Had they followed him, they might have changed their opinions. After making his parade — and adding several more plasters to his face to shore up his disguise — Jake walked to the printing shop of Fleury Mesplet. This was the same Mesplet who had come to Montreal with the Americans during the winter of 1775. A protege of Franklin, he had stayed after his countrymen had fled. Though he had not completely given up his allegiances, he was not, strictly speaking, an American spy.
Nor was he particularly happy to see Jake, whom he had known as a boy growing up in Philadelphia.
“ Not much of a disguise, then?”
“ If you’re trying to look like a man of fashion,” said the printer, himself very much the opposite, “you quite succeeded. But your chin gives you away. Everyone in town will know it’s you. You’re notorious.”
“ My chin’s too square?” Jake playfully took it in his hand and tried to see its reflection in the window. The window not being of glass, he was unsuccessful. “Perhaps another strategically-placed plaster.”
“ Leave by the back door,” said Mesplet. “I don’t want anyone to know you’re here.”
“ Now, now, relax, Fleury. Dr. Franklin send his regards.”
Not even this piece of flatter — invented for the occasion — could clam Mesplet, who took the unusual expedient of removing his sign from the front of the small, wooden building and then barring his door, as if he’d gone home for the day.
“ You’re worried about nothing,” said Jake. “Neither the barber nor the tailor made the slightest peep, and I stayed with them for two hours. Then I went to the market, showing my face at every booth. I could have lunched with a troop of soldiers without worrying. I was only here for a few weeks — no one even remembers me. It’s Quebec where I have to watch out.”
“ You won’t be so smug when Carleton meets you.”
“ Do you think these plasters are too obvious? They itch, and I’d rather do without them, frankly.”
“ Jake, what do you want? Half the town already suspects me of being a rebel.”
“ Aren’t you?”
“ I can’t help you.”
“ I don’t want help,” said Jake, picking up one of the handbills Mesplet had been working on and reading it. “ ‘Fire-arms made to your specification.’ Not bad. But you don’t need this dash her in firearms; it’s one word.”
“ What is it you want?”
“ When is Burgoyne starting his invasion?”
“ I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“ Fleury.” There was ever the slightest hint of physical injury in Jake’s voice.
“ Honestly, I don’t,” protested the printer, practically screaming. “Do you think they would tell me?”
“ They haven’t had you print amnesty proclamations or anything like that?”
“ Would they trust that to someone they suspect of being a rebel?”
“ Why did Carleton let you stay in Montreal?”
They put me in jail after Arnold fled. I was in Quebec for many months.”
Jake, unsure whether or not that was true, nodded solemnly anyway, as if in apology.
“ You should see Du Calvet,” said Mesplet. He uttered the name so low Jake could barely hear it.
“ So my old friend is still here then?”
Mesplet nodded. “He knows everything.”
If the printer had been alarmed by Jake’s visit, Du Calvet was infuriated. The risks involved in his coming north were incalculable, Du Calvet said; he endangered not merely himself, but many others in the city. For the tide had turned here, due in no small part to the poor behavior of the American occupation force in the winter of 1775- 76; the French were now at best neutral toward the rebels.
“ Arnold was an ass,” added Du Calvet.
“ I quite agree,” said Jake, who blamed the commander for his friend Captain Thomas’s death. “But your spies have not done a good enough job informing General Schuyler. Otherwise I would not have had to come north.”
“ Perhaps the problem is that neither Schuyler nor Gates wants to believe what we tell them,” answered Du Calvet. “And perhaps Congress would do better not to keep changing commanders every time the wind blows.”
“ Since you don’t want me here, I assume you will help me leave.”
“ Gladly. I will have a wagon and papers waiting for you tonight.”
“ Tomorrow morning, on the Post Road south of Montreal. I am otherwise engaged this evening.”
“ Where?”
“ At the ball.”
“ You’re insane!”
“ Frankly, I think I dance rather well,” said Jake. “Have the wagon waiting.”
“ The British army would love to hang you,” said Du Calvet solemnly. They were his parting words, except for curses when Jake promised to save him a dance.
Upon reflection, Jake might have admitted that he had gone about things a bit rashly. A more cautious spy would have snuck into town at night, waking Du Calvet or some other American sympathizer in bed, persuading him to gather information while he hid in the attic or cupboard. But Jake considered the words “cautious” and spy to be contradictions. Besides, he didn’t particularly like attics and grew claustrophobic in cupboards.
In any event, any admonition toward caution was now beside the point: He was sitting in a room of the Governor General’s Palace, enjoying the attentions of a small coterie of ladies, none of whom he recognized from his last sojourn in Montreal — and none of whom, he had reason to hope, would recognize him.
He’d breezed past the most difficult portion of the gauntlet nearly an hour before, clutching Marie’s arm firmly as he captain took her forward and with great ceremony introduced them to Burgoyne.
It was not for nothing that Burgoyne was called Gentleman Johnny. The general was a handsome man, perfectly tailored — if Jake looked like a dandy, Burgoyne had him beat by three leagues and a half. The fifty-four- year-old general’s jaw clenched and jutted as he threw a gratuitous bon mot in Marie’s direction, showing off his Parisian French. She looked quite ravishing in her fine yellow dress, he said; she would fit in perfectly in Westminster.
Burgoyne then turned to Jake, who pretended to practically faint at the introduction. The general looked at him oddly for a moment, as if they had met. They hadn’t, as far as Jake knew, though he proclaimed such had long been his ambition.
There was a vast line of guests, and the general’s attention quickly turned to the woman behind Jake, whose breasts were bulging from the top of her stomacher. Just in time, too, for Carleton had entered the hall and was bearing down quickly on the general.
Jake’s disguise now included a gold-embroidered eye patch as well as his strategically placed face plasters, along with a bit of rouge and some deft work on his eyebrows. Still, he could not trust any amount of makeup or patches to keep him safe from Carleton. He slipped quietly into the background. Leaving Marie to the greasy grasp of Captain Clark, he worked his way through the crowd, gathering female admirers as a protective screen.
The entire building was filled with talk about the coming offensive. Burgoyne told everyone — literally everyone — that the whole thing had been his idea, how he’d written a book to impress the king with the grand plan to separate the rebellious colonies, etc., etc. The book, a few wags commented in the hallway, was nothing more than a hastily printed and error-strewn pamphlet, but with similar allowances for exaggeration, Jake had no trouble putting together the outlines of the campaign. Burgoyne would start out from Crown Point and take
Ticonderoga, and then with the aid of a second prong sent through the Mohawk Valley, fall on Albany. He had thousands of men mustering to sail down Lake Champlain, and it seemed obvious from various hints that he would proceed along the east side of Lake George. Two things were critical to his grand design — a populace that would return to the British as the Canadians had, and an assault force up the Hudson by Howe from New York City.
The northern drive would not only pacify the towns and villages along the river, but would threaten to surround the rebel’s army of the Northern Department. Schuyler would find himself between Burgoyne’s hammer and the anvil of General Howe in New York. Washington would either retreat to New Jersey as Howe advanced — Burgoyne apparently through the American general was too cowardly to attack — or be crushed. Either way, the rebel army in the north would evaporate and the middle colonies would be secured.
