Kate gave her a contemptuous look. “He won’t dare touch me.”
Fifteen minutes down the main road she encountered Colonel Slocum and his two hundred men. They tramped along looking more like a mob than a regiment, their guns perched at odd angles on their shoulders, their ranks indiscernible. Slocum rode a small sorrel horse, not much bigger than a pony, at the head of the column. Behind him stumbled George Kennedy, his hands tied to a rope attached to Slocum’s saddle. Kennedy - had already been badly beaten. He had lost half his front teeth. Blood drooled from a swollen eye, a smashed nose. Dragging him on the rope, Slocum spurred his horse into Kate’s path.
“Where the devil do you think you’re going, Miss Stapleton?”
“Home.”
“You are like hell. You’re under arrest. We caught this traitor visiting his mama and papa and he told us all about you.”
Slocum reached out to grab her bridle. She lashed his hand with her riding crop. Several men from the column lunged toward her. She whipped the first man in the face with the crop and he dodged away with a howl of pain. The man behind him got a backhand slash as she spurred her horse. He sprang forward with a wild snort, knocked Slocum’s much smaller animal out of the way, and leaped a stone fence between the road and some open pasture. Kate gave him his head and he streaked across the lush green grass, soared over another fence, and regained the road about a quarter of a mile beyond Slocum’s column. No one tried to pursue her; Slocum had the only horse.
At first Kate rode in a daze of fright and anger. By the time she reached Kemble Manor, she was calmer and remembered the letter that Anthony had given her. She rode up the drive to deliver it. Caroline met her in the center hall. The doors to the north and south parlors and the library were shut, creating a strange gloom for midday.
“Mr. Skinner is indisposed,” Caroline said. “I will take the letter for him. Where did you get it? Did Anthony come to - to your house?”
“No. I went to him. We spent the night at the tavern in Shrewsbury.”
“Is that wise, Kate? Anthony is - a public enemy. There are men on the other side - our side - who may use you to attack him.”
“Let them try.”
Kate described her encounter with Slocum and his men on the Shrewsbury road. For her it was a clash between Stapleton pride and Slocum poltroonery, between ideal love and the gross mob.
Caroline saw there was no point in trying to teach Kate political caution. “There’s another reason for second thoughts, Kate. Your father came here yesterday to ask me to speak to you. I’ve never seen him so - so unhappy.”
“Really? An amazing performance for a man who did not shed a tear over the body of his wife.”
Kate was almost as shocked by these words as Caroline. They revealed how much Anthony Skinner was costing her. Suddenly she was back in the rose garden beside her father, talking about love and freedom. Did following her mother’s code mean she had to hate this man, who had done so much to fill her life with happiness? For a moment she almost took back the words.
But Caroline could not avoid a harsh reproach. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Kate. A man like your father does not weep in public.”
The hint of condescension as Kate heard it - the adult talking to the child - gave her the excuse she needed to lose her temper. “I never thought I’d hear such sentimental gibberish from you, Aunt Caroline.”
“Kate - I’m twice your age.”
“I don’t think that gives you any right to lecture me. I may be a fool. But at least when I die I will have this consolation. I tried to love someone. I took the risk. I gave myself to him - with my whole heart.”
“I didn’t know you were so cruel, Kate.”
“Why not? It’s the way of the world.”
With an arrogance she did not really feel, Kate strode to the door and looked back at the small figure of her aunt in the shadowed hall. Maybe Anthony was right. Maybe all these old people were fading away, their day done. Kemble said the same thing. But whom could you trust, what could you follow? Nothing but her own uncertain heart, so full of love last night, now charged with nothing but venom.
“I feel sorry for you, Aunt Caroline, I really do.”
THAT BITTER EXCHANGE with Kate triggered a night of anguished insomnia for Caroline Skinner. It exposed, with the savage economy of a saber stroke, all the dimensions of her unhappy marriage. Dawn was tingeing the windows with gray, the first birds were twittering, and still sleep refused to close her aching eyes. In the next room, she heard her husband’s big feet shuffling across the floor, then the inevitable coughing, spitting, throat clearing, and other physical sounds of the morning. The manor house suddenly became a huge cage in which she was trapped forever. Hastily throwing on a robe, she fled into the park behind the house. Down a curving path she ran, tears streaming down her cheeks, until she reached a bluff overlooking the bay. The sun had not yet started to rise. The great sweep of water was still a murky gulf.
Across the bay came a strange rumble. What was it? A few stars still glittered in the pale cloudless sky. It was not a storm. Then she knew. The British and the Americans were fighting on Long Island. The rumble was cannon fire. She went back to her room, put on her riding habit, and rode over to our house for breakfast. It was an easy way to avoid her husband and his inevitable predictions of a royal victory.
There was another reason - in fact two other reasons for her visit. My father was still immured with his lawbooks, pondering the legality of independence. Most of the lawyers in Monmouth and Middlesex counties refused to recognize it, and had withdrawn from practice in the courts which had begun to function under our new state constitution. Caroline had spent more than a few hours arguing with him about this boycott and his attitude toward the rebellion. Although he was her uncle, only a dozen or so years separated them in age, and they had long been intellectual companions, exchanging books and ideas. They may also have been drawn together by their mutual unhappiness in marriage. Now Caroline pointed toward the distant cannon and told him that the sound made his continued hesitation unthinkable. War had begun.
My father smiled and told her that the war had begun a year ago. Caroline shook her head. “No. That was a war with New England. This, is a war with America. King George and his Parliament are making independence a necessity.”
My mother warned Caroline that she was talking treason. “Not any more,” Caroline replied.
At the end of a very argumentative breakfast, she asked to see my father privately about a “family legal problem.” They adjourned to his study, leaving my mother almost expiring with curiosity. In the study, Caroline told my father about Kate’s rendezvous with Anthony Skinner and her encounter with Slocum. “I fear the worst,” she said. “Has she broken a law?”
“As yet, no law against treason has been passed by the legislature. But she could be punished under several statutes against public lewdness.”
“If she is accused - will you defend her?”
My father hesitated, as usual. To appear before rebel judges would be a tacit acknowledgment of independence. His glance wandered uneasily toward the dining room, where my mother was undoubtedly still sitting over her coffee. “Yes,” he said.
At Liberty Tavern, Caroline’s fears were proving to be prescient. A few hours after she saw my father, Daniel Slocum strode into the taproom with a warrant for Kate’s arrest. It bad been signed by one of his recently elected judges. With it was a deposition from the landlady of the Shrewsbury tavern stating that Kate had spent the night there with Anthony Skinner.
Jonathan Gifford studied the accusing documents and struggled to control a mixture of anger and shame. “This has nothing to do with the war, Slocum.”
“It has everything to do with it,” Slocum said. “You know as well as I do that your bitch of a stepdaughter set Skinner free. Now she’s down there in Shrewsbury flaunting her tail with him, and like as not acting as his courier. She’s turned an enemy loose at our backs at the very tim
e that we need every man to fight the ones that are likely to be at our throats if the news from Long Island is bad. We are going to make an example of her, by God, we are going to show everyone south of the Raritan what it means to truck with traitors.”
Jonathan Gifford looked past Slocum at the men in the taproom. He saw fear and anger on almost every face. Behind their confident talk, the independence men were haunted by a dread suspicion that the British army was unbeatable. It was inevitable. For decades, Americans had toasted and boasted the prowess of the English soldier. He turned to Barney McGovern. “You had better ask Kate to come up here,” he said.
Captain Gifford and Colonel Slocum waited in a silence charged with mutual dislike until Kate appeared. She was wearing an old blue housedress and only one petticoat. I was there and saw the lascivious light in too many eyes at the glimpse of Kate’s supple body beneath the carelessly flowing cloth as she strode into the room. She stood before Slocum, her back straight as an Indian’s, her proud chin high.
“Katherine Stapleton,” Slocum said, “I have been ordered by the magistrates of this county to place you under arrest.”
“What for?”
“Did you or did you not spend the night with Anthony Skinner at the tavern in Shrewsbury?”
“That is none of your goddamn business,” Kate said, color suffusing her cheeks.
“It is my business if anyone in this county, male or female, trafficks with the enemy.”
“If there is an enemy around here, it is you.”
“You are calling an officer in the service of the honorable Provincial Congress of the state of New Jersey an enemy?” Slocum roared. “You are condemning yourself out of your own mouth, miss. Why don’t you make a full confession here and now? We know you helped Skinner escape.”
Kate lost all control of her temper. It was exactly what Slocum was hoping she would do. In sixty seconds, all Jonathan Gifford’s efforts to protect her lay in ruins.
“I helped him escape because I love him. I went to him in Shrewsbury because I love him. You can do what you want to me. I’m not afraid of you or any of your stupid vicious friends.”
“Maybe we shall teach you some fear before long,” Slocum said .
“The Good Book tells us it is the beginning of wisdom. Mr. Gifford, you are hereby ordered to confine this girl in the same room where you previously confined her paramour with so little success. If she escapes, you will be responsible.”
“I won’t have to escape. A man with more courage than you, with more courage than any of you, will rescue me,” Kate said, making enemies of everyone in the taproom with one fiery glance.
“If be does, he will have to be bulletproof,” Slocum said. “There will be a company of militiamen guarding this tavern day and night. I hope he tries it. We will have no more worries about Mr. Skinner.”
By the time Caroline and my father arrived at the tavern, Kate was a prisoner. Jonathan Gifford was grateful for my father’s offer to defend her. He looked into Caroline’s haggard face and thought he saw the same concern there that was tormenting him. He asked her to talk to Kate. But Caroline did not have the strength for another encounter with her niece. For a moment she struggled with a wish to tell him what Kate had said to her at Kemble Manor on the way back from Shrewsbury. But why should she expect sympathy from him? Her unhappiness was none of his business.
“I think it would be better if you tried to draw her out yourself. She sees me as a kind of model - of what she despises.”
Jonathan Gifford was baffled by this statement. He sensed an unhappiness in Caroline Skinner’s voice that went beyond Kate’s dilemma. But there was no time to explore it now. He turned to my father.
“It’s more important for her to talk with you, Mr. Kemble. Take you up to her.”
A half-hour later, my father returned to Captain Gifford’s office, his hands spread wide with hopelessness and helplessness. “She has no interest in defending herself. She will neither let me plead her guilty nor testify in her own defense. She intends to remain silent.”
“Then she must learn the hard way. That seems to be the way women must learn everything,” Caroline said.
“Women and men,” Jonathan Gifford said.
That evening, Jonathan Gifford brought Kate her supper. She sat by the window staring emptily into the darkness. In profile, Kate looked so much like her mother he thought for a moment he could not bear it. Below in the tavern yard militiamen on guard duty guffawed over some joke. Their coarse laughter gnawed at Jonathan Gifford’s. nerves. They were probably talking about her.
“I think you’ll like this, Kate,” be said, removing the covers, “cold lobster salad with your favorite India relish, iced tea.”
“Take it away. I’m not hungry.”
“Do you really think he’ll try to rescue you, Kate?”
“Yes.”
“How many men does he have?”
“I don’t know.” She thought for a moment. “About thirty.”
“He can’t do it. Slocum is using you for bait, hoping he’ll try. Why did you tell them everything, Kate? They never could have convicted you if – ”
Like the messenger who aroused the King’s wrath with bad news, Jonathan Gifford became the focus of Kate’s rage for telling her the truth. She suddenly wanted to hurt him as much as he had inadvertently hurt her.
“I’m not a hypocrite like everyone else around here.”
“Kate - I’m trying to help you.”
“No you’re not. You don’t care about me. You don’t care about anyone or anything but this damned tavern and your reputation as an ex-officer and gentleman. To protect those two things you’ll let me go to the whipping post. Just as you let Mother go to Antigua.”
“For God’s sake, Kate, don’t sit in judgment on me.”
“I will sit in judgment on you. Because I know the truth. You’re like all the rest of them, playing stupid games with guns, worrying day and night about your reputation, your property, while women die all around you. Die from want of love. Because you don’t care about it.”
“That’s not true, Kate. I failed your mother. I don’t know exactly how. But I tried - I tried to make it up with you. I thought between us - there was a love.”
In the small still room, Kate saw an incredible sight. Jonathan Gifford, the man of iron self-control, was weeping. The shock almost freed her from her despair. She leaped up, crying: “There was - there is - I do love you. Or I did.”
“Then how can you say these things?”
She wanted to fling herself into his arms, to beg his forgiveness, to let him hold her as he often did after one of her tantrums when she was a child. But she was a child no longer. Sadly, she touched his wet check.
“I’m sorry. I guess I’m my mother’s daughter. Forget about me, Father. I’m not worth crying over.”
“Kate!” His big hands seized her arms and gave her a shake that almost made her neck snap. “Don’t value yourself so low. Your mother was one person - you’re another person - separate - different from her.”
She shook her head and turned away from him to stare into the darkness again. Another burst of laughter from the militiamen rose out of the night.
Jonathan Gifford spent an hour beside the brook regaining control of himself. Then he went to his office and wrote a letter to Anthony Skinner, telling him what Kate was facing. “She has acted out of a love for you that is more pure and disinterested than a man can conceive. She clings to the hope that you will somehow rescue her. I don’t think you have a chance of doing such a thing. Slocum probably has guards posted on all the roads from Shrewsbury. From what I hear, your numbers are too small to fight him. There is only one way that you can shield Kate - by surrendering yourself a prisoner of war and testifying at her trial. Even her part in your escape could be softened considerably if you told the judges that you played upon her emotions.”
Jonathan Gifford dispatched Barney McGovern to Shrewsbury with orders to deliver this lette
r to Skinner personally. He gave him enough money to bribe half the town into guiding him to Skinner’s camp. Captain Gifford spent the night pacing his greenhouse, too agitated even to work on his roses. About an hour before dawn, Barney rapped on the door. The sour look on his face announced failure even before he spoke.
“He read your letter and talked it over with his friends. I could hear them clear enough outside the tent, though they didn’t know it. They decided it might be good business for them, if the rebels beat a woman. Then Skinner came back and gave me a lot of malarkey about not trusting Slocum and sent me off. If I had a gun with me, I think I might have shot the bastard and taken a chance on running for the swamp.”
Early the next morning a dispatch rider from Amboy stopped at Liberty Tavern with grim news. The Americans had taken a terrible beating on Long Island. It was the beginning of that series of disasters in Washington’s defense of New York that shook the nerve of almost every independence man in our district. As far as Kate was concerned, it was not a good omen. The possibility of defeat, disgrace, aroused furious rage in many backers of the rebellion, particularly among the Slocums and their followers.
Later that morning, three newly elected judges, Lemuel Peters, Ambrose Cotter, and Samuel Slocum, the Colonel’s brother, arrived with Colonel Slocum and a military escort. They formed a three-judge court in Liberty Tavern’s assembly room.
My father tried to defend. Kate by asking for a specific indictment under the law. Since the state had not yet passed a law against treason, he was hoping to persuade the judges to dismiss the case. But his legal expertise was useless before Slocum’s judges. The Colonel had told them to convict Kate and they were determined to do so, no matter what the law said. Lemuel Peters declared the court was sitting as a kind of interim Committee of Safety. There was no doubt that the legislature was planning to pass a law against treason and trafficking with the enemy. In the meantime, public order must be maintained. Peters rebuked my father for attempting to use “legal tricks” to defend an enemy of the people. My father was left momentarily speechless to hear the bench so flagrantly prejudging the case. He could only shrug his shoulders, sit down, and let the charade begin.
The Heart of Liberty Page 18