Island of the Swans (59 page)

The rain-filled clouds overhead deepened to black in the growing dusk. In another hour, the sky would look like a pot of ink, with no moon rising. Thomas’s bowels grumbled uneasily. Provisions had been scarce, and the putrid meat and wormy biscuits handed out to the men in recent days had done their mischief. Many of Cornwallis’s troops had sickened with dysentery or the bloody flux, and Thomas feared he might be the next victim. He wondered how the devil the events of the last year and a half could have led so quickly from his luxurious feather bed in Charleston to this hellhole in Virginia called Yorktown.

The actual siege of Yorktown had begun the ninth of October at around three in the afternoon, and the sound and fury had not let up for five days. Thomas watched a cannonball plummet to the ground, just short of the small fort. It spun furiously as it burrowed down into the sandy earth and then exploded, splintering many of the logs masking the front of the redoubt and scattering the protective wooden pickets in every direction.

York River ran fast and cold at his back, emptying into Chesapeake Bay where a forest of ships’ masts in the twilight told him that the worst had happened: the French admiral, de Grasse, evading the British fleet sent to block him, had arrived from the West Indies in aid of the Americans.

Corporal Christopher Thornton stood beside Captain Fraser, shivering in his ragged trousers that, like Thomas’s own tattered uniform, had been issued for use in the soggy trenches in lieu of the regimental kilt. The young soldier followed his comrade’s gaze and shook his head disgustedly.

“Can’t believe that bastard, Admiral Graves,” Thornton growled under his breath. “Left us like sittin’ ducks, he has!”

The opposing navies had engaged in battle midwater between Cape Charles and Cape Henry at the entrance of the Chesapeake on the fifth of September. Their skirmish lasted less than three hours. Within the week, the British Admiral Graves had unaccountably sailed for New York, leaving the waters to de Grasse. Staring glumly through the rain, Thomas acknowledged to himself the British were outnumbered two to one.

“General Cornwallis has done the best that’s to be expected,” Thornton continued, more to himself than to his superior. “Fortifying Yorktown and Gloucester, opposite us, was the only thing to do… but putting us Highlanders in this wee fort, here… I don’t know, Captain… I’m getting an awful feeling, sir… that—”

“Enough!” Thomas interrupted his subaltern, though his own thoughts had been running along parallel lines as he watched the evening gloom envelop the gutted landscape.

The Fraser Highlanders were holed up with the Welsh Fusiliers and some German Hessians in a small five-sided fort adjacent to another smaller redoubt a few yards from the York River itself—outposts along the first line of defense against the American allies. Half the time, Thomas couldn’t even understand a word uttered by either group of his compatriots.

Nothing had gone right in this latest campaign, Thomas thought morosely, shaking the water from the top of his bonnet. Idly, he noticed a tall officer in a heavy woolen cloak duck into the redoubt from the trench that ran in an undulating line toward Yorktown. The firing had halted momentarily, and an eerie quiet descended over the soggy, pockmarked fields. Thomas watched the visiting captain hand orders to Major Campbell. Suddenly, he realized that the messenger was Hamilton Maxwell. Thomas hailed him and sloshed through the mud to his side.

“Thomas, man!” Hamilton greeted him heartily, though his face was drawn. “Good to see you, laddie.”

It always gave Thomas pause whenever he saw his old acquaintance whose features so reminded him of Jane. Hamilton looked as if he’d had as little sleep at Headquarters as Thomas had had in the earthen labyrinth that had been his home for a week.

“Been keeping good and wet, I see,” Hamilton joked grimly.

“And you, Ham?” Thomas replied, extending his hand toward Captain Maxwell, whose cloak was soaked through with the rain. “Where’ve you been? Haven’t seen you since before the march to this godforsaken swamp.”

A random cannonball burst overhead in the direction of the besieged town itself. Ham laughed sympathetically and shook his head.

“Cornwallis sent me north with dispatches for General Clinton in New York,” he explained.

“And?” Thomas asked pointedly.

Hamilton shrugged.

“Don’t know…” he said softly, not wanting to be overheard. “Clinton sent back word that he would send a relief expedition by sea from New York no later than October fifth, but no one knows if, in fact, the troops are on their way.”

“Well, they’d better get here soon,” Thomas said in a low voice, indicating the sorry state of the men holed up in the star-shaped fort.

Hamilton nodded agreement and turned as if to go. Smiling crookedly, he looked back at Thomas.

“Ah… I have some domestic news, man! A letter from my brother William caught up with me in New York. Sink me, if Jane and Alex haven’t produced yet another lassie! That makes six children in all, plus the Duke’s Geordie… can you fancy that? The Duke of Gordon got a breeder in m’sister Jenny, all right!”

Thomas hunched his shoulders, as if warding off the blow of Ham’s latest news from home.

“Christened Georgina, in honor of the king, on the eighteenth of July, just past,” Ham chuckled, calling over his shoulder as he ducked into the trench that would lead him back toward Yorktown under the cover of night. “A son named George and a daughter named Georgina. Trust m’dear sister Jane to cozy up to the Crown after that deuced Gordon Riot business, eh what? Well… so long, laddie! I’ll buy you a brandy when this is over…”

Thomas took a deep breath and stared into the starless sky. In vain, he struggled to banish painful images of the lass who once stood by his side and ripped down coronation posters. Now she played the toady to George III by naming another brat after him! Thomas tried not to imagine Jenny and Alex together—and the product of that coupling—their new bairn. The little garnet-haired girl named Louisa would have just had her fifth birthday in September, he thought wistfully, pushing all other memories aside.

Oh, God, Jenny…

A familiar and piercing sense of loss took possession of him, though he fought it as he had fought the rebel Americans for five years. Jane had changed in many ways, it seemed, and
he
had somehow become a man with no home, no family, no proof he had ever existed on this earth, but for that flame-haired child named Lady Louisa Gordon. For years, now, he had told himself that Jane was lost to him forever, but Louisa…

His knuckles whitened around his musket as another ball burst fifty feet to his right, the explosion briefly illuminating the onyx sky. A man screamed in agony.

Jenny! Jenny…
Thomas cried silently, echoing the sobs of the wounded soldier who lay writhing in the mud in a trench he couldn’t see. And he knew then, no mater how he tried to deny it, that if the next ball should strike him, Jane Maxwell and a child he’d never seen would be the last vision to rise before his eyes.

Once again, an uncanny silence descended along the earthen fortifications. A discomforting premonition of disaster settled over Thomas, along with the acrid smoke that drifted into the redoubt. General Washington’s entire force numbered some sixteen thousand men to their seven thousand or so. The enemy was dispersed in an encircling series of trenches matching their own, which the rebels had dug within a thousand feet of the British forces during the previous few days.

Six single shots rang out. Then silence again. A German Hessian several yards from Thomas suddenly cried into the blackness, “
Wer da?
”

Thomas flung himself on his stomach against the earthworks. Squinting down his musket barrel, he waited for an answer to his comrade’s question, “Who goes there?”

The response came soon enough. Bursts of fire erupted everywhere. Screams of pain and cries of fury in three languages spilled out into the darkness, which was punctuated with renewed flashes of cannon fire and musket shot.

A figure materialized on the wall above him and the Hessian shot at it point blank, shattering the knees of the invader. The soldier fell back on the sharp pointed pickets stationed below the miniature fort. His agonized screams could be heard over the steady sound of musket fire. A wave of French and American Continentals took the place of the hideously wounded soldier. Suddenly, Thomas found himself engaged in hand-to-hand combat within the extreme confines of the redoubt. Arms and elbows dug into his back as the British and German mercenaries tried to fend off the onslaught of enemy soldiers cascading over the walls of the fortification.

In the haze of smoke, he saw Thornton take a vicious bayonet thrust to the chest. The lad crumpled into the mud, and the soldier in the tattered blue Continental uniform who’d struck him down turned quickly to face Thomas. Oddly, few shots were being fired within the fort. The struggle was far more deadly—man-to-man. Amid the groans of men fighting for their lives, a new downpour was unleashed from the heavens. Flashing blades and bloodcurdling screams rent the air, along with lightning crackling across the night sky.

“
Nein! Nein! Nein!
” screamed Thomas’s Hessian neighbor suddenly. The German soldier threw down his musket and raised his hands in surrender. Soon, other Hessians in Thomas’s immediate vicinity followed suit, though he and the Continental remained locked in a deadly struggle. Thomas could hear the clatter of arms being pitched to the ground all around him as he and several other Fraser Highlanders continued to battle the onslaught of French and American troops overrunning the redoubt.

“
Vive le Roi!
” shouted a French soldier, the breast of his blue jacket smeared with blood and mud.

“
Vive le Roi!
” roared back his comrades, some still holding their enemies at bayonet point or by the scruff of their collars.

The French soldiers’ triumphant cries were echoed by those of the Americans, including the man who had killed Corporal Thornton and was currently battling with Thomas. Rain and sweat mingled on their faces as they grappled with each other in a lethal duel. The Continental suddenly caught the tip of his bayonet on the underside of Thomas’s musket barrel and flung it across the rain-swept redoubt. The two adversaries riveted their eyes on each other momentarily. Then, quickly, Thomas ducked to avoid having his head severed from his shoulders. Recovering his balance, he tackled the American soldier around the waist and the two of them pitched forward into the mud, fighting furiously. Scores of bodies hemmed them in, making it difficult to inflict major bodily harm. Thomas’s breathing had grown ragged, and he knew he had little strength left. Somehow, the Continental pulled himself upright and suddenly straddled Thomas’s hips, pinning him in the muck. His enemy pressed the tip of his bayonet to Thomas’s throat at the same moment Thomas brought up a small dirk that had been strapped to his waist and thrust it against the menacing steel blade.

“Stand back! Stand back!” a voice cried in the distance.

Out of the comer of his eye, Thomas saw Major Campbell slam his weapon into a pile of muskets in the center of the fort.

Thomas’s adversary muttered fiercely under his breath, “Throw down your arms, man! There’s no reason to die in a mud hole like this! We’ve bested ya, son…”

Major Campbell shouted at the British soldiers who were still fighting on all sides of the redoubt.

“Stand back, you Scottish lads! Surrender your arms!
Stand back!
”

Numb with cold and humiliation, Thomas acknowledged his compassionate adversary’s brief nod of the head and allowed his dirk to slip into the mud. He had no doubt but that similar surrenders were taking place at that moment over the entire battlefield at Yorktown. Slowly, the blue-coated American rose to his feet.

The rain beat down in full force on victors and vanquished alike. The soldier who had chosen not to kill Thomas extended his hand, pulling Fraser roughly to his feet and shoving him into the milling crowd of defeated British Redcoats. Falling into line with his compatriots, Thomas realized grimly that Cornwallis had been beaten, not so much by the Americans and their allies, but by that damned Clinton in New York, whose promised reinforcements hadn’t arrived in time, and by that idiot, Admiral Graves, who’d sailed blithely out of the Chesapeake Bay before a shot had been fired at Yorktown.

Shivering uncontrollably because of the damp, Thomas gazed at the crumpled form of Corporal Thornton whose eyes stared fixedly at nothing and whose chest was caked with blood. Thomas’s own eyes swept over the other bodies twisted into odd shapes and frozen in macabre attitudes, as if a mad sculptor had created this terrible scene. He suddenly thought of his father, Sir Thomas Fraser of Struy, who undoubtedly had surveyed an even more horrifying sight after the debacle at Culloden Moor more than thirty years earlier. In a very real sense, thought Thomas bitterly, that terrible day had led to
this
pit of carnage and death, where stout Scots lads such as Corporal Thornton sacrificed their lives in exchange for Britain’s mismanaged dreams of Empire.

Thomas clenched his fists to his sides as a wall of rage rose up inside him. The unwelcomed Union of Parliaments in 1707 and the failure of the Rebellion of ’45 had obliterated the last of Scotland’s claims to sovereignty. During Thomas’s lifetime, he realized, as Thornton’s life blood drained from his wounds into a pool of murky rainwater, an entire country and culture had been destroyed as surely as the wily George Washington’s troops had hacked to death the men of the Scottish regiments such as his young comrade who lay dead in the mud.

Swallowing hard, Thomas inventoried the few remaining members of the battalion he’d served with since 1776. Once again, he had survived.

But for
what
?

What was left to him? There had to be some
reason
for all this, he thought despairingly, gazing at the dead and dying bodies scattered everywhere.

His chest began to heave and the tears on his cheeks blended with the rain bathing his face. He closed his eyes, fighting for control over his emotions. Minutes passed while wounded men prayed aloud for death. When he opened his eyes, the edges of his vision began to turn gray and he felt his knees buckle. The soiled blue arm of Thornton’s would-be killer grabbed his own red sleeve to prevent him from pitching forward. The Continental soldier lifted Thomas by his armpits. He dragged him across the redoubt and leaned the captain’s crumpled form against the fort’s slanted dirt wall.