Chapter 39: Clare & Clarissa

We rode right into it and paid the price; two of my company dead plus the driver and footman shot off the carriage. I rolled from my wounded horse and scrambled into the weeds and thorn bushes while George galloped off in the other direction, going for help I certainly hoped. It was a whole company of howling Germans, blue jackets with red facings, and they laughed and gabbled while they searched the dead and pulled two women and a well-dressed man from the rig. I had not been told who we were accompanying so had no idea who those unfortunate people were. I certainly felt sorry for the women. One Hessian led the man off into the woods and came back alone while the women were roughed up a bit and then stuffed back into the carriage as a soldier took the reins.

"Raus!" somebody behind me yelled. "Up!"

I turned that there stood a smiling German pointing a musket at me. I crawled out, more than a bit chagrined for my inattentiveness, and he prodded me toward the carriage, only a hundred yards away. I grabbed a slim tree, swung myself around it drawing my bayonet as I did and skewered my captor in the short ribs. I grabbed up his musket while he grunted and slumped on his knees spitting blood. I ran deeper into the woods, hearing the carriage move off as well as an outcry behind me. I tried to run along in the direction the rig was traveling, glimpsing it occasionally through the trees. Most of Hessians evidently stayed behind to tend their wounded comrade and look for his assailant.

The tall carriage turned onto a narrow lane and soon came to a neat line of white tents near a small stream. I watched from a screen of blackberries as the women were dragged out, casually manhandled, trussed up and shoved into the largest of the tents. I sat, loaded my borrowed musket with buck and ball and waited. Pretty soon the rest of the bunch showed up with a body across a saddle. I watched the officer detail two men to dig a grave, another pair to prepare the body and the rest to build up the fire and get a meal started. He then went into the tent where the women had been cached, leaving the flap open.

I wondered whether they would start raping them before or after they buried the dead soldier and had their supper and felt unhappy about not being able to figure out anything I could do for them. Then the officer emerged from the tent, dropped and secured the flap, pulled on his gloves, posted a guard at the tent and went off to supervise the grave digging. I waited some more, but when he called the men over for the funeral service on the far side of the camp, I decided it was time to move.

I hustled down to the stream, crept along quickly, bent double and approached the big tent from the back. I could see that the guard's attention was on the clump of men around the red earth of the newly-dug hole so I slowly sliced the back of the tent open and stepped into its shaded interior. The sun was setting and the light was mainly orange. Both woman saw me immediately, and their eyes widened and mouths gaped.

They had been loosely bound, both hand and foot, so I cut them loose, gestured them to silence and hurried them out of the back and down to the nearby stream. Upstream and away from the camp we stumbled and trotted until they begged me to stop, panting and sore from having repeatedly fallen in the rough terrain, dress hems sodden and ripped, bodices gaping.

We sat on some mossy rocks and looked at each other panting. The older woman, perhaps in her mid-thirties, was dark haired and dark-eyed and her younger companion was fairer, blue-eyed and quite comely.

"We have to keep moving," I said.

"Where?" asked the older women, "where are we going?"

"Away," I said. "We'll find a place to hide."

"What about Mr. McSween?" the younger woman asked.

"The white-haired fellow?" I asked.

"My husband's uncle" the older woman said. "He had some business to take care of. What happened to him?"

"I fear they killed him," I said. The younger woman gasped. "That was a cruel bunch you fell in with." I introduced myself as a Continental and assured them that my friend George would bring help as soon as he could. "Let's move on."

I helped them up, and we trotted along the meandering stream until it all but disappeared. A pasture opened before us, and I made them wait while I investigated. In the distance I could see a small house and a dilapidated barn, its roof caved in. The field was waist high with grass and weeds so I assumed the farm was abandoned.

We walked around the periphery of the grassland so as not to leave an easily followed trail, and I had them wait again in the treeline while I walked up the the small, clapboard house. It was, as I had guessed, long empty, full of cobwebs and debris. I waved them to come along, and we found a broken table and crude bench and sat. The older woman introduced herself as Mrs. Preston. "Clare Preston," she said. "My husband's a captain, artillery. This is my niece Clarissa."

I nodded and smiled at them, keeping an eye on the broken window that showed the distant trees where the stream ended.

"Why did they stop us?" Mrs. Preston asked. She was a handsome woman, bright eyed with a firm chin. Her clothes were plain but had been fresh.

"For the horses, probably," I said, "and anything they can steal."

"Would they have hurt us?" Clarissa asked meekly. She was a slim, pretty youngster, certainly not yet twenty, dewy some would say with cornsilk hair and long eyelashes over blue eyes and a thin kerchief covering her chest.

"I don't know," I lied. "Germans have a bad reputation when it comes to women."

"What do you mean?" the girl asked.

I looked at the older woman, and she shook her head and clamped her mouth so I kept my peace.

We had nothing to eat, but the well water tasted all right. Night was fast approaching, and I did not dare start a fire. The woman were wearing traveling cloaks so I went out and gathered up arm loads of grass, shook it out as best I could and they made rough nests to rest upon. I told Mrs. Preston I would stay awake a while longer, and she nodded and smiled at me before she put down her head. When the moon rose and there had been so sign of Hessians, I sat on the floor with my back against the broken door and was instantly asleep, still wearing my boots.

Dawn was breaking when Clare Preston awoke me, shaking my shoulder. "They're out there," she said, down on all fours. "Two of them, on horses."

I rolled over and looked out the doorway. Two bluecoated riders were coming through the pasture, their horses hockdeep in grass. One was whistling. They were obviously headed for our house, our hiding place. "Wake the girl," I said. "Both of you get back by the chimney."

I checked my priming as the men rode into the ruined barn and dismounted. They were hardly fifty feet away and in no hurry. I wished I had not lost my old pistol. I pulled my ramrod free, bit open a cartridge and set it by my knee, drew down on the nearer man and let fly. I never looked at the results, just started reloading. By the time I scraped the ramrod out and pulled back the vise head, I could hear feet thudding just outside the doorsill.

I waited on my knees, squinting against the rising sun and when the man's body filled the doorway and the girl squealed, I fired, dropped my musket and grabbed my bayonet. There was no need; both Germans were very dead. The one with his foot in the doorway had most of his chest blown away and the one out in the barn yard was missing the top of his head. I hurried the frightened women out, got them both on one horse, mounted up and rode toward the rising sun, away from the creek and the old farm.

In less than an hour we found a road and stopped to rest. I rummaged through the soldiers' saddlebags and found some bread. We chewed and looked at each other.

"Now what?" said Mrs. Preston, pushing hair from her eyes, looking wary if not weary. I wondered how much she had slept.

"Now we hole up somewhere, figure out where we are and then try to get back to our camp," I said like there was nothing to it.

The younger girl nodded but Mrs. Preston only raised an eyebrow. "Last night," she said. "I kept thinking about those men, back there where we were tied up. It gave me chills."

"Doubt they'll come after us, not their job," I said. "They were horse thieves mainly I suspect."

"Are there a lot of them about?" Clarissa asked.

"Fraid so," I said, admiring her fresh beauty as she shaded her eyes to look at me. "Let's move on and find some real food."

"Do you have some money?" Mrs. Preston asked.

I nodded having added to my exchequer from the men I had killed that morning. In a mile or two we found a small inn and rode to the sheltered stable. Inside we enjoyed a good ale and some meat pies as well as a chance to really talk a bit. When the girl went out to use the privy, Mrs. Preston put on her worried look and said, "I fear she's virgin. If those heathens get her, they'll ruin her."