Chapter 29: Fidelia

It was late, or early actually, and the moon was setting, looking cold and distant, when the woman came to my blanket. "Please," was all she said, on her knees beside me, her hand at my shoulder. I lifted the edge of the old blanket, and she rolled in, sighing. She was barefoot but fully clothed. I put my hand on her ribs and felt her stays.

"How can you sleep in those things?" I asked, sliding my hand up between her full breasts to begin unlacing her strings.

"Don't," she said, "I'll do it. It's just so cold, freezing."

She unbuttoned her bodice and struggled with her corset until she had it free. I pulled her close, my hand on her belly, and drew the blanket over both of us, making my body conform to hers, my knees under her thighs, her back on my chest. She exhaled and relaxed. I tried to get back to sleep.

"What did they want, those men?"

"You," I said, "and all we have, all you have. You, mainly."

"I've never seen so much blood."

"Shakespeare was right," I said

"Poor Macbeth," she sighed, covering my hand with hers.

I was waking up and felt a painful surge in my groin. "Sleep," I said.

"Perchance to dream," she answered, and I think we slept for the world was turning pink the next time I opened an eye. She was facing me, inches away.

"You shake the ground when you snore," she said, touching my face.

"Sorry," I smiled, instantly aware of my usual morning erection.

"We'd better get started," she said.

I slid my hand up her back to her mop of soft hair, pulled her head to me and kissed her, long and languorously. Her mouth opened and our tongues met. I rolled her to her back, pulled up her heavy skirts and got between her knees before she said, "No." very clearly, looking up at me with some anger in her eyes.

I clambered to my feet and went off in the woods to piss and relieve myself. When I returned, she had rolled up my blanket and was hitching the horse between the traces. We moved slowly down the rutted lane, past the bodies of the three men who had attacked us at sundown. She kept her eyes up, straight ahead, as I noted my handiwork, my very efficient killing, no wasted motions or powder.

My tired horse had finally gone lame, and I was trudging along afoot when she stopped her light wagon and offered me a ride to the next village. She was carrying a load of small kegs, whisky I assumed from the smell. She was a big-boned, long-legged woman wearing dark, heavy homespun and a knitted shawl as well as very plain and sturdy boots. Her hair was tied back, and her hawk-nosed face radiated humor and confidence. I doubt that many women would have offered a man as big and dirty as I was a ride.

I clambered up beside her after stowing my rifle, blanket roll and small kit in the bed of her rig. She offered me her hand and said her name was Fidelia. I introduced myself and told her I was a Continental soldier on the way back to join my company. We talked to pass the time; weather, roads, horses, food - the usual things. She said she had visited Ninety-Six once, and we joked about the frontier town, the horse traders and the busy trollops. The sun was going down, but we were only a mile or two from her cross-roads destination when a big man in a long shirt and buckskin breeches stepped out into the road ahead of us.

"Hole up," he yelled, raising his hand.

The woman reined in her big-footed horse.

"What'chu hauling there, missy?" the big man asked. I stepped down to face a lean man with a short shotgun as he jumped out from the trees, showing me his yellow teeth. A third man stood behind us, spraddle legged, with a pistol in his belt. He wore a frock coat and a tri-cornered hat, obviously the leader of this bunch judging from his attitude.

"Kill that big bastid," the man in the long, green coat yelled, and the skinny fellow facing me looked down and drew back the hammer of his weapon. I grabbed the barrel, shoved it at him and then twisted it from his hands and shot the man standing in front of the wagon, pretty much all in one motion. He staggered back a step or two and fell, dropping his weapon. The wiry thief who had owned the gun jumped on my back, and I easily tossed him over my shoulder, drew my big bayonet and almost decapitated him where he lay near the off-side wheel, trying to get his breath. I ignored the spray of blood, grabbed my rifle, rested it on the side of the wagon and shot the man in the fancy hat as he ran back toward his horse. The heavy ball knocked him off his feet and spun him into the weedy ditch. His hat lay in the middle of the road.

"Guess there was just three of them," I told the woman as I reloaded my rifle, ramming down hard a couple of times. The smell of powder lingered around us.

"My," was all she said but I noticed that a pistol had appeared in her lap, a big-bored weapon of an antique pattern.

I put my rifle down and checked the bodies. The lean man who had held a gun on me had nothing worth taking, and I dragged his corpse into the ditch. The robber in front of the wagon had taken the load of buckshot in the chest and neck. I rolled his ragged remains off the road after putting his shotgun and ammunition in the wagon. The older man in the green coat had a heavy purse as well as a gold ring he did not need any more. I offered the ring to the woman when I climbed back to the seat, but she refused with a shake of her head.

"How'd you learn to move so fast?" she asked after she clucked her tongue at her horse.

"Have to, want to stay alive these days." I counted the money, a good haul that should see me though a month of drinking and whoring if I ever found a place to do either.

"That man that was leering at me, I know him, knew him, the one that stopped us, you should have seen the surprise on his face. Think I knew the little fellow too."

"Didn't notice," I said, getting my breathing back together.

The town where Fidelia had hoped to sell her corn whisky was gone. It had not been much to start with but now it was just ashes, a few piles of brick and stones and scorched timbers. We did not find any bodies.

"Lot of hate in these hills," the woman said. "Neighbor fighting neighbor. Most of the folks here, they tried to stay out of it."

"How about you?" I asked.

She looked at me, tight-lipped. "My family's English. My husband was a Scot, but a good man for that. I guess we're loyal but I haven't thought much about it. We're Carolinians, just keeping body and soul together."

"What now?" I asked, looking around at the destruction in the dusk.

"There's another village with a tavern, 'bout twenty miles the other way, back the way we came."

She drove far enough from the crossroads that the smell of the fire faded and then she pulled off the road. "Guess we can camp here," she said. "Make a fire." She began unhitching the horse and then looked at me. "Please get us a fire," she said with a smile. "I don't get much chance for manners."

I kicked together a decent fire, and she cooked us some corn mush with ham fat in a small, iron skittle, the kind they call a spider. We sat across from each other, and I enjoying watching the flames reflected in her eyes. The woods seemed to close in once the high, thin clouds lost their sunlight.

"I'll sleep in the wagon," she said as the fire died down.

"You got a blanket?"

She shook her head. "Won't need it. This shawl's pretty heavy."

"You can share mine," I said, essaying a smile.

She smiled back. "Don't think so," she said.

So I slept with my feet toward the fire's embers, and in the cool of early morning she joined me for an hour or two. Then we got back on the road and by the time the sun was high we had reached a tavern where five or six houses, a small mill and a smithy's cold forge leaned together by a fast-moving stream. Smoke hung over all of them.

I sat in the ordinary enjoying a good, frothy ale while the woman dickered with the inn-keeper about the price of her liquor in various kinds of money. She ended up selling it for two dollars a gallon, local paper, probably a good price for the times. Then she came and sat with me, and we enjoyed a decent meal and some polite conversation.

We were about to part and go our separate ways as soon as I found a horse I could buy with the thieves' money, when a band of militia trooped in, occupied three tables and made themselves at home. It was obvious that the local gentry were involved for the men had on the rudiments of uniforms and all wore red cockades in their soft hats. Several nodded to the woman beside me, and she acknowledged their greetings in a friendly manner.

I was headed for the back door, leaving Fidelia to finish her cider, when a man stepped in front of me. He was lean, well-dressed and carried a straight sword, a hanger as some called it closer to the shore.

"And where might you be going?" he asked, snorting up a bit of snuff and flaunting the lace at his cuff.

"North," I said.

"Fine looking rifle," he said.

"Pennsylvania," I replied hearing foot shuffling behind me.

"Indeed. And what were you doing with Mrs. H--?"

"Who?" I asked having either forgotten the woman's name or never heard it.

"Fidelia over there whose loyalty is surely suspect," he said with a wave. "Why don't you sit down."

Two men grabbed me from behind, pulled me back to a chair and tied my hands to the rungs behind me. The thin man in the tightly curled wig examined my rifle and then set it aside. He withdrew my bayonet and looked at it and then handed it to one of his men. "Looks like blood," he said and the man nodded and handed it back. He put it on the table between us.

"One of my patrols is just in. They found three of our men up the road, two hours' ride, dead; one with a shotgun blast, one with what appears to be a rifle ball, too small a hole for a musket, shot in the back, and the other with his throat cut, head nearly sliced off. Know anything about those dead men, those good men up there?"

I glanced at Fidelia who sat quietly across the room with one of the militiamen beside her, a small smile on his pock-marked face. A man came in from the back with the shotgun I had kept and the pouch of buckshot. He put them down on the table and backed up a step. "Look like Fred's," he said. "See here." He pointed to some scribing on the shotgun's stock.

The bewigged man nodded. "Well?" he said, looking up at me.

"They stopped Mrs. H-- late yesterday," I said. "Threatened to rob her and shoot me."

"And?" said the thin-nosed man. He extracted his enameled snuff box.

"We fought," I said.

"And you killed them?"

I nodded. "It was a short fight."

He put down his snuff box, reached across the table and slapped my face, back and forth, four or five times. It made a loud noise and stung pretty good, especially the backhand blows. My nose was bleeding and he was puffing when he stopped. "The man in the green coat was my uncle," he said as he picked up his snuff box and took a pinch.

"He was a thief," I said, licking blood from my lips. "But his ring's in my pocket if you want it."

"Bring the woman over here," he said.

I watched Fidelia cross the room with her guard behind her. She sat beside me, our elbows touching. She seemed calm, under control.

"Mrs. H--, widow H--," the red-faced man said, "tell me what happened over near Hilltown, what used to be Hilltown, that nest of rebels."

"You burned it?" Fidelia asked.

He smiled at her.

"Where are the people, Mrs. Fry, all of them?"

"Gone to judgment," he said. "Most are hanging from trees, feeding the birds. I think the young Fry girl is upstairs in fact unless they wore her out last night."

I saw Fidelia's head droop, her hair hanging loosely to conceal her face. I heard her sniff.