Chapter 55: Frances Again

By the time I got back to Richmond, everything had been moved over to the peninsula, way down toward Gloucester Point and, I was told, Point Comfort although that turned out to be wrong. I found Captain Foster, reported what little I knew, and was told that Tarleton had returned before I had and that some of his men were now involved in fortifying York and Gloucester and raiding the countryside on both sides of the York River. Captain Foster said he had sent most of his men out after Tarleton, but he ordered me to find a good shooting place, use my rifle and discourage the engineers building the forts.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"We got some good news for a change. Want'a hear?" Captain Foster asked, smiling like he just found a jug he had forgotten about.

I narrowed my eyes and nodded.

"General Washington's coming down from New York, his high and mightyness hisself, and he's got a French army with him, a big one, with heavy guns that are coming by sea. We also hear rumors that the French fleet is on the way to the Chesapeake. They should be here by the end of the month or early September."

"I'll be damned," I said. "And Cornwallis."

"We think he's left Portsmouth completely, and he's waiting for supplies, but you can go down there next week and make sure. Right now, go help slow down the fort building. Pick out the ones that look like they know what they're doing not jus' the dirt shovelers."

I found a tall, leafy sycamore on a hill overlooking the growing semi-circle of raw earth that would be the English fort. In it I located a forked branch some fifty feet off the ground where I could lean back against the trunk and brace my long rifle on a limb. It was difficult to load a rifle in a tree top, but I managed to get off about ten or twelve well-aimed shots before they spotted me and started firing case shot into my tree. I had hit at least five men by then and scared the hell out of several others. The ones I hit did not get up. I scrambled down and went looking for another tree.

The maple was not as big, but I had almost as good a sight line. The first shot from there spun around an officer studying a map, throwing his hat one way and his map the other, dropping him to his knees with his hands at his throat. I hit two more men from there before I started drawing fire and again had to abandon my position. By sundown I was in my fifth tree and had expended all the balls I had made for my rifle. I had not counted the number of men I had hit that day but knew I had done as ordered since few men wearing officer's hats were showing themselves in the open. It looked to me as if we were in for a siege unless the British fleet arrived and either brought a new army or took Cornwallis away.

Washington was coming. That was the news.

Horny, I went looking for Frances S -- in whose bed and on whose floor I had spent a wonderful hour or two. I found her at her father's large house in the country just outside of town. She was still just as frilly and as beautiful as I remembered. She was also full of news, some of which was actually useful to my tasks since she had heard British officers and leading Tories discuss their plans to rescue the army at a recent party one of her paramours had given. I sat on her father's broad lawn drinking his whisky in the shade of an old oak, and she bubbled happily with her neighborhood news. Finally we got to her own troubles and revelations.

"My husband was killed, about two months ago, shot dead," she said happily, leaning toward me and displaying her abundent chest. "They think his body just washed away, down the river. No funeral or anything. So I'm a rich widow."

I had wondered about the black dress but not the beaded fringes, gold necklaces, colorful rings and swathes of rich creamy lace at her breast, shoulders and elbows. "Who shot him?" I asked, sliding my hand up her long leg.

"It was a duel, over a young boy they say. A friend of his did it."

"A duel?"

"They went out to this island and shot at each other. The man had been his friend for a long time."

"Who is he?"

"It doesn't matter. He shot himself, put the pistol in his own mouth. They described it all to me. Horrible." She smiled.

I just shook my head and waited.

"So now I have two homes, forty-some slaves, three farms, and a new husband if I want him. Isn't that grand?" She grabbed my hand away from her thigh and held it between her swelling breasts. I hated stays all over again.

"Grand," I said, trying to pull her dress open and get at her laces.

"You remember, the man I told you gave me the riding horse?"

"And the locket," I said, fingering it, and deflowered you, I thought.

"Um hm, he wants to marry me. His wife died. He has two children."

"Well?"