Chapter 11 #2
"He'll die if we stay here," Thomas said. "The water is rising. There was a storm to the south last night."
Mr. Darcy looked at the ridge, then at the party. They were a ragged group. The Crown agents were exhausted, the voyageurs were sullen, and Mr. Wickham was swaying on his feet.
"Lift him."
"Sir?" Davis asked.
"Pick up the litter. We will take turns. Four men to a shift. We move in twenty-minute intervals."
"We can't carry a man through this. It's madness. Every step is a risk." Wickham's protest was sharp.
"Then you will be the first to show us how to mitigate that risk, Mr. Wickham. Position yourself at the front left."
"I am not a beast of burden, Darcy."
Mr. Darcy stepped toward him. He was covered in mud, his face was gaunt, and his eyes were like flint. "You are whatever this expedition requires you to be. At this moment, you are a pair of hands. Use them, or find your own way back to New Orleans."
Wickham looked around, seeking support, but he found none. Even the voyageurs were looking at Mr. Darcy with a new, grim respect. With a muttered curse, Wickham took his place at the litter.
Miss Elizabeth watched as the procession began.
It was a harrowing sight. The ridge was barely a foot wide in places, flanked by black water that seemed to wait for a slip.
The men stumbled, their boots sinking deep into the mire with each step.
Mr. Darcy took the heaviest position, the rear right, where the weight was most uneven.
She saw him strain, the muscles in his neck standing out like cords. He did not complain, did not offer a word of encouragement or a sigh of frustration. He simply moved.
When it was time for the first shift to change, Mr. Darcy did not step away. "I'll stay for the next," he told Davis.
"You need rest, sir."
"I'll rest when we reach the end of the ridge. Move."
Miss Elizabeth caught his eye for a brief second as he passed.
In that moment, she did not see the master of Pemberley or the arrogant visitor to Meryton.
She saw a man who understood that leadership was not a privilege, but a burden.
It was a realization that struck her with more force than any of his earlier attempts at civility.
"He is a better man than I gave him credit for," she whispered to herself.
"He is a man," Cécile said. "The others... they are shadows."
The forced intimacy of the camp that night was different from the ones before.
They were huddled on a small patch of dry earth under a wide oak.
There was no room for social distance. Miss Elizabeth was seated so close to Mr. Darcy that she could feel the heat radiating from his body.
She shifted an inch away, then stopped, unwilling to examine the impulse.
The voyageurs had caught a few catfish, which were roasting over a small, smokeless fire. The smell of the fish, combined with the damp earth and the sharp scent of woodsmoke, created an atmosphere that was both primal and strangely comforting.
"Miller's fever has broken." Thomas returned from the sick man's side. "The movement... perhaps it stirred the humors. He is sleeping naturally now."
A collective sigh of relief seemed to ripple through the group, even Davis let out a short laugh.
Mr. Darcy took a piece of fish and offered it to Miss Elizabeth. "You should eat. Tomorrow will be no easier."
"Thank you." She took the charred morsel. "And you? You carried that man for nearly three hours."
"I have a large frame. It was only logical."
"Logic has very little to do with it, I suspect. Most men would have found a logical reason to let Mr. Wickham carry him the whole way."
"Mr. Wickham was... occupied with his own difficulties."
Miss Elizabeth looked at Mr. Wickham, who was slumped against a tree, his flask finally empty. He looked pathetic rather than villainous in the dim light.
"I used to think him the most agreeable man I had ever met," she said, her voice low.
"He has that gift. In a drawing-room, where the floors are level and the wine is of good quality, he is unsurpassed."
"But here?"
"Here, the floors are not level."
They sat in silence for a time, the sounds of the bayou—the distant bellow of an alligator, the chirping of tree frogs—closing in around them.
In the isolation of the swamp, the world they had left behind began to feel like a dream.
The balls at Netherfield, the gossip of Meryton, the grand houses of London...
they were all part of a different existence.
They did not know, as they sat there in the mud of Louisiana, that across the ocean, the drums of war were already beating.
They did not know that on the eighteenth of June, while they were struggling through a maze of lilies, President Madison had signed a declaration of war against Great Britain.
They were deep in the American wilderness, forgotten by their government and oblivious to the conflict that would soon turn the Mississippi into a theater of blood.
They were only a small party of travelers, altered by the wilderness, bound together by the necessity of survival, and drifting deeper into a territory that was no longer as welcoming as it had once seemed.
"We reach the Choctaw lands in two days, if the water holds," Cécile said.
"Then we shall keep moving." Mr. Darcy leaned back against the bark of the oak.
Miss Elizabeth looked into the darkness, her hand brushing against the rough wool of Mr. Darcy's coat.
A strange foreboding, not for the bayou, but for the world beyond it.
The wilderness had stripped them down to their essentials, and she wondered, with a sudden chill, what would be left when they finally emerged from the trees.
The fire sputtered and died, leaving them in a darkness so absolute that the only way to know the other was there was by the steady, quiet sound of their breathing.