Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (28 page)

"You don't
even care to investigate.
 
Someone
convinced you that investigation wouldn't help.
 
Perhaps that someone is in the employ of Badley and Prescott even
today."

"Badley
and Prescott can manage such a scheme by themselves."

"The core
mechanics of it, perhaps.
 
But you're an
intelligent woman.
 
If I'd been them,
I'd have paid a few people to divert your attention elsewhere.
 
Badley may
still
be paying
them."

She rotated to
the fire, closed her eyes, and sighed.
 
"You think Badley paid a merchant to chase my petticoat all these
years.
 
Well, most merchants of
Wilmington are idiots, lending the weight of a goose feather to your
theory.
 
I'm exhausted."

He gripped her
upper arm, leaned closer, and whispered, "Consider those among your
friends
for whom Badley has regard.
 
I heard him
defend Mr. St. James when we were in the study."

Helen snapped
her head around to glare at him.
 
"Good heavens, what a pathetic attempt."

"I'd be
willing to wager with you, madam, that Badley and St. James entered your
husband's life at almost exactly the same time.
 
Why?
 
Because they were —
are — a team.
 
Now, what do you
say?
 
Shall we wager on it?"

Startled, she
stared at the fire, and her memory scrambled back eleven years, a fortnight
after she and Silas arrived in Wilmington.
 
She'd been in the parlor when the back door whammed open.
 
Silas tottered in jovial, reeking of brandy,
shored up by two men she'd never seen before who both looked apologetic and
embarrassed.
 
"Helen, my
honey!
 
I won at the cockfights tonight!
 
And I brought home two new friends to meet
you!

"Gentlemen,
I present my wife, the lovely Mrs. Chiswell.
 
Here we have Mr. Phineas Badley, owner of
Badley's Review
.
 
And over here is Mr. David St. James, who
travels the colonies playing piquet and one and thirty.
 
What fun, eh?"

Chapter Twenty-Six

"HOLD THE
LANTERN closer."
 
Helen winced at
the bark in her tone.
 
Hannah didn't
deserve it.
 
A team
.
 
Badley the brains, David the dash.
 
Was that how they worked it?
 
How had Fairfax known?
 
We have more in common than you're
willing to admit
.
 
Helen shuddered.

Hannah lowered
the light near Helen's portmanteau.
 
"Tell me what you're looking for.
 
I can help you."

Helen pawed
through clothing and slammed her portmanteau shut.
 
Damnation.
 
Must've left
the laudanum in Wilmington.
 
Not that
she'd used it much, fearing the infamous dependency, but if ever there was a
night for drugged sleep, surely this was it.

She sat and
stared at the wall of her tent.
 
Her
heart felt like a piece of meat tenderized by a butcher's mallet, left all
bloody, shapeless, and flaccid on the block afterwards.

Hannah hooked
the lantern to the ridgepole, sat beside her, and clasped her hand.
 
"Won't you tell me what's wrong?"
she whispered.

Helen's pulse
pounded her ears.
 
Drunkenness may have
marked Silas as an easy target for a quick purse cutting by "new
friends" who'd noticed his win at a cockfight.
 
But for a team to linger another two years, its ultimate goal
defrauding him of his estate, required an almost unbelievable amount of
dedication, patience, and perseverance — not to mention a degree of skill,
foresight, and cunning possessed by less than a thousandth of all criminals.

In 1769,
William Tryon was Royal Governor, and Wilmington was quite a town for
festivity.
 
At dinner parties, balls,
and theater shows, fashion and flirtation flowed.
 
How many times had she danced with David, dined at the same
table, smiled greetings across a crowded theater before Silas had left her
alone at the house on Second Street and traveled on business?

David's
nocturnal visits brought peace to the house.
 
No servant spoke a word of it to the master.
 
Mrs. Chiswell was happy for the first time, treated with
tenderness and respect by a fellow who was courteous to them and not so
haut
that he couldn't share humor every once in awhile.
 
David earned their loyalty.

Had it all been
an act?

Dragged nine
years past by memory, she trembled to relive the bellow of voices in the parlor
while she lay abed, her abdomen bruised, her womb cramped with miscarriage.

***

"The
devil damn you black for abusing her that way!"

"The
devil damn you black for fucking my wife!
 
It's your brat she carries!"

"All
she's ever been to you is — is livestock to kick around or futter when you're
drunk.
 
The woman doesn't matter to you
at all.
 
You'd rather poke a sheep or a
goat.
 
That's it.
 
She's the first woman you ever emptied your
stones into.
 
You're used to
livestock!"

"Bastard
cur, if we were in England —"

"Well,
we aren't in England, you idiot, we're in America."

"Take
back those words."

"Kiss
my arse."

"We
shall settle this, then."

"Yes,
we shall.
 
Name your time and
location."

***

Did David support
himself off his skill at gambling, or had he helped Badley and Prescott murder
her husband in exchange for a chunk of Chiswell estate?
 
What was that business he'd mentioned during
his most recent visit about paying off Prescott a final few pounds?

Hannah released
her hand.
 
"I shall fetch the
Professor."

"No."
 
Helen snagged her sleeve.
 
More disillusionment and doubt paralyzed
her.
 
Jonathan and Badley, cordial.
 
Jonathan, lukewarm over her swindle
theory.
 
Jonathan, part of "the
team?"

"You're
not well, Mrs. Chiswell, I can see it."

"The
skirmish with Marion's men.
 
My
reaction, delayed."
 
The last thing
she wanted was Jonathan's company.
 
"Say nothing to him.
 
Please, I just need sleep.
 
Help
me undress."

Conflict nipped
Hannah's face, but she complied.
 
After
she'd tucked Helen into the cot, she took the lantern with her.
 
Tears seeped from the corners of Helen's
eyes, in no way representative of the tidal wave of grief dammed up inside her,
and not easing her heartache.
 
She
blotted the tears away before they pooled in her ears.

Did David and
Jonathan play a charade with her?
 
Not
knowing left her in limbo, frozen, indecisive.

In the
distance, she heard Fairfax comment to a dragoon about a horseshoe.
 
Anger clenched her gut.
 
The scoundrel, this was his doing.
 
He'd crafted his words to unmoor her and
leave her sails stripped of wind, and she dredged up enough self-doubt to
muddle her own way.
 
He'd shaken the
tree more than she ever could have imagined.

Sleep found
her, but in her dreams, both David and Jonathan turned their backs on her and
walked away, while she struggled to follow, hampered by wrists tied behind
her.
 
That peculiar image of bound
wrists again.
 
Metaphor, surely, but
deep inside, she felt it meant more.
 
When she woke predawn the next morning to Roger's chipper whistle, she
felt as though she'd spent all night bribing the gods to be ferried back from
Hades.

***

Next day in the
High Hills of Santee, Helen rode forward among dragoons Sullivan, Ross, and
Davison and asked them what they enjoyed most about riding with the
Legion.
 
Sullivan and Ross commented on
their distinctive uniforms and their renowned mobility.
 
Although the Legion went through horses faster
than other regiments, Tarleton knew how to divert mounts from other regiments.
 
"Swift, stunning strikes," said
Davison, "and the looks of surprise and terror on the face of the
foe."
 
He sighed, pleased.

A blend of
humor, amazement, and uneasiness wound through Helen at the phrases the men
used to describe their commander.
 
"He gives us a sense of purpose."
 
"He's our protector."
 
"He's our champion."
 
In the eyes of his men, Tarleton had assumed the status of a divine
warrior from legend, like Achilles or Samson, boundless with stamina and
energy.

Divine warriors
weren't perfect.
 
They came equipped
with a fatal flaw.
 
Odds were that a
twenty-six-year-old who was younger than many of his subordinate officers had
at least one flaw.
 
But soldiers
demanded consistency of their officers.

Esprit de
corps
didn't arise in a unit whose commander led with his vices — firm one
day, lax the next.
 
Were Tarleton cut
from that cloth, the dragoons' comments about him would have been disparaging,
mocking.

She considered
Davison's comment about what he enjoyed the most:
Swift, stunning strikes, and
the looks of surprise and terror on the face of the foe
.
 
Characteristic of the Legion was its
rattlesnake-like surprise attack.
 
The
Legion counted upon chaos created among the enemy with the attack strategy.
 
Uneasiness pricked Helen again.
 
The Legion hadn't always been victorious
with its sudden attack.

Assuming her
assignment was genuine, could this be the muck Badley's sponsor had hired her
to uncover about Tarleton — that he didn't deploy other strategies?
 
Was the Legion, a disproportionately large
financial drain of His Majesty's resources in the southern colonies, a disaster
waiting to happen?
 
Parliament wasn't
hospitable to spendthrifts these days.
 
A feature that Tarleton abused his favored status with Cornwallis and
squandered resources would, indeed, be enough to sink a career in Parliament
before it ever started.

***

Mid-morning on
the ninth of December, the party entered Camden on Broad Street, a packed-dirt
thoroughfare running north to south through town.
 
Business from Market Square spilled over into the lower town
square.
 
Vendors hawked tobacco,
pastries, produce, ribbons, ink, livestock, and anything else they thought they
could sell to goodwives, soldiers, frontiersmen, Indians, slaves, artisans, and
merchants who wandered among the booths.

Helen couldn't
wait to collect Badley's bank draft and post her Santee Road adventures, eat a
meal that didn't consist of trail rations or snared rabbit, and spend the night
in a decent inn minus bedbugs, where she could rid herself of ten days of
Santee swamp slime.
 
She was ready to
feel silk against her skin again.
 
And
she was worn out on the company of everyone in her party, with the possible
exception of Calliope.

Sun and rain
had bleached the two-story wooden houses and businesses fronting Broad Street
to a uniform gray.
 
Upon closer study,
she determined that the bustle and traffic masked early stages of dilapidation
in Camden.
 
Shops for a wigmaker and
eyeglass seller had closed down.
 
So had
a large inn called the Leaping Stag.
 
Paint on the inn's signboard peeled.

The party
halted at the office of a purchasing agent for the Legion, located between the
courthouse and the Leaping Stag.
 
Fairfax and Campbell dismounted and headed for the front door.
 
A forty-ish, potbellied fellow in a good wig
and merchant-class brown wool suit emerged from the office grinning and shook
hands with Fairfax.
 
"Mr.
Fairfax!
 
Welcome back to Camden.
 
Good to see you again, sir.
 
You look the peak of health, and you, too,
Campbell."
 
He and the legionnaire
exchanged a handshake.
 
"The
Legion's been camped at Woodward's Plantation up the Broad River ever since
that business at Blackstock's.
 
You
heard of Blackstock's didn't you?"

The man had
jammed all that verbiage in two breaths and ten seconds, as if used to wily
talk.
 
Something about him was
familiar.
 
Recognition oozed into Helen
like tar from a broken barrel.
 
Then his
Wiltshire accent registered, and horror and disbelief blasted her.

"Good
god!" whispered Jonathan.
 
He
tugged the brim of his hat lower, seized her upper arm, and spun her around so
her back faced the man.
 
"Have you
your letters ready to post?"