The Pelican Bride (41 page)

He would have to wade through the dark guardhouse. Maybe someone had left a lantern and flint hanging out of the water’s reach. Shifting his brother a little higher in his arms, he turned to edge his way through the door.

Then, as he paused in the hallway between infirmary and guardroom, he heard it again—a hoarse noise that might have been a woman’s voice. Frowning at the tricks his mind played upon him in his anxiety, he waited for another shaft of lightning. There! Though he saw nothing but water and the leaky thatched roof overhead, he heard the shout again, a little louder and longer. In the darkness he felt along the wall with his shoulder until he found the guardroom door.

Holding onto Marc-Antoine, he was forced to find the latch with two fingers, crouching to release it. The door, swinging open on another rush of contained water, would have taken him off his feet again if he hadn’t hit the infirmary wall with his back. By now he could hear two women shouting for help.

Had Bienville been so cruel as to leave Geneviève and Ysabeau to drown in this rat hole? “Geneviève!”

“Tristan!” she screamed.

“Hold on—I’m coming!” Galvanized, muscles trembling from his brother’s dead weight, he fought his way into the room through the swirling dark water. Even with some of it having rushed out into the hallway and over the glacis, he was in waist-high water. “Where are you?”

“Center cell! Ysabeau’s on your right.”

“I don’t have a key,” he said in despair. “Marc-Antoine is
injured—I can’t break you out.” He thought for a precious few seconds. “I’m going to press through to the drill ground—maybe there’ll be someplace to leave him out of the storm. Hang on—I’ll come back for you!”

With every last ounce of his strength Tristan fought his way back to the hallway. Keeping his back pressed against the wall, he sidled toward the drill ground entrance. When he stepped out into the flooded green, he saw that, though neither moon nor stars lit the weeping night sky, the rain had slackened to a mild drizzle and he could pick out the shadowy shapes of the fort’s other three buildings. A wavering lamplight came from headquarters. Murmuring a prayer of thanksgiving, even while he wondered how Nika and the three Indians fared, he waded toward the light.

He accomplished the thirty-foot uphill distance without incident, discovering that by the time he reached his destination he was no longer wading, but splashing through ankle-deep water. Mounting the steps to the gallery, he looked down at Marc-Antoine’s face and was startled to find his eyes open.

“This makes twice, big brother,” Marc-Antoine said with a wan smile. “You’ll never get rid of me now.”

Tristan sighed and leaned against the closed door. “We all have our burdens to bear.”

Aimée slipped out the side door, which opened onto Madame’s chicken yard. She was not overly fond of chickens, but if she went through the front family room, she would face Madame’s endless questions. Pausing to assess the chicken detritus she was likely to step in on the way to the river, she shifted the blanket roll tied across her shoulder with a rope. Rain had come down in torrents all day. This was starting out as a very unpleasant adventure.

She stepped out from under the thatching of the eaves. She was almost sorry she had sent Raindrop away. Life was going to
be dreary indeed with only Julien for company. It was true that he had beautiful manners, he danced like an angel, and he could be charming and entertaining when he chose. But ever since the night she had taken Geneviève’s pastries to him, and allowed him the liberty of kissing her lips, he had developed an annoying habit of ordering her about. As if she were one of his cadets, or—or a kitchen wench even.

If Madame was to be believed, this was an almost universal trait of the male sex. Madame complained incessantly about Monsieur L’Anglois’s snoring, his habit of leaving dirty utensils on the table for her to pick up, his refusal to wipe his muddy boots before entering the front door. Aimée had noticed, however, that in the evenings Monsieur followed Madame’s movements about the house, anticipating her needs with a sweet devotion that attested to his love for her.

Somehow she could not picture Julien playing “Le Beau Robert” five times in a row on a violin simply because it was her favorite song.

She squared her shoulders under the weight of the scratchy rope. Julien was her choice, and no one was going to make her change her mind.

“Mademoiselle! There you are! Oh, please go back! Do not come!”

Raindrop’s escalating shrieks at last penetrated her fog of contemplation. She realized from the stench around her that she stood in Madame’s pigsty. “Raindrop? What are you doing back here so soon?”

Raindrop flung herself at Aimée in the dark. “Didn’t you hear me?” She grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the house. “You must go back inside at once! He is a very bad man!”

Aimée resisted, digging in her heels. “Stop this at once, you ridiculous child! Let go!”

“Monsieur Dufresne—he killed the Indian man, picked up his
gun and—” Raindrop threw her arms about Aimée and burst into tears.

“Julien shot an Indian?” Aimée patted Raindrop’s back. “Why would he do that, at this time of night? Did you speak to him as I asked you to?”

“No!” The little girl burrowed her face against Aimée. “I was frightened when I saw that big Indian waiting to jump out at Monsieur Dufresne, so I hid behind the corner of the building and watched. They were arguing about—”

“Arguing? So it was someone Julien knows?” This was getting odder and odder by the minute.

“Yes! The Indian said he had k-killed the soldiers and Monsieur Lanier and the priest—and that Monsieur Dufresne was to pay him.”

“That makes no sense. Why would Julien want his own people dead?” Even as she said it, a tiny voice reminded her that Julien had more than once expressed contempt for the Lanier brothers and for the priests.

“I don’t know,” Raindrop wailed. “I only know what I heard and what I saw. The Indian said, ‘I killed them all,’ and Monsieur said, ‘No you didn’t, so I shall have to clean up your mess.’ They argued some more. And when the Indian turned to walk away, Monsieur Du-Dufresne, he picked up his musket and—and shot him in the back—Oh, mademoiselle, it was truly horrible, much worse than butchering a hog or wringing a chicken’s neck!”

“Shh, shh . . . it’s all right, never mind . . .” It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. Julien would never shoot a man in the back. Aimée patted the little girl’s back while she gathered her scattered wits. Finally she took Raindrop by the shoulders and shook her a little. “Stop it now.”

Raindrop hiccupped. “I’m sorry, mademoiselle.”

Aimée yanked the neckcloth from about her throat and mopped Raindrop’s face. “I don’t know what you saw, but Julien would
never pay anyone to murder a priest. Don’t say anything to anyone else, while I go and straighten this thing out. Better yet, tell Madame you and I are both feeling poorly and are going to bed. I will see you in the morning.”

With that colossal batch of lies, Aimée picked up the blanket roll she had dropped and left Raindrop standing in the pigsty, sobbing into the neckcloth.

She would just see what this nonsense was all about.

Geneviève was still standing on the cot, in water up to her hips, when she heard a noise from the hallway. When she had failed to shake the iron bars loose and found the oaken boards of the outer wall impenetrable, she had tried to find a way to jump high enough to reach the thatching of the roof. She had imagined that if she could create a hole big enough to climb through, she might convince her fellow prisoner to climb on her shoulders, then go for help.

Ysabeau’s despondent refusal to get off her cot had put an end to that notion, even if further thought hadn’t brought her to realize that the light cane poles to which the thatching was lashed would never sustain the weight of a grown woman. So she had simply stood praying as the water rose and rose. For all her sins, she didn’t want to die by drowning. She didn’t want to die at all, not right now; but, dear God, if it must be, not in a prison of water.

And then somehow he was here, just like the first time she’d met him, pulling her out of watery terror into a gasp of precious free air. And most blessed miracle of all, he didn’t sound angry, he didn’t sound sad or disappointed. He’d sounded terrified, as if he loved her and didn’t want her to die anytime soon.

I’ll come back for you.

Waiting, she’d held the fear at bay with those precious words.
He’s coming back for you.

At first she thought the noise was a fresh onslaught of rain. But
then she recognized the sound of someone wading through water toward her. A dark, shadowy form appeared in the doorway.

“Geneviève! Are you all right?”

“Yes! Oh, Tristan, I’m so glad you’re here!”

“I have the key. Hang on.”

“Ysabeau first. She’s very frightened.”

Ysabeau released a whimpering sob. “Please! Let me out!”

“I’m coming. Geneviève, I love you.” He said it as if the words had been ripped from him, and he couldn’t have held them back another moment.

She wanted to say them back to him, but there was too much unsettled between them, not least her charge of treason. So she stood silent, gripping the bars, as he unlocked Ysabeau’s cell, all the while speaking quietly to keep her from hysterics.

“Can you see enough to get to the door?” he asked the girl when the door swung open.

“I think so.” Ysabeau sounded shaken, but she took a tentative step into the flooded room, then one more. She was halfway to the guardroom door by the time Tristan moved to Geneviève’s cell.

He fumbled with the lock and key in the dark. “I will make sure Dufresne is court-martialed. Bienville sent him to release the two of you when the drill green started to flood, but he never came back. The officers have been making arrangements to evacuate the settlement and didn’t follow up.”

Lacking the energy to form a reply, Geneviève nodded, though she doubted he could see her. When the door opened, she walked into his arms.

He lifted her, held her close, and she clung to him. “I won’t leave you again,” he said against her ear.

“I’m glad,” she choked out. “Is your brother all right?”

“He’s very ill, but I left him with Nika. She’d already made it to headquarters.” He shifted his grip, slipping an arm under her knees, the other across her back, and began to wade toward the
door. “I think I will not toss you over my shoulder this time,” he said with a low chuckle.

At that point, she wouldn’t have cared, but she kissed his damp cheek. “Tristan, you must know I didn’t poison that bread. I would never—”

“I know.” He stopped her lips with his, warm and possessive. “There is an explanation, and we will find it. But let’s wait until there is less immediate danger.” He kissed her again. “Please.”

“Yes. All right.” He was here, that was enough for now.

Nika sat cross-legged beside Mah-Kah-Twah’s bed, keeping vigil while the Frenchmen plotted and planned in the other room. Loud, disagreeable, they reminded her of her childhood, when she had sat in an out-of-the-way corner of her father’s hogan, listening to the elders decide on a place to make winter camp. They would come to agreement, and the women and children would be dragged along to make the best of wherever they landed.