“That will do. But, yes, it is my business—on Jamie’s behalf, if not yours.” But it was on his behalf, as well. The shock and rush of recent events had prevented my thinking through the situation, but I was quite sure that Jamie had. And now that I was thoroughly awake and undistracted by my own affairs, my thoughts were catching up with uncomfortable rapidity.
“Do you recall a Captain André?” I asked abruptly. “John André. He was at the Mischianza.”
“I may have lost a few things over the course of the last few days,” he said, with some acerbity, “but neither my memory nor my wits. Yet,” he added, in a marked manner. “Of course I know him. A very sociable and artistic young man; he was invited everywhere in Philadelphia. He’s on General Clinton’s staff.”
“Did you know that he’s also a spy?” My heart was thumping in my ears, and my stays felt suddenly too tight. Was I about to do something hideously irrevocable?
He blinked, obviously startled.
“No. Why on earth should you think that?” And, a half second later, “And why the devil would you tell me about it, if you do think so?”
“Because,” I said, as evenly as I could, “he’ll be caught doing it, in another year or two. He’ll be found behind the American lines, in civilian clothes, with incriminating documents on his person. And the Americans will hang him.”
The words hung in the air between us, visible as though they were written in black smoke. John opened his mouth, then shut it again, clearly nonplussed.
I could hear all the sounds of the camp around us: talk, occasional shouting, and the sounds of horses and mules, the beat of a drum in the distance, summoning men to . . . what? Someone at close range practicing a fife, the shrill note breaking in the same place each time. The constant rumble and shriek of the grinding wheel, frenziedly sharpening metal for the last time. And the increasing buzz of flies.
They were drifting into the tent in small clouds of carnivory; two of them landed on John’s forehead, to be irritably brushed away. The tin of bug repellent lay on the cot where Germain had put it down; I reached for it.
“No,” he said, rather sharply, and took it from my hand. “I can—I—don’t touch me, if you please.” His hand trembled, and he had a moment’s difficulty in getting the lid off, but I didn’t help him. I’d gone cold to the fingertips, in spite of the stifling atmosphere in the tent.
He’d surrendered to Jamie personally, given his parole. It would be Jamie who would eventually have to hand him over to General Washington. Would have to; too many people had seen the incident, knew where John was—and, by this time, what he was.
John didn’t sit up, but managed to thumb a glob of the mentholated grease from the tin and rub it on his face and neck.
“You didn’t have anything in your clothes,” I ventured, with a faint hope. “No incriminating documents, I mean.”
“I had my warrant of commission in my pocket when the Rebel militia took me, outside Philadelphia,” he said, but spoke in an abstract tone, as though it didn’t really matter. He rubbed ointment briskly over his hands and wrists. “Not proof of spying in itself—but certainly proof that I was a British officer, out of uniform and arguably behind the American lines at the time. Don’t talk anymore, my dear; it’s very dangerous.”
He snapped the lid onto the tin and held it out to me.
“You’d better go,” he said, looking me in the eye and speaking in a low voice. “You must not be found alone with me.”
“Grannie?” Germain pushed back the tent flap, red as a beet under his shaggy bangs. “Grannie! Come quick! Papa says Grand-père wants you!”
He disappeared and I hastily snatched up my equipment, bedizening myself with bags and boxes. I made for the tent flap, but paused for an instant, turning to John.
“I should have asked—does he care for you?” I said.
He shut his good eye and his lips compressed for a moment.
“I hope not,” he said.
I HURRIED AFTER Germain with my medical satchel full of gurgling bottles slung over my shoulder, a small box of extra instruments and sutures under my arm, Clarence’s reins in hand, and a mind so agitated I could hardly see where I was going.
I realized now that I hadn’t been telling John anything he didn’t know. Well . . . bar the account of Captain André’s future fate, and while that was chilling enough, it wasn’t of direct importance at the moment.
He’d stopped me speaking, because he’d already known how much danger he stood in—and what the effects were likely to be on Jamie, and on me. “You must not be found alone with me.”
Because I’d been at one point his wife, he meant. That’s what he’d been thinking but hadn’t wanted to tell me, until I forced the issue.
If anything happened—well, be blunt about it: if he broke his parole and escaped—I’d very likely be suspected of having a hand in it, but the suspicion would be a great deal more pronounced if anyone could testify to having seen us in private conversation. And Jamie would be suspected of complicity at worst, or, at best, of having a wife who was disloyal both to him and to the cause of independence. . . . I could easily end up in a military prison. So might Jamie.
But if John didn’t escape . . . or escaped and was recaptured . . .
But the road lay before me, and Jamie was there on his horse, holding the reins of my mare. And it was Jamie with whom I’d cross the Rubicon today—not John.