The Iron Chain

by Jim DeFelice

  The reason he had no such plans will be familiar to those who have followed Lieutenant Colonel Gibbs's previous exploits. Gibbs and van Clynne had just succeeded in foisting themselves off on Howe as messengers from General Johnny Burgoyne, telling him Burgoyne did not wish him to proceed north. While this was directly contrary to Burgoyne's grand plan for ending the war, the American agents had managed to completely convince Sir William. As the elaborate stratagem has been described in detail elsewhere, we will skip over it here, saying only that had Jake and van Clynne failed, General Schuyler would have abandoned Albany. Indeed, he would have had little recourse but to give over the entire Hudson Valley to the British, thereby splitting the states in two, and leaving New England and the Revolution to be strangled on the vine.

  While the author has grown reflective, Jake and van Clynne have mounted their horses, taken the others in tow, and continued north on the road toward White Plains. Jake has retied his hair with a spare piece of black cloth found in one of his companion's copious pockets. There was mention of a rental fee amounting to two pence per day, with interest compounded on the fortnight; the reader has fortunately missed the lieutenant-colonel's somewhat scatological retort.

  Jake soon had more considerable matters to ponder. He noticed that his mare's right foreleg was giving her difficulty; she had strained herself during her panicked flight. After switching to the gray-dappled stallion so lately owned by Johnson, the two patriots moved forward at a slower pace, hoping the mare could be saved.

  Van Clynne in the meantime expressed various opinions, mostly in the form of complaints, about the state of the American economy, which had become subject to wild inflation and artificial shortages, cheating honest businessmen and providing opportunity only for scoundrels. Why the Dutchman fit into the first group when he so easily and consistently made profits the second would envy was not adequately addressed by his theories, though Jake would be the last to point this out — it would only encourage van Clynne to speak at greater length

  Within fifteen minutes — at about the point where the squire was running down the beaver trade — they came upon a party of American pickets, who had set up a post on a wooden bridge over a tributary of the Bronx River. The men wore tattered hunting shirts; if these had been originally cut from leather, they had long since transmuted into a thinner and foreign cloth. Their breeches were not in much better shape, well worn and in a few cases patched; in others, simply torn. Their hose was nonexistent, and it would cause a grave injustice to the language to call the items on their feet shoes. But their weapons were in good repair, and the soldiers themselves cheery enough, as soon as Jake identified himself and his companion as patriots in search of the men's captain.

  The troops were Rhode Islanders from Colonel Israel Angell’s regiment. Angell was an old acquaintance of Jake's. This information was warmly welcomed by the captain, an amiable sort found bending over a kettle a few yards away. The man had built his fire by the roadside, announcing his post with a simple stick mounted by a blue ribbon. He had a stump for his desk, and a log for his seat, but nonetheless exuded the air of one naturally born to lead.

  "Can I offer you some Liberty Tea, gentlemen? I've added a few herbs I found by the roadside to the usual sassafras. I think it has quite a unique flavor."

  Jake and van Clynne exchanged a glance.

  "I make it a habit never to drink Liberty Tea after the early morning hours," blustered the Dutchman. "I, er, it keeps me awake."

  "I'm not thirsty, thank you," said Jake.

  "You're missing a treat." The captain poured the water and its steeped herbs into a crude tin cup and held it to his mouth. He took a sip, winced, then set it down. "Too hot," he said doubtfully. "I'll have to let it cool. Now, gentlemen — your business."

  "We are messengers," said Jake, producing a piece of blown and colored glass the Sons of Liberty had given him in New York as an identifier.

  The captain fingered the clamshell-shaped glass briefly, then handed it back. "And your destination?"

  "I can say only that I am working for General Schuyler. Ordinarily, I am assigned to General Greene."

  The captain's expression, wary and soured by the tea, lightened immediately. Rhode Island's Nathanael Greene was well regarded by many in the northern army, and certainly all who came from his state. "Have you seen the general recently?"

  "No," said Jake. "We have been on this assignment quite a while. It is a trifle, though there have been moments of interest here and there."

  "The general's leg is better?"

  "The general's leg has been injured since his youth, so I hardly think it could get better," said Jake. He smiled, acknowledging the cleverness of the trick. The officer's extra bit of wariness was well justified in these woods.

  For his part, the captain guessed from Jake's bearing if not his rough farmer's clothes that this guest was not a mere civilian pressed into service or even a disguised enlisted man, as Jake's ambiguous responses were meant to suggest. The officer was wise enough not to press the matter on the one hand, and on the other to treat the stranger with careful respect, even offering his log to sit on. Jake declined the honor.

  Van Clynne accepted with a happy grunt.

  "Colonel Angell is in Peekskill," the captain told them after ordering a detail to bury the men they had left down the road. "He spends every moment haranguing for supplies. There are shortages of everything."

  "What sort of thing does the army need?" van Clynne asked, stroking his beard.

  "Anything and everything. Shoes, shirts, boots especially. Food — I believe I would give half my inheritance for a pound of salt. I have not had salt with my dinner for three months at least."

  "There is money to pay for these things, I suppose?"

  "There is a shortage of funds," admitted the captain, "but surely not so severe that money could not be found if these items could be provided."

  More inviting words had seldom been spoken to the Dutchman, who immediately began computing how a profit might be patriotically turned.

  If anything, the captain understated his troop's condition by half. Many of the soldiers marched out barefoot, with tattered clothes and not even insignias of rank or unit. There was no shortage of gunpowder, only because there was not enough of it to be issued to a soldier except for a specific duty — a surprise attack would find much of the ammunition under lock and key. Worst of all, any honest rating of the American troops would put these Rhode Islanders toward the top of the men assigned to guard the Highlands — many of the other units were either militia or as green as the sprouting hills around them.

  "We had hope when Old Put came in," said the captain, referring to Major General Israel Putnam, one of the heroes of Breed's Hill and a beloved leader of the American forces. General Washington had put him in command of the Highlands two months before. "He has done much, but it is an awesome task. Rumor has it," the captain added in a lower voice, "that there is a plot afoot to destroy the iron chain stretched across the Hudson north of Peekskill."

  "Destroy it?" demanded Jake indignantly. "How?"

  "If I knew that, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about it, I assure you."

  The chain stretched across the river on a diagonal from the shore below St. Anthony's Nose to a point just above the Polpen Creek. It was the key to the defense of the Highlands and the rest of the Hudson Valley, as it kept British ships from coming north. Without it, no part of the valley — not Poughkeepsie, not Newburgh, not Kingston, not even Albany — would be safe. Indeed, were the British navy and its formidable marines able to sail blithely up the Hudson, Jake's recent mission to fool General Howe would be rendered useless. Upper New York could be taken in a hairsbreadth by a tiny fraction of the available British forces, and the vital supply link between New England and the southern colonies would be severed. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island — all would quickly starve to death. The Revolution itself would surely follow.

  "The chain itself is formidable
," said the captain, "but our other defenses, and the men ..."

  Here the officer shook his head, as if his pessimism were a physical thing that had formed on his tongue, and by clamping his mouth he might change the entire situation. He smiled, tried boldly to continue, though his voice was still forlorn.

  "Things are difficult for us, with such short supplies. Morale has fallen sharply; even I despair at times. The British have been recruiting men from the countryside as rangers, and it has been difficult to stop them. I have no doubt the man you killed was a recruiter."

  "Good riddance, then," said Jake.

  "Yes. But there will be more if our situation doesn't improve. Even my own men are tempted to desert."

  Jake received this sobering sentiment silently, realizing that though the situation was difficult, Angell would not have a man under him who would truly despair no matter how dire the circumstance. Van Clynne, on the other hand, took offense, and proceeded to upbraid the captain, telling him he was a soldier in the greatest army ever assembled, a fighter for Freedom, a defender of all that was holy and then some.

  "Your friend sounds like a member of Congress," the captain told Jake.

  "You'll have to forgive him. He hasn't had any dinner."

  "I have only dry biscuits to offer you myself. But there is an inn not too far from here, owned by a fellow named Prisco. An agreeable sort — if you told him you are on your way to Schuyler, I daresay he'd advance you the price of a good meal."

  "We are well acquainted with Justice Prisco," said Jake. "In fact, that is our destination, since we hope to stay the night there."

  And more, perhaps, as Prisco's inn was the same where Claus van Clynne had fallen in love not a week before. Sweet Jane — but perhaps it is better not to burden the reader with her portrait at present.

  The Dutchman, having gained an understanding of the overall need for supplies and seeing firsthand the severe effect on morale, had already resolved to assist in remedying the situation — especially as he realized a ready profit could be made. Thus he was now all the more anxious to get to the inn and see Jane — whom he would entrust to make certain contacts on his behalf with merchants further north. He mounted his horse and sat nodding and clearing his throat while Jake spent an inordinate number of seconds bidding the captain farewell.

  The gray-dappled stallion Johnson had so graciously bequeathed the patriot spy was a large, well-mannered beast that accepted Jake's long legs gracefully. It was a powerful horse, and would gladly have broken into a gallop if its new master had wished. But Jake, ignoring van Clynne's continued complaints, kept the pace slow to ease the strain on his injured mare, following behind. Despite the Dutchman's shortcuts — there was not a cow path in the state he did not know, nor a route he could not cut by five minutes — night had covered them with a heavy blanket of darkness before they reached Prisco's. The innkeeper himself greeted them in the yard between the large but simple frame tavern and the adjoining barn, used by Prisco as the stable. He had just come from checking on his assistant and some horses.

  "Well, well, Mr. Gibbs. And the redoubtable Squire van Clynne," said Prisco, holding up his torch. "My niece will be glad to see you."

  "And I her," admitted van Clynne, an uncharacteristic shyness suddenly entering his voice and tying his tongue.

  "Judge, my mare has hurt her leg," said Jake, dismounting to show him. "I'm afraid she'll be made into some soldier's dinner."

  Prisco — Jake called him judge because he was the local justice of the peace — examined the animal with a gentle hand.

  "I do not think the injury is that bad," he concluded. "We shall nurse her back to health if you can spend a few days."

  "We have business north," said Jake, "but I would be obliged to you if you watched her for me. I will pay for her feed."

  "All she needs is a few days' rest. New shoes, too," added the innkeeper, examining them. "It's difficult to find a smith these days; all the good ones and most of the rest have been put to work on the chain. But Elmer's lad should do a passable job." He called to his stable boy and turned the horses over to him.

  "Does this horse look familiar to you, Judge?" Jake asked as his stallion was taken.

  Prisco's round face turned quizzical as he studied Johnson's horse. Neither it nor its former owner were known to him, but he confessed that this did not necessarily go for much.

  "My politics are well known. Few British spies have the audacity to announce themselves, though I daresay they have darkened my halls. It is hard to tell these days who is friend and who is foe," added the keeper, who had to stretch himself considerably to pat Jake on the shoulder. "Come now, I've just tapped a new barrel of ale."

  "I've thirsted for it all day," said van Clynne, leading the way.

  -Chapter Three-

  Wherein, Jake plays a portentous game of chess.

  William Shakespeare earned much praise by comparing his mistress to a summer's day. Three times as many accolades would be won by a poet who could compare the object of Claus van Clynne's desire to some natural wonder, as the metaphor would be wilder and the language further stretched. Ovid's metamorphosing and Homer's blindness would both be put to strong use.

  Or to place it another way — sweet Jane has proven her patriotism under fire and has many other fine qualities, but alas, physical beauty is not numbered among them. Her nose does not quite fit her face, her eyes are off-line, her legs off-kilter. She is sweet, she is brave, but she is decidedly plain.

  Do not suggest this to the Dutchman. Nay, admit no impediments to his true love. Once inside the inn he made straight for the summer kitchen, where he found the girl laboring over a plum pie, her homespun dress clinging neatly to her skinny hips and her mobcap tied with a light blue ribbon the Dutchman had left during his last visit. The words they exchanged, the looks — that pie had not half as much sugar.

  Jake, meanwhile, took up a corner in the inn's great room not far from the fireplace, which was lit even though it was a warm night. The polished wood-paneled walls glowed a soft red with reflected light and warmth. The patriot spy reached up and plucked a large pewter tankard from the recessed shelf near his chair, appropriating the largest drinking vessel in the place.

  But he filled it with Prisco's mildest cider. In truth, Jake had earned a bit of rest, and did not have a pressing agenda — the distance to Albany could be traversed in a third of the time allotted, if he cared to do so. It would be natural for the lieutenant colonel to relax with a full helping of the fine brown ale Prisco was noted for. But a condition of wariness pressed upon him, and restlessness as well. The Rhode Island captain had lit a hot fire of concern in Jake's breast. Not for the first time in the war he worried that he could not do enough to help his cherished Cause to victory. Thus he studied the crowded room and its contents carefully. The sturdy chairs and chestnut planks beneath them seemed to hold no secrets; at first blush, neither did their occupants.

  These were the usual assortment of characters one finds along our highways. There were, naturally, local farmers talking politics and sopping up ale and cider; a traveling mechanic, who in conversation revealed himself to be something of a cross between a wheelwright and carpenter; a trading merchant or two, with an ear out for a likely deal. In the far corner of the room, two men with white beards and bare pates were hunched over a small but well-scrubbed pine table, playing checkers. The old fellows had been similarly occupied the last time Jake and van Clynne visited the inn; they pushed their pieces along at lightning speed, as if rehearsed.

  Jake got up to stretch his legs and stood by them thinking perhaps it might be diverting to engage in a game. He also thought these ancients might have an idea about the identities or business of the three men he had earlier dispatched to Pluto's vale.

  "I wonder if I might play the winner," suggested Jake, pulling up a chair near the old men.

  Neither man answered. The game was almost over, with red about to have a third man queened — an oxymoron that nonetheless
gave him a crushing advantage. Two moves later, black was cleared from the board. The combatants regrouped, changing colors and ignoring Jake.

  "Next game then?" he asked hopefully, trying to appear solicitous.

  When there was no acknowledgement, he decided the old geezers must be hard of hearing. Jake was about to wave his hand between them to get their attention when he was tapped on the shoulder by a man whose vigorous manner made his frame appear taller than it was, indeed, taller instead of shorter than average. About his own age and dressed much as Jake in the rough clothes of a farmer, the fellow had a quality in his smile that immediately invited a person to like him.

  "You look as if you would like to play draughts," he suggested.

  "I thought I might. But these old fellows seem to be in a world of their own."

  "Perhaps you would play a round with me. I've just borrowed a set from the proprietor."

  "Gladly," said Jake, who called for a refill as the stranger set up the game on an old keg near a drafty window at the side.

  "John Barrows," said the man, sticking his hand out over the game board.

  "Jake," answered the patriot spy.

  If the fact that he had given only his first name bothered Barrows, the farmer didn't let on, plunging happily into the competition. The match proceeded quickly; the stranger was not very good and Jake had four queens on the board before his drink arrived. But the man was nothing if not stubborn, staying in the contest until the bitter end.

  "Draughts is not my game," he confessed. "Now chess — there's a game for me."

  "You play chess?" asked Jake. "I haven't played since I was in London."

  "Yes, I play — I wonder if the keeper has a set," said Barrows. He jumped from the chair and went to find Prisco, returning not only with a set but with a candle to provide better light.