Jackson’s face was very still. “The canal that you were ordered to obstruct two weeks ago?”

Villeré listened to the question. “Oui. Yes.”

Jackson paused. “You escaped from the British by jumping through a window and running to de la Ronde’s plantation?”

“Oui.”

“And then you rode here directly.”

Another pause, while de la Ronde and Villeré exchanged glances.

“I will have an answer,” Jackson said, his voice deceptively calm.

Luke listened to Villeré’s halting narrative and then translated.

“First we rowed across the river, and then we found horses and rode north, and crossed the river again.”

Jackson’s expression was thunderous. “You crossed the river? For what purpose?”

Villeré began to stammer. De la Ronde’s expression was as stiff and fragile as glass.

“Let me suggest to you,” Jackson said, “exactly what happened. You ran to your father-in-law and told him what had happened in the hope that he would ride here directly and alert us. Then you intended to run away rather than face court-martial for dereliction of duty, and you ran to find a boat. Your father-in-law refused to let you go alone, and spent the crossing convincing you that to add desertion to your crimes would mean certain death. He succeeded, and so you then rode north and crossed the river again and came here. This whole additional episode costing us at least another hour. M. de la Ronde, have I come close?”

When Luke had relayed the entire speech, de la Ronde bowed from the shoulders and clicked his heels. In halting English he said, “In the essentials, yes, Major General.”

“You are a wise man, but your daughter married an idiot,” said Jackson. Mostly to himself he said, “The British infiltrated and made camp without firing a single shot. That’s the short and long of it, would you say, Villeré?”

The sound of Villeré’s breathing was very loud as Luke translated.

“Oui. Yes.”

The movement, when it came, was sudden. Jackson raised both fists and crashed them onto the table before him so violently that the glass in the windowpanes shivered.

“By God,” he shouted, the blood rushing into his face. “They will not sleep on American soil. I swear it.”

There was a moment of absolute silence, in which none of them even breathed. Then Jackson’s gaze fell on Gabriel Villeré, and he walked around the table to stand in front of him.

“Your sword.”

Villeré looked at Luke. He meant to be stoic, but the blood had drained from his face leaving only high color on his cheekbones, as if he were in the grip of a fever. He drew his sword and held it out to the major general, who took it.

“Mr. Bonner,” said Jackson. “Call on the guard and see to it that this man is escorted to the garrison gaol. Send word to his father as well. The court-martial will have to wait until we’ve driven the British back to the sea. Major Butler, send word to Fort St. Charles. Three volleys, if you please. We march south today.”

Chapter 46

New Orleans was a Catholic town full of churches and chapels, and in each church there was a bell tower. Bells told the hour, summoned the faithful to Mass, reminded them when it was time to say their prayers, announced births and deaths, called citizens to fight fires and floods. Now the bells were tolling wildly while the echo of the triple cannon blast from Fort St. Charles still hung in the air.

Jackson was calling all men to arms. The American troops were on their way to meet the British.

Since the moment Hannah had agreed to join the company of Choctaw, a knot had been tightening in the pit of her belly. She felt her whole self being stretched thin, as fragile as a bubble. She tried to recall why she had agreed, what had compelled her to go against her instincts.

Then the signal guns sounded, and just that suddenly all tension left her in a rush, as hot as blood.

With complete calm she finished what she was doing. She folded a blanket and spread it over the hospital cot, shook out the pillow, looked around the clinic—now empty but for an old man too sick to get out of his bed—and left to get ready. Ben Savard would be coming for her.

She passed through the main clinic, where Julia and Rachel were working with Clémentine and a half dozen other women to get ready for the influx of wounded. Through the windows that looked out on the rue Royale, Hannah caught sight of crowds in the street, driven by panic and excitement both.

It was a kind of madness that came over people; Hannah could see it in their faces, like a fever. Once she had been infected with it, too, but she had passed beyond such things. She would go to tend to the wounded and comfort the dying; she would bring all her skill and knowledge to that work. But she felt no thrill at the sound of drums and bugles, nor any anger or fear or joy. Those were things she could not afford to take with her onto a battlefield.

Jennet was in the little clinic when the triple cannon volley sounded. She startled so thoroughly that the basin of dirty water she was carrying slopped over and soaked her apron, which was none too clean to start with.

The little girl lying on the cot beside her didn’t startle, or even blink. Since her grandfather had died she hadn’t spoken a word, and it was an hour’s work to coax a few spoonfuls of broth into her.

Dr. Savard had asked her to take on the responsibility for the little clinic, and she had been glad to be given work. Once the fighting began and the first wounded were carried back to the city, some of them—the ones with wounds that would not kill them outright—would end up here.