King's Mountain

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “They say you’ve hanged men, sir? Have you really?”

  Cleveland nodded, recognizing a boy’s natural thirst for adventure. “That I have,” he said. “A good many, in fact. It’s a consequence of war, you know.”

  James shivered. “I don’t reckon I could, sir.”

  “Well, that’s on account of your impulse to kindness. Does you credit, son, but it won’t do in wartime. I recall back in Wilkes, when we were hanging that Tory traitor, William Riddle, a crowd gathered to watch the proceedings. Among their number were two young boys, who had thought that the spectacle might afford them a fine day’s adventure. They soon decided otherwise, though, for it was a sorry sight, and with tears in their eyes, those boys tugged at my coattails, a-begging me to spare the wretch’s life. The fellow had been injured when he resisted capture, and he cut a pitiful figure, standing there with the rope around his neck, sobbing for his life. The tenderhearted lads thought that the prisoner’s distress ought to move me to mercy, but I had seen so many hangings by then that I was unmoved by the sorry spectacle. I scarcely remember when the ritual of hanging aroused any feeling at all within my breast, except the desire to have it over with. Death comes to us all sooner or later, and I judge that there are many worse ways to set out for the Hereafter than dangling at the end of a clean rope.”

  James nodded. “The Indians burn their captives. I reckon that is worse.”

  “A terrible death,” said Cleveland, nodding sagely. “Every now and again you hear of a poor woman who has caught alight when the hem of her gown trailed through hot cinders from the fireplace, so that her dress goes up in flames and she with it. Burning is a terrible lingering death, accompanied by unbearable pain, and I would not wish such a fate upon any sinner in this world. They burned people to death in our mother country in the not-too-distant past, but here in the New World, civilized men do not. They call me cruel for I do not stay my hand at the hanging of a scoundrel, but if his death is warranted, then it must be done, and I can think of few ways as kind as the rope.”

  James considered it. “You could shoot them.”

  Cleveland nodded. “Yes, I suppose you could shoot your prisoner, but most of these wicked wretches would be a waste of good powder and shot, and, besides, there’s the chance of missing a vital organ, and thus prolonging the process, which is cruel to the condemned and distressing to the bystanders. But stand a man up under a sturdy oak with a noose around his neck, and you have him a scant ten minutes away from eternity, with next to no chance that the execution will fail. Not if you know what you’re doing, and we have had enough practice by now to be experts in every particular.”

  Joseph had settled into his blanket to go to sleep, or pretended to, and, although I was listening, I thought I’d stay out of the conversation, so that James could have his own talk with the famous Ben Cleveland.

  “Did you ever show mercy to any of them?” the boy asked, and I could see that he was struggling with the thought of this jolly stout fellow acting the part of a pitiless executioner.

  Cleveland smiled. “Show mercy? Why, I may have done a time or two. I remember once, we hanged a fellow for horse-thievery, while his partner in crime looked on in great distress. When it came to be the second man’s turn for the rope, I told him that I would spare his life if he would cut off his own ears then and there, and leave the area straightaway and never return.”

  After a shocked silence, James managed to say, “And did he?”

  “He did. Hacked off his own ears with my hunting knife, and took off down the road with the blood running down his neck. So you see, I can be a kindly, forgiving fellow if I don’t keep reminding myself of the urgency of the cause we’re fighting for. If we want this Revolution to succeed, we must be willing to set an example by dispatching those who oppose us, serve as a warning for the rest. It is a matter of resolve of purpose—our foes must die so that our cause may live. I reckon I come by it honestly, this practical way of looking at matters, for I am descended from a man who ordered more executions than I can even count in support of his revolution: Oliver Cromwell, who saw the king himself into the Hereafter, and I only wish I could do the same.”

  My boy’s eyes widened, for of course he recognized the name. “You’re descended from the Lord Protector, sir? Are you really?”

  He nodded. “My family—the Clevelands, that is—does not bear the Cromwell surname, for the tale of my ancestral origins is a romantic one, and I take pride in it.” Here he glanced over at me, and said with a rueful grin, “You know, Colonel Sevier, my dear wife, Mary, winces when I speak of my ancestry at social gatherings. She looks no further than the coffers of her wealthy planter father for proof of her own aristocracy. It is not seemly of me, she says, to boast of my forebears when they were born outside of wedlock, but, when one of them ruled a country and his good lady was herself a duchess of the realm, then I say there’s plenty to be proud of without worrying overmuch about the legalities of the matter. Besides, I think that Mary is secretly proud of my noble ancestors’ forebears.”

  “I had not heard of your family history,” I said.

  “It’s in a book. My family origins are recorded in a great slab of a book that a traveling peddler fished out of his pack and sold to me, when he learned that my name was Cleveland. The Life and Entertaining Adventures of Mr. Cleveland, Natural Son of Oliver Cromwell, the tome is called, and it is a daisy of a tale, though it bids fair to run as long as the Bible. The book says that the mistress of King Charles was cast off by him, and that she then took up with his supplanter, Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England. He threw her over as well, I regret to say, and he tried to have her killed to boot, but not before she gave birth to this son, Cromwell’s own. Well, it must be true, mustn’t it? To be written down in a book like it was.”

  James gasped. “And you are descended from the duchess’s baby?”

  “Well, she was the Duchess of Cleveland, so there you are. My ancestor. Bound to be. At any rate the tale in that book suited me down to the ground. I tell you, boy, I couldn’t be happier if they were to tell me that I was descended from the Archangel Gabriel. Oliver Cromwell overthrew the king of England, don’t you see? Defeated his armies, signed his death warrant, saw him beheaded, and then took his place as ruler of the country. Now that’s a sign if I ever saw one. Here we are in the colony of North Carolina at war with the troops of the king, and here am I, Ben Cleveland, fitted by blood and destiny to follow in the footsteps of my illustrious ancestor.”

  With the barest squeak in his voice, James managed to say, “You wouldn’t hang the king, would you, Colonel Cleveland?”

  The big man smiled and shook his head. “Well, perhaps not, son, but I don’t propose to let him hang me, either.”

  VIRGINIA SAL

  “If this is war, I believe I could get used to it,” I said, downing the last of my wine.

  In the major’s tent, we had dined upon confiscated beef and roast corn, and I was thinking that this life was a deal better than the one I had left behind. For a servant girl, the work had been hard and the victuals meager. Here, instead of scrubbing and mopping, and helping cook, and doing everybody’s bidding the livelong day, I had only to do a bit of washing, and sewing, which is no more than a fine lady does, for many’s the night back at the plantation, I had caught a glimpse of the mistress, sitting in her chair up close to the fireplace, plying her needle on silks and linens that gleamed in the firelight.

  Of course, now I was a mistress, too, but of quite another kind than the planter’s lady.

  I don’t say that I loved the major, for I knew myself to be no more to him than his white horse or his china plates—something useful for serving his needs, but otherwise of no account, and easy to replace. Still he didn’t stink, like the cowherds do, nor hit me when he drank, and he was kind to me, when he thought of it. I didn’t mind him, and sometimes I got to thinking I was fond of him, for I knew I’d never have a man like him again, and I resolved to make the
most of my days as almost-a-lady. That would end when this war was over, I reckoned, for then he would be posted somewhere else for some other war, but, in spite of all the killing and the laying waste of people’s farms, I wished this war would go on and on.

  The major was in a jaunty mood tonight. The men had raided a Whig plantation that afternoon, and, while he said he cared nothing for the spoils of war, he pronounced himself cheered by the thought of having deprived an enemy of his goods.

  “I have something for you, Sal,” he told me, when his officers had left us alone in the tent. “One of the men took it from the daughter of the house this afternoon, for he said she was too plain and stout to wear such a thing. He gave it to me, and I suppose it will do for you, my girl, for you are neither stout nor plain.”

  He reached into his pocket and drew out a string of green glass beads that glistened in the lamplight like the jewels of a queen.

  I reckon I liked him better then.

  He fastened the string around my neck, and held up a silver dish so that I could admire my reflection. I squealed with delight at the sight of myself in such finery, for I had never had such a thing before. Then I threw my arms around his neck and declared him the most gallant soldier in all the world.

  A while later, after I had given him his reward for the gift, and we lay there in the lamplight, spent but not ready for sleep, I said, “This war suits me down to the ground. I reckon you’re accustomed to such a life, though, ain’t you?”

  I heard him sigh. “The army has been my home for a long time.”

  “Your family sent you away then?”

  “Oh, I wanted to go,” he said with a hint of laughter in his voice. “A commission in a fine regiment and a war to boot—what more could a boy wish for?”

  I couldn’t imagine, and I said so.

  “Well, for a better war, of course. Back then, the only fighting to be had was the Prussians fighting the French and the Austrians, but that is hardly the stuff of Shakespearean heroics.”

  “Which side did you favor?”

  “Between the Prussians and the French? I don’t know that I cared, but Britain had sided with Prussia and so we were in it. Anyhow, I deemed that conflict better than no war at all, and considerably better than doing lessons at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich, which is where I had spent the last two years, waiting for a chance to live through a battle instead of writing essays about them.”

  “You went to war as a boy?” I suppose some of the farm boys we had in the regiment here were still waiting for their voices to change, but at least they weren’t officers. I wondered what a grown foot soldier would think of being ordered about by a stripling boy.

  He laughed and stroked my hair, which was the same color as his. “Didn’t I hear that question often enough when I first went off to the army, and always from the lasses. ‘Will you go to war then, Pattie?’ Even my sister Betty put that question to me one evening at Pitfour. I was already used to being asked that, for I had heard it often enough on my visits home, usually in the sorrowful tones of my mother or from various young ladies of my acquaintance. ‘Will you go to war then?’ they would ask, their voices hushed, as if the wake for me had already begun.”

  He mocked the accents of the worried young ladies, to show his disdain for that foolish question.

  “And what did you tell them?”

  “Why, I gave them all the same somber answer, to the effect that I was only a low-ranking officer, and that wiser heads than mine would make those decisions, but I hoped that God would give me the fortitude to do my duty, come what may, though of course I would not wish the scourge of war upon the innocent, and so on—what gentle ladies wish to hear, it seems. It satisfied my inquirers at any rate, for they would pat my arm and inform me with great solemnity that I would be remembered in their prayers. It was all I could do to keep from laughing at their theatrics. I thought I should be lucky to see anything besides a regiment of books, and a volley of examination questions. Still, an officer must be gallant as well as brave, so I told them all what they wished to hear.

  “But by God, I hoped there’ll be war! I had need of one.”

  “So you weren’t afraid to go to war then, even as a boy?”

  “My family had chosen the army as my career, and war is the army’s stock in trade. When I was but twelve, my uncle advised my father to purchase an ensigncy for me, and so he did, but when Uncle’s regiment the 15th Foot was posted to Canada with a war in the offing there, they thought better of having a lad of twelve in command of anybody, and so they gave my father back the money he had paid out for my commission, and my military career languished until I should be old enough and sturdy enough to be of some use to the army.

  I thought the officers were wise not to let a boy of twelve have command over anything, just because his parents could afford to buy him a commission, but I told him what he wished to hear as well. “I’m sure you would have made a fine officer, even then, Major.”

  “Well, I never got the chance to prove it. My father sent me off to a college to learn soldiering, and by the time I was fourteen I was ready. Nothing quickens a military career like a war, for it gives a soldier a chance to show his mettle and then creates a few openings within the ranks for advancement. I was ready.”

  “I cannot see you as a soldier,” I said, nudging him in the side, for I could feel his ribs poking up under his pale skin. “Back then you must have been so slight that you barely cast a shadow.”

  He shrugged. “Less of me to make a target then.”

  “But a battle! You might have died.”

  “I was quite accustomed to hearing about battles. There were battles in Scotland the year I was born. Charles Edward Stuart, son of the old Pretender—and not even the eldest son, at that—had raised an army to fight for his father’s claim to the throne.”

  “What throne? Scotland?”

  “Ah, no, Sal. They keep the king in London nowadays.”

  “Did the fellow”—I had forgotten his name, but even I had heard of London—“attack London, then?”

  “Not quite, but he got within striking distance of it, before the British army pushed him back across the Scots border. Then there came a battle that even I would not have wished to be in—a travesty of fighting on Culloden Moor against the army of the Duke of Cumberland.” Playfully, he put his finger on the tip of my nose. “And before you ask, Sal, the Duke of Cumberland was a son of the king.”

  “Which king?”

  “Why, the same one that we have now. His Majesty, King George.”

  “Oh. That king. Strange to think he has been king since before you were born.” Then I remembered what Dr. Johnson had told me, and I made bold to ask him about it, to see if it was true. “Did you really meet the king at his castle?”

  “I was asked to demonstrate my breech-loader for his majesty, so, yes, I went to Windsor and shot at targets to show him how well my invention worked.”

  “Did you shake his hand and sit supper with him?”

  He laughed out loud at my foolishness. “My father is a lawyer, not a prince. In fact, after the Jacobite defeat at Culloden, he defended some of Prince Charles’s supporters in the trials.”

  “Trials? Then I reckon Prince Charles lost.”

  “That he did. My father managed to save his noble Jacobite clients from the rope, though, and when they visited our home in Edinburgh, my brother and I heard their stories. How the prince’s men had been marched all night so that they came to the battle exhausted, and how the quartermaster had left the food behind in Inverness and brought the wrong size shot for the cannon. Swords against muskets. What followed was a slaughter, and when it was over, the men of the Duke of Cumberland had paced the field, prodding the bodies of the Jacobites for signs of life and bayoneting any who moved or groaned.”

  “Just like Major Tarleton then?” We had all heard about the Waxhaws, and I was sorry for the poor rebels who died like that, but it did not make me want to cast my lot with the
m. “Were you sorry your Scotch friends lost their battle?”

  He shook his head. “I suppose we were sorry to hear of such horrors being inflicted upon our fellow Scots, but as good Protestants, we were not sorry the Catholic Highlanders lost, nor were we much surprised. Anyone who would face muskets and bayonets with great unwieldy swords and useless cannons is ultimately past saving, I’d have thought. It cheered me to think that I had joined the side that had fought with the muskets and bayonets.”

  “You could still get killed, for in this war the other side has guns, same as you do.”

  “Just remember which army I’ve joined. Surely we are a match for any fighting force on earth.”

  “Even good armies lose soldiers.”

  “But I am an officer, Sal.” Then his voice took on an odd note, and he said, “Of course, so was General Wolfe.”

  Well, I didn’t know who that was, but he had got out of the mood of talking now, and he turned to me again, kissing me on the neck, and unfastening the glass beads. “We wouldn’t want to break your necklace with our sporting, Sal. You may have it back—after.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  October 2, 1780

  We had hoped that the storm would pass during the night, but when the light thickened at daybreak there was only an unbroken sea of clouds in a clabbered sky, and the rain was still falling like pellets of lead from a shot tower. My brother Robert, who had bedded down near us the night before, crawled out of his damp bedroll and peered up at the sky. “Well, the storm didn’t pass. Do you think we’ll move out in this weather, anyhow, Jack?”

  I shook my head. “I doubt it, but I won’t know for sure until I talk to the others. My head must be waterlogged—I can’t even remember offhand whose day it is to be in command. You keep an eye on things here while I hunt them up.”