Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (17 page)

Helen and the
two servants stepped aside to allow the investigators egress.
 
Enid secured the front door behind
them.
 
The clock struck eleven.

Helen turned to
Jonathan.
 
Fear for his safety climbed
atop fear for her well-being.
 
"I
dread the thought that this scoundrel who stole Silas's pistol may return to
complete his work on me and murder you by accident."

"Complete
twaddle, my dear."
 
From the easy
smile on Jonathan's face, they might just have finished a stroll in a
meadow.
 
"He hasn't the gall to
repeat an attempt tonight."

"How can
you be certain?"

"Mr. Sims
made his intentions clear.
 
He aimed the
pistol at me.
 
I'm
his target,
not you."

Chapter Fifteen

HELEN LAY AWAKE
long into the night, despite the safeguard of the driver, Peter, on a pallet in
the study below, a loaded pistol beside him, and pots and pans piled upon the
desk at the broken window to raise a clamor at any intruder's entrance.
 
Arthur Sims had murdered Charles and tried
to kill Jonathan.
 
Charles and Jonathan
had been Seconds in that duel.
 
Someone
wanted revenge.

Perhaps the
Chiswells figured out that Silas hadn't committed suicide.
 
If so, David was the crown jewel on that
assassination list.
 
Such a list might
include her name.

But —
They'll
kill Madam if they find it
.
 
What
had Charles meant?
 
Who were
"they," and what was "it?"
 
Why wait nine years to serve revenge?
 
Or did revenge provide too convenient a motive for murder?

As she drifted
toward sleep, a random thought tugged her back to partial wakefulness.
 
A man named Layman, sent by Widow Hanley out
of New Berne, had arrived to speak with her that morning.
 
Hadn't Enid said he'd return
mid-afternoon?
 
Hanley.
 
New Berne.
 
Something familiar about that combination, but she couldn't quite
recall.
 
Perhaps she'd remember in the
morning.

***

Between the
stable and house, mist hugged earth and warped into wraith-melody the driver's
merry whistle while he fed the horses.
 
Helen heard Peter's tune, disembodied and eldritch, as she descended the
stairs.
 
It sent a shiver from the soles
of her feet to her scalp, gifted upon her another memory, from the weeks prior
to the procurement, when whispers circulated among servants at Redthorne.
 
Carcasses of small animals turned up in
conspicuous places about the property once a month or so: mutilated rabbits,
squirrels, and rats.
 
Christian servants
murmured of devilry.
 
The other servants
murmured of old gods who walked the land eons before Roman soldiers.
 
Lord Ratchingham seemed oblivious.

What had
Jedediah the butler thought of all that?
 
With a start, she remembered that he hadn't been the butler at Redthorne
her final years in the village, but she couldn't recall what had happened to
him.
 
Odd.
 
Perhaps Jonathan knew.

She eased open
the back door.
 
Jonathan parted mist in
the yard, at one with the filmy, damp cloud, earth scents, and bird-warble,
movements of his early morning dance a silent, silky ritual.
 
She'd first seen him perform the dawn dance
on the deck of the brig to America.
 
China
,
he'd told her, when she'd asked where he learned the dance.

Beside her,
Enid watched him, no stranger to the movements.
 
"Look at that.
 
Just
like a swooping hawk," she whispered.

Indeed, each
motion called to mind swaying of plants or lithe activity of wild
creatures.
 
Comprehension hit Helen that
moment; his remarkable ability to avoid Gaynes's assault the previous night was
an application of his dance.
 
Thoughtful,
she withdrew into the house.

Enid shut the
back door and followed her into the study.
 
"Mistress, I've coffee set out in the dining room.
 
Shall I make toast?"

Chagrin tugged
Helen.
 
The pantry was almost
empty.
 
Little could she offer her guest
and friend to break his fast, but at the very least, she wouldn't insult him by
serving cold toast.
 
"Allow
Jonathan to settle in with his first cup of coffee before you toast
bread."

Enid bobbed a
curtsy and left Helen in the quiet of the study.
 
Her gaze roved over the dueling pistol case, ledgers, and storage
boxes, and her random thought from bedtime solidified to carve out
direction.
 
Letters.
 
Perhaps a clue waited in Silas's old
letters.

She dragged the
box to the window, providing her enough light to read, and pulled up her
chair.
 
Meticulous and exacting, Silas
had filed correspondences in reverse chronological order.
 
With but the faintest idea for what she
searched, Helen began in the mid-1750s, when Silas was around twenty years old.

After a few
minutes, she could hardly stomach more.
 
"Sowing wild oats" didn't begin to describe the debaucheries
staining her husband's early manhood, detailed to extreme in missives from
rakes who'd shared his adventures.
 
Season after season, inheritances burning holes in their pockets, they
flocked from surrounding counties with as much purpose as the hadji that
gathered en route to Mecca — except that their sacristy destinations were
London hells.

No normal
married man would keep reminders of such depravity.
 
With a shudder, Helen imagined Silas rereading his treasures late
at night, long after she'd fallen asleep alone, and easing his arousal with his
own hand.
 
Maybe he'd planted the
testaments for her to stumble upon after his death: his final mockery of her
from beyond the grave.

The rakes
became fewer and farther between in the 1760s.
 
Those who persevered in acquaintance commiserated with Silas over
pressures exerted by stodgy families upon fun loving fellows who showed no
signs of settling down in their thirties.
 
Assume a prominent role in family business, patriarchs and matriarchs
nagged.
 
Marry and beget children.
 
How stifling.

From the
sympathy he'd received from friends, Silas must have complained often about the
company of businessmen thrust upon him by his parents — advisers like Jonathan
who embodied responsibility.
 
One of the
last acts of his father before dying in 1767 was to order Silas's journey to
visit a business partner in North Carolina and study, firsthand, the Chiswell
family's naval stores trade.

Helen stared at
a letter from 1767, its writer Isaiah Hanley of New Berne.

Unsure of the
value of her find, she extracted Hanley's letters from the box and skimmed
them.
 
Early on, he acknowledged that
Silas barely tolerated his input and regarded him as some sort of restrictive
outgrowth of the Chiswell patriarch.
 
That changed in 1769, after Hanley suffered a series of strokes.
 
He required a secretary for dictation.
 
By 1770, he'd lost the ability to
speak.
 
From the warmth of the
secretary's responses, however, Silas had finally recognized a friend in Isaiah
Hanley.
 
Alas, too late for either man.

The final
letter, penned by Hanley's widow, announced her husband's death.
 
Helen remembered Silas receiving it in the
summer of 1771, just a few months before the duel.
 
He'd flown into a grief-fueled rage, slapped several servants around,
including Enid, drunk himself into a stupor, and vomited all over his
bedroom.
 
Summer days when the weather
was hot and humid, she imagined she smelled vomit in that bedroom still, even
though it no longer contained a stick of furniture and had been scoured from
floor to ceiling.

Why had the
widow of Isaiah Hanley attempted to contact the widow of Silas Chiswell in
1780, nine years later?

Helen
scrutinized each letter for a clue.
 
In
1770, the secretary had scribbled a peculiar postscript: "If perjury is
still a fear, we shall keep it safe for you."

It
.
 
That peculiar pronoun again.
 
Cold air scraped Helen's neck, and she
pulled her lace tucker closer about her throat.
 
In the darkness of a far corner, greenish phosphorescence
crouched, and she heard a whisper: "They'll kill Madam if they find
it."

With a gasp,
she stood and spilled Hanley's letters onto the floor.
 
"What is
it
, Charles?" she
demanded of the dark corner, although the glow had vanished.
 
"Tell me!"

"Good
morning, my dear."
 
Stockings and
coat pocket mended by Enid, Jonathan strolled in and drew up short when he
spied the letters on the floor.
 
"Allow me to help you tidy up.
 
I thought I heard you conversing with someone."

She
gulped.
 
"Jonathan, did Silas
confide in you fears of perjury back in 1770?"

"Perjury?"
 
He knelt and collected letters.
 
"Not that I recall, but by 1770, our
relationship was much strained by the melancholia induced from his use of spirits.
 
I was quite surprised when he ask me to be
his Second."
 
He stood and handed
her the letters.
 
"Here you
are.
 
Reading over some correspondence
to Silas, eh?
 
What have you found?
 
Did someone commit perjury against
him?"

"I'm not
sure.
 
These are from Isaiah
Hanley."

"Ah, yes,
Hanley.
 
A wise man."

"His widow
sent a fellow named Layman with a message for me.
 
He arrived from New Berne while I was out yesterday morning.
 
According to Enid, he was supposed to return
later."

"Don't
fret.
 
He'll turn up.
 
The Hanleys hire responsible servants.
 
In the mean time, Enid sent me to fetch you
for breakfast."

Minutes later,
while she and Jonathan dispatched toast slathered with blackberry jam, a knock
sounded at the front door.
 
Enid bustled
past the dining room to answer the door.
 
Then she poked her head in to them, expression dour.
 
"Mr. Gaynes and some men to see you,
mistress."

Chair legs
squawked in Helen's haste to rise and blot her fingers clean on a napkin.
 
"They've caught Arthur Sims?"

"I don't
think so.
 
Molly, Mr. Morris's
laundress, is with them.
 
It smells of
more trouble.
 
Shall I admit them to the
parlor?"

"No."
 
With Jonathan at her heels, Helen swept from
the dining room, pulled the front door open, and looked from the pale face of
Molly to the bloodshot scowls of Gaynes and several deputies.
 
"You have news for me?
 
Make haste.
 
My breakfast grows cold."

Gaynes jerked
his head at Molly without taking his eyes off Helen.
 
"Tell her."

Blonde Molly
chewed her lower lip.
 
"I don't
want to cause you more trouble, Mrs. Chiswell.
 
I was one of the early ones to market this morning, see.
 
I f-found a dead man, and recognized
him.
 
I w— wasn't snooping yesterday
morning, honest, when I overheard him talking with Enid at your front door.
 
I heard him say he was sent out of New
Berne, c-come to talk with you."

Shock swirled
through Helen.
 
Light-headed, she
pressed her hands to her cheeks.
 
Layman, Widow Hanley's messenger, dead before he could deliver
information from his mistress.

Murdered,
perhaps, to prevent his doing so?

Gaynes's lip
twitched at Molly.
 
"Run along back
to Mr. Morris.
 
We know where to find
you if we have more questions."
 
The girl scurried off after a curtsy.

"How was
he murdered?"
 
To Helen, her own
voice sounded distant, dreamy.

"Shot in
the head.
 
Surgeon's autopsying him, but
let's you and me wager he finds it was a
pistol
ball, same as what
killed Landon."
 
He sneered.
 
"Don't know what your plans are for the
near future, but the Committee of Safety insists that you not leave town until
we capture Arthur Sims."

Chapter Sixteen

PETER CLOSED
THE front door and took Helen's hat and cloak.
 
A burst of carpentry from the study subsided.
 
"Where's Enid, Peter?"