Hannibal was puzzled. He had no idea why the woman and someone else might have been in the barn in the middle of the night. But then he had a thought. There had been a man in the house, presumably this woman's husband, and he'd been so stinking drunk he'd never even quivered when Buck chopped into his head with an ax. If the man had been an ugly drunk who liked to beat his people, maybe the woman and someone else had gone to the barn while the fool slept himself sober. Maybe, too, the woman had been fucking some other man while her husband slept it off.
A quick check of the barn showed two sets of blankets and two places where people had been sleeping. There were bonnets and scarves that told him both were female. Somewhere out in the woods was a survivor, and she was running for help as fast as she could.
Hannibal seethed with anger. He'd been flummoxed by some cracker farmers wife. Worse, one of his men had been thinking with his pecker and not with his brain. The barn should have been checked out right away. The naked woman could have waited. Hannibal pulled out his bowie knife and rammed it into Reginald's stomach. He thrust the blade upward under the rib cage and into the man's heart. Reginald gasped in surprise and fell backward. No loss, thought Hannibal.
In an instant, Reginald's two brothers were on him, howling their rage. Hannibal's knife slashed one, opening his stomach and dropping him with a scream as his entrails started to tumble out, but the second bore him to the ground, where they wrestled. Hannibal slashed at his assailant, but the other man just howled some more and kept clawing at him. Desperation made his attacker strong, and Hannibal wondered if he'd be able to take him. Then the man stiffened and went slack. Hannibal rolled him off and let him plop lifelessly down onto the ground. Buck's ax was buried in the back of his skull.
“Took you long enough,” snapped Hannibal. Buck only laughed.
Hannibal lurched to his feet and looked around. The skinny white woman was gone. “Where's the woman?”
“She run away whiles you was fighting,” said another ex-slave.
“Goddamn,” Hannibal muttered. It had never occurred to the fool to try and stop her. Now he had two women survivors on the loose.
“We should chase her down,” said Buck.
Think. Hannibal looked at the woods surrounding the clearing. They were dark and there was no sign of motion, no sign of a skinny white woman running for her life. That meant she had either gotten so far they weren't going to find her, or she had gone to ground in a hidey-hole she knew existed on her own property. His gut told him she had gone to ground.
Think. To be recaptured was to die slowly and horribly. He already had one woman with a good head start and another one hiding somewhere nearby. He would never catch the first one and it would take both time and effort to find the second. If he took too much time looking for the second woman, the first would be on her way back with white men soldiers.
“No,” Hannibal said. “We get out of here. We gonna move as fast as we can.”
He watched as his band gathered their gear and their loot. After all was said and done, it was pitifully small. They would have to raid again to find some food. Now, though, he knew that they would be chased. Not only had they killed white people, but that asshole Reginald had raped one. And that woman with the hatred in her eyes was the one he feared more than anything. She had seen him and heard his name.
Now he knew the real fear that he would never again see his sweet Abigail and their son.
Chapter Twelve
The State Department of the United States was located on Fifteenth and Pennsylvania, a short walk from the White House. Made of red brick and only three stories tall, it was totally dwarfed by the U.S. Treasury Building, which was both adjacent and overwhelming in size.
To Henri D'Estaing, the difference between the two buildings, Treasury and State, was symbolic of the problems inherent with the United States. The United States of America, now the truncated Union, was far more interested in money than in matters between nations. In short, the United States was a nation of shopkeepers and had no soul, and she would never have one until she realized that it was necessary to exist with other nations. Indeed, existence with other nations was far more important than the making of money. It was, in his opinion, what had made France great and would once again. France understood nations and, under Napoleon III, was well on her way to a degree of primacy that she hadn't had in generations.
As he entered the smallish State Department Building, he smiled as he recalled Valerie's comment that it more resembled a college classroom building than a place where a great nation's foreign policy was developed. How perceptive she was, he thought proudly.
He found Secretary of State Seward's office and presented himself to Seward^’ s assistant. While he waited, he seated himself and wondered just why he had been summoned. Again, it was so untypical of a great power. There was no earthly reason for the secretary of state of any nation to ask to see a mere commercial attache, even one from the great nation that was France. Although he was curious. Henri had no great urge to have his curiosity quickly satisfied. Seward was an angry, bristly sort of man who, in Henri's opinion, was totally miscast as a diplomat. Subtlety was a diplomat's stock in trade, and Seward could be as subtle as a bludgeon.
Henri was escorted into Seward's office. “Be seated,” said Seward. He neither rose nor offered his hand. What is the matter now? Henri D'Estaing wondered as he tried to ignore the slight. “I've asked you here for two reasons,” Seward said. “The first is that I wish you to take a message back to France telling your emperor that his troops must leave Mexico immediately.”
“Shouldn't you be telling this to the ambassador, sir?” Henri asked in astonishment. “I am only the commercial attache.”
“You are, sir, what is here in Washington at the moment. The ambassador is away, and, besides, I wish this handled informally. I do not want diplomatic notes or diplomatic niceties cluttering up or delaying what needs to be done. Just go to France and tell the third Napoleon that the United States is angry that his troops remain in Mexico. Also tell him that the last thing the United States will tolerate is an Austrian emperor trying to run Mexico. France's presence in Mexico is a violation of the Monroe Doctrine and not to be countenanced.”
“But, sir, the presence of a king or emperor in Mexico City would provide stability for a nation that is torn by warfare and is totally bankrupt. Don't you agree that the stability it would bring would be for the good?”
“No.”
Henri tried another tack. “Sir, I believe it is what the people of Mexico want.”
Seward laughed harshly. “Don't insult me with that fatuous argument. If the Mexican people wanted French help they wouldn't be fighting French soldiers, now would they? And even if they did want French help, you're missing the point. The United States doesn't want French soldiers in Mexico, and there shall be no further discussion of the topic. Tell your damned emperor to get them the hell out of Mexico.”
Henri D'Estaing was sweating. He was way out of his depth in this conversation. “And if my government rejects your unofficial entreaty?”
“Then both your third Napoleon and whoever is placed on the Mexican throne will regret it. So will your army, for that matter.” Henri paled. This was too much. “Are you threatening war?”
Seward glared angrily. “A war is what you already have. Mexicans are killing your soldiers and your soldiers are killing Mexicans, or haven't you noticed? What I am threatening is to make it more miserable for France than it already is. If your government does not see the light, then the industrial might of the United States will be used to support those loyal Mexicans who are fighting the French. We will provide the Mexican people with the arms, ammunition, and the training necessary to chase you people back across the Atlantic.”
D'Estaing understood perfectly. The long border from California to Confederate Texas was wide open to the shipment of war goods to the Mexicans, and the monstrous industrial might of the United States had more than enough capacity to do exactly what Seward threatened.
“May I discuss this with my ambassador?” Henri asked.
“Of course.”
