Authors: Thomas Fleming
Dreams of Glory (9 page)
Stallworth still concurred with that last sentiment, although five years of war had destroyed his faith in a supernatural explanation for it. Whatever or whoever presided over this frozen world, there was no question about mankind's capacity for treachery, seduction, and murder.
Through the neat village of Springfield, at the foot of the Short Hills, Major Stallworth rode, the bitter northeast wind at his back. At Bryant's Tavern in the hills above Chatham, he paused to pick up another coded message and some hot rum, then cautiously descended the steep slopes to the rolling country between Chatham and Morristown. An hour later he dismounted
in front of General George Washington's headquarters.
in front of General George Washington's headquarters.
The sentry before the guard hut across the road from the mansion challenged him and called out the sign for the night: “Lafayette.”
“I don't know the countersign,” snapped Stallworth, “but hold your fire. I'm Major Benjamin Stallworth of the Second Dragoons.”
“Why sure, Major,” said the sentry, lowering his gun. “Come right forward.”
Stallworth strode up the path cut through the drifts to the door of the hut. As he reached the sentry he lunged at the soldier, tore the musket from his hand, and smashed the butt into his chest. The man toppled into the snow gasping with anguish.
“If I have anything to say about it, you'll be dismissed from His Excellency's Guard tomorrow,” Stallworth snarled. “You have no right to recognize someone who doesn't know the countersign. He should only be recognized by the officer of the day. Where is he?”
The sentry staggered to his feet and fell through the door of the hut. An officer and the half-dozen other members of the guard sat sleepily around a small footstove.
“Lieutenant,” the sentry gasped.
The lieutenant sprang to his feet, fumbling for his pistol. The other men lunged for their muskets, which were stacked against the opposite wall.
“Never mind,” Stallworth roared. “If I were an assassin or part of an assassination squad, you'd all be dead men now. I've just taken the musket away from your sentry by the simple expedient of telling him my name. Where is your commander, Major Gibbs?”
Ten minutes later, while George Washington stood uneasily between them, Stallworth confronted Major Caleb Gibbs, commander of the Life Guard. A rawboned Rhode Islander with a heavy country accent, Gibbs gestured at Stallworth, almost too angry to utter a coherent sentence. “Your Excellency,
sir,” he said. “I got to protest the unsoldierly, treacherous way this man tricked and assaulted one of my men a few minutes ago and possibly injured him.”
sir,” he said. “I got to protest the unsoldierly, treacherous way this man tricked and assaulted one of my men a few minutes ago and possibly injured him.”
“He deserved to be shot dead instead of just possibly injured,” Stallworth said. “I recommend his immediate court-martial and dismissal from your Guard, Generalâas an example to the rest of them. They've become dangerously lax.”
“But the fellow did know you, Major Stallworth. He was a member of your troop of dragoons in 1778,” Washington said.
“The boyâhe's only nineteen, Generalâtries to be polite to a former commander and gets his chest stove in,” Gibbs fumed. “I say if anyone should be court-martialed or dismissed, it's Major Stallworth.”
“I'd welcome a court-martial,” Stallworth snapped. “It would give us an opportunity to investigate the conduct of Major Gibbs as commander of Your Excellency's Guard. Survival of your person and the survival of this country are synonymous, Your Excellency. There's nothing more important to which a court-martial board might give its attention.”
“Gentlemen,” Washington said, “I think you're both overwrought. Let's sleep on these charges and countercharges, and consider them in the calm light of morning.”
Gibbs stamped out of the office. Stallworth dropped onto a straight-backed chair beside the General's desk and sat there drumming his fingers. Washington sighed and sat down behind the desk. He was wearing a dark blue night robe over his shirt, which was open at the neck. Most of the day's powder was gone from his reddish brown hair. A half-dozen already written letters lay on one side of the desk. He had been in the middle of another letter when Stallworth and Gibbs stormed into the office.
“Do you really think that was necessary?” Washington said.
“Your Excellency,” Stallworth replied, “you'll recall when you chose this house for your quarters, I warned you that it was too far from the main army. My opinion was passed over. But
you promised that you'd take extra pains to ensure the strictest discipline in your Guard. It hasn't been done. You're two miles from your troops, guarded by a pack of sleepwalkers!”
you promised that you'd take extra pains to ensure the strictest discipline in your Guard. It hasn't been done. You're two miles from your troops, guarded by a pack of sleepwalkers!”
Washington nodded wearily. “A man can only do so much, Stallworth. Between the weather and no money and a hundred desertions a week, we've been on the stretch eighteen hours a day here.”
Stallworth stared at Washington for a leaden moment, remembering the day that his taut nerves had snapped and he had marched into headquarters at Valley Forge to lecture the commander in chief on the carelessness with which civilians were allowed to go in and out of British-occupied Philadelphia. Instead of reprimanding him for impertinence, Washington had quietly explained that a fairly high percentage of these civilians were American secret agents.
Then, with an offhand humility that had astonished Stallworth, Washington admitted that security at the outposts was too lax. He was looking for a cavalry officer who might be interested in doing something more subtle than skirmishing with rival British patrols. Someone who could work with his secret agents. Was Stallworth interested? Stallworth's answer had been another lecture. He had given a great deal of thought to espionage since his friend Nathan Hale had died so needlessly in 1776. He would accept the responsibility only if he were given some authority over the agents with whom he worked. He did not want to be a mere spectator while brave men were given careless instructions, inadequate disguises, and suicidal missions.
Washington had merely nodded and begun telling Stallworth what some of the Philadelphia agents were doing. One apparent loyalist had access to the British commander in chief. He regularly carried letters Washington wrote, packed with false information about the growing strength of the American army, to this gentleman, who believed every word of them. Weren't they in Washington's own handwriting? Another spy, a sweet-faced Quaker lady, spent a great deal of
time lying on the second floor of her house, her ear pressed to a crack in the floor, listening to the deliberations of British staff officers in her dining room.
time lying on the second floor of her house, her ear pressed to a crack in the floor, listening to the deliberations of British staff officers in her dining room.
“We've learned a few things about this business since we lost your friend Hale,” Washington said.
That was the moment when Stallworth began changing his mind about George Washington. Over the next months, Stallworth realized that this man was prepared to accept almost any criticism, to tolerate the dislike of subordinates, the ineptitude of Congress, the hostility of New Englanders, in the name of victory. Stallworth had struggled to imitate his example. For the past year it had become more and more difficult as he watched Americans everywhere, even in New England, lose interest in the seemingly endless war. He had seen Connecticut troops working in the snow without shoes and stockings, and heard their officers damning Congress and the United States of America. For a year rage and disillusion had been building in Stallworth, intensified by the knowledge that the same thing was happening to everyone else in the army. Only this Virginian's uncanny calm, his refusal to lose his head, had enabled Stallworth to control himself.
“Maybe we're all half distracted with the way things are going,” he said. “I'll apologize to Gibbs in the morning.”
“Good. Would you like some madeira?”
“Grog would do better. I've been on the road for the better part of twenty hours.”
Washington walked to the door of the office and called out, “Colonel Hamilton, would you ask Billy to bring some hot grog for Major Stallworth?”
In a few minutes, Billy Lee, the slave that everyone in the army called Washington's black shadow, appeared with a mug of steaming rum and water. Stallworth drank it greedily, leaned back in his chair for a moment, and closed his eyes. For another half-hour his tired brain could function. “Now let's get down to business,” he said. “I want to hear exactly what happened.”
Washington took a sheaf of papers from a drawer and studied them for a moment. “Caesar Muzzey was killed about two hundred yards from this front door. He spent the earlier part of the night at Red Peggy's, on the Vealtown Road, and left a message from Three-fifteen in the usual place there.”
“What was the message?”
“Of little consequence, so far as I can see. A rumor that there's an expedition planned to the north for which they've imported winter clothing from Canada.”
Stallworth clicked his teeth. “We'll soon hear they've imported skates to go up the Hudson on the ice.”
“Muzzey left Red Peggy's about ten-thirty P.M. We know nothing of where he went or to whom he spoke between that time and twelve-thirty, when he was discovered with a bayonet in his chest.”
“Was he dead?”
“No, he was able to say one or two words. They seemed to refer to a code about which we know nothing: forty twenty-six.”
“Twenty-six,” Stallworth said, all but leaping from his chair.
“The same thing occurred to me. Caesar was on his way to collect the hundred guineas we promised him for Twenty-six's identity. But I'm no longer sure it's that simple.”
“Excuse me for interrupting you. Please finish the story.”
“By the time they got Muzzey into the duty hut he was dead.”
“Who was the officer of the day?”
“One of our most dependable men, Lieutenant Conway of the Delaware line. He's been in the service for three years. Distinguished himself at the Brandywine.”
“And the men he commanded?”
“Veterans, every one of them. No reason to doubt their loyalty.”
“Nevertheless, I think we should learn all we can about
them. As well as about Conway. I presume you made a thorough search of Caesar's body.”
them. As well as about Conway. I presume you made a thorough search of Caesar's body.”
Washington nodded. “We opened the lining of every piece of clothing he wore. We found nothing but the ten guineas we paid him for the message from Three-fifteen.”
“So we're left, for the time being, with the two people who found him, Congressman Stapleton and my fellow Yale graduate, the Reverend Caleb Chandler.”
Washington nodded. “What have you found out about Chandler?”
“His family seems sound. Two older brothers who served in one of the Connecticut militia regiments that pretended to fight for us in New York in '76.”
“The Kips Bay sprinters?” Washington said, with a rueful smile. He could relax with Stallworth, who had long since outgrown his New England chauvinism. Most of it had vanished on that fall day in 1776 when he watched four thousand Connecticut militiamen stampede up the east side of Manhattan Island at the first glimpse of the British light infantry.
“The Chandlers are old New England stock. The father is an elder of the Lebanon church. The mother is related to Colonel Meigs of the Sixth Connecticut. But our friend Caleb was sponsored at Yale by the late Reverend Joel Lockwood.'
“That's not in his favor.”
“Agreed. But I could find no one who recalled Chandler making disloyal remarks at Yale. He has a tendency to extreme opinions. In his last year he became a violent foe of slavery. But that's not entirely surprising. The new president of the college is a strong critic of it.”
“The president of Yale?” Washington said. He shook his head in his slow, reflective way. “You Yankees will drive me to distraction with your notions, yet, Stallworth. You want officers to fight a five-year war for paltry pay; you see military dictators sprouting like weeds every time a general makes a few demands. You expect men to be angels, Stallworth.”
“Or devils,” Stallworth said with a wry smile.
“To get back to Chandler. It hardly seems logical for a man who denounces slavery to murder a black, then demand an investigation of the crime.”
“Unless we're dealing with a very subtle, very devilish mind, General. Remember we caught the Reverend Lockwood telling Beckford there were men in New England who were ready to make a separate peace. I got further confirmation of this trend tonight, from Grey. He says Bowler, the chief justice of Rhode Island, has begun crying quits. What if Chandler plans to use Caesar's murder to set the New England and New Jersey regiments at the throats of the rest of the army? Playing the idealistic parson could be the ultimate deception.”
“If that wasâor isâhis plan, he should have chosen a more likable victim. From what you've told me, Muzzey was about as charming as a rattlesnake.”
“The truth isn't important in such matters, General. Chandler may be planning to cry up Muzzey as the perfect example of the bondage of the enlisted men that he likes to talk about.”
Washington shook his head, still unconvinced. “Could a Yale man have so little conscience?” he said, smiling.
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