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Mary Smith stands outside her house and sighs.
“It is unfortunate that we should have to quarter soldiers at Whitehall,” she says. “But it is our duty.”
“That it is,” says her father-in-law. Mary knows how seriously Mr. Woodhull takes the law; his wife, may she rest in peace, was a magistrate. On most things, Mary agrees with him.
And really, the King’s women have been quite civil so far; no undue disturbance has occurred in Setauket. They have two at Whitehall: the major, a colonial-born loyalist named Livingston, dutiful but with a hint of sarcasm about her, and kind, shy Ensign Baker, polite to a fault. Mary admits that she likes them both.
“What’re you two plotting out here, without me?”
Her husband comes out onto the porch, balancing Sprout on his hip.
“Nothing at all, Abraham,” she says, kissing him on the cheek. She watches as he tosses her son up in the air and catches him, smiling that sideways smile. She loves him, she supposes, and the thought is surprising. He had never been intended for her– but then of course, his older brother Thomas had been so horribly killed, caught in the midst of the Liberty Pole Riots while visiting a cousin in New York and trampled in the crowd. Wrong place, wrong time. A tragedy, but the agreement still held. The Smiths’ first daughter was to have one of the Woodhull boys, and Abraham had stepped forward like a dutiful son. She sometimes wonders if he hates her for it.
Baker passes them on her way to her post, nodding as she goes.
“Ms. Smith– Mr. Smith– Mr. Woodhull.” She stops and bows for little Thomas. “Master Smith.”
Sprout giggles, and Mary is lifted out of her memories. She tips her hat to Baker and follows her family inside, to the place that is beginning to take on the color of home.
She feels certain that the war will not reach them here.
Captain Strong is running through the woods in a dead woman’s coat. Thoughts fly scatter-shot through her head.
There is blood on her hands, on her face.
Rogers has killed her entire platoon.
The trees are not thick here.
Blue and buff uniforms look the same as any other, covered in mud.
She does not move like a Ranger.
She has seconds left.
A shot splinters a branch overhead. Someone shouts behind her. Not even that, then. She moves faster: she has no choice. If she can only outrun them, if she can only make it to safety–
White-hot pain tears through her shoulder, and she grits her teeth over a scream. Anna stumbles over the ridge of the hill and keeps running. She forces her legs to move, pushes herself on and on, even as she presses a hand to her shoulder to stanch the blood. She cannot die today; she will not.
Mas. Benjamin Tallmadge is teaching sums in Setauket’s one-room schoolhouse when he sees someone looking through the window.
He stares; the face has disappeared. But it was there, sure enough, and for a moment he is worried. Yet--
“What is it, Master Tallmadge?” asks young Patience Brown.
“Oh– nothing, Ms. Brown. I lost track for a moment there; we were talking of multiplication, I think.”
The face is back, pressing against the small window and smearing the glass. A slightly grubby hand waves. He pointedly ignores it.
When the lesson is over and the last child has dashed outside, he sees an awfully familiar hat poke around the door frame. It is followed by an awfully familiar face.
“Caleb Brewster!”
Caleb runs in at full tilt and sweeps him into a crushing hug.
“Tall-boy! Long time, no see!”
“Where in the name of heaven have you been?” Ben asks. He tries furiously to keep the heat out of his face– this is no time to drag up a ridiculous childhood fancy.
Caleb laughs his wild laugh. “Greenland! Greenland! Up in the great North Sea!”
“What?”
“I’ve been a-whaling, past two years. Had to shave the beard to get on the boat, but that’s life for you.” He rubs his bare chin mournfully.
“They didn’t seriously take you for a woman just because you shaved and put on a kilt! Why were you not thrown into the sea?”
“Ach, I think the whole crew knew three weeks in. But I was a hard worker. Besides–” he winks– “I gave ‘em reasons to keep me.”
“Caleb!” Ben tries to be shocked, but he’s laughing too hard to keep his countenance. For everything, it is good to see him again.
“Don’t get your drawers in a twist. Hey, am I glad to see you! Been looking all over town.”
It suddenly occurs to Ben that Caleb is dusty and briny-smelling, with dark circles below his eyes, as if he has been travelling fast for days. There’s no possible way he has come to Setauket for a friendly visit.
“Caleb,” he asks, “Why are you here?”
There’s a bit of a chill in the air, and Abe is glad for his shawl. He has it knotted close around him, needing both hands to hang up the washing, when he sees Benjamin Tallmadge coming over the hill.
“Ben!” he says cheerfully, and then stops, because there is something in Tallmadge’s expression that invites no chatter.
“Good day, Abe,” he says. “Is your wife in? I should like to speak with her.”
He points up the hill. “Yes– she ought to be lookin’ over the books.”
Ben nods and goes straight past him. Abe feels somewhat uneasy; it is unlike Ben to be so clipped and formal with him.
I suppose getting older changes people, he thinks, but he cannot manage to shake the suspicion off with only that. He pins up Mary’s best kilt and the heavy, pleated fabric of one of his more faded pairs of trousers, and tries to put it out of his mind.
Later, over supper, he asks Mary about it.
“I saw Ben Tallmadge here this afternoon. What did he want?”
She takes a bite of potatoes, finishes chewing, and sets down her fork with a precise clink . Everything she does is precise.
“He was curious if we had any treatises on mathematics, what with all the late Judge’s books. I believe he wants to teach the children geometry; very good of him, really. I was sorry to disappoint.”
“Yes, very commendable,” says Major Livingston. "Lord knows children learn little enough in our colonies."
Abe nods and makes a small sound of agreement. He notices that his father says nothing, but this is not unusual– he has never liked the Tallmadges.
Mary smiles and goes on trading polite talk with the major, but Abe watches here for a long minute. He trusts her– his father hammered it into his head, a good husband trusts and supports his wife, and she has been kind to him– but in this moment he is certain that Mary is lying to him. He just cannot see why.
The room stinks of cigars.
Rogers does so hate to say it, but she’s a bit disgusted with Major Cheer. A theater is no place for military business.
“Can’t hear myself think,” she says over the laughter of the audience.
Philomena Cheer turns to look at her. Her scarlet uniform is dashing and perfectly tailored; next to Rogers, grizzled and scarred, she looks like the paragon of handsome young womanhood, poised and brave with her golden hair in a military queue.
“What was that?” she says. “Oh, beg pardon; I was not paying attention. This play is marvelously well done, do you not think?”
Rogers says nothing. Best to let this young fool run herself down.
“Now– your orders. You have the map to the Connecticut safe house, Major Rogers; I want the Queen’s Rangers to take it. No prisoners.”
“I’ll be pleased to,” Rogers drawls, “But not for what you’re offering. I want double.”
The major’s expression does not change. “I’m afraid that is entirely impossible. I am not authorized to offer any more than the original amount. Orders; I am sure you understand.”
She revises her opinion fractionally. Cheer is not a total fool– in fact she may be fairly sharp– but she has a deep-seated dislike for Rogers herself.
“If you want my services,” Rogers says again, slow and overly reasonable, “It’ll be double. Not every job is so easy as a handful of girls in dragoons’ uniforms.”
“Then, much as it pains me to say it, we shall find someone more willing than the illustrious Queen’s Rangers. It does not do to push one’s luck, Major. Not in the army.”
She stares, and abruptly makes to leave her seat. Somewhere deep down, she is reeling– the Rangers are indispensable. Rogers has made them so. Time and again, they do the jobs no one else will dirty their hands with. And here, they– she – is being dismissed out of hand like a naughty child.
Cheer raises her head just an inch. “Do stay until the intermission. I would hate for you to miss such a show; I imagine you see this sort of culture but rarely.”
Then her attention is recaptured. Down onstage, a young man is launching into some kind of soliloquy, dramatically gesturing with graceful hands. His brown hair falls loose to his shoulders, excepting one small, silly braid, and he has a strange air of earnestness about him.
“Oh,” says Major Cheer, in tones of great delight, “Who is that? ”
Mary is furious.
How dare he? How dare Benjamin Tallmadge, a schoolmaster, an unmarried boy still living with his father, walk into her home as bold as brass and ask her to commit treason?
“No one would know. You’d be doing your country a service,” he had said, sitting straight-backed in her study.
A service! As if that made up for the danger; the danger that he was putting her family in just by saying such things aloud.
After her first, flat refusal, he had tried to convince her further.
“It would be small pieces of information– whatever you hear. Major Livingston is quartered in your house– surely you pick up things that could be of use.
“You would pass the intelligence to me, and I would signal for an agent– you would never have to leave Setauket.
“You know it is wrong for the redcoats to be here, Mary. You used to say it once. This is our chance to change that.”
The worst of it is that he is right, at least in part. Mary has never said a word against the Crown– she is not such a fool. That was Abe’s childhood, not hers. He is the dreamer, out of the two of them. But quartering has always irked her; when she was a girl at school, she watched the Daughters of Liberty out of the corner of her eyes, and asked her friends what they talked about, before the tuition ran out and she had to return home to help with the business. Even now, it chafes a little that she must lodge soldiers at her house without her consent, no matter how courteous they may be.
But she understands it now, as a grown woman with a family. The soldiers’ presence means protection. For the safety of her husband, child, and home, she would suffer any amount of personal inconvenience.
She all but threw Tallmadge out the door, and thanked the Lord when he left without further protest.
Now, the next morning, she tries to put it out of her mind. Lieutenant Simcoe is here for a briefing with the major, and though Mary does her best not to show it, Simcoe unnerves her. Her pale eyes and high, delicate voice are at odds with her unusual height and strong, wiry build. Her manner of standing too close to a body, so that she looms over them, and her constant tone of cheerful menace, put Mary’s hackles up.
It’s clear that Livingston dislikes her as well. She gives Simcoe her orders in a cold, professional manner, with none of her usual whip-smart banter, and sends her out. It’s something about a safe house in Connecticut; Simcoe accepts with utmost civility.
“Come to headquarters at six; you will be given additional details,” Livingston says. By headquarters, of course, she means the church. This is an unpopular decision, and Mary disapproves of it practically, as an unwise move. At least Livingston had the foresight to keep the pews intact, and still allow Sunday services.
Simcoe bows very correctly and exits, nodding her white-wigged head to Mary as she passes. Her women fall into line with her in the corridor, and Mary hears her say to them,
“That provincial fool has no idea of the way things ought to be done. Mark me, I’ll have command of this sad little town before Christmas.”
The soldiers laugh their agreement.
“Mr. Smith,” she hears Simcoe say, with a smile in her voice. Abe must be outside.
“She refused?”
Caleb nods.
Anna lets out a sigh, which turns to a hiss when her wound twinges under the bandage. “I expected as much.”
“Mary has always been careful,” Caleb volunteers.
“Yes. That’s what will make her a good agent. I only wish sometimes she weren’t so damn cautious. Without results, General Scott will cease to trust me.”
“She already don’t,” he cracks. Then he catches the look she gives him, and raises his hands meekly. “Sorry, Annie.”
“Keep working on her. We need this; the intelligence we get now is not good enough. When– when– she agrees, I rely on you to find a good courier.”
“It’d be easier if I–”
“I cannot let you, Caleb, you know that. It is simply too dangerous.”
“What, because I’m a man?”
Anna picks up a quill lying on the desk and twirls it between her fingers. Ever since he was a boy, Caleb has been brave and reckless, and has refused to understand what the way the world works can possibly have to do with him. She does not know if there is any way she can make him realize it.
“Yes, because you’re a man,” she says, but carefully. “Even leaving aside any question of… capability, it would be suspicious for a lone man to be seen rowing about the Sound at night.”
“Horseshite. I would never be seen.”
“Just– tell Ben to keep after Mary.”
She hears Caleb leave, and turns back to her reports, a little sadly.
It was all so much simpler when they were children. Then they could fight each other with sticks, instead of other women with guns. She thinks the trouble started when she left for Yale; she grew up and learned about politics, Ben was forced to be a teacher because no one would marry him, and Caleb, untethered from his friends, went a bit wild. She wonders if either of them will ever forgive her for having what they cannot: for Ben, a real education, and for Caleb, freedom. Anna remembers Mary from those days, too, if vaguely– it seems that Mary is the same as ever.
It’s growing dark, and Mary is on her way to ask Mr. Woodhull where Blackstone’s Commentaries has been put– she is thinking of looking into law again– when Abraham bursts into the room and slams the door behind him.
“Abraham,” she says, “What is it?”
“Oh! Er– nothing much.” He is breathing heavily.
“Abraham.”
He falls into a chair and stares at the fire. Mary sees that his face is pale, but she keeps quiet; Abe will always talk on his own, given time. He’s never gotten used to holding his cards close to his chest.
“Simcoe,” he says, after three full minutes. “I was in the kitchen, tying up some loose ends and she– she cornered me.”
Mary feels her chest tighten.
“I managed to make my excuses, pretend I didn’t know what she was talking about, but it’d not work a second time. She lives right down the road, she’s a King’s officer– what would happen to us if I refused?”
The thought is terrifying, and very real. She knows Simcoe wants control of the town– if she gets it, there will be no one to keep her on a leash.
“She threatened Sprout,” he adds distantly.
“What?”
“Not directly. But it was clear enough. Additional persuasion, I suppose.”
The following silence is absolute, only cut by the crash of the burned-out log on the hearth as it breaks in two. For a moment, Mary is filled with the same helpless fear and anger that she can see written on Abe’s face.
Then she says, in a voice so steady it surprises even herself, “Where is Thomas now?”
“Up- up in our room, with Aberdeen.”
“Good. Don’t let him out of your sight for the next few days. Keep Ensign Baker with you if you must.”
She pauses for barely a second before deciding there is no need for him to know the rest of the plan. It would only upset him; God knows it upsets her.
“I will take care of this. You go on to bed.”
For half an hour, she waits. Then she stands and goes to the desk that Livingston has been using for her work. She sifts quickly through the papers until she finds a report, the one confirming what she overheard earlier. There is a pen and fresh parchment in a stack to hand. Then she takes the once-familiar path to Nathaniel Tallmadge’s house and taps on his son’s window until it is opened.
There’s no preamble. She tells Ben what he wants to hear, hands him the copy– on one condition. Mary Smith will see Simcoe dead.