Chapter 45: Lotty

Missy and Martha fussed over the wound on the back of my thigh as if they were discussing a supper dish that failed to come out of the oven looking exactly right. It bothered me some to lie there in Charlotte's cottage, on a bed where I had romped and rogered more times than I could count, especially since I was lying on my stomach with my bare ass in the breeze.

"Well, it looks pretty good, considering," Martha said, rubbing something on the healing wound.

"Look at all this red here, along this stitching. That's not right," Missy said. "Fearsome."

"Nothing time and grits won't cure," Martha said, wrapping linen bandage around my leg and tying it off. She changed the dressing on my forehead and looked at the notch in my nose, squeezing a leaf that dripped juice on it. "Go on and pull up y'britches," she told me, packing up her midwife bag.

I stood and did as she suggested. Half of July had slipped by. Banastre Tarleton was out raiding far and wide while Cornwallis sat in Portsmouth, resting I supposed and planning what to do next. Either that or he was waiting for supplies and more men, which is what Captain Foster feared. I had already been down to Portsmouth once since the fight at Green Spring, and now I was supposed to go trail after Tarleton, reporting weekly if possible.

"You are in no shape to be riding anywhere," Missy said. "That thing's still oozing on your leg. Your nose looks some better though."

I had not known it at the time, but in the fight at the gun after that charge of grape killed the brave, red-headed girl, I had taken a musket ball right across the bridge of my nose. Gave me two black eyes, took out a piece of bone and left another dent in my hide, but did not really amount to much unless appearance was important. I had long since stopped counting wounds or worrying about what I looked like.

"That Legion's out there ripping up the countryside out Lynchburg way where they hanged them Tories. I got'a get to work," I told Missy, bending to kiss her cheek. "Foster's sent what's left of his company out yonder."

"Lot a good you'll do," she said. "Look what happened in Bedford, hardly a barn left my cousin told me." Missy shook her curly head. She was still dressed all in black although she had told me that several eligible suitors had already come to call and pay their respects to her late husband and sit with the lonely widow. "That bloody Tory," as she called him, had left a will that was all tangles since he had several farms as well as a number of children from previous wives and at least one bastard he acknowledged and left a bequest in slaves.

"I'm not eager to marry again," she said, "but 'fore you go, I hope you'll do your duty up in my bedroom. I got a terrible itch that needs some powerful scratching."

"Better be now, then," I said, grabbing her and starting to work on her onyx buttons.

"Get away," she said. "I'm not goin' to jump in that old bed with you. You come see me properly after supper, with your hands clean, too. Now get along."

Hamlet and I were seeing to my horse and equipment when Charlotte arrived on a lathered stallion and jumped down to grab me and kiss me. Hamlet cleared his throat and wandered off while Charlotte rubbed her body on mine in a way sure to excite both of us. "Where you going?" she demanded, sliding her hand inside my shirt.

"West," I said, sitting down. "Lookin' for trouble. Maybe out along the Appomattox, that way anyhow."

"Why? You've done enough."

'Cause we ain't won," I said, getting back to putting a new flint in the duck-bill jaws of my old musket and trying to ignore the fact that she was rubbing her belly against my shoulder.