Chapter 32
thirty-two
We recognize no Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!
John Adams
Four o’clock. How had she forgotten Catherine Kersey’s oft postponed tea invitation?
That set fire to Mae’s heels. In her haste she all but flung the bread at Lucy before departing again.
After returning to the parade ground, she hurried into the officers’ quarters and their own small, shadowed room, wondering what to wear. Her sweaty linen garments wouldn’t do.
A quarter of an hour later left her wishing for Coralie’s help with her hair and stays.
The small, cracked looking glass that had barely made it up Fort Montgomery’s hill told her that her cap was in place even if her hair wasn’t.
But her dress was a pleasing lilac lustring, a nosegay of silk flowers pinned to her fichu.
She even wore her wedding shoes. Wanting to contribute to the tea, she remembered the spiced comfits she’d brought from Chatham.
Just next door, Catherine Kersey answered at Mae’s first knock. “Come in. Alice isn’t here yet, but you’re right on time. And please, call me Caty.”
From somewhere in the parlor a clock chimed the hour. A small table stood between two open windows, three chairs waiting. The linen cloth and mismatched cups and saucers were a wee, welcome luxury in a temporary, disheveled life.
“I’ve brought sugared almonds and orange peel,” Mae said, taking the tiny tin from her pocket.
“Truly?” Caty brought her hands together in delight. “I’ve not had the like since Boston. Please, have a seat.”
Mae tried not to gawk at the Kerseys’ quarters, though this was her first time inside. She wouldn’t bemoan the fact they had two rooms to the Harlows’ one. Lace curtains adorned windows, books rested on a decorative shelf, and Caty even produced a silver teapot.
“I see you admiring my mother’s pot. She was a Boston silversmith’s daughter and this is his creation, a gift when she wed my father.”
“The floral engraving is especially beautiful.”
“I weighed the wisdom of bringing it, but a touch of civility makes being here more bearable. And Alice has promised to bring some smuggled tea.”
“Indeed, I have,” Alice said as she pushed the door open. “The blackest bohea.”
“It pairs well with the comfits Maebel brought.” Caty gestured toward the empty chair. “I hope to weather our little tea party and the heat well.”
A sudden breeze lifted a lace curtain but failed to reach farther into the room. Mae took out the fan tucked into her pocket. Alice did the same while Caty prepared the bohea.
“’Tis hard to believe August is upon us,” Alice said to Caty, fluttering her lace-edged fan harder. “When is your lying-in, by your reckoning?”
“Christmastide. Heaven only knows if we’ll be here then. I can’t imagine a winter spent in this fort, what with the blizzards New York is known for. Summer is trial enough.”
Waiting for the tea to steep, Caty launched into a litany of all she found wrong with Fort Montgomery.
The privy pits smelled abominably. Well water tasted tainted.
Rats had been found in a storehouse. Unruly livestock had overrun a kitchen garden while soldiers had broken into the rum supply and gotten falling-down drunk.
“But that’s not the worst of it.” Caty began pouring tea. “There’s been a terrible tragedy upriver near Fort Edward.”
Their fans stilled.
“Fort Edward upriver?” Mae ignored her cup of tea. “I heard it was controlled by Americans under General Schuyler.”
“Not any longer.” Caty shook her head, her features tight with distress. “It’s since fallen to the British—General Burgoyne—after he took Ticonderoga.”
Alice recoiled. “So the British are felling forts left and right on their way south? Will we be next?”
Mae looked from Alice to Caty again. “That isn’t the tragedy you speak of.”
At the shake of Caty’s head, Alice urged, “By all means, tell us.”
“’Tis quite . . . gruesome. And it might have been one of us instead.
” Caty took a sip of tea as if to steady herself.
“A young woman named Jane McCrea was recently en route to her fiancé at Fort Edward, a British lieutenant serving with General Burgoyne’s forces.
” Clearly rattled, Caty toyed with her cup.
“Miss McCrea’s lieutenant arranged for a party of British-allied Indians to escort her and a female friend to Fort Edward, where they could be married. They didn’t make it far.”
Mae resisted the childish urge to cover her ears, but she’d always been repelled by brutality. Once heard, such news tended to play over and over in her mind.
“Some blame a skirmish between American and British forces and a stray bullet. Others report it was her Huron guard who killed her after having an argument over who was to claim the reward for her safe delivery. Whatever happened, her scalp was delivered to her fiancé at Fort Edward.”
Mae flinched as the bloodshed played out in her head.
Alice’s gasp shook her further. “Are you sure ’tis true?”
“Intelligence came in today confirming the report. My husband rarely shares such things with me, but he felt it necessary that I be on my guard. And I tell you now so that you’ll be on yours.”
Mae’s mind veered to Coralie. How alike Jane McCrea and her sister were. Both affianced to British officers. Both in New York. Jane’s fate might have befallen her sister. Had Lieutenant Gibbs written as she’d hoped?
“Tragic,” Mae murmured. “The lieutenant’s life will never be the same.”
“I imagine he’s more than brokenhearted.” Alice shuddered. “He’s likely blaming himself for arranging her transport in the first place.”
They finished their tepid tea in silence. What more was there to say?
That night Mae and Rhys retired early to bed. She washed first, the tubful of cool water refreshing. Rhys preferred the river, having found a secluded spot up Popolopen Creek. Once Mae had donned a nightgown, she took out her brush.
“This weather makes me want to snip off my hair.”
“Don’t you dare,” he told her, taking her brush. “Your hair is your glory, like Scripture says.”
Her thoughts took a melancholy turn. What color was Jane McCrea’s hair? Would he not tell her about the incident as Caty’s husband had done? Nor had he told her about the fall of Fort Edward.
Silent, he began braiding her hair, each finger a thumb.
Turning, she interrupted his clumsy efforts by standing on tiptoe and kissing his bristled cheek.
She preferred him a bit scruffy, liking the way his roughened skin felt against hers.
Sand against silk, he said. He kissed her back, driving all thoughts from her head, including the room’s uncomfortable heat.
For a moment, war and advancing armies—even Jane McCrea—seemed distant and less dark.
Once they’d said their nightly prayers they lay down on the too-small bed with the thin mattress, and he ran a finger down her flushed cheek. “Someday we’ll have a thick tick filled with a great many goose feathers.”
She shut her eyes, trying to envision it. “Describe our bedchamber in that house of yours. Every inch.”
“’Tis a large room at the top of the stairs with a corner fireplace, with south- and north-facing windows overlooking what I hope to be gardens.”
“A flower garden and a kitchen garden.”
“Under your oversight, aye. I already have the seed.”
“Tell me more.”
“As for the finished bedchamber, there’s oak floors and lime-plastered walls with raised paneling.”
“No wallpaper?”
“Papered walls?” His amused voice held disbelief.
“A silver and blue trellis pattern, perhaps, with matching canopy and bed-curtains and coverlet.”
“You’ll make a poor man of me, Mae.” His sleepy smile told her he didn’t mind in the least.
“’Tis nice to dream, is it not?”
“You well know I can deny you nothing when you look at me like that.” He stifled a yawn with his fist. “We rise early. Needs be we sleep.”
She kissed him good night. Daybreak’s reveille would come far too soon. Since his recovery, Private Hawkes often drummed at dawn, but tonight a fifer signaled slumber. Tomorrow she and Lucy would begin making coats, having gotten a new supply of thread.
Soon Rhys’s rhythmic, even breathing told her he slept even as the dark denied her another look at him. Through the open window came the steady chorus of crickets and the distant, hollow hoot of an owl.
She dreamed of befeathered heads and fixed bayonets.
A swarm of redcoats and menacing stands of trees.
Their branches scraped like talons, tearing at her skin and dress.
She lay on the forest floor atop the leaf-molded ground, dirt beneath her nails, and then a sharp tug to her scalp brought her head up, and she saw Coralie—a broken, bloodied Coralie—face down, her hair torn away.
The sharp cry was her own, banishing the dream if not the darkness. It brought Rhys upright as if he were poised to fight.
“Mae, Mae. Easy, my love.” He took her in his arms, his mouth near her ear, one hand caressing her hair. “A bad dream . . . mayhap a nightmare.”
“’Twas Coralie. I saw her in the woods—she’d been killed, scalped on her way to meet Lieutenant Gibbs. She lay upon the ground and I couldn’t help her—”
His hand stilled. “You heard about Jane McCrea.”
She buried her head in his bare shoulder. “Caty Kersey told us today.”
“A tragedy—a casualty of war.”
“What do you know about her?”
“She was a pastor’s daughter. From Jersey. Affianced to a British officer.”
Somehow the similarities made it all the more chilling.
“Would you like to go to the farm on the Sabbath?” he said quietly. “Be with your family?”
She did—and she didn’t. “I’ll only go if it’s safe. I won’t endanger myself or you or anyone else.”
Yet even as she said it, she realized nothing was safe or certain here. Survival was ever in mind even within Fort Montgomery’s sturdy walls.