Arundel (32 page)

He flirted his hand, as if it would be done as easily as travelers cross our river at low tide. “To be sure all’s understood, you might repeat your orders.”

While I repeated his instruction to me he wrote two letters for us. Mine I have yet in my green seaman’s chest. I prize it as being from the bravest man I ever knew.

To those engaged on the Expedition to Quebec:

G
ENTLEMEN
—This is bome by Steven Nason of Arundel, who is gathering intelligence and furthering our interests. On his secrecy you may depend, and I should take it as a particular favor if you would give him what assistance, information, and trust he may require. Your compliance will much oblige, Gent., Your friend and humble serv’t.

B. A
RNOLD
.

He took a tin box from a drawer of the desk, unlocked it, flipped out a roll, and caught it deftly in mid-air. “Here’s fifty Spanish trade dollars. Buy what you must, and ask for the rest in the name of the United Colonies. Now be off, and expect me at Fort Western in ten days.”

“Sir,” I said, preparing to go, “we spoke once of a Quebec gentleman named Guerlac. Is anything known of him?”

Arnold’s eyes widened. “Why, yes. Guerlac, I understand, occupies himself innocently in Quebec. I’m hopeful you and I may pay a pleasant call on him and his charming sister, and at no distant date. Until then, sir, I’ll take it as a favor if you’ll forget his name and his very existence.”

Cap Huff brooded over this remark as we set off up the street. “Colonels,” he growled, “are a plague. They may be necessary to some, but not to me! We’ll have to rid ourselves of this one of yours if ever we hope to show Guerlac any more light-fingered affection. Pleasant calls, hell! When I call on Guerlac it’ll be as pleasant as a dog-fight!”

A sutler’s cart caught his eye, and he left me to speak to the sutler. I could see he was displaying his new jack boots and doeskin breeches, so I suspected a trade was brewing, and was not surprised when he told me to go on: that he would join me later. I gave him the address: Ivory Fish’s tent in Colonel Scammen’s regiment, next to the Connecticut troops, and went on without him.

I had finished enthusing Noah Cluff and Nathaniel Lord and Jethro Fish over the Quebec expedition, and was eating lamb stew and dumplings with the Arundel men in front of Jethro’s tent, when Cap Huff popped around the corner hurriedly, ignored our greetings, and said hoarsely: “You don’t know me and never saw me and never heard of me.” With that he dodged into Jethro’s tent.

While we puzzled over this announcement, four soldiers ran down the street, one of them saying, “He came this way!” I recognized him as the Connecticut trooper who had warned me against the thievery of Maine men.

“Hey, Maine!” he said, his sallow face bitter. “Where’s the big man that came past here just now?”

“Nobody came past here. What man was it?”

“Look, Maine,” the Connecticutter said angrily, “if I knew what man it was I wouldn’t be asking you! He talked like one of you lousy Mainers, but if we catch him he’ll look like cold pork!”

“What did he do?”

The Connecticutter cursed foully. “He came staggering down the street, all smeared with dust. When he got in front of our tents he caved in. We went out to look at him, and he said some Virginia riflemen had jumped him and tooken his coat and musket. He said he was dying, mebbe. We drug him into a tent and went to get a doctor, and when we came back he’d slid out under the back with a musket and a powder horn and two shirts and a knife and a blanket.”

The Connecticutter’s three companions had gone along; so he favored us with a suspicious stare, and joined them.

After we had eaten our lamb and dumplings a sutler’s cart drove up. “This Jethro Fish’s tent?” the sutler asked, peering at us nervously. He threw a bundle at our feet, whereat two jack boots and a pair of doeskin breeches sailed out of Jethro’s tent. We passed the bundle into the tent, and handed the breeches and the boots to the sutler. I thought he intended to turn and go back the way he had come; but he was stopped by a hoarse whisper from the tent. “You’d better be moving out of Cambridge.”

The sutler nodded, looking apprehensively behind him.

“Just a minute,” said the whisper. “We’ll go with you.”

I bade my Arundel friends good-bye, and mounted beside the sutler. In a moment Cap Huff, clad in leather breeches, woolen stockings, and stout buckled shoes, emerged from the tent with a rifle and a pack. He burrowed into the back of the cart, which sagged and wobbled under his weight. Jethro, with a smothered exclamation, raced into his tent and struck a light; but since he emerged calmly a few moments later, I knew his belongings were intact.

We squeaked off into the warm, sweet August night. When we reached the salty odors and the cold air blanket of the Mystic marshes, Cap emerged from the back, rubbing the sweat and dust from his face, and squeezed himself onto the seat with us.

“You see, Stevie,” he said, sensing my disapproval, “it ain’t as if we all stood on an equal footing. Here we were, going off on a hard trip. Well, I
had
to have something to wear, Stevie; and after what the colonel told us about Connecticutters, seemed as if they was the ones that ought to have things tooken from ’em. My gosh, Stevie, they’ll be getting free uniforms and everything they need before you know it!”

“Say,” the sutler exclaimed, “did that coat belong to you?”

“That was my coat,” Cap assured him. “When I left it with General Gates I didn’t know I’d have any more use for it. Did the general say anything when you asked for it?”

“Well,” the sutler said, “he made me sign a paper saying it was for the colonel.”

“What colonel?” I asked quickly.

“Easton,” the sutler said in some surprise. “Didn’t you say Easton? I wouldn’t want to get into any trouble—not over just one coat!”

Cap eyed him doubtfully. “Was it Easton or Hinman?” Then he brightened. “That paper won’t mean anything if you let your beard grow.”

“I can’t grow a beard until November,” the sutler said unhappily. “It makes my face itch in warm weather.”

“Well, my gorry!” Cap bawled. “Ain’t it worth a itch? Those clothes of mine are worth fifty dollars, hard money, if they’re worth a farthing; and these things you handed me for ’em ain’t worth a cent over twelve dollars!”

The sutler gloomily refused to proceed farther than Malden, so we hailed an empty provision wagon whose driver agreed to let us ride provided we would drive and let him sleep. It was a good thing that I was along; for Cap, having a long trip in prospect and unknown expenses to meet, would otherwise have placed the sleeping driver gently on the Lynn marshes and sold the horse and cart in Salem for what he could get.

By plundering a score of orchards and kicking two score dogs that came out to protect them, Cap contrived to keep from starving until we reached Newburyport, where we found the
Eunice
anchored off Tracy’s wharf, trim and cozy-looking in the early morning sun.

Cap let out a bellow as we came onto the dock, and Phoebe, in her old gingham swimming dress, whipped up over the stem like a golden otter, and down into the cabin.

She sculled over to us a little later, sea boots, brass-studded belt, cat’s eyes and all, a blue cotton handkerchief knotted around her wet hair. She had beans and mustard pickles for breakfast, she said, and one of us must go to the bakery for two loaves of hot bread. This I did, bringing back an apple pie to top off with, thinking to please Phoebe with it, but found her so busy with Cap, slapping him for his uncouth remarks about the color of her skin and eluding his great grasping hands, that she seemed to care as little for me as for the pie. I spoke to her harshly, saying that if she was not interested in my return she might at least show some interest in the welfare of her husband.

She gave the oar to Cap and scrambled over to sit beside me, slipping her arm in mine.

“I
am
interested, Steven, but I hated to start talking to you because then I’d have to tell you I couldn’t take you back to Arundel.”

“You’ve got to,” I said. “Why can’t you?”

“Because, Steven, Nathaniel Tracy had orders from General Washington, and there’s eleven sloops and schooners obliged to stay here to take an army to Fort Western. The
Eunice
is one, Steven, and I can’t leave without orders.”

“If that’s all,” I said, “I’ll see Tracy so you can carry us up. What Cap and I don’t know about that army isn’t worth knowing, is it, Cap?”

“Hell, no!” Cap roared. “George couldn’t have done anything about it unless we agreed to help him; hey, Stevie?”

“George who?” Phoebe asked.

“George Washington, of course,” Cap said. “Why, when we left, George said: ‘Now remember, boys, this is practically your army, so take good care of it and don’t mislay it.’”

“Behave, Cap!” Phoebe said.

“Hope to die!” Cap bellowed. “When we was leaving, George was that overcome he said to me, ‘Captain Huff,’ he said, ‘go on in and see Gates on your way out and leave some little thing I can remember you by: a coat or something, so’s I’ll have something to remind me there’s a few brave, honest men in the world when I look around at these lousy, thieving rascals from Connecticut and Rhode Island and Maine.’ Didn’t he, Stevie?”

“Those were his very words.”

“Steven,” Phoebe said after a little pause, and she seemed fearful of my answer, “is this army for Quebec?”

“It’s a secret, Phoebe, but that’s where we’re for: Quebec.”

She said nothing. We clambered into the sloop, getting out of our clothes as soon as Phoebe had lowered the mainsail a little to make a screen for us, and going over the side to rid ourselves of the sweat and dust of our journey. Cap, holding to a rope made fast to the stern davits, sloshed himself up and down in the river like a wild-eyed sea cow, blowing spray halfway up the mainsail and thumping on the vessel’s side with his ham-like fist until Phoebe thrust her head out of the hatch in a fury, threatening to burst the bean pot on his noodle unless he gave over.

If there is a better or tastier breakfast than beans, mustard pickle, coffee, hot bread and an apple pie with cinnamon, I have never found it in many years of traveling—unless, of course, the beans be badly baked, so that they rattle on the plate or swim in grease, as always happens with cooks who don’t understand the trick of baking them.

When we had taken off the sharp edge of our hunger on the beans and divided the pie into three equal pieces, Phoebe wanted more information, nor did I consider she had been overexpeditious about it.

“Did you see James?” she asked. I told her I had and found him no different than might be expected. Since I had expressed myself on the subject of James before they were wed, I forbore to add to this explanation, except to say he was weary of camp life, and desirous of marching in a soldierly manner.

“Where does he want to march to?” Phoebe asked. I told her I didn’t know, any more than he did; that he would doubtless be content to march in a circle.

“Does he plan to march to Quebec?”

“I don’t know. I said nothing to him about it, because I wouldn’t wish to have my life depend on his quickness in a fight. Those who volunteer will be taken, and God knows there’ll be many among us no better than James Dunn, and maybe not as good.”

“Poor dear!” Phoebe said. “Would it be better for him to stay in camp, Steven, or go with this army?”

“How do I know? I’ve heard my father say there never yet was a New Englander but went half crazy in a camp, what with homesickness and smallpox, and who didn’t thrive on a campaign provided his generals weren’t British donkeys like Braddock or Abercrombie. Yet I can’t tell what this campaign might be. It’s a more serious business to march to Quebec than to walk to Falmouth for a gingham dress.”

She showed no further disposition to question me, so I took the punt and sculled ashore to see Nathaniel Tracy. I found him in a brocaded dressing gown, pottering among the tall phloxes in the front yard of his mansion, built out of the earnings of a score of brigs and schooners.

“Sir,” I said, when he wrinkled his eyes at me good-naturedly over the top of eight-sided spectacles, “I was with General Washington and Colonel Arnold yesterday afternoon, and Colonel Arnold gave me this letter.”

“Yes, indeed!” Mr. Tracy said, taking the letter and pushing his spectacles up on his nose where he could see through them. “Yes, indeed! I know, I know, I know!” He peered carefully at my face and ears and shirt, started to read, then looked back sharply at my breeches and shoes, as though they might conceal some clue not contained on my upper sections. He completed his reading of the letter, murmuring “Yes, indeed!” a score of times.

“Sir,” I said, seeing it was his intention to commit himself to nothing until I had said my say, “I have a sloop lying in this river: the one with a girl as master.”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes!” Mr. Tracy said. “Yes, yes, yes! Yes, indeed! The
Eunice!
Yes, yes!” He groaned slightly, as if the machinery that produced his yesses had run down. “A baggage, sir! Quick brain! Active! Works ahead of herself! Make a good chess player! You play chess?”

I said I didn’t, and waited for him to go on, but he grunted obstinately and examined a pink phlox.

“Sir,” I said, “Colonel Arnold has ordered me to Fort Western. I’d like to sail there in my own sloop. If you’ll do me the kindness to release the
Eunice,
Phoebe’ll take us there and return here before Colonel Arnold arrives.”