Chapter 42: Mercy

Arnold and General William Phillips, the man Clinton had sent south to supersede him, arrived at Blandford on the Appomattox on April 24. We were not surpassed since they had made a leisurely voyage up the James with well over 2,000 men including fresh troops just down from New York. They landed on the small river's south bank, got themselves organized as if on parade, and then moved toward us.

We had perhaps a thousand men, mostly militia, under Generals Muhlenberg and good old Baron Von Steuben. We had dug in as best we could, told each other to wait until they got close, heard the officers yelling "aim low, aim low," over and over and fully expected the militia to turn tail and run. What we hoped for, of course, was another Breed's Hill, and I was surely surprised when the British did make what amounted to a straight-on, bayonets-lowered, bon-headed frontal assault.

I can still see them, guns on the flanks, banners waving, steel glittering. This time the American militiamen distinguished themselves, but after nearly two hours of hot and heavy fire, ammunition was running low and the Redcoats were still coming on. Our little company was right on the river, dropping back from fence to fence, wall to wall until we were in the town itself. I had been taking cartridges from every fallen man I passed and still had a pouchful when we made a stand near the bridge as the militia scurried across and then began dismantling the span. Watching the floorboards of the old bridge drop into the water did not help my confidence.

When we were reasonably sure all the men who were going to make it had crossed the river, Foster stationed me and George at the corner of a brick house and told us to give him five more shots before we ran for it. "Don't bother to bring your muskets, jus' run," he yelled as he galloped for the bridge.

I smiled at George and we looked down the empty street, cluttered with the debris of scampering men. Then the Brits arrived, rounding a corner, still in good order and double-timing toward the river behind us.

"You take the one on the left," I said to George, drawing down on he other officer. We fired almost together and the sword swinging men jumped and tumbled as we quickly reloaded. The leading company paused, quickly regrouped and came on. We fired again and the Brutish stopped, knelt and volley fired at our hiding place. That was enough for George.

"Let's go," he yelled, zig-zagging toward the bridge. I got off one more good shot, reloaded, saw they were still coming and followed him as cries of triumph rose behind us in the smoke-filled town. George run, pausing to toss boards into the river and I was right behind him, finishing the job but with my musket still in my hand.

On the Petersburg side, I watched George run up the road and stopped to kick loose on last floorboard. Then I turned, picked up my musket and tripped.

When I woke up I was in Richmond, lying cater-corner in a small bed, my head swathed in bandages. I could see some light out of one eye and nothing out of the other.

(editor's note: again some pages have been discarded here, perhaps half the notebook.)

This next part I put off writing for quite a spell. In it are tales about some more good women that I cannot forget. I hope I have done them justice.

George's Tavern was one of those crossroads places, a bit bigger than the usual ordinary perhaps. The ale was good and so was the doughy meat pie. The serving wench was about as old as your average granny with an almost toothless smile. A few questions led me to the conclusion that the people here did not care tup'pence about George Washington or King George III. They were not exactly neutral; they were more indifferent. After another beer, I went out back to use the necessary and found that my luck was continuing to be extra good that day.

A large, young, red-headed woman was washing clothes in a big wooden tub. She was the best looking creature I had seen in a long time, a full-bodied, big-hipped, pug-nosed beauty, but the tub reminded me of the one in which I had bathed on the Ransome's back porch and I shivered. The woman recalled Ginny to my brain and my cock shivered too, eternally hopeful.

After I took care of my bladder, I sat on a log bench and watched her for a bit. She was a pleasure to see, quick, strong and graceful, her steady up and down motion a reminder of better things we could be doing. Her dark hair cascaded in damp ringlets halfway down her sweat-stained back and fell across her face when she bent to scrub her wash and let me look down the front of her shift. She had broad shoulders, full breasts, a trim waist and long, muscular legs. She had hoisted her skirt on the sides as if she had been wading a stream and perhaps she had for the dress was wet to her knees. Perhaps she had been stomping on the clothes like a wine maker.

She glanced up at me from time to time under her dark brows, and made a wry mouth, half smile, half smirk. Her bodice gapped wide so that she could work, and her linen shift was water or sweat-soaked and sometimes clung to her ripe body. Horny was a good word for this spectator's condition.

I went into the tavern, got two beers and filled my pipe; then I returned to the log in the dusty yard. She wrung out her wash in strong hands, twisting it before her impressive chest, her breasts jutting forward like ones of those carved figures on a warship's bow. She hung her clothes on the line, stretching on tip-toe and then came to plop down beside me on the log, exhaling with fatigue. I handed her a dented can of beer, and she drank half of it and wiped her mouth on her hand.

"Thanks," she said. "You mind?" She took the pipe from my hand and stuck it in her wide mouth, smiling and puffing until a cloud of smoke encircled her head. "Helps keep away the bugs," she said, shaking out her coppery curls.

"That's true," I said, sticking the pipe back between my teeth and puffing a few times, cods starting to ache.

"You looking for somethin'?" she asked, squinting at me in the dazzling sunlight. "Or jus' lookin'?" She took a deep breath, encouraging me to look some more.

"Maybe," I said. "Been looking for good patriots hereabouts, finding Tories and worse." I shook my head and sipped my beer.

She drained hers. "Thanks," she said again. "Won't find many here that favors the rebellion. Fraid not."

"How come?" I asked, resting my hand on her warm thigh, feeling its strength.

"Different reasons. Mostly they's scared. Them riders was through here two or three times already this year, tearin' things up. I was a man, I'd been out killin' Redcoats long ago, and the damn Tories, too, blast 'em." She banged the log with a good sized fist and glared at me, daring me to laugh.

"Met a woman down in Carolina, did jus' that," I said, rubbing my fingers up and down the inside of her thigh.

She wrinkled her forehead, "Did what?"

"Went and fought. Joined the militia," I said.

"You're lying," she said, pushing my hand away as if she had just noticed what it was doing. "Finish that an' I'll get another pair."

I watched her stalk into the ordinary, wide buttocks rolling left and right, up and down in an almost circular motion with a hitch in it. She returned a few minutes later, bubbies jiggling, puffing a clay pipe and carrying two more jars of foaming beer. She still had not bothered to button up her front. She plunked herself down and handed me a rough-made can. I could feel the warmth her body radiated and the musky woman smell, too. These aroused me almost at once as if the sight of her large, lush, healthy body had not already started my blood flowing in the right direction.

"Tell me 'bout this woman," she said.

"Her name is Jake," I told her. "Probably ain't but five-two or so, tall as a musket, maybe eight stone soakin' wet, your age if you're twenty-some."

"Go on," the young woman said, sighing and puffing her pipe, giving me a fine view of her melon-sized breasts as she pulled her damp shift away from her freckled chest and flapped it a few times.

"She was in General Pickens' militia, had been 'bout a year when I met her. Light haired, dirty-faced, but with a good strong grip and iron nerves. Claimed to be a dead shot."

"You mount her?" the woman asked, raising an eyebrow and her both her knees, flapping her skirt to circulate some air.

"She weren't no Annie, no camp follower," I said. "She was a soldier."

"So? Don't tell me she don't like to roll in the hay jes' cause she's got a musket to tote around. Doubt a musket barrel's much use in bed."

"That's true," I said, a bit surprised at the crude remark and recalling my short time between Jake's skinny legs. "Reckon men an' women's much alike that way."

"Maybe," she said. "Did you?"

"Gentlemen don't talk 'bout ladies they've known."

"You don' look like no gentleman." She smiled at me and licked the beer foam from her lips. I watched her flickering tongue and wanted her right then as bad as I've wanted any woman I could recall. It was getting painful and probably obvious, but I didn't dare look.

I told her my name, said I was from Frederick Town and was a scout for Lafayette and Von Steuben's army.

"Army?" she said with a chuckle. 'Ain't much of an army is it?"

"More on the way," I said, hoping I was telling the truth.

"One Tory bunch come through here las' week and tore the hell out'a everything. Where the crap was your army? I ran across the field an' hid in the tobacco barn. They raped poor Miz Gardner and one a'her girls 'bout a mile south a'here. Killed a boy that tried to stop 'em."

I shook my head.

"If I'd had a gun, I'd a killed 'em all. They was wearing green jackets, carrying swords. Well mounted, they was."

"Rangers," I said. "Mostly Virginians in that outfit."

"You got two guns I see," she said, nodding toward my horse.

"Yep," I admitted, "good rifle and an old, issue musket."

"Take me with ye," she said, looking very serious. "We'll kill twice as many. I'm Mercy. Mercy Fraser." She stuck out her hand and looked me square in the face with her greenish eyes and firm set mouth.

"You know how to shoot?" I asked as I held her hard hand.

She nodded, withdrawing her fist and drinking her beer. "An' I can ride, probably good as you can cause yer so big. You big all over?" she asked, looking directly at my swelling groin and licking her lips in honest invitation.

"Ain't you nobody's wife, no one's daughter?" I asked, tugging at my britches to get a little more room.

She shook her head. "He pays me to wash and clean for him, cook some, too," she said, nodding at the tavern's back door. "And tries to swive me when his woman's not watchin'. Not that he's worth screwing." She held her forefinger and thumb a couple of inches apart and smiled.

"No husband? You look old enough." I smiled back at her, hoping she would not mind the ugly ear, scraggly beard or burn scars on my face. I wanted to be up between those long legs rogering her until she begged me to stop.

"Nope, boy I loved went off an' got hisself killed, let's see, four years back, up 'round Philadelphia, on the Brandywine, I think they called it. We used to bundle till I'd moan, all that playin', playin' in the dark, hands and tongues." She squirmed and smiled in remembering, wiggling her bare toes.

"I was there, at Brandywine," I told her. "It was a nasty fight."

We sat quietly side by side, puffing our pipes and finishing our beers. She stood and dusted off her hands and the back of her skirt. "C'mon," she said, offering me a hand to help me up. "Let's see how we fit together. I got an itch needs scratchin'." She did not have to ask me twice.

Mercy led me to a lean-to shanty built onto the back of the tavern's kitchen ell. It reminded me of a rude place a generous woman back near Annapolis used for her swiving a long time before. She met my needs after a girl in Philadelphia just about destroyed me, you might say raped me. I tried to think of that Annapolis tavern wench's name as I sat and pulled off my boots and britches in the shady room, watching Mercy undress as I did and eager to get buried in her.

The big redhead quickly stripped to her freckled skin, showing me her strong back and long, rounded butt, tossing aside her worn shift without looking. She stood before me, smelling of honest sweat and pulled my shirt over my head. I guess the whip marks were showing clearly that day as they sometimes did, long, much-crossed welts they were. She sucked in her breath and made a face when she saw my chest and back.

A breeze stirred through the room as she climbed on the bed and touched some of the wounds with her finger tips and then wrapped her arms around my ribs and hugged me, her chin on my shoulder. I could feel her damp, hard breasts on my back. Her hands slid down and took inventory of my equipment. She soothed, measured and weighted, but all she said was, "You sure are a hairy one."

Evidently satisfied that I had what was needed, she turned me around and kissed me hard and deep, kneeling in the middle of her disheveled bed, holding me by the arms, her hair hanging over one shoulder and brushing my body as I drew us together, my hands at her wide hips. I pushed her back to the chaff mattress with her hands behind my neck and her mouth agape, gasping a long, long "Ahh" of enjoyment and satisfaction as I filled her to the brim and well beyond.

Sometimes anticipation leads to disappointment., This was not one of those times. We pleasured each other fully and happily, enthusiastically, noisly, testing the quality of the bed-ropers knots and the strength of our eager bodies. "Damn, we do fit good," she said, the first time she had a chance to speak. She had cried out, almost like a wolf, barking over and over, when she came.

"Um," I said, resting my head on her muscular thigh and trying to regulate my ragged breathing. "I don' know what it is about you red-headed women," I sighed as my probing fingers brought shivers rolling across her belly.

"Sir?" she said, rising to an elbow behind me and covering my hand with hers, pressing, kneading, trapping my forearm between her strong thighs. My fingers stroked her gently, persistently and her breathing got kind of ragged.

"You reds are the absolute best, the undoubted champions of swiving. Nobody I've met can roger a man like a red-head. There's a auburn-headed girl, 'bout your size, up in New Jersey, that I thought was the most wonderful bed companion God ever made, tireless and considerate, imaginative to the point of lunacy, but you Mercy, my tiny dear, you are even more awesome, more wonderful, more generous, grander, more exhausting. I'm whipped, girl, turned inside out. If I took you with me to hunt Redcoats, we'd never get even one less'n he fell into bed with us. Even then we might not notice."

She laughed till the bed bounced and ran her hand through my hair, yanking my queue loose. I grabbed her arm and pulled myself up to kiss her soft mouth again. She was one of the few women I've kissed who tasted of tobacco. Our tongues twisted together as she held my head in both hands. I got back between her long legs, and after I had satisfied myself again, I rolled her over and let her hump me until she could do no more. I enjoyed watching her breasts bounce and the determined look on her shining Celtic face. She finally yelped at the roof and collapsed on my sweating body, her mouth on my collar bone, gasping for breath, one leg between mine.

"What happened to your ear?" she said to my throat after a while.