Lorenzo and the Turncoat (8 page)

Thomas stood at the door, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

Charles gently deposited his load on the floor. He looked down at the man. It was Dr. Bannister.
I have an idiot for a doctor
, Charles thought.

“Lorenzo!” Thomas exclaimed, falling to his knees beside him. He started to shake him awake.

“Don't do that,” Charles said. “He might have a concussion.”

Lorenzo groaned. “I don't, but my head hurts like the devil.”

“Serves you right. I've heard of people who didn't have sense enough to get in out of the rain, but never met one before.”

“Thanks for the sympathy,” Lorenzo said, squinting up at him.

“You're welcome.” Charles took a bottle from his pocket and offered it to him.

“No thanks,” Lorenzo said.

“It's the medicine you gave me.”

“Did it help?”

“Yeah. Headache's gone. Works like a charm. You really should take a swig.”

“It's just sugar water.” Lorenzo sat up slowly, wincing.

“Why did you give me that? Did you think I was faking it?”

“No. But you were out of a job. Probably hadn't been eating well. It was a logical assumption that your headaches were due to stress. There's more to doctoring than just handing out remedies. That's something I learned from my father. You treat the whole patient.”

Charles was caught halfway between anger and gratitude. On one hand, he was upset that the doctor had tricked him. On the other, he had shown him incredible acts of kindness. Getting him a job. Feeding him the first good meal he had tasted in a long time.

Lorenzo stood up. He wobbled.

Charles caught him. “And I thought you were a brilliant doctor with a miracle medicine.”

“You're cured, aren't you?”

“That's beside the point.” Charles went to the warehouse door to close it.

Water seeped in on the dirt floor.

Charles's feet squished in his shoes. There was nothing odd about that. He had stepped into a puddle or two rescuing Lorenzo. But his feet felt too wet. He looked down. He was standing in an inch of water. And it was rising rapidly. Water surged in. He tried to slide the door shut, but pressure kept it open.

“Thomas!” he yelled, horrified to see it up to his shins. “Get upstairs.”

He leaned his shoulder against the door and pushed with all his might.

Water was knee high.

Lorenzo struggled through the water to help him shut the door.

It was no use.

“Come on, Doc,” Charles said to Lorenzo. “We have to get upstairs.”

Thomas splashed through the water and scrambled up the ladder on the far side of the room.

Water swirled around the warehouse, stopped by enormous bags of rice. Crates with light contents floated to the surface and bounced about. One of them slammed into Lorenzo and sent him splashing into the water. He thrashed about unable to get his footing.

Charles lifted him up.

Lorenzo coughed out water. He looked panicked.

“This way,” Charles said, directing him toward the ladder.

Lorenzo froze.

“Come on, man!” Charles seized him by the arm and forced him forward.

Lanterns hanging from pegs along the warehouse wall sputtered, threatening to go out.

Charles wanted to grab one, but the water was rising too fast. It would only waste precious seconds, time better spent getting Lorenzo up the ladder.

The higher the water got, the harder it was to force their way through it. The last ten feet was through chest-high water. Charles ran into something and grunted in pain.

“Are you all right?” Lorenzo asked, coming out of his stupor.

“I'll live. Get going.”

By the time Charles reached the ladder, water hid the bottom rungs. He had to feel for a toehold.

Lanterns flickered.

Charles suddenly realized that they were about to be plunged into total darkness. He plowed through water up to his neck and grabbed a lantern. He held it high overhead.

Lorenzo was halfway up when water doused the other lanterns.

Charles scrambled behind him, keeping the lantern above the water. The next thing he knew he was on the second floor, wheezing, gasping for air.

Water dripped off all three of them and puddled on the floor.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Charles yelled in Lorenzo's face.

Lorenzo took a step back, his face showing surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“Why did you freeze, Doc? We could have drowned!”

Thomas stepped between them. “He's afraid of water, Charles. Lorenzo almost drowned once.”

Charles immediately regretted his outburst. “I'm sorry.”

“For what? Saving my worthless hide?” Lorenzo grinned, his usual good humor resurfacing.

“No, I mean …”

“I know what you meant. I must say this is a first! I've never had someone apologize for saving my life before!”

Water lapped the top rung of the ladder.

“You may be premature with your gratitude,” Charles said, nodding toward the rising water.

They were trapped on the second floor. If it rose much higher, they would drown.

The crash of a thunderbolt awoke Hawthorne with a start. He still had an arm around his captive but he could feel her trembling. It reminded him of his six-year-old daughter and how she always climbed into bed with him during a storm and huddled beneath the covers.

“It's just a little rain,” he said to Madame De Gálvez. That, he thought, was an English understatement. It sounded like the storm would blow the building down
at any moment. He stroked her cheek with his knuckle. “No harm will come to you. I promise.”

She pushed his hand away.

He put his arm around her and anchored the sheets in place.

Something troubled him. Her cheek felt unusually hot. He wished she would let him take her temperature, but knew the gesture would not be welcomed.

Lorenzo kept an eye on the rising water and was relieved to see it top off an inch below the second floor. He turned his attention to the constant lightning display beyond the warehouse window. Flash! Flash! Flash!

Winds screeched past, sounding like a soul in torment. The stone warehouse seemed to be withstanding the hurricane with no problem. But what about the roof? What if it blew off? Would they be sucked out into the hurricane?

He watched Charles dig into a crate.

Thomas voiced the question on Lorenzo's mind. “What art thou doing?”

“Looking for something. Aha!” he exclaimed, pulling out a pack of playing cards. He opened another crate and found candles. “And I thought taking inventory was a waste of time.” After he lit the candles, he shuffled the cards. “Dealer's choice?”

Lorenzo shook his head. Playing cards was entirely too frivolous at a time like this. He was trying to puzzle out what had happened to Eugenie.

“Thomas?” Charles asked.

“Playing cards are the devil's playthings.”

“Oh, good grief. It's just a way to pass the time.”

“People use cards to tell fortunes,” Thomas shot back. “And gamble.”

Charles sighed, shuffled the cards again, and dealt a game of solitaire.

Thomas watched with intense interest.

Lorenzo could tell the boy was itching to join in, but couldn't get past some religious prohibition about playing cards.

For an hour the storm raged, making talk impossible.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, it was dead quiet.

Thomas leaned the back of his head against the wall. “It sounds like the hurricane's over.”

“It's not,” Lorenzo said.

“I don't hear anything.”

“That's because we are in the eye of the hurricane.”

“The eye?” Charles asked. “What's that?”

“The center of the hurricane,” Lorenzo explained. “A friend of mine was raised in the Caribbean. He once told me about a hurricane that struck his island. There was an hour of dead silence. Then it struck again coming from the other direction, twice as hard as before.”

“I don't believe it,” Charles said. “You must be joking.”

Lorenzo shrugged. He had better things to do than defend Alexander Hamilton's truthfulness. If he said there was an hour of calm, then that was the way it happened.

An hour went by. Charles grew bored with solitaire and began to flick cards into a hat.

Suddenly, the hurricane struck again, just as Lorenzo had predicted. The wind howled. Rain lashed the warehouse. The roaring and crashing seemed twice as loud as before.

“Doest thou hear that?” Thomas said in amazement.

“I hate it when you're right!” Charles said.

Lorenzo laughed. “Get used to it. I'm right 99 per cent of the time.”

For three hours the hurricane blasted through town. Eventually, it lessened in intensity and spent itself.

When Lorenzo judged it safe, he threw open the shutters. Thomas joined him at the window while Charles opened one a few feet away.

No one spoke for a long time.

Everywhere Lorenzo looked, he saw complete devastation. Trees lay flattened. Muddy water swirled through the streets. The dirt trenches and wall embankments Colonel Gálvez had ordered built for the defense of New Orleans were washed away.

The city was completely vulnerable to attack.

All wooden buildings and homes along the river had been blown away by the storm. Entire blocks were leveled. A few lucky houses had lost a roof and nothing more. It was a good bet that fields were flooded and harvests ruined on the plantations beyond the city.

A carriage with no horse hitched to it was submerged in swirling waters. Lorenzo assumed the wind had blasted the vehicle from a nearby stable and parked it there. All kinds of objects hung from trees: a spinning wheel, strips of paper, a woman's ball gown.

Lorenzo was stunned by the damage. His companions seemed equally stunned.

Drowned animals drifted by. Here a cat, there a dog, further on a pigeon.

A casket floated down the street. Lorenzo traced a slow cross over his chest. It must have been pushed out of the ground by floodwater.

New Orleans was below sea level, so families could not bury their loved ones underground. Most were buried on the highest and best-drained land — the top of the three-foot-high levee.

“Doest thou feel like Noah in the ark?” Thomas asked.

“This gives me a whole new understanding of his situation,” Lorenzo said.

Thinking of the ark brought to mind the ships and vessels anchored in the Mississippi River. Lorenzo crossed to the windows facing the river and opened one.

The harbor was empty.

Where were the ships? Their captains had no advance warning and didn't have time to move them upriver to safety.

Lorenzo rejoined Thomas at the window.

“I'm thirsty,” the boy said.

“Me too,” Charles said. “It's funny when you think about it. We are surrounded by water but can't drink a drop.”

Thomas looked at him quizzically.

“God knows what's in that water,” Charles explained. “It will make you sick.”

“What are we to drink?”

“If we get desperate, there's wine downstairs.”

“Assuming the bottles aren't smashed,” Lorenzo pointed out.

“That's what I like about you,” Charles said, “… ever the optimist.”

A pirogue, a shallow boat used to navigate the bayous, moved up the street. A man in a straw hat rowed from the back bench. Colonel Gálvez occupied the front one.

He looked up at them and shouted, “Ahoy the warehouse! How are you faring?”

“Fine, except we need water,” Lorenzo said.

The colonel's hand swept the area. “I'd say we are suffering from an excess of water. What might your name be, sir?” He directed the question to Charles.

Lorenzo was surprised that Gálvez didn't know him. He had the uncanny ability to address people by name and know their personal situations. Now, more than ever, with the British cruising Lake Pontchartrain in the West Florida, the colonel made it a point to be acquainted with everyone in New Orleans and know their reason for being in the city. Why didn't he know this man?

Charles looked at Lorenzo. “What did he say?”

“He doesn't speak Spanish, Your Excellency,” Lorenzo said. “His name is Charles Peel.”

“Is he English?”

“American. A temporary employee of Mr. Pollock's. Did you find Eugenie?”

“No. We're looking for her and others. My men are going from house to house, taking a tally of the damage and trying to get a count of the dead. Many houses have been destroyed or are in bad shape.”

“What about my cottage?” Lorenzo asked.

“Gone.”

Lorenzo felt like a huge stone was crushing his chest. The hurricane had cost him dearly. He was homeless, and Eugenie was missing.

The next morning, Eugenie sat at a table on the inn's first floor and gazed out the window at rays of sunlight breaking through the cloud cover. The world, still wet from the storm, sparkled. She wondered if it had rained in New Orleans.