Chase the Dawn (47 page)

“Unless you’d prefer fish,” Ben remarked casually, and both the others spun round, eyes eager, mouths watering. He was examining a hook on the end of an improvised fishing rod. “There’s a stream up yonder. It may yield something.”

“I’m hungry,” announced a childish treble, as a very moist but visibly relieved Ned appeared in the doorway, fumbling with the fastening of his britches, “‘n’ I don’t want porridge.”

“A sentiment with which I heartily agree,” said Charlie, bending to help him do up his buttons. “But Ben has promised us fish.”

“No promises,” Ben protested. “I cannot catch them if they’re not biting. Do you want to come with me, Ned?”

“He’ll get dreadfully wet,” Bryony pointed out, but more as a matter of form than as serious objection.

“Not exactly an unusual condition.” Ben chuckled,
and went out into the gloomy morning, followed by a prancing tot.

The fishing expedition having proved successful, it was a well-fed group who left the cabin several hours later, their few possessions bundled into the two portmanteaux, battered now but still sturdy. Bryony’s shoe was patched with a lumpy piece of leather that Ben had begged from a member of the band they were leaving behind. It kept out the water but rapidly rubbed a sore place on the sole of her foot. However, she had learned to endure discomfort with some stoicism in the last months and plodded on, hiding her limp as best she could from Ben’s sharp eyes.

It was a forty-mile hike through rough country, since they had no desire to run into one of the groups of redcoats who patrolled the main thoroughfares of the province. Once into North Carolina, however, they could relax their guard somewhat. After the defeat at Kings Mountain, Cornwallis had reacted with caution and had withdrawn his plan to roll up the South in one bold sweep, retiring instead to winter quarters at Winnsboro to wait out the bad months. This left North Carolina for the moment free of British invasion. But what they found in Charlotte, when, footsore and exhausted, the four stumbled into the American-held town, was not a situation to inspire confidence.

Bryony forgot the pain in her foot for the moment as she stared in dismay at the ragged, half-starved scarecrows thronging the streets. “This is the army?”

“It would appear so,” Ben said grimly. He walked over to a small group and addressed a man leaning on a crutch. “Where can I find General Greene?”

The man gestured with his thumb down the road.
“Big house on the corner is headquarters. Ye’ll find ’em all there.”

“My thanks.” Ben came back to his own party. “All? I wonder who ‘all’ are?”

“The sooner we find out, the better,” Charlie said practically. “Maybe there’ll be rations, now that we’re back with the regular army.”

“Ever hopeful!” Bryony leaned against a wall and lifted her foot, examining the sole of her shoe. Blood stained the leather, and the thought of what she would find beneath made her feel a little sick.

“Stay here with Ned,” Ben instructed briskly. “Charlie and I will seek out Greene.”

“Why can’t we come, too?” Bryony looked doubtfully down the dirt road, where groups of men wandered aimlessly.

“Because, sweeting, I do not wish to present myself to my new commanding officer surrounded by a gaggle of women and children,” he said bluntly.

Bryony glanced around, eyebrows raised. “Gaggle?” she inquired. “I see no gaggle. Just us.”

Charlie chuckled but said, “Ben has the right of it, Bryony. It doesn’t look very soldierly for a colonel to report for duty with a child on his hip.”

“Well, how are you going to manage to keep us hidden?”

Ben spoke more sharply than he intended. “I have no intention of keeping you hidden, but until I find out what the position is here, I do not intend to parade you in front of the army’s high command.” With that, he turned on his heel and strode down the road.

Charlie handed Ned to Bryony, offering her a hesitantly sympathetic smile, which she returned with an
obvious struggle. “It’s only because he is worried about you,” Charlie said. “He has been dreadfully concerned about your foot, and now he must find lodgings and food—”

“Yes, I know,” Bryony broke in swiftly. “It’s always the way when he is harassed.”

“Yes,” agreed Charlie with a slight shrug. “I had best not be dilatory in presenting myself to Greene.” He went off at a trot in the wake of the rapidly disappearing Benedict, and Bryony, finding a relatively dry spot, sat down by the side of the road, holding Ned on her lap, both of them huddling into her cloak for warmth.

“There’s but three days’ rations, General, and the country is almost laid waste. The inhabitants plunder one another with little less than savagery.” The staff officer finished his gloomy report to Nathanael Greene as Benedict Clare and Charlie Carter were shown into a square parlor that served as staff room.

General Greene turned from his contemplation of the small fire in the hearth and looked at the new arrivals. “Who have we here?”

Benedict spoke for them both, and the handsome, florid veteran listened attentively. “You were at Kings Mountain, you say? Then you’ll do best to join Daniel Morgan’s men. He’s gathering together groups of local militia, men who’ve been fighting as you have been. He’s in dire need of regular officers who understand the frontiersmen and their style of battle.” Greene turned to his staff officer. “Ask the brigadier general to join us, will you, Lieutenant Bates?”

The staff officer left, and Greene frowned thoughtfully.
“We’re in a mess, Clare, as I expect you’ve gathered. A few ragged, half-starving troops in the wilderness, destitute of everything. We live from hand to mouth. There’s no morale, the armory is all but bare, and we face an army three times our strength. We will make but a poor fight, I fear. It is difficult to give spirit to troops that have nothing to animate them.”

“Do not underestimate the backcountry folk, sir,” Benedict said. “They are bold and daring above the ordinary. With leadership and a purpose, they will fight for you.”

“Well said, sir!” Booming agreement came from the door, and Brigadier General Daniel Morgan strode in. The old Indian fighter, who had commanded riflemen in the Northern campaigns until sent with Greene to rebuild the Southern forces, regarded the tall, lean Irishman with approval. “Bates tells me you’ve both been with Sumter’s raiders.”

“Aye, General, but when we heard news of your arrival in Charlotte, it seemed time to return to the open again.”

“You are well come, indeed.” Morgan clapped them both on the shoulders. “We’ll be spending some time organizing ourselves before we’ll be fit to fight. The officers’ billet is not the lap of luxury, but you’re welcome enough.”

Charlie coughed and looked at Benedict, who said carefully, “We’ll need to find a billet of our own, General. I do not travel alone.”

“Oh?” Nathanael Greene’s bushy brows shot up, and all eyes were on Ben, who found himself unaccountably embarrassed.

“My wife is with me, sir.” He settled for the plain,
unvarnished truth. “Also a small child whom we found in one of the villages that Ferguson had passed through—the only survivor and a remarkably tenacious lad.” A slight smile touched his lips. “He does not choose to be left.”

“They’ve been with you all winter?” Morgan seemed incredulous. He had little difficulty imagining the kind of living they would have had with the guerrillas in the mountains.

“My wife has been with me since I joined General Gates before Camden. She is quite a campaigner.”

“She must be,” muttered Greene. “Well, you know your own business best, I daresay. We do not have sufficient rations for families, I should warn you. We may be able to feed the two of you—”

“That will be my concern, General,” Benedict interrupted, a little stiffly. “I will look to my own.”

“Yes, well … uh, good, good. That is all settled, then.” General Greene, restored to his customary cheerfulness, rubbed his hands together over the fire. “I am sure you will be able to find lodgings in the village or nearby, for a small outlay.”

“It will have to be very small,” murmured Charlie, only too aware of their scant resources.

“There’s a cottage near the church,” Lieutenant Bates said suddenly. “A bit tumbledown, and deserted because the men are afeard of ghosts from the cemetery. It’s said they walk during the full moon.” He shrugged. “I’d not care for it myself, but it could be made habitable with ingenuity.”

Ben smiled. “That is a commodity we
do
possess, for all that our pockets are thin. And I’m sure we’ll find only friendly specters. My thanks, gentlemen.” He saluted,
beaming now that his major problem was a fair way to being solved. Charlie saluted in turn and followed Benedict from the house. “Now,” Ben said, “let us first look at this cottage, then we can surprise Bryony with a home.”

“I think you should fetch her first,” stated Charlie. “She is sitting at the road, in all this wind. I am sure she would prefer to be doing something.”

“I don’t want her walking unnecessarily on that foot.” Ben frowned. “But I daresay you’re right. She will be mad as fire if I leave her alone any longer than I need to. Fetch her and bring her to the church. It’s down that lane.” He gestured to where a small spire rose above the stone roofs. “I’ll reconnoiter.”

Charlie loped off up the street to where a very impatient and disinclined to be placated Bryony remained, huddled against the wind. “We think we have found us a house,” he said, helping her up, wincing in sympathy as she flinched when her foot touched ground. “Shall I carry you?”

“Oh, don’t be absurd!” Bryony bit back both a low moan and the tears of pain and weariness, choosing acerbity as an effective mask. “I should warn you that if Benedict is inclined to be snappish, then we shall have an uncomfortable time of it, because I am not at all in a good temper.”

“No, I can see that.” Charlie swung Ned onto his shoulders. “But if the house will do, then Ben will be as happy as a sandboy, and you will not be able to provoke him, however hard you try.” That drew a chuckle from her as she hobbled at his side, accepting the support of his arm.

The cottage by the church was most definitely
tumbledown, the roof sagging, the windows glassless, weeds choking the tiny garden. But there was a well and, to Bryony’s unbridled joy, a necessary house at the end of the garden. Sanitary arrangements when one moved with a marauding band tended to be limited, and she was heartily sick of bushes and ditches and trees.

“I think we are in luck.” Ben appeared in the cottage doorway, smiling happily. “I shall have a fire going in no time, and there are a few sticks of furniture that can be pressed into service. The roof needs some patching, but it’s no great matter.”

Bryony stepped through the door into the small, dark, one-room interior and burst out laughing. “Only you, Benedict Clare, could say that
this
is luck. Cattle are housed with more decency.”

Ben’s face fell. “I will do what I can, lass, to make it habitable.”

“Oh, you silly!” She flung her arms around him, hugging him fiercely. “I was only funning. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. It’s a veritable palace after what we have been used to. And there is a privy! Just imagine that.”

“I don’t think you are going to want to use it until we have rid it of the spiders and other crawlers.” He laughed, his spirits restored. “But before I do anything else, I am going to look to your foot.”

“I don’t think that that will be very easy,” Bryony said doubtfully, sitting on a rickety three-legged stool. “The shoe seems to have become stuck with blood to my sole.”

Ben looked a little grim. “Ned, go outside and collect sticks for the fire. Little ones for the kindling. Can you do that?” The child nodded importantly and disappeared
at a run. “Charlie, we are going to need water. There is a bucket by the well. It’s to be hoped it doesn’t have a hole in it.”

Charlie followed the instruction as cheerfully as Ned had done. One did not object to receiving orders from Benedict Clare. He knew too well what he was doing, and without his skills, they would none of them have survived the past few months.

“Now, let me see.” Ben knelt down and lifted Bryony’s foot, subjecting the mess to a frowning examination. “I am going to have to cut the shoe off, lass, and then try to soak off the patch. But I’ll need hot water.”

“I got some sticks.” Ned, with a gap-toothed grin of satisfaction, stood in the doorway, his arms full of twigs.

“Good lad.” Ben took them from him. “We’ll get the fire going first.” He knelt before the chimney and peered up it. “Of course, if there’s a bird’s nest up there, or some such, we’ll be smoked out. Ned, see if you can find a long stick that I can poke up the chimney.”

Bryony smiled to herself, feeling the relaxation seep into her despite her raw, bloody foot. Benedict Clare, with a job to do, was a joy to watch, and it did not occur to her for one minute that he would fail to turn this abandoned hovel into a haven of warmth and comfort. Such doubts did not occur to Ned or to Charlie, either, and their trust was not misplaced. The chimney was poked and pronounced free of obstruction, kindling laid, flint struck, and fire created. The lug pole over the fire was intact, and a kettle of water was hung over the blaze. A straw broom made an appearance in a gloomy corner, and Charlie was set to sweeping while Ben, at Bryony’s insistence, went to render the privy usable.

“I am going to the officers’ billet to scrounge a lamp,”
Charlie announced, replacing the broom in its corner. “I am certain they will be able to spare one. Shall I ask for anything else, Ben?”

“How about a couple of chickens, some milk, and some coffee?” Bryony suggested, only half joking.

“Bring what rations they will allow us, Charlie,” Ben said quietly. “They will at least form a base, and we’ll see what we can buy to augment them.”

Bryony examined her fingernails with a concentration that their cracked and dirty condition did not encourage. Ben could be remarkably sensitive sometimes, when his ability to provide was hampered by conditions outside his control; at such times, she and Charlie needed to be especially careful with their teasing complaints. She exchanged a rueful look with Charlie as Benedict turned away to test the temperature of the water heating in the kettle.