The Golden Flask

by Jim DeFelice

  "Here," said Jake when they finally reached the coffeehouse door. "No matter what happens, you are to keep your mouth quiet."

  "But — "

  "No matter what happens! The British will hang me, and you as well, if we are caught. You are to wait here exactly a minute, then come in. If it appears that I am in trouble, stay far away from me. There is a man named Bebeef with an apothecary shop in the First Ward. If I am captured, you are to seek him out and say I am your friend. He is a druggist and a philosopher and a great friend of mine; he will shelter you. Stay out of Canvas Town, no matter what anyone tells you. And under no circumstances — none — are you to follow me to jail. Do you understand?"

  The girl nodded soberly.

  Jake took a full breath. He never knew whether he would be recognized or not here, and what the consequences might be.

  "Take care of yourself," he said solemnly, patting Alison's shoulder as if it might be the last time he saw her. Then he pasted a smile on his face and plunged inside.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Wherein, fake is accused of being a deadbeat, then asked about his German.

  Rivington, as any reader of our country's journals will know, is the notorious editor of the lying rag proclaiming King George Ill's vicious slanders against his former subjects. He is the same printer who published the infamous notes from the Westchester farmer at the beginning of hostilities, and a man who has done much to proclaim the word of tyranny throughout the continent. While it will be admitted that Rivington has also printed the occasional reply from the patriot party — including one penned by Alexander Hamilton — there are few in America and none in England who doubt his loyalty to the king.

  Yet how to explain that, in opening the coffeehouse, he has entered into a partnership with Culper? How to explain that it is one of the best gathering places for the patriot spy network, and that even as Jake entered, three different pairs of patriot eyes noted his presence?

  Some questions are better left unanswered, at least for now. Suffice to say that Jake quickly found himself approached not by a mere waiter, but by Culper himself. The spymaster wore a reddened mask of gouty displeasure, and sailed at Jake as a crusader descending on the Saracens.

  "You, sir," he announced in a voice that scattered the pigeons nestling on the roof outside, "out of establishment this instant! We will serve none of your kind here!"

  "I always pay my bill promptly," sniffed Jake in return, not sure entirely what way the game was to be played.

  "Not so readily as you claim. Out — and take the servants' entrance. I wouldn't want people of repute to see you."

  "I resent the insult."

  "Do you deny that you owe me past ten pounds?"

  Jake glanced past Culper and saw Mark Daltoons standing near the side of the back hall. Daltoons, a young officer assigned to assist the city spies, was undoubtedly waiting to conduct him to a safer place.

  "Perhaps we could make an arrangement," Jake offered, glancing around the room. "I am to come into money soon."

  His glance had the effect of warning off a few of the more easily embarrassed patrons. "I must take the boy with me," said Jake in a whisper. "The lad in the tan vest without a hat just now coming through the door."

  "I will retrieve him," promised Culper beneath his breath. "If you have coins," he said loud enough for the room to hear, “you may meet me in the kitchen. If not, do not darken my hallway any longer."

  Jake was already heading for Daltoons. Tall and thin, with stained apron and unsmiling countenance, the fake waiter gave the most discreet of nods before disappearing into the back. Jake followed moodily; inside the hallway, he discovered an open panel and slipped through, landing uneasily on a twisting staircase.

  Closing the door behind him meant enshrouding himself in a thick, dank darkness. He descended slowly, and counted five steps when he was suddenly grabbed from behind.

  Just as he was ducking to flip his assailant over his back, he realized it was Daltoons.

  "We have installed a new passage," said the young man. "Come quickly.”

  When they had last worked together, Daltoons had confessed to Jake that he had lied about his age when enlisting in his Massachusetts company two years before. At the time, he was barely fifteen, though he said he was nineteen. The fiction was carried off so perfectly that the others in his group elected him their officer. In their defense, it must be said that Daltoons generally carried himself as a man in his late twenties or early thirties, possessed of a bravery that knew no age limit. Barely seventeen when General Howe's army advanced on New York the previous fall, he had volunteered to remain in the city and help establish the spy network.

  Jake had to duck to proceed through the passage, which burrowed beneath the building in the manner of a Roman catacomb. It narrowed so severely that at one point he and Daltoons turned and walked sideways.

  "Quite a snug little nest we've made under the British, no?" Daltoons said as he reached a large chamber. "Wait now and we will have a little light."

  A lamp filled with whale oil lay near the entrance. Daltoons took it up, and with some trouble succeeded in getting it lit. The walls and ceiling of this dug-out room had been boarded over with wide pine boards, but it could not in any sense be called comfortable; many a dungeon seemed more handsome.

  "The British have turned their screw wheels tighter of late," said Daltoons as Jake took a seat on an empty barrel. "The Tory bastard Elliot has been given broad powers, and anyone so much as criticizing the king is subject to arrest."

  "An exaggeration, surely."

  "Not at all," said Daltoons. "The British put a good price on your head after your last sojourn. Fortunately, they seem to have come up with a very faulty description."

  The young man reached to a nearby chest and picked through some papers. He handed Jake a sheaf of circulars offering 100 pounds for the apprehension of "one of His Majesty's most pernicious subjects, Jake Gibson. Standing five-foot-three, with dark black hair and a scar above his nose, he has a French accent gained from his years of service in the maritime, where he lost partial use of his leg."

  Jake's laugh shook the ceiling boards. "This is me?"

  "I know a dozen men who would swear it."

  The men's laughter stopped abruptly as they heard a noise above. The lieutenant took his pistol from his belt and steadied it at the narrow doorway, lowering it only when Culper pushed through with a grunt.

  "You took a great chance meeting me here," said Culper gruffly.

  "I asked for you at the governor's palace, but you weren't at home," returned Jake.

  "There's a price on your head. It's fortunate we have friends willing to describe you so minutely, or half the company upstairs would have fallen on you."

  Jake was just about to tell Culper why he had come when Alison burst through the opening with the joy of a newborn colt.

  "Father!" she cried.

  "It's all right, Alison, we're among friends," said Jake, holding her at bay.

  She gave him a strange look.

  "Father? Why are you calling me Alison? Do you think I've suddenly changed into a girl?"

  "If you want, I'll let our friend Daltoons examine you." Jake ignored her scowl and turned to Culper. "Her father helped me find an easy passage to the city, but was killed by marines. We only just survived by swimming the river."

  "You swam?" asked Daltoons incredulously.

  "Not by design," said Jake.

  As was her habit, Alison had adopted her own view of the situation. "I've come to New York to join the Sons of Liberty," she told Culper. "And to help General Washington.

  Culper frowned. "You can't help him here. Where is your mother?"

  "I have none. And no relatives either. I am a fresh recruit, without strings."

  Culper was already shaking his head by the time Jake suggested a place might be found for Alison at the coffeehouse.

  "She cooks very well," said Jake.

  "I don't want a job as a c
ook or servant," said Alison. "I want to join the army — or be a spy like you."

  "Alison, I think perhaps you should go and get something to eat. And get changed," said Jake.

  "I want to stay here."

  "No," he said firmly. "Lieutenant Daltoons will help you."

  "Gladly," said Daltoons. Not only could he now see through the disguise, he was beginning to see more than a bit beyond it.

  "Take her to Miss Tennison's," said Culper.

  Daltoons started to object, but his commander would hear none of it.

  "Tennison's. You could probably use a good supper yourself. Meet us at the infirmary when you are done."

  Daltoons appeared nearly as reluctant as Alison now that the destination was given, but nodded and led her out through an entrance that led up the stairs of an adjoining house.

  "Can we trust her?" Culper asked Jake.

  "Without doubt, though she's the most rambunctious girl I've ever met. But give her her due: she just helped me lie my way off Clayton Bauer's estate."

  "Bauer? He captured you?"

  "No. I had the bad luck to wash up on his shore. Alison passed herself off as a boy there, and talked Bauer's sister-in-law into helping us."

  At last Culper was impressed. "How old is she?"

  "I believe fifteen, perhaps a year more."

  "I don't know that we can keep her here. Things are far too dangerous now. The entire city is turned against us."

  "General Washington was afraid' you might be dead."

  "Not yet. But many of our people have been forced into hiding — or jail."

  "The general needs to know Howe's plans," said Jake. "He has intercepted a message that claims he's attacking Boston."

  "Very possible," said Culper. "His whole staff has disappeared from Manhattan. They're not on Staten Island either. Apparently everyone Howe values has been placed aboard ship and is sitting just over the horizon, whether waiting for the winds to change or some portent from heaven, it is impossible to say. Boston may be his target."

  "Why would he go north? Why risk another defeat there?"

  "If it were Philadelphia, why not just continue across the Jerseys?" answered Culper. "We have heard every city on the continent as a destination. I have sent a number of our men to try and discover Howe's plans, with nothing to show for it. My best hope was Robert Anthony, who infiltrated General Clinton's headquarters. Clinton has been left behind, though whether Howe trusts him with his plans seems to vary from week to week."

  "Where is Anthony?"

  "Sitting in one of the city jails, waiting to be taken to the prison ships or hanged, whatever they decide."

  "We must rescue him and see what he has found." Jake said.

  "I'm glad you feel that way," said Culper, a bit of his more usual spirit reviving in the twinkle of his eyes. "We have an operation planned this very afternoon. Tell me, how is your German these days?"

  Chapter Eighteen

  Wherein, Claus van Clynne is bundled in British rope and, more fearsome, red tape.

  While Jake was enjoying his brief breakfast at Clayton Bauer's mansion, Claus van Clynne was in need of much stronger relief. Having been transported downriver to a small landing north of Peekskill, he was bundled and taken south in the back of a hay cart. The cart skirted the American patrols and defenses in the Highlands, which centered around the immense river chain and its neighboring forts on the river. South of King's Ferry, the small group of disguised British sailors and the renegade Egans took a road that led to the shore. Had he not been gagged, the squire might have remarked that he knew this particular lane well, as he had ridden down it during his adventures as the adopted general of a Connecticut brigade but a month and a half before. He might also have protested, with great severity, when Egans took up his hat and placed it on his own head, deciding to treat it as a trophy of war.

  But then there was much van Clynne might have said at any stage of his journey. He could have waxed eloquent about the indignities of being lifted like a bag of year-old potatoes from the back of the cart and dumped unceremoniously into a longboat. He might have essayed at length about the untidy and haphazard rowing that took him to the river sloop waiting in the shadows offshore. He undoubtedly would have complained of the fickleness of the starlight as he stared at the sky for three hours while the sloop raced furiously south. Nor should anyone suspect that he would have stifled his complaints at the bidding of the marines who stood guard, nor Egans himself, who brooded at the front of the vessel.

  More Indian than white, the Oneida was suspicious of his British paymasters, and his many dealings with them had made him less, rather than more, inclined to trust them. But he nonetheless had made himself their agent, and an effective one at that. His motivations were a mixture of revenge against the people who had killed his adopted father, a misguided notion that adventure against the whites was the equivalent of glory in battle, and a determination to use the wealth he received to increase his own position and standing among his adopted people. Indeed, the man who was called Snowsnake longed above all else for acceptance and honor, not merely from his immediate family but from Iroquois in general. The lines of power in his clan and nation ran through the maternal side, and Egans with some reason felt he had never been properly appreciated by his adopted aunts. Returning with the trophies British silver could provide was one way of raising their esteem.

  His adopted father's death had left a great hole within his breast, which he felt could only be closed by over-awed respect. He would trade half the fingers on his hands for the position a man such as Johnson —- also white — commanded among the confederacy.

  For his part, Claus van Clynne believed Egans more misguided than evil. In the Dutchman's opinion, his alignment with the British was due solely to the misidentification of his adopted father's killer. The Dutchman placed a great trust in blood instincts, as well as his own abilities of persuasion, and felt that if the gag around his mouth were removed, he would soon have Egans leading the charge against the English. A word here, a hint there, and Egans would be among the hottest Revolutionists.

  Alas, his theory was never put to the test, for the gag was not removed; not when the sloop pulled into Loyalist Spuyten Duyvil to discharge some other passengers, nor when it slipped along the shore to find the wharfs further south in Manhattan at early morn. The rag was still firmly around his mouth as van Clynne, with considerable straining from the crew, was loaded into a wheelbarrow and dragged ashore, where he was hoisted into a wagon.

  If they chafed at taking directions from a man they might regard as a traitor to their race, the crew nonetheless followed Egans's orders and took some care as the trussed prisoner was lifted from the back and carried — again with a surfeit of groans — up the steps to the British administration building across from the jail.

  Even in wartime, there' are forms to be completed and papers signed. Egans waited stoically while the British went through their procedures for interning the prisoner. Van Clynne's money and his passes had been transferred to a satchel Egans kept at his side. He judged it unnecessary to produce them for the clerk, especially as they might be of use in his future endeavors.

  It was a good thing, too, for otherwise the process would have taken three times as long, between the cataloging and accounting.

  "An examination will have to be arranged," said the clerk at the desk, pointing at van Clynne after the forms were filled. "According to the calendar, it will not be before next week. After that, he will provide nice ballast at Wallabout Bay."

  Egans did not join in the laughter. The mud flats of Wallabout Bay were the home of a series of derelict hulks used as prison ships. In his mind, there was no glory in keeping prisoners in such torturous conditions. Better to kill a man outright, so that his spirit might be used by the victorious warrior.

  Needless to say, van Clynne had his own ideas. In fact, he tried to share them with the clerk.

  "I cannot hear you through your gag," the man told him.r />
  Van Clynne's gesticulations that it be removed were insufficient to convince him. The clerk was, however, required by the regulations to ascertain from the prisoner his name and role in the rebellion. Custom also dictated a few other inquiries, such as the nature of his religion. At length, therefore, the clerk nodded at the sergeant-at-arms, who removed the spittle-drenched gag.

  "I was just about to wonder what had happened to the custom of law in this country," thundered van Clynne the moment his lips were freed. "To be tied like a common hog —"

  "We were confused by your grunts," said the clerk dryly. "What is your name?"

  "I am a personal friend of Sir William Howe. I demand to be taken to him at once!"

  "The general will be with you shortly," said the clerk. "He is currently on his way to tea with Mr. Washington. What is your name?"

  "It was not two months ago when I dined with Sir William aboard his brother's ship and debated the merits of Madeira versus ale," answered the Dutchman. (He happened to be speaking the truth, though the clerk should be forgiven for not thinking it possible.) "Take me to him immediately."

  "This gentleman will show you there," said the Englishman, nodding at the sergeant-at-arms. "For the record, do you refuse to give me your name?"

  "I refuse to answer any of your questions," said van Clynne indignantly. "I refuse to be a party to this injustice, and stand on my rights."

  "You would do better to stand on your feet," said the clerk, making a notation in his book. "Take him away."

  "My hat, I demand my hat!"

  "You do not require a hat in jail," answered the clerk.

  "I stand upon my rights," blustered van Clynne. "A man cannot be deprived of his hat under British law."