Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution (49 page)

Mathias entered
the circle of light.
 
"Are we
ready?"

"Surely,
when icicles hang from Satan's breeches."

Sophie gave
David a cheery smile and turned to Mathias.
 
"We're ready."
 
She
handed the lantern to Runs With Horses and mounted Samson.

Mathias clasped
his cousin's arm.
 
"With any luck,
Fairfax won't remember to visit the people for at least half a day."

Runs With
Horses smiled.
 
"Go.
 
The wind will take your footprints."

The trio walked
their horses from the village.
 
Soon
after they crossed a brook to the northeast, David halted and dismounted.
 
Mathias and Sophie did the same, and she
read her brother's intent in the dawn.
 
Time to part company.

Mathias prodded
his shoulder.
 
"Are you sure your
widow is worth it?"
 
At David's
keen look, he grinned.
 
"Never
mind."

"David,
I'm going with Mathias."

His eyes
twinkled with approval.
 
"Of course
you are."

"If you
can safely do so, give Betsy my love and tell her I'm all right.
 
And give us a good hug.
 
It shall have to last awhile —
oof!"
 
The hug buried her nose in
his shoulder.
 
"That feels much
more like a bear than a brother."
 
She clung to him.
 
"Oh,
please be very careful.
 
I shall miss
you terribly."

"And I
shall miss you at least as much."
 
He whisked her hat off her head and kissed her forehead.
 
"Musket Woman.
 
Swamp Woman.
 
Ocean Woman.
 
Paper
Woman."
 
He dropped the hat back on
her head.

She released
him, adjusted her hat, and watched him embrace Mathias.
 
A grin split David's face.
 
"You two are so like a couple of peas
in a pod.
 
If you decide to make it
official, don't forget to invite me.
 
I'm jolly fun at weddings —"
 
He winked.
 
"Just as long as
it's someone
else
's wedding."

Finis

Historical Afterword

History texts
and fiction minimize the importance of the southern colonies, Florida, Spain,
and the Caribbean during the American War of Independence.
 
Many scholars now believe that more
Revolutionary War battles were fought in South Carolina than in any other
colony, even New York.
 
Of all the wars
North Americans have fought, the death toll from the American War exceeds all
except the Civil War in terms of percentage of the population.
 
And yet our "revolution" was but
one conflict in a ravenous world war.

Many history
texts and fiction also claim that those who identified themselves as patriots
were in the majority during this war.
 
Many scholars now believe that
neutrals
were in the majority,
pinioned between two minority and radical opponents and often getting caught in
the crossfire, a pattern we see played out in current events.
 
Those who do not learn from history...

Propaganda was
a mighty weapon wielded by both sides in this conflict.
 
On 29 May 1780, British Lt. Colonel Banastre
Tarleton led a cavalry charge against militia and regulars commanded by Colonel
Abraham Buford in the Waxhaws region of South Carolina.
 
Although Buford galloped away, leaving his
leaderless unit to be devastated, the bloody outcome of the battle was seized
upon by patriots and wrung for every ounce of anti-British propaganda they
could twist from it.

The impact of
women during the American War, especially those on the frontier, has been
minimized.
 
Women during this time
enjoyed freedoms denied them the previous two centuries and the following
century.
 
They educated themselves and
ran businesses and plantations.
 
They
worked the fields and hunted.
 
They
defended their homes.
 
They ministered
their folk religion at gatherings.
 
They
fought on the battlefield.
 
Although
unable to vote, women did just about everything men did.

Contrary to
popular belief, Jamestown, Virginia was not the earliest European settlement to
survive in the United States.
 
Don Pedro
Menéndez de Avilés established St. Augustine, Florida in 1565, decades before
the British built Jamestown.

Established in
1738, Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose (Fort Mose) was a community of freed
slaves sanctioned by the Spanish.
 
Destroyed twice by warfare, the concept of Fort Mose remained a beacon
into Revolutionary times, drawing many escaped slaves to Florida.

The city of
Galveston, Texas is named for Bernardo de Gálvez of the powerful Gálvez
family.
 
In the final years of the
American War, the Spaniards, led predominantly by Gálvez, battled the British
and forced them from outposts such as Pensacola and Mobile along the Gulf of
Mexico.
 
Long before Yorktown,
Cornwallis's military strategies were already being hampered by Gálvez and the
Spaniards.

Luciano de
Herrera acted as a Spanish operative in St. Augustine for almost twenty
years.
 
When British governor Patrick
Tonyn pierced his cover and sent soldiers to arrest him in 1781, Herrera was
clever enough to have escaped to Cuba the day before.
 
And when St. Augustine was returned to the Spaniards a few years
later, Herrera was granted a leading government post in the city.

Selected Bibliography

Dozens of websites, interviews
with subject-matter experts, the following books and more:

Abbott, Shirley.
 
Historic Charleston
.
 
Birmingham, Alabama: Oxmoor House, Inc.,
1988.

Baker, Christopher P.
 
Havana Handbook
.
 
Emeryville, California: Avalon Travel
Publishing, 2000.

Bass, Robert D.
 
The Green Dragoon
.
 
Columbia, South Carolina: Sandlapper Press,
Inc., 1973.

Boatner, Mark M. III.
 
Encyclopedia of the American Revolution
.
 
Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole
Books, 1994.

Campbell, Colin, ed.
 
Journal of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald
Campbell
.
 
Darien, Georgia: The
Ashantilly Press, 1981.

Gilgun, Beth.
 
Tidings from the Eighteenth Century
.
 
Texarkana, Texas: Scurlock Publishing Co.,
Inc., 1993.

Harland, John.
 
Seamanship in the Age of Sail
.
 
London: Conway Maritime Press Ltd, 1984.

Harvey, David Alan and Elizabeth
Newhouse.
 
Cuba
.
 
The National Geographic Society: Washington,
1999.

Hudson, Charles.
 
The Southeastern Indians
.
 
Knoxville, Tennessee: The University of
Tennessee Press, 1992.

Kemp, Peter and Richard
Ormond.
 
The Great Age of Sail
.
 
New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1986.

Lane, Mills.
 
Architecture of the Old South
.
 
New York: Abbeville Press, Inc., 1993.

Manucy, Albert.
 
The Houses of St. Augustine: Notes on the
Architecture from 1565 to 1821
.
 
St.
Augustine, Florida: The St. Augustine Historical Society, 1962.

Morrill, Dan L.
 
Southern Campaigns of the American
Revolution
.
 
Mount Pleasant, South
Carolina: The Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of America, Inc.,
1993.

Mullins, Lisa C., ed.
 
Early Architecture of the South
.
 
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: The National
Historical Society, 1987.

O'Brian, Patrick.
 
Master and Commander
.
 
New York: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd,
1970.

Padron, Francisco Morales,
ed.
 
The Journal of Don Francisco
Saavedra de Sangronis, 1780-1783
.
 
Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press, 1989.

Scotti, Dr. Anthony J., Jr.
 
Brutal Virtue: the Myth and Reality of
Banastre Tarleton
.
 
Bowie, Maryland:
Heritage Books, Inc., 2002.

St. Augustine.
 
Confessions
.
 
Trans. E. B. Pusey.

Steen, Sandra and Susan
Steen.
 
Historic St. Augustine
.
 
Minneapolis, Minnesota: Dillon Press, 1997.

Suchlicki, Jaime.
 
Cuba From Columbus to Castro
.
 
Washington: Pergamon-Brassey's International
Defense Publishers, 1986.

Swager, Christine R.
 
Black Crows & White Cockades
.
 
St. Petersburg, Florida: Southern Heritage
Press, 1999.

Tunis, Edwin.
 
Colonial Craftsmen and the Beginnings of
American Industry
.
 
Baltimore,
Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965.

Waterbury, Jean Parker, ed.
 
The Oldest City: St. Augustine, Saga of
Survival
.
 
St. Augustine, Florida:
The St. Augustine Historical Society, 1983.

Woodman, Richard.
 
The History of the Ship
.
 
London: Conway Maritime Press, 1997.

Follow Betsy Sheridan's
journey

The Blacksmith's Daughter

A Mystery of the American
Revolution

by

Suzanne
Adair

The patriots wanted her
husband dead. So did the redcoats. She took issue with both.

In the blistering Georgia
summer of 1780, Betsy Sheridan uncovers evidence that her shoemaker husband,
known for his loyalty to King George, is smuggling messages to a
patriot-sympathizing, multinational spy ring based in the Carolinas. When he
vanishes into the heart of military activity, in Camden, South Carolina, Betsy
follows him, as much in search of him as she is in search of who she is and
where she belongs. But battle looms between Continental and Crown forces. The
spy ring is plotting multiple assassinations. And Betsy and her unborn child
become entangled in murder and chaos.

Read
the first chapter now

Chapter One

SERENADED BY
PREDAWN cricket chirp and frog song on July 11, Betsy Sheridan paced in the
dining room, already dressed in her shift, short jacket, and petticoat.
 
Her stomach uneasily negotiated the
collision of oily pork odor from Monday night's supper with leather's rich
pungency from Clark's shop.
 
She knew
better than to blame the queasiness on being four months along with child.

News delivered
at suppertime had driven nettles of anxiety into her soul.
 
Her mother and uncle captured by Lower Creek
Indians in East Florida — good gods.
 
The Lower Creek didn't treat their prisoners to tea parties.
 
Imagining her mother Sophie and her Uncle
David tortured in creative, native ways made her gut feel like a blazing spew
of grapeshot.

At the window,
she breathed in familiar morning scents wafting from the back yard on a cool
breeze: sandy soil entwined with red veins of Georgia clay, wood smoke, pine
resin.
 
"Pregnant nose," the
midwife had called her heightened sense of smell.
 
Out back, King Lear the rooster crowed.
 
With Clark's apprentices arriving at seven, Betsy had best fetch
the eggs and start breakfast soon.
 
Perhaps the morning routine would ease some of her anxiety.

Her lit candle
held aloft, she paused outside the cobbler's shop to peer up the stairway.
 
Annoyance rifted her anxiety at the soft
snores issuing from their bedroom.
 
Clark wouldn't have overslept had he not stayed up for that midnight
delivery of Cordovan leather from Sooty Johns.
 
Betsy had never liked Johns, a greasy little peddler.
 
Because she, curious, had tiptoed downstairs
to watch the two men unload the leather, and they thought her asleep the whole
time, the delivery had felt illegal.

In the shop,
she lit and hung two Betty lamps.
 
Her
gaze skimmed over the counter where she kept the ledger and lodged on the
workbench piled with Cordovan leather.
 
Magenta by lamplight, it almost assumed the hue of coagulated blood.
 
Spain
.
 
Why should Spanish leather be delivered early Tuesday morning to
John Clark Sheridan, a British sympathizer, ostensibly one of Spain's
enemies?
  
A shudder rose in her, and she
wondered whether she should hide the leather.

Not that she
needed more to worry about.
 
Shaking off
her concerns over the delivery, she walked to the workbench and pushed aside an
awl and two cowhide boots to make room for her candle beside a small mirror.
 
The action of settling her mobcap atop her
braided dark hair eased her stomach.
 
After a final inspection to ensure a trim appearance, she stood.