Chase the Dawn (46 page)

“Happy, Bri?” His eyes opened again, searching her face as she bent over him to catch his words.

She nodded. “As much as it is possible to be at such a time.” She wiped the trickle of blood from his mouth again and smiled effortfully. She wanted to ask him about her parents, about how they had reacted to her disappearance, whether he knew if they were well, but she could not frame the questions.

But Francis read her thoughts, as he had often been able to do. “Your father is with Cornwallis,” he said, then stopped as he struggled to draw air into his shattered lungs. “On their way to Charlotte to rout out the rebels there. Then to Virginia … knock the South out of the war …” Another pause before he said in barely a whisper, “Things different now—after today.” Blood filled his mouth, and he had barely the strength to spit into the bowl Bryony held.

“Do not talk anymore, I beg you,” she pleaded in unutterable distress, wiping his mouth.

But Francis gathered strength again. “Your mother … heartbroken, Bri, but she knew.”

“Knew what?” She leaned over him, so startled by this revelation that she forgot the horror for a minute.

Francis almost managed a smile. “Knew that something had happened that summer—that you would go back, in the end.”

“Yes,” Bryony whispered. “I think I always realized that she knew.” Her fingers gripped his. “But my father?”

“Went to join Cornwallis …” He coughed again.
“Couldn’t stay still … Your mother said it was better that way….” His voice faded and died as the last reserve of strength was exhausted.

Bryony sat beside him for the two hours that it took before life finally left him. He did not regain consciousness, but the broken body perversely struggled on, trying to do what it was supposed to. Benedict stayed with her, in the far corner of the room, knowing that she was oblivious of him, that he had nothing to offer her as she mourned, yet unable to leave her to suffer alone. When she finally placed the hand that she held onto the bed and stood up, he went to take her in his arms, but she pushed away from him and went outside into the village street. She returned in about ten minutes and spoke in a strange, wooden voice that carried no expression.

“There is a weeping willow by the stream. I would like to bury him there, please.”

Ben nodded, and he and Charlie followed her to the spot, where they dug the grave in silence. Francis Cullum was laid beside the murmuring stream under the soft shade of the graceful tree.

Bryony sat near the fresh mound of earth and did not seem to hear Benedict when he gently said they must prepare to leave. Ben, for once at a loss, turned and went back to the house in the village. A short delay would not make much difference. He had already decided that they would not continue with the Carolinians who were heading back into the mountains with their prisoners. He had two choices: to make his way to Charlotte to join the remnants of Gates’s army where they waited in the hope of reinforcements from the North; or he could join up with another of the bands who slipped through the backcountry, harassing Cornwallis’s army in the undercover
war that was proving more successful than pitched battle.

It was only when he reached the cottage that he remembered Ned. There was no sign of the boy, and the woman said that she had not seen him since they had brought the wounded man inside. Benedict and Charlie hunted high and low. No one in the village had seen a small, ragged child who did not belong there, although there were plenty who did belong.

“He must be somewhere!” Ben flung himself onto a stool in the cottage kitchen and looked in exasperation at Charlie. “Bryony is in a bad enough state as it is, without this.”

The woman went to stir the contents of a pot hanging from a hook suspended from the lug pole over the fire. “Well, I’ll be! He’s in ’ere … been ’ere all along, I’ll be bound.” She grabbed the child’s arm and hauled him out into the kitchen. “Young varmint! Turned the place upside down, we ‘ave, lookin’ for ye.”

“You knew I was looking for you, Ned,” Ben said, drawing the child toward him. “Why were you hiding?” There was no response, and Benedict sighed as he recognized the child they had first found—a mute, petrified scrap of humanity. “Charlie, keep an eye on him, will you? I have to fetch Bryony. It’s time to put this place behind us.”

He walked down to the stream, where he found Bryony, still unmoving beside the grave. “Lass, we must leave now.” Bending, he took her arm and raised her to her feet.

“I want to go home,” she said in that same wooden voice that sounded as if a spring had broken.

He felt the sorrow seep into his pores. She had had
enough of the choice she had made; he could hardly blame her. “I had thought you were home with me, but I said that I would not hold you if you changed your mind. As soon as it is possible, I will arrange for you to return to your mother.”

She looked up at him, shock and incredulity chasing away the paralysis of grief. The black lashes were sticky with tears, but the eyes were now clear. “Of course I am home with you. How could you think I would change my mind? I meant only that I wish it were possible to go back to a time when none of this … oh …” She smiled, a faint little smile, but it was an attempt. “I would not change loving you, Ben. But I wished, just for a minute, that I could be a child again, with the future ahead, waiting to be made—back to a time when one believed that one
could
make the future, that it would not make itself and tumble you along with it.” Her shoulders lifted in a tiny shrug. “Such childishness, I know, but I do not think I could bear to be scolded for it at the moment.”

He caught her chin, lifting her face to his scrutiny. “You deserve to be scolded for thinking that I would, sweeting. There is nothing childish about wishing things undone. The foolishness lies in behaving as if they can be.” He kissed her, sensing—with a flood of relief—that she was at peace. There was no passion in her response, but he had not been trying to elicit that reaction, merely to provide the comfort and reassurance of his loving presence. It was a comfort and reassurance that she did not reject.

“Come.” He put his arm around her shoulders, turning her back to the village. “Something about today has badly upset Ned. He was cowering in the inglenook,
while Charlie and I turned the village upside down looking for him. And he has lost his tongue again.”

“I expect it was the proximity of death,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing imaginable. “Go on. I will join you in a minute. I would bid a last farewell to Francis.”

He studied her carefully, reluctant to leave her to renew her mourning, but her eyes were calm, her features composed, and he nodded his agreement. “Do not be long. The living have need of you.”

W
ell, that is a piece of news worth having.” Thomas Sumter regarded with scant interest the unconscious figure of the redcoat who had been induced to part with the useful information.

Benedict Clare shivered in the December night, shrugging deeper into his greatcoat, grateful for a garment that few of Sumter’s band of guerrillas possessed. “What do you want to do with him?” He gestured to the straggler they had cut out from a party of Cornwallis’s troops who had strayed too far from the army’s winter quarters at Winnsboro, South Carolina.

“Leave him here, the wolves’ll have him…. Take him with us, we’ll have to feed him.” Sumter shrugged as he laid out the alternatives. “We’ve enough mouths to feed.”

It was true enough, Ben knew. Game was scarce in the dreary winter months, and stockpiling supplies was impossible, as Thomas Sumter’s band was perpetually on the move, attacking British outposts, snatching stragglers like the man before them, stinging Cornwallis in
hit-and-run raids that required his constant attention and the constant deployment of troops all over the province. Ostensibly, the British earl was in control of South Carolina, but it was an uneasy possession, one that threatened to slip from his grasp if he dropped his guard for a minute.

One of the band solved the problem without further analysis. A shot rang through the dank wood, and the group left, sliding between the trees, as soundless and as deadly as any mountain lion.

Bryony gloomily surveyed the sole of her once sturdy leather shoe. The hole was enormous and this time past even Ben’s ingenuity, she reckoned. But it was too damn cold to go barefoot! The turf fire in the hearth spluttered, sending evil-smelling smoke curling up to the clapboard roof of the mountain cabin that had been home for the last three days. The turf fire was Ben’s innovation—it was the fuel of the Irish peasant, he had told her, and she supposed she should be grateful. After two weeks of incessant rain, there wasn’t a dry piece of timber on the mountain, and during this time she, Charlie, Ned, and Ben would huddle around the smoking hearth, taking what comfort they could from the flameless smolder that threw out little heat, although a pan of water would warm eventually.

The door banged open and a sheet of rain blew in, ice-tipped. Ben had slammed the door behind him before the yell of protest left her lips. “It couldn’t be helped,” he said. “It’s blowing a gale!” He bent to warm his hands at the thankless hearth. Bryony held out her shoe, wordlessly inviting his examination. Ben sighed.
“Maybe I can patch it again. But take heart, lass. This time next week, you shall find your bed in a town.”

“What! You mean we may leave this godforsaken mountain?” Bryony bounced to her feet, holey shoes and smoking fires for the moment forgotten. “Oh, I love you, Benedict Clare.” Seizing his arms, she danced across the earthen floor with him.

“What brought this on?” Charlie stepped into the hut, letting in another icy blast. “Have we killed a goose for Christmas?”

“No, but we are going to spend Christmas in town,” Bryony declared. “Where houses have shutters and doors that fit, and one can buy things …” She dropped to the floor again, in front of the fire.

“What with?” Ben asked, loath to dampen her excitement but not willing to deny reality. “Anyway, even if we had the wherewithal, lass, I doubt very much that there will be anything to buy in Charlotte. Gates’s army has been quartered there since their defeat at Camden. The countryside will have been picked clean.”

“I am all in favor of a change of dwelling, Ben, but why this dramatic shift?” asked Charlie, surveying the contents of a cooking pot with singular lack of expectation. “What is this, Bryony?”

“Maize,” she said. “It’s all we have. I nearly sent Ned out in search of lizards.” It was a gallant attempt to make light of things, and Ben bent to stroke her hair. She reached up and caught his wrist, squeezing strongly. “So, answer Charlie’s question.”

“We picked up a straggler this afternoon.” He sat down beside her and ladled the thick, tepid maize porridge onto a wooden trencher. “He was persuaded to tell us that General Washington has sent Nathanael Greene
to take command in the South. The Quaker is the ablest of Washington’s men.” He smiled through a mouthful. “Children, I think we are back in the fight.”

“When were you ever out of it?” Bryony demanded, taking a spoonful of maize from the pot and swallowing with effort.

“An organized fight between equal opposing sides,” Ben explained, although she did not really need the explanation. “If Greene can pull Gates’s army together, then we stand a chance against Cornwallis on the open field.”

“And we are going to join the army, I suppose?” Bryony sighed heavily, and Ben cuffed her playfully. She fell forward onto his lap, chuckling. “You will have to carry me. I cannot walk all the way into North Carolina without shoes.”

“I will carry both you and Ned, if necessary,” he said, stroking her back, and she heard the underlying seriousness behind the light tone that matched her own. They both glanced toward the little mound on the far side of the fire. Ned was like any other small animal. He fell asleep wherever he happened to be, and stayed asleep through any degree of turmoil for as long as he needed to.

The three adults talked until late into the night, making the plans that would take them into the next phase of the grim game they played. Later, when they lay curled around the fire, and the even breathing of their companions told them that they were alone, Ben turned her onto her side, facing away from him beneath the concealing blanket. As he joined them in a soft, sweet slide of delight, Bryony pressed backward, molding herself to the curve that contained her, surrendering her
self with her body to the deep well of pleasure that never ran dry however often they drew from it.

Ned woke them, as he always did, at first light, doing his usual dance expressive of the urgency of his need as he demanded that they open the door and let him out. “For all the world as if he’s a puppy,” Ben said, grinning as the child scampered out into the rain, disappearing into the bushes behind the cabin.

Bryony rose and went to peer out of the door. “Will it ever stop raining? The thought of walking to Charlotte in this does not fill me with enthusiasm.”

“The sky’s lightening up a little,” Charlie ventured. “It’s a good sign. Do we have any breakfast?”

“Maize porridge,” she told him. “If there’s any left over from last night.”