Untamed (3 page)

“Abercrombie is a fool!” one of the soldiers exclaimed to harsh laughter.

Bourlamaque did not smile. “That may well be—and thank God for it!—but his marksmen are laying down a most murderous fire upon us from the cover of the trees. We have pounded them with cannon, but we cannot root them out.”

“MacKinnon and his men?”

“
Oui
. Their Mahican allies are beside them.” Bourlamaque wiped sweat and gunpowder from his brow with a linen handkerchief. “The lot of them shift from tree to tree like ghosts and will not relent.”

“And they call themselves Catholic!” A soldier spat on the floor.

But Bourlamaque held up his hand for silence. “Listen! They are retreating again.”

The sound of shooting died away, replaced first by the distant beating of drums and then by an oppressive, sullen stillness. So many times now the battle had ceased, only to begin again. Amalie dared not hope, and yet…

Barely able to breathe, she bent her mind back to her work. Whether the battle was over or not, these men needed her help. She bound the soldier’s wound in fresh linen, gave him laudanum, prayed with him, then moved to the next bed and the next. She’d gone to the back room to fetch more linen strips for bandages when she heard the drums beat afresh.

Her stomach sank, and her step faltered.

“Curse them!” a soldier shouted. “Do they not know when to withdraw?”

There came a roar of cannon, and again the battle raged.

More dead. More wounded.

But not Papa. Not Papa.

Holding on to that hope, Amalie went where she was needed. She carried water to the injured men who lay on the bare earth outside, cleaned and bandaged their less serious wounds, offered what solace she could. She did not notice the sweat trickling between her breasts or the rumbling of her empty stomach or her own thirst.

Then the cadence of the British drums changed again, and once more the battle fell silent. And then—was she imagining it?—cheers. The sound swelled, grew stronger, and all heads turned toward the northwest, where soldiers stood upon the walls, their muskets raised overhead, their gazes on the breastworks and the battlefield beyond.

A soldier ran toward them, his face split by a wide smile. “They are retreating! The British are fleeing! The day is won!”

Relief swept through Amalie, leaving her dizzy. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, felt a gentle squeeze from the soldier whose hand she was holding.

“C’est fini, mademoiselle!”
he said, a smile on his bruised face.
It’s over
.

Amalie opened her eyes, smiled back.
“Oui, c’est fini.”

But even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. For the men who lay here and those inside, the fight was far from over, life and death still hanging in the balance. She threw herself into caring for them with renewed strength, refreshed by the knowledge that no more need die today and grateful beyond words that her father did not lie amongst the injured or the slain.

But if she’d expected the end of the battle to stem the tide of wounded and dead, she’d been mistaken. Carried on litters or hobbling, they arrived by the dozens, some scarcely scathed, some terribly wounded, some already beyond all but God’s help. Most had been hit by musket fire, holes torn into their flesh by cruel lead. Others had been pierced by shards of wood or burnt by powder.

“Be thankful they never had the chance to use their bayonets or their artillery,” said a young soldier when she gasped at the terrible wound in his shoulder. “Have you ever seen a man with his entrails—”

“That is quite enough, Sergeant.”

Amalie recognized Lieutenant Rillieux’s voice and glanced back to find him standing behind her, his tricorne in his hand, his face smeared with gunpowder, sweat, and blood. One of her father’s officers and a tall man, he towered over her where she knelt on the ground.

He bowed stiffly.

“I pray you are not wounded, monsieur.” She stood, wiping her fingers on her bloodstained apron.

It was then she noticed the pity and sadness in his eyes.

The breath left her lungs, and her heart began to pound, the sound of her pulse almost drowning out his words.

“Mademoiselle, it is with great sorrow that I must report—”

But she had already seen.
“Non!”

Two young officers approached the hospital, bearing her father on a litter.

Heedless of soldiers’ stares or Lieutenant Rillieux’s attempt to stop her, she ran to him. But it was too late. Her father’s eyes were closed, his lips and skin blue, his throat torn by a musket ball. She didn’t have to check his breathing to know he was dead.

“Non, Papa! Non!”
She cupped his cold cheek in her palm, then laid her head against his still and silent chest, pain seeming to split her breast, tears blurring her vision.

Over the sound of her own sobs, she heard Lieutenant Rillieux speak. “He was slain by one of MacKinnon’s Rangers during the first assault. He toppled over the breastworks, and we could not reach him until the battle ended for fear of the Rangers’ rifles. You should know that he fought bravely and died instantly. We shall all mourn him.”

And in the darkness of her grief, it dawned on her.

Everything her father had been, everything he’d known, everything they might have done together was gone. Her father was dead.

She was alone.

Chapter 1

April 19, 1759
Ticonderoga
New York frontier

M
ajor Morgan MacKinnon lay on his belly, looking down from the summit of Rattlesnake Mountain to the French fort at Ticonderoga below. He held up his brother Iain’s spying glass—nay, it was now
his
spying glass—and watched as French soldiers unloaded kegs of gunpowder from the hold of a small ship. Clearly, Bourlamaque was preparing to defend the fort again. But if Morgan and his men succeeded in their mission tonight, that powder would never see the inside of a French musket.

Connor stretched out beside him and spoke in a whisper. “I cannae look down upon this place without thinkin’ of that bastard Abercrombie and the good men we lost.”

Morgan lowered the spying glass and met his younger brother’s gaze. “Nor can I, but we didna come here to grieve.”

“Nay.” Connor’s gaze hardened. “We’ve come for vengeance.”

Last summer, they’d had no choice but to follow Abercrombie—or Nanny Crombie as the men had called him—to a terrible defeat. An arrogant bastard who paid no heed to the counsel of mere provincials, Abercrombie had ignored their warnings that Ticonderoga could not be taken without artillery. He hadn’t believed that the hastily built abatis—the barrier of felled trees and branches that had been piled afore the walls—could hinder trained British Regulars and had ordered his men against the French breastworks with naught but muskets. Soldiers had become ensnared like rabbits, cut down by French marksmen afore they could reach the walls, victims of their own loyalty and Abercrombie’s overweening pride.

On that terrible day, the Rangers, then under the command of Morgan’s older brother Iain, had taken position to the northwest together with Captain Joseph’s Muhheconneok warriors and had fired endlessly at the French marksmen, trying to dislodge them. But the French had turned cannon upon them and pounded them into the ground. So many had been lost—good men and true, men with families, men who’d fought beside them from the beginning.

’Twas here they’d lost Cam—and dozens more.

Dead for naught.

When Abercrombie had finally sounded the retreat and the smoke had cleared, the fort had stood just as it had afore.

Never had Morgan seen such senseless death—and at the age of seven and twenty he’d seen death enough to sicken a man’s soul. For nigh on four years, he and his brothers had lived and breathed war. Forced by that whoreson Wentworth to choose between fighting for Britain or being hanged for a crime they had not committed, they’d taken up arms against the French and their Indian allies, harrying them with ambuscades, seizing their supplies, fighting them in forest and fen. They’d slain fellow Catholic and heathen alike, burying their own dead along the way.

Morgan had never imagined that he, as a MacKinnon, would fight the French, traditional allies of all Scotsmen still faithful to Church and Crown. During the Forty-Five, the French had aided the Highland clans, including Morgan’s grandfather—Iain Og MacKinnon, laird of Clan MacKinnon—in their vain struggle to drive the German Protestant from the throne. Then, after the disastrous defeat at Culloden, the French had given refuge to many an exiled Scot, saving countless lives from the wrath of Cumberland. Even now France sheltered the rightful heir to the throne, bonnie Charles Stuart. Every true Scotsman owed the French a debt.

Aye, it was a devil’s bargain that had spared Morgan and his brothers the gallows. Father Delavay, the French priest Iain had kidnapped last year when he’d had need of a priest to marry him and Annie, said the sin was not theirs but Wentworth’s. And yet absolution stuck in Morgan’s throat, for it was not bloody Wentworth who pulled the trigger on his rifle, but he himself.

If anything gave him peace, it was knowing that Iain was now out of the fray, settled on the MacKinnon farm with Annie and little Iain, the firstborn of a new generation of MacKinnons. Wentworth had released Iain from service, not because he’d wished to spare Iain, but because he was besotted with Annie. Whatever the cause for Wentworth’s mercy, Morgan was grateful. He’d never have found the courage to face Annie had Iain been slain in battle—or worse—taken captive.

Morgan saw something move in the dark forest below, heard the slow click of rifles being cocked around him, and felt a warm swell of pride. He rarely needed to give orders. Having fought side by side for so long, the Rangers thought and moved as one. There were no better fighters in the colonies, no men better suited to the hardship of this war. ’Twas an honor to lead them, as Iain had done afore him.

Morgan closed the spying glass, raised his rifle, cocked it. But it was not French scouts who emerged from the green wall of forest, but Captain Joseph’s warriors, eighty men in black and white war paint moving swiftly and silently through the shadows. They’d been watching the Rangers’ west flank on the long march northward and had gone on to scout out the French sentries while Morgan and his men surveyed the fort from above.

Morgan lowered his rifle and whispered to Joseph in the Muhheconneok tongue. “You thrash about like a randy bull moose. We heard you coming from a league away. You might have been shot.”

Joseph grinned. “There is more to fear in a bee’s sting than in your muskets. My blind granny has better aim.”

Bonded by blood to Morgan and his brothers, Joseph Aupauteunk was the son of a Muhheconneok chief and a fearsome warrior. He and his father had come to the MacKinnon farm, bringing gifts of dried corn and venison that had helped Morgan and his family survive their first bitter winter of exile in the colonies. Though Morgan’s mother—God rest her soul—had at first been terrified of Indians, a lasting friendship had grown between Morgan’s family and the Mahicans of Stockbridge. ’Twas Joseph and his uncles who’d taught Morgan and his brothers to track, to fight, to survive in the wild. As for what Joseph’s sisters had taught them, Morgan was too much of a gentleman to say—without a gill or two of whiskey in his belly.

Morgan switched to English so that those amongst his men who did not speak Muhheconneok could understand. “What does Bourlamaque have waitin’ for us?”

It was time to plan their strategy.

A
malie picked at her dinner, her appetite lost to talk of war. She did her best to listen politely, no matter how dismayed she felt at the thought of another British attack. Monsieur de Bourlamaque was commander of a garrison in the midst of conflict. It was right that he and his trusted officers should discuss the war as they dined. She did not wish to distract them with childish sentiments, nor was she so selfish that she required diversion. And if, at times, she wished her guardian would ask to hear her thoughts…

Her father was the only person who’d ever done that, and he was gone.

And so Amalie passed the meal in silence much as she’d done at the abbey.

“We must not let last summer’s victory lull us into becoming overconfident.” Bourlamaque dabbed his lips with a white linen serviette. His blue uniform, with its decorations and the red sash, set him apart from his officers, who wore gray. “Amherst is not a fool like Abercrombie. He would never have attacked without artillery.”

Lieutenant Fouchet looked doubtful. “Surely he will think twice before attempting to take us again. The British lost so many men!”

Amalie had heard that British losses exceeded fifteen hundred men. She could not imagine so many deaths. In all, the French had lost a hundred with another three hundred wounded, and that had seemed devastating. And yet, Amalie had overheard Bourlamaque call those casualties light.

Lieutenant Durand took a sip of wine. “How can they dare to plan another attack after having been defeated so resoundingly?”

“That resounding defeat is exactly why Amherst will attack.” Bourlamaque fixed both Fouchet and Durand with a grave eye. “For the sake of British pride, he will try to capture the fort this summer.”

Lieutenant Rillieux leaned back in his chair, his face a wide grin. Alone amongst the younger officers, who favored their natural hair, he wore a powdered wig, the white a marked contrast to his olive skin and dark brows. “Let him do his worst.”

Amalie stifled a gasp. How could he tempt fate in such a way when it meant the deaths of his own men? He’d do far better to pray for peace!

But Lieutenant Rillieux didn’t seem to realize he’d said something thoughtless. “We shall drive Amherst back into the forest just as we did his predecessor. My men are ready.”

“Were they ready when MacKinnon and his men attacked that last supply train?” Bourlamaque raised an eyebrow in clear disapproval. “We lost a fortune in rifled muskets—not to mention several cases of my favorite wine. No matter how well you prepare, the Rangers seem to stay one step ahead of you.”