Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (25 page)

"And one
old man."
 
Helen heard Jonathan's
humor.
 
He shifted about, a blob by
starlight.
 
"You're the only
civilian who brought a musket."

Hannah sounded
grumpy.
 
"And you're supposed to be
keeping me warm."
 
After some soft
shuffling, Roger obliged.
 
Bliss
resounded in Hannah's murmur.

Cold seeped
into Helen's shoes.
 
Hopeful that the
concept of shared warmth appealed to Jonathan, she looked at him.
 
The waxing quarter moon peeked from behind a
cloud and revealed the oval of his face intent upon the campsite.
 
Dejection shivered through her.

Between
winter-bare trunks of trees, the burned-down campfire flickered, rendered the
site in stark shadow and orange light.
 
Helen yearned for sleep.
 
How
long had they squatted out there in the cold behind that boulder — two
hours?
 
Whigs weren't coming to kill
them.
 
Marion had been duped.
 
She yawned.

Jonathan
brushed her arm.
 
"Shh.
 
Listen."

The snap of a
twig about twenty-five feet to their right echoed like musket shot.
 
To her left, Roger dislodged Hannah,
replaced her with his musket.

"Shut
up!" came a hoarse warning from the right.
 
"You'll wake 'em before we kill 'em."

"They're
all asleep.
 
Nothing moving there in
camp."

Helen sucked in
a breath at the closer voice, fifteen feet to their left.
 
Stealthy shapes of ten men afoot in the wood
around them, muskets clenched in hand, closed on camp.
 
The fire glow beckoned.
 
The aroma of fried pork left on skillets
hung in the air.

She, Hannah,
Jonathan, and Roger squatted very still.
 
Marion's Whigs snuck past.
 
Their
forms became silhouettes.
 
Firelight
painted them orange targets.

"Left
their supper.
 
Damn, I'm hungry."

"Give me
some of that pork."

"Say, no
one's here!
 
It's a trap, lads!"

A branch behind
Helen popped, and a hot body reeking of whiskey sprawled atop her, pitching her
against the boulder.
 
A second group of
Whigs had followed the initial ten into camp.
 
"Halloo, Eli, they're out here!"
 
Jonathan hauled him off her, knocked his musket into darkness,
and kicked his stomach.

Another Whig
dove in.
 
A ball from Roger's musket
ripped his throat, and he collapsed and thrashed.
 
Sulfurous black powder stench, mingled with the metallic stink of
fresh blood, drenched the air.

Above the whiny
ring in her ears from musket discharge, Helen heard the rumble of horses
descending on camp.
 
Whig musket-fire
peppered the night, but she wasted no time speculating on the fate of
militiamen afoot with discharged muskets pitted against horsed cavalry soldiers
with uplifted sabers.

Alerted by
movement in her peripheral vision, she flung herself into Hannah.
 
A knife blade scraped rock beside her right
ear.
 
She rammed her elbow backward into
her attacker's groin.
 
He fell atop the
man with the throat wound and sobbed.

Hannah tripped
two more Whigs.
 
Roger smacked the butt
of his musket into both temples.

Stunned,
shaken, her pulse at a gallop, Helen saw two Whigs leap for Jonathan.
 
A bony thud signaled their collision with
each other.
 
Jonathan didn't occupy the
spot he'd been in a second earlier.

One man lurched
to his feet and slashed at Jonathan with a knife.
 
Jonathan's foot shot out, cracked his wrist.
 
He howled and floundered away.

A shriek of
mortal terror yanked their attention to the campsite.
 
Helen cringed and jerked her gaze away, too late.
 
Burned into her brain was a horrific
sequence of images: Fairfax raised up in the stirrups, firelight incandescent
on an archangelic grimace of rapture, his saber swooping orange flame, and
blood spray from a man's headless body before it crumpled.

"My
g-god!"
 
Hannah turned away,
coughed, and vomited.

Jonathan spun
Helen about so her back was to the campsite and gripped her to him.
 
The stench of puke, blood, and gunpowder
swirled around her.
 
She gagged.
 
Somehow, she retained her supper.

Horses
thundered toward them: dragoons with torches beating the brush for escaped
Whigs.
 
The Whig with the broken wrist
loped off faster, frantic for escape.
 
Davison cantered past and sabered him with the fine form of a champion
cricket player.

Jonathan and
Roger hauled the women away from bobbing torchlight, away from five injured men
who bawled for mercy and received it seconds later in the form of pistol shots
to their heads.

Outside the
campsite, Roger threw a blanket on the ground.
 
The women sank onto it, wrapped their arms about each other with their
backs to the metallic stench of carnage, and gaped out into night.
 
Behind them, Jonathan and Roger dismantled
tents, struck camp in preparation for two hours more travel to send them clear
of Marion.

Seventeen armed
men dead in less than five minutes.
 
Phineas Badley would find the story incredible, almost beyond
belief.
 
At that moment, Helen certainly
did.
 
Instinct screamed that it wasn't
the greatest shock the assignment would deliver.

***

Beyond trees
that shrouded the river, the moon had set.
 
Wrapped in a bedroll, Helen stared at the wink of stars above swaying
tops of pines and the scuttle of clouds.
 
The air smelled frosty, pine-spicy, earth-ancient.
 
An owl hooted over the Santee.

She thanked the
gods that Roger and Hannah had fallen asleep, snuggled together nearby in
blankets.
 
Not that they'd been noisy,
but from Hannah's sighs and Roger's grunts, it was obvious what they'd been
about.
 
Death, flirted with hours
earlier, had tagged sex to awaken for the subsequent act.

Jonathan's
blanket rustled.
 
Her skin clicked and
twitched.

Snores from
three of Tarleton's men proclaimed their deep, restful sleep while two others
stood sentry.
 
What did killing mean to
them?
 
Not sport.
 
Duty, perhaps.
 
Yes, duty.
 
Duty,
well-performed, awarded satisfaction.
 
That's why they slept so well.

But killing
wasn't duty to Fairfax.
 
She shuddered
to recall ecstasy far beyond satisfaction on his face the instant his saber
sliced the Whig's neck.
 
The paean in
his expression was darkly familiar.
 
Her
mind ground away with the need to identify it, denying her sleep.

Spiritual
unity.
 
Communion.
 
That was what she'd seen stamped on his
face.
 
"Gods!" she whispered.
 
Killing was exaltation to Fairfax.
 
Mouth dry, she thrust aside her blanket and
sat.

"Helen?"
Jonathan whispered, and he also sat.

He tried to
violate my sister...he shot a friend, someone I've known my entire life, in
cold blood
.
 
No, not mere
killing.
 
Before Fairfax's divinity
blessed him, it demanded more than death.

There are
ways a man might hang another, make it appear suicide
.
 
Such a murderer might also draw out the
physical agony of his victim during a hanging, without leaving overt
evidence.
 
Helen shuddered again, hugged
herself.
 
She imagined Ratchingham
choking in a noose fixed with expertise to cut off air but not snap his neck, a
stool returned beneath his feet long enough for him to recover consciousness,
then kicked away, over and over.
 
And
Fairfax feeding off his stepfather's terror and agony, his face illuminated by
exaltation.

She drew her
cloak over her clothes and slid on shoes and gloves.
 
"Helen, wait."
 
She walked away, knowing that Jonathan monitored her departure.

Her path
intersected with Campbell's patrol.
 
"Looking for your brother?"

She shook her
head.
 
"I need to walk.
 
I cannot find sleep."

"I
understand."

She believed he
did understand.
 
Campbell, the senior
dragoon, worked well with people.
 
Perhaps he'd had to interact with outraged and grieved civilians on
occasion and explain
why
.
 
"I shan't go farther than those pine trees over there."
 
She pointed east.

"Very
good, madam."
 
He bowed and stepped
aside.

Winter-brown
grass and weeds grabbed her petticoat.
 
Halfway to the pines, she hopped over trunks of smaller trees toppled in
the same direction by a recent windstorm.
 
She paused, kicked a fallen trunk to evict any varmints, and sat upon
it.

Exaltation.
 
Where was
her
exaltation?

Her neck craned
back, she studied the empyrean.
 
Antares, garnet heart of the scorpion, glittered.
 
Teal trail as thin as thread, a meteor
zipped across the velvet black for three seconds before it extinguished.

Elbows on her
knees, she propped her head in her hands.
 
Thoughts scattered through her mind like a child's jacks spilled upon a
wooden floor.
 
Her journal, with no
entry yet for Monday the fourth of December.
 
Badley, and what he wanted from the project, why he'd sent her into the
Santee, whether he'd visited Enid in her absence.
 
The peculiar events of her final week in Wilmington: attempted
creditor fraud, and the deaths of Charles, Layman, and Sims.
 
Jonathan's chaste caresses.
 
David's tortured love.

Emptiness ached
in her soul.
 
Where was her exaltation?

Cold slithered
her neck.
 
She straightened and pulled
the hood of her cloak over her head.

Movement in the
pines drew her gaze.
 
Fairfax strode
toward camp, as full of energy as any nocturnal creature.
 
She'd never seen him sleep.
 
Everything about him was eldritch.
 
Chilled, she stood.

He skipped over
a downed tree and made for her, high spirits fleshing out his tone.
 
"Helen, darling, welcome to two in the
morning!"
 
Even by starlight,
preternatural beauty resonated from him.
 
His gods had been appeased.

Her gods,
too?
 
You know where to find community.

Fairfax laughed
when he reached her.
 
"Let me
guess.
 
We must return to Wilmington on
the morrow."

It was far too
late to head back.
 
Her voice sounded
ancient, tired.
 
"We shall continue
on to my appointment with the Legion."

"Perseverance.
 
You keep your word."
 
His hands darted out, closed both her hands
together.
 
Heat radiating from his hands
penetrated her gloves and the bones of her fingers with an almost painful
jolt.
 
"Trouble sleeping?
 
Laudanum in wine would help."

"No, I —
that combination produces visions."

"Visions?
 
Intriguing.
 
I wager you've lain awake wondering why we didn't take them prisoner,
why we killed them —"

"
We
?"
 
She took a deep breath and tasted a faint,
new scent woven through his musk: blood.
 
"I know why the Green Dragoons kill."
 
Her tone remained even.
 
"I also know why you kill."

Winter gusted
over her.
 
His fingers stroked
hers.
 
After a glance toward camp, he
leaned toward her a few inches, studied her expression, and softened his tone.
 
"Such a busy mind.
 
Francis Marion provides quite a welcome to
the Santee, doesn't he?"
 
He tugged
her closer and caught her arms.
 
"While you're so busy philosophizing about death and killing, you'd
best consider why Phineas Badley is trying to kill you.
 
Such a charming fellow you work for."

Chapter Twenty-Four

"BADLEY —
TRYING TO
kill
me?"

"He
insisted that you travel into the Santee, despite my warning.
 
To my knowledge, no journalist has ever
traveled with the Legion.
 
The chance of
being killed is far greater than with a regular unit.
 
Were I a publisher, I'd send a reporter to the Santee or riding
with the Legion for two reasons.
 
One: I
was desperate for a story.
 
Two: I
wanted the journalist killed on assignment.
 
My impression of Phineas Badley is that he isn't desperate for a
story."