The Bastard

by John Jakes

  “I’ve asked Annie to excuse us a moment while we have a personal word.”

  He released Anne’s hand and guided Philip through the crowd applauding Sam Adams’ somewhat ostentatious mounting of the coach step. Anne’s look seemed to say she had no idea what her father wanted of Philip.

  In the midst of the shoving, vocal crowd, Ware found the privacy he sought.

  “You know I’ll be away at the Congress for several weeks, Philip. And that my daughter and Daisy are alone on Launder Street with that soldier.”

  “Yes, Anne told me a sergeant was quartered with you now. I haven’t met him yet.”

  “Poor lumpish creature,” Ware said. “He’s not a bad sort—for a Tommy. But I want to speak to you on another subject. I haven’t questioned Annie keeping company with you—even though I’ll frankly admit I would be pleased with a suitor of more substantial means and background. Don’t take offense! That’s a father’s natural reaction. Besides, I’m uncertain about your intentions. But as I say, I haven’t questioned your association with my daughter—”

  “Though you obviously wanted to,” Philip said, somewhat irritated.

  “Indeed so. However, the truth is, she asked me not to do it.”

  “Why?”

  “Your company gives her pleasure.”

  “Mr. Ware, I’m very fond of Anne. But—” He structured the falsehood carefully. “—you hit it yourself.”

  “Hit what?”

  “The reason I can’t state any—intentions, as you call them. I feel I don’t have sufficient money. Or prospects for the future.”

  Ware digested this with a murmur and a bob of his head. Then:

  “In confidence, I can say that Annie has mentioned both reasons. She’s also expressed an opinion that neither is genuine. Now don’t goggle and swear! Listen! My time’s short, and this needs saying. While I gather you have never spoken anything on the subject, Anne’s convinced there must be another woman somewhere in your history. Having lived with my own child since her birth, that kind of statement tells me how she really feels about you. Though the struggle goes unmentioned, she’s locked in some kind of battle with—whoever or whatever still holds a claim on you. Because she has—” He cleared his throat, obviously ill at ease. “—ah—set her cap for you.”

  Stunned, Philip looked through the crowd for the blaze of Anne’s chestnut hair. He couldn’t find her. That she had sensed the tearing in him—the pull of the past, of Alicia—only heightened his appreciation of her sensitivity.

  “Ultimately,” Ware went on, “a father, of all persons in the world, has the least to say about the disposition of a daughter’s life. Outside of royal circles, of course. So I speak to you instead. Asking two things.”

  The little lawyer’s face revealed his concern for his child. “First, in my absence, call frequently at Launder Street. Look after Annie as only a man can. And secondly—whatever your final feelings about marriage—don’t hurt her. If there’s to be nothing permanent between the two of you, so be it. But when you make your mind up, should the decision be negative, tell her frankly—and quickly.”

  Ware’s hand, surprisingly powerful, locked on Philip’s arm. “Because if I thought it was dalliance, with no genuine feeling, I would have you flayed out of your skin. If I couldn’t do it myself I would hire it done. I will, if you ever deliberately bring Annie to grief.”

  In as steady a voice as he could manage, Philip answered, “There’ll be no need for that, Mr. Ware. I think too highly of your daughter.”

  “Fair enough. Come along and let’s find her. I must be into the coach for Philadelphia.”

  vi

  Sergeant George Lumden was just under thirty years old. He had mild gray eyes, a large mole in the center of his forehead, crooked teeth. His manner was shy, almost humble.

  Lumden had answered the summons of the recruiting drum in his native Warwickshire. The eleventh son of a smithy, he had chosen military life because it offered his only means of escape from poverty. But, as Philip discovered in conversation with the soldier in Ware’s kitchen during the last days of August, Lumden was not pleased that the Thirty-third Infantry Regiment had been shipped to Boston.

  “There’s plenty in the regiment who feel the same way, too. In my case it’s personal. I’ve got a relative—a second cousin—in these colonies.”

  “Indeed, where?” Daisy O’Brian exclaimed, bringing a heaping plate of hot biscuits to the table and setting them in front of Lumden with a flourish.

  The cook’s cheeks seemed exceedingly pink,” Philip thought. From his vantage point on a hearthside stool where he sat with hands locked around one knee, Daisy looked positively fluttery. She overflowed with gasps and exclamations and too-loud laughter at Lumden’s slightest jest or sign of attention.

  Philip glanced across to Anne. She was slowly stirring a fragrant kettle of fish-head chowder simmering on a chain over the logs. Anne returned his glance with amused understanding. Neither the enraptured Daisy nor the slump-shouldered Lumden noticed.

  Lumden had both of his spatterdashes spread on the table. Using a little brush, he was applying moist white paste from a small jar. His uniform jacket with willow-green facings hung over the back of his chair. His torso, already turning to fat, was clad in woolen underwear that appeared fiendishly heavy for summertime.

  “I think the town’s known as Hartford,” Lumden said in reply to Daisy’s question. “I want to visit there—provided all stays calm in Boston. It’s my wish that it will. I have never served in combat and, damme, I don’t want to,” he added, without the slightest embarrassment. “Soldiering’s a hard enough life without throwing in the risk of being killed. I mean—just consider! You’re damp all the time. Even in summer, you’re damp from collar to socks!”

  Anne laughed. “I’ll agree, Sergeant, those uniforms do look hot.”

  “ ’Tisn’t only the sweat,” he said. “It’s this damned pipe clay. Every inch of white we wear must be clayed day in, day out, or there are hellish penalties.” Disgusted, he flung the brush down beside the jar of whitening compound. “When the pipe clay’s fresh, you feel soggy because it’s wet. When it dries it shrinks the material so tight you’re half-strangled—and you sweat all the more. Then there’s the damn pewter buttons, each of which must wink and twinkle—” Reaching behind him, he flicked one of the offending buttons. “—or that’s another fine or whipping. Or both, if you’ve a commander like ours.”

  “Got a tyrant in charge, do you?” Philip asked.

  “Yes, sir. The man has the vilest temper I’ve ever seen. Regiments like the Thirty-third attract such types.”

  “And other regiments don’t?”

  “Not so much.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, you see, the British army’s composed of two sorts of regiments. Royal ones—always in blue facings, surely you’ve seen those in town—”

  The other three nodded almost simultaneously.

  “Then there’s proprietary regiments like the Thirty-third. Hired to fight by the Crown. A real money-making operation for the nabob who can put one together. He virtually owns it, and even after expenses are met, he can bank on fattening his own fortunes. Take our actual commander. He’s a gouty old far…—” Blushing, he glanced at Daisy, swallowed. “—Viscount. Name of Coney. He’s never marched, never faced fire, never left England. So the man in charge of the regiment here, Lieutenant Colonel Amberly, he’s not the real commander at all, if you follow—”

  Lumden blinked, noticing the sudden tightness around Philip’s mouth.

  “Mr. Kent, did I say something to anger you?” He sounded apologetic.

  Philip’s scalp crawled. The palms of his hands had turned damp. He shook his head.

  “Go on, Lumden. Tell me about this lieutenant colonel.”

  The sergeant scratched his chin, frowned in annoyance when he realized his finger was still smeared with pipe clay. Daisy scampered for a cloth. As Lumden wiped the paste
off his jaw, he continued:

  “He’s the sort you often find commanding a proprietary. Cares nothing about the men—or the profession. Only wants a little experience to put on his record. Bought his commission, of course. Or his father did, I ’spose, that’s generally how it works. There’s no other way to achieve a high rank quickly. Like I say, Amberly’s a bas—uh, a bad-tempered man. He can be plagued cruel. Turn on you in a second! On the other hand, he’s not much worse than many I hear about. So maybe I shouldn’t complain.”

  Philip said quietly, “Do you happen to know this Amberly’s first name?”

  “ ’Course. It’s Roger. Roger Hook-hand, some of us call him on the sly. He has this crippled right hand—”

  Lumden held up his fingers, grotesquely shaped. Philip stared, his throat tight and hot. He jumped up with such suddenness that Daisy started. Lumden again look distressed:

  “Ah, I’m sorry! I know it’s not decent to mock a man’s misfortune. But the lieutenant colonel’s infirmities have crimped up something in his soul, damned if they haven’t. A bad hand—the mark of a bad birth—” Lumden touched his forehead near his left eyebrow. “That’s a hell-born combination, I’ll tell you. No wonder he’s taught himself to use the whip with his left hand. He enjoys handing out punishment, when the mood’s on him—”

  “Does this commander of yours ever speak of a wife?” Philip asked.

  “Yes, I’ve heard tell of one back in England. Mr. Kent, I’ve upset you, haven’t I? My apologies. But I’m damned if I know how I—”

  Philip spun for the back door, growling, “Never mind, it’s nothing.”

  “Do you know the commander, is that it—?”

  Philip slammed the door and clattered down the stairs into the mellow August sunshine.

  He heard the house door open again. Head down, one knuckle rubbing against his mouth, he walked to the relatively cooler shadow inside the little barn. Without really seeing it, he stared at Lumden’s spread-out equipment: his sizable pack, his cartouche, his Brown Bess with a swordlike length of steel mounted so as to extend well past the end of the muzzle. He felt rather than heard Anne enter behind him.

  He turned to confront her. The daylight outside set her chestnut hair aglow.

  “The name turned you white, Philip. Is it the same man you told me about?”

  “It can’t be anyone else. The first name might be coincidental, but not the hand and the birthmark.” Searching back, he remembered a statement Alicia had made and he added, “When I knew him, there was talk that he’d spend some time in the army. With so many regiments being sent here, I suppose it’s not unthinkable that he could wind up in Boston.”

  She glided toward him, touched his hand. “What do you intend to do?”

  Fighting the memories of how Roger Amberly had been instrumental in arranging his near-murder, Philip said, “I intend to stay out of his way. If he caught sight of me by accident, I imagine he could trump up an arrest. He hated my mother and me enough to want me dead, and I doubt the feeling’s lessened very much. He still carries that wrecked hand I gave him.”

  Anne gazed deep into his eyes. “You asked about a woman. A wife. Is she the one I’ve been struggling against all these months? I know there’s something more than your father’s letter binding you to the past—and holding you from any kind of future—”

  He was ready to lie to spare her feelings. Then he recalled his pledge to Abraham Ware. He said:

  “Yes, she’s the one.”

  “Married to your father’s other son. You never told me that part, Philip.”

  “I saw no need. Anne, I have to go back to the shop. Please don’t say a thing to Lumden.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t. But—when you questioned him, your face was as ugly as I’ve ever seen it. Do you still hate Amberly so?”

  “He caused my mother’s death! I’d like to kill him.”

  A weary expression overrode the starkness on his features then. His voice moderated:

  “But I’ve become enough of a realist—like the sergeant—to want to stay alive. Deliberate contact with Roger Amberly would put all the odds on his side, and none on mine. Unless—” A harsh thought changed his face again. “—unless a killing was carefully done. The trouble is, in these times—well, I have allegiances to Mr. Edes. And plotting murder’s no simple job. At least for me.”

  “Murder would only make you just what he is!”

  He knew she was right. He almost hated her for saying it. “Let’s not talk about it, Anne. I said I had to leave—”

  “First tell me a little about his wife. Was she beautiful?”

  “No, I won’t tell you. She’s married—and that’s the end of it.”

  “Except inside you.”

  He whirled away from her, away from the dreadful accuracy with which she’d struck to the heart of his turmoil. He stalked toward the front of the property. When she called his name, he turned in the blue shadows at the side of the house.

  Anne was standing in a patch of sunlight outside the barn. Her fists were clenched.

  “I’ll win against her, Philip. I swear I will!”

  He thought he saw tears shining on her summer-ripened cheeks. He turned again and hurried away down Launder Street.

  CHAPTER VII

  Betrayal

  i

  A NEW KING, LOUIS XVI, reigned in France. But some in Boston town proclaimed that they too had been graced with a new monarch, a despot. For although Thomas Gage spoke mildly enough in public, he manipulated the royal troops with a firm purpose from Province House. On the first of September, a few picked companies marched to Cambridge in a surprise raid and seized quantities of powder and muskets belonging to the local militia.

  Church bells pealing and small cannon exploding brought Boston citizens to an awareness that something extremely serious had happened. Serious for the colonials—but serious for the British, too, as it turned out.

  Response to the raid had been swift, the Gazette reported. Clanging bells and couriers on horseback summoned several thousand farmers with their muskets, their scythes—any weapon available—and drew them all toward Charlestown, where Gage’s men were busy seizing a second storehouse of powder.

  No military clash occurred. The soldiers prudently returned to the city just as the first countrymen came streaming to the site of the expected battle. When they found no enemies, they went home.

  But Ben Edes, for one, considered the affair a victory of sorts:

  “The general’s afraid, Philip. And in fear lies the capacity for error. Thinking to gobble up arms meant to be used against his men, he practically gave a lesson on how he’ll operate if he ever moves in force. You heard how quickly the militiamen rallied?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it wasn’t quick enough—the raid taught us that. We’ve got to set up new, faster ways of signaling and mobilizing the countryside. One day Gage will regret being such a generous instructor,” Edes chuckled. “Sam Adams is a quick study.”

  So it proved.

  Gage fortified the Roxbury Neck with guard posts during the first week in September. But Adams, Hancock and the other prime movers of the patriot cause came and went—if not unrecognized, at least unmolested. The general continued his policy of not moving openly against the rebel ringleaders, though he kept his regiments busy drilling.

  The freedom of movement Gage allowed Adams and the others permitted the Massachusetts House to sit at Salem in early October. In open defiance of the Governor, the House approved formation of a new Committee of Safety, chaired by Hancock, with official power to organize, arm and summon militia contingents to action. Philip began to hear a new term used to identify those select companies now responsible for rallying to an alarm in a very short time. Minute companies, they were called.

  Meantime, Abraham Ware’s weekly letter to his daughter brought a running account of developments at Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia.

  In response to a set of Massachusetts resolves
drafted by Dr. Warren, enacted at a convention in Suffolk County and then sent overland with Revere on horseback, the radicals and the conservatives in the great Congress pulled and hauled against one another, now rejecting Warren’s firebrand call for arming the towns and imposing economic sanctions against Britain, now proposing more moderate resolutions opposing the Crown’s position.

  Finally—“Praise the Almighty as well as those who argue loudest!” Ware declared in one epistle—the Congress adopted a set of ten resolves. Among other things, the resolves declared the exclusive right of the provincial legislatures to regulate matters of internal policy, especially taxation. The resolves also stated that thirteen separate and distinct Parliamentary acts put in force since 1763 were in violation of the colonials’ rights to “life, liberty and property.” And the radicals won a key point in the form of the sought-for promise of economic reprisals until the Intolerable Acts were repealed.

  Ware wrote Anne that the unprecedented assembly hoped to adjourn in late October, after drawing up a petition of grievances specifically addressed to the King. The representatives of the various colonies had already decided to meet again the following year if relief was not obtained.

  ’Tis not as much as Sam’l. or Dr. W. —or indeed, myself—would have wished,” the lawyer said in one of the letters Anne showed Philip. “On the other hand, there is concert—agreement—and that in itself is fraught with meaning for the future. To see the delegates, foregather at City Tavern at nightfall, and to hear such gentlemen as the very respected Col. Washington of Virginia voice the same concerns as the men of Boston—while we all indulge ourselves in Maderia and great heaps of baked oysters—that, my dearest daughter, is an experience not capable of being fully described, only savored in the proud heart.

  November came. Anne looked forward to her father’s return with mixed feelings. She missed him. But she would likewise miss the privacy afforded by his absence, privacy in which she and Philip could be alone in the parlor of an evening. They talked of everything except their own futures, while Daisy and Sergeant Lumden of the Thirty-third laughed and chattered in similar fashion in the kitchen.