by Becky Akers
“These were found on him, sir.” The aide took Nathan’s papers from the mahogany console and handed them to Howe. “Withal, he might have been one of them that started the fire, I daresay.”
The general scanned the notes, then raised his head to scrutinize the prisoner. Nathan tried to stand bravely, tried to disguise his fear, until Howe’s attention returned to the sheets.
Hours seemed to pass, yet Howe continued to study them. Nathan shifted uncomfortably. What was taking so long? Was Howe memorizing his notes? Or was his Latin so poor he couldn’t translate? Perhaps Nathan should offer his services as tutor. Ah, yes, General, give me my life, and I’ll reveal the beauties of Latin to you. I’ll teach you to parse and conjugate with the best of them, if only you’ll spare me to deliver those pages to His Excellency and marry Ally....
Howe read the pages with astonishment. How had one man, little more than a boy from the looks of him, collected all this information?
The question answered itself, jolting him. This wasn’t the work of one man alone. No, before him stood the courier of a spy ring. Better yet, their leader, to judge from his bearing. Howe had assumed the rebels were employing agents, but he’d caught none—until now. Now it seemed he had bagged their biggest fish. These notes revealed enough secrets to hand success to that fox Washington on a silver platter. Troop size, distribution, armaments, even the particulars of his plans for pinching the rebels between his army and his brother’s navy were spelled out in flawless Latin. (Why not a cipher, God help him, or the sympathetic ink his own spies had used for a year now?) The boy had also listed shipments of muskets from England, with ideas on raiding the boats as well as their cache of gold on Long Island.
Howe reread the sheets, and his admiration swelled. Clearly, the author was a man of talent, gritty and resourceful. What a coup if he could enlist him as a double agent! Howe darted another glance at him. With his looks, the ladies would tell him anything. One night in a whorehouse the rebels patronized would yield enough secrets to seal the fate of the United States of America, by Jove. And if the ladies’ clients withheld some tidbit, a fellow who ferreted out this sort of intelligence could easily fill the gaps. Then, too, notifying the rebels that another of their officers (no, better than that, their most valuable operative, one so committed to their cause that he would risk the noose) had deserted—that alone made persuading the boy worthwhile.
He folded the papers in half, tapped them against his palm. “What’s your name, son?”
“Captain Nathan Hale, sir.” Nathan had been silent for so long he expected his voice to croak with his panic. But it was firm as ever, a credit to him.
“I see. How many are in this with you?”
Nathan was about to speak the truth when an unsuspected cunning stopped him. Let the Redcoats think there were others, waiting to burst in here, eager to rescue him, to carry information to Washington if he—if they—
He shook his head.
Howe snorted and ripped his notes once across, then again. The sound cut the room like the crack of a whip. Nathan felt as if his soul itself were shredded. He watched, transfixed, as Howe handed the scraps to his aide with a muttered “Burn them.”
The general’s next words astounded him. “One of you men, free his hands, and then leave us alone.”
His order amazed the aide, too, for he started disbelievingly. “Sir, you—ah, he gave the men who brought him in quite a time of it—”
“So I see.” But the glint in Howe’s eye forestalled further protest.
The aide contented himself with saying, “Shall I mount a guard at the door, sir?”
“By all means. And a man outside each window, too. And Edward, bring me some red port wine and two glasses.”
When the room was clear, save for him and the rebel, rubbing his wrists, Howe stroked his chin. He considered his prisoner through the sentimental haze with which he had once regarded all the colonists. He had thought them bright, lovable children, noble savages as Mr. Rousseau would have it. Liberty infatuated them, true, but who was immune to that heady notion? Who didn’t wish to do as he pleased? Still, the world didn’t work that way. Men needed government, for help, for protection, to show them their place in the wider scheme of things and keep them in it, too, when freedom’s siren call seduced them. The rebels hated the State, but why? Wasn’t it really just a doting parent devoted to their welfare? Provided, of course, that they obeyed. And as a father ought not beat a child to death when punishing it, so the Army should not draw and quarter these so-called Patriots as traitors, whatever some Tories demanded. With a civilized demonstration of the king’s power and benevolence, errant Americans would voluntarily resume their role as loyal citizens in the Empire and consumers of its products. Now here was a shining specimen on which to test this theory.
He gestured to the Chippendale chairs flanking the console. “Shall we sit?”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Mr. Hale—”
“I’m a captain, sir.”
Again, he marveled at the spy’s serene courage. He was no more agitated than if they had been swapping stories at a dinner party. What a credit to him this boy would be!
“My apologies, Captain Hale. Hard to believe a man your age could have climbed so high already.” In truth, he often brooded that he was fighting infants in this war. There were too many rebel officers with piping voices and soldiers sprouting peach-fuzz. It depressed him that such youngsters had driven him from Boston. And when he defeated them, he could not brag about his conquest, for it would be over boys like this one, a captain who ought to be snickering with a girl in a hayrick somewhere, slipping his hands up her skirts and keeping an eye out for her father, instead of staring the hangman in the face.
Though the rebel nodded politely at his compliment, Howe saw that flattery would not move him. He was too brave for fear to work either. Howe regarded him while the minutes ticked by, Mrs. Loring forgotten as he pondered how to persuade this officer to swap allegiances.
A knock sounded at the door, and Edward entered with his port wine. As the aide poured two glasses, Howe asked, “You hungry, Captain?” Before the spy could answer, he added, “I know I am. Just sitting down to eat when they called me. Edward, be so good as to bring us some mutton and the bread, too. Oh, and the bowl of trifle. That’d be nice as well.”
Nathan tried to swallow the lump in his throat. Tipsy pudding was his favorite, but he would never be able to eat. It was all he could do to talk.
When they were alone again, the general said softly, “Tell me, Captain, seems you’re an honorable young man. What made you want to spy against your king?” Howe picked up a glass of wine and offered him the other.
Nathan took the drink as he considered his answer. He had had such glorious dreams, had thought to strike a blow for liberty. But to mention such things now seemed buffoonery or arrogance, given his failure and dishonor as a spy.
The rebel reflected for so long that Howe congratulated himself on his cleverness. With the question phrased like that, what answer was there? Surely he had made him see his error.
When at last the boy spoke, Howe nearly missed it, so soft was his voice.
“I thought to render a service, however great or small, to my country.”
Howe waited, but his captive said nothing more. He leaned forward, sat silent until the prisoner looked at him. When those blue eyes travelled from the window opposite to Howe’s face, the commander slapped his thigh. His voice was smooth as Mrs. Loring’s dusky breast. “Tell you what, Captain. I’m going to give you that chance to serve your country. Your real country, not this—this absurd confederation that Washington and Hancock and those lunatics in Philadelphia have cobbled together. You know you’ve done treason here, and you oughta hang. But you’re young, your whole life’s ahead of you, and God knows we all make mistakes. Now I could use a man like you to—to give m—m—me, ah, that is....”
Both men jumped to their feet, and Howe staggered back a ste
p, fearing that the rebel’s balled fist might smash his jaw.
For a moment, Howe saw himself and his proposition as this boy must. He, too, had fancied himself a man of honor. He had sympathized with American grievances, had even argued on their behalf in Parliament. Liberty, freedom, yes, indeed, such intoxicating fumes….But then the king offered him command of the government’s forces. He could almost taste the excitement of campaigning, the glory of victory, could almost count the riches resulting from royal favor. What was honor against all that? He had shed it easily. Now he assumed others would too, and as lightly.
Oh, he wanted to cry, at your age, I, too, would have insisted on my honor. I, too, would have scorned such a creature as I’ve become. But one matures, one learns the ways of the world. And, son, what good’s your honor if it lays you in your grave?
The rebel spoke, and he heard his own boyish contempt tremble in his voice. “Sir, I’d rather hang a thousand times than live a traitor to my country’s liberty!”
He barely smothered a smile at such vehemence. So young. They were all so young. Had he ever cherished anything enough to give his life for it? Still, what had worked on him from the king should work now, with the stakes that much higher.
“Come, Hale. Heroics are wasted here. I’m offering you a way to escape the noose, and all I’m asking is that you serve your king, which is what a good subject does anyway.”
“You offer me ignominy, sir—”
“Ignominy? No, I don’t think so. I’m offering you riches, not to mention promotion. Major Hale, eh? Maybe even Colonel. Tell me: what’re they paying you? I’ll quadruple it.”
If the rebel had been angry before, he was livid now. He struggled for control. Howe stood mesmerized, never having seen emotion mastered so gracefully.
At last, amazingly, a smile played at the prisoner’s lips. “Well, sir, that won’t cost you much. Four times nothing is nothing.” The levity vanished as he added, “I undertook my duty with no hope of a reward. I don’t go to the highest bidder.”
Howe realized he had erred. Bribes could never tempt a boy willing to brave the gibbet. He switched tack, loathe to admit defeat. “We’ll soon crush Washington. He can’t escape much longer. Think of it, Hale. You yourself noted I’ve got thirty thousand men on York Island, Long Island, too, waiting to march against his rabble. Thirty thousand of the finest soldiers in the world, against what, eight or ten thousand farmers? Don’t be a fool, Hale. You’re throwing away your life on a rebellion that’ll be crushed in the next couple of weeks, a month at the most. Please, son, I beg you, think this through.”
He laid a hand on the rebel’s arm, and the boy flinched as though struck. He looked levelly into Howe’s eyes, disgust written large on his face.
That disgust told the general he was wasting his time. He stalked to the French doors and opened them to find Edward with a loaded tray on the threshold.
“Take it back to the parlor,” he said. “You, guard.” He beckoned to the men lounging against the walls beyond the door, their boots grinding mud into the Aubusson carpet, bayonets scratching the woodwork. “Take this rebel to the greenhouse. Guard him till the provost marshal takes custody. He’s to hang tomorrow morning, soon as preparations can be made, for high treason against his king.”
The troops rushed past Howe into the room, and he turned for a last look at Nathan Hale. All he saw was the same faint smile, the same unruffled bearing, the same unshakable courage. “Damn him,” he muttered and hurried to rejoin Mrs. Loring.
CHAPTER 16
The ensign was a new recruit and unfamiliar with Billy Cunningham, or he would have looked in The Dove first. There he would have found the provost marshal snoring off the evening’s punch, sprawled in a chair that creaked with every sour, explosive breath. The officers in The Dove’s taproom either ignored the marshal or laughed at the mucous swinging from his nose. When the ensign appeared, close to midnight and after wasting an hour on his search, to ask for William Cunningham, they finished their drinks and sat in hushed expectation while a lieutenant of the Royal Regiment of Artillery pointed out his bulk.
The marshal refused to wake. As the ensign continued to shake him, Cunningham opened one eye. “Boy, if it ain’t the Devil hisself what needs me, you better run.”
“It’s General Howe, sir. There’s a prisoner he wants remanded to your custody.”
Cunningham snorted and relapsed into stupor.
The ensign wondered whether he dare return empty-handed. The rebel spy was securely confined and likely to be in his prison, awaiting Cunningham, whenever the marshal showed. Meanwhile, the men crowding the taproom looked a fine bunch, and tuppence from his last pay still enriched his pocket. With a shrug, he turned from the marshal and ordered a pint of small beer.
An hour later, Cunningham stirred, remembered something about Howe and a prisoner, and stumbled from his chair. He followed the ensign into the warm night and staggered to the East Post Road.
They turned south, Cunningham squinting at the sky. A haze obscured the stars there, and the marshal licked his lips. Had the fire raged to the Sugar House? He doted on the Sugar House, a brick building appropriated for his prison last Monday when they took New York City. He had filled it with every damned rebel he could lay his hands on. He imagined their screams once the fire reached the prison doors. By God, he should have been there. And would have been, but for Howe’s insistence he report to headquarters this afternoon. And for what? To bawl him out because some faint-livered neighbors near the Sugar House had complained. Alas, the poor dears objected to the rebels’ cries for mercy when he dragged them behind the prison to murder them (though, because they were not officially dead, he still collected the stipends for their upkeep). Let them put a pillow over their ears, for God’s sake: there’s a war on. But perhaps this new captive, with family or friends anxious to buy a last moment with him, would make the marshal’s trip north worthwhile.
Cunningham dismissed the ensign and stopped in the room assigned him for the night before proceeding to headquarters. He rewarded himself for his mile’s walk with a swig of rum from his canteen. His glance fell on a horsewhip he’d confiscated from a rebel three days ago. It was a costly one, with a braided handle and a split end that whistled satisfyingly when snapped. He admired it with bleary eyes before reeling toward the Beekmans’ mansion.
Howe had long since retired, leaving an aide on duty. This officer glanced up from his work to behold the provost marshal with distaste. His nose wrinkled at the fumes rolling off Cunningham as he read him the orders regarding the rebel spy in the greenhouse. Cunningham swayed, nodded, and as an afterthought, saluted. Then he wandered outside toward the gardens.
The guard challenged him, but he waved them off and worked at the bolt himself, cursing as the oak bar refused to yield. At last, it came free. The door opened to reveal a startlingly handsome young man, a boy, really, seated on a bench among pots of wilted plants, a candle beside him and a finger marking his place in a closed Testament. Cunningham stared in confusion. The boy looked exactly like the Archangel Gabriel in his boyhood copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress, and some of the terror he inflicted on others stabbed Cunningham through his drunken haze. Bloody hell, ’twas the Judgment Day. Then he remembered the lash in his hand and the guard of Regulars outside and the gunboats cruising the East River a few hundred feet away.
He cracked the whip.
The prisoner leaped to his feet, narrowly missing a stroke that would have opened his face from chin to brow.
Cunningham raised his arm again. And again, the rebel dodged the blow, but gracefully, like an angel.
“Hold still, ya coward, ya bastard!” Cunningham bellowed.
The boy lunged for the candle and douted it, and all was pandemonium.
Cunningham cracked the whip a third time before someone wrested it from him. There were shouts from outside, and running feet, and hands grabbing him, pinning his arms behind, however he cursed and struggled, and crashing pottery, an
d sudden lantern light that threw the room and the faces of the soldiers restraining him into sharp relief. It also shone on the rebel, coiling the whip, firm and proud despite the men on either side with their bayonets leveled at him.
The commanding officer, a lieutenant colonel who resembled a rooster uncannily, stepped forward. He offered his hand for the whip, which the boy surrendered with a bow. Then he strutted over to Cunningham. “What’s the problem here?”
Cunningham’s eyes narrowed. “What you interrogating me for? Huh? By all that’s holy, he’s the damned rebel. He’s the prisoner—”
“Yes, he’s the prisoner. What business you got with him?”
“Gonna hang tomorrow, ain’t he? I gotta get his name for my ledger, get his measurements for the coffin.”
The colonel ducked his head, as if pecking in the dirt, with an embarrassed peep at their captive. “Coffin won’t be necessary.”
“Gonna leave him hang, eh?” Cunningham said.
“For a while, anyway. Those are General Howe’s orders. As a warning to others.”
Cunningham glanced greedily at the rebel to see how he was taking the news that they would even deny him burial. But he continued serene. He might have heard that the next dance was a minuet for all the concern he showed. The provost marshal felt a stirring in his groin. It had been a while since anything, other than a bowl of punch, had tickled his desire. This rebel, with his beauty and athletic grace, his calm courage and dignity, was irresistible. He must have him alone.
“Still gotta get his name and rank,” he blustered. “Now get out and leave me be with him.”
The colonel regarded him steadily and then brought his jaw, wattles quivering, within inches of the provost marshal’s. “Name’s Nathan Hale. He’s twenty-one years old, and his rank’s captain. Now get out, sir. We’re not running a bawdy house here for your private pleasure. You’ll have him for your gibbet in the morning, but right now, he’s my prisoner.”