Chapter 7

"Damn," Billy Beckwith cursed. He jumped up, grabbed Jimmy by the arm and hustled him outside. Some men rushed to the windows and a couple hurried out the back door, but most just stood talking to each other and waiting. In a minute Beckwith stuck his head back inside and yelled, "Caleb!" I went out as Judge Peter said, "Let's have a short recess" and stood up. "Be upstanding," I heard Alex Beall say as the door closed behind me.

Griffith had ridden in from the Bladensburg road and said that a "bunch" of Redcoats on horses weren't far behind him 'less they got lost. "We tried to stop them, but they damn near ran Gus Yore down, and I thought for a minute he was going to take a shot at them. He sent me riding here soon as we spotted 'em, but I hung around in the trees to see what would happen. There was some arm waving and a bit of cussing, I reckon, but then they trotted on past the tavern, and I set out at the gallop."

"How many?" Billy asked.

"Ten or twelve with an officer that had a gold shoulder braid," Jim answered.

"All right. Thanks, Griffith. Stay here a minute with Caleb." Beckwith went back in the tavern and pretty soon a score of the men who'd ridden into Georgetown with us were coming out. Some had their rifles with them but a lot didn't. "Where's them muskets you took?" Billy asked me. I told him, and he sent me and Jim Griffith to fetch them. When we came back, Billy had taken the men out into the road where the gate had been when the British occupied the town. He lined them up in two rows, facing south and a'squinting at the sun.

"Make sure all the men in the front row have weapons," Billy said. "Get those pieces loaded," he yelled, "but don't prime yet." I guess he had about thirty men by then and two dozen weapons among them. "When they show up, I want the front row to kneel and put that musket out where they can see it. You men in the second row, close in some and make like you've got a rifle even if you don't."

Billy's squad shuffled around looking uneasy at each other. After a bit of jawing, they settled into place where most seemed satisfied, straightened their shoulders and tried to look mean and serious. They all puffed out clouds of steam and stomped their feet from time to time.

"Caleb," Beckwith said to me, worry obvious on his face, "give Jim your weapon and go back in there and ask Judge Peter to get a move on." Billy was in a bit of a pucker, I guess.

I asked Jimmy to be careful with my Georgetown rifle and then went inside and found Alex Beall and told him what was going on, and he whispered something to Robert Peter who hit his table with his hammer and said, loud and clear, "Take your seats and quiet down. Court's back in session." He took some papers out of a folder that I recognized as one we had stopped for on our way out of Georgetown that morning and more from an inside pocket in his robe, that I guess was the grand jury paper Mr. Foster had fetched.

Judge Peter read the charges and then stopped in the middle. "Did we swear the jury?" he asked Mr. Beall.

"No sir," Alex said, "not quite," and he stood again and raised his hand. He asked the jurymen to rise and take the oath, and they all did so I guess there weren't any Quakers among them. Don't many live near the courthouse.

Judge Peter told them to sit and went back to reading what Ned was accused of. It sounded pretty serious in all those legal words. Then he said to Ned, "How do you plead to these charges?" Ned stood up and said he was not guilty and then sat down beside the constable. Judge Peter said to him, "We don't have a proper 'dock' for the defendant so you can just sit there with Mr. Wainright."

"Mr. Morrison, who is your first witness," the judge asked.

'The complainant, Mr. Foster, m'lord," Morrison said, popping up and setting down.

"Mr. Beall," the judge said to Alex, "will you please take the other witnesses to a place where they cannot hear the testimony. And Leftenant Morrison, judges in Maryland are seldom called 'my lord.'"

Alexander Beall gestured to Annie a couple of times and then to me, and I ushered the Foster women to the back of the tavern where Beall introduced them to the village whore, which was a little awkward since nobody knew Annie's last name. "Annie here," he said, "will take you over to her room until the judge wants you. It's warmer in there than back in the storeroom. Go along now, please." Mrs. Foster and her daughter glanced at each other sort'a like they might upchuck and then back at Annie, who grinned her freckled Irish mug at them and waved a "come on."

Mrs. Foster still looked very doubtful, but she followed her daughter out the backdoor and into Annie's lean-to, and Alex Beall and I took out a couple of stools for them to sit on since Annie had just the one old chair beside her narrow bed. It was a tight fit but we got them settled. Good thing only the mother was wearing one of them hoopskirts. Alex Beall had to squirm around like a tightrope walker to check on the stove before we edged our way out of there. Annie's three-colored cat sat tucked up like a loaf of bread watching the whole operation from right where I wanted to be, the middle of her bed.

Alex, heading back into the tavern, said, "Go out front and see what's going on."

I did and found Billy Beckwith and his two rows of riflemen stomping around trying to keep warm. "Maybe them bloodybacks got lost," I said to him.

"Hope so," he replied. "We're coming back in if they ain't here in five minutes. Tell the judge so's he won't be surprised. I'll leave a guard down the road a'ways and one out here with the weapons."

Time I got back to Alex Beall to whisper the message, Mr. Foster had been sworn in and was sitting in a chair beside the judge's table, kind of half facing the jury.