The Blacksmith's Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution (30 page)

From the flush advancing up Tom's
neck, Betsy knew he'd comprehended the Branwells' "arrangement."
 
Jealousy poked at her, and she shoved it
away with a gulp of wine.
 
She'd no
right to censor his behavior.

"So since helping with the
books is out, we could use your assistance with housekeeping.
 
Lotty, our chambermaid, didn't show up for
work Monday morning.
 
When she finally
arrived Tuesday noon, she was so drunk she couldn't stand up.
 
I terminated her employment.
 
The slaves Hattie and Sally have temporarily
assumed her duties."
 
Perceiving
the downcast look on Betsy's face, she reached across the table as if to take
her hand.
 
Then she rested her
fingertips near Betsy's wine goblet.
 
"I know a woman of your station is hardly suited for a
chambermaid's work, especially after you've helped your husband in such a
cerebral capacity.
 
But Fate has brought
us together when we need each other's help.
 
You need work here only long enough for you and Tom to get back on your
feet financially.
 
What do you
say?"

The deal sounded repulsive.
 
Betsy had never felt more like saying
no.
 
But Tom prodded her ankle with his
toe, and Joshua watched her with an expectant smile, so of course the men must
be right, as the deal
did
sound like the perfect cover under which to
sniff around for Clark.
 
"Very
well, but you mustn't expect me to lift anything too heavy."

"In your delicate
condition?
 
Of course not, dear."

"And to help us recover faster
financially, please don't tell anyone who comes asking that we're here."

Abel stopped chewing and narrowed
his beady eyes on them.
 
"You in
trouble with the redcoats?"

Tom breezed out a smile.
 
"No sooner did our house in Augusta
burn then three fellows who'd loaned me small amounts of money came asking for
their funds.
 
And don't you know that
the five fellows who owe
me
money are nowhere to be found."

With a grunt, Abel returned his
attention to his plate and continued chewing.
 
At Tom's quizzical look, Emma giggled.
 
"Abel knows about those kinds of men.
 
He won't say a word."

***

A wave of masculine laughter and
tobacco smoke surged in from the first floor when Tom opened the door to admit
Joshua.
 
Candlelight gleamed in Joshua's
eyes.
 
"I wonder what time they
quit serving the rum.
 
We've over two
hundred drunken redcoats downstairs."
 
He shut the door and muffled some of the noise.

Betsy wondered whether she'd be
able to sleep through it.
 
She combed a
final tangle from her hair and began braiding.
 
"Are you sure your cousins don't mind spending the night in the
stables?"

"It's quieter, and they want
to keep an eye on the horses."

Tom smiled.
 
"Don't they trust a weasely accountant
to not be thieving horses in the middle of the night?"

"No, they don't trust the
weasely accountant's drunken patrons."
 
Joshua yawned.
 
"What time
has it gotten to be?"

"After ten."
 
With a yawn, Betsy tied the end of her
braid.

Joshua unrolled his blanket on the
side of the bed nearest the door and positioned his loaded rifle on the floor
next to it.
 
While Tom unrolled his
blanket on the opposite side of the room, Betsy shoved her shoes and stockings
out of the way and reclined on the bed near the nightstand.
 
The bed creaked and sagged, begging to have
the ropes tightened, but she was just too tired.
 
"Lights out, gentlemen?"
 
They both answered her with a yawn, and she extinguished the
candle, plunging the room into a darkness made incomplete by light filtering in
through a small window.
 
Noise from the
floor below seemed amplified.

Joshua's breathing deepened into
sleep within a minute.
 
Shortly after,
she heard Tom's soft snores.
 
But she
lay awake buffeted by unfamiliar sounds and smells from a tavern in
revelry.
 
She told herself she was lucky
to have made it to Camden unharmed, to have a generous cousin like Emma, and to
have uncovered clues of Clark's whereabouts on her first day.
 
Yet she didn't feel lucky.

Instead, she felt overwhelmed and
despairing, surely feelings her mother must have experienced when her second
husband died and she was left to raise a child alone.
 
Betsy remembered circles of fatigue beneath Sophie's eyes each
morning after she'd worked a print run and the way her mother dragged around,
almost too tired to care for either of them.
 
By the time Betsy had been ten years old, she'd resolved to never land
herself in the same situation.
 
No,
she'd marry a fellow who didn't travel, a man who worked a safe trade, because
she didn't want to raise a child alone.
 
In fact, the very idea of raising a child alone terrified her because
she was sure she couldn't do it.
 
Maybe
some women could do it, but she didn't have the gumption and iron backbone of
Sophie.

Now here she was, alone, and Clark
was nowhere on the horizon.

...what a clever way to circumvent
paying your most valuable employee.
 
Marry her
.
 
If she thought about it hard enough, she
could envision her husband bragging in such a manner to the men in the White
Swan.
 
But she didn't want to think
about it.
 
Not yet, at least.

Instead she experimented with her
anger toward him for getting involved with the rebels and putting the baby and
her in jeopardy.
 
She blamed Loyalists
and Whigs, too, who couldn't stop fighting long enough to hear each other's
grievances, and who'd battled it out yet again four days earlier up in Spartan
District, where Joshua was headed on the morrow.
 
Begrudgingly, she realized she had herself to blame, too.

It had been her choice to thrust
herself, her baby, and four men into danger, all because she'd hated the
thought of waiting in Augusta for Clark to return, or not to return.
 
In the wee hours of the morning, the reality
of her folly tossed and turned sleep from her.
 
If she'd had even an inkling of the dangers she'd encounter on the road
or the drudgery she'd be required to perform, just to be in Camden, she'd have
remained in Augusta, for waiting and passivity were her lot in Camden, too.

Chapter Twenty-Four

AFTER SEEING TOM off to work the
next morning, Betsy and Emma waved farewell to Joshua and the Creek.
 
Then they strolled from the stables through
the birdsong and humidity of a garden redolent of bread baking in the beehive
oven.
 
Sally straightened from weeding
beans when they passed, her smile broad.
 
"Mornin', Miz Emma.
 
Mornin', Miz Betsy."
 
She
extended her basket.
 
"Just look
here at all the beans that come ripe since yesterday.
 
Musta been that rain we had five days ago."

"We need another hard rain
just like it soon, or the corn will dry up."

"Yes, ma'am, fixin' to be
another hot one today."

In a dining room fragrant with
bread dough, Hattie, her fingers floury, poured coffee for Emma and Betsy, set
out biscuits and strawberry jam, and returned to kneading.
 
Betsy sipped her coffee, relaxed, and
listened while Emma apprised her of how they needed help each day.
 
Sweep, air, and dust the four guestrooms.
 
Empty the chamberpots.
 
Make sure each room had candles and stocked
tinderboxes.
 
Bundle heavily soiled
towels and sheets for the washerwoman, and see that every bed had sheets on it
that didn't look too dirty.
 
Patrons
paid extra for fresh sheets.
 
And make
sure each guestroom had at least five clean towels in it.
 
Hattie opened a cupboard and showed her a
ring of keys that held the upstairs linen storage key.

All in all, Betsy heard nothing
unusual in Emma's requirements until her cousin specified that the rooms had to
be cleaned by one o'clock, since a few patrons began arriving that early.
 
Betsy gave the ceiling a glance and
considered how late the revelry had extended into the night.
 
"Aren't some of them still asleep up
there this moment?"

"Oh, no."
 
Emma spread jam on her biscuit.
 
"Standard patrons are all out by four
o'clock in the morning.
 
Todd and his
men see to that, thank goodness."
 
With a lovely smile, she bit into the biscuit.

Such a policy hardly made sense to
Betsy's sleep-fogged brain, but she had plenty of other questions.
 
"Will you need my help in the afternoon
or evening?"

"Only if we've a frightfully
messy patron."

Betsy wrinkled her nose after
catching a whiff of alcohol, tobacco, and sweat from the common room.
 
"Who cleans out there?"

"Henry and Philip, who'll be
arriving any moment."

"Shall I tidy Abel's
office?"

"Absolutely not.
 
He's peculiar about who sets foot in
there.
 
Just sweep the hallway outside
if it's dirty."

Betsy gave her a curt nod, glad to
have one less room to clean.
 
"You
said four guestrooms.
 
What about those
four other rooms on the floor?
 
Shall I
clean those, too?"

Emma waved away the suggestion and
washed down her biscuit with coffee.
 
"The ladies clean their own rooms."

"You've residents besides
us?"

Hattie chuckled, not missing a
stroke with the bread.
 
"Lawd,
child, but Augusta must be a small town."

The nature of the Branwells'
auxiliary business dawned on Betsy.
 
Recalling Ensign Halsey's attention in the common room the previous
afternoon, she felt herself blush to her toes.
 
"This is a
bordello
?"

Emma smiled.
 
"Not exclusively, no, but we do such a
brisk business pouring cheer that it seems only natural to offer it in other
forms, too."

"This
is
a
bordello."

Emma's smile became practical.
 
"Betsy, if I need a sermon, I'll walk
down to Church Street.
 
Let us have an
understanding, shall we?"
 
Elbows
bent and propped on the table, she steepled her fingers.
 
"Georgia hasn't been in the forefront
of this war.
 
In the last six months,
more atrocities have crossed Camden's doorstep than most people witness in a
lifetime.

"Unfortunately, the victims
aren't brutal men.
 
If they were the
victims, wars wouldn't last but a day.
 
No, the victims are women like us, and their children.

"What happens to them when
their men go to war?
 
Many follow, and
it's a hard life for them.
 
Washing,
mending clothes, tending the injured and sick, never enough to eat, never a
moment to rest, never safe.
 
When their
men die, the army has no use for camp women.
 
Consider what happens to women and children who've no kin to take them
in."

Every day for more than a week,
Betsy
had
considered it.
 
The
stark terror of it pained her like a lump of ice in her soul.

"Janet's nose had been broken
and two back teeth had been knocked out when she came to me in February.
 
She'd run away from her husband, who got
drunk so he could beat and ravish her.
 
The other three ladies followed Janet in the spring.
 
Dolly's husband abandoned her, their son,
and her grandmother, and she's no other way to care for the boy and old woman.
 
Maria and her daughters were beaten by both
Whigs and Loyalists on their farm when Maria's husband and brothers vanished
into the war.
 
One of the daughters died
from the brutality.
 
Margaret's husband
was killed at Charles Town, leaving her to care for two sick children by
herself.
 
After her children died, she
followed Cornwallis's army here last month to shelter with her only relative, a
brother.
 
But he died, too."