Redcoat

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Who’s a fortunate Yankee, then?” the corporal asked of no one in particular. “Can you manage? I can’t help lift him, you know, not with my back.”

  “I can manage.” Sam lifted Jonathon from the mire and, the filthy body light in his arms, carried him to the house in Market Street where, just as Captain Vane had foretold, a physician waited in the candlelit kitchen. With him was a tall, elegant lady and a black maid who cried in shock as Sam carried the awful burden through the door.

  “Oh God!”

  The physician echoed the maid’s horror. “Oh God!”

  Sam laid the body on the table, then, because he did not know what else to do, he returned to the back door, to be checked by the doctor’s angry voice. “You did the damage! You can help repair it!”

  “Me?”

  “You’re a Redcoat, aren’t you? One of the fine men come to save us from ourselves?” The physician spat the words angrily. “Come here, man! Your damned Captain’s too squeamish to help, so you can do something for a Patriot.”

  The physician was stripping the clothes from Jonathon, cutting through the rotting, fouled, pus-stiff layers of cloth with long shears. The tall handsome lady blanched, while the black maid helped with quick and efficient fingers. “Are they doing nothing for them in there?” the doctor asked angrily.

  “No, sir.” Sam’s voice was full of misery.

  “Barbarians. Scum. Filth.” The doctor said it as he lifted the last layer of linen away. Sam stared with fascinated horror at the twisted and lumpen flesh that was Jonathon’s right foot.

  “Don’t gape!” the physician snapped. “Oh, my God! It’ll have to come off. Water, Jenny! Sheets. Oh, God.”

  The leg was bloated, rotten, stinking.

  “Can you …” the tall lady began.

  “…I can, Martha, but you’re going to have to offer me peace!” The physician was almost entirely bald, with a bad-tempered plump face. He opened a wooden carrying case lined with velvet which held, in specially shaped indentations, saws and knives and augers and forceps and wicked, small scalpels. He took out a bone saw, two knives and one of the scalpels. The teeth of the saw still held flecks of dried blood.

  The physician stooped to Jonathon’s shrivelled right thigh and sniffed at the rancid flesh. “There’s no skin to stitch over the stump. Have you got tar?”

  “No,” Jenny said.

  “Then red hot pokers! A red hot flat-iron. Anything! You!” – this was to Sam – “come here!”

  Sam, obedient, went to the end of the kitchen table where the doctor was looping a great leather strap around table and patient.

  “Pull it tight,” the doctor said. “I don’t want him to move.” Another strap went round Jonathon’s waist and two more about his healthy left leg. “Pokers, Martha! Pokers!”

  Martha thrust three pokers into the fire while Jenny worked the leather bellows. The physician peeled off his jacket and pulled on a blood-stained apron. “It’s going to hurt him.”

  “Will brandy help?” Martha asked.

  “I doubt he can drink it,” the physician said, “but it’ll help me.” He looked belligerently at Sam. “He’s strapped down, but he’s going to flap like a landed fish. You’re to keep him still, you understand? And don’t watch what I’m doing, just hold him tight!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Martha! Get the brandy, and more light, more light!”

  They waited. Jonathon moaned and turned his head from side to side. Then Martha came back to the kitchen with a couple of tall, twisted silver candelabras. She also carried a black bottle of brandy which the physician snatched. “Now, go to your brother’s head, Martha. Hold his face, give him reassurance. He probably won’t hear you, in fact he’ll probably die, but we can try to undo what our royal masters have done. Jenny! Keep that fire hot!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The physician had hooked a razor strop on to a meat hook and was now scraping a knife blade up and down the leather. “They will tell you,” he said to the kitchen at large, “that it takes twenty minutes to slice off a leg. That is mephitic, rank nonsense. I have done it in ninety seconds, and will do so now. Anything longer is too great a shock to the constitution. It is not pleasant for anyone, least of all the poor bloody patient, but if you want to give him even a quarter chance of survival, you will help me by not screaming, fainting, or otherwise displaying feminine weaknesses. This also goes for our gallant British soldier. Hold tight and think of England, but do not let that thought make you vomit. Are the pokers red hot?”

  “Yes, sir.” Jenny, clearly nervous of the physician’s bombast, said it meekly.

  “God bless us all.” The physician laid down the sharpened knife and poured himself a generous cupful of brandy. He drained it. “If God is gracious, he’ll stay unconscious. Hold him.”

  Sam lay his arms over Jonathon’s midriff. Martha put her long, white fingers against her brother’s even paler cheeks, and the physician took the long, wicked-edged knife. “Courage, all!” the physician said grimly, then plunged down with the bright feather-edged blade.

  Jonathon uttered a scream that might have been that of a soul entering eternal perdition. At the same moment his body went into a paroxysm of such vicious power that Sam had to fight it down with all his country-bred strength.

  “Keep him still!” the physician shouted, drawing out the last word as if to drown the awful scream that was so despairing and agonizing. Sam forced the body down as the gleaming blade flensed round the thigh to spill a shock of pus and blood on to the floor.

  The knife was discarded and the bone saw snatched up. The doctor grunted, the saw teeth skidded, caught, then began their rasping noise. Jonathon, thankfully, had fainted. Sam was looking away from the operation, staring at the dark-eyed lady whose eyes, all unknowing, stared into his. A tinge of burning came from the hurrying saw.

  The physician gave one last grunting heave with the saw, then a second knife slashed at the remaining flesh. “Pokers! Quick, girl! Quick!”

  Jenny handed the first poker to the physician, and Jonathon’s body jerked again as the red hot iron cauterized the savaged flesh. “Next!” Another steaming hiss and again the stench of roasting meat curdled Sam’s nostrils. “Next!” And Sam closed his eyes as if darkness could blot out the awful sound and smell.

  “Ninety-eight seconds!” The physician was sweating. “Bandages!” The bandages had been soaked in lead acetate to fight infection. “You!” – this was again to Sam – “Take the leg out and bury it.”

  Sam picked up the grotesquely twisted leg by the ankle and took it into the yard. There was no light, no way of finding a spade, nor any means of knowing where in the small yard he should bury the sawn-off limb. He dropped it on a small patch of grass, then sat, miserable, against the wall.

  A cry made him look up. A small child, nightrobed and frightened, had appeared in a doorway. She called for her mother, and Sam, fearful that the child would see the severed leg, ran to the door and gathered the small girl into his arms. “It’s all right, it’s all right.”

  “The door was closed.” The child, woken by the awful scream, had tried to go down to the kitchen.

  “It’s all right,” Sam said soothingly. Behind the child he could see into a room so lavish that it reminded him of the Squire’s house back home. He explained, as gently as he could, that the awful noise had been the sound of someone who had been hurt, but was now being made better.

  “Who?” The child, with the resilience of her age, was entirely reassured by Sam’s words.

  “Someone called Jonathon.”

  “Uncle Jonathon?”

  Sam heard the horror in the child’s voice, and hastened to allay it. “He’s going to get better! I promise!” Sam suddenly remembered the kick of the musket, the blossom of smoke, the exultation of an enemy down, and he thought how it all came to this; a soldier’s reward of blood and saws and screaming in the night. Nate, perhaps, had been lucky, and suddenly Sam knew that his brother�
�s death and Jonathon’s survival were inextricably linked; he also knew that he must keep the promise he had just made to a child if his brother’s soul was to find its paradise beyond the furthest stars. A rebel’s life must be saved, and Sam had promised it. Sam, through Jonathon, would make amends.

  Eighteen

  In the belief that unalloyed pleasures could end a rebellion and seduce the affections of soured colonists, Sir William, aided by Lizzie Loring, determined to make the life of Philadelphia’s society into a dazzle of ostentatious enchantment. Party succeeded party, dinners melded into candlelit suppers, while musicians, instead of inspiring the red ranks into the smoke of battle, whirled dancers around the city’s polished floors. Philadelphia would see, and the rest of America would understand, that the British tyrants of rebel propaganda were, in truth, the bringers of joy and the only true hope for wealth and peace in the colonies.

  Yet the war could not be entirely forgotten in the first weeks of the British occupation of Philadelphia. There was still the tiresome nuisance of the rebel forts on the lower river, and the city must be ringed with guardposts to protect its revellers from rebel raids. However, within that protective ring Sir William would have laughter, and his aides, who so recently had ridden amidst shot and slaughter, were ordered to become the ringmasters of enjoyment.

  Captain Vane embraced the order with alacrity, for Captain Vane was in love.

  On the night when Jonathon’s leg had been severed, Vane had waited for the widow’s thanks which, when they came, were brief but gracious. In the days that followed Vane besieged the widow with flowers, gifts and flattery. He was in love, and he loved with all the passion of a young man who had been starved of feminine company, and who believed he had met, in one woman, the very pattern of his secret longings. He told Sam he was in love, for a man could not keep such secrets from his servant, and he shared the happy news with John Andre.

  “You claim she’s beautiful?” Andre teased Vane.

  “As a dark angel.”

  “Her breath doesn’t stink?”

  “Like rose-petals crushed in dew.”

  “Then her teeth are surely rotten?”

  “Pure as polished ivory.”

  “Is she poor?”

  “Blessed with wealth, John, beyond a man’s dreams.”

  Andre looked alarmed. “She must have one imperfection, Kit.”

  “There is a daughter,” Vane allowed, “but a sweet child.”

  Andre laughed. “Then I wish you much joy, Kit. You deserve it. But she’s a rebel, surely?”

  “A woman’s mind,” Vane said dismissively, “can be changed. They’re notorious for it.”

  “But rarely in the way we wish. They’re also notorious for that.” Andre smiled. “So when am I to meet this paragon? Or do you not dare expose her to my fascination?”

  “I shall bring her to Billy’s Bacchanalia.”

  “Then I shall try not to swoon at her appearance.”

  Billy’s Bacchanalia, the nickname for an open-air rout, was ostensibly a welcome for autumn, but really just an excuse to revel in the Neck – a lovely place of mature trees between the converging rivers where lavish houses, built as summer retreats by wealthy Philadelphians, graced the banks. It was in the garden of one such house that Sir William ordered a late dinner served so that the guests could eat and drink in the fading evening’s light. Musicians played within carefully fashioned bowers among the trees from which, like pale moons in the afternoon sun, Chinese lanterns waited for nightfall. Guests sported in the Schuylkill, using the duck-hunters’ punts that were moored along the river’s bank.

  The day was cloudy, but dry, and in the afternoon a game of cricket was played between officers of the cavalry and officers of the infantry. Few spectators watched the game because of the greater pleasure of watching each other. Lizzie Loring, magnificent in a dress of white satin slashed over a scarlet petticoat, carried a furled parasol about which was woven garlands of flowers to match those which graced her hat. She strolled on Sir William’s arm and to left and right officers and their ladies bowed and curtseyed in welcome.

  Martha arrived in a polonaise of midnight blue and with her dark hair piled almost as high as Lizzie Loring’s. The two women had become friendly since their first meeting and Lizzie now drew her lover to Martha’s side. Sir William bowed. “Your brother, dear Mrs Crowl, how is he?”

  “The physician wants to bleed him. Do you think that’s a good idea, Sir William?”

  “I’m no expert.” Sir William smiled at Captain Vane who stood proudly beside the widow. “But there is a view in London which holds bleeding to be a bad idea. I can’t say it ever hurt me, though.”

  “I think bleeding is an atrocious idea.” Martha’s mind, despite her question, was clearly decided. “The poor boy’s lost enough blood as it is, so I shall tell the doctor to take his leeches away.”

  “But your brother is recovering?” Lizzie asked anxiously.

  “He becomes no worse,” Martha said. “But Captain Vane’s servant is being very kind to him, and that seems to help.”

  “He’s a good fellow, Sam,” Vane said. “And a genius with sick horses, Sir William.”

  “Doubtless your brother will soon be trotting,” Sir William said genially before inviting Vane and Martha to share his coach for a visit to the lower battery which guarded the confluence of the Delaware and the Schuylkill. Other guests had gathered there to be offered wine and oysters. However, it was not the refreshments which drew the small crowd to the river’s edge, but rather the distant sight of white smoke puffing across the southern marshes. Each new puff, jetting on the horizon, was followed seconds later by the dull crump of a gun’s firing.

  The guests watched the war which, as autumn threatened rain and chill winds, had been reduced to a struggle of fire in water, of blood seeping into salt marsh, and of wounded men screaming like the lonely cries of the gulls that scavenged at the grey water’s edge. The river forts must be taken and so Sir William had moved troops into the wide immensity of salt marsh south of the city where gun batteries, shored and sandbagged against the seeping water, punched dirty white puffs of powder smoke into the salt-tanged air. The river swirled and slid between the stiff-grassed islands, making for Delaware Bay where Lord Howe, brother to Sir William and Admiral of the North American Fleet, waited with the ships that should soon unite Philadelphia once more with the open sea.

  The British controlled the Delaware’s northern bank, where, on the marshes of Province Island and Carpenters Island the British engineers made great rafts of treetrunks on which their guns could fire south at Fort Mifflin which stood on the aptly named Mud Island in the very centre of the Delaware’s wide stream. The great guns, slamming back under the powder’s explosive charge, drove the rafts into the salted mud so that the vast weapons tilted and more planks, treetrunks, ropes, and earth had to be fetched to strengthen the shaking platforms. And always the American cannon, firing from behind the landward-facing wooden parapets of Fort Mifflin, took their toll of gunners and sappers.

  Beyond Mud Island, beyond the river’s treacherous shoals, and beyond Bush Island where the Americans had a barricaded battery, lay the nine-foot parapets of Fort Mercer on the New Jersey shore. Forts Mifflin and Mercer, strongholds in a slough of wetness, were under siege, not just by land, but by sea. British gunboats and frigates, grey sails shivering as their guns fired, added the weight of their shot to the bombardment. Sir William would have liked more naval boats in the wide river, but the Americans had sunk vast obstacles downstream and it was painfully slow work to warp even a single warship through the current-ridden gap. This was war at a creeping pace; no glory here of shining sabres at the gallop or of colours lifted to a rising sun, this was the dour work of engineers and gunners, of mathematicians and measurers who doled powder into the stubby barrels of mortars as though it was gold; one ounce too much and the shell would fly far beyond the target to splash harmlessly in the river’s swirl.

  Ma
rtha, watching the distant gunsmoke from the comfort of Sir William’s open carriage, smiled at the Commander-in-Chief. “You’ll have to explain what’s happening, Sir William. It’s an utter mystery otherwise.”

  “It’s just slow and steady work, my dear. We shall reduce Fort Mifflin by gunfire, then we shall use its guns to fire on Fort Mercer.”

  “Which will surely take a long time?”

  “I fear so, unless they surrender. I wish they would, for they’ve proved their bravery and can achieve nothing more.”

  Martha, knowing that Sir William was complimenting the rebel garrisons for her benefit, smiled an acknowledgement. “But surely they could yet bring ruin to the merchants of the city, Sir William?”

  “So the merchants tell me.” Sir William returned her smile. “But the river will be opened.”

  Yet, so long as the Delaware’s seaway was closed, so would cargoes gather dust in half-empty warehouses, and so would a scarcity of food threaten the city. Some Loyalist merchants urged an escalade on Fort Mercer, pleading that, once captured by assault, the fort’s guns could be used to grind Fort Mifflin into powder, and Martha asked Sir William why he rejected the advice. Sir William, flattered by Martha’s interest, shook his head. “Such an operation would take just as long! I would have to move artillery over the river, dig batteries, and open saps. Scaling ladders would have to be made and a breach opened. No, slow and steady will do the job just as well!”

  “And in the meanwhile,” Martha insisted, “we shall all starve?”

  “I will not allow you to starve, Mrs Crowl. No, I shall build a floating bridge across the Schuylkill” – Sir William waved towards the swiftly flowing river – “and we shall bring food from the Chesapeake Bay.”

  “It seems an extraordinary undertaking,” Martha said archly, “just to win a victory over a few troublesome colonials!”

  Sir William did not rise to the bait, but Lizzie Loring, who still harboured suspicions of Captain Vane’s belligerence, could not resist giving the line a tug. “Do you agree, Captain Vane?”