“A messenger from the Governor.”
“In,” said Frederic. He was feeling too pleasant to bother keeping the man cooling his heels for a while. After all, it was evening– no need to pretend to be hard at work at an hour like this. After four o'clock, in fact!
The man came in, smart in his uniform. A major officer, in fact. Frederic should know his name, probably, but then he wasn't anybody, hadn't even a cousin with a title. So Frederic waited, not greeting him.
The major held two letters in his hand. He laid one on Frederic's table.
“Is the other for me as well?”
“Yes, sir. But I have the Governor's instructions to give you that one first, to wait while you read it in my presence, and then decide whether to give you the other.”
“The Governor's instructions! To make me wait to receive my mail until I've read his letter first?”
“The second letter is not addressed to you, my lord,” said the major. “So it is not your mail. But I think you will want to see it.”
“What if I'm weary of work, and choose to read the letter tomorrow?”
“Then I have still another letter, which I will read to your soldiers if you don't read the first letter within five minutes. That third letter relieves you of command and places me in charge of Fort Detroit, under the authority of the Governor.”
“Audacious! Offensive! To address me in this manner!”
“I but repeat the words of the Governor, my lord. I urge you, read his letter. It can do you no harm, and not reading it will have devastating effect.”
Unbearable. Who did the Governor think he was? Well, in fact, he was a Marquis. But then, La Fayette was actually farther out of favor with the King than–
“Five minutes, my lord.”
Seething, Frederic opened the letter. It was heavy; when he unfolded it, a metal amulet on a chain spilled onto the desk, clattering.
“What is this?”
“The letter, my lord.”
Frederic scanned it quickly. “An amulet! Holy man! What am I to make of this? Has La Fayette become superstitious?” Yet despite his bravado, Frederic knew at once that he would put on the amulet. A ward against Satan! He had heard of such amulets, priceless beyond compare, for all had been touched by the finger of the Holy Mother herself, giving them their power. Could this be such a one? He opened the chain and lowered it over his head.
“Inside,” said the major.
Frederic looked at him a moment in bafflement, then realized what was expected and tucked the amulet into his shirt. Now it was out of sight.
“There,” he said. “I'm wearing it.”
“Excellent, my lord,” said the major. He held out the other letter.
It was not fastened shut, but it had been sealed, and Frederic was astonished to see that it was His Majesty's great seal imprinted in the wax. It was addressed to the Marquis de La Fayette. It contained the order for Napoleon Bonaparte to be placed under immediate arrest, to be returned to Paris in irons to stand trial for treason, sedition, disloyalty, and malfeasance.
“Do you think your pleading moves me?” said de Maurepas.
“I should hope that the justice of my arguments would move you,” said Napoleon. “Tomorrow will be the battle. Ta-Kumsaw expects to take his orders from me; only I understand fully what is expected of the French army in this engagement.”
“Only you? What is this sudden vanity of yours, to believe that only you are capable of command, that only you understand?”
“But of course you understand, my lord de Maurepas. Only it is for you to be concerned with, the broader picture, while I–”
“Save your breath,” said de Maurepas. “I am no longer deceived. Your witchery, your satanic influence, it floats past me like bubbles in the air, it means nothing to me. I am stronger than you thought. I have secret strengths!”
“It's good that you do, since all you have in public is idiocy,” said Napoleon. “The defeat you will suffer without me will mark you as the champion fool in the history of the French army. Whenever anyone suffers an ignominious and avoidable disaster, they will laugh at him and say that he committed a Maurepas!”
“Enough,” said de Maurepas. “Treason, sedition, malfeasance, and if that weren't enough, now insubordination. M. Guillotin will have business with you, I'm quite certain, my vain little bantam cock. Go, try your spurs on His Majesty, see how deep they dig when your limbs are in irons and your head is forfeit.”
The betrayal was not obvious till morning, but then it was swift and complete. It began when the French quartermaster refused to issue gunpowder to Ta-Kumsaw's people. “I have my orders,” he said.
When Ta-Kumsaw tried to see Napoleon, they laughed at him. “He won't see you now, or ever,” he was told.
What about de Maurepas, then?
“He is a Comte. He does not treat with savages. He is not a lover of beasts, like little Napoleon.”
Only then did Alvin notice that all the Frenchman they were dealing with today were the very ones that Napoleon had been circumventing; all the officers Napoleon preferred and trusted were not to be found. Napoleon had fallen.
“Bows and arrows,” said an officer. “That's what your braves excel with, isn't it? With bullets you would cause more damage to your own men than to the enemy.”
Ta-Kumsaw's scouts told him that the American army would arrive by noon. Ta-Kumsaw immediately deployed his men to harass the enemy. But now, without the range of muskets, they could do little more than annoy Old Hickory's army with the stings of feeble arrows fired from too far off, where they had meant to cripple the Americans with an irresistible storm of metal. And because the bowmen had to come so close to the Americans in order to fire, many of them were killed.
“Don't stand near me,” Ta-Kurnsaw told Alvin. “They all know of the prophecy. They'll think my courage only comes because I know I cannot die.”
So Alvin stood farther off, but never so far that he didn't see deeply into Ta-Kumsaw's body, ready to heal any wound. What he could not heal was the fear and anger and despair that already gathered in Ta-Kumsaw's soul. Without gunpowder, without Napoleon, the sure victory had become a chancy thing at best.
The basic tactics were successful. Old Hickory spotted the trap at once, but the terrain forced him to fall into it or retreat, and he knew that retreat would be disaster. So he marched his army boldly between the hills filled with Reds, funneling into the narrow ground where French cannon and musketry would rake the Americans while the Reds killed any who tried to flee. The victory would be complete. Except that the Americans were supposed to be demoralized, confused, and their numbers deeply reduced by the Red men shooting at them all the way here.
The tactics were successful, except that when the American army came in view of the French, and hesitated before the muzzles of nine cannon loaded with canister, and two thousand muskets arrayed to sweep and doublesweep the field, the French incomprehensibly began to move back. It was as if they did not trust the impregnability of their own position. They did not even try to withdraw the cannon. They retreated as if they feared immediate destruction.
The course of the battle was predictable, then. Old Hickory knew what to do with opportunity. His soldiers ignored the Reds and fell on the retreating Frenchmen, slaughtering all who did not run, seizing their cannon and muskets, their powder and shot. Within an hour they had used the French artillery to break down the fortress walls in three places; Americans streamed into Detroit; there was bloody fighting in the streets.
Ta-Kumsaw should have left then. He should have let the Americans destroy the French, should have taken his men to safety. Perhaps he felt a duty to help the French, even after they had betrayed him. Perhaps he saw a glimmer of hope that with the Americans involved in battle, his army of Reds might win a victory after all. Or perhaps he knew that never again would he have the power to gather all the fighting men of every tribe; if he retreated now, with the battle unfought, who would follow him again? And if they would not follow him, they would follow no one, and the White men would nibble their way to conquest, devouring now this tribe, now that. Ta-Kumsaw surely knew that it was either victory now, however unlikely, or the struggle would be over for all time, and any of his people who weren't slaughtered outright would either escape into the west, a strange land to them, lacking in forest; or would remain as a diminished people, living like White men instead of Red, the forest forever silent. Whether he hoped for victory or not, he could not surrender to such a future, not without a fight.