Chapter 50: Amanda

Captain Foster poked at my wounds, pronounced me healthy, and sent me into Philadelphia to listen and learn. I was back on the report-every-fortnight schedule that we had tried to use in New Jersey. Getting into Philadelphia was easy, but it was not always as simple to gather information and get it back out again. George Reedy and I went in together, but then separated. He was on a different schedule, and we did not see each other again until the spring.

That was a good assignment for me since I had decided that I hated soldiering. I had plenty of money to spend, hard money for the most part, and was my own boss. The temptations of the city were many, and except for the pharo gambling, I gave in to most of them at one time or another. As usual I started by attempting to cultivate tavern owners or the girls who worked at the inns, at least the pretty ones and those that I hoped I could trust as well as mount. I also found a few patriots in the tobacco shops and bootmakers' stalls and one bookseller. But that town was full of Tories, and the local farmers were much more willing to sell their produce to the British for gold than to Washington's quartermasters for paper.

One of the best things about that assignment was that I missed the fight at Germantown in the fog. Foster told me all about it in lurid detail during one of my visits to Valley Forge. That was the other thing I did not mind missing, that winter out there in the hills. While the Redcoats ate well, drank well and whored well, the Continentals froze their ballocks off and starved while being cussed at by a stout German. In my wanderings, I asked several times about a golden-haired Spanish girl named Teresa. No one had heard of her.

Amanda McBride at the Golden Ox was my first good decision. She was strong and healthy, but no one was going to call her beautiful. She had long arms and legs, big hands and feet, a nose like a hawk and a laugh like a startled mule. Her dark hair was completely untamable despite her continuous efforts and collection of fancy combs. She could carry eight or ten tankards at one time and keep a running tab in her head for a score of fast-drinking customers. She enjoyed ribaldry, but did not like to be casually handled in the tavern. I saw her swat down more than one ruffian who made a grab for her breast or buttocks, and then help him to his feet, dust him off and bring him a drink on the house.

Mandy evidently took a shine to me almost at once. We are both pretty big people. I do not ever recall asking her about her politics, but she proved her patriotism enough times that no one could doubt it. I met her during the first week of October, just before the fight up the road. She came and sat at my table and guzzled some of my beer just before closing time, wiping her face with her apron. The tavern had served a mix of farmers and mechanics, as well as subalterns and non-coms in red coats. I did not see any Germans that night or any other at the Ox.

"No Hessians?" I asked her, with my hand on her broad thigh.

"Never," she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "First one that came through that door made a grab for me, and I smashed him in the mouth with that small keg of brandy over there. He left spitting teeth, and we ain't seen another one since. Nobody thinks all a'them's human."

"You want to do me a favor?" I asked, running my inquiring hand a bit farther up her leg.

"Depends," she said, brushing my hand away and grabbing my thigh in an iron grip.

I gulped but did not cry out. "Depends on what?" I asked as calmly as I could as she tried to see if my femur was tightly attached.

"What the favor is?" she said with a small laugh, patting what was left of my leg.

"I need a listener with a good memory and an inquiring mind," I said as she drank some more of my beer and then refilled the glass from her pitcher.

"Ain't you're kind'a careless about who you talk to?"

"Why, you a Tory or something, one a'them King lovers?"

If looks could kill, I'd would have died right there and then.

"Listen, shit kicker," she said, looking at my broken boots, "my two brothers are up with Gates. I got a close cousin in the Pennsylvania Line and enough friends and lovers out there killing Redcoats and freezing their asses to keep this place in business for a month. Who the hell are you?"