Lorenzo and the Turncoat Read online

  Lorenzo tamped down his sorrow. He and Eugenie had become so entwined, thoughts of her filled every waking moment. Everything reminded him of her in one way or the other. He thought leaving New Orleans would ease the pain. It did not.

  Lorenzo forced himself to concentrate on the matter at hand. “His Excellency, Don Bernardo De Gálvez, Governor of the Louisiana Territory and Colonel in His Catholic Majesty’s Army, sends his greetings.” Lorenzo slipped the colonel’s letter from his inside pocket and passed it toward Dickson.

  He refused to take it. “I don’t read Spanish.”

  “The colonel is aware of that, sir. He wrote it in French.”

  Dickson’s eyes shifted left and right, as if he were thinking of a reason not to accept the letter. With a look of resignation, he stretched forth his hand, palm up, and Lorenzo deposited it there. Dickson broke the seal, unfolded it, and read. He reached for a quill pen and dipped it in ink. “No,” he wrote beside the first point. He shook his head and wrote “no” to the second request. He lingered over the next one. “No,” he said after a long moment of hesitation. He wrote “no” to the rest of the points so quickly, Lorenzo doubted he had read them all.

  “Sir,” Lorenzo began, “the colonel doesn’t expect an immediate answer.”

  “But he shall have one.”

  “The points are open to negotiation.”

  “No, they aren’t. No contraband enters Baton Rouge. There are no smugglers here. Therefore, I cannot comply with any of your colonel’s requests.”

  The man was either a liar or deluded. Smuggling was rampant. Maybe he recognized this as a ruse and wanted to get Lorenzo out of Baton Rouge as quickly as possible.

  “Thank you for your kind consideration, sir,” Lorenzo said, taking the letter Dickson passed back. He tried to remain cordial with the man, although he had taken an instant, irrational dislike to him.

  “You have your answer. I want you out of English territory at once.”

  Lorenzo forced a smile. “Sir, I fear that will be impossible. I have a second mission in your fair town. I am to deliver a letter to a woman named Eugenie Dubreton. Do you perchance know where she lives?”

  “I know of no such person.”

  “She is French. A redhead. I am told she is very beautiful.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

  Lorenzo decided to drop the matter. A kidnapper could hold Eugenie under this dunce’s nose and he would never know it.

  Dickson pointed a finger at him. “If I see you in town tomorrow … Well, let’s just say there will be consequences.”

  “I bid you adieu, sir, and thank you for your gracious hospitality.” Lorenzo bowed and headed out the door.

  Hawthorne lit a candle and tilted Beowulf, a book he remembered from his childhood, to the light. The doctor had an excellent library, meticulously catalogued by genre. What a stroke of good luck. With all this reading material, he wouldn’t die of boredom. The doctor’s cabin would be home for the next two weeks.

  Engrossed in the story of Beowulf’s fight with Grendel, he read and read. After a while, he pulled out his pocket watch. Nine thirty? Already? He glanced at Madame, fitfully sleeping. He checked to make sure she was comfortable and returned to his reading. Around midnight, he finished the book, closed it, and returned it to its proper place on the shelf.

  Madame stirred. Her eyes half opened. She mumbled something he didn’t understand. He leaned over her and refreshed the moist cloth on her forehead.

  “You were right about the hurricane, Lorenzo.”

  There was that name again. Her gibberish continued, making little sense. She muttered something about a wedding and thrashed about.

  “There, there,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and mopping her forehead and cheeks. Hawthorne laid the back of his hand against her forehead.

  She pushed it away. “Stop being a doctor, Lorenzo.”

  Who was Lorenzo?

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  At the crack of dawn, Lorenzo sat beside Thomas in sullen silence and stared at the ham and poached eggs the innkeeper served for breakfast. He had never felt so disheartened. He had knocked on every door in town, but no one had seen a French woman with auburn-red hair.

  Thomas gobbled his food down and eyed Lorenzo’s plate. “Are you going to eat that?”

  Lorenzo slid the plate in front of him.

  Thomas tore into it with gusto.

  Breakfast finished, they saddled up and set out down the road that led from Baton Rouge to Manchac. Lorenzo twisted around and took one final look. Common sense told him to admit she was gone. It wasn’t unusual for people to vanish and never be heard from again. Once, on a cattle drive, the cook disappeared in a stampede. No one ever knew what had become of him.

  Still, Lorenzo’s heart told him Eugenie was alive. His head told him otherwise.

  Hawthorne ran his hands through his hair and watched Madame thrash about. She began to mumble.

  Oh, God, please! Not another hallucination. It had been an awful night with Madame experiencing one fever-induced nightmare after another.

  The first one concerned him greatly. She had fancied herself a domestic servant in the Gálvez household and held an imaginary conversation with Colonel and Mrs. Gálvez.

  An hour later, a second hallucination scared the devil out of him. She looked up at the ceiling and laughed. “Do you see them, mon cher?” she asked.

  “Non, ma petite.” He mopped sweat beads from her forehead. “What do you see?”

  “Angels.” She laughed, her eyes on the ceiling in rapt attention. “Oh, look. They are but three inches tall. See how they play?”

  “Non, ma cherie.”

  “There! Do you not see the little one tumbling and turning somersaults? He looks like Lorenzo. Oh, my! He bumps into Héctor.” Her eyes seemed to follow an imaginary chase scene. Her expression turned serious. “Robert, why are the angels here? Have they come for me?”

  He felt his heart rumble. “No, Madame. Your mind is playing tricks.”

  “Oh, no. I see them very clearly.”

  Hawthorne squeezed his eyes shut to hold back the tears about to spill down his cheeks. He liked this woman, truly and genuinely felt a deep affection for her. He admired the way she fought him and attempted to escape. He even admired her for grabbing his pistol and trying to shoot him. He took her hand in his, brought it to his lips, and softly kissed her fingers.

  If the fever did not break soon, Dr. Somerset had said on his last visit, she would die. Hawthorne lowered his head and did something he had not done in a long time. He prayed.

  By late afternoon, two days after leaving Baton Rouge, Lorenzo and Thomas heard the tramp of a multitude of feet. A few seconds later, Gálvez’s ragtag army topped the hill. What a colorful crew! The regulars in white and blue appeared first, followed by carabineers in buff jackets with white cross belts. To the right walked the free black militia in white and red. There were men in homespun shirts and trousers and Indians wearing breechcloths, leggings, and moccasins.

  Lorenzo and Thomas pulled their horses to the side of the road and watched the men pass by. They had a long way to go and they hadn’t made much progress. Lorenzo assumed bad roads and thick forests had slowed them down.

  Regular soldiers formed a column with the Mississippi at their left so they could keep an eye on the four vessels sailing upriver under the Spanish flag.

  The free black militia and the Indians stayed on the alert for possible ambushes from the thickets and fields of sugar cane that grew on the marchers’ right flank. In the rear column, the militia kept watch to prevent an attack from that quarter.

  Lorenzo recognized most of them. One or two were his patients. Many were friends or acquaintances.

  Héctor Calderón walked at the rear of the regular soldiers. When he spotted Lorenzo, he waved and veered away from the rest.

  Lorenzo bounded down and greeted him with the traditional Spanish abrazo. “Good to see you, Héctor.”<
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  “Same here.” He reached up to shake Thomas’s hand. “Welcome back.”

  Lorenzo could tell from Héctor’s look of anticipation that he wanted to know about Eugenie but couldn’t bring himself to ask.

  Lorenzo merely shook his head. No, he hadn’t found her.

  Héctor clamped a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. That was the way it was between them. They communicated without saying a word.

  Lorenzo scanned the troops. “What did I miss?”

  “Nothing of any importance. Running into you is the most exciting thing to happen since leaving New Orleans. We walk all day, eat cold rations, sleep under the stars exposed to the elements, get up and do the whole thing over again.”

  Lorenzo scanned the hodgepodge of men. “It looks like the army has grown.”

  “We’ve added four hundred already. By the time we reach Baton Rouge, the outlying militias will join us.”

  Two men walked past speaking English with a decidedly American accent. A knot of men speaking a French Canadian dialect sauntered over to Héctor.

  “Henri, you tell him.”

  “Why me? I am not the leader.”

  “Mon dieu. You are the eldest.”

  “But Pierre is the one who knows how to write.”

  “Ooooh, there is François! He can help. François! Come here!” They motioned him over.

  “Who are you,” Héctor asked, “and what do you want?”

  “One moment, mon ami.”

  Héctor frowned. “I am not your ami. I am Captain Calderón and—”

  “You are not the one the colonel said we were to report to! We go find him.” The men gave Héctor companionable slaps on the back. “Au revoir, monsieur le capitaine! We talk later, oui?”

  Mouth slightly agape, Héctor slapped his hands to his side in complete frustration.

  Lorenzo put his hand to his mouth to hold back a laugh. At Valley Forge, he had seen untrained soldiers, just like these men, with not a smidgen of military discipline. Most soldiers in the Continental Army spoke English, however. Gálvez’s army was a confusion of French, Spanish, German, English, and Choctaw—a true Tower of Babel.

  Héctor scowled. “I hope these men don’t cut and run when they find out where we’re going or what we’re about to do.”

  “They must have their suspicions. Men don’t just drop everything at harvest season to go on a romp with the colonel.”

  “To be sure, they know something is afoot. Rumors are as thick as honey. But the colonel hasn’t told anyone about the declaration of war. No one is to know our destination until the last possible moment. That should prevent a deserter from running off to Baton Rouge and alerting the English.”

  “Speaking of the colonel, where is he?”

  “He’s gone ahead with Don Oliver to enlist volunteers.”

  Lorenzo noticed the troops traveled light, taking only what they could carry. There were no packhorses carrying tents, no wagons with extra ammunition, no mules hauling cannon. It looked like the men would be eating off the land or off the generosity of plantations and farms they passed.

  “I suppose all the war supplies are on the ships?” Lorenzo asked.

  “You suppose right. Your friend Charles is onboard as well.”

  “So he did enlist. I’m glad.”

  “Thanks for sending him to me. He seems a very competent fellow. Lieutenant Alvarez is pleased with him.”

  “What’s Alvarez doing here? He was sicker than a horse when I left New Orleans.”

  “Still is. He had to come. He’s the colonel’s only artillery officer.”

  “That’s a comforting thought.”

  “Indeed.”

  Gálvez was gambling everything on this attack: the security of New Orleans, his reputation, his career. Lorenzo prayed it turned out well.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Charles felt his stomach lurch. He ran to the fantail, the overhang at the back of the ship, and spewed a vile-looking and vile-tasting liquid. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he pivoted and glared at his fellow artillerymen-turned-sailors.

  “Look! The fantail lookout is at it again!” one of them exclaimed.

  “Keeping a sharp eye out for English pirates?” another asked.

  “Oh, shut up,” Charles replied.

  They had hung the name “fantail lookout” on him an hour after leaving New Orleans. This was Charles’s first time on a ship and it seemed that he was heaving over the fantail every hour on the hour. How was he to know the pitching and rolling would make him seasick? Going against the current and watching the land slip by while you stayed perfectly still made him nauseous. It hadn’t been that way when he had escaped down the Mississippi by canoe, but the little boat hadn’t pitched and rolled. It drifted with the current, taking him past St. Louis, Natchez, and Baton Rouge to New Orleans, where he had started a new life.

  Hawthorne propped Madame up with a bank of pillows and put a gargle of tea and salt water to her lips.

  She took a giant sip, swished it around, and spit it out in the cuspidor he held for her. “Thank you.”

  “You are quite welcome.”

  For the last three days, she had made amazing progress. Her fever had broken soon after he finished praying. Was it a coincidence or had God answered his prayer?

  Madame’s glands were still swollen, but the redness of her cheeks was starting to fade. At this rate, Dr. Somerset said, he would lift the quarantine within the week.

  “Would you like me to read?” Hawthorne asked.

  “Yes, please.”

  He opened Gulliver’s Travels to the place he had stopped reading the night before.

  Madame’s knowledge of English improved daily. Now and then, she didn’t understand a passage and he had to explain it. She had a quick mind and saw meaning in scenes that he never realized was there.

  Hawthorne read the last chapter and closed the book.

  “It is over?” she asked, clearly disappointed.

  “Yes. Did you like it?”

  “It was an eye-opener. I didn’t know anything worthwhile had ever been written by the English.”

  He started to open his mouth in protest when he caught the mischievous twinkle in her eye. “The colonel must find you quite a handful.” Keeping a straight face, he said, “I’ve found the perfect book for us to read next: Daniel Dafoe’s Journal of the Plague Year.”

  “The plague? In light of our present situation, do you really think it wise to …”

  His smile betrayed him.

  She smiled back. “Touché, Robert.”

  He picked up Robinson Crusoe and flipped it open to the first chapter. He began to read. When he looked up, he saw she had fallen asleep. He tucked the covers around her and scratched his neck. His throat felt sore. He gargled with the unused portion of the tea-and-salt-water mixture and feared he was catching scarlet fever.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Footsore, weary, sword dangling at his side, Lorenzo walked beside Héctor Calderón.

  It was September 6, 1779, a typical Louisiana day that began with blood-sucking mosquitoes in the morning and was followed by a steamy heat in the afternoon. Lorenzo was glad the colonel had modified the uniform code to allow linens and cottons to replace heavier materials.

  Five miles back, Lorenzo had sold his horse at a farm. He was sorry to see her go, but he knew her snorting and neighing would alert the British to their presence.

  Thomas, serving as courier, had ridden back to New Orleans with letters, messages, and other communications. He had been gone for several days and was due back at any time.

  Colonel Gálvez and Oliver Pollock rejoined the march, bringing fifty or so militiamen with them. Others trickled in from the outlying settlements of Attakapas, Natchitoches, Opelousas, Pointe Coupee. Gálvez’s total force was now 1,427.

  Lorenzo hoped it was enough.

  The march had fallen silent. After ten days of walking, no one felt like talking or joking. Some men had dropp
ed out of the march due to fatigue. Others were too sick to continue.

  “How much farther?” Héctor asked.

  Lorenzo recognized an abandoned building he and Thomas had passed on the way to Baton Rouge. “Not far. We will be at Manchac by dusk.”

  “Thank God.”

  When they were within a half league of Fort Bute, Gálvez climbed onto a fallen tree and called the men together. He stood with his fists on his hips and watched them fan out around him. “Men,” he began, “we have been on the road for several days now and the time has come for me to share a secret with you. I have asked you to join me on an important mission. Until now, I have kept its true nature secret. As you know, thirteen British colonies are in open rebellion against King George. On July 4, 1776, they declared their independence. Two British colonies, however, have not joined the rebellion. West Florida and East Florida have become a haven for English loyalists who wish us ill.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a piece of paper. “I have in my possession an intercepted letter exposing a dastardly British plan to attack New Orleans.” Gálvez read the letter aloud.

  Murmurs of indignation swept through the crowd. The men uttered vile oaths about the British.

  “On the 21st of June,” the colonel said, “His Catholic Majesty declared war on Great Britain and gave me permission to attack the British at the first opportunity. With that in mind, I have decided to strike Baton Rouge. Our first target will be Fort Bute at Manchac. Will you help me protect Louisiana? Will you help me defeat the British and sweep them from the Mississippi Valley once and for all?”

  Cheering erupted. Men hooted and pumped fists in the air.

  Lorenzo smiled to himself. As usual, Gálvez had them in the palm of his hand.

  The colonel waited for the shouts of approval to die down before continuing. “Tonight, under cover of darkness, we will surround the fort. Tomorrow we lay siege to it. From this point forward, the strictest silence must be maintained. Once we cross Bayou Manchac, we will be in British territory. I will tolerate no departure from the rules of war. When an enemy soldier surrenders or is captured, he will be treated fairly, with dignity as befits his rank. Hold yourselves in readiness, men. You will receive further orders directly. I wish to speak with my council of war.”