Forge

  “He’s not, you clodpate!” Eben argued.

  “How do you know?” Burns asked. “Because he said he was free? Of course he did. They’re worse than the Irish when it comes to lying. Where are his papers?”

  A few voices in the shadows murmured agreement. My enemy was gaining strength. I had to attack.

  “Private Burns makes a good argument, sir.” I forced an agreeable mask on my face. “Allow me to borrow it. He claims he was a tinsmith before the war, but he can’t be much over eighteen. I wager he’s still indentured to his master; could have another two or three years till his time is up. He’s the runaway, sir, unless he has papers proving different.”

  “Enough!” The sergeant pulled off his cap, ran his hand over his pate, and set the cap back in place. “None of you are free men because you are in the army, and I do have papers that prove that. Now stop jabbering at each other and fetch the blasted wood. All of you!”

  That night was the start of John Burns’s open campaign against me. He became the best bootlicker ever was, waiting close to the sergeant’s elbow for the chance to be of service or to whisper poisonous notions about me, or Greenlaw, or the other fellows who were not in his favor. Half the time the sergeant did not listen, but half the time he did.

  When we marched south out of Albany, the muckworm named Burns was driving the supply wagon. I marched in the last line of our company and had to be quick-footed to avoid the droppings left by the horses.

  CHAPTER XII

  Sunday, November 16–Sunday, December 7, 1777

  IT WOULD BE USELESS FOR US TO DENOUNCE THE SERVITUDE TO WHICH THE PARLIAMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN WISHES TO REDUCE US, WHILE WE CONTINUE TO KEEP OUR FELLOW CREATURES IN SLAVERY JUST BECAUSE THEIR COLOR IS DIFFERENT FROM OURS.

  —SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE DR. BENJAMIN RUSH, WHO PURCHASED WILLIAM GRUBBER IN 1776 AND DID NOT FREE HIM UNTIL 1794

  OUR PATH TOOK US TO KINGSTON, THE new capital city of the state of New York. Rather, what was left of Kingston after the British burned it. We joined the companies cleaning out the ruin of the barracks building, dragging out half-burnt timbers and shoveling broken bits of furniture, walls, and ceilings.

  I tried to keep my distance from John Burns. The sergeant assigned us to different work parties, which helped, but Burns was intent on spreading his mischief. False stories about my past surfaced, and fewer fellows cared to talk to me or sit near me when we stopped work for a mug of spruce beer and bread. Eben stayed a true friend, and a few others, but the poison from John Burns’s twisted heart was spreading.

  The company added a new soldier in Kingston, one Benjamin Edwards, who hardly looked old enough to be a drummer boy, tho’ he swore to be fifteen. He was a bookish lad with a face much pitted from the smallpox, and he knew many stories from ancient times that he delighted in telling around the fire. John Burns disliked Edwards instantly. I could not figure why. Edwards was every bit as white as Burns, and he was polite and funny, if you took the time to listen to him. But Burns found something offensive about the new lad and teased him without mercy. I made a point of extending friendship to Edwards.

  Sleep came hard in Kingston. I’d often crawl out of the tent and watch the stars pass overhead. One night the northern lights blazed a brilliant blue and ferocious green, the colors of my compass card, with the stars pointing arrows in all directions across the sky.

  On our third Sunday there, we were preached at by a minister who blamed the ruin of the city on our sinful souls. That did not sit well with us, but we had to listen to the whole sermon. If we’d walked out, the captain could have ordered a flogging. After church we’d been given a half day free. Most of the fellows went off to search for treasure in the rubble of the ruined houses. Anything worthwhile had been sifted out long before we arrived, so I convinced Eben we should stay by the fire and dry out our damp blankets and coats.

  Sergeant Woodruff found us there and handed Eben a folded paper. “This came from New Jersey for the captain,” he ordered. “He’s dining at the Hardenburgh house, out the toll road.”

  I looked at Eben and he looked at me, and that gaptoothed grin cracked open, ‘cause we had the same thought. Colonel Hardenburgh was said to be the richest man in the county. There was sure to be plenty of leftover grub from his dinner table. We were sick to death of boiled beans and pork fat.

  “Can Curzon go with me?” Eben asked.

  The sergeant hesitated.

  “Am I required here, sir?” I asked.

  “No, the day is your own.” He pulled off his cap and rubbed his head. “Colonel Hardenburgh heads up the militia here; Dutch folks mostly. They’re different from us in Massachusetts, understand?”

  “Yessir,” we said.

  “Strange bunch of bumpkins,” the sergeant warned, putting his cap on again. “Let Eben do the talking. Do you grasp my meaning, Smith?”

  No. He was talking in riddles.

  “Of course, sir,” I said.

  Colonel Hardenburgh’s house was big enough for four families, with two proper barns behind it and carefully tended fields stretching in every direction. The militia had pitched their tents around the house. A couple dozen of them stood about smoking pipes and enjoying the sun. A few held wooden plates with the remains of their Sunday dinner.

  “Do you think we’re too late for the grub?” I asked.

  “Maybe there’s a friendly lass in the kitchen who can help us,” Eben answered. “I’ll find the captain and meet you in the back.”

  He went to the door whilst I wove my way through the crowd. The talk was a mix of English and Dutch. What I could understand was all war news; more British ships were crossing the ocean, more Hessians being hired to kill us. One man claimed the Spanish were about to invade us from Florida.

  I hurried on.

  The food had been served behind the house near the kitchen door, where a long board rested across three barrels. Crumbs and broken bits of corn bread littered one end of the board; the rest was covered with dirty trenchers and bowls. An empty soup pot stood on the ground. But there—on the seat of a chair—sat three fat slices of apple pie waiting for the right lad to come along.

  The kitchen door opened. A short, round-cheeked black woman came down the steps, her hair covered with a dark blue cloth, her sleeves rolled up and apron greasy from serving. She was not old enough to be my mother, but older than a sister would be. She smiled warmly at me and said something in the Dutch to a person still in the kitchen. The door opened again, and out came the tallest man I’d ever seen, carrying two kettles of steaming water. He set one on the board and poured the second into the empty soup pot. Then he kissed the woman on her forehead, and I knew he must be her husband.

  I nodded politely. “Good day.”

  The woman chuckled. “Wat wil je, jij blaag?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Je wilt taart, of niet? Je meester voedt je niet erg goed als ik zo naar je kijk.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand, ma’am.”

  “She has no English,” the tall man said. “I do. I am Baumfree. Min vrouw, she is Bett. You?”

  “I am Curzon,” I said. “Pleased to meet you, sir, and your lady.” I bowed.

  “Het is me een genoegen je te ontmoeten.”

  That sounded friendly enough. “May I . . . can I . . . ?” I pointed to the pie and made a motion showing I wanted to eat it.

  The woman shook her head and spoke quickly.

  “For sojurs,” the man translated. “No you. No me. No Bett.”

  I struggled to figger his meaning.

  “Sojurs,” he repeated.

  “I am a soldier.” I patted my chest. “Me. Soldier.” I played at aiming a musket and firing it. “Pachooo!”

  “You?” The man frowned. “Sojur?”

  A barrel-bellied old white man with a well-coiffed wig, a red silk waistcoat, and a lace neck cloth stepped carefully down the steps, leaning on his cane and wincing. When he saw me, he spoke loud and fast Dutch
to Baumfree. The tall man shook his head and answered in a soft voice. Bett watched the exchange, her face wary.

  The old fellow pointed his cane at me. “My man here says you’re pretending to be a soldier.” His English was clear but spiced with a Dutch flavor. “Tell your master it’s up to him to feed you, not me!”

  And then I knew. Colonel Hardenburgh owned Baumfree and he owned Bett. He thought me a slave too, for my skin was as dark as theirs.

  Eben came around the corner, whistling.

  “Any luck?” he asked me.

  “Your boy claims he’s a soldier,” Hardenburgh said. “Take him away from here.”

  “Sir?” Eben asked.

  Hardenburgh’s face flushed. “I won’t have him stirring up my negars.” He turned his back to us and spat out angry Dutch at Baumfree and Bett.

  Baumfree tried to get in a word, an explanation, mayhaps, but the colonel cut him off.

  “With respect, sir, you are in error,” Eben tried again.

  “Hush.” I grabbed Eben’s elbow. “We have to go.”

  “No.” He shook me off. “I’ll explain and then we’ll get that pie. We deserve it after the miles we walked.”

  “A pox on the pie,” I said.

  The colonel’s face grew redder and redder as he yelled. Bett glanced at me quickly, then plunged the dirty plates into the kettle of water. Baumfree stood still as a tree, but his clenched jaw gave him away. He was thinking of how to revenge himself on Hardenburgh. For each thought of revenge, he’d have another of fear, for if he lashed out, his master could make him and Bett suffer.

  So he could do nothing.

  Neither could I, which shamed me and kindled my rage in the same breath. I turned on my heel and stalked away.

  “Hey!” Eben called. “Ho there! Wait!”

  I fought through the crowd of militia, bumping into as many men as I could without begging pardon, hoping to goad some lout into fighting me so that I could hit and hit and draw blood to silence the thunder in my head.

  They just stepped to the side and continued conversating, pipe smoking, laughing.

  At the road I broke into a slow run. Eben didn’t catch up to me for more than a mile, when I stopped at the crossroads.

  “What was all that about?” He bent over, hands on his knees, and panted like an overworked ox. “The captain told me flat out we could have pie, and there you go insulting the colonel and knocking through the militia like they’re the enemy. Have your wits cracked?”

  “Leave me alone.” I walked away.

  The fool followed me. “Were you rude to the colonel’s cook? Uncle says womenfolk need polite and proper handling, all of them. A man who treats a lady low—”

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” I said harshly.

  He walked so close, his clumsy feet near stepped on mine. “That old colonel looked ready to give you what-for. You better not have any of his spoons in your boots. I covered for you once, but I can’t do it again. Uncle Caleb has been prickly of late and he’ll think I had a hand in your thievery, and—”

  “Don’t you ever shut up?” I wheeled around to face him in the middle of the road. “I was not flirting with the cook. That plaguey lump of a colonel assumed I was a slave and chased me off the way he’d chase off a dog.”

  Eben stopped walking and frowned. “Why didn’t you just explain—”

  “Don’t be stupid. He’s not the type to listen to black people. That dastard thinks I am no better than his goat.”

  “Surely that was not his intention.”

  “Of course it was his intention. It’s why Burns is after me, why your plaguey uncle gives me the worst duties. Half the fellows in our company don’t think I belong there.”

  “I do.” Eben shuffled his boot back and forth over a wheel rut in the road.

  The hurt in his eyes stopped me. He had been kind to me, in his jabber-mouthed way. But how deep did his kindness go? How much could I trust him?

  “Let me ask you something. We’re fighting for freedom, right?” I picked my words carefully. “So why is that man allowed to own Baumfree and Bett?”

  “Well,” he said slowly, “we’re fighting for our freedom. Not theirs.” He crossed his arms, uncrossed them, put his hands on his belt and crossed his arms again. “Nobody in my family owns slaves, you know.”

  “That is not the point. Do you think only white people can be free?”

  “Of course not. There are plenty of free blacks, like you and those other fellows in Saratoga and Albany. We had a family two villages over from mine, they were all free black people.”

  “But the colonel’s slaves are not allowed to be free.”

  He frowned. “They can’t be free, Curzon. They’re slaves. Their master decides for them.”

  “What if they ran away?”

  “Then they’d be breaking the law.”

  “Bad laws deserve to be broken.”

  “Don’t talk like that!” He kicked a rock deep into the field. “You want to get in trouble? Laws have to be followed or else you go to the jail.”

  “What if a king made bad laws; laws so unnatural that a country broke them by declaring its freedom?”

  He threw his arms in the air. “Now you are spouting nonsense. Two slaves running away from their rightful master is not the same as America wanting to be free of England. Not the same at all.”

  “How is it then that the British offer freedom to escaped slaves, but the Patriots don’t?”

  “How am I supposed to know that?”

  The wind had come up whilst we argued. Before Eben could say anything else, it blew the hat from his head. He chased it down the road and returned gripping it tightly.

  I almost told him then; told him that I and my parents and my grandparents had all been born into bondage, that my great-grandparents had been kidnapped from their homes and forced into slavery while his great-grandparents decided which crops to plant and what to name their new cow. I wanted to tell him to convince him how wrongheaded he was.

  “If you were that tall fellow back there,” I asked, “wouldn’t you want to be free to live your own life?”

  “I don’t like talking about this,” he said. “But since you ask, no. If I were that fellow, I’d be happy for the food and clothes and good care my master gave me. I would know that God wanted me to be in bondage and I would not question His will.”

  The wind blew down the narrow strip of dirt between us, sending dust into the air and giving me the answer I needed.

  “You’re not my friend,” I said.

  CHAPTER XIII

  Monday, December 8–Sunday, December 21, 1777

  LIBERTY IS EQUALLY AS PRECIOUS TO A BLACK MAN, AS IT IS TO A WHITE ONE, AND BONDAGE EQUALLY AS INTOLERABLE TO THE ONE AS IT IS TO THE OTHER . . . . AN AFRICAN, OR A NEGRO MAY JUSTLY CHALLENGE, AND HAS AN UNDENIABLE RIGHT TO HIS LIBERTY: CONSEQUENTLY, THE PRACTISE OF SLAVE-KEEPING, WHICH SO MUCH ABOUNDS IN THIS LAND IS ILLICT.

  —ESSAY WRITTEN BY AFRICAN AMERICAN LEMUEL HAYNES, VETERAN OF THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON

  EBEN STOPPED SPEAKING TO ME AFTER that. I welcomed the silence.

  John Burns saw the coldness between us and befriended Eben, pouring out hollow compliments and listening with false attention to stories of Aunt Patience and two-headed calves.

  It mattered not to me. I worked. Slept. Ate. Cleaned my gun. Worked. Slept. Ate. Cleaned my gun.

  The other fellows fell into a pattern of card-playing and dice after supper. Greenlaw invited me to join in, but my peevish mood was not suitable for games. I sat close to the light of the fire and tried to carve a bird from a piece of pine. Good thing Isabel wasn’t around to see it; she would have mocked me endlessly on account of my carving looked more like a beaked pig than a bird.

  It was harder than ever to soldier my thoughts about her. My mind would run off without leave and I’d find myself wondering if she had a warm place for the winter. Mayhaps she had made it to Charleston after all and wouldn’t have to worry about the
snow.

  I jabbed the point of my knife into the meat of my thumb to remind myself that idle speculation about the girl who hated me was foolish.

  We were soon ordered to move south again, marching and then marching some more, ten or fifteen miles a day. Sergeant showed us on a map that our path was as straight as a musket barrel. That map was useless. It did not show the mountains we had to climb, nor the treacherous mud that stopped the wagons, nor the empty miles of fields and trees we passed, ever nervous that British or Loyalists waited to ambush us at the next curve of the road. We passed three score of tidy villages flanked with farms and filled with generous folk who let us sleep in their barns and fed us as best they could. Do you think any of those villages were marked on that map? Sergeant said no, they weren’t.

  Seemed to me that mapmaking was a profession for addlepates.

  We paused at a small camp in Jersey so the captains could confer with other captains about the state of the war and gossip about General Washington. Despite the near-freezing air, I stripped off my shirt and stockings and washed them with lye soap and hot water in the hopes of drowning all of the vermin that had begun to live in them. My clothes were still damp when we were ordered to march again, this time west into Pennsylvania. For all the talk of battles and gunfire, soldiering was mostly about blistered feet and itchy clothes.

  We were on our way to join the main body of the army outside Philadelphia. The British had chased the Congress out of that city whilst we were busy in Saratoga and had settled in there for the winter. Our army was camped a short distance away, where it would stay until spring, for gentlemen did not like to fight in cold weather. We thought this was a foolhardy notion. We wanted to beat the British, take back Philadelphia, and end the war. Brown, the fast-running lad, had developed a wicked cough from sleeping in damp fields. He said such rude things about our lazy, lily-livered generals that Greenlaw cuffed him on the head.