The Mark of the King

by Jocelyn Green

  “There were three of them, by my count. Arrows came flying before any of us got a shot off. The commotion set all the geese to flight, and the blasted honking drowned out everything else. I couldn’t tell where the raiders were coming from, between the mist and the trees. Laurent and I were farthest from the action. Andre and Gaspard—Marc-Paul’s soldiers—they didn’t survive.”

  “You mean—” For a moment, horror snatched Julianne’s words. Recovering, she placed Etienne’s gnarled hands over the rags on Marc-Paul’s chest and threaded her needle. “Please continue.”

  “I saw one of the savages run toward Andre after he fell, hatchet and knife in hand, but one of our hunting party shot him before he reached the poor lad. Might have been Marc-Paul or Pascal, I couldn’t tell.”

  “What of the other natives? Still at large?” Etienne asked. He stepped aside, and Julianne began stitching Marc-Paul’s flesh back together.

  “I wasn’t witness to the act, but besides the warrior shot by musket, another was full of arrows and lying in his own blood by the end. Maybe Red Bird killed him, maybe Running Deer. I spied Red Bird giving chase after the third native into the swamp.”

  Julianne focused on the silver flash of her needle as it worked. She heard Etienne inquire after Pascal.

  “Pascal lives, but he was badly injured. Running Deer said it was an accident with his musket. I didn’t see it happen, nor did I see the gun he blames. Running Deer cast it into the lake. Said it was ruined, anyway.” Jean shook his head. “You wouldn’t recognize Pascal now, at least on one side of his face.”

  Two Faces. The name Dancing Brook had called Pascal sprang to mind, sending chills over her skin. Who could have known the name would fit his physical appearance as well? What sort of accident could do such a thing?

  “Will he make it?” Jean asked again, now daring to look at Marc-Paul.

  Julianne’s throat tightened. She tied off the silk thread and cut it. She had no idea of the extent of the damage already done to nerves, tissues, and muscle. She could not guess when the bleeding would stop, or if it would continue beneath his skin, unseen, until he died of it. “I’ve never seen this type of wound before.” She looked to Etienne. “But you have, haven’t you, during your years in fur trade?”

  “Seven times.” Etienne’s voice was gruff, his nose red. He cursed beneath his breath.

  “How many survived?” Jean voiced the question that Julianne was almost afraid to ask.

  “Two.”

  The word struck like a blow, and all breath left her lungs at once. Streaked with Marc-Paul’s blood, her hands clenched the rags that she had held against his wound, and something inside her screwed tighter. Don’t take him! her heart cried out. Not him too! Her limbs shook, even as Etienne placed his crooked hand on her back. In her mind, she was at the levee again, heaping rocks and earth upon another grave, with no one else there beside her. The gravity in the room increased, and Julianne bowed her head to its pull.

  “Ma foi, Julianne!” Lisette’s voice sounded suddenly beside Julianne, yanking her from Marc-Paul’s future grave. She had not even heard her come in. “I’m so sorry!” Lisette was saying, wisps of blond hair framing blue eyes wide with concern. “Laurent told me what happened. Show me where the water is, and I’ll get to work.”

  The wound sewn shut, Julianne and Lisette did all they knew how to do. Salve. Poultice. Tea. Etienne helped move Marc-Paul into the bed and reluctantly retired to his quarters for the night, long after everyone else had gone home. Marc-Paul’s complexion improved from ash grey to a pale shade of his normal self, but he would not be out of danger for some time.

  Vesuvius curled up on the bed beside him and nuzzled his stocky head beneath his master’s hand. Wrinkles folded the little dog’s brow, and he looked at Julianne from between Marc-Paul’s fingers with eyes that reflected her own anxiety.

  Fire crackled in the hearth, its amber glow chasing shadows to the corners of the room. Arms crossed over her nightdress, Julianne wore a steady circuit over the bearskin rug, but her thoughts looped and twisted like brier canes with thorns that pierced her to the quick.

  The fleur-de-lys on her shoulder burned as if the hot iron had singed her skin mere moments ago. Surely it carried a curse. Could there be any other explanation for all this loss? All she wanted was to bring forth life, but ever since she’d been branded, it seemed her life was marked by death. Her brother Benjamin. Simon. Her baby. And now . . . She strode to Marc-Paul’s side and laid her hand on his pallid cheek. She bent her ear to his lips to hear him breathe.

  Vesuvius licked his hand, and Julianne slid to the floor and stared into the dancing flames. Memory flickered, and she saw Marc-Paul at every key moment from the last ten months: in the Saint-Nicolas Tower in La Rochelle; at the St. Jean Inn on arriving in New Orleans; at Bienville’s residence as he recommended her as colony midwife. He was there with her at Simon’s grave, had carried her home after she’d been flogged. Marc-Paul had dug her baby’s grave. Kissed her. Held her. Married her and made his house her own but did not take her as was his right.

  Tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. Her husband could die tonight, before she had ever shown him that she loved him. For all the pieces of her heart that she’d already laid to rest, the ache in her chest now consumed her.

  Julianne had slippery elm to aid in the healing of wounds. Cat’s foot to cleanse the body of poisons. But what was the cure for regret? Was there a tincture, a powder, a root, an herbal brew that could remove it from the soul? Regret was a river like the Mississippi, with depths the eye could not measure. Though her body remained on the soft bearskin rug, her heart was immersed in its dark waters, and she struggled to keep from drowning.

  Vesuvius whined, and Julianne turned to see him nudging Marc-Paul’s limp hand. Rising, she felt his skin and found it cool to the touch. Terror seized her. She pulled the covers down and laid her ear on his bare chest. His pulse was steady, if not strong, but his body trembled with cold.

  After pulling the blankets and counterpane back up to his chin, she stoked the fire and added another log. Circling to the other side of the bed, she slipped under the covers. Pressing her body against the length of his to warm him, she rested her head against his muscled shoulder and carefully placed her arm over his waist.

  Gently, she stroked his side, from the bottom of his rib cage to his hip. Until her finger dipped into a hollow. Well practiced in seeing the human body by touch, Julianne traced the length of the groove with one finger. It was a scar. Slightly wider than an arrowhead. Questions exploded in her mind. Was he struck by an arrow before? When? Why? If Etienne knew, why didn’t he mention it? Then hope rushed to the surface with blinding brilliance. If Marc-Paul had survived one arrow, could he not survive another?

  Relief kindled inside her, and she brushed featherlight kisses on Marc-Paul’s shoulder, his cheek, his lips. Her fingers memorized his body as she ran her hands over his skin to warm him.

  It took an arrow near her husband’s heart for Julianne to fully feel hers again. She would not lose him now. She must not.

  Chapter Twenty

  Marc-Paul awoke to searing pain in his chest, Vesuvius sprawled at his feet, and Julianne beside him, radiating warmth. His pulse trotted at the sensation of her bare arm on his waist beneath the covers, and he covered her hand with his own.

  Julianne’s lashes fluttered on her cheeks until her eyes focused on him. “You’re up!” She pushed herself up on one elbow.

  Marc-Paul tried to sit up but fell back upon his pillow when an invisible dagger twisted where the arrowhead had nested. “Awake, but not up.”

  “You will be soon. Let’s see how we’re doing.” Lips curving in a gentle smile, she leaned over him to peek beneath the bandage, her hair curling just above her shoulders. Though the fire in the hearth had guttered, her nearness more than compensated for it.

  Marc-Paul winced with both longing and the burning in his chest. As soon as she l
aid the bandage back in place, he caught her wrists, then circled his thumbs on her palms. “Thank you.”

  Her eyes brimmed with tears. “You’re not leaving me, you know.”

  His lips tipped up on one side. “I’m not leaving you. I love you.” At the slightest tug, she lowered her head to his.

  “I know you do. I love you too, Marc-Paul, with every piece of my heart,” she whispered. “All I have left, I give to you.”

  The sharp edges of a lump pressed against his throat as he swallowed. “I could ask for no greater gift.”

  Gently, he entwined her silken hair around his fingers. Her lips swayed against his in a kiss sweeter than honey, and her hand flattened against the uninjured side of his chest. Drinking in the clean, soft scent of her, he yearned to love her with the strength he had but a day ago.

  Before he could draw her closer, she pulled away, nose pink, and slid her hand over the frenetic drumming of his heart. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

  Trapping a moan in his chest, he silently conceded that the fire in his wound sliced deeper with the slightest movement. Exhaling, he stretched out his arm as her pillow instead, and Julianne nestled in beside him once more.

  Vesuvius roused himself, snorted, and waddled up the bed on the opposite side of Marc-Paul, fully extinguishing any romance in the air with a succession of sneezes.

  Julianne laughed. “He never left your side, you know.”

  Marc-Paul cupped his hand over the pug’s head and scratched behind his ears. “And neither did you.”

  “I should change your dressings. And Etienne will want to know your condition.”

  “The dressings can wait a moment, and so can Etienne.” He kissed her hair. “My soldiers were killed, both of them.” His chest constricted. “I fired too late to save them.”

  “But they will have a Christian burial.”

  He understood her to mean that their bodies were not cut to pieces, their organs not spilled on the shore. Neither were their scalps taken, he presumed. Small comfort. He would need to write their families in France. The boys were his responsibility.

  Something between anger and sorrow pulled at him. Closing his eyes, he sank into it and saw the bloody mayhem all over again. Heard the undulating warbles, the honking geese. The shouts. A deafening blast. And that scream. “Who else was hurt?” Defeat weighted his voice.

  Julianne adjusted the covers over them both before resting her hand on his bare waist beneath the sheet. “Pascal. Jean said his musket exploded somehow and burned his face.”

  Had he been aiming for the hostile who shot Marc-Paul when his musket misfired? “He was looking out for me out there, just like he did when I first arrived in this wilderness. Shouted a warning, and I dodged an arrow.”

  “Only to receive another.” Her tone seemed unimpressed. “I don’t understand. I thought the Chickasaw warred with the Choctaw.”

  Marc-Paul stared at the beams of the open ceiling and at the underside of the cypress planks above them, recalling the natives who had attacked. Their war paint and tattoos had been a blur, but he’d seen enough. “They weren’t Chickasaw.”

  Fear slipped into her eyes. “Who, then? Will they come again? New Orleans is not even fortified!”

  “I couldn’t see them well enough to tell. Raiders like that don’t come into towns, though. They pick off small numbers of people isolated from their communities.” Ridges formed on his brow. “Where is Red Bird?”

  “Jean says he ran after the third raider, the only one who survived. That’s all we know.” Her smooth hand slid over his waist, igniting a different sort of burning within him. Then her fingers stopped right on top of his scar. “What happened here?”

  The irony. Marc-Paul should have known she would ask. He should have prepared an answer.

  “It was an arrow, wasn’t it?”

  Outside, an owl hooted in the span of his hesitation. He was unwilling to tell the tale he had kept secret even from Etienne, whom he had hired shortly after it happened. Still, he nodded.

  “What happened?”

  Do not lie to her, his conscience demanded, yet he was loathe to tell her the whole truth. It would only hurt her to know the details. “I was searching for someone I thought needed help. But it turned out he didn’t want to be followed. The arrow stopped me.” Please don’t ask more.

  Julianne raised herself on her elbow again, and questions swam in her eyes. “You were trying to help?”

  He sighed. “Yes. I thought he was lost, or sick, or injured.”

  “One of your soldiers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you find him?”

  Benjamin haunted Marc-Paul’s memory. The young man had watched an arrow strike Marc-Paul and then turned his back and run away, leaving Marc-Paul to bleed while Red Bird fought the Chickasaw warrior ferociously, hand to hand. “Yes, I found him.”

  Closing his eyes, he volunteered no further information, and Julianne did not drag it from him, though he sensed she wanted to know. Instead she asked, “Are you cursed to be shot twice with arrows? Or blessed to survive them both?”

  “I have you, ma chérie. I am blessed.”

  A fleeting smile lit Julianne’s face before her gaze traveled to the Bible on the bureau. “If we had prayed harder for peace, could we have prevented the arrow from touching you?”

  “I don’t know,” Marc-Paul admitted. “Certainly the hand of God could have nudged the arrow off its path—and maybe He did, for it didn’t strike my heart or head. But the greater miracle is for us to have peace and grace in our spirits, no matter what the circumstances.”

  She sighed. “Miraculous, indeed.”

  “It can only come from trusting God.”

  “And trusting each other?” Her fingers tapped his scar once more. Was it a signal that she knew he held back? Or was it merely a wife’s loving gesture?

  Marc-Paul swallowed. “You can trust me, Julianne. I would never betray you or forsake you. And I know I can trust you.” This much, he knew, was true.

  “His coloring is good,” Julianne reported to Etienne and Francoise that afternoon. She dropped more cat’s foot into Etienne’s pot of boiling water. “The wound site looks as well as it possibly can at this stage. I still prefer taking every precaution, so let’s keep bringing him these teas and salves.”

  “Quite right, and I’m relieved to hear it,” gushed Francoise. “I’m only sorry I wasn’t able to come sooner. But I see the captain has been in very capable hands between the two of you.”

  Etienne grunted as he leaned over the steaming brew and sniffed. “I don’t understand it, and I certainly can’t recommend the smell, but if you think it may aid his recovery, I’ll not go against you. I don’t suppose ol’ dimple-faced Dupree is getting such good care.”

  Julianne bit back her amusement. “I learned all of this from his slave. If anyone can tend his injuries, Dancing Brook can.”

  “Oui, mon amie, but would she?” Francoise asked gently.

  Julianne regarded her friend’s knowing hazel eyes and considered the question. Pascal had smothered Dancing Brook’s perfect, healthy babe. Wouldn’t she be at least tempted to see him suffer? Would she not consider it justice?

  “After what Pascal did to her, and to me, the thought of his pain does not much bother me either,” Julianne quietly admitted.

  “Oh, I count it slightly enjoyable!” Etienne raised his metal cup of coffee in a toast to himself.

  Ignoring the Canadian, Francoise slipped her arm around Julianne’s waist below the jagged scars that crisscrossed her back. “He has wronged you greatly, and well I know it. But beware that bitterness doesn’t poison you, ma chère. If you feed it, it will eat you up instead. Do you know what I would do, if I were you? I would march over to Pascal Dupree’s house and offer to tend him myself.”

  Julianne’s heart rate climbed, and her blood ran hot in her veins. “I’m no longer the colony midwife nor the garrison nurse. Thanks to him, I might add.”

  Fr
ancoise shook her head. “Don’t do it for duty. Don’t do it just for his sake either, but for yours. Love your enemy, Julianne, and that poison in your heart will disappear.”

  “Love him? How?” Julianne crossed her arms, rebelling against the entire idea.

  “You behave like you love him—even if you don’t care for him—and your heart will release its bitterness. You practice grace.”

  Grace. Julianne sighed. She craved it for herself, but she hadn’t considered extending it to Pascal Dupree. “I’ll visit him,” she said at length. “But I am not like to enjoy it.”

  “Visit Pascal the rascal?” Etienne gaped. “Oh no you don’t.”

  “I would like to see how Dancing Brook fares too.”

  Etienne rubbed the back of his neck and muttered an unholy oath. “Then I’m going with you. I’ll not be having you off alone with that man, even if he is blown to shreds.” He jammed his felt hat down over his scraggly grey hair.

  Francoise beamed. “I’ll stay and keep vigil with the captain. Just tell me when he ought to have this tea.”

  After mixing up a paste for Pascal’s burns, Julianne left instructions with Francoise and headed to Pascal’s house with the trusty Canadian at her side. They walked in companionable quiet, the only sound their off-tempo footsteps on the path that edged the swamp. A damp wind flapped Julianne’s cape against her skirts and drove dark, low-hanging clouds across a pewter sky.

  When they reached Dupree’s property, it was Running Deer who answered the door.

  “I’ve come to see the patient.” Julianne held up her jar of paste. “To ease his pain. May we come in?”

  Running Deer stepped back to allow them inside. “I tell him. You wait.”

  Moments later, he returned and motioned them to follow as he led them to Pascal’s bedchamber. The sickly smell that filled the room was so thick, Etienne brought his hat over his nose. Julianne took shallow sips of air through her lips as she approached her patient’s bed.

  The right side of Pascal’s face resembled raw meat. Eyebrow and eyelashes singed off, it was a blessing his right eyelid remained. His brow, nose, cheek, and chin were a mass of blisters, some of them weeping. In some places, his skin was charred black and curling. The burn traveled down his neck and covered his right shoulder as well.