Consider Me Gone, page 26
part #1 of Time Shadows Series
The hands circling her throat tightened. Red spots flared before her eyes. Her lungs fought for air; her throat burned as he squeezed and squeezed and, all the while, the ugly whack-whack hurled down on her outstretched limbs.
And then another voice sounded overhead-—a death angel, perhaps, something coming to ferry her to hell. She could barely make out the creature’s words as she sunk deeper and deeper into the darkness. She heard Bernardo grunt, felt his limp weight collapse on top of her, and a sticky warmth seep onto her skin.
“Go, you wicked, wicked thing!” a man cried out—familiar but Claire’s befuddled mind couldn’t identify its owner. “Your son is gone and now so must you! Be gone, I say! Go back to whatever hell spawned you! There is nothing left for you here!”
An unearthly shriek followed a hiss and then the battering cane disappeared along with its hideous chill. Claire lay gasping for breath as Bernardo’s body was heaved to one side, leaving her blinking up at a lantern held over her face.
“Señorita? Señorita”
Someone cradled her head. Claire coughed and wheezed as she forced breath back into starving lungs.
“Señorita, are you harmed? Forgive me for leaving you at the convent but, when I spied revolt brewing in the streets, I had to warn the others. I thought for certain you would never leave the convent’s safety.”
Some sweet-tasting liquid dribbled down her throat. She coughed and forced down more mouthfuls. The burning sensation proved at least she still lived, whether she deserved to or not.
“Brandy,” he said.
She nodded. Understanding seeped into her brain. “Arturo, thank…you,” she gasped.
“Try not to speak. I fear he bruised your throat.”
Claire shot a look at Bernardo’s body. “Dead?”
“Completely and, should his mother find some way to haunt you along with that useless oaf, I will curse them both to eternal damnation. Can you stand?”
He helped her onto feet that felt as though a thousand pins pricked her soles. “So cold,” she mumbled, reaching for her legs. Her limbs ached. “She…froze…me.”
“The witch is gone now.”
Claire gazed into the young man’s face, seeing his bruised and bloody cheek and understanding that he, too, fought many trials since they’d last saw one another. “I am sorry…for leaving you…in the sun.”
Arturo shook his head and smiled a grim smile. “The sun, señorita? What is a little sun to a soldier? Can you stand by yourself for a moment?”
She nodded as he left her leaning against the wall and retrieved the knife from Bernardo’s back. He wiped the thing on his breeches, returning the weapon to his belt in one swift movement. “My orders were to guard you. I care not for my own comfort. I regret only that I left my post to warn the others before I could escort you to safety. By the time I reached the house, the damage was done. Later, I located the comandante who ordered me to return here to await the governor’s return. I have been hiding in the slave area ever since.”
“Are the slaves gone, too?” Claire managed to ask, her voice more rasp.
“Yes. The place was deserted until Bernardo appeared.”
“The French seek the governor,” she told him. “They will kill him.”
“Thank the good Lord they have not found him yet. I was told the governor has gone off to observe some secret rite, though of what nature I know not. No one knows where he has gone.”
“Secret rite?” Claire’s hand reached for her throat.
“The governor is a man who is fascinated by how people behave—“
“Yes, yes, I know that. What else have you heard?”
“The comandante learned that he went off alone to observe something of the like earlier this evening but had no idea where. At first he was to take a few men with him but changed his mind.”
“I know where he’s gone!” She said excitedly. “I know!”
“You do?” Arturo asked.
“Come with me.” She had only to take one step for her legs to buckle beneath her.
33
The Congo Plains burned that night, not with fire though cook fires enough blazed in the dark, but with a strange ferocious energy. Claire could sense it the moment she and Arturo pushed their way through the thicket into the clearing. Smoke and fire, angry crowds, and, far in the distance, the sound of frenzied drums.
“Be still, señorita,” Arturo warned. “What is this?”
“Over there in the distance must be the voodoo,” she whispered. “The old magic from Africa. Very powerful. Wild magic. Odette is yonder and…maybe her father, Celestin, too. The Governor would have,” she heaved air inter her bruised throat, “interest in such a ritual.”
But how could they find him amid so much smoke and frenzy? He would surely hide to better observe but where?
She could see the slave dancers in the far distance moving around their fires while, near at hand, others gathered, Frenchmen, she realized by the voices. She peered into the smoky darkness trying to make out shapes and faces until a gust of wind blew away enough smoke to bring clarity to the scene. She gasped. “Look Arturo! Over there.”
No more than fifty feet away, a crowd clustered in a rough circle between two large oaks. High on an overhanging branch silhouetted against the rising moon, a body slowly twisted in the breeze.
Fear clutched her. Antonio? But no, Claire realized with relief, the corpses’ blue uniform pinned him as a Spanish soldier.
Angry citizens shouted “Hang him! Hang him!” in French while waving bottles and staves about. An unseen man called for silence— Campeneau. Claire knew his voice immediately. Panic struck again.
“Hide, Señorita! You must not be seen.”
Shaking her arm free, Claire stumbled forward. When she heard Antonio’s voice cracked and gruff trying to pitch above the rabble, she nearly fell to her knees. They held him captive in that tight, vicious, knot. Their blood lust would see him hang.
“No! Let him go! He is innocent!” Pushing through the crowd, she struggled through to the center where the ragged knot of conspirators held a man bound hand and foot, propped up on either side by a man who wrenched his body to make him wince.
At first she didn’t recognize him, this bloodied man trying to retain dignity among brutes. A wicked gash lashed his face from forehead to cheek leaving one eye swollen shut. Blood seeped through his linen shirt as though he had been sliced through the shoulder, yet the face that turned towards her could only be Antonio’s.
Claire slapped her hand over her mouth. Antonio’s one good eye fixed on her an expression that did not yet hold the contempt she deserved. “Claire? My God, Claire?” he rasped. “Why are you here? Save yourself for God knows this mob knows no reason.”
“Release him!” she rasped, spinning around to Campeneau and then, spying D’entremont, added, “He is innocent. You know all know this to be true. You are drunk! Do not do this thing. Do not carry the weight of the governor’s murder on your hands.”
The rabble muttered in angry dissent. Someone threw a rock, hitting her painfully on the leg. Another cried out: “Is this wench French or Spanish?”
“Wait!” Campeneau held up his hand. “What is this you are about, Claire Comeau?” He held up the journal page for all to see. “Here is proof that Governor Ulloa means us harm, a drawing of a cruel contraption designed to sink French ships at our very port! Mademoiselle Comeau stole it from the governor’s journal to prove his guilt to all.”
All eyes turned to Claire but only Antonio’s mattered. “Claire,” he whispered. “This cannot be true. Are you a spy, is that it? Speak, why don’t you? I trusted you!”
“I thought myself a soldier,” she said at last, dropping her head. “A soldier does what must be done.”
“You betrayed me.”
“I believed a soldier should not mix love and war. Forgive me.”
But whether he would forgive her or not, Claire was not to know for, at that moment, Arturo leapt into the fray, brandishing his sword. “Unhand him or be prepared to fight!”
Hopeless—one man against a vicious crowd. Claire knew it and Arturo would know it, also, but he would die defending the governor or his life would not be worth living.
When the rabble descended on him, whacking viciously, tearing the sword from his hand and trampling the soldier to the ground with their boots, she could not bear to watch. Shoved away by men eager to participate in the kill, Claire stumbled backwards, losing sight of Antonio in the press of bodies.
The air reeked with the stench of blood, smoke and fury. Hate blazed in the faces of the men surging forward. Claire wailed in misery, her cries sounding like howls to her own ears. Nobody heard, nobody cared.
Someone clutched her arm. “Claire, come! I find safe place!”
She turned, finding Odette pulling her away. “I hide you.”
“No,” she tore her arm from the girl’s grip. “They will kill Antonio. If he dies, I die.”
“They will kill you, too,” the girl said, pitching her voice over the mob. “Come. My people over there, they help. Come, hide!”
But Claire refused to leave even though the crowd shoved her further away until she could see neither poor Arturo, her gallant protector, nor Antonio. Antonio! Everything and everybody she love was lost.
Odette screamed into her ear. “They come for you next! You must hide!”
Claire wrenched her arm away. “Save him, not me. I am nothing!”
Odette stared at her. “You are mad!”
“Perhaps, but save him, Odette. Do it for me, if you can. He is innocent of all the crimes against him. I am not!”
And then the girl dove into the crowd and disappeared. Claire backed further away as the heated press of bodies pushed towards the knot of men holding Antonio.
She stumbled backwards until the rough trunk of a huge oak barred her progress. Bottles and swill jars littered the exposed roots beneath her feet. Rumpled clothes lay strewn and tangled everywhere as if some woman had met a gruesome end—rape or murder or both.
She sunk into a crouch onto the heap of skirts and petticoat. A fine place to die, then. Let them find her here.
The voice inside her head screamed Claire, no. Get away from here! Antonio will live and so must you!
Claire laughed bitterly. “Be gone, you. I am doomed. Let me be.”
Her back pressed against the tree half-shrouded in shadows, she did not at first discern the subtle shift in the crowd before her.
She stared with unseeing eyes as dark faces dressed in white clothing encircled the masses of angry French. They remained silent at first while the far-off drumming intensified like the thud of some massive beating heart.
The slaves encompassed the French, thickening to ten or twelve people deep. Then the chanting began, a wild howling that swerved in volume to meet the drums until all fused into a deep, powerful, chant of spirit meeting magic.
The slaves on the outer edge of the circle began dancing, arms swaying overhead, casting strange elongated shadows across the trees. Someone screamed.
A man called out in alarm. Frightened, the French turned to face the frenzied dancers, calling to one another to attack but they did not seem to know how. One raised a stick to beat at the dancers but saw something in their faces that terrified him. He dropped the stick and ran, pushing through the ring, and dashing off into the night.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Claire quickly opened them to confirm the swell of slave men barreling their way into the throng to wrestle Antonio free. Pandemonium exploded. Two bonfires ignited at once, hurling oiling plumes of smoke and sparks far into the night sky. Women screamed; men yelled. An animal howled as if being slaughtered.
Power coursed through the clearing. Whatever had been unleashed dissolved the crowd into splinters of terrified people hurling away from the Congo plains, mad with fear.
Claire remained riveted to the spot. Unable to see through the smoke, she could only hear the crying, feel the crowd disperse, yet one voice rose above it all, a voice that brought such a crazy jolt of joy into her heart she almost cried aloud:
“Sacre bleu, but the Governor escaped! Those darkies have taken him away!” Campeneau had lost his quarry.
Relief trembled through Claire. She laughed, she cried, she hugged herself in blessed thanks. Odette and the slaves saved Antonio! Clutching the rough bark for support, she climbed unsteadily to her feet and stood trembling, gazing out into the clearing.
“Odette, thank you!” She called out with her heart.
34
Dawn clawed streaks of orange light into the sky, sending blue-black shadows scuttling for the undergrowth. The bonfires burned low, spewing coiling wisps of smoke. Most of the crowd had gone, leaving a grim and muddied clearing where bodies lay twisted in a shamble of violence and destruction.
Claire stumbled forward, half-numb with anguish and some strange distorted joy. Antonio lived. Nothing else mattered. Weaving around fallen men, she tried not to look too closely at the bloodied bodies until she reached the trampled spot where Antonio once stood. Above her head, the Spanish soldier swayed in the wind while at her feet another sprawled beaten beyond recognition.
“Arturo,” she whispered, crouching and gazing at his battered face. “I am so sorry. You were the true soldier, not me. With all my heart, I thank you. Rest in peace.”
“There she is! There’s the scheming Spanish wench!”
Claire spun around. A handful of men trudged through the clearing, one stooping long enough to loot a fallen comrade as the other four lumbered towards her.
She would not plead for her life by claiming French heritage. What did it matter? She belonged to no country now. But to die at their hands without a fight? Let them work for that satisfaction. Picking up her skirts, she ran.
But exhaustion made running impossible. She broke into a stumbling trot. Which way to go? With no home, no friends, no family, all she could do was force her feet to move somewhere, hauling her numbed heart along for the ride.
The men still dogged her, jeering and hurling insults when they weren’t busy pawing through heaps of charred remains or looting a corpse by the road.
Claire snorted in grim mirth. So they’d rather loot than rape her, eh? Mon Dieu, how she had lessened in importance. But they had not finished with her yet, she knew. Why rush when your quarry can barely hold herself upright? No, they were content to follow until her legs gave out.
Which would be soon.
Dawn continued to drag the sun higher into the bloodshot sky as if the orb had no will to bring in the day. Hazy amber light born of smoldering fires poured into the town like poison, thick and bitter, the best the sun could do.
This ragged town could be her village long ago; her family torn asunder, her parents dead. British soldiers lead that travesty with more discipline but with equal heartlessness.
A duty followed, a decree enacted. The Spanish, forced to abandon their homes suddenly, left behind rich pickings for the hungry townspeople. Those who did vacate immediately, the end was far worse. Those who tried to defend their homes were murdered.
A man lay face down in the road with his bloodied nightshirt half-torn from his body. The door of his house wide open as people carried out chairs, trunks, and silver plate, stepping over his corpse like so much rubbish. A baby cried from somewhere upstairs, probably wailing beside its dead mother.
Was life all one long wail of despair?
French soldiers marched past Claire, muskets in hand, boots crunching on the road, but they paid no mind to the looters or to her. Where they headed, she neither knew nor cared.
Why should they bother with another despairing woman rambling dazed down the streets of New Orleans when hundreds like her sprawled drunk in the doorways or slept where they’d fallen?
She stumbled, sagging to her knees only to struggle to her feet again. The men still trailed behind her, only two remaining now. The others must have found new victims or richer plunder or a perhaps a prettier girl to rape. Make the last two hounds walk with her to the end, then.
She pitched herself forward, quickening her step for another ten paces before tripping again. For an instant she lay face-down in the mire thinking how easy it would be to just remain there. No more struggle, no more fight. But, no. Up on her feet again, she stumbled on.
Not for her the convent life, nor would she ever offer herself to Madame Letourneau’s employ. Claire sealed her fate long ago and, before the day was done, she would die. Her heart strangled long ago so why not her body?
She had once dreamed of anther life but Claire had chosen a different path with a different end. The only question remaining was where to die. Not here in these mean streets, surely?
The decision swept down upon her like a bright promise. True, she’d need every dram of what strength remained to get there, yet, once the destination fixed in her heart, she fortified her resolve.
Her pursuers called out. “Hey, wench! Why such a pace? Come back, we mean you no harm.”
“No,” hooted the other. “Pierre and I, we give you good time, yes? Come share our wine.”
Claire broke into a half-stumbling run, pitching herself down the street in a desperate hurl. Only two more house-lengths before she reached her sanctuary. Footsteps pounded the ground at her back, determined now to catch their prey.
Like all good citizens, Monsieur LeBlanc’s house sat shuttered against the violent night. Boards had been nailed across the door with more barricading the lower windows in case the shutters could not hold.
Signs of violent intrusion were strewn in broken boards about the yard, the upended carriage in the streets. Monsieur’s home had been looted and she could not bear to thing what became of the family.
She had strength only to stumble towards the stone yard, whose gates, thank God, yawned open.
“Celestin? Celestin Picot?” she called out, hoping against hope to see the angel maker’s face one more time.
The freeman did not respond and for a terrible instant, Claire feared he may be harmed. But, no, she realized, the yard lay empty but for the sculptures, each of which remained untouched. Surely he’d be safe with Odette somewhere.
