The Turning of Anne Merrick (25 page)

The day began cold with a heavy fog clinging to the landscape like sheep’s wool to a thornbush. Once the fog began to break, scouting parties returned with reports of British troops no more than three miles away, moving toward the Continental works. Morgan’s riflemen, along with Dearborn’s light infantry, were out to blunt any possible advance.

Maybe two hours past noon…
Jack squinted up at the sun shining hot and bright in a clear blue sky. “I sure wish the damn lobsters would show,”
he whispered, tugging at Ned’s foot. “My inner spring is wound tighter than an eight-day clock.”

Ned leaned over to whisper, “That’s how it always is, brother… Hurry up and wait.”

Jack tipped his head to rest against the tree trunk and closed his eyes, filling his lungs in through his nose, and out in a slow puff. A cool breeze skirled across the open field, brushing over his face like a ghostly hand and whirling through the branches to shake a flurry of acorns rattling down through the leaves. He smiled, hearing the tiny dull thuds of the nuts landing on the ground and on the felt of Titus’s hat. The woods were very quiet, considering it was teeming with close to five hundred men just like him, itching for a fight.

Settling deeper into his seat, Jack heaved another breath, relaxing sweaty fists clutched tight to the barrel and stock of his weapon. There was a rustling in the leaves to his right—a bird flitting among the branches.

A cardinal or a jay gathering acorns.
Jack opened one eye and just caught a flash of blue against the rich mottle of green.
Jay it is.

“
Hao
—get ready.” Ned gave Jack a kick to the shoulder. “Here they come.”

Jack snapped erect. “That didn’t take so long, now, did it?” Squinting through a filter of insects, chaff, and motes dancing on the sunlight, he could see a line of red-clad figures emerge from the forest at the opposite end of the field, moving forward at a wary pace.

Bringing his rifle to full cock, Jack propped the stock against his shoulder. As ordered, he slowly swept the barrel of his rifle from left to right, searching for just the right target. His worldview became very small and, with the enemy’s every step forward, the details in it, crisp and clear. Like a divining rod to water, the blink of an officer’s brass gorget drew the attention of Jack’s weapon—and he held the Redcoat captain in his sights, finger on the trigger.

A turkey call rang out, and on this signal, hundreds of rebel rifles exploded in frightening unison. Every Redcoat in the front ranks fell—dead or wounded. The British line broke, retreating in panic.

The
riflemen’s wild cheer reverberated in the trees. Jack, Ned, and every other soldier sitting in a tree leapt down, and Morgan’s corps moved forward. The crunch of moccasined feet kept time with the scrape of ramrods seating lead ball to a charge of black powder. They left the cover of the trees and entered the open field.

At the far end, the Redcoats shouted and scrambled to re-form their lines to the rattling call of the drums. Jack finished reloading, slipping his ramrod back into place beneath the gun barrel. He and Titus ran after Ned and Isaac, and the foursome all dropped to one knee in a patch of tall grass. This time Jack was not so discerning with his aim. He drew a bead on a blur of red and pulled the trigger.

“Fire!”

The British volley whizzed across the field, and all around, rebel fighters were knocked to the ground like ninepins.

“Fire!”

The second barrage sheared Jack’s hat from his head, sending it flying. Another lead ball buzzed past his ear, and another whistled straight through the loose fabric at his hip. All around, riflemen toppled, groaning and writhing. A heavy veil of sulfurous smoke drifted across the field, clouding Jack’s vision, burning his throat.

“Fire!”

Someone punched him hard in the arm, and Jack fell flat on his back.

The turkey call yelped once again and voices shouted, “Take cover! Fall back!”

Jack jumped up and stumbled into Titus, who was struggling to lift a wounded man to his feet. Together, they half dragged, half carried the soldier back beyond the tree line, to the deeper cover of the forest, laying him flat beneath the umbrella of a balsam fir. The man’s shirt was soaked dark with blood, his eyes fluttering, barely conscious.

Jack fell to one knee and examined the wound, then looked up at Titus. “Gut shot.”

British artillery boomed, and chained iron ball sliced through the
branches overhead, casting up great clouds of dirt and debris as it pounded into the forest floor. Jack and Titus ducked, covering their heads.

“Their big guns are in range,” Titus said, giving Jack a shove. “We need to make tracks before they reload.”

Jack began to hoist the wounded soldier, but Titus stopped him. “There’s nothing we can do for him but add to his misery.”

Jack put his ear to the wounded man’s chest. “You’re right. He’s dead.”

“At least the poor fella didn’t have to suffer overlong.”

They took off, running an erratic course in a crouch, back to the cover of the chestnut oak. Jack tore the kerchief from his neck, wiping the sweat and grime from his face. “Do you have any water?”

Titus slipped the strap over his head, and handed over his canteen. “Save a swallow for me. My throat’s dry as dust.” Touching the side of his head, Titus’s fingertips came up sticky with blood. “I guess I lost my hat,” he said.

“Looks like you’re lucky you didn’t lose your head.” Jack took a gulp of water, and poured a drizzle onto a four-inch-long furrow carved through the spongy hair just above Titus’s right ear.

“Looks like you took a ball to the shoulder,” Titus said.

“Huh!” Jack grunted, plucking at the blood-sodden linsey clinging to his right biceps. “Doesn’t hurt much…”

“It will. Give me that kerchief.” Titus wrapped the scrap of fabric tight over Jack’s wound and tied it tight. “There. Another scar in the making.”

Ned and Isaac came running in from the field, sliding in to tumble and duck behind the big chestnut oak. “Take cover!” Ned shouted, and they all turtled up, arms over heads.

A sharp crack of musketry, and a spray of lead ball whizzed in an instant later, drilling into the tree trunks and sawing off branchlets—sending shards of bark and rough splinters hurtling through the air.

Isaac sat up and bit the cork from his powder horn, poured a charge down the barrel of his rifle, and uttered one frightening word. “Bayonets.”

Jack concentrated on reloading his weapon—
powder, ram, cock the hammer
. A soft breeze came across the field to lift the cloud of smoke, exposing the disciplined line of British infantry on a forward march, their fearsome bayonets affixed. An artillery crew was dragging a cannon over the rough ground. Jack found a mark, and pulled the trigger.

The riflemen all worked with a steady rhythm—pour powder, ram the ball down, cock the hammer, take aim, and fire—powder, ram, aim, fire—powder, ram, aim, fire—the dead accuracy of their every shot taking a horrific toll on the Redcoat advance.

Powder, ram, aim—Jack pulled his trigger and picked off an artilleryman struggling to load the six-pounder under heavy fire. Titus fired and sent the gunner wielding the linstock flying.

Jack and Titus spun back to sit with their backs to the oak. In unison they began to reload. Titus chuckled, his grin so white Jack jabbed him with the butt of his rifle, and laughed. “What’s so funny?”

“By God, I think we’re holding the bastards!!”

EIGHT

Danger and deliverance make their advances together, and it is only at the last push, that one or the other takes the lead.

T
HOMAS
P
AINE
,
The American Crisis

O
CTOBER 6, 1777
B
RITISH
F
IELD
H
OSPITAL

Raindrops began pattering a steady tune on the painted canvas stretched overhead. Anne peeked out beyond the tarp at a murky dusk sky, thinking it was almost as dull and dreary as the barley gruel simmering on the hospital kitchen fire. She drew her woolen shawl up over her head, tying the ends in a bulky knot on her chest.

Following suit, Sally sighed. “Och—just what we need—more rain.”

At their turn, Anne laid claim to one of the mess kettles, cushioning the wire bale handle with a flannel pad to hoist the steaming pot from the hearth. Sally collected three paper-wrapped packages of ship’s biscuit into the basket looped over her left arm, and hooked her thumb through the handle on a jug of spruce beer.

The wet weather combined with all the comings and goings around the barn-turned-hospital to churn the grounds into a gummy slurry. At the end of a long day’s work, with skirt hems heavy and caked in mud, the slippery slope down to the convalescent tents behind
the barn was made even more treacherous. Using mincing steps, the women carried the rations over to the third tent from the right. Like swimmers making ready to dive underwater, Anne and Sally each sucked in lungfuls of fresh air before shouldering a way through the door flaps.

A misling cloud of sweat, sick, and bloody bandages hung in the air. Anne squelched a gag as she tugged her shawl loose, turning her head to take relief from the lavender-infused hankie she kept tucked at her left shoulder.

“Belay that wambly belly,” Sally ordered, setting the brimming latrine bucket outside the doorway. “The quicker we see to this lot, the quicker we can find our beds.”

Two rows of straw-stuffed pallets and soldier’s gear flanked either side of the big marquee tent, leaving a narrow aisle down the middle. Sally tied the tent flaps open to encourage a bit of fresh air as Anne evaluated the state of their charges.

Most of the patients were too debilitated to do anything but lie prone on their pallets. The tent’s ranking officer, Captain Thomas Thorn of the Royal Artillery, sat listless against his field chest, a thick book open on his lap, his right leg ending in a bandaged stump at the knee. The Captain’s face was ruddy and his eyes bloodshot, leaving Anne to worry if his fever had returned. In the far corner, three of their healthier convalescents huddled around a broken shard of planking, playing a game of Hazard with dice they fashioned from a pair of musket balls.

Banging a ladle to the mess kettle, Sally announced, “Dinnertime, lads!”

Like schoolboys called in from play, the gaming soldiers put their dice away, scooting on rear ends to their own places to fumble in packs for mess kits and spoons. Anne took in another bracing breath of lavender. Exhuming a stubby lead pencil and small tablet from her pocket, she proceeded to count heads.

“Ye’ll be missing Lieutenants B-B-Bowman and K-K-Kinnear. They’re… they’re… they’re…” Foley, a left gunner who ironically lost his left arm to the surgeon’s saw, was always eager to offer up
pertinent information. Anne waited patiently for the end of his sentence, her pencil poised.

“D-d-dead,” Foley finished.

“Moanin’ and groanin’ all through the night, them two.” A blunt, squatty man, Sergeant Burgus was brought to hospital four days earlier, his left foot having been crushed under an ox’s hoof. “Not a one of us caught a wink o’ sleep.”

Foley jerked his only thumb toward his neighbor. “C-c-captain Thorn’s sad in his heart, p-p-poor soul.”

Anne went to the officer’s side, drawing down onto her haunches. “My condolences, Captain Thorn. I know Lieutenants Kinnear and Bowman were good friends of yours.”

“Good friends… yes.” Captain Thorn closed his book. “Did you know they came by their grievous wounds carrying me from the field?”

Anne nodded. “I know.”

“John Bowman and James Kinnear were fine soldiers—courageous men—imbued with every quality that can create esteem.” The artillery Captain eyed the tablet Anne held in her hand, his voice so very tired and pained. “And now, Mrs. Merrick, you may draw a line through their names, as if they never existed.”

Blinking back sudden tears, Anne rose to her feet and left the Captain to his grief. When she agreed to infiltrate Burgoyne’s army, the one thing she never figured on was becoming so enmeshed in the suffering of her enemies. Knowing men like Jack and David were responsible for the carnage she’d seen carted in from the battlefield was very difficult to bear. With a heavy heart, Anne forced herself to remember that the men she nursed, whose wounds she tended, and whose names she daily crossed from her list—these soldiers were fighting with all their might to crush a just cause, and kill the good, brave people who supported it.