I wrote this because I have a habit of taking overused plots and trying to make them not cliché and a bit more realistic. I hope it works out.
The Rules of Warfare:
Part I: A Wench and a Drunkard
Man is born free and he is everywhere in chains.
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Louisa sat alone at a table in the back, her hand grasping fruitlessly for the cup before her. It had been three years. Three years since the night everything happened. Sometimes it felt like mere days, sometimes decades, but always with a mixture of happiness and grief. Finally, she wrapped her fingers around the mug handle and brought it to her lips.
Looking out at the sea of men, her vision wavered and she slumped further over the table. They were dirty and despicable, just like her, bathing never a priority. Each man was probably not one to be crossed; all could be expected to have a pistol on his person or at the very least, a knife. Louisa gulped down mouthfuls of the rum in her cup, thinking it was never satisfactorily strong. She shoved a hand into her pocket and haphazardly slapped the coins from it on the table before staring at them pointedly. She waved an arm at a passing woman.
"Miss," she croaked, sliding a few of the pieces over the rough table toward her. "Whiskey an' another rum, if you please." The woman nodded as she took the money and left.
Three years, Louisa reflected, and not a damn thing to show for it. Sure she had tried to lie low, worked for a family in Boston for a few months doing the wash and cooking, laced up her stays every morning and played the quiet old maid. Moving on through the colonies she did odd jobs that she could help housewives with, all the while mindful of the glorious novelties around her, but she had soon found that missing her home was more hurtful than she could have before admitted and also that she gained more profit in making bets with dirty men in darkened taverns than cooking for the gentry. Soon the stays loosened and she stopped looking for work with the womenfolk. Louisa made all the coin she needed as she traveled from place to place, dissolving into oblivion and out of society. She decided that she was better off like that anyway.
Here among the familiar roar of laughter and shouting, the poorly-lit rooms, and smell of unwashed bodies and alcohol, Louisa could escape into herself. The door creaked as it opened, not an uncommon thing, and therefore hardly noticed.
"God save King George."
Louisa's head turned toward the voice. Two men stood in the doorway, staring at the tavern's men who had all halted their conversations to stare right back. What fool would come into that particular tavern and announce their despicable affiliation? "Damn dirty Tory." Louisa pushed herself to standing as many of the others did as well, feeling her leg, and grabbing at the knife from her boot. The blood rushed to her head and she fell into the wall next to her, grunting as the wind was knocked out of her. The men scrambled out of the door as everyone came at them.
Giving up her struggle she plopped back down, noting that the others efforts were more than sufficient without her help. The woman who had taken her money had returned with a scowl on her young but prematurely aged face, years of pipe smoke from the men around her probably the cause, and grumbling about the loyalists. She was younger than herself, Louisa could tell. God, she remembered when twenty-seven was still young. Where she was from it was prime. Where she was then you were talked about if you weren't married with many children by then, by twenty-two even.
The tavern men were yanking back the door as she sipped at the whiskey, burning her chest as it went down. They were shouting and brandishing weapons for a very long minute before they suddenly quieted and a rather large man returned with one of the dirty Tories under his arm, laughing in a wide and gap-laden smile. Louisa's grip tightened on the table edge as most returned to their seats and the large man lifted a table right up with his large hands and swung it around to the center of the room, pushing a chair in behind it as he spoke with the surprisingly clean looking Tory. Her drunkenness fueled her anger but also made it fleeting, intense feelings coming and going with regularity.
"Benjamin Martin," said one tall man to his portly friend, both of whom were sitting near to Louisa.
"War hero, Benjamin Martin?"
"The same."
"Loyalist!?" the portly one asked, startled.
"No, of course not," the tall one returned, looking back over his shoulder at this Martin fellow, pointing his thumb at the companion. "Probably just to scare the other one there. I heard him talking; he's French."
"Bastard. What would Martin be doing traveling with him?"
"No idea."
Louisa eyed the two men, who were apparently not Tories after all. This Martin was a man to rival the stories told about him. The infamous Benjamin Martin – war hero, savage fighter, and someone whom Louisa had disliked from the all the tales – did not look like a dangerous man. She would have feared any number of the brazen, grimy men in the tavern before the clean, well-dressed, mannered one who sat in the chair offered to him and calmly smiled at those speaking. Having the same deeply-lined face of the other older men, he still seemed to have aged better, probably in a superior environment. He looked nothing more than a soft spoken gentleman. Louisa knew full well the difference between a soldier and a savage. The paced and kind men who did choose to serve in the army could, of course, soothe their conscience with the knowledge that they fired into a line along with a string of others – a glorious ambiguity to the affair that allowed them to believe that they might have never harmed a man, and that the men falling were from the bullets of the guns around him, and his had just missed any target whatsoever. No, a savage knows what he does full well, and does it as they send body parts of their enemies floating down a river or what-have-you and back to the others. Still Martin did not look a savage, and Louisa had taken into account the ways that men exaggerate these stories.
The Frenchman stood stiffly behind him, rather than sitting, seeming suspicious of Martin's movements. Perhaps he was not a companion of his, she wondered. Friends did not look upon each other in that way. She glanced back down at her drinks. Finishing off the last nip of whiskey and turning the glass over, the woman started on the rum. Of course the men would have contempt for the French. They had just fought a war with them not such a long time ago, but Louisa was unaffected by their loyalties – she knew it was only a matter of time before the French were to join the American's plight. At this point in time, they were the ally. They would band together with the patriots of the American colonies and win this war in a few short years. Of course she knew. Knowing the outcomes of battles and events ahead of time was how she made her living.
Louisa knew she was a disgusting con artist, but it was difficult to have the knowledge and not use it. She had tried to make an honest living at first. It was too late to go back however; no one wanted to hire a drunkard. No, Louisa spent her nights betting inebriated men good money on where the next battle may be, or who might win, or who might be killed or injured. Moving around was necessary to ensure no one grew suspicious of her unfounded 'guesswork.' Half of her revulsion with herself is that she knew that she made profit off of the countries pain and casualties.
It had begun so innocently. The sorrow of losing home had oft been masked by the wonderment of the world around her, and relief as Louisa lived a simpler life, unmarred by the cynicism she had grown up with. War had also marked the time she had spent in her true life, but a war she felt was groundless. Here, her respect for soldiers had grown exponentially as the backdrop of one of histories most colorful times had shown her men who fought for something so noble and just that war seemed near poetic to her ears. Boston in the beginning was a flourishing example of the times and she had set out for there soon after coming to terms with her arrival, eager to see the full force of the burgeoning revolution that she was hearing so much about. The full beauty and the full horror had hit her as she lived and worked there, compelling Louisa to move onward, sobered in her admiration for the cause.
She found her joy in the simplified times and was able to forget her disgust for the decadence her homeland had come to. These people, these glorious patriots, knew the true meaning and application of freedom. They understood the gravity of going to war and they did not make the decision lightly. She smiled as she remembered how her peers lived in a world where important choices were made on a whim and carried out in less than a fortnight, but where she had relocated things took time, often many months or years, they exhausted all other options first, and put diplomacy before all others. No society had become that where the first thought is to beat a problem into submission, most often to mediocre results that left resurgent problems for the next generation. Where had all the enlightened thinkers gone? Perhaps, she had always thought, they, too, had been exhausted over time.
As Louisa continued to sip her drink, vision becoming even more noticeably impaired, she watched the Martin man stand, placing papers on the table, ink and a quill beside it, and look up at the crowd.
"Any man," he said in a voice remarkably powerful for his appearance. The men of the tavern quieted and turned toward him. "That should choose to do so, may sign his name here and serve in South Carolina's militia. My name is Colonel Benjamin Martin, if…" He looked at the men who gave him ragged dirty smiles nearby. "…you do not already know me, and I will be the commanding officer."
A few men whooped and shouted huzzah's as they hopped up from tables, others shouted but did not rise, and some men just quietly rose from their seats and, altogether, formed a line. Each stooped to have a short word with Colonel Martin before scrawling a name down on the sheet of paper. Militia, Louisa raised her eyebrows at the thought. Well they had come to the right place. Any tavern in the colony could provide the most radically revolutionary men for a body of war, assuming of course, that you were not concerned with having any kind of quota in morally upstanding citizens. Those men would fight the King as fiercely as any army could, but the rigor and structure that the Continental Army exhibited was not the organization they would have found themselves in. That was for the young sons and their officers.
Louisa eyed each one of them as they filed up to the table, envying their contribution. All she had done was drain others of coin and drink, living a migratory life with no true destination. Hadn't she in her old life admired the dedication of great men? Hadn't she when she arrived here been enraptured by the deep reality of the affair? Hadn't she known for years that the times she had found were some of the most beautiful and terrible of existence? And hadn't she, for all the wonderment and reverence she had paid to one of the most pivotal points in history and all the thought put into why she was there, spat in the face of a God given endowment?
No, she could no longer live this existence she decided, her drunkenness making this a most urgent issue that must be solved at that very moment through whatever drastic measures she might have to take. In a time that she had always greatly respected for all its facets she could not in good conscience keep, in essence, stealing money and drinking her life away. She must, Louisa decided, fight for her country.
Louisa slammed down her mug on the table and pushed herself to standing once more, pausing to steady herself this time before she took a lurching step away from the table. Seven more and she found herself at the back of the line, some men eyeing her with mild curiosity. She expected they would be wondering why that young man at the back of the line looked so feminine, then again with her badly tailored clothing, hat shadowing her face and the dim lighting, most didn't notice the difference. That fact had come to her mind over the years and had or had not bothered her, depending on how drunk she was; the fact that she could easily be mistaken for a man with her hair pulled back like was the style and being in taverns one was not searching for a woman in man's clothing to begin with. It had entered her mind once or twice that she was not attractive, though the sharp barbs of dissatisfaction were worn away with time. She was an unimportant being, hardly washed and not done up in the way she used to. Gone was the make up, the flattering clothing, the attractive expressions young women train themselves to make in the mirror from an early age. Perhaps she had been passably good-looking when she used to make an effort, but here she was an old con artist who drank too much; no one would care too much anyway.
A large black man timidly followed a small white one away from the line, she noted, after signing Martin's paper. His eyes were bright, but down turned. He must have been a slave. Louisa felt an anger blossom in her stomach at this arcane – well, not for the time – and terrible practice, but she said nothing, knowing that it was part of the times. But Martin had asked him to sign, the slave himself, asked to make his mark of his own free will. Would a brute that the legends made him out to be truly ask a slave if it was his will to fight?
Before she knew it, Louisa was the next in line and she began to step forward toward the table as the last man left. She felt an odd weightlessness in her stomach as her eyes met Colonel Martin's, a feeling oft felt when she met anyone she knew to be of consequence. It was the same as when she held an honest-to-God original copy of Thomas Paine's Common Sense and one warm July day when she had seen Benjamin Franklin in a Philadelphia square two years before. But this time there was an uncertainty to the affair. For a flicker of a moment, Louisa felt the concern about serving under this colonel whom she had heard about in stories to be a savage man. She had not the time to fret over it, however, for she was standing before him then and had to make a move.
She tripped abruptly as she came forward, catching herself on the shoddy little table that wobbled frighteningly under her weight, but she laughed in spite of that danger. "'m here to enlist."
"Yes?" the man before her muttered as he raised an eyebrow to her.
"Absolu'ly," she cleared her throat, straightening up to her full height. "Absolutely."
Colonel Martin looked up at her with an appraising expression. "Can you shoot?"
"Pretty well, I'd say."
"But the better question," came another deep male voice from near him, a hanger-on that stood watching the procession with a drink in his hand and a cocky smile on his face. "Is can you stand?"
Others watched, amused, as she drifted side to side dangerously and lifted a fist to the on-looker. "Mind yourself, you old cur."
"You're a drunken fool," the colonel said, capturing her attention once again and then motioned for her to step aside. "If you will."
"I may be drunk, sir," she told him swaying slightly. "But at least I am not drunk." Sensing there was something wrong with her words, but not being able to discern the problem exactly, she screwed up her eyebrows for just a moment. A few men around her laughed openly.
"Just go sit down," the dark-haired man said shaking his head, not able to hide his mild amusement.
"No." Louisa slammed her palm down on the table. "I want to sign up. I know full well what I'm doing."
"Listen, sir-"
"Ma'am," Louisa said and the Martin's eyebrow arched. "I'm a ma'am… er… woman." He looked her up and down, truly assessing the form before him, noticing the nearly concealed but most-certainly-there breasts and wide hips. She took off her hat and gave a little bow, allowing the dim light of the tavern to hit her face right, enough to see its softness.
"My Lord…"
"You've got that right." Louisa began to laugh, for what reason she knew not, placing the hat back crookedly atop her head. She failed to grasp that she should have been offended that she had again and inadvertently passed for a man. It must have been the unexpected nature of it, or the loose clothing and shadowed face, the gravely voice.
"Then you may most definitely not join us," he said after rubbing a hand down his face to collect himself.
Louisa stopped her sniggering and her eyebrows knitted together. "You disrespect me, sir."
The colonel shook his head. "Women are not meant to fight." He twirled the quill between his fingers and looked down at the papers. "It is not my decision but a fact of this, our lives."
Louisa kept her eyes trained on his face for a moment before standing back up straight. "Then God pity you and these men you make company with." She shot a glance at the Frenchman standing next to him and the hanger-on before she turned, deciding that to not fall down would look better than her drunken stumbles. As she found the table in the back where she had left her drink, Louisa sat heavily, crossing her arms before herself. Had she actually expected them to let her? No, but the drink makes a person do things they normally would not attempt; that she knew all to well.
She grabbed the mug of rum and brought it to her lips but paused, looking down at the contents and even in her inebriated state becoming disgusted with herself. She was a woman. Merely a woman, and nothing could change how things worked. She was reminded quite often that all the opportunities she had once had went out the window where she was now; all because of that simple fact.
She slammed the cup down, the rum sloshing out onto the table. No one would care. The whole place already reeked of stench and alcohol. She suddenly became quite aware of the magnitude of her existence, not just of the way she lived but also that she was woman along with all that it entails. Spending each night drunk in the tavern like some common whore. At least she had not sunken herself to that particular level.
The grizzled little white man was puffing on a pipe a little way off from where she sat, slave standing behind, and she vaguely noticed that he was looking at her. She raised an eyebrow at him in question before he slowly made his way over. Sitting down opposite her at the little table he shook his head.
His small eyes squinted at her. "What's your story?"
Louisa tipped her head. "I don't have one," she said after a moment.
The old man leaned back in the chair, pulling the pipe away from his lips and putting it back. "Fair enough."
She stared at him, her vision focusing and blurring as she did so, even with concentration. "Yeah?"
"Do you know who you've spoken to, woman?" He tipped his head toward the colonel at the table. "You have any idea?"
Through the fog of her drunkenness, Louisa once again pulled together what she had heard, sources varying, collected over the years. "Benjamin Martin. He served in the war years ago."
The old man leaned toward her. "You hear the stories?"
Louisa looked back at Martin, the man jovially speaking with other men from the tavern, an eerie sight indeed as she thought of what he was credited with. "Killed a bunch of the French, yeah? Brutal, I heard, just not exactly what." She didn't want to repeat it, not keen on cementing the story by expressing it aloud.
"Yeah?" the old man, pulled the pipe from his lips, wisps of smoke curling out from behind his decaying teeth. He looked her up and down. "Isn't no story a woman should be hearing an'way."
"I'll bet," she whispered.
"And more so not an'thing a woman should be getting involved with," he continued. "Woman like you shouldn't be in a place like this. She should be back in her husb'nd's home with chil'ren, yeah?"
"Suppose she should," Louisa said, eyes wondering to his slave who was just staring at the rough table. Such a strange sight to see a hulking man like him following the smaller one with such unquestioning obedience, such a sad sight. She looked back at the old man, anger coursing through her but she just shook her head. "Might I ask why you care so much?"
He laughed but it came out like more of a wheeze. "Jus' wondering how mad a woman mus' be to try and enlist in the militia." He continued to laugh until it turned into a long hacking cough. Once he quieted the man shook his head and turned to his slave, standing up. "Boy, you stay righ' here and don't you move. I'm going outside for a piss."
Louisa looked up at the man until his master had left the building, trying to catch his eye to no avail. "What is your name?" she asked.
The slave's eyes looked up at her, startled, before he cast them back down. "Occam."
"I'm Louisa."
He nodded. "Nice to meet you, ma'am."
"The same here." She smiled but he wasn't looking up. Jumping straight to what she wanted, she asked, "Do you know where the militia is meeting?"
Occam finally looked up at her before his eyes darted to the door and back, watchful for his master. "Miss wants to go?"
"I would 'ppreciate it."
"I'm supposed to be going to Snow's Island, in the swamps."
"Thank you Occam." Louisa looked up at him with a gentle smile, glad he finally held her gaze. "You have very kind eyes." A trace of a smile was upon his face by the time his master has returned calling for him to return to the spot in the tavern they had previously occupied.
Louisa stretched her arms as she got up, still wobbling. If she stopped her drinking she should be fine to ride in a few hours. A rare moment of happiness crossed her mind as she thought that there would be no deaths from drunken drivers that night and not for quite a number of years. Carefully crossing to the bar, she perched herself on a high stool and the barkeep wandered over.
"In the name of God, please tell me you have tea or coffee."
"Mmhm,' he grunted. "It tastes like horse piss, but if that's what you want…"
"As long as there's no alcohol in it, I don't care." Louisa rubbed her hand over her face vigorously, trying to get full control over herself. "Wait!" she grabbed the barkeep's sleeve as he turned away. "Make it just the hot water."
His eyes grew wide. "Hey, are you sure about that?"
"Yeah, I can pay you the same if that's what you want, just get me hot water."
"Alright, I won't stop you but you are going to be ill. You should know that water's dangerous to drink."
"Don't you think I know what I'm doing?" Louisa snapped and the barkeep put up his hands in surrender and went to fetch her water. She glanced over at the colonel again. They should be there for quite awhile, she thought, before they left and after that it was a long ride along the Santee. She would be sober by then, provided with a terrible headache, but sober. They wouldn't be all too difficult to follow. Louisa eyed all the men, Martin, the hanger-on, the Frenchman, all those that enlisted. Yes, she could wait.
Hope you like so far. It really helps if I can get opinions so, therefore, I ask that you leave a review not because I just want them, but I also ask that they help me out a bit, yeah? What's working, what's not working, hopes, gripes, questions, yeah? Thanks for your time. Lots of love.