A/N: It has been a while since I have posted anything. Never fear I will get back to the stories I have left hanging. This story and most of the others that will make up this series have been sitting in prompt/idea format in a notebook for the past few years. At the beginning of this month I had to write a history research paper and I chose the sige and massacre of Fort William Henry... Well guess what, like I have suspected, and maybe YOU already knew, James Fenimore Cooper didn't do much research before he wrote his book. I am rather annoyed, for some reason I though it was more accurate than it was. Anyways, that essay has influenced my writing and is making me consider rehauling THHC, but it is also why I have changed Duncan Hayward's rank to Captain, rather than Major, he can only be in his mid to late twenties and I have a hard time believing he is already a Major. It's not imposable, just unlikely. Anna and the other servants and Private Cather are Original Characters of mine. One last thing, try to see if you can guess who I am referencing at the end when I mention Cora's lover (hint: he was a real man, but he is not in the book or movie and he never married, though he may have been betrothed—it's up to speculation from what I've heard).
BECAUSE OF: A Cold
In the darkness of the premorning a young girl shook the shoulder of a sleeping woman. The woman's hair was coal black and contrasted sharply against the white of the girl's hand. Her face was fair and smooth, but several shades deeper than that of the maidservant.
The girl shook her again. "Miss Monro, wake up. Miss, wake up, the sun will be rising in an hour."
The woman, who was apparently Miss Monro, tossed off the thin covering from her shoulders and sat up quickly. "Thank you Anna, is Alice awake?"
"No Miss, she is yet asleep."
Miss Monro chuckled and patted the girl's hand, "When has she ever woken early? Do you have breakfast fixed?"
Anna lifted a petticoat from the chair by the bed and began to help her mistress into it. "Yes Miss and if Miss Alice ever woke up before me I would eat my bonnet." The two laughed together as Miss Monro dressed.
"I will wake her, Anna, go see to it that Billy has eaten, you know how he always seems to forget. Remind Mister Wrighte to check the provisions and powder."
"Yes Miss, I'll see to it. The column is assembling, Miss." She began to make for the door but Miss Monro called out to her.
"Anna, thank you, you are the dearest girl to put up with me—and him! Go on now." Anna smiled and scurried away.
Miss Monro picked up the candle and pushed aside the curtain that split the room in two and beheld her sister asleep on a cot similar to what she herself had passed the night on. She stepped through and set the candle down upon a shelf in the corner. "Alice, the morning is calling," she sang softly. She shook the shoulder of the sleeping girl gently. The sleeper didn't look much like her older sister; her hair was pale gold and her complexion white like her Irish mother's. Her lips were curled down in a troubled frown. "Alice, darling, we ride today, 'tis but seventeen miles to the Fort!"
Alice rolled away from her sister, scrunching up her face.
"We must eat, dearest, we will be setting out in an hour." She patted Alice's arm and stroked her hair softly. "Alice, awake."
In defeat Alice opened her crusty eyes. She sat up slowly. Miss Monro smiled and stood, reaching for her sister's clothes.
"Achoo!" The sneeze broke the silence. Alice fell back on the cot with another sneeze and a cough. Her throat was sore. She opened her mouth to tell her elder sister not to worry, but instead she doubled over on her side coughing.
"Alice!" Miss Monro exclaimed, she abandoned the clothing and returned to her sister. "Oh, Elise, my Alice, you are having one of your bouts, poor dear." She smoothed her hand over the girl's forehead, "Hot, poor dear, you have a fever. Oh Alice."
"It is not too—" Alice began, but coughing disturbed her speech.
"Hush, I will inform Captain Hayward you are too ill to be moved. Where is Anna—humph I sent her out!" Alice began to sit up once more but her sister pushed her down gently, "You are too ill my dearest Alice, we will postpone the trip."
"Cora!" She protested, but the next round of coughing and sneezes settled the matter. They would not be setting out for Fort William Henry that day, or, if Cora had her way as she usually did in such situations, until the next week at the earliest if they went at all. Another cough ravaged Alice's tender throat.
"Oh, why, why, did I ever insist on viewing the stars that night? Would that I had not been so headstrong! The constellations at sea are hardly a fair exchange for the trouble it has caused me," Alice thought pitifully. Miss Monro, or Cora, patted her sister's hand and, taking the candle with her, left the warm cabin.
Standing in the cool, humid air leaning against a waggon stood a younger man. He was taller than most, with features hidden by the war-paint and darkness before dawn. He was clad simply in a calico shirt and leather breeches, on his back was a musket. He was a runner for the English Army and had just returned from General Webb's cabin where he had delivered the letter he had been carrying. His chest still heaved slightly from the exertions of the seventeen mile run in the dark night. His eyes followed the young white woman as she strode quickly toward the General's lodging.
She knocked and was admitted.
A few minutes later she stepped from the cabin with a young officer at her side. They paused a few yards from the Indian.
"Return to your sister, I will be back with the Physician. Where is your maid? Has she been dallying with—"
"No, Hayward, I sent her on an errand. Would you be so kind as to find her for me after you have called the Physician?"
"Of course, lady. I am at your disposal." He bowed to her.
"Thank you, we are ever in your debt. Oh, Alice!" She, still with her candle, continued on in the direction from whence she had originally come.
For a little while the man continued staring after her as he contemplated her striking face. Her hair had been only tied loosely up, and there had been an air of distraction about her. Her face had caught his fancy, but eventually he turned away and slipped silently into the kitchens for food to replenish his pouch.
"Who might she be?" He wondered. She had seemed better dressed, and the officer had treated her with great respect. "It matters not," he decided eventually, as he drank from a waterskin. An hour or two passed before he presented himself to General Webb as he had been ordered. He took the message that was handed to him and slid it into his shirt and waited for any last instructions.
"You need not hasten as quickly with this message as with the last," Webb instructed, "but do be careful, Magua, the French have been sighted on the lake, I am sure you know the dangers their allies pose in the woods."
He only nodded and left. A few minutes later he began to jog the seventeen miles to the lake. Having no reason to do otherwise, he decided to deliver it to the commander of Fort William Henry. It was not urgent and by now the French Army might not have landed.
The sun was rising over the trees to shine onto the dirt track between the two sister forts. The pace of the column was slow. There were 2,300 soldiers of the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Ameicans and several of the Provincial regiments and militias. Astride a big black horse was the young officer whom Cora had been addressing earlier that morning. His horse was dancing and pulling at his bridle and altogether misbehaving. The black's spirit was taken up by one of the horses pulling one of the cannon and the driver cuffed the bay. The black's rider didn't react other than to manipulate his reins to better curb his steed.
Captain Hayward was chafing. His arrival at Fort William Henry had been something he had been anticipating for many weeks, but now that Miss Elise was ill he was inwardly cursing the officers that had assigned him to Lieutenant-Colonel Monro's command. He wished nothing more than to be at the side of the girl he loved, but instead he was riding to what could very well be his death. "It was," he reflected in a brief moment of clarity, "better that she had taken ill than continued on with her mad plan to journey to the Fort to support her father."
The black reared up halfway and he jerked him down again with a huff. A man in the Provincial ranks laughed at him and called out, "Yer horse won't settle 'til you do, lad."
Another called out, no doubt encouraged by his companion, "Show him who's boss!"
"Fine horse, pity a redcoat owns him."
Captain Hayward scowled, "All quiet in the ranks, Provincials!" he spat, and spurred the black forward away from the men who were calling out to him and laughing.
"Alice, oh my dear Alice! That one so fair should be subject to such suffering! It is unbearable." A simple cold! That had been what the physician had called it! The black skittered to the side. "Simple it may be but how does that comfort me? I love the girl but can not, will not, take advantage of her by speaking on such a subject as matrimony without her father present, or while she is so ill." He pulled the horse's head around and stood up in his stirrups. His sword slapped against his thigh. "So bound by that I can claim no more interest than even Webb himself! Not that I am even there to try!"
The day passed tryingly. It was hot and humid, moreover he was sweating in his thick coat and shirt and breeches. The soldiers and Rangers around him cursed and argued over one thing or the other. He was glad to arrive at their destination by the time evening came. His last though before he lay down for a brief rest was: "Thank God she has her sister with her, the woman is a wonder with invalids!"
Back in Fort Edward, Miss Monro tended her sister patiently: no day was too hot to remain by her sister's side in the close confines of their cabin, no night too long to stay up. She rarely slept those two weeks; she unconsciously mirrored the soldiers at Fort William Henry as they went sleep deprived to continue the defence. Alice slowly fought off the sickness, but she remained weak and feverish for many days.
Anna aided her mistress as best she could and often watched Alice while Miss Monro slept. The three women lived in something of a shell for the first twenty-four hours of the illness; then the sounds of the cannon fire from the nearby fort became too much to be ignored. Alice continued in her fever induced haze and so was saved much of the worry that her sister and the maidservant endured as they listened to the echoes of the explosions. The soldiers garrisoned at Fort Edward were a rumour mill that circulated endlessly. Anna made it her duty to impart what she deemed the most reliable of the information to her mistress every morning and evening.
On the 6th of August, only four days after Alice had taken ill, Sir William Johnson arrived. The day dawned bright but sweltering. At midmorning the women in the cabin heard a great commotion outside as of a great many men arriving. Cora sent Anna out to see what was happening. A few minutes later the girl returned breathlessly.
"Sir William Johnson is come with 1,200 militia and some 200 Indians! They are here to march to the aid of Fort William Henry! Sir William Johnson is in with the General now."
"Thank the Lord! Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. Oh Anna! Anna, the Lord is good! He has sent relief to my father in his time of need!"
Anna smiled and squeezed her shoulder, "Yes the Lord is good, Miss, but it is not only your father who you worry for." She gave Cora a significant look. Cora blushed and looked away.
"I suppose nothing escapes your eye, Anna. Let us not speak of him."
"Miss, it may not be my place, but you have always asked me to speak plainly to you—"
"Anna," Miss Monro cautioned, but the girl continued on bravely.
"Have you seen the way he looks upon Miss Elise? I know you have––oh Cora, oh Miss, you know he loves you as a brother would!" She hugged Cora, as her mistress turned her face away from her. "He loves her and she loves him too. Do not cry, Miss."
Cora shook her head and smiled wanly, "I am not weeping, Anna." She exposed her pale face to her maid to prove her point. "To think that I have refused two offers in hopes of catching the eye of a man who's heart is held by my own sister. To think..." she trailed off with a sigh. "Ah, it is best this way, I do not think I could have stood to raise my children amongst a regiment. I do not know how my mother managed."
"Miss, that is not true. You are a soldier's daughter far more than your sister is, but perhaps the culture of the Captain would have stifled you, Miss. In my opinion, you need a man whom you can be proud of and respect, but who would let you have your way. The Captain would not have allowed you to continue with your sports––he thinks them too unladylike."
The woman laughed and took a bite of the meal that Anna offered her, "You may be right, Anna, but it is too soon for you to point out his faults. Let time take its course, I am sure I shall find myself a soldier of good fortune who will not mind that I prefer to ride astride or that I can outshoot him. Perhaps he will even let me aid him in his strategizing."
The maid laughed, "He will be rich beyond imagination: he will own thousands of acres of land, the swiftest of boats, at his call he shall have a thousand soldiers to do his bidding; and yet he will still love you with a love that will transcend distance; and shall build you a great house and make you mistress of it; and you will have all the new dresses and bonnets you could wish for; and you will keep your drawing room in the latest fashions. You will be the envy of all."
Cora laughed again, "He shall be the king of the Old World as well as the New! I shall have jewels to adorn my hair and my carpets will be woven of spring flowers; my floors and tables will be polished mahogany; the plates will be gold overlaid with silver!"
But later, that evening after the news had come that General Webb had forbidden Sir William Johnson to go to the aid of the besieged fort and Anna was asleep, Miss Monro sat with her sister in silence. Her face was drawn and her eyes were red rimmed.
As she stroked her sister's hair Alice gazed up at her.
"Cora, do tell me what troubles you. There is something—" she began, but Cora interrupted her.
"Alice, my poor sweet Alice, to think of me at such a time as this, no there is nothing. It is best, and I shall put aside my thought."
Alice frowned up at her, but her sister had hidden the trouble from her. She could not help but believe that it was a delicate matter. "Cora, sister, I am not so ill that you can not trouble me with your cares. Do tell me."
"It is nothing, Elise, I am tired that is all."
"Is it not father? I hear the cannon, is he well? And Duncan, is he...?"
Cora shook her head and pressed a kiss to her sister's brow. "To the best of my knowledge they are both well. The Fort may yet hold. Do not worry, sweet, all will be well. Sleep, it will do you good."
A sennight passed. The firing had ceased. There was much smoke in the air. There had been a great commotion three days before when the survivors of what was being called the Massacre of Fort William Henry began trailing in. The numbers in Fort Edward continued to swell. Within her isolated cabin, Alice had no way of knowing what was going on without. She noted the silence, the smoke, and the sounds of panic. She noted her sister's tears and Anna's scared, shifty eyes. She was well enough to leave the cabin, but Cora forbade it. The young girl could guess well enough what had occurred, but as she sat in the cabin she wished it were not so.
Two more days passed before Alice caught Cora weeping on her bed in the night. During those days Miss Monro was often out, making Anna Allice's only companion. Cora would return smelling of the Hospital or kitchens, as though she had been working.
"Sister, do tell me if the Fort has fallen," Alice begged. "Is father well? Please."
But Cora never answered, or she changed the subject. Once Alice caught sight of a Ranger outside the cabin door. He was tall and seemed well made, but his uniform was lacking and he looked weary. He was speaking with Cora earnestly, but whatever the matter was he did not win the argument. Alice's eyes were fastened to the bandage on his arm and the musket on his back. When she asked, Cora only told her that he was a friend who had stopped by to ask after her wellbeing. Alice's eyebrows rose, but her sister ignored her incredulity.
The next morning Miss Monro was as bright as she ever was before. In the afternoon their father entered the room. Alice met him with a teary hug. She finally believed it. He had surrendered his post. She knew then that Cora had wept for the shame of it. The only parts she could not reconcile was the length of time it took her father to reach Edward and the strange Ranger. "The Terms of Capitulation ought not to have taken so long to be agreed upon," she thought.
The happiness of that day was not marred by any sad thought until she met the Ranger that had troubled her mind. He was as she had first noticed tall and strong, but his face was grim and there was a slightly wild look in his eye. He was missing half of his left ear and a red scar cut across his cheek, marking the path of the bullet. He had dark hair, and a beard that seemed not to have been trimmed in a long while which added to his wildness. His right arm was bandaged tightly and his uniform was ragged and stained.
"Miss Elise Monro," he greeted her, with a small bow. "Is your sister within?"
"Perhaps, who are you?" She countered evasively, as she stood in the doorway.
Unexpectedly he did not react angrily. He smiled, "It is good that you are well, I am Ranger Private Robert Cather of the 35th Foot. Miss Monro requested I inform her when such persons as she specified were found or heard of."
Miss Alice looked sharply at him, confused, "Persons found or heard of, Private Cather?"
He frowned, "You have not heard? The French—"
Cora, having noticed the conversation, stepped up beside her sister. "That is enough, Private Cather," She rebuked. "She will hear of it in time. Is your news good?"
He looked between the two women for a moment, then, "Yes, Miss. He is safe and well, I have seen him myself. He only just arrived and has been between the barracks and the Hospital all day."
Cora smiled, relieved. "Thank you, you have relived our fears." He nodded, but began to frown when she withdrew several coins from her purse.
"No, I will not accept this. I can not, " he attempted to put her off, but she would not be swayed.
"Take it," she insisted. He looked from side to side, pressing his lips together as though he were looking for some excuse not to take the money. Seeing that he would not accept it easily, she lifted his hand and pressed the coins into it. "For your sister then." He nodded.
"Thank you, Miss Monro. Good day, and good health to you both. If you need anything I am at your disposal." He bowed and was gone. Alice closed the door.
She was troubled even more so by his actions and his words than she had been before. "Who is he? Who were you asking after, and why did you not simply send one of the menservants? What was he about to say, Cora?"
Cora waved away her concerns. "I needed a quick and simple way to find Father." Alice's look was unimpressed. Cora sighed and began again softly, her eyes growing wide, "There was chaos after the surrender, the French Indians did not abide by the terms and they killed many and took others captive. Only a few came in on the 10th, father was not amongst them. As any daughter would, I feared for him and I sent Anna out asking after him but no one knew, though rumours abounded. At last I stumbled upon Private Cather. He was willing to tell me all he knew and to also to keep an ear open for Father.
"I also asked after Hayward. That was the man he was speaking of."
Alice's hand covered her mouth, "The fort was massacred? No wonder it has seemed like panic outside."
"They have not completed the lists, but the returning column was attacked," Cora agreed, but she did not clarify what had all happened on the morning of the 10th.
The next day Duncan appeared to eliminate Alice's fears. She had been unable to quite believe that he was safe until she saw him in the flesh. He was much quieter than he had been before. His face, though shaved and washed, was pale and strained. His eyes were bloodshot and he had not bothered to powder his blond hair, which was tied back at the base of his neck. His left hand was bound up and he spoke and acted as though he were extremely fatigued. When asked about the wound, he only said he had lost part of a finger. Most of his attention was focused on Miss Elise and often he would lose track of his train of thought and simply smile tiredly at her. Cora watched and slowly let her pain go.
On the 20th of August he proposed to Alice in Albany with Lieutenant-Colonel George Monro's approval. Alice accepted him. Her sister congratulated the two warmly, but Alice noticed something in her manner. A thought occurred to the newly engaged girl: "She loves him." A moment later, though, Cora laughed and teased her for her wide spread grin and Alice doubted the theory. November came and their father passed, the two girls remained with Captain Hayward for several months before making the voyage to Scotland where their paternal relatives dwelt. At the end of the Seven Years War Captain Hayward, then a Major—he had been promoted during the War—returned to the Old World and took Elise as his wife. Cora, then twenty-eight, had given her heart to the young Brigadier-General, who had died in 1759. She did not marry, but was ever a kind aunt to her sister's four children.
