Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution (22 page)

Sophie's heart
had ceased hammering enough for her to drill Ben with a glare.
 
"It might be expedient for you to
consider me a candidate for a prisoner exchange."
 
She slathered haughtiness into her tone.
 
"And I remind you that should you
consent to such an exchange, it behooves you to leave me unmolested while I'm
in your custody."

A sneer
imprisoned Ben's face.
 
After flinging
down her musket not far from the edge of firelight, he swung his fist in the
direction of several of the bandits.
 
"Barney, haul your arse over here and tie her Ladyship
up!"
 
Dear gods, her bluff had
worked!
 
"Sol, get out there and
help Gabe with the horses.
 
The rest of
you, do what you got to do to get your miserable hides sober.
 
We're marching out in a quarter hour.
 
All
of you, no more whiskey until the
morrow!"

Within a
minute, she found herself sitting, hands and feet bound, at the edge of camp,
her musket forgotten on the ground about six feet from her.
 
Adrenaline ebbed.
 
She felt cold, drained.
 
Her memory revisited MacVie's face and that of the bandit she'd shot,
lingering on the sight of blood on her brother's arm, the contortion of agony
in his expression.
 
David, oh, David.

A bandit
staggered over and retched into the bushes near her.
 
The stench settled over her like a sticky cloud.
 
While he staggered back to the campfire
wiping his mouth, another bandit pissed on the ground nearby.
 
She drew her feet up closer to her body to
avoid getting splashed.
 
The night
seemed to have no end.

Rustling in the
bushes drew her attention over her shoulder.
 
She caught her breath when a pair of dark eyes materialized in the
bushes, and Mathias lifted his finger to his lips.
 
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, almost unhinged
with relief.
 
Caught up with departure
preparations, the mob had ceased paying her direct attention.
 
A gentle tug and loosening of the rope
binding her hands told her Mathias was cutting her free.

From somewhere
out in the trees, she heard the approach of multiple horse hooves, a pistol
report, and a man's scream of pain.
 
More screams — human and equine — erupted from beyond the trees.
 
Then seven sword-wielding redcoats thundered
into view on horseback, Lieutenant Dunstan Fairfax at their lead.

Fairfax's voice
roared through the campsite: "Tarleton's Quarter!"
 
Scarlet archangel from the abyss, he
dismembered or beheaded four bandits.
 
Through geysers of blood, their heads bounced and rolled, and their
bodies collapsed, twitching.
 
Horror
punched the breath from Sophie's lungs and paralyzed her, even as the rope fell
away from her hands.

Drunken bandits
scattered, bellowing with panic.
 
A few
managed to discharge their pistols at the soldiers, but terror torqued their
aim awry.
 
Swinging their blades like
scythes, Fairfax and the six soldiers mowed the band of brigands down.
 
Severed arteries spurted.
 
Bandits writhed and screamed.

Mathias sprang
from concealment into chaos, a single slash of his knife freeing her feet.
 
Two bandits charged Sophie and Mathias with
knives.
 
Mathias yanked her to her feet
and thrust her musket into her hands.
 
She clobbered a bandit in the head with the butt while Mathias kicked
the knife from the other's hand and kneed him in the groin.

She scurried
into the bushes with her musket, but not before a backward glance rewarded her
with the sight of Edward and two other soldiers riding into the clearing.
 
The blacksmith caught up with her.
 
"Go!
 
Run like fire!"

They sprinted
for the moonlit marsh, galvanized by the pounding of pursuit, and emerged from
the pine grove into moonlight.
 
Sophie
tripped over the body of a bandit with an arrow through his throat.
 
As Mathias heaved her to her feet, a
sword-bearing Ben barreled from the grove and was upon them.
 
"Whore of Babylon, I'll cut your
scrawny teats off!"

She
screamed.
 
The
schlick
of an
arrow silenced when it pierced Ben's throat.
 
The bandit gurgled and sagged to the grass, thrashing.

Bow in hand,
Standing Wolf emerged from behind a lone tree, while Runs With Horses trotted
their four horses over.
 
Mathias shoved
Sophie up into Samson's saddle.
 
Her
limbs beginning to tremble, she kicked the gelding into a gallop and, with her
companions, fled the massacre in the grove.

At the
ill-fated campsite, she spied her brother propped against his saddle,
bare-chested, near the dying fire.
 
A
bloody knife nearby, Jacques finished bandaging David's arm and sat back,
satisfaction on his weather-beaten face.
 
She rushed to them and threw her arms about David, who clutched her with
his right arm.
 
"Sophie, oh, gods,
Sophie, are you all right?"

She doubted
she'd ever be "all right" again.
 
"Yes.
 
Let me see your arm —
broken?"

Pallid-faced,
he struggled up to a sitting position and shook his head.
 
"Mere flesh wounds."

Jacques laugh
was harsh.
 
"How like a brother to
not worry his sister.
 
I pulled a ball
from his arm."

David gritted
his teeth.
 
"None too gently, I
might add."

"Uncle
Jacques, did you get all of it out?"
 
Her words sounded distant to her.
 
She felt distant, as if she were teetering on the fringe of humanity.

"Of
course,
belle
Sophie."

"Thank
you."
 
She shook out David's shirt,
then stared at the bloodstains on it.

"Unfortunately
I have performed such grim service many times before, once on my own leg at
Saratoga."
 
He grinned at
David.
 
"You want to see the scar,
eh?"

Even through
his pallor, David managed a gusted laugh.
 
More stories of valor from the annals of Jacques le Coeuvre.
 
"No.
 
I'll take your word for it."

Mathias strode
past the body of the outlaw David had killed and knelt beside David.
 
"Our redcoat friends are about a mile
in that direction butchering bandits.
 
They were making quick work of it, so I cannot imagine them wasting time
before they look for us.
 
Can you
ride?"

"Jove's
jewels, the mongrel didn't shoot my bum, you know."

Mathias helped
him stand.
 
"I don't want you
bleeding to death on the road."

"As I've
never been a martyr, I'll let everyone know if I start bleeding to
death."
 
He snatched his shirt from
Sophie.
 
"Let's go."

Chapter Seventeen

TWO HOURS
LATER, beneath a half moon and firmament of stars, they guided the horses to
firm ground west of the road.
 
A groan escaped
David's lips when he slid from his saddle, and Sophie led him to moonlit
grass.
 
"Sit.
 
I'll care for your horse tonight."

"Thank
you."
 
He folded his long legs
beneath him.
 
"I hope we left the
whole bloody lot of redcoats behind."

Jacques yawned.
 
"We should be back on the road by
sunrise."

Sophie said to
her brother, "Help me remove your shirt so I can change the bandage."

"My arm
doesn't need more prodding tonight."

"If
gangrene sets in, you'll be shuffling cards one-handed.
 
Off with your shirt!"

Mathias led his
horse past.
 
"You'd best do as
General Barton orders.
 
Wounds like that
fester."

Cursing under
his breath, David eased his shirt over his head.
 
"The rotten luck of it.
 
I could have been at a Savannah card table tonight plucking purses and
drinking whiskey."

Well she knew
he might have enjoyed Savannah.
 
She
might have slept in a bed at a decent inn.
 
She'd voted to bypass Savannah and pitched them into that snarl of
outlaws and redcoats — gotten David shot, and nearly gotten herself violated by
a gang — and she'd had to kill a
second
man, not that she wanted to
dwell on that at all.
 
She unrolled
David's bandage.
 
How naïve she'd been
to insist on making the journey.
 
Were
her companions humoring her: a "general" with no field experience?

Eager to
embrace a caregiver role, she re-poulticed and re-bandaged David's wound before
seeing to their horses.
 
The others made
a fire and boiled water, and she prepared a mug of willow bark tea to ease
David's pain.
 
To the rest of the pot,
Jacques threw in a soup square, dried vegetables, and the two dressed rabbits
caught before the party abandoned the first campsite.
 
The aroma soon had the five men milling about in anticipation.

Her appetite
gone, Sophie trudged to a creek fifty feet from the campfire.
 
Screened in the long grass, she stripped and
sponged off sweat, horse, grime, and crusted menstrual blood.
 
But neither caring for David nor wearing
clean clothing improved her spirits.
 
She felt empty inside and not quite real, as if she weren't awake —
sleepwalking, indeed, like Lady MacBeth, now with two men's blood on her hands.

While she
pounded away at soiled rags and clothing, Mathias ambled out, making himself
heard in advance, and crouched near her.
 
"Plenty of stew left."

"I'm not
hungry."
 
She wrung out her shirt.

"You
haven't been eating enough."

"Yes, I
know.
 
I'm so skinny that even bandits
debate whether I'm worth ravishing."

A growl burst
from his throat.
 
He snatched the wet
shirt, flung it on the ground, and shook her once.
 
"Quit blaming yourself!
 
We agreed to stop back there.
 
Mistakes happen.
 
You were tired,
your attention wandered —"

"My
brother got shot, I nearly got..."
 
Her voice squeaked out of a throat tightened with tears, and she
attempted to twist away from him, humiliated because her tears wouldn't be
dammed this time.
 
"It
is
my
fault!
 
I should have listened to David,
and we should have stayed at an inn in Savannah."
 
Her voice went shrill.
 
"You were right!
 
I should never have come!
 
I don't know what I'm doing out here."
 
Tears rolled down her cheeks.
 
"I've killed two men, bungling my way
through it!"

"Sophie,
each one of us here has killed at least two men."

"But how
can you and the Indians kill and be done with it?
 
You don't like to kill.
 
I
saw it in your face Tuesday."

His shoulders
slumped, and his voice thickened with remorse.
 
"None of us enjoys killing."

"Yet you
leave it behind you like ashes at a campsite."

"What
would be the point of dragging it with us?
 
We carry too much in this life as it is.
 
We — Indians — thank Creator that we were the survivors of a
deadly encounter, and we move on.
 
If
you expect to complete this journey, Sophie, you must find your own road past
killing MacVie and that bandit.
 
At your
life's end, you will stand before Creator and the lake of spirits and speak to
all, not only of your sorrow but of the wisdom you learned on this
journey."

She stared at
him, his ideology stark, meaningful, piercing.
 
Then her remaining composure crumbled into sobs, and he tucked her
against his shoulder.

Had it been
merely a week ago, Friday night, that she lay in her bedroom, listening while
rebels printed broadsides?
 
Those horrid
broadsides popped up everywhere, poisonous toadstools of the press, fertilized
by bloodlust and rage.

Colonists were
falling upon themselves in a frenzy of bloodlust, forging a nation founded on
insanity.
 
They might demonize the likes
of British such as Banastre Tarleton, but it was only to thwart themselves from
looking in the mirror and seeing the Demon Ultime reflected back at them.

Why had she
thrust herself into such a morbid quest?
 
For family honor?
 
For sweet
Betsy and her unborn child?
 
For
herself, because she was bored with life in Alton?
 
If so, surely she was just as crazy as every rebel in the
Congress was.