Leopard in Exile (28 page)

Cree gentleman who had been seated opposite him at dinner.

At the conclusion of the meal, Lady Chesapeake had gathered up the ladies, who retired to the parlor

and left the gentlemen to Stilton, port, and walnuts. The talk instantly became freer, and the darker

aspects of the Nouvelle-Orléans situation were discussed.

The port had always had a reputation for the more unsavory forms of magic, and d'Charenton's

reputation had preceded him. The men gathered about the table feared worse than a revolt of natives or

freedmen. They feared the same dark forces with which the Tudors had swept the Plantagenets from the

throne of England four centuries before.

Wessex played only a superficial part in the discussion, instead arranging to place himself beside the Cree

merchant whose presence he had marked over dinner.

Sir White Badger wore his hair long, after Native fashion, but in every other way he appeared to be a

cultured European gentleman, his English entirely without a trace of the regrettable Colonial accent.

Wessex had gathered from the table talk that White Badger was in trade, his knighthood a recognition of

the substantial revenue his activities had produced.

"I wonder if I might have a word with you, Sir White Badger?"

"To speak frankly, Your Grace, I was hoping for the same, but I fear this is not the place. Do you know

the Cree village to the west of town, along the river?"

"I can find it," Wessex said shortly.

"Then come this evening after you leave here," White Badger said. "I believe I have news for you. A

letter."

The courthouse clock was tolling half-past one as Wessex's hired coach rolled away from Mandragore

House.

If this were a trap, he would be walking into it all too easily, he knew. But the opposition had no markers

upon the table, and thus his own role was that of rainmaker. The Native population took little interest in

affairs outside their own land: it was unlikely that White Badger were acting as a French agent, or even as

an English one.

No, Wessex decided. The worst he could expect was a small ambush from Thomas Wren or his

confederates.

A quick interlude at the Royal Baltimore allowed Wessex to change from his dinner dress into riding

clothes, and to arm himself with a variety of ingenious devices against future trouble. By the time he was

dressed, Atheling had obtained Further from the livery, and by two of the clock Wessex was riding

toward the Cree village. It was a symptom of his clandestine existence that it had never occurred to him

to question the need for meeting in the hours of darkness.

The road to the village skirted the woods. It was broad and well-marked with whitewashed stones along

its edge, and thus easy to follow even in the darkness—which was just as well, as the big bay did not like

being roused on a fool's errand in the middle of the night, and made his displeasure known. Wessex had

to fight to hold him on the road and keep him to a steady pace, and to his annoyance found himself using

both whip and spur constantly as the hunter sulked and grumbled about his work.

The night was quiet, its cool a welcome relief from the late summer's daytime heat, and only the distant

barking of an occasional dog interrupted the silence. When the road turned into the woods, Further

slowed, picking his way carefully along the dark road. Here Wessex dared not goad him on over an

unfamiliar track, and resigned himself to a snail's pace, but almost at once he saw a glimmer of light

ahead. Within a few moments he could see it clearly: a lantern hanging upon the porch of one of the small

cottages on the outskirts of the Cree village.

On a previous New World sojourn, Wessex and Koscuisko had traveled with the citizens of New

Albion, and so he was familiar with the Native villages, their architecture an amalgam of traditional and

European styles. He found his way to White Badger's doorstep easily, dismounting and tying Further to

the railing. He took his pistol from his saddlebags, and slipped it into a coat pocket before stepping up

onto the porch. From within the small house he could see the spark of a candle-flame, and the door

stood open.

"Come in, Your Grace," White Badger said.

Wessex entered. In contrast to its exterior, the inside of the cottage was wholly Cree. The walls were

hung with shields and painted furs, and chests and wrapped bundles lined the walls. His host was seated

on a wolfskin, facing the door, his evening clothes in sharp contrast to his surroundings. Wessex entered

and sat beside him, careful to keep both the door and the cottage's windows in sight.

"I do not think you would care for the black drink of my people, but I am prepared to offer you wine or

brandy, Your Grace," the Cree nobleman said.

"You are very kind," Wessex said. "A glass of brandy would be most welcome."

His host produced a familiar squat green bottle, and poured a generous libation into two gold-washed

silver cups. Both men drank in silence.

"You've come looking for the Duchess of Wessex," White Badger observed at last.

"Yes. I was wondering if she might have come to you."

"Say, rather, that we came to her, for an elder cousin came from the Smoking Mountains following a

vision sent to her by spirits. The Daughter-of-the-Wind told us an Englishwoman would soon come to

prove the truth of her words."

White Badger watched Wessex closely for signs of incredulity, but Wessex was used to the Native

notion of following omens found in dreams, and said nothing. Other matters concerned him. The Sahoya

was the spiritual leader of a tribal confederacy several hundred miles to the west of Baltimore. What

possible business could she have with Sarah?

"The Sahoya told us a woman who was Cree and not-Cree would be sent to us by Grandfather Bear,

and that we should aid her to aid ourselves. And such a woman did come."

"Sarah," Wessex said.

"So she named herself. And what the Sahoya said was true, for Her Grace was no stranger to our ways.

She sought her friends who were missing, and the Sahoya sought them with powerful medicine. What

they did together I do not know, but they and Meets-The-Dawn, the son of the chief, went away from

here at the full of the last moon, heading southward. She left a letter, but the chief was afraid of what it

might say to the English, and so ordered it burned unread."

For a moment, that disappointment overwhelmed the other information Wessex had been given, but then

a lifetime of discipline reasserted itself. The moon had been nearly full tonight. Wherever Sarah was,

Wessex was nearly a month behind her.

"I need to find mem," Wessex said.

White Badger shrugged eloquently, palms outspread.

"If you didn't mean to tell me where she is, why tell me this much?" Wessex asked, holding his formidable

temper in check with an effort.

"For the same reason the chief burned her letter. So that you would leave the matter alone. Her Grace is

a woman of power, and if you come to the Governor demanding that he find her among the People, the

Governor will send for troops to do as you ask. And the People will fear that the Earl means to use the

troops to drive them from their land, as was done in the past when your ships first came. I hoped that if

you knew that Her Grace acts upon her own interest and of her own free will, you would allow her to do

so in peace."

There was a delicate balance between European interests and Native ones in New Albion, Wessex

knew, for while the Crown saw its colony as a ready market for European goods, to be exchanged for

the raw materials of this lush and fertile land, others saw it as a new homeland… a homeland whose

present occupants must be brushed aside.

"And do you truly think that I will leave the matter at that? If you do not know where the Sahoya has

taken her, others here must," Wessex said.

"Will you meddle in the affairs of the People? The White King across the water has said his followers will

leave us to do as we would," White Badger said.

"Not with my wife." Wessex sighed and stretched. "Tell me where she is bound, and I will go mere

without alarming Governor Lord Chesapeake, I promise you. Refuse me, and make me your enemy.

And if I too disappear, there will be more trouble than you can easily imagine," he added for his sharp

ears had heard the stealthy sound of approaching footsteps outside the cottage.

"Not if you come to Nouvelle-Orléans with me," Illya Koscuisko said from behind him. "Now do be a

good fellow, Wessex, and keep your hands where young Wren and I can see them."

Wessex looked over his shoulder. Koscuisko was holding a pistol on him. "There's a back door, you

know," Wessex's partner said conversationally. "Do come in, Mr. Wren. You're frightening the horses."

Thomas Wren stepped through the front door. The young field agent's face bore the marks of the

battering Wessex had given him yesterday, and his face was drawn and white with tension. Wessex only

hoped the rifle he held wouldn't go off unexpectedly.

"I thought you had already left," Wessex said to his partner.

"I so hate to travel alone," Koscuisko said. "So I've been following you about. If Lady Wessex is missing,

I think you might have mentioned the fact. I should certainly like to help you find her."

"Then go away," Wessex advised him.

"Alas." Koscuisko shook his head, his face unwontedly grave. "She isn't here, Rupert. I've already

spoken to the sachem and to MacGillivray. None of them knows where they went—only that the Sahoya

took provisions for a long journey, and MacGillivray thinks she meant to go to Louisianne."

"Then I'll follow them," Wessex said stubbornly. "She's only a month ahead of us—I will catch up to her

before she reaches the city, and—"

"Lady Wessex can take care of herself," Koscuisko said. "Which is more than I can say for you, my fine

fellow. You'll never travel as fast as the Natives can. But I'm headed there anyway. Come along to

Nouvelle-Orléans and we can ask d'Charenton to confide in us. Who knows what he might know? And

perhaps we'll find Sarah mere before trouble does."

Wessex shook his head.

"I do wish you weren't going to be difficult," Koscuisko said mournfully. "But we'd thought you would

be."

A flare of warning coursed through Wessex, and he reached for his pistol. Neither of the White Tower

agents fired or even tried to seek cover. Why not?

His fingers closed clumsily over the pistol, then opened again. The weapon fell to the ground, the powder

spilling from its pan in a silvery rill.

"Drugged," Wessex said. The words came out slurred, and his vision began to darken.

"All in all the safest thing, as I'm sure you'd agree in other circumstances," he heard Koscuisko say.

Wessex lunged to his feet—and fell, instead, into oblivion and the mocking laughter of his own failure.

He awoke with a confused memory of an uncomfortable journey by horseback. The air around him stank

of kerosene and raw spirits—which did nothing for his headache—and there was a dull rhythmic sound in

the background that Wessex was wholly at a loss to account for. The deck beneath him vibrated.

He sighed, and sat up. As he'd expected, he was chained hand and foot. It was just dawn—he was

outdoors, on the water, under a canopy erected upon the deck of a boat. Koscuisko was sitting on one

of Wessex's trunks, watching him expressionlessly.

But Wessex lost all interest in what he intended to say to his partner when he got a good look at his

surroundings, for what Wessex saw before him was one of the odder apparitions of his career.

He lay upon the afterdeck of a low open boat. There was a small building amidships, and through its

open doorway Wessex could see the open flames of a furnace and hear it being rhythmically stoked.

Above that noise was a monotonous mechanical clattering. Black coal-smoke belched from a

smokestack above, raining soot and smuts down on the water behind, and on both sides of the ship,

water wheels higher than a man turned round and round, forcing the ship forward through the water.

"You've put a steam engine On a boat," Wessex said in disbelief. Steam engines had been known since

the 'seventies and the first attempt to adapt them to marine navigation had been made a few years ago,

but he'd had no idea that the technology had progressed so far.

"Actually, our Bobs did that," Koscuisko said modestly. "But this will be our first extensive trial. Only

think: depending on the number of portages we need to make, we should be in Nouvelle-Orléans in less

than two weeks. We can bring the
Royal Henry
down the Mississippi and anchor her upriver of the city.

When it's time to go, anyone chasing us will be fighting the current, but we'll have the power of steam to

carry us on the wings of eagles!"

"I think you're mixing your metaphors," Wessex said mildly. "Oughtn't it to be 'on the backs of dolphins'?"

His voice was hoarse with the aftereffect of the drugging he'd received, but the news Koscuisko had

conveyed lightened his spirits. If they arrived in Nouvelle-Orléans within a fortnight, there was every

possibility he might arrive in time to head Sarah off, always supposing that were truly her destination. "I

think I shall have you blackballed from your clubs for this."

"They were getting to be a bore anyway," Koscuisko answered lightly. "Have some coffee." He held out