Shortly after the battle for Concord, Colonel John Stark and his fellow commander, a very tall and handsome Major Andrew McClary of the New Hampshire militia, arrived in our town, determined to set up a field office. A weathered veteran of the French and Indian War, Colonel Stark took dinner with the Fultons his first night, regaled us with stories of his Indian captivity. I sat, transfixed, remembering Mary Rowlandson’s story, admiring the man before us who possessed such grit and fortitude. Colonel Stark set up his headquarters at the Admiral Vernon Tavern, not far from the Fulton home, and began recruiting at once. Within days, more than a thousand New Hampshire militiamen arrived, and our town became a whirlwind of activity and noise. Not long after, the colonel moved into the Royall mansion, as Isaac Royall had fled to England with a handful of his slaves a few days before the Concord battle, leaving his estate unattended.
Soldiers came and went through Sarah’s home as John took to helping Major McClary gather what supplies he could for the troops. Talk of war and lack of gunpowder became the fiber of our lives. When word leaked out that General Warren had granted Captain Benedict Arnold two hundred pounds of powder to capture cannons at Fort Ticonderoga, we held our collective breath, waiting for our salvation.
Now, I looked down at the letters, glistening with ink, set in the press that would soon turn upon paper. Mr. Adams and Mr. Hancock were in Philadelphia at the second meeting of the Continental Congress. But Noah and the army needed their help now. They needed the cannons at Fort Ticonderoga now. Yet General Gage surely knew this. He would not wait in his plans to break out of Boston.
I woke to the sound of cannon fire.
Its solid, powerful booms called from the east, causing a cramp of worry to form within my chest and work its way to my gut. I eased my hands over the solid mound of my belly, feeling my wee one move within even as my heart seized in fear for his father. Remembering my own advice to Mary the day of Lexington and Concord, desperate prayers poured from my mouth as I voiced my fears and consciously released them to the Almighty.
I rose and dressed, set out to Sarah’s house as soon as I was able. Despite the early hour, both soldiers and civilians crowded the main thoroughfare. I pushed across the bridge and finally entered Sarah’s home, where Major McClary pleaded with John.
“Is there no more to be found anywhere?”
John shook his head, a frown on his face as he broke into an unhealthy cough. “I’m afraid not, Major.”
The man cursed and Sarah looked on, her mouth pressed tight.
“I’m sending my men into battle with naught but a cupful of powder, fifteen balls, and a flint per man. Inexcusable.”
He left the house and Sarah placed a hand on John’s arm. “There is nothing you can do. We’ve given all we have and now there is simply none left to give.”
After Colonel Stark’s troops marched away, we gathered upon Pasture Hill. The rumble of cannons shook the sky. From the direction of Charlestown, billowing smoke rose to the heavens. I tried not to cry, truly I did, but thinking of Noah alongside all the men on the receiving end of the cannons of the king with not enough ammunition to defend themselves caused a large lump to form in my throat.
I’d felt that God had bestowed such grace upon me in allowing me a life of my own—a life with Noah. Would He continue to allow me to live beneath this grace? And what of those whose husbands and brothers and sons lay dying amid that smoke?
I breathed a prayer into the air, releasing it toward the gray swirls curling against the blue of the sky. What terrors were happening upon the hills of Charlestown, on both sides, we could only imagine.
Lord, be with Noah.
Be with us all.
When we could stand to watch the smoke and listen to the cannons no longer, we turned for home.
“There will be wounded. We must gather supplies. We’ll set up a hospital on the field near the bridge,” Sarah said.
John nodded. “Little John and I will ride to every house and gather what lint and linen we can.”
Sarah turned to her oldest. “Take the children back home. Keep a kettle of hot water on the stove all day, you hear? As much as you are able.” Young Sarah nodded, solemn.
We all went to our intended tasks when we reached the Fulton house.
“Where is Dr. Brooks?” I asked.
“Major Brooks,” Sarah corrected. “He is with the men.”
“Dr. Tufts is to care for them all? Who will work alongside him?”
Sarah looked at me. “We will.” Something passed between us then. A solidification of the bond we shared. While she was as much mother and sister to me, in that moment she was also friend and fellow freedom fighter.
We could not go to battle alongside the men, even if we wanted to. But we could do this. Help the hurting. Heal the sick. Together. I vowed not to leave her side.
We gathered what instruments we could from the kitchen and from John’s small shed, and though I couldn’t imagine using them on injured men, I reminded myself that I would do what I had to—for Noah. For all the men who risked their lives for our cause. And while I might not be convinced of the rightness of war, I was convinced in the rightness of helping the injured.
I would be strong.
We set up tables and lined them with old sheets, gathered what honey and camphor we could to make a tincture for wounds. The townsfolk responded to our call, donating as they could—a chair, a table, tools and axes. Butcher knives and torches. Lint and bandages and sheets. In early afternoon, a dirtied Major McClary came down the road. Far from the organized officer I’d seen just this morning, his shirt was torn and his hair a clump of dust and sweat.
“We need more dressings.”
We collected what we could, taking some from a group of women stripping sheets for just such a purpose, all the while keeping an ear for Major McClary’s report.
“. . . not enough gunpowder . . . reinforcements . . . holding them off . . . should have been on Bunker Hill . . .”
I wanted to ask him news of Noah but knew it was foolish to expect him to know how my husband fared among so many. We watched his retreat atop his horse.
I did not expect that the next time I glimpsed Major McClary’s handsome face, it would be with vacant, hooded eyes, eclipsed in death.
As night fell, our hospital grew busy. Both the dead and the wounded were brought to Medford. Little John lit torches alongside the beds of the men, and his father assisted Dr. Tufts in holding the men down during amputations. Reverend Osgood helped transport the men from wagons to the tables and workbenches that served as the makeshift beds of the hospital, praying with as many as possible.
I was sure the screams of the soldiers would haunt me until the end of my days. If the screams did not, the visions of open wounds and dangling limbs and tendons and, in one instance, a man’s bowels would certainly do so.
I wiped my cheek against my shoulder as I fought a rising nausea within me, but continued at my task, trying to ignore the obvious pain of the man beneath me as I dug a bullet from his upper thigh.
At first, at the sight of any serious injury, I had waited for Dr. Tufts. After the fourth time calling the doctor away from his immediate duties, Sarah had turned to me, exasperated. “Do what you can. He can only help one man at a time.” She’d handed me iron tongs. “If it is a musket ball, dig it out with this. If it is a laceration, apply lint and a bandage. If amputations are needed . . . tie off the flow of blood as well as you are able. They will have to wait for the doctor.”
Now, digging within this man’s flesh, the smell of blood and sweat and dirtied leather shoes rose up to meet me; the ground swirled around me. I would be sick. The flame of a nearby torch created a devilish vision before me, ghostlike in its fiery embrace. The mortifying scream of a man broke through it all. Then Sarah’s voice and Dr. Tufts’s. I turned in time to empty the little contents of my stomach onto the muddied ground beside me.
Almost at once, my vision cleared and the nausea left. I took my tool a
nd continued the work of probing within the man’s leg for the bullet that plagued him.
“Almost there, soldier,” I said, trying to mimic the calm tone Sarah had mastered. I felt the solid mass of the musket ball—the size now familiar from treating so many similar wounds—and grasped it, pulled it up through the man’s loud groan.
I placed the bloodied ball and my tool on top of his stomach and began applying the tincture of honey and camphor, then packing lint into the wound, taking my tool back up, and turning to see who else needed aid. The man mumbled his gratitude behind me.
With each survey of a man’s body, I would drag my reluctant gaze to his face and search for my husband’s features, both longing to see him and holding out hope that he would appear beside me—upright and healthy—at any moment.
I lowered myself to the ground beside a body—a colored boy of no more than thirteen—who shook uncontrollably. I ran a hand over his face, grabbed some lint from my basket and applied it to the quivering stump of his leg. Someone on the field had tied a rope around it to stop the bleeding, but there was nothing more I could do for him.
I sought his hand with my own bloodied one and squeezed. “Shhh . . . the doctor will be over soon.” A woman with a tray of flip passed by and I scooped one up, lifted the boy’s head to sip. He swallowed the tiniest of sips, but mostly his lips just bathed at the rim. After a moment, I lowered his head back to the ground.
“Do you know where my m-mother is? I r-ran away to the b-battle without her knowing.”
I made more hushing noises. “You will see her soon enough, now. Just rest.”
“Will you get her for m-me? She’s in the keeping room making b-biscuits.”
I blinked away tears. ’Twas the first time in hours that I had stopped to gaze upon the soul of the wounded. The boy’s eyes grew vacant.
“I w-want to tell her . . .”
As I watched the young man prepare to give up his life, I felt at the brink of insanity. I wanted to cover my ears and close my eyes to it all. Block my nose from the smells of reality around me. Would this truly give us freedom? This boy—was he a slave? Did he fight with freedom in mind? “She’s coming, dear. You can tell her. . . . Lord, be with him. . . .”
And then he was gone.
I blew my nose in my apron. If I dwelled on the boy’s death, if I pondered the heartbreak of the mother he’d spoken of, if I continued to sit holding his stiffening hand, I would weaken. I would not be able to rise and help others. In order to survive, I must somehow separate myself from it. I must continue on for the sake of us all. For Sarah, who labored alongside the broken, wounded men. For Noah, who gave his all for this fight. For my own child, growing within my womb, a legacy of liberty the inheritance we longed to give him. For every man who had given his loyalty to this cause of freedom, putting action behind ideals.
I gently pulled my fingers from the boy’s, laid one last lingering hand alongside his face, and rose, my basket of lint and bandages clutched in my arm.
“Emma.”
I turned at Sarah’s voice, prepared to give her aid, my dressings, whatever she had need. I held out the tool she’d given me, blood drying upon it.
She shook her head, her gaze flicking to me, then back to the tool. “’Tis Noah. He’s with the doctor. You must come quickly.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Emma
In the midst of death’s relentless power, I yet among the living stand.
MERCY OTIS WARREN
I FOLLOWED SARAH through the maze of wounded, bloodied men. My stomach threatened to rebel against me again, but I continued forward, the pale pink of dawn just now showing itself on the horizon.
Part of me wished Sarah to stop walking, to simply tell me what had happened to Noah or make him appear before my eyes. Another part wished she would walk forever. That I would never have to see what waited for me at the end of this march.
Whatever it was, I vowed to be strong for my husband. We would make it past this. I would help him. Unless . . . what if it wasn’t something to be past? What if he already lay like so many others, like the boy I’d just left who cried for his mother? What if he was already dead?
The ground swayed before me and I stopped, my hand grasping for something solid.
And then Sarah was there, supporting me, strong as ever. Yet she could be strong, couldn’t she? ’Twasn’t her husband we went to see.
For a moment, I regretted that Noah was so young and healthy, that he didn’t suffer an infirmity like John. He could have stayed. He had the work of the press, after all, itself a worthy cause for liberty. Why had he left us? Me and our unborn child? What would I do without him?
Sarah guided me toward the edge of the field. “A cannon hit his leg. Took it clean off. Dr. Tufts says it’s better that way, without an amputation. They were able to stop the bleeding on the field and dress it, but he’s lost a lot of blood. When I saw him . . . I had to tell you. The doctor gave him some opium to help with the pain.”
Her words lay like a jumbled mess in my head, as slow moving as custard. I couldn’t comprehend them, and at the same time, I could.
Noah, hurt. No leg. A lot of blood.
I curled over, Sarah’s arms around me.
Help . . .
’Twas the weakest of prayers, but it came straight from my soul.
“I . . . I need a moment.” My breathing was shallow and rapid as I whispered to Sarah, who held me, crouched in the mud.
I was selfish. Men needed her right now. Men worse off than I. Or were they? Was the pain of the heart sometimes capable of a greater suffering than that of the body?
Sarah rubbed my back, and I remembered Mother doing the same for me once when I was sick as a young girl.
Mother. She’d never written. Did she think of me? Did she care? Surely, when I had run off, she did not wish such travesty to be a part of my life. If she knew, what would she say?
“Emma.” Sarah’s voice broke through my thoughts. Strong, sure, where Mother’s was nothing but a figment of my imagination. “All will be well.”
Was it a lie meant to soothe, as I’d told the dying boy that his mother was on her way? I didn’t care. In that moment, I would believe it.
And yet as I felt my entire world crashing down, a greater call impressed itself upon me.
This moment could not be forever. I would have to rise, to walk and see my husband, to be strong for him in this, his moment of need. I would not disappoint him. ’Twas my turn to take up arms in our little family. To fight for goodness and peace amid chaos and destruction.
And I would do so by facing my husband with a brave face.
I dragged in air through my nostrils, decided and steady. Once. Twice. Three times. I felt my brain begin to clear, the call of duty to my husband stronger than my desire to curl in the mud and deny and sob and plead with the unfair reality of this turn of events.
“I am ready.” My voice didn’t waver and with Sarah’s assistance, I got to my feet.
“Good girl,” she said, directing me to the table, my husband’s still body upon it.
The first thing I noticed was not the stump of his lower leg, ’twas the steadiness of his breathing. His chest rose and fell in a rhythmic manner, so unlike the boy’s erratic and shaking breath. Such a small matter, a husband’s breath, yet it fulfilled in me no small hope.
Sarah left me, and I approached the table. When I came to him, I laid a hand on his shoulder and he startled awake, his eyes wide. I glimpsed the terror he’d been through that day in his wild and unfamiliar stare, the light from the lanterns reflecting a gaze that saw me and, at the same time, didn’t.
“’Tis me, Noah.”
He seemed to return to his senses at the sound of my voice. He grasped at me, mumbled my name, his words slurred with the effects of the opium.
I held him close, pressed his dirtied head to my bosom, and made gentle hushing noises as I’d done with the boy not minutes ago. Only, I vowed, Noah’s ending would be d
ifferent. I would do everything within my power to see it be so.
Dawn came early the next morning, shedding light on the writhing mass of wounded and bloodied men lying in our field hospital. I did not go far from Noah’s side, tending those at the edges of the field as best I could.
Something otherworldly pushed me forward. My stomach cramped around my nausea, but I considered it a small sacrifice compared to those around me. I stopped by Noah often, but the opium kept him sleeping, which I deemed best. When I passed him in his sleep, I dared glance at the abnormal stump of his bandaged left leg, propped up with a crude wooden crate. He still had his knee, but my husband’s foot and calf were gone.
I grieved that part of him, tried not to think on its implications, tried not to think on the dangers of infection setting in.
I prayed.
I prayed over him and over the patients I worked on. I prayed that something would give in this war, that the madness of wounding and killing one another would stop, that King George would see our side and that, perhaps, the Sons might see his.
As I moved from patient to patient, the lint and dressing within my basket beginning to dwindle, I sensed that we were not alone through the suffering, that a presence greater than us understood it.
It did not make a whit of sense. For the very life of my husband was in danger, my future in question. Despite my tiredness, I felt a purpose in serving, in being Noah’s wife and helping him through his darkest hour.
When he woke, the drugs seemed to have worn off, for he grimaced in pain, and I ran my hands over his arms, looked around for a tankard of brandy, which would have to do, for Dr. Tufts had run out of opium long ago.
When Mrs. Phips came with a tray, I took a cup and put it to my husband’s lips. He drank heavily before resting his head.
The Tea Chest Page 19
