Chase the Dawn (10 page)

The group of men waiting in the kitchen, dark clad, their faces smeared with soot or burned cork, stared at the figure blinking bemusedly beside their leader.

“What’s she doing here?” William demanded.

Benedict ignored the question. “Joshua, is your wife around?”

“Aye, shutting up the chickens, I reckon,” the farmer said, puffing on his pipe.

“I want her to look after the girl.” He gave Bryony a little push in the direction of the oak settle by the hearth. “Sit over there, lass.”

“You be leaving her here, then?” William spluttered. “So she can tell about this place, about us, about—”

“She knows nothing,” Benedict interrupted. “How’s she going to recognize you, blacked up as you are? And we came through the woods. She’d never be able to find her own way.”

“Aye.” Joshua nodded sagely. “Makes sense, and he couldn’t leave her alone in the cabin. Bertha’ll be happy to have her company.” He got to his feet. “There’s three
wagons out back. The lads and I will bring them along once ye’re well on the way.”

“Right.” Benedict glanced round the circle. “Everyone knows what to do. Let’s get to it.” He gave Bryony a smile as he stood at the door, and her heart lurched. What would become of her if he did not return? Would he not kiss her in farewell? But she knew that he wouldn’t, in order to save her embarrassment. His men might think what they pleased about what went on in the cabin in the woods, but Benedict would give them nothing on which to base their conclusions. The fact that Bryony did not care in the slightest what they thought would probably not weigh with him, so she kept her seat on the settle and watched them go, all but Joshua and two lads in their mid-teens.

“How long do you wait?” she asked tentatively. “Before you follow them?”

The farmer shrugged. “A quarter hour. They’ll be off through the fields. Us with the wagons must take the high road. Take us half the time.”

“I see.” Bryony nodded and thought fast. She was not going to stay here in this isolated farmhouse with the unknown Bertha, waiting in trepidation for the return or not of the only solid factor in her present trackless existence. She would hitch her fate to the Patriot’s, embrace his destiny this night, because at the moment her life without him was unthinkable.

Bertha, a comfortable woman in holland apron, linen cap, and heavy boots, plodded into the kitchen. She listened to Joshua’s laconic explanation for the stranger on the settle, accorded Bryony a friendly nod, and began to bustle around the room, trimming lamps, straightening the rush-bottomed chairs left askew by the departing
men. Bryony sat quietly, waiting until it became clear that Joshua and the two boys were preparing to leave.

“I’ve a need of the necessary house, ma’am,” she murmured in polite explanation, slipping out into the dark yard. The three wagons, already hitched, stood in the shadow of the barn. It was the work of an instant to hop into the back of the lead cart and to burrow beneath a pile of coarse sacks whose generally dusty condition suggested that they had been used to transport flour. She would look like a wraith, Bryony thought, her hair floured, her face deathly white. But such considerations were of little importance. She cowered against the side of the wagon, praying that the men would come to start their journey before the length of her visit to the necessary house became marked. Once she was away from here, there was nothing Bertha could do about her truancy.

After what seemed an eternity, a square of light showed from the farmhouse door, and low voices drifted across the yard. She dived back beneath the sacks, praying that she would not sneeze from the irritating burlap and the dust. The wagon creaked in protest, the frame shaking as someone clambered onto the bench. Joshua, she thought. The other two were too slightly built to have that effect. A soft clicking noise encouraged the horse forward, and the wagon moved out of the yard with its unseen passenger.

It was a long journey on a warm night, and Bryony struggled for breath beneath the sacks, not daring to raise her head from the hard planking of the wagon’s floor. It was a bumpy ride since she had nothing with which to brace herself, and just when she was beginning to regret the impulse that had condemned her to this
suffocating, jolting, bruising misery, the motion mercifully ceased. Holding her breath, she waited. Discovery at some point could not be avoided, but it mustn’t be too soon. If Joshua found her before his rendezvous with Ben, he might decide to take her back to the farm, and that would defeat her object, as well as jeopardize whatever goal this mission carried. That last consequence was one she was not prepared to face.

The wagon creaked and sighed as Joshua descended. Bryony lay motionless, concentrating on every sound in the blackness of her hiding place. A whisper on the wind, and then there was silence, utter silence. Gingerly, she emerged from the sacks, shaking her hair free, wiping her sweating brow with the back of her hand. Smearing dirt and flour dust, no doubt—she dismissed this half thought as totally irrelevant. The crescent moon was visible but shadowed in mist, the stars blanketed in high cloud, the air filled with the near-hysterical chorus of cicadas—an inevitable part of the backcloth of these summer nights.

Bryony dropped to the ground; grass underfoot, bushes encircling the wagons. The three horses chewed their bits and stood, placid and resigned to the waiting. There was no sense of human activity anywhere, yet Joshua and the boys had been gone no more than five minutes. Ben and the others must be somewhere near.

Ben’s last visit to his Indian friends had produced a pair of moccasins, as silent as they were comfortable, and Bryony now trod with the utmost stealth across the grass, pushing through the screen of bushes. Then she stared at the sight before her. A low building of wood sheathed with chestnut planking stood within a pallisade. The double doors of the building stood open, and
dark-clad men moved silently in and out, adding muskets and sacks to a growing pile. She recognized Benedict immediately, as much by his bearing as by his face, the only one not blackened with burned cork. He was clearly directing the operation even as he seemed to do his share of the fetching and carrying.

A cough and a shuffle of feet screeched in the quiet, and she ducked back behind the bushes, her heart pounding. Someone was standing within five feet of her—a lookout, perhaps? They would have to have them posted all around. Bryony stood and thought. She did not want to announce her presence just yet. It would distract Ben, and she didn’t wish to give him further cause for the wrath that would inevitably fall upon her head when she was discovered. Somehow, the idea of waiting meekly by the wagons for that moment did not appeal, either.

Moving away from the activity and the lookout, Bryony slipped through the bushes at the far side of the clearing and found herself on a cart track. It was presumably the track the wagons had taken to bring them to this spot, and it continued past the concealing bushes. Bryony wondered whether they had come from the south or the north; she had had no way of telling from beneath the sacks. She started down the track in the direction of the north star, curious to see if there were any indications of human habitation. The building that housed the armory that Ben and his men were so efficiently plundering presumably had not sprung out of nowhere.

The sound of voices raised in raucous laughter above the cicadas, the smell of wood smoke and tobacco brought her up short. She shrank into the shadows. Did
Ben know that there were others abroad tonight? Others this close? Bryony crept forward to the bend that hid the owners of the voices from view. Around the corner she saw a sight to chill the blood. In a field bordering the track, about a dozen redcoat soldiers were sprawled around a fire. Judging by their opened coats, the weapons scattered carelessly on the grass, the flagons that were being passed from mouth to mouth, they were not on active duty, were not expecting anything to disturb their roistering. Someone played a few haunting notes on a pipe, and voices joined in singing accompaniment.

Bryony crept back around the bend, and once there took to her heels, flying down the dry mud-ridged track as if all the devils in hell were pursuing her. Her hair streamed, as black as the night, as the warm, moist air rushed past her with the speed of her progress, and the sweat ran on her body so that the doeskin tunic stuck to her skin. She arrived, panting, at the wagons and was about to rush through the bushes and down to the armory when something grabbed her from behind. She opened her mouth to yell, but a hand, hot and hard, clamped over her mouth. She could taste the salty sweat of the palm pressing against her lips, could smell the sourness of unwashed skin and hair as she writhed in terror. Her feet left the ground as an iron band at her waist lifted her into the air. She was carried, kicking and struggling, through the bushes. It was only then that she was sure she had fallen into the hands of one of Ben’s men and not one of the soldiers, and her struggles ceased. When she was still, she was set on her feet again, although the gagging hand remained in place and one of her arms was pulled behind her back, held there with painful pressure as she was propelled forward.

She was marched across the enclosure, toward the open doors of the building. Just as they reached the entrance, she heard Ben’s voice, authoritative yet with that inherent softness that reminded her of spring raindrops. When had she had that fanciful thought before? The instant before she was thrust into the building, Bryony remembered. She was in the hayloft, listening to the voices of the intruders who had clubbed Jebediah just as she had been about to leave the stableyard and return to the house, her problem unsolved, but at least the solitude had brought her some peace. Her problem … Francis … oh, God, it was better not to have remembered! Her father, Sir Edward Paget … a king’s man to his backbone, to his last drop of blood …

“What the hell are you doing here?”
The soft voice, infused with incredulity, exploded her rapt trance. Bryony shook her head free of the memories that, now unleashed, threatened to overrun her senses. The hand at her mouth was lifted.

“Redcoats,” she said. “About half a mile to the north, along the track.”

“Coming here?” The question snapped in the sudden stillness.

“No.” She shook her head. “Camped and well away with drink, I think.”

“Sentries?”

“I did not see any, and I nearly fell over the camp, but no one saw me. There are perhaps a dozen of them, but I didn’t stay to look around carefully. It seemed more urgent to warn you.”

He looked at her closely, the black eyes narrowed. “If you’re due any gratitude, you will receive it with what
else is owed you for this night’s work.” There was no misunderstanding him, and Bryony swallowed nervously. This was the Benedict who set fire to barns, stole weapons, tied innocent people to beds in order to prevent their getting in his way. This was the man who bore the scars of the whip upon his back, inflicted for some unknown crime.

He swung away from her and began to rap out orders in a sharp staccato. Bryony backed out into the enclosure, where men were moving swiftly and silently, the pile of weapons diminishing as they were transported to the waiting carts. She stepped sideways to avoid a man with a heavy sack and tripped over something soft and yielding. A rapidly quelled scream emerged from her lips as a strangled whimper of horror. The man at her feet was dead, his eyes staring wide and blank into the night sky, a red stain spreading untidily across his tunic.

“Get over to the wagons.” It was Benedict’s voice, harsh, bearing no resemblance now to spring raindrops.

“He’s dead,” she said, looking up at Ben.

“And he’ll not be the only one before this night is over, unless we have uncommon luck,” he replied shortly. “Have you any idea what you’ve walked into?” He shook his head impatiently. “I don’t have time to deal with you now. Get over to the wagons and stay there until you are told what to do next.”

“Would it not be more helpful if I kept watch on the track?” The shock of her discovery of the dead man shaded her eyes, but her voice was strong and she met his anger with lifted chin, her mouth set in a determined line. “It seems you can ill spare one of the others to stand guard.”

Benedict struggled with himself for barely a second.
She was quite right, and he could not, for the moment, afford the luxury of chivalrous concerns for her safety. They were pointless, anyway, since she had obviated his earlier attempts to protect her. “Go, then. But stay within sight on the track. You are not to approach the camp again, do you understand?”

Bryony nodded and ran back to the cart track. What was Benedict intending to do with three wagons loaded with purloined arms? They couldn’t use the cart track again, surely. Not with British soldiers half a mile up the road. The men would be able to disperse across the fields, through the woods, the way they had come, presumably, but carts and horses needed more clearly defined paths.

Dear Lord! What was the daughter of an Englishman of Sir Edward Paget’s standing and conviction doing hiding in the grass, wearing an Indian tunic, on the lookout for a troop of British soldiers in order to betray them to a man who treated dead bodies as nonchalantly as if they were all in a night’s work? Which, of course, they were. Death and war were bedfellows, she remembered with bleak chill. Somehow, in the loving idyll of a log cabin in a clearing, the world’s reality held at bay across the abyss of unremembering, the connection had escaped her. And what would Benedict say when she revealed her identity?

“How many did you say there were?”

Bryony jumped. He had come up behind her like the proverbial thief in the night … like the soldier that he was, well versed in stealth and trickery. “About twelve,” she whispered. “Merry and somewhat befuddled.”

“Should be easy to take, then,” he said with a twist of his lips that sent a shiver down her back. “Locked in
swinish merriment, betrayed by that damned English arrogance, as usual, they’ll never know what hit them. The pleasure will be all mine.”

“But why must you take them?” she asked with all the naivete of a noncombatant.