Lorenzo and the Turncoat Page 13

  “That’s a lie!” he yelled.

  Madame stood up and jammed her fists on her hips. “It is the God’s truth. Dunstan Andrews killed soldiers and cowboys.” She stopped suddenly.

  From her expression, he could tell she was about to reveal privileged information. “Go on,” he commanded.

  “I can’t.”

  “Indeed you must! If you have information I need to know, please don’t withhold it.”

  She dropped into a chair and grew pensive.

  Hawthorne dropped to one knee in front of her and took her hand in his. “Please tell me what you know.”

  She took a deep breath, looked him straight in the eye and said, “I was at your cousin’s execution. He was captured in Spanish territory and put on trial for killing soldiers and cowboys in Texas.”

  “Texas?” A bad feeling began to bud. He had given Dunstan direct orders to remain in New Orleans. “What was he doing in Texas?”

  She hesitated. “Trying to kill Lorenzo Bannister.”

  That rang true. Dunstan hated him. Hawthorne listened in fascination as she told him about a cattle drive from San Antonio to the Mississippi River and Dunstan’s murder of the soldiers and cowboys guarding it. According to Madame, Dunstan had gone off on his own private mission of revenge.

  “Your cousin was given a fair trial,” she ended by saying. “There were plenty of witnesses. Soldiers from the Presidio San Antonio de Béjar testified against him. It is all properly documented.”

  “People loyal to your husband are hardly in a position to speak freely.”

  “A little Quaker boy who saw everything testified against your cousin as well.”

  “A boy named Thomas?”

  “Yes. Thomas Hancock.”

  Hawthorne had worked with the boy long enough to know he saw the world in black and white. There were no gray areas. It was a rigid view, but something Hawthorne rather admired. It made the boy predictable and dependable. Thomas would not have put his hand on the Bible and testified in court against Dunstan unless he was guilty.

  Hawthorne thought about the scar on his cousin’s cheek. In a duel with a lord’s son, Dunstan had knocked the sword from his opponent’s hand and pinned him to the floor. At that point, he should have released him. He didn’t. He killed him. It was murder. Cold-blooded, black-hearted murder.

  The room became unbearably hot. Hawthorne could not get a good breath of air. He crumpled.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Eugenie froze. Several seconds passed before she realized what had happened. She bolted to the door and flung it open.

  “Get Dr. Somerset at once. Robert has collapsed!”

  The sentry, unable to desert his post, relayed the message to a passing soldier.

  It suddenly occurred to her that she was free for the first time in weeks. Robert had passed out. She could leave! She took a step, but remembered that the guard had orders to shoot if they left quarantine without permission.

  She glanced at Hawthorne. How pitiful he looked. A strange sense of loyalty and gratitude settled over her. He had stayed by her bed and nursed her back to health. Every time she opened her eyes, there he was, taking care of her.

  Was it right to desert him in his hour of need? No.

  She rushed back to him. He was far too heavy for her to lift, so she cradled his head on her lap. For the first time, she noticed his flaming red cheeks. “Mon dieu,” she muttered.

  He had scarlet fever.

  Lorenzo sent the twenty prisoners of war captured at Fort Bute to New Orleans and turned his attention to the matter of the missing soldiers. Musket slung over his back, he circled the outside of the fort and studied the ground.

  Dried boot prints showed hundreds of feet rushing toward the fort.

  Lorenzo made a wider arc and found six pairs of prints that concerned him. They headed away from the fort. He squatted to look at them more closely.

  Gálvez crouched beside him. “What do you see?”

  “I’m not sure, Your Excellency.” Lorenzo stood up.

  “I have bad news,” the colonel said. “I just heard from my agent in Baton Rouge. Dickson isn’t sending soldiers to retake Fort Bute. It appears he considers the fort a complete loss and not worth the fight. He plans to make a stand at Fort New Richmond.”

  “I’ve seen the fort up close,” Lorenzo said. “Taking it won’t be easy.”

  “I know.”

  Head down, Lorenzo followed the boot prints into the woods with the colonel at his side. He trailed them for a mile, long enough to convince himself that the tracks were made by men thrashing through the undergrowth, running like the devil was after them.

  “More bad news, sir,” he said, pivoting toward Gálvez. “It looks like six men escaped from the fort in the chaos of battle and are headed straight to Baton Rouge.”

  Gálvez scowled and gave a rock an angry kick.

  Lorenzo knew what he was thinking.

  He had lost the element of surprise.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Six days later, Eugenie bent over a shirt she was sewing for Private Davy Morgan. One day when he delivered their supper, she noticed a long rip in his jacket and volunteered to repair it. When he took it off, she was surprised to see that his shirt had patches on patches.

  She glanced at Hawthorne lying in the bed she once occupied and was relieved to see that he was sleeping peacefully. His scarlet fever repeated the same steps as hers. The rash on his neck and face had spread to his chest, back, and the rest of his body. His tonsils and glands had swollen and he complained of a sore throat. Eating was so painful, he could only swallow soft food and liquids. He slept for hour after hour.

  To pass the time, she sewed for soldiers at the fort.

  There was a knock on the door.

  Eugenie answered. Not surprisingly, it was Davy. He liked to spend his free time in the cabin and always made himself useful. Sometimes, he changed Robert’s clothes. Other times, he ran errands. Once in a while, he and Eugenie played checkers, a game he called draughts.

  Soon after Robert got scarlet fever, Davy popped his head around the cabin door and asked if he could come in.

  “Do you not have fear of scarlet fever?” she had asked in English.

  “No, ma’am. Had it when I was a wee lad. Me and my brothers was in quarantine for six weeks.”

  “Six weeks!” Eugenie exclaimed.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He smiled wryly. “Me mum thought she would lose her mind afore it was over. Do you need some help, ma’am?”

  “Would you mind sweeping the floor?”

  “‘Twould be me pleasure.” He sprinkled the floorboards with water to settle the dust and grabbed the broom in the corner.

  It suddenly occurred to her that he was one of the nicest young men she had ever met. He was a British farmhand who worked on an earl’s estate until an army recruiter came through. Davy saw an opportunity to escape a dreary life and seized it.

  Eugenie finished the last seam on his new shirt and handed it to him. “Voilà.”

  He inspected it. “You really sew good.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s yours.”

  “Mine?”

  She nodded.

  His eyes lit up. “Mine? Merci beaucoup!” he said, using a French phrase she had taught him.

  “Pas de quoi,” she replied. It was nothing.

  He folded it carefully, placed it on the table, and returned to his work. He swept dirt into a heap and broomed it onto the dustpan that Eugenie held.

  She emptied it into the trash can. She did a bit of housecleaning in her own mind, sweeping away old hatreds, grudges, and bitterness. A British doctor had cured her of scarlet fever, a disease that often proved fatal. Davy had shown her and Hawthorne a number of kindnesses and had befriended them for no particular reason. Now that she had lived with the British, actually seen them up close, they didn’t seem so bad.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

&
nbsp; Lorenzo lifted his hat and sleeved away sweat. He peered at Fort New Richmond sitting on a bluff about a half mile away.

  Colonel Gálvez stood beside him. “Bring back memories?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency. There is one big difference, though. Last time I was here, I didn’t sneak up on the fort like a thief in the night.”

  Gálvez laughed.

  It was September 19, 1779. Gálvez’s army had advanced along the slope between the bluffs of Baton Rouge and the Mississippi River and was now setting up camp beyond the reach of the fort’s muskets and cannons. Gálvez’s little navy of four ships lay anchored downriver out of sight.

  Boom!

  Instinctively, Gálvez and Lorenzo flinched and ducked.

  A cannonball sailed from the fort and fell short. It bounced and rolled.

  “Last time I was here, the fort didn’t shell me,” Lorenzo said.

  “No?” Gálvez said in mock surprise.

  The British fired a second shot, but it, too, fell short.

  “Why are they wasting ammunition?” Lorenzo asked.

  “They’re sending a message: We know you’re there and we’ll flatten you if you come too close.”

  A bouncing cannonball on dry ground could kill scores of men. In wet weather, it would hit soggy earth and stop.

  Hands laced behind him, Gálvez turned and strode off.

  Lorenzo hurried to catch up. Guarding Gálvez was a duty that alternated between him and another staff duty officer. At all costs, they had to protect the colonel.

  Eugenie watched Robert sleep. The last time Dr. Somerset checked on him, she had asked why his recovery was taking longer than hers. Why had all his joints swelled? The doctor sidestepped the questions.

  Thunder boomed beyond the cabin wall.

  It reminded Eugenie of the last time she saw Lorenzo. He sat on the colonel’s patio eating lunch with her and glanced over his shoulder at a rumbling behind him.

  Thunder pealed again.

  Eugenie went to the window. The sky was a cloudless pale blue.

  “That’s not thunder,” Robert said, rousing from a long sleep. “That’s cannonfire. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know.” She stepped onto the cabin porch.

  Davy trotted past, musket slung over his back.

  “What’s going on?” she yelled.

  “The Spanish are advancing from the south!” He tipped his hat and ran on.

  The Spanish! If she could only get to them, she would be free! Eugenie noticed that the guard was gone. She stepped to the end of the porch and strained to see the front gate.

  British soldiers had pushed it shut and barred the fort’s only exit. There was no escape.

  The sun balanced on the western horizon as Lorenzo and Colonel Gálvez reconnoitered the area around the fort, looking for a good area to set up the artillery. They came across a series of earthen mounds that rose out of the meadow about a thousand yards from the fort. Some had flat tops; others were cone shaped.

  “What are these?” the colonel asked, scratching his head.

  “Indian mounds.”

  “Why did they build them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Boom! A solid iron ball ripped open a large chunk of earth in a mound several hundred yards away.

  Lorenzo jumped in spite of himself. Would he ever get used to the sudden noise?

  Gálvez didn’t twitch. “These mounds look like a good place to set up the artillery.”

  “How are you going to do that, sir?” Lorenzo asked. “The mounds are within range of Dickson’s cannons.”

  Nodding thoughtfully, he strolled off to a forest area south of the fort.

  From time to time, the British fired at Spanish troops busily preparing for battle. There was no way to know when to expect another shot.

  Boom! A cannonball tore limbs from an oak. It bounced and rolled, but did no damage, except to the tree.

  Gálvez visited each company commander and spoke encouragingly to the soldiers. He headed to the river where his little navy rested at anchor. There, he ran into his aides, Oliver Pollock and Lieutenant Colonel Miró, supervising the unloading of supplies. When he pointed to the mounds, they echoed Lorenzo’s concerns.

  Gálvez walked off again, hands laced behind him, head down. He stopped under an oak and leaned a hand against it. “A frontal assault would be suicide,” he said, speaking more to himself than to Lorenzo. “Dickson has cleared all outbuildings within musket range of the fort. There is no place for a sharpshooter to take cover. We’ve lost the element of surprise. We can’t storm the fort. We’ll have to bombard it.”

  “Sir, Dickson has eighteen cannons,” Lorenzo pointed out. “You only have ten.”

  Gálvez lifted an index finger. “But mine are bigger than his.”

  “Sir, we could shell thunder out of the fort, but Dickson will simply sit tight and shell us back. Eventually, we will run out of ammunition.”

  Gálvez looked at the mounds. His gaze slid to the forest. He smiled mischievously. “Then we’ll have to trick him. Take some men to the woods south of the fort. Have them dig trenches and chop down trees. Make a lot of noise. Attract the fort’s attention. I want them to think I’m setting up an artillery battery in the grove south of the fort. It would be best if Dickson repositioned his cannons so they were all pointing in that direction.”

  “While you are busy elsewhere?”

  Gálvez nodded.

  “Devilishly clever, Colonel.”

  “I have my moments.” He slapped Lorenzo companionably on the back. “Help yourself to whatever supplies you need. Move, Bannister!”

  In the descending twilight, Lorenzo took thirty men to the supply officer for shovels, axes, lanterns, candles, and tinderboxes. He led them into the forest. When he judged they were at a safe distance from enemy muskets and cannonballs, he halted. He selected ten men. “Chop these down, men.” He slapped each tree to be felled. “You ten,” Lorenzo said to the militiamen. “Fire on the fort from time to time. I want Dickson to think you are giving the others cover so they can work. And you lucky devils,” Lorenzo said, addressing the remaining ten. “You get to dig trenches. Make noise. Lots of noise! Let the British know you’re here!”

  The woodcutters set to work.

  Suddenly, light flashed from the fort. Puffs of smoke plumed into the air. The British lobbed one cannonball after another at them.

  “Fire away, Dickson!” Lorenzo exclaimed. It was too dark to see Gálvez and his men behind the Indian mounds, but Lorenzo knew they were there. He also knew the diversionary tactic was working. Not a shot was aimed at Gálvez erecting a battery within pointblank range of the fort.

  By morning, Dickson would be in for a big surprise.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  On the morning of September 21, Lieutenant Colonel Dickson sat in his dining room waiting for his slave Jubilee to serve breakfast.

  The Spanish were knocking at his door. Well, not exactly knocking, Dickson thought. They were chopping down his forest. He had ordered his cannons repositioned to face the noise. Artillerymen worked feverishly through the night to move them.

  Gálvez was so predictable. He was doing exactly what Dickson would have done under the same circumstances.

  Dickson had seen his kind before—aristocratic snobs who thought themselves superior because they had been born to position and privilege. Some of his own officers snubbed him because he was the son of a footman and a housemaid. Well, he would show them that he was just as good as Gálvez! His Excellency, Lord of New Orleans, would soon eat humble pie.

  Jubilee placed a delicious looking plate in front of him.

  The savory aroma of ham and eggs in Jubilee’s special sauce wafted toward him. His mouth watered. He reached for his knife and fork. Beyond the fort’s walls, a cannon thundered.

  “Damn those Diegos!” Dickson muttered. “Impossible to eat a meal in peace.”

  A cannonball sailed through the roof and landed in the m
iddle of breakfast.

  Gálvez pumped his fist in the air, pleased to see the first cannonball clear the walls and land somewhere inside the fort. If Dickson wasn’t awake before, he certainly was now.

  There was no way to know where shots would go until the first couple of rounds were fired. Cannonballs weren’t perfectly spherical. In flight, they could veer left, right, up, or down.

  The gunnery crew ran the first cannon back into position. Shooting always sent it hurtling back several feet and it took all four men of the crew to reposition it.

  Excitement surged through Gálvez. For the last three years, he had been an administrator, not a warrior. He had forgotten how exhilarating and terrifying a battle could be.

  Eugenie awoke to the sound of an echoing boom. Startled, she jumped from her chair and threw the cabin door wide open. The cannon fire sounded further away. She watched in horror as a cannonball plowed its way across the parade ground.

  Soldiers, yelling and cursing, hurried to their posts. One was still buckling on a sword belt. Another hopped on one leg as he pulled on a boot. Officers snapped out orders.

  “What’s going on?” Robert asked.

  Eugenie turned to find him awake. “The fort is under attack.” Her voice wavered in spite of herself.

  He tried to sit up but fell back into the pillows.

  She rushed over to him. “You’re too weak to be out of bed.”

  “No, Madame. I am not.”

  She tucked covers around him, then sat down at his side and knotted her hands in her lap so he wouldn’t see that they were shaking. She was terrified of the bombardment, but she was far more terrified by Robert’s condition. His recovery was taking too long. Something was dreadfully wrong, but Dr. Somerset would not tell her what. Robert complained of stiff joints and had no energy. His knuckles and toes were horribly swollen.

  He patted her hand. “You needn’t be afraid.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You’re terrified and too proud to admit it. No worries. You’ll make it through this. God will protect you.”