The Things She Sent Home

By evening, Senamé had acquired three new titles, a husband and an injury she did not possess.

The titles came from the laundry court. The husband came from somewhere near the kitchens. According to Kékéli, who brought the news with considerable professional pride, she had caught the lightning between her teeth and spat it into the imperial officer’s face.

“Both hands were occupied.”

Yétundé tightened the bandage.

“One of them still is. Stop helping.”

Senamé adjusted her cushion with her free hand. Gifts included flowers and an elephant with excessively large ears, now supervising treatment beside her water.

Kékéli picked it up.

“That’s mine.”

He opened his mouth.

“The elephant. You can keep the husband.”

The boy considered this a reasonable division and went to investigate the flowers. Yétundé finished the knot, tested the movement of Senamé’s fingers and gathered the stained cloths.

At the door, she nearly collided with Sètondji.

He stepped aside, eyeing her bandages. Suddenly she noticed her enormous hair, loose wrapper and foot against the wall.

She left the foot where it was.

“Which version have you heard?”

“That you were hurt.”

“How disappointing. Ask in the kitchens.”

He did not smile. That spoiled the joke more effectively than any reprimand could have done.

Yétundé took Kékéli with her. He protested until she mentioned that the porter’s family had brought something for Senamé, at which point his devotion to her interests became overwhelming.

Sètondji remained by the doorway.

“May I come in?”

“You’ve managed half of it.”

He came the rest of the way, carrying a small wooden box. Inside lay three smooth pieces of carved wood, each a different thickness.

Senamé lifted the largest.

“A replacement hand?”

“Something to hold while the swelling goes down. The healer recommended it.”

The groove kept her bandage clear while her fingers rested. The smaller pieces would come later.

That irritated her. She had been doing quite well with him on the other side of the room.

“Sit down before someone makes you marry the doorway.”

This time his mouth moved.

He sat beside her as she flexed her fingers around the wood. Outside, a child argued that he had merely found the object he must return, despite finding it in somebody else’s bag.

Sètondji watched her flex the injured hand.

“I went to Mother.”

Senamé’s fingers stopped.

“And?”

“I told her I would not proceed with the marriage.”

She set both feet on the floor as though a wrong movement could disturb his words.

“What did she throw?”

“Nothing.”

“She’s saving it.”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

“She reminded me of every person whose support the arrangement would secure. Then she asked which of them I intended to lose.”

She could hear Adonon making every possible answer expensive.

“What did you tell her?”

“That I would speak to Dèdoun myself.”

It was not finished, then. She hated how quickly her body had begun celebrating.

“You said yes in front of everyone,” Senamé said.

“I did.”

“No one held your tongue.”

“No.”

He offered no beautiful account of suffering while she stood beneath the lamps trying not to be seen.

Senamé rubbed a thumb along the wooden groove.

“I can fight a man who throws lightning. I don’t know what to do with someone who wants me when we’re alone and agrees to somebody else when the room fills up.”

His hands closed together.

“You shouldn’t have to do anything with him.”

She looked up.

“I am trying to stop being him.”

For once, she had no useful improvement to offer.

His hand stopped on the cushion’s edge. She studied the small distance between their fingers.

She put her good hand over his.

“You’re still very annoying.”

“I have been told.”

“By people who like you. Imagine the others.”

His laugh loosened something beneath her ribs. She wanted to crawl into his lap, bite his shoulder, demand three explanations and then refuse to hear any of them. Instead, she hooked two fingers into his sleeve and pulled him closer.

He came willingly.

The first touch of his mouth was so careful that she drew back.

“I hurt my hand.”

His breath warmed her cheek.

“I noticed.”

“Then stop kissing it.”

He kissed her properly.

Her injured arm caught between them. She yelped; he recoiled in such horror that she laughed, catching his collar before he could finish apologizing.

“Hold this one.”

He cradled her bandaged wrist between them. With the inconvenience settled, she kissed him again.

The kiss couldn’t settle what happened beside Dèdoun. Tomorrow he must still do as he promised.

But she wanted him here. For once, she let herself want something before she knew whether she would be allowed to keep it.

A faint pulse stirred beneath her breastbone.

Senamé drew back, her good hand resting against his chest. His heart was beating fast. The other rhythm came more slowly, deep inside her, with a warmth that spread beneath her ribs.

“What is it?”

She pressed her palm to her own chest. The grey bead lay cool beneath her fingers.

“I don’t know.”

He waited while she tried to feel it again. There: a small, uneven beat, almost tender enough to hurt.

“Does it feel bad?”

She shook her head. For once, she wanted to decide how she felt before being examined.

“Stay a little longer.”

He settled beside her, keeping her injured hand safe between them.

Dèdoun received him the following morning without her gold ornaments.

The absence was deliberate, but not entirely theatrical. She had slept badly. Beneath the scented oil and the careful arrangement of her hair, her eyes were swollen.

Sètondji stopped just inside her private sitting court.

She indicated the place opposite her.

“Please. I would rather not have this conversation while you look ready to escape.”

He sat.

On the table between them stood two cups. Dèdoun poured from the same jug, took hers first and drank. He left his untouched.

She had prepared anger, then tears, then a speech about her family. None of them survived the sight of him choosing his first words with such care.

“You do not have to explain which woman it is.”

His shoulders tightened.

“This is about what I agreed to,” Sètondji said.

“It becomes about me when you withdraw it,” Dèdoun replied.

“I know.”

“No. You know that you will be embarrassed. You haven’t asked what they will call me.”

Outside the screen, an attendant moved away. Dèdoun waited until the footsteps had gone.

Sètondji picked up his cup.

“I will make it clear that the fault is mine.”

She nearly laughed.

Men could be astonishing. He would declare her blameless, and every woman who had lost to her would repeat his generosity while wondering aloud what defect he had discovered.

He drank.

Dèdoun set her cup down before the little tremor in her hand became visible.

Kossiwa’s vial lay empty in her dressing box. The liquid gave the drink no taste or colour. Swallowing it should surely have produced a sign.

There was none.

“Give me three days.”

He lowered the cup.

“Dèdoun—”

“Three days before you make any public announcement. Let me speak to my family. Let me leave this room without everyone already knowing.”

His expression softened with precisely the sympathy she could not bear.

“I can give you that.”

“And until then, if Mother asks whether our engagement stands, you will confirm it.”

He drew breath.

For the first time since entering, he seemed unable to find the next word.

Dèdoun could hear her own pulse. She kept both hands flat on her knees.

“Will you?”

His fingers tightened around the cup.

“Yes.”

It came out quietly. He frowned at the sound of it.

She should have stopped there.

“Promise me you won’t withdraw your consent when she asks.”

He lifted his face. Something in his eyes made her want to take the words back, open the screen and call somebody in.

Then she remembered him following Senamé out of the reception.

“Promise me.”

The cup clicked against its saucer.

“I promise.”

The receipt arrived folded inside a letter that had been waiting in Abomey for eleven years.

She was with Tassi, protesting the suspicious grace of her actions in the queen’s dispatch, when the archive keeper arrived.

Now her own statement lay unfinished beneath her elbow.

The archive keeper matched the transfer number to the copy she had requested. He placed one finger beneath the line, then withdrew his hand.

There was the name.

A coastal factor acknowledged receiving Kpénahi’s father and three other prisoners. The name and mark matched the transfer register.

Beside the signature, a long-legged bird bent its neck inside a stamped oval. One leg had printed clearly; the other dissolved into a smear. Senamé brought the page closer to the lamp.

“Which house used this mark?”

Tassi examined it.

“Leave me the receipt. I’ll have it checked.”

Senamé kept her fingers on the paper.

“I want a copy sent to Azara.”

“You shall have one.”

Senamé followed the writing to the next page.

“Released to the ship?”

The keeper’s mouth tightened.

“Delivered.”

“Delivered alive?”

“Yes.”

She hated him for making her ask the next question.

“For sale?”

“Yes.”

Behind the transfer lay a smaller sheet: his plea for a pardon and return to his wife and child.

Beneath the request, another hand had written a single word.

Refused.

“Who decided this?”

The keeper glanced at Tassi. She held out her hand for the sheet, examined the authorization and set it where Senamé could read it.

“My father.”

Senamé traced the dates without touching the ink. The refusal came before the transfer. There had still been time to bring him home.

“His wife was coming here to ask where he was.”

“Yes.”

“And he was asking to go back to her.”

Tassi kept her eyes on the two documents lying beside each other.

“Yes.”

Tassi dismissed him only after ordering a second copy of everything.

Senamé remained bent over the pages. On the following sheet, a different hand reported the settlement of a claim from across the ocean. One of the men had arrived with an old injury. Another had died. The buyer disputed the price.

Kpénahi’s father had survived the crossing.

For a moment Senamé clung to that, although eleven years lay between the ink and her hand.

Then she reached the final enclosure.

He had tried to escape. Twice. The second attempt had left him unable to work. The buyer wanted compensation for the loss.

Attached to the claim was a short statement taken before his death. Someone had recorded it because he had continued to insist that he had been sold unlawfully.

He had named his wife.

He had named his daughter.

Senamé pressed her good hand over the lower half of the page. The name remained beneath her palm, impossible to stop reading.

Kpénahi’s name, carried through years of drills and border watches, lay in a stranger’s handwriting. A man trying to get home had spoken it.

“She thought he left.”

Tassi drew the earlier petitions toward her.

Find the name. Find the place. Kpénahi had wanted evidence, not a story someone wished her to believe.

“She thought he chose to leave them.”

The queen read the last enclosure. Her face changed very little, but she read it twice.

“Was this here when his wife came?”

Tassi checked the dates.

“The final letter arrived later.”

“And after it arrived?”

There was no answer on the table.

Senamé pushed the petitions toward her.

“They knew where to put her questions.”

“Yes.”

“They found the right shelf for every one.”

Tassi did not look away.

Senamé got to her feet too quickly. Her chair caught behind her knees, and she kicked it clear with a violence that made the lamp tremble.

She wanted the keeper back, someone to fetch or unlock something, make this a problem with a next step.

“Does his family know what you’ve found?”

The question stopped her.

Tassi’s hand lay beside the letters.

Senamé had given the queen a name, a date, a family seeking an answer. She had avoided saying whose family it was.

“No.”

“Then they should hear it from you.”

“You’re letting me send it?”

The queen’s expression hardened.

“Senamé. It is hers.”

Outside, the dispatch to Azara still needed clerks and travel provisions. Senamé pulled her unfinished statement from beneath the file.

Her hand shook too much to write neatly.

She wrote anyway.

Kpénahi,

I found him.

Then she stopped.

That was cruel. Found him sounded like a door opening, like someone waiting on the other side.

She struck out the sentence and began again.

Kossiwa was waiting when Senamé brought the packet to be sealed.

She checked the number of enclosures without trying to read them. Beside the queen’s dispatch lay a thinner bundle bearing her own precise handwriting.

“You’re sending a report?”

“We were sent to send reports.”

Senamé lowered herself onto the bench.

Kossiwa glanced at her bandage, then adjusted the cord so Senamé would not have to hold it taut.

“What did you find?”

“The answer.”

The black pearl rested against Kossiwa’s throat. She stilled her hand.

For a few moments she allowed Senamé to sit without asking anything else. That small restraint nearly undid her.

“He didn’t abandon them.”

Kossiwa drew the packet closer, aligning its edges.

“Then she needs to know.”

“Yes.”

Kossiwa sealed the cord. Senamé heard the familiar fastening: nothing would enter unnoticed or fall out on the road.

Kossiwa laid her own report beneath the queen’s letter. Senamé put a hand on it.

“What did you write about me?”

“That you intervened against an imperial escort. That you are injured. That the queen is asking for the sword.”

It was all true. She waited. Kossiwa met her eyes.

“And that you have become very close to this household.”

Senamé withdrew her hand. The courier had arrived at the door. Kossiwa gathered the packets and checked his travel mark before surrendering them.

“Would you have left that out?”

The courier tucked away Kpénahi’s long-awaited answer, the queen’s alliance request and a report on the life Senamé had begun to want.

“No.”

The courier bowed and left. Senamé stayed until she could no longer hear his footsteps.