Angel's Flight

by Juliet Waldron

  “It must’ve been a very bad time for you.”

  Angelica nodded. “Yes, but Uncle TenBroeck and his housekeeper, and my cousin Arent and his wife, too, were all so very kind. They are all generous people.” Tears flooded her eyes, but she kept talking, hoping they’d go away.

  Jack noticed the extra shine in her eyes. “I didn’t mean to make you sad,” he said, gently slipping his fingers beneath her hand.

  Angelica cleared her throat. Much more than that cursory tale and she would cry. This morning she felt weak to the point of wobbly.

  “Now,” she countered, hoping to shift the focus away from herself, “you must tell me a little more about your family.”

  “Of course,” he replied, stroking her fingers softly. “Ask away.” “Tell me about the Church family,” she said. “And about what England is like.”

  As she asked, she withdrew her hand. To her great relief, Jack simply let it go, like a kinsman who’d been offering comfort instead of a would-be lover.

  “Certainly. Which first?”

  “Tell me about England. About what your home place is like.”

  “What it’s like? Do you mean a description like a travel journal?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “All right, description first. Oxfordshire, where I was born, is like a well-kept garden.” Jack began easily. “There are slow streams filled with meanders, with willows and cattails. The country rolls from low hills to valleys and every inch is cultivated, except for the tops of hills which are crowned with what we call forests, although to you they’d seem mere wood lots. Very tame compared to this.”

  Jack gestured at the dark cliff-fall riverbank. Above were massive stands of chestnut, lifting hazy, new budded crowns to the sky.

  “Are there many in your family?”

  “Not really. As I’ve said I am the third son, although, actually, owing to my eldest brother’s death—unfounded confidence in his horse, rather like your father—I am now second. I have four sisters, three of them well married and gratifying my mother with grandchildren, as is my scholarly brother Frederick. He was meant for the clergy, but, alas, has now to deal with an estate and a title, which worries him more than I think it ought to.”

  “And your mother is alive?”

  “Yes. A handsome and pious lady.”

  “Just the little you said before makes me recognize a proud Livingston lady.”

  Jack chuckled. “Indeed? Papa always swore it was the high German doctor—her maternal grandfather—with whom he engaged whenever they quarreled. Are there any Herr Doktor Professors in your family?” he asked. “I believe I recognize a similar talent for debate.”

  Angelica ignored the jest. “Your eyes are your mother’s,” she said. “Of that, I’m certain.”

  The eyes in question regarded her levelly. “Yes. As a matter of fact, they are.”

  “And exactly how old are you, sir?”

  “Upon the first of June I shall be thirty-one. I can’t believe,” he said, almost to himself, “that I’ve lived to be such an old man and am still a bachelor.”

  But you haven’t been without the company of women, as much as ever you wanted, Angelica thought, admiring his good looks and thinking of the confident masculinity that had swept away her good sense last night.

  “And now, sir, I shall ask a very bold question.”

  “I would expect nothing less from an American lady.”

  “What, I pray, was your offense which sent you at such a tender age into the army?”

  “I fear they were legion, Miss TenBroeck,” he replied.

  “And you, the great-grandson of a high German doctor of Red Hook?”

  “He would’ve beaten me senseless every day, Mama often declared.”

  “Ah, but this is evasion,” Angelica persisted. “I’m beginning to imagine you must have been a terribly bad boy.”

  What on earth could he have done? His reaction plainly showed he didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Well,” Jack slowly said, “I did exactly what I wanted and then lied to get out of the resulting scrape.”

  Suddenly, he looked abashed. Angelica thought embarrassment became him every bit as much as his bolder moods.

  “And very interesting and inventive lies they were, too,” he continued. “I spared myself many a thrashing I richly deserved. But, at last, one of my tall tales collapsed on my head like a badly built wall. My father had just died and my mother was terribly upset when she uncovered my delinquency. My Grandfather Church told me, man to man, what I must do to make amends.”

  “Yes, you said he was the one who sent you to the army.”

  “Ensign Church curried a lot of horses and mucked out stables and polished whole rooms of tack, in between whippings,” Jack ended with a rueful grin.

  “Do you think if your father had been alive he would have sent you to the army?”

  “Yes. Indulged and excused, I might’ve grown up into a thoroughly bad apple, as some rich men’s sons do. Fortunately, Papa died before the grand finale of all my capers. Everyone would have accused me of causing it—his death by apoplexy, I mean.”

  “You are still evading, Colonel Church.”

  “Yes, I am. And you do not give up easily.”

  “My imagination is running wild. I hope,” she continued, frowning, “you did not kill someone.”

  ***

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she looked so alarmed Jack judged it the lesser evil to make some sort of confession. Of course, he couldn’t tell her the real story. She’d be, just as his pious American mother had been, absolutely horrified.

  Perhaps half the story would do. “With the connivance of one of our servants, I took a fine hunter of my father’s and sold him. Then I pretended he’d been stolen, swore it in front of a magistrate and perjured myself.”

  “At eleven?”

  “I am afraid so.”

  “Good Lord!” she cried, unable to imagine anyone so young doing such a thing. “Well, I sincerely hope you have reformed yourself.”

  “Absolutely,” he replied.

  It was always a tangle for him—a tangle of loyalties. He had needed the money to give to a lowly friend from the stables whose family had been put off their land and were in danger of starving. He had used the hunter to help those people, and he had not told his grandfather what he had done with the money he’d made, not even after many beatings.

  To his mother, he confessed the truth, but even she had not understood how he could be “more loyal to some boy in the stables than to your own family.”

  Mother had not told his secret, however, and she had blessed him and cried when he’d gone, so young, to the army. It’s always a tangle, Jack thought. And you can only pray to choose the right...

  They had reached the part of the river that lay between the promontory of Anthony’s Nose and the high rock of Bear Mountain. White sails were in abundance.

  A small craft darted in their direction. Just as swiftly, the sailors of the Judik lowered the Union Jack and raised a simple white flag carrying the motto “Liberty.”

  “Shouldn’t we have been stopped by a British ship before we got here?” Angelica wondered.

  “Yes. That little chase early this morning wasn’t much for the mighty British navy,” Jack replied.

  He gazed away, down the river. Angelica had an odd feeling he was evading her purposefully, as if she might read something in his eyes he didn’t want her to see.

  “The rebels must have good spies,” he observed. “Better than I’d have given them credit for.”

  “We are not rebels.” It was stupid, this dogged repetition, but she couldn’t stop herself.

  “As you say, miss.” The eyes that turned back to her were veiled, his mobile mouth a stern line.

  Standing on deck, they could see the small craft of the patriot militia readily passing the boom, which was a series of huge logs bobbing in the river with a submerged chain between. Only larger ships would find
it an impediment.

  A small, fleet boat drew alongside. It was manned by a scruffy crew of what looked like ordinary Hudson watermen. Only one man, the officer in charge, was in uniform, an ill-fitting blue-and-buff coat. He and Vanderzee retired to the captain’s cabin. After awhile, Jack was called.

  Angelica fretted about what would happen, but her anxiety didn’t last. Not much later, they emerged. Jack was his usual cool and confident self, while Vanderzee seemed disgruntled and uneasy.

  The officer, a Captain VanDam, paid his respects to Angelica.

  “I owe a TenBroeck lady in distress assistance,” the young officer declared. “Rest assured I shall do all in my power to help you reach your kinfolk.”

  Jack watched the performance with an ironic expression. It seemed that plans had been made to put her, Jack, and Hal aboard a smaller craft and send them up river straight to Kingston.

  “Something is going on down river right now,” Jack suddenly remarked, pointing.

  In the south, a huge black cloud boiled skywards.

  “Hendrik Hudson!” exclaimed Vanderzee. He swiftly pulled the glass from his colorful sash and put it to his eye.

  “Take a look at that, Captain VanDam.” After a moment, he passed the glass.

  “I’m damnedly near sighted. What do you suppose?” Captain VanDam asked.

  “It’s a powder explosion, a big one,” Jack declared. “Probably coming from that little town we sailed past.”

  “Peekskill,” Vanderzee replied with a brisk nod. “I’m with you, Mr. Church. I’d say they’ve fired the armory.”

  On shore, too, the ominous cloud had been noted. Only a few minutes later the decks of the Judik swarmed with men. The cargo, all those innocuous looking casks and barrels, was shifted hand to hand over the side into rowboats which came, one after another, from the shore. The busy scene reminded Angelica of a disturbed anthill.

  “Captain Vanderzee,” Jack finally suggested, “I believe it would be wise to get Miss TenBroeck off. Especially,” he added, lifting his fair head, “as the wind has changed.”

  Vanderzee lifted his craggy head. He sniffed the air, and then grunted agreement.

  “You’re right, sir. What little wind there is has shifted south.”

  Soon a flat-bottomed boat, about the same size as a Marblehead boat, was rowed along side. Angelica and more of those mysterious casks went down a ladder into it. Jack, talking soothingly, got Hal into the same harness that had been used to put the Spanish donkeys ashore. Then he worked with the sailors to swing his horse onto the deck of the smaller boat.

  “The things you’ve been through, poor fellow,” Angelica sympathized, soothing the bay’s black forelock after Hal was safely secured on board beside her.

  “He’s used to it, but that doesn’t make him like it. Still, the expression on his face when he’s hoisted is something to see. I always think he looks worried, but like the reasonable fellow he is, he knows that making a fuss will only make his situation worse.”

  “Has he made many water journeys?”

  “Oh, yes. By birth, he’s Irish, but he’s been to Canada and London.”

  They were under way, the craft scraping its flat bottom over the iron links of the submerged chain. By the steep slope of the western shore, they reached a floating dock of logs covered with planks.

  Here the ragged militia hurriedly unloaded. Twilight was coming on. The top of the eastern shore still shone with a haze of redbud and brilliant new green, while they, tucked against the wall of the high western cliffs, had lost sunlight.

  Angelica, wind ruffling her rumpled blue-and-white dress, stood upon a narrow lip of land. Men bustled madly, now loading the small casks onto pack animals.

  She knew there was a rutted, steep trail leading up and over the cliff behind them. After a traverse of some miles, this finally dropped down to the tiny village of West Point.

  “Sails! Lots of them!” someone on the wharf shouted. “They’re ‘round the Nose!”

  “Damn,” Jack muttered. He turned to stare across the water.

  “Oh, no!” Angelica’s heart rose into her throat at the sight of two war ships flying the British flag.

  Jack was already tacking up Hal, not with any kind of haste, but with a smooth, practiced rapidity. “We’ll have to go up there,” he said, pointing to the trail. “I’m sure we’ll have plenty of company. They’ll want to get this powder away.”

  All around them men loaded animals with those lethal small kegs. Some were simply shouldering powder and starting out on foot.

  A few moments later, they were off, leading Hal up the steep and narrow path among the others. Out on the river, a cluster of sails darted back and forth.

  A few shots came from the riverbank cannon, but the balls fell short. On the patriot side, the tallest ship and the most forward was Vanderzee’s.

  Angelica jumped as a tongue of fire shot from the Judik, followed by a white puff of smoke. A sharp report echoed wildly between the facing cliffs.

  “He must’ve had some four-pounders stowed somewhere,” Jack observed, gazing back at the fight now beginning on the river. “I hope he doesn’t split his sides.”

  The path they followed was a series of switchbacks, a mere footpath clinging to a rearing promontory. For a moment the entire line stopped while everyone stared with horrified fascination at what was going on below.

  The ships carrying the British flag were so many, and so much larger. They surged toward the rebels.

  Streaks of red and puffs of blistering white illuminated the twilight. The roar of cannons ricocheted back and forth between the high cliffs. One little ship exploded in a cloud of slow motion splinters. Almost before these had finished falling, its broken bow slipped beneath the Hudson’s green surface.

  “Get moving, you fools!” someone bellowed. It was Captain VanDam, waving his arms frantically. “We can’t be caught!”

  With much stumbling and rattling of rocks, the column moved again. Everyone understood the danger, but it was almost impossible to turn away from the scene on the river.

  Clods of dirt and stones rattled from above, startling some of the horses at the end of the line. There was a constant fear of being kicked.

  Angelica stubbed her toes and almost fell. In this, she wasn’t alone. In the growing twilight, all the men were stumbling and cursing. Sparks flew as horseshoes struck rock.

  Fearsome roars and flashes rose from the river. Finally, a rising red tide washed over them and, helplessly, everyone paused to look back.

  Angelica saw ships sailing briskly toward the shore. Behind them, the sails of a two-masted ship too large to escape over the boom made a magnificent pyramid of fire.

  “That’s the Judik!” Angelica’s heart thumped her ribs.

  “Yes,” Jack replied. “Hurry!” he shouted to those who, gaping down at the river, blocked the trail ahead. “They’re coming!”

  As they reached the top of the bluff, the tempo and size of the explosions on the river multiplied. Flames had reached the powder still stored on board the Judik.

  Angelica, her sides aching from the steep climb, looked back. The Judik was the center of a whizzing, smoke-trailing fireworks display. The entire gorge glowed and rippled red as if the hills were melting into the river.

  The British were painting the world—Angelica’s world—with fire and blood!

  “Run!”

  The time was past for formalities. Jack’s arm caught her around the waist, and he rushed her up and over the final rise. Tongues of fire danced behind.

  Then, with an earsplitting roar, a sound that surpassed any she’d ever heard or imagined, the end came for Vanderzee’s ship. There was a blinding light, while the concussion staggered those who had lingered near the lip. Men and animals screamed in fear together.

  Jack threw his cloak around Angelica like a wing, pressed her terror close against his chest and rolled with her to the ground. When the raging incandescence passed, they were clutching each othe
r in a bitter twilight that tasted of gunpowder.

  Chapter Nine

  There was Chaos on the cliff top. Animals panicked. A man was knocked cold in the flurry.

  Hal, although he had reared and let out a scream of his own at the final explosion, had halted right beside the spot where his master and Angelica had hit the ground. There he stood, his cavalry training holding, shielding them with his great body. Now, he was whinnying nervously and shaking his head from side to side as if his ears hurt.

  “Angel!” Jack said, and she felt his warm fingers upon her face. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I think so.” She wanted to be brave, but the concussion had been violent. Her ears stung and she was wondering if Vanderzee had gone down—or, in this case, up—with his ship.

  A sob tore out. Jack drew her close, held her against his broad chest.

  “Oh, God! The poor captain!”

  “There, there, love,” he comforted.

  “Come on!” A cry rang out from higher up. Jack and Angelica turned their heads.

  “Hurry!” Captain VanDam shouted. “They’re ashore.”

  Jack lifted her up on Hal and the straggling column began to march again, now into ever deepening darkness. What seemed like an eternity of stumbling in single file followed, as they, with muffled lanterns, marched along the narrow trail.

  At last they reached an open area. Besides the welcome sensation of not being hemmed in by forest or cliff, Angelica heard the guttural splashing of a spring.

  Captain VanDam ordered a stop. Men and animals drank and a guard was posted. After Jack tended Hal, he joined Angelica who, with a couple of the other women, was making a small fire.

  Jack shook his head at the sight, but VanDam had given his permission. Soon everyone was gathered around, rubbing their hands, breath visible in the night air.

  “Aren’t you worried about giving your position away to Indians or about the British catching up?” Jack put the question.

  “We’re on what used to be hunting grounds,” one grizzled, buckskin volunteer replied. “But for the most part these days, the Indians stay a good way west. If there’s any one out there watching us, it’s outlaws. There’s quite a few bands of ‘em in these hills these days.”