America Über Alles

by Jack Fernley

  The place was, if anything, fuller and more raucous than before, drink releasing any inhibitions the victors of the Elk River might have had. Where he had entered unseen, now as he tried to squeeze past people, tried to make his way to the open space beyond the tavern door, his bloodied face and dishevelled appearance made people look twice. That and the shrieking of Conze as he came after him down the stairs and into the throng below, screaming, ‘Stop the traitor!’

  In the small, tightly packed tavern, someone in response shouted, ‘Assassin! Stop the assassin!’, and within seconds the place was transformed into a writhing mass of shouting, screaming people, confused, not sure what was happening, looking to their neighbours for the unknown assassin, the drink colouring any judgement. Any face not recognised was under suspicion and more than one man was prodded and punched. ‘Over there! Him!’ screamed Conze, but the noise was too great now, he was drowned out by other screams and shouts of ‘Murderer!’ and ‘Assassin!’

  Hand was collared by a ruddy-faced German, but the man’s grip was weakened by alcohol, and Hand slipped away, and then down to the floor, crawling through the legs of others. It was not dignified, but for the time being it was effective, despite the kicks he received about him.

  He saw the door. He stood up and, foolishly, looked back at the confusion and madness of the howling throng. Conze spotted him and let out a hellish screech that flew above the tumult and focused every beer-soaked head: ‘BY THE DOOR! HE’S ESCAPING! STOP HIM!’

  Hand rushed out of the door, knocking over a couple who were trying to enter. Losing his balance, he scrambled back to his feet and made for the wide expanse of Chestnut Street, heading down towards the port. Behind him a crowd of drunken Stormtroopers came piling out of the City Tavern, hurtling after him, yelling insults as they pounded down the dusty street.

  The Irishman dashed to the left. He did not know Philadelphia well, but he knew he would be a dead man out in the wide expanse of Chestnut Street. He only stood a chance in the maze of warrens that had been thrown up in the last few years as the city had grown, in the workshops, smallholdings and shanty buildings of the city’s poor.

  Behind him, the Stormtroopers were charging about, colliding with people, banging into the walls of flimsy buildings, knocking over the fences and stakes of pig pens and chicken coops that sat alongside the homes of the poor. Hand had a lead through the maze of buildings, but he was unclear where he was running. He was just hurtling down any alleyway or side street, no idea where it would go. And then, horror.

  Without realising, he had gone in a circle and he now found himself running down a cinder path and straight into a group of the Stormtroopers. He threw himself to the right, over a picket fence and into the middle of a stinking, gurning family of pigs. The adults stabbed at him with their snouts, the piglets screeching. But he pulled himself up and over the picket on the other side, just before the Germans followed him through, dismantling the entire fence, falling over the pigs and each other amid animal shrieks and human expressions of disgust.

  Momentarily free of the carnage behind him, Hand turned left down another channel and then right, before a further right turn and into a more open space, where a black man was shoeing a dark brown plough horse. Their eyes met. Without saying anything, the blacksmith dropped the horse’s hoof, stood up, grabbed Hand by the collar and dragged him into the back of the smithy, throwing him up and over a pile of logs, before walking back out outside and picking up the hoof again, all in a matter of seconds.

  The crowd of Germans came rushing into the open area. A few continued to chase off down the side paths, but a greater number stopped.

  ‘Neger!’ shouted one, his face flushed with the excitement of the chase and an afternoon of drinking, ‘Where’d he go?’

  ‘Who?’ asked the blacksmith.

  ‘The man who came running through here but a minute past.’

  ‘White man?’ asked the blacksmith.

  ‘White man,’ replied the German.

  The blacksmith pointed his thumb. ‘That way. This horse went to give him a good kick and he went off down that way, where those men went,’ and he turned back to the hoof, nail placed ready for a hammering.

  The German eyed him suspiciously. ‘You better be telling the truth.’

  The smith looked up at him. ‘And you’ll be missing him if you don’t get a head on,’ before turning his head back down to his work and hammering the nail firmly into the hoof. He looked up to see the German still agitated, ‘I ain’t got time to play your white man’s game, search my smithy if you care, but I got a horse that has to be shod, so I’m a-getting on with that.’ He picked up a further nail, placed it and struck it squarely. The German looked at the men with him, unsure. At that moment a further burst of shouting from somewhere else settled his mind, ‘Come, follow me!’ he ordered and they ran off in the direction the blacksmith had sent them.

  The blacksmith continued to do his work, methodically finishing the hoof until he was satisfied. He gently placed it on the ground and stood up, stroking the plough horse’s weatherbeaten neck and head. ‘Good girl, all done, all ready for harvest.’ And then, wiping his hands on his leather apron, Oliver Cromwell walked into his smithy to see whether he had broken any of his friend Eddie Hand’s bones when he threw him behind his woodpile.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  ‘I came here straight away from that night at Buckingham. I was affeared of my life. Ain’t too much of a coward to say that, Ed. I know how these things go. Niggers get the blame. Your boys got me out, but I knew I had to go. Came here. Found this smithy, empty, needed someone to raise it up again. So, that’s what I did. Ne’er got a chance to thank you.’

  ‘You don’t need to do that now. You saved me. Mind you, could have done it breaking a few less bones.’

  The two men smiled at each other. They were in the room above the smithy. The summer’s day had turned to dusk. The shouts and screams of the day had given way to the usual night noises of any growing city.

  The day’s events were already becoming legend, but the truth of the day was grim. A young New Jersey boy, visiting an aged aunt, had been mistaken for Hand and was kicked and punched to death by a group of Stormtroopers. A clerk from the customs office had almost gone the same way before his employer had intervened. Someone else appeared to have used the day’s dramatics to take revenge on a rival, and threw him off the wharf where he drowned. Satisfied in their blood lust, the Germans had returned to their camp.

  Conze had inspected the body of the New Jersey boy and cursed the air. Hand was a small issue. Put in the historical framework of what was unfolding, he was a speck of dust against the curtain of the night. But so long as he was out there somewhere, lurking, he remained an unknown, unquantifiable source of potential problems. Von Steuben had asked him what had been the cause of the day’s kerfuffle – there were many well-to-do Philadelphians alarmed by the Stormtroopers charging about the city – and Conze felt embarrassed to have to admit it was Edward Hand, back from the dead. Von Steuben, he could tell, rather admired the man – that, or he was a convenient tool with which to needle his comrade. ‘Quite a thorn in your side, this man Hand. Werner, who will rid you of that troublesome Rifleman, eh?’ he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

  At the same moment, on the Smithy’s top floor, Hand was telling Cromwell of his time with the Iroquois.

  ‘They patched me up well, better than I could have done as a trained doctor, I daresay, and let me stay with them for months. We travelled north until we came across the Oneida.’

  ‘They’re the Indians who sided with the Colonists, aren’t they?’

  ‘They are. Split the Iroquois alliance. I was handed over to Akiatonharónkwen, who had heard of the massacre at Queen Esther’s Village. It seems it’s not the only attack on Indian villages the Hessians have made. There have been at least three.’

  ‘It ain’t good what’s happening, Ed, wi’ these Stormtroopers or whatever they call themselves. You kn
ow what happened at Lowantica with all the black troops? All marched out. All gone. They went back on Washington’s words to us. Worst of all, no one knows where they are.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They rounded them all up, from every unit and marched ’em all out. All out of the camp, and no one knows where. There must’ve been, what, five, six hundred Negro soldiers. There ain’t any now. Nor any special brigades either.’

  ‘That doesn’t give me a good feeling.’

  ‘No, nor me. Where d’you think they’ve taken them, Ed? I’ve been thinking on it and I just can’t fathom it.’

  ‘I fear for those boys, Oliver, I wish I could say different, but I fear for them. These aren’t reasonable men.’ Hand rubbed his face with his hand, wondering for a moment what to tell his old friend. He had fought with Cromwell, and trusted him, and he knew that he needed to tell him what he knew. ‘It wasn’t just an Indian village. I saw the same happen with a Jewish village.’

  ‘A Jewish village? I didn’t know there were Israelites in the Americas.’

  ‘Apparently there are. And the Stormtroopers . . . you know what they called them? These men and women – mothers, fathers, children – just trying to make a living and hurting no one? They called them vermin. To these Germans, these poor settlers were just vermin, can you believe it? I saw them torch the buildings and then slaughter everyone, little babies and all. And that’s not the last of it. They slaughtered unarmed British prisoners at New Brunswick, raped their women—’

  ‘Dear Lord! Does Old George know what’s going on?’

  Hand paused. ‘That’s something I don’t know. I never had a chance to talk to him about it.’

  ‘But you know the Old Fella, you know what he stands for, he wouldn’t stand for this, would he?’

  ‘I would say no, from what I have seen of him. They say he owns slaves in Virginia, but I never saw him show any disrespect to anyone on account of the colour of their skin or their religion. There is one man I know who would have no truck with this. Thomas Jefferson. Or I would hope he would not, but these are strange times.’

  ‘Strange times they are. Sweet Jesus. And where is our friend Pat O’Leary in this?’

  Again Hand paused. ‘Pat is with them. He has become one of their keenest followers, I’m sorry to say. Pat wears their armband and marches with them. I saw him today. He wears the black uniform of their officers. Pat and I have gone our separate ways and I can’t see us ever coming together again.’

  ‘You were like brothers. And Sarah. The three of you were a family; you’ve been through so much together.’

  Now Hand broke down, tears flowing. ‘I went looking for Sarah. That’s how I landed up in this scrape. It’s no good.’ He started to sob. ‘She’s gone over to them. She’s in love with Werner Conze.’

  ‘Who?’ Cromwell felt embarrassed by his friend’s weeping. He didn’t know what to do with such an outpouring.

  ‘He’s the one who ordered the execution of the Jews, the Indians, the innocents at New Brunswick, even myself. I tried to tell her. But she wouldn’t believe me. And then, well, it’s too late.’

  ‘Too late?’

  He looked up, his eyes full of sadness. ‘She is carrying his child. They are to marry.’

  ‘Ah,’ replied Cromwell.

  ‘It may be my fault. Perhaps I was more father than brother to her and more father than friend to Pat. Maybe I never saw them for what they were, what they could be, and these Hessians have done that, given them roles that I had never seen them capable of.’

  ‘If they’re such capable minds, why have they fallen for all this nonsense then?’

  Hand composed himself. ‘They can be very persuasive, these Hessians. And look at what has happened since they arrived. Victory, where before we were wandering around with little hope or belief. That’s all changed now. Now it’s the British who are on the run.’

  The two men fell silent. Two men from very different backgrounds who had fought against the British together, finding a shared kinship in the fight against the tyrannical British rule. The thought of the child Rebecca, her poor head smashed against a rock, came unbidden into Hand’s mind. What good was the fight against one tyranny when it would be replaced with another, greater tyranny? What sort of victory was it that was earned through the slaughter of innocent men, women and children?

  Hand lifted his head and looked over at his friend. Something had just occurred to him. ‘Any idea what they’re up to down at the port?’

  ‘At the port?’

  ‘In that big warehouse they built. You must have seen it – or rather heard it? They call it a factory. From the outside, it’s all noise, inside it’s one great furnace I hear.’

  ‘Oh, the workshop you mean? That’s how I got this place. They had all the blacksmiths of Philly come to them and they placed them down at their factory. They’re building something. It’s all a big secret. I mean no one is going to tell a dumb nigger anything, but they keep it to themselves. Something is going on. You curious?’

  ‘I think we should let our curiosity get the better of us. But first, there is a letter I must send to Thomas Jefferson. He is a man who will yet stand firm to his principles, I am sure.’

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Congress had called for Washington and his general staff to return to Philadelphia for an immediate war conference. The defeat of Howe along the Elk River had changed everything. The British had returned to New York, ‘Their arses well kicked’, according to Sam Adams. Now was the time to seize the advantage.

  Washington rode into the city with Hamilton, Greene, Cadwalader, Sullivan and Ewing alongside him, as well as Lafayette, who had become a close confidant in a matter of weeks. Knox had been sent off with his artillery units to join Schuyler and the Northern Army, to hold back Burgoyne from breaking out and possibly joining up with Howe and his now depleted, demoralised forces in New York.

  Entering Philadelphia, the first thing they noticed were the abundance of swastika flags flying in the city, from the windows of private homes to the wharves along the port and, most impressively of all, from the State House. There was now not one long banner, but three huge red banners, reaching from roof to ground, each with the swastika in its centre.

  ‘What ho, look at this, a festival for the Stormtroopers?’ queried Hamilton.

  ‘These Germans seem to think they and they alone are winning this war,’ grumbled Sullivan. ‘I told you, George, it’s dangerous to place too much trust in these Hessian mercenaries. This demonstration of impropriety suggests to my mind that we should be careful we do not exchange one form of tyranny for another.’

  ‘It is, I agree, an unnecessarily ostentatious display, John. The enthusiasm of the people of Philly appears to have run away with them.’ Washington chewed at his jaw.

  ‘The enthusiasm of the Hessians has run away with themselves more likely,’ Sullivan snorted.

  ‘I must say, I would have expected more of a hullabaloo for General Washington returning to the city,’ said Hamilton. ‘There is a distinct lack of a welcoming party.’

  ‘Exactly my thoughts,’ said Greene, his portly frame uncomfortable in the saddle, despite his experience of many months on horseback.

  And mine, too, thought Washington to himself. We almost appear strangers in our own capital.

  They left their horses to be fed, watered and groomed at the City Tavern’s stables and made their way on foot to the State House.

  At last, there, in the open hallway, was a welcoming party of Congress delegates, led by John Hancock, the President of Congress and one of the wealthiest men of the colonies, a man prone to extravagant acts of vanity and theatre.

  ‘Our dear, General Washington, how contented we are that you have arrived in such good spirits. Congress and the people of Philadelphia welcome you here as our commander-in-chief. I say, three cheers for the general, gentlemen, three cheers!’

  And the fifty delegates squeezed into the open entrance hall let out thr
ee cheers and several ‘Hurrahs!’, which went some way to placating both Sullivan and Hamilton.

  Once the din had died down again, Hancock, with an extravagant bow to the delegates, said: ‘Gentlemen, wonderfully done, so wonderfully done. But our war generals are no doubt famished after their trek from the north. So please, we have prepared a buffet of the necessary victuals and I believe there may be some wines and brandies to extinguish their thirst. We have a room prepared for you, sirs, and my secretary here will escort you, but, General Washington, may I ask you for some time with myself first, in my chambers as President of the Congress.’

  ‘Of course, John, but of course.’

  ‘I shall come with you, in case you require any assistance, General Washington,’ said Hamilton.

  ‘No, that will not be necessary, not be necessary at all, young man,’ said Hancock, who with a brush of his arm led Washington up a staircase and towards his office.

  They made their way into Hancock’s office, a room that illustrated the wealth of the man: a Wedgewood Blue Jasper vase sat proudly on a stand, Chinese porcelain in a glass cabinet, several classical busts and two large landscape paintings on facing walls. And waiting inside for them were John and Samuel Adams, the Boston cousins, and the most powerful men in the Congress.

  ‘Ah, either we have disturbed you, gentlemen, or I suspect something of a trap?’ Washington’s forthright response to seeing the Adamses threw Hancock off guard.

  ‘Not at all, dear fellow, not at all, we just thought we should—’

  ‘No point messing about, John, let’s get to the point,’ Sam Adams, the older cousin said. ‘George, take a seat. Want a brandy? John’s having one and I daresay Hancock will as well. I myself stick to water. The Puritan in me, as they say.’

  Hancock fussed in the background as Washington sat down. He had little idea what was to come, but over the two years he had been commander-in-chief, he had become accustomed to these ‘fireside chats’, as Hancock called them. The younger Adams passed over a brandy.