Prelude to Glory, Vol. 4

by Ron Carter

  “I’m sending those men on down to Albany to be questioned by General Schuyler. He needs to make his own judgment on them.” He stopped long enough to consider his next words carefully. “I must know how much of what they said is true. If Burgoyne has a large army and intends coming down to take this fort, I have to know it now. Both his numbers, and his timing. This fort is in desperate condition, and we do not have enough men to withstand a heavy attack.”

  He stopped, rounded his lips to exhale, and looked at both men. “That brings me to you. Will you go up there, locate Burgoyne, get a count on his numbers, and determine whether he has boats enough to carry his army down here? Report back to me as soon as possible.”

  Billy glanced at Eli, then spoke for both of them. “Yes, sir.”

  “I must warn you, my scouts are from Whitcomb’s Rangers. The Long Hunters. They’re good, and they’ve returned talking about many Indian patrols north of us. They haven’t been able to get far enough up there to make an accurate report. I tell you this so you’ll know what to expect.”

  Eli nodded. “When do you want us to go?”

  “When can you?”

  “Soon. I’ll need two things. A cup of alcohol and someone here to gather about a peck of seashells from the lake and drill a tiny hole in the middle of each while we’re gone.”

  St. Clair’s eyes narrowed in surprise. “Alcohol?”

  Eli gestured to Billy. “I’ve got to take eighteen stitches out of his shoulder, and I’ll need the alcohol to wash it when I’m finished. I’ll need the seashells to make a wampum belt when I get back.”

  St. Clair raised his eyebrows. “Eighteen stitches? What happened?”

  “A fight on the way here.”

  “Where? With who? How many?”

  “Just south of Albany. About eleven, twelve Mohawk.”

  St. Clair was incredulous. “You engaged eleven or twelve of them, and only Mr. Weems was injured?”

  “Tomahawk. Shoulder blade. We stitched it shut.”

  “I have surgeons here.”

  Eli shook his head. “No need. The cut’s healed tight. We just need to pull the stitches. Won’t take five minutes.”

  “The seashells? A wampum belt?”

  “They’re usually made out of shells. It might be a way to get into Joseph Brant’s camp to parley with him.”

  St. Clair stood, stunned. “You mean a wampum belt would get you in?”

  Eli shrugged. “It might.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “Then we made a mistake.”

  Billy interrupted. “We’ll also need two telescopes.”

  St. Clair settled back onto his chair. “Major!”

  Dunn opened the door. “Yes, sir?”

  “Get a pint of alcohol from the infirmary, and return with it at once, along with two officer’s telescopes. Then assign two men to go to the lake and gather a peck of seashells, take them to our artisans, and have them drill a small hole in the center of each one. I’ll need them in the next few days.”

  Dunn’s mouth dropped open, and he thrust his head forward two inches. “Beg pardon, sir. Alcohol? Seashells? Holes?”

  “I’ll explain later.”

  “Yes, sir.” Dunn walked out of the room shaking his head.

  St. Clair turned back to Billy and Eli. “How many days will it take?”

  Eli considered, then answered. “St. Johns is at the other end of Lake Champlain, on the Richelieu River. We can cover most of it on water. Maybe three days up, three days back. How long we’re there will depend on what we run into. Maybe ten, twelve days in all.”

  “On the water? One hundred forty miles in three days?”

  “Canoe. There are a few tied to your dock on the lake. We can cover fifty, sixty miles a day without much trouble, mostly at night. In daylight we’ll stay close to the east shore of the lake, away from the British.”

  “They’ll have scouts out.”

  “We’ll have to handle that when it happens.”

  St. Clair stopped to think. “Need food? Ammunition?”

  “Maybe some hardtack and smoked fish. Coffee. Sugar. A little gunpowder.”

  Quickly St. Clair wrote half a dozen lines on a piece of paper, folded it, and handed it to Billy. “They’ll give you whatever you require at the commissary.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Dunn rapped on the door.

  “Enter.”

  Dunn walked in and laid two telescopes in battered leather cases on the desk, followed by a pewter jar with a lid clamped on. “The telescopes and alcohol, sir. May I know the use of the alcohol?”

  “To wash Mr. Weems’s shoulder after Mr. Stroud takes out the stitches.”

  “Stitches?”

  “Eighteen stitches. From a battle with Indians.”

  Dunn’s eyebrows arched. “Oh. Anything else, sir?”

  “Not right now. Thank you, Major Dunn.”

  “Not at all, sir.”

  Billy and Eli each picked up a telescope, and Eli lifted the jar. “We’ll return this in a few minutes.”

  “Good. You plan to leave now?”

  “As soon as we pick up some things from the commissary and pull Billy’s stitches. We need our weapons.”

  “Dunn will get them.”

  Eli and Billy had started for the door when St. Clair’s voice stopped them, and he raised a pointed finger. “You two be careful. I’ve got to know what we’re facing from the north. Good luck, and Godspeed.”

  Billy and Eli walked across the dusty parade ground toward the infirmary, Eli carrying the small flask of alcohol. The strong stench of antiseptic and too many bodies in a small room stopped them at the door. Billy entered long enough to persuade one of the men on duty to give him a patch of clean cotton bandage, then walked back out to Eli. He gave a head gesture, and they walked to a stack of rough-sawed planks near where a crew of men were repairing a roof. Billy pulled his shirt over his head, then sat on the stacked lumber and leaned forward with the sunlight on his back, the line of eighteen black stitches showing prominently on the white skin.

  Eli drew his belt knife and stuck the point into the lumber, opened the jar, soaked the cotton cloth, and washed Billy’s left shoulder. The repair crew slowed and stopped, staring, fascinated. Eli held his knife away to pour alcohol on the blade and let it drip into the dust, then turned to Billy.

  “Ready?”

  “Pull ’em.”

  Eli tugged at the slack in the first stitch, cut the thread with the heel of his knife blade, then applied pressure until Billy flinched and the thread broke free. He dropped it onto the planking next to Billy as a small bead of blood appeared at each hole. Seventeen more times he tugged and cut, and dropped the stitches onto the small, growing pile. Then he slipped his knife back into its leather sheath, decorated with Iroquois fringe and beadwork.

  “You all right?”

  Billy raised his head. “Yes.”

  Eli soaked the cloth again to wash away the beads of blood, then sat down beside Billy. “Let’s wait for that to dry in the sun.”

  The small knot of men took one last look at the long, straight, pink scar, wishing they could hear the story of how it came to be. Reluctantly they went back to their work, buzzing, quietly creating thrilling fictions of how Billy got the scar, while Billy and Eli sat without speaking in the warm June sunlight.

  After a time, Billy asked, “The scar look all right?”

  Eli nodded. “Good. Knitted tight.”

  “If we get caught up there, dressed like we are, they’ll hang us for spies.”

  Eli rubbed the palms of his hands together, studying them. “If we get caught, I doubt it will make much difference how we’re dressed. The trick is, don’t get caught. We better return this jar and get our things and go.”

  Notes

  Unless otherwise indicated, the following facts are taken from Ketchum, Saratoga, on the pages indicated.

  In mid-June of 1777, General Arthur St. Clair arrived at Fort Ti
conderoga to take command. General St. Clair’s history and character are described. The terrible condition of Fort Ti is described, as well as the fact that it was built to defend against invaders coming from the south, and Burgoyne was coming down from the north. The facts related to the very poor morale and condition of the men at the fort are accurate. The powdered ink mentioned was commonly called iron gall ink and was made of ferrous sulfate, or copperas, and galls from the bark of oak trees, which contain both tannic and gallic acids. These two elements were mixed with gum arabic from the Middle East and reduced to a fine powder. The user then added rainwater or white wine or beer to restore it to a usable liquid.

  Colonel Jeduthan Baldwin, a great and energetic patriot engineer, was in charge of bringing Fort Ti up to fighting condition, assisted by Polish immigrant engineer Colonel Thaddeus Kosciuszko. Together they had built a new bakery, hospital, breastworks, defenses, a bridge, and other improvements. St. Clair had strong assurances from John Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congess, as well as from General Horatio Gates, that the British were not intending to come down the Lake Champlain–Hudson River waterway, rather, they intended moving their army down the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean, then south to New York. The ongoing acrimony between generals Gates and Schuyler has been explained in prior chapters of this book, as have the facts concerning Whitcomb’s Rangers.

  Sugar Hill was renamed Mt. Defiance, and Rattlesnake Hill was renamed Mt. Independence. Lieutenant Colonel John Trumbull proved cannon on top of Mt. Defiance could bombard Fort Ti, as well as Mt. Independence. General Benedict Arnold and Colonel Anthony Wayne scaled the mountain from the backside to prove cannon could be taken to the top. Despite this critical knowledge, no general issued orders to occupy Mt. Defiance. The two spies, Amsbury and Adams, captured near Colchester, led to information that was important to General St. Clair; their canteen had a false bottom in which was discovered the letter from Peter Livius, of the highest court in Canada, to American Major General John Sullivan, soliciting Sullivan to join the British. Billy and Eli are fictional characters (pp. 113–26).

  Gayentwahga, or Cornplanter, was a Mohawk war chief who fought with the British against the Americans (see Graymont, The Iroquois in the American Revolution, p. 123).

  In general support, see also Leckie, George Washington’s War, pp. 382–88; Higginbotham, The War of American Independence, pp. 188–90.

  New York

  June 17, 1777

  CHAPTER VIII

  * * *

  A light rain that had fallen in the early morning hours left the tall maples and spreading oaks that graced the grounds of the grand Broadhead estate on the northern fringe of New York City shrouded in misty fog. The moisture clung to the trees and the grass and the June flowers, sparkling like minuscule diamonds in the rising morning sun. But by nine o’clock, the mists had cleared to leave a cool, crystal-clear morning, with the promise of a hot day to come.

  The driver pulled the coach to a stop and quickly climbed from the box to the cobblestone street to unfold the two-step departure from the coach. Opening the carriage door, he grasped Mary Flint’s hand to steady her as she stepped to the ground. She placed two coins in his hand and said, “I’ll be here for a little time. Then I must go to the London–New York Bank on Broadway in town. Would you wait?”

  The driver bowed slightly, then walked to the horse to drop a round, four-pound iron tether weight to the street and check the leather straps that connected the weight to the bit chain of the bridle. Satisfied, he climbed back into the driver’s box for the wait.

  Dressed in black, her face veiled, Mary turned toward the mansion and for a moment stopped, as though seeing it for the first time. Massive, three-storied, with its sixty-two windows and six-column portico towering above two dark, heavy oak doors, the mansion dominated the twenty-acre estate from the low hill on which Rufus Broadhead had built it thirty years earlier. To the west, one could see the three hundred foot, sheer granite cliffs of the Palisades on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. To the south, most of the trees and rooftops of New York were visible. It was the only home Mary Broadhead had known before her marriage to Marcus Flint, son of the wealthy and powerful Flint family, whose grand estate was less than half a mile from that of her father.

  When war had erupted between the Americans and the British in the small village of Concord eighteen miles west of Boston, both families had become leaders in the patriot cause of liberty. None could have then known that sixteen months later, British regulars, commanded by General William Howe, would shatter the Continental army under General George Washington in and around New York, then drive them across the state of New Jersey in blind panic and over the Delaware River to hide on the Pennsylvania side, devastated, scattered, beaten.

  Nor could anyone have known that Mary Flint’s first child would be stillborn, or that her husband, a volunteer officer in the Continental army, would be crushed to death on the New York docks when the hawsers cradling a cannon being unloaded from a ship on the Catherine Street docks snapped, sending the two-ton gun smashing down on him. White-faced patriots who lifted the gun from his crushed body said the hawsers had been cut, and blamed British loyalists, but the murder of Captain Marcus Flint was lost in the ravages and frantic pace of the war.

  Nor could anyone know that with the strategic seaport of New York in their control, the British would seize the Flint mansion and estate for a hospital, and the Broadhead mansion for their headquarters. And no one could have predicted that within one year, the Flint and Broadhead fortunes would be gone, vanished, and the last of both families would be dead, save for Mary alone.

  Steadily she paced up the wide brick walkway to the broad porch, where a pair of British regulars in crimson tunics and white breeches stood, one on either side of the doors with their ten-pound Brown Bess muskets held stiffly upright at their sides, nothing moving but their eyes. She had taken her second step on the porch before the regular with the three chevrons on his sleeve brought his musket up and stepped in front of the door.

  “This building is occupied by British officers, ma’am. Please move on.”

  She faced the sergeant and opened her purse. “I’m aware of that. My name is Mary Flint. This was my home until I was nineteen years old. I have come to bury my father in the family burial plot behind the house.” She reached into her purse. “I have permission from Colonel Albert Cochran to do so.” She thrust a written document toward the sergeant. He unfolded it, read the terse message, returned it to her, then stepped aside.

  “You may pass.”

  She reached for the familiar door handle and walked into the spacious, high-ceilinged reception room, unprepared for the shock. Costly carpets imported from China were gone from the hardwood floors, and the treading of military boots had dulled and cut into the polish. The great family coat of arms was missing from its place high above the carved maple fireplace mantel, on the huge sandstone chimney. The eighteen-foot mural of the birthplace of the Broadhead clan in Ireland, which had graced the east wall, was gone. The music room and the drawing room were both stripped to accommodate desks and cots for officers. Uniformed British soldiers, both officers and enlisted, marched about, each preoccupied, paying her no attention other than a surprised glance at seeing a beautiful young woman with her face veiled, dressed in black, obviously going to, or coming from, a funeral. Wars resulted in funerals; they had long since lost meaning.

  A wave of nostalgia swept through Mary as memories came flooding. She saw the great home as it had been—a place famous for hospitality, graciousness and beauty, loved, cared for, with rooms where a little girl could run and beds to jump on and secret places to hide. She saw her mother, who kissed bumps better, and she sensed the smell of sweet pipe tobacco, and of musty, old volumes in the library, where her father would take her on his knee and read to her from large books with pictures of thrilling and mysterious places, where people had eyes and skins that were different and dressed in strang
e robes.

  The French doors into the library swung open and a uniformed officer strode to face her indifferently.

  “I am Major Farthington. May I ask your purpose in being here, ma’am?”

  “Yes.” She handed him the written message.

  He nodded. “I see.” He raised his eyes to hers and paused, startled by her youth and beauty. “I take it your father’s remains were previously interred in New York, then disinterred to be delivered here. The casket arrived late yesterday. Our men have prepared a grave in the family plot, and the casket is there waiting. Do you wish an escort?”

  “No, thank you. I know the place.”

  “Will anyone be attending your service? Family?”

  “I am the last of my family. There will be no one else.”

  The officer’s eyes widened. “You will bury your father alone? Deliver the eulogy?”

  “I will say what needs to be said.”

  “Very well. When you finish, the gravediggers will lower the casket and take care of the grave.”

  Mary took a deep breath. “I want to thank you for your understanding and consideration. May I pay you?”

  The officer glanced around the room. “If this was your home, I think you’ve paid enough.”

  Mary bowed slightly. “I do thank you. I’ll be on my way.” She turned on her heel and walked back outside into the sunlight, past the guards at the door, and down the three steps to the brick walkway. To her right was a narrower brick path, leading west, past the house, angling north to the family burial plot. She walked steadily to the tall, black, wrought-iron gate, opened it, and made her way to the mound of freshly turned earth with her father’s lead-lined, sealed casket resting above the open grave on two large planks, with the heavy ropes waiting. A granite tombstone stood at the head of the grave, with her father’s name, dates of birth and death, and the names of his wife and Mary engraved. Beneath was a delicate engraving of a single dove. Two gravediggers stood at a respectful distance, shovels in hand, waiting until they could lower the casket and complete the burial.

  There were no tears left in Mary. Dry-eyed, she walked to the head of the casket and for a long time stood in silence, remembering what had been. Then she lowered her face and spoke quietly.