The Blacksmith's Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution (46 page)

Betsy lounged back in her chair and
took a deliberate swallow of ale.
 
"As I was saying before you interrupted me, when I finish here, I
shall take care of it."

Emma stalked over, yanked away the
tankard, and handed it to Hattie.
 
"How dare you ignore my orders, you ungrateful wretch?"

Betsy leveled a cold stare on her
cousin.
 
Five days ago, Emma had
abandoned pretense of affection toward them, making them wonder how they could
last another week in the company of such a termagant.
 
Betsy had spotted Emma sneaking up to Abel's suite with the
ledger and day's invoices.
 
Abel, she
suspected, wasn't as infirm as reported.
 
The two were scheming something.
 
"You're confusing your cousin with a servant."

"Room two.
 
Now
."

Betsy wiped her mouth on her
napkin, obtained the keys, climbed the service stairs, and retrieved a clean
sheet for the bed in number two.
 
Back
downstairs a few minutes later, she dumped the wine-covered sheet in a basket
for the washerwoman and returned the keys to Hattie.
 
Above the din in the common room, soldiers from several units
were belting out a verse of "The British Grenadiers."
 
Waving aside Hattie's offer of more food,
she trudged back up the stairs.
 
What
she needed more than food was something she hadn't had since leaving Augusta:
solid rest.

At the door to her room, she
stretched.
 
In response to the baby's
movement, she rested her hand on her belly.
 
Baby, sweet baby.
 
Her expression
softened.
 
She swept her thumb across
the base of her ribcage.
 
A tiny elbow
or knee pressed her thumb before relaxing back into the protection of the
womb.
 
Dreaminess born of exhaustion and
maternal glory brushed Betsy's lips.
 
She envisioned a newborn boy with dark hair, held high and proud in the
arms of his Creek grandfather beneath winter sunshine.
 
Regret misted her eyes.
 
Would Clark ever see the child he'd
fathered?
 
Did he even care?

Hand still on her belly, she opened
the door and took two steps into the room before halting.
 
Like iron filings caught in a magnetic
field, all the little hairs on the back of her neck stood straight out, but she
wasn't sure why.
 
Light from the opened
door allowed her to see that no one lurked in the room.
 
All their belongings appeared safe and
untouched, even the supplies for their journey.
 
Still, her instincts vibrated.
 
She seized Lucas's musket, swept it under the bed, and poked it along
the other side of the bed in the shadows.
 
She flung open the wardrobe, but no one was hiding.

After scratching her temple, she
set the musket down, lit candles, and closed the door.
 
She surveyed the room again before
inspecting their supplies and assuring herself that nothing had been
stolen.
 
She peeked beneath the mattress
where the key to the cipher and other papers lay just as she'd left them.
 
She also rummaged through her clothes and
Tom's, not sure what she was looking for, and not satisfied to find nothing
amiss.

The entire time, intuition shot
such peculiar, crossed signals through her, poising her on the edge of flight
while causing her mouth to water.
 
In
exasperation, she pushed aside the puzzle and yielded to her exhaustion.
 
Undressed in minutes, she crawled into bed
and fell asleep.

A small portion of her brain
allowed her to register the arrival of Tom half an hour later before plunging her
back into sleep.
 
But her dreams didn't
offer her the rest she craved.
 
Blood
and lust they gave her, and peril scented dark, humid, savage.
 
She jerked awake before the first cockcrow,
Tom's soft snores on the floor beside her, her nose buried in her pillow, her
mouth full of a dark, humid, savage taste.
 
The taste was all over her pillow and the sheets.
 
When she bolted upright in bed, she smelled
it, faint, throughout the room, as though whatever had deposited it there was
still in the room with them.
 
But she
and Tom were alone.

"Go back to sleep,
Betsy," she muttered.
 
"It's
just your imagination," yet after she lay down, sleep didn't come.
 
Crazy as it seemed, she knew that what her
instincts had picked up on when she first entered the room the night before had
been a scent that had no business being in there and delivered dreams drenched
in blood and lust.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

ON SUNDAY AUGUST thirteenth,
churchgoing citizens united and bent their heads in prayers for deliverance,
along with folks who hadn't considered themselves religious.
 
General Gates had camped thirteen miles due
north of Camden, while the multitude that had followed him from North Carolina
filled in the surrounding terrain.
 
Although Lord Rawdon ordered garrisons from Rocky Mount and Hanging Rock
drawn in, along with four companies from Ninety Six, the redcoats were
outnumbered.
 
Even if Lord Cornwallis
arrived with all his men, the Crown forces would
still
be outnumbered.

For lack of sustenance, the
Continentals had razed the countryside on their southward march, concocting
eldritch stews made of green corn, green peaches, and whatever else they could
get their hands on, and thickening the entire mess with hair powder.
 
Gates's army was a dysenteric, noisome,
starving mob overendowed with militia as green as the produce they
consumed.
 
And according to reports,
Gates was strutting about as if he had plumage worth displaying, forming his
own strategies and not listening to his officers.

Granted bluster from rum and ale,
British soldiers at the Leaping Stag that night boasted about plowing through
the enfeebled Continental horde.
 
But
Betsy, in the doorway with Tom, saw it from another angle.
 
Never mind conquest.
 
The fevered, starving Continentals parked
thirteen miles north of them could do plenty of damage in Camden just trying to
lay their hands on decent food.
 
Ever
mindful of Hattie, she murmured in Tom's ear, "Can you not get Mr. Wade to
give you last week's pay on the morrow instead of Tuesday so we can leave a day
earlier?"

He shook his head.
 
"Believe me, I've tried.
 
He wants those dozen boot orders finished by
Tuesday at five."

"How important are boots when
armies are about to fight?"

"He's sticking it to all of
us, not just me.
 
If anyone leaves on
the morrow, he loses all of last week's pay."

With a sniff, Betsy crossed her
arms.
 
"After I pick up the
packhorse Tuesday at noon, I may as well help Harker pull the press."
 
She and Tom could be ready to leave Tuesday
evening.
 
Their first choice of route
had become doubtful with the Continentals sprawled across it, but much could
change between Sunday and Tuesday evening.
 
They'd decide on their exact route when they were ready to set out.

A soldier burst in through the
front doors, and above the din, Betsy distinguished his words: "Lord
Cornwallis!
 
The Earl
Cornwallis!"
 
The noise level
plummeted.
 
Everyone in the tavern fixed
attention to the young man, who had outrun his breath and was waiting for it to
catch up with him.
 
"He rode out of
Charles Town with his men four days ago.
 
He's scarcely paused for need to reach us in time.
 
He's here!"

The tavern exploded with
"Huzzahs!" and hats and helmets rode the air.
 
When the men settled down and called for
bumpers of drink, Betsy heard a hubbub swelling outside, the parade of
Cornwallis and his troops snaking through Camden.
 
One private leaped for the door waving his fellows to
follow.
 
"He's headed right up
Broad Street!"
 
The common room
resounded with the soldiers' stampede and the clank of tankards toppled off
tables.

Betsy tugged at Tom's sleeve.
 
"Come on."
 
She motioned him across the hallway to the
windowed pantry beside Abel's office.

Redcoats, Jägers, provincials, and
militiamen packed the roadside, making the view out difficult.
 
The military entourage flowed past on
horseback.
 
Lord Cornwallis rode near
the front waving and smiling, his back straight and regal after four days in
the saddle, his powdered wig impeccable.
 
Not a speck of travel dust sullied the scarlet of his coat or its gold
lace and epaulets.
 
Every inch of him
spoke assurance to the desperate faces around him that the King was superior
and would triumph.

Betsy's smile was wry.
 
"They've really needed
Cornwallis."

"He knows it.
 
He rode up Broad Street just for them."

"He should have come
sooner.
 
He'd have scared off
Gates."

"Gates would have come whether
he was here or not.
 
He's spoiling for a
fight.
 
I hope the redcoats give it to
him."

She eyed Tom with an eyebrow cocked
in amusement.
 
"What, now, have you
turned loyal without my knowing it?"

"Hah.
 
I'm all too weary of this war.
 
Perhaps a few more British victories like
Savannah and Charles Town will make the rebels willing to talk more and
squabble less."

***

She dreamed of a battlefield on a
crisp autumn afternoon, with men in red and tartan and buckskin lined up on one
side, and opposing them by a thousand yards, men in blue and buckskin standing
in formation.
 
Banners snapped in the
breeze, and a drum beat: whump, whump, whump.
 
Whump, whump, whump.
 
No one
moved.
 
What were they all waiting for?
 
Whump, whump, whump.

She dragged herself from sleep to
find Tom crouched at her bedside, listening.
 
Whump, whump, whump.
 
With a
gasp, she sat up, her heart drilling through her ribcage, and whispered,
"What's that sound?"

"I don't know," he said,
low, "but it's coming from across the hallway."
 
Her gaze followed his outstretched arm.
 
Abel's suite.
 
Whump, whump, whump.
 
"I'd better investigate.
 
Stay here."

"Oh, sure, I'll stay
here.
 
Do you think I've lost my
wits?
 
I'm coming with you."

He sighed and fumbled for his
breeches.
 
Whump, whump, whump.
 
"I should have known better than to try
to reason with you.
 
Better bring your musket."

Feet bare, throat dry, palms sweaty
around the loaded musket, she listened with Tom at the shut door to Abel's suite.
Whump, whump, whump.
 
With more courage
than she could have summoned, Tom shoved the door open and pulled back outside
next to her, his loaded musket ready.

Emma's muffled sobs greeted them,
along with more whump, whump, whump.
 
Tom hazarded a look into the room and straightened in astonishment.
 
"Betsy, come here."

At the sound of his voice, the sobs
became squealed entreaties spiked with hysteria.
 
Her musket lowered, Betsy followed Tom inside the candlelit
bedroom, where she stared, dumbfounded.
 
Blindfolded and gagged, Emma, in a silky shift, sat bound in a plush
chair.
 
She'd managed to free her right
foot, with which she'd been stomping the floorboards in attempt to draw
attention.

Abel was nowhere to be found.
 
Pillows fluffed into human form beneath the
bedcovers attested to his absence from bed when his wife was restrained.
 
And a good thing that was, too, for from the
quantity of escaped feathers and shredded covers, the blade of a sharp knife or
tomahawk had imbedded itself several times in the pillows where his body should
have lain.

Betsy eyed Tom, and the sight of
him gripping his musket made her tense her fingers about her own musket.
 
"Fairfax," he mouthed.

Her gaze darted to the darkness of
the doorway, then back to Emma in sympathy and alarm.
 
How long ago had this happened?
 
Was Fairfax still prowling the house?
 
Why hadn't he killed Emma and come looking for her after uncovering the
Branwells' ruse?