by Ron Carter
Silas sat unmoving, waiting, while Caleb stopped and lowered his hand. Then he spoke quietly. “Anything else?”
“Yes. Mother and Brigitte are working themselves to death to keep the family, and I’m working at the printer’s helping with his newspaper when I can. How come? Mother and Brigitte never did anything wrong to anyone.”
Silas looked into Caleb’s eyes and waited for the hot anger, the passion to dwindle, and then Caleb dropped his eyes, embarrassed. Silas quietly began to rub his hands together, studying them, sorting out his thoughts in silence, waiting for something to tell him what to say. Caleb waited in the quiet, and finally shifted his feet.
Silas raised his eyes to Caleb’s. “I don’t think I can answer your questions, Caleb.”
Caleb reared back in his chair, wide-eyed with surprise.
Silas paused for a moment and then continued to speak softly, thoughtfully. “I’ve had a question like that one for thirty years. I prayed about it every day, every night. I never got an answer. I don’t know why. After awhile I wept over it, nearly every day.”
His lip quivered and he closed his mouth hard and sat for a time, staring at his hands while he struggled to hold back tears.
“I didn’t think I was asking too much. If He couldn’t grant my prayer, I thought at least He could let me know why. But He didn’t.” Silas paused and his voice quivered as he finished. “I’m old now. I’ll be gone soon. Then I’ll know why He didn’t answer.”
Caleb saw the muscles in Silas’s old, weathered jaw flex as he worked with his emotions. He had never supposed this little old bent man who had been his reverend since the day Caleb had been born ever had a human emotion. That he would share such a thing was beyond Caleb’s wildest imaginings. He yearned to know, to blurt out the single question—”What did you ask of God?”—but he could not. He sat silent, eyes pleading to know.
Silas looked him in the eye. “I asked God for children. More than anything in this world, Mattie and I wanted children—our own family. She knitted little things for years. I built a cradle. It’s all stored and maybe someday someone else will get to use those things. I watched the light in her eyes die one day at a time for twenty-five years, and then she was too old. I still pray about it. In the Old Testament God gave Isaac to Abraham and Sarah when they were old. He can still do that for Mattie and me if He will. Or maybe he will find a child from someone else that Mattie and I can raise. He can do it, you know.”
Again he paused for a time, then raised his eyes back to Caleb. “Was I asking too much? Having children?”
Caleb looked into the pale blue eyes and he saw the deep yearning and he felt the unanswered question that this little man had held silently in his own heart for thirty years: Why has God denied me and my Mattie the one thing we wanted most in this mortal life? Children! Caleb saw the old eyes begin to glisten and Silas raised a hand to wipe the single tear that started down his cheek. Silas did not try to hide it, nor did he apologize. He sat in silence, waiting for Caleb’s answer to his question.
Caleb tried to speak, but could not. He choked and swallowed hard, and once again raised his eyes to Silas’s face and tried to speak, but could not get the words out. Finally he cleared his throat and shook his head.
Silas sighed and dropped his eyes to study his hands for a time before he spoke, quietly. “I don’t know why God wouldn’t send us children. And I don’t know why He has refused to let us know why. I know I will go on praying for the answer as long as I’m alive, and I know that if He doesn’t answer, I’ll learn the reason when I’m gone. Then I’ll understand, and it will be all right.”
He stopped, and a strange spirit crept into the room. Caleb felt the hair on the back of his neck rise as he sat there, and for a long time neither man spoke or moved while the spirit possessed them, and then it faded and was gone, and once more Silas looked at Caleb and spoke softly.
“I can’t answer your question about where God was when your father was killed, or why your family has been separated. I can’t even answer the single question that means more than anything else to me. I wish I could, but I can’t. I only know that I will not quit praying about it as long as I live.”
It was over. The old man stood, and then Caleb stood, and they faced each other in silence for several moments before Silas opened the door.
“I will tell no one what we’ve said, not even your mother. You can tell her what you think best. I wish I could be of more help, but I can’t.”
Suddenly, impulsively, Caleb thrust out his hand, and the gnarled old hand reached to seize it. For a moment the two faced each other, aware that their time together had brought forth something rare, precious. They both knew it would be locked in their hearts forever, to be brought out in quiet moments to be remembered and pondered, and that neither would ever speak of it again to anyone, or to each other.
The old man stood in the yellow light of the doorway while Caleb raised the collar on his heavy coat against the cold and walked away. The snow crunched under his feet as he turned the corner and started west towards home. He glanced upward, and there was no light, no moon, no stars. The heavens were still sealed away by a thick, chill, heavy overcast.
New York
December 28, 1776
CHAPTER XI
General William Howe faced himself before the full-length mirror in his second-floor bedroom of the Jacobson mansion and raised his chin to work patiently at finishing the knot in his cravat. Tall, slender, he paused to turn slightly while he studied himself, judging whether his apparel would draw the desired side-glances and guarded remarks at the great banquet and ball to convene at nine o’clock in the grand ballroom of the huge Murdock mansion in northwest New York City.
It was not by chance that he had ordered the British army into winter quarters December fourteenth and arrived in New York City December eighteenth at the height of the winter social season, when the rich and powerful filled the calendar with social events each more grand than the last. The day following his arrival, the Americans loyal to the Crown had hand-delivered a beautifully scrolled invitation to him to lead the grand march for the gala event of the socialite season at the Murdock mansion. The following day he had ordered Joshua Loring out of town to inspect American prisoners in New Jersey, and then arranged for Loring’s wife, Elizabeth, the beautiful, blond, charming social butterfly, to attend the grand ball as his consort. After all, the appointment of Joshua Loring to the undemanding position of British commissary of prisoners, and the providing of an extremely lucrative stipend for his services had not been a result of Loring’s competence or skills, but rather to accommodate the fancy that Howe had taken to Loring’s vivacious wife. Joshua loved his power and purse, Elizabeth loved her meteoric rise to the top of New York society, and Howe loved Elizabeth; happy with the arrangement, they turned a deaf ear to the expressions of shock and outrage that rumbled through the city. Howe had humbly, graciously accepted the invitation to preside at the fete and sought the services of the finest tailor in New York to create appropriate attire.
The tailor had fawned over him for an hour, spent another hour taking measurements, then proposed that a gown be created for Mrs. Loring appropriate to the elegant suit the general was to wear: a shirt of the finest snowy-white linen with lace at the cuffs and cascading down his chest, silk vest trimmed in gold, white velvet breeches, silk stockings to match the vest and which fastened below the knee with gold closures, and white ballroom slippers edged in gold. The coat was of sky-blue velvet, long tails, gold at the broad lapels and four-inch cuffs. Elizabeth’s gown was of the same luxurious sky-blue velvet, white lace and gold at the throat and cuffs.
Howe again proudly surveyed his attire. His usually saturnine expression cracked as a smile of approval flickered. In his mind he was seeing himself and Elizabeth together, suit and gown matching, him dark, her blond, the two of them the utter envy of every woman and the disgust of every man in attendance. For a moment he visualized how stunning it would be wi
th the crimson sash of knighthood beneath the velvet coat once the king had formally tapped him on each shoulder with the sword to make him a knight of the realm, as the king had promised. It was a pity it had not happened earlier; it would have electrified everyone in the ballroom. He turned to the lightly powdered wig on the dresser and sobered. His dislike for the wig was the price he had to pay for the pleasures he anticipated. He would wait for his aide to assist in fixing it on his head.
A rap came sharp at the door and Howe flinched, then glanced at the clock on the ornately carved mantel above the great stone fireplace. Five minutes before eight o’clock. A flicker of concern crossed his face as he called, “What is it?”
The voice of his aide came through the door, and Howe could not miss the man’s distress. “Sir, there is a lieutenant downstairs who insists that he see you.”
Howe’s forehead creased in puzzlement. “Lieutenant who?”
“Jacob Baum. From the command of Colonel Johann Gottlieb Rall at Trenton. Sent here by General Grant at Brunswick, sir.”
“What?” Howe exclaimed. He strode to the door and jerked it open. His aide recoiled one step back, fearful, waiting for Howe’s anger. Howe’s voice was loud, demanding. “There’s a German officer here from Trenton? At eight o’clock on a Saturday night?”
“Yes, sir.”
Howe was incredulous. “For what?”
“He has not said, sir. He says he has an urgent message and insists on talking to you.”
“Get the message and bring it here.”
“It is not written, sir.”
“Then he’ll have to wait. I have important matters in one hour. Billet him for the night and I’ll see him in the morning.” Howe started to close the door and his aide took one step forward.
“Sir, might I suggest you see him. He says he has slept only four hours since December twenty-sixth. He’s ridden two horses half to death on orders of General Grant to deliver a critically urgent message.”
“All right, all right! I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
Howe slammed the door closed and turned and stopped, his mind leaping with the possibilities of what catastrophe would drive General Grant to send a man from Trenton to New York in two days to deliver a message on the eve of the most glittering social event of the season. He began to shrug out of his velvet coat, stopped, reconsidered, and walked back to the door. He was not going through the tedious labor of changing out of his ballroom attire into his uniform, then immediately change back, simply to satisfy protocol before a German lieutenant. He strode down the hall and stairs, his ballroom slippers quiet on the hardwood floors.
His aide met him. “In the library, sir.”
Howe pushed through the French glass doors, sensing the faint aroma of sweet pipe tobacco that lingered in the library, aware of the walnut shelves that lined the walls, filled with books from every civilized country in the world. Lieutenant Jacob Baum stood in the center of the room before the massive mahogany desk. He gaped for a moment at Howe’s dress, then came to attention.
Howe stopped in his tracks, shocked. Lieutenant Baum’s greatcoat was smeared with dirt and blood, filthy, torn, his boots caked with mud. His high, pointed Hessian hat was gone and he held a dirty, ragged scarf in his hand that he had wrapped about his head to keep from freezing. He had not shaved for three days and his face was covered with grime, nose running from coming out of the freezing cold into the heat. He was fatigued, beaten in both body and soul, eyes dead, flat, and he was not steady on his feet as he waited for General Howe to speak.
“Lieutenant, I am General Howe. I am told you have a ‘critically urgent message’ for me.”
A strong German accent tinged Baum’s English. “I have a message from Herr General Grant at Brunswick, sir. With the General’s permission may I ask to be seated?”
Howe carried a plain wooden chair from the corner and placed it facing his desk next to the expensive, upholstered one, then walked to a small table in the corner for a crystal decanter of whiskey and a matching goblet. He filled the goblet and set it before Baum, then set the flask down and took his place in the great chair behind the desk. Baum raised the goblet and drank deeply.
“Thank you, sir. I am to report to you that the Americans have taken Trenton. The entire garrison is gone.”
Howe’s mouth fell open for a split second and he jerked forward in his chair, eyes narrowed in utter disbelief. “What?”
“Two days ago. In the morning the day after Christmas. There was a storm and they came from the west. They had cannon at the ends of the streets and the American soldiers came into the streets and they drove the garrison out into the field and the orchard on the east. The entire garrison was killed or captured, except for a few of us who escaped.”
Howe’s face turned pasty-white. He sat without moving for several seconds while his mind reeled, groping. “The Americans now hold Trenton?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How many of them?”
“I do not know. Many. Perhaps five or six thousand. They came so fast I did not have time to gauge their numbers.”
“Is Colonel Rall captured? His officers?”
“I think Colonel Rall is dead. I saw him hit once and then I ran with my own regiment down to the Assunpink Creek where most of us were captured. I know Major von Dechow is probably dead, along with four other officers. Two other officers and I and about fifty soldiers got into the water and we waded upstream for a distance and then got out and went further east before we turned towards Princeton. Some of us escaped but some were too weak and did not.”
“You reported this in Princeton?”
“To General Leslie. He sent me on to Brunswick to tell General Grant. He sent me on to report it to you, because I could speak a little English. I slept four hours yesterday in a barn because I could go no further. I changed horses once. I have eaten almost nothing since the morning of December twenty-sixth.”
Howe’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward, focused, intense. “Do you know who the American commander was?”
“No, sir.”
“General Washington?”
“I never saw. All I know is the terrible storm was in our faces and there were cannon shooting and American soldiers with muskets and bayonets everywhere.”
“Where did they cross the river? How?”
“I only know they did not cross at Trenton. They came in from the west, so they must have crossed somewhere up the river.”
“Coryell’s Ferry? McKonkey’s Ferry?”
“I do not know. They came down both the River Road and the Pennington Road and into both ends of town at the same time.”
“How long did the battle last?”
Baum dropped his eyes to consider. “I estimate about one and onehalf hours. Maybe less.”
Howe jerked erect. “They took Trenton from Rall in an hour and a half?”
Baum raised pained eyes. “I estimate that is true. Yes.”
“Did Colonel Rall try to escape across the Assunpink bridge and go on down to Bordentown for help?”
“No, sir. They had cannon down there and a strong force of foot soldiers. I saw them myself. It was impossible.”
“Do you know where the Americans are now? Are they coming towards Princeton? Brunswick?”
“I do not know. I was not allowed to rest at Princeton or Brunswick. I have ridden for two days to get here.”
“Is there anyone else who can confirm this report?”
“At Princeton. Three or four of us reached Princeton. I am the only one they sent on to report to you.”
By force of will Howe slowed his fragmented, racing thoughts. He leaned back in the great chair and stared unseeing as his thinking clarified and the decisions began to form. Moments passed in silence before he rose, strode to the door, and opened it to call down the hall to his aide, “Captain MacKenzie!”
The officer ran to the library and burst through the door. “Yes, sir.”
“First, find another offi
cer and bring him here to me as fast he can move. Then take this man to the nearest place where officers are billeted and get him hot food, a hot bath, dry clothes, and a bed. Then report back here for further orders.”
“Yes, sir.” The man nearly stumbled over his own feet as he pivoted and ran from the room. Instantly Howe went back to his chair and slid ink, quill, and paper into place and wrote a hurried message. He was setting his seal in the hot wax when MacKenzie returned with a captain who followed him into the library wide-eyed, half frightened.
MacKenzie announced, “This is Captain Jonas Welch, sir.”
Howe did not hesitate. “Captain, General Lord Charles Cornwallis is presently quartered at Number One Broadway, down near the waterfront, and he’s planning to leave for England immediately. Find him and deliver this message to him as fast as you can. Wait for his answer and bring it to me. Not one word to anyone. Do you understand?”
The captain exhaled, relieved to know he had not been ordered to appear before General Howe for some infraction. “Yes, sir.”
Howe handed him the written document and the captain turned on his heel and fairly trotted from the room.
MacKenzie hesitantly asked, “Is there anything else, sir, or shall I escort Lieutenant Baum to his quarters now?”
“Go ahead, but report back as soon as you can.” Howe listened to the click of the boot heels in the hallway while he took a deep breath and leaned back against the edge of the heavy desk working with his thoughts, forcing conclusions, and the beginning of a plan. So he’s on this side of the river and he took Trenton from the Hessians. My reports said his army was so weak that would be impossible.
