Honoré huffs a laugh. “I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true,” Noelle says. “I know it’s hard to believe, but they are at a great disadvantage, and Jackson has been both clever and lucky.”

“But Pakenham hasn’t surrendered,” Honoré says.

“No. The rumor is that the last battle will be fought tonight or tomorrow. What did they call it—the big push.”

“Then it’s not time to panic yet.”

She shrugs. It is the kind of shrug that requires close analysis, so full is it of meaning.

“You should consider,” she says finally. “What you will do if the worst happens.”

Honoré laughs, his voice hoarse. “In that case I have two options,” he says. “I can give myself up and hang, or I can flee to the islands.”

Another shrug, and now his irritation has the upper hand. “What is it you’re trying to say?”

“Nothing. Except there is a third possibility.”

He makes an impatient gesture and she spills it all out before him. What if he were to join the British? Fight in this last battle on the other side. If they do take the city, so much the better; he has proved his allegiance. If they lose, he will have a better chance of escape when they retreat to the ships waiting off Pea Island.

“Your concern for my well-being is touching,” says Honoré. “Worried that I’ll give you up if I’m caught?”

“Of course,” Noelle admits without hesitation. There is a flicker of her real self in her eyes, hard as obsidian. “And about the possibility that the courts will seize all your property. All our property.”

It is something that has occurred to him before, an idea he has always dismissed without close thought. He finds the missing brandy bottle a real trial.

“With my luck,” he says, “Pakenham would shoot me for a double spy, and on sight.”

“Then you must bring him some evidence of your loyalty,” says Noelle. “Something he needs very badly.”

“Jackson’s head on a platter.” Honoré coughs a laugh.

“The word,” says Noelle, “is that they are very short of powder and ammunition.”

“Oh, well,” says Honoré. “I’ll just load up a wagon and drive it down to them.”

“You could name your own reward.”

“That’s easy. Wyndham’s head on a platter.”

Noelle rises, her mood finally as sour as his own. “Have it your own way,” she tells him. “Sit here and wait for the gendarmerie to find you.”

She is gone before he remembers to ask about the brandy.

Honoré reclines on the divan and finds himself thinking through Noelle’s suggestion that he make himself useful to the British. To Pakenham, the hero of Salamanca.

It isn’t often he is in the position of having to win over another man. His habit has always been to dispose of men who stood in his way, and negotiation does not come easily to him. That is part of the reason that he has never run with the Baratarians. Lafitte requires loyalty of the men who work with him, a concept which has never meant very much to Honoré. There is something unnatural in Lafitte’s ability to bind other men to him, to have them do his bidding in order to earn a place in his kingdom.

Whatever it is that brings him so many loyal men, it is profitable. Lafitte’s auctions of smuggled slaves draw buyers from hundreds of miles around. He supplies the city with everything from soap milled in France to firearms.

Honoré sits up. So that is what Noelle was trying to get at: Lafitte’s hidden supply of black powder and ammunition kept at Le Tonneau. The rumor is that there is enough stockpiled in Lafitte’s secret armory to blow up a thousand ships.

Wyndham had been keenly interested in Le Tonneau, now that Honoré remembers. Once, Honoré had even taken him there.

Chapter 61

Rumors blew through the city, a windstorm of conjecture, wild fears and hopes. As the first week of the new year trudged by, tempers were strained to the breaking point and beyond. Funeral processions for fallen soldiers, no matter how humble, grew into huge ungainly affairs attended by hundreds, and the lamentations of the mourners rose up like a cloud over the city. An hour later, the rumor that Jackson was in the city would send those same people into a frenzy of cheers outside his headquarters.

Hannah’s menfolk were gone more, and for longer periods. She saw her father and uncle every day for at least a short while; Ben she saw very little, and Luke even less. Men who had been out in the ciprière in the cold rain had little time for long discussions, Hannah explained to herself. Clémentine must shovel great amounts of hot food into him, and he needed fresh clothes and water to wash. He must spend time with Paul and Julia and the children, and then of course he needed his sleep. Her question for him would have to wait.

When he was away she buried herself in work. The clinic suspended vaccinations until the battle for the city was decided, and dealt instead with a steady flow of patients. Soldiers with wounds small and large, broken bones, burns, infections, and the illnesses that were the burden of any army: dysentery, typhoid, measles, malaria. Hannah looked after men too sick to take note of the color of her skin; she worked in the surgery and apothecary; twice she was called to deliver babies for ladies who were normally attended by one of the medical doctors who had gone to the main field hospital for the duration.

There was no sign of Honoré Poiterin or word about him. She saw Maman Zuzu a few times, and learned from her that Jacinthe was safe and would most likely recover. Once she went out to the Bayou St. John to visit with Amazilie, who had grown thinner and very drawn. It was not just the loss of Titine that weighed on her, but also the fact that her son had gone off to join the fighting. Tibère was serving with the Battalion of Free Men of Color, and she had not seen him since Christmas Day.