Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (24 page)

After the
family was out of earshot, the dragoons buzzed with speculation about Thomas
Sumter.
 
Their fellow Legionnaires and
Tarleton had inflicted paralysis upon a great source of aggravation in the
Carolinas.
 
Huzzah for Tarleton and the
Legion!

While they
advanced ideas about how to track down a crippled Sumter and finish him off,
Helen glanced from Fairfax, whose cold scrutiny was for the road ahead, to
Jonathan, and she paced the mare beside the wagon.
 
"Jonathan," she said, low, "they're forgetting something."

His serene
expression and soft tone hardly matched the concern in his eyes.
 
"Marion
isn't
paralyzed, and
he's out there somewhere ahead of us —"
 
Wry humor molded his mouth.
 
"— mopping up the road with Loyalists when it suits his mood."

Chapter Twenty-Two

THAT NIGHT,
ROGER drilled with the musket, and parries and feints were executed across the
chessboard.
 
As Helen penned her journal
entry, she tried not to think about residents of the Santee made homeless.

Dragoons not on
sentry detail shuffled about camp, edgy and spoiling for battle.
 
Did they ever feel remorse for their
actions?

She read their
responses to the day's question: "What is the most formidable
characteristic of the rebels that we must overcome to end the
conflict?"
 
Perseverance, they'd
agreed.
 
If leaders like Marion and
Sumter despaired, they didn't show that face to their men.

Did George the
Third ponder perseverance as a force of life, or did his news arrive creamed
and honeyed?
 
Even when rhetorically
asked in her head, she found the question disconcerting.

With a jolt to
the bench, Fairfax sat beside her.
 
Jonathan packed away his chessboard with a tranquil expression.
 
Helen swiveled back around and closed her
journal.
 
"Let me guess, my
brother.
 
You won again at chess.
 
Congratulations.
 
How many nights of victory is that?"

He snatched the
journal from her lap, wrenching a gasp from her.
 
Perplexed, she watched him amble around the campfire with the
open journal and absorb its content like a contemplative monk in an
early-Church labyrinth.
 
He progressed
through entries with a reading pace faster than that of anyone she knew,
including Jonathan.

When he
withdrew a smoldering stick from the fire's edge and brought it to a page, she
leaped to her feet.
 
"What are you
doing?"
 
She stalked over and
lunged for the journal.
 
"How dare
you burn my journal?"
 
Perhaps
imagining torched houses had gone to Fairfax's head, inspired him with the urge
to emulate Tarleton and set something valuable ablaze.

"Sullivan,
prevent my sister from interfering."

"Sir."
 
The dragoon seized her upper arm and, when
she'd ceased to struggle, guided her away.
 
She blasted Fairfax with a glare.

Rather than
ignite the page, he studied the effect of heat upon it and other pages using
hot sticks plucked from the fire.
 
At
last, Helen realized he was looking for a cipher concealed with invisible ink
and rendered legible with the application of heat.
 
How ridiculous.

He flung a
stick into the fire, closed the journal, and approached.
 
"Thank you, Sullivan."
 
The dragoon released her, bowed his head,
and walked away.
 
Fairfax presented the
journal to her.

Straightened
with dignity, she clutched the journal to her chest.
 
"Suppression of disloyalty with the torch is an effective
means of cowing insurgents.
 
Am I
officially cowed yet?"

"You sound
just like one of them."
 
He jutted
his jaw ahead to where residents of the Santee had lost their homes.

"Considering
that some are likely Loyalists, I'm not surprised."

"The
rebels got what they deserved.
 
Each
dragoon here remembers his own home or property destroyed by partisans."
 
He studied her face.
 
"You're troubled because women and
children were dispossessed."

"Yes, I
am."

A gentle smile
curved his lips.
 
He grasped her
shoulders and whispered, "You aren't the correct journalist for the
project.
 
The fairer sex does tend toward
excessive sentimentality.
 
Go home.
 
That spitfire servant of yours will stroke
your brow and remind you that you're a good writer, despite your failure."

Rage fueled by
self-doubt she'd borne since the procurement seared her.
 
Not clever enough to master poise of a
well-bred lady.
 
Not intelligent enough
to maintain the turpentine plantation while Silas was gambling.
 
Not whole enough to capture the heart of a
good man.
 
Not talented enough to write
and edit for a magazine.
 
Not thrifty
enough to survive on a pittance.

We have more
in common than you're willing to admit
.
 
Damn Fairfax, he
knew
her and wrung her soul at its most
vulnerable spot, demanding her surrender.

She recalled
his metaphor from Lady Montagu about fruit falling from the tree.
 
He was shaking the tree.

Memory replayed
the silk of Jonathan's movement when he sidestepped George Gaynes.
 
Jonathan had deflected Gaynes, offered all
that vigor back to its originator, given Gaynes the power he wanted.
 
Power.

Her thoughts
assumed cohesion, and her pulse settled into rhythm.
 
"I shall persevere awhile longer.
 
No doubt I shall learn something of value in the process.
 
In the end, I just might surprise both of
us."

Hair at the
back of her neck stood out at the transformation of his expression — from smug
assurance to wary predator, just as in her parlor, when she'd handed pressure
back to him by mentioning his upbringing at Redthorne.

It hadn't taken
him but a day to reevaluate her strengths and weaknesses.
 
She expected no less of him the second time.

Emotion closed
from his face, he bowed his head.
 
"As you wish."
 
His
adaptation to the role of her kin grown smoother with each day, he escorted her
to her tent and signaled for Hannah to attend her.

She lay in the
cot a long while before sleep found her, the conversation with Jonathan in her
back yard remembered.
 
What lesson
does the universe intend you to learn with Mr. Fairfax as your teacher?
 
Whatever the lesson, she'd completed but a
fragment of it.

***

"Large
group ahead, sir."
 
His expression
grim, the forward scout, Ross, paced his mount to that of Fairfax, and dust
settled around their horses.
 
"At
least thirty men riding our way."

Helen emerged
from reflection.
 
Ross didn't look
pleased.
 
Were bandits headed for their
party?

"Francis Marion
has found us."
 
From his lack of
emotion, Fairfax might have been offering an opinion on the placement of
furniture.
 
His gaze swept the party.
 
"No aggression.
 
We allow them to pass.
 
Campbell, you're our voice again if
needed."

"Sir."
 
Campbell rode forward, and Ross fell back.

Jonathan helped
Hannah off the wagon to walk beside him and left Roger to steer the wagon.
 
The road branched.
 
At the intersection, burned into a plank of half-rotten wood, was
a sign that pointed left toward swampier ground:
Nelsons Ferry
.
 
Campbell raised a hand to halt their
progress, delay a right turn that would send them away from the ferry and
swamp.
 
Three-dozen men on horseback
cantered past for Nelson's Ferry, many of them Negroes, all in brownish hunting
shirts, tomahawks thrust in belts, the dull wink of musket metal across their
thighs.
 
Dust climbed at the patrol's
passage.
 
Helen fanned it away and
coughed.

She and her
party turned right and resumed their journey almost due north.
 
Seconds later, more than half the men from
the patrol surrounded and paced them.
 
Uncanny how they'd slipped upon them that way, almost without warning.

A small-boned
man in his mid-forties rode up and joined Campbell.
 
Gaunt and ugly as a withered swamp root, he possessed a pair of black
eyes that embodied equal parts sagacity and sorrow, and he rode with such grace
that he might have been born in his saddle.
 
Despite ungainly features, he radiated the magic of leadership.
 
Helen flushed with fear and thrill.
 
Badley would salivate over this story — if
she lived to write it.

Campbell
nodded.
 
"Morning."

"Morning."

The dragoon
glanced around to evaluate his own party's poor odds at surviving a skirmish
before he returned attention to the other man and deepened his regional
accent.
 
"You fellers know these
roads well?"

"We ride
them all the time.
 
Marion's the
name."
 
The man inclined his head
and also sized up Helen's party, including the wagon.
 
On the surface, they might be just another group of displaced
settlers.
 
His gaze snagged on Fairfax,
who rode erect in his saddle and monitored the road ahead with the casual,
bored look of a British cavalry officer.

For once, Helen
wished Fairfax could read her mind.
 
Forget
aristocracy and slump in that saddle, you dolt!

"
Colonel
Marion?
 
Why, I sure am pleased to meet
you, sir."
 
Campbell tipped his
hat.
 
"Zachary Downey.
 
This here's my kin, and we're headed for kin
near the High Hills.
 
How many more days
travel you reckon we got?"

"Two."
 
Marion eyed Fairfax again, and Fairfax
continued to ignore him and broadcast nobility with his posture.
 
"I don't recollect knowing any Downeys
in the High Hills."

"I 'spect
not, sir.
 
They ain't lived there above
three months.
 
We heard there's houses
burned up yonder.
 
How far north?"

"Another
day."

"As far as
the High Hills?"

"No, your
kin are safe.
 
Tarleton started the
torch at Sumter's mills on Jack's Creek.
 
Then he rode north to the Richardson place.
 
Destroyed a number of homes in that area."

"He still
roaming these parts?"

"No.
 
He's gone."

"Good."
 
Helen saw a bead of sweat roll down
Campbell's face, and she gulped.
 
The
dragoon had nerves of iron to continue the charade.

Marion's head
rotated on his scrawny neck, affording him another glance at Fairfax.
 
"Next time we're in the High Hills,
we'll call upon the Downeys."
 
He
tilted his hat.
 
"Good day, sir,
and luck to you on your journey."

The rumble of
Marion and his men faded back south.
 
Then Campbell blotted sweat from his face, and a snarl rippled his
expression.
 
"That old fox wasn't
fooled."

"No, he
wasn't," said Roger.
 
"He's a
sharp devil."

"I give
him less than a day to hunt us down."
 
Connor smirked.
 
"But he
won't return.
 
He'll send his lackeys
after us."

"In the
dark.
 
That's how he works
it."
 
His face as animated as any
child's when served an apple pastry, Campbell turned to Fairfax.
 
"What do you think, sir?"

"Let us
welcome their return on behalf of Colonel Tarleton and the Legion."
 
A chill raked Helen's spine when she
recognized the hate-filled seven-year-old come out to play.
 
By refusing to bow his shoulders, Fairfax
had flaunted his birth class, made certain Marion wouldn't mistake them for
Whigs, so he could lure them back.

Davison raised
his musket above his head.
 
"Huzzah!"

The responsive
"Huzzah!" from the other dragoons, their faces contorted, roared to
the sky.

Chapter Twenty-Three

FROM THE
ROCK-STREWN darkness where they crouched, Jonathan's voice unfolded, low.
 
"My good fellow, five nights of musket
drills do not a dragoon make."

A sulk tinged
Roger's voice.
 
"'Tarleton's
Quarter' is going to happen at our campsite.
 
I'm stuck here with two women and — and —"