Infinite Loss (Infinite Series, Book 3)

by L. E. Waters

  He looks up at me and laughs. “Wipe that stupid grin off your face, Sergeant. You’re at war, not a damn tea party.”

  I wish I haven’t already settled my things down, seeing the advance state of spirits he’s in. I turn to him. “First Lieutenant, thank you, with the Royal Fusiliers.”

  I put my arm up for the inn-wench to bring me a mug and dinner.

  He smiles. “That must’ve cost you a nice sum.”

  I don’t answer since I did pay dearly for the title.

  The inn-wench comes back with a meat pie and grog. I take a bite and make a face.

  The man chuckles. “Get used to it, Lieutenant. No spices here since the blockade. Only salt in these parts.”

  With all the spices absent, I can detect the sour aftertaste of overripe meat.

  He rambles on, “Dreadful Americans, with all their homegrown food, no sugar, not a decent cup of tea in months.” He stares up quickly. “Hey, have you brought any British goods with you?”

  I shake my head, not wanting to give them up. He takes a large swig and immediately wets his whistle on the handle for a refill. I try to make the most of his company. “What is the state of things here?”

  He turns, suddenly serious. “Boston reports that the colonials were bombarding, and streets filled with armed men in Philadelphia in response. Our regiment was rushed to Boston only to find the report false. Now we’re back here.”

  “You’ve seen no fighting yet?”

  He snickers. “The colonials are like little dogs; the louder they yap, the less likely they are to attack the British Lion.”

  Chapter 4

  Another cannon ball hits and makes the sod walls shake. The “little dogs” have quit yapping and are now indeed attacking with great force. I’m sitting in the dark among the hovered masses of British regulars, French-Canadian volunteers and Indians, with only a small lantern to write mother a letter by.

  We’ve been besieged at Fort St. John for two months now, and everything is running out—most of all, our resolve. Six hundred and fifty men, women and children take refuge within a barrack built for only twenty-five men. So to say it’s overcrowded is an understatement. It’s polluted; filth and bad smells everywhere. No clean place to sleep that is safe, and no safe place to sleep that is clean.

  So here I sit, in both safety and filth, with some cotton shoved up my nostrils to prevent my gag reflex from catching. About two weeks before the rebels got close enough to the fort to cut off our supply line to Canada and that is when most of the misery set in. The ground beneath us has turned to mud in the frozen sleet or snow that came down daily in November. With no straw to lay down, everyone does their best to stay on their feet as long as they can and huddle under their blankets. The glories of war.

  I try to position myself near the Indians, since they give off the least offensive smell. They live quite well since they have everything they need on their backs. At night, I watch as they light fires and tell stories around the warm glow. I can’t understand what they say, but their words are curious and so expressive that it captivates me. Some nights they dance, in the midst of all who are languishing. They dress like colorful birds and move like un-chided children. I can barely contain my feet from moving while I fall under their drums’ rhythm, as something primal at the base of my being urges me to join them. So different than the proper life we live in now, but something inside relaxes as I watch them and their movements.

  The only time they annoy me is whenever I attempt to draw them. They’re so curious about the way I draw three-dimensionally, that they lean over my shoulder as I sketch and occasionally smudge the page as they try to grab the subject that seems to be lifting off the paper.

  We’re outnumbered four to one, and it’s only our cannons that keep the colonials at bay. Rum and wine are now both exhausted, and salt pork is our only fare at two-thirds the normal allotment. Yet, it doesn’t keep me from sharing with my new friend. The fort started a colony of white-footed ferrets to keep the rats controlled since ferrets are able to crawl inside the tunnels the rats dig to breed in. Now the ferrets over-run the place, and a certain little sable kit catches my eye.

  “Rosey-toes?”—I’ve aptly named her, since the bottoms of her tiny feet are pinky-rose—“Come for your supper.” I try with my highest sounding voice. She crawls out of the bag I drag around with me, which contains nothing but my filthy clothes that I’ll have to burn at the end of all this. Happy to see the pork I hold in my fingers, she comes flip-flopping out and reaches on her short hind legs to grab the piece. Then she crawls up my blanket to find where I keep the rest of the pork. I lift the little weasel up in the palm of my hand and hold her suspended in front of my face. She has the loveliest white markings on her sable face, a pink nose that matches her toes, and little golden eyes. I tuck her into my blanket and try to settle her for a nap.

  I awake to an officer shaking me. “Johnny-boy, gather your things for surrender.”

  Relieved to surrender and escape this muddy hell, I pull myself together the best I can in these circumstances and, upon searching my bag, I realize Rosey must be off hunting. I click my tongue and call her, but she does not come. A lovely Indian child, who I had once drawn, smiles at me and takes some of her food from a tiny bag tied at her side. She clicks in an exact ferret chirp, and the little white face I love so much appears out of a sod crevice and comes scooting across to the food. I thank the girl with a smile, scoop Rosey up, and stick her in my bag. Filing out in our lines, I see that the cemetery is the only thing that flourished at the fort. It has grown four-fold since I marched past it months ago.

  The fort rests betwixt swampy woods and the now gloomy river Sorel. When first I see the rebels lined up in front of us outside the fort, all embarrassment for the state of my regiment vanishes. There stand the slouchiest, most undisciplined, sloppily-lined assortment of soldiers. All, except their officers, are in tattered civilian clothes, many even lacking swords. I’m utterly humiliated to lay my sword down to the likes of these soldiers and, once I do, they march us off to the backwoods of Lancaster for our imprisonment. Had I been able to leave the wretched glory-free war, I would have gladly sailed home to the accounting house again.

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  We march through the freezing wind and snow for weeks. We officers are forced to fend for ourselves and pay for lodging at taverns along the way out of our own dwindling pockets. The seedy tavern keeps, seeing our forced position, charge us double. When it looks as though we’ve reached the end of civilization itself, we’re told to split up and find permanent lodging since we’ve reached Lancaster. The scattered villages are few and far in betwixt and if I thought the cities were behind in culture, the frontier is like stepping back in time a hundred years. We go door-to-door asking for rooms. Most slam their Indian shutters tight, while some apologize for not befriending us, for fear that they will be labeled Tories by association.

  Finally, a German woodsman opens the door and once I speak to him in German, he can’t turn me away. Jan is the only patriot who treats me kindly. His plain frontier house, built of hewn logs, greatly misrepresents the degree of craftsmanship and ornamentation inside. Fine paneling stretches around the room, the stairs up to the loft are thick and masterfully carved, and the furniture in the keeping room is richly painted with colorful birds and tulips.

  He shares his supper with me and, after putting his fur-filled moccasins on the chest in front of his throne-like wainscot chair, he divulges, “It’s not only that they’re afraid of being stamped as Tories. Those lot of Germans are too cheap for charity. They only feed their families whatever the pigs don’t eat.”

  He smokes his pipe and then graciously passes it to me.

  “Agh.” He groans as he hoists himself out of the chair. “Better get to bed before the fire dies down.”

  There’s already a draft at my back even though my stool is at the edge of the hearthstone. I search around to where I might try to make a bed
. He stoops over the fire to ignite the pith of the rush light, which smokes and fills the air of whatever animal he rendered for grease. By the smell of it, I would guess bear.

  “Come my new friend, André.” He plucks a few red embers from the fire and drops them into his copper warming pan. “You’re welcome to sleep upstairs with me.”

  I glance at the large, most likely fragrant man, and I have no choice. After all the bed rolls I’ve shared with strangers on the cold floors of the taverns, at least he looks warm. He hands me the rush light to carry as I follow him up, holding onto the carved banister. I’m happily surprised to see a trundle bed under the jack bed built into the corner of the loft. I pull the bed out while he takes some extra goose-down pillows and bright quilts out of a chest.

  “My wife made me build this for future little ones.”

  Since I can tell there is no obvious sign of a female present, I don’t inquire further.

  “Your feet might still hang off the edge, but it’s better than cuddling up to me.” He laughs, even though I can tell he’s still thinking of the children that should be in it instead of me.

  “This is the finest bed I’ve slept in for months.”

  We turn our backs to each other to strip down to our underclothes, and he throws on a linen nightshirt, being careful to hang up his work clothes on wooden pegs on the wall. He motions for me to use them as well.

  Jan pulls his thick quilts back and moves the warming pan swiftly over the linen sheets, releasing his body odor into the air with the heat. He hands it to me quickly and hops in while the bed is still warm. He sits up, since no one ever lays flat on a jack bed. They’re built to conserve space and the occupant must sleep propped up on pillows to keep their feet from dangling. I fluff the pillows up and spread three quilts out, each one stitched most likely by his missing wife. I roll the pan evenly to keep from scorching the linen and leap to blow out the rush light before sitting in the bed. The warmth disappears immediately, and my teeth begin to chatter as I wait for sleep to distract me from the cold.

  “She died in an Indian raid,” he says out of nowhere.

  I knew it must have been some kind of tragedy by the way he avoided it. “I’m sorry.”

  In the complete darkness I wait for him to continue.

  “A damn Indian summer it was. When we least expected it. A few warm days in November, and they surprised us. Greta was here alone while I was hunting deer. Most of the women and children in the village were killed or taken.”

  “Truly terrible.”

  I hide my conflicting thoughts under cover of the quilts. Strangely, I also understand the plight of the natives, though I will never tell Jan that. What would it be like to be the redskins? With foreigners suddenly carving out livings from their territories—forever altering their way of life. It seems a battle that no one could win—no one should win. An unending greedy hunger for more and more.

  Jan begins to snore in little spurts, tired from his confession, and I fall asleep soon after, once the quilts hold some warmth.

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  The lonely farmer is the hardest worker I’ve ever seen. Even in the frigid dead of winter he still goes out every morning after eggs and returns with the early twilight. I try not to venture out into the streets since the citizens shout and threaten me whenever they get the chance to. Even small children imitate their parents by spitting and damning me and everything my red coat stands for. I try my best to help Jan out without risking my life. I fetch water from the well, chop wood for the fire, and attempt tasks usually carried out by women in the seclusion of the house. When all my chores are done, I watch from the small, thickly-bubbled window as the women in town transform their endless supplies of Indian corn into all modes of consumption. They thump their samp mortars like a giant doctor’s mortar and pestle and grind it into meal on querns. Luckily, Jan is content with our roasted ears, soaking them in brine and cooking them inside their husks.

  I stay inside with Jan, who is surprised to find out I’m a master in classical music and painting. We talk and paint the nights away, and he even learns to accept Rosey and her musky smell—which I only realized she had when I removed the cotton from my nose.

  He brings her eggs from the chicken coop and laughs a hearty laugh as she rolls one around the floor, trying to break in. I could always escape by just walking out the door and making my way east, but I have given my word of honor to stay.

  As soon as I adapt and feel comfortable in Jan’s confined farmhouse, we’re rounded up again and marched forty miles deeper into a forest so dense it’s in perpetual shadow. Where swarms of insects flutter about in grey clouds, and most animals and savages have better sense than to inhabit it.

  There is only one person who opens their door to us prisoners: a kind, heavily bosomed widow by the name of Mrs. Ramsay. She is the ray of light in the dismal place and once inside her red, saltbox home, one finally feels some peace and comfort. She is always at work cooking our meals, washing our clothes and scrubbing the stone floor, not letting a grain of dirt settle in. We prisoners rarely leave the house since only the worst sort of woodsmen patrol the streets looking for anyone to tussle with.

  Even though one night I banked the embers in Mrs. Ramsay’s fire myself, the next morning no amount of fanning or blowing would reignite the grey ashes. With no child in the house to send out for a kind neighbor’s ember, I grab up the fire scoop and make my way a mile over to the next house. After scaring the goodwife half to death with my intrusion as she is busy baking her bread for the week, she sweeps up a few red embers for me. I hurry back to keep the embers from burning out, and I bump into another red coat, appearing slightly disheveled. Some misguided Brits venture out from cabin fever and come back paying for it for days. This unfortunate fellow, John Despard, returns worse for the wear, saying, “This black eye is your message. I thank you, André.”

  “My message?”

  “A delightful Scot-Irish took hold of me at the side road and told me they’d been hearing stories of how you, the Lieutenant, tortured American captives while at St. Johns.”

  “That is ludicrous. I did no such thing.”

  “Well, they’ve been opening all the letters you send out, and they say you are writing in code, spying for the King.”

  I laugh. “It’s French! Those greasy idiots.”

  “Idiots surely, but André, they held my face over a sharpened hatchet and forced me to smell it, reminding me of its disagreeable effects on the skull. Promising me I’d be murdered tomorrow.”

  “Worseted-stocking knaves!” I curse. “They’re doing this to humiliate us. We mustn’t let them feel as though they’ve exalted themselves.”

  “They threatened if they catch you, they’ll throw you in jail, and that they can do, André.”

  “I’d best be staying indoors then.” I playfully wince at his swollen, grey-blue eye. “That looks rather painful.”

  He throws his worn hat at me, hitting me hard in the shoulder, his white smile dazzling.

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  I take to reading every book in Mrs. Ramsay’s meager library. I relax after a simple but wonderful breakfast, with my legs up on the wainscoting and Rosey curled in my lap beneath the book. I have to keep Rosey’s occupancy a secret, for Mrs. Ramsay will never allow any animals in the house due to the added filth they carry in. It’s an entertaining game among us men to conceal the little chittering weasel whenever Mrs. Ramsay and her birch broom come around. I can hardly contain my laughter when she passes by my bedroll and sniffs about the air with a scrunched up nose and an assaulted look on her face, causing even her ice blue eyes to flare.

  “Master André, my dear. I fear there must be something horribly wrong with you.” The men giggle in their sleeves as she continues, “We may have to get a doctor in, for there is the strangest smell emanating from your clothes and linens that I seem never to be able to get rid of, even after violent washing.” She says t
he last part in an exasperated whisper that makes it impossible for us to withhold the humor of the moment.

  Despard, with his shirt pulled up dramatically over his nose, says, so solemnly, “I think it’s emanating from his feet, Ma’am.”

  She looks disdainfully down at my feet in their stockings. “And you’re such a nice looking young man.” She whistles as she grabs, with the smallest pinch of her fingers, some of my stockings discarded on the bedroll and holds them out far in front of her. “How very tragic. I dare say you might be a bachelor forever if you can’t find some solution to this.”

  The men let out roars of laughter after she leaves, and Despard points to a corner. “Looks like Rosey used the outhouse again, André.” I leap up, lucky that Mrs. Ramsay’s was so distracted with my stockings. I take out a shoehorn sweep up the debris and pitch it out the window.

  That night, we’re all awakened to what seems like thunder rattling the walls. When we hear voices, we clamber to open the shutters to see the mob of militiamen gathered below in the smoky haze of pitch pine torches. My heart stops when they chant specifically for my blood. I turn to my fellow men and say, as I reach for my sword, “Well boys, I seem to have been chosen. Take care of Rosey for me if this doesn’t go well.”

  But they pull their swords and hold them up. Despard speaks for them, “You go, we all go.”

  Before we can make our way down the ladder from the loft, a figure runs toward the mob with great speed. We watch from the lower window as the figure brandishes a large broom and swings it back and forth like Excalibur. There charges our beloved Mrs. Ramsay, in her nightgown and bed cap, cursing away like a sailor, causing the agitated mob to break apart and run for cover, some unfortunate stragglers getting a good knock to the head. Our mouths fall open as she works her way up to the militia leader, and her eyes widen as she makes out who it is. “As I live and breathe, Timmie Thompson. You’re the one responsible for leading a raid at my very house!”