Traitor to the Crown (15 page)

Tarleton sent out flankers through the trees to keep rebel scouts or their local allies from discovering his true numbers. Then he formed up the men he had and pushed ahead, hoping Matthews would bring up his reserves before Buford crossed the border into rebel-held territory. With luck, he could bluff Buford and the colonials into surrender.

“There will be bloodshed,” whispered a voice beside him.

Tarleton was startled to see a strange boy in a red coat riding beside him. He went without a cap, and unruly blond hair covered his head. “Who are you? What did you say?”

The boy licked his lips, like a cat at a cream saucer, and smiled.

On sudden impulse, Tarleton trotted ahead of his men. What had he just been thinking? Oh, yes. Likely enough he could bluff Buford and the rebels into surrendering. But if he couldn’t he knew the legion could fight.

Before long Kinlock came galloping back along the trail. Tarleton called the men to a halt.

“What did Buford say?” he asked.

Kinlock sat up straight in his saddle and, in a fair imitation of Buford’s voice, said, “Sir, I reject your proposals. I shall defend myself to the last extremity.”

Tarleton considered this for a moment. “He said
defend myself
?”

Kinlock pushed his tongue in his cheek, thought about it to be sure, then nodded.

So Buford was thinking more about himself than his men. Their will was split. Best to find out their battle plans, see if there was a weak spot. “What did they do after you rode away?”

“I don’t know about after,” Kinlock said. “But before I left, they were already marching north again.”

“Marching?” Tarleton couldn’t believe his ears. What kind of fool would turn his back on an enemy and march when he was about to be attacked?

“Marching,” Kinlock said. “Hightailin’ it for the border. But they’ll have to hoof it pretty quick to reach Virginia before we catch ’em.”

“If they’re retreating, then they aren’t prepared to fight,” Tarleton said aloud. He wanted the men to hear his thoughts, although his mind was already decided. “All right, attend me closely.”

The men pressed forward on their horses until they were all in earshot.

“If we wait for the reserves to come up, these Virginians will still outnumber us. And they may have settled down a bit, and not be quite as scared. It sounds to me like they’re frightened, and it sounds to me like they’re running. So I say we do what the hounds do whenever the fox is running scared, and we run them down.”

All the humor had gone out of the men, and most of the nervousness. Tarleton saw resolve in their eyes, and in that moment he thought, by God, he loved this bloody fighting legion. They were good men.

“We’re going to run them down from behind,” Tarleton repeated. “We’re going to break their line and capture Colonel Buford and Governor Rutledge. If you
capture Rutledge, withdraw with him at once so he doesn’t get hurt. But that’ll take the fight out of them. If they don’t have sense enough to surrender after that, we’ll withdraw and wait for the reserves to join us.”

The men took a moment to check their weapons. Tarleton heard clapping, and he turned and saw a boy in a red coat with a gleeful expression on his face.

“This is going to be so good,” the boy said, grinning.

Tarleton was about to demand to know who the bloody hell he was when Kinlock spoke.

“Food, sir?”

“What?” Tarleton asked. “Oh, yes, of course, give the men permission for a bite to eat if they wish.” He had grown weary of corn pone and hominy, which was what the corn pone was before they baked it. The two formed nearly their entire diet. But he carried several small loaves of pone in his pack, and he broke one in pieces and ate it.

They had the advantage of horses and of Buford’s lack of resolve, and that should make this quick and easy even though they were outnumbered. If it wasn’t quick and easy, they could always pull back.

He signaled his troops into the formation that he wanted and had them move forward at a trot. As they came through the hills, and past the crossroads, he saw faces in the windows of the farms, latching the shutters and hiding from view. The fear was strong. Fear was his ally.

They heard the echo of a drum through the trees, and soon afterward raised sight of Buford’s troops half a mile or so ahead of them. He waited until the rear guard spotted them and all the marching heads were looking back over their shoulders. When the audience was large enough, Tarleton put out false signals to both his flanks as if he were communicating with a much larger force.
Then he sent a single rider in clear view over one of the hilltops to give orders to their imaginary reserves.

Buford’s men took the bait. The cadence of the drum doubled, and the men moved at a quick march instead of turning to fight.

Tarleton pulled out his saber and waved it over his head. “We’ve got them on the bloody run, boys. Ride them down and bring me Rutledge.”

The horses cantered forward as a mass, picking up speed as they went. The road widened out into fields on either side, and the horses spread out around Tarleton in a thundering, ironshod wedge.

As soon as the charge began, Buford called a halt and his men spread a hasty line across the road and into the fields. They had only minutes to react. Tarleton did not slow, but he knew that a couple of rounds into the cavalry at this distance could break the charge. With only a hundred and fifty men instead of seven hundred, that loss of momentum could be fatal.

But Buford didn’t fire. In what was perhaps some mistaken memory of the tactics at Bunker Hill, his voice rose above the field yelling, “Hold, hold!”

At a hundred yards away, Tartleton bent down over the neck of his horse and spurred it to a full gallop. In the last seconds before they crashed into the thin American line, he scanned the ranks for some sign of South Carolina’s rebel governor.

Finally, Buford’s voice cried out, “Fire! God damn you, fire!”

The muskets erupted when Tarleton’s men were ten yards away. Tarleton felt one ball whiz by him, heard others zip over his head. Most men were tossing their weapons aside even as they pulled the triggers, and the volley was wasted.

And then Tarleton smashed through the line, his men
on either side of him. They discharged their pistols at point-blank range and slashed with their sabers. The rebels went down, some under the hooves of the horses and some beneath the sudden impact of lead or steel. But most, thinking they were outnumbered, fell from fear.

Tarleton felt the fear now too. A dread, like the dread they felt on the storm-rattled ships when all the horses were dying. Overpowering dread, a flood that washed away all reason.

The rebels had thrown down their weapons and were surrendering everywhere that Tarleton looked. But still he felt the urge to shoot one, any one of them, just to kill someone, to see the blood flow, to watch it stain the ground and soak in like water for an evil garden.

Buford himself stepped forward, waving a white cloth in his hand. One of his aides held out his musket in surrender. Tarleton sheathed his saber. It was over. The British Legion, outnumbered more than two to one, had defeated the rebels.

Tarleton raised his unfired pistol.

A voice in his head whispered to him to shoot.

Only the voice wasn’t in his head.

It was an angelic-faced boy in a red coat. His eyes were wide, his lips parted hungrily. “Shoot,” he demanded. “Kill.”

Tarleton would not obey that voice, but he could not refuse it either. He lowered the pistol against the back of his own mount’s head and fired.

At the crack of the weapon, the horse reared and then collapsed. Tarleton was thrown to the ground.

“They shot the Colonel!” someone yelled.

And someone else, “They murdered Ban!”

By the time Tarleton had staggered to his feet, a slaughter had commenced. His men, full of fear, driven by the same demonic voice, emptied their weapons into the prisoners and then began hacking at them with their
sabers. They chased from horse back and dismounted to attack. Dozens of rebels were already dead, more wounded. Tarleton saw men cut down from behind as they tried to flee.

The little boy stood with his arms at his sides, the cuffs of his red coat hanging down over his hands. His head was tilted back at the sky, his expression as sated and vacant as a drunkard’s.

Tarleton grabbed him by the lapels and shook him. “What have you done? Make it stop!”

The boy’s eyes had rolled back in his head so that only the whites showed. A red light shimmered in the sheen of his whites, like a fire that danced in the caverns of his skull.

Tarleton flung him aside and ran among the men, grabbing their weapon hands to stay them. But the men tore free of his grip, using his name as their battle cry.

“I’m alive, I’m alive,” Tarleton screamed, running from man to man.

The men, as if jerked suddenly to their senses, staggered to a stop. But it was too late. More than a hundred rebels already lay dead. Another hundred or more crawled wounded among the corpses, crying out for aid. One man rolled over at Tarleton’s feet, with a dozen bloody slashes to his face and arms, begging for mercy as blood gushed from a wound that lay open the bare bone of his jaw.

“Brownfield!” Tarleton bellowed. The surgeon was with the reserves, so Brownfield would have to do. “Where’s the surgeon’s mate? Brownfield!”

The British-born Brownfield answered Tarleton’s call. He was pale as a flag of surrender as he dismounted his horse. He glanced around him, helplessly, and his voice wavered when he spoke. “The carnage …”

“Pull yourself together,” Tarleton snapped angrily. “Save as many as you can. Treat all the wounded alike, ours and theirs.”

They were hollow words. He didn’t see any of his men among the wounded, though he supposed there must be a few. The surgeon nodded uncertainly and knelt by the wounded man at Tarleton’s feet. At the sight of the wounds, his eyes lifted toward the commander in horror.

“Do what you can,” Tarleton said. He walked away to escape the accusation in Brownfield’s gaze. “Kinlock!”

The laconic captain, never excitable, answered Tarleton’s call. His arms were splattered with blood to his elbows, his boots were bloody to his knees, and his saber’s point had snapped off. He seemed as surprised by his appearance as Tarleton was. “Sir? We’re so glad you’re—”

“Where’s Rutledge?” Tarleton demanded. God forbid they killed a governor, even a rebel governor, in this mindless slaughter. He would never be able to justify that to Cornwallis.

“He escaped, sir,” Kinlock said. “The rebels say he went his separate way hours ago.”

Tarleton turned away to hide his fury. All this blood and for nothing! He looked for that smirking boy, that strange boy in the red coat. Tarleton remembered him now. He had been hanging around ever since they burned that town in New York.

The boy saw him coming. He knelt over a dead American, rent by horrible wounds. When he lifted his head, a crimson smear was slashed across his angelic mouth. He sighed like a dog after eating its fill.

“Balfri is coming,” he said. “And I am his herald. This is the blood of his new covenant, which is shed for many.”

Tarleton recoiled. “Oh my God—”

The boy laughed. “If you want to remember me, you can.” He offered a scarlet hand to Tarleton. “Take, drink this blood, in remembrance of me. Take and eat of this body, in remembrance of me.”

“You blasphemous monster!” Rage whirlwinded
through Tarleton. He drew his saber, intending to smash the unholy creature trapped in this boy’s body, and—

“Colonel Tarleton!”

He spun around to answer the voice.

Brownfield was wandering among the wounded with a train of volunteers, treating and aiding any man still alive. When he spied Tarleton, revulsion washed over his face. “Even savages do not commit these kinds of atrocities.”

Tarleton noticed the bloody saber in his hand—he must have slashed someone when they broke the line—and wondered why he had drawn it. He slammed it into its scabbard. There was an explanation for all of this, he was certain.

As if hearing someone else’s voice come out of his mouth, Tarleton said, “My men saw my horse fall, shot out from under me after the rebels had already surrendered.” Yes, that was it. That explained all their actions. “They reacted accordingly. Who could have restrained them?”

Brownfield bent to help another victim.

Somewhere behind Tarleton, a boy was laughing. Tarleton spun around, trying to find him, but no one was there.

The post chaise rattled over French roads in the cold, dismal morning. Proctor shifted in his seat and looked out the window of the enclosed carriage. Another charming village and yet more vineyards. He had never seen so many vineyards as he had in France.

He leaned his head out the window and called up to the coachman, “Are we near Paris yet?”

The coachman pulled down the scarf that protected his face from the cold. “Nous sommes à une heure de moins que la dernière fois que vous m’avez posé cette question, il y a une heure de cela. Vous devez être gentilhomme puisque vous avez les moyens de vous payer une esclave et un carrosse, mais vous avez la patience d’un ivrogne qui attend sa bouteille. Si vous avez plus de questions, peutêtre pourriez-vous les poser à mon cul, parce que mes oreilles sont gelées.”

“I beg your pardon,” Proctor said. “En anglais, s’il vous plaît.”

The coachman looked at him and offered a small smile. “I said, ‘We are very near to Paris.’”

“Ah, good,” Proctor said. He pulled his head back through the window and shifted to the other side of the seat.

“That’s not what he said,” murmured Lydia. She sat in the seat opposite him, so still and silent at times it was almost possible to forget she was there.

“Do I want to know what he said?”

She thought about it for a moment. “No, not really.”

“What did he say?”

Lydia shook her head. “No, you don’t want to know.”

She was dragging it out, trying to distract him, but he was in no mood to play along, so he fell back into silence. He shifted in his seat again. No matter how many times he changed position, he could not stretch out his legs comfortably or ease the aches that resulted from the constant jarring of the carriage. The squeak of the wheels was like an itch in his ears that he could not scratch.