The Blacksmith's Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution (18 page)

"Mr. Rainey!"

A redcoat stepped from the shadows
of the house.
 
"Sir."

"Place Mrs. Sheridan under
arrest."

"Yes, sir."
 
The soldier headed for them unwinding rope.

Tom balled both fists.
 
"You cannot do this, Lieutenant!"

Betsy glared at Fairfax.
 
"Tom, find Clark and tell him
everything that happened.
 
See if he can
find Colonel Brown."

Fairfax shook his head.
 
"Colonel Brown won't bother with such a
trivial matter as the imprisonment of yet another rebel."

"We shall see about that.
 
I may come from a family of rebels, as you
label them, but I'm married to one of Augusta's leading Loyalists."
 
The soldier Rainey had reached them by
then.
 
"Oh, put that rope
away.
 
I shan't give you a fight."

Fairfax nodded.
 
"A wise decision."

Tom growled at Fairfax.
 
"You dung-eating pig, if you hurt her
in any way —"

"Mrs. Sheridan knows her
place, Mr. Alexander."
 
Fairfax
presented him with a smile that his lip muscles stumbled over, so unaccustomed
were they to the motion.
 
"You do
well to review yours."

Chapter Fourteen

"LET ME OUT of here, you
bleeding sod!
 
I ain't buggered nobody's
ten-year-old son."

Her fingers plugging her ears,
Betsy could still hear the drunk in the cell across from her.
 
The jailer pounded on his door.
 
"Shut up in there, or I'll gag you and
put you in irons."
 
The drunk
subsided.
 
The jailer muttered,
"Sorry about that one, madam," through Betsy's grate.

En route
to jail, she'd held her head high,
proud to follow the footsteps of another neutral, her mother, who'd been
arrested and imprisoned.
 
But the
glamour wore off as soon as she smelled the piss, puke, and mold inside jail
and heard the drunk's tirade.
 
Sophie
Barton must be made of tougher stuff than her daughter was.
 
At least Betsy had a cell to herself.

The jailer had done her a favor and
let Clark visit earlier.
 
Seeing his
expression of outrage through the grate had brought her close to tears.
 
"What brutality!
 
I'll find Colonel Brown, Betsy, I
promise.
 
We'll have you out of there
this morning!"

In the interim, though, she had
plenty of time to think.

Even had she confessed David's
visit to Fairfax, she doubted he'd have believed her.
 
As Joshua Hale had cautioned, Fairfax had something broken inside
his head.
 
He was correct about most of
the circumstantial evidence he'd amassed against her.
 
Unless he got sidetracked, he'd eventually substantiate his
claims.

She pondered what he might have
done to extract information from Sophie and Widow Fuller.
 
Then she rubbed her temple and abandoned the
thought line.
 
Not only was it a waste of
her energy, but she doubted, chilled, whether her imagination was capable of
envisioning Fairfax's boundaries with forms of interrogation.

Women's voices filtered back.
 
Through the grate, she heard Jane Cochrane:
"For goodness sakes, you know she isn't a traitor.
 
This isn't about Betsy Sheridan being a spy,
either."

"No, indeed!"
 
That was Ellie Sweeney's voice.
 
"This is about some odious
man
harassing a helpless
woman
, and her with child, too.
 
For shame!
 
Times are hard enough without decent women being thrown in jail for no
good reason!"

"That's right!" chorused
other women whose voices blended.
 
"Let her go.
 
Let her
go.
 
Let her go."

The chant gathered momentum, and
Betsy wondered how many women had assembled in the office.
 
At least a dozen, she guessed.
 
A smile touched her lips as she imagined
them in their straw hats and cotton aprons, holding baskets and wagging fingers
at the jailer.

"Ladies, please!"

"We won't stand for
this!"

"Men shan't take advantage of
us
any longer!"

"We've washed your laundry,
mended your breeches, and cooked your meals, and this is how you thank
us?"

"Let her go.
 
Let her go.
 
Let her go."

In the other cell, the drunk no
longer sounded surly.
 
"Jesus
Christ, I'm going to die at the hands of a mob of women."

"Ladies, calm down!"
 
Nervousness spiked the jailer's
command.
 
Betsy wondered whether he'd
ever been harassed by a group of indignant goodwives.
 
"Surely you understand my position.
 
I can only release her with the approval of
an officer of the Crown."

"There's a dreadful stink
coming from those cells.
 
You let us
back there to make sure she's all right."

"I cannot, but trust me, she's
quite well."

At least half a dozen women booed
him, and Betsy identified the voice of Ruth Glenn, Loyalist wife of the
Anglican vicar: "You'd even deny her the civility of morning coffee?
 
How barbaric!"

"Ladies, be realistic about
this.
 
I cannot allow you to serve
coffee to an inmate.
 
I shall lose my
job over it!"

"Better your job than
something else."
 
Betsy didn't
recognize the woman's voice, but the corrosiveness in her tone gave her a
chuckle.

"And we have the means of
slicing bread in our baskets."

The drunk's voice rose in
lamentation.
 
"Ohhhhh, sweet Jesus,
spare me.
 
I won't ever do it again, I
promise."

Panic charged the jailer's
tone.
 
"Shall I interpret that as a
threat to a government official?"

"And put all of us in jail,
too?
 
Excellent idea.
 
I've no qualms about keeping Betsy
company."

Betsy heard spurs and harnesses
outside.
 
Adam Neville's voice pierced
the clamor.
 
"Whoa, there.
 
Why, Mr. Moore, what's this at jail this
morning?
 
A quilting?"

"Er, no, Lieutenant.
 
It's a misunderstanding."

Rose piped up.
 
"That it is.
 
Betsy Sheridan's imprisoned on false charges."
 
Several women voiced agreement.

Adam murmured something to quiet
them, then spoke up.
 
"I have
orders to escort her to a meeting to clear that up with Colonel Brown this very
moment over at the ferry."

Ellie said, "We'd best follow
to keep an eye on them."

While other women agreed to join
the procession, Betsy heard the jailer confer with the lieutenant.
 
"Your paperwork's in order, sir.
 
Very well, have your men wait here while I
fetch her.
 
Er, you, too, Mr.
Sheridan."
 
Betsy took heart at the
thought of Clark waiting outside for her.
 
"All right, ladies, step aside.
 
That's it, step aside.
 
Don't go
crowding her after she's out."

The clink of key in lock sounded at
the door of Betsy's cell, and she clasped her hands.
 
After the door swung open, the jailer motioned her out.
 
"Colonel Brown wants to chat, and
here's Lieutenant Neville to escort you."

A smiling Adam motioned her to the
exit.
 
"Right this way."

The ladies of Augusta phalanxed
her, fussed over her, and clucked sympathy and outrage over the arrest, all the
while conveying her out to her horse, where Clark waited with opened arms.
 
After an embrace, he helped her mount Lady
May.
 
In the saddle, she inhaled a deep
breath of morning, amazed at how marvelous Augusta's summer humidity smelled
and felt compared to the interior of jail.
 
Standing near the ladies, Tom saluted her with a grin.
 
She grinned back.
 
Thank you, Tom Alexander!

Adam mounted his horse and led the
way, Betsy and Clark falling in behind him, two Rangers bringing up the rear on
horseback, while Tom, Sarah, Rose, Diana, Ellie, Jane, and a number of women
followed on foot.
 
In a minute they
arrived at the ferry crossing, where the Savannah River sparkled in the morning
sunlight.
 
They dismounted to meet those
awaiting them on foot: Colonel Brown and several Rangers, and Lieutenant
Fairfax and the five soldiers who had accompanied him out of Alton.

Betsy's gaze swept over Thomas
Brown, called "Burntfoot" after drunken Whigs had assaulted him in
1775 at his plantation, tied him semi-conscious to a tree, and burned off two
of his toes.
 
Brown returned her appraisal,
gaze steady.
 
Had she not known, she'd
never have guessed that he, dressed in an ordinary hunting shirt and wearing a
battered hat to cover where he'd been partially scalped in the Whig attack, was
a lieutenant colonel.
 
He bowed and
touched the brim of his hat.
 
"Mrs.
Sheridan."

She curtsied.
 
"Thank you for the audience, sir."

He flashed her a smile before
directing the smile at Clark, standing behind her.
 
"You're fortunate to have caught me in Augusta.
 
But I can usually find time for the King's
Friends."

Betsy marveled over his poise.
 
His ropy, slight frame and his face,
weather-beaten beyond his thirty years, clued her that those tales she'd heard
about him roughing it in the Florida swamps with his Rangers, helping Governor
Tonyn repulse rebels from East Florida, were accurate.

His smile faded into
all-business.
 
With a motion of his head
to indicate the stone-faced Fairfax, at attention fifteen feet behind him, he
returned his focus to her.
 
"Mr.
Fairfax has related some evidence against you.
 
Even though it's circumstantial, it casts suspicion on you as a
conspirator with rebels.
 
That your
house was recently defaced and then burned is also quite peculiar.
 
Counterbalancing all that are the character
witnesses of citizens who assure me you've never displayed an inclination
toward the rebel cause.
 
And I know your
husband to be a leading supporter of His Majesty here in Augusta.

"So, we've naught but
circumstantial evidence and character witnesses for a case, and I ask myself
whether we even have a case against you."
 
Hands on hips, he leaned a few inches closer, his gaze on her
sharpening.
 
"Are you a
rebel?"

"No, sir."

"Are you helping the
rebels?"

"No, sir."

He rubbed his chin.
 
"There's a rebel spy ring operating
across Georgia and the Carolinas, affiliated with spies in the Northern colonies.
 
We know the Southern branch to contain at
least a dozen members including two Spaniards, one Frenchman, and two
women.
 
Have you communicated with
anyone in that ring?"

Such as her husband?
 
"No, sir."
 
The untruth stuck in her windpipe, hoarsened
her voice.
 
She coughed once.

"Did you communicate with your
Uncle David this past Monday or Tuesday?"

Heaven help her and David St.
James.
 
"No, sir."

Fairfax stirred.
 
"She's lying, sir."

Irritation seasoned Brown's
tone.
 
"Lieutenant, as you
were.
 
Madam, are you willing to swear
allegiance to His Majesty that I might be assured of your intentions?"

She swallowed.
 
"Sir, I claim neutrality.
 
You know there are a good number of neutrals
out there.
 
If I must swear an oath as a
Loyalist to avoid being returned to jail, then I shall do so.
 
But would I not be a more effective witness
to others of the King's intentions if I swore such an oath of my own volition,
having come to my decision after being treated justly by representatives such
as yourself?"