Halestorm

by Becky Akers

  She knew better than to believe him: Guy had never numbered disinterested kindness among his virtues. What’s more, he hated Nathan. Nor was he anything other than a moderate Patriot, however vehement she’d painted him when defending him to the Deacon. No, Guy was helping her solely to seduce her. And he would demand payment for any assistance he rendered—the same sort of reward he had nearly wrested from her last January near the waterfall. God forgive her, she would pay it, too, if it came to that. Just let him get her to Long Island. She saw no other way to attain the place, short of delaying until the morrow, or the day after if crossing were still restricted. And she hadn’t the stomach to postpone her reunion with Nathan yet again. What if he departed Long Island as bafflingly as he had the Continental Army? How would she ever find him then? She must continue her quest now, today, whatever the risk.

  “All right, Mr. Daggett.” She spoke slowly, reluctantly, fearing that she would regret this foolish decision. But there was no help for it. “If you can take me across on the ferry, I’d appreciate it. But then we’ll have to say goodbye.”

  “Yes, of course. Absolutely. In fact, I’m glad you mentioned it. I hate to abandon a lady, but I’ve, um, I have an appointment over there, on Long Island, you see. That’s why I was at the ferry this morning. You sure you won’t mind if I leave you soon as we disembark?”

  Oh, thank God, she thought, so relieved at his adjourning the day of reckoning she nearly swooned. She tried not to look as comforted as she felt. “Not at all, Mr. Daggett.”

  She waited while Guy collected his pass and wallet and then walked with him as they led Nellie to the ferry. She thanked him when they boarded with only a wave to the sentry this time. She laughed at his witticisms and answered with some of her own. But his eagerness to help still worried her, though he abided by his vow of good behavior. He touched her only to take her arm and then apologetically.

  At last, she thrust her misgivings from her. She was tired of travelling alone, of forging her way through rough country, of strange noises and feeling frightened. Having a companion was a boon. And they would separate before Guy could do any harm.

  As they stepped ashore from the ferry onto Long Island, Guy said, “There’s a fair at Flatlands Plain today. People come from miles around to go to it. Even if you don’t find your brother, you might find someone who’s seen him or maybe could tell you where he is. I was you, I’d start my search there.”

  “Where is it, did you say? Flatplains?”

  “Flatlands Plain.” He nodded. “I’m heading that direction for my appointment. If you want, I’ll show you where ’tis.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Nathan paused in his writing to flex his hand and rub his eyes. Then he rose for a stretch. He had hunched over his paper for so long that the candle, new this evening, had burned to its pewter stick. He wiped his brow, longing to open the window, for his small room under the eaves captured all the heat. But he dared not admit the night’s miasmas and risk another bout of fever.

  He scanned the pages he had composed. All that remained was to copy them over. That would take little time, now that the sentences flowed in his best Latin and gave every detail gleaned this last week behind enemy lines.

  It seemed impossible that he had been here a week and even more impossible that he had obtained such success. None of Billy Hull’s predictions had come true. God willing, he wouldn’t hang as a spy.

  Nathan had set out with Sergeant Hempstead the morning after speaking with General Washington, as the Continentals evacuated New York City. They rode north, off York Island into Westchester, and passed from there to Connecticut, hugging the coast. The fear had not overtaken him yet. They were still in friendly territory, and he had enough to do to sit his horse as his lightheadedness came and went. Indeed, when they crossed into Connecticut, he felt ridiculously comfortable, as if he were home again, with his father’s farm an hour’s ride away, not two days’, and Ally there to greet him. Even the enemy’s shipping, visible through the trees on their right, had not disturbed him, though there was a fleet of them. Was General Howe finally stirring three weeks after the Battle of Long Island? The Rangers, camped along Haarlem’s shore, would report this activity to Washington.

  They had travelled northeast to Norwalk, keeping one eye on the sloops. There they thinned, so that Nathan approached a schooner flying Continental colors and presented his pass. Captain Pond read the order to bear one Nathan Hale to any port he named and suggested they sail at nightfall. He would land him behind the Redcoats on Long Island.

  At dark, they boarded and awaited Pond in his cabin. Nathan was as pleased with the captain’s name as he had been with that of Judge Law in New London, and he counted it a good omen. Meanwhile, it remained for him to change his clothes. Then the terror that shook his hands and made his tongue heavy as lead felled him, so that he had trouble answering Hempstead’s sallies. He removed his uniform and handed it to the sergeant, saw what he was becoming, and froze. He stared at the fringed tunic, patched with whatever rags Asher had scrounged, so long that Hempstead said, “Like Joseph’s coat, huh, Captain?”

  He stared stupidly until the sergeant added, “So many colors.”

  He nodded, unable to speak, and tried to unbutton his breeches, but his fingers would not work. He turned lest Hempstead notice and got the breeches undone and his kerchief off, too, and donned the brown homespun of a schoolmaster with the kidskin pumps he had not worn since his days in New London.

  And all the while he thought, I’ll be out of uniform behind their lines. I’ll be living a lie. I’ll hang if they catch me.

  When he finished, Hempstead handed him a broad-brimmed hat in place of his tricorn. Nathan managed to smile as he settled it on his head and held his arms akimbo, waiting approval.

  The sergeant looked him up and down. “Well, Captain, you could pass for my old master.”

  He had found his voice by then, could even joke. “Your master was a man of fashion, was he?” His silver shoe buckles, glinting in the light of the lantern swaying overhead, caught his eye. They were modest, not beyond the means of a schoolmaster, but why court greedy notice from Redcoats? “Sergeant, I’ll give these into your keeping, too.”

  Nathan fingered his watch, remembering the day his parents had presented it to him, the love and pride in their eyes. Though it had gone with him everywhere since, he would not hazard it on this venture. He started to hand it over, then changed his mind. “I guess where I’m risking my life, I can risk my watch,” he said with a smile for the absurdity, and Hempstead nodded.

  Captain Pond came in then and sat late with them over some wine, discussing the war. Nathan finally fell asleep in a hammock on deck, too weary after the long day to sustain his fear. By the time the ship anchored near Huntington, on Long Island’s northern shore, the anxiety had lodged in his stomach, a gnawing weight, but at least it left his fingers and tongue free.

  It wanted a few hours to dawn when he and Hempstead scrambled down the rope ladder into a rowboat at Huntington Bay. Fishing vessels streamed past, and he hunched over the oars lest anyone see him with a Continental sergeant. Hempstead gave a final wave as Nathan stumbled ashore. He stood horribly alone, in the dark, in the breaking surf, fighting the impulse to splash after Hempstead as he paddled for the schooner and plead for passage back to Connecticut.

  Nathan was still tired, but now the fear goaded him instead of cumbering him, kept him too jumpy to sleep. He ambled across fields, angling west and south, and speculated about renting a horse. If Long Island under the Redcoats was like York Island under the Continentals, horses were scarce, and too dear for schoolmasters.

  He could laugh now at that morning’s panic. He had been certain every shadow held a British grenadier, though he was too far behind their lines for patrols. An animal rustling in the leaves sent his heart into his throat, and lightning on the horizon was the flash of artillery. Yet the first two days passed serenely as he headed west toward the enemy’s encampments. He
suffered only a few mishaps, and these were due more to his clumsiness than to the Redcoats’ shrewdness. He could even marvel at the four-armed contraptions dotting the landscape and turning in the wind to grind grain—natural enough, he supposed, on an island lacking Connecticut’s rushing rivers to drive its mills.

  Along the way, he surmised from the boom of artillery that an assault was hammering York Island, but he could not discover the details. That evening, a simmering Sunday with clouds threatening a deluge, he stood in Brooklyn on the bank of the East River and gazed across it toward York Island. Men-o-war clustered on the water, tents billowed in sharp white lines amid fields of goldenrod and clover in full bloom. Then the clover moved, a crop of Redcoats wheeling about camp. Smoke from cannon and musket-fire choked the heavy, waiting air. The enemy had taken New York, as Washington had foreseen.

  He heard the story in the taverns the next day. The government’s navy had shelled the thin line of defenses at Kips Bay, an inlet two miles north of the city. Under this cover, eighty-four boatloads of Regulars swept ashore and overwhelmed the Patriots.

  “Shoulda seen ’em run.” A grenadier chortled between long swallows of rum. “They throwed away their muskets, packs, everything. Never saw nothing like it. Cowards, they are. That old fox what leads them, that Washington, hear he’s a quiet fellow, dignified, you know. But my captain says he gets to the battle and sees them running, he starts hulloing at them and dashes his hat to the ground so’s they’d stand and face us. Captain says we almost captured him. He’s so angry at his men he just sat there, and some of his officers had to lead him out of our way.”

  “Almost makes you feel sorry for him,” Nathan said.

  The grenadier snorted. “Not much any man can do with these bloody Yankees. But we got the city now, and most of the rest of York Island, too. Rebels still hold the north half, but I wager they won’t hang onto that any too long.”

  “Kill lots of rebels? Capture any?”

  The soldier shook his head. “Naw. You know Howe. Well, maybe you don’t, being a schoolmaster and all. He don’t like killing ’em. He keeps saying this ain’t a war for territory; it’s a war for the people. Thinks we got to convince the rebels to be good Englishmen again. Tell you what,” he smiled mirthlessly. “Nothing convinces a man good as a bayonet or a noose. String them all up, I say. Show them what happens to traitors.”

  “Maybe they’ll hang some of the prisoners they captured.”

  “Didn’t get but a couple of hundred. Not like when we landed out here last month. Caught near a thousand of them then. Naw, this time they’s running too fast for us.” The Redcoat guffawed.

  The Continental flight continued all afternoon as those corps in the city also streamed north to Haarlem Heights. They could have walked and not run, had they known it. General Howe was content with landing his men on York Island and would not hurry to press his advantage. A commander who had needed two and a half months to move from Staten Island to York Island could not conquer Mr. Washington’s rabble in one day, needlessly endangering his troops. He took his ease and dined with the Murray family, whose mansion stood a few paces from his beachhead.

  More important matters than routing the Yankees demanded Howe’s attention. He savored Mrs. Murray’s cake while his officers twitted the lady about her rebel friends. Then, clearing his throat, he mused on his need for a headquarters. What would Mrs. Murray recommend? Ah yes, the Beekmans’ country home, a mile to the north, sounded lovely. It answered well since it was between his army, which would encamp above there, if the rebels allowed it (the officers chuckled and toasted his sally) and the city to the south. Then, too, it overlooked the East River most strategically from atop Mount Pleasant. Even a greenhouse on the property? Well, Mrs. Loring would enjoy puttering with the flowers there....Howe faltered as Mrs. Murray’s Quaker lips tightened at this mention of his mistress. General Vaughan, all the more debonair for the wound he had sustained in the day’s skirmishing, deftly changed the subject.

  On Monday morning, Nathan boarded the ferry for New York. He visited its taverns during the next days. They overflowed with soldiers like the grenadier eager to tell what they knew. He listened and asked the questions of a master hunting a school for the winter term, despite the chaos of war. One evening in a taproom near the Peck Slip Market, he found papers a paymaster had forgotten and nearly yelped for joy. They were requisitions of gold, with notation of its storage on Long Island and the schedule for guarding it. This alone made his mission worthwhile, and he stuffed them in a pocket. He should have moved on then, should have at least changed his seat, because the officer returned, looking for his notes, and Nathan had to talk hard to convince him he had dropped them outside.

  The troops had told him all they could. He learned nothing new his last night in New York, though he sat so late in the ordinary, plying officers with rum, that the proprietor stared. And so he had returned to Brooklyn two days ago with some of his drinking buddies, to look at fortifications and arsenals, to determine how well or poorly guarded were the muskets His Majesty had sent. He had stepped off the ferry, waving to the Redcoats, and saw a wagon broken down beside the shady road. When he offered his help to the man repairing it, Mr. Wyckoff insisted Nathan come home for dinner.

  Not only were the Wyckoffs enjoying the beginnings of a bountiful harvest this September, their farm lay equidistant from several of the enemy’s encampments. Mr. Wyckoff hoped to sell his surplus to the Redcoats. “But them soldiers is the most lightest-fingered I ever saw,” he told Nathan over their boiled beef and potatoes. “I need someone to watch the back of the wagon whilst I sell out the front, if you’s interested. Maybe you stay here with us a few days, help me out, ja? Took ’Manda with me last time,” he nodded at his wife, twenty years his junior and fetching in her white fichu and cap, “but they pinched her more than they done my fruit. ’Course, yous can’t complain. The officers is worse than the men, and they’d just say they got plenty that wants to sell to them, so if I don’t like the way they do the business, why, I don’t need to come back. But, I tell yous, they just think they own the world.”

  Nathan accepted his invitation despite Mrs. Wyckoff’s bold smile. And though he would have been far too nervous his first day behind the lines to invade the enemy’s fort, he had shed such caution. The Redcoats were arrogant and stunningly careless in the wake of their victories. Nathan wagered that even His Excellency, should he abandon his uniform for homespun, could poke around as he pleased. Wyckoff parked his wagon before the armory in one fort, and Nathan eavesdropped shamelessly on the guard shuffling before it. He also counted the guns and barrels of powder stacked inside. Both evenings, he had taken a walk after supper. He circled the forts, examined their cannon, chatted with the bored sentries. They gossiped freely about the men quartered within and how many had the French pox. He memorized numbers, names, facts.

  In his room at night, he committed everything to Latin, the only cipher he had. He had asked Washington for a real one, but the general shook his head. “They’ve broken every code we have, Captain. Might as well save yourself the trouble.” His subterfuge would fool no one for long, but it made him feel better and might even bolster his schoolmaster story if someone discovered his papers—so long as the finder overlooked his maps and read no Latin.

  He had relished his two days with the Wyckoffs. He was sure he had regained some of the flesh lost to the fever, for Mrs. Wyckoff was a bountiful cook. She mounded his plate and smiled brilliantly as she set it before him, letting him know she welcomed his advances. It was comical to remember his earlier trepidation. He had been sure he must outwit British officers intent on seeing him hang, but the biggest challenge had been evading his hostess. He didn’t need a jealous husband complicating things.

  So he had enjoyed a successful week and itched to return to American lines with his trove of information. Only Colonel Knowlton’s fair remained. He had seen handbills advertising it in the ordinaries:

  ALL GOOD FOLK TAK
E HEED

  BY PERMISSION — AT FLATLANDS PLAIN

  ON LONG ISLAND

  A DAY OF SPORT TO BE HELD

  FRIDAY THE 20th INSTANT

  LIVESTOCK AND CROPS BOUGHT AND SOLD

  RACES, BOTH HORSE AND FOOT, FOR A PRIZE

  OF FIFTEEN POUNDS!

  A BULL-BAITING AFTER THE TRUE ENGLISH MANNER, TAURUS

  TO BE BROUGHT TO THE RING AT HALF-PAST NINE

  ILLUMINATIONS — A PUNCH & JUDY SHOW — GREASED PIGS

  AND

  TROUPES OF PLAYERS AND SINGERS

  God save the King.

  Nathan would eavesdrop and talk with the Redcoats there, lodge tomorrow night with the Wyckoffs, and leave for his lines the day after. He longed to take his papers with him and depart directly for the American camp from the fair, but that was foolhardy. Carrying such notes amidst Redcoats was inviting disaster, and after spending all day at Flatlands Plain, he would not reach the ferry until dark, when it was no longer running.

  He yawned and quickly finished copying. Each day since he had left Haarlem Heights had been busy from first light, and he had stayed up late every night, despite the fever’s lingering weakness. He needed a clear head tomorrow. He blew out the candle and collapsed into bed.

  He slept so deeply that he awoke only when Mr. Wyckoff knocked on his door. “Huntington. Mr. Huntington, wake up, please. We are eating the breakfast.” He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and descended to another of Mrs. Wyckoff’s feasts. Then he piled into the back of the wagon with the Wyckoff children and taught them riddles as they bounced over the track to the fairgrounds.

  He had not lived among the enemy so long that he was inured to the sight of scarlet uniforms. Hundreds of men and officers thronged the place. The notes hidden in his room, and their proximity to the Redcoats, worried him. He wished the day were over, that he were safely back at the Wyckoffs’, the papers collected and folded under the lining of his shoe, before remembering that all these soldiers would have relaxed, chatty mouths.