We slept again in the woods, if our uneasy watches, gruesome dreams, and hours plagued by bites and bleeding feet might be called sleep.

Come morning, we rose and set out. Come noon, we arrived at the Rappahannock and walked along the road by its banks until we came to a house where the grounds were not full of activity. We determined that we should make our way to their dock and steal whatever boat we might find.

The place was, we swiftly perceived, a plantation recently sacked and brought low. The plantings in the gardens still retained their linearity and rectitude of bloom; but a chicken-house was mere ash, and the windows of the mansion were broken.

We found the dairy empty. No one was in the stables; no horses, neither. A phaëton still stood, the traces at the ready, as if prepared for flight.

The kitchens stood at a distance from the house, and it was to this building that we repaired with hope of some new sustenance.

Within, there were the remains of a feast: a ham and bread. We waved off the flies and tried some of the flesh. Its taste was acute and sweet, and we quickly spat it out.

Our investigation of the kitchen being done, we determined to enter the house. The door was open.

“If it is empty,” said I, “we should wait here until the evening and set out then upon the river once it is become dark.”

“This is not making me easy,” said Bono, indicating with his head the lawn, the open door, the window-glass.

“You boys enter,” said Clippinger. “I shall stay without.”

We posted Olakunde as a guard with him, saying he should not be safe alone; though in truth fearing that he sought an occasion to flee us. We took our muskets from the sack and affixed our bayonets. Olakunde and the Serjeant flanked the door.

Trepidatiously, Bono and I held our firelocks and stepped within. The drone of cicadas in sun and the cries of birds gave way to silence and coolness.

The furnishings in the parlor had been savaged with an ax. We liked not the look of the violence. We frowned to each other and held our bayonets before us.

The next chamber we entered was the dining-room. The table was gone, though chairs remained; the floor was ankle-deep in shards of shattered china plates and bowls. We picked our way through, though with little stealth remaining, for each step cracked and snapped as porcelain shattered beneath our heels. We had no shoes; we feared laceration, and walked with care.

This tide of crockery lay thin upon the floor of the next chamber as well. The room was dimmed with curtains; it took some time for our eyes to report what lay therein. It was a room empty of almost any furnishings, save a few greasy prints of herbs on the walls.

A woman in a fine cambric gown sat with her back to us, unmoving in a chair. At first, we thought her dead, for she exhibited so little curiosity as to our approach; and then she moved, putting her face in her hands.

’Twas then we saw that in front of her, on the floor, a child was lain prone, facedown, arms spread-eagled.

The woman dropped a hand from her face and scrabbled about on the floor, picking up the broken handle of some earthenware porringer.

She shied it at the child, which lay unmoving.

We could not perceive the significance of this tableau.

“What have you come for?” the woman asked without turning.

“Madame,” said I, “’twas far from our intention to intrude upon the grief of any; but believing the house unoccupied, we wished to take shelter here for a few hours before resuming our journey. We shall, of course, remove ourselves, unless there be any way in which we might render service.”

She turned and saw us. She pointed at her child. “He won’t get up. They took his father.”

We nodded.

Bono, at length, cleared his throat and inquired, “Where you wish us to . . . remove him to?”

We heard the clanking of the drabware behind us, and turned, startled, to confront a young man of fashionable dress and perhaps twenty summers. “Who is it?” he asked.

“Some Negroes,” said his mother. To us, she said, “They took all our Negroes.”

“When was the assault?” I asked.

“Three days ago,” answered the woman. “Three long days.”

The young man, her son, inquired again of us, who we were; to which we answered shortly that we were traveling down the river.

“Gwynn’s Island?” he asked. “Lord Dunmore?”

We looked at each other for confirmation; before either of us spoke, he continuing, “Take us. The rebels, they took my father.”

“We ain’t going,” protested the child upon the floor. “I weigh a thousand pound.”

To the youth, Bono said, “You wish to go down the river to join Lord Dunmore.”

“The rebels laid us low,” said the youth. “We don’t have nothing but broke crockery.”

We agreed, therefore, to take them with us. “We do have need of one thing,” said Bono. “Which is a boat.”

“We shall take our boat,” said the youth.

Hearing this, the woman roused herself from her seat. “I must choose what best to wear,” she said. “I have only met His Lordship twice.” She seemed suddenly beset upon by some frantic animation. “John,” said she to the eldest son, “attend me. What think you of my plum watteau?”

“I am sure,” said he, “I don’t know.”

“With a little jacket trimmed with galloon, and that petticoat of tobine. Given the chills on the river.” She held her head again in her hand. “I can never determine whether tobine seems it should be light, yet feels stiff and heavy, or seems ’twill be stiff and heavy and then feels too light.” She shifted upon the pool of crockery, sending up a great clanking throughout the chamber.

“My skull is staying touching this floor,” said the child.

“Are we leaving presently?” the woman asked.

We admitted we were not departing for some hours, until darkness.

“Excellent,” said she. “I shall arrange my toilette.”

In that ruin of a house, she went about her coquetry, applying her dyes, her pomander and pouncet-box. Once her hair was set, she would not disturb it, and sate sleeping in a chair, that it might not muss. The eldest son bounced a ball against the wall; the youngest remained prone.

Olakunde and Serjeant Clippinger being informed of the situation, Bono and I proceeded down to the dock to examine the boat for its readiness. There was nothing left there but a small dinghy that should barely fit us all.

With this news, we returned to our companions, and spent the afternoon sitting in the garden.

Come seven o’clock, we determined to set forth. At the instruction of the elder brother, Olakunde picked up the younger and carried him without.

“Leave me lie!” protested the child as he was brought down the bank. “Leave me lie!”

The elder son dragged a trunk after him, scraping ruts in the grass. Olakunde deposited the young child on the dock, where he no sooner had stood than he began to scream shrilly.

The mother looked about her garden, preparing to abandon it forever; and bade her eldest coquettishly to fetch her a flower to lay in her bosom-glass, “just peeking out,” as she said, “between them two fair snowy hills.”

It may be imagined, our impatience at these delays, for our spirits quickened at the sight of the river, smooth in its evening undulations; and everything within us pled to be excised from the ruinous shore and allowed to float free. All delay was torment.

The elder son ran from the shore and brought his mother back a phlox flower, which he presented to her with great show of gallantry. While he performed this office, Serjeant Clippinger, Bono, and I waited in the dinghy, desperate to cast off, with Olakunde standing by to hand them in to us.

They came to our side and prepared to step into the dinghy with us.

’Twas then that we observed the full extent of the mother’s gown.

“Why those looks?” she asked imperiously. “You object to the panniers?”

“It is a small boat, madam,” said I. “This is no space for panniers.”

She turned to her son. “One of them could remain behind. Ask one of them if they will remain.”

He turned to us.

“We will not,” Bono said.

“Madam,” I pressed, “I have it on the best authority that among the finest mantua makers of London, the pannier is no longer the mode.”

“Whose authority?”

“My mother’s, madam. She was a woman of fashion and exquisite raiment.”

“Your mother?” she said with deep incredulity. “What does she wear, linsey-woolsey and a Negro cap?”

“She is deceased.”

“That don’t hardly recommend the seasonability of her taste. Mind you, Lady Dunmore wears French hoops.”

We insisted — and her son now urged compliance — that she remove the panniers. She refused, her voice higher, lighter as a panic rose within her.

“We will need space adequate for rowing, madam,” said Bono. “Pulling the oars and such.”

“The space is already small,” I said. “And the boat will be none too stable when we are all afloat together, madam.”

“This is absurd,” said the mother.

“If you please, madam,” said Serjeant Clippinger. “We wish to cast off.”

“You shall do no such thing.”

We bobbed, clasping the dock. The boat’s draw was greater than I would wish, and with but three of us, the water lapped high on the gunwales, threatening to spill over.

“We shall wait, madam,” I said, “while you set aside these ornaments.”

“Two of you, step out,” she demanded. “The boat is too low in the water.”

“We regret, madam, that we cannot remain on shore,” said Bono.

Said I, “If it please madam, would she —”

“Step out. Two. One, two.”

We said we would not; she demanded that we should not travel one fathom without two of us remained behind. We protested with all the propriety we might. She would not compromise her dignity, and shrieked at us so that we might know it. The son sought to calm her — berating us for troubling her — and now the younger child began his bleating and wailing, that he would not leave his father’s house.

The mother declared we should none of us leave, that she would not stir upon the river with such rogues as we; that none of us should use the boat.

And so Olakunde stepped aboard, and Bono and I released our grip upon the wood. The elder son shouted curses at us, calling us dogs and curs, bastards, sons of whores, while his mother rebuked him, “Not in the presence of your mother. Not in the presence of your mother!”

We left them behind us on the shore. We drifted away from the ruins of their house, and were upon the river.