Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (108 page)

It did, another volley of defiant artillery, but the mules and horses merely danced and snorted this time, not taken by surprise.

“But?” she said, neatly returning to her place at his side. He gave her a sidelong smile.

“But they know the end is coming,” he finished. “But as for my knowledge of the situation, I will admit it’s more than observation. My fath—” A brief, fierce grimace crossed his face and disappeared. “Lord John told me about the battle. He wasn’t in any doubt as to the outcome, nor am I.”

“So the siege
is
about to lift?” she persisted, wanting certainty.

“Yes.”

“Oh, good,” she said, and let her shoulders slump in relief. He gave her an odd, interested look, but said no more and urged his horse into a faster walk.

CAPTAIN PINCKNEY WAS
perhaps thirty and probably good-looking, though sleeplessness and defeat had made him haggard. He blinked as Bree alighted from her mule without assistance and turned to greet him; she topped him by four or five inches. He closed his eyes for an instant, opened them again, and bowed to her with impeccable courtesy.

“Your most obedient, Mrs. MacKenzie, and I am to give you the utmost compliments of General Lincoln and the troops. I am also to convey his deep sense of obligation and gratitude for your kind assistance.”

He spoke like an Englishman, though she thought there was a southern softness in his vowels. She didn’t try to curtsy, but bowed to him in return.

“I’m very glad to help,” she said. “I understand there may be some urgency in the…er…situation. Perhaps you could show me where General Pulaski is at the moment?”

Captain Pinckney glanced at William and John Cinnamon, who had dismounted and handed their reins to the orderly accompanying the captain.

“William Ransom, sir, your servant.” William bowed and, straightening, nodded at Cinnamon. “My friend and I have come to escort my sister. We will remain, and see her back when her errand is finished.”

“Your sister? Oh, good.” Captain Pinckney looked substantially happier at the revelation that he wouldn’t be solely responsible for her. “Your servant, sir. Follow me.”

The guns went off again, a ragged volley. This time, she didn’t jump.

THE DEAD GENERAL
lay in a small, worn green tent on the riverbank, apart from the camp. This placement might have been a sign of respect, but there was a practical aspect to it, too, as Brianna discovered when Captain Pinckney removed a crumpled but clean handkerchief from his sleeve and handed it to her before courteously raising the tent flap for her.

“Thank y— Oh, my God.” A few late flies rose sluggishly from the corpse, wafted on a rising stink that shrouded him more thoroughly than the clean sheet over his face and upper body.

“Gangrene,” William said behind her, under his breath. “Jesus.” John Cinnamon coughed heavily, once, and fell silent.

“I do apologize, Mrs. MacKenzie,” Pinckney was saying. He’d taken hold of her elbow, as though afraid she might either bolt or faint.

“I—It’s all right,” she managed, through the folds of the handkerchief. It wasn’t, but she stiffened her spine, tensed her stomach muscles, and edged up to the makeshift bier on which they’d laid Casimir Pulaski. William stepped up beside her at once. He didn’t say anything or touch her, but she was glad of his presence.

With a sidelong glance to be sure she wasn’t about to faint, Captain Pinckney drew down the sheet.

The general was pale, eyes closed, his skin faintly mottled with purplish undertones and a greenish tinge about the jawline. She’d have to adjust that; they might want a death portrait, but she was pretty sure they didn’t actually want him to look really
dead
—just…romantically dead. She swallowed and tasted the thick, sweetly nasty air, even through the cloth. She coughed, breathed out strongly through her nose, and moved closer.

“Romantic” is the word,
she thought. He had a high brow (and a slightly receding hairline…), a small dark mustache, neatly waxed to make the ends turn up, and his features were an interesting mix of strength and delicacy. He had no expression; he must have lapsed into unconsciousness before he died (
and a good thing if he did, poor man…
).

“Did he—does he have a wife?” she asked, remembering her own feelings when she’d thought for an instant that Roger—

“No,” Pinckney said. His eyes were fixed on Pulaski’s face. “He never married. No money, of course. And no interest, really, in women.”

“His family in Poland?” Brianna ventured. “Perhaps I should make a likeness for them, as well?”

Captain Pinckney lifted his gaze then, but only to exchange a brief glance with Lieutenant Hanson.

“He didn’t speak of them, ma’am,” the lieutenant said, and bit his lip, looking down at the dead man. “He—” He swallowed, audibly. “He was kind enough to say that we—we were his family.”

“I see,” she said quietly, and did. “For all of you, then.”

She glanced down at the body, absently noting the details of the clean dress uniform in which they’d clothed him and wondering morbidly exactly where and how he’d been wounded. Could she ask?

There was a deep gash in Pulaski’s head, starting just above one temple, the wound a reddish black, with tiny crumbs of blackened skin along its edges. Looking closer, where the gash disappeared under the general’s hair, she thought she perceived…without thinking, she put out a finger and felt the cold skull give under her touch, light as it was. She heard Captain Pinckney draw in a sharp breath and hastily removed the finger.

“Grapeshot?” William asked, sounding mildly interested.

“Yes, sir,” Captain Pinckney replied, with an air of somber rebuke that she felt was aimed at her. “He was struck in several places—in the body and head.”

“Poor man,” Brianna said softly. She felt a strong urge to touch him again—to lay a hand gently on his chest, covered by the silver-banded red facing of his uniform—the uniform had a high collar, made of some kind of white fur…no, it was lambswool, lined with grubby pink velvet—but felt she couldn’t, under the censorious gaze of the captain.

“The doctor—
our
doctor—thought he might be saved.” Pinckney had lowered his voice discreetly, talking directly to William. “He was conscious, speaking…but he insisted upon being taken aboard the
Wasp,
and the navy doctor…” He cleared his throat explosively and took a deep breath. “It was the wound in his groin that went bad, or so I was told.”

“A great shame, sir,” William said, and clearly meant it. “A very gallant gentleman.”

“Yes, sir,” the captain said, and she could tell that he had warmed toward William.

“I understand that my sister is to make a likeness of the general,” William said, and she looked up. He nodded to her, then tilted his head toward the captain. “Would you tell Captain Pinckney what things you require for the task, sister?”

Hearing the word
“sister”
in his voice again gave her an odd little bloom of warmth in the middle of her chest.

“And while things are being prepared,” he added, before she could speak, “perhaps she might be given something to eat—we came at once in answer to General Lincoln’s request.”

“Oh. Of course. Certainly.” The captain looked over his shoulder. “Lieutenant Hanson—will you see to finding something for the lady and her escorts?”

“To be eaten somewhere else,” William said firmly.

LIGHT. THAT WAS
the first thing. And somewhere to sit. A place to set her implements. A cup of water.

“That’s really all I need,” she said, with a glance back toward the silent tent. She hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know whether you were thinking that you’d like—eventually, I mean—like a painting of the general, or—or were you thinking just a drawing, or drawings? The message just said a likeness, I mean, and I can do whatever you like, though all I can do today is to make sketches and notes for a…more formal likeness.”

“Oh.” Captain Pinckney drew a deep breath, frowning, and she saw his eyes slide sideways for an instant, then back to her. He straightened his shoulders. “I don’t believe that has been decided as yet, Mrs. MacKenzie. But I do assure you that—that you will be compensated adequately for whatever…form the likeness may take. I will guarantee that personally.”

“Oh. I wasn’t worried about that.” She flushed slightly with embarrassment. “I hadn’t expected to be paid—er…I mean…I intended from the start to do this just as a gesture of…goodwill. In support of the—the army, I mean.”

All four men stared at her, with varying degrees of astonishment. Her flush grew hotter.

It hadn’t occurred to her that Lord John hadn’t told William she was a rebel. Dr. Wallace undoubtedly knew her political allegiance, but perhaps had thought it more discreet not to mention it. And she’d been staying in a Loyalist household in a city under British occupation, employed by a very prominent Loyalist.

Well, the cat was out of the bag now. She gave William a level look and raised one brow. He raised one back at her and looked away.

It was midafternoon; the light was going already; it would be dark in a couple of hours. There would be candles, Captain Pinckney assured her, as many as she wanted. Or a lantern, perhaps?

“Perhaps,” she said. “I’ll make as many sketches as I can. Er…how long…?” Given the stench of the dead man, she imagined they must be wanting to get him underground as quickly as possible.

“We’ll bury him with the proper honors tomorrow morning,” Captain Pinckney said, correctly interpreting her question. “The men will come this evening, after supper, to pay their respects. Um…will that be all right?”

She was taken aback, but only for a moment, imagining this process of visitation.

“Yes, perfectly all right,” she said firmly. “I’ll draw them, too.”

SHE SAT, UNOBTRUSIVE IN
the shadows. Head bent, the soft
shush
of her charcoal lost in the clearing of throats, the rustle of clothing. But she watched them, in ones and twos and threes, as they ducked under the open tent flap and came to the general’s side. There each man paused to look on his face, calm in the candlelight, and she caught what she could of the drifting currents that crossed their own faces: shadows of grief and sorrow, eyes sometimes dark with fear, or blank with shock and tiredness.

Often, they wept.

William and John Cinnamon flanked her, standing just behind on either side, silent and respectful. General Lincoln’s orderly had offered them stools, but they had courteously refused, and she found their buttressing presences oddly comforting.

The soldiers came by companies, the uniforms (in some cases, only militia badges) changing. John Cinnamon shifted his weight now and then, and occasionally took a deep breath or cleared his throat. William didn’t.

What was he doing? she wondered. Counting the soldiers? Assessing the condition of the American troops? They were shabby; dirty and unkempt, and in spite of their respectful demeanor, few of the companies seemed to have any notion of order.

For the first time, it occurred to her to wonder just what William’s motive in coming had been. She’d been so happy at meeting him that she’d accepted his statement that he wouldn’t let his sister go unaccompanied into a military camp at face value. Was it true, though? From the little Lord John had said, she knew that William had resigned his army commission—but that didn’t mean he’d changed sides. Or that he had no interest in the state of the American siege,
or
that he didn’t intend to pass on any information he gained during this visit.
“I was a soldier,”
he’d said. Clearly he still
knew
people in the British army.

The skin on her shoulders prickled at the thought, and she wanted to turn round and look up at him. A moment’s hesitation and she did just that. His face was grave, but he was looking at her.

“All right?” he asked in a whisper.

“Yes,” she said, comforted by his voice. “I just wondered whether you’d fallen asleep standing up.”

“Not yet.”

She smiled, and opened her mouth to say something, apologize for keeping him and his friend out all night. He stopped her with a small twitch of fingers.

“It’s all right,” he said softly. “You do what you came to do. We’ll stay with you and take you home in the morning. I meant it; I won’t leave you alone.”

She swallowed.

“I know you did,” she said, just as softly. “Thank you.”

There was an audible stir outside. The procession of shuffling soldiers had stopped. She sat up straight and felt the two men behind her shift. She caught a low murmur from William.

“This will be General Lincoln, I expect.”

John Cinnamon made an inquisitive huffing noise but said nothing, and an instant later the tent flap was pulled well back and a very fat, stocky man in full Continental uniform, complete with cocked hat, limped in, followed by a close-packed group of officers in a variety of uniforms. It had begun to rain, and a welcome breath of cool, damp air came in with them.

She slipped her sketches into the writing desk and took out a few fresh sheets, but didn’t return to her work right away; she didn’t want to draw attention to herself. This…this was history, right in front of her.

Her heart had been quiet through the evening, but now it sped up and began to thump heavily, in an unpleasant way that made her worry that it was about to run amok. She pressed a hand hard against the placket of her stays, and mentally uttered a fierce
Stay!
as though her heart were a large, unruly dog.

The general stopped short beside the body, coughed—everyone did, the smell was growing worse, despite the cool night—and slowly removed his hat. He turned to murmur something to the man at his shoulder—a Frenchman? She thought Lincoln was speaking French, though very awkwardly—and she caught another whiff of rain and night, and saw the droplets that he shook from his hat make spots in the shadowed dust.

Lincoln beckoned three of the men forward.
French,
said the objective watcher in the back of her mind, and her pencil made rapid strokes, rough indications of embroidery, epaulets, full-skirted blue coats, red waistcoats and breeches…

The three men—naval officers?—stepped forward, one in front, his lavishly gold-laced hat held solemnly to his bosom. She heard William make a low humming noise in his throat; was this Admiral d’Estaing himself?

She leaned forward a little, not sketching now but memorizing, storing away the play of firelight through the tent’s wall on the officer’s face, the pitter of rain on the canvas above. The admiral—if that’s who he was—was slender but round-faced, jowly, but with oddly childlike wide eyes and a plump little mouth….He murmured a few words in formal French, then leaned forward and placed a hand on General Pulaski’s chest.

The general farted.

It was a long, loud, rumbling fart, and the night was filled with a stench so terrible that Brianna huffed out all the air in her lungs in a vain effort to escape it.

Someone laughed, out of sheer shock. It was a high-pitched giggle, and for a moment she thought she’d done it herself and clapped a hand to her mouth. The tent dissolved into embarrassed, half-stifled laughter punctuated by gasps and choking as the entire rotting essence of General Pulaski’s insides filled the atmosphere. Admiral d’Estaing turned hastily aside and threw up in the corner.

She had to breathe…She grunted, as though the smell had punched her, and her stomach puckered. It was like breathing rancid lard, a fatty foulness that slicked the inside of her nose and throat.

“Come on.” William grabbed her by one arm, John Cinnamon by the other, and they had her out of the tent in a ruthless instant, knocking General Lincoln out of their way.

It was raining hard outside by now and she gulped air and water, breathing as deep as she could.

“Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God…”

“Was that worse, do you think, than the dead bear in the wood above Gareon?” John Cinnamon asked William, in a meditative voice.

“Lots,” William assured him. “Oh, Jesus, I’m going to be sick. No, wait…” He bent over, arms folded over his stomach, and gulped heavily for a moment, then straightened up. “No, it’s all right, I’m not. Are you?” he asked Brianna. She shook her head. Cold water was running down her face and her sleeves were pasted to her arms, but she didn’t care. She would have jumped through a hole in Arctic ice to cleanse herself of
that.
A slime of rotten onions seemed to cling to her palate. She cleared her throat hard and spat on the ground.

“My sketchbox,” she said, wiping her mouth and looking toward the tent. There had been a general hasty exodus, and men were scattering in every direction. Admiral d’Estaing and his officers were jostling down a footpath toward a large, lighted green tent that glowed like an uncut emerald in the distance. General Lincoln, his hat full of rain, was looking about helplessly as his adjutants and orderlies tried in vain to keep a torch lighted. General Pulaski’s resting place, by contrast, was deserted and pitch dark.

“He put the candles out,” said William, and sniggered very briefly. “Good thing the tent didn’t explode.”

“That would have been quite fun,” Cinnamon said, with obvious regret. “And fitting, too, for a hero. Still, your sister’s drawings…I’ll toss you to see who goes in to get them.” He fumbled in his pocket and withdrew a shilling.

“Tails,” said William at once. Cinnamon tossed, caught the coin on the back of his hand with a slap, and peered at it.

“I can’t see.” If there was a moon, it was covered with rainclouds, and the pouring night was dark as a wet black blanket.

“Here.” Brianna reached out and ran her fingertips over the wet, cold face of the coin. And it was a face, though she couldn’t tell whose. “Heads,” she said.

“Stercus,”
William said briefly, and, unwinding his wet stock, rewound it around his lower face and plunged down the path toward the dark tent.

“
Stercus
?” Bree repeated, turning to John Cinnamon.

“It means ‘shit’ in Latin,” the big Indian explained. “You aren’t a Catholic, are you?”

“I am,” she said, surprised. “And I do know some Latin. But I’m pretty sure
‘stercus’
isn’t in the Mass.”

“Not one I’ve ever heard,” he assured her. “I thought you wouldn’t be Catholic, though. William isn’t.”

“No.” She hesitated, wondering just how much this man knew about William and the complications of their shared paternity. “You…er…have you been traveling with William for some time?”

“A couple of months. He didn’t tell me about you, though.”

“I suppose he wouldn’t have.” She paused, not sure whether to ask what—if anything—William
had
told him.

Before she could decide, William himself was back, gasping and gagging, the sketchbox under his arm. He thrust it at her, yanked the stock down off his face, turned aside, and threw up.

“Filius scorti,”
he said, breathless, and spat. “That was the worst…”

“Mrs. MacKenzie?” A familiar voice came out of the darkness, interrupting him. “Is that you, ma’am?” It was Lieutenant Hanson, drenched to the skin, but holding a dark lantern. The rain plinked on its metal, and water vapor drifted through the slit of light.

“Over here!” she called, and the lantern turned in their direction, the rain suddenly visible needles of silver falling through the light.

“Come with me, ma’am,” Lieutenant Hanson said, reaching them. “I’ve found some shelter for you and your…um…”

“Thank God,” William said. “And thank you, too, Lieutenant,” he added, bowing.

“Of course. Sir,” Hanson said uncertainly. He lifted the lantern, showing them the path, and Bree thanked him and started down it, followed by William and Cinnamon. She heard a small noise from one of them, though, and turned round. Lieutenant Hanson had stopped, looking toward the tent where Casimir Pulaski lay in darkness.

Hanson lifted the lantern a little, in salute, and in a low, clear voice said,
“Pozegnanie.”
Then he turned with decision and came toward his waiting charges.

“It means ‘farewell’ in Polish,” he said to Brianna, matter-of-factly. “He used to say that to us, when he left us for the night.”