by Ron Carter
“Set the bucket down. No need to waste the milk.”
Slowly Honeyman settled the bucket onto the dirt floor and straightened and suddenly anger surged. “Who are you? You got a reason for being here?”
“Eli Stroud. Scout for General George Washington. He sent me.”
Honeyman gasped and started. “General Washington? Is he all right?”
Eli stepped out into the full light and Honeyman saw the slightly hawked nose and the prominent chin with the scar on the left jawline; the blue eyes and brown hair of a white man. Eli weighed his answer.
“The general’s all right, but his army’s taken a beating. He sent me to deliver a message to you.” He dug inside his coat and reached out with the folded paper. Honeyman grasped the paper and turned it to the lantern light scarcely breathing and read the brief, terse message. He read it once more, and carefully went over the signature again and again. Authentic. He raised anxious eyes to Eli.
“You read this?”
“No. General said only you.”
“Know what it says?”
“No. He didn’t tell me.”
Honeyman read it once more, moving his lips silently with every word. Then he turned to the lantern, held the letter over the chimney until it curled and began to smoke, and then caught. He dropped the burning paper on the dirt floor, and the two men watched it burn to black ashes and crumble. Honeyman ground it into the dirt with his shoe heel.
Eli spoke. “Anything I should tell the general?”
Honeyman reflected. “Tell him I understand.”
“That’s all?”
Honeyman nodded. “That’s all.”
Eli nodded and started for the door, and Honeyman spoke.
“Stroud, I wish I could ask you to supper, but I can’t. It’s best if no one knows you came, not even my wife or the children.”
Eli nodded. “Might want to put out that lantern before I open the door. You leave first. Don’t know who might be watching.”
Honeyman picked up the milk bucket and blew out the lamp. Eli opened the door and waited while Honeyman walked out into the night. Eli listened to the sound of Honeyman’s boots in the crisp snow fade before he soundlessly closed the door. Behind Eli the Guernsey turned her head in the darkness, knowing something was different, and raised a quiet complaint. Eli counted one hundred breaths, opened the door, listened intently while he counted five more breaths, then slipped silently into the frigid, starry night.
Honeyman stopped at the root cellar near the back of the house long enough to set the bucket of milk on a shelf to chill overnight, climb back up the five stairs, and lower the thick plank door. He stopped to scrape the mud from his heavy shoes as Hannah opened the back door, and he blinked at the flood of light. He savored the warmth and the smells of supper and hot, spiced apple cider as he stepped inside. He hung his coat and unlaced and set his shoes thumping on the floor, then glanced at the table where the four children stood waiting.
While they watched in wide-eyed, respectful anticipation, he washed in the kitchen, ran a comb through his long hair, and returned to his place at the head of the table. They knelt while he said grace, and waited until he was seated before they took their chairs. The warmth of the stew and the freshly baked bread settled in and spread and they ate in silent gratitude. They tore chunks of bread to wipe their plates clean, and drank cold milk from the morning milking. Last, his wife poured a pitcher full of hot cider laced with cinnamon, and the children clutched their pewter mugs, eyes dancing as they waited for the special treat.
Honeyman packed his pipe and sought the large rocking chair while Hannah and the children cleared the table and finished the dishes. He rocked in silence, going over the message from Washington again and again, forcing the beginnings of a plan to take shape in his mind.
He started at the call from Hannah. “John, it’s bedtime for the children.” He glanced at the clock on the mantel, startled that it was well past eight o’clock. He rose and walked to the bedroom where he knelt with the family, nodded to Janey, their oldest daughter, who bowed her head and dutifully offered the evening prayer.
He had settled back into the rocking chair, toying with his cold pipe, when Hannah, slender, large eyes, blonde hair, round face, sat down near him.
“Something’s happened.”
He drew a great breath and looked her in the eyes. “Yes. I’ll be gone for a day. Maybe more.” For a moment Hannah’s breathing constricted, then evened once again, and for a time neither of them moved or spoke. She had learned never to inquire about John’s unexplained absences, but she had never learned to rise above the panic that surged in her heart each time he looked her in the eye and quietly said he would be gone. She could manage the house and feed the livestock and milk the Guernsey for a time, but she could not control the sick fear while he was gone. She had survived the arrests, the beating, the hiding in the swamp, but she could not bear the thought that one day a stranger would knock on her door, eyes downcast, hat in his hand and try to explain that John would not be coming home.
She rose in silence, mouth clenched, battling her fears. She had reached the door to their bedroom before John’s voice stopped her.
“Hannah, it will be all right. All right.”
She nodded and went into the bedroom and behind the closed door, slumped onto the bed. She buried her face in her hands and her shoulders shook with her quiet sobbing.
The morning star was dwindling as Honeyman walked out the back door into the gray, frost-covered world. He fed the beef animals, milked the cow, and with the first arc of sun igniting diamonds in every crystal of frost, walked back to the root cellar with a smoking bucket of milk. Vapor trailed behind his head and his face showed white spots from the deep cold. He left the fresh milk in the root cellar and took the chilled bucket from last night into the house. Hannah and Janey would separate the milk, feed the whey to the sow and her nine pigs, and make square pats of butter and round wheels of cheese from the butterfat to go into the root cellar for barter in Princeton on their next trip into town.
At the breakfast table, he poured thick milk on steaming oatmeal porridge, added honey, and reached for the bread.
“Janey, I’ll be gone for a day or two. Got to sell some of the beef animals. You help your mother, and help your brother and sisters with their schoolbooks.”
Janey nodded. “When will you be back?”
“Two trips. I’ll be back tomorrow, but I’ll need to leave again a couple days later.”
Janey looked at Hannah from the corners of her eyes and saw the tight lines around her mouth and the forced concentration as her mother kept her eyes on her own bowl of porridge. Janey understood the signs, but not the reasons. She nodded her head without looking at her father and continued her breakfast.
Honeyman finished his breakfast, and without a word went to the bedroom. He took two coins from a box beneath the bed and put them in his pocket, then put on a wool sweater and picked a scarf from a wall peg. He walked back to the kitchen and put on his coat, then his old, black shapeless hat, and walked out the door. He put rope halters with twenty-foot lead ropes on two of the Angus steers and tied them to the fence before he opened the gate and let the other animals up the lane and out to the pasture. He saddled and bridled the big, heavy-footed plow horse with long winter hair hanging six inches from its belly, and walked back to the house.
Hannah and the children stood nearby while he wrapped the handknitted scarf high around his neck and tucked the ends inside his coat, then tugged on his mittens. She handed him a small canvas bag with bread and cheese and meat. He stood still for a moment, handling it, looking at it, before he raised his eyes to hers. They stood for a moment in awkward silence before he spoke.
“It’s cold. Might give the sow a little grain.”
She nodded.
“I’ll be back sometime tomorrow—early afternoon—and then I have to go again.”
She nodded her head and her eyes dropped.
&nb
sp; He turned to the children. “No nonsense. Help your mother.”
The sun was a chill, golden ball shining through the bare branches of the eastern trees as he tied the two lead ropes to the saddle and mounted the big sorrel horse. He pulled its head south and clucked it to a walk. The two Angus steers set their legs stiff against the pull of the rope, eyes rolling white as the horse dug its calked shoes into the frozen ground. The two steers tossed their heads, bawling their displeasure at being dragged away from the pen and feed.
Honeyman walked the big horse south on the dirt road that divided the small village of Princeton, past the tiny College of New Jersey, with its great Nassau Hall, watching for British soldiers, making mental notes of the homes and buildings where they were billeted. He marked well the British headquarters, where the arrogant General James Grant now commanded the light infantry of the British Second Brigade, with a troop of light horse under the command of Brigadier General Alexander Leslie. When General Charles Cornwallis was given leave to return to England to be with his gravely ill wife, General Howe had sent Grant to take command of the string of British outposts—Staten Island, Perth Amboy, Brunswick, Princeton, Trenton, Bordentown, Burlington. The command headquarters were at Princeton, near the middle of the eighty-mile spread. The same General Grant who had strutted like a peacock, bragging he could march from one end of the colonies to the other with but five thousand British regulars and the entire American army and militia could not stop him. He had declared loud and long that nothing was more disgusting than American soldiers—undisciplined, cowardly trash!
The road angled southwest and Honeyman’s horse plodded faithfully on, across the Stony Brook Bridge and past Worth’s Mill where the land flattened nearly level. With the sun approaching its zenith they crossed Eight Mile Run, and Honeyman stopped to loosen the saddle girth and let the animals drink. He ate bread and cheese and drank clear, cold water from the creek before he tightened the cinch, once again mounted the horse, and pushed on. In the early afternoon they crossed Shabbakonk Creek, and in the distance Honeyman could see the clustered trees, with stark, bare branches and limbs that marked Trenton. He pulled the horse to a stop and the Angus steers slowed and stopped, questioning. For a long time he sat the horse, vapors rising from his face, as he carefully studied the town of Trenton in his mind.
The village of Trenton was laid out nearly true to the compass. The south end of the town was very close to the Assunpink Creek, which emptied into the Delaware River at the southwest corner of the village, where the Delaware angled slightly to the right and continued southerly. Queen Street divided the town on a north-south line, with King Street one block west and Quaker Lane one block east. Queen was the single street that continued south to cross the Assunpink on the only bridge at the south end of town. Once across the Assunpink, Queen became Bordentown Road, leading south to Bordentown, Burlington, and Philadelphia.
Running east-west, starting at the south end of town next to the Assunpink Creek and working north, the first street was Front Street, then Second, Third, and Fourth Streets. Clustered among these crossroads of dirt streets were about one hundred homes, some shops and businesses, and the Trenton mills.
All three of the north-south streets—King, Queen, and Quaker Lane—ended where they connected to the Princeton Road. Thus, travelers coming to Trenton on the Princeton Road could choose one of the three streets, Quaker, Queen, or King, to turn south to enter the village.
Honeyman made his decision and clucked to the horse, and moved on. He sat loose and easy in the saddle, turning his head from time to time to check on the cattle he was leading. Coming to the first northsouth road, Quaker Lane, he glanced casually to his left at the apple orchard and the cornfield, stark in the bright sunlight and the patchy snow. He turned left onto Quaker Lane, and worked south on the slick glaze where the direct sun had thawed the top of the frozen ground enough to make a watery surface. He nodded and tipped his hat to those who were in the streets, and who he knew to be avid Tories, while his eyes took in everything. He reached Second Street and turned west to Queen Street and paused. Standing tall in the stirrups, he studied the Assunpink Creek, then turned north, moving up Queen Street, once again tipping his hat and calling greetings to those whom he knew to be loyal to the Crown, and who knew him to be an outspoken Tory. At the top of Queen Street, where it ended at the Princeton Road, he turned left to King Street, and turned left once more, moving south on King.
He approached Third Street to his left, with the Methodist Church on the east side of the street, near the far corner. On the west side of King Street, was the large frame home of Stacy Potts. During the past year Honeyman had carefully cultivated the friendship of Potts, who was a declared Tory, faithful to the Crown. It was Potts who had welcomed the British with open arms and generously offered his spacious and comfortable home to them for their headquarters. General William Howe accepted the offer, but it was not British soldiers he sent to occupy Trenton. Howe gave overall command of the forces to German Colonel Carl Emil Kurt von Donop, who established his headquarters in Burlington, south of Trenton halfway to Philadelphia, and gave command of the Trenton post to German Colonel Johann Gottlieb Rall. Von Donop’s entire command, including the soldiers assigned to Rall at Trenton, were the blue-coated German Hessians.
In the months since their arrival, Honeyman had quietly learned that neither von Donop nor Rall spoke English, nor did they intend to learn, and their failure to establish open, solid communications with the local Americans had created a sense of nervous unrest between the Hessians and the Americans, both Tories and Patriots. While von Donop had some modicum of regard for Americans as soldiers, Rall held them in utter contempt. He had led his command straight into the breastworks on Long Island and watched the Americans scatter and run in terror. He had led his Hessians into the battle for Fort Washington, and again watched the Americans throw down their muskets and run for the protection of the fort, and then surrender it, all within half a day. It was the Hessians who ordered the Americans to march out of the fort, stripped of all their clothing—the ultimate humiliation—and it was only the angry orders from General Howe himself that saved the Americans from the shame of doing it.
Since taking command at Trenton, Rall’s daily patrols had reported the cowardice and disorganization of the Americans camped just across the Delaware River, and of the destitute, inhuman condition of their filthy camps, with sickness rampant, no food, clothing, pay, blankets, or tents, and daily desertions by the hundreds. Rall was absolutely unshakeable in his conclusion that he would beat the Americans by simply waiting for American stupidity and the hardships of a fierce winter to kill those who did not desert. It was ridiculous to order his men to dig trenches and build breastworks in the winter to defend Trenton when it was so clear that it was a senseless waste of time. He laughed at the suggestion the Americans might attack. “Let them,” he had bragged. “We’ll show them the bayonet. They can’t stand the bayonet.”
And Honeyman had learned one more thing. The German-trained Hessians brought with them from Europe the centuries-honored European tradition of the right of spoils. A conquering army was entitled to the spoils of their conquest, and the Hessians had stared wide-eyed at the wealth of the American colonies, lusting greedily to conquer and then strip everything they wanted from the homes and businesses of the colonists. Their mistake was they could not tell the difference between a subject loyal to the Crown, and a rebel, whom they were here to defeat. And, being unable to understand English, either spoken or written, they had no idea what the loyal Tory homeowners were shouting at them, nor could they read the written oaths of loyalty to the Crown and England the Tories thrust under their noses, nor did they care. They drove Tories and rebels alike from their homes at bayonet point, plundering at will, carrying off whatever they wished, including their women. General Howe had been appalled and issued harsh orders that the Hessians were to cease the barbaric practice, but the Hessians grunted and smiled and continued as thoug
h Howe had never spoken.
Thus it was that when the Hessians were ordered to occupy the beautiful and prosperous village of Trenton, many of the residents had abandoned their homes and businesses, and the Trenton mills, and the fourteen hundred Hessian soldiers had gleefully moved in to occupy the vacant buildings. They stabled their horses in some of the homes, tearing out walls to accommodate the animals. They threw the horse dung into the kitchen until it was filled, then knocked out the windows and threw it out into the gardens and the cultivated yards.
Honeyman dismounted in front of Rall’s headquarters and tied the reins of the big horse to the large iron ring anchored in the stone post, then tied the lead ropes to the two cattle to a different post and walked to the front door. A picket stopped him.
“I’m John Honeyman. I have a contract to deliver beef. I’ve brought two.” He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb towards the two steers.
The Hessian picket understood nothing, but he recognized Honeyman, who had delivered beef half a dozen times. He pointed down the street to the Old Barracks, and Honeyman nodded.
Five minutes later Honeyman turned the horse west off of King Street and led the cattle past the old, two-storied square stone building that stood at the bend in the road where King Street joined Front Street within sight of the Delaware River to the south. The Old Barracks had been built in 1758 to house three hundred soldiers during the French and Indian wars, and in need could accommodate over four hundred. Now it was filled with Hessians and a few Tory refugees. Cattle and livestock pens with feed and water had been erected behind it, and were used to hold British horses, and cattle to feed the troops.
Honeyman waited at the back door of the Old Barracks for the captain in charge of the livestock, then led the steers to the cattle pen furthest west. While he slipped the halters off the animals, he quickly counted the cattle in the pen. He coiled and tied the lead ropes while the captain issued his receipt, then remounted his horse. Five minutes later he again approached the picket stationed at the front entrance of the headquarters in the Potts’s home, and held up the piece of paper.