Leopard in Exile (35 page)

reconstruct the ancient ritual, and the land would never accept a regicide.

"D'Charenton means to make himself king?" Illya said. "Of
this
land?" But what, if anything, did this have

to do with what Talleyrand had sent d'Charenton to do?

"I know—I 'ave tol' him, me, dat dis will no' work. But 'e say, dat
diable
, dat he get de
Voudou

Magnian
to speak for him to de Ian' spirits, an he will mak' de sacrifice which will work wit'out fail."

"When will he make the sacrifice? Where?"

"In de Congo, on de Day of de Dead. But Jean 'ave de
cher p'tit
safe in Gran' Terre. 'Charenton wan'

him fo' de deaf, an' he mak de bargain wid Jean dat he will ransom him an' let de pirates go free, but

Jean, he wan' to rule Louisianne, an' he fink he kill 'Charenton instead, so dey fence, lak two ol' bull

gator."

The complicated plot, delivered in this garbled and native patois, was starting to make Illya's head spin.

But there was one thing he was clear upon. D'Charenton meant to sacrifice a human being to gain his

power over the land, and there was only one sacrifice which could bestow it upon him—or upon any

man—now.

Louis. The lost Dauphin, now king in exile.

Suddenly Wessex's actions became terribly clear. At the end of their last mission to France, Wessex had

let King Louis go. Louis' uncle, the Abbé de Condé, had married him to Lady Meriel before they had

disappeared, obviously heading for the only place on earth in which they might be safe: the New World.

Somehow d'Charenton had tracked them here. He had schemed to gain the governorship of Louisianne

in order to have a stronghold from which to act. The talk of Hallows with which he had deceived

Tallyrand must be no more than a smoke-screen over d'Charenton's true ambitions.

But somehow the young lovers had managed to get word of their plight to the Duchess. The Duchess had

come to the New World to aid them, Wessex being elsewhere, and Wessex had followed her. No

wonder he had been seeking Sarah in Baltimore so desperately, if he knew she was embroiled in

d'Charenton's plot!

"This," he said inadequately, "is very bad."

"I mus' go," "Momus" said, taking a step backward.

"Wait!" Illya said. "You must tell me—"

But "Momus" was gone. He had vanished right before Illya's eyes, fading into the twilight swamp as

though he were a creature born of the mist itself.

Charles Corday hurried through the bayou toward the river road where Remy Thibodeaux waited with

his horse. The mask of Momus was clutched in his hand, and he cursed his evil luck roundly.

The thrice-damned
Anglais
had sent him one of the two men who might recognize "Gambit" Corday on

sight, and if the mad hussar was here, could the icewater
Due de Anglais
be far absent? If they realized

Momus' true identity, they would doubt his motives, and Gambit had never been so passionately sincere

in his life.

D'Charenton and Lafitte—his beloved Louisianne was truly caught between the devil and the deep blue

sea. Each wanted to rule here as king, and between them they would tear
la belle Louisianne
to pieces,

and the scraps to be licked up by English dogs who would drive Gambit's people from their homes once

more. Between them they would kill the only man who could rule his poor homeland with the consent of

all her people.

He reached the road. Thibodeaux stood holding the horse's head, a lantern in his free hand. Moths

swirled about it like smoke. Corday had to ride all the way back into the city tonight to dance attendance

upon d'Charenton so that his afternoon's errand would not be suspected, and afterward, he had an

appointment outside of town—one that he dared not miss, for it was to crown Sanité Dédé's successor

as
la Reine de Voudou
.

"It go well, hahn?" Thibodeaux asked, holding the stirrup so Corday could mount.

The Acadian assassin merely groaned. "Tib, it could no' go more bad if it try wid bot' han's for a week."

Had he known Gambit's sentiments, Illya Koscuisko would have echoed them fervently. He stood in one

of the first-floor bedrooms of The Clouds gazing around himself. He had already searched all the other

rooms on this floor, but the items missing from Wessex's trunk told the story with an economical

eloquence that left Illya no need to conduct a search.

The damned cold-blooded Englishman was gone.

Just when I have the one piece of information that could bind our interests irrevocably together
,

Illya thought, sitting down on the bed. His hat tipped forward, and he grabbed it and flung it savagely

across the room, the gesture doing little to relieve his feelings.

Wessex had done a moonlight flit. He might be anywhere by now—and to raise the view halloo for him

would spook Baronner mightily, losing Illya his vital base of operations.

No. He had to let Wessex run, and hope the Duke didn't end with his hide nailed to the door by some

overeager lamplighter. Meanwhile, he had to find out where Grand Terre was, get some reliable maps,

and somehow infiltrate it, preferably within the next day or so. Once he had Louis—and whoever else

Lafitte was holding—safe, he could try to stop the rest of d'Charenton's ceremony.

Providing, of course, he could figure out what his contact meant by its taking place in the Congo on the

Day of the Dead.

And before he did any of those things, he had to dress for dinner and think up some plausible tale to

account for Wessex's absence. Swearing softly to himself in French—a good language for

swearing—Illya drew off his gloves and began to unknot his cravat.

The night was thoroughly established, melodious with the night-sounds of frogs and owls, when Wessex

crept circumspectly from his refuge. The Clouds was ablaze with light, every window filled with a

profligacy of candles, their light casting squares of green brightness upon the dark-shadowed lawn. The

servants were in their cabins, or serving in the great house. There would be no one to see him go.

Moving quickly and quietly, Wessex made his escape. The road was smooth and broad, the product of

that same enslaved labor that created so much of the elegance of Louisianne. Even without much

light—for the moon was waning, and would be full dark in a few days—progress along the broad smooth

road was easy. For a mile or so directly along The Clouds' frontage, the surface was white sand,

imported from some unimaginable distance. Afterward, the road reverted to the red clay of Louisianne,

but it was still obviously a well-traveled thoroughfare of far better quality than anything England could

boast.

We shall see how long this endures once Louisianne no longer has slaves to toil for her
, Wessex

thought to himself. He had seen no sign of the unrest that Misbourne had predicted once news of the

Anti-Slavery Bill had been disseminated, but was willing to concede that he simply had not looked in the

right places. It was unimaginable that men would wish to remain slaves with freedom so close, or that the

Louisiannes, who considered their slaves property, not men, would stand by tamely and watch them run

off.

His meditations came to an abrupt halt when he saw a light twinkling in the far distance. Wessex headed

toward it, careful to keep to the road. Distances could be deceptive in the dark, and he had no desire to

find himself chasing will-o'-the-wisps all night.

But the light proved more elusive than it had first seemed, and the Duke was just about to abandon his

search for its source when the sound of the drums began.

The sound was muffled by the trees—which was why he had not heard it until now—and at first he

thought his ears were playing tricks on him, but as he drew level with the light the sounds came to him

plainly. Two drums, perhaps three, their deep voices weaving a complex pattern around each other. It

became stronger as he listened to it, as if his hearing were attuning itself to the call of the drums, and

beneath the pagan cadence Wessex fancied he could sense the same desperate tide of blood-fever that

had driven the
mobile
in the days of the Terror.

He was not sure what this might be, but he would rather investigate it than leave an unexplored mystery at

his back. When he drew level with the flickering light, Wessex turned off the road and started toward it.

As he drew closer, he saw that it was not one light, but two—two large bonfires set out here in the

middle of the swamp. They were set as far apart as might constitute the size of a large room, forty feet or

so, and the space between them was bare of vegetation, beaten down as though it were often used as a

dancing-floor. There were almost sixty people gathered here between the heat of the two fires—the

women with their heads covered by calico tignons the men with a sort of white scarf tied about their

brows. One of the provisions of the Black Code was that the women of color, especially the
placées
,

must have their heads covered by a scarf at all times. Their clothing varied from the rags of the field

slaves to the elegant French confections of the notorious
placées
, the "serpent-women" of

Nouvelle-Orléans, and as Wessex continued to observe, he realized that some of those he had taken for

octoroons were in fact Creoles or French.

The drumming Wessex had heard came from an enormous drum laid on its side. A young Negro sat

astride it, drumming with two sticks upon the painted sheepskin head between his knees. On either side

of the enormous cylinder sat a man and a woman, beating on the drum's wooden ribs with what looked

like the leg bones of some large animal.

At the far side of the clearing, directly opposite Wessex's concealed position, a long table had been set

up. At one end of the table stood a black cat, and at the other end, a white one. Between the two cats

were a sort of tree or bush in a small pot, a couple of calabashes and a statue about three feet high. It

was shaped after the fashion of one of the saint's statues the Catholics used, but it wore bright cloth

garments—lovingly embroidered and beaded with cryptic symbols—and its face and hands were

coal-black. Around its neck the statue wore an elaborate necklace of animal bones and teeth.

It took Wessex several minutes of watching to determine that the cats were both stuffed, and while his

attention was elsewhere, the drummers stopped.

The silence that followed was absolute. The drummer walked toward the table, reached out toward the

doll, and—Wessex could not see precisely how, for the two fires gave scant illumination—suddenly there

was an enormous snake coiled about his hand and forearm. As he brandished the serpent, a young

woman—Creole or octoroon, Wessex could not decide—strode forth from among the worshippers and

began to dance with me young man and the snake in a complete and surreal silence.

Wessex was not-at-all certain of the import of what he was seeing. It did not seem to have any of the

hallmarks of d'Charenton's brand of diabolism, for there were no Christian symbols present to be

degraded. It seemed in fact to be a sort of cousin to the English witch-cult, practiced by the

slaves—inevitable, for though Louisiana was a Catholic land, the Black Code forbid the teaching of

Christianity to the slaves as well as forbidding them to practice the religions of their birthplace.

In any event, what went on here was nothing to do with him, for the simple reason mat Wessex could see

no way to turn it to his purpose. He would wait until the covering sound of the drums resumed, and then

make his escape.

But as he waited, he could not help but watch.

Now the man was passing the serpent over the heads and bodies of the gathered worshippers while the

woman spun in a strange sensual dance of her own. She had in her hand one of the calabashes from the

makeshift altar and Wessex could see drops of a pale liquid sparkle in the firelight as she showered the

calabash's contents upon the assembly as she danced. The weight of expectation was almost palpable,

and occasionally, now, sharp cries of anticipation would break forth from the waiting congregation.

He had been wrong to wait. Better to go now and risk detection than to stay and face what was so

obviously being summoned here. With difficulty, Wessex drew his eyes away from the scene and looked

back the way he had come. The bayou night seemed much darker now, and he blinked, trying to clear

his eyes of the fire-dazzle. He had the worrying sense that he had watched the ritual much longer than he

knew, and had somehow allowed himself to become enchanted by it.

And as he moved, one of the shadows moved with him.

Wessex stopped, sensing danger, and then sprang in the direction of the road, seeking to outrace

whatever guardian he had disturbed. Behind him, the drums commenced once more with renewed fury.

For a few moments the Duke led his pursuer on a wild chase through the trees, until at last he reached a

clearing he remembered seeing on his way into the bayou. He stopped, turning to face his attacker.

There was no one there.

For an instant, Wessex wondered if either his eyes or his nerves had played him false. But no. There
had

been a watcher, though it seemed now to have fled. Or if it were some sort of spirit, perhaps he had left

the area it was set to guard. He took a moment to re-orient himself, and then began walking quickly and