by Ron Carter
Weatherby paused to study Mary for a moment, gauging how she was receiving his summary. Then he continued pacing.
“You say you have the Purcell document as well as the Hollins affidavit supporting your story. That poses two questions: first, just what does Eddington have to support his claim? And second, even if Eddington has nothing, will that make any difference in a court hearing?”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
Weatherby turned to face Mary, his eyes boring into hers. He spoke sharply. “Think! Eddington’s British. The thirty-two thousand British pounds in question are from a dead British officer. This will be heard in a British court, by British judges, or a British jury. Perhaps in Britain.” He paused and pointed a thin finger at her. “You’re an American. A rebel. An enemy of the Crown and all that is British.” He reached for his pipe. “Need I say more?”
“I thought courts were to give justice, on facts.”
Weatherby shook his head violently. “In theory. But in truth, all too often human weakness tilts the scales. In this case, I am giving you my best professional advice when I tell you, I don’t think a British court will ever get to the facts. It will be enough for them when they are told you’re an American, trying to wrest a small fortune from a deceased British officer, at the expense of a British subject, who claims forgery and seduction on your part. I apologize for using the word seduction, but I must tell you, if it comes to a court hearing, you will hear that word bandied about until you will wish you had never heard of either the doctor or his estate. And I promise you, every newspaper in every major seaport will pounce on it. Your name will become commonplace, and it will be forever connected with the term seduction. I am truly sorry, but I would not be serving you well if I did not state all this as plainly as I can. I only hope you understand.”
Mary’s shoulders sagged, and she lowered her face. Weatherby sat back down, relit his pipe, and drew on it while he waited.
Her words came quietly, with her eyes downcast. “Me. A paid seductress.” She shook her head slowly, unable to force her mind to accept the thought. “What shall I do?”
Weatherby sighed. “You had better decide whether fighting for thirty-two thousand English pounds is worth going through the humiliation of being portrayed in newspapers as a seductress and a fraud.”
“Must I decide now?”
“Soon.”
“Is there no other way?”
Weatherby shrugged. “At this point, no one knows, but you had better presume it will happen, if that helps in your decision.”
Suddenly Mary straightened. “You will need money. I no longer have money.”
Weatherby leaned back in his chair. “Yes, I will. Quite a bit of it.”
“How much?”
“One thousand dollars for my retainer fee, more as the case progresses. And costs.”
“How much for costs?”
“Probably fifteen hundred dollars to begin with, more later.”
“Two thousand five hundred dollars to begin? I have thirteen English pounds in my purse, and no more. It’s out of the question. I should have thought of that first. I’m sorry I took your time.”
She stood to go when his voice stopped her. “Go get those two documents and bring them to me.”
“Why? I can’t pay you.”
He tapped the top of his desk with a bony finger. “Bring them here before you go on your trip.”
In the late afternoon, Lawrence Weatherby reread the document written by Otis Purcell and laid it on his desk, then picked up the affidavit signed by General Jarom Hollins. For twenty minutes he studied every word with fierce intensity before he laid it back on his desk. He sat in his chair for a time, sucking his cold pipe in deep thought before he rose and walked to open his office door.
“Ellen, would you send a messenger over to the London–New York Bank on Broadway. You know the one. Charles Partridge is the manager. Tell him I’d like to see him sometime tomorrow.”
He returned to his desk and eased onto his chair, then turned to gaze out the windows at the long shadows and bright sunlight of a sun setting on Wall Street. In his mind he was seeing Mary Flint on the Catherine Street docks, boarding a small boat for her journey up the Raritan to disembark and board a freight wagon. She would wait, perhaps through the night, for the two wagons that were leaving for Morristown, and she would ride one of them over the rough roads carved through the forests, through canyons that girdled and shielded the small mountain town, in her quest to find the Continental army.
Thirteen pounds in her purse. Almost penniless. Is it enough to pay her fare? Food? What will she do when the money’s gone? Is there danger? Soldiers? Highwaymen? Swindlers? Men who would take advantage?
Weatherby broke off the thoughts and ran bony fingers through his hair. He looked at the two documents once more, glanced at the clock on the worktable, and rose from his chair. It was past six o’clock. His day was ended.
As he opened his office door, a thought flickered through his mind. What about Mary Flint’s day? Is it ending, or just beginning?
Notes
Mary Flint as she appears in this book is a fictional character, as are the events and other persons described in this chapter.
Outside the walls of Fort Ticonderoga
June 17, 1777
CHAPTER IX
* * *
James MacIntosh squinted at the golden glow in the western sky, left by a sun that had set ten minutes earlier. He lowered his eyes to watch the lights of Fort Ticonderoga wink on, four hundred yards east of his ancient, weathered cabin. With the coming of spring, the eighteen inches of dirt on the cabin roof had brought forth the usual stand of grass, flowers, and weeds, and in the twilight it appeared the old, one-room structure was growing hair.
Adrift after his wife died many years before, MacIntosh had built his cabin in the shadow of the fort to live out his years alone in the wilderness. He occasionally worked at the fort for what little money he needed; all else he provided with his own hands, preferring the solitude of his small place to the noise and bother of civilization. He was not aware that sometime in the past he had begun talking to himself.
MacIntosh reached to scratch at his scraggly gray beard before he closed and latched the gate on the ramshackle pen and hutch that held his brood sow and her eight weaner pigs. He paused a moment to watch the little ones rooting headlong at their mother as she lay on her side, head thrown back, eyes closed. A grin crossed his wrinkled face at their grunts and high-pitched squeals as they jostled for position and the muffled sounds of bliss as they drew their life sustenance from her. “If they all make it through the summer,” he muttered, “there’ll be ham ’n bacon ’n lard ’n sausage for winter, and some to sell to the soldier boys at the fort.” His speech had a slight Scottish burr to it.
Average height, longsince retired from the British army, and gray from years in the wilderness, MacIntosh tossed the round, battered pan he used to carry his table scraps to the wooden feed trough, into the old wooden wheelbarrow next to the pen. Years before he had made a deal with the cooks at the enlisted men’s mess inside the fort. He would bring his wheelbarrow to their back door, they would toss their wet garbage into it until it was full, and he would wheel it back to his place for pig feed. In return, twice a year, he would deliver to them a gallon jug of chokecherry wine. Over the years the wood in the wheelbarrow had swelled, discolored to a dirty black, and acquired a permanent stench. The wooden wheel had worn slightly lopsided, which caused the heavy, handmade contraption to rise and fall rhythmically when he pushed it.
“Got to fix that wheel one of these days,” he mused as he walked past it. He continued on to the weathered shed and pen where he kept his mule and stopped to throw an armful of dried grass into a wooden box. The tired old animal lowered its head, and MacIntosh listened as its teeth began their grinding. He glanced to be sure there was water for the mule in the wooden half-barrel, then continued on the worn path toward his cabin. On the way, he passe
d the crude garden he and the mule had plowed and he had planted, and slowed to peer at the rows of green sprouts crowding upward through the soil, reaching for sun and water. Carrots, squash, corn, beans, potatoes. “Keep a-comin,’” he mumbled. “Just keep a-comin.’”
He walked on to the door of his cabin, and it opened soundlessly on its leather hinges. Once inside, he lighted a lamp and set it on the table. He was reaching into the kindling box beside the stove when he heard the mule stamping its feet in its pen.
The thought flashed in his mind—bear—and he moved quickly to the door, reached above it to jerk his musket from its pegs, pulled the door open, and stopped dead in his tracks, stunned, wide-eyed. Filling the door frame was an apparition that struck terror into the hearts of all who dared challenge the wilderness. A Mohawk warrior faced him, stripped to the waist, hair roached high, face painted vermilion from the hair to below the nose, then black to the throat. A tomahawk dangled on a leather cord from his left wrist, and in his right hand he grasped a bone-handled scalping knife. MacIntosh opened his mouth to speak, and in that instant the Indian was on him. He swatted the musket to the floor, then clutched the front of MacIntosh’s coat with his left hand while his right hand flashed upward to hold the tip of the knife against his throat. Without a word the Indian dragged MacIntosh out through the door, onto the dirt path. He released his hold and pointed west, toward the mule and pigpens.
MacIntosh nodded his understanding and began walking, the Indian four feet behind, knife and tomahawk ready. MacIntosh slowed at the mule pen to open the gate and leave it standing. The mule watched with detached disinterest and continued working on the dried grass. At the pigpen, MacIntosh caught the gate and swung it open as he walked past.
In gathering dusk they reached the tree line and were instantly into the gloom of the forest, walking west, then angling right in a circle to the east. MacIntosh did not know when the second Indian came in behind them. He only knew that when he broke clear of the trees on the shores of Lake Champlain, there were two of them, each stripped to the waist, painted for war, and armed. They pointed to a light birch-bark canoe tied in the foliage on the shoreline, MacIntosh stepped in, moved to the center and knelt, waiting. One of the Indians moved past him, then the other one launched the canoe into the black waters before he leaped inside and took his position in the other end. Each leaned a musket against the gunwales, then picked up a paddle, and dug the blade into the water. In the deep shadows, MacIntosh saw the fur-trimmed quivers filled with arrows, and the short, powerful war bows at each end of the canoe. The trim, lightweight watercraft leaped forward, creating a slight hissing sound as the high back-curve of the graceful bow raised a white curl in the gathering darkness.
From long experience, MacIntosh knew they had come to capture him, not kill him. Had they been on a raid, he would already be dead on the floor of his cabin, and his buildings would be smoldering ruins, his animals slaughtered. Having been taken captive, he would remain alive only so long as he remained silent and did what he was told. On the lake, a cough, a whistle, a spoken word would reach for miles, and if he made a sound that could draw pursuit, he would be dead in seconds, his scalpless body floating face down in the lake while the canoe sped on.
He silently shifted off his knees to sit cross-legged while the two Indians settled into a rhythm, soundlessly dipping their paddles in the glassy, smooth water, driving the canoe with powerful strokes steadily north. The moon rose to cast the lake in silvery shadows and send a shimmering path across the still waters to the canoe. MacIntosh sat quietly, listening to the loons laugh near the shore, the occasional bark of a fox, and the howl of a distant wolf. Sometime in the night he nodded off to sleep, to awaken with gray showing in the eastern sky. They sped on, with MacIntosh watching the shore, counting the familiar landmarks.
They passed The Narrows in the gray of dawn, then the Bouquet River, then Split Rock, where the lake widened, from less than two miles across, to more than ten. With the sun directly overhead, they slowed the canoe and turned it toward the eastern shore. Thirty yards from the rocks, the Indian in front strung his bow, nocked an arrow, and rose to a crouching position, studying the dark waters intently. Strangely, MacIntosh noticed the buckskin leggings, fringed, and the beautiful beadwork on his moccasins in the bright sunlight.
A white underbelly flashed beneath the calm surface of the lake, and the Indian instantly drew the arrow to its iron head and released it. It hardly made a ripple as it sliced deep, out of sight. There was a roiling in the water, and a huge brown trout came writhing to the surface, impaled on the arrow. Its struggling slowed, then stopped, and it rolled belly up in the water. The Indian in front reached with his paddle to pull it closer before it could sink, then raised it dripping from the water. He raised it at arm’s length toward the heavens, incanted his thanks, then laid it in the bottom of the canoe. He resumed his position in the prow, and once again they settled into their rhythm with the paddles.
They had passed Valcour Island in the middle of the lake, then Cumberland Head, and were approaching Ile la Motte before they once again turned toward the eastern shore. With the sun setting, they beached the canoe and kindled a small fire. When the sun reached the western skyline, the trout was roasted. The two Indians ate their fill, then pointed, and MacIntosh ate what he wanted. Nearly half the great fish remained, and one Indian wrapped it in green ferns, then laid it on a flat rock, and covered it with another flat rock. With dusk now fully upon them, they spread a blanket, and MacIntosh lay down. They did not tie him, but he knew. He would never be able to sneak away in the night unnoticed, and the penalty for trying would be death.
By the time the sun rose the next morning, they were already gliding north in the canoe, and by midmorning had passed Ile aux Noix. It was only then that MacIntosh understood they were taking him to St. Johns, located twelve miles down the Richelieu River. His eyes narrowed as he searched his memory. Hadn’t there been word at Fort Ticonderoga that the British were gathering at St. Johns? Perhaps intending to come south to attack Fort Ti?
The lake narrowed to empty into the Richelieu, and the current picked up. The canoe raced forward, light and easy on the running water. It was not yet noon when MacIntosh saw the first orderly rows of military tents and the bright red and white uniforms of thousands of British soldiers on the east riverbank, and then, flying over the settlement of St. Johns, the British Union Jack, rippling high and bright and proud in the sparkling morning sunlight.
The Indians skillfully brought the canoe to the wharf that extended into the river, with a crowd of their own kind gathering, and half a dozen British soldiers coming in from behind. They climbed onto the dock, waited for MacIntosh, then turned to face the gathering. With their heads high, chins thrust out, scowling in bravado, they made their abrupt, dramatic declaration of their feat in capturing and bringing in a white prisoner from the very gates of Fort Ticonderoga. No matter he was not an American officer, or even an American soldier, but a civilian. Only the bravest and strongest and most skillful could penetrate the enemy’s defenses to the center, and return with a prisoner.
Their vanity satisfied, they marched their prize through the throng, faces fierce, looking neither left nor right, into the cluster of buildings that were called St. Johns, stopping before a large, frame home in which General Burgoyne had established his headquarters. Only then did they stop, waiting for a British officer to open the door and step out to face them. Neither Indian spoke English, and the officer spoke no Mohawk. The Indians pointed at MacIntosh, then turned indifferently to walk away, leaving the British officer to do the easy work, after they had done the impossible.
The officer surveyed MacIntosh, dressed in his coarse, threadbare colonial garb, while MacIntosh squinted back at him, dressed in his immaculate crimson tunic, white breeches, black boots, and gold-trimmed tricorn hat.
The officer’s nose wrinkled slightly as he spoke. “I am Major Richard Darby, aide to General John Burgoyne,” he declared. H
e gave a head motion to the building behind him. “What, sir, is your name?”
“James MacIntosh.”
“From where?”
“Fort Ti.”
Darby’s eyes widened in surprise. “Military?”
“No. Civilian. Retired from the military years ago.”
“Which military?”
“British. Seventy-eighth Foot.”
For a moment Darby lost his superior bearing. “You served with the Seventy-eighth?”
“While you were just a pup.” The insolence was calculated.
Darby stiffened, and his lip curled. “Come with me. General Burgoyne will want to interrogate you.”
MacIntosh shrugged indifferently. Darby turned on his heel and entered the building, MacIntosh following. The anteroom of the home had been the parlor, and the paintings on the walls remained, along with the parlor table and chairs. Darby turned to MacIntosh. “You will remain here for a moment while I announce you to the general.” MacIntosh waited while Darby disappeared through an archway and down a short hall. He glanced about the room, remembering the constricting feel of a home and polished hardwood floors and walls with paintings and windows with curtains. He heard a door open and close, then after a moment, open and close again. Boot heels thumped on the floor until Darby reappeared in the archway.
“The general will see you immediately. You will follow me.”
You will follow me. Humph. He could have asked, not ordered. A sour look crossed MacIntosh’s face as he followed Darby down the hall to a door. As Darby raised his hand to rap, the door behind them opened, and Brigadier General Simon Fraser, a member of Burgoyne’s staff, commander of one wing of the Burgoyne army, brilliant, admired, liked, stepped into the hall. Darby instantly clacked his heels together as he came to attention.
Fraser’s smile was genuine. “Major, how are you this morning?” He eyed MacIntosh, still smiling.
“Excellent, sir. And yourself?”
“In good health, thank you.”
