An Echo in the Bone, Page 65

  brigadier added, breaking into a grin at the hoarse cheer from the officers. “And to Colonel St. Leger. We shall leave a small garrison to take stock and tidy things up here, but the rest of us … Well, there are rebels to be caught, gentlemen. I cannot offer you much respite, but certainly there is time for a hearty breakfast. Bon appetit!”

  RETURN OF THE NATIVE

  Night, July 7

  IAN MURRAY PASSED INTO the fort without difficulty. There were rangers and Indians aplenty, mostly lounging against the buildings, many of them drunk, others poking through the deserted barracks, occasionally chased away by harassed-looking soldiers set to guard the fort’s unexpected bounty.

  There was no sign of slaughter, and he breathed easier. That had been his first fear, but while there was mess—and to spare—there was no blood and no smell of powder smoke. No shot had been fired here in the last day or so.

  He had a thought and went toward the hospital barracks, largely ignored, as it held nothing anyone would want. The smells of urine, shit, and old blood had decreased; most of the patients must have gone with the retreating troops. There were a few people there, one in a green coat who he thought must be a surgeon, some plainly orderlies. As he watched, a pair of stretcher-bearers came out through the door, boots scraping as they negotiated the shallow stone steps. He leaned back into the concealment of the doorway, for following the stretcher was the tall form of Guinea Dick, his face split in a cannibal’s grin.

  Ian smiled himself, seeing it; Captain Stebbings still lived, then—and Guinea Dick was a free man. And here, Jesus, Mary, and Bride be thanked, came Mr. Ormiston behind him, stumping slowly on a pair of crutches, tenderly supported on either side by a pair of orderlies, the puny wee creatures dwarfed by the seaman’s bulk. He could tell Auntie Claire, then—she’d be pleased to hear they were all right.

  If he found Auntie Claire again—but he wasn’t much worried, really. Uncle Jamie would see her safe, come hell, wildfire, or the entire British army. When or where he’d see them again was another matter, but he and Rollo moved much faster than any army could; he’d catch them up soon enough.

  He waited, curious to see whether there was anyone else left in the hospital, but either there was not or they were to be left there for the nonce. Had the Hunters gone with St. Clair’s troops? In a way, he hoped they had—even knowing that they would likely fare better with the British than on the run down the Hudson Valley with the refugees from Ticonderoga. As Quakers, he thought they would do well enough; the British probably woudn’t molest them. But he thought he would like to see Rachel Hunter again sometime, and his chance of that was much better if she and her brother had gone with the rebels.

  A little more poking about convinced him of two things: that the Hunters had indeed gone, and that the leaving of Ticonderoga had been accomplished in the midst of panic and disorder. Someone had set fire to the bridge below, but it had only partially burned, perhaps put out by a rainstorm. There was a great deal of debris on the lakeshore, suggesting a massive embarkation—automatically he glanced toward the lake, where he could plainly see two large ships, both flying the Union flag. From his current perch on the battery, he could see redcoats swarming over both Mount Defiance and Mount Independence, and knew a small, surprising flare of resentment against them.

  “Well, you’ll not keep it long,” he said under his breath. He spoke in Gaelic, and a good thing, too, for a passing soldier glanced casually at him, as though feeling the stress of his regard. He looked away himself, turning his back on the fort.

  There was nothing to do here, no one to wait for. He’d eat and pick up some provisions, then go fetch Rollo and be off. He could—

  A shattering whoom! close at hand made him jerk round. To his right, one of the cannon was trained downward toward the bridge, and just behind it, openmouthed with shock, was a Huron man, swaying with drink.

  There was a lot of shouting from below; the troops thought they were being fired on from the fort, though the shot had gone high, splashing harmlessly into the lake.

  The Huron giggled.

  “What did you do?” Ian asked, in an Algonkian tongue he thought the man would most likely know. Whether he understood or not, the man simply laughed harder, tears beginning to run down his face. He gestured to a smoking tub nearby; good Christ, the defenders had gone so fast, they had left a tub of slow match burning.

  “Boom,” said the Huron, and gestured at a length of slow match, pulled from the tub and left draped on the stones like a glowing snake. “Boom,” he said again, nodding at the cannon, and laughed until he had to sit down.

  Soldiers were running up to the battery, and the shouting from outside was equaled by that inside the fort. It was probably a good time to go.

  RETREAT

  … we are pursuing the rebels, a great number of whom have taken to the lake in boats. The two sloops on the lake are following, but I am sending four companies down to the portage point, where I think the chance of capture is good.

  —Brigadier General Simon Fraser, to Major General J. Burgoyne

  July 8, 1777

  WILLIAM WISHED HE hadn’t accepted the brigadier’s invitation to breakfast. If he had contented himself with the lean rations that were a lieutenant’s lot, he would have been hungry, but happy. As it was, he was on the spot—blissfully filled to the eyes with fried sausage, buttered toast, and grits with honey, for which the brigadier had developed a fondness—when the message had come from General Burgoyne. He didn’t even know what it had said; the brigadier had read it while sipping coffee, frowning slightly, then sighed and called for ink and quill.

  “Want a ride this morning, William?” he’d asked, smiling across the table.

  Which is how he’d come to be at General Burgoyne’s field headquarters when the Indians had come in. Wyandot, one of the soldiers said; he wasn’t familiar with them, though he had heard that they had a chief called Leatherlips, and he did wonder how that had come about. Perhaps the man was an indefatigable talker?

  There were five of them, lean, wolfish-looking rascals. He couldn’t have said what they wore or how they were armed; all his attention was focused on the pole that one of them carried, this decorated with scalps. Fresh scalps. White scalps. A musky smell of blood hung in the air, unpleasantly ripe, and flies moved with the Indians, buzzing loudly. The remains of William’s lavish breakfast coagulated in a hard ball just under his ribs.

  The Indians were looking for the paymaster; one of them was asking, in a surprisingly melodious English, where the paymaster was. So it was true, then. General Burgoyne had unleashed his Indians, sent them coursing through the woods like hunting dogs to fall upon the rebels and spread terror among them.

  He did not want to look at the scalps but couldn’t help it; his eyes followed them as the pole bobbed through a growing crowd of curious soldiers—some mildly horrified, some cheering. Jesus. Was that a woman’s scalp? It had to be; a flowing mass of honey-colored hair, longer than any man would wear his hair, and shining as though its owner brushed it a hundred strokes every night, like his cousin Dottie said she did. It was not unlike Dottie’s hair, though a little darker—

  He turned away abruptly, hoping that he wouldn’t be sick, but turned just as abruptly back when he heard the cry. He’d never heard a sound like that before—a shriek of such horror, such grief, that his heart froze in his chest.

  “Jane! Jane!” A Welsh lieutenant he knew slightly, called David Jones, was forcing his way through the crowd, beating at the men with fists and elbows, lunging toward the surprised Indians, his face contorted with emotion.

  “Oh, God,” breathed a soldier near him. “His fiancée’s called Jane. He can’t mean—”

  Jones threw himself at the pole, snatching at the fall of honey-colored hair, shrieking “JANE!” at the top of his lungs. The Indians, looking disconcerted, jerked the pole away. Jones flung himself on one of them, knocking the surprised Indian to the ground and hammering him with the strength of in
sanity.

  Men were pushing forward, grabbing at Jones—but not doing so with any great heart. Appalled looks were being shot at the Indians, who clustered together, eyes narrowed and hands at their tomahawks. The whole sense of the gathering had changed in an instant from approval to outrage, and the Indians plainly sensed it.

  An officer William didn’t know strode forward, daring the Indians with a hard eye, and tore the blond scalp from the pole. Then stood holding it, disconcerted, the mass of hair seeming alive in his hands, the long strands stirring, waving up around his fingers.

  They had finally pulled Jones off the Indian; his friends were patting his shoulders, trying to urge him away, but he stood stock-still, tears rolling down his face and dripping from his chin. “Jane,” he mouthed silently. He held out his hands, cupped and begging, and the officer who held the scalp placed it gently into them.

  WHILE STILL ALIVE

  LIEUTENANT STACTOE WAS standing by one corpse, arrested. Very slowly, he squatted down, his eyes fixed on something, and as though by reflex covered his mouth with one hand.

  I really didn’t want to look.

  He’d heard my footsteps, though, and took his hand away from his mouth. I could see the sweat trickling down his neck, the band of his shirt pasted to his skin, dark with it.

  “Do you suppose that was done while he was still alive?” he asked, in an ordinary tone of voice.

  Reluctantly, I looked over his shoulder.

  “Yes,” I said, my voice as unemotional as his. “It was.”

  “Oh,” he said. He stood, contemplated the corpse for a moment, then walked away a few steps and threw up.

  “Never mind,” I said gently, and took him by the sleeve. “He’s dead now. Come and help.”

  Many of the boats had gone astray, been captured before they reached the end of the lake; many more had been taken by British troops waiting at the portage point. Our canoe and several more had escaped, and we had made our way through the woods for a day and a night and most of another day before meeting with the main body of troops fleeing overland from the fort. I was beginning to think that those who were captured were the lucky ones.

  I didn’t know how long it had been since the small group we had just discovered was attacked by Indians. The bodies were not fresh.

  GUARDS WERE POSTED at night. Those not on watch slept as though poleaxed, exhausted by a day of flight—if anything so cumbrous and labored could be described by such a graceful word. I woke just past dawn from dreams of Snow White trees, gape-mouthed and grasping, to find Jamie crouched beside me, a hand on my arm.

  “Ye’d best come, a nighean,” he said softly.

  Mrs. Raven had cut her throat with a penknife.

  There wasn’t time to dig a grave. I straightened her limbs and closed her eyes, and we piled rocks and branches over her before staggering back to the rut that passed for a road through the wilderness.

  AS DARKNESS CAME up through the trees, we began to hear them. High ululating shrieks. Hunting wolves.

  “March on, march on! Indians!” one of the militiamen shouted.

  As if summoned by the shout, a bloodcurdling shriek wavered through the darkness nearby, and the stumbling retreat turned at once to headlong panic, men dropping their bundles and pushing one another out of the way in their haste to flee.

  There were shrieks from the refugees, too, though these were quickly stifled.

  “Off the road,” Jamie said, low and fierce, and began pushing the slow and bewildered into the woods. “They may not know where we are. Yet.”

  And then again, they might.

  “D’ye have your death song ready, Uncle?” Ian whispered. He had caught us up the day before, and now he and Jamie were pressed close on either side of me, where we had taken cover behind a huge fallen trunk.

  “Oh, I’ll sing them a death song, if it comes to that,” Jamie muttered, half under his breath, and took out one of the pistols from his belt.

  “You can’t sing,” I said. I hadn’t meant to be funny—I was so frightened that I said by it reflex, the first thing that came into my mind—and he didn’t laugh.

  “That’s true,” he said. “Well, then.”

  He primed the pistol, closed the pan and thrust it into his belt.

  “Dinna be afraid, a nighean,” Jamie whispered, and I saw his throat work as he swallowed. “I’ll not let them take ye. Not alive.” He touched the pistol at his belt.

  I stared at him, then at the pistol. I hadn’t thought it possible to be more afraid.

  I felt suddenly as though my spinal cord had snapped; my limbs wouldn’t move, and my bowels very literally turned to water. I understood in that moment exactly what had led Mrs. Raven to slash her own throat.

  Ian whispered something to Jamie and slid away, silent as a shadow.

  It occurred to me, belatedly, that by taking time to shoot me if we should be overrun, Jamie was very likely to fall alive into the hands of the Indians himself. And I was sufficiently terrorized that I couldn’t tell him not to do it.

  I took hold of my courage with both hands and swallowed hard.

  “Go!” I said. “They won’t—they probably won’t harm women.” My outer skirt hung in tatters, as did my jacket, and the whole ensemble was covered in mud, leaves, and the small bloody splotches of slow-moving mosquitoes—but I was still identifiably female.

  “The devil I will,” he said briefly.

  “Uncle.” Ian’s voice came softly out of the darkness. “It’s not Indians.”

  “What?” I made no sense of this, but Jamie straightened abruptly.

  “It’s a redcoat, running alongside us, shrieking like an Indian. Driving us.”

  Jamie swore under his breath. It was almost completely dark by now; I could see only a few vague shapes, presumably those of the people with us. I heard a whimper, almost underfoot, but when I looked, could see no one.

  The shrieks came again, now from the other side. If the man was driving us—did he know we were there? If so, where did he mean to drive us? I could feel Jamie’s indecision—which way? A second, perhaps two, and he took me by the arm, pulling me deeper into the wood.

  We ran slap into a large group of refugees within minutes; they had stopped dead, too terrified to move in any direction. They huddled together, the women clutching their children, hands clasped tight over the little ones’ mouths, breathing “Hush!” like the wind.

  “Leave them,” Jamie said in my ear, and tightened his grip on my arm. I turned to go with him, and suddenly a hand seized my other arm. I screamed, and everyone near erupted in screams by sheer reflex. Suddenly the wood around us was alive with moving forms and shouts.

  The soldier—it was a British soldier; from so close I could see the buttons on his uniform and felt the thump of his cartridge box as it swung, striking me in the hip—leaned down to peer at me and grinned, his breath stale and scented with decay.

  “Stand still, love,” he said. “You’re going nowhere now.”

  My heart was pounding so hard in my ears that it was a full minute before I realized that the grip on my other arm was gone. Jamie had vanished.

  WE WERE MARCHED back up the road in a tight group, moving slowly through the night. They let us drink at a stream at daylight but kept us moving until the early afternoon, by which time even the most able-bodied were ready to drop.

  We were herded, none too gently, into a field. Farmer’s wife that I was, I winced to see the stalks—only weeks away from harvest—being trampled underfoot, the fragile gold of the wheat cut and mangled into black mud. There was a cabin among the trees at the far end of the field; I saw a girl run out onto the porch, clap a hand to her mouth in horror, and disappear back inside.

  Three British officers came across the field, heading for the cabin, ignoring the seething mass of invalids, women, and children, all of whom were milling to and fro, with no idea what to do next. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes with the end of my kerchief, tucked it back into my bodice, an
d looked round for anyone who might be nominally in charge.

  None of our own officers or able-bodied men seemed to have been captured; there had been only a couple of surgeons superintending the removal of the invalids, and I hadn’t seen either one in two days. Neither one was here. All right, then, I thought grimly, and walked up to the nearest British soldier, who was surveying the chaos through narrowed eyes, musket in hand.

  “We need water,” I said to him without preamble. “There’s a stream just beyond those trees. May I take three or four women to fetch back water for the sick and wounded?”

  He was sweating, too; the faded red wool of his coat was black under the arms, and melted rice powder from his hair was rimed in the creases of his forehead. He grimaced, indicating that he didn’t want to deal with me, but I simply stared at him, as close as I could get. He glanced around, in hopes of finding someone to send me to, but the three officers had disappeared into the cabin. He raised one shoulder in surrender, looking away.

  “Aye, go on, then,” he muttered, and turned his back, stalwartly guarding the road, along which new prisoners were still being herded.

  A quick traverse of the field turned up three buckets and a like number of sensible women, worried but not hysterical. I sent them to the stream and began to quarter the field, making a quick assessment of the situation—as much in order to keep my own worry at bay as because there was no one else to do it.

  Would we be kept here long? I wondered. If we would be held here for more than a few hours, sanitation trenches must be dug—but the soldiers would have the same need. I’d leave that for the army to deal with, then. Water was coming; we’d need to run relays to the stream nonstop for a bit. Shelter… I glanced at the sky; it was hazy but clear. Those who could move on their own were already helping to drag the desperately sick or wounded into the shade of the trees along one side of the field.

  Where was Jamie? Had he got away safe?

  Above the calls and anxious conversations, I heard now and then the whisper of distant thunder. The air clung to my skin, thick with humidity. They would have to move us somewhere—to the nearest settlement, wherever that might be—but it might take several days. I had no idea where we were.

  Had he been captured, too? If so, would they take him to the same place they’d take the invalids?

  Chances were that they would release the women, not wishing to feed them. The women would stay with their sick men, though—or most of them would—sharing whatever food was available.

  I was walking slowly across the field, conducting a mental triage—the man on the stretcher there was going to die, probably before nightfall; I could hear the rales of his breathing from six feet away—when I caught sight of movement on the cabin’s porch.

  The family—two adult women, two teenagers, three children, and a baby in arms—was leaving, clutching baskets, blankets, and such bits of their household as could be carried. One of the officers was with them; he took them across the field and spoke with one of the guards, evidently instructing him to let the women pass. One of the women paused at the edge of the road and looked back—just once. The others went straight on, without a backward glance. Where were their men?

  Where are mine?

  “Hallo,” I said, smiling at a man with a recently amputated leg. I didn’t know his name but recognized his face; he was one of the few black men at Ticonderoga, a carpenter. I knelt down beside him. His bandages were awry, and the stump was leaking badly. “Bar the leg, how do you feel?” His skin was pale gray and clammy as a wet sheet, but he gave me a feeble grin in return.

  “My left hand doesn’t hurt much right now.” He lifted it in illustration, but dropped it like a chunk of lead, lacking strength to hold it up.

  “That’s good,” I said, sliding my fingers under his thigh to lift it. “Let me fix this for you—we’ll have you some water in a minute.”

  “That’d be nice,” he murmured, and shut his eyes against the sun.

  The flapping end of the loose bandage was twisted up like a snake’s tongue, stiff with dried blood, and the dressing awry. The dressing itself, a poultice of flaxseed and turpentine, was soggy, pink with leaking blood and lymph. No choice but to reuse it, though.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Walter.” His eyes were still closed, his breath coming in shallow gasps. So was mine; the thick, hot air was like a pressure bandage round my chest. “Walter… Woodcock.”

  “Pleased to know you, Walter. My name’s Claire Fraser.”

  “Know you,” he murmured. “You’re Big Red’s lady. He make it out of the fort?”

  “Yes,” I said, and blotted my face against my shoulder to keep the sweat out of my eyes. “He’s all right.”

  Dear God, let him be all right.

  The English officer was coming back toward the cabin, passing within a few feet of me. I glanced up, and my hands froze.

  He was tall, slender but broad-shouldered, and I would have known that long stride, that unself-conscious grace, and that arrogant tilt of the head anywhere.