Long Knife (6 page)

“He is eighteen now, is he not? If he doesn’t join me, I’m sure he will go to join Washington almost as soon.”

“I can’t spare him, George.”

“With all respect, Father, I doubt you’ll have a choice in the matter. I mean, he may go to the eastern war as Jonathan and Johnny have. Or he might join me and I can keep an eye on him, eh?”

“As you did on your cousin Joseph last Christmas?” The question came loaded with a sarcasm unusual in John Clark’s nature. George was stung by it; he spurred his horse a few yards ahead in anger, turning his back on his father. Then he reined in and waited for him, cooling his temper.

“I am sorry I said that, George.”

“I’m sorry, too.”

“But you must understand it’s a worry on your mother. Not knowing whether her own nephew is dead or a prisoner in some Shawnee town.”

“It couldn’t be helped, Father. You know I always take every precaution. But I’m sure you don’t know what an undertaking
it was to transport five hundred pounds of gunpowder through those parts. It’s remarkable that we made it at all. I’m deeply sad about Joe. But such things happen. You must understand, Father, I’m commandant of the whole Kaintuck militia, and I’ve lost many a brave man. I’ve shewed you the Kaintuck, and you saw it’s land worth defending. Joe fought, and we mightn’t’ve got the powder there had ’e not.”

“Aye. And so now you propose an adventure a hundred times as foolhardy.”

“No, sir. Only a hundred times as important. And with a hundred times as many men, I expect. Believe me, sir, I know exactly what I shall do every step of the way.”

“So you’re a prophet now as well, eh?” Again that sarcasm, but followed by a sigh.

“If to believe one can control events is to be prophetic, maybe so.”

John Clark reined in his horse and sat looking directly at his son, obviously no longer thinking just of the next growing season. His cloak flapped against his leg in a gust of raw wind. For this inspection tour of the four-hundred-acre Clark estate, George was wearing his customary buckskins and fringed leggings and a fur hat, and to his father he looked more like a thinly clad savage than a son of the Virginia gentry. The shape of his long, muscular limbs and powerful chest were evident in the light garb. His pigtail of copper-red hair and the ringed tail of his hat hung together down his back.

“Aren’t you cold, George?”

“No.” The youth laughed. “You sound like Mother.”

“Well, I don’t know why you’re not. I’m frozen clear to my fundament.” He grinned, his lips bluish, his big horsy teeth yellow. “What d’you say we go back to a fire and a toddy, son?”

“Good enough. Listen,” he said, as they turned the horses homeward. “Here’s a story you’ll like: A white man shivers in coat and boots on a day like this, but his guide, a Delaware, is naked but comfortable. The white man inquires, ‘How can you bear it?’ The Delaware asks him, ‘Is your face cold?’ ’Yes, but I don’t mind that,’ says the white. ’So,’ the savage tells him, ’me all face.’

“Well, Father, I suppose I’ve come to be like that: all face. I don’t mind it.”

Laughing, they urged the horses into a canter down across the meadow and into a leafless copse, splashed through a shallow brook, jumped a stone fence, and galloped up the slope of a
small knoll where dry yellow grass waved. The sky was the color of gunmetal and the drizzle was changing to a spitting snow as the wind rose. Topping the knoll, they saw the house nestled among its outbuildings, its chimney smoke whipping away like spindrift. Cupid, a tall, skinny buck slave loosely draped in one of John Clark’s castoff blue coats, met them at the porch and took the horses to the stable.

Inside the door George and his father were jumped by seven-year-old William, whom they snatched up from the floor in their powerful arms and tossed back and forth between them until he was helpless with laughter, then handed over, reeling, to Lucy, a lithe ten-year-old with the long Clark nose in the middle of a delicate face. The two children went off to the kitchen, clowning self-consciously for their big brother, who, for all his affection and familiarity, seemed an awesome wild stranger from a wild land each time he returned from the west.

Richard and Edmund were sitting before the fireplace in their stocking feet, drying their boots. Their faces were flushed from exposure and smudged with ash and soot. They had been in a field at the corner of the farm all day burning stumps and brush from recent clearing. Edmund, only fifteen, appraised George with a rather timid smile: Richard, eighteen, almost six feet tall and currently trying to break the family of calling him “Dickie,” greeted him with a look of manly complicity. George went to them and backed up to the fire. “Hallo, boys! I’ve seen men come in from Indian skirmishes looking smarter than the two of you.”

“It’s dirty work, that’s what,” said Richard.

“It is indeed. Now if you wish to see some really dirty work, you should come out and see folks try to clear a field of those big Kaintuck trees. Big around as a house.”

“I do intend to, George. Say, now …” He rose and stood close beside George, dropping his voice. “I’d appreciate it if you’d put in a word with Pa to that effect. I fear he’s going to be ag’in it …”

George put an arm over Richard’s shoulder and grinned, gazing across the room to the sideboard where their father was decanting amber whiskey into two glasses. “Oh, ’a word to that effect,’ is it? A petition to King John of the Clark kingdom? You feel I have some influence in his court, eh?” He turned and squatted on the hearth and laved his hands in the heat of the fire. Hearing his father’s footsteps approaching behind him, he continued, “That you should settle with Father. All I’ll say is
that any Clark would be a welcome addition to any party of mine.”

“So he’s broached it t’ you, I see,” grumbled John Clark, seating himself on a wooden chair beside the hearth and giving George a glass. They touched the rims of their glasses. “To Virginia,” said Mr. Clark, glancing shrewdly aside at Richard. “Why anyone should want to leave her is beyond my ken.”

“To Virginia,” agreed George. “Including her new county of Kentucky, where I predict all good Clarks will go.”

“What! Not to heaven?”

“Aye. Just the place I’m speaking of,” said George.

“Mm-hm. Well, if it’s such a heaven, pray tell me why you must go there with an army.”

“Ha, ha! Well said! But I’ll wager you’ll come there one day, all of you, once Henry Hamilton and his bloody scalp-takers have been smoked out.” He sipped the whiskey and winked aside to Richard.

“It’s a wild scheme, that’s all it is,” said John Clark. “You can’t go out there a thousand miles and capture forts from the British and the savages. By heaven, give any red-haired stripling from Virginia a gun and a survey chain, and he imagines he’s George Washington all over again.”

“Washington defended a border of near four hundred miles with seven hundred men in the French and Indian campaigns,” George said.

“Aye, and it’s as I say, you think you can do something comparable.”

“Well, sir, it’s a worthy example.”

“I’m not a soldier, George, as all my boys seem to want to be. But I have read enough history to know that it takes cannon and a great number of men to storm forts.”

“True. But surprise makes one man worth ten. Richard,” he said, turning to his brothers, who were listening in awe, “and you, Edmund, I’ll remind you not to discuss this outside the family.”

“La, la, la,” came a woman’s voice from the kitchen door. “Intrigues and strategems, in our own home! Or have I entered the Continental headquarters by mistake? Wash up and come to the table, all you generals.”

For the occasion of George’s visit, Ann Rogers Clark had cooked an entire wild turkey, which Edmund had bagged the day before at the edge of the clearing. He had brought it home headless; the ball from his long rifle had neatly decapitated the
great bird at a distance of some twenty yards. Edmund, cheeks flaming with shyness and pride, was coaxed to explain why he had aimed precisely at such a small part of such a large creature.

“He’d caught sight of us,” Edmund said. “He was tryin’ to sneak off in th’ brush, and alls I could see was his dang ol’ head. So, I shot it off.”

George clapped his hands together and gave a whoop of approval. “Now there’s a sharpshooter!” Little William mimicked his glee, clapping and crying, “Edmund is a sharpshooter!”

Ann Rogers Clark, majestic and firm-jawed even though haggard from twenty-seven years of bearing and rearing her ten children, gazed at her son George for a moment, very thoughtfully, then tucked a damp strand of gray hair back under the edge of her dust cap. “You’re our guest of honor, George. Would you say the grace, please?”

A hush fell around the table; heads bowed and eyes closed. George did not feel especially solemn and reverent. He was too exuberant with his sense of purpose, and felt playful here in the bosom of his family, and decided that he would extemporize rather than recite the usual invocation. He paused and looked around at the ruddy faces, the heads of red hair, all colors of red: some copper, some sand, and some so dark a red they looked almost black. He looked at the brown basted turkey and the steaming bowls on the table. He caught Frances Eleanor, who was almost five, sneaking a look at him with her luminous eyes, and she shut them quickly.

“Our Father,” he began, “accept our humble thanks for the marksmanship Thou hast blessed Thy humble servant Edmund Clark with, and for putting this noble gobbler within its range.” He sensed someone at the table trying to suppress laughter. “Our gratitude for our health and for the tranquility and happiness of this house. Now, Lord, if Thou wouldst know how much we appreciate the bounty on this table, just watch us Clarks eat. Amen.”

He looked up to see both his father and mother, their lips compressed, shaking their heads and looking at each other. The children were smirking but afraid to laugh aloud.

“Lord forgive my son for his jocularity,” John Clark implored heavenward, then stood up, and with a keen-edged knife began laying open the turkey, and the clatter of a spirited feast began.

“Where will you stay, George?” asked John Clark.

“I’ll lay up at the Gwathmeys’ a day or two, but expect I’ll have to take lodgings at an inn.”

“Will you have time to pay a visit to Gunton Hall while you’re here?” asked Mrs. Clark.

“No, but I shall see Mr. Mason in Williamsburg. He’s helping the governor and Tom Jefferson advance my proposal in the Assembly.”

“Ah! Tom, too?” exclaimed John Clark. “Well, you’ve certainly enlisted enough old friends and neighbors to your cause.”

“I wish you’d enlist
me,”
interjected Richard.

“Time will answer that, and I suggest you be patient,” Ann Rogers Clark said severely. “And as for you, George, don’t be coveting Edmund’s markmanship for your army. Grace of God this war will end before he’s of age!”

“Amen,” said John Clark.

A
CARRIAGE DREW UP BEFORE AN INN IN
W
ILLIAMSBURG
. S
EVERAL
soldiers were in its path, arguing, laughing, and exchanging money. They jostled each other out of the way as the driver urged the team alongside the building. A slight young courier in well-cut velvet clothing and polished pumps stepped down from the carriage, and picked his way among the puddles and the heaps of dirty snow to the door of the inn. In the doorway stood the innkeeper and a comely golden-haired chambermaid, both peering up the street.

“I have a message for Major Clark,” said the courier. “He’s said to be lodging here.”

“So he is,” the innkeeper said, and pointed a fat hand up the street. “Here he’ll be coming now.”

The soldiers in the street had burst out in cheering. The girl
was hugging herself and jouncing up and down, her bosom and ringlets bobbing. “He’ll be the first,” she squealed.

The courier looked up the wet, gray street and saw four men in shirt-sleeves running abreast at remarkable speed, sprinting and lunging like racehorses. As they drew near the inn, a tall, wide-shouldered youth suddenly surged ahead of the other three, and passed the door twenty feet ahead of them, laughing, his shoes scarcely seeming to touch the street, the pigtail of his copper-colored hair flying. The others then thundered past, their soles slapping the cobbles as they drew themselves to a heaving, panting halt amid the taunts of the soldiers. The girl was watching the red-haired one, who had stopped a few yards farther on and was now coming back, grinning, carrying his strapping frame with an easy grace, and seeming to be hardly winded. “What did I say?” the lass exulted.

“There is your Major Clark, sir,” said the innkeeper. “It’s the fourth race he’s won this hour. Major!” he called.

The young officer came over, and the courier noticed that the wench inhaled to raise her bosom at his approach, as if in salutation.

“This man has come to see you,” said the innkeeper.

The courier and the young officer bowed slightly to each other.

“I come from Governor Henry, sir. May I speak with you?”

“Ah! I’ve been waiting for you, then. Is he ready to see me?”

“Yes. I’ve brought a carriage.”

“That’s good. Have we time for me to wash myself down and dress myself up? Nell here can bring us an ale. Would you, Nell? Now, sir,” the young officer said, taking the messenger by the arm and leading him into the inn, “tell me your name, and …”

“Heyo, Major,” one of the soldiers called. “Don’t forget the purse.” He crossed the street and spilled a handful of coins into Major Clark’s hand. “You’re the very devil on your feet, sir.”

“Thank you kindly. As I had to be, to outpace such fellows. Goodbye. Well, now,” he said, jingling the silver as they climbed the stairs. “Not bad for an hour’s exercise, eh? So tell me, how is the great Patrick Henry these days? I’m sorry; what was your name?”

“Jonathan, sir. Jonathan Herring.”

“Jonathan! I have a brother named Jonathan. He was with Henry in the Revolutionary Convention. He’s serving with General Muhlenberg now …”