Jean-Baptiste spoke without taking his eyes off the flames. “She is no longer of the family. No longer of the blood. I disown her.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “At Dolbin’s Inn they told you a carriage had passed, some men, a lady with her maid. You did not wait for more. You did not walk the hundred steps to the small church there, and so discover where your sister is. She is at Tir Alainn. She is Mrs. Michael Fallon.”

  He almost choked on the words. Fallon, who stole the firstborn son of his firstborn son. Fallon, who now reached once more into the Fourrier family. Gabrielle would have married well, perhaps an English nobleman. And she had been stolen.

  He realized his son was speaking. “What, Justin?”

  “But Fallon is in chains, on the Tamar! You arranged it. Word was sent he’d been taken.”

  “Yes. He was taken.” Jean-Baptiste sighed and looked away from the fire for the first time. “Not until two days ago, with your sister already gone, did I learn that Fallon had escaped.” Justin made a strangled noise, but his father continued. “He killed a guard and leaped over the side in the night. The captain assured me Fallon wore heavy chains. He assured me Fallon had drowned. He assured me—Bah! The very night of his escape that Irish devil signed the register at that church you overlooked, and married Gabrielle. God rot his soul. Where are you going? Stop!”

  The whipcrack word halted Justin with his hand on the door. “I’m going to kill Fallon,” he grated. “We’ll be done with him.”

  “No!” Jean-Baptiste’s vice was steel. “What Fallon has done cannot be changed, only avenged. Vengeance will be sweet for waiting, very bitter for haste. If you kill him, this so-called Provincial Congress will hang you.”

  Justin sneered. “Their day is almost finished. Cunningham is besieging Ninety-six with over two thousand men. Your agents among the North Carolina Scots tell us they’ll march any day. And when the British come, we’ll hand them the Carolinas neatly tied with a ribbon.”

  “Will we?” his father asked dryly. “It will take months to bring those Scots to the point of fighting. And as for your brave Cunningham, he and Williamson, the rebel leader, agreed yesterday that neither could gain an advantage. Both of them, both, mind you, are marching away to claim a victory. There will be no ribbon.”

  “And Fallon? An arrogant clod of an Irish servant, who’s had the effrontery to trick my sister, your daughter, into marriage. To smirch our name. To mix his mongrel blood with ours.”

  Jean-Baptiste bared his teeth. “An end will come. An end to this rebellion. An end to the herd ruling itself. An end to Michael Fallon.”

  20

  March of 1776 was a busy month. The British evacuated Boston, and Washington occupied the city. A British invasion of North Carolina under General Clinton was called off when it was discovered that the Scots Highlanders, rallied to the Royal Standard by Flora MacDonald, had been dispersed in fierce fighting at Moore’s Creek Bridge. With them dissolved the Tory support in the state. And in South Carolina a republic was proclaimed. The Provincial Congress became the General Assembly, with John Rutledge as President of the new Republic, and Henry Laurens as Vice-President.

  It amused Michael that they didn’t seem to realize what they’d done. They declared that neither King nor Parliament any longer had authority, but denied that it meant they’d declared independence. Everything for declaring independence except admit that’s what they’d done.

  Others knew what it meant, though. Clinton’s invasion force was diverted south. On the fourth of June thirty transports and a fleet of warships arrived off Dewees Island, north of Charlestown.

  Along the Bay warehouses were going down, being leveled by gangs of slaves. Warehouse owners sweated through their fine lawn shirts, laboring beside the black men with prybar and pickax. No one seeing those Carolina gentlemen, faces dirty, swinging shovels with grim intensity, doubted that the city’s fate had been laid in the scales.

  It was a Monday, this tenth day of June, 1776, the day the Gazette normally published, but its printing presses had been moved into the backcountry. Carriages, loaded with bundles and portmanteaus, accompanied by wagons crammed with furniture and slaves, trundled up the Bay in a steady stream. Every man who could was shipping his household out of town. Michael knew it was well Gabrielle had agreed to remain at Tir Alainn. The city was no place for a woman eight months with child.

  He shook himself. He was due back at Fort Sullivan before nightfall, and even a gentleman-volunteer had to obey the rules. He dodged between a troop of backcountry militia, straggling along with their muskets at all angles, gawking at the buildings, and a party of slaves with ropes and axes, being trained as firefighters. Immediately he had to stop for a file of soldiers, each with a basket of sashweights in his arms.

  “Every window in my house must be propped open.” Christopher Gadsden, resplendent in his well-cut uniform as Colonel of the First Regiment of Foot, indicated the baskets and shook his head. “I doubt if I’ve a single pewter spoon left, either. Musket balls must come from somewhere, but I wish it wasn’t my dining room.”

  “Are they sending colonels in from Fort Johnson now to pick up their lead?” Michael gestured at the sashweights.

  “No,” relied Gadsden with a laugh. “I came to town to confer with General Lee.” There was a touch of something in his voice that brought Michael up short.

  “You think well of Charles Lee?”

  Gadsden frowned at the edge on Michael’s words. “He’s the third-ranking general in the army, after Washington. He held a commission in the British Army, served in the Seven Years War. Some think we’d be better off if he was in command overall, instead of a surveyor who was never more than a militia colonel. You’re a veteran of that war yourself. With your military experience, I’d think you could see how lucky we are to have him.”

  Michael hesitated. “Tearing our warehouses down to provide a field of fire for artillery is smart. I hate to think what would’ve happened if they’d run past the forts a few days back, instead of waiting so long to get over the bar. And Lee is right about Fort Sullivan. Colonel Moultrie should build a traverse at the rear of the fort, where the wall’s only four feet high.”

  “But you still have reservations about Lee?”

  “Yes. A general must understand two things. One is strategy; the other’s tactics.”

  “I’ve read both Bland and Pickering,” Gadsden said stiffly.

  “Well, Lee says Moore’s Creek Bridge wasn’t important because it was all colonists, all Americans on both sides. But if those loyalist Scots had managed to fight their way across the river, they’d have grown from two thousand to twenty thousand. The British’d have a secure base for their operations on the North Carolina coast.”

  Gadsden hesitated. “That’s opinion.”

  “Is it opinion that he took half the powder from the Fort Sullivan magazine, and little enough there to begin with? Is it opinion he wanted to build a mile-long bridge from Haddrell’s Point to Sullivan’s Island, with no mention of how to get labor or materials, or how to keep the British from knocking it down with one broadside when they wanted?”

  “But—”

  “And what of that attack he ordered last week against the British on Long Island? We’d have had to cross three to five miles of marsh in mud up to our armpits. What’s the matter?”

  Gadsden grimaced. “This morning, Lee ordered Moultrie to cross Breach Inlet and attack Long Island. But it was called off. The whole British army’s ashore there, now, under a pair of generals named Clinton and Cornwallis. Lee wouldn’t send one regiment and a few militia companies against an entire army.”

  They halted at the State House, now Lee’s headquarters.

  “The problem’s still the same,” Michael said.

  “No,” Gadsden said stubbornly. “Lee may make errors, but he’s a brilliant officer. No, Michael, I’ll not hear another word against him.” At the top of the stairs, with the door open, he stopped. “Mark my words,” he called down. “We’ll win this battle because of Charles Lee.”

  “Or in spite of him,” Michael shouted, but the door was already swinging to.

  Michael started toward his own house wishing he’d kept his peace. The worst thing Lee had done was divide Carolinians. And on the eve of battle.

  He was halfway down his veranda before he saw the carriage at the stables. It was his, from Tir Alainn. He flung open the front door.

  “Where the hell is everybody?” he shouted. “What’s that carriage doing here? Is it Gabrielle? The baby? Jonas! Tam! Cleo! Damn it, where are you?”

  As the butler pounded down the stairs, the door to his study opened. Gabrielle made an awkward curtsey in the doorway. “Does my lord and master shout for me, too?” She smiled.

  With an oath he took her arm and guided her to a chair. “What are you doing here, you fool woman? Not an hour ago I was congratulating myself on your safety. Cleo, run fetch Mrs. Fallon a posset. The rest of you”—four maids had run to his shout—“go back to what you were doing.”

  Laughter burbled out of Gabrielle, and she held out a hand as though pleading. “Oh, please, Michael, not a posset. That’s too great a punishment. You’ve no idea how many of them a pregnant woman must drink. Every woman who visits me has her own recipe, and I must try them all.”

  “This is no joke, Gabrielle.”

  She sighed, and the determination he was coming to know was clear in her face. “I want to have my baby, our baby, close to you,” she said quietly. “I will not be brought to bed without you there.”

  Michael breathed heavily. “There are fifty ships out there, counting transports and all. They’ve an army on Long Island. Suppose a few frigates run past Fort Sullivan to bombard the city? The batteries along the Bay won’t stop the city from being smashed and burned.”

  Her face had drained of color. He cursed inwardly. Damn it, he didn’t mean to scare her. Well, yes, he did, but only enough to make her leave.

  “Look, you, Brielle, I need you safe at Tir Alainn.” She remained firm, and he cast about desperately. Inspiration struck. Distracted, she’d be more easily convinced. He took the plans for the city house from the cabinet behind his desk. “Darling, you’ve never even looked at these, to see what your new house will be like.”

  In a moment he had the plans unrolled on her lap, talking about dadoes and wainscoting. She touched the edge of the roll. It was dusty, old. And he’d had the lot on Queen Street for a long time, too. Why hadn’t he built?

  “Michael, when did you have these drawn up?”

  “Um? Oh, back in sixty-nine. Now, I want to use a good bit of our own oak and cypress, but I’ve bought a shipload of mahogany from Jamaica, and—”

  She let him go on. In ’69 he’d been in love with Elizabeth; this house had been planned with Elizabeth in mind. It was hers. “I don’t like it.”

  Surprise cut Michael short. “What’s wrong with it?” he asked finally. “Whatever it is, I’ll change it.”

  “Everything’s wrong. I want a double-house. Oh, everything. Can’t you just get new plans?”

  She seemed so deadly serious, he thought; it must be the pregnancy. “All right, Brielle.” He crumpled the plans into a ball. “New plans it is. Now—”

  A furious knocking erupted at the door. By the time Michael had gotten to his feet, Charles Holt, another of the Sullivan’s Island volunteers, had pushed by the butler. “We’ve been recalled. They’ve gotten the heavy warships over the bar.”

  Michael didn’t waste a minute. “Have you a boat? Good. Cleo! You and Tam run pack me some clean shirts and smallclothes. No, just put the posset down and go. And soap, mind you. Lots of soap. Gabrielle.” He stopped. She had both hands pressed to her mouth, and stared at him with wide eyes. He knelt beside her and took her hands. “Gabrielle, have the team put to the carriage. Whatever you want to take can follow after, but you must return to Tir Alainn.”

  She stopped him with a shake of her head. “No, Michael. And don’t make it an order, because I won’t obey, and you won’t be here to make me. Please? Besides, the roads are very rough. I’ve already ridden them once. Will you make me do it again?”

  She was right, damn it. With her time near, that lurching journey could be as dangerous as the British attack. And he couldn’t make her, in truth. “Brielle—You’re a crafty, devious woman, Brielle. I love you.”

  A light smile touched her lips. He’d said that almost as if he believed it. “I love you, Michael.” And she kissed him as if they were alone.

  Eighteen days later Michael sat in the camp behind the unfinished fort on Sullivan’s Island, waiting for the sun to come up. He’d a pipe in his hand, but it’d gone out, and he hadn’t noticed.

  The warships moving had been a false alarm. They’d only joined the transports in the Five Fathom Hole, south of the harbor entrance. There’d been nothing but false alarms since, and few even of those.

  The British army remained on Long Island. With miles of marsh on the mainland, across the narrow creek, they’d nowhere to go but across Breach Inlet, then down the narrow length of Sullivan’s Island to attack the fort guarding the north side of the harbor mouth. But they waited.

  They weren’t the only ones waiting. The traverse across the back of the fort still wasn’t up. In fact, it’d never been begun. Colonel Moultrie claimed they’d be done if the British got behind them, traverse or no, and he might well have been right. If any ship, however small, got into the creek behind the island, it’d be what Charles Lee had called it: a slaughter pen.

  The fort was supposed to be a square, with a diamond-shaped bastion at each corner. Actually, only the front and right curtains were up, and only the front two bastions. To the left and the rear the wall was only four feet high in some places, no more than seven anywhere. The front did look impressive in the dark. In the dark.

  In the light you could see the walls were made of palmetto logs, twenty to forty feet long, notched and laid like a log cabin. Two rows had been laid, twenty feet high, sixteen feet apart, with the space between filled with sand. To a civilian it’d seem impregnable, but when the fleet’s guns began to splinter logs, and the sand poured out—

  He’d studied that fleet more than once. A deserter from the British Navy, the old scars of floggings on his back, had named them for him, and given their rates. Bristol, fifty guns. Experiment, fifty guns. Sphynx, twenty-eight. Acteon, twenty-eight. Two hundred and seventy guns, the British fleet could bring against Fort Sullivan. And in the fort, on platforms held ten feet off the ground by brick pillars, were only twenty-five. Even counting the six twelve-pounders in hastily built cavaliers to either side, no more than twenty-five could be brought to bear at any one time. It was ten guns to one, in a fort of kindling and sand, and that floating bridge of Lee’s, two planks wide on empty rum kegs, wouldn’t hold twenty men at a time. He should write a letter to Gabrielle, just in case. He wondered what Elizabeth would feel if he died there.

  “You can’t sleep either, Mr. Fallon?” Colonel William Moultrie, the fort’s commander, was a bluff, stocky man, but he had a light step.

  “No, sir,” Michael replied. “Deer flies, sand fleas, and mosquitoes don’t give much chance of it. The tobacco smoke seems to keep them away, though, when I remember to keep it burning.”

  “I find riding keeps them off. In fact, I’m riding down to Colonel Thompson’s position now.”

  “Would you mind if I joined you, Colonel? The wind of riding might be better than this smoke after all.”

  “I would appreciate the company, Mr. Fallon. My adjutant is suffering from bad water.”

  The island was low, with broad beaches of white sand beginning to glimmer as dawn approached. The same sands formed the dunes of the island, covered by palmettoes and tangled thickets of myrtle, here and there a swamp oak or a lone cedar poking above the rest. The horses’ hooves sank deep, and the impressions filled quickly. It’d be poor footing for Thomson’s men if they had to retreat from the Breach back to the fort.

  At Breach Inlet Colonel William Thomson was only a spare shape in the early morning darkness, with the sound of the backcountry about him. “Morning, Colonel Moultrie, Mr. Fallon.” He offered a twist of tobacco, and when they declined, cut off a chew for himself. “What can I do for you gentlemen this morning?”

  “Do you need anything?” Moultrie asked. “I’ll try to get it for you, if you do.”

  Thomson laughed quietly. “Hell, Colonel, these lads don’t need much. I’ve known most of them since I was militia colonel up to Orangeburgh. Dan Horry’s boys are fit, too, and even Clark’s North Carolina bunch is ready.”

  Moultrie nodded, studying the four hundred yards of water separating them from Long Island. The growing light revealed the gray mass of the far shore. “Just keep them from crossing as long as you can. If they manage to make a landing, fall back to the quarterguard.”

  “Activity out to the ships, Colonel,” one of the men shouted.

  There was light enough to make out the ships, now. Moultrie and Thomson stared interestedly, but Michael swore. They were loosing their topsails. “They’re moving, Colonel. The tide’s at full flood, and they’re moving.”

  “Damnation! Thomson, hold them as long as you can. Come on, Fallon.”

  They spurred away at full gallop, or as close to one as the shifting sand would allow. They didn’t draw rein till they were into the fort.

  “Sound the long roll,” Moultrie ordered while dismounting, and the drums beat out the summons to the guns.

  Michael shed his coat, tied a rag around his forehead to keep sweat out of his eyes, and ran to the gun platform. Powder monkeys came running from the magazine with their leather buckets containing flannel cartridges. The gun crews—soldiers, sailors, deserters from the British—waited impatiently.