Leopard in Exile (18 page)

retrieved her beloved Baker rifle from its concealment in the false bottom of her trunk, and slung the bag

of paper cartridges over her shoulder.

She caught sight of her reflection in a mirror and grimaced. A fine Duchess she looked—more a raw

Colonial hob-goblin, did this world possess such creatures. All she needed was to paint her face with

hunting magic and braid some gull-feathers into her hair to complete the picture. But this Sarah could go

where Duchess-Sarah could not, and ask help of the only folk there were left for her to ask.

When she was certain she would not be interrupted or seen discovered, Sarah opened the window and

slipped out onto the roof. Her bare feet found easy purchase on a drainspout, and in a moment she had

slipped down the side of the building and trotted across the yard.

In another universe, Sarah had been the daughter of Miss Charlotte Masham and Master Alisdair

Cunningham, and had grown up in a small house on the edge of Baltimore. Her father had lost all but his

life at Culloden, and his health had been broken in the battles for American Independence, so from an

early age, it had been Sarah whose woodland skills had kept the family larder filled. She had been more

at home among her Indian playfellows than among her fellow settlers, and when cholera had carried off

her parents, had found herself toiling as an unpaid servant in her cousin Masham's household. Dame

Alecto Kennet's intervention with a tale of a mysterious legacy had started Sarah on the long journey that

had led her, in the end, back to her own beginning. Now Sarah would see if anything at all of the world

she remembered still existed in this one.

She moved noiselessly through the deserted nighttime streets of the town—in this world, Baltimore had a

curfew—and quickly reached its edge. The moon above gave her enough light to see by until she reached

the edge of the trees. She had planned to conceal herself there and wait for dawn to search for the

village, for she wasn't quite sure if the this-world analogue of her Cree playfellows would even be here.

The tribes native to the Maryland area were the Conoy, the Nanticoke, and the Shawnee, all of which

were members of the Algonquin Confederacy. The Algonquin and the Iroquois held an uneasy truce all

up and down the East Coast, though the power of the Five Nations had been decisively broken before

Sarah was born. For as long as she had been alive, land-hungry Europeans had pushed the Iroquois and

the Algonquin westward, leaving only isolated pockets of native settlement behind, such as the Cree

village above Baltimore.

The
Eeyou Istchee
—the Cree—were not native to the Atlantic Seaboard. The main body of that nation

lived far to the northwest, in what Sarah knew as Canada, but a generation ago a forward-thinking leader

had sent a band of his people south to form a trade outpost on the outskirts of Baltimore, and it was they

who had befriended first Alisdair Cunningham, and then his daughter.

Sarah realized that in this world, the First Peoples and the Europeans lived in far greater harmony than in

her own. Here there had been no burning and dispossession of the Mohawk nations, for the English

valued the native peoples as a market for the goods from European mills instead of seeing them as

unwanted tenants of land they could better use themselves.

But even if the two peoples lived in harmony, Sarah did not presume they trusted one another. Cree

scouts had made good spies in the American Revolution, and Sarah only hoped she could call upon their

skills herself.

So lost was she in her own thoughts that she paid no heed to where her footsteps led her, for if Baltimore

had changed, the land was just as she remembered it It was only when she realized that the light had

grown brighter that she stopped and looked up.

Sarah caught her breath in wonder. The whole forest gleamed with a silvery light, and the trees looked as

if they were made of jewels. Each leaf gleamed tike a dull emerald, and the tree bark had turned to rough

silver. Every detail she saw was impossibly sharp, down to the brown curl of last year's leaves upon the

forest floor and the coiled gold of the mosses.

Sarah clutched her rifle tighter.
What has happened here
? she wondered, her heart beating faster. She

knew she ought to be afraid, but all she felt was a sense of wonder and excitement The world had

become more itself, not less. This was the world she had always unconsciously expected to see when she

was a child, and seeing it now gave her a shock of recognition, not of strangeness, as if something she

had given up hoping for had finally happened.

All the peoples of this world take magic for granted, as if it is an everyday occurrence. And so I

suppose it must be. I stand on the edge of the Spirit World, the world as it was in the moment of

its first making.

If that were truly the case, then a tool had been placed into her hands. The People held that all the world

was sacred, and did not wall off their gods in churches as the white settlers did. Sarah leaned her rifle

against a nearby tree, clasped her hands together, and prayed.

Spirit of the land, spirit of the Oldest People, hear your child. Help me to find what I seek, so that

I can keep my promise to aid my friend, for you know that the world was first made from words

and that a promise is sacred.

When she opened her eyes, she saw the bear.

It stood on its hind legs at the edge of the clearing, the transcendent moonlight silvering its ash-brown fur.

Grandfather Bear stood nearly twice as tall as a man, his long black claws gleaming like glass.

Grandfather Bear was the patron of the Hunting Societies. Without his leave, no game could be taken

from the forest, the sky, or the stream, and so the people danced to him each winter. He was the greatest

of the Elder Brothers who watched over the People and taught them how to live. Until Corn Mother had

come up from the south, Grandfather Bear's medicine had been the only resource the People had to feed

themselves. He did not help the liar, the oathbreaker, or any hunter who did not generously share all he

had with his fellows.

She reached into her pouch and took out a quid of tobacco. It was used as both offering and currency

among the People, and she had thought she might need it to trade for information. But now she realized

she had been too long away from her childhood companions, and forgotten their ways. Kindred did not

buy the help of kindred.

She held out the tobacco on both palms toward Grandfather Bear, and now she could see the necklace

of beads and shells that he wore. The colorful designs of hunting medicine striped his mask and muzzle

and formed a bright dapple upon his shoulders. Sarah shivered with inward awe, and carefully placed the

tobacco on the ground before her, backing away.

*Come, daughter.*

The voice in her head was rough and low, such speech as stones or wind might make. Bear dropped to

all fours and turned away, vanishing into the forest. Where he had stood, there was now a path through

the wood, the white shells and polished stones of its surface gleaming in the moonlight.

Feeling insensibly lighter of heart, Sarah picked up her rifle and followed it.

In the Land of the Fallen

(Louisianne, August 1807)

T
he city had last burned in 1794, when Baron de Carondelet was governor, and been rebuilt out of the

private purse of Don Andres Almonaster. The Spanish city that had risen from the ashes of the French

trading post boasted a public school, a charity hospital, a Capuchin convent, and the great cathedral

dedicated now to Saint Louis that towered above every other structure in the city. The courthouse was

still known as Cabildo House, even though the Spanish dominion of the city had ended seven years

before, for though the colony had been ceded to France seven years ago, Napoleon had sent no

governor, preoccupied as he had been with problems at home.

And so Spain had continued to govern her former colony, though with increasing laxity. Seeing that, the

great pirate fleets moved north from Cartagena to make Grand Terre their new base from which to prey

on the rich shipping in the Gulf, and in a matter of months, Nouvelle-Orléans became a hotbed of

criminals. These stalwarts received the news that France was at last to send a Colonial Governor as the

office to steal everything mat wasn't nailed down. They were opposed by a Civil Guard drawn from the

ranks of the city's French, Creole, and Free Black inhabitants, and the street fighting was bloody and

inconclusive.

The Due d'Charenton arrived at the city in July with three well-gunned ships and several hundred infantry

under the command of General Victor. To divert the pirates' attention from the arriving ships, Victor

instructed Admiral Jerome Bonaparte to land his troops at the Bay of Mobile. As Victor marched

overland, investing the city from the north, the Emperor's young brother, Admiral of d'Charenton's little

fleet, acquitted himself admirably, driving the pirates' ships from their stations at the mouth of the

Mississippi and freeing the Port for the new Governor's arrival.

Once in the city, d'Charenton settled into spacious apartments in the Cabildo, scorning the house at the

corner of Toulouse and Levee that the Spanish governors had previously occupied in favor of proximity

to the courthouse and prison. The traditional pillories on Chartres Street were replaced with the stake

and the gibbet, and the new governor began his reign by emptying the prison, and executing the prisoners

his army had taken. Those who were burned alive, so it was rumored, were the lucky ones.

At first the city welcomed him. The Due was of noble French blood, and surely harsh measures were the

only cure for the lawlessness and anarchy that had beset the city for several long years. And the Due

d'Charenton did so many good things. His soldiers patrolled the streets day and night, so that any

woman, Creole or French, might walk the streets unmolested. Tradesmen opened their shops without

fear, and the port regained its former vitality. Goods that had moldered in dockside warehouses were

loaded and shipped to Europe, clearing the docks for new arrivals.

Most of all, to the delight of the
Occidenteaux
, the new Governor placed an enormous tariff on Yankee

goods. For years the western settlements of New Albion had shipped their goods down the Ohio and the

Mississippi for loading upon the great Trans-Atlantic ships, and the flatboats, crewed by
mauvais

Kaintocks
, rendered certain districts of the city unsafe for man, woman, or beast when the crews were in

possession of them. Now the Kaintocks discovered they would be charged half their cargo's value for

the privilege of discharging it in Nouvelle-Orléans—and the French customs officials were careful to set

that value high. Half of every English cargo—furs and hides, tallow, tobacco, indigo, flax, copper—went

instead to France, while French and Spanish cargoes used the port for free.

And so the days passed as, like a fat white spider in the center of a golden web, d'Charenton

consolidated his power.

Almost twenty years before, Father Antonio de Sedella had been appointed Commissary of the

Inquisition, and voyaged to Nouvelle-Orléans to establish a tribunal of the Holy Inquisition there. His

mission had met with no success, as Governor Miro, too familiar with the excesses of the Holy Office in

his own country, had deported him the moment de Sedella made his mission known. But before he had

departed, Father Antonio had prepared all the machinery of the Inquisition, including a network of secret

passageways that ran from the Capuchin friary to the Cabildo, to the Cathedral de Saint-Louis itself. All

his preparations had lain dormant, awaiting the arrival of the man who had discovered their existence

from the records of the Inquisition itself.

The underground room was large, surprisingly cool despite the heat of the season. Lanterns filled with

perfumed oil burned, filling the room with the sickly scent of burning roses, and the walls had been

draped with gorgeous fabrics, giving the chamber the look of the tent of some oriental potentate. A large

carved and gilded chair had been brought down from the room above, the arms of Spain still picked out

in gold and silk against its red velvet back, and a child's painted china doll sprawled carelessly upon its

seat. Beside it stood a delicate gilded table, with a decanter and cups of gold and crystal upon them.

The worst is dot he keep de little p'tit wid him, even here
, d'Charenton's. secretary thought. Charles

Corday was not certain which of the two terrified him more: the ancient, degenerate nobleman, or his

golden, elfin protégé.

One of the ways d'Charenton had amused himself since his arrival was by surrounding himself with the

young daughters of the city's prominent families. Little Delphine McCarty was the cherished daughter of a

powerful Nouvelle-Orléans family. She was perhaps seven, certainly no more, and in her the mingling of

Scots and Creole had produced a child who showed promise of being an astonishing beauty. Most of the

children had been terrified and repelled by the secret chambers beneath the city, but little Delphine had