Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (40 page)

No time to
check the secret drawer.
 
Helen shoved
herself up in pursuit.
 
A child couldn't
be Epsilon.
 
Who was the next link, the
person to whom she delivered the cipher?

Her route wound
back among the garrison's tents — an area, she realized after she'd received a
few startled stares from legionnaires, that she ought not to wander alone.
 
Pipe smoke and the smells of masculinity,
leather, and rum, a fiddle melody, and men's conversation and laughter
surrounded her — the military world ladies never visited.

Throats cleared
in her wake, verbal leers, but she kept her eyes on the girl and maintained her
pace to discourage the impression that she was there to solicit company.

The hoop
bounced through open flaps of the quartermaster's tent.
 
His assistant, Newman, emerged with the hoop
in his hand and a good-natured smile on his face.

Biting her
lower lip, Helen peeked from behind an unoccupied tent to see the girl bob a
curtsy of apology.
 
When she extended
her hand for the hoop, she palmed him a folded slip of paper: the cipher, no
doubt.
 
Newman tucked it into his
pocket, patted the girl's head, then popped back inside the tent to retrieve a
small sack of flour for her.
 
She
curtsied again and went on her way with hoop and flour.
 
On the surface, an innocuous encounter
between a girl and a kind-hearted soldier.

Newman the mail
carrier.
 
Gods almighty.

"Mrs.
Chiswell?"

Helen jumped,
then warbled a laugh for Sullivan, one of the dragoons from her escort through
the Santee.
 
"Oh, you startled
me!"

"I
apologize, but — but what are you doing
here
?"

She lowered her
eyelashes.
 
"My maid and I became
separated.
 
Will you guide me back to
the road?"

"Right
away, madam."
 
He sounded relieved
and extended his elbow.
 
Lieutenant
Fairfax's sister strolling among the rank and file: what an interesting tale
that would make.

They arrived at
the trail just as Hannah was traipsing north on it from market, her basket
full.
 
Helen presented him a deep curtsy
and received his gallant bow in exchange.
 
Baffled, Hannah looked between Helen and the retreating dragoon.
 
"Mrs. Chiswell, I thought you'd gone
back to your tent to rest!"

"Hush."
 
With a glance over her shoulder at Sullivan,
out of earshot, she urged Hannah along.

The entire way
back, she pondered.
 
Odds were that
Newman wasn't Epsilon.
 
However, he had
ample opportunity to sneak ciphers away to Epsilon with each outgoing
post.
 
Circumstantial evidence pointed
to Neville as Omega.
 
How adamant he'd
been to dance with her.
 
He must plan a
cipher transfer during that time.
 
She'd
sneak away from the dance, conceal herself, and take note of those who visited
her tent.

Back in her
tent, she confirmed the absence of the cipher.
 
A flat-chested, narrow-hipped girl not yet entered adolescence was the
last person she'd have expected as a messenger — the last person
anyone
would suspect as a link in a chain of spies.
 
Children and women comprised an invisible segment of the army.
 
How clever of those people with Greek
letters for code names.

In all likelihood,
Neville or Newman approached the girl with the opportunity to complete a task
"in service to King George."
 
She was trying to help her family survive, old enough to have made her
own decision.
 
But she wasn't old enough
to comprehend all the dangers inherent in that decision.
 
Weakest link in the chain, she made for easy
disassembling.
 
Bound wrists...

Queasiness
engulfed her.
 
Fragments of old, buried
memory clawed up into her consciousness and annealed at last.
 
Her wrists bound in the peaty dimness of a
tool shed.
 
A man's hand on the back of
her head, her face squashed into the rank hair of his crotch.
 
Her mouth full, her throat gagging.
 
"Ohh, girl," he crooned, his
breath sour with rum, "just wait 'til you're a few years older."

Nauseated,
Helen squinted into the mist surrounding the memory.
 
Who was this horrid man to force himself on her?
 
His face pierced the mist.
 
Treadaway
.
 
Tobias Treadaway at Ratchingham's Midwinter celebration, when she
was eleven years old, about the same age as the girl with the hoop.
 
Tasting rum, Helen staggered to the little
chamber pot in her tent and vomited up the purchasing agent.

While her
conscious mind sought to accept and sort the memory as genuine, Hannah untied
the flaps of her tent with haste.
 
"Mrs. Chiswell!
 
Are you all
right?"
 
The younger woman bent
over beside her.
 
"I knew it.
 
This whole journey has been too much for
you, and you down there in the damp of the creek yesterday with those
washerwomen."
 
The blonde smoothed
back Helen's hair and felt her forehead with a frown.
 
"No fever, but you're very clammy.
 
I hope you haven't caught a camp sickness.
 
Let's get you undressed and in bed.
 
No arguments, you hear me?"

No arguments at
all from Helen.
 
Hannah helped her into
her cot.
 
"I shall fetch you some
tea and broth, and coals for the brazier."
 
Off came Helen's shoes.
 
After undressing her, Hannah bustled out to dump the chamber pot,
returned it, and closed Helen's tent, on her way to arm herself with potions
for an invalid.
 
Her footsteps in the
grass receded.

Helen's heaves
subsided, replaced with a dull anger that focused, waxed piercing.
 
How dare Treadaway do that to her?
 
When she'd told her parents, they'd yelled
at her that it was her fault for being at the manor during Ratchingham's
celebration.

Bitterness
gouged Nell Grey's soul, wove her stomach with fire.
 
I hate you!
 
I hate all
of you!
 
Blood hammered in her
temples, dizzied her.
 
In her
imagination, she seized her parents and Treadaway each by their throats and
squeezed until their eyeballs bulged and she'd crushed their windpipes.
 
Any time she desired, she could kill them in
her imagination.
 
Gods, how sweet, how
divine.
 
A glorious exaltation.

Exaltation.
 
Animals tortured to death.
 
Ratchingham choked over and over.
 
A geyser of blood from the Whig's severed
head.
 
He tried to violate my
sister...he shot a friend, someone I've known my entire life, in cold blood...

Stunned, she
stared at the ceiling of her tent, comprehending at last the source of her dual
fascination-revulsion over Fairfax.
 
Divine
sister, sibyl of the gods, vision-priestess
.
 
Neither of them doubted his ability to pick up where her parents
and Treadaway had left off —manna he'd tailor for her.
 
Then he'd own her the way he owned Margaret.

Without a
doubt, she had drawn her "teacher" to her, but why hadn't she learned
the lesson?
 
To be sure, her parents and
Treadaway had abused her, and her anger was just.
 
But after anger had served its purpose, what did the warrior do
with the sword?

If Fairfax
found out about the girl with the hoop —

No, he
mustn't.
 
A girl on the cusp of
womanhood had dreams and hopes, even if many of them were ground underfoot in
the advance of a wretched childhood.
 
Nell remembered.
 
Perhaps the
girl with the hoop shrugged off as inconsequential the political element of her
role in favor of what her involvement gained for her family: extra flour
rations, more firewood, a pair of shoes.
 
Did any argument exist to convince her that it wasn't worth it?

Helen stared
at the desk, a cadaverous taste in her mouth, and knew that somehow, she must
convince the girl to end her role with Epsilon.

Chapter Forty

IN THE WEE
hours of the morning on Friday the twenty-second, Helen awakened from a
nightmare of Treadaway.
 
Too rattled to
return to sleep, she excavated memories from her childhood for similar foul
incidents.
 
Beatings and starvings her
memory provided in abundance, but as far as she could recall, she'd only been
forced that once, in the tool shed.

What a horrific
experience to lurk inside the brain, waiting for its moment to pounce.
 
She realized that the degradation of the
incident had, from the rear seat of the carriage, steered her opinion of
herself for years.
 
You're not good
enough
, it whispered.
 
You
deserve no better
.
 
Anger, fear, and
confusion spun her head.
 
How did one
undo such a ghastly endowment?

After reveille,
the Pearsons resumed arguing.
 
Fuzzy-headed, Helen stood, stretched, and dressed in her homespun
clothing, ignoring the stamp of cold in her bones.
 
In a moment of inattention the night before, she'd pinched
Hannah's shawl to complete her disguise.
 
The preoccupied Pearsons wouldn't miss her for some time, and neither
would Jonathan, always up and away for his ritual before reveille.

From the looks
Hannah had been giving her, the blonde thought her health fragile, her sanity
questionable.
 
She had no intention of
involving Hannah in her research at the kitchen.
 
She'd be back by dawn, before it was fully light, before anyone
had missed her or the shawl.
 
Her only
regret was skipping a morning of the dawn place.

She slumped her
shoulders and adjusted her body into the more casual gait of a lower-class
woman.
 
On the trail, she detoured in
the icy, wet grass for a group of infantrymen clanking north to drill.
 
"Ohh, Jen, there's my Jenny."
 
A soldier grabbed her buttock in passing and
made slurpy, kissing sounds.
 
She
whacked his hand away and kept walking in the opposite direction, alarmed.
 
Harsh laughter trailed.

"Brady,
wake up," said another man.
 
"She wasn't Jen."

"You
imbecile, I've squeezed that cow's arse enough times to recognize it in the
dark."

Their banter
faded, and Helen stepped back onto the trail, fuming on behalf of the
laundresses.
 
They were quite right in
their assertion that the soldiers needed more exercise than they were getting.

Green, wet wood
made for smoky fires in the kitchen area, where about ten women and as many
servants, slaves, and soldiers mingled, a few in murmured conversation.
 
But most just waited, sleepy-eyed, over
whatever they cooked: bacon, biscuits, coffee.
 
Liza the laundress bustled over.
 
"Nell, good to see you again!
 
How's the throat?"

Helen
coughed.
 
"Better, thanks."

Liza frowned,
unconvinced.
 
"Take care of
yourself.
 
There's a fever going
around."
 
She peered into Helen's
basket.
 
"What have you there?
 
Ah, the mistress wants her pot of
coffee."

Helen shook her
head.
 
"Tea."

"La, now
there's a lady with money.
 
I haven't
drunk tea in years, thanks to rebel scum.
 
Tuck your pot in beside mine on the coals right here."
 
Liza steered her for one of the fires.

"I need
water."
 
Helen coughed again at a
cloud of smoke.

"Take some
of mine."

Helen dipped
water from the proffered bucket, ensconced her pot among coals next to Liza's
pot, and crouched to her left.
 
Smoke
deposited a layer of grime on her clothing and skin, but how wonderful hot
water would feel back at camp, when she washed her face and hands.
 
The previous morning, the distracted
Pearsons had brought her coffee but forgot warm water for her morning toilette,
so Roger had had to run back and heat water.

To Liza's
right, a crouched woman coughed deep and hard, the sound of pneumonia.
 
Helen had seen her stirring pease soup the
afternoon she arrived at Woodward's plantation.
 
Even by firelight, the woman looked gaunt.

Liza waved to
someone on the other side of the fire circle.
 
"Over here, Rebecca!"
 
She nudged Helen.
 
"Have you
met Nan?"
 
Fever glittered in Nan's
eyes when she and Helen exchanged a good morning.