by L. E. Waters
I smile and set the horses to their fastest pace. Once we’re alone in the white-and-ebony tree scene, her cheeks rose with the healthy crispness in the air. She screams out, “I hate this war!” but laughs as it echoes through the emptiness. As we roll through the fields, she says, “All we are missing is music and then this would truly be perfect.”
I put a finger up in the air for her to hold that thought and reach into my breast pocket for the little snuffbox from France I’ve paid dearly for. I take it out, and she scrunches up her face, thinking I’m offering her snuff.
I laugh. “No, you silly girl. Open it. It is a carillons à musique.”
She takes the small, silver-engraved box in her delicate fingers and opens it. When the delightful melody plays her face brightens. “This is the loveliest thing I have ever beheld.”
Watching her with quick glances as I drive, I see her keep rewinding and listening over and over again. “What is the happy tune?”
“Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major.”
It’s like watching a child at Christmas. Her wonderment only grows with each time it plays again, and I can tell, by the way her feet can’t keep still, that she wishes she were pirouetting through the snow. Our joyful abandon comes to a finish as I see the end of the British fortification. She notices only after I stop the horses, and she stares ahead at the ugliness of the line.
I say, “Well, there it is. The end of the world.” And I turn the horses around as the sunset turns the snow red.
“I would do anything to end this war,” she says, drifting off in thought. “Get out of this crude cage made by mountain men and yokels.”
“As would I.” She quickly looks at me as if to study my resolve. “We shall both put an end to this, on our own.” I boast, and she throws back her head and claps.
She cheers, “Then we could sail on forever, listening to your snuff music!”
Our laughs echo out behind us in frozen joy.
Chapter 7
As deeper dissatisfaction with Howe’s performance grows, he resigns as General and Sir Henry Clinton is to replace him. I return from supper and, as I enter Franklin’s mansion, Despard warns, “Where have you been, John? He’s been meeting with his staff all day and now he’s waiting upon you.”
“He was supposed to be here a week ago,” I whisper over my shoulder as I run up the dark, ornate stairs.
I knock on Howe’s old bedroom chambers and hear a quick reply, “I pray this is Lt. André?”
I pat down my hair, pulled back with a black silk ribbon, and open the door with my hat in hand.
“Your Excellency.” I bow.
He appears annoyed at my act of respect and flutters his hands like he wants me to stop it at once. He gives me a cold stare from his slate-blue eyes. “I will light this candle and when it has burned down you will be so kind as to leave me.”
I notice he chooses the shortest candle of the bunch.
As he lights the candle the details of his stout full face, all drawn together, and his small, nervous lips emerge. He sighs deeply, as if lighting the candle took great stamina and unexpectedly removes his jacket and bag wig, then sits in the high winged-back chair. He takes his shirtsleeve, rolls it up, and combs his thinning hair down across his large head with his fingers, betraying a long scar running down from wrist to elbow.
He begins. “I must be as honest with you, as I was with the rest of Howe’s staff. I don’t like hand-me-downs, and I usually start afresh with my own staff when I am reappointed.”
I’m speechless, for I hadn’t expected this.
Clinton grins at my silence. “And I heard you were a man of words.”
“Forgive me, sir. Allow me to think of some.” He chuckles as I continue, “I have been most integral to the functioning of Howe’s affairs. I kept exact accounts and detailed maps for the General and have made no error.”
He takes the time as I speak to study me. “Well, you are not like the slipshod I saw last, I’ll give you that.”
“Despard?” I ask, and he grins and nods.
“You seem like a well-cultured and intelligent man, but I will have to warn you that I am not that kind of man. I have earned everything I have through surviving battles, and the only things I crave off the battlefield are good liquor and bad women. I have little patience for words, social graces, bureaucracy, and all the things you represent.”
“Then it only stands to reason that you are in great need of my strengths.”
He chortles. “Could be true.” He glances at the last flickers of the candle. “Time’s up, André. You are the only aide that stays. Day-to-day, though.”
Content enough with that, I go and break the harsh news to Despard.
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I sit in the vibrant spring grasses in the Shippen’s expansive orchard and garden, among the soothing hum of the bees happily making honey in their braided thatched skips. Peggy kneels beside me in a sea of skirts and removes her hand-held, silk sun mask to dangle a cherry down to her pretty, bow-shaped mouth. She shifts, watching me taking a half-bite of my wild cherry. “Why is it I feel my seduction has no effect on you?”
I blurt out laughing at her bluntness as she giggles with me like a child. I lie back and stare at the thick, blue sky. “I am immune now to the charming entrapment of the fairer sex. I have had my romantic illness, and I am now recovered, keeping my distance for fear of another fever.”
“It’s Margaret, isn’t it! I saw the way she looked at you on the warship. Practically burned me with her eyes when she saw you speak with me.”
“No, it is not Margaret.”
“All the better for you.” She bends closer upon her elbows and perches her head between her dainty hands. “Do you know that she spent a small fortune getting her hair piled over pads with thick flour paste into a such a tower, that she slept with her neck in a wooden block for so many days weevils hatched?”
“I will never look at Margaret in the same way again. See, good reason to avoid the sex entirely.” She sits up and spits out the pit, completely unladylike. Squinting an eye at her, I say, “As charming as you are.”
She laughs and pulls on my arm. “Oh, tell me more about that, André. I adore tragic love stories.”
“No. I have vowed never to speak of her again, and see, you have almost caused me to break my vow.”
“Oh, fine!” She pouts and then goes back to her cherry dangling. “You hadn’t the chance with me anyway since I already have a secret and scandalous lover.”
My eyebrows rise.
Rosey scampers over to her and her handful of dark cherries. Peggy holds one up just out of reach. “Dance, my little bear. Dance!”
Indeed, Rosey looks like a miniature bear on her hind legs, pawing her hands in the air. Peggy laughs and brings the cherry down within her little pink-toed reach. Rosey chatters, dragging the cherry away from us, to a safe distance in the grass.
“Do you think the war will be over by summer?” she asks, thankfully done with the other subject.
“My plan is, Major Washington—”
“Major Washington?” She laughs. “Why do you call him that?”
“Because that is the last rank he held in the British Army.”
She bites her lip in enjoyment, and I continue, “Major Washington’s boys only fight under the influence of an extraordinary quantity of strong liquor. So if we find a way to keep them from their grog and ale I think it could very well be over by the summer.”
“Oh, goody,” she says, dangling a cherry over my mouth and laughing as I snap my teeth to catch it.
“Will you promise to tell me of your secret lover if I arrange for it to be over and done with?”
Her eyes gleam with a mischievous sparkle. “Maybe I have my own plans for it to be over and done with, Englishman.”
Chapter 8
I awake to heavy fire and fumble into my boots and coat, then dart outside to mount my horse.
“André, gather
your men!” Clinton yells as his servant hoists him into his saddle.
I group my soldiers into a line of defense and send them out, but there is such confusion in the thick mist it appears regiments are disappearing.
Men shout, “The rebels are overtaking us!”
It’s impossible to control the panicked men, and only when the mist clears do the men realize, eerily, there is nothing there. Shots ring out nearby and smoke billows out of the Shippen’s house. Peggy’s house has been overtaken by a small force of rebels. I order my line over to push the rebels back as smoke fills the streets and the rebel dead spill out onto the dirt road. The fine estate’s bricks are riddled with gunshot, and women’s screams drift out the opened window as cannon blast at the mansion.
I yell, “Women are inside!” but the troops keep the cannon firing. The last rebels give up and flee, with tired British soldiers half-heartedly in pursuit.
Peggy rushes out the front door, more angry and excited than scared. She seems to grow taller, coming out from the smoke, as her sisters and mother seem to shrink. She comes right up to me as I dismount to check on her, but she only points to my horse’s hide where four or five buckshot are embedded.
I laugh. “Hurt him so little that I wish I had received them myself, to make people stare with the story of five wounds in one day.”
She returns my laugh. “So these are the forces that menace our world? They ran like rats.”
“Strong liquors, I tell you.”
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Later that day I go to Clinton’s quarters and hear him call out from the powder room. “In here, André.” His voice is muffled behind the cone his face is hidden in.
I stand safely at the door as his servant powders his fancier ramillies wig for the evening. Clinton withdraws from the cone and, choking on the cloud of talcum, spurts, “Word has come from a deserter on the American lines that the rebels were celebrating triumphs in the north. Burgoyne has been checked by amateurs, even surrendered.”
“Which General checked Burgoyne?”
“General Arnold. He has become quite an annoyance.” He winces as his large wig is pulled tight on the top of his head.
“Are you sure of this information. It seems impossible.”
He gets up, dusting the excess powder off of the cloth wrapped around him, and gives me a serious look. “Sentries have been found dead at their posts the last few nights. I have had to pull my lines back to the city limits.”
“It is spring, when Washington’s army seems to double as it did last year.”
Clinton shakes his head. “Not since I’ve put an end to the Scotch-Irish immigration.” He sits on the side of his bed with a groan and stiffly reaches down to get his tall boots on. He glances up. “Have you any other news?”
“Mr. Washington has ordered immediate death to any man who sells provisions to us. He has sent his light horse everywhere outside the city to enforce this. I fear the army may be in danger of starvation if it is effective.”
He lifts his head up, frustrated from his boot wrestling. “Then we threaten them back! They don’t sell provisions to us, we will order immediate death.”
I smile at his steel fist. “It is this sort of ferocity that we need to win the war, sir.”
He puts his hand up to stop me. “We must not alienate our own countrymen. I said the prior only because Washington would leave me no choice.”
I nod, feeling slightly dampened, and hold the door for him to exit to the dinner party.
Every window of the simple Quaker style house burns a candle on this chilly spring night. Silhouettes from the glow crisscross each other inside. We step into the warmth and hear many voices already in deep discussion. As I make my way toward the parlor where the gentleman have congregated, I pass the common room where the females sit around the fire with their embroidery in hand, clucking like chickens. I recognize Peggy from behind and wait, leaning against the doorframe quietly, until I can get her attention.
“Mary, you sit too close to the fire. You’re losing face, dear.”
The unattractive woman drops her embroidery to feel her face and attempts to move her chair away as she presses the wax back into her pockmarks.
The host calls for her colored girl. “Bertha! Come and place the fireplace screen!” After the slight girl hurries in to obey, the host turns to Mary’s ridiculer and chides, “And Betsy, you best mind your own beeswax.” Betsy quickly checks to see if her face has shifted and pulls her chair farther back from the fire as well.
As I start to drift away from the humorous scene, for fear they make me the recipient of their aggression, the floorboards moan and draw Peggy’s attention. She drops her embroidery at once and flutters to me. “Shall we confer?” she whispers. Then with a giggle Peggy pulls me into the small den and sits me down in the wooden chair across from hers.
She looks me in the eyes. “I’ve decided to confide in you. Assure me that my instincts are correct.”
“Do we need a pinky promise?” I hold out my meager little finger.
She laughs and flops back in her chair. “What would you say if I told you that I knew a patriot…intimately?”
“Your secret and scandalous lover?” I raise my eyebrows.
“Yes, and he is putty in my hands.” She squishes her hands together in demonstration.
“How did you manage this?” I can’t imagine her father allowing her to sneak across enemy lines to seduce a rebel.
“When the Americans took the city, Father worried the street mobs would attack if he took a public stand as a Tory. As his friends were imprisoned and he lost his business because of the Stamp Act, he had the horrid idea to flee to the country and become a shopkeeper.”
“A sound plan.”
She scoffs. “There was no place I detested more: no variety of food, no servants, no culture! When my sisters and I were forced to walk down the lanes by the Schuylkill to fetch supplies, the farm boys would pelt us with stones and tell us to go back to England.” She grabs the pendant around her neck and pulls it back and forth on the gold chain. “One day, a larger boy came in and tussled them all, apologized to us and helped us back our house. He never left my side after that, shadowing me everywhere I went, making sure no one assaulted me again during my chores.” She seems thick in her memory of him.
“Is that the patriot you speak of then?”
“Yes, he joined the Americans soon after, and I didn’t see him for months. Meanwhile the rebels sent two hundred men away from their families to the Carolinas, and the British pulled out of the country to occupy Philadelphia, leaving the loyalist houses unprotected.”
She repositions her wig slightly. “Father went to sleep each night on the floor by the front door, with his musket, worried he’d be ripped away, leaving us to fend for ourselves among the hostile blue devils. My patriot began to come at night, visiting me in secret and promising to protect the house while we slept. Father packed up his shop one day and decided to come back to the safety of Philadelphia, and I had to say goodbye to him, although he promised to risk life and limb to see me when he could.”
“Truly romantic, but how does this concern me?”
She looks offended and, with her lace-gloved hands out, says, “I have a patriot in Washington’s camp that will do anything to end this war, so as to be with me again.”
“That would be an excellent thing, if only I were a spy, but I am not.”
She studies me carefully. “You don’t know then?”
“Know what?” Suspense always annoys me.
“My patriot has begun to work his way up in his camp, and he has heard word of Clinton’s spy ring.” She pauses for that to sink in. “I trust you, André, and I’ve faith you are the man my patriot and I have been looking for.”
“Looking for? What have you planned for me?” I laugh, trying to lighten the mood.
“Someone to join Clinton’s spy ring and communicate with one of Mr. Washington’s very own men.�
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“That is a good head you hide under such a large wig.”
She winks at me as others join us from the parlor. I change the subject. “Dear Peggy, I was hoping you’d agree to escort me to the Mesquinza ball.”
“Mesquinza Ball,” she tries on her tongue. “Sounds exotic.”
“Quite exotic. I am throwing a ball in Howe’s honor, to welcome General Clinton and to celebrate all that is best of civilization. Gentlemen will come dressed as Knights of the crusades and our lovely Tory companions will, of course, be costumed as Turkish maidens.”
She sinks a little in her chair. “Father has forbid us from having any more dresses made. We have to re-wear our old ones.” She says the words as though they are dirt in her mouth. “I haven’t a costume like that in my armoire.”
“Well, then you must accept my invitation as my lady, for it just so happens that you will be escorted by one of England’s finest milliners, who will make you a costume to match mine own.” I do a grand sweep with my arm. She happily takes it and allows me to walk her to her seat at supper.
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That night I can’t sleep for thinking of all of the things I might become famous for. As soon as I’m dressed, I rush to Clinton’s room to find I have interrupted the late sleeper.
“Sorry to have disturbed you, Your Excellency, but I have interesting news.”
Clinton rolls onto his back and rubs the frizzed grey hair over to one side. “Inform me, then. I am awake now.”
“I have heard a rumor you have orchestrated a spy ring. Is that true?”
“If it were, it would be quite counterproductive to speak about it.” He laughs.
I take a deep breath, hoping the following inquiry isn’t a mistake. “Sir, I have a trusted source who has assured me there is man in Washington’s own camp with loyalist sympathies putting out feelers for a British contact.”
He sits up. “Whom have you heard this offer from?”
“A trusted source, sir, and I have been the one propositioned as the contact.”