Jake was anxious to continue on his mission, but prudence as well as duty required him to give the men a decent burial, even if they would not have returned the favor. Before laying them in their graves, Jake rifled their clothes as discreetly as possible, looking for papers or anything else that might give him more information about the task they had been assigned, if any. The only thing interesting he found was a Hawkins and Wilson smoothbore flintlock pistol. The British-made gun was a handsome weapon — General Washington himself owned a pair.
It was much too useful to be buried with the dead men — Jake stuck it in his saddlebag.
The Dutchman said very little as they went about the grim task of burying the men. Jake wondered what van Clynne made of them and their identities, whether he considered them mere bandits or disguised rangers, as Jake did. But there was no way to ask without inviting suspicion about his own identity and purpose.
Besides, Jake was too busy digging to talk: van Clynne’s contribution to the job became more and more theoretical as it proceeded.
The horses would fetch a decent price in Ticonderoga, but the Dutchman surprised Jake by letting them go free. Clearly this was a businessman who took only prudent risks. Allies or even enemies of this murderous trio might well recognize the horses, and pointed questions might not be easily turned away as this late attack.
Frowning as deeply as ever, van Clynne mounted his horse and waited impatiently as Jake said a short prayer commending the men to their fate. As he was sure they were going straight to hell, it was more in the way of thanksgiving than mourning.
Back on the road, the Dutchman’s tongue soon loosened. He began by complaining about the weather, which had turned very warm; he moved on to remarks about the thickness of the mosquitoes. In truth, the bugs were not thick at all, since it was only May, but logic had no bearing on van Clynne’s arguments, and if Jake had pointed this out, the Dutchman would instantly have found a dozen arguments to sustain his point. Jake kept his mouth shut, and presently, by some segue he couldn’t track, van Clynne was giving him a lengthy dissertation on the state of Indian affairs.
“ The fellow was an Iroquois from the Onondagas. A loner, but it is a bad sign nonetheless.”
“ He’s not a Mohawk?”
Van Clynne launched into the differences between the Maquas or Mohawks, who controlled the fur trade, and their Iroquois brothers to the west. The Mohawks called themselves “Ganiengehaga” meaning “the flint people” and referring to one of their stock trading items.
“ Have the Iroquois joined the British?” Jake asked, hoping his companion might yield some tidbits useful for Schuyler’s defense. If he was to be harangued all the way to Canada, he might as well try and make some use of it.”
“ Some yes, some no. There is a great debate among them even now. Schuyler has kept the tribes near him neutral so far, but there’s blood between the Iroquois and the British, and with these people, blood will tell,” said the Dutchman.
“ What do you mean, blood?”
“ Blood. One of their chiefs is related to the damn English. What’s worse, one of the English took an Iroquois for a bride. You know what that means?”
Jake shook his head.
“ These people are ruled by their women. It’s disgraceful. I am a great admirer of the Iroquois, except in this. They can’t make a move without their squaws. Let me give you a piece of advice that will stand you in good stead for the rest of your days — any woman who rules you will ruin you. Why do you think the Indians are so given to drink?”
Jake gave a noncommittal grunt.
“ Now in my day, a woman knew her place. Ensign Niessen at Wildwyck — there was a man who understood women. Had only to raise his eyebrow and his supper was fetched. And the woman was a good brewer besides. Aye, an excellent wife. Not like today.”
The name Wildwyck, as van Clynne eventually explained, was the true Dutch name for Kingston, changed from the even more appropriate Esopus by the admirable governor Peter Stuyvesant, who, though not without his faults, would tower over mankind like the Alps over Europe if he were alive today. As for Ensign Niessen, the man had lived a good century ago, something Jake knew because the house he stayed at near Kingston just a few days before had been built by Niessen’s son, already a full generation gone.
Though he spoke of him as a cousin, van Clynne couldn’t have known the ensign himself. His round face, obscured by a thick beard, was of indeterminate age, but Jake reckoned he wasn’t past fifty. There was a certain youthfulness in his voice, too, despite its constant pessimistic tone; it was quite possible that the Dutchman was only in his early forties, or perhaps even his thirties. This was much older than Jake, of course, but not nearly ancient; Dr. Franklin and many other leaders of the Revolution had marked considerably more years off the calendar. But van Clynne seemed to have acquired old age in his youth, cultivating it rather than running from it as most men do. His clothes were old-fashioned, cut fuller and looser than Jake’s even taking his girth into account. His belt was cinched with a massive buckle, ornately decorated in silver. Large buckles held his shoes tight to his feet, and despite the dust of travel, it was obvious that they had been blackened this morning, a bit of fussiness one ordinarily wouldn’t have associated with a country traveler. His stockings were a red russet — another obsolete mark, and an unusually colorful gesture for the otherwise cloudy Dutchman.
His breeches and coat were a dull brown. The sleeves were open peculiarly in a fashion worn almost exclusively in the Hudson Valley. Van Clynne’s hat was a fine beaver, well-proportioned for his head. Though the style was still popular, this particular hat looked ancient. It wasn’t that it was battered or worn; on the contrary. But the pelts themselves seemed somehow to have come from old beavers, with vague streaks of gray showing through in the light. The brim at the front was turned up slightly, affording a good line of sight to the burgher.
“ I’m not a burgher,” van Clynne said sharply.
“ I meant no offense.”
“ Next you’ll be calling me a patron.” The word spit from his mouth.
“ I just meant to ask where you came from,” said Jake contritely.
“ I haven’t asked you similar questions, have I? We have a business relationship, you and I: best to keep it that way.”
“ Fair enough.”
“ I retain the title Esquire from the British, since they are in possession of our country,” said van Clynne. “Especially since they are in possession of my piece of it.”
“ The English took your land?”
To Jake’s surprise, van Clynne didn’t answer, changing the subject instead.
“ It was a nice pistol.”
“ Which?”
The pistol you took from our friend. British, yes?”
“ I think so,” said Jake.
“ The flintlock is an intriguing invention. It was perfected by a Dutchman, you know.”
“ You’re pulling my leg, right? The Dutch haven’t invented anything in two hundred years.”
Van Clynne shot him a nasty glance and continued with his dissertation. “The only great weapon, though, is a blunderbuss. The wheel lock — do you know how many families have been saved by its invention? Ask the river Indians what they think of it.”
“ Bit of a pain to twist the spring when you’re under attack, isn’t it?” said Jake.
Jake had no need for a course on ballistics and was not inclined to listened to van Clynne’s discussion of the merits of smooth and rifled barrels. But his interest was piqued when suddenly the Dutchman began giving him an amazingly detailed description of a breech-loaded rifle.
Such a gun had been perfected only a few years before in England. Jake had seen one while he was there in school, and had not failed to be impressed by it. In fact he harbored hopes of conducting a special mission to England to retrieve one as a model for manufacture in the near future.
The gun’s key feature was a screw-threaded, ten-point plug in its breech at the top of the barrel. This allowed the ball or bullet to be placed there directly, rather than having to be rammed down the rifled barrel. Powder was wedged in behind it — you didn’t have to worry about measuring, since only the right amount fit. Back comes the plug, lock cocked, and -
“ Boom,” said van Clynne.
“ Boom,” echoed Jake. “Tell me, squire, where did you get such a weapon?”
“ Who said that I had one?”
“ You talk as if you do.”
“ No, no,” said van Clynne. “It is just an idea of mine. A fancy.”
Jake doubted that strenuously, but kept his opinion to himself. Instead, he opened a line of inquiry into another area that had lately interested him.
“ Where did you learn to throw a hatchet like that?”
“ I will answer that question,” replied van Clynne, “if you’ll tell me where you got that potion that stood our friend up like a skittle pin.”
“ I told you, I’m searching for cures,” said Jake. He’d hoped the drug had escaped his companion’s notice, but van Clynne was proving a wily type. “This was just a little concoction I came across in my travels.”
“ And would you have any more of it, by chance?”
“ Afraid not,” replied Jake, who would have answered the same even if he had. “It isn’t easy to obtain.”
“ The wilden taught me how to throw the ax,” said the Dutchman, paying off his end of the bargain. “Wilden” was the Dutch word for Indian or native. “Mohawks specifically. It’s all a matter of balance. Would you like a demonstration?”
Jake soon found himself dismounted, standing next to van Clynne as he extolled the virtues of a straight handle and a true head.
“ Your target must be an odd number of steps away, five, seven or nine; farther than that and you add uncertainty,” said van Clynne. “You grasp the butt end of the handle exactly in the middle of your palm.” He demonstrated. “Note my legs, loose, evenly apart. My weight is on my right foot.”
“ I noticed the strain.”
A brief frown passed over van Clynne’s face. “Here, stand over there, before that tree.”
“ Why?”
“ You want a demonstration, don’t you?”
Against his better judgment, Jake walked to the front of the tree and turned to face van Clynne. He was rewarded by the swift whiz of an ax sailing head over heels in his direction.
First he ducked, barely in time. Then he flew at his assailant.
“ Wait, wait!” protested van Clynne. “I threw it to land exactly over your head. I never miss. Go and see. Go and see.”
Jake loosened his grip on van Clynne’s cravat. He turned toward the tree, where the head of the tomahawk was buried deep in the trunk. Sure enough, the handle rested a measured inch above his scalp.
“ Now I’ll give you a demonstration,” said Jake, pushing van Clynne to the spot where he had stood.
“ N-Not with an ax, I hope,” stuttered the Dutchman.
Jake had already removed his four-shot Segallas pocket pistol from his vest pocket. It was a magnificent miniature gun with four tiny barrels, each with its own separate frizzen and flash pan, so he did not have to reprime after each shot. Nor did he have to reload, blasting one tripper, then the next, flipping the barrels with a quick twist and firing the third and the fourth.
Such a beautiful gun was a rarity in America, a fine and deadly specimen. Van Clynne did not remark on it, however. In fact, the Dutchman seemed quite speechless as Jake bounced the first two bullets off each side of the hatchet head, and then, feeling a bit peevish, buried the others next to the soles of van Clynne’s shoes.
“ As long as we understand each other,” he said, nodding to van Clynne.
“ We do, sir, we do,” said the squire, bushing himself off as the color returned to his face. “You trust me, and I trust you. It is a good business arrangement.”
Thousands of years before, upper New York had been covered with a massive glacier, a huge split of ice that fitfully gave way to a puddle of cold water huge enough to be considered a sea. The remains of that Laurentide ocean stretched to Jake’s right as dusk began to come on, visible through the trees and the occasional meadow. He and van Clynne were approaching the fringes of patriot territory and could feel the boundary in the growing chill as an evening wind began kicking up from Canada.
How much colder it had been ten thousand years before, when Mother Nature began blowing her warm breath on the ice, pushing back the invading ice so she could experiment anew with life in the valley? Her soft breath left behind huge deposits of scraped-white rock, booty and symbols of the struggle. Representatives of those rocks greeted them now, gleaming in the last red rays of the day — Fort Ticonderoga, the American stronghold and key to the defense of upper New York.
The patriot victory at the fort two years before was already celebrated in song and legend. A pair of American forces had combined in the capture — one under Benedict Arnold, the other under Ethan Allen. Taken together, they had not more than two hundred men under them, but the fiercest fighting was between themselves; the fifty or so defenders of the fort were mostly old pensioners put out to pasture with what was considered, until that moment, easy duty. The Americans’ booty was not merely the fort, which protected Albany and the Hudson headwaters, but something on the order of eighty bronze cannon. Those weapons had become the backbone of the American artillery corps.
Jake and his guide were admiring the stone walls from a distance because they had made a strategic decision to avoid the fort and surrounding settlements. People there, officers especially, had a tendency to ask questions and look at papers, and even if there were all in order — as van Clynne assured Jake they were — still, such matters were best not continually put to the test.
“ Can we hire a boat north of here?” Jake asked as van Clynne directed him to take a left at the next fork in the road. Even though they’d made remarkable time, he wanted to go faster still, and a boat would shorten the journey.
Van Clynne held off answering as a wagon approached. He nodded at the man driving it as if he knew him and continued on.
“ We’re not taking a boat,” he said. “Too many warships of both sides on the lake.”
Last fall the British had come as far south as Crown Point, about fifteen miles north on Lake Champlain. They were halted by caution, the approaching winter, and an American flotilla. Jake was unsure of the exact status of hostilities on the water, but as his traveling companion seemed extremely well-informed, he followed along without comment.
The Dutchman knew not only every highway and byway here, but also the deer paths and spring streams. They splashed up one of the latter as night came on, avoiding a small village whose population, according to van Clynne, consisted entirely of very nosy housewives. Their immediate destination was a house two miles farther on. It was owned by a Dutchman whose formula for brown porter was unrivaled in the state, according to van Clynne, who began proclaiming the virtues of its brewer as they pushed through the dark woods.
As the lane narrowed, Jake’s sixth sense of danger detection began to assert itself. He didn’t fear a double cross from his companion riding ten yards behind him so much as another ambush, this one more easily accomplished in the blackness. Placing a pistol in his left hand, Jake reined his horse carefully with the other. His eyes scanned for movement and his ears tuned to the specific frequency of human footfalls.
It was just such a sound thirty yards to his right that caught his attention. When he heard the second step he leaped off his horse and sped silently through the woods, gun in hand.
Van Clynne jabbered on, not even aware Jake had dismounted. His first notice of the ambush came with the loud crash and muffled moan the intruder emitted as Jake caught the man from behind, cupping his hand over his mouth to keep him from screaming out.
Pardon — her mouth. There was no mistaking that once he touched the smoothness of her face, Jake, seeing she was unarmed, turned her gently toward him with his left hand, which held the pistol. He was mildly surprised and somewhat pleased to see defiance, not fear, in her eyes.
When he let go, reaching down to pick up her fallen basket of early blueberries, she leveled a blow at his head.
He ducked and upended the girl, grabbing her around the middle.
“ Let me down!” she screamed, kicking and punching. “My father will shoot you if you hurt me.”
“ I meant no harm,” said Jake, setting her down gingerly — her muscles were nearly as strong as her spirit. “I thought you were coming to attack us.”
“ Who are you, riding through the woods at night?” she demanded. “Another soldier from the fort, or some damned Tory?”
“ Johanna! Johanna Blom!” shouted van Clynne, arriving late to the commotion. He explained in very excited Dutch that Jake was a friend and meant no harm.
Jake’s passing knowledge of the language allowed him to add that, had he known their assailant was this pretty, he surely would have surrendered without a fight. The remark prompted Mistress Johanna to attempt another punch, though its intended victim noted that this one was grabbed more easily than the others.
Apologies offered if not wholly accepted, Jake and van Clynne were escorted to the Blom house. Fifty years before, the two-story clapboard affair — as van Clynne explained in his flourishing style — had been an estimable stopping point for travelers. New roads, more dependable boats along the lake, and the failure of the local beaver population had conspired to cause its decline. Blom still let rooms from time to time, and his taproom remained popular with the male population of the small hamlet up the road a quarter of a mile, especially those seeking to avoid their wives.
Jake and his guide were soon sitting in front of the hearth, the fire stoked against the late spring chill, a mug of nut-brown porter in hand. The fire glowed and reflected off the hard-scrubbed floor, turning the whole room a bright yellow.
The porter was round and pleasing in the mouth, Jake had to admit. Even better was Mistress Johanna, who lost none of her spark indoors. As van Clynne and Blom fell into a long debate about the decline in the quality of ale yeasts — a crucial ingredient in the beer — she took up a station to Jake’s left in front of the fireplace. Johanna propped a long iron poker across her lap, though the fire was not in need of much attention at the moment.
“ That’s quite a stick you have,” joked Jake.
“ In case you attack me again, I want to be prepared.”
“ I’m already in your power.”
Johanna shot an embarrassed glance toward her father. He was deep in conversation — surely the decline in yeasts went back fifty years, and had to do with the shift of the Atlantic currents.
Though pretty, Jake had already concluded she was too young for more than the mildest flirting, and he merely nodded and sipped his beer as the girl walked slowly back to the kitchen, hesitating enough to let him know she wouldn’t mind being followed.
Meanwhile, van Clynne and Blom had changed not only their topic of conversation but their style of talking, low whispers replacing loud boasts.
“ You’ve stopped by just in time, Claus,” said Blom. “We have a little adventure planned this evening, around midnight.”
“ A party?”
“ You might say, though the guest of honor won’t take much pleasure in it. The Smiths have been hosting a British agent, who’s trying to recruit the countryside to desert to the king.”
“ Found no takers, I hope.”
“ None. But we can’t have that sort of thing going on in the neighborhood. We’re going to tar and feather the devil tonight, and send him on his way. Myself and a few of the local Liberty boys.” Blom glanced toward Jake, who pretended to be engrossed in watching Johanna leave the room. “Do you think your friend would come along?”
Van Clynne made a face. “I think not.”
Jake slunk back in his spindled chair and waited for the Dutchman to give him away. He had resigned himself to admitting he was an American agent — and positioned his pocket pistol in case they weren’t ready to believe him — when he heard van Clynne say that Jake was a Quaker and thus could not participate in any warfare.
“ Best to leave him totally in the dark,” added the Dutchman.
“ Have you tested his loyalties?”
“ Oh, I vouch for him,” van Clynne bristled. “But let us not take unnecessary chances. The more people who know of an operation, the more chance for something to go wrong. Some people just can’t keep their mouths shut.”
Even disguised as a Tory deserter, Jake Gibbs couldn’t pass up an opportunity to wreak a little havoc on the British cause, especially if all he was sacrificing were a few hours of sleep and the possibility of fending off the innkeeper’s daughter. Besides, he wanted to make sure van Clynne survived to help him north in the morning.
Jake wasn’t sure what to make of the Dutchman’s lie about his being Quaker. Perhaps he felt obligated by their business deal, or else his demonstration of prowess with the pocket pistol was still fresh in the squire’s mind. In any event, van Clynne didn’t mention his planned sojourn when they were packed off to the upstairs room to sleep.
Unlike many backwoods inns, there were separate beds. Jake didn’t object when van Clynne took the one nearest the door, nor did he let on that he was still awake a half hour later when Blom knocked on the door and whispered that it was time to leave. The Dutchman had fallen asleep — his snores were akin to the doleful soundings of a beached whale — and Jake was treated to a few minutes amusement as Blom tried to wake him. Finally, the innkeeper pulled the Dutchman’s beard, and he bolted upright with a start and a whispered curse.
Jake let the pair get a head start, then snuck out of the darkened house and trailed them up the road. Van Clynne’s grumpy voice carried farther than the light of his torch. He spent much of the short walk complaining about the sudden chill of the night — in the old days, spring came on with reckless abandon, and there was never a need for as much as a jacket once the snow had gone.
Jake saw why Blom had been interested in recruiting him when the pair met four or five men gathered in front of the hamlet’s small church. None of these Liberty boys was younger than sixty. The tiny community had sent all of its young men and a few of the older ones as well to the nearby fort: these old gentlemen were all that remained of the local population.
They were a feisty lot nonetheless, and in the manner of Liberty men across the continent, had prepared a proper tar bath and an effigy to impress the British recruiter with. As they passed a bottle to rally their youth for the coming action, Jake slipped back in the words, as much to stifle a laugh as anything else — these ancients sounded like a squad of nineteen-year-old privates, ready to take on the world. But there was no need to tell one versed in apothecary sciences that age was largely a matter of the mind.
Just as he settled into the darkness, Jake heard someone else moving through the nearby woods. He stood deer-still and watched a small figure emerge from behind the trees, study the gathering, and then retreat. The patriot spy followed along as quickly as he dared, as quietly as possible. The shadow — so short and thin he must be a boy of eight or nine — climbed over a rail fence into a cleared yard and began running; Jake had to let him get a very long lead before he decided it would be safe to pursue.
It was easy enough to see where he went. Well before Jake arrived at the back of the house, he realized the destination must be the Smith family homestead, and that the boy must be allied with the Tories.
“ They’re on their way, Father,” said the lad to the two taller figures in the road in front of the house. “They’re in front of the church.”
“ Good, Jamie. Go inside with Mother and make sure the cannon is ready. Mr. Peters and I will be here for awhile longer.’
Peters — whose accent gave him away immediately as a British officer fresh from south Wales — was working on a vast ditch in the road in front of the house, filling it with water from a nearby well. “We’re ready,” he told Smith. “We’ve just got to cover the trench with the rushes and dirt. No one will see it in the dark.”
“ I don’t want to hurt anyone,” said Smith.
“ They’re coming to kill you, man,” declared the British recruiter indignantly. “This is merely a small trick you’re playing on them. No need to feel guilty.”
“ The swivel cannon, though.”
“ We’ll fire it only if they attack the home. You’ve got to protect your family.”
“ What if it goes off by accident?”
“ Buck up, Smith. These people are rebels.”
Jake let the reluctant Tory continue his debate with the devil as he snuck to the back of the house, determined that there would be no such accident. In truth, most Loyalists did not feel the qualms Smith expressed, and Jake saw some hope for him — though not if the evening proceeded as planned.
A small lean-to was located at the back of the house, serving as the family as a summer kitchen. The voices inside the building indicated that mother and son — and at least two other children — were working on the swivel gun in the front room. Jake could easily sneak in while their attentions were turned toward the cannon and the street.
He had brought two of his pistols with him, and he took one now from his belt. Already loaded, he wanted to use it to scare the family into submission — but only scare them, for he was loath to hurt women and children, no matter how misguided their loyalties. He therefore took the unusual expedient of removing the flint from the firing mechanism — the pistol was cocked, and except to a careful eye, would seem ready to fire. Jake could even pull the trigger, though nothing would happen. The other gun remained ready at his waist.
Hearing noises in the distance up the road, Jake wedged his foot inside the door and eased it open, sneaking into the kitchen — and directly in front of the business end of a large, ancient, but very definitely loaded and simmering matchlock.