Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (21 page)

Perception
deepened wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
 
"And?"

"Your
ritual — Mr. Fairfax has witnessed the likes of it before."

Mild surprise
permeated his serenity.
 
"Does he
practice the art?"

"No, but
you never told me that your dance from China is a
weapon
."

"Ah, well,
those who apply it foremost as a weapon have left the path of wisdom."

A half-laugh escaped
her when she recalled Fairfax's desire to "stomp the rebels" by
capitalizing on whatever wisdom Chinese sages had passed along to
Jonathan.
 
Intuition fueled her vision
then — a petite woman nestled in the arms of a younger Jonathan, her black hair
fanned upon their sleeping pallet, her luminous skin milk-white in the dusk,
her almond-shaped dark eyes full with adoration and bliss while he massaged
her
palms with his thumbs.
 
Helen gazed at
her own hands, held in such tender regard within his.

"My dear,
is there something else?"

How did she
feel when she replaced the image of the young Chinese woman with that of
herself?
 
If only she could sort her
emotions: how she felt about Jonathan as a
man
, a
lover
.

And what of
David St. James?

She had just
over two weeks to figure it out.
 
Something told her it wouldn't take her that long.
 
She'd never enjoyed ignorance.

While pasting a
smile to her face, she withdrew her hands from his.
 
"Nothing else."

***

A packed mass
of crushed shell and sand, the King's Highway into South Carolina reeked of
tidal debris.
 
It stretched
west-southwest, broken by causeways over creeks and rushes-choked lowland —
no
land, in Helen's opinion, one that vacillated between swamp and salt
marsh.
 
Pockets of stink hovered above
causeways, decomposition's invisible kisses.
 
Cypress, cedar, and pine trees protruded from the sloppy ground like
loose teeth in swollen gums.
 
Insects
droned, and buzzards and egrets flapped about.

A northbound
postal carrier hailed them on the road that afternoon.
 
"You folks heard from down south
yet?
 
Francis Marion attacked the
garrison at George Town about a week and a half ago.
 
He got chased off, and his nephew died in the raid."

Fairfax's
regard of the postal carrier was unruffled.
 
"Why should Marion attack?"

The man
shrugged.
 
"Maybe because he was
madder than a hornet with a squashed nest after what Tarleton did."

"What news
of Colonel Tarleton?"
 
Fairfax
shifted forward in his saddle.
 
Nine
disguised redcoats eager for victory did the same.

"He took the
torch along the Santee Road, first part of the month."
 
The man scratched an eyebrow.
 
"The ninth or tenth, I think.
 
Burned rebels from their homes, middle of
the night."

Fairfax thanked
him for his news, and the party continued south.
 
What the postal carrier
hadn't
said activated Helen's
journalist suspicions.
 
Tarleton chased
Marion into the Santee but didn't catch him.
 
No doubt led astray by residents, riled over his failure to capture
Marion, the colonel had opted to suppress insurrection with the torch.
 
A brutal strategy, to be sure, and futile in
history as often as it was effective.
 
Uneasiness rooted inside her when she considered the reaction of the
Committee of Safety toward Wilmington's Loyalists in response to the news.

Late afternoon,
west of the tributary leading to Shallot Inlet, the land offered up a dry,
sandy hummock.
 
Requiring no further
endorsement of the site than charred remains of older campfires dotting the
stretch, the party halted for the night.
 
Almost faster than Helen could account for the day in her journal,
Roger, Hannah, and Jonathan had the horses unhitched, unsaddled, and rubbed
down.

Perched upon a
stool, she dashed off a charcoal sketch of the forlorn terrain while the trio
erected three tents.
 
Then she took up a
more detailed drawing of the Pearsons and Jonathan at work.
 
By twilight, she'd captured the essence of
soldiers building a campfire and tending their own horses in two more
sketches.
 
And she'd sneaked in a
full-length profile of Fairfax, hands clasped behind, feet planted
shoulder-width apart, scorching the road with his glare.

Jonathan knelt
and examined her sketches.
 
"Excellent work.
 
And not a
one of us held still."

She wiped
charcoal off her fingertips with a rag.
 
"Movement goes with portraiture, I'm afraid.
 
Years from now, perhaps when I'm an old, old
woman, very intelligent people just like you will have invented a device that
creates instant portraits, and no one need worry again about fidgety subjects
or —"
 
She held up the rag.
 
"— or charcoal."
 
She sighed and rolled up the sketches.
 
"Meanwhile, you're working.
 
I'm just writing and sketching."

He rested his
hand on the silk at her knee and whispered, "Playing the part of the
gentlewoman."

Their gazes
locked, and she felt it all pour into her soul: Jonathan's adoration, love, and
yearning.
 
Yes, she was his work of art,
perhaps even his life's crown achievement, but was she a
woman
to
him?
 
An involuntary shiver caught her.

"Pah, how
boorish of me.
 
Night's come on, and
it's grown colder."
 
He pushed
himself to his feet.
 
"I shall
fetch your cloak."

After he'd
walked off, she looked at the silk of her gown where he'd laid his hand.
 
For as long as she'd known him, he'd
confined his caresses.
 
If a man truly
loved a woman,
wanted
her, wouldn't twelve years of silence and
confinement make him ready to burst at the seams?
 
Jonathan didn't look ready to explode.
 
He looked content to pass his time with her in chaste caresses.

But David had
been a mitigating factor for eleven of those twelve years.
 
Another shiver found her, and she drew her
shawl tighter.
 
For the duel, Jonathan
had agreed to be
Silas's
Second, not David's.
 
The symbolism of his decision was clear.
 
David was the rival.

Pricked by
unease and tension, she collected her journal and sketches.
 
As she stood, she made eye contact with
Fairfax who, she realized, had observed Jonathan's caresses moments
earlier.
 
Blood-red rays of setting
sunlight emphasized the sardonic twist of his lips.
 
Did I not tell you so this morning?
his posture asserted
as he strutted for the company of his men.

***

That night,
damp cold seeped upward and penetrated Helen's bones, despite a foot of space
between her cot and rugs on the ground.
 
The marsh/swamp grew boisterous with territorial rituals and predations
of varmints far more antediluvian than frogs and crickets.
 
She listened to primordial instinct and
stared, wide-awake, at the canvas roof of her tent.

Creatures
moaned, splashed, thrashed, and screeched the night away.
 
Big creatures.
 
Midnight, the ground shook near camp.
 
A sentry shouted, "Bloody hell!"
 
A musket discharged.

Another
sentry's musket fired through the echoed report of the first.
 
"Got it!
 
Jove's arse, Parker, look at the
size
o' that thing!"

Helen bolted up
and groped for her shawl.
 
Parker: the
Devonshire farm lad missing the front tooth, the fellow who'd helped Fairfax
run David from her bedroom.
 
Well, bless
Parker's good aim with the musket in the dark, and thank the gods for the
King's finest.

She heard
Fairfax's unemotional growl.
 
"Keep
your voices down.
 
Clean it up."

The tent to her
right, where Jonathan slept, was quiet.
 
She untied the top of her tent flap, poked her head out, and squinted
across camp.
 
Several men hunched over a
massive blob in the sand.
 
Fairfax
strode for their tents.

"Hssst,
Mrs. Chiswell!"
 
Helen glanced to
her left to spot Hannah peeking from her own tent.
 
"What was that about?"

"The
sentries shot a panther."
 
She
presumed
it was a panther.
 
Trappers and guides
who made it to Wilmington related some fantastical tales of creatures they'd
encountered in the Carolina wilds.

Hannah
scrunched her face.
 
"Roger slept
through the racket."

Helen imagined
his response to the horn at two in the morning for one of Tarleton's infamous
surprise attacks on an enemy.
 
Maybe if
someone sounded the horn right in his ear —

Fully dressed
to his shoes, Fairfax strolled past their tents, hands clasped behind.
 
Didn't he ever sleep?
 
"Everything is under control.
 
Return to bed."
 
He circled the campfire and headed for the
men and the motionless thing on the ground.

Hannah stuck
her tongue out after him.
 
"'Everything is under control.'
 
Jolly.
 
Now I shall sleep tight
indeed."
 
With a cough of scorn,
she whipped the flap of her tent closed.

***

More salt marsh
than swamp claimed the scenery Saturday, and it more monotonous for the paucity
of trees.
 
To the horizon, the
tideland's grass, reeds, and sedge rippled like fur on the back of a dog
pestered by fleas.
 
Turtles bobbed and
flipped in the shallow water, and iridescent-winged dragonflies danced among
the salt loving herbs.
 
Helen spotted
the sinuous wake of a curious alligator.

They passed ten
homesteads during the day, their arrival often announced to settlers by tail
wagging mongrels with salt-crusted legs.
 
Bright-eyed children scrambled out to the road and cheered their way,
and the party paused a few minutes to accept hospitality from a plump goodwife,
who held out a bucket of cool, spring water and a dipper.
 
The road bent south.
 
By late afternoon, the air held the smell of
seawater and the faint cries of gulls.

A settler
invited them to pitch camp on his land.
 
They paid him for firewood, the use of his well and pasture, and a share
of fresh fish caught on Long Bay.
 
"Menace of the Swamp Beast" consumed two pages in Helen's
journal.
 
In charcoal, she captured
Parker, arms stretched wide, face animated, as he embellished his adventure of
midnight musketry for the settler's family.

The bay breeze
blew at night.
 
She drifted in and out
of sleep, unable to find a position in which both her nose and lower back were
warm.
 
In one dream, she and David ran
barefoot across summer grass on the Salisbury Plain.
 
Even asleep, she knew it wasn't real, and she awakened to the
tickly crawl of a tear down the side of her nose.
 
Why was it so damned cold in her cot?

She shuffled
blankets and regained sleep to dream of rising from her cot a-shiver, trailing
blankets over to Jonathan's tent.
 
"Shared bodily warmth," she beseeched him with chattery teeth.
 
His expression kind, he cuddled her and massaged
her palms with his thumbs.
 
Ah, at last
— relaxed and warmed by chaste caresses.
 
But for some reason, she shoved him over onto his back, and mounted him,
and Jonathan gripped her hips.
 
Driven
to the cliff of
le petit mort
several times without release, she fought
him, found her wrists bound and all control stripped from her.
 
Her head flung back, she howled,
sang
to ride the horn of the moon.
 
Earth-laughter boomed through her soul.

She jerked
awake: half-appalled, half-aroused, wholly confused.
 
Bound wrists?

Such peculiar
dreams the cold inspired, but she needn't be cold.
 
She'd seen extra blankets and a brazier in the wagon.
 
Next night, she'd use them.

Chapter Twenty

THE ROAD HUGGED
coastline and paralleled a swash, the thud of tide muted for highway
travelers.
 
Beyond the channel, sea oats
on sandbanks billowed in the sunlight.
 
Above sparkling water, pelicans and seagulls swooped, their shrieks
high, thin.
 
Helen tasted ocean with
every breath.

Noontime,
McPherson tossed a stale crust of bread to a lone seagull.
 
From out of nowhere, the sky darkened with
assault: screaming birds generous with defecation and molting feathers.
 
Horses shied and whinnied, and soldiers
cursed.