As far as my keen distaste for combat is concerned, I needed no reminder. Tarleton was not a man to be questioned and I was not one to inquire for reasoning, so I willingly followed him into battle. My greatest challenge was not acclimation, I could ride, take aim, fire and use aggressive force when my life was on the line just as well as any man on the field. No, I was faced with a deeper trial, one that I had no other choice but to accept. I was good at taking lives. Better now that I had ever been, in fact. I could not confess to this in my letters home, so I internalized it all. I was different from the other dragoons, but only underneath my bruised and war-torn skin. I killed with efficiency, with rage and all suspected that I loathed the enemy with as much ferocity as the next man in my company. What they did not know was that I had harnessed my own self-loathing, my love for John, my love for Sylvia and the frustration that I had with my own cowardice. That was who I was killing. I looked for traces of myself in those young continentals, the ignorance in their eyes, the love notes and sketches of their sweethearts that tumbled from their breast pockets and onto the bloodstained ground as I cleaved their muscular bodies with my sword.
If Tarleton was impressed by my ruthlessness, he hid those thoughts well. He did not give praise, only to himself when he droned about his victories in the third person over ale. He did show great interest in creating rifts within the ranks all while maintaining order. For example, I was pitted against another dragoon called Robert Combs for everything from rations, to how many hours of sleep I was allowed, to the most profitable locations on the battlefield. What pleased Colonel Tarleton the most about this rivalry was that Combs and I were already associated with one another. I knew that I recognized him the day that he arrived. We were the same age and size, although I will openly confess that he was far more fair of face than I had ever been. "You're quite like Captain Bordon, only better." Banastre told him one day, if only to light a fire under my bum. It might have worked, but I was too preoccupied recalling the first time that I had seen him, flirting with Celeste in Philadelphia. Clearly, it was all a game to Tarleton. Having a child with Celeste and then abandoning them both did not wear down his conscience, even after she found someone new- it merely made Combs an eligible subject for ridicule alongside myself.
We kept to the countryside, though some nights we would venture into the smaller coastal villages to do away with traitors or raise hell in any way that Tarleton felt fit. I enjoyed finer and simpler things, like riding past the larger homes and listening to the sounds that floated out of the windows of their music rooms and parlors. Sylvia fell back into her old ways while I was gone, penning new melodies and releasing them to the market. I could hear her songs playing from a mile away. They kept me hopeful, cheerful and comforted. On those nights, I felt as if the past had resurrected itself. I was that young soldier once more, eagerly hunting for reminders, for subtle promises that Sylvia was out there waiting for me. There was no John then, no Henry to mourn or Sebastian to fear for. Our future together was an empty page, waiting to be filled with the notes of a song that the world had not yet heard. But where there was Sylvia and music, John was not far behind.
I saw him again, this time in starlit Brooklyn Harbor with a young woman on his arm. A lady of esteem, I wagered, by the gown she wore and the way that she composed herself while walking alongside him. They boarded a carriage and nestled closely, conserving their most secretive and tender of smiles for when they thought no one was looking. I must have turned green with envy, or made my pain evident to Tarleton somehow, he called me out right away and I blushed crimson as the carriage vanished into the night. He was more intelligent than he liked to let on and so, I feared that I had given myself away to him. This fear would grow in the coming days, following a confrontation near the boundary line of New Jersey with Thorne's rebel spies.
It was sudden and brief, a chaotic thunderstorm of gunfire from the trees, followed by a retreat when they saw what they were up against. After identifying Silas to Tarleton, my hands began to shake. I might have fired without any difficulty, but my aim was tragic. My punishment was swift and telling. I was not the one entrusted to pass this intelligence on to John. This order was given to Combs instead. Call it paranoia, the painful churning of a desperate mind, but this gesture told me that I had single handedly revealed the contents of my heart. Silence was the only remedy that provided amiable results, it was oldest friend and I chose to rely on it. As I look back now on the man that I have become, I can say with confidence that it was within the confines of silence that my demons hatched and nested, waiting for my next order to charge or a call to arms.
When I returned home to Sylvia after eight long months of serving with Tarleton, I did not travel alone. I was accompanied by Robert. The lovestruck fool was always writing letters to Celeste. I had passed sweet words along to my beloved wife and she remained true to her usual tradition of writing songs for me to play or hum when sleep and I could not quite find one another. Yet, while my letters home numbered fourteen, Robert and Celeste's exchanges were well into the twenties! He tore into the silence that surrounded me during our ride and begged me to enlighten him on my marriage to a Ballard. With a shrug, I gave him simple answers that only skirted the surface of what it was truly like have Sylvia as a wife. Naturally, I was the most adamant with my descriptions of the General and his gradual approval of his daughter and I. It warmed my heart to think of Sylvia. It truly did. So much, in fact, that I nearly forgot to ask how John was faring since Robert was the one to see him last. I did ask. I did and soon after, wished that I had not.
"The gentleman is anything but trustworthy," Robert said with a stretch and a groan when we stopped to let our horses graze for a while. "And I am not the only one who believes that to be true!"
"Tosh." I might have cringed at the dreadful vernacular that had rubbed off on me thanks to the other dragoons. "There isn't a man alive who I trust more than Major Andre."
"Not even General Ballard?"
I removed my helmet and wiped the sweat that had collected on my brow. It was a cloyingly ornate thing by Banastre's own design. I am not proud to admit that the long hours of wearing it had nearly caused my head to fuse with the innermost band. I might have escaped that evil, but I knew that it was responsible for the premature recession of my already weak hairline. Sylvia would notice this and laugh. John would, too, and I felt a chilling wave of embarrassment wash over my weary body as I thought on this. "Intelligence is a different world from ours," I murmured, "John plays the entire chess board because he knows the game in and out, but there is not a treacherous cell in his pinky nail. I would be willing to swear it before the King, himself."
Robert smiled. Blankly, I think. "… not even General Ballard?" He reiterated with the same cryptic expression as before. I held my tongue. "Do you love him?" My nerves combusted, the blood in my veins frosted over with fear. Banastre had suspected me! He had, after all! Word must have spread like a wildfire through the ranks, knowledge of this illness, this black and festering root that had ripped through my soul and poisoned my mind against all that I had held dear was now common knowledge. "Do you love him?" Robert continued. Chuckling- if you can believe it, chuckling at my sudden paralysis. "The way that a son-in-law might? I only ask this because you and I appear to originate from a similar and more… humble lifestyle, compared to the Ballards. That and, quite candidly, the General terrifies me!"
I shut my eyes and swallowed hard, my mouth and tongue were papery and dry. I looked silly to him, I am sure, trembling, pale and fiddling stupidly with my riding gloves, watching the flat, green horizon for impending danger- or rather, any excuse to saddle up and continue our ride. "He still frightens me." I gave a quick, dismissive groan and decided to play on Robert's weakness to remove myself from peril. "What time are we expected to arrive? The General dislikes tardiness. He dislikes it very much."
We made great haste from that moment forward and I played the part well, a poor, young man frightened of any disapproval from a wealthy patriarch. As the terrain became familiar, I thought on Sylvia. Eight months is a long time to go without a woman's touch and she always welcomed me with such eagerness. Just the thought of holding her and feeling the power of her selfless love in every kiss drove me to distraction. My life had changed, my conscience, too- but homecomings would always remain sweet. Even if I was no longer deserving of those adoring glances and impending hours of tireless lovemaking. What tore me apart inside now was not how deeply I loved her, but the torture of holding two souls in my heart. I would allow her to consume me, to suspend what truly lived inside until I saw only her. I believed, truly believed, in that final hour of travel, that Sylvia would save me from myself.
When I saw the estate, I left Robert behind in a cloud of dust. I didn't bother with the doorman, I rode directly through the side gate and jumped the fence. My horse's hooves warped the metal pieces on the croquet field and uprooted several patches of grass. So much for the performance that I had given Robert! General Ballard would simply have to live with the damage that I had done to his landscape in my pursuit of his daughter! Sylvia and Celeste were in the garden that evening, with Sebastian and Viola at their feet. She did not see me at first because she was leaning over Sebastian and listening to him babble over one of the General's leather-bound biology books. He was examining what appeared to be the carcass of a colorful beetle and comparing it to a picture in the book's soiled pages. She was smiling at him and her nod of approval made my son smile, too. I caught Celeste's eye, then Viola's and then Sylvia came running towards me without delay. I dismounted so quickly that I very nearly lost my footing and tumbled to the ground. We held each other closely, wordlessly, for nearly a minute. I could feel both of our hearts racing, intent on breaking through our bodies and becoming one, too. The rosewater and finely milled soap that she had washed with that morning still resided on her flesh. I kissed her mouth with great depth, tasting oranges and tea and above all, Sylvia. It was her that all of my senses craved.
"I have missed you. Oh!" She paused, assessing a patch of dirt that she had transferred to my collar. "Sorry. All that boy of ours ever wants to do is dig for worms!" As she turned her pretty head, I smelled the sweet fragrance of her hair. "Sebastian? Do you have a kiss for Papa?" I was not enough to distract him from the jars of garden spiders and earth worms that he had compiled. "This is all he ever does. He has his own cataloguing system worked out and he's not yet three. Boris, I think," her smile was only temporarily spiked with severity, "I think he might be a genius!"
"He takes after his Mum," I brushed a wayward strand of her golden hair aside and kissed her a second time, realizing that I hadn't removed my helmet. I fiddled with it until it came off, without once leaving go of my wife.
"Your uniform changed," she observed, almost naively. "I approve." There was distance between us, new and strange. She looked at me, quietly taking in the chronology of tiny injuries that I had obtained since the last time that we saw one another. That and the new melancholy and weariness in my eyes. "You have changed, too."
"It's the ale," I smiled through my pain and gave her a tiny wink. "Rumor has it that too much of it can make a man shorter!"
"Really?" Sylvia saw and appreciated my cheekiness. "That must be it! Or merely spending too many hours around Banastre Tarleton. I wonder… can a man catch stunted growth?!" Our fingers became interwoven, our bodies leaned against one another. She could not stop holding me and I wondered silently- why. I was not deserving of such an embrace, but I accepted it. After all, she was mine and I was hers.