Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (113 page)

THE NEW YEAR
had come before William arrived at Morristown. He’d had plenty of time on the road to make his decision. And while he assured himself that Morristown was the logical place to begin his inquiries, since this was where Denzell was and Dottie would likely be with him by now, his conscience observed acidly that this decision was the counsel of cowardice as much as logic. He didn’t want to walk into Sir Henry Clinton’s headquarters as a shabbily dressed civilian and face the stares—if not the blunt questions—of men he knew.

He just didn’t.

Morristown itself boasted two churches and two taverns, with a cluster of maybe fifty houses and a large mansion near the edge of town. From the flags adorning this house, and the sentries before it, it was evidently now Washington’s headquarters. William wouldn’t mind seeing the fellow, but curiosity could wait.

Curiosity, though, caused him to ask someone on the town green why so many folk were waiting outside the churches, lined up and stamping their feet against the cold.

“Smallpox,” he was told. “Inoculations. General Washington’s orders. Troops and townspeople alike—like it or not. They been doin’ it in the churches every Monday and Wednesday.”

William had heard of inoculation for smallpox; Mother Claire had mentioned it once, in Philadelphia. Inoculation meant doctors, and Washington’s name meant army doctors. Thanking his informant, he strode to the head of one line and, tipping his hat to the person at the door, pushed his way inside as though he had a right to be there.

A doctor and his assistant were working near the baptismal font at the front of the church, using the altar for their supplies. The doctor wasn’t Denzell Hunter, but he was a place to start, and William strode purposefully up the aisle, drawing surprised looks from the people waiting.

The doctor, a fat gentleman with an eared cap pulled down over his brow and a bloody apron, was standing by the baptismal font, this structure having been temporarily topped with a wide piece of board on which were the tools of inoculation: two small knives, a pair of forceps, and a bowl full of what looked like very thin, dark-red worms. As William approached, he saw the doctor, his breath wreathing round his face, cut a small slit in the hand of a woman who had turned her face away, grimacing at the cut. The doctor swiftly wiped away the welling blood, picked up one of the worms, which turned out to be threads soaked in something nasty—smallpox? William wondered, with a brief shudder—with his forceps, and tucked it into the wound.

As the woman wrapped her hand in a handkerchief, William deftly inserted himself at the head of the queue.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” William said politely, and bowed. “I am in search of Dr. Hunter. I have an important message for him.”

The doctor blinked, took off his glasses, and squinted at William, then put them back on and took up his knife again.

“He’s at Jockey Hollow today,” he said. “Probably at the Wick House, but might be among the cabins.”

“I thank you, sir,” William said, meaning it. The doctor nodded absently and beckoned to the next in line.

Another inquiry sent him uphill to Jockey Hollow, a rather mountainous area—Washington was damned fond of mountains—where a scene of immense devastation spread before him. It looked as though a meteor had struck a woodland, shattering trees and churning the soil. The Continentals had cut down what had to be at least a thousand acres of trees—the stumps poked ragged fingers out of the mud, and bonfires of discarded branches smoked throughout the camp, each one with a fringe of soldiers holding out frozen hands to the heat.

Logs were piled everywhere, in a rude order, and William saw that in fact, sizable cabins were being built. This was clearly going to be a semi-permanent encampment, and not a small one.

Soldiers, mostly in plain dress or with army greatcoats, swarmed like ants. If Denzell was in there, it would take no little time to winkle him out. He walked up to the nearest bonfire and nudged his way into the circle of men around it. God, the heat was wonderful.

“Where is the Wick House?” he inquired of the man next to him, rubbing his hands together to help spread the delicious warmth.

“Up there.” The man—a very young man, perhaps a few years younger than William—jerked his chin, indicating a modest-looking house in the distance, on the crest of a hill. He thanked the boy and regretfully left the fire, smelling strongly of smoke.

The Wick House, despite its modest size, was plainly the property of a wealthy man: there was a forge, a grain mill, and a sizable stable nearby. The wealthy man either was a rebel or had been forcibly evicted, for there were regimental flags planted near the door and a blue-nosed sentry outside, clearly there to weed out unwelcome visitors.

Well, it had worked once…William put his shoulders back, lifted his head, and walked up to the door as though he owned the place.

“I have a message for Dr. Hunter,” he said. “Will I find him here?”

The sentry gave him a look from rheumy, bloodshot eyes.

“No, you won’t,” he said.

“May I inquire where he is, then?”

The sentry cleared his throat and spat, the gob of mucus not quite landing on the toe of William’s boot.

“He’s inside. But you won’t find him there because I’m not letting you in. You got a message, give me it.”

“It must be given into the doctor’s hands,” William said firmly, and reached for the doorknob.

The sentry took two steps sideways and stood in front of the door, musket held across his chest and his blue nose forbidding in its righteousness.

“You aren’t a-coming in, friend,” he said. “The doctor’s with Brigadier Bleeker, and he’s not to be disturbed.”

William made a low sound that wasn’t quite a growl. It didn’t affect Blue Nose, though, and he tried again.

“What about Mrs. Hunter? Is she in camp, perhaps?” God, he hoped not. He glanced over his shoulder at the sprawling mess below.

“Oh. Aye. She’s in there.” The sentry jerked a thumb backward, indicating the house. “With the doctor and the brigadier.”

“The brigadier…that would be…?”

“General Bleeker. General Ralph Bleeker.”

William sighed.

“Well, if I can’t go in, would
you
be so kind as to go inside and tell her that her cousin has come with a message for her husband? She can come out and get it, surely.”

It nearly worked. He could see doubt warring with duty on the man’s face—but duty won, and Blue Nose doggedly shook his head and waved a hand.

“Shoo.”

William turned on his heel and did so. He strode down the hill, not looking back—and turned aside as soon as the growth of shrubs and small trees hid him from the sentry’s view.

It took no little while to circle the hilltop and make his way carefully up through the grain mill, but he was able to blend in with the people waiting there to have their flour ground and could easily see the house. Yes, there was a back door. And no, glory be to God, there was no sentry—at least not right this moment.

He waited until the small crowd had stopped noticing him and stepped away in the half-furtive manner of a man going for a piss. Quick past the forge and up to the door, and…in.

He closed the back door behind him with a surge of pleasure.

“Sir?” He turned round, finding himself in the kitchen, and the cynosure of the gaze of a cook and several kitchen maids. The air was perfumed with the smell of roasting meat—there was a huge pig turning on the spit in the spacious hearth and his mouth was watering—but food could wait.

He bowed and lifted his hat briefly to the cook.

“Your pardon, ma’am. I’ve a message for the doctor.”

“Oh, he’s in the parlor,” said one of the younger maids. She looked admiringly up William’s body, and he smiled at her. “I’ll take you!”

“Thank you, my dear,” he said, and bowed ingratiatingly again before following her out.

The house was comfortable, but seemed to have quite a few people in it; he could hear voices and the sound of footsteps overhead—there was a second story over the back part of the house. The maid led him to a closed door and bobbed a curtsy. He thanked her again, and as he reached for the porcelain knob of the door, he heard the unmistakable sound of his cousin Dottie’s gurgling laugh, and his own face broke into a grin.

He was still wearing the grin when he stepped into the room. Dottie was sitting in a chair by the fire, some sort of knitting on her lap, her face full of lively attention as the man in Continental uniform standing by the hearth said something to her.

Denzell was there, too, by the window, but William scarcely noticed, frozen to the spot by the sound of the man’s voice.

“William!” Dottie exclaimed, dropping her knitting. The man by the hearth turned sharply.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, staring in shock. “What the devil are
you
doing here?” The blue of his coat gave his winter-pale-blue eyes a piercing glint.

William felt as though he’d been kicked in the stomach by a mule, but managed a breath.

“Hallo, Ben,” he said flatly.

BEN LOOKED AT HIM
with a cold formality and said, “That would be General Bleeker to you, sir.” That might have been taken as humor, but it bloody wasn’t, and wasn’t meant to be.

“Bleeker,” William said, making it almost a question. “All right, if you must. But
Ralph
?”

Ben’s face darkened, but he kept his temper.

“It isn’t Ralph,” he said shortly. “It’s Rafe.”

“One of Ben’s names is Raphael,” Dottie said pleasantly, as though making conversation over the tea table. “After our maternal grandfather. His name is Raphael Wattiswade.”

“Is?” William said, startled into looking at her. “I thought your mother’s father was dead.” He switched the look back to his cousin. “For that matter, I thought
you
were dead.”

Dottie and Denzell exchanged a brief marital look.

“I believe Friend Wattiswade has gone to some trouble to give that impression,” Denzell said, carefully not looking at Ben. “Will thee sit down, William? There is some wine.” Without waiting for an answer, he rose and gestured to his empty chair, going then to fetch a decanter from a small table near the door.

William ignored both the invitation and the chair. Ben was slightly taller than his father, but he was still six inches shorter than William, and William was not sacrificing the advantage of looking down on him. Ben stiffened, glaring up at him.

“I repeat, what the devil are you doing here?”

“I came to find your sister,” William replied, and gave Dottie a slight bow. “Your father wants you to come back to Savannah, Dottie.” Now that he had a chance to look at her, he thought Uncle Hal had been right to want that. She was very thin with dark circles under her eyes, her dress hung on her bones, and overall she looked like a fine piece of china with a crack running through it and a chip out of the edge.

“I told thee, thee shouldn’t have written to him,” she said reproachfully to Denzell, who handed her a glass of wine—and seeing that William was not about to accept the other one, sat down and took a sip from it himself.

“And I told
thee
that thee should go home,” Denzell replied, though without rancor. “This is no place for any woman, let alone one who—” He caught sight of Dottie and stopped abruptly. A hectic flush had risen in her cheeks and her lips were pressed tight. William thought she might either burst into tears or brain Denzell with the poker, which was near at hand.

Even odds, he concluded, and turned back to Ben, who had gone white round the nostrils.

“Step outside with me,” William said. “And you can tell me what the bloody hell you’re doing and why.
And
why I shouldn’t go straight back to Savannah and tell your father. If you feel like it.”

IT WAS COLD
outside, and the sky lay low and heavy, the color of lead. William felt the itch of Ben’s eyes boring a hole between his shoulder blades.

“This way,” his cousin said abruptly, and he turned to see Ben push open the door to a large shed from which the warm, thick smell of smoke and grease floated out, surrounding them.

Inside, the smell was stronger, but the air was warm and William felt his hands tingle in gratitude; his fingers had been half frozen for days. The bodies of deer and sheep and pigs hung from the beams, streaks of fat showing gray and white through the slow drift of smoke from the trench below. Large gaps showed where meat had been taken away—to feed the officers occupying Wick House, he supposed, and wondered how Washington proposed to feed his troops through the winter. From his hasty appraisal of the camp-building in the hollow, there must be nearly ten thousand men here—many more than he’d thought.

“Adam said you’d resigned your commission.” There was a creak and a thud as Ben shut the door. “Is that true?”

“It is.” He eyed his cousin and shifted his weight a little. He didn’t have cause to suppose Ben would try to hit him, but the day was young.

“Why?”

“None of your business,” William replied bluntly. “So Adam’s still speaking to you, is he?
Where
is he, come to that?”

“In New York, with Clinton.” Ben jerked his head to the left. His face was pale in the gray light.

“Does it occur to you that you could get him in serious trouble, talking to him?—arrested and court-martialed, even bloody
hanged
? Or does that consideration not weigh against your new…loyalties?” William’s heart was still beating fast from the shock of finding Ben alive, and he was in no mood to mince words.

“How the fuck
dare
you?” William said, fury rising suddenly out of nowhere. “Never mind being a traitor, you’re a fucking coward! You couldn’t just change your coat and be straight about it—oh, no! You had to pretend to be fucking dead, and kill your father with grief—and what do you think your mother will feel when she hears it?”

Despite the dim light, he could see the blood rush into Ben’s face and his hands clench into fists. Still, Ben kept his voice level.

“Think about it,
Willie.
Which would my father prefer—that I was dead, or that I was a traitor?
That
would bloody kill him!”

“Or he’d kill you,” William said brutally. Ben stiffened but didn’t reply.

“So what was it?” William asked. “Rank,
General
Bleeker? It can’t have been money.”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Ben said, through his teeth. He took a breath, as though to continue, but then stopped, eyes narrowed. “Or maybe you do. Did you come here to join us?”

“What—become Washington’s bum-licker, like you? No, I fucking didn’t. I came to find Dottie. Imagine my surprise.” He made a contemptuous gesture toward the blue-and-buff uniform.

“Then why resign your commission?” Ben looked him up and down, taking in the rough clothes and grubby linen, the thick boots with the woolen stocking tops turned down over them. “And why the devil are you dressed like that?”

“I repeat—none of your business. It wasn’t political, though,” he added, and wondered briefly why he had.

“Well, it was political for me.” Ben took a deep, deliberate breath and leaned back against the door. “Heard of a man called Paine? Thomas Paine?”

“No.”

“He’s a writer. That is, he was employed by His Majesty’s Customs and Excise, but got sacked and started thinking about politics.”

“As one does when unemployed, I suppose.”

Ben gave him a quelling look.

“I met him in Philadelphia, in a tavern. I spoke with him. Thought he was…interesting. Odd-looking cove, but…intense, I suppose you’d say.” Ben inhaled too deeply and coughed; William could feel the tickle of smoke in his own chest.

“Then, later, when I was taken prisoner at the Brandywine…” He cleared his throat. “I had occasion to read his pamphlet. It’s called
Common Sense.
And I talked with the officer with whom I boarded and…well, it
is
common sense, dammit.” He shrugged, then dropped his shoulders and looked defiantly at William. “I became convinced that the Americans were in the right, that’s all, and I couldn’t in conscience fight on the side of tyranny any longer.”

“You pompous twat.” The urge to hit Ben was growing stronger. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t want to go round smelling like a smoked ham, even if you don’t mind.”

This argument, at least, struck some remainder of sense in Ben. They went out, and Ben led the way downhill, but away from the town. They collected a few looks from men carrying lumber toward the camp, but Ben ignored them.

“If you’re a general, won’t people wonder why you haven’t got a flock of aides and toadies round you?” William asked the back of Ben’s neck and was pleased to see it flush, despite the cold. It was perishing out; snow had started to fall in thick, fast flakes that covered the dirty frozen humps of earlier storms.

“That’s why we’re going where no one will see us,” Ben said tersely, and stamped off down a trail of churned, cold-hardened mud, toward a large shed near a frozen creek. It was padlocked, and it took Ben some minutes to open it, both the key and his hands being cold and uncooperative.

“Let me.” William had kept his hands in his pockets, and while chilly, his fingers were still flexible. He took the keys from Ben and nudged him aside.

“What do the Continentals have that’s worth locking up?” he asked, though with no real intent to offend. Ben didn’t answer but pushed the door open, revealing the shadowy long shapes of guns. Cannon, four- and six-pounders, nine of them at a hasty count, and a couple of mortars lurking at the back. The Continental artillery park, apparently. The place smelled of cold metal, damp wood, and the ghosts of black powder.

“The smoke shed was a bit warmer,” Ben observed, turning to face William. “Let’s finish whatever business we have, before we freeze stiff.”

“Agreed.” William’s breath came white, and he was already beginning to long for the company of the dead swine and their fire. “I want Dottie to come with me, back to Savannah. Surely you can see she needs food, warmth…her family?”

Ben snorted, his breath puffing from his nostrils like that of an angry bull.

“Bonne chance,”
he said. “Hunter won’t go, because he’s desperately needed here. She won’t leave him. QED.”

In spite of Ben’s obvious annoyance, there was something odd in his voice. Almost a longing, William thought, and the thought sparked the realization that had been slowly growing, unnoticed, in the back of his mind.

“Amaranthus,” he said suddenly, and Ben flinched. He bloody
flinched,
the lousy poltroon!

“Does she even fucking know you’re not dead?” he asked.

“Yes,” Ben said between his teeth. “It’s on account of her that I— Never bloody mind. I can’t make Dottie go, short of tying her up in a sack and loading her into a wagon. Do you think you—”

“What’s on account of your wife?”
Your wife.
The words curled up in his stomach like worms, and he closed his hand, feeling rounded heat and slipperiness in his palm. “Do you mean to say you told her what you were going to do, and she—”

“I was a prisoner! I couldn’t tell her anything. Not until—until it was done.” Ben had been glaring at him, but at this, looked away. “I—I wrote to her then. Of course. Told her what I’d done. She wasn’t pleased,” he added bleakly.

“Do tell,” said William, with as much sarcasm as he could manage. “Was it her idea to pretend you were dead? I can’t say I blame her, if so.”

“It was,” Ben said stiffly. His eyes were still fixed on the open black mouth of a nearby cannon. “She said…that I couldn’t let it be known that I was a traitor. Not just for her or my father’s sake—for Trevor’s. Father would—would get over me being dead, especially if I’d died as a soldier. He’d never get over me…”

“Being a traitor,” William finished helpfully. “No, he bloody wouldn’t. And little Trev wouldn’t have a good time of it as your heir, either, once he was old enough to understand what people were saying about you—and him. You’ve smeared your whole family with your excrement, haven’t you?” He was suddenly warm, his blood rising.

“Shut up!” Ben snapped. “That’s why I changed my name and had official word sent that I’d died, for God’s sake! I even went so far as to have a grave in Middlebrook Encampment marked with my name, should anyone come looking!”

“Someone did,” William said, anger hot in his chest. “
I
did, you bastard! I dug up the body in that grave,
in
the middle of the night, in the fucking rain. If you hadn’t picked a thief to bury in your stead, you might have got away with it, damn you—and I wish to God you had!”

Underneath the anger was a sharp pain in his chest. Just where the Hercules beetle had been, and Amaranthus’s long slim finger.

“Your wife—”

“It’s not your fucking business!” Ben snarled, red in the face. “Why couldn’t you keep your nose out? And what
about
my wife? What the hell do you have to do with
her
?”

“You want to know?” William’s voice came low and venomous, and he leaned toward Ben, fists clenched. “You want to
know
what I’ve had to do with her?”