The Courier of Caswell Hall (39 page)

He could never return to Caswell Hall. The memories of Sarah were too strong and the rift between him and his father too deep to heal. While he loved his family, he would never conform to Lord Caswell’s expectations for him to run the plantation, nor could he oversee his father’s slaves.

Hours after Grayson left Hammond Plantation, Elisha found him and insisted on helping him fight the rest of this war. Today might be the end for them both, but they would remain strong until that end.

He scanned the ships in the waters around him. There were two French ships on their left, battling what seemed like half the British fleet. With the Grand Union flag high on their mainmast, he and his crew were focused on a ship waving the King’s Colours.

Or at least, he was supposed to be focused. Even as he called for the men to load the cannon and fire, even as the blast echoed through his skin, he couldn’t escape the memories of his wife.

Through the smoky air, Grayson turned toward the shore. Near here was the wharf where his schooner had been docked, where in his hunger and thirst and complete deprivation, he had thought his life would never get any worse. And yet it had.

If only he had died back when he was on the boat. If only Sarah had never found out about his imprisonment. Perhaps the stress of living the past month without a home wouldn’t have taken its toll on Sarah. She might still be alive.

Would she have grieved the loss of him as he did for her? Perhaps not, since she had already grieved for him when he left the first time. At the time, he had wanted to protect her by leaving quietly, but it had been cruel not to tell her good-bye.

Through the smoke, he searched the hills above the bank, the red uniforms and the blue, neighbors fighting against neighbors, fathers against sons. Many would lose their lives in this battle, but Americans well understood the cost of freedom. They were willing to risk everything for it. Often he wondered if their enemy, given the opportunity to consider it, would choose freedom as well.

Instead of blasting the cannons again, Zadock and four other men prepared the cylinders they’d filled with arrows. They lit the pitched tips of the arrows and gunpowder propelled them forward. Some landed in the bay, but Grayson watched through his looking glass as dozens of the arrows found their mark on the deck of the ship in their sights. Minutes later, the ship hoisted a white flag.

Grayson should have celebrated his success, but it no longer felt as sweet as it should have.

“Hold your fire,” Grayson commanded.

Zadock stepped up beside him. “I think she’s burning, Captain.”

He picked up his looking glass again and saw what appeared to be a fire on deck.

He lowered the glass. “Where is Elisha?”

“I’m right here.”

“We must ready ourselves for prisoners.”

The crew lowered a rowboat into the water, and Elisha rowed him toward the burning ship. “They still might shoot us, Master Porter.”

“It makes no difference to me.”

Elisha rowed again. “It does to me. I need to find Morah and Alden.”

Grayson glanced back at this man who had labored for his family for thirty years, the man who had taught him to carve and swim and ride a horse. The man who had suffered through Grayson’s whip and then forgiven him for a punishment he hadn’t deserved.

The man who had saved him from the British.

“If we survive—” He paused. “When we survive this, we will find your family.”

As they drew closer to the ship, a curtain of haze and smoke engulfed them. If there were any survivors, they were impossible to see, and he didn’t want to get too close to the sinking ship for fear it would take their boat and Elisha down with it.

Elisha stopped paddling. “Listen.”

Grayson listened, but all he heard was the blast of cannons and the distant popping sound of guns on shore. “What is it?”

“Someone is calling for help.”

And then he heard it, a voice—no, two voices—calling out. It sounded like a woman and a child.

He pointed to his right. “That way.”

Elisha dipped his oars back into the water and paddled right.

Through the haze, Grayson saw two people clinging to a barrel. He reached out and lifted the boy up first and then the woman. The woman pulled the boy close to her, huddling over the child like a hen with a broken wing trying to protect her chick.

Her sleeve crept up, and Grayson saw the dark skin underneath. He looked across the boat at Elisha and saw the man’s eyes widen.

“Morah?”

The boy and woman both looked up at Elisha, recognition spilling into their eyes. Then Grayson watched as the woman collapsed into his arms.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” Elisha said, kissing her wet hair, her cheeks.

She smiled at him. “We were coming home to find you.”

Elisha reached for his son and engulfed him in his arms as well until another cannon blasted near them. Elisha straightened. “I must paddle.”

Grayson carefully moved past Morah and Alden. Then he motioned Elisha away from the oars. “Let me paddle now.”

Elisha hesitated.

“Your family has come home to you,” Grayson said. “You must be with them.”

Elisha slipped from his seat. “Yes, Master Grayson.”

Grayson took the oars.

The family huddled together, whispering and weeping with joy as Grayson turned the boat. Either they would find his ship, or they’d find shore.

Moments later, Elisha stopped him. “Morah says Commodore Hammond is here.”

Grayson stopped paddling. “Commodore Hammond?”

She nodded. “Master Hammond found us at an auction. He bought us back so we could come home with him.”

Groaning, Grayson squinted across the murky water and smoke. He’d just sunk the ship of Sarah’s father.

If he must, he would search all night to find the commodore.

When General Washington and the men who guarded him left for York the next morning, Lydia joined their entourage in order to search for her sister. The general asked Nathan to remain in Williamsburg to serve as a courier, but Nathan assured her he’d assist her after the battle if she could not locate Hannah.

Her world felt as if it had tipped once again. Nathan, the man she admired, was the nephew of George Washington. How was she supposed to explain that to her father?

It was possible that Father no longer cared.

The camp followers of both the British and American armies waited together on a hillside near York. Some of the women prepared food while others watched the fight as if the battle were a game in the Colosseum of Rome.

Lydia stood for a moment in wonder.

Cannons blasted from the web of sails and masts in the harbor below. Muskets and men volleyed on land. All the Americans had been doing to win their freedom—all she had been doing—came down to a battle along an otherwise peaceful bay.

Turning, she searched through the crowd of women and children until at last she found her sister sitting on a blanket. Hannah’s dress
was torn, her hair covered in the dust and sand blowing from the beach. Neither of them resembled the ladies they’d been groomed to become. The war, the tobacco fields, and Major Reed had stolen everything from them.

And yet it wasn’t too late for her sister to leave behind Major Reed. Now Lydia could tell her the truth.

She sat on the blanket next to her sister, and Hannah looked over at her in surprise. “Why are you here?”

“I have come to escort you home.”

Hannah returned her gaze to the battle. “But I have only just arrived.”

A wagon filled with injured soldiers rumbled past them, and she heard the agonizing screams of the men. “This is not the place for you,” Lydia said.

“It is better than working in those fields. The war will be over soon, and when it is, Dalton will care for me.”

She took a deep breath. “He will not.”

“You are jealous.”

Lydia shook her head. “He cannot care for you, because he must return to his . . .”

“His what?” Hannah insisted.

“His wife.”

When Hannah looked back at Lydia, her eyes were filled more with anger than surprise. “Wife?”

Lydia nodded. “One of the major’s officers told me he left Mistress Reed back in England.”

“He is not returning to England.” Hannah’s gaze fell upon the smoke again. “I will be Mistress Reed in Virginia.”

“But he—”

Hannah stopped her. “You are wasting your time. I shan’t go back to those fields.”

In the distance, Lydia saw flames engulf what looked like a ship. “I want the Americans to win.”

Hannah balled up the edge of the blanket. “Because of Seth?”

“Because I believe in independence.”

Hannah looked back at her. “So I suppose that means we are enemies forever.”

“We are sisters, Hannah. No matter who wins this war.”

Hannah took her hand, and together they listened to the roar of the battle. Lydia knew not the location of Major Reed or Nathan or their brother, but for now they had each other.

And she hoped that one day her sister would change her mind.

A storm forced Grayson and the rest of the fleet to break from the battle, and when they dropped anchor north of York, he hurried below to visit Commodore Hammond in his chamber. Three days prior, he and Elisha had found the commodore clinging to a plank, barely conscious, and Elisha had hauled him into their small boat. Grayson rowed the man back to the ship, where he was tended to while Grayson and his crew continued to fight.

The ship rocked in the winds, but he was grateful for the respite the storm provided. None of them knew how long the battle would last, but it seemed to him that the French and American fleet remained strong.

Grayson knocked once on Commodore Hammond’s door before he unlocked it.

The commodore sat up in his bed, staring at Grayson as if he saw a ghost. “My eyes seem to be playing a trick on me.”

Grayson sat on a stool by the bed. “There is nothing wrong with your eyes, Commodore.”

“But they tell me that Grayson Caswell is standing before me.”

“It is true.”

“You and your men have taken my ship?”

“I am afraid that is correct.” They’d sunk it, to be exact, but he didn’t say that.

The old man leaned back against his pillow. “I suppose if I am to be taken, I am glad it is by a neighbor.”

“We are more than neighbors, sir.”

“Pray tell, what do you mean?”

“A minister near here also made me your son.”

In the hours to come, Grayson told Sarah’s father of her last days and her death, and inside that tiny cabin, Commodore Hammond’s grief mirrored his own.

As the crew waited above, the commodore clung to a locket Sarah had given him, and Grayson mourned with him, mixing tears of anger and sorrow. Morah had already told her master about his ruined home, but the loss of his ship and then the news of his daughter was almost too much for him to bear.

Commodore Hammond turned the locket in his fingers. “They have taken everything from me.”

“The Americans?”

“Both the British and the Americans.”

“Aye.” Grayson stood and watched the rain through the porthole. He would need to give orders to the crew soon. “You can rebuild your house.”

“The house was my grandfather’s dream, not mine.” The commodore coughed. “What news is there of Seth?”

Grayson turned back to him. “He is planning to marry the daughter of an American colonel.”

“Ah. A planter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That will be good for him,” Commodore Hammond said. “Do you still have your schooner?”

He shook his head. “It is the property of the British now.”

“They have taken much from you as well.”

He nodded.

Commodore Hammond folded his fingers over the locket. “I can no longer determine exactly what England is fighting for.”

“She is fighting to win.”

The chamber door burst open, and Zadock rushed inside.

“What is your news?” Grayson demanded.

Zadock glanced between the two men, his hat askew. “Cornwallis has called a cease-fire.”

November 1781

Lightning flashed across the steely blue waves on the James River as Lydia slipped out one last time to the gazebo. She watched the display as she strolled through the gardens, waiting for rain.