Chapter 30: Gilly

I remember telling Lieutenant Foster that I needed a woman.

"Don' you always," he said, completely unconcerned as I made my report. I told him that we had brought down a half-dozen Redcoated officers and twice that many dragoons in our fortnight of scouting, and he seemed pleased but still unsympathetic to my needs. It was, of course, a slight exaggeration, but I was pretty sure I had winged one subalteran and knew I had done several Redcoats including a big sergeant.

"Try to find Gilly," he said after I asked again. "She's probably around somewhere, poor woman. A good lay, she was."

"Who?"

"One of the camp followers," he explained. "Her man was killed a month or so ago, and she's gone from hand to hand and straight down to the gutter since then, a rummy some say. She'll swive anybody, even you, for a shilling. Now get out a'here."

A few questions led me to the river where the women were washing clothes. Off by herself and dressed in rags, a lean woman stood knee-deep in the fast-moving stream and pounded a pair of britches on the rocks. Her dark hair was a tangle as thick as any berry patch and her skin was brown from the sun. She had done the wash for several men judging by the clothes spread on nearby bushes and was about finished her chores for a while. When she came to sit on the bank, I let myself down beside her.

"Gilly?" I asked and she nodded. "I'm in need of comfort."

"Ye mus' be desperate indeed to come to me," she said, biting off a bit of tobacco and offering me the twist.

"I do need a woman," I said, edging closer to her. "Would you like a bath then, first, I mean?"

"I ain't so dirty. Are you?" She turned and looked at me, raising an eyebrow. "Now?" she said. Her eyes were green and rather bloodshot.

"And why not?" said I.

She nodded at the other women working along the stream bank. "Bit of an audience," she said.

"We could go upstream," I suggested. "I see you've got some soap."

She spat and considered. "Why not. It's been a while," she said and stood, pulling me to my feet. We walked a hundred yards north, past a stone outcropping and a sharp bend, pulled off our clothes and waded into the chilly water, trying not to look at each other. I got down on my knees and she washed my hair and back, and then I did the same for her, working hard at the many tangles in her long tresses. Her body was lean and hard for a woman, but her breasts jutted like a much younger girl's and her hips were surely womanly. She dunked her head to rinse out the soap, and I admired her long muscles and stringy sinews. The processes of her spine showed clearly as did her pelvic bones. The water was deep enough to cover her privates when she stood. We finished our bath and sat on the rocky bank, waiting for the air to dry us.

"You surely are the hairiest man I ever saw," she said, shaking her head and making water droplets fly.

"Thank you, ma'am," I said, hoping it was a compliment as she rubbed my back. "You're kind of pretty yourself," I said, "in a skinny way."

"I ain't been eatin' regular," she said, still working on her chaw.

"You got a man now?"

She shook her head and spat. "Don't need one."

"I'm back and forth, out scouting most of the time, so I can't really..."

"I understand," she said, raking out her long hair with her fingers, a Scotch combing some called it. She pulled it out so it covered her face and hung like a veil. After a while, she tossed it back and tied or braided it together somehow so it hung down her back like a long queue.

We dressed, our skin still damp and went in search of a meal. I had a good purse, taken mainly from the bodies of men I'd shot, so even tavern prices did not bother me. On the way we found a man selling women's clothes out of the back of a wagon, his late wife's he said, and I bought her a good woolen skirt and a hunting shirt, a plain bodice and a fancy girdle covered with embroidered flowers. She went behind a shed and changed her clothes, giving me back the girdle. "Too big," she said, "but a pretty thing." I gave it to the first plump woman I saw. Then we visited the shoemaker, and he traced her feet on some brown paper and promised her some stout boots in a week or so. I paid him.

We dined well, and I do not think I have ever seen a woman eat so fast and so heartily. She liked everything and devoured the food with both grace and gusto, sucking on her fingers from time to time and smiling at me to show she knew she should not. I just sat back and watched, pleased and a bit saddened that someone so hard-working should be so hungry. Her face bore the faint scars of smallpox and her cheeks were gaunt, but she gained both charm and life as she ate and drank. Her eyes sparkled with good humor. She finally sat back, poured the last of the ale down her gullet and said, "I'd enjoy a pipe."

I leaned forward. "And I'd enjoy a good rogering."

"Not on a full stomach, surely," she said with a grin.

I fetched her a clay pipe like my own, and we sat and smoked for a while as she cleaned the plates and trenchers with bits of bread. Then we went up to our room, and she took care of my needs as well as she could. She was bony but did her best to satisfy me several times. I tried to keep my weight off of her and not hurt her. It was good enough for a pipe clearing. She surely drained me.

"I've got to get back out in the field and kill some more Brits," I said. I dropped a purse on her flat stomach where it sat like a toadstool. "Will you be all right?"

She felt the leather bag and jingled the coins. She smiled and nodded.

"In a week, I'll want to see your new shoes and at least a stone more of fat on your lean bones."

"So you like the big ones, do you?" she asked with a chuckle, scratching at my belly.

"I like all women," I said, truthfully.

That week George and I were teamed. We ambushed several foraging parties and almost captured one well-mounted captain who was relieving himself when we shot down his teamsters and drove off his squad leaving him to run for it with his britches in his hand and his bare arse hanging out. We laughed so hard, he got away.