There was an empty seat, and the general invited me into the game. I sat between two Loyalist merchants.
“Sir William,” I said, “I shouldn’t. I’m short of silver.”
“Mortimer, I asked for a cardplayer, not a baboon. He may bet as he wishes. He is my guest. I will cover him, win or lose.”
And Mortimer shoved thalers and doubloons at me with his wooden claw.
Madame and all her nuns were at the table, including Clara, and even nuns from other establishments, loath to miss a game of vingt-et-un with Sir William. The general had to use five decks. But his concentration was fierce.
“Touch me,” the players would cry, asking for another card while the brute collected their bets.
And in the middle of dealing, the general turned to me.
“Did you ride my filly, John?”
“Master,” the brute said, “’tis not appropriate for the table.”
“Haven’t lost my charm, Mort. I’m keeping count. Did he ride the filly or not?”
It was only Mortimer who could answer him, not his aides, not the merchants, not Madame.
“There is no such filly, such filly does not exist. It’s the invention of your enemies, which have grown numerous around New York. The boy kept Mrs. L. company at the general’s request.”
“That’s better. We’re gaining momentum, Mort. Did he ride her?”
The nuns kept watching Sir William and Mortimer, their mouths agape. They had to be careful of Sir William’s ire. This dictator of Manhattan had the power to sentence them all to death.
“Well, Mort? I’m waiting.”
The brute stopped shoving his claw. He’d lost the momentum of the bank. The general had shoved him outside the realm of cards. He had his own sense of fairness and decorum, tho’ he was willing to crack skulls and worse for Master Will. He’d smelled an injustice. He’d murder, but he wouldn’t lie, not when that lie would betray Mrs. Loring, who trusted him.
“Did he mount her, Mort? Answer me.”
“I did,” says I with a chirp.
“Bravo,” the general said. “The baboon speaks.”
I was a marked man, no matter what I said. He looked at me like some falconer preparing to hunt his prey. He was a falconer, and I’d become half his hunting season. The cards trembled in his hand. He could have squashed my temples with his thumbs. But Gertrude got up from the table.
“You’re my guest here, Billy. And if you can’t behave, you’ll remove yourself with your vingt-et-un.”
“Madame,” he said, “I could turn your whorehouse into a barracks for drummer boys.”
“I wouldn’t mind, Billy. I could relocate. I’m told the climate in Newport is soothing for the female skin. You poor sod, you’ll miss us the moment we’re gone.”
“Mort,” he said, “remind Gertrude that she’s talking to the commander in chief. I’m not in the mood for insolence.”
“Then, dear Mortimer, have him arrest me and my girls. That prick will die of loneliness. Where else would he play vingt-et-un? There’s not another oak table large enough in the colony.”
Madame vanished with all her nuns, while Sir William fumed. He thrust every merchant out of the game, but wouldn’t permit me to withdraw. I had to sit with Billy and the brute.
“Mort, who are the finest strategists ever? Some say that Johnny Burgoyne should sit at the top of the list.”
“Posh,” said the brute.
Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne was the handsomest and most notorious general in the entire British war machine—a playwright, a gambler, an actor, and a whoremaster, he’d also been the first captain of light horse the Brits had ever had, according to Sir Harold. Burgoyne invented the whole idea of lightning cavalry in Portugal, during the Seven Years’ War. And he hoped to use much of the same “lightning” against us, to pounce upon George Washington from Britain’s own perch in Canada.
“Burgoyne a strategist?” continued the brute. “He can deliver naught but the pox.”
“Yet his lads love him so. He’d nary whip a one. No corporal punishment under his command.”
“What?” asked the brute, more riled than ever. “Not whip a man who behaves like a dog? That’s not an army, sir. That’s some foul kennel unfit for humankind.”
“Then who, Mortimer, would be high on your list?”
“Alexander the Great and yourself, Master Will.”
“No, no, I am middling, but I had a plan. I followed the king’s orders. ‘Drive them not to despair,’ he said, ‘but to submission. These are my children.’ Ye gods, how can a general fight with such a handicap? Dick and I as commanders and peace commissioners. Yet we were doing well, indeed, with those bellicose farmers on the run. Winter came, and the farmer boys did not have a pair of shoes amongst them. Shoes, Mortimer, that’s how a battle is won.”
“Alexander would have agreed, milord.”
“Don’t interrupt. The Continental Army was disappearing—there was no army. I have my spies. We crept into Washington’s very war tent. I had his shoeless scrubs walled in. I ordered seven garrisons, seven armed camps, built along a line from the Hackensack to the Delaware, like a chain that would tighten around an enemy and entrap it. The farmers should have froze to death. But I had a weak link, Colonel Rall. I never wanted the man. A drunken sod who built no works. He buggered himself on Christmas night. Washington crosses the Delaware, and not a single scout in sight. It’s lucky the little colonel got out of bed…lads, face it, the Hessians can’t fight. I asked for Cossacks, and I got men with mustachios who plunder and rape. Mort, how many Hessians have I hanged?” “Three.”
“And Rall would have been the fourth had he lived.”
“A colonel with his own regiment?” the brute asked, a bit bewildered.
“I’d have kept the hangman busy day and night…the farmer in chief resurrects himself, and I’m the butt of every rebel joke. Sir Billy who can’t lift his arse from Manhattan’s latrine…Johnny One-Eye, you can tell the Town Crier that if he ever writes another poem about Mrs. Loring again, I will hack off his ears. He’s Washington’s spy. I tolerate him because I’d rather have a spy where I can see his face. But one more bit of doggerel and—Johnny, I want the farmer in chief, to capture and to kill him. And the insurrection is over. But if we should pack up our ships and leave America while he lives, there will be anarchy and civil war. I will not disappoint the king.”
And he looked at me with the Divil’s own grin.
“The farmer in chief loves vingt-et-un as much as I do. He plays it with little Hamilton and all his other lads. Perhaps it was Hamilton himself who scribbled the poem and passed it on to the Crier. He’s brilliant, I hear. Was he not with you at King’s?”
“A pompous fellow with a fierce temper. I did not know him well. Yet we had one thing in common. We were the poorest students at the college. But I doubt he could have written that doggerel. He has not the least feeling for humor.”
“And you consider those wretched four lines humorful?”
“In a cutting, inconsequential way,” I told him.
“And you yourself might have been capable of scribbling them?”
“Not about Mrs. Loring, milord.”
“Then whom, pray?”
“The farmer in chief,” I said, dancing with Sir William. I had to dance, or I would have fallen into the Divil’s own dark well.
“The farmer in chief,” I said again.
He smiled like the master of vingt-et-un.
“And you’ll help us capture our George? We’ll announce a colossal game, a tournament of champions…at the Queen’s Yard. My spies tell me that he won’t be able to resist. I’ll declare a day and night of truce. We’ll lure him out of the forests and woods.”
“And you mean to capture him thus?”
“It will end the war, Johnny, it will end the war. You’ll repeat to the Crier that General Howe offers Mr. Washington twenty-four hours of amnesty, a furlough from fighting, to settle once and for all the questio
n of who is the master of vingt-et-un in North America.”
“And Mortimer will be waiting behind the curtain, I suppose, with his very fists as a hammer.”
“I need him not. I’m enough of a soldier to dispatch one farmer in chief. And if you don’t talk to the Crier, I will.”
I nodded to give him the illusion of both yes and no. But I couldn’t have him grab Harvey Hill, not yet. I needed Harvey to warn the farmer in chief not to accept Sir William’s venomous offer—vingt-et-un was an invitation to a kill.
Now I understood why Sir William sent his sappers to Holy Ground. They’d leveled the rampart so that George Washington couldn’t arrive unnoticed. But there was a bit of complexity, I’d wager, tho’ I didn’t have a London pound to my name. I was tormented by the notion that George Washington had made a recent visit to Robinson Street, much too recent, else those sappers would not have been digging here.
I WENT TO GERT, who sat with several nuns, puffing on their pipes, redcoats all around. “Madam,” I whispered, “you have tricked me.”
The nuns tossed pieces of tobacco at my brains, but I would not be deterred.
“Madam, I do believe that General Washington has visited these very premises of late. I alone am ignorant of that fact.”
“Idiot,” she said, “hold your tongue. The Brits are about.”
She wagged her head and the nuns disappeared with their pipes. Madame had a look in her eye that was like a mingling of contempt and sorrow for her bastard boy.
Twenty-Six
WHILE SIR WILLIAM PLAYED VINGT-ET-UN IN THE parlor, Gert and I talked through the night. She told me a tale about the commander in chief, a March tale, full of wind and rain.
“Johnny,” she said, “I could not swallow food or a lick of wine. My general but thirty miles away, on his mountain, and he forbids me to see him. ‘I would die, Gertrude, if ever you were caught.’”
“But you could have disguised yourself, mum, dressed as a drummer boy. The Brits are half blind.”
“Shush,” says Madame. “He was able to sneak one letter through the lines, beggin’ me to tear it up after I finished perusing it and all.”
I could not keep from trembling. “Do you still have the letter, mum?”
“Idiot, I tore it up and cried for a week, like some silly strumpet. But I knew his words by heart. ‘Dearest, your general is in a desperate state. His languor is like some disease he cannot shed. Melancholia always comes when I have to lie abed and cannot lead my boys into battle. Your general attends soirées with his family and their wives, and flirts with the prettiest of them—’tis nothing but a ruse. I would prosper well enough were I able to kiss your eyes.’”
“More,” I said, “much, much more.”
“Silence, before you wake up the whole house.”
“Let Billy come with his redcoats. He dare not call treasonous the sentences inside your head.”
“But his scribes can mark down whatever his torturers pull out of me.”
I was a torturer too. I had to pull the tale out of Gert, one thread at a time. Charles Lee, she kept talking about Charles Lee, Washington’s second-in-command, captured by the Brits this past December. He’d called Washington an amateur, sniped at him, caballed behind his back.
“Madame,” I asked, “did you ever meet this Lee?”
“He was a shit-in-the pants. My girls always had to give him a bath.”
I shivered at the thought of Clara scrubbing that fellow’s balls but said nothing, lest I break Madame’s stride.
“He had a fondness for a ripe little widow, a whore with much pretension, called the Widow White, with her own tavern in New Jersey. And Lee was wont to visit her with his pack of dogs. Well, a British patrol heard the dogs howl and arrested General Lee in the widow’s bedchamber.”
“Capital,” I said, until Madame told me that Lee had been Washington’s supreme strategist.
“My general thought to drown himself in the Raritan without Lee. ‘Child,’ he wrote, ‘I have had not one day of rest since the rebellion began.’ And it was perilous, John.”
“How so, madam?”
“He thought to take a holiday in Manhattan, among the Howes…’t was Clara who discovered him, more dead than alive, in the mud outside my window. God knows how he got across the Hudson.”
And I had to imagine for myself, with Madame’s lovely voice in mind. Clara rushing downstairs, past Sir William’s officers. She had to pull on his gold buttons to waken him. “Widow White,” he repeated, “Widow White,” according to Madame.
“Must have been a delusion, John. My general had not eaten in twenty hours.”
Clara led him into the house half a step at a time, his arms flailing like a straw man. She walked among Howe’s own bodyguard, advertising this straw man as a drunken suitor. The bodyguards laughed. They couldn’t quite imagine George Washington under the same roof with General Howe.
Clara hid Washington under Madame’s massive bed and went into the parlor, where Gert was having a heated game of vingt-et-un with Howe. And the two women employed their own language of little signs while Sir William hovered over his aces or whatever else he had in his hand. Madame didn’t say, and I’m not sure if Clara rolled one eye or bent her palm all the way back in a trick she learnt in Dominica, but Madame knew that Washington was in the house. She bowed to Sir William, sat Clara down in her place—“Billy, I think I have the flux”—and rushed to her other general.
She stationed a nun outside her door, fetched Washington from under the bed, propped him on a pillow. He was still delusional—“Damn the Widow White.” Then he smiled. “Worth it,” he muttered. “The wind and the brackish water. I had to look at your face.”
His head dropped onto the pillow and he dozed for an hour. He had a meal in front of him when he opened his eyes. Kippered herring and hot toast, marmalade, coffee from the admiral’s flagship. She had already brushed his uniform.
“Child,” he said, the way he had addressed her nineteen years ago, and it pleased Madame. “They will dredge the Raritan, thinking I have drowned. I must return.”
She had to keep him here for a few more hours, so that he would find his strength and would not fall dizzy in front of Sir William’s bodyguard. And she did what New York’s most illustrious “abbess” had been taught to do. She played vingt-et-un with the commander in chief while Sir William was into his cups and his cards but two doors away.
Washington was silent during most of the game, didn’t bluster, didn’t bully, didn’t cheat, as Sir William would. Then Clara knocked thrice, and it meant that she’d been able to contact a rebel spy who would spirit Washington away. Madame was not fearful of this return trip. He had the good fortune that generals seemed to have. His face had been like a death mask in repose, robbed of blood—yet the blood returned the moment he smiled.
“’Tis my first wartime holiday. A ride across the river, a roll in the mud. But I wouldn’t trade it for a world of royal cushions and crowns.”
Then there was another knock, with the loud thump of an Englishman.
“Gert, Gert, lemme in.”
Sir William had left his cards and come to her door.
Washington did not hide his epaulettes. And Gert had to pirouette in order to save him. Her heart pounded, but she couldn’t ignore William’s knock. She undid the latch, and the British commander in chief stood on Gert’s doorsill like some trapeze artist who might balance himself forever without really entering the room.
“I was worried about your flux,” he said.
He had that blinding discretion of an aristocrat. He wouldn’t condescend to notice George Washington or any other man in her boudoir. And she almost loved him for it. He had the rank and the privilege to walk wherever he pleased in a bordello. But Gert’s was sacred ground. And that is why he amused himself so.
“Billy,” she said, like a buxom moon goddess coming out of her garden just to whisper in Sir William’s ear. “Billy, deal me a hand. I’ll be right back.”
And he was gone. British New York could go to the Divil, she sang to herself soon as she fell into Washington’s arms.
MADAME WOULD TELL ME nothing more. And now I understood why Sir William had turned the nunnery into an armed camp after the phantom’s visit in March. He was expecting an encore from Madame’s gentleman caller, but the caller didn’t come. And then the guardhouse and the redcoats disappeared from Madame’s front lawn. That worried me more. William was enticing—nay, daring—George Washington to visit Gert again. And this time there would be no balancing acts on a doorsill.
“Madam,” I said, “you must warn General Washington.”
“Do you think I haven’t tried? Billy watches me like a hawk.”
“But you could send Clara to look for another one of Washington’s spies.”
“He will hang her or chop off her head if she moves ten paces from the Queen’s Yard. Have you not noticed? No nun is allowed to leave the premises.”
“But I am still free,” I said.
“Are you, Johnny? He has cast you into his net. He will allow you to roam, but will arrest whatsoever you happen upon.”
“Madam,” I said, “then I am nothing more than Billy’s secret agent.”
And I ran from Holy Ground.
Twenty-Seven
Johnny One-Eye Page 13
