Free King's Mountain by Sharyn McCrumb

by an empty belly or the need for a dry place to sleep.
    Elias Powell took charge of me for the rest of the afternoon, rabbiting on about camp rules, and washing, and a long recital of the commander’s wants and wishes. “And mind you keep yourself clean in body, girl,” he added, “In case he adds you to his list of wants.”
    I shrugged. “That will cost him extra.”
    He took me to the cook’s tent, and saw that I was given a bit of boiled beef and corn, soldiers’ rations, for my midday meal, washed down with a pot of ale. I wondered whose cows had been taken to feed the army, but even if they had come from the farm of someone I knew, I would have eaten it just the same, for my going hungry would not change anything for them that had lost their livestock.
    Finally, when I had finished my food and Powell had run out of commandments, he took me along to one of the tents used by the commander’s servants, where I would be staying, alongside the other maidservant. “Go on inside,” he said, “and tell her you’re here on my say-so. Reckon she can tell you whatever else you need to know,” and I decided that he had thought of somebody else that he needed to order around, and on account of that, he was willing to let me go for a while.
    I went into the tent, but nobody was there. Just a woven basket of soiled clothes, some bedding, and a tin plate next to a wooden pail of water. The sparseness of the tent was more what I had expected for an army on the move, instead of the rug and trunk and silver and I don’t-know-what-all that the commander needed to keep body and soul together in the wildwood.
    â€œYou looking for something?”
    It was a woman’s voice, low and quiet, but colder than snowmelt, and for a heartbeat I felt my body tense to run at the sound of it, but then I shook off that foolish notion, and turned to face her. “You’d be the other maidservant? That Elias Powell said to tell you I am hired on to help you serve the commander.”
    She stood staring at me without a word of welcome. It was hard to put an age to her, though of course she must have been about the same as me, for her thick ginger hair was unsilvered, and her face was smooth as a child’s. I decided that it was her eyes that belied her youthfulness. They were as green as persimmons, big and dark-lashed, set above sharp cheekbones in a face as pale as moonlight. But those eyes were as cold as her voice, as if she could cut right through you with the harshness of her gaze. For all her beauty, hers was not a face that I cared to look at overlong, and I could feel her still looking at me even after I turned away.
    I tried again. “I hope I’ll be some help to you, looking after the officer.”
    Her smile was mostly a sneer, but she seemed to make up her mind to tolerate me, for she said, “What do I call you?”
    â€œName’s Sal. Elias Powell called me Virginia Sal, on account of I told him I come from there.”
    She shrugged. “He had another reason, too. I am called Virginia Paul.”
    I wondered if she was saying Paul , like the apostle in the Bible, or Poll , which is a nickname among some folk for “Mary.” The first was no name for a woman, though, and the second, being the name of the mother of Our Lord, did not suit her at all, so I reckoned “Paul” was her last name. I didn’t like to ask, though, for I didn’t think she’d take kindly to my notions about her name, so all I said was, “Are you from up in Virginny, too?”
    â€œNo.”
    I listened to see if I could tell where she came from by the sound of her voice, but she hadn’t said enough for me to be able to tell. She didn’t sound much like the Englishmen I’d heard talking, nor the fellows from the northern colonies, but she didn’t talk like someone from these parts, either. A time or two I thought her words sounded