fountain. Finally, assured the animal was dead, he gladly got to his feet and backed away.
The other pig succumbed to a rifle shot, and their course in animal husbandry was over for the day, leaving them time to laugh at Lewrie's appearance. He was pig blood and pig shit, old, dried cow pats and grass stains from head to foot, his stockings torn down to his ankles, one shoe missing, and the seams of his jacket ripped open. The black ribbon that bound his clubbed-back hair was gone and his hair hung lank and dirty on either side of his face.
'Hurrah, you done fer 'im, sir!' Cony roared, taking an opportunity to get a laugh on an officer-to-be.
'Might be needin' this,' Mollow said, offering him his shoe.
'Still have that soap, Chiswick?' Alan glared, his chest heaving for air after his battle to the death with an enraged porker. 'I think I'll take you up on your offer of a bath.'
They slit both pigs' throats, dragged them into the farm yard and hung them up to bleed fully after slicing their bellies open and gutting them. Mollow made a drag from two fence poles depended from one of the horses' saddles and laced them together so that the carcasses could be carried. Then Chiswick gallantly offered to stand guard while Cony and Lewrie got an opportunity for a wash in the stock pond.
Cony was having little of it. He took off his shirt, socks and shoes, rolled up his slop trousers and waded in for a quick splash, not having much use for soap. ''Tis unhealthy ta take too many baths, sir, so it is,' he said firmly. 'One at yer birthin', one at yer weddin', one at yer dyin', that's all a good Englishman needs.'
Alan, though, was happy to shuck his clothes and let them soak in the pond while he waded in with soap in hand, naked as the day he was born.
There was little enough fresh water aboard ship, rationed at one gallon per day per man, and most of that used for boiling rations in the steep-tubs, with only a pint a day for sponging or shaving, so it was heaven to lie back with his posterior resting on the shallow bottom and lave himself with water warmed by the sun. He scrubbed with the hard lump of soap until all his saltwater boils and chafes stung, but it felt like a healing sting, like staunching a cut in seawater. He stood up knee deep and lathered his whole body, then dunked and rinsed. He soaped his scalp and rubbed and scratched with his fingers until his hair felt almost squeaky between his hands.
'A little bit of heaven, is it not?' Burgess asked, squatting by the bank with rifle in hand to stand guard for him.
'Maybe it is dangerous to staunch one's perspiration, or bathe too often, but now and then, it's marvelous!' Alan sighed happily.
'I told your seaman to scrub out the worst from your uniform.'
'Thank you right kindly, Chiswick. Let me know when this is maddening to you and I shall spend another twenty minutes in the water.'
'Take your time.' Chiswick waved as if it did not matter. I had a dunk two days ago in a creek closer to the town. Don't forget to do behind your ears. Your momma would not allow that to pass unwashed.'
'Never had one,' Alan replied. 'I've always had dirty ears. No one would know me without them.'
'For dear old nurse, then,' Chiswick shot back. He rose to his feet and took a long look around. 'This must have been a nice farm once.'
'Really?' Alan said, wondering what had been so nice about a cabin made of pine logs with no mark of real civilization to it.
'For this part of the world, yes,' Chiswick said, changing his tone, which made Alan swivel to look at him. 'More than half the farmers in the Colonies would give dearly to look so prosperous or orderly.'
'What was your own place like?' Alan asked, raising one leg to give it equal treatment with the soap.
'Oh, we were proper squires in the Carolinas,' Burgess said, smiling but not much amused by the remembrance. 'Had a brick house and some columns out on the portico. Painted barns and outbuildings. We grew tobacco, corn, rice, and timber, and had the mill, too. Tried our hand with indigo, but never got the hang of it, not like some closer to the coast. We had a decent herd of cattle and sheep. And some really fine horses.'
'I hope you killed all your pigs… painfully,' Alan said.
'Never asked 'em.' Burgess grinned.
'So you were what my whore in Charlestown called Tidewater people?'
'Charleston,' Burgess corrected without thought. 'Yes, we were, in a way. Sort of betwixt and between Piedmonters and Tidewater, not fully one or the other. People firmly established in the Tidewater put on more airs than we could afford.'
'I'm sorry you got burned out,' Alan said, rising and dripping water as he waded the few paces ashore. 'Regular trooos or Regulators or whatever?'
'You did learn a lot from that whore of yours,' Burgess replied, tossing him a scrap of cloth with which to dry himself. It had been some woman's sack gown once, a light blue linen worked with white embroidery in a pattern that was now hard to identify, evidently something that Burgess had found in the house or the yard, smelling strongly of mildew and leaf mold. It was fairly clean and dry, though, so he used it without another care.
'No, 'twas a troop of horse rode through while the army and the militia were away over toward Charlotte,' Burgess said, his hazel eyes narrowing in anger. 'Wild as over-mountain men, not even an organized troop, most of 'em. Some local hothead Patriots, too, as they like to style themselves.
'Were you there then?' Alan asked, sitting down in the sun to finish drying with the scrap of gown across his lap for modesty.
'Aye, I was there.' Burgess winced, his hands growing tight on the rifle. 'My daddy and momma, my sister Caroline, and my younger brother.'
'Did they harm any of you?'
'They shot George.' Burgess glared. 'Shot him down like a dog. He was just fourteen; he didn't know. They were taking his favorite horse and he went after them and… they just shot him down. And they laughed. He bled to death before we could do anything for him.'
'My God, I'm sorry, Chiswick,' Alan said, shocked in spite of all the deaths he had seen in his short time in the Navy.
Burgess went on. 'Could have been worse. Their leader, one of the local Rebels, was a gentleman. Else we'd have all been killed, and my momma and sister raped. Their leader had that man beat half to death right on the spot. But then, he went on looting the place after that, so it wasn't much comfort to us. We all got used pretty ill, anyway, what with all the shoving and pushing. Couple of our house servants got shot, and they ran off the rest, along with the stock. Then they allowed us some time to gather what we could, and torched the place.'
Alan didn't know what to say, so he finished dressing. Cony had done a fair job as hammock-man and had gotten out all the worst smuts.
'I'll stand guard for your bath now,' Alan offered.
'I knew that bastard, Lewrie,' Burgess almost moaned.
'That Rebel neighbor?'
'It was one of our cousins,' Burgess said, verging on tears.
'Holy shit on a biscuit!' Alan gaped. That proves it. The whole bloody country's mad as a lunatick in Bedlam, he thought.
'I grew up with him, played with him, hunted with him, sported with him and his family,' Burgess said. 'They were better off than us, real squires of the county. They had no use for more land, but they've got ours now, and some of our slaves and our stock. From Momma's side they were, in the Carolina's longer than we were, closer to Wilmington, and the town turned into a hotbed of rebellion until we occupied't. Their daddy was at all the meetings and conventions, saying he was for the King and only wanted his rights as an Englishman, but then they all changed and turned on us 'cause Daddy was a newcomer and stood up for King George. God, I cannot tell you how much I hate them. How I want to see them suffer and die. You cannot know what it is to be betrayed by your own blood!'
'The hell I can't,' Alan said without mirth. 'When we get back I shall tell you about it, if there's time. But if we got our wishes, a battalion of people would be consigned to Hell. Now stick your head under water for a while to cool the heat of your blood.'
'I guess they used us for an example, of what would happen if any more of our neighbors stayed Loyalist.' Burgess muttered on as he stripped away his uniform to take a scrub. Like I said, most of our neighbors were Scots. They came over after Culloden, and when they give an oath, they never break it. Most of the lower Cape Fear is like
