Chapter 10: Problems

By nightfall I had spent some time and more than a few of Susan's shillings in Princeton taverns and had a reasonable idea of what was going on. Lord Cornwallis had headed toward the river with most of his force, moving a lot faster than Howe ever thought about except when he was pursuing Loring's wife, so big old Washington and his straggly bunch of continual losers was in trouble down at Trenton, the Princeton Tories said. "Cornwallis will bag him," seemed to be the consensus. He had left behind some infantry and a few dragoons under a fellow called Mawhood, that I had never heard of; commander of the 17th and a good soldier, they said.

I rode back toward the creek called Assunpunk, or some such thing, through scattered signs of the day's fighting. I found my lieutenant, made my report and was told to get on back to Princeton, that the army was on the move. I looked at the scattered campfires down toward the cold river, asked my officer if he was sure and got a good scalding.

I walked my old horse around the British camps, saw some artillery parks, avoided the smoking sentries without any trouble since I could smell them at a hundred yards, led my horse through an alley and knocked on the Snyder's narrow back door. As good a time as any, I decided, feeling reasonably healthy and hopefully randy. Felicity let me in with a half-shuttered lamp in one hand and a fully-cocked pistol in the other. She put the pistol down and placed a finger to her lips.

"I'm glad you finally came, took you long enough, thought I was going to have to send out an invitation. Ivy and the boys are in the cellar," she whispered "asleep, I hope, and there's a British captain in my bed. I was going to shoot him if he woke. Must be something to this prayer business."

I bent and kissed her, sliding my hand inside her coat to hold her full breast, running her hard nipple through my fingers and feeling her pounding heart. Over her fancy nightshirt, she was wearing the Redcoat-officer's jacket I had given her on the day of the battle. She pushed me back out the door and eased it closed. We stood in the frigid dark with her mouth on mine and her arms around my neck. My hands explored her well-muscled back, soft belly, startling breasts and ample hips, a long, slow, intriguing journey.

"I warned you I'd be back," I told her, when I could get a breath.

"He showed up about an hour ago," she whispered, gnawing at my lip, "drunk as a lord, demanded I do certain beastly things for him, all carefully described. He started to undress and passed out across my bed. He hasn't moved since then, just snoring away in there." She kissed me again and certainly could feel my growing interest through her thin nightdress.

"All right," I said, patting her back, "I'll take care of him and return as soon as I can. You go down and visit with Ivy. I bet she's all ears."

She squeezed me against her hard breasts, and we reentered her home. With her finger nails Felicity opened a door I could not even see in her paneled wall and disappeared down steep steps with her lamp. I went to her bedroom and found an artillery captain sprawled across her bed, his jacket off but his boots still on, his wig awry. As she had said, he was snoring. I nudged him a couple of times, and he did not respond. I undid his neck cloth and gagged him with it. I tied his wrists together without waking him and rolled him over on top of them. When I pricked his cheek with his sword point, he finally opened one eye.

"Get up, captain," I said, "or I will pluck out your eyes and feed them to you." He stumbled to his feet, and I led him out the back door. He made a terrible gurgling sound, and I realized he was throwing up so I yanked off his gag, and he spewed vomit across the path and then spit several times. I put the gag back in and pulled it tight. I found my horse munching Mrs. Snyder's dry grass and helped the captain mount and then got on behind him, taking the stirrups while his feet dangled. He was not a very big man, and my horse did not seem to care.

"Not exactly what you planned on this evening I suppose," I whispered in his ear. I swung a bit wider leaving Trenton, but found my lieutenant just where I had left him, striking his tent while strangely quiet lines of men marched past. Usually you could hear the jingle of frying pans, bayonets and other such accouterments, but these soldiers were stripped down to light packs and ammunition. The campfires still glowed where I had seen them before, even a bit brighter perhaps.