Queen of Swords
Page 73

This informal assignment to Juzan’s company turned out to please Major General Jackson. He had distinct favorites among the various companies, and he liked Juzan’s Choctaws for their independence and their efficiency and, most of all, for their lack of fuss. Because, Luke concluded, Jackson was fed up with the Creole legislators who continued to plague him with their worries and their presumption on his time and attention. The Tennesseans, who bivouacked in ankle-deep mud and never complained about any duty, were more to his liking.
Juzan was the most reliable source Jackson had for information about the enemy’s actions, and he also had some of the best riflemen. Working in tandem with the Tennessee rifles, they picked off the sentries the British sent out to patrol the perimeters, and more than one careless officer. After two days of this, the British withdrew all their men and put a redoubt in their place. At that point, the Choctaws were happy to leave the matter to the Baratarians, who turned their attention and their artillery to putting the forward British guns out of commission.
“You may call those Baratarians pirates and banditti,” Nathaniel told his daughter. “But by God, they’ve got a feel for the big guns.”
Hannah said, “Elizabeth will never forgive me if you get killed fighting this war. No matter how much fun you have while you do it.”
Her father gave her a grim smile. “Elizabeth knew when we set out where we were headed and what the dangers were. We cain’t leave here until this whole mess is settled anyway, so we might as well help it along.”
Of course everyone was caught up in the war. Everyone she cared about, everyone precious to her in a five-hundred-mile radius. At night she dreamed all those people were marching past her, and usually Kit Wyndham was among them. She had no idea where he was, if he was even alive. And sometimes, she found herself wondering about Kit Wyndham, and if someday he would find himself on the wrong end of Nathaniel Bonner’s rifle.
Chapter 55
When their line had been cut in half and the batteries destroyed, when it was clear that the attempt to turn Jackson’s flank had failed, the order came. What remained of General Keane’s column was to fall back, out of reach of the guns of the Louisiana and the batteries. Away from the Chalmette buildings fired by Jackson himself, which had burned so hot and bright that for those few minutes it was possible to forget the damp cold of this place.
As Kit Wyndham prepared to run, a single volley from the direction of the river knocked more than a dozen men to the ground and he was spattered, once again, with blood and bone and shrapnel. Ears ringing, he blinked sweat out of his eyes and headed toward the canals. There was no choice available to them but to go through the swamp.
Ciprière, Kit reminded himself; they called this hellish confusion of water and mud and slime the ciprière. Submerged to his waist in the icy muck, fighting to stay on his feet and keep his weapons dry, Wyndham passed a sergeant who had died leaning on a cypress trunk. There was a gash to his cheek that exposed one yellow tooth. Kit took the man’s weapons—powder was as precious as blood—and moved on.
Men straggled along, three or four dozen, many wounded, all breathing like overworked bellows. Faces blackened by powder, eyes red-rimmed, grim of expression, Wellington’s veterans waded into an acre of reeds and there they stopped, ducking down to conceal themselves like boys playing hide-go-seek. Their caution was well grounded: The ciprière was where the snipe-shooters were most active. Dirty-shirts, they called the riflemen from Kentucky and Tennessee, hunters of men.
Crouched in the chilly water, shivering so that his teeth clattered, Kit discovered, with little surprise, a bullet fragment in the meat of his upper left arm. No pain yet, and only a little blood.
The man beside him, small and wiry with a pendulous lower lip, watched as Kit pried it out with the tip of his knife.
He said, “Tha were one of Wellington’s Exploring Officers, aye? I’ve heard tell of thee. Tha mun have done summat far wrong, to be out here with us rough ones. What was it?”
“I volunteered,” Kit said.
“Och,” said the old soldier with a grin. “Art tha seekin’ redemption by fire, or art tha pure daft?”
“A little of both,” said Kit, and found himself laughing.
Hungry, cold, in pain, covered with scratches and cuts, Kit came into camp at Villeré in the late afternoon and found a grim satisfaction in the fact of his own survival.
There was a thin stew of some unidentifiable meat and beans and chunks of slimy vegetable he recognized as okra. Kit sat with his bowl in his hands in front of a low and smoky fire, waiting for his feet to come back to life. The men around him talked freely of their frustration and anger and dissatisfaction. Affronted by Jackson’s tactics, they begrudged his men everything, from better food to more cannons and, most of all, another victory.
“Those bloody dirty-shirts,” said the Yorkshire man who had spoken to Kit in the ciprière. “But worse still are the pirates with the cannons.”
“Have you ever seen the like?” Another man shook his head in wonder.
“Damn them one and all to hell,” muttered someone from the shadows. “Of course they know how to use big guns. What are they but a band of thieves and slave-runners and smugglers?”
The Yorkshire man elbowed Kit. “Did tha meet any of yon pirates while tha were exploring on the other side?”
All eyes turned to Kit. He took a moment to finish his food, wiped his mouth with his hand.