I could demand a trial, but I suspect my husbandly outrage would hardly mollify a French military tribunal, particularly when I’d thrown a chopping blade at their commander while he was entirely preoccupied with someone else’s wife. I could hear soldiers spilling from Government House and the rattle of drums from the barracks against the mountains. I also heard the barking of dogs and wondered if they sensed a new dinner. I was probably whiter meat than they were used to, but I was fairly certain their palates wouldn’t mind.
“Monsieur Gage!” It was a hiss. Jubal reached out a paw of a hand and jerked me deeper into garden foliage. “What is happening? I heard shots.”
“I tried to rescue my wife.”
“Where is she?”
“I didn’t find her at all.” It sounded foolish even to me. “It turned out Rochambeau was rogering some other spouse. Now the garrison is aroused and the general wants to kill me as much as I wanted to kill him.”
“I thought we were going to quietly steal away?”
“That was the plan, but I’m afraid I became a little reckless when my wife vanished. I’m not used to being married. ”
“Women make you stupid?”
“Apparently so.”
“Now it is very dangerous. We must flee to the mountains, but they will be watching. Monsieur, I am a little disappointed. We were told by the British that you were a man of cunning.”
“Retirement is simply more work than I imagined. I’m afraid I’ve grown rusty.”
“Merde. All right, hurry, I hear their hounds!”
He turned to run, but I stopped him. “Jubal, I’m sorry, but we can’t go without my wife. We spied a dangerous man who tortured me back in France, and I’m worried he has Astiza. Did you see a woman emerge from Government House, quite beautiful, mustee in coloring, hurrying on some kind of mission?”
“No woman alone. But I did see a woman more pushed than escorted, a man’s hand on one arm and a child in his other.”
“A child! A boy?”
“Perhaps. It wasn’t evident if he was forcing her somewhere or she was demanding they leave. She glanced back, several times. They were heading for the harbor.”
Bollocks. Martel had promised her reunion with Harry if they fled before I confronted him, and she’d chosen my son over me, trusting her resourcefulness over mine. Now I’d lost them both. “If it’s Astiza, a bastard of a Frenchman is taking her there.”
“My sympathies, Monsieur Gage, but we must go now, to Dessalines, or risk being hanged or eaten. It may already be too late.”
“No, it’s I who am sorry, Jubal, because we must go to the harbor instead, to rescue my wife. And you can call me Ethan. From now on we’ll be equals.”
He groaned, not at all impressed by my offer of friendship. We heard cries of command in French. A bugle in the middle of the night. A rising chorus of baying hounds. “This is a very poor idea. Our rebels are the opposite way.”
“We must, my new friend. I misplace my family like an old man his spectacles, and I want to prove I can hold on. Can’t you lead us to the harbor on a winding, twisting way in which we won’t be seen?”
“There is no such path. The street grid was laid with the compass. A musket ball can carry down a street from one end of Cap-Francois to the other. They’ll cut us down like rabbits. And if we do get to the sea, we’re trapped between dogs and water.”
“We’ll steal a boat.”
“I don’t even think we can reach the sea. You’ve roused entire regiments.” He obviously thought me mad as well as stupid. But no, I was just faithful.
I glanced about. A cluster of officers was in a cone of light spilling from Government House main doors, their sabers pointing as they tried to sort what the alarm was about. Rochambeau had disappeared, probably to put some clothes on. The barking was closer, and near the barracks I thought I could see lupine, leaping forms, their wolfish teeth white in the night. Down the Rue Dauphin toward the Caribbean a squad of infantry was assembling. In short order the dogs would sniff us out in the shadows and we’d join the men swinging on the gibbets, our odor adding to the city’s scent of corruption. Unless…
“We can escape in that.” I pointed to a wagon stacked with barrels in a dark court adjacent to the park, the yard just off the main street to the sea. Each hogshead, I guessed, contained sugar, a remnant of wartime plantation production that had been too late for a ship with room for sweets. All departing vessels were crammed with fleeing aristocrats and refugee heirlooms.
“We have no horses or oxen, monsieur.”
“It’s a long, gentle slope to the Caribbean. We aim, push, and ride.”
Now we could hear the clatter of hooves in the dark as men mounted. The barking of the dogs was getting closer. “You’ve left us no choice,” he admitted, looking dubiously at the heavy vehicle.
“It will fly like a chaise.” I wished it would fly like Cayley’s glider, but it was several tons in the wrong direction. I released the lever brake. Alone, I couldn’t have maneuvered the ponderous wagon, but Jubal took up its tongue and dragged it out into the street with the brute strength of a bear. I kept his spirits up by pushing a little from behind. We aimed down the street like a boulder tumbling down a mountain. Lest the vehicle drag, I unlimbered the tongue by freeing an iron pin, and then used that pin to jam the front axle so it couldn’t turn. Then I threw the heavy tongue up onto the cargo of casks. “Now, push, push, push! Point her like an arrow!”
Our chariot, weighing several tons, began to move.
Slowly.
As we ponderously accelerated, we came into faint light thrown by a house window.
There were shouts as we were finally spotted, and the excited chorus of slavering dogs. The animals came on in a streak, eyes glowing in the night’s torch and lantern light. Men were running after them, holding glinting sabers.
The wagon rolled faster.
“Did you bring a gun?”
“Too dangerous,” Jubal said. “I’d be flayed if caught. Of course, also dangerous not to, now.”
“Hindsight is always sharpest.” I eyed the dogs. “We’ll use the wagon tongue. Pole like a boat.”
Jubal swung the heavy timber down against the street, and we shoved. Our cargo gained more speed.
Guns flashed in the night, and bullets made a familiar hot wasp sound. My ear had stopped bleeding, but still throbbed. I thought I saw Rochambeau by his officers, gesturing while he clasped a woman’s silk dressing robe around his body. A major-the wronged husband? — was shaking his fist at the general.
We were now trundling rapidly downhill, aimed at the sea like a ball at pins, but the mastiffs grew out of the gloom with astonishing speed, sprinting for our wheels and snapping. A huge dog sprang to gain purchase on our cargo, but Jubal swung the wagon tongue in a huge arc as easily as a baton. It cudgeled the beast, knocking him sideways into a building, where he bounced and fell among his fellows. They paused to snap at him, and the distraction gave us precious seconds.
Now we were rumbling with the terrifying momentum of Cayley’s flying machine, buildings blurring past, the Caribbean ahead aglitter under the moon, wind warm in our faces.
“How do we slow?” Jubal asked.
“The brake lever.”
“It will work at this speed?”
“Possibly. I’ll give it a pull.”
There was a screech and the wood snapped, stinging my hands. We jerked and went faster.
“Or possibly not. Drag the tongue!”
He tried. The wooden beam bounced, threw up a fountain of dirt and mud, caught on something, and yanked away, almost pulling Jubal off the wagon with it. Now we were racing faster than any horse could run.
The dogs and pursuing soldiers faded in dark behind.
I heard a shouted command and turned to where we were rolling. Ahead, a file of French soldiers had formed to block the road. One had a glowing match he held above a five-pound fieldpiece. “Halt!” he called.
We couldn’t. Jubal yanked me down. “They’re going to shoot!”
