Halestorm Read online

  Could you choose between love and freedom?

  Set during the American Revolution, Halestorm tells the story of the war’s most endearing hero: Nathan Hale, the 21-year-old spy who “only regretted he had but one life to give for his country.” Caught between honor and romance, Nathan must forfeit the woman he hopes to marry, even as a rival for her hand vows to win her at any cost. Their contest culminates in a British Artillery Park when Nathan hangs for espionage – but, in a surprising twist, still triumphs.

  Filled with love and conflict, murder and betrayal, Halestorm whisks readers into an era of wrenching choices and extraordinary sacrifices. Author Becky Akers dramatizes the characters and period through meticulous research, clever dialogue, and a fast-moving plot whose climax will stir your deepest emotions.

  HALESTORM

  Becky Akers

  Copyright © 2012 Becky Akers

  To all Sons of Liberty, then and now, especially Mark

  PROLOGUE

  Nathan never thought he would spend the last night of his life in a greenhouse.

  Dead and dying plants cluttered the place, their mustiness heavy on the warm evening. Clanking muskets and the tread of boots sounded from the Redcoats outside. The sun was sinking in final farewell over Hudson’s River, but enough light remained to discern the cracked dirt in the earthenware pots. The farm boy in him mourned that drought was killing a fine crop. He would gladly water the wilted vines, but the British have issued him no drink, no food, not even a Bible.

  It was just as well that he had no rations. The void within, born full-grown and monstrous when General Howe sentenced him to hang tomorrow, would not let him swallow anything.

  Besides, he has twice seen a man hanged: once earlier today as New York burned, and the first time a few years ago, when he and his brother Enoch were riding home from college. They had passed a large oak, a gallows tree, with people bunched and spellbound. A thief balanced above the crowd atop an ox’s broad back. His arms were tied behind him, a noose clutched his neck, and he grimaced with such horror that those urgent, twisted features haunted the boys for months. They should not have watched. Nathan had implored Enoch to travel on, but his brother sat his horse, mesmerized. So he, too, bore witness, unable to turn his eyes.

  Someone smacked the ox’s hindquarters, and the thief gave a scream that choked off with a gasp. His feet scrabbled for a toehold. His body jerked and heaved. Then the man wet himself, worst shame of all.

  No, Nathan vowed, he would drink nothing, eat nothing this night, though he was parched as a cornfield in July.

  The pacing outside stopped, and he heard a command to draw back the bolt. He ran a hand through his hair, struggling to compose himself.

  General Howe’s aide-de-camp entered. He wasted no salute on a rebel, let alone a spy, nor sympathy either. “The General begs to inform you that you have only to let him know, should you reconsider and accept his terms,” the aide recited tonelessly, eyes straight ahead. Still, his manner implied that Howe was merciful beyond reason. “What answer shall I give?”

  Nathan stood silent, trying to frame a reply as elegant as the aide’s spiel even if his voice squeaked with terror. At last he said, “Pray, um, present my compliments to him, but I—I…My answer’s the same as before.”

  Those eyes shifted to stare at him, as fascinated as Enoch with the condemned thief.

  “Well…” The aide coughed. “If you, ah, change your mind....”

  When he was alone again, Nathan collapsed onto a bench, remembering his interrogation with General Howe an hour earlier. There had been no denying his espionage with his notes spread before the British commander. He had labored long over those pages, and he felt for them what his father did for new-ploughed land. They were his creation, won by his effort and ingenuity during his week with the enemy, invaluable to the Continentals. But this morning, as he was returning to hand them—and victory—to General Washington, the Redcoats had grabbed him, just steps from American lines.

  Even Howe was impressed. He had looked up from the notes to say, “I could use a man like you. No sense letting the noose get you. You’ve made a mistake, son, a bad one, true, but we all do when we’re young. Tell me now, wouldn’t you rather fight for your king than against him? What do you want? Money? Promotion?”

  Nathan had leapt to his feet, fists clenched. “I’d rather hang a thousand times than live a traitor to my country’s liberty!”

  Brave, glorious words—and Howe would see that he had his wish. But it was one thing to utter such sentiment in the heat of the moment and another to sit in this suffocating greenhouse on York Island, with the earth spinning toward the morrow, thinking on his family and his sweetheart and how he could go home again after all, to know that the life he counted gone was his for the asking.

  His mind seized on Ally. If only he might talk with her, draw courage from the clasp of her hand. It seemed impossible that they had been together this time yesterday. Her eyes had sparkled up at him as she lay beside him in his room....

  And his father. He could almost see the Deacon: tall, stern, imposing. If the news of his son’s death didn’t kill him, the shame of it, of being strung up like a dog or a murderer, would. His father was as staunch a Patriot as any. Four of his boys served the Cause, two more clamored to join, and he’d forbidden the women at home from wearing their own wool that they might weave it for Continental uniforms. However much he grieved at a son’s loss in battle, quiet pride would comfort him. But to have his child hanged as a spy—

  Night had fallen, though Nathan didn’t notice until shadows slithered through the door’s slats. Again the bolt slid back; again he feigned composure, expecting another emissary from General Howe.

  A red-coated lieutenant stepped into the room. He carried a candle in one hand and a battered little book in the other. He was a short man, slight, with at least ten more years to his credit than his prisoner. Pistols bulged in both pockets of his uniform. Still, by the time he reached them....

  Nathan could lay the officer out with just one blow, could jump him and run for it, leave all honor behind—

  As if reading his mind, two soldiers appeared behind the lieutenant, bayonets fixed.

  “Sir,” his visitor was saying, “I found a Bible for you, agreeable to your request, but if the provost marshal catches you with it, he’ll take a fit. And I’ll see about some paper and ink, so’s you can write your family.” He laid the Testament on the bench and handed the taper to Nathan. Its flame caught the sympathy in the eyes above the scarlet cloth. Were there tears as well? “Mr. Hale—”

  “Please, sir, I’m a captain in the Continental Army.” Nathan has corrected the Redcoats so many times on this point; so many times they’ve retorted that the king and Parliament deem them rabble, not an army, with neither rank nor respect. The lieutenant surprised him, then, when he acquiesced. But he spoke softly lest the guards hear.

  “Captain Hale, I—I’m sorry that the war—that you—I’m sorry, sir. If there’s anything else I can do....” He bowed, and Nathan reproached himself for thinking to overpower a man who came in friendship.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  “Certainly, Captain. You’re a gentleman of honor, sir, never mind what anyone says.” He bowed again, retreated to the door, and saluted.

  Only when the lieutenant left did Nathan Hale slump to the bench, defeated, despairing….

  CHAPTER 1

  Yesterday, it had rained steadily, bad weather for harvesting. The fields turned to muck, and water cascaded off the barn’s roof in sheets. Deacon Hale despised cursing, but even he was tempted to damn the downpour that kept him and his sons from their work. The corn would burst on the ear if they did not gather it soon, and he would be short four hands once Nathan and Enoch
returned to college. He had never known a year to match this one of 1772 for rain.

  Today, though, the sun shone in a clear sky and streamed through the windows of the Hales’ parlor. It twinkled off the pewter plates marching along the sides of the table and the platters ranged symmetrically between their ranks. A vast meat pie did duty as centerpiece with bowls of cranberries blushing around it. The women had sacrificed half their flock of poultry to this meal, offering chicken with dumplings, chicken in a pie, chicken fricasseed and fried. Nathan favored fruit, so a dish of spiced apples sat before his place, mounded high enough to hide him. Still, since the Hales considered meals only a prelude to dessert, his wife had outdone herself with jams and jellies, fools and flummeries. She was bound that this dinner, the last before her stepsons departed for Yale, would be the most festive yet.

  The Deacon watched from the doorway while his wife surveyed the table and ticked off dishes on her fingers, as though they would starve if she forgot one. She was a comely woman in her white lawn cap, and he admired the play of light and emotion across her face. She lacked the genius of his first wife, but he had found that a perfect face and figure compensated for most shortcomings. “Abigail, this looks fine.”

  She smiled and patted his cheek.

  Her daughter Alice hurried to the table with pots of coffee and tea, hot from the fire. Turned sixteen a few months past, she was as striking as her mother. But the beauty that endeared Abigail to the Deacon made him suspicious of Alice. Any girl as fetching as that was bound for trouble. He studied her while she filled mugs and congratulated her mother. “Looks like we’re expecting the king himself, Mama. They’ll never forget this meal. Maybe they won’t even want to go back to school after all this—”

  “Don’t start with that, Alice.” Abigail set a jug of milk beside Enoch’s plate. “They’re going back tomorrow, no matter how much you want them to stay. Now go call everybody.”

  But the aromas and hunger were already pulling the rest of the family into the room. The Deacon left the doorway for his place at the table’s head.

  Alice stepped out of his way. She had never liked her stepfather, though it was five years since her mother had married him. She preferred to dote on Nathan as he stood behind his chair and bantered with Enoch. He felt her gaze and glanced up with a smile before laughing at Enoch’s joke. Joanna, the baby of the family and a wisp of a girl though she was eight years old, tugged on Nathan’s waistcoat. He leaned down to whisper with her before swinging her to his shoulder as she giggled. He buried his face in her stomach, pretended to take a bite, told her he’d rather have little girl for dinner than corn or seasoned greens.

  “Nathan, put your sister down.” The Deacon spoke more from habit than anything else. He demanded propriety at the dinner table, and woe betide the person, except Nathan, who violated that. He bowed his head. “Let us pray.”

  Alice stole another look at Nathan to tide her over the Deacon’s grace. She loved how his hair fell over his forehead, though he ran a hand through it to tame it. Those hands, delicate as a deer and strong as one, too, now lay folded before him. She had seen them cradle a newborn lamb and warm it, or calm a colt, a branded calf, a crying child.

  The Deacon said his “Amen,” and the family took their seats.

  “Anybody want some of this?” Enoch swept the apples from before Nathan and passed them across the table to his brother Joseph.

  Nathan grabbed the milk-jug. “’Tis my hostage, Enoch, until I get my apples.”

  As Nathan could subsist on fruit, so Enoch would eat nothing without milk. David, ten years old and the image of his brothers at that age, piped up. “Don’t give it to him, Nathan. That makes more for the rest of us.”

  “All right, boys, that’s enough.” The Deacon spoke so mildly he might have been complimenting them. “You’ll make us glad you’re leaving tomorrow, long as we can eat in peace.” He smiled, and Alice dropped her fork. She could count on one hand with two or three fingers remaining the times the Deacon had tried a sally. She glanced again at Nathan, wondering at his magic.

  “Father,” he said now around a mouthful of Abigail’s wheat bread, “unless there’s something you want done, I’m going to town this afternoon, return some books to Reverend Huntington.”

  Alice’s heart lurched, but she sat silent. If she asked to go, the Deacon would assign her some chore. Indeed, he began handing them out then and there.

  “That’s fine, son. I want to finish the hay out behind the house, if the rain didn’t ruin it, but Enoch and Joseph can help me there. Samuel, you too. Joanna, Beth, once the kitchen’s put to rights, you girls gather up the pears in the orchard. David, you pick those beans, and I want them done all the way to the middle of the patch this time, you understand?”

  Joanna upset the preserves, distracting the Deacon before he had finished matching workers with jobs, and Alice sighed with relief. She must accompany Nathan; this was her last chance to be alone with him. She had determined that before he left tomorrow, she would have a proposal from him, whatever his father’s objections.

  She had loved Nathan for as long as she had known him, ever since her mother had married Deacon Hale and moved herself and her daughters into his somber, crowded household. Alice could smile now, remembering her apprehensions that day. She’d been eleven, too big to cry, and she insisted the dust was making her eyes water as they exchanged her birthplace in Canterbury, Connecticut, for Coventry and the Hale farm. Coventry seemed alien and hostile, though it lay but fifteen miles from Canterbury and was identical to it.

  Then, too, she was used to sharing her mother with only one sister. But Deacon Hale had ten children, eight of them boys. Nor had she known what to expect from those strange creatures who would become her brothers. Would they tease her? Punch and kick her? Make her cook and clean for them and sew their breeches?

  Even her sister Sarah, a grown woman in Alice’s eyes now that she was sixteen and leaving a sweetheart in Canterbury, chewed at her thumb as the Deacon drove them to their new home. The girls clutched the sides of the cart rattling toward Coventry at breakneck speed. After the first miles, they realized something was wrong besides their stepfather’s reckless driving, though they couldn’t say what. By the time they were halfway to his farm, Sarah whispered, “He hasn’t laughed once. I don’t think he’s even smiled.” Beside the Deacon sat their usually giggling, frivolous mother, subdued as a rabbit in an eagle’s shadow.

  They reached the Hales’ land, acres and acres of corn and rye engulfing a house, barn, and outbuildings. The home was a simple one of two floors that seemed too small for the brood converging on them from ten directions. Deacon Hale must have ordered the smiles plastered on all faces, from that of Samuel, the firstborn, to Joanna, then just three years old. Alice understood too well. Their mother had been dead less than a year, yet here came a woman to usurp her place. She herself was upset that their forbidding father had become hers also, and she couldn’t even remember her real one, so long ago had he died. This recently bereaved family must resent them even more. She longed to climb into the cart and go home, where they belonged.

  Then her eyes fell on Nathan, and such thoughts left her with her breath. He was tall and broad-shouldered, especially for a boy of thirteen, with honey hair gleaming to rival any halo. It was brushed off his forehead to keep it out of a powder burn, black and still raw, from a hunting accident. That alone marred his beauty. His eyes were the same brilliant blue as hers, and as thickly lashed, too. Alice shivered. Once she looked into those eyes, she knew she would discover precious secrets, sacred ideals. He had a confidence about him, a self-containment, an easiness with himself and others that made her itch to know him, that fixed her mind and soul on him.

  “Alice, Mr. Hale’s talking to you.”

  Her mother’s reproof and a poke in the ribs jolted her from her adoration. She gulped as the Deacon spoke in ponderous, aggrieved tones. “I said, you and Sarah’ll probably be great friends with my Beth.”<
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  Alice ducked her head. A confused impression of an older girl holding Joanna while the whole family stared held her blushing and tongue-tied.

  Then Nathan rescued her. His voice should have been cracked and hoarse, as befit a boy on his way to manhood. Instead, it was clear, low, sweet.

  “Did my father scare you to death with his driving? They say birds won’t fly when he’s got the reins for fear he’ll outrun ’em.”

  “Now, Nathan,” the Deacon said, but a smile tickled his lips, to Alice’s amazement. His children lost their contrived grins and laughed.

  She swore Nathan winked at her as he continued. “Beth made some gingerbread for you. It’s pretty good now that she puts ginger in it ’stead of mustard.”

  “Nathan, stop it,” his sister said, though she was chuckling with everyone else. Coventry at once became more welcoming, and Alice’s heart was gone from that moment, enthralled by this stepbrother.

  For the next year, it was enough to sit near him or walk beside him, to watch the firelight on his face as he whittled in the evenings, to memorize his quips at supper and repeat them to herself before she fell asleep. When he spoke of the day’s lessons, she listened with all of herself, leaning forward, eyes aglow. She might interrupt with questions about Pericles or Greek’s use of the aorist, but never as the others did with an account of the battle two roosters had fought that morning or how much corn the north field would produce. Nor did she care that the affection he gave her was what he showed for David or Joanna.

  But then she turned twelve, and Nathan, fourteen. He was old enough for college, the Deacon decreed, especially if sixteen-year-old Enoch enrolled, too. Her heart broke when he set off for Yale, and it broke anew each time he visited Coventry to treat her as his little sister.

  She tried to make him see her as a woman, the way she saw herself. When he came home during the harvest of her thirteenth year, she sighed a lot and gazed about soulfully. She had read The Vicar of Wakefield, and Sophia’s success with these tactics impressed her. But all they earned Alice was an early bedtime and a dosing of thyme-tea from her worried mother.