The Courier of Caswell Hall (17 page)

Then she listened, praying for a response.

To her right she heard the creak of a door, and she swiveled on her feet to see her friend emerge from the family’s dovecote. Her fairylike dress was covered in soot and hay, and her eyes bore the same blank stare of the Negro men.

Sarah tripped and then leaned back against the stone building, gulping great breaths of the smoke-laden air. Lydia rushed toward her. They needed to get her away from here, but Lydia couldn’t force her to move. Not even with the darkness pouring over them.

She led Sarah back toward Mother and the Negro men. She wished she had the perfect words to ease her friend’s distress, to comfort her, but she had none. Only questions.

“What happened?” Lydia asked.

“The British came,” Sarah murmured. “They set it on fire.”

Even though she’d suspected it, Lydia still felt as if someone had struck her. She wished so badly that she had been wrong.

Sarah began to shake.

When Lydia looked up, she saw Elisha’s eyes wide with fear. “Where is Morah?” he demanded.

“She must be near—” Sarah said.

The man next to Elisha interrupted her. “The British took the rest of the slaves with them.”

A horrible noise surged through Elisha’s lips, the guttural sound of despair. When he dropped to his knee, Lydia’s skin turned cold.

What happened to his wife? His son?

In that moment, Elisha wasn’t their family’s Negro. He was her protector, her friend.

“I am so sorry,” she whispered.

Elisha buried his head in his hands.

When Sarah spoke again, her voice cut like ice through the smoke. “What about Thomas?”

“He tried to stop them by the river.” The taller man spoke again. “They shot him.”

Sarah tilted again, and Lydia tried to steady her. She wished there was something she could do to comfort all of them.

“What—” Sarah’s voice cracked. “What will they do with the rest of our servants?”

“I am afraid they’ll sell them, miss,” one of the men said.

Sarah collapsed onto the ground and Lydia sat beside her, wrapping
an arm around her friend. Sarah’s tears poured onto Lydia’s shoulder, and anger pulsed through Lydia. For a moment this morning, everything had seemed normal again. They had been two friends simply talking over tea.

But nothing was normal.

The blunt brutality of this war came crashing around her. There was no safe place for any of them, Negro or gentleman.

“You must come home with—” Lydia stopped before she finished her invitation. What would happen if Major Reed and the others
had
set Sarah’s house on fire? They couldn’t take Sarah home with them, and they certainly could not leave her here.

She looked over at her mother. “We cannot leave her alone.”

Mother eyed the unburned flank buildings around them. “There is no place for us to spend the night here.”

Sarah sat up, and Lydia took her friend’s hand. “Perhaps we can all go back to Williamsburg,” Lydia said. The soldiers might still be patrolling the roads, but Mother could concoct a story for them.

Sarah shook her head. “Elisha cannot drive. He must grieve his loss.”

Lydia looked up at him again, at the devastation etched into his face. If only they knew where the British had taken his family.

Another Negro man ran up to them. “Four more British soldiers are coming from the west.”

Lydia’s heart quickened as Sarah turned to her remaining two men. “Can one of you take us to town?”

The younger man stepped forward. “Aye.”

Mother spoke. “You must walk home, Elisha.”

His nod was inconclusive.

Mother kept talking. “Tell Master Caswell that we will return on the morrow.”

Lydia’s legs trembled as she climbed up into the coach. How could her mother ask Elisha to do anything?

But perhaps Mother needed to take charge of this situation. It was almost as if she couldn’t allow herself to empathize with the loss of a son.

With his cane in one hand and a shaving kit in the other, Nathan moved slowly along the road. While there were times when he needed to stay hidden, often he avoided suspicion by remaining in plain sight. He couldn’t have come up with a better way to escape notice. A crippled man, with a passable British accent, posing as a barber.

Even though British soldiers frequently stopped him, none kept for him long. He charged two pence for a shave. Some paid, some did not, but they always let him on his way.

Months ago, a barber near Fredericksburg had given him a basic lesson on shaving and letting blood. The barber tried to teach him how to pull teeth too, but heaven forbid if someone actually asked him to do so.

He hadn’t expected to see Lydia Caswell. Even though she’d been mostly hidden by the coach, she’d looked even more beautiful than he remembered. She had seen him, and he had seen the surprise on her face.

Ah well, it couldn’t be helped. She would keep his secret, he was sure of it, but suddenly he wished for a more dignified occupation for his disguise—a physician, perhaps, or a shipbuilder. But a barber required only minimal supplies easily obtained by Patriot sympathizers, and all the British soldiers needed barbering services.

Smoke clung to the air as he turned toward the Hammond plantation. Sarah’s men must be burning debris before the next rain. Tonight he would sleep in one of the Hammonds’ flank buildings and then retrieve any return messages in the morning. He already had two messages to deliver to his uncle. Once he checked the dovecote, he would acquire some sort of transport north.

Another carriage rumbled up the lane, and he crept to the edge of the trees to make room for it. A Negro he didn’t recognize drove the horses, and when the driver stopped at the intersection, Nathan saw the profile of Lydia’s face and two other women through the window. Then he saw Lydia’s tears.

Instead of turning toward Caswell Hall, the driver turned back toward town.

Why were they still traveling after dark? And what had happened that made Lydia cry?

With his cane, it would take him another fifteen minutes to walk to the Hammond house, and then he would search for Lydia in town.

A blaze roared upstairs in the Pendells’ guest chamber. From her bed, Sarah watched the lashing and twisting of the flames in the fireplace. Once, she’d sought comfort and warmth in fire, but now all she saw was destruction, the black bones of her home left for dead.

Everything happened so quickly—the terrible stomping of feet as the British drew close to her hiding place. The heat and the ashes. Birds flapping against her in the dovecote before they escaped through the roof.

If only she could have flown away with them.

Morah had been right. Those soldiers probably wouldn’t have respected her role, and no matter what she said, they might have decided to make a spectacle of her. Still, she wished there had been something she could have done to stop them.

Kneeling in the dovecote, struggling for breath, she’d wanted the smoke to take her life. But then it was as if she heard Grayson whispering to her, telling her to fight. So she fought with every breath until she heard Lydia calling her name.

The British had killed Thomas and destroyed all that he’d helped her and her father build. And then they’d stolen away dear Morah and Alden and the others.

She should have given the few Negroes who remained some sort of instruction before she left for Williamsburg, but there had been no strength left within her. Perhaps they could live off the land until Seth returned. Her brother might love the plantation, but she would never go back. Everything she cherished had been devoured by the flames—her treasured books, her mother’s furniture, her father’s papers, her letters to Grayson.

She hated the British for making her hide in the tiny dovecote while they plundered her house and property, hated herself for cowering before those soldiers and her servants.

Never again would she cower.

Her father and brother would be devastated by the loss of their home and Negroes. If Father had been there, he would likely have made her hide, but neither he nor Seth would have cowered. Surely they would have respected Father’s position in their navy.

On the table lay the letter Lydia had given to her from Mrs. Pendell. Seth had asked her to deliver the messages for Washington, but how was she supposed to do that now? The next courier would realize the moment he arrived that this link in their network was broken. How would they deliver the messages? The courier couldn’t call on Mrs. Pendell directly. It would give away everything they’d work so hard to keep secret, and it would jeopardize Mrs. Pendell and her family.

A light tap on the door forced her thoughts away. After the door opened, Lydia moved quietly across the small room and placed a glass bottle and a spoon on the nightstand. Sarah closed her eyes, glad for the company but much too tired to entertain.

Lydia sat on a chair beside the bed and leaned forward. “Are you well?”

Sarah shook her head.

“Of course you are not.” Lydia reached out, but Sarah couldn’t grasp her friend’s hand. How could Lydia continue to support those who had burned her home and killed Thomas?

Sarah’s voice trembled when she spoke. “How can you be on the side of those—of those tyrants?”

Lydia placed her hand on Sarah’s arm. “I do not condone what those men did to your home or servants.”

Sarah could no longer pretend to be loyal. “But destruction is what they want—what the king wants. Destruction of our freedom and our property and our very lives.”

“The rebels have also destroyed things.”

“But they do not burn our homes.”

Lydia took her hand away, folding her arms over her chest. “Perhaps not, but they’ve taken innocent lives.”

Sarah stared at the blaze. How could she forget those dark days after the death of the senior Lord Caswell, the days after Grayson disappeared? “I am sorry, Lydia. My mind is not right.”

Her friend dabbed at her eyes. “I love people who have remained loyal, yet I hate all that the British have destroyed. How am I supposed to choose a side?”

Sarah studied her friend’s tears. Lydia reminded her so much of Grayson. He had pleaded for peace instead of destruction.

Lydia held up a glass tincture. “Mother said the laudanum will help you rest.”

“I do not wish to rest.” Part of her wanted to numb her pain, but another part wasn’t ready to let go of it. The men who burned the plantation, they deserved her hatred. Thomas and the other slaves deserved her grief.

“You need your strength,” Lydia said. “Tomorrow you must leave Williamsburg.”

Sarah’s stomach clenched. She hadn’t begun to think about where she would go next. But what if the British were looking for her? What if they discovered that she hadn’t died in the blaze?

Finally she took Lydia’s offer of medicine and, after her friend left, pulled the covers over her and closed her eyes.

Lydia was right; she must leave as soon as possible. She wouldn’t cower if the enemy found her again, but she had promised her father that she would do everything she could to survive this war.

Perhaps tomorrow she would finally sail away.

Lydia rushed across the grassy plaza in front of the Pendells’ house. The laudanum had coaxed both Mother and Sarah to sleep, but she couldn’t rest. She needed a place to calm the racing in her mind. Some people might find it odd, but the only place in town where she would find some sort of comfort was at her grandfather’s side.

The houses along the plaza were dark, the residents unaware of what had happened three miles from them. What would happen if the British did take Williamsburg? She prayed they wouldn’t burn it as they had Sarah’s home.

Had the British burned the house because Hannah inferred the Hammonds were Patriots? Father had defended Commodore Hammond and his daughter, but Lydia had not joined him to defend her friends—nor had she denied her betrothal to Seth.

A thought came to her, and she shuddered. Would Major Reed retaliate because she had refused him in the kitchen? She had thought her engagement to Seth might deter the major, but instead, it seemed her deception had pushed him to destroy.