Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (15 page)

"I don't
intend to go alone.
 
I hope the Pearsons
will join me."

Welsh accent
trickled into Enid's voice.
 
"No
doubt they'd serve you well, but surely after all the years we've been together
—"

"To obtain
as candid a portrait as possible of Tarleton, I must pose as the widowed sister
of one of the regular officers in the Seventeenth Light Dragoons."

"Ach,
Rhiannon, spare us!
 
That
Saesneg
!"
Her tongue tangled in accent, Enid lifted hands to her face.
 
"I don't trust him!
 
Lloerig
, not well in the head.
 
Without conscience.
 
Can you not see it in his eyes?"

Helen steadied
her chin.
 
"I see it."

"I implore
you, don't go with
him
."

Helen wondered
whether she'd sleep that night, unassisted by laudanum.
 
"Unfortunately he and the assignment go
together.
 
The advance I've received has
helped me with the new debt.
 
I might
put the house up for sale, but what if it doesn't sell for months?"
 
She paused and studied Enid.
 
"Or I might release you from my
service."

Face drawn in
misery, Enid lowered her hands and hung her head.
 
"Don't send me away from you."
 
Her lower lip trembled.

"Then help
me here, at home."

The servant
nodded, beyond speech, her cheeks blotched with unshed tears.

Helen lay
awake long into the night.
 
She'd never
found it wise to dismiss her instincts, and her instincts were sending up an
awful ruckus.
 
She may have flummoxed
Fairfax by springing Ratchingham's name on him, but he wouldn't stay stumped
for long.
 
Many weeks in his company
stretched before her.
 
She had no doubt
he would adapt with alacrity to the task of convincing her to surrender her
soul to him.

Chapter Thirteen

"SIGN
HERE."
 
THE arthritis-knobby
forefinger of Maximus Prescott stabbed the bottom of the document's third page
before scooting the inkwell closer across the surface of the desk.

"Not
before I read the entire contract again."

"No
need.
 
I corrected all five mistakes.
 
Simply sign the document where
indicated."

"Leave
me."
 
When he didn't budge, Helen
pushed up from the cushioned chair in Badley's study, her glare fixed on the
attorney.
 
The powdery pallor of his wig
emphasized the seethe in his dark eyes.
 
Why did Prescott hate her so?
 
She chilled her tone.
 
"If
this
version also contains errors from your incompetence, I shall refuse the
project."

He stomped for
the door and slammed it behind him.

Unnerved,
angry, Helen resumed her seat, inhaled three times to clear her mind, and read
the contract aloud.
 
Twenty minutes
later, she set the document on the desk and reached for pen and ink,
disappointed that all was in order and Prescott hadn't left her an exit.
 
Having failed in the previous draft to
obtain her agreement on unfavorable conditions, he knew better than to sneak in
more "errors."

Although Badley
had agreed to pay her four times her daily rate and fund two men to maintain
the horses, equipment, and camp, he refused to fund a female attendant,
presuming Helen to take Enid.
 
He and
Enid knew where they stood with each other.
 
As Badley would discover, the joke was on him.
 
Enid wasn't leaving Wilmington.
 
Still, Helen found her sense of selling her soul to the devil deepened,
rather than eased.

Since
Tarleton's parties were the stuff of legend, the contract called for a report
on Yule spent with the British Legion.
 
Other than that, she must record her adventures daily for the duration
of the journey and make effort to contact Badley at least fortnightly.
 
Posts were often lost to rebel interference,
and delayed by inclement weather and poor roads, so she must create copies of
everything she sent him, as well as her journal entries.
 
Badley couldn't require her to engage in battle
— but she knew an account of a skirmish would titillate Londoners.

After signing
the contract, she left the study.
 
From
the stables at the rear of Badley's house, men already loaded the wagon that
would be her "home away from home" for more than two months.
 
She observed them a few minutes before
walking to the mantua-makers' and shoemaker's shops.
 
All three shop owners' eyes were bloodshot, as were those of
their employees.
 
From the clutter of
fabric, leather, and sewing implements that had possessed the shops overnight,
Helen realized no one had slept much.
 
Still, they greeted her with smiles, eager to gauge the fit of her
partially completed wardrobe.
 
Some of
their enthusiasm transferred to her.

Wrapped in her
cloak, she scurried back for Second Street.
 
Fog besieged the town again, inauspicious weather for a funeral, and the
air stank of dead fish and tar.
 
Charles's service started in half an hour, and she and Enid barely had
time to bustle to the churchyard together.

On Second, she
stopped mulling over the retainer she'd given the Pearsons' attorney first
thing in the morning to resolve her mortgage muddle, and she squinted through
fog at a large, dark blob in the street ahead.
 
The mass resolved itself into a fine new post chaise and four horses
parked before her house.
 
Who was her
visitor?
 
The driver's greatcoat and
cocked hat looked to be of quality.
 
He
tipped his hat to her when she passed.

Enid, a bloom
on her cheeks, opened the door before Helen reached the step.
 
"Welcome home, mistress."
 
She reached for Helen's cloak and lowered
her voice.
 
"While you were out,
you'd a visitor from New Berne, name of Layman, come on behalf of a Widow
Hanley."

Hanley.
 
The name seemed familiar, but Helen couldn't
place it just then.
 
Still in the
doorway, she glanced again at the post chaise.

"Layman
was on horseback and said he'd return mid-afternoon."
 
Enid grinned with pleasure.
 
"The Professor awaits you in the
parlor."

Further
thoughts of the mysterious Layman and Widow Hanley from New Berne scampered
from Helen's head as she rushed past Enid.
 
Jonathan Quill looked up from an examination of her watercolor and
smiled.
 
"Good morning, my
dear.
 
Lovely new landscape you've
painted.
 
I presume your omission of
druids was intentional?"

Emotion tumbled
through her, gratitude the foremost.
 
"Oh, Jonathan."

He deposited
the painting on the couch and met her with outstretched arms and his familiar
scent of the exotic East.
 
"Shh," he whispered into her hair.
 
"I'm here now.
 
I owe
all of you at least that much — you, Enid, Charles."
 
He grasped her shoulders, set her back from
him, and appraised her with pleasure, as always.
 
But this time, sobriety and sadness laced the pleasure.
 
"What devilry in Wilmington.
 
Poor Charles.
 
Tell me they've caught his murderer."

"Alas,
no."
 
She glanced him over, too,
and studied his face.
 
The crow's feet
around his clear, blue eyes were no more advanced than when she'd seen him in
April, nor was the gray dusting the hair at his temples.
 
Time didn't mark its passage on Jonathan's
serene countenance or his lithe, medium stature.
 
He must have been at least forty years old when she set foot in
Boston twelve years earlier; yet he was as supple and fit that moment as a
twenty-year-old.

"Well.
 
A knave cannot catch a knave."
 
Jonathan sniffed.
 
"Lurid, the ineptitude of these committeemen with the
law."

He didn't know
half of the story.
 
"We
must
talk."

"I
surmised as much."
 
He checked the
time on a gold watch drawn from the pocket of his embroidered silk
waistcoat.
 
"Do allow me to provide
our transportation to Charles's funeral."

***

Two sextons'
shovels scraped in unison, and damp clods of dirt thumped the wooden lid of
Charles's coffin six feet below sight.
 
Halfway around the grave from Helen, Roger enfolded Hannah in his arms.
 
To Helen's immediate left, slow tears
tracked Enid's face, lifted to the misty, gray sky.
 
Grateful for the solid presence of Jonathan on her right, but
aching with the women's distress and her own, Helen blotted tears from her eyes
with a handkerchief.
 
Several paces back
from the graveside, George Gaynes and two deputies whispered between themselves
and directed scowls at her.

"...through
Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever."
 
The vicar spread his arms to congregants at
the graveside, his black frock flapping like the wings of a buzzard.

People
muttered, "Amen," and withdrew.
 
The vicar and several congregants escorted the Pearsons over to a small
reception behind the church.

Helen signed
for Enid to join the bereaved.
 
She
intended to mosey that way herself when she felt more like eating.
 
With Jonathan her silent companion, she
walked among headstones until she found that of Silas.
 
Then she stood at the foot of the grave to
contemplate the metaphor of its autumn-brown grass.

When she
stirred to rejoin the Pearsons, Charles's graveside had gained a familiar
visitor, his gentleman's cocked hat upon his head.
 
Jonathan regarded him.
 
"Curious.
 
That fellow over
there reminds me of a peer who died twenty-three years ago near Avebury."

Helen's skin
crawled.
 
"Was the peer's name Fairfax?"

The electricity
of astonishment sparked Jonathan's eyes.
 
"Why, yes, Timothy Fairfax."

Helen nodded
toward Fairfax, who was studying Charles's grave.
 
"I believe he's the son of your acquaintance.
 
His name is Dunstan Fairfax."

"The
fellow you wrote me about."
 
Jonathan grunted.
 
"An
officer out of uniform — and after what happened to John André."

For André,
civilian clothing had been a disguise allowing him to attempt a desperate
mission behind enemy lines.
 
For
Fairfax, Helen knew it was a prop in a perverse game he played.

Jonathan
squinted at Fairfax.
 
Helen could almost
see twenty-year-old memories roam his face.
 
"Fairfax's widow, Jane, remarried.
 
I recall it."

"She wed
Lord Ratchingham."

"Henry
Clancy, yes."
 
He turned back to
her, one eyebrow hiked.
 
Sanguinity
emptied from his tone.
 
"Ratchingham hanged himself seven or eight years ago.
 
Did you know that?"

How tragic,
my stepfather was also a suicide
.
 
Fairfax's words returned to Helen, and she nodded.
 
"Let me introduce you.
 
I suspect you'll find it quite
interesting."

Jonathan
strolled her over, their footsteps muted in the fog-drenched grass.
 
His back to them, Fairfax scrutinized the
crowd at the reception, where Gaynes and his cohorts glowered at him and
stuffed their faces with food.
 
He
turned to face Helen and Jonathan with detachment.
 
"Madam."

Conscious of
the Committee's proximity, she kept her voice low.
 
"How considerate of you to pay your respects to Mr. Landon,
sir."

His gaze hopped
from her to Jonathan and assessed his carriage, the quality of his suit, and
the ease with which her hand nestled in his elbow.
 
"Mr. Landon was law abiding."
 
He tilted his head toward Gaynes.
 
"Were
I
officially the investigator, the perpetrator
would have been apprehended long ago."

Jonathan also
kept his voice low, so the Committee wouldn't overhear.
 
"How now, sir, Mr. Gaynes over there is
one of North Carolina's finest examples of Yankee Doodle law enforcement."

Fairfax's lips
twitched.
 
"I haven't yet the
pleasure of your acquaintance."

"Jonathan
Quill, at your service."

Helen noted
Jonathan's special smile, reserved for occasions that required rather than
merited cordiality.
 
Fairfax's
expression remained bland, but she knew he'd placed Jonathan's name and
relationship with her from his snoop into the contents of her letter the
previous day.