Halestorm

by Becky Akers

  “That’s for his court-martial to decide. I’ll ask you again, ma’am: you involved in his spying?”

  “If I say I was, sir, will you let me sit with him?”

  The colonel studied her, then said, “Captain Hurley, take the lady to the prisoner. They can talk together, but don’t let them touch. Can’t have you slipping him a weapon, ma’am.”

  “Certainly not, Colonel.” Her scorn was withering.

  “Looks like the whole city’s on fire.” Captain Hurley, his hand again on Alice’s elbow, nodded toward New York. Flames snaked through the smoke obscuring the buildings, with enough crackling and roaring to smother their voices.

  Everyone but the lovers and their guards moved to the prow to peer at the fire and exclaim as the steeple of Trinity Church collapsed in an explosion of sparks. Yet Alice had eyes for Nathan alone. “Please, sir, I want to sit with Captain Hale,” she told the officer beside her.

  Nathan sat leaning against the wheel of a wagon, piled with apples, that one of the farmers had driven aboard. She took a seat three paces away, mindful of the colonel’s order that they not touch and hoping if she abided by that, the guard would grant them privacy. The two officers smiled apologetically but did not withdraw, though they did turn their backs.

  They sat silently, Nathan morose, Alice terrified. Guy scowled from the far side of the ferry. As they drew closer to the city, the stench of burning buildings overwhelmed them. The fire was intensifying, and much of the city had disappeared under its pall.

  “Ally.”

  She glanced up. She would have sworn Nathan had called her name, but he was not looking at her. She stared at his blue eyes, his perfect nose, and then she saw his lips move. “...we dock...run...stay together....” The wind snatched his words from him, but she had heard enough.

  The ferry bumped the landing. Its passengers coughed and wiped their eyes as smoke enveloped them. The lieutenant pulling Nathan to his feet fought for balance while the barge bucked. He was a fat, perspiring fellow and clumsy as he concentrated on staying upright despite the boat’s motion. Nathan thanked him for his help, stepped along with him willingly, even joked about the billowing smoke that hid a man’s feet from him. The lieutenant clutched his arm more for his own footing than to restrain Nathan.

  They leaped the gap between ferry and shore. Nathan lurched against him, and the lieutenant hit the water too surprised even to bellow.

  “Ally?” Nathan cried as he took the stairs of the landing in two bounds.

  “Run, Nathan!” She scrambled after him, her gaze fixed on his hair as it glinted through the smoke. The roar of the flames, the screams of people and horses, the explosion of collapsing buildings, the sizzle of water thrown on the fires drowned the sounds immediately around them. She had no idea whether the Redcoats were on their heels or still aboard the boat.

  She grabbed Nathan’s arm and hung on. He dashed through the crowd, using his shoulder to clear a path, aiming for the heart of the fire in the hope that its chaos would hide them. Families veered past, appearing for a moment only to vanish in the smoke. Mothers clutched babies, fathers herded older children half-dressed and crying.

  They plunged down what seemed to be a main road. Then Nathan cut right, into a lane of old Dutch houses that were already smoldering. At the far end, men shimmered through the heat as they knocked down buildings to slow the fire’s spread.

  Alice had lost a shoe in their mad race and tried to ignore the slimy things underfoot. She stifled a scream as a human leg dangled in front of her. Looking up, she saw a man, newly hanged to judge from the urine dripping off his boot, swinging from a second-storey casement. “Nathan, look!”

  But he had seen the corpse and the workers, some of whom were pausing to stare at a man with his arms bound behind him, and drew her away from both. “Come on, Ally. Let’s go.”

  They turned down the next street, another deserted lane, though the smoke was not as dense as on the main thoroughfare. Nathan paused to gain his bearings. He recognized none of the streets, lost as they were under ashes and debris, though he had been garrisoned here five months. “Ally.” He put his mouth near her ear to be heard over the flames. “You get this rope off me?”

  She worked at his bonds, but the colonel’s knot held. Then an idea came to her. She looked frantically about for a piece of blazing wood with a handle on it and found one in the shutter of a window that had caught fire. She ripped the board free and ran to Nathan seconds before the glass shattered.

  It was difficult to burn through the ropes without singing him or his clothes. But at last, the bonds fell away, and he grinned as he swept her into his newly freed arms. “Good job. Let’s see if we can find our lines.” He took her hand to resume their flight, spirits soaring.

  They backtracked to the main street and collided with Captain Meadows. “Colonel!” he shouted, fumbling for his pistols. “Colonel! I found—oooff!” Nathan’s fist slammed into his jaw, and he slid to the ground.

  Alice screamed as a bayonet flashed out of the gloom to glide down Nathan’s left arm. He bent double, and she shrieked again, certain he had been mortally wounded. The soldier who had come to Meadows’s aid thought so too, for he lowered his musket and stepped closer, blinking watering eyes. Nathan plowed his head into the man’s stomach, winding him, knocking him over as he would an opponent in football.

  They fled once more, west across the main street toward the fire’s center, hunting the next road that would lead north to the American camp. But this effort was worse than swimming upstream. Livestock of every description, along with owners hauling carts of household goods, pelted past them away from the danger. They caromed into one burly man, a butcher from the looks of his bloodstained apron, who quarreled with Nathan’s apology as if catastrophe weren’t beating at his back.

  “Watch where you’re going, there, Blunderhead. Hey, what you doing running at the fire, anyway? Don’t you wanna be going t’other way?” They tried to sidestep him, but the man, nimble for all his beefiness, jumped in front of them. “You ain’t one of them damned rebels that set this blaze, is you? ‘Cause we’ll hang you like we done the other ones.”

  “Sir, we’re trying to fetch our water bucket,” Alice cried, peeking from behind Nathan.

  But Nathan whirled to retrace their steps, flowing with the river of Yorkers escaping their burning homes. The crowded street slowed them to a shuffle and gave the butcher a chance to rally his friends. “Hey, that one there’s one of them rebels what started the fire. Don’t let him get away.”

  Men were stopping, craning their necks to glare at Nathan, swearing. An old woman next to Alice shook her fist. “Get the rebel, throw him on the fire! My whole house is gone, all my furniture, my little cat—”

  A roar shook the ground. Flames blasted sky-high on the next block. “Must’a’ got the tar works,” someone shouted. “Look out! They got powder stored near there!” The mob disintegrated, its anger against rebels forgotten.

  The wind shifted and blew the smoke from the streets. Nathan ducked his head. He towered over most crowds, easily visible, and he didn’t know where the officers from the ferry were. A few Redcoats were running about, but they were probably members of the occupying troops, not the ones aboard the boat. A detachment was forming down the road, undoubtedly to fight the fire. Still....

  He scrambled up another alley to his left, pulling Alice after him. Houses backed along it, with a rickety barn at the end from which an agonized neigh echoed. That finished that, unless the alley continued north of the barn. Taking such a chance was too risky.

  He turned to leave, but a wall of people and carts pressed across the alley’s entrance. They must cross the barn. It was so decrepit they could probably pry a board from its rear.

  He ran for it and dived inside, resolutely ignoring the nag stamping and screaming in her stall. “Oh, the poor thing!” Alice cried as they pushed past the mare to the back of the barn.

  Someone had recently replaced the plank
s there, and they weren’t as rotted as he had hoped. A sledgehammer leaned against the far corner. Though he preferred an ax, it would have to do. The horse’s hysteria reached a crescendo, and he shouted, “Ally, turn her loose, will you? And see if you can find an ax.”

  Nathan hefted the hammer and was positioning himself for a swing when Alice shrieked. He whipped around.

  Guy Daggett, hatless, coatless, his face so streaked with soot he looked more demonic than human, clutched Alice to him. Her neck was in the crook of his arm, and his hand shook insanely as he jammed a pistol to her temple. “I’ll kill her, Hale, I swear! Put that thing down! Now!”

  Nathan set the sledgehammer aside, never taking his eyes from Guy.

  “Guy—” Alice gasped.

  “Shut up!” Guy jerked the pistol at the barn’s door before pointing it again at Alice. “Outside! Get outside! No more tricks, Hale, or I’ll put a ball through your precious little Ally!”

  Nathan took a step toward the door, and another, and then there were the colonel and Captain Hurley from the ferry, and half-a-dozen other Redcoats recruited to help them, bursting into the barn.

  “He’s mine, Colonel!” Guy screeched as the soldiers trained their muskets on Nathan.

  “Didn’t say he wasn’t,” the colonel said. “But now that we’ve found you, whyn’t you let us help secure him?” He motioned, and the Regulars fanned out to encircle Nathan, Alice, and Guy. “Let her go, lad. Come on, hurry! This barn’s gonna catch fire any minute. Let the lady go.”

  Guy regarded them mulishly. Then he pushed Alice from him so that she stumbled. Nathan leaped to catch her. Instantly, the Redcoats were on him. They shoved him to the ground, held him there with the points of four bayonets and two swords while one produced a rope and tied his wrists behind him.

  Alice cried, “Colonel, please, he—,” but the colonel cut her off.

  “Ma’am, by rights, I oughta take you in, too, for helping him give us the slip. But you’re young and you’re in love. Now get out before I change my mind.”

  “Colonel, no! You—”

  “Captain Hurley, get the lady out of here. Billet her in the first set of rooms you can find that’s safe from the fire, and charge it to the regiment if she can’t pay. Rest of you, form up. Let’s get him to headquarters. Mr. Maggot—”

  “It’s Daggett.” Guy clutched his pistol in hands that were still wobbling and so even more menacing.

  “You can come with us or not, whatever you want. On your feet, Hale. Let’s go.”

  It took both Captain Hurley and Guy to pry Alice, pleading, fighting, from the barn, though flames curled at its southwest corner. But Nathan, pulled to his feet, stepped freely among his captors out into the street, heading north.

  They spent the rest of the day travelling the three miles from the city to the Beekmans’ estate, where General Howe had established his headquarters. Not only did they contend with parents desperately hunting children and bucket-brigades straggling down every block, but they also fought off angry Yorkers. The mobs assumed the troops had captured an arsonist when they saw Redcoats with a prisoner. Again and again, the colonel and his men beat back homeowners seeking vengeance on those who had destroyed their property.

  Then too, they kept a tight guard on Nathan. Though his courage had earned their respect, they were determined he would not mock them with another escape. The colonel had grabbed a handful of his linen and stared him in the eye as they began their march. “Now, lad, you try anything else, you’ll have more holes in you than a whore’s story. You understand me? You so much as look cross-eyed, they’ll run you through. Save the hangman some trouble.” The end of the rope binding his arms was wound about the colonel’s waist three times. The two stoutest Redcoats flanked him, gripping his biceps, and the others rested their bayonets against his back. Such precautions slowed their progress.

  His hands were numb, his wrists and forearms chafed from the hemp. One eye was puffy from their assault in the barn, and blood dripped from his nose. His arm throbbed where the bayonet had sliced it earlier. He was assuredly marching to a court-martial and his own death. But two thoughts chased around his head to the exclusion of all else: Ally. Failure.

  It had nearly killed him to see Daggett hustle her from the barn. Would he try to force her as he had last winter in Coventry? Again, Nathan heard Ally’s cries rending the forest, saw the prints of her frenzied flight on the snow, felt her quivering beside him as he escorted her home afterwards. But surely Daggett’s interest lay in claiming whatever reward the government offered for betraying him. Most likely he would deposit Ally somewhere and then hasten to headquarters for his share of the credit.

  Nathan could see his notes poking from the colonel’s pocket just ahead, and when he tired of worrying over Ally, he mourned his failure. It tinged his mouth with bitterness, made it hard to blink back the tears. He had been so close to succeeding, to bringing Washington the information he needed to escape Howe’s trap. It would probably have won the war for them. Now, the Continental Army, barely surviving when he left it last week, was doomed. And so was the liberty depending on those beaten, decimated troops. Freedom, independence, all the fine ideals of their Cause would expire with the army. The only question lay in how long the government’s forces would wait before their final attack.

  At length, they reached headquarters.

  The Beekmans’ mansion, like the Morrises’ further north sheltering General Washington, was elegant and gracious, with formal English gardens Redcoats now patrolled. They saluted the colonel and his men and showed them to the front parlor. Though chairs of carved mahogany edged the room, the guard took a position in the middle of it, with Nathan at their center.

  An aide-de-camp entered and waited by the door while the colonel unwound the rope from his waist. He pulled the notes from his pocket and fanned them in his hand, then went to whisper with the aide. That young man kept glancing from the papers to Nathan with horrified fascination. When he departed, the colonel returned to his prisoner and the guard.

  “Lad’s gone to fetch Sir William. You boys stay here until you’re ordered otherwise. I’ll see that your absence is cleared with your officers.” His eyes rested on Nathan, and he shook his head. “God have mercy on you.”

  The minutes dragged as they awaited Howe. Though the men grasping Nathan’s arms did not relax, those whose bayonets were pricking his back fell to joking. His whole body ached, and he longed to sit, either on a chair or the floor. But he would not beg a favor of his captors and concentrated on standing tall despite the pain. He was almost grateful for such misery. It gave him something to ponder besides Ally and failure.

  General Sir William Howe, Commander of His Majesty’s Land Forces in North America, was supping with the delightful Betsy Loring when his aide-de-camp leaned over to whisper, “Sir, a rebel spy was brought in. You care to see him?”

  Howe sighed. Sometimes it seemed the world was in league against his dalliance with Mrs. Loring. This aide, for instance, sniffed disdainfully at their giggling fetes, which usually degenerated into orgies, and seized any excuse to interrupt them. Howe thought that if Mrs. Loring’s own husband had accepted their arrangement—and was, in fact, flourishing as Commissary of Prisoners in payment for his wife’s services—everyone else ought to show the same tolerance. Even Mrs. Howe, an ocean away but doubtless bombarded with tales of his peccadilloes, seemed less offended than the busybodies around him.

  He especially craved Betsy’s solace after today’s calamity. He had hardly believed his ears when reports of the conflagration reached him. Damn the rebels! He had congratulated himself last Sunday on so cleanly capturing New York. Hardly a man lost, hardly a musket fired, and the most important city in the colonies after Philadelphia had tumbled to him, atoning for his humiliation at Boston.

  Howe had feared the rebels might fire the place before they left, but their retreat had been so panicked that they did not think of it. They’d remembered today, however, and sent op
eratives through his lines. It was just like the rebels to snatch victory from a man, deprive him of his laurels. Full of sour grapes, they were. He’d had the last laugh, however, promising to hang any arsonists caught in the act, though from what he’d heard, the Yorkers who lost homes and shops had dispatched all the rebels they could find. Still, he’d rather have an arsonist than a spy this evening. His blood was up. He wanted revenge on those who had tarnished his trophy.

  With a sigh, Howe crushed his napkin into a ball, apologized to his pouting lover, and turned with exaggerated patience to the aide. “Lead on, if you please.”

  Howe followed the aide from the mansion’s rear parlor to its entry hall. “This wasn’t something you could handle yourself, Edward?” he muttered at the aide’s unyielding back.

  “Think you’ll see why we summoned you, sir.” Edward’s tone bordered on insolence as he threw open the French doors to the front room.

  Howe’s first impression was that he had been correct. An impossibly young and handsome man, hard to take seriously as a threat to anyone, let alone the British Army in North America, stood in the middle of the hall, erect and indomitable despite the soldiers surrounding him with fixed bayonets. The setting sun streamed through the windows to light his face, turning his beauty to gold. Only his bruised eye, a maroon streak down his sleeve, and the blood crusting on his lip and spattering his linen showed that he was not a willing visitor. His faint smile was that of a gracious guest.

  Nathan squared his shoulders as the door opened to admit the general. Howe was as tall as Washington and fastidiously barbered, though that could not obscure the shadow of his heavy beard. Authority sat on him almost visibly. It was the sort Nathan had never been able to effect in his own small command, that ordered men into battle but scorned to be questioned however many died, an arrogance that imposed its opinion on the world regardless of consequences. The black eyes surveying his wounds and bedraggled clothes widened. Howe’s dark brows marched toward his wig.