Redcoat

  But that, at least, was something Sam could try to cure. Not with bleeding, but by an older way, and Sam would have to find the ingredients to make that ancient magic work. He would start tomorrow, and pray the doctors did. not kill Jonathon first.

  A sound in the alley made him go to the door. He stared into the darkness, telling himself a cat had jumped on to the waterbutt’s uneven lid, but, unsettled by Maggie’s terror, Sam felt a shiver of apprehension. Was Scammell prowling the darkness, looking for his woman? Sam closed the door. There was so much unfinished business. Jonathon, Scammell, Maggie, even Caroline? But Caroline, he told himself, was not his business. She was Jonathon’s, and Jonathon must be saved.

  To which end Sam spent the next week searching for the ingredients he needed for a miracle and, as he did, so the fighting on the river came to its inevitable end. More of the obstacles that had prevented Lord Howe’s ships from sailing up the river in force were dragged away, and the battle fleet, its heaped sails towering above the wetlands, made a stately progress towards the stubborn forts. The Fury and Roebuck, Somerset and Liverpool, Pearl, Isis and Vigilant opened their gunports and fired across the stark blackened ribs of the Augusta. The big ships’ bluff sides were like chequered cliffs in a mist of gunsmoke that, minute after minute, was pierced by jets of flame hurling iron at the two forts. Gulls screamed. The answering fire from the American forts died slowly.

  It could not last. Fort Mifflin was the first to fall, not to assault, but to the hopelessness of men caught in a meat grinder. One by one their guns were blasted from carriages, their wounded froze and died in bloody puddles, their walls were scorched and breached, and still the mortar shells churned carnage into horror and the solid shot drove splinters that gutted men alive. One dark cold night, the island garrison slipped across the river in boats, and dawn came up to see the fort ablaze, but with its flag still flying over the flames.

  Five days later, and a full month after the first unsuccessful assault, Fort Mercer gave up the fight. The garrison took to the last galleys and gunboats and, in a freezing dawn, tried to run the wide river’s gauntlet past the city. From the Pest House Quay to the guns at the end of Vine Street, the British batteries of Philadelphia opened fire. Rebel boats were shattered into shards of wood, oars tumbled, and men fell into the cold river to be picked up by smaller, following craft that were rowed through the spouts of water hurled up by cannon fire. Only the small boats came through; the larger ones all sank in the slow-turning flood.

  A dozen prisoners, unable to swim to their comrades’ boats, were taken from the river and marched, teeth-chattering with cold, to the 1st Grenadiers’ headquarters behind the Pest House Battery. There Major Zeigler, Sir William’s Hessian interpreter, spoke with the captured rebels. He wanted to know the fate of the Hessian General Donop who had been wounded and captured during the failed assault on Fort Mercer.

  After the interrogation, Zeigler sought out Sir William. General Donop, the Hessian reported, had died three days after his capture. “A bad death, Sir William, painful.”

  “I’m sorry, Otto.”

  The Hessian shrugged. “War is cruel, ja? To us and the rebellers. But they were warned we were going to attack.”

  Sir William, standing by a window of his headquarters, turned to stare at his interpreter. “They were warned?”

  Zeigler found a small notebook and leafed through the pages. “Ja. A rebeller lieutenant told me so. He was boasting, of course, but he says the fort heard of the attack the previous day. They were able to man a deserted bastion which killed a lot of our men.” Zeigler closed the notebook. “That’s bad, sir.”

  “Yes.” Sir William frowned. Only a handful of his men had been privy to the secret attack, but Sir William, with a sinking feeling, remembered he had also told Mrs Loring, and, his face grimacing with the realization of his fault, he looked back to the window. “It won’t happen again, Otto.”

  “You knew about it, sir?” Zeigler was puzzled by his master’s calm reaction to the news of treachery.

  “Otto, look!” Sir William, abandoning the grim news of betrayal, suddenly pointed through the window to where, above the roofs of the city and hazed by the smoke of the fires which cooked Philadelphia’s meagre suppers, the first tall masts of approaching warships could be seen. The merchant ships followed, and thus Philadelphia was saved, the seaway was open, and the merchants’ fortunes would be rescued.

  And Sam, with Caroline’s help, planned a miracle.

  Twenty-Four

  The cup was just over five inches high and carved from a dark, tough-grained wood which had been lovingly polished to a glowing sheen. “It’s ivy root,” Sam explained. “I dug it up from behind the State House.”

  Martha turned the cup in her hands. It must, she thought, have taken hours of obsessive work to make such an object; the bowl had thin shining walls that swelled from a narrow stem standing on an elegant base. “Did you turn it on a lathe, Sam?”

  “I did it with a knife, but Miss Caroline polished it.”

  Sam’s words somehow suggested that, if the cup held any merit, it was solely due to Caroline’s work. Sam smiled at Caroline as he spoke, and she smiled back.

  Martha saw the exchange between them, and saw too how the effort to save Jonathon’s life had brought Sam and Caroline into this willing and close complicity, so close that Martha did not have the heart to tell these two young people that she had already despaired of Jonathon’s life. “It’s beautiful,” she said as she put the cup down.

  “It’ll do,” Sam said modestly. He sat at Mrs Crowl’s kitchen table with Caroline opposite him and cups of tea between them. Rain slashed and seethed on the cellar steps behind. Jenny and the kitchenmaids were pickling oysters in the big larder, filling the basement with the smell of nutmeg and vinegar.

  The kitchens were now the warmest rooms in most of the city’s houses, for the shortage of fuel meant that fires must be rationed, and kitchens, where fire could cook as well as warm, were the only rooms where fuel was not stinted. Food and goods had come with the merchantmen that followed Admiral Howe’s warships, but the city was expected to provide its own firewood and so the pretty woods of the Neck were shrinking beneath the soldiers’ axes.

  Just as Martha’s hopes for her brother shrank – and Sam’s reliance on an old magic did not enhance those hopes. She could sense all Sam and Caroline’s belief pathetically expressed in that glowing and beautiful cup, but Martha also read more, much more. Sam’s English country magic demanded an unused cup made of ivy wood, but Martha knew the cup did not have to be this well made. Any crudely hacked-out receptacle would have satisfied the magical formula, but Sam and Caroline, working together, would not be content with anything but the very best. The cup, Martha thought, was a reflection of what they meant to each other, but were too stubborn to admit. She thrust the thought away. “So we have the cup,” Martha said, “and now just need to fill it?”

  “There’s a fellow called Cathcart,” Sam said, “Lord Cathcart?”

  “17th Dragoons,” Martha nodded. “I’ve met him.”

  “He has a mare in foal. Right upset he is, what with the winter and all that. I reckon she’s near term. It could even be tonight!”

  “And she’ll suffice?”

  “She’ll suffice,” Sam tried out the word. “As long as I get to her first. I’m spending my nights there, but if the Captain wants me home, then …” He shrugged.

  “Let’s hope he doesn’t.” Martha listened to the rain. It had fallen ever since the forts had been taken; a storm that was flooding cellars and turning the streets into quagmires. No house could be kept clean in this weather. Visitors came with mud splashed to their hips. Mud was in the carpets, on the stairs, and grimed into clothes; mud that would stay until the spring cleaning.

  “And if it is tonight, I still think I should …” Sam, stubbornly reverting to a well-worn argument, was cut off by Caroline.

  “I’m doing it,” she insisted, then, to stop Sam m
aking any protest, she looked at Martha and recited her well-rehearsed lines. “I go down the alley behind the college and it’s the fourth gate on the left. I climb the wall …”

  “… which has broken glass on the top,” Sam interrupted.

  “I’m not feared of glass,” Caroline said. “I go over the right side of the wall by the stables so I don’t wake the slaves. I follow the passage at the back of the stables and there’s a window above the smokehouse roof. That leads to the servants’ stairs. Up one floor, through the door on to the landing, and Jonathon’s room is straight in front of me.”

  “And there’s a dog in the yard,” Sam said in tones that suggested Caroline could not deal with a hostile dog.

  “I’m going into the house, Sam!” Caroline stared defiantly at the Redcoat. “What would Jonathon think if I didn’t try?”

  The magic required a cup, a potion, and that either Sam or Caroline should insinuate their way into Abel Becket’s house. This could not be done openly, for Abel Becket had refused Sam entry, just as he barred from his house anyone who might encourage his nephew’s patriotism. So the house would have to be broken into, and Caroline was insistent that she should take that larger risk. Sam would gather the elixir, but Caroline would deliver it.

  “I should come with you, then,” Sam said.

  “And who looks after the front of the house?” Caroline demanded.

  “I can do that, then come round the back!”

  “I’ll be long gone by then,” Caroline said scornfully. “But you wait for me there in case I have trouble getting out.”

  Sam, knowing this argument was lost, nodded reluctantly. “I suppose that’s the best way.”

  Martha smiled at their agreement. “The most convenient night is a Thursday because Mr Becket’s always at a lodge meeting.”

  Sam shrugged. “It depends on the mare, ma’am. We might have to go any time.”

  Martha looked at the girl. “Don’t get caught by Mr Becket.”

  “Thump the bugger,” Sam said, then immediately blushed for using the word. “Forgive me, ma’am.”

  “I wouldn’t mind thumping him,” Martha said, “or your precious Captain.”

  “He’s all right,” Sam said defensively. He felt trapped by the antipathy between Martha and Captain Vane, for, though he liked Martha, Vane had never been unkind to him, and Sam was mindful that Vane had extricated him from disaster, and had subsequently given Sam the privileged and profitable life of an officer’s servant. That life might end if Vane knew Sam visited this house, but Sam reckoned that what the Captain did not know the Captain could not fret over.

  And nothing would prevent Sam from visiting this house, for it was here, in the smoky kitchen, that he shared a happy intimacy with Caroline. Sam told himself that they only shared an obsession with curing Jonathon, an obsession that had produced the cup. He dared not hope for more.

  The clock in the hall struck four and Sam grimaced. “I have to go, ma’am. He wants me macaronied.”

  “Macaronied?” Martha asked.

  “All prinked up, ma’am. I have to serve a supper party.”

  “Poor Sam.” Martha waited till he had plunged into the seething rain, then turned to watch Caroline wrap the precious cup in a scrap of sacking. “Are you sure it wouldn’t be better if Sam went into my uncle’s house?”

  Caroline shook her head. “If I get caught, the worst they’ll do is throw me out, but they could arrest Sam as a thief! Besides, Jonathon will want me to come.”

  “I suppose he will, yes.” Martha, as the winter drew on and as the Patriots clung together for support in an occupied city, had found herself drawing closer to Caroline. She admired the girl’s spirit, used her to carry messages across the water, but still feared for a marriage which Jonathon’s illness might, of itself, make redundant. Martha now edged her way towards the touchy subject. “You like Sam, don’t you?”

  “I like Sam.” Caroline, still staring at the table, sounded almost defiant.

  “More than you like Jonathon?” Martha was immediately penitent. “I’m sorry. That was unfair.”

  Caroline looked up. “I promised Jonathon, didn’t I?”

  “Yes. But sometimes promises are traps we set for ourselves.”

  “Only if you break them,” Caroline said with a stubborn defensiveness.

  Martha paused again. “Do you love Jonathon?”

  “I love him.” It was said flatly. The truth was that Caroline, quite irrationally, blamed herself that a cripple had gone to war, and the guilt had provoked in Caroline a mixture of pity and affection which, if not love, had provided a convincing substitute to the wounded Jonathon.

  Martha’s silence was an expression of her scepticism. The wind and rain beat at the house in a crescendo of fury that made her instinctively glance towards the stairs as if listening for her child’s voice. “Maybe,” Martha broke the silence, “it’s best not to marry for love. I didn’t, and was perfectly happy. We exchanged vows, then I made his house the most elegant in the city and he made me wealthy. He’d have preferred a son to a daughter, but that could have been remedied in time.” Martha grimaced at her memories, then leaned closer to the dull glow of the fire.

  Caroline had listened to Martha’s words and half understood their message. “So Jonathon and I can be happy?”

  “Jonathon will be happy,” Martha spoke wryly. “He’s passionate, and as long as he thinks you love him then he’ll be grateful.”

  “I do love him,” Caroline insisted.

  “But the maggot in the apple,” Martha went on as though the younger girl had not spoken, “is when the regrets begin to gnaw at you. It’s when you see the man you might have married, and know you’re bound to the one you shouldn’t. There were times …” Martha paused, thinking that she was about to reveal too much, then shrugged. “There were times when I even wanted him to die. Then he did, and I felt dreadful. Dreadful.”

  Caroline said nothing.

  Martha wiped at a smear of spilt tea. “What will you do if Sam stays in America? He might, you know. Will you shut your front door to him? Will you persuade Jonathon never to see Sam again? Because if you don’t, my dear, then it’s Sam you’ll dream of in the long nights.”

  Caroline would not face the question. “Sam’s a Redcoat,” she said flatly, “and he’s proud of it. He’ll go back where he belongs one day.”

  “The curious thing about America,” Martha said in an apparent change of subject, “is that anyone can belong to it. And I like Sam, so I might very well try and persuade him to stay in America.”

  “He won’t,” Caroline said.

  “Meaning you’d rest easier at night if he didn’t?” Martha probed.

  But Caroline did not rise to the question. Instead, she twisted in her chair to listen to the rain’s pounding. “Might I sleep here tonight?”

  “Gladly.”

  Caroline slept in the borning room next to the kitchen, but Sam did not sleep at all. He had macaronied himself and at three in the morning he helped a drunken but happy Captain Vane to bed. Then, to the curses of the other servants who were trying to sleep in the kitchen, Sam changed into his old uniform, pulled on his watchcoat, and went out into the night.

  The rain spat now, driven by a swirling, howling wind that gusted about the street corners and flattened the flames of Sam’s torch. A cedar shingle, blown from a roof, rattled against a shutter and Sam, startled by the sudden noise, turned. He was haunted by the suspicion that he was being watched, by the apprehension of shadows moving just beyond the corner of his vision. He told himself it was nonsense, that Maggie had put an unreasonable fear of Sergeant Scammell in his head, but still he waited cautiously for a sign of his enemy. There was none; only the wind-torn and rainfretted shadows.

  He went on, turning into an alley, then pushing through a gate to see a slit of lantern light above a stable door. Instantly Sam feared he was too late, but Lord Cathcart’s groom, waiting beside the mare’s stall, shook his head. “
You almost missed it, Sam.”

  Sam latched the door. “Is it coming?”

  “Any time. Poor little bugger.” The groom shivered. “It’s too cold a night to be born.”

  Sam ducked under the chain. The mare was trembling with fright, but Sam gentled her. The wind howled at the roof. The other horses, made nervous by the mare and the weather, stirred uneasily in their stalls.

  The foal came a half-hour later, slithering in blood to the straw, then struggling to stand on its skinny legs. Sam crouched under the mare’s belly where he held a wooden canteen to the swollen dugs. The mare snapped once, but Sam soothed her, then used his fingers to draw the mother’s first milk into the canteen. When the small barrel was full, he put the half-cleaned foal to suckle.

  Sam paid the groom some of the coins he had earned from doctoring officers’ horses, then carried the canteen into the grey wet dawn. He had carved the cup, and now he had the beestings; the first milk of a mother which, served in a virgin cup of ivy, would raise the very dead from their graves. No medicine was stronger, and no medicine had ever been prepared with so much love. Now all that was needed was for the magic to be smuggled to Jonathon in the big, servant-guarded house; into which, this coming night, with Sam’s help and some small luck, Caroline must go.

  Twenty-Five

  “The playhouse merely needs a lick of paint,” Captain John Andre said happily, “and we shall have a season of unalloyed and wicked delight. We shall give the city’s ministers apoplexy, so only good can come from it. Perhaps you’ll be one of the players, Kit?”

  “I’m no actor, John.” Vane had to raise his voice to be heard over the hubble of conversation and music. The fall of the forts and the arrival of the battle fleet were deemed sufficient cause for celebration, and so Sir William’s spacious house was again filled with officers and their ladies. The darker, white-faced blue uniforms of the navy mixed with the gaudier army coats. Saratoga was being forgotten, or at least drowned with wine, beneath the crystal-splintered light of the chandeliers that alleviated a rainy dusk beyond the windows.