The Turning of Anne Merrick

by Christine Blevins

  Hercules folded his arms across his chest. “Quit scrubbing around it, Tully. He needs to know…”

  Jack looked up. “Know what? What is it?”

  “No one could tell me a peep about where Anne is being held. I tapped all my sources and came up dry as an old nun’s twat. I was on my way back when I bumped into an old mate—” Tully rubbed the stubbly, steel gray hair on his head. “You remember Dobbsy?”

  Jack nodded. “I do.”

  “Aye, well, we got to palaverin’, ol’ Dobbsy and me, and he tells me he’s been making solid silver a-stevedorin’ for this boatman who hauls water…” Tully’s squinty eye twisted tight in grimace. “Out of the clear blue, he tells me he saw that fat bastard O’Keefe, pushing the Widow Merrick up the larboard ladder on the Whitby yestereve.”

  “The Whitby?”

  Hercules said, “The prison hulk the bloodybacks have moored out in Wallabout Bay.”

  “A prison hulk?” Jack fell back against the wall. “Was Dobbs drunk?”

  “Dobbsy’s always drunk.” Tully shrugged. “I didn’t want to question him too deep and risk tipping our hand. The man can’t be trusted when his pocket’s dark and he needs a drink.”

  “He’s a drunk. He might be mistaken…” Jack pulled the hat from his head.

  “It’s too much of a coincidence, Jack.” The tailor’s voice was soft.

  “Fuck me!” Jack dropped his head back to bump against the wall, and stared at the ceiling. “A hulk.”

  “There might be a way in,” Hercules said.

  Tully cautioned, “With Hessian guards on duty day and night, I don’t see how he can get in.”

  “A hulk,” Jack repeated to the ceiling. “I need a way in and out. It’s impossible.”

  “What did you think?” Hercules gave Jack’s foot a kick. “Did you think they’d set Anne out on the Commons so you could stroll up la-di-da and whisk her away? Put your mind to it, lad. Once more to the breach…”

  “I can’t think. I’m put to wit’s end.” Jack gave his head a shake. “I thought she’d await a hanging at the sugar house, like I did. I know the lay of it… I already figured a disguise—one of those sergeants who comes around trying to recruit rebel prisoners. I’d get in the yard when there was a crowd—like when they parcel out the day’s rations. Then I’d create a diversion—a fire, maybe—start a panic, grab Annie, and get out in the confusion.”

  “Hmmmph!” Hercules nodded. “That’s actually quite a good plan.”

  “But she’s not at the sugar house.” Jack stared at his open palms. “A prison hulk… Fucking Blankenship.”

  “There’s a lesson learned.” Hercules shrugged.

  Jack nodded. “Make certain your enemy’s dead once you kill him.”

  “Dash me timbers!!” Tully slapped his knee and rasped, “I think I know a way!”

  “How?”

  Plucking the tape from the tailor’s neck, Tully pulled it tight to measure the breadth of Jack’s shoulders. “A-yup!” He smiled, and gave Jack a shove. “You’ll fit, alright.” Fumbling in measuring Jack’s height from seat to the top of his head, he grinned and affirmed, “Aye, a tight squeeze, though… but you’ll fit just fine…”

  Hercules snatched the tape away. “Tell us what you’re bletherin’ on about!”

  Tully fell to his knees and grabbed Jack by the shoulders, his squinty eye almost open. “The water barrels, Jack! The water barrels!”

  Jack blinked for a moment, then grabbed Tully by the side-whiskers. “Why, you gnarly old son of a sailor’s whore!” he cried, planting a kiss right on the top of Tully’s stubbly head.

  Hercules laughed and pounded both Tully and Jack on the back. “The fuckin’ water barrels, lads!”

  Water. She tried to swallow, but her throat was sore and parched. The scuttlebutt’s at the bow…

  Anne’s eyes fluttered open. Dim light and a breeze off the river was coming through a small barred opening. A gull sailed through one of the patches of blue sky. It was very quiet but for the creak of ship’s timbers and a droning hum in her head. Heavy wooden knees curved off the ship’s skeleton just to her right, supporting the beams and planking of the deck above.

  The prison hulk…

  “Hullo there!”

  Anne turned her gaze to the right. The sailor she was just talking to at the railing was now sitting at her side with two tin basins—one filled with water, the other with fresh butchered beef.

  She rasped, “Trueworthy Jones.”

  “That’s right! That’s my name,” he said, dipping a handkerchief into the water. “You gave us all quite a scare, Mrs. Merrick.” Jones smiled and looked over his shoulder. “Didn’t she, lads?”

  Trueworthy sat before a low wall made of four sea chests stacked two high. Three scruffy heads peered over this partition, smiling and nodding; one man waggled his fingers in greeting. Anne tried to wave back, struggling to find her hand under an itchy blanket pulled up to her chin. Crinkling her nose at the bad smell puffing up from under the wool, she asked, “Where are we?”

  “The gun room—belowdecks.” Trueworthy draped the wet handkerchief over her forehead. “The officers allowed a place for you here. A woman needs a bit of privacy.”

  Anne attempted to elbow up to sit, but her head began to throb, and she fell back to finger a large knob risen under the hair on the side of her head.

  “You have to rest, Mrs. Merrick…” Trueworthy scolded, rearranging the compress that had slipped from her head. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  “Blood?” she squeaked.

  Jones turned to his mates and snapped, “Shove off, you lubbers. Mrs. Merrick needs her rest.”

  Anne shifted her shoulders, suddenly aware of the lumpy straw-filled pallet she was lying on. Under the blanket, her skirts were all bunched around her hips, and the rough osnaburg canvas was like pumice stone on the bare skin of her bottom and legs. She could now see that what she mistook for raw beef in the basin, was in fact a mound of bloody rags. “What… ?”

  Grasping her gently by the shoulder, Trueworthy leaned in and whispered, “I’m afraid you lost the babe.”

  “Babe?”

  “Not more’n a mite. Two months gone, were you?” he asked, scooping up a cup of water from a small pail. “Hard on a woman’s soul, losing a youngling at any stage.” Trueworthy slipped an arm under her shoulders, and held the cup to her lips. “You’re fevering. You should drink.”

  Anne gulped down the water, brack and bitter as it was. “A baby…” she murmured, lying back. Two months gone. The farewell at Elbert’s…

  “I cleaned you up as best I could,” Trueworthy said, replacing the compress with one fresh and cool. “I’m no stranger to the way of it—eight sprouts, we have, Mrs. Jones and me. I helped in birthing three, and was by her side when she lost a youngling or two as well.”

  “A baby… lost before I even knew it was there…” Anne began to sob. “What kind of woman am I not to know? The signs were there. I should have known, Mr. Jones. I could’ve…”

  “Now, now. No use in that kind of talk. Probably for the best, at any rate,” he said, stroking her head. “Lord knows this hulk’s no fit place for human beings of any sort, much less a woman alone with a babe in arms.”

  “I didn’t have to be alone, don’t you see?” Anne whispered. “He’s a good man, my Jack. He would have taken care of us.”

  Trueworthy’s face took on a hard look. “Aye… well where is he now, this Jack?”

  “Scouting for Washington. Sally will get word to him and he’ll come for me… I know he will—” Anne grabbed the seaman by the arm. “You can come with us, Mr. Jones, when we escape.”

  “I suppose he give you this, your Jack.” Trueworthy slipped the little wooden heart into Anne’s hand. “Found it when I loosened your stay strings.”

  It had grown too dark to read the words, but she clutched it in one hand, and reached for the half crown strung round her neck with the other. “Jack said he’d rescu
e me, on land or sea…”

  “Best not to dwell on such fancies…” Trueworthy said. “There’s no rescue from this hellhole we’re in—you hear me? None. Put your mind t’ getting strong—put your mind to surviving. This war can’t last forever.”

  “No rescue…” she repeated, turning her head to stare at the darkening sky out the window.

  Anne could feel them leave her—hope—faith—confidence—courage—twining up to disappear into the atmosphere like the tendrils of steam from a cup of tea. It wouldn’t be long now before she was completely empty, like the cadavers up on deck.

  She that dances must pay the fiddler… Anne rolled toward the sound of water trickling into the tin basin and the copper-tinged smell of the blood-soaked rags. Yet another child of mine, lost—dead— She reached out and grasped Trueworthy by the wrist and said in a heart-aching whisper, “I wish I were dead, too.”

  “Aye… don’t we all…” he murmured, and pressed the cool cloth to her head.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolfe.

  THOMAS PAINE, The American Crisis

  THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

  Jack peered into the looking glass Hercules held out, set the razor aside, and used a towel to wipe away the dregs of lather from his fresh-shaven face and neck.

  “Not really long enough for a proper Hessian mustache, is it?”

  “It’s good enough,” Hercules said, twisting in a bit of beeswax to curl up the ends.

  “What you lack in mustache, you gain in hair,” Tully said, tugging the long braid trailing down Jack’s back. “Any Hessian would be proud to sport this here rattail.”

  The tailor coached, “Let’s hear your German once again—Fire! All hands abandon ship!”

  Jack barked, “Alarm! Feuer! Alle mann von bord!”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  Jack snapped his heels in attention. “Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann!”

  Tully grinned. “Sounds like a proper cabbage-eater to me.”

  “Excellent,” Mulligan agreed.

  “I better get a move on.” Jack buttoned up his weskit made of golden yellow wool, and brushed away a smudge from the white breeches he wore. “The waterboat leaves for the Whitby at five o’clock…”

  “Don’t you fret. The boatman’ll wait for his silver.” Hercules helped Jack into a regimental jacket of Prussian blue with facings to match his weskit. “The last hundred pieces cross the bastard’s greasy palm after Tully sees your barrel loaded onto the Whitby.”

  “That’s an awful lot of money, Stitch, and I’m grateful to you for it—for everything. I would never have managed any of this without you…” Jack pulled Hercules into a hug. “Both of you.” Throwing his arm around Tully’s shoulders, he said, “I swear on all I hold dear, no man could want for better friends.”

  Hercules pulled away, swiping a tear from his eye. “Enough folderol. Let’s get this barrel packed.” He snatched up a full gunnysack and dropped it into the empty hogshead centered in his office. “There—that will also serve as a bit of a cushion for your backside. You’re next. Scoodle down in.”

  The big water cask was just a little more than four feet tall. Tully held it steady while Jack hopped up to sit on the edge, swing his legs around, and slip inside the barrel. Curling his shoulders inward, he managed to clear the narrow barrelhead to sit with knees bent, back supported by the bellying slope of the barrel staves.

  “Anne’s clothes are in the gunny you’re sitting on.” Hercules began to tick off the list he had scribbled on a scrap of paper pulled from his pocket. “Pry bar?”

  Tully handed down a short, iron bar. “Secure this somehow—you don’t want it banging about in there—”

  Jack slipped the pry bar inside his weskit.

  “Tinderbox?” Hercules read from the list.

  Jack patted his chest. “In my pocket.”

  “Good. The diversions?” Hercules asked.

  “This here’s the whale oil.” Tully handed down a corked tin bottle, which Jack situated near his feet. “And here’s your bomb and match.” Tully gave Jack a heavy corked grenade, and a coil of cotton cord soaked in salt peter and coated with gum spirits.

  Looking very much like the pomegranate the French named the little bomb for, Jack weighed the iron ball in his palm before buttoning it into his coat pocket. “Packed tight with powder?”

  “Filled to the brim,” Tully assured. “And that there’s a quick match, so light it and get out of the way.”

  “Hat!” Hercules grabbed the tricorn decorated with fuzzy yellow balls of wool at each tip. “Try to keep it from being crushed. And last but not least…” The tailor passed down a fungus-covered chunk of rotting tree bark. “This is a good idea. I hope it works.”

  “So do I,” Jack said, tucking the chunk of foxfire between the gunnysack and the barrel wall. “It’s bound to be as dark as a coffin in the hold of that ship.”

  Hercules reviewed his list. “That’s the lot. Close her up, Tully.”

  “Once I fit this lid on, you latch it on the inside.” Tully pointed to the hooks mounted around the inside edge of the false barrelhead he’d devised. “I only drilled three small holes to give you some air—anything more might attract notice—so it’ll be close in there.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Jack looked up at both heads peering over the barrel edge, one ruddy and ginger, the other grizzled and gray. “I’ll get word to you somehow, once we get settled.”

  Hercules reached in and squeezed Jack’s shoulder. “You’re using one of your nine lives doing this thing.”

  Jack grinned. “That still leaves me with four, by my reckoning.”

  “Good luck to you, lad.”

  “I’ll need it.” Jack knuckled his brow in salute, then to Tully said, “I’ll be seeing you soon, my brother.”

  Tully grasped Jack by the hand. “Look for the signal. I’ll be there.” He slid the lid into place.

  The barrel went dark, and the foxfire glowed eerie green. Jack moved his fingers methodically from one hook to the next, making certain each was firmly affixed. Once finished, he settled in, rapped his knuckles to the barrelhead, and shouted, “Let’s go!”

  * * *

  Edward Blankenship produced a watch from his weskit pocket and flicked the gold casing open. “I mean to have my company aboard the six-o’clock ferry, Provost.”

  Narrow shoulders hunched, William Cunningham dipped his pen in the inkwell, and continued to scribble as fast as he could, his ferret eyes darting from his hand to the officer waiting impatiently on the other side of the desk. “Tedious, I know, Captain, but the Hessian in charge will never release her without the paperwork in order.”

  The Provost dipped his pen one last time to scrawl his signature and, without looking up, said, “I know the widow once risked her neck for her rebel lover, but it doesn’t necessarily mean Hampton’ll be returning the favor. He may value his own hide overmuch to walk willingly into your snare. You haven’t been able to find him—for all your effort—and he might not even be in town.”

  “Hampton is like the dove, ever constant to his mate.” Glaring one-eyed out the barred window, mouth turned down in perpetual snarl, Blankenship muttered, “He’s here. I can feel it.” Snapping his watch closed, he returned it to his pocket, and fit his dragoon’s helmet over the black silk scarf masking his scars—the death’s head emblazoned on it stark in the light of the oil lamp.

  Cunningham hurried to sprinkle the document with sand from the pounce pot and waved the paper about to dry the ink. “I hope you’re right. I, for one, will revel to see the bastard twist in the wind.”

  Blankenship leaned over and snatched the page from the Provost’s fingers, giving it a brief glance before folding it twice and stuffing it into his breast pocket. “Prepare a hanging party. Send out your invitations, Mr. Cunningham, and have your henchmen spread the word—guilty of treason, Anne Merrick will be dancing on the gallows tonight. The news will b
e sure to flush our quarry from the weeds.”

  Anne lay curled on her side, staring at the little square patches of blue sky exposed between the crisscross of rusty iron bars. Rough fingers pressed her cheek for a moment, and then the back of her neck. Trueworthy Jones dropped to a sit, gently tugging her by the shoulder until she relented, and rolled onto her back.

  “You’re still fevering…” he said, eyeing the full cup of broth he’d left that morning, untouched and gone cold. “And you haven’t swallowed a drop of the beef tea the fellows made for you.”

  “Give it to another, Mr. Jones,” Anne said. “I’ve no appetite.”

  Leaning in, Trueworthy smiled and said, “I worked the burial crew today, and I brought you some presents—bound t’ give you some cheer.” Digging down into his shirt, he pulled out a small clump of green grass no bigger than his fist. “Plucked this up when the guards weren’t lookin’.” He held the grass to Anne’s nose. “In’t it grand?”

  Anne gave a little shrug, eyes drawn back to the blue sky beyond the bars of her prison.

  The sailor reached into his shirt again, and brushed a bit of white fluff against her cheek. “Believe it or not, this was just rolling along the beach—soft as a feather from a cherub’s wing—swansdown, I think.”

  Anne rolled back onto her side to gaze up at the window.

  Jones gave her a nudge. “What say you come up on deck and take some air? Might spark your appetite… You have to eat something.”

  Anne sighed, her voice sounding as small as she felt. “Not today, Mr. Jones.”

  “The day’s a-wasting, and the fresh air will do you some good…”

  Anne didn’t respond.

  “Come, now.” Trueworthy tugged at her sleeve. “I won’t be taking no for an answer…”

  Anne pulled her arm away and curled her legs up.

  “Stop this nonsense!” Trueworthy leaned over, his face inches from hers. “You can’t just give up!”