An Hour of His Own

Wood cracked against wood behind the courtyard wall. Senamé slowed on her way to Sètondji’s office, then looked through the gate.

He was busy being attacked.

Sètondji retreated before his opponent’s practice sword. Near the wall, he turned under a blow, caught the blade and twisted it free.

Senamé understood the move. The rest of him required a longer look.

Without his tunic, there was nothing to hide the strength across his shoulders or the scar beneath one arm. Sweat traced a path down his back. She followed it until he turned.

“Were you looking for me?”

Unfortunately, yes.

“The records,” she said. “You were going to ask.”

“The petition office. I sent the request this morning.”

She should have thanked him and left. Instead, she asked to borrow the spare sword.

The instructor gave her two easy openings before she realized he was testing her. On the third, she knocked his blade aside and stepped close enough to strike his throat.

His sword pressed against her ribs.

“Both dead.”

Senamé looked down at the wooden point.

She could have broken the weapon. She could have thrown him over the wall. Neither would have kept a real blade out of her body.

“Again,” she said.

She stayed until she could pass the blade untouched. Her braids loosened, and Sètondji forgot the cloth in his hand as he watched.

That pleased her enough to be dangerous.

She lost the next exchange.

When the instructor called a halt, she was laughing. Halfway through the water Sètondji offered, she remembered her serious inquiry.

“Your turn by the wall,” she said. “Show me.”

He took the practice sword and slowed the movement for her. His retreat had drawn the instructor forward; the last step left him room to turn.

Senamé tried it. Too far. Her shoulder met the wall.

“Less room than you think,” he warned.

On her second attempt, he stood where the opponent would have been. She turned inside his reach and stopped close enough to see a bead of sweat caught at his collarbone.

For a moment, neither moved.

Then the instructor cleared his throat.

Senamé stepped back. Sètondji went to retrieve his tunic, which suddenly seemed a terrible waste of cloth.

That evening, Senamé cried over her crooked strip of weaving.

She had picked it up while putting away her clothes. One edge still curled where she had pulled the thread too tight. Sètondji had held the other end while she worked, staying after someone had called him away.

Such a small thing. She couldn’t understand why it had followed her all day.

With Afiwa out and Kékéli asleep, she took her washing cloth to the drying court.

Under the empty lines and square of night, she pressed the cloth to her mouth before the first sob escaped.

She knew how to do this quietly.

That made her cry harder.

Today she had fought, laughed, been invited back to the weaving court. Sètondji had sent her request without making her prove she deserved it.

She wanted another day like this.

And another.

Back in Azara, the house by the cistern had seemed enough to want. A door of her own. A place to leave her things. Now she wanted people inside it, people who stayed after the work was finished.

How was she supposed to go home and stop wanting that?

The scales ached at her hip. She loosened her clothes. Tassi had no answer; the Python withheld his. How easily she had forgotten them this afternoon.

But she had enjoyed it.

She was still trying to hold both thoughts when a shutter opened above the court.

Senamé froze, listening for footsteps. She could leave before anyone noticed her.

Then a man began to sing.

Sètondji.

The voice was softer than she expected. He stopped halfway through a line, tried a different note and started again. The song was about a man who crossed three rivers to visit his lover, then knocked at the wrong door.

Senamé lowered the cloth.

Apparently this had happened before. The furious lover had prepared food and sent her family away for a fool who could cross the world but not a street.

A wet laugh slipped out of Senamé.

Above her, Sètondji hummed through a passage he hadn’t finished. Something scratched against a board. So that was what he had been writing beside his clothes.

In the next verse, the lover went out with a lamp.

Still angry. Still looking for him.

Senamé listened as he changed a word, lost his place and laughed. Nothing was required of her. She could simply hear something beautiful.

Gradually, her breathing eased.

When the traveller finally found the right house, she had stopped crying.

Afiwa found her there before dawn.

She woke with a stiff neck and cloth beneath her cheek. Afiwa crouched beside her, lamplight revealing unspoken concern.

“Don’t ask,” Senamé murmured.

“All right. Up.”

Afiwa helped her stand and brushed the dust from her back. At the doorway, Senamé glanced towards the shutter.

It was closed.

Her friend followed the glance, then led her inside without a word.

Adonon sent for Senamé and Sètondji later that morning.

He met her outside the queen mother’s court, dressed in cream, every trace of the training yard washed away. Senamé nearly told him about the song. She wanted him to know what it had done for her.

Then he asked whether she had slept well, and all she managed was, “Eventually.”

Inside, women were sorting ceremonial cloth beneath an awning. The woman with the coral pins stood beside Adonon, holding a patterned length against her shoulder.

Senamé made her greeting.

Adonon looked her over.

“You’ve given her a great deal of your time,” she told Sètondji. “One might think you intended to marry her.”

Heat rushed into Senamé’s face.

“She is the queen’s guest.”

“And you have a future of your own to consider.”

At Adonon’s gesture, an attendant moved the cloth aside. Letters lay beneath it, tied in neat bundles.

Senamé understood before Sètondji spoke.

“Mother. I said I would consider introductions.”

“And that is what I’ve arranged.”

The woman with the coral pins came forward.

Dèdoun.

At last Senamé had a name to put to the smile.

Adonon praised Dèdoun’s family, education and accomplishments. Dèdoun greeted Sètondji almost shyly, considering how little trouble she had speaking to Senamé.

Two other women would arrive with their relatives. There would be visits, shared meals, time to get acquainted.

Sètondji stopped an attendant from untying the next letter.

“I intend to choose my wife.”

“Then meet them.”

“I mean without a promise already made.”

Adonon’s expression sharpened.

“Have you heard me announce your engagement?”

“No.”

“Then don’t accuse me of it.”

He swallowed his answer, searching for a harmless objection. Adonon had already called for a clerk.

The visits went into the household schedule.

Sètondji asked to see the dates. Adonon agreed at once, making room for him beside her as though this had been his idea.

Dèdoun joined Senamé near the edge of the awning.

“I hope this won’t interrupt your lessons.”

She could make Dèdoun explain, before everyone, why it should.

Instead, she looked towards Sètondji.

He was still studying the dates, trying to keep one afternoon free.

“So do I,” she said.

Outside, Sètondji walked with her as far as the passage leading to the guest rooms.

“I didn’t know she would do that with you there.”

Senamé wanted to ask whether he would have minded without her there. The question felt too much like an admission.

“Are you going to meet them?”

He glanced back towards Adonon’s court.

“Yes.”

There was nothing unfair about the answer. That was the worst part.

She had arrived with borrowed clothes and a secret mission. His family expected him to marry. Of course he would meet their candidates.

“I haven’t promised anything,” he added.

“You don’t owe me an explanation.”

His gaze returned to her.

She wished she hadn’t said it. She wanted the explanation. She wanted him to keep talking until something stopped hurting.

A servant approached to fetch him. This time he really did have to go.

Senamé walked back alone. In her room, Afiwa was sorting the papers for their report. She made space on the bed without being asked.

“They’re finding him a wife,” Senamé said.

Afiwa put the papers down.

Afiwa eased a painful pin from Senamé’s gold-threaded braids.

For a while, Senamé let her.

Afiwa put a sandal on the bed.

“Adonon.”

Despite herself, Senamé looked.

Her friend placed the comb beside it, then arranged three hairpins in a row.

“He chooses a wife from the women she invites. The visits happen when she decides. Her friends tell him how well each visit went.”

Senamé pushed the comb beneath the sandal.

“Like that?”

“Now you understand.”

The laugh hurt a little coming out, but it helped. Senamé rescued the comb and began picking hair from its teeth while Afiwa returned to the papers.

They could report altered orders, invitations, officials bypassing Tassi. It still made her look like a woman needing rescue from everyone around her.

Senamé knew what she had left out.

“Give me the pen.”

Afiwa passed it over without asking.

Senamé added three sentences. Tassi wanted to reunite the imperial talismans. She had asked about Azara’s sword. Senamé had refused to tell her where it was, and the queen had continued helping her.

The last sentence mattered. She made herself leave the first two beside it.

Afiwa read them.

“All right.”

“Don’t sound so relieved.”

“I’ve been carrying that report next to my skin. I’d like to know what I’m taking home.”

Two mornings later, Sètondji took her to the royal audience recordings. Permission for the older transfer books had still not arrived; these she could see.

Small pearls rested in padded drawers, each with a label tied beneath it. Cedar kept insects out of the wood; the room smelled as though someone had shut a forest inside and forgotten the key.

Sètondji selected a recording to show her how an audience worked.

A man appeared above the bronze viewing ring and bowed. Then he began naming the queen’s ancestors.

By the time he reached the walls of the palace, Senamé had shifted twice on the bench.

“Did he come about the walls?”

“No.”

“Does he know?”

He advanced the recording. The visitor stumbled, nearly felling an official. Before anyone laughed, Tassi’s gentle questions drew out the reason for his visit.

Senamé watched that part again. The queen had seen his fear and made room for him to speak.

She liked her so much in that moment.

A messenger called Sètondji away before they opened the next pearl. He left her with the clerk and a promise to return.

The second recording concerned land. Senamé learned that two men could agree on the location of every tree and still threaten to kill each other over them.

The third showed a young woman kneeling before the throne.

Her clothes were plain and carefully arranged. She gave her name, the household where she served and the reason she had come: her brother had been taken after a dispute with an official.

She had witnesses.

Someone outside the image asked whether she wished to withdraw the accusation.

The girl repeated a witness’s name.

“Will you withdraw it?”

Senamé leaned closer. The recording showed the petitioner from the throne. Whoever was questioning her stood beyond its edge.

Then Tassi spoke.

“You may leave without further punishment if you withdraw the accusation.”

The girl looked up.

“Will you let my brother come home?”

No answer.

She began explaining again. She had worked in Abomey for years. People knew her. Someone could fetch the woman she served.

“I thought, with a woman on the throne—”

A voice cut across hers. Tassi ordered silence.

Senamé waited for the queen to ask about the witnesses.

Instead, Tassi offered the girl one final chance to withdraw.

She refused.

Another voice read the sentence: dismissal from the household, expulsion from Abomey, no return without permission.

The girl remained kneeling. When the attendants reached her, she got up, straightened her clothes and made the proper farewell.

The image vanished.

Senamé touched the ring again. There she was, back at the beginning, placing her hands neatly on the floor.

Every gesture was correct.

All those lessons, and this girl had known them already.

“Where’s her petition?”

The clerk checked the label.

“This is only the audience.”

“I know. I want the evidence.”

He explained that petitions were kept elsewhere. Judgments went to another office; orders concerning prisoners might be held in a third.

Senamé asked him to write the names down.

When Sètondji returned, the girl was kneeling above the ring again.

“Did she lie?” Senamé asked.

He read the label before answering.

“I don’t know.”

“Tassi let them send her away.”

“Yes.”

She wanted some missing fact to change the queen’s voice when she played it again.

He couldn’t.

Senamé took the list of offices.

“Then I’ll ask.”

Yétundé recognized the petition office at once.

“Try the wife’s name too,” she told Senamé, looking at the details Kpénahi had given her. “If she came asking for him, they may have filed her request separately.”

“Could you take it there?”

Yétundé’s hand stopped above the paper.

Senamé began explaining how little she needed. A book number. A date. Surely someone could—

“No.”

The word was quiet enough that Senamé almost spoke over it.

Yétundé moved back from the table.

“You can ask as the queen’s guest. What do I say when they ask why I want it?”

She had nearly sent Yétundé into an unfamiliar office with a question she herself kept hidden.

“I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

Yétundé nodded towards the list.

“That door. Early, before the line reaches the yard.”

Senamé and Afiwa were there the next morning.

Even with Sètondji’s request, they waited all morning while a clerk searched under the wife’s name and village.

At last he found an entry.

Three petitions appeared on the page. The first asked where her husband had been taken. The second requested permission to see him. Beside the third, a clerk had added the reference for a transfer register.

No answer was recorded.

Kpénahi’s mother had made each journey without knowing whether she would learn anything. Someone had watched her leave after the third.

“May I see the register?”

Further permission was required.

This time, though, Senamé knew exactly which book to request. She asked for the reference in writing and waited while the clerk stamped it.

Outside, Afiwa bought them water. Senamé drank with the paper held safely away from the cup.

For the first time, she had something to send Kpénahi that wasn’t another promise to keep looking.

Before dawn, Afiwa packed their report and a copy of the reference. Senamé kept the original.

They had added the petition entries, but not the recorded audience. When Afiwa asked why, Senamé answered too quickly.

“We haven’t seen the evidence.”

“We can say that.”

“And if Kpénahi orders us both home before we find it?”

Afiwa waited.

Senamé tightened the cord around the food parcel. She was defending the queen again. Perhaps there was a reason to. Perhaps she only wanted there to be.

“Give me until you come back.”

“I’ll tell her we’re still checking a judgment.”

Senamé disliked the compromise. She let it stand.

Kékéli tried to contribute a carved lamp to the bag. Afiwa returned it to the shelf, then checked beneath the food for anything else he had decided she needed.

At the outer gate, the morning air smelled of damp dust and cooking fires. Porters were already arguing over space on the road.

Senamé straightened Afiwa’s strap.

“Don’t let her send someone else back.”

“I’ll tell her nobody else knows how to manage you,” Afiwa said.

“She’ll believe that.”

“She has experience.”

They smiled, but neither moved away.

Afiwa caught Senamé’s hand against the strap.

“You’re allowed to enjoy being here.”

Senamé looked at her.

“Just keep asking your questions. Even when you like the person who has to answer.”

She pulled Senamé close. Their foreheads touched, and for a moment the crowded gate might have been a path in Azara, with home waiting at the other end.

Then Afiwa stepped back.

“I’ve borrowed your best hairpin.”

“That wasn’t permission.”

“Keep somewhere for me to return it.”

She slipped between two porters and walked until the road opened ahead of her. Then she ran. A hanging cloth snapped in her wake, and the dust had barely risen before she was gone.

Senamé stayed by the gate until new arrivals forced her aside. Three women entered with attendants and matching luggage. One carried an invitation bearing Adonon’s mark.

Inside her sleeve, the stamped reference scratched against her wrist.

She took it out and went to find the clerk who could authorize the next book.