The silver bullet ps-1

by Jim DeFelice

  “ Got the damned rebels on the run,” said the sergeant when the two small fleets parted.

  Jake grunted in assent. Van Clynne said nothing.

  “ You will honor me, gentlemen, with your papers,” said the lieutenant.

  “ And what if I have no papers to treat you with?” said Van Clynne hostilely. “What will you do then?”

  “ We’ll take you back as prisoners and spies,” answered the officer, drawing his sword from its scabbard.

  A moment before, Jake could not have had a higher opinion of van Clynne, whose services as a guide had been invaluable. Now his estimation shifted one hundred and eighty degrees — the man was inviting not only suspicion, but death. Nonetheless, Jake remained outwardly calm. He could have his Styan in hand and fired before the officer had finished kicking his horse’s flanks for a charge. Then he’d reach down and test his new Hawkins on the sergeant.

  “ In the days of Governor Stuyvesant, no traveler was ever ill-treated,” said van Clynne, reaching into his vest for the papers. “Even an Indian would get proper respect. A man’s word was his guarantee. Now, without a piece of foolscap signed by every monkey in the province, one can’t even journey three leagues. Every sneeze is regulated.”

  The officer put his sword back in its sheath and nodded to the sergeant, who dismounted, snatched the wad of papers from van Clynne and handed them over. The lieutenant unfolded the several pages paying careful consideration to the signatures if not the rest of the words, before handing them back.

  “ Who’s he?” asked the officer.

  “ My son,” said van Clynne.

  At that, everyone raised an eyebrow, including Jake.

  “ He doesn’t look Dutch,” said the sergeant. “He’s dressed like a macaroni.” Macaroni was a derogatory term for a dandy, and though Jake would not have been taken for such in the city, out here the fine cut of his clothes tended to stand out.

  “ The ways of the young,” said van Clynne, shaking his head. “I wish I could talk some sense into his head. Perhaps you can.”

  “ Be happy to try,” said the sergeant, reaching towards Jake’s horse.

  Jake pulled the reins around and answered him with a string of oaths in ill-formed pidgin Dutch. Though ruinous to van Clynne’s ears, they were enough to convince the soldiers. The Dutchman grabbed his papers back and prodded his horse forward, setting off down the road. Jake followed quickly.

  “ Why did you give them a hard time?” he asked when they were out of earshot.

  “ They were British.” To van Clynne it seemed a natural explanation. “I told you the hat would draw attention, didn’t I?”

  “ Do you really think they’d believe I was your son?”

  “ What do I care?” said van Clynne. “You’re a deserter, and they won’t shoot you for that.”

  “ What do you mean, I’m a deserter?”

  “ You are. You’re a Loyalist who’s had enough of the fight. I’d wager that your neighbors drove you from your home and sent you packing. Rattlesnake cure, indeed.”

  “ I’m an apothecary,” said Jake, adding a slightly mournful note to his voice, as if all van Clynne said were true.

  “ Yes, well, I’ll take my twenty crowns now, if you please.”

  “ We agreed on Montreal. I have a friend there who’ll give me the money.”

  “ Listen up, fellow. You have more than twenty crowns in your purse, I dare say. I don’t care to know your business, but my guess is that you want to get north as quickly as possible, to see your friend or family, whichever it may be. Now I have business to transact in several houses near here and I will be all day and possibly the next two or three about it. You may tag along if you wish, but we’ve gotten through the America lines, which was where the danger lay for you. Wasn’t it? Well?”

  Jake nodded solemnly. Van Clynne was quite pleased with himself.

  “ Cut through this field and take the road there,” he said, pointing to his right. “You’ll come along the highway, and you can ride straight to Montreal. It’s eighty miles at the most, no more.”

  “ How do I know you’re not sending me into a trap?” said Jake, caught up in his role as a Tory coward.

  “ If I were going to turn you in, I would have done so near Ticonderoga. Besides, there’s no profit in it — unless, of course, you don’t pay me now.”

  Jake reached inside his clothes to the money belt around his waist. He counted out four gold guineas and then two crowns. Together the coins could have kept a Boston family in clothes and bread for more than a month.

  Van Clynne examined the coins to see if they had been shaved, a common practice. Each was intact and practically new, an oddity he noted but did not remark on. Before finding their way to Jake’s money belt they had been in the charge of a British paymaster, but the tale of that detour lies outside our immediate scope.

  “ Thank you, good sir,” said the Dutchman, doffing his hat as he dropped the coins into a purse he kept on a long string around his neck. “And now, I bid you farewell.”

  “ Good luck in your business,” said Jake. “Until we meet again.”

  “ I’d get rid of the hat if I were you,” were van Clynne’s parting words.

  The city of Montreal lies at the foot of Mount Royal on a strategic island in the St. Lawrence. The great French explorer Jacques Cartier discovered it and claimed it for the greater glory and profit of the French kingdom in 1535, though it was not until 1642 that white men made a lasting settlement. The profit in question was largely spiritual, with the Association of Montreal formed by Sieur Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve aiming squarely at converting the heathen and adding their population to heaven.

  The French, and their Jesuit priests especially, felt a special calling to promulgate the Word in the wilderness, baptizing freely and spreading the spirit of Christianity by whatever means necessary. Smallpox was not meant to be one of those means, but it was nonetheless distributed more quickly and efficiently than the scriptures.

  Jeffrey Amherst took Montreal for the British in 1760. Robert Montgomery took it for the Americans in 1775. By the fall of 1776, Benedict Arnold and his tattered band of disease-ravaged soldiers had given it back, abandoning it in disarray.

  By that time Jake was already hard at work for General Greene in New York. After being wounded at Quebec in late December 1775, he’d been evacuated to a makeshift hospital. There he’d refused to let the surgeon take off his leg, preferring death to life as a cripple. His stubbornness had cost him great suffering, but Jake had gambled that he could survive the wound without infection or complication, and won. In truth, the decision had been made at least partly from the wild despair of having seen his friend Captain Thomas and then General Montgomery die but a few yards from him on the battlefield. For a dark moment Jake Stewart Gibbs had not truly cared whether he lived or died.

  A great deal of time had passed since then. Jake shifted himself on his horse as he rode along the St. Lawrence, fighting off the sad memories as he steadied himself for the tasks ahead. He decided to promote himself from druggist to doctor — his new cover story would proclaim him a country physician heading to the big city for supplies. Jake, though not specifically trained as a doctor, knew a good portion of medicine from his family’s trade and his own studies of natural philosophy. He could not only fool any soldiers who questioned him: he could probably treat them better than the military quacks at their camps.

  The only deficiency in his story was his dress. As the British sergeant had pointed out, he looked a bit too much the gentleman to be the rough traveler. He adjusted his appearance by loosening his shirt and removing the eagle feather stuck in his cap, but a wary mind at the city’s fort could easily find questions for which vague answers would be his only reply.

  Which was one reason he didn’t intend on going straight in the front door, at least not tonight. Another was the fact that he was tired and hungry, and it was already quite late. The last, and most important, reason was that he
was hoping to renew an old acquaintance.

  “ Jesu — back from the dead!” exclaimed Marie Sacre when she opened the door.

  “ Comment vas-tu? ” he replied in a bashful and rusty French.

  “ Tres bien. But my God, I never expected to see you! Zut!

  “ Can a poor traveler enter?”

  “ Of course!” Marie’s hair was held back in a simple, almost frontier style, but the thick, smooth material of her mauve-colored dress hinted that she was not merely a plain farmer’s wife. The smooth cotton flattered her shape and at the same time was warm and comforting.

  “ Comme les francais sont amiables!” said Jake. The French are so easy.

  “ Don’t get fresh,” she said, pulling him along into the front room of the large, two-story brick building.

  As Jake took a step onto the wide-beamed floor, a long narrative of his journey formed on his tongue. He was just able to cut it off when he saw the room was not empty.

  Not at all. Its occupant rose from his chair, dressed in the bright red jacket favored by followers of His Royal Majesty, the King of England.

  “ Captain Clark, let me introduce you to my cousin, Jake Gibson,” said Marie, putting her arm on his shoulder as she amended his name. “Jake is quite a traveler. He’s just come from Quebec.”

  “ Indirectly,” said Jake, his only option to play along with what she said.

  “ Then you must have seen Burgoyne!” exclaimed the British captain, taking his hand and pumping it like a glassblower’s bellows with a strong, crushing grip.

  “ I left before he arrived,” said Jake, hoping that made sense — and that he wouldn’t have to be more specific. “I had business with the savages.”

  “ We don’t call them savages anymore,” said Marie in the light but firm voice one used to correct a child. “They are allies.”

  “ What business are you in?” asked the captain.

  “ I am a doctor of sorts,” said Jake, looking at Marie to make sure she heard — and agreed.

  “ Of sorts?”

  “ In the backwoods one handles many things. One learns many things,” said Jake, warming now to the task of fooling and then pumping this Captain Clark for information. “I have these past few months been contemplating the efficacy of a rattlesnake cure. I learned of it from a Jesuit, who told me the Huron swore by it as a cure for many diseases, including cancer and pox.”

  “ Inoculation works against the pox,” said the soldier.

  “ Not in all cases. The humor must be properly balanced.”

  Marie disappeared into the other room. Jake settled in a chair next to the fire, warming himself. His face and manner were nonchalant, but beneath the facade he was coiled and ready to strike. His pocket pistol was charged, though he wasn’t sure even all four of his bullets could fell the large man across from him. Fortunately, the officer appeared unarmed, without even his sword. Obviously, he was on very friendly terms with the house’s occupant — a fact which not only surprised but perturbed Jake. To find Marie cozying up to the other side wounded him more than the powerfully built redcoat ever could.

  “ I thought of studying medicine myself before joining the army,” said Clark. “I still may, when I return home.”

  “ Yes,” said Jake. “How long since you left England?”

  “ Oh, I’ve been here for over a year. Came with Burgoyne to rout the rabble, as it were, but I was transferred to the governor’s staff. The general, of course, spent the winter in England — jolly wish I could have.”

  Jake nodded. “But he’s back now.”

  “ He certainly is. Thank you, my dear,” said the captain, rising as Marie returned with a tray of tea cups, along with a dish of supper for Jake.

  She placed the tray on a small settee; Jake noted that she didn’t have to ask the British officer how much sugar he wanted when dropping in the lumps.

  “ It looks to me your cousin wants something stronger than tea,” said the captain when Jake didn’t take his cup.

  “ My system is allergic to tea,” said Jake.

  Marie turned the harsh undertone to his voice aside as lightly as a compliment. “Oh, I’ve forgotten, cousin, about your unbalanced humors. How silly of me. Would you like some coffee instead?”

  “ No.”

  “ Good, because I haven’t any.” She laughed. “I’ll get the rum.”

  “ Allergic to tea?” said the officer. “You sound like a rebel.”

  He was joking, but Jake wasn’t. “And what if I do?”

  The captain didn’t take up the challenge, tut-tutting as he sipped from the delicate china cup. “Meant nothing by it, my friend. You’ll have to forgive me; being a soldier one sometimes finds jokes at other people’s expense too easily. My brother is allergic to cats, actually. Quite the thing — put one in a room with him and in two minutes he’s sneezing a storm. The devil must spend the day outside his door to catch his soul at some unguarded moment.”

  Marie, standing at the door, shook her head sternly, warning Jake off. In any event, the captain proved unprovocable and skillfully evasive. An hour’s worth of fishing failed to produce anything useful.

  “ You’re still attending the ball tomorrow night, yes?” Clark said to Marie as he took his leave.

  “ Of course.”

  “ Bring your cousin,” he added. “He should meet Governor Carleton. And General Burgoyne. Doctors are in great demand.”

  “ He’ll be there, I’m sure,” she said before pecking the captain on the cheek.

  Chapter Eight

  Wherein, Jake has a heart-to-heart discussion with his close friend and sometime cousin, Marie Sacre.

  “ But a British soldier, Marie!”

  “ And what, I should have sat here alone like a num waiting for some jackal of a farmer to appear on my doorstep? Thank you for your advice, Jake Gibbs, but I don’t need it. I have fended for myself long before I met you, and will do so long after you are gone. Which, I assume, shall be shortly.”

  She pushed away from him on the bed, folding her arms across her breasts. Her stays and hoops, petticoat and dress, lay in a trail back across the room.

  “ You always had a sharp tongue. Perhaps I should give you a good spanking,” Jake teased.

  “ Try it,” she said without humor, adding in French a phrase that translated roughly as, “And if you do, I shall make a puppet of your louie.”

  “ You already have.”

  “ Fiddle. No woman can tame you. She would be a fool to try.”

  “ That’s why I love you.”

  “ And what is the reason you’ve come back?”

  “ You’re not enough?”

  “ I know you, Jake Gibbs. You’d never risk your neck for me.”

  “ I’ve risked it for much less.”

  She stepped off the bed and pulled a casual shift from the drawer of her bureau, then went downstairs for something to drink.

  Marie Sacre was the descendant of the earliest settlers of the area. Well known in Montreal, which lay less than five miles to the north, she was considered by half the inhabitants a wild eccentric, a thirty-year-old woman who had never condescended to marry. The other half regarded themselves in constant competition for her charms, striving to break her vows against marriage and win her large estate as their prize.

  Or as an added prize, since her charms were of considerable value themselves.

  Jake had met Marie during the summer of 1775. General Montgomery assigned then-Captain Gibbs to scout Montreal and its environs in preparation for his invasion. After mapping the defenses and delivering his recommendations, Jake returned and entered the city disguised as a local trapper. His new assignment was to recruit Canadians to the Cause, laying the seeds for a local revolt as the Americans approached.

  While his French seemed masterful to American ears, Jake quickly discovered that his accent not only gave him away as a foreigner, but greatly undermined his status with his audience. A squad of redcoats ended his second attempt at ral
lying support, and he was forced to flee the market area about ten steps ahead of the bayonets. He ran down an alley and met Marie, making a forcible impression by knocking her off her feet. Fortunately, he caught her in midair and whisked her upright with the sweep of a dance master. The soldiers closing in, he bowed and dove behind a pile of boxes in a desperate attempt to hide.

  Something in her expression had told him she would not give him away, but Marie went beyond his best expectations. Jake listened as she assured the soldiers the alley was empty, but a man had just run inside the leather shop across the way. As the soldiers charged off, Marie hurried Jake to her carriage on the street. He threw off his coat and hat, assuming an ad hoc position as her driver; they rode back down through the square he’d been chased from, past the eyes of several of the soldiers who’d done the chasing.

  In the days that followed, Marie helped him clandestinely meet with local opponents to the Crown. The opposition network was one of the reasons — along with the critically weak defenses — that Carleton abandoned the city when Montgomery approached.

  By that time Jake had given himself a new mission, having perpetrated one of his greatest hoaxes. He presented himself to his former employer, Carleton, saying he had fled rebel lines to join him. Completely taken in, the governor once again made him his secretary — a position the young patriot used to great and sundry advantage. Carleton did not begin to suspect him until they had retreated together to Quebec, and even then did not take the proper precautions until Jake had managed to do considerable damage to the British cause. Placed under house arrest, he managed the disguised daylight escape Colonel Flanagan had earlier alluded to — but as those exploits are to be recorded elsewhere, we dwell too much on the past to the expense of the present.

  “ I thought you had gone to find Clark and turn me in,” said Jake when Marie returned to the room.

  “ Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve brought some whiskey. You always liked it.”