The Magnolia Duchess

by Beth White

  Meanwhile, the brigade storming the redout in front of the rampart found themselves cut down by murderous rifle fire. Before long they were routed as well, running hard for the rear. Through a pall of smoke Charlie could see crusty old Colonel Gibbs, red-faced and sweating, mounted on a rearing plantation horse, remonstrating in vain for his men to return to the front of the battle.

  Time shut down for Charlie, years of training informing his actions and commands behind the battery. The battle roared like a dragon, men died around him, and he kept going.

  Then they had to wait for more ammunition. For their own reasons the Americans ceased fire as well, and a bizarre lull descended on the battlefield. The smoke, caught in moist air, drifted to the ground like snow. As the ringing in his ears cleared, Charlie could hear a band from behind the American lines blaring “Yankee Doodle.”

  Suddenly the brigade major from the 44th rode up on them, wheeled the horse, and slid to the ground. His face was black from powder, streaked with sweat and blood from a cut over one cheekbone. “We’ve lost this thing, Kincaid,” he panted. “Pakenham, Gibbs, and Keane are all dead. When the men find out, they’re going to run. But some of us from the 21st are going to get across that ditch and go over the wall. Are you with us?”

  Charlie stared at him. Such an action would be both heroic and suicidal. The last flourish in signing off on his duty to His Majesty’s Navy. Whether he survived or not, he could go to the other side with a clear conscience.

  He was done.

  VILLERÉ PLANTATION

  Fiona glanced up when Ishmael came to the doorway supporting another soldier. She would have burst into tears, but she seemed to have gone dry. The impulsive young woman who had sold herself into the cavalry in the name of patriotism had somehow withered away, leaving this automaton who grimly went about the business of closing sightless eyes, tying tourniquets about gushing wounds, and holding instruments for the surgeon while he dug for bullet fragments.

  “You’ll have to leave him out there.” She went back to replacing the bandage that a young soldier had restlessly plucked off his forehead. “There’s no more room in here.”

  “I think you gonna want to talk to this one,” Ishmael said. “He came from the front, and he says the battle’s over.”

  She looked up with a frown. “It’s been less than an hour since the firing started!” She shook her head. In the end, she’d done nothing heroic after all, nothing beyond failure to deliver a message. “Never mind. I’m coming.” She rose and stepped over wounded men until she reached the boy Ishmael was lowering to sit against the foyer wall. She hardly noticed when Ishmael gave her a compassionate look and left. “Here, let me look at you. Where are you hurt?”

  “My back.” The young soldier gasped with every breath. “I was in the first wave of the 44th. I fell, and the rest ran over me getting away. When it was over, I had to crawl the rest of the way back because anybody who stood up was shot like a dog—” He slumped over, weeping. “I shouldn’t have crawled.”

  Pity wouldn’t make him well. Fiona rolled him to his stomach and began to cut his coat away from the gash between his shoulder blades. “So it’s really over? The Americans surrendered?”

  The boy groaned out a curse. “No! They hid behind that rampart, shooting at us, muskets and rifles and artillery, and General Lambert ordered us to withdraw because somebody forgot to bring the equipment so we could climb over. We were like pigs in a slaughterhouse.” He turned his face toward her and whispered, “They’ll say I’m a coward, hit in the back.”

  She put a hand on his head. “Then—then we won? The Americans won?”

  “I suppose. Maybe we’ll attack again. I don’t care. I just want to go home.”

  Slaughter. God, oh God, please let Charlie be safe.

  MCCARTY PLANTATION, AMERICAN HEADQUARTERS

  As the wagon rolled to a stop outside American headquarters, Charlie looked about, still stunned to be unharmed after the harrowing journey across the ditch upon the shoulders of his mates, and then climbing over the wall under murderous musket and rifle fire. He shook the manacles about his wrists and found them real enough. As far as he knew, he was the only one to have survived.

  The guns were quiet now, except for sporadic musket fire kept up by the Americans to harass the retreating enemy. Charlie had no idea what would come from this day, but he suspected what was left of the British command had had enough.

  He remembered another Sunday morning months ago, spent imprisoned in a tack room, thinking about committing treason. He’d sensed God telling him to honor his commitment, and he had done that to the best of his ability. Now his personal coin had flipped so completely that he might as well be resurrected from the dead. In fact, that was probably a good way to think of it.

  The driver of the wagon jumped down, giving Charlie a strange look along with a rough hand down to the ground.

  Wiping the smile off his face, Charlie followed the man into the McCarty mansion’s empty front hallway. The New Year’s Day bombing had left it little more than a burnt-out shell, but Jackson hadn’t bothered to change his headquarters. Instead, according to Charlie’s loquacious escort, the commander just moved himself and his officers down to the ground floor, where they slept, ate, and conducted all their planning.

  Charlie soon enough found himself sitting on the blackened hardwood floor in a room with several other prisoners, most of them in the uniforms of the 7th and 43rd Regiments, Lambert’s brigade. One or two gave him a morose welcome, then resumed studying the backs of their eyelids.

  Charlie was almost asleep himself when a servant entered with a tray of drinks and a pile of flaky biscuits, which he offered to the prisoners. “Thank you,” Charlie said, embarrassed when his stomach gave a loud rumble. It occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten since yesterday.

  Satisfied, licking buttery crumbs off his fingers, he lay down, head pillowed on his arm, and sank into exhausted slumber.

  He awoke when the door opened to admit a tall, dark-haired fellow with a bristling two-day beard and a ferocious pair of eyebrows. He looked eerily familiar.

  Oh, yes, the pirate brother. He should have anticipated that one of the Lanier clan would show up here.

  Judah Lanier’s expression did not lighten as he crooked a finger at Charlie. “You. Come with me.”

  Charlie got up and followed without bothering to bid the other prisoners goodbye. Their exchanges would be worked out according to military protocol. He had a feeling this confrontation with Judah was going to be personal.

  Lanier led the way down a long hall, opened a door on the right, and went in. The minute Charlie entered behind him, Judah whirled and launched a fist.

  Righting himself, Charlie pressed the back of his hand to his aching, bleeding mouth. He eyed Fiona’s brother, aware that they were alone. If he decided to end Charlie’s life then and there, nobody would know or care.

  “How is it that you’re even alive?” Lanier snarled. “They said you came over that parapet like a madman and they pulled you down just to see what kind of lunatic does such a thing.”

  “I’m not sure you’d understand.”

  “Try me.”

  Charlie shrugged. “God gave me one more wall to climb, and I climbed it.”

  “Do not tell me God gave you permission to lure my sister over here and put her life in danger.”

  “I assure you I was just as appalled to see her as you were. But I did what I could to protect her, since there was no way to get her out of here.”

  Something akin to the grunt of a charging bull escaped Lanier as he turned and slammed the flat of his hand against the door. “That ought to be your head!”

  “Undoubtedly you are right.” Charlie sighed. It appeared he was going to be allowed to live. “But in spite of all my best efforts, I have survived this hellacious day, and so have you, so if you’re done venting your spleen, perhaps we could get on toward more practical things. For instance, arranging another prisoner exchange.
”

  Lanier sneered. “It doesn’t surprise me that you’re anxious to go back—only that you didn’t run away again. But I’m more concerned about Fiona right now.”

  “As am I. Though for your information, returning to the navy is the last thing I want.”

  Lanier scowled at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I plan to resign my commission as soon as possible and emigrate to become an American citizen. Your pesky little sister is going to become my wife—the sooner, the better. So perhaps you wouldn’t mind expediting that prisoner exchange?”

  19

  JANUARY 18, 1815

  VILLERÉ PLANTATION

  The British were leaving. Of course nobody would tell Fiona anything. The few officers who stayed back had gone about the glum business of removing the remaining artillery, ammunition, and powder, while the surgeon counted the wounded and returned with those able to be moved back to the fleet.

  That left Fiona and the Villeré slaves to care for the fifty or so who couldn’t walk on their own. Today, ten days after the battle, two more had died, and she was preparing them for burial.

  Under the circumstances, she wouldn’t have expected the slaves to linger. The British officers had offered them freedom—more or less an act of retaliation against the planters who dared to repel their advance into the city—and most of the field hands had left. But the house slaves, including Ishmael, Lulu, and Rachel, had elected to remain. “Nowhere else to go, miss,” said Ishmael with a shake of his head. “Dangerous out there for a colored man.”

  There were still guards posted near the levee and in small pickets by the woods and along the sugarcane fields, exchanging the occasional volley with Americans patrolling the Rodriguez canal rampart. But she suspected their main purpose was to camouflage the daily disappearance of hundreds, then thousands, of troops who boarded the barges and floated down the bayous to Lake Borgne.

  They had to go. There was no more food available—in fact, the Villeré family was reduced to a diet chiefly composed of the grits they’d stashed in a compartment under the kitchen floor. Ishmael turned out to be quite a good crawfish fisherman, and when the British were otherwise occupied, Lulu would boil up a fine gumbo. Other than that, they all went hungry.

  One morning a few days ago, Fiona had caught Colonel Thornton as he passed through the hospital ward and asked if he knew what happened to Lieutenant Kincaid.

  Thornton paused with his hand on the doorjamb, his face grave. “I’d have thought you would have heard by now. He was with a company of the 21st who tried to go over the wall at the last minute. Heroic and insanely stupid.” He hesitated. “When we cleared out the ditch, many of the dead were . . . unrecognizable. And Kincaid wasn’t found elsewhere. So you can assume . . .” He turned to walk away and said over his shoulder, “I’m sorry, Miss Lanier.”

  She had stared after him. Charlie had been on the battle site after all. Not so surprising was the fact that he had involved himself in what amounted to a suicidal effort. But . . . it just seemed that if Charlie were dead, she would know it.

  Charlie dead. Reminding herself for the hundredth time that it was true, she drew a blanket over the blank face of a marine who’d been barely hanging on to life this morning. Death everywhere.

  “Miss Lanier.”

  She looked up. A young officer she’d seen hanging about the house during the last couple of days hovered in the doorway. “Yes . . . I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

  “Drake, miss. I was sent to find you.”

  “All right.” She stood up, glancing at the marine’s blanket-covered body. “These poor men are ready to go.”

  “No, not the—They want you. Right now.” Drake’s spotty face mottled red. “General Lambert’s office.”

  With Pakenham dead and Cochrane supervising the fleet, Lambert was the commander on the field. She couldn’t imagine why he would send for her, but she knew from the paucity of gold on Drake’s uniform that he wasn’t of high enough rank to be able to tell her anything.

  “All right.” She followed Drake down the hall, but he stopped her before knocking on the library door.

  “Wait, miss. I wanted to say something to you.”

  She sighed. “What is it?”

  “I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry about what happened the day we came.”

  “What are you talking about?” All she remembered from that day was Charlie. And meeting Penny. And sometimes she had nightmares about the sugarhouse.

  “I was—it was me with Osmond. We found you in the slave cabin, and Osmond tried to—you know. Anyway, I should have stopped him, and I’m sorry. You’ve been nothing but kind to all of us, even after that, and I . . .” He stood there wringing his big raw hands.

  Half of her wanted to take out her knife and divest him of some of his pertinent equipment, while the other half felt sorry for his obvious misery and remorse. “I shall forgive you,” she said carefully, “if you will give me your promise to never, ever stand by again while someone weaker than you is harmed. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, miss, I swear I will. I mean, I won’t. Well, you know—”

  Feeling a hundred years old, Fiona patted his arm. “Yes, I know. Now move, so I can get this over with.”

  Drake took her hand and awkwardly kissed it, then knocked on the door.

  “Come!” someone bellowed from within.

  “Thank you, miss,” Drake whispered as he opened the door for her.

  She found General Lambert seated at the desk, with another gentleman standing by the window. Backlit by the sunshine streaming in, his face was in shadow.

  Lambert stood with a sour smile. “Miss Lanier. We are going to miss your nursing skills, but it seems we are to release you as part of a prisoner exchange.”

  She blinked. “That’s good, of course, but how will I—I mean, will I just walk over to the American side?”

  “I’m here to take you home, Fiona.”

  She turned as the man by the window approached. “Desi!” She threw herself at him, and he caught her tight. “Oh, how wonderful to see you!” She leaned back to study him. He looked tired, but not so gaunt as the soldiers she had been caring for.

  He smiled and released her. “I’ve been held aboard a ship on the other side of the lake since the night battle before Christmas. The others are being released to go back to their companies, but Judah facilitated special arrangements for you.” He glanced at the general. “I’m glad we’ve been able to come to some terms after our late . . . contretemps.”

  “Will I see Judah before we leave?”

  “No, but Oliver is going with us—under loud protest, I might add.” Desi shrugged. “Judah holds quite a bit more clout than he does.”

  The general proffered a packet of papers to Desi. “If you don’t mind, I have other business to attend to. Gather your belongings, then Sublieutenant Drake will escort you north along the river road under a flag of truce. Once you’re in American territory, you’re no longer my responsibility.”

  Desi tucked the papers into his coat and gave Fiona a wry look. “Is there anything you want to take?”

  “Just my coat. But I want to say goodbye to some people.”

  “Fine.” Desi gave the general an ironic bow, then opened the door for Fiona. “Personally, I’ll be glad to see the last of this swamp.”

  JANUARY 20, 1815

  OFF CHANDELEUR ISLANDS

  The Sophie had orders to weigh anchor at dawn, and Charlie was so tired from the last two frantic days of hauling troops down to the fleet that he could barely stand up. Still, determined to know where he stood before retiring to his berth, he waited shivering on the quarterdeck, listening to the sails snap overhead in a stiff wind blowing off Lake Borgne as he waited for Admiral Cochrane to emerge from Captain’s quarters.

  After coming down from the McCarty plantation by barge under flag of truce, Charlie’s first assignment had been helping stuff cotton into a regiment of scarecrows to be posted in str
ategic places that night—one of the craziest maneuvers he had been asked to perform in the course of his naval career. The ruse, intended to give their forces time to get across the lake before the Americans knew they were gone, seemed to have worked, since they hadn’t been seriously chased during the extended retreat.

  Score points, he thought, for British subterfuge, of which he was a prime example.

  Before he could get too far off on that mental trail, the hatch behind him opened and the admiral emerged. Good. Now was the time.

  “Sir, I wanted to speak to you for a moment, if you have time.”

  Cochrane scowled. “Kincaid. I trust you have recovered from your heroics—and yet another stay as a guest of the Americans.”

  Charlie ignored the provocation. “I won’t keep you, Admiral. I was just wondering if you’d heard from my grandfather since I gave you that letter for him.”

  “I have not. And you must disabuse yourself of the notion that I have nothing better to do than serve as your postmaster.” Cochrane surveyed Charlie and sniffed when he found nothing to criticize. “I assure you, however, that you will be the first to know if Admiral Lord St. Clair puts aside his sheep farming long enough to put pen to paper.” Smirking, Cochrane went whistling down the ladder onto the main deck and disappeared.

  Deflated, Charlie frowned after him. Nothing untoward had happened, but something felt off about that encounter. Maybe he was just overtired. Yawning, he stepped through the hatch to descend the ladder to the officers’ berth.

  Leaving New Orleans would put him one step closer to reuniting with Fiona. He prayed she was safe and warm at home. It had been worth the sacrifice of returning to service, to know that he’d secured her release.

  JANUARY 21, 1815

  MOBILE

  It took three days to get to Mobile in a hired wagon, Fiona seated beside Desi on the driver’s seat and Oliver in the wagon bed with their provisions. As they rattled along Conception Street, the sun floated behind them halfway to the horizon. It had been a long ride, complicated by intermittent rain showers, frequent ferries across swollen creeks, and little in the way of available food. Her cousins had been solicitous to the point of absurdity, but she managed to restrain her irritation and respond politely every time they asked her if she was tired.