“A silver and blue trellis pattern, perhaps, with matching canopy and bed-curtains and coverlet.”
“You’ll make a poor man of me, Mae.” His sleepy smile told her he didn’t mind in the least.
“’Tis nice to dream, is it not?”
“You well know I can deny you nothing when you look at me like that.” He stifled a yawn with his fist. “We rise early. Needs be we sleep.”
She kissed him good night. Daybreak’s reveille would come far too soon. Since his recovery, Private Hawkes often drummed at dawn, but tonight a fifer signaled slumber. Tomorrow she and Lucy would begin making coats, having gotten a new supply of thread.
Soon Rhys’s rhythmic, even breathing told her he slept even as the dark denied her another look at him. Through the open window came the steady chorus of crickets and the distant, hollow hoot of an owl.
She dreamed of befeathered heads and fixed bayonets. A swarm of redcoats and menacing stands of trees. Their branches scraped like talons, tearing at her skin and dress. She lay on the forest floor atop the leaf-molded ground, dirt beneath her nails, and then a sharp tug to her scalp brought her head up, and she saw Coralie—a broken, bloodied Coralie—face down, her hair torn away.
The sharp cry was her own, banishing the dream if not the darkness. It brought Rhys upright as if he were poised to fight.
“Mae, Mae. Easy, my love.” He took her in his arms, his mouth near her ear, one hand caressing her hair. “A bad dream ... mayhap a nightmare.”
“’Twas Coralie. I saw her in the woods—she’d been killed, scalped on her way to meet Lieutenant Gibbs. She lay upon the ground and I couldn’t help her—”
His hand stilled. “You heard about Jane McCrea.”
She buried her head in his bare shoulder. “Caty Kersey told us today.”
“A tragedy—a casualty of war.”
“What do you know about her?”
“She was a pastor’s daughter. From Jersey. Affianced to a British officer.”
Somehow the similarities made it all the more chilling.
“Would you like to go to the farm on the Sabbath?” he said quietly. “Be with your family?”
She did—and she didn’t. “I’ll only go if it’s safe. I won’t endanger myself or you or anyone else.”
Yet even as she said it, she realized nothing was safe or certain here. Survival was ever in mind even within Fort Montgomery’s sturdy walls.
thirty-three
Last Sunday the Rebel army was Mustered at the White plains, when it was reported amongst them that they have 20000, but the Friends to Government say if they be 14000 that is the outside of them. That the Women and Waggoners make up near the half of their Army.
British intelligence report, New York
How good it was to sit around the family table with everything just as it had been before she’d wed and left. Jon presided with a prayer, Joanna served, and the children chattered as Coralie sat beside Mae, Rhys and James opposite.
“Did you fort dwellers bring any news?” Joanna asked as she sat down.
Mae tensed, hoping Jane McCrea wouldn’t be mentioned in front of the children.
“Little to report,” James replied, buttering his bread, “except for General Washington encamping a few miles north of here.”
“At the Clove, yes, in Ramapo Valley. On the other hand, I heard Ticonderoga and Edward have both fallen.” Joanna’s delight turned to dismay. “One hardly knows what to pray for from day to day.”
“All changes hourly,” Jon said. “This war is truly tit for tat.”
“Be on your guard from every direction,” Rhys told them, taking a drink of cider.
James nodded. “So far you’ve had nothing stolen or destroyed?”
