The Once and Future Spy Read Online Free PDF Page A

Commander-in-Chief’s personal bodyguard. He had beenconvicted, a woman whispered to Nate, of plotting with a group of local Tories to poison the man he was supposed to be guarding.
     There was talk that some peas the Virginian had by chance not eaten had killed the chickens they were thrown to.
    Maybe it was true, Nate reflected. But whose truth? Which truth?
    The condemned man, wearing homespun breeches and a dirty white collarless linen shirt open at the neck, struggled to keep
     his balance on the dray as it was pulled past Nate and Stephen and several hundred civilians who had come to witness the hanging.
     Next to Nate a man wearing a cooper’s canvas apron hoisted a small boy onto his shoulders so he could get a better view. Nate,
     in the front rank, studied the condemned man’s face. His cheek muscles twitched, his eyes darted from side to side, spittle
     dribbled from a quivering lower lip. Nate noticed a stain spreading around the man’s crotch, and I think, I imagine Nate thought:
     If it ever comes to that, I swear to God I will not lose control of myself.
    Nate repeated “I swear” out loud, almost as if he were taking an oath.
    The dray drew abreast of the Commander-in-Chief sitting impassively on his white mare, which was pawing playfully at the ground
     with her right front hoof. A general from central casting on a horse from central casting. (I know a historian is supposed
     to be above this kind of comment, but history desperately needs a giggle now and then. Humor me while I humor history.) The
     condemned man’s darting eyes caught a glimpse of a pine box. It dawned on him that he was looking at a coffin—at
his
coffin—and he spun around toward the Virginian on the white mare and cried out in a brittle voice, “Excellency, Excellency,
     have mercy on a poor sinner who is not eager to meet his Maker,” or words to that effect.
    Nate saw the Virginian’s patrician eyes narrow into slits and being not far away, he heard him comment to General Knox, “My
     tenderness has been often abused. Matters are too far advanced to sacrifice anything to punctilios.”
    (Punctilio/pΛnk’tiliaU:n. [pl. punctilios] a delicate point of ceremony; etiquette of such point; petty formality. The Virginian
     had a curious sense of punctilios!)
    The dray reached the gibbet. Hickey became aware of the dangling noose and sagged to his knees. Tears streamed down his cheeks
     and he started breathlessly hiccuping the way a child does when he criestoo hard. Two shirtmen, tough cookies who looked as if they had seen their share of scalped corpses during the Indian Wars,
     climbed onto the dray. They grabbed Hickey under his armpits and hauled him, still hiccuping, to his feet. One of the shirtmen
     fitted the noose over the condemned man’s head and tightened it around his neck.
    Stephen tugged at Nate’s sleeve. “Come away,” he whispered, but Nate didn’t move.
    The crowd grew deathly quiet. The Virginian’s central casting horse snorted. General Knox, his maimed hand concealed in a
     silk scarf, nodded. An officer elbowed the drummer boy. The beat of the kettledrum quickened. The two shirtmen jumped down
     from the dray. Another shirtman whipped the flank of one of the oxen with a long white birch branch. The beast blew air through
     his lips and stood his ground. The shirtman cocked the branch. Hickey, watching from the dray, the noose tight around his
     neck, managed to scream “Mother!” between his hiccups. The branch swatted down across the oxen’s flank. The animal started
     forward, dragging the other oxen with him. Hickey tiptoed along the floorboards of the dray to keep his footing. Then he ran
     out of dray and dangled from the noose. A muted sigh, an exhaling of many breaths, came from the crowd. The hanging man developed
     an enormous bulge in his crotch, the result of an involuntary erection. The women present averted their eyes.
    The child on his father’s shoulders laughed nervously; he