The Tory Widow

by Christine Blevins

  The taller boy standing beside the squatting boy gave Jack a shove to the shoulder. “Get up, you selfish old bugger!”

  Jack jerked his head up, bared his teeth and snarled, “Shove off !” but the two were not impressed.

  “You have t’ claim your share,” the squatting boy advised with a wise nod. “If you don’t want ’em, your rations can be splits amongst them that are hungerin’.”

  “Selfish old bugger!” the other repeated.

  Them that are hungering. Jack pushed up to a stand, and dusted his palms off on his breeches. “Alright, alright . . . I need to piss anyway.”

  “Best wait ’til we’re in the yard for that,” the older boy advised.

  The younger boy pinched his nose, turning his squeaky voice into an odd nasal drone. “The shit tubs is overflowin’—ain’t been emptied in days.”

  The taller boy led the way past rows of slow-moving men rising from beds of moldering, vermin-infested straw. The British held only a portion of the four thousand captured Patriot soldiers in this five-story building. Between the sick and dying men too feeble to rise and seek out their rations, and the stream of ill-kempt, cadaverous men funneling down the stairway in a slow shuffle, Jack had gauged that close to six hundred prisoners of war suffered the filth and deprivation of Cortlandt’s Sugar House.

  “We had our eye on you—saw that drunken bastard O’Keefe and the mulatto hangman bring you in yesterday.” Bobbing along beside Jack, the smaller boy offered his hand in greeting. “I’m Jim Griffin.”

  Jack took the thin hand. “Jack Hampton.”

  It would be generous to say the boy was skin and bone. His wide blue eyes were a bright contrast to the rest of him, mired under a layer of grime from the top of his ill-shorn head to the chipped and cracked nails on his bare toes. A clacking pair of drumsticks and a wooden canteen were strung to a shred of burlap sacking tied at his waist. The sleeve on his tattered shirt was crudely mended at the shoulder with knotted bits of twine, and his filthy breeches had frayed away to expose scabby, bony knees.

  Jack jerked his head toward the taller boy. “That pleasant fellow your brother?”

  “Him and me are brothers in arms,” answered Jim, giving his friend a slap on the back.

  The taller boy turned with an apologetic grin and shook Jack’s hand as well. “Brian Eliot, of Rawlings’s Maryland Riflemen.” He fell back to flank Jack. “Sorry ’bout being so rough on you. I find I don’t have much patience for newcomers when my stomach worm gets to gnawing.”

  Brian bore in his voice the soft twang of a Southerner. He was year or two older and a few inches taller than Jim, but just as gaunt. His shoulder-length hair was drawn into a greasy tail, and tied with a strip of cloth torn from the filthy rifleman’s frock shirt he wore gathered at his slim waist with a tooled leather belt.

  Jack pointed to the foot-long piece of iron sheathed on Brian’s belt. “That’s a nasty looking sticker you carry, brother.”

  Brian smiled proud, and slipped his makeshift weapon out for Jack to admire. The young rifleman had somewhere scavenged a flat strap door hinge, and sharpened the decorative fleur-de-lis end to a menacing point. “Keeps the boy-buggerers and thieves away, don’t it, Jim?”

  “Aye that.” Jim grinned. “Don’t nobody bother us no more.”

  “How long you boys been in here?” Jack asked.

  “Brian was amongst them who was captured at Fort Washington back in November,” Jim said. “I’ve been here longer—I was drumming for Atlee’s musketry battalion on Brooklyn when we was boxed in and captured by Cornwallis.”

  They shuffled down four flights of stairs to the main floor—past a square-jawed Hessian soldier beating his musket butt to a big iron sugar cauldron—and out into an open area within a tall palisade adjacent to the sugarhouse. A company of surly faced, blue-jacketed Hessians guarded the enclosure and distributed rations. Jack joined the line waiting to collect a share for the week—a paper-wrapped packet of hardtack along with a dripping one-pound chunk of pickled pork.

  A Redcoat sergeant accompanied by a drummer boy came in through the gate and addressed the captives. After marching up and down the line in an annoying spate of drumming, the sergeant called out, “Step up, lads, and volunteer! Reclaim yer honor and sign on to take the King’s shilling. Put an end to yer misery—yer rebellion has been squashed flatter than a French pancake.”

  There was a bristling among the prisoners—eyes shifting to and fro—each man bolstering his fellow with a nudge or a glance, and not a single man taking up what was, under the circumstances, a very tempting offer.

  “C’mon, lads,” the sergeant urged. “I’ll stand any man who steps up to take the oath to a pint.”

  “D’ruther drink my own piss, than drink with the likes of you,” a lanky Virginian drawled.

  A voice shouted, “Bugger off, ye wee lickspigot!”

  “Aye,” another yelled, “you and yer whole shitten army.”

  The recruiting sergeant rolled his eyes. “God rot yiz all, then—fools! Fuckin’ stupid rebel sods.” He gave his drummer a nudge, and they left the yard in search of a friendlier audience.

  “Here you go, boys—” Jack handed off his rations, adding, with as much swagger as he could muster, “Wasted on me, seeing as how I’m due for a neck stretching on the morrow.”

  Neither boy hesitated. Jim took the hardtack, Brian took the meat, and Jack knew the friends would come to a fair reckoning in divvying up the extra food they’d earned for keeping a sharp eye on the comings and goings of the provost’s minions.

  “Thank you kindly, Jack.” Brian slipped his rations inside his shirt.

  “Me and him figured you for a goner.” Jim pulled out a biscuit and sniffed it. “O’Keefe only deals with those destined to dangle. You fellas never seem to be very hungry.” He cracked the hardtack in two. It was writhing with weevils. The boy broke up the biscuit and flicked out most of the vermin before sifting the crumbs into his mouth.

  “What’d you do t’ warrant a neck stretchin’?” Brian asked.

  “I got caught trying to smuggle a boatload of British Army stores to Washington.”

  “A-yup.” Brian nodded. “High treason. That’ll do it.”

  “A good thing to swing for, I reckon,” Jim said, uncorking the stopper on his canteen. “Cheers to you, Jack!”

  Jack bid the boys farewell, and went off to join a long row of ragged scarecrows relieving themselves against the fencing. Finishing his business, and buttoning his breeches, he turned to find the boys waiting for him.

  “We want you to come with us to our place,” Brian said.

  “C’mon . . .” Jim leaned in with a wave and a whisper. “We got something you’ll want to see.”

  Jack followed the boys back into the building, through the river of men still flowing into the small yard for food and fresh air, to a narrow staircase leading down to the cellar.

  “I don’t know . . .” Jack stopped at the top of the stairs. “Whatever you’re after, boys, I’d rather just hand it over than suffer a thump to the head or the business end of that sticker.”

  Brian crisscrossed his thumb over his heart. “We mean you no harm.”

  “I promise you’re gonna like our place,” Jim added. “You’re a true Patriot, just like us.”

  Jack followed the boys down the stairs, where they negotiated the dank maze of corridors with the ease of nocturnal prowlers. He kept up with a grip on Jim’s bony shoulder knob while his eyes adjusted to the darkness, careful to avoid stepping on the squeaking swarm of rodents retreating as the threesome pressed forward.

  They came to a cobwebbed barricade made up of several big sugar barrels, a heavy, fallen-down ceiling timber and an old broken barrow. “There it is.” Brian pointed out a half-hidden padlocked door. “We found it when we were rat huntin’.” He scooted under the downed ceiling beam. “Watch your head . . .”

  “We tapped the pins from the hinges,” Jim explained as Brian pried the door open at
the hinge side with the flat end of his iron sticker. Jack followed them in, squeezing through the narrow opening.

  Brian called out, “Hold still while I get us a light.”

  In the rustling darkness, Jack heard the comforting sound of flint striking steel. After a few failed, flashing attempts, the tinder—a frizzle of old burlap sacking—caught a spark.

  “We found a whole cask of whale oil in here,” Brian explained as he nurtured the flame and transferred it to a twist of paper to light the wick on a large glass-chimneyed oil lamp, bathing the small room in a golden, wavering light.

  “We eats a spoonful once a week,” Jim added, scrunching his face. “Brian says it does us good.”

  The boys unloaded their rations onto the same counter that held the lamp—a long wooden desk fitted with a series of cubbyholes still stocked with a dusty assortment of paper labels, tags and blank bills of lading.

  The room was no bigger than ten foot square, and Jack stood in the center of the dirt floor, gazing in wonder about him. “My word! These are very fine . . .”

  Jim elbowed Brian. “See, I knew he’d like ’em.”

  Jack wandered the perimeter of the room, examining a series of intricate scenes rendered in black on the smooth plaster walls. “Who drew them?”

  “We did,” Brian said. “Me and Jim—with chunks of charcoal we found in an old bin.”

  “Trying to make our room a pleasant place,” Jim added. “Since there weren’t no windows in here, we fashioned our own.”

  Windows into worlds far beyond these prison walls . . . The drawings were large, and each scene was framed in a heavy, broad stroke—a boy and a spotted hound running through a field of corn under a cloud-filled sky; a mother kneading dough before a cheery hearth, her baby asleep in a basket at her feet; two boys in straw hats lazing along a marshy shoreline, their hopeful lines cast; a family with hands joined in prayer, gathered around a table groaning with food.

  The two drawing styles were distinct, but still, the subject matter was wrought with much skill, and Jack was struck by the beauty and peace conveyed in simple lines from the minds and hands of such young boys. The images were at once wonderful and painful for Jack to gaze upon. It broke his heart to think of the talent and dreams imprisoned and snuffed out in this awful place.

  While the artists sat on the floor chewing on a supper of uncooked meat and moldy, weevil-infested biscuits, Jack took in each scene. Smiling, he began to compose the “window” he’d draw, if he were lucky enough to own such skill.

  My beautiful Anne, standing at the compositor’s table, teaching our daughter to set type—our tall son beside me, working the press, a stew pot simmering on the fire . . . and . . . and it will never be . . . Jack lost his smile. For I am a dead man.

  As if he’d been struck once again across the back of the head with a pistol butt, Jack was staggered by the admission. I end tomorrow beneath Cunningham’s gallows. There was no bravado in the thought. Every hope, dream and desire he’d ever had would be strangled lifeless by a hempen rope.

  Jack clutched at the cast-iron half-crown around his neck, his breath stuck in his chest. He closed his eyes and imagined the other half in Anne’s possession, lying against the creamy, smooth skin just beneath the hollow of her throat. Gasping a shallow breath, he could almost feel the soothing peace of her fingertips on his brow.

  “We didn’t mean t’ make you sad, Jack,” Jim said, in a quiet voice. “Sometimes, the pictures take you to a place you didn’t mean to go to . . .”

  Jack heaved in and puffed out a sigh, swiping tears away with his sleeve. “No . . . I’m glad I came. Really. Thank you, boys, for sharing your place with me.”

  Brian nodded. “Even if it’s only in your mind’s eye, and only for a smidge of time, it helps to wander away from this shit-stinking world, don’t it?”

  Rations were stowed into a small keg with a tight-fitting lid. The lantern was doused, and the three trudged back upstairs to slip back into the crowded yard just as the Hessians began to bark out orders and herd the prisoners back inside. Jack joined the despondent double file of men, moving through the doorway, shuffling along to the beat of consumptive hacks and groans.

  It surely is a shit-stinking world . . .

  “Hampton!”

  Jack turned to his name. Through the moving crowd he could see a red-coated officer standing with a Hessian guard call out his name again.

  “Hampton!”

  Jack kept pace with the herd, all the while snatching glances over his shoulder.

  Jim grabbed Jack by the shirttail, whispering, “What’s that bloodyback want with you?”

  “I suppose it’s my gallows time . . .”

  “No, sir.” Brian shook his head. “They ain’t allowed t’ scrag anybody on the Sabbath . . .”

  Jack shrugged. “The provost may have something in mind for me—more than just a hanging.”

  “Don’t answer, Jack.”

  “Make ’em find you.”

  “Hampton! Jack Hampton!” the officer shouted, craning his neck. The Redcoat and the Hessian guard began to move up the line, and as they drew closer Jack could see the officer was cradling the distinctive brass helmet worn by the 17th Light Dragoons in the crook of his arm. In his other hand, he bore a loaf-sized rectangular package wrapped in rose-colored paper and tied with a blue, grosgrain ribbon.

  “Here!” Jack shouted, stepping out with Jim and Brian on his heels trying to pull him back.

  The lieutenant was one of the cavalrymen he had ridden with when he had scouted for General Clinton . . . one of the three dragoons Anne quartered above the Crown and Quill . . . Wemyss.

  “I’m Jack Hampton,” he announced. “I’m him.” Jack could see the reciprocal flash of recognition in the dragoon’s eye—the lieutenant clearly hesitating before at last handing over the package.

  “Your cousin has sent this small comfort for your last hours. Miss Sally bid me to tell you she made this cake special, just for you, and she will pray for your mortal soul.”

  “Thank you, sir . . . thank you so much.” Jack slipped the package inside his shirt, and touched his fingers to his brow in salute. “Please tell my cousin I am most grateful for her kindness and her prayers.”

  Wemyss brought a kerchief to his nose to allay the stink and considered Jack for a moment with a furrowed brow. Then, turning abrupt on his heel, he marched away.

  Jack tugged the boys back into the shuffling throng, and under his breath he said, “I need to use your light.”

  Both boys eyed the bulge in Jack ’s shirt, and nodded. They dragged their feet, making sure they were among the last prisoners lagging behind when the guards shut the big door. At the sound of the heavy iron bar dropping into its seat, Brian whispered, “Go!” and the three of them peeled away and skittered down the cellar stairs.

  “Whatever you got there, it surely smells grand,” Jim said, his nose twitching like a rabbit’s as they pried the door open to the secret room. “What do you think it is?”

  Jack pulled the package from his shirt and took a sniff. “It is definitely the finest soft gingerbread in all of New York. I’m hoping it is also a message from my woman.”

  “How’d your woman get a Redcoat to deliver it?” Brian asked, putting flint to steel to light the oil lamp.

  “My Anne, she is a wonder.” His heart was dancing a jig in his chest, and he fumbled so untying the ribbon, he threw up his hands and left it to Brian to accomplish the unwrapping.

  The deep brown loaf was wrapped in four sheets of rose-colored foolscap paper. He spread the sheets out on the countertop, examining each one, front and back.

  Seeing every page was blank, Brian sighed in sympathy. “It was probably too dangerous for her to write a message . . .”

  “No. There’s a message here. I know it.” Jack set aside the two most grease-stained pages, and ran his fingertips over the surface of the two clean pages.

  “Can we eat a bite?” Jim asked. On Jack ’s absentmi
nded nod, the boys converged on the loaf, prying off two good-sized chunks.

  “Looky here,” Brian said, “there’s somethin’ in this cake . . .”

  “Looks like the mate to the one you wear.” Jim showed Jack the crumb-covered half-crown in the palm of his hand.

  “ ‘Made it special . . .’ ” Jack said, with a grin and shake of his head.

  He removed the glass chimney on the lamp, held the paper to the heat of the flame and held his breath when the faint strokes of a pen began to darken on the page. “Here it comes . . .” He laughed. The script formed into full black, and he threw his head back and exclaimed, “Oh, Annie!”

  The boys crowded on either side. “What’s it say? What’s it say?”

  Jack read aloud the words rendered in Anne’s fine, strong hand:

  “Be Ready.

  We are coming for You.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  There are injuries which nature cannot forgive;

  she would cease to be nature if she did.

  THOMAS PAINE, Common Sense

  Monday, June 23, 1777

  Supper Hour at the Red Lion on Broad Way and Murray

  EIGHT o’clock . . . William Cunningham snapped the case on his pocket watch shut and waved the serving boys in to clear the table. But for a few scraps and bones congealing in greasy, bloody puddles, the platters and bowls were picked clean and the gravy jugs were drained dry. The boys carried off the remnants of the main course, and set out an impressive array of exotic sweetmeats and imported English cheeses. Brandy goblets were distributed, and the publican placed six bottles of Armagnac on the long table at regular intervals. The provost poured himself a glassful, and waited for his guests to ready their drinks.

  The cut-crystal goblet weighed heavy in his hand. Pushing away from the table, his head swam a bit. Too much claret and punch, and not enough meat and potatoes, he thought. Of late, his appetite never seemed to match his thirst.

  Cunningham fortified himself with a gulp of brandy, and rose to propose the customary toast. On this signal, chairs scraped back across the floorboards, and the group of merchants, bureaucrats and British officers whose favor he regularly curried joined him.