Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (51 page)

She made sure
her party stayed away from their site that afternoon and was relieved later to
find that Rebecca hadn't played messenger.
 
The cipher remained in the Epsilon compartment.
 
By then, she had no doubt that Neville was a
double agent.
 
Did the Army sanction
what he plotted with Michael Stoddard?

Rebecca sneaked
into their midst after supper and asked for Mr. Quill.
 
Helen ducked into her tent, unwilling to
trust a crooked flicker of lantern light and an elegant gown to conceal
Nell.
 
The girl left soon, a bag of
cornmeal in her hand and, Helen hoped, none the wiser about the mistress of the
campsite.

The final day
of 1780, she awakened before reveille to the sound of Hannah vomiting with
morning sickness.
 
Jonathan had already
left for his routine.
 
Helen pulled on
her shift, stockings, shoes, and cloak and sent Roger to the kitchen for a
crust of dry, stale bread.
 
A cloth
soaked in ice water in one hand and a lit lantern in the other, she entered the
Pearsons' tent, knelt beside Hannah, and swabbed her face.
 
"Roger will bring you dry bread.
 
Don't rush eating it, and don't rise or move
around much until you've finished it.
 
A
breeding woman creates foul humors in her stomach for several weeks.
 
Give the bread time to absorb it.
 
Tonight, prepare your dry bread for the
morrow."

"I've
never felt less like eating."

"You must
eat the bread nevertheless.
 
Otherwise,
you'll feel wretched the entire day."

When Roger
returned, Helen repeated instructions for him.
 
Then, because her confiscated clothing was still damp from its launder
the previous afternoon, she borrowed Hannah's petticoat and jacket again and
walked out to greet the dawn.

Afterwards, she
contemplated babies and the solstice wreath and reprimanded herself for her
blithe behavior with Jonathan.
 
She'd
left her herbs behind in Wilmington and hadn't purchased more.
 
The decades-old diagnosis of a Chinese
doctor hardly assured her.
 
She might
already be pregnant.
 
They had to be
more cautious.

Except that she
didn't want to be cautious.
 
When she
and Jonathan made love, she lost time and found the rhythm of the
universe.
 
Even thinking of their
amorous play stimulated the slippery twitch between her thighs.
 
She drew a deep breath of cold air, bemused
to realize that lust wasn't confined to eighteen-year-olds.
 
But for Jonathan and her, it wasn't just
about lust.
 
It was about life: life in
the midst of death and destruction.

***

While they were
out that morning, the lantern stand regained a neutral position, and the cipher
vanished from the desk.
 
Rebecca hadn't
picked up the cipher.
 
Helen had spotted
the girl in the kitchen with her mother.
 
"Omega" had lost his messenger.

Expectation
filled the camp New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, prompted by messengers on
horseback.
 
At five o'clock Tuesday
morning, January second, at least two horses galloped past in the direction of
Tarleton's marquee.
 
Helen, who'd
drowsed while Jonathan finished dressing, bolted upright in the pallet.

Men's shouts
followed the horses, and a moment of silence, as if every human and creature
held its breath, and the sun paused in its climb for the horizon.
 
Then she heard what she'd been expecting for
weeks: the bugle for saddles.

One tent over,
Hannah retched, too jarred to ease herself into the morning.
 
Jonathan rushed Helen into her stays and
gown, while around them, horses whinnied, metal clanged, tents were struck, and
people shouted and ran about.
 
The two
dashed out to the trailside to learn that Daniel Morgan was reported en route
to Ninety Six, and Cornwallis had ordered Tarleton west over the Broad River to
drive the rebels back.
 
At Brierly's
Ferry, before crossing the Broad, the Legion would collect the first battalion
of the 71st Regiment of Foot and its artillery piece, stationed there under
Major McArthur.

Meanwhile, the
trailside filled with family members, servants, and slaves, all come to bid
adieu to the infantry, cavalry, artillerymen, militia, and scouts assembled on
the trail by torchlight.
 
Among the
civilians were a number of merchants, officers' wives, Margaret, washerwomen
Jen, Sally, Liza, and Rebecca — all stoic.
 
Among the corps, Helen also recognized faces.
 
Campbell, Connor, Davison, Ross, and Sullivan, the dragoons who'd
escorted her safely through the Santee and told her so much of themselves.
 
Kennelly, the infantry private who'd served
Fairfax.
 
And Neville, his expression
impenetrable as befitted a ranger and scout, a two-faced Janus to Helen
now.
 
Although she searched, nowhere did
she see Lieutenant Stoddard.

Tarleton
trotted his charger along the column for a final inspection, his buttons and
braid glittery in torchlight, the swan feathers atop his helmet taunting the
stars.
 
Harsh as the scrape of a rake in
brown leaves, his voice leaped out to the men.
 
"The rebel scum are at it again, lads!
 
Killing, burning, and looting a path to Ninety Six through
your
homes,
your
lands,
your
kin!
 
We're all that stands between Morgan and anarchy!
 
What are we going to do about it?"

The roar of
five hundred feral wolves surged from the men.
 
"Kill 'em!
 
Send 'em
back!
 
Stomp 'em!
 
Grind 'em underfoot!"

Helen gaped at
the commander of the Legion.
 
The
flicker of torches rendered his expression electrified, determined,
headstrong.
 
At home in the sweep of
bloodlust, chosen of the gods, he pranced his horse back and forth, and the
cheer of five hundred disciples engulfed his passage.
 
The foyer at Woodward's, the afternoon ride, the Yule feast: all
were occasions when she'd encountered the magnetism of his leadership.
 
With a single message from Cornwallis, she
experienced it anew.

Tarleton waited
for the men to settle down a bit before he bellowed again.
 
"The rebels are diseased, starved,
disorganized!
 
What match are they for
the finest unit in His Majesty's Southern Army?"

"Huzzah!"
 
Legion-thunder reverberated earth and
heaven.

"The
finest unit in the
whole
Army!"

"Huzzah!"

"Ninety
Six, lads, where the rum and wine flow, and the loyal lassies will thank the
Legion!
 
Are we ready?"

"Huzzah!"

"Let's
give that whoreson Morgan a reception from hell!
 
For king and country!"

"For king
and country!
 
Huzzah!"

Chapter Fifty-Two

THE STOMP OF
hooves and boots, clank of weapons, and creak of wheels beneath the small
cannon faded before sunrise had washed away the stars.
 
The Legion left behind the rank odor of
predators gone a-hunting, and a skeleton force to guard the heavy baggage.

Back in her
tent, a lantern lit, Helen captured every impression in her journal, almost
oblivious when Jonathan left to perform his morning ritual.
 
When the Pearsons returned from the kitchen,
they delivered a report on the exodus of people from camp.

Daylight
revealed that tents of the rank and file had been packed away.
 
Some officers' slaves and servants were also
striking tents, and a few merchants and sutlers prepared for departure.
 
Depending on the exigency of the battle
situation and how well they foraged, the Legion might fly for several weeks
without the heavy baggage.
 
They might
just as easily trounce Morgan and return within a few days.
 
Therefore, most of the civilians
remained.
 
However, everyone moved close
to the hub of activity for protection.

Of Fairfax,
Helen received no word.
 
Description of
the Legion's victorious return would make an excellent end to the feature on
Tarleton, so she decided to linger another day or so.

At noon,
highlanders from Major McArthur's 71st arrived escorting the battalion's heavy
baggage, on order from Cornwallis to leave it in the Legion's encampment.
 
They brought news that boosted the rush of
recent events.
 
George Washington's
cousin had sent forty of his dragoons to attack a nearby fort manned by
Loyalist militia.
 
Learning of the
dragoons' advance, the commander and his men had abandoned the fort three
nights earlier and fled for the safety of Ninety Six.
 
William Washington's dragoons had taken possession of the fort.

Helen
recognized that the Loyalists' flight represented another chapter in the Crown
forces struggle: maintaining an effective militia.
 
Neither side could depend upon militia, but most Londoners didn't
grasp the fact that the rebels always seemed to have a larger pool of militia
to pull from.
 
Helen suspected that her
feature on Tarleton and the Legion could show those across the Atlantic just
how crucial His Majesty's provincial units had become in a war that dragged on
and drained optimism from everyone.
 
Her
resolve to remain on assignment deepened.

Tuesday night,
she and her party dined on beefsteak, purchased from a butcher who was closing
shop.
 
Hannah picked at her meal.
 
For the first time, Helen listened to her
inner concerns about the younger woman's condition.
 
Hannah hadn't found a respite to her morning sickness.
 
If Tarleton ordered the heavy baggage to
relocate, would she be able to keep the pace?

The absence of
communication from Fairfax for almost a week both relieved and concerned
Helen.
 
Surely he'd received his trunk
and realized what she'd confiscated.
 
And what was Neville up to while riding with the Legion, in service to
the rebels, his cover intact?

In her tent that
night, she only half-responded to Jonathan's spiral of caresses and
kisses.
 
He soon gave it up, rolled
over, and fell asleep.
 
She listened to
his soft, even breathing long into the night, agitated by conspiracies: the
rebels, Neville, and, in particular, Fairfax.
 
Had she felt him motivated by justice, she'd have trusted him with her
knowledge of the spies' activities.
 
But
justice wasn't a priority for him.

***

Too pukish to
leave her tent, Hannah remained abed Wednesday morning.
 
Roger headed alone to the kitchen for coffee
and hot water.
 
Later that day,
communications flew.
 
Tarleton,
bivouacked six miles west of the Broad River, had found no trace of Morgan and
pressed farther west to sniff around for the rebel commander.
 
He requested that Cornwallis have the
Seventh Regiment of Foot standing by at Brierly's Ferry with the rest of the
71st.

News came from
Cornwallis, too: doubt that the story of Morgan's movement against Ninety Six
was accurate.
 
The Earl promised the
Seventh to Brierly's.
 
But there was no
mention of the Seventeenth Light Dragoons in the day's messages, and Helen
heard nothing from Fairfax.

The sky clouded
over.
 
Drizzle accompanied supper.
 
Winds shifted to the northwest, cold and
dreary.
 
Early afternoon on Thursday the
fourth, a courier hastened to Winnsborough with Tarleton's request that both
the Seventh and the Seventeenth Light escort his baggage to him.
 
Since he expected to move quickly, he
specified that "no women" come along to slow his progress.

The officers'
ladies packed up, prepared to head home in the morning.
 
Disappointment and relief cascaded inside
Helen.
 
Disappointment that her
assignment had come to an end, and she'd miss the heart of Tarleton's story,
witnessing him in action against a foe.
 
Relief that she could return to civilization and need no longer put up
with reveille, latrines, inferior hygiene, lukewarm food, and a tent's damp
interior.
 
Relief also that she wouldn't
have to deal with Fairfax anymore.

Despite
drizzle, she strolled in the lower camp to observe departure preparations of
the women.
 
Nan, the woman with
pneumonia, had left on the second, too ill to remain.
 
But to Helen's surprise, she discovered Margaret, Sally, Jen,
Liza, and Rebecca packing up with the intention of accompanying the baggage
into whatever purgatory Tarleton ordered the Legion through.

How they
intended to defy the Legion's commander mystified her.
 
They must be resolved to make themselves no
burden, deny their own femininity if necessary, put the needs of the unit far
above their own.
 
A harsh existence, one
that demanded courage.