The Gentle Rebel (23 page)

“What’s next?” Nathan asked, getting to his feet.

“We wait for Washington,” Knox answered, heaving his bulk from the ground. Then he touched Nathan on the shoulder, saying, “You’d better be careful. The British aren’t going to go easy on anybody who was on that hill today.”

“I’m not going back,” Nathan said. His face looked grim in the pale light, and he added, “I’ll wait for General Washington.”

Knox laughed and said, “Well, we’d all better stay together then. They’d have to find a pretty thick rope to hang Henry Knox, but they’d love to try it. I’m joining Washington as a staff officer. I’d like for you to come with me as part of my command—artillery.”

“I know a little about rifles—but not much about cannon.”

“We don’t have any,” Knox said dryly. “So you’ll have time to learn until we get some.” Then he said suddenly, “And I’ll have you, too, Mr. Laddie Smith.”

“Me, sir?”

“Yes, you.” Knox moved to stand before Laddie, and his voice was gentle as he asked, “I don’t think you’ll stay in Boston either, will you? Not if Nathan goes.”

“I—I don’t want to be left behind.” Laddie did not look at Nathan, but she felt his eyes on her.

“Knox, what will Laddie do in the army?” Nathan asked.

“I’d say make maps,” Knox shot back. “We’re going to need someone who can keep us from getting lost—and as far as I know there’s not a qualified cartographer on hand.”
Then he shot a look at Nathan, saying mildly, “Laddie will be one of my aides, Nathan, not in the infantry. Safest place in a war is with the generals!”

Nathan saw that Knox was sincere, and he said to Laddie, “You won’t stay out of this?”

“No—not if you don’t, Nathan.”

An owl sailed over, silhouetted against the darkening sky, and Nathan looked up as it dropped silently like a ghost into a small clump of bushes. There was the sound of a muffled struggle, then silence.

Nathan looked at the dark eyes of Laddie Smith and said with a smile, “I should have left you to freeze, boy! You’re nothing but an aggravation to me.” Then he laughed and ruffled Laddie’s soft, dark hair, saying, “You’re bound and determined to be a rebel, I see that plain.”

Looking down at Laddie from his great height, Knox noted the soft eyes and the smooth-planed features. He smiled, saying as they turned to leave the grove:

“A rebel, yes—but, by Harry—
a gentle rebel!
”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

LADDIE IN LOVE

July 2, 1775, was a rainy Sunday in Cambridge. As the weather cleared, General George Washington rode into the rain-soaked college town and received from General Artemas Ward command of the entire military force of America. James Steven, a soldier on duty that day made a single bored notation: “Nothing hebbeng extroderly.”

Nathan and Laddie had made one quick trip to the Winslow house to pick up their things. Charles had been the only one up as they entered, and there had been a heated argument, for he felt that Nathan was throwing his life away. “Why, you young fool, can’t you see the end of this thing?” he’d cried out passionately, and in his agitation he’d seized Nathan by the arm and shaken him. “The King and Parliament
can’t
let this rebellion succeed! It would give an invitation to every royal colony to rebel against England!”

“Uncle Charles, there’s no point in discussing it.” Nathan had pulled away from his uncle and said in a tone of utter finality, “I’m in this thing to the end, and Father is, too.”

Charles had stood there, a sad look in his eyes. “It’s the death of you, boy! Everything—everything will go. Abigail—have you thought about her?”

“Yes, I have.”

“You know she’s for the Crown, and she won’t change?”

Laddie shot a glance at Nathan, noting the look of pain in his eyes, and then he had straightened up and said firmly, “I’m sorry, Uncle Charles, but it’s what I have to do.”

They had gathered their belongings and gone back to the rebel lines that night, and in the weeks that passed, both of them struggled to find their niche in the army that was being birthed in the hills around Boston.

Nathan wrote of this in a letter to his father:

The troops around Boston lived in shelters made of whatever materials they could lay their hands on, and Laddie
quickly realized that if she had not been made an aide to an officer, she would have been in bad shape. Some of the men knocked together rough shacks, a few had tents, but the majority simply lived on the ground between constantly soggy blankets.

All the staff officers had places in houses, and fear of discovery had clawed at Laddie until Knox had taken her to a small bungalow not far from the heights of Dorchester. “Lieutenant Mason and I will take the bedroom, Laddie, and you can bunk in the loft.” Relief had flooded her; she would still be able to keep her sex a secret—at least for the time being.

Knox was a dynamo of activity, and he kept her close most of the time, roaring out memos, dictating reports, and spawning letters constantly. She learned to move through the confusion in his wake, and in a week had made herself indispensable to the huge man. To add to the confusion, it was often impossible to tell officers from enlisted men, for despite the efforts of General Washington to outfit the men in some semblance of a uniform, the Congress took no action. Washington finally authorized officers to adopt scarves, cockades, secondhand epaulets—whatever they could find to identify themselves.

As the weeks dragged on and the first American army took shape slowly under Washington’s hand, Gage and his troops remained oddly passive in Boston. “I guess he thinks our army will give up and go home,” Knox said once to Nathan; then he had added with a grimace, “And he could be partly right—with this eight-months Army of ours. By the end of the year, many of these units will be at the end of their agreed term of service, and will be free to go home.”

But it never happened. When some of the men went home, short-term militia were called up to man the lines, while recruiting officers beat their drums in distant towns and hamlets. Many did stay past their time, and Nathan said once to Laddie, “It’s Washington they stay for. He’s not a man that troops will run after cheering and tossing their hats, but you
just notice—when he passes by, men stand straighter and grip their muskets a little tighter—and they wind up writing letters back home trying to explain why it seems fitting for them to stay on after all.”

September came, then October, and the hills put on their fall colors of yellow, red, and gold. Men who had been sleeping on the ground suddenly fell into a building frenzy, putting up shacks, and the sound of axes rang constantly as firewood parties fell on the hardwood groves.

On one of those days in late October, Laddie and Nathan went on a day’s hunt at General Knox’s suggestion. “By Harry, if I have to eat another plate of this stew, I’ll give up food,” he had groaned. “Winslow, you’ve mastered your drill with your gun, so take that rifle of yours and get us a buck—even if you have to mistake a nice cow for one! And Sergeant Smith, you go along to be sure he doesn’t shoot himself.” His smallish eyes had gleamed, for despite his ferocious words, he had noted that both Nathan and Laddie were worn thin with the efforts to put together some sort of artillery unit. “Both of you have done well,” he said with a sudden warm smile. “Take a couple of days and forget about trying to kill the British.”

Neither Nathan nor Laddie argued, and in less than two hours they were making their way out of the camp, headed toward the thick forests northeast of Boston, mounted on two large mules that would carry back the game. All day long they pushed deeper and deeper into the wilderness, and by dusk they were camped beside a large brook beneath a tremendous hemlock. Nathan had passed up several chances to knock down deer, choosing instead to knock down enough quail to feed them for the night. Laddie could scarcely believe how he could usually take their heads off with a single rifle shot, and as they were roasting them over a small fragrant fire that night, she finally said, “Nathan, if you can hit a tiny thing like that, a man wouldn’t have a chance, would he?”

“Well, Laddie,” he answered with a quick smile, “one big
difference between shooting quail and men—the quail don’t shoot back!” He was wearing a fringed hunting jacket, and his high-planed face was thrown into even sharper lines by the flickering of the fire. The trip had relaxed him, and the ease in tension made him look younger. He added thoughtfully, “Lots of men can hit a nailhead at a hundred yards, but nailheads aren’t men, and it’s a hard thing to take a human life.” He looked at her across the fire and asked curiously, “Did you have any trouble pulling the trigger on Breed’s Hill?”

“I—I don’t think I could have done it,” she said in her husky voice, “but the shotgun was loaded with bird shot. I guess that’s all we had. It couldn’t have killed anybody. I just aimed at the crowd and pulled the trigger, and I know it stung a few men.” She thought about it, and when she looked at him, her strange almond-shaped eyes reflected golden glints from the sparks that rose from the fire. “I still don’t know if I could shoot—if I
knew
I was going to kill a man.”

He didn’t answer at once, but her words troubled him, and he gave his attention to the bird he was roasting. “Hey, this is just about right.” He pulled off a fragment of the toasted meat, juggled it in his hands to cool it, then tasted it, saying, “Laddie, this is
good!
” The two of them ate the quail, along with some biscuits and a couple of boiled potatoes they’d brought. They made tea in a small pot, and later Laddie brought out the plump wild blueberries she’d picked as they walked through the woods.

“I don’t care if it takes a week to get some game,” Laddie said finally. The sharp autumn air had brought a rich color to her face, and she pulled her short wool coat snugly around her, lay down on her blanket, and stared into the leaping flames of the fire. Sleepily, she murmured, “Nathan—how long will this war take?”

“How long?” Nathan laughed quietly and poked the fire with a stick, sending the tiny sparks upward to mingle in the tops of the trees with the real stars that glittered overhead. “Why, boy, it’s not even
started
and you’re already thinking
about the end! But I guess you’re thinking like lots of the fellows are—we’ll spend the winter running the British out of our country; then we’ll go home in time for spring planting and be done with King George.”

She looked up, caught by the doubt that threaded his words, and asked, “You don’t think it’ll be like that?”

“No way it can happen. In the first place, we’re probably going to
lose,
not win. Laddie, we got a bunch of farmers and shopkeepers with few guns—most of ’em never even
saw
a battle. We have no factories, no navy, no professional soldiers. And England has it all. Why, they got a hundred thousand men of their own troops, and if they’re not enough they can hire that many more Germans or Hessians! You saw ’em march up that hill, like machines! What would have happened if we’d been in front of them without any protection—or if
we
had to charge up a hill like that against those trained troops?”

He took a sip of his tea, and there was a silence, broken only by the cry of some night bird—a lonesome sound that made her shiver and draw her blanket closer. She had been in the middle of such activity and such optimism for the past few weeks that defeat had not even been a thought in her mind. Now Nathan’s face was so bleak in the firelight that she longed to put her hand on his, but said only, “Nathan, if you don’t think we can win, why . . . ?”

“What am I doing here?” He finished the tea, put the cup away, then punched his blanket roll into shape and prepared to lie down. “I made a promise to Caleb, Laddie. I’ll keep it. As long as there’s a fight, I’ll stay with it.” A sudden cry in the woods startled them both, and he got to his feet, in one smooth movement seized his rifle and stood there, alert and waiting.

“Just a panther,” he finally grunted. “Those critters sound like a woman screaming, don’t they?” He laid the rifle down, threw a thick log on the fire, and seeing that she was still sitting, staring rigidly into the dark woods, he stepped closer. Reaching out, he grabbed her thick hair and pulled her
startled face up; then giving her head a shake, he laughed and said, “Not scared of a little ol’ panther, are you, Laddie?”

The gentle grasp he kept on her hair did not hurt, but his touch sent a shock along her nerves. Looking up into the wide blue eyes that laughed down at her, she could not control the sudden tremor that seemed to make her weak and vulnerable. For months she had kept a constant effort to erase all traces of her femininity from her speech, her movements—and now in one explosive instant the touch of Nathan’s hand on her head sent everything crumbling!

I love you, Nathan Winslow!
The words leaped to her lips, seemed to fill her breast, and she knew that if she lived to be an old woman, this scene would be fresh in her heart—his face framed by the naked branches of the hemlock, his smile gleaming brightly against his tanned face, the smell of leather and woodsmoke, along with the crackling fire and the gentle bubbling of the brook, and the touch of his hand on her hair—all would be there for her when she thought of this time.
I’ll never have him—but I’ll always remember this night—when I first knew I loved him!