Chapter 4 - The Hospital at Princeton
In the pre-dawn mist, Captain Chatsworth led the troop of thirty-four dragoons out of the dankness of Frog Hollow and up the sawmill road. A frozen brook lay on their right, shrouded in winter fog. It was the same route the Rebels had taken more than a year ago when they launched their surprise attack on the British in Princeton. Now it was the dragoons’ turn.
They rode past the apple orchards where much of the battle had taken place. The twisted dead branches of the fruit trees, fatally maimed by heavy musket and cannon fire, appeared as gnarled, grasping fingers in the mist. They left the road and trotted up the sloping open fields toward Witherspoon’s house, hidden above the hill on the south side of the Princeton Trenton Highway. A quick snatch of the two traitors in their nightshirts, a fast gallop down the highway, skirting Trenton in the early morning hours before most people were about, and then crossing the Delaware at Bristol where the ferry would be held by Loyalists and another troop of the 16th Dragoons. They would be back in their quarters in Philadelphia by evening.
At the top of the rise, Chatsworth paused and motioned with his hand for the troopers to form a line. At this early hour, a few candles flickered from the hospital windows on the far side of the road. The Reverend’s home, closest to them was dark, save for a lantern burning outside the front door.
An owl hooted from somewhere in the gloom to his right. Otherwise, all was silence. No barking dogs, no geese in a yard, honking to give the alarm.
Satisfied, Chatsworth drew his fuzee from the scabbard, held it aloft and waved the men forward. Once on the highway, by prearranged plan, they formed into three groups. Chatsworth led fourteen troopers at a gallop to Witherspoon’s house while six others raced past to block the road leading into Princeton. The last contingent of fourteen rode into the darkened yard of Nassau Hall to deal with any armed soldiers he assumed would be within or in makeshift barracks in adjoining buildings.
Chatsworth pulled back on the reins and swung one foot over the saddle. Suddenly, the nine shuttered windows on the front of the house were thrown open. He heard the shouted command “Give Fire,” and a blast of muskets pierced the darkness. The trooper next to him cried out as he was blown from the saddle. A second volley followed immediately. Chatsworth, with one foot on the ground and the other still in the stirrup was shielded by his mount. He fired his fuzee under his horse’s neck at an open window. “Ambush,” Chatsworth yelled as loudly as he could. He turned his horse away from the house, leaped back in the saddle and galloped back toward the highway. A swarm of horsemen swept around the rear of Nassau Hall with shouts of “Have at them! Cut them down!”
Chatsworth with his remaining troopers rode into Nassau Hall’s open yard as the dragoons there fired a volley at the oncoming Rebel cavalry. Chatsworth yanked the reins to turn his horse to face the Rebel cavalry, presenting a smaller target. He drew one of the brace of pistols he carried in his saddlebag, kneed his mount forward and charged. He fired his pistol at point blank into the face of an oncoming trooper. The flash of the powder in the firing pan momentarily blinded him but he saw the man flop backwards. He was not certain in the confusion and darkness whether the shot from his second pistol had brought down another Rebel. Dropping the pistol back into the bag he unsheathed his saber and felt the cold metal of the hilt in his hand. He slashed at one man, the force of his sabre blow severing the Rebel’s up thrust arm just below the elbow. The bloody forearm with the fingers still gripping the Rebel’s sword hit Chatsworth’s horse on the nose before it fell to the ground. He sensed rather than saw the Rebel cavalry hesitate as they lost the momentum of their initial surprise attack.
Damn the decision to forgo a trumpeter to accompany his troop on the raid, he thought. “To the highway. Back to the highway,” Chatsworth yelled.
In the tumult and confusion that followed, the dragoons dashed down the road toward Trenton. Chatsworth led a rearguard action against a squad of overeager but inexperienced Rebel cavalry, attacking them as they slowed to cross a narrow wooden bridge. He fought with a wrath and anger brought on by the failure of the raid, taking savage satisfaction at cutting down those who had thwarted the kidnapping. Satisfied that they were free from further pursuit, they caught up with the rest of the dragoons and halted at a farm on the outskirts of Trenton. Only twenty-two of them remained.
Chatsworth posted four pickets on the road toward Princeton. The subdued troopers sat around the kitchen table and hearth, grimly wiping blood from their sabers, while the farmer and his wife nervously brought them cider and bread.
“I swear I will discover the spy who betrayed us and personally hang him from the highest gallows in Philadelphia,” Chatsworth said, resetting the ramrod in one of his pistols. He glared at the woman and then her husband who were almost faint with fear of the cavalrymen in their home. Some Rebel sympathizer, Chatsworth thought, a farmer or traveler in the area, had spied them camping the night before. Rebel cavalry must have been summoned from nearby and arrived in time to fortify the Witherspoon house. Sooner or later, the Rebels would boast about this skirmish. Someone’s name would be given out as having sounded the alarm. As he fingered the solid wood stock of one pistol with the silver oval on the handle, now engraved with his initials, he thought of John Stoner. He had given Chatsworth these two fine weapons as a gift after the fire in New York City. John was too obsequious at times but he did have his uses. Once they returned to Philadelphia, Chatsworth would ask Stoner to unleash his network of spies, paid informers and other lowlifes he relied upon to get him the names of those who had given the dragoons away. Then he would extract vengeance for the loss of a dozen of his men.
The bright crisp sunlight of the mid-morning revealed the dark stains of blood in Reverend Witherspoon’s yard, marking where the dragoons had fallen. Ten troopers in all had been killed, their bodies loaded in wheelbarrows and carted off to the graveyard. The wounded had been taken to a barn, to await their turn for the surgeon’s saw or needle. Will walked across the yard, a trooper’s jacket and breeches tucked under his arm. A long streak of crimson near the collar marked where the man’s blood had spilled from the musket ball that had shattered his jaw. The red jacket was of good quality wool. He shuddered at the memory of feeling the dead soldier’s still warm flesh when he stripped him of his clothes. He would give them to Private Gillet. It would at least keep the upper part of the sick man warmer than his threadbare and torn linen uniform.
When he reached the room on the third floor, Gillet was not on his straw pallet. Confused, Will retraced his steps from the landing, to be sure he was in the right room. He peered into their faces, asking each one where Gillet was. Most were too sick to answer and the response from those who could was “most likely died and carted away,” or “died in his sleep which is all the more better for him.”
He saw a townswoman in one of the nearby rooms feeding a soldier with a ladle from a soup pot.
“Do you know what has happened to the Private in that other room?” Will said pointing in a futile gesture down the hall.
She looked up at him with pity. “Lieutenant. I do not know any of these poor men’s names or rank. You should ask Mrs. Hadley. She is about on this floor or the one below.” Will ran from one room to the next until he found her distributing linen compresses to other women.
“Mercy,” he said. “I am looking for a Private and he is no longer where he was yesterday. Private Gillet of a Rhode Island Regiment,” he blurted out, as if that description would identify him to her. “He was in that room two from the landing,” he said with desperation.
“Will,” she said quietly. “Many of these poor men die during the night. The burial crews remove them to the Churchyard where graves have been prepared.”
He did not wait for any further explanation but dashed down the stairs still carrying the jacket and breeches and ran through the snow toward the Church. A line of corpses, face up, lay in the shadow of the church wall awaiting burial. Will squatted
down next to each man, staring at their faces, their sightless eyes, their gaping mouths with stained and broken teeth. None were Gillet.
“Sergeant,” he called out to the man in charge of the burial crew. “Are there any other of our dead?”
“No, sir. Only the bloody dragoons,” and he uttered a series of curses, as if the corpses of the cavalry could hear his damning their souls.
Back to the hospital, in the main hall, Will recognized one of the wives who had ridden in his wagon from Valley Forge. “Excuse me Miss. I need help in finding an invalid soldier.” He described Private Gillet’s room on the third floor.
“This morning we moved some of the sick men about. Dr. Rush ordered it, I was told. Those with the ague and bloody flux together in several rooms, those with whatever diseases the learned doctor calls them, I know not what, in others.” She eyed the jacket and breeches Will held. “My husband suffers from cold and chills at night. If you do not find this soldier please think of my man.”
Will mumbled he would and ran up the steps. Methodically, he went from room to room, stepping carefully around the emaciated men lying in their own filth, moaning or shivering on the straw-covered wooden planked floor. The stench of excrement and unwashed bodies filled his nostrils. He found Gillet in a room that for the moment was bathed in sunlight. Despite the warmth of the rays, Gillet was shivering under his thin jacket, reversed to cover his chest like a short blanket. Will helped him to sit up, put his arms through the sleeves and then lay the trooper’s red coat over him.
“I am very pleased to see you alive,” Will said, rolling up the breeches and placing them behind the Private’s head as a pillow. Gillet’s teeth chattered. “This fever weakens me. Earlier this very morning, after I was moved, a good doctor came and bled me, saying it would improve my health.” He shivered under the red jacket. “I should have stayed in barracks, cold as they were, and not come here to die. They will take all of my blood and when I am drained dry, claim they have cured me though I be a lifeless corpse.
Damn them, the bloodsucking asses.”
“You should not question the wisdom of the doctors. I have seen many men bled and rid of their fever and ready for service in a matter of days,” Will said confidently. Gillet stared at him, wanting to grasp at his hopeful words but suspicious they were lies to ease his mind.
“I am to leave tomorrow morning.” Gillet tried to sit up in protest. Will put his hand gently on his chest. “A good friend of mine, Private Adam Cooper, will remain here another few days until the wagons are to return to Valley Forge.” He took Gillet’s hand in his and squeezed his cold bony fingers. “Adam will look in on you each day.”
“I thank him for his attention but he must abide by your promise for a separate marked grave. I depend upon you to tell him.”
“I already have. Adam will honor my promise which I strongly believe will not be necessary to be fulfilled.” Somewhere in the room, a soldier coughed steadily between gasps for breath, the sound in his throat like a rattling of coffee beans shaken in a dry pot. Will had heard that cough before. Death for that one was not too distant, he thought, willing himself not to look around. He patted Gillet’s hand. “Warmth and nourishment will help you regain strength. I will see you in Valley Forge before the spring campaign against the British.”
“I wish it to be true,” he croaked, “but in a few days I will be no more and never see you, nor my beloved Judith, nor any other person that walks this earth.” His eyes filled with tears and he turned his face away.
Will was about to utter some additional words of encouragement, but thought they would sound hollow with Gillet waking every morning to the sight of those who had died during the night.
Instead he knelt closer to the Private and began, in a calm low voice to talk about his love for Elisabeth, the anxiety he felt when they were separated, and his fear he would never see her again. He spoke of how his love sustained and carried him through his darkest moments. He told Gillet the story of Captain Hadley and Miss Mercy, their first meeting at the makeshift hospital in Morristown, of Samuel being wounded and her search and care for him and his recovery.
“I will ask Mercy, who is now married to my friend the Captain, to visit you. She attends at this hospital. Let her presence remind you of the love for your wife Judith that you have expressed to me. Think of that love as being unbreakable, as is mine for my Elisabeth, and let that be the strength that leads you to return to health.”
Will stood up, arching his back to relieve the stiffness from kneeling. “I expect to see you at Valley Forge, Private Gillet,” he said, as confidently as possible. He crossed the narrowing shaft of sunlight that pointed like an arrow to the door and quickly departed without looking back.
Early Sunday morning, with the frost still on the fields and a three quarter moon to guide him, Will saddled Big Red, made sure the bags with dispatches and correspondence were secured and rode south. Even in the early morning, there were people about on the Princeton Trenton highway - farmers and woodsmen in their ox-drawn sleds lumbering toward whichever town was the nearest, a few lone riders, perhaps tradesmen or mechanics and men on foot who had the look of deserters and the need to travel as far as possible in darkness.
Will reached Trenton shortly after dawn. An ugly grey sky loomed ahead. From the heights above the town, the scars of the battle of Trenton and destruction wrought by Hessian and British troops during the occupation more than a year ago were clearly evident. Will took the upper Pennington road that led around the town to the ferry. He was relieved to see the ice floes in the Delaware were few and far between. Across the river a group of blue uniformed soldiers clustered around a bonfire.
“Tis seven dollars for you and the horse,” the ferryman said, emerging from his wooden shack with brown moldy boughs for a roof. He held his coat around his throat and scratched his ass.
“I am a courier on official business to Valley Forge,” Will said turning Big Red to face the man.
“That is a big horse,” the man observed. “I should charge you more for poling both of you across.” A young boy, around fourteen with a jacket too big and breeches too short, came from around the cabin and stood next to him. At his age Will thought, I was hauling cannons from Fort Ticonderoga to Cambridge, and eager to be free of my father’s yoke.
Two herdsmen, driving several bony cattle before them, came down the slope toward the ferry. Big Red snorted and pawed the brown snow. Will patted his neck, knowing of his horse’s dislike of the cattle’s smell.
“Now that you have other passengers,” Will said, “you will take me across with them, and I will help pole.” The ferryman hesitated, calculating how much he could charge the herders per head and make up the loss of a fee for Will.
“Done,” said the man, counting the cattle coming towards the river. Will hefted the pole in his hand as the boy and his father pushed off from the shore. The flat-bottomed raft moved smoothly into the current. He was on the upriver side and, as Nat and Adam had taught him, he poled rhythmically with an eye to warding off ice floes.
“We are heading to Valley Forge with our beeves,” one of the herders said to Will.
“When I last left, there was great need for meat for the soldiers,” Will replied, glancing up at the cattle and thinking, they would not provide much sustenance for very many.
“Good. Then they will fetch a fine price even though it will be in Continentals.”
“Why not sell them to the Crown for sterling?” Will asked, testing the man.
“He has a son with the Army,” he replied, gesturing with his head toward the other herder. “Besides, ‘tis our dooty to the cause.” The way he said it made Will suspicious. Perhaps there was nothing to it but maybe the men intended to cross the Delaware as patriots and then with their greed as their guide, find a British foraging party and sell to them.
The ferry bumped against the frozen shore and the boy waded through ankle deep water to make it fast. Will mounted Big Red who jumped the sho
rt distance. The cattle bellowed in panic as the ferry rocked from the loss of the horse’s weight.
A Corporal held up his hand and Will produced a note from Dr. Rush, countersigned by Captain Hadley, for unimpeded passage. Will leaned down and took the note, tucking it in his waistcoat pocket and buttoning his outer jacket up again.
“I would question those herders closely. They say they are driving the beeves to Valley Forge. That is a long way to go on foot and they may prefer to sell to the Crown.”
“Oh, do they now,” the Corporal responded. “We have dealt with their like before. We will ease their travels by escorting them to the next crossroads.” He grinned. “There is a Continental paymaster there and a large enclosure for cattle. They will be back across the river in no time but surely not the happier for it.”
It took Will the better part of the day of hard riding to cover the forty-six miles to Valley Forge. He was stopped twice by roving militias and once by cavalry on patrol. It was almost dark when he found the Gulph Road leading to camp and the side road to the solid stone house that served as General Washington’s headquarters. Tired from being in the saddle since dawn, he dismounted stiffly and tied Big Red’s reins to the post. He was starving for he had nothing to eat but some hard bread and a bit of cheese Mercy had given him from Reverend Witherspoon’s kitchen. Candles burned in every window, illuminating four of the General’s personal guards, the flames reflected in the polished bayonets on their muskets. He unbuckled the saddlebags, slung them over his shoulder and, after stating his purpose was admitted.
An orderly sat at a small table in the narrow center hallway, barely leaving enough room for officers to pass into the adjoining rooms or ascend the stairway.
“Letters and dispatches for General Washington,” Will said, feeling the rush of warm air from the fireplace ablaze in the room to his right. A group of officers sat on benches close to the fire, their backs to the hallway, listening to one reading from a sheet of paper.
Spies and Deserters Page 7
