The Heart of Liberty

by Thomas Fleming

  “Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I tell you?” he said. “I always knew those New England hypocrites would fall short with their schemes to turn us all into Roundheads. Let’s drink to the loyal, honest men of New York and Pennsylvania, Delaware and Carolina.”

  Almost every glass and tankard in the taproom was raised. Captain John Fleming, standing at the bar, was one of the few who did not lift his drink. The Captain had become a fairly regular visitor to Strangers’ Resort, hoping to improve the advantage he seemed to have gained on his first day. But Kate had begun to treat him with little more than ordinary politeness. She enjoyed his company, occasionally went riding with him, always conversed animatedly with him when he came to dinner - but gave no sign that there was any unusual warmth kindling her heart. Captain Fleming could not compete with Anthony Skinner’s assiduous attentions. He invariably combined his political visits to the tavern with a half-hour tete-a-tete with Kate at the end of the evening.

  George Bellows saw Captain Fleming’s refusal to raise his glass. He roared out a toast. “To the honest men of New Jersey, who know what to do to hypocrites and traitors.”

  Again, almost every glass was raised. Captain Fleming remained motionless. While Anthony Skinner watched with smiling approval, Bellows strode across the room to confront him. “What’s the matter, Captain? Are you afraid to drink to honest men?”

  “If you had toasted the honest men of Virginia, I would have gladly done so, sir,” said Captain Fleming. “But I must remind you, they are all for independence.”

  “Damn independence. We’ll see how many dance to that word when a British army sets down on your coast. Then I’ll be damned if you find an honest man in all Virginia.”

  “I fear you’ll be damned and well damned, sir,” said Captain Fleming. “You and your red-coated friends will find one or two hundred thousand.”

  “Did I hear you damn me to my face, sir?” Bellows roared. “There is no man in New Jersey, no man in America who can do that.”

  “I think you damned yourself,” said Fleming in the same quiet voice. “But if you wish to hear the same expression from me, I will most heartily damn your sentiments and call you a traitor to your country, sir. If you wish to repel that charge, I am sure Captain Gifford will supply us with pistols.”

  “I don’t need a pistol,” Bellows roared. He raised one of his big fists to smash Captain Fleming in the face. He outweighed the young Virginian by forty pounds and would have given him a fearful beating, but he never struck the blow. Jonathan Gifford, moving with wonderful rapidity for a man with a shattered knee, caught Bellows by the collar of his coat and with a wrench of his powerful arm and shoulder flung him half the length of the bar.

  “Get out of here, Bellows. I think you’d better go, too, Mr. Skinner.”

  Anthony Skinner replied with a mocking bow. “At your service, Mr. Gifford. It’s your tavern, for the time being. As an ex-officer of the King, you should know more than anyone about the penalties of disloyalty.”

  Jonathan Gifford said nothing as Anthony Skinner turned to the drinkers in the taproom and invited everyone to continue the party at Kemble Manor. There would be a cold supper, country dancing, and drinks for every honest “loyal” man and woman. There was a general exodus that virtually swept the taproom bare. Left in the room were only one or two drinkers too sozzled to care about politics and a scattering of independence men slumped glumly in the corners.

  “Do you think he’s right, Mr. Gifford?” Captain Fleming asked. “Does the vote in Philadelphia mean the collapse of the union?”

  “Tomorrow or the next day could bring very different news,” Jonathan Gifford said. “If you Virginians and your friends from Massachusetts are any sort of politicians, you will find a way to satisfy - or frighten - the four who are lagging behind.”

  “I hope so,” Captain Fleming said. “With Carolina to the south and Pennsylvania to the north, Virginia would be in trouble.”

  “Not half as much trouble as New Jersey, if New York and Pennsylvania fall out,” Jonathan Gifford said.

  “True enough. From what I saw and heard tonight, we’ll have our hands full without that calamity.”

  Jonathan Gifford nodded again. He took a clay pipe down from the wall, packed it with tobacco from a jar beneath the bar, and lit it. “Do you remember the talk we had about a Tory regiment, Captain?”

  “I do. Have you heard any more?”

  “I think I know the man you want.”

  Jonathan Gifford drew deeply on his pipe. The acrid fumes of tobacco swirled in his lungs and coursed on his blood to his brain. It was not an easy thing to do, betray the son of his best friend. But he had come - or been brought - to this moment not by any one voice or incident, not by a mean desire to protect himself, though that was part of it - or by a crude calculation of where his interest lay. No, it was by a medley of voices, faces, and incidents which those last menacing words from Anthony Skinner climaxed. It stretched from that moment by the Shrewsbury four years ago, from the arrogant condescension on Viscount Needham’s face, the anger and shame and innocence on the faces of Kemble and Kate, from the big determined Virginian who stopped in the road with greetings from his old friend Israel Putnam, to that small dark cool woman in the shaded park of Kemble Manor. All these things somehow canceled or unbalanced other memories. His father’s dry prudence, Lord George Howe’s generosity and courage, twenty years of disciplined pride, the 4th Regiment, the King’s Own, all seemed as insubstantial as pages from a book dancing in a furious flame.

  “Yes,” he heard himself say, “if I were you and had a few men to spare - I would put a guard boat in the bay off Kemble Manor and a patrol on the coast road between the manor and Amboy. If you see Anthony Skinner on that road, I would arrest him and search him thoroughly.”

  Captain Fleming nodded.

  “Would you join us for supper, Captain?”

  “I had hoped for such an invitation, sir,” he said with a warm smile. “But I think you had best simply give Miss Kate my compliments. I have a feeling there is no time to waste.”

  Jonathan Gifford waited until he heard the hoof-beats of Captain Fleming’s horse on the road. He left Barney in charge of the taproom, slipped out the back door into the cool twilight, and strolled through the garden to the family house by the brook. He found the place empty and dark. Lighting an oil lamp in the hail, he saw a scribbled note from Kemble.

  Kate has gone off to the Manor with A.S. I saw his performance in the taproom and called him a damn Tory to his face. I’m off to Amboy - where people care about their country.

  Jonathan Gifford sighed wearily. The last line was aimed at him, of course. While waiting for a response from Israel Putnam, Kemble had taken to spending his days at General Mercer’s headquarters in Amboy, learning what he could about army routine. Jonathan Gifford crumpled the paper and flung it into the cold fireplace. It was just as well. He would spend the evening doing a chore he had been putting off for weeks.

  Kate did not return until noon the following day. The party had lasted until four a.m., she said. The best dancing and singing she ever remembered. Jonathan Gifford did not ask if one of the songs was God Save the King.

  The next two days were ferociously hot. They drifted by in a kind of suspenseful daze. No travelers appeared from Philadelphia. The tavern was crowded from morning till night with a fluctuating flow from the neighborhood. Independence men came and went in doleful groups, looking ever more tense and anxious. Most of the customers were moderate men whose opinions were not fixed on either side of the dispute, but simply wanted to hear the news.

  What they finally heard was news enough - if not the news they expected or wanted to hear. A little after noon on July 4, a group of horsemen appeared on the road in the usual cloud of dust. As they drew closer, loungers in the yard saw Captain John Fleming at their head, his face saturnine. Behind him, between two soldiers, rode Anthony Skinner, his hands tied behind his neck. They dismounted and Skinner was half sho
ved, half dragged into the taproom. Tensely, Captain Fleming asked where he could find a justice of the peace. Was Mr. Gifford one?

  Jonathan Gifford shook his head. “Old Jasper Clark is one,” he said. “He’s also a member of the County Committee. He lives not ten minutes away. Shall I send for him?”

  “Please.”

  “If you do that, Gifford, you are marked as my enemy, and an enemy of every honest man in this neighborhood,” Anthony Skinner said. “This man has no right to arrest me. He’s a damn Virginian. So are his men, usurpers in this colony without a shadow of legality. Are you going to let an honest citizen of New Jersey be arrested on the open road while going peaceably about his private business?”

  Captain Fleming eyed the crowd in the taproom uneasily. His hand strayed to the butt of his pistol. “I am ready to show these gentlemen your business was neither private nor peaceful, Mr. Skinner. But I prefer to do it legally.”

  “How can you use that word, you damn hypocrite, when you’ve driven the legal government out of the colony?”

  “Barney,” Jonathan Gifford said, “ride over and fetch Mr. Clark Tell him it’s very important.”

  In twenty minutes, Jasper Clark, dressed in homespun trousers and a loose calico work shirt - a more unjudicial figure could not be imagined - was seated behind a table in the assembly room, his long, lined face solemn, his eyes wide with indignation as Captain Fleming told why he had arrested Anthony Skinner and what he had found in his saddlebags. The drinkers in the taproom crowded the doorway. A visibly distressed Kate and a palpably exultant Kemble sat on the green-cushioned Chippendale couch. Jonathan Gifford stood against the wall in his sergeant-at-arms posture. Skinner, his arms still bound, glared at the boyish Virginian as he spoke.

  In a terse, official style that added impact to his words, Captain Fleming told how he had seized Skinner on the Amboy road and found in his saddlebags his commission as colonel of the so-called loyal militia, and commissions for a number of other persons, including Joshua Bellows and his son George. He also found a muster list with three hundred names on it, and three hundred guineas to pay them. The Virginian deposited this evidence on the table before Jasper Clark. The guineas made a faintly musical sound inside their canvas bag.

  While Fleming spoke, Jonathan Gifford was studying the faces of the crowd at the door and he was also watching Kate. On the faces at the door, two emotions prevailed. Some resented not being asked to join the loyal militia and some were enraged by its very existence. What Jonathan Gifford saw on Kate’s face was more distressing - a mixture of anguish, love, and rage that made him realize how foolish he had been to think that anyone could easily replace this man in her affections.

  “Do you have any answer to make to these accusations?” asked Jasper Clark, his Adam’s apple moving nervously up and down his throat.

  “Yes,” Anthony Skinner said. “What is the charge under which Captain Fleming is trying to hold me prisoner? I have committed no crime against any law, as far as I know. My only purpose in recruiting this regiment is to provide a force of honest men ready to protect the lives and property of every man no matter what his political beliefs.”

  “Do you take me for some kind of fool, young man?” asked Jasper Clark. “You are conspiring against your country. You are guilty of treason and, by God, if you don’t hang for it - “

  “Mr. Clark, you are talking nonsense. How can I commit treason against a country that doesn’t exist? I freely admit I oppose the Continental Congress, that band of political adventurers who are breaking into frightened factions in Philadelphia at this very moment. If you want to arrest me by force, go ahead, take the risk. But it cannot he done by law.”

  “We shall see about that,” Clark said. “Captain Gifford, do you have a strong room in which this prisoner can be safely held for a day or two?”

  “All the rooms on the second floor have locks on them.”

  “I hereby order you to confine this man in one of those rooms. Take pains to make sure there are no limbs of trees convenient to his window, or any other means by which be could escape. What is the distance from the window to the ground?”

  “Fifteen feet. A jump would break a man’s legs.”

  “Nevertheless, nail the window shut,” Jasper Clark said, staring stonily at Anthony Skinner.

  “You will regret this, Clark,” Anthony Skinner said. “There will come a day when you will beg me for mercy on your knees.”

  “Take him away,” Clark said. “I have heard enough treason for one day.”

  “Let’s tar and feather him first,” shouted someone in the crowd at the door.

  “Right,” shouted someone else. “There’s a tar barrel in the cooper’s shop.”

  Jasper Clark rose to his feet, trembling. Jonathan Gifford thought he was going to collapse. The strain of attempting to govern others was telling on him. With surprising dignity, Clark declared, “We will do no such thing. We will proceed in a decent, lawful manner. No prisoner of mine will ever be abused by a mob while I sit as justice of the peace. I am sure I can depend upon the support of Captain Fleming.”

  “You can, sir,” said Fleming, rising to confront those in the doorway.

  Jonathan Gifford took Anthony Skinner’s arm. “I advise you to come quietly,” he said in a low voice.

  For a moment Skinner seemed about to make another defiant speech. But Kate whispered just loud enough for him to hear her: “Go with him, Anthony, please.”

  Skinner let Jonathan Gifford escort him swiftly through the door which led down a short ball into the kitchen. Captain Fleming followed them. In the kitchen, Jonathan Gifford told Barney’s wife Molly to fetch a hammer and nails and some dinner to the corner room on the second floor. They mounted the back stairs and soon had Skinner incarcerated. Jonathan Gifford nailed the window shut and left the prisoner with a bottle of claret and a good pound of roast beef to console himself.

  “I will post a man at the end of the hall. That way he should not disturb any other guests,” Captain Fleming said.

  Downstairs the crowd had returned to the taproom and the tavern yard. Jasper Clark was finishing his letter to the Provincial Congress, reporting what he had heard from Captain Fleming and asking them for directions on how to deal with this alarming discovery of a loyalist regiment.

  “They will have to send us men from other parts of the colony,” he said. “I doubt we could raise as many as that damn fellow has recruited. Can I borrow one of your soldiers to carry this letter, Captain?”

  “You will have to give him directions. They are all strangers to New Jersey.”

  The messenger was soon on his way to Burlington with the letter. Jonathan Gifford called for his chaise and rode at a fierce pace - even for him - to Kemble Manor. A servant let him into the entrance hall, and Caroline Skinner met him there with a bright smile. She was wearing a simple red silk housedress. Her black hair was woven into two braids that made her look remarkably like an Indian. Jonathan Gifford told her why he had come. Her smile vanished. “Mr. Skinner is in the library,” she said. “By this time I am sure he is drunk. He and Anthony had a great quarrel yesterday, before he left. No doubt it was about this business. Did you play a part in taking him captive?”

  “No more than you did,” he said, eyeing her warily.

  She caught the edge in his voice and turned away abruptly to lead him to the library door. The room was full of shadows. The damask curtains were drawn against the bright afternoon sun. In the half-light, the white marble busts of the Duke of Marlborough, General Wolfe, and George III seemed to float like bodiless ghosts on their pedestals between the windows. The heavy Jacobean furniture, fringed with carved coronets, added its touch of the macabre to the scene. Charles Skinner was slumped in a huge dark leather armchair, a decanter of brandy beside him. He was wearing a red velvet skullcap lined with white linen, a blue damask dressing gown, a richly embroidered red satin waistcoat, black satin breeches, and red morocco slippers. He heaved from his chair and stum
bled toward his visitor, his voice thick with liquor - and something else, perhaps grief.

  “Gifford, old friend, have a glass with me. I was hoping to see you privately. I had it out with the boy. I would sign no paper, join no association that would set me against my countrymen. God knows, some of the dogs warrant hanging. But I thought deep and hard, Gifford. What you said is right, right in the heart as well as in the head. If you don’t stand up to these damned insolent Englishmen, we shall be truckling servants to them like the Irish. I won’t conspire to such a thing, no, by God.”

  Jonathan Gifford limped to the high windows that looked out on the north lawn and its weeping willows. He pulled back the draperies and filled the room with strong July sunlight. He told his old friend what had happened to his son. Charles Skinner stumbled back to his big chair in the corner, poured himself a tumbler of brandy, and downed it in one long gulp.

  “I told him to demand a regiment - two regiments to support him, otherwise damn all commissions and recruiting bounties. What good are they? You can’t win wars with gold coins and pieces of paper.”

  He stared at the bust of George III as he said these words. He swung around, breathing like a man on the brink of an apoplexy. “What’s to be done, Gifford? Should I go see him?”

  “No. It would only irritate people and accomplish nothing.”

  “Can I post a bond for him? Let them name any figure. I will write a note for this whole estate if they want it. He’s my son, Gifford, my only son.”

  “I will ask the Committee about the bond. But I think the Provincial Congress may insist on having him transported to Burlington, where they can question him.”

  “Most likely, most likely,” Charles Skinner said. He uttered a great groan. “Dear God, Gifford, can you believe this is America? Can you believe we were all as contented as the swains of Arcady a year or two ago?”

  Jonathan Gifford nodded perfunctorily. But he thought to himself: Perhaps you were happy, but I wasn’t. The violence of the denial shocked him. Was this the secret reason why he was tinning into a revolutionist? Was he willing to risk a possibly dangerous future because he had no real love for (or in) the past?