by James McGee
Still, he thought, at least there was one advantage to being here.
He didn’t have to speak French.
The voyage from Nantes to Boston had taken thirty-two days, one more than Larkspur’s skipper, Jack Larsson, had forecast and thirty-two days too many, as far as Hawkwood was concerned.
Getting out of Paris in the wake of his last assignment had been achieved without too much difficulty but there had always been a weakness in the plan’s second stage, which had been reliant on Larkspur being intercepted and boarded by a British vessel on blockade duty, whereupon Hawkwood would have revealed his identity and secured safe passage back to England.
Regrettably, no one had allowed for the formidable seamanship of Larkspur’s wily skipper. During the five years the blockade had been in place – which required all neutral ships to submit to a cargo inspection at a British port or be seized as an enemy vessel – Jack Larsson had accrued valuable experience in the art of outwitting the Royal Navy’s squadrons. Now that Britain was actually at war with America, he had become even more adept at avoiding detection.
Thus Larkspur had slipped past the British patrols with ease, presenting Hawkwood with the uncomfortable realization that he was America bound.
The one advantage of the month-long voyage was that it had given him time to gather as much information as he could on the fluctuating state of British–American hostilities.
In Paris, up-to-date intelligence had been impossible to glean. Even though European newspapers carried accounts of skirmishes between the two sides, by the time news from the other side of the Atlantic reached the French newspapers or English ones smuggled in from London, it had to be at least six weeks out of date, if not more; which had left Hawkwood with no option but to tap Captain Larsson and his crew without arousing their suspicions.
First he had to gain their confidence. Aided by fraudulently obtained boarding papers which confirmed his identity as one Captain Hooper – an alias he’d used to good effect on previous missions – Hawkwood had been able to pass himself off as an officer in the First Regiment, United States Riflemen, on recent detachment as an observer to a French Regiment of the Line in Spain.
To his relief, Larsson had accepted ‘Captain Hooper’s’ patchy knowledge of the war as a legacy of his months serving with Bonaparte’s army in the Peninsula; which had left them, at least as far as Larkspur’s skipper was concerned, as fellow Americans, united in their patriotism, desirous of fresh news and looking forward to a safe return home from foreign climes.
But while Larsson was cognisant with American naval exploits, he knew little of the land campaign; what meagre information he had on military activity on the western and northern fronts lacked credible detail. The last dispatch he’d been privy to had been dated mid-September, a week before Larkspur had sailed from Boston.
And anything could have happened since then.
And so, on the cold, misty morning when the dark smudge of the Massachusetts coast finally materialized over Larkspur’s larboard bow, while Hawkwood felt the relief surge through him at having made landfall, he knew he was still a long way from salvation.
He’d accepted from the outset that another sea voyage would be an inevitable consequence of his arrival in America, but the thought of trawling the docks in search of a berth on an east-bound merchantman in the vain hope that this time the vessel would be stopped and boarded by the Royal Navy was not an option he’d been prepared to consider; once bitten, twice shy in that regard.
The only viable alternative was to try to reach the British lines. If he could manage that, he would surely be able to secure passage to England.
To achieve that goal, however, he’d first needed to confirm the whereabouts of the most convenient battlefront; short of enlisting, the easiest way of obtaining that information without drawing undue attention to himself was to consult the newspapers. Thus after disembarking and spending a night in a dockside tavern recommended by Larsson, his first objective had been to find the nearest reading room.
At the Exchange Coffee House, arming himself with a selection of journals – archive copies as well as the latest editions – and securing a seat in a corner with his back to the wall, he’d spent the morning familiarizing himself with the state of the nation. The Boston Patriot and the Washington Intelligencer had both carried a variety of dispatches, ranging from accounts of skirmishes and copies of letters from front-line commanders to the Department of War, to lists of the dead and wounded, notifications of promotions, requests for militia volunteers and even reward notices for deserters. More informative, by far, however, had been The War, the aptly titled New York broadsheet, published specifically in order to cover the conflict.
Concentrating on the latter’s editorial, the first thing that struck him was that the tide of war had taken a much grimmer turn since he’d left France, resulting in grave consequences for both sides of the divide.
The main build-up of forces had been along the borderland between the United States and the Province of Upper Canada, down the line of the Great Lakes, Ontario and Erie, with British and American combatants facing each other along opposite shores of the Niagara and Detroit Rivers.
It had been the British who’d seized the initiative when, back in August, General Isaac Brock crossed the Canadian border and laid siege to Detroit, capturing the town and taking his opposite number, General William Hull, prisoner. There had been several cut-and-thrust sorties since then, with the British continuing to have the edge, culminating in the defeat of a recent American counter-invasion attempt into Canada near Queenston, during which the aforementioned General Brock had lost his life to a sniper’s bullet. But, so far, it looked as though neither side had been able to summon the troops or equipment to wage a decisive land battle.
While the red-coated regiments had shown their superiority in the land war, the same could not be said for the waterborne operations of the Provincial Marine, the Royal Navy force that patrolled the waterways of the St Lawrence River and the northern lakes. The Americans, against all odds, had managed to seal the Marine inside its main base of operations, the port of Kingston at the eastern end of Lake Ontario.
In sifting events into chronological order, it had soon become clear to Hawkwood that in the weeks since the debacles at Detroit and Queenston the Americans had been regrouping with a vengeance, strengthening their troop numbers along the St Lawrence and bolstering their main naval base at Sackets Harbor – across the water from Kingston – where a number of newly acquired merchant vessels had been converted into war ships and transports.
Emboldened by their new-found confidence, the Americans had also undertaken several small but telling raids against British supply convoys and fortifications along the various river routes. Rumours had even been revived which spoke of another possible invasion attempt on Canada.
Two maps displayed in a four-day-old edition of The War had eventually provided the information he’d been searching for: the disposition of British and American forces. One covered the operations around the Detroit River; the other reflected events that had taken place further east in New York State along the northern Canadian border and the Niagara Frontier. Studying the maps carefully while referring to the corresponding dispatches, it hadn’t taken long to deduce that if he was to try to reach the British lines, three escape routes were available to him – none of which looked in the least inviting. There was no need to make a decision there and then, however, because no matter which route he ended up taking, all roads led to one inevitable transit point:
Albany.
What had made him hesitate, though only for a moment, had been the fact that Albany had recently been designated the headquarters of the American Army’s Northern Command.
Deciding that was a bridge he’d have to cross when he came to it, Hawkwood had surreptitiously extracted the New York map page from the newspaper and folded it into his pocket. As he’d left the Exchange, one thought remained uppermost in his mind.
; No one had said it was going to be easy.
The coach had left Boston at the ungodly hour of two in the morning. His seaman’s bag having been swapped for a more convenient knapsack, Hawkwood had alighted from the coach at Albany’s State Street terminus at eight o’clock in the evening of the following day, a mere three days after his arrival on to American soil.
And more than twenty years since his departure.
The major caught the pot-man’s eye and raised his empty glass.
“I’ll have the same again and another brandy for my friend.” As the order was borne away, Quade began to massage his right thigh.
“How’s the leg?” Hawkwood asked.
“Stiff as a board and aching like the devil, but the surgeon told me I can probably return to duty by the end of the week.”
Quade didn’t look or sound that enthused by the prospect. From the exchanges they’d had so far, Hawkwood could understand why.
The drinks arrived.
“Whiskey for you, Major,” the pot-man said. “Brandy for the gentleman.”
If you only knew, Hawkwood thought. He took a swallow, savouring the warmth of the alcohol as it passed down his throat, and watched as Quade downed half the contents of the whiskey glass in one go.
“You were telling me about Queenston,” Hawkwood said.
Queenston was where the major had received his wounds. Not that Hawkwood was that curious as to how Quade had come by his injuries. He was more interested in what information the major might have regarding American and British troop emplacements.
The hamlet lay on the Canadian side of the Niagara River, as Hawkwood had discovered from his visit to the reading room. It was also home to a British garrison, one of a string of Crown fortifications that stretched from Niagara in the north, down to Fort Erie in the south, where the river began its spectacular journey to Lake Ontario. It was this length of frontier that formed the apogee to one of Hawkwood’s three possible escape routes.
“Goddamned militia!” Quade’s knuckles gleamed white as he gripped his glass. “Citizen soldiers? Useless bastards, more like! If there’d been a regular in command instead of that fool Van Rensselaer, it would’ve been different. That’s the trouble with political appointees, they’re easily pressured. He was told he had to attack Canada before winter. He should have stood his ground, told them it was too soon. It was the same with his officers. The idiots were demanding he either launch the invasion or let their men go home for Christmas! God save us! Is that any way to run an army? Well, is it?” The major took another swig. “D’you know there weren’t even enough boats for the crossing?”
Beads of perspiration clung to the major’s brow. Whether they were a result of his proximity to the hearth or due to the pain in his leg or the effects of the whiskey, it was hard to tell. Quade wasn’t slurring his words, so the sweat oozing from his pores could just as easily have been a physical manifestation of the resentment he was giving voice to – with scant regard for discretion. Though no one in the vicinity seemed to be paying either of them any attention.
“Is that so?” Hawkwood said.
“And half the vessels had lost their oars!”
From the tone of his voice, Quade sounded as if he was just getting started. Hawkwood braced himself to endure a lengthy rant about the inadequacies of the General Staff before any useful nuggets of information could be gleaned.
But as Quade’s story unfolded, it was difficult not to sympathize, even if he was the enemy. The newspaper accounts of the battle had made much of General Brock’s death, but now it emerged that much of the story had gone unreported. American losses had been considerable.
“I was in the second wave,” Quade continued, the edge in his voice as sharp as a blade. “We used a fisherman’s path to gain the Heights and take their battery – though not before they’d spiked their guns, which we could have done without. Victory should have been ours. With Brock dead, we thought they’d cut and run. What we hadn’t allowed for was his aide-de-camp, Sheaffe, bringing up reinforcements from Fort George or the arrival of his advance party – that breed, Norton, and his damned savages!”
Quade’s face twisted. “They’re what did for us. They occupied the woods at the summit; kept us pinned down with musket fire. All this while Van Rensselaer was still trying to rally his troops into crossing the river. Trouble was, the cowards had seen the redcoats advancing and they could hear the screams.”
“Screams?” Hawkwood said.
“Of the wounded …” Quade lifted his glass and took a swallow, “… and the natives. That’s when the militia told Rensselaer they weren’t prepared to fight on foreign soil! It was their cowardice that left us stranded. Once the rest of Sheaffe’s men arrived, we never stood a chance. Marched towards us as calm as you like. Stopped a hundred and fifty yards out. At that range our muskets were useless. When they fired their volley, we couldn’t see them for the smoke. It was only when it cleared that we realized they’d used it to hide their approach. That’s when they fixed bayonets and charged.”
The American grimaced. “And we ran; every man of us, like frightened jack rabbits. Only there was nowhere to go. We had the drop from the Heights at our backs and the British in front. We tried sending two men out with a white flag, but the savages cut them to pieces. By that time, most of our side were trying to climb down to the river, hoping they’d be able to swim across. You could hear their bodies hitting the rocks, even above the sound of the guns.”
Quade shook his head, as if to rid himself of the memory. “I don’t know how the hell I made it. Truth is, I was more fearful of what those savages would do if they caught me than I was of falling over the damned cliff. I thought the Mullahs were inventive when it came to torture, but they’re nothing compared to the Iroquois.”
The major cradled his glass in silence for a moment then his eyes met Hawkwood’s. “I took a musket ball in the side and that sent me tumbling. Broke the bone when I landed. One of my sergeants hauled me into the water. Funny thing is, it was one of those missing oars that saved us. We found it adrift on the current and used it to float back to our own shore.”
Quade extended his injured limb and resumed kneading the muscle above his knee. “We left a thousand men behind. It wasn’t a retreat, it was a rout, plain and simple. No other word for it.”
The major had long legs. He was equal to Hawkwood in height and about the same age, give or take a year, though his dark hair was shorter, cut back from a widow’s peak and greying at a faster rate. There was also a gaunt aspect to his features, which, Hawkwood thought, could have been due to his injury. Or it could have been from the trauma of reliving his ordeal. That might also have accounted for the haunted look in his eyes.
It occurred to Hawkwood that the more the major drank, the more his looks matched his mood. For while the alcohol appeared to be having little effect on either his balance or his vocabulary, it grew apparent that he was becoming more morose with each sip. Hawkwood suspected that if Quade were to drink to excess he would not be a happy drunk.
Men like Quade were nothing new; officers unwilling to accept their own failings while finding constant fault with others, usually men of a more senior rank. Though if half of what Quade had told him was true, it was small wonder the man was feeling bloody. The American army appeared to be in a sorry state, with a lack of experienced soldiers of all ranks, not to mention supplies and weaponry and even horses for their recently created dragoon regiments.
According to Quade, some enlisted men were having to fight in bare feet because there was a shortage of boots. The major’s own uniform jacket was brown and not the regulation blue because there was a dearth of indigo cloth.
Hawkwood tried to imagine what the British army would do if there wasn’t enough scarlet weave. It didn’t bear thinking about. But then, until this latest conflict, the Americans hadn’t been involved in a war on home soil since gaining their independence. Little wonder they were at a disadvantage when they were trying to reb
uild their army.
The major was from Virginian military stock. It had been the young Quade’s intention to study artillery and engineering at Fort Clinton, until his father advised him that a new professional army was being formed to combat the threat from the north-western Indian tribes who, a year previously in a bloody battle on the Wabash River, had inflicted the greatest defeat upon the United States Army by a native foe. Quade had been one of the United States Legion’s first recruits.
“We got our revenge at Fallen Timbers,” he told Hawkwood. “They had no option after that. They had to sign the damned peace treaty.”
Hawkwood presumed that Fallen Timbers was a battle the Indians had lost. Quade obviously expected him to know about it. Probably best, Hawkwood thought, to remain silent and not disabuse the major of that particular notion.
The Mullahs Quade had referred to were the Berber Muslims. Hawkwood didn’t know much about them either, though he did recall Larkspur’s skipper referring to a war the Americans had fought in the Mediterranean some seven or eight years before against North African pirates.
Following the Legion’s disbanding, Quade had switched his allegiance to the newly resurrected Marine Corps. The Corps had been looking for officers and with the Legion’s mission against the tribes fulfilled, Quade had seen an opportunity for advancement. Since then, by his own admission, the variety of enemy he’d fought against had exceeded that of his father and grandfather.
The major shook his head wearily. “If I’d had any sense, I’d have ignored the call. My ship was in Boston when I heard they were in need of serving officers. Men with experience of engaging with irregulars were especially in demand. I guessed that with my time in the Legion and fighting the Berbers, I had what they were looking for, so I offered my services.”
He gave a rueful smile. “Saw it as the lesser of two evils, my chance to get back to dry land. I’m no sailor, damn it. I always was prone to sea-sickness. Not so good for a Marine, as I’m sure you’ll agree.” He massaged his knee once more. “And look where it got me. That damned river was freezing; it’s a wonder I didn’t come down with pneumonia.”