The providential fog lingered, providing cover during the daylight hours of the retreat. As the last vessels were loaded, it became apparent they must leave a few good horses behind. David waited till the very last moment before taking his turn to board. With much regret, he stripped Bill of his saddle and hitched the stallion to the post in front of the ferry house. Right ahead of General Washington, David jumped onto the last boat to leave Long Island.
“I canna believe he did it—but do it he did!” Duncan nodded to General Washington at the prow. “Moved an entire army right out from under the nose of the British high command—with nary a shot being fired.”
“And we live to fight another day . . .” David heaved a sigh of relief, sharing his friend’s admiration of Washington. Heavy in the water, the boat lurched across the river. Black Bill . . . the ferry landing . . . Long Island . . . all disappearing into thick mist.
I’ ll never have another horse as fine as my Bill.
The more David thought about it, the more he could not bear the idea of his stallion falling into enemy hands. When they pulled into the sunny ferry landing at the end of Maiden Lane, he rushed to find General MacDougall.
“General, sir,” he said, pointing to the opposite shore, shrouded in fog. “We’ve time for one last run. If I muster volunteers, might I have permission to go back and fetch my horse?”
MacDougall eyed the mouth of the river for enemy warships. “Aye—g’won, then—find your volunteers, but do so with speed, lad.”
Old Gourley was game, and Duncan was willing. By offering a hot breakfast courtesy of the Cup and Quill as an inducement, David was also able to coerce four of the Marblehead mariners to join in on the rescue mission.
Carrying a light load, and with strong muscles behind the oars, the flat-bottom scow cut across the water as if pushed along by a great invisible hand. The fog was beginning to lift, patches of mist swirling to open up in clear expanses. With no time to waste, David leapt from the boat as it bumped to the landing, and ran up to the ferry house where Black Bill waited just as he was left, hitched to the post with a short lead.
No sooner did David set foot on Long Island, did he want off again. After so much hubbub and confusion earlier, the ferry landing was now a forlorn place, made even more desolate in the eerie fog. An inexplicable dread congested in his chest, and he cursed his own stupidity, fumbling with the complicated knot he’d used to hitch his horse to the post. Impatient, Bill tossed his angry head, snorting and stamping his hooves in chastisement.
“Goddamn this knot . . .”
Tail swishing back and forth, Bill stiffened his neck, his ears pivoting back.
David heard it, too—the clank-clank of armed soldiers on the prowl. He looked down to the landing. Duncan, Gourley and the Marbleheaders, all standing in the scow—all waving their hands wildly. He turned to see a row of bright specters emerging from the swirling mist—red figures crisscrossed in white, moving with stealth toward the landing.
What a fine mark to shoot at . . . he thought . . . and my musket’s on the boat.
The soldiers came into full view—grenadiers in furry, peaked hats. With a shout, they began running toward the landing. Gourley gave a shout, and the others scrambled to the oars. pushing away from the dock. The Redcoats broached a stand, flintlocks clacking back, and laid several rounds upon the scow as it disappeared into the fog.
“Shhhh . . . Billy . . . shhhh . . .” David ducked down and slipped around, putting the skittish horse between himself and the soldiers. He unbuckled the stallion’s halter, disengaging Bill from the post. Grabbing a fistful of mane, he pulled up onto Bill’s bare back.
The movement caught an eye.
“Halt!”
Kicking and jabbing his heels, David yanked hard on handfuls of mane in a struggle to direct the bridleless stallion. A single shot sounded, and the ball whizzed past, plinking off the iron ring on the hitching post with a high-pitched ding.
Bill reared up. David squeezed tight to his mount, clinging to the mane, clenching his every muscle to stay astride. More shots flashed in the fog, sharp sulfur smoke mingling with the mist. Nostrils flaring, eyes gone wide and wild, Bill wheeled to the left, and then swerved to the right, going nowhere in a mad circle.
David was jerked one way and then the other, barely able to keep his seat, feeling as if he’d been slapped hard on the shoulder—then the leg—with a wet leather strop. Heart thumping in his brain, he hunched over his stallion’s withers. On this signal Black Bill at last gave in to his instinct to flee. Taking off in full gallop, he raced inland.
David shot a glance over his shoulder. Muskets a-crackle, the Redcoats gave good chase, but on foot they were no match for his stallion. Black Bill continued to run hard, and as the gunfire faded in the distance, the stallion slowed to a canter, then to a gentle trot.
Drawing upright, David tottered. Head swimming round and round, he groped at a burning ache in his left shoulder. His fingers came up sticky and scarlet. Try as he might, he could not make a fist with his left hand and Bill’s mane slipped through his fingers. Dizzy, David slumped down and wrapped his right arm around the stallion’s strong neck.
“I’m shot, Bill . . .”
As if understanding the dilemma, the horse came to a complete standstill. Blowing short puffs through his nostrils, Bill twisted round and nuzzled David at the knee.
With Redcoats not too far on his heels, David tried to urge Black Bill forward, and noticed his right leg buzzing with biting pain from ankle to knee as if being stung by a hundred wasps at once. Suddenly thrown off-kilter and at odds to keep his balance, he slipped to the left, flailing at air. Keeling over, David landed hard.
Pain screwed through his shoulder and into his gut like a white-hot auger, fastening him helpless to the ground. His leg felt as if it were being crushed between the grinding maws of a jagged vise. Eyes rolling back in his head, David gagged and coughed up the mouthful of sour bile rushing to his throat.
Lying with one cheek in the sick, the world slowly blinked back into focus—and he could make out four stamping black hooves in the fog. He drew in a deep breath. Blowing it out slow, he struggled to regain control of his wits. Bill bent and whuffled concern in his ear. The stallion nosed David’s good hand, the wiry horse whiskers tickling the pads of his palm, his gritty tongue licking the salt from David’s curled fingers.
“Run, Bill . . .” David stroked the soft velvet nose. “You run—I’m dead.”
“Oh no, Captain . . . you’re not dead yet.”
Hands carefully rolled David onto his back, and he stared up at a fuzzy black face framed in filmy white and asked, “That you, Bill?”
A different yet familiar voice said, “My God, Titus—his leg’s a bloody mess—”
“He’s shoulder shot as well.” Brown wool floated down beside him. “We’ll have to carry him in the blanket . . .”
“On three,” Jack said. “One . . . two . . .”
In a mercifully quick but still painful up-and-down, David was moved onto the makeshift litter.
“They’re coming . . .” David gasped. “Redcoats . . .”
“Be more worried about your redhead than Redcoats,” Titus said, taking hold of the two blanket corners. “Miss Sally will be none too pleased when she sees that leg . . .”
Strapping his musket across his back, Jack hunkered hear David’s head, wrapping each fist in a good clutch of wool. “Are you ready, brother? This will be a rough ride . . .”
David nodded. “I’m ready.”
Jack and Titus hoisted the blanket, and with David cradled in its sling, they ran into the fogbank.
“WE’LL never find the rebel bastard—not in this fog,” Lieutenant Wemyss grumbled.
Stuart chimed in. “The blasted rebel retreat would never have succeeded if not for this damnable fog . . .”
Edward Blankenship cantered alongside the pair of young lieutenants, part of the dragoon detachment following the trail of the lone rebel offic
er who managed to gallop away from a whole company of grenadiers.
Wemyss picked up the rant. “If those grenadiers bloodied the bastard as they claim, you might think we’d see some sign of it—drop of blood or two—or perhaps a corpse . . .”
Stuart laughed, and Wemyss’s sarcasm drew an understanding smile from Blankenship. At last given the order to storm the Brooklyn works, only to find that their miserable foes had vanished in an artful evacuation—it rubbed everyone raw. That the grenadiers had allowed the lone rebel left behind to escape was in the least inexcusable.
“Running away—the cowards—they are becoming expert at it,” Wemyss huffed. “We had them by the short hairs . . . By all rights, Captain, you have to admit, we should have crushed this rebellion days ago . . .”
“Aye.” Stuart nodded. “Now the traitors live to bedevil us another day.”
Why Howe had not allowed them to completely crush their enemy upon breaching the Jamaica Pass and executing the flawless flanking maneuver was a rankling mystery being pondered by officers and enlisted men alike. Edward refused to join in the muttered discontent, and he would not rise to the bait Wemyss dangled.
“What lies behind our commander’s judgment is—as it should be—beyond our ken. We are soldiers, Wemyss. We have but to do our duty . . .” Blankenship pulled his horse to a halt. “What’s this?”
Traveling through a rocky, shrubby field, they had come upon a torn-up patch of mud, with faint horseshoe tracks leading away from it to the northwest. They dismounted, and leaving the horses tethered to a birch, the men traced the trail on foot until the tracks grew even less distinct and disappeared.
After reaching the dead end, Stuart uncorked his canteen, and took a deep swallow. “This fellow’s long gone—most likely at home by now, making a bonfire of his regimental uniform. He’ll be among those waiting to sign Howe’s oath of loyalty.”
“Colonials!” Wemyss snorted. “Curse every one of them to . . .”
“Shhhh . . .” Blankenship put his fingers to his lips, and cocked his head. “Hoof beats . . .”
The rhythmic thud-duh-dump, thud-duh-dump grew louder and louder, until piercing through the veil, about ten yards distant, a jet-black horse burst through in a swirling mist. With a nicker, the stallion cantered up, and bold as you please began jostling and nibbling at one of the mares tethered to the tree.
Secure within the herd, the stallion allowed the officers to approach. Stuart took a spare halter from his saddlebag and slipped it over the horse’s nose.
“He is a beautiful animal,” Wemyss noted. “Well tended.”
“He’s bleeding.” Stuart point to a patch of dark red blood smeared across the stallion’s right flank.
Blankenship examined the spot. “A lot of blood here, but no wound.” He showed his palm, red and sticky from the effort. “It seems the grenadiers did manage to sink a ball into the rebel.”
“Bleeding, escaping upon a stallion without a bridle or saddle—the devil must be dead or dying in the brush somewhere,” Stuart surmised. “The grenadiers will have better luck finding him on foot with dogs than we will on horseback.”
“Quite right, Lieutenant.” Blankenship fashioned a long lead with a length of rope, and attached it to the stallion’s halter. “Let’s head back.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
We fight neither for revenge nor conquest; neither from
pride nor passion; we are not insulting the world with our fleets
and armies, not ravaging the globe for plunder. Beneath the shade
of our own vines are we attacked; in our own houses, and on our
own lands, is the violence committed against us.
THOMAS PAINE, Common Sense
Saturday, September 14, 1776
Midmorning at the Sign of the Cup and Quill
A doleful harbinger, the wool-stuffed mattress thump, thump, thumped, from step to step to step as Anne dragged it down the stairs. “Like moving a dead body,” she complained, tugging the unwieldy thing the last few yards across the floor.
“I dinna think it’ll fit.” Sally eyed the mattress as she finagled the sugar chest into the storage closet beneath the stairs. “There is not a square inch to spare in here.”
The women managed to squash the mattress in nonetheless. Sally put her weight against the door so Anne could thread a padlock through the hasp and lock it with the corresponding key on her ring. They pushed the big cabinet back into its spot, concealing the door’s existence.
“If we’re lucky,” Sally said, wiping her hands on her apron, “the lobsterbacks willna think to look behind the cabinet.”
“If we’re lucky,” Anne said, “Washington won’t order the whole city put to the torch, as they say he is wont to do, rather than leave it for the British.”
Sally sighed. “I’ll put a lock on the kitchen door anyway, for whatever good it might do.”
Anne spun in a slow circle on one heel, going over the checklist in her mind. All linens and valuable furnishings were stowed under lock and key. All the doors and shutters were latched secure. The pushcart and two rucksacks were packed and waiting by the front door.
“I suppose we’re ready.” Anne flopped down in a chair, scrunching her nose upon viewing her shoes poking out from her hems.
It was a fifteen-mile trek on the Post Road to cross over to the mainland by King’s Bridge. Boats willing to take passengers upriver were few and far between these days, and they might well have to foot the additional thirty-five miles all the way to Peekskill. Anne packed her pretty French heels away, and borrowed a sensible pair of brown shoes from Sally—low flat heels with squared toes, secured with a wide strap and buckle.
“Blech!”
Sally tossed their straw hats on the tabletop, and pulled up a chair. “The baker’s boy just popped his head over the fence. Quakenbos will be by within the hour to fetch us along.”
Anne nodded. “Then we will have to bid farewell to the Cup and Quill . . .”
The days since the army’s retreat from Long Island had whipped by faster than a hurricane wind. The coffeehouse had been filled to capacity morning, noon and night with vanquished, exhausted soldiers in need of a hot meal, and some respite from defeat and the wet weather. Anne and Sally flung open the doors to all comers, and without charge offered cups of chicory coffee and liberty tea, bowlfuls of porridge and heartfelt smiles. Even penny-pinching Quakenbos handed out loaves of fresh-baked bread—everyone doing their part to bolster the sad wreck of an army that had stumbled up from the ferry landing.
“I still dinna see why we have to leave,” Sally grumbled. “Washington’s made a mess of it. Our soldiers are deserting in droves, our army is in shambles, and the English have all but won the war anyway.”
“I don’t want to go to Peekskill any more than you do, Sally, but it is just too dangerous for us to stay here. David would want for us to go.”
Sally pursed her lips. Digging in her pocket, she produced David’s last letter. Unfolding it on the tabletop, she traced a fingertip across the words, as if she would be able to divine her man’s whereabouts and his well-being by some magical transmission. “I live to be together with you once again . . .” her voice wavering a bit as she read the line aloud for the hundredth time.
It verily broke Anne’s heart to see her friend in such despair. Sally seemed to fight tears every minute of every day since Mr. Gourley had delivered the letter and the horrible telling of David’s being marooned in enemy territory.
Sally moved easily from tears to rage. She scooped the page up and shoved the letter back into her pocket, saying for about the thousandth time, “The stupid gowk—risking all for the sake of that damn horse!”
Like a china plate balanced on the sharp point of a needle, Sally teetered from worry, to anger, to desolation, and back to worry—ready to fall and shatter into shards at any moment. Anne tried to be a strong shoulder for Sally to lean on, but as each day wore on, without any word of her brother’s fate, she, t
oo, found it difficult to maintain her stoic optimism.
General Washington had ordered all New York citizens to evacuate two days before, but Anne and Sally did not join the latest exodus. Holding out hope that David might yet show up among the soldiers coming through their door, they kept on brewing coffee and baking scones, denying the reality of their tenuous situation. The endless work served a dual purpose—a welcome distraction from wondering and worrying, and as an excuse to avoid heeding the order to evacuate.
Anne knew the situation had become untenable the moment she heard Walter Quakenbos pounding on their door that morning. The Continental Army was abandoning the city, and the baker allowed them three hours to gather their things, if they meant to travel along with him. Anne felt she had no choice. She and Sally prepared for the trip they had for so long resisted.
“Duncan MacBryde stopped by, and I tolt him we were off to Peekskill.”
“Good,” Anne said. “When David rejoins his regiment, Duncan will pass on the word and he will know that we are safe.”
There was a knock at the door.
“There’s Quakenbos . . .”
Anne glanced around her shop. “Time to bid farewell to the Cup and Quill.”
Both women were slow to their feet. Anne reached for her hat.
A second round of knocking threw Sally into a snit. “We hear ye, auld man, we’re comin’, aye?” She slid the bolts, and swung open the door. “My God!” she shrieked, taking a step back, her mouth formed a perfect O.
Hunched together, Jack and Titus pushed past her. With hands linked to form a seat, they carried David straight up the stairs. “We’re putting him in the old master’s bedchamber!” Titus called over his shoulder.
The women scrambled after them. Anne skirted around with the key to unlock the door to the room. “Set him on the floor for now—we’ll have to bring up a mattress and bed linen . . .”
“He’s taken a ball to his leg and shoulder,” Titus explained as he and Jack lowered their charge to the floor with much gentleness, helping him to sit propped in the corner. Sally dropped to David’s side, her eyes brimming. Brows knit, she pressed the back of her hand to his forehead, then to his cheek.
The Tory Widow Page 20
