Chapter 85: Philomela

I had another excursion, but I am not sure whether it was before or after the bloody business with the Indians. I know it was in the fall; I can remember the coldness on my bare skin and the trees turning color. A young woman of some means had come to camp to marry a Continental officer only to find that the man had died of dysentery or the black fever or some such thing. She was in turns distraught and angry, and it somehow became our company's task to see to her care while she was in camp and to help her make her way back toward Boston, by sea if possible.

I think Foster tried to bed her and failing, decided to get rid of her. My captain had been a friend of her late intended, which is how we got the job, and he would mount a wildcat in heat if it would hold still long enough. When it came to women, there were no rules for our feckless leader.

"Take her out to stay with Mrs. Phillips until they decide," Captain Foster told me. He tossed me a light purse and a scowl. "And keep your britches buttoned and your greedy hands off her. She's one a'them saintly kind nohow."

I smiled and found a light, commissary rig we could use since they told me she had only one trunk and then went to meet the woman who had been widowed before she was wed. She was very fair; blonde, blue-eyed, lean and mournful, but stylish and comely for all that with a fine, very straight posture. Dressed all in black except for the dark blue ribbon in her hair and creamy lace at her elbows, she lifted her eyes to me and tried to show a smile when I asked her name.

"Philomela," I think she said but it was so low pitched I'm not at all sure; I did not catch her last name at all. She climbed up to the wagon seat gracefully, straightened out her voluminous skirts with a shy kind of look at me, pulled a knitted shawl about her shoulders, and we were off toward the Phillips' home, a tenant farm managed by a mature widow, a place we had secreted women before but usually for more earthy reasons. The widow Phillips was a very humorous and broad-minded lady, and we did pay her for her labors on our behalf.

We exchanged not a word during the hour-long ride. I wondered if all women packed a black dress just in case they were widowed. The only sound she made seemed to be sniffs, as if she had a cold. I enjoyed watching her light, yellow curls and high, firm breasts bounce and admired her long legs when she rested her black-booted feet on the dash and stretched. She was wearing stays, unfortunately for my pleasure, and I suspect, her comfort. I must say that stays have generally mystified me, especially on lean, young and healthy women with normal-sized bosoms and waists.

I saw the smoke first and then smelled it and feared what we would find since the wind had borne the distinctive tang of roasted flesh. The house had been burned to ashes and chimney stones and through the tendrils of smoke I could see spradle-legged, long-haired, flop-headed figures bound to trees near the tumbled frames of outbuildings. One chicken pecked around them, a lucky survivor.

I stopped on the road and told the girl to stay put. The farm woman and her old servant had been tied, ravished brutally and repeatedly judging from their condition, and then bayoneted many times. I was about to cut them down when I heard footsteps behind and spun, my blade in my fist, only to find the blonde girl looking horrified, hand to her mouth. She crumpled and fell on her side, out cold, eyes rolled back, mouth gaping, shawl flung aside.

I left her there, cut down the bodies, found a shovel and started digging in what had been the kitchen garden. The girl roused herself, went to the well and then found a spade and helped me dig, her head turned away from the torn bodies. We buried the ragged remains under some pine boughs, bent our heads over the mound of earth and were about to head back to Washington's camp for another suggestion when three Hessian horsemen came trotting down the lane, laughing and pointing at us as I leaned on a shovel. The girl screamed, lifted her skirt and ran for the treeline, and I grabbed up my musket and was right behind her as the sound of hoofbeats spurred us on. I heard a pistol bang just as we reached the sheltering under-growth.

The big men dismounted, cursed, and charged in after us, yelling threats of some sort, crashing through the brush. I paused on one knee to even the odds and brought down the first jaeger I saw with a head shot at twenty paces. His skull seemed to explode, blowing off his fancy hat.

Then we ran on until we reached a shallow stream. I pulled her behind an outcropping of mossy granite, gulped in air and reloaded my musket with buck and ball. I handed the gasping woman my old pistol, cocked it, looking into her frightened blue eyes and was about to show her how to use the thing when we heard splashing nearby. I stepped out from behind the massive, grey boulder with my musket leveled and saw the surprise on the man's face before I shot him just above his belt buckle. He jerked back a step or two with his middle ripped away, fell to his knees and then to his face as the girl screamed.

I turned to find her in the grasp of a big, blue-clad soldier with a thin mustache and then there was a muffled shot, a cloud of dark smoke, and he stumbled back, holding his gut and looking astonished, losing his fancy hat. By the time I reached the woman, the German sat, spraddled legged, watching his blood pour out onto the leaves in gory gouts.

I took the smoking pistol from her hands and led her back to the ruins of the house and the grave we had made. She seemed to accept my hand on her boned waist, her breathing shallow. I did not even bother to search the bodies, but got her up on the wagon and turned around where the road was wide enough. She leaned over the side away from me and vomited, her slim back shaking. When she finished and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, I offered her my canteen. She nodded her thanks, drank and spat repeatedly while I reloaded our weapons. She had lost a button and the top half of her swelling breasts had become fully exposed by all our exercise, but she did not seem to notice what I had a hard time not looking at and wanting to be frolicking among.

"It just went off," she said quietly, her full chest now rising and falling more rapidly. "I don't know how it happened. He grabbed me from behind and pulled me around, tearing at me and then, then it just exploded. You should have seen his eyes." She shuddered, and I noticed that her dress had been ripped apart at one shoulder and come loose at the waist as well.

"Scouts," was all I said. "Looking for things to steal."

"Where are you going?" she asked, breathing deeply.

"Back to camp."

"I want to go home, to Boston," she said firmly, sitting up very straight and yanking her bodice down firmly.

"Take a long time in this rig," I said, trying to be funny.

"I came down by ship, to Philadelphia." She was serious.

I saw a dust cloud coming toward us from down the road and turned quickly onto a long-disused lane, clucking my tongue, flapping the reins and urging the horse to pick up his feet among the weeds.

"Now what?" she said, looking back toward the road as we bounced and jounced, her trunk rattling about.

"More cavalry," I told her, pulling the whip and looking ahead, hoping for a curve or another side track to hide us among the cleared fields of grass. I glanced at her and saw her fear as she looked back toward the road, holding my arm, her hand trembling but her grip firm.

"Germans?"

"Can't tell," I said, patting her leg. "Can't take a chance."

We heard them thunder past and sat quietly for a while, letting the horse rest and getting our breath.

"Were you frightened, back there I mean, at the house?" She looked at me squarely, chin trembling a bit. For the first time, I recognized the beauty in her youth and was stimulated by it and by the fight that had poured energy into my blood.

"Sure," I said. "That's normal, being scared. I'm scared right now."

"What happened to those poor people, the ones we buried?"

"Butchered. Germans do like that sometimes, have fun with captives, especially women."

She shuddered. "What're we going to do now?"

"Looks like we got caught up in some big movement hereabouts. We better hole up and wait to see what's going on."

"Hole up?" she said, grasping my arm with both hands.

"Hide, just for a while," I told her enjoying the feel of her warm, soft body against my biceps.

She nodded, and I followed the disused trail until we came to a roofless, doorless log cabin with some tumbled down sheds behind it and a caved-in well. Second growth trees and various hardy weeds were starting to take over the place. We explored a bit and decided no one had lived there for many years. There was no smell at what had been the privy and the gardens showed nothing but weeds and wildflowers.

I made a small fire in the stump of the chimney, saw to the horse as best I could, and we sat on the hearth crosslegged and ate what food we had left.

"Now what?" she asked as the sun set early in a bank of dark clouds and the cool air rustled through the ruins, ruffling her the fine hair at her forehead. She sat with her legs hidden under her wide, black skirt, looking very young and very vulnerable, very desirable, very swivable. I tried to quiet down my still-angry blood and ignore my randy condition without much success. I am sure she was aware of my swollen codpiece.

"We rest, think and then decide what to do. Right now I think we have to stay off the bigger roads, maybe walk back to camp, leave your stuff here, and get back to our lines wherever they may be tomorrow. We only came about ten miles. I think your things would be safe. I'd have to turn to horse loose, let him fend for himself."

"I really want to go home," she said, and she sniffed again. She had a small nose and a full mouth. Her eyes were shiny with tears. I felt the stir of desire and tried to ignore it despite my painful engorgement.

I reached out and held her shoulder, just trying to comfort her, and she half rose and came into my arms, weeping, shivering. I cuddled her in my lap and tried to console her, patting her back and hip while she sobbed. She smelled of soap and felt as good as I had thought she would. At length she looked up at me, rubbed her eyes with her knuckle and said, "I'm sorry." I kissed her forehead, and she arched her neck and took my mouth with hers, clinging and hungry. Want instantly re-emerged, and I am sure she felt it.

I fetched my blanket roll, and when I returned she had her bodice completely unhooked, hanging loosely from her slim shoulders. She turned her back to me, said, "I can't sleep wearing stays, curse the things," she muttered and worked on getting her boned corset loose. I built up the fire a bit, gathered up some more wood and when I sat to pull off my boots, she was barefoot and already wrapped in the blanket and smiling at me, lying on her back, her hair loose, one knee raised.

I rolled in, pulled up the blanket to my hip, and she turned her back to me. I made my big body conform to her smaller one as best I could, got my right arm half under her head and my left over her hip with my hand sliding up to find a warm, full breast inside her unhooked top. We wriggled a bit, trying to get comfortable, and I withdrew my right arm when she pinched it. She sighed.

"Need a pillow, if you're going to do that," she whispered covering my cupping hand with her own. Her nipple was very firm, poking between my fingers. I rolled out, pulled off my britches, thus freeing my aching member, folded them up and put them under her head. I was about half riled as I got back under the covers, and she whispered her thanks. We squirmed back to where we had been, wiggling into spoon fashion, and she whispered, "That's nice" as I felt her nipple swell between my fingers and my member rose toward her body, pushing into her ruffled shift.

Our breathing merged and I held back, enjoying what I had, my cock's head barely touching her firm buttocks from time to time, my stones hard and heavy. She sighed and her breathing became that of shallow sleep, almost silent, a whisper of breath. I resisted taking what I needed.

We slept chastely until it began to rain, first just a few drops and then a blowing torrent with flashes in the clouds. The dying fire hissed, and we scrambled out to lie under the wagon, huddled together in my blanket, shaken by the thunder. Her hand rested on my thigh, her elbow at my groin. I wrapped her in and held her close, fumbling with her shift. She bent her head back and we kissed, and then I was on my back and she was atop me, straddling me, the blanket discarded, yanking at her skirt, her bodice flapping open, her face concentrating fully.

I pulled the blanket over us as she grabbed my stalk and we joined roughly. She sighed again and again, teeth clenched, hips pumping as I reached up to hold her firm breasts, her hard tits in the palms of my hands. She was very tight. I felt like the first explorer in some narrow cave as she squeezed me steadily as I pricked her deeply. We both grunted with effort, her eyes closed.

She heaved in rhythm with the sheets of rain drumming on the bed of the wagon above us and bumped her head a couple of times as we bucked and fiercely coupled. She bent forward, held me at the shoulders, her hair in my face, and my hands grasped her damp, cloth-covered buttocks as she urged me on and on. We rutted and clung to each other wordlessly.

Thunder rolled and lightening flashed in the distance, but we never paused until we were spent, mashed together and gasping for breath, her knees sliding down beside mine, her head at my shoulder, my heart thumping hard and my long shaft buried in her, resting, recovering. The storm moved on toward the distant coast, but we soon did not notice in our renewed eagerness to satisfy each other and spend ourselves into oblivion.

I rolled her to her back, bent into her, and I'll bet she managed to come a half-dozen times in one continuous series of shuddering spasms before we quit, shaking with pleasure, moaning and sighing, seemingly amazed at our durable love-making as cold rain dripped from my shoulders down on her smiling face.

I awoke in a grey dawn, disentangled, found my britches where I had left them near the hearth, pulled them on, hoping the damp cloth might soothe my aching need and then returned to help the girl clamber from beneath the wagon. The hobbled horse was nowhere in sight. The barefoot young woman in the white shift stood, stretched up and melted into my arms, her face on my chest, gripping me tightly as my member hardened.

"We'd better get started," I said, holding out her wet shoes.

"I've never done it like that before," she said, trembling. "Never knew anyone could."

We walked, hungry and foot weary until we had to stop, thoroughly lost but still heading southwest according to the weak sun's indication. We rubbed each other's feet, resisted the temptation we saw in each other's glance, and started again, finding all sorts of odd things to talk about. She told me that the only other men she had "made love with" were an older uncle and a young cousin. She had never "done it" with the man she planned to marry. She wept when she told me that, and we stopped to hold each other and kiss tenderly. She sniffed and changed the subject.