New York - The Novel

clamber up the parapet. He saw a British helmet in front of him, pressed toward it, ready to strike the man down. But a trooper was just ahead of him, lunging with his bayonet.
    As he came over the parapet, there seemed to be redcoats everywhere. They were falling back, trying to get off a volley. Speed was the thing. Without another thought he rushed forward, aware that there were three or four other fellows close by his side. A redcoat was just lifting his gun as James thrust his sword, as hard as he could, into the fellow’s stomach just below the chest. He felt the steel burst through the thick material of the uniform, then strike into the backbone behind. Raising his foot against the body, he dragged the sword out before the redcoat fell.
    The next few moments were so confused, he hardly knew what he wasdoing himself. The redoubt seemed to be a jostling mass of bodies, and the sheer weight of the attacking numbers seemed to be pushing the redcoats back. He found himself beside a tent, worked his way round it, found a redcoat in front of him with a bayonet which he parried aside, while another of his own men ran the redcoat through. Strangely, the tent seemed to act like a magic barrier in the middle of the hubbub. Coming to the tent flap, he found it open. A British officer, who must have just been wounded, had staggered in there and was lying on the ground. Blood was coming from his leg. His helmet was off, and James saw a tangled mass of hair. He took out his pistol, and the officer turned, clearly expecting death.
    It was Grey Albion. He stared at James, astonished, but he didn’t smile. This was battle after all.
    “Well, James,” he said evenly, “if someone’s going to kill me, I’d rather it was you.”
    James paused. “If you surrender,” he said coldly, “you’re my prisoner. If not, I shoot. Those are the rules.”
    Albion glanced around. The fighting seemed to have moved beyond the tent as the British were falling back. There would be no help from that quarter. His sword was on the ground beside him, but his leg was wounded and James was armed. Unless James’s pistol misfired, he had no options. He sighed.
    And then James spoke again. “One other matter. You are to leave my sister alone. You are to cease from all correspondence with her and you are never to see her again. Do you understand?”
    “I love her, James.”
    “Choose.”
    “If I refuse?”
    “I shoot. No one will be any the wiser.”
    “Hardly the word of a gentleman.”
    “No.” James pointed the pistol at his head. “Choose. I require your word.”
    Albion hesitated. “As you wish,” he said at last. “You have my word.”

    With the redoubts taken, Cornwallis’s camp was open to close bombardment. Two days later, he tried to break out and get troops across the river, but stormy weather prevented him. Three days after that, on October 19,having no other option, he surrendered. As his troops marched out, they played the dance tune “Derry Down.”

    On November 19, 1781, a ship came into New York from Virginia. On board was no less a person than Lord Cornwallis himself. While his troops had been held in transports, the general had negotiated a release on parole, so that he could go to London to explain himself.
    Awaiting a vessel to England, he retired to a house in the town where he busied himself with correspondence. He certainly hadn’t come to New York to enjoy its society. Relations between himself and General Clinton were said to be strained. If Clinton thought Cornwallis had been rash, Cornwallis could point out that he had obeyed instructions from London, and considered that Clinton had not done enough to support him. In the wake of the disaster, both men were preparing their cases.
    The same ship also carried a letter from James. It was affectionate and full of news. It seemed that Washington had considered following the victory of Yorktown with a strike against New York that might have ended the war there and then. But Admiral de Grasse was anxious to go and do more damage to the British in the Caribbean. “So I dare say,” he wrote, “that I shall be spending some more weeks sitting outside the gates of New York, and thinking of my home and my dear family within as I do so.” He seemed to believe, nonetheless, that the end of the war must now be in sight.
    He then gave them some account of the events at Yorktown, and the attacks on the redoubts. The next part of his letter, her father handed to