“You know, Lieutenant, I fear that after some time in your new appointment a simple ale now and again just won’t help to get you through those especially hard days when you feel things might be going against you.” He gestured toward the empty glass he left on the table with a nod of his head. “You should try something infinitely more fortifying... Scotch. Come!” Maxwell donned his hat and walked out.

Allison stood up, bolted the remainder of his ale as if to steel his nerves in spite of the Major’s suggestion, and followed.

Standing in the street outside, on the fringes of the lamplight from the Black Horse, was a man in chains who was shackled wrist and ankle. The intimidating presence of four mitered redcoat grenadiers served as his escort. Three of the soldiers were armed with bayoneted muskets and the fourth, who looked to be a noncommissioned officer, held a torch. The prisoner’s posture was stooped and the weak light of the tavern lamps combined with the brightness of the torch held behind him threw his face into shadow.

“We’ve gotten nothing from him, sir,” the torch bearer said to Maxwell. The Major nodded his understanding.

“So, Mr. Allison ,” Maxwell’s loud voice echoed up and down the street, “do you happen to know this man?” He walked over to the prisoner and grabbing his hair, jerked the man’s head back allowing the torchlight to reveal its features. The face was bruised and swollen, but was quite easily recognizable as that of the coach driver who had brought Allison here from New York City.

The Major didn’t wait for an answer from Allison , likely having taken the look on his face as all the confirmation he needed. After shouting “Bring him!” to the grenadiers, who prodded their prisoner forward, he pointed further down the street indicating for Allison to come along.

Allison obediently hastened forward to match his stride, still more than bewildered by this revelation. As the soldiers followed with their quarry, something came to his mind.

“Dear God, the whiskey!” Allison exclaimed. “The man offered me a drink from his flask during the first overnight stop! I was so tired at the time it was easy enough to believe I just fell asleep. I had already broken the envelope seal earlier. Under the effects of a sleeping draught, the letter could have been removed from my person and returned without my ever knowing it. He probably saw Mr. Mike leave it in the carriage for me before leaving the city.” Allison exhaled sharply, disappointed with himself. “I should have disposed of that message sooner, though I don’t know what opportunities I had to do so.”

“Hmmm... maybe they weren’t totally wrong about you, Mr. Allison . You do appear to have some powers of reason, even if the initiative to act upon them might be somewhat inhibited... or even dormant,” Maxwell remarked with a sneer. “Let’s see what else you might have noted along the way but didn’t fully process.”

Soon, the streets turned from cobblestones to bare earth and they came to a long wooden building near the river which they entered through a small door. It had the appearance of being a storehouse for goods and supplies transported by bateau or barge on the river given the large number of sacks, baskets and wooden crates piled along the walls. There was already a small fire burning on a section of earthen floor near the entrance which threw eerie dancing shadows on the walls. Another soldier stood within near the doorway. The clank of chains indicated that the coach driver had just been ushered through the door by his captors.

“String him up!” the Major commanded, and without delay, the grenadiers had the man suspended by his arm chains from a hook on one of the ceiling beams like a side of beef. His feet only half-touched the dirt. The noncommissioned officer then produced a knife and unceremoniously cut through the material of the man’s brown coat and then the shirt underneath. They were stripped off and he was left bare-chested in the cold air.

“Lieutenant, let’s see if your colonial sensibilities were as much of an impedance as I suspect,” Maxwell called out.

After a look at Allison , Maxwell walked up to the prisoner, who had the morose countenance and downcast eyes of a man who thought himself already dead. The Major grabbed his chin and roughly lifted his head so that the man couldn’t help but look him in the eye.

“Qui êtes-vous? Pour qui travaillez-vous?” the Major asked.

Allison began to feel something like a sickness growing in his gut as an unnerving realization dawned on him. He had thought there was something singularly different about the man! A Frenchman! Allison also realized that the Major had taken note of his reaction, nodding as though confirming something previously suspected.

When the driver didn’t answer his questions, Maxwell exhaled as if disappointed, shook his head, stepped back a couple of paces and nodded to one of the soldiers. The grenadier stepped forward and slammed the butt of his musket into the side of the man’s head with a sickening crack. The coachman yelled aloud and would have fallen to his knees if the chains hadn’t held him upright.

Major Maxwell stepped back up to him and repeated his questions in French with a far more insistent and emphatic tone. He put his left hand to his hip, pulling back his coat on that side to reveal the pistol at his belt. The restrained offender appeared not to notice and was taking heaving breaths as a result of the trauma from the blow he had taken. Even in the rather dim light, a small stream of crimson was noticeable on his chin from which droplets fell to the dirt. Then in a sudden burst of defiance, the driver lifted his head and a stream of red-pink spittle shot into the Major’s face from beneath the man’s broad Gallic moustache.

“Barbare ecossais!!” the prisoner bellowed through his swollen jaws.

Maintaining a semblance of dignity, the Major simply looked nonplussed and pulled a handkerchief from inside his coat. He wiped the bloody mess from his face and then nodded to the grenadier sergeant who walked to where the fire was burning and knelt down. From where he stood, viewing the scene with more and more repugnance, Allison couldn’t tell what the soldier was doing.

“Perhaps you prefer English after all!” Maxwell exclaimed as he pulled the pistol from his belt, cocked it and aimed it point-blank at the driver’s face. “Then understand this, mon ami... you will not be given the benefit of an easy death. That option has been forfeited!”

At this, the Major aimed his pistol at the roof and fired, but made sure to hold it so the flint struck within inches of the prisoner’s cheek. The man yelled in pain, no doubt partially deafened and with powder burns on his face and neck. At once, Maxwell turned the pistol to grip it by the barrel and slammed the coachman in the face with the heavy, brass plated butt. The chained man looked to go nearly unconscious as he immediately slumped and the chains shackled to his wrists were again the only things holding him up.

Maxwell allowed his brogue to become more prominent as he spoke aloud with his ire rising to its boiling point. Allison didn’t know if it was simply a result of his anger or done consciously out of scorn for the driver’s earlier outburst.

“We gotta lively one here, lads! It’s only fittin’, we show ‘im whatta welcomin’ bunch o’ thistle heads we Royal Scots truly are!” The Major seized the prisoner by the hair again and picked up his head so as to look him in the eye one more time. “Sadly, I fear the Auld Alliance between our countries is dead and defunct, my friend. Though I canna believe it would have ever reely mattered here in this provincial backwater!” Maxwell looked at the sergeant who nodded and stood up, then began to approach holding an iron poker, the tip of which was smoking hot from being held in the fire.

Allison had seen more than enough and he wanted no part whatsoever of what was about to occur. He turned and strode purposefully out the door through which they had originally come without so much as a word. Major Maxwell hastened to follow and shouted back to the captive as he walked, “I’ll be back presently. ’Till then I’ll leave you to the tender mercies of the lads here!”

The night was noticeably cooler outside the storehouse’s walls. Allison stopped walking in the middle of the street with his mouth agape in disgust and his hands on his hips as he heard the Major’s footsteps catching up with him.

“Just where are you going, Lieutenant?” the Major demanded when they were both outside on the street. His voice seemed to quickly settle back into more of the timbre it possessed while they were at the tavern.

“Major, I’ve seen enough! If you’ll forgive me for saying so, sir, this has been most... most...”

“NECESSARY!!” Maxwell roared. His outburst seemed to resonate throughout the entire sleeping town of Trenton and beyond. An awkward silence followed his exclamation which was broken only intermittently by the distant barking of a dog and the barely audible gurgling of the nearby Delaware.

Then Maxwell stepped toward Allison and drew him along to the far end of the wooden storehouse where the shadows helped hide them from the street. He took the copy of the order letter from his coat and shook it in the air periodically as he spoke with a tone of voice Allison didn’t believe he had yet heard come from the Major. Although the two men had never met prior to tonight, what he said now sounded almost like the honest exasperation of a senior officer toward a trusted subordinate with whom he felt genuine disappointment.

“Lieutenant, the man who drove you here over the past two days was suspected by his own employer of being a French spy.”

“Mike ?”

“Indeed. He made his suspicions known to the authorities some weeks ago in New York, and when they were eventually brought to our attention we asked him if he would oblige us with some assistance in making that determination.”

“Delivery of the sealed letter and the arrangement of my journey...” Allison again rejoined.

“Yes. We had good reason to believe this man would take every opportunity to play his hand when assigned to transport a British military officer, and he drugged you to obtain this intelligence. We believe his contacts in this area were English-speaking Lenape scouts who would then have carried the message North. We’re not sure exactly how - if it would be passed through more northerly tribes like their Abenaki brethren for instance - but eventually it stands to reason it would find itself in the hands of Montcalm, Levis, or even Vaudreuil, the Governor-General of Nouvelle France himself.”

“Blazes! Well, at least the message contained very little of use.” Allison said.