We walked in silence on that shining morning. Silence- save for the clunking of my boots and the gentle pattering of footfalls. I watched the ground between us, captivated as ever by the gracefulness of her stride. My tongue was in shackles. Sylvia's was, too. The only rhetoric that passed between us had grown stale, tarnishing amongst the innumerable words that were now doomed to go unspoken. "Be kind to Charles." That was my Sylph's last request and although it had hence been covered, overgrown by an hour of her deep caresses and at least a dozen of those wild kisses of fire, I carried her words like the priceless gifts they were and vowed to hold true to them. She sensed my animosity, my desire to revolt against my commander. I would never harm him, place slander or insult on the name that he now shared with her in the place of my own. The tempest within me would wax mild when he was near and devour all that I was tenfold when he was out of sight. I would do this for her because it was her command and her word was sacred to me, above all others, God's included and certainly my own faulted conscience. There was a carriage waiting at her door. The driver was standing on the dirt road, tapping his foot with what I assumed to be impatience. I halted, covered by the shadow of a nearby building and pulled her by the hand, back into the darkness. She saw me break, she always did. I watched her sadness morph into soft-spoken courage. Our individual fates seemed so evident just then, she would outlive me. I wonder to this day if she had always known or if this was her moment of realization.

Lightly, she lowered her eyelids, tears clung to her lashes like morning dew. Her singular piece of cargo, her beloved violin, was placed on the ground between us. The doeskin gloves followed suit and with naked fingers, she touched the unshaved surface of my face. I bowed my head, pressing my forehead to hers and as my hands fell across the dainty framework of her shoulders, I felt the slightest convulsion of a sob rising from within her. Feeling her cry was akin to catching the vibrations of distant thunderclaps, they were present, they were real, but she kept them contained in the most admirable way. She was the soldier, the warrior, the hero all along. Just as my sense of kindness in my younger days had inspired her music, I had only lasted in battle this long by following her example. I should have said this then, but I did not.

Before turning away, before stepping out of the lingering shadows of the night and onto the carriage that would deliver her to New Jersey, she allowed her lips to fall upon mine. Her mouth was salted, mine was, too, with tears and sweat from our last night together. It was a simple waltz, I thought, a soft and shallow kiss that cut to the heart of me. I knew the geography of those glistening lips, I knew the texture of her tongue, how quickly and slowly those sweet gusts of breath could blow, I knew the hollow cavern of her mouth so well because it was my home. This one kiss, this soft farewell, was neither melancholy nor lustful. Her lips, full and soft as satin, warm and rich as the setting sun on an evening in midsummer, rolled and danced with varying degrees of pressure across my own. They were plump and loose at first, cascading freely wherever they landed. Towards the end, however, they tightened and when she moved away from me, I saw that she was smiling.

I continued to watch her while I bent towards the case at our feet. Her expression strengthened, and I saw in that single glance all that I had grown to love about Sylvia but also, an unexpected gift- gratitude. We both understood, without the luxury of discussion, the symbolism in the passing of the violin from my hands to hers. She kept the gloves folded over the handle and held her eyes steadily on my own when she backed away. The corners of my mouth might have twisted into a grin, the coating of tears that I had yet to shed might have temporarily given way, so she could see that same love reflected in my eyes. I forced my slouching, burdened shoulders forward and my back into straightness. The sunlight cloaked her, it gave new coloring to the golden, pinned and intricately twisted hair atop her sweet head. I was humbled to say the least, to see this majestic beauty smiling just for me. The city streets were lively now, eyes from every corner fell upon my stunning, ivory-clad lady. There, before all the world, while I hid away in the shadows and she sparkled like a diamond in the light, Sylvia gave a single, swanlike bend into a curtsy at my feet. It was low, so low that she could have kissed the dust and cobblestones.

I was unworthy of such a gesture. Even the King, himself would not require her to bow so lowly and for so long. Now, we had an audience. Shop keeps, lawyers, doctors and common pedestrians stopped in their tracks, pondering the same question as I- why me? Who was I? What had I done to be honored in such a way? She kept the lower portion of her body against the ground and allowed her head to rise above her knee. That grateful smile had not left her lips but a single tear glistened as it rolled towards her chin. I reached for Sylvia, prepared to help her rise but she continued to watch me, to burn a lasting memory of my face into her mind before standing on her own. My empty hand soon covered my mouth and eyes, stifling a pitiful march of incoming tears and gasps and eventually, sobs. She wanted to stay and comfort me, I could read her eager sorrow like a book. But by doing so, by catching my fall and drying my tears, the carriage would leave without her, the dragoons would be without their Captain and Sylvia and I would have broken apart and come to dust right there, in each other's arms.

We had to part and so, we did. It was there, on a cool New York morning, with my feet in the shade and hers on a widened sunbeam, that I watched her disappear from my life forevermore. I waited with my head in my hands, waited until she was gone from my sight, to kneel upon the road that now lay vacant. My fist struck the ground. My tantrum from the night before had not resolved. I was angry again, frightened and alone. My one saving grace, the only notion that kept me from tearing my own body to pieces then and there was my promise of vengeance. I placed my memories of lovely Sylvia on a shelf in the deepest corridor of my mind. There beside her in that jeweled tomb, I stored my own compassion, my moral compass and what remained of my mutilated heart. I cried in secret nightly, alone in my tent on the dark and dangerous highways sloping south. A fortress is not a fortress without a moat. I like to believe that every tear I shed spilled into that secret canal and looped around all that I still considered to be sacred in this cold, unfeeling world.

A mighty dam dismantled in my soul on the day that I was first summoned to Fort Carolina. News spread swiftly through the ranks but somehow, I was among the last to learn of John's execution. I stood with Colonel Tavington, familiarizing myself with the reflections on the floorboard. I quickly learned that when Lord Cornwallis spoke to the two of us, he showed little interest in me. No, he was far too preoccupied with holding Tavington's attention and readying himself for the next time that the defiant young colonel spoke out of turn. John was mentioned only in passing and Tavington shrugged the sad circumstance off, he cut to the heart of the matter, the purpose of our meeting on that crisp October morning. I held my composure. The colors of the dying trees outdoors were mirrored on the smooth surface of our commander's desk. I lifted my gaze to watch the wind break off a collection of leaves and send them swirling across the yellowing field nearby. The two men bickered over the cold, hard statistics of the soldiers we lost in our latest battle. I knew what was beginning between them, a war within a war. It would be my duty to remain levelheaded and try to maintain a semblance of peace within the company, but sorrow came first.

My soul was so easily altered, so helpless, so willing to be carried out to sea, crushed by the whitecaps and lost within the dark and swirling depths. No one in the room could see that I was drowning. I was decent now, not quite masterful, but decent and hiding my emotions behind a mask of stone. I tried to hold my thoughts at bay and keep them from returning to how cruel I was towards John. Cornwallis was cross now and Tavington, alarmingly, looked to me for support that I could not provide even if I wanted to.

"Captain," he jostled my shoulder, "tell him the truth. You were there. Tell him that I only gave the order to charge when I was certain that the damned rebels were advancing. Tell him." The sheer irritation in Tavington's icy glare hardened into detestation. I opened my mouth to speak, blindly hoping that the correct words would find me if I met them partway by making an effort. "You are useless. Do you hear me?! Useless!"

I returned to the reflections and wished myself outdoors, to be one with nature as she slowly turned the seasons. Tavington made a point to slam into my shoulder as he left me to fend for myself. Cornwallis leaned over his desk, massaging his temples for several seconds. "And to think," he said aloud, hardly caring if I heard or heard not, remained put or trailed behind my comrade, "I could have had taken Tarleton with me in his stead. Thank heavens for you, Captain Bordon," I caught a sliver of a grin on his gracefully-aged face, "I believe I mean that, too."

As I stood, bewildered, my shyness caused my gaze to meander. The autumnal hues of the outside world contrasted the room's green walls. Ever since that telling dream I had so many months ago, I associated death, John's death in particular, with September's painful transition into October. "S-sir?" I asked, halfheartedly, looking away from the windows, the floor and the nuance of shadows throughout the space. My wandering eyes found their mooring at last on a portrait on the wall, a new addition. The artist that he had commissioned to paint her surely found such a task daunting. He had tried, tried in vain to capture her spirit and trap it between the surface of the canvas and a thick coating of acrylic. To me, however, she appeared as hollow and cold as a porcelain doll. The tears that I had been holding back before trickled into the open air, at last.

"Beautiful, isn't she? Such a pity that she did not remove her gloves that day. What you see here is an artistic liberty based on my description. I must be the only man alive to have ever seen dear Sylvia's hands! Mind if I share a secret with you?" He waited for me to speak and when I did not, he proceeded, anyway. "They are bony and terribly chapped. Lovely, of course. Always lovely, however… She has the hands of a gardener, that one! Or a maid! Or a cellist!" That final statement grabbed hold of my collar and shook some life into me, but that was not his intention. He doted upon the painting and its many inaccuracies. To me, it was a distortion, an image of her through the furthest curve of a chalice filled with cloudy wine. I suppose it was how he saw her, and it comforted him to have that false icon nearby. It comforted me, too. I am not ashamed to admit that it soothed the gaping wound within me, numbed the shock of John's passing to realize that although she belonged to someone new, I viewed her in every dimension, while he saw her only in one.

He carried the portrait with him, hanging it amongst his other trivial images of England and great danes. Always, he would feel my eyes upon it. Always, he would use it as an invitation to converse. He was aware now that Sylvia and I had known each other for years. He was a highly intelligent man and, at the very least, must have realized that her desire to name their child "Boris" was my doing. Yet, there was a curtain obstructing his view, a wall of land blocking off the river of truths and connections between us. He never suspected that we had a past as husband and wife or that we had acted as lovers after she was his. He confided in me and just as my infatuation with Major Andre had so tragically eclipsed my homelife, learning how Sylvia was faring reduced the tears that I shed for my lost friend. That is, until they both intersected my heart at the same time. Allow me to explain, it was the eve of our second battle. Cornwallis had learned, by way of a worrisome letter, that Sylvia had fallen into debilitating despair. She had only written to me once informing me that she was producing her grandest opus yet. He described her condition to me. She locked herself away in the spare room upstairs- a common practice while she was working. What troubled us both was her refusal of rest, human contact and food. After nearly a week of starvation, the butler heard a recurring thump coming from behind her closed door. He was able to break in and go to her side, by then, the seizure had caused significant bruising to her arms and legs. Her commitment to music, I understood. This new Sylvia, the one who had emerged after the hanging, who was prone to violent seizures, was a mystery to me. She was resting when last he heard. The convulsions were few, but still prevalent. His fear was all-consuming, I could tell. As was my own.

The second that this troubling meeting seemed to find an unsteady resolve, Cornwallis remembered that he had confiscated something from Tavington that was intended for me. My already warped stomach wrapped around itself a second time and then a third when the letter fell into my hands. The seal was unbroken, thank heavens, but it forced me to wonder how many bits of personal mail Tavington had intercepted. It was a pretty note, a pretty note on a bit of expensive parchment. I touched the name in the corner, pondering how close John was to his end when he decided to write. Awkwardly, without asking how long the item was in the thief's possession, I thanked him and excused myself. Tavington, Banastre and Sylvia- those were the only living souls who knew of my romantic involvement with Major Andre. Of the three, Tavington was the most forthcoming about his amusement and disgust. It was likely that he snatched it under the premise that matters of the heart had no place in warfare. God knows, he muttered those words beneath his breath every time a dragoon's focus was blurred by lovesickness. I agreed. I knew and he knew how easy it was for my mind to go astray. So, why did I decide to read the letter? I suppose it was an effort to find closure, to rush my grief into a satisfying resolve. With a steady hand, I tore evenly into the seal.

To my sweet friend:

By the time this letter finds you, there will be no path on earth to deliver your reply to me. I have spent endless hours, revisiting the sweet lease that I held in your heart. Your memory has kept me warm in this terrible place and if you were near, I would feel compelled to ask permission to meditate on your kiss as I breathe my last breath. Since I am no more, and that single breath has long since faded into nothingness on the breeze, it was for you. I could not give you all of my moments in life. So, you may claim my moment of death as your own. I did not speak to Colonel Tarleton with the intention of easing this weight from my shoulders. If it helps you to believe that I was a selfish man, however, I was never in the position to argue. I asked him to watch over Sylvia for you and to be her messenger. If the number of her letters decreases, write to him. He will tell you how she is faring better than anyone. I know that our last meeting was tumultuous. I know that I have wronged you beyond all wrongs and that no apology will ever remedy the pain that I have caused you. To tell you that I die now without a trace of resentment will anesthetize nothing. From the first moment that I saw you, softly dreaming in the recovery ward, I loved you. The day that you revealed your desire for me altered the course of my life forever. I should have known better, I should have honored your choice to wed Sylvia and my courtship with Miss Shippen. There is much to regret. If I had more time, I would ask you to cast your regrets on me. As I love you now, you may hate me. Pass your cares onto my ghost to bear. Call me a martyr, call me a fool, call me what you will. I shall continue to call you love from beyond the grave.

In a better world, perhaps. In a better world.

John