The Blacksmith's Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution Read online

  The Blacksmith's Daughter

  A Mystery of the American Revolution

  by

  Suzanne Adair

  The patriots wanted her husband dead. So did the redcoats. She took issue with both.

  In the blistering Georgia summer of 1780, Betsy Sheridan uncovers evidence that her shoemaker husband, known for his loyalty to King George, is smuggling messages to a patriot-sympathizing, multinational spy ring based in the Carolinas. When he vanishes into the heart of military activity, in Camden, South Carolina, Betsy follows him, as much in search of him as she is in search of who she is and where she belongs. But battle looms between Continental and Crown forces. The spy ring is plotting multiple assassinations. And Betsy and her unborn child become entangled in murder and chaos.

  Acclaim for Suzanne Adair

  The Blacksmith’s Daughter:

  Armchair Interviews

  "History and fiction combined to tell a great story."

  Front Street Reviews

  "Suzanne Adair follows up her award-winning debut with another, subtler, high-stakes adventure tale."

  Midwest Book Review

  "Adair holds the reader enthralled with constant action, spine-tingling suspense, and superb characterization."

  Paper Woman, winner of the Patrick D. Smith Literature Award:

  The Wilmington Star-News

  "...a swashbuckling good mystery yarn!"

  Midwest Book Review

  "...an exhilarating story that will captivate the reader from beginning to end."

  Red Adept Reviews

  "...a humdinger of an action-adventure story wrapped around a mystery."

  Camp Follower, nominated for the Daphne du Maurier Award

  and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award:

  Armchair Interviews

  "Adair wrote another superb story."

  No Name Café

  "Full of details, a unique historical perspective, an elaborate plot, and outstandingly strong characters, Camp Follower is a historical mystery with something to please everyone."

  Midwest Book Review

  "Adair takes her reader on an exciting adventure, filled with historical fact wrapped around an intriguing plot."

  The Blacksmith's Daughter

  A Mystery of the American Revolution

  by

  Suzanne Adair

  Copyright © 2009 by Suzanne Williams

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The characters, incidents and dialogue herein are fictional and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements

  I receive help from wonderful and unique people while conducting research for novels and editing my manuscripts. Here are a few who assisted me with The Blacksmith's Daughter:

  The 33rd Light Company of Foot, especially Ernie and Linda Stewart

  Carl Barnett

  Lonnie Cruse

  Bonnie Bajorek Daneker

  Marg Baskin

  Howard Burnham

  Dr. Ed Cashin

  Larry Cywin

  Peggy Earp

  Mike Everette

  Jack E. Fryar, Jr.

  Nolin and Neil Jones

  Marja McGraw

  John Robertson

  Dr. Tony Scotti

  The Blacksmith's Daughter

  A Mystery of the American Revolution

  by

  Suzanne Adair

  Chapter One

  SERENADED BY PREDAWN cricket chirp and frog song on July 11, Betsy Sheridan paced in the dining room, already dressed in her shift, short jacket, and petticoat. Her stomach uneasily negotiated the collision of oily pork odor from Monday night's supper with leather's rich pungency from Clark's shop. She knew better than to blame the queasiness on being four months along with child.

  News delivered at suppertime had driven nettles of anxiety into her soul. Her mother and uncle captured by Lower Creek Indians in East Florida — good gods. The Lower Creek didn't treat their prisoners to tea parties. Imagining her mother Sophie and her Uncle David tortured in creative, native ways made her gut feel like a blazing spew of grapeshot.

  At the window, she breathed in familiar morning scents wafting from the back yard on a cool breeze: sandy soil entwined with red veins of Georgia clay, wood smoke, pine resin. "Pregnant nose," the midwife had called her heightened sense of smell. Out back, King Lear the rooster crowed. With Clark's apprentices arriving at seven, Betsy had best fetch the eggs and start breakfast soon. Perhaps the morning routine would ease some of her anxiety.

  Her lit candle held aloft, she paused outside the cobbler's shop to peer up the stairway. Annoyance rifted her anxiety at the soft snores issuing from their bedroom. Clark wouldn't have overslept had he not stayed up for that midnight delivery of Cordovan leather from Sooty Johns. Betsy had never liked Johns, a greasy little peddler. Because she, curious, had tiptoed downstairs to watch the two men unload the leather, and they thought her asleep the whole time, the delivery had felt illegal.

  In the shop, she lit and hung two Betty lamps. Her gaze skimmed over the counter where she kept the ledger and lodged on the workbench piled with Cordovan leather. Magenta by lamplight, it almost assumed the hue of coagulated blood. Spain. Why should Spanish leather be delivered early Tuesday morning to John Clark Sheridan, a British sympathizer, ostensibly one of Spain's enemies? A shudder rose in her, and she wondered whether she should hide the leather.

  Not that she needed more to worry about. Shaking off her concerns over the delivery, she walked to the workbench and pushed aside an awl and two cowhide boots to make room for her candle beside a small mirror. The action of settling her mobcap atop her braided dark hair eased her stomach. After a final inspection to ensure a trim appearance, she stood.

  One of the cowhide boots slid off the bench, so she leaned over and snagged it. When she propped it beside its mate, she spied a sliver of paper between heel and sole. Curious, she pried it out and read Mrs. Filbert's daughter is Sally in her husband's handwriting.

  Odd. Who was Mrs. Filbert?

  Betsy tilted the paper closer to the candle. Here, now — what was that? Writing appeared on the edge of the paper nearest the heat.

  Amazed, she passed the rest of the paper above the flame. Bluish script gibberish and three-digit numbers filled in the page, some sort of cipher. She waved the paper around. It cooled, and the writing vanished.

  A chill brushed her neck. Clark had planted a secret message in the boot. Should she tell him she'd found it?

  More anxiety wound through her. Bad enough that her family on the St. James side was in so much trouble lately, but now her husband was involved in questionable deals. When they'd married in January, she'd dreamed of leading a normal, uneventful life: helping him with his business, raising children, tending the garden and house. By the lamplight of that Tuesday morning, though, her optimism looked as naïve as that displayed by fifty-six Congressional delegates who'd signed their names to a declaration of independence from George the Third's rule. Four years later, thousands of redcoats still occupied the thirteen North American colonies.

  Another crow from King Lear prompted Betsy's attempt to wedge the paper back in the heel. Unsuccessful and exasperated, she shoved the note into her pocket, lit a lantern, and bustled from the shop with it. The back door squeaked when she exited from dining room into garden, and Hamlet and H
oratio loped around from the front yard, tails awag in greeting. She paused to scratch behind the hounds' ears, and memory caught up with her.

  Almost two months earlier, during her mother's last visit to Augusta, they'd sat in the dining room sipping herbal tea, and Betsy told her the news: You shall be a grandmother before Yule. They'd laughed and embraced through tears of joy, and for the first time ever, Sophie had talked with her as one mother to another, dissolving the physical distance between them that seven years of living apart had imposed. But now, captive of the Lower Creek...Betsy blinked away the salty mist of misery, her stomach afire again with apprehension.

  She stumbled a few steps before righting herself and continued down the path to the henhouse. The dogs bounded away to the front of the house. A sparrow began his reveille. The earth smelled cool, damp, and ripe. Inside the henhouse, she hung the lantern on a hook and grabbed a basket. The hens welcomed her with soft clucks, the acrid odor of their droppings magnified by her nose.

  "Well, Titania, have you an egg for me this morning?" The hen shifted to allow Betsy's groping fingers access to straw only. She proceeded to the next hen. "You, Desdemona? Alas, no egg." She straightened. "Strange. Perchance you need a change in diet. Well, I'm sure to find something from Portia. No? Oh, very well, you did lay two eggs yesterday." She fumbled beneath more hens without success, and an eerie sense of familiarity spread through her. The only other time this had happened was when all the eggs had been collected as a prank just prior to her arrival.

  She lowered her voice, not daring to believe. "Uncle David?"

  She heard amusement in his voice outside the henhouse. "I cannot play that trick on you twice, can I?"

  She raced out and flung her arms around dark-haired, lanky, handsome David St. James who'd no doubt passed the night in the arms of a certain wealthy, lovely widow in town. Small wonder the hounds hadn't alerted her to his familiar presence. "Great thunder, it is you, and you're all right!" She smacked his cheek with a kiss. "Oh, gods, when I heard the news yesterday, I could scarcely eat or sleep for worry." She tugged him toward the house. "Clark has been so worried, too. But you've escaped the Indians!"

  David braked their progress toward the house. "Don't tell your husband or anyone else that you've seen me."

  "Why not?" She noticed her uncle's hunting shirt and trousers and checked herself. "You're running, aren't you? Mother, too."

  "Yes."

  "Just like Grandpapa Will."

  She watched David's stare home on her. "What do you mean?"

  "He was hiding in the henhouse yesterday morning."

  David darted a look around. "Where is the old man?"

  "Probably in South Carolina." Cynicism seeped into her voice. "That's where he seemed to think he could lay low with rebel friends because he landed himself in all that trouble with the redcoats last month. Running a spy ring from Alton, printing incendiary broadsides, escaping to Havana to intrigue with the Gálvez family. The Gálvez family. Zounds. How did a printer from a frontier town, ever catch the eye of people so high up in the Spanish court? And what did he expect from all that intrigue? Surely not a pardon. I don't suppose he'll ever learn, will he? So I fed him breakfast and sent him on his way before it grew light. And where's my mother?"

  "On her way to a Cherokee village in South Carolina." He glanced at the sky. "And since I don't want to be recognized on the road, I must away to Williamsburg before it gets much lighter." His tone became shrewd. "I'm here only to assure you your mother is safe and well, and she sends you her love."

  The unreality of the situation descended on Betsy. She felt as though cotton stuffed her head. "A redcoat from our garrison came by last night to relate the news. You and Mother had been arrested as rebel spies after chasing Grandpapa to Havana. Then you were captured by Indians north of St. Augustine while the redcoats were escorting you back to Georgia. You and Mother, rebel spies? Hah. Perchance if men bore children, yes. Why don't you tell me what really happened."

  David ejected a soft laugh. "Well, we did go after the old man, but it was for his own good. We aren't rebel spies, and it's a great misunderstanding that would take me too long to explain. Rest assured, though, that your mother is safe for now."

  Betsy frowned. Of course it was a misunderstanding, and no one could dance a reel around the truth like her uncle. "When shall I have the full story?"

  "When someone has the time to explain it."

  Ah, no. He wasn't going to escape without explaining the greatest mystery of all. "Surely you can tarry long enough to clarify one detail. Wait here while I fetch what arrived by post yesterday and show it to you."

  "Very well, but hurry."

  She bustled up the path, flung open the back door, seized the package from within a cupboard, and trotted back out to David. "See here, this was addressed as follows: 'To Mrs. Betsy Sheridan in Augusta, Georgia.' Well, go ahead and see what's inside."

  Stupefaction and recognition flooded his voice when he examined the parasol and lace veil within. "I don't believe it."

  She set the box and its contents down next to the basket of eggs David had collected. "There's a brief letter here somewhere. Who is Miguel de Arriaga, author of the letter?"

  "Captain of a Portuguese merchant brig, the Gloria Maria."

  "So you and Mother had quite an adventure!" Awed and envious, Betsy straightened and handed him the letter. Then she leaned inside the henhouse, unhooked the lantern, and held it to illuminate Captain Arriaga's script on the page.

  David skimmed the letter, and she followed the path his eyes took over it, having already memorized the contents:

  MADAM:

  Your Uncle and Parents were Passengers aboard my Ship, the Gloria Maria. I gave this Parasol and Veil to your Mother, a remarkable Woman, and she lost them in Havana when British Soldiers captured her. If you see her again, please give them to her and tell her I tried to help.

  I am Madam

  Your humble Servant

  Miguel de Arriaga

  "How did Captain Arriaga find me?"

  "Your mother told him about you." Her uncle folded the letter with haste and handed it back to her. "Here you go. Now I must away."

  She'd once seen a large-mouthed bass wiggle off a hook with greater finesse. "Oh, no you don't." After tossing the letter into the box, she seized her uncle's arm. "You tell me what the captain meant by my 'parents.' No more pretense. Look at me. Dark hair and eyes, olive skin. And these cheekbones! Both my mother's husbands had blond hair and blue eyes. I couldn't be the daughter of either of them. So who was — is — my father?"

  David squirmed, trying his best to get off that hook. "Your mother's the one who must have this conversation with you."

  "But she's on her way to South Carolina, and you're here." Betsy released him and set the lantern down. "She's with my father, isn't she? I shall go looking for both of them so I may have a proper explanation."

  "Come now, you've more sense than to travel into a war-torn colony."

  She jutted her chin forward. "You tell me, then."

  He sighed. "Your father is Mathias Hale, a blacksmith from Alton."

  Astonishment shot through her. "Hale?" She had a vague recollection of the Hale family as respectable blacksmiths in her hometown of Alton, south of Augusta. The wonder of discovery began arranging perplexing pieces of her past into a logical picture. "That's why Mother sent me here to be fostered with Lucas and Sarah seven years ago. I must resemble my father or someone in his family, and she wanted me out of Alton." Confusion trailed off her words. She blinked at her uncle "Why didn't Mother marry Mr. Hale? Was shame or hardship involved?"

  David held up his hands. "Another long story which I've no place or leisure to explain. Forgive me, but I must begone." He strode to the back of the henhouse and unhitched his horse.

  She tracked him, her thirst unquenched. "Is he a good man?"

  "Yes, a very good man."

  "Well, then, I truly don't understand why she didn't —"

/>   "Betsy." He turned to her and seized her shoulders. "You must leave it for now."

  "But can you not imagine what it's been like for me, Uncle David, to never have had a father? In all my seventeen years, I've had uncles, a stepfather, and grandfathers, but they haven't been my father."

  "You shall meet him someday, I know it. He's that kind of man. But now isn't the time to look for him." David pressed a kiss to her forehead, released her, and climbed into the saddle with his fowler. "Don't go to South Carolina."

  Betsy stepped back, certain she exuded defiance in her stance. "Why not?"

  He wagged his finger at her. "I mean it, Betsy. Don't go to South Carolina. And, for that matter, stay clear of Alton for awhile, especially a lieutenant by the name of Fairfax."

  Oh, faugh. Her uncle's "enemies" were all cuckolded courtiers of wealthy widows. She sweetened her smile. "Not to worry."

  The paling sky outlined perplexity in her uncle's posture. As much as he enjoyed women, he'd never figured out what to do with those who were headstrong. "I cannot command you to anything, can I?"

  "Good luck in Williamsburg, Uncle David." She blew a kiss.

  He shook his head, reined his horse around, and trotted it from the yard with a final wave. Betsy watched until the gloom of dawn swallowed him before retrieving the lantern, eggs, and box. Then she ambled back to the house escorted by the aria of a mockingbird.

  So. Her kinfolk had evaded the Crown's "justice" upon the gallows and torture at the hands of Indians and were en route to sanctuaries in other colonies. And for the first time in her life, she had a father: a blacksmith, a "very good man." At the back step, she paused to address the sky, her shoulders back, her face aglow. "Mathias Hale," she whispered, "expect me soon."

  Chapter Two

  THE STAIRS GROANED liked a gouty old man, testament to Clark's descent, but Betsy continued dusting the counter, her back to the door, pondering exile imposed on her uncle and mother, her husband's note hidden in the cowhide boot, and a blacksmith named Mathias Hale. Clark entered the shop sniffing the air, and she heard his grin. "Coffee, and mmm, biscuits with your blackberry jam. What's the occasion?"

  She tried not to sound piqued or nervous. "No occasion." The apprentices hadn't arrived yet. Perhaps now was the time to talk with him about the secret message. "Clark, I —"