Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (10 page)

In the
lengthening shadows, onlookers had gathered before a warehouse near the
intersection of Dock and Front Streets.
 
Deputies from the Committee blocked the doorway.
 
The press of spectators kept Helen on the
periphery of the crowd, but comments she heard from the curious, the nosy, and
the tragedy leeches made her thankful she couldn't move closer, where she might
draw attention to herself.

"When did
he
kill hisself?"

"He didn't
kill hisself.
 
Someone shot 'im.
 
Early today, after midnight, I heard 'em
say."

"Weren't
'e Chiswell's butler years ago?"

"Ya, an'
Chiswell shot hisself in the head."

"Shot
hisself, my arse!
 
We know better, don't
we, lads?"

Stomach
knotting, Helen kept to the shadows.
 
Deputies made way in the crowd for the egress of two men, between them a
stretcher bearing a man's supine, sheet-covered body.
 
Waving off queries from onlookers, George Gaynes followed them
out, caught up, and led the procession — to a surgeon's office where there'd be
an autopsy, Helen knew, shaken.
 
She'd
seen it all before.

Her gaze
followed them back nine years, when she'd watched Silas's covered body removed
from another warehouse on a stretcher.
 
At her left on that day stood Charles, and at her right was Jonathan
Quill: the Seconds.
 
At the funeral,
Charles had again stood on her left, and Jonathan on her right.
 
Beneath the mottle of bruises on her ribs
and abdomen, hidden from the world by a polonaise gown, her early miscarriage
gathered momentum.
 
Ashes to ashes, dust
to dust.

She blinked,
jolted to the present by grief for Charles, an intensified headache, and the
eerie coincidences.
 
Had anyone yet
informed Hannah, Charles's newlywed daughter?
 
It was too late in the day for her to walk to Hannah's house — probably
for the best.
 
If she paid her respects
on the morrow, she'd be less visible.
 
The last thing she wanted was for residents of Wilmington to string
together coincidences, dredge up the business of Silas's death, and connect it
to Charles's.

Chapter Eight

"THE
FUNERAL IS Monday morning, the twentieth."
 
On the couch beside Enid, Helen released the housekeeper's hand
and massaged her own brow with a sigh.
 
"In the morning, we shall visit Mistress Hannah.
 
Let us rest tonight.
 
We've slept little."

"You've a
headache."
 
The Welshwoman
rose.
 
"Wait right there.
 
I've just the thing for you.
 
A boy delivered it while you were at the
wharf."
 
She bustled from the
parlor.

Helen rested
her head in her hand.
 
When would she
tell Enid about the assignment?
 
She had
to do it soon.
 
Badley had paid the
mantua-makers and shoemaker to expedite their work, tipped them a prodigious
amount to fit her for a wardrobe at ten the next morning, Sunday.
 
But informing Enid was the easy part.
 
How in the world would she negotiate a truce
for
weeks
between her and Fairfax?

Enid returned,
and Helen studied the label on a bottle of wine she held for inspection.
 
Not for several years had she been able to
afford such an Italian red.
 
Mystified,
she searched the servant's face.
 
"You said a delivery boy brought it, but who sent it?"

A wise smile
curved Enid's lips.
 
She handed her a
card withdrawn from her pocket.

An audacious,
masculine hand had scrawled the letter "D" on the card.
 
No other message.
 
Helen cupped the card in her palm, deep relief piercing some of
her grief over Charles.
 
Amused,
embarrassed, she recalled David's grimace when he sipped her wine.
 
"Open the wine.
 
You shall share it."

As soon as Enid
left the parlor again, Helen pressed the card to her bosom a moment before
tossing it into the fire.
 
Audacious.
 
She hoped David
hadn't compromised his escape and was at least thirty miles south of
Wilmington, enjoying brandy at an obscure inn that hadn't seen traffic with
soldiers in a long while.

After drinking
a goblet of wine, Enid secured the house and retired to bed.
 
Helen nibbled bread and cheese, drank wine,
and brooded.
 
By three-quarters of the
way into the bottle, the Italian red had swelled to a delectable, sensuous
experience that blunted the edge on grief, fear, and loss.

Like a
paramour, she thought later, sitting on the side of her bed and staring
drunkenly at the empty bottle on the nightstand.
 
No, not quite like a paramour.
 
The wine was more like a temple priestess of ancient Babylon, condemned
by the Biblical prophet Hosea, worshipped and delighted in by warriors who
returned from battle.
 
A snort of irony
escaped her, and she traced the bottle's label with her fingertip.
 
Fancy that.
 
She was a warrior, and her temple priestess was a bottle of wine.

At dawn Sunday
morning, she was awake.
 
Silas had
trodden over her dreams, the ball from his dueling pistol embedded above his
right eyebrow and dribbling blood and brains.
 
He pursued her down Market Street, swinging at her with his riding crop,
second to his fists as the preferred tool for discipline.
 
She'd shaken herself awake when Charles — a
ball from a dueling pistol embedded above his eyebrow, too — joined them.

Her skull felt
stuffed with goose down, the migraine unabated.
 
And, of course, anguish took pleasure in her company, undeterred
by wine.
 
She hadn't expected grief to
vanish.
 
At least she hadn't laced the
wine with laudanum.
 
For her, that would
have induced worse than nightmares: hallucinations and visions most unholy.

She sought the
dawn place after she'd dressed, almost too distracted to lose herself in
earth's wisdom.
 
At the back door, Enid
awaited her, eyelids swollen and red.
 
"I've porridge and coffee ready, mistress."
 
Her tone lacked spunk, and her dark gray
jacket and petticoat leached color from her face.

"I shall
breakfast in the study.
 
Jonathan must
be notified of Charles's death."
 
A
memory from the Atlantic crossing surfaced: Silas drunk in their cabin, she and
Jonathan exploring predawn star clusters up on deck with his spyglass.
 
How pleasant his company, compared to that
of Silas.
 
Her throat tightened.
 
Aware of Enid's astute expression, she
cleared her throat.
 
"If Jonathan
is in residence at his estate, you know he'll attend the funeral."
 
But he was likely elsewhere than his estate
half a day south of Wilmington.
 
Africa.
 
India.
 
China.

At seven
o'clock, a letter to her former teacher composed, she found dawn's light
through the study window blocked.
 
Startled, she looked up from her desk.
 
Fairfax fingered the window frame at the spot where one of his men had
jimmied it open early the previous morning.
 
Indignation frosted her expression.
 
She stood, fists balled.

He spotted her,
removed his hat, and bowed.
 
"Good
morning."

From his lack
of emotion, he might have addressed a farm animal.
 
She compressed her lips.
 
"How dare you peep in on me like that?
 
Remove yourself from my property this instant."

Enid huffed
into the study and glowered.
 
"What's
he
doing out there?"

"Mrs.
Chiswell, as you and Mrs. Jones are decent widows, do allow me an audience lest
neighbors presume me a loiterer."

Welsh accent
ground from between Enid's clenched teeth.
 
"Heigh, where's my pitchfork?"

Helen gripped
the housekeeper's upper arm to restrain her from storming out to the shed and
making good on her threat.
 
"Meet
me in the parlor straight away, Mr. Fairfax.
 
You've five minutes for your audience.
 
After that, Mrs. Jones and I shall leave on errands, at which time we
expect you to depart the property."

"Thank
you, dear sister."
 
He bowed again
and headed around front.

"'Dear
sister'?"
 
Enid looked to be
tonguing rancid pork.

"Admit him
to the parlor — quickly, so we're rid of him."

Enid curtsied and
bustled out.
 
Helen allowed herself
several deep breaths to order her thoughts, straighten the desk, and cover
Jonathan's letter.
 
From the foyer
window, she saw men standing on her front walkway.
 
Enid had made herself invisible.

In the parlor,
Fairfax examined her latest watercolor, hat beneath his arm.
 
"Midsummer dawn.
 
I can almost feel dew evaporate and hear
sparrows sing."
 
He indicated her
other paintings.
 
"You've an
excellent hand at landscapes.
 
A baronet
over in Avebury would pay well for your work."
 
Filing away the potential business lead in silence, Helen strode
forward and seized the canvas from him.
 
He watched her stash it in a corner facing the wall.
 
An unsettling radiance glittered in his
eyes.
 
"I've never met an Anglican
gentlewoman who painted sites of the old gods."

She grew uneasy
with the conversation thread.
 
Fairfax
fished for something from her past.
 
With her station in Wilmington society as a middle-class, virtuous
widow, she'd plenty of past to be uneasy about.
 
"My husband was a
deacon
in the Anglican
Church."

"Of course
he was.
 
Remember the old days, in the
sixties, before the druids barged in and tried to regulate our
celebrations?
 
I wonder how many
colonists would chuck the Christian gods and frolic with the rest of us if they
could sample a truly invigorating Beltane."

She gaped.
 
Fairfax was no Anglican.

The glitter in
his eyes became incandescent, imbuing him with angelic beauty.
 
"Ah ha.
 
You remember Beltane."

No one forgot
Beltane.
 
She swallowed.
 
The weird familiarity in his features struck
her anew.
 
She must know him from her
childhood, although, dismayed, she couldn't yet place him in her memories.
 
Perhaps if she hadn't tried so hard to
forget what came before Silas Chiswell —"Mr. Fairfax, you're here to discuss
my broken window."

"Quite.
 
I questioned the men under my command and am
satisfied that none is responsible for your broken window latch."

She
scowled.
 
"I catch you snooping
around my house, and that's all you have to say?
 
Do you expect me to believe you or your men?
 
I think you've used the incident and this
jabber about my watercolors as a flimsy excuse to gain access to the interior
of my house during the day so you can search again for your alleged rebel spy.

"Perhaps I
hid him in a wall compartment or beneath floorboards, eh?"
 
She swept her arm outward.
 
"Do search the house again and satisfy
yourself that I'm not entertaining men here.
 
Then leave my property."

He studied her,
the unearthly glow in his eyes unabated.
 
"What time did you and Mrs. Jones repair to bed two nights
ago?"

"Nine
o'clock, if it's any business of yours."

"Helpful
information.
 
The drizzle two days ago
moistened the turf enough outside your study window to capture boot prints of
your intruder.
 
He was approximately
five feet four inches in height, slightly overweight, favoring his left leg,
and wearing a dark blue wool coat."
 
He shook his head.
 
"Doesn't
match the description of any of my men.

From the way
the wood is splintered on the outside, the intruder used a metal bar to force
the window."
 
Fairfax retrieved a
kerchief from his waistcoat pocket and unfolded it.
 
"He crawled inside your study some time between nine o'clock
and midnight and snagged fibers of his coat on the wood.
 
See here."
 
He extended the opened handkerchief to her.

She inched
forward, skeptical, for a look.
 
Sure
enough, a few dark fibers of wool resided there.
 
He'd also found wool fibers from David's coat snagged on her
window frame upstairs.
 
Grudging respect
for Fairfax's investigative abilities stirred within her.