The Heart of Liberty

by Thomas Fleming

  Anthony

  Kate suddenly remembered what Caroline had said to her about being displayed as a woman with a weak will and no understanding. With unexpected anger she told herself she was not too stupid to see why Anthony was so anxious to marry her. Aside from her half share of Kemble Manor, he obviously felt that his failure to rescue her impugned his honor. If she married him, it would be an act of public forgiveness on her part. For the first time, she confronted the avarice in Anthony Skinner’s commitment to the King. She threw his letter into the fire.

  Watching the flames devour it, Kate suddenly found herself wishing she could thrust her hand, her, whole body into some magical flame that would consume the old Kate and permit a new one to step forth, purified of the bad temper, the violent willfulness she had inherited from her mother. That talk with her Aunt Caroline had been a shock of the mental or spiritual sort as violent as the one she had received from the whip. Slowly, painfully, over the past few weeks, Kate had accepted the harsh truth at the center of it. She had recklessly, brainlessly given herself away. She had paid a bitter price for it. She did not want to pay it again.

  A few days after Kate discarded Anthony’s note, a full brigade of British infantry landed unopposed at Perth Amboy and marched up the road toward New Brunswick. At the head of the column, making Barney McGovern a prophet, was the 4th Regiment, the King’s Own. A major on horseback swung out of the column and dismounted. He had a round red face and a belly big enough to burst all the buttons off his waistcoat.

  “Is this where a certain innkeeper named Gifford resides?” he thundered.

  There were timid nods from a number of us on the porch. “Get him out here,” roared the Major. “I’m here to arrest the damn rascal.”

  A shiver went through all of us. The British were launching a reign of terror. The Major’s threats and exclamations did nothing to dissuade us. “Get him out here,” he roared. “By God, I’ll have his rebel head on a block before morning. Liberty Tavern. The son of a bitch will dance on hot coals to the British Grenadiers or I’ll know the reason why.”

  Jonathan Gifford appeared at the door. A smile leaped across his face. Were we all going mad? we wondered. The officer was grinning from ear to ear, too.

  “Brother Jonathan,” he roared.

  “Brother Billy,” cried Jonathan Gifford.

  They flung themselves into each other’s arms like a pair of long-lost lovers.

  “By God,” said the Major, “it’s worth three thousand miles of ship’s bread and salt beef to see you, I swear it.”

  “That sounds like a British diet to me,” said Jonathan Gifford. “You’re in America now where a man can eat to his heart’s content.”

  “Which is exactly what I’ve been doing,” said the Major, patting his paunch.

  “And the wine cellar on wheels?”

  “Right there,” said the Major, pointing to a big wagon in the road. “Here,” he roared to the driver. “Pull that in here and post sentries at the head and tail. If I find a bottle missing in the morning, they’ll get a hundred lashes each.”

  Dr. Davie was standing in the tavern door watching all this. Jonathan Gifford waved him over and introduced him to Major William Moncrieff. He pointed to the wagon. “In there you will find the finest collection of wines in America. Possibly in Europe. Wherever Moncrieff goes, his wine cellar goes with him.”

  “He won’t need to touch a drop of it tonight,” said Dr. Davie.

  Captain Gifford smiled. “We have a few bottles downstairs that can challenge his best.”

  “The devil you say, Gifford. You’ve got the palate of a peasant. But I am willing to try the experiment, provided we start off with the drink you fellows call rumfustian.”

  Two hours later, after liberal quantities of rumfustian had been consumed, Major Moncrieff and his old friend progressed somewhat unsteadily down to the residence, where Kate joined them for dinner. It was a feast of pheasant, jugged hare, oysters from Raritan Bay, and lobsters from the Atlantic, the meat flavored by magnificent wine from Burgundy, the fish by a delicate product of the Moselle.

  Moncrieff personified only part of that motto of the British officer, to live well and leave a fortune to his heirs. In his case, he lived so well there was no hope of a fortune or heirs for that matter. His conversation was replete with descriptions of magnificent dinners in England, Ireland, France, and Spain. He also talked freely about the war, which he called “a damn silly business started by fools on both sides.” As a professional soldier, he had no interest in politics and nothing but contempt for politicians. He soon concentrated on reminiscing about his days as a young officer with his friend Gifford.

  “Ah, Havana, Gifford, there was a city. Remember those Spanish girls? Amazing how often their duennas turned out to be nearsighted or blind.”

  “What?” said Kate archly. “I can’t believe my solemn father ever conducted himself as anything but an officer and a gentleman.”

  “Whoa,” roared Moncrieff, almost choking on a lobster claw. “He was in a class by himself when it came to the ladies. Wild ones, they were his specialty. The wilder the better. After a week or two with Gifford, they were tamed for life.”

  “Father, is it true?” Kate said.

  Jonathan Gifford kicked Moncrieff in the shins. “You know how it is with old soldiers,” he said. “They tend to exaggerate everything, from their heroism to their - ”

  “Damn me if I ever exaggerated a thing,” thundered Moncrieff. “But you don’t understand how it is with a soldier, my dear. Every day of a campaign he risks being laid low by a bullet. And for what? For King and country. So he says to himself, by God, since I take such risks, I deserve a few exemptions and if the King and the country don’t agree, why they can go to the devil.”

  Kate looked at her father and could not believe what she saw. He was blushing.

  “And what about Canada, Gifford? Those Frenchies. Remember that one who called herself Solange? By God, I almost challenged you when she dumped me for your damned Irish blarney. That’s why I never married, you know,” declared the Major, attacking a column of defenseless oysters. “This fellow was always getting the best-looking woman in sight. I consoled myself with the best cook. Before I knew it, I was too damned fat to interest girls your age - or any age. It’s all his fault.”

  “What would you think of a woman who - lived like a soldier?” Kate asked.

  “Why,” said the Major, “I’d think she was a shameless hussy. But I’d like to meet her.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Now, my dear,” said Moncrieff, “I see you have some modern ideas. Women are not soldiers. That’s the only excuse we have to offer. Once a man settles down and marries I expect him to be as constant as the most virtuous wife.”

  “But once a woman sins - I mean acts like a soldier - she can never be virtuous again.”

  With no idea that the conversation was very personal for Kate, Moncrieff gave her his honest opinion. “A woman’s reputation is her stock in trade, so to speak. Like a soldier’s courage.”

  “I think that is hypocrisy!”

  “But a soldier doesn’t damn a man if he runs away at first then comes back to the fight. No more would he condemn a single fall from virtue in a woman. However, the way of the world – ”

  “Is hypocrisy,” Kate said.

  “Since when is that news?” Moncrieff said. He patted her hand. “Ah, my dear, I think you must be troubled by a friend who has been indiscreet with some young fellow in uniform. Don’t fret about it. People forget those things quickly in a war. So many other things happen, they haven’t got time to remember matters that would keep them indignant for ten years during a peace.”

  “Do you agree with all this, Father?”

  “Absolutely,” said Jonathan Gifford, momentarily bewildered by another aspect of war, the constant occurrence of the unexpected. Two days ago, if someone had told him that his old friend Wild Billy Moncrieff would turn into a moral philosopher
and say precisely the things Kate needed to hear, he would have laughed in his face.

  “I will leave you two veterans to your pipes and port and reminiscences of old conquests.”

  Moncrieff studied Kate as she left the room. “A fine girl, Gifford. I could never picture you as a father. But from the way she looks at you, I guess you’ve made me eat my words again. It almost makes me wish I’d quit this damn business when you did.”

  “I didn’t have much choice, Billy. I couldn’t march a mile on this knee.”

  “Ah, with your blarney you could have talked your way onto a general’s staff if you wanted to stay. You were right, what you said that last night in Havana when we got drunker than two cormorants in a brewery. There’s no future for the likes of you and me in this army. It gets you like a crab apple in the belly, seeing pipsqueak viscounts and fake Irish lords with commissions their fathers bought them.”

  For another ten minutes, Moncrieff savagely criticized the British army system of selling commissions and giving most of the promotions to noblemen and sons of noblemen who had the necessary cash and influence in London to shoulder aside professional soldiers like himself. Jonathan Gifford was amazed to recall in the voice of this old friend how sharp had been his antagonism to the British system, with its heavy emphasis on aristocracy. It was a bias that pervaded not only the army but all aspects of English life. It was startling to realize how much healthier, freer, America was without it.

  When they talked about the war Jonathan Gifford was struck even more profoundly by how different his feelings were. Moncrieff talked of a quick easy conquest and rubbed his hands at the prospect of being rewarded with some choice American lands. Jonathan Gifford had no fault to find with Moncrieff for this attitude. It was the way a professional soldier saw a war in the eighteenth century. The profits should be as high as the risks. But he could muster no enthusiasm to match Moncrieff’s glee. It was his country, or at least the country of his son and daughter, that Moncrieff was talking about with such, lip-smacking ardor. When the Major said he would depend on his old friend Gifford to keep his eye peeled for one of the choicer rebel estates, he could not resist pointing out that Washington still had an army and the war was not over.

  “By God, I think you’re half a rebel, Gifford. I thought you just changed the name of this tavern to keep it in one piece until we got here.”

  Captain Gifford smiled, poured some more rumfustian into Moncrieff’s tankard, and the Major soon forgot politics. An hour later, after Wild Billy had staggered off to his room at the tavern, Kate came downstairs to find her father sitting in one of the two wing chairs before the dying fire, his face unusually solemn.

  “I like your old friend,” she said.

  “He talks too much.”

  “No. No, Father,” Kate said, sitting down in the other wing chair. “For the first time I - I feel I know you as - as Jonathan Gifford. Not the man I call Father. It makes me feel a little easier about myself. A little more - forgiving. It’s strange, but at first I didn’t want you to forgive me. I wanted you to treat me like you treated Mother. But Aunt Caroline helped me see - how wrong I was how foolish. I realized you did forgive me - but I couldn’t forgive myself.”

  “That’s the hardest thing to do, Kate.”

  “Why couldn’t you forgive her, Father?”

  “I don’t know, Kate. I tried. I said I forgave her. But in the end - I couldn’t do it.”

  “She hurt you - that much?”

  “I tried to put that other life behind me, Kate. It wasn’t nearly as good as old Moncrieff makes it sound. It was lonely, damn lonely. You’d wake up in the middle of the night, covered with sweat, wondering why you were scared. In Havana just after the siege ended I realized what was bothering me. An ensign in our company - he was only seventeen - was killed in the last night’s fighting. I was undone for weeks. I couldn’t sleep. I barely ate. I was mourning him - like a son. That’s when I understood those midnight sweats. It wasn’t getting killed that worried me. It was leaving nothing behind me, Kate. Nothing - nobody - but a few old drinking friends like Moncrieff.”

  Jonathan Gifford took a poker and stirred the dying fire. It blazed for several moments and Kate could see the grief etched on his face as he continued.

  “I thought I’d changed that - found the kind of life I wanted - with your mother. But little by little, she turned from me, Kate, and tried to take you and Kemble with her. She made me feel like a stranger again. I suppose some of it was my fault. There was some calculation in our marriage - your mother had quite a fortune - but it wasn’t the main thing. So help me. She made it the main thing by twisting it that way in her mind and heart. What happened at the Shrewsbury - was the end of it, not the beginning. I suppose that’s why I couldn’t - I had no feelings left for her, Kate.”

  “But for me and Kemble you still - ”

  “More than ever, I suppose, after I lost your mother.”

  “Is it true that Viscount Needham - in Antigua - tried to send her back? He - he didn’t love her?”

  “He told me that - in a letter. He swore he never encouraged her to - to go.”

  “What will happen now, Father - in the war?”

  “I don’t know, I still think the Americans can win. They are starting to panic. That could beat them. But Washington doesn’t look like a panicky man. He could make the difference.”

  “Anthony says Americans are cowards.”

  “Doesn’t that make you angry, Kate? You’re an American. They can talk all they want in London about English colonies. Americans are a separate people. Your people. I never tried to talk politics to you, Kate, but this goes beyond politics. Americans are fighting for their self-respect, their lands, their future - all the things the Irish have lost.”

  “You know, Father, I think you are more Irish than you realize.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “And more American.”

  “I wish - I hope that’s true.”

  For another hour they sat there talking about Ireland, England, America, the war, what these large words meant to them as human beings, what they meant to others - Anthony Skinner, Charles Skinner, Kemble. Jonathan Gifford shared memories and feelings with Kate that he had never shared with anyone before. He told her about the day his mother got up from her sickbed and cooked a big meal while his father was at the law, courts. She put it in a basket and sent him down to one of Dublin’s back alleys to give it to her brother’s family. There were ten of them living in two rooms. It was his first glimpse of the savage, demeaning poverty in which the Catholic Irish lived. He told her how strange the Americans seemed to him at first, their wildness and lack of discipline, how long it took him to realize that this was part of their freedom. Gradually that wall of discretion and diffidence which so often frustrates honest speech between parents and children dwindled into insignificance. It would never entirely disappear, of course. Between Kate and Jonathan Gifford there would always be the distance of their very different generations. But that night in the fall of 1776 Kate and her father became friends. For the first time since her mother’s death she felt she could talk to him with perfect trust.

  “I feel - like I’ve been on a long journey - and now - I’m home,” she said as she kissed him goodnight. “Not the same person. But the same home.”

  THE FOLLOWING morning Jonathan Gifford, his head aching from too much rumfustian, saw Moncrieff and his rolling wine cellar off to his regiment’s bivouac, somewhere up the New Brunswick road. He had scarcely returned to the tavern when another old friend was confronting him with a very serious expression on his face. Charles Skinner took his seat at the Squire’s table in the bay window of the taproom and asked Captain Gifford why he had changed the name of his tavern.

  “It says what I think, Charles.”

  “You are making a mistake, Gifford. It could cost you this tavern, possibly your head.”

  “Are you telling me that if the British win this war, it will be a crime
to use the word ‘liberty’ in America?”

  “I hope not. But you know as well as I do, it has become a party word, a rebel war cry.”

  “All the more reason for honest men not to abandon it.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Charles Skinner said, although it was clear that he had no enthusiasm for the political point Jonathan Gifford was making. The Squire took a formal-looking piece of parchment from the pocket of his coat. “I will thank you to post this on your tavern door.”

  It was a copy of Lord Howe’s peace proclamation.

  “Yon may tell all and sundry that I will be here each day from noon until three p.m. I have accepted Lord Howe’s request to serve as his deputy for this part of New Jersey. All those who swear the stipulated oath before me will promptly receive the King’s forgiveness and protection. I hope they know me well enough to be assured that there will be no reproaches, no reflections on anyone’s conduct if he agrees to become a peaceful citizen once more. An early peace - the earlier the better - is what we must have, Gifford. It’s our only hope.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of restoring civil government. Getting the army off our backs. I hope you will be among the first to accept this pardon, Gifford.”

  Jonathan Gifford shook his head. “In the first place, I don’t think I’ve done anything that requires a pardon. In the second place, I don’t think all the pardons in the world can get the army off our backs. The army is still in Ireland, a hundred years after they surrendered. It’ll be the same story here, I guarantee you. If Washington’s army breaks up that won’t he the end of the war. This country will be like Ireland multiplied by thirteen for the next fifty years. In the third place, I don’t think Washington’s army is going to break up. I still don’t think the British can win the war, Charles.”

  “You are trying my friendship, Gifford, by God, you are trying it to its utmost.”

  “I know I am. What are friends for, if they can’t tell each other what they think and feel?”

  “True enough. But I think you’re half mad, Gifford. I think you’ve let that son of yours destroy your judgment.”