Scarlet RIbbons

by Judith E. French

  "He is the King, Martha," Sarah said fervently. 'It's not our place to question his right to rule. We're English, whether we live in York or on the Chesapeake."

  "Bah," Martha scoffed. "Yer mouthin' more of Obediah's talk. Englishmen have rights! Where was my boy Nathan's rights when he was snatched off the dock at Oxford and forced to serve the Royal Navy for six long years? Where was his rights as an Englishman when they whipped him like a dumb animal and sent him home to cough his lungs out and die of consumption?"

  "But we—"

  "No!" The older woman shook her head vigorously. "Don't speak to me of being English! If a mother beats her child and throws it in the gutter without a scrap of food or a mother's carin', that child will learn to do for hisself." Martha set her cup heavily on the table. "It's what we've done here in the Colonies, girl. We've cast off a bad mother and learned to do fer ourselves. I gave Nathan to this struggle and Matthew at Long Island, but I've got a man and six more sons. The British will have to kill us all, Sarah. We won't quit and we won't back down! There's a passel of folks like us, from Vermont to the Carolinys."

  ~~~

  Martha's fiery words of rebellion echoed in Sarah's mind and troubled her long after her friend had ridden away from King's Landing. Sarah knew Martha was a Patriot, heart and soul, but not wanting to waste precious visiting time in arguing, the two women usually avoided the subject like the plague. Sarah decided that the word of Howe's invasion must have frightened Martha more than she would admit if she would plead the cause of the rebels in Sarah's kitchen.

  As usual, neither woman convinced the other, and the rare afternoon of gossip and laughter had been cut short by the heated disagreement. I didn't even tell her that Forest had left King's Landing, Sarah thought as she threaded the strips of venison onto iron skewers and suspended them over the fire. I even made excuses when the boy asked where Forest was. For some nagging reason, she hadn't wanted to tell Martha or Joshua the truth . . . as though not saying he was gone would make it not so. A faint ember of hope glowed within her. "He said he'd come back if he could," she murmured into the cavernous hearth. Her words were swallowed up by the fire-blackened bricks as her hope was dashed by icy reality. Sarah sighed heavily, blinking as a sudden puff of acrid smoke caused her eyes to smart and run. "But when has any man other than Papa ever kept his promise to me?"

  ~~~

  The trees bent in a soundless wind, their limbs contorted in frightening shapes. Sarah stood in the yard as a thick fog spilled from the wood line, creeping along the ground, enveloping her feet and legs in an icy mist. She opened her mouth to scream, but to her horror she was as mute as the wind.

  The fog rose higher and higher until it surrounded her . . . trapping her alone in a formless sea of cold, gray vapor.

  Then an eerie cry echoed through the fog. "Sar-ah!"

  That voice! She knew that voice!

  "Sar-ah."

  Closer now. Sarah tried to run, but the fog sucked at her legs, pulling her down like quicksand.

  "I'm com-ing!"

  She twisted in the direction of the sound, her eyes widening in terror as a man's blood-streaked face loomed up in the mist. His gore-spattered hand reached out to grab her.

  ~~~

  "Obediah!" Sarah sat bolt upright in her bed, heart pounding with fear. The linen sheet was damp with her sweat, her thin shift as wet as if she had stood out in the rain.

  "Flirt," she whispered hoarsely into the night, calling her hound. "Flirt . . ."

  A sleepy whine came from the foot of Joshua's bed, and seconds later a cool nose pushed against her hand.

  "Good dog," she murmured. "Good Flirt." She hoped she hadn't cried aloud; the boy needed his sleep.

  Still shaken by her nightmare, Sarah rose from the bed and padded barefoot to stand over her son. To her relief, Joshua was still sound asleep on his pallet, his beautiful face illuminated by the moonlight that streamed in through the narrow window. "Sleep tight," she whispered.

  Joshua always looked younger to Sarah at night, but she knew her son was growing by leaps and bounds. Soon he would be too old to sleep in the same room as his mother. Many families lived and slept in a single room, but with only the two of them, there was no need. Sarah's cabin had a loft chamber accessible by a ladder from the kitchen. On his birthday, she decided, she would fix him a proper bedroom in the loft. Joshua would likely be less disturbed by the move than she would be.

  Sarah's heartbeat slowed to normal as she made her way into the kitchen for a dipper of water. The moonlight gave evidence that the bad weather had passed. Doubtless, there would be travelers tomorrow. If she were fuzzy-headed from lack of sleep, she would regret her foolishness.

  The water washed away the taste of fear; the familiar smell of the tin dipper was reassuring. The only ghosts here are in your own head, Sarah told herself. It wasn't like her to be so squeamish.

  Striking a light, she lit the stump of a candle and set it on the table. The golden glow spilled into the shadows of the night, dispelling her childish misgivings.

  The dog followed her into the kitchen and rubbed her head against her leg.

  "You thirsty, too?" Quickly, she dipped a bowlful of water for the dog. The animal gratefully lapped at the water as Sarah ruffled the fur behind her neck, searching for ticks.

  I'm a coward, she thought. I found the perfect solution to my problem, and I don't have the nerve to carry it through.

  Flirt beat her tail against the floor and looked toward the door.

  "You want to go out?" Sarah crossed the room and slid back the bar. "No chasing rabbits, now," she threatened. "Just do your business and get back in here." She leaned against the doorjamb and stared pensively into the moonlit night.

  Abruptly, Sarah set her lips in a tight line and went to the cupboard and poured out a precious handful of salt. Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the quiet darkness and strode purposefully toward a grassy spot at the far end of the yard.

  "My grandmother swore that salt would quiet an uneasy spirit," she said boldly as she sprinkled the salt over Obediah's unmarked grave. "So take this, you bastard, and rest easy in hell."

  Chapter Six

  The British Invasion

  August 29th, 1777

  Over fifteen thousand British and Hessian troops under the command of Sir William Howe poured ashore and set up temporary camp near Head of Elk. The weeks at sea had taken a terrible toll on Howe's crack forces. August heat and sickness had decimated men and cavalry horses alike. Soldiers weakened by thirst and meager rations unloaded field pieces and arms from the ship, as others dug graves for the dying men and burned the carcasses of emaciated horses.

  While Sir Howe commandeered Jacob Hollingsworth's tavern for his headquarters, British troops ravaged the surrounding countryside, seizing slaves, horses, and cattle from Loyalists and Patriots alike. Howe's men raided the village at Head of Elk, burned the courthouse records, robbed the storehouses, and destroyed the Continental army depot.

  As Tories flocked to join Howe's army, General George Washington marched ten thousand Continental soldiers south from Philadelphia to meet Howe, Cornwallis, and von Knyphausen. Washington's orders to the Delaware and Maryland Eastern Shore militias were to watch and harass the enemy, "intercepting as often as it can be done whatever parties they may send out to procure supplies of forage, cattle, horses, provisions, and necessities of every kind; which will equally serve to distress them and shelter the inhabitants from their depredations, and ought therefore to be an object of your peculiar care."

  Captain Tench Tilghman, aide-de-camp to General Washington and cousin of Captain Peregrine Harris, delivered his commander's orders to Harris and his Maryland troops at their field camp south of Wilmington. Captain Harris relayed the directions to his scattered officers and men when and where he could make contact with them.

  ~~~

  September 1st, 1777

  "The captain says the General wants us to harry em like pie birds after a buzzard,"
Sergeant John Comegys whispered to his companion. Both men were crouched in a muddy ditch, their upper bodies concealed with foliage and their faces blackened with ashes.

  "And what the hell does he think we've been doing?"

  John spat a cud of tobacco into the stagnant water. "How many times I got to tell ye, boy, I don't make orders, I just carry 'em."

  Lieutenant Forest Irons grimaced and brushed at a bothersome greenhead fly. "You don't give orders? Then how did we get in this mud hole?"

  "Reckon uncles carry more weight in this army than a lieutenant," John quipped.

  Forest's hand closed around the offending fly and smashed it. "Umm," he agreed. He was so tired that anything could make sense, even if it didn't. He hadn't slept more than an hour since the night before he killed the deer at King's Landing. And that seemed like weeks ago instead of days.

  His bad leg began to cramp, and Forest shifted his rifle to one hand and began to massage the offending muscles. "We'll be lucky if the Hessians don't smell us," he mumbled. "We stink worse than the hog pens on the Dover Green."

  John chuckled and bit off a fresh chew of tobacco. "Don't be pokin' fun at the new seat of the government, now. I've a mind to buy a few lots west of the Green, myself." He grinned. "Fact is, I did. I run into this Tory fellow that wanted to put an ocean between him and these backwoods rebels. He was glad to sell his land to a loyal supporter of King George for half what it was worth."

  Forest didn't miss the twinkle in the gray-haired farmer's eye. "And you figure yourself for a loyal subject of German George?"

  "Sure am. I'd give old Georgie some of my place, if he asked. Two foot wide and six foot deep."

  "Uncle John, Uncle John," Forest admonished jokingly, "what would Grandmom say?"

  "Mama?" John spat again. "Mama always said, 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.'"

  "I don't think digging a grave for Caesar is what Grandmom had in mind—or the Bible either, for that matter. What about 'Turn the other cheek'?"

  "I offered George both my upturned cheeks and he planted his German boot square in the middle of 'em." A mosquito landed on the back of Forest's neck and John swatted it. "He's not my king, and that's a fact." John's graying eyebrows twitched as he delivered each softly accented word. "I'll have no king on this earth, boy. And if any of these political bigwigs try to set us up an American king after we throw these English out, they'll find their pink arses in a stew jest as hot."

  Forest was content to let his uncle ramble on. Days alone on horseback carrying dispatches seemed to have made the older man more garrulous than ever, but it didn't matter. Uncle John was Forest's mother's brother, and his favorite out of the five. All were hot for Washington except Uncle Abner, a merchant in Philadelphia, and he knew better than to let his political opinions come between him and his family.

  Family was all-important to the Comegys and to Forest's father's family, the Irons. As the only surviving son, Forest knew he was especially cherished by his parents and older sister, Rebecca. And since the death of his own child, Nicholas, Forest felt the ties of blood and kin even stronger.

  The agony of Nicholas's death last July had been overshadowed by the loss of Chad at the Battle of Princeton in January. Strange how a father's grief could become a black hole in his mind that he stepped wide around. Forest had seen so little of the boy—not really a boy yet, but a baby. He could weep for Chad, but he'd never allowed himself tears for the son who had died so uselessly.

  Nicholas had been as much a casualty of the war as Chad. By the time the child was born, Forest had been able to admit to himself, if not to anyone else, that his mother had been right—he'd chosen the wrong woman to be his wife. Diane Fairfax was as shallow and self-seeking as she was beautiful. Her wit had turned acid, and her seeming indifference to his ardor, which had been so intriguing before they wed, became a disappointment in the marriage bed. If Diane had not become pregnant they might have unofficially gone their respective ways, but with a coming child, separation was unthinkable. Nicholas had come into the world blatantly unwanted by his mother and neglected by a father who had thrown himself heart and soul into the struggle for independence.

  Forest tried to picture the chubby-cheeked, blue-eyed infant in his mind, but there were only brief glimpses of the back of a white-blond curly head toddling away. He had been fiercely proud of Nicholas, had provided for the child's physical needs and had devoted himself to the boy on the occasional nights he spent at home in Chestertown. But Forest knew he had failed Nicholas; he had never been the father to the boy that Forest's father had been to him. No matter what Diane had done to destroy their marriage, Forest could not blame her for his own shortcomings.

  "Boy!" John's urgent hiss was accompanied by a vigorous thump with the butt of the older man's musket. "Wake up! Somethin's comin' up the road."

  Forest snapped awake and strained to hear evidence of approaching soldiers. The sun was hot on his shoulders; fierce mosquitoes bit at every available inch of exposed skin. He held his breath and listened. Nothing. The hair rose on the back of his neck as a flock of crows flew up from a cornfield across the dirt road.

  John stood like a rock, his dark-streaked face as unforgiving as some Old Testament avenging angel. His knotted and scarred fingers curled around the butt and stock of a new English-issue Brown Bess musket.

  Forest sucked in air and tried to still the churning in the pit of his stomach.

  John's lips formed the familiar "Steady, boy."

  A wave of love for his uncle swept over Forest. How many times had he heard those words from Uncle John? Once, when John had taken an eight-year-old Forest hunting for the first time and a ten-point buck stepped out of the misty woods in front of them . . . on the day last autumn when Forest had gotten the letter from his mother saying that Diane and Nicholas had been lost at sea . . . and again, when he and Uncle John had stood shoulder-to-shoulder at Chad's funeral.

  From the left came the sound of a horse's whinny and hoofbeats on the rutted dirt road. From the right sounded the unmistakable squeak of cart wheels. John grinned and spat out his wad of tobacco. "Here comes McCarthy."

  "I want to know who picked him to play the Quaker woman," Forest whispered.

  Around the bend came a two-wheeled farm cart pulled by a riding horse too well bred to be comfortable with the feel of harness leather. Sitting on the rough seat of the cart was a tall, broad woman in a plain gray skirt and short cape. Her coarse face was shaded by a wide-brimmed bonnet, her large hands covered by men's gloves. Behind her, on the floor of the cart, was a woven cage containing a black-and-white-spotted pig.

  When the cart was directly across from the willow tree on the far side of the road, the big woman reined in the horse and climbed down from the cart. There were several loud taps, a muttered curse, and the far wheel rolled off. The pig began to squeal just as the mounted patrol of Queen's Rangers came down the road from the left.

  Forest counted five uniformed rangers, a civilian in a plain homespun shirt and leather breeches on a piebald workhorse, and several pack animals. Two black men were tied to a rope looped around the civilian's saddle.

  The patrol reined in as they spied the broken cart and quickly surrounded the woman. Someone shouted a warning, and all hell broke loose.

  John's musket roared, inches from Forest's head, and the ball lifted a green-coated ranger neatly out of his saddle and sent him tumbling beneath the hooves of another horse. The Quaker woman threw back her cape, revealing a pair of flintlock pistols spitting fire and shot. A horse screamed and roared as a ball dug a furrow along its right flank.

  Forest fired at the soldier on the rearing horse and then charged from the ditch, swinging his rifle butt like a club at the man on the piebald horse. A white-hot pain seared Forest's left arm, nearly knocking him off his feet. He staggered up again and lunged forward to grab the reins of a heavily loaded packhorse.

  Two rangers wheeled their mounts in an attempt to escape back down the road the way they
had come. John leveled his reloaded musket and fired. One rider slumped forward over his saddle, but kept riding. The second ranger dropped low over his horse's neck and lashed the animal into a run.

  Another mounted ranger charged Forest and leveled a pistol point-blank at his head. Forest ducked under the animal's neck, catching a blow from a front hoof. Seizing the ranger's left arm, Forest yanked him out of the saddle. The man hit the ground with a heavy thud and lay still, the wind knocked out of him.

  Forest grabbed the ranger's musket and vaulted into the saddle, cursing the weak leg that nearly made him miss his seat. He snapped his head around and gave a sigh of relief. The fighting, at least for the next few minutes, was over.

  The Quaker woman had thrown off her bonnet and cape and was standing with one booted foot on the potbellied civilian's chest, a pistol aimed at the man's Adam's apple. John had pulled another ranger to his feet and was ordering him to strip off his jacket and boots. And the man who had nearly killed Forest was still lying breathless in the road. In the confusion, both black men had vanished.

  Forest glanced at the motionless ranger lying facedown in the field with a mixture of compassion and satisfaction. The dead man had been a tall, muscular man in his prime. Forest knew that most of the Queen's Rangers were Americans, Tory troops recruited generally from Connecticut and New York. Sarah had never said whom her husband was serving with, only that he had gone north to fight with a Loyalist unit. It was possible that the man Uncle John had killed was Obediah Turner, and for a brief second Forest wished the dead man was Sarah's husband.

  "Can I come out now, Da?" Suddenly a tow-haired boy popped out from behind the big willow tree.