Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (162 page)

“Hold!” he called, his voice ringing with shrill virulence. “That’s as far as you go!”

“What is the meaning of this?” Captain Bonhomme growled, coming to a halt in a flurry of sand.

“My men and I,” Valcour shouted, “have first call on the boats! Or perhaps I should say, the only call.”

“Name of a name, you treacherous dog! This is mutiny.”

“Why, so it is, my good captain. How intelligent of you to recognize it. You will be so kind, all of you, to lay down your weapons.”

“The devil we will! Look you, man. Can’t you see our only chance is to get to the ship? The Spanish dons will hang us all, men and woman, if you leave us marooned here!”

“Yes, with one exception. I wish I could remain to see it, but my men and I must depart.”

“You can’t get away with this,” Morgan said, pushing forward with Félicité at his side. “There are more of us than there are of you. We can surround you.”

“The first man who moves,” Valcour cut across the words, “is dead.”

At that moment, a sailor at the end of the line shifted, reaching for his pistol. Without the flicker of an eyelid, Valcour fired. The seaman screamed, falling writhing to the ground. In seconds he was still.

“I did warn him. Death now or later, it’s all one to me.” There was emptiness behind Valcour’s yellow-brown eyes as he dropped his now useless pistol. “But as I was saying, only the men shall hang.”

Before she could move, before anyone saw his intent, her brother lunged toward Félicité and clamped a hand on her wrist, dragging her across the stretch of beach that lay between the two groups. As Morgan jumped after them, Valcour whirled with leveled sword. Morgan came up short, his green eyes blazing.

“That’s right, back down,” Valcour said on an exultant laugh. “As much as I would enjoy running you through, I think it would be too easy an end. I prefer you to be tried and hanged by your Spanish masters. So fitting, don’t you agree, and so amusing for Félicité.”

Valcour spun her wrist, twisting it behind her back so she was brought up, white-faced with pain, against him. One of the mutineers growled something, and Valcour nodded in agreement.

“As my friend here pointed out, we waste time. Gentlemen, your weapons? Carefully now. What a shame it would be if anything went off and hit my dear sister.”

It seemed at a glance that most of the men who had thrown in their lot with Valcour were, as might have been expected, from the Raven, the most villainous and hardened of the lot, the ones most likely to act without compunction if the order that had been given was not soon obeyed. Bast, his brown eyes fastened on Félicité, was the first man to bend and put down his primed pistol, placing it with care so the weapon would not discharge accidentally, then laying his sword on top.

“Valcour, you can’t do this,” Félicité said, finding her voice, forcing the words through the tightness in her throat.

“Can’t I?” he sneered. “I would have thought you would thank me for the invitation to join us, instead of objecting to our methods. I am sorry I have to use you as a hostage for the good behavior of the others, particularly Morgan, but that is the fortune of war.”

“You can’t leave so many to die!”

“Why not? I have done worse, my dear, believe, me.” Narrowly he watched the men before him.

“Then I beg you to leave me here, too. Please, Valcour, I ask in the name of my father.”

“Your father? Why should you think I would be, moved by a plea in his name, me chère? I had no reverence for the man who adopted me; more than that, I despised him. But I paid him back in the end for his years of patronizing me, of reminding me at every turn of my dependence on his charity, and of how fair I fell below his expectations of what I should be. On the day he died, he regretted his slights most bitterly, I do assure you.”

“What-what do you mean?” she asked, watching with sickness as Captain Bonhomme, his Latin eyes dark, dropped his cutlass and pistol along with, the others.

“Why, Félicité,” haven’t you guessed? I was so certain you must have! It was I who told Olivier Lafargue of your cohabitation with the former Lieutenant Colonel McCormack, of the way you were spreading your legs, ruining yourself so that he might live. What else could he do, being your father, except take his own life to wipe out the dishonor and free you from such base servitude?”

Anguish shafted in her as she thought of her father alone in prison, faced with such grievous knowledge, such a loss of regard for her. What shame and despair he must have felt, what impotence as he sought to find a way to help her, before he had taken his final decision! “How could you, Valcour? How could you?” she whispered.

“It was easy. A few words in a note, a coin to the guard, and it was done. It was I, in reality, who set you free. You should be grateful. I cut, the cord that held you to New Orleans, sliced away the encumbrances so we could start a new life. We can still have it, too, in France, when we have money enough to take our rightful position at court.”

“You are mad!” Félicité said. Morgan was putting down his arms now, with the same care as Bast, the last man to do so. There was a white line about his mouth under the brown of his skin as he watched Félicité and the man who held her. As he came slowly erect again, she saw his pistol lay butt first, toward her. She met his emerald gaze, saw his almost imperceptible nod, and realized she alone could help herself. The others dared not for fear of the danger to her. Moreover, of them all, she was the only one Valcour and his men might hesitate to kill.

“Mad, am I?” Valcour laughed, and paused to indicate with a wave of his sword for his men to begin gathering up the weapons. “Mad? Hardly. I was sane enough to trade what I knew of the conspiracy and the men who indulged in it for my own freedom. Sane enough to escape the net that caught them, just as I will escape this one.”

“You speak as if you were innocent, but you weren’t. You were as guilty as the men who died, maybe more so!” His grip was looser as he began to move backward toward the longboat, pulling her with him, as he explained his cleverness. If she could only keep him talking, act as a drag upon him as she stumbled, barely moving; anything to delay him. There were as yet a few pistols left on the ground amid the confused movement of the mutineers as they picked up dropped weapons.

“Was I? It doesn’t matter. I wasn’t stupid enough to stay around, and I fooled the Spanish, got away clean even though I was the most wanted, most hunted man in the colony. They couldn’t touch me then, and they won’t touch me now.”

She jerked her arm free then, driving the point of her elbow into her brother’s wounded side. He gasped, yelping with pain as he released her. She dived, rolling, coming up with Morgan’s pistol. As she leveled it at Valcour’s chest, he stopped abruptly in his rush after her, spreading his arms wide, easing back.

If he had had a pistol he might have killed her, so violent was the rage in his eyes. As it was, the reach of his sword was not enough. “Now,” she said on a deep breath, speaking into the abrupt stillness, “drop your sword.”

Valcour smiled, a curling of the lips that did not reach his eyes. “I can do that, but it won’t make a difference. My men care nothing for my death, and you have only one shot. They have no choice now but to carry through with the plan. To be hanged by the Spanish, or hanged by the captain there as mutineers — those are their only options otherwise.”

“They can go without you then.” At her words, there was a rumble of agreement among his followers, and they began to back slowly toward the boats once more. A few were close enough to fling the awkward extra weapons they carried inside and, grasping the gunwales, drag the longboats into the water.

“You won’t shoot me, Félicité, not in cold blood, not without the goad of a fight beforehand. That’s not your way, heaven be praised. Put down that pistol and come with me. Choose life instead of hanging. I never meant that for you, truly. Know you now, Félicité, ma chère, that I do care for you in my own manner, as much as I am capable of caring for anyone or anything. If I did not, I would never have troubled myself to try to rescue you from Morgan that night in New Orleans, would never have bothered to return for you. If I tricked you into coming with me, or forced you by threat of degrading pain to help deceive your lover and take his ship, it was because you would not have done so, otherwise. And if I have hurt you it is because it is necessary for me, for without it I can never bring myself to possess any woman.”

His tone made it sound as if he considered his reasons for what he had done valid, as if they should make a difference. They did not.

She would not allow them to penetrate her hard resolve, though they sent a shiver of something like revulsion through her that was mirrored on her face. “If you believe I won’t shoot, try coming nearer.”

“Before God, Félicité, be reasonable,” he cried. “There is no time for this. Come!”

“Never!”

“Then die with your renegade lover and be damned!”

He spun around, leaping for the last of the longboats as his men pushed it into the water. Anger, cold and implacable, rose in Félicité. Holding the heavy pistol with both hands, she sighted in on Valcour and squeezed the trigger.

The weapon exploded with a mighty blast, kicking upward in recoil, but it was already pointing skyward, the barrel swept up by Morgan’s hand. The ball whistled harmlessly over Valcour’s head. Swinging around, his face black with rage, her brother cursed her.

“Let him go,” Morgan said, kneeling beside her. “You don’t want his blood on your hands.”

Perhaps he was right, perhaps she didn’t, and yet it would have been a satisfaction, some recompense for the losses she had sustained because of Valcour Murat.

Around her, the men left on the beach snatched up the one or two remaining pistols, firing after the fast-rowing pirates as they drew away. Splashing into the water, they shouted, yelled, cursed, flung sticks of wood and sea shells, all to no effect. The men in the boats pulled farther and farther out to sea, taking the weapons, the hopes, the chance of survival of the men on the island, leaving them marooned with nothing except the specter of harsh Spanish justice.

The babble of rage and blame, despair and fruitless plans died away. The Prudence lay with bare poles; there was no chance of getting her ready in under six hours of hard labor at least. She was useless then, and her boat had been on shore and was now gone. They had nothing with which to defend themselves other than a few knives and daggers, carpenter’s tools and hand spikes that would be useless against well-armed soldiery. The only thing left was to take to the woods, going into hiding, though the island was so small it would be only a matter of time before they were found and dragged one by one from their dens.

A few took the chance, sidling away, disappearing into the green shadows of the palm forests, but most stood where they were.

The bluff captain of the Prudence could be heard counseling his men, drawing them apart. Most of them, he said, were English by birth and recently taken by the pirates to boot. It should go easy with them, even the dons being able to understand the oaths men swear when the devil drives. They had only to tell the same tale, and like as not their ship with her cargo, the salted cod left uneaten by the pirates, would be returned to them, Spain and England being, for once, not at war with each other.

There was no such comfort for the others as they watched the mutineers swarm aboard the Black Stallion. With the frigates growing larger on the horizon, they could hear the shout of orders and squeal of the winches of the brigantine drawing her anchor free of the blue water. They saw the white sails unfurl beneath the yard-arms, dropping downward until the trades bellied them and the great fore and aft sail on the mainmast filled, the boom swinging wide. Sleekly, without apparent effort, the ship began to move out of the cove, leaving them behind with a fine kick of froth at her stern.

“He’s going to make it,” Captain Bonhomme said. “That whore-son is going to make it.”

But Morgan was watching the trees at the points of the cove, a frown drawing his thick brows together. “I think not.”

From around the curves of the cove, coming from opposite directions, their masts mingling with the tree trunks, were two war vessels, great ships of the line mounting more than two hundred guns between them.

“Sacre bleu!” the other man breathed, though it was difficult to tell whether in sorrow or gladness, as his gaze swung to follow Morgan’s sighting, then returned to the slender lines of the brigantine. Though the men on board were mutineers, they had also been his crew for many a long day and longer leagues of sea travel. That the men aboard the Black Stallion had seen them was plain from the scurrying to and fro and the angling of the guns.

Félicité drew in her breath as she recognized the danger.

“It may be they can still get away,” Bonhomme said, “if only they can clear this deathtrap of a harbor.”

“He’s going to try for it,” Morgan said, his voice quiet.

“He may as well. The brigantine has a shallower draft, right enough, and he could run back into the cove where the frigates and heavier ships could not follow, but the cannon of the Spanish are longer, with a greater weight and range. The dons can stand out to sea and smash him to flinders. Nay, he has to try for it, or else choose the rope.”

The Spanish ships converged, coming nearer and nearer the pirate vessel, until, squinting against the sun, it seemed to Félicité that a stone thrown from one deck could easily have hit the other. “Maybe,” she said slowly, “the Spaniards are not going to fire on him.”