Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution (58 page)

Chapter Fifty-Eight

HELEN CRANED
HER neck for a yawn at the sky, its leaden color paling, and acknowledged the
clarity of a soldier's features when he walked past on patrol.
 
If the rain held off, opposing forces north
of them would be able to distinguish each other well enough to know friend from
foe.
 
She shivered.

At three
o'clock in the morning, the remainder of the army had set out.
 
Tarleton ordered the civilians and guard detachment
to remain upon their ground until full daybreak.
 
She fought the urge to stand and pace, instead regarding Liza,
Jen, Sally, Rebecca, and Margaret, who sat upon another blanket not far from
her.
 
How could they exchange recipes
and mend stockings when those they loved were miles away, assuming position for
battle?

Their quiet,
feminine unity touched her.
 
She
swallowed at poignancy in her throat.
 
They'd left her undisturbed to write in her journal, but she knew they'd
welcome her.
 
For centuries, women
snared in the savagery of war had kept each other's company and formed citadels
of calm and courage because it was the way of women.

The ether
around Helen vibrated and convulsed, as if from a thunderclap.
 
Conversations hushed.
 
Everyone paused.
 
A spider of ice crawled over Helen's skull and dragged her gaze
north.
 
In her bones, she understood: a
shock wave from a huge volley, the battle underway.

Jonathan
secured her desk on Calliope.
 
Baggage
guards, representative from each corps that marched with Tarleton, continued
patrols, dawn's light marking their steadfastness.
 
Artisans and slaves checked wagons and draft horses to ensure the
baggage was ready to roll.
 
Jen recited
a molasses cake recipe for the women on the blanket.
 
Treadaway wove between them all gnawing his lip, useless.

Rebecca left
the women and knelt at the edge of Helen's blanket.
 
Surely the girl was anxious for her father and frightened for her
own well-being, yet she didn't display those concerns.
 
Try as she might, Helen couldn't summon a
smile of encouragement for her.
 
Rebecca
didn't want her encouragement.
 
With a
stab of empathy and horror, she recognized childhood terminated by war in
Rebecca's face, not unlike her own terminated childhood.

Rebecca waited
to be certain Treadaway was out of earshot.
 
Then she moistened her lips.
 
"Thank you."
 
Her
child's voice was the whisper of fallen autumn leaves.
 
"For helping me."

Helen
nodded.
 
Rebecca returned to the blanket
of women, and Helen considered Newman, now dead, and Neville and Fairfax,
fighting miles to the north with Tarleton, and she hoped Rebecca truly
was
out of the Epsilon ring.
 
She deserved
that much.

Distorted
sounds drifted to her, a distant cacophony of cannon fire and discharged
muskets.
 
She struggled to picture Morgan's
militia flinging down their muskets in terror, scattering before the deafening
charge of dragoons from the Legion and Seventeenth Light, but the images
refused to bind.
 
All she could envision
was hollow-eyed exhaustion and hunger on the faces of the soldiers headed
north, swallowed by night several hours before.

In charge of
the baggage, Ensign Fraser of the 71st ordered their departure.
 
Thirty-five wagons creaked into motion,
preceded by two batmen and Negroes, their horses laden with portmanteaus,
including that of the paymaster.

The high ground
degenerated into swamp.
 
Tremors gripped
Helen's muscles before she'd marched five minutes.
 
Travel grime plastered her face and hands, and her brain phased
in and out of a fantasy where she was clean, dry, and warm, well-fed, and
rested.
 
Even by daylight, the terrain
tripped her, fought her advance north.
 
The saber of winter wind sliced through wool and rasped in the trees.
 
Go.
 
Go
.
 
Trickster crows swooped
down nearby, cocked their heads, and mocked the procession with beady
eyes.
 
Haw-haw!
 
Helen's gut rippled with hunger, her
constant companion for at least three days.
 
How had Tarleton and his men prevailed?

She almost
tottered into the rear of a wagon before realizing the train had stopped, the
road beneath them high ground again, fringed by copses of oaks, dogwoods, and
pines.
 
Battle sounds from the north had
dwindled.
 
Her gaze tracked on Fraser,
who trotted ahead.

The advance
guard had detained three civilians on horseback: clean, middle-class men who
didn't look to have fought their way through a battle.
 
One man waved an arm.
 
"Halloo, you folks with Tarleton?
 
If I were you, I'd scatter.
 
Your commander just lost a battle up
yonder!"

Disbelief
shimmied up Helen's back like a hundred ants of ice.
 
Consternation erupted along the line —"Who is he?"
"What's he talking about?" "Tarleton
lost
?"— before
Fraser reached the three civilians.
 
"Who are you?"

"We were
visiting kinfolk, cattle farmers.
 
We
saw a battle."
 
The man's voice
quavered with shock.
 
"Tarleton's
officers are dead.
 
His infantry
collapsed.
 
Morgan's men aren't far
behind.
 
For god's sake, save yourselves
while you can!"
 
He slapped his
horse's flank.
 
"Heigh, get
up!"
 
No one tried to stop the
civilians from bolting.

Soldiers shoved
people aside and began dumping Tarleton's hoarded delicacies upon the ground to
prevent rebels from confiscating them.
 
Hungry artisans bellowed with rage.
 
Two slammed Helen as they leaped to pull soldiers off the baggage.
 
Jonathan dragged her and Calliope out of the
fray.

Head spinning,
she watched soldiers wrench themselves free, cut loose draft horses nearest
them, and flee south upon the road, Ensign Fraser in their lead.
 
Becoming a rebel prisoner of war was not an
option for a man who'd served with Banastre Tarleton.

Sally
wailed.
 
Men rushed to unhitch remaining
draft horses and escape, or dive into the baggage for food.
 
Margaret pushed a man away from a horse, her
brusqueness so shocking him that he backed off and allowed her to claim it for
her own flight.
 
Jonathan yanked Helen's
arm.
 
"We're getting out.
 
Now."

Two-dozen
whooping militiamen on horseback thundered in from the north and discharged
firearms into the group of civilians.
 
Four men and Jen sprawled on the ground, bloody and screaming.
 
Swords whooshed the air, artisans' muskets
fired, and Helen dove for cover beneath a wagon.
 
When she scuttled around to look for Jonathan, she saw Calliope's
legs.
 
Where was Jonathan?

"Yee-aww,
women
!"
hollered a rebel.
 
Liza and Sally
shrieked.
 
A man seized Helen's forearm
and tried to drag her from beneath the wagon.
 
"Got me one right here!"
 
She gripped the underside of the wagon with her other hand.
 
Unbalanced, he sprawled belly down.
 
Expression screwed into a snarl, he started
to crawl beneath the wagon.
 
She gouged
one of his eyes with her fingers.
 
He
bellowed and wiggled away.
 
Gooey blood
from his eyeball clung to her hand.
 
She
shrieked, her heart pounding with horror, and smeared her gory fingers through
the mud.

Dozens more
horses thundered onto the scene.
 
The
song of sabers unsheathed rang through the site.
 
Rebels, as one, howled with terror.
 
Blades slammed together, men cursed, horses whinnied — Calliope,
where was Calliope?
 
Heart whamming her
throat, Helen rotated her head toward the outer edge of the wagon.
 
Again, she spotted Calliope's legs, dancing
around.
 
But where was
Jonathan
?
 
She had to find Jonathan.

Certain that
Tarleton's cavalry had engaged the Whigs, she scuttled toward the inner edge of
her cover, hoping for a glimpse of dragoons.
 
She froze at the sound of a moist, heavy impact.
 
A severed head hit the ground inches from
her nose, blood spraying away from the wagon.
 
The man's eyes blinked twice before glazing over.
 
His lips, twisted in a grimace, revealed
space where a front tooth was missing.
 
Parker, from Devonshire, Parker — no, it couldn't be Parker, because
Parker wasn't a rebel.

Her stomach
heaved and brought up nothing, not even bile.
 
Fancying she smelled rum on the dead rebel, she gagged, squeezed her
eyes shut, and rolled to the other side of the wagon.
 
Horror tossed her gut, dizzied her mind.
 
Flee, yes, flee.
 
Calliope's reins trailed the ground.
 
She seized them, dragged herself from beneath the wagon.
 
The mare whickered at the sight of her.

Smeared with
mud, Helen crouched behind the wagon, waiting for her stomach to quiet.
 
She finally poked her head up when, above
the moans of the wounded, she heard Tarleton's grief-thickened voice: "God
save the king, but I cannot stay!
 
None
of us can!"

Sweat and dirt
streaked his face.
 
Grime dulled the
gold buttons and braid, and the swan feathers drooped.
 
The horse beneath him wasn't even the
magnificent charger he'd ridden out on five hours earlier, but a tired old
gelding.
 
"How valiantly each of
you has served His Majesty and me.
 
I'm
unable to repay your loyalty.
 
Morgan,
that whoreson with no decency, he shot
officers
!
 
The infantry lies dead or grievously
wounded!"

Helen darted a
glance around at the uniformed men on horseback — Legion cavalry with some dragoons
from the Seventeenth Light — and reality finally speared her.
 
Daniel Morgan and his militia rabble had
obliterated Tarleton's infantry in less than half an hour.
 
All Tarleton had left of an army of a
thousand was fewer than two hundred dragoons.

Her gaze shot
to the colonel again.
 
The streaks of
moisture on his face.
 
Not sweat,
no.
 
Despair and grief lumped in her
throat.
 
Tarleton would never forgive
himself this defeat.
 
He'd been as
devoted to those men as they'd been to him.

"Heed
me.
 
More rebels are on the way.
 
We must ride to my Lord Cornwallis.
 
Leave the baggage.
 
Save yourselves!"
 
He
wheeled the gelding about south.
 
Cavalrymen steadied horses bearing bound prisoners who'd survived the
attack upon the baggage.

Betrayal and
more horror climbed through Helen's despair.
 
What was Tarleton doing?
 
Was he
leaving them to Daniel Morgan, and the settling of old scores?
 
Tarleton's Quarter — no, no, surely not!

Margaret, in
just as much muddy disarray as Helen but somehow still sultry and beautiful
mounted upon a draft horse, thrust her way through the crowd to Tarleton.
 
Then they were off southbound on the road,
Tarleton, Margaret, perhaps one hundred fifty cavalrymen, and their prisoners.
 
Helen and the others gawped at their retreat
in stunned silence and disbelief.

"God damn
you to hell!"
 
A wainwright shook
his fist at the retreating horses.
 
"You bloody bastards, you left us to die!"
 
A roar of panicked agreement swelled from
the artisans.

A hand jiggled
Helen's shoulder.
 
With a gasp, she
faced a grimy, rumpled Treadaway.
 
"Come quickly, madam."
 
His breath was short, as if he'd been running.
 
"Your friend, he's hurt badly!"

Confusion and
fear snared her reason.
 
"Jonathan!"
 
Still
gripping Calliope's reins, she stumbled off-road after the agent, into the
brush.
 
Dead briars snagged at her
petticoat and cloak.

"Hurry!"
 
Treadaway paused, his expression twisted
with concern, and waved for her to follow him into a copse of trees.

Brambles and
brush detained her.
 
"Mr.
Treadaway, wait up!
 
Jonathan, I'm
coming!"
 
She finally cleared
underbrush and glimpsed the agent ahead in the gloom.
 
"Mr. Treadaway!"
 
She trotted ahead, peering around tree trunks.
 
"Jonathan?"