The recoil slammed at Sam’s broken finger, making him scream, but the scream was lost in the blasting thunder of the gun which spat flame and smoke and its filthy charge of broken metal and bent nails at Vane. “Go!” Sam shouted it, dragging Caroline behind him, and he did not hear the clicks as the flints fell on damp musket pans that did not fire.
He charged into the smoke of his gunfire and he saw one Redcoat lying in the doorway, another crawling into the night, and Sam had an impression of blood as though a man had been flensed alive by the screaming metal scraps, then he shoulder-charged the third man, sending him reeling, and leaped over the threshold. Caroline was with him. There were more soldiers in the farm’s yard, men who were dragging open the barn-doors and who now turned with raised bayonets towards the fugitives. Sam knew that all was lost, that he was truly trapped, but the madness of battle was deafening him to reason and he whirled the empty gun as though he would fight a regiment before he would surrender.
“Stand back! Hold your fire!” Sam heard the shout and thought he must have dreamed it. He was running hard, dragging Caroline with his broken right hand, sobbing with rage and pain, then Caroline twisted away, dragging Sam into the darkness of the shadows beyond the barn. Suddenly Sam was cloaked by night and the rain was cool and blessed on his bloodied face. He stumbled, but Caroline pulled him onwards, and Sam realized that no one pursued them or shouted after them.
They stopped at the treeline. Both were panting, but Sam heard Caroline say his name aloud, heard her say it again and again, and he held her close in the greying darkness where he could not tell whether the wetness on his face was his own blood, or the rain, or tears of joy because, with a whole army set against him, he had not failed.
Forty-Three
The rain stopped. By full dawn the clouds were in ragged retreat from a blue sky in which the sun shone as sweetly as any man might have desired. The Meschianza was saved.
The crowds gathered early to throng the wharves which had been hung with bunting that steamed dry in the warm sunlight. Other spectators took to river boats to watch the grand procession which, at half-past three on the afternoon of 18 May 1778, launched the great event. The Meschianza, for which Sir William’s officers, out of loyalty and love, had collected more than three thousand guineas, had begun.
A fleet of longboats carried the guests south from Knight’s Wharf. A larger pinnace carried the two Commanders-in-Chief beneath a gaudy silken awning. The Roebuck, a frigate which had spent the long cold winter in Philadelphia, fired a nineteen-gun salute as the pinnace passed, and the spectators cheered the gallant sight. Surely, the Loyalists reasoned, the British did not fear defeat if they could mount such a spectacle as this. The French could come, yet this display of confidence suggested that, come what may, Philadelphia was safe.
The guests were landed on the wide lawns of the Wharton mansion that was far enough from the city’s streets to be spared the stench of rotting effluent. Seven young ladies, unmarried maidens all, were led to a pavilion which had been specially built on the north side of the lawn, and another seven were guided to an identical spired booth to the south. The girls, chosen for their beauty, were the ladies of the knights this day. The maidens wore turbans edged with silver lace and hung with pearls and golden tassels. Veils hung from the turbans. Their white dresses, fashionably slashed to reveal silk petticoats, were encircled by sashes which each girl in turn presented to her chosen champion.
Those champions, at full gallop and with plumes erect, came safely beneath the twin arches. Each of the fourteen knights was an officer, but never, even in an army that loved its uniforms, had officers been so gorgeously arrayed. They wore doublets of white satin, sleeves slashed to show coloured silks beneath, and boots of silver leather. The Knights of the Burning Mountain challenged the Knights of the Silver Rose to a tourney to decide which pavilion held the most beautiful girls. Gauntlets were thrown down, lances raised, and the mock fight could begin.
It was all such happy fun. The knights charged, tossed away their coloured lances, then hacked at each other with blunted swords. The ladies gasped their admiration. The knights drew pistols charged only with powder and the small explosions reminded the spectators of the real war that waited on these diversions, but today the knights fought, not to contain the foul creed of republicanism, but for their ladies. At the battle’s end, happily without a drop of blood to mar the day, it was declared that each band of knights and each group of ladies were as brave and as beautiful as the other.
Sir William applauded the judicious decision, but his mind was far off. At last, at long last, the rebels had agreed to send Peace Commissioners to New York where they would discuss the war’s ending and, while there were those who averred that the rebels merely played for time until the French forces arrived to tip the balance, Sir William was trying to persuade himself that peace could be attained. “Willie?” Lizzie Loring leaned towards him.
“My dear?” Sir William seemed to start awake. He blinked, then waved a dutiful hand at the bedecked garden. “It’s very beautiful, isn’t it?”
“We’re supposed to lead the procession, my dear.”
“The procession? Ah, of course. Just so!”
The guests, now that the mock battle was done, walked in pairs between a hundred musicians and, as the day faded into a perfect evening, they entered a silk-hung hall lit by a galaxy of milk-white candles. Musicians played and guests danced.
Sir William surrendered Lizzie Loring to the arms of John Andre and walked with Lord Robert Massedene in the twilit garden. They strolled to the great arch which celebrated Sir William’s triumphs and which was decorated with piled arms, unfurled colours, and surmounted by the figure of Fame who carried a laurel wreath in her outstretched hand. Sir William, standing beneath the proffered honour, chuckled. “It’s all nonsense, Robert, all nonsense.”
“You did win the victories, sir,” Massedene chided. “You’ve not been beaten here.”
“True, I wasn’t defeated, but I suspect that lady,” and here Sir William glanced up at the goddess with her outstretched laurels, “I suspect she won’t reward victory over Mister George Washington with undying renown. And victories or not, Robert, we still have our backs to the water, don’t we?” Sir William looked towards the Roebuck which, moored in the stream, was lit by lanterns that cast shivering reflections on the dark river. “Is Mrs Crowl safe?”
“She is now, sir. Her house is damaged, but …” Massedene shrugged.
“Houses can be repaired. And the papers you found across the water?”
Massedene shook his head dismissively. “There was merely a letter from Charlie Lee, sir, offering Mrs Crowl’s brother a post with the rebel army. Hardly a treasonable document, I think?”
Sir William smiled. “Not treasonable at all. But in the search for it, Robert, Captain Vane was killed.”
“Indeed.” Massedene’s voice was quite toneless.
“Sir Henry says he must have a hero’s burial.” Sir William’s voice was equally without expression.
“A very apt gesture, sir, if I might say so.”
Sir William turned to his aide. “Sir Henry also says that you prevented his killer from being captured?”
“He does, sir?” Massedene sounded faintly surprised.
Sir William smiled in the darkness. “One of the light company captains says you ordered his men to hold their fire?”
“It was raining, sir. The muskets couldn’t fire. Besides,” Lord Robert Massedene shrugged, “it was dark. There was no way of knowing what damage might have been caused by indiscriminate fire.”
“Quite so, quite so.” Sir William began strolling across the lawn. “It was Vane’s servant who fired the killing shot?”
“I wouldn’t know, sir.”
Sir William appeared not to hear the disavowal. “Mrs Crowl will be pleased.”
“She will?” Massedene pretended surprise.
“She told me she was rather fond of … whatever his na
me was.”
“I’m glad for her sake, sir.” Voices called from the house and Lord Robert gestured towards them. “I rather think your presence is needed for the fireworks, sir.”
“Ah, yes, indeed! Fireworks for my victories! How very nice. And Lizzie will be pleased. And well done, Robert. Well done.”
Massedene checked, astonished. “Well done?”
“That’s what we’re here for tonight, is it not? To congratulate ourselves?” Sir William smiled, then laughed. “So, well done, my dear Robert, well done indeed.”
Rockets exploded into stars of crimson that fell like jewels into the river. Chinese fountains spewed white fire to make the night seem like day. Twenty separate displays launched their dazzling flames into the darkness to astonish a city.
Sam watched from across the river. He sat on a grass bank with his arm around Caroline’s shoulders. Sometimes he stole glances at her face which, lit by the brilliance of the fireworks, seemed so very beautiful. He felt tears in his eyes. His brother, whom he had loved, had never found his American paradise, and Jonathon, whom Sam had befriended, he now knew lay dead beneath this soil. But Sam lived and he must now live for both the dead men.
“What are they celebrating over there?” Caroline asked.
“Victory.”
She laughed softly, then flinched from the glare of a brighter rocket that exploded above the river in feathers of white light, casting stark shadows from the warehouses on the city’s wharves. “I never liked the city,” Caroline said suddenly.
“Nor I.”
“I would have lived there, though.”
“You’d have had to,” Sam agreed. He held one of her hands in his left hand. Their fingers intertwined.
“I didn’t want to live there.” Caroline’s voice was soft with regret.
Sam understood what she was saying. “You never let Jonathon down.”
“I did in my dreams.”
“That’s what dreams are for. Things that aren’t real. Things like the Green Man.” He smiled because he had confessed to Caroline how scared he had been in last night’s darkness.
Caroline looked at him. “Dreams can become real, Sam.”
“We did nothing to make this one real.”
“No.” Caroline’s voice revealed that she took comfort from that truth.
They had hidden in the woods all day. In the morning the soldiers had searched the Fisher farm, slaughtering the livestock for rations and taking away the precious stores from the barn. The farm had been plundered for food, but the family was safe. Caleb and Anna were now with neighbours, waiting to make certain that the Redcoats would not return, while Sam sat with Caroline beside a dark river.
Caroline leaned her head on his shoulder. “What were you planning to do, Sam?”
“After I’d warned you?” Sam thought for a moment. “Go far away, I suppose. Somewhere where no one could find me.”
“And raise horses?”
“Like as not.”
She smiled. The night was riven with fire, and made beautiful by the falling sparks that hissed as they fell into the river. Caroline’s voice was scarcely louder than the sound of the fire’s dying. “You can raise horses here, Sam.”
“It’s a good country for horses,” Sam agreed. He paused, not because he feared to say the next words, but to savour the pleasure of uttering them. “And children.”
“Yes.” Caroline felt a surge of joy which was so strong that it astonished her. There was no explanation for love, she thought, but only a fool would want one.
“But children need peace.” Sam sounded wistful.
Caroline said nothing. Their last exchanges, as stumbling as they may have sounded, were the declarations of love that would last their lifetimes, but Sam was a Redcoat, and she a rebel, and Sam had now hinted at the unasked question that lay between them.
“Children need peace,” Sam said again, but this time more firmly, “so I suppose we’ll have to fight for it.”
Caroline turned her face up to Sam’s. “We?”
“We,” Sam said, and for a moment Caroline thought he would say no more. She expected nothing more, for Sam was not like Jonathon who would have wanted to spin words around this moment. Sam thought the simpler an assertion was, the firmer it was meant, but then, to Caroline’s surprise, he did offer an explanation. “A man must fight for his home, mustn’t he?”
“Is this home, Sam?”
“Home is where you love. And where you are loved.”
Caroline stroked his hand. “This is your home, Sam.”
The fireworks died. The dancers’ music played on, coming thin over the dark water, but Sam and Caroline walked away. They walked home, and on the bank they abandoned the coat which Sam had spread on the muddy grass to keep the damp from Caroline’s dress. It was his soldier’s coat, his red coat that he had worn at Paoli’s Tavern in that night when he had carried a red blade to the killing, but now the coat was left in the mud and a new flag would dazzle Sam’s eyes.
Because the Redcoat was free.
Historical Note
I have taken some liberties with the Revolution’s chronology; thus the skirmish at Paoli’s Tavern occurred on the night following the panic in Philadelphia, rather than, as the chapter order would suggest, on the previous night. The explosion which destroyed HMS Augusta is here brought forward by one day to coincide with the failure of the assaults on the river forts. Similarly the news of Saratoga reached Philadelphia a few days before those failed assaults, but it seemed apt to inflict all the bad news at once on Sir William. I fetched General Charles Lee early to Philadelphia, then delayed his return to Valley Forge by one week so he could witness the aftermath of the action at the Crooked Billet.
The only characters drawn from history, besides the obvious and famous names, are the General Officers, Admiral Lord Howe, John Andre and Lizzie Loring. The rest are fictional.
The British had troops in Philadelphia for only one more month after the Meschianza. Then, needing the city’s garrison elsewhere, they abandoned Philadelphia to the rebels. The Loyalists fled, some to Canada, some to the islands, a few to Britain. The occupation of the city had lasted a mere eight months.
Redcoat is drawn from many sources, but I must acknowledge an extraordinary debt to John W. Jackson’s With the British Army in Philadelphia, 1777–1778 (Presidio Press, San Rafael, California, 1979). To Mr Jackson’s splendid work and fine research Redcoat owes much of its accuracy. The inaccuracies that remain are, of course, my own.
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First published by Michael Joseph 1987
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