Chapter 42: Seanna

When I reported back Captain Foster smiled and said I was just the man he wanted to see. Peter McGinn and I were the only members of the company in town, and there was a visiting officer who had asked for some protection while he scouted about and got to know the country. The officer was a portly Frenchman who spoke almost no English but had with him a young woman, who he claimed was some sort of relation and who acted as his interpreter. We just assumed she was his doxy.

The four of us set out the next morning to tour the camps and the countryside to the south. The woman, almost hidden in a heavy cape, rode side saddle and the Frenchman weighed down a heavy-boned mare. Shortly after noon we stopped to dine at a good tavern near the ferry. When the woman hung up her cape, Peter and I looked at each other and smiled. She was a red-headed beauty with Ireland written all over her face, and she had a body that would have brought a statue of St. Patrick to roaring life with a hard on.

Peter leapt up, helped her with her chair and introduced himself, naming County Limerick as his ancestral home although his people had been here since his grandfather arrived in chains fifty years before. She smiled and said she was Seanna something. She pronounced the name "Shaw-nah." They both ignored me as it I were a loaf of bread. All through the meal, they made small talk and shared private smiles, leaning to touch shoulders and laugh. Peter told colorful stories of his adventures which the young woman translated for the Frenchman, and then we were back on our horses and into the woods.

A Hessian patrol jumped us only a few hundred yards from the tavern with the river still in view, about a dozen of them although I certainly did not stop to count. They must have been waiting and perhaps had been called by someone at the tavern. In the first cruel volley, most of which went high, the officer's horse was hit, and he was tossed to the ground. Peter took at least two balls in his torso and was probably dead before he fell from his horse. I felt something burn across my back as I grabbed the girl's halter and yanked her horse's head around. We spurred and ran for it, bent low over the animals' necks and ignoring the shouts and shots behind us. My animal stumbled but then ran on.

I headed for the hills, and at the first rise when I looked back, I could see mounted men trailing along after us. "Keep going," I told the girl, unlimbering my Pennsylvania rifle at the next curve. "Take the left fork and then wait for me." I dismounted, stood on my reins and waited for the first German to come into the clear along the trail. The young woman circled her horse once and then trotted off without a word.

At about 150 yards I had a good target, a blue-coated man coming straight at me at the gallop and swinging a sword. I stepped off to the side a bit, fired, began reloading and then glanced up to see a riderless horse turn off into the woods. By the time I had rammed home the next ball, the nearest man was within fifty yards, an easy shot, and I blew him out of his saddle, waving his arms as if he was trying to fly. The others milled about while I mounted and galloped quickly up the hillside, finally noticing that my horse had been hit in the withers, a nasty-looking wound.

Seanna must have heard me coming because she rode out onto the trail and quickly followed when I waved. We rode hard up and up along the switchbacks, hooves throwing stones, still seeing the Hessians below and knowing they could see us. Near the hilltop, I turned off into the woods, dismounted and walked my lame horse down the hill and across a small stream and then back up to a hunting cave George and I had found long before. She dismounted, and we stripped the horses of their saddle bags, slapped their rumps to get them going down hill, and hurried into the black entrance.

The cave's mouth was very narrow and twisting, but it opened within a yard or two to a oval room perhaps ten feet across and four to five feet high. The signs of old fires showed it had long been used and diffused light filtered in from the crooked doorway.

"Was he dead?" Seanna asked when she got her breath.

"The Frenchman?"

"No, Peter."

"I think so."

She wiped her nose and sniffed. "I liked him," she said.

"Me too," I said and put my arm round her shoulders. "A good man."

"Can we make a fire?"

"Not now."

"How many of them?"

"I don't know, maybe ten or twelve. I think I got two back yonder."

"Now what?"

"We wait. Captain Foster knows where we were going. He'll send men out. I'm sure your Frenchman was alive when he hit the dirt."

'He's not my Frenchman."

"Weren't you, you know, sleeping together?"

"Never, the thought," she said with a smile.

"Quiet now," I said as I reloaded by rifle and checked the loads of my old pistol and Tower musket.

We heard voices crying, hallooing, in the distance, and then a guttural voice nearby said something, and we heard footsteps coming slowly into the cave. I pushed the girl back and fixed my blade bayonet to the musket. I handed her Magda's knife and crawled up to the entrance. A German stuck his head around the corner, saw the woman and stepped into the low-ceilinged room, bent over and wearing an evil smile. I turned the musket on its side and stabbed him through the lower ribs on his left and drove him all the way back to the cave's entry where another jaeger waited on his horse.

Still screaming and clawing at his gut, the man I had bayoneted tumbled down the hill as I knelt and shot the blue-coated soldier who was clumsily raising his weapon. He spun off his horse and started to crawl away, so I slid down the rocky hill and ripped his throat out with my bayonet. Then I went back and did the same for the first man who was sitting slumped over and trying to hold in his intestines.

In those hills the sound of the shot reverberated for some time, and I doubted it anyone could tell where it came from. The two bodies were another matter. I scared off the horses, gathered up their weapons and ammunition in their cloaks and took them back to the cave. "Come help me," I asked the girl, and she followed without question despite the fact that my left arm and leg were drenched in blood, black with it. We hauled the bodies into a narrow defile that was probably a water course in the spring, tried to ignore their gaping throats and torn bodies, covered them with leaves and brush as best we could and shuffled through the bloody trail we had left as we returned to our cave.

"Now can we make a fire?" she asked, shivering. It did not seem that cold to me.

"No," I told her, handing her one the Hessians' capes in which I had gathered up their arms, haversacks and other goods. It was blood stained but warm, and she huddled in it as far back from the entryway as she could get, in the darkest corner, clutching Magda's gutting knife. I went to the mouth of the cave and stood guard, watching the winter sun slowly set and turn the world orange and purple as it did. It was very quiet on the hillside, and I hoped they had given up and gone to take their fat prisoner back to the British.

I gathered up some sticks, and when it was almost dark made a very small fire in the back of the twisted entry. The girl came and put her hands to it while I rummaged through the dead men's packs for food. I found some hard cheese, dark bread and several fat sausages as well as some tobacco. We warmed the sausages on sticks, ate and shared the rum in my canteen.

I was sitting with my back to the entrance, watching the thin spiral of smoke rise and flutter over my head and the reddish light reflected from the young woman's lovely eyes, when we both heard a twig snap and then a loud, "Damn."

I spun and fired one barrel of the pistol without looking, and a man screamed in the passageway. I charged ahead blindly and found him crawling away. I jumped on his back, yanked out my blade bayonet and almost chopped his head off, hacking until he collapsed. I left his body where it fell, half out of the entrance since they had obviously found us. I suppose the smoke gave us away. Stupid of me, playing to the woman's wants, the back of my head hoping I could get between her legs I suppose.

We kicked out our small fire, finished the food in our hands and waited. We could hear them pulling the body out of the entrance and then the shots came. I think it was three men, loading and firing steadily under an officer's or non-com's command for the shots were well spaced and constant, both high and low. The balls whined and rickocheted off the walls, sometimes striking sparks while Seanna and I lay flat and covered our heads.

"Ow," the girl yelled after about the first dozen shots.

"How bad?" I asked.

"I'm all right," she said, "Just a bruise on my arm."

Many of the balls never made it into our low room but bounced out from the winding entry, and I assumed the Germans would figure that out and move in soon. I had five weapons loaded, and waited for a pause. It never came, a slight German slid into our space on his belly under the fusilade and got the muzzle of his musket into the room before I suspected anything. I crawled forward quickly when I heard him cock his firelock, and his shot shinged the length of my calf, nearly ending my career as a lover. I grabbed his head in both hands and smashed it down against his weapon and the floor two or three times. Then I lifted his limp body, surprised how little he weighed, and pushed him forward toward the entrance, both feeling and hearing two balls thump into him as I did. I left him balled up, bloody head down to his ragged knees, and blocking the way. I crawled back to my place and cocked a musket. The firing stopped.

I pulled up my breeches leg and examined my calf with my fingers. It was not a deep wound, more of a gouge, but it stung like hell, was bleeding and had torn through the side of my boot. "Do you have a shift on?" I asked quietly.

"Um," she said, "why?"

"Tear me a long strip. I've got a wound to bandage."

"Hm, so do I now that you mention it. This nick on my forehead is running down into my eye. I think a stone chip cut me." I heard her ripping cloth and soon had a yard long piece that I wrapped my calf tightly with while I admired her bare leg in the faint light.

"I can't do this, ' she said.

I crawled next to her, felt her thick, curly hair and managed to get a bandage around her forehead. Then I bent and kissed her gently. She kissed me back eagerly and held on, trembling.

"What going to happen?" she whispered while my curious hands slid down to cup her breasts. She shrugged me away and pulled her cape tightly around her.

"Well if there were ten, there are now five, maybe more though, and they are cold and unhappy, but they are also vengeful, blood mad. I think late tonight or more likely early tomorrow they'll make a try. Oh oh." My heart jumped up in my throat.

The sound of shuffling feet filled the cave, and I grabbed the nearest musket and fired at the moonlit entrance, closing my eyes as I did. I found the next weapon and fired that too, closing my eyes again to keep from being blinded by the pan flash. The third musket misfired and by then a man was right on me. We grappled and grunted in the dark, and he managed to cut my forehead and the back of my hand before I got my fingers around his throat and throttled him, feeling his airpipe crunch under my thumbs and then smashing his skull upwards to the stone ceiling.

The girl screamed, and I turned to pull a grappling man off of her. A long knife glittered in his hand so I grabbed that wrist quickly and swung where I thought his face should be. I hit him a couple of times and the floor once before Seanna dispatched him with three or four thumping strikes into his chest and neck with Magda's knife. I pulled the thin blade out, wiped it off and handed it back to her with a, "Thanks."

Our cave was getting crowded. I pulled and pushed both of the bodies to the entrance and in doing so found another dead man in the way, shot cleanly through the forehead. I could have stuffed the bloody entryway full of bodies and considering what happened next, perhaps I should have, but one-by-one I pushed them out with my feet and heard them tumbling down the steep hill, a regular avalanche.

Blood was streaming down my face and my hand ached. The girl tore more strips from her shift and bandaged me as best she could in the semi-dark. Then she held my face and kissed me, very gently with her tongue flicking at my lips.

The first fire brand came bouncing into the cave about a half-hour later. Two more followed that stayed in the entrance curve, smoking and sputtering, pine knots I think. I tossed the smoky torch out and was about to go after the others when a shot slammed into the wall near my face. I scurried back, spitting dirt. More burning faggots and more shots followed until the cave mouth was brightly lit and the cave itself almost smoke-filled. We stayed as close to the floor as we could, but I knew it was only a question of time.

"Look," I said, handling the girl my heavy pistol, "this is how it works. If you cock this all the way back, put it in your mouth and pull the trigger, you will die quickly. If they take you alive, you will probably we gang-raped and then bayoneted to death or torn apart after they get tired of using you. They do terrible things to women."

"What are you going to do?" she asked, trying not to cough, her eyes watering, the loaded and primed pistol shaking in her hand.

Another burning piece of wood clattered in the entrance, followed by another shot.

"Attack," I said. "They don't treat male prisoners much better, and I don't fancy being nailed to a tree for bayonet practice."

"I'll be right behind you," she said.

I did not argue, the smoke was getting too thick. I slung my good rifle and a Hessian musket across my back, picked up a loaded musket, checked its pan, bent low and went as fast as I could toward the entrance, ignoring the flames that I felt licking my shins. We must have surprised them because their first shot was high, and I fired back at the flash and heard someone scream and then curse before a second shot whipped at my shirt tail.

I tossed the first musket aside and slid down the hill on my heels and rump, but the girl tripped and fell behind me. I heard her yell and saw the pistol slide past in the light of the Hessians' fire and heard her cry out as she scrabbled down. I looked for a target, but could not see anyone among the trees. Their fire was throwing flames five or six feet into the night air. I pulled the battered women into the brush and waited. Her nose was bleeding. I shot flicked past, but I did not see the source so I waited some more, flat to the ground behind a pile of loose stones.

"You all right?" I asked with my hand on her back.

"No, my cape's gone and I tore my good dress," she said. "And I lost my pistol. I'm freezing. My nose is hurt." She spat, blood I suppose.

"I've still got two loaded guns, and I can see your pistol from here." I pointed.

The German fired again, and I returned his fire from a kneeling position and saw my hurried shot send shards of wood from the tree where he hid. Out he came charging at us, teeth bared, bayonet leveled, screaming something in German. He must have decided I would not have time to reload, thought I with an inward smile as I shrugged my fine rifle into my hands and confidently took aim. At twenty yards, I stood and fired and nothing happened. I had evidently spilled my priming coming down the hillside. I felt frightened and foolish, about fifty-fifty, and damn near pissed myself.

I set my rifle down and stepped out to meet him, angry at myself and with my big blade in my hand, wishing I had time to fix it to a musket. He yelled something more that had a "damn" in it and slowed down but kept coming, jabbing out. His reach was four feet better than mine, and I never took my eyes away from the tip of his spike.

The mustached Hessian lunged, and I blocked his thrust with my left arm, getting my coat and elbow sliced for my efforts. I swung at his eyes and missed, and he jabbed low, making me retreat and nicking the top of my thigh. I fell over a rock, and he smiled just before his left eye and nose disappeared in a gout of blood and his tall hat went flying. He dropped his weapon and put his hands to his face. Blood poured between his fingers as he fell on me. Somehow I had not even heard the pistol fire before the ball hit him. He kicked a few times and was still.

The trembling red-head stood with the smoking pistol in both hands, smiling. "Damn," she said, grinning at me in relief, "If I had fired that thing into my mouth, it might have hurt me." Then she dropped to her knees and vomited, her back shaking, hair dangling.

A Redcoated officer stepped from behind a tree on the other side of the Hessians' spitting fire. He was a small man with a very large pistol, and he was wearing a fancy sword, a cocked hat with a plume, high boots and a lot of new-looking gold braid. The pistol was pointed at me, but his eyes were on the girl kneeling nearby. "Put up your hands, both of you," he yelled shrilly, walking cautiously closer. When he was ten feet away, he stopped and looked at me. "Who the devil are you?" he asked, as if I had dropped out of the sky.