The silver bullet ps-1

by Jim DeFelice

  The lieutenant colonel accepted a mug of rum from the owner of the house and stood briefly in front of the fire to warm his britches. It was barely noon and already he’d had a full day; a good part of him wanted nothing better than to rest here until the next morning. But this small adventure had already delayed him more than he wished.

  The fact that the Secret Department had sent one of its agents after him complicated things. Hopefully, the assassin had worked alone and in complete secrecy, as the branch’s procedures general dictated. Hopefully, he had not had a chance to alert Herstrow.

  So many hopes, so little certainty or time.

  Jake still had the bullet, safe in its secret pocket. He also had Leal’s knife. But he was once more without a gun, having lost all three Kim pistols to the lake. He borrowed a weapon from one of the militia officers, along with fresh powder and ball, promising that Schuyler would restore them.

  His horse seemed to have enjoyed the morning — the beast gave a good whinny and stomped his feet, urging his rider to get going.

  “ But your clothes aren’t even dry, and your hair is wet,” said Betsy when Jake came back inside to take his leave. She had gotten out of her dress and was wrapped in a large quilt blanket. Somehow, the shapeless fabric was even more flattering than the beautifully brocaded garment she had worn this morning.

  “ I’ll dry on the way,” said Jake, who permitted himself one last diversion — he leaned forward and kissed her.

  “ Good luck,” said Roland solemnly at the door.

  “ And to you,” said Jake. “I hope you will be justly rewarded for your bravery with freedom.”

  Across the room, Betsy was nodding. So, at least some good would come from this.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Wherein, Jake pursues the messenger and that eminent squire, Claus van Clynne, seeking to return to the latter all that is owed.

  The ambush on the lake caused a delay in Jake’s plans, not only because of the time involved in the incident itself, but because the loss of the boat meant he had to proceed by land, where it was more difficult to make up the lead Herstraw had obtained. Schuyler had given him tend days to accomplish his task, but in truth this amounted to something closer to eight, since he would need to leave time to return to Albany with word of his success.

  The general’s horse was a fine beast, with thick muscles and long legs, quick eyes and sharp movements. But the strongest animal needed food and rest, and this one was no exception. Every delay was a frustration. Though Jake stuck to the main roads, these were not so fine as to guarantee quick progress. Aside from the potholes, there were long swathes of mud left by the recent heavy rain.

  By the end of the second day, Jake had only just reached the other side of the river from Albany, and had yet to spot his quarry or even hear definite word of him. He stopped in an inn and tried to catch some sleep — even his boundless energy required an occasional nap to be recharged — but the proximity to Albany turned his thoughts to Sarah and her family. After two hours of fitful stretching and wrestling with the covers, he rose and set out, doubling his efforts to catch up with the spy’s party.

  Jake soon adopted a desperate routine: He’d hop from his horse on a dead run as he pulled up to a house or inn, plunge inside and shout for the proprietor. In the shortest speech possible, he’d demand to know if a man answering the messenger’s description had traveled through; then he’d ask about van Clynne, whom he realized would be a more memorable guest. If the answer were no — and for a while it seemed as if it would always be no — he’d rush back outside and resume his journey.

  The approach lacked subtlety, but his inability to find any trace of Herstraw worried him a great deal. He feared that the messenger had changed his route and perhaps his tactics.

  Finally, late in the afternoon, a startled innkeeper in Claverack told him that a party answering his description had passed through that morning, hoping to make Rhinebeck by nightfall. Jake thanked the man, threw a gold guinea down for his troubles and fled back to his horse.

  With the next few miles of the journey passing uneventfully if quickly from Columbia to Dutchess County, the narrative will take a slight detour to address the matters of patriotism of the countryside, as it bears not a little relevance to the attitude of men passing through it. If, for instance, you are wondering why Jake rides with a loaded and cocked pistol in his hand as night comes on, here is the reason.

  As a general rule, it is often posited that the strength of local support for the Revolution varies in direct proportion to the closeness of the British Army; that, in the case of the Hudson Valley, the closer one draws to the city of New York, the more support one finds for the so-called Royalist party. As is usual with generalities, this one is good enough from the distance, but on close inspection reveals particulars that render it meaningless. Dutchess County, midway up the valley between New York and Albany, was considerably less enamored of the patriot cause than geography would dictate. In the spring of 1775 a document called the Proclamation for Association — roughly an agreement to resist the tea tax and other obnoxious elements — was signed by 1,680 of the county’s residents. Not a bad number, except when one considers that another 882 were against it. Across the river, Ulster voted 1,770 to 80 in favor of the measure.

  While we have no wish to slander the good worthies of Dutchess, it is nonetheless necessary to point out that a sizable portion of the countryside had not been convinced by the intervening years to join the Cause. Many merchants refused to accept money issued by Congress as legal tender — an act tantamount to treason, and requiring some sort of response, as several speakers declared late that evening at an emergency meeting in Rhinebeck’s Traphagen Tavern.

  Other speakers — all men whose service as patriots could not be questioned — noted that the paper money had lately begun to depreciate sharply in value. Taking paper currency was thus becoming as much a test of personal fortitude and thrift as of politics. The greatest threat to the Revolution might not be British guns, they allowed, but rampant inflation.

  Though Jake’s polished tongue would undoubtedly have settled the matter firmly for the patriot side, he did not pause to enter the debate as he walked quickly though calmly through the house. He met the inn’s owner — Traphagen himself — coming down the hall with a pitcher of beer in one hand and cider in the other. Pretending to be a friend, he asked after Herstraw, and found that the inn’s only guest at the moment was a rather cantankerous Dutchman who had gone off to bed already, complaining about the sorry slide of village inns since the Dutch had lost their monopoly.

  Imagine the joyful reunion when two friends, long separated by the travails and trials of war, are suddenly thrust together. Imagine the look one has, expecting that the other has met with an untimely and violent end. Imagine the utter relief and weeping, the shouts of deliverance, the unfettered glee.

  Imagine all of that, and throw it far from your head.

  “ But how did you escape!”

  “ Out of bed, you bastard!” shouted Jake. “You’re just lucky there’s no one else in the room, or you’d be apologizing for waking them.”

  “ Now just a minute, sir,” said van Clynne indignantly. “I am many things, but my parentage has never been in doubt.”

  “ Up!”

  Jake poked his pistol beneath the covers and tossed them aside, exposing the full length of van Clynne’s bed shirt, a fussy red flannel affair.

  “ Surely we can discuss this,” said the Dutchman. “To shoot a man in bed while he sleeps!”

  “ You’re not sleeping,” said Jake, leaning to put down the lamp he had carried with him — just in time to free his hand and grab the pocket pistol van Clynne swung up from behind his back.

  “ I’ve been looking for this,” Jake said, snatching the Segallas triumphantly.

  “ I was holding it in protective custody,” blustered van Clynne. “Several of the mob wanted to take it and sell it, but I wouldn’t let them.”

&n
bsp; “ I’ll bet.” Jake flipped a shilling onto the bed. “I’ll ransom my money belt as well.”

  “ Well, you’re the first Tory I’ve met who pays his debts.”

  “ I’m not a Tory. I’m an American agent of the secret service, assigned by His Excellency General Washington to the Northern Department for special duty.”

  “ Whatever you say, sir. Whatever you say.”

  “ Jake reached inside his coat and took out a letter from Schuyler guaranteeing him free passage.

  “ That’s nothing,” said van Clynne, not even bothering to read it. “I’ve got a million letters. I’ll sell you one from King George, if you like.”

  “ And here is the deposition your wrote accusing me,” said Jake, throwing it on his chest. “How would I have obtained it if they hadn’t freed me?”

  “ Many a soldier can be bought during these desperate days, I’m ashamed to say.”

  “ Where’s my money belt?”

  Van Clynne pointed to a bureau in the corner. Jake backed to it, keeping the Dutchman in aim. In truth, this was not very difficult, given the brightness of his flannel.

  “ Look at the back of the belt!” Jake flung it at him.

  Van Clynne’s brow furled as he gazed at the symbol, which had been appropriated from the Free Masons. Unless one were admitted to the brotherhood, the stylized eye contained in the design was not easy to see. Its use by members of the secret service was more by way of convenience; they were, after all, members of their own even more select group. Nonetheless, its innate esoteric nature was enough to impress nearly anyone.

  “ That could be the stamping of your horse’s shoe, for all I know,” said van Clynne, flinging the money belt back. “The fact that you are a member of a college fraternity is hardly impressive, sir. Not at all.”

  “ How do you think I escaped from the fort?”

  “ You’re a brave and able man. I know that from your dealings with the renegades.”

  “ Damn you — I’m on a mission for Schuyler. Ask me any question you want about him. Ask me to describe his house in Albany. It’s Georgian, with a rail around the roof.”

  “ If you’re referring to his drafty barn south of Fort Orange, anyone could have that information. It’s well known that the general has a house outside the city.”

  “ The color of his daughter Betsy’s eyes — brown.”

  “ Her beauty is legendary, though how she sprang from him I could not say.”

  “ Listen, van Clynne.” Jake stepped across the room and put his gun to the Dutchman’s throat. “Because of you, the man I was following, — a real British spy — escaped. I want you to tell me where he is.”

  For a man with a loaded pistol pressing against his skin, van Clynne displayed a remarkable calmness. “Is it true that you are a spy?” he asked.

  “ Not a spy, an agent of the secret service under General Washington, assigned to General Greene and on temporary duty for General Schuyler.”

  “ Even better,” said the Dutchman, gently pushing the pistol aside and rising from his bed. “I admit I was wrong about your being a Tory. I can see from your bearing that you are a fine patriot.”

  “ And?”

  “ Perhaps we should discuss this situation over a beer downstairs,” said the Dutchman, stroking his bear. “I am, after all, a man of business.”

  He was indeed, but as van Clynne soon related, his nomadic existence of a well-connected traveling broker was the result of a series of reversals that had severely shaken his family. While his story was, as one would expect from even a brief acquaintance, filled with exaggeration, diversion, and a few outright misstatements, in the main it was believable, and might be boiled down to the following:

  During Dutch domination of the area, the van Clynne’s had been granted a large patent on the western shores of the Hudson. But the coming of the British had put the ownership in question. The choicest parts of the estate had been usurped by a British merchant. With the connivance of several powerful Dutchmen (it pained van Clynne to admit this, but it was true; not even a Dutch patron could be trusted, especially where land was involved), the Englishman had robbed van Clynne’s grandfather of his land. Ever since, the family had devoted its resources toward getting back its birthright. The efforts had succeeded only in landing the family deep in debt to a dozen solicitors, both in America and England. Bills had lately begun arriving from the Netherlands. Though his business dealings made healthy profits, still van Clynne could not get far enough ahead to satisfy all his creditors, let alone pay for new court costs.

  “ What exactly do you want me to do about it?” said Jake, fighting back a yawn. By now, they had the taproom all to themselves, save for a poor young lad who served them beer and napped, though not necessarily in that order.

  “ If you really do know General Washington, then you can help get my land back,” suggested van Clynne.

  “ I don’t know about that.”

  “ The family is all Tory! They’ve fled.”

  “ Why don’t you appeal to the local magistrates?”

  Van Clynne made a frightful spitting sound. “Half of them are descended from the thieves who robbed my family. But a letter from your friend, General Washington — “

  “ I didn’t call the general my friend. He is my commander. Our commander.”

  “ If I’m truly as vital to your plan as you said,” smiled van Clynne, “you’ll be happy to help. Indeed, I would be most valuable to the patriot Cause. I flatter myself when I say I am a man of many talents.”

  “ You flatter yourself, indeed.”

  The Dutchman launched into a few minutes of extended hyperbole concerning his great love of Freedom and the like. Jake finally cut him off.

  “ I will put in a word for you, but I can’t make any promises.”

  “ Deal,” said the Dutchman, sticking out his hand and shaking. “Our friend has traveled on to Fishkill to stay with some acquaintances, then leaves in the morning bound for White Plains via the pass in the mountains south of the village. I know a quick way to the town. As I’ve concluded my sale of the coach, I’m free to take you there first thing in the morning.”

  “ We’re leaving now,” said Jake.

  “ Now? It’s past ten. And it’s dark.”

  “ It usually is at this hour.”

  “ We can’t travel at night. The highways are filled with all sorts of robbers and Indians.”

  “ We’ll go by water, then.”

  “ Actually, I think the rumors of danger on the roads are quite overblown,” said van Clynne.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Wherein, a slight diversion of the tale is made, for reason of celebrating the patriotic village of Fishkill, and rescuing its cows.

  If there is a town in upper New York that had done its yeoman’s duty in the War of Independence, it is tiny Fishkill. After the British took Long Island and New York City in 1776, they followed those conquests with a battle for White Plains farther north. This was a bloody and dangerous fight for the patriot Cause, all the more so because it followed such serious losses. But victory turned the tide of the war. General Howe — the same general with whom Jake is presently preoccupied — had to retreat to New York City to consolidate his gains and lick his wounds as the fall began slowly turning to winter.

  The Americans likewise had wounds to lick, and a great many of them were healed in Fishkill, a small village some forty or so miles north of where the battle had taken place. The entire hamlet became a hospital, with sundry buildings, tents, and even the roadway used as operating theaters and recovery rooms. The air reeked with the smell of hard-won Freedom and Liberty, the cries of suffering echoing between the hills and across the creek that marked the town.

  The same campaign that caused the fall of New York and the blood at White Plains sent the state congress fleeing northward, briefly landing at White Plains and then, on August 29, 1776, to Fishkill. The village gave not one, but two of its churches to the congress, beginning with
Trinity on the east side of the Post Road. This was no so great a sacrifice as might be expected, for Trinity here as elsewhere meant “English,” which in turn meant “Tory,” and any sympathizer in the neighborhood by now had either fled or gotten very good at holding his breath.

  It did not take long for the politicians to be driven down the street by a second invading horde — a flock of birds entered through the glassless windows and took up residence, punctuating the proceedings with loud cries and other comments on the quality of debate. The congress adjourned westward down the road to the Dutch Reformed Church, which not only had the benefit of glass, but also happened to be across from one of the finest pubs in the state.

  The village lasted as state capital for only a short while, the representatives soon hearing of better quarters and even better taverns farther north at Poughkeepsie and then Kingston; nonetheless, its contributions to the Cause will be long remembered.

  Alas, upon their arrival in the center of town several hours before dawn, Jake was in no position to celebrate the village’s history. Despite his eagerness to help, van Clynne’s knowledge of Herstraw’s whereabouts had not proven as precise as promised. It was not that the Dutchman couldn’t locate the house where the messenger was staying. On the contrary; he located the house in three different places, and could offer no method of telling which might be the genuine article. Jake’s plan to sneak inside and switch messages while the man slept was thus dealt a temporary setback. And as it would soon be light anyway, he decided his only course was to wait until a better opportunity presented itself.

  They could at least be reasonably sure the messenger would take the pass south through the Highlands over the Post Road. The only other way to White Plains was to first travel northeast to Wiccopee, a highly unlikely route for anyone to take. Or so Jake, who with every passing minute became more and more aware of Schuyler’s deadline and the possibility that Albany would be lost, consoled himself.