In the darkness she barely noticed the ship they were boarding. Not until she was sitting on a hard chair in the corner of a tiny cabin did she begin to wonder about its size. Mail packets were ocean-going vessels. This was no more than a fishing smack. “Is this the packet?” she asked.
No one answered her. On deck she could hear the captain giving orders to cast off the bow and stem lines.
“Mr. Skinner,” she said, “where are we going?”
She walked to the cabin door. Charles Skinner rose from the table in the center of the cabin and blocked her passage. “We are meeting the packet off Sandy Hook tomorrow morning,” he said. “We have a debt we must settle in New Jersey.”
“A debt? Couldn’t you leave the money in New York?”
“This is not a debt that can be settled with money,” Anthony said. “Only with these.”
He took the lamp from its socket on the table and turned to the bulkhead of the cabin. Caroline saw a rack of gleaming muskets.
The cabin door opened and three men joined the Skinners at the small table. Two were young, squat and thick-bodied, with plain hard faces. They wore greasy sailors’ clothing. The third was a big black with a shaved skull and the brand of a runaway slave on his cheek.
“Here is your money, lads,” Anthony Skinner said, and counted fifteen guineas into their grimy, outstretched hands. “There’s five more for each of you if you do the job well.”
“What are you going to do, Anthony?” Caroline asked.
“We are going to settle our debt with your friend, Captain Gifford,” Anthony said.
“Anthony - he saved your life.”
“Which proves he is a fool - as well as a whoremaster.”
“Mr. Skinner. You won’t let him do this.”
For a moment shame flickered in Charles. Skinner’s eyes. Then his face became as cold and empty as the faces of the three men with the guineas in their hands. He took a flask from the inside pocket of his coat and handed it to the big black. “Drink up,” he said. “It will steady your aim.”
The ship pitched and rolled wildly as it raced before a strong northeast wind. Caroline sat there listening to Anthony Skinner describe his plan with the help of a map of the Jersey coast. They did not bother to explain it to her. But it was not difficult to grasp. They had found a way to lure Jonathan Gifford to the shore. They were going to wait for him in the marsh grass below Garret Hill and kill him.
Kemble and I left Liberty Tavern about four a.m. Jonathan Gifford, staring sleeplessly into the darkness, heard our hoofbeats. He thought nothing of it. Travelers often left the tavern before dawn to catch stage boats from Amboy. But the sound of our horses’ hoofs made him decide to do something he had been mulling for two days. He had sent Barney to Amboy to find out when the next packet sailed to England. Today, May 6, was the day. It would be painful to stand on Garret Hill and watch the ship cross the bar at Sandy Hook. But he hoped with the aid of the coast watcher’s telescope that he might catch a last glimpse of Caroline standing on the stem looking at the coast of home.
Kemble and I arrived at Garret Hill in time to see the sun rise from behind a bank of gray northeast storm clouds far out on the Atlantic. The waters of the bay were flecked with whitecaps as far as the eye could see. Atlantic-sized waves were crashing on the beach. As the sun rose higher, we saw a ship riding offshore on a straining anchor cable. The coast watcher on duty came out of his but with his rifle in his hand. He told us the ship was the Tory sloop Revenge. She was flying a flag of truce. “But I loaded up just the same,” he said, hefting his rifle.
At Kemble’s suggestion, each coast-watching station had been equipped with two rifles to give them an advantage over potential attackers.
“Are you here to exchange prisoners?” the coast watcher asked.
Kemble shook his head. “This is a private matter. I give you my word of honor there is nothing illegal about it. You can report the entire thing to General Washington.”
The coast watcher was a member of our light horse troop. He looked baffled by this cryptic guarantee, but he did not argue with us. If it had been anyone but Kemble, he would have demanded to see some authorization to meet loyalists for any reason, public or private.
“There’s no one on the beach,” I said, sweeping the white sand with the coast watcher’s telescope. “I don’t see anyone on deck, either.”
This was not surprising; wind-whipped spray was flying above the sloop’s taffrails.
“They’re probably waiting below to make sure there are only two of us,” Kemble said.
As we descended the winding path to the beach, the sun rose above the cloud banks on the horizon, sending a blaze of red through the scattered clouds above our heads. Soon the whole world seemed drenched in that ambiguous color, symbol of blood, war, victory, national pride. At the bottom of the hill the wind off the marsh had a damp cutting edge. Kemble broke into a fit of coughing. I saw blood stain his handkerchief.
“Don’t worry, Jemmy,” he said. “I don’t expect to die for a good while yet.”
On board the Revenge, Charles Skinner dragged Caroline from the cabin and down the spray-soaked deck to the sloop’s pitching stern. “I want you to see it, madam,” he shouted above the wind. “I want you to see what your faithlessness has done.” He pointed to the two tiny figures descending the footpath down Garret Hill. “Coming down that hill is a man I loved more than anyone I ever met in this world. Now I stand here his murderer, thanks to you.”
From the foot of Garret Hill, without the coast watcher’s telescope, Kemble and I could only make out small formless, faceless figures on the deck of the Revenge. I nervously wondered why they were not lowering a boat.
“They want to make us do the waiting,” Kemble said.
We walked toward the water on a narrow path through the marsh. Sea birds circled above us uttering wild cries. The thick brown salt hay swayed in the wind. Kemble was a few steps ahead of me.
Four men rose out of the hay, like creatures from the ocean depths, two on the left, two on the right. The nearest one on the right was Anthony Skinner. He balanced his musket on the stump of his right arm. Four guns crashed with a simultaneous blast of smoke and flame. Kemble lunged forward as if he were running through the smoke, miraculously escaping the bullets. But it was like the last leap of an exhausted athlete who would never reach his goal.
“Murderers,” I screamed.
They came floundering out of the marsh after me, knives in their hands. I was carrying Jonathan Gifford’s pistols in their ivory case. I leveled them at the two shorter men, who were the first out of the muck, being more lightly built than Skinner and the big black. The guns were empty but the cowardly bastards did not know it. They gave a yell of fright and dove back into the salt hay. I ran for the path up Garret Hill. I made it twenty yards ahead of Anthony Skinner and the black. On the crest of the hill, the coast watcher’s rifle boomed. His aim was poor. The bullet almost took my head off. But the shot discouraged my pursuers. They gave up the chase and returned to the marsh, where the other two killers were going through Kemble’s pockets for money. Anthony Skinner waved them off and the four trotted toward the beach.
“Murderers,” I screamed.
The wind flung the word back in my face, Weeping, I ran the rest of the way up the hill. I reached the summit, half choking with grief and exhaustion, to find Jonathan Gifford dismounting from his horse.
On the stem of the Revenge, a half mile away, Caroline saw the explosion of smoke and flame in the shoulder-high marsh grass, and Anthony’s pursuit of me. “It is done,” Charles Skinner said, in a voice that trembled between exultation and grief. “He is a dead man.”
There was no reason for Caroline to doubt him. She clung to the rail, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Captain,” shouted Charles Skinner. “Lower away. We must get those fellows off without wasting a minute.”
On the summit of Garret Hill, Jonathan Gifford groaned like a man in his death
agony as I gasped out what had happened. The red sun glared down like a blind bleeding eye on a toy Kemble. Captain Gifford seized the coast watcher’s telescope and focused it on the beach. A boat had rounded the stern of the Revenge and was pulling hard for shore. Anthony Skinner and his confederates were at the water’s edge, waving exultantly to it.
Jonathan Gifford swung the telescope to the Revenge and trembled with shock and disbelief. There, close enough so it seemed to speak to her, through the magic of the magnifying lenses, was Caroline Skinner on the ship’s stem beside her husband. She was weeping. Her face was contorted with grief.
Captain Gifford sprang into the saddle and spurred his horse down the footpath, which was no more than a yard wide. I grabbed the coast watcher’s rifle, mounted my horse and followed him. I was sure we would both end in a tangle of horseflesh and leather in the swamp below us, but we made it to the bottom without a mishap. I thought Captain Gifford would ride hard for the beach to fight it out with Anthony Skinner before the Revenge’s boat reached shore. The Captain had two pistols in his saddle holsters, I had the rifle and the dueling pistols. But he stopped, dismounted, and knelt beside Kemble. Three bullets bad struck him in the chest. He had died instantly.
With a grief that was terrible to watch, Jonathan Gifford caressed Kemble’s upturned cheek. “Son, son,” he murmured. “Oh, son.”
From my saddle I could see the longboat, about twenty yards from shore. It was having trouble making headway in the surf. Skinner and his cohorts were wading into the water to get to it.
“We can still get a shot at them, Captain,” I said.
Jonathan Gifford shook his head. “Enough blood has been spilled, Jemmy,” he said.
He remounted and rode slowly toward the beach. By the time we reached the sand, Skinner and his three murderous friends were halfway back to the Revenge. Jonathan Gifford paid no attention to them. He rode down the shore until he was directly opposite the sloop. The wind tore at his cloak, lashed his face with blowing spray. He felt nothing, knew nothing but an enormous sadness. The huge sweep of the bay beyond the woman on the stern of that ship was an image of his world, empty of love, and with Kemble’s body back there in the marsh, even of consolation now.
Aboard the Revenge, Caroline had watched with dazed, uncaring eyes the progress of the boat to the beach, the struggle in the surf as Anthony and his confederates clambered into it. It did not matter to her who died or lived, now. Beside her, Charles Skinner gave cries of alarm, shouts of advice.
A horseman emerged from, the swamp. Only one man sat a horse with that instinctive command, only one, man had those solid shoulders and that large noble head. Jonathan Gifford. At first Caroline thought he was a hallucination. Then she saw me behind him. There was no reason why in her torment she should wish Jemmy Kemble into imaginary being. We were real.
She could not see Jonathan Gifford’s face. He was too far away. But there was something in the angle of his head, in the unbroken, unmoving intensity of his stare, that spoke grief, longing, agony.
Beside her, Charles Skinner had decided Anthony was safely on his way back to the ship, and turned his eyes to the beach.
“My God, is that Gifford?” he asked.
He never got an answer to that question. With a cry that was as involuntary as the act itself, Caroline flung aside her cloak and leaped into the wild waters of the bay. At first she sank like a stone beneath the weight of her dress and petticoats. But the hours she had spent swimming with Jonathan Gifford had vanquished all her fear of the water. Beneath the surface, she ripped open her dress, untied her petticoats, and struggled free of them. Wearing only her shift, she emerged among the waves and began swimming for shore. Charles Skinner bellowed to the men in the longboat and pointed toward her. Anthony, crouched soddenly in the stern, took command and ordered the oarsmen to come about and pursue her.
The boat gained on Caroline with every stroke of its six oars. It was exhausting work, swimming in such a surf. She stopped to catch her breath, looked back and saw the boat. She struck out again, swimming with all her strength. But it was no contest.
Jonathan Gifford turned to me. “Is that rifle loaded, Jemmy?”
I nodded.
He pointed to the boat. “Pick off that lead oarsman and I will give you half of Kemble Manor.”
“I will do it free of charge,” I said, springing to the sand.
Caroline was about fifty yards offshore. The boat was about fifty yards behind her now. I knelt on the sand and aimed upwind just enough, I prayed, to hit the man at the bow oar. With modicum care I squeezed the trigger. The rifle bucked against my shoulder. The oarsman pitched forward against the man sitting just ahead of him. They both lost their oars and the boat slewed into the trough of the waves, almost swamping. Jonathan Gifford gave a yell of triumph, kicked off his boots, threw off his cloak and coat, and plunged into the water.
We could hear Anthony Skinner roaring curses at the sailors. They had stopped rowing and were shouting back at him. They had no desire to get any closer to me and the rifle, which I was swiftly reloading.
Captain Gifford reached Caroline with no interference and a minute or two later, was walking back through the shallow water with her in his arms. He wrapped her in his cloak, sat her on my horse, and we turned our backs on the Skinners, leaving them to rendezvous with the packet off Sandy Hook and sail away to their bitter exile in England.
Midway along the path through the marsh to Garret Hill, we found the coast watcher kneeling beside Kemble’s body. Even though Jonathan Gifford had prepared her for it, Caroline wept at the sight of him. He lay on his side, his head oddly cradled on his outflung arm, his sightless eyes staring toward the ocean. I like to believe his last thought was of that wild Irish girl who crooned to him in the face of the darkness they were both entering:
Between us and the hosts of the wind
Between us and the drowning water
Between us and the shame of the world.
We buried Kemble the next day in the manor graveyard, beside his mother. It was a private ceremony. Kate and Thomas Rawdon, Caroline and Jonathan Gifford, I and the rest of the Liberty Tavern family were the only mourners. When we returned to the tavern we were surprised to find one of General Washington’s aides waiting for us. The coast watcher had written a report of the ambush and the events on the beach, and forwarded it to headquarters. The aide handed Jonathan Gifford this letter:
Dear Sir:
I have heard of your loss, which is also our country’s loss. I know how deep such wounds cut, how slowly they heal. I wish to extend my heartfelt sympathy. If your son had a fault, it was an excess of love for his country, and an excess of courage which led at times to recklessness. If these are faults, they are easily forgiven by understanding men. Perhaps they sprang from the want of patriotism and courage in those around him from which alas we have too often suffered in the course of this long war.
You may be consoled to know, sir, that as I sat down to write this letter, word arrived from British headquarters in New York that a new general has taken command there with orders to remain on a strict defensive until peace negotiations are completed in Paris. I think we may fairly rejoice, and I trust you will do so, in spite of your sorrow, that the liberty and safety of our country have been established on a permanent footing.
I also gather from the coast watcher’s report that a lady whose feelings on this score as well as on other matters important to your happiness has been restored to you by the fortunes of war. That your future years together may be as contented as a free and prosperous America can make them is the sincere wish of
Your friend,
George Washington
The news of the cessation of hostilities went swiftly through our neighborhood. That night we gathered at Liberty Tavern for a celebration which none of us living have ever forgotten. We drank and laughed and sang and toasted George Washington, the honorable Congress, the United States of America, and the patriots of New Jersey,
into the dawn. It was then, I suppose, that we began the process of selective forgetting that transformed our memory of the Revolution into Fourth of July oratory. We let the needless deaths, the random cruelty and crude greed, the halfhearted and the fainthearted slip into history’s shadows. I think this was a mistake. It would do us no harm - and perhaps a great deal of good - to remember the dark side of our national character. At the very least, it would give us a new appreciation of those who paid a price in anguish, sorrow, and blood to resist this evil undertow.
But that night we drank to our victory, which grew more glorious with every toast. No matter that some who raised their brimming glasses did not deserve it.
The last toast was the best. Jonathan Gifford gave it in the center of the taproom, his arm around Caroline.
“Here’s to all them that we love
Here’s to all them that love us.”
Sorrow and joy mingled in that word love. We echoed his deepened timbre as we sang out the response.
“And here’s to all them that love those that love them Love those that love them that love us.”
The endless war, the hatred, the grief ebbed from our weary hearts. We were at peace at last.
Published by New Word City, Inc., 2014
www.NewWordCity.com
© Thomas Fleming
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-61230-583-7
The Heart of Liberty Page 55