After a dinner of roast sweetbreads, served with mushroom catsup, cold hare pie, and potted swan, stewed in claret with several pounds of fresh butter, the Captain confessed that New Jersey cooking was almost the equal of Virginia. He refused to yield the “almost.” Arguing cheerfully, the young couple went for a stroll along the bank of the brook. Jonathan Gifford invited Barney McGovern to sit down with him and finish a second bottle of Madeira. He told Barney what Captain Fleming had just told him about the flying camp planned for Perth Amboy.
“The war is getting closer and closer, Barney. Which side are you on?”
“Can an Irishman stand anywhere but with the Americans? Their cause is Ireland’s cause, Captain. If I was ten years younger and I didn’t think you needed me here I’d be up there in the Canadian woods with the rest of the boys.”
“I’m glad you’re not ten years younger.”
“Twill be hard to be neutral, Captain.”
“I know it, Barney.”
But what should a man do if he was neutral? If his feelings were canceled by opposing memories, by his perpetual sense of being a stranger in every country? What did he owe Ireland? Pity, nothing more. The land of his birth, of his mother’s people, to be sure. But the ties of blood were more than balanced by his father’s cold British fluids.
Barney went back to work in the taproom. Jonathan Gifford got out his maps of North America, drawn by his old friend Captain John Montresor of the British Army Engineers. For a long time he sat there studying the geography of New York and New Jersey. It was almost twilight when Kate wandered into the room and lit an oil lamp. She teased him about drinking so much Madeira that he thought he could read in the dark. Then she drew aside the gauzy scarf around her throat and said-, “Look.”
Around her neck was a small gold locket with some lovely filigree work on the cover.
“A gift from the Captain?”
“He bought it in New York. He was going to send it to a young lady in Virginia. But he would rather have me wear it.”
Kate strolled to a mirror to study it triumphantly. She seemed more exultant than ecstatic, prouder of it as a trophy than as a pledge of love. Did she suspect what he suspected - that Captain Fleming had bought a half dozen of these lockets? No, Jonathan Gifford decided. Kate always saw herself as an actress in a throbbing drama, a character in a pulsating novel. She had no doubts or hesitations. It was part of her ability to communicate joy, excitement, to the people around her. Looking at her as she fingered the locket, Jonathan Gifford was shaken by an immense fathering love. He yearned to protect her from the hurricane that was whirling toward them. How could he do it? Was Captain John Fleming any safer than Anthony Skinner? Only by a few degrees, measured on the maps of his concern. It was the best he could do. Accept it, he told himself, it was better than nothing.
Above all, it was better than not caring. It was better than turning his face away, walking out of their lives. He had confronted that possibility the day he had found the farewell note in Sarah’s bedroom, the warning plea to let her go unhindered. He had confronted it again when they brought her body home in the sealed, lead-lined coffin. He had seen the baffled pain on the faces of Kate and Kemble and said no. He had vowed he would live out the terms of his love for them - and for Sarah, in memory of that first golden year - no matter what failures engulfed him. It was too late to start a new life, to find a new circle of love. More important, he was held here by love, and by the challenge in those bitter words: I loved you, but not with my whole heart. Just as you loved me. There was no way to defeat that monster but by living his answer, day by day.
FOR THE FIRST night in weeks, Jonathan Gifford slept deeply and dreamlessly. Dawn did not find him in his greenhouse, hissing over his roses. He might have slept past breakfast. But a muscular hand shook his shoulder at six-thirty. Black Sam’s deep, dark voice penetrated his sleep like a flock of migratory birds plunging down a sunlit sky.
“Captain, Captain, something’s happened. Something mighty bad.”
“What?” he said, sitting up and involuntarily flinging aside his nightcap.
“Those army horses that Captain Fleming left. Someone cut their throats.”
In three minutes, Jonathan Gifford’ was in the barn. One of the horses, a chestnut mare, was still alive. But with every breath more blood gushed from the gaping slash. One mute eye stared up at Jonathan Gifford, wide with pleading terror.
“They must have done it just before dawn,” Sam said. “Else she wouldn’t be still alive.”
“Is Barney up?”
“Just rising, I expect.”
“Get him out here. Saddle three horses. Get three muskets, ammunition, and powder from the armory.”
In ten minutes they were riding hard down the Shrewsbury road. They met four or five hired hands trudging to their farms. None of them had seen a group of men, say three or four, armed or unarmed. There had to be a group, Jonathan Gifford reasoned, because the horses were in adjoining stalls and would have been noisily terrified if a single man had clone the job. There bad been enough men to take up positions beside each horse and at a signal do the vicious deed simultaneously.
They swung down back roads and rode in a wide semicircle around Strangers’ Resort. They met only a few soldiers going home on leave, an occasional farmer driving cows or pigs to the Amboy market, and a peddler or two. By ten o’clock they were well to the northwest of the tavern. Reluctantly they turned their horses’ heads homeward. The May sun blazed down on them from the deep blue sky. They were hot, weary, and thoroughly disgruntled when they heard hoofbeats and a cheerful voice calling to them. Kemble, out for the morning ride that was part of Dr. Davie’s program for rebuilding his health, was soon cantering beside them. His good cheer vanished when he heard their story. He had seen no one suspicious on the road between them and Elizabethtown.
“We may yet run them down,” Jonathan Gifford said. As he spoke, they rounded a bend in the road and saw five men in brown loose-fitting homespun farm clothes trudging toward them. They were barefoot and their faces were shaded by floppy, wide-brimmed work hats. Each carried a gun. Not until the man in the center of the line looked up at them did Jonathan Gifford recognize Joshua Bellows, his oldest son George, his two brothers Ben and Abel, and their cousin Harold. The Bellowses owned two middling farms on the north side of Kemble Manor. They were almost family retainers, grinding all their corn and wheat at the manor mill and selling their surplus with Squire Skinner at the best price he could get in Amboy or New York.
The Bellowses drew off the road as Jonathan Gifford and his party approached them. “Good morning, Josh,” said the Captain. “You look like you’ve been on the road a good while.”
“Went out for some game, rambled farther than we thought. Ain’t that right?” Joshua Bellows said, glancing quickly at the rest of the family. They nodded and muttered agreement. He looked up at Jonathan Gifford again, a triumphant smile on his bony, hollow-checked face. They were ready for trouble, Jonathan Gifford thought. George Bellows, known as Pork for the size of his belly, had a finger on the trigger of his musket.
“What were you hunting?” Jonathan Gifford said.
“Why pheasant, squirrel, maybe a deer - anything we could shoot. ‘Twasn’t our lucky day, was it, lads?”
Again there was this nervous glance that demanded assent from the rest of the family.
“Five guns and you couldn’t get a single bird? That’s pretty poor shooting. You didn’t see anybody- on the road who looked suspicious, did you? Someone killed four horses in my barn last night. They belonged to the Continental army.”
“Is that a fact?” said Joshua Bellows. He almost smiled, but thought better of it. “Why, Captain,” he said, “I’m surprised you even let them put such animals in your barn. That could get you in a peck of trouble when the King’s troops come to put down this here unnatural rebellion.”
“You think so?”
“Why, yes, I do. Maybe the ones who done that thing
to them horses are your best friends. That could be, Captain. At a time like this it’s hard. to tell your friends from your enemies.”
“That’s an interesting thought,” Jonathan Gifford said. He swung his horse’s head into the road and said, “Have a good day, neighbors.”
“Same to you, Captain.”
As they cantered away, Kemble caught up to his stepfather. “He did it. Why didn’t you arrest him? He was practically laughing in your face.”
“They had five guns. We had three.”
“They’d never dare to use their guns on you. Or me.”
“Maybe not,” Jonathan Gifford said with that hard common sense that repeatedly irritated Kemble. “But if they did, we’d never have the chance to repeat the mistake.”
Kemble did not say another word on the ride home. His father sensed a sullen accusation in his silence. There was considerable ground for Kemble’s assumption that the Bellowses would never dare to shoot a Stapleton. In our era of ever growing democracy, it is difficult to remember how much the America of 1776 was dominated by an elite group of families in every colony. Kemble was the only surviving Stapleton male in our part of the colony, but the family was equally powerful in north Jersey. His father’s first cousin, Hugh Stapleton, was a leading Whig in Bergen County. Eventually he became a delegate to the Continental Congress.
Back at the tavern, Jonathan Gifford sent Sam to Perth Amboy with a letter for Captain Fleming, telling him- what had happened and offering to pay for the dead horses. He assured the young Virginian that from now on the barn would be locked and guarded at night. Captain Fleming returned a hastily scribbled note that he had no horses to spare. He hoped that Jonathan Gifford would lend his own horses to the army, if necessary. Captain Fleming added that he was sure the incident would persuade General Mercer to take strong steps against the Tories in the area. Just what these would be, he did not know. They only had a single regiment of three hundred men and a hundred of these were sick with camp fever, dysentery, and other “diseases of the season.”
The last line of the note was written in a firmer, less agitated hand. My warmest respects to Miss Kate. Jonathan Gifford showed it to her. She decided to be cross about it. “Oh, la, am I supposed to be impressed? Twenty lines about dead horses and guard boats and Tories and a single line admitting that I do, after all, exist.”
Kemble, who had heard a good deal about Captain Fleming by now, looked surly. But Jonathan Gifford silenced him with a warning wave of his hand and went up to the tavern to help Barney in the taproom. It was Saturday, and the place was full of farmers and hired hands and even a few slaves, who picked up pocket money working in the neighborhood on their days off. Behind the bar, Barney McGovern was busy mixing a huge pitcher of rumfustian.
“George Bellows over there at the Squire’s table paid for his first round with this,” Barney said.
He took a gold coin from his waistcoat pocket and slid it down the recessed shelf behind the bar. It gleamed dully in the shadow.
“Fresh minted in England this year, I’ll bet on it. “Where would he get that, Captain?”
“I don’t know,” Jonathan Gifford said.
He took the jug of rumfustian over to the table. Bellows leered up at him. He had a wide flabby mouth and a button nose that seemed to sink into the mottled flesh of his face.
“What do you think, Captain,” he said, “do you think the Yankees will stand against the King’s troops? I say they’ll run away as fast as their legs can carry them - like they did at Bunker Hill.”
“They left a good many British unable to run after them,” Jonathan Gifford said.
“You must have lost a friend or two in that fight, Captain.”
“I did.”
“Yet you side with these people. It seems to me a soldier would be fierce for revenge.”
“I’m not a soldier any more.”
“But you know the profession. You could train other men. Do you know the definition of a trimmer, Captain?”
“No.”
“A man who thinks he can throw his slops to windward in a gale.”
The remark brought roars of laughter from the ten or twelve drinkers clustered around the Squire’s table. Jonathan Gifford noted that several of the laughing men were shippers and wagon masters - important people if an army planned to operate in New Jersey. The man sitting next to Bellows, a razor-faced Yankee type named Cotton, owned three or four coasting sloops. A very useful fellow to know if you wanted to visit British ships in New York Harbor.
Bellows’ crafty eyes suddenly shifted from Jonathan Gifford to a man standing to his left, behind him. “Ah, Col - Mr. Skinner, bow are you this day in the merry month?”
Jonathan Gifford turned to find himself gazing into Anthony Skinner’s saturnine face. “I’m not too well,” he said in a voice that could be heard throughout the taproom. “I have just been witness to a terrible sight. Governor Franklin is on the New Brunswick road with an armed guard around him. He is being taken before a committee of Congress in Princeton to be condemned like a common thief.”
An excited discussion of this news filled the taproom for the rest of the day. Sympathy for the governor was widespread. Others felt that he had forfeited any right to indulgence by his refusal to accept the offer from Congress to live as a paroled neutral on his farm.
“There will be no way for a man to remain neutral,” Anthony Skinner said. “You know as well as I do that the Congress will vote for independence in a few weeks. The violents rule it as absolutely as the Sultan of Turkey rules Constantinople. After they play that damnable card - the last one in their deck - there can be no neutrals. There will only be enemies of the King and supporters of the King. Let me tell you something, gentlemen. I have traveled a good deal around England, Ireland, and Scotland. I have seen what happens to enemies of the King - believe me, I know what I say. His Majesty’s vengeance is harsh - and his generosity is great.”
At the bar, Barney McGovern whispered in Jonathan Gifford’s ear. “That’s a recruiting speech if I ever heard one.”
Jonathan Gifford nodded. He was more interested in assessing Anthony Skinner’s impact on the crowd. Standing there, backed by the burly Bellows and a dozen other men, he looked unbeatable. No one contradicted him. But Jonathan Gifford could see something that Anthony Skinner missed. At least half the faces in the room were in angry disagreement with him. The rest lacked the fervor with which he damned a declaration of independence. They acknowledged what he was saying, with glum nods at best. The men who wanted independence were ready to fight for it. Those who disliked the idea opposed it for negative reasons - it would start a war - it opened up an unknown, possibly dangerous future. But they did not hate it. They too were Americans. They shared the undercurrent of resentment at the inferiority implied in words like “colony” and “mother country.” The words no longer made sense. America was too big, too rich, to accept an inferior status. It would take a subtle, skillful politician to arouse these cautious men. Jonathan Gifford did not think Anthony Skinner was that politician. He was too angry, too eager for battle.
The rest of May and the first glowing weeks of June slipped by like pages in a book of fables. Unreality permeated the days and nights. When the Jersey wagons with their enormous wheels and teams of four to six horses rolled to a stop in front of the tavern, the travelers who debarked were surrounded by questioners demanding the latest news from Philadelphia or New York. The wagons were called flying machines by their owner, John Mercereau, who boasted in the newspapers of his ability to get you from Philadelphia to New York in a day and a half. We could depend on our travelers telling us fresh news, if they had any.
But our favorite source of information was our post rider, Abel Aikin. Abel’s costume was unique. It was usually a blue coat with yellow buttons, a scarlet waistcoat, blue yarn stockings, leather breeches, all topped by a red wig and a blue cocked hat. When he rode on horseback, his saddlebags were stuffed with enough packages and parcels to spav
in his poor old mare, all private commissions by which Abel supplemented his small salary. The mare knew the way better than Abel, permitting him to knit stockings and sweaters as he rode.
Abel liked to torment us with hints and rumors. He had his choice of dozens in the month of June 1776. He filled our ears with bad news from the south. The British had a fleet and army poised to attack Charleston, South Carolina. Virginia had introduced a resolution for independence, but fears for the fate of Carolina prompted their convention to vote it down. Charleston was preparing to buy off the British fleet by paying the admiral an immense ransom. All this while he sat in the saddle, needles clicking away. In the tavern, his tongue loosened by free grog, he would admit it was all hearsay.
As we pieced it together from Abel and from soldier and civilian travelers, the news was confusing and alarming. There seemed to be no agreement on independence in Congress. There was, in fact, strong talk of Pennsylvania abandoning the confederation and New York and South Carolina following the Quaker colony. In New Jersey, the Provincial Congress was busy. It resolved by a vote of 54 to 3 to adopt a constitution for the state and a ten-man committee was appointed to write it. It sent a new delegation to the Continental Congress. All were vigorous independence men.
But the most exciting news in that tormenting month came from New York. At about five o’clock on June 29, an army dispatch rider rode an exhausted horse into the tavern yard and asked for a drink of grog and a fresh mount. “The British fleet’s in New York Harbor,” he said. “There must be three, four hundred ships. It looks like all London is afloat.”
“Where are they landing?” Jonathan Gifford asked as Sam led a fresh horse from the barn.
“On Staten Island. They’ve taken it without firing a shot. That damn nest of Tories greeted them with open arms.”
The Heart of Liberty Page 10