“Really.” Both eyebrows were raised as high as they could go. “Fraser’s sent you as an envoy to General Lincoln, and they sent you to me because Benjamin’s asleep?”
“Not exactly.” He’d best just put it baldly. Whatever Jamie’s reputation with the Continental army was, his business with Marion was straightforward enough.
“I take it you know that General Fraser resigned his commission following the Battle of—”
“Monmouth, yes.” Marion shifted his scrawny buttocks on the stone. “Everyone knows by now, I should think. Is it true that he wrote his letter of resignation on the back of an ensign and sent him to Lee with a muddy shirt?”
“It was written in his wife’s blood,” Roger said, “but yes.”
That took the look of amusement out of Marion’s eyes. He nodded a little, the meager pouf of graying hair on top of his head stirring in the rising breeze, as though disturbed by the thoughts beneath it.
“I don’t know Monsieur Fraser as a man,” he said, “but I’ve talked with those who do.” He eyed Roger, head on one side. “What does he want with me?”
“He’s assembling a militia,” Roger replied, just as bluntly. “A partisan band. He doesn’t want to have anything further to do with the Continental army—and I imagine the feeling is mutual—but he does intend to fight.”
“I suppose he’ll have to.” It was a statement of fact, made with no emotion at all, but spoken here, with the air around them live and dangerous as a lightning storm, it struck Roger like a blow in the chest.
“Yes.”
“And he wants a—a liaison with the army, perhaps? A connection, but not a formal connection. Just so.” Marion’s lips were thin and bloodless; pressed tight together, they disappeared, making him look like a marionette with a hinged, carved jaw.
“He knows of you, too,” Roger said carefully. “That you have experience in forming militia units and … employing them effectively in a … a formal military context?”
“It’s much more effective to employ them outside that context,” Marion said, glancing toward the cemetery wall. There was a rising noise of horses and men, audible now that the guns had fallen silent. His large dark eyes turned back, focusing on Roger’s face. “Tell him that. He should keep his distance from the army. They will use his militia, certainly, they need every man they can get. But the risk to him—him, personally—is very great. If it had not been for Lee’s trial and La Fayette’s good word, Fraser would have been court-martialed himself after Monmouth; perhaps even hanged.”
Marion spoke casually, but Roger felt the scar on his throat tighten and burn beneath the concealment of his high white stock, and he had the sudden uncontrollable urge to fling his arms out, burst the memory of rope and helplessness.
He gulped air and tried to speak, but no words came. Instead, he turned violently on his heel, seized a stone from the ground, and flung it at the stone wall. It struck with a crack like a bullet, and a gull that had been sitting on the wall rose with a shriek and flapped away, dropping a large wet splatter of feces on the ground between the two men.
Marion looked at him with concern.
Roger cleared his throat and spat on the ground. He didn’t apologize; there wasn’t anything he could say.
“I’ll tell him,” he said, hoarse and formal. “Thank you for your advice, sir.”
He was trembling. The sense of something coming hadn’t gone away; it was growing. The ground seemed to be vibrating, but it must be only him.
A young lieutenant came through the gate beneath the Star of David, face lit with fear and excitement.
“They’re waiting for you, Colonel.”
Marion nodded to the boy and stood up.
“You can’t leave, I’m afraid,” he said apologetically to Roger. “It will begin soon. Do you want to fight? I can give you a good rifle.”
“I—no.” Roger touched the stock at his throat. Marion’s attention was focused on the sounds behind the cemetery wall. No, it wasn’t his imagination; the ground was vibrating. Horses. The horses … “But I—I’d like to help. If I can.”
“Bon,” said Marion softly, almost absently. He slid his arms into the sleeves of his coat and hitched it up on his shoulders, fingers twitching the lower buttons into place without looking. But his attention came back to Roger, just for a moment.
“Go back into camp, then,” he said. “And wait. If things go wrong, you can help bury us. Or if they go right, I expect.”