Chapter 31: Prisoner

Unlike warmly remembered Boston, we did not find many welcoming women out there in the swamps and hills. Nancy, Melissa and Cecelia were the satisfying exceptions, along with a few others. Much of the frozen countryside was deserted, the animals confiscated or driven off and the farmhouses and barns empty if they still stood.

For some reason the Crown sent a new minister into the wilds of New Jersey. The old one had fled during the confusion after the fights at Trenton and Princeton. The new fellow, according to George who had sniffed this out from some contacts with boyhood friends, was a mean, crabby man who rode his circuit of three churches with great regularity and preached obedience to the King and Parliament and damnation to England's enemies, both foreign and domestic. We decided, George and me, that we should pay him a visit while our friends were back in camp during one spell of decent weather.

The church's manse was a well-built, story-and-a-half clapboard house near a small stone church at one of the busier river crossings. The church had a square-topped steeple, sort of Norman I suppose, and the home had some blue smoke drifting from its brick chimney when we rode in. Unfortunately, the minister was out on his rounds, but we did get to meet his wife, a hard-eyed woman of forty or so, and got a glimpse of his daughter, who appeared to be perhaps twenty and was the owner of a fine head of long, curly, blonde hair. The family had three slaves, who appeared to be a man and his wife and daughter, and a well-kept barn with a milk cow and some goats as well as some riding horses. The minister, we learned, took a light rig when he went out to the smaller churches in his parish and lived with various of his fellow believers.

Finding that he would return in a day to preach at the stone church on Sunday, we visited the nearby tavern and enjoyed some good ale and pleasant company, although all the local trollops were busy with their regulars, a typical Saturday. Sunday morning, we cleaned ourselves up and went to church, perhaps the only time I did so during the whole war. The minister turned out to be a white-haired, angular, squint-eyed, fire-and-brimstone type with a grating voice and superior manner.

We waited for him on his back steps after the services, followed him inside and sat with him for an hour or so. When we left I think he was convinced that his future well-being depended, at least in part, on practicing and preaching Christian forbearance and love of neighbor. Both his wife and daughter sat in on our discussion from time to time, and both seemed to enjoy their husband and father's obvious discomfort as he squirmed between us. The slaves served us a light meal, and the wife followed us to the back door and as we parted, she put her hand on my shoulder and said, very quietly and sincerely, "I hope you will return."

I turned and faced her and since I was down a step, our faces were on the same level and only inches apart. She smiled, melting her stern look, and said, "He's away from Tuesday through Friday almost every week, sometimes Saturday morning as well. Liberty or Death still the countersign?"

That was about as open an invitation as you can have, and I was glad George had not heard it since I did not think I would need any help with the rector's sturdy wife and rebellious help-mate. It turned out that I was wrong as I usually am about women.

The next Wednesday, on some pretext, I rode into the backyard of the parish house late in the afternoon and stabled my horse. The black man working there smiled a greeting and his wife let me in the back door. "They's in the parlor," she said, and I found the wife and daughter at domestic duties, the younger woman busy at a small loom. We chatted, had "tea," and passed the time of day. At their invitation, I stayed for supper and we bid the younger woman goodnight about nine, and she went to her room above stairs. Her mother and I waited an impatient hour or so and then quickly made our way to her bed on the ground floor of the big house, smiling at each other like juvenile conspirators.

Her bedroom faced the back of the house, and the slaves evidently slept above with the girl in the steeply-pitched loft rooms. It did not take us long to shed our clothes and entangle our limbs. The woman, whose name was Maud, sighed and relaxed in my arms while we kissed and explored a bit.

"Pleased to have a man in my bed," she whispered. "Specially a rebel."

I kept my peace and nuzzled her full bosom remembering another minister's wife who had helped me forget the war only a month or so before. I tried to remember her name as I caressed Maud to a pleasant frenzy.

"He only does his duty on Sunday night and then it's barely that, hardly noticeable. I suppose we're fortunate to even have the one child."

"Pity," I said, mounting and sliding slowly into her.

"Um," she groaned, wriggling, "Go easy there."

I did but it was not long before we forgot the world including the others in the house and enjoyed each other fully. The second time was much longer-lasting but became equally enthusiastic toward the end, and I had to muffle her happy squeals with my mouth when she convulsed under me. We slept, warming each other, contented, and awoke early to enjoy my normal, dawn cockstand despite its rather grandiose dimensions. She was impressed and then overjoyed, and I missed at least one yelp when she shuddered in joyful climax.

At breakfast, the slave girl who served pointedly ignored my presence, but the daughter could hardly keep from bouncing with her impatience. When I bid them good day and thanked Maud for her hospitality, the daughter, Beatrice, followed me out to the stable.

"That was an impressive performance, last night," she said, holding tight to my arm while I tried to saddle my beast. "How many times did you do it?"

I ignored her and turned my back, but she went on, "I haven't heard my mother have so much fun in my whole life. What were you two doing this morning?"

I smiled at her and made my usual "gentlemen never tell" murmur.

"They don't," she said, "perhaps not. But I could use some of that attention." She slid in between me and the horse and stretched up to kiss me with some hunger and fierceness. I held her, kissed her back and then pushed her away. Her body was full and devoid of stays.

"There's a war waiting for me," I told her.

"It'll keep," she said. "How about up in the loft?"

Just then the black man came to the open door and said that her mother was calling for her. "Damn," the girl said, "nex' time bring a man for me." She laughed and ran back for the house, skirts flapping. She was a pretty thing with a mop of hair that probably had not been cut since she learned to walk.

On Friday, George and I told the others we were going scouting, and reached the minister's well-lit house just after sunset. We saw to our horses and knocked at the back door. The young slave admitted us with a knowing grin, and we were both welcomed by the women in the front room. I introduced George, who had shaved and put on a clean shirt, and Beatrice and I trotted up the stairs as soon as we could politely separate ourselves, eager to get started. We left George with his hands full of spun wool that Maud was winding into a ball.

Because of the way the house was built, the girl's bedroom was over her mother's and father's, but she had a fine, strong, rope bed, a small window at the end of the house and a looped rug on the floor. The ceiling was so low, I could not stand up straight except right at the roof beam. I helped her out of her back-laced dress, a sure sign of class, and she admired my injury-nicked body shamelessly before we pulled up the quilts and got down to our mutual intentions.

She was a healthy and rambunctious young woman, and it took some effort to satisfy and tame her. At one of our pauses, while we tried to get our breathing down to normal, we heard George moan below us and the bed down there begin to creak in a regular cadence, about every ten seconds it seemed, then every five. The upstairs rooms had no fireplaces but were heated, poorly, through holes cut in the floor so sound traveled with great ease in that house.

'That's good to hear," Beatrice said calmly, "I'm so glad my mother's getting some joy. Father's really impossible, a prig." She found me ready again and urged me to remount, her knees raised and wide spread. Soon we were trying to match the steady one-a-second creaks from below with bounces and groans of our own and laughed together as we happily swived.

Some time after midnight, there came a tap on the door and George entered. "Himself is in the barn. He's sick or something." We could see that he was naked and carrying his clothes.

"Come on," said the girl, raising the quilt, "get in here where it's warm."

He did not wait to be asked twice, and the three of us lay together listening until we heard snoring from below. We both kissed Beatrice, promised to return when we could, dressed except for our boots and crept down the narrow stairs. Maud met us at the back door, kissed us both and bid us farewell with a smile. "Good hunting," she whispered.

The next week we got there late on Tuesday and stayed until early Friday. By then we knew both women a lot better, and I'm sure we left them satisfied. I took the mother first and then we traded back and forth, hardly spending more than a few hours a day at meals and other chores. It was tiring but fulfilling work, and of course, all in the cause of eventual victory and confusion to our enemies.

The daughter, I found, enjoyed doing it while sitting or kneeling on the side of her bed, and she told me during one energetic session, while we could hear George and her mother grunting beneath us, that she had a lover back in the city, in New York, a young and ambitious prelate, and that she was anxious to get back to him.

"Not that you're not wonderful," she said, holding me at the shoulders and leaning back against my laced hands, "and George's is nice, too, but Philip, he does just incredible things. It makes me blush to think of it."

"What kind of things," I asked, slowly withdrawing my sodden lance and sliding my tongue down between her small breasts and then her belly while she watched me wide-eyed, hardly breathing. I knelt between her legs and brought her to screeching climax with my out-thrust tongue and then shoved her heaving body back up on the mattress and satisfied myself while she moaned and thrashed about under me.

The next morning, when I rammed my favorite member into her warm moistness, she had to admit she had never experienced anything like that with anyone and managed to achieve a pair of rolling, roaring orgasms before I came, shivering and shaking, and then had to abandon her for the privy.

George meanwhile became Maud's favorite for reasons I could not understand. He claimed it was just virility and maturity, but I suspect it was his incredible ability to stay upright and active for an hour at a time. Beatrice and I really did not care, but spent our time inventing ways of increasing our joint pleasure. She was very loose jointed and acrobatic and often had both her legs well up on the front of my shoulders while I rammed my pike into her.

We left them on a Friday with the sun high in the winter sky after we gave the smiling slaves some coins and urged them to show discretion. They assured us that they would and that they were happy to have served us. It was not long after that the pastor resigned his benefices and took his family back to New York.

George and I did get into New Brunswick one night on a scouting mission and found a pair of cousins we decided were in dire need of comfort. George knew the country a lot better than I did, having grown up in Metuchan, so I let him lead. To be completely truthful, now that I think back on it, he was in charge of this job with orders to bring back an enemy officer, alive and able to talk.

We discovered an old shed where we could leave our horses out of the cold, and walked into town about the first of March. When somebody said the date, I remembered Nancy and the promise I was not keeping. The roads were a sticky mess, and we were both muddy to the knees by the time we got to the tavern George wanted to visit first. I had a smoothbore pistol under my belt in the small of my back and Magda's skinny knife in my boot; George had a six-inch blade strapped to his forearm and a short cudgel under his belt, but we did not expect or seek trouble. We wanted information since spring was coming, and Washington and his advisors needed to guess right about which way Sir William Howe would jump. Headquarters moved to Middle Brook on the eastern slopes of the Wasatch. The prime targets seemed to be Albany, Philadelphia or Charleston although there was some talk of Boston. A few supply sergeants were taking wagers.