The Heart of Liberty

by Thomas Fleming

  “This damn rebellion is already falling apart, Gifford. If it does, the worst of them, people like Clark, Slocum, will be desperate men. We can’t leave my boy in their hands. Is there any fresh news from Philadelphia?”

  “None.”

  Charles Skinner seized his arm, pleading like a child. “They’ll cut his throat, Gifford. He’d be safer in the hands of drunken Indians.”

  “I don’t think he’s in any such danger. The rebels are as opposed to mob law as you are. Some people wanted to tar and feather Anthony. Old Jasper Clark stared them down with the dignity of a chief justice.”

  “Gifford - promise me this. If the news from Philadelphia is of dissolution and chaos - as I pray to God it will be - if in spite of this they try to take my boy a prisoner to Burlington - then help him. I know you too well to offer money.”

  “I will do what I can.”

  In the center hall, Sukey, Caroline Skinner’s personal maid, banded him his hat and said, “My mistress would like to see you in the garden, Captain Gifford.”

  Caroline Skinner had combed out her braids. Her hair was now swept in two wide gleaming bands about her head. She was wearing a red sun hat that matched her dress. It had a wide brim garlanded with white dwarf China roses. She had asked him for some cuttings a year or two ago.

  “I see you’re putting chinensis minima to good use,” he said.

  She nodded, fingering one of the flowers on the side of the brim. “I love them,” she said. Then she dropped all pretense of small talk. “What have you decided?”

  He told her that he had promised to help Anthony Skinner if it became necessary. She looked dismayed, and seemed about to say something violent. But she controlled herself with an obvious effort and smiled sadly.

  “We seem fated to make different choices, Captain. I was about to tell you some harsh things Anthony has said against you. But he is my son. I don’t wish him any bodily harm.”

  Jonathan Gifford nodded. “I’m afraid I’ve seen and heard him for myself.” He told her what Anthony had said to him in the taproom two nights ago. “But there is a man in there,” he pointed to the manor house, “who saved my life more than once.”

  “And you saved his. I’ve heard him tell the story.”

  “What difference does that make? My dear lady, you don’t - I don’t think you understand friendship.”

  “No. I’m only a woman.”

  “I meant no such thing - “

  “But I happen to think this does not disqualify me from advising a man. My husband would rather consult a brandy bottle. I’m only trying to tell you not to risk - too much.”

  Once again - this time in the most direct and unqualified way - Jonathan Gifford saw the remarkable dimensions of Caroline Skinner’s character. It was so totally different from her sister Sarah’s personality, he still could only see it without comprehending it.

  “I appreciate - your concern.”

  “It is for Kate and Kemble’s sake - as much as yours,” she said in a voice so sharp it seemed almost a rebuke.

  “I know,” she said. “Let’s not argue. Let’s trust each other - as much as we can.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I like that. As much as we can.”

  JONATHAN GIFFORD RODE back to Strangers’ Resort feeling heavy, mournful, as if he were returning from a funeral. There was so little he could do. But be would meet the responsibility as he had net so many others in his life. As he neared the tavern, he noticed an unusual number of men on the road. Some were on foot, some on horseback. They waved cheerfully to him. Next, he saw an extraordinary number of people in the tavern yard. Black Sam ran out of the crowd as he approached and took his horse to walk it around the back.

  “What’s happened, Sam?”

  “News from Philadelphia. The Congress declared independence.”

  Jonathan Gifford leaped from his chaise and limped toward the crowd.

  “Captain,” Sam called, “does it mean everybody’ll be free, black and white?”

  “We’ll see, Sam. We’ll see.”

  Lemuel Peters and Ambrose Cotter were in the center of the crowd. Peters was waving a piece of paper excitedly. “Captain Gifford,” he said, “can we use your chaise as a platform?”

  “Certainly.”

  Sam led horse and chaise into the crowd. Peters mounted the chaise and said, “By a communication just delivered to me from the honorable Provincial Congress of New Jersey I am happy to report the honorable Continental Congress in Philadelphia on July 2 declared our independence from Great Britain by a vote of twelve states to none, New York’s delegates abstaining only for want of proper instructions from their constituents. A declaration of independence is in preparation and will be forthcoming in a few days.”

  He handed the paper to Cotter and continued in a more oratorical tone. “I thought it best to tell you this glorious news immediately, since we have an enemy upon our shore. We must rouse ourselves against him and against his depraved and vicious allies in our midst. We are now free citizens of a free country. We need fear no man nor bend our knees to anyone. Are you with me?”

  A roar of assent filled the hot July afternoon.

  “We have a traitor within reach of a rope at this very moment,” shouted a voice from the crowd. It was Daniel Slocum. Aided by a phalanx of his relatives, Slocum shoved his way to the chaise and jumped up on it beside Peters. “What are we waiting for? Let’s hang that son of a bitch Anthony Skinner now.”

  “We are waiting for orders from our elected representatives in Congress,” Lemuel Peters said.

  “Damn them. What have they done for us anyway? Have they sent us soldiers? Do they care if Skinner and his friends cut our throats tonight?”

  “That’s enough of such talk,” said Peters, visibly shaken. “Let us not disgrace this day with lawless vengeance. Let’s celebrate the glorious news.”

  “He’s right,” shouted Cotter from beside the chaise. “Let the Congress hang Skinner and send us orders to hang his friends.”

  Jonathan Gifford pulled himself onto the chaise. “There are drinks inside,” he said, “for every man who wants them - free of charge as long as a man can hold his liquor.”

  That settled it. With a roar of delight the crowd surged into the taproom and filled the other rooms. As an opening ceremony, Kemble cut the portraits of George II and George III from their frames and burned them in the fireplace. Everyone gave three cheers and started drinking. Volunteers were pressed into service as waiters when the family and staff proved unequal to the task. Liquor poured like the falls of the Passaic or the great torrent of Niagara. The walls of the tavern shook with defiant liberty songs.

  We led fair Freedom hither And lo, the desert smiled! A paradise of pleasure

  Was opened in the wild!

  Your harvest, bold Americans, No power shall snatch away! Huzza, huzza, huzza, huzza,

  For free America,

  Barney McGovern kept saying that he had never seen anything like it, as he broke open cask after cask of rum and bard cider. When the war began last year, Jonathan Gifford had bought enormous quantities before the prices rose. For a while, even this surplus did not look as if it would last. But about eight o’clock the crowd began to thin.

  Barney swore they had served at least two thousand people. “Let’s hope they’ll fight as hard as they drink,” he said.

  Kate flung aside her apron and pronounced herself exhausted.

  “I’ve done my duty,” she said. “Do I have your permission to bring Anthony some supper?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “If they had hanged him,” she said, glaring out at the still populous taproom, “I would have hanged myself beside him.”

  She vanished through the doorway to the kitchen. A moment later, into the tavern swaggered a new crowd led by Daniel Slocum. The evening was far from over, Jonathan Gifford told himself grimly.

  Slocum was already drunk. With him were about a dozen men. Some were familiar to Jonathan Gifford, ot
hers were strangers whom he introduced as “honest sailors from Perthtown.” They looked like highwaymen to Jonathan Gifford - dirty, rough, ugly, well past their youth.

  “Say, Gifford, are you still giving rum away to honest Americans to celebrate the glorious news?” Slocum asked.

  “That’s right. Step up and drink your fill.”

  “Ah, Gifford, you know how to get your way, don’t you? You know just how and when to trim your sails,” Slocum said as he took tankards of rum and handed them back to his friends at their table near the bar.

  “I’m not a sloop, Slocum, I’m a man,” Jonathan Gifford said. “You know what I mean,” Slocum said. “We’ve had drink aplenty along the road. This ain’t what we come for. We decided to crown the day’s celebrations by tarring and feathering and maybe hanging a damn Tory - a traitor to his country.”

  “Go find one and good luck to yon,” Jonathan Gifford said.

  “What do you mean find one? You’ve got one upstairs, Gifford, the best possible candidate. Bring him down.”

  “I can’t do that . . . I have orders from Mr. Clark to keep him in close confinement.”

  “Damn you, Gifford, didn’t you hear me? I’m a colonel of the militia. I want to interrogate this man, pry out of him his hellish plot to cut our throats and burn our houses over us. That’s what he was planning to do. Do you deny that, Gifford?”

  “I don’t know what he was trying to do. I haven’t seen the evidence. Neither have you.”

  “Listen, you goddamned Englishman,” Slocum said. “You’d hate to have a riot in here, wouldn’t you? Now these gentlemen, Mr. Chandler and his friends, these fine seafarers from Perthtown, they come from Boston originally. There ain’t no one knows bow to wreck a house - or a tavern - faster than Boston sailors. Right, lads?”

  There was no need for Mr. Chandler and his friends to respond. They kept looking at Jonathan Gifford, their eyes as empty as their heads.

  Jonathan Gifford reached under the bar and took a black whip from a lower shelf. He took two formidable clubs off the wall and handed one to Barney and the other one to Black Sam.

  “Slocum,” he said, “get out. Don’t finish your drink.”

  Slocum contemptuously turned his back and picked up his drink. Jonathan Gifford’s whip hissed through the thick air. Slocum howled with pain and shock as it curled around his wrist. The rum in the tankard flew into his face and the tankard sailed halfway across the taproom. Slocum ended up on his back in the sawdust. His sailor friends sprang to their feet. One of them seized a chair. But Jonathan Gifford had given considerable thought to the design of his taproom. His chairs were bolted to the floor.

  Barney and Black Sam, both big men, advanced around the bar swinging their clubs. “Now, boys, go along, go along and there’ll be no trouble,” Barney said. “The Captain has two pistols behind the bar. The first man who raises his hand will get a bullet between the eyes. The Captain never misses. There are then in the ground, from Quebec to Havana, from Dublin to Vienna who didn't believe that until it was too late?”

  While Barney spoke, Jonathan Gifford calmly placed the two pistols on the bar. Daniel Slocum and his sailor friends headed sullenly for the door. “We’ll see you soon, Gifford,” Slocum said, rubbing his wrist.

  “Barney,” Jonathan Gifford said. “Tomorrow morning, I think you’d better send someone to Amboy - or go yourself - and tell Captain Fleming our prisoner isn't safe here any longer.”

  “Why not?”

  Kate was standing behind him. She had slipped noiselessly through the door from the kitchen. Jonathan Gifford gave her a calm account of what had just happened. It still aroused violent emotion.

  “They won’t just tar and feather him, they’ll kill him, you know that.”

  “They’re not going to do either one, Kate, not as long as I have anything to say about it.”

  “They’ll kill you, too. Oh, God – ”

  She vanished into the kitchen again.

  “Maybe you’d better ride to Amboy tonight,” Jonathan Gifford said to Barney.

  Jonathan Gifford shut his doors at eleven o’clock, as usual, sent his overnight guests upstairs with oil lamps, and retreated to his family house by the brook. Walking through his rose garden, he was engulfed by a dozen, two dozen scents. The garden was in full bloom now. It made him wish that a woman waited for him in his bedroom. He bad been living like a monk since Sarah’s death - by way of expiation, perhaps. But today’s news, the fact and the idea that these Americans had declared their independence of all the things that made life steady and regular and secure - King and church and carefully balanced government - this plunge into the unknown stirred him enormously. It awakened in him an awareness of how much of his life had been ruled by the dead hand of the past, submission to his father’s dry authority, fear of his mother’s violent Irish heart, obedience to the army’s hard-cased way of doing things, his anxious wish for the approval of men like Charles Skinner, men who stood for old habits, traditional deference, downright standards of conduct. Was it too late to change now? he wondered. Too late even to try to love another woman? Mournfully, not for the first time, he pondered his failure with Sarah, the apparently inexorable decay of love into hate, desire into revulsion. I loved you, but not with my whole heart. Just as you loved me.

  Jonathan Gifford stood by his open bedroom window. A southwest breeze wafted the scents of the rose garden down to him. The stars glistened in the murmuring brook. For the first time he thought it might be possible to begin again, to love another woman. At least the wish was there. Perhaps it was born of this daring American decision. Or was it simply just the scent of roses and a natural hunger for some kind of love? He poured himself a long drink of Madeira, downed it in an even longer swallow, and put out his light. He was soon asleep to the languid lullaby of the brook. His dreams were a jumble. Daniel Slocum’s swarthy face, his mouth hurling those vicious words. Goddamned Englishman. Sarah strolling among his roses in another July, then a voice calling his name: Captain - Captain

  He sprang from his bed and rushed to the front door. When he opened it, Barney McGovern crashed into the room like a falling tree. Jonathan Gifford lit a lamp. The hall clock stood at four a. m. Someone had hit Barney across the face with a club. His right eye was almost closed, his nose was broken, blood oozed from a massive bruise on his right cheek.

  “What happened?”

  “Skinner,” Barney said. “He clubbed me as I led the horse to the barn.”

  “Just now?”

  The clock bonged four. Barney shook his bead. “I got back from Amboy about two.”

  Jonathan Gifford dragged Barney to his feet and half led, half carried him to a chair in the parlor. He got him a glass of brandy and then labored as fast as his bad knee would let him up the slope to the tavern. Up the stairs he struggled to the second floor. The boyish soldier on guard at the end of the narrow hall was asleep on his feet.

  “Have you seen him, man, have you seen your prisoner?” the

  Captain said with a ferocity that welled out of his army past. “No, sir,” said the frightened youngster. “All’s been quiet.” Down the hall they went to Anthony Skinner’s door, Jonathan Gifford selecting the key, shoving it into the expensive lock - and flinging open the door to an empty room. The nails had been pried out of the sash. A rope, tied to a foot of the bed, dangled out the open window.

  “Where did he get it?” Jonathan Gifford asked. “Who came into this room?”

  “No one but daughter, sir - Miss Kate. She brought his food. So help me, sir, no one else.”

  The boy wanted to know if he should awaken his fellow soldiers and pursue the fugitive. Jonathan Gifford told him to go to bed. “He took one of my horses. He’s five miles away by now.”

  Back down the garden to his house Jonathan Gifford went, rage whirling in his mind. He mounted the stairs to Kate’s bedroom and pounded on the door. “Kate,” he said, “Kate, get up.”

  She opened the door so quickly, it wa
s evident that she had not been asleep.

  “Put on a night robe, I want to show you something.”

  She put on a rose and blue night robe and followed him downstairs. Kemble peered from his door as they passed it. “What happened?”

  “Go back to sleep,” Jonathan Gifford said.

  In the parlor, he forced Kate to stare at Barney McGovern’s battered face. “Look at it. Look at what you’ve done,” he said.

  With no children of his own, Barney had been almost a second father, certainly a long-suffering, endlessly generous uncle to Kate and Kemble. He had taught them how to ride, tramped through the autumn woods to gather chestnuts with them, tirelessly played games with them.

  “Now, Captain,” Barney said groggily, “how could Miss Kate – ”

  “I don’t care! I’m sorry, but I don’t care,” Kate cried. “I brought Anthony the rope and the hammer for the nails. I’m glad I did it. I love him. More than I love Barney, or you, Father, more than I love anything. Let a swine like Daniel Slocum, let all those drunken heroes who call themselves patriots do what they want to me. They can tar and feather me, I don't care. Anthony is free.”

  “So that’s how,” said Barney sadly.

  Jonathan Gifford seized Kate by the arms. “Keep quiet,” he said. “We are not going to tell anybody what you did. You are not going to tell anybody what you did. Do you understand me?”

  Almost a full minute passed before Kate numbly nodded her head.

  “Go upstairs, get in your bed, and stay there all day tomorrow. You are sick. You know nothing about it. Understand?”

  Kate nodded again. Jonathan Gifford turned to find Kemble on the stairs, outrage on his face. “Don’t say a word,” he said. “Just take your sister to her room. Then come back here immediately.”

  When Kemble returned, Jonathan Gifford sent him to the icehouse to make a pack for Barney's cheek. With this medication and six or eight ounces of brandy, Barney pronounced himself practically cured.