The Turning of Anne Merrick (41 page)

“Send a runner to alert the pickets at all points of entry,” David said. “I want her apprehended and brought straight to headquarters—understand, Sergeant?”

“A-yup!” Squinting in the sunshine, the Sergeant brought a knuckle to his brow in salute. “My boys’ll keep an eye to windward, Cap’n. The she-spy has but t’ show her face, and we’ll nab her lickety-click.”

Anne followed after her brother, walking in one of the frozen wheel ruts leading up the Gulph Road. Anne pounded her bundled head with mittened fists. “It was niggling at my brain the day I met her… there was something so familiar… I’m sorry.”

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” David said over his shoulder. “You saw her counting the guns and reported directly.”

“But her cheerful air, the instant camaraderie—all methods Sally and I used to cull information from our marks in Burgoyne’s camp. I couldn’t put my finger on it then, but I know now why she seemed so familiar. I saw myself in her.” Anne crossed through the deep snow to walk in the opposite rut, on parallel course with her brother. “She owned a forged pass and managed the daily countersigns. Your sergeant’s right. This woman knows her business.”

David limped along, keeping up with his sister’s pace. “I’ve been making inquiries all morning. It seems she covered every inch of our camp—from the entrenchments to headquarters—she even wheedled her way into the General’s kitchen selling buttons to Cook. Who knows what she may have seen or overheard?”

“Yet she’s vanished like a ghost at cockcrow.” Anne huffed a sigh. “I believe counting cannon was her final task before heading back to Howe.”

“She assessed our defenses, counted guns and manpower, observed our training and our weakened state,” David said. “She even learned the numbers of infirm from one of the surgeon’s mates. Howe will soon know he can swoop in and topple our entire army with not much more than a feather.”

“You think he’s planning an attack?”

“He’d be a fool not to,” David asserted.

“
Remember—Howe proved himself a great fool by not pressing his attack on Long Island. If there was ever a chance to crush us, that was it—and I heard many a British officer in the Cup and Quill opine likewise.”

“I know Howe dotes on his winter comforts, but still…” David turned up the collar on his overcoat, and stuffed his hands back into his pockets. “I find it galling he’s sent spies to crawl all over our camp, and we know naught of the works and doings in Philadelphia.”

As they passed the parade ground, Steuben’s big hound came at them, bounding through the snow, practically knocking Anne off her feet. “Azor!” She laughed, giving the hound a good scrub about the ears.

David tugged his tricorn down to shade his eyes, and watched the Model Company being put through their paces. Major Steuben’s commands, barked in French, and echoed in English, had the troops executing not quite in clockwork, but better than when first drilled. “Our Prussian seems to be making some progress.”

“They are still an army of ragamuffins,” Anne said. “But I agree, there’s a marked improvement in performance and bearing.”

“At least something is improving.” David bent to rub his bad leg.

Anne sent Azor galloping off to his master’s whistle. “Is your old wound giving you trouble, David?”

“My barometer,” he said, flashing a smile. “Lets me know when a storm is on the way.”

They continued on toward headquarters, and when they reached the crossroads, Anne gave her beleaguered brother a hug. “We’ll see you at supper?”

“I’ll be late. There’s a staff meeting this afternoon… Wait!” David tugged her by the sleeve. “Come with. I’m so behind, and could use another hand.”

“Alright,” Anne said. “But just for an hour or so. I plan to fetch the boys from hospital today.”

To David’s pleasure, the sentry posted at the stoop of Washington’s headquarters went beyond a perfunctory exchange of parole and countersign, to vigorously
question their identities and purpose before allowing them to enter. “Another marked improvement,” he noted.

“Courtesy of Madame She-Spy!” Anne said, and David laughed, swinging the door open to the surprise of the ensign on the other side of it. In the entry hall, a tall officer was buttoning up his coat.

“Colonel Tupper—” David swept his hat off in salute. “May I present my sister, Mrs. Anne Merrick.”

The Colonel gave Anne’s hand a hearty shake. “The one who spied the spy?”

“The very same.” David beamed.

Anne smiled at the Colonel’s play on words. “Purely a happenstance.”

“I hate to appear rude, Mrs. Merrick, Captain Peabody”—he offered each of them a slight bow—“but I’m en route to the Bakehouse for an important session.”

“Court-martial?” David asked.

Tupper’s pleasant smile straightened to a grim line as he fit his tricorn onto his head. “The Dutchman,” he said, flipping a thumb toward the stairs.

Lieutenant Enslin stood at the top of the staircase, dressed in a dirty shirt with tails untucked and wrists bound before him. Gazing through wisps of unkempt hair, he and Anne locked eyes only for an instant, before he turned away.

“G’won…” The guard standing behind gave him a poke with the butt of his musket, and Enslin came down the stairway, the irons shackled to his ankles jangling loud with each step. He kept his gaze elsewhere, and as he passed, Anne could see his feet were bare of shoes and stockings.

Anne called out, “Lieutenant Enslin!” and in the brief moment before the door banged shut, Enslin glanced over his shoulder, his sad blue eyes filled with fear and desperation.

“You know him?” David asked.

Anne nodded, unwinding her muffler. “A good man. A real gentleman. What could he be charged with?”

David dropped his voice to a scant whisper. “It seems the Lieutenant employed his parts on male bums, not female hearts.”

“No! That’s… That’s nothing but vile rumor,” Anne said with a shake of her head. “I don’t believe it…”

“Believe it, Annie,” David said. “The Dutchman’s fully admitted to it.”

“Oh.” It was as if the air’d been pinched from her lungs by a sharp blow to the belly. She wandered to the window to watch poor Lieutenant Enslin, without a cloak or blanket, stumbling along in his shackles, barefoot on the snowy path.

“Will they hang him?”

“I don’t know,” David said, joining her at the window. “Tupper’s a fair man, but it’s a bad business. I don’t envy him this case.”

Anne let out a little gasp seeing Lieutenant Enslin stumble and fall, and her heart broke watching for what seemed an eternity, as he tried without any success to rise, bound and shackled as he was. One of the guards at last showed some pity, and jerked Enslin up to his feet. When the entire cortege disappeared down the path to the covered bridge, she turned to her brother and asked, “Would it help him, David, if I were to testify as to his kindness?”

David put his arm around her shoulders. “I’m afraid nothing will help him, Annie. The Dutchman is a lost cause.”

With Jim and Brian to her left, Anne took a step forward and asked, “What do you mean, they can’t go?”

Four quarantined soldiers snapped eyes up from their card game, and Anne knew her voice had gone out loud and sharp.

“I meant what I said.” Seated in a crouch on the surgeon’s stool near the fire, Mrs. Snook took a tug on the clay pipestem clenched between gaping, yellowed teeth, and puffed out an unholy halo of evil-smelling smoke to wreath her narrow head. In a voice made gruff by tobacco she said, “They’s unfit for duty.”

It was warm near the hearth. Anne swiped her hood back, and pushed the cape of her cloak off one shoulder. “You misunderstand
my intent, Mrs. Snook. They aren’t being returned to duty of any sort. I mean to take them off your hands—to care for them in my hut.”

The matron shifted in her seat, as if considering Anne’s proposal. Deep purple crescents sagged beneath watery, ferret eyes blinking at the acrid smoke emanating from her pipe. Her ears poked out from thin hair pulled tight into a scrawny tail, and she was made most ridiculous by the man’s velvet and tasseled nightcap she wore perched at a jaunty angle. “Eyah… I understand… but them two aren’t fit for duty and they stay put.”

Anne plunked fists to hips, her brow knit. “Are you deaf or daft?” She leaned forward, speaking loud and slow, as one would speak to an imbecile. “I’m taking these boys where they will receive better care—so they can be
returned
to duty—and not to their graves.”

The soldier-patients were drawn from their humdrum routine by the rumpus, and the able-bodied crowded in to witness the exchange between the two women.

Unfolding like a jackknife, the tall, thin matron rose to her feet. Folding arms across her sunken chest, she restated her dictum. “You can go where you please, but these boys are in
my
charge, and I take my duties to heart, ye hear?”

“Heart! If you indeed own one, I’d wager it’s no bigger than one of old Methuselah’s shriveled bollocks.” To the guffaws of the onlookers, Anne grabbed Jim and Brian by the hands and hustled them toward the door.

Mrs. Snook called out, “Bar the door, Sergeant McQuigg. If they take a step beyond the threshold, arrest the boys for desertion.”

Anne spun on her heel and charged back to stand toe-to-toe with the hospital matron. “Tell me, Mrs. Snook, what manner of sotweed have you tamped into your pipe?”

The soldiers gathered around burst out laughing. Anne grabbed Jim and Brian—wrapped in their shabby blankets, faces dotted with scabby pox, hair matted, and barefoot to boot—and she pushed the boys to stand front and center.

“Look at them, Mrs. Snook, these fine specimens in your charge—practically naked and as thin as ramrods. These boys under your care
are no better off than a beggar is in a stinking gutter in New York town.”

“The beggar in the gutter’s better off than we are,” one of the soldiers chimed in.

“Aye,” another agreed. “Any beggar worth his salt’ll beg enough for a pint now and then.”

Mrs. Snook was not budged by sentiment or satire. “These are soldiers under quarantine, treated no better or worse than any other.”

“They’re boys—and they are helpless in this place. I can give them proper care.”

“They’re soldiers in my charge,” Mrs. Snook said with a nod, “and they stay put.”

“Your charge.” Anne reached out and snatched the ridiculous nightcap from the matron’s head, shaking it in her face. “I’d wager the corpse from which you pilfered this cap was in your charge as well.” Anne flung the nightcap into the fire.

Mrs. Snook gasped and watched the nightcap burst into flames, then she turned and gave Anne a hard shove, sending her back a step.

“I’m warning you, Mrs. Snook, I’m in a thin skin today.” Hands curled into fists, Anne could feel the bite of fingernails digging into palms. “I’m taking these boys with me…”

“Give her what for, Annie!” Jim shouted.

Mr. Binny came barging through the crowd, and, like wind on water, a disappointed groan rippled across the hospital as the surgeon grabbed Anne by the shoulders.

“Mrs. Merrick! Mrs. Snook!”

Anne heaved a heavy breath, and relaxed the muscles bunched in her shoulders.

“I apologize, Mr. Binny, for this disruption, but I find I have no tolerance these days for idiots of any kind.” Anne shot the matron a look that would turn sweet wine to vinegar. “As I explained to deaf ears, I will see these two boys cared for. If you require, Mr. Binny, I’ll swear an oath to keeping them quarantined from the rest of the population.”

“No oath required, Mrs. Merrick, and any relief you might give to
our effort is much appreciated. Mrs. Snook seems to have forgotten it is a hospital we are running, not a prison.”

“Thank you, sir, and good day.”

Anne pushed the boys out the door, where Sally and Pink were waiting, waving their arms and stamping their feet beside bundles of clothing.

“What took ye so long?” Sally asked.

“You should have seen, Sal.” Jim bounced around, punching the air. “Annie was at loggerheads with pinch-faced Snooky.”

“Enough of yer blether. Hurry and put these on, so we can be on our way.” Sally handed Jim and Brian stockings and shoes and teased Anne with a smirk, “Fisticuffs with the matron, Mrs. Merrick?”

“We exchanged a few words between us.” Anne shrugged.

“Hey!” Jim complained. “You gave me girl’s shoes!”

“And girl stockings,” Brian added, holding up the pair of hose Sally had given him.

“Aye, and be glad for ’em.” Sally pulled a yarn cap over Jim’s head. “Unless yid rather cross the valley barefoot, this is what we have to spare.”

The boys sat down and scrambled to pull on socks and shoes in the cold. Anne helped Brian into her Hessian coat, and Pink draped Sally’s red cloak over Jim’s shoulders. Fastening the clasp under his throat, she drew the hood up.

“What a pretty little girl,” Brian teased, patting Jim on the head.

Jim gave Brian a shove. “Shut your hole!”

“Let’s go!” Anne waved everyone onward, and together they set off to the cabin on the other side of the valley.

Jim took the point position and urged, “At the quickstep, please—I don’t care to have any of my mates t’ see me wearing lady clothes.”

Anne said, “Maybe you should have thought of that before you sold your nice clothes away.”

Brian’s eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you believe us? I ain’t never had a shirt as fine or warm as the one you made for me. Why in heaven’s name would I ever sell it?”

Jim added, “
We tolt you true, Annie. Our things was stolt from our backs, and there ain’t nothin’ to be done about it.”

“Mmmmph!” Sally snorted. “If yer shirts were truly stolen from your backs, ye must have seen the thief. Why will ye no’ name him?”

“We can bear being cold and shivery,” Brian said. “But we’d not bear being cold and shivery and beat to a pulp.”

“And ratting on this fellow will garner us a bad beating for sure,” Jim said.

“Ratting on what fellow?” Anne pressed.

Brian groaned. “Can’t say, Annie. It’ll go hard on us if we do. Truth is, we oughta known better, and harbored our goods more careful-like. Without Jack and Titus and Cap’n Peabody at our backs, there was no way for us to keep our nice things. Not in this camp.”