The Blacksmith's Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution

by Adair, Suzanne

  "You hardly seemed open to reasoning, and I didn't desire to birth my child in Augusta jail. As I told you, I was seeking the shelter of a relation to have my baby in peace. Here I am in the home of my cousin Emma. Have I satisfied your curiosity?"

  "And where is Clark?"

  She held his gaze. "I've no idea."

  "You may as well dispense with the lies. One of our agents saw you talking with him in Log Town Friday. Where is he?"

  "Random chance made that encounter possible. I accompanied Emma to donate medical supplies for Loyalists injured in the Hanging Rock incident. Clark was one of the injured men there."

  "When will you see him again?"

  She shook her head. "Your guess is as good as mine. To protect himself, he never told me where he was staying, nor did he set up a time to meet me again."

  Neville crossed the room and returned to the shadows. It was downright eerie the way he blended with darkness, just the way an Indian would do. "You're under arrest, madam."

  "Yes, I do remember." She lifted her chin, feeling her options run out, and extended her wrists. "Go ahead, then, tie me up and take me to jail. There isn't a thing I can do to stop you."

  His eyes glittered from the shadows, much as Brown's had done from beneath his hat. "You swore allegiance to the king. I admire the grace with which you handle this. I shall give you the opportunity to prove your loyalty."

  She lowered her wrists, liking the sound of his prelude even less than the threat of jail. "I've already proven it in the letter I wrote Colonel Brown before my departure."

  "Then you shouldn't mind proving it again. Clark is working for rebels while posing as a Loyalist. The Ambrose spy ring, of which he's a part, aims to assassinate British military figures in high command positions. A great deal of funding for the ring's activities comes from the Dutch, although we aren't certain yet what the Stadtholder's motive is in all this.

  "Last month, counterespionage activities enabled the Earl Cornwallis to learn of an ambush along his return route to Charles Town, so he took another route. But an operative from the Ambrose ring made an attempt on the commander at Ninety Six Friday. He killed an adjunct accompanying the commander and swallowed poison to avoid interrogation. And, of course, there was the attempt on Colonel Brown's life by Sooty Johns. So you see, we really must put a stop to the activity.

  "Clark will attempt to meet you again. Find out as much as possible about the ring's mission. Names of the agents. Where they're located. The Stadtholder's stakes. Information like that. Ultimately we expect you to lead us to Clark, at which point you'll be exonerated from suspicion."

  Betsy swallowed, horrified. "How can you expect me to just hand him over to you?"

  The smile spread across Neville's swollen lips again. "You're sharing the bed of his apprentice. When a woman takes up such an arrangement, she often dispenses with the man who is obsolete. Do we understand each other?" She nodded, flabbergasted. "Excellent. When you've information of import, send word to me through Mr. Branwell. I shan't stray far." He bowed to Abel. "Sir." He bowed to Betsy. "Again, madam, it's been a pleasure."

  As soon as he exited, she pivoted to follow. Abel slithered to the door and laid his hand on the latch. "Mrs. Sheridan, I'm not finished with you yet." Here it came, a confrontation over the snooping. "I've a message to you from Ambrose." Black humor laced his tone. "Under no circumstances are you to follow Neville's orders. If you contact your husband, it shall be my pleasure to evict you and Mr. Alexander from my house on your adulterous arses. May heaven help you after Ambrose catches up with you."

  God damn the bastard to hell. She returned his glare. "The conservative approach is a curious one for you, considering the four whores you've lodged upstairs."

  His lips pulled back in a snarl. "Don't be clever with me, woman, or you shall deeply regret it. Now begone."

  She trudged back up the hallway and through the dining room, dazed that she was expected to serve both rebels and redcoats. All the way upstairs, she pinched herself, hoping she'd awaken from the nightmare. But when she reached the second floor, she realized the nightmare wasn't yet ready to release her. Beside the door to their room, her cousin had Tom pressed against the wall in a kiss so juicy Betsy could hear the moisture. In ruthless rhythm, Emma rotated her pelvis into his groin and rubbed his chest with her silk-covered, unfettered breasts. Betsy backed around the entrance of the stairway and down three steps, rage spreading within her.

  She heard the kiss break off. "Mrs. Branwell, this is most unseemly of you."

  Emma sounded breathless. "Darling, you must help me. My marriage is unconsummated. Abel has desires only for his accounting books, while I'm a warm-blooded woman with such diverse needs."

  "I'm not the one to gratify those needs. I'm very much enamored of my wife."

  "Oh, the mockery of it, that my drab little cousin could arouse a handsome young man like you more than I, and she stinking of chamberpots." Betsy clenched her fists. Small wonder Emma felt such affinity for her prostitutes. "Smell my wrist. Lilac. Here on my throat, too. Feel how soft. Yes? I'm oh so ready for you to take me, even if for only two minutes —" Silk slithered, and Emma squeaked with surprise. "Oh! What did you do that for?"

  "I already told you I'm not interested, madam. Good night!"

  The bedroom door squawked open and slammed shut. Emma emitted a ragged sigh, muttered, "Damn," and shuffled for the stairs. Betsy straightened her shoulders, held the banister, and waited, her expression neutral. No surprise registered on Emma's face when she turned the corner and spied Betsy. "Oh, excuse me, dear, I'm having such trouble sleeping tonight and must have left my laudanum in the dining room." She glided downstairs in a cloud of lilac so cloying that Betsy almost gagged.

  In the bedroom, Tom bent over the washbasin dousing his face and neck with cool water, his coat and vest cast onto the chair. He straightened and blotted his face on a towel, and they eyed each other in mutual misery too deep for words. "Betsy, I'm thinking if we work really hard, we can get out in two weeks."

  "Even the morrow won't be soon enough."

  He nodded, flung aside the towel, and cleaned his teeth. She waited on the bed for him to finish. While he opened his blanket, undressed to his shirt, and lay down on the bedroll, she rushed through her own toilette. The candle extinguished, they lay in darkness. Tom dropped off into sleep.

  But she lay awake a long while, trussed up in the schemes of the Branwells, Jan van Duser, and Adam Neville. A fly blundered into a spider's web, she struggled without escape, awaiting the spider's pleasure. She detested all of them with virulence that shocked her.

  While she lay awake, she realized Abel wasn't omniscient. He didn't know she'd snooped in his office. If she did nothing else, she was determined to decipher the message in Clark's last letter. The intelligence locked there might give her leverage. Should she find Abel's office locked, that ring of keys in the cupboard downstairs included a spare key for his office.

  It occurred to her then that she wasn't as trussed up as they all presumed. The revelation made her skin crawl. At her disposal was a weapon her antagonists weren't aware of, an elemental she might loosen upon them if she figured out how to contain him without destroying anyone she loved in the process.

  Words and the printing press: her family legacy.

  What a masterful piece of propaganda her grandfather had produced with that broadside. History was full of warriors whose only weapon was words. Words, yes, her means of directing the beast. With a smile of satisfaction, she rolled onto her side and slipped into sleep.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  MONDAY MORNING, BETSY tidied the guestrooms in time to allow a visit to Abel's office, this time locked. Under pretense of fetching towels, she trotted the ring of keys upstairs to replace the spare office key with her room key, in case Hattie or Emma counted keys, then returned the ring to the cupboard. She'd leave early for the print shop, find an artisan to copy the key, and replace the original before anyone was the wiser. />
  In the accountant's office, she memorized ten more number-word combinations. Comparing invoices to entries in the ledger, she realized the expenses of the Ambrose spy ring were being subsidized by so many different "charitable donations" that it boggled her mind. Tempting as it was to pass invoices on to the redcoats, she resisted the easy gratification. Abel would figure out she'd undone him and get word to the spies. Then she and Tom might not escape Camden. No, she had something far more appropriate planned for Mr. Abel Branwell.

  Emma was her usual ingratiating self, praising Betsy's cleaning before wheedling a pre-dinner trip from her to the butcher. On Market Square, Betsy joined a gaggle of goodwives in straw hats, all haggling over haunches in the hot sun while the butcher's boy fanned flies off the cuts.

  A brisk breeze seized Betsy's hat and sailed it over the butcher's stall. Annoyed to lose her place in line, she gave chase. Before a fabric stall on the next row, she found her hat in the hands of Josiah Carter.

  He passed it to her as if afraid she might take his arm off at the elbow. She curtsied. "Thank you, Mr. Carter."

  From his furtive posture, she wondered whether he was being followed. "Good day, madam." He plunged into the most densely populated portion of the market.

  After tying the ribbons of her hat, she scurried after him. Carter, like her, was caught in the middle. "I've no hard feelings for you, sir."

  He walked quickly without looking at her. "I'm glad to hear it. I wondered whether I'd see you alive again. Had I known the vipers with whom I'd be sharing a pit, I'd never have agreed to store your property. I haven't the slightest idea how to extricate myself from this intrigue."

  "You must think me petty for wanting my property back."

  "Not at all. I commiserate. I've lost eighty percent of my family fortune in the past four years. It's bad enough that I shall be forced to sell all but three hundred acres of my land to pay off my debts. Now Mr. van Duser and his attorneys dangle blackmail before my nose. I've not the finances to defend myself, so they push me around. I wish I'd never set eyes on that Dutch demon."

  Commiseration stung Betsy's heart. Three hundred acres was a pittance for one accustomed to the life of a gentleman. His life, like hers, had been ruined by manipulations of patriots and British. A pity neither had taken sides. They might have fared better.

  Indecision tugged at her. If she executed the scheme she'd crafted overnight, Carter might receive repercussions, and she could lose her property forever. She must try to protect him. She caught his forearm and turned him to face her, the bustle of Market Square around them. "Mr. Carter, I'm setting a plan in motion that will make van Duser rue the day he started pushing decent folks like us around. The problem with my plan is that you may fall under suspicion."

  "Ah, no, I want no part in what you're scheming. I'd rather stay out of jail, thank you."

  She released him. "You needn't know the details. All you need do is move my property from your barn to a safe location on your land and play ignorant when people come asking for it."

  "Van Duser will slit my throat if I touch your property."

  Recalling the tale of Will's adventure in Havana, she smiled. "Tell him a Spaniard appropriated it to a secure and secret location and paid you handsomely for your trouble. He'll hop like a rabbit after he hears that news."

  "A Spaniard?" Carter's frown conveyed that he considered her daft. "Why should that make him jump? And to be sure, he'll want the name of this Spaniard to verify my story."

  "Give him the name of Gálvez."

  "Gálvez. Ye gods, I've heard of them. Way up there in the Spanish court, aren't they?" Carter's lips paled as he began to ponder the extent of the intrigue he'd been plunged into. "But why would such a connection be significant to van Duser?"

  "I've no time to explain, but I suspect the name is tangled enough with his intrigue to confer immediate credibility upon your story. What do you say? Will you do it?"

  "I shall give it thought."

  "Don't drag your feet. I may have to execute my plan any moment. Whoever comes asking for that furniture, give them the exact same story. And make certain you leave my name out of it."

  His gaze made another pass around the marketplace, and he bowed. "I must be off. Good day, madam." With a tip of his cocked hat, he vanished into the crowd.

  She watched him go, approval touching her lips. How she wished she could witness the obnoxious self-assurance wiped from van Duser's face when Carter explained the missing furniture, but she'd just have to settle for imagining the event and knowing it would soon be the Dutchman's turn, like Abel, to run scared.

  ***

  Harker and assistant Saunders had started the print run for Wednesday's paper when Betsy arrived. She came prepared in her oldest clothing. Lampblack and varnish spattered everywhere, even if she didn't pull the press. Harker greeted her with a grin. "The first side's looking mighty good!"

  On all the pages hanging to dry in the yard behind the shop, columns lined up without reading too cramped and with little wasted space. Type was crisp and clean, owing to her speedy sort job late Friday afternoon. Harker had disposed of the cracked letters.

  At two-thirty, while she hung out front pages, the men ambled outside with lit pipes. "We're running ahead of schedule, thanks to you, Mrs. Sheridan." Harker wiped his sweaty neck with a kerchief. "The master calls for a fifteen-minute break. Sit down for a spell and rest your feet."

  Just the opportunity for which she'd been waiting. "I shall pick up where you gentlemen left off, if you don't mind."

  "You sure you want to get your hands dirty?"

  She wiggled blackened fingers at him. "Like this?"

  Harker laughed. "You're an angel, Mrs. Sheridan."

  That wouldn't be the attribute others ascribed to her when she was finished with them. She curtsied. "It's my pleasure to be of assistance."

  In the pressroom, she grabbed two empty composing sticks and opened type drawers. Five minutes later, she inspected her message: The furniture you seek is in the keeping of Jan van Duser, surveyor, Camden. She set the sticks aside, inked the galley of the front page of the paper, and pulled off five copies. The action required more physical effort than she'd remembered from her childhood. She blotted sweat off her forehead with her handkerchief before she headed outside with the pages. Neither printer nor assistant moved from the shade.

  Back inside, she hauled out an extra galley and fit her two composing sticks into it. Then she inked it down, pulled off a copy, and inspected it. No letters inverted. Everything was lined up well and easy to read. Perfect. Setting the page aside, she fit the front page galley of the paper back onto the press and pulled off five more copies, at which point she could feel her back sweating. Harker and Saunders stomped in through the back door anyway. She hastened to break down her galley and stash the composing sticks out of sight on a low shelf for disassembly later.

  Saunders clicked his tongue as she bustled past with the six pages. "Look at her go, Frank."

  "Best thing that ever happened to my business."

  She camouflaged her page among dozens of front pages drying in the merciless sunlight, pausing to regard it before she returned inside. It would have been far easier to write a note, but she couldn't chance anyone from the Ambrose ring intercepting the message and comparing a sample of her handwriting.

  As for Lieutenant Fairfax, she doubted he'd backtrack during the heat of the hunt just to query printers about the page. No, if he'd tracked down that Spanish assassin in Camden with such alacrity, she could be certain that while any scent was fresh, he'd stay with his quarry. And after he scratched the van Duser surface of the Ambrose spy ring, he'd be reaping far too much success to care who'd tipped him off. By then, she and Tom would be long gone from Camden.

  She studied the page, her mood sobering, for there was no getting around the fact that after Fairfax got to digging, Clark's name would come up. Not that such a revelation would surprise the lieutenant. She was sure he'd known standing n
ear the scorched foundation of their house in Augusta that Clark was a spy. He'd tried to snare him then, even though he didn't have quite enough proof.

  Clark, however, was a groundnut in comparison to the giants of the ring, evidenced by the way he'd been sent on that suicide mission to Hanging Rock. If Fairfax could capture one of the top men in the spy ring and squeeze information from him, why would he waste time on drones like Clark or even Basilio or Francisco? Betsy chewed her lip. She hoped as much was true, because she didn't want to be the instrument of her husband's death, even if there was nothing left of the marriage. At least she'd alerted Clark in Log Town to Fairfax's proximity.

  "Mrs. Sheridan!" Saunders jiggled papers from the doorway. "Where'd you run off to?"

  "Here, sir, making sure everything's drying properly."

  Just after eight, she left the print shop exhausted but elated. Yes, she'd broken down the composing stick without Harker or Saunders knowing, and she had her prize trimmed, folded, and tucked inside her bodice, but those successes weren't the sole sources of the spring in her step.

  Of all the crazy notions. She'd derived contentment from her work in the pressroom. The men had praised her insights and helpfulness, but it felt good to pull the filthy, grueling press again. Perhaps printing was in her blood. The entire process filled her with such a sense of accomplishment and power that she couldn't wait to help print the back page of the paper the following afternoon.

  Not until she'd returned to the Leaping Stag and caught sight of Janet and Maria in the common room laughing and flirting with soldiers did she put the pieces together. It astounded her. Dependent on men for protection, Janet, Maria, Dolly, Margaret, and hundreds of women across the thirteen colonies were forced to whore their way through the war when those men disappeared. They'd never learned skills to land them other work in demand.

  But Betsy had been in a position to receive the legacy of printing as she was growing up. Will St. James and Sophie Barton had thrust the business down her throat at times, but she at last realized what they'd been about. She needn't be dependent on a man for protection. With her skills, so long as she settled in a town with a printing press, she needn't worry about being reduced to prostitution or raising her child in poverty.