The Turning of Anne Merrick (12 page)

Titus looked up from securing his bedroll with a length of rope. “Quit fooling around and burn the thing.”

Ned turned the paper upside down, and brought it close to his eye. “There’s something more writ here… on the bottom. Look…”

Titus took the page, studied it for a moment, then hooted, “Ooooh, Neddy boy! You’ve uncovered some vital information here—a most urgent love note.”

“You see, Jack,” Ned declared, lifting his chin and folding his arms across his chest. “And I didn’t scorch nothing.”

“Let me have that…” Jack leaned in for the paper, but Titus swept the page up and out of reach. Ned and Isaac laughed as the two men tussled like boys over a ball—Jack chasing after Titus, who circled backward around the fire, switching the paper from hand to hand—his height and the length of his arms keeping the page just out of Jack’s grasp—all the while teasing in a silly falsetto, “Oh my sweetie darling, I love you so!” In mock swoon, he dropped back in his seat, fanning himself with the page.

Jack snatched the paper from Titus and sank down onto his hunkers to read the message Ned had revealed. But there were no words. Centered along the bottom edge, and no more than half an inch high, Anne had drawn in simple lines an image of their two love tokens fitted together to form a full crown, flanked by the initials
J
and
A.

“I’d
never figure to find anything down along the bottom edge. I never search beyond ‘message ends.’” Jack looked up at Titus. “How’d she ever expect me to see it? What does it mean?”

“It means she didn’t expect for you to see it at all. That scribble is naught but a woman’s silly fancy.” Titus resumed stuffing gear into his haversack and gave Jack a nudge with the toe of his moccasin. “Get busy.”

Jack stayed on his haunches, still eyeing the drawing. “You’re right, Titus. She put this here knowing full well I would most probably never see it.”

Ned retrieved the hat Jack lost in the tussle with Titus. With a grin, he playfully exchanged headgear, plopping his turkey-feathered
gustoweh
onto Jack’s head. “Look, Uncle—Jack is one of us—
ukwehu-wé
—an Oneida man.”

So fixated on the scrap of paper in his hand, Jack didn’t even notice the exchange of hats.

“Time’s a-wastin’…” Titus swapped the hats back onto the proper heads. “Let’s go, Jack. Shred it, burn it, swallow it—I don’t care—but we need to make tracks, and I’m not about to travel with those pages.”

Jack looked up. “You all can go on without me… I’ll meet up with you tomorrow night in Stillwater.”

“I knew it!” Titus brought his fist down onto the haversack he was packing. “You are truly love-cracked, and seeing that Britisher captain talking with Mrs. Anne has put the devil in your head…”

“It’s not that, Titus.” Jack stood upright, tapping his finger to the drawing at the bottom of the page. “Something’s amiss—something troubling her—I know it.”

“Flapdoodle.” Titus threaded Jack’s arm through his rifle strap, settling the weapon on his friend’s shoulder. “You’re coming with us.”

“No—I’m going to see Anne.” Jack slipped the rifle off, letting it thud to the ground at his feet. “You are more than capable of delivering the message to Stillwater on your own.”

“And you are more than common stupid, Jack Hampton, to be even thinking about sneakin’ into that camp on your own.” Titus tugged hard at the red kerchief Jack wore tied about his neck, exposing
a ribbon of angry scar tissue rippling round his throat. “Odds are against your cheating the hangman twice, brother.”

“Don’t you fret, Titus; I’ve a few lives left in me yet.” Jack jerked away, righting his kerchief and shirt collar to conceal his noose scar. “I don’t see why you’re putting up such a kick and stram, anyway. My staying behind is no more dangerous than anything else we’ve been at these past few weeks.”

Titus settled his bedroll diagonally across his back. “There’s no time for this nonsense. We’ve got to get this message to David’s ear, toot sweet.”

“Anne’s message has my eye—and I know, for some reason, she wants us together.” Jack held up the page with the crown, his dark brows knit in determination. “I pray you’re right, and it is just a silly fancy on her part—but there’s a chance she’s in some trouble, and I can’t leave before finding out which it is. I’m all for our cause, Titus, but I will not lose Anne to it.”

Titus whipped the leather strap through the buckle on his haversack, wrenching it tight. “What’s your plan, then?”

“I’ll go into the camp after dark…”

“Just stroll right in, will you?” Titus interrupted. “Alright. Let’s say somehow you manage to get past the pickets and the guardsmen—how do you expect to find Mrs. Anne in the dark, among thousands?”

“I’ll… I’ll find the baggage train, and then I’ll find Anne. I know her barrow. Once I find her and make sure all’s well, I’ll be on the road.”

“And if all isn’t well with Mrs. Anne?”

“Then we bring this business to a halt, and she and Sally come with me to Stillwater.”

Fully accoutered and ready to travel, Isaac said, “Your friend’s a hardheaded man, Titus.”

“Yep. Hard as hickory.” Titus poked Neddy in the shoulder. “This is all your doing—messin’ with that candle—so you can stay with him now, and see he keeps a scalp attached to his hard head.”

“Alright.” Neddy shrugged. “I’ll stay.”

Titus shouldered his haversack and took up his rifle. “I expect to see you both in Stillwater by twilight tomorrow—y’ hear me, Jack?”

“Don’t
you worry, brother. We’ll be there.” Jack thumbed a cross over his heart. “I swear.”

Without a backward glance, Titus and Isaac took off at a trot and disappeared in a churn of greenery. Neddy shed his gear and announced, “I’m still hungry… You?”

Jack shrugged and took a seat at the fire ring, contemplating the little drawing at the bottom of the page he still held.

With tomahawk in hand, Ned left the fire, returning after a moment with a fair-sized sheet of bark he’d peeled from a nearby white pine. He sat next to Jack and nudged his griddle stone over the hottest coals. With a broad-blade knife honed to a razor edge, Ned proceeded to peel free the edible inner layer of bark from the rough outer bark. He cut the thin sheath of inner bark into uniform rectangles, each the width of two fingers, and no longer than the length of his hand.

Creasing a sharp fold just above Anne’s drawing, Jack tore the bottom inch from the page and tucked the scrap safe behind the leather band circling the crown of his hat. He floated the damning pages onto the coals, and sat motionless, watching the paper squirm and writhe and burst into flames.

“Titus has the right of it,” Ned said, breaking the silence. “Lots of coats down there—red, green, blue—won’t be no easy task, finding one little woman amid all that.”

Jack grunted in assent.

Ned arranged a dozen of the pine bark chips onto the hot stone, flipping each to toast both sides to a crisp golden brown. He plucked a cooked chip from the stone, and handed it to Jack.

“Eat.”

“Really? Tree bark?” Jack eyed the offer. The Indian scouts were prone to eating the oddest fare, but he found the wilderness edibles they harvested usually provided a welcome addition to their army rations of cornmeal and beans.

“G’won.” Ned smiled. “Roasted, it’s sweet.”

After taking the first bite, Jack reached for a second chip, and Ned asked, “
Yawéku ka?
Tastes good?”

“Yawéku ka.”
Jack nodded. “First you got me to wearing moccasins,
then making birdcalls, and now I’m eating tree bark—and liking it. Afore you know it, I’ll be forgoing breeches for a breechclout.”

Laughing, the Oneidan arranged another batch of chips on his griddle. “I aim to make you
ukwehu-wé
, Jack. When I’m done, your own woman won’t know you…” Ned glanced up at Jack. “
Oho!
That’s the way in, isn’t it? You’re sure dark enough for it…”

“Goddamn, Neddy Sharontakawas! If you aren’t one slippery Indian.” Jack tossed his hat off, fit Ned’s turkey-feather cap onto his head, and crossed his arms over his chest. “
Shekóli
, you bloodyback bastards!”

FOUR

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly:—
’Tis dearness only that gives everything its value.

T
HOMAS
P
AINE
,
The American Crisis

I
N
C
AMP
—D
ARNING AND
S
CHOOLING

Evenfall found Anne and Sally cloistered inside their tent. They’d pitched their canvas alongside an orderly camp of Hessian dragoons, amid a sparse grove of popple and pine trees bordering the deepwood. A lone whippoorwill perched nearby and added comfort to the quiet night, trilling its name over the rough chorus of katydids and crickets.

Released from the stricture of her stays, and stripped down to muslinet shift, Anne settled cross-legged on her cot with her mending basket and hairbrush. After sweeping the boar bristles through her hair one hundred times, she plaited it for sleep, flipping the thick braid over her shoulder where it hugged the ridge of her spine. She stretched a silk stocking over a wooden darning egg and angled the eye of her needle toward the lantern light, pinching the thread through.

Down to her shift as well, Sally sat on her bed facing Anne, bare feet flat to the ground. Chewing on the fuzzy end of her braid, she tapped a chalk pencil to the writing slate on her lap in time to the rolling chant of the whippoorwill’s call.
Taap-tap-tap
.
Taap-tap-tap.

“I never paid much mind to birds back at the Cup and Quill,” Sally
said, “but out here, I find I’m grown partial t’ th’ whippoorwill. It seems she follows us from camp to camp, na?”

“Mm-hmm…” Anne did not glance up from the series of satin stitches she sewed to bridge the small hole in the toe of her best pair of stockings. “She sings a pretty song, our whippoorwill.”

Sally dropped her chalk and leaned back on her hands. “Bab Pennybrig tells me she dreads the whippoorwill’s call. ’Tis a portent of death, she claims, and swears she heard it the night her Bill fell at Breed’s Hill.”

Anne began weaving the tip of her needle up and under the satin stitches. “Bab Pennybrig saying a thing doesn’t make it so.”

“Aye, tha’s true. Better to hear the whippoorwill’s sweet call than the snake’s rattle, I tolt her.” Sally set her slate aside. “Th’ snake’s rattle—now, there’s a true portent of death. Ye ken tha as well as I, d’ye not, Annie?”

Anne looked up from her darning. “I ken you ought take up your chalk and turn your mind to finishing your sums.”

Sally dragged her slate back onto her lap. “I
hate
sums! I’ll never be an arithmetician. I’ve no th’ knack for it.”

Six years before, when Sally was only fourteen years old, shod in wooden clogs and wrapped in a threadbare woolen shawl, she boarded a ship in Glasgow. Upon landfall in New York, Old Merrick purchased her indenture at the auction block and set the girl to work as a scullery maid in his household. Anne soon recognized that Sally owned a keen mind, and even though she knew it would rile her husband—for Merrick was not given to cosseting his servants—she determined to teach the illiterate girl to read and write.