The Heart of Liberty

by Thomas Fleming

  Anthony was wearing his green militia colonel’s coat with its abundance of gold braid. He wasted no time in getting to the point. “Why won’t you see me or answer my letters? Is it your father?”

  “My father has delivered all your letters.”

  “He’s using you, Kate, using you against me. Don’t you see how valuable, it would be politically if we married now? It would make your brother Kemble look foolish. It would squelch those people who blame me for letting you get whipped.”

  Once more Anthony’s overconfidence in his powers of persuasion and his underestimation of her intelligence were appallingly visible.

  “I have changed my mind about the Revolution, Anthony. I wish I could change yours.. When the war ends, perhaps we can decide how much our political differences matter. For now - ”

  “I was afraid your father or your brother would turn your head around, Kate. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Take my word for it. I need you now, Kate, not after the war. I want you now. How could you forget the happiness of that night in Shrewsbury, Kate? It was our wedding night.”

  Kate began to weep. She saw, felt, her old longing for this man still alive within her, beside her new repugnance. She had not abandoned her desire for him; instead, she had only managed to sequester it in an unvisited part of herself while she filled her mind with politics and philosophy and women’s rights. The old Kate was letting her know that she would not be so casually dismissed by new ideas, however interesting.

  Major Moncrieff seemed to materialize beside them. “My dear fellow,” he said, “you appear to be making this young lady cry. Please go away, or I will be forced to thrash you.”

  Anthony Skinner retreated. The next partner on Kate’s card, a lieutenant of the King’s Own, approached her with a bow as the orchestra began a menuet de la cour. He was a tall, rather ugly young man named Rawdon. He looked solemn to the point of utter dullness.

  “It’s hard to believe that these were once lively dances,” Lieutenant Rawdon said. “Minuets, I mean.” He began giving her a history of the four types of minuets which he claimed should now be classified as slow, slower, slowest, and dead. Even gavottes and allemandes had been slowed to a middle-aged pace. He said it was because royalty had taken over these dances and replaced their zest with ponderous formality.

  These were rather startling opinions from a British officer. “We only dance these things to prove we can do it,” Kate said. “Would you like to see how Americans really dance?”

  A smile leaped across Lieutenant Rawdon’s wide mouth, giving him a rather puckish look. “I. would like to see Americans do something besides shoot -at me,” be said.

  “Let us talk to old Jacquelin.”

  Jacquelin Dupuy was the best fiddler in the neighborhood. He had been recruited into the orchestra. “Jack;” Kate said to the white-haired Frenchman. “This gentleman does not believe I can dance him down in a country reel.”

  Jacquelin looked worried. “The General said ”

  “I will tend to the General,” said Lieutenant Rawdon. “Get to work, old man.”

  Old Jack stepped `to the front of the podium and struck up one of the fastest reels in his repertoire. Most of the ladies looked dismayed. With their absurdly high heads, their panoplies of hoops and stays, such violent activity was beyond them. Reels were only “danced at private homes, where women were in “undress” - without hoops. Those who tried to match Kate’s pace soon staggered off to the left and right, gasping. Red-faced colonels and puffing majors joined them with relief, aghast at how exhausting an American country dance could be. They were soon joined by spavined captains and lieutenants. In fifteen minutes Kate and Lieutenant Rawdon had the floor to themselves. They might have danced for another hour, if Major General James Grant had not intervened.

  Grant was in command at New Brunswick. He was a short squarish man with a pug nose and bulldog mouth encased in rolls of flesh. He stomped to the podium and waved Jacquelin into silence. “I thought I gave an order that we were to have none of these American dances. This stamping and jigging is not appropriate to His. Majesty’s officers.”‘

  Old Jacquelin and the rest of the orchestra seemed to think they might be shot at sunrise. They stammered out an explanation, pointing to Lieutenant Rawdon. “He what?” roared General Grant.

  He thundered down the ballroom to Rawdon. “I will see you at my headquarters tomorrow, sir. You will, I hope, explain yourself.”

  “I can explain it now, General. This American Amazon challenged me to an endurance contest. I felt the honor of the regiment, not to say the army, was at stake.”

  “Are you jesting with me, sir?”

  “Only halfheartedly, General,” murmured Rawdon.

  “Sir?” roared Grant. “I think you had better retire to your quarters.”

  “Would you care to join me, Miss Stapleton?” said Rawdon. “We Will take along your fiddler, and continue our dance there.”

  “It is the least I can do,” said Kate. She turned to-Grant. “It was entirely my fault, General.”

  “I am not interested. Mr. Whatever-his-name - will explain himself to me in the morning.”

  Rawdon strode to the podium and invited Jacquelin to join them in his quarters. The old fiddler hesitated and said he would lose his night’s wages. “I will pay you double,” Rawdon said.

  As Rawdon walked to the door with Kate, Moncrieff and most of the officers of the King’s Own Regiment blocked his path. “It’s had enough that you talk back to a major general,” Moncrieff growled. “But if you think you can walk out of here with that young lady - ”

  “I was about to invite you and the rest of the officers to join us, Major,” said Rawdon. “Why else would I hire the fiddler? In my opinion General Grant has insulted me - which he has a right to do - but he has no right to insult Miss Stapleton. As I see it, we have no alternative but to withdraw from this party in a body.”

  “I have no use for Major General Chucklehead,” Moncrieff admitted. “And there’s something in what you say about insulting – ” He looked anxiously at Kate. “Do you feel insulted?”

  “Yes!” said Kate good-humoredly. She was ready to say anything to avoid another encounter with Anthony Skinner.

  “Then go we shall.”

  Rawdon was living with two other lieutenants in a house vacated by a Whig committeeman who had fled New Brunswick ahead of the royal army. Kate retired to a bedroom and dispensed with her hoops. Rawdon stood Jacquelin on a chair and Kate danced her favorite reels with the officers taking turns for another hour or two. Rawdon and everyone else but Kate drank heroic quantities of port between dances. The house was almost as well stocked with liquor as Liberty Tavern.

  No one but Rawdon was able to match Kate’s pace, which was odd, because he looked and acted so ungainly. But when he started to dance he was all lightness and grace. “You know,” he said at the end of one reel, “I think I deserve some reward for defending your honor in the teeth of Major General Grant. I would like it now because I may be shot by tomorrow night.”

  “You shall have one,” said Kate.

  She conferred with Jacquelin and with his help began singing one of the favorite songs of the Revolution, The Banks of the Dee. The song described the plight of a lonely young lady strolling along the river yearning for her lover who had left her to go “o’er the rude roaring billows” to fight the “proud rebels” of America.. Kate sang it to Rawdon with the exaggerated gestures and expressions used by the actors in the play when they parodied the Americans.

  Everyone thought it was funny except Rawdon, who somewhat drunkenly said he would give ten years of his life if Kate would make the last stanza come true. In a sweet tenor voice he sang this reprise which told how “time and prayers” would restore the hero to his beloved.

  “The Dee then will flow, all its beauty displaying, The lambs on its banks will again be seen playing, Whilst I with my Katie am carelessly straying And tasting again all the sweets of the Dee.”


  “Oh no,” said Kate, ignoring his amorous looks, “I will only be content when you sing the American version.”

  “What’s that?” someone asked.

  “You haven’t heard it?” She signaled old Jacquelin and he took up the melody once more.

  “Twas winter and blue Tory noses were freezing

  As they marched o’er the land where they ought not to be The valiant complained of the fifers’ cursed wheezing and wished they’d remained on the banks of the Dee.

  Lead on, thou paid captain! Tramp on, thou proud minions, Thy ranks, foolish men, shall be strung like ripe onions

  For here thou hast found heads with warlike opinions On shoulders of nobles who ne’er saw the Dee.”

  The officers roared with laughter. “A hit, a good hit,” they cried. She suspected that they were really laughing at Lieutenant Rawdon. He seemed oblivious. He sat there, gazing up at Kate with a drunken smile. “I agree with every word,” he said. “Every word.”

  We must get this young lady home, or her father will challenge me, and if that happens I’m a dead man,” said Major Moncrieff.

  The officers commandeered two carriages and drove Kate home singing Yankee Doodle at the top of their voices. When they arrived, Liberty Tavern was long closed. But this did not stop them from banging on the door and roaring for the innkeeper. A bleary-eyed Barney McGovern finally opened the door, and Jonathan Gifford appeared, stuffing his shirt in his breeches, a few moments later. He invited his three a.m. visitors into the taproom and served them some of his best port - which none of them needed. Kate described Rawdon’s clash with Major General Grant, giving an excellent imitation of that pompous martinet.

  “You remember the chucklehead, Gifford,” said Moncrieff. “He attacked Fort Pitt with eight hundred men in ‘58, lost four hundred, and got himself captured.”

  “I was there, and saw him hiding under a bush,” Jonathan Gifford said. “Then he gets up and tells Parliament he can conquer America with five thousand men.”

  “Right. That is our chucklehead,” said Moncrieff. “The man’s an ass. But this fellow – ” He pointed ominously to Rawdon. “He’d better learn the difference between an ass and an ass who’s a major general. Damn me if we aren’t out hunting hay and oats every day next week, on account of you. Getting potshotted by bloody militiamen, some of them living right here in this tavern, I think.”

  “Sing us The Banks of the Dee again, Miss Kate,” said Rawdon. “So I can at least die happy.”

  Kate obliged him. Rawdon rose, swaying. “Miss Kate, I must tell you, the Dee is my native river. I was born on its banks.”

  “Alas the poor Dee,” said one of the other officers and began dragging Rawdon to the door.

  “But it’s not the Scottish Dee. It’s the one in Wales. That’s the way my luck runs.”

  They dragged Rawdon into the night, telling him he would need all the luck in the regiment to survive his interview with General Grant tomorrow. Kate stood at the door laughing and waving to them until their voices faded into the darkness.

  “You look like you had a good time,” Jonathan Gifford said.

  “I did. Thank you for making me go, Father.”

  “How would you like a rum toddy?” I’m going to fix one for myself to put me back to sleep.”

  Kate said she would welcome one. They sat and talked as friends as well as father and daughter. Kate told him her feelings about the British officers as she danced with them, how it had helped her understand some of her feelings for Anthony Skinner.

  It had also helped her understand a little more what had happened between him and her mother.

  “I think without realizing it you became an American, Father. In ten years you became an American and that made you seem dull and foolish to her. And all the time it was she who was foolish. She must have been hard to love, Father.”

  “No, it was easy at first. Later - it wasn’t all her fault, Kate. I fear I’m not - an especially loving man.”

  “You will never convince me of that after what I saw at Princeton.”

  Jonathan Gifford’s voice grew thick with emotion. “I was trying to save his life.”

  “I saw Anthony tonight.”

  “Yes?”

  “He made me very unhappy. I still felt this terrible longing for him, Father. Not as he is now but as - he - we - might have been. A regret for losing him. I’m glad I saved his life, Father. It would have been terrible if they hanged him.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve learned a lot in the last six months, Father. But I look at Aunt Caroline and I ask myself, where has all her knowledge gotten her? It didn’t help her make a happy marriage.”

  “People change, Kate. It’s hard to see into the future, especially when we make decisions that bind us for life.”

  Kate started to weep. “That is what I am afraid I have done. I still love him, Father. What am I going to do?”

  Jonathan Gifford took both her hands and held them for a long time. “I know how you feel, Kate. It isn’t easy to stop loving someone. Maybe it’s even harder to stop regretting that you gave your love to someone. We don’t have that much control over our feelings. But at your age, there is every reason to hope - to expect - that a new love will replace the old one.”

  He meditated somberly on his drink for a moment. “Before this is over, Kate, I think you may find it impossible to love Anthony Skinner.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, Kate found Kemble waiting for her at the breakfast table. A glance at his furrowed forehead told her he was spoiling for an argument. Jonathan Gifford sat tensely between. them, obviously expecting one too.

  “And how was it last night in the enemy camp? I heard those drunken louts bring you home well past midnight.”

  I had a lovely tune in the enemy camp. And they were not drunken louts, they were drunken gentlemen.”

  “Did you pick up any intelligence worth passing, on to General Washington?”

  “Oh yes,” Kate said, “I was a very diligent spy. I persuaded one of General Howe’s aides to take me on a stroll, and while he was distracted by a rebel attack I made a map of their whole camp on my instep with a piece of charcoal. But I made the mistake of dancing a country reel and the whole thing became a sticky blur.”

  “Very funny.”

  “It was a perfectly innocent evening, Kemble, I assure you,” Jonathan Gifford said.

  “I do not share your moral perception of the matter, Father.”

  “Morals have nothing to do with it.”

  “I think they have everything to do with it. How am I supposed to rally the patriots in this part of New Jersey when I have a sister who spends her nights dancing with English officers? Who’s going to trust me? Can you imagine what the Slocums will say?”

  “For the tenth or eleventh time, Kemble, I see no point in this talk of rallying the people when the British army is all around them. Let Washington take care of that in west Jersey. All you’ve done with your rallying here is infuriate the troops and encourage them to loot and burn.”

  “And for the tenth or eleventh time, I am telling you that I find this a disgusting doctrine. You have no blood relationship to this girl. If anyone is her eider in this family, I am. I forbid her to see another British officer. If she disobeys me, she may find out again how that lash feels.”

  Kemble was the complete fanatic now. Kate was stunned by his ferocity, then deeply hurt. She and Kemble had always been closer than the average brother and sister.

  “I can’t believe you would even say such a thing, Kemble,” Kate said.

  “I will not only say it, I will do it.”

  “Kemble,” Jonathan Gifford said, “until you apologize to your sister - and to me - you are not welcome at this table. From now on you will eat your meals in the tavern kitchen.”

  Kemble stalked to the door. “The less I have to do with either of you, the better it will be for me - and the Cause.”

  “You see, Father,” Kate said, “I told
you it would cause trouble.”

  “Let me worry about that,” Jonathan Gifford growled. He was finding it harder and harder to tolerate Kemble’s headstrong style. He seemed to go out of his way to pick quarrels with his father, as if he were trying to prove something to himself as much as to the Slocums and their followers.

  Relations between father and son deteriorated even more over the next two weeks as Kate slipped back into her melancholy isolation. Thomas Rawdon and several other officers of the King’s Own Regiment made repeated attempts to see her. Rawdon was particularly strenuous. He sent her bouquets of flowers, jars of perfume, a set of Chinese silk scarves, a gold locket, a silver bracelet, and a pearl necklace.

  “The fellow must be New Brunswick’s favorite customer,” Jonathan Gifford said.

  Kate returned all these gifts with polite notes of regret. Rawdon appeared at the tavern and begged to see her. Jonathan Gifford carried his note down to the residence.

  “He says he got shot at three times on the way down. He’s literally risking his life - ”

  Kate shook her head and went back to her book.

  The gunfire was, ironically, Kemble’s responsibility. Day and night he rode through the countryside urging real or potential Whigs to join the irregular war against the enemy. It was April, the trees were budding, the bushes thickening. There were hundreds of places between Amboy and New Brunswick where a man could lie by the side of the road and be invisible to an approaching horseman. One shot well placed and the British army was minus a lieutenant, a captain, a major. A company, a regiment was decapitated. Kemble had it all figured out mathematically. If every Whig in the county killed one British officer between now and June, the royal army would be a leaderless mob, ready and eager to surrender.

  The loyalists had. a reply to this guerrilla resistance. About a week after Kemble’s partisans began sniping from ambush, Jonathan Gifford was awakened by a fist pounding on the door of his residence. He looked out the second-floor window and saw that the house was surrounded by horsemen carrying pine torches.