Ghost Fire

by Wilbur Smith

  He realized blood was dripping from the cut on his scalp that Gilyard had begun. He would have a scar across his forehead for the rest of his life. A wig would hide it, but Corbeil would always feel the shame.

  “It seems you had some help,” said Bercheny. “Happy the man who can call upon his wife in his hour of need. You are lucky, General.”

  He was mocking him. Corbeil felt the anger swell inside him again, fixing irrationally on Constance. How demeaning to be saved by a woman wielding a penknife from her writing desk.

  Gilyard groaned. He was a hard man to kill, but Corbeil would enjoy finding out what it took. The guards carried him away to the cells.

  “I will make you pay for everything you did to me!” Corbeil shouted after him.

  By the window, Constance had picked up Gilyard’s knife. It trembled in her hands—her body was shaking. The shock of what had occurred caught up with her.

  She saw Corbeil watching and made to offer him the knife. “Keep it,” Corbeil said brusquely. “I will show you how to use it so that next time, when you stab a man in the back, you do it properly.”

  Constance slipped the knife into the drawer of her dressing-table. “I look forward to the lesson.”

  •••

  Fifty rangers had set out on the scout. Five returned, four making their way over the slushy ground, dragging a fifth on a makeshift stretcher of saplings. A bell was tolling from the small village that clung to the lake shore. It was nearly midnight, but as Theo approached he saw lights inside the church. The doors opened, and a throng of people in their Sunday best spilled out onto the muddy road.

  “What are they doing?” Theo wondered.

  Some of the congregation were still singing a hymn: “Hark how all the welkin rings, / Glory to the King of Kings.”

  “It is Christmas!” Moses exclaimed.

  With his Abenaki appearance and dress, it was easy to forget he had been taught in a mission school. Theo would have sensed the irony if he hadn’t been so exhausted.

  The parishioners were alarmed to see five filthy, bloody vagabonds staggering into their village. Some of the men from the outlying farms carried pistols as protection against wild animals. They drew them and might well have fired if Theo had not managed to cry out, “God save the King! We are English.”

  Then he collapsed. The last sound he remembered hearing was children singing, “Born to raise the sons of Earth, / Born to give them second birth.”

  A week later, he presented himself at the headquarters in Albany. His arm was in a sling, his face bandaged from Bichot’s cut, and he walked with a limp. The first thing he had done on reaching the town was to visit his wife and son. Abigail was tearful at how broken her man appeared, but she hugged him first tentatively and then more closely as she felt his full warmth against her skin, and for a moment she was whole again. Caleb cried, too, but more with hunger than surprise. Theo knew the world stopped spinning when he was embraced by his family. He wanted never to leave them again.

  Although it was the depths of winter, the headquarters were filled with bustle and activity. He expected a long wait, but instead he was ushered straight up the stairs, and into General Williams’s office.

  Theo saluted. The general regarded him with keen eyes. He had an aquiline face, with salt-and-pepper hair and the easy command of a born patrician. Pictures of hunting and horses adorned the walls. From appearances, it would be easy to dismiss him as another English aristocrat, given an army to play with by his friends at court. In fact, he was the son of a Kentish lawyer, who had earned every promotion on the battlefield. Theo could tell at once that he was a born soldier.

  “My condolences on your unit,” the general said. “No doubt you lost many friends—and Major Gilyard was a fine soldier.”

  Theo nodded.

  “His absence is a grievous blow.” Williams leaned forward. “This must be the year we defeat the French in America or concede the fight. There are powerful voices in London, whose owners insist we should be concentrating our war efforts in Europe, not some far-flung wilderness. We cannot afford another defeat like last year.”

  Theo gestured his assent.

  “When spring comes, I shall attack Fort Royal.”

  Theo knew he had to speak. “With respect, sir, we found evidence the French have taken guns up onto the ridge that commands the fort. They have made it impregnable.”

  “I have read your report,” snapped Williams. “One rusting gun does not make a battery, and no fort is impregnable. If we cannot take Fort Royal, the war fails. I will break their resistance if I must level the mountain and drain the lake to do it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The task will be harder without Major Gilyard,” Williams conceded. “The French fear the rangers like the pox. I need your men guarding our flanks, keeping the French pinned behind their walls and out of the woods.”

  Theo blinked. “My men, sir?”

  “You are now the senior officer in the company.” He passed a paper across the table. “I signed the order for your promotion this morning. Congratulations, Captain Courtney.”

  Theo didn’t touch the paper. “It is a great honor, sir, but I fear to tell you, I mean to quit the army.”

  Williams stared at him, as though he had uttered the most arrant nonsense imaginable.

  “Today is New Year’s Eve,” Theo persisted. “My enlistment expires at midnight tonight.”

  “You do not know what you are saying,” said Williams. “You have suffered a great deal of hardship these past weeks. Take two weeks’ leave, then return to your unit.”

  Theo felt the full weight of the general’s stare, the power of a man who had broken fortresses and directed armies with the force of his will. Yet he did not waver. He had thought of little else since he returned, talking long into the night with Abigail. It was time to look to his future.

  “My father died too young, and his father before him. I want to see my son grow up.”

  Williams held his gaze. Perhaps he saw something of his own strength in Theo’s eyes, for the outrage on his face softened to something like respect. He folded the commission and pressed it into Theo’s hand. “It is undated. If you think again, there is always a place in my army for you.”

  “Thank you, sir. But my mind is made up. We will buy a wagon and settle new land in the Ohio country.”

  “A pity. Word of your exploits is getting out, Mr. Courtney. After what you have achieved, your men would do anything for you.”

  Theo left the room, disquieted. Something inside him sat uneasy with abandoning the fight, and what remained of his men. He also considered his higher purpose, his revenge for the death of his loved ones. But he forgot his doubts the moment he saw Abigail and Caleb waiting on the street outside.

  Abigail ran to him, scanning his features anxiously. “Did he try to dissuade you?”

  Theo showed her Williams’s paper. “He offered me a commission as captain.”

  Her face fell. “I told you they would try to tempt you.”

  “And I told him no.” Theo took the paper in both hands and ripped it up until the pieces were so small they blew out of his grip. He watched them float down the street. They settled in the mud and were soon ground underfoot.

  He took Caleb from Abigail’s arms and held him aloft, delighting in the baby’s squeals of excitement.

  “From now on, I belong only to you.”

  •••

  Corporal Pierre Duchambon had not seen daylight in a fortnight. For the minor infraction of stealing a few sous from his messmates—only to pay money he owed a pimp—he had been punished with two weeks’ prison duty. The dungeon lay beneath the fortress of Québec, deep within the insurmountable promontory of Cap Diamant that commanded the St. Lawrence River. For eight hours a day, Pierre stood guard on the solitary prisoner who occupied it. Down before dawn, up after sunset on the infernally short winter days, he lived every hour by the light of a single lamp that was forever threatening to sputter
out. He was sick of solitude, and sick of the dark.

  When he heard footsteps descending the long spiral stair, he was pathetically grateful at the prospect of company. He heard soft footsteps, not the heavy tread of soldiers’ boots. An officer?

  Pierre stiffened to attention but hunched with surprise when he saw who it was. A beautiful woman with shining golden hair, wrapped in a fur stole, came toward him with an attractive maidservant carrying a lantern.

  He saluted. “Are you lost, madame?”

  “I wish to see the prisoner,” she said, in a voice that brooked little argument.

  Pierre shifted uneasily. “I have orders from the captain that no one is to be admitted.”

  “My husband is the general.” She stared at him, her cool green eyes adamant. “All I am asking is that you leave us for ten minutes.”

  “I cannot desert my post.” He could not face the prospect of more punishment, more weeks in darkness.

  “If anyone finds you, tell them I fainted and you went to fetch water. My maid will go with you and support your story.” Her face softened into a warm, willing smile. “No one will know. And I’m sure you would be glad of a few minutes of my maid’s company. It must be lonely for you down here all by yourself.”

  To have the sympathy of such a beautiful, noble woman after all his hours of misery—Pierre would have done anything for her. Her maid was not unattractive either. “You will not help him escape?” he asked.

  “He tried to kill my husband. He will die in that cell before I see him released.”

  Her tone was so chilling, Pierre could not doubt she meant it. He unlocked the door and retreated up the stairs with the maid.

  The moment Constance stepped into the cell she felt the darkness and the confinement smother her. The stench of decay and waste and despair washed over her. Memories she had forced deep inside herself burst out, flooding her with the shock of revelation. She put a hand against the slick wall to steady herself and almost shrieked. It was like touching the past, the desperation of the Black Hole in Calcutta. A vision of Deegan swam before her eyes, the fat old sot’s face sliding down her stomach as she trampled him to death.

  The memory gave her strength. She closed her eyes, counting her breaths. “You survived that. You can survive anything,” she told herself.

  The panic passed. She mastered herself. She opened her eyes again. When she lifted the lamp to study the man she’d come to see, she saw only a wretched prisoner in her power.

  “Did you come to finish your work?” croaked Gilyard. He was chained against the wall, his face wrapped in black blood-soaked bandages. Small holes had been cut for his nose and lips, while his one remaining eye gazed at her through a narrow slit.

  She reached in her purse and pulled out the small knife she had taken from Gilyard in the fight. She crouched in front of him, out of his reach, so he could see the Indian totems and wild animals carved into the antler handle. She turned it over to show him the writing on the reverse.

  To Major Gilyard from Theo Courtney, in gratitude.

  “The Theo Courtney who gave you this knife: is he about my age? Does he have red hair, and brown eyes?”

  Gilyard would not speak. She leaned closer, wondering if he could smell her perfume through what was left of his nose. She let her hair brush his face as she whispered in his ear, “Theo Courtney is my brother.”

  Gilyard could not hide his surprise. He craned his head round, trying to read Constance’s face for any hint of a trick or a lie. All he saw were her green eyes gazing back. A hard stare, like he used to see in Theo’s determined glare.

  She saw the truth in Gilyard’s one, unblinking eye. “Where is he?”

  Gilyard tried to speak but was consumed by a fit of choking. “How?”

  “We were separated by tragedy almost three years ago. I did not know he was alive.”

  He watched her, making grim soughing sounds through his nose. “Help me,” he whispered.

  Memories of the Black Hole swirled around her in the noxious air, ghosts waiting to tear her mind apart. She could not hold them off much longer. “What do you want of me?”

  He bobbed his head toward the knife in her hands. It shone with lethal promise in the lamplight. “Release me.”

  “Where can I find my brother?”

  Under the bandages, Gilyard’s face was unreadable. Constance feared he might slip into unconsciousness. “Albany,” he breathed at last.

  “Thank you.”

  She offered him the knife, but he pushed it back into her hand. “I am too weak. You must do it.”

  She nodded. She felt no guilt. If she did not do this, Gilyard would suffer either an agonizing death from gangrene, or an even slower, more painful death at the hands of Corbeil’s torturers. And a dead man could not reveal her connection with Theo.

  “Show me where.”

  He raised his left arm and pointed to a place under the armpit. “Here. Slide it in flat, between the ribs.”

  It was the second time in her life that Constance killed a man. The first had been frenzied, the instinct of a panicked animal. This was almost serene. She sat beside Gilyard, putting one arm around his shoulders to brace him. She moved the blade, probing for the right spot until he nodded. Then she rammed it through the skin. It was easier than she’d expected.

  The little blade was long enough to reach the heart. She watched him die. The shudder that went through the body, the momentary tension, then the slump as his muscles relaxed for the last time. A life, gone.

  A noise in the passage announced the guard’s return. She pulled out the knife, wiped the blade and returned it to her purse. Blood welled from the wound, soaking into the bandages, but they were so filthy it barely showed. No one would examine this rotting corpse too closely.

  She swept out of the room and closed the door before the guard could look in.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Did anyone challenge you?”

  “No, madame.” Curiosity got the better of Pierre. “What were you doing in there?”

  “I prayed with him,” she said. “I do not think he has long to live.”

  Pierre nodded, relieved. With her golden hair and alabaster skin, she looked the perfect angel of mercy.

  “And if you tell anyone I was here, I will make sure my husband assigns you the furthest, coldest outpost on the frontier.”

  His jaw dropped.

  She smiled sweetly. “The best charity is done in secret.”

  Her fixed smile disappeared the moment she returned to her boudoir. First the dungeon, now Theo: her body was shaking with the release of emotions she’d thought she had locked away forever.

  She stank of the dungeon. She had her maid fill a hot bath and undress her, then sent the girl away to launder the clothes in case any blood had stained them. Constance settled into the steaming water, letting the water lap over her breasts. The heat opened her pores and let out the filth of the prison. She soaped it away.

  That Theo should be so close, barely two hundred miles away, beggared belief. Did he know she was alive? Impossible. She had been carried out of the Black Hole as a corpse: everyone in India would have believed her dead.

  Should she try to find him? What would she say?

  Another image from the past returned to her. Theo as she had last seen him, caught in the spyglass as his ship sailed from Calcutta. Abandoning her, breaking every promise he had ever made to protect her.

  But he was all the family she had.

  She was still pondering it when Corbeil arrived. He threw his hat and coat into a corner and sank onto the chaise without taking his boots off. They left dark dirty streaks on the upholstery.

  The sight of it—the black mud oozing over the blue silk—changed something inside her. She hated it here: the snow, the mud, the cold, having to make small talk with the garrison wives, their fashions five years out of date, and bumptious merchants who talked only of money. Paris was where she belonged: the only place she had approached true happiness.


  “Please do not put your dirty boots on my chaise,” she said. “I had the fabric imported from Paris.”

  Corbeil gave her a dismissive look and didn’t move his feet.

  “I want to go back,” Constance announced. “As soon as the ice melts, I will take the first ship for France.”

  “You belong with me.”

  “I belong to no one.” Constance stepped out of the bath. She stood for a moment, dripping and naked. She knew she was beautiful, and the power she had over men. She enjoyed seeing the conflicting emotions play out on Corbeil’s face. “You cannot keep me here,” she said.

  “Of course I can. You are my wife.”

  She dried herself, arching her back so that her breasts pushed forward, letting her hand linger in intimate places. A bulge was rising in Corbeil’s breeches, and it delighted her to see the effect she had on him.

  “Come back with me,” she said, advancing toward him. “Let us leave this frozen wilderness and go somewhere we can be warm.”

  Corbeil shook his head. “You know I cannot. The English are advancing on three fronts. They are overextended. This summer we will destroy them utterly.”

  He swung his legs off the chaise, spreading the mud wider over the fabric, and stood. “I do not care for this mood of yours. All day I have that idiot governor general undermining me and questioning my orders. Half my supplies have disappeared, I cannot feed my men, and the finance minister is growing fat on the pickings. A wife should be a solace to her husband, not a scold.”

  He noticed that Constance was staring past him, her eyes fixed on the streaks of mud on her chaise. He grabbed her shoulders. “Are you listening to me?”

  “I am leaving.” She shook his hands off her and went to her dresser, pulling out clothes. “I am sick of it all—this fort, this country. I am sick of you.”

  She had meant to wound him. But she had not expected to strike so deep. Corbeil crossed the room and clamped his hands on her shoulders. She struggled, clawing him away; her nails caught his cheek. He threw up his arms—whether to block her or to retaliate, she didn’t know.

  His fist struck the middle of her face in a quick rabbit punch. Blood erupted from her nose and ran down her naked skin. She shrieked with pain but more with shock, transported in an instant back to Mauvières’s château.