Evermore: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 3) (36 page)

“You are suffering from a misapprehension, captain. These
women are colored. That one there,” Franks said, gesturing to Nicolette, “has
consorted with the enemy ever since they invaded New Orleans. At considerable
risk to ourselves, we have apprehended her in an attempt to carry messages from
the Union headquarters to General Banks in the field. A traitor, Captain.”

The captain looked fully at Nicolette for the first time.
His face went slack with astonishment. “Nicolette?”

“Ah, you know the woman,” Franks said. “Then you understand
how dangerous she is. I recommend confinement apart from the other one. My
understanding is that the mother, here, is an innocent dupe in the scheme to
appear harmless as the Chamard woman carried her invidious missives northward.”

“Nicolette,” the captain said again.

She hadn’t heard Adam Johnston had lost an arm. Even as she
held his gaze, giving him neither a smile nor a hint of gratitude to find a
familiar figure in this harsh place, she wondered at the hardness of her heart.
She felt neither sympathy nor pity for the empty sleeve.

Adam’s gaze took in the yellowing bruises on her face.
“You’ve been beaten,” he said, his face ashen.

“Quite necessary, I assure you,” Franks said.

Adam’s sorrowful eyes said more than his whispered words.
“Nicolette. I’m so sorry.”

Nicolette gave no indication she heard him. “My friend and
the children need a roof over their heads, Captain. Food and water. A bed.”

Adam drew himself up. “Of course. Corporal, take the ladies
to Mrs. Brickell now, please.”

Nicolette stepped around Murphy. He’d been enjoying himself,
bantering with the soldiers. She shot him a look that killed the merry glint in
his eye. Satisfied, for now, she followed Lucinda and the boys.

“Miss Chamard,” Adam said. “I will call directly. To see
what assistance you require.”

“That won’t be necessary, Captain. I’m sure the corporal
will see to our needs.”

The corporal led Nicolette and Lucinda through the fortress.
The air crackled with energy as men swarmed over the camp, as quick and
purposeful as ants. A group of soldiers sharpened long poles and set them in
the ground, slanted outwards. A dozen black men, already shirtless in the
morning heat, shoveled dirt, heightening a breastwork. Around an artillery
site, men piled sandbags into a protective wall.

A church, a few houses, a barn or two constituted the
village. From beyond the settlement, the sound of the gristmill carried through
the morning air. Nicolette’s teeth ached at the grating of the huge granite
millstones against one another, grinding corn into meal. By now, Franks would
be telling the commander of Port Hudson that she was a spy. What would the
Confederate general do about that?

Tired from the long walk, Charles Armand dragged against
Lucinda’s outstretched arm, fretting and pulling at her hand. Nicolette caught
up to him and swept him on to her hip.

The world was a hard and cruel place. Feelings made a person
weak and vulnerable. Nicolette no longer allowed herself that weakness. She
felt only this simmering rage that made her chest boil with hot blood. For her
nephew, though, for remembrance of how she loved him, she pretended a piece of
her heart still lived.

“You hungry as that little bird up there?” She pointed to a
nest of robins peeping from a low branch. “He wants a cricket. Maybe that’s
what you’ll have for breakfast. A nice big bowl of crickets with milk and
sugar.”

That earned her a giggle, and she hoped the sun seemed a
little brighter for Charles Armand. For herself, she saw only glare or deepest
dark, nothing in between.

On the other side of the battlements, lush forest surrounded
the northern edge of Port Hudson. Somewhere beyond those trees, among General
Banks’ battalions and regiments, it was likely Finnian McKee prepared his
Signal Corps boys for the coming assault. Would it matter to him, to know she
was here, perhaps a mile away, among his enemies? It was of no consequence. She
was not the same Nicolette Chamard he’d known.

Mrs. Brickell, a stubborn soul who’d refused to leave her
home as the Federals advanced, fed Nicolette, Lucinda, and Charles Armand corn
meal mush and rancid bacon. Then, full of friendly chat, she gathered worn
quilts and blankets to make bed pallets. She showed no curiosity about them,
whether they were colored or white or something in between.

“It’ll all be over in a few days,” Mrs. Brickell said. “One
way or t’other. Jest rest yerselves here and we’ll
all make do.”

Late in the morning, Nicolette sat on the back stoop
shelling hard dry peas. She still had a charge of treason to face. Once she
would have thought a woman would be safe from hanging. But once she’d thought a
woman would be safe from a beating, too.

She clamped her sore jaw. No one would ever put a rope
around her neck. She’d fight them till they’d have to kill her before they
could hang her.

Mrs. Brickell stuck her head out the back doorway. “General
Gardner hisself wants to talk to you.”

Through the house, Nicolette saw three men silhouetted on
the front porch. Nicolette met them, confident she appeared calm and
unconcerned.

Adam did the introductions. “Miss Chamard, allow me to
introduce Major General Franklin Gardner.”

Grim faced and red-eyed, the general looked like he hadn’t
slept and had too many things to do. He nodded his head to Nicolette and she
curtsied briefly.

“Good day, General Gardner.”

“And Colonel William Miles.”

Colonel Miles, bent and white bearded, offered a courtly bow
from the waist.

Nicolette dipped into a full curtsy in response.

General Gardner gestured toward the rawhide chairs. “Please,
Miss Chamard, won’t you take a chair?”

“I prefer to stand, thank you.”

Adam took a position at her elbow, a clear declaration of
alliance. Nicolette ignored him.

“Now, Miss Chamard,” General Gardner began, “we have
received a serious accusation against you, which, however reluctantly, we must address.”

“Yes, General. I am aware of the accusation.”

“Have you indeed messages to General Banks about your
person, Miss Chamard?” Col. Miles asked.

“No, sir, I have not.”

“Nor perhaps have you committed to memory information which
would be advantageous to General Banks were he to receive it?”

“No, sir, I have not.”

Miles and Gardner exchanged a look.

There was not a hint of supplication in her voice when she
spoke. “I am not a spy.”

“There. You see, sir, it is as I told you,” Adam
interjected.

The general held his hand up to hush him. “Miss Chamard,
this man Franks also claims that you were seen entering and exiting the Union
headquarters in New Orleans many times. Will you explain your business there,
please?”

“Gladly. My mother was once a slave, General. My Uncle
Thibault and his children are yet enslaved. I wish the Union to win this war so
that slavery is ended forever. To that end, this past year I have aided the
Union as a telegrapher on General Butler’s, then General Banks’ staff.”

“A collaborator, then,” Colonel Miles said, looking at her
over his spectacles.

Nicolette raised her chin proudly. “Yes, sir.”

General Gardner motioned with his head to Colonel Miles.
They walked a dozen paces across the yard.

Nicolette held her back ramrod straight. She stared at
Gardner and Miles, trying to read their bodies. Their heads were bent toward
one another in earnest consultation, but she could not see their faces.

“Captain?” Colonel Miles called for Adam to join them.

The General looked back at her once and turned his shoulder
toward her again. What could they be talking about for so long? They had no
proof! There
was
no proof.

Gardner nodded his head once, twice. He strode back and
stood in the grass below the steps. “Miss Chamard, Colonel Miles is acquainted
with your father. We regret the unpleasantness. Good day to you.”

He bowed reflexively and turned to the colonel. “Very well,
Colonel. That’s taken care of. Let’s have a look at the east rampart, if you
please.”

Nicolette’s fingers uncurled. She took a breath at last. She
was not to be hanged. Nor chained to the wall in some dark room. But not
because she was innocent. Because Colonel Miles knew her father. And if he
hadn’t once played cards with Papa, shared a glass of port and a cigar?

“I told them you were not a spy,” Adam said.

Nicolette ran her gaze down Adam’s length. Former suitor.
Former batterer. How often had her dreams been tormented by what this man had
done to her? So much smaller than she remembered him. Middling height, sandy brown
hair. A bushy mustache He’d been drunk that day he hit her, blind drunk. She
saw no signs of drink now. His eyes, hangdog, appealing to her for some sort of
recognition, seemed clear.

“As it happens, Mr. Johnston, I am not a spy. But had the
Union general asked it of me, I believe I would have attempted it.” She entered
the house without another glance at him.

The following day, Nicolette did her best to amuse Charles
Armand. Made uneasy by sporadic gunfire several miles beyond the fort’s
perimeter, he fussed and clung. With every shell whistling from the gunboats
and bursting over the river ramparts, he flinched until his shoulders began to
shake.

“Look here, Charles Armand.” Nicolette stripped a pillow
case off its pillow and smoothed the unbleached cotton. “This is a very special
pillow case. When it’s on your head, the big booms can’t hurt you. They’re
still very annoying, but they are harmless against this special pillowcase. And
it is yours, Charles Armand.”

Nicolette draped the case over his head. Charles let out a
long quiet sigh.

By noon, artillery, musket, and rifle fire rolled across the
prairie land east of Port Hudson in a continuous blurred roar. Nicolette gave
up trying to divert Charles Armand and held him in her lap. The magic pillowcase
at least kept his little body from trembling.

When a soldier passed by, walking double-time with a spade
over his shoulder, Nicolette called through the window. “What news?”

“Can’t see a thing from the ramparts, Miss. Got no idea
who’s winning out there.”

At last the noise ceased. No cannon, no rifle pop, no mortar
shells. Nicolette itched with the need to know what happened. She returned
Charles Armand to Lucinda and walked toward the eastern perimeter, out of range
from cannon and mortar should the attack resume. The soldiers manning the
barrier at the east entrance opened up. Col. Miles rode in with his infantry,
retreating in good order, but hot, bedraggled, and defeated. At the end of the
column, carts of dead and dying soldiers.

The Union had beaten them back.

One of the casualties, his arm hanging off the side of the
cart, cast vacant eyes toward the brilliant sun. The boy from yesterday, the
one who asked if Franks had “had” her. Just a boy. And dead. Just one more boy
out of so many. A Confederate soldier. An enemy. What did his death mean to
her?

In the twilight, she returned to Mrs. Brickell’s house where
Charles Armand had already gone to sleep. She shooed flies away from him, lay
down beside him and closed her eyes.

At dawn, she woke with a start. The mortar fire again. No
doubt the
Essex
was among them, Captain McKee’s friend Jay Zettle
lobbing shells at her. How wonderful, she thought, to be killed by such a
friendly, cheerful soul.

The face of the dead soldier on the cart came back to her. A
gruesome face, all the blood drained out of it. That boy had been alive
yesterday.

That boy had had a pistol.

Nicolette eased off the pallet where Charles Armand slept,
sweat beading over his lip. Lucinda and Bertie slept nearby, flies buzzing in
and out the window, a slight breeze moving the gauzy curtain.

She slipped on her shoes and crossed the village to the
surgeon’s tent. The morgue no doubt would be nearby. Closing her ears to cries
and moans, her eyes averted from a fly-covered amputated leg, she held a hand
over her nose. The large, quiet tent beyond beckoned her with open flaps.

As she drew near, the drone of flies grew loud. Inside, the
dead were laid on tarps. Mrs. Brickell and another woman were bathing the faces
of the fallen boys. A sergeant was searching pockets for letters, watches,
photographs, items to be sent home to mothers and fathers and sweethearts.

Nicolette looked for the face she knew. Somehow, it had to
be his gun she took. She found the boy, his face the color of magnolia blooms.
A wound in his thigh gaped right down to the bone. A sword slash? However the
gash was made, it had drained the blood from his body, his entire pants leg
thick and stiff with it. He would not suffer amputation or fever or years of
pain and debilitation. It was over, for this boy. Louisiana Legion, the patch
on his sleeve said. A boy from home.

His weapons were gone. Nicolette looked around. All the
bodies were disarmed. In the corner of the tent, the sergeant had made a tepee
of the muskets and rifles. At the base of the pyramid, one pistol, still in its
holster and ammunition belt.

Nicolette checked that the women and the sergeant bent to
their tasks. They paid no mind to her. She moved down the row of bodies to the
pile of arms, picked up the pistol and belt, and slipped out of the tent.

She crossed open ground and hid behind a shed. The wounds on
her wrists had bled through the gauze bandages again. Ignoring the stains, she
loaded the pistol. All she needed now was a clear line of sight to take down Franks
and Murphy. The fort might be a mile wide and two or three miles long, but
she’d find them.

The Nicolette who sang ballads, who made up funny ditties,
who once fell in love – she didn’t know that Nicolette any more. She was merely
an instrument now, the hand behind the gun that would send Murphy and Quentin
Franks to hell.