From Sea to Shining Sea (44 page)

Billy was gaping like a fish, blinking, breathing hard as if he had raced a mile. From what he understood of it, his brother George had won the war or something. “Papa,” he cried at last,
“we have to go! I’m harnessing the chaise!” And he was out of sight around the house before John Clark could say do or don’t.

“H
URRY
, P
APA
,”
EXCLAIMED
B
ILLY
. T
HE ROUGH ROAD WAS
nearly shaking the carriage to pieces. John Clark and Billy were on the driving seat. Mrs. Clark, Lucy, Elizabeth, and Fanny were jouncing in the back, crammed in shoulder to shoulder. Dickie and Edmund rode ahead. It was some seven leagues to Fredericksburg, and John Clark was bent on getting there to hear whether this wild genie’s tale was true. Along the road, people waved their hats and yelled when they passed, as they had already heard the frantic courier.

I
T WAS EASY TO FIND
L
IEUTENANT
M
ONTGOMERY IN
F
REDERICKSBURG
. There on the shady road in front of the public house was a crowd yelling around a wagon, as sassy and bumptious as only a crowd of town Virginians can be. On the back of the wagon stood a man of about John Clark’s age, in shackles and iron collar with a chain running down to leg-irons, dressed in what once had been an elegant, braid-trimmed white uniform, now besmirched by the bilgewater and mud and road dust of a thousand miles, staring out over the heads of the jeering crowd, trying to stay dignified while they galled him and cursed him and his ancestors. His iron-gray hair was kinked and matted with chaff and he had several weeks’ gray stubble on his jaws, but he still looked haughty and defiant. This was the prisoner, and Lieutenant Montgomery, rangy and brown-faced, was standing on the wagon seat high over the crowd, announcing in a loud voice all the crimes this man had done on the frontiers.

“… inciting red savages to murder the innocent! Putting British guns and scalping knives into their cruel hands! Buying the scalps of our own people!”

“Flog ’im!”

“Give ’im to us! We’ll skin ’im from the heels up!”

“Hang ’im by his own guts, Lieutenant!”

Three bewhiskered guards in buckskins stood around the wagon to keep the townspeople a little way back from the prisoner.

John Clark flicked the reins and clucked his tongue to drive the chaise slowly up through the crowd. Dickie and Edmund rode alongside as the mob parted, and when the family was within ten feet, John Montgomery saw them, and broke out in a big grin and stopped talking for a moment. Billy was holding to the seat with his knuckles white, eyes fixed on the man in irons,
mouth hanging open. John Clark reined in the carriage, stood up, and said, “John Mongtomery, good day.”

“Good day to you, Mister Clark, Mrs. Clark,” he replied, tipping his coon-fur hat. The crowd saw them then, and heard their names, and they raised a cheer of greeting, laughing and pointing to the prisoner. John Clark and his sons were well known in Fredericksburg. The crowd simmered down then to see what would come next. The prisoner had turned his proud, suffering stare in their direction, to see what this distraction was—or perhaps he had heard Montgomery say their name. The lieutenant said now:

“Hey, Mister Roachblob, just lookee here who’s come up. Here’s Squire John Clark, and his missus. That name has a sound on your ear, hey, ye scummy frog? This be th’ father and mother o’ Colonel Clark, who y’ met of late. Say how d’ye, Roachblob, to your superiors.”

Every emotion but happiness crossed Rocheblave’s face in two seconds. He shut his eyes and went pale under his dirt, then opened his eyes and turned red, his eyebrows roofed up and his mouth corners went down, his eyes got shimmery, and his chin wrinkled like a currant. Then he hauled in a long breath and composed himself. And he bowed, a courtly bow, his chains rattling, and said:

“M’sieu, Madame, my compliments. Some, some, solace it is, to see that the Colonel Clack who deed to me thees, is well born.”

John Clark dipped his head to him, and replied, “Aye, sir, who is born a Virginian is well born.”

The crowd yelled its delight. John Montgomery leaned over and slapped his knee. Then John Clark raised his voice over all that. Quiet a man as he was, he could roll his voice like a senator.

“Welcome to the Commonwealth, sir. Whatever befalls you while you’re here, I hope you’ll ponder your crimes and grow to be a better man. May I present my good wife Ann—stand up and curtsy to ’is Lordship, Annie—and my sons Richard, Edmund, William. Get up, Billy, my boy. My daughters, Lucy, Elizabeth, Frances.” One by one they stood up in the carriage and acknowledged the haughty wretch in the wagon, as strange an encounter as the townspeople ever had witnessed. And finally John said to him, “How did my son treat ye, sir?” The Frenchman set his mouth hard, and replied:

“Ungently, M’sieu. That is the word. Ungently.”

John sighed. “Aye, th’ lad was always forceful. Quick of temper.
But … But … how did he hurt you, other than your pride, I mean?”

The Frenchman’s eyes dropped. Montgomery laughed scornfully. “George woke ’im in his nightshirt and scared the bejeebers out of ’im, that’s all the hurt he did! Hyeh! Wouldn’t let no one lay a hand on ’im. Nor on anybody else.” The crowd laughed at the thought of this haughty foreigner standing scared in his nightclothes. Billy looked up at his father, who now said:

“If it’s true what you’ve done, sir, our son’s even more gentleman than we esteem ’im. We’re not barbarians, sir, I wanted you t’ see that. Mister Montgomery, may I have the pleasure of standing treat for you and your boys, in the public house? Have’ee th’ leisure? I’d like to hear how George is, and how his circumstances appear.”

“Honored, Mister Clark, honored! And I’ve letters for ye from ’im. Yes, and a mile o’ yarn t’ tell!”

John Clark tipped his hat and started to sit back down in the carriage, but then paused, and said, “M’syoo, will ye join us? Surely y’d like to get out o’ this sun.” The Frenchman nodded, and looked as if he were about to cry.

“And so,” John Clark roared, “come one and come all who’d like to drink a toast to my—” He saw Ann Rogers Clark in the corner of his eye. “… to our son, George Rogers Clark!”

And up went a shout that made the family blink back tears of pride.

“Y
E NEVER SAW THE LIKE
,” L
IEUTENANT
M
ONTGOMERY
told the fascinated crowd in the pub. “Everything went just as ’e’d foreplanned it, but easier. We got us in and around that town without so much as rousin’ a dog! George made a beeline up a street right for th’ fort, broke one door latch, and caught this man right in ’is bed. With ’is own wife, to ’is credit. Then ’e turned the whole of us loose to hollo like demons and scare them people silly. We ran ’round that town all night like naked savages. With torches. Howlin’. But he wouldn’t let us harm a soul, or even raid a pantry, even though we’d not eat for three days or so. By morning light those people were ‘spectin’ to be torn asunder by our teeth and claws and eat raw. This here Frenchman here’d told ’em all Rebels’re cannibals, didn’t you, ye …

“George let their imaginations reduce ’em to flop. And when morning come, they all creeped up a-hidin’ behind their priest’s skirts, beggin’ us not to strip their families or burn their church. By then George had ’em where he wanted ’em. Well, they groveled
and whined and begged a while, and then he stopped ’em right there, and said, ‘Hold on! Who d’ye think you’re talkin’ to, savages?’ He said, ‘Do we look like people who’d hurt innocents or make war on a church?’ Heh, heh! Well, we looked just so, o’ course, and he knew it. Then he said, ‘I came here t’
stop
th’ flow of innocent blood, and catch this murderin’ Rocheblave! Rest of ye,’ he said, ‘can go on about your business, as free people under our flag!’ Then ’e told ’em about the alliance, which o’ course this polecat here’d never done.” The listeners were smiling, murmuring, shaking their heads in wonderment.

“Well, Mister Clark, by this time they were beginnin’ to get the drift, and I thought that priest was goin’ to crawl up an’ lick George’s toes out o’ gratitude. And by sunup, those people in that town were throwin’ a festival o’ deliverance! Why, their church bell was clangin’ and whangin’, and they were tyin’ ribbands and flowers over everything, and kissin’ us and puttin’ wreaths round our necks, and whoopin’ and singin’.” Montgomery’s eyes were damp as he recollected the scene, which apparently had moved him immensely, and he went on:

“Well, all, that’s how we took Kaskasky, and got its cannon, and listen: by then those people was so stuck on us that Rocheblave’s whole militia wanted to ride under our flag! I mean it! And that’s what they did! That very morning, they rode out with Joe Bowman and his company, up th’ river road to th’ other towns, and told ’em what had happened, and that celebration spread up there, and Joe set up a government in Cahokia in th’ fort there. Then George sent that priest over to Vincennes, to win ’em over likewise. And, folks, that’s how George Rogers Clark put Britain out o’ business in th’ West, with but a hundred and thirty men to his name.”

“Is that
all
? A hundred and thirty?”

“Aye! And th’ only blood shed was from our feet, he marched us so fast across that danged Illinois prairie to get there! Aye, by God! And this wilted cock of a Frenchman here’s all that’s left of that murtherin’ web on th’ Missip’. That’s the story, friends, and it’s true as the words o’ the saints, and I’ll say this.” He paused and shook his head and blinked as if he had just stepped down off a whirlwind. “Am I ever tickled I got to have a hand in it!” He drained the rum out of his glass and sat shaking his head while the tavern buzzed with exclamations.

“Sir, sir,” Billy Clark was saying. “Sir, what about the Indians?”

John Montgomery looked at him for a moment, then leaned toward him and smiled. “About the Indians, Master Clark?
Why, by time I and my boys left to bring this prisoner here, why, not one peep’s been heard out of ’em. No sir, that brother o’ yours, why, he knows redskins better’n about anybody. He figures they’re gonna look at that little Virginia flag flying over those towns, and they’re gonna hear those French traders talk about that redheaded war chief that suddenly came from nowhere and threw down the British flag, and, son, he reckons it won’t be too long till they start askin’ permission to come meet ’im. And when they do, why, he aims to talk some sense into ’em. Y’ want to know what they’re callin’ your brother out there now, young man?”

“What, sir?”

Montgomery leaned still closer, and with narrowed eyes and an ominous tone said:

“The Chief Long Knife.”

“The Chief Long Knife?”

“The Chief Long Knife.”

Billy pursed his lips. His eyes were glazed with wild wonder. “Whhhhhhhwwwww!” he whistled low and long.

E
VEN INTO THE DUNGEON-SHIP
J
ERSEY
NOW AND THEN
seeped news of the war.

Word of the alliance with France set off a cheer which was deafening inside the hold—though merely a strange, muffled roar heard by fishing boats passing by—and inspired the Poet to pen an elegy on France. There was another cheer when a new prisoner brought word that the French admiral Count D’Estaing had sailed into the Delaware with eighteen ships and four thousand French soldiers. A dead, demoralizing silence reigned in the ship when word came that General Charles Lee had been court-martialed for treason after his retreat at Monmouth. And when news came that Tories and Indians had massacred more than two hundred American settlers at Fort Forty near Wilkes-Barre on Independence Day—that same day when the prisoners had escaped from the
Jersey
—the gloom was deep. Thus the war news came, always months late.

“We’re like a man in his grave,” Johnny Clark commented once to the Poet. “All’s we know o’ the world is what we overhear when living men pass into the churchyard.”

“By Heaven,” exclaimed the Poet. “What a verse could be writ on that conceit!”

And then on a September night Johnny was jolted out of a demon-crowded nightmare by a hand jerking at his wrist.
“Come, Johnny,” wheezed Hoag’s voice, “sit up and hear th’ news!”

At the table sat a fresh, crisp new prisoner, an ensign of the Virginia Line, who had been brought aboard late in the afternoon. He was a round-faced, red-lipped, pimply little fellow who looked as if he should be on a stool in a countinghouse. “Tell him, Padgett,” said Hoag to this newcomer, “what you just told us. Sit here, Johnny.” The youth was trying now not to show his dismay at the sight of the cadaverous ruin of a red-headed officer who was easing himself painfully onto the bench across the table. He said:

“Well, it’s this, sir. I was caught by British pickets, while carrying dispatches from Williamsburg to General Washington, sir.”

“Y’ needn’t call me ‘sir,’ Mister Padgett, I’m nought but a corpse.”

“Uh, yes, sir.” The youth swallowed hard. “Anyway, the chief item of fact I had on me at the time was of a matter just learnt from away far off west—from the Mississippi River, believe that!—that a company o’ Virginia irregulars on July Fourth last captured all the enemy’s outposts in that valley, and blocked up the western supply route to British Canada. And all that, sir, without a man hurt.”

Hoag prodded Padgett’s shoulder with a sooty knuckle. “Go on, lad, tell ’im who done it.”

“It was a Colonel Clark, militia.”

Johnny felt a shiver start in his temples and race down between his shoulders. He swallowed a lump and started blinking tears. “That … that wouldn’t ha’ been a George … Rogers … Clark, would it, now?”

“The very one, sir. I remember the name.”

Johnny’s knobby-knuckled fingers were clutching the table’s edge, and his head was turning on its scrawny, stubbly, sore-spotted neck, the Adam’s apple gulping up and down, the eyes spilling over, tears making pale tracks down the grime on the bags under his eyes, the eyes glinting fiercely, pitifully, as they darted to the Poet, then to Hoag. Strange little whimpers were catching in Johnny’s throat and he fell into an awful fit of coughing, and when he finally got through it, Hoag’s hand patting him on the back, Johnny took a painful deep breath and tilted his face back and pursed his lips, and he emitted a long, high, eerie wolf’s howl that woke every British officer in the quarterdeck above.