The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles (52 page)

The rogue likewise captured a prize off the Carolinas. To auction it, he sailed to the Leewards rather than an American port—his express intent being to defraud the rightful owners of their share, I am certain.

Upon his arrival in Boston late in the month of April—I now fear with the foulest purpose in mind—he stayed not overlong.

Word first reached me only to the effect that he had set sail for an unknown destination. I subsequently learned, through that network of seamen’s intelligence which operates despite the presence of the army of a foreign tyrant, that said destination was the port of New York, where Rackham planned to compound his fraud and multiply his illicit gains by selling Gull to a new Tory owner—selling, in effect, what he neither owned nor had any right to sell.

But I am ahead of myself, and will shortly explain how I come to use Rackham’s name in past tense. Learning of Gull’s abrupt departure, I repaired at once to Cambridge to report the sad turn to your most esteemed wife, hoping to offset the disappointment with my own happy news—that in command of Fidelity, I had secured a British merchantman whose sale here has increased your investment some thousand-fold, a right handsome profit—

Racing on through the letter, Philip could not summon the faintest stir of delight at what should have been welcome news: he was modestly rich. It made no difference because of what he already sensed lay ahead.

In Cambridge, the good Mrs. Brumple relays to me the horrid story of the surprising disappearance of yr. dear wife, a most perplexing and puzzling affair, but only that—until more news came to me from New York—this very day.

The news was brought by a neutral vessel, Dutch flag, which called at the aforementioned port last week. Gull did indeed put in there, but under mystifying circumstances.

Her first mate, a fellow who was privy to Rackham’s plan, was in command. The captain himself was lost at sea between Boston and Gull’s destination; lost, I regret to report, along with a Massachusetts Bay woman of unknown identity whom Rackham caused to be brought aboard the night before he sailed.

Evidently a struggle ensued, as both fell to their deaths from Rackham’s own cabin. In the cabin was evidence of blood, and one window was shattered. The whole business is the talk of New York, and was narrated in detail by the Dutchmen.

“God,” Philip said in a stricken voice. “Oh dear God.” He virtually forced himself to read the next:

Thus a perverse pattern has shaped itself; a pattern, I say, unguessed and unglimpsed till I recollected Mrs. Brumple’s odd tale—as well as certain other incidents, viz., the unsavory and reckless interest of the d—d Rackham in Mrs. Kent.

I will endeavor to find out whether my suspicion as to the identity of Rackham’s companion has foundation, or, mercifully, is but grim coincidence. I debated long over whether to inform you of matters herewith reported. However, since Mrs. B. later told me she was writing an urgent message concerning yr. wife’s absence, I felt I had better take the step.

I trust Divine Providence will prove all worries ungrounded, and reveal the person who perished with Rackham to be some other—

Philip couldn’t read the rest. Captain Will Caleb’s hope was fruitless. He knew it with a heavy, dead feeling; knew it as certainly as he stood shivering on the solid brink of the cliff.

Finally, he looked back at one passage in the letter.

Late April, Caleb said.

After
his decision not to return home.

He damned himself and his idiotic sense of duty. He damned Henry Knox and he damned Washington and he damned the war most of all.

A lightning bug winked soft gold in the wind-stirred grass high above the river. What could he do?

Nothing.
It was too late
—

“Anne!” he cried, a small dark blur on the brow of the bluff. From the silent forests on the Hudson’s far shore the frantic echo pealed back.

AnneAnneAnneAnne
—

A sentry came running, musket at the ready, to see who had shrieked like a madman in the July twilight.

“I feel partially responsible—” Henry Knox said in a feeble voice. Philip had hobbled to Knox’s quarters, a dead man who yet moved and thought. Solitude was unbearable; he needed to speak to someone. Share his grief with someone—

Or was it guilt he wanted another to share?

Realizing it, he was ashamed. Guilt was quite evident on Knox’s round face.

Forcing himself, Philip shook his head.

“Henry, there’s no blame. You were right in everything you said at Valley Forge. And no one forced me to stay and take a British ball. But—”

The decision was spoken an instant after he made it: “—I’m not waiting for the mustering-out papers. I’m going home now.”

“Yes. I fully understand. Is there someone to care for your son until you arrive?”

Philip balanced on his crutch, tugged out the first letter. “The lady who wrote this, Mrs. Brumple. She can give Abraham her complete attention since—” His mouth wrenched. “—since there’s no one to bury.”

Knox frowned sadly, silent.

Philip stared down at his right leg in the new, larger boot that permitted a bandage to be worn inside. His voice sounded faint, almost like an old man’s, as he went on:

“Once I met Dr. Franklin in Philadelphia. He told me a story from his boyhood. How he bought a pennywhistle, not knowing its small value and paying far too much. He said that afterward, he always judged everything in those terms—was he paying too much for a whistle?”

Suddenly, uncontrollably, tears streamed down Philip’s cheeks.

“She’s dead. I know that bastard took her aboard his ship. She probably died trying to get away from him—that would be like her. I know I had to stay; I know we all had to fight for the country if we mean to keep it. But the price is too high, Henry. The whistle cost too much—oh, Christ—
Annie
—”

Not caring that it was unmanly, he covered his face and cried.

Henry Knox continued to stare in silent misery. At last he managed to say:

“I’m sure it’s precious small consolation for your injury and your personal grief. But as Mr. Paine wrote in that famous pamphlet of his, anything worthwhile—worth having—ultimately commands a high pr—”

Philip swallowed back the tears, silencing his friend with a hateful stare:

“I don’t want to hear any more, Henry.”

“Philip, you mustn’t lose sight of the goal! You said it yourself—if we win this war, we secure liberty for—”

“Yes, Henry. Yes, goddamn it, I know
very well
what we’ll secure. But doing it, you haven’t lost the woman you love.”

T
HE LOW-LYING SUN SET
fire to the great bend of the river sweeping away west of the point of land where the American flag flew above the five-sided fort. The fort was constructed of heavy logs, reinforced on the landward faces with brick and stone. East of the fort, mercantile establishments, shanties and a boatyard straggled along the shore of the Monongahela. He saw it all through a haze of June humidity as he came down from Coal Hill like some kind of walking corpse.

His deerhide shirt and trousers were stained and torn. Strips of the shirt were wrapped tightly around his upper left arm. The arm was bandaged in two other places, below the elbow and at the wrist. All three bandages, and the exposed skin above and below each, were filthy with dirt and dried blood.

The fair-haired man had a strange, almost maniacal glaze in his eyes as he limped along the street in the early dusk, dragging the stock of his Kentucky rifle in the dirt. There were men and a few women abroad, the men mostly in hunting outfits. Despite the heat, a couple of them wore fur hats with raccoon tails dangling down the back. One or two of the men were dark enough to have some black or Indian blood. Nearly everyone gave the stranger a stare. Several pointed to call a companion’s attention to the shambling figure.

The man continued to move with that sleepwalker’s gaze and gait. His passing stilled the voices of loungers on the shadowy porch of a two-story boardinghouse. The man seemed not to hear any of the clatter of the river settlement: the hammer and thud of mallets from the boatyard; the riffle of an evening drum from Fort Dunmore; the creak of a wagon almost overflowing with glistening black lumps of coal coming up behind him.

As the wagon went by, the man glanced up. The driver was instantly uneasy because the man’s eyes burned with fever or hunger or something else. In a hoarse voice the man asked:

“Is George Clark here?”

The driver hauled on his reins, stopped his team. “George Clark of the Kentucky militia?”

“Yes.”

The driver pointed between crude buildings to the boat landing on the Monongahela. “Them’s his five flat-boats moored yonder.”

The man with the rifle swayed, as if he were having trouble standing up. But his eyes were still afire.

“I didn’t ask you about Clark’s flatboats, I asked about him.”

Fearfully, the wagon driver swallowed. “Try Semple’s Tavern.”

“Where is it?”

“Right down there.”

Without so much as a thank-you, the grim figure stumbled on. The driver wiped his mouth and shook his head.

Judson saw. But he didn’t give a damn what anyone thought about him. His sole objective was to reach the end of the journey, and stop. It wouldn’t be too long, hopefully. A few more steps—

Lord! If only he could relieve his thirst with a swig of rum. Just one drink, to ease the tension in him; to moisten his raw, parched throat—

Since the night when he’d killed five wolves between sunset and dawn, emerging from the experience half alive, he’d wanted nothing so much as a strong drink. It would have eased his pain; mitigated the agony he felt at every step. But, of necessity, he’d gone ahead without it, pushing on—dragging on—toward the forks with the ache of clumsily bandaged wounds a constant companion.

Now, stumbling toward the door of Semple’s, his thoughts grew confused. Why was he here? For a drink?

No, that wasn’t right—

Dizzy, he swayed back and forth again. He knuckled his eyes, planted his feet wider until the spell passed.

He licked his upper lip, all peeled and split and hard. He blinked a few times, then realized someone was watching him.

The man was a dim figure in the fast-lowering dark. He was seated against the corner of the building. He wore buckskins with long fringing, and hide moccasins. An English dragoon pistol and a hunting knife were thrust into his belt. The man’s face was completely in shadow. The sinking sun was behind him; and his flop-brimmed frontier hat helped to conceal his features.

Oddly, the fellow hadn’t so much as stirred when Judson showed signs of passing out in front of him.

Not that Judson Fletcher expected an outpouring of humanitarianism from the citizens of Pittsburgh. He knew he looked far too grimy and forbidding for that.

But as his mind cleared a little, he mentally remarked on the man’s absolute lack of motion. Quite different from the reactions of the other inhabitants he’d encountered while walking into the settlement.

In the few seconds that he and the seated man stared at one another, Judson noticed one more peculiarity. The man had his arms crossed over his chest, and his hands tucked out of sight next to his ribs.

Judson’s scrutiny made the fellow nervous. He jumped up and disappeared around the end of the building. But not before Judson saw the back of a hand that was either a white man’s burned extremely brown by the weather, or was naturally dark—

Well, he’d seen a few similar types in the little town already. He supposed it was possible for half-breeds to venture into Pittsburgh so long as they proclaimed themselves loyal to the American side.

Having decided the strange spectator was indeed an Indian—and cleared his head a little more in the bargain—Judson shuffled on toward the tavern door and thrust it open.

He heard a blast of boisterous talk, saw a blur of faces in the sullen redness leaking through greasy windows. When he entered, heads turned. Some of the conversation diminished.

At the bar, in the shadow of a stag’s horns hanging on the wall, a tap-boy drew foaming mugs of ale from a cask. The smell drifted to Judson clear across the room; set his tongue moving in his mouth.

Abruptly, the interior of the tavern seemed to tilt and distort. Again he fought to stay on his feet. Searched—but didn’t find the face he sought.

He staggered forward between the tables, smelling the sweat of the long hunters, the teamsters and rivermen gathered over venison and fish and hominy. He was aware of foreheads scratched; comments murmured about his ghastly appearance. None of that made any difference. Two emotions gripped him as he took his faltering steps:

Disappointment that his friend wasn’t here.

And anger over his own consuming awareness of the rum and ale fumes.

As through a fog that receded ahead of him, stirred and swirled back by the motion of his weary body, he saw half a dozen rough-clad men watching him with particular attention from a table beside a window. The men had been poring over a map. As it became apparent that Judson was heading in their general direction, one of the men quickly folded the map and slipped it inside his greasy shirt. His eyes slid to the ravaged arm, then back to Judson’s face, suspiciously.

Judson went by a table of three noisy men wearing homespun shirts. One of the three, in his cups, grabbed Judson’s rifle.

“Stranger, where you come from? Looks like you tangled with—”

Judson wrenched the rifle away so violently the drunk nearly toppled out of his chair. The drunk’s face and those of his companions sobered as Judson stared at them.

“Are you with Major Clark?” Judson asked, hoarse.