In the days that followed, several other vessels were sighted, but always they were far off and posed no threat. On the fourth day after the Amity’s capture, she and the Revenge sailed through a narrow strait and into a body of water several miles across.
Though Creighton’s command of any geography beyond the British Isles was vague, he did recall that New Orleans lay at the mouth of the Mississippi River. If this was the Mississippi, then perhaps the stories of how much bigger things were in America were true. But Peter revealed that they had, in fact, sailed into a lake he called Pontchartrain. “If you go up the Mississippi, you have to fight the current, plus a headwind. It can take a month, sometimes, to reach New Orleans that way. This way is easier.”
The ships crossed the lake and anchored a hundred yards or so from the south shore. In the morning, a party of men rowed off, then returned late in the day with four flat-bottomed scows. The crew loaded them with the Amity’s cargo—mostly bales of cotton and tobacco and barrels of indigo and rice that the ship had taken on in Charles Town, plus farming implements and household goods originally meant for the settlers in the Florida colony.
Benedict Arnold came aboard the Amity to supervise the work. When a sailor carrying a sack of salt tripped and dropped his load, it landed on a cannon block and split open, sending salt cascading across the deck. Just as abruptly, Arnold’s temper burst forth, and he showered the sailor with a torrent of abuse and invective. He came within an inch of striking the man, but contented himself with seizing the poor fellow by the nape of the neck and sending him staggering back toward the hold.
“Does he always have such a short fuse?” Creighton asked the giant.
Peter winced a little, as though this were a sore subject. “He tries to keep it in check, but the longer he does, the worse it is when it finally breaks loose. It’s been a source of grief for him more than once. But it’s also what makes him such a fearless and fearsome fighter.”
“Not fearsome enough, it seems. After all, it was his side who lost the war.”
Peter’s temper was clearly less quick than his commander’s. He merely shrugged and grinned. “It an’t lost yet.”
Within a few hours the barges were piled so high with goods that the water threatened to slop over their gunwales. By the time half a dozen crew members had climbed into each one, the boats had no more than four inches of freeboard.
“I hope you don’t expect me to ride in one of those,” Creighton said.
“Poh, there’s nothing to fret about,” Peter said blithely. “Come on.”
They climbed down the cargo net and into one of the barges. When Peter stepped aboard, its hull seemed to sink another inch or two. As they rowed away from the ship, Creighton looked back to see his uncle and Lieutenant Hale, escorted by two guards, climbing into another boat.
The crew piloted the barge toward a crescent-shaped fort made of wooden posts sunk into the ground, with planks nailed to them. But before they reached it, they swung about and headed into the mouth of a narrow waterway that disappeared between stands of unfamiliar trees, many of them draped with long strands of some gray substance. “Spanish moss,” Peter informed him, even though he hadn’t asked. “And them are cypress trees.”
The waterway could not accurately be called a river, for the brown water in it seemed not to be flowing at all. It was more like a winding canal. The banks were twenty feet apart at most, and half that expanse of water was choked with reeds—and, Creighton guessed, with snakes and alligators as well. He kept as far from the gunwales as the piles of cargo would allow.
“This here is Bayou San Juan,” Peter said. “It takes us inland four or five miles.” Though Creighton had no notion what a bayou was, he could not have been persuaded to admit it. Peter told him anyway. “Bayou is an Indian word, I believe. ’Tis like a river, only instead of the water flowing out of it and into the lake, it’s the other way around.”
The passage soon grew so narrow that the crew were forced to ship their oars and take up poles. Something pricked the back of Creighton’s neck and he slapped at the spot instinctively. “Mosquitoes,” Peter told him. “They get thick as mustard when dusk comes on.”
“I know what mosquitoes are,” Creighton replied irritably. “We have them in England, you know.”
“But,” said Peter, with a trace of pride, “the ones here are bigger, I warrant.”
“No doubt,” Creighton muttered. “And so are the fools.”
It was gloomy amid the overhanging trees, and became more so as the sun sank lower. At the same time the bayou grew ever narrower and more shallow. Creighton began to suspect that they had taken a wrong turn somewhere. Surely nothing could lie at the end of such a dismal corridor except perhaps their doom. Yet the sailors went on poling the scow through the dark water, seemingly unconcerned.
Just when it seemed that both the daylight and the water would give out entirely, a clearing appeared on their left. In it stood a long, low structure built of boards. Creighton looked about for other buildings and saw none. “This is New Orleans?” he asked incredulously. It was even more primitive than he’d imagined.
Peter seemed amused. “No, this here’s a warehouse. We’ve got to hike another two miles overland to get to town.”
Creighton glared at him. “You’ve no call to make me feel stupid!”
Peter seemed taken aback by the accusation. “I’m sorry. I never meant to.”
“I’d like to see how well you’d fare in a place like London!”
“I’m sorry,” the giant repeated. “’Pon my honor, I wasn’t making fun. I was only trying to be helpful.”
“Well,” said Creighton, a little less harshly, “stop trying, all right?”
The barges that had preceded them were tied up along the bank, and their crews were transferring the cargo to the warehouse. Creighton’s boat drifted up behind the others and was made fast to a cypress trunk. Seemingly without effort, Peter scooped up a hundred-pound sack of coffee beans under each arm and stepped ashore. Creighton followed, empty-handed.
By the time the barges were unloaded, dusk was upon them—and so were the mosquitoes. The sailors began passing around a clay pot; each man dipped out a handful of some thick substance and smeared it on his hands and face. Peter scooped his share from the container and handed it to Creighton, who took one whiff of it and nearly dropped the pot. “What is that?”
“You really want me to tell you?” Peter asked as he nonchalantly slathered the smelly stuff over every inch of exposed skin. “I wouldn’t want you feeling stupid again.”
Creighton was glad that it was growing dark; it hid the smile that he couldn’t restrain. “Yes, I really want to know.”
“’Tis bacon grease.”
Creighton winced. “It’s also rancid.” He thrust the pot back into Peter’s hands. “I’m not about to anoint myself with that.”
The giant stared at him, then at the pot, and then shrugged. “As the dying tailor said, suit yourself.”
The party started off through the trees, following a broad, well-worn path. Before they had traveled a hundred yards, Creighton began to regret his decision to forgo the bacon grease. The mosquitoes were so numerous and so merciless that he felt almost the way he had felt aboard the Amity, after the cannonballs struck and the air was filled with deadly debris. He wanted to cry out, to fall to his knees and cover his head with his arms.
He drew from his sleeve that accessory carried by every true gentleman, the handkerchief. He draped it over his neck and drew the ends together under his chin, like a wimple. The thin linen offered little protection; the mosquitoes pierced it like so many pins. The one thing the cloth did impede was his breathing. The hot, humid air had made him short of breath to begin with; now he felt as though he were suffocating. He pulled the cloth aside and drew a deep breath, only to inhale a horde of mosquitoes that set him coughing and choking.
“Are you all right?” Peter asked.
Creighton couldn’t manage a reply—which was just as well, considering his ugly mood. He knew that the sensible thing would be to give in and armor himself with rancid grease, but his pride wouldn’t let him. He wondered whether his uncle, who was somewhere in the rear of the party, under close guard, had deigned to daub himself with the stuff. He doubted it.
A crashing, crackling sound off to his right, accompanied by savage grunts, drove the mosquito problem from his mind. “What’s that?” he demanded in an urgent whisper, imagining Indians.
“Wild pigs, like enough,” Peter replied.
Another building appeared ahead, silhouetted against the sky. “The brickyard,” Peter said, no doubt to save Creighton the embarrassment of mistaking it for New Orleans.
Creighton had not pictured New Orleans as the sort of place to have bricks. He had imagined it, in his more optimistic moments, as a cluster of squalid log huts. After another interminable half hour of stumbling over tree roots and swatting mosquitoes, he got his first inkling of how far off the mark he was.
The trees dwindled and they emerged onto a broad flood plain. A hundred yards ahead lay a palisade of upright logs, surrounded by a ditch. Within the palisade some five hundred houses were lined up, like so many well-trained soldiers, in half a dozen neat rows, parallel to the river. A low bank of earth a thousand yards or more in length lay between the buildings and the broad expanse of the Mississippi.
The streets of the city were not lighted by lamps as the streets of Bristol were, but the candlelight that shone from the windows of the houses seemed familiar and inviting. They approached a gate in the log wall. General Arnold identified himself, and the guards allowed them to pass through. “Why do they need a palisade?” Creighton asked.
“To keep out the Indians and the English.”
The way Peter lumped the two together, as though they were equally barbarous and detestable, irked Creighton. “What do they have to fear from England? The two countries aren’t at war.”
“Not yet. But General Arnold says it’s only a matter of time. He says the Brits would love to take New Orleans, because then they’d control the mouth of the Mississippi. They’d also have us Patriots right where they want us: in prison, or at the end of a rope.”
The houses of New Orleans were not quite as grand, overall, as those in Charles Town, but neither were they especially small or shabby. The more modest dwellings were covered in clapboard, with wooden shakes on the roofs. The better ones were built of timbers with bricks laid up between them, and were roofed with slate or tile. The walls of some had been plastered with stucco and whitewashed.
They all had three things in common. One was a drainage ditch—usually overgrown with reeds—that circled the property. The second was a wide veranda, similar to those he’d seen in Charles Town. The third was the foundation: rather than being set on a solid footing of stone or brick, the houses were raised up on pilings, sometimes as much as six or eight feet above the level of the dirt street. Obviously the wall of earth that bordered the river sometimes failed to keep the Mississippi from straying beyond its banks and into the territory it had once occupied.
By the time the company reached the open square at the heart of the city, the men had begun to disperse and go their separate ways, until all that remained besides Creighton were the giant and the general, along with the two prisoners and their guards.
Arnold eyed the colonel and the lieutenant thoughtfully. “We’ll try confining these two in the Cabildo House. If they cause any trouble, we can transfer them to the prison.”
Colonel Gower stepped forward, contemptuously pushing aside the guard who tried to restrain him. “I protest, sir, in the strongest terms! It is contrary to the rules of war to confine an officer who has given his word not to escape!”
“Perhaps,” said Arnold. “But you said yourself that we are not at war. You can’t have it both ways. Besides, you continue to keep our officers, including General Washington, locked away in prison cells. When you allow them their liberty, we will do the same for you, not before.” He turned to Peter. “Do you suppose Mr. Franklin can find room for another stray?”
“Like enough.” The giant beckoned to Creighton, who was still busy batting at the air around him. “Come on.”
Creighton hesitated, gazing after his uncle and Lieutenant Hale, who were being ushered toward a brick-and-timber building on one side of the square. If he went with Peter, he had no idea what he might be letting himself in for. On the other hand, he knew exactly what awaited him if he cast his lot with the colonel, and it was not a happy prospect.
He set off after Peter, whose seven-league strides had already carried him a stone’s throw away. Though Creighton had some difficulty catching up, at least the quick pace left some of the mosquitoes behind. “Where are we going?” he asked breathlessly.
“To Dr. Franklin’s home, on Royal Street.”
“Franklin? Is he any relation of Benjamin Franklin?”
“He’s one and the same.”
Creighton was so surprised that he halted in his tracks—until the halo of mosquitoes encircled his head again; then he broke into a trot to evade them. “I thought he was dead.”
“Dr. Franklin? He’s the least dead of anyone I know. I believe all the electrical energy he’s soaked up keeps him going. So, they’ve heard of him in England, have they?”
“Of course. In fact, I venture to say that he’s better known there than any other American. I wasn’t aware he was a doctor, though.”
“I believe it’s what they call an honorary title. Folk say he’s a genius. Personally, I wouldn’t recognize genius if it sprang up and bit me, but I do know he’s a devilish clever fellow.”
“Is that so? Back home, those I associated with regarded him as something of a rustic buffoon.”
Peter was silent for a time, as though digesting the remark. Finally he said, “Then I’d say you associated with the wrong sort of folk.”
Nothing Creighton had seen in America so far had been anything like he expected, and Dr. Franklin’s house was no exception. It was unimpressive, both in its size and its construction. Though it stood on brick pillars, the walls were merely cypress boards.
“There’s no light in his room,” Peter said. “He’s probably gone to bed.” He led Creighton around to the rear of the house, where the windows were lighted.
“This is hardly the sort of place I would have expected to find a former ambassador to England and France living,” Creighton observed.
“I warrant he has trouble affording even this. He’s in the same boat as most of the Patriots; most everything he had—money, possessions, property—was taken by the Brits.”
“Oh,” said Creighton. “I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t suppose you would.” They climbed the stairs to the veranda. Three doors opened onto the porch; Peter knocked at the center one. It was opened a moment later by a slight, dark-haired girl of about Creighton’s age, who wore a linen cap and an apron over her dress.
“Peter!” she cried. “You have returned safe and sound!” She was about to throw her arms around him, but then she seemed to think better of it. She retreated a step and hung her head, her hands clasped together tightly as though restraining each other. “Will you come in?” she said, more demurely. Her heavy accent told Creighton that she was neither English nor American; nor was it like any Spanish accent he’d heard. He put her down as French, and she shortly proved him right.
Peter had made no move to enter. He stood rooted to the porch, his hat in his huge hands. “I didn’t want to—I only—”
The girl abruptly became animated again, waving a hand at them impatiently. “Vite, vite, before les moustiques invite themselves in as well!”
Peter ducked through the doorway and Creighton followed. Waving a towel at the mosquitoes in their wake, the girl slammed the door shut behind them. The interior of the house was arranged very differently from the typical English dwelling. There were no hallways. They had entered a sort of foyer, and from it doors led directly into the other rooms of the house.
The girl led them through the dining room and into the pantry. “I was just putting some things away,” she said. Though the pantry was small, an open window kept it from being intolerably stuffy. Creighton wondered at first why the room was not swarming with mosquitoes. Then he saw that the window was covered with loosely woven fabric that allowed air to pass through, but not insects.
“One of Dr. Franklin’s inventions,” Peter said. “Here’s another.” He gestured at a curious contraption that hung from the ceiling. It consisted of a boxlike frame of wood, covered with strips of the same sort of fabric that was on the window. Atop the box was a dish full of water. The ends of the fabric strips were draped over the edge of the dish.
“What is it?” Creighton asked.
“He calls it an evap-o-ra-tive cooler,” Peter said, pronouncing the words carefully. “You see, the water runs down over the cloth and . . . and . . .” He trailed off. “And somehow that keeps the food in the box cool. I don’t really understand it. You’ll have to ask Dr. Franklin. As I said, he’s a devilish clever fellow.”
“And you, Peter, are a devilish rude fellow,” the girl chided him. “You have been gone for two weeks, and all you can talk about is Dr. Franklin’s inventions? Who have you brought with you?”
“I’m sorry,” the giant mumbled, shamefaced. “You know when it comes to social things, I’m like a dog in a dancing school.”
“Then I shall have to make up for it.” She curtised awkwardly to Creighton, as though she had only just learned how. “Je suis Sophie Doucet.”
Creighton was more accustomed to ignoring housemaids or ordering them about than to being introduced to them. He stared at her a moment before he remembered that he was supposed to be a servant, too. He turned to her and bowed slightly. “Creighton Brown.”
To his surprise, her brown eyes went wide and one work-reddened hand flew to her mouth, as though he’d said something scandalous. “Bonté!” she breathed. “Votre visage!” She passed her hand across her features. “Your face!”
Puzzled, Creighton put his fingers to his cheek. The skin was a mass of bumps, as though he’d suffered a sudden and extreme outbreak of pimples. His face was hot to the touch, too, partly from the bites and partly from embarrassment. He was about to respond with some unpleasant remark, as he normally did in such situations, but the girl held up her hand.
“I have something that will help.” She turned to a set of shelves and, standing on tiptoe, took down a glass jar filled with a salve of some sort. “Rub un petit peu—a small amount—on your face. It will make the swelling go down, and make the itching less.”
Creighton regarded the salve dubiously. “It’s not bacon grease, is it?”
She laughed. “Non, non. It is comfrey and myrtle. You will smell very pleasant.” She looked up at Peter’s well-greased countenance and wrinkled her nose. “Unlike some others I could name.” At once she bit her lip and hung her head again. “Ah, pardonnez-moi,” she said meekly. “That was a thoughtless thing for me to say.”
But Peter did not appear offended so much as baffled. “What’s come over you?”
She blinked innocently at him. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Well, I mean . . . I don’t remember you ever begging pardon for anything before, least of all for your . . .”
She gave a slight, mischievous smile. “For my sharp tongue?”
“Well . . . yes.”
The girl said soberly, “Ah, but I am not the same Sophie Doucet to whom you bade farewell a few weeks ago.”
“You—you an’t?”
“Mais non. I have embarked upon a regimen of self-improvement.”
Understanding dawned suddenly on the giant’s face. “You’ve been talking to Dr. Franklin.”
“Oui. He has devised a plan by which I may improve my character.”
“A plan?”
Sophie nodded enthusiastically. “Each week I am to devote myself to cultivating one of thirteen basic virtues: frugality, sincerity, tranquillity, et cetera. This week it is humilité.”
“Humility.”
“Oui.” She bit her lip again, thoughtfully this time. “I am beginning to think that I may have to allow two weeks for this one.”
Peter frowned. “I know that I an’t a fraction as intelligent as Dr. Franklin, but I liked your character the way it was.”
Sophie made another awkward curtsy. “Merci. But I have become aware that my behavior is sometimes not so very . . . comment dit-on? . . . so very ladylike.” She turned back to Creighton and inquired in a ladylike fashion, “The ointment makes it better, n’est-ce pas?”
“Yes,” Creighton admitted grudgingly.
“Bon. You will be staying with us?”
Creighton glanced rather sullenly at Peter. “It seems I have nothing to say in the matter.”
“Could you make shift to put him up for tonight?” Peter asked. “In the morning Dr. Franklin can decide whether he’s to stay.”
Sophie nodded. “Where are you from?” she asked Creighton, and then, apparently considering this too blunt and unladylike, quickly added, “If you do not mind my asking.”
“Bristol.”
Sophie tilted her head to one side. “Bristol?” she repeated, though she pronounced it Breestol. “Where is that—if you do not mind my asking?”
“On the western coast.”
“The western coast of what?”
Creighton stared at her incredulously. “Why, England, of course.”
Her expression changed from one of amiable curiosity to something much harsher and more hostile. “England? Vous êtes anglais?” She turned to Peter with a disapproving, almost accusing look. “You did not tell me he was English!”