“Nothing,” Johnson said before his wife could speak. “We ain’t heard nothing, seen nothing. I swear it.”

  Justin kept his eyes on the woman. She shook her head tightly and said simply, “Nothing.”

  The woman was terrified. The frustrated rage that’d been building in Justin for days was near boiling. She’d tell, damn her, or—

  A gaunt trooper pushed his way past the prisoners. “Sir, I found this in the midden.”

  “God’s teeth, man, I can smell where you found it. No, don’t hand it to me. What is it?”

  “Bandages, sir. From the look of them, whoever wore them was bad hurt.”

  “Hang them,” Justin snapped.

  All three women began screaming at once as the man and boy were dragged struggling to the tree. The boy leaped and bucked, fighting in silence except for ragged panting, but his father roared.

  “You can’t do this! We’ve got a right to a trial! You can’t hang us without a trial! God’s mercy! At least take the boy in! Take the rope off him! Ben! Give him a trial!”

  Mrs. Johnson clawed at Justin’s coat, sobbing, until he deigned to look at her. “I can tell you where they are. Please. We didn’t know who they were. Oh, God, please don’t hang them. Please.”

  “Where?” Justin growled.

  Wild-eyed, she stared at her husband and son, nooses snug around their necks. The men at the ropes paused. “Not more than two hundred yards straight west from the house. It looks like a big clump of myrtle, but there’s a hollow inside. We put them there just an hour ago.”

  “Hamilton! Reilly! Take twenty men. If they’re not there, track them. They’ll head west. With luck you’ll find Fallon by dark. If you’re not back here by daybreak, I’ll follow with the rest of the men. And remember, if anyone touches either of them, especially the woman, I’ll kill him. Now go.” He rounded on the men under the tree. “What are you waiting for? Get on with it, damn you.”

  Mrs. Johnson’s scream ripped the air. “God, no!” She pulled her daughters’ heads to her chest and put her face down. None of them saw Henry Johnson, or Ben, pulled kicking into the air.

  “You people,” Justin said when it was done. “You want to be on both sides. Every third farmhouse has a rebel dog hidden in the loft. But when the King’s forces come around you’re all Loyalist to the bone. Well, you’ll learn better. We’ll see how many of your neighbors still have trouble choosing a side after this.”

  “The women, sir,” Captain Gordon said. “What do we do with them?”

  “Let them show their newfound loyalty by entertaining His Majesty’s troops. But save the youngest one there for me.”

  Shrieking, Mrs. Johnson tried to claw a way out for herself and her daughters. Laughing, the men grabbed her and Mary, dragging them to the barn, strewing torn bits of their dresses along the way.

  Justin dismounted and pulled a dumbstruck Alice into the cabin. He threw her down on her parents’ bed, slapped away her will to fight, and tore off her dress. It was all coming to a fitting end, he thought. By tomorrow Fallon would be in his hands. Alice’s scream as he thrust into her seemed to be Fallon’s scream. He began to laugh.

  Gabrielle stumbled once again. Pain ran up her arms and legs, but she wouldn’t let go of the stretcher pole. In truth, she was afraid that if she set it down, she wouldn’t be able to pick it up again. Martha was laboring as hard as she, sweat rolling down her face, and even Daniel was panting. Only Michael, in his laudanum-deepened sleep, and James, sleeping beside his father, had made the night’s journey easily.

  Just after dawn she’d looked back. A pillar of smoke rose far behind them. The Johnson farm. She said a silent prayer and kept walking. She didn’t mention it to Martha or Daniel. There was no need to frighten them.

  As the sun gathered strength, the terrain became familiar. “Once we’re over this rise,” she panted, “we’re safe. It’s Tribando, the Hudson plantation.”

  She fell silent as they staggered to the top of the rise. Defeat washed over her, and she sank to the ground. The others eased the cot down and dropped beside it.

  “Maybe—” Daniel said, but he didn’t finish.

  Below them a wide marble stair swept up to a pile of blackened timbers. Not even a tendril of smoke rose. Yet it had to have happened within the past few days. That much they could tell from the animals. Pigs, sheep, even a few cattle, perhaps two dozen in all, lay scattered haphazardly, clouds of flies buzzing over each one.

  “What happened?” Martha asked, her voice hanging on the edge of tears.

  Gabrielle shook her head. “I don’t know. I just don’t—I wonder if this is what they did to Tir Alainn?” She took a deep breath and tried to catch hold of herself. Sally Hudson—her friend, widowed at Savannah—owned Tribando. Was she dead?

  Something crackled in the brush, and a woman sidled out, watching them with feral eyes. Her hair was matted and her dress was torn. She held a brushknife in front of her with both hands.

  Daniel moved between her and the cot, but Gabrielle motioned him back. Slowly, so as not to frighten the woman, she rose. “Don’t be afraid. We won’t hurt you. My husband is injured, and I need help for him.”

  “Fourrier,” the woman barked. “Gabrielle Fourrier.”

  “Sally? Oh, my God, Sally. I’m not Fourrier any longer. I’m Gabrielle Fallon. Remember, I married the man who came to the reading circle? Michael Fallon.”

  Sally’s knuckles whitened on the knife hilt. “Your brother was here. Two days ago? No. Three. Sometimes the hours seem to go so fast, and then they hardly pass at all. I can’t seem to keep it straight.”

  “Sally, I—”

  “He had men with him,” she went on as if Gabrielle hadn’t spoken. “Some had green coats, and some had red. Green coats and red coats. Tarleton and Fourrier.” She made a horrible sound; it took Gabrielle a moment to realize it was laughter. “I couldn’t chase them away, so I sent servants out with water. They forced their way in, and Fourrier knocked me down when I tried to get in their way. Tarleton made me serve them. Jack’s brandy in Jack’s study.” Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she cried silently.

  Gabrielle felt a desperate need to stop her. No more of what her brother had done there. She couldn’t bear to hear more. “Sally, we can’t carry Michael much farther, but we have to keep going. Is there a cart left?”

  “Why should I help a Fourrier?”

  “Michael’s not a Fourrier. Don’t you remember him? He put a sprig of dogwood in your hair, and read you the poem about the shepherdess.”

  Sally peered at him blankly. “Is he dead?”

  “No. No, he’s had laudanum.”

  “The officers drank Jack’s brandy. They didn’t let their men have any, though. They sent them through the house for plate, pictures off the wall, dishes, even my dresses. Others gathered the slaves in the drive. They put them in a neck coffle and left them there all day without water.”

  “Sally, please.”

  “They laughed and told jokes, with their feet up on Jack’s desk. Your brother, Justin, made a joke about Jack dying a hero’s death. He said Jack drowned in a ditch. How could he know that?” Gabrielle wanted to make her stop, but Sally held the knife higher now, her eyes glittering. “Tarleton said I was a rebel bitch, but he’d like to mount me anyway. But Justin said I was his, because he knew me, and he’d picked the plantation. Finally Tarleton said I wasn’t worth an argument. They gave me to a lieutenant of Tarleton’s legion. He took me aside and tore my clothes, but I hit him with a candlestick, and hit him and hit him. Then I ran out of the house, all the way to the woods. Some of the men laughed, but none tried to stop me until an officer ran out, yelling that I’d killed Lieutenant Owen. Tarleton kept shouting, ‘Hoy, hoy, hoy. Catch the vixen and every man jack of you can mount her till she can’t twitch.”’ She laughed jerkily. “But they didn’t catch me. No. I hid. I hid. Finally they began to leave. The animals they didn’t take, they killed, sabering and bayonetting pigs and sheep. They even shot some horses that ran. Then they set the fire and rode away, the green coats toward Charlestown, with the slaves and the stock, the red to the west. I sat up here and watched it. Everything he built, burning, burning.”

  James suddenly sat up on the cot, knuckling his eye with a small fist. “Who’s the lady, Mama?”

  Everyone except Sally jerked as if fearful of what the boy might have heard. “Such a pretty child,” she said. “I never had—I wanted Jack’s baby so badly. There’s an old wagon behind where the stables were, and I think some of the tackies made it into the woods. Look.” Before anyone could move she darted into the bushes, the cracking and snapping of branches marking her trail.

  Daniel started after her, but Gabrielle stopped him. “No. First we carry Michael down to that wagon. Get up now, James. You can walk that little way.”

  The boatman looked doubtful, but he took the front end of the cot wordlessly.

  Sally had said the wagon was old, but it had been less than the truth. Every board was dried and gray, and many were split. The wheels were warped; when Daniel shook one the entire wagon rattled. He climbed under it, around it, and in it, and finally dusted his hands.

  “It ain’t much, ma’am, but maybe it’ll get us someplace near.”

  “Then you go find one or two of those horses. What’s the matter, Daniel?”

  He shifted under her gaze. “Ma’am, it’s that lady, Mrs. Hudson. It ain’t right to leave her here like this.”

  Gabrielle’s face hardened. “At the first farm we come to, I’ll tell the people she’s here. No, Daniel, that’s all. If it were just the rest of us, without Michael, we could take her. But Michael is here. If we have her with us people will notice us the more. They know her hereabouts. And if Michael’s taken, he’ll be killed. Justin’ll see to that.” She held up her hands like scales. “Her life against Michael’s. It’s no contest.”

  “But—”

  Martha poked him in the chest. “You hush up, Daniel. A man don’t know nothing about it. You go on and get them horses. Go on with you. Here, Miss Gabrielle, you let me take that.”

  Gabrielle relinquished the bundle she’d been lifting into the wagon gratefully, and sank to the ground. James ran to her, and she hugged him. “We’re going somewhere safe, Martha, somewhere far away. We’re going to Georgia.”

  “Georgia! Lord’s sake, Miss Gabrielle, them British got every stick and lump of Georgia!”

  “Exactly. The fighting’s over there. We’ll go just as far into Georgia as we can, until we find a place where they don’t even know the fighting ever started, and that’s where we’ll stay. That’s where we’ll be safe until it’s over.” They would be, no matter what it took. No matter what.

  Four months later, in September 1780, Gabrielle was patching James’s shirt carelessly. Her worried gaze was on Michael, coat around his shoulders against the early chill of the Georgia hills, limping toward the cabin on his walking stick. She’d told him he was exerting himself too much, too soon, but he wouldn’t listen. And she didn’t want to think of what she hadn’t told him.

  With each piece of bad news that she gave him, Tarleton’s successes, and now the defeat at Camden, he pushed himself harder. Camden. Horatio Gates, the new general sent by Congress, had blunderingly led his army to disaster. In the middle of the battle he’d fled, leaving that giant Bavarian, the Baron de Kalb, to die trying to hold the field with his Continentals. The survivors had fled north after the general.

  Even that hadn’t shaken Michael’s resolve. He refused laudanum, despite pain that often kept him lying awake at night. He fought the pain as if it were the British he could no longer come to grips with.

  He bent down to kiss her fingers. “You shouldn’t have to prick these sewing patches, lass. It’s not the life I promised you.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said, but he smiled disbelievingly and went inside. She followed. “Michael, it’s true. You’re all that’s important.”

  He dropped into a chair and pulled her down on his lap. “It’s this that I say is important.”

  “Michael, your leg!”

  “It feels better for having you sit on it. Now then. Martha has the boy down to the creek for washing him and the clothes, and Daniel’s gone to the store.” He unfastened the first button on her dress, and the second. “We have the cabin to ourselves for at least two hours more.” He began to rain kisses on her satin breasts.

  “Michael, stop.” She knew he was just trying to distract her. An hour after they rose from the bed his dark mood would be back on him—blacker if past experience was a guide. “Darling, this must be talked about. You must stop taking the whole blame for the way the war’s gone.”

  “I’m not—” With a sigh he let his head fall against her shoulder, and she stroked his hair. “You don’t understand, Brielle. I promised you the world, and I’ve brought you down to a dirt-floored log cabin. I should be finding James a pony—and a tutor. Instead all he has is one top and Daniel’s carved horses and what little I can teach him. And you, doing work that no lady should have to. I’ve a right to be in a fey mood. It’ll take a miracle to recover the things you should have.”

  “Darling,” she said hesitantly, “it might not be that—”

  Daniel rapped on the doorjamb, keeping his eyes on the floor. “Colonel Fallon, ma’am. Visitors.”

  Two men pushed past the boatman. “Henri! Louis! Oh, Lord!” Gabrielle sprang up, bursting into tears as she hastily fastened her bodice. Joy and trepidation warred in her heart. They were her brothers, and she loved them, but she wished they’d never come. Now Michael would find out. She glared at Daniel.

  Michael had bounded to his feet, and the three men were engrossed, laughing and handshaking and backslapping. “Brielle,” Michael called, “quit hiding in the corner. It’s your brothers have found us, lass. Bring us some glasses and that jug of rum. Wait till you taste this, Louis. I think they make it by fermenting tobacco, then strain it through some of that Georgia clay.”

  Louis peered into the glass Gabrielle handed him. He took a cautious sip, and his eyes squeezed shut. “God,” he gasped. “I think you’re right.”

  “It’ll grow on you. Now Henri, I can understand Louis here being free, but how did you get out of Charlestown? They’re not giving passes to officers on parole, are they?”

  “Hardly that.” Henri stroked his new thin mustache with a forefinger and smiled. “In fact, they barely let us walk the streets. Well, it wasn’t quite that bad, except for having Justin trying to talk me into turning coat. Didn’t try it too often, thank God. Didn’t want it too well known he had a brother was a rebel officer. Stab me, he didn’t.”

  “Two brothers,” Louis murmured.

  “But how did you get out? And why? If you’re retaken they’ll thrown you in a cell. And if they claim you were fighting—Well, they hang you for breaking parole, you know.”

  “I know. But they were bound to anyway. They’re not satisfied with parole any longer. Strike me blue, but they’re not. Clinton left Cornwallis with instructions to bring South Carolina back to the crown, and Cornwallis gave Nesbit Balfour instructions to force Charlestown back. He demanded oaths of loyalty to the King from all the prominent citizens and all the officers on parole.”

  “But that’s in violation of any parole I ever heard of,” Michael protested.

  “Not according to Balfour,” Henri said. “He said our paroles only encompassed service with the American Army. Stab me if he didn’t. When some protested, he had them shipped off to prison in Saint Augustine. Christopher Gadsden. Edward Rutledge. Thomas Heyward. Many of the older men, like Charles Pinckney and Henry Middleton, agreed and were accepted back into the fold. But I could see what was coming then. If the paroles only applied to service against the crown, then they’d soon enough be demanding we serve for the crown. So I stole a boat and rowed across the Ashley. Just blundered around then, until I ran into Louis.”

  “It’s all of a piece,” Michael sighed. “Bit by bit they’re crushing us. How many will risk hanging rather than join the winning side? Oh, the hell with it. How did you find us?”

  “We found your traces. There was a widow named Johnson and her two daughters who were running messages and medical supplies to Francis Marion under their petticoats. Then there was a teamster who’d seen you in a rickety old wagon, crossing the Savannah at Hutson’s Ferry. Well, we didn’t have an idea of where to look when we got down here. But we walked into Grierson’s store, and there stood Daniel, trading deerskins and foxhides for salt and sugar.”

  “Wait a minute, now. You said something about taking supplies to Marion. Where’s he operating? I thought the British had the Carolinas in a sack.” Daniel muttered about chores and scurried out of the cabin.

  “Are you joking?” Henri looked amazed. “Don’t you hear any news here?”

  Michael stared at Gabrielle’s back. She’d suddenly busied herself over dinner. “Of course I hear,” he said slowly. “Brielle and Daniel—Brielle and Daniel bring me all the news from the store.”

  “Well, stab me, it doesn’t sound like it. After Charlestown fell, it was damn rough, I’ll admit. Redcoats and Tory militia ran wild. Justin wasn’t the only one to write his own laws. For a couple of months it seemed like they couldn’t lose. Then, in the middle of July, the whole state exploded. South Carolina’s aflame from one end to the other.”

  “What he’s trying to say,” Louis put in, “is people were pushed as far as they could go. Partisan bands formed all over the state. Marion isn’t the only one. There’s Andrew Pickens and Thomas Sumter and William Davie and—”

  “But what kind of fighting are they doing? Did they take part at Camden?”

  “Oh, no. As a matter of fact, Marion got started because Gates, the fool, didn’t want him. He rode in with some volunteers, and Gates took them for ragamuffins. Finally, he told Marion to ride off and do whatever damage he could, just to get rid of him. So, Marion’s men raid supply convoys, prisoner details, isolated outposts, in fact, anywhere they can catch the British by surprise. Between raids they hide in the swamps, and if the pressure gets too bad, they go back to being farmers for a while.”