“Do you have an alternative?”
“We could hide in the swamp. Some of the wounded live nearby. I could deliver them home at night. Then they can rejoin us once they’ve recovered.”
Marion frowned as he considered. “Very well. We cannot fight the British with dead soldiers. Take care of your men.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I expect you to be more than a nursemaid, Captain,” Marion continued. “Your objective will be to sever the British lines of supply and communication between Charles Town and General Cornwallis in the west. Burn the bridges and the ferryboats. And lose your uniforms.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Use Snow’s Island as your base,” Marion referred to a river island in the midst of the nearby swamp. “I hope to return in a few weeks. Until I do, South Carolina is in your hands.”
“I understand.” Matthias swallowed hard at the lump in his throat. He and his men would be the only resistance left in the area. And they were a sorry lot.
“Good luck to you, Captain.” Marion bowed his head, then strode from the room.
The Scotsman handed the knife to Matthias. “I believe ye dropped yer wee blade. I wiped it clean.”
“Thank you.” Matthias wedged the knife under his belt. “Why did you come east? You had to know you were going further into enemy territory.”
“I had my reasons.” The major examined Matt carefully. “I havena met many a man as strapping and fearless as you. I have two daughters. Ye may be just the man for them.”
Matthias groaned. Hadn’t he endured enough matchmaking schemes from his mother? “I have no intention of marrying, sir.”
The Scotsman snorted. “As if ye were good enough for either of them. My lassies are the reason I came this way. I need to know they’re safe. The last I heard they fled Charles Town and were living in a cabin off the Pee Dee River.”
“You wish me to provide them with protection?”
“Och, just try it, laddie. My daughters will roast you over an open fire. All I ask is that ye tell me they’re safe. Send a message to me, Jamie Munro.”
“And your daughters?”
“Virginia Stanton and Caroline Munro.”
“I’ll take care of the matter, sir.”
“Aye, I believe ye will.” With a smile, Major Munro strode from the room.
Matthias shrugged his uninjured shoulder. He’d faced the enemy in battle for four years and survived. How difficult could a pair of females be?
Blackened timbers lay strewn across the ground. The house had been small. Only the stone fireplace remained standing as the sole testament to a family’s former hopes and dreams.
Matthias tied his horse to the nearest surviving tree, then picked his way across the ruins.
“There’s nothing left worth stealing.” A young man stepped from the woods, leveling a musket at Matthias.
“I’m not a thief.” Matthias wiped the soot from his hands, leaving black streaks on his buff-colored breeches. In his new role as partisan leader, he now dressed to blend into the surroundings. “Is this your home?”
“Aye, what’s left of it.” The man lowered his weapon. His wife emerged from the woods with two young children clinging to her skirt.
“I’ve been traveling down the Pee Dee,” Matthias explained. “This is the fourth burnt home I’ve found, but you’re the first people I’ve seen. What happened?”
The man removed his tricorne to wipe sweat from his brow. “The British did it, those accursed devils.”
“When?” After the rescue at Nelson’s Ferry, Matthias had remained in the swamp for a week, taking care of his men. Last night, he and his cousin had traveled to the upper Pee Dee to visit Richard’s parents. Then today, he had ventured downriver in search of the major’s daughters.
“The redcoats were here yesterday,” the man answered. “They started on the coast in Georgetown and worked their way up the Pee Dee, burning everything in sight.”
Matthias grimaced. This place had to be nearly seventy miles from Georgetown. Seventy miles of burnt homes.
The man sighed. “They said we deserved it for helping the partisans free some prisoners at Nelson’s Ferry, but I had no part in it.”
Matthias flinched as if he’d been hit with the blunt end of an axe. It was his rescue that had caused this? His heart squeezed at the sight of the children, wide-eyed and silent, their faces smudged with soot. On their cheeks, little trails of cleaner skin had been left behind by their tears.
He reached into his shoulder bag and removed the loaf of bread his aunt had given him. “ ’Tis not much, but it is all I have with me.”
“Thank you, good sir.” The wife accepted the loaf.
“No thanks are necessary, I assure you.” Matthias swallowed a knot of guilt. “If you travel upstream another twenty miles, you’ll reach my uncle, the Reverend Nathaniel Thomas. He’ll be able to assist you better than I.”
The man nodded. “Thank you.”
“I’m searching for two women who live along this river. Perhaps you know them? Virginia Stanton and Caroline Munro?”
“Aye.” The man accepted a piece of bread from his wife. “But we haven’t seen them since the redcoats came through.”
The woman passed out pieces of bread to her children. “Poor Virginia is expecting in about a month. ’Twould be her third.”
They have children? Matthias loosened his neck cloth. The major had neglected to tell him that small detail. “Their father, Major Munro, asked me to locate them.”
“They live about five miles south of here.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears. “That is, they did.” She turned away as if to escape the bleak possibility that remained unspoken.
The two women and their children could be dead.
CHAPTER TWO
Monday, September 4, 1780
The drum of horse hooves drew closer.
Caroline exchanged a worried look with her older sister. Virginia touched her swollen belly with a protective gesture and eased to her knees behind the tall thicket of sweet pepperbush.
They were a pitiful bunch, Caroline thought, glancing from Ginny, who was beginning her ninth month of pregnancy, to her young nephew and even younger niece. Their few belongings filled the sacks that straddled an old brown horse.
The thundering noise grew closer. In their hiding place, four-year-old Charlotte huddled beside her mother. Edward sidled closer with a defiant look, as if daring anyone to say he was afraid.
The horse pawed at the spongy, black earth, sensing the vibrations of approaching horsemen. More than one, Caroline could tell. The rumor she had heard last week flitted through her mind. Redcoats had invaded a home, found a pregnant woman, and stabbed her and the unborn child with their bayonets. Then they had written a warning above the bed. Thou shalt not give birth to a rebel.
She glanced at her expectant sister and murmured a silent prayer. Then, in case God was occupied elsewhere, Caroline lowered herself to one knee and lifted the loaded musket to her shoulder.
She eased the tip of the barrel between leafy branches of sweet pepperbush. The strong scent of the spiky white flowers itched her nose. Blast. This would be a bad time to sneeze. The horsemen dashed by in a dusty blur of black, brown, and dirty homespun. Colonials, four of them. Caroline caught her breath and stood.
“No,” Virginia whispered. “They could be British deserters. They could be desperate, even ruthless. We trust no one.”
Caroline refrained from mentioning their own desperate situation. Eventually, they might have to trust someone. “The danger is over for now. We should press on.”
For five days, they had traveled south through the Black Mingo Swamp, winding their way around bogs and hiding from anyone who ventured close. They planned to reach the Black River and follow it westward ’til they located Colonel Sumter’s
army, where their father was stationed.
Caroline walked in front of their group, carrying their one musket. She glanced back to check on the children, who rode. Nine-year-old Edward nodded in the saddle. Seated behind him, Charlotte rested, her arms wrapped around her brother. Poor innocents. Father had been right. The price of freedom would be paid by all, including the children.
Virginia led the horse by the reins. She gave Caroline a tired smile.
Caroline smiled in response, then faced front with a jerk. Dear God, what if her sister went into childbirth? In the middle of a swamp with enemy redcoats all around?
She swallowed hard at the panic rising in her throat. Face the facts, Caroline. You’re the only able-bodied adult in the group. It is up to you to make sure we survive. By her calculations, they were now close to the Black River. If they found passage upriver, they could be reunited with Father in a few days.
“What is that smell?” Virginia asked.
Caroline sniffed. Not again. The air along the Pee Dee had been thick with the smoke of burning homes. Had the British burned along the Black River, too?
“I smell fire,” Edward announced.
“Mama, I need the potty,” Charlotte whispered.
“Do you see a chamber pot around here?” Edward muttered.
“Don’t fret, sweeting,” Virginia told her daughter. “We’ll stop soon.”
Caroline strode around a bend in the path and slowed to a halt. The path widened and sloped down to the Black River. Here the land had been cleared of vegetation, but as the river snaked into the distance, tangled vines hugged its banks. The horse path continued on a parallel course to the river. In front of her, smoke curled into the air from the charred remains of a rowboat. A boat they could have used.
She groaned. How could it get worse than this?
Virginia stopped beside her. “We’ll figure out something.”
“Can I get down now?” Charlotte asked.
Caroline propped the musket against a tree, then lifted her niece off the horse. Virginia led Charlotte behind some bushes.
“Godsookers! Look at that.” Edward slid off the horse and ran down to the water’s edge. “They set it on fire while it was still in the water. I didn’t know that was possible.”
Caroline frowned, gazing at the blackened remains of the ferry that floated on the far side of the river. “Ships burn at sea all the time.” She winced inwardly. Blast! She’d done it again and blurted out something dreadful. Edward’s father, a blockade runner, had been missing at sea since last April.
Luckily, Edward didn’t seem to notice. He had picked up a stick and was prodding at the burnt remains of the rowboat.
“Edward, we are the ablest amongst our group. Your mother and sister are counting on us. We mustn’t let them down.”
He stabbed the boat with his stick. “Fear not, fair maiden. I shall defend us to the death!”
Caroline sighed. She was definitely on her own.
“What do you want here?” a man’s voice shouted.
Caroline spotted a log cabin a short distance away. A man leaned against the door frame, watching them with the bloodshot eyes of a drunkard. The ferryman, she assumed.
“Good sir,” she greeted him with a forced smile. “How are you today?”
“I’m ruined.” The man lifted a jug for a long drink. Wiping his mouth with a grimy shirtsleeve, he stumbled a few steps toward them. “I’ve been put out of business by my own neighbors, the scurvy bastards.”
Edward snickered at the man’s choice of words.
Caroline frowned at her nephew, then tied off the horse so she could join the ferryman close to his cabin. “It was your neighbors who burned your boats?”
“Aye. Now that they’re militia, they think they can do whatever the hell they want. Said they had to burn all the boats to hurt the British.”
“Oh, I’m sorry for your loss.” Caroline suspected it could have been the group of men who had passed them on the horse path. As much as she applauded anyone’s efforts to bedevil the British, the militia had also made matters difficult for them. “We’re attempting to rendezvous with Colonel Sumter. Do you have any other boats?”
“ ’Twill do you no good.” The man upended his jug, discovered it was empty, and tossed it onto the ground. “The armies are gone.”
“Gone?” A chill prickled the skin on her arms. “What do you mean?”
“I mean the armies with Gates and Sumter. The British killed them all.”
Caroline gasped. Papa. She looked at Edward to see if he had heard. No, he had moved to the river’s edge to poke his stick in the mud. Good Lord, what should she say to Ginny? Perhaps nothing for now, until she knew for sure. “Surely some of the men escaped?”
The ferryman scratched his dirty shirt. “I suppose. Shall I feed your horse for you?”
“Ah, yes, thank you.” Caroline’s mind raced as she considered their dilemma. Where should they go? The Munro family home in the foothills of North Carolina was too far away. Virginia would never make it there in her current condition. Was Ginny’s husband, Quincy, still alive? Was their father still alive? What if Jamie Munro was lying in a field somewhere, alone and wounded? How could she ever find him? How could she take care of her family all alone?
The ferryman untied the horse, then scrambled onto the saddle and rode away.
Caroline stood, transfixed with disbelief.
Edward threw his stick at him. “You scurvy bastard!”
“Edward James Stanton!” Virginia marched from the bushes. “I will not tolerate such language.”
“But he stole our horse!” Edward shouted.
Caroline emerged from her state of shock and dashed after the thief. She ran, her heart pounding and filled with dismay as she watched the last of their belongings disappear down the horse path, gone forever. Breathing heavily, she slowed to a stop.
You fool! She had wondered how it could get worse. Now she knew. They had no transportation, no destination, no money, no food. Not even a change of clothes.
She trudged back to where her sister and the children waited. “I’m sorry.”
Virginia nodded and sat beside the dirt path.
“ ’Tis all right, Mama.” Charlotte tugged an object from her apron pocket. “I still have my book from Papa. See?”
Virginia’s eyes glimmered with tears. “Yes, sweeting.”
“What a bufflehead,” Edward muttered.
“Hush,” Caroline warned her nephew. “I want to take a look in the ferryman’s cabin. Will you come with me?”
She and Edward rummaged through the filthy cabin and located several useful items—a knife, a horn of gunpowder, a tinder wheel, a block of cheese, and a sack of figs.
As they feasted on cheese and figs, Caroline attempted to come up with a plan. If they continued west, there was no guarantee they would ever locate Father. She couldn’t even be sure he was alive. But if they went east, they would end up in British-held Charles Town. She stood and brushed the dust from her skirts. “I believe we should travel westward.”
“I agree.” Virginia packed their meager supplies in the empty sack.
Caroline retrieved the musket and led the way up the horse path. The sun began its final descent and still they trudged along. Her hopes of finding decent shelter dwindled with each step. Would they be forced to spend another night sleeping under the trees?
Finally, they reached a clearing. No cabin in sight, only a pier that stretched into the river.
“Godsookers, would you look at that?” Edward pointed.
Caroline’s mouth dropped open. On the opposite bank of the river, a green lawn spread before an enormous white house in the Georgian style.
“Perhaps they will take us in for the night,” Virginia suggested.
“But how do we get there?” asked Edward.
>
“There must be a way.” Caroline ventured onto the pier. A second pier on the other side of the river taunted her. So close and so far away.
“There should be a boat of some kind,” Virginia said. “They obviously cross the river to use this path.”
Caroline scanned the riverbank. “There, I see it!” She pointed downstream to a rowboat partially hidden by cattails. Thank God it was on their side of the river. She strode to the river’s edge to retrieve the boat.
It was stuck in shallow, muddy water. As she waded in, the mud sucked her feet down and filled her shoes. She grimaced at the cool, squishy sensation. With effort, she dragged the boat to the pier. It was a small boat, too small for them all to cross at once.
“May I row?” Charlotte asked when her mother helped her board the boat.
“No,” Virginia replied. “Let your aunt row. And keep your hands inside the boat.”
“Why?”
Edward climbed aboard. “Because an alligator will bite your fingers off!”
Charlotte squealed and rocked the boat.
“Enough, Edward.” Caroline rowed the children across to the opposite pier and ordered them to remain there. Then she returned for her sister.
“Don’t fret,” Caroline told her sister as she rowed. “I shall speak to the owner of this place and procure us lodging for the night.”
“Have a care what you say. They could be Loyalists.”
“I know I tend to say unfortunate things at the wrong time, but I will succeed in this. I promise.” Caroline tied the boat off and helped Virginia climb onto the pier.
She passed the musket and supplies to Edward. “Hide these over there.” She pointed to the nearest grove of loblolly pines. Before leaving the boat, she untied her apron and dipped it into the river so she could clean her face and hands.
Leaving the dirty apron in the boat, she stepped onto the pier. “There. How do I look?”
“Allow me.” Virginia retied the ribbons that gathered Caroline’s red curls behind each ear. “There. You look quite . . . presentable.”
Charlotte gave her a dimpled smile. “Like a princess.”
Having just returned from his task, Edward glowered at his sister. “Don’t be silly. Princesses aren’t covered with mud.”