Chapter 58: A Hundred Pounds

On my way back to my duties, I stopped to visit Frances again, drawn like a bear to honey, anticipating another happy tumble in the hay, complete respite from the never-ending war. It was a terrible mistake. She rose to her toes and kissed me when I opened the door to her bedroom and found her alone, writing a letter. The room smelled like roses. It was midday, bright and sunny, and the large, high bed looked very inviting.

"So how's the poor, lonely, little widow?" I asked when my mouth was free.

"I'm going to marry him," she said, unbuttoning her robe and smiling at me. 'But I'm happy to see you, you big bull."

I undressed as rapidly as I could, but she was bare first since she was without her stays for a change and just wearing a light robe of some filmy stuff. I pushed her back to the foot of her big bed, admiring her fine body, soft with the fat layer of unsoiled youth lying beneath her fair skin. She yipped as usual, wrapped her legs around me and gritted her teeth.

"Nobody's been with me since you left," she moaned, undulating. She squealed with pleasure, my mouth covering most of her outcries.

We lay panting side by side, telling each other what we had been doing while we pawed each other.

"What's going to happen?" she said. "What's going on?"

"I think we've got 'em trapped in Yorktown," I said, "unless their damn fleet comes in to save them."

"Really?" She threw a leg over mine, impatient, encouraging me to get ready, smiling into my face, licking her lips.

"Really," I said, nibbling at her mouth.

"When are you going to have to leave?" she asked.

"In the morning."

"Good, good, I can't wait to see it again. I told one of my friends, and she said I must have been dreaming."

"Probably," I said, rolling atop her. She welcomed me with a sigh, and we were immediately in rapid and energetic action, banging together, bouncing on the big bed with abandon and ignoring the noisy protest of the knots beneath us. She enjoyed herself as much as any woman I've ever known, beating on me with her small fists and encouraging me to greater effort.

"Where's your father?" I asked after becoming conscious of the noise we were making and slowing our pace to about a long-distance gallop. The bed moaned and groaned, its legs juddered.

"Richmond," she moaned.

We paused to eat, enjoyed a dusty bottle of wine she fetched from somewhere downstairs, swived again and slept, both anticipating the morning. At least we slept in a bed for a change.

In the grey morning our patience was rewarded. I rolled over. She awoke suddenly, smiled, and we joined our bodies.

The bedroom door crashed open and there stood a smiling, young British officer, an ensign, and two greenclad soldiers with fixed bayonets. The girl on the bed rolled over, and I looked for my weapons.

"It's about time," she said. "Where y'all been?"

"Waitin' to hear the bed stop squeaking, sweetheart. Get dressed, rebel," he said to me and then, "You too," to the naked girl sitting up with her a quilt held between her lush breasts. "Hurry up." He prodded me with the tip of his saber as I pushed my shirt into my breeches.

"Me," Frances squealed, "I'm not goin' anyplace."

"Cap'n's waitin' f'you downstairs, ma'm," said the young Redcoat, smiling as the woman scrambled out of bed and pulled on her light robe to an appreciative audience. I sat and looked for my boots while she tied her garment around her and hurried through the door, pushing the riflemen aside, her hair a mess, her chin thrust out. They both smiled as she passed. They nudged each other.

When we got down to the front hall, Frances stood facing a British cavalry captain, shaking her fists and yelling. "You promised, Johnny, you promised me a hundred pounds. You promised!"

He grinned, slapped her face, and said, "Take her along," to the men guarding me. They tied my hands behind me and hurried us both out to a waiting wagon, both shoeless. The girl was crying, spitting mad, dragging her bare feet and thrashing in the grip of two smiling cavalrymen who were not being very careful where they put their hands. They tossed us both into the back of a wagon with a bit of hay on its bed, tied my feet together and one of the greenclad soldiers climbed in with us and hogtied me, hands and feet looped together behind me. Since I was barefoot, Magda's knife was a long way from my grasp.

As we jounced out of the yard, the grinning soldier began getting ready for a different sort of action by sheathing his bayonet, removing his belt and unbuttoning his jacket. Frances sat with her back to the driver's seat, looking furious, her arms folded across her chest.

"Leave her alone," I said to him as he knelt by my face, and he hit me in the ribs, smiling. I took a deep breath and knew he had cracked a rib or two.

"You had yours, shit-kicker," he said. "Now it's a man's turn." He grabbed Frances by a leg and pulled her down beside him. She looked at me wide-eyed as he tore away her light robe and opened his foreflap. "What a fine little muff," he said, dragging out his tool.

"No," Frances, yelled, squirming, "your captain's my friend. Don't."

The boy hit her across the face with his open hand, front and back, full swings in a confined space, two loud, head-snapping cracks. "Spread 'em," he told her as her nose began to bleed. He mounted her roughly, with a wild grin on his face, his teeth clenched, as she lay with one knee raised and tried to push him off. He rode her hard for a few minutes with his hands holding down her shoulders and then jerked and arched his back crying, "Gah, ah, ah, damn that's good."

He continued humping for another minute or so with his hands at her breasts and then pulled out of her and fastened his britches. He stood and tapped the man sitting beside the driver. "Yer go, Dave," he said and they changed places, stepping over me as they did. Dave kicked me once, but not hard enough to break anything, more just out of form as he dropped his britches to his knees.

The soldier knelt, grabbed the small girl's wrists and spent some time gnawing at Frances's face and fine breasts before her tore at her groin with his hands, prying her open. She squirmed and tried to roll out from under him, and he cuffed her ears with both hands until she stopped and let him grunt and hump until he was content, holding her by the hair. It did not take long.

When that man dismounted, he stood with his left hand on the back of the driver's seat, smiled down at the sobbing Frances and said, "Get up here, y'stupid bitch." The girl got to her knees in the straw, moaning and trying to cover her nakedness, and he reached down, grabbed her long hair and pushed her face into his sodden groin. "Suck it, whore," he said, shaking her head back and forth and laughing. "Lick it." The man who had mounted her first turned to watch and patted his friend on the shoulder.

"That's better," he said, after a bit, putting both hands on her head as the wagon rolled on a smooth stretch of road. When he satisfied, the soldier forced Frances to turn around, knelt and buggered her until she screamed, staring at me and crying, "Help, please, help me." When he was done, he wiped his bloody prod on her legs, and then traded places with the driver.

"I always get the leftovers," the older man said as he opened his britches, rolled out a gastly purple member as broad as it was long and pulled the moaning girl down to him. It looked like some sort of poisonous toadstool, more like a maul than a lance.

"No, please," she cried weakly, looking at his misshapen tool and then at me rather wildly as if I should have been able to do something. The driver knelt between her lifeless legs, lifted her hips and impaled her roughly, mashing her flat in the straw, rocking from side to side and gnawing at her breast and throat. Frances watched him do this to her, mouth agape, body limp, and when he finished she turned away from me and vomited in the straw. There was blood in her groin.

All through this period the Redcoated captain occasionally rode up beside the wagon and watched the action, smiling down, especially when the girl saw him and called out to him for help. "Save some for me," he said at one point.

One of the horsemen was next, neatly stepping into the wagon from his mount and not even bothering to remove his spurs before he rogered the poor girl from the rear, banging her head against the driver's seat from time to time. He withdrew, smacked her bare buttocks, and said loudly, "Thank you, madam, I suggest you do better next time." He looked at me, "Hardly worth the effort," he said.