JONATHAN GIFFORD did not sleep very well that Christmas night. He was up at three a.m. prowling his greenhouse. Was it a kind of premonition or simply the instinct of a veteran soldier that made him suspect with something close to certainty that this was the night Washington would attack? It was the time when an overconfident enemy would be most likely to expect a peaceful respite. The weather was foul. The northeast wind continued to drive snow and sleet across the state. He shuddered to think of Kemble exposed to such punishment. Kemble or any other American. The regiments he had seen march past Liberty Tavern during the November retreat were wearing summer clothes.

What fools the Americans were, to think that they could end the war in one or two battles and beat the biggest and best army Great Britain ever sent overseas. But reflection softened his asperity. Almost every war began with expectations of quick triumph on both sides. The Americans were new at the game, new at everything. Think how difficult it was to graft two kinds of roses. The Americans were trying to blend thirteen different species into a single immense flower.

The next day, the twenty-sixth of December, the news began to seep across the icebound, snow-swept state like a soft breeze from never-never land. Hearts, hopes, unfroze, rejected the news as impossible, and leaped like colts in springtime when it was confirmed.

“True, aye, true, so help me God,” said mud-splattered shivering Abel Aikin at the bar of Liberty Tavern. He took a great gulp of Scotchem, holding the steaming mug in both numb hands. Jonathan Gifford seldom served this drink, which consisted of applejack, boiling water, and a hefty dash of ground mustard. He considered it closer to: a medicine than a refreshment. But Abel’s half-frozen state justified the potion. Our mailman had become an army dispatch rider when the post office ceased to function in New Jersey. He shuddered as if he were still out there in the winter wind. “True we took the town of Trenton and twelve hundred of those unconquerable Hessian heroes at eight o’clock yesterday morning. Damn me if it isn’t true. I saw it with my own eyes.”

“By God,” roared someone in the back of the crowd, “let’s go get our guns and shoot up the British at Brunswick. We can’t let Washington do all the work.”

There was a roar of agreement and a surge out the door. All across New jersey, as the news filtered through the countryside, resistance flared. British dragoons carrying mail and messages were shot down on the roads. Anthony Skinner and his friends no longer roamed our neighborhood with such confidence. Shots were fired at the manor house and he stationed a company of his loyal militia on the grounds, at great expense, to guarantee his own safety. There was news of a fierce battle between a militia army and a brigade of British at Springfield and the ambush of a regiment of Germans near that same town, almost directly north of us.

On December 3o came word from New Brunswick that the British were rushing reinforcements across the state. They were determined to smash Washington’s army and revenge their defeat at Trenton. Washington had recrossed the Delaware and announced his intention of doing battle with them for the possession of New Jersey. We huddled over Jonathan Gifford’s army maps in the taproom of Liberty Tavern, wondering what Washington would do - or could do. Reports had ten thousand British troops advancing on him. Unless the Americans fought far better than they had in any previous battle except Trenton, the prospect was extremely alarming.

Late that night Cornelius Talbot arrived with news that dispelled these larger military matters from the minds of Liberty Tavern’s family and friends. You will recall that he had become an assistant, commissary - a buyer of food and firewood - for the British army in New Jersey. He had been captured at Trenton but General Washington had given him a parole of honor on his promise to remain neutral for the rest of the :war.

“I really think,” said the fellow, shivering before the big fireplace in the taproom, “that I got off because he wanted me to deliver this to you, from General Putnam.”

Jonathan Gifford ripped open the dirty envelope and read Israel Putnam’s scrawl.

Olde Frend,

Com atto ounce fore yore lad. He is dedlie sicke but wont quitt tho he cann butt breethe. He is withe the arme.

Putnam

“Where is the army?” Jonathan Gifford said.

“They may be in the Delaware, for all I know,” said Talbot. “I left the morning of the British advance, and a devil of a time I had of it ducking bullets along the way.”

Jonathan thanked the neutralized Mr. Talbot and gave him a pint of brandy to warm him on his way home. He rushed across the snowy lawn to the residence and awoke Kate. He showed her the letter. “Will you come with me?” he asked. “Barney’s out with the militia. Kemble may need a nurse - ”

“When do you want to leave?”

“Now.”

“I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

“I’ll have the sleigh hitched in the tavern yard.”

Ten minutes later, Kate climbed up beside him on the sleigh. Bertha, Sam’s wife, stood beside it in the snow, declaring she was ready to come too. “I raised that boy from a baby, Captain. If he’s sick he needs a mother and I’m the only one he has now.”

“Someone’s got to run the tavern, Bertha.”

Jonathan Gifford turned to Sam, who was standing on the other side of the sleigh. “You’re in charge, Sam. Here’s the key to the money chest in my office. Keep a loaded gun handy and don’t let anybody push you around.”

“I’ll do my best, Captain,” said the dark voice.

Jonathan Gifford flicked the reins of the two-horse team and they trotted into the night, their bells jangling. A saw-toothed wind blew out of the north. Captain Gifford wore a bearskin matchcoat but the cold seemed to penetrate it as if it were summer silk. Kate was wearing a fur muff and fur-lined boots and a cloak lined with marten fur. The same thing happened to her.

Within minutes she was in agony. The cold penetrated each lash wound on her back with devilish skill.

By dawn they were on the Princeton road. They had scarcely gone a half mile when they collided with an incredible sight - the entire British army - ten thousand men - slogging toward them through the snow, staggering with weariness. A squadron of the 16th Dragoons was at the head of the column. A young lieutenant dashed forward, saber in hand. “What the devil are you about, man? Talk fast or I’ll hack you in two.”

Jonathan Gifford calmly identified himself and told him where they were going. The Lieutenant looked skeptical. He was about to order them to turn around when his commanding officer, Colonel William Harcourt, rode up. “Gifford,” he said, “what in God’s name are you doing out in this weather?”

Jonathan Gifford explained his mission. Harcourt was immediately sympathetic. “You’ll probably find your boy somewhere about Princeton. There was some nasty fighting there yesterday morning. Washington gave us the slip, got into our rear, and tore three of our best regiments apart. I’m afraid he’s taught us a damned hard lesson.” He sighed. “Not the last lesson I fear we must learn before we quit this detestable war.”

Jonathan Gifford carefully concealed his emotions. “Would the rebel army be at Princeton then?” he asked.

Harcourt shook his head. “Only their sick and wounded and some of ours, poor fellows. It was a damn bloody fight. We lost a half-dozen officers and a good hundred men. Washington moved off for New Brunswick. That’s where we’re heading to protect our stores. We had no alternative but this forced march, which is likely to put half the army in hospital. The countryside is so damn hostile, we were afraid they’d join Washington and storm the place if we didn’t get there first.”

Colonel Harcourt did not know that his old friend Gifford was one of the prime reasons why the British thought the countryside was so hostile. Our little war of harassment had made a large impression on the enemy high command.

Harcourt held out his hand. “I must get back to the head of the column. I hope you find your boy.”

Jonathan Gifford edged his sleigh to the side of the road and pushed west against the flow of the column. More than once he had to rein in his horses to avoid a man who toppled out of the line of march unconscious from cold and exhaustion. He wondered what he would do if anyone tried to seize his sleigh to transport these casualties. A glance beneath the heavy canvas on the floor would reveal two quarts of brandy, warm blankets, a ham, a thick cut of beef, and other nourishing food. But the officers kept the men under very tight discipline. Dropouts were picked up, slapped in the face, given a gulp of rum, and pushed back into the column.

At the rear came forty or fifty British wagons that forced Jonathan Gifford off the road. The first were full of wounded men who cried out in pain at every rut.

“Dear God,” said Kate, “it’s like watching a procession from hell.”

Finally the road was free and a feeble winter sun broke through scattering clouds. Jonathan Gifford used his whip and soon had the sleigh skimming down the road to Princeton. About noon they rested the horses and heated some tea over an open fire. They gulped it down with bread and butter and were on their way again. Toward four in the afternoon they saw the roof of Nassau Hall looming above the bare branches of the trees and were soon on Nassau Street. Jonathan Gifford hailed a sparely built young man who was hurrying past them in the snow and told him whom he was looking for.

“I have so many sick and wounded I could not begin to remember their names,” said the young man. “My name is Rush, Dr. Rush. I came here as a volunteer and find myself running a hospital.”

“This man had no rank. He was attached to one of the generals, I would think.”

He showed him Putnam’s note.

“Oh yes, I remember him now. I saw him in Philadelphia. Pale as Banquo’s ghost with a wracking cough. I told him he had a fever and should go to bed directly. But he ignored me. Everybody ignores doctors until it’s too late.”

“Where is he?”

“He is in the same house with General Mercer and Captain Fleming. You cannot miss it. It’s a big farmhouse on the Trenton road, just this side of the stone bridge. Most of the fighting took place around the barn and orchard - no one has buried the bodies. I fear this young lady - ”

“Did you say Captain Fleming was among the wounded?” Kate asked.

“Among the dead, more likely, by now. Do you know him? He was the commanding officer of the regiment. Imagine it, at twenty-one. All the other officers sick, wounded, dead.”

“Thank you, Doctor, we’ll find the house.”

In five minutes they were riding across the battlefield. Grisly memories welled up in Jonathan Gifford, the awful slaughter of Ticonderoga, where the dead and dying lay in piles before the walls; the carnage on the Plains of Abraham, where men were torn apart by murderous point-blank fire; the putrefying corpses around Havana. Now they saw men in red coats, others in blue, and others in simple homespun sprawled in odd frozen shapes, in an orchard, in the fields before it, and around the barn and a rail fence beyond it. Two or three dead horses lay in the midst of this human carnage. Burial parties were at work, picking up the dead and lugging them to wagons in the road for transportation to unknown graves.

“I thought I’d seen my last battlefield,” Jonathan Gifford said. “I hope this is it,” Kate said.

They stopped before the farmhouse and sat there for a moment watching the burial parties loading a wagon just ahead of them. “Won’t anyone even say a prayer for them?” Kate asked.

“Their mothers and fathers will,” Jonathan Gifford said.

In the farmhouse, a fat distracted woman met them by the stairs. She was the wife of the owner of the farm. He had fled British-occupied Princeton and was somewhere across the Delaware. Kemble Stapleton? There were so many sick and dying soldiers in the house, she did not know one from another. They would have to look for themselves.

In the first room they saw General Mercer sitting up in the bed, his face and head gashed by three or four awful bayonet wounds. He recognized Jonathan Gifford and smiled faintly. Captain Gifford expressed his sympathy. Mercer brushed it aside with a shake of his head. “We won the day. That is all that matters,” he whispered. He was a dying man.

In the next room, John Fleming lay on blood-soaked sheets, his breath coming in shallow gasps. Kate cried out with grief when she saw him. He looked dazedly up at her. “Is it really you, Miss Stapleton, or am I already in heaven?”

“No, no, it’s Kate,” she ‘cried, kneeling-beside him.

“Stay with him,” Jonathan Gifford said. “I will go look for Kemble.”

“When I heard about you and Mr. Skinner, I gave up all hope that you - ”

“It was what I deserved,” Kate said, tears streaming down her face. “You were right to forget me.”

He shook his head. His breathing was becoming more and more shallow. “I wanted to tell you that day in the garden - how serious I thought it was - principles - I was going to say they were - life and death. I thought you would have laughed at me - now perhaps - ”

“I have changed - I am changing,” Kate said. “I am coming over to - to my country’s side.”

“That gives me great satisfaction - “

He closed his eyes, as if the sight of her made death almost unbearable for him. “I think I would give eternity for a month in Virginia with you, Miss Kate.”

“We may have it yet.”

He shook his head. “Hold my hand. Hold it - please.”

She held his cold hand and watched him die.

Upstairs, Jonathan Gifford was standing beside another bed. Kemble stared up at him with wild fever-haunted eyes. “You aren’t my father. I have no father. Only a two-faced Englishman who says he’s my father.”

A strangling cough convulsed the thin body and all hut obliterated consciousness on the death’s-head face he was little more than a skeleton in ragged filthy clothes. Jonathan Gifford called for Kate. She did not come. He went downstairs and found her kneeling beside John Fleming’s corpse, weeping.

Gently, he drew her to her feet. “Kemble’s upstairs,” he said. “Let’s save him - if we can.”

Kate was appalled by the pallid ranting skeleton she found upstairs. While Jonathan Gifford held Kemble’s arms, she forced brandy down his throat, then wrapped him in clean blankets and helped her father carry him downstairs. Outside, darkness was falling and with it more snow. They laid Kemble on the floor of the sleigh and started home. Before they were an hour on the road, the snow was whirling and roaring in a wild blizzard. Every fifteen minutes or so, they stopped to force brandy on Kemble. But he became more and more listless. His hands and feet were appallingly cold.

“He’s dying,” Kate said.

“Freezing,” Jonathan Gifford said.

Without a word he stripped his bearskin matchcoat from his shoulders, wrapped it around Kemble, and lay down beside him. “I will warm him with my body,” he said. “Pile the blankets on top of us.” Kate obeyed, creating a furry cocoon. She took the reins and urged the weary horses into the storm. All night they stumbled forward. Jonathan Gifford lay there with his arms around his son, listening to him babble deliriously. Often Kemble spoke to his mother.

“Not your fault. Like all Americans - the British. It was his fault - both their faults. Both British - They will pay. They will both pay, Mother.”

Then he would he on some battlefield giving orders, weeping when Americans broke and ran. “My countrymen, my countrymen,” he cried.

Next he was back ten years in a boyhood nightmare. His mother had been incurably superstitious. She frequently lamented that Kemble had been born on Whitsunday. There was an old saying, “Born on Whitsunday, born to kill or be killed.” There was only one way to lay the supposed curse - the child had to undergo a mock funeral, complete with a coffin, at the age of ten. The sensitive, highly imaginative boy had been terrified by the idea and Jonathan Gifford had sternly vetoed it. This had led to his first violent clash with Sarah.

“Don’t put me in the coffin, Mother, I’ll be good,” Kemble whimpered. Then he was in the West Indies with Sarah, talking about breadfruit trees, the dangers of the tropical sun. Warning her. “Mother, be careful.” Weeping again. “You didn’t say goodbye - ”

A cry from Kate. The sleigh came to an abrupt stop. Jonathan Gifford crawled from beneath the blankets and the matchcoat to find a sizable tree had fallen across the road. In the windy darkness, with fingers that refused to obey him, he had to unhitch one of the horses, lash a rope around the tree and drag it off the road. It took a half-hour to finish the job and get the horse back into harness. Mounting the sled to hand the reins to Kate, he found her crumpled on the front seat, asleep. He tried to arouse her but She was too exhausted to respond. He placed her beside Kemble, heaped the matchcoat and blankets around them, and took the reins himself, with nothing but an old broadclbth coat to protect him from the savage wind.

About an hour later they were challenged by a sharp “Halt. Who ‘goes there?” A British light infantry squad surrounded them. They were on the outskirts of New Brunswick. In the darkness they had missed the Perth Amboy road. Jonathan Gifford drove into the British camp and found his old friend Monctieff, who swiftly persuaded one of the British quartermasters to exchange two fresh horses for the exhausted team that had been pulling the sleigh. With this reinforcement, they practically flew the last ten miles to Liberty Tavern.

There, all three travelers were ordered to bed by an appalled Dr. Davie. Jonathan Gifford was on his feet in a day or two. Kate took more than a week to recover from the ordeal. But Kemble was the real patient. Dr. Davie found pleurisy in both lungs. The old Scotsman ordered a strong fire in his room day and night and hot flannel on Kemble’s chest to be changed every half-hour. “The lad must sweat, sweat, sweat,” growled the dour physician. “It’s his only hope, and a damn slim one.”

Bertha, Black Sam’s wife, and Molly McGovern responded magnificently to this challenge. No patient in history ever had more devoted nurses. They abandoned all their duties in Liberty Tavern’s kitchen and elsewhere to the hour-by-hour struggle for Kemble’s life. It lasted almost two months. More than once in the first six weeks he seemed to be strangling. Blue veins stood out in his temples as he gasped for every breath.

In his desperation Dr. Davie summoned all the powers of light and darkness to aid his patient. He appealed to Archaeus, a benevolent demon, supposed by Paracelsus to look after the body’s functions in sleep or delirium. He wrote certain words in Hebrew on a plate, washed them off with wine, added three grains of citron, and forced the mixture down his patient’s throat - an old remedy used by Eastern Jews. He hired boys to thrash the woods and drive away any and all owls because their cries supposedly had deleterious effects on a dying man.

If anything saved Kemble, it was the devoted care of his nurses, and Dr. Davie’s refusal to bleed him. It was a month before the fever subsided and Kemble recognized anyone. “For the next week he was a barely animated corpse, washed, turned, and dressed by the women. He was still too feeble to hold a posset of milk or broth in his hand. Even when he began to breathe freely, he was still listless, engulfed in gloom. Day after day he lay there, saying nothing.

Jonathan Gifford discovered what was wrong. “I suppose you expect me to be grateful to you,” Kemble said.

“For what?”

“For rescuing me. So I can live the rest of my life as a British slave.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Isn’t the war over? The last thing I remember was the fight around the barn at Princeton. The Philadelphia militia broke and ran. I was trying to rally them. I was sure it was the beginning of the end.”

Jonathan Gifford shook his head. “Washington rallied them personally. He won at Princeton and the British were so shaken they abandoned west Jersey. They’re still in New Brunswick and they’ve got fortified camps along the Raritan down to Amboy, which means they’re all around us here. But they don’t control a fifth of the state. Washington is in winter quarters at Morristown ready to contest any move they make.”

Life, animation was suffusing Kemble’s still, gaunt face. “I thought - when I found myself here - “

Jonathan Gifford explained how they had found him at Princeton after the American victory there. “Legally you’re a British prisoner. You and the rest of the sick and wounded were captured by the British when the Americans retreated. The British paroled you in Dr. Rush’s custody, when they retreated.”

“That means I can’t rejoin the army?” Jonathan Gifford nodded. Kemble stared at the ceiling. “You’re glad, aren’t you?”

“Not everyone can be a soldier. Especially in an army that tries to pretend that winter doesn’t exist.”

“But I want to be part - ”

A fit of coughing almost strangled him. His cheeks glowed with unnatural color, sweat glistened on his forehead. Jonathan Gifford helped him sit up in bed so he could get his breath.

“It’s all right,” Kemble croaked. “The Cause needs support here as much as on the battlefield. New Jersey will be the cockpit as long as the war lasts. Perhaps God has sent me home to be a scourge to Tories and trimmers. They stopped the militia from turning out with their lies and threats.”

Jonathan Gifford shook his head. “The militia didn’t turn out because they knew they couldn’t win. This isn’t Massachusetts, Kemble. This British army has twenty thousand men, trained men with cavalry, artillery.”

Kemble glared at his father. “You’re one of them. One of the trimmers. That’s the kind of thinking that’s ruined us.”

“You’ve been almost ruined because your pinchpenny Congress wouldn’t let Washington recruit an army big enough to give the British a decent fight. You don’t win a war with spirit, enthusiasm, Kemble. You win it with trained soldiers, men who know what to do on a battlefield.”

“You may have changed the name of your tavern. But deep down you still want those beloved regulars of yours to win.”

“That’s a damned lie, Kemble. It’s the last thing I want.”

“Then why are you entertaining them for dinner?”

Kemble had heard Kate and Molly talking about Maid Moncrieff’s visit.

“I’m entertaining my personal friends. It doesn’t matter to me what color coat a man wears.”

“It does to me.”

In those harsh words Jonathan Gifford sensed future sorrow. Kemble’s set pale lips and glittering eyes contained neither understanding nor forgiveness. But he suspected that the greatest sufferer from his son’s revolutionary zeal would be Kemble himself.