by Jane Feather
Bryony dropped to the ground; grass underfoot, bushes encircling the wagons. The three horses chewed their bits and stood, placid and resigned to the waiting. There was no sense of human activity anywhere, yet Joshua and the boys had been gone no more than five minutes. Ben and the others must be somewhere near.
Ben’s last visit to his Indian friends had produced a pair of moccasins, as silent as they were comfortable, and Bryony now trod with the utmost stealth across the grass, pushing through the screen of bushes. Then she stared at the sight before her. A low building of wood sheathed with chestnut planking stood within a pallisade. The double doors of the building stood open, and dark-clad men moved silently in and out, adding muskets and sacks to a growing pile. She recognized Benedict immediately, as much by his bearing as by his face, the only one not blackened with burned cork. He was clearly directing the operation even as he seemed to do his share of the fetching and carrying.
A cough and a shuffle of feet screeched in the quiet, and she ducked back behind the bushes, her heart pounding. Someone was standing within five feet of her—a lookout, perhaps? They would have to have them posted all around. Bryony stood and thought. She did not want to announce her presence just yet. It would distract Ben, and she didn’t wish to give him further cause for the wrath that would inevitably fall upon her head when she was discovered. Somehow, the idea of waiting meekly by the wagons for that moment did not appeal, either.
Moving away from the activity and the lookout, Bryony slipped through the bushes at the far side of the clearing and found herself on a cart track. It was presumably the track the wagons had taken to bring them to this spot, and it continued past the concealing bushes. Bryony wondered whether they had come from the south or the north; she had had no way of telling from beneath the sacks. She started down the track in the direction of the north star, curious to see if there were any indications of human habitation. The building that housed the armory that Ben and his men were so efficiently plundering presumably had not sprung out of nowhere.
The sound of voices raised in raucous laughter above the cicadas, the smell of wood smoke and tobacco brought her up short. She shrank into the shadows. Did Ben know that there were others abroad tonight? Others this close? Bryony crept forward to the bend that hid the owners of the voices from view. Around the corner she saw a sight to chill the blood. In a field bordering the track, about a dozen redcoat soldiers were sprawled around a fire. Judging by their opened coats, the weapons scattered carelessly on the grass, the flagons that were being passed from mouth to mouth, they were not on active duty, were not expecting anything to disturb their roistering. Someone played a few haunting notes on a pipe, and voices joined in singing accompaniment.
Bryony crept back around the bend, and once there took to her heels, flying down the dry mud-ridged track as if all the devils in hell were pursuing her. Her hair streamed, as black as the night, as the warm, moist air rushed past her with the speed of her progress, and the sweat ran on her body so that the doeskin tunic stuck to her skin. She arrived, panting, at the wagons and was about to rush through the bushes and down to the armory when something grabbed her from behind. She opened her mouth to yell, but a hand, hot and hard, clamped over her mouth. She could taste the salty sweat of the palm pressing against her lips, could smell the sourness of unwashed skin and hair as she writhed in terror. Her feet left the ground as an iron band at her waist lifted her into the air. She was carried, kicking and struggling, through the bushes. It was only then that she was sure she had fallen into the hands of one of Ben’s men and not one of the soldiers, and her struggles ceased. When she was still, she was set on her feet again, although the gagging hand remained in place and one of her arms was pulled behind her back, held there with painful pressure as she was propelled forward.
She was marched across the enclosure, toward the open doors of the building. Just as they reached the entrance, she heard Ben’s voice, authoritative yet with that inherent softness that reminded her of spring raindrops. When had she had that fanciful thought before? The instant before she was thrust into the building, Bryony remembered. She was in the hayloft, listening to the voices of the intruders who had clubbed Jebediah just as she had been about to leave the stableyard and return to the house, her problem unsolved, but at least the solitude had brought her some peace. Her problem … Francis … oh, God, it was better not to have remembered! Her father, Sir Edward Paget … a king’s man to his backbone, to his last drop of blood …
“What the hell are you doing here?” The soft voice, infused with incredulity, exploded her rapt trance. Bryony shook her head free of the memories that, now unleashed, threatened to overrun her senses. The hand at her mouth was lifted.
“Redcoats,” she said. “About half a mile to the north, along the track.”
“Coming here?” The question snapped in the sudden stillness.
“No.” She shook her head. “Camped and well away with drink, I think.”
“Sentries?”
“I did not see any, and I nearly fell over the camp, but no one saw me. There are perhaps a dozen of them, but I didn’t stay to look around carefully. It seemed more urgent to warn you.”
He looked at her closely, the black eyes narrowed. “If you’re due any gratitude, you will receive it with what else is owed you for this night’s work.” There was no misunderstanding him, and Bryony swallowed nervously. This was the Benedict who set fire to barns, stole weapons, tied innocent people to beds in order to prevent their getting in his way. This was the man who bore the scars of the whip upon his back, inflicted for some unknown crime.
He swung away from her and began to rap out orders in a sharp staccato. Bryony backed out into the enclosure, where men were moving swiftly and silently, the pile of weapons diminishing as they were transported to the waiting carts. She stepped sideways to avoid a man with a heavy sack and tripped over something soft and yielding. A rapidly quelled scream emerged from her lips as a strangled whimper of horror. The man at her feet was dead, his eyes staring wide and blank into the night sky, a red stain spreading untidily across his tunic.
“Get over to the wagons.” It was Benedict’s voice, harsh, bearing no resemblance now to spring raindrops.
“He’s dead,” she said, looking up at Ben.
“And he’ll not be the only one before this night is over, unless we have uncommon luck,” he replied shortly. “Have you any idea what you’ve walked into?” He shook his head impatiently. “I don’t have time to deal with you now. Get over to the wagons and stay there until you are told what to do next.”
“Would it not be more helpful if I kept watch on the track?” The shock of her discovery of the dead man shaded her eyes, but her voice was strong and she met his anger with lifted chin, her mouth set in a determined line. “It seems you can ill spare one of the others to stand guard.”
Benedict struggled with himself for barely a second. She was quite right, and he could not, for the moment, afford the luxury of chivalrous concerns for her safety. They were pointless, anyway, since she had obviated his earlier attempts to protect her. “Go, then. But stay within sight on the track. You are not to approach the camp again, do you understand?”
Bryony nodded and ran back to the cart track. What was Benedict intending to do with three wagons loaded with purloined arms? They couldn’t use the cart track again, surely. Not with British soldiers half a mile up the road. The men would be able to disperse across the fields, through the woods, the way they had come, presumably, but carts and horses needed more clearly defined paths.
Dear Lord! What was the daughter of an Englishman of Sir Edward Paget’s standing and conviction doing hiding in the grass, wearing an Indian tunic, on the lookout for a troop of British soldiers in order to betray them to a man who treated dead bodies as nonchalantly as if they were all in a night’s work? Which, of course, they were. Death and war were bedfellows, she remembered with bleak chill. Somehow, in the loving idyll of a log cabin in a clearing, t
he world’s reality held at bay across the abyss of unremembering, the connection had escaped her. And what would Benedict say when she revealed her identity?
“How many did you say there were?”
Bryony jumped. He had come up behind her like the proverbial thief in the night … like the soldier that he was, well versed in stealth and trickery. “About twelve,” she whispered. “Merry and somewhat befuddled.”
“Should be easy to take, then,” he said with a twist of his lips that sent a shiver down her back. “Locked in swinish merriment, betrayed by that damned English arrogance, as usual, they’ll never know what hit them. The pleasure will be all mine.”
“But why must you take them?” she asked with all the naivete of a noncombatant.
“In order that the wagons can get away. We cannot risk them hearing us, now, can we?” That same smile disfigured his face.
There was nothing about this Benedict that remotely resembled the one she knew. He was glorying in the prospect of ambushing the unwary troop, with a pleasure that seemed to have little to do with the need to secure the safety of the laden carts. Black-faced men were slipping out of the shadows, forming a circle around their leader. They had knives in their hands, the blades dull gleams in the dimness, and pistols in their belts. Was Benedict going to order and supervise the deaths of those men who were laughing and singing in the unwariness of drink? Bryony knew that it was not a question she could bring herself to ask, yet her eyes asked it.
His own became flat, expressionless, opaque as they read the question and denied the answer she wanted so desperately to hear. “Little girls should not wade in waters too hot and too deep for them,” he said, his voice tinged with mockery. “You will go now to the wagons. Joshua is responsible for you. It’s a responsibility that he would as lief not have, so I suggest you avoid making your presence felt.”
“I would prefer to remain with you.”
Anger, dark and fearsome, engulfed his expression, and she took an involuntary step backward. “Your preferences are of no importance,” he said with soft finality. “Your safety is all that concerns me at present. It is a safety that you have wantonly jeopardized, but I will not do so. Neither will I risk that of my men for some foolhardy whim of yours.” Without waiting to see if she obeyed, he turned from her. His hand moved in a brief signal to those around him, and they seemed to melt into the shadows as they stole toward the unwitting redcoats.
Bryony went back to the wagons. Joshua and the two boys were in position, ready to drive the carts out. Tarpaulins covered their mounded contents. She hesitated at the lead wagon, waiting for some sign of acknowledgment from Joshua. She received nothing, so she clambered aboard to sit beside him.
“Ye’ve no business here,” he growled.
“If I hadn’t been here, you’d have had a nest of redcoats on your backs,” Bryony retorted.
Joshua’s eyes flicked sideways, a glimmer of surprise in their depths. Then he snorted, a curious sound, half laugh, half exclamation. The silence in the clearing became almost palpable, and Bryony could not get out of her head the image of the dead body lying by the plundered armory. How soon before it would be discovered? Were there more? And what in the name of all that was good was happening down the road? She waited in dread for the sound of shots, the clash of steel, shouts, but there were only the cicadas, shrill and monotonous.
Hours seemed to pass, but she knew it was only a matter of twenty or thirty minutes before Joshua raised his hand to those behind, clicked softly at the horse, and the wagons moved onto the track. The journey seemed infinitely longer this time, even though she could breathe and see and was not in fear of imminent discovery. But she could feel the tension in the burly figure beside her, the straining into the darkness for the sounds of pursuit, and her own thoughts were a roiling turmoil of fear for Benedict, of the avalanche of awakened memories, and of how the disclosure of those memories was going to affect the idyll in the woods.
Dawn was streaking the sky when the wagons turned into the yard of Joshua’s farm. They were driven into the barn, and the solidly comfortable figure of Bertha appeared immediately, tucking her hair into her cap.
“I’ve been worried sick wondering where you’d got to!” she scolded Bryony, wagging a ferocious finger. “If you were one of mine, I’d take a switch to you … going off like that without a word.”
“Leave her be, Bertha. She’ll have trouble aplenty with Ben,” said Joshua, unhitching the horse from the traces. “Besides, she did us a good turn.” He handed the reins to Bryony. “You can do us another one, and get this old lady out of harness and bedded down in the far stall.”
Bryony, glad to have something useful to do and not at all unwilling to be out of the way of Bertha’s rough tongue, took the horse off cheerfully. It was not a task she was accustomed to performing, Sir Edward’s stables being amply staffed, but she set to it with a will, reflecting that recently she had learned to do a great many things that Miss Bryony Paget in normal circumstances would never have expected to tackle.
Bertha was caring for the other horses while Joshua and the two lads were pitchforking hay over the wagons. Bryony, having fed and watered her charge, grabbed a fork and joined in. It was backbreaking, scratchy work, with dust and straw flying around, sticking to the sweat on her brow, and getting in her nose and mouth. Her hands, still sore from their combat with the fishing line, blistered rapidly, but she persevered, refusing to give up before anyone else. Bertha joined them and seemed every bit as strong as the men, swinging the pitchfork with an enviable rhythm. She glanced at Bryony and pursed her lips.
“Not used to this sort of thing, are you?”
“Is it that obvious?” Bryony paused for breath, leaning on her fork.
“Clear as day,” the other woman said bluntly but without rancor. “You’re all wore out, I shouldn’t be surprised. Go on up to the kitchen. There’s a pot of coffee in the hearth.”
It was a tempting offer. “No, I’ll do my share.” Bryony resumed the forking, feeling that in some way she had to redeem herself in the woman’s eyes.
“How long do you think the others will be, Joshua?” The question didn’t manage to sound as casual as she had hoped, as calmly confident that they would be turning up at any moment.
The farmer grunted, paused in his efforts for the time it took to wipe his brow with a bright spotted handkerchief. “Only Ben’s coming here. The others’ll be off their separate ways. We got to lie low for a while after this night’s work. Don’t want to draw attention to this place … not with this lot under the hay.” He gestured to the three haystacks that had replaced the wagons.
“So, how long do you think he’ll be?” she persisted, tossing another forkful onto the haystack.
The answer was unhelpful. “No telling. Depends how much of a fight the redcoats put up.” He propped his fork against the barn wall. “Reckon that’ll do. Let’s go up to the house. My belly’s cleaving to my backbone.”
Bryony, however, found the keenness of her own appetite blunted by apprehension. She was quite incapable of doing justice to the steaming pile of griddle cakes that Bertha set before her, or to the ham and beef that the farmer’s wife carved in lavish thickness. Bryony’s eyes kept sliding to the door, her ears pricked for the sound of footsteps, and several times she slid off the long bench to go to the window.
The sun was now high, shedding its merciless illumination on anyone who was abroad and wished to be inconspicuous. There was bound to have been a hue and cry when the theft and the body at the armory had been discovered. And what about the redcoats? Twelve men lying with their throats cut! Oh, God, if it had taken that to bring Benedict back safe and sound, she would live with it.
“Ben’s got himself out of worse trouble than this, m’dear,” Bertha said, her eyes softening as she came to put an arm around the younger woman’s shoulders. “He’ll not come here until he’s certain there’s no pursuit. He’d not risk us, so he might not come till dark.”
/> “I don’t think I could endure waiting that long!” exclaimed Bryony. She was filthy, almost febrile with exhaustion, yet quite incapable of doing anything about either condition. “I could make my way back to the clearing.”
“If you even think of running off again, my girl, you’ll be a lot more miserable than you are now!” Bertha threatened. “Ben left you here in my charge, and here you’ll stay. You understand?”
Benedict certainly picked convincing guardians, Bryony reflected with a rueful grimace, returning to the bench. She had just reached for the coffeepot when the door opened. Benedict strode into the kitchen. His face was drawn and tired, the black eyes heavy with weariness. He was as dirty and disheveled as Bryony, but much of the fatigue seemed to leave him when he saw her, relief lightening his eyes.
“Ben!” She skittered across the floor and into his arms. “You’re safe!” He smelled wonderful, of dirt and sweat overlaid with earth and sun and the acrid tinge of gunpowder. His hands moved briefly over her head resting against his chest.
“All well, Joshua?”
“Aye. And with you?”
“All but Tod.”
Bryony looked up into his face and saw the gray cast of sorrow, the dark agony of remorse in his eyes. He was not indifferent to death, then, at least not to the death of his own.
“We thought we had them all,” he continued, his voice expressionless. “Then one came out of the bushes with a knife. He stabbed Tod a second before I shot him.”
There was a long brooding moment of silence while the loss was absorbed, the colleague mourned, then Bryony heard herself ask in a voice that sounded stiff, as if after long disuse, “Did you kill them all?” She stood back from him, meeting his gaze.
Ben said nothing for a minute, and his expression was unreadable. Then he spoke, slow and soft. “They were drunk and unarmed, all but the one who knifed Tod. Only he died. I cannot bring myself, even in bitter hatred, to perpetrate murder in cold blood, but …” A low intensity entered his voice and his eyes burned. “I would have given much to have had them sober and armed. There would have been no quarter then.”