Scarlet RIbbons

by Judith E. French

"The rope holds the ferry on the line," Sarah explained. "We switch the loop from side to side, according to which way the tide is moving. You have to pole."

  "And the second pole?"

  "For your strongest-looking passenger."

  The excited baying of hounds cut the air, and Forest spun around to see two dogs break from the woods and charge toward them. Right behind the dogs was a small rider on a black horse.

  "That will be my boy, Joshua," Sarah said proudly. "He's six, but he tries his best to do a man's work around here."

  Dogs and boy galloped closer, and Forest recognized the black animal as a mule. In minutes, the dogs were running in circles around his feet and sniffing him warily. He stood still and let them get his scent.

  "Down, Rock, down, Flirt," Sarah ordered. Obediently, the black-and-tan hounds dropped to the ground, tongues lolling.

  The handsome boy reined in his mount a few yards away. "Mama." He stared at Forest with open curiosity.

  "This is our new hired man, Joshua," Sarah said. "His name is Forest."

  "Morning," Joshua replied. He was a miniature replica of his mother, with his large gray eyes and thick dark hair.

  "Good morning to yeh, young Master Turner," Forest said. "I'm right pleased to meet you." He walked toward the mule and extended his hand.

  Joshua flashed a brilliant smile and nodded solemnly. "And I, you," he replied in his most grown-up voice.

  Forest turned and winked at Sarah. "I wonder thet yeh need extra help with a tad this size at the inn. How old is he? 'Leven?"

  "Six," Joshua chimed in. The smile returned. "Aunt Martha sent you some duck eggs, Mama. They're right here in the basket, and I didn't break even one."

  "Good you got relatives so close," Forest said, "with Master Turner 'way on business."

  "Martha's a good friend," Sarah answered. "She dotes on the boy, and he's called her 'aunt' since he was a baby."

  "My papa's not gone on business!" Joshua declared. He's fighting in the war! He went off to whip that Washington and drive those Con'nentals into the sea."

  Forest grinned. "A proper little Tory."

  Sarah couldn't keep the color from straining her cheeks. Straightening her back, she wiped her hands on her apron and fixed Forest with an unwavering gaze. "We're loyal English subjects here, and I make no bones of it. If you are a traitor to your king and country, you'd best say so now."

  "Was I a Patriot, would I ha' done what I did this mornin'?"

  Sarah shrugged. "Maybe so, maybe not," she answered. "'Tis hard to tell redcoat from blue . . . and that's for certain."

  Chapter Two

  Sarah’s Trust is Hard Won

  It was close to midnight when Sarah closed the door to her cabin and dropped the heavy iron bar in place. She never slept in the inn. Her home, such as it was, was private. Here, she and Joshua could share a somewhat normal home life away from the drinking and bawdy talk of strangers.

  The old house, two rooms and a loft, had been the original tavern at King's Landing, before Obediah's father grew prosperous enough to build an imposing brick building with stone chimneys. The stone had come as ballast in ships from England, as Obediah was fond of relaying to anyone who would listen. The bricks came from their own kiln, and the furnishings on the gentry side of the inn had been imported from London.

  Sarah's cabin had only the poorest of furniture. The bedstead, which nearly filled the sleeping chamber, was hand-hewn of red cedar. Her table was cracked and lacking a proper leg on one side —the result of a drunken brawl between Obediah's brother Isaac and Martha's Patriot husband, Will Green.

  The household linen and china would have shamed most women. The pewter was patched, and the copper pots rejects from the tavern kitchen. Obediah was tight; he begrudged her any possession that others wouldn't see and envy. Anything "fittin," as he called it, had to be used for the inn customers—coarse items for the common folk and pretty things for the gentry.

  Sarah stooped to pet Flirt's head; the hound bitch's mate, Rock, was shut in the tavern kitchen to keep the guests from raiding the larder at night. No one would get past the big hound without killing him. Once Sarah had given the order "Watch!" Rock would hold his post or die trying. Sarah knew that the Delaware Blues would never have taken her unaware that morning if the hounds had been at King's Landing, instead of with Joshua.

  Lighting a candle, Sarah tiptoed into the bedroom to check on her sleeping son. Silently, she pushed aside the mosquito netting to look at Joshua. He lay on his back, with one arm flung over his head and the other clutching the stuffed lamb Martha had stitched for him.

  Sarah blinked as she felt the tiny catch in her throat. No matter what else had happened to her, she had Joshua, and her love for him was a burning flame. Tenderly, she drew the linen sheet up over his twisted little foot, controlling the urge to take it in her hands and stroke it. His crippled foot was a minor flaw, and one that made him all the dearer to her.

  Joshua had been born perfect, to Obediah's satisfaction. He had often taken the baby into the tavern and pulled away the blankets to show off his son's sturdy limbs and smooth skin. "My son!" he would declare. "A Turner through and through," he'd repeat, although Joshua had inherited none of his father's oversized features or florid coloring.

  When Joshua was just learning to walk, Obediah had taken him into the public room and left him unattended while he shared a pint with friends. It had been fair weather, and the front door was open. Toddling outside, the baby had fallen under the hooves of a horse and been left with a badly broken foot. Obediah had refused to take the child to a physician, despite Sarah's pleading. When the little foot had healed crooked, Joshua was no longer "a Turner through and through." In Obediah's eyes, the boy was a cripple—worthless. Within weeks, Joshua had learned to stay out of reach of his father's callused hands. He had learned that "Papa" could be a frightening word.

  Sarah returned to the kitchen and poured warm water that she had carried from the tavern hearth into a large tin basin. Stripping off her dirty clothes, she began to wash . . . first her face and arms, then her breasts and thighs. Carefully scooping up some of the precious scented soap she had bargained for, Sarah gloried in the sensual feeling of the warm soap and water against her bare skin.

  The remainder of the clean water was for rinsing. Cup by cup, she sluiced it over her nude body. The warm water took away the ache of her tired muscles and soothed her troubled mind.

  When her feet were washed, Sarah wrapped a patched linen towel around her nakedness and padded barefoot to the shelf where she kept her hairbrush. Undoing the heavy braid, she let her long hair fall over her shoulders and began to brush it out.

  Every morning in good weather, when she went to the river for water, Sarah washed her hair. Her mother had had hair like Sarah's and had always cautioned her to keep it clean and brushed. "A woman's glory," her mother had called it. "We've been blessed with this glory—it would be an insult to God to let it smell like a midden." Her father had teased them both about the constant washing, but he had bought them scarlet ribbons to twine in their dark tresses, and Sarah had known he was proud of them.

  Sarah never neglected to bathe or do her hair, no matter how long or wearisome the day, no matter how troubled she was. It was Sarah's anchor to her childhood and a consolation in times of pain.

  Sarah went to the window and stared out toward the barn. All was silent that should be. An owl hooted from the trees by the landing, and the ever-present sound of the river was reassuring.

  She sighed deeply. This morning's raid by the Delaware militiamen had been a near thing. If it hadn't been for Forest . . . She nibbled at an already bitten fingernail. The man was not as he seemed . . . or was he?

  Forest had fixed the sign, a task that had evaded her best efforts for months. He had carried enough water from the river for her to scrub the entire downstairs of the tavern, kitchen floor included. Moving heavy furniture hadn't fazed him, neither had the thousand and one questions that Joshua h
ad fired at him.

  Halfway through supper, the bell had rung on the far side of the river for a party of six. Forest had made three trips with the ferry, tended the customers' horses, and helped her feed and fetch drink for the men. He'd been quick to learn, as he'd promised. She should have been delighted. So, why was he like a thorn in a bare foot? Why would such a handy, smart man want to work as a common servant?

  ~~~

  In the barn, across the moonlit yard, Forest lay awake and stared up into the darkness. The servants' quarters were not what he'd expected. True, the two beds were mere boxes filled with straw and covered with fodder-stuffed ticks, but the linen and blankets were clean and free of bugs. There was a stool, a table with pitcher and bowl for washing, a battered chamber pot, and wooden pegs for hanging clothes. The plank floor was swept clean; the window boasted a pane of real glass.

  Nothing about King's Landing was how he had imagined. He rolled over again and rubbed his scarred leg. If it weren’t for the leg, he'd be with Smallwood's men, where he belonged and not on this mission.

  It had been cold that morning of January 17th, so cold the earth was like iron—frost had glistened from every tree branch and blade of dried grass. He and Chad had been in the thick of the fighting just beyond the Quaker Meeting House in William Clark's orchard . . . the Battle of Princeton, men were calling it now. It was bayonet against bayonet, face-to-face with your head full of the scent of gunpowder and dying men. In the midst of all that carnage, he'd seen a cardinal, its blood red plumage bright against the gray of that January morning . . . In the moment he took to observe that flash of color, his brother, Chad, had died and a 17th Leicesters' musket ball had smashed through his own leg and put an end to the glory of battle.

  He'd argued with his captain that he was fit for active duty. Spying on a woman, even a Tory woman, left a bad taste in his mouth. He'd convinced himself that Sarah Turner would be a large, foulmouthed troll with bad breath and narrow, squinty eyes. He'd been wrong.

  Instead, he'd found a beautiful, intelligent young woman running the inn at King's Landing . . . a woman who under other circumstances he would have found extremely intriguing.

  Forest punched his pillow and rolled over onto his stomach. He was a soldier. It wasn't his place to question the decisions of his superior officers. All he had to do was carry out orders. It wasn't as if he was new to this—he'd completed two missions already: one in Lewes on the Delaware and another in Philadelphia. Why did this job have to be different?

  Telling himself that Delaware and the Eastern Shore counties of Maryland and Virginia were Washington's breadbasket gave him little consolation. He knew that an army traveled on its stomach, and it was the Patriot formers of Kent and Talbot and Queen Anne's that kept the supply wagons moving north to the Continental troops. The peninsula had fed the Patriot army since the beginning of the war, and if the British could cut off the sources of flour and meat, the Continentals would be lost.

  "Damn it to bloody hell," Forest growled into his pillow.

  On July 25th, the British had sailed from Sandy Hook, New Jersey, bristling with over 250 warships under the command of General Howe, destination unknown. Washington knew that the long-threatened attack was imminent—he just didn't know where the British were coming ashore. The Delaware River? The Chesapeake? It was any man's guess. Rumor said there were twenty thousand soldiers on board. Congress had ordered the militias of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania to keep the British from landing. Forest had laughed long and hard when he'd heard the directive. Stopping a British force of that size with militia would be like trying to hold back the tide with your hat.

  But Howe's attack really wasn't Forest's problem. Forest had been sent to try and find out who was leading the Loyalist raids on the supply trains and Patriot farms in this part of the peninsula. A Sussex County militiaman, Sam Wiggins, had infiltrated the gang, but before he could report the name of the leader and the location of their armed camp, Wiggins had been identified as a spy for the Patriots and been murdered. A local farmer had found the militiaman's body; with his last effort Wiggins had scrawled the message "King's Landing" in the dust beside him.

  It was common knowledge that Turner's was a Loyalist tavern. What wasn't known was if the conspicuously absent Obediah Turner was a leader of the Tory raiders, or if his wife, Sarah, was an active participant. If messages were passed, or Tory messages were held at or near the inn, Forest must learn of it and report to Smallwood's headquarters. He understood the importance of the mission—he just wished someone else were carrying it out.

  ~~~

  Forest woke and dressed in his dirty buckskins as the last stars were fading in the early morning sky. It had been a struggle to keep his own worn clothing, he remembered with a chuckle. Sarah Turner had threatened to burn the garments the night before. He tied the black eye patch carefully in place and combed his hair as best he could with his fingers.

  He stepped out into the barnyard, stretched, and scratched his chin. The damnable beard itched. He'd only grown the whiskers to keep someone from recognizing him. His home in Chestertown wasn't that far from the Misakaak.

  In the trees overhead, a rooster began to crow. Already, iridescent ribbons of coral and mauve were spilling across the eastern sky, and the low murmuring of drowsy animals was beginning to drift from the barn. The air was still; the earth felt warm under Forest's moccasinned feet. He guessed it would be another hot, sticky day.

  The sound of a woman's voice came from the river, and Forest turned in that direction. As he followed the path, he could make out fragments of an old English folk song.

  . . . hush your mouth, my pretty little bird,

  And tell no tales on me.

  And I'll make thee a cage of beaten gold

  With spokes of ivory . . .

  The hound bitch came running up the slope, followed closely by her mate. They gave a few half-hearted yaps and circled playfully around Forest's ankles. He noticed that the female's belly was rounding with pups. Forest crouched and extended a hand in friendship. After a second's hesitation, the male licked his hand. The female watched but kept a guarded distance.

  . . . with spokes of i-vor-y . . .

  Sarah Turner came up the path through the cedar trees, weighed down by two brimming buckets of water. She caught sight of Forest with the dogs and smiled. "Good morning to you," she called. "I'm glad to see you're an early riser."

  Forest stood and hurried toward her with eager strides. "Lem'me take them buckets. They be too heavy fer ye."

  Sarah's eyes widened in surprise. "And who do you think carries them every morning, sir?"

  "All t' more reason yeh need me." Forest took first one bucket from her hand and then the other. "God's teeth, Mistress Turner. You should have muscles like an ox if you carry these up this hill every morning."

  Sarah laughed. "My muscles, or lack of them are none of your affair, Abe Forest," she admonished gently. "Remember your place here."

  "Yes, ma'am. I will thet," Forest replied. He noticed that her freshly braided hair was damp with little droplets of water that sparkled like twinkling stars. He fell obediently into place behind her, his eyes on the sway of her shapely hips. "My mam always warned me my tongue would get me hung, missus, and thet's a fact. Don't mean no harm by it." She's bathed and washed her hair, he thought. He grinned as he caught sight of the worn handle of a brush in her apron pocket. Even with her patched homespun gown and bare feet, Mistress Turner had an air of dignity about her.

  Damn your eye for a pretty girl, Forest thought to himself. You've come to spy on the woman, not ogle her. Why couldn't she have been fifty and toothless, instead of barely of legal age, with great gray eyes that haunted a man's dreams? She's a married woman and your enemy, he reminded himself as he made the proper answers to Sarah's instructions for the morning's chores. You're here to work your way into her confidence, even into her bed if it takes that—anything, so long as you can find out what you've come to learn.<
br />
  "I need more wood for the fire," Sarah said as they entered the tavern kitchen. The room was heavy with the scent of baking bread and bubbling oatmeal. "We've the six guests from last night and another who arrived just before dawn. The new man wants breakfast before you take him across the river." She shoved a mug of buttermilk and a biscuit into Forest's hand. "Eat this. We'll have no time for a proper meal for ourselves for hours."

  Forest noticed a new quarter-keg on the table. It smelled of ale. If it was full; God alone knew how Sarah had lifted it.

  She bent to stir the oatmeal and then sprinkled a little cinnamon on top. "I'm sorry I lied to you about my husband," she said matter-of-factly.

  "Ma'am?"

  Sarah straightened up, long-handled spoon in hand. "Yesterday—when I told you that Master Turner was away on business . . . "

  "No need to mention it, ma'am. Ye don't know me from a hole in t' ground. Womenfolk can't be too kereful—not in these times." Forest took a deep swallow of the buttermilk. It was cool—she must have stored it in the well, overnight. The biscuit, even a day old, was so light it nearly floated out of his hand.

  "I wouldn't want you to think I was a natural-born liar," she continued. Beads of moisture glistened on her high cheekbones. "Because I'm not."

  Forest tried not to stare. Damned if her lips weren't the color of ripe strawberries. His own mouth went dry as thoughts of tasting those saucy lips danced tantalizingly in the corners of his mind. "No, ma'am," he managed to say. Sarah must have had Joshua when she was little more than a child. This morning, with her face all soft and red-cheeked, she looked barely twenty.

  "If you're done with those vittles, I need the wood," Sarah reminded him, a little sharply. All his staring with that one eye made her uneasy.

  "Yes'm, on mah way."