The Blacksmith's Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution (39 page)

Emma was her usual ingratiating
self, praising Betsy's cleaning before wheedling a pre-dinner trip from her to
the butcher.
 
On Market Square, Betsy
joined a gaggle of goodwives in straw hats, all haggling over haunches in the
hot sun while the butcher's boy fanned flies off the cuts.

A brisk breeze seized Betsy's hat
and sailed it over the butcher's stall.
 
Annoyed to lose her place in line, she gave chase.
 
Before a fabric stall on the next row, she
found her hat in the hands of Josiah Carter.

He passed it to her as if afraid
she might take his arm off at the elbow.
 
She curtsied.
 
"Thank you,
Mr. Carter."

From his furtive posture, she
wondered whether he was being followed.
 
"Good day, madam."
 
He
plunged into the most densely populated portion of the market.

After tying the ribbons of her hat,
she scurried after him.
 
Carter, like
her, was caught in the middle.
 
"I've no hard feelings for you, sir."

He walked quickly without looking
at her.
 
"I'm glad to hear it.
 
I wondered whether I'd see you alive
again.
 
Had I known the vipers with whom
I'd be sharing a pit, I'd never have agreed to store your property.
 
I haven't the slightest idea how to
extricate myself from this intrigue."

"You must think me petty for
wanting my property back."

"Not at all.
 
I commiserate.
 
I've lost eighty percent of my family fortune in the past four
years.
 
It's bad enough that I shall be
forced to sell all but three hundred acres of my land to pay off my debts.
 
Now Mr. van Duser and his attorneys dangle
blackmail before my nose.
 
I've not the
finances to defend myself, so they push me around.
 
I wish I'd never set eyes on that Dutch demon."

Commiseration stung Betsy's
heart.
 
Three hundred acres was a
pittance for one accustomed to the life of a gentleman.
 
His life, like hers, had been ruined by
manipulations of patriots and British.
 
A pity neither had taken sides.
 
They might have fared better.

Indecision tugged at her.
 
If she executed the scheme she'd crafted
overnight, Carter might receive repercussions, and she could lose her property
forever.
 
She must try to protect
him.
 
She caught his forearm and turned
him to face her, the bustle of Market Square around them.
 
"Mr. Carter, I'm setting a plan in
motion that will make van Duser rue the day he started pushing decent folks
like us around.
 
The problem with my
plan is that you may fall under suspicion."

"Ah, no, I want no part in
what you're scheming.
 
I'd rather stay
out of jail, thank you."

She released him.
 
"You needn't know the details.
 
All you need do is move my property from
your barn to a safe location on your land and play ignorant when people come
asking for it."

"Van Duser will slit my throat
if I touch your property."

Recalling the tale of Will's
adventure in Havana, she smiled.
 
"Tell him a Spaniard appropriated it to a secure and secret
location and paid you handsomely for your trouble.
 
He'll hop like a rabbit after he hears that news."

"A Spaniard?"
 
Carter's frown conveyed that he considered
her daft.
 
"Why should that make
him jump?
 
And to be sure, he'll want
the name of this Spaniard to verify my story."

"Give him the name of
Gálvez."

"Gálvez.
 
Ye gods, I've heard of them.
 
Way up there in the Spanish court, aren't
they?"
 
Carter's lips paled as he
began to ponder the extent of the intrigue he'd been plunged into.
 
"But why would such a connection be
significant to van Duser?"

"I've no time to explain, but
I suspect the name is tangled enough with his intrigue to confer immediate
credibility upon your story.
 
What do
you say?
 
Will you do it?"

"I shall give it
thought."

"Don't drag your feet.
 
I may have to execute my plan any
moment.
 
Whoever
comes asking for
that furniture, give them the exact same story.
 
And make certain you leave my name out of it."

His gaze made another pass around
the marketplace, and he bowed.
 
"I
must be off.
 
Good day,
madam."
 
With a tip of his cocked
hat, he vanished into the crowd.

She watched him go, approval
touching her lips.
 
How she wished she
could witness the obnoxious self-assurance wiped from van Duser's face when Carter
explained the missing furniture, but she'd just have to settle for imagining
the event and knowing it would soon be the Dutchman's turn, like Abel, to run
scared.

***

Harker and assistant Saunders had
started the print run for Wednesday's paper when Betsy arrived.
 
She came prepared in her oldest
clothing.
 
Lampblack and varnish
spattered everywhere, even if she didn't pull the press.
 
Harker greeted her with a grin.
 
"The first side's looking mighty
good!"

On all the pages hanging to dry in
the yard behind the shop, columns lined up without reading too cramped and with
little wasted space.
 
Type was crisp and
clean, owing to her speedy sort job late Friday afternoon.
 
Harker had disposed of the cracked letters.

At two-thirty, while she hung out
front pages, the men ambled outside with lit pipes.
 
"We're running ahead of schedule, thanks to you, Mrs.
Sheridan."
 
Harker wiped his sweaty
neck with a kerchief.
 
"The master
calls for a fifteen-minute break.
 
Sit
down for a spell and rest your feet."

Just the opportunity for which
she'd been waiting.
 
"I shall pick
up where you gentlemen left off, if you don't mind."

"You sure you want to get your
hands dirty?"

She wiggled blackened fingers at
him.
 
"Like this?"

Harker laughed.
 
"You're an angel, Mrs. Sheridan."

That wouldn't be the attribute
others ascribed to her when she was finished with them.
 
She curtsied.
 
"It's my pleasure to be of assistance."

In the pressroom, she grabbed two
empty composing sticks and opened type drawers.
 
Five minutes later, she inspected her message:
The furniture
you seek is in the keeping of Jan van Duser, surveyor, Camden
.
 
She set the sticks aside, inked the galley
of the front page of the paper, and pulled off five copies.
 
The action required more physical effort
than she'd remembered from her childhood.
 
She blotted sweat off her forehead with her handkerchief before she
headed outside with the pages.
 
Neither
printer nor assistant moved from the shade.

Back inside, she hauled out an
extra galley and fit her two composing sticks into it.
 
Then she inked it down, pulled off a copy,
and inspected it.
 
No letters
inverted.
 
Everything was lined up well
and easy to read.
 
Perfect.
 
Setting the page aside, she fit the front
page galley of the paper back onto the press and pulled off five more copies,
at which point she could feel her back sweating.
 
Harker and Saunders stomped in through the back door anyway.
 
She hastened to break down her galley and stash
the composing sticks out of sight on a low shelf for disassembly later.

Saunders clicked his tongue as she
bustled past with the six pages.
 
"Look at her go, Frank."

"Best thing that ever happened
to my business."

She camouflaged her page among
dozens of front pages drying in the merciless sunlight, pausing to regard it
before she returned inside.
 
It would
have been far easier to write a note, but she couldn't chance anyone from the
Ambrose ring intercepting the message and comparing a sample of her
handwriting.

As for Lieutenant Fairfax, she
doubted he'd backtrack during the heat of the hunt just to query printers about
the page.
 
No, if he'd tracked down that
Spanish assassin in Camden with such alacrity, she could be certain that while
any scent was fresh, he'd stay with his quarry.
 
And after he scratched the van Duser surface of the Ambrose spy
ring, he'd be reaping far too much success to care who'd tipped him off.
 
By then, she and Tom would be long gone from
Camden.

She studied the page, her mood
sobering, for there was no getting around the fact that after Fairfax got to digging,
Clark's name would come up.
 
Not that
such a revelation would surprise the lieutenant.
 
She was sure he'd known standing near the scorched foundation of
their house in Augusta that Clark was a spy.
 
He'd tried to snare him then, even though he didn't have quite enough
proof.

Clark, however, was a groundnut in
comparison to the giants of the ring, evidenced by the way he'd been sent on
that suicide mission to Hanging Rock.
 
If Fairfax could capture one of the top men in the spy ring and squeeze
information from him, why would he waste time on drones like Clark or even
Basilio or Francisco?
 
Betsy chewed her
lip.
 
She hoped as much was true,
because she didn't want to be the instrument of her husband's death, even if
there was nothing left of the marriage.
 
At least she'd alerted Clark in Log Town to Fairfax's proximity.

"Mrs. Sheridan!"
 
Saunders jiggled papers from the
doorway.
 
"Where'd you run off
to?"

"Here, sir, making sure
everything's drying properly."

Just after eight, she left the
print shop exhausted but elated.
 
Yes,
she'd broken down the composing stick without Harker or Saunders knowing, and
she had her prize trimmed, folded, and tucked inside her bodice, but those
successes weren't the sole sources of the spring in her step.

Of all the crazy notions.
 
She'd derived contentment from her work in
the pressroom.
 
The men had praised her
insights and helpfulness, but it felt
good
to pull the filthy, grueling
press again.
 
Perhaps printing was in
her blood.
 
The entire process filled
her with such a sense of accomplishment and power that she couldn't wait to
help print the back page of the paper the following afternoon.

Not until she'd returned to the
Leaping Stag and caught sight of Janet and Maria in the common room laughing
and flirting with soldiers did she put the pieces together.
 
It astounded her.
 
Dependent on men for protection, Janet, Maria, Dolly, Margaret,
and hundreds of women across the thirteen colonies were forced to whore their
way through the war when those men disappeared.
 
They'd never learned skills to land them other work in demand.

But Betsy had been in a position to
receive the legacy of printing as she was growing up.
 
Will St. James and Sophie Barton had thrust the business down her
throat at times, but she at last realized what they'd been about.
 
She needn't be dependent on a man for
protection.
 
With her skills, so long as
she settled in a town with a printing press, she needn't worry about being
reduced to prostitution or raising her child in poverty.

She smelled the supper Hattie had
ready for her in the dining room, and her stomach rumbled with hunger.
 
After sweeping her gaze across the common
room once more, she whispered, "Thank you Grandpapa.
 
And thank you, Mother."

Chapter Thirty-Two

ON JULY TWENTY-FIFTH, Horatio Gates
arrived at de Kalb's camp on Deep River, their combined forces numbering
anywhere between 2,500 and 7,000 troops, depending on the source's
sobriety.
 
On the twenty-seventh, Gates
ordered a march on Camden straight through countryside with little resources to
scavenge.

While Betsy and Tom doubted his
wisdom over the march, they couldn't deny that starving Continentals would find
Log Town and its invalid soldiers easy pickings.
 
Lord Rawdon realized the same, mustering what able-bodied men he
could to detain Gates.
 
If ever
Cornwallis's support in manpower and martial prowess was needed, it was
then.
 
But the British general remained
aloof in Charles Town, and anxiety swelled among Camden's residents.