The Heart of Liberty

by Thomas Fleming

  The daring of the idea appealed to Kemble. “Where shall I come from?”

  “Galway Town. Beckwith has never been west of Dublin. You were a mate aboard one of the supply ships that just sailed for home. You took sick and the captain left you on shore, damn the heartless bastard.”

  “All right,” Kemble said.

  So they began a week of consummate subterfuge. Major Beckwith accepted Margaret’s story with a shrug and a nod of acquiescence. Kemble spent the week living on fresh meat and milk from the Major’s larder. Each midnight, Margaret crept up the stairs to his third-floor room and held him in her-arms. He was too sick to do more than promise an early return to their ardent nights at Liberty Tavern. By the end of the week, his pulse was normal and he was well enough to spend most of the day out of bed. Margaret seemed more troubled than pleased by this recovery. She caressed his cheek with her delicate hand.

  “I feel a doom on us. I don’t know what it is. But I feel it.”

  She could find out nothing from Beckwith. Officers who visited made passing remarks about “action” and “drubbing the rebels.” An American loyalist came to the house early one morning and argued with Beckwith for over an hour. Listening at the door, Margaret could only hear snatches of the conversation. “The people are demanding action,” the loyalist said. General von Knyphausen, the Hessian officer whom Beckwith served as aide, could become “the man who conquered America.”

  By now Kemble was strong enough to walk a half mile of counted paces up and down his room each day. But Margaret preferred to let Major Beckwith think he was still sick. It avoided the problem of a face-to-face meeting with the Major, where embarrassing questions might be accidentally asked. This possibility prompted Kemble to give some thought to a hasty departure. He had Margaret bring him fifty feet of rope from the barn.

  “I may have to leave some night when your friend is entertaining.”

  “But will it support two of us?” Margaret said playfully. “If I have anything to say about it, you shall not leave without me.”

  The following day, the third of June, Margaret was in the front hall arranging some flowers in a vase when the door opened. There stood Major Beckwith and Brigadier General James Pattison, who was in charge of the military police in New York. Behind them was a squad of soldiers with fixed bayonets.

  She greeted the General as an old acquaintance - he was an occasional dinner guest. His reply was a frown. “This is not a social call, my dear girl. We are here to arrest a spy.”

  In that terrible moment all the alternatives must have thundered in Margaret O’Hara’s mind. She could pretend ignorance, knowing that Kemble would lie to protect her until the moment of his death. She could tell part of the truth and plead for mercy, sobbing that she only thought she had been helping a sick young man she had met in New Jersey. Irish stupidity, woman’s weakness would be her whines. But she chose a third way, a way that must have been filled with special terror for her, having seen two brothers die on the gallows. She whirled and raced to the stairs.

  “Kemble! They are coming for you! Run, my love, my love, my Love! Run!”

  With a growl of rage, Beckwith dragged her from the stairs and smashed her in the mouth. “You Irish bitch,” he snarled.

  “Up the stairs,” Pattison was roaring to the soldiers. “Take him alive if you can.”

  In his room, Kemble had been reading a copy of the extraordinary Gazette which the British had just published announcing the fall of Charleston. He was filled with gloom. Margaret O’Hara’s cry lifted him from his chair and set his mind on fire. He understood what had happened, what she had done. Should he join her? Meet the soldiers with a knife and pistol in hand?

  No. What he knew, what he might yet find. out about the British invasion of New Jersey was too important. A deep infusion of his father’s realism steadied his careening soul. He flung open his window, seized the escape rope and dropped it down the side of the house. But it was still daylight. He had no hope of descending unseen. Pursuit in New York’s streets crowded with off-duty soldiers would be brutally brief.

  His racing mind saw only one totally daring possibility. He ripped off his red wig and mustache and flung them on the bed. He locked the door and stepped into the room’s clothes cupboard. In it were an old uniform or two that belonged to Beckwith and three or four dresses of discarded mistresses. He left the double doors slightly ajar. In a moment the British soldiers were pounding on the door of the room. They smashed at the lock with the butts of their muskets. The wood splintered and they rushed inside, bayonets ready.

  “The devil,” swore the Lieutenant in command. “He’s gone out the window.”

  “Look ‘ere on the bed. A red wig,” said one of the soldiers. “His disguise.”.

  The Lieutenant peered out the window. “Now we don’t even know what the bastard looks like. Ah! I see a fellow skulking about a half block off. That may be him. Quick, downstairs and make that Irish bitch tell us - ”

  Their feet thumped on the stairs. The last soldier out of the room paused in the doorway and eyed the clothes cupboard. With a quick look over his shoulder to make sure the Lieutenant was gone, he walked softly over to it, opened one door, and whipped out a dress. His hand came within six inches of Kemble’s face. Stuffing the dress under his coat, he hurried after his fellows.

  Through the open door Kemble heard them asking Margaret O’Hara what he looked like.

  “I will tell you nothing, you goddamn English buggers.”

  The sound of blows. A scream of pain. Then a wail that made sweat spring out all over Kemble’s body. He had never heard an Irish keen before. A wild, wordless lament filled the house. Margaret was weeping for herself, for their love. It took all the strength of Kemble’s formidable will to remain silent in the clothes cupboard.

  The keening ceased abruptly. Doors slammed. The house was silent. There was not even a sound in the kitchen. The Negro cook must have been out marketing. Kemble emerged from the cupboard, pulled off his boots and breeches, and donned one of the dresses he found there, a plain brown taffeta garment. He ripped the skirt in one or two places. In a second-floor cupboard he found a wide flat sun hat with a hood that draped the back of his neck and tied beneath his chin. He looked unbelievably grotesque - the most unfeminine creature ever created. In the kitchen he added to this impression by rubbing fireplace soot on his face and hands. Then he crept under the back porch and lay there thinking of Margaret with mounting misery until darkness fell.

  In twenty minutes of rapid walking, Kemble reached Horace Monaghan’s shop. It was dark. But a light glowed on the second floor. Kemble went around to the rear, hiked his skirts to his waist, and climbed some thick trailing vines to a second-floor window. It was open. Knife in his mouth, he came into the room like a pirate. Monaghan heard him and screamed once. He did not scream again because Kemble had the knife at his throat.

  “They came for me, Monaghan. They took Margaret O’Hara away. It was you who told them.”

  The little Irishman’s eyes bulged with tenor. “Sure, I knew you’d get away. It was only the girl I was giving up. What’s she to you? An Irish whore she was, selling her immortal soul for British suppers.”

  “You miserable bastard,” Kemble said and smashed him in the mouth with the back of his hand.

  “And a Catholic,” mumbled Monaghan, “an Irish Catholic.”

  “I should kill you, Monaghan. I should cut your throat.”

  “They picked me up on suspicion. I had to tell them something to set me right. I swear I didn’t know you were there. I only found out when they pulled me downtown not an hour ago to ask what you looked like. I said I’d never heard of you. The girl was there. She said nothing. There was death on her face. Bloody. They swung a noose in front of me. I’m not a brave man.”

  “I won’t kill you, Monaghan, if you can find out for me within twenty-four hours the day they are coming into New Jersey. If you don’t find it I will come back and kill you, even if there’s
a regiment of British soldiers guarding you. I’ll get past them using a disguise. You’ll never suspect a thing until the knife is in your guts.”

  “How will I get word to you? They may set a watch on me.”

  “I will come to you. In the meantime I will leave word with other friends in this city. If they arrest me in or near this shop, you’re a dead man.”

  “You have nothing to fear from me. I swear – ”

  “Shut up and get busy. Get on your hat and start visiting taverns. Strike up a conversation with every officer you recognize. Pay special attention to the ones who are drunk.”

  Kemble took enough money from Monaghan to buy some food. The next day was the King’s birthday. Salutes thundered from the forts and the warships in the harbor. A stream of elegantly dressed gentlemen and officers headed for Sam Francis’s tavern at three o’clock for a formal banquet. Beribboned and belaced generals and their aides predominated, of course. It was a gorgeous demonstration of British opulence. Kemble thought about the starving tenants in their Irish huts, the war-weary small farmers in New Jersey, and vowed he would defeat this monstrous imperial arrogance that so casually ground innocent victims beneath its feet. Over and over again he repeated like a man obsessed, “In the name of Margaret O’Hara, in the name of Margaret O’Hara.” It was his tragic banner, his private emblem.

  That night he returned to Horace Monaghan’s shop the same way - through the second-floor window. Monaghan was beside himself with fear. “You should have come to the door,” he wailed.

  “What have you found out?”

  “In a day or two or three at most. I heard it from a major at the Anchor last night and from a colonel when I was fitting him today.”

  “Not good enough. We have to know the exact day. Militia won’t turn out to stand guard. They will go home and refuse to come out at the real alarm.” Kemble took out his knife. “I’m going to cut your throat, Monaghan. You deserve it.”

  “No. No. Give me another day. I swear I’ll find out.”

  “And how they are coming? We must know that too. Is it Amboy or Elizabethtown?”

  For another day Kemble wandered New York waiting and watching. He saw ominous signs of military preparations. Dozens of sloops sailed down the East and Hudson rivers to dock near the Battery. Army wagons rumbled through the streets to the wharves and men loaded dozens of barrels of powder, cannon, food onto the boats.

  That night Monaghan had the information. “Tomorrow night, weather permitting. I don’t know where they are to land. I could only ask such a question under risk of my head.”

  “How can I get off this island?”

  “You don’t have a hope. They are guarding every foot of the shore. The usual routes - forget them.”

  “Who told you it was tomorrow night?”

  “Two colonels. They were gabbing away as if I had no ears. And Beckwith, no less. He came to thank me for - the girl.”

  Monaghan’s voice dwindled. The look on Kemble’s face made him realize he had said the wrong thing.

  “What are they doing to her?”

  “They’re not hangin’ her. Beckwith was for it, but others thought it would trouble the Irish soldiers in the regiments. So they’re sending her to the West Indies - for the troops there.”

  “Monaghan,” Kemble said, “if I die and find my soul in hell, my only consolation will be seeing you there.”

  “Now what do you mean by that? I don’t know any man who tries harder to be a good honest Christian. Not a man do I cheat. I stay away from loose women. I drink little if any - ”

  Kemble was gone, leaving Monaghan to whine his Pharisee’s lament into the night.

  A tour of New York Island’s shores soon convinced Kemble that Monaghan was right. Every cove was guarded by a detachment of loyalists. At one of them he was startled to hear a familiar voice denouncing the British army. “Here we sit in the mud like so many lackeys while they go marching off to glory. Goddamn them all, I say, from generals to privates.” It was Anthony Skinner.

  The night drained into the dawn with Kemble still in New York. Bands playing, regiments swung down the Broadway from their camps outside the city. There was no longer any question that the army was assembling. Staten Island became Kemble’s only hope. If he got there, he could cross it on foot and swim the narrow channel to the Jersey shore at Elizabethtown. He loitered at the lower wharves and finally approached a British sentry. In simpering broken English, he managed to convince the redcoat that he was the wife of a soldier in the Von Lossburg Regiment.

  “Von Lossburg whops-bond?” he said over and over again, pointing to Staten Island and giggling idiotically.

  The sentry told him (her) that he (she) was a piece of German trash if he ever saw one. Kemble smiled and nodded as if he (she) thought it was a compliment. The bored sentry pointed to the outermost sloop on the wharf. “Get in that boat there.”

  The sloop was a guard boat which made regular trips about New York Harbor with orders, prisoners, supplies to the various posts. The captain was obviously used to transporting German soldiers and their wives and paid no attention to Kemble. Within two hours he was on Staten Island. It took him another three hours to trudge six miles to the swampy shore opposite New Jersey. He found the narrow channel called Arthur Kill thick with British patrol boats. He had to wait until dark to swim it. The water was cold and the current was dangerously strong. By the time Kemble crawled into the marsh grass on Elizabethtown Point he was exhausted. It took him a half-hour to find the strength to stumble another mile to the village. At a crossroads on the outskirts he was challenged by a nervous sentry. After a tense dialogue about the password, Kemble walked toward him with his hands up, repeating “American - friend, American - friend.”

  In five minutes, he was face to face with General William Maxwell, commander of the New Jersey brigade of the Continental army. They were guarding the shore around Elizabethtown against British and Tory raiders. Maxwell’s fondness for the bottle had not declined since his visit to Liberty Tavern in 1776. His nose, his cheeks were the color of ripe cherries. But his tongue was blunter than ever. His face grew dour as Kemble told him about the imminent British invasion.

  “They won’t bring less than six thousand men. Our brigade doesn’t have six hundred, scattered from here to Newark. If we don’t get some help from the militia, the bastards will be eating dinner at Washington’s table in Morristown tomorrow night, and we will be across the Delaware - what’s left of us - back where we were in 76.”

  Maxwell glowered at Kemble. “Where are you from?”

  Kemble told him. The Scotsman grunted sarcastically. “One of Slocum’s heroes. Where would we be if every county had a law forbidding their militia to leave home?”

  “General Slocum got that damn law passed for personal reasons,” Kemble said. “Nobody asked him to do it.”

  “Can you get them to come up here?”

  “Give me a horse. If I can’t, I’ll find someone who can.”

  “Talk to Gifford at Liberty Tavern. He’s a good man.”

  Kemble reached Liberty Tavern about 2 a.m. He was almost as spent as the half-starved army nag he was riding. He awoke Jonathan Gifford and told him about Margaret O’Hara’s capture and the British invasion. He brushed aside his father’s sympathy. “We can do nothing for her,” he said. “Except revenge her. How can we get the men to turn out?”

  Captain Gifford thought about it for a moment. “Tell them what Maxwell said to you. Tell them that the army considers Monmouth men a bunch of cowards because they won’t leave their county to fight.”

  “Will you do it?”

  Jonathan Gifford shook his head. “I’ll come. But you are the only one who can talk to them.”

  “They will laugh in my face.”

  “Not if you tell them what’s at stake. No speeches. Just the simple truth.”

  He poured Kemble a drink of French brandy. “Take a good stiff one. Then let’s go to work.”

  All night
Kemble and his father rode from farm to farm challenging our militiamen. Kemble made no speeches about the glorious Cause and the rights of man. He simply told them what Maxwell had said about Monmouth men, and what would happen if the British got across the Rahway River and through the Watchung passes.

  “They’ll smash Washington and take New Jersey. I’m going to fight them. Will you come with me?” he said.

  This was not the febrile orator who led boys to their deaths at Monmouth. At dawn, no less than three hundred men gathered in front of Liberty Tavern. Jonathan Gifford rolled out two barrels of rum from his cellar and we filled our canteens.

  As our drums beat and our fifes began to swirl, the boom of a distant cannon reached our ears. On the Watchung Mountains fire signals blazed into the dawn, summoning militia from Essex, Middlesex, Morris, and Somerset counties. A horseman clattered into the tavern yard. An angry General Slocum demanded to know what the hell was happening.

  “Who called out the regiment without my orders?” shouted the General.

  “I did,” Kemble said. While we stood there listening, Kemble repeated General Maxwell’s insult. “I hope you’ll come with us, General, and help us show the rest of the country we are not afraid to fight.”

  Slocum could only mumble that he was ready to march.

  “We will take no orders from that son of a bitch,” shouted Samson Tucker from the middle ranks of the regiment.

  “Who said that?” Slocum roared. “I will stand him up against the wall and shoot him.”

  “Try it,” shouted another voice in the rear ranks. “We’ll see who gets shot.”

  “We want Captain Gifford to command us,” I shouted.

  “Aye, Gifford, Gifford,” shouted enough voices to compose a chorus. “Let’s elect him colonel.”

  Jonathan Gifford shook his head. “A one-legged colonel is worse than none at all. Kemble will ask General Maxwell for a regular officer to command you.”

  “I will be happy to take his advice,” said Slocum in a voice that sounded as if someone had a hand around his windpipe.