Redcoat

by Bernard Cornwell

  And trade, Abel Becket believed, would bring America greater blessings than any slogan. Trade brought money, and so Abel Becket prayed for the arrival of the British and the opening of the seaway. He had even gambled on British victory for, in his warehouse, Abel Becket had hoarded a great stack of sawn black walnut, ready for the day when it could be sent to the London market for real coin. The Philadelphia furnituremakers had begged to buy some of the precious timber, but Abel Becket had spurned their depreciated rebel paper dollars. London was the town that mattered, the town with gold, and the town that could make Philadelphia strong again.

  Yet, if the trade was to come to the city, then first the rebel forts on the Lower Delaware would have to be taken. The next morning, standing on his wharf, Abel Becket watched two large shallops that, under grey sails, beat into the cold north wind. Both boats had been rigged with small bow-cannon, and both were crewed by armed men. “Look at them!” Abel Becket spat his derision into the breeze. One of the ships bore a scarlet flag on which the Tree of Liberty had been sewn, while the other carried the new rebel flag of striped red and white. “It looks,” Abel Becket said scathingly, “like a clown’s pantaloons unfurled.”

  The boats had come from the rebel forts. One of the craft, the one with the striped flag, fell away in the wind so that it was driven close to the jutting wharf where Abel Becket stood.

  “Are they come? Are they come?” A man, making a trumpet with his hands, shouted the question of the moment across the choppy water.

  “They’ll come!” Abel Becket shouted back.

  Beside him, obsequious as ever in his master’s company, Ezra Woollard chuckled, “And they’ll run you off the river, Johnny Lyle!”

  “Go to hell, Ezra!” The insult was followed by a wave of the hand before the shallop bore up into the wind.

  Becket watched it go. “You say they’re obstructing the river?”

  “They’re sinking pontoons at Billings Island, sir.”

  “You’ve got details?”

  “And maps.” Woollard followed his master back into the warehouse, past the great baulks of walnut and past the fragrant bales of linseed that would sail for Ireland. Yet nothing could sail before the British came and the forts were taken.

  Ezra Woollard, safe in Abel Becket’s private room, put his plans of the rebel defences on the table. “I was thinking,” Woollard said, “that these should reach the British.”

  “Indeed.” Abel Becket’s agreement was whole-hearted.

  “They’re north of the city now. It won’t be a difficult ride.”

  “I can spare you.” Becket stood by his window which looked down into Water Street. “God knows but there’ll be no business till the city’s safe.”

  Woollard smiled. “I was thinking, sir, that maybe I wouldn’t be the best messenger.”

  Becket turned. “No one knows the river better than you.”

  “And I can write my knowledge down, sir, but I’m not a smooth talker. And the British are gentlemen, are they not? And they might despise a common man like myself?”

  Becket offered his foreman one of his rare smiles. “Not so very common, Woollard.”

  “But I’m no hand at dealing with gentlemen.” Woollard’s humility came hard, for, as a young man and not so long ago, he had prospered as an independent merchant in Philadelphia. He had made his fortune as a dealer in New Jersey tar, and it sometimes seemed that there still clung a sulphurous reek to him.

  Woollard’s tar business, that had grown from one leaky shallop bringing barrels from New Jersey to the Delaware’s shipwrights, had been broken by the British naval blockade. There were not enough ships being built on the river, nor needing repair, and Woollard had only been saved from bankruptcy by Abel Becket. The older man had paid the debts of the ailing tar business and made Woollard into his foreman. It was a good bargain, for Woollard had the skills of a trader and the physical force of a man toughened by a hard trade. His round face was scarred and pitted, his hair was coarse and thick, his body bulky and strong. In rescuing Ezra Woollard, Abel Becket had found himself a most effective foreman.

  “Are you suggesting,” Abel Becket asked, “that I should ride to the British myself?”

  “You’d be better at persuading them than myself, sir. But I was thinking of Master Jonathon.”

  “Ah.” Becket went back to the table and sat. He stared at the plans of the rebel defences. “I don’t think he’d make a willing messenger.” “I heard,” Ezra Woollard said slyly, “that Mister MacTeague preached from Joshua 24, verse 15, yesterday?”

  Becket’s dark eyes looked up at the foreman. “He did.”

  “So Master Jonathon must choose.”

  “Jonathon is my nephew.” Abel Becket was dressed in his customary black, with an old-fashioned black Steinkirk about his neck, and the sombre clothes added an odd force to the warning note in his voice.

  “And it’s not for me to interfere in family affairs,” Woollard said blithely, “but it seems to me, sir, that the British will be in a position to reward some families in this city, and to punish others. They’ll bring trade, but they’ll not give trade to merchants whose loyalty isn’t absolute.” He paused, as if to give his master a chance to protest, but Becket stayed silent.

  “And they could hear, sir, how Master Jonathon hurried eighty barrels of fine powder out of the city the other night! They’ll not like it!”

  “It was paid for.”

  “With paper, not coin that they’d have given us.” Again Woollard paused, but again Becket stayed silent and the foreman knew that he was expressing the fears of his employer. “And, with respect, sir, his sister doesn’t help. It just seemed to me, sir, and with the greatest of respect, that Master Jonathon must be made to display a proper loyalty.”

  Becket frowned. “I’ve no doubt, in time, that he’ll do just that.”

  “Not if what I hear is true.”

  Woollard paused, and Becket could not resist asking the invited question, though he gave it a scornful twist. “Waterfront gossip, Woollard?”

  “He’s sweet on Caroline Fisher.”

  Becket frowned at the news, then grimaced as he saw a personal motive for the revelation. “Whom you once wanted to marry?”

  “That was before I knew of her levelling views, sir. She’s a rebel, and fervent! Now it’s none of my business, and I’ll cease my talking as soon as you tell me to, sir, but it seems to me that if Master Jonathon can be forced into showing a proper loyalty then Caroline Fisher will scorn him as quickly as she can.”

  Becket, troubled by the information, stood again and walked restlessly back to the window. “Jonathon’s never mentioned her to me.”

  “He wouldn’t! He’d be ashamed!”

  Becket watched two carts sidle past each other beneath his window. One of the drivers, carrying a load of dried fish, expertly flicked his whip at a small boy who tried to filch a free meal. “Jonathon’s young,” he said, almost to himself, “and the young like to flirt with dangerous views. But he’s good!” He turned back to Woollard. “He’s as talented a trader as you or I, Woollard! That deal for ticken, how much did we make? A thousand dollars?” Becket smiled. “It’s that leg. They feel sorry for him and don’t know that he’s a better man than they’ll ever be!”

  “So we mustn’t lose him, sir. We mustn’t let the likes of Caroline Fisher and, begging your pardon, sir, Mrs Crowl, turn his head to nonsense! Make him choose.” Woollard gestured at the plans that lay on the table. “Send him to the British, sir, and no one will doubt his loyalties after that.” He paused, and he saw the doubt on Abel Becket’s face, and Woollard knew that the merchant was contemplating the possibility that Jonathon would rebel against the order and thus provoke the confrontation that so far the family had avoided.

  Woollard chuckled. “Master Jonathon’s not such a fool as to quarrel with his bread and butter!” He made his voice confiding, almost reassuring. “He’s a good lad. He just needs his mind made up for him.”
/>   “Maybe.” Becket still stared into the street. “Caroline Fisher?”

  “A slut, sir, if you’ll forgive the word. She needs a good whipping. Not that it’s my business, but I’d hate to see a girl like that taking all the profits from your hard work.” Woollard shrugged. “Forgive me for saying too much, sir, but it’s all in our interest if the British favour us. And if you want me to ride north with the papers I’ll gladly do it.”

  “No.” Becket, his mind evidently decided, turned back. “Leave them.”

  “Sir.” Woollard bowed his head then clattered down the stairs to the counting house where the empty desks showed how trade had suffered in these last years. Three clerks only worked where once a dozen had scratched at their ledgers. The clerks held their breath till the foreman had gone, but Woollard’s mind was not on mere clerks; instead he considered the fate of a business that he had a mind to own, and to which end, but for the most respectable and justifiable of reasons, a cripple must be forced into a decision. Jonathon must choose.

  Six

  Opposite Philadelphia, on the Delaware’s eastern bank, was marshy land that rose to low sandy ridges that were thickly wooded. It was poor land, yet from this Caleb and Anna Fisher had made a farm.

  The farm lay south of where the Cooper River joined the Delaware and its poor soil had been enriched by its proximity to Philadelphia where, in the echoing covered market, Caleb sold melons, cucumbers, pumpkins, squashes, mulberries, apples, cherries and chestnuts. His wife churned milk to butter, made cheese, and baked broad high-crusted pies that were carried across the river for sale.

  The reward for their work was a weather-boarded house of warm snugness. The main room was a huge kitchen, off which there was a small parlour where, each winter morning, Caleb Fisher read the scriptures. In summer he sat on the back porch to make his private devotions. There were two bedrooms, both in the attics, and a cabin for the black slave family that provided the farm’s only workers. Caleb’s neighbours had helped build a towering barn beside which a grove of sycamores shaded the yard where chickens pecked. It was not a rich farmstead, nor a grand one, but to Caleb and Anna it was a palace.

  “The Lord’s been good to us,” Anna liked to say, even though she had lost three children in infancy. Her only surviving son had grown up and married. Then he too had died, with almost all his family, in one of the dreadful fires that sometimes swept the small wooden houses built on Philadelphia’s margins. One baby had survived that fire; Caleb and Anna’s grandchild, who had lived ever since on the farm and who had become dearer to her grandparents than any other person on earth. So dear that Anna sometimes forgot she had not given birth to Caroline herself.

  There were those, both in the small New Jersey river settlements and in Philadelphia across the water, who thought the girl had gone wild. She should, they said, have been married long before. Caroline was eighteen now, four years past marriageable age, yet her grandparents made no move to force her into wedlock. They had even supported her refusal to wed the rising Woollard when his young business looked set to make a fortune. Some thought Caleb and Anna would not let Caroline go because they needed her help about the land, but others, who knew the Fishers better, understood that Caroline had her own thoughts on marriage. It would come, but in her own time and of her own choice.

  And there would be choice, for she was a girl who caught the eye of men. Her golden hair was lightened by the sunlight to a gleaming paleness that contrasted oddly with her tanned skin from which a pair of blue eyes challenged a disapproving world. She could ride like a boy, milk a cow like a dairymaid, and handle a river shallop like a waterman.

  It was the shallop that made Caroline noticed, for, as her grandfather grew older, it became her duty to take the farm’s produce over to the city’s quays. A bright-haired girl sailing a boat with such skill was bound to provoke attention. Like all the river sailors, she wore a knife at her belt to cut at tangled rigging, but there was something about her face that suggested the knife could be used for more than slashing ropes.

  Not all the farm’s produce went to the market. Caroline carried the choicer fruits and firmest cheeses to her special customers, among whom was Martha Crowl, and it had been at the widow’s house that Caroline had first met Jonathon. She had first seen the clubbed foot appear on the kitchen stairs and she had felt a pang of pity for the boy. He had limped beside her as she returned to the wharf and they had discovered that each was orphaned, and that each was a Patriot living in a Loyalist house.

  Caroline’s grandparents’ loyalism was not like Abel Becket’s, who held the creed as a matter of fervent belief. Anna Fisher remembered seeing the old King before she sailed to America. “A grand man, he was! A grand man!” Caleb swore that Anna had never seen the King at all, but only some grandee passing through her Yorkshire village, but Anna insisted that the King of England had smiled at her, and that one smile had kept her loyal for nearly sixty years. The rebellion, in Anna’s sturdy view, was all the fault of the Philadelphia lawyers. “I never did trust a lawyer, it was lawyers who tried our Lord and Saviour, and lawyers who chopped off good King Charles’s head, and all the lawyers ever cared about was their own pockets. Have you ever known a poor lawyer?”

  Caleb believed a Christian should be ruled by a king, because, just as land needed water or a calf milk, it was natural. To him the rebellion was a fuss across the river, nothing more.

  But Caroline had never seen a king, and she crossed the river to hear the city’s debates, and the rebellion seemed a fine thing to her. She had been born in the colonies and her espousal of the Patriot cause was as instinctive as was her grandparents’ more ancient loyalty. To that espousal she added the passion of the young who believe the world can still be changed for the better, and Caleb and Anna accepted her enthusiasm, knowing that it would be as futile to try and check the Delaware’s spate in full flood as to try and change their granddaughter’s mind. Caroline, like Jonathon Becket, would be a rebel.

  They had known each other for a year, and their meetings had always been in the city. Jonathon would waylay Caroline on the wharf and insist on carrying her baskets to market. Sometimes he would limp with her through the shipyards to the north of the city and he would tell her which shipwrights used bad timber and which thinned their tar; sometimes they spoke of the rebellion and Jonathon would list what supplies he had found for the rebel army that week, and how his sister made up the profit above the meagre payments the Congress would allow so that his uncle would be content to sell to the hated rebels. Always Caroline knew that this charming, eloquent, and wealthy young man was trying to tell her that he was in love. Why else would he inflict the pain of the long walks on himself?

  “He’ll be rich,” Anna Fisher sometimes teased Caroline.

  “A rich merchant.”

  “Nothing wrong with money, child.”

  Caroline had grimaced. “He’ll have to live in the city, won’t he?”

  “If that’s where the money goes, and it usually does.”

  Once, when Abel and Hannah Becket were at a church meeting, Jonathon had taken Caroline around their house and she had seen the quiet, solid wealth of the family, and it had scared her. The table had been set for a supper, and Caroline had never seen so much cutlery, or so many plates, or such shining glassware, or so many spermaceti candles that cost nine dollars a tierce. “We use tallow,” she had said defensively.

  “So do we, upstairs.”

  “I make them myself,” Caroline had said, “starting by killing the sheep.”

  “You don’t!”

  She had looked almost challengingly at Jonathon. “You’ve never killed a sheep?”

  “Lord, no!”

  Caroline could not imagine how a person could live in such ignorance of country necessities, nor, when she was truthful, could she imagine herself living in a city.

  Yet, if Jonathon had his way, and his way could be as forceful as it was amusing, she would live in a city. He had not offered marriage,
but he would, and Caroline did not know how she would respond. She admitted to herself that there was something flattering in his attention, and the dragging foot invited pity, but Caroline almost feared the moment when Jonathon would demand her response.

  Then, in the last week of September 1777, on a Tuesday evening, Jonathon came to Caroline’s house for the very first time.

  He arrived in the sunset. At first, as Caroline watched the strange horseman come down the track from the plank bridge across the Cooper River, she did not recognize Jonathon, but then he lifted his hat and smiled. “Watching the sunset?” he asked as he reined in beside her.

  “I’m deciding what cattle we’ll keep.” Caroline nodded towards the cows that grazed on the marshland by the river’s edge. “The wind’s taking their milk early this year.” She looked up at the sky. “There’s a bad winter coming.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so.” Caroline saw how, on horseback, Jonathon lost his crippled appearance. The right stirrup, to encompass his clubbed foot, was made twice as large as a normal iron, but he sat straight and tall, and she sensed how hard it must be for Jonathon to walk when he could ride so well. “You want the horse to drink?”

  She ducked through the fence and led the mare round to the cattle trough by the milking barn. From here, when her face was hard by the warm flanks of the cows as she milked them, Caroline could see the glorious sight of the city across the river. In high summer, on still days, the spires and roofs were reflected as cleanly as if the steel-flat water was a mirror. In spring the tiles and shingles lost their starkness as the poplars on the streets came into new leaf, while in winter the snow gave the city a shining glory. Now, in the turn of summer to fall, there was a golden darkness to the city that was accentuated by the absence of masts from the quays.