The Creole Princess (42 page)

Rafa’s hands cupped her shoulders. “Lyse, we leave for Mobile in two weeks time.”

“But you will stay here again?”

“No. I’m going this time. Pollock will remain here, and Gálvez needs an ordnance officer.”

She all but crushed the fragile sticks of the fan. “Then . . . I will go too.”

He laughed. “This is not a joke. Look at me.”

She whirled to face him. “I’m not joking. I know the bay of Mobile better than anybody in New Orleans, except maybe Simon. And I could be a nurse.”

“Lyse, I’m not discussing this with you. I wanted to say goodbye, because Gálvez will have me very busy after tonight. Please don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.”

“It
is
difficult! I’m tired of saying goodbye.” She swiped the back of her hand across her wet cheeks. “Being a woman, wearing skirts, getting left behind—I’m sorry, but I’m very angry right now.”

His voice gentled. “But I’m very glad you’re a woman. I can’t say more, here in this crowd. And no, I’m not taking you outside to be alone, because I couldn’t—don’t look at me that way—” He swallowed hard and stepped back with a shaky laugh. “I’m trying very hard to be the man you deserve. So tell me you’ll pray for me, and let me go.
Te amo, prima
.” He kissed his fingertips, laid them upon her mouth, and backed away into the crowd.

The fan snapped in half.

N
EW
O
RLEANS
, F
ORT
S
AN
J
UAN
J
ANUARY
11, 1780

He was gone.

Lyse stood at the highest point of Fort San Juan, the bell tower of its little chapel, and watched the last sail fade into the sunset. She put her fingers over her lips, holding onto Rafa’s last touch, and tried not to weep. He wanted to be the man she deserved?

Ah, Father in Heaven, how she loved him. He was courageous
and strong and faithful, and infinitely better than she had any right to expect in a lover. She wanted to be with him, to hold and serve him, and to laugh with him.

But it was time to think beyond herself and what she wanted. It was time to grow up a little more—a lot more—and become a woman who deserved a man like Rafael Gonzales. There were families without homes still, after the hurricane. There were children roaming the streets with no place to go, hunting for food in the garbage heaps. And there was Mr. Pollock, left to mind the warehouses and field messages for the governor. She knew every inch of the warehouses, as did Daisy and Scarlet—and surely he would need help.

She could accomplish those things, because every difficulty of her life had prepared her to do so. She smiled. Like Esther of the Bible, she was in New Orleans, now, for just such a time as this.

D
AUPHINE
I
SLAND
F
EBRUARY
10, 1780

Rafa, making notes in a leather journal, followed Gálvez around as he inspected the wreck of the
Volante
, run aground on Dauphine Island, a spit of sandy ground that all but enclosed Mobile Bay.

On the twentieth of January, the Spanish fleet had been joined by the American ship
West Florida
, captained by William Pickles and holding a crew of fifty-eight men, just off the coast of Biloxi. The French had built their first fort there at the turn of the century, but the old wooden palisade had long since crumbled and washed out to sea. The British apparently cared nothing for defending the spot.

Rafa had to wonder if the British took defense of the Gulf Coast seriously at all. Perhaps the strategy of combined French, Spanish, and American commanders—that of stretching and spreading British forces thinly between the New England and southern
coasts—had begun to take effect. In any case, there had been nary a shot fired as Gálvez led his armada east along the north boundary of the Gulf of Mexico.

But the forces of nature seemed determined not to make Gálvez’s campaign easy. Three days ago, winds had begun to blow contrary, making progress difficult, and then the rain and lightning came. On the third day, visibility was zero, the twelve ships scattered in all directions of the compass. One of the brigantines went down, three others ran aground on sandbars, and Rafa, aboard the flagship
Volante
, had been cast overboard when it snagged on an underground shoal. Fortunately, he was a strong swimmer and had managed to hold on to a cask of wine washing to shore, narrowly avoiding the debris flung about by the wind.

Even now, he surreptitiously kissed the cross hanging about his neck in gratitude. Lyse and his mama must have been praying for him. Four hundred of the twelve hundred regulars and militia Gálvez had brought had died in the storm. One of those could easily have been him.

Gálvez paused beside a debris-covered dune, took the kerchief from about his neck, and wiped his sandy face. He sighed. “There’s no repairing this one. We’ll take it apart and carry as much of it as we can to make ladders and other structures as needed.” He looked at Rafa. “Are you sure you’re all right after that wild ride you took yesterday? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“You always told me I’d see adventure in your command, sir.”

Gálvez smiled. “Indeed I did.”

“Have you had any response from your request for reinforcements from Havana?”

The general’s smile faded. “Not yet. It appears we’re going to have to do this on our own. Well, let’s get back to the
San Miguel
. We’ve a lot of work to do.”

Many commanders would have given up and set sail for home. Not Gálvez.

Filled with admiration and renewed determination of his own, Rafa stuck his pencil behind his ear and followed.

D
OG
R
IVER
,
EIGHT
MILES
OUTSIDE
M
OBILE
F
EBRUARY
28, 1780

The weather had continued to gnaw at them like a dog with a sore tail. Dawn came in a gray pall that barely lightened the eastern skyline. Rafa, like all the other men, was wet, chilled to the bone, and dressed like a ragpicker. His boots squished as he walked to the mess camp for a chunk of hardtack, and he’d given up on drying his socks.

For the last two weeks, sleeping had been a hellish business of rolling up in a tarp to keep the rain off, and fighting off the gnats that buzzed around one’s face, twenty-four hours a day. At least as an officer Rafa was allowed to trade out stints in one of the longboats that had been dragged up the Dog River to their bivouac point. The infantry were required to find their rest wherever they could, in the mud.

By the twelfth of February, they had made it as far as Mobile Point, abutting Dauphine Island, where they set up the guns salvaged from the wreckage of the
Volante
to guard the entrance to the bay. Eight days later, just as they were ready to move on, the misery and frustration was mitigated by the arrival of reinforcements from Havana. Rafa had witnessed Gálvez’s herculean effort not to rip into Generals Ezpleta and Míro—who commanded the four Spanish frigates containing over a thousand experienced infantrymen—for their lackadaisical response to his repeated requests for aid. After all, both men were technically his superiors, as they were of higher rank.

However, there was no question as to the real leader of the campaign. Gálvez was everywhere, encouraging, berating, and
joking with everyone from cabin boys to General Girón. Rafa wondered if the man ever slept—then concluded that if he did, it was standing up, with his hat dripping rain, boots cracked and dull from the constant whirling of sand and salt.

Rafa’s thoughts went often to Lyse. He hoped she was dry and safe, perhaps just waking up beside a banked fire in the little house the soldiers had built for their three beautiful young laundresses—the Sirens of San Juan, as he had called them in a song he wrote in their honor one late night before Christmas. His duties seemed lighter, knowing that Lyse waited for him at the end of the campaign.

At least, he hoped she waited for him. She was just as likely to hire a boat and row herself after him, if she felt he was taking too long to get back. Lyse wasn’t one for doing what she was told in every situation.

Grinning to himself, he was about to round a stack of ladders he had helped build, when a familiar voice on the other side brought him to a dead halt. At first he thought it was Simon, which wouldn’t be so surprising, of course. But then the voice rumbled again, this time more distinctly. He stepped around the ladders.

“Antoine?”

Antoine Lanier, sitting on an ale cask, chewing on a piece of sausage, looked up with an expression so like Lyse’s it hurt. “Rippardá! I don’t know whether to shake your hand or punch you in the gut.”

“I prefer the former,” Rafa said, extending his hand. “How are you, sir? And—how did you get here without getting shot?”

Lanier gripped Rafa’s hand and stood up. “I’m much better, now that you Spanish boys have shared your provisions. We slipped in under cover of dark, through a little series of bayous I’ve been fishing since I was a boy. Simon could take you through that way.”

Rafa looked at Simon, who sat on another keg close to the fire. Gálvez was nearby, engaged in conversation with a young Negro
dressed in clothes every bit as ragged as Rafa’s. In fact, they all looked as though they’d been dragged through briars backward.

Simon saw Rafa’s curious glance at the black man. “That’s Scarlet’s man, Cain. He’s the one got my father safely from the fort here. Well, him and Little Bit there.”

For the first time, Rafa realized that a small lump under a tarp near the fire was a human being. A mop of curly hair was just visible at one end. “Is that Luc-Antoine?”

Antoine nodded, the firelight glinting across the pride in his face. “After the Americans raided the Dussouy plantation, Luc and Cain lived in the woods for a couple of weeks. Finally Luc started scouting around the fort to see if they could find a way to get to me. Eventually, an officer named Tully spotted them and convinced Luc to meet him near the edge of the Dussouy property. Tully has been kind to me, made sure I ate at least once a day and didn’t drown when the water rose in the guardhouse. He said Lyse was always a favorite of his, and it was a shame the way the major had treated her and Daisy.

“Anyway, he told Luc that Redmond had more or less lost his mind since Daisy disappeared. He blamed her running away on us Laniers and had made up his mind to force my execution. Tully didn’t hold with hanging civilians, and he wanted to help get me out of the fort. So he had Joony, one of Burelle’s women, bring in an extra dress and cap with a load of clean uniforms, plus a tin of lamp black. I blacked my face, put on the dress and cap, and walked right out in broad daylight during a changing of the guard.