Waiting for the Queen Read Online Free Page A

rather just run somewhere dry and warm.
    â€œThey must be hungry,” I finally say.
    â€œAye. And John, we need to build fires within the few cabins we do have. I’m told these people are quite helpless. Unlike the great La Fayette.”
    â€œFather,” I ask. “Dost thou know, is the Queen among them?”
    â€œNay, but they expect her in the next weeks or, if not, then in the spring.”
    â€œThose others, the dark-skinned ones. Are they . . . slaves?”
    Father bows his head awhile. His hair is wet. The shoulders of his deerskin jacket are wet as well. After a moment, he raises his head and regards us gravely. “Aye. Their owner is a sugar cane planter from Hispaniola. Dost thou remember thy geography, Hannah?”
    â€œHispaniola. ’Tis in the Caribbean Sea, to the south of our country.”
    â€œAye. See John, our Hannah forgets naught. Well, the man has sanctuary here as well but is in a thundering tirrit at the state of things. And the unfortunate souls be bearing the brunt of his ill will. I said to Talon that we might shelter them here.”
    â€œThe slave owners, Father?” John fairly shouts.
    â€œNay. His slaves.” Father stands. “Should there be no dwelling for them, as there shan’t be, I fear. John, we need—”
    â€œCould we help them run away, Father?” I ask, the idea of it just there, bright and large.
    â€œHannah,” John says, “art thou forgetting that law?”
    And now I do remember. The Fugitive Slave Act. It was passed in February of this year by our new Congress in Philadelphia. Even though our country’s Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal and have inalienable Rights , many of those who signed this wonderfuldocument turned around and wrote a law that condones slavery! Are we already snarled in hypocrisy as a nation? Father worries that we indeed are.
    â€œThese be French slaves,” Father is saying. “So any law of ours may not apply to them. But now let us have a moment of quiet before we see to our tasks.”
    I close my eyes and a scene shapes itself around me, a grove of young maples, my favorite summer place, at home. At my feet, long thin blades of grass, curving over last year’s leaves, brown and crumpled. I sit on a rock ledge and just look. The green all about gladdens my heart. So, too, the shade. The whisper of wind. My face grows warm, and my hands. I breathe in the grove’s sweetness and my heart slows.
    After Father and John leave, I fill a pot with stew and a basket with bread and sweet butter and prepare to carry these things to my two families, the La Roques and the Aversilles, who have been fortunate to have won, in a lottery, cabins for themselves.
    As I hurry toward the new cabins, I shiver with cold and the strangeness of it all. Nobles, here. Slaves. And soon, the Queen of France.

Eugenie
    Looking through the low door, I can only gasp. Our maison is merely a single room! Hardly even that—a mere storeroom! Still, warmth flows outward from the fire on the hearth, and so, compressing our redingotes about our traveling gowns, we dare to enter, Maman first.
    Inside, we take in the rude furnishings. Gateleg table against one log wall. Candleholder and candle upon the table. Three wooden, utterly plain chairs. A peculiar small bed against the opposite wall. A bench with a high back near the fireplace. Black iron utensils to either side of the raised hearth, with wood stacked on the left. One unglazed window open to the darkness gathering outside. As workers carry in our three barrels and two trunks, Maman and I must press against one another to make room for them. When they leave, I set Sylvette down on the plank floor. At once she jumps upon the bench and sits trembling before the fire.
    â€œWe cannot stay here,” I say. “We must have something better than this.”
    â€œAh, but at least it is warm,” Papa says,