12

Here, at last, is the part where my man Nate meets Molly Davis:

I SEE HIM AS DISTINCTLY AS IF I WERE walking alongside him as he made his way down the spine of a dirt lane that cut under the heights of The New Lots to the village of Flatbush. The night would have been as bright as a night with a sliver of a moon can get. A warm, damp breeze was probably blowing in from the Atlantic, making the planets appear swollen and near enough to touch. A shower of meteorites blazed high overhead, leaving long fading fingers trailing across the heavens. On either side of the lane, fireflies filled the dark fields with thousands of pinpricks of light as they flashed urgent coded messages to each other. So Nate would have imagined then; so I imagine now.

Nate, dressed in coarse breeches and an old coat with deep pockets, carrying his wooden shoemaker’s kit strapped to his back, was roughly halfway between The New Lots and Flatbush when his ears caught the drumbeat of hoofs. He scurried into the underbrush in time to avoid a lobster patrol, Grenadiers, judging from their high bearskin hats silhouetted against the stars. They passed close enough for Nate to hear the brass matchboxes fastened to their chests tapping against the brass buttons of their tunics.

Several miles down the lane he found the farmhouse that A. Hamilton had described—it was on the outreaches of Flatbush, the second house down from the communal barn with the date “1747” carved over the double doors. As a matter of prudence, Nate decided to scout the house before announcing his presence. He could hear the notes of a pianoforte coming from a front room, but he couldn’t make out who was playing because the shutters had been fastened for the night. Weaving between the fireflies, Nate circled around to the back of the house. Nearby a dog howled and several other dogs farther down the lane took up the cry. The barking ceased as suddenly as it had started. Nate spotted a faint light where a back shutter had been left ajar. He climbed over a fence and crossed the yard to the shutter. All the panes of the mullioned window behind the shutter but one had been replaced with animal skins stretched and oiled. Nate pressed closer to the single pane that remained. He found himself looking into a small bedroom. Against one wall was a narrow truckle bed covered with an indigo blue quilt. In the middle of the room was a naked woman. She was standing in a low tin tub filled with water, her profile toward Nate, her nose and mouth covered with a bandanna soaked in camphor, the pungent odor of which reached Nate outside the window. A whale oil lamp with a floating wick was set on the floor next to the tub and its flame projected flickering shadows of the woman as she sponged herself in the tin tub.

Staring at her shadow dancing on the wall and ceiling, Nate surely caught his breath and leaned forward. The skin on his face must have tingled. He would have followed each movement she made, oblivious to everything else in the world. I can see her in my mind’s eye reaching for a towel folded over the back of a settle chair. I imagine her about thirty years old, with incredibly pale skin and (over the bandanna) eyes that conveyed shyness or sadness. Or all of the above. Her dark hair would have been cut short and parted in the middle, with wisps curling off negligently from her sideburns. Her shoulders would have been bony and narrow, her breasts small and jutting, her stomach flat, her pubic hair a tangle of damp curls. Throwing the towel over a shoulder, she stepped from the tub and walked with a slight limp (her leg had been broken in a fall from a horse and badly set) to a mirror hanging on the inside of a door.

Watching the woman as she studied her reflection in the mirror, taking in the lean line of her back, her buttocks, her muscular thighs and calves (it turned out that she covered the equivalent of twenty miles a day spinning on her “walking wheel”), taking in her bare ankles and her bare feet, Nate surely lusted after her as he had never lusted after anyone or anything in his life.

Contrary to published reports, my man Nate was no archangel. The fact of the matter is he had never set eyes on a naked woman before. He had imagined one often enough; had peeked with his classmates at sketches of the female body in medical texts at Yale; had once sweet-talked a girl into taking off her stockings and slippers and wading in the Connecticut River with him; had been mesmerized by the memory of her bare ankles and her bare feet for months afterward. But the vision that confronted him now transported him to a different level of existence. He felt lightheaded. He heard his heart pounding. He sensed an erection forming and instinctively thrust it into the side of the house. (I know you are out there, Nate, lurking in the crevices of your myth, squirming as I approach. I’m getting uncomfortably close, aren’t I, Nate?)

He would have been content to stand with his nose pressed to the pane of glass and his erection pressed against the wall, watching the naked woman for the rest of his natural life if he hadn’t felt the business end of a blunderbuss stabbing into the small of his back under his shoemaker’s kit. In the darkness behind Nate someone chuckled quietly. “Figured as how them dogs wasn’t howlin’ for nothin’. Ol’ equalizer’s loaded with buck ‘n’ ball,” a Negro voice announced. “Jus’ move a muscle, ol’ John Jack, he gonna cut you into two peepers ‘stead-a one. Now go’n lift them hands a yours straight up.”

Nate raised his hands over his head and froze.

“Now you gonna start yerself walkin’ real slowlike ‘round to the front door, which is where a gentleman, which is what you sure as hell ain’t, would-a come to in the first place.”

Nate risked a glance over his shoulder, made out the tall Negro holding the blunderbuss and did as he was bid. He reached the front door of the farmhouse, pushed it open with the toe of his shoe and stepped into the room. A woman bent with age, wearing a thick knitted shawl draped over her fragile shoulders, sat on a stool in front of the pianoforte, nodding and singing as she played what Nate recognized as an old English nursery rhyme. An old dog twitched in his sleep at her feet.

Here is her song:

If buttercups buzz [she sang, off-key] after the bee;

If boats were on land, churches on sea;

If ponies rode men, and grass ate the cow;

If cats should be chased into holes by the mouse;

If mommas sold their babies to gypsies for half a crown;

If summer were spring and the other way round

Then all the world would be upside down.

And thumping on the keys with her arthritic fingers, the old woman started to repeat the refrain:

Then all the world would—

Suddenly she caught a glimpse of the Negro pointing his blunderbuss at a stranger. Her eyes widened. Her mouth worked, but no sound emerged. Then she found her vocal cords and screeched, “Molly! Come quick! John Jack’s gone and caught himself a rebel!”

A door flew open. The woman who had been sponging herself in the tub stood under the lintel, one hand raised and touching it. She was wearing a man’s flannel dressing gown buttoned up to her neck. Her feet, visible beneath the hem, were still bare. The bandanna that had been over her mouth and nose was gone, but she still reeked of camphor.

“Found ‘im peepin’ thru the winda,” John Jack reported. He prodded Nate in the back. “Who went, an’ said anythin’ ‘bout you lowerin’ them hands’a yours down?”

Nate’s hands shot up again. He addressed the young woman. “You must be Molly Davis.”

“What do you want from me?” she asked from the door.

“What I want,” Nate told her, “is polite intercourse.”

The woman measured Nate with her sad eyes for a long moment. Presently she asked, “What is your name?”

Nate told her. She hesitated, then indicated with a jerk of her head that she expected him to follow her into the bedroom. John Jack and the ancient woman exchanged looks. John Jack shrugged and lowered his blunderbuss. Nate let his hands sink of their own weight to his sides, thrust them into the deep pockets of his waistcoat and plunged past Molly into the bedroom, into the odor of camphor. She followed him and closed the door. He turned to face her. The tin tub half-filled with water stood like a lake between them.

Once again he saw her standing naked in the tub, saw the curve of her breast as she reached for the towel, and he had trouble collecting his thoughts. “I have a letter,” he finally managed. “For you. From A. Hamilton.”

Slipping the wooden shoemaker’s kit from his shoulders, Nate sat down on the settle chair, took off his right shoe and removed a folded letter from its hiding place between the inner and outer soles. Stepping around the lake Molly accepted the letter, scooped up the whale oil lamp from the floor and walked with an almost imperceptible limp to the bed. She placed the lamp on a night stool, sat down on the edge of the mattress and slit open the seal with the edge of a fingernail. Moving her lips, sounding out each word, she read the letter. “We must burn this,” she said, looking up at Nate. “I will help you in every way I can.” Her eyes avoided his. “Is it true you were spying on me through the window?”

Nate reddened. “I wanted to be sure I had the right house.” He nodded toward the bandanna soaked with camphor, neatly folded on a side table and, hoping to change the subject, asked, “Why do you breathe in camphor?”

Molly said, “A woman in the village told me that a handkerchief soaked in camphor and held to the nose five minutes each day will prevent the yellow fever, beside purging the nasal passages and the lungs. You smile at things you don’t understand. It does you no credit. Back in Ireland they have a saying—what butter and whiskey won’t cure there’s no cure for. But I don’t hold with that. I believe in herb plasters and quince juice and lily roots and a salve made of opium and honey. It is well known that arsenic taken in small doses cures indigestion. The resin of a dragon tree calms the swelling that comes from gout.” Molly became aware of Nate’s eyes riveted on her. “Why do you stare at me? Because you saw me without clothing? You must be very innocent. Are you tongue-tied? Say something.” Molly’s eyebrows glided toward each other, her mouth stretched into a suggestion of a smile, though it seemed to Nate to be the kind of smile that was an alternative to tears. “To start with, tell me where you are from.”

“Connecticut.”

“Where in Connecticut?”

“Coventry.”

“Are Connecticut folks still hot for the war?”

“Lukewarm would be more like it,” Nate told her. “In some townships they were obliged to pick names from a hat to fill the quota of recruits for the summer campaign. Some whose names were picked paid substitutes to take their place. I heard of one man who sent his black slave in his place.”

“A good victory will change all that,” Molly said confidently. “Do you know about the lobsters landing at Kipp’s Cove on Manhattan Island?” When Nate shook his head in surprise she added, “John Jack came in from the Brookland Heights with the news this afternoon. Seems like the lobsters went across in barges from the New Town Creek on the fifteenth. The Continentals holding the beach cut and ran as soon as the lobsters turned up. They say General Washington was almost taken as he tried to rally his troops.”

“What happened to General Putnam and the men holding New York City?”

“They’re supposed to be working their way along the Broad Way toward the Haarlem Heights and Washington’s main body. If the lobsters haven’t already occupied the city, they soon will.”

Nate allowed as how the military situation looked bleak. Molly agreed. Nate explained why Washington had dispatched him behind the British lines. “He figures he’s got to hold out on the Heights for a good month or two if he’s going to pull his regiments together for a retreat. He sent me to find out if Howe plans to give him the time he needs.”

Molly stood up. Once again her shadow danced on a wall behind her. “I know the western reaches of the Long Island like the palm of my hand,” she said. “I used to picnic with Isaac at the New Town Creek. We will start off first thing in the morning.”

“We? Who said anything about you coming along?”

“The roads are crawling with lobster patrols and Tory roadblocks,” Molly said. “You’ll be less conspicuous if you’re with a woman. I can say I’m taking you back home to whip the cat. The lobsters will wink at each other and whisper snide comments, but the chances are good they’ll let us go on.” Before Nate could disagree she started for the door. “Be careful what you say in front of my great-aunt,” Molly instructed him before she opened it. “She’s a diehard Tory and always mentions Farmer George in her prayers. So do I—I damn his soul to burn in purgatory till the end of time.”

Molly prepared a glass of warm milk laced with honey for Nate, found him a spare blanket and installed him on a pallet on the dirt floor of the larder. Returning to her bedroom, she pulled a document box out of her dowry trunk, unlocked it with a key she kept hidden in a crack between two floorboards, pushed aside some legal papers (her marriage certificate, the deed to John Jack) and removed the diary she had been keeping in a penny notebook since her marriage. She flipped to the entry recording the death of her husband, Isaac. “Ambufh’d by greef,” she had noted on a page stained by tears. “Life seems not worth living.” She turned to the last blank page, dipped a goose quill into a jar of ink and carefully printed out the following:

“Septembre the twenty second, 1776. An Agent from General Wafhington by name Nate Hale, a remarcable man with out corruption albeit stil a yuth, sent out to scout ye Enemy lines, ariv’d this night at ye farm in Flatbufh. Being nak’d and at my Toilet I spied him loytring at my window but giveing way to pastions long thout ded I made no outward sign and tarry’d the more to be seen. I afk myfelf if it be sinful & contrary to nacher to defire to be defir’d.” Molly looked up from the diary to reflect on the moral aspects of the problem, then bent her head and wrote: “And I reply: NO!”

I’m up to Nate and Molly scouting the British dispositions:

AT FIRST LIGHT NEXT MORNING Molly—still smelling vaguely of camphor—roused Nate, who was sleeping like a baby on the floor of the larder. She handed him a steaming cup of mocha coffee as he stepped into the common room. Through the open front door Nate could see John Jack attaching the traces of a buck cart to a gray mare. Molly drew on a dust cape over her dress and, walking with a limp so slight it seemed more like a hesitation, went outside. Nate hefted his wooden shoe repair kit onto one shoulder, swallowed the last of his mocha and followed her. Down the lane the first cocks were crowing into the morning. Hiking her skirt (knowing Nate he would not have missed the flash of her ankle), Molly climbed nimbly onto the seat of the cart. Nate deposited his kit in the back and took his place alongside her. John Jack handed up the reins to Molly. “See that Great-aunt wears her shawl,” Molly instructed the Negro. “If she complains of swelling in her joints, mix a thimbleful of resin from the earthenware jar with her tea. We’ll be back in two days, God willing.” With a cluck of her tongue and a snap of the reins she set the horse into an easy trot.

Smoke spiraled up from the chimneys as Nate and Molly made their way through the deserted lanes of the village and headed through Flatbush Pass toward Brookland and the British positions in the marshlands north of the town. They encountered a Tory roadblock on the northern end of the pass, but the two guards who were awake were content to check Nate’s wooden shoe repair kit and hand him a recruiting leaflet, which he read out loud to Molly as they continued on their way.

“It’s addressed to ‘All Intrepid Able-bodied Heroes,’ “ he told her. “Listen to this garbage. ‘Spirited fellows who are willing to engage will be rewarded at the end of the war, besides their laurels, with fifty acres of land.’ At least on our side most of the men who engage do so out of patriotism.”

“And what is patriotism?” Molly inquired.

“Why, nothing more or less than the feeling you have for a country, for its people; nothing more or less than the conviction that their manners distinguish them from their enemy; that they are capable of boundless energy and boundless generosity and boundless justice.”

“You harbor no uncertainty about this rebellion of ours?”

“About the rebellion I am not at all in doubt. About what comes afterward I am less sure.”

Molly asked for instances. Nate gave some. John Adams claimed that by balancing the legislative, executive and judicial branches of a government against one another, the tendency in human nature toward tyranny could be checked, but Nate wasn’t convinced. Nor was this the only problem he foresaw. In victory would the standing army that Washington was so desperate to raise subvert the liberties it was created to protect? Would Washington become king of the Colonies? Would the larger states in an eventual union devour the smaller ones? Would the slave states, by exploiting cheap labor, oblige the antislave states to adopt their ways in order to compete economically?

“Would you then impose your antislavery point of view on the states that favor slavery as a condition of joining the union?” Molly wanted to know.

Nate agreed he would if he had his way. “I don’t see how we can complain about being slaves to the British on the one hand, and keep a sixth of our citizens in a state of perpetual slavery to us on the other hand. There is no logic in this, not to mention justice.”

Molly plucked the whip from its sheath and beat in annoyance at the flank of the mare, which quickened her pace. “You surely consider it inconsistent of me to be a rebel against the King and a slave owner at the same time.”

“I meant no criticism of you—”

“Your meaning was clear. John Jack came to me as a part of my widow’s third when my husband was killed. He was valued at a hundred and twenty pounds sterling. I got him and the mare and the buck cart and my dowry trunk and fifty pounds sterling and a fistful of Continentals not worth a plug of tobacco and some pewter plates and my walking wheel and the clothes on my back, and was packed off to play nursemaid to my great-aunt, who had a spare bedroom and needed looking after. Without John Jack I’d have to pay someone to plow and sow and reap, and that would be the end of us.” The mare, running now, was foaming at the corners of her mouth and droplets of foam were spraying back onto Nate and Molly, but she didn’t appear to notice. “You’re so hot under the collar about Negro rights, but a married woman has less rights than a slave. A slave can sue a white man or a Negro but a married woman doesn’t exist as far as the courts are concerned. She can’t vote or sue or put her name to a contract. She can’t even draw up a will. A slave can keep what wages he earns, some have even saved up enough to buy their freedom, but a wife’s wages belong by law to her husband.” Molly became aware of the horse foaming and drew back on the reins, slowing her to a walk. She looked sideways at Nate and said bitterly, “When have you ever heard of a wife saving up enough to buy her freedom?”

“Was marriage so bad to you then?” Nate asked.

“Isaac was a gentle man and good at lovemaking and I dearly miss his company,” Molly said. She added passionately, “But that doesn’t change one thing I have said about a married woman being more of a slave than a slave.”

Molly fell silent and Nate decided it was the better part of wisdom to let the issue rest. A company of Royal Artillerymen in blue and red tunics overtook the buck cart, coming from Graves End. Nate counted fourteen six-pounders and five wagons covered with tarred canvas and probably filled with powder and shot. The artillerymen astride the horses pulling the cannon bantered with Molly as they rode past. “What a lass like you needs is a King’s man,” shouted a trooper with a gray beard.

“Do you think you can get it up, what with you being this far from home?” Molly shouted back gaily.

“If I can get it out I can get it up,” the trooper retorted to the amusement of his comrades.

“Watch you don’t anger them,” Nate whispered, but by then Molly was laughing at every remark and giving back as good as she got. She pulled up to rest the mare and let the dust raised by the artillerymen settle, and started off again. The cluster of houses that formed Brookland came into view as they climbed the heights and followed its crest. At the edge of town a half dozen Light Dragoons with dirty red plumes jutting from their brass helmets stopped the buck cart and questioned them. Molly explained that she had been visiting a great-aunt in Flatbush and was returning home to Brookland with a shoe repairman she had picked up on the road. The lobsters exchanged knowing looks, checked Nate’s wooden kit and let them pass.

They stopped for wedges of meat-and-vegetable pie and tankards of cider at The Sign of the Black Kettle on the waterfront of Brookland. The main room of the inn was crowded with merchants and traders and they had to squeeze in on a bench across from two coopers who were nibbling raw garlic cloves with their meal. Farther down the table half a dozen young officers from a Tory regiment were drinking Madeira. One of them could be overheard boasting about Washington’s days being numbered. A Tory with a sickle-shaped whisker on each cheek asked how far it was from Frog’s Neck to King’s Bridge. Eight, maybe nine miles as the crow flies, someone guessed. The Tory with the whiskers said something that Nate didn’t catch. The others laughed boisterously. Nate and Molly avoided each other’s eyes.

After lunch they walked the length of the waterfront, examining the cargo ships and men-of-war tied up or anchored out waiting their turn for a pier. Nate noted the names of the men-of-war and counted their guns, and ducked behind a toolshed to scribble in his notebook Latin words, which, when sounded out, read:

HMS Roebuck, forty guns

HMS Orpheus, thirty-two guns

HMS Carysfort twenty-eight guns

HMS Rose, thirty-two guns

HMS Phoenix, forty guns

“Did you notice anything curious about the British warships?” Nate asked Molly as they climbed back into the buck cart.

“Only the Union Jack, the sight of which brings bile to my throat,” she replied.

“Ships of the line have four to six longboats each. But there were none in the davits, and none alongside, and none at the piers.”

“Maybe they are all off to Manhattan, provisioning.”

“Maybe,” Nate said thoughtfully.

“Which implies ‘Maybe not,’ “ Molly noted.

The highway outside of Brookland was crawling with lobsters going in both directions. Molly talked her way past two roadblocks, one manned by Tories, one by Northumberland Fusiliers in bearskin hats, and put the mare into a fast trot as they headed up the highway that skirted the New Town Creek and led to the New Town and, beyond, the village of Hushing. Off to the left a gently rolling series of slopes hid the low-lying marshes that surrounded the creek. “It’s from there the lobsters launched their boats against Kipp’s Cove,” Molly explained, waving a hand.

“We ought to take a gander at it,” Nate suggested.

Molly drove the buck cart off the highway and hid it and the mare behind a thick tangle of wild blueberry bushes. Leaving her dust cape in the cart, popping blueberries into her mouth, she trailed after Nate across the fields toward a rise. As he neared the top he crouched low and crawled the last few yards. Molly, her lips dyed blue, crawled up beside him and together they looked out through the tall grass at the New Town Creek, with the East River and Manhattan Island beyond. The afternoon was stifling hot and filled with the dry ticking of crickets. Kipp’s farmhouse and, farther north, Turtle Bay and the Beekman mansion overlooking it were all visible across the river. The creek itself, angling off toward Nate’s right, was crammed with longboats moored in rows a dozen abreast—Nate counted nine rows—and buzzing with activity. Scores of tents had been set up parallel to the creek line, and hundreds of men could be seen stacking kegs of powder and cartons of shot on the shore near the boats, cleaning cannon or muskets, caulking boats that had been beached and turned upside down. Beyond the tents, in a field, a sergeant major was putting half a hundred highlanders in kilts through their paces; on a shouted order that Nate could just hear, the men knelt and made as if to fire, then gave way to a second rank that knelt and made as if to fire in turn. Nate whistled under his breath and put a palm on Molly’s back, which was soaked through with sweat. “The ones in blue coats are Hessian Grenadiers, the ones in green, Jaegers. They say the Jaegers were recruited from hunters and game wardens in Germany and are all sharpshooters. The yellow uniforms over there must be the 29th Worcestershires; we took one of them prisoner outside Boston. The purple are the 59th East Lancashires. See the white leggings and scarlet coats? Those must be the famous 5th and 52nd Grenadiers—the ones Howe led against my Colonel Knowlton at the rail fence beneath Breed’s Hill. If I had to guess, I’d say there were three thousand men out there if there was one.”

Molly asked, “How many men can one of those longboats hold?”

Nate was recording what he saw, in Latin, in his notebook. “I should think fifty or sixty.”

“Nine rows of boats with twelve to a row makes a hundred eight boats, plus the three being caulked makes a hundred and eleven, multiplied by, say, fifty, makes”—she scratched some numbers in the dirt with a fingertip—”Five thousand five hundred fifty.” Staring out at the British soldiers, Molly’s eyes narrowed. “When I see lobsters the Irish in me smothers the woman in me,” she said in a bitter undertone.

“How old were you when you came across to the Colonies?”

“I was going on seven.”

“Do you remember Ireland at all?”

“I remember the humiliation of living in an occupied country. I remember the violence of the occupiers—the people baitings, the bear baitings, the public hangings. Once the lobsters strung up a fourteen-year-old girl for stealing a lace handkerchief. Till the day I die I’ll hear her screams as they carted her through the streets with a sign around her neck. I remember the sound of the sea and the swell of the sea that took me away from all that, or so I thought. And here they are again. You and your like fight because you are patriots. I fight because I’m doing what the Irish anywhere in the world get the most pleasure out of—killing lobsters.”

Nate finished scribbling notes to himself in the notebook. He remembered the Tory officer at the Black Kettle mentioning King’s Bridge and Frog’s Neck. “Where exactly is Frog’s Neck?” he asked Molly.

“If you follow the East River up a few miles past Hell Gate and the Two Brothers, where the river empties into the sound there’s a spit of land sticking out of the north shore that looks like a frog’s neck.”

Nate remarked, “I heard the rapids at Hell Gate were treacherous.”

“Depends on the season,” Molly said. “Depends on who’s piloting the boat. The locals sail through all the time to fish in the sound.”

In the distance the sergeant major, drawing out his words, could be heard crying, “Fix … bayonets.” Nate, preoccupied, mumbled, “Folks in my neck of Connecticut have a saying: You can’t plow a field by turning it over in your head. We’ve seen all we need to. Let’s go.”

Here’s where Nate figures out what the lobsters are hatching and devises a scheme to thwart them:

NATE AND MOLLY DOUBLED BACK toward Brookland, taking their sweet time so as not to arrive before the Tories guarding the roadblocks had been relieved by the afternoon shift. They left the buck cart behind a shed near the waterfront and the mare in a fenced-in field, tipped a teenage boy to keep an eye on both and crowded onto the flat ferry to New York City, arriving as the sun was setting behind the Jersey ridges. A silken breeze blew in from the Narrows, ruffling curtains in open windows. The wide city streets were filled with mounds of uncollected garbage that crawled with rats as large as rabbits. Several children with homemade bows and arrows stalked the rats, but they scurried away into the garbage before the hunters could get a shot at them. The barricades that the colonials had thrown up on the approaches to the river had been demolished by the lobsters and piled in heaps against the sides of buildings. Nate spotted a Rooms to Let sign on a sprawling clapboard house a block up from the ferry landing and knocked on the door. He started to turn away when the landlady, fixing her shrewd eyes on him, announced that there was only one room and one bed available, but turned back when he felt Molly’s elbow jabbing into his spine. He paid for the room and scrawled an invented name on the ledger in the hallway, caught Molly’s eyebrows arched suggestively and hastily added “and wife” after his signature. Nate hefted his wooden kit onto his shoulder and he and Molly followed the landlady up two flights to a small back room with a window with leaded panes looking out on a vegetable garden. There was a high narrow bed against one wall, a ceramic basin under a hand pump against the other wall. For decoration there was a broken banjo clock and a line portrait of George III that had been torn from a magazine and framed.

“The candles,” the landlady announced, nodding toward the two tapers in pewter holders on the table, “are extra. You can settle up when you leave.”

As soon as the landlady had departed Molly turned on Nate. “How can you be sure?” she demanded, picking up the argument where it had been left off.

“There are two things we know about the lobster General Howe,” Nate insisted. “He’s an expert on amphibious operations—he’s already proven that twice, once in shifting fifteen thousand troops to Graves End to attack Long Island, the second time in the landing at Kipp’s Cove to attack Manhattan.”

“Just because—” Molly started to say, but Nate plunged on.

“The second thing we know about Howe is that he was badly shaken by the losses the lobsters suffered assaulting Breed’s Hill. He shies from frontal assaults against fixed positions the way a horse shies from a stone fence. He showed this when he forced our boys on Long Island to retreat behind the Brookland Heights fortifications, and then failed to assault the heights, giving General Washington time to slip his entire force across the river to Manhattan.”

“I still don’t see—”

“Let me finish my reasoning. Howe has installed his forces on Manhattan facing the colonials on the Haarlem Heights. The way I see it, he has two choices. He can launch a frontal attack on the heights and risk running into the kind of fire he faced at Breed’s Hill, risk suffering the same kind of losses—and don’t forget, when Howe loses a man, killed or wounded, he has to look to England for a replacement. Or he can mount another amphibious operation—ferry a mess of soldiers past the Hell Gate rapids, land them at Frog’s Neck and set up a blocking line between Frog’s Neck and King’s Bridge. With the British warships patrolling the East River and the North River, and lobsters in front and behind, Washington would be trapped on the Haarlem Heights. Morale, already low, would deteriorate even more. Desertions would increase. Food supplies would dwindle. Congress would blame Washington, Washington would blame Congress. If Howe were patient enough there is every chance the Colonial army would wither on the vine without a shot being fired. The rebellion would be over.”

Molly walked to the window and stared out at the weather cocks on the roofs opposite. “I am obliged to admit your reasoning is persuasive,” she finally said.

“I am obliged to agree,” Nate said gloomily. “At least it explains the presence of the hundred and eleven longboats, and the five thousand five hundred fifty lobsters, hidden in the Newtown Creek. If Howe was only going to ferry them across to Manhattan to reinforce his bridgehead at Kipp’s Cove, he could accomplish that from the Brookland ferry landing.”

Molly turned to face Nate. Her smile was a hedge against tears. “If you are right everything is lost.”

“Perhaps not,” he said thoughtfully. And he outlined for her the scheme that he had been concocting: What if he were to compose a report, in Latin, giving details of Howe’s dispositions, and most especially a description of what he had seen at the Newtown Creek? What if he were to draw the conclusion, supported by snatches of overheard conversation, that the lobsters planned to land a force at Frog’s Neck with the intention of cutting off Washington in Manhattan? What if he were to append a notation to the report saying it was a duplicate, that the original had already been dispatched to Washington? Molly could write out in her hand a second letter purporting to come from A. Hamilton. Let them come, it could say. Breed’s Hill will look like a picnic in comparison. Or words to that effect. A. Hamilton could hint in his letter that Washington had already taken precautions against Howe’s forces—had hidden cannon on the Two Brothers to rake the lobster longboats as they passed Hell Gate, had fortified Frog’s Neck and every likely landing place within twenty miles. Nate could hide the rough notes from his notebook, along with these two documents, between the inner and outer soles of his shoes, and allow himself to be captured. The papers would fall into Howe’s hands. The British would be convinced that Washington was aware of their plans and was waiting for them, and would call off the amphibious operation. Washington would have time to reinforce the army on the Haarlem Heights, train recruits, organize an orderly retreat through Westchester. Howe would lose by not winning; Washington would win by not losing.

Molly shivered. “They’d hang you as a spy.”

“There is as much chance of my being exchanged as hanged,” Nate insisted. “In either eventuality, it is the custom to let prisoners send letters back. Your friend Captain Hamilton fixed up some coded phrases for me to use. If I saw that Howe had fallen for my story, I could signal Washington by employing one of the codes in a letter.”

In the fading light Nate caught the expression of horror on Molly’s face. “Put yourself in my place and say honestly whether you would not act as I propose to act,” he pleaded.

“It is too high a price to pay,” Molly declared passionately.

“Where I come from they have another saying,” Nate told her. “What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly.”

Molly saw there would be no talking him out of his scheme. Perhaps she could discourage him by picking on details. “How do you propose to get yourself captured?” she demanded. “By walking up to the first lobster you see and turning yourself in? They will smell a rat.”

“I’ve thought of that,” Nate said. “I have a cousin from Portsmouth, one Samuel by name, a through and through Tory, who holds the post as Deputy Commissary of Prisoners here in New York. He knows me for a rebel and an officer in the Continental Army. If he caught sight of me he would surely turn me in.”

Molly breathed a sigh of relief. “There must be ten or fifteen thousand souls in New York. It could take weeks before you discovered your cousin’s whereabouts. By then, if your reasoning is correct, the lobsters will be manning the line between Frog’s Neck and King’s Bridge and the rebellion will be all but over.”

Nate looked preoccupied. “Hamilton gave me the name of someone in New York to turn to in an emergency. He ought to be able to find my cousin Samuel for me.”

Here, now, is Molly contributing to the rebellion:

MOLLY WATCHED FROM THE SHADOWS of an alleyway across the street as Nate strode up to number 22 Wall Street and boldly knocked on the front door. A flickering light appeared in a window, the door opened and Nate disappeared inside. He emerged twenty minutes later. Checking to be sure there were no patrols in sight, he crossed to the alley, took Molly by the arm and started back toward the rooming house. After a while Molly asked, “Now will you deign to tell me who you saw in there?”

“A Jew broker named Haym Salomon.”

Molly seemed surprised. “I have never yet met a Jew. What is he like?”

“He seems civil enough. He read my letter of introduction and agreed to help me. By good fortune he is personally acquainted with my cousin’s superior in the Commissary of Prisoners, a man named Loring. Salomon said if I returned at sunrise he’d tell me where I could find cousin Samuel.”

“Oh,” Molly said. She had been praying Nate would run into a dead end.

Back in their room Nate lit the two candles and set out paper, ink and a quill on the table. Molly’s lower lip trembled. Tears threatened to overpower a sad smile as she observed him from the window. He was really going through with it.

Nate’s quill scratched across the paper as he wrote out, in Latin: “Exemplum litterarum missarum ad ducem Washington.” “That should turn the trick,” he said. “ ‘Copy of original report sent to Washington.’ “ He looked up and collected his thoughts and continued writing, in Latin: “Howe preparing amphibious operation designed land large body at Frog’s Neck and trap you on Manhattan Island. I personally saw 111 longboats hidden in the New Town Creek along with large number of troops and provisions.”

Putting the paper aside to let the ink dry, Nate prepared another sheet. “It’s you who will write out this one,” he told Molly, and seating her in his place, pacing behind her, peeking occasionally over her shoulder, he spelled out the Latin words as she wrote them: “For the eyes of Captain Hale,” he began. “Hmmm. What would Captain Hamilton say in such a letter? Something about my report being extremely valuable. And a hint that Washington had fortified the Two Brothers and Frog’s Neck.” Concentrating on his Latin, Nate started dictating.

When Molly had finished and the ink was dry Nate carefully folded both letters, along with two pages of his raw notes, between the soles of his shoes. “All that’s left,” he said, “is to organize things so that the letters fall into Howe’s hands.”

Taking a deep breath, Molly announced in a hoarse whisper, “If you are absolutely set on going through with this mad scheme of yours, I propose that we marry ourselves.”

Nate’s eyes widened. “Marry ourselves? Are such things done?”

“The world,” Molly reminded him, “is upside down.” She smiled at his discomfort. “You are clearly a virgin,” she added. “The least I can do is make sure you don’t die one. Consider it my contribution to our common cause. But before I can bed you we must exchange vows.”

Nate, insulted, said, “What makes you so sure I am a virgin?”

Molly limped over to him and put a hand on one of his shoulders. “The way you looked at me through the window when I was at my toilet makes me think it.”

“You saw me looking and did nothing?”

“You must understand: Before I was ambushed by grief I grew accustomed to living the life of a married woman… there are things you miss when fate deprives you of a husband.” She added anxiously, “Contrary to what is generally supposed, women have appetites too.”

Nate reached impulsively for her hand. “The moment I saw you I knew I would have liked to love you. What vows would you have us say to each other?”

“I would have us pledge to govern our house, in the unlikely event the Lord ever gives us one, according to God’s word.”

“I pledge it,” Nate declared eagerly.

“I too pledge it. I would have us renounce all pride, ostentation and vanity in apparel and behavior. I would have us promise to give honest attention to friendly rebuke and admonition.”

“I pledge it.”

“I too pledge it. Finally I would have you pledge to love and honor me. And I would pledge in return to obey you in so far as obeyance does not trespass on principles dearly held.”

“I do pledge it and with all my heart,” Nate said urgently.

“I too pledge it with all my heart,” Molly whispered.

She studied his face and said, “If the spirit moves you, you may kiss me now.”

Still holding her hand, he leaned forward and touched his lips to hers.

Molly turned away so he wouldn’t see the tears brimming in her eyes. She crossed the room and removed the framed line drawing of George III and set it down facing the wall. Then she blew out both candles.

Nate said with panic in his voice, “I must have light.”

Molly lighted one of the candles and placed it on the floor next to the ceramic basin. Shadows danced on the walls. Nate said something about how he loved shadows, about how you needed light to have them. Molly worked the hand pump until she had half filled the basin with water. That done, she began to remove her clothing-first came her pointed pumps, then her sand-colored thigh-length stockings. She undid the tiny buttons down the front of her dress and slipped out of it. She reached down and grabbed the hem of her shift and straightening, drew it over her head. Bare-chested, wearing only homespun knickers, she looked across at Nate, standing in the middle of the small room, his mouth agape, his head angled as he stared at her shadow dancing on the wall and on the ceiling.

“I have never before seen anything so beautiful—”

“It is unnecessary, even undesirable, to speak at moments such as this.”

She turned away from him and undid the ribboned waistband of her knickers, and let them fall to the floor and kicked them away. Then she stepped into the ceramic tub and, bending to wet a sponge, she began to wash herself. Her voice drifted back over her bare shoulder. “You may undress now, Nathan, and turn down the bed.”

She heard his shoes, his clothing falling to the floor. She felt his trembling hands on her shoulders turning her around. She smiled to hold back the flood of tears but it was no use. She pressed her wet skin to his dry skin, she fitted her body into the curves of his, she burrowed under his chin with her face, she pressed her lips to the hair mole on his neck, she sobbed as she had sobbed only twice before in her life.