The Emerald Storm (21 page)

Yes, I’d capture Martel, retrieve Astiza, castrate Rochambeau, flee to Dessalines, find the treasure, get the emerald, and somewhere along the way rescue my son.

I hurried back to the library, swung the bookcase open once more, and made my way down the private passageway to the pantry. The same servant as before intercepted me.

“Monsieur? It’s not yet time for Jubal.”

“I need to get upstairs first, but the main way is guarded.”

“Strictly forbidden during celebrations. General Rochambeau entertains in private.”

“My wife is up there.”

He looked sympathetic. “The general can be very seductive.”

“No, she’s captive against her will.” I doubted this was entirely true, but I needed his help. “A husband has rights.”

“And Rochambeau has sentries, does he not? It is impossible.”

“I need you to get me up a secret way behind the guards. There must be a servants’ stair.”

“Also guarded.” He hesitated, however. He knew an alternative.

“Then we flee with Jubal to help liberate Haiti,” I promised. “No one will know your role until victory, when you’ll be a hero.”

He frowned. “If they suspect, they’ll feed me to their dogs.”

“If we succeed, there soon will be no more dogs, and no more French. No more whips, and no more manacles.”

He swallowed, taking courage. “We’ve a hoist to bring food above. The idea came from your own president, Jefferson. A sea captain brought drawings from Virginia. Perhaps you can fit inside.”

I clapped his shoulder. “Good man. Rochambeau is probably drunk, and his men half-asleep. I’ll find her without a peep, and we’ll slip away as silently as deer.” Or bury some steel in the general’s head, but why alarm my new confederate?

As the slave turned to lead me, I slipped a kitchen cleaver into my breeches beneath the back of my coat. I realized how naked I felt unarmed, which had been my state since escaping the pirates of Tripoli. I must commission another rifle, but no time for that now.

The contraption the slave proposed to hoist me in was like a cupboard, and it took some grunting and flexing to fold myself in. Lord, it’s a nuisance getting older, and my mid-thirties is a stiff march from my teens. It didn’t help that I had the cleaver blade to be wary of. I took care not to cut a slice out of myself.

“When the hoist stops, climb out,” the slave instructed. “If they find you in the dumbwaiter, they’ll stick you like a pig with bayonets so as not to disturb the party with gunshots.”

“Saves powder, too.” I saluted from where I lay curled. “Don’t worry, I don’t intend to disturb the festivities a whit. I’ll slink about like a ghost.”

“Just don’t become one, monsieur.”

A door closed, and I was in darkness. Then with a lurch I felt myself ascending, helpless as a goose folded into an oven. I just prayed that Astiza wasn’t gaily descending the stairs, looking for me, as I rose to look for her.

The dumbwaiter stopped, and I pushed to get out. The cabinet door, I realized too late, was latched from the other side. I was locked in. No doubt my fellow conspirator hadn’t remembered that. Or had he, and I’d squeezed myself into a trap?

I considered signaling to go down again, but I had no way to do so. With no better course I wedged my feet against the hoist and pushed against the door. Wood groaned but didn’t give.

It was hot, and short of air.

So I shrank into myself as much as I could, planted my boots, and launched against the door. The latch snapped with a crack, splinters flew, and my momentum carried me out onto a wood-plank hallway. I landed with a whoof and a clump.

So much for creeping.

“C’est quoi?”
One of the sentries, not as sleepy as I’d hoped, was trotting my way. I rolled to one side and, when he rounded the corner, tripped him and sprang. He fell, musket clattering, and I jumped on top of him and brought the handle of the cleaver down on his temple. He stilled. I’d no desire to murder, just to get my wife away from the lecher in chief. Unfortunately, the other guard likely heard the noise. Time to hurry!

I sprang up, got my bearings from our earlier visit to Rochambeau’s office, and trotted to what I guessed was the bedroom door, gripping the cleaver while realizing I should have grabbed the musket. The speed of events was confusing me, and it didn’t help I was lubricated with rum punch. Ah, well. The kitchen utensil was a bit like my familiar tomahawk. Why hadn’t I ordered a new one of those, too?

Well, because I was married and a father, quietly retired, a squire of sleepy scholarship and prudent investment.

Rochambeau’s chamber was unlocked. I slipped inside and looked for my wife. I’d only seconds before the next sentry followed me. The bedroom was dim, a single candle, tropical moonlight falling through open French doors. And there on a bed behind gauze mosquito curtains, a woman rode our Casanova commander. Her back was arched, breasts high, hair tumbling to her splayed buttocks, the man beneath her grunting as she made soft cries.

Astiza! It was as if a lance went in.

I knew she was desperate to get news of Harry. But to be betrayed so soon in our marriage, and humiliated so completely, a gaping cuckold, cut me to the quick. I mentally cursed the awful dilemma Martel’s scheme had put me in, and the desperation my wife had been driven to. Rochambeau must suffer!

So I lifted the cleaver and charged. With a savage tug I ripped the bed curtain down and reached for Astiza’s dark hair to heave her off the commander. She screamed.

Rochambeau looked at me in amazement. The cleaver gleamed.

And then I realized I was not yanking on Astiza at all.

It was one of the bastard’s other seductions, her chest flushed, mouth open in confusion and fear, twisting her neck to relieve my grasp on her hair.

Where was my wife?

Behind me the door of the chamber crashed open and a sentry burst in. “Stop right there! Who are you?” His musket came up, the bayonet aimed at our frozen ménage à trois.

“Don’t shoot me, you idiot!” General Rochambeau cried.

I released the tart and shoved her down at the general, who was reaching for a pistol on a nightstand. Damnation, where was my wife? I sprang for the French doors and the balcony before there was a bang, and a musket ball hummed by my neck. I was in it now!

“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-François 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.

The wagon rolled faster.