John could feel sleep tugging his eyes shut, fogging his brain. The hayloft was warm; the straw was comfortable. Beside him, Latham drifted off in no time at all, a solid presence that he could sense even in the darkness. It would be all too easy to fall into a deep sleep.

But even slumber seemed a lie. To sleep with his back to another man was to take that man for his comrade. It required a certain degree of trust, and to give it unearned seemed anathema. Comfort was a freedom-stealing lie.

Life. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness. Stretching for ideals like those, well… They just made him forget that at the end of the day, he didn’t know where his sister was. If she was well. If she was alive. There was no room for ideals in his life. There was no room for anything except fighting. Surviving.

After Latham’s breaths evened out, John slipped out of the blankets, made his way down the rickety ladder by feel, found his coat, and slipped out the barn door.

It was frigid outside the barn. The stables and the two wings of the inn made a little open-sided courtyard. The moon was a slim, silver crescent overhead, providing just enough light for him to make out a stone well in the center of that space.

There were stars overhead, twinkling with a faint, mocking light.

He should just leave. The open road called to him in the gloom, beckoning him on. Latham was too soft. Yes, he’d kept up thus far, but only because John’s arm had restricted his movement. He was getting better—he stretched his arm out, feeling a twinge, but it was a good twinge. He could go faster, farther, longer.

He would do anything for his mother. For Lizzie. He would do anything in his power. He just didn’t know what he needed to do, and the unknown ate away at him.

He should leave. John was doing his best to avoid despair; Henry preferred to stay in inns and eat freshly baked bread by the fire.

John’s master had told him once that while he didn’t hold with beating his slaves, others did—and that it wasn’t cruelty because black men didn’t feel pain the way white men did. That, he had said, was why he always had his slaves on the most dangerous jobs in his shipyard. If they fell from the heights, or if a beam pinched their shoulder… Well, it wouldn’t hurt them as much, would it? It was simple humanitarianism, his master had said.

That sentiment was bullshit of the highest order.

John felt pain. The cold of the night made his skin into miniature cobblestones. It bit into his toes. John ought to have put his shoes on before leaving the stables. The cold did nothing to alleviate the ache in the pads of his feet, that persistent throb of flesh abused by the day’s journey.

He sat on the edge of the well and felt his thighs protest.

He wasn’t magic; he felt pain.

Lizzie, Lizzie. I’m coming.

He felt hope, too, no matter how much life had tried to rob him of that. He’d felt it in the afternoon. He’d felt it that night, looking into Latham’s eyes. He felt it now, thinking of Lizzie’s last letter. Life could not be so cruel as to take his loved ones away now, not when he’d survived an entire war to come…home.

Home, such as it was. Home was Newport, a city where his family was being threatened simply because they were free and black. Some home.

Life could be so cruel.

Latham was nothing but trouble, and really, John ought to leave.

That he didn’t, that he sat out here in the cold looking at the stars, letting numbness seep into his fingers… That was idiotic.

The barn door creaked. He turned.

Latham didn’t say anything as he crept out. He’d brought half the blankets with him, and he wore them draped over his shoulders like a multipointed cape.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked once he stood close by.

John nodded.

“Looking at the stars?”

John nodded again. “My mother told me that the stars were different in Africa. When she first got off the ship in Charleston, it was night, and she thought she’d been taken to hell.”

Latham didn’t answer.

“I recognize,” John said dryly, “that the earth is round and that the stars are fixed at a great distance. I labored for a shipwright. I’m no fool.”

“I had not said otherwise.”

Somehow that just made John angrier. “It’s really about your own feelings, you know.”

“Your pardon?”

“All your talk of people being equal. It’s not about me. It’s about you. You want to believe all people are equal because it excuses your transgressions. You say ‘all men are created equal’ because back in Britain, you never questioned your tea or your sugar or your rum. You didn’t ask who grew the cotton you wore. You never needed to. Your talk of equality is a sword, not an olive branch. If you say we are equals, you think I’ll forget that you are complicit in the misery your kind inflicts on mine.”

Latham still did not answer.

It was easier to talk this way than to think how helpless he was, how many miles still separated him from his desperation.

“All you idealists have a bit of Thomas Jefferson in you,” John continued. “You fall short of your professed ideals and seek to make up the difference by condescending to those you see as beneath you. But your condescension does not make me feel equal.”

Latham sat on the well next to John. He wrapped the blankets about himself, then set one elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand. Swathed in blankets as he was, it made him look like some sort of gnome.

“It’s a fair criticism,” he said quietly. “Very fair. In my defense, it’s a new ideal for me. I’m still trying to make everything fit.”

“That’s a terrible defense,” John replied. “Am I supposed to excuse you because it has only recently occurred to you that I could be on your level?”

“Also…a fair criticism.” Latham frowned. “I’ve got these horribly awkward bits of elitist thought poking out everywhere, and I’m doing my damnedest to uncover them. It hurts my head, but clearly the situation has been, um, rather more personal to you than a little intellectual discomfort.”

“Ha.”

“You’ve been incredibly patient with me,” Latham said. “I’m a horrible fumbler.”

“Is that why you’ve agreed to accompany me? I’m nothing but a lesson to you. I suppose I’d be a valuable one at that. I’m black. I’m a former slave. If you wanted an object on whom to practice your equality, you could hardly do better.”

Latham turned his head. “John.”

The single syllable of his name echoed in the courtyard.

“I prefer to be addressed as Hunter.”

Latham shifted toward him on the bench. “I am with you because you looked into my eyes on the battlefield and saw not an enemy but a man. You gave me your coat. I wasn’t the only one who committed something like treason that night. You trusted me with your life when you could easily have taken mine.”

“Idiocy,” John muttered. “Utter idiocy.”

“Empathy,” Latham said. “I hold these truths to be self-evident, John. That all men are created equal. And yes, you’re right. It is about my feelings. I desperately want to believe that I have the capacity, the right, to have everything that I’ve never dreamed possible. That even I—strange, odd, treasonous me, the Henry who can never focus on one thought long enough to finish a conversation—deserve happiness.”

John didn’t answer.

“Maybe that is selfishness,” Latham said. “But then, maybe an ideal is nothing more than selfishness writ large. Caring for someone else with the hope that if you do, someone will in turn care for you. Maybe my ideals only feel so intense because my hope is so desperate.”

“Ha,” John said. “What do you know of desperation?”

“I don’t. I don’t know. But right now, I have blankets and you are freezing. If you are going to sit outside fretting, I can do something about that. Come here.”

John looked over at the other man.

“I have no nicety of principle,” Latham said. “I was in the infantry for years. I don’t mind sharing body heat.” His voice dropped. “In point of fact… I rather like it.”

Strange. Odd. Treasonous. They were confusing words to come from a man who exhibited all the trappings of wealth. Not so confusing, perhaps, if that man had listened to churchgoers talk about men who liked men, the way John had not.

“Come here.” Latham gestured. “Stop freezing.”

John let out a breath. So. Latham had wondered what if, too.

It didn’t change anything. John refused to think of the other man that way. He wasn’t going to let the contact, thigh on thigh, mean anything when Latham shifted six inches over. He was going to ignore everything when Henry—Latham, he meant—put his arm around him, arranging the blankets over the two of them like a little tent.

“Your fingers are ice.” It sounded like Latham was scolding.

“Sorry, I’ll keep them to myself.”

“Nonsense.” Latham’s hands pressed around his, swallowing him in warmth. “What would be the point of that when I’ve warmth enough for two? You have to take care of yourself.” The man was scolding. “You’ve several hundred some odd miles to travel still, and here you are, freezing yourself in the middle of the night and not sleeping. Sleep is necessary to recover from injury. How are you supposed to manage your distance tomorrow, and the day after, if you keep on like this?”

John didn’t answer. Latham shifted again, pressing their thighs more firmly together.

What if John were to kiss him?

Latham, he was sure, would manage to talk through it, somehow.

His lips would be warm and his skin would be rough, but God, he’d know how to use his tongue.

Good thing there was never going to be a what-if between them.

“If you’re going to fret,” Latham said, “for God’s sake, man, do it in a way that doesn’t hurt yourself.”

Latham’s arm crept around his waist, a warm bar.

“You’re a regular furnace,” John heard himself say.

“Nonsense. We burn at the same temperature, didn’t you know? I learned that from the camp doctor. It’s not so surprising, after all. We have the same flesh, with the same ability to conduct heat and cold. I’m not naturally warm. I just wasn’t outside as long as you, that’s all.”

“Mmm.” It was hard to hate a man who shared his blankets. Harder still when his hand on John’s waist—steady, not importuning at all—gave John ideas that he really ought not have, not about a man he was apparently going to be traveling with for quite a while.

Equality was well and good, but…

Strange, odd, treasonous me.

But the miles went by more pleasantly when Latham was around. His chatter was amusing, John had to admit. God knew John needed to be distracted from his thoughts of the future. He served a purpose.

And for all his chatter, Latham listened when John spoke. He never puffed up and demanded to know why John was questioning his character. He listened to John.

What if…

Slowly, John turned his head. Leaned in, so that his nose brushed the other man’s shoulder. Deliberately, he set his hand—still cold, if not as frozen as it had been—against the other man’s thigh. Even through the fabric of Latham’s trousers, he felt his muscles tense.

He could feel the warm exhalation of Latham’s breath against his cheek, a shuddering waft of air.

Yes, he thought. I’m here. I’m like you.

Latham did not move. Not for moments. Not until his free hand came up and gently—ever so gently—rested on top of John’s hand on his thigh. He didn’t move John’s hand away. Instead, he acknowledged its presence. The inappropriateness of it. The implications—what it meant for both of them—and what his acceptance meant.

They sat in silence, on the well.

Just this much, John told himself. Just this much held no meaning. It was nothing more than an acknowledgement of something they both knew. John’s own inclinations had to have been obvious as well, if Latham had come out here, sat like this with him.

It meant absolutely nothing.

“You’re the one who needs sleep,” John finally said. “We’d best go back to…” He paused. Not bed; that had its hidden implications, ones he didn’t want to think through at the moment. “We’d best go back to the barn, Latham.”

“It’s Henry. I prefer that you call me Henry.”

“Henry.” John sighed and gave in. “But it’s still Mr. Hunter to you.”

* * *

It was a lovely afternoon for walking, the second they had encountered in a row. The trees were mostly bare by now, which meant that despite the cold air, bright sun touched John’s face, unfiltered by anything except a few branches reaching to the sky.

He’d left the sling behind several days ago. As he walked, he moved his arm, subtly, in its socket, testing the range—just enough to twinge, a good kind of pain, before backing off.

Henry was talking.

That, John realized, would be surprising to nobody in the universe who knew the man at all.

Henry was amusing, thoughtful, a complete chatterbox, and—incidentally—also an inveterate liar. Percentage-wise he probably didn’t lie much more than the average man. But given the sheer volume of words that proceeded from his mouth, he uttered approximately a hundred times more lies than John. And he had a tendency to deliver them all at once.

“So at any rate,” Henry was saying, “when I was taking articles—”

“One moment.” John held up a hand. “When you were taking articles? Isn’t that what one does when one wants to be a barrister?”

Henry wrinkled his nose. “Ah. Yes. Well, so it is.”

“Didn’t you tell me once you were a potter’s son?” Or maybe it had been a tailor. There had been as many professions as there had been days.

“Ah, ha ha. Well. Yes, I did, and there are potters’ sons who…still, possibly that might have been a bit of a…um, how do I say this? A bit of an exaggeration.” Henry gave him a brilliant smile. “My father…did own a pottery works? It wasn’t entirely a lie.”

More than two weeks of walking. Two weeks of Henry talking; several days of thinking of him as Henry rather than Latham, a transition that had occurred all too swiftly. That much time, John had spent listening to the other man’s exaggerations. He was used to it by now.

“So your father owned a pottery works. You were planning to be a barrister. How did you wind up in the infantry?”

“Did you know that people want barristers who are capable of talking about the same thing for more than two minutes at a time?” Henry shot back brightly. “I did know that, but my father had to be convinced that it was the case.”

“Your father the potter?”

“Uh. Yes. Him.” Henry simply waved a hand. “It does all make sense, and I’ll explain as soon as I…um, take care of some business over by that copse of trees. If you know what I mean.”

John did know what he meant, and he wasn’t referring to Henry’s need to piss. Henry avoided all questions about his father, except to roundly decry him as terrible. The only thing John was sure of was that he wasn’t a potter. He was likely not even a pottery works owner. Henry was hiding something.

It would be offensive, except he was so inept at hiding it hardly counted. It was like draping a blanket over a statue and pinning a sign to it that said NO STATUE UNDER HERE, HA HA, WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT?

Henry’s family was obviously wealthy—enough so that Henry, with his talk of equality and such, felt it an embarrassment.

But one could not hide the tracks left by wealth. John could hear it in his voice. He could hear it in his surprised exclamations.

“Who knew squirrel could be so delicious?” he’d remarked the first night they’d made stew of the hapless creatures who’d made the mistake of chattering excitedly at them from the road.

An officer in the infantry, and he’d never eaten squirrel? John knew that officers tended to use their own funds to purchase provisions, and that wealthy officers tended to eat well, but…

Never eaten squirrel?

He didn’t complain about hard biscuit either. He acted as if it were a special treat.

“Goodness,” Henry had said. “I’d always wondered what it was like, and now I know!”

He’d wondered. He had wondered, as if it were a line in a story and not the desperate reality for thousands of men.

Henry had just continued on the road, eating squirrels and hard biscuits with the absolutely terrible cheese that he tried every meal.

He may have been born wealthy, but his clumsy attempt to pretend otherwise was endearing. Or—at least—John corrected himself, it would have been, if John had been the sort to allow himself to be endeared. Henry hadn’t even sighed wistfully five minutes ago when they’d passed a cottage. The wind had carried with it the scent of cooking food—savory meat and the yeasty smell of baking bread. Even John had glanced longingly in that direction before moving on.

It had been days since their last warm meal.

The wind shifted and John caught the scent of that bread again. He hoped Henry hurried his business up—story about his father or no, John hated wanting things he couldn’t have, and bread was something of a personal weakness.

Crusty bread. Brown bread. Steaming bread, hot from the oven. Damn it.

John’s stomach grumbled. At that moment, leaves crackled, presaging someone’s arrival. He turned. Two men had come out of the trees. They were white, and they looked at John with narrowed eyes.

“Told you so,” one said to the other.

“Walking about on the road, just like that.”

God. The last thing John needed now was to be accosted by the locals. This, this was the sort of thing that might have happened to his mother in Newport. One day at the market, they might have—

He clamped down on that train of thought before it spread into panic.

“I’ll be moving on,” he assured them. “I’ve no desire to stay.”

The two men exchanged glances. The one who spoke next had sandy-brown hair and a gap in his teeth. “But who knows what you’ve taken? That’s what I say.”

The other man—ruddy skin contrasting with dark, curly hair—nodded. “In fact,” he said, “I think we should search your pack just to be sure you haven’t stolen anything. We’ll hold on to anything suspicious we find, just in case the real owners turn up.”

So it was to be a kind of shakedown. He didn’t have enough that he could afford to lose anything. John stepped in front of his pack. He was going to have to hold firm.

“Hand it over,” said Gap Tooth.

John grimaced. “I would really rather not.”

Curly Hair just shook his head. “It will be a real shame to have to report you to the constable. We live just down the road. He knows us.” He pointed in the direction of the cottage. “We’re good, God-fearing folk. Who knows you?”

“Oh dear Lord.” The words came from behind them as Henry materialized from between the trees. “You mean you don’t know him?”

They turned as one. They caught sight of Henry. He paused, as if on instinct, to let them look him over. There was no sign that he’d been doing his business. There was no sign that he’d been on the road for weeks. Every morning, he wielded his razor like an expert. His cheeks were close-shaven; his clothing was almost new. His boots were dark, the leather not cracked by time.

Henry held his own pack over his shoulder as if it were a light jacket instead of a bag containing all his worldly belongings. He posed, arm cocked at his hip, eyes bright and wide. He looked like he belonged anywhere—his glossy not-quite-blond hair, his too-jaunty hat, his coat that spoke of riches. He wasn’t trying to look like a potter’s son now.

The men frowned, then exchanged glances with each other. Those glances said that they had no idea what Henry was talking about.

John had been feeling that way for the last fortnight.

“You’ve truly never heard of him?” Henry asked. “That’s Corporal John Hunter. Corporal. Jonathan. Lewis. Hunter. Does that jog your memory?”

John didn’t have a middle name, but Henry said it so sincerely that he almost doubted his own memory.

Gap Tooth shook his head. “Not…really?”

Henry continued on. “Corporal Hunter, Scourge of the Rhode Island Regiment?” He waited expectantly. Curly Hair shrugged.

“John Hunter, Bane of the British? Ruin of the redcoats? Enemy of the English?”

The two men just squinted at Henry.

“Surely you have heard of the Lacerator of the Loyalists? The Curse of the Crown? That John Hunter?”

“Um.” Gap Tooth looked as befuddled as John felt. “No?”

“For God’s sake. I knew the British had suppressed news of our American heroes, but I didn’t know they had been so successful. This is a travesty. An utter travesty.”

Curly Hair’s eyebrows scrunched down in confusion.

John had no idea what the other man was doing, but… Damn, this would not turn out well.

“Latham,” John said through gritted teeth. “You’re embarrassing me.”

“Humble, too,” Henry said, waving off the warning tone in John’s voice. “Why, at the Battle of Germantown, he saved Washington himself from a detachment of British soldiers. They had snuck into the encampment before him. Had you not heard this story of attempted assassination?”

“No!” Despite themselves, the two men crept closer to Latham.

“Yes!” Latham was clearly warming to his story. “Major General the Lord Cornwallis, God rot his soul, had the most dastardly plan. He intended to kill Washington by subterfuge, thus depriving the Continental Army of its most powerful leader.”

Curly Hair gasped. “Of course he did, that worm.”

“Cornwallis had his men slay seven Continental soldiers—good men, including my comrade Duncan—but that’s a story for another day.” Henry paused, looking upward, as if to commemorate the passing of a lost soul.

Curly Hair tilted his head.

“The threat to Washington? How’d that turn out?”

John found himself mildly curious about what he was supposed to have done, too.

“Ah.” Henry seemed to return to the present. “That evil man dressed his most trusted, most stealthy soldiers in Continental blue. He sent them into the encampment where Washington was quartered. Washington had sent scouts out to survey the land. His aide-de-camp, the, uh…” Henry faltered. “The esteemed, uh—”

“Hamilton,” John put in. “His name is Alexander Hamilton.”

Henry waved a hand in his direction. “Don’t interrupt me, Hunter. As I was saying. The esteemed Hamilton had gone to oversee the front. Never believe that Washington was left unprotected, of course; he was no fool. But those cowardly, cravenly men in American uniform strode into camp as if they owned the place. They walked through the encampment, and before anyone knew what was happening, they slew Washington’s inner guard. Washington cried for help—but only one man had the eagle ears to hear it.”

“Who was that?” John asked.

Henry gave him an annoyed look, quickly masked by a sweet smile. “I am so glad you asked. It was Jonathan Lewis Hunter, that was who. Just as the spying, lying British soldiers surrounded Washington, Hunter here” —Henry clapped John on the back—“entered his tent.”

John glared at Henry; Henry looked at his hand and yanked his arm away with a sheepish smile.

“Gah,” said Gap Tooth. “One man, against so many?”

“Precisely. John was just one man. He hadn’t any warning. He had naught on him but…a stick.” Henry looked off into the distance. “A stick and a single carving knife that he had been using to whittle it into a ship.”

John raised an eyebrow.

“How was he to defend his commander with such an item?” Henry posed this hypothetical.

“General,” John interjected. “Washington is a general.”

“General,” Henry conceded. He didn’t look at John, just smiled at the other two men. “I used the word ‘commander’ to describe what he did—commanded. In other words, I used it generally. To encompass generals. But back to the matter at hand. Corporal Jonathan Lewis Hunter had only those sparse weapons, to compare with the muskets and the wicked swords of his seven enemies. But he had one thing they did not.”

“What?” Curly Hair asked.

A man willing to lie for him? John knew better than to provide that answer.

“Determination. He looked those devils in the eye and said one thing: ‘I cannot allow you to kill my commander.’”

That sounded like a great deal more than one thing. Still…

“General,” John interjected.

“General,” Henry agreed. “That’s what I said, isn’t it? Stop interrupting. ‘I cannot allow you to kill my general,’ he said. ‘You’ll get to him when you go through me.’”

“So what happened next?” Gap Tooth asked.

“What, next? Oh.” Latham paused. He looked up at the sun and sighed. “I’m sorry, gentlemen. We haven’t had a hot meal in days, and we mean to make South Brunswick by nightfall. We must be on our way.”

Gap Tooth glanced at Curly Hair. Curly Hair looked back. The two men gave each other a nod.

“I’m William,” said Gap Tooth. “William Williamson. This is my friend David Poitier.”

“Williamson. Poitier.” Latham nodded at them. “We’re pleased to make your acquaintance. I’m just Henry Latham, but I hardly need to introduce my traveling companion. Jonathan Lewis Hunter himself.”

The men glanced at Hunter.

“He may shake your hand if you ask nicely,” Latham said. “But he’s very circumspect. Too humble, really. He hates admitting his role in things.”

Poitier and Williamson had apparently forgotten that they’d started the encounter by attempting to rob John. They glanced at each other. Then Williamson turned to John.

“Mr. Hunter,” he said, holding out his hand, “it’s truly an honor.”

“I…” John sighed. He took the other man’s hand. “Right.”

Poitier elbowed Williamson, who coughed and spoke. “Would either of you…want some soup?”