'Can you name the men?'
'Their leader calls himself Samson. I don't know the others.'
There was a brief silence, then Rochambeau sighed.
'I see. In that case, my friend, you must travel all the faster. I will see that these men are kept under observation, and thank you.'
Then, he turned to the Swede who stood waiting calmly, apparently in no way discommoded by the weight of two muskets, powder flasks, pistols and a large, bulging sack.
'You may put that lot down, my dear Count,' he said with a chuckle. 'I dare swear no one has ever demanded such a service of you before.'
'But then there is no one quite like you, General. It is a pleasure to be a conspirator in your company. I wish you luck, gentlemen,' he added, turning to the two others. 'May I also say that I envy you? By going to headquarters, you will be getting nearer the enemy. While we must go on playing whist with the good citizens of Rhode Island.'
'Your turn will come. Come along now. Our absence may be remarked on, and we promised to finish the evening at the Jeffries'.'
Fersen made a face and sighed deeply enough to bring down the remains of the casemate.
'Where Monsieur de Lauzun has promised to put in an appearance in order to describe to the ladies which novels are the Queen's favourites. I really would much rather go to bed, sir—'
'So would I, my friend. But you are not here to be entertained. We are at war. Good luck, the rest of you.'
Fifteen minutes later, looking like Tim's twin brother in his deerskin garb, Gilles followed his friend out of the old fortifications. Outside, the night was clear, warm and light, with the breath of sea air which can make even the worst of the dog days tolerable. Tim plunged into the long grass of a meadow that stretched northward along the island, ending in a small coppice. But when Gilles tried to urge Igrak after him, the Indian boy refused and Gilles had to call Tim back.
'I can't understand what he is saying,' he whispered. 'I think he said something about scalps!'
The hunter and the young Indian crouched in the grass and muttered rapidly. Tim laughed.
'He doesn't want to go home,' he explained. 'He says if he has no scalps to bring back he can never be a warrior, they will make him stay with the squaws and the papooses!'
'And you can laugh? Yet we can't leave him here, any more than we can let him go and get the scalps he wants.'
'Oh, if it were up to me, I shouldn't care if he were to go and scalp your friend Lauzun and some of his fellows. But I think I've a better idea. Go and hide in the spinney and wait for me.'
'Where are you going?'
'Don't worry. I shan't be long.'
Tim vanished, as noiselessly as a cat. The grass closed behind him as sea water closes on a fish. After half an hour which seemed like a whole week to Gilles, he reappeared, one hand carelessly gripping a whitish bundle with sinister dark stains. Gilles watched him hand it over solemnly to the boy and shuddered.
'What is it?' he whispered. 'You surely can't have—'
With no change of expression, Tim bowed deeply to Igrak whose eyes had begun to sparkle in the gloom, at the same time murmuring through his teeth: 'The hussars drink deep and sleep the better for it. I had no trouble relieving them of their wigs, and they'll be punished for their loss in the morning which brings joy to my vindictive spirit.'
'But – the blood? There's blood on them.'
'A belated chicken. I cut its throat over them. Looks pretty good, doesn't it? And just look at the kid. He's as happy as a king, and he believes in it. Of course, it will be harder to get his brother to swallow it, but I'll have a word with him. If you ask me, the boy has amply proved his courage. And then – well, we must be off and sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof! Come on! There is a fishing village opposite Prudence Island where we can get a boat to cross to the mainland.'
Gilles' laughter was echoed by the cry of an owl, disturbed in its hunting, but in another moment the spinney was quiet again.
Chapter Eight
The Captive Girl
'Three million! No more than three million!'
Startled, Gilles stared for a moment at the Rebel leader, wondering how to take this and whether it were some kind of private jest on the part of a gentleman who, at first sight, had made such a deep impression on him. But General Washington was rereading Rochambeau's letter with a care that ruled out any possibility of jesting, so that the younger man could not help echoing his last words.
'No more?' he said hesitantly. 'May I point out, sir, that that is an immense sum of money?'
The Virginian's stern, handsome face was illumined by a brief smile. Just for a moment, it held the charm of a wintry sea lit by a ray of sunshine. Washington liked the spontaneity of youth and he was amused by the faintly shocked tone of the young Frenchman in the deerskin jacket with his ready command of English.
'For a regiment, or even for a town under siege, yes, I agree with you. But not for an army which has been short of everything for far too long. We could do with thirty million—Not,' he added quickly, 'that this is not very welcome. It will enable us to deal with our most pressing needs. I'll give orders at once for a party to be sent to collect it, as discreetly as possible.'
Discretion again! The history of this cargo of gold was beginning to look like a comic opera. Rochambeau and Ternay bringing it in great secrecy and now Washington collecting it just as secretly, as if he were not master in his own house! The look on Gilles' expressive face did not escape the General's grey eyes.
'Is there something troubling you?'
Gilles flushed brick red.
'Forgive me, General. I am only surprised at so much discretion. Here you are in your own camp, amongst your own men. What have you to fear?'
'Nothing, to be sure, except for tradesmen, the suppliers of this very army. If it were known that I possessed so large a sum they would make me pay two or three times as much for what it has already cost me much trouble to extort from them at prohibitive prices. What is more, my men have had no pay for five months. They might imagine that the days of the fat kine have returned. Which is far from being the case! So I would ask you, too, to be very discreet. Leave me now, gentlemen. You have travelled a long way and must be in need of rest. I will see you again tomorrow. Until then, Colonel Hamilton will look after you.' He indicated his aide-de-camp who was standing blocking the doorway.
Gilles and Tim bowed and turned to leave the modest house which had served General Washington as headquarters since he and his army had arrived in the village of Peekskill on the left bank of the Hudson River. But the General called them back.
'Just a moment! General Rochambeau tells me he would like me to keep you with me for a little while. He says also that you have an interesting prisoner, the brother of an Indian chief?'
This time it was Tim who answered.
'Own brother to Sagoyewatha, chief of the Wolf clan of the Senecas who is—'
'I know who Red Jacket is,' Washington interrupted. 'That is what interests me. But I have to think. I will see you tomorrow.'
The two friends found themselves outside and, after collecting Igrak from the guard room, they followed Colonel Hamilton, whose age must have been twenty at the most, through the canvas city which the war had caused to spring up below the mountains, on the hill of Peekskill. Gilles looked about him with interest. The American camp was about the same size as the French one at Newport but it looked very much poorer. The tents, their entrances concealed by odd-looking stoves, very necessary in winter, were sooty, patched and dirty. The soldiers were dressed all anyhow, many of them in rags and those that had them in grey uniforms and strange moulded leather hats with draggled plumes, like tufts of grass, at the back. As to their weapons, they were so obviously antique that they must have witnessed not merely the loss of Canada by the French seventeen years earlier but even the actual conquest of some of the thirteen states whose stars were to be seen on the new American flag that flew so merrily over all this wretch
edness. 'If I were the general,' Gilles observed in an undertone, 'I shouldn't be so uppity about the gold I was given. It seems to me he needs it badly. In all fairness, he should have hugged me.'
'He smiled at you,' said Colonel Hamilton, who had overheard this. 'With him, that's a sign of delirious happiness. As for our men, they may not look much, but they can fight. And wait until you see our cavalry! Your La Fayette says he's rarely seen anything to touch it.'
'I meant no aspersion on your troops, Colonel. Indeed, it would ill become me since you, for your part, might judge the King of France's men by my appearance, which is scarcely brilliant.'
Rochambeau's emissaries had in fact taken less than five days to cover the forty-odd leagues of forest, intersected with lakes and swamps, which lay between Rhode Island and the Hudson River. They were hideously dirty and the smell of them would have put off a badger, while they were having a perpetual struggle to stay awake. Or at least Gilles was, for Tim, inured by long usage to extensive journeys over difficult ground, had calmly hoisted Igrak over his shoulder as they left the General's tent without even waking him. The Indian boy had fallen straight into the sleep of exhaustion at the feet of the sentry into whose care they had given him on their arrival.
Hamilton led his general's guests as far as the wooden palisades bordering the river. There, by the entrance to the camp, stood a collection of buildings, part tents, part Indian huts, about which moved a number of persons recognizable by their sunbonnets as women. These were the 'Molly Pitchers', the camp followers who carried water to the men in battle, assisted the surgeons and did what they could to improve the soldiers' fare by such means as came to hand, notably by quiet depredations on the neighbouring farmyards. They got their name from the heroic woman who, at the battle of Monmouth courthouse, had taken her wounded husband's place in the firing line and had kept the whole regiment supplied with water. It was, indeed, a very affectionate nickname.
The young colonel went up to one of the women, a little dark creature, as wizened as a prune and barely half as tall as her companions but who nevertheless appeared to be a person of authority among them.
'Janet Mulligan,' he said, 'the General sends you these two boys. They are his guests and he would have you look after them until the morning. They need food and rest.'
Without a word, Janet left her tub and the washing in it, dried her hands on her hips and stalked across to Tim. She gazed at his burden with a jaundiced eye and sniffed.
'And that?' she said, pointing a soapy finger at Igrak. 'Do I have to take care of that as well?'
'More than of the other two,' Hamilton assured her imperturbably. 'He's the General's hostage.'
'Then let him look to him himself! He's an Iroquois. And I want none of them here. My man Harvey was scalped and burned alive at German Flats by those devils belonging to the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant. I'd rather starve than give a pinch of maize to one of those brigands! Be off with you! Get him out of here! Take the creature away and if the General doesn't like it he can come and ask me why himself. Isn't that right, girls?'
The group of women that had gathered round the washtub as round an altar, chorused their agreement.
Such unanimity drew a beaming smile from Janet.
'We're all agreed, you see, Colonel Hamilton. So you can put your Indian where you like so long as you get him out of here. As to the other two—'
'Madam,' Gilles interposed, bowing as deeply as to a great lady, 'all we ask of you is some quiet corner where this child may go on sleeping. We ourselves will find food for him. As the colonel has told you, he is of great importance to your general.'
Janet's eyes widened in surprise as they took in the young man, from muddied moccasins to tangled fair hair.
'What have we here? He's as dirty as a pot, as beautiful as a god and he talks like a lord. Except that no lord ever spoke to me like that… Madam, he says! Madam! To me!'
Gilles laughed. 'I am a Frenchman,' he said, 'and you are a woman. To us, all women are – are ladies. I came here with the King of France's army, to fight alongside you, and it was I who captured this child. The General holds him to be valuable. I beseech you – madam – give us a corner to put him in. My friend cannot carry him over his shoulder all night long.'
Quite unexpectedly, Janet Mulligan was blushing like a girl, eyelashes aflutter. She broke into a sudden smile and even sketched a curtsy.
'Don't you be giving me those looks, young sir! Such eyes as you've got! Such eyes! There then, just you come this way.'
Without further explanation, she herself led the travellers to a tent and began kicking out of it various cooking pots and other implements. That done, she begged them to make themselves at home, adding that whatever they wished for they had only to ask.
Nor did the kindness of Janet and her friends end there. Clearly much taken with the young Frenchman, they bustled round him, miraculously producing bread, not too stale, meat that was edible and cool beer. Then, when Gilles made known his intention of washing in the river, they generously presented him with a piece of soap, which they made themselves.
'This isn't the place for you,' Tim teased him, as they splashed together in the sun-warmed waters of the Hudson River. 'You ought to be in the Indies. You'd have made a fine sultan. All these women are in love with you already.'
'What do you expect?. There can't be many Frenchmen here. I am a curiosity to them, that's all.'
'The curiosity is all on their side. Take a look over by those bushes. They're all there, watching us take our dip. I guess they want to see if a Frenchman strips like an American.'
Tim executed a neat dive, his buttocks gleamed for an instant in the sunshine and then he vanished under water, swimming out into the stream like a great otter, while Gilles lay back idly and let the great river carry him along on its green waters, flowing majestically between wooded banks. At that moment it was hard to remember that they were at war, for all that rich countryside basked in an almost divine peace. Only, here and there, were wooden forts whose obvious newness gave them away and downstream some suspicious smoke was dissolving in the blue sky. And when Gilles swam across to the far bank, he caught a glimpse of distant black points: the spars of the English vessels anchored in the Hudson River. New York was not much more than thirty miles away.
The true face of war showed itself once more in the blaze of the setting sun, when, with a thunderous noise of hoofbeats raising echoes in the countryside, three troops of cavalry loomed up through the dust and swept in through the wide-open gates of the camp, yelling a savage song of victory at the tops of their voices. They were led by a kind of centaur in rent and bloodstained garments, white teeth bared in laughter and flourishing a reddened sword. He was guiding his splendid devil of a horse with his knees alone.
'Colonel Delancey,' Tim remarked. 'And part of the famous Virginia cavalry. What do you think of them?'
'Nothing at all,' Gilles said, his eyes devouring the amazing display of horsemanship, the magnificent animals and the infectious enthusiasm emanating from the men. 'I'm lost in admiration! I think I'm going to enjoy fighting alongside men like that.'
Lying on the bare ground under a blanket, lent by Janet, which was very nearly clean, Gilles lay awake late into the night, listening to the noises of the camp and the cries of the seabirds, so reminiscent of Brittany. Tired as he was, excitement drove out sleep. He was impatient for the morning, impatient to find out what it was that this amazing General Washington, of whom even the English said that there was not a king in Europe but would look like a lackey next to him, wanted them to do for him. So far he had seen nothing of the war but the interminable preparations for it, a distant encounter with the English fleet at sea and the routine of camp life, manoeuvres, discussions and politics, and the joys of the commissariat. But the men around him had been fighting for months and every day brought its quota of arms and bloodshed. Gilles wanted his share in all this, and he wanted it now.
All at once, in spite of the din
of Tim's snores filling the tent, he was aware of a slight rustle. The canvas flap across the entrance was raised noiselessly, then the rustling was resumed. Someone was crawling inside.
Gilles' hand slid to his side, touched the handle of the hunting knife at his belt and closed upon it firmly. At the same time, he eased the folds of blanket gently aside, preparing to defend himself against attack… But as he did so he felt groping hands and a smell of soap and wet grass filled his nostrils.
Quickly, he grasped one of the hands and knew, from the faint squeak she gave, that it was a woman.
'Who are you?' he whispered. 'What do you want?'
'Hush! – You'll wake your friend. Janet Mulligan sent me. I'm her niece, Betty. As to what I want—'
'Well?'
She gave a stifled giggle and he was suddenly aware of warm hands parting the front of his deerskin shirt and sliding over his chest.
'Janet wants me to welcome you on behalf of the girls of America,' Betty whispered teasingly. 'She said you ought to be pleased because that's all Frenchmen think of!' And with that, she was on him. Warm, hard breasts, firm thighs, hot belly and moist lips all moulded themselves to the young man's body and instinctively he closed his arms on them.
As his fingers touched the soft skin of her bare back, he felt a long shiver run through the girl, like an electric shock which passed irresistibly into his own body. The great hunger for love which he had felt in Manon's arms returned to him and gladly he embraced the unexpected gift. The honour of Frenchmen was at stake. Ripping off the remainder of his clothes, he crushed the yielding body to him fiercely and gave free rein to the accumulated desires of many months.
Dawn was approaching when the tent flap was raised once more to let out the woman whom he knew only by touch and Gilles at last allowed sleep to flow over him like a beneficent wave, with no thought in his head but that America was a wonderful country and the soldier's life the finest in the world.
Falcon 1 - The Lure of the Falcon Page 21