Chapter 1

I wasn't there at the real, honest-to-Bessie beginning which, I guess, goes back to the Revolution that failed, you know, old George by-damn Washington and all them hotheads, but I got hip deep into that sticky mess pretty early, out of just plain ordinary indolence and normal carelessness as well as my in-born curiosity which my mamma always said would get me in trouble. You couldn't say I was an "instigator." Not hardly. How about a supporter or helper, maybe even agitator? There's that's a good one, agitator, stirring 'em up; that was me. Least I tried. Sometimes I was along just for the ride, just to enjoy myself, but I did like to cause trouble.

And I must admit that I do like poking the high mucky-mucks in the eye now and again, especially them rich farts in the big wigs. And, as you will find, if you keep on reading, there were a couple of right pretty females involved; matter of fact, one that was more that just pretty; she was something, something really special.

Anyhow a lot of things had happened before we liberated Georgetown, that's for sure, and afterwards too when it got downright interesting, just a tad dangerous and a bit noisy when folks started pointing loaded firearms at each other. I am sure you know that when you poke a beehive, something is bound to happen, and it ain't always good. Sometimes it's honey, but not always.

I got to see and hear most of the main events, not that any of this will end up in the history books. Nor on tombstones neither for that matter. We was awful lucky that it turned out as good as it did with nary a man lost, me getting thoroughly laid and nobody hurt bad. Not counting Billy; guess he's kind'a lost, but shoot, he nearly always was. Fraid he ain't missed.

Billy Beckwith, he's about five years older'n me, he's the one you ought to talk to if you can find him. Don't think anybody's seen Billy since, well, since his rebellion ended, and he shrugged into that shabby old coat of his, been wearing that thing since Hector was weaned, he has.

Shoot, it really lasted just two days, more or less, but, of course, he'd hoped it would go a lot longer. Wait a minute; I'm not even sure what he hoped. Think it got his name attached to it 'cause it sounds good. Don't believe "Caleb Gally's Rebellion" or "Ned Beall's Revolt" would have quite the same ring.

Anyroad, at the end of January 1783 I finished up the time I owed Mr. Hite, the miserable, old, skinflint blacksmith out there on the washed out road to Log Town, and got paid off with some cheap clothes and wore out tools, no surprise. Some freedom dues they was! I'd had two years added for running away when we was over in Baltimore back about the time of the real Revolution when he bought my paper and I played soldier. I got apprenticed on account of I was an orphan and my dead folks owed money to a half dozen unhappy merchants

Only British soldiers I saw up close before this here trouble was back at that tavern that was Arnold County's courthouse; that was a long time ago, coon's age like the old folks say. Seen lots of Redcoated wabblers since then and so have a bunch of other fellers out here. History goes round and round it seems. Only one way to get off the carousel, and it ain't always pleasant. Sorry, sometimes I speak before I think; it's a failing.

Anyhow, some men had been meeting here and there since the long-hoped-for and now-generally-regretted Revolution ended down at Yorktown and all this area got changed to the Reserve; bunch of rebels done it, well, ex-rebels, anyway, that's what they was, including a few you'd have to say was hotheads if not chuckleheads or fools. And of course, it goes without saying, most of them was Scots.

I had planned to go west when I'd paid off my time, but that's closed now, so the law says. Lot a'men still headed out across the hills or down south, law or no law, and I might end up following them. Mighty pretty, them blue hills. Billy could have done just that. It's all Canadian now; that's what they tell me, Quebec and Roman, so they say. Damn shame, that's what it is, price of pride one feller done labeled it.

Anyways. So when I got shed of Hite, I was looking for a real job for real brass. Talked to the other local blacksmith, Micah Waters, a good man, ended up working for him later, but he didn't have enough work right then to take on another smith. Went down to Georgetown and hammered for a while making some wrought iron kitchen things for the smith that has a store down there by his forge on Water Street, near that old bridge, nice feller, but I spent more on the tarts and taverns than he was paying me so I had to get out of town 'fore them bar wipers and wagtails started trying to collect all the brass I owed.

Some men had been meeting in secret all right; lot a'people knew that. Officers had like a club, two clubs in fact, one-time Rebel officers that is, Continentals I guess is the right word. One was the Sons of Spartacus, called themselves Sparticans or Spartans or something like that. T'other was named the Benedict Arnold Society, bee-eh-ess, some called them "bastards." Think they liked that. Those were the militia officers, most of them, brevets and elected, all the same. Proud? Lord, they'd make a peacock blush. Rather not say too many names even though they are officers so most everybody knows. There was even a Quaker or two in that crowd. Honest.

Now men that was just privates and such, they'd been getting together, too, along with those like me who hadn't served out-of-state but who'd fought the damn Tories here at home, in and out of uniforms, home guards and irregulars you might say, night-riders some of us, some for profit as well as pleasure. Hite wouldn't let me join up, but I got in some licks along with men like my friend, Jimmy Griffith, brave as hell he is. Brave or plumb crazy. Hard to tell.

We'd been trying to protect the locals who were catching it from the other side after the fighting ended, from the damn lickspittle Tories who gloried in our defeat. We'd disrupted some of the land auctions and paid a few late night visits on them who thought they'd live in some dead Maryland Line sojer''s house and throw his widow and orphans out in the road. Fucking Scots had hard money, you know, so they was at every land sale, factors mostly, Glasgow tribe.

We hadn't shot nobody nor even tarred and feathered the lickspittles like they did back in the Seventies or hung 'em neither like they did up Fredrick way. Or worse. But we had raised some hell and scared some that deserved a first-rate scaring, have to admit that and shame the devil, whatever that means. There's some urine-stained drawers in a few Tory homes these days that I had something to do with, me and a few friends. Ain't bragging, but it's the god-honest truth.

By the end of 1783 we had figured out that there wasn't any real law in our part of the Province 'cept maybe the busy-body Tory militia and a couple of boozy Marines down in Georgetown and the court way up in Fredericktown. All that business about young Brookes and the Clagett murders smoked that. The sheriff's office was up in Frederick and about all we had representing Toryapolis was a worn down overseer of roads, Alexander Beall, who sometimes forgot he wasn't sheriff no more.

Beall had been short-lived Arnold County's one and only sheriff back during the Revolution, and some thought him a Tory-lover but that warn't fair, way I think. Fair, that's what he was. I didn't know him back then 'cept on sight, but Mr. Hite showed him respect and Micah Waters thought he was a pippin. Big fellow, he is, quiet but once he decides what's right, he does it, and you'd better stay out of his way. Did his job anyhow, back then when things was all topsy-turvy, everybody admitted that. Honest man most said, and that's not always the way to get popular and loved, is it? Specially when about half the people disagrees with the other half most of the time and all hades is breaking loose.

So with no law hereabouts to speak of, we started meeting together with some of the former officers and getting more organized, regular rules, meeting dates and all. You remember what old Franklin said about hanging together. I don't know whose idea it was. Finally the pot boiled over early in '84. It didn't take much. Sorry if that's kind of confused; I'll try to hold to the line from here on.

Here's the story - plain and not-so simple:

Alexander Beall's nephew had been fixing to marry up with this girl; betrothed's the word I was looking for, it was agreed by all and sundry, signed and sealed, the bann's read. Nelly Foster's her name, and her father's a bloody Tory that bought up two or three patriot farms after the governor took 'em, confiscated them you might say, and some did. I saw Nelly a time or two and she's a real pretty little thing, dark haired and quick on her feet, a daisy and a charmer.

Now the Beall boy, he did his service down with Nathaniel Greene, minor knee wounded, limps some in damp weather now and then, and he's been tending to his own business since Yorktown and trying to get hitched up and start his own family. He came to a couple of those veterans' meetings, but he wasn't a regular or anything, and he didn't jaw much. Kept his nose clean and his britches buttoned.

Anyhow, damn if her father, after agreeing to the match and then putting Ned off for about two years, he says no, she can't marry no damnable rebel. They turned to argufying, right there in the girl's brick house down in Georgetown, and I guess some names was called, and Ned Beall hit the man right in the mouth. Knocked out a couple of teeth, they said, blood all over the place, girl and her mother a'screaming and Mr. Foster going for a gun. Ned, he runs for it but right into the arms of Constable Wainright and couple of his bully boys. They club him down and haul him off to the town cells. He, as they say, had his cods in a cloven stick; in durance vile the educated calls it.

Word of this gets out the road to the tavern where we used to have a courthouse. Weren't the only inn out there, but it was clean and the cook was damn good, a slave of course. I was there once for some kind of legal business when I was a bondman. I guess the Frederick stage brought the news; that's the usual way. It's back to every day now that the rolling road's in fair shape. By the time we heard it, a foul gang of Tories was beating up every poor old patriot in Georgetown; you know how stories grow; embroidery's what the womenfolk call it. Bullshite's another name.

So we had a meeting, and Billy Beckwith, who'd been wounded up north and froze his ass as well, and Richard Johns, who was in the Maryland Navy, they volunteered, sort of, with some loud, and perhaps alcoholic, encouragement, to go down to Georgetown and see what was going on and find out how Ned was being treated. Lot of other men asked to go with them, but the cooler heads, and we had a few, said we didn't want to make things worse or look like a mob was coming. Didn't take much to stir folks up back then. Broke the monotony some say, like a tavern brawl between friends.

Now remember this here was winter time, January, cold as bloody hell, but they rode down there and asked around and came back in about four hours or so. We hung about the tavern there joshing with Annie and Stud and drinking beer and eating gravy and bread and whatnot. Don't think they had no pie. Cracked a few walnuts. Some played whist and others darts or just drank. Some men were roasting chestnuts, and I know there was at least one good card game going on, and the draught boards were always busy. So they got back, our emissaries, how you like that word, eh? And we put away our cards, lit our pipes, sat down and listened.

Ned had a knot on his head, they said, and a black eye and a fat lip and a couple of mashed fingers, but shoot, that's not much worse than some men get on Saturday night just being sociable. A lot of what we'd heard was flam, but Nelly's father was swearing out all kinds of warrants and such, and it looked like Ned was going to be a guest of the town for a while 'less a couple of people went bond for him. Now you know his family's dirt poor and more'n likely owes the next three crops to their factor like most farmers out here.

So we discussed who would be willing to sign and risk some land or money, not that Ned wouldn't show up. We figured that most of the Scots, like the Peter family, was doing fine, but we weren't going to get anything there, like milking a stone goat. As tight-fisted a bunch that ever walked the Earth, they are. There's a lot of Beall land down in Georgetown 'cept the town has taken most of it now, and I guess the Bealls out here and them down there don't speak or something. Don't even say the name the same way neither. So that leaves the Brooke family we decided, the Quakers in general, that had enough to risk and might do it, being charitable and all as they claim. Interesting folks, them Quakers.

Now the way the land lies, the Quakers that fought in the Revolution are kind of outcasts from them that refused to fight because of their religion. Don't speak but they're still, well, still friends, and not speaking is how they worship, so I've been told. Anyroad, Mr. Johns, who's a Quaker, said he'd go talk to James Brooke, who signed up for the militia and fought with the irregulars once or twice, and then together they'd go visit his Uncle James who has miles of land and maybe some he'd be willing to pledge to get Ned out. That was the end of that meeting 'cept for the drinking that followed. As I recall, we quit when the keg was empty.

Next thing we hear Ned's going to be transported to Annapolis to stand trial, and they've charged him with a felony, don't know which one, but serious nohow. We met in Faulk's barn after that bit of bad news. There was too many of us to fit in the tavern. Must have been a fifty or sixty men, easy. I know there was at least one Magruder there though I think he was calling himself McGregor now, the family's old name I believe. I guess Lloyd Beall was the ranking officer present. He always liked being called "captain." He spoke for moderation and patience, said he was sure it was going to all "work out" and "blow over." Kind of surprised me since every time I'd heard him before it had been nothing but "bloody" this and "bloody" that where the British, Tories and their friends were concerned.

Richard Johns reported that several members of the Quaker community was willing to pledge for a bond, but the way he understood it, it was too late. Ned Beall was being sent over to the Bay in chains to await trial. That's when Billy Beckwith stood up.

Now I've heard Beckwith before, and he can spout, 'specially when he's got a few tots of black strap inside him. But this time he was cold sober, and he stuck to the subject and didn't wander around in his interesting way. He said we had to stand up for our rights or we wouldn't have none left. Said that's what we'd fought for anyhow. Rights. One of our rights was a trial by a jury of our neighbors, he said. Don't think her said "peers" like I heard later. Ned Beall didn't have no neighbors in Annapolis, Billy said, fact no decent man did, he said, and that got a good laugh. So it wasn't right taking Ned over there for punching Mr. Foster in the nose. Somebody in the crowd yelled, "mouth" and a few laughed, but Billy glared and made a wry face, squinting his eyes.

Billy said it was like when the Brits tried to take smugglers over to London for trial 'cause Maryland juries wouldn't convict them. I hadn't heard of that, but he said it was so back before the Revolution. "We gotta send somebody down there that they'll listen to," Billy said. "Once they get Ned to the Tory capital, it might be too late. They might hang him."

Most seemed to agree judging from the mumbling and the shuffling about. I listened to a lot of windy palaver about who and how many to send, and "Captain" Beall's name came up right away, but he declined with a smile and pointed to a man sitting on the side of a stall, way in the back, chewing on a root of some kind, sassafras maybe.

"Send my cousin, Alexander Beall," the one-time captain said. "I think he knows the constable down there, and he's the only one here who has a Provincial job. The government, such as it is, trusts him."

So everybody turned around and looked, and Alexander Beall, who's a pretty fair-sized man, 'bout fifty I guess and worn around the edges, grizzled some, he hopped down and walked up front. He got up on the feed box where Billy had stood, sucked his teeth, wiping his nose on his hand and said he'd do it. Said he'd tell the law in Georgetown that people out here were mad and thought Ned had the right to be tried where he hit that man, by a jury of his peers. That's the word he used, "peers." Then he said he'd like to have another man go down with him to represent the rest of us, and he looked around and his eyes lit on me. Maybe it's because I was about the only one there bigger than he is. I go about fifteen stone.

Beall said, "What's your name?" squinting at me like he should have remembered, and I told him, and he said, "You busy?" and I said no so he said, "Let's go." And we got in his light rig and headed off for Georgetown, just like that. Didn't even have time to take a piss. He had an animal skin rug that we put across our laps, wolf or some such, and that helped, but that wagon wasn't much for springs. On the way down the old rolling road, we talked about the troubles and Mr. Hite and blacksmithing and women and I-don't-know-what-all. By the time we came down that first cobblestoned hill, I guess he knew me pretty good, and I liked and respected him. He was a calm man. I wished I had a bottle of something keep us warm.

Mr. Beall left his wagon at a stable in the care of a white-haired slave who was bigger'n either of us, and we walked over to the constable's office. He introduced me to Mr. Wainright who found another chair in his back room, and we sat down in front of his small desk. Now the constable, William Wainright, is a kind of straight up and down man, thin and very careful in the way he moves and what he says and how he dresses. He wears a good wig, a light brown one, and real fine clothes, including a short, embroidered waistcoat, kind of fancy dress for a law man, but I found out later he has long irons in several fires and don't have to worry about his income. He doesn't carry a pistol or sword but a thin cane instead. Mr. Beall thinks maybe he's got a knife inside that cane, but I couldn't tell.