Shadowbrook (12 page)

The face of the Half King remained impassive, but he read the decision of the others in their eyes. Tishcohantin the Lenape had convinced them.
Ayi!
Not only would they not fight with Washington, they would most likely take up the hatchet for Onontio, who was not dead after all, however hard he, the mighty Tanaghrisson, had tried to kill him.

The Half King flicked a quick glance at Croghan, the Irishman. He knew it as well. It was plain on his face. Would he tell Washington? Maybe. Maybe not. But it did not matter whether or not the Virginia sachem knew. It was over. The great plan for removing Onontio from the Ohio Country had failed. Tanaghrisson felt a little shiver deep in his belly, a knowing that was coming to lodge in his gut. It would probably kill him, this knowing. But first he and his would suffer more. May the Great Spirit curse all
Cmokmanuk,
and forgive us for ever thinking we could live with them in this place.

“Why do you return alone?” Tanaghrisson’s wife asked. “Where are the soldiers and the others who left with you?”

“hey are not here.”

“I can see that. Do you think something has happened to my eyes?”

“You have a squirrel’s tongue. Click-clack, click-clack and you say nothing. It makes me tired to listen to you. Get everything ready, we are leaving.”

“All of us?” Her husband had brought eighty people here, twelve of them braves, the rest women and children and old people.

“All,” he said.

“A far distance?”

Tanaghrisson shrugged and she knew that meant probably yes.

So. Another journey with cranky children, exhausted elders, no proper cooking fires, and all the other discomforts that went with such treks. At least four of the women with full bellies would have to deliver on the trail, without a proper birthing lodge. Men were stupid, but it was never any different. “Perhaps you will take just the braves,” she urged, “leave the rest of us behind to follow some other time.”

“I said
all.
Can you not understand plain speech?”

Ayi!
There was no hope for it now. “Where are we going?”

He wasn’t sure. Aughwick, Croghan’s trading post, perhaps. Three days’ journey east. Maybe four with the squaws and the children. “When we get there, you will know where we are. Pack.”

Tanaghrisson turned away and looked at the death trap Washington called Fort Necessity. This little thing on the meadow should have told him he’d made a bad bargain as soon as it was built. The notion of a pact with the English to defeat Onontio and make him, Tanaghrisson, the lord of all the war chiefs in the Ohio Country required batde-seasoned allies. Instead he’d associated himself with a few ill-trained soldiers in a stockade with split-log walls just a little taller than the Virginia sachem himself. The space within it was hardly big enough to shelter some weapons and a few tents. A man could walk the whole circle in forty strides.

The runner he’d sent out had brought word a short time before. Five hundred of Onontio’s heavily armed soldiers had left Fort Duquesne. And as he’d feared, a hundred Lenape and Mingo marched with them. If Onontio met the Americans in the forest, Washington and his men would all die swiftly. If the French came here they would place themselves in the hills that surrounded this meadow and easily kill the forts defenders one by one. Tanaghrisson sighed. The sense of disaster was a physical thing. It shivered in his belly now as it had a few days ago back at Gist’s trading post. “Pack,” he said again. “I will tell the others.”

His wife looked at him shrewdly. “You have lost everything you wagered. How did this happen?”

“This Washington is a good-natured boy who will someday be a good man,
but he has no experience.” Tanaghrisson glanced again at the ill-sited fort with its paltry defenses. “Worse, he will not listen to those who have.”

Two days later Washington got word that Tanaghrisson and his followers—including his dozen braves—had left Great Meadows. He sent a messenger to try and get the Half King to return, but didn’t have much hope of success. There were only a couple of Indians with them now, malcontents who preferred to stay rather than leave with their companions, and they were not to be trusted. For all intents and purposes, he and his men were marching on alone. It was hard not to give in to a certain despair. No, he told himself, despair had no place in a heroic life. He was meant for greatness. He had been ordered to rid the Ohio Country of the French and he would do so. But without substantial numbers of Indians to swell his numbers he dare not attack Fort Duquesne. Very well, they would wait for reinforcements from Virginia and Pennsylvania, but not here at Gist’s. Exhausted as they were, he would somehow drive the men another six leagues to the trading post at Red Stone Creek, or Red Stone Fort, as some called it. It was sure to be a better place to take a stand.

Only his determination built the additional six leagues of God-rotting road. And when they got to Red Stone Creek—not a fort after all, just a single fortified building called a blockhouse—it was his will that got the trenches dug to defend their position. He was a madman, compelling the world and everyone in it to do his will, and miraculously perhaps, they obeyed. Two days later everything changed.

“Scout’s returned, sir.” The lieutenant jerked his head back toward the Mingo standing a short distance away examining the preparations for battle that had been made in his absence. He did not look impressed.

“Bring him to me.”

The news was straightforward. Six hundred armed men had left Fort Duquesne—five hundred French infantry and a hundred Indians. The Virginians were outnumbered three to two. “What kind of a force?” Washington demanded. “Do they look as if they’re just exploring?”

“They come to fight.” The Mingo’s gaze kept traveling the perimeter of the encampment, taking in the shallow trenches and the spent men. “Soldiers and braves all with many scalps at their belt. And big guns. Bigger than those.” He gestured toward the swivel guns the Virginians had brought with them at such cost. “Much bigger.”

Washington turned away so neither the officer nor the savage would see his struggle. He’d proved he had the potential for greatness simply by getting this far. But force of will could not deflect grape and chain. It would not turn away cannonballs, or shield men from musket fire. When Washington turned back, the
Mingo was walking away, planning to disappear into the forest most likely, but the lieutenant was still awaiting his orders. “Tell the men to prepare to leave. We are returning to Fort Necessity.”

“Now, sir? The boys are very tired, they—”

“They are alive. I intend they should remain that way. Now, Lieutenant. In fact, sooner.”

Back at Great Meadows Washington assembled his men in the open fields and waited to engage the enemy. When the French arrived they dispersed themselves in the surrounding trees and raked his lines with musket fire. The Virginians retreated to the shallow trenches surrounding Fort Necessity. And then, sweet Christ Jesus, it poured down with rain. Sheets of it. The trenches filled with water and the enfilading fire never let up.

Some ten hours after the engagement began a boy—he was barely fifteen—whom Washington had made a corporal a few days before crawled on his belly through the mud to the trench where the colonel had positioned himself. “The troops, sir. They got into the rum. A good number’s pretty drunk.”

“I can suggest no immediate remedy for inebriation, Corporal. And under the circumstances there’s nothing we can do to point out the error of their ways, but they will be disciplined when this is over” Bloody hard to blame them for wanting liquor to ease the terror, but there would be a few hours respite fairly soon. Washington’s eyes raked the horizon. It was eight o’clock and the dusk was thickening; soon it would be too dark for shooting. And with sunrise, who knew … maybe the rain would stop. Maybe the reinforcements would come.

“Yes, sir. But it’s the bloody rain, sir. The boys’ muskets is soaked; they won’t fire. Not if they ain’t dried and cleaned. And the screw that cleans ’em, sir, we’ve only two of those between all of us.”

“There’s little I can—”

“Monsieur le Colonel Washington!” The voice from the trees thundered over the sodden meadow like the summons of the Archangel Gabriel. “Monsieur le Colonel, can you hear me?”

Bloody hell! If he stood up he’d be a sure target. But glory demanded action. Washington got to his feet. The young corporal grabbed at his sleeve and tried to haul him back down. “No, sir! Don’t! It’s not full dark. They can still see you, sir.”

Washington shook him off. “I am in command of the Virginia Regiment, Corporal. I quite mean for them to see me.” Then he stood as tall as his more than six feet allowed, with both hands cupped to his mouth so they’d be sure to know exactly the direction of the shout. “I am right here, sir! And I can hear you quite plainly.”

“
Eh bien, mon Colonel.
Do you wish perhaps to negotiate?”

Sweet Christ Jesus. Maybe they wouldn’t all die in this Godforsaken mud.

“His name is Captain de Villiers, Colonel Washington. He says he is the brother of the French lieutenant. The one who was—The one who died last month in the glen. Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville.”

“Yes, I remember his name quite well.” The storeroom was the driest place in the stockade, but it leaked like a sieve. And there was only one flickering candle to read by. “This bit here,” Washington thrust the document closer to the Frenchspeaking captain he’d sent to do the negotiating. “What does this mean?”

“Those are the terms, Colonel. We are offered the honors of war. We can leave with our arms if we agree to withdraw from the Ohio Country and pledge not to return within a year. We have to repatriate their prisoners, sir, and leave two officers as hostages at Fort Duquesne. I’ll stay behind, sir. And I’m sure there’s another—”

“Why such generous terms, Captain? Have you any idea?” Blast and damnation. Did this de Villiers know something he did not?

“I can’t rightly say, sir. They look pretty well dug in up there in the trees. They’re all around us, sir. And—’

“I know they’re all around us.” The fusillades had been pouring down on them from every direction for hours. “What about ammunition? Supplies? Perhaps they’re running low.”