The Turning of Anne Merrick

by Christine Blevins

  Jack began to hoist the wounded soldier, but Titus stopped him. “There’s nothing we can do for him but add to his misery.”

  Jack put his ear to the wounded man’s chest. “You’re right. He’s dead.”

  “At least the poor fella didn’t have to suffer overlong.”

  They took off, running an erratic course in a crouch, back to the cover of the chestnut oak. Jack tore the kerchief from his neck, wiping the sweat and grime from his face. “Do you have any water?”

  Titus slipped the strap over his head, and handed over his canteen. “Save a swallow for me. My throat’s dry as dust.” Touching the side of his head, Titus’s fingertips came up sticky with blood. “I guess I lost my hat,” he said.

  “Looks like you’re lucky you didn’t lose your head.” Jack took a gulp of water, and poured a drizzle onto a four-inch-long furrow carved through the spongy hair just above Titus’s right ear.

  “Looks like you took a ball to the shoulder,” Titus said.

  “Huh!” Jack grunted, plucking at the blood-sodden linsey clinging to his right biceps. “Doesn’t hurt much…”

  “It will. Give me that kerchief.” Titus wrapped the scrap of fabric tight over Jack’s wound and tied it tight. “There. Another scar in the making.”

  Ned and Isaac came running in from the field, sliding in to tumble and duck behind the big chestnut oak. “Take cover!” Ned shouted, and they all turtled up, arms over heads.

  A sharp crack of musketry, and a spray of lead ball whizzed in an instant later, drilling into the tree trunks and sawing off branchlets—sending shards of bark and rough splinters hurtling through the air.

  Isaac sat up and bit the cork from his powder horn, poured a charge down the barrel of his rifle, and uttered one frightening word. “Bayonets.”

  Jack concentrated on reloading his weapon—powder, ram, cock the hammer. A soft breeze came across the field to lift the cloud of smoke, exposing the disciplined line of British infantry on a forward march, their fearsome bayonets affixed. An artillery crew was dragging a cannon over the rough ground. Jack found a mark, and pulled the trigger.

  The riflemen all worked with a steady rhythm—pour powder, ram the ball down, cock the hammer, take aim, and fire—powder, ram, aim, fire—powder, ram, aim, fire—the dead accuracy of their every shot taking a horrific toll on the Redcoat advance.

  Powder, ram, aim—Jack pulled his trigger and picked off an artilleryman struggling to load the six-pounder under heavy fire. Titus fired and sent the gunner wielding the linstock flying.

  Jack and Titus spun back to sit with their backs to the oak. In unison they began to reload. Titus chuckled, his grin so white Jack jabbed him with the butt of his rifle, and laughed. “What’s so funny?”

  “By God, I think we’re holding the bastards!!”

  EIGHT

  Danger and deliverance make their advances together, and it is only at the last push, that one or the other takes the lead.

  THOMAS PAINE, The American Crisis

  OCTOBER 6, 1777

  BRITISH FIELD HOSPITAL

  Raindrops began pattering a steady tune on the painted canvas stretched overhead. Anne peeked out beyond the tarp at a murky dusk sky, thinking it was almost as dull and dreary as the barley gruel simmering on the hospital kitchen fire. She drew her woolen shawl up over her head, tying the ends in a bulky knot on her chest.

  Following suit, Sally sighed. “Och—just what we need—more rain.”

  At their turn, Anne laid claim to one of the mess kettles, cushioning the wire bale handle with a flannel pad to hoist the steaming pot from the hearth. Sally collected three paper-wrapped packages of ship’s biscuit into the basket looped over her left arm, and hooked her thumb through the handle on a jug of spruce beer.

  The wet weather combined with all the comings and goings around the barn-turned-hospital to churn the grounds into a gummy slurry. At the end of a long day’s work, with skirt hems heavy and caked in mud, the slippery slope down to the convalescent tents behind the barn was made even more treacherous. Using mincing steps, the women carried the rations over to the third tent from the right. Like swimmers making ready to dive underwater, Anne and Sally each sucked in lungfuls of fresh air before shouldering a way through the door flaps.

  A misling cloud of sweat, sick, and bloody bandages hung in the air. Anne squelched a gag as she tugged her shawl loose, turning her head to take relief from the lavender-infused hankie she kept tucked at her left shoulder.

  “Belay that wambly belly,” Sally ordered, setting the brimming latrine bucket outside the doorway. “The quicker we see to this lot, the quicker we can find our beds.”

  Two rows of straw-stuffed pallets and soldier’s gear flanked either side of the big marquee tent, leaving a narrow aisle down the middle. Sally tied the tent flaps open to encourage a bit of fresh air as Anne evaluated the state of their charges.

  Most of the patients were too debilitated to do anything but lie prone on their pallets. The tent’s ranking officer, Captain Thomas Thorn of the Royal Artillery, sat listless against his field chest, a thick book open on his lap, his right leg ending in a bandaged stump at the knee. The Captain’s face was ruddy and his eyes bloodshot, leaving Anne to worry if his fever had returned. In the far corner, three of their healthier convalescents huddled around a broken shard of planking, playing a game of Hazard with dice they fashioned from a pair of musket balls.

  Banging a ladle to the mess kettle, Sally announced, “Dinnertime, lads!”

  Like schoolboys called in from play, the gaming soldiers put their dice away, scooting on rear ends to their own places to fumble in packs for mess kits and spoons. Anne took in another bracing breath of lavender. Exhuming a stubby lead pencil and small tablet from her pocket, she proceeded to count heads.

  “Ye’ll be missing Lieutenants B-B-Bowman and K-K-Kinnear. They’re… they’re… they’re…” Foley, a left gunner who ironically lost his left arm to the surgeon’s saw, was always eager to offer up pertinent information. Anne waited patiently for the end of his sentence, her pencil poised.

  “D-d-dead,” Foley finished.

  “Moanin’ and groanin’ all through the night, them two.” A blunt, squatty man, Sergeant Burgus was brought to hospital four days earlier, his left foot having been crushed under an ox’s hoof. “Not a one of us caught a wink o’ sleep.”

  Foley jerked his only thumb toward his neighbor. “C-c-captain Thorn’s sad in his heart, p-p-poor soul.”

  Anne went to the officer’s side, drawing down onto her haunches. “My condolences, Captain Thorn. I know Lieutenants Kinnear and Bowman were good friends of yours.”

  “Good friends… yes.” Captain Thorn closed his book. “Did you know they came by their grievous wounds carrying me from the field?”

  Anne nodded. “I know.”

  “John Bowman and James Kinnear were fine soldiers—courageous men—imbued with every quality that can create esteem.” The artillery Captain eyed the tablet Anne held in her hand, his voice so very tired and pained. “And now, Mrs. Merrick, you may draw a line through their names, as if they never existed.”

  Blinking back sudden tears, Anne rose to her feet and left the Captain to his grief. When she agreed to infiltrate Burgoyne’s army, the one thing she never figured on was becoming so enmeshed in the suffering of her enemies. Knowing men like Jack and David were responsible for the carnage she’d seen carted in from the battlefield was very difficult to bear. With a heavy heart, Anne forced herself to remember that the men she nursed, whose wounds she tended, and whose names she daily crossed from her list—these soldiers were fighting with all their might to crush a just cause, and kill the good, brave people who supported it.

  People like Jack and David… and Sally… and me.

  Sally banged once again on her kettle. “Bowls up!”

  “Ye can divvy up the extra rations amongst us…” Will Crisp held out his bowl. “No one will be the wiser.” Emma Crisp’s eldest was wounded on p
icket duty during a rebel ambush the night before. Knocked flat by a rifle shot to the leg, he was lucky the lead ball zinged through his thigh muscle without doing any damage to the bone.

  With a fierce look in her eye, Sally poured a double ration of gruel into the boy’s bowl, daring Sergeant Burgus to voice a complaint. “Thin as a needle, this lad is—not enough meat on him to even stop a bullet.”

  Anne pointed to the end of the row, where a man bundled in a blue jacket lay curled on his side, facing away from the others. “Who’s that there?”

  Foley gave it a good try. “M-m-mooo… moo… moo…” Taking a deep breath, he tried again. “M-mm-moo-mooo…”

  Captain Thorn leaned over and clasped his gunner by the shoulder. “Moved him in today—right, Foley?”

  The gunner nodded. “A German.”

  Anne went down the aisle to give the toe of the new arrival’s mud-crusted boot a shake. “I need your name and regiment.”

  The Hessian rolled onto his back. Strips of clean linen were tied to his head, holding a fresh padding of cotton lint over his right eye. He wore gold braid looped over one blood-splashed shoulder, and an ornate scabbard and sword lay atop his field chest.

  “Yer wastin’ yer breath.” Sergeant Burgus sneered. “Th’ cabbage-licker don’t speak a word o’ the King’s English.”

  Putting pencil to paper, Anne softened the timbre of her voice, and spoke slowly. “Please, sir, your name and regiment?”

  The Hessian officer rose up on one elbow, pushing long, matted tangles of straw-colored hair over his shoulder. Though equipped with but one working eye, the officer still managed to cast Burgus a withering glare as he said in a firm voice, “Kapitän Andréas Hoffman—erste brigade, regiment von Rhetz.”

  While she scribbled the Hessian’s name onto her roster, Sally mimicked spooning food into her mouth. “Are ye able t’ feed yerself, Capeetan?”

  “Ja… ja…” The German sat up and fished a shining brass mess kit from his pack.

  “Good,” Sally muttered, ladling a helping into his bowl. “One less for us to cosset.”

  Anne and Sally finished dishing up the soldiers’ dinner—a bowl of gruel, three round ship’s biscuits, and a cup of spruce beer.

  Knocking one of his biscuits to the side of his wooden bowl, Burgus said, “Hard as a woman’s heart, these biscuits.” The Sergeant scooped up a spoonful of gruel, letting it drizzle and plop back into his bowl without eating it. “And would ye look at this pap? How’s a man expected to get back into fighting fit on this pig swill, I ask ye?”

  “Thank ye, sir.” Sally snatched the bowl from his hands and, with great flourish, spilled the contents back into the kettle. “Plenty will be grateful for yer share of pig swill.” She tossed his empty bowl back into his lap.

  “You’ve no call to deny me my victuals.” Burgus held his bowl out. “I’m a wounded soldier…”

  “Wounded? Fiech!” Sally sneered. “Over-friendly with the oxen is what ye are.”

  Captain Thorn snorted into his beer.

  “I’m a King’s man, Mrs. Merrick, and I fight for rations and sixpence a day.” Burgus shifted in his seat, turning to Anne, his voice raising in pitch. “Your girl has no call to withhold my victuals. I was but sayin’—a man needs a piece of proper meat and a cup of proper grog in these desperate times…”

  “In desperate times, Sergeant,” Anne replied, “a real man keeps such thoughts to himself.”

  “Hear, hear!” Captain Thorn perked up, and raised his cup to Anne.

  “I’m owed rations, Mrs. Merrick,” Burgus insisted, making a big show of wincing and lifting his bandaged foot onto a bolster. “I’m a King’s man, wounded in the line of duty.”

  Anne could not bear to hear another word drop from the man’s selfish mouth. She closed her eyes and huffed a sigh. “Just give him his share,” she said.

  “So pleased wi’ yerself, aren’t ye?” Sally jerked the bowl from Burgus. “Th’ face on ye—like a bulldog lickin’ piss off a nettle.” She ladled out a portion of gruel and shoved the bowl back into his hands. “There—ye wee whinging snivelard. Choke on it.”

  Will Crisp hooted. Foley slapped his knee and stuttered, “Yer a rare one, S-S-Sally.” Even the Hessian was laughing.

  “Never tangle with a redhead, Sergeant,” Captain Thorn advised. “They’re known to carry a sting in their tails.”

  The women settled in to spoon-feed the invalids, and Captain Thorn broke a biscuit into his bowl. “So, ladies… what news?”

  Sally shrugged, using the corner of her apron to wipe the spittle dribbling from her patient’s mouth. “There’s little good to tell.”

  Anne rolled a blanket into a bolster, propping her charge up at an angle. “Burgoyne has cut rations once again.”

  One-handed, Foley used the socket end of his bayonet to pound a biscuit into bits before stirring it into his gruel. “That b-b-bodes ill.”

  “I tell you what bodes ill…” Burgus did not hesitate to join in the conversation. “It’s been over a fortnight since the battle and we do naught but sit and wait while the damn rebels gain in numbers and strength. By all rights we ought be in full retreat—back to Canada to winter.”

  “Britons never retreat,” Sally said.

  Anne shot her friend a warning look, to which Sally flashed a grin and a wink. No one else seemed to catch the sneer in Sally’s tone.

  “There’s talk of reinforcements on the way,” Will Crisp offered. “General Clinton’s forces from New York, maybe General Howe, some say.”

  “Don’t believe it. No one is coming.” Captain Thorn traced the brim of his bowl with his spoon. “We’re on our own out here.”

  A low-pitched, mournful drone pierced the stillness punctuating the Captain’s dour pronouncement. Echoing over the tree-covered hills, the lone call was joined in by a higher-pitched howl, and another, and another. Sounding much like a winter’s wind screaming through chinks in a wall, the eerie harmonic wail sent a shiver up Anne’s spine.

  “D’ye hear that, young Will?” Burgus cocked his head to the side, one bushy brow raised. “Reinforcements!”

  Foley’s bony shoulders hunched up around his ears. “Hellhounds.”

  “Is that what they are?” Will Crisp went goggle-eyed. “The woods are filled with the reek of ’em by day—and by night you can actually see the glint of their fiery eyes as they dart among the trees.” His voice cracked on the word “trees.”

  Sally leapt up to raise the wick in the oil lantern hanging from the center pole, brightening the light. “Dinna speak of th’ hellhounds, Will Crisp, lest ye bring ill fortune upon yerself.”

  Foley nodded vigorous in agreement. “G-g-gaze into the eyes of a hellhound three t-t-times, and yer certain t’ meet with d-d-death.”

  “Nonsense.” Captain Thorn crushed another biscuit into his bowl. “It’s nothing but the howling of wolves drawn in by the smell of war.”

  “With the wounded left behind on the field, and the pitiful graves that were dug under fire”—Burgus shoved a spoonful into his mouth, spattering gruelly gobs of biscuit as he spoke—“it’s certain those wolves are eating better than we are.”

  The rain began falling in earnest, thrumming on the canvas roof in rapid fire. Anne was compelled to close the tent flaps to save those closest to the door a drenching. A staccato flash of lightning produced a bone-shaking crack of thunder, startling Foley so, he upset his bowl, spilling his dinner out onto his pallet.

  “S-s-s-s-sorry. Th-th-th—”

  “Don’t fret, Mr. Foley.” Anne took the empty bowl from the gunner’s trembling hand. Thorn shimmied over to draw a blanket over Foley’s shaking shoulders. Sally came over to pour the last of the gruel into the gunner’s empty bowl when the sharp report of a hunter’s rifle resounded, causing them all to jerk. The single shot was followed by a hue and cry, and the ragged crackle of musket fire.

  “Sounds like another sharpshooter hit his target,” Thorn said.

  Will nodded.
“Puffing a pipe on picket duty, I bet. No better way to draw a rebel bullet to your brain.”

  “They brought a dozen dead in from Breyman’s redoubt today,” Sally said. “Every one of ’em picked off by rebel sharpshooters.”

  “You mean rebel cowards. Targeting officers and artillerymen from a distance—” Burgus grumbled, gathering his blanket about his shoulders. “Where’s the gallantry in that?”

  Foley shrugged. “G-g-gallantry don’t win wars.”

  “I’ve heard tell these American boys are given rifles when still in leading strings. By the time they’re full grown, they can shoot the winking eye from a man at two hundred yards.” Will jerked his head over toward the Hessian.

  Burgus laughed. “For once it don’t pay to be an officer, does it?”

  “Whether you agree with their methods or no, the rebels have dogged our progress since Ticonderoga, and on the field of battle, they managed to repulse every one of our charges.” Captain Thorn toyed with the last of his biscuits, spinning it like a coin on the cover of his book. “There’s something to admire in how they’ve figured a way to fight us. I never thought they stood a chance, but a fortnight ago I saw untrained, ill-armed, backwoods farmers hold back the might of the Empire.”

  “What a load of old bollocks! ‘Something to admire,’” Burgus mimicked. “Sounds like a rebel in the making.”

  “Poltroon!” Thorn whipped his biscuit across the aisle, hitting Burgus square on his big greasy pate. “You forget yourself, Sergeant!”

  Anne laughed, and Sally clapped her hands, exclaiming, “Bull’s-eye!”

  “How dare you question my loyalty, sir?” Captain Thorn leaned forward, his bloodshot eyes hooded in fury. “If you were any kind of a soldier, you’d know to study your enemy’s strengths. If you were a smart soldier, you’d know to respect them. But you, Sergeant Burgus, are akin to a fingerpost on the road, pointing the way to a place you’ve never been.” The Captain pounded a fist to his chest. “I was on that battlefield and know what I saw—an enemy fighting with fierce determination—men fighting for something more than sixpence a day.”