Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (23 page)

Helen — no,
Nell
— Grey.
 
For twelve years, Nell Grey had
been silent.
 
Cold plunged through Helen,
and she trembled.

Jonathan
kissed her hand, led her to the door, and faced her again.
 
"You can cast both David and Mr.
Fairfax from your life if you care to do so.
 
You can even cast me from your life.
 
But Helen Grey walks with you the rest of your days.
 
Have you made peace with her?"

Chapter Twenty-One

ALONE, HELEN
PACED in her room, her body awakened to Jonathan and thirsting.
 
Girlish infatuation, she told herself.
 
By his refusal of her, he seemed to agree.
 
Still, the foundation of admiration and
respect she experienced for him felt so solid, timeless.

Between bouts
of bafflement over Jonathan, she pondered the thing called love she and David
had long declared for each other.
 
Rather than mutual love, she suspected that he had given her control of
his heart, and she'd held him at bay for ten years.
 
His trapped expression their last night together added fuel to
her suspicions.
 
I would marry you if
that's what you wanted
.
 
Didn't
sound much like love to her.

What was love
anyway?
 
Could she even recognize
it?
 
Outside, the watch announced
midnight.
 
Gazing out the curtains, she
finally asked herself a question she'd skirted during her pacing.
 
What had Nell Grey to say about love?

Memory shoved
her into the procurement at Redthorne.
 
She backed from the window breathing hard, fists clenched.
 
For several seconds, Nell Grey ignited
within her, a howling titan powered by bottled-up rage and abandonment, before
Helen forced her back and sat at the edge of her bed, stunned, panting.
 
What profound shackles to carry around.
 
Somehow she must find a way to ease the
weight of them.
 
The portmanteau of a
journalist in the backcountry was heavy enough.

Besides, she
suspected Nell Grey had more than the procurement to howl about, and in good
time, she'd hear all about it.

***

Around seven
the next morning, Helen sent Hannah to track down the innkeeper and post
letters to Badley and Enid.
 
With
Fairfax's strategy in mind to render their party as inconspicuous as possible,
she'd packed away her silk and jewelry.
 
Over her petticoat and jacket of homespun wool, she wore a cloak while
she supervised the baggage transported downstairs, where Jonathan and Roger
waited with the wagon and horses.
 
The
foggy street writhed with activity — merchants in carriages, slaves on errands,
livestock meandering, military men in threes or fours, artisans on
delivery.
 
Traffic bottlenecked around a
half-dozen dismounted backwoodsmen in hunting shirts and felt hats.
 
They and their horses took up a quarter
width of street next door.

Helen glanced
about.
 
Five after seven.
 
Where was her escort?

In her
peripheral vision, a backwoodsman approached, and faux-Carolina accent groped
her from the dawn.
 
"I see you've
the wagon loaded, dear sister, so let's be off."

Her double-take
on Fairfax in a hunting shirt preceded her hard stare at the group of men.
 
No Parker or McPherson.
 
Not a man among them did she recognize.
 
She eyed Fairfax from head to toe again and
murmured, "Good heavens.
 
What a
difference."

He lowered his
voice.
 
"Legion cavalrymen over
there."

Her gaze on
them widened.
 
All out of uniform,
ordinary looking.
 
Judging from the bulk
packed with their bedrolls, they'd hidden away their distinctive fur helmets
and tailored, green cavalry jackets.
 
Their sabers, too.

Fairfax offered
her his elbow in a stiff movement.
 
"Allow me to introduce your escort."

The five
dragoons came to attention at their approach, the regality of her carriage
registering on them.
 
They lacked some
spark of bearing that she'd come to associate with British regulars.
 
Even Parker with his gap-toothed grin
possessed the spark.
 
As proudly as the
dragoons carried themselves, they were still provincials.
 
How fortunate that Badley hadn't insisted on
passing her off as the sister of one of them.

Her gaze
flicked over Fairfax, and disquiet tugged at her.
 
His carriage might mark him as a regular officer, not in the
slightest a provincial.
 
At least to
her, his transformation wasn't complete.
 
She hoped it wouldn't present a problem for their party down the road.

Their route lay
west Wednesday the twenty-ninth on a well-trafficked highway, past miles of
forestland denuded for the growth of rice and indigo in the rich, loamy soil of
eastern South Carolina.
 
Black gum and
sweet gum trees, oak, maple, and sumac had shed their leaves for winter,
enabling Helen to glimpse planters' opulent homes.

That night, she
recorded her reflections of the day and sketched dragoons preparing
supper.
 
In the company of Tarleton's
men, Fairfax warmed to the role of brother.
 
And Jonathan faded into the background for his portrayal of a family
servant, spending far less time in Helen's company.
 
The isolation it imposed left hollowness in her soul.

The next day,
swamp encroached with their proximity to the Santee.
 
Helen spotted wood storks, herons, and egrets.
 
Several times, deer leaped across the
road.
 
Once, they rode through a cloud
of rank musk exuded from a black bear that had crossed the road just prior to
their passage.

Tree frogs and
mockingbirds sang their progress deeper into the damp tangle of cypress, pines,
and pin oaks.
 
Open stretches of water,
dark with tannins and adorned with floating mats of vivid vegetation, appeared
off-road.
 
By nightfall the final day of
November, civilization had petered out.

As if to
counteract the absence of sophistication in a swamp singing with mosquito
melody and the arias of weird night birds, Jonathan set out his chessboard
after they'd finished supper.
 
Fairfax
pulled up a campstool.
 
The prospect of
sport in any form drew the interest of Campbell and Connor, two of the three
dragoons not on sentry detail, as well as Hannah.
 
The other dragoon, Davison, demonstrated musket drills for Roger.

By firelight,
Helen recounted in her journal the few travelers they'd met that day and
described swamp flora and fauna.
 
In
twenty minutes, she heard Fairfax murmur, "Checkmate."

Campbell,
Connor, and Hannah meandered over to observe Roger at the drill.
 
"Rest," said Davison.
 
Roger snapped his musket from position near
the outside of his right foot up and over and held it out, centered, before his
torso.
 
"Shoulder your
firelock."
 
Roger tucked the
musket, rotated, against his left shoulder, the butt in the palm of his
hand.
 
His movements looked smoother
than they had twenty minutes earlier.
 
Roger enjoyed the drill.
 
So did
his dragoon teacher.

Game pieces
clicked, slid together into their protective package by Jonathan.
 
A glance over her left shoulder rewarded her
with a solemn wink from him.
 
She put
away her pen and ink and closed the journal just as Fairfax straddled her bench
and sat upon it.

Hands braced on
his knees, he leaned toward her, unsmiling, and she, aware of the casual
observation of Campbell and Connor, resisted the urge to put half a foot more
distance on the bench from her "brother."
 
His gaze strolled from her eyes to her lips, over her bosom, and
into her lap, where her hands rested on the journal, before returning to her
eyes.
 
He whispered,
"Congratulations.
 
You and Mr.
Quill have resolved that titillating chemistry between you to portray the
unambiguous roles of widowed lady and revered servant."

"Thank
you," she whispered back.
 
Too bad
whispers weren't the ideal vehicle with which to convey sarcasm.
 
"Congratulations on your chess
victory."

"He
allowed me to win."

She tasted
salt, musky and masculine, and swallowed.
 
"I assure you it wasn't so."

"What are
you writing?"

"Today's
journal entry.
 
What else would I
write?"

His gaze
stroked the journal.
 
"Ciphered
intelligence reports for rebels."

She laughed
softly.
 
His responsive grin, minus a
shred of warmth, siphoned the humor from her.
 
"You think me a spy for rebels?
 
Why?"

He sighed with
what appeared to be sincere regret, and the backs of two fingers stroked her
cheek.
 
"You abetted David St.
James's escape."

She flinched
from the caress.
 
"There are dozens
of
true
rebels running around out there.
 
Fetch one of them for the feather in your cap."

"You don't
trust me."
 
The icy smile returned
to his mouth.
 
"I don't trust
you."

Her pulse
stammered.
 
"If I'd grown up with
the Clancys as my stepbrothers, I wouldn't trust anyone, either."

Iron control
beat back the fiend that spasmed one corner of his mouth, and comprehension and
fascination ripped through his gaze.
 
"We have more in common than you're willing to admit."

Two damaged, dark
stars dancing round each other in a heavens of light.
 
Helen shrugged off the image.
 
A gust of amusement escaped her.
 
"And exploration of those supposed commonalities should intrigue
me?"

"Why do
you paint sites of the old gods?
 
Did
you lose them while you pretended to be Anglican?"

Her scalp
crawled with shock.
 
How could he know
of her struggle to reclaim her religion?

Satisfaction
honed his smile, as if he'd read her thoughts.
 
"You've had no community since you left Wiltshire, have you?"

His uncanny
guess rattled her.
 
She tilted her chin
up.
 
"It's none of your
business."

He
chuckled.
 
"You know where to find
community."
 
He grasped her hand
and kissed her wrist.
 
"Pleasant
dreams, Helen."

***

The following
day, first of December, the weather continued humid and mild, and the Santee
Road wandered northwest.
 
Helen,
comfortable in the saddle of the mare, Calliope, rode among the dragoons and
sneaked in the first of several questions for her report: "Why did you
join the Legion?"

Surprised and
pleased to have her attention, the men opened up.
 
Four were married, three with young children.
 
Two were farmers, two were artisans, and the
fifth was a merchant.
 
Different
backgrounds, but Helen heard a united voice in their responses.
 
There was so much at stake: property,
businesses, lives of their loved ones.
 
The settled lands belonged to them as much as to the rebels that scarred
the terrain with protracted bloodshed.
 
Thus they were challenged to end the insurrection, restore order
wherever men wallowed in anarchy, and remind citizens that a power superior to
partisan chieftains existed.
 
Expecting
no quarter from rebels in battle, they fought as if each moment was their
last.
 
Always.

Mid-afternoon,
the party encountered a family of seven headed southeast.
 
Horses plodded with a laden wagon, and
everyone except a little girl walked.
 
The father and boys carried muskets, and he hailed them.
 
"What news out of George Town,
friends?"

To Helen's
relief, Fairfax allowed Campbell to respond in his regional accent.
 
"All quiet on the road these past three
days."

"A good
thing that is.
 
We're bone-tired of
it.
 
I'm sorry to tell you, but closer
to the High Hills of Santee, your road will stink of homeless folks, burned
barns, and dead stock.
 
Last month,
Tarleton came through with the torch.
 
Then Marion followed, mopping the road with anyone gone loyal out of
cowardice.
 
Marion, he patrols the area,
so watch yourself.
 
And bugger the both
of them, I say."

"Yes,
we've heard about Tarleton and the torch."

"Wouldn't
surprise me if he burned out a few Loyalists, too.
 
He nearly killed Tom Sumter a few days ago."
 
Noting their puzzled looks, he added,
"News to you, eh?
 
It happened way
out on Blackstock's Hill, northwest between the Tyger and Enoree.
 
They say the old man's arm is paralyzed from
a musket ball, but he's still breathing.
 
Don't you know, soon as he's on his feet, he'll stir up more
trouble."
 
The man spat into
roadside weeds.
 
"Blasted, mucking
war."