Black awoke in the dead of night, groggy and with a great ache on the back of his head, as if he’d been clubbed. He was enough awake to realize that something sharp was pushed against his throat and that the saddlebags were no longer under his head. He tried to raise his arms to push the sharp thing away, but found they were tied rightly around his waist. He tried to jump up, but his legs were tightly bound at the ankles.
He could feel the hot breath of someone hovering over him. “What did you do with Dr. Stevens?” a voice asked. “Did you kill him?” When the voice spoke that second time, he realized it was Mary.
To admit to knowing Dr. Stevens would be to admit much, so he said nothing.
“If you don’t answer me, Corporal, I will slit your throat from ear to ear.”
He tried to speak but his throat was dry, and only a croak came out. He tried again. “What would you do with my body?”
“If you are the Englishman I think you, the men at dinner will help me bury you and whistle while they do it.”
“There were other men at the second table last night. If I scream, they will come to investigate.”
“They also enjoyed my pie. And ate more of it. Now tell me where Dr. Stevens is. Or I will slit you and be done with it.”
Clearly, he needed to admit to knowing Stevens. The question was how much to admit. “We were on our way here,” he said. “We were waylaid on the road, just after lunch. He was mortally wounded.”
There was a long pause, and he heard her suck in her breath. Finally, she said, “Why didn’t you stay with him?”
“He told me to ride on.”
“To go where?”
A half-truth might do for now. “He gave me the map in the saddlebags, and this town was circled, so I rode here. Yours was the first inn I came upon.”
She said nothing for a moment, as if considering his answer. “I looked at your map. Totowa is also circled.”
“That it is.”
“Tell me why.” She pressed the blade more tightly against his throat. Any harder and he would bleed.
If she is a Patriot, he thought, the truth will surely kill me. If a Loyalist, the truth might save me. He sensed her somehow false to the Patriot cause, but it was in reality nothing more than a desperate hunch.
“My mission is in Totowa.”
He felt the knife ease up slightly. “What mission, exactly?”
“To take George Washington back to England to stand trial for high treason. I am an officer of His Majesty’s Army sent by His Majesty to carry out that mission.” He thought briefly of adding that he could instead choose to kill Washington because his orders didn’t expressly forbid it. But he decided to keep that to himself. Perhaps because he had thought increasingly about that option, and how much easier it would be to carry out than getting Washington back to the ship.
The knife left his throat, but she made no move to untie him. He waited silently, sensing that his life was still in the balance. Finally, she spoke. “We will go to Totowa together.”
“Will you untie me now, then?”
“We will need to talk more first.”
“What about?”
“About whether you are who you say you are.”
“Who else would I be? I’ve just told you things that would see me hanged from a tree if they were revealed to many hereabouts. I am in a false uniform.”
“You could be an agent of the rebellion, sent to infiltrate the Loyalist resistance. With a faked map and a pretty story.”
He thought for a moment. “I see no way to persuade you by mere words, and a man’s loyalties are hardly engraved on his forehead.” He paused. “Nor a woman’s, for that matter.”
“This is true,” she said.
“So, we are at an impasse.”
She laughed. “Hardly that. You are still tied. I still have your knife, and I can still use it.”
“Have you ever killed anyone, Mary?”
“Not yet.”
“It is a messy business, especially up close.”
“This entire rebellion has proved a messy business. You would not be the first to die messily in it.”
“Have many died hereabouts?”
She snorted. “Ha! Many Loyalists have died. Or lost their property. These so-called Revolutionaries are nothing more than the low classes, those without property who wish to take our property for themselves. Had I let my true feelings be known, we would have lost this inn.”
“We?”
“My husband and I.”
“Where is your husband?”
“He is away. And according to you, dead.”
“Dr. Stevens is your husband?”
“Yes.”
“So you are not Mary White, but Mary Stevens.”
“I was once Mary White. But that matters not. Now tell me more of what you say happened to him.”
He told her, and when he was done, he heard her quietly crying. “I would comfort you if you would release me, Mary.”
“I need not your comfort, and I dare not release you without someone else here because I don’t know whether to trust your story or not.” She got up and said, “It would be foolish for you to try to escape or make a sound.” She left the room.
He tested the ropes that bound his hands and legs. They were still tight. Even if he could somehow loosen them, he would have little chance of getting away. The best thing he could do was to ride to Totowa with Mary—if she was really planning to go there—and somehow be rid of her on the way or just after he got there. Rufus had ridden ahead, so perhaps he would be there, too. And there were the fifteen Loyalists Dr. Stevens had promised would meet up with them.
Minutes passed, and he heard only the faint chirping of the birds that begin to sing just before dawn. Perhaps Mary was simply gathering up a group to bury him.
His increasingly morbid thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door opening. The room was still mostly dark, but he could make out Mary and several men she had brought back with her. She carried a lit candle and he saw they were three of the six men who had been at dinner the night before. One man was a true giant, well over six feet tall and burly.
“Bear,” Mary said, addressing the giant, “untie him. If he tries anything, hit him with this.” She handed the man a wooden cudgel. “I used it on him last night after the pie took him down but left him still stirring.”
“What are we to do with him?” Bear asked.
“We’ll go to Totowa, as Dr. Stevens planned. And meet up there with the others. If this man is who he says he is, we will need him.”
“How do you know to trust him?” Bear asked.
“We don’t, but Rufus is to be at an inn nearby, and he will tell us if this man is who he says he is since Rufus was to be at the beach.”
Black said nothing. What would happen if Rufus failed to show up?
Bear asked the same question, except out loud. “And if Rufus doesn’t come, Mary, then what?”
“What would you have us do in that case?” Mary asked.
“Kill him,” Bear said.
Black had been listening to their discussion with mounting apprehension. The more they talked about him as if he were an object, the more danger he was in. He had also noticed that the other three men were clenching and unclenching their fists.
Black decided to make himself part of the conversation. “There is also a question why I should trust you,” he said.
“Yes, there is that,” Mary said. “But if neither of us can trust the other, you are the one tied up in the bed. If we kill you, we might eliminate the good to be gained from you, but we will also take away the risk.”
“I will offer you something,” Black said. “I will tell you how Washington is to be gotten back to England—which beach is the pickup beach. Without that information, your whole venture on behalf of your king will be useless.”
“Some of us are of the opinion,” Bear said, “that the rebellion will collapse if the General is shot dead. A trial in London of Washington might make our good King George smile, but it will do us no good here. So why kidnap him? It would be so much simpler to kill him. I would enjoy doing it with my own hands.”
“And some of us are of a different opinion,” Mary said.
“And what opinion is that?” Bear asked.
“That the authorities in London know what they are about, and that putting Washington on trial there for treason will bring the rebels to bargain for a settlement. Then Loyalists like us can live in peace, and with our properties intact.”
Black interrupted. “I have spoken of this very thing with Lord North himself,” he said. Which was a lie because Lord North had mentioned no such thing to him. But it seemed the right thing to say.
Mary, who had been facing Bear, whirled and looked hard at him. “You met with the First Minister?”
“Yes. It is he who gave me my direct orders. And while there is disagreement in the government over whether Washington is more help to us dead or on trial, or whether his absence from the rebellion will make any difference at all, the King wants to see him tried—and watch him suffer a traitor’s death. You are all loyal subjects of the Crown and should do as your king commands. As I am doing.”
No one said anything. As he waited for someone to speak, Black knew that his invocation of the King might be thought false in itself. What proof did he have that he had met with Lord North? To these people he might as well have said that he’d met with Moses.
Finally, Mary said to Bear, “Untie him, but keep a close eye on him, and search him for small knives and any orders he may carry.”
Once his hands were freed, she turned to Black and said, “One false move and we will kill you.” Hardly had she finished speaking than she began to weep, and he heard her say aloud, amidst copious tears, “All this killing. So many friends, and now my husband, too. What will end this war?”