Evermore: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 3) (35 page)

These were the men who’d come sneaking into her house!

“Bitch.” He kicked at her feet. She kicked back.

“Stop it now, Murph. What’d you
bring to eat?”

The men fed Lucinda and Charles Armand. Nicolette’s gag
remained in place.

“So. Now we got ‘em, what are we going to do with them?” Murph said around a mouthful of bread.

“The essential thing, we shall keep the traitor from
delivering her messages to the Yanks in Baton Rouge.”

Murphy eyed Lucinda over his tankard. “Looks to me like Lucy
here’s just dark enough we might could sell her in Natchez, Franks. Buy a few
more horses for the Rebs with what we’d get for a good looking gal like her.”

Franks and Murph. I’ll remember them. I’ll find them. And I’ll kill
them
.

Franks put his bread aside. “Murph,
use your head. A girl that good looking, she’s trouble. She’d draw attention.
No, I think we’ll simply turn them over to the Confeds
when we reach Port Hudson. The soldiers can use them as they will.” Franks
smoothed his long mustaches “Traitors servicing the very men they meant to
betray. There is justice in that, don’t you think?”

Nicolette struggled to speak.
Not Lucinda
, she insisted. But her grunted
not her
! came out garbled and incomprehensible.

“What’s that you say, Miss Chamard? Unh Unh?”

Murph laughed at his partner’s
wit. Nicolette fell back, furious.

The boat churned up the river, past Cherleu, past Toulouse,
past Chanson. Past Donaldsonville and Plaquemine.

In the darkened dank cabin, Nicolette endured endless hours
of helpless rage. Thirst increasingly nagged at her, her swollen tongue trapped
by the blood-caked rag in her mouth. She could not think, could not make a
plan; as aimless as a butterfly in the breeze, thoughts flitted through her
mind.

By the time the second day dawned, she slipped in and out of
delirium. Now and then Lucinda’s pleading voice penetrated her confusion. “She
needs water,” Nicolette heard, then slipped back into the fog.

The day passed in silent derangement. Nicolette had long
talks with Papa. He sang to her in his wonderful baritone, his eyes full of
love and laughter. She walked under an arbor of blooming crape myrtle arm in
arm with Captain McKee, his hair shining in the sun. Finn whispered in her ear,
Wake up, Nicolette
.

The release of the gag roused her. Sweet water trickled into
her mouth.

“Slow,
chérie
.”
Lucinda’s gentle hands held a cup to her cracked lips. “A little at a time.”

“Get her cleaned up, too,” Murph
said.

Nicolette moaned at the pain as Lucinda bathed the blood
away.

Franks came into the cabin with bread and a bottle of wine.

“What you want to do about her wrists, Franks?”

“Cut her loose. Ankles too. Got to get the circulation going
so she can walk off the gangplank.”

Fire seared her veins as the blood rushed back into her
hands. Then Murph cut the ropes around her ankles and
flames shot through her feet. She heard someone moaning, not aware it was
herself.

“Please, monsieur,” Lucinda said. “Can you not give her the
wine?”

Lucinda rubbed Nicolette’s wrists and arms, then helped her
hold a cup in her purpled hands.

“How we going to get her off the boat, looking like that?” Murph said.

“Wrap her up good in Lucy’s shawl. Pull her bonnet down.
Should get us through the crowd.”

Murph hauled her to her feet, but
her legs wouldn’t hold her.

“You’re going to have to carry her, Murphy, looks like. You
can manage that, can’t you?”

“I reckon. She don’t smell so good though. I think she peed
on herself.”

“I never noticed you smelling like a rose, my friend.”

Franks took Bertie from Lucinda and cradled him against his
shoulder. “I don’t have to convince you, Miss Chamard,” he said, looking
directly at Nicolette, “that if you should cry out, I will drop this baby over
the side.”

Frantic, Lucinda reached for Bertie. Franks stiff-armed her.

Thick-tongued, Nicolette rasped, “I understand.”

“Let’s go,” Franks said.

Murph tied his soiled handkerchief
over Nicolette’s bruised and swollen nose. He wrapped the shawl over her
blood-stained bodice and jammed her hat down low. Then he picked her up and
followed Franks carrying Bertie, Lucinda carrying Charles Armand.

Passengers crowded at the gangplank, intent on disembarking,
on waving to friends on the dock, on balancing their way across the plank to
shore. Murph handled Nicolette’s weight with ease and
carried her as if she were his beloved invalid. No one noticed Lucinda’s
fearful face nor Nicolette’s eyes blazing with hate.

The Red River wound its way across north Texas, wet the
southwest corner of Arkansas, then flowed across Louisiana. North of Baton
Rouge, it dumped its red waters into the muddy brown of the Mississippi. Down
this conduit, supporters of the Confederacy shipped foodstuff and livestock to
feed the Rebels.

Whoever controlled the junction of the two rivers controlled
that flow of goods. The Federals already commanded the Mississippi River from
Baton Rouge down to the Gulf of Mexico. Once they took the territory north of
Baton Rouge, they would squeeze shut the Red River and slowly strangle the
Confederacy.

Twenty-five miles north of Baton Rouge and forty miles south
of the Red River, Port Hudson lay at a strategic point on the eastern bank of
the Mississippi. Atop an eighty foot bluff, the fort surveyed a sharp bend in
the Mississippi. Navigating through that bend involved a slow, meticulous
passage, slow enough that Confederate cannon could pick off Union gunboats easy
as shooting fish in a barrel.

If the Confederates continued to hold Port Hudson, they might
hold the Red River. But if the Union took the bluffs here and further north at
Vicksburg, they’d kick the Rebs off the Mississippi entirely.

Port Hudson had another strategic mission as well: tie up
Federal soldiers and matériel that would otherwise be sent to aid Ulysses Grant
in taking Vicksburg, the other crucial bastion on the Mississippi.

In late May, after weeks of skirmishing, Federal General
Nathaniel Banks gathered his forces to encircle Port Hudson. The
Essex
and
other gun boats pummeled the Confederate river batteries with arching mortar,
trying to get the range. Some of the balls skittered across the ground
harmlessly, some struck trees and burst into towering flame. Others exploded in
the earth itself, throwing up roots and dirt which coated the soldiers’ hats
and shoulders like heavy black rain.

For days, Nicolette and Lucinda had endured heat and rain
showers from above, bruising and splinters from beneath as they traveled in the
back of a buckboard. Franks allowed Lucinda free use of her hands and feet, but
Nicolette he kept bound. She could have won some leeway from him had she been
willing to disguise the rage that bubbled up every waking hour. She would
rather bite the man’s nose off.

Nicolette grunted as the buckboard bounced over a pothole,
rattling every bone in her body. Murphy drove the mules, Bertie tied to his
broad chest with Lucinda’s shawl. Insurance, Murphy called it. “You ladies
don’t behave,” he’d told them, “it won’t take no trouble at all to pinch the
little feller’s breath off.” They behaved.

She listened to the distant rumble of cannon rolling through
the night sky. They were getting close. Charles Armand woke and scrunched up
closer to his maman, covering his ears with his hands.

Since leaving the steamboat at Baton Rouge, the zealot
kidnappers had surreptitiously bought horses and mules from planters in the
outlying regions. By day, they hid from the Yankee patrols. By night, they
evaded them, traveling along back lanes and crop roads toward Port Hudson to
deliver their much-needed assets.

So close now that they could see the glow of each mortar
burst reflected in the overhanging cloud cover, Franks spurred them on,
trusting the pre-dawn fog to shield them from Union pickets.

Over the clop of hooves and squeaking of axles, a shout
penetrated the night.

“Yo! Who goes there?”

“Friends,” Franks called out. “Brought you a remuda.”

“Hold right there,” the soldier told them. “Be light in a
bit. Then we’ll let you in. If you ain’t Yanks.”

Lucinda gripped Nicolette’s hand.
She must think this is deliverance,
Nicolette thought.
Maybe it will be, for her and the boys
.

The Confederates would treat Lucinda well enough. But if
Franks convinced the commander at Port Hudson she was a Union spy, the Rebels
would not treat Nicolette kindly. Nicolette could not muster much concern for
her neck. She was numb to every feeling but rage.

The sun rose above the treetops, revealing soldiers peering
at them over an embankment. A deep ravine separated the wagon from the newly
constructed ramparts.

“Damn, Reb. You got some horses there,” a soldier called
out.

“Courtesy of the patriots of the city of New Orleans,”
Franks answered.

“Come on around this way and we’ll let you through.”

They passed a good mile of raw yellow earth piled into fortified
lunettes, ravines filled with felled trees and branches, and curious faces of
Rebels staring at them over the breastworks. On the eastern side of the
fortress, they passed through the perimeter into Port Hudson.

From here, the mortar rounds from the river sounded distant
and harmless, the nearby soldiers too busy to heed the booms and bursts. Murphy
pulled the wagon up.

“Going to be a hot one,” a sergeant said, accepting a
written account of the horses and mules.

“Yep. Mighty damned hot for May. Tell the general Quentin
Franks brought him a whole damn remuda.”

Murphy turned around on the buckboard seat. “You gals can
climb on down from there.”

He laughed at Nicolette, bound and helpless. A fresh surge
of hatred burned through her.

“Now we’re safe in Confederate territory,” Murphy said
cheerfully, “I reckon I can let you out of them ropes, Miss Sassy-pants.”

He handed Bertie over to Lucinda and walked around to the
back. Nicolette’s wrists were scabbed and bruised from days of being bound.
When Murphy untied her ankles, bearing the same scars, he ran his hand up her
skirt and patted her calf. Bitter bile rose in her throat.

“You’re done with the ropes, missy,” Murphy said
conversationally. “Course you got to answer to treason, but that’s a different
kind of rope, ain’t it?”

Behaving as if he were a gallant gentleman, he helped them
climb from the wagon. Nicolette’s stiffened legs refused to hold her weight.
Murphy caught her with a strong arm and leaned her into his chest till she
found her feet. She did not protest. She had days ago ceased to imagine
spitting in Murphy’s face or clawing at Franks’ eyes. She intended to do more
damage to these two than she could inflict with bare hands.

“See here, lads.” Murphy gestured at her and Lucinda like
they were livestock. “We brought you Rebs more than horses.”

Half a dozen dirty, raggedy soldiers gathered round Lucinda,
gawking. “Damn, I bet she’s pretty, you cleaned her up.”

“She got big titties, see that?”

The third soldier, a skinny boy with pale dirty hair curling
over his forehead, stared at Nicolette. Her eyes were drawn to the pistol at
his belt.

“Lookit this other one, fellas,”
he said. “Pretty, but them eyes is scary mean.”

Nicolette studied the young man who leered at her. He
thought she was some
thing
,
a mere object to be used for his pleasure. She had no worth in his eyes, no
true identity. This realization did not sting. The last days of contained fury
had removed her from herself. She saw clearly, but she hoarded her emotional
energy. When the time came, she meant to expend that energy in a blaze of
vengeance.

Murphy waxed sociable with the boys. “They is pretty women,
that they are. Figured you boys would know what to do with a couple of pretty
women.”

The young soldiers snickered, red-faced but eager.

“You had ‘em yourself?” the skinny blond kid asked.

Franks turned at the insinuation, an indignant frown on his
face. “We are Christian gentlemen, sir. Married men, faithful to our wives as
we are to our cause.”

Murphy winked at the soldiers. “But if you boys is unwed, I
don’t see no harm to amusing yourselves. But watch out for that one.” He cocked
his head toward Nicolette. “A hard woman. A traitor. She just as soon kill you
as look at you.”

The soldiers dropped their eyes when Nicolette ran her gaze
over them.

The village was an earthen fortress, there were guns
everywhere. If that boy touched her, or Lucinda, she’d blow a hole through the
dirty blond ringlet in the center of his forehead.

A one-armed officer in a gray uniform, his hat faded and
crumpled, strode across the open ground. Maybe this was the man who would
decide whether she was to be treated like a lady, or a traitor. He looked
toward the string of horses, then approached the wagon.

“You men,” he said, his voice harsh. The soldiers
immediately dispersed.

“Mr. Franks?” the officer said with an inquiring look.

“Here, Captain.”

“You have just made it in, I believe. The Feds about have us
surrounded. This is a fine gesture, sir.”

Nicolette edged along the wagon’s side, closer to where Franks
stood talking to the captain. She knew that voice.

“We are not fighting men, Captain, but we are true sons of
the Confederacy nevertheless. We are proud to aid our brothers in arms.”

“Let me show you to headquarters. Major General Gardner will
welcome you at breakfast.” The officer nodded toward Lucinda. “Corporal, show
Mrs. Franks and the other lady, Mrs. Murphy, is it? Take the ladies to Mrs.
Brickell’s house where they can refresh themselves.”