And not a moment too soon. Jake leapt forward, throwing his body into Herstraw’s as the British messenger ducked in the doorway. Herstraw’s bullet missed him as they crashed to the floor. Jake lost his pocket pistol in the tumble and had to settle for a few hard strokes with his fist against Herstraw’s chin. The British messenger responded with a surprisingly robust chop to Jake’s kidneys, followed by an even more painful smash with his knee to the American’s stomach.
Jake rolled away. Herstraw made the mistake of interpreting his retreat as surrender, rising to his knees and grabbing for the Segallas. But as his fingers touched the handle of the small gun, his insides suddenly burned with an intense, unquenchable fire. Jake’s elk-handled knife sliced through the tender flap of skin just under the edge of his rib cage and danced through his arteries and organs in a grim minuet of death, draining his strength. In the next moment, it drained his life as well — Jake reached forward and perforated Herstraw’s throat, blood spilling across the floor in a vicious spurt.
Daltoons, meanwhile, jumped to his feet and secured the door against the maelstrom outside. Jake took his Segallas back from the dead man, grabbed the silver bullet from Herstraw’s boot and followed Daltoons to the window.
The gunfire outside the room suddenly stopped, and the two men dove through the glass just as the British soldiers crashed through the door.
Aboard Howe’s flagship, van Clynne and the general had conceded that, as a rule, the hops added to British beer left something to be desired. Wilder breeds would bring more exotic flavors, van Clynne maintained, and the general could find little to argue with there. In fact, the general was starting to show signs that he would find little to argue with anywhere today. His normally reticent tongue had been loosened by the large meal and the equally plentiful drink, and he had begun to find his guest, at first invited solely for the purpose of offering him some company on an otherwise dull morning before his staff meeting, stimulating and interesting. Though Dutch, this van Clynne displayed a pleasing etiquette that complimented his wide-ranging knowledge. He seemed well-acquainted with even the most minute piece of history connected with the province, Dutch especially. He also appreciated the vast difficulties the general had with the administration of his task.
The colonists were a strange bunch, both men agreed. Here the general and his brother Lord Richard had shown great leniency, all the patience of overindulgent fathers, and yet their many entreaties had been scorned. “I show mercy in the Jerseys,” said Howe, “and I am repaid with Trenton! Imagine, attacking on Christmas Day!”
“ Scandalous!” agreed his guest.
Howe had rarely seen such a facile grasp of the facts and situation, nor felt such sympathy with a man he had just met. In short, van Clynne was just the sort he wished to have on his staff as a civilian assistant, and the general was getting around to asking if he would consider such a position, when he realized, somewhat to his chagrin, that he had yet to receive the message van Clynne had come to deliver.
Well, Sir William, Yes, it is time to get down to business indeed,” said van Clynne, who in fact felt that another hour of talk and he would have this entire Revolution wrapped with a bow. “I have spent this past several days in hurried flight from Montreal, ordered to meet you by General Burgoyne himself.”
At the mention of the rival general, Howe’s entire mood changed. “Gentleman Johnny,” he spat, using the name as a sailor might a curse. “He’s nothing but a playwright.”
“ And a bad one at that.”
“ It is a sad reflection on our state that such a man had been promoted to a position of power,” admitted Howe. “I myself only took the post as a commander in America because I saw it as my solemn duty. Like many others, I hesitated to fight such a war against our brothers. You know that I have always had the greatest sympathy for the Americans.”
“ Who could blame you?”
“ But our hesitation allows men like Burgoyne to march through. Gentleman Johnny, indeed.”
“ He wears ridiculous hats,” said van Clynne, laying on the worst insult he could think of.
Jake found himself in the street, holding the stolen silver bullet in one hand and the bloody knife he had used to kill Herstraw in the other. The soldiers in the building began yelling and loading their guns; Jake took advantage of the short respite to run like hell.
As usual in Revolutionary campaigns, the British were slow to pursue. They had mustered all of their men for a frontal assault, and took their time regrouping. Daltoons tossed Jake a pistol and then ducked down an alley to the right; Jake decided they would do better by splitting up, and ran straight ahead. Along the way, he dropped the redcoat jacket and other parts of the uniform, hoping to look like a civilian; he also wiped the blood-soaked knife and slipped it inside his boot, not wanting it to incriminate him if he managed to pass into the crowd on the street.
Unfortunately, there was no crowd to pass into. The soldiers made their appearance a block behind him and began their chase in earnest. They had their bayonets fixed and gleaning, and ran with the abandon of lions chasing the Christians in ancient Rome. Still, Jake might have escaped except for the untimely arrival of a group of cavalry from the west.
New York City being a garrison town, one British unit or another was always within rock-throwing distance. This troop, in fact, was within half that mark — as they began to comply with their fellows’ cries for assistance, Jake scooped a stone from the pavement and let it fly directly in the face of the lead man. It hit not him but his horse, which was the next best thing. The animal reeled, alarming and confusing its mates: Jake had just enough time to dive into a building on his right.
This admirably handy edifice was owned by one Madame Terese Lucia DeCose. Madame was a French dressmaker who had arrived ten years before from the banks of the Seine, armed only with a long needle and some sharp ideas of fashion. Like many immigrants, she saw America as a ripe opportunity for advancement and a fresh start. With only occasional backsliding into her old profession — in Paris, Madame DeCose was what was known as a courtesan — she had achieved her American dream. Her shop was patronized by a small but moneyed group of New York women, a handful of whom happened to be there this afternoon to listen to Madame discourse on the latest trends in brocades.
Jake saluted them most politely as he dashed through the front room with its displays. Faced with a choice at the end of the hall, he went left into a room that happened to have a window opening onto an alley. It also had a patron in a very advanced stage of undress, as she was getting ready for a fitting of new stays and gown.
Under normal circumstances, Jake would have found some way to console her exposed embarrassment at being found naked. The face that she was only nineteen, of extremely graceful shape and with very fair — and natural — blond hair would have made it a most difficult chore, but Jake would have born this penance somehow, managing a cheerful, brave face.
But these were not normal circumstances, and Jake had to leave this delicate task to the British, following hard behind. The woman’s screams had the effect of not only directing the soldiers to Jake’s escape route, but hurrying them along. He was barely out the window when they burst through the door. One of the men fired a gun, and its bullet whizzed past them as he fled up the alley.
An alley closed off on one end by the approaching cavalry, and on the other by a brick wall.
The wall belonged to an older building, which had suffered much from the elements; with a leap, Jake found a good enough handhold to boost himself to a second floor ledge, and from there to the roof. This was nearly fatal; he slipped on the tiling and nearly tumbled back to the ground. Momentum, fortunately, had given him just enough impetus to move in a diagonal across the roof, and Jake managed to fall against a chimney and propel himself in a ricochet straight onto a gable of an adjoining building.
The crash rattled his teeth and not a few of his bones, but his unexpected course — and the damsel in distress — had thrown off the pursuit. Jake now had a small space to escape in. Without waiting to catch his breath he scrambled up the roof and over the side, sliding toward the corner, where, he hoped to find a rain spout that would provide a handhold to climb down. His luck was with him and he began to rapidly descend — only to run out of spout considerably short of the ground. He had to jump nearly twenty feet.
At first it was not obvious that the sharp pain in his knee was anything other than a temporary complaint. Jake hobbled a few steps toward the road, more concerned about the sounds of redcoats rallying than the grinding of his leg bones together. In fact, when he met a wagon at the end of the alley, he didn’t even brother pausing before levering himself over it.
