TEARS OF THE FOOT GUARDS

SCHERZO - STAVE XXXVI

S T A V E

XXXVI

July 1779

Take a little Port, Guards sergeants say. It warms the voice before parade.

She knew better: best to refrain from luxuries. A warm towel 'round the neck . . . But here, her first public show. First in America. First in three years . . . Why so care? They'll ignore her – window dressing – curtains, sconces, picture frames. She'll enter and occupy near the fireplace, open her mouth and sing. What Matter if they cared? She'd have her shillings, an accomplishment itself, and to sing at Queen's Head . . . No mean tavern with proprietor, Samuel Fraunces, respected by both Tory and Whig . . . That she'd convinced Fraunces to hire her . . . No shabby trick – a Woman-on-the-Ration . . . The toughest scarecrows the Old City's seen, makes Holy Ground doxies refined Ladies . . . But Obedience, her clothes laundered, her hair washed with rain water and her clusters pushed up by whalebone stays, had Fraunces the moment he saw her. Stupid Men. Sheep. "So you sing!" his cheery rejoinder. "Would ye like me to sing for ye now?" The way she smiled and him with a hopeful look she might grab his prick and take it out . . .

Far harder convincing Geordie. Nothing that he'd said. Nothing that he need to say with his posture bracing; the flank companies had just returned from raiding the Virginia and Connecticut coasts and then an attack up the Hudson at a fort on Stoney Point. Now this.

"I will do It," she'd said, irked by his silence. "We need the Cash. I'll not stay in those Women's Barracks. What am I t'do alone? I do not feel Safe."

"Safe?" he said with alarm. "When'd you not feel safe? I keep ye safe."

"When you're not here?"

"What happened?"

"Nothing happened."

"Are you not here with the rest of the women?"

"Yes." She rolled her eyes. "Harpies except Bess; the Philadelphia girls constantly whining, the women from other regiments back alley cut-throats with their dirty brats, Jaruesha drunk day and night . . ."

"And Cash keep you safe?"

"I can rent a room of my own – a room for us."

"And Captain Garth'll give permission," him skeptically.

"What would he know? He's never here. Webb's never here and that new man, Machesney . . . The Flank Companies on missions and the rest run loose like a pack of savages."

"I cannot leave the barracks . . ."

"But I can."

He took her arm. "Why you doing this to me?"

She pulled away. "What am I doing to you?"

His shoulders rounded in a most un-guardsman-like manner. "Don't go."

She thwacked him on the side of the head, like a mother knocking sense. "And where am I going? I said it was for us."

Above them the floorboards squeaked. Muffled voices through the walls. A child crying. At the baseboards, the occasional rat. The building had a tang.

"I miss Philadelphia," he said.

"As do I."

"The war'll end." His hopeless comfort.

"It's always ending – a never ending, ending."

"I'll rise. You'll see – first corporal and then a sergeant's cord. I'll give you a good life once again. I'll run the race or do something better." He un-balled her fist and kissed it. "When have I failed you?"