Prelude to Glory, Vol. 7

by Ron Carter

  A faint, wistful smile passed over Turlock’s face. “I do.”

  Thirty minutes later, with the sun casting long shadows eastward, Billy Weems and Eli Stroud faced the pickets at the door of Washington’s headquarters and Billy spoke.

  “Lieutenant Billy Weems and Scout Eli Stroud. We were told to report to General Washington.”

  Without a word the picket swung the door open and stepped aside. Billy led as the two entered the small, austere room with walls of unpeeled logs and mud chinking. Directly facing the door was a plain table made of pine planks. Behind it sat General George Washington. Billy stopped three feet short of his desk, Eli on his left, and saluted.

  “Lieutenant Billy Weems of the Massachusetts Fourth, sir. You remember Scout Eli Stroud. We were ordered to report to you.”

  General Washington rose, graying hair pulled back and tied behind his head. He wore his full dress uniform, wrinkled, showing sweat stains. His pale blue-gray eyes were steady, and in them was the light of recognition. At the moment he could not remember how many times he had called this pair into his office for scouting assignments he would trust to no others. Eli, dressed in beaded buckskins and moccasins, tall, dark hair, dark-skinned from more than twenty years of summer sun and winter snows, regular features, prominent nose, a white man orphaned as an infant and raised by the Iroquois to age nineteen to be an Iroquois warrior; gifted in his knowledge of the woods, educated by the Jesuits to speak all six Iroquois dialects, together with French and English, fiercely independent, a three-inch scar from a long ago battle prominent on his left jawline, a born leader. Billy, from Boston, clad in homespun trousers and an officer’s tunic, shorter, barrel-chested, powerful beyond most men, round homely features, steady, called from the ranks of the enlisted to become a lieutenant based on merit alone. Washington could not remember Eli Stroud ever saluting anyone, or Billy Weems failing to do so.

  Washington gestured. “Be seated.”

  Both men drew up straight-backed pine chairs and sat facing Washington, who took his place in a high-backed, scarred, leather upholstered chair. They could hear the birds and insects of spring through the open window as the two waited for their commander in chief to speak.

  Washington pointed to two documents on the table in front of him. They saw the concern in his eyes as he picked up one document and spoke.

  “I received this less than one hour ago from a British major who carried it here from New York under a white flag.”

  Washington paused, judging how much of the contents he should reveal, then went on. “I’ve been concerned—deeply concerned—that our Congress and officers would begin to think the war had ended when General Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. I feared we would become less diligent in our opposition to the British and give them time to rally and rebuild.”

  He paused for a moment, then went on. “You’re aware that we’ve positioned the Continental Army to encircle the British in New York and control the Hudson. That’s why I’m here, in Newburgh. Our whole intent is to prevent them from moving in any direction without our knowing it. We simply can’t afford a surprise attack in the southern regions, or for that matter, to the west.”

  Billy nodded.

  “Now this letter arrives from New York. Carried by British Major Theodore Durfee. It is signed by General Sir Guy Carleton.”

  Billy started. “General Carleton from Quebec? In New York? I thought General Henry Clinton was in command there.”

  “No longer. General Carleton has replaced him.” Washington leaned forward on his forearms to spread the document flat. “Let me read to you.” He located the proper place and traced with his finger as he read.

  “ . . . I am joined with Admiral Digby in the commission of peace, and we are most anxious to reduce the needless severities of war.”

  Eli blew air. “A peace commission? They’re asking for peace talks?”

  Washington nodded and remained silent for several seconds, then continued.

  “I’m suspicious. I don’t know if this is an effort to get us to stand-down during negotiations while they get ready to attack, or whether it’s genuine. If it’s genuine, they’ll have to come to terms with Congress, not with me, but it is my duty to determine if this is what it claims to be.”

  Again he paused. Eli settled back into his chair, mind leaping ahead, sensing what was coming. Billy remained motionless. Washington plucked up a second document and leaned forward, picking his words.

  “Four days ago this letter was delivered to me.” He raised it. “From French Admiral de Grasse. He wrote it during a major sea battle in the West Indies. De Grasse was certain the British would win. This letter was sent to warn us that if they did, they could send part of their navy north to blockade all of our major ports. Cripple us. He wanted to warn us.”

  Eli pointed. “How was the letter delivered?”

  “De Grasse gave it to a young captain in our navy. An excellent navigator I had assigned to assist de Grasse in the West Indies.”

  Washington saw Billy straighten in his chair as he continued. “He was given command of a fast schooner and sailed her out of the battle, badly damaged. He stopped at Head of Elk to warn our forces there, then traded ships and came on north to Philadelphia, and overland to find me here.”

  Billy raised a hand. “The name, sir? Of the navigator?”

  “Matthew Dunson.”

  Washington saw the surprise and recognition in Billy’s face, and asked, “You know him?”

  “All my life, sir. Is he safe?”

  Washington nodded. “Safe, and in Philadelphia with what few ships we have, awaiting further orders. Fine officer.”

  Billy closed his eyes for a moment, then relaxed.

  Washington tapped the two documents on the table with a long index finger. “These two documents raise a serious question. Can the British be asking for a peace parley as a delay tactic while they move their navy from the West Indies up here to blockade our ports? Or could they intend moving part of their army, or all of it, out of New York in preparation of an attack?” He leaned forward. “I must know, and there is only one way to be certain. Go see.”

  Billy glanced at Eli, who sat motionless.

  “I’ve called you here for that purpose. You two are going down to New York to observe conditions directly, then report back to me on two questions: First, do the British have their West Indies fleet at anchor in New York harbor? Second, is there any indication they are preparing their army for a major campaign?”

  Billy spoke. “How soon do you need a report?”

  “Three days.”

  Eli nodded. Billy answered. “Yes, sir.”

  “I want you to leave tonight.”

  Again, Eli nodded and Billy answered. “Yes, sir.”

  “What will you need? Horses? A boat? Provisions?”

  Eli glanced at Billy and something unspoken passed between them, then Billy answered. “A canoe. Two telescopes.”

  Washington’s eyebrows arched for a moment. “You can travel well enough downstream in a canoe, but what about upstream? Won’t you need horses?”

  Eli answered. “The Hudson runs both ways, depending on the Atlantic tides. They’ll be coming in two days from now. For a while the river will run backwards, halfway to Albany. A canoe can take us both ways. If anything goes wrong, we can get horses from the British.”

  Washington said, “Of course. I had forgotten about the tides. Will you need rations? Ammunition?”

  Billy answered, “I think we’ll be all right, sir.”

  “I’ll have two telescopes for you in fifteen minutes. Is there anything you need to ask me before you go?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Report directly to me when you return, day or night.”

  “We will, sir.”

  “You are dismissed.”

  Billy and Eli stood, and Billy saluted. “Thank you, sir.”

  Washington watched them turn and walk from the room, out into the early shades of evening, then
reached again for the message from General Carleton.

  Outside, Billy and Eli angled west toward the dwindling cook fires of the Massachusetts Fourth Regiment, where Sergeant Alvin Turlock saw them coming and stood waiting.

  “You seen Gen’l Washington yet?” He turned his good ear to listen.

  “Just came from there.”

  “Where you off to this time?”

  “Down river. We’ll need a little dried meat and some cheese and bread.”

  “How about a few potatoes? Shriveled and got sprouts from winter storage, but by now I doubt you’d know how to eat a good one.”

  “We’ll take ’em.”

  “When you leavin’?”

  “As soon as we get our weapons and blankets and two telescopes from the general.”

  “I’ll have a sack ready when you come back.”

  The steady drone of crickets and the croaking of bullfrogs in the marshes and bogs reached through the deep dusk as Turlock handed a burlap sack to Billy and he swung it over his shoulder. The bandy-legged little sergeant stared up into his face, dim in the shadows, ignoring the fact he was speaking to an officer. “Got the telescopes?”

  “Right here.”

  “You two be careful, hear?” He watched them disappear into the shadows before he turned back to the low evening campfire.

  They walked silently down the incline to the river where Eli picked a light, birch-bark Iroquois war canoe from the sixteen that were tied to the pier. They laid their weapons and the telescopes and sack in the bottom before Eli stepped into the bow and settled to his knees. Billy grasped the gunwales in the rear and launched the craft, splashing, then jumped inside, dripping, to take up his paddle. Ten minutes later they were near the center of the mighty Hudson River, stroking to a slow rhythm, enough to move them slightly faster than the current to maintain control.

  Unnumbered stars speckled the black domed heavens as they passed the lights of West Point on the heights of the west bank. A three-quarter moon rose on the eastern rim to cast a broad, quivering trail of silver light that followed the canoe, bobbing tiny and frail on the surface of the mighty river. Both men looked upward for a time, then at the black, fearsome water on which their fragile craft danced, then at the sweep of endless forests that covered the broad valley on either side of the river, and a consciousness of their own smallness swept over them.

  Fort Clinton was a faint outline on the west bank; to the east, not far from the river, they saw the faint glow of the hamlet of Verplanck. They passed Stony Point on their right, the only sound the quiet dipping of their paddles as Eli silently worked the bow and Billy the stern of the craft. It was well past midnight when the single light at Tarrytown to their left gleamed tiny in the night, and they drew close to the black shoreline, watching and listening as they glided silently on. The moon was settling toward the southern horizon when they turned into the mouth of a small, unnamed creek, beached their canoe, and concealed it in thick foliage. Without a word they took meat and cheese from the sack, buckled on their weapons belts with the sheathed knives and Eli’s tomahawk, picked up their rifle and musket, and set a course due east through the forest. Eli led, with Billy following, marveling as always at how Eli moved in the blackness and thick foliage without sound, as though guided by something only Eli understood.

  Eight miles later, the breaking of dawn found them on their bellies, lying invisible in the thick green ferns on a bluff overlooking the British encampment at White Plains, three hundred yards below. They listened to the familiar rattle of the morning drum pounding out reveille and watched as the troopers threw back the tent flaps to walk out into the glory of a calm spring morning in the great Hudson River Valley. Wildflowers were everywhere, thronging the open meadows and lining the banks of the streams and brooks that flowed westward into the river. The pines were so green they seemed deep blue against the brightness of the oak, beech, ash, and chestnut trees that carpeted the rolling hills as far as the eye could see.

  For a time the two remained motionless, studying the lay of the British camp, remembering. They were seeing White Plains as it was on October 28, 1776, when the British caught the ragged, beaten remains of the Continental Army on the flats and cut them to pieces—drove them into a panic-driven retreat back to the south. They were remembering the nightmare of the fight at Long Island two months earlier on August 27, which had broken and scattered the untrained Continental Army, and the catastrophe at Fort Washington on Manhattan Island that followed on November 15, which all but annihilated the smashed remains of the American army.

  Billy stirred and pointed, and Eli nodded. Both reached for their telescopes and extended them to begin a slow study of the entire installation. Sixty tents, eight regulars per tent: four hundred eighty regulars. Twenty officers’ tents, five officers per tent: one hundred officers. The horse herd was held in a pen formed by ropes strung in the trees. One hundred thirty-four horses, more than half of them draft animals for pulling wagons or cannon. The twenty cannon were formed near the horse pen in two opposing lines, muzzle to muzzle. The wagons were lined in twelve rows of five each behind the cannon: sixty wagons. The gunpowder was in barrels stacked one hundred fifty yards from anything else, covered with tarps, with two pickets always on duty. There was no way to count the barrels, but each man made his own estimate of the amount, according to the size of the mound. The crates of food supplies were divided into three areas: two for the enlisted, one for the officers. The drill and parade ground was worn to the deep brown soil; there was no grass.

  Slowly the scouts shifted to relieve set muscles, then settled again to watch the movement of the regulars and the officers. The British finished and cleaned up the morning mess, then stood for inspection. Twenty men marched in formation to feed and water the horses. Four of the men tied sixteen horses on short ropes to a line strung between two trees while two more men strapped on the thick leather aprons of a blacksmith. They began the methodical labor of drawing the feet of the horses up between their knees, then jerking the nails from the worn shoes to toss them clanking into a pile. Then they set out sixty-four new, caulked shoes and jammed them into the white-hot coals of the forge, waited until they were glowing, then began the careful work of pounding them into the shape of the hoof of each horse.

  To the north a wood detail stripped off their tunics and commenced the never-ending drudgery of sawing and splitting more firewood. One company of regulars assembled on the parade ground in ten ranks of ten, and Billy and Eli could hear the barked commands of their sergeant as he put them through their daily drill. They had started the cook fires for the one o’clock mess when Billy collapsed his telescope and slowly withdrew from the crest of the rise and Eli followed. Without a word they rose to a crouch and retreated silently through the thick spring foliage until they could no longer hear the pounding of the blacksmiths’ hammers or the shouted commands of the drill sergeant, and they hunkered down behind the decayed trunk of a great pine, fallen in a long ago time.

  Billy spoke in hushed tones. “See anything that says they’re getting ready to move?”

  Eli shook his head and said nothing.

  “Only five hundred regulars. Not enough. The main camp’s got to be down on either Manhattan Island or Long Island.”

  “Or Staten.” Eli squinted up at the sun. “Not quite noon. We need some rest if we’re going to take a look at Long Island tonight.”

  With Eli leading, they retraced their steps in silence, stopping to listen, moving, stopping. They covered the eight miles back to the river and their canoe with the sun just past the zenith, and sat down. Eli spoke quietly.

  “The only tracks besides ours were two Indians that passed going south sometime yesterday morning. Mohawk. Could have been scouts, but I doubt it because they didn’t return. No British patrols. Nothing. They’re not getting ready to move.”

  Billy nodded, and Eli continued. “We tip up the canoe and you sleep under it. I’ll take first watch.”

  At four o’
clock in the afternoon Eli nudged Billy and traded places in the cool of the shade of the canoe. At eight o’clock Billy roused Eli, and they sat listening to the rasping of crickets all about them and the clamor of frogs reaching from bogs along the river. With night birds performing their incredible nightly pirouettes overhead, they ate cooked mutton, cheese, and chewed down a raw, shriveled potato. They drank long from their wooden canteens, then sat lost in their own thoughts until the last hint of the sun was gone, and the forest was covered by a shroud of deep purple and black.

  “It’s time,” Eli said, and they both rose. They buckled on their weapons belts, Billy tied the burlap sack beside his belt knife, they picked up rifle and musket, and hoisted the canoe overhead. Twenty minutes later they were in the canoe, Eli on his knees in the bow, Billy serving as tiller. Together, they threw their shoulders into it, driving the light craft out into the current of the great river.

  The three-quarter waxing moon rose as they passed Dobb’s Ferry to their left, on the west bank of the river, and caught the salty tang of the sea strong in the air. The heavens were an unending spread of celestial wonder as they passed the lights of Philipsburg. They came within fifty yards of the east riverbank as they approached the north head of the East River, and they silently held to the center of the narrows as they passed Kingsbridge and followed the curve of the river to their right, due south. Half an hour later they passed Harlem to their right and remained in the river center as they worked on south, past the entrance into Long Island Sound, down to Kip’s Bay, where they swung due east to beach the canoe on the south bank of the inlet. They hid it in the forest, took their weapons, and beneath a moon that cast the world in silvery twilight, set a course due south, walking overland toward Brooklyn and Gravesend.

  It was midnight when they slowed, listening to the sounds of the night as they crept forward up an incline approaching Brooklyn. They were remembering the steamy, sultry day of August 26, 1776, when they had last been on the banks of the East River, part of a terrified, shattered remnant of a lost army with their backs to the river and ten thousand British regulars one mile in front of them. In the dusk General Washington had turned to Colonel John Glover, commander of the Marblehead Brigade of fishermen, and asked if he and his regiment could move what was left of the Continental Army across the river to Manhattan Island during the night. The little fisherman nodded, gathered every vessel on the river that would float, and the miracle was done.