Revolution in Time (Out of Time #10)

by Monique Martin

  “Are you ever going to tell me what happened earlier?” she finally asked.

  His brows drew together and he sighed. “I acted impulsively.”

  It wasn’t exactly an explanation, but it was something, and she didn’t want to press. Despite his assurances that he was fine, it was clear to all of them that he wasn’t. None of them, except for perhaps Simon himself, expected him to be.

  “It’s going to take time to put all of this behind us,” she said gently.

  He nodded but was clearly still troubled.

  “And I know you don’t want to go, don’t want us to go,” she continued, “but—”

  “I understand the importance.”

  There was something else then. “But?”

  He looked almost pained. “I’m afraid I’ll make some sort of mistake. A dangerous mistake. I’m not thinking too clearly right now.”

  It was a difficult admission for him. Simon prided himself on his logic, on his ability to control himself, and to feel so out of control must be deeply unsettling.

  “What if I do something that puts you in danger?”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “I nearly did today,” he said and then eased out of her arms and crossed the room. “If they hadn’t stopped me ….”

  He shook his head and turned to face her. “I’m supposed to take care of you.”

  “You do.” Elizabeth walked over to him. “We take care of each other.”

  He nodded but didn’t seem convinced.

  “How about this? While you’re feeling impulsive, I’ll be a little more like you.”

  He looked at her in question.

  “Strong,” she answered, “confident, protective.”

  He smiled, pleased and humbled at her assessment.

  Elizabeth did her best Simon impression. “Now come here and kiss me.”

  He mock frowned. “Do I really sound like that?”

  She pulled him into her arms. “Not really.”

  “That’s too bad.” He looped his arms around her. “It was damned sexy.”

  Elizabeth laughed, but it was smothered by a kiss.

  “We’ll be all right,” she said. “As long as we’re together.”

  ~~~

  “These are your keys.” Travers held up three ornate skeleton keys. “Don’t lose them. The machine has programmed them to return the bearer at a specified time.” He turned to Teddy, who was struggling to shoulder a musket that was larger than he was. With his face freshly shaven, he looked more like a boy than a man.

  They all looked like they were going to a very strange costume party—Teddy and Jack in their rough and mismatched soldiers outfits, Travers and Victor a little more resplendent in French silks, and she and Simon as the lowest rung of the upper class, the landed gentry.

  Teddy struggled a little more until Jack took the gun from him. Elizabeth caught Jack’s eye and he gave her a wink.

  Teddy took the keys. Each had a different colored ribbon tied to the end of it.

  He held up the key with the red ribbon. “Forty-eight hours,” he said and handed it to Jack. The next was blue. “Seventy-two.” He gave that key to Travers and then the final key, with its white ribbon, he held out to Elizabeth. “Ninety-six.”

  She took it with a smile. Teddy returned the smile then nervously moved back to stand with Jack.

  “Each duration is based on our best guess of the time needed for the task at hand. Since we don’t know exactly where Thomas Paine is, we wanted to give you a little extra time.”

  Elizabeth hated that part. Of all the missions, theirs was the vaguest. Each group received detailed dossiers on their subject and mission. Theirs was sadly lacking. Unlike Franklin or Washington’s exploits, Paine’s life in England before he traveled to America was sparsely recorded. Where in all of London he was on September 27, 1774, no one knew.

  “The side effects of traveling by the machine diminish greatly after the first time. You might have a slight headache, but that should be all.”

  Travers tucked his key into his jacket pocket.

  “When you arrive in your designated location, mark the time. The clock for the automatic return will then start ticking down. And I cannot stress this enough—don’t lose your key. It will return whether you have it in your possession or not. Do not get separated near the return time. When the time expires, the bearer and anyone they’re touching will be brought back here. Anyone else will be left behind.”

  He glanced around the room. “Everyone understand?”

  There was a soft chorus of agreement and then silence until Jack broke it.

  “Well, might as well get this show on the road.”

  Teddy looked at Elizabeth with a worried smile. She crossed over to him and straightened his jacket.

  “You’ll be fine. Jack will take care of you.”

  She glanced over at Jack, who nodded. It was comforting to know Teddy was in good hands.

  She kissed Teddy’s cheek and then gave Jack a hug. “And look out for yourself while you’re at it,” she whispered to him.

  He responded with a Wells grin. “You too, kid.”

  He looked at the others and then joined Teddy by the large console of the machine. He took out the key and put it into the slot.

  “Here goes nothing.”

  He put a hand on Teddy’s shoulder and turned the key with the other. The blue light snaked out from the machine up his arm. It enveloped them both and a split-second later they, and the key, were gone.

  ~~~

  December 24, 1776 - Bucks County, Pennsylvania

  It took Jack’s head a moment to clear. The headache that usually came with traveling by key was already fading.

  His hand was still on Teddy’s shoulder, and he eased him around. “All right?”

  Teddy smiled through his own headache, and they both took stock of their surroundings.

  As promised, Teddy’s machine dropped them off in the forest just outside of Washington’s encampment on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River. Even here, deep in the woods, Jack could smell the burning wood of the campfires, and, as the wind shifted, the latrine.

  The trees had all long since dropped their leaves and stood naked and brown against a cloudy gray sky. Small patches of snow lingered in the shadows, but otherwise, the ground was dark and muddy. It was oddly still in the woods; if it weren’t for the sounds coming from the camp in the distance, it would have felt like time stopped. But time hadn’t stopped. It ticked away and with each second their time here was running out.

  Jack took out his watch and marked the time as instructed. “Ten past eleven,” he told Teddy. “We need to be together two days from this moment.”

  “Forty-eight hours, right.”

  Jack tucked his watch away and made sure the key was hidden deep inside the special pocket they’d sewn into his waistcoat.

  At least it wasn’t snowing—yet, Jack thought, as he shifted the musket strap higher onto his shoulder and took a deep breath of the cold, damp air. His clothes were warm enough, for now. The breeches and stockings would be little comfort in the driving snow that was to come. At least his clothes fit.

  Teddy’s were a size too big. Despite his mental image of men in the Colonial Era being “Hobbity small”, as Elizabeth put it, they weren’t. The average man of the 1770s was barely an inch shorter than his modern counterpart. Teddy was small in any era and in his oversized clothes he looked it. And he looked frightened.

  He had every right to be, Jack knew. They weren’t just stopping a madman from changing history; they were doing it in the middle of a war. Jack had seen his fair share of war, but for a man like Teddy, a man who literally couldn’t hurt a fly, it was going to be a challenge.

  Jack learned, however, never to underestimate people, and Teddy had already been a constant source of surprises. Jack counted himself a pretty good judge of character. He had faith that Teddy would do what needed doing, or he wouldn’t have partnered with him.

&nbs
p; “Ready?”

  Teddy nodded and looked uneasily around the forest.

  Jack clasped his shoulder. “We’ll be all right. Just stick with me.”

  Teddy nodded again, a little more certain.

  Tomorrow, Washington’s men would start their march to the crossing point and on to Trenton. They didn’t have much time to find their man and stop him before he stopped history.

  “Let’s get to camp,” Jack said, nodding toward a break in the trees.

  They’d both spent last night studying the enormous dossier Travers had provided. At least Jack had. Teddy read it once and had it committed to memory. Their man, Burgess, was average looking except for his pale blue eyes. Dark hair, darkish complexion, average height. One amongst thousands in the camp.

  “Keep a look out for Burgess.”

  Teddy nodded and took a step right into an enormous puddle.

  “And puddles,” Jack added as Teddy shook his foot off.

  His foot would be soaked. They didn’t have boots, just black leather shoes and gaiters that barely helped.

  “Look out for Burgess and puddles,” Teddy said, quite seriously.

  Jack gave a short laugh. “Right.”

  They made their way through the dense forest, exiting at the edge of a clearing where Washington’s troops set up camp. Row after row of canvas tents lined the field. Thousands of men, and yet hardly enough. The not-so-great Continental Army that started with twenty thousand men less than a year ago had now dwindled to five thousand, and at least a thousand of those were unfit for duty.

  The men that were left were tired, starving, and ready to go home.

  As Jack and Teddy walked into the camp, the storm that had plagued the troops for the last few days was mercifully taking a break. The incessant rain left the ground thick with mud that caked everything. It clung to wagon wheels so fiercely that the spokes all but disappeared. It splattered the sides of every tent and clung to Jack’s feet in heavy clumps as he walked.

  Men sat huddled by small fires as they prepared for what was to come. One man sat in front of a flat stone. He took a small cup of molten lead from the fire and poured it into a handheld mold. Then he pried it open and hammered out a musket ball. He clipped off the excess lead and dropped the freshly made ammunition into a bucket and started again.

  Another soldier sharpened knives on a wheel and several more piled soggy wood onto wheelbarrows to disperse through the camp. All of them looked exhausted. It was no wonder. The Continental Army had had their butts thoroughly kicked since the beginning of the war just six months ago. They lost nearly every battle they fought and had been chased and harassed all along the eastern seaboard.

  Outgunned and outmaneuvered, they’d been unable to mount any sort of offense. Washington and his men had been in a perpetual state of retreat. They fled from New Jersey to the Pennsylvania side of the river, where they would make one last stand or lose the war.

  From the looks of the men, the latter seemed much more likely. The revolution was teetering precariously in the balance and it looked like it wouldn’t take much to tip it the wrong way. They needed to find Burgess, and fast.

  If Jack were trying to ruin the revolution, he knew where he’d start—at the top.

  Jack rapped Teddy’s arm and nodded toward a large brick building. If he remembered it right, that was McConkey’s Ferry Inn.

  They trudged their way through the mud and stopped at the edge of a fence near the big building.

  A man in uniform went inside.

  “That’s where Washington is,” Jack said quietly as he rested his musket against the fence rail.

  Teddy nodded and put his gun next to Jack’s. “They’re planning it all right now.”

  Jack picked up a stick and scraped the mud off his shoes. “I know Travers said they wouldn’t try to kill Washington, but—”

  “They won’t,” Teddy said confidently.

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t know. This army’s held together with chewing gum, bailing wire and that man’s will. Losing Washington would devastate the cause.”

  “Or invigorate it. Assassinating a beloved general could galvanize support not just here but abroad. Not to mention there are others here capable of taking his place. It’s too risky.”

  Jack hmm’d. He’d have to trust the bean counters on that one. After all, they’d been disturbingly right about everything so far.

  “All right,” he said. “If you were—”

  “Put your backs into it!” a man called out.

  A cannon that was being pulled and pushed by several men had got stuck deep in the mud. The young officer in charge came around to the back of it to exhort his men. “Come on!”

  A large man slipped and went to his knees. The man next to him helped him up, but it was clear the first man wasn’t well. He tottered on his feet and would have fallen again if his friend hadn’t steadied him.

  The young officer slogged over to them.

  “Jenkins?”

  The man tried to stand up straight, but he was nearly out on his feet.

  “Sick, sir,” his friend answered for him.

  The officer’s fine features pinched, and then he nodded curtly. “Take him to the infirmary.”

  Another man stepped forward and helped the sick man walk off.

  “That’s the fourth this week.”

  The officer looked around in frustration. He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. Jack had known plenty of young officers in the war, in his war. Barely out of short pants and put in charge of men’s lives. Some things never changed.

  The young officer grunted in frustration. Without what looked like his strongest man, his cannon was good and stuck. He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose, stuffed it back into his pocket and sniffled loudly. The common cold didn’t care about one’s rank.

  “Dammit.” Then he noticed Jack and Teddy. “You two, come here!”

  They hesitated and he put both fists on his hips with aristocratic annoyance.

  Jack glanced at Teddy and they hurried over to him. He eyed them carefully. “I don’t remember seeing you before.”

  “We’re new. Militia,” Jack said, quickly coming out with their pre-planned backstory. “We were—”

  “Yes, yes,” the man said with an impatient wave of his hand and then gestured toward the cannon.

  Teddy and Jack did as they were ordered and joined the other men in trying to unstick the cannon from the mud. The officer even joined in and eventually the artillery rolled out of the rut with a great sucking sound.

  “Very good,” the officer said. “You are?”

  “Wells and Fiske.”

  “You’re new, you say?” He eyed them again. “Ever fire a cannon?”

  Jack shook his head, but Teddy piped up next to him.

  “Yes.”

  Jack turned his head to give Teddy a stunned look. The little man was chock full of surprises. Teddy shrugged casually.

  Before Jack could ask just where he’d fired a cannon, the officer took over again.

  “Good. You’re with me now.” He looked at Jack and dismissed him. “Rest of the infantry’s over that way.”

  Jack’s heart skipped a beat.

  “Sir,” he said. “We’d sort of like to stick together. I promised—”

  “Promises have no place in war.”

  Jack struggled to come up with some other excuse to stay with Teddy, who, for his part, was going pale.

  “Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” one of the other men said, “we could use the muscle. He’s not as big as Jenkins, but he’s got meat on him.”

  The officer frowned and huffed out a breath. “Fine. Get this thing moving.” He started to walk away and then turned back. “They’re under your watch, Mr. Sullivan.”

  Sullivan saluted. “Thank you, Captain.”

  The captain nodded curtly and turned toward the brick house where the other officers were conferring with Washington.

  Jack watched him go an
d then turned back to Sullivan. “That’s Captain …?”

  “Hamilton.”

  “Hamilton? Alexander Hamilton?”

  “One and the same,” Sullivan said as they got back to the business of moving the cannon down the muddy, rutted path.

  Jack knew that Alexander Hamilton—future Secretary of the Treasury, author of the Federalist Papers, and infamously not-so-good duelist—had served with Washington, but seeing him in the flesh was a surprise.

  “He’s younger than I thought he’d be,” Jack said.

  Sullivan nodded then dipped his head toward the rows of tents. “They all are.”

  He was right. As Jack took a closer look, he realized how many of the men were boys. Some must have been barely fifteen years old. Children. Knowing what lay ahead of them made his stomach churn.

  He and the others successfully repositioned the cannon with the other artillery on the far side of the camp. The field guns were lined up like soldiers themselves, ready to march. Tomorrow, they would.

  Sullivan took Jack and Teddy back to the tents where Hamilton’s men were bivouacked. He introduced them around to the other members of the New York Provincial. They were a mixture of college students, farmers, mill workers and even one lawyer. All of them had left their lives, wives and families, everything; all left behind for the cause. Cold, wet and hungry, they offered to share what little they had.

  Jack and Teddy were assigned a tent—two spaces recently opened up thanks to the dysentery that was sweeping the camp. They placed their guns with the others in the traditional stack that looked like a teepee of muskets, took off their haversacks, canteens, and cartridge boxes and unrolled their blankets. As was the custom, they both brought their own plate, knife, fork, and cup.

  Some sort of stew was cooking on the campfire, and they both took small servings and a bit of hardtack.

  Teddy started to bite into the flat hard biscuit.

  “I would soak it a little first, my friend,” one of the men warned him. “They as hard as my wife’s heart.”

  The others laughed and Teddy leaned his piece of thick cracker inside the edge of his stew pan.

  Jack and Teddy ate their food quietly, guiltily. There was little to go around, and each bite they had was one another wouldn’t. But it would have seemed odd and rude to have refused the offer, so they ate.