“He can’t go on fighting with his capital in our hands and his supporters in hiding.”
“Don’t confuse terms, Will. Howe can’t occupy the rebel capital. He can only occupy the place where the capital was, and that’s an empty victory at best. The capital is where the congress meets, and on the twentieth that will be Baltimore. And supporters in hiding can still be supporters, and a force to reckon with.”
Will had to concede the logic of Pryne’s arguments, but he remained stubbornly unconvinced. His spirits continued to be high, buoyed by the prospect of an early end to the rebellion. His optimism was shared by hundreds of loyalists who came out of hiding to strut and crow and openly flaunt copies of the notorious loyalist newspaper, Rivington’s Gazette.
Christmas was spent quietly in chatting with Pryne or in reading one of his books. Will was in the back room the following afternoon, compounding a prescription, when he heard a great tumult of yelling and banging of guns in the street. He ran out to see High Street filled with men, women, and children, whooping, cheering, and capering, oblivious to the bitter cold and a freezing rain that was turning to snow.
“What happened?” Will bawled. “What’s the excitement?”
“Victory!” a dozen voices howled back. “Ain’t ye heard? General Washington slipped across the Delaware in the storm and took the Hessians by surprise. We killed or captured nigh to five hundred and sent the rest flying. Only four of ours was wounded and not a one killed.”
Will turned and stumbled blindly back into the shop. Samuel Pryne, who had heard the news from the doorway, looked at his drawn face and refrained from saying, “I told you so.”
The next few days more than verified Pryne’s predictions. The victory brought new spirit to the patriots, and volunteers flocked to Washington’s side. In swift succession he occupied Trenton, eluded Cornwallis with eight thousand British regulars, scattered another crack force, and captured Princeton. In that brief, bloody fight, the British lost three hundred men killed, wounded, or captured to the Americans’ forty. Howe fell back sullenly on New York, and the winter burst in full fury, to end military operations until spring.
“Now,” Pryne said, “we can tighten our belts and settle down for a long and bitter war.”
“It looks that way,” Will admitted glumly.
Chapter 6
With the shadow of enemy occupation lifted, congress returned to the state house, and the fugitive patriots came swarming back to Philadelphia. They brought with them a new thirst for vengeance and a new, harsher spirit of intolerance toward loyalists. Cartings, floggings, and rail-ridings became an almost daily occurrence and the supply of tar and feathers fell alarmingly.
At the height of the frenzy a wild rumor spread that loyalist apothecaries were poisoning the medicines sold to patriots. In alarm, the state legislature hurriedly passed a law that no apothecary or druggist even suspected of Tory sentiments could remain in business. This was shortly expanded to include doctors.
The day the law passed, Pryne hurried upstairs and spent several hours burning papers in his fireplace and crushing the ashes to powder. He was not a moment too soon.
The next morning a squad of militia led by a red-faced captain tramped in and took possession of the shop for investigation. Although a thorough ransacking, upstairs and down, turned up no incriminating evidence, Pryne and Will were taken to headquarters for questioning. Will maintained the pose of innocent and ignorant apprentice so successfully that his examination was little more than a brief formality. Pryne, however, had to endure a grueling two hours of cross-examination before receiving a certificate of permission to carry on his occupation.
“I’ve learned something of myself today, Will,” he said, on the walk back to the shop. “It seems I missed my calling when I took to herbs and simples. I should have become an author instead, a weaver of romances and fairy tales. I swear, Will, I invented enough of them today to fill Ben Franklin’s library.”
They were not bothered again, and Will was enormously relieved to note that the number of Pryne’s night visitors fell abruptly to almost none. Only rarely did he hear cautious footsteps mount the stairs and come down again almost immediately.
The effect on Pryne, however, was far different. He lost his normal good spirits and became moody and withdrawn. Once, in a rare burst of confidence, he exclaimed, “This constant watching and spying is destroying us. We’re losing touch with the scouts, the men who guided Howe’s troops on the right roads to Philadelphia and who marked the loyal farms where they would be sure of supplies. They daren’t contact us now, but we will have need for their services again, and soon. A dangerous risk will have to be taken then, I fear.”
With spring the seesaw war resumed, and the struggle in Philadelphia intensified. In midsummer a number of prominent men, including a son of William Penn, were jailed for sedition. Some two hundred more, mainly Quakers, with their families were dragged from their homes and deported to Virginia, beyond range of possible communication with the enemy. It was a summer of gloom and tension for both Will and Pryne.
Then, on a stifling night in late July, Will heard a visitor softly come and go on the front stairs. A moment later Pryne came bursting down the back stairway. By the light of the candle he carried, his face was a shifting mask of glee.
“Will, wake up, boy, and hear the news I’ve waited so long for. Not a breath of this must pass your lips, of course. On the twenty-third, General Howe sailed from New York with sixteen thousand troops, the pick of our army. Washington’d give his right arm—no, both arms—to find out his destination, but he won’t learn until it’s too late. Will, he’s on his way to capture Philadelphia, and this time there’ll be no nonsense about it.”
Two days later, from the shop window, Will saw a Continental officer of heroic size race by at breakneck speed on a huge black horse. A scarlet-lined cloak streamed behind in the wind and a sword with a gold hilt bounced at his side. An aide on a bony nag was jouncing far behind in a vain effort to keep up.
“That must be somebody pretty high in the rebel army,” Will said. “He’s sure togged out fancy compared to most.”
Pryne chuckled. “That, my boy, was General George Washington in person, trying to find out which way Howe is heading. By the time he finds out, he may not be quite so high in the army—or he may not have any army left to be high in.”
“You didn’t talk that way the last time Howe started for Philadelphia.”
“The last time,” Pryne said soberly, “Howe was misjudging Washington and still playing at war. Since then he has learned a few lessons and this time he’s coming in dead earnest.”
For Will there were three nerve-wracking weeks of dead silence until Howe’s mighty armada swept into the Chesapeake Bay, moving toward a landing at Head of Elk, fifty-five miles southwest of Philadelphia. Pryne greeted the news by ripping out an unaccustomed oath.
“Now, what in the name of all that’s merciful is he doing clear up there? He could have landed as easily at New Castle or Chester and been twenty miles closer on the very same road. I just hope I haven’t given that dunderhead credit for learning lessons he may not even know are in the book.”
The next afternoon ten thousand Continental troops, with Washington at their head, marched through Philadelphia on the way to meet the invaders. For the most part, their marching order was as ragged as their uniforms, but there was nothing makeshift about the way they handled their weapons or the grim determination on the craggy, weatherworn faces. For the first time Will sensed something of the inherent strength of this ragtag force, and he found the effect disturbing.
Once again Philadelphia boiled with rumors and teetered on the edge of panic. Congress went on meeting, but with its luggage packed for quick flight. Patriots who had been the loudest in their praise of Washington