Chapter 53: Widowmaker

No matter what Benjamin Franklin had to say about it later, the British certainly enjoyed themselves in Philadelphia that winter. I suppose General Howe was the most at ease, but few were suffering, except for the citizens whose property was destroyed or daughters were raped. The Hessians kept right on acting like Hessians, but the young English officers had a round of balls, parties and theatricals. They thronged the Indian Queen and staged drunken orgies at the Cockpit and the Grapes. Their mistresses, of all colors and nationalities, were regularly paraded through town and given parts in the plays. Many proper Quaker families, even the Tories, found themselves exiled to the third floor of their homes while the lower two became barracks and brothels.

Several of my sources suggested that Howe himself was salting away many golden florins from the scandalous profiteering that went on that winter, but those were just rumors. His long-term affair with Betsy Loring was no secret from anyone.

Americans prisoners were treated very badly, poorly housed and worse fed. Many of the spies we sent into town just disappeared. Dead patriots soon began filling the local potter's field.

The Hessians stabled their horses in private homes and cut holes in the floor so they could shovel the manure into the basements. They threw fences, furniture and siding from local houses and sheds into their fires. Libraries, including Franklin's, were plundered by both the British and Germans, and what they could not haul off, they burned. I suspect that many Philadelphians regretted welcoming their "visitors."

I saw young Banastre Tarleton for the first time that winter, a beefy man in a tight fitting uniform, wearing a long, green plume in his hat and a handsome woman on his arm, and I certainly heard about John André although I do not believe I ever saw him. Long before spring came up the river, I was telling Captain Foster that Sir William was going to return to England. That word was on the wind. He obviously had no stomach for nor interest in the war.

With Sal's and Amanda's help, I was able to snag a few more young officers for rides out to Valley Forge. On one of my twice-a-month trips back to headquarters I saw "Baron" Von Steuben at work for the first time. He was training a model drill squad of some sort, all volunteers I was told. From their age, dress and deportment, they were veterans of the campaign, but this large, loud, big-nosed man was treating them like dogs. He taught them how to stand and then how to march, and march in step. He cursed them in a mix of languages and worked as long and as hard as his men did.

Two weeks later I saw squads marching around the muddy grounds, counting loudly in a German accent; "von-du-dree" and keeping in step, looking like soldiers. Discipline is what they learned, but I was happy to be in Philadelphia. Every time I went back to the starving, freezing hutments, I was gladder as the winter seemed to drag on forever. I would see much more of the Baron before this long war was over. By the winter's end General Greene had become the quartermaster general, and things, including supplies of food, improved.

One day Amanda had a letter for me, neatly folded and wax sealed with my name in flowing script on the outside. "Somebody knows who you are and where to find you," the woman said, arching an eyebrow.

I sniffed the missive, snapped open the seal and spread out the heavy paper. The salutation was "You Great Fool" so I pretty sure the person who wrote it knew me. I scanned down to the bottom of the page and read, with some difficulty, the signature, "never y'r ob't serv't, Madam A. G. Smollett." I smiled as I was sure I meant to do.

"Where did you get this?" I asked, waving the letter.

"Boy brung it. Who's it from?"

I showed her the signature, but she just shook her head.

The letter read, as I recall, at about three oversized words per line, "You may remember me from Boston where I was known as Singleton and from New York where you graciously made me a widow again. I saw you on the street, going into this place, and since I know your real name, thought I might attempt to contact you. I believe I can be of help. I hope you can help me."

I looked up, but Amanda had gone about her business. I closed my eyes and saw the luscious woman with the long hair and flawless skin. The last line gave an address and said I should come to the back and ask for Rosa.

The address was a most stately home on the fringe of the bustling town, and Rosa proved to be a diminutive slave woman of some years. I told her my name, which brought a small smile, and said I wished to see Madam Smollett.

"Perhaps," she said, "follow me," and she led me into the dark house, through several well-appointed rooms and into a front sitting room with a bow window, a good fire and a thick floor covering. "Wait," she said as she quietly left. I heard her climbing the stairs and took the measure of the room, a woman's room obviously from the light colors, numerous plants, and colorful paintings. I paced the Chinese carpet and wondered how the woman had coped after I left her with a dead consort face down in the manure pile.

The door slid open and there she was, smiling. The first thing I saw after the smile was the oversized blue sapphire dangling between her nearly exposed breasts. She crossed the room like a lioness, took my hand and held it to her heart. I bent and kissed her gently.

She gestured to a chair, rang a small bell and smiled again. Tea appeared in Rosa's hands along with crackers, sweets and small open-faced sandwiches. She poured, we drank and when the servants had left, she put down her cup.

"Damn," she said, hunching her shoulders, "it is good to see you. You are just about the first honest face I've seen since I've been in this mannerless, overgrown hamlet."

"You are associating with the wrong people," I told her as straight-faced as possible.

She nodded, jouncing her huge hair-do about. "I know, I know. In just in the last three months. I've made enough mistakes to get me hung"

"Tell me," I said, crossing my legs and gobbling food, resisting the urge to gobble up her as well, almost sure I would soon have that opportunity.

"Well," she said, looking out the window and fingering the large, icy stone, "after Filmore's funeral they kegged up his body and shipped it home, confiscated the house and the horses, found his books in complete disarray and told me to vanish. I did with all the jewels and hard money I could find."

"You look well," I said. And she did, pink and healthy, pump and vigorous, her hair shining and her skin glowing.

"I feel terrible, which is why I had to see you. I have not had, I have not reached, oh damnme, I need a real man, badly and soon. These weak-kneed fops that follow André around are abominable, and my lord and master is worse. I ache. Like who was it, Romeo, I burn?"

"Who is Smollett?" I asked.

"Ah, well, yes, Smollett. You'll have to meet him. I've made another wonderful match there. He's a quartermaster officer, in supply management, a thief on a grand scale and a pederastic sodomite." She shook her head.

"Good lord," I said.

"I married Lieutenant Brown, Royal Navy you know, within a month after Filmore's demise. That was good as far as it went. Fine man, very young, very rich, very spoiled, very innocent. Virgin of a sort, the kind produced by the Navy after they've been midshipmen. Could not bring himself to lie with me at first. Wanted me to suck him and later, when he felt secure, to whip him, lash his buttocks. I ask you? I was training him, bringing him along when he died. Actually got him to sleep with me but that's all."

"What got him?" I asked, stuffing down another small sandwich.

"Broke his neck, fell from a cross tree, they said. But I suspect one of his lovers may have done him in."

I shook my head.

"They buried him out there, at sea I mean, full honors. I learned a month or so later. I've written his family, sending copies of the papers, and asking for my widow's share of his inheritance. Have not heard a single word. except for a recent note from a local solicitor saying they did not believe that the marriage had been consummated."

She laughed briefly. "I wonder how they knew," she said. "Then along came this one, Smollett, all manners and silks, as if I hadn't made the same mistake before. But I was hungry. Gave me this bauble as a wedding present." She held up the gaudy sapphire for me to examine. "So I wed him after knowing him a fortnight, still in mourning more or less. More fool me. Local society was scandalized."

"How can I help you?" I asked, enjoying the sight of her chest rising and falling, emerging and retreating behind her lace and stiff-fronted gown.

"We can help each other. He knows a great deal, Smollett does, dispositions, strength, problems, scandals, that sort of thing. You could take him out to your General Washington, pump him dry and dispose of him."

"Kill him, you mean?" I said, putting down my tea cup and admiring her coldbloodedness as well as her lush beauty.

She nodded and smiled. "Remember please that I saw you kill a handful of men like they were so many chickens. This man is mere offal, a waste of air and water."

"Perhaps we could blackmail him and get more that way," I suggested.

"They don't care what he does to boys. There's a house in town that supplies them, and he's hardly alone in his perversions. His idea of making love is to tie me to a bedpost and bugger me. He's done that twice when I had been drinking, but never again."

"You put up with that?"

She nodded, and I shook my head.

"I'd like to talk to him first; see if he'll cooperate under threats."

"He's not to be trusted," she said. "He uses drugs, laudanum, opium, I don't know what all, absinthe, coca."

Somewhere in the house a door opened and closed. "Here he is now," the woman said, looking worried. "He comes home for his mid-day meal and to devil me."

She hurried out and was back in a minute with a tall, lean man on her arm. She introduced me, and the man ignored my offered hand and made a slight leg. He wore a small wig, a flaring jacket of dark yellow, a flower embroidered waistcoat, knee britches, silk stockings, silver buckled slippers and a flowing neckcloth of patterned material tied in a big, loose knot. I was surprised his feet touched the floor.