Spies and Deserters

by Martin Ganzglass

  At night Adam knew from the stars and the receding sounds of the ocean behind them, that they were traveling south by southwest. They camped one night beside a river. The two Indians left before the others had settled down. When they returned they conferred with Colonel Tye, drawing lines in the dirt at his feet. At daybreak, they moved away from the river and rested deep in a forest of mixed gnarled thick hardwoods and straight pines. When it was dark, they retraced their way to the river, where the two Indians guarded one wide flatbottomed skiff tied to a thick weathered grey tree trunk sticking out from the muddy bank. With all of them crowded on to the one vessel, they moved out into the slow current. Colonel Tye stood at Adam’s shoulder in the square bow, quietly whispering directions. Nero and Poor Taylor, both strong but inexperienced on the water, propelled the boat forward from the rear. The rest of the Black Brigade knelt motionless and quiet on the boat’s planks, their muskets resting on their laps.

  “Over there,” Colonel Tye murmured to Adam. He nimbly switched sides and turned them sharply to the right. Tye signaled to Nero and Poor Taylor to desist. The tall cat-tails rustled against the wooden sides as they glided forward until they bottomed on the muddy flats. Adam held the boat sideways and steady with his pole deep in the muck, as Cocquetak and Aquadonk jumped into the shallow water and disappeared in the darkness. Tye followed and led the Black Brigade up the gently sloping embankment until they reached a field bordered by brambles and berry bushes entwined in a split-rail fence. They trotted down a narrow path, no wider than their shoulders, until Tye halted and hooted once softly like an owl. There was an answering hoot to their left, followed by another. Tye waited and then called twice more. The Indians came out of the darkness and the Colonel squatted down with them on his haunches and listened to their few words and signals. He rose smiling and motioned for his men to gather round.

  “There are twelve local Militia in Shrewsbury. At the Tavern. They have not set out sentries,” he whispered, “and some are in the yard without arms. We will use bayonets. Softly now. Follow me.” Creeping forward, they instinctively crouched down below the top of the thick hedges although there was no need shrouded as they were by the blackness of the cloudy night. They paused at the corner of a church, no more than one hundred feet from the tavern. “Take no prisoners,” Tye commanded. Adam was uncomfortable with that merciless order. He resolved to do what he could to avoid it.

  On Tye’s hand signal, the fifteen men of the Black Brigade ran forward, the two Indians in the lead. They covered half the ground before any of the militia was even aware of their onslaught. There were shouts of alarm and several of them rushed toward the tavern door to grab their muskets. One was felled with Aquadonk’s tomahawk in his back, a few made it inside and the ones who turned and raised their arms in surrender were bayonetted by Samson, Pompey and Blue Jacket who were in the lead.

  Adam dashed into the building, turned left toward a smaller room and found three of the militia hastily snatching their muskets from an upright floor rack on the far wall. One managed to get a gun in his hands and as he was turning, Adam hit him on the back of his head with the butt of his musket. He clipped another one under the chin, snapping his head back, before Sam and Nero, close on his heels, plunged their bayonets into the two prostrate militiamen. The third soldier, a farm boy with blond hair and a chubby, innocent face, fell to his knees, blubbering repeatedly, “Please. Please. Do not kill me.” Nero, without hesitation, ran him through with such force his bayonet came out the poor boy’s back. Adam turned away in disgust. By knocking the two soldiers out instead of bayonetting them, he was as responsible for their deaths as if he had killed them himself.

  A search of the other rooms of the tavern found only terrified travelers and merchants quaking in their beds and protesting they were not militia but only honest and poor folk. The sight of armed Negroes with fresh blood on their bayonets only intensified their fright, so much that they voluntarily gave up their purses, and in some cases, their cloaks, coats and even their boots.

  Tye directed his men to search the tavern’s barn and take all the horses and wagons. He sent Sam the Traitor with his wagon and those of the Black Brigade, who had been guarding the road from Shrewsbury in case any of the militia escaped, to ransack all homes for barrels of flour, butter, cheese and smoked meat or fish, cloth and clothing and anything else they deemed useful.

  Without much prodding, the awakened and terrified guests, many shivering in their nightshirts, assembled in the tavern’s main room. The innkeeper, wearing a long smock-like shirt stained with food and charcoal, pleaded with Tye not to torch his building.

  “Why would I do that?” the Colonel said sharply, quickly tiring of the man’s whining. “I am Colonel Tye and I choose to leave it standin’ so that when I return I will find many of these fat rich Whig chickens to pluck, their fine horses to take and sturdy wagons to use.” He moved from warming himself before the dying fire to stand up close to the innkeeper.

  The man hastily took two steps back, treading on the bare feet of one his guests standing behind him. The traveler squealed in pain causing Tye to laugh out loud.

  “I know you Josiah Halstead. Do you know who I am?” Tye asked.

  “I believe you were that Titus fellow who was raised in our county.”

  Tye hit him hard with his open hand and a trickle of blood appeared at the corner of the innkeeper’s mouth, accompanied by a stifled whimper.

  “Raised in our county? Raised did you say? I was enslaved in your county. By John Corlies, well known to you, I believe. Is that not true?” Tye leaned forward, towering over him.

  “Yes,” Halstead replied. “I know him.”

  Tye slapped him again. “Know him. Bollocks. You dined with him and his wife, you little shit. Am I correct? ”

  “Yes. Yes. You are right. Absolutely correct, Colonel Tye.” The innkeeper raised his hands to protect his face from the slap he anticipated.

  “Remember this, Halstead. Tonight me and my men visited you. We will be back once Shrewsbury has restocked its supplies and there is somethin’ worth carrying away.” He poked Halstead in the center of his chest with his finger.

  “Take care until we return not to do anythin’ that may anger me. No coddlin’ up to Retaliators and hostin’ county militias.” He ran his finger down the middle of Halstead’s stomach and stopped at his navel. “Or else I will gut you myself and burn down this building as a warning to all slave-ownin’ Whigs.” Halstead, pale with all color drained from his face, could only mutter repeatedly, “yes sir, yes sir,” and rock back and forth on his feet.

  As they left Shrewsbury, Adam found himself seated besides Nero on one of the wagons filled with the dead militia’s jackets and coats, muskets and cartridge boxes, and saddles, bridles and forage looted from the town’s barns. “Dis be sum ting,” Nero grinned, speaking the first words to Adam since they had left Sandy Hook. Adam grunted in reply. 2

  In the wagon ahead, the only three slaves they had found and liberated, huddled together wide-eyed and shivering from the cold October night air, surrounded by odd pieces of furniture, barrels stacked precariously, trunks and nondescript bundles. Behind Nero and Adam, several of the Black Brigade served both as a rear guard and drove the herds of cattle and horses they had seized. Adam signaled for Nero to slow their wagon. Wordlessly, he clambered in the back, selected two or three heavy coats taken from the dead militia, jumped off the wagon and trotted forward. He handed them to the three slaves, whose tattered shabby shirts and trousers indicated they were field hands, not house servants. It was their good fortune to have been brought by their masters to Shrewsbury, although they did not seem to appreciate it, as they sat spiritlessly in the wagon bearing them to freedom.

  “Col’nl not gonna like dat,” Nero said menacingly as Adam climbed up next to him. Adam shrugged. A lot of blood had been shed to free only three slaves. He preferred that they raided farms where there were slaves to be freed rather than attacking small towns for plunder
and forage to give to the British.

  By dawn they found refuge at a Loyalist farm, although Adam sensed the owner was nervous surrounded by armed Negroes returning from their bloody raid. Tye was the only one invited inside the owner’s brick home and he returned to his men’s campfires in the early evening. He picked out several of them, Adam, Nero, Pompey and Samson along with a few others and they followed Tye into the barn, now crowded with the stolen horses.

  “Our host has informed me the notorious Elihu Cook I wanted to capture in Shrewsbury is rumored to be hidin’ with relatives several miles north of here. I know the place.” He waved at the group of horses. “Nero. Pick a calm one for Adam and help him saddle it. We will make a rider out of him yet.”

  Adam felt relieved he would not have to ride double with Nero but apprehensive about being on his own. He had ridden some, usually slowly in daylight. A night raid would tax his limited abilities. The Colonel could have chosen someone else. It was Tye’s way of paying him back for openly challenging him at their Sandy Hook refuge. They rode single file. Adam was in the middle of the group, awkwardly trying to hold on to his unloaded musket and the reins with both hands, while the mare trotted along obediently, following the ones in front and sensing those behind it.

  Tye unerringly led their band on cow paths that cut through fields, up narrow creek beds where the overhanging limbs forced the riders to crouch low in their saddles, and through deer trails in woods so dense as to obscure the starry sky. When they rode uphill, Adam leaned as far forward as he could over his horse’s neck, fearful of sliding backwards. When they went downhill, he did the opposite, gripping the reins and the mane with both hands, while stretching as far back as possible in the saddle.

  After about two hours, they emerged at the top of a long sloping field, the corn stalks broken and cut close to the ground after harvest. Nestled at the bottom, clear in the light of a half moon, about one hundred yards away was a long, low house, with two gables and a columned front porch. The dark shape of a barn loomed to the right.

  They left the horses at the edge of the woods, loaded their muskets and stealthily crept through the field, spread out between the rows of broken stalks until they were close to the house. Tye motioned three of the men to circle behind and sent two others to guard against escape through the side door, now visible that they were closer. Satisfied that no one seemed to be astir in the house, Tye led Adam, Nero and the others on to the porch and pointed they should stand guard at each of the large windows. Then he pounded on the door with his fist and shouted loudly.

  “Elihu Cook. Surrender and no one else will be harmed. Resist and I will burn this house and kill all those inside.” Tye pounded again but there was no response. Adam heard sounds of someone running inside. Suddenly, the glass of the window he was standing next to was smashed and a musket barrel emerged pointing toward Tye still hammering on the door. Adam knocked the muzzle downward with his musket, and as it discharged, grabbed the barrel with his free hand and yanked it forward hard. The person holding the stock let go and cried out in pain as the jagged edges of broken glass cut into flesh. Tye and two of his men battered down the door were already inside.

  Adam smashed the remaining shards of glass and climbed through. In the dim light, he made out the shape of a young boy, cowering in the corner of the room, the left arm of his nightshirt stained red. He looked like he was no more than twelve and he bit his lower lip as he tried to stanch the blood.

  Nero, running down the hallway to the main staircase, saw the boy in the door frame and turned to bayonet him.

  “No, Nero.” Adam shouted and jumped forward to protect the youth.

  “You kill em, den,” Nero snarled and bounded up the stairs. Adam bent down, ripped a piece of the boy’s nightshirt and bound a tourniquet below his elbow.

  High-pitched screams of a woman came from upstairs, followed by boots clumping down the stairwell. Nero and Samson roughly pushed a disheveled white-haired man, his nightshirt hanging over his breeches, through the hall and out the door, now hanging askew on one hinge. Tye followed them, saw Adam kneeling and peered into the room. He snorted at the boy’s slight frame on the floor. “He almost shot me. Probably related to Cook, the scummy brat. Finish him off and be quick.”

  Adam put his finger on the boy’s lips. He drew his bayonet and covered it in the blood already sopping the shirt and then signaled for him to scream. Adam left the house and joined the Colonel and others who were standing on the porch. He wiped his bayonet on his trousers, making sure Tye saw him.

  Elihu Cook, his hands tied tightly behind his back, turned and glowered at Adam. “That was my nephew you murdered in there. I will see you hanged for that.”

  “Hardly, you Rebel bastard,” Tye replied, kicking the old man in the butt and forcing him down the stairs. “You will rot on a prison ship in New York harbor until you pray for your death to come.”

  Adam waited nervously for the horses to be brought down from the tree line. He threw his musket across the pommel, and with his left foot in the stirrup, awkwardly succeeded in hoisting himself up. His ungainly manner drew a laugh from Tye, who brought his horse along side.

  “I owe you my life, Adam. Even a boy can kill a Colonel. A good night’s work and the British will reward us well for it.”

  Tonight he had saved a life. The night before, Adam thought as they rode back through the cornfield, he wished he had been able to spare the three militia from Nero’s bayonet.

  “I can understand hanging for desertion,” Whipple muttered softly to Henry. “But for plundering? In one case ‘tis abandoning your brother soldiers and causing them grievous harm. In the other, ‘tis the mere taking of property.” He shifted uncomfortably in the freezing ankle-deep slush and wiggled his toes in his shoes.

  “You heard the verdict of the court martial. He took money and silver plate. In defiance of General Washington’s orders. He is to be made an example. Do you think I like standing here in the cold to watch the poor bastard swing?” Gillet replied. 3

  The two friends stood in rigid lines on the Danbury Common, part of a large rectangle of men encompassing a makeshift scaffold. They were among the fifty soldiers ordered to represent the Second Rhode Island Regiment, together with fifty from every other Regiment of Stark’s Brigade. They had been marching south from Providence through Connecticut to join the main army somewhere across the Hudson.

  The condemned man, a private from a Connecticut unit, escorted by an armed guard of Light Infantry, was led on to grounds accompanied by the solemn throbbing beat of the drums.

  “If he had deserted, it would be the Rogue’s March for him,” Whipple said. “A much better tune that and it would not stretch his neck.”

  Gillet nodded and lowered his eyes, not wishing to see the actual hanging. His thoughts were of his last day with Judith and their daughter, one of three days’ leave in Providence, granted after the British abandoned Newport at the end of October. His final glimpse of his wife was of her waving seemingly proud and resolute, amongst the crowd on the streets as the Second Rhode Islanders, led by their Colonel, paraded out of town. Henry took some solace in the knowledge the town council, free from the threat of British attack, had generously established a fund to provide food, fuel and clothing for the families of soldiers. As further proof of their new-found generosity, in his baggage were a new wool tunic and trousers, socks and a blanket, all provided by the good citizens of Providence for their brave sons marching south.

  The warm clothing was welcome and put to good use almost immediately, with the first snow occurring so early in November as to cause the soldiers to dispute whether there was a year when it had happened sooner. Their usual pace was fifteen to twenty miles per day and in good weather they could accomplish it. On those occasions, they would sleep in barns or out in the open, having outdistanced their baggage wagons. When the weather was bad, as it had been on the slog through rain and hail down to Danbury, they had made only nine miles at best, and had rested
uncomfortably, cold and wet for most of the day until the wagons had arrived with their cots and tents.

  Henry was aware of the silence and shifting of feet. He looked up and the convicted soldier was swinging from the gallows, his head hanging down at an unnatural angle. They were dismissed after the a Regimental Surgeon officially declared him dead.

  Two days later they crossed the Hudson by ferry, it taking the better part of the day and night to get all the troops over. Colonel Angell had insisted the Regiment’s baggage train immediately follow his men so that, once on the New York shore, and ten miles inland from the river, they camped in relative comfort inside tents with their blankets to ward off the frigid December cold. From there, it was a long miserable plodding march. Some days they covered sixteen miles on roads where the churned-up mud came over their shoes, other days they trudged through ankle-deep snow. Henry was grateful for the respite from marching when it stormed, and they remained inside their tents. On the Colonel’s orders they would not break camp that day. He did not know whether they were in New York or had yet reached New Jersey. It mattered not. They were cold, tired, barely dry, unable to keep a fire going for cooking, subsisting on salted pork, stale bread and a gill of cider or rum.

  The next day, with the drums signaling to strike the tents and prepare to march, they were up at six and the entire Brigade was on the move by seven. It was another frigid day where the sky was low and heavy with the promise of snow, and the wind mercilessly in front of them. By mid-morning they began encountering couriers. The riders came from the southwest and with their presence came rumors of what was up ahead.

  “You are daft to believe we are heading to the lines to do battle with the Redcoats,” Henry said to Whipple as they plodded along, casting an apprehensive eye at the sky. “’Tis winter camp where we are going and a damn cold time of it if there is no shelter when we get there. Our tents will give us little comfort if this storm is as fierce as it looks.”