“Held up the Colonel’s train and embarrassed me in front of the others. That is what. You better not have lost any feed or there will be hell to pay.”
“Nothing is spilled,” Will said sullenly, his shoulders sagging under his father’s tirade, as if he had been struck with the whip instead of lashed verbally. In the last year he had grown taller than his father and now stood slightly under six feet. Still, his father intimidated him.
“We have loaded the last of the sacks,” he said, turning his back to his father as he led Big Red and the mare to the sled.
George Stoner noticed Nathaniel and introduced himself. “I appreciate your helping my idiot son, here.” He pointed at Will with the whip handle. “His stupidity is from his mother’s side. She was Dutch, passed away in childbirth, leaving me to raise this worthless one on my own.” He noticed Nathaniel’s dark blue cloak with the broad collar, the flat stiff broad-brimmed black hat and the thick canvas britches. “You are not a teamster from around here. A soldier from the Fort?”
“Hardly, sir” Nathaniel replied. “Ensign Nathaniel Holmes of the Marblehead Mariners. Colonel Knox brought me along to dismantle the artillery and supervise their passage to Boston.”
George Stoner appraised Nathaniel in a new light, taking in the broad Massachusetts accent and calculating how he could turn the Ensign’s acquaintance with the Colonel to his advantage.
“Come, ride with me on my sled. I am pulling one of the double fort cannons with a four-span team. Just as the Colonel specified,” he said, affecting a greater familiarity with Knox than was warranted by the passing nod of acknowledgement from the Colonel at Fort George. “His brother himself, supervised its loading,” he added, giving Will a venomous look to hold his tongue.
“Wilhelm. Haul your sled back on the road.” He pointed with the whip handle through the trees as if Will didn’t know where the road was. “When you find the first group of wagons, stop there. Make sure you feed our horses first before the others. Have three bags ready for my teams when I arrive,” he shouted, as he walked away. “You bed down by yourself tonight. I will look for you on the morrow.”
Will flicked his whip at Big Red, taking his anger at his father out on the horse. “Sorry,” he said under his breath and clicked softly, encouraging the two horses to move forward. Since his mother’s death, every time his father called him Wilhelm, he heard his mother’s proud reprimand of her husband. “We are Dutch. My son’s name is Willem. Wilhelm is German,” she would say vehemently. His father would shrug as if it were all the same to him. He would wait until Will had done something wrong and deliberately call him “Willem,” adding “you stupid Dutch boy” to demean his wife’s heritage.
Will felt the stabbing needles of pain in his head, brought on by his raging, helpless fury. He hated his father. The man never missed an opportunity to belittle him in front of others. Deep inside, he had another reason, formed when he was much younger and unable to understand. After his mother had died, George Stoner had not waited a month before he let the word out among the local farmers and merchants around with eligible daughters that he was “in the intent of mind,” as he put it, to take another wife.
Will was eight years old when his mother, Sarah Ryckman Stoner, had passed, dying while giving birth to a stillborn baby boy. His stepmother, Martha, an 18-year-old farmer’s daughter when she married George Stoner, was nice enough to Will. He resented her because he saw Martha’s face every day but couldn’t remember his own mother’s face at night before he fell asleep. Sometimes, he saw his mother’s figure in his dreams, hanging clothes or feeding chickens in their yard, her face a blur or turned away from him. All that remained were his receding memories and the red wool scarf she had made for him one winter. Unconsciously, he burrowed his chin in it to protect against the cold night wind, feeling his warm breath blow back on his face.
When he thought about it at all, he recognized that his stepmother’s life was not easy. Martha had lost her youthful spirit and exuberance after giving birth to two girls in quick succession, followed by a baby boy who had died within the month. They had buried him, unchristened, behind the house, his tiny grave marked by a flat stone no more than a foot in length. In the next two years, she gave birth to his half-brothers, Silas, who was now three, and Jacob who was two. When he had left with his father for Albany, Martha had looked worn and tired. She had given him a hug, and had stood waving goodbye as they drove the teams out of the barn and down the road past their hay fields.
Later, he discovered she had stuffed a small package of smoked venison, dried apples and a few potatoes into his leather rucksack. A wooden bowl, a pewter cup and a narrow-handled pewter spoon with a broad oval, good for eating stew or soup, made up the rest of his kit from home. His knife was tucked into his waistband. His hatchet, with the hickory handle he had carved by himself, was stowed in his leather bag for convenience.
His older brother, Johan, had taught him how to carve. He smiled at the memory, sitting in the barn one cold winter afternoon, almost a year before their mother had died, watching Johan finish making a sap funnel out of apple wood. His brother had found a hollow sycamore branch and showed Will how to make it into a wooden cup. Now Johan had it better, Will thought enviously.
Sarah had insisted both her boys be taught to read and do sums. Grandma Ryckman had educated them. Once they returned to the farm George Stoner had smelled a profitable opportunity. He apprenticed Johan to a merchant in Boston and required him to send home each fortnight whatever extra shillings he earned. That had been three years ago. At age twelve Will had assumed the additional burden of his older brother’s share of the farm work.
Will thought of the many times since Johan had left, his father had hit him for not doing something right, for taking too long, for reading, for eating too much. Sometimes it seemed George Stoner hit him for existing or being in his sight.
After Will had distributed the feed to the encamped wagoners and fed his father’s team of eight, hobbled together under a copse of firs, he bedded down on the sled, nestling among the sacks of oats for warmth. He stuck his hand inside his leather pouch and felt the worn hickory handle of his hatchet. I swear if he strikes me in front of the others, before this trek is over, I will smash his head with my hatchet. I will too, he said out loud to himself. That was his last thought before he fell asleep- hungry, angry, cold, defiant, and alone.
He awoke shivering under the brown homespun blanket he wore as a cloak during the day, shook the stiffness out of his legs, jumped off the sled and trudged a short distance down the flattened snowy track to relieve himself. In the early-morning winter darkness, he carried sacks of feed to the teamsters, homing in on the dying embers of their fires. Defiantly, he brought the oats to his father’s teams last. He was confident his father would still be asleep, having stayed up late quaffing rum either by himself or with others. He quietly passed his father’s figure, lying wrapped in a cloak, next to the sled’s thick curved runners of ash, and made his way to a nearby campfire. Still angry from last night, he imagined the frozen ropes tearing loose and the cannon sliding off the sled and crushing his father into the frozen ground.
Nathaniel saw him coming and waved him over. His cheerful greeting instantly changed Will’s mood.
“Come close to the fire and warm yourself if your bones are as chilled as mine,” he said. Nat moved to make room for Will on the fallen log among the circle of men. Will shifted his leather bag to his back and held his hands out to the fire.
“Those clouds promise snow today,” Nat said, pointing to the south, the direction they would be traveling. “The Colonel expects to reach Boston in sixteen days should the weather favor us. If we are granted, by Divine Providence, a decent snow not followed by an accursed thaw, we will deliver what Colonel Knox has promised to General Washington in good time”
One of the wagoners sniffed the air and shook his head. “Snow or not, today will be too warm to freeze the roads.” He shrugged. “For me, I only
care the damn Hudson be frozen until we cross and return. From there on, the thaw will be your problem, not those of us from around here,” he said. “I am signed on only as far as Kinderhook,” he explained. “Some of the others,” he gestured at the teamsters around the circle, with a battered long handled claw hammer he was holding “They will be going to Claverack or beyond to Great Barrington and will leave the train there. I say good luck to you, the Colonel and his young brother crossing the mountains of Massachusetts.”
The wagoner took a skillet of roasted coffee beans from the fire and put it down on the snow. A small cloud of steam rose around the hot pan like a halo, accompanied by a hiss, which quickly died down. He mashed the beans with his hammer and emptied the skillet’s contents into a pot of hot water resting on two sturdy green branches over the fire. Will didn’t particularly like coffee but held out his pewter cup for his share. He would drink anything hot this morning. He stretched out his feet toward the fire, feeling the heat through his wet, thin shoes.
“Though the weather has not been frigid enough to freeze the Hudson River for the ice to bear the heavy cannons, I am confident when the time comes we will all be able to cross,” Nat said, holding his pewter cup of coffee with both hands. “The Colonel is a most able man, a careful man who plans well. On our outward journey, the Colonel made arrangements and has already hired other teamsters to take the cannons to Cambridge,” Nat said, responding to the man with the hammer. He spoke loud enough for the others to hear. “They are to meet us at Great Barrington. Some of you have dispensation to leave us there and Massachusetts men will haul these cannons through those mountains you mentioned and on to General Washington.” He retied his reddish brown hair back in a tail with a black ribbon and readjusted his Mariner’s hat.
Will half-heard the bearded wagoner saying something about the strange happening last night. “Damn lucky for the drunken sod, he found the trail again. He would have frozen to death in the woods.”
“No, most likely not,” another said. “The pockey bastard had enough rum in him to keep him warm for hours yet.” Several of them laughed. A few licked their lips as if savoring a swallow of rum with their morning biscuits.
So, the ghost of Bloody Pond had been a drunken soldier from Fort Ticonderoga, Will thought. He had fallen off the wagon on which he had been riding, stumbled off the road into the woods and gotten lost before eventually finding the train of artillery again. Big Red had simply shied at running over the man. Maybe there were no such things as ghosts. Will listened quietly to the conversation. At home he never talked much, afraid of his father’s reaction both verbally and physically. “They are a sorry lot of oddities, them soldiers from the fort,” the teamster who had made the coffee continued. “Not enough flesh on them. They look like scarecrows in uniform. Probably not worth a damn in a fight.”
“Worse,” another wagoner said. “They will not be much help unstucking our wagons on the road. They lack the muscle or spirit to do the job. They do like their liquor though,” he added. “Especially that one last night.”
There was a thick band of lighter grey low in the eastern sky when George Stoner joined the group. His father motioned Will to get up and sat down next to Nathaniel. Will stood there unsure what to do, chewing on his last piece of coffee soaked bread.
Sitting next to Nat, it had tasted pleasant. Now it was bitter in his mouth.
“Good morning Ensign Holmes,” George Stoner said amiably, making sure he was not crowding Nat. He looked up at Will, and feigned surprise he was still there.
“Go feed my team of eight. Do I have to tell you to do every simple task. Can you not think for yourself ?” He dismissed Will with a wave of his hand.
Will stalked off through the muddy slush to his father’s hungry team. When he returned to his own sled, still smarting from being embarrassed in front of the others, he found Nat waiting for him.
“I would prefer to ride with you, if that is acceptable,” he said. Will nodded, eager to have his company.
He pointed to the train forming up behind them. “I will leave the block and tackle on the other wagon,” he said, hoisting himself up on the sled. He threw one sack of oats on the seat for himself and another for Will. “They make a good cushion, as comfortable as a velvet seat in the Royal Governor’s carriage,” he said, winking. He patted the sack. “Of course, the Governor is not at liberty to go anywhere these days, with General Washington’s army surrounding Boston. With these cannons, we will play a fiery tune for General Howe and the British Navy as well.”
“My father would thrash me if he found me using the sacks as cushions,” Will said.
“I do not need your father’s permission,” Nat responded, gesturing for Will to get the horses on their way.
Despite the peculiar way he spoke, with a broad flat A sound, and the use of strange words Will had never heard before, Nat proved a good companion and an excellent storyteller. During that day and the next few that followed, on the rough slog down from Glen Falls south to Saratoga, Will forgot the cold biting wind that always seemed to be before them, the cracked skin on his hands and his frozen toes. He listened appreciatively to Nat, eagerly learning of places, things and experiences he had never thought about or even knew existed. They averaged less than nine miles a day on the slushy, furrowed roads, made worse by freshly fallen snow, followed by the thaw and the muck that sucked at the sled’s runners.
Nat had been to sea since age ten. His father was a Captain and ship owner out of Marblehead. He had taken his son on many of his voyages down the east coast to the Caribbean. Nat had acquired his knowledge of cannons on board his father’s armed sloop. At age eighteen, Nat had joined the Marblehead Mariners. His Regiment, he proudly told Will, now served as the personal Headquarters Guard for General Washington in Cambridge.
When Colonel Knox asked for volunteers with experience in the hoisting of cannons and their transport, Nathaniel had stepped forward. He had left Cambridge in late November on a quick overland journey by horse, carrying only what he needed and ample block and tackle for the work to be done.
At Fort Ticonderoga, Nat related that after the Colonel had sorted out the usable cannons, the soldiers and hired civilians had loaded the fifty-nine guns, carriages, side boxes and flints on pettiangers and bateaus and brought them down the lake to Fort George.
“What is it you mean by pettiangers and bateaus? ” Will asked, mangling their pronunciation.
“Why, they are two-masted, light-bottom shallow craft,” Nat replied, in surprise. “Have you never been on a boat?” he asked, looking at Will incredulously.
Will shook his head and then brightened, anxious to please his companion. “There is a ferry near our farm, made of planked logs and big enough to carry a team of horses and a wagon across the river.”
Nat laughed. “It consumed eight full days, working into the cold after nightfall on many of them, to load our little fleet. And seven more for me with my crew of inexperienced soldiers, unaccustomed to the vigorous labor of rowing, to make it to Fort George. For a distance of only thirty three miles,” he said incredulously.
Will did not understand whether seven days was too long or exceptionally short, but he nodded as if he knew, and tugged the brim of his hat lower on his brow against the wet snow that had begun to fall.
“At last, with a fair wind I sailed down to Fort George without any need for those inept soldiers to row at all. When I beached the pettianger they were mostly drunk and unable to help with the unloading.”
They traveled in silence for a while before Will, overcame his fear of being ridiculed for knowing so little about the world Nat had seen.
“My older brother, Johan, is apprenticed to a merchant in Boston,” Will said. “He writes infrequently and then tis only an accounting of his earnings for my father. Pray, tell me about Boston? ”
Boston, according to Nathaniel was the most civilized city in the colonies. Its people were God-fearing first, rigorously and righteously observing th
e Lord’s Day. They were the most educated, tolerant, and intelligent, kept informed by The Boston Gazette, broadsheets, books, magazines and even newspapers from London; its businesses were the most prosperous and well run, the streets were paved and illuminated at night by street lamps, the red brick buildings well kept and properly furnished; its mechanics were the most skilled and industrious, all of which had been ruined by the British Army of Occupation.
“They are Sabbath breakers,” Nathaniel said vehemently. “They march on Sunday and disrupt our places of worship and meetings. They violate God’s laws by flogging their soldiers and shooting deserters. On the Boston Common,” he added, as if that were sacred space. He paused and resumed with more spirit.
“Only in February of this year, more than 200 of them landed at Marblehead Neck, on the Sabbath mind you,” raising his eyebrows to emphasize what he had said before. “They marched to Salem to seize cannon and powder of the militia there. Well, we trapped them at the Salem Bridge, my Marblehead Regiment behind them and the militias from Salem and the surrounding towns of Essex County to their front. All of our people, be they Presbyterians, Baptists, Congregationalists or even Quakers, poured out of their meeting houses that day to oppose the breach of the Sabbath. I tell you Will, it was a grand triumph for us, marching alongside those Redcoats, mocking their martial airs as they beat a hasty retreat down the road they had taken from Marblehead.”
They stopped at a clearing close to the road in the early evening winter darkness where the leading sleds had made camp. Will started a fire, using walnut bark he had stripped with his hatchet. “Tis as good as pitch pine,” he explained to Nathaniel, before leaving to rub down and feed his team and carry sacks to the other wagoners. He was late coming back because his father demanded he feed the team of eight, while George went off in search of a friendly teamster with rum to spare or barter.
Nat was perched on a sack of oats in front of a cooking fire. There were some potatoes roasting in the coals, a pot of water steaming and two salted cod laid out on a freshly cut evergreen branch. “It is more tasty than the mealy biscuits they gave us at Fort Ti,” he said. Will tentatively tried a bit of the salted cooked fish, nodded in agreement and tore into the hot flesh, crunching some of the bones in his teeth. He shared his dried cold venison, and after their meal, he stoked the fire and the two of them moved closer for warmth.
Cannons for the Cause Page 3
