Chapter 5
Washington, DC
August 24, 1814
August 24, 1814
Usually the capital of the young United States bustled with energy and ambition, but four days after the British Army had made its nearby landing, Washington was as deserted as a plague city. Callie had hardly slept at all the previous night. In the darkest hours, she saw the light of a fire to the northeast. A bridge burning, she guessed.
This morning she’d chosen her clothing carefully, deciding on a blue gown that was elegant but simple so that she would look like a modest lady deserving of respect. She also pulled her hair back into a prim knot since it was too colorful to be respectable.
Now it was late afternoon and the artillery that had boomed earlier had fallen menacingly silent. The nearby battle must be over, but what had happened? Callie moved restlessly around her house, oppressed by the silence and wishing desperately that there was something she could do.
She almost jumped out of her skin when her front door knocker was rapped, but it was a polite-sounding knock. With her loaded pistol in her left hand and concealed in the folds of her gown, she warily opened the door. A harried-looking man dressed as a clerk bowed slightly. “I’m Mr. Williams from the Treasury Department, ma’am. We’re trying to move as many records as we can out of the city. Do you have a horse and wagon my department can borrow? I’ll give you a receipt.”
Grateful that her household had left for Baltimore the morning after Callie had received news of the British landing, she said, “I’m sorry, my horses and cart are in Baltimore with my family.”
He sighed. “A wise decision, but I wish you had more horses and wagons!” He touched the brim of his hat. “You stay safe, ma’am.”
“You also, Mr. Williams.” She closed the door. He wasn’t the first to come by foraging for transportation for vital documents, but he might be the last.
She’d told her two young seamstresses to stay home with their families. Many of the few people left in town were women like herself who were staying in the hope that they could save their homes. It wasn’t a vain wish. Several women in towns around the Chesapeake had been able to persuade British officers not to torch their homes. It was worth the risk of her remaining here.
She was sewing trim on a gown when she heard shouting outside. Again she opened the door, and saw a battered militia officer trotting down the street. Seeing her, he called, “There’s been a battle at Bladensburg and the British routed us! They could be here in a matter of hours, so lock your doors and pray!”
Now that the danger was imminent, she felt surprisingly calm. She’d never been good at waiting. After locking her front door, she left the house through the kitchen and walked quickly down the side street to bring the news to her friend Edith Turner, an older widow who had been the first to welcome Callie to the city. With invasion imminent, Edith had taken in several elderly friends who didn’t have the strength to evacuate.
She answered the door at Callie’s first knock, her face worried. “There’s news?”
“Yes, a militiaman reported that the British routed our forces at Bladensburg.”
Edith gasped. “That’s only a few miles away!”
“The militiaman said to lock our doors and pray,” Callie said grimly. She gave her friend a swift hug. “That’s good advice. Stay safe, Edith!”
Her friend hugged her back. “You also, my dear.”
As Callie returned to the safety of her own solid brick home, she heard a booming explosion to the east, in the direction of the battle. At a guess, American forces had blown up another bridge to slow the British advance. Wryly she wondered if Americans were doing more damage to their capital than the British would have done.
Half an hour or so later, she peered out her front curtains and saw retreating militiamen trickling past. One looked over and saw the movement of her curtain. He spoke to the young man next to him, and the two turned in to her front walk. More knocking. They looked more frightened than threatening, so she opened the door, though once more she kept her pistol handy.
“Ma’am.” The taller of the two young men coughed, then started again. “Ma’am, could we have some water? Please? Me and my brother are like to keel over.”
“Of course. Get in the shade of that tree and I’ll bring you some,” she replied.
Guessing there would be more men needing water, she brought two full buckets and a pair of ladles. “Help yourselves. There’s more where this came from.”
“The only Americans who knew how to fight were Commodore Barney’s flotilla men,” the taller brother said bitterly after he thirstily gulped down a ladleful of water. “They been fightin’ the British Navy up and down the bay for months. They knew how to stand their ground! I heard some of ’em say they’d keep fighting all through the streets of Washington.”
Seeing their humiliation, Callie said quietly, “If soldiers aren’t experienced and the whole company collapses and retreats, there’s no point in individual soldiers staying to fight. Your mother wouldn’t like it if you got yourself killed for no good reason.”
“The lady is right, Jem,” the shorter brother said. “Ma would kill us again if she thought we was that stupid.” He drank deeply, then poured a ladleful of water over his head to cool himself down. “We ran today, but by God, we’ll fight again another day!”
“They’ll not take Baltimore!” Jem used the ladle to fill his empty pewter canteen. “Thank you kindly, ma’am. We’ll be on our way again. It’s a long hike north.”
Callie wished them well and refilled the water buckets, leaving them on the edge of her lawn with the ladles so other retreating soldiers could drink. Then she withdrew into her house again, pulled the curtains, and waited.
The summer days were long in August, and it wasn’t yet full dark when she heard the sound of marching men. She took her pistol in hand again. A single shot wouldn’t be of any use against an army, but she felt better for having a weapon to hand.
Needing to see, she pulled her curtains open a sliver and peered out. A group of several dozen soldiers were marching past her house with mounted officers in the lead. They were heading toward the capitol building and flying a white flag of truce.
She sighed with relief. Perhaps the British wanted to negotiate a ransom that would save the city from being destroyed.
Being female, Callie thought a ransom in return for sparing the capital was a fine idea, though she suspected that many men had too much pride to give money to the enemy even to save the city. But even if the government was willing to be reasonable, she wasn’t sure there was anyone left in Washington with the authority to negotiate.
She studied the riders. That erect man in the lead wore the insignia of a major general and was surely Robert Ross, the commander of the army forces. One of Wellington’s top generals in the Peninsular wars, he was said to be a just and honorable man who didn’t wreak havoc on civilians. But the man riding next to him . . .
She frowned. An admiral of the Royal Navy rode beside Ross. That must be George Cockburn, who had been named the most hated man in America because of his months spent slashing and burning up and down the Chesapeake Bay. He’d destroyed whole towns as punishment for American destruction in Canada.
It was said that Cockburn’s older brother had died fighting the rebels during the American Revolution, so the admiral had a very personal hatred for Americans. Callie hoped that since they were on land, General Ross had command over Cockburn.
The troops were moving in good order despite having fought and marched on a very long, hot day. The group was directly in front of her house when she heard noise from upstairs. Footsteps?
She went from nervous to near panic in the space of a heartbeat. The lock on the kitchen door at the back of the house was a simple one and wouldn’t resist a determined housebreaker, and the servants’ stairs ran up from the kitchen. The noise of marching troops must have drowned out any sounds until now.
Clutching her pistol, she headed for the stairs to investigate, but before she could start up, a ragged blast of rifle shots boomed from directly over her head. Hell and damnation! Some American soldiers weren’t giving up, and they had chosen her house as a sniper post!
Her horror at the thought intensified when she ran to her front window and saw General Ross’s horse crash to the ground, taking its rider with it. Several soldiers behind the officer also pitched over, wounded or dead.
Furious and disciplined, his troops immediately returned fire to the upper stories of Callie’s house. Thunderous gunshots and shattering glass, followed by heavy feet pounding down the servants’ stairs. She heard her back door slam as the shooters ran.
Out on the street, General Ross scrambled to his feet, apparently unhurt, praise God. But some of his men had not fared so well. From the reactions of the other troops, some soldiers had died or were seriously injured.
Ross called for another horse. After he remounted, he barked a command that caused the rider with the truce flag to hurl it to the ground.
Callie stood frozen, caught between an impulse to rush outside to see if she could aid the wounded and an equally strong desire to flee. She didn’t want to abandon her home when she’d done nothing wrong. But would the British soldiers listen to her?
A mighty crash sounded against her front door and the glass panes at the top shattered as the wood splintered. Another two blows broke it down completely, and soldiers barreled into her drawing room.
“Find the bloody snipers!” one bellowed.
Instinctively Callie raised her pistol, gripping it with both hands. She was a good shot and could kill or wound one of the soldiers. But which one? She aimed at a slight youth in the lead, but he looked so young. They all looked so young!
Killing one man wouldn’t save her. She lowered the pistol and said in her most English voice, “I don’t know who fired those shots! I think some American soldiers came in the back of my house and fled after shooting at you.”
“We’ll get ’em!” Two soldiers shoved past her and ran toward the back of the house, but the others stayed.
A corporal wrenched the pistol from her hand and struck her on the side of the head with the barrel. “You shot my mate, you treasonous bitch! You’ll pay for that!”
Dizzy and near collapse from the painful blow, she cried out, “I’m Catherine Audley, an English widow from Lancashire! I would never shoot a British soldier!”
The corporal snarled, “You carry a gun and your mates damn near killed General Ross!” He glanced at the pistol, then shoved it under his belt. To his men, he barked, “Break up that furniture and pile it here to start the fire.”
On the verge of blacking out, Callie again said vehemently, “I’m English! I am not your enemy!”
“Too late to play the innocent!” As the corporal grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the door, the other soldiers began smashing furniture and tossing it into the center of the room. One soldier grabbed a chair and began battering the shelves that held fabrics and trims.
The glass-fronted cabinet that contained special buttons and delicate china cups for serving tea to her clients shattered when smashed with the butt of a musket. The soldier spotted a bowl of expensive silver buttons and poured them into his knapsack, then dragged the remnants of the cabinet to the center of the room. Another soldier found the silk gown she’d been carefully trimming and balled it up to add it to the pile.
She looked away, shuddering, unable to bear the sight of these vandals destroying the life she’d painstakingly built, the beautiful objects she’d cherished. Then her captor yanked her out the front door onto the lawn. She tried to fight back, but she was too dizzy and he was too strong. Down the side street she saw Edith Turner watching with her hands pressed over her mouth and her eyes wide with horror.
Ross and Cockburn and most of their troops had moved on, leaving this squad to wreak vengeance for the attack. The white flag of truce that had been thrown to the ground was now filthy with hoof and foot prints.
Swaying dizzily, Callie watched through the shattered front door as torches were thrust into the pile of broken furniture. Flames flickered, then caught hold and flared toward the ceiling. A soldier yelled, “Mick, fire in some of them Congreve rockets!”
Mick pulled two rockets from his knapsack and fired first one, then the other, into the house through the broken windows. The rockets exploded noisily and flames engulfed the drawing room and began racing through the rest of the structure. She stared numbly, hardly able to grasp how quickly her beloved home had become an inferno.
As the flames roared upward, her captor yanked her farther away, more likely for his safety than for hers. Even in the middle of the side street, she felt the searing heat.
There was worse to come. A soldier emerged from the back of the house swigging from a bottle of brandy he’d found in the pantry. It was swiftly emptied as he passed it around to his mates. The last man to drink hurled the empty bottle into the blaze, then turned to Callie with dangerously glittering eyes. “I say we string her up! She hurt my mate bad and coulda killed General Ross. Why should she be breathin’ when so many of our lads died today?”
The man who held her arm retorted, “Mebbe later, but she’s a fine-lookin’, highborn lady and we shouldn’t waste ’er. Let’s show ’er what British soldiers are made of.” He pulled her against him and clamped one hand over her breast.
Revolted, she began fighting frantically to free herself. She managed to knee her captor in the groin. He screeched and let her go, but two other men grabbed her, their expressions wolfish. She grabbed for one man’s rifle and had managed to wrench it from his grasp when a ferociously aristocratic voice bellowed, “Be damned to you all!”
She and the soldiers all swung around, riveted, as an English gentleman galloped up on a white horse. He was garbed in clothing that cost more than a soldier’s annual salary, and his eyes blazed as he commanded, “Unhand my wife!”