The Turning of Anne Merrick (18 page)

Thunder rumbled overhead, sounding all the world like someone dragging a heavy chest across the floorboards of the heavens. Jack screwed a greenwood handle onto the spoon’s pointy shank, setting it and the bullet mold on the coals to heat.

“D’ you think it’s storming by Annie and Sal?”

Titus didn’t answer. Jack glanced back to see his friend snoring softly. No matter day or night, wind or rain, thunder or lightning, Titus was a great one for grabbing snatches of sleep whenever and wherever he could—a valuable wartime skill—a skill Jack often wished he could develop. A fretful sleeper, Jack never slept so sound as he did when holding Anne Merrick wrapped in his arms…
Was it the way her hair smelled of lavender? Or maybe something to do with the rhythm of her breath…

He’d bedded more than a fair share of women in his time, and no other but Annie had ever managed to soothe his restless soul. Jack pinched off a bit of beeswax and worried it into a pea-sized ball between thumb and forefinger, the corners of his mouth turning up in a smile. One day, when the war was over, he would sleep to that sound every night.

One day…

He dropped the wax pea into the molten lead, and a gray cloudlet puffed up from the ladle like magic smoke from a sorcerer’s cauldron. The bit of beeswax flux brought the metal’s impurities to the surface.

One day soon…
Jack flashed a smile, and just as quickly lost it. It was both naïve and stupid to believe anything but British victory
would come soon. Using the spoon, he skimmed the dross from the molten metal, leaving behind a silvery puddle of pure lead.

We are at war with the world’s most formidable foe…

He’d witnessed the vast British armada crowding New York’s harbor—hundreds of ships armed with enough cannon to flatten any city in their sites. He and Titus had scouted on Long Island to see the first wave of the invasion—thousands of soldiers and massive amounts of artillery and matériel landing ashore. And when they infiltrated the British forces, they saw the Redcoats exact a
tour de force
in military strategy, outflanking the Continental Army’s fortified position on Brooklyn Heights.

By all rights the war should have ended right then and there…

And it would have but not for a fortuitous fog allowing Washington to stage a stealthy nighttime retreat, saving what was left of his army to fight another day.

Pulling off a miracle to survive the year after the disastrous defeat on Long Island, the American rebel forces were now wedged between Burgoyne’s well-trained army coming from the north, Howe and his army on the move, and Clinton with a sizable force occupying New York town. The unstoppable might of the Empire was on a collision course with a Continental Army desperate to increase ranks decimated by sickness and desertion.

When Jack and his fellow scouts caught up to the ragtag brigade of New Hampshire militiamen that had been deployed to prevent Burgoyne’s Germans from raiding the stores at Bennington, he could not help but feel his heart sink. Though strong in numbers and spirit, and led by an ardent and experienced commander, the Patriot soldiers rallied to wage war on professional Hessian and Brunswicker troops without a piece of artillery, nor a single bayonet among the lot of them.

Outgunned, outtrained, without steady support to feed, clothe, and arm those willing to fight…
Jack heaved a sigh. “We don’t stand a chance.”

He poured a thin stream of molten lead into the opening of the bullet mold. The lead hardened in a matter of moments. He swung
open the mold, and rapped it with the flat of his knife, knocking the hot bullet out onto the buckskin.

Staring at the solitary ball, he thought,
Like flies on a bull, we are to the British… annoying, but easily banished with the flick of a tail.

Why the British Army did not flick their tail was the question befuddling the minds of many. Giving his head a shake, Jack turned to his task, developing a rhythm to pouring and knocking the molded pieces out onto the buckskin to cool. The balls rolled to settle in a depression on the leather, and began to look like a bowl of just-picked silver cherries, the flared stems a by-product of the molding process. Jack clipped off these sprues, rubbing each finished sphere against his scotch stone to erase the resulting nub, assuring his ammunition would fly straight and true to the target.

Waste not, want not…
Jack gathered up the severed sprues along with the now-hardened drips and drops of lead that had drizzled onto the ground during the pouring. The tick of the lead bits dropping into his cupped hand recalled his days at Parker’s Press, where he apprenticed and worked as a journeyman printer before the war. He sprinkled the lead bits into the ladle, as if adding pepper to a stew, thinking how he ought to be setting lead type, not making lead bullets. Watching the hardened lead consumed by the molten puddle, he muttered, “I wish the British would just have done with us already. Then Annie and me could…”

He regretted the awful wish almost as soon as it had coalesced in his brain, and he couldn’t believe he’d let the words escape his lips. Jack glanced back at Titus, worried his sleeping friend might have heard him utter such treason. Surprised and dismayed to find himself gone so out of heart for his cause, Jack ground a knuckled fist at the bridge of his nose, telling himself, “Stop it!”

Too much in blood and treasure had been sacrificed to give up now.
Too much.
Throwing back his head, he shouted out to the wind, “Bugger King George’s royal arse, and
fuck
the British Army as well!”

Jack snatched up his mold, and returned to the business of making ammunition with methodical frenzy. Pour. Knock. Pour. Knock.
Pour. Knock. Pour. Knock. Add more lead. Add the flux. Clip sprues. Pour. Knock. Pour. Knock…

A blinding flash of lightning split the sky, and almost simultaneous earsplitting thunder cracked so loud as to startle the bullet mold from his hand and roust Titus to snap upright. Jack pulled a deep breath to check his racing heart.

“How long have I been asleep?” Titus asked, eyeing the large pile of newly minted musket balls.

“Not long.”

Titus stretched, sniffing at the sulfurous smell in the air. “Your face is white as gypsum paste.”

“A close strike, that…” Jack pulled the ladle away from the coals to cool.

“You know, they say carrying a laurel leaf will keep the lightning away…”

“Who says? Old wives?” Jack laughed, gathering his bullet-making tools into his haversack. “And how exactly is a leaf in your pocket supposed to stave off a strike like the one we just heard?”

“I don’t know exactly—but there is a science to dealing with lightning.” Titus would not be swayed. “Mr. Fraunces would have us lay iron bars on the beer barrels stored in the cellar, to keep the beer from turning sour during a thunderstorm.”

“Pish. Another old wives’ tale.”

Titus scooted forward, dragging his pack along to sit beside Jack. He untied the camp kettle strung there and handed it to Jack. “Put this out to catch some water. Isaac and Ned will be back soon, and as long as we have fire, I’ll make us some soup for our supper.”

“Soup? Really?” Jack stretched to set the kettle out beyond the shelter, raindrops beating a bright tune on the hollow brass.

Titus nodded with a wicked twinkle in his eye as he undid the buckles on his pack. “Back in Stillwater, the quartermaster was distributing officers’ rations. I fell in the queue with the other mess servants and came away with a share for us.” He laid out the bounty gained by clever deception—four turnips, a dozen onions braided together,
one thick yellow carrot the size of a baby’s leg, a small sack of oatmeal, and a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with jute string.

Jack tugged at the string on the package. “Pocket soup?”

“It is.”

The package contained eight pieces of “soup.” Able to fit in a soldier’s pocket, each cake of concentrated meat stock was roughly four inches square and one inch thick, and as dense and brown as chewy molasses candy.

Jack laughed and slapped his friend on the back. “I surely do benefit by your knack for seeing to your belly.”

Titus grinned. “On rare occasion, this black face comes in handy.”

Jack set the full kettle to heat on hot embers. Titus dropped in a soup cake and two handfuls of oatmeal into the simmering rainwater. Four onions, two turnips, and a third of the carrot were chopped and added to the pot.

Waiting on their supper, the pair used the time to see to their weapons. The worst of the thunderstorm blew over, and gradually the rain diminished to a drizzle, and all the while their soup bubbled into a wholesome potage. On hearing a familiar turkey call, Jack and Titus grabbed their guns and scooted out from under the shelter to see Isaac and Ned trotting through the trees, dressed in naught but breechclouts and bare chests.

“
Shekóli
.” The smiling Indians slipped under the shelter, and took seats close to the fire, dark eyes sparkling with pleasure to see supper had been seen to in their absence.

Jack once again admired the tattoo on Ned’s shoulder. In one talon the spread eagle clutched six arrows—one arrow for every nation in the Iroquois Confederacy. As Isaac had explained, “Many arrows bundled together are stronger than one arrow alone.” On an idle day, bolstered with plenty of pain-numbing rum, Jack had Isaac tattoo a similar design on his shoulder, except the eagle that was pricked into his skin with a needle and rubbed with lampblack was clutching a bundle of thirteen arrows, one for each of the thirteen states in his new nation.

The men all found their spoons and dipped their cups into the kettle.

“Mmmm…
yawéku ka
,” Isaac said, with an appreciative nod.

Jack waited until both Isaac and Ned finished eating before asking, “Did you get into the German camp?”

The Indians cast him a look that would curdle sweet milk, and both of them dipped in for another helping without answering his question. After slurping down seconds, Ned was the first to speak. “The German colonel—he chose good ground.”

Isaac began smoothing the space between himself and Jack. “This is the enemy camp.” Pushing a small pile of spruce needles into a hill at the center, he began illustrating the details of the German encampment on a canvas of dirt and duff. Using a small stick, he drew a sinewy line curving past the hill to indicate the river. Crossing the line with a short stroke he said, “The bridge.” He placed his tin cup within a bend of the river. “The American militia camp is here.” Putting a small stone a ways behind the hill he added, “We are here, on the wooded ridge.”

With their bearings thus defined, Jack and Titus nodded and scooted closer.

Ned balanced a small twig atop the spruce-needle hill. “One three-pound cannon on the high ground aimed west, well protected with a breastwork of logs.” He placed another twig, saying, “A second three-pounder aimed at the bridge. I counted only a dozen artillerymen in all.”

“A strength and a weakness,” Jack noted.

Ned shrugged. “They say Burgoyne is sending more soldiers and cannon. Once reinforced, they move forward to Bennington.”

Titus asked, “How many men do they have now?”

Placing one of the lead balls from Jack’s pile of ammunition near the hill, Isaac said, “One hundred Indians are camped near the bottom of the hill.” Keeping to the scale of one ball per hundred soldiers, Isaac continued to place bullets to illustrate troop strength and position. “Three hundred Hessian grenadiers and dragoons—green and blue coats—protecting the high ground. Two hundred Redcoats with the
baggage. Two hundred Loyalist militia—Canadians and Americans—defending the bridge.”

“You can tell them by the paper badges pinned to their hats,” Ned added.

“Paper badges?”

Ned dug into his pouch for a damp and wrinkled scrap of foolscap. “The German Colonel ordered it, so they can tell Loyalist from rebel in the heat of battle.”

Jack examined the simple badge—nothing more than an inch-wide strip of white paper folded at the center to flap like a pair of wings—then he turned back to study the map for a moment before looking up with a big smile. “It’s almost too easy, isn’t it?”

Anne walked in step with Geoffrey Pepperell, elbows linked, her skirts draped over her free arm. Even so, the wind coupled with the disparity in their heights rendered useless the waxcloth umbrella he had borrowed from Lucy Lennox. What seemed a trifling drizzle when they departed the manor house General Burgoyne had commandeered as his headquarters, developed into quite a downpour.

The path along the river’s edge was a thick stew of mud, and Anne’s every step was taken with effort, as if she were shod in lead boots. She tugged a foot free from the sucking morass, almost losing one of the sturdy walking shoes she’d had sense enough to wear to the General’s table this night.

Geoffrey set their lantern on the ground, handed the umbrella off to Anne, and unsheathed his sword. Prodding with the tip of the blade, he succeeded in dislodging a great glop caught between the sole and heel of his boot. “This substance is more akin to mortar than to mud,” he said, scraping the soles off with the edge of his blade. “Let me have at yours now…” He motioned for Anne to lift her foot.

Anne braced a hand to the Captain’s shoulder as he bent to take practical hold of her silk-stockinged ankle to clear the muck caked on her shoes.

“That’s better, no?” Geoffrey stood to sheathe his sword. Armed
once again with lantern and umbrella, he offered the crook of his elbow. “Let’s make for higher ground.”

Awaiting the supply train on its way from Lake George, the army encamped along the curving east bank of the Hudson at a place called Fort Miller. Once restocked with provisions, the entire army would traverse the pontoon bridge Burgoyne’s clever engineers had built, and then advance toward Albany.

Anne flinched at a huge bolt of lightning splitting the sky over the river. She buried her face in a red wool–clad shoulder to weather the companion clap of thunder.

“A close strike…” Pepperell wrapped an arm about her. Another bright bolt shot across the black sky, and the accompanying thunder rumbled like the roll of battle drums, signaling a blast of wicked wind to race up the river, jostling the trees and dousing their light.