Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (129 page)

She turned her head sharply, body tensed, and looked him up and down, as though to determine whether this was an ill-timed attempt at wit. Concluding that it wasn’t, she let her shoulders relax and merely said, “No, I couldn’t,” in the patient tone one might use to tell a child why he oughtn’t to put his hand into the fire.

“Certainly—well, almost certainly,” he corrected himself, “you could. I—have been thinking that I must go back to England, soon. To deal with things. You could travel with me, under my protection. Ben’s not a duke yet, but he’s still a peer. That means a divorce would have to be granted by the House of Lords—and they’d do it in a flash, once they heard about General Bleeker. Mere infidelity is one thing; treason’s quite another kettle of fish.”

Her nostrils whitened, but she kept her temper.

“That is
exactly
what I mean, William. Do you think I haven’t thought of divorce? How brainless do you think I am?”

There wasn’t any sort of good answer to that question, and he wisely didn’t try.

“What do you mean by ‘exactly,’ then?” he asked instead.

“I mean treason,” she said, exasperated. “What else could I mean? As you say, if I were to petition the House of Lords for a divorce on the basis that Ben has abandoned me, not for a trollop but for General Washington, they’d grant it in a heartbeat, if I could prove it—and I do think you’d come and testify to it, if need be, William.” She gave him half of a rueful smile before returning to her argument.

“And the newspapers and broadsheets and every
salon
in London would be buzzing for weeks—no, months!—about it. What would that do to your uncle? To his wife? His brother? To Ben’s brothers and his sister? How could I possibly do that to them?” She made a passionate gesture, flinging out her arms in frustration.

“The regiment? Even if the King didn’t disband it outright, he’d never trust Father Pardloe again. Neither would the army.”

“I see,” he said stiffly, after a moment’s silence. He took a breath, and then took her hand, carefully. She didn’t jerk it away or slap him, though she didn’t respond to his touch, either.

“I only want to say that I didn’t suggest divorce from any motive of self-interest,” he said quietly. “I thought you might suppose…”

She’d been fixedly looking out at the water, but turned at that and met his eyes, her look straight and serious, eyes gray as the overcast sky.

“I might have,” she said softly. She was close enough that her skirts, stirring in the breeze, wrapped round his naked calves, and kissing his knuckles lightly she let go his hand.

“We should—” she began, but then stopped dead, staring. “What’s that?”

He turned to look and saw a naval cutter, ensign flying in the wind, tearing down the river toward them. As it passed, he caught a flash of army uniforms aboard.

“News,” he said. “From Charles Town. Let’s go!”

THEY SAW THE
cutter at the quay as they hurried back, then a small group of army and naval officers laboriously climbing the slippery stone stairway to Bay Street.

William inflated his lungs and bellowed, “Has Charles Town fallen?”

Most of the officers ignored him, but a young ensign trailing at the end of the group turned and shouted, “Yes!” with a beaming countenance. The young man was hastily grabbed by the arm and dragged along, but the group was plainly in too much hurry to waste time on official rebuke.

“Oh, dear God.” Amaranthus was panting, pressing the heel of her hand into her corset. William had quite forgotten her, in the excitement, but at once took the shoes and stockings from her other hand and urged her to sit down and let him help re-shoe her.

She did, and laughed, in small breathless spurts.

“Really. William. What do you think me? A…mare?”

“No, no. Certainly not. A filly, maybe.” He grinned at her, and pulled her last stocking up to her knee. He had to leave her shoe buttons undone, having no buttonhook and no clue how to use one if he had, but he tied her garters briskly and she could at least walk.

“They’ll have gone to Prévost’s headquarters,” he told her, as they reached Oglethorpe Street. “I’ll see you to Papa’s house, then I’ll go find out the details.”

“Come back as soon as you can,” she said. She was windblown and panting, with red splotches on her cheeks from trotting over the cobblestones. “Please, William.”

He nodded and, handing her in at the gate, strode off in the direction of General Prévost’s headquarters.

By the time he returned, it was well after teatime, but Moira and Amaranthus and Lord John’s new housekeeper, a tall, irritable woman aptly named Miss Crabb, had kept some cake for him and were all waiting impatiently to hear the news.

“Partly it was the slaves,” William explained, licking a crumb from the corner of his mouth. “Sir Henry had already put out a proclamation, offering freedom to any slave of a rebel American who might choose to fight for the British army—and when this was reiterated to the countryside around Charles Town, there was quite an outpouring of men from both countryside
and
the city. And as these were men with a strong knowledge of the terrain, as you might say…”

Moira refilled his teacup, eyes gleaming over the squat gray teapot.

“Ye mean to say as how ’twas black men that turned upon their masters, and that’s how the city fell? Good on ’em!”

“Mrs. O’Meara!” Miss Crabb exclaimed. “You cannot mean that!”

“The divil I don’t,” Moira replied stoutly, plunking the pot back on the table with such force that tea sputtered across the cloth. “And ye’d mean the same, if ye’d ever been a ’denture, like I was. Death to the masters, says I!”

Amaranthus uttered a shocked laugh and tried to turn it into a coughing fit by burying her face in a handkerchief.

“Well, I do gather that Lord Cornwallis and his regulars had some hand in the surrender,” William said, keeping his countenance with some difficulty. “He led his troops onto the mainland, while Sir Henry was capturing the offshore islands, and besieged the city with cannon and trenches.

“And whilst all this was going on, in mid-April, Sir Henry sent two of his officers to take a place called Monck’s Corner. Banastre Tarleton—I know him, very vigorous officer—and Patrick Ferguson. They—”

“You know Ban Tarleton?” Amaranthus said, surprised. “I know him, too. How funny! I—trust he escaped injury?”

“So far as I know, yes,” William said, surprised, too. He was reasonably sure that nothing short of a cannonball at close range would have made a dent in Tarleton; he’d had a brief passage with the man—over Jane, and the thought conjured up a host of feelings he didn’t want to deal with. He swallowed tea and coughed a little. “I’ve not heard of Ferguson—do you know him?”

He supposed it wasn’t odd that she should. Prior to turning his coat, Ben had been a major in the British army, and his battalion was—so far as William knew—still with Clinton.

She shrugged a little. “I met Major Ferguson once. A small, pale Scottish creature with a crippled arm. Very intense, though, with those sort of pale gooseberry eyes.”

“I suppose he is. Intense, I mean. Sir Henry sent him out to collect Loyalists for a provincial militia, and I understand he’s done quite well. His Loyalists fought with Major Tarleton’s troops to take Monck’s Corner—and that cut off the main line of retreat for the Americans. So then—”

Before he had told them all he’d heard, the table was a wreck of empty plates, spilled saucers, and lines of sugar, pepper, and salt, illustrating the movements of Clinton’s army.

“And so Charles Town fell, day before yesterday,” William ended, slightly hoarse from talking. “Lincoln had offered to give up the city three weeks before, if his men were allowed to walk out unharmed. Clinton knew he had the stronger hand, though, and kept up the bombardment, until Lincoln finally surrendered unconditionally. Five thousand men, they said, all taken prisoner. A whole army. Is there more tea, please, Moira?”

“There is,” she said, getting ponderously to her feet. “But if it was my choice to make, son, I’d be gettin’ out the fine brandy. Seems as though such a victory’s deservin’ of it.”

This notion passed by general acclamation, and by the time Lord John arrived home, well past midnight, there were no more clean glasses and only an inch of brandy left in the last bottle.

Lord John eyed the shambles of his sitting room, shrugged, sat down, and, picking up the bottle, drained it.

“How are you, Papa?” William had stayed up, leaving the women to make their separate ways to bed, and had sat by the fire, thinking. Sharing the general glow of the victory, to be sure—but envious, too, of the men who had won it.

He missed the camaraderie of the army, but more than that, he missed the sense of shared purpose, the knowledge that he had a part to play, people who depended upon him. The army had its strictures, and not inconsiderable ones, either—but by contrast, his present life was shapeless and lacking…something. Everything.

“I’m fine, Willie,” his father said affectionately. Lord John was plainly exhausted, held up mostly by his uniform, but clearly in good spirits. “I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.”

“Yes, of course.” William got up, and, seeing his father put his feet under him but then hesitate as though uncertain what came next, smiled and bent to hoick Lord John out of his chair. He held on to his father’s arm for a moment, to make sure he was steady, and felt the solid warmth of his body, got the smell of a man, a soldier, sweat and steel, red wool and leather.

“You asked whether I might consider buying a commission,” William said abruptly, surprising himself.

“I did.” Lord John was swaying a little on his feet—clearly the inch of brandy just consumed was only the icing on his evening’s cake—but his eyes were clear, if bloodshot, and met William’s with a quizzical approval. “You should be certain, though.”

“I know,” William said. “I’m only thinking.”

“It’s not a bad time to rejoin,” his father said judiciously. “You want to get in before the fun’s over, I mean. Cornwallis says the Americans won’t last another winter. Bear that in mind.”

“I will,” said William, smiling. His own level of intoxication wasn’t much below his father’s and he felt a warm benevolence for the army, England, and even my lord Cornwallis, though he normally considered that gentleman to be a tiresome nit. “Good night, Papa.”

“Good night, Willie.”

THE BEGINNING OF
a battle is usually much better defined than its ending, and even though Charles Town concluded with a formal and unconditional surrender, the aftermath was, as usual, long, drawn out, complicated, and messy.

The flood of dispatches did not abate, though the ratio of excitement to tedium dropped considerably. More parts of the Savannah garrison were indeed carved off and sent north—but to guard prisoners and escort them to prison hulks or other insalubrious quarters, rather than to join in glorious battle.

“At least at the end of
our
siege, Lincoln took his army off with him,” William remarked to his father and uncle. “Less to tidy up, I mean.”

“Took them off north so Cornwallis could bag them all, you mean.” Uncle Hal was inclined to be snappish, but William had been around soldiers for the majority of his life and recognized the poisonous slow sapping nature of tension that could not be discharged in a good fight, resulting in prickliness and disgruntlement.

“At least Ben wasn’t there,” Uncle Hal added, in a tone that made Papa look sharply at him. “Save me having to shoot him myself to keep him from being hanged.” One corner of his mouth jerked up, in an apparent attempt to make this sound like a joke. Neither his brother nor his nephew was fooled.

A muffled gasp from the door made all three men glance round, to see Amaranthus in her calico jacket and straw hat, she having evidently been out. She had a hand pressed over her mouth, either to keep from saying whatever she was thinking—or perhaps to keep from vomiting, William thought. She was white as one of Lord John’s porcelain figurines, and William moved to take her arm, in case she was about to faint.