“So you sat here for six days as if that would make a difference?”
Jamie smiled.
“Nothing better to do. Besides, if I went wandering about without your protection someone might remember a past offense, or I might be tempted to try something stupid again, so I figured, Jamie boy, it was best just to hang about here and wait.”
“Anything happen?” Allen asked wearily, hoisting his saddlebag that Jamie then insisted upon taking. He regretted abandoning that horse, but Elizabeth had given him another, the last poor bony creature in the family stable along with one of her father’s old suits, which loosely fitted his slender frame. There was even a cover letter that was in the saddlebag, conveying sympathy for a departed relative in Newark, and two pounds sterling as a gesture to help the family—or if need be as a bribe. She actually had something of a forger’s hand and had created a reasonable pass in case he was stopped by militia. The ruse had worked several times.
Elizabeth. Throughout the long ride back he could not stop thinking of her, of what had transpired in the hours after he awoke to find her sleeping by his side, and then her willingness to help him escape. She had told him about her encounter with Peter, and he could see that it visibly upset her, perhaps even tore at her sense of loyalty. Was it to the Loyalist cause or just him? he now wondered. That did give him pause as he questioned her several times about that encounter, in which Peter had held the balance.
That was the other question that had troubled him on the ride back to New York on a half-dead horse. Did Peter let me go out of some old sense of friendship, or did he deliberately want me to go now with the report of what was transpiring? Perhaps was it both? Or perhaps it was even out of love for Elizabeth that he sensed from the way she spoke of him with a certain sadness, and that must have torn him as well. That thought was secondary to Elizabeth, who he knew would haunt his waking moments and his dreams henceforth. The ferryman said he would see to the horse for a week, but sell it if Elizabeth’s father failed to find a way to get it through the lines over to New York, and send the money to her. The man was a good Loyalist and just might see to it, but in the middle of this chaos of war, he would not hold his breath.
“Did you get my report to headquarters?” he asked Jamie as they turned the corner down Mulberry Street to his lodgings.
“Yes, sir, I did deliver your report as you ordered to Clinton’s headquarters.”
“To Colonel Smith?”
Jamie shook his head.
“They didn’t let me past the front door and some sergeant took it. Sorry, sir, I tried but that is far as I ever got.”
“Damn it to hell.”
“I’m sorry, I tried, sir.”
He took it in and gave the boy a reassuring pat. Exhausted, he all but staggered up to his room, calling for the innkeeper, who had just awakened to find him something to eat. Jamie had to help him change into his regular uniform, a blessed reassurance after the adventures of the last couple of weeks. It almost felt like a noose had been removed from his neck, now that all he needed to fear was a musket ball in the stomach, or a bayonet or sword. After what they had done to John, he had come to fear that death more than any other, though it appeared that John had felt no pain, but he would never forget how the man’s face turned purple in death, tongue lolling out, eyes bulging. Not a soldier’s death, damn them.
Bolting down a slice of warmed ham and two boiled goose eggs he suddenly realized he had lost his horse in Philadelphia days ago. Technically the army would provide him with a new mount, but that would take days to accomplish with all the usual paperwork and exasperating sighing of a bloated quartermaster about the cost of the king’s property, as if it were his own personal possession. So leaving Jamie behind—the lad definitely would not help with any impression at headquarters—he went over to where a company of dragoons was housed and stabled, talked it over with their captain whom he had wisely provided with drinks on occasion, and finally had a mount for half a day. Wearily, he made the journey up the Broad Way, to Clinton’s headquarters in the middle of the island. The morning seemed no different than any other now, some officers heading out with their “ladies” for some escapades in the forested hills of Harlem Heights, the usual drunk soldiers coming back late for morning parade. It was, he knew, a foreshadowing.
* * *
General Clinton, with Colonel Smith sitting in his chair, as if the two had not moved an inch since last he saw them, looked down at his hastily written report and silently passed it over to Smith who examined it more carefully.
“So you have had quite the adventure, young sir. Upon my word, ten days behind the Rebel lines, no less. I shall see to it that when this is all over, you shall be mentioned in a dispatch.”
Allen merely nodded his thanks, saying nothing.
There was a long uncomfortable silence until Colonel Smith, with an audible sigh, set down Allen’s brief report. “Now let me understand this,” Smith asked, while Clinton just sat back in his chair, holding Allen with his gaze. “You actually witnessed this parade, counted the troops, including all the French regiments that you have noted down, then just calmly turned about and came straight back here with this report?”
“Well, sir, I did have a bit of a problem with one of their officers for intelligence that delayed me until early the next morning.”
“That was not in your report,” Clinton said. “Why not?”
“I did not think it pertinent to the matter at hand, sir.”
“So what did happen?” Smith asked.
“I was recognized by one of their militia shortly after the parade had passed and was briefly pursued. Apparently there was a bit of hue and cry so I hid until three in the morning after the moon was concealed by clouds, feeling it was safe then to slip past their pickets, return, and cross at Bordentown to avoid Trenton, where I would be recognized, and then straight back to here. It only delayed me a few hours.”
“How and where did you hide?”
He had learned his craft well across the years, but he fumbled slightly with his story of hiding in a barn and taking the horse.
Smith gazed at him without comment.
“Sir, to be truthful, let us just say that the honor of a lady, loyal to our cause, is involved and thus I hesitate to speak further upon that subject.”
“So you hid in the home of a beautiful young lady that you met while stationed in Philadelphia?” Smith asked and there was the flicker of a smile.
“Something like that, sir.”
“A good Loyalist?”
“I found out later that a Continental officer had in fact come to the house to question her but she kept the secret that I was concealed on her property.”
Clinton actually chuckled slightly.
“Her bedchamber perhaps?”
He tried not to let his flash of anger show. It was never wise for a colonel to show that kind of emotion to the commander of all forces in North America. It could mean a very quick posting, indeed, to some damn fever-ridden island.
“Relax, sir,” Smith interjected, chuckling. “I pray the interlude was a pleasant one, a reward richly deserved, before you returned to your duty.”
“My duty did come first,” he replied icily.
“Of course, as it does with all of us,” Clinton said, and again it was wise to say nothing. The number of Clinton’s mistresses, one of them a married woman with her husband living in the city, was no secret to either side in this war.
“May I surmise that this Continental officer was an old acquaintance of yours, Colonel Wellsley.”
“That is correct, sir.”
Smith looked over at Clinton and placed the paper back before Clinton.
“My compliments, sir, on your report. We do not question it in the slightest,” Smith continued.
Clinton glanced back down at the paper.
“Thank God we’ve already dispatched Admiral Graves. Combined with Hood, he should be able to contain those damn French.”
“Graves has left, sir?” Allen asked.
“You didn’t notice?”
“I crossed the river while it was still dark, changed, and came straight here. I must confess I did not stop to look down the bay.”
“They weighed anchor four days ago, to link up with Hood at the mouth of the Chesapeake.”
Allen nodded with approval at this news.
“The French fleet based in Rhode Island is gone as well,” Smith now replied. “They departed four days ago as well.”
So much had transpired in the ten days he had been wandering about New Jersey and into Pennsylvania.
He did the calculations and realized that all depended now on whether the British fleets were the first to unite and turn on one of the French fleets, or whether it would be the French who united first. All of that was dependent entirely on the vagaries of war at sea, on wind and tides, on clean copper bottoms or weed choked ones, and on the nerve of admirals being willing to venture their fleets in a line encounter. There was a time when he had held the British fleet in awe. He had grown up on the stories of their great triumphs. During three years here in New York, however, he had seen that Graves was all but afraid of his own shadow, unwilling to act unless given clear written instructions. Perhaps the greatest mistake of their fleet across this century was the dishonoring and execution of Admiral Byng. In the opening days of the Seven Years War (what he and his boyhood friends knew as the French and Indian War) Byng had failed to follow up on a partial victory and turn it into a decisive defeat of the French, and suffered death by firing squad for a sin that was not his fault.
That had thrown ice water on the initiative of most every admiral since. They now insisted upon clearly written directions, right down to detailed orders of under what conditions they would be permitted to actually engage an enemy. All of the famed aggressiveness of the Royal navy seemed to have drained away. To earlier and, he prayed, to later generations of British admirals, the presence of Barre’s fleet, so close by to New York, would have been a call for aggression, offensive, venturing all. While Graves had just safely followed his orders to protect New York harbor and their line of communications back to Halifax and England. Gone were the days when an admiral with a stomach to risk all would load his ship full of marines from every other vessel in his fleet, wait for a moonless night, load them into rowboats, and storm straight into the enemy anchorage to either “sink, burn, or make a prize of war,” of the entire lot.
Wars were not won by defensive actions.
As he looked at Clinton now, he wanted to cry out. If ever there was an opportunity to catch Washington out in the open and not locked up in his fortress of West Point, it had been these last ten days, his army strung out along fifty miles of road. A sortie in force would have cut that army in two like a sharp knife slicing through a thread stretched taut. They might not have been able to defeat them as they once so easily could, but they surely could have battered him, stalled him, perhaps even turned him back. Instead, officers were off with mistresses to Harlem Heights, drunk soldiers wandered back late for parade, shrugging off the dozen lashes lightly applied. The entire city seemed locked in timelessness, as if the war no longer seemed to have any real beginning or end, that it would just be like this forever.
He had clearly seen that Washington could not wait forever. He was bent on a mission, in his heart, without doubt, the same watchword driving him forward as it had at Trenton: Victory or Death.
“When do you estimate they will reach Yorktown?” Smith asked, breaking the silence.
“Sir, they should be at Head of Elk on the Chesapeake within a day, two at most. From what I could hear, sir, but this was more gossip than seeing actual reports, and thus is not in my report. There are not enough boats to move the men from there.”
“How many, though?” and now it was Clinton who asked.
“Maybe enough for a third of the infantry. Of course, artillery and heavy supplies will receive priority for the boats they have. The rest will continue on foot. If the weather holds, and I have heard the main road down through Virginia is well maintained, or at least it was before the war, the bulk of the army will most likely arrive by around September 20, if they hold to a pace of fifteen to twenty miles a day.”
“It should all be over by then anyhow,” Clinton said, looking over at Smith. “Graves links with Hood, together they smash those braggadocio French and what they call a navy. Communications are resumed with Cornwallis, who can easily hold there through the winter if need be, and then we decide whether to move and reinforce, or just pull Cornwallis back to here for the winter. Then we just leave Washington stranded in his precious home colony with an army that will melt away in disgust after having dragged themselves five hundred miles for nothing.”
It was the most he had ever heard Clinton say about his plans so openly, and even with a touch of animation.
Smith looked back at him and shifted, slightly turning a shoulder to Allen as if he was not supposed to hear.
“Sir,” and his voice was low, so that Allen actually did step back several feet in a gesture of politeness, but nevertheless he could still hear every word as he stared off, eyes raised from the two of them, fixed on a painting behind Clinton of a pastoral scene with two lovers with the usual naked cherubs flying about above. He remembered Elizabeth had such a painting in her dining room, and he always thought it highly amusing. How could anyone concentrate upon attempting to make love with naked babies flying over one’s head?
That thought triggered yet again the memory of being with Elizabeth. Even as he dwelled on that thought, the two officers, but feet away from him, continued to speak, their voices lowered as if he was not to listen.
“May I point out, sir,” Smith whispered, “that your statement has several assumptions of which we have no knowledge yet: that Hood and Graves do unite, that they do meet and defeat the French, if they can engage them before the French first gain the approach into Chesapeake where they will have a vastly superior position against any naval force trying to force its way in from the open seas. We now have certain knowledge, thanks to the bravery of this officer, that at least ten thousand American and French troops are speeding down upon Yorktown as we sit here. When combined with the forces already there under Lafayette, Cornwallis will be vastly outnumbered.