The Mark of the King

by Jocelyn Green

  Hands covered her shoulders from behind. With a start, she turned. Red Bird, Papa’s friend, crouched before her, hair lashing about his face.

  Throwing herself into his arms, she wrapped her legs around his waist. Without a word, he stood, holding her securely against his chest, and carried her away as the storm buffeted them both.

  Thank you, Jesus-God, Lily prayed as she clung to Red Bird’s neck.

  When they emerged from the swamp, Papa’s house came into view. Shingles ripped from the roof and flew through the air with dangerous speed. She ducked her head against Red Bird’s shoulder as he hurried inside and wrestled the door shut behind them.

  “Lily!” Etienne’s voice sounded above the storm as Red Bird set her on her feet.

  “Where are you?” she called, for all was darkness between the shuddering walls.

  She heard the old man’s knees thud to the ground just before she felt his arms fold around her. “Merci, merci!” he was shouting. “Where is Madame?”

  “Taken!” she yelled in his ear. “On a ship!” At least, that was what Running Deer had said.

  “What?”

  The door burst open again, banging wildly against the house until the wind snapped it from its hinges and launched it far away. Leaves and bark and branches rushed into the salon on gusts that scraped Lily’s face with sand.

  Red Bird’s hand went beneath her elbow. “To the fireplace!” he called, and she scrambled over the hearth to huddle in the small cave. Screaming filled the chimney over her head. She covered her ears but could not block out the noise.

  “Where is Fist Face?” Lily cried, but no one seemed to hear her.

  Her gaze desperately probed the room for the little dog. Papa’s books flung from a table onto the floor and blew open, the pages flapping against the rain. Chairs toppled and hurled across the salon while blowing dirt and grass caught on the damp rug. But Fist Face was nowhere she could see.

  Etienne fought to hold a plank over a window while Red Bird drove a nail into one end. But the storm’s grip was stronger than Etienne’s and tore the board from his hands. After several more tries, the one plank Red Bird managed to pound into place ripped free almost as quickly. Giving up, the men joined Lily in the fireplace.

  “Can’t we light a candle?” she pleaded. “I can’t see Fist Face!”

  “No flames,” Red Bird shouted over the shrieking wind. “Too dangerous. The wind could throw something against it and start a fire.”

  “What about Madame Girard?” Etienne asked. “What ship?”

  “A bad man took her! I don’t know where they went! Can you search?”

  Red Bird gravely shook his head. “If they are on the water—”

  His words disappeared in the moaning wind, and perhaps that was just as well. Fear and guilt knotted Lily’s stomach. If she hadn’t run away, Madame would not have been caught either.

  The storm shook the house in rage, and the frame around the missing door splintered into jagged spears of wood that sliced through the air. In the next instant, Fist Face yelped and bounded from the place one of the shards had landed.

  “Fist Face!” Lily called, reaching for him.

  He turned in circles, his tail tucked between his legs, searching for her.

  A sound like cannon boomed over the wind, a signal that another tree had broken. With a deafening crash, it smashed through Papa’s roof and right into the salon. Etienne and Red Bird crept out of the fireplace, shielding their eyes with their hands as they looked up at the ruined roof.

  Near the door, Fist Face squeezed out from beneath a fallen limb—and didn’t stop. When he ran outside, Lily launched herself through the wreckage of the salon and after him, praying one more time for Madame, who had chased after her.

  THE GULF OF MEXICO

  Minutes had dragged like hours while Benjamin resurrected Julianne from the depths of the ship. She now huddled with the rest of the deserters just below the main deck. The pounding of water over the bow seemed to pummel her chest as well. Foam slipped between the cracks above and rained down upon them.

  Julianne gripped Benjamin’s wet hand and pressed her other hand against the porthole as she peered out. Lightning split a black sky over an obsidian sea. Streaked with white froth, the waves convulsed and seized.

  The frigate lifted in the air and slowly turned broadside on its way down the backside of the wave. Now Les Deux Sœurs lay sideways in the trough so that she could clearly see the wall of water rearing up before her. Thirty-five feet high, forty feet, fifty feet. Taller.

  Benjamin cursed. “We are lost.”

  The wave picked up the frigate and rolled it.

  And then the ship was upside down. Julianne tumbled and spun, the rope cinching around her middle while saltwater rushed in and lapped at her chin. They were sinking into the deep. In a pocket of air, she raised her palms and found the deck not one foot above her head.

  “Swim down to the ladder!” she shouted, clutching Benjamin’s arm. “Or you’ll go down with the ship!” She released her brother and dove underwater.

  Someone pulled her back, and she bobbed to the surface, sputtering.

  “I can’t swim!” Pascal’s voice pealed desperately in her ears.

  “I’ll help you.” Benjamin this time. “Julianne, go!”

  She gathered as much air as her lungs would hold, then propelled herself through the dark water, hands groping for the ladder as she went. It wasn’t where she thought it would be. Frantically, she waved her arms and hands through the deep while precious seconds ticked by. How long can one hold one’s breath? A minute? Ninety seconds? How long has it already been?

  Finally her hand brushed something, and she grabbed it—someone’s arm. Whoever it was took hold of her, yanking until her hand hit the ladder. While her lungs urged her to surge upward like a buoy, her mind contradicted. Down the ladder, to reach the upper deck, she told herself. Down, and then out and up. One rung at a time, she pushed herself further down, escaped through the hatch, and felt her way along the upside-down deck. There was the mast pointing down, there was the rigging. And all of it cloaked in black.

  Julianne’s breath built inside her chest until the pressure was a vice around her middle, screwing tighter, tighter, until she thought her sternum and her spinal column must break. At last, she felt her way to the rail, pushed herself over the edge, and mustered all the strength she had into making swift, long strokes toward what she hoped was the surface.

  Then a yank from below, and she was being jerked further down into darker, colder waters. She kicked at whoever was pulling her before realizing the rope was still tied to her waist—and still tied to whatever anchor Benjamin had used before he’d descended to the cargo hold to find her. She was leashed to a sinking ship.

  Stunned at her oversight, and with an explosion building in her lungs, Julianne tore at the knot with fingers that scarcely cooperated until the rope loosened enough for her to wiggle from its noose.

  Blackness crowded her mind, blurring her thoughts. The pressure in her chest disappeared. Muscles cramping, she surged away from the falling frigate.

  When she broke through the surface of the rolling waters, she gasped for air and inhaled rain and the splashing sea. A long wooden plank bobbed near her, and with a final heave, she swam to it. There was so much water in the air, and so much air in the water, that without the plank keeping her afloat, it would have been impossible to tell where the sea ended and the atmosphere began. Raphael had surfaced too, and two other men she couldn’t recognize.

  Air refueled Julianne’s lungs, and fear came rushing with it. “Benjamin!” she shouted, scanning the waters.

  Beyond her reach, two heads came sputtering up to the surface, rasping to pull oxygen from the rain-drenched sky.

  “Stop! You’re pulling me under!” Benjamin’s voice carried over the water.

  “I will not drown a mile from shore!” Pascal, in a panicked scream.

  Lightning blinked in the churning sky
just long enough for Julianne to see Pascal pushing down on Benjamin’s shoulders, as though the young man were a life raft Pascal could mount.

  “Pascal, stop!” she cried over the wind. “You’ll drown him!”

  Darkness again. Dread poured through her as she realized Benjamin had stopped fighting back.

  “Help! Help! I can’t swim!”

  “Where’s Benjamin?” Julianne shouted.

  “Gone!” Pascal gurgled and thrashed.

  Her heart turned to ice. Taking the plank with her, she swam toward Pascal and shoved the wood beneath his arms so he would not take her down too.

  A swell lifted them, but they kept their heads above the surface. The black sky faded to gunmetal grey. Still menacing, but at least Julianne could see.

  Still grasping the plank supporting Pascal, she swirled around, calling for Benjamin. His name caught in her throat. For there, within swimming distance, two arms latched around a bale of silk. Relief washed through Julianne as she released the plank and swam over to her brother.

  “Hold on,” she told him when she was near enough to be heard.

  “Julianne. You made it.” But Benjamin’s speech was slurred. After blinking at her with pupils of unequal size, his head suddenly seemed too heavy for his neck, and he lolled against the silk. He must have hit his head on part of the ship as he brought Pascal out of it.

  She sucked in a breath. If he’d suffered a concussion, he could drift into unconsciousness. She tucked his hands between the bale and the strings binding it together. But she dared not leave him, lest he begin to slip beneath the surface. Julianne positioned herself behind Benjamin and threaded her arms under his as she too clung tightly to the bale. “It’s all right. I’ve got you.” Words she hadn’t uttered to him since he was a child and she the only mother he had, soothing him after a nightmare.

  If only this were a nightmare from which she could wake as well.

  Benjamin turned his head and wheezed. “I was a dead man anyway.”

  “What? What are you saying? No, we’ll ride it out. The worst is over.” He wasn’t thinking clearly. Julianne could barely think herself.

  “Where I’m going now, you cannot follow. Promise me you won’t follow. I’ll wait for you on the other side.”

  “I don’t—I don’t understand,” she stuttered, heart rate climbing. Rain and seawater sprayed her face and arms.

  “Pascal panicked when we surfaced.” Benjamin paused to draw a ragged breath. “I didn’t notice he still had his knife in his hand from cutting through rigging below. It was an accident.”

  Julianne could barely make sense of the words. “An accident?” She cast a sidelong glance at Pascal, drifting on his plank of wood twenty feet away. “Are you injured?” Or just delirious?

  “His blade. Buried it in my stomach.”

  No. She saw the foam stain pink on the water. “I will not bury you again, Benjamin.” But she would. Of course she would. There would be no recovering from such a wound.

  “Forgive me. If not for me, you wouldn’t be in this danger.”

  “Benjamin!” But she was helpless. Julianne knew how to bring babies from the womb, stitch skin back together, use plants to bring healing, dig arrowheads from flesh, concoct cures for fevers—but she could do nothing for the brother growing cold in her arms while the deep pulled at them both from below. He was slipping away from her as surely as if he had already fallen into the sea.

  “I forgive,” she cried at last, finality weighting her voice.

  “Now let me go.”

  Julianne stared at her brother’s queue, wet and curling at his neck. “Come, mon frère,” she called into his ear, her arms shaking as they framed his sides, her fingers still digging into the bale of silk. “Be strong. Hold on.”

  The wind sprayed her words back in her face. The coarse fibers of Benjamin’s shirt pressed into her cheek as she laid her head against his back. A wave rolled over them, sloshing water into her mouth and nose. She choked on it, then coughed to clear her lungs.

  Benjamin didn’t choke or cough. Even the shivering had left his frame. Horror gripped Julianne. He was gone.

  Shock numbed her, and she embraced it like an old friend that always came to her when she needed it most—at Salpêtrière, at her first wedding, after Simon’s death, and baby Benjamin’s. And now it was here again, a merciful carving out of her heart, that she may not feel its pain. Vaguely, she registered a persistent clicking and wondered what it could be, until she realized it was her teeth rattling between her jaws.

  So it’s over. Julianne had found her brother only to lose him. But she would not allow his flesh to feed the sharks. Tears mingled with rain, rinsing the salt from her cheeks. Lord! I need you now. Please come. She had no other words but these. Over and again they looped in her mind as she braced Benjamin’s body against the bale of silk.

  Time grew unreasonable. She felt anchored to the moment of Benjamin’s death, while time passed over her like the rolling waves. She could no better discern minutes from hours than she could separate one dark swell from the next. Her thoughts blurred, and she was glad of it, for with clarity could only come pain. Water suspended Julianne between earth and sky, between past and future, life and death, like purgatory.

  Then a screaming parted the wind. A bowsprit, broken from the prow of another ship, came hurtling like an arrow launched from Apollo’s bow. Blankly, Julianne watched its flight. Wondered, distantly, if it had come to take her life as well.

  But it was Pascal who was struck with a sickening thud and knocked into the water.

  Was he dead?

  Pascal’s plank washed toward Julianne, and she caught it. Slowly, something soft uncurled in her middle and warmed through her veins, and she thought that perhaps it might be hope. Hope that the hand of God had struck Pascal Dupree down in perfect justice. Hope that she never need look upon Two Faces again.

  Then one of Pascal’s arms reached up out of the water, pawing in search of the plank Julianne now held fast. From the deepest, darkest trench of her spirit, white-hot hatred for Pascal Dupree bounded to the surface of her heart like wreckage after a storm. He had killed Benjamin.

  But that wasn’t all. The full litany of Pascal’s wrongs unfurled in Julianne’s mind. Let him die, said a voice. Do nothing, and he’ll be gone forever. He deserves nothing more than death. Nothing less than a painful one.

  “Help me.” Pascal’s voice was weak as he thrashed about with one arm. The bowsprit must have incapacitated the other, and he could barely swim with two arms. All she had to do was wait.

  So she did. Julianne tightened her grip on the plank she kept from him, and in the corner of her narrowed eye, the lily flexed on her shoulder. The mark of a murderer. It mocked her now. At last, the brand fits. A murderer after all.

  Pascal splashed with one arm again, then disappeared once more.

  Another whisper in Julianne fought to be heard above the rush and roar of hate. Grace you have received. Grace you must give. Love your enemy. Vengeance belongs to the Lord. But she did not want to heed those words. Certainly, she felt no love. Still clinging to Benjamin’s body, Julianne teetered between judgment and grace.

  The list of loved ones she had lost was as long as Etienne’s market list. Why was it now in her power to save the one man she despised? Why should he live, when so many others had not survived Louisiana? She licked the salt from her lips and closed her eyes, but she could not stop up her ears against Pascal’s desperate splashing.

  As his commotion faded, the plank pressing into her palm became a blade, slicing through her grief to the conscience that lay smothered beneath it. One tugged against the other and back again with dizzying speed. Don’t do this thing, her conscience pleaded.

  Who would know? Her anger, combusting.

  You. Pascal. And the God who sees all.

  I owe Pascal Dupree nothing.

  God owes you nothing, and yet He made you His daughter. You are a child of the King; it is His image you
bear. King Louis marked you with judgment, but the King of Kings covers you with grace. Whose mark will you now display?

  The plank burned in Julianne’s hand. Her eyes popped open, and she blinked the water from her lashes.

  “Pascal!” she called as he slipped under again. The water bubbled above him.

  With a hasty check to confirm Benjamin’s hands were strapped securely to the bale, she released her brother’s body and swam with the plank of wood toward where Pascal should come up again.

  Suddenly she was underwater, Pascal’s hand around her ankle, pulling her deeper. Her white chemise wrapped her like a shroud.

  I will not go down with this man. She doubled over, trying to peel his fingers from her leg. That failing, she kicked him in the nose as hard as she could. When his good hand went to his face by instinct, she wrapped her arms around his middle and swam to the surface with all her might.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Gasping for fresh air, Marc-Paul burst up onto the deck, unable to stay below a minute longer. All the ginger water in the world would not have made tolerable the rolling, cramped quarters reeking with eau-de-vie, sweat, and vomit.

  Inhaling deeply of the rain-scrubbed air, he gripped the rail. The rain slowed to a patter, and the winds eased to a mere ghost of what they had been. The sky softened to pale grey silk, sunlight just peeking on the eastern horizon. There was no frigate in sight.

  “A bit smashed up, but nothing as can’t be repaired. Or replaced, in the case of the bowsprit.” Captain Armistead strode with impeccable balance toward Marc-Paul, though the waves, still calming after the hurricane, were twelve feet high. “Worst I’ve seen in these parts yet. Still, we’ll make it back to New Orleans fine, even if we do limp a bit.”

  Bienville joined them at the rail. “Any sign of Les Deux Sœurs?”

  “Only that.” Armistead pointed at a few barrels and bales, several crates and planks of wood, and at least one broken mast bobbing in the troughs and swells among an untold number of wine bottles. “The fools didn’t even reef their sails before the storm. I’d not be surprised if they were all at the bottom of the drink right now, saving us the trouble of jailing and trying them.”