Evermore: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 3) (41 page)

He was more interested in keeping his turban in place than
in kisses, but she finally won a smile from him, the first in days.

“Let me take you to Maman. I have to go to work.” She
carried him to Mrs. Brickell’s house, nibbling at his earlobe and tickling his
ribs. When he gave in and giggled, she felt the sun relieve the last dark
corner in her soul.

At the open air hospital, Nicolette flitted from one soldier
to another with cool water, tender hands, kind words. The doctor unpacked a
case of quinine from the Union supplies and she dosed the malarial patients
with assurances they would soon feel better.

“You’re all sunshiney, Miss,” a
soldier with a mending arm teased her. “You got yourself a feller?”

“Yes, sergeant, I have indeed.”

“Is it me?” the soldier next to him called out.

“Nah, it’s me, you jackass,” a third said.

“You all a bunch of fools. She’s been in love with me ever
since I got dragged in here. Ain’t you, Missy?”

Laughing, Nicolette leaned over and kissed the top of the
soldier’s head. “I am in love with every single one of you, and that’s the
truth.”

Nicolette spent the day tending sick and broken men, but a
waltz buzzed in her head as she soothed and cleaned and cheered her patients.

At sunset, Mrs. Brickell relieved her. “I left supper
setting out for you, honey. You go on back to the house and sit with your
beaux.”

She meant Alistair. He’d accepted her rejection as if it were
merely a temporary setback. He would appear at Mrs. Brickell’s front porch as
usual tonight, if the lull in the fighting lasted. She had let him to continue
to call, out of loneliness, out of indifference. She shouldn’t have allowed it.
Now she would have to hurt him all over again.

When Alistair arrived, the fireflies and the mosquitoes
animated the night air. Nicolette met him at the porch steps. “Will you walk
with me?”

They were nearly to the creek, their way lit by a half moon.
“If you’ve changed your mind, Nicolette, you’ve only to say the word.”

“Alistair, you are my dear friend, and I don’t want to
hurt you. But you must let me go.”

He stopped and turned her to face him. “This is what you
brought me out here to say? Give you up? Nicolette, I can wait. After the war,
when you’ve --”

“I’ve heard from him. The man I knew. A letter.”

“A letter,” he said dully. “How did you get a letter?”

Nicolette drew a deep breath. “Alistair, he still loves me.
And I’m in love with him.”

Alistair looked up at the moon, shriveling inside. He was
going to lose her.

“Will he marry you?”

Words do hurt, she thought. All the joy from Finn’s scrawled
note across the torn page -- “Come out with Corporal Peach. Finn. I love you” –
had hid a small nagging, niggling doubt.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice just above a whisper.

“I will marry you, Nicolette. Tomorrow. Tonight.”

“No,” she said.

Under cover of dark, braving rifle and artillery fire,
Alistair led his men in a sneaking approach to the enemy sap, the trench dug to
shield the Federals from Rebel fire as they ran in closer to the barricades.
His heart was a dead thing in his chest, but his mind was alert to every
cricket chirp or clink of a canteen. He saw his men, dark forms against black
earth, crawling over hummocks of dirt with great clarity, as if the starlight
illuminated the shadows as brightly as mid-day sun.

Alistair meant to die this night. But he would damage the
enemy, destroy and devastate and kill, until the moment arrived.

Alistair signaled four men to creep further to the right. He
motioned for another three to maneuver to the left.

At Alistair’s short sharp whistle, his men erupted into
their terrifying, stunning Rebel cry and swarmed into the sap. The Federals,
senses dulled by the noise and lulled into security by their own punishing
artillery, were completely unprepared for a reckless midnight raid outside the
fort.

Five minutes of close combat, and Alistair’s Rebels had the
sap. They cleared the trench of captives, then threw grenades up and down its
length, destroying a week’s worth of digging. Alistair retreated to the fort
with all of his men and half a dozen prisoners with their rifles.

He grabbed a few hours of fitful sleep, mosquitoes and heat
plaguing him less than Nicolette’s painful, final no. At dawn he woke to the
furious roar of artillery. He didn’t wait for orders. He roused his troops and
joined the rush of reinforcements heading toward the noise and flash at the
southwest corner of the fortifications.

As Alistair arrived, the Federals rushed through an intact
sap right up to the barricades.

A strong-armed Yank lobbed a grenade over the parapet. A
quick-witted Reb grabbed it up and heaved it back, the too-long fuse exploding
amid the attackers, shooting dirt into the air, hurling a man’s arm across the
embattled ground.

Adam Johnston and his unit rushed in at Alistair’s left,
their musketry loaded and ready. Adam slashed the air with his sword, the early
sun gleaming on the blade. “Onward!” he shouted. At the brink of the parapet,
his front line fired. Shouting, he directed the next row to fire into the
enemy, the front row kneeling to reload.

Across the yards of open ground, a second platoon of
blue-coats leapt out of the trenches and charged, bayonets at the ready.
Alistair plunged his bayonet into a Yankee’s ribs, snapping the blade off.
Heedless and fierce, he raised his rifle stock as a club and rushed into the
oncoming enemy.

All around, men lunged, stabbed, clubbed. The rhythm and the
abandonment of all but the killing seized Alistair in a kind of crazed joy as
he thrust, dodged, parried, and struck. He knew only the scent of cordite and
blood, the sight of grimaced faces, and the thud of his rifle stock smashing
into an enemy’s head.

“Fall back!” a Yankee captain yelled.

Alistair pursued, his long legs overtaking another soldier,
his rifle butt raised to bash at his head.

“Captain!” Alistair heard the word, but he dwelt only in the
moment, only in the blur of blue coats and the mindless heat of battle.
“Whiteaker!”

Club upraised, Alistair ran down a retreating foe, fear on
the Yank’s face as if he were pursued by a mad man. The Yankee twisted to avoid
Alistair’s rifle butt, brought his bayonet up and lunged for Alistair’s gut.

Before the bayonet connected, Alistair hit the ground hard.
The breath knocked out of him, he lay stunned. Then a gray-coat body fell on
top of him. Blood. So hot. Blood pouring from the man’s chest.

The fool! The man had taken the bayonet he’d wanted for
himself.

Air rushed back into Alistair’s lungs. He had to fight. He
had to kill. He had to end it now.

He shoved the body off and crawled out from under the man
pouring his life’s blood into the Mississippi soil.

Around him, open ground. The Yanks had retreated. There was
no one to fight.

His body slow and heavy, he looked down at the thief who’d
robbed him of the Yankee’s bayonet thrust. He bent to roll the wounded man
over. A man’s last sight should be of the sky, not the dirt.

Adam Johnston.

Alistair dropped to his knees. Blood dribbled from Adam’s
mouth and drained from the wound in his chest.

“Johnston, what the hell have you done?”

Adam gasped for breath, but he could smile. He held his hand
out and Alistair clasped it. “For her,” he said. “So she can be happy.”

He blinked, and in that blink, the light in his eyes dimmed
out. Alistair closed the lids with shaking fingers.

“I wish you hadn’t done it, Johnston. I wish you hadn’t.”

At the opposite side of Port Hudson, Marcel grabbed a cold
torch from the night’s watch, lit it, and hurled it into the Yanks’ moving
shield of cotton bales. Other Rebs did the same and the cotton turned into a
wall of flame.

The firing on this front ceased as the Rebels watched the
conflagration, horrified at the screams of men caught in the flames.

“Jesus. Look what we done,” a man said.

“God help ’em.”

Marcel rushed along the barricade, checking his men. “How’s
your ammo? Be ready. They’re coming back.”

Among the defenders, one skinny lad stood out. Val sighted
along his rifle barrel, ready to fire into the enemy.

“Val!” Marcel’s hands fisted. He’d beat the shit out of Val
for being up here in the line of fire. “Get down from there!”

“No, sir. I been doing . . . I have done what you said ever
since we left New Orleans.” Val’s voice still wavered in adolescent transition,
but he raised his chin and looked his master in the eye. “I’m a man now, Mister
Marcel. I’m a soldier.”

“The hell you are. You’re not here to fight.”

The Yanks renewed the assault. Bullets whirred through the
air, zinging against a rifle barrel, slicing through a Reb’s
hat.

“I am here to fight.”

The men around him aimed and shot double time, their fire
deafening. Val shouted over the din, “I’m a Louisiana man, just like you.”

Marcel grabbed at Val’s collar, dragging him.

Val struck at Marcel’s hands, fighting at him for every
step.

Marcel raised his fist to punch Val in the face so he could
get him out of there, out of the deadly onslaught.

Val’s head dropped forward. His hands opened.

The back of his skull was blown away.

Stupid with shock, Marcel’s mouth gaped. He collapsed,
gathering Val into his arms, no air in him to wail or shriek.

Another moment, he’d have had him out of there.

The fight raged on. Marcel lifted Val and carried him from
the battlements and through the pitted landscape. Val. The brightest, most
beautiful boy.

Marcel bore his burden through Port Hudson to the hospital
tent. Nicolette bent among the wounded soldiers, feeding someone a dose from a
cup.

When she saw him, she came running. Marcel sank to his
knees, Val draped across his body.

“Oh, God, Marcel. Not Val.”

Marcel wiped a smear of dirt off Val’s chin. “He’s dead.”

“Yes,” Nicolette said.

Marcel smoothed the closed eye, brushed off a lilac petal
that floated onto Val’s cheek.

“We’ll take him to the house and I’ll lay him out there,”
Nicolette said. She signaled to an orderly to help Marcel carry the body, but
when the soldier bent to take Val under the arms, Marcel waved him off.

“I’ll carry him.”

In the house, Marcel laid Val on the plank table.

Nicolette sent him into the parlor where Lucinda poured him
the last of Mrs. Brickell’s brandy. Back at the battle line, bombs burst and
cannon boomed, but here in the parlor it was quiet enough to hear the rocker
squeak on the floor boards. Charles Armand climbed into his father’s lap and
sucked his thumb as Marcel rocked back and forth.

Nicolette washed and dressed the body. Lucinda sewed a
shroud.

Marcel thought of all the plans they’d made for Val, he and
Papa and Valentine. He was to go to Paris to study at the Sorbonne, maybe
become a doctor, or a scholar who wrote history books.

Val was meant to be a great man. Not a corpse lying on a
pine board table.

Marcel lay his sleeping son on the settee, carefully
adjusting the pillow case turban so that it wouldn’t fall off.

At the dining table, he found Lucinda sewing the shroud up
the center of Val’s body. Val’s face was bathed and serene. Lying face up,
there was no sign of the damage the Yankee bullet had done. Only the hint of
gray around his mouth suggested his heart had ceased to beat.

Marcel caressed the boy’s forehead. “I have to go back,” he
said.

“We’ll take care of him,” Lucinda said.

She opened her arms and held Marcel tight. “Be safe,” she
said.

Marcel kissed Val’s forehead, then held on to Lucinda’s hand
as he walked through the house. At the open doorway, he turned and tilted her
face to the light, studying her.

“I love you,” he said. He enfolded her in his arms and spoke
into her ear. “You won’t forget, Lucinda? I love you.”

She wiped at the tears on his face. “I’ll never forget.”

Nicolette returned to the hospital. Casualties were coming
in fast now, shattered limbs, missing limbs, cracked heads.

Late in the day, nauseous from the chloroform fumes,
Nicolette yielded her post to a medic and escaped to the open air. Out here,
men needed water and bandaging, pain medicine and quinine. She moved to the
next man, propped up against a tree stump waiting his turn, his hat pulled down
to keep the sun out of his eyes. He had a handkerchief tied around his bare
arm, a smear of dried blood underneath. Not too bad. He’d just need a good
bandage to keep it clean and he could go back to the lines if he wanted to.

She gripped one edge of a piece of gauze in her teeth so she
could rip the end off.

Alistair shoved the hat off his forehead. “Nicolette.” He’d
been watching her from beneath his hat brim, glad he was alive to see her in
the morning light. After the roar and frantic hours of sword and rifle, he felt
calm. He hadn’t died like he’d wanted to, but a tranquil resignation lay easy
on his heart.

“Alistair!”

“Now don’t fret,” he said. Nicolette looked a sight, her
hair uncombed and her face sunburned and sweaty. And more beautiful than he’d
ever seen her, in spite of the crease of distress on her forehead. “It’s just a
scratch.”

“Let me see.”

Her fingers fumbled at the knot stiffened with dried blood.
Alistair took his knife out of the sheaf on his thigh and handed it to her.

“Been a long day?” he said gently.

“Val died this morning,” she said. He could see her throat
working so as not to cry.

“I’m sorry. He was a likely boy. I guess Marcel knows.”