“So, it is a horse you need.” Oort leaned back in his chair. “I must say, with what you have said, and not said, I do not feel I can be confident about getting the horse back.”
“I can pay you for the horse,” Bel put in.
Again, Oort tensed as she spoke. “Why so quick to offer money when there was a chance of it being freely given?”
“Because there is no time for endless conversation and polite phrases.” Every word sounded as though it had been bitten off as short as possible. “I agree, also, that there is little chance of the horse returning. You are well off, no doubt, but that would be asking a lot.”
So it was that they selected a horse from Oort’s barn, not his best horse by far, but a serviceable mare with white splotches across a light brown coat. The price was not as much as Bel could have paid and probably less than the horse would have commanded in town, especially with the saddle and harness, but all agreed it was fair. By the time it was done, though, the sun was dipping toward the western horizon. Still, although Oort offered to put them up for the night, Bel was insistent about moving on.
Once they had put Oort’s farm behind them, Bel’s first words were biting. “I know that I’m a girl where people would look to see a man. I do not need you making jokes about it.”
“I am sorry,” Hal said. He meant it, too. “I said what I did because Oort was getting tense about you. I wanted to relax him, but I am sorry.”
Bel ignored the apology. “I want to cross the river and head north on the west bank of the Hudson before we stop for the night.”
“How long is this going to take?”
“Three days. Belisarius is fit; I could make it, maybe, in two, but that children’s pet you’re riding won’t stand a pace like that.”
Bel fell silent again after that. They crossed the wooden bridge at Spuyten Duyvil and found the dock for the ferry a little further north on the road. There, Bel spoke only to pay for the passage. Once on the west bank, they headed north, again in silence. Finally, with the dusk gathering, Bel spoke up.
“We will camp up there.” She pointed ahead and to the left, where a grove of oak trees stood just west of the road. “It will be a cold camp, no fire that might attract unwanted guests. I’ll stand watch for most of the night. I just need a couple of hours from you before dawn.”
At the mention of sleep, Hal felt his exhaustion. He could not remember when he had last had a full night’s sleep. Still, it was only fair that they take equal watches. “I’ll split the hours evenly with you. I can do it.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” Bel answered. “I never sleep much anyway. I might as well watch.” She paused and looked away from him. “Hal, I am sorry for my words and deeds earlier today. They were intemperate.”
Hal struggled to find words for a response, but it would have been futile even had he found them. Bel spurred Belisarius ahead toward the grove and all he saw was her back.
They were up with the morning light, breakfast a few bites of hardtack taken from Bel’s bag. The road was quiet at that early hour, as quiet as the girl. Was it possible that they would ride one hundred and fifty miles without another word? Hal began to think so.
“Tell me about this Eugen Verplanck,” he said, looking for some way to break the silence. “He’s a general in the Provi army. Oort thinks he has had enough of them, but do we really know that? What makes you so sure he will be on your side?”
For a while, there was no response. Then, when Hal had given up on getting an answer, Bel spoke up. “We have been in communication with him for some time. He knows the Dutch need to live with the English, but he has seen that the Provis believe only in domination, whatever their earlier words or promises. He will fight for us.”
“You’re sure? We could be riding into a trap.”
“Where do you think we sent those rifles we took from you at Nieuwmarkt?” There was heat in Bel’s words, but Hal was glad enough to hear something other than an emotionless answer. “If this is a trap, the whole revolt is doomed. But it isn’t.” Was she trying to convince Hal or herself?
No sooner had that conversation ended than horsemen appeared to the north, singly or in small groups, all of them traveling south. As the day went by, men on foot appeared, also hurrying south. Behind them were family groups with oxcarts and wagons, piled high with belongings and children. The traffic became thick enough to slow them down, forcing them to thread their way around wagons and farm animals. No one was headed north except Hal and Bel.
The flood of people was enough to break Bel out of her brooding. As they went, she tried to ask people what had put them on the road. The news, scant and imprecise, was not encouraging.
“The Provi army is on the road to the north,” said one man. “They’re stealing everything not locked down or taken away.”
“It’s the French,” said another. “They’ve beaten Verplanck at Fort Orange and are taking all the highlands.”
“It’s Verplanck,” said a third. “He’s broken out of Fort Orange and has sworn to re-take Nieuw Amsterdam for the Provis.”
The only thing all could agree on was that there had been fighting and there was going to be more. None of them wanted to be around when the next battle took place.
“I can’t blame them,” Hal said. “I wouldn’t want to be in the middle of a war. Certainly not with my family.”
“I don’t blame them either,” Bel said. “This is concerning, though. Something has gone wrong. There shouldn’t be fighting here. We need to get to Verplanck and we are not going to do it pushing through all these folk on the road.”
The land to the west opened up, flat enough to get away from the road and allow them to push the horses for more speed. It became clear almost immediately that Bel’s initial judgment of Hal’s mount was correct. The mare could not go much faster than she had been going on the road. By late afternoon, there was thunder from the north.
“Wonderful,” Hal said. “All we need is to have to do this in the rain. Although, those clouds don’t look threatening at all.” He gazed at the high cirrus clouds that stretched away to the north. Even at the horizon, there was no sign of the thick gray ones that meant rain.
“It’s not thunder,” Bel said, “that’s cannon. I just don’t know how far away. Could be twenty miles, could be fifty.”
Hal brought his horse even with hers. “Any idea who’s fighting?”
“No. We need to get there to find out, and that’s what I mean to do. We’ll have to keep going into the night, not much rest for us or the horses. Just pray yours doesn’t give up the ghost.”
The cannon fire dwindled toward evening and stopped once it was dark. True to her word, Bel did not call a halt until the moon was high in the sky. That gave them a few hours’ sleep before they were back in the saddle with the early light. Ominously, by midmorning the traffic on the road had almost disappeared. All that was left was the debris from the passage of a herd of people. There were books on the ground, pages fluttering in the breeze, a broken chest, one leg snapped off, scattered trousers and dresses, farm tools. Whatever had fallen stayed where it had landed, its owners too fearful, or in too much of a rush, to pick it up. Scavengers would get to it eventually, but for now, even they were missing. With his stomach in a knot, Hal pushed his mare to keep up with Belisarius as they went north.
They came upon the field suddenly. One minute they were trotting toward the crest of a small hill, the road and surroundings the same as they had been for the past few miles, the next, they were at the crest, the field of battle spread out before them. It was marked by shattered wagons and toppled cannon, but mostly by the bodies of men. Corpses lay, singly, in clumps and in lines, from the east, where the Hudson lay, to beyond their field of view in the west. They littered the ground heavily in front of a slope to the east, on a few hills to the west, and on both sides of the road.
“Christ.” Hal followed the word with a long exhalation. None of the fighting he had seen had left anythi
ng like this. “So, this is what we heard. What happened here? How many dead?”
“Two armies fought,” Bel answered. “There must be more than two thousand dead. Maybe much more, we’re not seeing the whole field. Come on, we need to see this.” She led the way down the gentle slope to the killing field.
The battlefield was a scene from the circles of hell, not brought to life—very little lived across those blasted acres save the crows—but brought to reality. The ground was churned mud and furrowed soil. Little puddles collected in the hollows, some of scummy water, others of clotted blood. Trees were stripped of bark, their lower branches leafless while the upper reaches appeared untouched. The bright sun of an early March spring that had warmed their ride the past two days was also warm enough to hasten decomposition. Bodies bloated in their uniforms, especially the gutshot ones, like plump sausages straining their skins. They stared sightlessly at the sky above, or the ground beneath; swollen tongues thrust out through silent mouths in blackened faces. Their stench hung over the battlefield like a miasma no wind could disperse. It clogged the nostrils, forced its way down the throat, and made Hal’s stomach twist into knots that threatened to erupt with vomit.
It took no more than five minutes for Hal to conclude that he had seen enough. He could not leave, though, while Bel was there. She seemed in no hurry, picking her way from one clump of bodies to another, inspecting their uniforms and the way they lay. Her one concession to the stink was her scarf, wrapped tightly over her nose.
At last, Hal could take it no more. “Bel, can’t we get out of here? Whatever you’re looking for, it’s not here. There’s nothing left to find.”
“Not so,” she replied. “We need to know what happened here. I’m sorry I’m so slow. This is the first battlefield that I have seen.”
“How much can you get from a field of dead men?”
“Enough.” Bel straightened up, weariness evident in the way she arched her back, even if she kept it from her voice. “Verplanck fought the Provis here.” She swept her arm across the bodies around her feet. “These men are from the Seventy-first Highlanders. That regiment is loyal to the Provis, or so we believe. Same for the Twenty-first New Nassau we saw to the left. Both units are from the Army of Northern Nassau.” She pointed at a different uniform on the men to the right. “These are militia with the Seventy-first. Militia units do not appear like this,” she snapped her fingers, “when called. This move was planned in advance. I don’t know why this army was here, but this means it cannot be moving to threaten Nieuw Amsterdam as we had feared. We have figured wrong on many things. I see very few from Verplanck’s regiments and where it looks like they should be, it appears that bodies were removed. And, look at this.”
She climbed a low hillock around which the dead of the Seventy-first Highlanders were thick. At the top was a large, freshly dug grave. A small one stood to the side with a crude wooden cross atop it. RIP/RIV Gen. Harry Blackburn was marked in black on the crosspiece.
“RIV?” asked Hal.
“Dutch. Rust in vrede. Rest in peace.” Bel sighed. “This is big news, both good and bad.”
“All right.” Hal tried to tell himself that the air was clearer on the top of the little hillock. “What is the news you are reading in all of this?”
“You don’t see many of Verplanck’s men among the dead.” Bel’s voice was muffled by the scarf, so that Hal had to strain to hear it. “That means he won, held the field to bury his dead, mostly, and take away his wounded. He didn’t stay long enough to bother with the Provis. This confirms it.” She pointed to the small grave. “General Blackburn was one of Verplanck’s best. Maybe an experienced soldier could look at this and tell you how he came to be here and what he did; I can’t.” She looked down at the dead Provis. “I can tell you that the Highlanders won’t be worth much for some time. But we lost Blackburn. That’s more than just losing a good general. He was one of the few, very few, who had respect from both the English and the Dutch. This will make it even more difficult for Verplanck.”
Hal thought the situation could hardly be more difficult, but he kept that thought to himself. “If Verplanck won, as you say, then where did he go? And where are the Provis? They can’t all be dead.”
“No, I’m sure not, as much as I might wish it so. Verplanck would have come from the north, from Fort Orange, so the Provis could not have gone that way. I doubt they went east. The Hudson is there and they just lost a battle. They must have withdrawn to the west. That’s the only way we would not have seen them. Verplanck either withdrew to Fort Orange or followed them to the west. I don’t know why either army was here, so I can’t tell you now which way he would have gone. It won’t be too hard to find out, though. Armies do not leave a battlefield on tiptoe.”
In fact, they found a trail leading southwest easily. The ground was marked with the wheels of wagons and artillery, the hooves of horses and the boots of men, all pressed one on top of the other so as to stamp a broad road into the earth. If that was not enough spoor to follow, the path was littered with the detritus of an army on the march. Cast-off bedding, broken backpacks, and empty cartridge boxes served as trail markers. There was an abandoned wagon, its axle broken. A little farther, a horse lay dead. Mercifully, Hal saw no more dead men. Bel took that as a good sign. The army was in good order after the battle.
Bel called a halt as soon as the light failed. She did not want to risk blundering into the rear guard or skirmishers in the dark. Despite the army’s head start, she said, two on horseback would have no trouble catching up to an army hauling supply wagons and artillery. It would be a cold camp again, though. They were close enough to the army’s rear that a fire might attract unwanted attention. Fortunately, the same warm spell that had turned the battlefield into a fetid cesspool made a night in the open without a fire more tolerable.
Indeed, they had traveled only a short distance from their campsite the next morning when Hal and Bel could see the long column of the army stretched out ahead of them. With a shout, Bel spurred Belisarius into a full gallop. Hal’s horse followed, more of its own inclination than Hal’s. Hal clung to the saddle and reins and let it run.
At their approach, four horsemen peeled away from the main body and galloped back in their direction. They blocked the path and waited for Hal and Bel, their faces hard, their uniforms dirty, torn and bloodstained. Two held pistols at the ready, a third drew his saber.
“Halt!” The challenge came from the one who had not drawn a weapon.
Bel reined in her horse abruptly. Hal’s slewed sideways but at least came to a stop at a safe distance from the troopers.
“My name is Bel.” Her voice carried easily across the distance between them. “We have an important message from Nieuw Amsterdam for General Eugen Verplanck.”
“Hand it over and we will take it to him,” said the one who had spoken before.
“It is not written.”
The man’s face could not have hardened further, but his eyes narrowed. He made an abrupt hand signal to the trooper next to him. Immediately, that man turned his horse and galloped back toward the main body of the army. No further words were exchanged. The five of them merely sat on their horses, watching each other.
The tableau was broken by the return of the fourth trooper, with another man galloping alongside. This man was younger; his uniform was clean and he wore the badges of an officer. He took a close look at Bel, then walked his horse over to where she and Hal waited.
“I am Captain Michiels of General Verplanck’s staff. Your description is known to the general.”
Bel nodded.
“Will you give the message to me?”
“No.”
Michiels did not hesitate; indeed it seemed that he expected the refusal. “Come along with me, then,” he said. “We will see what the general makes of it.”
Eugen Verplanck had made his headquarters in a handsome, two-story farmhouse along the main axis of his army’s advance. Men loitered on the porch
to enjoy the shade under the overhanging roof. To the left of the main entrance, officers were gathered in what had been the dining room of the house. Maps covered the table; all the chairs had been pulled out and stacked in the hallway. Of the house’s usual inhabitants, there was no sign. They might have fled at the army’s approach or be cowering in an upstairs room. The men clustered around the map in the dining room reminded Hal of the scene in Harmsworth’s old office earlier, where Fons ten Eyck had been the leader. The conversation stopped when Michiels led them into the room.
Eugen Verplanck was a tall man with a spare frame, his heavy orange coat hanging loosely from his shoulders. Unlike the immaculate uniform of Captain Michiels, Eugen’s was stained and marked with dirt, the collar of his white shirt grimy about the neck. It was hard to tell from his face how old he was. Sun, wind, and frost had turned the skin to leather. He looked hard at Bel for a minute.
“Yes, I know who you are,” he said. “The message, if you please.”
“Nieuw Amsterdam is in the hands of forces loyal to the rightful governor,” she said, “although the Provis hold Manhattan north of the city wall and the west bank of the Hudson. Our agreement had been that your Army of the North would relieve the pressure on Nieuw Amsterdam and secure the city, but we now have information that Massachusetts is moving. The Swedes threaten to enter the conflict if the Lobsters take Nieuw Amsterdam or cross the Hudson.”
Eugen Verplanck’s mouth tightened. “How do you know this, and how do you know it is true?”
What passed for a smile crossed Bel’s face. “My companion, Hal Christianson, is from the Trans-Delaware. Tell them of Gustavus, Hal.”
So, Hal found himself telling Verplanck and his men a condensed version of Gustavus’ secret mission to Nieuw Amsterdam with the rifles, the meeting with Harmsworth, and his own meeting with Gustavus on the King Olaf. Hal had not intended to dwell on his own role in those events, but it was clear to everyone that he had been personally present at all of them.
Accidental Warrior: The Unlikely Tale of Bloody Hal Page 32
