We learned to attack with the bayonet in squads. “Always choose the man on your right. That way you know each man will be accounted for.” We learned to fight bayonet to bayonet, using blunt wooden sticks on our guns instead of the dangerous steel. When Jonathan Gifford and Barney McGovern demonstrated the rhythm of thrust and counterthrust, how to block and deflect an enemy slash, they used real bayonets. We were hypnotized by the competence with which they handled these weapons. To a casual observer they looked as though they were seriously trying to kill each other. Again and again Barney’s bayonet came within an inch of Jonathan Gifford’s flesh. Once he drove it straight at his throat. Captain Gifford drew back his head just enough to let the blade pass beneath his chin.
A woman’s cry startled us. We turned and saw Caroline Skinner standing at the park gate, her hand to her throat, as if the blade had pierced her there. For a moment we were all members of the same tableau - Caroline at the gate, we hired volunteers with our turned heads and opened mouths, Jonathan Gifford and Barney like a statue of two embattled gladiators. Caroline broke the spell by running headlong to the mansion house. Jonathan Gifford threw aside his musket and told Barney to resume training us with our wooden bayonets.
He found Caroline at the kitchen table. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t go out there. But I can’t help it. I’m - fascinated - horrified - by it all.”
Jonathan Gifford heard this as a reproof. Drenched in sweat, dirty and exhausted from the previous four grueling days, his temper was short.
“You don’t like the business of war? Does it offend you to discover what dirty work it is to turn men into soldiers? Sometimes I think that’s been the trouble with you Americans all along.”
“You Americans - ?”
“You thought it was all glorious, noble, heroic, defending the rights of man. Well, that’s how they’re defended, madam, by men who know how to use bayonets - the way I’m teaching them. If you Americans all learned that lesson five years ago this damn war would be over now.”
“Jonathan, please don’t talk that way. You Americans. It was not just the bayonet coming so close, it was the look on your face. You - you liked it”
They stood there in silence for a long time while all their selves crowded into that hot, still room - the soldier and the woman, the lover and his beloved, another man’s wife, another woman’s husband.
“I saw the man I never met, the man who - led bayonet charges. Who fought duels. I suddenly wondered if I loved him.”
“I have work to do,” Jonathan Gifford said and turned to the door. She saw she bad hurt him deeply. She flung herself against him from behind, pinning his arms.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I keep thinking of you - and Anthony. The only two people I have ever loved. Really loved. It terrifies me to think you - you may kill him. I used to be so sure I could control my feelings. But you - you have changed that. You have changed me. Please understand, Jonathan.”
She was right. He bad been enjoying this intense return to soldiering. He had been enjoying the flash of that steel bayonet an inch from his throat. The man he had tried to escape, the killer with his special blend of Irish wildness and English calculation, had been returning to life within him. But it was necessary, he told himself angrily. Necessary to let him live another few days.
“I will try - try to understand,” he said.
He left her there in the shadowed kitchen. Caroline felt bereft, as if she had lost him. Outside she beard him roaring, “All right, all right, on your feet now. Time for some work with real bayonets.”
ON THE SIXTH day, we rested. Jonathan Gifford mustered the staff of Liberty Tavern, Caroline, and Sukey to cook three days’ provisions for us. Along with salt pork, and beef, we had a supply of veal glue, an ingenious cake soup that Captain Gifford made from boiling legs of veal into a jelly, which was then laid on fresh flannel to draw out the moisture. A piece the size of a walnut, boiled in a pint of water, made a delicious strong broth.
At twilight we marched south. In his knapsack, along with his provisions, each man carried part of a scaling ladder, made by BLack Sam, then broken down to be reassembled at the right time. Jonathan Gifford rode at the head of our little column. Kemble and Thomas Rawdon and Barney McGovern strode in the front rank. By dawn we had reached the Trap Inn below Shrewsbury where Rawdon had met the men who guided him to Anthony Skinner’s camp. From there we swung west into the pines, following the slashes on the trees while Rawdon counted his paces. About halfway, Jonathan Gifford called a halt and sent Rawdon and Kemble forward as a scouting party. They got close enough to see the fort through the pines. They marked a path back to our camp by nailing small strips of white cloth to the trees every hundred paces.
Satisfied that we could advance in the dark without losing our way, Jonathan Gifford revealed his plan. We were to attack at dawn. With luck we might be able to blast a bole in the wall. Otherwise we would have to use our scaling ladders. We were to rely on the bayonet. No man was to load his musket. “I guarantee you it will save the lives of some of you. In a fight like this one, you are just as likely to get shot by your friends if everyone is blazing away.”
He drew a diagram of the fort on the ground and carefully described its layout. We were to attack their barracks. Skinner’s house was to be handled by Kemble and Rawdon.
“No man is to load his musket until he hears three blasts on my whistle,” Jonathan Gifford said. “With any luck we will not have to fire a shot. And remember. When we charge. Yell. Make them think the whole Continental army is coming after them.”
As we formed up for the march, Jonathan Gifford took Lieutenant Rawdon aside and handed him one of his dueling pistols. “You may need this when you go after Skinner in his house.”
We marched in a long, carefully planned column. Barney McGovern and three scouts led the way. Twelve men prowled the woods on each side and another carefully picked party of six formed the rear guard. Jonathan Gifford trudged in the middle of the column beside two men who were carrying a keg of gunpowder suspended from a long pole. Nearby were the men with the scaling ladders. It was a five- or six-mile march, agony for a man with a ruined knee. But Captain Gifford never broke his pace.
We arrived within striking distance of the fort at four a.m. Rawdon, Kemble, and Jonathan Gifford crept forward to study the situation. As they had hoped, the sentries had vanished from the walls. They could even hear one man snoring.
“Get the gunpowder,” Jonathan Gifford whispered.
In five minutes the barrel was deposited beside them. Carefully, silently, they rolled it to the side of the fort, then opened it and ran a fuse back into the woods. The ladder carriers were told to throw aside their burdens. They probably would not need them. The explosion would be the signal to attack.
“Remember,” Jonathan Gifford whispered, “yell.”
The night faded from the sky. A few early birds began to twitter in the trees around us. The shape of the fort became visible. “Five more minutes,” Jonathan Gifford said.
“They beat reveille early,” Rawdon said.
“Two more minutes,” Jonathan Gifford said.
He counted off the seconds, struck a match and touched the tiny flame to the train of powder. With a whoosh it raced across the twenty yards between our hiding place and the barrel. There was a flash of light and a tremendous explosion that momentarily blinded and stunned us. The fort seemed to vanish in a great gush of smoke. Jonathan Gifford was on his feet running, yes, running on that tortured leg into the smoke. Kemble and Rawdon and Barney ran beside him.
Howling a wordless war cry, we followed them. A ten-foot hole had been blown in the wall. In a moment we were on the parade ground. Skinner’s men were pouring from their barracks. Still howling, we opened into a line and charged them. Some of them fired wildly at us. Their bullets whistled harmlessly over our heads.
“My God,” one of them screamed, “they’re Continentals.”
It was a logical conclusion
. Never before in the war had militiamen relied on the bayonet with such confident ferocity. They broke and ran before we got close to them.
Rawdon and Kemble raced for Skinner’s house. He was as stunned as the rest of the garrison when the explosion flung him from his bed. But he was ready to fight. He grabbed a loaded musket from the wall and shouted to Kate. “Get under the bed.”
Kate ignored him. She knew what was happening. She ran to the window. “There are hundreds of them, Anthony. Give up.”
He ignored her and crouched in the corner to the right of the door, his musket raised. Thomas Rawdon appeared in the doorway. He had Jonathan Gifford’s pistol in one hand and a musket in his other hand.
“Dr. Murphy at your service, Skinner,” he said. “I think your best remedy is an immediate surrender.”
Rawdon was one step from eternity.
“No, Thomas, he’ll kill you,” Kate cried and flung herself across the room. She crashed into Skinner as he pulled the trigger.
Rawdon pulled back his head at Kate’s cry. The double-shotted musket blasted a hole in the wall an inch from his face, momentarily blinding him with a shower of splinters.
“Bitch,” Skinner roared and raised his musket to crush Kate’s skull.
Rawdon fired. The pistol’s bullet smashed into Skinner’s right arm. With a howl of pain and rage he dropped his gun, grabbed Kate by the front of her dress, and hurled her at Rawdon like a projectile. As they tumbled against the wall, he raced past them into the outer room. There he found Kemble, who wasted no time on invitations to surrender. He fired his musket from the hip and another bullet shattered Skinner’s right arm. But the recoil of the musket sent Kemble reeling. Skinner got past him and stumbled onto the parade ground.
There he saw at a glance that his dream of conquering New Jersey was over. Most of his men were running or surrendering. A few still fought with an outlaw’s desperation, but there was no hope of organizing them to make a stand. They were going down in a series of short, nasty encounters with our bayonets. In the center of the parade ground Jonathan Gifford calmly directed squads to pursue fugitives or attack pockets of resistance.
“GIFFORD,” Anthony screamed. He raised his left arm, his fist clenched. “I WILL EVEN THE SCORE, GIFFORD.”
“Surrender, Anthony,” Jonathan Gifford said, drawing a pistol from his belt and walking toward him.
“Never,” Skinner said and ran for the hole in the wall. Kemble stumbled out of the house. “Shoot the bastard,” he roared.
Jonathan Gifford leveled his pistol at Anthony Skinner’s back. But he could not pull the trigger. Those words in the manor kitchen, that look of reproach on Caroline’s face had forever stilled the wildness, the battle fury that had once made him fearful, even loathsome to himself. He remembered instead Caroline’s anguish at the thought of him killing her son. He could never face her with Anthony Skinner’s blood on his hands. He lowered his pistol.
“Let him go. I don’t think he’ll do much more harm.”
“He will do harm as long as he lives,” Kemble said.
It was impossible to explain to Kemble now. Jonathan Gifford returned his attention to the battle, which was rapidly ending. Most of the garrison had surrendered. A few holdouts in the barracks were soon persuaded to join them by a promise of decent terms. We had killed or badly wounded a dozen of them. Our only casualty was a man wounded in the leg.
Thomas Rawdon reported Kate was weak but basically healthy. Jonathan Gifford decided to send her and the wounded home immediately. He sent Kemble and twenty-five men with them. He gave Kate a note to Caroline, in which he tersely told her of the easy victory, assuring her that he and everyone else in the family were unscathed. He ended with: “A.S. is not among the prisoners. He escaped.”
The rest of us stayed to demolish the fort, a job that took two days. We marched home hoping to hear Anthony Skinner had been captured on the run and was safely incarcerated in a local jail. We were greeted by the neighborhood at Liberty Tavern as conquering heroes - but no one had seen a trace of Skinner. Patrols had been sent along the shoreline and a special watch kept on the Shrewsbury, where he was known to have many friends. Tavern keepers were given his description. Daniel Slocum, trying to horn in on our little triumph, offered a reward of $500 for his capture.
Then came news from the South - news of the possibility of a much bigger victory. Instead of retreating from Virginia to the security of their bases in South Carolina, the British had fallen back to the little tobacco port of Yorktown, confident that their fleet could waft them from Washington’s grasp, if his attacking army looked too formidable. But a French fleet appeared from the West Indies to blockade the Chesapeake while Washington seized the head of the Yorktown peninsula, cutting off all hope of overland escape. The British were in a sack, and if the French persevered for once, instead of raising our hopes and then sailing away, we had an excellent chance of bagging an entire British army.
Jonathan Gifford was as exultant as the rest of us. He left us studying his maps on the taproom’s big corner table, called for his chaise, and rode over to tell the news to Caroline. It was a warm day in late September. Everywhere he looked, Captain Gifford seemed to see a blooming reflection of his happiness. For the first time there was hope, genuine hope that the war might end soon.
In the entrance hall he greeted Caroline with a kiss so hearty it knocked the lace cap off her head.
“What in the world, Jonathan?” she said. She hastily withdrew from his arms, picked up her cap, and fussed with the ribbon. She seemed as diffident and strange as if he had kissed her with her husband in the next room.
“My dearest, I have the most amazing news – ” He told her and found himself the amazed one. She barely reacted to it.
“Caroline - what is the matter? Are you still hurt by – ” She shook her head. “That was my fault, not yours.”
“What is it then?”
“I will tell you - tomorrow.”
“I want to know now. Are you thinking that when the war is over - ?”
“I will tell you tomorrow, Jonathan.”
“You are treating me like a child.”
“I am not. Please go and tomorrow - ”
“I will have an answer now.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “You will hate me.”
The words filled him with dread. What was happening? Could someone with so much good sense go mad without warning? All his doubts and fears about women swarmed down his nerves.
“You’ve heard the news already. Your first thought - if the war ends - was facing Mr. Skinner. There is no need to worry about that, my dearest I’ve talked to Governor Livingston. He tells me Congress is resolved no matter what to bar the loyalists forever. It’s a sad fate, but they can hope for compensation from the King.”
“No, Jonathan, no. That isn’t it.” She seized his right hand for a moment in her two bands. “I cannot keep it from you. Come upstairs.”
He half-knew, as they mounted that graceful, curving staircase, what he would find. She opened her bedroom door. There on the white sheets where they had made love so often in the last years lay Anthony Skinner. He was covered with mud and blood and in a half-conscious stupor, his eyes glazed with fever. He was too weak to raise his head. He tried to sit up and fell back gasping.
“Mother - you promised - ” he croaked. “You promised. Why did you? Bastard will sell me - wants to hang me.”
“No, no, Anthony,” Caroline said. “He won’t betray you. You won’t, will you, Jonathan?”
Captain Gifford turned his back and walked out of the room. Caroline followed him into the hall, closing the bedroom door behind her.
“He came to the back door last night. He hid first with some loyalists in Shrewsbury but he heard them talking about how much money they could get by betraying him. He came here because there was no one else he could trust. His right arm is black and swollen twice its size.”
“You should have sent him away.”
“Jonathan, I couldn’t. He was sick, dying in front of my eyes.”
“You should have sent him away. This is a war. He is an enemy.”
“He is still part of my family,” Caroline Skinner said. “I can’t bear to think of myself as one of those who answers hate for hate. Perhaps that’s a woman’s weakness.”
He waved the self-accusation aside. She had long since dispelled those old ideas from his mind.
“You must leave here this instant. You never saw him,” she said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Has Sukey seen him?”
“No. She was visiting friends of the Talbot farm last night. I sent her to Brunswick to buy salt and some other things early this morning. She will be gone all day.”
He must get him out of this house and on his way to New York.”
“I have already taken care of that.”
“How?”
“I went to the Bellowses’. Anthony told me they would know where to find help. There will be a wagon here at dusk. They will take him to Shoal Harbor where a boat will be waiting.”
“Caroline. Don’t you see - you’ve put yourself in their power? You can’t trust them. Especially now when it looks like the war may end. Why didn’t you send for me, trust me?”
“Because I was afraid of what I saw on your face when you were teaching the men to use the bayonet. Afraid of what you said in the kitchen.”
The Heart of Liberty Page 51
