Untamed (5 page)

“Morgan!”

He recognized Connor’s voice and saw his brother emerge from the forest at a run, Killy, Forbes, and McHugh behind him.

“No, Connor! Stop!” From somewhere nearby Morgan heard the tromp of hundreds of boots and knew the gates of the fort had been thrown open. Were the French planning a counterattack? “I am lost already! Get the men out of here!”

Even in the dark, he could see the anguish and horror on his brother’s face as Connor realized he would not be able to reach him in time to keep him from the swarming French.

His strength all but spent, Morgan met Connor’s tormented gaze, his chest swelling with regret, grief, love. So long they’d been together, the four of them—Morgan, Iain, Connor, Joseph. And now…

Gathering all his breath, Morgan shouted.
“Beannachd leat!”

Blessings go with you, brother!

And dinnae mourn me overlong. Tell little Iain—

But Morgan never finished the thought.

The last thing he heard before darkness claimed him was Connor’s anguished cry.

Chapter 2

A
malie crawled out of bed early the next morning after a fitful sleep, dawn peeking through her window, the night’s shadows still clinging to her mind. She poured water from a porcelain pitcher into its matching bowl and splashed her face, the water’s chill helping to wash away her weariness and her lingering sense of dread. Although last night’s fighting had ended quickly and the enemy had been driven away, war had followed her into her dreams, her slumber troubled by cannon fire, dying men, and that terrible, haunting cry.

It had risen out of the forest like the howl of demons, sending chills down her spine, making her blood run cold.

“It is the Mahican war cry,” Bourlamaque had told her, seeing her fear. “The Abenaki have one very similar. Have you never heard it?”

“N-no, monsieur,” she’d answered.

He’d looked down at her for a moment, seeming to consider her. “I forget that you’ve never actually lived amongst your mother’s people.”

Then he’d dismissed her, sending her to her room to await the outcome of the skirmish, while he’d gone with his officers.

Determined to put the night and its fears behind her, Amalie dried her face with a linen towel, then sat on her bed, loosed her braids, and began to work out the tangles from her hair. The
mère supérieure
had tried many times to get her to cut her locks, but Amalie had steadfastly refused—not her only rebellion. Unable to understand why God should care how long her hair was, she’d resisted even when she’d been warned that pride was a grave sin.

“A woman should be humble in all she does, Amalie,” the
mère supérieure
had scolded. “Such willfulness endangers your soul.”

Amalie had tried to explain that her long hair was but a way of knowing her mother, a way of being close to her. Though she could not remember her mother, her father had told her many times how her mother’s dark tresses had hung to her knees.

“Like a river of black silk,” he’d said.

But the
mère supérieure
had brushed this aside, saying it was far better for Amalie to know God than the woman who’d borne her. It had taken a letter from Amalie’s father to decide the matter, though the
mère supérieure
had required her to wear her hair up lest its beauty stir envy in the hearts of the other girls.

Of course, the other girls hadn’t envied Amalie at all, but had teased her about her darker skin and the strange color of her eyes—neither green nor brown but both. The few times she’d seen her Abenaki
cousines
—her female cousins—they’d done the same in reverse, calling her pale, laughing at her eyes, and teasing her about her hair, which was more brown than black and hung not straight and smooth like her mother’s, but in tendrils.

Amalie did not resent their teasing, for she could see for herself that what they said was true. She
was
different. Her mother had been half Abenaki, Amalie but a quarter. Her features were neither French nor Indian. She was truly as her mother had named her—Child of Twilight.

“In her eyes, you were neither day nor night, sun nor stars, but a mingling of both,” Papa had explained.

Sweet heaven, how she missed him!

Fighting a sudden pricking of tears, Amalie shifted her thoughts to the day ahead. If she hurried, she might be able to weed Bourlamaque’s garden before the sun grew too warm. She braided her hair and tied it up with the blue silk ribbon her father had given her, then slipped into her stockings and petticoats. She would have liked to go without her stays, but Bourlamaque did not tolerate undress at his breakfast table. She left them loose instead, then pulled on her gray linen gown. She had just opened her bedroom door when shouting erupted from downstairs.

“It goes against my conscience as a surgeon and a Catholic! If you wished him to die, why did you bring him to me? Better to have let him perish where he lay!”

Amalie recognized the voice as that of the fort’s surgeon, Monsieur Lambert.

“I do not wish him to die!” Bourlamaque spat out each word. “I wish him to live so that I can wrest from him all he knows! I cannot interrogate a dead man!”

“You do not mean only to interrogate him. That I could understand and condone. You mean to hand him over to the Abenaki, who will burn him alive!”

Chills skittered down Amalie’s spine at the thought of anyone suffering such a fate, even an enemy.

“Have you forgotten the number of Frenchmen and Abenaki these men have slain or the Abenaki village they destroyed two winters past or the supply wagons they’ve pillaged, stealing medicines you needed to treat our men?”

Amalie felt her pulse leap.

They had captured one of MacKinnon’s Rangers?

Captured and gravely wounded, it seemed.

And then she understood.

Monsieur de Bourlamaque wished the Ranger to live so that he might learn his secrets and give the Abenaki their promised chance at vengeance, but Monsieur Lambert clearly wanted no part of it, afflicted at the notion of saving a man’s life only to hand him over to torture and death.

“I’ve forgotten nothing!” Monsieur Lambert’s voice shook. “But I took an oath to heal men, not to harm them!”

“Then heal him!” Bourlamaque’s shout made Amalie jump, his words booming through the little house. “What befalls him when he leaves your care is a military matter and none of your affair!”

For a moment there was silence.

Although she knew Monsieur de Bourlamaque was doing his duty, Amalie found herself feeling pity for Monsieur Lambert. On the one hand, healing this Ranger and turning him over to Bourlamaque would save French lives, appease an important French ally, perhaps helping to win the war. On the other, saving the man’s life so that he might suffer torment surely went against all a doctor was trained to do.

And what would you do, Amalie?

Would she have been able to tend the Ranger’s wounds, ease his pain, and calm his fever, knowing she was sparing him for the cruelest of deaths?

She wanted to think that she would. The Rangers had killed her father, after all. They had destroyed her grandmother’s village and sown terror in the forest. But the very thought of saving a man so that he might perish in flames made her stomach knot.

In truth, she did not know what she would do.

“Very well, monsieur, I shall do my best to save his life,” Monsieur Lambert said at last. “But know this—I will treat him with the same diligence I would any officer. I will not deprive him of laudanum as Lieutenant Rillieux demands, nor will I suffer your soldiers to abuse him.”

“I expected no less,
mon ami
. Leave young Rillieux to me. But how do we know this man is truly Morgan MacKinnon?”

“One of our partisans claims to have met him and recognized him, and when I spoke the name, he opened his eyes.”

Not just a Ranger, but their leader!

And then Amalie understood why it was so important that he survive.

“If you need anything—”

“I should like Mademoiselle Chauvenet’s help in tending him once I’ve removed the balls from his leg and shoulder. He is shackled and greatly weakened, so she will be in no danger. She speaks the English tongue and has a deft hand at healing, and I fear my young attendants harbor too great a hatred for these Rangers to care for him reliably.”

“Consider it done.”

Whatever else they said was lost beneath the din of Amalie’s heartbeat as it thundered in her ears. One hand clasped over her mouth, she closed her door, and leaned against it, stunned.

Bourlamaque had just given her over to care for a man he had consigned to death.

And not just any man.

The leader of MacKinnon’s Rangers himself.

M
organ drifted between agony and oblivion. He’d known when French soldiers carried him into the fort. He’d known when they’d realized who he was, shouting his name and cheering as if they’d taken a great prize. He’d known when they’d stripped him bare, shackled him, and called their surgeon to probe his wounds.

“Il a perdu beaucoup de sang. Ses blessures sont profondes. Il pourrait bien mourir.”

He’s lost a lot of blood. His wounds are deep. He might well die.

Morgan understood their words, and he welcomed death. He knew well what would happen to him should he survive. ’Twas far better to die now, his blood spilled upon the floor, than to perish in the fires of the Abenaki, his torment stretched over unending days.

Aye, he feared so terrible and painful a death. What man would not? But more than pain itself, he feared that the flames might prove fiercer than his courage, loosing his tongue, overthrowing his mind, breaking him so that he betrayed his brothers and the Rangers.

And that he could not do.

If there’d been any hope for escape, he’d have seized it and fought his way out like a man—or died trying. But shackled hand and foot and this close to death, he’d never get out of bed, let alone out of the fort.

Hadn’t he always known this day would come? Aye, he had. But if a MacKinnon had to die, ’twas far better that it be him than Iain or Connor.

If only there were a priest…

He let himself drift, relinquishing his soul to God.

But the French were not going to let him go so easily. They forced laudanum down his throat and thrust a leather strap between his teeth. It was not out of mercy for him that they did these things. They were simply trying to heal his body so they could pry into his mind.

“Bite down,” their surgeon said in heavily accented English.

Too weak from loss of blood to fight them and chained to the little bed, Morgan spat out the strap, his pain turning to rage. “Save your blade for another! I dinnae want your help!”

The surgeon looked down at him, his blue eyes troubled, Morgan’s blood already on his hands. “That is not for you to decide, Major MacKinnon.”

Rough hands forced the strap back into his mouth and held him down as the surgeon raised his knife.

The pain was staggering, far worse than Morgan had imagined. The shock of it drove the breath from his lungs, turned his stomach, made his entire body jerk. He felt his chains draw tight, iron biting into his ankles and wrists.

Holy Jesus God!

He clenched his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut, fought not to cry out as the surgeon cut into his chest, searching. A cold sweat broke out on his brow, the moment wearing on until he was aware of nothing but pain. He felt his body arch, as with one last excruciating tug the ball was pulled free.

Darkness dragged at the corners of his mind, drew him down.

But it didn’t last.

The surgeon cleaned the wound with brandy, the deep, fiery burn a new kind of torment. Then he stitched it, applied a stinking poultice, and wrapped Morgan’s shoulder with linen strips.

By the time the surgeon had finished, Morgan felt strangely euphoric. Perhaps he’d gone daft. Or perhaps the laudanum was now at its full strength.

Then the surgeon moved to Morgan’s right thigh, and the ordeal began anew.

“Il faudra peut-être amputer sa jambe.”

Through a haze of pain, Morgan understood.

They were trying to decide whether to cut off his leg.

A bolt of fear surged from his gut, lodged in his chest.

Fàilte dhuit, a Mhuire, a tha làn de ghràsa…

Hail Mary, full of grace…

But even as his mind sought for the sacred words, pain swamped him and sent him hurtling into forgetfulness.

A
malie looked down at the unconscious prisoner and tried her best to
hate
him.

He and his men had killed Papa and hundreds more—nine this past night alone. A dozen soldiers lay battered and bleeding just beyond this room because of them. They’d slain dozens of Abenaki men, leaving women, children, and elders to starve. They’d turned the forest around Lac Saint-Sacrement into a trail of death, evading every trap laid for them.

Until now.