Chapter 12
The fourth week of June brought a heat that did not merely hang over the expedition but seemed to press against the skin with the burden of wet wool.
The bayou, once a labyrinth of pressing green, had narrowed into a series of stagnant channels where the water was blackened by tannins and choked with duckweed.
Progress was measured no longer in miles but in the number of logs the voyageurs were forced to portage or the hours spent hacking through the trailing beards of Spanish moss that draped the waterway like funereal shrouds.
Miss Bennet, seated in the center of the lead pirogue, found her world reduced to the rhythmic dip of paddles and the relentless hum of insects that no amount of grease or smoke could discourage.
Mr. Darcy sat in the bow, his back a rigid line of blue wool and determination.
He had discarded his cravat days ago, yet he maintained a composure that Miss Bennet found both admirable and infuriating.
While Mr. Wickham lolled in the second boat, frequently complaining of his flask's depletion, Mr. Darcy remained vigilant.
His gaze never left the water's surface, which today was as still as a mirror and twice as deceptive.
Only the occasional splash of a turtle sliding from a sun-drenched log broke the stillness. Then, the water to the left of the pirogue did not merely splash; it erupted.
A bull alligator, a monster of some twelve feet, surged from the depths with a speed that defied its prehistoric bulk.
Its armored head struck the side of the hollowed-out log with the force of a battering ram.
The pirogue lurched violently. One of the junior Crown agents gave a short, sharp cry as he was nearly cast into the dark water.
The beast's jaws, lined with yellowed teeth, snapped shut inches from the gunwale, a sound like a pistol shot that seemed to vibrate in the very air.
"Hold the line!" Mr. Darcy said.
The voyageur at the stern fought to keep the craft from capsizing, but the alligator was not finished. It roared—a vibration that Miss Bennet felt in her very marrow—and swung its massive tail, catching the side of the boat again. The wood groaned under the assault.
Mr. Darcy reached for the holster at his hip.
He drew his pistol and fired, the report cracking through the humid silence.
The ball struck the beast's skull, but the angle was shallow; the creature thrashed in a frenzy of pain and redirected its fury toward the second boat.
It lunged, its weight crushing the side of the smaller pirogue.
Supplies began to spill into the dark water—barrels of salt pork and precious crates of ammunition vanished into the silt.
"The boat is lost!" Thomas called.
The men in the second boat scrambled to catch the gunwales of the larger craft as their own vessel began to settle into the mud. The alligator, emboldened by the chaos, turned back toward the lead pirogue. Its mouth was agape, revealing a pale, fleshy throat.
Mr. Darcy did not attempt to reload. He drew the heavy hunting knife he carried at his belt and leaned dangerously over the side. When the alligator lunged, he plunged the blade with a two-handed strike, driving the steel into the soft tissue behind the creature's eye.
The water became a froth of blood and mud.
The alligator thrashed, its tail lashing the air, nearly swamping them.
Miss Bennet gripped the sides of the boat.
She looked at Mr. Darcy and saw a man possessed of a cold, terrifying efficiency.
He held the knife in place until the thrashing subsided into a sluggish roll, then he wrenched the blade free and pushed the carcass away with a muddy boot.
"Is everyone unharmed?" Mr. Darcy asked.
"I believe so," Miss Bennet said, from behind a crate she had been gripping with both hands. "Though I confess the creature's manners were very ill-suited to polite society. One does not simply arrive uninvited and attempt to eat the boat."
His voice was steady, though his chest rose and fell with exertion. He wiped the blood from his knife on a handful of moss and returned it to its sheath.
"We have lost a boat and half the salt meat," Thomas said, pulling himself onto the remaining craft. "But the men are accounted for."
"We must find high ground. The air is changing."
Miss Bennet followed his gaze upward. The sky had turned the color of an old bruise.
The humidity had reached a breaking point, and the air felt thick enough to swallow.
They paddled with a renewed, desperate energy, the scent of the dead alligator lingering in their nostrils like a warning of what the wilderness held in its teeth.
The rain did not begin with a drizzle. It began as if a dam had burst in the heavens.
Within minutes, the bayou was transformed.
The slow-moving water began to swirl and rise, fed by the torrents pouring from the hidden feeder creeks.
The light failed, plunging them into a grey, watery twilight where the trees became ghosts.
"Make for the ridge!"
They reached a small elevation, a chenier where a cluster of oaks managed to keep their heads above the rising flood. The party scrambled up the muddy bank, dragging the remaining pirogues behind them. The current was already snatching at the gear.
By the time they established a meager camp under a sagging canvas fly, the bayou had risen four feet. They were stranded on an island no larger than a ballroom, surrounded by a rushing, chocolate-colored tide that carried trees and debris like toys.
Miss Bennet stood under the leaking canvas, her skin cold despite the heat.
Her dress was ruined, the hem heavy with silt, and her hair hung in lank cords.
Cécile Delacroix sat beside her, silently wringing out a blanket.
Mr. Bennet had retreated to a dry corner with a book that was, miraculously, only half-soaked, though he looked older and frailer than he had in New Orleans.
Mr. Darcy was crouched by the lantern, examining a sodden mass of parchment. It was the master map provided by the War Office. The ink had run into blue and black smears, the fine lines of the river topography dissolved by the flood.
"It is gone," Mr. Wickham said, leaning against a tree trunk. He had managed to save his brandy, though his boots were lost in the scramble. "We are lost in this wretched place with no way out and no way back."
"We are not lost," Mr. Darcy said.
"The map is paper pulp, Darcy. Even you cannot deny that."
"I do not need the paper."
Mr. Darcy moved to the center of the camp and cleared a space in the mud.
He took a charred stick from the edge of the fire and began to draw.
Miss Bennet watched, fascinated, as he traced the curve of the Mississippi, then the detailed veins of the Atchafalaya.
He added islands, bayous, and elevations that they had passed days ago.
His hand never faltered. He was reconstructing the world from memory, his mind a more reliable vessel than the parchment he had carried.
"You remember the soundings from the third day?" Thomas asked.
"Six feet at the bend, narrowing to four near the cypress stand. If the flood follows the usual drainage, this ridge will remain dry, but the channel to the north will be impassable for a week."
Miss Bennet looked at the map in the mud and then at the man.
A flicker of the old prejudice—the idea that such a man must be artificial, a creature of London drawing rooms. Yet here he was, mapping a wilderness he had never seen before this month, his intellect applied to survival with the same rigor he surely applied to his estate ledgers.
It was a formidable mind, she realized, and one that did not require the trappings of civilization to function.
The seriousness of his mission began to press upon her.
This was not merely an escort for her father's whims; Mr. Darcy was a man engaged in a silent war against the very elements and the hidden enemies of his crown.
The weight he carried was visible in the set of his shoulders as he worked by the flickering light.
The rain continued into the night, a relentless drumming that prohibited sleep. It was in the early hours of the morning that a cry broke through the sound of the storm.
Mr. Wickham had been sent to gather more wood from the higher end of the ridge. He stumbled back into the firelight, his face ashen, clutching his ankle.
"Something bit me," he said, collapsing onto a damp bedroll. "Under the brush. A snake."
Thomas was at his side in an instant. He stripped away Mr. Wickham's stocking to reveal two small, weeping punctures on the inner ankle. The area was already beginning to swell, the skin turning a sickly purple.
"Cottonmouth. Cécile, the lancet and the salts."
The next few hours were a trial of sweat and low voices.
Thomas worked with a grim focus, cutting into the wound to draw out the venom, while Mr. Darcy held Mr. Wickham down.
The man, usually so full of easy charm, disintegrated into a state of whimpering terror.
As the fever took hold, the whimpering turned to a frantic, disjointed babbling.
Miss Bennet sat nearby, tending the fire to keep the water boiling. She could not help but hear.
"Not my fault," Mr. Wickham said, his head tossing from side to side. "She was a child... fifteen... London is a lonely place for a girl with a fortune."
Mr. Darcy's features hardened into a cold stillness. He gripped Mr. Wickham's shoulders with more force. "Silence, Wickham."
"The pride of Pemberley. She would have gone with me. We were halfway to Gretna before you found us. Always the Great Darcy, saving the innocent. But what of the others? The girls in the village? They don't have brothers with ten thousand a year to buy their silence."