Evermore: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 3) (40 page)

Then there were not even enough rats. Men who had learned to
eat every rodent they could catch balked at eating their mules and horses.
These animals had names, they had eccentricities and loyalty and heart.

To encourage the men, General Gardner ordered up a mess of
thoroughly boiled horse meat and ate it out in the open air where the troops
could see him. His example, and the pain of empty bellies, persuaded them,
though many cried without shame when it came time to slaughter their own
mounts.

Their weakened bodies quickly revived with the infusion of
fresh meat, and their morale soared. Some of the high-spirited soldiers, aware
they were now part-horse after eating their flesh, kicked their heels at mess
time and hollered “ye haw!”

On the other side of Little Sandy Creek, General Banks
busily indulged in oratory and declared a hiatus in the attack. If the Union
were going to take Port Hudson, they’d have to dig saps to reach the ramparts.
Banks put his soldiers and the hundreds of non-soldier blacks to work in the
June sun.

During this relative peace, for skirmishes still erupted
along the perimeter, Alistair arrived at the Brickell house every evening,
shaved and washed. Marcel did not allow an opportunity for another kiss like
he’d seen his friend bestow on Nicolette, but he did allow the courtship, if
that’s what it was, to continue on Mrs. Brickell’s front porch.

Marcel sat on the porch, leaning against a roof post,
Charles Armand in his lap. He had persuaded Charles Armand to let him tie the
pillow case so it looked like an Arabian prince’s turban. Lucinda, close enough
her skirts brushed against Marcel’s shoulder, rocked and hummed to Bertie.

Val stretched out in a patch of shade. All gangly arms and
legs, his body trying to grow past the six foot mark on half rations, he was
skinny as a rail. A dark fuzz proudly shadowed his upper lip else he would have
been too pretty for a young man. When Val wasn’t in motion, he was asleep, and
he snored softly beneath his straw hat.

Nicolette sat on the top step next to Alistair. No longer
diffident or hesitant, he seemed a different man. He laughed more easily. He
looked at her more boldly, took her hand more confidently. She liked him the
better for it.

“Why this show of mercy? Why has Banks ceased the attack?”
Lucinda asked.

“No mercy in it,” Alistair said. “Banks has his men digging
rifle pits and tunnels and ditches to finagle a few hundred yards closer.”

“So they are going to breach the barricades?” Nicolette
asked.

This new Alistair gave her a sly grin. “Don’t think so.
We’re going to let them invest a little more time and energy in their pretty
zig zag trenches, then a few of the lads and I will
go out and blow them up.”

Nicolette gazed toward the Northern garrisons outside the
fort. Finn wouldn’t be in a tunnel. He’d be in the rear, running messengers,
sending coded wig wags.

Unless he had to be in a signal tower. Nicolette heard the
snipers boasting about their body counts. A sharp-eyed lad with a Springfield,
one he’d confiscated from a fallen Yank, could hit his target at 900 yards. The
Yank would fall and never hear the rifle crack.

Finn would know that though. Surely they built some sort of
barrier in the towers, a stout plank of oak to protect themselves.

Finn had told her all about wig wag signaling one day over a
cup of chicory coffee. They’d sat under a sweet gum tree in a courtyard café
off Rue Royale, someone nearby playing a harmonica. Finn had poured salt on the
polished pine table and showed her the flag combinations. Miss Chamard he’d
spelled out. And then that six feet of manly tanned confidence had blushed.

Alistair touched her hand. “Don’t be frightened. We’ll beat
them back.”

She fingered the garnet cross at her throat. Here, in a
besieged fortress where there was no water for bathing, where the temperature
reached 100 degrees in the afternoons, it seemed reasonable to leave the top
two or three buttons undone. Alistair’s eyes followed her hand to the cross.

“I was just imagining those poor boys in the trenches.”

“You want the Yanks to beat us out.”

It wasn’t a question, she noted. “I just want it to be
over.”

A hundred yards away, Adam Johnston rode by in the last light
of the day. He generally found occasion to direct his horse this way every
evening, making no show of disguising his steady stare.

Alistair stared back. Disgust in his voice, he said, “I’ll
speak to him. He’s got no cause to be riding by here.”

Nicolette shrugged. It didn’t matter to her what Adam
Johnston did.

In fact, she realized, the first flush of joy she’d felt
when Alistair arrived had passed. She liked being courted. She liked being
kissed. The awful numbness of heart had left her, but if she should not see
Alistair again after the siege, she would not pine for him, would not ache for
him in the night like she did for Finn.

Alistair regarded her in the failing light. She had changed.
Not just from the strain and poor rations. There was a sadness about her eyes
now that he had not seen before, not even after she’d been so badly hurt. Had
she lost someone to the war? Someone had given her that stunning cross. The
idea that she’d been attached to a man he knew nothing about burned like a hot
knife in his gut. And yet, in spite of the hint of sorrow around her eyes, she
was cheerful. She was, almost, serene.

“How is it, Nicolette, you can be so composed in the middle
of a battlefield?”

“It is hard won, I assure you. And you? You seem quite
imperturbable. Where is the man I knew in New Orleans, full of doubt and
conflict?”

Alistair fiddled with a piece of grass. “Left him on the
Lafourche, I guess. Living through your first battle, and the next, and the
next. Finding you can face death as well as the next fella. That’ll change a
man.”

He tossed the blade of grass away and openly took her hand.

“Let’s take a walk.”

He put her hand on his arm and strolled through the rare
quiet hour toward Foster’s Creek running through the middle of the enclosure. A
posse of soldiers scoured the ground for Union minié
balls they could melt and reform into ammunition for their own guns. Others
collected shell debris to pack into hand grenades and canister.

Alistair led her through the shade of a tattered oak grove.
He lost the easy manners he’d shown the last days and resumed the formality
Nicolette had known in New Orleans. He suddenly held his arm out the requisite
three inches so as not to entrap the lady’s hand. His neck had gone stiff as a
statue’s.

“Nicolette,” he said, a frown line deep between his brows,
“after the war, the plantations will be in a bad way, whoever wins. But if the
Yanks win and all the slaves walk off, the cane and cotton growers will be
ruined.”

Nicolette merely nodded. She knew this.

“However,” Alistair went on, “I own part-interest in a
silver mine in Colorado. Two steam boats. And I’ve invested in the railroad
they’re building through Texas.”

He parted the hanging branches of a willow tree and led her
into a leafy bower. “Whatever happens after the war, I will still be a wealthy
man.”

Nicolette murmured something congratulatory, not paying much
mind. Why did he think she’d be interested in his finances? Unless . . . . Oh
no.

“Alistair --”

“Please, Nicolette. Let me say this. I know I’ve been a
fool. I let propriety and tradition and all that nonsense rule me, when all
I’ve wanted since the day I met you was to make you mine.”

“Alistair --”

He touched his finger to her lips.

“Not as my plaçée, Nicolette. As my wife.”

Alistair bent to his knee and took her hand. “Nicolette,
will you marry me?”

Sadness descended on her like a cold heavy dew. Once, maybe,
she would have said yes. But not now.

“Dear Alistair.” She shook her head. “I am not in love with
you.”

Alistair remained on his knee, his hold on her hand
unwavering. “I know you don’t love me the way I love you. I know it. But I can
take care of you, Nicolette. We’ll live anywhere you like. New Orleans. Baton
Rouge. New York. I’ll make you happy, I know it.”

She shook her head. He could make her secure. Give her
children. Give her his love. But she had nothing to give in return. Her heart
remained tied to a dream, a fantasy of loving Finnian McKee. She was not ready
to let go of that longing. Yearning, if not hope, was what sustained her.

She looked into his eyes, so full of hope. But again she
shook her head.

Alistair raised himself. After a moment, he faced her again.
“Is there someone else?”

Nicolette’s gaze penetrated through the willow branches to the
treetops beyond the barricades. Finn was over there, in the Union camp.

“Not anymore.”

Finn trudged through the heat back to his preferred
observation post. He and his signal men did not have to wield shovel and pick
digging the trenches that would protect the soldiers in their next assault
against Port Hudson. He had time on his hands. He climbed the tree to the
tallest platform on the north side of the ramparts. From there, on a quiet day
like this, he could see a patch of the village itself.

He checked first, as he did every day, that André Cailloux’s
body still lay where he fell. He didn’t know why he tormented himself like
this. Of course the body had not moved. But this vigil was all he could do for
a brave soldier. By now, after heavy rains, the body had begun to sink into the
ground. If Banks wouldn’t arrange a truce flag for burials, the earth itself
would accomplish the task.

At his leisure, no skirmish ripping the quiet air, he
trained his scope into Port Hudson. Two women and a small boy walked across the
field outside the village proper. He knew there were a few women and children
inside. Must be hell for them, he thought. He adjusted his scope and focused on
the woman on the left.

Can’t be!
He stood
up and squinted into the eyepiece again.
What
the hell is she doing here?

Finn scrambled down from the platform and raced back toward
headquarters. Since the Rebs had wounded and captured so many Yanks, Banks was
sending a wagon load of medicine and bandages into Port Hudson. He’d go with
the wagon. She must be desperate to get out of there. He’d bring her back with
him. She could stay in his tent. He’d bunk with Hursh. She’d be safe behind the
lines.

He tore into Weitzel’s tent where
the adjutant pored over dispatches.

“That medicine wagon. Where is it?”

“Just left, I believe.”

Finn whirled. He’d catch up and go along as escort.

“Captain McKee.” General Weitzel himself hailed him from
across the lane of tents, Hursh Farrow at his side. “Just the man we need.”

“General. Request permission to escort the medicine wagon.”

Weitzel frowned. “That’s hardly necessary. I want you and
Major Farrow to go over this new scheme from headquarters with me. They’re
proposing taller towers, and I have to say, I don’t see the benefits outweigh
the risks. Come inside, Captain.”

The wagon got further ahead with every minute. “General?”

Weitzel looked at him, one eyebrow raised.

Finn felt his chest might explode. “Sir, five minutes
please?”

“Make it quick.”

Finn ran toward the signal men’s enclave. “Corporal Peach!”

Finn tore a leaf from the code book, hell they all knew it
by heart now anyway. “Sir?” Peach said.

Finn scrawled a message on the page. He hesitated, then
added another line.

“Do you remember Miss Chamard, from the Custom House?”

“Yes, sir,” Corporal Peach said, smiling wide.

“Catch up with the wagon we’re sending into Port Hudson. Go
in with them. Bring Miss Chamard back with you.”

“What’s she doing in Port Hudson?”

“I don’t know, Peach. Just bring her back.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Take my horse. Don’t fail me in this, Corporal.”

“No, sir!”

Finn spent the rest of the day performing the minutia of
camp duties required of him. He took out his watch every ten minutes, then
every five. Where the hell was Peach?

The men were building cook fires by the time Peach rode up
on Finn’s horse. Alone.

“What happened?” Finn called, on the march to intercept him.
“You didn’t find her?”

“Yeah, Captain. I found her.” He slid off the horse and
handed the reins to Finn.

“Then where is she?”

Corporal Peach shook his head. “She wouldn’t come. I give
her the note, like you said, but she had a little feller pulling at her skirt,
she said she couldn’t leave him.”

Finn’s chest went hollow on him. “Well, what did she say
when she read my note? Did she look mad?”

“She warn’t mad. She was all smiley.
Oh, I recollect what she said. She showed me this pretty cross made out of red
stones. Said tell you she’s wearing it.”

The air rushed back into Finn’s chest. “Thank you,
Corporal,” he said, pumping Peach’s hand. “You are relieved of your duties for
the rest of the day.”

Finn swung himself onto his horse and trotted into the
woods. At the creek, he tied his horse, stripped off his clothes, and plunged
into the cool water.

She’s wearing my garnet
cross!

Nicolette read Finn’s note and pressed it to her breast.
Heavy, humid air turned to tiny bubbles of cool, sparkling champagne tingling
on her skin. She wanted to dance! She wanted to whisper, to shout, to sing.

Captain McKee’s corporal turned and waved to her as he
followed the wagon back to the barricades. Nicolette blew him a kiss and the
boy grinned back red-faced.

Charles Armand stood close, the hand holding on to
Nicolette’s skirt keeping him safe. She whisked him into her arms and covered
his face with kisses. “I love you to pieces, Charles Armand.”