"Certainly, ma'am." He sighed. "That used to be your home, that mansion on the hill, didn't it?"
Poor Burke Russell, she saw, was still lying on the eastern catwalk. Three dead Indians were sprawled there now to keep him company, though. She was a bit more hardened to such sights than she had been just a short time ago. But what she saw in the cheerful June sky beyond the palisade made her body go clammy-cold with horror.
A rope of thick, black smoke coiled upward, twisting this way and that, spreading till it seemed to stain the entire eastern quarter of the sky. The palisade was too high for her to see the fire itself, though red tongues of flame shot up now and again in the midst of the smoke. But she had no doubt at all about where the fire was.
"They're burning Victoire!" She started to cry.
She felt Frank's hand patting her shoulder, and turned.
"I was hoping the people of Victoire might be able to hold out," she said.
Frank put his arm around her. "Nicole, I'm sorry, it's pretty likely the only people left alive from Victoire are already here. Lucky most of them could outrun the Indians and get here."
"But, Frank, what's happened to the rest of them—Marchette, Clarissa—are they all dead?"
Frank didn't answer. He just stood there holding her.
Grief weighed on her like a cloak of iron. If she hadn't had Frank to lean against, she would surely have fallen to the floor. She looked out again and saw other, more distant columns of smoke. The Indians must have come from the east and struck every farmhouse they came across. They had surely destroyed Philip Hale's church. Poor Nancy!