CHAPTER 13

He woke up feeling like the wrath of God had descended on his skull, having sat up and finished half the bottle on top of all his exertions the day before. A clock had chimed three before he had been calm enough to sleep, and he had been roused at five to head down to the boats to oversee the last construction.

While he was standing around trying to look commanding (and awake), Burgess Chiswick joined him, looking a lot fresher than Alan felt. He did, however, bring a large mug of coffee with him, which Alan appreciated.

“Well, this looks promising, I suppose,” Burgess said. “Though I know little about the construction of boats. What are your men doing to those beams?”

“Drilling holes,” Alan said. “We’re ready, except for the keel pieces to add weight and stability. See the boreholes through the existing keels? We’ll bolt these on.”

“With what?”

“Pine dowels, slightly oversized and hammered into the boreholes. Like the bung in a beer barrel. Should hold for long enough to get us over to the eastern shore and round the capes,” Alan said.

“Metal would be better, would it not?” Burgess asked.

“We found some flat angle-iron forged with holes in it for various uses, and some bolts, but nothing long enough to go all the way from side to side. They’d have to be nine or ten inches long.”

“Thought I heard a disturbance upstairs last night. Did the fair Miss Nancy treat you well?” Burgess leered.

“No, she threw me out, along with a shower of glassware and stuff,” Alan admitted ruefully. “’Twas a bad idea after the ambush.”

“Ah, well.”

“Shit,” Feather spat as the dowel he had shaped splintered as he tried to drive it into the first hole in a beam before lifting it up to fit against the keel member. “This ’ere pine’s too light, sir. Even do we get it tamped down wi’out breakin’, I wouldn’t trust ’em in a seaway.”

“What about a musket barrel?” Burgess suggested, kneeling down to look at one of the beams. “There’s hunting guns and those French muskets to use. With a vise and a file, we could cut down some lengths to fit into the holes. And then, if some of those bolts are large enough, we could force-thread them down into the barrel bores. That would hold your angle-iron plates on to spread the load if they flex.”

“An’ iffen the bolts and plates fall off, sir, the musket barrel’d still be snug enough inside ta ’old.” Feather smiled, revealing what few teeth he still possessed.

“Well, this isn’t going to work.” Alan frowned, angry at the delay. “We have to give ’em a try.”

Using a piece of string, Feather measured the extreme width of a beam, knotted it carefully, and headed for the barn and carpenter shop to measure off lengths of musket barrel to file off. Queener left off the work with an auger and went with him. He was back in moments with one of the French muskets, trying it in the boreholes already made. With a piece of chalk, he scribed circles inside the marks already made on the shaped beams to show the size of the bore necessary, and dug into the wooden tool box to find an auger with a smaller bit, and to try various bolts until he found some that could be wound down the barrels.

The musket barrels worked well. They were driven down into the holes with mallets until they were flush, and the angle-iron plates were fitted on. Then the bolts were cranked down into the barrels, cutting their own threads in much the same fashion that a weapon was rifled by a worm-borer. After four hours of filing and sawing, drilling, and turning, the barges were ready to be put back on the water. They were now as seaworthy as they could be made without starting from scratch in their construction. Borrowing a few soldiers for muscle power, they shoved them back off the X-shaped bow cradles onto the sand and mud, then hauled them into the still waters of the inlet.

“Hurrah, it floats!” Alan exulted as his crew cheered.

Coe and a small crew scrambled into the nearest barge and got to work to pole her out into deeper water where she would truly be floating, instead of resting with her lowermost quick-work on the mud.

“Try sailing her while you’re out there,” Alan ordered. “There’s a high tide, and enough water in the cove to see how she handles.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Thank you for your timely suggestion, Burgess,” Alan said to the soldier. “For better or worse, now we can do no more. Best start fetching food and whatever down from the barns so we may be ready to sail as soon as it’s dark.”

“I have never heard a better thing in my life,” Burgess said, and trotted back toward the house. Alan turned back to the water and sat on a stump to watch how Coe was doing. The boat had a slight way on her from their last bit of poling as they raised the pair of lug sails. They were cut short but full so as not to overset the boat with too much pressure too high above the deck and her center of gravity. The barge paid off the wind for a while, then began to make her way forward. She heeled over more than Alan liked to see by the light wind in the inlet, but she was sailing. A few more hands to weather should counteract her tendency to heel, he thought, and heavier cargo of provisions and passengers would help.

The boat made a lot of leeway, but as soon as Coe and his men put the leeboards down and they bit into the water, she began to hold her own, no longer sloughing downwind at such an alarming rate.

“Damme if they don’t work,” he told Feather, who was standing by him. “I shall put you and your man in my report when we rejoin the fleet.”

“Queener, sir. Name’s Nat Queener,” the old man stuck in, taking a pause in his tobacco chewing to nod and speak for himself.

“Well, it was handily done and damned clever work,” Alan said.

“Thankee, sir, thankee right kindly.” Queener bobbed, tugging at his forelock, or what was left of it, and Alan was struck once more by how little he had known about most of the men—not Coe or this Queener or Cony, wherever the devil he was at this moment, even after all those months on Desperate. Queener was too old and frail to play pulley-hauley at fores’ls or halyards, or take a strain on a tackle, too spavined by a hard life at sea to go aloft any longer, but he was a good member of the carpenter’s crew and knew two lifetimes’ worth about boats. The Navy was full of such oldsters, and Alan vowed that he would not overlook their talents or their contributions again if given a chance.

Coe tacked the barge about and came back up the inlet at a goodly clip, the once ungainly barge now behaving like a well-found cutter. He bore up to the prevailing winds to try her close-hauled, but there was not enough width to the inlet, or wind, to judge her behavior. The best that could be said was that the boat was tractable. She would not win an impromptu race from anchorage to stores dock, but she could be sailed safely and would perform like a tired dray horse to get them off the Guinea Neck and out to sea, which was all they asked of her.

Coe finally brought her up to the shallows at the mouth of the creek, handed the sails and raised the leeboards, and let her drive onto the mud and sand in the shallows gently with the last of her forward motion. He and his crew waded ashore wearing smiles like landed conquerors.

“Them sodjers is acomin’, Mister Lewrie,” Feather said, directing his attention inland to a file of riflemen bearing the first boxes and small kegs of water, cornmeal travel bread, boiled and jerked meat, and the dried powder and ball car-touches.

“Feather, see to loading the boats and then make sure the hands have their dinner,” Alan instructed. “We plan to leave on the falling tide around half past four or so while there’s still enough water in the inlet to float ’em out easy.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Governour Chiswick was there with the advance party, his face set in what Alan recognized by enforced association as bleak anger. He waved for Alan to join him and stalked a way up the brambled bank of the creek for privacy.

“We have trouble,” Chiswick whispered. “That damned Hayley brat is missing. Little bastard took off sometime in the night. So you know where he headed.”

“Jesus,” Alan said, “how did he get past your guards? I thought you had the neck watched so a mouse couldn’t escape?”

“Keep your voice down, damn you,” Governour warned. “We don’t need to panic your sailors, or my people. And yes, he shouldn’t have been able to get through, but he stole a rifleman’s tunic and the sentries didn’t remark on him strolling right past them. We’d better get out of here, now, before he can bring troops down here from Gloucester Point.”

“We could pole out into the marshes by Big Island, but we’d be naked as dammit until the sun went down. There’s not cover enough out there for a snake. Night is the best time.”

“Now is the best time, Alan,” Governour insisted. “Unless you want to be killed or captured. After yesterday’s ambush, I doubt if anyone is going to offer quarter to us, not if they belong to the same unit as those men we shot down.”

“What time did he go, do you think?” Alan said, thinking.

“We think around five this morning, just before first light,” Governour explained, impatient to even bother. “One of the sentries on the perimeter thinks he saw someone heading off west, but he thought it was one of our men going to relieve himself. And the sentry who lost his tunic was guarding the house. He got off at four, and took an hour with that Sookie, and when he turned out his coat was gone, so it had to be between four and five.”

“Sookie!” Alan gasped. “I’ll bet her mistress put her up to that. They must have planned it.”

“Of course they planned it,” Governour fumed.

“He went on foot?” Alan asked.

“Yes. No horses are missing.”

“It is two hours up the peninsula, the roads are so bad,” Alan speculated. “Say he left at five, so he could not get there before eight in the morning on foot, even if he knew the country. Take an hour to get someone to act and get a party on the roads. If they sent cavalry, they could have gotten here by eleven to start scouting us. Hell, even infantry could have been here by now!”

“Hmm, there is that,” Governour said, puffing out his cheeks as he studied his watch. “’Tis just gone one in the afternoon.”

“There is the possibility he could have come across a snake, or no one believed him,” Alan said.

“No, they’d believe him if he got there. I would.”

“So where are they, then?” Alan asked.

“Cornwallis is supposed to be surrendering this morning, as are Tarleton and Simcoe on this side of the river. Perhaps they are waiting until the formalities are over before gathering up our little band of stragglers. We hid our true numbers from the brat, damn his blood, so they may not think eighteen or twenty survivors are all that important. A stupid reason, I grant you, but stupider things have happened in war.”

“Take this whole damned campaign as a case in point,” Alan said. “But, they wouldn’t be coming to collect survivors, they’d be coming with blood in their eyes, Governour. We killed six of them yesterday, did we not? Why aren’t they here already, howling for revenge?”

“I don’t know,” Governour admitted, a hard thing for him to do. “We’ve seen no boats going downriver, so no one has raised the hue and cry yet. Nothing stirring on those French ships blockading the river to the east. Look, once we get the boats loaded, what are the chances of getting out of here?”

“Just like I said last night. Horrible,” Alan said. “There’s no cover out there in the marshes. Big Island isn’t high enough to hide a small dog. We put our bows outside Monday Creek and those French will blow us out of the water with artillery. With this outflowing tide, we could gain two knots, and the wind is fair enough, but it’s also fair for a frigate to run us down north of the Guinea Neck shoals before we could get ten miles.”

“We should have left last night,” Governour said petulantly.

“In boats that would have capsized without the leeboards and decent keels.” Alan sniffed, wondering just how thick in the skull one had to be to wear a red coat and go for a soldier.

“I grow weary of your attitude, you stubborn jackass,” Governour said. “A couple of years in the navy doesn’t make you a genius at nautical matters.”

“But it beats what you know of boats by a long chalk,” Alan shot right back. “I’m not King Canute, and neither are you, we can’t change things to suit. We cannot get away until dark, we’ve already discussed that. Now, what do we do until then? You tell me, you’re the bloody soldier! But don’t come raw with me.”

Oh, shit, he thought. This brute’s going to kill me for that, see if he doesn’t. But he’ll not blame this on me. God, are we fucked for fair. The Rebels an’ Frogs are going to come down here and knacker us like sheep. What’s the bloody difference, him or them; now or later?

Governour did indeed appear as if murder was on his mind, his face turning purple with anger, and his hands twitching out of control. But after a long minute in which they locked stares and would be damned if either would be the first to look away, Governour spun on his heels and stalked off on his long legs, hands jabbed together in the small of his back, and Alan let out a soft breath of relief that he was still alive.

His relief was short, however, for Governour Chiswick turned just as suddenly and stalked back toward him, and it was all Alan could do to stand his ground without fleeing into the woods.

“You’re a know-it-all Captain Sharp, Lewrie,” Governour said in a rasp, not a sword’s length away from him. “Damn your blood, sir. And damn you for being right. My apologies for rowing at you.”

A hand was extended, from which Alan almost flinched until he realized it didn’t hold a weapon. They shook hands.

“Sorry I lost my temper as well, Governour,” Alan said warmly, his legs almost turning to jelly with surprise.

“Well, until dusk, there’s nothing to do but do what soldiers do best,” Governour said, smiling as much as he could while still grinding his teeth. “Wait. Take positions in the woods by our preparations and hope for the best.”

“Have everything ready for a quick getaway,” Alan added.

“If they come, Alan, we shall have no chance of retreat, and damned little of surrender, either, you know?” Governour softened. “I believe we can prevail, but until we see how many troops come, we won’t know. I wish to God I could have gotten Burgess away, for my family’s sake. The rest of our regiment, what’s left of it, is going into Rebel hands this day. I have to save what I can. They’re my neighbors, my friends, they trust me . . . oh, damme for a weak, puling . . .”

“I have a crew to worry about as well, Governour, men from my own ship,” Alan told him. “They’re depending on me, too.”

“You understand. Good,” Governour said. “Good lad.”

Maybe not as well as you’d like, Alan thought. I’d like to get the hell out of here with a whole skin, and damn the ones who run too slow. But you can’t say that aloud, can you, can’t even think it, but have to go all noble and talk of Duty and the King and Honor and be the last arse-hole into the boat. God help me, but He must know I’m such a canting hypocrite! If you’re dead-serious in what you say, Governour, then you’re a hell of a lot better than I’ll ever be.

They finished loading the boats and drew them out nearly fifty yards off the mouth of the creek, where there was water deep enough to float them. The North Carolina Volunteers filtered off into the woods with their rifles and cartridge pouches to stand guard, and Alan put his own men on watch as well, drilling them once more on loading and firing the Ferguson rifle, just in case. They ate a late dinner of cold boiled meat and dry cornbread, while over by Yorktown, the shattered remnants of a once-proud army marched into captivity with their flags cased, dressed in the last finery the quartermasters had issued, instead of letting it be captured still in the crates. They marched drunk and surly, as though by infusions of rum and hot sneers they could belittle the victors. By battalion and regiments, they tramped through a gauntlet of Rebel and French troops to lay down their colors and honor-draped drums, pile their muskets and accoutrements, and march away naked and helpless. Lord Cornwallis pleaded illness and sent his second-in-command to represent him. That officer surrendered his sword to Washington’s second-in-command, while a British band of fifers played gay music to lessen the shame.

Alan thought of going back up to the house and giving the Hayley sisters some guineas for what they had taken, but after their deception he could not find the generosity in heart to do so, and was sure that if he did go up to the house, he would most likely be tempted to torch the damned place. Had they just sat there, we’d be away with no one hurt by dusk, but they could not leave well enough alone, and that damned imp, he thought furiously, probably thinks he’s a fucking hero!

As the afternoon drew on, he began to feel a lot calmer. There was no sign of the enemy, no movement from any of the ships out in the river to put a landing party ashore or come closer for a peek. He started to think they could get away scot-free after all.

But then, a little after three, an outlying picket who had been watching the ford onto the neck came drifting back from tree to tree to carry word that there was an enemy force on the Gloucester road.

“How many men?” Governour asked his scout as they held a quick conference in the trees at the eastern end of the tobacco fields near the muddy lane.

“’Bout a dozen hoss, Governour,” the thatch-haired private named Hatmaker told him. “Dragoons, some mounted officers. Mebbe forty, fifty foot ahind ’em, all Frenchies, look like. Blue an’ yeller, an bearskin shakoes, dressed putty much like the troopers.”

“Lauzun’s Legion.” Governour nodded. “Odd they sent so few. No one behind them?”

“I waited ’til they wuz past couple minutes afore I cut across country, Governour. Didn’t see nobody else.”

“We may have a chance after all,” Governour smiled wolfishly. “We shall stand and fight. Mark you this, though. We’re going to have to kill every last mother-son of them, or word gets out and we’ll never have a chance to escape. Mollow, take six riflemen with Mister Lewrie to stiffen his defenses up by the creek. Lewrie, you must cover everything north of the road and around the boats and the creek. Burge, you and Knevet take twelve men and guard behind the chevaux-de-frise in the woods a little north of the road and put some snipers along the lane. Don’t expose yourself until they charge right on top of you.”

“Right, Brother,” Burgess said, a trifle breathless.

“I’ll make my demonstration south of the road, and draw them onto me. I’ll hold my ground ’til over-run, but I think I can bleed ’em, and force ’em to seek a flank to turn, on my right, along the road and north of it,” Governour said, drawing in the dirt with the tip of his sword-bayonet. “Burgess, you’ll be my first surprise for them. Lewrie, you’ll be my last.”

“Aye?” he replied, feeling a trifle dubious a surprise.

“Hold your log redan up there until they pass you, and then fall on their flank. Do it from ambush, don’t risk your sailors in the open. They’re not used to our practice. Hold your ground and don’t be drawn unless I send a runner to tell you to advance south toward the road. If you don’t hear from me direct, hold your ground and keep the boats safe.”

“Let ’em get stuck into you and then kick ’em up the arse?” he said through dry lips. “I can do that.”

“Don’t fire too soon, or they get away. And if there are more of them behind this bunch, they may come your way to flank us even wider. Trust Mollow, he’s a veteran at this. If I break, I’ll fall back on you. Wait for us as long as you can, then get your people out of it.”

“Aye, Governour,” Alan agreed.

“In any case, wait no more than ten minutes after we have opened fire, and it should be over one way or another,” Governour concluded.

“The hell with that,” Alan told him, shaky but determined. “We’re in this together. If we fall back on the boats, we’ll just be grand targets splashing through the shallows. Might as well stand or fall on land, dammit to hell.”

“Well said, sailor,” Governour said, taking his hand and giving him a farewell shake. “Now let’s take our positions before they see us.”

Alan did not know what to expect once he got back to his hastily made positions up by the creek. Would the enemy come with drums and fifes like the Rebels that had marched into the parallels facing the Yorktown entrenchments, or would they come filtering through the woods like so many painted savages? He could see no sign of them as yet, and was dying of curiosity. He told his men they would have to stand their ground, just like guarding their bulwarks against boarders, gave them a short pep talk, which he did not much believe even as he said it, and knelt down by Mollow and another rifleman to wait out of sight.

About fifteen minutes later, a lone horseman came out of the trees on the far side of the tobacco fields on the road, about four hundred yards away, a fine figure in horizon blue and yellow on a splendid mount. He sat and studied the ground before him for a long moment, before three other riders cantered up to hold a short conference with him. Even at that distance, Alan could see that two were also Lauzun’s Legion officers in their hussar shakoes, and the third wore blue and white with a tricorne.

The riders stiffened in their saddles and pointed across the brown fields of neglected tobacco plants as Governour’s men stepped out of cover south of Alan’s vantage.

“Are they deranged to expose themselves like that?” Alan asked.

“Dem’stration,” the private next to him said, spitting a dollop of tobacco juice on the rotting log in front of him and wiping his lips. “Same’s bait, they is. Hey, here’s yer Frogs.”

A body of cavalry appeared on the road, cantered past the officers, and formed a single line-abreast on either side of the muddy road, while one officer joined them. A second Legion officer walked his mount over to take position with a company of infantry that appeared behind the cavalry, these men in horizon blue tunics with yellow facings, white breeches and gaiters, and tall bearskin shakoes. They were four abreast as they wheeled south, halted once in the middle of the tobacco field, faced east and formed two ranks facing the North Carolina riflemen. To their flank, the cavalrymen drew their heavy sabers and flourished them in the late afternoon sun with appallingly good precision.

“Heh, Governour’s a puttin’ on a show fer ’em.” The private chuckled.

“Hatmaker, get yer fuckin’ haid down,” Mollow told him.

Governour had twelve men in a single rank, impossible odds even if they were riflemen, perhaps two hundred yards away from the waiting enemy ranks. As Alan watched, they went through a drill that Alan did not think such informal troops knew, while Governour stood to one end and called orders that wafted to his ears.

“Poise firelocks!”

“Like musket men.” Alan understood.

“Half cock firelocks! Handle cartridge!” Governour called, while a corporal beat the time with what seemed a half spontoon. “Prime pans!”

“They’ll think they’re reg’lars,” Mollow snickered. “Fooled more’n a few that way. Stupid bastards.”

“Shut pans! Charge with cartridge!”

The dozen men were pretending at that long range to load from the muzzle with cartridge, though their rifles were already loaded and ready to fire. At the word of command, they seemed to ply rammers, which were really their cleaning rods, and tamp down cartouches, resuming the rammers and coming to attention once more at the command “shoulder firelocks,” ordering arms and affixing bayonets, the long sword-bayonets which should have given the game away. But the foe still stood and watched as though mesmerized.

“Why don’t they just charge them?” Alan whispered.

“Honor,” Mollow spat, as though it was a dirty word.

Only when they had finished their evolutions did the senior Legion officer ride out from his lines to converse with Governour. They saluted each other punctiliously, their words unheard from a distance but obviously couched in tortured and convoluted syntax of two gentlemen expressing the highest respect and admiration for each other, no matter what they really thought of each other. The Frog was removing his shako and bowing from the waist, making a beckoning gesture as though he were granting permission to fire first to Governour, and Governour gave his own back, removing his wide-brimmed campaign hat and sweeping it across his chest, making a gesture to the waiting French troops in turn.

The Frenchman finally spurred his horse about and rode back to his men. He called out once more in a loud voice, and Alan could understand the last offer to surrender peaceably, which Governour spurned.

“Poise firelocks!” Governour called, unshouldering his own piece. “Take aim!”

The French troops at a word of command began to advance slowly, their muskets held out before them with the butts by their thighs and the muzzles up, with the bayonets glinting sharp silver. They were getting into decent musket range, for by firing at one hundred yards one could fire at the moon and achieve just as much good.

“Fire!” Governour shouted, bringing his arm down in an arc.

The rifles cracked, and ten men in the front rank of the French troops were punched backwards into their fellows by the weight of .65 caliber balls. Their own volley came a moment later as they halted and brought their weapons up to fire, but Alan was delighted to see that the Volunteers had knelt down to reload, no longer playing the stiff regular musketeer, and the volley mostly went over their heads.

The cavalry, though, as though spurred into motion by the first noise of battle, lurched forward, their mounts hunkering their hindquarters down and the sabers sweeping off the shoulders to point at the Volunteers, blades held upside down and point slightly down at the charge.

Governour gave the infantry one more volley from a kneeling position, and then faded away back into the pines behind the zigzag fences as the spent powder smoke from his firing formed almost a solid wall through which his men went invisible. But the cavalry was almost upon them, out to one side and swinging in to jump those fences. The cavalrymen whooped and screamed, eager to put sword to the foe and show the dazed infantry who was the better fighter. In a torrent of Gaelic, Polish, German, or French, they came on like a tidal wave.

“Should we . . .” Alan began.

“Nah, Burgess’ll be makin’ his move ’bout now.” Mollow laughed.

“But . . .” The infantry had fired the second rank volley into nothing, and then they came on at the charge themselves, now that they had an enemy on the run, wanting to be in at the kill before the cavalry earned all the honors. The mounted officer with them loped alongside them, waving his sword over his head and urging them on.

“Looky thar!” Hatmaker, the private soldier, called out over the sound of battle. “More o’ the shits.”

“Thort they wuzn’t ta come down hyar ’thout they brung a whole passel of ’em,” Mollow said, pointing out the second company of troops that was emerging on the road, led by the third officer in blue and white with the tricorne hat. “Virginia Militia, looks like.”

They were an outlandish-looking bunch of soldiers, some dressed in purplish long-fringed hunting shirts, some in castoff blue and white tunics over a variety of civilian breeches and waistcoats, some in gray or tan tunics without facings. They formed well enough, though, and came on at a trot, four columns abreast with ten men in each file, jogging forward to the north of the road through the tobacco plants as though they meant to flank the fighting and skirmish through the woods, swinging wide of the cavalry.

The change in sound from the south got Alan’s attention, and he turned his head to see the first cavalrymen spur their horses and soar up and over those fences. The roars of challenge changed to shrill and womanish screams as they came down on the double row of chevaux-de-frise that had been hidden in the shadows. Mounts neighed in pain and terror as they skewered themselves on the sharp wood spikes. Those cavalry that had been balked and were milling about in front of the fence suddenly came under fire from Burgess and his men, and gaudily dressed troopers were spilled from their saddles, their useless sabers spinning in the air.

There was time for Governour to get off a volley as well, directly in the face of the charging infantry, punching their officer off his horse before they faded back into the woods for the first of their lines of rifle pits, bringing the French charge to a sudden halt as half a dozen more of their men were smashed down. They stopped to reload, and the quicker-loading and quicker-firing snipers in the woods knocked down more of them before they could raise their weapons to return fire.

“Should we stand ready for this bunch?” Alan asked as the militia seemed to trot forward on a beeline for their own low dead-fall log ramparts.

“Lie down an’ keep quiet, now, but do ya be ready ta rise up an’ give ’em a volley when I give ya the word,” Corporal Knevet ordered, calm as a man in church.

“Steady, men,” Alan seconded him, crawling along his line of sailors, who clutched their borrowed rifles with white-knuckled hands. “You can get off two volleys to their one if you’re steady. They can’t face that. We’re going to give it to them point-blank and run their ragged arses all the way back to Gloucester Point.”

And I wouldn’t believe me for a second, he thought fearfully.

“On, boys, we got the bastards skinned!” the militia officer was encouraging his panting soldiers. He was off his horse, having left it in the rear, a heavyset, sweating man in a too-small uniform wrapped with a large red sash of command, with a gaudy bullion epaulette on each shoulder like a general, far above his true rank. Alan peered out from a gap between two of the mossy dead-fall logs as they came on, swishing through the weeds and the dried leaves of tobacco, their accoutrements jangling and thumping on their bodies, musket butts knocking against each other as they jogged shoulder to shoulder for comradely support.

“Now?” Alan asked Mollow.

“Not yit, be quiet, young’un,” Mollow cautioned. “They’s swingin’ off ta our left. Let ’em get in real close fuhst.”

“’Ware them logs thar!” someone yelled to their front.

“Shit,” Corporal Knevet groaned, realizing they had been spotted. “Stand to! Take aim . . . fire!”

They stood up from behind their barriers, to find the militia company not thirty yards away, turned slightly oblique to them and stumbling to a halt at the sight of their weapons. The volley was a blow to the heart, right in their astonished faces, a ragged crackling of shots that took the front rank and the nearest column of files down, so close Alan could see the blood fly from the nearest men struck.

“Load!” Alan cried, not knowing where his first shot had gone. His hands seemed to have plans of their own as he cranked the breech of the Ferguson open, flipped up the pan cover, and dug into the pouch at his side for a fresh cartridge to rip open with his teeth.

“Face left!” the officer was screaming, waving a huge straight sword and shoving numb survivors of that fatal volley off to his left to lead out the unharmed files. “Form two ranks!”

Mollow, Knevet, Hatmaker, and the other soldiers got off another volley as they shambled into order, quickly followed by Alan and his men, who were less familiar and comfortable with the rifles. Alan saw some of his sailors grounding their rifles to begin the process of loading from the muzzle, as they had been trained on the Brown Bess muskets aboard the ship, before coming to their senses, or being swatted by a senior hand.

More enemy soldiers were being laid out on the ground, groaning and crying in terror as they were hit.

“Front rank, kneel! Take aim . . . fire!” the militia officer yelled.

They got off a volley, and at that close range it was deadly, no matter that half the militiamen had not even bothered to do more than stick their muzzles in the right direction. Volunteers and sailors shrieked in agony as they were smacked down behind the log barrier, which suddenly seemed to be about knee high instead of waist deep.

“Charge ’em!” the officer screamed.

“Fire when ready!” Alan screamed back, trying to be heard over all the noise. Rifles cracked, his own slamming back into his shoulder, and the white-bearded older man who had been running at him was struck on the breastbone and was slammed backwards as though jerked on a rope to drop to the ground with his heels flying in the air.

“Better fall back ta the boats,” Knevet suggested.

“Once my boys run, there’s no stoppin’ ’em,” Alan shouted right into his face. The enemy charge was coming forward, bayonets pointing for them big as ploughshares and shining wickedly.

The men were fumbling at the loading and firing of their Fergusons, hands trembling like fresh-killed cocks at the sight of the enemy at the charge. If they waited to get off a last volley, they would be all over them, and he was still outnumbered.

“Boarders!” Alan howled, drawing his pair of dragoon pistols and dropping the Ferguson. “Away boarders! Take ’em, Desperates!”

Alan brought up the first pistol in his right hand, aimed, and lit off the charge as his men began to surge forward over the barrier to meet the militiamen. He did not hear the explosion, but a ragged man with a half spontoon leveled like a pike spouted a scarlet bloom below his chin.

Alan dropped the spent pistol and transferred the other to his right hand. He fired, and a soldier in dirty blue and white almost up to the barrier gave a great silent scream, and his waistcoat turned red over one lung.

Then Alan was over the barrier himself, cutlass in his right hand and one of his own pistols in his left. A bayonet lunged for him, and he nicked his blade into the wood of the fore-stock, shoving it out of the way, then slashed back to his right, inside the soldier’s guard. He sank his cutlass into flesh and bone on the man’s right arm, knocking him down to the dust and the weeds, chopped downward again and laid his opponent’s face open. Another man was close, and Alan brought up his pistol and fired. There was a soft pop, but that man’s face writhed in terror and he dropped away, clutching at his stomach and dropping the musket that had been near to taking Alan in the chest.

There was a lot of screaming going on, but he heard little of it, for he moved in an unreal fog, a swirling, shifting kaleidoscope of colors through which he waded. Grays and blues and tans, flesh and blood, dark wood and bright metal. He discharged his last pistol somewhere along the way and had no idea where the ball went, found his dirk in one hand and the cutlass in the other as he slipped in under someone’s guard and took the man in the abdomen. He was in among the trampled and broken dry tobacco plants, slashing about as though he was cutting a path through them to get at the enemy.

He came face to face with the sweaty, obese enemy officer with the glittering epaulettes, his hat gone and his eyes huge with fear and shock. The man brought up that heavy straight sword, big as a Scottish claymore, but Alan smashed it aside as easily as a feather and the man opened his mouth to scream before he turned to flee, dropping his sword in fright.

Alan seemed to float forward like some vengeful Greek god masquerading as a man in the Iliad under the walls of Troy; he brought down that heavy cutlass blade and cut the officer’s back open, tumbling him into the dirt and mud of the field between the tobacco rows, brought it down again and almost severed the head from the shoulders, hacked on the body until he began to hear things beside the ringing in his ears.

“Load up!” someone was ordering. “Load ’an face the road!”

Mollow was at his side, fending off his bloody cutlass with his rifle stock as Alan thought him another foe to deal with. “Hold on, thar, boy! Git yerself a rifle, an’ we’re gonna do some hawg-killin’!”

The closest weapons Alan could find were militia muskets, and he did not have the right caliber ball for them. He searched back and forth across the fields until he came across the soldier Hatmaker, who had been shot in the chest and would no longer need his rifle.

“Form ranks, form two ranks!” Knevet was shouting, man-handling stunned sailors and surviving riflemen into some sort of order. There seemed too few to be credited. “Spread out, ten foot apart! Load up an’ stand by ta fire!”

Alan loaded Hatmaker’s rifle, wiping the blood from the breech and stock as he did so. He looked up to see French soldiers from Lauzun’s Legion stumble from the woods south of the road, along with a few men from the militia company who had run off from the fighting and had gotten mixed in with them. Cavalrymen in shakoes, sabers abandoned and bearing short musketoons and dragoon pistols, infantry in bearskin headresses with muskets, a wounded officer with a sword in hand being helped along by his orderly. There seemed too damned few of them to be credited, either. As he watched they turned to fire back into the woods from which they came, then spun about to continue running.

“First rank . . . fire!” Knevet called, and six or seven rifles made a harsh sound, spewing out a thick cloud of powder. “Reload! Second rank . . . fire!”

This time, Alan aimed and fired, his hands so weak that he could have just as easily hit either the ground at his feet or the bay beyond. A third volley sounded from the woods by the zigzag fences as Governour, Burgess, and their survivors came into sight, and they had the French and Rebels caught in an L-shaped killing ground, just about one hundred yards away, too far for accurate musket fire even for steady men, but as Governour had predicted, close enough to do terrible practice with Fergusons. The enemy melted away, spun off their feet to fall like limp rags.

“Kill ’em! Kill ’em all, goddammit!” someone ordered.

“Close ’em!” Knevet said, and the two ragged ranks began to walk forward, angling right to keep up with the fleeing foe as they finally broke and fled. There were not a dozen left on their feet, then eight; another volley and there were three, a few scattered shots and there were none left standing, only the writhing wounded crying out for quarter as the soldiers walked among them with their bayonet blades prodding at the dead.

Wanting no part of such a gruesome activity, Alan sank to his knees and concentrated on drawing breath into his lungs. He felt as though he had run a mile, and every limb of his body ached as though he had carried something heavy as he had done so.

“Ya hurt?” Mollow asked him, kneeling down by him.

“No, I don’t think so,” Alan panted. “You?”

“Cut ’r two, nothin’ much.” Mollow grimaced. He swung his canteen around from his hip and took a swallow, then offered it to Alan, who half drained it before handing it back reluctantly.

“Bastards worn’t ready fer this kinda fightin’,” Mollow commented. “Bet them Lauzun boys thort they’d tangled with red Injuns back in them woods. Them Virginia Militia put up a good fight fer a minute thar, though.”

Alan got to his feet and looked back to the north. He could follow the trail of the fighting through the tobacco fields where plants had been knocked flat by struggling, falling men, like a swath left by a reaper. And the swath was littered with bodies all the way back to the log barrier, bodies spilled on the ground like bundles of clothing empty of the men who had worn them, looking sunk into the ground in ungainly postures, a few squirming back and forth in pain still.

“God Almighty in Heaven,” Alan muttered in shock.

“Purty bad, wuhst iver I seen, an’ I seen me some fightin’,” Mollow went on as they walked stiff legged back toward the north. “You an’ yer Navy boys stand killin’ better’n most, I’ll ’low ya that. Whoo, all them cutlasses aswangin’ an’ them sailors ayellin’ and stampin’ fit ta bust, like ta curdled my jizzum!”

“Is fighting on land always like this?” Alan gaped in awe.

“Naw, mos’ times hit’s almost civilized.”

There was Hatmaker, curled up like a singed worm, his yellow hair muddied and his eyes staring at a beetle that crawled under his nose. A sailor was next, struck in the belly, flat on his back with his shirt up to reveal the huge purple bruise and bullet hole that he had clutched before he bled to death through the exit wound in his back. Nearer the logs there was Feather, the stubborn quartermaster’s mate, sprawled across the body of a Virginia militiaman, a musket bayonet still in his chest and the musket sagged to the ground like a fallen mast.

And there was old Nat Queener that Coe was trying to help, shot through the body and feebly fluttering his hands over his slashed belly, life draining from him as Alan watched. He knelt down next to him and the old man turned his face to him. “We done good, didn’t we, Mister Lewrie?”

“Aye, we did, Mister Queener,” Alan told him, tears coming to his eyes at the sight of him. He wasn’t long for the world with a wound like that. “Anyone you want to know about you being hurt?”

“Ain’t nobody back home, I outlived ’em all, Mister Lewrie. Mebbe ‘Chips’ an’ a few o’ me mates in Desperate, iffen they made it.”

“I’m so damned sorry, Queener.” Alan shuddered.

“Don’ ya take on so, sir. Hands’ll be lookin’ ta ya. Aw, I’d admire me somethin’ wet afore I go, Coe. Got anythin’?”

Coe lifted up a small leather bottle of rum and Queener gulped at it greedily.

Alan got to his feet, hearing Queener give a groan and the last breath rattling in his throat.

“’E’s gone, sir,” Coe said. “’E were a good shipmate.”

“Aye, he was. How many dead and wounded from our people?”

“Dunno, sir.”

“Find out and give me a list, Coe. You are senior hand, now.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Alan wandered off to pick his way across the field to retrieve his dropped pistols, the dragoon pistols, and to gather up the Ferguson he had discarded at the barrier. He ran across Governour, limping from a sword cut on his leg that was already bound up.

“Hard fight,” Governour said matter-of-factly. “But we got ’em all. No one to tell the tale back up at Gloucester Point, so we should be able to get away. It’s after four. Once we make the worst wounded comfortable, we should think of being on our way.”

“What about the dead?” Alan demanded, suddenly angry that the officer was so callous.

“Have to leave ’em where they lay.” Governour shrugged. “We’ll put the worst hurt up at the house where the Hayleys and their slaves can care for ’em. They’ll send for surgeons. We can’t care for them.”

“Goddamn you!” Alan shouted, whirling on him.

“Would you rather that was us?” Governour said with a sad smile, pointing to the nearest mutilated dead. “Grow up, for God’s sake, Lewrie. Get the names of the dead to leave with the Hayley family. Maybe they’ll put something up over their graves, I don’t know, but that’s all you can do after something like this. You’re a Navy officer, or the nearest thing we have to one right now. Act like one.”

They laid out their own dead with as much dignity as they could. Of the thirty soldiers and officers from the Volunteers, there were eighteen dead or so badly wounded they would have to be left behind. Of the eighteen sailors and petty officers, only nine would be leaving on the boats. Of the French and Rebel militia, there were not twenty men left alive from the nearly hundred who had come to take them.

Alan copied out his list of dead and badly wounded, then went up to the house, where Mrs. Hayley and her sister Nancy waited on the porch by the back terrace, aghast at the carnage, tears flowing down their faces at the horror that had come to their peaceful farm.

“Mrs. Hayley, Miss Ledbetter,” Alan said, doffing his hat to them. “We are leaving soon. I have here a list of the people we left behind in your care, and the names of the dead. I trust in your Christian generosity to tend to them as gently as possible.”

“Yes, yes we shall,” Mrs. Hayley managed, stunned.

“I was going to give you some guineas, to pay for what we had to requisition, but I would admire if you used it instead to pay the surgeon who comes and perhaps to put up a small marker for our dead, along with the militiamen and French who died here today.”

“That is good of you, sir,” Mrs. Hayley whispered. “I . . .”

“This was a pointless, useless battle that no one’ll remember in a year, most like,” Alan went on coldly. “Had we gotten clean away, none of these poor men would have died. It solved nothing, it meant nothing.”

“I’m sorry!” Mrs. Hayley wailed, no longer able to bear his words of reproach, knowing full well that she had given her son her consent to carry word down the Neck, scheming happily to get him away unseen so he could play a hero’s part and she could be a patriot as well, never having seen the cost of patriotism firsthand.

“What happened to Rodney?” Nancy Ledbetter asked, her face ashen.

“I have no idea, nor do I particularly care,” Alan said. “He may be safe up the Neck, or he may lie dead out in the fields or woods. ’Tis all one to me. He brought it on himself if he was hurt or killed.”

“You’re a brutal young man, sir.” Nancy wept, clutching the small bag of coins he offered her along with the paper. “How can you go through life so uncaring about others?”

“Think on this, Mistress Ledbetter,” Alan said. “You and your scheming and spying killed nigh on a hundred men, maybe your own nephew, too. How brutal were you, my dear? Would you have wept a tear on my corpse? I doubt it. You’d have bedded me if you thought there was anything more to gain by it, all to bring this about. How can you live with yourself, I ask you, instead? Good-bye, Mistress Ledbetter.”

He turned to go, but she clutched at his sleeve. “Forgive us!” she pleaded. “We did not know . . .”

“Take it up with God. He’s better at forgiveness than I am.”

So saying, Alan made his way down to the boat landing, stopping to give what cheer he could to the wounded sailors and those soldiers he recognized in one of the slave huts where they had been installed to heal or die, as God willed.

He got down to the boats, where the small party waited to board for the escape across the bay. The tide was running out rapidly now, and the sun was almost gone. The barges twitched at the end of their painters as the inlet emptied with the outrush to the sea. They floated high instead of canting over with their keels in the tidal flats.

“Coe, take charge of the first boat,” he ordered his senior hand. “Corporal Knevet, better get your party aboard with Coe, here.”

“Yes, sir,” Knevet replied, wading out to the boat with the sailors.

Sir, Alan thought. The bastard actually called me “sir”!

There was a sharp pop up the creek, which had everyone diving for their rifles and a spot of cover from which to fire, but after a moment Governour and Burgess came out of the gloomy thickets to join them, the heavy dragoon pistol in Governour’s hand still smoking.

“What was that?” Alan asked.

“Nothing much,” Governour replied. “We ready to depart?”

“Aye. Burgess?”

Burgess wore a bandage about his head and one arm was in a sling, but he shouldered past Alan to splash out into the shallows without one word, tears running down his face.

“Let’s go, then,” Governour said.

• • •

There was no need to pole or row out of the inlet, for the wind was out of the south-east, so once past the mouth of the narrow inlet, with the lug sails set, they could wear up on the wind to beat through the pass at Monday Creek and get out into the bay far above the watching frigates in the mouth of the York. With the leeboards down in deep water, they were making a goodly clip, lost in the first of the night, dark sails and tarred hulls indistinguishable from the almost moonless waters.

“We want to keep a heading east-nor’east, Burgess,” Alan told the soldier, who was seated in his boat. “Keep an eye on the compass for me.”

“Yes, I will,” Burgess snuffled.

“What happened back there?” Alan asked, leaning close.

“God save us, it was George all over again,” Burgess said with a catch in his voice as he tried to mutter too soft to be overheard.

“George? Oh, your younger brother? What was?”

“We caught that Hayley brat,” Burgess told him. “Governour said he owed him a debt of blood, and he shot him in the belly, so he’d take days dying. We left him out there in the brambles, out of sight.”

Alan waited for a sense of shock, but his nerves were about out of the ability to be shocked by much of anything after all he had seen or done. He pondered how he felt about this revelation.

“Oh? Good,” Alan finally said, “serves the little bugger right.”

“God, Alan!” Burgess shuddered. “That makes us no better than the bastard who killed George. What does it matter, anyway? We’ve lost the army, mayhap lost the whole damned war here in the Chesapeake. All we had left was our honor, and now that’s gone, too. What’s a gentleman without his honor?”

“Alive,” Alan told him evenly. “And, if he’s not caught with his breeches down or the weapon in his hand, he is still a gentleman to everyone else. I’d have shot the little shit-sack myself if I’d run across him first. Now you and Governour have these men to look after, and your family down in Wilmington to worry about. Forget it.”

“I’ll never.”

“Hard times’d make a rat eat red onions,” Alan quoted back to him. “You do what you have to. This war has all cost us most of our decency, and it’s not through with us yet. Like our sailing master says, the more you cry, the less you’ll piss. Buck up and swear you’ll never do it again, but it’s done, and it wasn’t your hand done it. Governour’s still your brother. Worry about how he’s dealing with it.”

“You’re trying to make me feel good about it?” Burgess marveled.

“Let me know when you do.” Alan grinned in the dark. “Now keep an eye on that compass. There’s just enough moon to steer by. What’s our heading?”

“Um . . . just a touch north of east.”

Alan looked to the eastern horizon above them and found a star to steer by, swung the tiller slightly until he was on a close reach to the south-east breeze and leaned back, blanking his mind to what Burgess had just told him, blanking his mind to everything except getting across the bay before sunrise.