Chapter 7: Enlightenment

We left Philadelphia the next day, headed for Baltimore and Annapolis. Greene and Von Steuben along with their aides, rode in front while Foster and our small company of scouts trailed the wagons as a afterguard, eating dust now and then. Two of our men were always a mile ahead, out on the flanks, just in case. Greene was a great believer in scouts and spies. Captain Foster and I rode in silence for several miles, getting accustomed to the rhythm of our mounts, enjoying the fine day. When we stopped for a rest and a cold meal, I decided to talk with him about the energetic young woman I had spent an afternoon swiving.

"Did you ever hear tell of a colonel in the adjutant's office name of Forbes?" I asked him as we both watched large birds wheel overhead, hawks of some kind. I had found it hard to get the lovely blonde out of my mind, and I was sore as hell, wasted. My balls ached.

"Forbes, don't tell me you met his wife? Lord, I should have warned you," the captain said, hitting me a friendly blow on the shoulder.

"His wife, the young filly with the golden hair?" I gestured with my hands to show her enticing shape.

He nodded and laughed. "She's one of the town's current scandals, replacing poor Peggy Shippen, I suppose." He laughed again, shaking his head. "Among the corps of wagging tongues, she is the scarlet whore of Babylon, the quail of the ball."

"I thought, but, well, she said that, she told me she was his daughter." I spat into the dust and wondered if I was a fool.

"Did she feed you the prisoner story or the cruel father tale?

"A bit of both I suppose."

"She's wonderful isn't she, and she's only sixteen they tell me. I did see her once this week, from a distance, at headquarters just the other day. She glowed but somehow reminded me of a hussy I once knew when I was a boy. The story is that Forbes bought her when she was twelve, privately, down at Fells Point, indentured but I don't believe transported. She's a white slave, if you will, perhaps a Hellbore graduate of some sort. There are various versions. No one knows what he paid for her and what she was capable of even then. He's married her somehow, up the Hudson where he has some influence, but he still holds her contract, until she's twenty-one, an apprentice, if you will. Normally indentured servants cannot marry. No one can guess what happens when she's of age. Now, and this is the part you are not going to like very much, he hides in his house and watches her swive other men. If you stuck her, hah, and I'm sure you did, he saw you do it from one of the closets or up in the attic, watched, listened and enjoyed every position, every grunt and groan. There are dozens of peep holes in that room, trick mirrors and false walls."

I shook my head, more confused than usual. "I never heard of such a thing. Why does she do it?"

"Opium perhaps, laudanum as they call it now. Did you notice her eyes? We don't really know and as far as anyone can tell, she never fucks the same man twice, but she has one almost every day, every afternoon, just after he comes home for his supper, for hours at a time. Sometimes, so they say, he brings her a stud. or sends one around, a colleague in need or someone he wishes to shame or blackmail. Once in a while he brings others to watch her perform in the evening."

I scratched at my crotch. "Is she poxed?" I asked, not really wanting to know but feeling very sore. I stayed sore for a week.

"Doubtful," said the captain, smiling at me, "not yet anyway. Hope you enjoyed yourself; you can be sure her husband and master did. Did she give you a cup of tea?"

I nodded.

"And you stayed up for an hour, rutting away like a blooded stallion on May Day?"

"Guilty, more'n that," I admitted, remembering it like a dream.

"Well," he said, "you got the full treatment, my boy, with bells on."