Chapter 72: Retribution

The first useful pieces of information I transmitted that winter, mainly from a friendly blacksmith, alerted the forts on the Delaware to impending attacks. Colonel Christopher Greene, I was later told, made good use of this warning to smash a company of Hessians led by a man known as "No-Quarter" Von Donlop. Forts Mifflin and Mercer finally fell after a month and an artillery barrage we could hear in town, but I was not there so I cannot say what happened except that the British gained control of the river and had an easier time being supplied. Food for the average solider and for the prisoners got no better.

Amanda came to me all excited one night some time in that period. "Have y'heard," she said, as she stripped out of her clothes and watched me undress, "they've opened a new cat house jus' for officers, in one a'them big homes they took over on the edge of town, an' they been forcing the girls into their plays and revels, André and them swells."

"What that make, an even hundred? Philadelphia's got more whore houses than it has taverns." I said, pulling off my boots and getting ready for action.

"This 'uns different," she said. "They're makin' girls they've taken from their families whore for them, young ones, even a few from really good families, Whigs of course, right here in town. They ain't done that before."

"Don't believe it," I said, as I got to work, and she exhaled with pleasure. "Why should they bother when this city is full of trollops."

"These ain't jus' whoring. They make 'em sing and dance. Worst thing, these girls keep trying to fight 'em off so its like rape, that's what, over an' over. That's what this feller tole me. They have an audience when they do 'em."

I gave up the conversation until we lay, spent, beside each other.

"Where'd you hear this?" I asked her when I could speak. "'Bout these girls?"

"Woman that cooks there tole the man that tole me. Says the girls are kept locked up like they was in jail. They's bringing new ones in, too. Says their keeper's the biggest, meanest black feller anybody's ever seen."

She told me where the house was, and said she had heard that as many as a dozen women were kept there serving British officers. "When they wear 'em out," she said, "they disappear. That's what this lady said, jus' disappear."

I stood across from the handsome country home for several hours that evening and watched five or six Redcoat officers enter, stay for perhaps an hour, and leave chatting happily with their friends. I heard no screams, in fact the house was dimly lit and very quiet. The door was answered by an elderly woman with white hair and the threatening blackamoor was nowhere in sight. I went back to Mandy's bed and waiting arms and thought about it.

The next morning, I knocked at the door of the wooden extension behind the brick home with my shirt tail hanging out. A young woman wearing a flimsy robe opened the door a crack.

"Need any chores done, Miss?" I asked. "Wood cut, trash hauled, I'm pretty hungry."

She looked at me sad-eyed, vanished without a word and returned with a hoe cake wrapped around some jam. "Go on, quick," she said, "I hear him coming." There was a bruise on her cheek, and she looked very frightened.

"Bitch," said a loud voice from inside, "who's out there?"

The girl closed the door, and I heard a slap. The door was flung open, and the biggest black man I've ever seen filled the doorway. "Get outa here, I'll sic the dogs on ya," he growled.

I made myself as small as I could. "Jes' looking for work," I said. He was at least as tall as I am and perhaps a hundred pounds heavier with hands that looked shovel-sized. His skin was copper-brown and shiny and his nose was long and sharp rather than flattened. He had two gold teeth, dog teeth.

"Yessir," I said to him, leaving with my back bent.

"Damn deserter," the big man said, closing the door.

We needed to get someone inside and find out what was going on. Amanda arranged for me to talk to the cook, but I did not learn any more; young woman were being held captive and were forced to sport and have sex with men who came to the house, good behavior was enforced by the black man who was called Marse or Marsh and who, the cook said, was part Indian or part Welsh or some such thing.

She said he cuffed the girls around regularly and satisfied himself on them whenever he pleased as part of his pay. If a girl misbehaved, her punishment started with Marse rogering her up against the cellar's rough stone wall. She said she sometimes heard a girl screaming for pity down there for an hour or more, but she did not know what else he did to them.

I went back to camp and found Michael, the young cutthroat who looked so benign. We decked him out in an ensign's garb, gave him a fine sword, good boots and some clean gloves and sent him in to enjoy himself while George and I watched from a deserted basement nearby, part of the remains of abandoned mill of some sort.

Michael was back in a half-hour or so, looking a bit shaken.

"That big black took a dislike to me," he said, shucking out of his fancy jacket with its blue lapels. " I was well at it with a fine, young lass when he busted in, yelled 'hurry up, y'young shit' and kicked the bed. The girl nearly fainted, and I lost interest immediately. It's worse than finding out her father's in the next room."

"What did you see," I asked.

"It is like a jail. There's a guard outside; you seen that. All the doors are locked. The old lady hands you a key with a room number on it when you enter. I only saw three girls, and all of them were bruised or disheveled, looked injured. I heard a girl crying, 'Don't, don't, ' but the lass that I was with, she hardly resisted at all. I think she'd been crying though."

"How was she?" George asked, looking hungry and hoping, I suppose, that he would get a turn.

Just then a carriage stopped in front of the house. The black man emerged wearing a long waistcoat and with the help of the soldier acting as footman, dragged two bawling girls into the house, kicking their feet. Both looked hurt, their clothes torn, their hair awry.

The carriage and the soldiers left. "We'd better do something," I said. "You two take care of the guard there at the foot of the steps and go in the front, tie up the ole lady, go on upstairs with the keys. I haven't seen anybody go in for the last hour except Michael. I'll get in the back way. We've only seen one man in there, so we should be able to deal with that even if he is a big one. Then we'll figure out how to get them out of here."

So we attacked the house frontally, with just pistols and knives. I suppose Michael had the ensign's short sword as well. I had no trouble getting in the back door, signaling the cook to silence, nor in finding the man I wanted to subdue. The screams came from the cellar door which stood open at the foot of the back stairway. I could hear George's big feet thumping up the front steps as I went down to the basement.

A single lamp hung from the rafters and the two girls we had seen being dragged into the house were lashed to posts holding up the floor above, their hands tied behind them. Marse was naked and barefoot, and his huge body gleamed in the flickering light as if it had been oiled. He had forced one of the young women's legs apart and was trying to get his huge, stiff member into her. He held her by the hair, lifting her chin, banging her head against the post and laughing, holding his cock and poking it at her.

"Stop," I yelled from the foot of the steps, and he turned toward me with a growl, his red-veined, purple-headed prod swinging around like a cannon. He was not fat except right around his middle and huge muscles bunched in his arms and legs.

I leveled my pistol at his upright member and watched his angry, blood-shot eyes. "Go over in that corner and sit," I told him. He took a step toward me and then turned his back and grabbed the girl at the neck, pinning her head back to the post, her eyes bulging. She squirmed but his hand clamped her jaw closed. She was naked and her torn clothes lay piled at her feet.

"Drop it. I'll tear her head off, rip her throat out," he said without even looking at me.

"Please," screamed the other girl. "She's my sister. Don' let him hurt her." She squirmed in her ropes, a bare breast bouncing right and left, shining in the lamplight.

I took the pistol off full cock and dropped it to the stone floor. The black man turned and backhanded me, driving me to the far wall wondering how many teeth I had lost or when I could breathe again. He came at me roaring, arms outstretched and almost ran squarely into my blade bayonet. He saw it at the last instant and kicked at my arm, hitting me in the elbow. I dropped the big blade, my hand numb. The man laughed, showing his sharp, gold teeth and hit me in the chest with his massive fist. I hit him back, twice, ribs and belly, and it was like striking a wall or hitting a full-sized oxen. He barely noticed and struck me in the forehead as hard as I've ever been hit. I actually saw flashes of light.

He threw me the length of the room, and I stumbled and rolled, coming up with Magda's narrow blade. I do not know if he saw it as he came at me, crouching, his arms extended, growling. I stepped inside, let him grab me and sliced open his belly. He screamed and stepped back, and I drove the narrow blade up under his thick ribs, hoping to reach his heart. He held his guts together with one hand and took a weak swing at me before he fell to his knees, his hand sliding down my body, and I kicked him, stepped over his moaning face as he thrashed about and cut the girls loose. They comforted each other, staring at the fallen man who lay rocking on the floor, both hands to his bleeding stomach, his limp member still distended. I recovered my bayonet and shook blood back into my tingling arm.

When we gathered in the front room on the first floor, we found we had nine young ladies in various states of dress and undress and in a wide range of tempers, all more or less frightened, all young and despite their bruises, quite comely.

"Where's Marse," a tall, dark-haired young woman asked from her straight-backed chair. Her bodice had been ripped open, and evidently no longer owned a shift, but her dress was obviously of good quality material, long and flowing.

"Dying," I said, admiring her bosom. "Slowly."

"Are you sure?" she asked, eyes brimming with tears.

I pulled my blade and showed it to her. I had not wiped it off yet and it dripped gore on the floor covering.

Two Redcoat officers came through the front door and into the empty hallway.

Michael saw to them and salted them away in a large closet with gags in their mouths.

"Where's the guard?" I asked George.

He made a slicing gesture at his throat. "In the alley," he said.

"Any suggestions?"

"Let's get 'em fed," Michael said, sitting beside a slight blonde and petting her shoulder. I guessed she might have been the girl he was swiving earlier and I was right. Once we got them safely out of town, the two of them absolutely vanished for a couple of days.

"Put a closed sign on the door," I suggested, and Michael took care of that too while we herded the young ladies, all chattering at once, into the dining room. The cook produced a rich soup and some good bread while I talked to the dark-haired girl who had asked about their captor. She seemed the oldest and coolest of the group.

"Rose," she said, "Rosalie McK-- is my name. They raided my home upriver a month ago. Killed my father, beat up my younger brother and carried me off after two of them raped me and my mother. I've been here since, serving our masters." She wiped her mouth and then rubbed tears from her eyes.

"There's a wagon and two good horses out back," the Irish cook said when she caught my eye. "They use it for hauling supplies. But be careful a'the dog."

Someone beat on the front door and yelled, "Open up."

I went and opened the door, with my pistol held behind me. "Closed, sir, there's sickness," I told the man who stood there, an overstuffed, well-dressed artillery man in full regimentals, his long nosed-face looking disdainful.