Chapter 43: May 1781

Three days later I introduced Mercy to Captain Foster. He made a nod toward her, but was slow to take her hand. "She wants to join up," I said. "She can shoot and ride, and she ain't dumb."

"You willing to go live with the enemy?" Foster asked as he resumed his chair behind his littered desk.

"Why'" she said, looking at me, worried, pulling her tattered dress together between her plump breasts and sitting up extra straight.

"Best way to find out what they're up to," the captain said over his steepled fingers.

"I think he means camp followers," I said.

He nodded, but she still looked puzzled. "Every army's got a bunch of women, sometimes children, traipsing along after them. We've got a couple a'dozen. British usually have more'n we do, but both army's pretty much the same."

"You mean whores?" Mercy asked.

"No," Captain Foster said with a grunt at her directness. "most are wives or friends, mistresses perhaps, some do washing and cooking. There's a few doxies, drabs mostly. Some lie with the men when they're asked, maybe most do. A few may do it for money. I'm not sure. I think they chase off the real bawds."

"Officers' wives, sergeants' women, just homeless folks. British sometimes let 'em up in the wagons, but they mostly walks," I told her.

"You want me to join Cornwallis's camp followers?" Mercy said, lowering her heavy eyebrows, her hands folded in her lap.

Foster nodded and waited, eyes narrowed, mouth relaxed.

"I want to kill Redcoats, shoot 'em," she said, looking from him to me and back. "Like he does."

"I got lots of men that can shoot Redcoats, but I don' have nobody that can travel with the British army," Captain Foster said. "They hung the last man we got into the legion, 'bout a week ago."

"They might be looking for her. We was in a little fight," I said. "Left four bodies back yonder, an' two a'them's hers. She's a damn good shot."

"She can whack off her hair, get another dress, different color," said the captain. "Put on an accent if she needs to, pretend to limp, whaever's needed."

"It's dangerous," I said to her.

"I understand," she said. "I'll give it a try. How do I get in and out?"

"Can you read and write?" the captain asked.

Mercy shook her head.

"Then you'll have to memorize things. Every Wednesday you can meet this big galoot in the woods, go off to relieve yourself, like y'got the trots or something, early in the day. If you do Monday an' Tuesday, nobody'll notice Wednesday. He'll have a glass or somethin' to flash the sun at you in the morning. Be looking for it."

For the next hour we discussed what the Americans wanted to know, mainly what Cornwallis was ordered or planning to do, how many men he had, field guns, what reinforcements he expected and the camp gossip if any seemed useful. My job would be to get her in and be ready to pull her out in an emergency as well as to meet once a week and bring whatever information she had back to Captain Foster who planned to stay with Lafayette. The best news we received was that Anthony Wayne's long-expected Pennsylvania company had finally arrived and the American army was steadily growing in numbers if not in quality of militia or arms.

Then I had one of my better ideas: I took Mercy to the Ransome's and introduced her to Pamela. (editor's note: the family mentioned probably comes from the missing portion of book ten) "We need a favor," I told her. "Mercy could use a bath, a hair cutting, and a new dress, at least one that's a different color, some strong shoes too. She's going to be doing some walking." I gave Pamela some of the money the captain had given me. "I know there's not much left in this town, but see what you can do." I lifted an eyebrow at her and smiled.

"When do you need all this?" Pamela asked, looking doubtfully at the big red-head who was just about her size and only a few years younger.

"Right away. She's got a job to do. No time to explain. Ask her as you cut her hair off. I'll be back in a couple a'hours."

At supper the four of us sat at Mr. Ransome's table, enjoying a fine meal and admiring the new Mercy. Her hair was much shorter and seemed several shades lighter as well as more curly. My hair might have been longer now. Her freckled skin glowed with good health and strong soap, and she wore a dark green dress of linsey-woolsey that was unlikely to attract attention except that it was cut low enough for the lace atop her new shift to show along with much of her strong chest. On her feet were high, dark shoes from some closet in the house. There was even a bit of lace at her elbows.

"Pamela tells me that you have joined the American army," old Mr. Ransome said near the meal's end. He lifted his wine glass to her. "I wish you good fortune."

Mercy bowed her head and then raised her glass. "I thank you both, no, all three of you for your help. I've no way to repay you."

As we were about to leave, Pamela pulled me aside. "I'm going to Captain Foster's," she said. "I'll tell him Mercy's ready. You can use my room, out back, if you wish."

"How did you know?" I started to ask, but Pamela's look told me to forget the question.

"Have a pleasant evening," she said with a broad smile.

We said our farewells to Mr. Ransome, and I led Mercy around the house to Pamela's basement room. We made our way down the dark steps and waited for our eyes to adjust to the cellar gloom. It was a small space, with just a single bed and chair. Pegs stuck in the wall held the woman's clothes, and one narrow window let in a bit of air.

"Is this Pamela's dress?" I asked as I unhooked the bodice and nibbled at her throat.

"Um," she said as she worked on my new neck cloth, undid the buttons and helped me pull my shirt over my head. I carefully hung her dress on a wall peg.

"It's a fine dress," I said, holding her lush breasts from behind and kissing her ear, shoulder and cheek. She wriggled under my hands, and I helped her take off her new shift. She sat on the bed and unlaced her shoes, pulled off the knitted stockings, and slid under the quilt while I sat on Pamela's chair and got my clothes off. I was glad I had trimmed my spotty beard and wished I had gotten a bath instead of just refilling my cartridge box and seeing about another horse.

"I'm frightened," she said when I took her in my arms and our legs intermingled.

"Of what?" I asked, kissing her small nose.

"I'm not sure. I guess of what I don't know." She put her mouth on my neck and then gnawed on my shoulder and upper arm.

"Everyone fears that."

"Really?" She sighed and licked my throat, her breath catching in gulps.

"Um," I said as she raised one leg over my hip and pulled me closer.

"I'm going to miss you," she said, coaxing me deeper.

"Won't be for long," I said, as both our bodies arched and shook.

"Ah," she cried, "oh, we'll do it on Wednesdays then, ah, in the woods, oh God, up against a tree, hah, or, ah, or on the, in the, ah, uh, down in the leaves, the leaves. Oh there, right there."

"That's something to look forward to," I said as the pace increased, our mouths joined and her fingernails bit into my back, her heels beat on my legs.

We swived to exhaustion and slept. First light was late reaching into the basement, and Pamela awoke us as she returned from the captain's lodgings. "Sorry," she said, almost running up the steps again and leaving us under her quilt.

We heaved together for a few minutes in mindless joy, and then I rolled to my back. "We've got to get going," I said, sliding my hands up her straining ribs. She galloped to a throaty climax and waited, arched back with her hands gripping my thighs, frozen, for my own very tardy one.

She fell atop me, clawing at my face and shoulders. "Again," she breathed, "Please. One last time." Her hips rolled in the old motion, but we were both spent. We dressed, ate with Pamela in the kitchen, thanked her again and set off to find the British army on its destructive path on the peninsula between the York and the James.

It took most of two days and avoiding several mounted patrols before we crept along a wooded stream where women were fetching buckets of water with yokes over their shoulders. Mercy grabbed and kissed me, bit my lip, tossed her blanket roll over her shoulder and, without even a glance back, went to join them, her story of stopping to visit a friend ready.

I spent most of the next four days shadowing the British as they made their leisurely and vandal-like way eastward. On Sunday morning I shot two young officers who were bathing in the James, their milk-white bodies drew my attention from half a mile away. The first fell back in the river and floated away in the current, leaving a red streak behind him. I was too far off to hear whether or not he cried out. The other, his long yellow hair streaming over his shoulders so that, from a distance, he looked like a woman, ran ashore and stopped to gather his clothes. That gave me time to reload my rifle, and it was relatively easy to blow him off the side of the hill at about a hundred yards. He had almost reached safety. He fell to the stony river bank, grabbing at air, tried to stand, covering the gushing hole in his chest with his hands, and then fell on his face and was still. I reloaded and waited for someone to respond to the shots, but no one came.

Early on Wednesday morning, I was in the treeline as Cornwallis's baggage train topped a hill along the road to Williamsburg, followed by cattle, African slaves, and the hundred or so camp followers that trooped along behind it. I watched the heavily burdened wagons trundle past and strained my eyes for a dark green dress in the mob that trailed behind them. Most were women, but a few boys and children in dresses scampered among them. Some were burdened with bundles of clothes, but most swung their legs with tired ease, a small purse at their belts or a blanket roll diagonally across their bodies. Many wore hats in the mid-June sun. I had a broken piece of mirror at the ready so when I saw this long-legged woman wearing a tucked-up green dress, her red hair peeking out from a wide, straw bonnet, I flashed sunlight into her face until I was sure she had seen me.

At the next bend of the river, she said something to the drudge beside her and walked quickly into the woods and into my arms. We held each other for some time before we kissed and kissed for some time before we fell to the forest floor and tore at my clothes. "Damn, damn, damn," she cried as I plowed her deeply and well, scrambling into the shade on my hands and knees with her arms and legs locked about me. "Oh, God, I've missed you," She cried and lurched up against me over and over. "Do it, do it faster, ah, more, more, more. Ah, you can slow some now. There's a randy sergeant up there, bloody bastard, ah, that's, ah, that's good, ah, he's determined to swive me one of these days. Oh, yes, yes, more, right there. Can't keep his hands off my rump. That'll have to do, won't it. Wonderful, wonderful. Should I let him?" Her arms and legs relaxed, and her body stopped heaving beneath me. Her freckled face assumed a worried look instead of the odd strain and joy of gape-mouthed passion and full-bodied effort.

We stood gasping, and I offered her my canteen while I buttoned my britches. "You've got to get back, quickly," I said, smoothing down her rumpled dress and brushing off some leaves and dried grass, picking sticks from her coppery curls. "You decide about the sergeant." I avoided looking in her eyes and pulled Magda's thin-bladed knife from my boot and handed it to her. "Can you hide this somewhere, just in case?"

She nodded, jiggling the little weapon in her hand. "I'll put it in my bedroll. We're headed for Williamsburg, Jamestown and then Portsmouth, that's what I hear. And the British fleet is bringing supplies and reinforcements. They are eating well, all of us are, mostly beef looted from the farms up stream. Did you see the herd and the slaves? I've heard no complaints. But Cornwallis and Clinton are evidently in some sort of dispute; that's the campfire babble most nights. Clinton, someone said, wanted half of this army back in New York." She kissed me hard and ran back out toward the disappearing throng leaving me with her sweet taste and the feel of her warm body in my hands.

I went back to the headquarters and reported to Captain Foster who was traveling with Wayne's troop of worn but experienced men. Richmond had been abandoned again. They honestly looked like soldiers and marched steadily, if not always in step, to just keep in touch with the British without stirring them up as they moved farther and farther down the James. I asked for and received a small telescope, not very powerful and not very good glass, but it was better than nothing. My new orders included doing what I had been, picking off any officers I found loose about the edges of Cornwallis's army. Tarleton and Simcoe were still out and about and reports kept coming in of burned homes, stolen slaves, torn up bridges and terrorized families.

From the river, I could see the H-- plantation I knew so well on the far side, and with my little spyglass I spotted Martha at work in the kitchen garden, pulling weeds I guessed. I regretted not being able to visit with Missy and Charlotte, not being able to bed them, satisfy them, enjoy them. Despite Mercy's more than adequate rogering, I still yearned for the company of those lusty women and their warm and generous love.