THEY HALF CARRIED, HALF DRAGGED ME BACK TO THE BOAT AND laid me on the bench in the cabin. At least, I suppose that is what they did – I fainted not long after we had left the road, and presently came to flat on my back, staring up at the ceiling. Burr and Blennerhassett were conferring beside me.
‘How bad is the wound?’ Burr asked.
I rolled my head to my left and saw Blennerhassett crouching low over my arm. I shuddered, and Blennerhassett leaped back. The weeks since we departed his island had not proved agreeable to him: his eyes had retreated into his skull, so that the great, hooked nose became yet more pronounced, and his pale skin seemed veritably moribund. It did not make for a comforting bedside presence.
‘How is your wound?’ This time, Burr addressed me directly.
I tried to lift my left arm and instantly abandoned the attempt, giving full voice to the pain which knifed through my shoulder into my chest.
‘I fear there is still some pain,’ said Blennerhassett, superfluously. ‘I am not a surgeon, you know, Colonel Burr. I may patch the hole, but I cannot mend it.’
Burr thrust his hands into his pockets and turned this way and that. ‘You must forgive me, Lieutenant: it is my own foolishness that has brought us to this pass.’ He shook his head in emphasis of his shame. ‘I have been so assiduous recruiting my army, yet I have forgotten our need for a surgeon. Even against the Spanish, we cannot trust that all their shots will go astray.’ He tapped me playfully on the shoulder, seeming not to notice the fresh hurt which made me grimace. ‘Your sacrifice is not in vain. Imagine if this had happened in the deserts of Mexico. We will retain a surgeon before we reach Baton Rouge, you may depend on it.’
I feared we would have more call for an undertaker, though I did not want to be the man to prove the need. I groaned, and reached my right arm across to paw at the wound.
‘We’ll need a surgeon,’ Blennerhassett insisted. ‘I’ve cleaned the wound as well as I can, but I can’t say it won’t fester if it’s left. We must find a doctor to see to it, or risk having to amputate.’
I had not warmed to Blennerhassett, with his distant manner and unusual preoccupations, but now I felt a surge of good-feeling towards him. Burr, by contrast, showed no such humanity.
‘Come, Harman, amputation would not be so bad. If Jerrold is to be my Admiral Nelson he can certainly manage single-handed.’ He bobbed his head, delighted with his joke and oblivious to its effect. At last, seeing the anger on my face, he relented. ‘I will take my boat ahead to Bayou Pierre and call on my old friend Judge Bruin. I had intended to consult him anyway, and he is as likely as any man to rouse a doctor in these parts. You will stay here, Harman, and wait for the rest of the fleet to arrive, then follow us down.’
He spoke briskly, though even then it seemed that he was animated more by a desire to finish the discussion than to assure my health, for he kept shooting covetous glances towards the door of the sleeping cabin. Before he could depart I flapped my good arm to stay him.
‘Are you not curious as to who inflicted my wound?’
He shrugged. ‘I had assumed you met with a Chactaw. It was as well he did you no worse injury. They have in their tribe the most terrible savages, you know, bone pickers who—’
‘It was not a Chactaw.’
‘Then who—’
‘It was a Spaniard.’
I slumped back on the bench, pleased to have pinned his attention at last. Briefly, I explained my encounter with Vidal on the stage from New York, and my subsequent battle with him in the forest. All the while, Burr paced the cabin with increasing agitation.
‘You are sure it was him?’
‘I stood as close to him as I am to you now.’
‘That is troubling.’ Burr put his hand to his chin, squeezing the jaw between finger and thumb. ‘That the Spanish suspected our designs, we knew. That their agent has followed us so assiduously, and dares attack us on American soil, is cause for the greatest concern. What other traps may they have awaiting us down river? And how much of our scheme do they know?’
Not enough to have identified the English officer caught up in it, I hoped.
‘No matter.’ It was not in Burr’s nature to be cast down for more than a few moments. ‘They can hardly have marched an army through the Mississippi Territory, and we are well enough equipped to repulse whichever spies and agents they send against us. No, there is nowhere they can attack us until Baton Rouge, and by then we will have shown our true colours in any case. We have nothing to fear.’
He nodded to himself. ‘I leave it to you, Harman, to gather our forces and proceed down the river. For now, you will forgive me if I retire to my bed.’
He hurried down the cabin and pushed through the bedroom door, shutting it tight behind him. The bolt within snapped closed. With a doubtful glance after him, Blennerhassett made to leave.
‘Wait,’ I mumbled. ‘What became of Miss Lyell?’
Blennerhassett’s long nose seemed to droop further in discomfort. ‘They found her in the woods, where you had left her. She was quite unharmed, so I hear.’
‘Where is she now?’
His gaze shied away from me. At once, he seemed to take an unusual interest in the planking of the wall. ‘She went to bed. Colonel Burr was afraid she might take a little melancholy for her ordeal.’ He offered a weak smile. ‘But she’ll be well, I’m sure.’
With that, he scuttled out of the cabin. Through the skylight, I heard him relaying Burr’s instructions to the crew on deck.
I lay back on the bench, feeling the hull twitch in the current as we cast off and rejoined the river. My arm still throbbed, but the pain went unheeded as thoughts of Catherine and Burr consumed me. Twisting my head around to see the door, I could almost glimpse Burr crouching over her pale, flawless body, running his hands over places I had believed my own. With every creak of timber or howl of the wind, I imagined I heard Catherine’s moans as she gave herself to him, or Burr’s frenzied, porcine grunting. I wanted to leap to my feet and tear the door from its hinges, run Burr through with a bayonet and implore Catherine to remember that I had saved her life in the forest; or else stagger on deck and drown myself in the river. I had suspected their connection for some time now, but to have it confirmed, and compounded by Blennerhassett’s embarrassed pity, was almost more than I could bear. Burr had called me his Nelson. Instead, I had become his William Hamilton.
I must have fallen asleep, though my preoccupations were the same both awake and in dreams. In both, enticing visions mingled with mute rage. Sometimes I saw Catherine, and sometimes Isobel; sometimes it was I who caressed them, at other times I stumbled upon them in lascivious embrace with Burr. Periodically, I would roll over in my makeshift bed and awake with a yelp, but the void within always sucked me back into sleep. Perhaps it was one of these cries which summoned Catherine, for when I opened my eyes she was standing over me, luminous in her white night-dress.
‘My poor, gallant hero,’ she cooed, stroking a hand over my forehead.
‘I saved your life.’ There was a sour dryness in my mouth which parched the strength from my words, though she seemed to understand them.
‘I cannot tell you my gratitude.’ There was an honesty in her words, but it only worsened my melancholy. If she truly felt grateful, how could she betray me to Burr?
‘Burr,’ I mumbled. ‘Burr.’
She touched a cold finger to my lips. ‘Hush. He is not your concern.’
I wanted to leap up, to cry out that he was my concern: that he had dragged me down this cursed river, that he had more than once nearly seen me killed and that, to crown it all, he had stolen Catherine’s affections from me. But I did not. Instead, I nursed my hurt in silence.
I was woken by a flat, iron-grey light pressing against my eyes. The boat no longer seemed to be moving, and the doors at the far end of the cabin had been thrown open to admit daylight. I shivered, trying to pull the blanket further over my neck, but the motion sparked a stab of pain. At least the attendant yelp attracted some attention. Burr’s slave boy hurried to my side and, with many beggings of my pardon and deferential ‘Massas’, tied a handkerchief into a rudimentary sling for my arm. Then he indicated that I should get out of bed. I was little more than a spectator as he lifted me up, pushed on my boots and hung a greatcoat over my shoulders before leading me outside.
Even with the greatcoat on I felt the bite of the hoary air, its sting in my nose and its grind in my throat. At some point during the night we had passed into a different world: the greys and browns which had surrounded us for weeks had vanished under a crystalline blanket of snow, shimmering and glittering in the pale winter morning. Even through the cold it offered a hopeful purity which could not fail to lift my spirits.
The river too was different. The broad expanse and rapid current of the Mississippi had gone; we were now in a narrow, stagnant piece of dark water, hemmed in by willows and poplars. The boat was moored to a short wooden landing, which led on to a broad path cut through the trees. From somewhere not so far away I could smell woodsmoke.
Footsteps sounded on the deck behind me, and Burr came around the corner of the cabin. He had wrapped himself in a military cloak which evidenced many years’ active service, and had a tricorn hat jammed over his ears. As ever, his bumptious energy was unflagging.
‘How do you do this morning, Lieutenant?’ he greeted me.
I tapped my right hand against the sling. ‘Painfully.’
‘You’ll not feel the hurt of that wound for long in this cold – better than brandy for dulling pain, as General Washington used to say when we were at Valley Forge. And we will have a doctor to see to you soon enough, though you may need more than the cold if he calls for his saw.’
He winked, as though the prospect of amputation were a tremendous joke between us. I did not even pretend amusement.
‘Where are we?’
‘Bayou Pierre.’ Burr pointed away through the trees. ‘Judge Bruin has his house over there. He is an ally in this venture. A warm hearth and a stout meal will doubtless mend your spirits – and I fancy we may find he has gathered more men to our cause.’
Taking great care to keep from slipping, I followed Burr over the side of the boat onto the icy landing. It was hard to keep balanced with one arm bound across my chest, especially trudging through snow four inches deep, but Burr’s boy took my elbow to steady me while his master hurried on in front. There was something childish in his character which was forever driving forward, always chafing to be over the horizon.
The line of trees along the shore was not deep: after fifty yards or so the path opened on to a snowy meadow, running up a slope to a low ridge where a handsome brick house stood. Railed fences rose out of the snow, dividing the fields and marking out a track which led straight up the hill before us. Even between the railings the snow was untouched by man or beast; it crunched and creaked under the weight of our boots as we ploughed through it.
We had gone about halfway up the slope, and were in the centre of that pristine white meadow, when the door to the house opened. The light on the snowfield dazzled us, reflecting the sun onto our squinted eyes like a mirror. I cupped my free hand around my face and stared, but I could make out nothing save a dark, round figure hurrying down the hill so fast I feared he would lose his footing entirely. He slid to a stop in front of Burr just as the boy and I came level with them.
‘Colonel Burr,’ he said, breathing hard. ‘I thought it must be you.’
Even though he lived in the depths of the wilderness, the frontier life had not appreciably hardened him. A rotund belly pressed out between the folds of his fur-trimmed cloak, and his face seemed to have been steeped in red wine. Two tufts of white hair trimmed the side of his head; otherwise, beneath a fox-fur cap, he was entirely bald.
Burr took his hand and shook it with his customary enthusiasm. ‘Judge Bruin. May I present Lieutenant Jerrold? The rest of my company will join us tomorrow, but for the moment we are the vanguard. What news of the territory? You must tell us everything, for I have heard conflicting reports up the river. Has Wilkinson announced the war yet? How many volunteers have you gathered? Do you know the state of the defences at Baton Rouge?’
The questions rattled off his lips like drumbeats, each so hard on the last that the judge could barely open his mouth to reply. Bound up in the flow of his own rhetoric, Burr did not notice the fearful alarm which spread across Bruin’s face, nor the agitation with which he wrapped and folded his fingers together. At last he could bear it no more, and blurted out, ‘You are too late, Colonel Burr. Have you heard nothing?’
Burr paused, cocking his head like a robin. ‘Too late for what? We have been alone on the river this past week, and have met no-one. Has the war started without us?’
Bruin pulled a flask from his coat and gulped down its contents. ‘By God, Colonel, but you have chosen a poor time to sequester yourself. The war has started, yes indeed, but not the war you wanted. Your designs are known and the country is in uproar. Jefferson himself has issued a proclamation for your arrest on charges of treason. You are finished.’