Two men with a wheelbarrow emerged from the shadows and passed them, pushing their grisly cargo of dead soldiers, their arms and legs hanging over the sides of the wooden barrow. Lanterns in the field beyond the fence indicated the burial detail at work. Elisabeth noted the dead soldiers were barefoot, their shoes having been removed to serve the living.
Inside the barn, lanterns hung from wooden pegs or nails, illuminating the stalls crammed with the worst of the wounded lying on the hard dirt floor, more than two dozen to a compartment. Some were covered with blankets. Most were not. The wider passageways between the stalls were also filled with those able to sit, their backs against the rough wooden siding of the stalls, their heads lolling to the side in pain wracked sleep.
Mercy approached one of the local women who appeared to be in charge. “We have come from Philadelphia to help,” she explained, gesturing to Elisabeth and Mary. “I have some experience in tending to wounded.”
“There is one doctor and his two assistants making the rounds from barn to church to home to wherever they are housed,” she replied softly. “These men were last seen by him a few hours before sunset. Some need attention now. Others have died in the interim,” she said wearily. “The ones in the stalls need the most care- and warmth. They are amputees or have chest or stomach wounds. Those here,” she said pointing to men on the floor in the passageway, “are at least able to eat although God knows we have little to feed them.” She shrugged. “As for the ones outside, we simply do not have the room. Do your best. Holding the hands of those in pain may be all that can be done for these poor souls.”
Mary left quickly to have the drivers bring the trunks of bandages and blankets. Elisabeth followed Mercy as she proceeded from stall to stall assessing the soldiers’ condition. They lay in rows, so close together it was difficult to walk for fear of stepping on one of them. Some moaned quietly awake, others called out in their sleep. Some labored in their breathing. The breathing of others was so shallow, Elisabeth feared they had passed. Bright fresh blood oozed from the stump of one soldier’s leg, wrapped tightly below his knee. He tried to sit up but was too weak to raise himself. Awkwardly, in the narrow space, Elisabeth knelt next to him and supported his back. The man smelled of gunpowder, sweat and urine. He looked wild-eyed at her and then to his bloody stump.
“I must find my leg,” he muttered. “I must find it. Mother would want me to.” He sank back, exhausted on the dirty straw, still mumbling to himself.
Elisabeth put one hand on the soldier’s brow. “His skin is as if it is on fire, and yet he shivers.”
“It is the fever after amputation,” Mercy said. “They need to be covered. I will ask if there is any hot broth. They require nourishment to keep up their strength.” She moved on toward the stall entrance and Elisabeth rose to follow.
She felt a tug on the hem of her cloak. Elisabeth turned and looked down at the face of a young soldier, his unkempt light brown hair, matted to his forehead, his eyes sunken and pleading. His dirty blackened bony fingers held tightly to the dark blue fabric of her hem as if it were a lifeline to his continued existence. A bandage wrapped around his chest and his torn blue jacket was encrusted with dried blood.
“Please, Miss. There is much pressure on my heart.” Weakly, he raised his arm. “Could you lift it off?”
She was about to plead she did not have the time. Staring down at him she could not discern where his dried blood ended and the crimson facing of his jacket began. She gasped, realizing Will’s uniform was the same color blue with dark red facing.
“Mercy,” Elisabeth called softly and then louder. Mercy Ford’s head appeared around the stall entrance. “I am tending to those in the corridor.”
“I need to remain here,” Elisabeth said simply. “With this soldier.” She shook her head overwhelmed by the maimed men surrounding her. “And these others.”
Mercy quickly assessed the situation. “Very well, someone needs to remain here until the doctors return. Take this stall, the next one and the pathway in between. I will ask Mary to come by with blankets, linen and at least water.”
Elisabeth knelt by the young soldier and gently lifted his jacket away from the massive bandage wrapped completely around his chest. “Is that better?” He nodded. “I must tend to others but I will return.” She tucked the tail of his blood stiffened jacket under his hip and rose.
Elisabeth went from soldier to soldier, passing the still ones hoping they were deep in an exhausted sleep and not dead. For those who tossed and moaned, in the throes of a high fever and breathing rapidly, she would wipe their sweating brows with a wet linen cloth; for those that cried out, she would reassure them softly and hold their hands in hers. She carried a pewter pitcher and poured water into a cup, offering it to those who implored her with a weak outstretched hand or asked in hoarse whispers. For those with stomach wounds, she dipped the linen cloth in the pitcher and wiped their cracked lips, and let some drip into their mouths, blackened on the right side from biting the powder filled cartridges during the battle. 4 She did not know what to do about those with head wounds and on her own, decided a sip of water would do no harm. One soldier alarmed her with an ear splitting scream as she tried to lift his head for him to drink from the cup, so she simply dripped water into his open mouth.
Over the next few hours, Elisabeth returned, whenever she could, to the young wounded soldier in the uniform like Will’s, and Captain Hadley’s. He seemed more pale each time. She managed to convince herself it was the candles in the lanterns that had burned down to almost stubs. Every time she was next to him, holding his hand, he managed a wan smile as he looked deeply at her eyes.
As the night wore on, Elisabeth’s neck and back ached from constant bending. She was nauseated by the stench of unwashed men, helplessly lying in their urine and excrement with vomit dribbling down their shirts and drying on their chins and necks. Most of all, she was overwhelmed by the sight of so many of them, young men who had been whole and energetic a few days ago and who now were broken, maimed and maybe dying. And she knew, Will could be one of them, lying unattended in some home or barn, perhaps even in Darby. She would not permit herself to think of him as dead. She clung to her resolve- she would only accept his death when told by someone who had seen him. Until then, she would continue to hope.
A local woman joined her and together they dispensed soup from an iron pot with a ladle, the soup being hot when they started in one stall, warm by the second one and fairly cold for those lying in the passageway between the stalls. Her young wounded soldier had been one of the lucky ones to receive two ladles of the warm broth. She smiled encouragingly as she lifted the dipper to his cracked lips. Then, before she could stand up, he had reached out and covered her hand holding the ladle in both of his, like one protects a small bird that has fallen out of its nest. Involuntarily, she brushed his light brown hair back from his forehead. When she next returned to the stall, he was dead.
She watched with horror as two townsmen, beads of rain dripping from their hat brims, one holding the young soldier under the shoulders, the other his feet, carried him out of the stall. She heard the thump as they dumped his body in the wheelbarrow in the yard. They returned carrying another wounded soldier on a makeshift stretcher of a blanket stretched between the long handles of a hoe and rake. The man gave out an inhuman groan of agony as they lowered him on to the stall floor and pulled the blanket out from underneath him. This soldier’s hip and upper thigh down to the knee were swathed in bandages. His right arm was missing just below the elbow with a thick woolen cap covering the bandaged stump. The man’s eyes were sunk deep in their sockets and his skin, stretched tight across his forehead, was a light grey, like the color of dirty water. Judging by his clothes he was of a militia, but which one she could not tell. She took the blanket that had covered the young soldier and laid it over the militiaman, careful, as she knelt next to him, not to touch his bandages. He tried to speak but his words were more a wheeze.
How long she continued ministering as best she could to the wounded crammed about her, she did not know. The barn buzzed with the constant sounds of moans, soldiers calling out in their feverish hallucinations, the occasional high-pitched scream of someone in horrific pain and the persistent, piteous cries for water. It was those lying listless, comatose and she feared close to death, who received whatever extra attention she could give. And she realized, she did not know the single name of any of the men she was attempting to care for.
Elisabeth was so fatigued she did not notice Mercy, until she felt a hand on her shoulder. “Other women have arrived to relieve us. Come it is long past midnight.”
Elisabeth followed Mercy outside. A cold mist enveloped the yard, yet the air was clean and fresh. She took a deep breath. In the dim light of the lanterns, the ground around the barn and sheds seemed to move with those wounded waiting their turn for space inside. Dark shapes tossed and thrashed, calling out for help, for water, for comfort, for any kind of relief from the pain, the fever, the cold, their fear of dying alone. Mary Lewis caught up with them and the three women walked slowly away from the barn and yard, toward the farmhouse.
“I met the surgeon in charge,” Mercy said. “He assures me some of the wounded have already been sent to Philadelphia and beyond.” Mercy paused and wearily pinched her nose between her eyes. “I have decided to return to the city immediately. I can help there as well as here. If Samuel is alive and wounded, he will send a message to me there.” And so would Will, Elisabeth thought. “I will go with you,” she said quickly. “And I also,” Mary Lewis added. “My husband would not prevent me from tending to the wounded housed in Philadelphia. If I thought otherwise, I would remain here.”
The three women were so exhausted, they fell asleep in the carriage despite the jolting ride through the night on the rutted road. Arriving in Philadelphia in the early morning, it was clear the city had changed. There was a tenseness about the people, an air of nervousness and apprehension. The normal business of markets and manufacture seemed to have come to a halt. Nervous crowds clustered on corners discussing the latest news or reading aloud from freshly printed broadsheets. It was evident some people had decided not to wait any longer for bulletins of another defeat and the arrival of the British army. Several wagons loaded high with household furniture and drawn by tired horses plodded by. Angry workmen milled about, some carrying cudgels, calling out obscenities and threats to those they deemed cowards for seeking the protection of the countryside.
Mary left them at Mrs. Knox’s and rode with her husband’s driver and wagon to her house north of Market Street. Mercy and Elisabeth, despite their weariness ran into the house anxious for news. They found Lucy in the drawing room at her writing desk. She put her quill down and rose from her chair, surprisingly quickly given her ample size.
“Oh my dears. You look so wearied. I was this very moment penning a response to my dear Harry. Please sit and I will tell you my news.” She rang a small brass bell on the desk. “Have some tea and nourishment while we talk.”
Elisabeth sat on the Grecian couch with her back arched to lessen the stiffness in her lower spine. She kept her legs away from the yellow upholstery, conscious her stockings were bunched and spattered with mud. Mercy took a chair at the tea table.
“The wretched wounded have been arriving in the city in a continuous stream. The Pine Street Church, St. Peters nearby and Christ Church, I am told are all filled to overflowing. Down by the river, warehouses have been turned into hospitals. The very numbers of our poor wounded soldiers have frightened people to believe our army is destroyed and our cause lost.” She motioned for the servant to place the tea tray on the table and pour. “Mr. Paine has written an essay calling us to act with more resolve to defend our freedom. All the Philadelphia papers have printed it.” 5
“Judging by the number of wagons we saw being loaded with household essentials, Mr. Paine’s essay does not seem to have had the desired impact,” Mercy observed.
“The gentlemen of our Congress have remained,” Lucy said. “They are setting a fine example for the populace. It is rumors that our now our enemy.”
Elisabeth noted her change in attitude and resolve, now that she had received word from her husband that he was unharmed.
“There is no further word from the General or a mention of Will?” Elisabeth asked.
“No, my dear,” Lucy replied, reaching over and patting Elisabeth’s knee. “My intuition tells me your young man is well and with the army in the field.”
“Then why did not the General mention that in his letter to you?”
“Oh, do not be a silly,” Mrs. Knox said, taking another piece of toast and spreading it with jam. “Harry wrote his brief note to me in haste. Will may have been on another part of the battlefield or assigned to a different Regiment. When he is once again in the General’s company, I assure you my thoughtful Harry will include a word about his wellbeing. Indeed, I will add to my letter you are anxiously awaiting word from your Will.”
As she and Mercy hurried to the Pine Street Church, Elisabeth was not greatly reassured by Lucy Knox’s words. She had seen so many wounded, it was difficult for her to believe, Will had escaped this slaughter unscathed.
The street in front of the two-story church, with its high windows and four rows of double Greek styled columns lining the entrance way, was crowded with wagons loaded with food and barrels of water, thin mattresses filled with straw, stout ceramic chamber pots of all sizes and crates of linen and sheets. Men and women bustled in and out, like busy ants tending to a partially destroyed nest. Mercy took Elisabeth’s hand and together they pushed through the press of onlookers, and through the tall double doors.
Inside, the pews had been moved and lined the walls, one stacked upon the other in wooden piles taller than a normal person. The wounded lay on the stone floor in orderly rows from the entrance up to the carved wood presbytery in the rear. Sunlight streamed through the glass windows on the eastern side, illuminating with its rays the soldiers on the opposite side lying pale on their makeshift pallets. Women moved among the wounded, some sat on low stools or inverted boxes or baskets. It was much more organized than the barn hospital in Darby Elisabeth thought, but the suffering and the stench of excretions and festering wounds was the same. So were the bloody stumps, the fevered looks, the violent shivering of bodies under blankets, the screams of agony and pain and the mumbled words of gratitude or hallucinatory cries of those who had lost their reason. And then, there were those who lay so still, their breathing so shallow, it was difficult to determine if they still lived.
“Elisabeth. You proceed on the right side and I on the left. Wave to me if you find Samuel or Will.” Elisabeth nodded and began her grim promenade moving along the rows, thinking of the last time she and Will had walked together on the streets of Philadelphia that summer night in early July.
Lost in her thoughts, she almost did not notice the few soldiers lying quietly in the dim area in the chancel behind the altar. Had one not uttered a soft moan, she might have passed them by. A cloud covered the sun, now past its zenith, and the half circled portion of the floor was in shadows. Her shoe caught on an irregularity in the large rectangular stones and she reached for the wooden railing of the altar to steady herself. One of the men, unshaven with the beginnings of a thick beard, lay unconscious on his pallet, his booted feet extending beyond the thin mattress. His head was swathed in a bandage that pressed his hair to his skull, leaving only an unkempt long brown tuft sticking up from the top. The sleeve of the right arm of his uniform had been cut away, revealing the pale skin of his forearm, resting outside the blanket. His hand, from the wrist down was black with dirt and gunpowder. A bandage with an irregular blotch of dried blood encircled his bicep. It was his uniform that caught her eye- dark blue with red facing, the same as the Massachusetts Artillery. She knelt down for a better look and stared at the face before her.
It was Samuel Hadley. He lay breathing with bubbles of spi
ttle trapped in the nascent beard around the corner of his mouth. She could not tell whether or not he was conscious. Elisabeth came from behind the altar and looked around for Mercy. She was walking slowly down the far side of the church peering at the rows of wounded. Elisabeth thought it would be unseemly for her to shout, although there was enough noise from both the wounded and those tending to them. She lifted her dress so as not to trip and hurried down the center aisle of the Church.
Hadley knew it was not a dream when someone turned him on his left side and pushed a blanket beneath him. The pain in his head was intense, as if a large stone was rolling around inside. He had dreamed Mercy was there, kneeling beside him, washing his face and neck with a wet cloth, then his wrists and fingers, then the forearm, oh so gently. The woman behind her, to his blurry vision, looked like Elisabeth. And in his dreams before, when he been in the throes of a high fever, his wounded arm had been attached, something he fervently wished for but was unsure it was true. One time when he had awakened on his litter in the dark, he thought he saw his hand, wrist and forearm in the candlelight but that could have been an hallucination, brought on by the fever. He almost cried out from the intense pain when they lifted him onto a stretcher. He bit his cracked, parched lower lip so hard, he could taste the blood.
He must be awake, he thought, if he felt the pain while being moved and could taste his own blood. And he could see his own right hand. Thank God it was true. He uttered a sigh of relief. Mercy was walking beside him. She squeezed his good hand. He sensed he was being carried in the street. He heard voices around him and closed his eyes to the bright sunlight that made his head ache more. They had stopped, a horse snorted and stomped its hooves, Mercy admonished someone to be careful and he was tilted and lifted up unevenly, the weight transferring to his wounded shoulder. This time, a loud groan escaped his lips and then he was lying flat, still on the blanket, another blanket on top of him. The warmth felt good. He could smell the fresh straw underneath. Mercy placed something soft under his head and shoulder, he felt her sitting next to him and then the jolting of the wagon on the cobblestones sent shattering white hot flashes of pain through his skull. He wanted to pass out, for this to be over with, but she squeezed his hand to comfort him and her presence kept him conscious. When they carried him off the wagon and he was on level ground, he could see Mercy more clearly. He squeezed her fingers in reply. “No angel in heaven was ever more lovely,” he said, and lost consciousness again.
Blood Upon The Snow Page 22
