As Rhys turned to answer a question from Colonel Lamb, Mae descended the battery toward her sister. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen Coralie with Captain Sinclair. Sometimes in the evenings they’d play cribbage on the common. Card games were popular, though gambling wasn’t allowed.
Coralie turned away from him and faced Mae. “You’ve not come to remind me I should be about my work, have you?”
“Nay, I thought you might introduce me,” Mae replied as Captain Sinclair returned to duty.
“You’re a minute too late,” Coralie replied, hefting her basket to her other hip and walking away.
“Say you’ll come for tea soon,” Mae called after her. They had little time together. She spent more time with Lucy than anyone. Did that nettle Coralie?
“’Tis too hot for tea,” Coralie replied with a wave of her hand, moving toward the sally port. “Perhaps once the weather cools.”
Mae watched her go, the heat causing her to itch as sweat dampened her back and bodice. But at least today she wasn’t nauseous, and mint tea awaited if she was.
She tarried in the shade of the magazine till Rhys joined her. Would he leave again soon on a foray or to transfer the prisoners? The fear that he might walk out those gates and never come back bedeviled her night and day.
“What is it, Mae?” he asked once they were in their own quarters.
“I’m forever missing you. Even when you’re right beside me I’m already anticipating you leaving again, which robs me of the joy of this minute.” She couldn’t put into words how she felt. Strangely empty and a bit lost. Homesick for a place she’d never been—or was it the feeling of safety and security she craved? “But I won’t bemoan your duties. I’m simply ... touchy lately.”
“With good reason.” He took her in his arms so gently she felt more fragile.
She lay her head upon his shoulder, wishing she was more like Alice. Alice, ever outspoken, who never flinched at war talk and even seemed to relish it. Alice had some of Lucy’s mettle.
“You’re the finest wife I could ask for,” Rhys murmured, stroking her hair. “And you’ll be the finest mother too. Remember all this is fleeting. We seem to be walking through fire now, but it has an end. When you feel at a loss, remember the Shenandoah and our home there. One day this fort in the middle of the wilderness will be all but forgotten.”
thirty-nine
Happiness depends more upon the internal frame of a person’s own mind—than on the externals in the world.
George Washington
At daybreak, Rhys and a company of riflemen set out with Claudius Smith and three of his fellow renegades. Smith wore leg irons, the rest bound with rope. The journey took Rhys farther from Fort Montgomery than he wanted, Mae uppermost in his mind every step. He was beginning to rue being away from her. If she became ill or needed him or lost the baby...
They halted briefly midmorning to dole out water and jerked meat. Used to traveling on foot thirty miles or more a day with the army, farther on horseback, Rhys chafed at the delay. The surly prisoners walked surrounded by riflemen both afoot and astride horses as the sun baked the stony path hard as granite. No wind stirred, turning the march suffocating beneath the humid trees. Even the birdsong seemed muted.
Smith, their foremost prisoner, glared at his captors and cursed his irons. Rhys paid him no attention except to note the powder burns beneath his right eye and his unkempt beard. He’d murderedseveral men—all Patriots—since his rampaging began and deserved hanging, but punishment needed to be quick lest he escape like he’d done before.
“What do you think Ol’ Put will do to Smith?” Bohannon asked Rhys, refilling his canteen at a creek.
“General Putnam has little patience for renegades,” Rhys replied as he checked his rifle. “I doubt Smith and his cronies will live to see the sunrise.”
They finally reached King’s Ferry. Heavily guarded by the Americans, it was a strategic point where Continental Army troops, supplies, and communication between New England and the southern colonies—now the thirteen states—continually crossed. Signs of their passage were everywhere. Several thousand men couldn’t move through the wilderness without scarring the land. Trees had been felled to widen the way, underbrush trampled, streams diverted, and makeshift bridges built to ease their passage. The smell of freshly cut timber hung in the humid air.
Rhys surveyed the ferries and flatboats and oarsmen that had hauled an entire army with artillery and horses and wagons over water. The distance from the landing at Stony Point to the landing at Verplanck’s Point was about half a mile wide.
“What did General Clinton say about Verplanck’s Point?” Bohannon asked, tilting his cocked hat further forward.
“He wants a report on the fortifications there.” Rhys trained his spyglass on the eastern shore. “Entrenching tools have been sent from West Point, but I see little from this side in the way of defense.”
They dismounted and led their horses onto the waiting ferry as the incoming tide licked the transport’s edges. Rhys glanced back at the remainder of the riflemen who waited with the prisoners for the next crossing.
“How goes it upriver at the twin forts?” the ferryman asked. “Any sign of Burgoyne and his lobsterbacks?”
Rhys faced the wind. “In the words of General Washington, theenemy keeps us in a state of constant perplexity and conjecture with their extreme inactivity and delay.”
“Crivvens!” The ferryman spat overboard. “Washington certainly can’t be accused of dithering, moving south then ordering Lord Stirling’s division on toward Peekskill.”
“You’ve been busy,” Bohannon jested.
