Mistress Firebrand (30 page)

In the Sugar House, lying in Severin’s arms at night, feeling the strength of his body and his resolve, she had begun to believe they would be able to do it—to simply bide a while with their escort and then slip free. But then Lieutenant Jones had shackled her to the guns.

“It is a simple lock to pick,” Devere had assured her in quiet tones when no one else could hear. “Jones will be on his guard at first, and the men will act disciplined enough for a time, but that will not last.”

The first night they were able to break their march at an inn and Jones ordered Jenny chained in the cellar and set six men to guard her. Two of her keepers smirked at the prospect and Jenny felt sick with fear, but Devere brought her bedding from his pack and slept beside her through the night.

This proved a wise precaution. The second night they stopped at a farm, where Jones was forced to pay the farmer damages after two of his soldiers broke into the man’s chicken coop and stole a hen and some eggs. The third night the company slept in a drafty barn, and there was nothing to steal. But on the fourth, they stopped at another inn, and there was almost a shooting—four of the redcoats intercepted the innkeeper’s daughter on her way back from the necessary and her father had to cow the villains with a leveled fowling piece.

After that Devere rarely left Jenny’s side, and made it very clear to the men who guarded her that any importunity would be answered. One ill-shaven, bandy-legged soldier nursed a sore jaw for days . . .

Lieutenant Jones, who could scarcely afford to pay off every inn keep and farmer between New York and Albany, did his best to maintain order, but as Devere had anticipated, he quickly gave up trying to prevent the petty thievery that was second nature to a full third of his men.

They were three weeks on the road, and Jenny knew that if help did not arrive soon, it would not be coming at all. Devere had been honest with her about that. They had discussed it, and they were resolved. If no aid came, he would have to take his chances overpowering Jenny’s guards at night.

Six men were very bad odds. Jenny would need to distract them, and that meant taking desperate measures. If she lured two of them close, he might handle the rest, but she was shackled and would be able to do little if anything to defend herself when the duped men realized what she and Severin were about.

Neither of them was eager to put the plan into action, but it must be soon. A few days at most.

They were crossing a ford when rescue arrived, the water only knee-deep but the streambed slick and treacherous. Lieutenant Jones was wise enough to have the horses led across—indeed, was himself leading the pair of the gun cart Jenny rode—but the middle of a rocky stream was an impossible position to defend. Which was why, of course, the Rebels had chosen this spot for their attack.

Bullets struck the water, splashing like skipping stones all around her. The report of nearby rifles was almost deafening. Jenny put her head down, but, shackled to one of the guns, she could not scramble behind a cart for cover as the soldiers did.

Jones cried out, shot through the hand, blood pouring between his fingers. The horses reared and tore the reins from him. They whinnied and plunged toward the bank. The gun cart surged ahead, throwing Jenny against the running board. The vehicle struck a stone and she was hurled back onto the two guns laid side by side in the cart bed. The wheel broke and the bed tilted dangerously. The guns rolled, winding Jenny’s chain like a capstan, and the heavy cannon burst through the side rail and plunged into the water, taking her with them.

She scrabbled to stay on top of the rolling guns lest her arms or legs be crushed between the barrels, but her gown became soaked instantly and weighed her down. She tried to raise her hands, but they were anchored to the cannon, and it was a struggle to keep her head above even the shallow water.

Then Devere was at her side, holding her up, searching frantically for the fastening of her shackles, lock picks in his hands.

“It is wedged between the guns,” she said, taking deep breaths of air while she yet could. This was their chance. This was their rescue . . . and they were not going to make it.

“No,” he said through clenched teeth. “There must be a way.”

Ahead of them in the streambed Jones was barking orders and the company was regaining some order of discipline. His men lined up behind the carts and began to return fire. The shots from the tree line slowed, then stopped, and the attack was over.

*   *   *

Severin was still in the water at Jenny’s side, struggling to get her free, when silence fell. Lieutenant Jones splashed through the stream—mouth set in a grim line and stricken hand a bloody mess—to regard Jenny and the guns with stony resignation.

In the chaos of the fight, four men had been killed, three injured, and six gone missing—deserted, no doubt. And more would have been lost if Jones had not been an experienced frontiersman, used to fighting over rough terrain and accustomed to ambushes. It took a dozen of the remaining soldiers to shift the guns and free Jenny. The additional weight on the two intact carts slowed their progress to a crawl, but Jones insisted that they press on through the moonlit night to the next hamlet marked on his map. He ordered one of his injured men to ride in the cart with Jenny and announced quite loudly that, if they were attacked again, she was to be shot.

The men’s faces—illuminated in the shifting light of the moon and guttering torches or half shrouded in shadow—were taut and wary. But no further attack came.

It was dawn when they reached the inn, if it could be called that, a roadhouse with a few outbuildings. Jones ordered Jenny locked in a shed under guard. She was soaked and exhausted. Devere wanted her in a room with a bed and a hot meal because they must take their chances and break out tonight or never, but Jones would not stand for it.

The loyalist lieutenant had Severin marched into the inn at gunpoint and shown into a tiny chamber with barely space for the breakfast table. He took the seat opposite the grim-faced officer. He heard two soldiers taking up a guard position just on the other side of the door.

“I am not a fool, Colonel,” said Jones. “I lost ten men and two horses out there, and the other two carts were practically shot to pieces, but there was not so much as a scratch on Miss Leighton’s vehicle. The Rebels were here for her.”

Severin did not deny it. “General Burgoyne sent you south for guns and men. You have them. The girl jeopardizes your real mission. You started with more than thirty men. Now you have barely twenty. If the Rebels attack again, you will lose more men and quite possibly the guns. Is one girl really worth all that?”

“The Rebels seem to think so,” observed Jones.

“Perhaps because they don’t like the idea of seeing an innocent young woman hanged.”

The other man shrugged. “My understanding is that
you
contend she is Burgoyne’s mistress. If that’s true, sir, he’s hardly likely to hang her. Your worries seem to be misplaced. Assuming she is something
else
, then I am content to let justice take its course.”

“This is not justice, Lieutenant Jones. It is the injured pride of powerful men. The same sort who block
your path to promotion because they despise Americans. Your Rebel fiancée is merely a convenient excuse for their prejudice.”

“Prejudice that will be overcome, Colonel, when I prove myself a loyal subject. An officer who knows his
duty
.”

“And what of your duty to the young woman you plan to marry? I understand your Rebel neighbors have confiscated your family’s land, and a lieutenant’s pay is hardly sufficient to keep a wife.”

“I am insulted that you would think to bribe me.”

“Do not speak to me of honor, sir, when you are about to deliver to the hangman a woman whose only crime was
writing a play
, and all this just to serve your own ambition.”

“I did not ask for this assignment,” said Jones, shoulders slumping slightly. “I would have you know it is exceedingly distasteful to me. My fiancée’s name is also Jenny. Her hair is redder than Miss Leighton’s, but they are of an age and in all other respects might be taken for sisters. If I had any other choice, I would set her free, but Captain André foresaw that the Rebels might try to rescue her, and his instructions—General Howe’s instructions—in that eventuality were quite explicit. I am very sorry.”

It was the way he said it, and the presence of the guards just beyond the door. And, now, the guilty tick in Jones’ left eye.

“
What
have you done?”

Jones’ hand edged toward his pistol. “I did what was necessary.”

“Where is she?”

“It is too late, Colonel Devere. Two men took her
to the stream. They will bury her there, and it will be said that she took ill on the march. That she succumbed to a fever.”

Severin bowed his head.

“I
am
sorry,” repeated Jones.

Severin wasn’t sorry. He wasn’t angry either. He was cold inside.
Never
had anything been more necessary than this. Jones was on his guard, but Severin had the advantage of initiative, and of having spent half a lifetime killing not just animals but men. He grasped the barrel of his pistol, lunged across the table, and punched Jones in the throat with the heavy wooden stock, crushing the man’s windpipe. The lieutenant fell back in his chair, gasping desperately for air. Severin did not care if the man lived or died, only that he did not call for help.

Severin flung open the door and stepped through, tomahawk in one hand and quilled knife in the other.

The man standing guard on the left died with Severin’s tomahawk in his neck. A short, savage horizontal chop. He had no time to make any sound at all. The one on the right managed a short, strangled cry before Severin stabbed him in the throat. The inn keep came running, but Devere put a bloody finger to his lips; the old man took in the carnage, paling, then nodded and retreated into his kitchen.

It had been done in less than a minute with little sound but the table scraping along the floor: one man incapacitated or dying and two dead. But Severin could not deal so with a dozen or more. So he walked—heart in his throat, bloody hands thrust in his pockets—out of the inn and in the direction of the stream.

As soon as he was out of sight, he took a long draft of the cool morning air . . . and began to run.

Jenny knew something was wrong when the two guards beckoned her out of the shed. Something off in the way the larger of the pair looked at her, and in the way his wiry, pockmarked companion avoided her eyes altogether.

“I’m not going anywhere without Colonel Devere,” she said.

The big man clamped a rough hand over her mouth and the poxy one grabbed her feet; then they carried her, struggling, down the hill and out of sight of the inn. She bit and she kicked and elbowed and punched—until they struck her a blow to the gut and she could scarcely speak or think for the pain.

When they set her down, she fell to her knees and struggled to rise, but one of them—the bigger man?—placed a boot across her back to keep her there. The other pulled her ankles out from under her. She tried
to scream, but the owner of the boot grabbed her hair and pressed her face into the dirt.

Her vision swam; the ground in front of her face blurred.

Then the boot was gone and the hand was lifted, and she scrabbled madly like a dog, clawing over the earth to get away. Harsh and metallic, the sound of a ramrod sliding down a barrel made her turn.

Her two red-coated tormentors were looking up the hill now, frantically trying to load their muskets. The wiry man had dropped his cartridge and was searching through the carpet of pine needles for it, but a moment later his bigger comrade was raising his gun to fire.

At Severin.

He was running, his eyes fixed on the man with the primed musket. Her lover did not have a gun. But there was a gory tomahawk in his right hand and a bloodied knife in his left. He was moving so fast that before his adversary had a chance to sight along his barrel, Severin had closed a few more yards, and his tomahawk whirred a steel crescent through the air. The heavy blade buried itself in the big man’s chest, and then Severin was atop the kneeling, pockmarked redcoat. His knife rose and fell twice, and then no more.

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.

Jenny took a tentative step toward Devere. He had blood on his face and spattered across his shirt; his cuffs were red with it.

He seemed not to notice. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No.”

He retrieved the grisly tomahawk and hung it at his waist, and produced his lock picks. His hands were
slippery; he stopped to wipe them on the ground, then used his tools to free her. And for the first time in a month, it was daylight and she was not shackled.

“We must go—now,” he said as the hated irons dropped to the ground. Her wrists were red and raw.

“We must run, as long and as far as we are able, put distance between ourselves and Jones. He does not have the men to pursue us into the woods and guard the cannon at the same time. If we travel far and fast now, we will make it.”

“Where to?”

“We strike out for Fort Ticonderoga,” he said, leading her away from the hillside. “Fort Ti is held by the Americans and nigh impregnable. Even if Jones reaches Burgoyne’s camp and the general sends a party after us, we should be safe behind the walls.”

They ran. She did not look back at the carnage he had wreaked on her behalf, because he had saved her from a very ugly death and she was grateful for it. All she wanted in the world was to repay him by playing her own part now, by keeping pace.

She could not think of a time since childhood when she had run such a distance. Every time she thought she could not go on, Severin encouraged her and she found reserves of energy to continue.

They traveled like that for hours, slowing to a walk every so often and then picking up speed once again, until the sun was no longer overhead in the sky and Devere judged that they were no longer in danger of imminent capture.

“Do you know where we are?” she asked.

“Somewhere south of Fort Ti,” he said. “I’m not sure how far. Most of the inhabitants in these parts are
Rebels, so we should be able to find someone willing to sell us food and shelter and, with any luck, horses.”

They stopped to drink from a stream, and Devere left her to wash off the blood and attend the call of nature. When he returned, he brought her blackberries wrapped in a handkerchief. She ate them, reminded of the barn the theater troupe had played outside of Albany years before where the audience had paid in produce. All she had seen of the wilderness on that tour had been glimpsed through carriage windows. Too exhausted to appreciate the wonders around them, the New American Company had each night hung their painted traveling backdrop with its pointy Italian trees and played before it. And Jenny had hardly had time to appreciate the scenery on the road with Jones and his men.

Only now was she truly in Arcadia.

She had never known anything like it. The breeze was fresh and cool, scented with pine, so different from the thick cloying scent of the city. The ground beneath her feet was a soft carpet of decaying leaves. The forest stretched empty all around them save for the occasional flutter of wings or the furtive quick movement of some small creature.

“It is the landscape André painted for John Street,” she said, marveling at the hemlock, spruce, and fir. “It is beautiful.”

Severin produced a stone from his pocket and began to sharpen his knife thoughtfully. “I had much the same reaction the first time my mother took me to the theater. It was a world of wonders. The forest is beautiful, but, growing up, I didn’t see it through the eyes of a painter. I saw it as a resource. A landscape of ever changing dangers and opportunities. My father”—Jenny noticed how he
left a little air around the word, as though he was not quite sure he had used it correctly—“taught Julian and me to hunt and to fish and to fashion weapons out of the wilderness. I hated the tame emptiness of the English countryside when I got there, but there was no going back, and I soon learned that it held other dangers. And other opportunities.”

She had seen him assessing those dangers and opportunities, both in the streets of New York and more recently on the trail. He was always alert to his surroundings, always alive to the possibilities unfolding around him, reading the cues the way actors read one another onstage. It was why he was so very good at what he did, and why they worked so well together, she realized.

“How does it feel to return?” she asked.

He gave her a little smile. “Probably a lot like your visit to New Brunswick.” Jenny had told him about Ida and Letty and the battle for the bake oven. “There is something gratifying about the familiarity, but it is possible to be of a place, to be shaped by it, and yet no longer be part of it.”

“I think it is possible,” said Jenny, remembering how happy she had been in the little blue house with Aunt Frances, “to make a place for yourself in the world with another person, a little country of two.” And then she remembered what Aunt Frances had said about Harry wanting to raise her. “Or three. Even if you are out of step with the world.”

“We will make such a place, Jenny,” he said, gathering her into his arms. “I promise you.”

When Jenny was rested, they ran on, and as evening was falling they emerged in a cleared field where
corn was growing. There was a farmhouse at the edge. Devere had Jenny wait hidden amongst the stalks.

She watched him approach the house, and then saw him stop, put his hands in the air, and back away. That was when she made out the man with the gun standing on the porch. She was too far away to pick up what they were saying, but after a short exchange Severin pointed to the field where she was hidden. Then he nodded and beckoned Jenny to come out. When she emerged from the cornfield, the man on the porch lowered his rifle and nodded back.

The damage had not been visible from the field. The little farmhouse was pockmarked with musket balls and someone had clearly tried—and failed—to hack the door to pieces.

“Burgoyne’s Indian scouts,” explained Devere. “The good news is that we are close to Fort Ti. The bad news is that so is John Burgoyne. We must get ahead of his army and reach the fort before he does.”

The farmer and his family were kinder than Jenny could ever have imagined—especially to two bloody strangers who had appeared out of nowhere—and she was grateful for water to wash in and a clean shirt for Severin.

Devere did not refuse the meal that was offered them. But she noticed that he did not bow his head when the farmer said grace, and the wide-eyed children still stared at Severin even in his new shirt with all the blood cleaned away.

They lay down after the meal in the keeping room on blankets spread over the floor, and Jenny fell into a deep, dreamless sleep from which Devere woke her when it was not yet light. Her feet ached and her legs
were stiff and sore, but she knew they must go on. He used his knife to slice a coin from the hem of her petticoat and left it on the table.

They walked for two days. Once, they heard distant shouting and Devere changed direction and led them off the trail for a time, but by late afternoon on the second day they encountered the first pickets guarding the fort. Not obviously, to Jenny’s eye, soldiers, but weathered, rifle-bearing men in leather hunting smocks.

They did not like the look of Devere’s red coat, even turned inside out, and they took his tomahawk and his pistol, leaving him only his quilled knife, and led them to the fort under guard. They were hard, determined men, but their tension and anxiety were plain. War was coming—indeed, was already there.

“Tekontaró:ken,”
said Severin when they reached the gates. “The place where two waters meet.”

It was an imposing structure, far bigger than the Battery in New York or any building Jenny had ever seen. She could understand now why it was called the Gibraltar of the North. Sun sparkled off the stone and the lake beyond, and she felt safe for the first time in more than a month.

It was not to last. Inside, all was urgent preparation and mounting uncertainty. They were handed over to a harassed lieutenant, who placed them under guard in a ground-floor room in the barracks: ten double bunks lined up between the windows, the beds so new that they still smelled of pine. Jenny was grateful for the chance to sit down, even on someone else’s straw tick. With the sun streaming in through the panes and the fresh air off the lake, she found sleep irresistible.

When she woke it was dark.

“Shouldn’t someone want this bed?” she asked Severin, who was standing by the window looking out, just as he had been when she fell asleep.

“Yes,” he said. “Jenny, I do not know what is happening, but something is amiss.”

“The fort is impregnable,” she said. “You said so yourself.”

“I did, didn’t I? But I suppose I am no siege engineer . . .”

A very young captain, in a blue uniform coat that had seen better days, came to question them an hour later. They told him who they were and how they had escaped from a British column. Severin told the man that he was known to someone named Harkness and someone named Trumbull, and that Jenny was known, personally, to Washington. When Devere named her as Cornelia, the young man brightened and recited a speech from her
Miles Gloriosus
, and that made Devere smile, despite himself.

Admirer or not, the captain would not tell them what was happening. A little later he did, however, bring back three young men who—as it happened—had all been students at King’s before the war and seen Jenny on the stage at John Street. Two of them asked about conditions in the city and how particular streets had fared after the fire and whether particular buildings were still standing. She answered them to the best of her knowledge. One of them returned an hour later and brought them apples and cheese and a little jug of rum.

Jenny and Devere were left in the barracks overnight. No one claimed the beds, so Devere pushed two bunks close together and they slept next to each other until the sun woke them in the morning.

At midday they were called to General St. Clair’s office, where fires were burning despite the heat of the day, and clerks were feeding papers to the flames.

“Burgoyne’s a canny foe, for all his bluster,” said St. Clair. The general—a British regular officer during the last war, Severin had said—looked both suitably professional and troublingly grim.

“He’s managed to bring cannon up Mount Defiance, a bit of engineering that was thought to be impossible, else we would have long since leveled that blasted rock. When he has them in position, he will be able to fire down on us. Our position is indefensible.”

He handed one of his clerks a sheaf of papers, food for the flames. “Miss Leighton, I have verified, is who she says she is. I have dispatches from Washington that attest to her identity as Cornelia and confirm her arrest in New York. They instruct me to do whatever is within my power to aid her.

“You, sir,” he said to Devere, “I have no knowledge of, and you wear the uniform of an enemy officer. Tonight I must spirit more than two thousand souls from out of this garrison without alerting the enemy. I cannot afford to take prisoners on this march. Miss Leighton will depart with the families who took refuge in the fort and the garrison’s women and children. You, sir, will remain locked in the fort—until your countrymen take possession of Ticonderoga and discover you.”

“No,” said Jenny. “You can’t leave him, General. The British will hang him. If not for desertion, then for murder. He killed two men so that we could get away.”

“Then I am heartily sorry,” said St. Clair, “but I have the safety of
two thousand
men—of an entire army and its followers—to think of, and I cannot risk it.”

“Then I will stay as well.” She was not going to be parted from him.

“No,” said Severin. “You must go with them, Jenny. If I’m lucky, Jones won’t have caught up with Burgoyne, and no one will yet know of our escape. The British will free me, and I’ll slip away to join you.”

“And if you aren’t lucky?”

“May we speak privately?” Severin asked St. Clair. “Before Miss Leighton departs?”

The general agreed, and they were returned to the barracks, where she rounded on the man she loved.

“I am not going without you.”