The Tory Widow (22 page)

“Jack Stapleton, sir.”

“You are a local man?”

Jack said, “Born and bred to this island, before being sent to the city as apprentice . . . I know my way around.”

Good boy,
Titus thought. Stick to the truth as much as possible—the course they'd both agreed upon to avoid blunders and detection by suspicious minds.

The officer rattled off another question. “Apprenticed? At what trade?”

“Printer, sir. A thriving business, at least up until my press was put to ruin by them bastard Liberty Boys.”

The mention of the Sons of Liberty struck a chord, and both captain and sergeant instantly shifted into more amenable attitudes.

“Captain Blankenship, your farrier has been complaining of being shorthanded, sir . . .” the sergeant suggested. “This slave looks to be a fit fellow. He'd do as an ostler, at least.”

“Yes, send the negro to work with the horses,” Blankenship agreed. “I will escort our bearded friend to headquarters. He might serve as a guide.”

Jack shouldered his musket, and left with the captain.

“Give this to the farrier-major—” The sergeant scribbled off a note and directed Titus to the horse paddock. “An easy one to find—dressed all in black, he is, with a horseshoe insignia on his sleeve.”

 

 

TITUS looked up from the tin plate balanced on his lap. “There's my master, sir,” he explained, pointing to Jack crossing the pasture. “He serves as a guide with the Seventeenth. Might I have permission to go to speak with him?”

“Yer master?” The farrier looked up, squinting, to where Titus pointed. “Aye—g'won, ye poor bugger.”

Titus ran out to meet Jack, and they sat together under a big tulip tree. “I hope you brought something to eat. The horses are fed better rations than what we were just given for our supper—a hunk of pickled beef so rusty with rot I wouldn't feed it to a dying dog. And the biscuits—squirming with weevils . . .”

“From what I can tell, the regulars don't fare any better, which is why I went foraging.” Jack unloaded his sack, laying out an oblong loaf of dark bread, four wizened sausages, a waxed cheese and half a dozen apples. “Plain fare—but fresh,” he said, handing over a sausage.

Titus broke the sausage in two. After a quick visual inspection and a good sniff, he took a bite. “Where'd you sleep last night?”

“I made a bed in a tent with three other guides—Tory farmers from hereabouts.” Jack pulled out a folding knife and sliced a chunk from the cheese. “Spent the whole evening listening to their Loyalist mouthings, and thereby, I learned less than nothing. How about you?”

“Dragoons have been coming all morning, checking their horses and gear, and the smiths have been running from horse to horse repairing shoes and tack. The farrier-major gave me orders to fill fifty feed sacks. He says the Seventeenth is moving camp to a village called Flatlands.” Titus tore off a fist-sized hunk from the loaf.

Jack leaned back against the tree trunk. “That's odd—moving south to Flatlands, when the Continental lines are to the north . . .”

“I thought it odd as well. Do you remember Blankenship? The officer from yesterday? He was among a bunch seeing to their mounts, and I heard him tell another that ‘Clinton would turn their flank.' ” Titus reached for another sausage. “At first I figured he was yammering horse-talk, as they are all wont to do . . . but later on, when a little fellow came around wanting
General
Clinton's mount saddled, I got to thinking there might be something more to what Blankenship said.”

A sudden drum call resounded from the main encampment—three long rolls punctuated with two hard beats. With a groan, the farriers and ostlers shoveled down the last of their suppers as the rhythmic drum sequence was repeated over and over.

One of Titus's fellow ostlers waved him in. “C'mon, Titus! They're beating Assembly!”

Jack and Titus rose to their feet, sausages in hand.

“Repair to your colors!” the farrier-major shouted at Jack.

Titus shoved the sausage, the rest of the cheese and a few apples into his shirtfront. “Looks like we're on the march. You better go and join your company. I'll find you in Flatlands!”

CHAPTER TEN

THOMAS PAINE,
Common Sense

 

 

 

 

 

A
NNE clattered from the kitchenhouse, carrying four empty wooden buckets by the handles—two in each fist, fitting the buckets onto the pushcart parked near the back door of the shop. Originally designed for delivering printed materials and paper supplies, the square barrow with its two wide wheels and high wooden sides was the perfect cart for conveying water from the pump in Chatham Square.

Anne pulled down the skirt hems tucked into her apron strings and secured her mobcap with a T-shaped silver pin. “I'm off !”

Sally popped out the kitchenhouse door, her head turbaned in a linen towel, a smudge of flour dimming the freckles on her cheek. With a wave she said, “Hurry back!”

Anne steered the barrow through the shop, down Dock Street and onto the bumpetty cobbles of Queen Street. The city was busier than usual for a Sunday afternoon, and the unexpected traffic hampered her plan for a quick forth-and-back to the pump. Anne gauged the time of day by the length of the shadows her cart rolled over as she headed uptown to the tea-water pump, sorely missing the hourly music of the city bells. General Washington had ordered all of the bells stripped from the church towers, and the plundered metal was recast into artillery.

Still a few hours till nightfall . . .
Anne sighed, and slowed her pace, calming her inclination to crash along at full speed with long strides.

After spending her day roiling over Cup and Quill concerns, wondering for the well-being of her brother, and anxious over how and where the British might strike an invasion, Anne found she craved the solace of her pillow more than ever. But try as she might to encourage a good night's rest by working hard, drinking cups of chamomile tea and stuffing sprigs of lavender into her pillowslip, deep sleep proved elusive. Most of her bedtime hours were wasted in rigorous tossing and turning, accompanied by vigorous pillow thumping.

Though she pointed to hot weather and worries as reasons for her restlessness, she knew the true cause. Anne was bedeviled by shameful, uncontrollable yearnings and fevered imaginings. Night after night, she lay in the tangle of her bed linen, reliving over and over the few moments spent enveloped in Jack Hampton's embrace . . .
against the wall, lips crushed to his . . . one of his work-rough hands on her breast, the other reaching up under skirts . . .

The sudden trill of fife and the rattle of drum disturbed her reverie. Anne tightened her grip on the crossbar handle and leaned in to push the cart across a rough patch in the cobbles. Up ahead she could see the source of the military music—the intersection at Maiden Lane was blocked by a soldier's parade. She pushed her cart to the side and continued unencumbered to watch the regiment march by.

These soldiers in their short blue jackets and neat leather hats had been crowding into the Cup and Quill of late. Hailing from one of the smallest colonies, they were the largest and—by most estimation— the best equipped of all the Continental regiments. Carrying full packs and shouldering new, polished muskets, the Delaware Blues presented a fine military display, marching three abreast.

She tapped an elderly pipe smoker observing the parade. “What's going on?”

“Reinforcements shipping out,” he said. “Howe's landed his entire force on Long Island—twenty thousand Redcoats! There will be a mighty push on Brooklyn for certain.”

“Brooklyn! Not the city?”

“Never you fear, miss, our shores are safe.” A thin man in rolled sleeves and leather apron joined the conversation. “Our lads will push those Redcoats off of Long Island and into the ocean. Right makes might.”

Twenty thousand . . .
The news fanned her constant glowing ember of worry and it burst into flames. Anne rose up on tiptoes, scanning the even files stretching down and forming ranks two blocks away at the Fly Market Square, and she caught a glimpse of a familiar green weskit moving through the gathering crowd of observers.

“Jack!”

He did not hear her call over the hubbub and marching music. Weaving a course along the fringes, he headed toward the square.

“Jack!”
Keeping her eye on the flash of emerald green bobbing in and out of her view, Anne sailed after him. Whipping through and around the onlookers at full speed, she managed to catch up when he came to a standstill near the stairs leading down to the ferry landing on Water Street.

“Jack!” At once breathless, elated and relieved, she reached out and took hold of his shoulder.

All the wind was sucked from her canvas the moment she touched the man, suddenly aware this man was not tall enough—this man was too broad in girth and had gray streaks mixed with the dark hair drawn into the bedraggled ribbon at his neck.

“Madam?” he quizzed her through a pair of spectacles perched at the end of his nose. Anne snatched her hand back, her mumblings tangled on the square knot lodged in her throat. Blinking back tears she stammered, “B-beg pardon, sir . . . I-I've mistook you for someone else.” With a nod, the man turned his attention back to the parade, and Anne shuffled back to brace her hand against the railing.

Her true colors were just revealed. The mere glimpse of a certain shade of green sent her flying into a heart-thumping tizzy—and the mistaken identity just as quickly consigned her with a thud to the depths of disappointment.

“Widow Merrick? Are you ill?”

Anne startled. She looked up to see a familiar young officer dressed in the same gray and green regimental coat David wore. She shook her head, and forced a smile. “The heat . . . I just needed to take some air away from the crowd. But thank you for your concern, Lieutenant . . . ?”

“Collins . . . John Collins.” The young lieutenant shook her proffered hand. “I've frequented the Cup and Quill. Your brother is a friend of mine.”

“Of course! Have you any news to share, Lieutenant? Does David fare well?”

“He's anxious, as we all are, what with the bloodybacks on our doorstep.” Collins shrugged. “But since David is such a cheerful fellow, I'd say he fares better than most. Why, I last saw him Friday night when I shipped over—at the Ferry House he was—smoking cigars and drinking whiskey with a Spaniard and a negro man.”

“A Spaniard?” Anne squinted.

“A foreign-looking fellow—tall—with a heavy dark beard.”

“No!” Anne laughed. “Don't tell me he's grown a beard!”

“You know the man?”

“I know both the Spaniard and the negro man—friends of our family.”

“Collins!”
an officer shouted up from the landing.

“I have to go.” The lieutenant flipped a haversack over one shoulder.

“Good luck to you, Lieutenant.”

“I'll tell your brother of our meeting.”

“Tell David he is a constant in our thoughts and prayers.”

John Collins skittered down the stairs, taking a seat and an oar in a flat-bottom scow.

Anne leaned over the railing. “Mr. Collins! If you should happen to see the other two—the Spaniard and the negro man—tell them Anne Merrick bids them both to take care!”

 

 

AS the sun drew close to the horizon, an unseasonable chill crept in from the east to settle over the British encampment at Flatlands. The cool temperature combined with wood smoke from the many campfires to end the summer day with an aspect more akin to October than to August.

With a gunnysack full of foraged foods thrown over his shoulder, Jack meandered past row after row—hundreds of wedge tents—in search of the one he shared with his fellow guides and three British regulars.

After his midday meal with Titus was interrupted by the call to assemble, the 17th and all of General Cornwallis's units struck camp at Flatbush and marched two miles south to encamp with General Clinton's forces at the old Dutch village called Flatlands.

Jack puzzled over it, but he could make no sense of this move away from the rebel lines. And though no one seemed to understand the why or wherefore of the orders, it was plain these seasoned soldiers recognized the movement as a meaningful portent, and the camp buzzed with industry in preparation for the inevitable.

Jack strolled past men with wood-framed mirrors propped, wielding lather and razor, shaving while there was still good light to see by. Others were busy seeing to their uniforms, mending tears, and applying fresh coats of pipe clay to mask the grime and stains on white crossbelts, breeches and waistcoats. Boots, shoes, cartridge boxes and canvas gaiters were also being attended to, receiving a good rub with brush and blackball.

The colonial guides were housed in the third tent beyond a neat pyramid of regimental drums, right next to a group of small conical tents used to shelter the racks filled with barrel-end-up muskets.

“Ahoy!” he shouted to his fellow guides busy building a campfire in front of his tent. He was at once greeted with a rousing cheer from his Tory messmates. To Jack's surprise, the three surly troopers, who had complained so bitterly to their sergeant over having to share tent and mess with “colonial bastards,” cheered as well—all prejudice overcome by the full gunnysack slung over his shoulder.