by Jane Feather
Within weeks, General Washington and his army had arrived in Williamsburg.
As September continued in days of blazing heat and suddenly chilly nights, the embattled Cornwallis worked incessantly on fortifying his position, clearly prepared to defend himself to the last extremity, and General Washington planned that last extremity with great care. Williamsburg filled with troops as the Americans gathered from across the country for the last campaign of the war, and Bryony Clare retreated within herself.
To all outward appearances, she was calm, cheerful, uncomplaining at Benedict’s constant absences on patrols. When he returned, exhausted, hungry, dirty, but always exuberant, she listened to the descriptions of the skirmishes, the stories of spies, the attacks on the small British fleet on the beaches of Yorktown. And her heart grew cold as she pictured her father, cornered, preparing himself for the humiliating surrender that he must know was inevitable—if he was still alive.
There was smallpox in Yorktown, Ben told her, supplies were down to a minimum. Starving horses had been driven out to die on the beaches because they could no longer be fed. Women camp followers and their children had been sent away to fend for themselves. The damn arrogant British would swallow their pride this time! It was said with that fierce intensity, with the disfiguring smile that she had seen so often before; the first time was when he had contemplated the capture of the group of redcoats on the lane by the armory, and she had wondered then what demons possessed a man of such tenderness and humor, who had so much love to give and who gave it so freely. She knew the demons now, and she knew her own. And she knew how they must be exorcized.
On the evening of September 27, Benedict and Charlie, the gravity of their expressions belied by the excitement in their eyes, came back to the cottage with the news that Washington had drawn up his order of battle. They were to march at dawn to strike the final blow that would win America.
“There will be a garrison of two hundred remaining here with the sick, the wounded, and the stores,” Ben said, drinking deeply of his tankard of ale. “You and Ned will be quite safe until we return.”
“Yes, I am sure we shall,” Bryony said calmly, without the flicker of an eyelid. “Do you have time for supper, or must you go back to headquarters?”
Benedict glanced at her. There was something amiss, something not quite right about her voice, her manner. But it was probably the prospect of the upcoming battle, he told himself. He crooked a finger at her, and she came over to him, unsmiling, though her body as he held her was quite relaxed. “It will be the last time, sweeting,” he promised gently, touching her lips with his finger. “I know it is hard for you to bear, but you have borne so much, you can manage this last.”
“Have I said that I cannot?” There was a tinge of indignation in her voice that quite reassured him.
At five o’clock the following morning, the troops moved out of Williamsburg and took the sandy woodland roads to Yorktown, seven miles away. It was already warm and, as the morning wore on, the heat grew intense and clouds of gray powdery dust filled the air under the steady tramping of twenty-six thousand men, clogging noses and throats and obscuring the countryside on either side of the narrow road.
Bryony left Ned with Claude Blanchard at the hospital in Williamsburg. The Frenchman accepted the charge with an easy shrug. He had three hundred men to care for with only one helper; a small boy would make little difference. Bryony rode out of Williamsburg on her raking gelding, adapting with the ease of familiarity to his awkward gait. She kept well to the rear of the marching column, holding a handkerchief over her mouth to prevent choking on the dust. At noon a halt was called, and she sat under a giant cypress, waiting patiently as cooking fires sprang up along the roadside despite the heat. Ben, she presumed, would be with his mountainmen, tramping stolidly in their baggy britches and bare feet. They were marching ahead of the French column in whose rear she had found herself, so she was quite safe from detection at this point.
A chill message came down the line from General Washington as the men sat eating and laughing in the broiling heat. It was a message to remind them forcibly that this respite was but brief. If the British came out to meet them, they were to fight hand to hand, using the bayonet.
Bryony ate her bread and cheese, drank a little water from a trickle of a stream, and turned her attention to the tricky matter of how and when she should disclose her presence to Benedict. There was nothing he could do about it once she was in the siege lines, but if his anger was very great, it would make it even more difficult to persuade him of her need—a need that she had little reason to believe he would understand, anyway. But if she left him to do what she must without his understanding, without his agreement, then only the bleakest of futures lay ahead for them—if, indeed, they would have a future.
Once the march was resumed, the column divided, the French moving off to the left, the Americans to the right. Bryony also went to the right. It was late afternoon when the American column was halted at a swamp where the bridges had been burned. A troop of green-coated horsemen rode out of Yorktown but were turned back by a few rounds of grapeshot, and the army settled down to make open camp while the bridges were rebuilt across the swamp.
Benedict was with Washington and his staff officers, meeting under a mulberry tree that served to take the place of a headquarters tent, when Bryony rode up. “Good evening, gentlemen.” She swung off her horse. Her face was pale and set as she walked over to them, leading her mount. “I beg your pardon for interrupting, General Washington, but may I talk with Colonel Clare?”
Benedict’s first thought was that something dreadful had occurred. With a low exclamation, he strode over to her, not waiting for a response from the general. “What has happened, Bryony? Whatever could have brought you here?”
She looked uncertainly at the group under the tree. They were all regarding her with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance. She had little difficulty understanding both reactions to the presence of a woman at this moment and in this place. “Please, I must talk with you,” she said in a low voice that throbbed suddenly with intensity. Her gaze locked with his, urgent with appeal and with something indefinable that filled him with a deep foreboding.
He turned back to the general, offering a word of excuse, then took the gelding’s reins and walked toward the concealment of a small wood. “I am having difficulty believing that you could do this,” he said. “I cannot imagine what could have happened to have brought you here.” There was sharpness in the words, but his tone was puzzled rather than angry, and the eyes probing her face for answer were quiet and warm.
“Nothing has happened,” she said slowly, feeling for the words that she had rehearsed over and over, but that now had deserted her. “There is something that I must do.”
Ben felt a little chill run up his spine as his foreboding expanded, emptying his mind of all else. He said nothing, just waited.
“I must go into Yorktown.” There, she had said it. With none of the softening explanations or pleas for understanding, she had said it.
The gelding lowered his head to crop the grass at his feet, and the rein tugged in Ben’s hand. He let it slip through his fingers while his mind tried to encompass what she had said. “Why?” The word hung in the hot, muggy air.
“My father is there.” She reached a hand to pull at the horse’s rough mane as if the little gesture could restore normality between them.
“Go on,” Ben said, coldly now.
“I am a Paget, Benedict. I have tried to deny it, to submerge myself in Clare so that I will not remind you of what you hate, but I cannot do it.” She looked at him, seeing the cold rejection in his face and accepting it, sorrowfully but with the knowledge of its inevitability. “I must reconcile the two parts of me. I love my father and cannot deny him, not even for you, who I love more than life itself.”
She searched his face for a response to this declaration, but his eyes had flattened and there was no emotion to be read. She swallowe
d and continued. “I must make peace with my father before I can live in peace with you. I do not ask that you do so, also. I would not expect that. But I wish you to understand my need. Afterward, I will return to you, to go again where passion drives … if you will have me.” She looked over his shoulder and into the rapidly darkening wood, where the whine of swamp mosquitoes rose to promise misery.
“You cannot go into the town,” Ben said flatly, concentrating on the one issue of which he was certain. What she had said, he could not grapple with at the moment. “Washington intends blasting them into submission. He has ordered the heavy guns brought up, the battering cannons and mortars. There will be nothing left of the town if Cornwallis does not surrender.”
“Then that is all the more reason why I must go. If my father is killed and I have not made peace, I will not be able to live in harmony with you, or with myself.”
“I cannot let you go!” It was a cry of anguish. “Into such danger, Bryony. I will not risk losing you for such a whim. Afterward, you will find him….”
“He may not be there,” she said with quiet stubbornness, burying deep the hurt that he should judge as whim an imperative of such magnitude. “You once said, when this began between us, that you would not hold me.” This time there was defiance and challenge in her voice. If he would deny her his understanding and acceptance of this need, then she must fall back on his promise, which he was bound to honor. It was a bleak substitute for a lover’s compassion, but all that was left to her. And she would not dwell upon the paucity of a spirit that embraced only bitterness.
Had he ever expected her to invoke that promise, made at a time when he did not know her as he now did? He had loved her then, certainly, but she had not yet entered his soul, become one with him. Now she would sever the bond of love, cut herself out of him, leave him mutilated by loss. And she would do this because she was ultimately a Paget, and those ties had proved more binding than any with which he had tried to hold her.
Disillusion chilled him. Despair stood stark in his eyes. Dull anger infused his voice as he bowed to compulsion. “In the morning, when we have crossed the swamp, I will send you under flag of truce.”
And so it was that a small figure, accompanied by two soldiers, crossed the barren, sandy plain between the opposing armies, to be received within the enemy fortifications. Benedict Clare, filled with an aching sense of loss, betrayal leaden on his soul, watched her go, back to her own people.
Sir Edward Paget stood in the dining room of Thomas Nelson’s handsome Yorktown house, listening to the wrangling. “If we cross the river by night, we can destroy the allied boats on the north shore, drive back Choisy’s force, capture their horses, and be one hundred miles inland before Washington realizes.” The plan was described in impassioned accents by a bewigged staff officer.
“Indeed, then we can join Clinton in New York,” another stated with a sage nod.
“Or go south and regain the Carolinas.”
The plans of desperate men flew around the room like locusts, and Sir Edward wandered to the window, looking out over the York River, where the French fleet threatened and their own few remaining ships bobbed at anchor in the harbor. He was tired, sick to death of this campaign. Sick of the fight, of the cause, of the rhetoric. There was no savor to life. But then, there hadn’t been for longer than he could bear to remember.
The door opened and the contentious buzz in the room paused. “There’s a woman, my lord.” The lieutenant addressed the earl, in such haste that he was in danger of forgetting the courtesies. “Came under flag of truce from the enemy lines. Wishes to speak with Sir Edward.”
Paget swung round as the buzz broke out with renewed vigor at this extraordinary piece of news. Deserters on both sides were a plague to which they were all accustomed, but women, bearing the white flag? … “Who is she, Lieutenant?”
“Won’t give her name, sir. Says she must speak with you alone.”
“Well, go to her, man,” Cornwallis said testily. “She may have valuable information.” Sir Edward hid the sardonic gleam in his eye with a punctilious bow and a formally uttered excuse.
Bryony stood in the hall, between two troopers, and as her father appeared she drew herself up and looked steadily at him.
For a long moment, he returned the look, searching her face for clues. He saw a slender woman in a threadbare riding habit—a woman from whom all the frills and the fancies had been pared, revealing the essence that shone clear and candid from adult eyes. Then the weariness dropped from him as if by magic. This was a kind of magic—this miraculous apparition; his daughter, for all that she bore the marks of one who had gone through the fires and emerged, honed, tempered, strong enough to take what was allotted her. He held out his arms and she ran into them with a little sob of pain and joy.
A coughing and shuffling of feet brought Paget back to a sense of reality. “That will be all,” he said crisply to the soldiers. “Come into the parlor, child. Whilst I am overjoyed to see you, I could wish you had chosen a more orthodox method of reappearance.”
Bryony began to laugh weakly. “Oh, Papa, you are not in the least changed.”
Her father paused on the threshold of the parlor, regarding her with a quiet gravity. “We are all changed, Bryony. In many cases, out of all recognition.” She bowed her head in silent acknowledgment and preceded him into the graciously furnished room, whose handsome appointments seemed somehow incongruous in this besieged town.
“Tell me,” her father invited. “You are not here because you have run away from anything.”
She smiled slightly. “How can you know that?”
“Just by looking at you. You have found what most of us seek and few discover.” He took her hand where the thin gold band encircled her ring finger. “Is it Benedict Clare?”
“How did you know?”
“Your mother knew immediately.” He shrugged. “When I thought about it, of course, it seemed obvious—odd moments that I recalled as puzzling … your outrageous appearance at the duel. But I am not blessed with a mother’s intuition.” He released her hand. “He is with Washington?”
Bryony nodded. “There are things I cannot tell you, but he has no love for the British.”
“Then why are you here?” There was a sudden sternness to the question that took her aback. “He is your husband. You made your choice and you cannot renege.”
“I wished to see you.” Bryony opted for the simple truth. “If only to say farewell.”
“And he permitted this? Permitted you to enter a doomed town?” Sir Edward’s eyebrows lifted. “I do not know what kind of a rogue your husband may be, daughter, but I suspect that he is not the kind to see his wife go into danger without remonstrance.”
“He is the kind of rogue, Papa, who will not stand in the way of a personal imperative.” It was a bare statement that her father sensed left much unsaid, but he would not probe. Bryony spoke again, her voice low. “Do you feel that I have betrayed you?” It was the question she had come here to ask. He had received her as his daughter, but that did not necessarily mean that he was untouched by her defection.
Sir Edward seemed to take a long time considering his answer. Then he shook his head. “After what I have seen these last months, differences in principles and beliefs seem singularly unimportant beside the ties of family and love. That is your belief, also, is it not?”
Slowly she nodded. “But not my husband’s.”
So, that was it. Sir Edward nodded. “Mayhap, he will learn it.”
How long could it go on? Ben could almost feel the earth shudder as the barrage continued to tear apart the village. From where he stood, on the browning grass, amid bear-paw cactus and sere sedge, he could see the tall houses of Yorktown shuddering as the cannonballs plunged through roofs and shattered walls. Where was she in that kitchen of hell? On the riverfront below Yorktown, a torrent of fire raged, enwrapping the British ships as the French lobbed red-hot shot in among the crowded vessels, and cannon a
nd mortar bludgeoned the town from behind. Now and again, a shell would sail over the town to plunge into the river, exploding in a foaming jet that shot into the sky, cascading down, tinged with the flame-brightness of the night. How could anyone still be alive in there? he thought with stabbing desolation. Close to four thousand shot had fallen upon the town and harbor in the last twenty-four hours, and the slaughter within must be horrendous.
Hour by hour, American and French troops dug the trenches that would bring them close enough to the town to force the British surrender. Only two British redoubts, far in front of the defense line, stood in the way of allied advancement, and they were to be taken that night in a concerted attack. Benedict was to join Lafayette’s men, storming the Rock Redoubt, and he was under no illusions about the danger of the mission. It would be a desperate battle with cold steel in hand, no quarter possible in the confined space. They had been told to empty their muskets, relying only on the bayonet to achieve their goal. But he would play his part with grim determination, knowing that success would bring this damnable business to an end all the sooner, and if Bryony was still alive, then her chances of staying so until he could reclaim her would be greatly increased.
During the days since her departure, he had made endless bargains with fate, with God, and with the devil. If she was alive and well, he would care for nothing else. And he knew now that nothing else mattered beside her love. He had said and done things that should have destroyed that love, but it had remained as shield and buckler for both of them. She had struggled to steer a path between abiding loyalties while maintaining her personal integrity, and he had made it as difficult for her as he could. She was who she was—his wife, his lover, his friend and companion. And she was also the daughter of Sir Edward Paget—just that and nothing more. At last he could see her clearly, separate from the entanglements with which he had insisted she be bound.
