He’s still looking right into my eyes. I notice how dark blue his own are, like water running over a slate.
“And of all the people I’ve met in New Prentisstown, your Mistress Coyle is the only one who truly knows what leading is like. Leadership isn’t grown, Viola. It’s taken, and she may be the only person on this entire planet besides myself who has enough strength, enough will to take it.”
I keep looking at his eyes and a thought comes.
His Noise is still silent as the black beyond and his face and eyes give away nothing either.
But I do begin to wonder–
Right there, just at the back of my thinking–
Is he afraid of her?
“Why do you think I had you taken to her for your gunshot wound?” he asks.
“She’s the best healer. You said it yourself.”
“Yes, but she’s far from the only one. Bandages and medicine do most of the work. Mistress Coyle just applies them especially skilfully.”
My hand goes unconsciously to my front scar. “It’s not just that.”
“It is not, you’re correct.” He leans even farther forward. “I want her on my side, Viola. I need her on my side if I’m going to make this new society any kind of success. If we worked together, Mistress Coyle and I,” he leans back, “well, what a world we could make.”
“You locked her up.”
“But I wasn’t going to keep her locked up. The borders between men and women had become blurred, and the reintroduction of those borders is a slow and painful process. The formation of mutual trust takes time, but the important thing to remember is, as I’ve said, the war is over, Viola. It truly is. I want no more fighting, no more bloodshed.”
For something to do, I pick up the cooling cup of coffee. I put it to my lips but I don’t drink it.
“Is Todd okay?” I ask, not looking at him.
“Happy and healthy and working in the sun,” the Mayor says.
“Can I see him?”
He’s silent, as if he’s considering it. “Will you do something for me?” he asks.
“What?” Another idea begins to form in my head. “You want me to spy on her for you.”
“No,” he says. “Not spying, not at all. I just want your help in convincing her that I’m not the tyrant she thinks, that history isn’t as she knows it, that if we work together, we can make this place into the home we both wanted when our people left Old World all those many years ago. I am not her enemy. And I am not yours.”
He seems so sincere. He really does.
“I’m asking for your help,” he says.
“You’re in complete control,” I say. “You don’t need my help.”
“I do,” he says insistently. “You’ve grown closer to her than I ever possibly could.”
Have I? I think.
This is the girl, I remember.
“I also know that she drugged you that first night so you would fall asleep before you told me anything.”
I sip my cold coffee. “Wouldn’t you have done the same?”
He smiles. “So you agree we’re not that different, her and I?”
“How can I trust you?”
“How can you trust her if she drugged you?”
“She saved my life.”
“After I delivered you to her.”
“She’s not keeping me locked up in the house of healing.”
“You came here unchaperoned, didn’t you? The restrictions are being lessened this very day.”
“She’s training me as a healer.”
“And who are all those other healers she’s been meeting with?” He folds his fingers back into a tent. “What are they up to, do you suppose?”
I look down into the coffee cup and swallow, wondering how he knows.
“And what do they have planned for you?” he asks.
I still don’t look at him.
He stands. “Come with me, please.”
He leads me out of the huge room and across the short lobby at the front of the cathedral. The doors are wide open onto the town square. The army is doing marching exercises out there and the pound pound pound of their feet pours in and the ROAR of the men who no longer have the cure floods in right behind it.
I wince a little.
“Look there,” says the Mayor.
Past the army, in the centre of the square, some men are assembling a small platform of plain wood, a bent pole up on the top.
“What’s that?”
“It’s where Sergeant Hammar is going to be hanged tomorrow afternoon for his terrible, terrible crime.”
The memory of Maddy, of her lifeless eyes, rises in my chest again. I have to press my hand to my mouth to hold it back.
“I spared the old Mayor of this town,” he says, “but I will not spare one of my most loyal and long-standing sergeants.” He looks at me. “Do you honestly think I would go to such lengths just to please one girl who has information I could use? Do you honestly think I would go to that much trouble when, as you say, I’m in complete control?”
“Why are you doing it then?” I ask.
“Because he broke the law. Because this is a civilized world and acts of barbarity will not be tolerated. Because the war is over.” He turns to me. “I would very much like you to convince Mistress Coyle of that.” He steps closer. “Will you do that? Will you at least tell her the things I’m doing to remedy this tragic situation?”
I look down at my feet. My mind is whirling, spinning like a meteor.
The things he says could be true.
But Maddy is dead.
And it’s my fault.
And Todd’s still gone.
What do I do?
(what do I do?)
“Will you, Viola?”
At least, I think, it’s information to give to Mistress Coyle.
I swallow. “I’ll try?”
He smiles again. “Wonderful.” He touches me gently on the arm. “Run along back now. They’ll be needing you for the funeral service.”
I nod and step out onto the front steps and away from him, moving into the square a little bit, the ROAR of it all beating down on me as hard as the sun. I stop and try to catch the breath that seems to have run away from me.
“Viola.” He’s still watching me, watching me from the steps of his house, the cathedral. “Why don’t you have dinner with me here tomorrow night?”