Kiss of a Traitor (47 page)

Lee and Marion moved on to Fort Motte, a fortified mansion owned by Mrs. Rebecca Motte, whom the British relegated to an old log cabin on the fringes of the grounds when they commandeered the house. The patriot army reached McCord’s Ferry and came within sight of the mansion, where they halted. Ford frowned at his view of the fortifications as he stood beside Marion and they examined the mansion’s strategic position on a hill beyond the ferry. The British had dug a fosse, a deep ditch, in the grounds surrounding the house. They had erected earthworks, thrown up an abatis of felled, sharpened saplings slanting outward, and constructed a timber palisade. The commander resided with one hundred forty British and Hessian soldiers inside the fortified area.

Marion and Lee began with a formal siege. They blockaded the house, sniped at the guards on the palisades, and started a trench to tunnel beneath the earthworks and other defenses.

On May eleventh, a shout of excitement resounded from the walls of the fort, and Ford looked out into the distance. Lord Rawdon’s campfires glowed not more than a forty-eight-hour march away. Ford pointed out the danger to Marion. Realizing he must dispose of the fort in quick order or retreat from Rawdon, Marion sent Ford to Mrs. Motte with a message seeking her permission to burn the house.

“Were it a palace,” she said to Ford, “it should go.” She presented him with an exquisite bow and quiver of arrows she had received as a gift. “This will serve your purpose,” she stated with a firm nod.

Colonel Lee sent word to the fort that the patriots planned to fire it. Lieutenant McPherson listened politely but refused to give up his position. The Americans waited until noon, when the roof had heated up from the sun, then shot fire arrows into the shingles. The British soldiers climbed to the roof to extinguish the fire and came under the rifle shots of sharpshooters. McPherson reluctantly admitted his defeat and waved the white flag. Marion sent in men to douse the fire and save Mrs. Motte’s home as soon as the British evacuated and threw down their arms.

Rebecca Motte invited the captured British officers and the victorious American officers to dine with her after the surrender. The dining room in the house would not hold such a large number of guests, so she set out tables under the arbor in front of her cabin.

When Marion left the table to take a stroll about the gardens, Ford rose and discreetly followed him. He watched as the general came upon a group of Colonel Lee’s men hanging a Tory from a tree limb. Two other Tories lay dead on the ground under the tree.

“Cut him down,” Marion yelled and drew his sword. “In the name of God, what are you doing?”

“Only hanging a few Tories,” the Continental dragoon drawled. “Colonel Lee won’t mind.”

A muscle jumped in Marion’s tight jaw and outrage speared from his eyes. Ford knew the dragoons’ cruelty, particularly the killing of prisoners, brought to mind the past depredations of Tarleton and his legion.

The Swamp Fox pulled his raggedly garbed body up to the fullest extent of his height, which at under five feet left the dragoons towering over him in their smart Continental army uniforms. “I’ll let you know, damn you,” he shouted in the face of the man who had spoken, “that
I
command here and
not
Colonel Lee.”

Ford remained under the shelter of a hickory tree. Propping his shoulder against the trunk, he folded his arms and listened to the exchange of words. At six feet and four inches of lean muscle, he was more than a match for any of the dragoons, and he hung back in the shadows in the event Marion had need of his aid. But as he allowed his commander to settle the matter in his own manner, he quickly saw the Swamp Fox had the situation well in hand.

Other British posts fell to the American force, and Marion had the chance, at last, to take and occupy his boyhood home of Georgetown at the end of May.

Then Thomas Sumter, who rode with Marion and Lee, expressed his desire to take the post at Moncks Corner, feeling as strongly about it as Marion felt about Georgetown. Sumter badgered Greene and finally convinced the general to place Lee and Marion under his command for an attack on the town. Marion had avoided serving under Sumter, as the two had disparate views on conduct in the war. But he complied with Greene’s orders.

The British left Moncks Corner at the approach of the Americans, and Sumter gave chase, determined no redcoat would escape. After crossing and destroying Quinby Bridge, the British commander finally gave fight at Shubrick’s Plantation. The British had an enviable position with a howitzer in the mansion’s front yard, and cribs, barns, and slave quarters, all flanked by rail fences. Lee and Marion assessed the defenses and disagreed with Sumter’s verdict to attack. Such an action would prove suicidal for their men. Sumter, in his usual reckless manner, acted as if he and the other Americans were immortal and gave the orders to strike straightaway.

A bloodbath followed in which Marion lost fifty men and ran out of ammunition. He was stricken with grief and furious with Sumter, whom Marion always felt was a man whose courage exceeded his judgment. This rash battle gave credence to that evaluation. Lee and Marion attended to their wounded, threw the dead bodies across horses, and left the bloody field. Resentment ran through Marion’s ranks because only Sumter’s men had been allowed to fight from the shelter of the cabins, leaving Lee’s and Marion’s forces exposed to deadly fire. They deserted once again. Marion retained only a hundred men from his original four hundred. This time, he told Ford, he could not fault his militiamen for leaving.

James Jenkins, one of Marion’s men, summed up their feelings when they stopped by the Widow Jenkins’s home to tell her about her son’s death. “Having heard that Sumter would go into battle, whether or not, live or die, I thought then I could never forgive him. I was also informed that Marion was opposed to risk his men under circumstances so forbidding; and from what I have heard of his character, I’m disposed to believe it. He loved his men, and would not expose them where there was no hope.”

Late summer’s heat bore down like a heavy fist on Willowbend. Trees wilted in the orchards, and dust choked the roads. Willa’s expanding body depleted all her energy. She’d not fully recovered from her battle with Marlene’s poison, and now, she mourned the loss of her former strength. She tired easily; her feet and ankles swelled with fluid; her back ached with the burden she carried. Her stomach grew enormous, jutting from her body so grossly she was incapable of sitting—or standing, once seated—without assistance.

That assistance came in the form of her friend, Emma Richardson. The two girls continued to meet weekly at the park in Georgetown until the day when Willa failed to appear at the appointed place and time. With Willa’s pregnancy obvious for some time, Emma feared complications and rode out to Willowbend. She shed tears at what she found, her best friend close to death, the victim of a murder attempt perpetrated by her stepmother.

Emma visited often during Willa’s recovery and, one day, the words simply spilled out of Willa’s mouth. She asked Emma to collect her family and belongings and move into Willowbend. Sensitive to the Richardsons’ situation and concerned they would refuse out of pride, she phrased her request as a plea for help and companionship. And she truly meant the appeal. Willa had no desire to live alone in the big house with only her baby and servants, even servants who were friends, for company.

The Richardsons accepted the offer and let their town house go, moving into Willowbend the next week. Only Richard declined, as he preferred to remain with friends in town. Mary Richardson assumed the task of housekeeper. Young Rebecca assisted in the kitchen. Emma spelled Jwana in nursing Willa and tended the gardens when Willa had no need of her.

Willa protested their working like servants, for the Richardson women were gently born of good families, but they insisted on contributing to the household. The war had brought hardship to everyone, even the wealthy Tory families. Willowbend had few servants or slaves left. Many had run off to join the patriots; others had deserted to the British army.

The diverse household quickly came together as a family. They gathered in the parlor after dinner where Emma or Willa—once she felt well enough to join the others downstairs—read from a favorite book taken from Colonel Bellingham’s library. Or Rebecca played selections on the pianoforte while Emma sang. Quinn, Jwana, and Plato often joined them for games of chess or cards. The house soon evolved into a warm, comfortable environment for the birth of a new child.

As her birthing time approached, Willa mouthed a silent prayer of thanks for the support of her friends. Jwana had never birthed a baby, and the nearest midwife resided in Charles Town. But Mary Richardson, having brought three children into the world, calmed everyone’s nerves by promising to take charge when Willa’s time came.

While Willa lumbered through the sere orchard grass in the cooler air of twilight—as she did each night on Mary’s orders—her thoughts turned to Brendan, the missing father of her baby. She wondered where he was and what he was doing. And why he’d not seen fit to visit her … not even once.

Richard called on them often. Through him they received some news of the war. At the end of May when Willa heard that Francis Marion had taken Georgetown, she half-expected a visit from Brendan. He was with the Swamp Fox. He would not be anywhere else. But he did not come, and her heart was as bereft as an empty nest. Then anger overrode her sorrow. Certainly a brief visit to see how she was getting on would not interfer with his war activities.

Brendan must know she was carrying his child. Surely someone in Georgetown informed him of her condition. She had kept to the plantation for much of her pregnancy but made occasional trips to town in addition to her dawn meetings in the park with Emma. The size of her belly was a sight difficult to ignore. In another time, the townspeople would have snubbed her as a loose woman. The war changed that attitude. Single, pregnant women were a common sight on any street in any town in South Carolina or elsewhere. With death on the horizon, couples took what pleasure they could of each other while they were young and alive.

Marlene and Digby took residence in a town house in Georgetown and lived comfortably on Colonel Bellingham’s bequest, or so Willa had heard. Even Marlene, a widow living openly with an unmarried man, drew little or no comment from the townspeople.

But Brendan’s impending child still failed to bring him to her side. His neglect underscored what Willa most feared to accept. He continued to hold her accountable for her role in his capture. She agonized over the thought that invariably followed. Surely he could not have convinced himself that another man sired her child. Could he possibly believe her baby was Digby’s? If so, it would be the final indignity.

At this point each night, as the hopelessness of her unrequited love swept over her, she sobbed and cradled her swollen belly in her arms. After dashing the tears from her eyes, she broke a dead branch from a tree limb and whacked it against the tree trunk. This, too, became a nightly ritual, though she could no longer bend over to pick up branches from the ground. She lifted her lips in a watery smile. She would denude the orchard by the time the baby arrived. Her tears and violent assaults on the trees helped ease, in some fashion, the anguish engendered by Brendan’s neglect.

Fireflies appeared in the dusk, winking on and off like tiny fairies. She sighed, dropped her gnarled weapon, and moved toward the house. The baby had shifted in the past week and sat lower in her belly. She had nearly a month to go before her due date but sensed the impatience of Brendan’s child to enter the world.

Ford planned to swing by Willowbend while he was in Georgetown but found himself thwarted by time and circumstances. The brigade’s foray into the city was as brief as a summer storm. Ford found no opportunity to contact Willa in the time allotted him. He managed to duck away from his duties with only just enough time to visit MacGovern’s Tavern for a bowl of Gwen’s famous stew and a pint of ale. After riding day and night with Francis Marion, Ford flexed his weary shoulders and sighed as his bottom settled on an object other than a saddle or the hard ground for the first time in months.

He had barely relished the stew’s rich odor and lifted the spoon to his mouth when a small, middle-aged man came up to his table. Ford glanced up with a frown on his lips. The man’s prominent Adam’s apple bobbed in his thin throat as he swallowed. With his hat clutched in his hands, the intruder appeared ready to bolt. His sparse brown hair was rumpled and the handlebar mustache a bit overgrown. His frock coat looked costly and well tailored, though a trifle wrinkled and dusty.

“Mister Ford, Mister Brendan Ford?” the man asked in a quavering voice with a lift of wispy brows.

Ford blew out a sigh and set down the spoon. Sprawling back against the bench, he gestured to the adjacent seat. “Indeed. And you would be?”

The man smiled broadly and slid into the seat. “Please, allow me to introduce myself. Hiram L. Brooke, Esquire, at your service, a solicitor and partner in the London firm of Teasdale, Collier, and Brooke. I have searched for you for close to a month now. Of course, over three years have passed since we came upon the information, and then another seven months went by before we discovered your current name and whereabouts. When I arrived in Boston, I found myself completely unprepared for the difficulty I would encounter in locating you. I first traveled to Virginia, then realized what a muddle I had got myself into. Traveling accommodations have been most uncomfortable and dangerous with this war going on. Why, in England, the colonial rebellion hardly rates a mention as a topic of gossip. I had no notion the fighting was still so fierce. And I expected to find red Indians on every street corner …”