Chapter 48: At Smiley's

I headed back toward Richmond and made Smiley's tavern my first stop. I had spent restful two days there earlier and enjoyed myself memorably although I never learned much of any use. Smiley himself was long dead but his young widow ran the place with the help of her two nubile daughters and one mature and considerate prostitute by the name of Jenny. I had managed to bed all four of them during my previous visit and looked forward to trying my luck again. They also had a couple of slaves, one in the kitchen and her man in the yard, hard-working folks who had provided some useful rumors.

I was scraping at my whiskers with Magda's sharp, thin blade when a bunch of riders galloped in from the wornout road. "Oh oh," Lucy said, getting up from the straw and hauling down her dress. She was the reason I was shaving since she had complained so long and loud about my bristly face while we were swiving that I was put off my game completely. She started looking around for her clogs, and I came and joined her to get out of the sunlight. I put my arm around her and my hand on her hard bottom, a friendly gesture that I hoped would encourage her to spread her legs again although my tonsorial efforts were less than half done.

"Who are these men?" I asked her with a friendly pat.

"Militia," she said with a grimace, twisting out of my grip. "Tories. Officer's a Brit, Lancaster, but they's Virginians, the rest a'them, and mean buggers. Mama won' even let us serve the tables when they's here."

I watched as the black stable hand brought in their mounts and saw that most of the saddles held a short musket or carbine in a leather scabbard. At least they were not going to be fully armed in the tavern if I had to do something about them.

"You best hide," Lucy said, pulling at my arm. "Get up in the loft. I'll come and soothe y'later."

Just then the girl's younger sister, who was called Lonnie and was about fifteen, came running out of the back door with a smallish man in hot pursuit. She was squealing and flailing her arms when she ran into the barn and grabbed her sister. The boy followed, and I tripped him. He slid across the floor, legs kicking, and I pulled him to his feet and banged his head against a post a few times and then dropped his limp body into a stall.

"You kill him?" Lucy asked, comforting her sobbing sister.

"Doubt it," I said. "What's going on?" I asked the trembling girl who was sniffing and wiping her eyes.

"They's wild today," she said. "Two a'them hauled Jenny up to her room first thing then that feller made a grab for me. Momma's mad as can be."

"Bob, where the bloody hell are ya?" someone yelled from the inn.

"Get him to come back here," I whispered to Lonnie, and she went to the open barn door and beckoned, smiling broadly and looking frisky, something she knew she did well. A lanky militiamen soon appeared, looking hopeful, and I hit him in the head with a piece of cord wood. He fell like a tree so I hauled him back to the hay with the other man, who was moaning some by this time. I knelt to keep the girls from seeing what I was doing and dispatched both of them with a jab to the chest with Magda's knife. Killing vermin was the way I thought of it. They hardly bled.

Then, since I could hear the mother yelling and cussing, I headed toward the inn despite the girls clutching each other and urging me to stay away. I was almost to the back door when their mother appeared in the grip of another soldier who seemed intent on ripping her dress from her back. She was a strong woman and had a frying pan in her fist, but he was persistent, had her arm tightly gripped and was twice her size. I peeled him away from her, hit him in the belly and the face and then stomped on his neck once he fell in the mud. Mrs. Smiley looked down at the sprawled dead man under my boot with his tongue protruding and said, "Where's my girls?"

I pointed toward the barn and went into the dark tavern with my cocked pistol in my hand. Noises came from upstairs, thumping and laughing, and a British officer and a militia non-com sat at a table, drinking and relaxing, coats undone and feet up on chairs. The officer's eyes widened as I stepped behind his companion and clubbed him senseless with the barrel of my weapon. It took two whacks.

"Sit," I said, "or you're a dead man."

He tossed his ale at me, scrambled backwards, cursing and drawing his sword, and I shot him in the body with a load of buckshot. I bloody mess about the size of a trencher appeared across his chest and stomach. He twitched a few times when he landed, and I quickly reloaded while the booming report was still echoing.