Chapter 61: Nan

An hour later, after I had described several times to many officers that indeed the British seemed to be abandoning their outer defenses, Jamey Dillon, the blacksmith, and I were aboard a old wagon urging its mule to hurry west toward Williamsburg where I was sure Captain Foster's people could get us some horses. I had shed the green coat but kept the musket and ammunition. The smith had pried the left cuff from my wrist, but I was still wearing the other and the length of chain.

We spent the time, as the mule moved at its single pace, discussing women and the war, especially officers we had met. I gave him a somewhat exaggerated but very colorful description of what Mickey and I had accomplished in the sack and praised Dan Morgan to the heavens suggesting that had he headed the army instead of Washington, the war would have been over in '76.

Trading the wagon for a pair of riding horses proved to be no problem, although I had to repeat what I had seen in the redoubt, and we headed on up the river at a more rapid pace. We picked up our conversation more-or-less where we had left it. The smith allowed that he not recall having a woman during the two years he had spent as one of Lord Cornwallis's itinerant blacksmiths, traipsing through the South.

"I saw a sight of woman with the baggage train," I said, thinking back to Mercy's brief time with the camp followers.

"Officers got first pick a'that bunch, then the sergeants. Didn't leave much for the ordinary soldiers much less men like me and the cooks. Them that was left looked poxy enough to scare off most less they was blind or poxed theirselfs." He shook his head.

"So you relied on the old five-fingered widow?"

"That I did, an' maybe a few wore-out tavern wenches. Some did goats or sheep, some did each other, but that weren't f'me. How much farther we got to go?

"A ways," I said, as we approached the army's ferry that crossed the James near Hopewell. The sun was sinking by then, but we were almost there.

"There's the tavern I tole you about," I said maybe a half hour later. Want'a stop for a beer?"

"Naw. I want'a poke that gal til I'm cross-eyed. Sure am glad they catched you back there."

I thought about George and said nothing. My luck had not run out yet.

Harley greeted me like a long-lost son and clapped Jamey on the back once he figured out who he was.

"Found him down among the Redcoats. Couldn't'a got out without his help," I told him.

"Well, he's a good man," Harley said. "What brung y'here. Thunk you was over Glouster way, 'cross the York."

"I am, but I need another favor, two in fact." I held out my arm with the chain dangling from it and looked over to where Mickey was rough-shaping a horseshoe at the anvil. "Jamey here ain't been laid since King George's German daddy was on the throne."

"That so," said Harley, poking his fellow smith in the ribs. "Do it still work?"

"Hope so," Jamey said. "Sure like to try an' find out."

"I promised him that I'd ask you to let him spend some time with Mickey, 'sall right with her, a'course."

"Sure," said Harley. "You 'n me can go get a beer soon as I cuts this off a'you, and Mickey can take care a'Jamey here. How's that? Seems I done this here for you once a'fore." He chiseled off the rivets with a couple of blows.

Jamey smiled widely while I rubbed my chaffed wrist, and Harley took him over and introduced him to Mickey who put down her hammer and shook his hand. They talked for a bit, and pretty soon Jamey had his hammer out, and both of them were beating on shoes, sparks flying.

Harley came back and took my arm. "Come on," he said, "She won't do nothing for him till she finishes them shoes I set her to. Stubborn gal. Old Jamey's in for a treat, ain't he?"

I nodded, and we went down to the tavern.

61 -

Since the H-- place was only a mile or two west of the tavern, I headed there as soon as I could leave Harley with my thanks and a beer in front of him. Missy was still wearing black, but she was willing to give me a bath despite the late hour, and Martha sewed up my cheek where a flap of skin had been hanging for a couple of days. My nose was still sore and both eyes were turning purple they told me.

"You're even in worse shape than usual," Missy said handing me a sponge after she scrubbed my back. "An' you got new cuts on your back. It looks like somebody took a bite out'a your shoulder." She touched the place as Martha arrived with another steaming bucket. I stood and she poured water over me and handed me a big towel. Then she examined her needle work, nodded her satisfaction and anointed the stripes on my back.

I told Missy what had happened to the girl she had given her husband's clothes, and she sniffed back a tear. "Damn war," she said, letting me help her unlace her stays. "You want to eat first?" she asked me as I sat on the side of her bed, waiting for her.

"No," I said, pulling her up to perch on my lap with her knees behind my rump. "An' I know you don' want me to put my back on your clean sheets with this goo Martha rubbed on me."

She wiggled, getting comfortable with my lance fully inside her and still growing. "Very thoughtful," she said. "You sure you're up to this here?"

"I'm up," I told her and kissed her vigorously. We began with my hands locked in the small of Missy's back. By the time we finished, she had torn open the whip cut on my shoulder, but we both were ready for a bit of food and wine.

I hoped Jamey was feeling as satisfied as I was. Missy found me a shirt, and it was late the next morning before I remember anything else very clearly.

Two days later I was back in the works before Gloucester, facing the British force commanded by Banastre Tarleton and a colonel called Dundas who had about 700 regulars behind the thick walls. The Americans, mainly Virginians I think, were under George Weedon and the French, including some pretty-well mounted dragoons, were led by the Duc de Lauzun. On the day I got back, he almost captured Tarleton in a rough little fight along the high road just above the town.

Captain Foster, who was dividing his time between Gloria in Williamsburg, Pamela in Richmond and the siege of Gloucester, was north of the York on October 2 and in a mood to give orders. I told him what happened to George Reedy and reported the death of Colonel Scammell as well.

"Well," he said, looking very serious. "If the French fleet holds, we've got Cornwallis trapped. This here's important, too. No one thinks he will try to break out toward the south where Greene and the others are closing the frontier. But, he might attempt to head north to join Clinton in New York. I'm probably making a mistake, but I want you to get out there where this cavalry fight took place and interview the woman Tarleton was visiting. See what you can find out about his numbers and intentions. Try to stay out of her bed. I understand from the Duke that she is milkmaid pretty."

"Yes sir," I told him, "I will do my very best."

"Draw a clean uniform, at least a better shirt, before you visit this woman. What happened to your nose?"

I was wearing a shirt Missy had given me from her slave clothes. It was a good bit too small, and my britches were blood stained and ragged. "Man with a sword hit me," I told him, feeling my bent nose. "The one that killed George."

"You take care of him?" the captain asked.

I nodded. "How's Gloria?" I asked.

"Tireless," he said. "She's likely romping somebody right now. By the way, your rifle's over there in the corner. When you finish this job, you can join the others on the far side of Gloster to keep an eye on Cornwallis's moves, if any. He's got some small boats still, and a couple of ships out in the river. I guess you'd like another blade bayonet, but I don't know where to find one right now. I'll keep my eyes open."

"Thank you," I said, drew a shirt and new britches that fit, found a horse no body was using and rode up toward Wicomico on the road that ran down the center of the peninsula, using the directions Captain Foster had received from the French. Behind me the siege guns boomed out in a steady progression, and the big guns at Yorktown answered with a rumble. They fired most of the day and much of the night from then on, for the next two weeks, hundreds of shells a day.

The door of the small farmhouse was answered by a young, black woman. She raised an eyebrow, and I asked if her mistress was at home. Silently, she let me in and then vanished. From the back room appeared, as described, a very pretty woman in her mid-twenties, a young matron. Her dark blonde hair was tied back with a wide, blue ribbon that was about the color of her eyes. She had a small, upturned nose; high cheek bones; a soft, pink mouth; firm, rounded chin, and bright, blue eyes under dark, heavy lashes. She was slim, well-moulded and long-legged, perhaps five foot six, dressed for the farm not the city, but with lace at her elbows and shift verge.

"Sir?" she said.

I introduced myself, said I was an emissary from the forces laying siege to Gloster and wished to ask her some questions.

"Tea?" she suggested. "Amica, some tea," she said to the back room. "It will not be real tea, but we've grown to like it. Please sit down."

I sat and we talked. The tea arrived, and we talked some more. She was animated and collected, neither frightened nor eager to please.

"Do you manage this farm by yourself?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, no choice there," she said. "We only have four slaves and ten acres of tobacco. It's not such a big job."

"It looked bigger," I said, watching her breathe a bit more rapidly.

"Yes, well, we own fifity acres. No, that's wrong, we farm fifty; we own twenty with a big woodlot, rent the rest."

"Corn, I assume."

"Mostly," she said. "Some long-fallow land in pasture although the army has taken most of the animals. We only have a few goats left."

"Your husband?"

"With Clinton. A captain in the loyal forces." She sat up straighter. She had fine posture, good carriage as they sometimes call it.

"No children?" The house was very quiet.

Her eyes widened. "Amica," she said loudly, "go down to the barn and work on that flax." The back door closed as she released a sob.

"I'm sorry," I said as she pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and wept into it. I did not know whether to go hold her and pat her or not so I just sat and looked out the window until she sniffed and stopped crying.

"I've had three since, um, since my husband has been away. He left in early '77. One was born dead last year, and I fear I'll not have another, ever; a little girl came early and died after only two days in'79, in the winter, and the other girl, she, the first child, they took her away."

"Who did, who took her away? The British?"

"No," she said, "no, the factor. He's a Scot, has offices in Alexandria and Portsmouth, Arthur McGee. He took the girl, Jean I called her. I don't know what she's called now. She'd be almost three I guess."

"I don' understand," I said, truly puzzled and hoping to move the conversation around to Tarleton soon.

"We owe him, the factor. My husband owes him money. Well, tobacco, but it's the same thing."

"Isn't that normal, having an account with your factor, a debt?"

"Yes, but my husband gambled. That's how he lost the thirty acres, five or ten at a time. When he joined the army, we owed three years of tobacco crops plus almost a thousand guineas."

"Good Lord," I said. "That's a hundred thousand pounds now."

"At least," she said. "And at twenty percent."

"How can you pay it? Does your husband provide?"

"On my back, generally," she said. "That's how I pay it. The factor and his friends visit me and swive me at their pleasure. Three or four times a year although, because of all this, they haven't been here for a while. One or another of them fathered all three of my children."

"Does your husband know?" I felt embarrased for her.

"I've written him." She lifted her chin and looked even prettier, her eyes damp with tears, tense lines near her soft mouth.

"What about Tarleton?"

"Oh," she said, "you heard. He's been here a few times lately. Never in my bed. Not that way. I first saw him, hm, six weeks ago perhaps. He's quite gallant, very proud of himself."

"Why do you stay? Have you no one to help you, no family?"

She shook her head. "I love my husband. I vowed to stand by him when we wed, rich or poor you know."

"What do you know of Tarleton, of his force in Gloucester?'

"Nothing, almost nothing. He said he had a thousand men and could stop ten thousand at his walls. He left saying he wanted to meet that duke, but they tell me he was defeated, almost captured by the French."

"I heard the same," I said.

"That's about all I know except there is evidently some sickness in the British camp, something serious that worries them."

The back door opened and blue-black Amica appeared almost silently. "Miss Nan," she said, "Mac's here wif two men an' a pack horse."

"Oh Lord," the young woman cried, jumping to her feet. "I thought all this would surely keep them away. They must have come down from the Rappahannock. Imagine!"

"You're pretty enough for a man to ignore the war," I said, standing beside her at a window that looked into the back yard, resting my hand easily on her shoulder. "Why the pack horse."

"They usually stays three or fo' days, drinking and playin' cards and swivin' Miss Nan," Amica said, shaking her head. "What we gonna do. They seen his horse and ast about it."

"What did you tell them?" the woman asked, still staring into the yard.

"Nuffin'," said the slave girl.

"Go fetch Major and Billy. Go out the front way. Tell 'em to bring their pitch forks." She whirled and pushed at her hair.

The black girl fled, leaving the door open at about the same time heavy foot steps marched through the back door and a man's voice called, "Nan, where the hell are you? No greetin' for me? Where' m'kiss?"

I sat back down taking a quick inventory of my choices and weapons. My rifle was in the barn with my horse. Magda's thin knife was in my boot. I had surprise and, I hoped, size on my side judging from my quick look at the visitors.

The three men almost filled the room and stopped suddenly. I stood and measured them. The mistress of the house did her duty cooly, introducing me with the title of sergeant since that is what I had told her I was. I grasped the hands offered me, giving each of them a glare and a firm enough shake that they would remember me.

"What are you doing here?" demanded the factor, Mr. McGee, a man of fifty or so, florid, paunchy and wearing a stylish wig. The other two, Simmons and Forest, both probably in their forties and looking like the prosperous merchants they likely were, soft men I decided, they backed up and became spectators, folding their arms over their fancy waistcoats.

"I'm a provost marshal," I said, "investigating a complaint."

"Whose complaint?"

"This lady's," I said. "She's suggested that one or more of our men may have insulted her."

"Hah," said the factor, "it would take a cannon to insult this prime piece of ass, this lovely slut. Come now!"

I hit him in the belly, and he fell to his knees, gasping and then vomiting in the middle of the floor. "Get out of here," I said to the other two. "I want to talk to this man alone. Wait in the barn, and I'll get to you directly. Do not try to run off. My men are out there waiting."