“This way,” his cousin said abruptly, and he turned to see Ben push open the door to a large shed from which the warm, thick smell of smoke and grease floated out, surrounding them.
Inside, the smell was stronger, but the air was warm and William felt his hands tingle in gratitude; his fingers had been half frozen for days. The bodies of deer and sheep and pigs hung from the beams, streaks of fat showing gray and white through the slow drift of smoke from the trench below. Large gaps showed where meat had been taken away—to feed the officers occupying Wick House, he supposed, and wondered how Washington proposed to feed his troops through the winter. From his hasty appraisal of the camp-building in the hollow, there must be nearly ten thousand men here—many more than he’d thought.
“Adam said you’d resigned your commission.” There was a creak and a thud as Ben shut the door. “Is that true?”
“It is.” He eyed his cousin and shifted his weight a little. He didn’t have cause to suppose Ben would try to hit him, but the day was young.
“Why?”
“None of your business,” William replied bluntly. “So Adam’s still speaking to you, is he? Where is he, come to that?”
“In New York, with Clinton.” Ben jerked his head to the left. His face was pale in the gray light.
“Does it occur to you that you could get him in serious trouble, talking to him?—arrested and court-martialed, even bloody hanged? Or does that consideration not weigh against your new … loyalties?” William’s heart was still beating fast from the shock of finding Ben alive, and he was in no mood to mince words.
“How the fuck dare you?” William said, fury rising suddenly out of nowhere. “Never mind being a traitor, you’re a fucking coward! You couldn’t just change your coat and be straight about it—oh, no! You had to pretend to be fucking dead, and kill your father with grief—and what do you think your mother will feel when she hears it?”
Despite the dim light, he could see the blood rush into Ben’s face and his hands clench into fists. Still, Ben kept his voice level.
“Think about it, Willie. Which would my father prefer—that I was dead, or that I was a traitor? That would bloody kill him!”
“Or he’d kill you,” William said brutally. Ben stiffened but didn’t reply.
“So what was it?” William asked. “Rank, General Bleeker? It can’t have been money.”
“I don’t expect you to understand,” Ben said, through his teeth. He took a breath, as though to continue, but then stopped, eyes narrowed. “Or maybe you do. Did you come here to join us?”
“What—become Washington’s bum-licker, like you? No, I fucking didn’t. I came to find Dottie. Imagine my surprise.” He made a contemptuous gesture toward the blue-and-buff uniform.
“Then why resign your commission?” Ben looked him up and down, taking in the rough clothes and grubby linen, the thick boots with the woolen stocking tops turned down over them. “And why the devil are you dressed like that?”
“I repeat—none of your business. It wasn’t political, though,” he added, and wondered briefly why he had.
“Well, it was political for me.” Ben took a deep, deliberate breath and leaned back against the door. “Heard of a man called Paine? Thomas Paine?”
“No.”
“He’s a writer. That is, he was employed by His Majesty’s Customs and Excise, but got sacked and started thinking about politics.”
“As one does when unemployed, I suppose.”
Ben gave him a quelling look.
“I met him in Philadelphia, in a tavern. I spoke with him. Thought he was … interesting. Odd-looking cove, but … intense, I suppose you’d say.” Ben inhaled too deeply and coughed; William could feel the tickle of smoke in his own chest.
“Then, later, when I was taken prisoner at the Brandywine …” He cleared his throat. “I had occasion to read his pamphlet. It’s called Common Sense. And I talked with the officer with whom I boarded and … well, it is common sense, dammit.” He shrugged, then dropped his shoulders and looked defiantly at William. “I became convinced that the Americans were in the right, that’s all, and I couldn’t in conscience fight on the side of tyranny any longer.”
“You pompous twat.” The urge to hit Ben was growing stronger. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t want to go round smelling like a smoked ham, even if you don’t mind.”
This argument, at least, struck some remainder of sense in Ben. They went out, and Ben led the way downhill, but away from the town. They collected a few looks from men carrying lumber toward the camp, but Ben ignored them.
“If you’re a general, won’t people wonder why you haven’t got a flock of aides and toadies round you?” William asked the back of Ben’s neck and was pleased to see it flush, despite the cold. It was perishing out; snow had started to fall in thick, fast flakes that covered the dirty frozen humps of earlier storms.
“That’s why we’re going where no one will see us,” Ben said tersely, and stamped off down a trail of churned, cold-hardened mud, toward a large shed near a frozen creek. It was padlocked, and it took Ben some minutes to open it, both the key and his hands being cold and uncooperative.
“Let me.” William had kept his hands in his pockets, and while chilly, his fingers were still flexible. He took the keys from Ben and nudged him aside.
“What do the Continentals have that’s worth locking up?” he asked, though with no real intent to offend. Ben didn’t answer but pushed the door open, revealing the shadowy long shapes of guns. Cannon, four- and six-pounders, nine of them at a hasty count, and a couple of mortars lurking at the back. The Continental artillery park, apparently. The place smelled of cold metal, damp wood, and the ghosts of black powder.
“The smoke shed was a bit warmer,” Ben observed, turning to face William. “Let’s finish whatever business we have, before we freeze stiff.”
“Agreed.” William’s breath came white, and he was already beginning to long for the company of the dead swine and their fire. “I want Dottie to come with me, back to Savannah. Surely you can see she needs food, warmth … her family?”
Ben snorted, his breath puffing from his nostrils like that of an angry bull.
“Bonne chance,” he said. “Hunter won’t go, because he’s desperately needed here. She won’t leave him. QED.”
In spite of Ben’s obvious annoyance, there was something odd in his voice. Almost a longing, William thought, and the thought sparked the realization that had been slowly growing, unnoticed, in the back of his mind.
“Amaranthus,” he said suddenly, and Ben flinched. He bloody flinched, the lousy poltroon!
“Does she even fucking know you’re not dead?” he asked.
“Yes,” Ben said between his teeth. “It’s on account of her that I— Never bloody mind. I can’t make Dottie go, short of tying her up in a sack and loading her into a wagon. Do you think you—”
“What’s on account of your wife?” Your wife. The words curled up in his stomach like worms, and he closed his hand, feeling rounded heat and slipperiness in his palm. “Do you mean to say you told her what you were going to do, and she—”