The Silver Bullet

Chapter Nine

For an eighteenth-century man, Jake was rather eccentric about bathing. He tried to take a bath twice a week if possible, and occasionally more, even in the winter. This flew in the face of scientific thought, and was one of the few areas where Jake, who had made a strenuous study of the philosophic arts and endeavored to live by their principles, strayed from the reasoned path. He simply loved to bathe, and despite the weight of the mission head, rose early the next morning and headed out to the stream behind the house to indulge himself.

Marie’s homemade soap was strong, pricking at his skin. The early spring air was quite cool yet, no more than forty degrees. Still, Jake let himself collapse back on a rock in the middle of a small pool of rushing water, watching as one of Marie’s dogs chased after a pair of ducks by the stream bed.

His thoughts soon returned to matters of more significance. With the cover story of a physician already established, he could sound out the British soldiers at the ball about joining the expedition. Details of the coming attack would flow from their mouths like the silky water around him.

As long as they didn’t remember him. Jake knew that the British Army had been greatly reinforced since his last sojourn, and that most of the old guard had been transferred, but there was at least one man guaranteed to know who he was — Carleton.

Even with his hair freshly curled and as many plasters on his face as fashion allowed, it wouldn’t be easy to fool the governor. But a more complete disguise would mean he couldn’t go as Marie’s cousin. Even if he found another way in, he’d be deprived of Captain Clark’s very useful entree.

All in all, his best course was simply to avoid Carleton. It shouldn’t be too difficult if the gathering was large. Undoubtedly the governor would be preoccupied, and besides, the last person he’d expect to see in Montreal again was his long-lost secretary.

Jake turned his concerns to his rusty dance steps as he walked back up the path to the house, trying to remember whether at beat six or eight that one dipped his knees in the minuet.

He had settled pretty firmly on six by the time he sat down to breakfast. He was mildly surprised and not a little pleased that the servant girl had cooked a full plate of wheat cakes for him on Marie’s instructions. A pile of dried berries topped the place and some fresh sausage held down the side; it was easily the best breakfast Jake had had in weeks.

“ Perhaps after breakfast, you can give me a shave,” said Jake as the girl returned to the fire.

“ We’ll have the barber do that in town, if you don’t mind,” said Marie, entering the room behind him.

Jake thought he detected a slight tone of jealousy in her voice. If so, he dispelled it with a slightly more than cousinly kiss on her cheek, then sat back down to work on his cakes.

“ We’ll have to buy you some fresh clothes, if you’re to go to the ball,” said Marie, as she looked over her servant’s work.

“ Good. There’s some business I want to attend to in town,” said Jake.

Marie’s expression warned him from saying anything more revealing in front of the girl, as if that were really a danger. He finished his meal, and within a half hour had hitched Marie’s horse to her chaise, or cariole, as the French called it.

Marie’s estate was located only a few miles from the bank of the St. Lawrence directly to the south of Montreal, but to reach a place where they could board a bateau they had to travel in a large circle to the east, passing through three neighbor’s holdings. Each of these had been broken into smaller estates and farms; Marie waved and greeted each person they passed by name.

Marie did not own a house in the city, but as the journey was somewhat lengthy, she planned to spend the afternoon and change for the ball in the apartments of a friend.

After she got Jake outfitted, of course. She knew a tailor who could be pressed into quick service for a few extra coins. Jake could make do with his present breeches, but a coat of powder blue — now that would be just the thing to set off his shoulders, wouldn’t it?

“ And you’ll have to get a new hat!” she exclaimed.

“ But I like this hat. It’s been with me since Boston.”

“ Exactly.”

In the end, he did get a new hat, a large, round beaver with an upturned brim and golden feathers that made him look vaguely Spanish, or so said the tailor. The man muttered considerably at the amount of work he was expected to do to prepare the coat — luckily ordered by a customer who had the bad sense to die the day before he was to pick it up.

The blue jacket threatened to clash with Jake’s brown breeches, but the addition of a yellow brocaded vest turned the outfit into something quite modern, even racy for the colonies. Two watch chains signified the cutting edge of fashion, with their charms, ribbons and baubles hanging off and making a pleasing clang when Jake walked. The fact that their ends were fastened to pieces of metal instead of watches were besides the point.

If there was a woman in Montreal who could have resisted his charms when he arrived, she would be positively swooning now. A bit of lilac water, a good deal of scalding to his hair, which was then powdered and tied in a correct black bow beneath his hat — London itself would have fallen at the feet of this young swain.

Which Jake supposed, was a good enough cover for a spy. For who would suspect the man who stood out from the crowd and called attention to himself instead of lurking in the shadows? “Do I look like Jake Gibbs, the rebel provocateur?” he would say to anyone confronting him. “Well sir, I am not, though from what I have heard of the dog, I would be glad to meet him face-to-face, so that I could challenge him on the field of honor for insulting the king. Rumor has it he hung a rosary of potatoes around the king’s effigy, and I would very much like to avenge that dishonor.”

Hopefully, brave words would be enough. For Jake had come to town unarmed, except for his pocket pistol — a larger weapon would have drawn too much attention, most especially at the ball.

Jake tested his self-assurance as well as his disguise by striding through the Montreal marketplace not far from the wharf. The square teemed with soldiers, but they did not seem to pay him much mind; to them he was one more useless dandy.

Had they followed him, they might have changed their opinions. After making his parade — and adding several more plasters to his face to shore up his disguise — Jake walked to the printing shop of Fleury Mesplet. This was the same Mesplet who had come to Montreal with the Americans during the winter of 1775. A protege of Franklin, he had stayed after his countrymen had fled. Though he had not completely given up his allegiances, he was not, strictly speaking, an American spy.

Nor was he particularly happy to see Jake, whom he had known as a boy growing up in Philadelphia.

“ Not much of a disguise, then?”

“ If you’re trying to look like a man of fashion,” said the printer, himself very much the opposite, “you quite succeeded. But your chin gives you away. Everyone in town will know it’s you. You’re notorious.”

“ My chin’s too square?” Jake playfully took it in his hand and tried to see its reflection in the window. The window not being of glass, he was unsuccessful. “Perhaps another strategically-placed plaster.”

“ Leave by the back door,” said Mesplet. “I don’t want anyone to know you’re here.”

“ Now, now, relax, Fleury. Dr. Franklin send his regards.”

Not even this piece of flatter — invented for the occasion — could clam Mesplet, who took the unusual expedient of removing his sign from the front of the small, wooden building and then barring his door, as if he’d gone home for the day.

“ You’re worried about nothing,” said Jake. “Neither the barber nor the tailor made the slightest peep, and I stayed with them for two hours. Then I went to the market, showing my face at every booth. I could have lunched with a troop of soldiers without worrying. I was only here for a few weeks — no one even remembers me. It’s Quebec where I have to watch out.”

“ You won’t be so smug when Carleton meets you.”

“ Do you think these plasters are too obvious? They itch, and I’d rather do without them, frankly.”

“ Jake, what do you want? Half the town already suspects me of being a rebel.”

“ Aren’t you?”

“ I can’t help you.”

“ I don’t want help,” said Jake, picking up one of the handbills Mesplet had been working on and reading it. “ ‘Fire-arms made to your specification.’ Not bad. But you don’t need this dash her in firearms; it’s one word.”

“ What is it you want?”

“ When is Burgoyne starting his invasion?”

“ I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“ Fleury.” There was ever the slightest hint of physical injury in Jake’s voice.

“ Honestly, I don’t,” protested the printer, practically screaming. “Do you think they would tell me?”

“ They haven’t had you print amnesty proclamations or anything like that?”

“ Would they trust that to someone they suspect of being a rebel?”

“ Why did Carleton let you stay in Montreal?”

They put me in jail after Arnold fled. I was in Quebec for many months.”

Jake, unsure whether or not that was true, nodded solemnly anyway, as if in apology.

“ You should see Du Calvet,” said Mesplet. He uttered the name so low Jake could barely hear it.

“ So my old friend is still here then?”

Mesplet nodded. “He knows everything.”

If the printer had been alarmed by Jake’s visit, Du Calvet was infuriated. The risks involved in his coming north were incalculable, Du Calvet said; he endangered not merely himself, but many others in the city. For the tide had turned here, due in no small part to the poor behavior of the American occupation force in the winter of 1775-76; the French were now at best neutral toward the rebels.

“ Arnold was an ass,” added Du Calvet.

“ I quite agree,” said Jake, who blamed the commander for his friend Captain Thomas’s death. “But your spies have not done a good enough job informing General Schuyler. Otherwise I would not have had to come north.”

“ Perhaps the problem is that neither Schuyler nor Gates wants to believe what we tell them,” answered Du Calvet. “And perhaps Congress would do better not to keep changing commanders every time the wind blows.”

“ Since you don’t want me here, I assume you will help me leave.”

“ Gladly. I will have a wagon and papers waiting for you tonight.”

“ Tomorrow morning, on the Post Road south of Montreal. I am otherwise engaged this evening.”

“ Where?”

“ At the ball.”

“ You’re insane!”

“ Frankly, I think I dance rather well,” said Jake. “Have the wagon waiting.”

“ The British army would love to hang you,” said Du Calvet solemnly. They were his parting words, except for curses when Jake promised to save him a dance.

Upon reflection, Jake might have admitted that he had gone about things a bit rashly. A more cautious spy would have snuck into town at night, waking Du Calvet or some other American sympathizer in bed, persuading him to gather information while he hid in the attic or cupboard. But Jake considered the words “cautious” and spy to be contradictions. Besides, he didn’t particularly like attics and grew claustrophobic in cupboards.

In any event, any admonition toward caution was now beside the point: He was sitting in a room of the Governor General’s Palace, enjoying the attentions of a small coterie of ladies, none of whom he recognized from his last sojourn in Montreal — and none of whom, he had reason to hope, would recognize him.

He’d breezed past the most difficult portion of the gauntlet nearly an hour before, clutching Marie’s arm firmly as he captain took her forward and with great ceremony introduced them to Burgoyne.

It was not for nothing that Burgoyne was called Gentleman Johnny. The general was a handsome man, perfectly tailored — if Jake looked like a dandy, Burgoyne had him beat by three leagues and a half. The fifty-four-year-old general’s jaw clenched and jutted as he threw a gratuitous bon mot in Marie’s direction, showing off his Parisian French. She looked quite ravishing in her fine yellow dress, he said; she would fit in perfectly in Westminster.

Burgoyne then turned to Jake, who pretended to practically faint at the introduction. The general looked at him oddly for a moment, as if they had met. They hadn’t, as far as Jake knew, though he proclaimed such had long been his ambition.

There was a vast line of guests, and the general’s attention quickly turned to the woman behind Jake, whose breasts were bulging from the top of her stomacher. Just in time, too, for Carleton had entered the hall and was bearing down quickly on the general.

Jake’s disguise now included a gold-embroidered eye patch as well as his strategically placed face plasters, along with a bit of rouge and some deft work on his eyebrows. Still, he could not trust any amount of makeup or patches to keep him safe from Carleton. He slipped quietly into the background. Leaving Marie to the greasy grasp of Captain Clark, he worked his way through the crowd, gathering female admirers as a protective screen.

The entire building was filled with talk about the coming offensive. Burgoyne told everyone — literally everyone — that the whole thing had been his idea, how he’d written a book to impress the king with the grand plan to separate the rebellious colonies, etc., etc. The book, a few wags commented in the hallway, was nothing more than a hastily printed and error-strewn pamphlet, but with similar allowances for exaggeration, Jake had no trouble putting together the outlines of the campaign. Burgoyne would start out from Crown Point and take

Ticonderoga, and then with the aid of a second prong sent through the Mohawk Valley, fall on Albany. He had thousands of men mustering to sail down Lake Champlain, and it seemed obvious from various hints that he would proceed along the east side of Lake George. Two things were critical to his grand design — a populace that would return to the British as the Canadians had, and an assault force up the Hudson by Howe from New York City.

The northern drive would not only pacify the towns and villages along the river, but would threaten to surround the rebel’s army of the Northern Department. Schuyler would find himself between Burgoyne’s hammer and the anvil of General Howe in New York. Washington would either retreat to New Jersey as Howe advanced — Burgoyne apparently through the American general was too cowardly to attack — or be crushed. Either way, the rebel army in the north would evaporate and the middle colonies would be secured.

Jake’s own knowledge of the terrain from Ticonderoga south, vague as it was, supplied a second reason Burgoyne would attempt to get as far south as Albany as quickly as possible. Any large force would have trouble being supplied from Canada; its lines of communication would stretch thin and be an easy target for irregulars. By contrast, the river could move tons of food and supplies. Winter, too, would be easier in Albany than on the lakes.

Any man or woman in the hall could have told you the general’s plan within a half hour of arriving. A woman with a stomach strong enough to stand the general’s incessant preening — and breasts large enough to hold the general’s attention — could even say which army units were heading south with him, inept subalterns or no.

But no one could say when the attack was due to be launched. Such information was now Jake’s greatest desire, and it induced him to continue wandering through the party, chatting with everyone he met, always ready to gracefully retreat at the slightest sign of the governor. Fortunately for Jake, Carleton did not like Burgoyne, and kept his distance from the general. The spy could always escape his attention by heading toward Gentleman Johnny.

“ There you are,” said Marie, finding him as he prowled a corner of an elegantly appointed sitting room just off the ballroom. “What are you doing?”

“ Admiring the drapes.”

“ She’s cuckolded her husband twice in three years,” hissed Marie, nodding at the neighbor who stood before the red velvet fabric.

“ Is that a recommendation, cousin?”

Marie frowned heavily.

“ Do you know when the invasion is to begin?” Jake whispered.

She shook her head. It seemed to be the one secret Burgoyne was intent on keeping.

There was a cry of violins from inside; the entertainment was about to begin.

“ So would you like to dance?” Jake asked Marie.

“ Must you tempt fate?”

“ Oh, come on,” he said, adding, as if he missed her point, “My leg is perfectly healed.”

Marie sighed and took his arm, letting him lead her to the dance floor, where they took up a place in the line of dancers. The first dance was a minuet, begun with its requisite bows and curtsies to the guests of honor. As Carelton’s attention was drawn by a consultation with one of his aides at the other end of the room, Jake put himself quite into the dance. He kissed his hand with great flair as he offered it to Marie, bending his knee slightly and then stepping forward on his toes, forward and lower, moving to the left, facing his partner, flourishing, taking hands and whirling around, working through a set of four and ending back with his cousin.

The American hadn’t danced in several years, and leading through the ring of dancers, he realized he was starting to get just a tiny bit heady. That was quickly cured — Jake saw from the corner of his uncovered eye that Governor Carleton was heading down the row toward him.

But the dancer was caught by the beat of the music. Their turn had come to play second couple, and Jake and Marie stood idly, waiting as the first pair took up with the fourth.

Well, Jake thought to himself as the governor approached, this shall certainly make an interesting story for the crier to shout in the morning — notorious spy caught out of turn at the ball on the eve of the invasion.