Jonathan’s Story Continues

“Bravo! Bravo! I am enjoying this game immensely, and I will be sad when it ends. But ‘twill end, I promise you, Mr. Asher. You need to win with the cards you hold every time; I only need to win once.”

Revolutionary New York City:

Where the British officers dance, gamble, foxhunt, and take over the homes of the residents while in the burnt-out neighborhoods thousands of refugees huddle in canvas shelters, and captured Continental soldiers starve in the churches, warehouses and ships converted into prisons. A dangerous city but the perfect place for a war profiteer, and a spy, and a seeker of justice for the murderers of the woman he loved.

Yet for Jonathan, there is also the New York of Elizabeth, a milliner, whom he is courting, of two orphans. Emma and Daniel, whom he has taken into his care, and friends like his business partner the former slave Gabriel, his brother William, and sister-in-law Nancy.

Jonathan’s enemies—the murderers he stalks, the profiteers who covet his lucrative trade in smuggled French wine, the officers of British intelligence—suspect and close in.

Plots, counterplots, duels, and betrayals ensue.

As the Revolutionary War draws to its climax at Yorktown, Jonathan’s world of subterfuge begins to come apart, and he must find a way to protect those he loves and maybe even survive.

SAMPLE

The sailor grabbed Jonathan’s arm as he exited the tavern and jerked him into an alley. “This way, sir. This way. Don’t resist the hand of a well-wisher.” When they were completely hidden in the shadows, Jonathan’s abductor whispered. “You soon be a wanted man.”

“I am already in many places, good and bad, sir, so if you please, release me,” Jonathan said after controlling the brief rush of panic. “I’ve an appointment in half an hour,” he added. Although his brother, Gulliver, had sacrificed himself by falsely confessing to the murder of Captain Hogwood, Jonathan couldn’t shake the feeling that the matter was not settled. The men under his brother’s command had been incensed at the hanging of their lieutenant. They were certain he had been sleeping in his quarters when the murder took place. His confession made no sense to them. Perhaps, they were homing in on the real reason. Jonathan’s unease now had become personified in a man with a strong grip, a rolling sailor’s gait, and the reek of rum.    

The large hand squeezed painfully. “Got no time for formalities, sir, such as I be not this and you be not that. We are morsels about to be stewed in the same pot. I’m doing you a favor. They are after me, meaning you are next.”

“What are you implying, sir?” Jonathan shook his arm free.

“Want me to proclaim it to the world.” The sailor seized and squeezed his arm again, whispering, “Let’s just say I mix with the jacks and seadogs and the shifting ballast in the taverns and listen and listen while they spin me their woes which is every sailor’s lot. I find out where they been, what they carrying, the sea worthiness of their vessels. Information which has certain value to certain people in certain quarters.” 

He drew Jonathan closer, engulfing him in a cloud of rum vapor. “What value you ask? One pound and ten shillings, keeping me in rum, which I cannot live without. I give what be of consequence to a whaleboat captain who exchanges my one pound ten shillings of information for one pound ten shillings.” 

“This has nothing to do with me,” Jonathan exclaimed angrily.

The sailor belched and continued, “Meredith James just caught the captain with papers and other such stuff unhandy to have in his possession. At this very moment, sure the captain is deciding between doing the gallows’ dance as a spy and traitor to good King George or giving up his contacts, me among them, and pardoned for his sins against the crown. Loving my rum so much and thereby loving my life, I know what I’d do. Doubt me at your peril. You see, I be your guardian angel, and you mine. You are to help me escape in time of need as I must do for you. That’s what they told me when I complained about working by my lonesome.”

“Guardian angels don’t extort each other,” Jonathan whispered harshly, gritting his teeth. Meredith James’ hold on Long Island was an unpleasant obstacle to his pursuit of Jaeger Hoffman. Little occurred on Long Island that escaped the notice of the piratical militiaman. Meredith was already suspicious of Jonathan so if he entered the domain of the King of Long Island Sound his movements would be closely followed. 

“Guardian angels do what they have to do to get their rum.” The sailor’s grip tightened as if in preparation to wrenching Jonathan’s arm from its socket.

“I might believe you if I were informed about your existence.” Jonathan clenched his fist in preparation for the inevitable fight. 

“Somebody must forgot,” the sailor replied unconcerned. “The damnable thing is I suspicioned this perilous situation came about on account of an intelligencer in Washington’s camp who kens who isn’t what he seems in the city. So, friend, how do we handle this?”

Murdering his guardian angel immediately occurred to Jonathan as the simplest solution. Unfortunately, he still carried a troublesome conscience. “Can you row?”

“In circles.” The sailor lifted his other arm which terminated with a knotted sleeve at the elbow.

Jonathan left a message with his brother’s wife, Nancy, that he would be gone for a few days and then visited the Gatling residence next to his warehouse and gave Thomasina, Josiah’s wife, money to take care of the horses, she being the only one of the twenty-four awake. Jonathan felt a stab in his heart when he thought about Emma and Daniel. He had just purchased a small brazier. He told Thomasina to give it to Pollux at the warehouse and inform him that he would be away for a few days. Pollux would know what to do with it. If for some reason Jonathan couldn’t return, perhaps he could persuade William and Nancy to take the children in, paying them with the deed to their house. He would figure it out later. This one-armed, inebriated guardian angel now required all his attention. He could see no clear way of dealing with the fellow spy beyond escorting him to Washington’s camp near Middlebrook and demanding that Hamilton explain why he put his cover into the hands of an unreliable sot.

Jonathan remembered seeing a small, abandoned bumboat turned upside down on a dock on the East River with its oarlocks still in place, although the wood was too rotted to transport cargo of any weight. Next to the bumboat had lain two splintered oars. If the craft and the oars hadn’t been scavenged for firewood yet, they might suffice for the two of them on a smooth crossing into New Jersey.

On viewing the pitiable craft, his one-armed guardian angel swore he had shipped in worse and anyway a drowning was a better end than a hanging for drowned corpses didn’t have such horrible expressions. Jonathan launched the boat with his passenger settling himself comfortably in the bow and began rowing around the tip of Manhattan Island toward the cliffs of the Jersey shore. A thick fog rolled in as he passed Manhattan, and Jonathan could only maintain his bearing by rowing at a right angle to the tidal current. 

“A smuggler’s night,” his guardian angel companion observed.

“Not quite that. Smugglers like to see where they are going,” Jonathan replied in a whisper.

Suddenly, the sloshing of oars and the voices of a half dozen ladies, giggly and drunk, and possibly quite lost came out of the fog.

“Bumboat full of trulls. Been a while since I cuddled with one of them daughters of Eve,” Jonathan’s companion commented wistfully.

Jonathan shipped his oars and let the boat drift away from the voices.

“What’s that?” the sailor asked, hearing several splashes a little while later.

“Something being thrown overboard,” Jonathan said grimly. A naked white body floated past them a minute later. The silhouette of the ship approached then faded gradually, erased by the fog. More splashes sounded. “This doesn’t make sense. There shouldn’t be prison ships hereabouts.”

“Poor buggered souls,” the guardian angel whispered, perhaps out of respect for the dead. “Guards don’t want the trouble of burying them so just dump their carcasses with nary a prayer.”

Jonathan rowed on. After beaching the boat on the Jersey shore, they found a trail up the cliff and stumbled on a road that seemed vaguely familiar to Jonathan. They were in the ambiguous territory just south of Paulus Ferry and safe for neither side. 

An hour later a voice boomed out of the darkness, challenging them, “Who goes there?”

They stopped. “Who goes there,” the voice repeated. Not knowing whether the challenger was a King’s man or a patriot or a cowboy or skinner, Jonathan and his guardian angel ran a hundred yards and hid in a ditch. The caller wisely didn’t follow.

Taking a path that detoured around the voice, they unaccountably found themselves walking down the street of a village. Jonathan assumed they were in the Town of Elizabeth, which lay supposedly in Continental territory. They then heard a man grumbling in German from the upper window of a house. Another man pissed against a barn, swearing drunkenly.

“Halt! Wer da?” They were confronted a second time. A gray outline of a man with a leveled musket stood twenty yards in front of them. It was too risky to ascertain whether he was a Hessian or German-speaking Continental soldier.

The sailor unsheathed his knife making the soft sliding sound of metal against leather.

“Quickly, this way,” Jonathan said, and they ducked between two houses. A shot rang out behind them. They sprinted into the thick fog. The guard again wisely did not follow.

They traveled in disgruntled silence into the morning, circling the outskirts of the township of Union and keeping their distance from the farmhouses they happened upon. Jonathan had spent a month wandering and working in this area after giving up preaching so when the fog finally lifted in the early afternoon, he recognized the spindly creek, the field of tree stumps, several dozen of which he had cut himself, and the burnt pile of wood that was all that remained of the farm of a family that had allowed him to sleep by their fireplace. They were not far from Middlebrook. Still, Jonathan was cautious. He wanted to avoid being seen by either side, and as Arnold had said, there are roadways, pathways, backways, and smuggler ways. Where possible, he used the last. His companion, swearing continually under his breath for being obliged to walk drunk more miles than any Christian should be required to walk sober, followed. 

At a turn in the trail, they suddenly came face to face with Hector perched on top of a fat horse, whistling a jaunty tune, his overlarge tricorn hat pulled down low. The boy started and paled when he saw Jonathan. He had identified Gulliver, Jonathan’s brother, as the man who had killed captain Hogwood because of his strong resemblance to Jonathan. Gulliver had gone along and confessed. A moment later the brave boy forced a smile at what might be a vengeful ghost. “You, sir?” He managed to say.

“Visiting your grandmother, Hector? How is she?” Jonathan asked, wondering at the propensity of this boy to be found on the infrequently traveled trails in the dangerous territories between the two armies. 

Hector seemed momentarily confused then brightened and said, “‘Tisn’t one, ‘tis t’other. My Brunswick grandmother is middling, some days better, not like my Germantown grandmother who’s middling, some days worse.”

“Good day to you, Hector,” Jonathan said.

“Good day to you, sir.” The boy rode off at a fast clip toward Perth Amboy.

In the very late afternoon, they approached the encampment of the Continental Army, chosen because of its strong defensive position and named Log House City. The land had been cleared for a square mile and each brigade occupied a low hill complete with officer cabins and parade grounds. Jonathan had no intention of striding into the camp, renouncing his loyalty to the king and rejoining the army. Delivering his “guardian angel” eliminated the danger so long as the man kept his mouth shut. However, he wanted to speak to Hamilton to clear up a few things. 

Discovering a partly ruined shack in a stand of white oak and chestnut trees a quarter-mile from Washington’s camp, Jonathan directed the “guardian angel” to convey a request to Hamilton to pay him a visit that evening, but otherwise, tell no one else about his presence.

“Me lips are sealed,” his guardian angel said and sauntered off through the field of stumps that separated the wood from the camps, speculating out loud about the Continental Army’s stock of rum. Jonathan spent a few minutes trying to figure out what to do next, but the fatigue of having walked twenty-five miles won out over worry and he slipped into a doze.

“Major Clark, what in the bloody damn hell are you doing here?” Jonathan cried out and jerked himself awake. 

Sitting bolt upright, he glanced around at the splintery walls of the shed. He did not see Major Clark, the Continental spy that operated in the surroundings of Philadelphia, and who had nearly broken his jaw after providing a pass into the city. Nor did Jonathan see anyone else, yet he was certain somebody had been there in the shack. He rushed outside and then to the edge of the wood which gave out onto a view of Log House City. A small figure was running up the incline of one of the regimental hills holding an oversized tricorn hat in his hand. 

The small voice of Hector was heard hailing the guard and he passed by without being stopped. Almost immediately the boy fell in with a stout woman exiting the camp carrying a large basket of laundry to be washed in a creek at the bottom of the hill. From their easy manner together, Jonathan guessed Hector was her son. The woman dumped the laundry next to several tubs simmering over fires while she listened to Hector. Her load was full of officers’ uniforms. She continued working, feeling inside each jacket before consigning it to the pot of boiling water. The boy stood back expectantly. The woman retrieved what appeared to be a letter from one of the pockets of a uniform jacket and put it in the folds of her skirt. 

“So that’s how the information is passed,” Jonathan whispered to himself. Hector and his mother worked for the British. The spy, possibly an officer close to Washington, left the information in an inner pocket of his jacket. The laundress retrieved it and gave it to Hector to deliver. A boy, especially one visiting an ill grandmother, would not be bothered on his way through the lines even if he didn’t possess a pass, much less searched. If another laundress washed the clothes, the information, probably coded in an innocuous-seeming letter would be set aside or destroyed. 

Hector’s mother suddenly put her fingers to her lips and bent down to hear her son better. She straightened and glanced around as if trying to pierce the thick foliage with her gaze. Giving another laundress a coin and her basket of soiled clothes, she started walking in the direction of Jonathan’s shack. Jonathan retreated into the cover of a stand of gooseberry shrubs twenty yards away.  When the laundress neared the doorless entrance, she scraped her upper lip with her bottom teeth and drew a pistol from her skirt. 

“Show yerself, Mister,” she demanded. “I want to talk to you.” After a moment’s hesitation, she peered inside.  

“I saw him. I heard him snore,” Hector insisted. “He was the same man I saw hanged for killing Captain Hogwood, the one I accused—the merchant from New York. And now he is here. I swear to it.”

“If dead men come back to life, your father got a lot of explaining to do for not availing himself of the opportunity,” the laundress said to her son.

“Maybe, there were two of them that looked alike. But this fellow seemed more like the man riding with Captain Hogwood, and the man they hanged wore a uniform, so I think they hanged the wrong one.” Hector was near tears.

“The man confessed to the murder, so he warn’t the wrong man. If this fellow were a damn rebel, he’d not be hiding away from his friends. Likely he were just a cowboy looking for easy pickings,” the mother said. “Wait until tomorrow afore you leave with the letter.” They walked back together toward the camp.