The Silver Bullet

by Jim DeFelice

“We’re to have dinner Sunday,” said Bacon, “to discuss certain aspects of the voodoo. Your name came up earlier today, Gibbs, in connection with a plot by these rebels. Have you gotten involved with them?”

  “A good question,” said Howe, pulling the general aside. Bacon’s men gathered around him, listening to the discussion. Their backs were between Jake and the two generals, effectively screening them from view.

  The nature of the Secret Department meant that only a handful of agents were known to Bacon, and at any given moment there were bound to be a few operating in his theater whom he had no authority over or knowledge of. A man assigned to Carleton or Burgoyne could easily be a stranger to him.

  But this Dutchman?

  “The doctor, perhaps,” said Bacon. “I sense something about him that stands out. On the other hand, we used foreign agents in Spain for the prince’s assassination.”

  The two generals punctuated their debate by stealing glances at the pair of prisoners. Though he couldn’t overhear, Jake knew precisely what the problem must be – who would believe van Clynne as a secret agent?

  And yet, wasn’t that the most powerful argument in his favor?

  Howe called one of the ship’s officers over to join the conference. In the meantime, Bacon took a knot of men aside and dispatched several back to the city, whether on this or other business, there was no way for Jake to tell.

  “Once more the debate was rejoined, this time continuing for nearly a quarter of an hour – a comparatively short time for a British command conference, as anyone familiar with Howe’s notorious delays attacking New York will realize. Finally, the remaining subordinates parted and the two generals emerged nodding. They directed their attention toward Jake, not van Clynne. Which was fine with all concerned.

  “You’re a doctor?” Howe asked.

  “I’m not admitted in London,” said Jake, “but I attended Edinburgh.”

  “My officers say he has the best headache remedy in the colonies,” said Bacon. “But of this profession as a messenger I’m completely unaware.”

  “It’s not a profession, Sir Henry. I met Squire van Clynne while on a trip to obtain rattlesnake venom from the Indians near Canada. WE fell in as fellow travelers, and when he needed assistance, I rendered it. I had not realized he was in the service of the Crown. I assumed that, since he was Dutch –“

  “Careful,” said van Clynne, warming to his role. “Remember your oath.”

  “What oath is that?” said Bacon, his birthmark glowing.

  “I have taken an oath not to reveal his oath,” which itself is based on a prior oath of my own,” said van Clynne. “Kill me for it, if it is your pleasure.”

  “It may well be a pleasure,” said Bacon, turning back to Jake. “You have been north before.”

  “Many times, Sir Henry. My travels take me far and wide.”

  “Behind rebel lines.”

  “I have sworn allegiance to the king, and will do so at any time or place the general proscribes. I have lost my land for hit. I am not a traitor, sir. Science requires me to travel. My headache cure, for example.” Jake turned to Howe, who had a skeptical look on his face. “Unfortunately, my latest duties detained me from obtaining the ingredients necessary for my potion, General, but I will gladly supply you with a complimentary bottle from my next batch. It would be most beneficial to me, actually, to have your endorsement.”

  It would be fitting, would it not, if the matter of Jake’s identity could be settled by some headache powder? After all, the Americans were the biggest headache Howe and all of Britain could ever have, and the expedient of using a cure for a much small one to escape would be but poetic justice. Unfortunately, neither Howe nor Bacon was much on poetry. When they retreated a ways on day to discuss the matter once again, Jake would not have bet a farthing that Shakespeare entered the discussion.

  This new conference was cut short by the arrival of a fresh contingent of guards who ushered a small group of prisoners aboard. The men were chained and in very poor condition, with welts and bruises covering their bodies. Dragged and pushed forward, the poor wretches were too beaten even to groan with pain.

  “These are the Sons of Liberty we found in the city,” said the lieutenant in charge of the detachment. “Their ring leader is that one.”

  He pointed to a man in a plain brown coat, just now being led over the side. He had been spared the humiliation of a beating; his clothes were so fresh they appeared new, and while his face had been smudged with grease or dirt, he bore himself with an almost aristocratic manner, if such can be said of a man in chains.

  “What have you to say for yourself?” Howe demanded of the prisoner.

  “Long live Liberty!”

  A sharp cuff on the ears knocked him to the deck near Jake’s feet.

  Jake wanted to help him, but doing so would only seal his own fate. Instead he took a step back and kicked at him. Jake’s legs were still manacled, and he was able to make his miss look more than convincing – he slipped as if he’d forgotten his binds, so that the thing he did completely against his instincts appeared the most natural action of all, a loyal British subject trying to kick away treason’s snake.

  The soldiers laughed as Jake tumbled backward onto the deck.

  “You bastard,” said the Liberty man. “I know who you are. You helped launch the plot against us.”

  “Who is he?” demanded Howe.

  “Jake Gibbs,” said the prisoner. “As notorious a Tory as any in the countryside.”

  The Son of Liberty spit on Jake as his guards restrained him. The huge, venomous piece of spilled burned Jake’s face.

  A look passed between them at that second. Everyone else in the party, even van Clynne, would swear it was hate; Jake recognized it as the solemn torch of Freedom.

  “Unchain him,” Howe said to the guards around Jake. “Then take these prisoners ashore and hold them on charges of treason.”

  No apology was offered and Jake didn’t care to make an issue of it. He asked only for a cloth to bind his knee; that done, he tested it and found it reasonably sound. He was mildly surprised to find his pocket pistol and Leal’s knife, surrendered during his capture, returned to him.

  Van Clynne, meanwhile, was preparing to leave the ship. He practiced keeping his eyes closed as he walked toward the railing.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Bacon asked.

  “Of course,” said van Clynne, sweeping down in a graceful gesture. “Thank you for the dinner, Your Honor,” he said to Howe.

  “Your weapon,” suggested Bacon.

  Jake noted the glimmer in the general’s eye, and felt his hope of escape sinking to the bottom of the harbor.”

  “I was afraid you’d come to relieve me of my duty,” said van Clynne so smoothly that even Jake was impressed. The Dutchman put forward his hand bashfully. “I feared you had orders from the king to, er, countermand me, as it were.”

  Van Clynne met the question with his usual bluster – which naturally was the proper response. Bacon gave back the knife with a stern warning that he would be watching for the Dutchman – and expected Jake to be prompt for dinner. The pair was soon back on the water, being rowed into New York, the end of their mission in sight.

  -Chapter Thirty-four-

  Wherein, some general facts and opinions regarding the Sons of Liberty are expressed, and Duty requires a new mission.

  When in 1765 England imposed the Stamp Act, laying a tax on virtually every document necessary to American life, from newspapers and journals to deeds and custom manifests, the colonies rose en masse against it. But while many commentators date the activities of the various organizations now known as the Sons of Liberty from that year, if should be noted that the Sons were active by 1745 at the latest in New York. They were an effective and innovative group that prior to the open declaration of hostilities was, contrary to British propaganda, a most moderate influence on the populace.

  Many instances serve to prove this argument. Ther
e was, for example, the matter of Cadwalladar Colden in New York, the lieutenant governor who had armed and reinforced Fort George after the people made their opposition to the stamps known. He intended they would take these ignoble swatches whether they liked them or not, and seemed ready to go about slaughtering anyone who opposed them.

  The Sons responded by stuffing an effigy of Colden onto a carriage and parading it to the fort. This was quite a show, with hundreds of seamen as well as local citizens attending. To a man, the British inside feared a horrible slaughter – and not of the citizens opposing them. But the Sons, taking a temperate view, led the crowd to content itself with merely burning the effigy.

  They also sacked the mansion of the fort commander, Major James, a disagreeable sort who clearly deserved it.

  The stamps were henceforth abandoned, and peace restored without the loss of a single person on either side. Clearly, the Sons have suffered great libels from their oppressor’s pens.

  Once the redcoats occupied New York, many of the more notorious members of the group had to flee for their lives to the countryside. Those who remained found it necessary to hide their loyalties. This did not end the organization’s operations in the city, but did make it very difficult, even for those familiar with the group at its highest levels, to identify exactly who was and who was not a member.

  It was for this reason that Jake did not know the man who had saved him, even though he had often had occasion to call on the group for assistance. He had no doubt, however, that the man who saved him had been acting on Culper Junior’s orders. As he told van Clynne when they clambered onto the wharf, his gratitude was boundless. The Liberty boy had risked death to save them. It was just this kind of selfless activity that would guarantee the country’s future.

  “I quite agree,” said van Clynne, his legs still wobbly from the journey. “I know of a place just north of the King’s Bridge where we might purchase some food and drink at a fair price. It is run by an old Dutch friend of mine whose sympathies are quite with the patriots, though he has stayed in the neighborhood due to his health.”

  “Fine, we’ll eat there tonight. First we have to retrieve our horses and my bomb. Then I’ve got to find a wagon.”

  “Tonight?”

  “We’ve got to rescue our friend,” explained Jake, leading the way back toward the stable where he’d boarded the horses. “They’ll be taking him to jail on shore before they hang him. I’ll have a plan cobbled together in no time.”

  The only plan van Clynne wanted to hear was one to escape the city. Directly.

  Van Clynne pointed out that Jake was under orders to return to Albany, that there would be great consternation if he failed to meet Schuyler’s time limit, etc, etc.

  Jake never answered. There was no possibility he could be swayed. His sense of duty and honor, his obligation and his gratitude, combined in such a way that he would have swum against Gibraltar had the Liberty man’s rescue depended on it.

  It might be said that the Dutchman admired his companion’s resolve and character, realizing that he could all upon them if he were in a similar situation. Nevertheless, it would have been very much against van Clynne’s nature to simply shut up. Thus, he was still arguing when Jake finally found the four-wheeled wagon he wanted. That the wagon was accompanied by a driver was not critical, since the narrow lane in front of the storehouse where it was parked was temporarily deserted. Jake snuck up behind the man and knocked him unconscious in a trice.

  Wanting to keep his accounts even, the American agent tucked a few of van Clynne’s continentals – at three percent interest – into the man’s shirt.

  “He’ll have a tough time explaining those if he’s a Tory,” said van Clynne.

  “Truly a shame,” answered Jake, taking up the reins and leading the horse and wagon forward.

  They stopped three blocks away at a small but crowded store. Van Clynne stayed with the wagon, grumbling about the difficulty of finding a good parking spot in the overcrowded city.

  “Still talking to yourself, Claus?” asked Jake when he returned a few minutes later.

  “The city was never like this under the Dutch,” van Clynne claimed.

  “The traffic will be lighter near the jail,” said Jake, taking a jug of pitch he’d just bought and pouring it into the back of the wagon.

  “What are you doing?” exclaimed van Clynne as Jake placed a candle in the middle of the sticky black puddle.

  “Just get going – make a left at the end of the block and drive north. Hurry.”

  The British inevitably took the same path from the docks to the jail; Jake had scouted it several times previously. That preliminary work proved handy now; they crossed town in the space of five minutes and found an alleyway along the narrow street two blocks from the prison’s portals.

  While van Clynne drove, Jake turned the wagon into a mobile fire bomb. His plan was a simple one – van Clynne would light the candle, then drive the burning coach across the roadway, blocking the street. Jake would launch his noise keg from the rear, temporarily paralyzing the British guards.

  “And not us?”

  “You should be far enough away, if you stay with the wagon.”

  “While it’s on fire?”

  “You’re afraid of fire, as well as water?”

  “I’m afraid of dying prematurely.”

  “Here, stop this candle wax in your ears. The concussion can shatter your eardrums.”

  “So we’ll leave the man we’re rescuing deaf?”

  “Just temporarily,” said Jake, jumping down. “Remember to light the wick back here before you pull into the road. It will take a few seconds to flare up, and I want the flames impressive enough to catch their full attention before I launch my bomb. Don’t forget to curb the horse’s reins and when the bomb goes off, grab our men and run up that alleyway. I’ll take care of any guards who are still standing.”

  “Perhaps it would have been better to steal a coach instead of this wagon,” said van Clynne. “A man with strong legs could bolt over this, even if it is on fire.”

  “If he’s unconscious, these salts will revive him,” said Jake, handing van Clynne a small potion bottle he had purchased at the store. Be careful with it – under normal circumstances it’s used as a rat poison.”

  “But –“

  “Just don’t let him drink any,” said Jake, untying their horses from the back of the wagon. He secured them to a side post, and then quickly worked some wax into their ears as a precaution against injuring them.

  “I’ll meet you three blocks north by the church,” said Jake. “I know a place where we can stay until it’s dark. With luck, the commotion will bring a few of our friends forward, so escape won’t be difficult.”

  “Perhaps we should enlist them beforehand,” suggested van Clynne. “In my opinion –“

  “I can’t hear your opinion,” said Jake, stopping his ears. “Wait until the first man passes Kiefer’s there, then pull out. Put your ear stops in!”

  Van Clynne’s complaints continued, but Jake was oblivious to them – why hadn’t he thought of this simple expedient days ago?

  As he trotted down the street to take up his position, he saw shutters were being shut on the street above – the procession of prisoners, was nearing.

  This was a poor street, and before the British invasion, many of the folk here had supported the Revolution. Trapped by the quick occupation, they had learned to keep to themselves, especially during the almost daily marches to the gaol. By the time the patrol and its five prisoners appeared at the head of the block, there was no one on the street.

  Except for Jake, who took up a spot in the doorway about ten yards from the alley where van Clynne was waiting. A few strikes of his flint and he had the small candle in his hand lit; his only other chore now as to wait.

  The candle was necessary to light the bomb, whose fuse was too short and quick burning to let it be set in advance. Jake could not rely on flint to ignite the fuse at t
he last moment; he needed his hands free. HE set the candle down on the ledge of a small window that looked into the doorway; the effect was much like lighting a votive at the altar of the cathedral in Paris.

  “Why are you putting a candle on my window, mister?”

  Jake turned around and saw a young girl, five or six years old, tugging inquisitively at his leg. He had to take the wax from one of his ears to hear her.

  “You don’t want to burn down my house, do you, sir?”

  The prisoners, with their redcoat guards behind, were dragging themselves forward not twenty yards behind her.

  Jake could have ignored the small girl, trusting that Fate would keep her out of harm’s way once the small riot he planned began. But there was something in him that could not ignore a child wandering innocently toward danger. He took the wax from both his ears and stopped it in hers, then quickly picked her up in his arms and pushed at the latch on the top of the split door, intending to shut her inside.

  The latch would not give way. He had to step back and kick at hi, not once but twice, and then finally place all his weight behind the thrust before sending the top flying inward.

  “Stay inside, sweetheart,” he told her, forgetting that she could not hear him. “The patriots are fighting for Liberty today!”

  Have you ever heard such overwrought words? “The patriots are fighting for Liberty today!” With a very large exclamation point at that. In the middle of a fight, when his own safety hung in the balance. At any moment he might be discovered. At any moment he might be killed.

  “The patriots are fighting for Liberty today!”

  Corny? But whose fault is that, if that was the reality? Does not everything noble sound, under some circumstances stripped of its context, overwrought?

  Such words build revolutions and legends. They inspire minds and warm hearts in the cold realities of the trenches, keeping blistering feet trudging along the line toward the most distant goals.

  “The patriots are fighting for Liberty today!”

  Jake jumped back out into the street, right behind the rear guard, just as van Clynne pulled his chariot across the road in all its fiery glory. Jake leaned back and lit the bomb as the troops and their prisoners began shouting in alarm and confusion.