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

by Adair, Suzanne

  She allowed her body to slump, signaling acquiescence. Behind him, Tom rolled over, brought himself to his knees, and wiped away blood near his left eye with the back of his hand. If she hadn't kicked Fairfax's knee, the ball would have plugged Tom between the eyes instead of yielding that scrape to the side of his head. Tom blinked and spotted her, and she looked at Fairfax as pathetically as possible. Yes, yes, keep your attention on me. I'm surrendering. I'll tell you everything.

  He registered the change in her and paused from tickling the skin on her upper chest. "Really? So soon? Damn. I thought you'd more resistance in you. Are you quite certain you're sincere? Perhaps we should play this out a bit longer, just to be sure."

  She shook her head in misery, begging, tears filling her eyes, and forced her gaze to hold his. In her peripheral vision, Tom found his footing, stole toward his horse, and reached for something. Surely he wouldn't try to reload his musket. Fairfax would hear him. She moaned. Two tears rolled down her cheeks, and she moaned again.

  Fairfax stiffened, preternatural awareness alerting him to movement without sound behind him. When he spun around, Tom had sought partial concealment behind a pine tree, blood oozing down the left side of his face, a coil of rope in his hands. No mere coil of rope, Betsy realized with a zing of fear: a lasso. True, he'd chased down and lassoed one of their hounds the morning she and Clark left for Augusta. But Fairfax wasn't going to let himself be lassoed and tied down like a dog.

  The lieutenant eyed her and moved out of kick range. "Are you challenging me with a rope, boy?"

  Tom twirled the lasso. "Untie her and let her go."

  "More than blood leaked from your head just now." Fairfax pulled out the pistol and took aim. "You have to my count of five to lay down the rope, or I shall put a ball between your eyes. And this time I won't miss."

  Betsy's eyes bulged. He wouldn't count to five, but Tom might make the mistake of believing so. She stamped her foot three times. Focused on his opponent, Tom paid her no heed. She screamed through the gag and again stamped her foot three times.

  "One."

  She thrashed about, drawing Tom's eye for an instant, and stamped her foot three more times. Three. The faintest widening of his eyes told her he'd intuited her message.

  Fairfax cocked the pistol. "Two."

  With more nimbleness than she'd ever seen him exhibit, Tom pivoted from cover and flung the lasso. It hooked Fairfax's neck, fouling his pistol aim, sending the ball among the trees. When he tried to extricate his neck, Tom tightened the rope, creating a collar. The lieutenant charged him, slackening the rope. Tom dropped it, grabbed the tree for support, and jacked his knee just in time to catch Fairfax's groin.

  Betsy heard the solid thud and gaped. Fairfax hadn't dropped to the ground in agony the way a normal man would have done. The blow had only sent him into a crouch from which he began fumbling with the lasso, loosening it. His breath in gasps, Tom grabbed the rope and tightened it again, yanking the lieutenant up against the pine tree. Choking, Fairfax dropped the empty pistol and pushed off the tree. Tom hauled him back and kicked his knee from beneath him.

  With a grunt, Fairfax collapsed to all fours. Tom dispensed a kick to his kidney. Wandering the twilight between conscious and unconscious, Fairfax struggled to a sitting position. Tom ran the rope around the tree again and again, trussing him up against it. When he'd secured it and shoved the pistol beyond range, he staggered away, legs folding beneath him, head in his hands.

  For excruciating seconds, Betsy expected him to pass out. Fairfax regained consciousness and began squirming to exploit a weakness in his bonds. Tom pulled a handkerchief from his vest pocket and mopped blood from his head and face. Stuffing the handkerchief away, he heaved to his feet and headed for her.

  He cut her bonds and gag. They embraced, both a mass of muscle tremors from exhaustion and wracked nerves. Then, wordless, he stomped for his horse. She scurried after, puzzling over his stony expression, tightening the drawstring on her shift and fumbling her jacket closed. But when he snatched up his musket, she straightened her shoulders, understanding. So did Fairfax, who stopped squirming. With a derisive smile, he watched Tom load his musket.

  The packhorse snorted. Betsy went to him and stroked his nose, her back turned. A metallic swish told her Tom had pulled the ramrod from the barrel of his loaded musket. The packhorse shifted around, frisky, as if smelling something good and familiar. All Betsy smelled was death, by then all too familiar.

  Tom cocked the musket. "May the devil welcome his own."

  "Lower your weapon, sir. We have you surrounded."

  The packhorse's ears perked, and he whinnied in welcome. Betsy swung around in shock and watched four men emerge from the woods while Tom complied with their order: Josiah and Jeremiah Carter and two friends, all bearing muskets, all grimed with black powder. Cordiality filled Fairfax's voice. "Mr. Carter, how good of you to stay my execution. Please untie me and assist my apprehension of these rebel spies."

  Carter looked from Fairfax to Tom and the wound on his head. Then he shifted his gaze to Betsy, whose hand trembled across her naked collarbone. Her modesty supplied a summary of the scenario: violation and vengeance. Carter's gaze swept back to Fairfax. "Rebel spies? I'm certain you're mistaken, Lieutenant. I know this man and woman. They aren't rebel spies."

  "You stopped him from executing me just now."

  Betsy saw determination root in Carter's expression. "We chanced upon you while pursuing bandits who raided my plantation. I think it likely this man and woman found you tied thusly and chased off your would-be executioner."

  Fairfax's jaw bounced open. "What? He was aiming his musket right at me. Have you no eyes?"

  "I've a good set of eyes, and I see a substantial injury to your arm, sir. You've had blood loss. Maybe enough to affect your perceptions and memory. We'd best get you to a surgeon."

  "I don't need a bloody surgeon! I need you to untie me!"

  Carter cleared his throat. "Really, sir, perhaps we'd best leave you there until you calm down and we can make a thorough search of the area for the men who wounded you."

  "Look no further. She shot me out on the battlefield!"

  "Indeed, blood loss." Carter shook his head and walked to Betsy, motioning Tom to join him. Stroking the packhorse's neck, he said, low, "We can detain him an hour at most."

  "Thank you," Tom whispered. "Do yourself a favor and kill him."

  "You're as bad as he is, and no, I don't want to hear your grievances. I'm tired of fighting and killing. Madam." He looked at Betsy. "I'm grateful to you for exposing injustice that I myself was forbidden to bring to light. Seven of us will testify of the Branwells' criminal operations. I will be relieved if you left Camden this hour and reached the sanctuary you spoke of. And as you go, know that I shall hold your property for you until such day as you return for it."

  She drew a ragged breath. "Thank you, Mr. Carter. Please don't let him see which way we go."

  "Absolutely not. Now leave here at once."

  Chapter Forty-Five

  BETSY AWAKENED BETWEEN a snoring Tom and cast iron pots, her face pressed to a blanket that had seen cleaner days, a wagon swaying beneath her. Her mouth tasted like a decomposed varmint, and her head ached as if it had been whacked against a tree. But the ominous cramping in her womb had stopped. When she stroked her belly, the baby shifted about, happy to not be in flight down the Waxhaws Road or stupid with fatigue.

  War might have ripped South Carolina apart, but people could still trust in the innate goodness of strangers, as demonstrated by the Dean family, who had let them climb aboard their wagon at noon and ride west with them. The family had even offered to feed them supper and put them up for the night.

  Her stomach growled. She couldn't remember her last meal. She had a vague recollection of bandaging Tom's head after they'd been ferried across the Wateree by jubilant Loyalists. Yawning, she looked at Tom's bandage. Hair might cover the patch where the ball had scalped, but he'd bear the
scar the rest of his days. Her eyelids drooped. Sleep again found her.

  The Deans awakened them around six-thirty in the evening on the east bank of the Congaree River. After Betsy and Tom paid their own fare and contributed to that of the others, the entire party was ferried across. The family encouraged them to stay for supper at the home of a friend a quarter hour away and to also accept their hospitality for the night.

  So after pork stew, cobbler, and coffee, Betsy, Tom, the Deans, and their friends watched moths flirt with the backyard bonfire, and Tom spun his tale: of traveling from Charlotte Town Tuesday afternoon, getting caught in a skirmish, being held prisoner all night, and escaping the battle. Children ensconced in mothers' laps listened with rapt eyes.

  Much later, Betsy blew out a lantern and relaxed on her blanket in the barn. When she regained sleep, dreams caught up with her at last. Around three in the morning, on the threshold between dreaming and waking, she gazed into the night to behold the specter of Clark turning his back on her and walking away a final time. Then she rolled on her side away from Tom and let the trickle of tears begin, let it gather momentum into the storm of reckoning she'd weather for a long while, jamming her teeth together to silence her sobs.

  She and Clark had never said goodbye. Not in Augusta, nor in Log Town, nor on the battlefield. But every one of those moments had been a goodbye. The whole marriage had been a goodbye. Always he slipped away from her like mist clutched between fingers. When she searched her memories for laughter they'd shared in Augusta, it all receded before her, ungraspable.

  Were it not for the child she carried, she'd have questioned whether Clark ever walked the earth, for he seemed imaginary. With a jolt, she realized that the man she'd married, the fellow of sensible politics who provided for her and lived a quiet shoemaker's life, wasn't Clark. The Clark she'd fallen in love with had never existed.

  Even more astonishing was her insight that goodwife Betsy Sheridan who kept a tidy house and the books for her husband's business, the woman who'd settled down — she was imaginary, too. If the Augusta ladies knew she'd escaped a mass grave, emptied chamberpots in a whorehouse, exposed a blackmail scam, pulled a printing press, shot two men, and wounded a Horseman from the Apocalypse, they'd faint.

  The straw beneath their blankets rustled. Tom curled up to her backside and wrapped an arm around her. It was the same position they'd awakened in one morning at the Leaping Stag, except there was nothing sexual about it this time, and there was everything solid about it. For a month he'd been there, always a friend, always a partner the way Clark had never been. Not for a long while had Tom been the blushing, gangly apprentice from Augusta. Even that memory receded when she reached for it.

  The Fates had granted her a brief reprieve. She lay safe on a blanket in a barn west of the Congaree with leisure at last to grieve. Miles northwest, refuge awaited her among people whose ways so differed from hers that a month earlier, she couldn't have envisioned herself living among them. During that month, however, her values and priorities had been stood upside down. That morning, Thursday, August seventeenth, her affirmation of her earlier decision to venture to Mulberry Creek and claim what was hers no longer seemed desperate and crazy, but just and wise.

  ***

  Ninety Six was a piddle of artisans' shops, a courthouse, and a jail numbering perhaps a dozen buildings along the road. Even counting the surrounding flourmills and farmsteads, the village didn't seem worthy of the palisade around it, especially since the Cherokee hadn't been aggressive in years. She and Tom rode on through, minimal interaction with the inhabitants, just a couple of travelers headed somewhere, anywhere.

  The way veered west, away from the sunlit sparkle of the Saluda River. They camped Saturday night among hills and hardwoods, and Betsy counted stars through verdant foliage. On the morrow, they'd cross Mulberry Creek.

  How would her mother know she was there? How long would she and Tom have to wait? They had about ten days' rations and would need to move on by the twenty-fifth if Sophie didn't show. The problem was that Betsy didn't know where else to go. It was too late to mull over options.

  A clever secondary plan hadn't come to her by the time they set off Sunday. The terrain grew more mountainous. They didn't reach the creek until the evening. No human had set foot on the ledges providing a view of the road in quite awhile, and it had been at least a week since another horse had traveled the road. Still, they couldn't be too careful, so after they picketed their horses above rhododendron and rocks, Tom sneaked an eighth of a mile back down the road and obscured their passage.

  Monday and Tuesday they waited. Wednesday afternoon the twenty-third, a week after the battle of Camden, while Betsy sat beside Mulberry Creek and contemplated the water, she heard soft movement behind her and sprang up. Her alarm transcended into relief and joy. On the bank stood Standing Wolf.

  With a grin, he helped her up the bank. She hugged him despite the stinky bear grease. "How did you find us?"

  "Noisy. Birds for miles around chatter your location."

  "Pshaw." She laughed, the first time she'd done so in too long. "It's so good to see you. Who else is here?" His smile grew mystical. "My mother? Oh, let's not tarry another moment!"

  She earned kicks of annoyance from the baby for scrambling back up the hill. Joshua Hale spotted her next and pointed out a slender, dark-haired man approaching from the left, but she whirled Joshua about in a hug first.

  The "man" turned out to be Sophie in a hunting shirt and trousers. "Mother, oh, Mother!" And because she couldn't help herself, because she'd doubted she'd see her mother again, Betsy began bawling as soon as she and Sophie embraced.

  When she regained composure, she smiled through tears and fumbled a handkerchief to her face while her mother smiled through her own tears. It was indeed her mother holding her hands and stroking her face, though not Nagchoguh Hogdee, Paper Woman, so much as Mountain Woman, her face lightly tanned, her body toned and agile from riding a horse and sleeping beneath stars. But more than just color and activity contributed to her vitality. Sophie Barton looked content for the first time ever.

  A wiry Indian approached them. Unlike Standing Wolf, he wore a hunting shirt and trousers, and his black hair, full and long, was plaited. Red man? White man?

  Walk in Two Worlds: Ayukapeta Hokolen Econa. Memories stirred, placing his face among those she remembered from childhood in Alton, the incident a joke she'd overheard him share with Will and David. Wonder filled her voice. "Mathias Hale — why, I do know you!"

  The obsidian of his eyes softened. He touched her cheek with the back of his fingers, as if he couldn't believe she was real. "You I haven't seen in eight years."

  "She looks just like Mama, doesn't she?" murmured Joshua.

  "Incredible."

  "And look, here's one who escaped." Joshua pulled Tom over.

  Tom made a stiff bow. "Pleased to meet you again, Mrs. Barton." He shook Mathias's hand. "Thomas Alexander, sir."

  "Mathias Hale. Thank you for seeing our daughter to us."

  Sophie glanced around. "Where's Clark?" Betsy lowered her gaze and cleared her throat, but Sophie spared her fumbling for words. "Oh, dear, I'm so sorry." Her mother embraced her again, and her voice emerged quiet, weary. "In that case, Mr. Alexander, we're very much in your debt for bringing Betsy safely to us." Sophie's gaze traveled to Tom's head wound. "I presume you put your own life in danger to do so."

  Joshua clapped a hand on Tom's shoulder. "I told Betsy he'd be a good friend."

  Mathias said to Tom, "Come back with us into the mountains. Wait for all this to blow over. The way isn't safe yet for you to return to Georgia."

  Tom bowed his head. "Thank you, sir, madam." He turned a smile to Betsy. "I'd like that very much."

  A crow cawed. No ordinary crow, Betsy knew, when her kin stiffened to listen. "What now?" Mathias trotted for the ledge to get a view of the road. Standing Wolf accompanied him.

  Mathias responded to more crow caws. Betsy and the others
headed for the overlook. A Cherokee warrior sprinted from the brush, his hair, tattoos, and clothing similar to that of the Creek, but a more olive hue to his skin. He conversed with Mathias, gesturing south. Mathias nodded and turned to all of them. "Panther Leaping spotted a party of two dozen militiamen and several redcoats headed north on horseback. They'll pass beneath us within a minute. Mr. Alexander, are your horses secure behind those rocks?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Good. Ideally the men pass by and never know we're here because there are too many to squabble with. All the same, ready weapons, choose cover, and don't fire unless I say so."

  Shrouded in summer foliage, they scattered and crouched on the ledge, Mathias, Standing Wolf, and Panther Leaping with arrows fitted to bows, Betsy, Sophie, Tom, and Joshua with muskets ready. Kneeling to the right of her mother, Betsy turned and caught her glance of love. Then Sophie's gaze snagged on the road. Her expression stiffened. She drew up her musket, sighting.

  The hairs on Betsy's neck stood up, and her teeth bared. Riding point for men on horseback was Lieutenant Fairfax, his predatory gaze sweeping from side to side as the rocks rose around them. He halted the party thirty feet away. A man in a hunting shirt and trousers rode forward to his side: Adam Neville.

  The Ranger was clearly not his prisoner. He studied the road from his saddle and shook his head. "A quarter mile back, they left the road."

  "That's an excellent place for an ambush up there."

  "Agreed."

  Understanding crawled through Betsy. Fairfax was using Neville without letting on that he knew he was a rebel. Like van Duser and Branwell, Neville didn't comprehend the twists of Fairfax's mind. At some point, his usefulness as scout and guide would expire. If he were lucky he'd get his brains blown out or his throat slit. But she doubted he'd be lucky.