Infernal Revolutions (39 page)

‘Spit it out then, Pete. What's the plot?'

Instantly more composed with Sophie gone, the youngster calmly poured out the tea and bade me sit down at his desk. Social niceties out of the way, he did not prevaricate further.

‘Tell me, Harry, do you know anyone who wants you dead?'

Though shocked by the question, I pretended not to be, and waited until I had finished my first luscious sip before replying.

‘No-one really, apart from Rebels in general and a defeated love rival by the name of Verne Placquet.'

‘What about a dragoon by the name of Burnley Axelrod?'

I could not feign indifference to this one, for my cup began a violent and prolonged rattle in my saucer that quite gave the game away. ‘Twas all I could do to get them back on the desk in one piece.

‘Go on, Pete. Reveal all.'

Noting my reaction with interest, Pete obliged, with brutal but bracing openness.

‘I sent you into the Hackensack Valley because I was told to, by Burnley Axelrod, who came to visit me here one afternoon just after our arrival. I thought he looked big in Portsmouth, but without my horse I was dwarfed by him. His swaggering presence was so overpowering that ‘twas all I could do to stop from crying. He said you would enjoy the adventure in the Hackensack, for underneath the docile exterior lurked a skilful and dirty fighter, only too pleased to risk his life.'

I felt queasy at the ominous build-up of intrigue, and asked to borrow some of Pete's toilet water, which I dabbed shakily on my brow. Pete went on.

‘I must admit it did not sound like the same H. Oysterman I knew, but who was I to argue with so powerful a figure, who claimed to know you and your family intimately, and who said he had your best interests at heart? He also said you would kill yourself out of sheer frustration if you did not see action soon.'

‘Apart from the stupefying effect of his sheer presence, presumably he bribed you in some way to keep such an unorthodox request quiet,' I said, sounding surprisingly collected in spite of myself.

‘Well…er…he did say he would pull strings to get me promoted if I complied. As I did not consider the request particularly unusual, I complied; would have done so even without the promotion carrot.'

‘Well,' I said bitterly, ‘I suppose I must thank you for being so honest with me, and drawing my attention to a plot I never knew existed. Forewarned is forearmed.'

‘You think he really wants you dead then?' said Pete matter-of-factly, slurping his tea with relish now that his sins had been confessed.

‘
Please!
' I recoiled.

‘In retrospect – if you did not want glory after all – I cannot think of any other reason for him to want to send you there. ‘Tis the local Valley of Death, by all accounts. You did well to come out alive.'

‘But why?'

‘Just were.'

‘No, why would he want me…' I gulped, ‘…dead.'

‘Cast your mind back to your meetings with him. What transpired, what did he do?'

‘He was the one who roped me into the army, before stealing the girl of my dreams.'

‘Then should not you be the one trying to kill him?'

‘Oh, I don't know,' I exclaimed, my mind in turmoil. ‘But does any of it matter? My spying duties are over, I am not dead, and therefore I will not be staying here much longer, will I?'

I looked at Pete closely as I said this, to gauge his reaction. The sudden clearing of his throat and the look of seriousness that swept over his face told me all that I needed to know. I went on:

‘I've always been a forgiving dog, Pete, and lucky for you that I still am, for I presume you are going to tell me, amongst other things, that you have reneged on your word as a gentleman, and that I will not now be returning to England on the next ship home.'

‘Ah,' said Pete, lifting a finger, the sudden judicial look on his face indicating that a defence to the accusation had been long prepared. “I have it on high authority that should you come back to us with information valuable to our cause”, I think were my exact words, Harry. Firstly, as you have no doubt guessed by now, that high authority was Mr Burnley Axelrod himself, and secondly, whether the information you have brought back to us is valuable or not is for Mr Woodbine to decide, not I. Subject to the approval of both those gentlemen, the agreement still stands as far as I am aware. So never let it be said that a Wriggle has gone back on his word, or next time I shall be forced to demand satisfaction over pistols.'

This sort of talk was presumably the salamander in Pete coming out. Goaded, I turned aggressive myself.

‘Even though you know I would blow your head off in such a duel?'

‘Even though,' said Pete, his shaking hand reaching out instinctively to Hartley for emotional support.

‘Ah, I'm sorry, Pete. ‘Tis just that my mind is in frightful disarray at the moment. I simply do not know what to do for the best.' I began a serial chewing of my fingernails, arousing much interest in the hungry Hartley. ‘Surely though, the uncovering of a spy death trap is valuable information. How can it not be?'

‘'Tis not for me to say,' said Pete, distancing himself from all involvement. ‘Only Taylor Woodbine, as I said.'

‘That fool would not regard George Washington In A Cage valuable. Anyway, I'm not sure that I want to go back to England. Sophie is not keen, and she is my life now, I suppose.'

‘So what's it like then, Harry?' said Pete, coughing with affected nonchalance, ‘you know, doing it with a, you know, with a girl?'

‘'Tis overrated, Pete,' I lied, wanting to spare the dog's feelings. ‘Do not fret yourself about it.'

Pete perked up.

‘I
knew
it was, Harry. I just knew it.'

‘The small intimacies are nice, though. You know – the caring, the sharing…'

‘I'll bet they are,' said Pete, wistful again. ‘Still, Hartley supplies me with those, don't you, Hartley?'

Hartley barked joyously.

‘But if I stay,' I went on, thinking aloud, ‘then I will be thrown either on the redoubts of Fort Washington, of less importance than a sack of potatoes, or on the uncertain mercies of Burnley Axelrod. I will be either in a fool's or a lout's hands, and I don't know which is worse.'

‘Thank you, Harry, I shall remember that.'

‘No, not you, Pete. I mean Howe or Cornwallis or whoever is in overall command.'

‘Look, why don't you ask him outright what his game is? Why don't you find Axelrod and confront him direct. He is not going to murder you in cold blood, now is he?'

‘He might. He is the sort.'

I continued to fret silently. Pete tried another tack.

‘All this worrying is probably for nothing, you know. I might have got the wrong end of the stick. Perhaps he really does have your best interests at heart.'

‘No, there is something afoot, Pete, I can feel it.'

Pete bestowed on me a lovely look of concern, then grew visibly impatient and shot a glance at his clock.

‘Look, Harry, I know you are somewhat troubled, but I need to be at a meeting with my fellow officers now, discussing the conduct of the war and so on. May I suggest that you go to Taylor Woodbine's and see what he has to say. If nothing, then pluck up courage and go to Axelrod's. See what he has to say. If nothing, come back to me, and I will do everything in my power to make sure that your duties in the attack on Fort Washington are of the lightest possible, as a sort of non-prejudice peace offering. I'm a tender dog, Harry, as you know, and I could not bear to see young what's-her-name weeping over your mangled corpse. I would feel hideously responsible.'

‘Sophie,' I sighed. ‘But no, Pete, thank you. I want no special favours from anyone. If I am to go into battle, then it will be on the same footing as everyone else.'

‘Noble man!'

‘Which reminds me – if we do have to stay presumably Sophie and I are to have the same sleeping quarters as everyone else?'

‘Sadly, Harry, yes. I will make arrangements with Sergeant Mycock this afternoon. But ‘tis nothing to be worried about. I understand quite a few of the men have picked up common American drabs since your departure, and they sleep with them quite openly amongst the rest of the men. Not, of course, that I am implying that Sophie is a Common American Drab. No-one bothers them, is all I'm saying, though I understand that the Overrated Thing, if it is done at all, is done discreetly whilst the rest are asleep. Any sign of feigned enjoyment by either drab or soldier exacerbates the frustration of the single men, and fights ensue, as they did when Thomas Yarborough broke all the rules of probability and managed to bring home Molasses Mo, the beautiful black slave of a local Anglican minister. Unbridled copulation has to be carried out in alleyways or fields, unsatisfactory though those locations are in times of war. One wouldn't, for example, wish to be caught
in flagrante delicto
by a regiment of Hessians on their way to battle, unless one
wanted
to be spitted to one's Love for eternity.'

Pete snorted dirtily at the image.

‘You seem to have carried out a lot of research on the subject, Pete. Business or pure enjoyment?'

‘Oh, business, of course. The more an officer knows about his men the better. My reading of Marlborough taught me that. Anyway, sex doesn't interest me in that way. I am like you when it comes to the Temple of Eros, Harry – manfully indifferent, if not actually bored by the whole thing.'

Had there not been more worrying things on my mind, I would have been forced here to replace kindness with truth, for I could see that the word
overrated
had taken a hold on the youngster's mind, and I could imagine it popping up again during the officers' dinner that night. ‘
Who
said sex was overrated?' I could hear the assembled rakes leaning in to ask, scorn loaded. Thus would my name be dragged through the mud yet again, this time as traitor to another cause. In peacetime I would be sought out and ridiculed, and sporting attempts would be made to cuckold me. Thank God there was a war on. But I realized I was worrying needlessly: by the time word got around that I was a nancy boy I would probably be dead anyway, lying crumpled at the foot of a redoubt with a smoking ball in my brain. I therefore let the matter drop, and continued with the contemplative sipping of my tea. All was quiet until Pete's own thought processes reached a critical stage, and he suddenly cried out as though stabbed with a toasting fork.

‘You know about Fort Washington!'

The penny, it seemed, had belatedly dropped.

‘Aye, Thomas told me. Why, a secret is it?'

Pete groaned.

‘It was, Harry, it was. Oh, why do I confide in such fools? If word gets out that word has got out, I'm in for a court-martial.'

‘Do not worry yourself, Pete. The Americans would not have built a fort there had they not expected to be attacked. They've got another one across the river at Fort Lee, haven't they? You watch, I bet we attack that one too, eventually.'

Pete regained control with the aid of a Bath cake, thanked me for the brilliance of my strategic insight, and began to dress as if for a ball at Grosvenor Square. First he exchanged his workaday wig for a smart casual affair chosen with care from the stands. He powdered it (which induced violent yet comic sneezing fits in Hartley), and placed it on his head with great ceremony, before moving over to a cheval glass and making the final adjustments. Next he rebuttoned his jacket correctly and bade me brush off any marks on the back. As I was doing so he bent down and gave his buckles and other brassware a quick polish with a cloth I'd seen him clean his teeth with earlier. A quick fiddle with his gorget, a careful placement of his hat, and he was ready to resume duties as Lieutenant Peter Wriggle, The Boy Wonder of the British Army.

‘You look resplendent, Peter,' I said, with genuine admiration. ‘Very manly, yet at the same time as dandy as a Frenchman.'

‘I do not wish to be compared to one of that race,' said Pete, the glow suffusing his cheeks belying the haughtiness of his remark. ‘But thank you anyway. Now, as we cannot be seen to leave together, perhaps you would kindly vacate the premises. Formalities of rank must be observed, whatever rabble rousers like Thomas Paine would have us believe. All men are created equal, indeed!'

Pete gave another horrible snort, which quite dashed any lingering hopes I had of approaching him as a patron of my poetry. The arrogance of rank was out at last, as Sophie had predicted it would be, and an intimation of the adult Pete seemed suddenly on view. At the moment, he was still a sort of Prince Hal roughing it with the lowlife boys, but breeding would soon reassert itself, and it would not be long before the cute piglet Pete was swallowed up by the gross charmless Re-gal, to become a mere replica of his trough-fattened father.

‘Aye, I must be off now, anyway,' I said. ‘I will go to visit Taylor Woodbine after all, I think. Then perhaps Burnley Axelrod. Explore all avenues, as you say.'

‘Good man, Harry,' said Pete, shooing me out onto the landing, like an actor clearing his dressing room five minutes before a performance. ‘Get to the bottom of it. I would.'

With which advice lingering in my ears, I clattered down the staircase deep in thought. As I emerged into the fading light of the autumn afternoon, I saw Thomas chatting amiably with a rough-looking pair of potential assassins. He looked up and gave me a wave of acknowledgement as I passed.

‘Good luck at Fort Washington!' he called at the top of his voice. ‘Up and at the rascals, eh, Harry? Give the rogues one for me, but don't do anything I wouldn't do!'

This seemed to interest the rough-looking pair, possible Liberty Boys, for they managed to exchange a few meaningful glances before the second-floor window flew open and Pete's head shot out, closely followed by Hartley's.

‘Thomas, ye damned rogue, stop your blabbing! Had I wanted a town crier I would have had one pressganged. Desist, or I will send you in with the Hessians, hernia or not!'