The Tory Widow (25 page)

Jack crossed the wide stoop to sit on the stair steps. Propping elbows on his knees, he cradled his head, closed his eyes and pictured the map spread out on the general's table under the big marquee tent hours before. He envisioned the fortified Patriot lines at Brooklyn Heights sandwiched between a British invasion force twenty thousand strong, and the power of a naval armada riding anchor on the East River.

The door banged open, and a dozen officers stomped down the steps, fitting on helmets, girding on swords, and rousting their companies to assemble and form.

Jack jumped to his feet and caught up with Blankenship collecting his mount. “What's happened?”

Blankenship turned, his handsome face alight, his voice tinged with more than a little bravura. “The pass is absolutely undefended! The rebels admitted as much when put to the question.”

“I don't believe it!” Jack gripped Blankenship by the arm.

“Believe it—it's true! The pass is ours! I'm taking a party through to affirm what the rebels have reported, and the vanguard will follow forthwith. You best get ready.” The captain swung up onto his horse. “Mark my words, Stapleton—I will be standing you a pint in a pub on Broad Way before the week is out!”

The dooryard was a tumult of horses and men as dragoons and troopers bumped about in the dark to create semblance from disorder. In the confusion, Jack claimed his horse, and led it around to the back of the tavern.

Clinton has yet to breach this pass . . .
He struggled with the knots he'd tied in securing his pack to his saddle . . .
He still needs to get ten thousand encumbered with heavy artillery and baggage through that gorge . . .
“Bloody hell!” Jack cursed and pulled the knife from his boot to cut his pack free. He might not be able to prevent the British incursion, but he could certainly still warn his brothers-in-arms and get them to fall back to the Brooklyn works, and avoid total annihilation.

Pack on back, musket on shoulder, Jack skirted along the woodlands until he found the trailhead to the Rockaway Path. For not having slept in almost twenty-four hours, Jack was energized with new determination, and he climbed up the overgrown trail in the dark with some speed. Pausing when he reached the crest of the ridge, he scanned the valley view.

The eastern sky was imbued with a velvety blue, presaging the dawn. The waxing moon, sitting low on the western horizon, cast deep purple shadows on a patchwork landscape sewn of gray and black scraps. To the southeast, toward the Bedford Pass, he could see the flicker of campfires—yellow flashes amid the shadowed woodlands—like fireflies signaling to each other in a hedgerow.

Our forces guarding the Bedford Pass . . .
Jack marked the position and his course. He launched into a trot and made for those fires.

Jack raced with the rising sun and reached the encampment in the woods in less than half an hour. A sleepy-eyed picket wearing a dark hunting shirt and a sprig of oak leaves in his tricorn leaned on a long rifle, contemplating the few stars in the western sky. Jack snapped a branchlet from a nearby oak, and decorated his own hat accordingly. He gave the picket a wide berth and wound around, making his way into the camp pitched within a woody grove of white oak trees.

A lone drummer sat near one campfire—practicing, tapping out a soft call. Two men coaxing a fire under a simmering pot of water barely shot Jack a glance as he strode past with a tip of his hat, heading for the largest tent, as if he knew exactly what he was about. He swept a door panel aside and poked his head in.

A slim man with a hawkish nose stood bare-chested and barefoot in breeches, positioning a small mirror to best advantage, the light coming from a single candle set on a cluttered desk. His momentary puzzlement at Jack 's appearance caused him pause.

“Are you the commanding officer here?” Jack asked.

“I am,” the man answered, his eye turned wary. “Colonel Samuel Miles, Fourth Pennsylvania Riflemen. And you are . . . ?”

Jack entered. He moved into the light, sweeping off his tricorn in salute. “Jack Hampton, sir, bringing you urgent intelligence.”

The crowded tent was further disordered with a disheveled camp bed, a small table desk and a single folding chair. Colonel Miles found a badger-bristle brush and a wooden cup amid the melee scattered on the desktop, and nodded to the chair. Jack shrugged off his gear and settled into the canvas sling.

Miles dipped his shaving brush into a bowl of steamy water and began beating up a soapy froth, the brush handle clacking merry against the sides of the cup. “What regiment do you serve with, sir?”

“Well . . .” Jack scratched his beard. “These past two days, I've served as a scout in the King's Army . . .” and he proceeded to tell his story as a concise series of facts and events as they pertained to the British advance, including Titus's escape from the line. The colonel lathered his face, and hurried to scrape his whiskers during the telling, interrupting twice for clarification, and nicking his chin once.

“I had a feeling the bloodybacks had their eye on the Jamaica Road.” Miles freed a frock shirt from the tangle on his bed. The colonel poked his head out the tent and shouted, “Drummer—beat the long roll—muster the battalions.”

After pulling the shirt over his head, he tugged on a pair of boots, rifled a hand across the desktop and snatched up a ring of keys. “Come with me.”

In contrast to the aligned rows and precise order of the British camp at Flatlands, American tents were scarce and strewn through the woods like dice tumbled from a cup. Jack followed the colonel on an erratic path weaving through trees, tents and between soldiers, who slept curled with blanket and gun under the open sky, just waking to the call to arms.

Miles pulled to a halt in front of such a slouched figure propped against a sapling. Leaning in, he gave the man's shoulder a shake. “On your feet.”

A heavy chain rattled a rusty tune. The man grasped the tree trunk and rose slow. Legs shackled, he stumbled forward into the mottled dawnlight filtering down through the canopy.

“Titus!” Jack lurched and caught his friend around the waist. “Unfetter him at once!” he demanded, helping his friend to lower back to a sit.

Miles already worked the padlock on the shackles. “A pair of farmers brought him to us bleeding and unconscious . . . They said he was a Tory spy.”

“Knocked me out cold afore I could convince 'em otherwise.” Wincing with a halfhearted smile, Titus fingered the gash on his head, his speech and appearance distorted by considerable swelling on the left side of his face. “Did the Redcoats get through?”

Jack hoisted Titus back up to his feet. “I'm afraid they did. Can you walk? We need to get back behind the works at Brooklyn.”

“I can walk.” Titus pulled away from Jack and looked around. “I guess them two took my gun and my pack?”

“They must have kept the gun. I have your pack.” Miles fell in leading Jack and Titus back to his tent. The thud of artillery sounded from the west—followed by a series of six more reports. With a glance over his shoulder, Miles said, “Hessians on the Flatbush Road.”

The guns continued to thud dully in the distance, and three more drummers joined in beating the troops to assemble. The rhythmic rat-a-tat cast a spell in the ghosted morning light, and the waking riflemen were drawn to the camp center like hungry boys to the dinner bell, to be herded by shouting, sword-wielding officers into order.

The colonel ducked into his tent and came out wearing a tricorn decorated with a white ostrich feather and carrying a sword in scabbard. He dropped Titus's pack at Jack 's feet. “So, Hampton, will you be joining our effort?”

“What effort?”

“I'm mustering my battalions to march south to those guns.”

Jack blinked, and he gave his tired brain a shake, certain he must have misheard. “You're what?”

“Do you not hear those guns? We have standing orders to engage when the enemy begins its advance at the Bedford Pass.”

“Orders be damned! There are ten thousand Redcoats and Hessians on your front and another ten thousand on your rear—sound the warning to fall back to the works at Brooklyn, before you are trapped between the two!”

Miles buckled on his sword belt. “Pennsylvanians are not cowards and will not run from a fight. We are marching south to engage the enemy, as ordered.”

Jack's brows met in a fierce scowl. He reached out and grabbed Miles by the shirtfront, pulling the shorter man up onto his toes, knocking his fine plumage into the duff at his feet.

“You best heed my advice, Colonel, or your courageous Pennsylvanians will be slaughtered in a useless endeavor.” Jack pushed the colonel back and slipped the strap of Titus's pack over his shoulder. “Let's go, Titus—away from this madness.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THOMAS PAINE,
Common Sense

 

 

 

 

 

L
IEUTENANT David Peabody recited the order to the commander in charge. “Fresh troops are arriving and General Washington proposes to make a change in situation. Be prepared to parade your regiment to the head of your encampment at seven o'clock, with all arms, accoutrements and knapsacks.”

Except for the five regiments manning the extreme front trenches with a constant watch, the order to prepare was being sent to every regiment on the lines. David passed by a huddle of sodden, desultory soldiers eating—for lack of dry firewood—a dreadful supper of hard biscuit and raw salt pork. It had been difficult for these exhausted men to keep their spirits up, their powder dry, and their muskets in working order without any or shelter from the rain. The troops were worn down, and David prayed Washington's new orders did not foretell a night attack on the British, as most of his fellow officers predicted.

Swinging up onto his stallion, David rode to the front line, to survey the scant mile and a half separating the British encampment and the American works. The scene was serene for the moment. As daylight faded, the squeal of cannonshot along with the sporadic pop and buzz of exchanged musketfire gave way to the thud of pick and scrape of shovel. In only two days, working through the night, the diligent British sappers had advanced their zigzag trenches to less than six hundred yards away. David peered through his spyglass.

He pocketed his glass, gave his horse a nudge and a tug to the left, and they trudged back to the stable. Leaving Black Bill watered, fed and curried, he headed toward camp with his saddle on his shoulder, slogging through an ankle-deep morass of mud and puddles.

He looked to his tent, and for the first time in three days a smile crossed his face. A good-sized campfire was blazing away, and one of his tentmates, Duncan MacBryde, sat on a campstool with bare feet stretched to the flames, his empty boots draped with wet socks set close to the fire, steaming.

“Saint MacBryde, you've wrought a miracle! Where did you come upon dry wood in this muddy hellhole?”

“Och . . .” Duncan's blue eyes bore a devilish gleam. “I only made do . . .”

David went inside to dump his gear, and immediately noted the canvas roof and walls were a bit cockeyed and saggy. Every tent pole had been replaced with hewn birch trunks still in the bark.

David hurried to join Duncan, to dry out a bit and scribble a quick letter home. He shed his damp wool coat and soggy hat, and dug pen, ink and journal from his pack. Sitting down at the campfire, he stripped off soaking wet boots and socks and extended his feet. “Fie on foot rot!”

“Aye, the bane of every soldier!” Duncan tossed a chunk of firewood onto the pyre.

A merry swarm of sparks soared up into the twilight, and David leaned inward, the wood hissing and popping, his damp skin and linen awash in the wonderful, dry heat. Setting his inkpot to one side, he opened his journal on his lap, thumbed to the first blank page and began to write: