The Proud and the Free (18 page)

In more ways than one had things changed, for Nassau Hall, which had been such a fine and lovely building, was gutted and wrecked, with not a window left in it and not a stone in reach that wasn't defaced by those gentle advocates of culture, the British enemy, who had stabled their horses in one part of the hall, while the German mercenaries used another part as an outhouse. Also, the war had raged closer to this village than to many; some men had fled to York city; others had died or gone into the Jersey Line; and here and there among the houses was a little tyke who would never know that he or she had been sired out of the foreign brigades, and was none the worse for it either. So it was a good welcome the regiments found in Princeton, with the news gone ahead of them that they had thrown out the gentry, and with the brigades marching down the street between the houses like redcoat grenadiers, and with the two Scottish pipers taking their place on either side the big hall and skirling us around it onto the camp grounds.

My own work, along with that of Angus and the Gary brothers, was to lay out and order the encampment, and this time we set to work to repair the old huts and get them fit to live in, and it was from this that I was summoned by the Committee of Sergeants.

They were already at work around a long, mutilated table that had been rescued from the debris of the ruined hall. It was set up on the first floor in a big room, lit with candles and hastily made as habitable as possible. Old shutters and boards had been nailed over the smashed windows to keep out the draft, and a good fire was roaring in the hearth. Odds and ends of boxes and kegs had been put to use as chairs, and the tavern keeper from the crossroads had presented to the Committee, as his own peace offering, a big pewter jug of hot flip, which now filled the whole room with its delicious smell. As I entered, Danny Connell dipped into the flip and poured me a measure.

Drink hearty, Jamie!

To the Committee of Sergeants, I said sourly.

What pecks in ye, me lad? grinned Connell.

My whole lousy, worthless twenty-two years of life, and my one glimpse of glory.

Then hold onto it, Jamie, nodded Jack Maloney, for I wish to God that I was twenty-two again, glory or no.

And when this evening is done, added Dwight Carpenter, go find a village lass, Jamie; for ye are a fine, upstanding Pennsylvania lad and winsome too –

The devil with you!

Old Scottsboro here, he is sour and old, but it is not natural, Jamie, to be sour and young.

Leave the lad alone, said Bowzar sharply. It's one stinking taste of flip, Jamie. Tell me, how are we covered?

It would not be covered at all if it was left to the great discussions of the Committee. At least, what I do, I do.

Jamie, Bowzar broke in, stop yapping of that. We gave ye a task because we thought ye could do it – and do you want a certificate for every time ye leak? Now, Jamie, how are we covered?

I got forty men of the Guard out, and another fifty beside.

That is not enough, Jamie. We want a picket around this place that a rabbit could not squirm through – and no picket is to yap – and I mean no gabble whatsoever. If anyone comes up to the guards, they are to turn him over to you or MacGrath. Turn out three hundred men on two hours —

They have had a day's march.

We know that, Jamie, and let them go guard tonight, and we want them out and on parade in full gear at seven o'clock in the morning.

I have no watch, I said.

But I have, and I'll turn you out, Jamie. So get that under way and leave Angus to do it, and then take one of the Gary lads and ten of the best and most likely lads you have got in the soldier guard, and go across the road to the inn, where you'll find the general and two of his staff waiting. Bring them here.

How do you know they'll be there then?

Because they there now, said Holt.

They are there, Jamie, but let them cool their heels a little.

They'll be raging.

Then let them rage, lad. They have done their share of raging, and it should not take too much out of them. Bring them here gentle, but very firm – very firm, Jamie. Polite, but very firm indeed.

Drums? asked O'Toole.

To hell with that, said Scottsboro. They have drummed us sufficient, and we'll not drum them back.

I saluted.

That's a good manner, to salute, Jamie, said Levy. This is not the end, son.

I went out thinking of what the Jew had said, and I was thinking of it as I repeated to Angus MacGrath the instructions for guarding the encampment.

I want it proper, I told Angus, with a devil of a lot of rigmarole and saluting.

But I chose my ten soldiers for the honor guard out of sheer bitterness, five white and five black, knowing how the officers hated to see a Nayger or a Jew do more than die – or less. Three of the white were Roman, with the Irish thick on their faces as well as their tongues, and the other two were the Gonzales brothers. The black men were big Bantu, none less than six feet tall, big-muscled as well. From here and there, we scraped together the best clothes we could find, and I set the drummer lads to scurrying among the huts to turn up cocked hats, since the scarves and home-made woolen caps we wore were hardly of a soldierly appearance. Katy Waggoner and Jenny Hurst showed up at the command hut of the 11th, where we were, and set to work with needle and thread, sewing on the men as they stood around, self-conscious and grinning; and meanwhile a drummer lad blacked their broken boots and the toes as well, for I considered that in a dim light that might give the appearance of a whole shoe. When they were done up as well as they might be, I formed them in two columns, and we marched smartly across the road to the inn.

The Hudibras was kept by a Dutchman named Jacob Hyer. I knew him from the past, a big-bellied middle-aged man, with a gift for gab and a fund of stories of battles he had never seen. Like a thousand others from the Jerseys and Pennsylvania, he had once paraded with some local folk, and that made him a colonel of militia or something of the sort, but he was a smart man and a born diplomat, and he blew the way the wind blew. When the British were in Princeton, he, like the others, became as loyal to the crown as a man could be, and the half-dozen barmaids he employed for other purposes than drawing beer served the King with all their will and might and main; but when Continentals marched in, he was a mighty patriot indeed. But we of the foreign brigades now occupied an uncertain category in his mind, and when he opened the door for me, after I had smacked it once or twice with a pistol butt, his face, usually so pink and pleasant, was dead white and earnest and apologetic – as he said:

Why now, it's Jamie Stuart, it is, and welcome here to the Hudibras.

It is indeed, I answered him, and where is the officer gentry?

Now, Jamie, I always been a good friend to you, and I never have no trouble in my house. You come in by yourself, huh?

The hell I will. I come in with them – motioning for Gary to lead the guard in, and standing there as they filed past.

And if there's one little bit of dirty play, Jacob, I added, I'll ram this pistol up your fat ass.

Jamie, you know me as a good friend …

We went into the taproom, and from the blazing hearth, the smell of roasting pork and lamb, and the fullness of it, the steam of smoking flip, and the way the wine and the beer and the rum were flowing out of the taps and into the well-padded bellies of well-clad travelers from Tory New York to rebel Philadelphia and back again, you would never know that there was a war and a few thousand men in rags and bare feet trying to fight it. There were tradesmen there, and commission men from the shipping and corn agents and meat speculators and military contractors and subcontractors and overseers from the big holdings and prosperous farmers, and quiet, sharp-eyed men in black broadcloth who asked no questions and answered none, who minded their own business and did it with both sides in lofty impartiality – and there were women serving and having their behinds pinched and giggling; but the giggling stopped and the talking halted and the motion froze as the dozen of us stalked into the room.

They were afraid. How many times in the past had I come into this same inn and walked past the taproom to the kitchen, because officers were here and fine gentlemen in fine clothes and I was a dirty sergeant of the Line in my patched overalls and my broken shoes? And as I moved through the taproom, close to the wall, no one had even looked up from their roast or beer – since I was something they paid no mind to, only one of the rabble that was foolish enough to carry a musket in the war. They looked up now; they looked up with terror and their chairs scraped and the scraping stopped – and there was silence until a barmaid dropped a pewter mug.

Where are they? I asked Jacob Hyer.

Even the motion of the candle flame seemed to have halted, even the reflection in the copper pots and mugs that lined the walls and the polished pewter trays and pitchers behind the bar.

Now, Jamie, my lad … began Jacob Hyer.

God damn it to hell with
Jamie my lad!
Where are they?

Let your boys go into the kitchen and wet their throats, and I'll take you along, Jamie.

Where I go, my men go – and we want none of your stinking brew!

He sighed and shrugged and nodded, and we all went up the staircase, and every eye in the place followed us, but no word was said. We marched up the stairs, the great Bantu Naygers bending their heads to fit themselves to the place, and down the short hall to a door, upon which Jacob Hyer knocked timidly.

Come in, a voice said.

He opened the door and entered, and I followed – Gary behind me, and then the ten men crowding into the room – and there was Wayne with Stewart and Butler, two colonels of the Line and men close to him.

In full uniform, they sat around a small mahogany table. Two candles in silver sticks burned on its polished surface, and a bottle of port stood there too. Each had a partly finished glass which he held and fingered, but the ease of it was too contrived even for the unknowledgeable lad that I was. I realized very certainly that they had been waiting for us impatiently enough, and had only taken up this pose when they heard us downstairs. The gilt was gone off them, and not now and never again would I see in these uneasy gentry even a touch of the greatness that I found resting so simply and softly in my own comrades. So I stood there calmly and deliberately, while the ten men marched into the room and around the table.

Whatever Wayne and Stewart and Butler thought, to see us, they concealed well enough. They looked at me and my men coolly, sipped at their glasses, set them down and flicked their cuffs. They were turned out in buff and blue without a wrinkle or a speck of dust – only a little fall of powder from their wigs onto their collars. Butler and Stewart were florid men, fleshy and healthy and big of head; in my mind, men, as against the lad that I was; well-turned out, well-cared for men who had always enough to eat and drink, always a bed between sheets, always a woman for their assured, commanding manner, always an arrangement to take care of any contingency – except this one. They were not, perhaps, identical with the old-country gentry, but they were very close to it nevertheless, good horsemen who had callused their asses driving over honest men's fields to kill a fox, good drinkers, good eaters, not overconcerned with politics but only with what they liked to call a soldier's task, and seeing nothing at all wrong with lying down in a Tory or patroon house, as long as it was with men of honor that they consorted.

Now they faced no men of honor at all, and they remained stiff and silent as Wayne demanded:

What is all this?

A guard of honor for you, Mr. Wayne – which I said deliberately, the lad in me playing it loose, which was something I paid a fearful and terrible price for, as you will see. Yet I do not know if I could have done it any differently, even if I had known well ahead what the accounting would be. I was a wild and headstrong animal – and not ashamed of that, even now, for the piece of truth that was in us was a firm thing.

Since when do you address me as Mr. Wayne?… he asked – quietly, for all that his voice trembled with anger.

I have no orders to address you otherwise.

And who gives you your orders, Sergeant?

The Committee.

He didn't answer that, although he made to, and I realized that he had swallowed down what he intended to say. He sat in silence, and the two colonels with him were silent too. Now I noticed from the corner of my eye that the landlord still lingered, so I said:

Get to hell out of here, Jacob!

The door closed behind him, and still the three officers sat grimly silent around the table. Anthony Wayne was never a very brilliant man; courage he had, and loyalty to his own lights, but not the rapier mind that belonged to Hamilton and Burr and Reed and some others. His inner conflict was visible to us who watched, and when he spoke again his voice was hoarse and dry.

We will go along with you, Sergeant. We need no guard. Dismiss them.

My orders are that the guard takes you into our lines.

Damn it, Sergeant, he cried, his voice rising, you seem to forget who you speak to!

I have not forgotten.

To hell with you and be damned! We will not walk among you like dirty criminals!

Very well, I shrugged – and started toward the door. But he called me back, as I knew he would.

Wait a minute, Sergeant.

Without turning, I halted. Wayne spoke like a man with a bullet in his lungs.

Are these your orders?

They are. I'm not in the habit of lying, Mr. Wayne.

Very well, he said softly, so softly that I scarcely heard it. I never turned around – and this they remembered well, and for this too I was repaid in their own peculiar coin. The cobbler's apprentice led them out, and the guard formed on either side, and Gary brought up the rear. Into the corridor we went, down the stairs, through the taproom, outside into the night, across the road, through our lines, and up to Nassau Hall – and never a word was spoken.