Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (60 page)

Fairfax's lips
twisted wryly.
 
"Treadaway has
regained consciousness and lost his gag."
 
He shook out Helen's cloak and nestled it over her shoulders.
 
"I know how hungry you are.
 
Prescott has food stashed in his horse's
saddlebags."
 
He jutted his chin to
indicate a location past her right shoulder.
 
"Soon as I'm finished, I shall fetch us a meal."
 
After straightening, he gloated down at her,
a tundra pervading his eyes.
 
"Such
a talented mouth, oh, yes."
 
Then,
swaggering back the way he'd come, he whipped out his knife.
 
"Mr. Treadaway, you should have waited
your turn."

Chapter Sixty

WHILE HELEN
EXPLORED with frantic fingers the rope that bound her hands, a performance she
never wished to witness unfolded on the other side of the brush.
 
"
You
did that to
Prescott?"
 
Treadaway's voice
leaped an octave.
 
"You bleedin'
monster!
 
Help!"

A series of
humid thuds followed, reminiscent of the sounds grain and seed bags made when
plopped upon each other at the wharf in Wilmington.
 
When the impacts ceased, Helen knew that Treadaway was no longer
of a humor to holler for help, just as she knew she wouldn't be able to untie
her bonds blindly.
 
Nevertheless, she
must free herself before Fairfax finished with the two men, or the pendulum of
power between them would shift to favor him at the physical level.
 
She could not defeat him there.

Morgan's men
would search the area for those who'd marched with Tarleton, but the
wine-filled baggage train posed a serious distraction in the immediate vicinity,
and Fairfax did seem to have located his sport far enough off the road that his
guests' screams weren't easily heard.
 
Add the chaos of battle aftermath, and she admitted a distinct
possibility that Fairfax wouldn't be discovered.
 
Thus far, only Rebecca had found her way to Helen.
 
Now the girl was dead.
 
As for Jonathan, the two of them had somehow
become separated in that horrid skirmish.
 
Since she and Calliope had disappeared together, Jonathan must have
concluded that she fled south with others to avoid capture.

No one was
going to rescue her.
 
Alone, she must
escape.

"Monster?
 
Treadaway, I'm miffed.
 
You've quite a touch with throat
slitting.
 
Newman never put up a fight.
 
Who's really the monster here?"

The agent said
something unintelligible.
 
He sounded
sluggish, as if his brain were swollen.

"Thus far,
Prescott has failed to provide me with intelligence about Epsilon, but I
haven't given up on him yet.
 
I agree
that he looks a bit worse for the wear.
 
Why don't you give your fellow spy a break?
 
Epsilon's identity, if you please."
 
Treadaway whimpered pieces of words.
 
"You don't know?
 
Hmm.
 
Tell me what you know about Lieutenant Michael Stoddard."

Helen blinked
in disbelief.
 
Fairfax thought Stoddard
was a spy for the rebels.

"D-don't
know anyone named Stoddard."

"You
rebels always insist upon eating your loaves with stones."
 
The pummeling resumed.

She smelled
vomit and human waste.
 
Horror swamped
her again.
 
Run away!
 
Run away!
 
Fright and flight drove her hands into another fruitless struggle
with her bonds.
 
Her soul wailed in
helplessness.
 
Nothing she was doing
advanced her escape, but she
must
escape.

She inhaled,
tried to calm herself with deep breaths, as Jonathan had taught her.
 
Her nose detected the smell of horse.
 
She twisted her neck for a look over her
right shoulder, in the direction Fairfax had indicated for Prescott's horse,
but saw only brush and trees.
 
The horse
must be tethered.
 
Were other horses
back there?

Hoping that
Treadaway's loud sobbing would act as a cover, she whistled once past her
shoulder and heard Calliope's snort of recognition.
 
Although she was bound and the mare was tethered, gratitude
welled in her eyes.
 
She wasn't totally
alone.

She visualized
Calliope laden with blankets, food, and the desk.
 
Her desk with the story of Banastre Tarleton — bane of Thomas
Sumter and Francis Marion, and Lord Cornwallis's favorite — tromped by Daniel
Morgan at a place with the dull name of Cowpens.
 
What London paper would buy
that
story?
 
Fairfax was right.
 
Tarleton's defeat had made her efforts worthless.

Worthless?
 
Her thoughts performed an about face.
 
Worthless to
Londoners
, but the
colonies harbored rebel presses aplenty.
 
She'd witnessed what would surely be reckoned a pivotal battle, and she
could disguise her bias.
 
Ah, she
couldn't imagine a more fitting poetic justice than convincing rebels to pay
for the story.

Memory drifted
to her last sight of Tarleton.
 
He'd no
intention of helping his civilians escape Morgan.
 
She imagined artisans overtaken by Washington's men, slaughtered
like Marion's Whigs in the Santee — despite their courage and dedication, no
match for seasoned dragoons.
 
Anger
stung her gut.
 
So Tarleton wanted to
hang a rebel printer, eh?
 
Poetic
justice, indeed, if a rebel printed her story and metaphorically hanged
Tarleton.

Treadaway's
scream of suffering hauled her back to reality.
 
Not until she'd escaped Fairfax could she make plans for her
work.
 
She'd written a story no other
journalist would be able to obtain.
 
One
of Fairfax's first acts would be to destroy it.
 
Not only did he deem the story worthless, but its existence
blocked her total capitulation.
 
Her
writing was pointless to him.
 
He needed
his "oracle" subsumed to him, as Margaret had been back in
December.
 
He had no use for another
person's independence.

Margaret had
chosen to ride off with a defeated Tarleton, rather than wait for Fairfax.
 
But now, Fairfax had Helen Chiswell, and oh,
the manna he planned to feed her...such a talented mouth, yes, indeed...just
like Treadaway...

Treadaway no
longer sounded human.
 
Helen closed her
eyes and focused on each breath to evict the panic that shredded her
logic.
 
When she reopened her eyes,
panic still hovered at the periphery of her soul, but it no longer choked
her.
 
Instinct's delicate voice
whispered something she hadn't heard before: that in the dissonance of terror,
she'd overlooked a clue to her escape.
 
She must calm down enough to recognize it.

For the first
time, she swept her gaze over Rebecca's body, face and hands already the pallor
of death.
 
Sadness trickled through
her.
 
A life over so soon — yes, there
was another story.
 
All the camp women
deserved a voice for their courage, but especially Rebecca, who had given her
life for Helen.
 
Prescott's pistol had
been aimed at her face.
 
He was so close
she could see the muscles in his trigger finger contract.
 
But Rebecca had flown from the brush and
stabbed him in the leg, taken the pistol ball in Helen's place, given Helen a
chance to escape.

Rebecca had had
a
knife
.
 
Prescott threw it into
the leaves after he decked the girl, near where she collapsed.

No knife showed
through the brown leaf carpet that separated Helen from the girl.
 
Considering how thorough Fairfax was, he
must have removed it while she was insensible — no, she mustn't assume.
 
She shrugged off her cloak.
 
She had to check for the knife.

Unavoidable,
unmistakable, the rustle of leaves that announced her scoot-hop toward
Rebecca.
 
Almost all the way there, hair
on her neck stood out again.
 
She bowed
her head and quivered her shoulders to deepen her deception.
 
"Poor child."
 
She sniffed.
 
"She was so young."

"Forget
about her, darling."
 
Fairfax
strolled closer.
 
"She was
nothing."

Resentment
simmered in Helen.
 
Nothing.
 
A nobody.
 
And that nobody had saved her life.
 
Helen's knee pressed something hard beneath the leaves.
 
Without moving her head, she rolled her eyes
downward and glimpsed steel.
 
She jutted
her right hip to allow her petticoat to cover some of the blade.
 
"So young, and now her life is
over.
 
Please go away.
 
Allow me time alone with her."

He vented
exasperation through his nostrils.
 
"As you wish."
 
His
footsteps receded in the leaves, and he said in a chipper tone, "Hullo,
Prescott.
 
Thought I'd forgotten about
you, eh?"
 
The attorney, who had been
quiet too long, bleated again.

Helen blinked
at tears.
 
"Thank you,
Rebecca.
 
The gods grant you
peace."

Shimmying
around, she grasped the knife hilt and tried to manipulate the blade upon
rope.
 
Her wrists chafed, and she nicked
herself twice before she paused, sweating, to reconsider.
 
What she needed was a way to brace the knife
while she sawed the ropes with the blade.

She glanced
upward, felt mist upon her face, and licked her lips.
 
Several feet away, a small tree had been snapped at the base.

Prescott and
Treadaway were sobbing.
 
"Neither
of you knows Epsilon's identity?
 
Come
now.
 
It's nearly noon, and it's
raining."

She dragged
herself over and examined the jagged wood of the stump, not yet too decayed,
before wedging the hilt of the knife into the stump, blade angled up, and
backing against it.
 
If she could avoid
toppling over onto it and stabbing herself, the action might succeed.

Muscles in her
neck and shoulders bucked at overextension while she sawed rope.
 
Twice the knife popped loose, but after a
few minutes, she felt the rope loosen.
 
She shook her arms and rolled her shoulders back.
 
Seizing the knife, she freed her ankles.

Pure terror
clobbered her at the wink of red uniform in the brush.
 
Heart pounding, she had just enough warning
to reposition rope over her ankles and jerk her arms behind her back in
pretense, the knife clenched in her hand.
 
Fairfax emerged from his sport and frowned at her.
 
She yanked her gaze to the girl's body,
hoped she stared at it vacuously, and rocked back and forth.
 
"Rebecca, Rebecca," she murmured,
in silence imploring the gods to send Fairfax away.

"We
mustn't have you taking a chill."
 
He retrieved her cloak.

More terror
electrified her.
 
He'd spot the loosened
ropes on her ankles when he replaced the cloak over her shoulders.
 
If she wanted to escape, she had no choice
but to knife him.
 
"The gods reward
warriors," she whispered.

"I didn't
hear that, darling."
 
He draped the
cloak over her.
 
At the same time, his
gaze registered the ropes on her ankles.

With a screech,
she stabbed upward for his groin.
 
Quick
reflexes jerked his body.
 
The knife
caught his inner thigh instead.
 
She
shoved herself away from his fury and agony and rolled to a crouch, the knife
still gripped in her hand.

He fell short
in a lunge, hobbled, blood spreading across this thigh.
 
"Damn you!"

She slashed air
near his fist, stumbled to her feet, tripped on her cloak, snatched it up.
 
Balance regained, she fled from torture and
murder toward the horses.
 
Her face and gut
ached, and she shuddered with cold, shock, and fatigue.

"Damn you,
you witch!"
 
The woods reverberated
with the god of war, foiled and in pain.

A backward
glance confirmed that he offered no immediate pursuit.
 
Calliope snorted with pleasure at her
approach, and she hugged the mare's neck.
 
Two geldings were tethered nearby, probably Prescott and Treadaway's
mounts.
 
Neither was Fairfax's battle
horse.