Chapter 12

New characters appearing in this chapter:

Thomas LeGras

General Clark’s Aide, 5’-7” tall, 145 pounds, 30 years old, brown hair and eyes, a bit of a dandy

The site for the town of Lexington was first selected in June of 1775, when a party of surveyors and frontiersmen led by William McConnell camped on the Middle Fork of Elkhorn Creek. When they heard of the patriot victories at Lexington and Concord, they named their campsite Lexington in honor of it.

A permanent settlement was not established there until 1779 due to dangers posed by various Indian tribes. In that year Colonel Robert Patterson and twenty-five companions arrived and erected a blockhouse. A stockade and cabins soon followed. The area was known as Bryan Station for a time. The settlers defended it against British and Indian attacks during the American War for Independence.

The town of Lexington was officially created in April of 1782. Over time, Lexington was transformed from a rough, wild settlement into one of the largest communities west of the Allegheny Mountains at that time. By 1800 the Main Street of Lexington had all of the appearances of Market Street in Philadelphia on a busy day. There were over four hundred houses in the community, and Transylvania University had moved to Lexington from Danville in 1789. The first library in Kentucky opened in Lexington in 1795, and a number of churches soon appeared in the city.

Early the next morning, Friday the 13th of June, we all set out for Lexington. My Brother, male Cousins, and I wore the clothing that we had purchased in the Other Reality. Our Sisters and female Cousins wore the outfits that they had worn on the march here. The road from Fort Henry soon intersected the road that ran from Boonesborough to Lexington. We reached the outskirts of the town after another three miles or so. We had seen a number of fine brick houses on large lots just outside of the town on a hill overlooking it.

The road that we were on had turned into Main Street when we passed the town limits. Lexington was a busy town with much work going on. There were houses and businesses under construction. Numerous stores were already in operation. Our Sisters and female Cousins were interested in the mercantile stores and the seamstress shops. We guys were just interested in seeing the town. We did visit the blacksmith’s shop, and several of the rifle maker’s shops. We had the shoes on all of the horses checked by the blacksmith and his helper. A few shoes required replacing.

Carl and James went to check out a couple of the numerous taverns, and soon reported that they had a form of beer here, although no ale to speak of, but did have a lot of corn liquor.

While the blacksmith and his helper were busy with all of our horses, we had time to observe the people moving about in Lexington. The citizens and travelers were as varied a group as one could have ever seen. There were farmers in work clothes, merchants in breeches, waistcoats, and aprons, as well as women in shifts, skirts, and bonnets. We also saw men in breechclouts, greasy hunting shirts, leggings, and moccasins. These were invariably carrying long Kentucky rifles as well as other weapons. There were also ladies in fancy dresses, and gentlemen in breeches, stockings, waistcoats and fancy coats; some with hats and some without.

The streets here were of dirt, or mud when it rained, and not cobblestones as in the towns of our relatives in the Other Reality. They were also much wider and straighter.

“Some of these other horses will require new shoes in a while,” the blacksmith told us when he had finished shoeing the horses that required new shoes. “It would be best to only bring in a few at a time.”

“We will have the smith at Fort Henry look at them periodically,” I told him to a startled look.

“Fort Henry?” he asked.

“My Brothers, Cousins, and I are all in the Army,” I told him.

“You don’t look old enough to have Army horses, and these didn’t have an Army brand on them,” he remarked.

“These are our own horses, not the Army’s. We are all officers in a special unit,” I told him as I handed him the money to pay for the work he had done. I could sense that he had a very small Talent. It was enough to make him a good smith, but not enough to make him a great one. The Talent allowed a smith to feel the iron as he worked it.

After leaving the Blacksmith, we waited for our female relatives outside the store they were currently visiting. They soon emerged with a few small packages that went into their saddlebags before we all prepared to return to Fort Henry. On the way out of town our female relatives were more than a little upset.

“Everything here is more expensive than we envisioned,” Saraid complained.

“Much of it comes from New Orleans by keelboat,” I pointed out.

“Even so, Mark, it seems excessively expensive,” she countered.

“That’s why most of the people here make their own cloth and clothing,” Dealla pointed out to her Sister.

“The locally grown food and meat aren’t that expensive. The wood products aren’t either. It’s only those things that are imported,” Dymphna pointed out to her older Sister.

“But all of the nice things that interest us are imported,” Sererena pointed out to her younger Sisters.

“We can’t help that,” Dealla and Dymphna replied.

As we left, we got a much better look at the fine houses on the large lots just outside of the town. They were mostly two and three story houses of brick, with an occasional one of wood. They were similar in appearance to some of the old houses that we had seen in Savannah not far from our home, and in Charleston, South Carolina; Williamsburg, Virginia; Annapolis, Maryland, and Philadelphia. They were the houses of people who had brought money with them from the coastal colonies, or who had made large sums since arriving here. They had little in common with the houses or cabins of the vast majority of the other settlers here.

Since we were in no hurry, as we had nothing to do at the Fort, we rode all of the way back and enjoyed the scenery and seeing those that we occasionally encountered on the way back. Once back at the fort, we all spent extra time taking care of our horses when we put them up.

The next three days were very quiet, and we had little to keep us busy. Our Mage Sisters had finally decided on a name for the foal, and called her Elva (pronounced Al-va). They took the mare, which they had named ‘Molly’ out to graze on grass on Saturday and Elva went with her. The rest of us also took our horses out to ses out to graze on the plentiful grass around the Fort.

We had been told that a horse needed an acre of pasture if kept outside all of the time, but could exist on a lot less if stabled part of the time, and fed hay and grain. They also needed other horses around them, as they are herd animals. The Army certainly didn’t need to worry about that with all of the horses that they had.

While the horses enjoyed the outdoors and the grass, we sat around with little to do but watch them and the grass grow. This was not a good thing for people who were used to being busy all of the time.

“There has to be something to do besides watching the grass wave in the wind,” Anann said after an hour or so, as she was clearly bored out of her skull.

“What are you proposing?” Gerald asked, as he re-sharpened his knife for at least the fifth time.

“There was a book of Magic that I was reading. It was just getting interesting when all of this started. Could we possibly bring books here to study?” she asked.

“I never thought of you as the studious one, Anann,” I told my Sister.

“I passed all of my tests, Mike! Did you think that it all just came to me suddenly, or that the ‘Book of Dreams’ taught all of it to me?” Anann asked in a cross voice.

“She didn’t get it from me either, Mike!” Amelia added in a grouchy voice. Now I had both of my younger Sisters mad at me.

“Okay, okay! I take it back. But I still don’t know if we can draw on the library here, or if there even is one in this Reality,” I told them.

“I guess there is only one way to find out,” Seamus told us before sitting down, closing his eyes, and attempting to call a book to him. A large, thick book soon appeared in front of him. It was a hand copied book of Magic and appeared to be in very good condition. Seamus opened his eyes and picked up the book.

“That went well enough,” he said before opening the book and checking its contents. “It appears to be the same as the volume in our Reality,” he said after checking a number of pages. By this time, several of my other relatives were also calling books to themselves.

Our Mage Sisters were much too busy working on the grass areas around the fort to do any reading, at least for now. They also worked on the small gardens that the various units at the Fort had planted. This kept them busy and as happy as could be. It is after all what they do.

I tried calling a particular book to me to study, but got no response. It appeared that it either didn’t exist in this Reality, or someone else had it in use. I settled for a different book and began to study it. The remainder of the three days went by much more quickly after that.

Monday evening, Wolf, Gerald, and I packed our backpacks in preparation for the trip the following morning. The next morning, Tuesday the 16th, I gathered all of my relatives to go over things before we left.

“I’m not sure how long this trip will take. It will depend on when a keelboat is ready to leave. The trip down river should only take two or three days. The real question is the kind of reception that we’ll receive at Army Headquarters. One of us will transfer back here to let you know when we arrive.

“Keep your uniforms ready in case you need to transfer there. You ladies keep on the seamstress at the Tailor’s shop about the rest of your uniforms. All of you stay out of trouble. Seamus is in charge until I get back, and Gwyn, Sererena, and their twins are his helpers,” I finished.

“Don’t be too long,” Meagan told me. “And see if you can find some cute boys with the Talent. We’re all getting lonesome.” The other women all giggled at this but agreed with her.

The three of us checked our horses before saddling them to be sure that they had been taken care of that morning. We were all in uniform and moved over to General Clark’s Headquarters when finished. There were already two horses waiting there. One was a large roan stallion with a fancy saddle and tack.

“You two wait here. I’ll go in and see when we are leaving,” I told them. General Clark was just coming out of his office as I entered the building. There was a rather nondescript Captain behind him.

“Are you ready, O’Connell?” he asked in his big booming voice.

“Whenever you are, sir,” I replied.

“Josiah, keep a tight rein on things while I am gone. General Sullivan will be in charge in my absence, but he’ll depend on you for advice. I’ll be back as soon as I can,” the General told his Chief-of-Staff before turning to me.

“Let’s go!” was all that he said before starting out of the building. I followed the other Captain, who was apparently the Aide who he had mentioned.

We rode out of the Fort and headed for the clump of trees that we had used previously. Once there, we dismounted and calmed the horses before Wolf, Gerald, and I joined hands and partly surrounded the two officers and the horses. I cast the transfer spell drawing on all of our Magic, and we disappeared from the trees near the Fort.

We instantly reappeared in the trees where the book store was in our Reality near Nashville. The Aide was seriously surprised by these happenings.

“What have you done? Where are we?” he demanded in a panicked voice with a French accent to his Old English. He was looking around wildly at the group of trees that we had materialized in while the General grinned at him.

“I warned you Thomas that there would be things that would be hard to understand,” the General reminded his Aide before turning to us. “This is my Aide, Captain Thomas LeGras. He keeps me from upsetting my enemies too much,” Clark told us with another big grin.

“Well, Captain since you asked, we are about three miles from Nashborough. We transferred all of us here using Magic. These others are my Brother, Wolf O’Connell, and my Cousin, Gerald O’Connell. Oh, and I’m Mike O’Connell,” I told him, introducing each of us.

“Let’s move on to Nashborough. I want to see when a boat will be ready to leave. Then we’ll visit the fort here and see what it needs,” General Clark told us taking command.

In uniform with the General leading, we received quite a different reception than we had received previously. People made way for us and stared as we passed. There were no appraising glances from people looking to pick up some easy horses. I had noticed that both the General and his Aide had swords and pistols with them. We three only had our Power Rings and wards, neither of which were presently visible, but would provide a lot more offense and defense than either the swords or pistols.

We continued through Nashborough and descended to the river. On reaching the shore of the Cumberland, General Clark demanded, in a very loud voice, “Who is in charge here?” A large man in canvas pants and long-johns detached himself from a nearby group of men. His hair and beard were brown going gray.