By the Bay (15 page)

Apparently more things than were immediately evident had changed during her brief absence.

In her dreams she slept in Phi
li
ppe
’s
arms, felt his strength against her, and it was only thus that she was able to take an uneasy rest. But toward morning when she swam upward toward consciousness, the guns were silent and she wondered if they were only a part of the dream.

Mother came in with a breakfast tray and put it on her night table. Jillian looked at scrambled eggs, buttered toast, crisp bacon and a big mug of black coffee. It looked and smelled delicious and she couldn’t remember when she’d last
eaten.

But before she took a bite she looked at her mother. Christine Blake
seemed
like a new woman, a woman Jillian had never seen before. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks tinged with a faint pink. There was nothing stumbling and vague about this woman. She was neatly dressed in tailored pants and a long-sleeved white blouse.

Jillian was accustomed to seeing her mother mostly in night gown
s
and housecoats with bedroom slippers. Though neat in her own fashion, she rarely bothered to dress in outside clothes like these. And she never wore pants, saying that a lady should wear dresses.

She even protested the
dungarees
Jillian wore on the island where she rarely saw another person other than Frank on the ferry that took  her over.

Locals dreamed of the day when Padre Island became a tourist paradise, but that was a long way off and, if Jillian had her way, would never come. She liked to think of the island as belonging exclusively to her and the few others who loved its spare beauty.

Now Jillian tried to eat her breakfast slowly, though hunger urged her to gobble it down. Tears came to her eyes as she thought of Philippe and she dashed them angrily away. No time to indulge in that now. “I dreamed of guns being fired. It was a noisy night.”

Mom’s laughter was without humor. “Not a dream, honey. We hear the sound of the guns most nights now that war has come to the Gulf.”

For an instant Jillian thought of the Carolina and Louisiana in the Gulf to repell the British. No!
T
his was another place and another time. “War,” she said. “Surely that’s far away.”

“No more,” Mom said, her face tightening into worried lines. “Now that the axis powers have knocked England to its knees and taken down New England
and Middle America, they’ve after the Confederacy and the Republic of Texas. They’re chopping off the new world nations one at a time, but thanks to our navy, we’ll still holding them off out in the Gulf.”

Names spun through Jillian’s brain. New England, Middle America, the Confederacy . . .her mother spoke as though those were countries, not regions of America.

She choked on her toast.

“Sometimes I think we might have been better off back when we pulled away from England if we’d stuck together. Then we might have been powerful enough to fend off European invaders.” She sighed. “No use crying over spilt milk and, of course, Texans have always gloried in their independence.”

Jillian gulped orange juice. “Just when did the break come?”

Mom laughed again. “Oh, honey, you’re the history teacher, not me. From what I remember it all started in the second revolutionary war when we lost to the British. The New England states seceded at about the same time. Of course it was nearly a hundred years before the southerners kicked the Brits out and formed the Confederate States of America. And by then,” she paused to smile proudly, “the Lone Star flag was waving over the Republic of Texas.”

Se cuffed her daughter playfully on one shoulder. “But you know all that. What is this? A test to see if Mama knows her history
?”

“No, No, Mom,” Jillian protested weakly. “I’m just needing a little refresher, I guess.” She couldn’t help thinking of what Philippe had said about their needing a single line of thought. If she were to be dumped here in this alternative world, then she should remember its history rather than the one she left behind. This lack of memory was like being sent to war without ammunition.

“We haven’t had word of Aunt Dorothea and her family in weeks,” Mom went on, “of course communications to the
frontier
are cut off after the invasion.”

Kansas was the
frontier
? That didn’t sound good. Jillian decided she wouldn’t ask any more questions right now. She wasn’t sure she could bear the answers. So the battle of New Orleans had been a defeat for the Americans, a loss that began the change that led to a fragmented America. And the war between the states had not been a civil war, but one between parts of the southern states with Great Britian.

“I never thought England would give up,” she hardly realized she was speaking aloud.

“Oh, honey, they didn’t. They were pounded into the ground and they still have small groups holding out on that island of theirs. They are stubborn people.” She smiled. “And so are Texans.”

Jillian had no doubt of the staunch character of residents of her native state . . .country, but how could they stand against an axis of greatly enhanced power that had already swallowed so much of the western world.

“Philippe, you must not let them win,” she whispered. “Even the British will lose in the long run if they win in New Orleans.”

Suddenly she realized her mother was staring at her. No longer hungry, she pushed her breakfast tray aside. “Guess I’d better get dressed to face the day.”

“If you’re up to it, but honey, you haven’t told us what happened. Did you really elope with Philippe and where is he now?”

She hesitated only a moment. “Yes, we’re married, but he got left behind in New Orleans.”

It was the truth, but Mom’s next question caught  her by surprise. “Captured by the enemy?” she asked with a tragic expression.

“Not exactly.” Jillian considered. She could hardly explain to her mother a situation she didn’t understand herself. “But he felt a responsibility to make a stand there.”

Suddenly her mother’s arms wrapped around her. “Good for him. It looks hopeless, but you never know what will make a difference and turn everything around. It’s like you’ve always said, honey, this is a change point in time. What we do now will affect people in our distant future, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”

Jillian wasn’t feel
ing
too hopeful about even having children. If she and Philippe were separated forever, she would leave no legacy to an uncertain future. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

Her mother gave her a little shake. “Get your jeans and shirt on, Jillian. Your dad will be wondering what happened to us.”

Jillian stared at her. “Dad?” she finally choked out the word.

“Well, I called him first thing to let him know you were safe, of course. He would have been here
already
if he could have left his  command and he’s called three times to urge me to get you over there.
Hurry! Get ready. It’s cruel to keep the man waiting.”

Jillian pulled on jeans and a shirt, slipped on her loafers and was ready to go, combing her hair as she went out with her mother. So in this reality her dad was still alive. Too bad she couldn’t remember being raised by him, but she could hardly wait for this first meeting within her memory.

Mom actually had a rather cute little blue coupe and she could drive, an accomplishment she hadn’t possessed in any reality Jillian knew about.

Before they could drive away, auntie drove up on a motorcycle
and gave her an enormous hug
and
demanded to know where her new husband was. After a quick explanation, she got in the backseat of the coupe and they drove off. To Jillian’s surprise they drove through town and
on toward the salt flats
. “Uh, where is Dad?”

“In Brownsville, training troops,” her mother responded with a certain impatience in her voice, her eyes on the roadway ahead. Obviously she thought this was a question Jillian shouldn’t have to ask.

Jillian was relieved to see that tall, skinny Sentinel Palms, one of her favorite features of the valley, still lined the roadways, but new to her were the tent cities, apparently home to soldiers clustered in the lowered valley to meet the invasion threat.

In what had been the border town of Brownsville, they were admitted only after her mother flashed an identification badge, then directed to drive straight to headquarters where Colonel Blake would be waiting for them. A military jeep decorated with a Lone Star flag led the way, escorting them in a way that seemed familiar to her aunt and mother.

The building to which they were taken was low and long, relatively
unpretentious
in style, but they had to be identified by the escorting soldier before they were allowed in a heavily armored
front
door. A tall, thin man with fading red hair and the same kind of sun burnable skin she possessed, strode toward them. “Jillian, you scamp, it’s so good to see you even if you did run off instead of getting married here in church with the whole family in attendance.”

He had a long serious-looking face, but laughing eyes, and she took to him immediately in spite of a lifetime of doubts.

His hug was cautious. Obviously he was not a demonstrative man.

She gave him a little squeeze, then stepped back.

“So it’s now Mrs. Philippe
d
e B
e
auvois,” he said with a Texas accent that made hash of the French name. “Where is the lucky groom? Afraid to face his new father-in-law?”

“Philippe got caught up in the fighting in New Orleans,” her mother said, accepting the kiss her husband placed on her cheek. “This war is just messing up everything, even my daughter’s romance.”

“I’m sure he’ll be here soon,” Jillian added quickly, hoping against hope that her words would prove to be a prophecy.

The man they said was her father saw to it that Mom and Auntie were seated in a comfortable
room
with hot coffee and frosted cakes and then said he was going to show his daughter around his office.

“Oh, Davis, don’t take her away. She’s seen your old office a hundred times.”

“I wish to have a little time alone with my daughter,” he returned with dignity and without further delay, led her away.

They went through another guarded checkpoint before Davis Blake motioned
her through
a doorway and closed and locked the door behind them. The click of that lock made her a little anxious. After all, they said this man was her father but as far as she was concerned her father was a man who’d died not long after her birth.

She looked around at a cavernous room full of machines with busy lights, red, green, blue and white, flicking across their surfaces. The whole room was lined with machines and on an island in the middle stood a series of desks which held smaller, but equally bus
y
machines.

This was like something out of the Flash Gordon films where an evil being from another planet comes to take over Earth.

The look of humor faded from the red-haired man’s eyes and lines deepened in his forehead. He looked really, really worried. “Now Jillian,” he said, “you can tell me what’s really going on.”

Chapter Twenty
One

The speaking face of the woman he loved pulsed at the edge of his consciousness, but Philippe
d
e Beauvois hadn’t time to mourn his loss. He had to be everywhere, checking fortifications and seeing to his men as they operated the most powerful artillery that the United States possessed
here and at this time
.

The effort being undertaken by the coalition of Americans from natives to New Orleans Creoles was seriously underwritten by his buccaneers and their guns. The fate of the new nation with only its few decades of
existence hung in the balance during these few days and with Jean
Lafitte
out of the picture, he had to do his best to fill his friend’s boots.

The redcoats with their formal, European idea of warfare, gentlemen’s war as they thought of it, were being mowed down this morning by the fire from the big guns while Jackson’s riflemen from Kentucky and Tennessee, raised from boyhood to be the best shots in the world, were picking off the rest.

Still the losses to the Americans were
bad enough
as well as the slaughter went on and Philippe saw the loss of
more than one
old friend.

In the mid-morning when a party of the Britishers broke though the lines, their onward rush purchased by scores of the lives of their fellows, came running at them, Philippe heard his first mate shout a warning and then felt an explosion engulf him. “This is it,” he thought as he fell. The American cause was as good as lost without a leader for the privateers, he thought, more afraid for his new country than for himself. And then, before he could analyze matters further, blackness swept him away.

Waking up was so painful that he almost wished he hadn’t survived. Thirst was his ruling need, but his head throbbed as though he
was
being regularly struck by a hammer and his left leg ached fiercely.