Chapter 40: Faith

I once got to play the knight in shining armor, but of course in my own shabby way. I was eating and drinking in a tavern near the river when the stage stopped and seven passengers trooped in to dine. The group included one striking woman in a long purple cloak. She stood out from the crowd, like a rose among toadstools, not only because of her dress, but because of her cool poise, striking posture, curly brown hair, dark eyes and voluptuous beauty. She was a fine, healthy woman, perhaps twenty-five or so, more than five-and-a-half feet and a good ten stone. She was with an older man that I hoped was her father but turned out to be an uncle, almost as good for my intentions which were anything but honorable once I saw her doff her hood and cape. Good enough to eat was one of the phrases men used for women like her. My prod ached in minutes.

Then two Redcoat dragoons entered, loudly demanded service, pushed people away from the table they wanted, grabbed at the serving girls, cursed the inn-keeper and began drinking rum as if it were water. It was not long before they spotted the dark-haired beauty with her cowl turned back and began lusty comments and rude laughter about her body and the age of the man with her. They loudly discussed what they would like to do to her and how often.

While the younger of the two ordered some food and more drink, the older man, a square-jawed sergeant wearing a short sword and high boots with knee flaps approached the girl's table, adjusted his foreflap ostentatiously and invited her to come dine with them. He bent near her and said something that caused her to blanch and then he stood and laughed with his hands on his hips, his bulging groin thrust at her.

The white-haired man leapt to his feet and the sergeant backhanded him back down with a bloody mouth and grabbed for the young woman. She twisted away as he pulled her cloak free to reveal the curving expanse of her bosom and the fine lace adorning it, her breasts barely thrust into her gown. His view of her ample chest seemed to make him forget food. He grabbed her hair, yelled "Come, bitch, to swive me royally, astride by damn," and pulled her from the table while she struggled quietly, panting and trying to push his arm away. Her uncle sat back in the corner, dabbing at his bleeding nose with a napkin.

I pulled on the sergeant's shoulder, turned him around, hit him in the mouth and knocked him back toward his own table where the other Redcoat sat grinning. The sergeant scrambled to his feet with blood dribbling from his mouth and nose and yanked out his horse pistol with a curse. I was on him before he could cock it, twisted the big gun from his grasp and hit him in the ear with its heavy butt. He crumpled and his eyes rolled back.

"Let's get him out of here," I said to the other cavalryman. Together we pulled the stunned soldier to his feet and helped him outside where the cold air revived him.

"Go on," I told the private. "Get on the road. Write it off, just a barroom fight."

"We'll meet again," the sergeant mumbled, spitting blood. "I'll kill you, y'bastard. That was a prime piece in there."

I jabbed him in the belly with his own pistol. "Go home," I said. "Leave us alone or you'll be buried here."

"Stupid colonial," he yelled, mounting and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. They rode off with the younger man glancing over his shoulder at me.

I went back to my beer and meat pie, feeling a lot of eyes on me. The white haired man was comforting the woman in purple, and I left them alone. He nodded a thanks at me. Shortly the stage clattered off with its load of passengers, and I decided to trail after it just in case the two Redcoats made another try for the toothsome young woman with the dark hair.

It was barely a mile down the road, just after they forded a swollen creek, that my suspicions paid off. The Redcoats were blocking the way, weapons raised. I saw the younger one drag the girl in the bright cloak from the carriage as I rode into the woods, dismounted and loaded my musket. I heard the stage clatter away and the woman screaming as I checked my pan and fixed on my bayonet. She kept yelling so they were easy to find.

When I shot the sergeant from about twenty feet, he was kneeling between the woman's flailing legs with his cock in his hand and the other man was holding her arms and laughing, his knee on her shoulder. Her cloak had been tossed aside and her dress and shift had been turned back over her face revealing a triangle of dark hair between her plump, white thighs. The would-be rapist's head exploded, and his twitching body fell back across her feet, arms outstretched, prick still briefly upright. The younger man stood as I ran out of the woods, trying to draw his pistol, eyes startled. I stepped over the woman, bayoneted him low, lifted him from his feet and drove him back to a tree as my blade ripped his ribs and guts apart before it destroyed his heart. He was dead before he fell, crumpled like some gaudy rag doll.

The woman had scrambled to her feet and was brushing off her clothes by the time I had wiped my blade on the dead man's coat and sheathed my bayonet. She was breathing hard, quite a pleasant sight, and looking at the man at her feet and his shriveled privates. I checked the bodies quickly, pocketing the sergeant's hefty purse, and then took her arm, pulled her dress up to her shoulder, helped her don her heavy cloak and led her back to the road where the soldiers' horses stood tethered. She was shaking but quiet.

"Can you ride?" I asked her, offering my hands to boost her up to the saddle. She nodded and stepped up, attempting to sit side-saddle but then swinging her knee over the horse's back and hitching up her heavy skirt between her legs. There was blood and bits of brain on her legs and boots as well as mud. She pulled her cloak forward to cover her legs, struck her feet in the stirrups and smiled down at me. Her legs were long enough that I did not have to adjust her saddle gear.

"Thank you," she said with a quiver in her voice. She swallowed and shivered.

"I'll fetch my horse," I said. "Be right back."

We rode slowly, leading the third horse and hoping to catch up with her carriage and uncle, getting to know each other a bit in short spates of conversation. Her name was Faith, and she had been on her way to Philadelphia. Her white-haired uncle was an official in the British government in New York with a safe-passage paper in hand, but her husband was with Gates, a patriot militia captain, and she was not sure where.

A cold rain began about sundown and we stopped under some pines to wait it out. I got out my old floppy hat, and she laughed at me when I put it on. "My grandfather had one like that," she said. "We made him throw it away." She had a fine laugh and very white teeth that lit the shadowed gloom. Her body seemed to glow with good health, but I'm sure that was my imagination and desire.

When it let up a little we trotted down the road to the first lights we found, an inn at a ferry crossing. The water was very high. I helped her dismount at the front door, enjoyed the feel of her body as I did, and then took the three horses around to the back and saw that they were under cover. I paid for their feed and care with some of the sergeant's coins and went in the back door.

She had ordered food and drink, mulled wine for her and ale for me. Her royal-colored cloak hung near the hearth and I put my disreputable hat and tattered jacket with it. We ate, chatted and exchanged a few looks that might or might not have meant anything. After a bit of dickering I sold the spare horse for our meal, one night in two rooms and a gold guinea. My personal exchequer was swelling and my post-fight blood lust had yet to completely subside. It felt like I had a piece of bar iron trapped in my britches. I tried to ignore it, but the woman's warm beauty made that impossible. She smelled wonderful, musky and clover-like.

Most mature women with a chest like hers wore some sort of cloth around their necks, at least a handkerchief, but she simply sat up straight and thrust out her proud pair with their lace edging; they were conical and, I estimated, at least quart sized. In those days with most women cinched in and plumped by corsets, estimates were difficult.

We drank a bit more, left our damp clothes where they were, and went up to our cold rooms. At her door, I put my hand on her shoulder, fingers on warm skin, touching her fine hair, stroking it with my thumb. "Do you want company?" I asked hopefully, trying to put a pleasant smile on my face.

She smiled briefly and shook her head, closing and loudly bolting the tiny room's door behind her.

I took off my boots, heavy belt and sodden britches and climbed into bed, proud of my restraint, hoping my prod and ballocks would stop hurting. Perhaps an hour later a tap on the thin door awoke me with my pistol quickly in my hand. There she was, wrapped in a quilt, head down, hair tumbling. "I can't sleep," she whispered as I let her in. I happily led her to my bed. She rolled in, swaddled in her quilt and I joined her, wearing just my long-tailed shirt. Our noses touched and then our knees.