Redcoat

by Bernard Cornwell

  Caroline did not reply, but just stared into the small flames.

  “Or I could say you were frightened of those men who attacked you?” Martha suggested. “But whatever I say, my dear, it will save you a deal of confusion.”

  Caroline frowned. “I’m not confused.” She stopped, remembering the night in the alley beside the synagogue. She shook her head. “Sam’s a Redcoat.”

  Martha heard the echoes of troubled loyalties. “Sam’s a Redcoat of whom you’re very fond, and I can’t say I blame you. But you’ve a promise to keep.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “So stay on the other side of the river.” Martha’s voice was firm now. “You don’t scratch at a half-healed wound. Let it alone.”

  Caroline looked at the older woman. “And your messages?”

  Martha shrugged. “There’s only gossip in them now. There’ll be no fighting till spring, but if I’ve something of importance to send, I’ll have a servant deliver it to you.”

  Caroline looked into the fire again. “I’ll tell Sam I can’t come to the city till the ice melts. It wouldn’t be fair for anyone else to tell him.”

  “He’s a Redcoat,” Martha said lightly, “so he must be accustomed to bad news.”

  Caroline did not smile. “And I can’t see Jonathon anyway” – her voice was wistful – “so it’s all for the best.”

  “Yes. It is.”

  Caroline left, and that night the first heavy snow came. It snowed all night and all the next day. Heavy, soft, thick flakes of snow whirled around rooflines and heaped in alleyways to cover the ordure in courtyards. It drifted to smooth the frost-rutted roadways with a glinting, brilliant coating. The rooms of the city, lit by reflected light from the snow, seemed brighter and, for a few days at least, spirits rose. In the twelve days of Christmas there were snowball fights on the Centre Commons, while high-prowed, horse-drawn sleighs, jingling with belled harnesses and slick on their steel-lined runners, appeared in the streets. There were sledge races on the Neck, and an ice feast in one of the abandoned summer houses on the Schuylkill’s bank. By New Year the river was hard frozen so skates could hiss and scrape on the gleaming ice.

  And each day Sam watched for the ice’s melting, but instead it seemed to thicken. January turned to February in the hardest winter of living memory. The snow turned to mucky slush, then was freshened by new falls. The food supplies shrank and men died of scurvy. Their teeth fell out, they shivered, they curled against bare walls and simply died. Only the rats seemed fat. Two rats, gutted and skinned, made a decent stew. “It’s rabbit, sir,” Sam would tell Captain Vane, and the Captain did not press to discover how his servant found rabbit meat in Philadelphia’s winter. Forage parties still trudged out into the blizzards to search the nearer farms for hidden supplies, and sometimes, in the short cold days, musket fire echoed over the pitiless land to tell of a brutal skirmish between Redcoats and rebels.

  Such rebels were on patrol, for General Washington had pulled the Continental Army back to winter quarters at a place called Valley Forge. Lizzie Loring thought it sounded like a very cosy place.

  “Cosy?” Sir William asked her.

  “All those blacksmiths’ fires in a valley? I imagine they’re very snug.”

  “I seem to recall we burned down the forges last summer, and their deserters tell us it’s the most hideous place.”

  Lizzie stood at the bedroom window. Icicles hung from the eaves beneath a grey sky in which the sun, low over the State House roof, was paled to a sickly yellow disc. “Is that what you’ll say when you desert us?” She turned. “Will you say how hideous America is?”

  Sir William was touched by her unhappiness, but could offer small consolation. “Perhaps they won’t accept my resignation?”

  “But if they do?”

  “You can come to England?”

  “I can’t imagine Lady Howe appreciating such a thing. Nor can you.”

  “No.” Sir William, wearing a skullcap and heavy robe, stroked his sleeping dog which lay curled at his feet by the fire. “But if there’s peace, my dear, I’ll stay.”

  “Will there be peace?”

  Sir William looked hopelessly at his lover. “If the French don’t come, yes.”

  “And if the French do come?”

  Sir William thought about his answer as he stirred the negus which warmed on a trivet by the flames. “It will be a different war, my love. A war about sugar and islands and fleets. Maybe the Spanish will join the French? It will be an old-fashioned European war, and all because of threepence on tea.” He said the last words bitterly.

  “And you’ll leave” – Lizzie, in her own misery, took no notice of Sir William’s – “and you’ll tell England that America was never worth fighting for, and that it’s a hideous place with dull people and ranting preachers and a foul climate.”

  “No,” Sir William said, “I won’t.” He stood, crossed to her, and gathered her into his arms. “I shall say it was the place where I knew the greatest happiness of my life. Then lost it.”

  It was winter, and the land was palled with white, waiting for spring.

  PART THREE

  Twenty-Nine

  The building was cavernous, dark, and echoing. It reeked of paint, but on this night in early April 1778 that thick stench was mingled with the odours of powder and perfume.

  Silks and calico rustled in the darkness. A woman giggled and was immediately hushed.

  Only four lights, each an oil lamp placed within a reflecting hood, burned in the building’s gaping interior. The small flames cast a flickering and yellowish glow on to a painted scene that depicted green hills, deep woods, and a steam flowing towards a stone-built village with a spired church. The painting hung like a vast curtain across the stage of Philadelphia’s theatre, reviving sweet memories of the English countryside for the officers who stood in the pit’s darkness.

  Somewhere deep in the theatre a hidden drum began a slow and menacing beat.

  A trumpet, much closer at hand but still hidden, seared an abrupt fanfare that made the crowd shiver with a delicious alarm. More than two hundred people were standing in the darkness to watch the lit stage. Lovers’ hands, vouchsafed the secrecy of the darkened pit, linked fingers.

  The fanfare ceased. The drummer gave a final flourish. Then there was silence except for the rattle of rain on a high window.

  A pause, just long enough for the spectators’ apprehension to increase, then a disembodied voice sounded from the apparently empty stage.

  Once more ambitious of theatric glory,

  Howe’s strolling player appears before ye!

  On the word “appears”, the four lights at the front of the stage were abruptly doused and other lamps, placed behind the painted scene, were unhooded. The English landscape had been painted on a scrim, a great sheet of gauze, and the effect of obliterating the darkness behind the scrim and the light before it, was to make the gauze and its rural scene vanish. It was a cunning theatrical trick that never failed to raise applause, as it did this night. In an eyeblink the hills disappeared to be replaced by a black-cloaked man whose face was hidden by a deathly white papier-mâché mask.

  The man put his right foot forward, placed his clenched right fist against his left breast, and, as the now transparent scrim was reeled invisibly upwards, his fine declamatory voice again echoed in the theatre’s pit.

  O’er hills and dales and bogs, thro’ wind and weather,

  And many a hair-breadth ’scape I’ve scrambled hither,

  For we true vagrants of the Thespian race

  While summer lasts ne’er know a settled place.

  The hidden drum began to beat, softly at first, but rising, and the caped man mimed panic.

  Now beats each Yankee bosom at our drum,

  Hark! Hark! Alarm! Howe’s strollers come!

  On the last word he snatched the papier-mâché mask from his face and hurled it into the wings. There was more applause, even louder than before, as the popular
Captain John Andre thus revealed himself and bowed to his audience. At the same instant two doors, one on either side of the stage’s small apron, were thrown back and lines of uniformed men marched in carrying tall candelabras, brilliant with flame, to light the theatre’s interior.

  Andre again held up a hand for silence. He smiled. “My lords, ladies, gallants, friends! The Society of Gentlemen of the Army and Navy, which I have the humble honour to represent this night, welcomes you to the playhouse!”

  More applause. The candelabras were being placed on linen-covered tables that were heaped with food and wine.

  “A playhouse where we, this winter, have been delighted to offer you the rarest gems of the dramatic art! The Constant Couple!” There were mocking cheers at the mention of the play’s title, cheers that Andre checked with an upraised hand. “The Wonder! A Woman Keeps a Secret!”

  There were more cheers and laughter, which again Andre checked with a raised hand. He walked to the front of the stage while musicians came from the wings to set up their chairs and stands behind him. Tonight, instead of drama, the theatre would hold a subscription ball for the widows and orphans of those who had lost their lives in the King’s service. The benches of the pit had been pushed under the gallery to make way for dancing, while, in the antechamber, two Hessian officers had established a faro bank for the gamblers who could not endure an evening’s entertainment without their gaming. It was a night for revelry, and Captain Andre thanked all who had paid to attend, raised laughter by imitating the preachers who claimed the theatre had corrupted Philadelphia’s youth, and enjoined each guest to an evening of celebration.

  Applause followed his speech. “He did that remarkably well!” Sir William Howe clapped enthusiastically. “He wrote the poem, y’know? John’s a talented fellow.”

  “Indeed.” Charles Lee smiled at Lizzie Loring. “I’m astonished you have never graced John’s stage, Mrs Loring?”

  “Lord, no, Charlie! I ain’t a player!”

  Sir William spied Martha on Lord Robert Massedene’s arm and waved to attract her attention. “Amongst my other sins, dear Mrs Crowl, do you see me as a corrupter of American youth?”

  “Dear Sir William.” Martha, splendid in vivid blue silk and with her piled hair looped in ribbons of the same colour, gave the Commander-in-Chief her hand to be kissed. “Whom have you corrupted?” she asked.

  “The clergy say everyone.”

  “They should be grateful for the business, should they not? Clergy need sinners like pork butchers need hogs. Dear Lizzie.” Martha exchanged kisses with Lizzie, then looked back to Sir William. “If you really wish to avoid the corruption of our youth, why don’t you send Charlie back to General Washington’s army?”

  “It will be done within the fortnight.” Sir William smiled at the rebel General. “I shall miss you, Charlie,’pon my word, I shall.”

  “I shall miss you, Sir William. I fear I return to a dull existence. Our Congress is proposing a ban on horseracing, gaming, cockfighting, plays, or expensive diversions.” Lee shook his head sadly. “I sometimes wonder why I fight for the rebellion at all.”

  “Why do you?” Sir William was genuinely curious.

  The tall Lee, who still sported his gaudy Polish uniform, shrugged. “To get my name in the history books, I suppose.”

  “You think history will remember such a little war?”

  “One dares hope?”

  The musicians, their music arranged, watched their leader’s violin bow beat once, twice, then sing on its strings. It was the same small orchestra that had played all winter long at the city’s revels whether in military headquarters or in the houses of the richer Loyalist merchants who cared for such entertainments. They played for the same guests who had made the same endless round of parties; entertainments to make people forget their hunger and cold.

  The city had not starved, though it had been close. The forage parties had fought vicious battles in the hinterland, suffering ambush and loss, but always bringing some food back. The farmers, ordered not to sell their food to the British, nevertheless hid it from the rebels in the hope of gaining British gold and so, with such precious hoards brought back by foragers, the city had survived.

  As the dancing began, Martha took Charles Lee aside. “I particularly wanted a word with you, Charlie.”

  Lee had become friendly with Martha through the winter, drawn by her beauty as much as by a shared allegiance. Now he looked back towards Lord Robert Massedene. “Robert won’t be jealous?”

  “Robert and I are amiable friends,” Martha said firmly, “and nothing more. He is a dear man, but I didn’t stay in the city to be suborned by an enemy.”

  “So there’s hope for a friend?” Lee asked mischievously. “I’d like to take a beautiful wife back to Valley Forge and watch General Washington pretend not to notice.”

  “It won’t be me, dear Charlie, but you really are returning to General Washington?”

  “Did you ever doubt it?” Lee teased Martha, knowing full well that some of the Patriots believed him to be altogether too friendly with his British captors. “I’m to be exchanged for General Prescott, taken at Saratoga of blessed memory, but whether His Excellency truly wishes for my return, I cannot tell.”

  “Why ever should he not?”

  “Plump George dislikes me intensely, but he dislikes any man who has had success against the British. I doomed myself in his affections by winning at Charleston, and I wager you that Gates and Arnold earned His Excellency’s displeasure at Saratoga.”

  Martha took a glass of wine from a table. “You’re saying General Washington’s jealous?”

  “I’m saying he has the spite of a woman, and her appetite for flattery.”

  Martha listened to the splenetic words impassively. She had seen the same jealousies within the British command, between Sir William and the recently departed Lord Cornwallis, and she supposed it was impossible for ambitious men in authority to live in amity. “General Washington must have some merits, Charlie.”

  Lee shrugged. “He’s brave as a lion and stubborn as an ox, though, God knows, a man who’s defeated so often needs to be.”

  “All he needs do,” Martha said wistfully, “is survive till the French come. If they come.”

  “If.” Lee said the word darkly. The rumours had been strong all winter, but the French still hesitated, weighing what losses they might suffer around the globe if they came to the rebellion’s aid. Another rumour, just as keenly discussed about the city, was that Sir William had offered his resignation and would be replaced. Lee, taxed on the rumour by Martha, shrugged. “I imagine Lizzie would tell you, would she not? Poor Billy. He never made up his mind whether he was fighting us or stroking us.” Lee watched Sir William fondly. “He’d really like to make peace, but I fear that won’t happen.”

  “We must encourage his hope,” Martha said tartly. “If Billy is persuaded that peace is attainable, he’ll be reluctant to wage war, will he not?”

  Lee looked at her thoughtfully. “That is a quite dishonest notion, dear Mrs Crowl. I like it.”

  Martha, pleased with the compliment, smiled. “If Billy does go, who’ll replace him?”

  Lee spread his hands in a gesture of ignorance. “Henry Clinton, perhaps?”

  Martha had never met the American-born General Clinton who now commanded Britain’s New York garrison. “Is he able?”

  “As able as Billy, if that means anything, and, like Billy, he was always an opponent of the war. But command changes some generals; the prospect of victory overcomes the scruples of morality, and I fancy Sir Henry might be more avid for military victory than Billy.”

  “But he is able?” Martha insisted.

  “He isn’t negligible,” Lee allowed, “so we’ll have to find a general who can win battles if we’re to defeat him.”

  Martha watched the dancers dip and swirl before the stage. “You, Charlie?”

  “My humble wish is merely to serve the sacred cause of liberty.” Wh
ich humbug only served to tell Martha that the rebel command was, indeed, Lee’s ambition. Lee smiled maliciously. “Though I hear our new golden hope is an unfledged French aristocrat? Have you heard of him? Lafayette? The shifts we are forced to, dear Mrs Crowl. Youths scarce out of their cradles become generals on His Excellency’s whim. Never mind!” Lee gave an exaggerated sigh. “Perhaps the infant Lafayette can teach George to dance? The French make good dancing masters.” He offered his arm. “Shall we?”

  Martha stepped back from the offered arm. “But I haven’t asked my favour of you, Charlie.”

  “My dear Martha, I have waited all winter.”

  Martha dutifully smiled at the dutiful flirtation. She saw Christopher Vane thread his way through the gaudy crowd and, lest she caught his eye, she turned into the shadows beneath the pillared gallery. “It’s a favour for my brother.”

  “I forgot! How is he?”

  “Wonderfully recovered. They’ve fitted him with a wooden leg, and soon he’ll be unleashed on to the city’s streets. Or so I’m told.” She paused, letting a naval officer edge past them. The fleet had returned when the ice melted in March, bringing powder, shot and rations for the coming campaign. Martha looked at Lee again. “Jonathon wants to rejoin the Continental Army.”

  Lee frowned. “With one leg?”

  “He never had two anyway, but he can clerk, can’t he?”

  “I suppose so.” A sudden whoop made them both turn to see Christopher Vane leading a Scottish reel. Sir William applauded his aide. There had been a coolness between the two men earlier in the winter, following the fruitless sally to Germantown, but Sir William was not a man to harbour grudges and Kit Vane, to Martha’s regret, was again in Sir William’s favour. The comman-der-in-chief laughed delightedly as some paroled rebel officers, free to live within the city, joined the dance. Above them, at the edge of the stage, a bonneted Highland officer danced alone above crossed swords.

  “The British at play,” Martha said icily.