by Lori Benton
Lake Champlain
Reginald Aubrey had long believed his death would be by violence—at the hand of a particular Oneida warrior. Though violence had swept him from the deck of the gondola Philadelphia into the frigid waters of Lake Champlain, where he struggled now to stay afloat, the warrior had had nothing to do with it.
Reginald had meant to return to Schenectady and face the terrible wrong he’d done that warrior and his wife. What he’d done instead—when it was made clear General Arnold’s need for experienced sailors had grown as desperate as his need for ships, with the British advancing up the lake from Canada to meet the newly fledged American navy—was to board the last rigged galley as a volunteer. Experience Reginald Aubrey possessed, having piloted bateaux on the Mohawk River for years. And he could swim—a fortuitous skill given that, after six hours’ roaring exchange of gunfire, he’d been blown clean off the Philadelphia and that worthy craft he’d helped construct on the stocks at Skenesborough was fast going down to the lake bottom.
The battle had commenced before noon, off the shore of Valcour Island. Dusk was falling now, and the troubled water Reginald tread slammed a cold through his bones like the pounding of the guns still firing above his head. Smoke lay thick over the lake, obscuring what view the rough chop allowed of the battered American fleet: hulls and masts splintered by shot; sails and rigging in tatters aloft. The galleys, Washington, Trumbull. Arnold’s flagship, Congress. The gondolas, New Haven, Providence, Spitfire, Connecticut, Boston, New Jersey. Others not seen since the battle’s commencement. The schooner, Royal Savage, run aground on the southern tip of Valcour, its crew fled into the island’s woods to escape the British guns and the Indians in their swift canoes.
The Philadelphia, still going down.
Guns thundered. Grapeshot screamed overhead. Round shot cracked greenwood hulls. Splintered planks and bodies littered the waves.
Reginald knew himself wounded, though cold had numbed the pain within seconds of submersion. His left leg and arm felt weaker than they ought. His right leg, usually the weaker, barely compensated as he struggled to stay afloat. Where were the ships’ boats he’d seen pulling through the chaos, collecting the wounded? Where was the hospital ship, Enterprise?
But no. He’d no wish to lose a limb to a surgeon’s saw. Better to bleed out in the water…
Drifting smoke parted, giving him glimpse of a rescue boat. He called out, but a swell smacked him, pulling him under into suffocating dark. When his head broke the surface again, there was only smoke and debris and his lungs sucking in air. Gunfire stuttered in sporadic concussion, then ceased. Ringing silence brought a fusillade of questions. Were the British backing down? Had Arnold surrendered? He’d lost sight of the Philadelphia. Valcour Island was the nearest land, closer than the lake’s western shore. He could swim for it…Did he know in which direction to swim?
He went under, clawed back to the surface, choking.
With the cessation of the guns, he heard the cries of wounded men, again thought he glimpsed a hull nosing among floating debris. He tried to shout and went under, chest swelling to bursting. Tight, airless agony.
It seemed a very long time he took going down, time enough to torment himself over those he was leaving behind—
Anna, his dear girl. That she should hear of this battle and know he’d died on her day.
Lydia, who’d loved him at his most unlovable, waiting years for him to love her in return.
William, driven into the arms of the enemy, tattered and hulled by the knowledge that his life was built on lies.
The warrior, on his knees and bleeding…
—until like a sack of drowning puppies he was yanked from the depths by his coat’s nape and hauled against something hard. His chest seared as his lungs convulsed, greedy for air.
“I have him!” a voice barked. Hands grappled him. Then he was sprawled in the bottom of a boat, gagging, expelling water in a throat-burning gush.
“Aubrey!” the voice said. “Welcome aboard, sailor.”
Then pain roared to life and he sank into blackness as drowning as lake water.
A blast shuddered through his bones, yanking him conscious, body convulsed in panic. Pain ripped through his flailing limbs before a steadying arm clamped across his chest.
“Easy,” a voice hoarse with weariness admonished. “You’re aboard the Congress—what’s left of her.”
Congress. Arnold’s ship.
He began to get his bearings. A blanket covered him. Beneath it he was soaked. The breeze striking his exposed bits had an icy edge.
Memory surfaced, bobbing up like flotsam. He’d heard a blast. Not from a broadside gun. The shudder had gone through his bones but not the deck beneath him. That seemed intact. And crowded—with its own crew and those rescued brought aboard. Men spoke around him, but softly. The movement of the craft told him they lay at anchor. The cold air smelled of sulfur. It was near dark.
“Did I hear a blast?” he forced out, raw throated.
“That’ll be the Royal Savage, what went aground on Valcour,” said a sailor nursing a wounded shoulder. Reginald strained to hear him over the ringing in his ears. “The redcoats—or their Indians—set her aflame. Ye heard the magazine go.”
Reginald absorbed the news as, in the relative quiet of snapping sheet and lapping swell and what sounded like hammers tapping, there arose in the distance a tumult of war cries.
He sat up, pushing back the blanket to assess his injuries. He was hatless, head wet and bared to the cold. His coat had been removed, dumped in a puddled heap on the deck beside him. His sodden shirt-sleeve, torn off at the elbow, bound his left forearm. Below the knee, his leg was wrapped in the remains of his stocking. Both bindings were bloodstained. The ringing in his head would be days in fading.
He was battered but whole. As for the fleet…
“Our losses? Besides the Philadelphia and Royal Savage.” He could make out the faces around him, features strained and powder blackened in the deepening twilight.
“Some as good as lost,” said the wounded sailor. “Washington is barely afloat, taking on water. Congress here was hulled below the water line. Mainmast took damage. The British drew off and anchored out of range to the south. Patching their ships as we’re doing, I expect.”
“I can help with that.” Reginald started to haul himself to his feet, but another sailor clamped a hand over his arm, keeping him down.
“Ye’ll do no such thing. I kept you off the Enterprise as you insisted, but those splinters went deep. Yanked ’em out myself. Pray ye the wounds don’t fester.”
Reginald had no memory of the crude tending administered. All for the best, he thought, as a scream cut the air. It issued from the hospital ship. “My thanks you have, on both counts. But what is to be done? Wait we for morning?”
“Himself is deciding, yonder.” The sailor canted his head toward the galley’s stern, where three figures gathered close around a hooded lantern. Its feeble light revealed General Benedict Arnold, still in uniform—his only uniform; his belongings were aboard the burning Royal Savage, he having moved nothing but his flag over to the Congress before battle commenced—and the officers of his hastily assembled navy, General Waterbury and Colonel Wigglesworth.
“Sixty dead then?” Arnold was saying, turning to stare with narrowed intensity toward the leaping light on Valcour’s distant shore, the lantern’s faint glow limning his prominent nose.
“Yes sir,” said Wigglesworth. “Best as we can count at present. Ammunition is nearly three-fourths spent across the fleet, the vessels themselves barely seaworthy. They’ll not withstand a repeat of today.”
“No question dawn shall see a resumption of the fight.” Waterbury rubbed a hand along his bristled jaw. “The choice, as I see it, is retreat or surrender.”
Silence fell while Arnold stared into the night. Reginald got haltingly to his feet. The shadowed forms of the fleet lay scattered at anchor. Beyond the light of the burning schooner, darkness hid the isla
nd’s rocky southern shore, the Indians, the British fleet. And William, out there somewhere on that wind-swept lake?
Surely not. It would have taken him and Sam Reagan weeks to reach Canada afoot, find Johnson, join the Royal New Yorkers…if he’d carried through with that intention. Besides, it was British regulars and experienced sailors their ragtag navy had faced this day. Not raw colonial recruits.
Arnold, soot-blackened as a gunner, swept his gaze across the deck, giving Reginald a brief nod before addressing his officers. “We shall not surrender, but neither shall we engage them again in our present condition. We retreat to Crown Point and preserve the remnants of our navy. Question being, which way?”
“They’ll have us hemmed to the south. North around Valcour?”
“The wind is northerly,” Waterbury countered Wigglesworth’s suggestion. “We’d have to row against it, no sails.”
Pulling at the braid of his battle-worn coat, drawn with weariness, Arnold weighed the options. The hazards of feeling their way around the north end of the island in the dark would be as unappealing to the general as it was to Reginald.
“Gentlemen,” he said at last, and in the glow of the hooded lantern, Reginald thought he saw the general’s mouth curve. “We shall not go north. We shall go south—but quiet-like—straight through the enemy’s anchored fleet.”
4
October 17, 1776
Aubrey farm
It was done. A fait accompli. Reginald had survived it and was home, sitting in his favorite chair by the hearth and recounting the tale. No sense being angry now, Lydia admonished herself. But he’d said he was only going to build the boats.
“A risky move it was, but a bold one,” Reginald said, addressing those gathered in the sitting room—Anna, Good Voice, Stone Thrower, Two Hawks, and Lydia, who, with three expectant mothers with imminent childbeds, had come meaning to entreat Anna to return to town. Thoughts of returning to Schenectady had fled upon Reginald’s unheralded homecoming, a happy reunion sullied now as the truth of what he’d done sank in, filling her mind with the chop of dark water strewn with planking and the bodies of the dead…
“The British left us a gap near a mile wide between the flank of their anchored ships and the western lakeshore. Come midnight we rowed through it in file, sweeps muffled, lanterns hooded—praying British ears were still as deafened from the guns as were ours.”
Stone Thrower and Good Voice, together on a settee, leaned forward, intent on the tale, but from her chair Anna broke in, “Were you wounded, Papa? When you went into the water?”
Earlier in the yard, as Reginald dismounted his horse, Lydia had known straightaway he’d taken hurt. She’d refrained from mentioning it thus far, but it didn’t surprise her that Anna had noticed the subtle stiffness in his movements.
“Not but a few splinters,” Reginald assured his daughter, waving away the horrific detail. “The British gave us not one gun as we passed. I came last aboard the Congress with General Arnold, and long could I see the Royal Savage burning behind us.” As if feeling the keen edge of her gaze, Reginald paused. “Truly, Lydia, the wounds weren’t grave.”
His blue-gray eyes were warm yet wary. The water between them was as littered with debris as that of Lake Champlain. Memory of the kiss they’d shared months ago rose like an ache in Lydia’s throat. Reginald fixed his stare on the hearth fire—avoiding the gaze of William’s twin, who sat cross-legged beside it—as he picked up the thread of his tale.
“We’d hoped to make Crown Point and there be resupplied, but the wind turned against us, coming up from the south. It was all night rowing—and look you, Lydia, do not hiss in your breath,” he added as she did exactly that. “ ’Twas hardly a man of us not wounded, see. All could lift an oar were needed.”
Lydia shared a glance with Anna, then pressed her lips tight.
“We anchored in the night to mend as we could. By sunrise we saw the British sailing hard after us. We pushed through the day, rowing, strung out along the lake. The wind was yet strong from the south as we tacked, our bows smacking the chop, Congress shuddering as though her timbers would crack to kindling.” Reginald leaned forward in his chair, his Welsh-lilted voice a gentler wave than those of which he spoke.
“Into another night we pressed, yet dawn showed the British fleet again come up with us, and we still twenty miles from Crown Point. Within hours the Washington surrendered, leaving Congress the nearest prey. We’d tacked toward the eastern shore with four of the gondolas. It settled then into a running chase, with Arnold keeping up a brisk return of fire. But we were taking losses…”
A glance at Lydia, and Reginald said no more of losses.
“By noon ’twas clear we were done for. Arnold ordered Congress and the gondolas run aground. We took what arms we could carry and fired the vessels. Arnold didn’t strike our colors but let them fly above the flames.”
“A good defiance,” Stone Thrower murmured.
“That it was,” Reginald agreed. “ ’Twas no winning that engagement, see. But the British didn’t press us. I’ve heard they do not mean to. Not from that quarter. Not this year.”
“Iyo.” It was Two Hawks who spoke, from the floor by the hearth. He and Anna shared a deep look before seeming to remember they were under Reginald’s nose and broke the gaze.
Anna colored pink in the firelight. Reginald opened his mouth to address his daughter.
“How far was this from Crown Point?” Lydia asked, snagging his attention.
“About ten miles.” Reginald shifted in his chair, pain tightening his mouth, and let whatever he’d thought to say to Anna pass. “We watched the fires take deck and sail. Then the magazines exploded, rolling flames into the air, scattering burning planks across the bay. Enough to break the heart, it was. Once Arnold saw the ships would make no prizes, we took to the wood and made our way to Crown Point.”
Lydia gaped. “Ten miles afoot, after all that? I wouldn’t think—”
“I had it in me?” Reginald’s mouth twisted. “A near thing it was, and I’ll pay a price for it yet awhile.” He rubbed a hand at the base of his neck. “We reached Crown Point and warned the garrison the fort wouldn’t hold, presuming then the British would press the attack. We put the place to the torch and proceeded to Ticonderoga, and here am I come home at last, who meant to be gone but a few weeks’ time.”
Anna had her arms crossed, her face a study in unhappiness. “And we never even knew this was happening to you.”
Reginald’s expression softened. “I suppose there is still that of the soldier in me, unable to refuse such pressing need.”
Good Voice drew in a breath. With that one word—soldier—Lydia knew she’d been thrust back in memory to another war, another fort.
Seeking for something to say to cover the moment, Lydia glanced at Anna. Two Hawks had captured her focus again. It was wrenching to witness the depth of their longing, but…Lydia narrowed her gaze at the pair. There was longing in that shared gaze, but something else had supplanted it, at least in Anna’s expression. Pleading? Two Hawks met it with a shake of his head.
Stone Thrower asked, “What of the other American ships?”
“They reached Ticonderoga,” Reginald said. “Even the crew of the Washington taken prisoner was returned under flag of truce and the promise of parole.”
The fire’s snap was loud in the ensuing silence. Lydia felt tension gathering in the room. Again…there went Anna mutely pleading, as if she wanted Two Hawks to say something he didn’t wish to say.
“We have waited for your return,” his father said. “After one more sleep, we start our journey home to Kanowalohale. We have decided this.”
Surprise, then dismay, chased across Anna’s features. Whomever Stone Thrower meant by we, it hadn’t included her.
Reginald too looked surprised. “You needn’t leave so soon.”
“We thank you for sharing your home this long while,” Stone Thrower said, his handsome face burnished in the fire
light. “But there is hunting to be done.”
Reginald rubbed at his neck again. “Rowan has told me of your help with the harvest. I mean to send you home with a fair portion of the yield.”
It was true. The Oneidas had been of great assistance to Rowan and Maura Doyle in Reginald’s absence. Good Voice mostly, though Stone Thrower had done what he could, confined to crutches. It had been the first time he’d harvested corn—women’s work among the Oneidas.
Good Voice said, “What you offer we accept. But still we go. Hunting will be hard, dangerous with spies going about the forest trails. But the furs will buy us many things needed. Not just food.”
“It is not only for us we go,” Stone Thrower added. “Some at Kanowalohale have none to provide. I am a warrior of my people. My place is with them.”
Looking both regretful and relieved, Reginald cleared his throat. “What of Johnson’s regiment? Is there news?”
“That is for my son to answer,” Stone Thrower said.
Two Hawks sat straighter as he related the rumors that had circulated about Sir John Johnson and his regiment. “We put to rest each one until none remained to follow. We know where William is not—at the lake forts. We do not know where he is.”
Reginald was silent, absorbing this, then said, “Too long have I been gone from my place on the Binne Kill. But once my business there is in order…” He met Stone Thrower’s questioning gaze. “I’ve had time for thinking about what Arnold did on Lake Champlain. I thought of doing likewise—finding a break in the British lines in the north, slipping through to find William.”
“No,” Lydia said before she could think better of it. “Reginald, winter is nigh upon us.”
Reginald ignored all but Stone Thrower, to whom he’d bound himself with a promise—that they would neither go after William alone.
“It is a bold plan,” Stone Thrower said. “It stirs my heart to hear it. But we have taken hurt, you and I. To cross such distance in snow would take a man in his full strength to do. And I have reason to stay. For now.”