Love & War (Alex & Eliza #2)(29)
“I believe it is the Irish who grow the potatoes, Major,” Laurens said with a bit of a laugh.
“You say potato, I say pomme de terre,” Gimat said. “In either case, I am sure it will be only a few years before the British come traipsing on our side of the Channel, and I will once again have the honor of planting redcoats in the ground. Like potatoes,” he couldn’t help adding.
“One war at a time, Major,” Alex said wryly. “Well then. It seems we are ready. Now all we do is wait.”
Gimat produced a small silver flask from his jacket. “Perhaps a drink to seal our union. I have grown rather fond of your American whiskey. It tastes like sin and burns like pepper, but it ‘gets the job done,’ as they say, with remarkable alacrity.”
“I can think of no more fitting occasion,” Alex said, taking the flask and pulling a slug of fiery liquid into his mouth, then handing it back to Gimat. Gimat passed it to Laurens, and then to Fish, before drinking himself.
Gimat had just finished screwing the lid back on the flask and stowing it when heavy footsteps were heard outside the tent flap. The sentry asked for the password, and a breathless voice answered, “Rochambeau!” A moment later the flap was pulled aside and a young soldier entered.
“The redcoats are pulling their guards off the wall,” he panted, not even bothering to locate the commanding officer. “The cannon will be fired momentarily.”
Alex nodded at him. “Gentlemen,” he said. “To war.”
He shook Fish’s and Gimat’s hands as they headed out of the tent. Laurens grabbed his friend in a bear hug, kissed both of Alex’s cheeks, then departed into the night.
Alone in the tent, Alex pulled the latest letter from Eliza from his pocket, one he had committed to memory so that reading it was redundant.
My dearest,
On July 5, Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler II entered this world in the presence of myself and Angelica. She is a bright-eyed, strong girl whom we have already christened Kitty, which was the name by which Mama says she was known in her youth. (Tho’ I have a hard time imagining anyone having the temerity to refer to Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler I as “Kitty”!) To compound the day’s joys, Angelica informed me that she and Mr. Church are expecting a child of their own! Oh, Alex, it is happening! The war is ending and a new generation is being born! The first generation to grow up as Americans! It is a privilege almost too great to contemplate. Oh, my darling, I cannot wait till you are here again—till we make our home wherever we make it, in Albany or Boston or New York or Philadelphia! Hurry back to me, and let us lead this nation into the future!
Your loving wife,
Eliza
And they say I am the eloquent one, Alex thought as he wiped at his eyes, which had grown curiously moist.
“Must be the dust,” he said wryly, though no one was there to hear him. He folded the letter quickly and put it away in his pocket; the words within it had stirred his soul and spurred him forward—he grabbed his bayoneted rifle and an axe leaning against a tent pole and ran outside, ready for battle.
A quick glance showed him that Laurens, Gimat, and Fish had taken their positions at the heads of their respective battalions. Their men were arranged in line on one knee, like so many sprinters at their marks.
“On my command!” he called out.
No one answered him, yet there was a palpable sense of attention—of leather creaking and sabers rattling in their sheaths.
A moment later, the first cannon barked its explosive BOOM! and a whistling tore through the night.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
One after another, the cannons fired. By the time the fifth went off, the first shell was exploding high in the sky. A flash, as of long, slow, branched lightning, turned night to day, exposing four hundred grim, determined faces.
“Sappers forward!” Alex yelled.
Fish’s faint voice answered him, even as the flash flickered out. “Sappers forward!”
Twenty men sprang up as the second shell exploded, puncturing the darkness with another brilliant flash of light. The next several minutes were an eerie spectacle, as darkness fell only to be ripped away again and again. With each flash of light, the sappers seemed to have surged ahead like hungry swarming locusts, breaking into two groups and advancing toward the long line of angled pikes, or abatis, that formed the first line of British defense. Hop, hop, hop, hop: Every flash brought the two mobs five feet closer to the thicket of sharply pointed trunks and limbs. Then, as the last shell exploded, Fish’s men were upon them, their axes and saws glinting in the final flickering light.
Ribbons of smoke drifted down from the sky, lighter than the renewed darkness, and a smell of burned gunpowder wafted through the air. From across the wide no-man’s-land could be heard a bugle on the far side of the palisade.
“We are under attack!” Alex was just able to hear a British voice call. “The rebels are coming!”
We are rebels no longer, Alex thought. We are Americans.
He pulled his watch from its pocket and glanced at it in the glow of a shaded lantern. Some two minutes had elapsed since Fish’s men had charged forward. He thought of the major’s boast that his team would have breached the pikes in that time, and almost considered ordering the charge ahead of schedule. Each minute saved would give the British that much less time to prepare their defenses.
Calm yourself, Colonel, he told himself in his best approximation of Laurens’s voice.