“Ahhhh! Your word’s as good as your brandy.” He felt very good, very happy. He felt certain that he had helped spare many a man from the awful, deadly misery that he had suffered less than two years ago.
Boots crunched on the snow outside. The snow had half-melted during the day, then had frozen over as temperatures plunged. The door opened inward on its leather hinges and Bill Croghan came in, huffing and shivering. At once Dr. O’Fallon poured him a brandy. “Health,” Croghan said, winking and drinking.
“Health indeed!”
“I don’t see the usual queue of doom-faced soldiery outside,” Croghan said.
“We’re done. Every man’s infected good and proper. But only in his arm, I pray,” Jonathan said.
“And so I pray. Listen. Much news from home!” Croghan now referred to the Clark house in Caroline County as his home. He had had to put his English home out of his mind entirely. “Your derring-do brother Colonel George Clark has gone over the mountains once again. Apparently his mysterious mission is under way at last.”
“Mm. You mean Major,” Jonathan said, his cup halfway to his lips.
“No. Colonel. That’s what I came to tell you. I’ve a letter from your Little Brother Lucy today. The scallawag finally condescended to write to me, bless her heart. Anyway, she says he’s a colonel now.” He handed a paper to Jonathan. Jonathan perused it while, outside in the cold, the footsteps of marching soldiers crushed in the snow, and the incredibly strident voice of Baron Von Steuben, Washington’s new Prussian drillmaster, screeched drill commands.
“‘Little Brother Lucy’?” exclaimed Dr. O’Fallon, thumping the heel of his hand against his temple. “By all that’s odd, I’ve got to meet the rest of this Clark clan!”
“Aye, you should!” Bill Croghan exclaimed. “Get Doctor Jonathan here to extend you an invitation, and you’ll never regret it.” He extended his cup for another dram, and tilted his head toward the frantic voice and the half-coherent ravings of the Prussian, whom General Washington had put in charge of retraining the Continental troops for the coming campaigns of spring. Von Steuben, with the ferocious energy of a mother bear and the muzzle-blast language of a master sergeant, was giving the ragged army no leisure to think about its itchy little spots of small pocks, or any of its other myriad miseries. “Listen to that voice!” Croghan laughed. “How’d you like to be married to a woman with a voice like that? Ha, ha! Have you heard what the troops have nicknamed him? ‘Herr Schpittenschlobber.’ Ha, ha!”
“By Jove!” Jonathan slapped Lucy’s letter with his knuckles. “Brother George is a colonel! Well, though. It’s only militia,” he snorted, “so he’d better not try to bear rank over me, ever!” Then he shook his head and compressed his lips. “Lord help ’im, if he’s set himself a hard task and has to depend on militia for it! Especially such lawless yayhoos as he’ll be a-findin’ out on the backside o’ those mountains! Poor George! A colonel of bear-biters! Lord help ’im!”
* * *
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK SAT BEHIND THE LONG TABLE IN the main room of the public house in Red Stone Fort and eyed his latest recruit, who was about to be entered onto the muster roll by Cousin Johnny. The volunteer looked as if he had never once stood up to full height in his life. He had leaned against the door jamb before coming in; now he was supporting himself on the table, both palms lying flat on it, his rangy body hanging between his shoulders, one long leg crossed loosely in front of the other, as if his arms and the table were all that could keep him from collapsing on the floor and going to sleep.
He did not appear to be weak; there was sinew and long, ropy muscle evident there. But he was either the laziest or tiredest man George had ever seen. He was dressed more like an Indian than a white man. His face was weathered and bony and hollow-cheeked. He looked as if he had not been under a roof or in bathwater for two years. He looked, in other words, like half of the volunteers George had managed to sign up: rough, raw, flea-bitten, half-civilized if that much.
“Your name?” asked John Rogers, holding the quill point in the ink pot and looking up at him.
The man muttered something that sounded like “Hom’n Cawnsuluh.” Johnny squinted. “What was that first name?”
The man licked his lips. “Hom’n.”
“Uh, is that Harmon? Herman?”
“Mhm,” the man said, nodding. Johnny wrote something down and then looked up again and said:
“And that last name again, it was what?”
“Cawnsuluh,” the man replied, then wiped his teeth with his tongue.
“How d’you spell that?”
The man’s eyes narrowed, then glanced about. He looked like a trapped animal. But then he fell back on his natural indolence, and with a lazy leer of a smile, said:
“Hell, yew th’ man with th’ pen. Yew spell it.”
Johnny sighed and shook his head and wrote something down. George stood up. “Keep,” he called, “fetch me and this man some grog.”
Even this laconic newcomer seemed struck by the redheaded, deep-voiced officer who was extending his hand to him; he pulled himself into an almost upright posture and reached for the handshake. “Come and have a cup with me by the fire,” George said cheerfully, “and we’ll get acquainted, and I’ll tell ye what my expectations are. I’m George Clark, and this is my show.”
“How d’ye?” The woodsman picked up his rifle from where it leaned on the table and, mouth hanging open, followed George toward the hearth. There the whopper-jawed, greasy-haired innkeeper was setting down mugs for them.
“Well, now, Mister Consola,” George began, “tell me what country y’ve seen lately.”
They took time, these personal talks with new men. But George never failed to learn something useful from them, and he usually was able to imprint the new recruits with some of his own confidence. By shrewd but easy-sounding conversation, he was able to divine pretty well what a man’s sentiments and loyalties were. He had turned away two or three, during the last few weeks, whom he had suspected of being Tories sent to spy on him.
But the recruiting so far had been a crushing disappointment. Instead of the three hundred men he had expected to have by now, he had only one hundred. The county lieutenants were blocking the efforts of George and his officers, discouraging enlistments and even enticing recruits to desert.
The dilemma lay in the secrecy of the expedition. It could succeed only if it remained a secret. But because he could not reveal his true purpose, he could not convince anyone of its importance. The county lieutenants and other leading citizens accused him of getting the countryside in an uproar, trying to recruit their own scarce manpower away for the defense of a distant region whose people were fools to be there anyway. The worst trouble was with Colonel Arthur Campbell, leader of Fincastle County, who had so recently failed to block George’s move to get Kentuck made a separate county. Now Campbell seemed determined to thwart anything George was doing, executive orders or no, and it had come to a point where George had gone up and banged a fist on Campbell’s desk and accused him of sedition. It had done no good.
Spring was coming on and George had but a fraction of the men he needed. Therefore he used all his power of persuasion on every man who came in. And so now he quizzed and listened to this rancid bushloper, gradually became convinced that he was a much better man than he looked to be, and noted that he might be especially useful as a hunter or courier, as his drawling history indicated he had been just about everywhere George had ever heard of. Apparently he sagged and slouched so much only in order to conserve energy for the times when he was on the move.
They finished their cups. George stood up. Console—or whatever his name was—unfolded himself and rose, grinning a grin that looked like an old churchyard full of crooked tombstones. George swore him in and pumped his hand. “I’m glad to have a man like you,” he said, meaning it. “Now if you’ll go back to the pup over there who wrote your name, he’ll see you get victuals and a berth.”
“I’m sure
glad I come, Mister Cunnel! Ah’d reckon this goan be a rail ramsquaddle hijink, ayup-ha!” And he shambled back to Johnny Rogers.
At that moment, Bill Harrod came in, looking like a whipped dog. “Five more o’ mine have gone over th’ mountain,” he muttered. “Crump says he saw ’em talking this mornin’ to those two poop merchants from Fincastle, Long Jaw Campbell’s boys. An’ now they’re gone.”
“Damnation!” George ground his molars. “Get one and lose five!”
“I’ll send a squad out after ’em.”
“No. I’m not going to do that anymore. They don’t come back either!” He was clenching and opening his fists. “’Scuse me, Bill. I left something in my room.”
The innkeeper watched George stalk through the door. He had seen Colonel Clark in that state a lot of times now, and he shook his head and sucked an eyetooth. He knew that something would probably be broken in there before the colonel came back out.
“LEFTENANT JOHN CLARK!” SAID A VOICE AT THE GRATE.
“Here,” he replied, startled and curious, rising stiffly from the table. Hoag looked at him across the table and said:
“Here indeed. Where else could y’ be?”
“You’re wanted,” said the voice. A key slid in iron and turned.
The turnkey, with a pistol in his belt, walked him up a gloomy companionway to the door of the British officers’ quarters, and rapped. A voice called, “Enter.” The turnkey opened the door a crack. “I have Clark, sir.”
The door opened. The burly British naval officer studied Johnny for a moment, then reached in and put on a hat. He came out into the corridor, buttoning his tunic. “Follow me,” he said, leading him through the doors and barricades to the maindeck.
“What’s it about, if I may ask?” The officer did not bother to answer, and Johnny wanted to clout the back of his insolent head.
It was another cloudy, raw, bitter-cold day, but even this much gray daylight was enough to make him squint. He took a deep, grateful breath of the fresh air, but it jolted his befouled lungs and threw him into a fit of coughing. Smart-looking sentries turned and looked at him with disdain.
His buff breeches were dingy with the grease and old food rubbed into the thighs, with the stains of rat-droppings. His tattered hose hung loose on his wasting calves. The dark blue wool of his coat was flecked all over with chaff and straw and lint. His whiskers felt all a-crawl suddenly, as if the lice in it were seeking deeper refuge from the cold wind. He felt he was a disgrace to his uniform, but there had been nothing he could do, down in that waterless, airless dungeon, to keep himself looking smart.
He was led forward the length of the barren, gray deck, and it seemed a mile, with the wind slicing through his clothes. Charcoal smoke and rancid steam billowed over him as he passed the forward hatch.
At the forecastle, a thick-necked, brutal-eyed Tartar of a man, wearing some sort of fleece-lined leather skullcap with earflaps, and apparently two or three American army coats, stood guarding a door, not with a gun but with a two-foot-long cudgel.
“Here’s Clark,” the British officer said to this brute. “You have that Virginian wants to see him.”
The squat doorkeeper nodded. He touched Johnny on the shoulder with the end of his cudgel, as if to impress upon him its weight and hardness, then tilted his head toward the door. He unlocked the door with a huge iron key and pushed it inward. A dense, gagging odor emanated from the darkness inside. “Cla’k f’ Freeman,” he called in, then prodded Johnny to enter.
Freeman? Johnny thought. He did know many Freemans.
Another troll, this one with a shaved skull, three folds of flesh on the back of his neck, and ape arms, beckoned him in with a flick of pig-eyes, and the door closed and the bolt slid behind him.
The stench here was so sharp it stung his nostrils and he had to close his throat to keep from gagging. The troll led him down a ladder into a dark well of murmurings and whisperings, then past the edge of what seemed to be a dark warehouse of stirring forms stacked on wooden shelves. Then they went down another ladder to a deeper well, and, finally, down a third into a confine with slimy floors and an atmosphere so dense and fetid that he was afraid to breathe more than tiny sips of it. Rats twittered in the gloom and moved boldly in dim pools of lantern-light between rows of wooden racks. He was being led aft now, into the bowels of the ship, and it was indeed like a trek through a bowel, rank with the smell of excrement and putridity. Here there was an oppressive rush of pitiful noises: phlegmatic breathing, groans, explosive coughing, unintelligible talking, tuneless singing, frantic-sounding whispers, the rustle of turning bodies, thump of bone against boards. Bare hands and feet hung into the aisle. It was true what Hoag had said: the prisoners were packed here like mackerel in a barrel.
How can they live? he wondered. He was sickened by this incredible disregard for comfort and dignity.
And what poor Freeman lies here? he wondered. What a mockery that one so named would be locked deep in a stink-hole like this. As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom he could see half-naked skeletons of men, white and close as maggots on the long racks; they seemed not even to have straw to soften the planks they lay on. Somewhere below and aside, invisible in gloom, was an open space from which came a clammy, cave-like dankness, the chill of cold, wet stone, tricklings, drippings. Was it the bilges and ballast? he wondered. An open latrine? Or both?
Now the troll stopped, and kicked a rack.
“Freeman,” he growled, “’ere’s your bloody officer.”
A matted mass of dark hair turned in the shadow; Johnny’s heart quailed with dread.
A face—rather, a hollow-eyed skull with badly blemished skin stretched over it, protuberant brow, broad cheekbones and a mouth prominent as a monkey’s between sunken cheeks—turned into the feeble lamplight. The lower lip hung slack, revealing gray teeth in rotting gums. Johnny did not recognize this half-living cadaver, though something about the bone structure of the face stirred his memory. Other faces were turning to look at him, too, and he heard voices saying, “Look. It’s an officer.” “An officer?” “I think it’s an officer.”
Now the specter named Freeman groped out into the aisle with a scrawny, long hand. Overcoming revulsion, Johnny took it.
“Thank’ee for comin’, Mister Clark.” The voice was curdled.
“Glad to, Mister Freeman.” Saying this made Johnny break loose in a wet, raking cough and he felt much of the matter loosening in his lungs and felt the point of sharp pain there. The man in the shadows said:
“Y’ know me, then?” The eyes looked radiant for a moment.
“O’ course,” Johnny lied.
“I saw ye one day on deck,” the voice rasped. “I asked … asked ’em weeks ago if I mought talk wi’ ye.”
“They just now fetched me. Took their time, didn’t they?”
He still didn’t know who this was; the face and voice were ghastly. The way of speaking was plainly the Scotch-Irish of down home. Johnny was sorting in his mind among the many Virginians he’d known named Freeman.
“They know I’m not … I’m not long f’r this life,” the face said. “So reckon they decided t’grant me one boon.”
“You’ll be fine,” Johnny said feebly. Freeman was still holding onto his hand, as if onto life itself. Freeman’s hand was like a fistful of rabbit bones. Johnny saw that the guard troll was standing off in the shadows, listening, digging in his nostril with a dirty digit.
“So I wanted t’ ask’ee,” Freeman went on. He paused, and a tremor vibrated his hand. “Ye do still mean t’ marry Betsy, am I right?”
Betsy! Now Johnny knew. This, then, was one of the brothers of Betsy Freeman. Which brother he knew not; was it Micajah, the one who liked to be called Mike, or … He couldn’t even remember the other one’s name. Johnny had not seen Betsy since ’75, nor had he intended to. He remembered the day he had ridden toward Williamsburg with Patrick Henry’s militia, remembered Isaiah Freeman, this wretch’s father, walking alo
ngside his horse, asking virtually this same question. God, would they never get over it that a Clark had courted Betsy? He had all but forgotten her. Surely she wasn’t still waiting about for him, not as lusty and comely a wench as she had been. Johnny felt a twinge of poignancy, and at the same moment a flash of bitter humor at the absurdity of it. Had that shrew actually kept up the fiction of this attachment in the minds of her menfolk all these years? Or was this young Freeman here, in his extremity, just out of touch with time, deluded by an echo of long ago?
The gaunt face was still intense, a spark of lanternlight burning in each eye.
“Betsy,” Johnny said. “Why, ah, what does Betsy say on the matter?”
“Oh, sir, why, that y’re betrothed. As it’s so, ain’t it?” Now Johnny fancied he saw a flash of insistence in those sockets: the brotherly protectiveness of a sister’s honor. What was it his father had said? A lass is likely someone’s sister.
Johnny flushed with indignation at the thought of her, and wanted to tell this wretch that his sister was a liar. It was all so remote, from a lost time and unreachable place, and seemed so utterly inconsequential anyway; how could the deceits of her heart intrude now on their present misery? And yet, despite all that, he was bemused, and had he not been steeped in war and horror and the sense of his own decay for so long, he might have been flattered.
Instead, he was indignant, and was about to say so. Another coughing fit racked him first, though, and it was a minute before he could turn back to those anxious eyes in that skull.
And he realized that the matter now was not one to do with his feelings, nor even Betsy’s, really, but the burning question inside this dying young man: his need for one scrap of favorable and hopeful knowledge in his last days. Johnny glanced away from the ravaged face, and saw other faces peering at him, many faces, interested faces, though how much if anything of this they were comprehending he knew not. Some probably were looking at him only because he was a new sight on the edge of their muzzy, limited world. But others might be the brothers of sisters, pretty sisters of precarious reputation, and they might well be comprehending the gist of this conversation; maybe this Freeman lad had told them something of it already. Nobody in this sumphole of death needed to hear a harsh denial made to a dying peer, and Freeman himself least of all should have to hear it. And so Johnny said, in a rush of pity for all people in all hopeless plights:
From Sea to Shining Sea Page 29