The King`s Commission

'Damn you to Hell, McGilliveray, I've had it with your bitterness at being born only half-white or half-Muskogee. What passes between us is no matter, though, as long as the girl prospers. And my child.'

There, I've said it, he thought with sudden wonder. I've claimed the brat as mine, and her as my responsibility.

'And what do you want for your child?'

'I'd like him to grow up English, frankly, with proper schooling and all. There's no bloody future in growing up Indian.'

'Hardly possible unless our mission is successful. And that after he's been raised Muskogee for his first few years. Best let him be what he'll be and let it go at that, Lewrie. I'll be staying on with the tribe, though, and I'll see that he knows who his father was, and what his legacy is. I am truly sorry for you about this.'

'Then give me a little help here,' Alan demanded.

'Blankets and such for the present. Make her a rich little girl when she goes back to the White Town. Her own skillets and pots and all the needles and thread you can, that sort of thing. Any spare shirts you have. Maybe some sailcloth you can spare. For the future, I can tell her the value of money, and you could leave her some. Small coins would be best, pence and shillings, so she can buy from the traders who will come. Could you come up with about twenty pounds in change?'

'Yes, I could.'

'At five pence here and a shilling there, it will keep her and her babe in style for years,' McGilliveray promised him. 'Good, then,' Alan said, giving her another assuring hug.

The next noon found them at the mouth of the Ochlockonee River, in the long narrow inlet between the two arms of swamp and marsh that formed the hiding place for the Guarda Costa sloop San lldefonso. It was too soon to expect the sloop to be there, but they were close enough to deep water to have a good view of the ocean beyond and could spot her arrival when she appeared.

They made camp on the east bank, though it was not much to look at, given a choice. Their new Muskogee and Seminolee allies would be coming down the east bank, so they had to suffer in silence. The ground was half- marshy, half-sand-spit, strewn with sea-oats and dune grasses, saw grass and palmettos, and cypress and pine inland to their rear. It teemed with biting flies, mosquitoes and gnats, and but for the sea breeze would have been uninhabitable for very long. They pitched lean-tos of cane and palmetto fronds for shelter and settled down to wait. Cashman sent some of his fusiliers out on picket, and the young Creek warriors went off to hunt silently with bows and arrows, and to scout the ground.

While Soft Rabbit and the other unmarried travel girls set up their pots and gathered firewood, Alan and Cashman went to the shore and found a place to spy out the sea.

'By my reckonin', this is the day you wanted the boat to come back for us,' Cashman said. 'If she makes it.'

'Should have been safe as houses out there, out of sight of land,' Alan said, extending his telescope and patiently scanning the horizon.

'Well, Red Coat… Tom… was tellin' me that when they took Fort St. George at Pensacola, Galvez fetched a fleet of sixty-four ships from Havana for the job.'

'Sixty-four?' Alan scoffed. 'They've not ten decent sail of the line in the entire West Indies. Damn few useful frigates, either. Most were merchantmen, I'll wager. You can depend on my captain to come back for us, you'll see.'

'Two weeks, three weeks, is a long time to lay out there and kill time, though. Seriously, if he doesn't come, what could we do?' Cashman pressed.

'Sail off in the boats, I expect. I did it once before up in the Chesapeake, and that was with river barges never meant for the open sea. I could do it again, a lot better than before, with the launch and the gig.'

'It's a devilish long way to Jamaica, though, ain't it,' Cashman grunted, pulling off his moccasins and spreading his toes in the dry white sand. 'What, two days' sail to Tampa Bay, another two to the Keys?'

'Let's not go borrowing sorrow so quickly,' Alan replied. 'If things go that badly, it might make more sense to borrow horses from the Creeks and go overland to Charleston. If traders can do it, then there's a chance we could, with some help from our new allies. Tonight's the night Svensen was due back with the sloop. If he doesn't make it, then we might have to change our plans, but I'd give him at least two days' grace before I started worrying for real.'

''Nother thing that bothers me…' Cashman began.

'God, but you're a fountain of joy today, Kit.'

'Notice we didn't come across any Apalachee on the way back?' Cashman droned on full of caution. 'We gave 'em some muskets and truck, they got the drift of what we're doin' here with White Turtle and the Seminolee with us. I know they're a shattered lot, compared to the Muskogee, but you'd think they'd come out of the woodwork and give us a cheer or two, maybe try to cadge a free sip of rum'r somethin'.'

'Hmm, have you asked McGilliveray about that?' Alan asked, now sharing a worry with the infantryman.

'Not yet, but I'm goin' to, right now,' Cashman replied. 'Never thought I'd be the one to say this, but I'll be tickled pink to see the sight of our Creeks and Seminolee show up with 'nough weapons and men.'

'I'd like it, too,' Alan agreed, putting down his telescope after deciding that not even an errant whitecap could be mistaken for a topsail on the horizon. 'If the sloop comes inshore tonight and anchors here in the inlet, and our Indian friends are not here to take delivery of the guns, we'll be forced to wait for them with a target no patrol could miss.'

'De sloop's heah, Mista Lewrie, sah!' Andrews hissed at the front of Alan's lean-to, where he had been sleeping with Soft Rabbit, after staying awake most of the night awaiting the arrival of San Ildefonso. He had barely lain his head down, it seemed, to sleep the morning away.

'I'll be right out,' Alan said, groping for his shirt. It was the first night he had slept with her that they had not made love, or even removed their clothing. Soft Rabbit had gone to sleep without him hours before, after sensing that his duty took precedence over her.

'Ah-lan,' she coaxed as he started to leave what little scrap of privacy they had in the lean-to with a blanket hung over the front.

'Got to go, Soft Rabbit, like it or not,' Alan said. He gave her a quick hug and a kiss, then darted out into the dawn. It was not foggy on their sand-spit, though fog hung thick as the Spanish moss on the trees to their rear and inland. By the light of a few smoldering coals in the cook-fire from the night before, he could see that his watch read about half past four in the morning. It was false dawn, and the soft breezes coming off the sea were chilly. Waves rolled in and broke on the beach with a soft, continual hissing.

There was barely enough light to see where he was walking as he made his way down to the shore by the river.

'Where away?' he asked in a soft voice.

'Deyah, sah,' Andrews said, pointing out to sea to the southwest. 'Mustah missed de river in dah dahk un' come 'long de coast.'

San Ildefonso ghosted out of the river fog, hardly a ripple of bow wave under her forefoot, and her sails hanging almost slack with the last gasp of the pre-dawn sea breeze. For a moment, Alan was worried she might have been a real Spanish Guarda Costa sloop, but he recognized several patches on her outer jib, and caught a lick of color aft on her mains'l gaff-the blue, white and red of a Royal Navy ensign.

'That's her, alright,' Alan breathed with relief in his voice.

'If she's in the right hands,' Cashman said at his elbow, which made Alan's full bladder jolt with alarm. 'I'm keepin' my troops hidden 'til we know for sure.'

'Good thinking,' Alan replied, realizing that it was never good to see what you expected to see without making some preparations to be surprised by a clever foe. 'Unfortunately, they'll expect to see some of our party. And me, or they'll turn about and sail out of here with the land breeze when it comes up. It's too late to be fooling about on a hostile shore with dawn in an hour.'

'I'll leave you to it, then, Alan. Good luck.'

Alan opened his breeches and stepped into the sea oats to drain his bladder while he had the chance. Then, gathering his nerves, he stepped out onto the river shore in plain sight and waved his arms at the sloop, hoping that Cashman's fear was not real.