Jennifer Horseman (52 page)

"Admiral? Admiral?"

The voice called him from sick dread settling around his soul. For a moment still, he could not make the proper reply, but with the sole thought of his two sons buried, he finally managed to say: "Alert the fourteenth regiment and initiate the immediate transport of troops to Toulon. Call my captains immediately." Then in a passionate vow: "Commencement de la fin de Negra Garrett!"

Crouching in the bushes, Juliet followed the sound of laughter until she came to the two soldiers resting at the edge of a small brook. The two men must be the last of the regiment heading to Toulon to join the naval force there. When she had first seen the neat rows of men coming up behind her, she had been terrified, terrified they had come for her, but of course that was ridiculous; not a soul in the last five long days of travel had seen through her disguise to discover even her sex, let alone her mission. Then she had been terrified of being discovered, for while she had fooled peasants and the farmers along the way, they numbered a handful. A regiment numbered in the hundreds.

She had left the road for the cover of forest, where, owing to two days of travel with no sleep and only brief stops for water, she had fallen asleep as she waited for the soldiers to pass. Morning sunlight streamed through the trees, and still she might never have wakened had not these last two soldiers talking quietly by the stream burst into sudden laughter.

"Toulon is not so bad. I know a pretty mademoiselle there. Her name is Mercedes, long brown hair and . . ." he motioned with his hands at his chest, indicating another attribute he found attractive. "She's a serving wench at a little cafe that overlooks the water there—"

"A little cafe? The only cafe in Toulon, I wager! And one with the entire outfit cramped inside, a hundred eyes on this little Mercedes. Ma foi! The entire regiment in Toulon, mixed with what's left of the navy. What on earth for?"

The question had been asked but never answered by every last one of the soldiers ordered to move from Marseilles to Toulon. The dark-haired soldier only shrugged as he dipped his cask in and out of the cool water. "Who knows?"

Juliet remained perfectly still and silent until at last the two soldiers rose and left again. She knew what they did not; the Marseilles regiment had been ordered to Toulon to ensure enough men and arms to capture a man named Garrett.

A man she loved far more dearly than life.

Once she felt it was safe, she silently returned to where she had tied her horse. She wore the clothes Jack had gotten her: baggy breeches and oversized coat over a dirty cotton shirt, suede boots two sizes too large and a straw hat that covered nearly the whole of her face. The clothes kept her safe and felt now like a second layer of skin, especially as they were plastered to her by grime. "And donna be thinkin' o' bathin', either," one of the beggarman's pieces of parting wisdom. "Ye already smell o' 'orse sweat and ye can take my word that nothin' keeps people away like a goodly scent. A few more days an' the only people who'll be able to come near ye will be those with a perfumed kerchief 'bout the nose. Unless ye be wantin' company?"

The entire trip had passed like a dream of changing landscapes. Once she reached Amsterdam, with its canals and cobblestone streets edged by tall, thin Dutch houses, she walked to the nearest stables and bargained with the rest of her money for the best horse there. Once she had a horse, she left on the long, ever-changing roads that promised to get her to Toulon, a trip that amounted to nothing more than endless hours along country roads. The steady trot of horses' hooves matched the rhythm of her heart, and she sang childhood songs less to pass the time than to keep from thinking, thinking about how she would save him and what would happen if she could not.

Using Jack's advice, she avoided people traveling along the way just as she avoided passing through the larger townships: Brussels, Waterloo, the Parisian valley, and finally Lyons, choosing instead the road circling around these places. In six long days she stopped only twice—in villages where she traded her exhausted horse for a fresh one and for a small bit of food she could eat along the way.

She stopped only once to sleep. As she passed the Parisian valley toward Lyon, she had come across a lovely old church outside a small farming village. She had felt so tired and hungry. The severe cramps in her legs from hour after hour of sitting in the saddle felt all but unbearable, and still she might have resisted if not for a chill settling over the land with dusk. The chill had frightened her, it seemed to seep through her skin to surround her heart and make her afraid. Afraid of the familiar road and the horse that wanted to rest as badly as she did, afraid most of all of losing sight of the light. "Now remember, lass," Jack's parting words came to her then, "the best place for desperate people 'as always been God's church. Ifn ye find yeself afraid, truly afraid, seek out the nearest church. . . . With ye salvation, a soul gets a little warmth. . . ."

The church had been small and empty and ... so strangely warm. She remembered little else, too tired even to pray. She must have fallen asleep immediately. Her sleep was visited by strange dreams: dreams of him, the strange old beggar pointing urgently to a church far away on a distant hillside, her emotions lifting with joy as she ran toward it ... the church, the place where she would be safe. ...

She woke to the morning light. A blanket had been placed over her and a single votive lit in the sacristy. She thought of Garrett and felt his love as she never had before. It made her cry, evoking his name over and over as she hurried out the doors. . . .

Now she was within miles of Toulon, arriving on the heels of a regiment. Leaves and twigs made a thick carpet, crackling under foot and hoof alike as she led the dappled mare out onto the road. With her hat in place and the pistol heavy in her coat pocket, she mounted and turned the horse toward Toulon.

The noonday sun shone in a cloudless sky as she passed the first small houses and farms on the outskirts of Toulon. The road traveled about a mile up from the sea and the air was warm and humid, moist with the salty fresh taste of the Mediterranean nearby. To her left, rollinggreenfoothillsstretchedbeneathahigh mountain. A few chateaus dotted the hillside to her side, separated from barns, stables, and pastures where idle cows and horses grazed. Sheep grazed on the slopes above that. Yet her gaze followed her consciousness, which was centered on the stretch of blue sea where The Raven would appear on the horizon.

A plan had finally occurred to her. She would need a small boat and someone to row it. She had enough coins left to pay someone. She needed a flag too, and the only flag that might work to warn of danger was the quarantine flag, the one flown when disease struck a ship. Garrett would guess from that. Every ship had them and she could probably bribe a cabin boy to fetch one for her—

Hoofbeats sounded behind her and she turned to see a dozen more mounted soldiers heading her way. Nervously, she reined her mount to the side. No one cast a glance in her direction. Still, she waited long after they passed before starting out again.

Toulon had to be just ahead. The harbor emerged in the distance and there she saw what was left of the ruined French naval fleet. Amidst fishing boats of various sizes the tall masts of the great ships rocked peacefully at dock. Even from a distance she could see many were burnt or had gashes in the sides, masts torn or fallen.

Gradually Juliet became aware of the strange odor filling the air, unpleasant in the extreme, and alarmed by it, not knowing why, she slowed her mount as she rounded a wide bend. The vista came into view. Startled, she stopped the horse to stare.

The road led down a gentle incline to the small valley that was Toulon. The town was less than a mile-long clutter of houses and shops built along the curve of the small bay. Like flags, the red and white of soldiers' uniforms were everywhere, just everywhere. Yet what she stared at were the great billowing white tents erected along the hillside.

In these tents wounded sailors lay, the scent of their torn, bloodied, and burned flesh surrounding the area for nearly a mile in any direction. She anxiously took in the scene, all of it, including the fourteen tents, each swarming with uniformed soldiers. Tables were arranged in the open air to escape the thick scent of death, tables where officers gave and received orders to the men rushing in and out of the tent doors to save their countrymen. She watched a cart slowly make its way out of the camp, marked by black ribbons and piled high with bodies wrapped in white sheets. The French naval camp . . . There would be roadblocks here and questions put by soldiers who had lost brothers and friends because of "Garrett . . ."

Frightened, panicked, Juliet slipped off the horse. TUrning toward the bluffs overlooking the ocean, she quickly walked past a small farmhouse, the chicken coop and barn in back. Once past these, she let the horse free to graze. As if going through the paces, she walked faster and faster until she was running, running against the breeze to reach the edge of the ocean where she dropped to her knees on the grassy slope above a narrow beach.

Dear God, how was she supposed to save Garrett? To warn him to turn The Raven back? The entire long journey she had been lost in a thick haze built only by the blind faith that she would somehow, some way, save him, only to now confront the hard light of reality: she could probably not even get into the town, let alone out to the sea to warn him! What had she been imagining? That she would slip out to sea in a rowboat, aided by a kindly man who welcomed this opportunity to turn traitor to his country? That they would head her to the exact place she guessedThe Raven might sail to as dozens of French sailors watched through telescopes?

"Oh my God ... oh my God . . ."

She knelt on the grassy bluffs, praying and desperate. She kept turning her eyes from the ocean to the grass surrounding her, searching for something, anything, one thing that could give hope where none existed. She closed her eyes, concentrating, listening to the rush of the breeze through the grass, the distant shouts of men down at the harbor, the steady pounding of hammers. . . .

Like the warning tick of the grandfather clock, the pounding grew louder and louder in her mind. She finally looked up to see what it was about. No men were repairing the ships . . .

Turning her gaze inland to the bluffs on the other side of the town she saw men building a platform. She watched for some time, not knowing why, just staring at poles erected one by one. Ten poles went up before the first crosspiece was hammered into place. She was shaking her head at the sight even before she saw the first rope fly over the top. . . .

A frantic sound erupted from the deepest part of her heart. "No, no ... Garrett, help me ... help me!"

Yet it was not Garrett who answered but rather the distant sound of a church bell, ringing twelve times from the mountain top. Tears blinded her as she turned to see the stone walls of the monastery at the very top of the mountain behind Toulon. "Now remember, lass, the best place for desperate people 'as been and always will be the church. . . . Ifn ye find yeself afraid, really afraid, seek out the nearest church. . . ."

"Leif, Leif," Garrett sighed, pouring more water into his goblet as he and Leif finished their breakfast. "You have the sight, aye, that's one thing, but dreams? Remember the time you dreamt a knife was put to my chest until I died and how upset you were, certain I was going to be murdered? And not from any . . . ah, sight but only because you had overheard me telling someone—"

"Aye, that you would cut your heart out and feed it to Tonali if that's what it took. I remember. I suppose you're right. Tis a short trip anyway, that is, if D'Ville-neuve even knows about Austria."

"Which would be one hell of a prize to bring home. Though just seeing if they're planning to rebuild the ships will be enough . . ."

Leif felt some small relief as they talked of this, it being the longest conversation Garrett had engaged in since the day he lost the lass. Garrett finally got up to get his boots and Leif turned his attention to the cat. Tonali paced back and forth in agitation. "What the devil's wrong with the cat now? He's been in a fit since—"

"Juliet left. What is wrong with you?" Garrett pushed a foot into a boot and shook his head, "All night, I kept waking from my own strange dreams to see him moving back and forth—"

"What strange dreams are these?"

"Ah, Leif do you have to even ask? Suffice to say, I've not been so preoccupied in my dreams since I was thirteen, which would be fine if I didn't have to wake every blessed day to realize that it was only a dream. ..."

"Garrett . . . Garrett, don't you know there's always hope?"

"In my heart, Leif . . . Last night I kept dreaming she turned toward an old church, her face lit with joy and happiness. It played over and over in my mind, as if marrying me could bring her such happiness. . . ." He shook his head, trying to accept it even as he said it.

"Aye, what is hope but food for beggars . . . men who have nothing else to live on."

He turned toward the door then, and after a heavy sigh Leif got up to follow, wondering why he felt the world was at an end. Tonali hissed behind him. Leif turned to confront a mean sneer, another hiss. The gold eyes caught and threw back the light. A chill raced up Leifs spine and he was abruptly cautioned by his fear. . . .

The day dawned hot and humid as The Raven sailed a good seven miles off the Mediterranean coast of France, heading east to Toulon. A gentle breeze blew from starboard. Garrett stood at the rail of the ship, staring off into the blue water, shirtless and bootless beneath the hot sun like the rest of the crew. He seemed oblivious to the work behind him, and after the second time he failed to give a needed command Leif had to shout the orders for him—even though Leif had no official rank, he was always turned to before the first officers in times of Garrett's absence—the crew began watching the tall man at the ship's rail with plain sympathy. "There's always a first time. . . ."