Ghost Fire Read online

  Before Claypole could register the insult, the captain clicked his tongue and his horse moved off. A murderous look came over Claypole’s face. The preacher put a restraining hand on his arm, and the corporal glared at him in warning. Theo turned his back.

  The band struck up again, a bright and jolly tune that sounded out of place in the grim village. The new recruits fell in behind them.

  “Onward,” called the captain. “We will bathe Mr. Courtney elsewhere. We have a long march ahead before we rendezvous with the army at Albany.”

  •••

  Theo washed himself in the river and they gave him a new suit of clothes. Pain racked his body from his hours on the pillory, but he had no time to recover. The captain set a brisk pace. Theo stumbled along at the back as best he could.

  They slept that evening on the outskirts of another village. The captain took lodgings in town, while the men pitched tents in a meadow by a river. Theo noticed that the recruits’ tents were in the center of the camp, surrounded by the regular soldiers.

  He was relieving himself into a patch of bushes after supper, when the corporal came up beside him and unbuttoned his breeches.

  “A friendly word in your ear.” The corporal directed a prodigious stream of piss into the bushes. “I couldn’t help noticing the way you was looking at the forest. Almost like a man thinking of leaving us.”

  Theo tried not to let the guilt show on his face. In fact, he had been thinking of Abigail, wondering when he could slip away from the company and retrace his steps to Bethel.

  The corporal focused on his business. “You’ve got that sweetheart you left behind, ain’t you? Must be quite something, worth taking that punishment for.”

  Theo nodded.

  “I only says it in case you’ve forgotten you’ve joined the army now. Leaving ain’t a matter of walking off. It’s called desertion, and the punishment for that makes the pillory look like a tap on the cheek. You understand?”

  He buttoned himself up and returned to the campfire. He posted extra sentries around the camp and looked into Theo’s tent twice before the lantern was put out.

  They marched for three more days. The weather grew cooler. The leaves were beginning to turn orange. Theo thought constantly of Abigail—what would Claypole have done to her?—but he had no chance to escape. After India, he had thought he was done with soldiering, yet now he had no choice. On the march, the corporal made sure there were always men around Theo; in the evenings, he made a show of placing the pickets.

  On the third evening, Theo sensed something different. There was no village nearby for the captain to retire to, not even a farm. They camped together in a glade in the forest. The corporal spent longer than usual posting the sentries and seemed more preoccupied with what was beyond the camp, rather than the men inside it.

  “There’s Indians in these parts,” he explained, sitting at the campfire sharpening his bayonet.

  “Are they hostile?” Theo asked.

  Sparks flew from the whetstone. “Some’s with us, and some’s with the Frogs. Sometimes you can’t tell the difference until you feel the touch of their steel carving up your scalp.”

  Theo shivered. The forest seemed darker than ever.

  “You ever fought Indians?” one of the men asked Theo. He was a farmer’s son named Burwell, with rough hands and a beard already grown full.

  “Only in India. They fight on elephants.”

  There followed an incredulous discussion about elephants. The men around the campfire could not imagine such a thing. But Burwell had a point to make.

  “Indians on elephants, you’d hear coming through a forest, I reckon.”

  Theo thought of the din he had heard at Perrin’s Garden, the blast of drums and elephants and war cries that announced every Indian army. “You hear them anywhere.”

  “Our Indians ain’t like that. They move through the woods like ghosts, and all you’ll notice is a strange prickling feeling down the back of your neck. Until they want to be seen.”

  There were murmurs of agreement around the fire. Burwell continued, “Just don’t let them take you prisoner. They’ll scalp you alive, and not even trouble themselves to put a bullet in you to ease the pain.”

  “What is ‘scalping’?” Theo asked.

  “It’s what they do to them they kill. They cut down to the bone of your skull, then peel off the top of your head—skin, hair and all. Take it as a trophy, proof of the kill. You go in their villages you see dozens of ’em—hundreds, sometimes—hanging off their tents and longhouses.”

  “It sounds barbaric,” said Theo.

  Burwell leaned forward. Firelight flickered over his face. “That’s not the worst of it. One man I heard of, the Indians opened his chest and cut out his heart. Ate it right in front of him as he died. Says it gives them the strength of their enemy.”

  “Enough,” said the corporal. “You’ll give young Mr. Courtney nightmares.”

  Theo had no nightmares that night. He barely slept. Each time he began to drift off, some new noise from the forest snapped him awake again. He lay with his knife beside him. When one of his companions returned from a call of nature, Theo almost stabbed him in the belly.

  When dawn broke, Theo’s relief was only tempered by his fatigue. He spilled his breakfast, fumbled with his pack, and tripped constantly as they marched along the road.

  Worse, he had ended up beside Burwell, who had an inexhaustible supply of stories of Indian atrocities, which he shared in intimate detail. Decapitation, mutilation, torture and murder: Burwell recounted them all with savage relish.

  Suddenly, Theo heard a rush of air, and a sound like a wet kiss. Burwell went quiet.

  For a moment, Theo was glad for the relief from Burwell’s chatter. Then he noticed an arrow sticking through Burwell’s throat. Blood geysered from the wound.

  Burwell collapsed. A volley of musketry tore through the company. The captain’s horse reared and he was thrown to the ground. Several of the men were already down, wounded. An arrow plucked Theo’s hat clean off his head.

  He could not see who was attacking them. The musket shots seemed to have come from the bushes by the roadside, but no one was there.

  At that moment, the bushes came alive. They were blinds, disguised to look like natural growth and mask the men behind them. The Indians emerged hollering, taking full advantage of the confusion.

  The column had no chance. Half the soldiers were carrying fifes and drums; the rest had no time to unsling their muskets before they went down. The volunteers at the back, unarmed, fared no better. Some stood frozen with shock, gaping at the Indians, until a bullet or an arrow caught them. Others fled down the road. They didn’t make fifty yards.

  Theo ran to one of the fallen soldiers. The musket was still on his shoulder, with the strap buried under the man’s body. He cut the strap and grabbed the gun.

  An Indian, bare-chested and painted with strange designs, stood over him wielding a vicious ax. The part of Theo’s brain that had been listening to Burwell’s stories identified it as a tomahawk. There was no time to load his musket, no time even to think. Theo brought the gun up like a staff, as the Indian brought down his tomahawk. The blade buried itself in the wood of the stock and stuck. Theo wrenched it away, reversed the musket and clubbed the Indian’s face.

  Before his enemy could rise, Theo ran to the forest, carrying the musket with the tomahawk still lodged in it. Bullets flew through the trees, gouging clouds of splinters out of the trunks. He’d been seen. He ran on, twisting and weaving through the thick forest. The shots died away.

  Shouts and running footsteps took their place. The Indians were following him—and however fast he ran, they were faster. They moved through the forest like wolves. The musket weighed him down. He dropped it, and continued running, though he was now defenseless. Glancing back, he saw men close on his heels. An arrow flew past his shoulder and stuck in a tree trunk beside him.

  He started to swerve again so they could
not get a clear shot. It slowed him down further, pushing through thick undergrowth. The Indians fanned out, choosing easier ways to encircle him.

  Theo found an animal track. It was narrow, but at last he could stretch out his legs and run full pelt. He looked back, hoping he was putting some distance on his pursuers. To his horror, he saw that one of the Indians was on the same track and closing fast. He brandished a tomahawk in one hand, and a scalping knife in the other.

  Theo put his head down and sprinted for all he was worth. His foot landed in a patch of leaves that lay scattered over the path. He stepped forward and—

  Something clenched around his ankle, so tight and sudden it pulled him off his feet and sent him sprawling face-first to the forest floor. He kicked to free himself but couldn’t escape. His leg was hanging in a noose about a foot off the ground. The noose was suspended from a sapling, which had sprung up from the pile of leaves and now stood quivering.

  He had stepped into a trapper’s snare.

  He still had his knife: he could have cut himself free. But he had no time. The Indian, seeing his target fallen, bounded forward with a whoop of triumph. There was nothing Theo could do. The Indian stood over him and raised his tomahawk for the killing blow.

  Burwell’s words echoed in Theo’s mind. “Whatever you do, don’t let them catch you alive.”

  With a deafening crash, the Indian’s body snapped forward as a bullet struck between his shoulder blades. Theo twisted around. The corporal knelt between two trees, a dozen paces away, his musket to his shoulder.

  Theo leaned round and fumbled with the snare, trying to free his foot.

  “Give me your knife,” he begged the corporal. But the corporal was frantically reloading. More Indians were coming, stalking through the forest. They made a ring around Theo and the corporal, closing tighter.

  The corporal started to panic. He jerked the musket from one man to the next, trying to cover them. He could not shoot them all.

  “One step closer and I will shoot,” he shouted.

  The Indians did not falter. The corporal aimed his musket at the nearest, a broad-chested man with a proud face, and many feathers hanging from his single lock of hair. He was naked, except for a loincloth. His head was shaved but for one lock of hair and painted red down to his eyes. He walked toward the muzzle of the gun and did not flinch.

  The corporal glanced at Theo. But Theo was still caught by the snare and could do nothing to help him. With a cry of despair, the soldier reversed his musket and put the barrel in his mouth. The weapon was so long, he had to grab a stick to reach the trigger and push it down.

  The Indians gathered around the corpse and examined it. An angry exchange ensued. From the gestures they made, Theo sensed they were frustrated that the bullet had blown off the top of the corporal’s skull, ruining their trophy.

  They still had Theo. They set a guard over him, and left him in the trap while they went back to the road. He did not dare look at his captor. Every moment stretched like an eternity while he waited for the touch of steel against his scalp. All the misery in his short life played through his mind, and he cursed the fates that had brought him there.

  Screams sounded from the road. Not all of his companions had died in the first onslaught. When the Indians returned, each had two or three fresh scalps, still dripping blood, tied to his belt. Theo thought he recognized several as coming from men he’d shared a tent with. He vomited into the bushes.

  They also brought a prisoner—an Easton man named Gibbs. Theo wondered why they had kept this man and himself alive. Burwell’s stories suggested plenty of possibilities, all of them horrific.

  The Indians freed Theo from the snare but bound his hands. They put a branch between his arms, like a turning spit. They did the same to Gibbs. With a man on each side of the prisoners holding the ends of the poles, they set off into the forest.

  Chandernagore, India

  1756

  The city was fine enough, Constance supposed. Almost a mirror image of Calcutta, it had been built by the French some twenty miles upriver from the English city. Like its counterpart, it spread around a bend in the Hooghly river. It boasted imposing brick mansions, expansive warehouses, tall-spired churches and a fort with many guns: all the necessities of European civilization.

  But it was not like Calcutta as she had known it. Or maybe it was she who was different. Things she had hardly noticed before now drove her to despair: the stink of mud and human effluent; the heat; the insects that crawled over every crumb of food and kept her awake at night; the empty words and dull platitudes that passed for conversation among the French society. She moved through it in a daze. Her corset always felt too tight, however much she loosened it. She struggled to breathe, as if a scream was trapped inside her.

  She lived with Lascaux, the French captain who had rescued her from the nawab’s camp. She owed him a debt of gratitude—and she had nowhere else to go. She repaid him as women had always repaid men. She made herself as beautiful as she could, and let him squire her around town to the balls and levées and entertainments that made up the social calendar. Lascaux held her arm with the proud air of a man who could not believe his luck. His fellow officers teased him mercilessly. They seemed to find enormous fun in the situation, though Constance did not understand the joke. Her French was improving, but not fluent.

  “They are just jealous I have secured the affections of the most beautiful woman in the city,” Lascaux told her, with a kiss.

  He was good to her, and as gentle as could be expected. He was stolid and reassuring. She could not deny that, compared to Gerard Courtney, with his sly intelligence and wicked wit, Lascaux was as dull as a block of wood. Nor was he handsome. His wiry dark hair stuck out at odd angles, his skin was marked with pox scars, and he seemed to have been born with his mouth fixed in a permanent pout. She did not care: it was not a question of love. Constance wanted never to touch another man.

  But a woman must make compromises to get what she needs.

  Constance made herself smile for Lascaux, laughed at his bons mots and put on the fine gowns he bought her. When her boils had subsided, and she could do so without being physically sick, she allowed him to kiss her. Sometimes she let him fondle her breasts, but never anything more. When he tried to go further, she always withdrew with a demure frown and a regretful “I must think of my virtue, Monsieur.” She enjoyed seeing the pained frustration on his face. It felt like power.

  She knew she was lucky to be alive. Yet a part of her soul remained inaccessible, still locked inside the Black Hole. The press of the crowds at the balls and parties made her feel faint. If someone brushed against her in the throng, she had to bite her lip to keep from crying aloud.

  Even the smell of the air made her nauseous. Sometimes she woke drenched with sweat, sobbing in the darkness. Once, when Lascaux had come to her room and tried to calm her, she had almost scratched his eyes out.

  She had to escape India.

  One day, Lascaux returned from his barracks with a somber look on his face. “My regiment has been summoned back to France.”

  “But that is wonderful news.” Constance moved toward him, her face lit with the first sincere smile she had felt in months. “I am so bored of India.”

  “I thought you liked this country,” said Lascaux, surprised. He pulled back, avoiding her gaze. “The army has decreed that our sweethearts and, er, native friends must stay behind.”

  Constance’s eyes blazed. “Sweethearts?” she spat. “Is that what I am to you? Just a common soldier’s whore?”

  She said it so fiercely that Lascaux retreated in something like fear. He stiffened. “Mademoiselle, I have never treated you with anything other than the greatest courtesy. I hope you did not mistake my attentions for anything more significant.”

  “It seemed significant enough when you had your hand down my bodice.” Anger coursed through Constance, so much it made her tremble. It was like a key turning a lock inside her. The part of her bein
g that had been inaccessible, the black box in her soul, was suddenly opened. She had thought there was nothing inside but a dark hole. Now she realized it was filled with fury, powder that only wanted a spark.

  But—

  Beneath the rage there was something even more profound: her instinct for survival. Lascaux was her only ally in the world. Attacking him would harden his heart and drive him away. Without him, she would have nothing again.

  There were other ways.

  “Forgive me,” she said humbly. “If I spoke hot words, it was the heat of love, not temper. Do you not see that I love you?”

  He stared at her. Constance crossed to him and wrapped her arms around him. She wanted to hit him, but she resisted the urge. Instead, she pressed her breasts against his chest, rubbed her midriff against his groin. She felt him stir under her touch.

  “You are everything in the world to me,” she said. Her voice shook with emotion. “I would do anything not to be parted from you.”

  Her hand slipped around his back and down, cupping his buttock. Gerard Courtney had been an imaginative lover, and she had been an enthusiastic pupil. She had learned what men liked and how to pleasure them in ways that the stolid captain from Bordeaux could scarcely imagine.

  He sagged against her, yielding to her skillful fingers. “There are things I must tell you.”

  “The only thing that matters is that we are together. Is that not so?”

  She kissed him, letting her tongue flutter over his lips like a butterfly. She undid the buttons of his shirt, sinking to her knees as she went and planting little kisses on his throat, his chest, his belly. She tugged open the fly of his breeches and slipped her hand inside.

  Lascaux moaned with pleasure.

  “The adjutant will not give you a berth on the ship,” he said. He was struggling to speak. “There are only places for—” He gasped as her fingers ran over his balls, exploring the crevice between his legs. “—wives.”

  Her tongue flicked the tip of his shaft. “What can we do?” she wondered, in a voice so plaintive she sounded like a little girl.