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March 1814
In the mornings she went walking while the men slept. First away from the settlement and along the cliffs that looked over the cove, then down the rough stairs carved into stone. She moved slowly, one hand spread on the rock face like a starfish while the other held her skirts.
For a while she studied the world: turtles sunning themselves on the rocks, restless seabirds, fish dull and sun-bright, quick and darting, languid, sinuous. The constant of the sea, and the horizon. When she could look no more, she turned and began the climb, lizards skittering at the sweep of her skirts. She felt lazy eyes on her back.
The guards had been lulled by the regularity of her habits into complacence. And why not? She could have been no more tied down had they used ropes and chains.
The path she walked ran along the forest that made up the heart of the island. Shadowy cool in the heat, buzzing with insects. Mastic trees so big that it took four men to circle the trunk, arms outstretched; fragrant cedar; stands of mahogany so dense that walking among them was to twist constantly one way and then another. Tamarinds, wild mangoes, other things she could not name.
How her father would have loved this place. Orchids like birds in flight hanging over the frayed stump of a palm tree. Parrots everywhere, flickerings of scarlet and emerald and cobalt blue overhead. She thought of her father often, spoke to him in her thoughts as she made her plans. Imagined his reactions, and made changes accordingly.
The forest gave way to the wet side of the island, mangroves on stilt roots in swamps alive with crickets, flies, great armies of ants and termites. The stink of green things rotting, thick on the tongue. She picked her way carefully, skirts tied into a knot, back straight.
No one was following her now. She was never sure why, if it was simple laziness, or fear of where she was going, or the certainty that she would be back. The lagoons went on for miles, and then more swamps, and finally there would be the sea.
She had loved the sea, once, and dreamed of living on a ship. Now she spent as much time as she could in this particular place, where she could be free of the sound of waves breaking on the cliffs and the scream of gulls.
The lagoon spread out before her in the dim light. She held her breath and waited. A ripple, another. The surface of the water moved and broke.
Hello. She whispered the word while the bulbous body in the water rolled and rolled. Then another appeared beside it, smaller: her child. Water sliding off gray-green skin, a rounded hip, the long curved line of back.
She stepped out of her shoes and into the cool grasp of the water, thought of swimming out to them. To play among the selkies, and learn their language so that she might ask them for shelter and sanctuary. For herself and her child.
Her hands rested on the great curve of her own belly. The life inside it flexed and turned, another swimmer in a silent sea.
L'Île de LamantinsFrench AntillesAugust 1814
The island, beautiful and treacherous, drew in the love-struck and rewarded them with razor-sharp coral reefs, murderous breakwaters, and cliffs that no sane man would attempt.
Kit Wyndham was sane. Out of his depth, perhaps, but Major Christian Pelham Wyndham of the King's Rangers was in command of all his senses, while Luke Scott was not.
"Major?"
The lieutenant hovered like a maiden aunt, stopping just short of wringing his hands. If given permission to speak, Hodge would say out loud what he had said too many times already: that they had no business here; that what Scott intended was madness.
Hodge was wrong about one thing: They did have business here, and crucial business at that. The only kind of business that could have forged this strange alliance between himself and the Scotts: They were after the same prey.
A fat moon hung in a clear night sky, sending the shadows of masts and rigging out to dance on the water. On the rail his own hands were drained of color, corpse gray.
He turned to assure his lieutenant that he would have no part in this night's insanity. Let Scott take his band of mercenaries and storm Priest's Town, and good luck to them one and all. Kit Wyndham had made a promise, and he would keep it: Now that their quarry was in sight, he would step back and let Scott lead.
Just behind Lieutenant Hodge stood Hannah Scott, dressed in men's breeches and a leather jerkin over a rough shirt, her person hung about with weapons: a rifle on her back, pistols, a knife in a beaded sheath on a broad belt. She could heal or kill; he had seen her conjure miracles and blasphemies with equal ease. No mortal woman, he had called her to her face, and she had not corrected him with words.
The moonlight was kind to her, as the sun was kind. In the year since they had made their uneasy alliance he had seen her every day, and still the sight of her was startling. By the standards of Wyndham's own kind, Luke Scott's Mohawk half sister could not be called beautiful. Her skin was too dark, her hair too black, her mouth too generous for pale English blood. Below deep-set eyes the bosses of her cheeks cast shadows. Most damning of all, the expression in those eyes was far and away too intelligent. If her skin were as pale as cream, her mind would have isolated her; Englishmen did not know what to do with such a woman.
Even at this moment she knew exactly what he was thinking, the excuses he had been ready to offer, the rationalizations. If he voiced them she would simply tilt her head and look at him. She would call him no names, but he would hear them anyway.
"Major?" Lieutenant Hodge's voice rose and wavered.
He said, "Fetch my weapons." And: "Miss Scott, please tell your brother I will be joining the rescue party."
All this, for a woman.
The men liked to speculate, when Luke Scott was out of their hearing, how much money had been spent on this year-long crusade, by the woman's kinfolk and the Crown. Scott wanted his wife back; none of the men doubted that for a minute. He wasn't the kind of man who would let himself be robbed, not Luke Scott. But it seemed that there was more at stake, something nobody was talking about. The fact that Wyndham had been sent after Dégre at the same time made that clear.
No expense had been spared. First there was the Isis, the great merchantman sitting idle in the waters off Kingston. She was too clumsy a ship for the kind of work they had to do in the islands, and so Scott had purchased the schooner Patience as thoughtlessly as another man might put down coin for bread and ale. The crew was well paid and the provisions---meat and biscuit and ale and rum---were generous. Beyond the material things, the Earl of Carryck and the Scotts had put down a fortune in pursuit of information.
Kit Wyndham stood back and watched the Scotts contrive. Their money was of less interest to him; he was born to wealth and had been raised among people who knew how to spend it. His family had been cultivating those skills for generations; his mother and sisters were experts. When Scott spent money he bought results. Fast ships, good men, names whispered in dark corners, maps drawn with a bit of charcoal on a tabletop.
Scott's men were expert soldiers, utterly silent, ruthless to a fault, loyal unto death. Part of that was generosity with coin, but not the biggest part. Kit had known men like these when he was in Spain under Wellington.
Now was not the time to think of Spain. He put those images out of his head and concentrated on the back of the man in front of him, called Dieppe. Scott's most important find: a small, quick, wiry man, his skin the deep true black of the enslaved African.
Just last month Scott had found Dieppe in St. Croix and bought him for more than he was worth. Then he offered the African his freedom in return for one night's work. It was Dieppe who knew the reefs that built a fortress around this island. Without him they would need an army to take it, and no doubt the lady would die before they could get to her.
Night birds called, and their voices echoed off the water as the longboat wound its way through a swamp crowded by an army of mangrove trees. A sinuous tail as broad around as a man's waist flicked in the moonlight, and Wyndham touched the long knife at his side. He had seen an alligator twenty feet long rip the leg off a man with a jerk of his head.
Dieppe led them onto land so saturated with water that to stand still was to invite disaster. They followed one by one: Scott, his sister, then the others made a long coiling snake with Dieppe as the head. Dieppe and Scott and some of the other men carried machetes; Wyndham had his short sword.
For two hours they walked through the damp heat of the swamp in the wake of the swinging blades. Tiny gnats gathered at nostrils and the corners of lips and eyes, and Wyndham wiped them away with the back of his hand, thinking of the ointment he had been offered and turned down.
The lagoons, then, as they had been told: long commas of water silvered by the moonlight. The men broke into a trot until they came to the edge of the forest, where they stopped for five minutes while Dieppe and Scott spoke, heads bent together.
The swamps were bad, but these forests were worse. Wyndham concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other and not losing sight of the man in front of him. Something screamed, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose. This dark and fragrant place could hardly be more different from Spain's hot exposed plains and rocky hills, but his blood pounded here as it had there, and would spill the same bright color.
When they came out of the forest Wyndham touched his pistols and his sword lightly, and looking up, caught Hannah Scott's gaze on him. He had seen her kill, but she knew nothing of him in the field, except the stories told behind his back. Most of them were perfectly true.
The cove was small, well protected from the winds, and unguarded. Looking down on it they saw two ships---Dégre's Grasshopper, and another unknown to them. If Scott had sailed the Patience into the cove and tried to walk up the path that had been cut into the cliff face, then perhaps one of the men sleeping with an empty bottle cradled between his legs might have woke to sound the alarm. As it was, they died quietly.
Scott sent half the men to deal with the ships, and the rest of them went into the settlement called Priest's Town. It turned out to be nothing more than a warren of shacks set up off the ground, most of them empty. Two old mulatto women lived in the smallest of them with their goats and swine. They seemed neither surprised to be roused by strange soldiers in the middle of the night, nor worried about their lives. That was another talent of Scott's: he could dispense calm as easily as coin. People trusted him, even when they should not. He could be kind, if it furthered his cause; but ruthlessness came to him just as easily. He would have gone far in the army.
The raiders turned their attention to the largest of the shacks. Directly in the middle, the largest room's outer wall was made of a series of doors, all open to the weather. A rail hung from the sagging porch like a broken arm. Lanterns swayed from blackened posts, some of them dead, others guttering and spewing black smoke. The inside of the house was crowded.
Scott's men moved like a company who had fought together in a dozen campaigns, silently, easily, joined by invisible threads just tense enough to keep them aware of each other. Kit tested the weight of his rifle, as familiar to him as any part of his body. The bayonet clicked into place. It caught what light there was and winked at him.
They waited for the guide, ten minutes, twenty, and then Dieppe came back, sweat covered, trembling. Scott asked him a question in rapid French, and got a nod in answer.
"A child? Did you see an infant?"
"Non." Sure of himself, of what he hadn't seen.
For the first time tonight, Wyndham saw Scott hesitate. No doubt he had been hoping to find the woman and her child together. If there was a child.
Again he felt Hannah Scott's gaze on him, as if she were reading his thoughts, and answering them.
It was an argument they had had too many times: whether or not the information they had about the woman's condition was to be trusted. Scott believed it was true; Wyndham was doubtful. The old woman who had told them that the lady they were after was heavy with child might simply have been looking for more coin.
In a few minutes they would know. Scott sent some of the men around to the back, and gave them orders to wait for his signal.
Wyndham saw the room for a split second before the battle started. Tables cluttered with dice and cards and cups, a long bar on the far wall, and men who had been enjoying themselves. A dozen of them, dirtier and rougher than many, but still just men burned by sun and wind and erratic fortune.
The one man who concerned them most sat at a large table in the corner, his dark head thrown back in laughter. It had been more than a year since Wyndham had last seen the false priest, but he recognized Dégre. And on the other side of the room, sitting behind a small table with cards laid out before her, the woman. She was much changed, thinner and drawn and her eyes shadowed, burning with fever, or anger long held in check. Her belly was flat. If she had been with child, she was no longer.
It took less than a second to see all that, and then his rifle found its target and things happened very fast, and all at once.
There were very few things that Jennet Huntar could be sure of, but one of them was this: For as long as she lived, she would dream of palm trees. Spindle-fingered against topaz skies or storm clouds, dancing against bloody sunsets and bloodier sunrises, always beckoning: They would be with her forever. Right now she could look up and see them against the sky as the night leached away, if she just lifted her head.
But she was at work, and it was the work that kept her wits intact. She had a little table of her own, and two stools. On the table she dealt out her cards for anyone who could pay the price.
When there were few men interested in the cards she laid them out for herself.
The Hangman. The Tower. The Knave of Swords.
Tonight her steadiest, most devoted customer was drinking at the bar. He was called Moore, one of Thibodoux's men off the Badger. When the old Irishman was here, he spent half his coin on drink, and the other half he gave to hear her read him the cards. The other men spent money on the women in the back rooms, but Moore was content to sit and look at what he could not have.
Tonight he waited until the moon had set and he was so full of liquor that he would fall off his chair if Jennet leaned forward to prod him with one finger. And yet he was not so drunk that he forgot what he wanted from her.
He sat with filthy fingers laced into his long, tobacco-stained beard. The low forehead was remarkable for its deep reddish color, set off by a thick twisting white scar in the shape of a cross. His mouth made a perfectly round circle in the middle of his beard, and his tongue flickered when he talked, snakelike.
"Tell me, Lady Jennet, when will I get me a good wife?"
It was the question he always asked.
Moore was no better and no worse than the other men who drifted through this place. Always hungry: for drink and release and excitement, for sleep, and beyond all those things, for advantage. Hungry and not particularly worried about how he came by what he needed.
"Not tonight, Mr. Moore. But perhaps sometime soon. Let us look."
She took her time. Moore would not complain. It was mostly what he was paying for, the right to sit close enough to imagine the texture of the skin he could not see, would never see. She was the daughter and sister of an earl; surely her skin must be as soft and white as milk. Many of the men who came here would have delighted to quench their curiosity by taking her apart like a crab, cracking open what she tried to hold back. But she was Dégre's pet creature, and they must keep their distance unless it was to sit across a table and hand over coin.
As long as he came no closer and kept his hands to himself, Jennet was content to take Moore's money, and sometimes, when he had drunk enough, the one thing she really wanted from him.
"It's been a good while since you last came to see us, Mr. Moore," she said as she shuffled the cards, slowly, carefully. "A long voyage, then?"
He looked about himself nervously, one eyelid fluttering. Fear cut through the drunken fog. "Aye. Long enough, missus. Long enough."
She had misjudged the timing, and put him on his guard.
The Three of Swords. The Six of Cups. The Moon.
His gaze shifted to the table in the far corner, where men sat bent over their game. The one he feared was not looking in this direction, but that meant nothing at all.
He's got eyes in the back of his head, does Dégre.
She had heard men say such things too often to count. The man they called the Priest, or more rarely, Dégre---the man who owned this place and claimed the island itself---was a legend, a force as inevitable and ungovernable as the winds. None of the hard men who frequented L'Île de Lamantins would cross him.
Jennet had crossed him, and she lived still. Because in the year since she had begun traveling with him, she had come to understand the way his mind worked. She had planned very carefully, and moved fast when the time came, and she had succeeded. She was alive not because she had got the best of Dégre, but because he had plans for her that promised more satisfaction than a quick death dealt out in the anger of the moment.
The Priest was watching her now, as she turned over cards and talked about them. He might be thinking about nothing more than what he would eat for his supper, or of changing his shirt, or there could be something very different brewing there.
It worried Moore, but Jennet was beyond fear. Dégre had already robbed her of everything of value.
"The Moon," she said to Moore. "It shows itself often when you come to hear your cards read, sir. The moon is a guiding image for you, I think."
"Aye," he agreed, his small features bunched together in an attempt to convey sincerity. "And remind me then, Lady Jennet, what does it mean, the Moon card?"
"Inconstancy. Are you inconstant in your temperament, Mr. Moore?"
It was too much for him in his current state. He blinked at her owlishly, his mouth jerking at one corner as he tried to push himself up from the table, a puppet with tangled strings. Jennet gathered her cards together, waiting patiently for him to find his tongue and make it do his bidding. Later, it would be the expression on Moore's face she recalled first when she thought about this night.
As he opened his mouth, the sound of a dozen rifles firing together tore the world in two. Moore fell forward onto the table, blood gushing from his mouth.
Jennet dropped to her knees and then pressed her face to the floor. The room was filled with screams and gunsmoke and tumbling bodies, glass shattering and the wind, rising suddenly; she heard it howling and howling as the idea presented itself, very clearly: She was about to die, and she had brought it upon herself. The next volley would find her, and she would die here on this filthy floor in this hell-begotten place and she would never see him again, never in this life.
A man was standing over her. Dégre, his face lost in shadow and still she saw his eyes, wild with rage. Blood dripping from his scalp onto his shoulder, running down his arm. He held out a hand to her, and it simply...fell apart in a mist of blood and flesh.
He stood for a moment looking at the raw meat that was his hand, baffled, it seemed by his expression, at this turn of events.
And then Luke was there, pressing a pistol to Dégre's temple.
"Ah," the false priest said calmly. "Scott. Come to claim the leftovers, eh?"
To Kit Wyndham it looked as though Dégre smiled, even as Scott's pistol kicked and fired. The Priest's knees folded, and he fell.
Lady Jennet was falling, too, collapsing so slowly that when Scott caught her it looked as though they were practicing a new dance step. His head came up and turned, his gaze raking over the destruction they had wrought.
"Hannah," he said, holding out the woman. "Hannah, help me."
In less than an hour it was all sorted: a dozen dead men piled up and rolled from the porch like so much driftwood. The ones who had been in the rooms off to the side with the women, all prisoners now, had been divided into groups. Some of them were digging graves; the rest were marched down to the cove.
Overhead the early morning sky was darkening, and a rough breeze made the palms sway.
One of the women yawned. There was a splatter of blood on her skirt and her eyes were dull with weariness, but she raised her face to the sky and smiled. Another woman sat with her feet swinging, leaning toward one of Scott's men. His posture as he bent his head toward her was as obvious as a flag. Soldiers were as predictable as horses in their needs.
Kit rubbed the grit and gunpowder from his face and listened to what was going on in the corner where Scott crouched next to his half sister, the two of them a wall between the room and the woman.
Lady Jennet had come out of her faint and was weeping in Hannah's arms, weeping as a woman weeps when she has lost the thing she loves most in the world.
"Jennet," Hannah said, her tone firm but not harsh. "Jennet, calm yourself. You're safe now. You are safe."
Scott looked away. To Hannah he said, "I'll go search the other rooms."
"No," Jennet said. Her head came up with a jerk. "No, don't leave me. Luke, don't go."
What a gift that was to him. Scott couldn't hide his relief.
"We have to be away," he said to her, cupping her head in one hand. "Jennet, do you know where he kept the letters?"
She blinked, fresh tears coursing over her reddened face. "Letters?"
Hannah sent Scott a sidelong glance, one that told him to keep his silence. In a gentle voice she said, "The letters Dégre stole from you. The ones he threatened you with. We can't leave them where someone else might find them. Where are they, Jennet?"
"The letters," Jennet said. "Those letters. I burned them months ago."
Scott made a sound that came up from his gut, as if he had been punched.
Hannah said, "The letters are destroyed? You burned them?"
"Aye, and he beat me bloody for it." She might have been talking about a new hat, for all the emotion in her voice.
"He beat you." Scott's tone, so carefully modulated, took on a new tone, an underlying tremor. "Is that how the child died? He got a child on you and beat it out of you in a fury?"
She seemed to wake up at that, confusion giving way to understanding and then, more quickly, anger. A brightness came into her eyes, and Kit recognized her then as her father's daughter.
Wyndham had first met Lady Jennet at the dinner table of the garrison commander at Île aux Noix, introduced to him only as a missionary's widow working among the wounded prisoners. Then he had not seen her for who she was: a daughter of the fourth Earl of Carryck, and sister to the fifth of the line. She had taken pains to hide her connections, but now her bloodlines were etched on her face. In spite of all she had seen and done in this war, or maybe because of it.
She righted herself and looked at Scott, who was meant to be her husband, who had spent a year looking for her.
She said, "Not his child, Luke. Yours. Our son. And he's not dead. I know he's not."
Scott's face went very still as her voice came stronger.
"I gave birth to him right there, in that room. A month ago he was smuggled away. I bribed them, and the captain took him away, because he wasn't safe here. He wasn't safe."
All the color had drained out of Scott's face, all tension out of his body; he swayed and bent forward over his knees, his head hanging low.
"Oh, Christ," he said softly. "Oh, merciful Christ." Spasms ran through him so that his shoulders jerked. "Where?"
Jennet reached out a hand as if she thought he might collapse under her touch.
"A town called Pensacola, in Spanish Florida." She stroked his hair, and then he raised his face to her and he did collapse and she opened her arms to catch him, arms that circled closed.
Hannah had turned away, and Kit caught her gaze. She walked out onto the porch, and he followed her.
She said, "He'll want to question the men who were taken prisoner."
"I can do that." Kit rubbed his eyes. "I'll go do it now."
"Most of them are off the Badger," she said. "They probably won't know anything about the boy."
"Probably not," Kit agreed. He didn't want to look at her. From her tone he knew what she was feeling, and he knew, too, how little she would welcome his intrusion. "But I'll find out for sure. You'll talk to the women?"
He turned to leave her and felt her hand on his wrist. Paused, and waited.
She said, "Thank you."
It was the most he would allow himself to expect.
There were injuries among the men. Not many, and none very serious, but enough to distract Hannah while Jennet and Luke talked.
She took off her weapons and put them aside, tried to clear her head of the last hour and the lingering stink of gunpowder. There were splinters to be drawn and burns that needed salving, and one of the men had taken a knife wound to the cheek.
When she let herself remember why they were here, she looked up to see that Luke and Jennet were gone, and the door to the room she had pointed out to him was closed.
The men had seen it, too. They got up, one by one, and wandered out toward the settlement.
Hannah thought of Wyndham, gone off to question prisoners. A man in search of a miracle. He would bring it back to offer to her on an outstretched hand, his quiet self-mockery held in front of him like a shield.
"Luke," Jennet said. "Major Wyndham is in love with your sister, I hope you realize."
They stood at the rail of the schooner Patience. All around them the ship was in the turmoil that went with the last hour before sailing, a great rush of boxes and barrels and trunks marched up the causeway and into the bowels of the ship, like a calf being fatted for slaughter. The noise was such that Jennet had to raise her voice to be heard, but she kept her eyes on Kit Wyndham, who paced the wharf below them. He had given up leather jerkin and homespun for the dark green coat and silver lace of the King's Rangers; the sun glinted on his buttons and epaulettes and sparked the blue of his eyes. He was waiting for Hannah. They were all waiting for Hannah.
"I don't know if love is the issue, in this case." Luke covered her hand on the rail with his own. "Certainly he's infatuated."
In the full August sun Luke's own hair had worked almost white, while his skin had gone an even middle brown. There were deep lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, but when he looked at her she still saw the seventeen-year-old boy he had been when he first came to Carryck, so many years ago.
"He's in love," Jennet said. "If he were not, he would be on his way back to Canada at this very minute. I am sorry for them."
Luke made a noise that meant he was sorry, too, or would be, if other matters hadn't had such a hold on his attention. News of the war was everywhere, and while it had put the British who swarmed over these islands in a grand mood to hear that their army had burned Washington to the ground, the Bonners took it in with sober detachment. Now Luke watched sailors carrying a gunboat out of the warren of boat works, his expression severe and distant. He was wondering how much the war in the Gulf of Mexico would hinder their own journey.
Jennet touched his arm and watched him try to find the thread of the conversation: Wyndham, who was in love with his sister but must leave her. He said, "You mustn't forget that Kit isn't a free agent. And he has a fiancée at home in Canada."
"I'm not the one with the faulty memory," Jennet said. "Truth be told, he doesn't want to leave Hannah. No matter what noises he makes about having enough of detached duty."
Luke bent his head to her and spoke directly into the shell of her ear. "Why don't we go below where we can discuss this in private?"
At that, Jennet laughed. It sounded nervous to her own ear, as if she were a young girl unaccustomed to flirtation. Luke heard it, too; she saw that in the veiled expression just before he turned his face away.
Very soon they would have to put words to the things they had not yet had the courage to discuss, an idea that unsettled Jennet greatly.
"There's Hannah," Luke said. "I was starting to worry."
The wagon that stopped below them on the wharf was crowded with baskets and boxes. Hannah was involved in a discussion with the driver, a tall black man who seemed surprised at the number of coins she had put in his hand.
"More of her bits and pieces," Luke said. "I'll see that her things are stowed properly."
Wyndham had already started in that direction, but Jennet didn't try to stop Luke from leaving. She did try to stop her own sigh of relief, and failed.
From the privacy of Luke's cabin---her cabin, too, now that they were wed, and what a strange idea that was---Jennet watched Port-au-Prince grow smaller. From this distance the town looked like a magical place, sapphire and emerald, gold and blinding white where the sun touched thick whitewashed walls. Around it the fields stretched out---coffee, sugarcane, cotton, indigo---and above it rose mountain ridges that ran the length of the island.
Once she would have loved this place, and the idea of exploring all of it, mountains and hidden glens and savannahs. Now the Patience---how poorly named was this ship---could not move fast enough to suit Jennet.
Seven days they had spent here, seven wasted days when she must submit to doctors' examinations and interviews with the authorities, when all she really needed was to be moving west. But no one would hear of them rushing away, most especially not Luke's mother.
Giselle Somerville Lacoeur, once of Montreal, took charge of Jennet and no one---not her son, or her husband, or even the governor himself---dared to interfere. Age had not mellowed Luke's mother.
As a girl Jennet had loved Giselle and admired her, but now she found she had very little to say to this Mme. Lacoeur. For her part, Giselle did not seem to mind Jennet's impatience, nor was she swayed by her moods. Giselle was far too involved with making sure that the steady stream of seamstresses and milliners and mantua makers did their best work, and speedily. She would have her new daughter-in-law properly outfitted before she sailed. There was no excuse for sloppiness, she told Jennet. No matter how dire the situation.
The Lacoeur home was spacious and cool, standing as it did in a great sea of palm trees at the crest of a hill. The veranda that circled the house was wide and deeply shadowed, with comfortable chairs and chaise longues piled with pillows. Jennet spent most of her time dozing there, though she never put foot on the marble terraces that ran down to the sea.
On Jennet's third morning in Hayti, Giselle found her asleep when she should have been in her rooms, where the seamstresses were waiting.
"You may need to apply to the authorities anywhere from Pensacola to Mobile to New Orleans," Giselle said. "You may have to dine with governors and generals and bankers. The clothes you wear will speak more loudly of your resources and connections than any letter of introduction."
"I am so sleepy," Jennet said.
Giselle was unsympathetic. "No sane man would go into battle without the proper weapons, and neither must you. This is a war you are embarking on, Jennet, and the prize is your son. You must be ready for a long fight."
It was something they never spoke about directly, the fact that getting to Pensacola was only the beginning of the problems. They might not be able to get away again, if the war began in earnest along the Gulf coast---and Luke and all the rest of the male population of the island seemed to think that was exactly what was likely to happen. That would mean waiting, or traveling overland through territory that they didn't know and that might be hostile. They would need every advantage they could claim.
And so Jennet stood still while others draped her in the light silks and gauzes dictated by the climate; while the women talked about color and embroidery, hats and stockings and stacked heels. They discussed the fashions in Paris and London, and the peculiarities of Americans. Her own thoughts moved in a very different direction. While they gossiped, she made long lists of questions to ask Giselle's husband.
Anton Lacoeur was a sharp, doe-eyed man with a head for numbers and a talent for trade that had made him many fortunes. To Jennet's surprise, he had been the one who seemed to best understand what would make her time in Port-au-Prince bearable. He drew up lists of names, men who might be of help to them, others they should avoid at all costs; he wrote letters of introduction and drafts on banks; he brought them maps and charts.
When he came to the end of his own knowledge, he invited others to his home. Naval officers and army engineers, merchants and traders and others whose business practices were best left unexamined, but who knew the Gulf well enough to talk for hours of tides and treacherous marshes, swamps, bayous. They spoke of pirates and profiteers and smugglers, things that would have delighted Jennet as a girl---things that would have delighted her even a year ago---but now left her only vaguely uneasy. Luke took charge in these conversations, and Jennet was glad to leave it all to him.
It was Anton who brought Luke and the man called Bardi together. Bardi, who had lost his ship in mysterious circumstances and needed a way back to the Gulf through the British blockade. He was presented to them as untrustworthy, a man without morals or scruples but one who knew the area where they were going as well as any man alive. It was worth his own life to stay out of both American and British hands.
"Pay him well and never take your eyes off him," Anton had said. "And he'll get you to Pensacola or wherever else you need to be, and then be shut of him."
While Jennet's time was divided between Giselle and her husband, Hannah was free to seek out other women, dark-skinned women who watched and listened but rarely spoke to white people of what they knew. These were women who worked in the kitchens and laundries and nurseries, and from them she collected names whispered in throaty Creole French.
And then, finally, this morning Jennet found herself in front of a priest in a small Catholic church. He was an ancient Frenchman with a wobbling voice and kind eyes and he had married them and blessed them and wished them a speedy journey and quick recovery of their son.
In the few moments before they left to board the Patience, Giselle raised the subject of the boy. "Luke was taken from me at birth, remember," she said. "It was many years before I saw him again. You will be more fortunate." In a conspiratorial tone she added, "When you find the boy, bring him back here so I can see to his education."
But the truth was, Giselle didn't believe her grandson was alive; none of them did. It was so clearly written on their faces. Poor Jennet has been through a great deal, that look said. Humor her, for the time being.
It was uncharitable of her, but she could not help thinking such things, not even of Luke. He would do everything in his power, but in his heart, Jennet was sure, he had already given up on the boy. She held it against him, and didn't know how to stop.
Now they were married, and that was a good thing. The very best thing, something she had wanted for as long as she could remember, to have Luke as her husband. She had left Scotland not yet thirty years old, a widow of only a few months, to come looking for him.
Jennet pressed her trembling hands together, and wondered how long she could keep herself from weeping.
"Luke sent me down to see after you," Hannah said in the open hatchway, and just that simply the battle was lost. Jennet turned to her cousin with tears streaming down her face, and then collapsed into her outstretched arms.
They sat together on the edge of the bed for a long time while Jennet wept and Hannah waited, quiet and patient. Hannah was wearing the only gown she had allowed Giselle to order for her, figured Indian muslin over rose-colored silk. She had put it on for the wedding ceremony and left it on while she ran all her last-minute errands; there was a smudge of soot on her hem and a pulled thread in the lace at the neckline. She smelled of spices and something bittersweet, of sunlight and clean sweat, and under all that was another smell, salty and sharp; she smelled of Kit Wyndham. It was none of Jennet's business, not really, and it made her weep all the more, her tears wetting the bodice of celery green silk drugget with its elaborate embroidery. Her wedding gown.
Men's feet drummed on the deck in response to whistles and shouts, sails creaked and caught the wind so that the ship shivered and danced like an eager dog on a line. Jennet let herself be rocked.
Hannah had lost a son. She would never see him again in this life, and that thought brought Jennet up short. She pressed the back of her hands to her streaming eyes and tried to regain control of her voice.
"Not now," Hannah said. "Not unless you're ready."
"I am," Jennet said. "I think I am."
"Then tell me."
She couldn't tell, not everything. Not yet. But Jennet would start, and hope that half the story would be enough.
The words came slowly at first, forced up out of her throat and mouth like bloody clots. She talked of the day Dégre had taken her from Île aux Noix, the ship that had been waiting, the men on the ship. How they circled around her, delighted with the promise of diversion over the course of a dull voyage south. The dissatisfaction when Dégre made it clear that she was not to be marked. Lady Jennet was an asset first and foremost, and her value was not to be compromised.
Eventually prudence gave way to the sea and the monotony of the wind and the rum, and the bolder of the men began to approach her. There were many things they could do to amuse themselves that would leave no mark, at least none that others could see. They talked about this in her hearing, as they might talk of slaughtering one of the pigs that lived in a pen on deck while they rubbed knuckles over its bristled skull.
It was too easy to imagine. She would be passed from man to man, and each of them would use her in his own way, casually or angrily or with a whispering kind of thankfulness.
Dégre, who never showed any interest in taking her, watched and said nothing. Jennet understood that he was leaving it up to her: She must find a way to save herself.
"Have you ever stabbed a man in the throat?" Her voice was steady, but her hands trembled.
Hannah shook her head.
"It's like standing under a waterfall," Jennet said. "I was covered with blood." And then: "I don't regret it. The others left me alone after that."
Because I stank of blood, she might have said. And it amused Dégre to refuse me water to wash. As long as I live, I will dream of the flies.
Instead, Jennet told the story of the day she had given birth, the long hours in a hot room where lizards clung to the walls and birds screamed in the trees.
"But he was perfect," Jennet said. "Perfect in form, and healthy, and so much like Luke, the shape of his eyes and his fingers and toes and the way his hair grows here." She touched the crown of her own head. "He was perfect. He is perfect, and he must be alive, or what was it all for?"
There it was, the question like a thorn struck through the heart. The question she had never dared put to Luke.
Hannah smoothed Jennet's hair away from her hot face. Her black eyes were without any expression that Jennet could read. She might say, The boy is dead and you know it or The boy must be alive because we wish it so.
She said, "Jennet, listen to me well. You and Luke must hold each other up. Don't turn away from him, not now, especially not now. You must trust that he can bear what you have to say. The things you cannot say to me, that you think you cannot say to anyone. Do you hear me?"
It was the best advice Hannah had to offer, and Jennet wanted no part of it. Her cousin must have seen that in her face, because her own expression sharpened.
Hannah said, "Do you know what I regret most? The things I didn't say to Strikes-the-Sky. The morning I saw him last, the things I should have said. Don't make the same mistake."
Jennet nodded, and shuddered, and nodded again. "Send him to me, would you?"
When Luke came a half hour later, there was a fine beading of sweat on his forehead. Jennet had a sudden picture in her mind of Hannah speaking to him, a finger raised in admonition. It made her smile. He smiled back at her.
In his hands he carried a tray with bread and fruit and cheese, and under his arm a bottle of wine. He put these things down on the small table under the porthole and then turned to her like a man awaiting sentencing. "It's not much, as wedding suppers go."
Jennet held out her hand. "It's not the food I care about. Come sit by me," she said. And then: "Do you remember the night you came to me with the pennyroyal ointment, when I went to sleep in the hay barn?"
"You were sulking, and so I seduced you into a better mood."
Jennet laughed, because he meant her to. "If you care to remember it that way."
He touched her face. "I remember the promises we made, under the waterfall."
She reached up and kissed him, felt his surprise and his delight and his caution, too, and so she kissed him again, putting her hands on his face and pulling him down to her.
He held back for a moment, and then he relaxed against her with a sound that came up from his belly. Jennet pressed her forehead against his and closed her eyes. She said, "I was never raped. I want you to know that."
She felt the words work on him, the way they dug into his mind and then, more slowly, moved through him, muscle by muscle. His arms went limp and then tightened so that she gasped.
"It wouldn't have mattered," he said. His gaze was steady, though his tone had coarsened a little.
"I might have been," Jennet said. "But I killed the first man who tried. I stabbed him, and after that the others left me alone." She would have gone on, but he pulled away to look in her face.
"But that's nothing to be ashamed of."
"I'm not ashamed of it," Jennet said.
"Were you punished?"
"No," Jennet said. "It amused Dégre, to---the whole episode amused him. I would do it again, and without hesitation."
"Of course you would," he said, his mouth touching hers. "I wouldn't expect anything less."
And then he kissed her, his mouth intent: And here was the surprise, that there were still such kisses to be had in the world, from a man like this one. Who could make her remember desire, and feel it again, that twist and pulse deep in the belly, the knowledge that it was there all along through all the months she had come to see herself as not an empty vessel, but a broken one. His voice was deep and rough and there was a trembling there, one that matched her own.
"Let me remind you," he said. "Let me show you."
It was ten days since he had come to Priest's Town to save her. He had slept beside her chastely, and held her when she wept, and comforted her as a brother comforts a grieving sister, and through all that Jennet had sensed him waiting and wanting, his body impatient for her but kept in check. She wondered how she could ever give him the things he deserved, the touch he wanted.
She turned to meet him, tasted salt on his skin and tears, and made herself a promise she wanted to keep, but could not be sure of, not yet.
Hannah heard Jennet's voice first, and realized that she had been outwitted. She picked up her skirts and trotted around the corner of the kitchen building into a small, well-kept garden alive with butterflies. In the middle of it, four women sat in the shade of an arbor heavy with flowering vines. Between Jennet and Titine sat an elderly woman with the bearing of a queen and the inquisitive, alert look of a girl of ten. She might be called a free woman of color by Preston and others like him, but to Hannah's eye she seemed white. Beside her sat another, older woman, this one far darker of complexion but no less alert. One of her eyes had gone the milky color of marble, and the hands in her lap were so swollen at the joints that they seemed hardly human.
Among these women Jennet's head of blond curls looked almost doll-like, but the stare she sent Hannah was pure defiance.
Hannah forced herself to smile as she approached. It was true that Jennet was pale, but the hands wrapped around the bowl of milk were steady, and the shadows under her eyes were no worse than Hannah's own. More than that, Hannah had the sense that these women were well aware of Jennet's condition and could be trusted to watch her closely.
"My sister-in-law Hannah," Jennet said. "I was wondering when you'd come to find me. Let me introduce you. This lady is Mme. Valerie Maurepas, Titine's mother. And that is Gaetane, Madame's servant. They have a great deal to tell us."
It was clearly Gaetane's role to tell stories, and she was very good at it, though she allowed Titine and her mother to add the occasional comment or detail.
Hannah had the idea that it had always been this way, since the day Archange Poiterin had bought a cottage on the rue Dauphine and installed Valerie there with two slaves of her own to look after her, one of whom was a twenty-year-old Gaetane. Together they had been expelled from that same cottage, and together they had come to Pensacola to live with Valerie's only daughter.
Titine had not inherited her mother's legendary looks, and because her father had made no provisions for her in his will, she had accepted the position as Andrew Preston's housekeeper, and perhaps more. Hannah had the idea that Mr. Preston would require some kind of payment for taking in two old black women who could be of little practical use in his household.
Gaetane, it was very clear, disliked Pensacola and wanted nothing more than to go back to New Orleans, but she would not leave her mistress even if she had the means to do so. No doubt she would have escorted Valerie Maurepas to hell, if solely to make sure the devil showed her the courtesy she deserved. And Gaetane had quite a lot to say about Honoré Poiterin. Some of it was amusing, and all of it was alarming.
"Everybody know Michie Honoré, the same way everybody know the gator and the gar. I like the gator better, me, M. Caïmon. Câlice! We got one back there in the ciprière long as two men standing one on top of the other." She looked toward the tangle of green that started beyond a pasture where a few horses grazed in the shade of a stand of cypress trees. "Old M. Caïmon don't make no bones 'bout what he want, and don't pretend to be something he ain't."
Hannah thought for a moment. "What does Honoré Poiterin want?"
The three women looked briefly at one another, and then Mme. Valerie answered in an elegant, musical, and quite old-fashioned English. "Honoré cares about two things. The first is amusing himself. The second is pleasing his grand-mère Agnès, because she controls the money he requires to amuse himself."
Gaetane sniffed loudly. With one small, red-painted clog she crushed a yellow jacket crawling over the cobbles.
Hannah said, "Is it Agnès Poiterin's idea or her grandson's to try to claim my nephew as their own?"
Mme. Valerie crossed her hands on her lap. "That is a very good question, but there is no simple answer. My guess would be that once Agnès saw the boy, she decided she wanted to keep him, and Honoré went along with it."
"Mme. Agnès, she like pretties, her," Gaetane said. "And that boy of yours the prettiest child I ever seen in all my long years."
Jennet jerked and righted herself. "You've seen him? You've seen my son?"
"Mais yeah, we see your boy, your Nathaniel," said Gaetane. She pronounced it in the French way, Nah-taan-i-el. "See him just about every day. Jacinthe, she bring him by here and sit right there where you are, madame, with the boy in her lap while she pass the time with us. The boy got a smile like his papa's, like your man's."
Jennet stood, hands pressed to her mouth, and then sat again.
Titine said, "I would have told you, but you were so unwell when you arrived."
"Jacinthe is his nurse?" Hannah asked.
"Mais yeah." Gaetane rocked her whole body from side to side in approval. "She got sweet milk, Jacinthe, and a good heart. Deserve better than that devil Honoré, that for sure."
Titine said, "The boy is well taken care of with Jacinthe, Madame Scott."
Hannah saw the sharp look Titine's mother sent her. She said, "You disagree, madame?"
"I have no quarrel with Jacinthe, but it's not the girl who will have the raising of the boy. It's Honoré's grand-mère." She seemed to come to some conclusion, because she held up a hand to quiet Gaetane.
"Honoré might have turned out differently, if it hadn't been for the fact that Agnès raised him in her own image. I wouldn't put a good dog in her care, much less a boy. You had best go straight to New Orleans, and do what you must to get your son back. If you're fortunate Honoré will be away on business and you'll find a way around Agnès."
"And how do we do that? Can you tell me?" Jennet's voice was steady but she was trembling.
"If I knew how to get the best of Agnès Poiterin I would not be here," said the older woman. "I would be where I belong in my cottage on the rue Dauphine, in New Orleans---where you must go, without delay."
The hour in the garden had drained Jennet of the little strength she had, and she retired to her bed without argument. She allowed Hannah to wipe her face and throat with a cloth dipped in water sweetened with cloves and mint.
"Tomorrow," Jennet said.
Hannah hesitated, and then nodded. "Tomorrow, yes."
"You'll arrange it with Luke?"
"If you like. If I must." It was an invitation, but Jennet turned her face to the wall. Hannah was about to leave her when Jennet spoke again, her voice clogged with unshed tears.
"I can only fight one battle at a time," she said.
Hannah sat again. "You aren't at war with Luke."
"No." Each breath Jennet produced was short and harsh. "Of course not."
Jennet slept fitfully for much of the day, starting up out of dreams to find herself drenched in sweat. It was dim in the chamber and crossed by breezes that felt good against the dampness of her skin. Often someone was sitting beside the bed, Hannah or Titine or another young woman with skin the color of molasses who held a baby to her breast. The smell of her milk filled the air, and it made Jennet's own breasts ache.
She dreamed that her brother Simon was sitting beside her bed. He had died long ago as a young boy, but in her dream he was a man grown, with a shock of red hair and a deep voice he used to tell her news of home. I watch over them, he said. I watch you all. She dreamed of Honoré Poiterin, his laughing smile and the flash of an earring against black hair. A young man of some talents and many sins, who feared nothing and demanded everything. She dreamed of Moore's face across the table, his mouth forming the question When will I get me a good wife? While the white scar on his forehead twisted like a snake against red flushed skin. When he showed himself next he was reciting the marriage rites with the exaggerated care of a man who has drunk too deep.
Deus Israel conjungat vos in matrimonium et ipse sit vobiscum qui misertus est duobus unicis...
Jennet woke fully and finally in the last of the evening light at the sound of the door shutting and a step on the floorboards.
She said, "You needn't sit here with me all day."
"I've brought supper." Luke's voice, steady and calm, his tone unremarkable. Jennet opened her eyes and saw him sitting beside her. He had spent the day in the sun and his skin still glowed with it.
A beautiful boy, him, with a smile like his papa's, like your man's.
He helped her sit up and arranged the pillows for her back, sat by and watched her drink the tisane Hannah had sent up with the dinner tray, and smiled when she pulled a face at its bitterness. While she spooned soup Luke did the same, telling her between swallows about his day. The repairs to the Patience were moving along and she would be ready to sail tomorrow, if nothing else went wrong; he had hired a crew member to replace Bardi, a free man of color out of Mobile who could get them past the British and American navies to New Orleans by a back route.
"Bardi has left us?"
Luke told her the story, one with no real surprises: Bardi had taken off in the night. Jennet felt a vague relief.
"As long as we can leave here tomorrow," she said.
There was a small and uneasy silence, undercut by the sound of a man's voice raised in tuneless song to the rhythm of a scythe. The smell of fresh-cut grass came to them and Jennet was struck with an unexpected surge of homesickness for Scotland, green and damp, where her mother must be waiting for news. Jennet had yet to find the words to write the letter her mother must read.
"Do you feel strong enough to walk?" Luke's voice brought her out of her thoughts.
"Now?"
"It's cool out, and it's still light. You needn't worry about running into Poiterin. He sent a note saying he's away on business for a few days."
"Did he." Jennet summoned a smile. She wasn't ready yet to discuss Honoré Poiterin with Luke, and neither did he seem eager.
"Hannah thought it would be good for you to get out," Luke went on. "If you feel strong enough. And if you finish the tisane."
It was good to hear some of Luke's old teasing tone. She finished the dark, cold tea in two swallows and let him help her dress.
Where the dirt lane turned to run parallel to the harbor, an old woman sat in the window of a shack overgrown with a riot of flowers that glowed like a scattering of burning stars in the gloaming. She was an Indian of a tribe Jennet could not name, her hair hanging limp over rounded shoulders. The woman watched two naked children with skin like tarnished copper who looked up from their game and only blinked at Jennet's greeting. She felt their eyes following her. She would have liked to talk to them, but most likely they would have no language in common beyond her small bit of Spanish.
"I have seen some poor villages in the last year," Jennet said. "But I expected more of Pensacola."
Many of the cottages that lined the lane were abandoned or collapsing in on themselves. More pigs and goats roamed the lanes than people. Their owners had made themselves scarce, most probably because soldiers or sailors loitered on corners or lounged, half asleep, under trees. A few men greeted Luke, but most pulled caps down over their eyes and pretended not to take note.
"The Spanish can't manage this place," said Luke. His voice trailed away while his mind turned to trade, and to the concerns he had left in other men's hands in Canada. He was thinking about returning to Montreal, whereas Jennet could hardly imagine that such a world still existed. She tried to conjure up the house on the rue Bonsecours, to see herself at the dining table or her son playing in the garden, but the only picture she could manage was the rough shed she had lived in with Hannah in the garrison followers' camp on Île aux Noix.
Jennet tightened her grip on Luke's arm and slowed her pace. She kept her gaze on the bay, scattered with ships that rocked in a good wind. The sky had already faded into a colorless night. Beside her Luke went very still. Jennet had let go of his arm to wrap her shawl more closely around herself, but she imagined she could still hear the tension humming through him.
"What?" She followed his gaze out into the bay. "What?" Though some part of her understood already.
"She's gone? The Patience?" Jennet found she could not catch her breath.
"Bardi," said Luke. There was no particular emotion in his voice, not anger or surprise. "And here is the harbormaster, come to report the obvious."
They waited while the man rode up. Luke took Jennet's hand, and that simple act flooded her with courage as no words could have. The Spaniard slid to the ground, his expression so studiously serious that his jowls, blue-bristled, drew up in pleats all the way to his cheekbones.
"M. Scott." He bowed. "Madame. I come to report---"
"The sailing of the Patience," Luke finished for him. "We can see that ourselves, Señor Uribe."
The harbormaster blinked at them and then turned to look out into the bay. The rising moon cast a path across the water like a curl of silver ribbon.
"The Patience has sailed?"
Luke didn't try to hide his irritation. "Unless she sprouted wings and flew off like a bloody gull. You hadn't noticed?"
"I have been otherwise occupied." He bowed again, not so much out of politeness, it struck Jennet, as a way to hide an inappropriate half smile. He was a man who enjoyed delivering bad news, but knew enough to be ashamed of this in himself.
He said, "There is no kind way to relate this; forgive me. One of your men has been found behind the tavern with his throat cut."
Luke drew in a sharp breath. "Bardi," he said again. "This is his work."
A fluttering of muscle in Uribe's cheek. "No. Not this time."
"And how do you know that?"
"Because it is Bardi whose throat was cut. Whoever did this went a step further and took Bardi's head with him," said Uribe. "The rest of the corpse was dumped at the doorstep of a---" He paused in consideration, and then bowed from the shoulders. "Shall we say, a lady of flexible standards who knew him well enough to identify the remains. What is the expression in English? The chicken has come home to roost, is that correct? Bardi was a scoundrel, and not to be mourned. As to who took your ship---" He looked over his shoulder at the bay again as if he expected to see some answer written in the sky. "I don't know who's responsible."
I know. Jennet could not make herself say the words out loud, but there was no reason to; from Luke's face she saw that he was guessing already what she could have told him. Suddenly she felt light-headed and unsure on her feet. She pinched the flesh between thumb and forefinger until her vision cleared.
"But perhaps this will explain." The harbormaster was busy patting his chest in the way of a man with too many pockets and a poor memory. Finally he pulled out a square of folded paper with a large red seal and presented it to Jennet with a flourish and a bow.
"For you, madame?"
The letter was addressed to Lady Jennet in a strong, flowing hand. A hand she had never seen before, but recognized nonetheless: The great loops and grandiose swirls spoke the name of the writer as clearly as a signature. While she stared at the letter in her hands she only half heard the harbormaster's questions, all directed to Luke, about Bardi.
Finally he bowed again, this time so low that they had a view of the circle of nut brown skin at the crown of his head.
"I see no need to disturb you further about this crime," he said to his shoes. "But I would like to question your men, when they return with the Patience. If they return."
There was just enough light, and so Jennet cracked open the seal on the letter as soon as the harbormaster's horse had taken him out of hearing. A single page, covered with that bold hand.
Luke said, "Read it to yourself first," and he walked off three paces and stood looking out toward sea. It was that simple gesture of understanding, of faith and love, that gave Jennet the courage she must have to face whatever waited for her on the paper.
The sheet shook in her hands so that the words seemed to jump on the page. It was in French, a language she spoke fluently, but it might as well have been written in Arabic for all the sense it made to her.
She forced herself to take three deep breaths, and when her head had cleared, she read.
My dearest wife,
What a lamentable turn of events! You are new arrived and I must away without even a kiss. It is too cruel, after so long a separation. If only you had not found it necessary to bring a second husband with you. Whatever were you thinking, my dear? Had you been more patient, I would have come for you eventually. And now you must somehow rid yourself of---by what name does he go? Mr. Bonner? Mr. Scott? I suppose that depends on whether he is passing himself off as Canadian or American, does it not?---before you join me in New Orleans. I wonder how you will do it.
As a dutiful husband responsible for your spiritual and moral health, I must admit that I am disappointed in you. My beloved grand-mère will think it far too generous of me to take you back, but a man in love is not always wise, and in the end I will persuade her, though I suspect she will make you dance to her tune before she allows you near the boy. Agnès Poiterin has many things in common with the Church and the law: all three are severe in their treatment of faithless wives, and is it not proper, so? I do hope that further separation from our son will not prove necessary.
I wonder if he will remember you? I fear not, but should you prove sufficiently penitent, you will have many years to atone.
Your disconsolate but devoted husband,
Honoré Poiterin
Postscript: To hasten my journey I have taken the liberty of borrowing the ship Patience, which, after all, belongs to my esteemed brother-in-law, the Earl of Carryck. As I prefer my own men to the rabble hired by the false husband, they have been dismissed. Your own possessions you will find in the abandoned cottage opposite the boat works at the eastern end of the wharves. I see that you have used your time well in at least one way. Such finery! We will make the perfect couple.
Jennet went to Luke and held out the letter, but he didn't take it. Instead he put his hands on her face and lifted it to the light of the moon. Jennet could not bear the sadness in his expression, and so she covered his hands with her own and went up on tiptoe to press her mouth to his. He tasted of the meal they had shared, of salt and bread, of himself. For a moment she feared he would not respond, and then a shudder went through him. With a groan he pulled her close to bury his face in the crook of her neck.
"I swear to you. I swear to you that he means nothing to me, and never could. I will kill him myself before I let him come between us and our son. Now read this, so you know the kind of man we are dealing with."
Luke took a deep breath, and finally he nodded, once.
They walked quickly to the next cottage, where a lantern hung at the door. A woman came to greet him, no longer young, scantily dressed. Her smile was broad and hopeful and insincere, and Jennet did not need to hear her voice to know what she was proposing. Luke sent her away with a few words and a coin pressed into her hand.
When he had finished reading he folded the letter. "The crew," he said, his voice hoarse.
The ship, the weapons, the stores---all those things he could replace, and would, no doubt, before another day had passed. But the crew was another matter entirely. Capable men who had earned his respect and friendship, some of them with families.
Jennet said, "Shall I come with you?"
That was the last thing Luke wanted, and he told her so. From her expression it was plain to see that she was relieved. He wondered how much she knew about Poiterin's methods, how much more she was holding back, and why. While he walked her back to Preston's he managed to keep his questions to himself, and once they arrived there was no time. He stopped only long enough to borrow a horse and gather the things he might need.
Nathaniel BonnerParadiseon the west branch of the SacandagaNew-York State
Father,
We are in Pensacola, where we believed we would find a family by the name of Poiterin. These are the people who have been caring for Jennet's and my son.
The Poiterins left this place a week ago when the British navy took possession of the port and made it clear that they will use this place as a point of departure for marching on Mobile and other points inland. They have gone to New Orleans, and thus so must we, though it will take us deeper into the war.
In our short time here we have learned some things about the Poiterins, who are Creole bankers and merchants. Disturbing and unsettling things that caused Jennet such extreme distress that I worry not just for her health, but for her peace of mind. She blames herself for putting the boy in the power of such people, though she seems to understand at the same time that she had no other choice, and that any reasonable person would have done the same.
Were my sister Hannah not here, I would be lost.
Because we are unsure of the Poiterins' interests and motivations, we must approach them with some caution. Our plan is to go to the city and have Jennet make first contact. Not until then will we have any sense of what must be done to get the boy back. With the added complication of the war in the Gulf, I must tell you that I have no clear idea of when we will be able to start for home, though I fear it will not be soon, and may be as long as a half year, if a legal battle becomes unavoidable.
I send two copies of this letter by different post routes in the hope that at least one of them will reach you. Should the postal service continue in spite of the war in this part of the country and you would like to chance a letter, please direct it to the care of Mrs. Eugenie Preston, Maison Verde, Bayou St. John, Louisiana. This is the widowed sister-in-law of a Scots merchant resident in Pensacola who has been helpful to us in return for business accommodations.
I send you fond good wishes from Jennet and Hannah both, as well as my own. I remain your devoted son,
Luke Scott BonnerPensacola, Spanish Florida11 September 1814
Dearest Luke, my love,
He is here, he is well. He is beautiful.
We arrived three days ago, but it was only this morning that Madame P fulfilled her promise and allowed me to spend time with him. I can hardly write for agitation and joy and dread. Today he was mine for a while at least, but tomorrow is unknown.
I held him for an hour, in the shade of the veranda that overlooks the Bayou St. John. He is your son, from the shape of his toes to the way his hair grows in a whirl at the crown of his head. He looks at me so calmly, this son, this child you and I made. He looks at me as though he is trying to remember where he saw me last. He has not yet smiled at me, but then the young slave woman who cares for him, Jacinthe is her name, tells me that he has always been solemn and thoughtful for such a young infant. You see, in this he is your son as well. He will not take after his rash mother, whose reckless behavior has exacted so great a price.
I walked with him and talked as I would, in Scots, which I may not do when I might be overheard, for fear word will get back to Madame Poiterin.
The old lady is much as we were led to believe she would be. The small indignities she thinks up for me are bearable; anything, anything is bearable if it brings the day closer when I can leave here and put the boy in your arms.
She requires that I attend Mass and visit the confessional daily, at her own chapel. We owe Titine a great debt for accurately predicting this, because otherwise there would be no way for her to meet Hannah and you would never be reading this letter.
The priest who hears my confession daily is neither a good man nor a bad one, but he is certainly curious.
In the dim light of the confessional he wants most to hear those details that should interest him least. He asks questions about the island and the men there, what they might have done to me and to each other in my sight, if I dwell on such memories, if they cause me to sin. He asks me about you, whether I allowed you the privileges of the matrimonial bed, and if so, which ones, and how many times, all so (he tells me in a voice a little breathless and hoarse) he can decide a suitable penance. I can hardly imagine this going on every day until we are away, but I will do whatever is necessary.
Today already I was taken by the almost irresistible urge to describe for him exactly what it is that men and women do together. I don't know if he would be satisfied then, or if it would simply incite further questions. I do wonder, too, if he reports my confessions to Madame P in detail. It is a most disagreeable idea, and yet I would not be surprised, such is the hold she---and her money---have over him.
Madame P claims that when I have convinced her and the Church that I am truly repentant she will allow me to join her household as her acknowledged granddaughter-in-law and H's wife. If it were not for the war that creeps closer every day, I should say that the best course for us would be to take the boy and run now, immediately. Holding Nathaniel this morning this idea seemed not only appealing, but obvious and necessary, far more reasonable than giving him back into another woman's arms without knowing if she will bring him again. Every day there is more talk of Jackson and his troops, where they are and what they are doing and when they will be here to fend off the British, who must surely strike at New Orleans very soon. The rumors tumble over each other: He is here already, in disguise; he has turned back for the north; he has fallen in battle. All I want is to be safe away, with you and Hannah and our son.
But you need not fear, I will not divert from the plans we made so carefully, though my heart will break anew every time I must give him up again.
You must know also that I have nothing to report about Honoré Poiterin, as his grandmother forbids him all contact with me until I am deemed free of sin and properly chastised. He did not seem at all put out by this restriction, and indeed it was a huge relief to me. I need not tell you, though, to watch for him. He is close by, so Titine and her aunt Amazilie tell me.
I see very little of Mr. Preston's sister, who is bedridden and so afraid of Madame P that she shakes at the mention of her name. I depend on Titine and Amazilie and on Amazilie's grown son Tibère, who have taken on our cause as their own. Because they are kind, good people, but also because they hope that the resolution of our troubles may also mean that Titine's mother might return to her home in New Orleans, which H.P. has taken from her at his grandmother's urging. Titine will carry this letter with her every day until Hannah comes to the chapel. I hope that I have learned the code correctly and that you will be able to read this with less difficulty than I have had writing it.
I think of you hourly and with great love, my one true husband. Your devoted wife,
Jennet
When Titine came to report on her first meeting with Hannah, Jennet had been so light-headed with relief that at first she had simply failed to comprehend the bad news: Hannah had arrived safely in New Orleans, but she was sick with swamp fever. How sick, Titine had refused to speculate; instead she had consulted with her aunt Amazilie, filled her apron pockets with herbs and medicines, and gone straight back to the city. And never returned.
By the second day it was clear to them all that Titine had been abducted, or was dead at the hands of common thieves. It was then that Jennet allowed herself to contemplate the full weight of the facts: Titine was gone for good, and Jennet was responsible for this. Add to that, news just as bad: Titine had disappeared before she had thought to tell anyone where Hannah was hidden in the city. Hannah was stranded someplace, ill unto death, without money or papers. In the pack that Titine had brought back to Maison Verde for safekeeping was the letter Jennet had written for Luke, in code.
Luke was missing, too, and there was no word of him. In short, all their plans had gone wrong.
Despite all this, Jennet had no choice but to present a calm and benign expression to the world in general, and to Mme. Poiterin in particular. Her daily routine did not change with Titine's disappearance, except that Amazilie was now required to accompany her to Mass and confession every morning, followed by Mme. Poiterin's men.
And so Jennet concentrated on her son. When Jacinthe brought him, Jennet could put everything else away for that short time. She set herself the goal of making him remember, if only by touch and voice, who his mother was.
It was Jacinthe who suggested, shyly, almost apologetically, that Jennet put her son to the breast.
"Let him suckle," Jacinthe had told her. "Let him pull hard, the milk will come back."
"But..." Jennet, afraid to take Jacinthe at her word, had hesitated and asked the more crucial question. "Surely Madame will object?"
Jacinthe blinked at her and put a long hand on her own high rounded belly. "Madame got another great-grandchild coming," she said. "This one will need to suckle, too."
Jennet had the idea that Mme. Poiterin was not likely to acknowledge Jacinthe's child as her own blood, but she did not say so. Instead she put her son back to the breast and let him draw. The pain, at first, was exquisite, but it was not long before her milk came back, and in such abundance that she was swollen with it when Jacinthe brought the boy later than usual.
The joy of having her son back in this particular way was enough to offset the unpleasant nature of her afternoon duties, when she was expected to arrive at Larivière at three every day to take coffee. Or rather, she had been summoned to read aloud while the old lady took coffee and ate a multitude of sugary little confections called pralines. Jennet might have taken some satisfaction from the simple act of reading well, if Madame had not interrupted constantly to correct her French pronunciation or to lecture.
The old lady used the newspaper reports as a way to launch into her daily catechism, which began with a biting critique of everything having to do with Americans. She found them to be vulgar, brazen, uncouth, greedy; she deplored the garish houses they were building in the sprawling new suburbs that clung to the city like leeches, and most of all, she resented their insufferable interference in Creole business and society. Beyond all that, she disdained their inability or stubborn refusal to learn French, the only language that Mme. Poiterin cared to hear spoken around her. New Orleans would always be French, could be nothing less than Creole.
The reports of Commander Patterson's raids on Barataria and his routing of the Lafitte brothers made the old lady so angry that her plump hands shook. The Lafittes had offered their services to the Americans---why they should do such a thing she could not imagine---but instead of showing their gratitude that men of courage and wide experience were willing to assist them, the American navy had destroyed the village at Grand Terre, taken dozens of prisoners, and confiscated half a million dollars in property.
She had no doubt, Madame said darkly, that the milled soap and Belgian lace and embroidered fabrics she had ordered from France were now in the possession of an American woman with a loud voice and no sense of style. The only comfort was the fact that the Lafittes had eluded Patterson, and would soon be back in business.
"What would be best," she pronounced finally, "is if the British and Americans killed each other off entirely, and let us return to our own ways. What do you say to that, miss?"
Jennet sometimes wondered if her face might crack from the effort of hiding her feelings, and thought that Mme. Poiterin would actually like to see that happen. It seemed to be her goal.
The oddest thing of all, Jennet had decided quite soon, was that Madame seemed unable to take the threatened English invasion seriously. It mystified Jennet that a woman who prided herself on her political acuity and good business sense would refuse to entertain the idea that anyone might try to impose their will on her, or to take something she called her own. Jennet, who had been raised on a steady diet of Scottish history, could have told Madame something of the way the British treated the people they defeated, but she also understood that this was not a discussion, but a lesson. If she wanted to be accepted as a Poiterin she must take on the opinions and positions that were presented to her, and make them her own.
Jennet wondered if Honoré might be able to convince the old lady that she needed to make plans in case the worst should happen and the city was overrun, but she had seen Honoré very rarely since she came to Louisiana, and he was never present when she paid her long afternoon calls at Larivière. It was a surprise, and an unsettling one, to find him in the parlor a week after Titine's disappearance, his legs stretched out before him and a coffee cup balanced on the silk brocade vest over the flat plane of his stomach. He pretended surprise when she came in, and then played the concerned and loving husband, bringing her pillows she did not want and coffee she would not drink.
Madame was not taken in, either, and she pursed her small pale mouth in displeasure. Jennet could not tell if Honoré's purpose was to anger her, or if he simply didn't care about her mood. Another possibility presented itself, far more frightening: Honoré was here because of Titine's disappearance. Maybe he had learned something and was just waiting for the opportunity to give her bad news; perhaps he knew exactly what had happened to Titine, because he had made it happen. She thought of Piero Bardi's head sitting on top of her trunk in an abandoned shack, and she shuddered.
"Are you cold?" he asked her. "Can I get you a rug for your lap?"
His grandmother tsked at such a bold question, but Honoré ignored her. He wanted to know how Jennet fared, if she was comfortable in her new home, whether she required anything from town that he could get for her.
"Have you had word from your family?" he asked, and a shower of gooseflesh rushed up Jennet's back at the expression on his face.
"Of course she has not," his grandmother said sharply. "You know there has been no post from Europe. It is most inconvenient, this embargo."
"I fear you must miss your brother and mother, my dear." Honoré persisted in speaking to Jennet directly, and his grandmother in answering for her.
Titine was dead, and Honoré had killed her; of that Jennet was suddenly quite sure. What she could not know was how much information had been forced from her before she died. Jennet pinched the flesh between her thumb and first finger until her vision cleared and she could control her breathing.
"Why should she?" Mme. Poiterin was saying. "She has her son. She has you, or will have you, if it turns out her good behavior is not a ruse. It is the way of civilized society: A young lady forsakes her mother for her husband's family." She sniffed delicately, as if remembering her own mother.
"Grand-mère," he said. "Has my dear Jennet not been tested enough? Surely it's time to acknowledge the marriage."
Jennet dropped her head in fear that her expression would give away too much, but Mme. Poiterin, who was just as surprised, turned all her attention in Honoré's direction. Her round cheeks flushed with color and her eyes narrowed.
"You talk of this matter as though it were nothing more than a dinner engagement," she said. "Shame on you, Honoré. If you had gone about this marriage properly to start with none of this would be necessary. As it is, you will wait until I am entirely satisfied that Lady Jennet will be a suitable wife and mother to your son."
Mme. Poiterin had started calling her Lady Jennet in a dismissive tone. Jennet might have objected, but she found her title much preferable to being called Honoré's wife.
The old lady was saying, "I will admit she has proved to be biddable, if perhaps a bit simpleminded. Père Petit reports that she is repentant, though sometimes I believe I still see a hint of rebellion in her expression. However, if things go on as they have, we will be able to have the banns read starting next month, and celebrate the wedding Mass early in the new year."
Honoré didn't try to hide his irritation. "You forget, Grand-mère, we are already married."
"So you say," said his grandmother. "But I have yet to see your marriage lines." She looked at Jennet when she said this, and Jennet returned her gaze evenly. It was an odd circumstance that Honoré had constructed for himself. He could not produce the marriage lines, because no such document had ever existed. She had wondered for some time why he didn't simply forge something to show his grandmother---it seemed like something he would do without hesitation---and then realized that he hadn't yet decided where the greater advantage might be, in a real marriage or a false one. No doubt it had to do with his claim on her family's money, and his grandmother's, both of which he would keep, if he could manage it. Her son was nothing more than a chip in this game of chance.
What he didn't know, what she would not tell him, was that she did have a set of marriage lines, these absolutely legal and binding in the eyes of both the Catholic Church and the law. She began every day by sewing that piece of paper into the hem of whatever gown she was to wear, but she wondered sometimes what would be worse: to lose it, or to have it be discovered by Mme. Poiterin. To declare herself the legal wife of another man would be to hand over her son to these people.
"It's all very silly," Honoré said. "But if you insist."
"I do," said the old lady. "And there is another matter I will insist upon."
Jennet was surprised to learn that Honoré had joined a militia troop, from which it followed that he needed money for the elaborate uniform and for new weapons; it was expected of him as a son of one of the first families. His grandmother, always sensitive to such claims on her reputation, got a wily look in her eye and commanded Honoré to write a letter asking to be excused.
"With the cane harvest coming so soon you're needed at the plantations," she said. "Especially now. I worry that the slaves at Grand Trianon will be seduced by the lies of the English, and as far as Amboise is concerned, I have lost faith in Cheveau. Others have extracted themselves this way. You can, too."
"You would have me branded a coward?"
She rapped her knuckles on the carved wooden arm of her chair, as large as a throne. "I would have you alive."
"You think there is going to be a real battle?" Honoré smiled. "The British have the Americans outnumbered and outgunned by a factor of ten. They will make short work of the navy on the Gulf and then march into the city without firing a shot. The legislature will strew rose petals before them if that means sparing the city, and their properties. They are already huddling together in corners, wondering about the best way to surrender."
"Then why bother?" said Madame. "Stay home out of the cold and rain."
"Because if New Orleans must fall to the British, our officers will be required to negotiate with their officers. The men who make up that party should be---"
"Creole," said his grandmother. "And of the first rank. It would put you in a good position---"
"To see that our interests are protected, once the fighting is done. And," he added with a smile, "who else could do the uniform justice?"
Jennet had begun to wonder how much more critical the situation might get when the heavens took some pity on her and struck Père Petit dead with an apoplexy. It happened while he sat at his supper table, and thus at Mass the next morning she had something to be thankful for. She was so busy with her own thoughts that it wasn't until Communion that it occurred to her that the new priest---a younger man of average looks and bearing---would be the one to hear her confession.
She hoped he would not be as invasive and curious as Père Petit had been. She hoped he would let her recite a list of small transgressions and be on her way. From the look of him at the altar she could tell nothing of his personality.
After Mass she went into the confessional to wait for him, closing the door so that the small space---it always made her think of a coffin set on its end---was almost completely dark. It smelled of cypress and tallow and incense and sweat, with a hundred other scents lingering just below the surface. Fear, regret, submission.
The door to the priest's cubicle opened and closed, and then the grillwork on the window that joined Jennet's space to his slid to one side. She could see nothing of the priest through the curtain; she was not meant to see him. She waited for the familiar prayers to begin and then, after a moment, raised her head.
"Père?"
"I am no priest." The voice was hoarse and very low, one she had never heard before.
Jennet's throat closed in fear and hope. She had to swallow hard before she could force words out of it.
"Do you bring me a message?"
He said, "I bring you news of your cousin Hannah."
Jennet closed her eyes. "Who are you?"
"My name is Jean-Benoît." And then: "She is at Dr. Savard's free clinic on the rue Dauphine. She has malaria and is not well enough yet to leave her bed. You must come to her so that together you can make plans."
"But I can't," Jennet whispered, her voice cracking under the strain. "I cannot risk my son's well-being. Do you have any idea what Mme. Poiterin would do if she found out?"
With utter calm he said, "If you cannot bring yourself to trust me, I cannot help you, your son, or your cousin."
Jennet pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. She wanted to believe the voice behind the screen, but she was terrified.
"I think Honoré is suspicious," she said.
"Then you have less time to act, not more."
At that moment it occurred to her that whatever information Honoré had forced from Titine, he could not know of Hannah's presence in New Orleans, or Hannah would be dead.
She said, "Tell me something about Hannah."
There was a small silence, and she had the sense that he was choosing his words carefully. "She is tall for a woman, taller than you. She is half Indian and half white and has the best features of both races. She speaks English like a schoolteacher and French with a British accent. She is a trained physician who studied for a time in Manhattan. Her worry for you and your son and for her brother is keeping her from a full recovery."
Jennet couldn't help herself; she sobbed out loud. "Yes," she said. "I believe you now. Do you have word of my husband?"
"Not yet," said Jean-Benoît.
Those two words filled Jennet with hope for the first time since Titine's disappearance. She forced her voice to steady.
"I will come to Hannah, if you can arrange it without arousing Mme. Poiterin's suspicions."
"When you go to read to her this afternoon she will suggest the trip herself," he said. "Be ready."
"Wait," she said. "What does the new priest know about all this? Have you bribed him to allow you to speak to me?"
"Not all priests are like Petit. Tomaso Delgado is a good man, and my friend. Does that satisfy you?"
It did not; it could not. She said, "I am struck by the coincidence that Père Petit should die just now, so suddenly. So conveniently for my cause."
After a moment Ben said, "Do you want my help?"
"Of course," said Jennet. "Of course I do."
"I think I could learn almost everything there is to know about this city just listening at the window," Jennet said to Hannah later that day. "Listen, here comes Mr. Occhiogrosso."
Hannah stood to look out the window. A small man was walking along the street, as laden as a donkey. There was a wooden frame on his back filled with panes of glass in all sizes that rattled with every step. He carried a long wooden ruler that he used as a sort of walking stick, clicking it against the cobblestones. He looked up at Hannah in the window and flashed a smile around the stem of his pipe, his teeth the color of tobacco.
"How do you know his name?"
"Henry has made a study of all the vendors and workers who come by. He's especially fond of the Italians because they stop to talk to him. Won't Jean-Benoît be waiting for you?"
"I wish you could come with me," Hannah said. "It's not good for you to be cooped up here constantly."
Jennet threw her a suspicious look. "Don't tell me you're afraid of Ben Savard. Not Hannah Bonner, who faced down the likes of Mac Stoker and Baldy O'Brien."
Hannah knew better than to respond when Jennet was in a mood like this: unable to voice her fears, and set on distracting herself and everyone else with the combination of wit and impudence that was all her own. She wondered, again, if she should have told Jennet this latest news about Titine.
She watched for a moment as Jennet turned over a card and considered it. Then she asked a question she had been holding back since the day they had come to the L'Île de Lamantins.
"You've never explained about the cards you left behind at Nut Island."
Jennet looked up. "The seven and the Queen of Swords, aye. I missed them. There was no paper on the island except for the navigation maps on the ships, so I had to make replacement cards out of palm fronds that I wove and cut to size."
Hannah said, "And who is the Queen of Swords? Is that you, or me?"
"It will have to be you," Jennet said. She tilted her head thoughtfully. Her expression said she was looking back to the day Dégre had taken her away, out of her life and into his, and set them on the path that had brought them to New Orleans. Hannah had seen many men talk of battles with the same expression: as closed and unwelcoming as a fist.
Jennet said, "I knew Luke would come after me, but I wanted you too. I wanted both of you."
"I needed no convincing," Hannah said. "There was no question but that we'd come after you." She bent over the baby on Jennet's lap and ran her fingers through the curls, feather soft and slightly damp, that fell over his brow. He looked up at Hannah with perfectly round and trusting eyes, her brother's son. Her missing brother.
"We never lost faith that we'd find you," Hannah said, and she saw a tremor move across Jennet's face. "We must do the same for Luke."
Then she kissed them both and left Jennet to her solitude.
With the coming of the late fall, New Orleans was filled with a new vigor, due, Hannah had no doubt, to the fact that the terrible draining heat of late summer was truly gone. Here the coming of winter was welcome, because with it came parties and dinners and long walks on the levee without fear of sunstroke. It all reminded Hannah how far she was from home.
At Lake in the Clouds there would be at least a foot of snow on the ground, and soon the ice on Half Moon Lake would be thick enough to support a man. Partridge would explode out of the underbrush in a shower of snow so white against a pale blue sky that it made the eyes water. But in New Orleans the breeze that came off the Mississippi was warm enough that she might have done without the shawl draped over her shoulders.
Standing in the courtyard while she waited for Ben Savard, the sun, even low on the sky, touched her face like a blessing. Tomorrow the cold rain would most likely return, but she could be thankful, just now, for this small respite, for the deep red of the damp cobblestones and the shadowy loggia with its arches and pillars. Even now there was a good deal of green about: a red clay pot of chives on a windowsill, fig and date and palm trees around the fountain in the middle of the courtyard, where water fell from the mouth of a mermaid to wash over alabaster breasts and pool around her tail.
Paul Savard bought this property from a French merchant who had gone bankrupt. Now the kine-pox clinic was on the ground floor with the general clinic immediately above it. The family apartment where Jennet was hidden away was on the topmost floor. From the courtyard Hannah could see the window, but there was no sign of her cousin.
She caught movement to her right and turned to see Jean-Benoît coming down the stairs from the small apartment over the kitchen, in a building all its own.
"I didn't realize you lived here," she said, and then wished she had not, though he didn't seem to take offense.
"The garçonnière is here for me when I'm in the city," he said. He gestured with his chin. "It's that passageway we want, beside the stable. Clémentine, bonjour." He inclined his head and shoulders to the cook, who was watching them from the kitchen doorway, and Hannah did the same.
She followed him out of the courtyard through a narrow passageway that ended in a heavy wrought-iron gate. Jean-Benoît lifted the latch and it swung open silently into a smaller courtyard, partially cobbled and surrounded on three sides by low, one-story buildings with overhanging eaves. All of them seemed to be empty.
"When the American troops get here they'll requisition every square foot of space," Ben said. "I doubt they'd displace a clinic, though. So there's no time to lose."
Many questions came to mind, but she restricted herself to the problem at hand. "What exactly did you have in mind?"
He showed her a long building that had once been a carpenter's shop. It still smelled faintly of wood sap and grease and of men's labor. It was solidly built, with whitewashed walls and a sturdy plank floor, light-filled and airy, with a large hearth at one end and a Franklin stove at the other. There was plenty of furniture available, Ben told her, cots and tables and cabinets, and she would have full access to the apothecary where she had spent the morning.
"The space is adequate?"
Hannah raised her shoulders and let them drop. "I have looked after the sick in much worse places." She thought of the blood-soaked ground at Tippecanoe, of the garrison gaol where her brother Daniel had almost died, of a dozen different battles, and turned her mind away from those images. Then she turned her mind to the people here who needed care, and asked about them.
"We'll go meet some of them," Ben said.
Hannah hesitated. She thought of Jennet, hidden away from the Poiterins and waiting for word of her husband. She thought of Rachel, who would be coming soon to tell her daily stories and share the gossip. She felt her fingers twitching with the need to be doing something, anything, and she nodded.
Ben opened the door, and Hannah stepped out into the city.
"I hardly remember any of this," Hannah said a few minutes later. "Though I think I must have come this way, when I first got here."
The weather was fine and the breeze was welcome on her face, and Hannah felt truly well for the first time in so many weeks.
She said, "When I was very little I dreamed of adventures, but this morning I was thinking that I've had quite enough of them in my lifetime."
Ben glanced down at her. "The first lie you've told me." He grinned to take the sting out of the truth. "You aren't the kind to sit quiet by the fire, or you wouldn't be here in the first place."
"I could learn to be that kind of woman," Hannah said, feeling herself flushing a little. "It would be a relief."
"You want to sit by the fire and sew?" He shook his head. "I can't see it."
"Maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do," Hannah said, irritated now. "Maybe you don't know me at all."
"I know enough," he said. "Paul told me about that summer. He told me about the riot, and what happened after. What you risked."
Hannah felt herself flush with embarrassment, though she couldn't say exactly what bothered her: that Paul Savard had been telling stories, or that he had told them to Ben.
She said, "He exaggerates."
"My brother?" Ben looked amused. "I know no man less inclined to exaggeration. He is far more likely to err in the other direction."
Because Hannah could not argue with that very true statement, she remained silent and was relieved when Ben let the subject go.
In a short time they had passed out of the neighborhood of large, well-maintained homes and businesses into an area that was populated by artisans and skilled laborers. Most of the houses were two-room cottages that were of a size with the cabins Hannah was familiar with. A space to sleep, and one for the business of living, a small garden. The spell of warmer weather had brought out washtubs and clotheslines, and women called to each other as they worked. It would be easy to imagine herself in some other country, because Hannah saw not a single white face.
It struck her for the first time how the community of free people of color made New Orleans into a city unlike any other. Nowhere else, not even in the states where slavery had been outlawed, did so many live, if not in perfect freedom, then at least with a good measure of self-government.
A ragman, his skin as wrinkled and dark as roasted hickory nuts, came toward them leading a donkey laden down with sagging panniers. He nodded to Ben and didn't look at Hannah, but at the faded blue cotton tignon she had taken from her pocket to wrap around her head. She was not any shade of black, but neither was she white, and thus the law applied to her as well. And yet she had the impression---fleeting, unsettling---that the old man would have snatched the cloth from her head, if Ben had not been beside her.
She said, "In Manhattan I only had to be wary of how whites looked at me."
Ben made a sound in his throat, one that she thought must be meant as acknowledgment.
They passed into another part of the city, far more run-down. Fewer of the children on the street were colored, and more of them called to each other in Spanish. The wooden gutters that lined the lanes in the rest of town were missing here or broken, and puddles of dirty water and waste and trash pockmarked the road. A half dozen piglets dug in a pile of refuse, curled tails working furiously and without pause, even when a window opened and a shower of slops rained down on them.
They passed a butcher and then skirted a great heap of headless, hollowed-out carcasses outside a tannery. The stink in the air was so thick that Hannah's eyes watered and her gorge rose sharply and it took all her concentration to make her stomach settle. Then Ben turned a corner.
Hannah stopped, in surprise and unease. It was as if a whole village---any of the Indian villages she had known at different times in her life---had been fit into the short lane of cottages. Women and older girls sat in doorways, grinding corn or tending pots hung over fires made in the open. A grandmother scraped a deer hide stretched on a makeshift frame, an infant with a lesion on its cheek looking over her shoulder. Children ran back and forth with sticks, chasing a ball made of a pig's bladder. Three old men, their faces folded with wrinkles, sat on a blanket on the ground, their hands open, palm up, in their laps. A water barrel stood just next to them, a tin dipper on a rawhide thong dangling from the rim.
From across the crowd one of the old men looked at Hannah with milky turquoise eyes, his face as impassive as a sleeping infant's.
She said, "These people don't belong in this city. What are they doing here?"
"Some of them are slaves," Ben said. He looked at her with eyes just the same color as the old man's, but his gaze was sharp and knowing and anything but passive. "Their masters put them into these cottages and hire them out as day labor. They don't run away because some of the children are kept on the plantation as surety. In the spring they'll be called back there for the planting."
"There are no young men."
"They've been lent to the planters who have cane fields. The harvest will start soon."
"All of them, slaves?" Her voice shook a little. She had understood what Ben told her earlier, but to see the truth of it was something very different. Some day she would be among the Kahnyen'kehàka again and she would tell them about this place, where the Real People were bought and sold and worked like mules.
Ben was looking at her with something like sympathy in his expression. He said, "Not all. What you see here is some of what Jackson left behind him after Horseshoe Bend."
Horseshoe Bend. Hannah shook her head, to rid it of the images.
Ben took her first to see a man who worked in a hut just large enough for himself and his cobbler's bench. He was bent over a boot with a loose heel. There were only three fingers on each hand, and one leg was gone below the knee, but otherwise he looked healthy, if not especially well fed. He was dressed in rough work clothes, and his hair had been shorn.
The dark eyes met Hannah's first and then moved on to Ben, and he smiled and rose from his work. The language he spoke was completely unfamiliar to Hannah, but she did notice that beside her, Ben had stiffened, ever so slightly.
"What?" she asked him, when he had replied.
"Blue-Deer says he is glad to see that I have taken a wife, and that there will be wailing from Mobile to Galveston."
Hannah shot Ben a sharp look and got a calm one in return.
"And you corrected this misconception."
"I told him what he needs to know."
"What name did he call you?"
Ben inclined his head and smiled. "He calls me by my Choctaw name, Waking-Bear."
Then Ben turned back to the cobbler and took up the conversation again. Hannah watched Blue-Deer's expression shift and soften, and then he replied.
"He has a son who is going blind in one eye," Ben translated. "He would take him home to the healers in his village, but the village is gone."
"I will do what I can," Hannah said. "If he will come to see me at the clinic."
That easily her decision was made.
All the people she met had a few things in common. They were Indian, though many had had at least one African or white parent or grandparent. One in six or seven had eyes the same startling turquoise as Ben Savard. They were all poor, and they were all pleased to see Ben, and eager to talk to him. And once he had introduced Hannah, they were eager to talk to her, too. They told her about fevers and wounds, about cures they had tried, the ones that had worked and the ones that hadn't; about cousins and sisters and grandfathers who had died suddenly or slowly; about children who wasted away even when food was plentiful; about rashes that came and went without explanation; ulcers and coughs and belly cramps.
For the next hour they worked their way from one family to another. Sometimes they could speak French, but mostly they spoke the local Creole or their own languages, and then Ben acted as translator.
An old woman who had the look of a clan mother asked her the question she had been waiting for. Hannah recited her lineage, and Ben translated.
I am Walks-Ahead, daughter of Sings-from-Books of the Kahnyen'kehàka, called the Mohawk by the O'seronni. We are the People of the Longhouse, Keepers of the Eastern Door, the Kahnyen'kehàka of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee People. We live far to the north of this place, in the Endless Forests. Where it is so cold in the winter that the birds flee to the south, and snow makes a blanket for Brother Bear that lasts until April.
I am the granddaughter of Falling-Day, who was a great healer. I am the great-granddaughter of Made-of-Bones, who was clan mother of the Wolf for five hundred moons. I am the great-great-granddaughter of Hawk-Woman, who killed an O'seronni chief with her own hands and fed his heart to her sons in the Hunger Moon, in the time when we were still many, and strong.
She wanted to tell these people about the other women who claimed her as their own, who had taught her well, women who did not look like the people around her now. The stories they wanted to hear had to do with other Indians, the tribes to the west and the battles they had fought.
And so Walking-Woman told them. As she spoke and Ben translated she noted how his tone shifted, and tensed, and grew strong with the flow of the story.
She spoke of the days she had been known as Walking-Woman. She told them of her husband, Strikes-the-Sky of the Seneca, of her uncle Strong-Words and the rest of her family. She told them about Tecumseh, also called Panther-in-the-Sky, and his brother, The Prophet, who had been the undoing of all their hopes. She told the story of her years living among the Real People on the Wabash at Tippecanoe and the day Harrison's troops came and destroyed it all. She told how her uncle Strong-Words and his sons fought and died in that battle; she spoke of her own husband, who had been sent out to recruit other tribes to Tecumseh's vision of a nation of red-skinned men and women united in their determination to keep some of this continent for themselves. How Strikes-the-Sky had gone out on this sacred mission and never returned.
She knew as she told this story that she was being judged, and that many found her lacking. Her husband had been a Red Stick from the north. It was men like him who had roused the Upper Creeks to a war. A war that had been lost, once and for all, at Horseshoe Creek, at unimaginable cost not to the whites, but to the rest of the Creek nation, and to every other tribe. It was because of that war that they were here, where they did not belong and did not want to be.
Hannah, agitated and truly alive for the first time in so many weeks, found she was thankful for the opportunity to tell her own story to people who understood, because their stories were much like her own.
An older man asked through Ben what she knew about the future, and whether it was true that Jackson was coming to this place to drive the Real People into the sea.
To Ben Hannah said, "Tell them I know less than they do. You can answer their questions about this war better than I can."
"I can't tell them what they want to hear," Ben said, but he spoke for a long time anyway, and Hannah saw that the people liked and trusted and respected him. She understood almost nothing of what he said, but she knew, because it was all so familiar. Another O'seronni war, and the Indian tribes had to decide where they stood. Which side they would fight for, or if it might be possible, this time, to come away from another O'seronni war with the little they had intact.
In the dusk they walked back to the clinic on the rue Dauphine. Glad now of the shawl that she pulled close around her, Hannah walked with her head lowered. The past had come to claim her, and it would not be shaken off so easily.
"Was I wrong to take you there?"
Ben spoke French. Hannah wondered if he realized it, or if he meant to say something by that choice of language. You are among my kind now, or You must put aside what you think you know. Or maybe he was only tired, as she was. Tired but content, as she had felt after a day in the cornfield as a girl, cleansed by hard work and sweat, having earned her food and her rest.
"You know you were not," Hannah said. But she thought of the last woman she had examined, no more than forty years old though she looked sixty. The troubles she brought to Hannah were the kind that nothing in the clinic apothecary could cure. Ungrateful children, stolen opportunities, broken promises that left a burning in the gut.
"What do you have for that?" The woman had been jittery and eager, her black eyes too bright as she caressed the grinding bowl in her lap. The smell of corn and sour sweat and bitter words hovered around her like a shroud. "You got something to bring justice down on a bad heart?"
"No," Hannah had told her through Ben, glad for once that she did not speak the same language. "That's not the kind of medicine I know about." And she saw that she had said the right thing. She had passed some test set for her by Ben Savard, and earned his trust.
"While you've been out exploring," Jennet said, "I've been whispering in corners with Rachel. Don't grimace, cousin, it will give you wrinkles before your time."
Hannah held up the shoe she had just pulled off her foot. "I'd give a great deal for a pair of moccasins, or even the doeskin to make my own. So tell me about Rachel, before you burst."
"She's in love. She's really certain this time."
Hannah pushed out a great breath. "Mr. Bellamy?"
"Oh no, Mr. Bellamy was days ago. You must pay better mind, Hannah. Rachel has given her heart to a M. Reynaud. Who is, she assures me, the perfect gentleman. Half French, half English, tall and fair, and he dances like an angel."
"Does an angel dance?" Hannah asked, yawning.
"When he is not busy making his fortune, yes. He dances and pays court to a highly strung sixteen-year-old who takes great satisfaction in the drama."
Something in Jennet's tone caught Hannah's attention. She turned to look at her cousin.
"Pay me no mind," Jennet said, blushing a little. "Nathaniel was unsettled all afternoon and none of us could comfort him."
Hannah was across the room and leaning over the baby's cot while Jennet went on, her voice wobbling. "The general opinion is that he's got a tooth coming. Please don't wake him, Hannah. Dr. Savard came up earlier and pronounced him perfectly healthy."
"Hmmm," Hannah said, and Jennet gave a weak laugh, putting up both hands in a gesture that said she was done protesting. Instead she came to stand beside Hannah while she examined the sleeping boy, her touch quick and so gentle that he hardly stirred.
"Clémentine thinks something I ate spoiled my milk, and says that I'm to have nothing but boiled hominy for a day. I've come to the conclusion that cooks are the same wherever you go. Do you remember how we sat in the kitchen at Carryckcastle and listened to Cook lecture on the evils of eating the strange things my faither was growing in his greenhouse?"
"Food as both the cause and the cure for every human ailment," Hannah agreed. And then: "You are trembling, Jennet, but he's in perfect health, now that he's done such a fine job of worrying his mother and setting the household on its ear."
Jennet collapsed into the chair next to the cot. She said, "I don't know what I'd do if I lost him, too."
Hannah put a hand on her cousin's shoulder and pressed, and then she went back to stretch out on her bed. For a long time they were silent, and Hannah was about to drift off to sleep without eating dinner or washing or even changing out of her clothes, when Jennet spoke.
She said, "Is it settled then, about your clinic?"
Hannah turned on her side. "New Orleans is an odd place, Jennet."
Her cousin leaned forward to cross her arms on her knees to listen, and so Hannah told her what she had learned and seen, and she heard her voice trembling.
When she had finished Jennet said, "But you needn't, if you don't want to."
"I'm not sure I do," Hannah said. "But I think I must try."
Pressed into service on the Puma among men who routinely killed for tarnished baubles and imagined slights, Luke had gone for days at a time without speaking. As it was, they already knew more about him than was to his taste; they had gone through his things and pocketed everything of worth. It was pure luck that he had kept the most important papers tucked under his shirt.
Now he found that the habit of silence was harder to shake off than he had imagined. Alone with Jennet, all the things he thought to say, had meant to say, were gone. She didn't seem to care, or maybe, Luke realized, she was feeling the same way. They spoke very little that first night. He told her the minimum she needed to know: about being boarded, his escape when the Puma docked at São Paulo, the voyage back as a crew member on another ship.
"What about money?" she had asked him. "Didn't the pirates take everything?"
"They did," Luke said. "But I retrieved what I could before I left them."
She didn't require details, and he was glad.
In the morning the Savards were presented with the fact of Luke Bonner's unannounced arrival. They never flinched at the idea of another guest in an already overcrowded apartment, or at least they showed nothing but kindness and hospitality. Paul Savard examined the wound to Luke's head, made a deep sound that seemed to be approving of his condition, and handed him something to drink that Luke swallowed down without a question. Laudanum, he realized too late, and the next time he woke it was mid-afternoon and his headache was much improved.
Hannah had gone to her clinic for the day, Jennet told him, because it would arouse suspicion if she did not. And the young woman Luke had interviewed at the slave market had arrived and was established in one of the two cots, under Hannah's care.
"How is she?"
"Dying," said Jennet. "Hannah says the trouble is in her belly."
"I'm sorry for the girl," Luke said. "But I need to hear about you."
Sitting beside him with the baby on her lap, she told him in more detail about the weeks since they had last seen each other in Pensacola. Luke stopped her now and then to ask a question.
"And Savard's brother, the one who---" he gestured at his own bandaged head. "It was his idea, how to get you away from the Poiterins?"
Jennet said, "It was his doing, from beginning to end." And then she gave him a small smile, one of the few she had been able to produce during the telling of the story. "So you see you will have to forgive him for last night."
"Aye," Luke said. "I suppose I will."
When she was done he understood three things very clearly. The first was that the debt they owed the Savards, most especially Ben Savard, was so large that he would never be able to repay it. The second was that they could not impose on their hospitality much longer, and the last: that they had nowhere to go. He couldn't even go out on the street, for fear that Poiterin might see him. What he needed, he realized, was a lawyer he could trust, one who would tell him whether the Poiterins' claims had any chance of being honored in court. Something to ask Savard about, when they could talk.
The rest of the first afternoon passed in relative solitude. Luke still had his own story to tell, but Jennet didn't seem in a hurry to hear it. It was a relief to simply sit together with the boy between them.
Their son. A vigorous, healthy child of almost eight months. A being with a surfeit of personality. If Jennet put him down on the floor he crawled away at high speed, his mouth set in a determined line. Caught up and tickled, he opened his mouth wide to show four white teeth. He had an infectious belly laugh, and when presented with anything he had never seen before---a quill, a shoe buckle, a stranger's hand, a newspaper---he would turn it over once or twice in his hands, his gaze as serious as any banker's, and then put it in his mouth to see if it might be edible.
In Luke's arms the boy first examined every button, working his way up to the neck of his shirt, where he wound his fingers in a few chest hairs and yanked, crowing with satisfaction at his father's grunt of surprise. Luke captured the offending hands and the boy promptly lifted himself to a standing position and bounced, flexing his knees and stamping like a drunken sailor on a dance floor. He babbled the whole while in a language that rose and fell like English, but contained not one recognizable word.
Luke had never let himself think too much about the fact of his own fatherhood, out of dread, out of superstitious worry. That they would never find the boy; that they would, and he would have Dégre's dark hair and eyes. These were things he would never say aloud. Jennet, who had borne so much by herself, should not have to carry the weight of doubts that had lasted only until she put the boy in his arms.
She had named him for Luke's father. A gesture of hope, certainly, but not without a certain amount of irony. Luke had grown up without knowing his father, had not even seen him until he was on the brink of manhood himself. For the first time, Luke began to understand what it must have been like for Nathaniel Bonner to learn that he had a son who had been kept from him. A new kind of anger, one he hadn't been able to imagine.
He helped Jennet bathe the baby, handing her the things she needed, letting himself be splashed, obediently lifting the rosy pink boy with his perfectly round belly and the evidence of his sex below it, and wrapping him in toweling. Deposited on the bed he attempted escape by rolling away, and then, resigned to being dressed, kicked his legs with vigor, flung out his arms, contorted his face and mouth elaborately, as if he were reciting an epic poem and required their full attention.
Almost shyly Jennet said, "Dr. Savard says he shows no ill effects from his---from the early separation. He seems healthy, does he no?"
Luke looked Jennet directly in the face and smiled. "He is perfect."
For the moment that seemed to be enough for all of them.
When Hannah came in the evening, looking very tired, even ill, Jennet came suddenly fully awake. The disquiet and tension that had drained away from her over the course of the day were back.
"Hannah," she said. "Are ye fevered?"
"Just very tired," Hannah said. "Clémentine has had a cot put in Rachel's room for me. Will you forgive me if I go straight to sleep?"
It was not really a question; she had already turned away before the last word left her mouth.
"We have things to talk about," Jennet said, and Hannah paused.
"Tomorrow is soon enough," Luke said, and he saw an expression flit across Jennet's face. Disagreement, frustration, and something that looked like panic.
Later, when the boy was asleep and they lay down together, as nervously as twenty-year-olds newly married, Luke smoothed the curls away from Jennet's face and kissed her. He kissed her gently, though he was thinking of the last time they had been together: the heat and strength of how she had come to him. Now she felt limp in his arms, empty of desire of any kind, drugged.
She trembled a little, pressed her face to his, sighed. She said, "I want to go home."
"I'll take you home," he said.
"Tomorrow? Can we set off tomorrow?"
He put a thumb to the corner of her mouth, smoothed it over her cheek. "If it's in my power," he said. "We'll set off tomorrow."
She nodded, her eyes fluttering closed. "Don't leave me again."
"Never," Luke agreed.
And then she was asleep. He pulled her closer so that her head was bedded on the hollow of his shoulder, and listened to the sound of her breathing.
To Hannah's great relief, she found that Rachel had already retired and was deeply asleep. In the light of a small candle she undressed down to her chemise and slipped between the sheets of the cot Clémentine had made up for her. Clémentine, who had looked at Hannah with her piercing dark eyes when she had made the request.
"Rachel's chamber?" she had repeated twice, and Hannah, thinking of the early morning hours she had spent in a bed over Clémentine's kitchen, nodded resolutely and willed herself not to blink.
There was no help for it. If she never went back to Ben's bed again, the damage was done. She hadn't seen him all day, something that at first had seemed a kindness on his part, and then, as the hours passed, began to feel like something else. Not so much a threat as a demonstration, and a challenge: I can stay away. Can you?
Hannah was so weary that the room seemed to tilt and spin even in the dark. Eyes open or closed, nothing changed except that she had lost her balance and had not the first idea how to get it back again.
Hannah stood for a moment on the gallery with her shawl wrapped around her head and shoulders and considered. She had spent last night in Rachel's room, and though she had been bone tired she had slept very little. Out of anxiety and worry for Jennet, she told herself, but also because she wasn't sure she was where she should be. She wanted to go back to Ben---about that she must be honest, with herself at least---but the idea also frightened her. He frightened her, in a way Kit Wyndham never had.
Because I could control Kit, she reminded herself, and winced.
Hannah went down the stairs, out into the open courtyard. There was a cold sleet coming down but she went slowly, wondering if Ben might be at his window, and watching her. When she finally allowed herself to look, she saw that the room was dark and the window had been shuttered closed.
Which was just as well, she told herself. What she needed now most of all was rest, and there were two cots in the little clinic. She imagined them, freshly made, on either side of the hearth. It was that picture she had in her mind when she opened the door and found Leo sweeping the floor.
Hannah turned as she took off her cloak and shook it. A shower of sleet hit the floor with a hissing sound.
"I'll be done here soon," Leo said. "Or I can leave this until tomorrow."
He was calculating something for himself, she could see it in his face. Hannah said, "As you like, Leo. I have work to do." Which was true enough.
She went to the table where her daybook---so new that she had filled only one page---had its home. She read over the last entry:
Ltilakna. 6-year-old Choctaw girl with a rash of small open, infected blisters at the right corner of the mouth. Cleaned area thoroughly and applied a distillation of dock root. Asked mother to bring the child back in two days' time.
Thomas. 54-year-old Catawba seized with colic. Severely undernourished, probably eating refuse. Gave him a decoction of snakeroot & saffron and a bowl of bread soaked in beef broth.
She had notes for another six entries to be made, and so Hannah brought the candle on its saucer closer to the daybook and reached for the stoppered ink bottle. The long room was clean and dry and there was a good fire in the hearth. Hannah took a moment to close her eyes and be thankful for the fact that she was---that they all were---alive and safe, for the tasks she had to keep her mind occupied, for the good black ink and the smooth paper of the daybook. And then she asked herself how long it would be before she fell asleep over her work.
"Ben came in earlier," Leo said, startling her out of her thoughts.
"Did he?" Hannah took up a penknife to trim her quill, observing Leo from the corner of her eye.
She was very aware of how gossip moved through the household, and had no doubt that everyone, including Leo, knew where she had spent Sunday night. The part of her that was Kahnyen'kehàka was not bothered by this; it was every woman's right to choose, and that she had done. She would not pretend otherwise, though the other part of her---the O'seronni half, raised by a Scots grandmother and an English stepmother---stumbled a little at this lack of privacy.
Leo would know where she spent Sunday night. He would know, too, that Ben Savard had joined the militia.
"He left you a note, under that bottle on the corner of your table. I didn't read it."
"Can you read?" Hannah asked, surprised.
He smiled proudly. "The priests will teach anybody who wants to learn."
"As long as they convert."
He gave a shrug worthy of an old man. "It's a small enough price."
Hannah took the note, feeling her pulse jump as she opened it. She spread it flat on the open daybook and saw that Ben Savard's handwriting was even and schooled and still was distinctly his own. He had written only two words: the name she had been given by her husband's people.
Walking-Woman
She touched the letters on the page and then she folded it and tucked it into her bodice.
Leo was saying, "A stranger came by as well. A white man. He said he'd call again."
"An American?"
Leo's lip curled. "Pas du tout."
"I understand you don't like Americans," Hannah said. "But you should remember that Dr. Savard's wife is one. I hope you don't make a face like that at her."
"Mrs. Savard is no American," he said, indignant. "Mrs. Savard is a Quaker."
That brought Hannah up short. "That is her religion, not her nationality. Some Quakers are Americans. Mrs. Savard is both."
Leo seemed to take this as a personal affront. "I don't believe you."
"Well, then, what about her children? What of Rachel?"
"Oh, she's an American," Leo said.
"Very well," Hannah said, irritated and amused at the same time. "But I suggest that you talk to Mrs. Savard and see what she says. So this stranger was not American. What did he look like?"
Leo shot her a sidelong glance that said very clearly what an odd question this was. "I couldn't say. I know better than to look white men in the face when they speak to me." He raised his head with a sudden movement. "Why do you speak French like a white?"
Hannah paused and considered the question. "I learned French from a teacher. A white woman. Do people have trouble understanding me?"
Leo said, "We understand you well enough, but it's hard to trust somebody who talks like you. Who doesn't talk like us."
Hannah understood very well what he was trying to tell her: Many people, including Leo himself, had not yet made up their minds about her.
A timid knock at the door made them both turn in that direction. Leo was across the room before Hannah could move a step. He opened the door and Hannah saw a young boy, his dark face wet with rain. He caught Hannah's eye and then looked down at his own feet while he said a few hushed words to Leo. There were some questions and answers, and then Leo closed the door in the boy's face.
Hannah said, "What is it?"
"Do you know somebody named Titine? A free woman of color?" His expression was uneasy.
"Yes," Hannah said. She gathered her thoughts, or tried to. She realized, with some disquiet, that she hadn't given Titine a thought in days. Titine, who had disappeared, and possibly died, trying to be of help to the Bonners.
"The boy says that this Titine's aunt has got word of her. The aunt is the housekeeper at the Maison Verde on the Bayou St. John, and she's wondering if you'd come. And bring your doctor's bag."
"Now?"
"He's waiting to show you the way. But you can't go. It'll be dark soon, and Ben isn't here."
Very calmly Hannah said, "Was the message for Ben?"
Leo scowled at her. "You can't go alone. You don't know the way."
"I'll ride," Hannah said. "I can take the boy up on the saddle with me."
"You have no boots."
"Boots?" Hannah looked down at the clogs on her feet, and thought of her stepmother, Elizabeth Middleton Bonner, who had earned the name Bone-in-her-Back from the Kahnyen'kehàka, for her strong will and sense of justice, and for her bravery. Hannah's father had given her another name, Boots. For her one indulgence, the love of pretty footwear. Leo could not know it, but to remind Hannah of her stepmother at this moment was only to steel her resolve. She said, "Will you go to the stable for me, or should I do that myself?"
Leo's usual obstinate expression faded. Hannah could almost read his mind, and in some small way she understood and even liked the boy for his caution and the way he assumed responsibility for her welfare. But there was no time to shepherd him through his doubt, and so she went back to the long table where she prepared medications and hurriedly gathered the things she might need, medicines and salves and instruments she had once carried in a leather bag, but now tied into a large square of linen that she could tear into bandages if the need arose.
"Your cloak is still wet."
That was certainly true. For a moment Hannah considered going up to the apartment to get more suitable clothes, and then she remembered Jennet and Luke as she had last seen them. Jennet, who was already on the verge of falling apart. Luke must find a way to calm Jennet, though he had a bump on his head. Luke would feel obliged to come with her, though the Poiterins lived on the Bayou St. John and for him to come face-to-face with Honoré at this point would be a disaster.
She would not be put off, but neither could she go out unprepared. She needed warmer clothes, boots, money, a weapon.
As she went out Leo said, "I have to go to the clinic to see Dr. Savard."
Hannah gave him a grim smile. "I'm on my way to see him myself. Come along, if you like."
Paul Savard did not much like her plan, but he didn't try to stop her, either, and for that Hannah was thankful. Instead he gave her a pistol and a knife in a beaded sheath, a small leather bag of ammunition, another of powder, and the last, the heaviest, of coin. Leo watched all this, at first surprised and then barely able to contain his disapproval. He made a number of pointed comments under his breath, dire predictions and promises, dark certainties.
Paul finally said to him, "A smart man knows when it is time to stand out of the way of a strong woman. I could tell you stories about Hannah---" He broke off with a smile, and turned around to pick up a book. Its stained leather binding and sprung spine said that it had seen hard use and a number of mishaps in the apothecary, and even before she could read the words embossed she guessed what they would say: Seats and Causes of Disease Investigated by Means of Anatomy. The doctor began to leaf through the pages, not reading so much as looking for familiar landmarks.
Paul Savard was known to quote Morgagni in all kinds of professional discussions, but what bearing he could have on the present situation was beyond Hannah. She was about to say as much when he found what he was looking for and pulled out something that had been lodged between the pages.
He held up a small piece of discolored paper. The handwriting was clean and strong but the ink had faded with time, and still Hannah recognized it immediately. She sent Paul Savard a startled look and he returned a Gallic, one-shouldered shrug as he handed the note to Leo.
"My wife tells me you are an excellent reader," he said. "Read it aloud."
Leo began, stumbling a little with the English. "A man needs medical help. If you will attend to him, be outside the almshouse kitchen door at three this afternoon."
"How did you come by that?" Hannah asked, unsettled and moved by the vivid memories those few words could pull forth.
"What does it mean?" Leo asked.
To Hannah, Paul Savard said: "That's a long story."
Hannah met his gaze directly and when she saw that she could not move him, she said, "I must go, the boy is waiting."
The doctor inclined his head. "Of course. Leo, see that Hannah sets off and then come back here and I'll tell you the story. Unless she would like to tell you herself, tomorrow?"
She took the time to wonder what Paul Savard was trying to accomplish, and then she shook her head. "You must suit yourself," she said. "As you always do."
The messenger seemed greatly relieved to see Hannah come out of the courtyard on horseback, and he took her hand and climbed up behind her without a moment's hesitation. Through chattering teeth he told her his name was Michel. Hannah sent Leo back into the little clinic to get a dry blanket to wrap around the boy, and then with his arms around her waist they set off. She was aware of Leo watching from the window, his expression disapproving and wistful both.
Now and then Michel gave directions in short sentences, taking them down one street and then another, until finally they were on the path that paralleled Marigny's canal. This was the lesser-used road, the longer way to the Bayou St. John, but Hannah could think of many reasons to avoid the main byway, and so she urged the mare to a jolting trot at the same moment that the sky split open. The sleet turned into an icy deluge, and the mare whinnied her disapproval.
The temptation was to break into a canter, but the road was unknown to her and the combination of the dusk and fog called for caution. Beyond that, Hannah had been raised by men who spent a good amount of time traveling through the endless forests, and she knew the importance of paying attention in strange territory.
The path ran between the canal on one side and the beginnings of the swamp on the other. The smell of the canal was strong in the air despite the rain. Rotting fish and waterweeds and dung. A half dozen mules stood at the open half door of a stable, waiting to be let in after a day of treading the towpath, oblivious to the rain. Shacks and small cabins straggled along the way, weathered board walls festooned with fishing nets and lines. The tools of men who made their living on the swamp were everywhere: crates and barrels and wooden tubs, flat-bottomed boats dragged onto land and turned over to show scarred underbellies, piles of fish bone. A pack of dogs watched them passing from a shadowy corner, and Hannah was glad of the pistol she had tucked into her belt.
In the open door of a cabin that seemed filled with smoke, a man with a pinched face was skinning an alligator carcass that looked to be twice his own length. Inside her deep hood Hannah was glad that he didn't try to talk to her. If he knew the boy who rode behind her there was nothing of recognition to see in his face.
The land changed suddenly from swamp to the cultivated fields of a large plantation, acres of cut sugarcane and, just visible in the distance, a cluster of cabins around a larger house. Michel saw her looking.
"Michie Fauchier's place," he said, pointing in one direction, and then in the other: "Michie Dejan."
The swamp closed in again and then opened suddenly where the canal joined the bayou. The rain had faded away to a despondent drizzle by the time they turned west to follow the waterway to the settlement. There was no one to be seen out-of-doors, which was a great relief. Hannah was just about to ask Michel to point out Maison Verde when the boy gave a great wiggle and slid off the saddle. He looked up at her and pointed to the nearest house, and then ran off.
Uneasy now, and thinking of Leo's warnings, Hannah hesitated. She remembered that a stranger had come by the little clinic to see her today, a white man; she wondered now which of the houses on the bayou belonged to the Poiterins. She had two choices: to trust the boy, or to turn the horse around and go back to the city.
She walked the mare around the main house to a small cluster of buildings: stable, barn, kitchen, others she could not put a name to. The door of the kitchen building opened and a woman beckoned to her. She was strongly built and tall, wrapped in a white apron that seemed to glow in the growing dark. She gestured again, and called a word over her shoulder. Michel came running, his mouth still full of food.
"Amazilie says to come right in, you shouldn't be out here where anybody could see you. I'll look after the horse."
Hannah had understood that for herself, but still she hesitated. There was a tingling in her hands, and her mouth had gone dry. Something was about to change; she knew that without a doubt. Whether it would be for the good or bad was unclear, but what she did know, with certain dread, was that it would start here and now. She slid off the horse and started toward the woman in the doorway.
Luke woke early in the evening from a deep sleep and sat up, disoriented and sweat drenched.
The dream was gone. Nothing to hold on to beyond a sense of something very wrong, someone in trouble. It was a familiar dream, one he had been living with since the day Jennet had been taken away from him. He rubbed his eyes and drew a deep and shuddering breath.
Beside him she was deeply asleep. Beneath the covers she was naked, a thought that made his flesh stir. He would have liked to look at her while she was quiet like this, but the room was chilly and he was not a boy, after all. He didn't have to indulge every urge. He was repeating this to himself when he realized that he was not the only one who was awake.
The baby was lying on his side in his cot, his wide eyes fixed on Luke. He looked content, his round cheeks flushed with color. Luke wondered if the boy was capable of curiosity about this man who had appeared out of nowhere. A man who took liberties with his person and, no doubt more troubling, with his mother's. But there was nothing of fear in the small face, and so Luke got out of bed as quietly as he could manage, and dressed.
Then he stood over the cot and considered. He had little experience with infants, and remembered only vaguely things he had heard over the years. Luke remembered that his grandmother had had great success in quieting unsettled infants by wrapping them firmly in warm flannel and then rocking them, but this boy stood, sturdy and curious, and wanted something other than quiet cuddling.
Luke leaned over and picked up the boy, gingerly, carefully, and tucked him into the crook of his arm. He smelled of his mother's milk and his own soggy linen, and of something that was unfamiliar to Luke and was most likely simply himself.
"Let's go find some tea, you and me." He glanced at Jennet, who had not moved an inch. "Leave your mother to catch her breath."
The boy lifted his fist to his mouth and began to mouth it.
"At least until you can't wait any longer," Luke amended.
Luke knocked lightly on the parlor door, where he found Julia and Paul Savard sitting alone at the table over a simple supper of bread and cold pork and tea. Julia would have got up from her place to see to the baby had not Clémentine come in with more water. She scooped him up like a gold coin found on the street, and bore her prize off to his bath and clean linen.
Luke decided to dispense with social niceties and put his concerns out plain. He said, "After the scene we had this morning I don't know what I should do first, thank you or apologize. Jennet is---" He paused, not quite sure what to say, beyond the fact that he needed help.
Julia Savard seemed to have been expecting this. "Jennet has been through a great deal. For a very long time her survival depended on her ability to dispense with all emotion, and now that you are reunited---she is awash. You must take her behavior now as what it is: evidence that she loves and trusts you above all others."
Paul said, "You must forgive my wife. She hasn't lost the habit of plain speech."
"And I never shall," Julia said. "Though I hope I haven't distressed you."
"No," said Luke. "I think surprise is closer to the truth. I hadn't seen it that way, but it makes sense." He cleared his throat. "Since we're talking plain, I've got something else to say. We can't set off for home just yet, but maybe we can get out of your way, at least. If you knew of a small house we could rent for the next few weeks."
Paul Savard glanced at his wife and raised an eyebrow; his expression said clearly that they had been discussing something, and that Paul had been proved right. Julia's mouth set itself in a resolute line, and that line turned into a smile that could only be called grim.
Julia said, "Could we please put the subject of your lodging aside for the moment? We have an idea to share with you. One that may solve most of your problem."
Paul leaned toward his wife. "Julia, you must leave him room to disagree with you."
"Of course he may disagree with me," Julia said, though her tone said he would not.
"Now I'm curious," Luke said. "What is it?"
Paul said, "You know of Edward Livingston?"
That was a name well known in New-York as well as New Orleans, and Luke said so. "Prominent family, successful lawyer. There was some kind of scandal before he left Manhattan. He's been here for a good while."
"He came in '04. As a lawyer he's without equal, and few can match him for his business sense."
"Or aggressiveness," Julia added.
Paul nodded his agreement. "He's the most prominent figure in the American community. His influence reaches as far as Washington and London and Paris, and he's connected to everybody and everything here, starting with the governor and the leading Creole families."
"And the Baratarians," said Julia.
"He's connected to your family as well," Luke said. "Your daughter gave me the family history this morning."
Julia looked a little embarrassed, but before she could say anything Luke went on.
"I like Rachel," he said, with complete sincerity. "She reminds me a little of Jennet at sixteen. Eager to fling herself out into the world, no worries about the cost."
"That is our Rachel," Julia agreed.
Paul made a small humming noise in his throat. "The point is, we're connected to Livingston through Julia's first marriage, and he's connected to everybody else. And here's another point: His secretary has resigned suddenly due to ill health." And then: "I see you understand my thinking. I'd like to introduce you to Livingston and recommend you as a replacement. A temporary replacement, of course, though we needn't mention that to start with. You have all the business experience and skills, you speak English and French fluently, and you're American. Or at least you're enough of an American to satisfy him."
Luke tried to sort through the questions that had presented themselves. "I'm not sure what advantage there'd be in the arrangement, but I can see one problem. I'm bound to run across Poiterin if I'm out in the city day by day."
"Yes, you are," Julia said. "But if Edward Livingston takes your part, and you are presented as his trusted colleague and employee, Poiterin won't be able to touch you."
"Not in public he won't," Paul added.
Julia went on. "You'll be free to act on your own behalf while you're working for Livingston."
"And what of Jennet?" Luke said. "What do I say if Poiterin approaches me about Jennet and the boy?"
"We have talked that through," Paul Savard said. "And it seems to us that you have to turn the tables on him. Produce papers to prove your marriage---you do have your marriage lines? We'll introduce you and Jennet to Livingston and his wife at the same time."
"With your son," said Julia. "Louisa will be besotted with him."
"Tell them the story of Jennet's abduction, and then Poiterin must back off," Paul Savard said. "He can't afford to have his name linked to the men who were responsible. His reputation here is shady as it is, and he must tread carefully if he doesn't want to be exposed completely."
"Though by rights he should be arrested and tried," Julia said. No doubt she knew that Poiterin was involved with the illegal importation of slaves, something that would be anathema to any Quaker.
"And his grandmother?" Luke said.
"She hates Americans," Paul said. "But I don't believe she'd be willing to take on Livingston, though that's something we have to ask him about."
"Nor will she put Honoré at risk," Julia said. "She'll forfeit claim to your son rather than do that."
Luke was struck by how simple and elegant this plan was, but he also knew more of Honoré Poiterin than these two good people did. He said, "I have seen Poiterin's work firsthand. He has no conscience. He has killed innocent men out of nothing more than the desire to demonstrate that he can do as he likes. He will strike out at us if the opportunity presents itself. You'll be a target, too, even after we're gone. We've already put you in enough danger."
Savard leaned back in his chair. "You are thinking that a doctor with a Quaker wife is no match for Poiterin with revenge on his mind."
Luke inclined his head. "Something like that."
"You're forgetting my brother," Savard said. "But let me assure you---Poiterin won't forget Jean-Benoît."
Julia was studying her folded hands, her cheeks flushed with anger or discomfort, her jaw set hard. Luke tried to make sense of what he had stumbled across. A family argument with deep roots, and none of his business, except insofar as his own actions might cause any of these people difficulty.
"I don't want any part of this plan if Julia cannot endorse all of it," he said. "I'd rather we took our chances in the city than cause you any more trouble."
"You would gamble with your son's life?" Julia asked him. And: "Of course you would not. I admit that some elements of this plan concern me, but those are matters between my brother-in-law and his conscience."
"So you think we should do this thing?" Luke asked her.
She nodded. "I think it is the best chance you have. If Jennet approves, we will call on the Livingstons this evening, the four of us. Might I---" She hesitated. "Might I go to her now and tell her about all of this? I think I can present it in the best light."
It was as close as she would come to telling Luke he would make a mess of it.
He said, "I'd be thankful."
Ben Savard came into the parlor while they were waiting for Jennet and Julia. When Paul nodded at him, Luke understood that he had had a part in putting the plan together, but had stayed away while it was being explained. He would have tried to acknowledge the debt he owed the Savards, but Jennet came flying into the parlor flushed with color, her eyes and expression as bright as Luke had ever seen them.
She came to him directly, her hands held out before her for him to take. Her eyes were wet, but this time she seemed to have been weeping not out of fear and frustration, but joy.
"You like the plan?"
"I do," she said. "It is a very good plan, I think." She glanced around the room. "Where is Hannah? What does she say to all this?"
Luke said, "We haven't talked to her about it yet." And to Savard: "Is she still down in the little clinic?"
"Hannah isn't here," Paul said. "She was called out to the Maison Verde, late this afternoon."
Jennet's expression clouded over immediately. "Hannah is gone to the Bayou St. John? By herself? Why would you allow such a thing?"
Savard's head tilted to one side, as if he were imagining what it would mean to deny Hannah Bonner some task she had set herself.
Jennet said, "It's not safe. We have to go after her."
Just that simply her high spirits and hopefulness were gone, replaced by something very like terror.
"I don't like this at all," she said. "Honoré is behind it, I'm sure of it. Luke, you'll have to go after her if nobody else will." She threw Ben Savard a look that was plain in its meaning.
He met her gaze with a steady one of his own. "I'll go. I'm on my way out to the old Spanish fort tonight to join my company."
"You'll look in on her?" Jennet said. "You'll bring her back here safely?"
"I will make sure she gets back safely," Ben Savard said. "You can count on me."
Suddenly presented with the solution to the problems that worried her so deeply, Jennet was filled with new energy. Her hands trembled as she got ready to leave the house on rue Dauphine in the company of her husband and friends. They continued to tremble while she let Rachel fix her hair and she got her son ready. Nathaniel was uneasy, too; he flexed and turned in her arms, as if he wanted to swim away through the air. Julia had a rare talent for quieting unsettled infants, but it took her an unusually long time to convince him that all was well and that it was safe to leave the business at hand to the adults.
Setting out for the short walk to the Livingstons', Jennet was struck with the absurdity of the situation. She had what she wanted, and she was terrified.
If only, she told herself, there had been some time to sit quietly with Luke and talk it all through. If only Hannah were here. Jennet felt that absence with every forward step, but just as strongly she felt the responsibility that had been given to her. When Hannah came back to the rue Dauphine, Jennet hoped she would find that their situation had much improved. It would be a gift to her, and Jennet was willing to suffer this hour of uncertainty and fear to that end. Others had been bearing the burden long enough.
But it was strange to walk the street with Luke on one side and Paul Savard on the other, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary for them to be going to pay a call. As if there were no chance of Honoré Poiterin coming around a corner. The image of him leaning against a wall, his legs crossed at the ankles, was easily conjured. Any one of the people they passed on the street might recognize her and, remembering the reward, shout out to the world who she was: a madwoman, unfit to care for her own child.
When they finally stood in front of the Livingstons' fine house---carved wooden lintels and gleaming brass, beveled glass in tall windows aglow with candlelight, so that the whole gleamed like a treasure box---Jennet stopped to catch her breath.
Luke waited patiently beside her. He looked at ease, though she knew he was not; he had that knack, of hiding his feelings. She wished she had more of it. The borrowed clothes might not fit him exactly as they should, but no one would take note of that. They would see the blond hair smoothed back to a queue, and the strong nose and jaw and high brow, his suntanned face solemn above the stark white linen at his throat.
He smiled back, scar high on his cheekbone. It was small and white and curved like a quarter-moon.
The inconstant moon.
Jennet shook her head to dislodge that unwelcome echo. This was her husband, who would protect her and their son with his life. She squeezed his arm, and gave him a sincere smile.
He said, "All will be well, girl. I promise you that. Can you trust me?"
Jennet remembered, quite suddenly but very clearly, the day she had realized she loved him. She had been fifteen and furious because he had refused to let her ride out with the men.
When will you stop seeing a little girl when you look at me? she had asked him, and he had paused at the door and glanced at her over his shoulder. The look in his eyes had given her a very clear answer: He did see her as she wished to be seen.
He knows me, she had thought. And he loves me for who I am. It had been that simple.
"Let them do their worst," Jennet said now. "I'm not afraid so long as we're together."
News reached us late yesterday evening of a short-lived slave uprising in Whitehall County, Mississippi. We report the verified details of this horrible event to forestall rumors and panic.
Cedar Grove Plantation has been burned to the ground. The violence began when the slaves who were at work in the sugarhouse rose up and overpowered an overseer. Cedar Grove's owner, M. Christophe Jardin, died when fire spread to his mansion. M. Jardin was an unmarried man, and to our certain knowledge he and his three overseers were the only casualties of this savagery. No other innocents died in the conflagration.
Some two dozen slaves escaped before neighbors and officials could gain control of the situation. It is our understanding that most of those runaways have already been caught, and those responsible for the uprising summarily executed, as justice demands.
Our local officials take great pains to point out that the rebellion at Cedar Grove is in no way part of a larger, more sinister plot. In this case, rumors that the uprising was incited by British spies are simply false. Officials in Whitehall County have satisfied themselves that what happened at Cedar Grove had other causes, specifically an owner who was too liberal with his slaves, and an overseer who was too trusting.
We are reminded of our responsibilities to those lesser creations who depend on us to instill in them the discipline, self-control, and Christian principles which are foreign to their natures.
"It will be light in an hour," Ben said into the dark. He sounded as sleepy as Hannah felt.
She said, "Do you have to go?"
He turned on his side. "I have to go. Do you have to stay?"
"No, I'm going back to the city." She yawned. "I'll walk out with you."
But neither of them moved. Finally Hannah said, "I have this feeling that everything is changing. The whole world is changing around me, and it's going to be hard to hold on."
"It's the war," Ben said. "And me."
She snorted a surprised laugh. "Such modesty."
"Go on," he said. "Deny it." His voice was low and sure. And then: "I unsettle you. Have you figured out why?"
"Why don't you tell me," Hannah said, and wished she could snatch back the words.
"Because we fit," he said. "And you can't pretend we don't."
"Are you talking about the fact that we're both half white?"
He pushed himself up on an elbow. "That's only part of it."
It was odd, wanting to disagree and unable to find any flaw in his reasoning.
"We fit in some ways," she said. "But not in the most important ones. You belong here, and I don't."
Ben traced a finger along her hairline. He seemed to be picking his words, but then he only shook his head. His smile sometimes made him look almost boyish. He said, "Come. Walk out with me."
The freezing rain of last night might have been a dream, if it weren't for the fact that Hannah's clothes were still vaguely damp. The air was sweet and much warmer than she had expected. By the time they had finished saddling their horses and walked them out to the shell path the sky was full light.
Hannah glanced toward the kitchen and wondered if Tibère was still there with Caspar. He would be buried today, no doubt in secret. To announce to the world that a slave who had run away so many years ago had come back to die would bring a lot of unwanted attention. It would bring Honoré Poiterin, almost certainly, to make sure that his bad habits didn't become public knowledge.
Ben was so quiet that Hannah thought he must be thinking about Caspar, too, or about Honoré.
She said, "How long will your company be stationed here?"
He turned as if he could see through the trees as far as the old Spanish fort, which stood on high ground at the point where the bayou met Lake Pontchartrain.
"I've been assigned to Major Hughes, so I'll be here as long as he has command, or until they figure out which direction the British are going to invade from," he said. He glanced down at her, the color of his eyes particularly strong and strange in the first light. Then he turned his head toward the north, and at that moment Hannah heard it, too: the sound of men on horseback. A lot of them, moving at a fast clip.
Ben took both horses by the bridle and pulled them into the trees that led down to the water. Hannah followed, more curious than alarmed. They stood while the horses thundered by, shoulder to shoulder. Ben leaned over and spoke into her ear so that gooseflesh moved in a wave down her back.
"Hughes and the men. I'll have to catch up."
Hannah said, her voice oddly high and far away: "Try not to get yourself killed, will you?"
The smile he turned on her was so wicked that Hannah should have been alarmed. Before she could step away he bent his head and kissed her as if it were the most natural thing in this strange world, as if she belonged with him and nowhere else. She kissed him back anyway.
He was still holding the reins, and he turned to loop them around a low branch.
Hannah said, "You have to catch up."
"I won't have far to go," Ben said. "They're stopping at the Kilty-Smith place. You could see them if you went down to the water's edge."
There were many good reasons to refuse, but none came out when Hannah opened her mouth to protest. Instead she let him pull her deeper into the trees. She went with him because she was intrigued and flushed and couldn't think of an excuse not to go, at least not an excuse that wouldn't make him laugh at her outright. So she let herself be pressed up against the trunk of a tree---a cypress, she noted with some part of her mind---and be kissed. And she kissed him back, glad of the chance, glad of the feel of him. Things were changing, that was true, but Hannah realized that she didn't want Ben Savard to be one of those things.
One large hand was lifting her skirt and moving up her thigh with a touch as light as feathers.
"Really, Ben---" She shuddered as Ben's tongue traced from the hollow of her throat to the jut of a collarbone.
Against her ear he said, "Send me off to war with a smile on my face."
"You've been smiling for hours," she said, her voice wobbling.
There was no more talking for a while, though Hannah could not make her mind stop working, couldn't stop the words tumbling and then disappearing into the long kisses that shifted and deepened and broke only long enough for Ben to lift her, her skirts caught up around her waist, her legs wound around him.
"You see?" he said. "We fit."
She saw, yes. She saw him, the truth of him and of herself. She wanted this. Ben Savard so deep inside her and still it wasn't enough, couldn't ever be enough. With one part of her mind she heard more horses on the shell road, and men on foot marching in formation, and then that sound was gone, too, lost in the shudder and shift, the heat and commotion and push and pull and the final plunge, like falling from a great height, heart pounding, to be caught up again in the tangled web of the world.
"What is going on?" Hannah asked, when she had her breath back and was trying to put her clothes back in order. "A hundred men must have gone by here in the last fifteen minutes."
"Major General Jackson," Ben said. He retrieved the slouch hat he had dropped from the ground and settled it on his head. "Come to rescue us from the presumptuous enemy." He leaned down to kiss Hannah, a hard stamp of his mouth. "Get back to the rue Dauphine," he said. "You may not see me for a week or more. Sleep in my bed while I'm gone."
The ride out to the Bayou St. John was unexpectedly pleasant, though Luke had got little sleep and less rest. Jennet, relieved beyond words at this change in their fortunes, had climbed up onto the great bed in the large, almost opulent chamber they had been given for their use, and fallen asleep while the baby was still nursing. Luke had untangled him and was considering whether or not he should wake Jennet when a maidservant scratched at the door. It turned out to be the Livingstons' wet nurse, who had the care of their young daughter and who had been instructed to take on Nathaniel's needs as well.
And so Jennet had slept on, undisturbed, and Luke had lain next to her, not quite asleep, while the evening's conversation drifted in and out of his mind. He was deeply uneasy for a dozen reasons, and also oddly resigned. They had taken a great risk in approaching Livingston, but it seemed as though the Savards' intuition had been correct.
In the morning, things moved so quickly that there was no time to reconsider. A manservant---a slave, no doubt---appeared with clothes suitable for Livingston's secretary, the jacket a little small, the linen a little large, the boots, thankfully, the right size and well broken in. Then he had been given a bowl of coffee and milk and a roll of soft white bread, and before first light they had ridden out of the city.
The first day of December. In Montreal there would be snow and cold, but here the skies were clear, and the temperature was no more than chilly. Another thing to be thankful for: Luke found he wasn't expected to make any kind of conversation. They were in a larger party of men, among them the mayor and the governor.
Luke was surprised at Claiborne's youth---the man looked to be no more than thirty-five, though he had been appointed to his post by Jefferson some years ago. Worse than his relative youth was the fact---Luke couldn't overlook it after even ten minutes in the man's company---that he was severely limited in terms of intelligence, excessively prideful, and completely unaware of the way he presented himself to the world.
After so many years in business dealing with politicians, Luke knew a bad one when he came across him. A man in Claiborne's high position needed a few basic skills, including the ability to hide his true feelings in the company of rivals, but Claiborne's dislike of the lawyer was palpable. And still he spent the entire seven-mile ride arguing with Livingston about the Baratarian pirates who had volunteered to fight for the American cause. Or better put, Claiborne argued a dozen different reasons that Lafitte's offer be turned emphatically down. Livingston rebutted all of them shortly, almost carelessly, and as each argument failed, Claiborne's mood worsened. He had a face as long and oval and pale as a poached egg, and there were flecks of red on his cheeks and neck, evidence of his irritation with Livingston or of the cold, or both.
It was no less than Luke had been led to expect from talks with the Savards and from the newspapers. The American governor was so far out of his depth that the Creole legislature ignored him with impunity. The whole of the city seemed to take particular pleasure in Claiborne's crusade to shut down Lafitte's well-organized company of thieves, pirates, and slave runners. Clearly the governor's obsession with Lafitte had passed into the realm of the ridiculous, something not entirely unexpected from an American, but nonetheless regrettable. When Claiborne announced a reward of five hundred dollars for the capture of Lafitte, Lafitte retaliated by offering a reward of his own: a thousand dollars for the capture of the governor.
Claiborne was a ridiculous figure and the perfect foil for Lafitte, who was admired for his business sense, his bravery, and his adventures. Most important, Lafitte provided the residents of New Orleans with hard-to-get goods and services---many of which had been in plain view in Livingston's own home.
To Luke it was clear that Claiborne was determined to win Livingston over to his view of how Lafitte was best to be handled, as if another American would have no choice but to see things his way. Luke listened as closely as he could, given the roughness of the road and the wind, and stored away what information might prove to be useful at some point.
Luke noted the exact moment when Livingston's patience gave way. He sent Claiborne a look that Luke recognized, a look he himself used when negotiations had broken down past the point of usefulness, and ended the conversation with a single sentence.
"Major General Jackson will decide what to do about Lafitte, not you." And he used his spurs to put distance between himself and the governor.
They were riding through a wide savannah, brilliant green even now in the first week of December. A great heron, stark white against the flashing blue of a pond, lifted awkwardly into the air as they passed. Luke saw ten different kinds of birds in just as many minutes. This was strange and beautiful country---nothing like Canada, and yet it caused a surge of homesickness to rise in his throat.
"There," said Livingston. They had come to the edge of an expanse of fallow fields where a small city of tents had sprung up. Luke calculated some thousand men, militia and volunteers out of uniform, milling around. They looked as if they had been living rough for a long time.
"Not the most inspiring sight, are they?" one of the other men said.
Luke spoke to him directly for the first time. "They lack spit and polish," he said. "But their reputation as fighting men makes up for that."
Beyond the fields were a line of pecan trees, a scattering of houses, and the Bayou St. John. Livingston pointed to a large, rather run-down house that stood on a rise at the junction of the canal and the bayou. "That's Kilty-Smith's place."
As they picked their way through the camp, Luke studied the landscape until he was able to identify the Maison Verde. He wondered if his sister might still be there, and what had brought her here in the first place.
Even so early in the day the crowds had already begun to gather. They threaded their way through groups of onlookers as cheerful and unruly as children waiting for a play party to begin. Jackson was here. They were safe, they told each other, from the British. Now they were safe. Washington had burned, but New Orleans would stand.
Luke handed his horse over to a young boy and followed Livingston into the merchant's house, which was as overrun as the campground. Soldiers, officers, militiamen, merchants and bankers and plantation owners, all hoping to be admitted into the dining room and the company of Jackson and his officers. The mass of men opened to let the governor and mayor through, and Livingston walked with them as unself-consciously as a prince behind a king. Luke followed, but he felt himself being observed and wondered, too late, if Poiterin himself might be here. Before he could look around to answer that question, he was inside the dining room and the doors had closed behind him.
Andrew Jackson sat at Kilty-Smith's breakfast table over a bowl of boiled hominy. Long weeks of living out-of-doors had deeply tanned his skin, but still his color was vaguely off, a hint of yellow beneath the leathery brown. The tufts of hair that stood up on his head made his already narrow face with its sunken cheeks seem almost absurdly long.
To Luke he looked like a man who had risen from a sickbed far too soon, and would pay for his folly. Then, oddly, that first impression of severe poor health fell away as soon as Jackson raised his head. The deep wrinkles around the eyes might have had something to do with pain, but the eyes themselves could have belonged to a bird of prey. They were sharp and unblinking and unflinching, and Luke had no doubt that in that one sweep of the room Jackson had taken in everything and everyone around him, long before his host had finished with the introductions.
Any secretary worth his salt had to be good with faces and names and so Luke paid attention, marking into his memory the barrel shape of Major Hughes, who commanded Fort St. John; Jackson's secretary Captain Reid, whose face was mostly hidden behind a profusion of sleek beard that reached to his cheekbones; Major Butler, Jackson's adjutant, famous for his ability to assimilate, organize, and retain thousands of details crucial to his superior; Commander Patterson, severe and as inflexible as an iron rod in full naval uniform. A dozen other officers, and then the leading men of the city: Bernard Marigny, the richest and most powerful Creole in New Orleans, and a man dedicated above all things to spending the fortune his father had left him; Ignace de Lino de Chalmette, an elderly Marigny uncle; Magloire Guichard, a dignified old man and speaker of the legislature. When Livingston was introduced, Jackson's expression opened and became less guarded. For a long minute there was what amounted to a private conversation in the crowded room, Livingston and Jackson renewing their acquaintance. Claiborne looked at first surprised, then disgruntled, and then almost sick to his stomach.
Then Livingston introduced Luke as his new secretary. Jackson's gaze met Luke's. He returned the gaze without flinching, aware that he was being judged not just by Jackson, but by every other man in the room. Aware, for the first time, of a group of militiamen in the far corner, hidden by the men of the legislature. Men in uniforms as gaudy as peacock feathers, and in their middle, Honoré Poiterin.
"Gentlemen," Jackson was saying in a gravelly voice. "The British are at the gate, and they must be stopped. To do that, I will need your assistance. Your full and unquestioning assistance. Whatever quarrels you've got among you, let them go. Until New Orleans is secure, you must forget these distinctions you make between Americans and Creoles. We are all Americans, or we will all be British."
His gaze settled momentarily on certain men in the crowd and then moved on. "If I've made myself understood, we'll start," Jackson said.
For the next hour Luke was aware of two things: Poiterin, who stared at him with open and unwavering hostility, and Jackson, who dispensed judgment and directions with the bare minimum of social nicety and a great deal of sharp commentary. Each man was evaluated for what he had to contribute, and made short work of. Some were passed along to be dealt with by Butler or Patterson; others were told that they would be called on as they were needed. More than once Jackson waved a hand to cut off a speech filled with empty platitudes to ask questions that must be seen as rude.
Little by little the men began to trickle away, orders and instructions in hand. Through all of this, Livingston only observed, calmly, a man sure of his value and his place in the company. Through all of this, Poiterin stayed exactly where he was until two thirds of the room had gone.
"May I introduce Commander Henri de Ste-Gême," Kilty-Smith was saying. "And some of his Hulans, or Dragons à Pied, as they are called. Pierre---"
"Commander," Jackson interrupted. "We count on your local boys to show us the lay of the land."
"Of course," said Ste-Gême, a man as short and rotund as a cork. His English was so heavily influenced by French that it sounded almost as though he must be joking. "We will lead the charge. As you know, Major General, we are originally sons of France, and we will be pleased to send the English dogs back to their island, as my forefathers did at Agincourt."
Jackson's gaze was hard but his mouth twitched at the corner, out of amusement or pique, Luke couldn't say. "I look forward to seeing you in action," he said, and his gaze flickered toward Major Butler with a message that Luke understood from across the room. Ste-Gême allowed himself to be led away, the handful of men he had brought with him following like ducklings. Poiterin continued to stare at Luke until he was summoned specifically, and then he turned away with obvious reluctance.
"So it begins," said Livingston, who had observed the entire silent exchange. And then: "Stay close."
Jackson had winnowed the crowd of men down to the ones he considered most worthy and potentially useful to him, and Livingston was among that number, a man of like mind and ability. Before they left his company, Livingston had pledged all his time and energy to Major General Jackson and had joined his staff as a voluntary aide. When Jackson and his officers made ready to ride into the city, Luke found himself among the small party of men invited to join them.
On the way out to the horses, another surprise: Ben Savard stood in the early morning light next to Hughes, who had command of Fort St. John. As he passed the men, Luke said, "Hannah?"
"On her way home."
"What about you?"
Ben shrugged. "Depends on what they have in mind for me. I see you've worked things out."
At that moment Jackson turned his head in their direction. Luke, who had stood his ground with far more imposing men, felt the jolt of that cold blue gaze in his spine.
"Major Hughes," said Jackson. "You are satisfied with your Indian scout?"
"Jean-Benoît Savard," said Hughes. "There is none better in Louisiana. I'm about to lose him to Captain de Juzan's regiment of Choctaw."
Ben's expression was impassive, as if they spoke a language he didn't care to understand.
"Keep him here," Jackson said. "I have a need for such men, and he will be more useful out of uniform, for the moment at least. Savard."
Ben looked at Jackson directly and gave a slight, stiff bow from the shoulders. "At your command, Major General."
Jackson's mouth was like a bloodless cut in a face carved from stone. He turned away and disappeared into the crowd of his officers.
Jennet woke with a gasp and lay frozen with fear until she made out the embroidered bed hangings and remembered where she was, and why.
The Livingstons'. They were safe.
The pillows and covers showed that while Luke was not here, he had slept beside her. Jennet remembered, now, where he had gone this morning, and why. She wondered if he had tried to wake her. With a sigh of relief, she sank back into the small mountain of pillows, all encased in finest linen and smelling of lavender water.
The house was very quiet, though by the quality of the light, it must be at least nine. Even without the light she would have known the hour; her breasts were full and tender. If they did not bring the baby to her soon, she would have to go look for him. And, she noted with some surprise, she was hungry herself. She sniffed and took in the faint smell of coffee.
Just that simply she was more fully awake and it seemed, looking around the room, that at some point in the last months all the color had drained out of the world in such a slow way that she hadn't even noticed. Now it was as if a hundred candles had been lit at once so that grays gave way to strong color: the sky blue of the coverlet, the crimson and grass-green embroidery on the pillow slip, the crisp gold of sunlight on the polished cypress wood floor, the same warm color as Hannah's skin.
Jennet sat up in the bed, thinking of her sister-in-law. She would ask the butler to send a message. Mrs. Livingston had told her that she was to act here as if she were at home, and that she would do. She would send a half dozen boys out on errands, but the first one would carry a note to Hannah. Just as soon as she found her clothes and took care of the baby.
A soft knock at the door. Jennet jumped back into the bed and pulled the covers up around herself---she was wearing only the simplest muslin shift---and a servant came in carrying a tray covered with a linen cloth the same brilliant white as the tignon wrapped around her head. Behind her was Rachel, carrying a fussy, scowling Nathaniel. His expression shifted just as soon as he saw her, first going blank and then breaking into a smile. He lurched, trying to fling himself out of Rachel's arms.
She handed him over with a laugh. "He's had porridge this morning, but clearly it's not enough. He doesn't like to be kept waiting, does he?"
"I suppose I should wean him," Jennet said, knowing even as she said it that she had no intention of doing any such thing. It would be too cruel, after such a long separation. They would both feel the loss.
In a matter of minutes the servant had set a table with china, silver, a tea service, baskets of toast and rolls, and a plate filled with shirred eggs, ham, and a buttery mound of hominy. Then she disappeared without saying a word. Jennet's mother, who had been the housekeeper at Carryckcastle for all of her adult life, would have approved. For her own part, Jennet was rather sorry, as servants were generally the best source of real information about the way a household worked, and there were things she would have liked to ask.
Jennet climbed out of bed and wrapped a shawl around herself and the baby, who was nursing so enthusiastically that she could barely contain a wince. Settled in a chair, she used her free hand to accept the teacup Rachel had filled for her.
"So," Jennet said. "Is the great man arrived in the city?"
Rachel's excitement was answer enough, but of course she must also describe what Jennet had missed.
"You should have seen it," she said. "The whole city turned out to welcome the general. My uncle Livingston was riding next to him, and your husband just behind, and he looked so very handsome, you would have been proud. It was so thrilling. I'm surprised you could sleep through the noise."
"It has been a long time since I had a proper night's rest," Jennet said. "It would have taken more than a parade to wake me."
Rachel said, "It's so exciting; the major general is only five minutes away. We will be seeing a lot of him, I think."
There was no end to Rachel's enthusiasm for Major General Jackson and his party, which continued while Jennet looked to the boy and ate her own breakfast with her one free hand.
"The troops will be pouring in," Rachel said with a pretty blush. "Corbeau---have you met Corbeau? my uncle's valet---Corbeau says we will be overrun by Americans, and my aunt said---"
"Better than the alternative, to be overrun by the English."
"Yes," Rachel said, sitting back. "Exactly." She pushed out a sigh, and then seemed to really look at Jennet for the first time.
"You think me silly. Well, I suppose I am, a little, but it really was exciting."
"Of course it was," Jennet said. She gave the girl a sincere smile. "And I don't think you silly. I think I was much like you at your age, actually."
This pleased Rachel greatly. She said, "Your color is much improved. You like it here with my uncle and aunt?"
"We are safe," Jennet said. "And your aunt keeps a verra comfortable home, forbye."
"You are feeling better, if you're speaking Scots so early in the day and without provocation," Rachel said with a smile.
"It's good of you to come by so early," Jennet said.
"Aunt Livingston thought you might like to see a familiar face," said Rachel. "And I wanted to tell you about the parade, and oh, I haven't even thought to tell you about the speech the general gave on the Place d'Armes. Even Mme. Derilemont was impressed, and you know what she thinks of Americans."
Jennet's plate was empty before Rachel came to the end of her story of what had transpired on the Place d'Armes.
"And I have messages to deliver. My mother has sent your things, and wants to know what else you might need or want, and Hannah is back from the Bayou St. John and needs to speak to you."
Jennet would have liked to have heard that particular bit of news first, but she couldn't find it in herself to be irritated with the girl. "I was hoping she would come straight here."
Rachel got up suddenly and went to look out on the garden.
"Rachel."
The girl turned back, all her happiness gone, and in its place an expression of supreme discomfort.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Rachel began in a tone that made it clear that there was in fact something amiss. "It's just that my aunt Livingston has very specific ideas about callers."
Jennet swallowed and put down her fork. She took a moment to settle the baby on the floor with a piece of dried toast, and to right her clothes.
"Is it Hannah she objects to, or the hour?"
"I'm not sure," Rachel said. She looked so unhappy that Jennet understood exactly what she hesitated to say. Mrs. Livingston's kind welcome didn't extend to half-breed, half-blood sisters. Rachel could come and go as she pleased, but Hannah could not.
Jennet looked down at her son, who was rubbing his face with the toast as if it were a washcloth. This was all for his sake, after all. It was worth any price to keep this child safe until they could take him home. Hannah of all people knew that.
And still, the relief that Jennet had felt on waking was gone, replaced by resentment and guilt. Hannah, who was worth ten of Mrs. Livingston, was not welcome here. There must be some compromise, and Jennet would find it.
"I will speak to your aunt."
Rachel let out an audible sigh of relief. She said, "I came here straight from the Place d'Armes, but she's still out. I'm sure she'll want to talk to you as soon as she's home again. Now, I'm supposed to ask which gown you want to wear to tea this afternoon, so it can be brushed and pressed." And at Jennet's look of confusion: "You remember, my aunt invited us to tea this afternoon? And she included Hannah in that invitation, at least."
"I had forgot," Jennet said. "I suppose half the ladies will be coming to examine Hannah to see if she wears scalps on a belt around her waist."
Rachel frowned. "I think you do my aunt a disservice---"
"No doubt I do," Jennet said. "She has been the very soul of generosity, and deserves to be treated in the same way. Forgive me."
But Rachel, who was indeed very young and sometimes thoughtless, was also her mother's daughter, and she had a conscience. Jennet wished she had kept her worries to herself.
There was a soft knock at the door and the nursemaid came in for the baby. She was a woman of at least forty, with a round, pleasant face the color of molasses and eyes the exact same shade. With a deep laugh she scooped the baby from the floor and parted him from what was left of the toast. He responded by grabbing onto her nose and launching into a loud and impassioned speech.
"You two are getting along very well," Jennet said. "Thank you very much for your kind attentions, Jeanne."
The nursemaid looked surprised at being thanked, and she ducked her head. "Such a strong boy, so handsome. He demands admiration, and I supply it."
Rachel got up to follow Jeanne out. "What shall I tell the housekeeper about your gown?"
"It's not as though I have a dozen to choose from," Jennet said, thinking very briefly of the beautiful gowns that had been made for her at Giselle's insistence, now sitting in a trunk in Mme. Poiterin's house, never to be retrieved. She could feel no real regret for the lost finery. The three simple gowns Julia Savard had found for her were all she needed or wanted.
"The blue?"
"Certainly," Jennet said. "Whatever you think will suit best."
It wasn't until the early afternoon that Mrs. Livingston returned home, and then she disappeared into the back of the house to consult with her housekeeper.
Jennet retired to the lady's small but elegant drawing room to wait. She found it impossible to sit still with a book, and so she went to retrieve her tarot cards from the basket of things that had been delivered from the rue Dauphine, and began to lay them out on a table by the window that looked over the rear garden.
The noise in the hall was the first indication that something was wrong. She heard the butler's alarmed voice, and the unmistakable sound of a cane on the polished wood floors. The door opened abruptly.
The butler's name was William. He had come with Edward Livingston from New-York, a spare, quiet, dignified free man of color with exacting manners. Now he was agitated, and barely in command of his emotions.
Alarmed, Jennet rose, but before she could think to ask what might be wrong, she saw for herself. A pulse began to hammer at her temples and wrists and elbows.
"You will let me pass," said Mme. Poiterin in heavily accented English. "Or I will buy you from your master just to have the pleasure of watching the flesh being whipped from your bones."
"He is no slave," Jennet said, her voice catching in her throat. "William, please fetch your mistress."
"Indeed," said Mme. Poiterin. "Fetch her so that I can tell her what I think of people who hide runaway lunatics and abducted children."
"Fetch Mrs. Livingston now," Jennet said. A great calm had come over her, a detachment so complete that she seemed to be watching the scene from outside her own body.
Jennet held her ground as the old lady thumped across the room. Her face was red with exertion and choler, and one small fist in its black kid glove was pressed against her bosom.
"I've come for my great-grandson," she said, in French. "Produce him immediately and perhaps the law will go gently with you."
"You have no great-grandson here," Jennet said. "My son is none of your blood."
Jennet was not tall, but Mme. Poiterin was shorter still, a small hill of beaded black brocade topped with an elaborate construction of black lace and wool in the shape of a stovepipe. Jennet thought of it belching smoke, and she found herself smiling. Unadvisedly.
Mme. Poiterin was small, but she was surprisingly strong and very quick. Her slap made Jennet stagger.
"How dare you laugh at me! You should be cowering in shame and fear."
"Madame!" Mrs. Livingston stood in the door of the drawing room with William behind her. "What do you mean, forcing your way into my home and assaulting my guest? Have you taken leave of your good sense?"
"The constables are on their way," said Mme. Poiterin. "They will arrest this---this woman for the assault on my slave and the stealing away of my grandson's child."
"They will do no such thing," said Mrs. Livingston sharply. "You are not yourself, madame, or you would not intrude into a private home without invitation. You must leave immediately, or I will have you arrested for trespass."
For one moment Mme. Poiterin's mouth made a small, pale circle in her face. "You may forget who you are, madame, but I do not. I remember you on your knees taking up my hem, when you hadn't two coins to rub together. You would not dare have me arrested."
Jennet had to admire Mrs. Livingston's ability to remain calm---to maintain her regal bearing---in the face of such provocation. She merely shook her head, and spoke very quietly. "I would dare that much, and more. What my husband will do, I can only imagine. Do you think the first families will stand behind you when they hear about this outrageous behavior?"
The old lady's hand tightened its grip on her cane, and it seemed to Jennet that her color climbed even higher. "You are hardly the person to judge what the first families will do, as you have never belonged and will never belong. I tire of this. Give me the boy, and I will go."
Jennet pulled herself up to her full height and walked to the middle of the room, where she was positioned between Mrs. Livingston and Mme. Poiterin. "I never bore your grandson a child. The boy is mine and my husband's."
The whole of Mme. Poiterin's face, powder white and round as a penny, trembled. "That is a lie."
Anger was an odd thing, Jennet realized. It could come like a flare, throwing everything into stark relief. Now she felt a click in her mind, like the snapping of fingers. Blood rushed up her neck and down her arms to her hands and immediately ebbed, leaving her trembling in a white anger. The image of her father came to her, and his voice: It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and angry woman.
"Get out," Jennet said. She felt the anger gathering in her throat, pushing up and up, but her voice sounded oddly calm to her own ears.
In the soft folds of the old lady's cheek, a muscle twitched. "You ill-bred slut," she said. "I know all about you. You dare to deny me?"
"Madame," said Mrs. Livingston. "I suggest you spare yourself further embarrassment---"
"I have recourse," Mme. Poiterin said. Her mouth jerked as if she might spit in Jennet's direction. "I can report to the authorities what I know to be true. She"---she pointed at Jennet---"and the whore-master she calls a husband are spies. They are spies, do you hear me? My grandson has proof. They will hang, and then the boy will be returned to his rightful place with me."
Jennet's skin felt too tight on her face, as if it would suddenly split and a new Jennet---one capable of terrible things, her father's daughter---would push out into the light. She bore down on her anger, for her son's sake.
"Madame," she said slowly. "My husband and I are not spies, and never have been. But if they hang men for piracy and theft and murder, then your grandson will hang, when I give evidence against him. Shall I tell you what I know about his dealings? Then you can decide if you care to go to the authorities with your stories."
The old lady pressed a hand to her chest. "I don't have to listen to this."
"No?" Jennet said. There was a knock at the door, and men's voices raised in concern. "Then let me tell the constables what I have seen with my own eyes. Mrs. Livingston, please, open the door."
It was dark by the time Hannah made ready to leave. Luke only relented on his intention to walk her back to the rue Dauphine when he saw that Leo was waiting with a lantern.
"Julia must have sent him back for me," Hannah said. "She went ahead home with Rachel a good while ago."
Luke said, "We'll never be able to repay them."
It was what he always said when they spoke of the Savards. Hannah knew that their dependency on people who were as good as strangers to Luke was a trial to him. But Leo was waiting, not bothering to hide his impatience, and Hannah was tired. A sensible conversation that would put her brother's mind at ease would have to wait.
Leo, never cheerful, always suspicious, was more dour than usual this evening. Hannah wondered if he might really be worried about their safety, given the fact that the streets were full of men who had been drinking Major General Jackson's health all day long, shopkeepers and clerks and fishermen intermingling with Kentucky riflemen and the militia. But the rue Royale was well lit, and there were constables on most corners, and she and Leo didn't have very far to go.
She pulled the hood of her cape so that her face was more hidden, out of simple good sense and also to calm Leo. She said, "You were a great help to me in the clinic today. Thank you."
He threw her a sidelong glance and nodded. Hannah, overcome with the full force of the last twenty-four hours, couldn't find the energy to work any harder for Leo's smile, and so they walked along in silence. At the gate that led into the courtyard behind the little clinic, Leo paused. He said, "I'm going to see my mother."
Surprised, Hannah turned. He held the lantern so that his face was in the dark, but she still had the sense of his eyes, very large and overly bright. He had never before mentioned his family.
"Is she unwell? Does she need help?"
"That's why I'm going," Leo said. "To find out." He thrust the lantern at Hannah and ran off, disappearing into the dark so quickly and completely that he seemed to have simply melted away.
There was something wrong. That thought was still forming itself in her head when she felt a sharp prodding at the small of her back. The muzzle of a gun.
"Don't turn around," said the voice behind her. "It is only a musket, but still, it would make short work of your backbone."
Hannah took a very deep breath and let it out. "What do you want?"
The musket prodded again, more forcefully. "To start with, some privacy. Your Redbone Clinic will serve, I think."
The thoughts tumbling through Hannah's mind were too bright and quick to grab. A question presented itself: Am I going to die? Is he going to kill me? And the answer: Very likely yes.
Strikes-the-Sky had talked sometimes about what it was like to go into battle. How the world seemed to shrink down and vision to expand, so that there was no room for thought or words of any kind, no sense of mortality beyond a calm understanding that he was walking into the shadowlands and might never turn back. Now Hannah understood what he meant when he said that to go into battle was to stop feeling.
The shutters were closed tight, so that the little clinic looked like a long, dark cave lit only by the lantern. The few things that would serve as weapons were out of her reach: at one end of the room, in a box on a shelf, the simple surgical tools lent to her by Paul Savard; at the other end, a neat pile of firewood.
She could throw the lantern down and start a fire, but the idea of being in this closed space while it burned brought back memories long buried, and she hesitated too long.
"Put the lantern on the table there, and sit on the stool."
Hannah did as she was directed. The urge to ask questions was strong, but stronger still was the sense of her father, who would volunteer nothing in a situation like this. Not a word, not a tremor.
Honoré Poiterin came into the lantern light to look into her face, and found nothing there at all. At her shoulder she sensed her father, and his approval.
Poiterin wore a long, dark cloak and a hat pulled down low on his brow. There was a deep shadow of beard on his cheeks, and a crusting scab at the corner of his mouth. He vibrated with tension, but it did not feel like anger to Hannah. She would have preferred anger to the cold appraisal and eyes empty of everything that would have made him human.
She understood that he had used Leo, hurt Leo's mother or threatened to hurt her, laid this trap. That meant that he knew where she had been, where Jennet was. Maybe he had followed Luke after they saw each other early in the day; maybe his grandmother had got word to him. He wasn't in uniform, which must mean something, but what?
Poiterin pulled off his gloves one finger at a time, watching her closely, his eyes narrowed. He had tucked the musket into a wide belt at his waist, just next to a knife sheath of tooled leather.
"So," he said in a conversational tone.
Hannah caught the flicker of intent in his eyes but too late. The blow knocked her from the stool. In the part of her mind that remained detached she analyzed the pain in her cheekbone and left shoulder, noted that nothing had broken. She rolled herself into a ball as the first kick came, and it connected with her hip.
Poiterin leaned down and grabbed her by the hair, pulled her upright, and levered her onto the stool, where she sat holding her nerveless arm.
"So," he said again. He was looking at her intently. "You are Luke Scott's half-breed sister, is that right?"
Hannah's voice creaked. She struggled to control her breathing. "Yes."
He nodded. "You were with him on the Isle of the Manatees, when he rescued the slut he calls his wife from Dégre?"
Hannah nodded. "Yes."
"You call yourself a doctor."
It wasn't a question, and Hannah didn't answer it. She watched him pace back and forth, in and out of the lantern light.
"I've seen you before," he said. "But I never made the connection. She was hiding here with the Savards the whole time, waiting for Scott."
Hannah kept still.
He stopped. "And now they're both under Livingston's protection."
She was braced for the next blow, curling around herself as she was hurled to the floor. With her head tucked in the kicks fell on her back and legs. There was a sound a rib made as it cracked, like a walnut shell stepped on by a heavy man's boot.
This time he dragged her to the cot nearest the cold hearth. Near enough to grab a piece of wood, one she could use to cave in his head. But his grip on her right arm was crippling, and her left arm was still numb and useless.
Poiterin stood over her. "They aren't looking for you," he said. "Savard thinks you're still at the Livingstons', so there will be no rescue for you this night."
Hannah heard herself cough. Pain flared in her ribs, along her spine, in her pelvis. She coughed again, and then she forced herself to look at Poiterin, who stood over her.
He said, "Say something or I'll cut out your tongue."
Hannah tasted blood as she tried to work her mouth. Her voice came finally, in a whisper. "What do you want?"
"What do you think I want?" He leaned over to speak into her face, his words sharp and wet. "What would any man want in my position? Satisfaction. Revenge. Vengeance. The slut made a fool of me in front of the whole city. In front of my grandmother. Someone must pay. You, I think." He smiled and brushed Hannah's hair away from her face. It took every bit of strength she had to allow his touch without stiffening or shuddering.
"Tomorrow," he said, fisting his hand in her hair. "Tomorrow they will look at you and understand that it isn't wise to cross me. A lesson Scott should have learned long ago."
Hannah thought of Ben Savard, of his smile as he bent over her, the smell of him. The look in his eyes when he spoke of killing Poiterin, the plain fact of his intention, and the satisfaction it would afford. As Poiterin used his knife to cut her clothes from her body, as he ripped strips from her skirt and used them to tie her wrists to the frame of the cot, Hannah focused on that image of Ben Savard. A terrible sadness came over her, a sense of loss and her own stupidity.
Poiterin talked. Through the hours of the night, he spoke to her, sometimes in English, more often in French.
"I don't intend to kill you," he told her again and again in a conversational tone. There was a swipe of blood on his face, not his own.
"I want you to tell them about this. I want you to tell everybody." And, breathing hard: "Of course, things get away from me sometimes."
Sometimes her mind simply shut him out, refused to allow his words meaning beyond an inhuman hiss.
He seemed to be at ease, sure of himself, unworried about time or interruption. He would pace back and forth across the room, and in the light of the failing lantern Honoré Poiterin looked to Hannah like the devil the O'seronni priests talked about when they came to her grandmother's village. Wild-haired, bloodied, ranting.
Sometimes he used his fists, and when he tired of that, he found other ways to amuse himself.
Hannah turned her mind inward and sang.
I am Walks-Ahead of the Wolf Clan of the Kahnyen'kehàka, the Keepers of the Eastern Door of the Haudenosaunee Nation. We are the People of the Longhouse.
I am the daughter of Sings-from-Books, whose voice I still hear. I am the granddaughter of Falling-Day, whose touch I still feel. I am the great-granddaughter of Made-of-Bones, who was clan mother of the Wolf for five hundred moons. I am the great-great-granddaughter of Hawk-Woman, who killed an O'seronni chief with her own hands and fed his heart to her sons, in the time when we were still many, and strong.
She sang her death song to herself, and when she paused, she heard her ancestors speaking back to her.
You are strong, Hawk-Woman told her. You are stronger than the O'seronni devil. And: You don't belong here with us. Not yet. Not yet.
At first light Hannah opened her eyes and understood that she was still alive, and alone.
Time drifted. There were faces: her father, her grandfather, her grandmothers, her stepmother, beloved Curiosity, who might be waiting for her in the shadowlands.
Strikes-the-Sky came and sat beside her. There was white in his hair that hadn't been there when she last saw him.
It's not three years since you died, she said to him. Does time pass so quickly in the shadowlands?
He touched the jagged wound left in his throat by a Potawatomi arrow and frowned, as if she made too much of it; as if it were no more concern to him than a blackfly bite.
She said, It was an honorable death. She did not say: It was a quick death or It was an easy death. Both of those things were true, but they meant nothing to him. He had died in battle with the Potawatomi, men he had hoped to win over to Tecumseh's cause. He had failed, and then he had died. As Tecumseh failed, in the end. As they had all failed.
He touched her forehead with two fingers. He said: It is not your time.
A river of pain coursed through her bones and forced her up out of her body. She looked down at herself, and saw a woman who had been beaten. Her face so swollen and washed in blood that her own father would not know her. Bruises on her throat, and the impression of teeth like a half-moon on the slope of her shoulder. More bite marks on her breasts. A circle of cut rope on each wrist, so sunken into the flesh that it couldn't fall away. Blood in a pool under the skin over the left ribs, blood on her belly and on her legs, like a skirt of red feathers. A bruise in the exact shape of a boot on her thigh.
It is not my time. She said the words aloud.
When she next opened her eyes---five minutes, five hours, five days later---a woman was standing over her. Yellow-Sapling, the Choctaw healer who came in the very early morning to sort through the herbs and medicines she kept in the little clinic, where it was warm and dry, and where it was meant to be safe. Hannah could not speak her name or even raise a hand, but she could be thankful that it was this strong woman who had come to her first. This Indian woman who had survived war and stayed behind to see to the others who had not. There were tears on her own cheeks, but Yellow-Sapling's face was dry.
She studied Hannah for a long moment, her expression placid but her eyes full of fire. Then she went away and came back with water. She dipped a clean rag into the water and then squeezed it so that the cool wet spread over Hannah's lips and tongue and down her swollen throat. Yellow-Sapling chanted under her breath in her own language as she worked, her touch light and sure. There was a fire in the hearth---Hannah had no memory of it being lit---and the smell of herbs burning, and of tobacco thrown into the flames to honor the Great Spirit and ask his help.
The rhythm of the song Yellow-Sapling was singing lulled Hannah to sleep, and when she woke again she was lying between clean sheets someplace else, someplace she recognized but couldn't name. Paul and Julia Savard were bent over her, their mouths moving as they talked. Hannah wondered why her hearing had left her, and then she realized that the pounding of her own blood in her ears was deafening, and worse: She was full of fever, her body a vessel filled to the bursting with steam. A fever bigger than her broken bones and torn skin.
The malaria had come to claim her again, and it bore her off before she could answer even one of their questions.
They gathered in the small apartment on the topmost floor: Julia and Paul Savard, Jennet and Luke, and a man who was a stranger to all of them. He introduced himself as Captain Aloysius Urquhart of the U.S. Army, the liaison between the armed forces and the New Orleans constabulary.
Jennet wanted nothing to do with Urquhart. She wanted Ben Savard, but he had been sent off on some mission to the west, and could not be reached. Ben Savard would not be satisfied with talk, as these men---her own husband, Hannah's brother---seemed to be. Luke was as angry as Jennet had ever seen him, but still he stood here.
With Julia sitting beside her, Jennet was able to control her own temper while the men talked of the law, and of customs, and what might be done. Urquhart was treating the attack on Hannah like a prank, as if Honoré Poiterin were a rude boy who had taken another man's horse out for a run. The sound of his voice slid down her throat and filled her belly and festered there like a cancer.
"...nothing much to be done without witnesses," Urquhart was saying. When he spoke a mouthful of perfectly straight and white teeth flashed like knives between lips the incongruous red of strawberries. He was hatless, with long greasy hair and a mass of curling dull blond beard stained tobacco brown. One broad thumb, its nail the color of pitch, was curled loosely around the upright barrel of a long rifle in the casual way of a man who never put his gun away from him. He was from Kentucky, and Jennet had to pay attention to follow the unfamiliar rhythm of his English.
Now she stood. Urquhart didn't turn toward her, but she would not be silenced by his disapproval. She said, "We know who assaulted my sister-in-law, Captain. There is no doubt about that, not after his grandmother forced her way into Mrs. Livingston's parlor yesterday afternoon."
Urquhart's look was impatient. "Pardon me, ma'am, but I don't see the connection there at all. If your sister-in-law were to wake up out of her fever sleep and give a positive identification, maybe we could do something---"
Jennet interrupted him. "Then what about Leo? He came back here with Hannah last night, he might have seen Poiterin. Somebody must have seen him."
"If it was Poiterin," said Urquhart again. "There were a lot of drunk men in the streets last night."
Jennet turned to Paul Savard. "Why is Leo not here?"
"We can't find him," Paul Savard said. His color was poor, and there were new lines creasing his cheeks.
"You'll pardon me for pointing this out again," Urquhart said, "but nobody was killed here. All we've got so far is an Indian woman who was beat."
Luke stepped between Jennet and the captain. Urquhart's hand tightened on the rifle barrel.
Luke said, "We've got a woman who was beaten within an inch of her life and repeatedly raped. Something will be done, by God."
Urquhart's tone sharpened. "There are bigger problems to be dealt with right now than a Redbone woman being roughly handled."
Jennet pushed forward, jerking her arm free of Luke's grasp. "Then I want Mme. Poiterin arrested for trespass and for her threats against me and my son. Mrs. Livingston was a witness to that; it happened in her own parlor. Will you ignore that, as well?"
"Mrs. Livingston filed no complaint, as far as I know," Urquhart said. "But I'll go there now and see if she wants to make a statement. If she won't, there's nothing I can do."
He put the hat he had been holding in his left hand on his head, nodded, and walked out of the room.
Jennet said, "If I had a gun I would shoot him."
"Good thing you're unarmed then," Luke said. "We've got enough trouble as it is."
Julia put a hand on Jennet's arm. "I'm going back to sit with Hannah. Will you come, too?"
"In a moment," Jennet said. And then: "The only weapon we've got against Poiterin is the news Hannah brought us yesterday. He is spying for the British. If they don't care about what he did to Hannah---" her voice cracked, and Julia's hand on her arm tightened, "---they must care about that."
"Jennet---" Luke began, and she whirled toward him.
"Don't say it."
"I have to say it. We've got no evidence on Poiterin beyond Hannah's word."
"We've got more than that," Jennet said. "We've got Wyndham, who is somewhere in this city right now. Once he's in custody he'll give up Poiterin."
"You can't know that," Luke said. He looked as though he would be sick, with sweat on his brow in spite of the underheated room. He looked miserable, and it struck Jennet that she was punishing him because she could not strike out against Poiterin.
She went to him and put her head against his chest, felt his arms come up around her while she wept out her anger and frustration. The door opened and closed beyond them and they were alone.
When there were no more tears left, she took the handkerchief he offered and wiped her face, taking deep, shuddering breaths.
"I promise you he won't go unpunished," Luke said quietly.
"What are you going to do?" Jennet asked. Her head ached and her throat was raw and she was deeply weary, but she couldn't clear her head of the image of Hannah.
"I'm going to talk to Ben Savard," Luke said. "As soon as I can find him. In the meantime, Livingston has arranged for armed guards, here and at his house. You are not to step out onto the street without them, do you understand me?"
Jennet managed a half smile. "I wish Poiterin would approach me," she said. "I wish he were so rash. I would like to see him die."
Luke's expression tightened. "Do not put yourself at risk," he said. "For our son's sake, Jennet, promise me you won't go anywhere alone."
She gave him her promise, but Luke's expression didn't change at all. He didn't trust her, and with good cause.
Jennet moved through the next five days like a woman caught in a maze, unable to stop, always turning the same corners.
The clinic was so overrun that Julia and Rachel both were pressed into full-time duty during the day, and so Jennet became Hannah's nurse. Hannah, in the grip of a fever like a winding-sheet.
Jennet bathed her with cool water laced with vinegar, fed her water and tea and the medicines Dr. Savard supplied, teaspoon by teaspoon. There were different salves for her many scrapes and cuts and seeping bruises. Dr. Savard showed Jennet how to change the dressings. The biggest danger was that there had been some damage to the lungs, and that she was bleeding internally. Jennet held her breath when she checked Hannah's pulse, but by the third day when there was no sign of infection, she allowed herself to hope.
Hannah must be bathed, and dosed with the medicines and teas Dr. Savard brought, and her dressings and soiled bedclothes changed. She must be given boiled water by the teaspoonful every hour, and after the first day, chicken broth as well. All the while she worked or sat next to Hannah, Jennet sang and read and told stories. The work was exhausting, but Jennet was more glad of it with every passing day.
Now she went to fetch water and paused to look out of the courtyard. One of the armed guards on duty turned and bowed from the shoulders. They were simple men but good at their work. Three times a day they escorted her back to the Livingstons' so she could see to her son's needs, and then back to the clinic so she could see to her cousin's. The Indian woman who had first found Hannah came to look after her while Jennet was gone. Yellow-Sapling was a somber woman who seemed to speak neither French nor English, but she was devoted to Hannah and brought medicines of her own with every visit. When Jennet came back the room smelled of herbs burning, and the air itself had taken on a new color.
Jennet saw far more of the guards than she did of her husband, whose every minute was monopolized by Livingston. Luke came by the clinic at midday and again in the late afternoon, stayed long enough to tell Jennet his news and hear hers, to spend a few minutes by his sister's bedside, and then he was gone again. It was eleven or later when he came to bed, and he often fell into an exhausted sleep before he was completely out of his clothes. At sunrise he was gone again, and Jennet was on her way to the clinic.
On the sixth day, Jennet was changing the sweat-soaked bedding when she realized that Hannah's eyes were open. She went very still while she composed her face and her voice.
"Cousin," she said calmly. "It's me, it's Jennet."
"I see you," Hannah said. Her mouth, still swollen and bruised, barely moved, and her voice was hoarse.
Jennet sat down heavily beside the bed. "You've had a---"
"---relapse," Hannah said. She closed her eyes, and drifted away into sleep.
Jennet pressed her face into the damp bed linens and wept.
When Luke came to the clinic on the rue Dauphine in the early evening, he found his sister sitting up in bed supported by bolsters, with young Henry Savard by her side. There was no sign of Jennet.
Luke had been raised by a kind and loving grandmother, but Wee Iona had rarely hugged or coddled. Jennet was made of different stuff, and Luke realized that a great deal of her need for physical touch had rubbed off on him. He crouched down at the side of the bed and took his sister's hand in his own, raised it to his mouth. His voice came rough.
"It took you long enough," he said, trying to smile.
She looked at him somberly, this younger half sister who often seemed as old as Iona. There was nothing of pain or anger or confusion in her eyes. Most of her bruises were fading though there were still scabs on her throat and---Luke did not like to think of it---elsewhere.
Hannah said, "You won't be shut of me so easily."
Luke reached for the chair behind him, taking that moment to remind himself that Hannah would not be helped by displays of emotion. Henry was looking at him, chewing his lip as though the question he wanted to ask had to be kept back by brute force.
"Hello, Henry," said Luke. "Are you keeping my sister company?"
The small head with its high brow bobbed eagerly. "Until Jennet comes back." And in a rush: "Did you see Major General Jackson today?"
"I did."
"Did he kill anybody?"
"Not while I was watching," Luke said. He put a hand over his sister's where it lay on the bedcovers, fingers curled.
"Did you see my uncle?"
"No," Luke said. "He's still away on assignment."
"For Major General Jackson," Henry reminded them.
"Yes," Luke said. "Henry, I need to talk to Hannah alone for a while."
The boy pushed out a resigned sigh. "Not about the war?"
"No," Luke said. "Nothing about the war."
The boy left, casting a glance behind him that was full of suspicion.
Hannah said, "It was good to have him here. I almost feel myself again, listening to him chatter."
"Have you talked to Dr. Savard about your condition?"
Hannah blinked. It was, Luke realized, because she was too stiff to nod.
She said, "There is no permanent damage, and the fever is past. This relapse wouldn't have lasted so long if it weren't for---" The fingers under Luke's hand attempted a flutter.
"Your other injuries."
She blinked.
"Ben Savard is out west, on the Sabine River. Disputed territory, claimed by Mexico and Louisiana both. I can't find out what he was sent to do, but I can guess."
"So can I," Hannah said. Her mouth quirked at the corner, but whether that was meant to be a smile, Luke couldn't tell. He went on before she could respond.
"There's no sign of Wyndham, either, though I've been looking. Poiterin is with his regiment on the Chef Menteur road. He hasn't come back to the city."
"Jennet told me," Hannah said.
There was a moment's awkward silence, and then her hand turned under his and she grasped his fingers with some of her old strength.
"You are not to blame yourself," she said. "It is none of your fault."
"There's only one person at fault here," Luke said. "And he won't go unpunished."
"There are two people at fault," Hannah said. Her voice had begun to fade. "Whatever he is, his grandmother made him. You know that better than most."
"Yes," Luke said. He thought again of his grandmother, who had been all the family he had known until he was fifteen. She was a formidable woman, too, but made from a different mold from Agnès Poiterin.
"If Iona were here she'd know how to deal with Mme. Poiterin," Luke said.
"There are women like Wee Iona here in New Orleans," Hannah said. "I know some of them."
"You're healing fast," Paul Savard said to Hannah the next morning. He smiled at Jennet, who stood on the other side of the bed. "Good nursing."
"A strong constitution," Jennet said. "I can take credit for nothing more than bed baths and clean linen."
Hannah turned her head. The headache that had seemed yesterday like a new and permanent appendage had begun to recede after all.
"You can take credit for a great deal more," she said. "Unless it was somebody else telling stories about MacQuiddy and his wee fairy bride."
Jennet looked drawn and pale, but she also looked satisfied. "I knew ye heard me. I knew it. Once or twice I even thought you were trying to laugh."
"You'll have to write down this story for me," Paul Savard said to Jennet. "It seems to have a strong medicinal value. Are you feeling well enough to get out of bed for a short while?"
"I'd like to walk a bit." Hannah saw Jennet's expression darken. "Five minutes on my feet will do me no harm," she said. "You can hold my elbow if you must."
"It's not that," Jennet said, flustered in a way that was nothing like her. "There's someone here to see you."
Hannah looked between them. "No friend?"
Paul cleared his throat. "I wouldn't call him friend or enemy. His name is Captain Urquhart, with the U.S. Army. We called him in after you were found---"
"I asked Mrs. Livingston to call the authorities. It was an error," Jennet said tightly.
"I'm not sure that it was," said Dr. Savard. "But he's here now and wants to take a statement from you."
"Urquhart is the liaison between the army and the local constables," Jennet added, her tone clipped. "He has no interest in the problems of people like us."
"Like me," Hannah corrected. Jennet nodded curtly.
"Your first interview with him didn't go well, I take it," Hannah said. And to Paul: "I expect he won't just go away. If he must see me, he can come in here. But give me a half hour with Jennet, first."
Jennet sat to one side like a prim and disapproving chaperone while Urquhart took a chair without being invited. He drew a notebook and a stub of a carpenter's pencil from inside his jacket, and looked at Hannah expectantly. Hannah met his gaze and kept her expression blank.
"If you could just relate the events of the night you were attacked."
He had amazingly white and healthy teeth, so perfect that they might have been taken for false, though the lack of clicks and whistles in his speech made that unlikely. Everything about the man seemed many shades too bright: ruddy cheeks, red mouth, the curling blond beard and the green pea stuck in it. His vivid coloring stood in stark contrast to his demeanor, which was sober to the point of severity.
Urquhart was only here, Jennet had told her, because Livingston had showed an interest in the case for Luke's sake. Otherwise an assault on an Indian woman would never have earned any kind of formal inquiry, much less this very unusual second visit.
"I spent the afternoon at the Livingstons'," Hannah said.
"On what errand?"
"I was invited to take tea."
If he was affronted by the idea that she had been a guest in the Livingstons' parlor, he hid it well. It was a trick that Hannah knew, too; she would not show this man any weakness, no matter how far he tried her patience. Jennet was another matter, of course.
"And then?"
"Just after dark I walked back here in the company of a young boy called Leo."
"We haven't been able to locate this Leo," Urquhart said.
Hannah raised an eyebrow in Jennet's direction.
"It's true," Jennet said. "There's no sign of him. I think Honoré may have scared him off."
"Or worse," Hannah said.
Urquhart frowned. "And then?" he prompted.
"When I came into the smaller courtyard---the one off the rue Toulouse---Honoré Poiterin was waiting in the dark. He put a gun to my back and forced me into the clinic."
Urquhart looked up from his notebook, where he had yet to write down a word. "Clinic?"
"The little clinic, we call it," Hannah said. "You probably have heard it called the Redbone Clinic. It is attached to the rue Dauphine kine-pox clinic by adjoining courtyards."
He pursed his lips, and then nodded. "Go on."
Hannah looked at him directly. "For the next ten hours or so he kept me there, bound by my wrists to a cot. You can see the extent of my injuries. Or Dr. Savard can provide you with a written list, if you need one."
Urquhart considered his pencil. Finally he said, "It's your statement that Honoré Poiterin attacked you, bound you, beat you, and raped you over a ten-hour period."
Jennet drew in a sharp breath.
"Yes," Hannah said. "That is my statement."
"You want me to arrest the man?"
"Captain Urquhart," Hannah said. "You asked for a statement. I made one. What you do with it is outside my sphere of influence."
Urquhart scratched the corner of his mouth. His fingers were stained with tobacco and gunpowder and ink, and his nails were rimmed black. He said, "I heard rumors about you, but I didn't believe half of them. Now that I hear you talk I guess a lot of what's being said is true."
Hannah gave Jennet a sharp look that said, Don't. Urquhart was looking at her, too. "This was the same day you called the constables into Mrs. Livingston's parlor to remove Mr. Poiterin's grandmother."
"That's so," Jennet said.
"The same Mrs. Poiterin who has filed a lawsuit claiming you're unstable and that you should surrender her great-grandson to her care."
Hannah had not heard this news. She saw that Jennet had not wanted to bother her with it yet.
"Captain Urquhart, that lawsuit was dismissed, as you well know," Jennet said. "She has no claim on my son."
He made a humming sound deep in his throat that might have been disapproval or dissent. "Whatever the facts, it looks to me as if you've got the upper hand in this feud you've got going with the Poiterins," Urquhart said. "Why stir things up again?"
"Clearly you don't know Honoré Poiterin," Jennet said stiffly. "He is capable of things---" She broke off and turned her face away. "He will never stop. This assault on my sister-in-law won't satisfy him. Until we can leave Louisiana we are in danger, all of us."
Urquhart's expression gave nothing away. He might believe Jennet or think her a hysteric; he might pity or despise her. He pushed out a great sigh.
"I'll talk to the man," he said. "And make it clear that if any more bad luck comes your way, he'll have to deal with me. Will that do?"
Jennet hesitated. "No. But I understand it is all we can expect of you."
Urquhart stood, put the unused notebook back into his jacket along with the pencil, and touched his brow with one finger. "Thank you for your time."
"Wait," Jennet said, her tone deceptively even. "Aren't you going to write out the statement for her signature?"
Urquhart's brow creased, but Jennet went on before he could respond.
"You're very busy, of course. We anticipated as much." Jennet took a sheet of paper from the table next to her and held it out. "So Miss Bonner dictated her statement to me, and signed it. It has been witnessed by Dr. Savard and his wife, and by me as well."
"So I see," said Urquhart. Inside his beard, his mouth twitched. He took the paper and folded it carefully before he tucked it into his jacket.
"If you should lose it, don't worry," Jennet said. "I will make copies. One for Mr. Livingston, one for Governor Claiborne, one for the mayor---"
"I take your meaning, Mrs. Bonner," Urquhart said with a stiff smile. "Now if you'll permit me to get back to work."
When he was gone Jennet collapsed onto the chair. She said, "That was a waste of time. Honoré is not afraid of men like Urquhart. He's not afraid of anything."
Hannah closed her eyes and remembered saying those very words. Maman Zuzu had smiled at her as one might smile at a deaf child who denies the possibility of song.
She said, "There's a free woman of color called Maman Zuzu. I'd like to send a message to her. I think probably Clémentine could arrange it."
"Papa says you are a very bad patient," Henry Savard told Hannah the next morning. "Mama says he is not one to talk, because when he had the influenza she had to pour laudanum down his throat to keep him in his sickbed. Rachel says---"
Hannah cleared her throat, and Henry, unusually attuned to her moods for a boy of his age, stopped expectantly. "Do you want to sleep now?"
In fact Hannah didn't want to sleep. She wanted to be out of bed, because Paul Savard was right: She was a very bad patient, and moreover she considered his directions too extreme. She bit back the things she might have said, and concentrated instead on young Henry's expression. Such a serious boy, so eager to share his stories.
She said, "I have an idea. If your mama says you may, you might bring me the newspaper. Then we can read together about the war."
Henry's eyes widened with pleasure, and then his whole face fell. "I would like that, but Mama will say no. She thinks the newspaper will give me bad dreams. Because we lost the gunships." He leaned forward and whispered, "I'm not supposed to know, but everybody is talking about it."
Hannah's conscience was no match for her concern or her boredom, especially as Henry already knew what his mother wished he did not. She said, "Won't you tell me?"
He wiggled in his eagerness, glanced at the door to make sure there was no adult there to hear, and told her what he knew. The good news, he wanted her to know first of all, was that the pirate Lafitte had stopped Major General Jackson on the street---in broad daylight, in view of a dozen people---and simply talked the Baratarians into the major general's good favor.
"The governor must be very cross," Henry said. "Lafitte is always getting the best of him. Now that Major General Jackson has taken the Baratarians' side, there's no hope of Lafitte hanging. Especially if he keeps New Orleans safe, as Clémentine says he most certainly will."
"You admire the Baratarians?" Hannah asked.
Henry looked very thoughtful for a moment. "No. I can't admire them. Mama says they really are very bad, that they steal and smuggle slaves. Slave smuggling is the worst thing of all. Mama is a Quaker." He glanced at Hannah to see how she would take this.
"I am not a Quaker," Hannah said. "But I agree with your mama, it is the very worst thing. I once knew a very good woman who ran away from her owner because she wanted to raise her child to be free."
Henry said, "What happened to them?"
Hannah hesitated. "The little boy grew up a free man. He's an apprentice cordwainer in Johnstown, near where I was born."
Henry nodded. Hannah could almost see him sorting away this story for further thought.
Then he said, "There is bad news, too."
And it was very bad, so bad that Hannah at first could hardly credit what she was hearing. The entire American fleet---five gunboats and a tender---had been lost to a British invasion force. The British now had control of Lake Borgne.
"You mustn't worry," Henry said, in a voice and tone that echoed his father exactly. "Major General Jackson has sent Major LaCoste and his battalion and some dragoons and lots of artillery. They will guard the roads into the city."
"I'll do my best to remain calm," Hannah said.
"Mama says she wishes the rest of the city would do the same," Henry said, his color rising perceptibly. "People are very upset. Mme. Grandissime told Rachel's aunt Livingston that a thousand English soldiers are marching up the Chef Menteur road right now, and a battalion of free men of color could no more stop them than a litter of puppies could stop a stampede of horses. Clémentine says we should go away to a safer place, but Mama---" He looked again over his shoulder and lowered his voice.
"Mama says doctors don't run off when people need them most. Clémentine is very grumpy about it. Rachel might go with her aunt Livingston, if things get much worse."
"And what about you, would you like to go away someplace safe?" Hannah asked.
Henry drew up, his small face creased in surprise and insult. "I am not afraid."
"Of course not," Hannah said. "But if your sister goes, she'll need someone to protect her."
That gave the boy pause. He studied Hannah very closely to see if it was some kind of trick, and she returned his gaze with complete calm.
"Go ask Rachel," Hannah said. "See what her plans are."
Henry got up so abruptly that the stool wobbled. At the same time Hannah heard Jennet's voice in the hall. When she opened the door Henry hurried out of the room.
"Did I interrupt something?" Jennet asked. She was carrying a basket, which she put down on the table near the window and began to unpack. A covered bowl, a basket of fresh white rolls still warm from the oven, a small jug. It seemed to Hannah that the Livingstons' cook was in some kind of competition with Clémentine to force-feed her back to good health.
"Henry has been telling me about the loss of the gunboats."
Jennet's face stilled. "I brought the paper for you to read. In case Henry left out any detail."
"Is it true that the entire American fleet is lost?"
Jennet pushed out a soft sigh. "Such as it was in the southern theater. Our five gunboats against a whole flotilla."
"Maybe you should leave with Mrs. Livingston."
Jennet's mouth pursed itself in distaste. "Aye, weel. She's packed, it's true, but not quite ready to leave, and no more am I. I am determined that we should stay together, Hannah. The troubles start when we let circumstances separate us."
Hannah let out a small laugh. She remembered saying something like that to her own father and stepmother many years ago.
"You may be right," she said. And: "What does Luke think?"
"He won't hear of us going anywhere so long as Honoré is---" She paused, and flicked a hand toward the window.
So long as Honoré Poiterin was in the world, Hannah thought, none of them was safe. She took inventory of her injuries. Her wounds were mostly healed, the last of the bruises faded to a dull yellow cast. There was no tenderness in her belly or ribs. It was true that she was weak and prone to headache, but today she was much improved over yesterday, and she expected that trend to continue.
She was more than capable of walking out of this room, this building, this city. If there were a ship to be had, she could board it, and they could go home. She thought of the American gunboats and the British navy.
"It's almost as if this place wants us to stay," Hannah said.
"Oh, aye," Jennet said, following Hannah's line of thought without hesitation. "Betimes I can almost feel its grip on my ankle."
The slash of memory made Hannah catch her breath. For a moment she could not rid herself of the feel of Honoré Poiterin's hands on her skin. She turned her head to the pillow and fought for her composure.
"...tomorrow's parade," Jennet was saying. She put a tray on Hannah's lap and sat down beside her.
"Are you unwell?"
"A little nausea, gone already," Hannah said. "There's another parade?"
Jennet studied her for a long moment, and then relented. "Aye. Luke says it was Livingston's idea, taken up eagerly enough by Jackson. A grand review of all the battalions left in the city. They meant to wait until Kentucky and Tennessee troops get here---it won't be more than a few days, Luke says---but this business on the lake made them reconsider. Can you guess what's really on the great major general's mind?"
"Martial law," Hannah said. She picked up her soup spoon.
Jennet hiccupped a laugh. "Did Henry tell you that?"
"No." Hannah gestured with her chin to the newspaper that lay folded on the tray and the bold headline. "But I can still read."
Hannah ladled soup while she gathered her thoughts. She could feel Jennet's gaze on her, insistent in her curiosity.
"You might as well come out and say it," Jennet said finally. "I can almost see it sitting on your tongue."
Hannah hitched a breath. "I need you to help me convince the Savards that I am well enough to leave here."
"Leave here?" Jennet looked around herself at the small, neat room, at the comfortable bedding and the sunlight coming through the window that opened into the courtyard. There were birds singing in the trees and, in counterpoint, the sound of dice being thrown against a brick wall. The armed guard was still in place, and would be until they left New Orleans. Or until they were called to battle.
"Where would you go?" Jennet asked.
"Not very far. I'd like to move into Ben's apartment." And in response to Jennet's confused look: "Above the kitchen."
"I know where it is," Jennet said.
Hannah couldn't help smiling. "Are you worried for my good name, or my safety?"
"Your safety, of course," Jennet said, so huffily that Hannah thought she had struck closer to the mark than she imagined.
"I don't think Poiterin will come after me again," Hannah said. "And I would dearly like some solitude. Surely you can understand that."
"Oh, aye," Jennet said. "The city feels like a beehive to me, and all of us crawling over each other. I do understand." She nodded firmly, as if to convince herself. "I'll speak to them, then, if it's important to you."
Hannah said, "I've got a better idea. Help me over there now, and speak to them later."
"Aye," Jennet said. "It is far easier to ask forgiveness than permission. I should scold ye but it would be dishonest of me, as I've done exactly the same for all my life. Come then, let's see you dressed."
The landlady who had once done everything in her power to keep M. Christian Reynaud as a tenant through the autumn months was no longer so dependent on his custom. In fact, she could hardly disguise the fact that she was glad to see him go.
He stood with her in the narrow parlor of the little hotel, counting coins into her gloved palm. Her small, thin face creased itself in an attempt not to look pleased, and Kit understood exactly why. She would triple the rent on his modest rooms before he was out the door, and find a new tenant before an hour was out. "I hope you will remember us when next you visit New Orleans, M. Reynaud."
Kit inclined head and shoulders to save himself the trouble of lying. When he came back to this city he would have his choice of accommodations, as would all of the English officers and their families, who waited on Cat Island planning victory and Yuletide balls. Of course he must get out of the city first, before Jackson declared martial law. Once that was done---and no doubt it would happen during the grand review scheduled for this very afternoon---every lane and street out of the city would be blocked, and every able-bodied man would be in one kind of uniform or another.
He made his way to the stables across the way, weaving through the crowded street. People were already gathering for the parade. They would provide cover for his departure, as they had when he came back to the city.
Inside the cool, dim stables there was no sign of Stadler or any of his slaves. No doubt the parade explained the quiet in a place of business that was normally very busy. Stadler did a great deal of business because he kept his stables in meticulous order and his horses were healthy and groomed and properly fed.
He called, and got no answer.
Kit swallowed down his irritation and considered. He could find a different public stable, or he could help himself to a horse and saddle here. That would mean going back into the hotel to leave money for Stadler, but he could see no alternative that didn't involve a great waste of time. He walked deeper into the shadows along the stalls, looking for the bay mare he liked best and finding her at the very end.
"There you are," he said. "Come, old girl, we're off."
The mare nickered at the sound of his voice and shifted on her feet.
"Not today," said an unfamiliar voice from the shadows. And: "Leave your hands where I can see them, Captain Wyndham. I have a musket aimed at your back."
Many things went through Kit's mind in a great tumble, but loudest of all was the echo of his name. Captain Wyndham. Captain Wyndham. Captain Wyndham.
"I think you've mistaken me for someone else," he said in his best local French.
"No mistake," said the stranger behind him, keeping to English. "Christian Wyndham, an officer in His Majesty's forces on the North American continent. Turn around."
Kit forced his breathing to calm, and turned. The man who stood there was a stranger to him. Tall and broadly built. Mixed blood, mostly Indian. Shorn black hair, and eyes of a strange light color that looked almost silver against the dark skin. His own age, or a little younger.
"Who are you?"
There was a flicker of a smile that disappeared as soon as it came. "Jean-Benoît Savard."
Savard. Kit tried to make sense of it, to connect this man to the Dr. Savard of the clinic on the rue Dauphine.
"He's my half brother," said the man.
"You're in the habit of reading minds?"
"I can read yours. You're wondering if you can get to that knife in your belt before I shoot. You can't."
"Not at all," lied Kit. "I was wondering why you are so certain you know me."
Savard inclined his head. "For a spy you are a very bad liar."
Kit considered the few options open to him. He said, "Very well, if you are so sure you know me, what are we waiting for? Let's go to the Cabildo so we can resolve this misunderstanding. I have nothing to fear from the authorities."
Odd, how he almost believed himself, but Savard clearly did not. He wondered where the stabler was, if Savard had paid him to stay away.
"Let's get down to business," Savard said. "What's your interest in the Indian woman at the clinic?"
Kit drew in a sharp breath, considered lying, and reconsidered. "She is a---was an acquaintance of mine. I heard that she was unwell."
"Is she one of your spies?"
His tone was unremarkable, as if he had asked about the weather, or which tailor Kit frequented.
"I haven't spoken to Hannah or been in the same room with her for many months. If you've been watching me you know that."
"You still haven't answered me directly. I suppose I will have to take you both to the Cabildo."
Kit felt his pulse leap like a startled bird. "So far as I know she is no spy."
The stern expression didn't relax, but there was a flicker of something in the strange light eyes. "And Honoré Poiterin?"
Kit blinked. "Who?"
"The English are in trouble if you're the best they have. You've broken into a sweat. Tell me about Poiterin."
"I know Poiterin," Kit said.
"He's a friend?"
Kit lifted a shoulder. "A social acquaintance."
"One of your network."
Silence seemed the only possible response. A long moment passed.
"I'm curious," said Savard. "That you seem to know nothing of the connection between Poiterin and the Bonners."
"Connection?" Kit's mind raced, tried to link what he knew of Poiterin to the Scotts, and failed.
"You haven't heard any talk."
"No," Kit said, letting his anger rise to the surface. "I don't listen to women's gossip, and the men I do business with hardly sit around discussing the affairs of an Indian woman. What is it you want, exactly?"
"I want to know if you had any part in Poiterin's attack on Hannah Bonner."
Kit was sure he had misunderstood, but saw by Savard's expression that he hadn't.
"Poiterin? It was Poiterin who beat and raped her and left her for dead?"
The words hung in the air, almost visible.
Savard said, "You know he is capable of it."
Kit closed his eyes. Poiterin was one of the most valuable and volatile of his network, superbly placed and a source of excellent information, but unpredictable and prone to fits of rage. Kit had seen him shoot an expensive horse for nothing more than balking, and according to rumor he was guilty of far worse things. He had heard some of them over the last months. Smuggling, piracy, slave running---that Poiterin was a man of no loyalties and no morals was clear, but then Kit supposed that there were few saints who had ever taken up treason.
A vague memory came to him of the journey that had brought him first to Barataria. Men deep in their cups, telling stories. Lafitte's name had come up, and the men who had sworn him allegiance. Stories of Mac Stoker and his son, of Anne Bonnie and the old days, of rich merchantmen taken after hard battles, feuds and vendettas and stolen children.
There had been some story about a child taken from a white woman as a souvenir, Kit remembered now. An infant taken home to a grandmother, as a man might take a string of pearls to a lover who needed to be wooed after too long an absence.
"Was it Poiterin who took the boy to Pensacola?" The question had been asked before Kit could stop himself.
Savard looked grimly satisfied. "Maybe you're not as dumb as you seem at first. I'll ask you straight out one last time. Have you taken any part in Poiterin's campaign against the Bonners?"
"I knew nothing about it." And if I had known, Kit asked himself, what could I have done?
"You know now. He's a liability to you."
Kit met Savard's sharp eyes. "You have a proposal for me."
Savard nodded.
"And if I don't accept your terms?"
One shoulder lifted and fell. "I'd prefer to handle this myself."
Kit understood the man perfectly. He could agree to whatever he was going to suggest, or he could die right here. Savard wouldn't risk taking him to the Cabildo for questioning, because Kit knew things about the Bonners that could easily be misconstrued in such anxious times.
"Go on," Kit said. "I'm listening."
It was Clémentine who first discovered Hannah's removal to Ben's two small rooms above the kitchen. As soon as the older woman realized that she couldn't bully Hannah into moving back to the Savards' more comfortable apartment above the clinic, she changed direction. Within an hour Ben Savard's apartment had been transformed.
Clémentine's two daughters, silent in their work as their mother required of them, moved through the two small rooms like spirits. They tightened the bed ropes, replaced the mattress, and remade the bed with fresh linen that smelled of lilac water. A new cloth was spread over the table, dishware and a small tea service appeared on the rack on the wall, and new wax candles replaced the tallow ones that had suited Ben Savard well enough. All of this was done while Hannah sat near the hearth, half dozing in its warmth.
Then the Savards came too. Julia brought her books and newspapers and the report that Jennet would be back tomorrow. Paul Savard insisted on examining her. With obvious reluctance he declared her well enough to be out of his immediate sight.
Hannah said, "All this fuss. Whatever has got into Clémentine, do you think?"
Dr. Savard looked at her closely. "It's not just Clémentine," he said. "They've taken your part."
"Who has taken my part?"
He glanced toward the door. "Before the attack, they were watching you and keeping their distance. Now you're one of them. You've got a common enemy."
He hadn't answered Hannah's question, and she said so. "You're being very mysterious. It's not like you."
"I'm being cautious. That's very like me." After a moment he said, "I believe you've met Clémentine's mother. She's called Maman Zuzu."
"Oh." Hannah cleared her throat. "I see. I didn't realize."
"Because they weren't ready to trust you. Now they are."
It was hard to imagine that anyone might have suspected that Hannah was working with Honoré Poiterin, but that seemed to be what Dr. Savard meant. If that was true, she had paid a very high price to earn the trust of women like Clémentine and her mother. She might have asked more questions, had Luke not come in with news of the grand review on the Place d'Armes.
"More talk," said Dr. Savard. "And crowds. If we don't have an outbreak of yellow jack it will be a miracle of the first order. What of the speech? Did he do it, are we under martial law?"
"Effective immediately." Luke rubbed his eyes. He looked as though he had slept very little in the past days.
"Will this make things more difficult for us? Should I be doing something?"
"You should concentrate on getting better," Luke said.
In fact Hannah was feeling a little dizzy and very tired, and her eyes both ached and itched. She said, "Don't go quite yet. Tell me what to expect. Dr. Savard, have you ever been in a city under martial law?"
"No," he said. "Though I've heard stories."
Luke studied the floor between his boots. He said, "For you and the clinic, and for us, there won't be many changes. The city is closed off; you can't get in or out without permission from headquarters. Every able-bodied man will be called into one kind of service or another. The courts have shut down, and business has pretty much come to a full stop. There's a curfew for everybody now, as there always has been for the slaves." He drew a piece of paper from his jacket. "Unless you've got a military pass. They'll give you one," he said to the doctor. "All medical people will get them."
Luke turned to Hannah. "Things are coming to a head. The British are on dry land and making advances. I expect we'll see the first real confrontation within days, but with any luck not until after the Kentucky and Tennessee regiments get here."
Dr. Savard said, "Is it as bad as it looks?"
Luke's mouth pursed itself while he thought. "Yes."
Hannah closed her eyes. "I can't get away from this war. It will never end."
"It will end," Luke said quietly. "One way or the other. Listen, Savard, I need to raise the topic of evacuation with you. The women and children---"
"Julia won't have it," said the doctor. "There's no hope of her going. I'll talk to her again about the children. What about your wife and son?"
"Just as stubborn," Luke said.
Hannah said, "You could make her go, you know you could. You don't want her to."
That struck home, she could see the discomfort of it in the way he looked away. Finally he said, "I'm following my instincts."
Hannah sat back. "Then I must trust your decision."
Later, when Hannah had gotten into bed, Clémentine herself appeared in the door with a tray and an expression that brooked no dissent. Clémentine had never been very forthcoming, and Hannah had never pushed, out of respect and also because of what Ben had told her---and she herself had seen---of the animosity between the Africans and the Indians in this part of the world. If Paul Savard said that Clémentine had changed her mind about Hannah, he must be believed, though her long face with its deep-set eyes showed no hint of approval as far as Hannah could see.
And so Hannah ate the soup and the bread and drank the bitter tisane while Clémentine waited by the fire, darning stockings and keeping her thoughts to herself.
At the door she paused. She said, "There's a bell hanging right here. You ring it good and hard if there's any trouble. I'll hear it."
"Thank you," Hannah said.
In the last moments before she fell asleep in the glow of the banked fire, she thought of Ben Savard, who had been away a long time.
The room that served as a surgery was across the hall from the apothecary. Until now it had seldom been used; this was, in the first line, a kine-pox clinic, and only secondarily a charity hospital. Surgical cases were mostly referred elsewhere.
There was a short row of chairs outside the surgery, all of them occupied. Some of the men talked quietly, some slept with their heads propped on the wall. A few were playing cards, and one was dictating a letter to Rachel. In this setting, the lighthearted girl who took such pleasure in parties and dinners was unrecognizable. Here she was her mother's daughter, quiet, attentive, efficient. She glanced up at Hannah as she passed and gave her a grim smile.
Julia was waiting inside the surgery. It was the lightest room in the house, with a bank of windows that looked out on the street, but the day was overcast and the lamps had been lit. In the middle of the room was a large table that might have once been in a kitchen. Julia had just finished scrubbing it, and her face was pink with exertion. She wore an apron that covered her from throat to toe, and her hair was tied with a large handkerchief.
"I was hoping you'd be able to assist," Hannah said.
"We can call on Rachel, too, if we need her." Julia used the back of her hand to wipe a stray hair from her cheek.
Hannah took an apron for herself from a hook on the wall. She rolled up her sleeves and tied a large square of linen over her plaited hair, and then she stood for a long minute and studied the row of surgical instruments laid out neatly on a tray. A variety of surgical knives with down-turned points and wide spines, lancets, scissors, bone saws small and large, needle holders and needles. All well used and lovingly maintained so that the blades shone.
Hannah had had her first lessons in surgery from a Muslim doctor called Hakim Ibrahim, and she had never forgot the things he had taught her. His had been the first microscope she had ever seen, and from him she had learned the importance of cleanliness. She examined her nails now, and then scrubbed her hands and arms with water and lye soap at the washstand. Next to the basin Julia had put out a bottle of thirty-percent alcohol solution, as well as one that was marked Dist. Hamamelis Virginiana. She glanced at her over her shoulder.
"What's this?"
"Paul insists," Julia said. "It's your doing, I think. You treated his hand when he cut it, and there was a wager?"
"Oh," Hannah said, remembering. "Yes."
With a tone that was a little shy, Julia said, "When there is time, you might ask him about his experiments. He would like to show you his microscope."
Hannah said, "I'd like to see it." And oddly, it was true. Her interest in medicine and science, which had been slumbering for so long, had sparked to life again. She thought of the laboratory she had inherited from another one of her teachers, empty and neglected these many long months. It was odd to think that they would be going home soon, really going home, to take up their lives. She found herself thinking of her father, and wondering if the letters she and Luke had sent off with Lieutenant Hodge on the Grasshopper had found their way home, of the letter Luke had sent from Pensacola. She thought of the last letter they had had, and Curiosity.
"Hannah?" Julia said.
"I'm ready."
There was a knock at the door and it opened.
Jennet said, "Shall I bring in the first patient? A great hulk of a man from Kentucky, he tells me his name is Abraham and he's got a bullet stuck in the meat of his shoulder that he'd like to be rid of."
Hannah couldn't help but laugh. It was amazing, the way Jennet could bring light and warmth into the worst situation.
"What have you done with the boy?"
"Och, dinnae worry about wee Nathaniel. Clémentine fairly ripped him out of my arms when I said I wanted to come help." Jennet took an apron as she spoke. "I'll fetch Abraham, shall I? And we can get to work."
By the time the afternoon had slipped into dusk, it was clear to Hannah that she would never again operate so efficiently or well. With Julia and Jennet to assist they made short work of Abraham Finley's bullet, and then went on to amputate toes, clean and drain an abscessed knife wound, and dig a dozen pieces of shrapnel out of a hand so horny with callus that it was like cutting through leather. Now the newest patient on the table had taken off his leggings to reveal an ulcer the size of a saucer that had eaten through muscle to the bone.
Watching Julia handle instruments, Hannah had the idea that she could have done any of the surgeries on her own without hesitation. In contrast, Jennet had had only a few months of training, and cases like this one still caused her difficulty. Now she turned away momentarily. Hannah wouldn't have blamed her if she had brought up her breakfast, the stench was that bad.
When she turned back, Jennet fixed the patient with a stern gaze. "Mr. Corbin," she said to him sharply. "Mr. Corbin, explain to me exactly how it is that you let yersel come to sic a pass. The Almichtie gave ye twa guid legs, man, and look what ye've done with the left one. Guid God, but that must pang ye."
Julia and Hannah exchanged glances, but didn't try to intervene. When it came to dealing with the varied personalities of patients who happened to be soldiers, Jennet had no equal. Her instincts never failed; she knew when to be sympathetic, when to be distant, when a man needed most to be calmed or bullied, pacified or chided.
Mr. Corbin had come into the surgery with a mutinous expression that at first seemed impervious to Jennet's outrage. She went on anyway with her lecture, and Hannah, busy as she was with the mess that had once been the man's calf muscle, had to admire his ability to tolerate more than one kind of pain.
"What baw-heid walks three days on a shank like this?" Jennet demanded. "What use will ye be tae the major general if ye fall doon on yer gizz in the muck?"
Finally Mr. Corbin opened his mouth to respond. Jennet's head snapped up and she fixed him with her most severe expression.
"So noo we'll hear excuses, will we? A sairy tale, nae doot."
A momentary hesitation, and the small pale mouth shut. The two of them glared at each other for a moment and then, with a huff of a sigh, Mr. Corbin seemed to give up the idea of defending himself altogether.
Jennet never lost track of what Hannah required from her, nor did she let up in her lecture. While she brought water and took away basins and handed instruments and bottles and salves she wondered out loud about the idiocy of men who hadn't the sense that God gave a midge.
It wasn't until they were almost finished that Hannah realized that the unfortunate Mr. Corbin had lost consciousness, but that he had done so with a vague smile on his face.
Julia, who was not easily amazed, openly wondered what exactly had just happened.
"Sometimes a harangue-maker is more use than a surgeon," said Jennet, who was just now beginning to get her color back. "At least when it's a Scot ye've got to cut on."
Hannah realized she hadn't heard Mr. Corbin say even a single word. She said, "He's a Scot?"
"Och, aye," said Jennet. "Were he anything else, I wadnae have spoke half so sweet."
The day's work was almost---but not quite---enough to make Hannah put aside all thought of Ben Savard. But when Jennet had gone back to the Livingstons' and Hannah was climbing the stairs to eat her supper with the family, she felt her pulse pick up. Unless he had gone back to the front, he would be there at the table.
According to Paul he hadn't gone back to his company yet, but neither was he at supper. Hannah felt Rachel watching her, but resisted the inclination to meet the girl's gaze. At this moment she could hardly hide what she was feeling.
Rachel said, "Mama, Hannah hasn't heard my news."
"That's true," Julia said. Her smile was a little sad. "Would you like to tell her?"
"I'll tell it," said Dr. Savard, throwing a look at his stepdaughter that was partial amusement and a greater part pride. "Rachel has had an invitation to spend a season in Manhattan in her uncle's household."
The girl's face shone to hear those words spoken out loud. Her joy was so overwhelming that Hannah could hardly look at her.
Henry, who had been scowling at his plate, looked at Hannah. "She'll find somebody to marry there and never come back home again."
"Nothing in this world is certain," said his mother in a calm tone. "But at this moment we are all in good health, and your sister is very happy. Won't you be pleased for her?"
"No," said Henry shortly. "Not if she's going away."
"You'll go to your room to think about that," said Henry's father. "And come back when you're prepared to be kind to your sister, and conduct yourself reasonably at table."
"Reasonable," Henry said, with all the dignity he could muster, "is a word grown-ups use when they can't make you agree with them."
Later, alone in Ben's apartment, Hannah sat down heavily on the bed in the empty room.
Reasonable is the word you use when you can't get somebody to agree with you.
Laughing, she lay down and fell asleep watching her breath make white clouds in the air.
Late in the night Ben came, and leaning over her where she slept, said her name.
Hannah woke immediately. In the light of the candle he carried his expression was severe, his eyes shadowed.
"Have you changed your mind? I can find a bed elsewhere."
"I haven't changed my mind."
She moved to the far side of the narrow bed and then watched as he undressed. He seemed far away in his thoughts, almost unaware of her. Certainly unconcerned that she watched him as his clothes fell to the floor. He pulled his hunting shirt over his head, arms crossed and elbows pointed at the ceiling so that his muscles jumped into stark relief. His skin was the color of old honey, the hair that feathered across his chest and abdomen dark. There was a new scar on his right side, short but wide, and new enough to still be bright pink.
Hannah said, "Did you stitch that yourself?"
He looked down in surprise, as if he had forgot about a wound that might have killed him. With the flat of his hand he covered it briefly and then glanced at her with a grin.
"Surprised I know how to use a needle?"
"Not in the least," Hannah said. "I'm sure you are very handy. But you didn't stitch that yourself; the angle is all wrong."
"Is it?" He came and sat down on the edge of the bed. The air was very cold and his skin had risen in bumps all over his arms and back. Hannah could have held up the covers for him, but somehow it seemed too much work just at this moment.
He said, "A woman on the Sabine River did it for me." And then, when it was clear she wouldn't ask, he said: "I want to tell you about where I was. Do you want to hear?"
Hannah held out the blanket. "Come," she said. "Tell your story."
Jennet was one kind of storyteller, and Ben was another. Jennet used her hands and body and voice, like the actors in the play Hannah had seen at the Park Place theater in Manhattan. Ben went still while he talked, and let his voice create a bubble, and inside the bubble, a world.
He told her about a place called the Disputed Lands, a day's ride to the west. Five thousand square miles, the Calcasieu River on the east, the Sabine on the west. An old Caddo Indian village on the north, and the Gulf on the south. Ciprière, canebrake, savannahs, a hundred kinds of water, a thousand kinds of birds and game. Hills covered with yellow pine as far as the eye could see. White oak in the river bottoms, cypress trees five hundred years old.
Mexico claimed it and so did the Americans, but both countries were wound up in other, bigger wars. They agreed to disagree. They called those five thousand square miles neutral territory, but there was nothing neutral about them. Both sides retreated: no troops, no law, and so the lawless moved in.
"The worst of the worst," Ben said. "Men with no footing in the world."
Men who robbed and murdered and raped. Slave-runners determined to ply their trade even after the laws were passed to stop them. And runaway slaves who banded together, determined to survive.
Hannah sat up so suddenly that the room swam a little. Ben was looking at her, cautious, waiting.
She said, "Red Rock."
His hands grasped her forearms and he brought her back down. Ben held her like that, calmly, until her heart regained its normal rhythm.
"Red Rock."
"Yes, Red Rock. Before slavery was outlawed in New-York State, the runaways would go north to Canada, but some of them stayed in the endless forests. Friends of ours---" Her voice wobbled, thinking of Curiosity Freeman, of her son Almanzo. Here they would be called free people of color.
"It ended badly," she said. "The whites won't let them be, you know. It always ends badly."
He was lying on his side, his hands still on her forearms. There was nothing sexual about the way he touched her, which was right and good, and still it made her ache in an unexpected way.
Ben said, "Does that mean they shouldn't try?"
There was something in his tone of disappointment. He had expected a different reaction.
"I couldn't bear it," Hannah said. "I couldn't bear to see it happen again."
There was a long silence, and then Hannah said, "That's what you wanted to ask me, isn't it? You want me to go west with you, to live in that place with the lawless and the runaways. To be a doctor and your woman and anything else that's needed."
He didn't make excuses, or try to hide his feelings. "Yes. I thought---I think it could be a good place. For us. For you, and me."
"No," Hannah said, pulling her hands from his. "I'm not strong enough to go west again, not like that. Not even for you. And you don't need to go, either."
He was silent for a long moment. "They need my help."
Hannah choked out a little cough. "They will die with or without you. Sooner or later the Americans will remember those thousands of acres and the timber and the game, and then they'll come and they'll show no mercy. You know that. You know it."
"And between now and then," Ben said. "They have a chance. We would have a chance."
"I can't," Hannah almost moaned. "I can't watch it all happen again. It would kill me this time. Please, don't ask me."
He held her gaze for a long moment, and then he nodded.
In the morning Hannah was stiff from sleeping perched on the edge of the narrow bed. Her joints ached and her face felt swollen, as though she been crying all night, though the pillow slip was dry.
Ben was dressing with his back to her, and the silence in the room was heavy. Hannah's throat felt tight and hot, incapable of words. And what was there to say, really: He had asked her to go west, and she had given him the only possible answer.
Ben came to sit on the edge of the bed. He leaned over and kissed her, a soft kiss full of longing and affection. Against her mouth he said, "You are a wonder to me, Walks-Ahead."
He got up and went to the table where he had laid out his weapons. Tomahawk and war club, a knife and a long rifle. Ammunition pouches, a patch box, a powder horn. Today or tomorrow or the day after he would find himself on a battlefield. While Hannah worked in the surgery, putting O'seronni soldiers to rights, he would be fighting with a company of Choctaw.
Hannah sat up, and held the blanket to her chest. The sun wasn't up yet, but the sky outside the windows was lighter. There had been a frost; she could smell it in the air.
She said, "I'll come with you, when you go into battle. To tend to the Choctaw under Juzan, and anyone else who asks me."
He stopped and looked at her, his eyes moving over her face as if he might find some answer written there. She watched him consider, and then decide.
Ben nodded. "It may be later today, or early tomorrow." He studied the floor for a moment. "I brought clothes for you." With a swing of his head he indicated one of the two chairs in the room. There was a bundle there, tied with string.
"Thank you," Hannah said.
"I'll try to give you as much notice as possible, but you may not see me until it's time to go."
Hannah pushed out a sound that was meant to be an acknowledgment, or a question, or a request for help. She didn't quite know herself what she hoped for. Even when Ben had gone and her heartbeat had quieted, she couldn't put words to the ache in her belly.
The day passed, far more quickly than Hannah thought it would. She spent the morning in the surgery, again assisted by Julia and Jennet, and the afternoon in the little clinic.
She had expected that the afternoon would be as busy as or busier than the morning, and learned that she was wrong. There were only three people waiting for her. The first was Rattling-Gourd, the old Chickasaw chief who had explained to her the difference between white and black and red. She was surprised to see that he was still alive, and even more surprised that he had managed to get here at all.
He came into the clinic still wrapped in his blanket, now gaunt and stripped down to the bone by pain, hardly able to walk. With him he brought a granddaughter, whose swollen abdomen and sticklike arms and legs made a lengthy examination unnecessary. When Hannah asked her name, the girl looked at her as if she had never heard human language before.
The third patient was the young pregnant woman she had treated for swollen legs and ankles. She was pregnant still, but Hannah could see without being told that the child was dead in her belly.
"Make it come," said the young woman, who gave her name as Helen. "Make it come out of me before I die. I have four other children; they will starve."
Without Leo to run errands, Hannah had to leave the clinic to get what she needed, but first she put Rattling-Gourd in one cot and Helen in the other, and set out a pallet for the little girl. Then she went to the kitchen to ask Clémentine to send bread and soup. Finally she went to the apothecary, where she found Julia hard at work.
Hannah took down what she needed from the shelves: roots of black cohosh and goldenseal, borage, flaxseed. Julia, busy with the mortar and pestle, watched for a while as Hannah tied everything into a square of gauze that she would steep in hot water.
She said, "Overdue?"
"Dead in the womb."
Julia nodded. "Will you need help?"
"I'm going to get Yellow-Sapling," Hannah said. "If Rachel could sit with her while I'm gone---"
Julia nodded. "How long do you need?"
Hannah considered. "Send her in a half hour."
Though it had been weeks since Hannah had visited the Indian village at the edge of the city, she remembered the way. She slipped through the crowds, staying clear of troop movements, keeping her head down and the hood of her boiled-wool cloak pulled low.
Luke would be angry if he knew what she was doing, but Luke was not here, and she had no one but herself to call on.
She turned into the narrow street, and stopped short. Where the Redbone village had been was now a sea of army tents. The militia were turning out to be mustered under the hectoring cries of their officers.
Hannah slipped back into the shadows and away, and didn't stop until she was out of breath.
How stupid she had been, not to realize. Of course her patients hadn't come to the little clinic. The Redbones were gone; there was no room or tolerance for them with the English so close. The three who had come to her were here only because they were too sick to go. She wondered fleetingly where Helen had hidden her other children. She thought of the labor to come. Even with Yellow-Sapling it would be difficult and dangerous, but without her---Hannah forced herself to breathe deeply and think. After a moment, she set off again for a different part of the city.
She found Maman Zuzu and Maman Antoinette together, drinking coffee. Hannah had time to think about that, as coffee was precious now and expensive, but she didn't ask. Nor did they ask her questions, once they understood she needed help with a difficult delivery. Both of them got up and put things in baskets, pulled shawls around themselves, and waited for her to show the way.
When they got to the little clinic, Rachel met them at the door. She was very pale and her face was damp with sweat, which must mean something; it was hard to upset this girl, for all her youth.
"What is it? Has the labor started?" She had dosed Helen before leaving, because the effect of the tea would take a little while to be felt. Sometimes things moved more quickly than expected, and Hannah had been longer on her errand than she meant to be.
"Step aside, missy," said Maman Antoinette in a creaking English, no hint of deference or apology. "Let us see to her."
Rachel stood aside.
Things were as Hannah had left them. Rattling-Gourd on one cot, staring at the ceiling. His granddaughter on a pallet beside him, asleep now that she had eaten, with a thick rug folded over her thin frame. Helen on the other cot, the great mound of her belly with her hands crossed over it. If she was in labor, she was hiding it well.
Then Hannah saw that there was someone else. She sat on a stool near the hearth, a slight form wrapped in a blanket that was more holes than wool. She raised her head to look at Hannah. A brand on her cheek, so new that it was still mostly blister. How beautiful she had been.
"Rachel," Hannah said. "Who is this?"
"She won't give me a name."
"Jacinthe," said Zuzu. "She's called Jacinthe, her. Belonged once to Poiterin. They sold her because she let the white baby get stole away."
Hannah knew that she had heard the young woman's name, and now she remembered. The young woman who had nursed Jennet's son. What Ben had done for them wasn't without cost.
"She's asking for Jennet," Rachel said. "I wasn't sure what to do."
"You leave her to us," said Maman Antoinette. "We care for our own."
"Jacinthe," Maman Zuzu said.
She said the name aloud, and the girl rose from her stool. She was unsteady on her feet, which were bare and filthy with dirt and dried blood. And in her arms was a bundle that flexed and squirmed.
Hannah and Maman Zuzu reached her at the same moment. Zuzu helped her to sit back down, and Hannah found herself holding the child that Jacinthe had almost dropped. It was no more than a few hours old. Still streaked with the evidence of the womb, its head lopsided from the birth canal. Too small, but it breathed and mewled and flexed, a living child.
"Poiterin's?" She asked the question though she already knew the answer.
"Who else?" said Zuzu.
The two old ladies spoke to Jacinthe in a low singsong, their tone comforting but firm. They asked questions in quick patois. Hannah caught only one word in five, but she understood what they wanted to know, because the same question was foremost in her mind.
Where had Jacinthe been, and how did she get here?
But the young woman only looked at them, dry-eyed, uncomprehending. Blank. When they pressed a cup of water on her she took it and drank, and then she took the bread and chewed it slowly and swallowed.
Hannah had passed the baby to Rachel, and now it let out a thin cry. Jacinthe didn't even blink at the sound.
In the local French Rachel said, "Your baby needs you. Do you have milk?"
Jacinthe turned her face to Rachel. "I have no baby," she said. "I have no milk."
"Jacinthe," said Maman Zuzu in a sharper tone. "Wake up, now. We got no time for such foolishness."
Jacinthe looked at her finally, some life coming back into her expression. "I am looking for Honoré." As if it should be obvious, as if it were Zuzu who were not in command of her senses.
"You don't need that man," said Zuzu. "You don't need that devil."
"His grand-mère is dead," Jacinthe went on, and then she smiled. It was a young girl's smile, simple and pure and frightening. "The woman who carries fire came, and now his grand-mère is dead. He will need me."
Hannah thought, the woman who carries fire, but she asked a different question. She said, "What can we do for her?"
"You can't do anything," said Zuzu. "Maman will take her home. We can hide her until we can send her west."
She would go to the Disputed Territories, of course. The memories that came to Hannah were so strong that it was hard to push them aside. Another young woman, heavy with child, fleeing for her life.
Hannah said, "What about the baby?"
Maman Antoinette shook her head. "She would let it starve. If you can't find a wet nurse, feed it goat's milk from a rag. If it lives out the night."
From the near cot, Helen's voice came thin and high. "Let it go," she said. "Let it go." And then she groaned, a sound that came up from her belly.
Rachel said to Hannah, "I'll take the baby to Jennet. Jennet will know what to do."
Jennet had no idea what to do. She looked at the newborn, red of face and squalling, and she looked at Rachel.
"Even if you don't want to keep him---"
"Keep him?"
"---you could nurse him. He's so hungry, Jennet."
He was hungry, no doubt. Jacinthe's son was hungry, as Jennet's son had once been hungry and needed nourishment. That this was also Honoré Poiterin's child was something she must ignore for the moment. She sat down and held out her arms for the baby, who began to root against her breast even before she had uncovered it.
When the small red mouth snapped down on her nipple, she let out a sharp sound. Pain, and surrender. The round cheeks worked at her breast with such need, Jennet wondered if any woman in the world could refuse it.
Rachel said, "I'll bring warm water and clean towels."
Jennet should have stopped her. There were so many questions: How Jacinthe had come here, if she had run away, where she was now. Why she had not nursed him. If she was alive at all. But the simple fact of the child, the heat and damp weight of him, the dark eyelashes and feathering curls, those things were more powerful than any questions.
When his gulping slowed and then stopped, when he was asleep, Jennet used the tip of her finger to loosen the small mouth from her breast.
Rachel came back with a basin of water and a pile of clean linen. Together they washed him and tied a long strip of gauze around his belly to protect the umbilicus until it was ready to fall away. Jennet fashioned a clout out of linen and finally they wrapped and swaddled him. In an hour or two he would be hungry again, and the whole process must be reversed and repeated, and then again, and again, through the nights and days to come.
"Jacinthe?"
Rachel shook her head. "She repudiates him. And she's---" The young woman hesitated, looking for a word.
"A runaway?"
"Out of her senses," Rachel said. "And a runaway. But she will be all right. Clémentine's people will see to it that she gets away."
Jennet stroked the baby's head with its fine black curls. He was very pale of complexion, his eyes the muddy color of all newborns.
"The sins of the fathers," she murmured.
"What?" Rachel said, almost sharply. Jennet glanced at her.
"A Greek writer said it. The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children."
"Not any God of mine," said Rachel stiffly.
"Nor of mine," said Jennet with a sigh. And then: "Tell Hannah I'll be down to help as soon as I've got him settled."
"You mean to keep him, then?"
"She saved my son's life," Jennet said. "She showed him kindness and love. I can do no less for her."
Long after dark, Jennet returned to the Livingstons' simply because there was no bed for her anywhere at the Savards'. In the clinic patients slept two to a cot, on pallets in the hall, on chairs. The Savards' apartment was just as crowded, and the servants' quarters.
There might be room in Ben Savard's small apartment above the kitchen, but Jennet was not so tired that she would intrude there. Instead, two soldiers who were well enough to be sent back to their companies walked her to the rue de Conde, one carrying her basket and the other Jacinthe's infant son. They were both militiamen from Tennessee, capable, quiet men and exceedingly shy. As she was too tired to try to draw them out, they made the trip in silence.
In her arms Nathaniel, sleeping, felt very heavy. He was a healthy child, well fed, round of limb and cheek, flushed with color. His personality was more pronounced every day, a cheerful boy who exchanged periods of contemplation for bursts of activity that ended in crowing laughter or tears of frustration. When Jennet came to take the boy from Clémentine, she found him in earnest study of a darning egg, entranced by its shape and smoothness. She knew without a doubt that, left to his own devices, her son would have tried to fit the whole thing into his mouth.
Jacinthe's son was less than a day old, and there was nothing to read of his personality. If he was to stay with them---and Jennet could think of no alternative---she would watch his mind come alive to the world, and his spirit. He would grow to look like his mother, or his father. By that time, she told herself, she would love him for his own sake. That would make the difference. It must make the difference.
They would call him Adam, she decided, trudging along the street. It was a name that marked him as a man who would be the start of his own line. When he was old enough to ask about his people, she would tell him stories of Scotland and the Carrycks, of Dan'l Bonner, called Hawkeye for his skill with a rifle, whose adoptive father was Chingachgook. He would hear stories of Chingachgook, a Mahican sachem who had taken in a child who was not of his blood and raised him as a son.
She would send away for books on Africa, and together she and Adam would read those stories, too.
Jennet resolved that she would do everything in her power for this boy, who had been sent, she had no doubt, to take the place of the child she had conceived on the night Honoré Poiterin agreed to take her own son away to safety. The child she had wished dead, and who had died, but was now given back to her.
Jacinthe had brought him into the world alone, crouched in some alley in her travail. That he had survived at all was a miracle. He might have come dead to the world, as Helen's child had. A dead daughter born of a dead mother.
It was always a surprise, how much blood the human body could hold. Hannah and Maman Zuzu had worked hard to stop the bleeding, and then Dr. Savard had come, fetched by Julia, and together they had failed. Helen was gone, and somewhere in this overcrowded city the four children she had hidden away were waiting for her to return.
To Maman Zuzu, Hannah had said, "Will you ask? Will you see if you can find out where they are? I will pay to have them brought here."
The old woman hadn't been cruel, but neither had she offered any comfort. The chances were slim, but she would ask.
Then Dr. Savard had put a hand on Hannah's shoulder. He said, "She has her own to worry about now, but ask Ben. Ben will find them, if they are anywhere to be found."
He could do more for the young Chickasaw girl, who would be alone when her grandfather died, as must happen within hours or days. She would be brought into the household, Julia told Jennet. There were so many orphans, they would do what they could for her.
Jennet should have fallen directly to sleep, once she had washed and changed and nursed both babies. When the nursemaid came to fetch Nathaniel and found two children where there had been one, she hadn't even blinked, nor had she asked any questions. Jennet was thankful. Tomorrow was soon enough to cope with Mrs. Livingston.
The maids had done their work, so that if she had wanted occupation, there was precious little to do. Her few gowns were clean and carefully pressed, as were all of Luke's things. This household, overseen by Mrs. Livingston and her formidable mother, was ordered enough to please even the housekeeper at Carryckcastle; everything smelled of freshly aired linen, lavender water, starch, beeswax.
She had been far more comfortable in the crowded apartment above the kine-pox clinic, with Hannah sleeping beside her and the smell of damp swaddling clothes in the air.
On the table that stood between the windows was a porcelain vase that held a long spray of ivy, and Jennet's tarot cards. Mrs. Livingston had got into the habit of coming by to ask Jennet to read the cards for her. A small secret, she whispered to Jennet. A diversion in difficult times. Her mother would not understand, of course, but she and Jennet were women of broader experience in the world.
Now Jennet took the cards in hand and sat for a moment concentrating on the weight and shape of them. The softened edges, slightly rough against her palm. She tried to recall the first deck she had had, which she had left behind her in Canada, the shapes and colors. No more could she remember the face of the lady who had given them to her, on her way to Canada for the first time, excited beyond measure. Mme. Rojas had told her she would travel, and Jennet had laughed in delight at this new game. She had understood very little, but she had learned. She had come to understand how the cards worked, how they could open the mind to possibility. One card was sometimes enough.
She turned it, and setting her hands on the table, Jennet let her weariness and imagination lead the way.
The Chariot: Strength, bravery, vigilance, endurance, discipline. In troubled times the efforts of one extraordinary person can turn the tide.
Jennet found the letter on her pillow, along with a note in Mrs. Livingston's delicate hand.
Mrs. Bonner, this letter came with the post-rider some days ago, and was waiting at the post office to be claimed. My brother August D'Avezac saw it there today and took it in your name. I pray that the news it brings you in these difficult days is welcome.
Louisa Livingston
The letter, stained and creased from a long journey, had first gone to the care of Mrs. Preston on the Bayou St. John, and then been returned to the post office because no one had been at home at the Maison Verde.
Elizabeth Bonner had written the address.
She should wait for Luke, or go to Hannah; she could rise and dress and ask for an escort to walk with her back to the clinic.
Jennet opened the seal, and unfolded the two sheets of paper, closely written.
Dearest Children,
We are in possession of the letters you wrote to us in late August from the Island of the Manatees in the French Antilles, as well as Luke's letter from Pensacola written almost two weeks later.
To say that we were relieved to hear your initial report of Jennet's safe recovery would be an understatement of the first order. Indeed, we talked of little else for three days, all of us gathered together either here in our kitchen or in Mrs. Freeman's. The letter from Pensacola arrived yesterday, and has brought us back together to discuss your difficult situation.
You must understand that we are full of gratitude that Jennet has been safely returned to the care of her family. Once young Nathaniel has been restored to you, and she has had sufficient time and peace of mind, I believe she will recover. We hope that you will come to us for that purpose.
No doubt you can imagine that there has been considerable debate here on how best to help you. Uncharacteristically we came to a common resolve very quickly: None of us can bear to sit by and wait for word. In the end we have come to a conclusion that may not surprise you.
Your father and your uncle Runs-from-Bears are on the way to New Orleans. As war has rendered travel by sea and overland both exceedingly unreliable, they are resolved to start the journey by traveling west to Pittsburgh. From there they will set out southwest by means of the Ohio River. They have with them enough money to lease a keelboat and hire a crew that will take them all the way down the Mississippi. If all goes according to plan they should arrive within a week or ten days of this letter depending on the postal service, the state of the roads, and, of course, the war.
You know your father and uncle well enough to believe that they are capable of this, and more. And to tell the whole truth, I believe that they look forward to this journey with great eagerness and anticipation, first and foremost for the chance that they might be of service to you, but also because it is a very long time since they have had any kind of adventure. In truth, I envy them the opportunity to act on your behalf. If it weren't for the baby (who thrives, and is a joy to us all) I think I would be easily talked into making the journey myself.
This letter must go out with the post-rider this afternoon if it is to have any chance of reaching you before our men do. Thus I close in haste, sending you my best wishes and prayers for your continued health of mind and body and quick success in your search. When you are safe home we will have much to celebrate. Your loving mother and stepmother,
Elizabeth Middleton Bonner
Paradise, on the west branch of the Sacandaga
New-York State, the 20th October, 1814
Dear brother & sisters,
Da and Runs-from-Bears are coming to save you, because Da says he will go simpleminded sitting idle while you are fighting alligators and redcoats, and Many-Doves says she will go simpleminded watching Runs-from-Bears pace, and anyway, who better to help you in your time of need?
I think I could, as I have a rifle of my own now and am reckoned a good shot, but no one listens. I have to stay here and go to school, with my own brother Daniel as the teacher. It was hard enough to have my mother as teacher, but this is worse still, I promise you. When you come home with the new baby who is my nephew, I am sure I will be far kinder to him than Daniel is to me, and never scold him for his penmanship, which as you see is perfectly easy to read.
Ma says that I am unfair, and that Daniel is an excellent teacher, which indeed everyone who doesn't sit in his classroom agrees to be the case. He has endless patience with everybody but me, and I forgive him that only because I think that has to do with his arm, which is still not healed and causes him pain in spite of all the medicines Many-Doves and Curiosity and the new doctor give him. I hope his arm is better soon and that his mood gets better with it. Ma and Da are very worried about you. I am not but I think you should come home quickly all the same.
Your brother
Gabriel Bonner, aged ten full years
Dear Brother and Sisters,
I am sending along my rifle for Luke's use or Hannah's. If I were able, I would carry it to you myself to repay some part of the debt I owe you. The newspapers say there will be a battle for New Orleans that will make what has come up to this point look like child's play, but for me this war and every war is over. As it is I stay behind to look after my mother and the children, and to carry on teaching school, but my thoughts and good wishes are with you every step of the journey you must make, home to safety.
Your brother, Daniel Bonner
The morning was overcast and wet and very cold, but Jennet could hardly contain her eagerness to be on her way to Hannah. Good news was rare, and Jennet didn't want to hold it back from her one minute more than necessary. She was busy getting both babies ready to go when there was a knock at her door.
Mrs. Livingston had heard of the new child brought into her house and must have the opportunity to examine him. Jennet stopped what she was doing and made every effort to sound pleased at the delay.
"But, Mrs. Bonner," Mrs. Livingston said, pulling up her skirts so that she could sit on the edge of the bed where Jacinthe's son---Jennet told herself she must start thinking of him as Adam---lay swaddled and asleep. "You will adopt this child?"
"Yes," Jennet said, and flashed a quick, tight smile. "I owe---rather, I owed his mother a debt, and she is gone. He has no one else in the world."
Mrs. Livingston's pretty mouth pursed thoughtfully as she reached for Nathaniel, who was crawling across the wide plain of the bed with the obvious intent of crawling off into space. "You must pardon me, Mrs. Bonner," she said. "But is this a colored child?"
Jennet had believed herself ready to answer questions, and found that she was not. Righteous indignation would do no good, nor would it be possible to distract Mrs. Livingston from this topic. She glanced down at the baby's fragile skull with its dusting of dark hair over a high brow. His skin was lighter than Jennet's own after a summer in the sun. No doubt if she declared the boy to be white, Mrs. Livingston would take her word. But she could not make herself say the words.
"Of course." The lie came so easily to Jennet, she found she could look Mrs. Livingston directly in the eye and say the words with complete composure: "His mother was a free woman of color."
Mrs. Livingston sat back and pulled Nathaniel into her lap. He wiggled and twisted, full of energy and determined to be on his way, but all her attention was on Jennet. Her thoughtful, charitable attention.
Finally she said, "If you like, I can ask Marie to help you with him. She is nursing a daughter, and has enough milk for two. You know I've got enough willing hands to look after both these boys. That way you could return to help at the clinic, if you care to."
Jennet agreed that it would be a great relief to her to have competent help, and they did expect her at the clinic.
Mrs. Livingston said, "You have fallen into our ways very quickly. Here it is common to bring a colored child into the nursery when a new child is born in the family. Our Susan's daughter Pauline has been with Cora since she was a few weeks old. This kind of companion is an excellent thing."
What Jennet wanted to say was that Adam would not be Nathaniel's companion, but his brother. She looked at Mrs. Livingston directly, determined to say this, and then knew that she could not. She was a guest in this woman's home; her husband had rescued them from the need to hide from Honoré Poiterin. They owed the Livingstons as much as they owed the Savards, and she could not repay them in harsh words.
Instead she said, "I would like to get to the clinic. Hannah should see this letter that came yesterday as soon as possible."
"Ah." Mrs. Livingston got up and smoothed her skirts. "On today of all days, a distraction will be very welcome. Things have reached a critical point. Mr. Livingston did not come home before three last night, and he says the major general has not slept at all in two days. He thinks the fighting will begin tonight."
At the door, she cast a last long look over her shoulder. "I will send Marie to you immediately. Mrs. Bonner, promise me you will take two of our grooms when you go out into the streets. These two little boys need you."
She did not say: because your husband may not come back from this battle, but Jennet heard the words nonetheless.
Jennet dropped a letter in Hannah's lap. Her expression, her coloring, everything about the way she held herself said that the letter brought good news. Hannah was almost afraid to touch it.
"Go on," Jennet said.
Hannah observed. Her cousin's mood was high, but there were circles under her eyes, a weariness that couldn't be disguised. Yesterday she had left with Jacinthe's newborn son, gone with him back to the Livingstons'.
She said, "Tell me about the baby first."
Jennet's expression sobered immediately. She pressed a fist to her cheekbone and then she pushed out a long and heavy sigh. "He is healthy," Jennet said. "He took to the breast, suckled like a wee demon, and slept."
She looked away for a moment. "I intend to keep him and raise him as our own."
It was the thing Hannah had expected. "You're sure?"
"Aye," Jennet said. "There's naught else for it."
"A child isn't a penance," Hannah said, and Jennet jerked as if she had been slapped. It seemed as if she would lash out in return; the old Jennet would have, but this one, who had been through so much, caught herself.
"For his mother's sake," Jennet said. "For his own, and for mine, too. Aye, I willnae deny it."
"Good," Hannah said. "Where are the boys now?"
"Mrs. Livingston produced a nurse out of thin air to look after the both of them while I'm helping here. A young woman. Her milk is sweet, I'm told, and in that household no baby goes without noodling for so much as an hour. Now will ye please read the letter? There's news you must hear."
Hannah's hands were shaking by the time she finished.
Jennet said, "Can ye believe it? Your faither and uncle on their way to us now."
"Oh, yes," Hannah said. "I can."
For one moment she thought herself in danger of fainting out of sheer joy and relief. Her father, her uncle. On a keelboat on the Mississippi, on their way here. The image filled her with an old energy that she had forgot about.
Jennet was still talking, holding out another letter, this one unopened. "The direction is to you alone. Is that no Curiosity's hand? Open it, Hannah, before I bust every button for wondering."
Hannah did as she was bid.
Dearest Girl, our Hannah,
I have been thinking of you & praying for you every day & every night since you left here with your brother to bring Jennet home where she belongs. Mark me well, I do not say that I have feared for you, for I know no other woman as strong as you, Hannah, and never for one moment have I doubted your resolve nor your ability. When Lily and Simon brought your letters to us your good news was no surprise, but I am thankful & I do praise God. His wisdom is great & His tender mercy is over all His works.
No doubt they told you in their last letter that I am sickly or even on my deathbed. Don't you believe it. It was nothing but a bitty cold that settled in my lights, but Many-Doves made me onion compresses and her special tisane and within a week I was right as rain, Praise the Lord our God for His Mercy. I was seventy-eight years old this last spring and on that morning I was up at dawn baking, a dozen loaves of good bread and six pies and then I scrubbed my own floor. How many women my age can say half as much? You hear me now: I intend to live long enough to see this new Bonner grandson and more than that, to see you bring a daughter into this world. You & I have stories to share before the Lord (Great & Marvelous are His Mercies) calls me home to join my good husband and daughter.
One last word before they pull this bit of paper right out from under my nose, and that is this: You cannot save the whole world, child. No doubt you have seen terrible things in this newest war and will see worse before you find your way back home, but don't get caught up in trying to fix every broken sorry creature you come across. Some things must be left to God.
You get yourself home to us who love you best, though there be mountains and lyons in the way.
Your loving true friend, Curiosity Freeman
writ by her own hand, the first day of December in the Year of Our Lord Eighteen Hundred and Fourteen.
When she had finished reading, Hannah dropped the letter to her lap and put both hands on her face. As if to hide tears, or a smile, or both.
"Oh, I am so glad," Jennet said, hugging her. "What a good omen. The best omen."
Hannah nodded, unable to speak for a moment. She stood, and took a deep breath to clear her head. They were in the apothecary with the door closed, but all around them the building seethed with noise and movement.
"Luke should hear this news, too. It will mean so much to him to know our father is coming."
"Aye," Jennet said. "But there's no time to go running about looking for him. I'm expected in the clinic this last half hour."
"He's still being kept busy translating, then?"
Jennet drew in a deep breath. "At the moment he's most probably still at headquarters, but they'll assign him to a company today," Jennet said. "Commander Patterson took a liking to him, apparently. Luke expects to be put aboard the Carolina."
"I'd rather see him on the Carolina than in the infantry," Hannah said.
Jennet's mouth quirked. "Aye, weel. We've been unco unlucky when it comes to ships. I'd prefer---" She paused, and when Hannah gave her an encouraging nod, she went on. "I was wondering if perhaps there wad be a place for him in the same company as Ben."
Hannah saw how very uncomfortable Jennet was making this unusual request, and how much it meant to her. She said, "I can ask."
She folded the letters carefully. "At any rate, Luke needs to see the letter; it's excuse enough to send for him."
"And where will you be?" Jennet asked. Her tone had shifted: sudden awareness, and suspicion, too. And with good cause.
"I'm going to the field hospital," Hannah said. "They need experienced surgeons."
"Oh, no," Jennet said. "Not that. Haven't you done enough?"
"I haven't even started," Hannah said. She would have turned away but Jennet took her by the wrist, her grip hard.
"Who sent for you? The army doctors?"
Hannah laughed. "Of course not. It was Ben's idea."
For a moment they looked at each other, and Hannah was struck by an odd mixture of emotions. Affection, impatience, sadness.
"I can't stay behind," Hannah said, "knowing I could be of help."
Jennet flushed with irritation. She said, "And did ye no just read the wise words of a woman as dear to ye as a grandmither? Ye cannae help every puir soul that comes your way, Hannah Bonner."
"But those that I can help, I will," Hannah said. "As long as we are here, I will."
Jennet blinked, resigned. "I don't like it," she said. "Not one bit. But at least I've got an argument that must swing Luke to my way of seeing things. He'll want to be near you, and that's enough to keep him off the Carolina."
She looked about herself as if she were suddenly aware of how late it was in the day. "I'll have to go find him straightaway."
In fine weather, on good roads with a fresh horse, sixty miles was not much of a distance, not to Kit Wyndham, who had been born and raised on the broad expanse of the North American continent. In England and Europe, where land was far more precious, sixty miles was a different proposition altogether. Kit had learned that lesson in his three years on the Iberian Peninsula.
Now he was learning to measure miles again. Sixty miles from New Orleans to Pea Island, where the British troops were massing for the invasion. Every step of the way through the soggy, freezing wet. More than fourteen hours after Kit left New Orleans the fisherman's boat set him ashore on Pea Island, where he was greeted at bayonet point.
He identified himself to the marine on watch, offered the right password. Kit allowed himself one question. "Any word of General Pakenham?"
The marine sent him a sidelong glance, and then shrugged. "Expected any day. Couldn't be too soon, if you was to ask me, sir."
Trudging through the miserable encampment in ankle-deep mud and muck, Kit considered. Spirits must be abysmally low if the men were talking to strangers about their unhappiness with command. Kit thought longingly of hot water and dry clothes and food, things that he would be doing without for a long time to come. As the thousands of men bivouacking on these five barren acres had been doing without. Over the last week Admiral Cochrane's sailors had been ferrying men from the fleet to this island in a frenzy that did not spare space for tents or even sufficient rations.
He made his way toward the command tent, passing company after company: riflemen, infantry, artillery, the Highlanders who made it a point of pride to scoff at the weather. The West Indies troops who suffered more than the rest in the freezing rain. It seemed to his eye that their numbers were already much reduced. The wretches had another twelve hours or more in open boats to look forward to. The navy would dump them on solid ground within reach of New Orleans, but whether they would be in condition to bear arms, that was the question.
For the first time Kit felt real doubt about the outcome of the operation. They had the advantage in numbers of experienced soldiers and sailors, but it seemed a very long way from Pea Island to New Orleans, through bayou and ciprière, and then back again. Not only men, but power and ammunition and artillery guns had to be carried every step of the way.
A week ago he would have been able to share his concerns with his superiors, but now he had a report to deliver that would not lend to his credibility. Just the opposite, in fact. When he finished, his career would most likely be as compromised as his reputation.
The command tent was so crowded that one man had to leave before another could enter. Kit worked his way to the table in the middle, where a dozen officers were gathered around a map, each and every one of them intent on appearing unmoved by the blustering argument in their midst.
To someone less familiar with Admiral Cochrane and General Keane it might indeed seem that the two men were on the point of blows. The unfortunate truth was that they brought out the worst in each other: Cochrane's conceit and pride, Keane's impulsiveness and temper.
Keane had caught sight of Kit. With a few words the tent emptied out, until he was alone with the two senior officers.
"Not a moment too soon," Keane said. "Now, what can you tell us about Jackson's numbers, Major?"
Kit gave his report. His very dissatisfactory report, its deficiencies laid out clearly. He would not offer excuses. He could save that much pride at least. Getting it all out was something of a relief. Kit wondered if he had spent so much time with Roman Catholics that he had been infected with an inclination toward confession. He wondered if priests were ever truly shocked by what they heard, and if they got angry, as General Keane and Admiral Cochrane were now obviously angry. A humming tension, as high-pitched as a bow drawn across a violin, filled the room.
"If I understand you correctly, Major," General Keane began, "you are telling us that you were forced out of the city before you could get any certain information on the number and quality of troops arriving from the north. The exact information you were sent to gather."
"That is true, sir," Kit said. "The Kentucky and Tennessee troops will have arrived since I left New Orleans."
"And your network of informants is defunct."
"Yes, sir," Kit said. He was able to keep his voice steady.
"So you have nothing to show for your months of work except your life."
"I have nothing useful to show since my last report."
Cochrane could contain himself no longer. He said, "And this is the famous Exploring Officer who gave the French such a run for their money. Wellington's pet, they called you, is that right?"
Kit felt a flush of anger making its way up his face. He met Cochrane's gaze directly. "Not in my hearing, sir."
"Have you lost your mind, man?"
"I think perhaps I did, for a while," Kit said.
Keane held up a hand to ask for patience, and Cochrane sputtered to silence.
"I take it you still haven't found out the location of Lafitte's secret store of ammunition and powder, either."
"On the contrary, sir," Kit said. "That I can tell you, with certainty."
It was his one bit of currency, and it didn't go as far as he had hoped. Not once he told them the rest. Lafitte's stash was on the river, almost directly opposite the city.
"You're saying we can't get to it until we've taken the city and don't need it anymore," said Keane.
"Not at all, sir," said Kit Wyndham. "I'm saying it will require a small party of men, the right kind of transport, and a diversion of the first order."
Cochrane said, "You want to lead this mission, do you, Wyndham?"
"I am yours to command, sir," Wyndham said.
"Looking to redeem yourself, eh?" Cochrane squawked like a gander in a temper.
"Just so, sir."
There was a moment's silence in the tent.
Keane seemed to come to a conclusion. "Not straightaway," he said. "Let's see first how things go tonight. We may not have need of any more powder."
"Is it to be tonight, then, sir?" Kit tried not to let his disquiet show.
"In three brigades," said Keane. "You know the lay of the land between Fisherman's Village and the plantations---" he cast a glance at the map, "belonging to de la Ronde and Villeré?"
"Yes, sir, I know both plantations well."
"You'll join the advance," said Keane. "Under Colonel Thornton. We start at nine."
The next twelve hours did nothing to lessen Kit's doubts. The logistics of moving thousands of soldiers and artillery to the mainland would have been daunting under any circumstances, but Keane and Cochrane seemed to believe that by pure force of will and timing they could overcome what might prove to be a fatal flaw: They had too few boats of the right kind. And then, of course, there was the weather, which was turning from bad to worse.
The troops had been ferried to Pea Island from the fleet by the sailors who rowed sixty miles, back and forth, without pause. This next stage in the invasion would proceed in much the same way. Moving the army in installments was always tricky, as the advance could easily be overrun and dispatched before the next detachment arrived. And so Cochrane and Keane had come up with an alternate plan which did not bode well: The vanguard would sail first in the lighter vessels best able to navigate the shallow waters of the Bayou Catalan. The larger boats, sure to get stuck at some point, would follow. When they could go no further, the lighter vessels could be used to ferry the troops from the larger ones.
There was nothing to do but take on this flawed plan as his own and do everything in his power to make it work.
Kit worked with Thornton, a dour man who was well respected and equally feared by the troops he commanded. They had to move almost two thousand men from the 85th, the 95th Rifles, and the King's Own, along with artillery, engineers, and marines, which meant first that they had to be divided up among the available barges. Plans were made, discussed, changed, and finally set in place late in the night.
With less than three hours until first light, Kit rolled himself---back in uniform, finally---into a piece of waterproof canvas that smelled of mold and urine, and fell into an uneasy sleep.
And of course the plans fell apart immediately. Ten o'clock came and went as men were directed into and out of barges, artillery was reassigned, kits went lost and were found again. It was almost noon by the time the advance pushed off, men packed in so tightly that there was no possibility of movement, not even to adjust a hat when the rain started in earnest. Kit found himself revisiting the calculations that had so plagued him the day before: from the fleet to Pea Island, from Pea Island to Bayou Catalan, through the ciprière and along the canals to the de la Ronde plantation, the site chosen by scouts. And then back again, mile by mile. If they should fail, if they should lose this battle, retreat would be almost impossible. Clearly Cochrane and Keane had simply refused to contemplate such an event. That in itself made Kit uneasy.
Around him men tried to keep their spirits up by telling stories and singing, and for a while it seemed to work. Then the rain turned to sleet and the charcoal fire that was too little to give off real heat went cold, taking with it most of the forced good cheer and leaving every one of them to fold into himself, silent. To conserve what energy and heat they could, while the sailors rowed and rowed toward an unseen shore.
At dusk they reached the fishing village, quiet but for the barking of dogs and apparently deserted.
The troops, wet and dispirited, came back to life by the discovery that there was indeed a guarded camp, and the piquets were all sound asleep in the shacks. In a matter of minutes they were surrounded and taken prisoner.
"So much for the fabled American militia." Thornton allowed himself a small laugh as the prisoners were marched off for questioning.
Kit said, "The ones in blue belong to a company called the Chasseurs."
Thornton grunted. "Chasseurs, indeed. An insult to good fighting men."
"I doubt Jackson realized that the rich sons of New Orleans bankers had been assigned this duty," said Kit.
"Let's hope there's a great deal he doesn't know," said Thornton with a rare grin.
With renewed energy the sailors shoved off and the barges began to work their way laboriously through the shallow waters of Catalan and then, narrower, the Bayou Mazant. None of the men around Kit had seen the ciprière before, and they looked about themselves with interest and some disquiet, thinking, Kit could imagine it well, that they would not like to fight a battle in such a place, neither land nor lake, but a combination of the two. Full of strange trees dripping moss, as welcoming as a graveyard. A Scot asked in a low voice about alligators, as if he believed they might hear him and come to introduce themselves.
"They don't like the cold," Kit told him. "In the summer months you'd see dozens of them sunning themselves, but now they're asleep on the bottom."
His answer seemed to quiet some unspoken fear but also stoked general curiosity, and a half dozen whispered questions came his way. The order for silence was welcome, coming as it did just before they reached the de la Ronde canal, which turned out to be blocked with branches and whole dead trees. Something Kit had tried to tell Keane about, but the general had more faith in his advance party than he did in Kit Wyndham.
The engineers consulted briefly, and pronounced the situation impossible. They moved on, through acres of rushes tall enough to hide a thousand men. Kit was wondering what they might do when they found that Jackson had ordered every one of these canals blocked, when they arrived at the next one and found it completely clear. Thornton issued orders, and the first of thousands of British soldiers put foot on American soil.
They came out of the rushes onto a large plantation that reached all the way to the high embankment of the Mississippi, into recently harvested cane fields, dry and firm underfoot, divided here and there by fences. In the middle distance stood the planter's house, surrounded by mature trees and gardens and outbuildings. Some cows and sheep grazed near the far border of the property, but there was not a soldier in sight, nor even a slave at work.
The Americans had known for many days about the invasion force, its size and location. Jackson had had more good information about the British than they had about him, but now the advance spread out, unseen, unchallenged, to cross the fields that led, like stepping-stones, a mere seven miles to the city of New Orleans.
Kit, glad he had kept his doubts to himself, went with them.
Gabriel Villeré had a favorite chair in his father's parlor, where he settled with a cigar after a solid breakfast. Around him were his hunting dogs, his younger brother Jules, and many of his best friends. An altogether agreeable morning, as the sun had finally come out after a cold and rainy night.
Villeré tugged at his uniform, which was pretty enough to parade in but damn uncomfortable otherwise. It pinched his neck and made him cross, and he wondered if his friends felt the same but were afraid to say so for fear of sounding soft. A few weeks ago they had sat in this very room, eager to join the militia, to get in on the fighting. Some of them out of patriotism, or curiosity, or just simply for the excitement of it. Gabriel had joined because he couldn't think of an excuse not to that would satisfy either his father---General Jacques Villeré, commander of the entire Louisiana militia---or his father-inlaw, who was also in uniform and talked a good deal about the honor of shedding blood to protect one's home and land. His father was a good man, but not a particularly insightful one when it came to his own children. His father-in-law was not quite so enamored and saw Gabriel more clearly.
But he had put on the uniform, and accepted the rank of major and the assignment that came with it. His responsibilities were few and minor: block the bayous, protect Fisherman's Village, and keep watch for the British. In return he could sleep comfortably and eat well. The ladies had been sent to Grand Terre, but his closest friends were close by. Really, things could be much worse. He could be with the rest of the uniformed militia on the Bayou St. John in moldy tents, suffering the December night winds off of Pontchartrain.
Here all he had to do was dispatch a few men to tramp along the canal and bayou as far as the fishing village where Catalan joined Bayou Mazant. The fact that those men hadn't returned yet seemed nothing to worry about. There had been freezing rain in the night, and they were smart enough to take cover out of the weather. No doubt they would come strolling in before noon complaining of poor food and wet feet.
What the heir to the Villeré plantation could not put out of his head, though he tried, was the fact that he had not yet sent the slaves to obstruct the canal. Jackson's reasoning was that the man-made waterways that connected the Mississippi to the bayous and then the Gulf were too tempting for the British to resist. The planters to either side---including Gabriel's father-in-law to the north---had made a great production out of the whole silly venture. Gabriel had hesitated, though Jackson's engineer had been by more than once to remind him what the major general expected. What he ordered.
It grated, to have such a man as a commander. Jackson was a Yankee, after all, and really knew nothing of Louisiana or the way things worked here. To obstruct a canal would be the work of a few days, but to clear it again would take much longer, and as owners of a working plantation, the Villerés depended on the canal. Gabriel most especially depended on it, as he kept busy for most of the year running goods for the Lafittes.
As if the British would choose such a route into the city to start with, through swamp and bog. They would come in by way of Pontchartrain and the Chef Menteur road. It was the obvious choice.
"I don't believe it," one of his companions was saying in a heated tone. "I won't believe it until I hear his confession for myself."
Gabriel looked down at his younger brother Jules, who had been playing with the dogs while he listened to the conversation.
"They're still arguing about Poiterin," Jules said. "Whether he really is a spy."
Gabriel shrugged. "I myself find it hard to believe," he said, using his elbows to lift himself out of his chair. He opened the lid of a carved walnut box and hesitated over the selection of cigars as he thought of Honoré Poiterin, who was a good man to have at a dinner party. To be seen with someone so daring was to borrow some of his shine, for a short while at least.
"They say he's gone to fight for the British," said Jules, his voice still low.
"He's signed his death warrant if that's true," said Gabriel.
Moll ambled over and pushed her nose into his hand. He rubbed her head and started for the door. If he smoked in here, he would have both his wife and his mother to deal with, and it simply wasn't worth the trouble.
At the door, Moll went suddenly still. Later Gabriel would remember that one moment as the last peaceful minute of his life, because it was followed by an explosion of wood and glass as the door was kicked open and a company of English soldiers came crashing in.
It had been a quiet morning, and now it was full of English riflemen in dark green jackets and infantry in dull red. They poured in every door, herding the rest of Gabriel's men before them until every one of them stood, some still in short clothes, in a huddle in the middle of the parlor.
Through it all, one thought repeated itself in Gabriel Villeré's mind: Now it's done. Now he'll know.
One of the younger dogs snapped at a soldier and got a kick in the ribs for his trouble. Jules let out a furious cry and would have rushed forward, but was caught up by a more cautious hand: Pierre Solet, whose sharpest look wasn't for any of the men who had invaded this house, but for Gabriel himself.
They were all looking at him, waiting for him to do something. They didn't understand that Gabriel was incapable of doing anything at all. He had lost the power of speech and locomotion and coherent thought, all replaced by the image of his father's face.
Then out of the confusion an officer stepped forward and addressed Gabriel directly. He was Colonel Thornton of the 95th of Foot. His manner was all that was correct and courteous, but his tone was as hard as ironwood. "You are our prisoners, Major---"
"Villeré," Gabriel supplied. "Of the New Orleans Militia." His English was not very good, but he caught the gist of the commands that Thornton spit out, rapid-fire, to men who peeled away to do his bidding. They were all in high good spirits. They had taken the Villeré plantation without firing a shot, and now it would serve as the British headquarters during the battle for New Orleans.
From the window, Gabriel saw that the entire plantation was crawling with British soldiers. Who had come, no doubt, by way of Lake Borgne, the bayous, and finally an unobstructed Villeré canal. What had happened to the men he had dispatched to Fisherman's Village? He could not ask, but he could imagine. He hoped they had put up more of a defense than he had.
As they were herded together against the wall, searched, and stripped of weapons, Jules found Gabriel's side and stayed close. His eyes, as round and bright as pennies, fixed on Gabriel's.
"Do something," Jules said. And it was clear to Gabriel that he must do something, the one and only thing there was to do.
Major Gabriel Villeré offered the officers wine and cigars and a seat by the fire. And while he played host, struggling to maintain a polite, deferential tone, his mind, shocked for once out of lethargy, went to work.
From the veranda, Kit Wyndham watched a feckless Gabriel Villeré move like a puppet from one side of the parlor to another. He looked stunned, as well he should be.
Kit turned away, glad that Thornton had not asked him to take part in the actual capture of the house. Instead he had been assigned responsibility for dealing with the civilians, most specifically the slaves. It was his job to make them comfortable with this rather drastic change in their circumstances. He was to get any information they could provide, and convince them that while they were now free, their services would be greatly appreciated. The quartermaster would have to see to feeding the thousands of men who were coming, and for that he would need the locals. Thornton would expect a proper dinner tonight, and wine, and a fire. He would call the women who served the table servants instead of slaves, but beyond that they would be invisible to him.
There were a dozen slaves, young and old, about half of them the ones who worked in the house and kitchen. None of them, men or women, would meet his eye. Fear, disorientation, confusion. Kit spoke to them in a tone he hoped would strike them as friendly without being coercive. Most probably they wouldn't trust him anyway, and in that they were right. They had been hearing for a long time about what good things the British would do for them, but what reason did they have to believe those rumors? And if things went badly here after all, they would find themselves returned to their owners, and in worse shape than they had been yesterday.
But he did his best. Kit spoke to the slaves in his own approximation of the local French. He offered them a fair wage for their work, pointed out the quartermaster who would pay them, answered the few subdued questions they asked.
A younger man, heavily muscled and as broad through the chest as a barrel, was the one to ask the inevitable.
"And if you British lose? What happens to us then? Will you take all of us to England and give us places to live and work?"
There was only one possible answer, and Kit gave it. "The Americans can't stand up to the full force of the British army and navy. You have nothing to worry about."
Walking away later, Kit hoped the cook and kitchen helpers would not be among the ones who ran off. A dragoon ran up to him, dismayed to find that the slaves had already dispersed.
"I wanted you to ask them where the rest of the horses have been hid." The invasion forces had only enough horses for the officers; the dragoons, for whom a horse was as basic a piece of equipment as a right arm, had had to come on foot like the infantry. They had been hoping to find mounts on the plantations, but if Villeré was any indication, the dragoons would not be mounted at all for the duration of this campaign.
The dragoons were disappointed, but the rest of the troops were in good spirits. The weather was dry and unusually warm, and there was no sign of resistance.
"Easy pickings," he heard one man say to another. "By tonight they'll have finished with the transport and we can march on New Orleans tomorrow."
After the misery of the journey, it all seemed too easy. A dozen of the Highlanders got the quartermaster's permission to have a look at the levee, where they promptly stripped down and dove into the Mississippi, muddy and cold as it was.
"Yesterday they couldn't wait to get out of the wet," said Quartermaster Surtees to Kit. "Soldiers." And he shook his head with all the exasperated affection of a father.
Standing on the levee, Kit surveyed the river and the bordering properties. To the north was Denis de la Ronde's plantation, with a mansion that had no equal in five hundred miles for beauty or graciousness. De la Ronde intended to transform all of southern Louisiana into a new France, and so he had called his home Versailles. Kit had been invited to an evening party there a few weeks ago, and he had danced with de la Ronde's daughter, Gabriel Villeré's young wife. A pretty but easily confused young lady, who had been sent away with the other ladies to safety.
He was thinking of that pleasant evening, of the wine and card games and conversation, when Kit heard the commotion from the house. He turned in time to see Gabriel Villeré leaping a fence to tear across the fields, one of his dogs running at his heels. Muskets had already come up and began to fire, but it seemed that Villeré could move when the need was on him. He disappeared into a swampy area of trees and bushes that separated this property from de la Ronde's, and a half dozen of the 95th gave chase, only to come back a quarter hour later empty-handed.
"And so he'll carry the tale to Jackson," said the quartermaster, who still stood beside Kit. "You've seen the man. What will he do? Jump up from his dinner to come wave his sword in our faces?"
And the quartermaster laughed uproariously at the idea of the American military on the offensive. Americans had never been known to attack, not in all the years they had been fighting wars on this continent.
Kit looked out over the troops making themselves at home in the expanse of land between the river and the swamp, and some of the disquiet of the last day came back to him. But he said nothing to the quartermaster, who was still laughing at his own joke as Kit walked away.
At mid-afternoon, Jennet showed up at headquarters. Luke heard her voice in the main office and braced himself for some kind of disturbing news; his wife disliked the army headquarters and would never come here unless truly compelled.
And as it turned out the news was both good and bad. The letter she brought was a shock and a pleasure. And then she told him about Hannah.
He took a moment to think it all through: His sister was going to help at a field hospital. Not the main field hospital---Luke realized this immediately though Jennet seemed not to; the army surgeons and the doctors from the city would hardly admit her to their number---but some other, smaller affair with no official standing. It made sense, and it made him uneasy, but he could no more forbid Hannah than he could shoot her.
"And so it's clear," Jennet was saying. "If ye must join a company, you should join the Choctaws. That way ye can keep an eye on your sister."
"And Ben Savard can keep an eye on me, isn't that what you're thinking?"
Jennet's mouth tightened. He knew her expression, and it was one that did not bode well. She would have her way, even should it be necessary to spill blood.
She said, "It is the logical thing to do, and weel ye ken it."
Luke thought of the Carolina, where he was expected to report. The ship would be manned mostly by the Baratarians, who were experts in artillery and had supplied their own cannons, guns, ammunition, and black powder. He was uneasy still about this idea, as there were some men from Barataria that he would rather not run into just now.
He said, "If the Choctaw will have me---"
Jennet interrupted him. "Ben Savard will see to it."
"Then I'll talk to Butler."
And Jennet's face blossomed into an unsteady smile that told him just how worried she had been at the idea of his joining a gun crew. She came and put her hands on his chest, went up on tiptoe, and kissed him soundly.
"Thank you," she said. "I'll rest much easier."
Luke took a moment he could ill afford to pull her closer and kiss her again.
"You'll come back to us," Jennet said, nipping at his lower lip to underscore her command. "You'll come back whole."
Before he could go find Major Butler, the man appeared before him with an agitated Creole in tow. A planter by the name of Leroux, who had no English but nevertheless wanted to convey something of importance.
Luke listened for a moment and asked a question, and then reported.
"Another sighting of British sloops," he said. "Almost word for word like the last report."
Major Butler nodded. "Thank him, will you? And send him on his way."
"He also wants to know if the American government will reimburse him for the slaves who run away with the British," Luke went on. He put this question to Butler without any particular intonation, as if he were asking about the weather. In fact it was nothing new; the wealthy landowners were all worried about this particular point. It went hand in hand with the rumor that Jackson would burn New Orleans before he let it fall to the British, something that the major general roundly denied, but which Luke held was highly probable.
Butler's mouth contorted. He said, "Tell him that all reasonable claims will be considered, when the time comes."
Luke translated, and then held up a hand to keep Butler from leaving. He said, "A small matter," and then requested the change in assignment, which Butler agreed to without hesitation. There were far larger things to worry about, after all, such as the shouting from the main office: Major General Jackson in a fit of temper. Butler ran, and Luke followed.
Jackson stood in the middle of the main office with two men. One was a gentleman planter Luke recognized as de la Ronde. The second man was twenty years or so younger. They were both officers in the uniformed militia, and both men were disheveled. In part most probably because they had rushed here---de la Ronde still held his riding crop in one hand---but also because no man living could face Andrew Jackson in a temper and remain unaffected.
The younger man looked as if he might faint. His complexion was the color of cheese, his mouth opening and closing in spasms as the elder one talked, a jumble of French and heavily accented English.
Jackson caught sight of Luke and he made a sharp cutting gesture with his hand in de la Ronde's direction.
"I'll have my own translator." And to Luke: "This is Major Gabriel Villeré and his father-in-law de la Ronde. I want you to ask Villeré to tell the story of what happened since yesterday at his father's plantation, and I want to hear your translation sentence by sentence."
Luke began by introducing himself, trying for a tone that might provide Villeré with the courage to forge ahead. Then the young officer began to speak, at first slowly and in short sentences.
There was nothing complicated about the story, and Luke translated it almost automatically. He was able to keep first his surprise and then his alarm out of his voice as he recounted Villeré's actions: the company dispatched to Fisherman's Village, the orders they had been given, the fact that Villeré had retired early to his bed and not risen until well past first light.
The sudden attack and capture by British soldiers.
"Stop there," Jackson said. "I want you to translate my questions word for word."
Luke nodded his understanding.
"Major Villeré, by what path did the British troops gain access to your property?"
Villeré answered, and Luke translated: "By means of the canal that runs from the ciprière across the fields and stops short of the levee."
Jackson's face was very still. "The canal that you were ordered to obstruct two weeks ago?"
Villeré listened to the question. "Oui. Yes."
Jackson paused. "You escaped from the British by jumping through a window and running to de la Ronde's plantation?"
"Oui."
"And then you rode here directly."
Another pause, while de la Ronde and Villeré exchanged glances.
"I will have an answer," Jackson said, his voice deceptively calm.
Luke listened to Villeré's halting narrative and then translated.
"First we rowed across the river, and then we found horses and rode north, and crossed the river again."
Jackson's expression was thunderous. "You crossed the river? For what purpose?"
Villeré began to stammer. De la Ronde's expression was as stiff and fragile as glass.
"Let me suggest to you," Jackson said, "exactly what happened. You ran to your father-in-law and told him what had happened in the hope that he would ride here directly and alert us. Then you intended to run away rather than face court-martial for dereliction of duty, and you ran to find a boat. Your father-in-law refused to let you go alone, and spent the crossing convincing you that to add desertion to your crimes would mean certain death. He succeeded, and so you then rode north and crossed the river again and came here. This whole additional episode costing us at least another hour. M. de la Ronde, have I come close?"
When Luke had relayed the entire speech, de la Ronde bowed from the shoulders and clicked his heels. In halting English he said, "In the essentials, yes, Major General."
"You are a wise man, but your daughter married an idiot," said Jackson. Mostly to himself he said, "The British infiltrated and made camp without firing a single shot. That's the short and long of it, would you say, Villeré?"
The sound of Villeré's breathing was very loud as Luke translated.
"Oui. Yes."
The movement, when it came, was sudden. Jackson raised both fists and crashed them onto the table before him so violently that the glass in the windowpanes shivered.
"By God," he shouted, the blood rushing into his face. "They will not sleep on American soil. I swear it."
There was a moment of absolute silence, in which none of them even breathed. Then Jackson's gaze fell on Gabriel Villeré, and he walked around the table to stand in front of him.
"Your sword."
Villeré looked at Luke. He meant to be stoic, but the blood had drained from his face leaving only high color on his cheekbones, as if he were in the grip of a fever. He drew his sword and held it out to the major general, who took it.
"Mr. Bonner," said Jackson. "Call on the guard and see to it that this man is escorted to the garrison gaol. Send word to his father as well. The court-martial will have to wait until we've driven the British back to the sea. Major Butler, send word to Fort St. Charles. Three volleys, if you please. We march south today."
New Orleans was a Catholic town full of churches and chapels, and in each church there was a bell tower. Bells told the hour, summoned the faithful to Mass, reminded them when it was time to say their prayers, announced births and deaths, called citizens to fight fires and floods. Now the bells were tolling wildly while the echo of the triple cannon blast from Fort St. Charles still hung in the air.
Jackson was calling all men to arms. The American troops were on their way to meet the British.
Since the moment Hannah had agreed to join the company of Choctaw, a knot had been tightening in the pit of her belly. She felt her whole self being stretched thin, as fragile as a bubble. She tried to recall why she had agreed, what had compelled her to go against her instincts.
Then the signal guns sounded, and just that suddenly all tension left her in a rush, as hot as blood.
With complete calm she finished what she was doing. She folded a blanket and spread it over the hospital cot, shook out the pillow, looked around the clinic---now empty but for an old man too sick to get out of his bed---and left to get ready. Ben Savard would be coming for her.
She passed through the main clinic, where Julia and Rachel were working with Clémentine and a half dozen other women to get ready for the influx of wounded. Through the windows that looked out on the rue Royale, Hannah caught sight of crowds in the street, driven by panic and excitement both.
It was a kind of madness that came over people; Hannah could see it in their faces, like a fever. Once she had been infected with it, too, but she had passed beyond such things. She would go to tend to the wounded and comfort the dying; she would bring all her skill and knowledge to that work. But she felt no thrill at the sound of drums and bugles, nor any anger or fear or joy. Those were things she could not afford to take with her onto a battlefield.
Jennet was in the little clinic when the triple cannon volley sounded. She startled so thoroughly that the basin of dirty water she was carrying slopped over and soaked her apron, which was none too clean to start with.
The little girl lying on the cot beside her didn't startle, or even blink. Since her grandfather had died she hadn't spoken a word, and it was an hour's work to coax a few spoonfuls of broth into her.
Dr. Savard had asked her to take on the responsibility for the little clinic, and she had been glad to be given work. Once the fighting began and the first wounded were carried back to the city, some of them---the ones with wounds that would not kill them outright---would end up here.
With her, Jennet had two of Mrs. Livingston's servants, older negro women she hardly knew, whose names were Susan and Martha. Though they looked nothing like the women who had run the kitchen at Carryckcastle for all of Jennet's girlhood, she sensed that these two were cut from the same mold: opinionated, steadfast, unflinching in an emergency, and able to exert their will almost effortlessly when it came to dealing with children or the infirm. Together the three of them would look after the lesser wounds, provide food and drink and a place to dry clothes and boots. Then the men they had cared for would go back to battle to be shot at again.
Jennet was stringing a rope across the room so they would have someplace out of the rain to hang wet clothes when she saw Martha, the younger and taller of the two servants, put down the brush she was using to scrub the table and look to the window, where Ben Savard could be seen speaking to a neighbor.
"Jean-Benoît," Martha said, and her dark face split into an affectionate smile.
"My," said Susan. "Look at the man." And she clucked her tongue in admiration.
"Come to fetch the Redbone doctor," said Martha.
Jennet took a deep breath, but before she could think of what to say, or if she should say anything, Ben Savard had come into the room. She got down from her stool to greet him, and realized that the door from the courtyard had opened, too. Henry Savard came in, with Hannah just behind him.
Since they had been in the city Hannah had worn the simple gray gown and sturdy shoes Julia provided, but today she had put those clothes aside. Now she wore a hunting shirt of felted wool dyed a deep red. The shirt was so long that it reached to her knees, and so wide that it hung in folds that had been cinched tight to her waist by means of a long red scarf. Two more scarves of the same color were looped loosely around her neck.
The fringed hem of the shirt touched the embroidered and beaded bands of high winter moccasins dyed a true deep red. Like the hunting shirt and the short cape that hung down Hannah's back, the moccasins had been heavily embroidered. Across her chest she had strapped a leather bandolier with silver fittings; from it, a beaded sheath hung down over her left hip. The grip of a long knife faced forward so she could reach across and draw it easily.
In her hands she carried a wide-brimmed felt hat with a low crown, and slung on her back was a canvas pack.
Jennet knew exactly what was in that pack: an instrument case with scalpels and saws, the tools Hannah would need to amputate an arm or close a wound or draw out an arrowhead or shrapnel. There would be bandages and gauze, lint and plasters. A variety of needles in a flannel roll, heavy thread, laudanum, camphor, and alum to be used as a styptic. In a wooden case lined with felt were stoppered bottles of rectified spirits and brandy and Jesuits' bark tea.
If Hannah must go to war, she would be prepared.
Jennet turned to Ben, who looked far too pleased with himself.
She said, "The clothes?"
"My mother's."
Henry provided the crucial detail. "Grand-mère Amélie," he said. "She was a Seminole princess."
"Of my eight great-grandparents, one was a Seminole princess," said Ben.
"Oh, Amélie was a princess all right," said Martha, who had never stopped smiling. "And don't you look like one, too, in her things."
Hannah managed only a short, tight smile. She said, "If we're done discussing my wardrobe, I'm ready to go."
"I wish I were ready to watch you go," Jennet said dryly.
"It's only six miles south of the city," Hannah said. "I'll be far from the fighting."
"You'll be right in the middle of it all," Jennet said, her voice catching. "As you always are." She turned to Ben Savard.
"If anything happens to her---"
There was a glittering in Ben's eyes that made the color spark like turquoise. No tears, but pride and hope and love, and Jennet understood that those things would have to be promise enough.
It was half past three when they left the clinic. The first thing that struck Hannah was how empty the streets were. After so many weeks of crowds, it was unsettling.
"Jackson is reviewing the troops," Ben said, reading the question from her face. "That's where we're headed."
They trotted at an easy pace through the streets, catching sight now and then of a figure behind a window or on a balcony. There were no children to be seen anywhere, no young women walking, nobody in the cafés. But Hannah sensed them, the women with their children, the men too old to take part in this newest war. Waiting for the fighting to begin, so they could wait for it to end. Sitting in darkened parlors clutching carving knives, having handed even the most antique muskets over to the hundreds of men who had walked into the city to volunteer without weapons of any kind.
The air was cold on Hannah's skin, and it felt good. The smell of rain was in the air, along with a faint tinge of gunpowder that settled on the tongue, a taste as familiar as salt. She felt no tension, but neither could she stop the jumble of questions her mind produced. She hoped that there would be some kind of shelter---a barn, a shed---any place with a roof and walls to cut out the winds and the worst of the wet. She didn't like the idea of treating battle wounds out in the open in such weather, though she had done it more than once before.
"What are you thinking?"
She glanced at Ben. "How strange that it all comes back to me so easily. How it never gets easy."
He made a sound deep in his throat that said he understood.
Ben turned into a narrow street and Hannah followed him, drawing up short when he made a gesture that asked her to wait while he went into a small cottage with shuttered windows. A tabby cat sat on the porch blinking at Hannah until Ben came back. He had a man with him, by his dress and bearing a free man of color, someone of considerable standing in his community. He was wearing strong boots and a traveling cloak and he carried a battered portmanteau.
"Hannah Bonner," Ben said. "May I introduce Hyacinth Rousseau. You are both doctors and surgeons."
In her surprise Hannah stumbled a little. "Dr. Rousseau. My pleasure."
He was smiling at her, a man of at least sixty, with a bald head like a speckled brown egg. The doctor took the hand Hannah offered and his grasp was firm and dry and cool. His eyes were sharp, but not unkind in their appraisal. He spoke English to her, with the local French accent.
"Dr. Bonner. I've heard good things about you. You've won the approbation of Maman Zuzu, which is something I have not managed in more than fifty years."
Hannah said, "It would have happened sooner if you were a woman, no doubt."
His whole face contorted around his smile. The doctor took the hat from under his arm and fit it carefully to his head. "Shall we go?"
There were many questions Hannah would have liked to ask, and she might have even made the attempt, if not for the noise of the bugles and drums.
They came to the levee and climbed it by means of the stairs hacked into the turf. The wide brown river, pockmarked with rain, was higher than the land around it, like a pulsing artery pushing up to run along ridges of muscle. The river was full of boats of every type and size. Hannah saw a large schooner, a good hundred feet in length and heavily armed. Its decks crawled with men out of uniform, the kind of rough sailors she had become familiar with in the year that they had been searching for Jennet. Among them were a few sailors in the dark blue jackets of the American navy.
"The Carolina," Ben said.
They trotted along the levee until they came in sight of an open field to find what must be, it seemed to Hannah, every soldier, militiaman, marine, and sailor in the entire southern United States. Army regulars, backwoodsmen, pirates, farmers, shopkeepers, cabinetmakers, bankers, and lawyers. Two dozen Choctaw, a battalion of free men of color. A total of some two thousand men, many with no experience in battle at all. Some still without weapons.
Downriver, the very best of the British empire---the military force that had defeated Napoleon---waited.
Beside her Dr. Rousseau said, "May the good Lord keep them, every one."
On the far side of the field Hannah picked out General Jackson, surrounded by staff and officers, on the Levee Road that overlooked the field. The troops had begun to march, one company at a time, in formation. The officers were mounted, and the sun glinted on epaulettes and bridles and the telescope that Major General Jackson was using to study the river.
"Where are we going?" she asked Ben.
"The DuPré plantation."
"We had best get moving," said Dr. Rousseau. "It will be dark in another hour."
He was not young, but the doctor proved himself capable enough when speed was called for. It seemed he also had questions, and wouldn't wait to ask them. Ben told what he knew, and none of it was good. The British had got a foothold on a plantation just south of the city, and that without a battle.
"A poor start," said Dr. Rousseau. "But not yet time to despair."
Conversation slowed and then stopped as the road became clogged with men, on foot and on horseback, wagons and caissons, handcarts and wheelbarrows. Hannah let herself be swept along, and kept her eyes on Ben.
She thought of the men she didn't know yet, the Choctaw warriors who would be in her care, and how little she would be able to do for a serious wound to the head or gut. She could bind gashes and extract bullets if they hadn't penetrated the abdomen. She could amputate. She had good instruments, perfectly honed; she had medicines. There was even laudanum, though there might not be time to use it. She had the power of her mind and the sustaining memory of all her teachers over the years, who stood behind her. And she wasn't alone. She was comforted by the presence of Dr. Rousseau.
An hour out of the city, they left the main Levee Road and cut down through the fields, and Hannah realized that they had caught up with Juzan's company of Choctaw warriors. When they came to a stand of trees, they were waiting. Among them was her brother.
Luke grinned as he came to her. His face was smeared with mud and his hair was hidden under a turban, so that at first glance he might have been another Choctaw.
He said, "Jennet insisted."
"Of course she did," said Hannah. "I have this idea that together Jennet and Ben could set even the government to rights."
Luke looked first surprised, and then pleased. "You're right, they are alike in some ways." And then: "I'll have his back, as much as I'm able."
Hannah didn't know what to say to this, and so she only squeezed her brother's arm and turned back to the other men.
One of the warriors, older than the rest, was talking to Ben. Most probably this was some relative of his, but she would have to wait for an explanation: In many ways the southern tribes were no different from her own people; it would be rude to interrupt the exchange of information that was part of such a reunion.
And so she took the opportunity to study the older man, taking in the graying hair that hung down from the rough linen turban he wore wrapped around his head like many of the others in the company. Juzan might be the man Jackson had appointed to lead these men into battle, but Hannah knew she was looking at a Choctaw war chief, the only man whose word would count with the warriors who waited quietly, watching the growing shadows and keeping track of every living being within hearing.
Finally he turned away from Ben and went directly to Dr. Rousseau. The two men were clearly acquainted but formal with each other, each reserved and respectful. They spoke a language that was mostly the local French but studded with words in other languages, Spanish and the Indian tongues. She had been favorably disposed toward Dr. Rousseau, and she saw that her instincts had been right. This was a man who could work side by side with Indians and Redbones.
When he finally turned to her, Hannah learned that the chief's name was David Fairweather. He had a name in his own language as well, but that was not offered to her. Later she would have to ask Ben Savard what it meant that the war chief denied her his name. She feared it couldn't be anything good, but then she saw no evidence of disapproval in his face, nor could she hear it in his voice.
David Fairweather was a full-blood Choctaw who wore tribal tattoos on his cheeks and forehead. His brow had been purposely flattened by means of a board pressed to his head when he was an infant, but his clothing was the usual mixture of native and white: doeskin and homespun. He wore a long, dull blue shirt without a collar, a scarf knotted around his neck, loose leggings and winter moccasins, everything embroidered and beaded. Across his chest was a broad wampum string with a pattern Hannah didn't recognize, and he carried so many weapons---including war club, long rifle, and bow and arrows---that he might have been setting out to turn back the whole English army single-handed.
No doubt the Choctaw were divided, as was every other tribe, on the matter of traditions. There would still be Choctaw women who bound boards against the soft foreheads of their newborns to force their skulls into this particular version of beauty, just as there would be others who despised those mothers for their inability to leave the old ways behind.
The men talked among themselves for a while, Juzan explaining the orders they had been given. At one point she felt gazes shift toward her and away again, and she realized that they were talking about her. She heard healer and woman and friend. When Ben came over she saw relief and satisfaction in his expression.
She said, "They didn't know you asked me to come?"
"Juzan knew."
Later, Hannah told herself, she would ask more questions. There would be a lot of them.
Ben was saying, "Dr. Rousseau, you know the DuPré slave alley? Mose is waiting for you there; he'll get you what you need."
"I know it," said Dr. Rousseau.
Hannah's throat was very dry, but she made herself speak. "Watch out for yourself, Jean-Benoît Savard. And for my brother."
He grinned at her, sure of himself. Sure of her. His easy smile was more comfort than any empty promise.
In the gathering dusk, Hannah studied the countryside and the plantations stacked along the river like layers of a cake. As large farms went, the plantations were not much different from their counterparts in the north. Main houses, some simple and single-storied, others ornate and sprawling; barns and stables, warehouses and outbuildings. Sugar-works. Chicken pens, cattle and sheep grazing, hayricks and cotton bales stacked in pyramids and covered over with tarpaulin. Ditches, fences, canals, and in the distance, the ciprière, a wall of shadows. Bats danced overhead, quick shapes against the darkening sky, and the smell of night rose out of the stubble in the fields as the color seeped out of the world.
They passed through a marshy half acre of reeds and cypress and came out on another plantation, this time directly among the cabins that housed the slaves. They were screened from the main house by a grove of pecan trees so that they seemed almost like a small and isolated village.
The cabins were arranged in two long lanes that intersected at a right angle. Between the cabins, small gardens had been dug under for the winter. A flock of geese waddled by, followed by two boys who looked more surprised than alarmed to see the strangers.
Women were coming to their doors to call to children and nod to Dr. Rousseau, though most of them did not meet his eye. Out of respect or fear it was impossible to say, and, Hannah told herself, unimportant.
"Where are the men?"
The doctor glanced at her. "Jackson's engineers have put every male slave over the age of ten to work for the last three weeks, mostly digging ditches and blocking bayous."
It had been a naïve question, just as it would be naïve to ask why these women and children had not been sent away to safety.
There was one older man left, at least. Mose met them at the door of the cabin they were to have as their field hospital. And with him was Père Tomaso. Hannah had last seen him at her bedside in the long days of her last illness, when she had been so badly beaten that she could hardly breathe for pain. He had come to sit beside her every afternoon for two weeks or more, often to tell her stories about Ben that made her laugh in spite of the pain. Sometimes he read to her aloud. What he had been reading---a newspaper or the Bible or poetry---that Hannah could not recall, but his voice had steadied her, something calm and soothing to focus on in the worst time.
Hannah wondered what other surprises Ben had waiting for them, even while she greeted the man. She was glad to see him; another pair of hands were always welcome in a field hospital.
He saw the question on her face and answered it. "The man who owns this plantation is my brother-in-law. My sister offered us the use of the cabin."
"You are good to come and help," Hannah said. "I don't know why Ben didn't mention it to me."
"Ben likes to set plans in motion, but rarely talks about them until he sees how they work out," the priest said.
"I'm learning that about him," Hannah said dryly.
Dr. Rousseau ducked his head, too old and wise to make any comment.
They went inside together. The cabin was small, with walls that had been recently whitewashed, and a swept hard-packed earth floor. There was a hearth with firewood stacked beside it, and two water buckets. The only furniture was a table, three stools, and two pallets on the ground, each covered with a clean blanket. An unlit lantern stood on the table.
Hannah had the sense that these things were the best the people had to offer, gathered from each of the cabins for their use. She was thinking this as she saw Père Tomaso take a dozen fat candles out of the sack he had with him.
"From the church," he said. "I thought you'd need them."
Dr. Rousseau was unpacking his own bag. He said to Hannah, "Tomaso is half a doctor himself. He'll be a big help." He glanced at her over his shoulder, a smile cutting a sickle through his close-cropped beard.
"Now there's nothing to do but wait," said Hannah.
"I've got another idea," said Dr. Rousseau. "There's still enough light; let's go to the levee, have a look and see what the English are up to."
Père Tomaso declined to join them, for reasons that were unclear to Hannah. But she followed Dr. Rousseau readily to the levee and up to the road that ran along it. And there was the river, as always, bending one way and then another like a fat old serpent, the water fast-moving and muddy.
The doctor pointed out the main house on the McCarty plantation, where Jackson had his headquarters.
"And the field hospital," Hannah guessed aloud.
"Oh, yes," said Dr. Rousseau. "Three or four doctors from the city and Jackson's own surgeons, all set up there."
He talked about the plantations that lined the river, who owned them and what they grew, which owners had joined the militia, which had gone away to safety and left the protection of their private property to the army.
"And just down there, you should be able to see the Carolina," said the doctor.
"It's two and a half miles," Hannah said. "You give my eyesight far too much credit."
It was full dark now, and the shapes of trees and bushes and wide expanses of empty field had melded together into the shadowy expanse of the ciprière. She thought of what it would be like to have to travel through an unfamiliar ciprière in the dark. There was no reason to worry about the Choctaws, who were more at home in these watery backwoods than any white man, but the English were another matter entirely. She wondered what they made of it all. This place was as different from the battlefields of Spain and France as fire was from water. The Choctaw would move through the ciprière without hesitation, as hard to pin down as smoke, and just as disabling. Kit Wyndham and his like, for all their strength and bravery and battle experience, could not hope to match them. She was confident of that much, at least.
Out here, on the fields between the ciprière and the river, there was far more to worry about. The American troops were there, advancing on the canal that separated the Villeré and LaCoste plantations and marked the British line. No doubt Jackson had sent his best, most seasoned men, but still: The British advance had had a day of good weather to situate themselves and dig in.
Hannah gave in to her curiosity. Paul Savard had lent her a telescope, and now she took it from the loop on her belt. At first it showed her nothing but the darkened fields, and that was a good thing. If the American troops could not approach the British silently in such optimal conditions, there was little hope they might prevail.
What Hannah could see with her telescope was so unexpected that it took a moment to make sense of it. The British encampment was lit up by a half dozen bonfires, as if the troops were trying to advertise their position and strength. She began to doubt her own eyesight, and so Hannah handed the telescope over to Dr. Rousseau.
For a long moment the telescope moved back and forth as he studied the encampment.
He said, "They've settled in like long-lost cousins sure of a warm welcome." He handed her back the telescope.
"They are very sure of themselves," Hannah agreed. "But then, they defeated Napoleon."
Hannah observed men walking from the main house to the outbuildings, from the levee back to the fires.
"They'll have slaughtered most of the Villerés' livestock for their cook pots," the doctor said. And then, in a rougher tone: "They are in for a rude surprise."
"You think there's a chance, then," Hannah said.
But instead of answering her, the doctor turned his face toward the river where he had supposed the Carolina must sit in darkness. At that same moment, a rocket shot into the sky from the fields about a half mile farther on, trailing white and red and blue. Before the last of it had sputtered out, a world of sound and light erupted from the dark on the far side of the river. Long tracers of light followed the first volleys as grapeshot arced over the water and tore directly into the very center of the British camp.
Through the telescope, Hannah watched the British camp seethe and roil like an anthill kicked in by a bad-tempered boy. There was a mad rushing, frantic action; fires were doused, and then she could catch only glimpses of what was happening when powder flashed from muzzles and shell after shell crashed into the camp. Even from so far away she could smell the black powder smoke. And added to all this, a misting rain and a fog rising off the river.
And then the shelling stopped as suddenly as it had started. Another signal rocket, and following it, the bugles called out to the troops waiting in the dark, from the ciprière to the levee.
"Here now," said Dr. Rousseau. "Here it starts." He was as calm as an elder telling a story of a battle fought generations before. Hannah was not surprised. She thought of her father, who might be here tomorrow or the day after, of her uncle, who had come to take them home, but who would first fling themselves into this cauldron in the blind faith that they could climb out again whole. She thought of Ben Savard, who had taken up arms for the O'seronni without hesitation.
Men liked battle, that was the truth of it. And another truth: She could do no less than offer her help, once they had purged themselves of the need to draw blood.
The doctor had turned again, this time toward the fields, where sputterings of light and sound, gunfire and wild shouting, made it clear that the infantry had engaged the British. And then the Carolina began again with her bombardment of the British camp.
He said, "We had best get out of the open."
When Hannah thought of battle, it was the noise she remembered most clearly, the pounding that made the eardrums ache and the whole world tremble. And still it took her by surprise. The relentless battering of sound that shook the ground and the walls and made it impossible to speak. The Carolina gave no quarter. As long as she had munitions, she would give none.
In the makeshift field hospital, they waited in the dark for their work to begin, reluctant to waste lantern or candlelight until it was most needed. Now and then Père Tomaso would go out and speak a few words to Mose, or someone else out of Hannah's line of sight. He would come in again, and in the next pause in the shelling he would give them what news he had heard: The British three-pounders were not of a caliber to reach the Carolina, moored as she was on the far side of the river. They seemed not to have any bigger guns, which was good luck that could not last; no doubt the artillery was on its way, and unless the supply lines could be cut, the one-sided nature of the battle would not last long.
"The infantry?" Hannah asked.
"The fog is worse, and they are hampered for it."
"Wounded?"
"A handful. At the other field hospital."
Hannah could make out shouts now and then, in the pauses between shells, a shout for ammunition, a muffled scream. A child wailed nearby, and was hushed. Horses thundered by on the Levee Road from the city and then back again.
She sat with her back to the wall and her forehead pressed to her knees, and reached for calm. Memories of other battles rose and fell or were pushed away. She felt Strikes-the-Sky close by, the shape and scent of him. He rarely spoke to her anymore and she found it harder, now, to know what he was thinking. How he felt about her being here, looking after men who fought for Jackson and the O'seronni. If he would understand, if he would forgive her.
If he would disapprove of Ben Savard as he had disapproved of Kit Wyndham.
She remembered the new wound on Ben's side, neatly stitched by some woman who lived in the Disputed Territories, a woman he called a friend.
He hadn't come to her bed last night, and she had slept badly, and now he was out in the night and the fog, killing men who had stepped onto American land in the hope of claiming it for themselves. Something he would never be able to do, even if he lived through this battle, and the next one, and the one after that. Ben Savard might be among the dead already. He might die before her father and uncle arrived, an idea that struck her like a fist. He could die fighting this white man's war, and then all the things she wanted to ask him, all the things unsettled between them, would stay that way forever.
She had asked him one question, in the moment before he went off with Juzan and the Choctaw.
"Why are you fighting this war, really?"
Maybe he knew her better than she believed, because he seemed to have been waiting for the question. He said, "Because when the dust settles, this place will be American. In another fifty or a hundred years the whole damn continent will be American. There won't be anywhere to hide."
Hannah said, "So your plan is to become your enemy."
"Do you see any alternative?"
"No," Hannah had said. "None at all."
The air heavy and wet, cold hanging gauzy white in the night sky. The stink of gunpowder and blood.
Dr. Rousseau stood at the open door, his mouth drawn down at the corners while he watched two Choctaw carry in the wounded man and put him on the scrubbed table. Père Tomaso was speaking to them in their own language, asking questions and getting short answers in response. Then they slipped away, back into the night.
"This one is no stranger to battle," Dr. Rousseau said.
"His name is Nittakechi, he's the son of Pushmataha. A chief closely allied to Jackson." Père Tomaso said the name as if he believed they must be familiar with it.
"We'll do what we can for him," said Hannah. "No matter who he is allied to."
"Of course," said the priest, inclining his head in apology.
The chief's son was no more than seventeen years old, but his nose and cheeks were a mass of fading scars, and there was an indentation in his skull that made it clear he had survived a blow with a war club sometime in the last year or so. Spider legs of blood ran over his forehead and eyelids from a bullet wound that had plowed through his scalp and along the skull. He was concussed and would not fight again this night, but he would most likely survive.
His eyes fluttered open. Hannah leaned over him with a candle to look at his pupils, and was glad to see that they were equal in size and that they reacted to the light.
He muttered something she couldn't make out, and she dredged up the bit of his language that she had.
"Ak akostinincho." I don't understand. The priest was waiting to be asked to translate, but she didn't look at him.
The boy's throat worked. "Water."
She gave him what he wanted, helping him take small sips from the tin cup. Then he closed his eyes.
"Yokoke." Thank you.
The doorway filled again, a tall militiaman in the nut-brown homespun coat of the Battalion of Free Men of Color. Another limp form hung over his shoulder.
To Dr. Rousseau he said, "Pris un dans l'estomac."
"Mousquet?" Hannah asked. "Carabine?"
The soldier looked at her for the first time. "Baïonnette."
In a firm voice, one she had not had to use now for a very long time, Hannah replied, "We will take care of him now. You can go."
"You understand soldiers," Dr. Rousseau said to her later. "All they want are clear orders."
When the buglers called retreat some three or four hours later, Hannah went out into the night to lean against a rough wall and clear her head. She stayed there for a half hour, watching the troops pulling back, gathering what information she could by listening to scraps of conversation.
Jackson's offensive had taken the British completely by surprise, and he had pressed his advantage. Now, with the fog so heavy, the fighting had been suspended and he withdrew his men to the Rodriquez Canal---Hannah tried to remember if Dr. Rousseau had pointed that landmark out to her---and would dig in there for the next battle.
Some of the troops were going back to the city. They drifted down the Levee Road, their voices warping and weaving together in the fog, loud and soft. Now and then a bit of rough laughter, or a shout as friends caught sight of each other. The men were exhausted but too satisfied to give in to it, in the way of men who had won a battle they had been expected to lose. Telling each other jokes at the expense of the British, who had been caught looking the other way and pounded to dust by the Carolina.
If not for the fog, Hannah heard more than once. If not for the fog we would have sent the Rosbeefs back to the Gulf once and for all.
Dr. Rousseau had gone back to the city with one of the wounded, and in the cabin Père Tomaso sat beside a still form, the young man who had taken a bayonet to his belly and bled to death before they could do anything for him. Giles Hermange, the son of a barber, twenty-one years old. Père Tomaso knew the family well, and he would take the boy home to them.
Of the six men they had treated, three had been able to walk away once their wounds were cleaned and bound. To Hannah's relief and surprise, they had not done a single amputation, and the only serious wound left was the young Choctaw. She wondered about the other troops, if they had come away so easily.
There had been no word of Luke or Ben.
Hannah went to the water barrel in the corner and drank from her cupped hands, splashed her face and rubbed her eyes. She offered the dipper to Père Tomaso and watched him drink, thinking that she could go back to the city now, and sleep in her own bed. In Ben Savard's bed. She wondered how much Ben had told the priest, and found the idea irritated her more than it should have.
She turned at a sound. Juzan and the Choctaws crowded into the cabin, all of them at once, to stand around the table. The war chief looked at Hannah.
"He will live?"
Hannah believed he would, and said so. If the Choctaw could carry their brother to the little clinic, she would look after him there tonight. Tomorrow he would likely be well enough to rejoin them.
Two of the warriors picked him up at a flick of the war chief's finger. They filed out, one by one, leaving Captain Juzan behind for a moment. He studied Hannah for a moment, as if he wasn't sure what to say.
"You're taking him back to your camp," volunteered the priest.
Juzan gave a weary grin, and nodded.
Hannah said, "I thought you might. Bring him to me if he gets worse." And: "What of Ben and Luke?"
Juzan looked over his shoulder. "They'll be along," he said. "Soon. Père Tomaso, Dr. Bonner. Thank you." He touched his cap and disappeared into the fog.
The jangling of a harness announced the arrival of a mule cart. The priest went out to greet the driver, and together they moved Giles Hermange to the wagon bed.
Père Tomaso gave Hannah a kind smile. "I fear we'll see each other again." Because of course this had only been the beginning. There would be another battle, and another, until one side or the other surrendered. He had been an excellent assistant, quick to understand, nimble in his reactions, and able to stay out of the way.
She said, "You were a great help. Thank you."
"I go where I'm needed," he said. "Of course that's not always where I'm wanted."
Hannah felt herself flush. She turned her face away and then back again. "I would be glad to have you assist at any time."
He studied her for a moment, and nodded. Then Hannah stood in the doorway and watched the mule cart go. When the sound of its wheels on the gravel path had faded away, she found the fur-lined cape that she had cast aside when she had been hard at work and hot, and pulled it around herself. She thought of Ben's mother, who had worn these clothes. Spattered with dirt and blood, the fine beadwork on the moccasins obscured by mud. She would scrape the fine doeskin clean, dry and brush the moccasins, and then she would fold all of it neatly and return everything to Ben Savard.
Unless he didn't come. In that case she could sleep right here on the pallet, if the slaves had no objection to her staying the rest of the night. She wondered where Mose had gone, if he was asleep somewhere.
Hannah went to the door and then out into the night, still heavy with fog.
She walked first down the slave row to the point where the fields started. The lantern that hung from a nail on the wall of the last cabin still burned, casting a solid oval of light sharply defined at its edges by the fog. The fields rolled away from where she stood, like waves from a ship. Hannah turned and walked in the other direction until she came to the levee, where she stood in the shadows and watched the troops withdrawing.
These men were quieter, and moved with a certain weariness that made little sense until Hannah realized that these were prisoners being marched back to the city under guard. The guard that walked with them held weapons at the ready, and more soldiers on horseback before and after. A half dozen men carried torches to light the way. In that flickering light she caught a flash of color now and then, a faded red coat or an epaulette that sparked in the firelight, half torn from a shoulder. A bloody cloth pressed to a cheek, muddy boots, forage caps. She stood and watched for a quarter hour until the last of the men had disappeared from sight, and caught not one glimpse of a blond head.
When she turned, Ben Savard and her brother were coming toward her, moving out of the fog into the feeble light of the lantern she had left outside the cabin as a guide. They moved easily, long strides, heads swiveling as they went, still alert and aware and, above all, alive.
Ben was looking at her, his eyes tracing her shape as if she were the one who had just fought a battle and might be injured. As if she were his to worry about. The way she was looking at him, taking his measure: no obvious wounds, his face and hands blackened by gunpowder, his smile all the brighter by contrast.
No blood shed. A man back from battle full of life.
They stopped in front of her.
"I see you managed to keep out of trouble," she said. Her voice trembled a little.
Luke said, "I'm off away home, or Jennet will have my skin for letting her worry. Do you have your things?"
Hannah glanced at the cabin. "Not quite---"
"I'll go ahead, then," Luke said, casting a quick sidelong glance at Ben. "You two take your time."
And he disappeared into the fog and dark at a trot. Hannah had the sense he would run all the way back to the city and Jennet.
To Ben she said, "How---" and stopped, because he caught her up against him with one strong movement, his arm curling around her waist as hard and certain as a grappling hook. She was pressed against his chest and Ben had lowered his head to hers, his mouth so close to her own that when he spoke she felt the shape of the words on her lips.
"I was hoping you'd wait."
He kissed her then, both arms closing around her, pulling her up against his chest, lifting her off the ground. Hannah kissed him back, drawing in his smells, gunpowder and grease and ciprière, a faint tinge of blood, and the oils on his skin. She had forgot how it was, how a man came off the battlefield smelling like this, as if in the rush and tumult he must sweat out his very essence. I am alive.
In the cabin, with the door closed, she said, "Let me see your shoulder," and he laughed at her. There was some blood and a tear in his shirt, but he laughed like a boy without worries or responsibilities. What he wanted from her had nothing to do with medicine.
She could stop him with a word, but could not think of what that word might be. Hannah let herself be drawn down to the pallet, where she might have been frightened or anxious, but she could only laugh herself, caught up in this surplus of energy, the promise of relief.
He was so alive, so full of motion, so intent, as if she were a lesson he had set himself to learn. The texture of the skin below her ear, the taste of her sweat. Her blood ran cold and hot and cold again, fear getting the upper hand.
Ben took her head between his palms and pressed his forehead to hers and whispered.
"We're here together, Hannah. Walks-Ahead. You and me and nobody else. You," his mouth moved against her skin. "You and me and nobody else. You take what you want, and leave the rest."
That made her laugh out loud. "And if I want nothing at all?" He was hugely aroused, as hard as hickory, bursting with need.
"Then we sleep," he said. He kissed her on the cheek, the kiss of a solicitous friend, a proper older brother. But he was not her brother, and Hannah could not pretend he was, had no wish to force that role on him or on herself. She turned her head so that their mouths met, and she kissed him the way she wanted to be kissed. He was a man who could take direction and turn it to his advantage.
Her body responded, and her mind followed along. Ben Savard had come from a battle where he had fought for his life, where he had killed in order to come back to her. And hadn't she done the same, the very same thing, come back from a place where she might have died, from that night when a different man had tried to break her.
The kiss deepened, turned, flexed, flowed back and forth between them. She had missed kisses like this, she had missed this man's touch.
Ben pulled away, his gaze sharpening as he examined her face. Then he kissed her again, the kiss she didn't want, brotherly, chaste. He rolled over onto his back so that only their hands touched.
He said, "I felt the memory come back to you. Your whole body went cold."
Hannah tried to gather the words that might make him understand. In the end she gave him the simplest truth.
"I am glad," she said. "I'm glad that he never kissed me."
Ben was very silent, his gaze fixed on the ceiling. Then he turned on his side toward her, and cupped her face with his hand.
"I'm glad, too," he said. He let one hand rest on the plane of her belly, his fingers lightly curled. And: "When you are ready," he said. "I am here. I will be here until you send me away."
In the minutes it took her to fall asleep Hannah thought about that, about the idea of sending Ben Savard away. How such a thing might be done, and what the world would be without him.
At first light, Hannah and Ben walked back to the city to be greeted at the clinic door with the news that Luke was in the little clinic.
"He left the battlefield without a scratch," Hannah said, her alarm making her voice rise.
Paul Savard said, "Someone took a shot at him just as he was coming into the city. He never saw who it was."
He exchanged a glance with his brother, one that wasn't lost on Hannah but would have to be examined later.
"Tell me," she said.
"He was lucky," the doctor told her. "Either the gun misfired or it was poorly loaded, and the bullet deflected off a wagon before it struck him. He's got a back full of splinters. Nothing life-threatening." And: "Unless Jennet's temper gets the best of her."
Hannah took leave of Ben with a flutter of her hand and went to the surgery, where Luke lay prone on the table, his back bared for treatment. Julia stood at one side with tweezers and a scalpel, and Jennet on the other with a bowl of water. Julia said, "This isn't as bad as it looks."
Luke grunted.
"Or as it feels," Julia added. "Would you like to take over?"
"Please no," said Luke. "She'll torture me to death."
Jennet snorted. "Listen to him whinging like a babe in arms. For splinters and a wee bit of blood."
Hannah cast Jennet a sidelong glance. Her fright had given way to anger, and now Luke must bear the brunt of it.
It took Hannah a moment to take full measure of the wounds, but when she was satisfied that Paul Savard hadn't been minimizing the damage, she went to Jennet directly and put a hand on her shoulder.
"There will be scarring, but nothing here is very deep. If there's another battle tomorrow he'll probably insist on rushing off to join it. I will take over if you like, Julia."
Julia left to see to other patients, and Hannah settled at Luke's side with the tray of instruments.
"One of you should just hit me on the head with the hammer," Luke said. "Get it over with."
"What would be the fun in that?" Jennet asked.
There was silence while Hannah worked. A clink as a bit of shot was deposited in a basin, and then Jennet washed away the blood. Luke drew in a hissing breath, and the process repeated itself. Hannah pulled a half dozen long splinters that had dug into the muscle, and a few bits of shot. When she was almost finished, Luke roused himself.
"Not tomorrow." His voice came muffled, because he had buried his head in his arms. "No battle tomorrow."
"Is that so?" Jennet said dryly. "You made your wishes clear to both sides, then?"
He turned his head very slightly and shot her an aggravated look. "The English are still bringing in troops and artillery---"
"By all means, let's wait for the Sassenach to get themselves organized," Jennet said.
"---and our fortifications are weak. Jackson's got every slave in a hundred-mile radius and most of the free men, too, militia and regular army, out there on the Rodriquez Canal."
Jennet made a humming noise deep in her throat. Hannah dug for a splinter and Luke jerked.
To distract Jennet, Hannah asked her about the rest of the wounded. It turned out that there had been twenty-four killed in battle and just over a hundred wounded, only half of those seriously, and that the army surgeons and the city hospital had absorbed them all. Even the captured British---and there were many---had been easily accommodated, the officers taken in by the first families.
"There are many hundreds dead on the other side," Jennet said. "The Carolina did serious damage. And then there are those who managed to survive the battles and come home wounded nonetheless."
Luke pushed out a sigh that gave way to a low yip as Hannah got hold of the splinter and pulled. When she had finished he turned his head toward Jennet, reached out, and grabbed her by the wrist.
"Oi," said Jennet, but she let herself be drawn down so she was face-to-face with her husband. Luke looked her directly in the eye for a long moment.
"Now listen to me," he said in a soft and dangerous voice. "I am not badly wounded. I will not die. I'm not going to recount every step I took in battle so you can torture yourself with what might have happened, but didn't. So stop asking."
Then he darted forward to kiss her firmly before he let her go.
He turned his upper body so he could see Hannah more directly, and he gave her a grim smile.
Hannah said, "The worst is over."
"Good," Luke said, and turned onto his stomach again.
Hannah said, "I need some water, Jennet, if you would."
"Of course." She took the ewer and paused at the door. "Would you care for tea?" Her tone had turned conciliatory, and a bit shy.
"I'd prefer whisky, but tea will do," Luke said.
"Well, then," Jennet said. "I'll see to it." And she closed the door after herself quietly.
After a moment Hannah said, "She's been coping with a lot, Luke. She's terrified at the idea of you going back into battle."
He gave a soft grunt. "It's not so easy for me, either. For all I know she'll go out and find another infant to adopt while I'm gone."
Hannah paused. She hadn't been in the room when Jennet told Luke about Jacinthe and the child, and this was the first mention he made of it to her.
"You don't want the boy?"
He jerked impatiently. "I didn't say that."
"But?"
"I'm uneasy about it."
Hannah sat down next to him on a low stool so she could look him in the face. "Why?"
"Because," Luke said, "I intend to kill the boy's father just as soon as I can track him down."
Hannah kept losing sight of the fact that it was Christmas Eve, but Clémentine did not. There was a goose for dinner, and potatoes and peppered turnips mashed with cream, and greens cooked with bacon and onions, and bread warm from the oven.
She found she had an appetite. They all did, crowded around the Savards' table. Everyone was here but Ben, who had gone back to his company after seeing Hannah to the clinic.
"He didn't like to go," Rachel said, looking directly at Hannah. "He had no choice."
Hannah tried to look as if this news were of no particular importance to her. She was not so sure of Ben Savard or her own feelings and loath to have the subject raised, even in the company of such good friends and family.
"I could come with you next time," young Henry was saying. "I would be a great help in the field hospital."
"Of course you would," said Hannah, and: "Of course you cannot," said Henry's mother and father in unison.
"I don't understand what went wrong," Rachel said. "The British seemed so formidable."
"They are formidable," said her stepfather. "But they also suffered from the sin of hubris."
Henry's face contorted as he tried to make sense of the word. "Do you mean they're too big for their britches?"
"Yes," said Paul Savard. "That's exactly what I mean. They underestimated an enemy, which is the height of foolishness. I only hope they go on as they started."
"That would serve us well," Luke agreed. "But they're waiting for a new commanding officer."
"Let's hope he's no more competent than the one he's replacing," said Rachel.
"Do you know who it is?" asked Julia.
Luke paused, and then he answered. "The information that we have from the prisoners of war isn't reliable."
"And?" said Paul Savard. "What name have they given?"
"Pakenham," Luke said.
Hannah saw Dr. Savard's surprise give way to disquiet. "Wellington's brother-in-law? Salamanca?"
"Yes," said Luke. Now everyone was paying attention, looking from Paul to Luke and back again, waiting for some explanation. After a moment's hesitation Luke said, "Most of the regulars and the dragoons are still at de la Ronde's to keep an eye on the enemy."
That was little comfort, but it seemed enough to soothe Rachel, who went back to her food with a sigh.
Her stepfather exchanged a long look with Luke. "Well, then," he said. "I expect there's no joy in the British camp today, after such a pitiful showing as they provided last night."
Hannah caught Luke's eye, and wasn't much comforted by the doubt she saw there.
The weather was fine, and so after dinner they went for a walk, Hannah and Jennet and Luke. Rachel and Henry joined them, the boy hopping like a flea in his excitement, ever hopeful for more news of last night's battle, now that his mother wasn't there to interfere. They left Adam with Julia and Paul, who intended a quiet afternoon of reading between visits to the clinic, and took Nathaniel, who sat tucked into the crook of his father's arm, surveying the world like a small emperor wrapped in shawls, his cheeks pink with cold.
Jennet was glad to be out-of-doors, glad of the sun and the clear cool air and the fact that they were together and healthy. For the moment, at least, she could pretend there was no war and nothing wrong in the world.
She thought of the letter she had been writing to her mother and brother, and resolved to add more to it this evening: the good news there was to share, and what it was like to be in New Orleans on Christmas Eve less than twenty-four hours since Jackson had led them to victory in their first battle with the British.
The street vendors were out in full force among the crowds, selling pralines and gingerbread and cake, pickled peppers and eggs. An elderly man with no teeth at all fed the fire beneath a great pot of simmering punch, while a younger man with eyes the exact same shade of green filled a tin cup which could be emptied for a coin.
Henry said, "Oh, I remember that punch."
"As if Mother would let you near it." Rachel laughed.
Luke bought a cupful and drank it down. He flushed a deep red as he handed the cup back and the vendor winked at him.
"Two more of those and you'd have to carry me home," he said.
News of Jackson's activity was to be had on every corner where militiamen stood together. Apparently most of their number had been held back at the Rodriguez Canal to strengthen entrenchments along its line from the river to the ciprière and to assist the engineers, who were to cut the levee in front of Chalmette's plantation and flood the plain between the two armies.
"Little good it will do with the river so low," she heard one man say to another.
"It can't hurt," said his companion.
Generally the militia seemed to be in good spirits and determined to make the most of the free afternoon before they returned to the Chalmette plantation to take up the backbreaking work that would keep them busy through Christmas Day.
"I plan to report back this evening," Luke said, as though Jennet had asked the question aloud.
There was a set to his jaw that she recognized. She could argue with him now in public and lose, or argue with him later in private and lose. She decided that she didn't care to ruin their walk, and kept her thoughts to herself.
They stopped to watch a pantomime done by men in colorful papier-mâché half masks in a rapid Creole French that had the crowd howling with laughter. Rachel listened only for a moment before dragging a disappointed Henry away, and then consoled him by buying him a piece of candied ginger.
By the time they had worked their way to the river, young Nathaniel's good mood had begun to sour. Jennet judged that in another half hour he would be howling for the breast, and was about to announce the need to start back when they were overtaken by a river of men streaming down from the Levee Road.
"More militia," said Luke. "Just arrived, and look, half of them don't even have a musket."
In the last hour Jennet had managed to banish the idea of the war to some point far away, much further than the seven miles to the British encampment. But here it was again, come to claim her attention: men newly arrived and ready to fight. Most of them, it looked to Jennet, more in need of a meal and clothing than they were of weapons. They wore ragged hunting shirts and deerskin leggings and a variety of hats, from old tricornes to fur caps. Rough men who would not complain about the hard conditions at the Rodriquez Canal. In passing, she wondered how they would like being handed shovels and set to work alongside slaves.
Henry said, "Look, that man is wearing a whole raccoon on his head," and Jennet laughed out loud because she must. The baby produced a deep belly laugh out of simple camaraderie.
The river of men flowed by and past them, and they continued up onto the Levee Road where they could see the traffic on the river, crowded even now with every kind of boat. The keelboats that had brought the militiamen down the long length of the river rocked and fought against their mooring ropes. They would be broken up for firewood or building lumber. To Jennet's Scots sensibilities it seemed a sinful waste of wood, but in the United States trees were as plentiful and everlasting as the clouds in the sky.
Jennet was standing between Hannah and Luke and she felt them both tense at the same moment that she caught sight of two last men jumping from a keelboat to the dock. Then Hannah bolted, running like a girl, and Luke's face split into a smile.
He turned the baby in the direction of the keelboat and pointed. "There," he said. "There comes the grandfather you were named for, and your great-uncle Runs-from-Bears."
Nathaniel Bonner had been born in the endless forests of New-York State in the fourth year of the nine-year war between the French and the British for possession of the North American continent. Which made him, to Jennet's reckoning, fifty-six years old. Though she had never asked Runs-from-Bears how old he was---he was far too imposing a figure to bother with such things---she believed the two men to be of an age. Though it was true that one was a full-blood Kahnyen'kehàka of the Turtle Clan and the other of pure Scots extraction, the two men had been cast from the same mold. They looked nothing like the men of Carryck in their dress or even in the way they held their weapons, but the sight of them gave her a sense of homecoming.
Henry made a small, choked sound. Jennet had forgot about the boy and his sister for a long moment, but turned now to see their expressions. For once Henry was stunned into silence. Rachel was trying harder to look nonchalant, and failing completely. No one had thought to tell them about Runs-from-Bears, and now Jennet remembered what she had felt on first seeing him. He had very black eyes that never seemed to blink; the dark skin stretched tight over heavy cheekbones was pox-scarred, and a line of tattoos stretched over the bridge of his nose to his temples. Silver earrings dangled from his ears, and there were feathers braided into his hair, which was still full black. He looked nothing like the Indians Jennet had seen in New Orleans or Pensacola. And then there was the matter of his weapons. Both men were armed with rifles, pistols, knives, tomahawks, and war clubs.
"No cause for concern," Jennet said to Henry. "You'll see, they're the kindest men ever put on earth."
Henry said, "Will he let me touch his tomahawk?"
Rachel started to answer him, but Jennet shook her head at the girl. She said, "You'll have to ask him."
Henry glanced up at her, his eyes wide. "He speaks English?"
"He does," Jennet said. "Now I must go say hello, and then I'll introduce you."
As a girl Hannah had been given to tears, a weakness she had disliked and schooled out of herself as she grew into womanhood. She had done such a thorough job of it that even at times tears would have been a blessing she found she could not call them forth. She had buried her son with dry eyes and steady hands, kissed his cold cheek one last time and turned away for the long walk home.
But with her father, here on the Levee Road in New Orleans on a chill Christmas afternoon, she found she was a daughter first. She stood in front of her father, trembling, and when he put his arms around her she collapsed against him as though she were not more than thirty years, hardened by loss and desperation and pain.
Against her hair he said, "Daughter, it is good to see you."
Hannah had no words of her own, and so she stood and listened as he spoke to her in her own language, the language of the Wolf Longhouse of the Kahnyen'kehàka, the language that bound them together as surely as blood. She came to realize that her uncle was standing very close, his hand on her shoulder, and Hannah turned a little from her father to look into his face, this uncle she had loved all her life. As a young girl she had hoped to marry him, and then he had married her aunt and that was almost as good, because it meant he would live with them at Lake in the Clouds. Runs-from-Bears, who understood when other adults did not, who took her out tracking and listened to her stories and who now was here, because she was in need. He had come to help, they had both come to help. Hannah realized that her cheeks were wet, and that her eyes stung, and that she had remembered, finally, how to weep.
The holidays were good for business, but war was even better: Every room in Noelle Soileau's establishment was occupied. She herself had given up her room and was sleeping on the divan in her office; the slaves had been turned out to sleep in the stable with the animals.
Mme. Soileau made the rounds of the parlor, filled to bursting with men who waited their turn to climb the stairs. At home wives and children would be waiting to start the Christmas Eve festivities. She knew many of those women by name and reputation, and they knew her, too, though they did not meet her eye when they passed on the street.
Most of her clients had been coming here for years and many of those had a favorite girl, and were willing to wait until she was available. They waited in comfort, drinking smuggled brandy and talking among themselves. About the war, of course. Always about the war.
There were half a dozen officers in uniform scattered throughout the room. A young man in navy blue held up a hand to get her attention and she went to him, leaning over to give him a view of her cleavage and jewels and the full effect of her perfume. A man of this age, denied release for many days, needed little encouragement to wait his turn, but it did no harm to remind him why he was here.
His mouth worked as if he had lost the habit of language. "How much longer, do you think, madame?" He was speaking French, or trying to, with horrid results.
Noelle considered. The young man was on the verge of passing out, which would mean she had wasted precious space on him. She glanced up at Peter, an able assistant who could read her thoughts quite easily after twenty years. Peter nodded.
This particular officer would find that the next available girl considered him the most intriguing and irresistible of men. His money would find its way into Peter's palm before he climbed the stairs. If he collapsed before he could take what it had bought him, that would be his loss.
Really, she needed more girls. She needed more of everything, from brandy---difficult to get now that Lafitte and his kind had joined the fighting and were neglecting their usual clients' needs---to beds.
She glanced up the stairs to the landing, where Nicole was taking leave of a regular client. Her gown hung open at the front to reveal the shadowy lines of breast and belly and thigh. Nicole saw herself observed, and retreated back into the room that she called her own. Each of the regular girls had a room, outfitted with good furniture and bed linen that was changed often. It was these niceties that kept regular clients like the elderly judge now descending the stairs coming back.
He stopped in front of her and bowed from the shoulders.
"Mme. Soileau. How good to see you again."
As if they met at church every week. Some of the older men liked to keep up the charade.
"Sir, shall we have the pleasure of seeing you again this week?" With all formality and condescension, as he required for his own peace of mind.
Behind their spectacles, the bright brown eyes moved through the parlor, took note of men standing because they had nowhere to sit.
"Perhaps," he said. "When you are not quite so busy."
Noelle inclined her head in acknowledgment of the gentle rebuke.
She must have more space. If she could not renegotiate rental terms with her one permanent guest, she would have to put him out. It was the opportunity she had been anticipating for years, and now she felt her heartbeat quicken. The exchange would require a certain kind of cunning, a good deal of luck, and brandy.
She cast a glance at Peter, who would supervise in her absence, and went up the stairs.
Honoré Poiterin lay on the brocade-covered divan before the hearth in Noelle Soileau's best room---her own room, though few realized that fact---a bottle of brandy in one hand, a glass in the other, and his gaze fixed on the bit of the street he could see through the windows.
The door of the tavern called the Cock and Hen opened and disgorged three men, all in uniform, all unsteady on their feet from drink. Celebrating Christmas in the time-honored fashion by escaping the family for more genial company. One of the men was Philippe Espinoza, a planter with a passion for dice but no head for arithmetic. Honoré had spent many happy evenings with Espinoza, and would have gladly joined him tonight. But Wyndham had sold him out to Jackson, and it would mean hanging if he showed his face in New Orleans.
He would have to stay just where he was until the British took the city.
The only time he ever ventured out was very late at night, in a hooded cape. A calculated risk he took, for fear of simply losing his mind from boredom.
Now he was tempted to sleep, warmed by the fire and the brandy and the meal he had been served by Noelle Soileau herself. No one else was allowed in this room. There were spies everywhere, as he knew very well. Noelle Soileau herself was a gamble, but a fairly safe one. She knew the value of a bird in the hand, especially one who had just inherited a large family fortune that included two plantations, numerous houses and other real estate, warehouses of cane and cotton stuffed to the rafters, and investments in every lucrative business in a five-hundred-mile radius. After the British took the city there would be more land, and perhaps even enough money to settle his gambling debts.
Unless, of course, the Americans prevailed. It was a thought he did not often entertain. In that case he would have to flee, and once he was safely away he would have to liquidate everything through his lawyers. He could live a comfortable life in the islands, but the arrangements were complex enough to give a man a headache.
He still had the ship he had taken from Bonner in Pensacola, hidden away in a safe harbor thirty miles away. It would be easy enough to pick up a crew, then sail to the Antilles. Now that Dégre was gone from Priest's Town, he could imagine making it his headquarters. There was a fortune to be made in slave running, and the life suited him.
But of course none of this would be necessary. The Americans had no chance against Wellington's army, and New Orleans would change hands again. Better the English than the Americans.
Honoré didn't realize he had dozed off until he heard the door open. He sprang up from the divan as he grabbed for his pistol.
Noelle went very still, one brow raised in censure.
" 'Stie d'tabernac," he said. "You gave me a fright."
Noelle inclined her head, as close as she would come to an apology.
Honoré reached for the glass which had rolled off, dribbling brandy over the fine carpet, and picked up the brandy bottle to fill it again. When he had taken a swallow he looked at Noelle, who still stood near the door.
She was an unappetizing sight, far too thin and with a hard mouth and harder eyes, her hair dyed a deep and objectionable red. He preferred darker complexions, and younger women. Honoré had gone without release for too long, but he was not so desperate as to contemplate using Noelle Soileau.
He said, "News of the war?"
"No." She went to the windows and looked out to the street. "I need this room," she said. "I have to ask you to go."
His laughter gave way to a cough. "If you want to raise the rent I won't refuse you."
"I want the room," she said, glancing at him over her shoulder.
Honoré rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. "Or what?"
She lifted a shoulder and let it drop. He waited for what would come next, her real demand. She delivered it in the same cool tone.
"You will need a widow," she said. "To see to your family's holdings once they hang you."
Honoré coughed for a full minute. When he had regained his breath he found she was studying him as she might study a bug caught in a web.
"You want me to marry you," he said.
"I want to be your legal heir."
"And how do you suppose to find a priest who will marry us?"
A quirk of the mouth. "I have someone in mind. He owes me a favor."
"I'm sure he does," Honoré said darkly. He said, "You are proposing a business arrangement."
"It's not the pleasure of your company I yearn for," said Noelle.
"So we marry," Honoré said. "And then you report me to the authorities and weep prettily at my hanging."
"Think, Poiterin," Noelle said in the voice of an irritated and put-upon teacher. "If I turned you in, I would hang next to you."
That was true. Honoré turned his head away and tried to gather his thoughts. In the worst case---if the British gave up and retreated, and he had to flee---Noelle would try to sell everything and run off with the money. But in some things the law served a man's best interest, and a wife couldn't sell property without her husband's consent and signature. Once he was dead, it wouldn't matter to him who got the Poiterin family fortune, and in the meantime it would secure his position here while he finalized his plans.
He said, "I find the idea of a Christmas-morning wedding in a whorehouse amusing. Call in your priest." And yawning, he turned his attention back to the street.
In the days following Christmas it sometimes seemed to Hannah that she might have dreamed her father and Runs-from-Bears, so little did she see them. The fault, she determined, was not just the war, but also Mrs. Livingston, whose annual Christmas party had turned her father and uncle into objects of curiosity.
Hannah had not been pleased to receive the invitation to start with and had no intention of attending. "I'm surprised at your aunt's change of heart," she said to Rachel, and then was sorry to have embarrassed the girl, who was more aware of her aunt's failings than it might at first appear.
When it became clear that her father and uncle did intend to accept the invitation, she spoke more openly. "Until you and Bears came Mrs. Livingston didn't like to have Indians in her parlor. Or even in her kitchen," she told her father.
"You don't like the woman," Nathaniel Bonner said. "But I'm curious; I'd like to get a look at her after hearing Jennet's stories."
"I'm not going," Hannah said. "I won't be trotted out like a pet."
"I doubt anybody ever took your uncle for a lapdog," Nathaniel Bonner said. "And if they tried to, he'd set them straight. As I'd expect you to do, daughter."
Hannah said, "It's a battle I choose not to fight just now."
He came to sit next to her at that, and let a comfortable silence spin out between them.
"You follow your best instincts," he said finally. "And I'll do the same."
His own instincts had taken him and Runs-from-Bears to the Livingstons', where the élite citizens of New Orleans, already agitated by the presence of a captured British officer, had given up all pretense of calm detachment. But even the most forward of the gentlemen might not have approached directly if it weren't for what happened when Nathaniel Bonner came face-to-face with none other than Major General Jackson.
The general stopped in his tracks, his eyes widening. "If you're not the son of a man called Hawkeye out of the New-York frontier, then I'm seeing ghosts."
"Your eyesight's right good," said Nathaniel. "And as I spring a leak if you stick me, I can own in good conscience that I'm no ghost."
"It was something to see," Paul Savard told Hannah later. "Old Hickory was as delighted as a boy to run into your father and uncle. They spent an hour talking common history and battles and politics, and every Creole in the room was listening. Even the ones who don't have any English."
The story moved through the city on long legs and was everywhere by noon on the twenty-sixth. It seemed another version of it came to Hannah's ears every hour, embellished and polished to a high gloss. It came to the point that she was more likely to hear some tall tale concerning her father than any news of the war. Even Henry had less to relate than usual, and she had to be satisfied with the general report that the whole of the American force had been put to work either building fortifications at Rodriquez Canal, harassing the British, or spying on them.
A neighbor who had never spoken to Hannah stopped her on the street. "I had no idea your father and General Jackson fought together in the Revolution."
"They didn't," Hannah said.
"But I heard---"
"The major general met my father once," Hannah said. "It was during the Revolution, but not in battle. I believe the general was no more than fourteen at the time. My father is some ten years older."
It didn't matter what she said; the citizens of New Orleans loved a good story and weren't about to give up on this one. Two men from the far north had come to New Orleans to join the fighting under their old friend Andrew Jackson. Ferocious in battle, both of them, men to be taken seriously. One was white, but raised by the Mohawk. The other was Mohawk, raised by whites.
Hannah said, "My father was raised by his own parents. My grandmother Cora was born and raised in Scotland, and my grandfather---the one called Hawkeye---was born to Scots immigrants. He was orphaned and raised by a sachem of the Mahican tribe."
The request for a family history was put to her by a lady who had come to bring bandages for the clinic and tarried in the hope of getting a glimpse of Nathaniel and Runs-from-Bears.
"Mahican? Mohawk? Is there a difference?" she asked, wide-eyed.
"My uncle Runs-from-Bears was born in the longhouse of the Turtle Clan at Good Pasture," Hannah went on. "He is a full-blood Mohawk and was raised among his own people."
"Who would have ever imagined a full-blood Indian on Major General Jackson's own staff?"
"My father and uncle have joined Captain Juzan's company," Hannah said. "That's where they can do the most good."
She supposed it was unreasonable of her to be so irritated by stories, especially when there was real trouble to deal with. On the twenty-seventh the British gunners used heated shot to sink the Carolina and almost got the Louisiana as well, but for quick-witted sailors who warped her up the shore out of range. Then, forced back from his line, Jackson took the precaution of having all the buildings on the Chalmette plantation blown up. None of this was good news, but the loss of the Carolina struck an especially hard note, and the city's attention shifted away from the Bonners. Hannah was torn between relief and guilt, both of which gave way quickly to worry.
Her father and uncle had decided to attach themselves to the Choctaw under Pierre de Juzan, and they saw no reason to delay, going out on their first full day to survey the land. Hannah did not try to explain to her father why she disliked this idea, or what struck her as wrong about fighting under Andrew Jackson, because it would have done no good. Nathaniel Bonner made up his own mind, and once he had, the only person who ever swayed him was his wife. Who was not here, to Hannah's great distress.
This informal assignment to Juzan's company turned out to please Major General Jackson. He had distinct favorites among the various companies, and he liked Juzan's Choctaws for their independence and their efficiency and, most of all, for their lack of fuss. Because, Luke concluded, Jackson was fed up with the Creole legislators who continued to plague him with their worries and their presumption on his time and attention. The Tennesseans, who bivouacked in ankle-deep mud and never complained about any duty, were more to his liking.
Juzan was the most reliable source Jackson had for information about the enemy's actions, and he also had some of the best riflemen. Working in tandem with the Tennessee rifles, they picked off the sentries the British sent out to patrol the perimeters, and more than one careless officer. After two days of this, the British withdrew all their men and put a redoubt in their place. At that point, the Choctaws were happy to leave the matter to the Baratarians, who turned their attention and their artillery to putting the forward British guns out of commission.
"You may call those Baratarians pirates and banditti," Nathaniel told his daughter. "But by God, they've got a feel for the big guns."
Hannah said, "Elizabeth will never forgive me if you get killed fighting this war. No matter how much fun you have while you do it."
Her father gave her a grim smile. "Elizabeth knew when we set out where we were headed and what the dangers were. We cain't leave here until this whole mess is settled anyway, so we might as well help it along."
Of course everyone was caught up in the war. Everyone she cared about, everyone precious to her in a five-hundred-mile radius. At night she dreamed all those people were marching past her, and usually Kit Wyndham was among them. She had no idea where he was, if he was even alive. And sometimes, she found herself wondering about Kit Wyndham, and if someday he would find himself on the wrong end of Nathaniel Bonner's rifle.
When their line had been cut in half and the batteries destroyed, when it was clear that the attempt to turn Jackson's flank had failed, the order came. What remained of General Keane's column was to fall back, out of reach of the guns of the Louisiana and the batteries. Away from the Chalmette buildings fired by Jackson himself, which had burned so hot and bright that for those few minutes it was possible to forget the damp cold of this place.
As Kit Wyndham prepared to run, a single volley from the direction of the river knocked more than a dozen men to the ground and he was spattered, once again, with blood and bone and shrapnel. Ears ringing, he blinked sweat out of his eyes and headed toward the canals. There was no choice available to them but to go through the swamp.
Ciprière, Kit reminded himself; they called this hellish confusion of water and mud and slime the ciprière. Submerged to his waist in the icy muck, fighting to stay on his feet and keep his weapons dry, Wyndham passed a sergeant who had died leaning on a cypress trunk. There was a gash to his cheek that exposed one yellow tooth. Kit took the man's weapons---powder was as precious as blood---and moved on.
Men straggled along, three or four dozen, many wounded, all breathing like overworked bellows. Faces blackened by powder, eyes red-rimmed, grim of expression, Wellington's veterans waded into an acre of reeds and there they stopped, ducking down to conceal themselves like boys playing hide-go-seek. Their caution was well grounded: The ciprière was where the snipe-shooters were most active. Dirty-shirts, they called the riflemen from Kentucky and Tennessee, hunters of men.
Crouched in the chilly water, shivering so that his teeth clattered, Kit discovered, with little surprise, a bullet fragment in the meat of his upper left arm. No pain yet, and only a little blood.
The man beside him, small and wiry with a pendulous lower lip, watched as Kit pried it out with the tip of his knife.
He said, "Tha were one of Wellington's Exploring Officers, aye? I've heard tell of thee. Tha mun have done summat far wrong, to be out here with us rough ones. What was it?"
"I volunteered," Kit said.
"Och," said the old soldier with a grin. "Art tha seekin' redemption by fire, or art tha pure daft?"
"A little of both," said Kit, and found himself laughing.
Hungry, cold, in pain, covered with scratches and cuts, Kit came into camp at Villeré in the late afternoon and found a grim satisfaction in the fact of his own survival.
There was a thin stew of some unidentifiable meat and beans and chunks of slimy vegetable he recognized as okra. Kit sat with his bowl in his hands in front of a low and smoky fire, waiting for his feet to come back to life. The men around him talked freely of their frustration and anger and dissatisfaction. Affronted by Jackson's tactics, they begrudged his men everything, from better food to more cannons and, most of all, another victory.
"Those bloody dirty-shirts," said the Yorkshire man who had spoken to Kit in the ciprière. "But worse still are the pirates with the cannons."
"Have you ever seen the like?" Another man shook his head in wonder.
"Damn them one and all to hell," muttered someone from the shadows. "Of course they know how to use big guns. What are they but a band of thieves and slave-runners and smugglers?"
The Yorkshire man elbowed Kit. "Did tha meet any of yon pirates while tha were exploring on the other side?"
All eyes turned to Kit. He took a moment to finish his food, wiped his mouth with his hand.
"I did," he said. "I sat and drank with Dominique You more than once, and with Lafitte and his brother. I've watched them argue among themselves, and I've been nearby when worse has happened. They aren't men to cross. No doubt it was one of them who fired on the field hospital from the Carolina. The naval commander is a competent man, and wouldn't have ordered such a thing."
"It's our bad fortune that they threw in their lot with Jackson," said one of the older soldiers. "If anybody can keep us out of the city and drive us back to the sea, it will be the fookin' Baratarians."
There was a morose silence as the fire spat and flared. The men needed a victory, but the best Kit could offer them was diversion.
He said, "There's a story about one of them---"
All eyes turned to him as if he were offering heavenly salvation and a pint of ale for the journey.
"A renegade even by their standards. You understand that the Baratarians have their own rules, and Lafitte is the commanding officer. He tells them what ships they can attack and board, what prizes they may take and which they should leave in peace. But there's a captain of a morphidite schooner called the Puma---I've never seen her, but I've heard tell that under sail she's all wings and no feet."
"And her captain?"
"He's called Ten-Pint. I don't know his real name, but he's a Frenchman like most of Lafitte's men."
"Fond of the drink, is he?" A soldier with a nose as round and red as a strawberry asked this question, out of what was clearly fellow feeling.
Kit cleared his throat. "I'm sure he is, but that's not where his name comes from.
"The stories about him are legion. He goes his own way and does as he pleases, damn Lafitte. Once he threw a cabin boy overboard with a flick of his wrists for nothing worse than spilling a bucket of water. And that's the very least. A man who steals from him may get away, but sooner or later, Ten-Pint will take his revenge. And when he finds his prey he always says the same thing: 'I've no interest in a pound of your reeking flesh, but I'll take ten pints of your blood.' "
"And he's over there, with the rest of the Baratarians?" asked the younger man, glancing to the north.
"I assume so," said Kit Wyndham. "I hope never to find out directly."
"Aye, weel," said the deep voice from a soldier sitting in the shadows. "If Pakenham don't get the guns we need, you may yet shake Ten-Pint's hand."
The mood shifted immediately.
"It's not Pakenham's fault," said the older soldier. "It's Keane, who set us here in the muck in the first place, sixty miles from provisions."
"Colonel Rennie is worth three of Keane," said one soldier. "That was clear enough today."
"And Thornton," offered another man. "Ten times Keane's worth."
"Rennie might have saved the column, if not for Keane yanking at him, like a dog on a chain."
"More than a hundred dead this day. And not one step have we took over that damn Rodriquez Canal."
There was a grim silence from the circle of men, undercut only by occasional screams. Raw opium wouldn't be enough to dull the pain of losing a leg to a surgeon's saw.
An ensign was moving down the field, calling out a name. Before he was in hailing distance, Kit knew the boy was looking for him. He was tempted to walk away and sleep in a hay barn where he couldn't be found, but years of training weren't so easily discarded. Kit stood and identified himself.
"Who sent for me?"
"The general, sir." The boy's arm was in a sling and he limped. Kit wondered in passing how many men were whole and uninjured.
Junior officers were milling about on the veranda, talking in low voices. As Kit climbed the stairs, a single shell came whistling over the trees and exploded in what had once been a garden. One of the men on the porch fell to his knees belching blood, and another dragged him away.
"This way, sir," said the ensign. His eyes were glazed, and his tone unremarkable.
Pakenham was pacing the main room, his chin lowered to his chest and his hands clasped at the small of his back. His color was bad; deep lines had dug themselves into his cheeks and along his mouth.
Keane sat on the other side of the room, his whole body turned away, a man who desperately wanted to be alone but could not leave. The rest of the staff moved about restlessly.
Pakenham stopped and turned on his heel to Kit. His mood was black with self-recrimination, which Kit found somehow comforting. He was an honorable man, an excellent officer, and his hands were tied by fate and the decisions made before he arrived.
"Gunpowder," said Pakenham.
"Sir?"
"Lafitte's secret store of gunpowder. You know where it is. Show me." He jerked his head toward the map spread out on the table.
After a moment's study, Kit's finger traced the curve of the river. It was a very good map, but not a perfect one.
"Here," he said, putting his finger on a spot in the ciprière south of the city, on the opposite side of the river.
"You are familiar with the lay of the land?"
Kit agreed that he was.
"Good," said Pakenham. "Take what men you need, and go seize it."
Kit hesitated for only a second, but Keane took the opportunity. "He's afraid of being taken prisoner. Of being shot as a spy."
Pakenham seemed not to hear Keane at all. "You performed a miracle or two for us in Spain, Kit. Are you willing to try again?"
It was in the very bones of a man like Pakenham, the ability to instill courage and purpose.
"Yes, sir," said Kit.
"We need that powder."
"Then I will bring it, sir. Or I will die in the attempt."
To her father, Hannah said, "I'm tired of ladies coming by trying to catch a glimpse of you. Silly hens, all of them."
He was cleaning his rifle in the courtyard, and she was pretending to help him. It was that or go back into the clinic, and the sight of her father was too new and precious to pass up.
Her father laughed to hear her complain. "Now you've gone and hurt my vanity."
"But it makes no sense."
"Folks need distraction with the English hunkered down so close by, and they'll take it where they can get it. Later on they won't even remember our names, and all the war stories will be about their own sons and husbands. It's the way of things."
"You sound like Elizabeth," Hannah told him.
He cocked his head. "Does that surprise you? Cain't live with a woman all these years without some of her ways rubbing off. Someday you'll find that out for yourself."
It was as close as he came to raising the topic of Ben Savard. Of course it hadn't escaped him that Hannah shared Ben's apartment, but he wouldn't push for her confidence and she wasn't ready to talk about Ben yet. She didn't think she'd ever be ready. The day she would have to leave Ben was coming, but to hear her father tell her that was more than she could bear.
That night he came in past midnight, but she woke immediately. Hannah looked forward to these long conversations in the dark. During the day she imagined telling him about the things people said to her, and what he would say in response. Often he responded with questions instead of answers, another way that he reminded her of Runs-from-Bears.
"Today," Hannah told Ben, "a Mrs. Turner asked me if it was true that my father was President Washington's godson."
"Well, that's just funny," Ben said. "You have to see it that way."
They were in bed, his arm draped across her belly. "Why do you let it get under your skin? Do you even know?"
She did know, at least in part, but that was another subject she didn't want to raise. Instead she caught sight of the rifle leaning against the wall where Ben had left it. Her brother Daniel's rifle. Nathaniel Bonner had given it to Ben for his use.
"My father thinks a lot of you," she said.
"Hannah, the bed's hardly big enough for the two of us. Let's leave your father out of it."
She raised up on one elbow and grinned at him. "You do like my father."
"I do," Ben said, running a hand up her belly. "But I don't particularly want the man looking over my shoulder just now."
"Because you're going to---"
"Yes," Ben said, flipping her over. "Because I am going to."
The next morning, well before sunrise, Ben paused at the door on the way out. The air was chill enough to make his breath hang in clouds.
He said, "There may be some real fighting today. The English have been gearing up for something big."
Hannah sat up in bed and wrapped her arms around herself. "Do you think you'll need me?" She hadn't been called back to the little field hospital yet, and she had begun to wonder why.
He glanced over his shoulder as if there might be an answer in the shadows. Finally he said, "I'm hoping not, but I'll come by if things go bad." And still he didn't go.
Hannah waited for him to come out and say what it was that was sticking in his throat. The light from the candle danced on his face, caught the color of his eyes and the curve of a cheekbone.
"I want you to tell me about your brother Daniel," he said finally. "If I'm going to be using his rifle, I want to know why, how he came to give it up."
It was something she never spoke about, but she found she was pleased to be asked.
"Tonight," she said. "I'll tell you his story tonight."
Ben's mouth curled up at one corner. "I'll look forward to it."
Though there had been few serious wounds thus far in the on-again, off-again war being fought on the plantations to the south, there were enough visitors to the main clinic to keep everyone busy throughout the day.
At one point Hannah found herself examining a young lady of some nineteen years, a friend of Rachel's, who had fallen from her pony on the Levee Road, wrenching her knee and tearing her silk stockings.
"I was visiting my fiancé at the army camp," Mlle. Girot explained to Hannah. "But the fighting started again and we had to leave, all of us."
"You make a habit of calling in at the army camp?" Hannah was amused by the idea of ladies making social calls to a battlefield. "You bring a picnic supper, and table linen?"
The young woman had the good sense not to be offended by this light teasing. "It seemed safe enough," she said. "And the gentlemen were so glad to see us. The food in the camp is disgusting."
"And your family doctor---"
Mlle. Girot ducked her head. "Dr. Kerr is engaged by Major General Jackson, and has no time to see his usual patients. And Rachel has spoken so highly of you." She managed a shaky smile.
"I take it your parents don't know you're here."
"I was hoping---"
"To hide the injury, I see."
"They would forbid me to go again. Is my leg very bad?"
She winced as Hannah removed gravel from the long graze on her shin.
"Your stockings are beyond repair," Hannah said dryly. "But the rest of you will recover. You will have to stay off your feet with your knee elevated for at least a week, until the swelling goes down. What you tell your family about how you came to hurt yourself is your own affair."
Mlle. Girot was so relieved that she hardly twitched while Hannah cleaned and bound her injuries. Throughout the entire operation she told what she knew of the battle.
"The British underestimate our soldiers time and again," said Mlle. Girot in a tone that Hannah suspected echoed her father's. "They push forward into the face of the artillery and then seem surprised when they drop by the dozens. Soon they will give up and go away."
"Or bring in bigger guns," Hannah said.
Mlle. Girot's head tilted to one side as she considered this idea. She seemed to be looking for a counterargument, and when she could produce none, she subsided into uneasy silence that lasted until Hannah was almost finished.
Finally she said, "You have attended soldiers in other battles?"
Hannah glanced at her. "Yes. Many times."
"It is hard to imagine, the things you must see and do. Do you think it is harder for you than it is for a man?"
"There's nothing easy about it," Hannah said. "For anyone."
It was almost eleven before the men came home. They were tired and subdued, but among them they had only minor wounds: a powder burn, a cut on the back of the hand, a broken toe.
And they were hungry, the best of signs, in Hannah's experience.
The adults sat together around the Savards' table and talked. It fell mostly to Luke to tell the day's story, with comments now and then from Nathaniel. Ben was unusually quiet, and Hannah watched him with growing unease.
"They're still hauling guns," said Luke. "Sixty miles over water and through swamp. Pakenham won't really make a move until he's satisfied with his artillery."
"They are taking a long time," Julia said.
"That's the English," Nathaniel said. "They stop and ruminate on the smallest details when it's time to jump---"
"---and rush ahead when they'd do better to stop and think," finished Luke for him.
"Aye," said Nathaniel. "It's bred in the bone."
"And you, married to an English lady," Jennet said, trying to strike a lighter tone and not quite succeeding.
"There are exceptions to every rule," observed Julia.
"The English have been fighting the same way since they first came to this continent," Runs-from-Bears said. There was no disapproval in his tone, nothing of disgust; it was an observation that a man made of his enemy and then put to good use.
"It worked for them with Napoleon," said Paul Savard.
"That's the problem," Nathaniel said. "They can't adapt, and worse still, they've got too many war chiefs. The one that got here on Christmas Day, that Pakenham, he's afraid to stand up to the others, what are they called? Keane, and Cochrane."
Hannah saw Paul and Julia exchange glances. They were wondering how Nathaniel Bonner would have such detailed information. Hannah hoped they wouldn't ask, because she didn't particularly want to hear the details of the risks the men took day by day.
She was sitting next to Ben, and his hand settled on her knee. No doubt her expression was as easy to read as Julia's.
Ben said, "Kit Wyndham is in the fighting."
Jennet dropped her fork with a clatter. "You saw him?"
"We did," said Luke.
"Could have shot him right between the eyes," said Nathaniel. "But it would have made things mighty hot for us."
"That would have been distinctly unsporting," Jennet said. "Wyndham may be fighting for the other side, but he was a help to us. Why do you look at me like that, Luke; you have said so yourself."
Luke shrugged. "A man takes a stand, and lives with the consequences."
Jennet was looking at Hannah as if she wanted her support in this argument, but Hannah could not contradict her brother, for the simple reason that he was right.
"What I'd like to do," Luke said, "is ask the man a few questions. Such as, how he came to write that confession. Any thoughts on that, Ben?"
Every face turned to Ben Savard, whose expression gave nothing away. It was a question that Hannah had been wanting to ask him, but thus far she hadn't found the right combination of words and courage.
Ben speared a piece of fish out of the stew, and turned his steady gaze to Luke.
"What is it you think I did?"
Luke shrugged. "I expect you caught him unawares and held a gun to his head, and he wrote down what you told him to write."
"Every word of it true," Jennet interjected.
Luke went on without acknowledging the interruption. "What I don't know, is whether it worked out the way you had in mind."
Hannah watched her father following this conversation, his interest so keen that she could almost hear it humming.
Ben said, "Poiterin taking off before they could arrest him, is that what you mean?"
"I figured that's what you were aiming for," Luke said.
"Not exactly," said Ben. His left hand tightened on Hannah's knee and then relaxed. He said, "You'll have to wait a little longer to see how things go with Poiterin."
"How things go?" Jennet said, a little sharply. "You think he'll be back?" Her color rose quickly, anger like a fever in the blood.
Ben turned all his attention to her. He said, "No. You'll never have to deal with the man again. I can promise you that."
Runs-from-Bears made a sound deep in his throat, one of approval.
In Ben's apartment that evening Hannah stripped down to her chemise and took a brush to her hair, but she was so tired that she found it hard to lift her arm. Ben sat on a stool, pulling off his moccasins.
"I want you to know," Ben said, "that if Wyndham dies, it won't be by my hand."
Any response that Hannah gave to this declaration would have been the start of a long conversation, and she was far too weary for anything of the kind.
Ben said, "You want to know about Poiterin?"
She had been hoping that he wouldn't offer to tell her. "I am doing my best not to think about Poiterin."
Ben got up and came to stand behind her. He radiated heat like a hearth.
"You spend a lot of time trying not to think about things," he said. His hands settled on her shoulders and then slid down her back to close around her waist. She shivered at the touch of his mouth on her neck.
"Is that wrong?" she asked, a little breathless.
"It makes it hard sometimes," Ben said. "I don't know how much to tell you."
She turned to look at him.
"Tell me, then, if you must."
His expression was so serious that she could hardly bear to look at him. The urge to run away from whatever it was he had to say was so strong that she shook with it.
Ben cleared his throat. "If you really want to know, here it is: Your uncle has replaced me in Henry's affections."
She struck him with the flat of her hand and tried to pull away, but his embrace was unyielding, and she didn't really want him to let go anyway.
"Jealous?" Hannah said.
"It won't last long," Ben said. He pulled her across the room and tucked her under the blankets, but still Hannah shivered. Whether it was the cold or those words won't last long, she wasn't sure. What she did know was that Ben was taking every opportunity to remind her that this was all temporary. The battle for the city would end, and the Bonners would go back to the endless forests. She would go back to Paradise and Lake in the Clouds, and take up the practice of medicine, resume her life. Her good life, among her family and friends. There would be babies to deliver and sore ears to treat, swollen joints and fevers and the aches and pains of the elderly. Her brother, who had still not healed from his wounds and was in constant pain. The new baby, and Gabriel, and Lily in Montreal with her new husband. Curiosity, who had stories to tell her.
Within days or weeks they would be on their way, and she could feel nothing but fear.
It would be nonsensical to be angry at Ben for speaking the truth, and stupider still to let it ruin the time they had. And still it ate at her, his need to raise the subject. In fact it seemed that it was on everybody's mind. The water man stopped her to ask when they were leaving for home, and Mrs. Livingston bemoaned the fact that the end of the war would mean the departure of the fascinating Nathaniel Bonner and his remarkable friends and family.
Rachel especially could hardly keep her excitement to herself, because her parents had arranged for her to travel with the Bonners, who would take her to her family in Manhattan.
In Henry, at least, Hannah had an ally.
He had come to her in the little clinic, his lower lip pooched out as though he were still a baby, and in need of comfort. Everyone was going to New-York, and he had to stay behind, and really, it was unfair.
"Your mother and father and your uncle Ben will still be here," Hannah had pointed out to him. She felt the boy's sharp gaze on her.
"You could stay, too," Henry said. "You could marry my uncle."
"I have family in the north," Hannah said, striving to make her tone neutral. "They miss me as much as your mother and father would miss you if you went away."
"But you sleep in the same bed as my uncle," Henry had persisted. "And that means you're married." His thin face was pinched with worry.
"We are not married," Hannah had said, and refused to be drawn further into the conversation.
Now she said, "Henry is just as jealous as you are of him. He doesn't like the fact that we share a bed."
"Your uncle disapproves?"
Hannah bit him on the shoulder and he yelped. "Henry," she said. "Henry doesn't like"---she shrugged as if to take in the whole apartment---"this."
"Someday Henry will understand," said Ben, his fingers working her buttons.
"He understands too much as it is," Hannah muttered, and then she gave up, as Ben meant her to do.
"Of course it is very foolish of me," Mrs. Livingston said to Jennet, her voice trembling. "But I find my nerves---the artillery---"
"It is very unsettling, even for the most sanguine of temperaments," Jennet agreed.
Around them, the sound of glass breaking as dishes and mirrors and paintings fell with every percussion that shook the house. The worst so far, Jennet thought. Maybe not the worst to come.
Mrs. Livingston pressed a half-gloved hand to her mouth. From down the hall came the sound of her mother weeping piteously.
"She won't calm unless I take her to the nuns," Mrs. Livingston said. "We are all going. Won't you come, too? You and your little ones? With the men away---"
Jennet knew what she was thinking, where her imagination went. If the British won this battle and took the city, she expected the same kind of rape and pillage she had seen as a young woman during a different revolution. It was unlikely, but Jennet could not promise Mrs. Livingston anything. Neither could she go cower in the Ursuline convent and pray the rosary while there was work to do at the clinic.
"At least let me take the babies." Mrs. Livingston grasped Jennet's hands so firmly that she winced. "The nurses will be with us, they will lack for nothing. You can come see them there, when your work is done. And if the worst should happen, I believe that even the English will respect the sanctity of the convent."
Jennet, the daughter of a Scots earl well versed in the history of Englishmen and their way of making war, managed a brief smile.
"Thank you," she said. "It will be a relief to know them well looked after."
Later, making up cots in the main clinic with Hannah, Jennet found that she was angry at herself for letting the boys go.
"Luke won't like it," she told Hannah. "No more do I."
"Luke wasn't there," Hannah told her. "For my part, I would have done the same thing."
Jennet didn't know if that was a lie meant to calm her, but she was thankful nonetheless.
For the next hour they worked without trying to talk over the noise of the battle, and Jennet studied Hannah's face. She looked far more healthy and rested than she had in many months, which most certainly had something to do with the fact that her father and uncle had come. At least in large part.
Three hours after the first shots were fired, something changed. The timing or rhythm of the battle had shifted. Hannah straightened and turned toward the windows, her head tilted to one side as she listened.
Finally she said, "One side or the other has stopped firing."
"The Americans?" Jennet could barely say the word.
"Most probably the British," Hannah said calmly. "Apparently they are very low on powder and ammunition."
Jennet heard herself squeak. "How do you know such things?" And then: "I hope you do more than talk of war all night."
At that Hannah flushed so completely that Jennet was reminded of her as a young girl, before she had known anything of men. When they had played together at Carryck, and climbed trees, and shared secrets.
She said, "He is a good man, is he no?"
Hannah nodded. "Yes, he is that." Her gaze flickered toward Jennet and then away again.
"Do you regret Wyndham?"
The question took Hannah by surprise. She paused, a pillow in her hands, and seemed to be trying to recall something specific. She leaned against the wall with one shoulder, her head lowered, and when she raised it again there was a distance in her expression, the look that came over her when she was contemplating a patient, and the nature of whatever illness had brought that person to her.
She said, "When I think of Kit, I can see him in my mind doing simple things---looking at a chart, talking to the sailors, eating an apple---but I can't recall his face, or the sound of his voice. But I do remember the things he told me, his own stories. He had a need to hear them told, I think. I don't think he heard himself, it was more in the way of praying that some folks have, repeating words for the sound. Kit was always reminding himself what others expected of him, and why those things were good and necessary. So when I think of him, I wonder if he'll ever find his way and I wish him well, but he feels far away from me. As he always did, even when he slept beside me. A man away from himself."
She stood straight and flexed her shoulders as if her muscles were cramped. "I was glad to know him, but I have no regrets. And now if you have any love for me at all, Jennet, you'll stop there and ask me no questions about Ben Savard."
Jennet opened her mouth, but Hannah stopped her words with a severe look. "I mean what I say, cousin. Every word."
If she had stopped to think about it, Hannah would have known that this conversation with Jennet would be shared with Luke, and from there would make its way to Nathaniel Bonner and Runs-from-Bears. What did surprise her, though, was the speed with which it all happened. Less than twenty-four hours after she had forbade Jennet questions about Ben Savard, her father and uncle sought her out.
She had already retired for the evening, taking with her one of Paul Savard's books on anatomy and a brace of good candles. Ben was likely to be out on patrol all night, and she worried she wouldn't be able to sleep. The greater implications of that worry only made things worse, and the solution, she decided, was to focus on facts and medical histories and diagrams.
So lost was she in a drawing of the nerves of the arm and shoulder that she didn't hear the steps on the stair until the last moment. And then her father's voice.
A wave of panic flooded up from her gut, spread over her breast and throat and down her arms until her fingers jerked with it. As though she were a little girl who had misbehaved and must now face the consequences.
The fact that Runs-from-Bears was with her father made things a little easier in one way, and much worse in another. Together there was no escaping them.
She said, "News of the battle?"
Her father said, "Nobody's hurt, if that's what you're worried about. After yesterday's drubbing it'll take a few days for the Tories to work themselves up to another run at Rodriquez."
"And in the meantime?"
Runs-from-Bears huffed a short laugh. "Every man jack is out there shoring up the fortifications. Except for the rifles, of course. They're not so reckless as to put a shovel in your father's hands."
"Hey, now."
"Nathaniel, if they need somebody to shoot the eye out of a squirrel at a hundred yards you're their man, but a shovel just ain't your kind of weapon. You'd likely take off a toe out of pure boredom."
Many white people were so intimidated by Runs-from-Bears that they never imagined that he might have a sense of humor, but in fact he had always laughed easily and as a young man, the stories went, he had been prone to play tricks on everyone. Now his smile was friendly and easy, which thoroughly alarmed Hannah. Something was coming, and she had an idea it wouldn't be a pleasant conversation.
"You're as jumpy as a flea," her father said to her. "Settle down, daughter."
And so she did. She sat straight of back and let herself be engaged in conversation, listened to the things they had to tell her, stories about the things they had seen that day, including their first sighting of an alligator. They had been sitting up in a cypress tree with a view to picking off a few British officers when the creature came up out of the depths. A hard-shelled overgrown lizard, said Runs-from-Bears. With too many teeth.
Now he was determined to get an alligator skin to take to the Kahnyen'kehàka at Good Pasture; otherwise, they would never believe his descriptions. The subject, Hannah realized finally, was about going home.
"I figure this business with the redcoats will be finished in a week or so, and then we can head out," her father said. "We'll have to wait that long just to get the horses we'll need and a wagon or two. You think you'll be ready?"
Hannah drew in a sharp breath. "Of course I'll be ready," she said, and she heard the sharpness in her tone. "I can't wait to get home."
"Good," said her father. "That's as it should be. I'm thinking I'll take your stepmother a few saplings. A pecan tree, maybe, and I hear the magnolias are pretty in the spring. She's got into the habit of planting trees, or better said she keeps Gabriel busy digging holes. She's been talking about that greenhouse we saw in Scotland back when you were a girl, and you know what that means. Traveling in caravan like we will be, I expect I can get a few saplings back to Paradise for her to coddle through the winter. Young Rachel will have more than a few trunks with finery and such, and then our Jennet has taken to collecting infants."
Hannah said, "Da, will you get on with it and say what you came to say?"
He tilted his head at her. "I'm talking about the journey home, getting ready to go."
"Packing," added Runs-from-Bears, helpfully.
"I don't have anything to pack," Hannah said. "I lost everything when I fell sick, even the knife you gave me when I was a girl."
"That's right," said her father. "I recall, now that you mention it. I've been keeping an eye out, and I picked this up for you."
He unbuckled a scabbard Hannah had never seen before and handed it over to her. It was a short sword, the kind that officers carried. A very fine weapon with an inlaid grip, double-bladed, well balanced. A beautiful weapon, of little real use to her, but beautiful nonetheless.
Hannah said, "Why, thank you."
"It's pretty to look at, ain't it? When we get home I'll see to it you get a proper knife, but I don't like the idea of you depending on borrowed weapons when you're near the fighting out at the field hospital."
"And now you've got something to pack," said Runs-from-Bears.
Hannah looked back and forth between her father and her uncle. "I'm still waiting for you to get to your real point."
Bears grinned at her, and her father cleared his throat and looked away.
"You were always bright," her father said. "My ma was teaching you your letters when you was no more than four. Learning come easier to you than it does to any of your brothers and sisters, even Daniel. That book there in your lap, I doubt I could make any sense of the title, and were you to take the time to explain it to me. But in some things you're plain slow, girl, and I suppose it falls to me to tell you so. If Elizabeth were here she'd do it without stumbling all over herself, but she ain't."
Hannah felt her color rising. She opened her mouth as if to protest but her father held up a hand to stop her.
"You've been torn up inside since before we got here, and it's worse every day. Now I'm not talking about the wrong done to you, that's something different. That calls for a certain kind of healing, and maybe it won't ever find an end. What I'm talking about is the pain you cause yourself."
The first flush of embarrassment was giving way to anger, but her father wasn't finished yet.
He said, "We like the man, Hannah. He's quick, and he'll do what needs to be done without shirking or excuse. Everybody who knows him---white or black or red---likes and respects him, and the few who don't have reason to fear him. And here's something I cain't often say: He's smarter than you."
"Is he." Hannah's voice sounded strained to her own ear.
"Some smarter," agreed Runs-from-Bears. "He's got you tied up in knots, and you never even saw the rope coming."
Hannah got up and walked across the room and back again. Sat down and stood, crossed her arms and then sat again. Her father and uncle watched her impassively. They would wait all night if she made them.
"So you're saying I should marry Ben Savard."
"That would be the sensible thing to do," said Nathaniel. "As attached as you are to the man, and he to you."
"You don't want me to come home with you. You want me to live here."
"Hell, no," Nathaniel Bonner said. "That's not the idea at all. We'd hog-tie you and cart you home on a mule if need be."
"Gag you, too, if it came to that," said Runs-from-Bears.
"Then I don't understand," Hannah said. Her hands were trembling, and she wound them together.
"You see?" her father said to her uncle. "It's a wonder how a smart woman can be pure blind at times." He turned back to her. "You cain't stay here, and he doesn't have to, either. You bring him on home with you to Paradise."
Hannah took a deep breath. "This is his home. This is everything he knows. What makes you think he would leave here?"
Bears said, "What makes you think he wouldn't?"
Her father said, "Have you ever asked the man?"
Hannah drew in a sharp breath and held it.
"She's never asked him," Bears said to no one in particular. He shook his head in disbelief.
Nathaniel Bonner stood. "Time to get some sleep. You think about asking Ben Savard to come north, will you?"
"You want me to ask Ben to marry me."
Her father raised a brow. "You're a Kahnyen'kehàka of the Wolf Longhouse. You pick your own husband and do the asking."
"This is Louisiana," said Hannah. And: "I wouldn't know how to ask."
"You'll figure it out," her father said. "Your stepmother managed when she asked me, and she had more than a little to do with raising you."
Before he went through the door, Hannah put a hand on her uncle's arm. She said, "He might say no."
That earned her a gruff laugh. "I guess you don't see what you do to the man."
"But he might," Hannah insisted. "He might say no."
Her father winked at her. "We got plenty of rope," he said. "And I'm right good at knots myself."
Honoré Poiterin wakes gasping in the cold night air, fumbling for flint and striker and candle.
The small light hauls him from the dream world back into the realm of the living. Slowly his breathing comes back to normal, sweat dries on his brow, and he becomes aware of his physical self: the itch in his eyes, his tongue, the palms of his hands. The misery of the rash that covers his face and neck.
Every day he is more reluctant to move from the bed, terrified of dreams, afraid to look out the window for fear of who he'll see there, staring up at him. The boundary between the living and the dead has thinned to the consistency of gauze.
When he mentions this to Noelle she doesn't laugh or call him names. Instead she looks thoughtful, and stands staring out the window herself for a long minute. Honoré's throat constricts in fear. She'll turn now and tell him that he's absolutely right: The dead do walk the streets.
He thinks now and then about the priest who came into this room to marry them. His friends would convulse with laughter if they knew that Honoré Poiterin is longing for a priest. But he imagines that a priest might be able to set his world right again. He would gladly pray a hundred rosaries, if it rid him of the dead. Certainly it seems that Noelle doesn't know what to do for him.
She says, "You'll be better once you can get out in the daylight. It's the drink, and too much thinking."
It's true that his mind never seems to shut off. If he drinks himself into oblivion, the memories fill his dreams and mix together with the visits from the dead. There is simply no escape.
On the seventh of January something changes. He wakes to the smell of good coffee, burnt sugar and cinnamon, a fire of seasoned wood. The air is as sweet as his mouth is sour. Honoré opens his eyes and watches as Noelle picks up the room, her movements quick and efficient. There is a fresh white linen cloth on the table where she has laid out his breakfast.
She says, "There is water beside you."
He drinks until his throat stops hurting and his tongue unglues itself from the roof of his mouth. Then he allows himself to be helped out of bed and into the hip bath, where she cares for him as if he were an infant. Finally she shaves him, and helps him into clean clothes, and then there is breakfast.
Honoré considers asking about his brandy bottle, but he is unsettled by Noelle's easy smile, her odd mood. What have you done with the harridan, my wife? He keeps himself from asking the question aloud. Instead he lets her pour him more coffee and hot milk.
While she makes the bed and moves around the room, he tries to sort it all out.
"Is the war over?" he asks finally. "Have the British taken the city?"
She pauses in folding a blanket and then comes to sit across from him.
"No," she says. "I am afraid that things don't look good for the English."
Honoré huffs a laugh. "I don't believe you."
"It's true," Noelle says. "I know it's hard to believe, but they are at a great disadvantage, and Jackson has been both clever and lucky."
"But Pakenham hasn't surrendered," Honoré says.
"No. The rumor is that the last battle will be fought tonight or tomorrow. What did they call it---the big push."
"Then it's not time to panic yet."
She shrugs. It is the kind of shrug that requires close analysis, so full is it of meaning.
"You should consider," she says finally. "What you will do if the worst happens."
Honoré laughs, his voice hoarse. "In that case I have two options," he says. "I can give myself up and hang, or I can flee to the islands."
Another shrug, and now his irritation has the upper hand. "What is it you're trying to say?"
"Nothing. Except there is a third possibility."
He makes an impatient gesture and she spills it all out before him. What if he were to join the British? Fight in this last battle on the other side. If they do take the city, so much the better; he has proved his allegiance. If they lose, he will have a better chance of escape when they retreat to the ships waiting off Pea Island.
"Your concern for my well-being is touching," says Honoré. "Worried that I'll give you up if I'm caught?"
"Of course," Noelle admits without hesitation. There is a flicker of her real self in her eyes, hard as obsidian. "And about the possibility that the courts will seize all your property. All our property."
It is something that has occurred to him before, an idea he has always dismissed without close thought. He finds the missing brandy bottle a real trial.
"With my luck," he says, "Pakenham would shoot me for a double spy, and on sight."
"Then you must bring him some evidence of your loyalty," says Noelle. "Something he needs very badly."
"Jackson's head on a platter." Honoré coughs a laugh.
"The word," says Noelle, "is that they are very short of powder and ammunition."
"Oh, well," says Honoré. "I'll just load up a wagon and drive it down to them."
"You could name your own reward."
"That's easy. Wyndham's head on a platter."
Noelle rises, her mood finally as sour as his own. "Have it your own way," she tells him. "Sit here and wait for the gendarmerie to find you."
She is gone before he remembers to ask about the brandy.
Honoré reclines on the divan and finds himself thinking through Noelle's suggestion that he make himself useful to the British. To Pakenham, the hero of Salamanca.
It isn't often he is in the position of having to win over another man. His habit has always been to dispose of men who stood in his way, and negotiation does not come easily to him. That is part of the reason that he has never run with the Baratarians. Lafitte requires loyalty of the men who work with him, a concept which has never meant very much to Honoré. There is something unnatural in Lafitte's ability to bind other men to him, to have them do his bidding in order to earn a place in his kingdom.
Whatever it is that brings him so many loyal men, it is profitable. Lafitte's auctions of smuggled slaves draw buyers from hundreds of miles around. He supplies the city with everything from soap milled in France to firearms.
Honoré sits up. So that is what Noelle was trying to get at: Lafitte's hidden supply of black powder and ammunition kept at Le Tonneau. The rumor is that there is enough stockpiled in Lafitte's secret armory to blow up a thousand ships.
Wyndham had been keenly interested in Le Tonneau, now that Honoré remembers. Once, Honoré had even taken him there.
Rumors blew through the city, a windstorm of conjecture, wild fears and hopes. As the first week of the new year trudged by, tempers were strained to the breaking point and beyond. Funeral processions for fallen soldiers, no matter how humble, grew into huge ungainly affairs attended by hundreds, and the lamentations of the mourners rose up like a cloud over the city. An hour later, the rumor that Jackson was in the city would send those same people into a frenzy of cheers outside his headquarters.
Hannah's menfolk were gone more, and for longer periods. She saw her father and uncle every day for at least a short while; Ben she saw very little, and Luke even less. Men who had been out in the ciprière in the cold rain had little time for long discussions, Hannah explained to herself. Clémentine must shovel great amounts of hot food into him, and he needed fresh clothes and water to wash. He must spend time with Paul and Julia and the children, and then of course he needed his sleep. Her question for him would have to wait.
When he was away she buried herself in work. The clinic suspended vaccinations until the battle for the city was decided, and dealt instead with a steady flow of patients. Soldiers with wounds small and large, broken bones, burns, infections, and the illnesses that were the burden of any army: dysentery, typhoid, measles, malaria. Hannah looked after men too sick to take note of the color of her skin; she worked in the surgery and apothecary; twice she was called to deliver babies for ladies who were normally attended by one of the medical doctors who had gone to the main field hospital for the duration.
There was no sign of Honoré Poiterin or word about him. She saw Maman Zuzu a few times, and learned from her that Jacinthe was safe and would most likely recover. Once she went out to the Bayou St. John to visit with Amazilie, who had grown thinner and very drawn. It was not just the loss of Titine that weighed on her, but also the fact that her son had gone off to join the fighting. Tibère was serving with the Battalion of Free Men of Color, and she had not seen him since Christmas Day.
Where there was so much misery and pain, Hannah told herself, it was truly the height of self-indulgence to be worried about something as trivial as a marriage proposal.
She spent a good amount of time composing a letter to her stepmother in her head. Elizabeth would know what to do. If she had been here during Hannah's very odd, very disturbing discussion with her father and uncle, Elizabeth would have taken control and...what? What would she have said?
Here Hannah's imagination refused to cooperate. A very bad sign indeed.
In the late afternoon of the fifth of January, the richest men in the city evacuated their wives and children by means of Henry Shreve's steamboat. Julia Savard would not go, but Rachel and Henry were entrusted to the care of Mrs. Livingston, who left New Orleans with her mother and daughter.
Jennet came back to stay with the Savards, and brought the babies with her, much to Clémentine's satisfaction. To Hannah's relief Jennet seemed to have forgot entirely about Ben Savard, or at least, she had been warned away from the subject by Luke or more likely, to Hannah's mind, her father-in-law.
The mood in the city was more somber by the hour, and by the evening of the seventh, Hannah had begun to believe the rumors about the coming battle. She left the clinic and climbed the stairs to Ben's apartment, trying not to hope that she would see him this evening. It had been almost two days, and she wanted the opportunity to talk to him before he went into battle. She knew too much of the possibilities to pretend to herself that there was no danger.
No book could hold her attention, and so she lay sleepless, staring at the ceiling and trying to ignore the sound of artillery fire in the distance.
At first she didn't hear the scratching at the door. The people who sought her out here were more likely to knock or call out, and so she went to answer the door already alert and uncertain.
Her visitor was a stranger, a young woman who had painted her face in a manner that left no question as to her chosen work. She wore a pink-and-brown paisley shawl over a low-cut gown, and what was either a fake mole on one breast or the beginning of a fearsome cancer.
And her brow creased in confusion and no small amount of unhappiness at the sight of Hannah. She said, "Where's Ben?"
Hannah's voice came rough with sleeplessness. "On patrol, with his company."
"I have a letter for him."
Hannah stepped aside. "Would you like to wait?"
And then had to bite hard on the lining of her cheek to keep from laughing at the look on the younger woman's face. Affront, surprise, uneasiness.
"I've got to get back," she said. And, with sudden energy: "I know you. I've seen you before."
"Is that so?" Hannah managed a small smile. "Have you come to the clinic to be vaccinated?"
This suggestion was greeted with a hoot of laughter. "As if I'd let the likes of you stick me with a needle full of cow piss."
There was a moment's silence in which the unapologetic examination of Hannah's face continued. She was about to protest when the woman's eyes widened.
"I know," she said, her tone triumphant. "You was the one who spent a week in Girl's room, sick with the marsh fever. I saw you once or twice when I passed by. You look healthy enough now."
"I am healthy now," Hannah said, disoriented. "Who is it who sent you?"
"My mistress," said the girl. "Mme. Soileau. She's got a house on the other side of town." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "You don't remember that week at all? My face don't strike you familiar? I'm Nicole."
"I don't recall you," Hannah said. "But I remember Girl."
The woman's expression sobered. "I miss Girl. The mistress sold her when she got sick."
"I know that," Hannah said. She lifted her chin in the direction of the clinic. "She died here, of an obstruction in her bowel."
"Is that so?" Nicole had gone pale beneath her rouge. "Could be she's better off. You hear stories about the planters who buy their slaves from the auction houses."
I've heard those stories, too, Hannah thought, but kept it to herself.
"You said you have a letter---"
"For Ben. I'm supposed to give it to him direct, but she didn't say nothing about waiting half the night."
"I can give it to him," Hannah offered.
The girl gave an uneasy and doubtful shrug. "It's important, the mistress says. You won't read it?"
"I won't read it." And then, against her better judgment: "How is it Ben knows your mistress?"
"Oh, everybody knows Mme. Soileau," Nicole said. "Every man, at least." And she winked. She handed Hannah the letter, heavy paper folded and secured with a solid wax seal.
"I'm trusting you, now," she said.
"I will deliver it," said Hannah. "You can depend upon it."
Nicole's perfume was still hanging in the air when Ben came through the door a half hour later, just as the cathedral bells were chiming eight o'clock. Hannah had lit candles and stoked the fire and she sat in the best chair near the hearth, an unread book in her lap and, on top of the book, the letter.
Hannah stayed just where she was while he took off his weapons and set them carefully aside. Then he came to her directly and leaning over, kissed her on the forehead.
"You've been a long while," Hannah said.
"I have," he agreed. "Long enough that I was hoping for more of a greeting."
Hannah studied his face, and felt her resolve crumbling away. This was Ben Savard, who had given her every reason to trust him, who had saved her life. She loved him, that was clear to her now, and the oddest thing was that love made it all the harder to be fair.
She said, "You had a visitor just a little while ago."
Ben shrugged off his wet cape and spread it out before the hearth. "A visitor."
"Yes. A young woman called Nicole. She brought you a letter from Mme. Soileau."
"Ah." He sat down on a stool and took his time pulling off his moccasins. "So what does it say?"
"It's your letter," Hannah said, her temper flaring. "I wouldn't open it."
"But you look mad enough to throw it into the fire."
"I am not mad."
"No?" He held her gaze.
"How is it you know Mme. Soileau?"
"I don't know her, the way you mean." He grinned. "In the biblical sense. Don't know any of her young women that way, either."
"You do business with her of another kind?"
"I wouldn't call it business," Ben said. "Is this about Girl?"
"Yes," Hannah said. "Your Mme. Soileau---"
"She's not mine."
"---as much as murdered that young woman. Why would you have anything to do with her?"
"You're jumping to conclusions, chère. Open it up, read it to me before you decide I need tarring."
Hannah paused, trying to make sense of the things she was feeling. She held out the letter to him.
"This is your business and none of mine. I needn't involve myself."
Ben took the letter, letting his fingers trail over hers. His skin was still cold, and the shock of it ran up her arm. He looked irritated and Hannah thought: Good. At least we're both mad.
The wax seal gave a soft crack and he unfolded the single sheet. His eyes moved over the page, and then he handed it to her.
"It's your business, too," he said. "But you're right, you needn't involve yourself."
The hand was firm and straight, the ink very black.
He goes to Le Tonneau after midnight.
Hannah looked at Ben. He was studying the fire, his face set in hard lines. He spoke without turning toward her.
"Poiterin has been hiding out at Noelle Soileau's place since the night his grand-mère died in the fire."
Hannah tried to make sense of the words. "And you knew where he was? Why didn't---how could---" She broke off.
"I didn't tell you and I didn't turn him in for a couple reasons," said Ben. "Mostly because Noelle asked me to hold off. She had her own plans for the man."
Hannah took a deep breath. "We are talking about Honoré Poiterin, who put Jennet through such torture for so many months, who took Titine and sold her, who raped me."
"You think I could ever forget about that?" Ben gave her a long and very sober look.
"No," Hannah said. "But I don't understand."
After a moment Ben said, "As much as he's done to you, he's done that and more to Noelle and her family." He ran a hand over his eyes. "You met Valerie Maurepas in Pensacola?"
It took a moment for Hannah to collect her thoughts. "Titine's mother. Yes, I met her."
"When Noelle was sixteen or so---about Rachel's age---she was taken off the street. By one of the slave traders of the sort who isn't fussy about where his stock comes from, or how legal it is. Noelle was free, born to free parents, but that didn't matter to him. He took her north and sold her to a planter in Virginia, and she'd be a slave to this day if she hadn't got word to Valerie. Valerie hired a lawyer and got the papers together and they sued, and eventually Noelle got her freedom back. She was nineteen by that time, and those three years---they took a toll."
"I can see that they would," Hannah said, her tone milder now. "You're saying Noelle Soileau is connected somehow to Valerie Maurepas."
"Noelle may be without mercy when it comes to business, and if you're waiting for me to explain how somebody with her history would hold slaves, well, then I have to disappoint you. I don't understand it myself, but she's not alone. There's more than one dark-skinned slave holder in this part of the country. But I can tell you this about Noelle: To her own people she's loyal unto death, and her great-aunt Valerie Maurepas and her cousin Titine are two of those people she counts as her own." And to Hannah's blank look: "You didn't realize that Noelle is colored, did you? Most folks don't, but she signs herself that way: Noelle Soileau, FWC."
Hannah said, "I should have thought to ask why Titine took me to that house, but I was too sick, and later I just---" She paused.
"It was the one place in the city she knew you'd be safe, because she asked Noelle to take you in as a personal favor to her."
"My recollection," Hannah said slowly, "is that rent was paid. And when the money was used up, I was thrown out."
"Mais yeah, rent was paid. She's a businesswoman first and foremost. And then Titine got snatched up and stole away---"
Hannah closed her eyes and opened them again. Of course. Of course that would send someone with Noelle Soileau's history into a frenzy. "She must have been out of her mind with grief."
"Mostly it's anger that moves Noelle," Ben said. "But now you'll see where it comes from. Titine got snatched up by Poiterin because of you and Jennet coming to New Orleans. Noelle put part of the blame on you. Maybe that seems unreasonable to you---"
"But we are partly to blame," Hannah said.
"Even so, Noelle didn't throw you out to die, not the way you think. She sent word to me, and I came to get you."
Hannah let the silence spin out while she thought it all through.
She said, "There's still Girl."
"Yes," Ben said. "There's Girl. I can't make any excuses for that, and I won't. But I can tell you that whatever ill you wished on Honoré Poiterin, it's nothing compared to what Noelle has put him through."
"What did she do?" Hannah asked.
"She called in Maman Zuzu."
Hannah stood and walked to the window. There was nothing to see in the courtyard except the darkened shape of the fountain. Without turning she said, "Tell me about this place he's going tonight---"
"Le Tonneau. On the other side of the river, a half mile or so south. Pretty well hid."
"Noelle arranged this."
"She's been working on getting him out of the city, yes. It took some handling, from what I hear."
"And now it's up to you to waylay him."
"I'm not going alone."
It all fit together, quite suddenly and with clarity. "My father."
"And your uncle and your brother," said Ben. "Between the four of us, we'll put paid to the whole business."
He was taking dry clothes down from the pegs on the wall. For a moment, Hannah watched him.
"Why does he need to be out of the city? Why couldn't you go take him out of her place?"
Ben cast her a sidelong glance. "Because it can't look like Noelle had anything to do with it. If there's any suspicion of foul play on her part, the court will stop her from inheriting."
"Inheriting?" The word caught in Hannah's throat.
"Honoré Poiterin is as good as dead," Ben said. "And Noelle Soileau is his wife." He drew in a deep breath and let it go.
"His legal wife." It wasn't a question, but Ben nodded.
For a moment he seemed to be ready to tell her more, and then he shook his head. "I was hoping to spend the night, but I've got to go straightaway. Are you going to give me a kiss good-bye, or will I have to make do with a few fond words?"
Hannah went to him then. She put her hands on his chest and went up on tiptoe to kiss him.
"Is it true about tomorrow, about the battle that's coming?"
"It's true," Ben said. He ran a hand over her hair. "I may not have time to come back here tonight. If that's the case I'll send somebody to fetch you to the field hospital. If you're still willing."
"I'm willing," Hannah said. There were other things she wanted and needed to say, but she couldn't bear the idea of raising the questions she had for him and then having him leave before they had time to talk it all through.
Instead she said, "You take care, Jean-Benoît Savard. You take good care. Don't turn your back on Honoré Poiterin, or on the English army, either."
Jennet showed up at her door shortly after Ben had left.
She said, "Can ye take Adam, please, afore I drop the puir wee thing on his heid."
"I was about to come find you," Hannah said. "I didn't want to wait for word alone."
The babies were quickly settled, side by side on Ben's bed. Hannah stood for a moment considering the two of them, strong and healthy, full of promise. Adam, who had had such a difficult start, had been coddled and nursed to rounded surplus. His black hair curled prettily at his temples, and his skin glowed the shade of aged oak. He had a cleft in his chin that marked him as Honoré Poiterin's child.
Beside her Jennet said, "I will do right by this boy, I swear it."
Hannah thought of her brother, of her father and uncle and all the family at Lake in the Clouds who would have a hand in his raising and education. "We all will," she said.
"Weel now," Jennet said, as if coming out of a trance. "We'll no be sleeping this night, so here's my plan. I'm going to brave Clémentine's kitchen and bring back tea and whatever else I can find, and then we'll sit together, the twa of us, and I'll read the cards. And I've got a question or two that Ben couldna take the time to answer when he came to fetch Luke. Will ye tell me what ye ken?"
"You get the tea," Hannah said. "And I'll provide what answers Ican."
"For my part," Nathaniel Bonner said to nobody in particular, "I'd prefer six or seven feet of solid snow to this damp cold."
He expected no response, and got none. The three other men in the canoe were thinking the same thing, with the exception of Ben Savard, who most probably had never seen a proper snowfall in his life.
The Mississippi was a fearsome river, muscular and stubborn, and no doubt many a less experienced party had found themselves dragged along until she spit them into the Gulf. But they were all at home in a canoe and familiar with the river, and they worked their paddles in rhythm and made the other side in good time.
They made landfall at the foot of a good-sized garrison that surrounded the city's main powder magazine. There was no lack of guards, but all of them were men seventy or older, armed with ancient muskets. If the British got this far, it went without saying, the city had already fallen.
A few of the guards greeted Savard as they passed, and then the four of them broke into an easy trot and left the brightly lit camp behind.
For all the cold damp, it wasn't so overcast that they couldn't make their way. Savard had proved time and again that he knew this whole territory, stick and stone, and so they followed the shape of him along canals and through orchards, keeping off pathways.
The plan was to settle in at this secret armory of Lafitte's, the one called Le Tonneau, and wait for Poiterin to show up. According to Savard, Lafitte's place was a well-kept secret, something easy to believe as they followed him deeper into the swamp. Nathaniel was curious to see what such a place looked like. Rumor had it that Lafitte had provided most of the big guns and ammunition for the Carolina and the Louisiana. He had seen for himself that the Baratarians had brought their own guns to man the Rodriquez Canal. Bears had watched them at work for a while and pointed out in his casual way that Lafitte was better armed than the United States navy and army combined.
Savard paused now and then to listen. The night was full of sounds, many unfamiliar to a backwoodsman from the New-York frontier, though Nathaniel had learned a bit in the last week. Then the ground underfoot went from soggy to pure water, and Savard was pulling out a canoe hidden away in the brush.
They set to paddling again, this time through still black waters. What moonlight there was fell on cypress trees, some no more than stumps, others great in their age and size. A half hour later Savard held up a hand and they floated for a moment while he listened. He spoke to them in a low voice, his head turned so they could hear him.
"There's something wrong," he said. "Lafitte most usually has guards all along here, but there's not a single man on patrol."
"You sure Poiterin is by himself?" Luke asked.
Savard nodded. "He's good, but he's not good enough to lay all of Lafitte's men low."
"You got a plan?" Bears asked.
It turned out that Savard did indeed have a plan.
A half hour later they had taken their spots. The armory was on an island no more than a half acre in size, but solid underfoot. Le Tonneau turned out to be a low building constructed out of cypress logs and without windows of any kind. A big double door was set into the front under the eaves, and a lantern hung to either side of it. Around the building itself was a clearing that gave way to cypress trees. Nathaniel, hunkered down with Savard in the shadows, studied the situation as a hollow feeling rose from his gut into his throat.
Not one guard, but standing in front of the door were two caissons, each hitched to a pair of dray horses. Lying on his back, half in the shadows, was a man who had lost a good part of his head to a hatchet blow. Nathaniel liked to deal with one thing at a time.
"Horses in this part of the country swim through swamp, do they?"
Savard pointed with his chin. "There's a road leads south and then forks. One spur goes right to the big river."
"So who's inside? The British?"
Savard glanced at Nathaniel. "Most likely. That's one of Lafitte's men dead on the ground. There must be another five or so like him around here."
The situation required some thought. Somehow or another the British, short on powder and ammunition, had found this place, hid away as it was deep in the swamp. Nathaniel recalled what he had been told about Wyndham, but then there had to be more than one spy still at work for the British. It was a complication, and no small one. If they moved on this little raiding party---and they would have to---they'd lose their chance at Poiterin.
"I'm going to go talk to Bears and Luke." Savard slipped away into the shadows and was back in five minutes.
"They don't see things much different," he said. "We'll wait a while longer, see who comes out those doors." And he swung his rifle up and reached for his powder horn.
Waiting was a skill learned in boyhood or never learned at all. Nathaniel was pleased to see that Savard had the knack of it, his whole frame relaxing against the tree trunk to the point that he seemed to melt right into the bark. The primed rifle rested in his arms, and his eyes moved over the clearing as steady as a new-wound clock.
He found himself wishing, as he did every waking hour, for Elizabeth. He had the idea that she would like Ben Savard, but then sometimes she still surprised him, seeing things tucked away in a man's mind that he never would have guessed. He was thinking about what it would be like, that first conversation between Savard and Elizabeth, when the double door opened up.
British. Four redcoats, two Indian scouts of a tribe Nathaniel couldn't identify, and an officer in dark green. Another four redcoats. Both the Indian scouts and two of the redcoats immediately fanned out, weapons at the ready. The rest of them were humping barrels and boxes.
From the other side of the clearing came an owl hoot, Runs-from-Bears making his intentions known.
"I've got the tall one." Nathaniel brought up his rifle and fired. Savard did the same, and from the other side of the clearing came two more reports. Then they were moving into the chaos in front of the armory. All four armed men were down, one of them screaming. Barrels and boxes were dropped as men reached for weapons, and then Luke stepped out of the shadows and put a musket to the officer's neck.
"Kit," Luke said in a conversational tone. "You're just about the last person I expected to see here."
"Luke."
"Tell your men to stand down," called Ben Savard. "Or I'll fire a bullet into one of those casks and we can watch them burn."
There was a moment of silence, and then Wyndham did as he was bid.
In short order they stripped the prisoners of their weapons and stood guard while they returned the powder and shot to the armory. Nathaniel stayed close to Wyndham, not talking to the man but watching and wondering at the odd turn of fate. They had come here for Poiterin and were ending up instead with a man who had proved himself a friend and ally over a long and difficult year. They'd have to march him back to the city, where he'd be tried and hanged as a spy.
"We could tie them all up and leave them back in the trees while we deal with Poiterin," Luke said.
"Best move those wagons around back then," Bears said. "Nathaniel?"
"I'd say it's worth a try, if it gets us Poiterin."
Nathaniel caught Savard's gaze. The younger man nodded. "Lots of rope in those caissons," he said. "But we'll have to work quick."
They left Wyndham until last. As an officer he would get better treatment than enlisted men, had he been captured by regular army. As it was, Nathaniel was in no mood to take chances. He tied the man's wrists, taking the time to study him. He looked battle weary and worn down, but he was tough. Nathaniel said, "This shouldn't take long. We've just got some business to settle with an old friend of yours."
"Poiterin is no friend of mine."
"Call him a colleague, then. He's on his way here, hoping to buy Pakenham's forgiveness the same way you had in mind."
Wyndham looked him straight in the eye. "I require no one's forgiveness," he said. "I am proud to be an officer of His Majesty's army. I only wish I were a better one."
Nathaniel said, "Do I have to gag you, or will you go quiet to stand with the rest of your men?"
Wyndham looked at Luke. He started to say something and then just shook his head. "I promise not to do anything to warn Poiterin. In return, I'd just as soon you'd shoot me here and now."
"I can see how that might appeal," Nathaniel said to him. "But I fear you'll have to take your chances with the court."
The last word was barely out of his mouth when the gunshot sounded, and in that same second Nathaniel felt the rush of a bullet skimming by. Wyndham sagged and then fell to the ground.
Runs-from-Bears and Savard went into the brush after Poiterin, and came back a half hour later. Empty-handed.
Hannah, rolled into blankets before the hearth, was dreaming of home, and resisted the hand that settled on her shoulder to shake her awake.
"Daughter," came her father's voice in Kahnyen'kehàka. "Squirrel."
It was his use of her girl-name that woke her. Hannah sat up.
Nathaniel Bonner crouched before her. He was damp with sweat and his color was high. He had been running, hard and long.
"You're needed at the field hospital," he said. "I've come to fetch you."
Hannah dressed quickly and quietly. For once it was a blessing that Jennet was so hard to rouse, because at this moment they could afford no delay. Her father's expression told her that something was very wrong.
At the door he was waiting with her medical pack slung over his shoulder.
"Who?"
He looked her direct in the eye and said, "It's not your brother or Savard or Bears."
Hannah's breath hitched and caught. With relief, and with a new kind of worry. "Who?"
"Kit Wyndham," he said. "Poiterin shot him."
The six miles to the field hospital on the DuPré plantation gave Hannah time to think of many questions, but to ask only a few. The answers were sobering. Kit Wyndham was both badly injured and a prisoner of war, and Poiterin had disappeared again. He wouldn't go back to Noelle Soileau's, unless it was to kill her for her part in the trap that he had managed to escape. When Hannah said as much to her father, it turned out that Ben had already thought of this possibility. On his way through the city Nathaniel Bonner had stopped and delivered a message.
Hannah had seen her father deal with all kinds of people over the course of her life, but she could not see him in a room with Noelle Soileau.
"She's safe?"
"If she does as she's told."
It would have to serve. There were other matters to worry about just now. One wounded man and more to come. Even in the full dark, evidence of the coming battle was everywhere on the Levee Road, supply wagons and caissons and men. Hannah was hungry and she was thirsty, but that would have to wait. Something occurred to her.
"Dr. Rousseau?"
"Already there," said her father. "Since yesterday, according to Savard."
Hannah was glad to know that Kit was not lying alone in his own blood.
They cut through the fields on a path that was already familiar, moving at a fast trot. For as long as she could remember she had followed her father like this, on one kind of trail or another. It felt right and proper and was a comfort to her.
At the beginning of the row of slave cabins her father took his leave.
"I wish you could stay here with me," she said, and was embarrassed. But he grinned at her.
"And miss all the fun?"
His hand, hard and rough, settled on her shoulder. "Do what you can for him, daughter, but be prepared. He won't last the day."
"Da." She grasped at his hand as he pulled it away. "Where's Ben?"
Nathaniel looked over his shoulder, his eyes narrowed as if he could see the battlefields just to the south. "He's gone to work," he said finally.
"I need to talk to him," Hannah said, her voice catching.
"I'll send him back to you," her father said. "Soon as we have a free minute."
Then he winked at her, and turning on his heel disappeared into the first featherings of a rising fog.
Dr. Rousseau's hands and lower arms were bloody, and his expression said everything Hannah needed to know. She stood beside the table where Kit Wyndham lay.
The bullet had lodged in his upper abdomen and was there still. Dr. Rousseau had done what little could be done, but a bullet that pierced the peritoneum meant only one thing. Unless they were to open his torso there was no way to know exactly what damage it had done, but it was damage no man would survive.
He was heavily bandaged in linen that matched the pallor of his skin. He had lost so much blood, Hannah wondered how he could still be alive. If he still was alive, or if she was imagining the rise and fall of his chest. Then he opened his eyes and looked at her.
"Walks-Ahead." His voice was easy and his tone light. As if she had come to tea.
She sat down on the stool beside him and touched his face. His fever was climbing, but it wouldn't last long. Soon his body would recognize a battle lost.
"Stomach wounds," Kit said. "You told me once how it's the hardest way to die."
"Not this time," Hannah said, struggling to match his tone. "It looks as though the bullet did damage to an artery."
"What good news." Kit managed a smile.
It was still at least an hour to sunrise, but from far off came the sound of bugles calling men from sleep. Kit turned his head and listened. He said, "Their haversacks will be soaked with dew and rain. Fires forbidden. Cold breakfast."
"You're sorry to miss the battle."
"I would have liked to fight under Thornton," Kit said. "If Pakenham had a dozen more like him, Jackson would have no chance."
"Then I'm glad there's only one Thornton," Hannah said.
He turned his face toward her. There were darkening shadows under his eyes. "If we take the city, no harm will come to you."
It was an empty promise, and they both knew it.
Hannah said, "Would you like me to write to your family?"
His brow creased in confusion, as if he had forgot that he ever had a mother or sisters or a fiancée.
He said, "I failed him." And: "Make no excuses for me."
Hannah took Kit Wyndham's hand and held it until he had gone.
When she went out of the cabin there was no sign of Dr. Rousseau, but there were soldiers milling about in the fog and dark, cooking breakfast over small fires. She hadn't realized that the slaves had been turned out so that the militia could be housed here, and even stranger was the mood among the men as they fried bacon and ate it between slabs of corn bread. Her own stomach was grumbling but she moved on, thinking that she would find Dr. Rousseau somewhere close by.
Then Hannah realized what was so very odd about these men. They were unarmed. Many of the volunteers who had come from the north had expected to be supplied with weapons by the army, and had found themselves disappointed. They had been assigned to the rearmost lines, where they served as nothing more than window dressing.
As she passed she heard them speaking among themselves in tones that ranged from disappointment and agitation to outright indignation. Having put aside their farms and families and traveled so far, they were being denied the release of battle. No wonder, Hannah thought, that Dr. Rousseau didn't show himself.
She passed a small group of men who stopped to look her over, openly suspicious. One of them, a man with few teeth and missing one ear, challenged her directly, and Hannah found herself lying without hesitation. This outlying field hospital had been established on Jackson's direct order, and she and Dr. Rousseau were here at his command.
She left the idle men behind her and walked to the embankment. In the dark she climbed up to the Levee Road, but there was nothing to see in the fog, not the river itself or the ships on the river, not a flicker of fire anywhere. But in the darkened fields to the south, men were massing. One army ready to march forward and take by force, the other determined to stop them.
A drumming of hooves, and a patrol swept by on horseback, a half dozen men with cloaks fluttering behind them. Hannah stepped back, but not before she was seen. The lead rider pulled up abruptly and the others followed his lead, their horses dancing in place and kicking up mud. One of them held up a lantern, and Hannah found herself in the middle of a puddle of light.
"Mistress Bonner," called Major General Jackson. "I wish I had a hundred more like your father and uncle."
"So do I," Hannah said.
His leathery face folded into a smile. "That's a fine weapon you've got. Do you know how to use it?"
Hannah touched the sword her father had given her, hanging from her belt in its leather scabbard. "I do," she called back. "But I'm far better with a scalpel."
The smile widened. "Best you stay here then," he said. "And see to our brave lads."
And he put spurs to his horse, and galloped off with his staff close behind him.
The wagons pulled out into the street under overcast and rainy skies. Nathaniel Bonner drove one team and Runs-from-Bears the other, while Luke rode alongside the wagons on a sturdy horse. Jennet could look up at any time and see him there, his eyes narrowed as he kept watch.
"The war is over for us," she told him, and tried to believe that it was true. Jennet glanced at Hannah, who sat next to her father with young Nathan in her lap. Her complexion was drawn and stark with worry, and Jennet thought her own face must look much the same.
"Where is he?" she asked Luke, for the tenth or fiftieth time.
"Patience," said her husband, and moved his horse out of the reach of her pinching fingers. To Jennet's eye he looked more concerned than he would admit, and this kept her awake that first night, when they made camp under a clear and cold night sky.
On the second day they made camp after crossing into Mississippi. The women and children slept in the covered beds of the wagons; the men put bedrolls on the ground when they weren't on watch. Jennet felt safe, but unsettled. Her mood subdued, watchful, reluctantly hopeful. She saw those same things in Hannah's face.
By the light of the cook fire Jennet thought of the things she would say to Ben Savard if she ever saw him again. And if it meant digging him up to say those things, she would have that satisfaction.
When next Jennet looked up, he was there, standing behind Hannah.
Hannah saw Jennet's expression and understood before she even got to her feet that everything had changed. It was in her smile as she turned and Ben Savard's arms came up to draw her in to him. It was in their faces, full of light and promise.

