The Turning of Anne Merrick (17 page)

Anne gave him a thump to the chest. “So she’s chained naked to a rock, and Cetus is on the way…”

Jack picked up the thread. “… And Perseus the Hero just happens to fly by and see Andromeda…”

“Fly by?”

“Perseus is just returning from a quest to kill Medusa and he has a pair of magic winged sandals—but that’s another story. Anyway, Perseus falls instantly in love with Andromeda.”

“And he rescues her!”

“Not exactly. A canny fellow, he first flies to Ethiopia and wrangles a deal with the King and Queen: He agrees to destroy Cetus in
exchange for Andromeda’s hand in marriage. Of course, they agree. Perseus flies back to Andromeda just as Cetus is about to gobble her up. Perseus goads Cetus into rising out of the water, and makes him gaze upon the Medusa’s decapitated head, which he happens to carry in a magic sack…”

“How handy!” Anne giggled.

“Cetus is instantly turned to stone, Andromeda and Perseus are married, and they live happily ever after. When they died of ripe old age, Athena placed them in the sky as constellations.”

Anne asked, “Which one is Perseus?”

“Right there, just below and to the left of Andromeda.” Jack snaked his arm beneath Anne’s shoulders, and pulled her close. “Keep your eye on Perseus and you might see a shooting star this time of year.”

They lay quiet, watching the sky for some time, when Jack whispered in her ear. “I’ll rescue you from any monster—land or sea.”

“I know.”

Anne blinked awake to a deep violet dawn. The celestial mob had dispersed with the onset of daylight, leaving behind only a few twinkling stragglers—the brightest of these high in the sky overhead. She barely whispered its name.

“Capella.”

Dreading the advent of daylight, like a magical incantation to keep the sun at bay, she whispered the names of all the stars that had climbed higher into the sky, calling them back to the horizon. “Capella. Almach. Mirach. Alpheratz.”

Jack’s arm lay warm and heavy across her middle. She turned to see his features masked by a blanket of her hair, tiny wisps flying up and down on the whistling in and out of his breath. Anne gathered her tresses into a tail over one shoulder, and turned to lie in a curl on her side. Sleeping Jack matched her movement, and without any words they settled in to nest together like two cups in the cupboard.

“Mmmghh…” Jack said to the back of her head. “We ought wake.”

Fully awake, Anne said, “Not yet.”

She lay warm on their balsam bed, relishing the rise and fall of his chest against her back when, to her horror, a robin fluttered down to land just beyond the fire ring, his rich red breast startling in the predawn light.

The early bird,
she thought, reminded of the red-coated regulars up at dawn readying for the day’s march. She watched the robin hunting for its breakfast, hopping here and there to peck at the dew-soaked ground with its beak.

“A redbreast,” Jack whispered into her neck.

“Mm-hmm…” she said. “Pay him no heed.”

But the robin would not be ignored. Hopping to perch on the log seat, he began his morning song.
Cheerup, cheerup, cheerup, cheerio!

Jack gave her shoulder a little shake. “Ned will be here soon.”

Anne covered her ears, trying to shut out every sound and every reason signaling the time had come for them to leave their private universe.

“One night’s not enough.” Her voice wavered, near tears.

Jack leaned up on his elbow and stroked her hair. “You’re right. It’s not enough.”

Cheerup, cheerup, cheerup, cheerio!

Reaching down, Anne scooped up a small rock and hurled it at the robin, sending it fluttering up into the trees.

“Oh, Annie…” Jack wrapped her tight in his arms, and she turned and buried her face in his chest, but she could still hear the damned robin singing in the distance. She peeked up at the sky, searching the cerulean blue. “I don’t see it anymore…”

“See what, Annie?”

“Capella.” A single hot tear trickled out the corner of her eye, and her chest ached with sudden panic. The earth was still spinning. Time had not stood still. She bolted up, unable to stay her tears. “I know I have to go back there—and I will—but I want—no—I
need
for you to understand this one thing…”

Jack shifted to sit facing her, and he brushed back the mad tangle of hair from her face, his eyes deep pools of worry. “What is it?”

Anne met his eye, and took hold of his hand. “In order to serve the cause we so believe in—to
fight how I can to win our country’s liberty—I find myself doing things that in any other world would seem untrue to you. To us. You must know I’m not.” She pulled Jack’s hand to lie over her heart. “I belong to
you
.”

Jack nodded, and pressed Anne’s hand to his heart. “And I to you.”

A rattle of drums echoed up through the morning mist, and the two of them jumped out of bed like cats out of the woodbox.

Jack scrambled to pull on his leggings and moccasins. “I was supposed to have you back before reveille beating! Sally’s going to have my hide…”

Anne struggled out of Jack’s shirt, wriggled into her skirt, and found her shoes. They worked together to fold and roll both blankets into tight sausages. Jack rigged his bedroll with a rope strap and slung it over his back. Pulling on his pouch and haversack he said, “I have your crown piece here.”

Anne took it from him, dropped it down her shift, and tied her shawl ends into a knot at her breast. “As fond as you are of this breechclout,” she said, tugging on the flap, “you ought change back into breeches before you travel south, lest the Continentals mistake you for one of Burgoyne’s Indians.”

“I almost forgot…” Jack dove into his pouch. “I made a present for you,” he said, handing her a small packet wrapped in a maple leaf and tied with a scrap of blue grosgrain ribbon.

Anne undid the wrapping to find a plump heart, carved of wood as smooth as a peach and stained golden brown. Beautiful in its simplicity, the heart fit in the palm of her hand. She was struck dumb.

“Wood from an oak that was split in two by lightning,” Jack said. “Sanded it for hours on end to get the polish. Go on, turn it over.”

Anne flipped the heart over, and she lost her breath. Within a hatched border, three words were etched in neat block letters, and carefully stained a deep umber:

“Oh,
Jack!” Anne smiled and blinked back her tears. “This is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever given me. I will cherish it always.” She flung her arms around his neck, and kissed him farewell. “You’ll be back after Stillwater?”

“I think we’ll be joining the fight at Bennington. I imagine they’ll need every man they can get. I’ll make sure David sends someone to watch for your messages.” Jack shouldered his rifle and pack and, with a jerk of his chin, said, “There’s Neddy now.”

Discreet in a stance at the edge of the ridge with his back to them, Ned leaned on his rifle, eyeing the horizon. Anne and Jack walked hand in hand the few steps to the parting in the brush and the deer path they had climbed to reach their haven.

“This path zigs and zags straight down to your camp. It’s not far.”

Anne nodded. “I’ll be fine.”

It was clear neither of them wanted to curse their parting with the word “good-bye.” Their lips met in one last, simple kiss, and Jack walked off to join up with Ned. Giving his friend a slap on the shoulder, they took to the trees.

Anne called out, “Take care…”

Jack turned to flash a grin and wave. Anne forced a smile and blew him a kiss, and she watched until he and Ned were lost in the rising mist.

Taking up her blanket, and clutching the wooden heart to her own heart, Anne started down the path. Covered in a veil of morning fog, and cheered by birdsong, the dark and ominous woodland came into enchanted green focus with the onset of dawn. Anne stopped at the rotting tree to see the patch of foxfire fungus transformed by the daylight into a clump of plain, ordinary mushrooms. She smiled and brushed her fingers across the velvety caps.

Whoever would guess how you glowed in the night?

FIVE

I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ’Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

T
HOMAS
P
AINE
,
The American Crisis

S
COUTING THE
E
NEMY
E
NCAMPMENT NEAR
B
ENNINGTON

Jack leaned in to toss another chunk of wood on the fire just when a wayward gust ruffled the smoke to sting his eyes. He took a step back, narrowing his eyes at an opening in the forest canopy overhead and the gray clouds roiling by like turbid river water. A drop of rain landed splat on his forehead.

“Get ready,” Jack said, swiping the wet from his face with the back of his hand. “It’s about to weather hard.”

Stretched out along the full length of their lean-to shelter, Titus turned onto his side. Hugging his bedroll like a boon companion, he muttered, “No battle today…”

Fat summer raindrops began to find their way through the leaves and boughs, driving into the soft duff of the forest floor like miniature cannon shells. Jack ducked under the lean-to and took a tailor-style seat before the fire.

“I think this as good a time as any to cast some ball.”

“Mm-hmm…” Titus grunted. “Lord knows we’ll soon need all we can get.”

Hinging open his folding knife, Jack shaved the end of a greenwood stick to a taper, and twisted the makeshift extension into the socket end on the handle of his smelting ladle. Nestling the ladle’s shallow bowl in the bed of white-hot coals raked from the fire, he propped the makeshift handle on a rock to extend beyond the fire ring, keeping it cool to the touch and safe from the flames.

Jack arranged the rest of his bullet-making supplies on the swath of soft buckskin to his left—a cake of beeswax, half a dozen finger-length bars of lead, a pliers-like bullet mold with handles wrapped in leather strapping, a scotch polishing stone, and a battered copper spoon, its shank sharpened to a point. He placed one of the lead bars into the hot ladle and settled deeper under the shelter to wait and watch the metal melt into a blue-gray puddle.

They began the day’s scout at dawn, but the clear blue skies did not fool Isaac, who soon noted the leaves on the ash tree had turned to show their white undersides. “Bad storm’s on the way,” he predicted. “No battle today.”

Soon enough, huge thunderheads massed on the eastern horizon as the scouting party hurried through the woods to circle around the high ground occupied by Colonel Baum and his regiment. When they saw the enemy’s contingent included a cohort of Mohawk warriors, Ned and Isaac altered their
gustoweh
in keeping with the Mohawk style, showing three feathers pointing upright, and broke away to infiltrate the German encampment.

With an eye on staying dry while they waited for the Oneidans to return, Jack and Titus set about constructing a simple shelter. Harvesting several lengths of spruce root, they lashed a sturdy ridgepole five feet off the ground between a huge pair of red spruce trees. Together, they assembled a square frame braced with a rough gridwork of sapling wood. The completed frame was propped and lashed to the ridgepole at a forty-five-degree angle with the open face away from the wind, providing space enough for four to sit, and plenty of cover to protect a fire.

Jack and Titus thatched the lean-to with a weaving of spruce boughs and pads of absorbent moss, and used the same to carpet the shelter
floor. A small ring of stones was arranged at the open face, and a quantity of firewood was stockpiled. Combined with the natural windbreak afforded by the flanking tree trunks, and the living spruce umbrellas overhead, the hasty bower would provide plenty of shelter from the oncoming tempest.

A blast of wind whipped through the trees in a skirling rush, broadcasting a spray of mist and setting the shelter to rustle and quake. The pleasant patter of rain instantly shifted in intensity, and the new din was akin to thousands of anxious fingers drumming on hundreds of tabletops. Jack eyed the veracity of the structure.