by Lori Benton
Anna, first to see her, looked with astonishment at the handsome face of Two Hawks’s mother, marked with approaching middle age, then at her slender wrists and hands cupping that protruding belly.
“You’re with child,” she blurted, before a word of greeting passed her lips. “Good Voice…how? I mean—that is to say—” She stammered to a halt, blood mounting in her face as Good Voice’s brows rose.
“You are happy for this?” she asked.
“Yes—just all astonishment.” A child on the way, and her twins nearly twenty! Did Two Hawks know? Of course he knew. He’d eyes. Anna looked past his mother, eager for sight of him coming out to greet her.
The cabin doorway stood empty.
“I am also happy,” Good Voice was saying. “I thought never again to bear a child, but Heavenly Father gives beyond all I could expect.”
Anna opened her mouth to ask about Two Hawks, but Lydia was suddenly there, exclaiming in her turn over Good Voice’s pregnancy. The two fell to talking about its advancement, Lydia’s guess of nearly six months proving accurate.
“Are you come because of William?” Good Voice finally had space to ask. “There is news of my son?”
“Not beyond what Clear Day brought,” Lydia replied.
Despite their lack of news, Good Voice’s face lit. “Two Hawks has seen his brother. Maybe soon I will see my son. You also, now you are come.”
Anna glanced at the people going about their work at nearby cabins—or pretending to while watching their reunion—still expecting to see Two Hawks. It took a moment to realize there were no young men about. Few men at all save those of Clear Day’s generation. Grandfathers. She turned back to Good Voice, unable to hold back asking any longer, but Strikes-The-Water called from over by the horses, capturing Good Voice’s attention. Anna only realized the girl had asked about Two Hawks when Good Voice replied in English, “My son has been gone many days. My husband…him you have just missed. He set out for Oriska, taking news of the council.”
Clear Day stepped away from the horses. “There has been a council?”
Good Voice told them of the sachems and chief warriors who’d gathered at Kanowalohale several days past—an attempt to appeal to the Mohawks and the rest of their brethren for peace. “But there will be no peace. It is known that the British, and Thayendanegea with his warriors, and all those whites who are for the Crown are coming now from Oswego. All the warriors have gone away up to the fort, or to Oriska.”
Lydia had warned her, still the disappointment was crushing.
Clear Day went away with the horses tied in a string. Strikes-The-Water gazed after him, shoulders stiff.
As they gathered their medical kits and what provisions remained and piled them beneath the arbor, the sound of distant shouting arose. Under the arbor they turned, craning to see the cause of the disturbance. Whoever was shouting was doing so in Oneida. Then the shouter came into view—a warrior coming up a main path of the town, his pace swift.
“What is he saying?” Lydia asked.
Anna felt a clutch of alarm as the faces of those the crier passed turned anxious and grim, even before Strikes-The-Water answered in startlingly clear English, “Soldiers surround the Carry fort. Guns fired. Some dead. That he say.”
Without another word, the girl ran to intercept the bringer of news.
27
August 3, 1777
Fort Stanwix
The morning air trapped within the fort’s turf-and-timber walls hung as heavy as a battle’s aftermath. The smell of powder smoke wasn’t the predominant fug assaulting his nose upon rising, still Reginald suffered a brief lurch of displacement, as if he’d slipped backward in time to another August dawn, another fort.
Heledd. He wished for even a moment in his late wife’s presence, to tell her he was sorry. To tell her he had loved her, however imperfectly. Did the dead have such knowledge? Did they remember? Or forgive?
He rose in the oppressive dawn to the torments of the present. There’d been fleas in the straw pallet he’d been provided. He shook out his clothing and searched his person, ridding himself of the pests as best he could, but as he left the barracks where he’d billeted, he imagined his sweating scalp still crawled with them.
Such annoyance paled before his chief disappointment; he’d discovered that Stone Thrower wasn’t at the fort as he’d hoped. A blind hope, as it turned out. Had the warrior been there and seen the approaching British patrol and made his escape, even as Reginald was being chased inside Stanwix’s walls? Was he out in the wilds somewhere scouting with no knowledge of the siege? He’d found no one who could say for certain, and his frustration was mounting. He was trapped, unless he wanted to try his luck getting through the enemy that ringed them. He’d been so certain the journey upriver, unplanned and rash as it was, had been an urgent necessity. In fact, he’d almost dared believe he’d heard the voice of the Almighty again at last…
Even as the thought formed, the distant bark of a rifle had him dropping in a painful crouch—before his brain told him he wasn’t a target. He scanned the ramparts and embrasures, seeking a body tumbling. Whatever enemy marksman had taken a shot at a guard or at a work detail had missed.
Heart-heavy for the boatmen killed or captured in yesterday’s harried dash, Reginald headed toward the smell of cookery. Turning the corner of the barracks, he ran headlong into someone rounding it from the opposite direction.
“Sorry, sir!” said a familiar voice as Reginald bent for his hat, knocked into the dirt at his feet. A hand reached down and gripped his arm, as though he needed steadying.
Shaking off the hand, Reginald straightened and found himself fixed by the startled hazel eyes of the traitor, Sam Reagan.
Who wasn’t a traitor at all—so Reagan hastened to explain in a fervent burst of chatter—but a Patriot spy who’d infiltrated Sir John Johnson’s regiment to gain intelligence about the British plans for war in the north and then secret that intelligence south to Generals Schuyler and Washington. Dumbstruck, Reginald let the lad talk until finally he came to the salient point that lay between them. “And as for William, sir, I—”
The name put iron into Reginald’s bones. He grasped the sleeve of Sam’s coat. “Where is William?”
Surprise, then guilt, rippled over Sam’s face. “More’n likely out there now.” He bent a nod toward the southeast bastion, beyond which St. Leger’s advance force haunted the wood’s edge, sniping at Stanwix’s walls. “Before I left Oswego, I learned Captain Watts’s company—mine and William’s—was to accompany the forward patrol, ahead of St. Leger’s main force.”
Reginald thrust Sam’s arm away. “Before you…you left William? Abandoned him?”
“Not abandoned, sir. I tried to bring him away with me, but he wouldn’t desert.”
William had chosen to stay. It was a worse blow even than the thought of him abandoned among the enemy forces.
“I gave him a choice,” Sam went on. “Let me walk away or turn me in for the spy I’d confessed myself to be. He chose the former, though I think it was a near thing.”
Reginald let the words sink in, sifting them for meaning. A near thing. Were William’s loyalist sentiments less entrenched than Reginald had long feared? Was there still a chance, if Reginald could but get to the lad, he could be persuaded to see reason?
As for Sam Reagan—traitor or no—Reginald couldn’t fathom what passed for reason inside the murky depths of his brain. “It was you led William away. Why do so, why let him enlist, knowing all the while you were never in earnest?”
Sam hesitated, as if to gather words long rehearsed for such a moment as this. “My course was set that night last summer when William found me. He never told me the truth about his birth. Not till months later. But I could judge the state he was in—like he’d taken a blow to the head. I feared letting him go off alone,” Sam went on hastily, when Reginald flinched. “Not in everything have I been false, sir. Not where William is concerned. He was my friend. Sti
ll is, for my part.”
As the words hung between them, Reginald thought, More truly your friend than ever my son, but oh, William, it must seem the whole world has played you false.
He stepped back. “Look you. William had you all these months. He wasn’t alone. For that I’m grateful.”
Sam blinked, clearly taken back. Awkward silence lanced between them before a familiar voice said, “Major…Reagan. I see you’ve found each other.”
Ephraim Lang joined them, one callused, big-jointed hand cradling a bowl of what looked like congealing porridge. “Breakfast.” The captain thrust the bowl at Reginald, who took it, though his appetite had fled.
Lang’s gaze shifted to Sam. “I’d expected to find this one beaten to a pulp should the two of you cross paths. I commend your restraint, Major.”
Sam had the grace to redden. “Thank you, sir,” he said to Reginald. “And not just for now. For everything.”
Bowing briefly, he took leave of them. Reginald watched the lad make his way across the drill ground until Lang’s laconic voice recalled him.
“I’d tell you to save your breath to cool your porridge, Major, but I think it’s bordering on cold.”
Reginald dipped his fingers in and took a bite. Cold and tasteless. He nodded toward the distant rifle cracks outside the fort, which had sporadically followed the first. “You know then…about William?”
“That he’s likely out there with a rifle trained in our general direction? I do. You’ve my prayers on the matter, for what they’re worth to you.”
A pressure bloomed at the base of Reginald’s throat.
Lang gave him a curious glance. “When you caught us up at Herkimer’s Carry, you said you meant to find the Indian—Stone Thrower. And Two Hawks. Neither are here, and as you know we’re likely looking at a decent stretch of time inside these walls. What mean you now to do?”
“What can any of us do?” Reginald replied, but he wasn’t seeking an answer. In that moment he dared to do a thing that terrified him more than being trapped within the walls of another besieged fort. He addressed himself to heaven. Was it You sent me here? Had You a purpose in it? Is there atonement for me to make after all?
There was no reply from the Almighty.
Reginald gave no better answer to Lang’s question, though he had one in mind: before St. Leger’s main forces arrived, before William managed to get himself killed, Reginald had to get free of those walls.
When the sun was high, Colonel Peter Gansevoort assembled the garrison. Still a young man to Reginald’s eyes—not yet thirty—Stanwix’s commanding officer was tall and thick chested, with a voice that carried over the parade ground to the soldiers manning the ramparts, gazes trained westward for the first sign of St. Leger.
The fort was as ready as it could be, given the hasty state of repairs. The garrison itself stood somewhere short of eight hundred, comprising Continentals from the 3rd New York and the 9th Massachusetts, three dozen artillerymen, various Oneida and civilian scouts, and eight women who hadn’t evacuated to German Flatts. Though small arms cartridges were plentiful, artillery ammunition remained in distressingly short supply.
With his back to a barracks wall at the parade’s edge, the straps of musket and shot bag crossing his chest, Reginald listened as Gansevoort made no effort to sweeten the situation. While the fort boasted fourteen artillery pieces, he’d received intelligence of more powerful field pieces among St. Leger’s retinue. “But should our enemy attempt to storm the fort,” Gansevoort said, addressing the assemblage, “we shall see the value of those fourteen guns!”
There followed a general exhortation to the troops standing in ranks before him, their sweating faces lifted—reflecting dread, anticipation, exhaustion—to continue as they had begun, with courage, fortitude, and faith in a delivering Providence…
Now, Reginald thought, while Gansevoort encouraged his troops to make every rifle shot count, every target sure—now was his time to slip away out of the fort. His chances of getting free of every obstacle, of finding Stone Thrower, or Two Hawks, or William, were overwhelmingly slender, but with a final glance around to be sure no one was intent upon him, he took the two strides needed to reach the corner of the barracks, turned it, and made for the sally port. There a guard challenged him, as he knew would be the case.
“No sir.” Thin-faced and flushed, the soldier stood in his path, rifle held crosswise. “I cannot let you pass. Not ’less you’ve permission from the colonel, or one of the officers?” The soldier’s gaze fell to Reginald’s coat, as if anticipating his producing written evidence of such orders.
“I haven’t any, nor do I require it. I’m under no one’s command here.”
The soldier’s gaze shifted to his fellow guards; then he set his narrow jaw. “Begging your pardon but I am, and I’ve orders to let none without—”
“By the grace of God we are going to defend this place!”
Gansevoort’s sudden shout, commanding the troops to attention, captured the guard’s as well. In unison they turned toward the parade. Reginald thought wildly of slipping past and making his escape—surely they wouldn’t shoot him—but Gansevoort’s last exhortation caught him before he could act, resurrecting a similar incitement from the depths of memory. Colonel Monro had shouted such words as the French and their Indians surrounded Fort William Henry, twenty years ago…to the day.
The third of August.
Past and present clashed in a frisson of dread that tightened the sweating scalp beneath his hat, as from the parade a roar of cheers erupted—a roar that faltered prematurely, dying by degrees, until breathless silence overhung the fort.
Reginald’s gut knew its purport before his ears, trained like those of every man within the walls, detected a stir—too faint yet to be called sound—beyond its tensely listening bounds. His gut knew and turned over in dismay before the distant rat-tat-tat of drums swelled on the humid air and rolled across his nerves like approaching thunder.
28
August 3, 1777
Fort Stanwix
Reginald watched from the southwest rampart, Ephraim Lang beside him, two among those lining the embrasures, thrumming with tension, reeking of sweat and fear. Most watched in silence as St. Leger’s forces emerged from the forest to the west and marched toward the fort, drums rattling, bugles blaring, banners fluttering in the breeze sprung up with morning’s passing. British regulars in their scarlet and white. Sir John’s Royal New Yorkers in their green and white. Hessians and Tory rangers in varying shades of green. Ranged alongside the regular forces were the Indians in war paint, bristling with feathers, armed with clubs, spears, bows, tomahawks, and guns—a sight intended to shatter whatever confidence Gansevoort had instilled in the garrison.
After the last of St. Leger’s army emerged into the open, the columns deployed, fanning into lines that swung around as if to encompass the fort. But for all their pageantry, they were few.
“That the lot of ’em?” a voice along the rampart queried.
Ephraim Lang leaned back from the embrasure he and Reginald shared. “See any field pieces? I’ll wager half this brigade’s still inching up Wood Creek—forgotten the mess you lads made of it?”
A rueful laugh. “With these blisters? Still—”
An abrupt cessation of bugles and drums had them back at the embrasures, gaping. Save for the piercing cry of a hawk circling high above the field, stillness had fallen outside the fort.
The blood-pounding silence stretched out long, until with no apparent prompting, a tall warrior in a breechclout took a dozen strides toward the invested fort, raised a hatchet, and with blackened face thrown back unleashed a scream. The rest of the enemy ranks, white and red, loosed their shouts in unison. While the combined roar of hundreds assaulted the fort, Reginald exchanged a look with Lang.
“Twenty years, Major,” the captain said above the clamor. “Had ye thought of it?”
Reginald had, almost continually, and said so.
&
nbsp; Beyond the fort the roar was fading. Officers shouted. Columns reformed. Drums beat a marching cadence. The Indians, many still yipping like wolves, melted into the woods to the south.
There was a siege to plan.
Aware of a rising murmur at his back, Reginald turned to see several of the officers of the 3rd New York talking in earnest with three of the women who had remained, below the rampart where he perched. The women, petticoats hitched, left at a run toward a barracks. An officer hurried off in another direction.
“What’s to do?”
“It’s to do with a flag,” Lang said.
Reginald glanced around the fort’s interior, only now realizing that Stanwix flew no flag. More men were running about. One joined the group below, carrying strips of white cloth. A woman returned, red petticoat and sewing kit in hand.
Reginald descended the rampart and made his way through the press of bodies gathered round a pole laid on the ground. A ring of women hunkered round a large rectangle of cloth taking shape under their stitching fingers, rough cobbled amid the sense of defiance rippling through the garrison. Reginald had never seen this flag’s configuration. Before he’d more than a glimpse, he felt a presence at his side: Lieutenant Colonel Willett, grinning down at the work of the women’s hands. “The white bits were cut from a shirt, the red stripes from her spare petticoat.” He nodded toward the pretty blond stitching down one of those red stripes to the white on either side. “But the blue field in the upper corner…that’s from me. A British artillery coat taken off the field at Peekskill.”
Despite his failure to escape the fort and the increased ranks of the enemy without, as the women stood back from their work, and the flag—red, white, and blue—was hoisted, and huzzahs went up, and one of the guns was discharged in the direction of the British camp, falling short but making its point, Reginald wasn’t insensible to the exhilaration and pride shimmering on the air like heat waves. His heart stirred with it but also with fear. Though he hadn’t spotted him among the British ranks, William was surely on the other side of the fort’s walls. And feeling just as trapped as he?
