The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles (25 page)

Philip chuckled. “The whole rigmarole does have its comical side sometimes. The Howes tried to open negotiations with Washington but they refused to address him any other way than
Mister
Washington. To have called him general, you see, would have acknowledged that he had some authority! And that, in effect, would have recognized last July’s declaration. Well,
Mister
Washington rejected all such correspondence—so the Howes tried ‘George Washington, Esquire,
etcetera’
—arguing that
etcetera
could mean anything the recipient wished! Washington rejected those letters too. Finally the Howes got tired of dallying offshore and landed on Long Island.”

“And the soldiers ran!” Daisy said, disgusted.

“In some cases,” Philip agreed. “But for every one of those incidents, I could tell you three where little groups of men stood and died. Still, the problem of lack of training is having its toll. The majority of men just don’t understand military life. God knows I don’t enjoy obeying some fool’s orders! A friend of mine who’s in charge of the artillery once prophesied the problem. He said farmers and artisans probably couldn’t be turned into a disciplined fighting force. And whenever it proves to be true, it’s a disaster. When the British crossed to New

York island and landed at Kip’s Bay, for instance, the militia turned tail. Washington arrived on that beautiful white horse he rides. He swore like I’ve never heard a man swear before. And he laid about him with his own sword—”

“Attacking the enemy personally?” Lumden asked.

Philip shook his head. “His own men—who were running. He was in such a state, one of the staff officers had to lead his horse off the field. That kind of thing poisons the air. By the time we were pushed back across the Hudson into Jersey, and then marched south, the army was ready to fall apart. I think it would have if the general hadn’t turned us out on Christmas to cross the Delaware.”

“People began saying better things about Washington after that,” Lumden commented. “It was a splendid victory!”

“George, you’re acting and sounding like a patriot these days,” Philip laughed.

“I am, a bit,” Lumden said, reddening. “Loyalties do change. How many of those damned German mercenaries did you capture?”

“Over nine hundred. They’re not the beasts they’ve been painted. They’re hired to fight and they do it, that’s all.”

Lumden was correct in one comment, though. Public opinion of Washington had altered radically in the preceding thirty days. Only the general’s desperate decision to attack Trenton’s Hessian garrison—a garrison placidly celebrating Christmas and totally unprepared for attack—had kept the American army from collapsing under wholesale desertions brought on by demolished morale. Philip vividly recalled the cheerless cold of the December weather; the stomach-turning passage over the ice-blocked Delaware in open boats piloted by the men from Marblehead; the fast march to Trenton with his boots all but rotted away; kneeling and firing at the Hessians charging along Trenton’s main street while the sleet slashed over his bare, bloodied feet. Sent to the rear of the lines because he could barely walk, Philip had missed taking part in Washington’s second small but decisive rout of the British at Princeton.

Though the memories, once called up, came back in detail, he could contemplate them with a certain hard calm. He had faced death often in the past year. And though he was always afraid before an engagement, his earlier morbid concern for his own welfare had disappeared. He supposed that was a result of experience; the toughening process of combat. Like Colonel Johann Rail’s Hessians at Trenton, he did his job and hoped for a speedy end to it, so that he could come home for good to the little house Anne had rented here in Cambridge.

But the return wouldn’t be immediate. At the moment Washington’s army was in winter quarters, as were the forces of the king. Spring was sure to bring new campaigns. Against York State, some said. Against Philadelphia, others claimed.

Along with the Trenton and Princeton victories, the discovery that the Hessian mercenaries could be defeated had somewhat stiffened the army’s backbone. But not enough, Philip had decided. As Knox had predicted, the Americans had not become an army in the true sense—

Anne brought cheer back to the room as she announced:

“Come, the meal’s ready. I’m afraid the fare isn’t very elegant.”

“Seeing you both again is worth ten banquets,” Lumden smiled, an arm around his pregnant wife’s waist.

“But we must be off by mid-afternoon, George,” Daisy said. “I want to be in Concord before it gets too dark.”

“Of course, love,” Lumden murmured. Anne and Philip exchanged amused glances over Lumden’s domestication.

For a while, accompanying his wife to the carefully set table in the dining room, Philip could forget the squalid garrison life at Morristown, and the constant speculation about a spring offensive. He surrendered pleasurably to conversation with old friends, and to the costly but slightly gamy chuck of beef Anne had purchased for the occasion, doctoring it with a thick brown gravy to make it palatable.

Farewells were said on schedule, about three. Philip and Anne waved their visitors away from the front gate. Lumden’s hired carriage lurched out of sight up the rutted street.

Philip took his wife’s hand, started back along the walk almost melted clear of snow. He noticed a curtain stirring at a downstairs window of the clapboard house next door.

“Old busybody’s watching us again.”

Anne laughed. “Mrs. Brumple is a dear, lady, Philip. Eccentric, but dear.”

“There’s nothing more pestiferous than a widow with time on her hands. I know she spies on us in the evening—especially when we shut the curtains early and go to bed. Frustrated biddy!”

“But she’s been very kind and helpful. She fixed a poultice when Abraham had the croup at Christmas.”

“She’s asked me twice how much money your father left us.”

“Only twice? I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard the same question—” Anne’s brown eyes shone merrily. “I fend her off.”

“I’m afraid I just act rude and say nothing.”

“Oh, Philip, you mustn’t. It’s ever so much more satisfying to Mrs. Brumple if you hint that Papa left a fortune. That way, she has something to discuss when she visits the market, or sews uniforms with her church group—”

“I suppose.” He wasn’t convinced.

Back in the parlor, he warmed his hands at the fire. On the mantel rested his mother’s casket and the little green bottle of tea. Above, on pegs, hung Experience Tait’s Kentucky rifle and, higher still, the sword given him by his friend Gil.

“Would you like to rest a while till Abraham’s done napping?” Anne asked.

He yawned, said, “I would, but there’s work that needs doing.” Somber, he kissed her mouth gently. “It’s time I answered my father’s letter.”

Her brief nod and quick caress of his cheek said she understood.

Seated at a desk near their bed, a candle lit against the fading light of the winter afternoon, Philip unfolded the neatly inked pages of thin vellum.

The letter had been delivered in January to the Cambridge office of the postal service, after months in transit. It had been written in the early fall, and had reached Boston on a French packet that slipped past the British squadrons ranging the coast. When Philip had initiated the correspondence the preceding summer before marching south to New York, he had never imagined his letter stood much chance of being delivered to Kentland, his father’s country seat, let alone a chance of being answered.

But now, re-reading the reply, he felt the same emotional tug as he had all the other times he’d pored over the words since his return home. His eye was drawn to the passage toward the end:

It is a wondrous thing
—
nay, I may say a miraculous thing
—
to hear, after years of silence, that my well-loved son Phillipe Charboneau is alive and grown to manhood. Your brief missive to that effect burst like a sunrise into what has become a gray and tedious existence. My wife is ten months in her grave, and my other son, Roger, perished in Philadelphia, of wounds incurred in Boston Town, where he was serving with the army. The exact details of his fatal encounter remain elusive to this day.

Philip wiped his perspiring upper lip. Last summer he had written his father out of some deep, almost mystical compulsion to communicate with the man who had given him life. But that first letter to James Amberly had been guarded; had done little more than establish his existence in the colonies under a new and different name. He’d mentioned Marie Charboneau’s death on the voyage to New England. But he’d said nothing about Lady Jane Amberly’s treacherous hoax to cheat him of the inheritance his father had promised. Nor would he, ever.

And the identity of the slayer of Amberly’s legitimate son would likewise remain his secret; his guilt.

To know, however, that Phillipe Charboneau has become Philip Kent
—
I do not overlook the significance of the last name; to know, I say, that he is happily wed, and has presented me with a grandson, cheers me as nothing else could. I am only regretful that circumstances, including my untimely illness when you were at Kentland, conspired to rob you of the portion I meant you to have from my estate. Your remark that you had burnt the letter to your beloved mother—the letter in which I pledged you that portion
—
was momentarily distressful. Yet on reflection, I grew to appreciate your act, drawing from it many favorable assumptions about the man you have
b
ecome. With an ocean separating us, and a d—d debilitating war whose causes are better left un-debated between father and son, I send you my warmest affections, a full measure of pride, and my renewed expression of astonished joy at hearing from one I had presumed dead. I hope conditions will not prevent the happy occurrence of communication from repeating itself.

With eternal fondness, Jas. Amberly.

His father had omitted his hereditary title.

Philip found a fresh sheet, whittled a sharper point on the quill, then hesitated. He was still unsure how a duke was properly addressed.

At last he gave up speculating and again wrote
My dear father
as the salutation.

I too experienced great joy and pleasure when a French vessel succeeded in delivering your letter to our shores. Let me tell you at once that I wish only for your good health and fortune, despite the opposite positions in which we find ourselves as a result of the strife between our nations. Along with most of my countrymen, I hope that the trouble will be resolved, with due consideration to the interests of both sides, before much more time elapses—

Though wholly dedicated to the patriot cause, Philip could write that honestly; it was the prevalent view. Most men he knew looked forward to a resumption of amicable relations with England—not to mention trade. Provided, of course, the Americans didn’t lose the war.

In regard to your statement about the inheritance, I must say to you that I have no regrets about destroying the letter in question, as I determined at the time to renounce all claims except the one, most meaningful of all, whose renunciation circumstance, pride, and love would never permit. That I may address you as my father is reward enough, as many persons I met round about your estate, and also in London where I stopped briefly, spoke excellently well of your virtues and character. Not the least of these was the famous American savant, Dr. B. Franklin
—

The quill scratched on as the candle burned down. Philip described his wife in glowing terms, then his son Abraham. After deliberating, he included one carefully phrased line about his service under General Washington.

He signed the name
Philip,
folded the closely written sheet and waxed it shut. He owned no special seat to mark the wax. He addressed the outside to his father at Kentland, Kent, Great Britain, not knowing Amberly’s London residence.

Then he went to the kitchen. Anne was using the remains of the meal for the Lumdens to create a kettle of marrow soup.

Walking up behind her, he kissed her ear. She clasped his hand where it circled her stomach, pressed his forearm up against the softness of her breasts, leaned her head back a moment, her eyes closed.

“Annie,” he said, “do you suppose we—?”

Mischievous, she gave him no time to finish, spinning around and kissing him soundly on the lips. “The answer is yes. The soup can wait. Your leave’s too short as it is, and Abraham won’t wake for a while yet—”

Laughing, he hugged her. “That wasn’t precisely the proposition I had in mind—though it’s a very good one. Would you like to go to Boston?”

“Now?” she exclaimed.

“Oh, we’ve things to do now,” he smiled. “Tomorrow, perhaps. You could market while I look up Ben Edes and see whether letters can be posted to England.”

“I’d love to! I’m sure Mrs. Brumple would care for Abraham for the day.”

Philip grimaced. “I’m glad she’s good for something besides asking impertinent questions and peering at our closed curtains.” He tugged her hand. “Come on, let’s pull ’em shut and give the old soul her evening’s titillation.”

The excursion to Boston, though undertaken on foot along slushy roads, proved fortuitous in several ways. At North Square, Anne was able to fill her basket with two reasonably fresh loins of pork. And at another of the market booths there, Philip spent a few shillings on a brightly painted toy drum and sticks for Abraham. He ignored Anne’s tart comments about disliking playthings that reminded her of the war.

Ben Edes’ former shop had been looted and burned out by the British. But he had returned to a new location a few doors further down in Dassett Alley. There the young couple found their old friend busily working his hand press. He was once again publishing the
Gazette,
though without any assistance.

As soon as Philip and Anne arrived, Edes closed up shop and took them to the Green Dragon for tea and biscuits. At the table, Philip asked about outgoing mail.