Kiss of a Traitor (41 page)

She unpinned the packets and emptied the crushed plants into the cistern, praying the volume of water would dilute the poison enough to sicken and not kill the soldiers. Supper was at six, an hour from now. Seamus had instructed Gwen MacGovern and her daughter to empty Brendan’s water, by kicking over his bucket should it become necessary, and refill it from a bottle of untainted water they would carry with them. Willa doubted he received fresh water every day; however, she had no desire for her concoction to poison him, too.

All the men should have imbibed the water and taken themselves off to the latrines by ten o’clock. Purging their bodies of the poison would occupy them all night. She smiled when she pictured the pandemonium in the rush to empty their bowels. The fort would be an unpleasant place to inhabit come morning.

Leave now.
Willa knew she should. She had accomplished her mission without discovery. Plato waited for her outside the fort along the wall fronting the Sampit River. Seamus had led a party of militia to the church to create a diversion by lighting smoke pots of wet moss inside the church’s office. They planned to abscond with Brendan’s horse in the confusion. Marion remained under the cypress trees in Socastee Swamp outside town with the rest of his men. They would rendezvous at the swamp and ride into town at ten to enter the fort and remove Brendan.

She should leave …
now,
before a redcoat saw and detained her, though she had little doubt she could talk her way out of most any situation. Unless the two guards from the gate caught her. No; the sergeant had already made the latrine his new residence. More pressing concerns would occupy him for a long while.

Despite what her common sense told her, she was powerless to leave until she knew, for certain, where Digby jailed Brendan, until she convinced herself he was still alive.

She reconciled the structures in her view with her internal image: gunnery, cookhouse, enlisted soldiers’ barracks … officers’ quarters, the sole two-story building. She watched the yard for activity and pulled back against the commander’s office wall when three officers approached to the sounds of clinking spurs and sabers slapping against their thighs. Her breath remained suspended while they passed by within a hair’s width.

After peeking out from her hiding place and finding the way clear, Willa sprinted across the courtyard and whipped around the corner of a shed on the far side. Not more than five yards away sat the building. Wooden shutters covered a window on the second floor. No trees grew within the compound, and the sides of the structure were sheer. She cursed under her breath and acknowledged the impossibility of climbing up to the window. She edged her way down the wall to examine the building’s front door. Two soldiers stood at attention on either side, muskets in hand and stoical expressions on their faces. She could not make it past them. Yet their presence, along with the gate sentries’ comments, reassured her that Brendan remained alive inside the building.
They would not take such care to guard a corpse.

Willa slid back to her former position, as close to the shuttered window as she dared go. Squatting down on her heels, she searched the ground for rocks. Perhaps she could draw Brendan’s attention. She had no idea what she expected him to do should she be successful. The shutters were surely locked. But the window called to her, and she could not leave until she tried.

Coming to her feet with a handful of rocks, she chucked them at the shutters. Then an armed guard burst around the corner from the front, twisting his head in all directions and swinging his musket in wide arcs, and she realized the noise was drawing unwanted attention. Her stomach churned as she hunkered down to melt farther into the shadow.

When the guard shook his head and strolled back to his place at the entrance, she sucked in a breath and crept back to the gate. The corporal had returned. He took a belligerent step in her direction and brandished his musket. “Where’s Sergeant Waters?”

Willa gestured over her shoulder with a thumb. “Took me so’s I kin do ma job. Says I be comin’ on back. Guess de boss man be wantin’ ta talk ta him.” She pointed to the flask abandoned in the weeds against the wall. “An’ he done left you de rest’a dat.” Willa sidled away from the corporal when he glanced over at the wall. She burst into a run as soon as she cleared the gate and left the corporal standing there with a bewildered expression.

Ten o’clock, an hour before moonrise. They rode by starlight, letting their horses choose the path. A stiff wind plucked at their coats, bringing with it the fresh scent of snow, a rare occurrence this far south. Even rarer was the curse uttered by Francis Marion. He knew, as did they all, that snow on the ground would telegraph the direction of their escape after accomplishing Ford’s rescue.

Marion pulled his horse to a halt and gestured for the small party to gather around him. “In light of the impending inclement weather, we shall split into groups of two as soon as we ride beyond sight of the fort. Each pair of riders will take a different direction. The redcoats will be incapable of determining who is escorting Captain Ford. I shall take him with me and retreat to my camp in North Carolina.”

Willa, who led Brendan’s horse by the reins, protested. “You must take me, as well, General. Captain Ford may have need of my healing skills.”

Marion bent a smile on her. “I understand your reasons for wanting to accompany us, Miss Bellingham. But I fear your participation must end when we leave the fort. Major Digby and the commander will be out for revenge when they discover their prisoner missing. And by virtue of your association with Lord Montford, you will become their prime suspect. You must be sound asleep in your bed by the time Major Digby reaches Willowbend. Should you be absent, suspicion will fall on your family, including your ill father, and may extend to your friends, the Richardsons. Plato will join up with me at the border and accompany Captain Ford to my camp. His knowledge of medicinal herbs is nearly as extensive as your own.” The warm smile that softened his ascetic face cut through the bleak night. “Your aid has proven invaluable and worthy of the best men in Carolina fighting for their freedom.”

Willa nigh choked on her unshed tears. But he was right. She dare not follow her heart and leave her father and the Richardsons to face the consequences of her actions.

Marion assigned directions and destinations, then pulled down his hat over his eyes to buffer against the wind and sat straighter in the saddle. An inimitable air of leadership covered him like a king’s mantle. “Are we ready, men and Miss Bellingham?” he asked. When everyone expressed their assent with a nod or a wave of the hand, they sped off once again toward the fort.

At the gate, a soldier sat on the muddy ground beside his musket, holding his belly and moaning like a bobcat in season. He put up only a token resistance. Seamus tapped him on the head with a pistol, tied his hands and feet, gagged him, and dragged him into a dark, shallow declivity along the wall. After stripping off his homespun coat, Seamus revealed the red jacket of his old uniform and stood guard at the entrance in the sick man’s place.

They were in, spreading through the garrison in an eerie atmosphere permeated by the cries and groans of ill men and tainted with the stink of overloaded latrines. A soldier ran past them at intervals, clutching his stomach and vomiting onto the ground. None attempted to waylay the partisans who strode through the grounds as if they, and not the British, occupied it. Few redcoats even cast a glance toward the intruders. The pain in their guts garnered all their attention.

The door to the officers’ quarters stood wide open and deserted. The room they entered, a dining hall, was empty. Men retched in the rooms beyond. The air reeked, heavy and as overpowering as a battlefield surgeon’s tent. Willa held her breath and pointed to the stairs.

They found a stout, padlocked barrier when they reached the room Seamus indicated most likely to hold Ford. General Marion stepped back a pace, drew his pistol, and put a ball through the lock. He then hammered at it with the metal butt of the gun until the lock gave way and clanked to the floor.

Willa was the first through the door. She came to a halt at the sight of Brendan, motionless on a bloody pallet. He lay on his stomach, his face turned away from her, his back a mass of welts and fresh ribbons of cut flesh. Blood, old and crusted, new and flowing freely, covered him from neck to calves. She crumpled to her knees with her hands clasped over her mouth to suppress her scream.

Marion slid past her to approach Ford. Crouching beside the pallet, he lifted the battered man’s head and turned it gently toward him. “Captain Ford,” the general said in an authoritative voice. “Are you still with us?”

Ford’s eyelids flickered. His lips trembled and opened a fraction. “General,” he sighed so faintly it could have been his last breath.

Marion came to his feet and signaled to Plato and one other man. “You will have to carry him. I fear Major Ford has undergone a stressful ordeal.”

The two men came forward and grasped Ford’s arms, easing him to his feet. His cry broke Willa’s heart. Once they had him upright, they dressed him in warm clothing they brought with them. He struggled briefly as he flinched away from the touch of cloth on his back, then he seemed to pass out.

“Brendan,” Willa whispered on a heartrending moan.

He lifted his eyelids only far enough to send her an accusatory gaze. “You bitch,” he said with bitterness in a faint voice. “Come to see the end, have you?”

She shook her head vehemently. Tears streamed down her face. “No, no …”

Losing consciousness again, he slumped against the men’s hold. When Plato hoisted the comatose man onto one shoulder, Willa walked on shaky legs behind him. She grasped and clung to Ford’s limp hand, maintaining her desperate hold all the way through the fort to where they left the horses.

Willa stood stiff and silent in the glacial winter night while Marion and Ford rode away to the north. Ford had remained unconscious as they tied him facedown across Dancer’s back.

Brendan hated her. She could not fault his judgment of her culpability in his capture and torture. A sickness, unlike any she’d ever felt, flooded her. She had brought this misery down on him, and now, she wished with all her heart it had been she instead of Brendan the redcoats took into custody that dreadful night. She would face the whip gladly to atone for her betrayal.

But it had not been she. Icy wind slapped against her wet cheeks, and the pain in her heart rendered her incapable of movement. She feared this was the last time she would ever see the man she loved, the father of her baby. Snowflakes, fat and wet, melted when they touched the heat of her face and merged with her tears.

Like a vulture drawn by the prospect of a corpse, Major Digby returned to Willowbend from Cornwallis’s camp the evening before Colonel Bellingham died.

Later that same night, Willa came back from the Georgetown garrison and slipped unnoticed into the house through the balcony outside her bedchamber window. After scrubbing the brown dye from her skin, she fell into bed, exhausted mentally and physically. Yet sleep came with difficulty. The macabre vision of Brendan’s torture at the hands of the redcoats haunted her. She said a prayer for General Marion and Brendan and added another for Plato’s healing skills.

Whether Brendan loved her or not seemed inconsequential when compared with his condition. The prospect of his possible death squeezed her heart in a painful grasp. If only he would live, she promised God she would resign herself to never seeing Brendan again.

In the early winter morning, Willa awoke to footsteps racing up and down the stairs and hallways and the servants’ muffled voices whispering and weeping outside her door. When the knock came, ‘twas Quinn who opened her door and quietly said, “Willa, your father has passed.”

She fled the bed, donned the first dress she laid hands on, and raced from the room. The door to her father’s suite sat ajar, and voices came from inside. When she burst through the doorway, Digby was holding Marlene’s hands and speaking to her in a hushed voice. Both turned at Willa’s entrance. Marlene’s face lacked evidence of tears or any expression one would expect from a grieving widow.

“Have you sent for the doctor?” Willa asked.

“Really, Wilhelmina,” Marlene said. “A doctor will hardly do poor George any service now.”

Willa whirled about with a look for Quinn, who had trailed in after her. He nodded and drew in a breath. “At once,” he said and left to implement the unspoken request.

Willa came back around and threw a glare at the two lovers.

“Where have you been for the past week?” Digby asked before she could vent her anger. “Were you aware that your Negro slave, Plato, has run away? Were you with him?”

She had no time for Digby’s drivel; she had to see her father. But then she recalled that Digby, having been at Willowbend last night, could not yet be aware of Brendan’s escape.

“Where were
you,
Digby?” The duo’s flaunting of their infidelity in her father’s house, on the very doorstep of his deathbed, caused her words to spill forth with venom. “Perhaps you would find it in your best interest to return to Georgetown and check on the progress of the war. That
is
the reason you are occupying our state, is it not?” With satisfaction at the bewildered expression on Digby’s face, she hurried from the sitting room into her father’s bedchamber.