Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (48 page)

"What of
David?"

Sadness tensed
her throat, although no longer the wild grief that had kept her awake two
nights before.
 
She regarded the sky a
few seconds before summarizing David's escape plans and how she'd tossed him
from her tent.

"You
declined his assistance, and he accepted your answer?"
 
He snorted.
 
"After the years you two have known each other, that's difficult
for me to imagine."

His skepticism
annoyed her.
 
Again, she felt him shove
David at her.
 
"I don't love
David.
 
I'm not sure I ever did.
 
He was kind to me when Silas was cruel, but
it's long past time for us to have gone our separate ways."
 
She compressed her lips.
 
"And I don't understand why you've
championed him as my suitor when you've loved me."

His response
was as remote as the stars.
 
"I
presumed you and David would marry and have children.
 
You stayed together after Silas's death and your
miscarriage."

"I'm
grateful for the miscarriage."
 
Regret bled into her voice.
 
"I couldn't support a child on my own, and David wasn't the right
man for my husband.
 
And by now the best
years of childbearing have flown past me."

"Bah.
 
You're young enough to bear healthy
children.
 
So many women do want
children.
 
And your lack of dowry is no
obstacle.
 
Your talent for unearthing
controversial stories may gain you the affections of a number of patrons,
bachelors for whom your finances are inconsequential."

Such a peculiar
conversation to have with Jonathan.
 
"A woman's finances are never inconsequential."

His tone grew
breezy.
 
"My dear, be as cynical as
you like, but a woman's lack of dowry
is
inconsequential to certain
men.
 
Unless I've grown myopic in my
observations, your finances don't matter a jot to Mr. Fairfax."

Fairfax had
told her so himself.
 
A flush stormed up
her neck into the crown of her head.
 
"Marriage to him would be a disaster."

Jonathan folded
his arms over his chest the way he'd done during the Atlantic crossing when she
skirted an answer or fed him an answer too simple.
 
Frustrated, she twisted away from him.
 
If she weren't looking at him, perhaps her thoughts would clear,
freeing her to speak from her heart.

"Mr.
Fairfax's idea of sport resembles that which —"
 
Her stomach knotted.
 
She
pressed trembling hands together and pushed on.
 
"— which was forced upon me by Treadaway when I was about
eleven years old."

"Tobias
Treadaway, the procurer?"
 
Although
Jonathan stood behind her, she heard his astonishment.

She
nodded.
 
Nausea pressed her gut.
 
Several shaky breaths rattled from her
throat.
 
"I tried to be Anglican
for Silas.
 
I thought there might be
happiness between us if I did so, but I found little comfort in his faith, and
he was determined to be unhappy, regardless.
 
After he died, I remembered the Old Ways.
 
But what I practiced in community in Wiltshire I had to modify
for secret and solitude in Wilmington."

"Ah,
yes," he whispered.

"I
initially fancied Mr. Fairfax a colleague, but he has done something with the
faith that I'm not certain the gods would approve.
 
His gods are without conscience.
 
So I continue to celebrate in solitude."

"You sound
surprised at your accomplishment."
 
Acceptance, certainty, and a bit of humor wrapped his tone.
 
"No one is ever far from the gods, no
matter to what ends of the earth she, or he, travels."
 
At a rustling noise, she turned about in
curiosity to behold him elevating the holly and ivy wreath to the stars.
 
"Happy Solstice, my dear."
 
Through his amusement, he sounded a little
embarrassed, like a boy with a semi-plausible explanation for a load of sweets
discovered in his haversack.

"
You
put that on my tent!"
 
For an
entire week, she'd presumed it was Fairfax's gift.

He returned the
wreath to the ground.
 
In his exhale,
humor dwindled.
 
His hand reached for
hers, warmth in the winter night, and drew her closer.
 
"Whatever Treadaway did to you, you
won't be rid of him until you allow him to go."

Frustrated, she
rolled her eyes.
 
"On the surface,
doing so seems a menial task, but to ask it of yourself is to reveal a thousand
snarls that time has planted from the deed.
 
Each day, you release it, yet it feels as though you never released it
the day before.
 
I wonder whether I can
achieve peace over it in my lifetime."

"Everyone
who desires not to be consumed with revenge asks the same question, performs
the same daily quest for peace."

Consumed with
revenge.
 
A daily quest for peace.
 
Jonathan sounded as if he spoke from
experience.
 
By starlight, her fingers
twined with his, she couldn't imagine what might consume a man like Jonathan
Quill with revenge.
 
Eerie whispers of
Fairfax's voice wended through her memory:
Where are the children and
grandchildren?
 
For eleven years,
Jonathan had shoved David at her.
 
Why?
 
She scrutinized his
face.
 
"Do you have children?"

In silence, he
released her hand and swiveled his gaze to the heavens.
 
Disappointment soured her heart.
 
She'd transgressed into privacy that he
would never choose to discuss.

"I haven't
told you much about my youth."
 
He
searched the night sky, as if inventorying memory for the appropriate
genesis.
 
"My family imported silk
and porcelain from China to England.
 
We
had an alliance with a Chinese family.
 
Like my older brothers, I lived with my father's trading partner, to
understand the people with whom we transacted business, just as the sons of my
father's partner lived for a time with my family in Wiltshire."

She held very
still, almost afraid to inhale.
 
The
intensity of her listening magnified each flutter of breeze or hoot of an owl.

"At
twenty-two, I fell in love with a Chinese widow who had two young sons.
 
There was friction over the topic of
marriage.
 
So I purchased her as my
concubine and settled with her in China, for her sake willing to be expatriated
and act as a permanent agent for the business.
 
After we'd been together but one year, she was murdered by a nephew of
my father's trading partner."

Shock punched
the breath from Helen.

"The
nephew's execution did not ease my grief and anger.
 
Dead, he continued to taunt me until I thought I would go
mad.
 
Tensions between our families
rose.
 
The alliance, strong for four
generations, verged on collapse.
 
My father
ordered my return to England.
 
But I did
not obey him."

He fell silent
again, and she visualized the Chinese concubine and her glorious fan of dark
hair.
 
This wasn't the end of his
story.
 
Something profound had happened
to him after that.
 
"Where did you
go?
 
To a monastery?"

"No.
 
We of the West are forbidden in the
Temple.
 
But there are mountains in
China — green and scented with trees, cool with the tumble of clouds, lush with
streams that cascade hundreds of feet into rainbowed mists — where masters seek
solitude.
 
And sometimes, a master will
draw a student to him in his seclusion.
 
An unworthy young man eaten with despair helps him tend garden beds, and
sleeps on a woven mat, and absorbs what the masters — the human as well as the
mountain — have to say.
 
After awhile,
he begins each day in gratitude, with a sincere desire to be released from his
anguish.
 
And it happens, little by
little."

Helen felt
humbled.
 
"How long were you on
that mountain?"

"Six
years.
 
Oh, my heart was mended well
before then, but I stayed on to continue learning."
 
He chuckled.
 
"I had grown to enjoy peace.
 
I no longer cared about the business.
 
My father didn't grudge me the choice I'd made during those
years.
 
Then I received word of his
failing health.
 
Time for me to leave
the mountain.
 
I arrived in Wiltshire
three days before he died.
 
My eldest
brother never made it home.
 
His ship
went down in the Channel.
 
And a few
months later, my other brother took a fever and died."

"You
inherited the business."
 
Helen
eyed him with awe.

"I sold
it, set up trusts for my brothers' children with their shares, made
investments, traveled the world on my earnings."

Envy stomped
her when she thought of Jonathan's massive library.
 
What a life he'd lived.
 
Was there anything he lacked?
 
But with her next pulse, she realized, and turned him to face her.
 
"You had no children with your
concubine."

"A Chinese
doctor placed the fault with me."

"After
only one year of trying?"
 
Incredulity filled her voice.

"She
hasn't been the only woman to share my bed.
 
No children."

He'd pushed
David at her all those years because he knew David could give her children, and
he presumed she wanted children.
 
Just
as he'd presumed the doctor's analysis was correct, and none of his ladies had
tinkered with the likes of tansy and pennyroyal.

No.
 
Jonathan was too sophisticated for
that.
 
Her gaze on him became shrewd,
and she thought of his huge, empty house.
 
"Children frighten you, don't they?

He turned away
from her again.
 
"Helen, leave
it."

"Vulnerable,
volatile, one moment full of energy, the next lying in your arms aflame with
fever."
 
She embraced him from
behind, crossed her arms over his torso, and inhaled the scents of sandalwood,
frankincense, and myrrh.
 
The warmth of
his back penetrated her chest, and her skin clicked and twitched.
 
"I frighten you, too."
 
His hands caught hers, and his thumbs
stroked her palms.
 
"Vulnerable and
volatile, but not a child, not like that girl in Ratchingham's parlor."

He faced her,
years of hunger engorging his expression.
 
One of his hands seized her waist and rocked her pelvis forward, propped
her upon the horn of the moon.
 
The
other hand cupped her face.
 
Fire
followed the track of his lips over her earlobe and across her neck, and the
heat of his mouth sought hers.

Later, in the
darkness of her tent, his fingertips painted splendorous spirals in her
sweat.
 
Across her lips and throat,
around her shoulders and breasts, over her ribcage, winding to and from her
navel, he drew the gods' emblem of eternity, traced whorls on the damp inner
thigh of the great earth before probing her slippery, swollen warmth.
 
She arched into the sacrament again and
again, the poem and poet.

The second
time, they coupled much more slowly, immersed in the euphoria of arousal
without release.
 
Her flesh and bones
became translucent, and her exhale became his inhale, the rhythm of earth and
heaven.

Before
reveille, she awakened to find him tugging on his shirt.
 
"Time to dance with the Enlightened
One, eh?"

"A
charming metaphor."
 
Wool sighed as
he pulled on his stockings.
 
"In
more than a quarter century, this is the first morning ever that I've debated sleeping
in."

"Cease
debating.
 
I've a visit to the kitchens
to make in Hannah's spare clothing."

"Camp
woman."
 
His tone grew merry.
 
"A little soot on you in no way reduces
your appeal.
 
I do hope you let me bathe
it off you."

"You
enjoy
portraying my servant."

With a snicker,
he slid on his breeches.
 
Then he
straddled her above the blanket and leaned close.
 
"
You
enjoy laundering my shirts."
 
His lips caressed her chin before following
the line of her jaw to her earlobe, where he whispered tenderly, "Despite
what you believe, I don't think you've ever been infatuated with me."

Unexpected
tears sprang to her eyes.
 
"Ah,
Jonathan."
 
She stroked beard
stubble on his jaw and knew he could hear her smile.
 
"The Enlightened One awaits.
 
Go give gratitude."