by Beth White
“Well, to be perfectly honest, Auntie does know I’m riding, but I’m going a little farther than I led her to believe.” She pursed her lips as she’d seen Maddy do time on end. “Cisco, I’m so bored up here with nothing to do but sew! I just wanted to ride for a while without having to make girly conversation. Don’t you ever feel like running away?”
He shook his curly head. “Why would I want to run away from a good job where I get plenty to eat and enough money to save for a livery stable of my own one day? And Miz Giselle is even teaching me to read and write!” But he backed up a step, his expression as lugubrious as a thirteen-year-old’s could be. “I won’t tell, but Miz Giselle always finds out everything anyway. You’ll see.”
With that warning ringing in her ears, Fiona turned Max toward the road.
She’d heard Desi talk about the soldiers’ encampment near the western edge of town and figured, with the plans to march toward New Orleans, activity would be stirring there. At first she rode with her head down, hat pulled low over her ears, hunched inside Sullivan’s coat. To flatten her curvy figure, she’d bound her bosom with strips torn from an old petticoat, and she hadn’t gone far before it occurred to her to stop and smear a little dirt on her face to camouflage the smooth texture of her skin.
It was a bone-jarring ten-minute trot to the encampment on poor old Max, whose duties usually entailed nothing more strenuous than pulling the children’s pony cart. He wasn’t happy with the saddle, much less the rider, and periodically tried to scrape her off under a tree limb. By the time she spotted the first sentry, she was wishing she’d taken her chances and let Cisco drive her in the pony cart after all.
“Hey, you!” the guard shouted when she got a little closer. “Stop and state your business.”
“Message for General Coffee,” she said, imitating her cousin Israel’s husky adolescent voice. “From Rémy Lanier.”
“You another one of the Lanier boys?” the man asked. “Come on, I’ll take you.”
Another? What did that mean? But reluctant to provoke questions, Fiona dismounted and followed the guard, leading Max through a sea of tents. She passed soldiers who were building fires, stirring cauldrons of stew, frying hardtack and bacon, and engaging in dozens of other homely afternoon camp chores. One or two sat on camp stools reading letters, and she wondered if they were from parents or sweethearts.
What if she wrote to Charlie? Would there be any way to get a letter to him? He’d told her not to try.
Distracted, she nearly ran into her escort, who had stopped at a large officer’s tent. As he ducked inside, sudden panic struck Fiona. She hadn’t thought she’d actually get in to see General Coffee himself. He had talked to her on two separate occasions. Surely he would recognize her and have someone haul her back to her family in utter disgrace.
Discretion being the better part of valor, she skirted the tent and headed for the edge of camp, where the horses would be corralled in a makeshift paddock. She heard them whickering and stamping before she saw them, a beautiful remuda of all colors and sizes—most of them tall and muscular like Tully. Still, she found the big bay stallion with no trouble at all. He was young enough to be playful, running circles around the confined space of the paddock, rearing to paw at the air, trumpeting to draw attention to his masculinity.
Holding Max by the halter, she whistled Tully’s signal and smiled when he lifted his head, ears pricked. The moment he saw her, he ran toward her and nuzzled her pocket for the apple she’d brought.
Laughing, she pressed her cheek to his, listened to the crunch of his big teeth on the fruit, felt his heart beat under her hand. For the first time in days, joy flooded her spirit. Thank you, God, for this beautiful animal. Thank you for his affection, thank you that he even remembers me.
“Boy, you got to be one of them Lanier kids,” drawled a deep voice behind Fiona. She turned to find a tall, bearded cavalry officer, picking his teeth with a knife as he regarded her thoughtfully. “My wrangler run off three days ago, and can’t nobody else even get near that horse ’cept General Coffee. He ain’t been curried in all that time.”
Fiona didn’t know what to say. “That so?”
“It’s definitely so.” The officer flicked the knife toward the ground, where it stuck, quivering. “Would you like a job?”
14
Sehoy was tired of feeling like the fifth wheel on the Lanier family wagon, particularly when it seemed to be veering off the road into the weeds. The evening meal had been awkward in the extreme, and she tried to eat her stew and cornbread without drawing attention to herself.
Aunt Giselle seemed to think Fiona would be back before supper, but when she didn’t return, Uncle Rémy questioned poor Cisco with such uncharacteristic severity that the boy almost cried. Cisco didn’t know where Fiona had taken Max, the old pony—or he wouldn’t say. Maddy was convinced her cousin had taken off after that dratted Charlie Kincaid, while her mother, the beautiful Mrs. Lyse, vehemently denied the possibility. The only one who kept his opinion to himself was Mr. Desi, who ate his dinner and occasionally patted Maddy’s hand to keep her from flying into the boughs.
The children, including thirteen-year-old Israel, had been sent to the kitchen to eat. Sehoy supposed she should be grateful she hadn’t been sent out along with them. Still, when Desi addressed her without warning, she almost wished she had been exiled as well.
“What? I’m sorry—I didn’t . . .” She trailed off, blushing.
Desi chuckled, but in his kind way. “I said, nobody has bothered to ask the person closest to Fiona what she thinks. Did she say anything about her plans to you, Sehoy?”
“Not in so many words. I know she’s been lonesome for Navy Cove.” She glanced at Maddy, and added reluctantly, “Miss Maddy is right, though, she’s grieving over Charlie.”
“I told you so.” Maddy lifted her chin.
“Still,” Sehoy said quickly, “I can’t see her going after him like she did before. That was different.”
Aunt Giselle tsked. “Seemed to me she’d been getting along pretty well.”
“Auntie, you shouldn’t have let her go riding by herself, or even with just Cisco.” Maddy looked disapproving. “She was always too fond of running wild with the boys, even when she was a little girl.”
“I just thought a little fresh air might do her good,” Giselle said defensively, looking at Lyse for corroboration.
Lyse sighed. “Don’t feel bad, Giselle. I’d have done the same thing. I wish Rafa were here. He would know how best to proceed.”
“Since he is not,” Desi said, “would everyone feel better if I go out and ask a few discreet questions? For the sake of her reputation, we don’t want the world to know Fiona has disappeared, but as nightfall is upon us, we should probably use what daylight is left to look for her.”
This plan meeting with general relief and approval, Desi excused himself from the table and went to fetch his greatcoat.
Sehoy rose and caught him on the way out the front door. “Mr. Desi, I thought of something.”
He paused, putting on his hat. “What is it?”
“Well, you remember that cipher we tried to translate, the one Charlie had me hold?”
“Yes, what of it?”
“What if Fiona had already figured it out? What if she made plans to meet Charlie somewhere, say in Pensacola?”
“You think she would do such a thing?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” Sehoy hesitated, then blurted, “If I were in her shoes, I might.”
Desi looked down at her, curiosity in his deep-set brown eyes. “Would you indeed.” It wasn’t a question, the way he said it. He seemed to understand what she meant. He laid a gentle hand upon her shoulder. “You may be right, though I’m inclined to agree with Mrs. Lyse that I doubt it. But what worries me most is the idea that someone—perhaps one of those uncouth creatures from Tennessee—might have abducted her for, shall we say, his own unsavory purposes. Fiona is an extraordinarily pretty girl,
after all.”
“Yes, sir.” Sehoy sighed. “I should have been with her this afternoon. But I didn’t want to go riding.” She’d been in the attic, mooning over a letter Oliver sent earlier in the week, and trying to compose one in return. “It was too cold outside.” If that sounded lame and defensive, then so be it.
“It is that,” Desi said. With a faint smile, he turned up the collar of his coat. “I’d best see if I can find your missing cousin before dark. And meantime, don’t waste time berating yourself over your inability to control another person’s foolish decisions.”
Oliver was her cousin as well, she thought as Desi left—though the connection went back so many generations as to be almost nonexistent. And she sincerely hoped she wasn’t making a foolish decision herself, in keeping what Oliver had told her from his family.
As Fiona followed Captain Stillman through camp, she expected at any moment to hear someone yell, “Fraud! Lightskirt!” but no one paid the least attention to her. If anything, her comparatively small stature, her ragged coat and misshapen hat, the scuffed, down-at-heel boots rendered her all but invisible—for now.
Joining the army, which had seemed like such a wonderful idea in the safety of Aunt Giselle’s kitchen, was absurd, crazy, the stuff of a Shakespearean comedy. Who was the girl who dressed like a boy? Viola in Twelfth Night? Funny, she’d also lost her twin brother and fallen in love with someone she couldn’t have. In the process creating all sorts of mayhem.
But she had answered that providential job offer with a firm “Yes, sir, I sure do,” making sure old Max was brought into the remuda and cared for.
She was going to serve her country in a meaningful way. As meaningful as her mother observing and reporting British troop movements, coded in chatty letters to Aunt Lyse during the Revolution. Or her father and Uncle Rafa delivering Spanish gold in a daring dash up the Mississippi to aid George Rogers Clark’s Midwestern stand at Fort Pitt. Or Uncle Luc-Antoine helping his father escape from the Fort Charlotte guardhouse.
Which thought reminded her of Charlie—a singularly unproductive mental gyration.
Captain Stillman of the magnificent beard ducked into a side alley between some rows of smaller tents, and she followed. Her family in Mobile would be frantic at her disappearance and maybe think she’d run off after Charlie again. But she couldn’t stay there any longer, moping about with nothing to occupy her mind. Well, she could, but she didn’t want to. She was fed up with people telling her, a grown woman, what to do. Certainly she was smart enough to hide her identity and care for the cavalry mounts she had raised, while the men fought to maintain their American freedom, so dearly won.
But it was going to take some ingenuity.
The captain stopped so suddenly that she almost walked into him.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, trying to peer around him.
“Nothing’s the matter.” He looked over his shoulder. “You’re a quiet little—” and he called her a name she’d only heard at the shipyard a time or two. “Which Lanier family you from?”
“Rémy’s. I’m Israel.” Israel was just young and stupid enough to volunteer for the army. She hoped he wouldn’t actually do it.
“You sure you’re old enough to be off your mama’s teat?”
Thoroughly shocked, Fiona made herself laugh. “Yes, sir, I’m thirteen.”
“Hmph.” He stared at her. “If I didn’t need you so bad, I’d send you home.”
“Please don’t do that, sir! My cousin Fiona raised some of those horses, and I—I feel responsible for ’em.”
“They’re good animals.” He paused, then went on more gently. “You obviously know your way around horses, boy, but if you don’t think you can stomach what’s coming, you’d better let me know right now, and we’ll forget the whole thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“This ain’t playtime. There’s gonna be a battle, probably a long, drawn-out one. You ever killed anybody?”
Fiona swallowed hard. “No, sir. But I can protect myself. And just a couple of weeks ago I shot a man that took off with my property.”
Perhaps the note of truth in her voice convinced him. “That’s good to hear. You got a gun on you?”
She shook her head. Why hadn’t she thought of that? She could have taken one of the boys’ hunting rifles.
“All right. I’ll get you one, and a knife. A man ought to be armed, even to take care of the horses.” Without further comment, Stillman turned and continued walking wherever he was taking her.
Which turned out to be a campfire in front of a large tent. Four uniformed officers sat around it, using hardtack to scoop beans into their mouths from metal plates. Fiona was glad dark had almost completely fallen. She couldn’t see their faces, which meant they couldn’t see hers.
“This here is Israel Lanier, boys,” Stillman said, jerking a thumb at Fiona. “Gonna replace that colored boy that run off.” The mustache twitched. “He’s a little soft, maybe, but he knows his way around a horse, so you treat him right, you hear, Catlett?”
The officers guffawed and elbowed one another.
“Yes, sir,” said one of the younger ones with a pair of close-set eyes and a sparse mustache.
Fiona thought she recognized his voice. Maybe he’d been with General Coffee the day he came to Navy Cove to buy the horses. She hoped not.
“What about that gun, sir?” she said, thinking that arming herself might be a good idea for more reasons than one. “And the knife?”
Stillman pointed at the ground close to the fire. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.”
“Yes, sir.” She dropped to the ground and remembered just in time to sit with her feet pulled in, knees splayed as she’d seen her brothers and male cousins do. She propped her forearms across her knees. “You got some more of them beans?” she asked gruffly.
“Sure. Growing boy needs his feed, right?” One of the soldiers got up, an older one, judging by the stiffness of his movements. “I’m Morris, Sergeant Kern Morris. We’re glad to have you. Jackson’s been waiting on recruits from the upper Mississippi to report in before we head to New Orleans.” He handed Fiona a filled plate. “Coffee?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
Morris thumped her on the head. “Least you got some manners. Better than that last lice-infested kid shared my tent.”
Fiona grunted and started to eat. When Morris handed her a steaming tin cup of coffee that burnt her hand, she yelped, “Yeow! I mean, thank you, sir.”
Morris laughed and sat down.
The first officer who had spoken, the young one called Catlett, said, “There’s another Lanier kid here, did you know that?”
Fiona ducked her head to hide her surprise. “My pa said he thought my cousin Oliver might enlist. Was it him?”
“Tall, skinny kid with reddish hair and a bunch of freckles. Oliver might have been his name.”
If Oliver saw her without warning, she was going to be found out. “Do you know where he is? My pa said to give him a message if I saw him.”
Catlett pointed. “Third row over there, 7th Infantry. But don’t go anywhere until Morris gets back.”
“Oh, I won’t.” She had to have that gun. But then she was going to find Oliver and make sure he kept her secret. And if he objected, she just might shoot him. She crammed a hunk of hardtack into her mouth to hide her smile.
The 7th Infantry camp was a short walk in the dark past a row of small, ragged tents. Fiona held her breath lest someone stop her, but she slipped along unmolested, passing groups and individual soldiers at their evening tasks—cleaning guns and personal gear, writing letters by candlelight, playing cards or throwing dice.
She would stop every now and then to ask, “Anybody know Oliver Lanier?” receive a short no in response, and wander on. Finally one old fellow spat out a stream of tobacco juice and jerked his head toward a tent not far away. “Down yonder, kid.”
“Thank you, sir.” Approaching the tent, she slowe
d and stopped outside the firelight. She saw an iron pot suspended over a small campfire, surrounded by camp stools where three young men sat eating their supper. “Oliver!” she hissed. “Oliver Lanier? Is that you?”
The boy in the middle nearly dropped his pan of beans. When he looked up, Fiona recognized her cousin’s freckled face.
“Who’s there?” he said.
“Oliver, come here. I need to talk to you.”
“Fio—”
“It’s Israel.”
He looked confused. “Israel?”
“Yes. Pa sent me to find you.”
Oliver’s companions laughed, and one of them shoved him off the log. “Go on, Lanier. Looks like your daddy found you after all.”
Oliver got up, dusting off the seat of his breeches, and set his plate down on the log. “I’ll be right back.” He snatched Fiona by the elbow and drew her out of earshot of the other boys. “What are you doing here, Fiona? I know your voice when I hear it.”
“You’ve got to call me Israel.” Fiona jerked her arm out of his grasp. “I signed on to work the horses for the cavalry unit.”
“Wait. Just wait a doggone minute! You can’t join a cavalry unit! You’re a—”
“I already did. I told them I’m Israel Lanier, and somebody said they’d seen you earlier in the day. Does Uncle Luc-Antoine know where you are?”
“Sure.”
If he knew her voice, she knew his as well. “No, he doesn’t, and if you tell on me, I’ll tell on you too.”
“Fiona—”
“Israel!” she repeated. “Call me Israel.”
Oliver audibly ground his teeth. “All right. But you can’t do this by yourself. You need somebody to watch out for you and make sure you’re all right.”
“The men I met tonight seem like good men. And as long as they don’t suspect anything, I’ll be fine. Which is the only reason I came to find you—I need you to help me cut my hair.”
Oliver stared at her in patent horror. “I’m not doing that. Your brothers will hang me from the highest tree as it is. Cutting your hair wouldn’t be decent.”