Читать книгу Rabble in Arms: A Chronicle of Arundel and the Burgoyne Invasion - Kenneth Roberts - Страница 8

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My sister Susanah opened the door while my mother and my sister Judith slipped away to the rear of the house. A moment later Steven Nason stood on the threshold of the front room, looking in at us in a friendly enough fashion; and over his shoulder I saw the round red face of Cap Huff—the hulking man who had bellowed at the crowd in Wells, and pried into our coach. They had pulled off their brown smocks, and wore decent coats of dark green cloth.

Nason was a big man, though not as wide as his companion. He looked slow and a little thick-witted, like many of our Arundel seafaring people, who move and think as quickly as any one if the need arises. There was nothing slow about his eyes, however. They seemed to leap from our clothes to our faces and back again, and to miss nothing in the leaping.

My father bustled around, lighting the whale-oil lamps. “Come in, Steven,” he said. “How’s your wife? I guess she’s glad to have you back from Quebec.”

Nason smiled and came into the room. Behind him his clumsy ox of a companion bent down his head and edged sideways through the door, as if fearful of wedging himself there.

“Yes, come in,” I said, anxious to get in the first blow if there were blows to be struck. “What’s this they’ve been doing to my father?”

“Your father?” Nason asked. He stared at me as if puzzled, while Cap Huff eyed the pitcher of flip and scoured the corners of his mouth with a tongue like a red ear of corn.

My father stood up, his face gray. “It means nothing to Steven, Peter,” he said. “He’s just down from Quebec.”

“I guess I can make it mean something to him.”

“Now, Peter!” he protested. “First thing you know you’ll be in trouble yourself.”

Cap Huff cleared his throat noisily. “That thing on the table looks something like a pitcher.” His eyes became more protuberant. “Ain’t it maybe a pitcher?”

Nathaniel jumped up and gave each of them a tumbler of flip, and when he had refilled our own glasses, Cap Huff was holding out his glass to be filled again.

“Now,” I said, “I want to tell you about my father. These damned midwives here——”

“By God, that’s right!” Cap Huff bawled, surprisingly. “That’s what they are! Half of ’em don’t care whether we win or not, as long as they can go on making a dollar! That’s all they think of! Money!”

“Cap,” Nason said, “I’d like to have you put a curb on your tongue. Those from this town that went up Dead River and down the Chaudière with us weren’t midwives, and there’s plenty more like ’em. Just bear that in mind.”

“I think your friend’s right,” I told Nason. “Theodore Lyman’s been charging my father three dollars specie for a bushel of corn. If they must accuse some one of being a public enemy, why not accuse Lyman?”

Nason stared at the ceiling. “He’s a Patriot,” he said. “He’s planted a row of elms to celebrate the Battle of Bunker Hill.”

“He’s a hell of a Patriot!” I said.

Cap Huff hitched his chair forward, and his voice was hoarsely eager. “Three dollars? He charges three dollars for a bushel of corn? Whereabouts does he live?”

Nason eyed him suspiciously, but spoke to me. “I heard about your father. It was too bad, but it appears to me it was his own fault. If he hadn’t thought the war was going to be over soon, or if you hadn’t thought so, you’d have come home before this, wouldn’t you? And if he thought the war was going to be over soon, he didn’t think it was because we were going to win it, did he?”

“Well——” I said, and stopped. He was right, and there was nothing I could say.

“It’s all right so far as I’m concerned,” Nason said. “I wouldn’t think we could ever whip the English, either, if I didn’t know they’d blunder into trouble sooner or later. But people in Arundel don’t look at it like that.”

“Not anywhere they don’t,” Cap Huff growled.

“It’s pretty serious business,” Nason went on. “If we get whipped, all rebels are like to be hanged; so those in charge of things aren’t going to let anybody even talk about being whipped. If they do any hanging they’ve got to hang us all, because we’re all going to hang together. Everybody’s got to be a Patriot or get out. There’s some sense in it, too. If it came to hanging, and there were Loyalists still living everywhere, the Loyalists would probably help to hang every one else, wouldn’t they?”

“But my father——” I protested.

Cap Huff wagged his head. “You got to meet a few Tories before you know how people feel about ’em. Why, over around Albany there’s so many of ’em that they go prowling through the woods, skinning Patriots and making saddlebags out of the skins to sell in New York. That’s why we ain’t going back to Quebec by way of Albany. Winooski River and St. John’s: that’s the route we got to take, on account of those damned Loyalists or Tories or whatever you want to call ’em.”

“But my father’s no Loyalist!” I told them. “Why, he’s no more of a Loyalist than I am.”

The two men were silent, staring into their empty tumblers. Nathaniel looked in the pitcher and laughed: then went to the dining-room and took the rum bottle from the sideboard.

I knew what was on their minds, so I added hastily, “I’ve been aching to get home and fight the British ever since I heard Burgoyne was going to use Hessians and Indians against us.”

Nason and his huge companion stared at me, their mouths wide open.

Nathaniel added a tot of rum to all our tumblers. “I’m with Peter,” he said. “I’ll go wherever Peter goes. That ought to settle my father’s case.”

What he said made me feel better than any amount of rum. For months I had worried about his perverse admiration for the British, and then been in a stew for fear he might become infatuated with Marie de Sabrevois; and finally I had been near sick at what might happen to my father and mother and sisters if he persisted in his determination to be what he called logical about everything. Now he had committed himself; and my relief was such that I could have forgiven even Theodore Lyman.

“There you are,” I said to Nason, who was peering into my face as though he doubted his own senses. “If any one in this family’s a Loyalist, you’re a Loyalist yourself.”

“Burgoyne!” Nason whispered, as though my words were slow in reaching his brain. “Burgoyne! And he’ll use Hessians!”

“And Indians. Five thousand Indians. God knows where he’ll get that many, but they say he’s got ’em!”

Cap Huff got up and moved his great arms backward and forward, as if his coat bound him. “Did you say Burgoyle or Burgloyd? Who in God’s name is Burgloyd?”

“Burgoyne,” I repeated. “He was a general at Bunker Hill. He writes plays and poetry. They say in England he’s an illegitimate son of Lord Bingley, but that’s not so.”

“How do you know he ain’t?” Cap demanded hoarsely. “All the Englishmen we’ve seen so far, they’ve all acted as if they was illegitimate sons—not Bingley’s, of course, but somebody’s. And you know what the Bible says about——”

Nason’s voice cut sharply into Cap’s. “Hold your tongue! You’re in a decent house!”

“What if I am!” Cap muttered. “Ain’t the Bible a decent book? And ain’t it the truth, what I say about Englishmen? Ain’t it the simple truth?”

Nason ignored him and took me by the lapel of my coat. “Five thousand Indians! How could Burgoyne—where could Burgoyne—who told you so?”

“All England knows it. He was supposed to sail for Quebec soon after we sailed from France. Part of his troops, we heard, would sail with him, the rest to follow through the month, and in May.”

“Troops?” Nason said. “You mean regulars?”

“Five thousand regulars was what we heard. Five thousand regulars and three thousand Hessians.”

“And they’re going to Quebec?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s why I felt we had to get home quick. They figure on landing in Quebec and marching down the Hudson to join Howe. Everybody in England seems to know about it. The idea is to split the colonies in two—cut off New England from the rest of the country, and then smash the rebellion by smashing New England. If they’re going to turn Western Indians loose on these settlements, there’s got to be something done about it, hasn’t there?”

A silence fell on us—a silence so profound that the shrill sweet piping of the baby frogs grew and grew until it seemed to come not only from out-of-doors, but from the cornices of the room in which we sat: even from the fireplace, and from the chairs and sofa and pictures.

Nason looked up at Huff, and on his lips there was a sick smile. “We’ll waste no more time,” he said. “We’ll set off to-morrow with what men we’ve got. Send Doc Means back to Wells to tell the rest of the men to be at Littlefield’s Tavern at noon to-morrow, ready to march.”

“By God, Stevie!” Cap Huff said, and his voice rumbled like thunder in our dimly-lighted front room, “not even Arnold could stop that number of men with what he’s got.”

“Arnold?” I asked.

“General Arnold,” Nason said. “The one we serve under: the one that got us to Quebec safe. There isn’t another man in the world could have done it. He was wounded when we stormed the city. If he hadn’t been—if he hadn’t been——”

“If he hadn’t been,” Cap Huff declared, “we’d be sitting on top of that damned big rock this minute, swigging cider and brandy.”

“How many men has he got?” I asked.

Nason’s laugh was one of exasperation. “We’ve had a little trouble getting men,” he said. “That’s why Cap and I came home—to get twenty scouts. When we left Quebec, the end of March, Arnold had two hundred and eighty-six effectives. That’s the kind of general Arnold is! Two hundred and eighty-six men, and he had the British bottled up in Quebec!”

“Bottled up!” Cap Huff bawled. “Bottled up and scared to death! Had the strongest city in the world surrounded, by God, with two hundred and eighty-six men! Surrounded and damned near starved, and the garrison afraid to take off their breeches when they went to bed, ever since January, for fear Arnold would climb over the wall with his two hundred and eighty-six men and club ’em to death with icicles!”

“That’s about right,” Nason agreed. “He’s a great man—a great man! There isn’t anything he can’t do! If they’ll send him enough men and let him alone, he’ll take Quebec this spring just like this!” He tossed off the remainder of his rum and rose to his feet to tap Cap Huff on the chest. “I want word taken back to Wells that we’re marching in the morning. Tell Doc Means. Have him start right away.”

“What about us?” I asked Nason.

He stared blankly, seeming to have forgotten our conversation. “Well, what about you?”

“Aren’t you going to take us with you for the army?”

Nason scratched his chin as if in doubt. “This is for scout duty. A man has to be handy with an axe. He has to know how to shoot.”

“Nathaniel and I worked in the shipyard when we were boys,” I said. “We can lay a tree on a peg, both of us. I can trim a beam with an adze so you’d think it was planed. As for shooting, I’ll go out with you to-morrow morning, and if I can’t fill a hogshead with plover in fifteen minutes, I’ll eat the hogshead.”

Nason nodded slowly. “I guess maybe you can. I forgot, seeing you in good clothes, you’d been brought up around here. To tell you the truth, though, you probably wouldn’t get any pay. Cap and I haven’t had any for three months.”

“Well, if you can get along, we probably can,” I told him.

Nason seemed uncomfortable. “There’s one more thing. It’s important. I’m bound to tell you; but you’ll have to swear not to tell. When you hear it, you may not want to go; but whether you go or not, you’ve got to keep quiet about it, or you might get us shot. It’s against the law.”

“Well, what is it?” I asked.

“You swear, both of you?” He looked from Nathaniel to me.

We said we did.

“Well,” he said, “smallpox is bad in Canada. Bad! It’s hard to dodge. Nearly everybody gets it. There’s no use taking men to Canada for scout duty unless they’ve had the smallpox. They’d be busier dying than scouting. All that go with us must take the smallpox by inoculation.”

“Where must we take it?” I asked.

Cap Huff cleared his throat importantly. “I got my own doctor with me. He can fix you up in a jiffy.”

Nathaniel came to stand close beside me. “You mean we’d take the smallpox right here: right in this room?”

“You’d just get inoculated with scrapings from a mild case,” Nason said. “Doc Means took some nice scrapings. You won’t break out for a week.”

“Break out?” Nathaniel asked. “Will we have scars on us?”

Cap Huff helped himself from the rum bottle. “Listen,” he said, “I’d ruther have this kind of smallpox than one flea, and everybody’s got to have fleas some time. You’ve had ’em, ain’t you?”

He went to the outer door, opened it, and, to our astonishment—for we hadn’t suspected that our two guests had been accompanied by a third guest who waited outside—we heard him speaking to some one.

Immediately there walked in as mild-looking and helpless-appearing man as I had ever seen. He was certainly sixty years old, and maybe even seventy. His hair was white and his face a fresh pink, in spite of its thinness; and perhaps because his eyes were a faded blue, there was an air of childish innocence about him: a trustful, useless look. He was, I thought, somewhat insecure on his feet: he seemed to waver a little in his walk. The fact is, my own youthful vanity in my strength and agility led me to feel a certain compassion for his feebleness. Since that time I have found that there were few who were not similarly affected by Doc Means; but the truth of the matter is that he was about as feeble as a young wildcat.

It was not Doc Means’s feebleness, however, that upon our first meeting impressed us most poignantly and instantly. It was his smell. With his very entrance the room was filled with an acrid, penetrating odour that made the eyes water.

Nason and Huff, apparently inured, seemed not aware of anything unusual; but Nathaniel, unprepared, uttered a muffled sound of surprise and protest, opened a window wide and remained near it.

For a moment I did not myself attribute the odour to its true source, and was puzzled. “What’s that smell?” I asked.

“What smell?” Cap Huff asked blankly. He turned his head from side to side, sniffing. “Everything smells all right to me.”

“Maybe,” Nason said, “it’s Doc’s asafœtida bag.”

“Yes, I guess that’s it,” Cap agreed. “I remember I used to smell it some when I first got to know him. If you can learn to stand it at all, the more you get to know him, the more you get over it.” He looked at us patronisingly. “Doc has to wear an asafœtida bag around his neck on account of his health. It ain’t nothing to worry about, so just roll up your sleeves.”

We rolled up our sleeves, and Doc Means wavered forward to stare placidly at our upper arms with weak blue eyes. With a trembling hand he dusted at my biceps, as if to free them of a non-existent web: then turned to Nathaniel.

I considered him careless as well as helpless; for in the dusting, he scratched me, which was not pleasing, since his finger-nails were less clean than some I had seen. In my own mind I set him down as a doddering old fool and wondered how such a man as Nason could seem to set store by him. Indeed, I thought the man little better than half-witted; for when he had fumbled at Nathaniel’s arm, he appeared to forget about us and stood staring at the rum bottle out of eyes that seemed half blind.

“Pour yourself a glass of rum if you like,” I said.

He shook his head and spoke in a flat, weak voice. “I don’t touch it, hardly ever,” he said. “What kind is it?”

He picked up the bottle and smelled of it, looking at it inquiringly. Then, as if the more readily to smell it, he poured a glass half full. “What kind is it?” he asked again. “I seldom touch it.” And with that he lifted the glass and the rum vanished. He set down the glass, shaking his head. “Not any more,” he said in a faint voice. “It don’t have a good effect on me—likely to cause distress in me.”

He looked at Nason meekly. “Cap says you want me to be off for Wells.” He turned and moved toward the door, walking with that wavering gait which was not a limp, and suggested decrepitude, not lameness.

“Here,” I said, “why doesn’t he give us the smallpox?”

“He gave it to you,” Nason said. “You got scratched.”

I looked at my arm. There was a red welt across it. On Nathaniel’s there was a similar welt. Thereupon I stared hard at Doc Means and wondered if I had made a mistake about him.

Doc Means blinked at us. “Good-bye all,” he said in a whispering voice. He opened the door and went out droopingly.

... Nason watched him go: then turned to us. “There’s just one more thing: your requirements. Living isn’t any too easy in Canada, and you’ll need the requirements: yes, and some old clothes to have the smallpox in. Repeat the requirements, Cap.”

Cap looked up at the ceiling with eyes a little crossed and made his recitation in a high, artificial tone. “Each man enlisting for scout duty expected to serve for period three years an required equip self an’ be constantly provided with good firearm ramrod worm priming-wire brush bayonet scabbard belt cutting-sword tomahawk or hatchet a pouch containing cartridge box that’ll hold at least fifteen rounds hundred buckshot jack-knife tow for wadding six flints one pound powder forty leaden balls to fit firearm knapsack blanket canteen or wooden bottle capacity one quart provisions for three days.”

He lowered his eyes and spoke naturally. “Get yourself a tow-cloth coat like what we had on. You can drop things down inside it—things like chickens or wine-bottles. Mine’s outside. It’s kind of ripe, but it’ll do for your womenfolks to get a pattern off of. You get the brown colour into it by putting it to boil with brown ears of corn.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s all right. We’ll be ready, but it’s got to be understood, before we go, that there’s to be no more talk in this town about my father or any other member of my family being a Loyalist.”

“I’ll send Cap to see somebody,” Nason said.

“Yes,” Cap agreed hoarsely, “there’s a few people I ought to see: Maybe I’ll have to start a little later than you, Steven, but I can catch up with you in no time.” The two of them eyed us solemnly as they moved toward the door; and their minds, I could see, were already on other matters.

The door closed behind them: then opened again, and the moist red face of Cap Huff peered around the door-jamb. He spoke to us in a whisper so harsh it set the fire-irons to vibrating. “I’ll tend to Theodore Lyman for you! Where’d you say he lived?”