HE WAS LUCKIER THAN he’d thought he might be, if not as lucky as he’d hoped. His companies were to be in the second wave, following up the vanguard of foot, guarding the artillery. Not a guarantee of action, but a good chance nonetheless, if the Americans were half the fighters they were reputed to be.
It was past noon before he lifted his spontoon into the air and shouted, “Forward, march!” The brewing weather had broken in a spattering rain, a welcome relief from the heat.
Beyond the shore, a fringe of woods gave way to a broad and beautiful plain. Waving grasses lay before them, flecked with wildflowers, the colors rich in the dim, rainy light. Far ahead, he could see flights of birds—doves? quail? too far to see—rising into the air despite the rain, as the marching soldiers drove them from their cover.
His own companies marched close to the center of the advancing line, snaking in orderly columns behind him, and he directed a grateful thought toward General Howe. As a junior staff officer, he should by rights have been delegated to messenger duty, scampering to and fro among the companies on the field, relaying orders from Howe’s headquarters, carrying information to and from the two other generals, Sir Henry Clinton and Lord Cornwallis.
Given his late arrival, though, he knew none of the other officers or the army’s disposition; he was completely ignorant of who was whom, let alone where they should be at any moment. He would be useless as a messenger. General Howe, somehow finding a moment in the bustle of the oncoming invasion, had not only welcomed him with great courtesy but had offered him the choice: accompany Captain Griswold, serving in such manner as the captain might direct—or take command of a few companies orphaned of their own lieutenant, who had fallen ill of the ague.
He had jumped at the chance, and now sat proud in his saddle, his spontoon resting in its loop, leading men to war. He shifted a little, enjoying the feel of the new red wool coat on his shoulders, the orderly club of the queued pigtail on his neck, the stiff leather stock about his throat, and the small weight of his officer’s gorget, that tiny silver remnant of Roman armor. He’d not worn uniform for nearly two months and, rain-damp or not, felt its resumption to be a glorious apotheosis.
A company of light horse traveled near them; he heard the shout of their officer and saw them draw ahead and turn toward a distant copse of wood. Had they seen something?
No. A tremendous cloud of blackbirds exploded from the copse, in a chatter so great that many of the horses shied and spooked. The horse soldiers foraged about, weaving through the trees with sabers drawn, slashing at branches, but just for show. If anyone had been hiding there, they had gone, and the light horse rode back to rejoin the advance, catcalling each other.
He relaxed back into his saddle, releasing his grip on the spontoon.
No Americans in sight—but they wouldn’t be. He’d seen and heard enough in his intelligencing to know that only real Continentals were likely to fight in an organized fashion. He’d seen militia drilling in village squares, shared food with men who belonged to such militias. None of them were soldiers—seen in groups drilling, they were laughable, barely able to march in a line, let alone in step—but nearly all were skilled hunters, and he’d seen too many of them shoot wild geese and turkey on the fly to share the common contempt of most British soldiers.
No, if there were Americans nearby, the first warning of it was likely to be men falling dead. He signaled to Perkins, had him convey orders to the corporals, to keep the men alert, weapons loaded and primed. He saw one corporal’s shoulders stiffen at receipt of this message, which he plainly considered an insult—but the man did it nonetheless, and William’s sense of tension eased a bit.
His thoughts returned to his recent journey, and he wondered when—and where—he might meet with Captain Richardson, to turn over the results of his intelligencing.
He had committed most of his observations to memory while on the road, writing down only what he must, and that coded in a small copy of the New Testament that his grandmother had given him. It was still in the pocket of his civilian coat, back on Staten Island. Now that he was safely returned to the bosom of the army, perhaps he ought to write up his observations, in proper reports? He could—
Something raised him in his stirrups, just in time to catch the flash and crack of musket fire from the woods on the left.
“Hold!” he shouted, seeing his men start to lower their weapons. “Wait!”
It was too far, and there was another column of infantry, closer to the wood. These swung into firing order and loosed a volley into the woods; the first rank knelt and the second fired over their heads. Return fire came from the wood; he saw one or two men fall, others stagger, but the line pulled together.
Another two volleys, the sparks of returning fire, but more sporadic—from the corner of his eye, he saw movement and whirled in his saddle, to see a gang of woodsmen in hunting shirts running from the far side of the copse.
The company in front of him saw them, too. A shout from their sergeant, and they fixed bayonets and ran, though it was plain to William that they’d never catch the fleeing woodsmen.
This sort of random skirmishing kept up all afternoon, as the army pressed on. The fallen were picked up and carried to the rear, but they were few. One of William’s companies was fired upon at one point, and he felt godlike as he gave the order to attack and they poured into the wood like a stream of angry hornets, bayonets fixed, managing to kill one rebel, whose body they dragged out onto the plain. The corporal suggested hanging it from a tree as discouragement to the other rebels, but William firmly declined this suggestion as not honorable and made them lay the man at the edge of the wood, where he could be found by his friends.
Toward evening, orders came along the line of march, from General Clinton. They would not stop to make camp. A brief pause for cold rations, and then press on.
There were murmurs of surprise in the ranks, but no grumbling. They’d come to fight, and the march resumed with a greater sense of urgency.
It was raining sporadically, and the harassment from skirmishers faded with the sullen light. It was not cold, and despite the growing soddenness of his garments, William preferred the chill and damp to the sultry oppression of the day before. At least the rain dampened the spirits of his horse, which was a good thing; it was a nervous, skittish creature, and he had cause to doubt Captain Griswold’s goodwill in lending it to him. Worn down by the long day, though, the gelding ceased shying at windblown branches and jerking at the reins, and plodded onward with its ears falling sideways in tired resignation.
It wasn’t bad for the first several hours of the night march. After midnight, though, the strain of exertion and sleeplessness began to tell on the men. Soldiers began to stumble and slow, and a sense of the vast expanse of dark and effort between themselves and dawn settled upon them.
William called Perkins up beside him. The soft-cheeked private showed up yawning and blinking, and paced beside him, a hand on William’s stirrup leather as William explained what he wanted.
“Sing?” Perkins said doubtfully. “Well, I s’pose I can sing, yes, sir. Nobbut hymns, though.”
“Not quite what I had in mind,” William said. “Go and ask Sergeant … Millikin, is it? The Irishman? Anything he likes, so long as it’s loud and lively.” After all, they weren’t trying to hide their presence; the Americans knew exactly where they were.
“Yes, sir,” Perkins said dubiously, and let go the stirrup, fading at once into the night. William rode for some minutes, then heard Patrick Millikin’s very loud Irish voice lifted in a very bawdy song. There was a ripple of laughter through the men, and by the time he reached the first chorus, a few had joined in. Two more verses and they were all roaring lustily along, William included.
They couldn’t keep it up for hours while marching at speed with full equipment, of course, but by the time they had exhausted their favorite songs and grown breathless, everyone was awake and optimistic once more.
Just before dawn, William smelled the sea and the rank mud scent of a marsh in the rain. The men, already wet, began to splash through a number of tiny tidal inlets and creeks.
A few minutes later, the boom of cannon broke the night, and marsh birds rose into the lightening sky with shrieks of alarm.
OVER THE COURSE OF the next two days, William never had any idea where he was. Names such as “Jamaica Pass,” “Flatbush,” and “Gowanus Creek” occurred now and then in the dispatches and hasty messages that passed through the army, but they might as well have said “Jupiter” or “the backside of the moon” for all the meaning they had.
He did see Continentals, at last. Hordes of them, swarming out of the marshes. The first few clashes were fierce, but William’s companies were held to the rear, supporting; only once were they close enough to fire, in order to repulse an oncoming group of Americans.
Nonetheless, he was in a constant state of excitement, trying to hear and see everything at once, intoxicated by the smell of powder smoke, even as his flesh quivered at the report of cannon. When the firing ceased at sunset, he took a little biscuit and cheese, but without tasting it, and slept only briefly, from sheer exhaustion.
In late afternoon of the second day, they found themselves some little way behind a large stone farmhouse that the British and some Hessian troops had taken over as an artillery emplacement; the barrels of cannon protruded from the upper windows, shining wet with the constant rain.
Wet powder was a problem now; the cartridges were all right, but if the powder poured into priming pans was left more than a few minutes, it began to cake and go dead. The order to load, then, had to be delayed until the last possible moment before firing; William found himself grinding his teeth in anxiety as to when the order should be given.
On the other hand, sometimes there was no doubt at all. With hoarse shouts, a number of Americans charged out of the trees near the front of the house and made for the doors and windows. Musket fire from the troops inside got several of them, but some made it as far as the house itself, where they began to clamber into the shattered windows. William automatically reined up and rode to the right, far enough to get a look at the rear of the house. Sure enough, a larger group was already at it, a number of them climbing the wall by means of the ivy that covered the back of the house.
“That way!” he bellowed, wheeling his horse around and waving his spontoon. “Olson, Jeffries, the back! Load and fire as soon as you’re in range!”
Two of his companies ran, ripping the ends of cartridges with their teeth, but a party of green-coated Hessians was there before him, seizing Americans by the legs and pulling them from the ivy to club them on the ground.
He reined round and dashed the other way, to see what was happening in front, and came in sight just in time to see a British artilleryman fly out of one of the open upper windows. The man landed on the ground, one leg bent under him, and lay screaming. One of William’s men, close enough, darted forward and grabbed the man’s shoulders, only to be shot by someone within the house. He crumpled and fell, his hat rolling off into the bushes.
They spent the rest of that day at the stone farmhouse; four times, the Americans made forays—twice, they succeeded in overcoming the inhabitants and briefly seizing the guns, but both times were overrun by fresh waves of British troops and evicted or killed. William never got closer than two hundred yards or so to the house itself, but once managed to interpose one of his companies between the house and a surge of desperate Americans dressed like Indians and yelling like banshees. One of them raised a long rifle and fired directly at him, but missed. He drew his sword, intending to ride the man down, but a shot from somewhere struck the man and sent him rolling down the face of a small hillock.
William urged his mount closer, to see whether the man was dead or not—the man’s companions had already fled round the far corner of the house, pursued by British troops. The gelding wasn’t having any; trained to the sound of musket fire, it found artillery unnerving, and the cannon happening to speak at this particular moment, the gelding laid its ears flat back and bolted.
William had his sword still in hand, the reins loosely wrapped round his other hand; the sudden jolt unseated him, and the horse whipped to the left, jerking his right foot from the stirrup and pitching him off. He had barely presence of mind to let go of the sword as he fell, and landed on one shoulder, rolling.
Simultaneously thanking God that his left foot hadn’t been trapped in its stirrup and cursing the horse, he scrambled up onto hands and knees, smeared with grass and mud, heart in his mouth.
The guns in the house had stopped; the Americans must be in there again, engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with the gun crews. He spat out mud, and began to make a cautious withdrawal; he thought he was in range of the upper windows.
To his left, though, he caught sight of the American who had tried to shoot him, still lying in the wet grass. With a wary glance at the house, he crawled to the man, who was lying on his face, unmoving. He wanted to see the man’s face, for what reason he couldn’t have said. He rose on his knees and took the man by both shoulders, pulling him over.
The man was clearly dead, shot through the head. Mouth and eyes sagged half open and his body felt strange, heavy and flopping. He wore a militia uniform of sorts; William saw the wooden buttons, with “PUT” burnt into them. That meant something, but his dazed mind made no sense of it. Gently laying the man back in the grass, he rose and went to fetch his sword. His knees felt peculiar.
Halfway to the spot where his sword lay, he stopped, turned round, and came back. Kneeling down, cold-fingered and hollow-bellied, he closed the man’s dead eyes against the rain.
THEY MADE CAMP that night, to the pleasure of the men. Camp kitchens were dug, the cook wagons brought up, and the scent of roasting meat and fresh bread filled the damp air. William had just sat down to eat when Perkins, that harbinger of doom, appeared apologetically at his side with a message: report to General Howe’s field headquarters at once. Snatching a loaf of bread and a steaming chunk of roast pork to put in it, he went, chewing.
He found the three generals and all of their staff officers gathered together, deep in a discussion of the day’s results. The generals sat at a small table thick with dispatches and hastily drawn maps. William found a place among the staff officers, standing respectfully back against the walls of the big tent.
Sir Henry was arguing for an attack on the Brooklyn Heights, come morning.
“We could dislodge them easily,” Clinton said, waving a hand at the dispatches. “They’ve lost half their men, if not more—and weren’t such a lot of ’em to start with.”
“Not easily,” said my lord Cornwallis, pursing fat lips. “You saw them fight. Yes, we could get them out of there—but at some cost. What say you, sir?” he added, turning deferentially to Howe.
Howe’s lips all but disappeared, only a white line marking their former existence.
“I can’t afford another victory like the last one,” he snapped. “Or if I could, I don’t want it.” His eyes left the table and passed over the juniors standing against the wall. “I lost every man on my staff at that damned hill in Boston,” he said, more quietly. “Twenty-eight of them. Every one.” His eyes lingered on William, the youngest of the junior officers present, and he shook his head, as though to himself, and turned back to Sir Henry.
“Stop the fighting,” he said.
Sir Henry wasn’t pleased, William could see that, but he merely nodded.
“Offer them terms?”
“No,” Howe said shortly. “They’ve lost nearly half their men, as you said. No one but a madman would go on fighting without cause. They—you, sir. Did you have an observation to make?”
With a start, William realized that Howe was addressing this remark to him; those round eyes were boring into his chest like bird shot.
“I—” he began, but then caught himself and drew up straight. “Yes, sir. It’s General Putnam in command. There at the creek. He’s … perhaps not a madman, sir,” he added carefully, “but he has the name of a stubborn man.”
Howe paused, eyes narrowed.
“A stubborn man,” he repeated. “Yes. I should say he is.”
“He was one of the commanders at Breed’s Hill, wasn’t he?” objected Lord Cornwallis. “The Americans ran fast enough away from there.”
“Yes, but—” William stopped dead, paralyzed by the fixed joint stares of three generals. Howe motioned him impatiently to go on.
“With respect, my lord,” he said, and was glad that his voice didn’t shake, “I … hear that the Americans did not run in Boston until they had exhausted every scrap of ammunition. I think … that is not the case, here. And with regard to General Putnam—there was no one behind him at Breed’s Hill.”
“And you think that there is now.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, sir.” William tried not to look pointedly at the stack of dispatches on Sir William’s table. “I’m sure of it, sir. I think nearly all of the Continentals are on the island, sir.” He tried not to make that sound like a question; he’d heard as much from a passing major the day before, but it might not be true. “If Putnam’s in command here—”
“How do you know it’s Putnam, Lieutenant?” Clinton interrupted, giving William the fish-eye.
“I am lately come from an—an intelligencing expedition, sir, which took me through Connecticut. I heard there, from many people, that militia were gathering to accompany General Putnam, who was to join with General Washington’s forces near New York. And I saw a button on one of the rebel dead near the creek this afternoon, sir, with ‘PUT’ carved on it. That’s what they call him, sir—General Putnam: ‘Old Put.’ ”
General Howe straightened himself before Clinton or Cornwallis could interject anything further.
“A stubborn man,” he repeated. “Well, perhaps he is. Nonetheless … suspend the fighting. He is in an untenable position, and must know it. Give him a chance to think it over—to consult with Washington if he likes. Washington is perhaps a more sensible commander. And if we might gain the surrender of the whole Continental army without further bloodshed … I think it worth the risk, gentlemen. But we will not offer terms.”
Which meant that if the Americans saw sense, it would be an unconditional surrender. And if they didn’t? William had heard stories about the fight at Breed’s Hill—granted, stories told by Americans, and therefore he took them with several grains of salt. But by account, the rebels there had taken the nails from the fencing of their fortifications—from the very heels of their shoes—and fired them at the British when their shot ran out. They had retreated only when reduced to throwing stones.
“But if Putnam’s expecting reinforcement from Washington, he’ll only sit and wait,” Clinton said, frowning. “And then we’ll have the whole boiling of them. Had we best not—”
“That’s not what he meant,” Howe interruputed. “Was it, Ellesmere? When you said there was no one behind him at Breed’s Hill?”
“No, sir,” William said, grateful. “I meant … he has something to protect. Behind him. I don’t think he’s waiting for the rest of the army to come to his aid. I think he’s covering their retreat.”
Lord Cornwallis’s hooped brows shot up at that. Clinton scowled at William, who recalled too late that Clinton had been the field commander at the Pyrrhic victory of Breed’s Hill and was likely sensitive on the subject of Israel Putnam.
“And why are we soliciting the advice of a boy still wet behind the—have you ever even seen combat, sir?” he demanded of William, who flushed hotly.
“I’d be fighting now, sir,” he said, “were I not detained here!”
Lord Cornwallis laughed, and a brief smile flitted across Howe’s face.
“We shall make certain to have you properly blooded, Lieutenant,” he said dryly. “But not today. Captain Ramsay?” He motioned to one of the senior staff, a short man with very square shoulders, who stepped forward and saluted. “Take Ellesmere here and have him tell you the results of his … intelligencing. Convey to me anything which strikes you as being of interest. In the meantime”—he turned back to his two generals—“suspend hostilities until further notice.”