The Iron Chain
Page 13
Jake now had all the information he needed about the Tory plan, and no excuse not to kill Busch. But how could he murder a man who only minutes before had saved him from drowning?
Jake followed along quietly until he caught his foot in the muck and fell face first into the swamp. He was by now so cold his joints felt frozen solid. "I hope we will have some device that allows us to see in the dark when we attack tomorrow night," he said, righting himself.
"You are starting to sound like a complainer, Smith," said Busch. "What happened to the brave man I found at the tavern?"
"He got cold and hungry, and a good deal wet."
"We'll be by a fire soon enough," said Busch. "If we cannot find a hospitable inn, we've only to return to Stoneman's."
Finally they reached dry ground. The Tory captain started up the steep incline like an African monkey. Jake made better progress here, and found that the quick pace warmed him. They soon reached a lane, and began walking south once more.
"This path leads to the road in front of the house. The roadway is just around that turn," said Busch, whose steps started to slow.
"Do you ever think of confronting your father, and asking his forgiveness?"
"I have, many times," said Busch. "He does not seem to recognize me. Something in his head has broken, and he would as soon shoot as say a word. He has tried to shoot me, in fact."
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than they heard noises ahead. Busch put up his hand and motioned Jake toward the trees at the side of the roadway. They waited in the darkness for a moment, then began slowly creeping forward.
Jake now wanted an opportunity to leave Busch without arousing his suspicions; he planned to go to his rendezvous with van Clynne, then return to Stoneman's and sabotage the plans as a member of the troop. The noises were just the thing — Busch's father must have come out to avenge his dogs' death.
But Busch's father wasn't waiting for them around the bend.
Claus van Clynne and a detachment of Rhode Islanders were.
"There they are, men! Capture the Tory traitors so we can wrap them in tissue for General Putnam!"
"I see one!"
"Watch, there's a whole brigade of them behind!"
"Halt or we fire! Halt, I say!"
The reader undoubtedly will credit Claus van Clynne with great mental powers of prognostication for his ability to scope the precise point where Jake and his Tory captain would emerge from their spying jaunt. The Dutchman would do his best to encourage this, though the true story of his fortuitous arrival at this juncture of our story is less flattering. For Colonel Angell had grown tired of van Clynne's endless diatribe regarding the conduct of the war, and had sought to get him out of his wigged hair by assigning him and a squad of men to the spot along the river he felt least likely to be attacked. In fact, the colonel might have had some hope that old man Busch — well known to the patriot commanders, if only from a distance — might be provoked into taking several shots at the Dutchman. Not that Angell wished him any real harm, but van Clynne provoked in him that double reaction he so often had on people — on the one hand, his service to the Cause of Freedom was indispensable and undeniable, and on the other hand, he had a way about him so annoying even the mildest of Jesus’ apostles might be tempted toward murder.
The soldiers who had accompanied van Clynne to the area seized the opportunity to attack the shadowy figures ahead at least partly because they had grown tired of the Dutchman's lecture on the possibilities of screw-fitted breech-loading rifles. Thus their attack was premature, and both Busch and Jake were able to duck back safely into the woods, escaping their ill-aimed fire.
Unaware that van Clynne was nearby, Jake ran next to Busch when the firing started, but gradually began to drop back. A bullet whizzed dangerously close to him in the underbrush, and he dove to his right, getting an armful of prickle weeds as his reward.
"Smith?"
"I'm all right," he hissed at Busch, rising to his feet.
"This way," said the Tory captain. "Go straight over the hill. I'll wait for you there if we get separated. Forget about the horse. I know where there are others."
Jake continued to stumble forward, letting Busch increase his lead. The fire from the Continentals — who surely could not see well enough to aim, except at the noise — was remarkably hot and dangerously close. He wanted to make his feigned escape attempt look convincing, but not so convincing that he was wounded, and so Jake found it necessary to run further into the woods than he otherwise would have wished.
At length, he realized he had lost Busch. But as there was no way of knowing whether the captain was hiding in the shadows just a few feet away, he had to arrange his capture carefully. He continued to move in the general direction the Tory had indicated, meandering as if lost. The troops, meanwhile, had brought up torches and spread out to search the woods. A throb from his knee, which had been injured a few days before, suggested a perfect plan — he would complain about the knee loudly when found, in case Busch should overhear.
If Jake was unaware of van Clynne's presence, the Dutchman was equally ignorant of his quarry's identity. He had been left alone by the roadside, without even a flint to light the wood gathered for a fire, when his troop first ran to investigate the noises in the woods.
"Probably just a raccoon," grumbled the Dutchman to the darkness. But when it became clear that his men weren't returning, he decided to set out after them. He was quite surprised when he found the company — or one member, at least — almost immediately, walking straight into the soldier and knocking him to the ground.
Or would have, except that the man was bigger even than van Clynne, and so it was the Dutchman who found himself floundering in the dust, propelled there not merely by the surprise of having walked into the man but by a sharp blow as well.
"You idiot, I'm on your side," said the Dutchman. "Help me up. Come on, be quick about it."
"Do as he says, Phillip. After all, it would be too easy to kill him here."
The voice had a sickeningly familiar ring to it, instantly recognized by van Clynne. It belonged to Major Dr. Keen.
-Chapter Nineteen-
Wherein, Jake becomes acquainted with the inside of a patriot jail.
It took the Rhode Islanders nearly a half hour to find Jake in the dark underbrush. By that time, he had decided to take off his green coat, following the theory that a real Tory would have done so, trying to escape as a civilian. Still fearful that Busch was hiding nearby, Jake not only groaned about his knee but noisily protested that he had done nothing wrong. He submitted to a search, which turned up his pistol and elk-handled knife, though not the Segallas, thanks to Jake's loud complaints that he would freeze if made to turn over the waistcoat where it was hidden. Eventually, he was allowed to keep the vest, and led from the dark woods in his damp breeches.
At the roadside, his hands were bound and a long rope attached to his leg so he could not run without dragging half the company with him.
"Where is the rest of your troop?" demanded a short corporal, whose cheek had been seared some time ago by a sword or bayonet point.
"What troop?" responded Jake.
"The troop you were intending to assault the chain with, Tory."
"I have no troop," said Jake. "I was not assaulting the chain."
"What were you doing here then?"
"I am a traveler, on my way to White Plains. I had no money to stay at an inn, and tried sleeping in the woods, until you assaulted me. There is no law against that yet."
The reader can well imagine the contempt with which the corporal met this story. Jake nonetheless stuck to it loudly, and embellished it slightly for their lieutenant, a thin rod of a twenty-year-old who soon appeared from the woods. Without a uniform, the officer must treat Jake as a civilian and hand him over to the civil authorities — or decide he was a spy and shoot him on the spot.
Fortunately, the man seemed inclined toward the former, and Jake kept up his charade as he
was marched up the road, in case Busch was still in earshot. The Rhode Islanders were rather pleased with themselves for having captured a man they assumed would eventually be judged a Tory criminal. They celebrated by prodding and pulling him along, greasing his way with epithets and curses, along with a good number of promises of what would become of him if their commander dared to turn his back a few minutes.
Under other circumstances, this show of spirit would have warmed Jake's heart, restoring his high opinion of the Continental army, or at least these troops, who had been mustered at the state's expense. Just now, however, he could have done with a little less enthusiasm — despite the torches, the path was dark and their pace brisk, which meant that he was continually in danger of falling; the soldiers' bayonets had been well sharpened, and pricked almost as sharply on the back of his neck as the dog's fangs had.
After they passed the hillside where Busch had told him to meet, Jake decided the time had come to reveal himself as an American officer. He had left the small glass token identifying himself as a messenger back at Prisco's for safety during his adventure; there was little chance the common soldiers would have realized what it meant in any event. His only hope was to persuade them to take him to their colonel, who would recognize him immediately.
But he must do all of this discreetly, in case the Tory leader was still hiding nearby. Jake stumbled in the dark and rolled on the ground as if he had fallen. Prodded by a pair of bayonets, he groaned about his knee. "Get the lieutenant," he whispered between the louder complaints. "I have to talk to him. Quickly."
The soldiers answered him in a loud voice that he must get to his legs himself or be run through.
"The lieutenant, quickly," hissed Jake. "Pretend to hit me, so that I lie unconscious. I have to see your colonel."
"We'll hit you for real, Tory!" shouted one of the men.
The other added threats and insults of his own. Jake got to his knees.
"I'm a patriot, you idiot," he hissed.
The soldier responded with a heavy curse which would undoubtedly have elicited a like response from Jake — had he heard it. For one of the guards had decided he had suffered enough lies that night from the Tory villain, and smashed Jake across the back of the head with the butt of his rifle, sending him to Sleep's lush vale.
Jake awoke with a start as he was dumped unceremoniously on the dirt from the back of a wagon the Continentals had commandeered to transport him. He had been unconscious for nearly two hours, during which time the soldiers had taken him to a small hamlet east of Continental Village and north of Cortlandville. Largely ruined during a side skirmish related to the Battle of White Plains, the hamlet had once included a church, two stores and a small mill, set up on the creek. All but the church had been destroyed, though the wooden-planked bridge in front of the church's graveyard lately had been restored.
Besides the church, a large barn nearby remained intact; it was now used as common property by the few inhabitants who remained in the three or four houses across the creek on the main road.
While the area was familiar — Jake realized as he shook his head clear that he had come this way searching for Stoneman's farm—there was no time to wax nostalgic. His hands still bound behind his back, he was lifted from the dust roughly and dragged to the church.
His mother would have expressed no surprise over this, but he was not on his way to a service. The building had been appropriated by the Committee Against Conspiracies to be used as a prison for suspected Tories; the guard at the door received him with a ceremonial curse and a threat against his person if he did not comply with all the rules and regulations of the jail.
Still groggy, Jake protested that he was innocent.
"Save your story for Mr. Jay," said the jailer. "He'll hear your case next week. In meantime, you'd best watch your manners inside. As big as you are, there's them who are bigger."
And with that, the man put his foot on the disguised patriot's back and propelled him inside the open door, to the great amusement of his escorts.
When it had been used for services, the interior of the church had been simple, its most lavish ornamentation a thick red carpet that ran down the center of the austere wooden rows. A small lectern was mounted at one side of the altar, itself made of wood. Now that it had become a jail, its decor was plainer still. The furniture was gone, except for a few pieces gathered in a pile at the side of the interior. The carpet remained in place, dividing the room in two; even in the dim light supplied by some candles in buckets at the side of the room it was still a dark if soiled red, and gave the impression of a tongue resting in a mouth.
The long, narrow windows had been filled by boards that ran nearly to the ceiling. A pump organ, once the pride of the small congregation, still stood in the choir, but the door to this balcony was boarded and nailed shut. Heaps of bare hay were scattered along the walls, each topped with a ragged blanket—beds for the accused. A tumble of basins and pipes — amazingly, they seemed to be some sort of still, and perhaps accounted for the sweet, sick odor — stood at the far end of the altar area.
The church's original congregants had been Loyalists, most of whom fled the neighborhood after the Battle of White Plains. They had now been replaced by a mixture of mild Tories waiting examination, and more difficult men, ruffians and thieves whose allegiance belonged directly to the devil. One of the latter, a large, broad-shouldered fellow with a crooked nose and a strange stench about him, approached Jake menacingly, and said he would cut off his binds for a price.
"How much?" Jake asked, wondering to himself if his pocket pistol was still hidden in his vest.
The man leered without answering. He reached for Jake's hands and sawed through the braided rope as easily as if it were a woman's mending thread.
"I'll take your boots in payment, for starters," said the ham-handed brute. "We can work the rest out as we go."
No blow on the head, no matter how severe, could have made Jake acquiesce to such bullying. He saw that he had a large audience, and recognized at once that all were awed by the Tory giant. They would sooner plunge into a volcano than help Jake.
"These boots will never fit," he answered. "You're a bit fat in all the wrong places, beginning with your head."
The brute gave him a quizzical look in response, not quite sure that he'd been insulted until one or two of the bravest men in the church let their stifled guffaws escape. His lungs began pumping like a pair of hot bellows, forcing his chest larger. His shoulders puffed up as well, and his face turned so red it seemed to glow in the dim light of the church.
"You'll do as I say, or you'll suffer the consequences."
"Where did you ever learn such a big word?" Jake took a half-step backwards, preparing himself.
"I will teach you!" shouted the villain, slashing at Jake. He cut only the air — the patriot spy had dodged backwards. The brute swiped again and Jake retreated once more, this time falling against some members of the audience who promptly tossed him back toward his tormentor.
Jake dove into a somersault, bringing his foot up to kick the giant in the chest and knocking him backwards. Rolling back over to his feet, the patriot launched another kick but missed; he fell onto his back. The brute dove at him blade first. Jake managed to roll away, sparks glinting from the knife as it scraped into the slate floor. A sharp punch staggered his attacker and sent his weapon to the ground, but the man was built like Goliath and quickly recovered. He managed to catch Jake's boot as he aimed a flying kick at him and hurled the American spy back into one of the onlookers.
Jake had no time to thank him for breaking his fall. The bully grabbed him up with both hands and hurled him again in the opposite direction. Once again a Tory was fortuitously placed, but Jake realized he could not count on such luck a third straight time. He pretended to be stunned until the villain reached down for him in a rage. Then Jake leaped with all his might into the man's chest, knocking him over. Two sharp kicks to the brute's groin ended the fight.
Once he caught his breath, Jake stepped forward to stop the slaughter, saying it was not fair that an injured man be attacked by so many. That argument proved of little deterrence, and it was only when Jake suggested the guards would hear the commotion and investigate that the men began to lower their voices, if not the strength of their blows.
"You're damn awful noble," said a voice from the back shadows.
Jake couldn't quite place the familiar voice until he saw its plump owner step forward.
"Caleb Evans," said Jake. "We feared you were dead."
"It would take more rebels than are gathered in the province to kill me," declared the ranger corporal heartily.
"I'm glad you're alive," lied Jake, clapping him on the shoulder. "We're to be rescued tomorrow. Captain Busch has already planned it."
"Word has reached us," said Caleb. "One of the boys who brings us food is the son of a friend to our cause."
"I wonder," said Jake, picking up Wedget's knife and tucking it into his belt. "Is there a man named Johnson here?"
Caleb shushed him. "All of these men are loyal, but under duress, I doubt most could be trusted. Do not reveal yourself to them; say nothing you would want reported to the rebel courts." In a lower voice, he added, "Johnson missed our rendezvous and I fear he must be dead."
Jake nodded solemnly. No better actor could have been found on a London stage.
"Will the attack on the chain be called off?"