“It’s the American!” Rochambeau cried. “He’s an assassin!”
Well, I had failed in that role since I’d entirely forgotten to cleave the bastard’s head. I whirled around and hurled the weapon at him, the blade spinning as the couple ducked and the woman shrieked. The cleaver embedded itself in a bedpost. Then I vaulted the stone railing of the balcony outside, above the garden. As I did, Rochambeau’s pistol fired, and this time something hot grazed my ear, stinging like fire.
I fell into darkness, my body crashing into shrubbery and damp soil, deliberately rolling so I didn’t break a leg. Then I bounced up, gasping. My ear had been cut by the ball but, other than bleeding, it seemed intact. I was scratched, dirty, and bewildered. If his paramour wasn’t Astiza, where the devil had she gone?
And where was Leon Martel?
What a stew. I listened to the chorus of cries as the ball erupted into panic at the gunshots. There were shouts, oaths, and the rasp of drawn swords.
I’d turned a cotillion into a hornet’s nest.
Chapter 23
I glanced up. Two men appeared on the balcony, presumably the sentry and a naked Rochambeau. Their guns were empty, having missed. I regretted not having my own. I was curious about the size of the bastard’s nutmegs, but it was too dim to judge. With no way to strike back I limped away, nursing a turned ankle. Sensing a presence, they shouted, but I carried on, melting into the gardens.
What now? No wife, no son, and no distracting festivity to give me cover as I crept to join Dessalines. Instead, I’d roused the garrison. I suppose I should have thought things through more clearly, and charged less impetuously, but the fear that my wife was in the arms of another had obsessed me. Love, lust, and jealousy can addle the mind like English gin.
I’d also been seized by the idea of using the cleaver, and not necessarily on the top of the general’s anatomy. If I was caught, he might use it on me.
I could demand a trial, but I suspect my husbandly outrage would hardly mollify a French military tribunal, particularly when I’d thrown a chopping blade at their commander while he was entirely preoccupied with someone else’s wife. I could hear soldiers spilling from Government House and the rattle of drums from the barracks against the mountains. I also heard the barking of dogs and wondered if they sensed a new dinner. I was probably whiter meat than they were used to, but I was fairly certain their palates wouldn’t mind.
“Monsieur Gage!” It was a hiss. Jubal reached out a paw of a hand and jerked me deeper into garden foliage. “What is happening? I heard shots.”
“I tried to rescue my wife.”
“Where is she?”
“I didn’t find her at all.” It sounded foolish even to me. “It turned out Rochambeau was rogering some other spouse. Now the garrison is aroused and the general wants to kill me as much as I wanted to kill him.”
“I thought we were going to quietly steal away?”
“That was the plan, but I’m afraid I became a little reckless when my wife vanished. I’m not used to being married. ”
“Women make you stupid?”
“Apparently so.”
“Now it is very dangerous. We must flee to the mountains, but they will be watching. Monsieur, I am a little disappointed. We were told by the British that you were a man of cunning.”
“Retirement is simply more work than I imagined. I’m afraid I’ve grown rusty.”
“Merde. All right, hurry, I hear their hounds!”
He turned to run, but I stopped him. “Jubal, I’m sorry, but we can’t go without my wife. We spied a dangerous man who tortured me back in France, and I’m worried he has Astiza. Did you see a woman emerge from Government House, quite beautiful, mustee in coloring, hurrying on some kind of mission?”
“No woman alone. But I did see a woman more pushed than escorted, a man’s hand on one arm and a child in his other.”
“A child! A boy?”
“Perhaps. It wasn’t evident if he was forcing her somewhere or she was demanding they leave. She glanced back, several times. They were heading for the harbor.”
Bollocks. Martel had promised her reunion with Harry if they fled before I confronted him, and she’d chosen my son over me, trusting her resourcefulness over mine. Now I’d lost them both. “If it’s Astiza, a bastard of a Frenchman is taking her there.”
“My sympathies, Monsieur Gage, but we must go now, to Dessalines, or risk being hanged or eaten. It may already be too late.”
“No, it’s I who am sorry, Jubal, because we must go to the harbor instead, to rescue my wife. And you can call me Ethan. From now on we’ll be equals.”
He groaned, not at all impressed by my offer of friendship. We heard cries of command in French. A bugle in the middle of the night. A rising chorus of baying hounds. “This is a very poor idea. Our rebels are the opposite way.”
“We must, my new friend. I misplace my family like an old man his spectacles, and I want to prove I can hold on. Can’t you lead us to the harbor on a winding, twisting way in which we won’t be seen?”
“There is no such path. The street grid was laid with the compass. A musket ball can carry down a street from one end of Cap-Francois to the other. They’ll cut us down like rabbits. And if we do get to the sea, we’re trapped between dogs and water.”
“We’ll steal a boat.”
“I don’t even think we can reach the sea. You’ve roused entire regiments.” He obviously thought me mad as well as stupid. But no, I was just faithful.
I glanced about. A cluster of officers was in a cone of light spilling from Government House main doors, their sabers pointing as they tried to sort what the alarm was about. Rochambeau had disappeared, probably to put some clothes on. The barking was closer, and near the barracks I thought I could see lupine, leaping forms, their wolfish teeth white in the night. Down the Rue Dauphin toward the Caribbean a squad of infantry was assembling. In short order the dogs would sniff us out in the shadows and we’d join the men swinging on the gibbets, our odor adding to the city’s scent of corruption. Unless…
“We can escape in that.” I pointed to a wagon stacked with barrels in a dark court adjacent to the park, the yard just off the main street to the sea. Each hogshead, I guessed, contained sugar, a remnant of wartime plantation production that had been too late for a ship with room for sweets. All departing vessels were crammed with fleeing aristocrats and refugee heirlooms.
“We have no horses or oxen, monsieur.”
“It’s a long, gentle slope to the Caribbean. We aim, push, and ride.”
Now we could hear the clatter of hooves in the dark as men mounted. The barking of the dogs was getting closer. “You’ve left us no choice,” he admitted, looking dubiously at the heavy vehicle.
“It will fly like a chaise.” I wished it would fly like Cayley’s glider, but it was several tons in the wrong direction. I released the lever brake. Alone, I couldn’t have maneuvered the ponderous wagon, but Jubal took up its tongue and dragged it out into the street with the brute strength of a bear. I kept his spirits up by pushing a little from behind. We aimed down the street like a boulder tumbling down a mountain. Lest the vehicle drag, I unlimbered the tongue by freeing an iron pin, and then used that pin to jam the front axle so it couldn’t turn. Then I threw the heavy tongue up onto the cargo of casks. “Now, push, push, push! Point her like an arrow!”
Our chariot, weighing several tons, began to move.
Slowly.
As we ponderously accelerated, we came into faint light thrown by a house window.
There were shouts as we were finally spotted, and the excited chorus of slavering dogs. The animals came on in a streak, eyes glowing in the night’s torch and lantern light. Men were running after them, holding glinting sabers.