Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (37 page)

"Oh,
heaven help us."

Jonathan and
Roger had gone to watch another drill that morning and not yet returned,
availing Helen of the opportunity to change clothing without their
questions.
 
But as she and Hannah
approached the tents, she grasped Hannah's arm and slowed her.
 
Before they'd left for the creek, Helen had
paused about twenty-five feet from the tents and looked over the campsite.
 
She found her original point of reference
and stood in silence, her examination critical.

Hannah
whispered, "What is it?
 
Is
something wrong?"

The intruder
had been back.
 
What piece of evidence,
even from that distance, told Helen so?
 
It must be obvious, left in the open, considered inconsequential by most
passersby.
 
In her mind, she retraced
her steps to leave the tent earlier, walk out to where she stood that very moment,
and pass her first critical gaze upon the campsite.

No, wait.
 
She hadn't walked all the way out
immediately
.
 
Her apron had snagged on the lantern just
outside her tent door, so she'd angled both the cut branch she used as a stand
and the lantern to face away from the door.

Her heart
thumped her ribcage again.
 
Someone had
moved the branch back around to face the door.
 
In that position, it might snag clothing.
 
Perhaps it was a signal to passersby that her tent — and the desk
— had been visited again.

Conscious that
Hannah studied her as if she'd lost a few cards from her deck, Helen approached
her tent, Fairfax's meticulous investigation of her broken study window in
mind.
 
Multiple sets of footprints
blended in the rain-softened dirt and grass, far too many sets to
separate.
 
At the tent door, she found
the flaps tied as if she'd done it herself.
 
Too bad the makeshift lantern stand hadn't grabbed a convenient wad of
telltale fibers from the intruder's clothing.

Undaunted by
lack of overt evidence, she ordered Hannah to wait outside, let herself into
the tent, and allowed her eyes to adjust to a dim interior imposed by the
morning's high overcast.
 
The desk sat
just where she left it on an open campstool — but had it been moved just off
center?
 
To confirm her hunch, she knelt
before it and looked for the single hair she'd pasted to the desk and stool
with a dab of saliva.
 
Gone: dislodged
when the intruder had lifted the desk off the stool.

Just outside,
Hannah cleared her throat.
 
"Mrs.
Chiswell, are you feeling all right?
 
I'm worried you might have picked up a chill down there at the
creek."

Helen had to
keep her out of the tent a few minutes longer.
 
"You're right.
 
It
was
cold down there.
 
Before you help me
change, might you fetch us some coffee?"

"Oh, yes,
madam.
 
Shall I fetch coals for your
brazier, too?"

Helen wanted to
shuck off the homespun clothes before Jonathan and Roger's return.
 
"Just coffee for now."

"Right
away!"

The retreating
rustle of footsteps announced Hannah's departure.
 
With a sigh of satisfaction, Helen murmured, "What is it you
want with my desk, eh?"
 
She sat on
her cot and opened the desk, not surprised to again find nothing from her
journal amiss.
 
The intruder wasn't
after the journal.
 
That explanation was
too obvious.

With the desk
closed, she strolled her fingers over handsome patterns along the sides,
trellises of roses, stems, and leaves carved into the wood.
 
Spaniards had an eye for magnificence in art
that sensible Britons had never claimed.
 
Perhaps David had seen similar desks in Havana.
 
She stroked the mahogany and imagined high
romance for the desk's inception...

A nobleman,
un
hidalgo
, fell in love with a
Doña
from a family too prestigious to
bother with his petitions for marriage.
 
Nevertheless, the couple pledged eternal love to each other.
 
He returned to his humble papaya plantation,
too much time on his lovesick hands, and sat beneath palm trees to carve a desk
for her as token of his love.
 
With the
desk, she would write him every day, and...

The fantasy
ground to a halt in her sensible, British head.
 
Any Spanish matron not half-witted would sneak daily peeks into
her nubile daughter's desk for love letters to fellows not designated as her
betrothed.
 
If the
hidalgo
had
been clever, he'd have created a secret compartment in the desk where his
Doña
could hide daily letters to him before she smuggled them to a trusted handmaid
—

With a start,
Helen regarded the desk anew.
 
Then she
bent close to it, scrutiny fresh.
 
Odd,
was that panel along the base a trifle offset?
 
She traced it to the rear of the desk, where the offset seemed more
definite, wedged fingernails around it, and tugged.
 
Without resistance, a thin panel of wood slid out.
 
Upon it lay an open sheet of paper.

She gasped in
astonishment.
 
The body of the letter
was scripted in a combination of words and numbers, a cipher.
 
Her gaze darted to the salutation — simply
"Epsilon" without title — and scrambled to the closing, which read,
"Yrs.
 
In Service, Omega."

Chapter Thirty-Seven

SHE WRESTLED BACK
her impulse to heave the desk across the tent as if it contained black widow
spiders.
 
Instead, she lowered it to a
rug.
 
Throat parched, she poked her head
out of the tent.
 
No one in sight.
 
The washtub remained where Hannah had set
it.

She withdrew and
tied tent flaps with shaky fingers.
 
The
drawer dangled like a tongue in a bawdyhouse.
 
Without a cipher key, she'd no way to discern the affiliation of the
writer: covetous member of the Crown forces or clever rebel spy.
 
But she reaffirmed her decision to not
involve the provost.
 
He'd muddle the
situation and never uncover the players.
 
She could ferret out players herself.
 
If Neville was "Omega," others in camp must be involved, for
Treadaway had ridden back to Camden that morning.

At some
point, you'll realize that you must tell me what you know.
 
On that day, the idea of toying with me
won't hold half as much appeal for you as it does right now
.
 
Cold penetrated the base of her skull.
 
Fairfax suspected her of conspiracy due to
her involvement with the St. James family.
 
He didn't know that Neville destroyed her old desk and messengers
swapped notes via a secret compartment in the replacement.
 
If Neville were a rebel spy instead of a lap
dog Loyalist, and Fairfax found the cipher in her desk and had a copy of the
key —

No.
 
He wasn't going to find the desk, and she
had no intention of telling him about it unless she could wield it as
leverage.
 
I offer you this information,
and you obtain something I need to complete my project.

She closed the
drawer and replaced the desk.
 
To
destroy any messages she found would constitute evidence that she was aware of
the secret compartment.
 
Rather, she'd
change clothing and stretch her legs at market, allow the messenger to retrieve
the cipher.
 
Perhaps she'd double back
early one day and spot the messenger in action.

***

Outside a wine
merchant's marquee that afternoon, Helen noticed Margaret deliberating over red
wine.
 
She sent Hannah to the next stall
and sidled closer to the courtesan, who then voiced her dilemma.
 
"Which one: Portuguese, Spanish, or
Italian?"

Helen felt
impish.
 
"Perilous choice.
 
Any
man from the Mediterranean will
steal your heart."
 
Their laughter
earned frowns from officers' ladies within the marquee.
 
They subsided into giggles, and Helen
gestured to the bottle in Margaret's hands.
 
"A gift for yourself?
 
Try
the Portuguese."

"I believe
I shall."

Helen leaned in
closer, a journalist on duty.
 
"Tell me, how did you and the colonel become acquainted?"

"He took a
fancy to me in Camden this summer when my employer went bankrupt."

Few prostitutes
were so fortunate.
 
"He treats you
well enough."

Mischief
quirked the courtesan's full lips, a sensuous invitation.
 
"True, he doesn't beat me or curse
me.
 
He provides me a fair allowance and
lavishes gifts upon me."
 
After a
quick glance around, the brunette's regard of Helen sharpened.
 
"Why refuse him?
 
He takes his time."

Helen
scrutinized the other woman, trying to make sense of her words.
 
Fever-bright and famished, Margaret's gaze
bored into her.
 
Then comprehension
crawled over Helen.
 
Good gods, the
courtesan had noticed Tarleton flirting with her and presumed Helen to encroach
upon her territory.
 
"Margaret, the
colonel flirts with every lady —"

"Not
Tarleton
."
 
Margaret punched out an exhale, as if
correcting a dull-witted child.
 
She
gripped Helen's upper arm and yanked her in close for a shrewd whisper.
 
"You
ninny
, I know he isn't your
brother."
 
Then she released
Helen's arm and swayed back into the marquee to purchase wine.

Helen gawped after
her.
 
Ninny she was, indeed, and poor at
playacting.
 
Panic flipped about her
chest like a frog in ferns.
 
If Margaret
knew, who else knew?
 
Whom had she
told?
 
How much time did Helen have
before Tarleton terminated her visit?

She lowered her
gaze and breathed reason.
 
If Margaret
had told anyone of consequence, Helen would have been booted from camp.
 
Why did Margaret keep the secret?
 
What price did she expect of Helen in return
for concealing it?

Price
.
 
Margaret seemed willing to
share
Fairfax with her.
 
Helen envisioned the
torment and haunting in the brunette's eyes and shuddered.
 
A prostitute's lot in life was lousy sex,
multiple times a day, day after day.
 
Fairfax wasn't merely supplying Margaret with intangible manna, such as
flattery.
 
He delivered a physical
performance that ensnared her like laudanum, beneath Tarleton's nose.

She rubbed her
temples.
 
Tarleton wasn't stupid when it
came to women.
 
Did she want to be in
camp when all that exploded?

Conscious of
horses just behind her, she heard Fairfax's dispassionate voice from the
saddle.
 
"I suggest that you bypass
the Spanish wine.
 
Cortés, Pizarro, and
de Soto, fully armored, in every bottle."

Helen exhaled
before facing him.
 
"We need to
talk."

"Ah, at
last."
 
After handing over his horse's
reins to Kennelly, Fairfax dismounted and tucked Helen's gloved hand into the
crook of his elbow.

She signaled
Hannah.
 
The blonde followed between
them and Kennelly.
 
Helen pitched her
voice low.
 
"Margaret knows I'm not
your sister."

"Don't let
it concern you."

The inhumanity
of his tone implied that he owned Margaret.
 
Tarleton wasn't as suggestible as his courtesan.
 
Helen firmed her voice.
 
"What if the colonel finds out about
you and his mistress?"

"Exactly
what would he find out?"

Flawless, his
blank expression.
 
Neither Fairfax nor
Margaret was going to tell Tarleton about the indiscretion.
 
Helen needed a story about the Legion, and
she wasn't going to tell.
 
She sighed in
disgust.

"Mr.
Pearson didn't inquire after your mail this morning.
 
Here you go."
 
Fairfax reached inside his coat, withdrew a letter to Jonathan that had
been opened, and handed it to her.
 
She
secured the letter in her basket.
 
"Aren't you going to inquire where I've hidden Phineas Badley's
bank draft?"

"No.
 
Your analysis is correct.
 
Badley stranded me out here and hopes I'll
be killed."

Fairfax's
eyebrows shot up.
 
"
Brava
,
darling!"
 
He perched her hand upon
his elbow again.
 
"How did you
arrive at such conviction?"