Redcoat

by Bernard Cornwell

  Vane played for time, hoping Sir William would change the subject. “Agree, ma’am?”

  “That the effort expended is out of all proportion to the possible reward?”

  Vane, denied his hopes that Sir William would obviate the question, was forced to reply. “If we lose the thirteen colonies then we encourage insurrection elsewhere. There’ll be republican rebellions in Canada, the West Indies, even Ireland. It’s like a contagion that must be checked at its source.”

  “I had no idea we were so dangerous!” Martha said, which made Sir William smile. The party broke up as Sir William suggested he really should pay some small attention to the cricket before the setting sun ended play, and Martha declared that it was a game impossible to comprehend and she would walk back to where the dancing would take place.

  “I fear” – Martha put her arm into Vane’s – “that our politics will never agree, Kit.”

  “We can try.” Vane was so pleased that she had given him her arm that his thoughts were upon anything but politics. He gestured with his free hand at a grassy walk which went off at a tangent from the main path, wending its way into the shadow of trees that promised the chance of intimacy. “Shall we take that path?”

  Martha, who knew well what he wanted, had no intention of granting it. Her friendship with Vane was useful, for he offered her protection against the venom of the Loyalists who resented her continued presence in the city. Martha was mindful, too, that an aide-de-camp to the Commander-in-Chief was a man who could well let slip details of British intentions that she could pass on to the rebels. However, she had no desire to pay for those details with intimacy though, for the moment, nor would she discourage Captain Vane from his infatuation. She ignored his invitation to take the shadowed path, declaring that she was impatient to meet his friends who waited where the musicians tuned their instruments for the dancing. Vane hid his disappointment, but consoled himself that the widow seemed content in his company. He was proud of her beauty as he introduced Martha to John Andre who, just as proudly, named Miss Peggy Shippen, whereupon Miss Shippen declared how much Philadelphia had improved during the three weeks that the city had been occupied by the British.

  “Improved?” Martha asked.

  “It’s so much more amusing.” Peggy looked around the lawn which was bright with uniforms and silk dresses. “So much more civilized.”

  “Civilized?” Martha pounced. “Are you saying we lack civility, Miss Shippen?”

  “How can America lack anything,” Andre deflected the argument, “when it has you, Mrs Crowl?”

  Martha laughed. “America lacks nothing, Captain Andre, that it needs for independency.”

  “We’re to be serious!” Andre lamented.

  “You mustn’t argue with Mrs Crowl about America,” Vane said, “for she has the colonists’ belief that America contains all that is choicest in the world.”

  “True,” Martha said. “As any American can tell you, our architecture is the finest, our food is the best, and our scenery unsurpassed. No horses are as swift as ours, nor will you find servants so honest, nor divines so tediously devout. You’re not going to argue with such modesty, are you, Captain Andre?”

  Andre, who had enjoyed Martha’s exaggeration, bowed surrender to her. “But is there nothing you lack?”

  “An aristocracy,” Vane intervened.

  “Ah!” Martha smiled at him. “And what kind of lack is that?”

  “The aristocracy,” Vane said carefully, “is the fount of taste. Taste comes from pleasure, not money.”

  “Pleasure usually costs money,” Martha said tartly. “But let us accept the distinction. So what results from money that is not governed by taste?”

  “Money without taste, my dear Martha, leads only to a blowsy and vulgar display.”

  Peggy Shippen agreed, but Martha pretended to think about his words, then frowned. “I’m not sure I entirely understand you.”

  “Take this house.” Vane waved towards the summer house about which the party spread across the shadowed lawns. “I don’t deny its splendour, and certainly not the expense, but the gilding! It’s laid on like plaster so the eye has nowhere to rest. A single detail, given prominence, would be far more expressive.”

  “And an aristocracy,” Martha asked in a dangerous tone, “has natural taste?”

  “Good taste or bad?” The voice came from behind Martha, and she turned to see a short, round-faced man. First he smiled at her, then he looked towards Vane for an introduction.

  Vane was grudging, but obliged. “Mrs Martha Crowl, allow me to name Lord Robert Massedene.”

  “Your charmed servant, ma’am. I assumed Kit had an eye for beauty, but I never before realized how laudable was his admiration for the nobility.”

  Martha smiled. “Do you have natural taste, my lord?”

  “I have none at all. The aristocracy, ma’am, founded their dynasties by being better thieves than anyone else. Whatever glittered, they took, and the true aristocracy has never lost that healthy vulgarity.”

  “Gilded thieves?” Martha asked with amusement.

  “Who would now steal this land from you. I do hope you will resist us.”

  Martha was clearly charmed by his lordship. “You don’t want to win, my lord?”

  “Win what?” Massedene feigned alarm. “America, my dear Mrs Crowl, is a wilderness with an unendurable climate. It is too hot in summer, too cold in winter, and fit only for insects, snakes, and raving Baptists. God only knows why we fight for it.”

  “For their own good, of course,” Vane, piqued by Massedene’s nonsensical intervention, said it too sharply. “And because the majority of the colonists wish our rule to continue.”

  “I don’t!” Martha said, then, seeing Vane’s jealousy, she assuaged it by laying a hand on his arm as she looked back to Lord Robert. “What I don’t understand, my lord, is why, if you dislike America so much, you are here at all?”

  “Money, dear lady. I need the salary. We younger sons daren’t lower ourselves to trade, so we must try to win renown by the sword. An entirely ridiculous fate, but we cannot all show good sense.”

  Vane, knowing that the reference to trade was aimed at himself, heard a minuet strike up and, careless that he might be showing rudeness to Massedene, turned Martha towards the music. “May I?”

  “Why not?” Martha turned to smile a farewell to his lordship, then followed Vane towards the dance. “You don’t like Lord Robert Massedene, do you?”

  “I would deny any feelings towards him.”

  Martha showed her disbelief with a smile. “You positively bristled, Kit. Were you jealous?”

  “You provoke such emotions in me.”

  Vane, his happiness restored by her smile, took Martha into his arms to join the dancers who scattered themselves in pretty array across the lawn, while the music drowned the distant gunfire which marked the flat land where men died. The sun emerged from a bank of clouds to swell red and splendid, and to pale the small lanterns hung among the leaves which were turning into the extraordinary and vivid colours of an American autumn.

  Sir William Howe, returning from the cricket in his carriage driven by his trusted manservant Tom Evans, checked its progress to watch the dancers. “It’s how I imagined it would be,” he said to Lizzie.

  Lizzie grimaced. “They say, my dear, that if you don’t take the forts swiftly there will be hunger. And hungry people do not make good company.”

  “True,” and Sir William’s smile widened, for Sir William practised a deception on the rebels. He spoke openly in society about his slow but steady plans to take the forts, while in secret he prepared a daring stroke which, he believed, could free the city and bring peace in its wake.

  For in three days’ time Sir William proposed to do precisely what the city’s merchants urged on him. In three days’ time Fort Mercer would be assaulted from the land. Three thousand Hessian troops would cross the Delaware by night. Because their preparations for the crossing could no
t be concealed, the story had been spread that they went to scour central New Jersey for food and forage. In truth they would turn south and, by dawn, be ready to rush an unprepared Fort Mercer. It was a bold plan, and if the rebels should get wind of it, it would fail.

  Thus, only a handful of men were privy to the secret. The Hessian commander General Donop knew, and was unhappy that, in the desperate need to keep the secret hidden, he could not make scaling ladders to assail Fort Mercer’s nine-foot walls. Lord Cornwallis and his closest aides had been told, for Cornwallis was second-in-command and it would have been discourteous to deceive him. General Howe’s own aides knew, for they must write the orders that would be distributed at the very final moment. Admiral Howe knew, for the handful of boats he could warp past the obstructions would distract Fort Mercer’s defenders with broadside fire as the land assault went in, but beyond those men, all of whom Sir William trusted absolutely, no other officers had been informed.

  But now, as they watched the dancers shimmer on the wide lawn, Sir William told Lizzie Loring. He told her because he knew how much she yearned for the fighting to end, and he told her because even a Commander-in-Chief could not resist boasting to his lover of the clever deception he had devised. “If I build a floating bridge, you see, everyone will know that the siege will take a long time, so, even though the siege will be over in three days, I must still boast of my plans for the bridge.” Sir William chuckled happily. “You understand?”

  “Perfectly, my dear.” Lizzie linked her arm into her lover’s arm and leaned snugly against his stout body. “So you’re attacking in three days?”

  “In three days, though naturally I trust you to honour the confidentiality.”

  “Of course, though I shall be hard pressed not to boast of your cleverness.”

  Sir William enjoyed the praise. The enemy, he declared, would be lulled to sleep, then hit with savage force and, he fervently believed, once the forts had fallen there would be peace.

  “Truly?” Lizzie asked it eagerly.

  “Truly.” Sir William rapped the carriage door as a signal for Tom Evans to drive on. “The river will be opened to the sea, my love, and wealth will flood in. The Loyalists will want their share, they’ll come to us, and the rebellion will wither away.” Sir William had come to these middle colonies because he had been told just how many Loyalists waited for a flag about which to rally. The fall of the forts and the coming of wealth would be their signal, and even the stubborn Mister Washington, who still lurked somewhere to the city’s west and north, would surely see the futility of continued rebellion. Peace would come with the ships. Peace and plenty, and all depended on the swift fall of two stubborn forts.

  So a secret must be kept if an assault was to open the river to wealth and peace. Sir William, watching the happy scene, dreamed of ending this war, and of the rewards peace might bring. He imagined himself as the most high, puissant, and most noble William, Duke of Philadelphia and Earl of Pennsylvania, Viscount Brandywine of Chesapeake and Baron Howe of Germantown, Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, and a member of His Majesty’s Honourable Privy Council. No more money worries then! “What a prospect!” he spoke aloud.

  Sir William’s sudden exclamation was not at his hoped-for elevation to the highest ranks of the nobility, but because, as the carriage turned about a stand of trees, Sir William saw the sudden and glorious sight of the city illuminated by a wash of evening sunlight that, spearing across the world’s rim, spread beneath the dull clouds so that the buildings seemed to glow with a golden and charming light beneath a darker sky. “The New Jerusalem,” Sir William said.

  “Complete with pharisees?” Lizzie asked.

  But nothing could spoil Sir William’s mood. He was experiencing a sudden upwelling of pure joy that he translated as a spiritual portent of victory. He stared at the city of brotherly love, and knew that, when the seaway was opened and the trade began to thrive, he could make a glowing, just, and happy peace in this well-named city. “I do believe that when the rebellion is ended, I shall live here.” He paused, smiled at Lizzie, and, ignoring the existence of his own wife and of Lizzie’s husband, amended the happy hope. “We shall live here, my love.”

  And, in such happy expectations, Sir William took his paramour to the sunset’s party where lovers danced.

  Nineteen

  “Eggs?” suggested the commissary sergeant.

  “Just two for myself,” Sam said. “Captain Vane doesn’t like eggs any more.”

  “Your Jack-pudding’s bleedin’ fussy, isn’t he? Gone off eggs? You’ll want eggs, Tom?”

  Tom Evans, Sir William’s principal servant, confirmed that he would take eggs for his master, as well as buckwheat, cucumbers, oysters, clams, nutmeg, pulses, and mutton. “He fancies a roasted saddle. He’ll need two for tonight.”

  “Lucky Billy, lucky Lizzie.” The sergeant pushed open a door to reveal a dozen bedraggled sheep penned in a small yard. “You want to kill a couple for me, Sam?”

  Sam drew his bayonet and obliged, then received one leg of mutton for his own master. Food shortages might threaten if the forts were not taken, yet this warehouse was a cornucopia; there were barrels of salted pork and beef, casks of limes, hogsheads of spirits, and tierces of rice. There were molasses, cone sugar in bright purple wrappings, currants, and cases of gin. There were baskets of salt, boxes of cheese, and firkins of butter; all of it guarded by a commissary that was swiftly becoming one of the richest trading houses in the city. Gold changed hands here for food, and Captain Vane daily expected Sam to find delicacies that were bought with the goods Vane appropriated from the house where, with two other officers, he lodged and which, with its rapidly depleting belongings, was the property of an absent Patriot. “It isn’t stealing, Sam,” Vane had said, “but punishing a notorious rebel.”

  “How do you know he’s notorious, sir?”

  “You’ve never heard of Benjamin Franklin?”

  “No, sir.” Sam had looked at the portrait of the house’s owner which hung above the mantel. “Funny-looking bugger, sir.”

  “That funny-looking bugger, Samuel, is trying to get the French to join the war against us. I hope a Parisian whore gives him a very virulent dose of the pox. Now take that clock and don’t accept anything less than three pounds for it.”

  Sam wiped the blood off his bayonet, then took the clock out of his haversack and offered it to the commissary sergeant, who shook the gilded and marble-mounted timepiece to ensure that its works did not rattle about in the case. “Two pound?”

  “He wanted four, Sarge.”

  “He’s pissing into the wind then, isn’t he? Four pounds for that rubbish?”

  “It’s an eight-day clock, sarge! Very valuable!”

  “Two pound.”

  “Two ten?”

  “Two five.”

  “Done.”

  Sam took the coins, less the price of the lamb, eggs, and two bottles of claret. “Any Keyser’s Pills, Sergeant?”

  “Won’t be any till the fleet gets through, Sam.”

  “Liquorice?”

  The sergeant sucked a dubious breath. “Bloody scarce, Sam! It’ll cost you five shilling!”

  “Ah! Come on!”

  “Five or nothing!”

  Sam hesitated, then decided to tell Captain Vane that the clock had only fetched two pounds. Vane would be unhappy, but, as the clock was stolen anyway, the captain could not make too much of a fuss. “Bleeding robbery,” Sam grumbled as he walked away from the warehouse with Tom Evans. “Five bloody bob for a scrap of root?”

  Tom Evans never paid a penny, for it was rumoured that the crammed warehouse only existed because of Sir William’s interest in the profits. Tom Evans, out of loyalty to his master, would never confirm the rumour. Indeed, as befitted the privileged intimate of a commander-in-chief, Evans rarely spoke to any of the other officers’ servants. However, he had a soft spot for Sam Gilpin, who was always respectful and helpful. “You know how to cook a
leg of lamb, Sam?”

  “Put it on the spit, light the fire, and keep turning.”

  Evans flinched at such philistinism and gave Sam careful instructions on how to roast the leg, and how to prepare an oil and vinegar dressing to accompany it. “Eating it today, is he?”

  Sam shook his head. “He’s with Billy tonight. He wants this for tomorrow.”

  “Getting ready for the battle, then.” Evans kicked at a dog which had smelt the meat in his sack.

  “Battle?” Sam asked.

  “Gawd, you must be bleeding simple, Sam Gilpin! They’re attacking the bloody forts in two days. Hessians are crossing the river and your fellow’s going with the grenadiers to the island!” Tom laughed. “You’ll have to keep your head down, Sam!”

  The news did not entirely surprise Sam, who had noted how Captain Vane had been more than usually secretive in the last few days. Vane would lock himself in the parlour of the lodgings and there write for hours, always taking care that Sam should not see the resultant paperwork. “How did you find out, Mr Evans?”

  “Everyone knows!” Evans, eager to drive home his seniority in the strict hierarchy of military servants, took pleasure in displaying his knowledge which he had garnered while driving Sir William’s carriage the previous evening. For Evans to have admitted that he only knew by eavesdropping would be to demean himself, so instead he used the news to demonstrate Sam’s lowly status. “Everyone knows!” he said scornfully. “Everyone who’s anyone, that is.”

  “I expect they forgot to tell me,” Sam said lightly.

  Evans laughed. “You’d better watch out, Sam! Your fellow’s the kind that loves a scrap. His last man got chopped, didn’t he?”

  “He’s fair enough,” Sam rather liked working for Captain Vane. It was not an onerous job. The other officers’ servants in the lodgings divided the work with Sam and, for the most part, he found himself looking after all the horses. He cooked occasionally, though not nearly as well as Captain Andre’s man, who was a fastidious and fussy preparer of meals. Otherwise Sam’s duties were cleaning Vane’s uniforms which, because the Captain was in love, had to be done with meticulous care.