Prelude to Glory Vol, 3

by Ron Carter

  “Got to keep that fire low.”

  Billy nodded as they both dug inside their coats for the dried fish and fried pork, and the hard biscuits wrapped in canvas.

  “Wish we had coffee,” Eli said.

  They sat with the yellow firelight reflecting off their faces and making faint, ghostly shadows inside the barn. They gnawed chunks of hard fish and pork and biscuit. They drank from their canteens and refilled them from the water bucket, and as they stared into the low, dancing flames and worked at their meat, a strange, unexpected, reflective mood settled over them. The warmth of the tiny fire reached them and they wiped at their noses as they began to drip. For a long time they sat in silence, each lost in his own thoughts.

  Billy spoke low, his words echoing in the empty barn. “Ever think about dying? whether God has appointed a time for each man to die?”

  Eli didn’t raise his eyes from the fire. For a time the only sound was the grinding of the hay by the horse in the next stall. “You worried?”

  For a moment Billy hesitated. “I think about it. We’ve been through some bad battles with men killed all around us. We could have been dead half a dozen times. It seems like after awhile we’ve used up all our chances, and the balance tips the other way, and it’s our turn to go. I wonder if God decides all that.”

  “I’ve thought about it.”

  “Do you think He decides?”

  Eli’s forehead wrinkled and he reached to wipe at his mouth, then settled. “It seems like there’s more to it than that. I think God sees things different because He sees more than just us. Your Bible says He made everything in the heavens, and if He did, He sees us as part of all that. His plan is bigger than ours.”

  Eli paused and Billy held his silence, waiting. Eli raised questioning eyes. “In His plan, do you think we decide anything, or does God decide it all?”

  Billy’s eyes narrowed for a moment, then grew wide at the thought. For a time they sat in silence before Billy answered. “We decide some things. I decided to join in the fight for liberty. So did you.”

  “Why?”

  “Something inside. I know I have good thoughts and bad ones, and I can decide which ones I follow.”

  Eli raised his face. “Remember I told you the Iroquois teaching about the Twin Brothers. The Good Twin and the Bad Twin?”

  “I remember. I think they’re the same as Jesus and the devil in the Bible.”

  Eli suddenly leaned forward, focused, intense. “You think your Bible says they were twins? Brothers? Jesus and the devil?”

  Billy reached into his memory. “I’ve heard it taught that way.”

  Eli didn’t hesitate. “If they’re brothers, and if Jesus said He is the Son of God and that we’re all God’s children, then we’re all one family. God, His son Jesus the good brother, the devil the bad brother, and all of us.”

  For a time neither moved as the power of the thought reached deep inside them. Finally Billy shook his head. “I don’t know. I wish I did.”

  Eli shook his head. “I’d give a lot to know.” Once again he raised his face to Billy. “You asked if God decides when we die. I doubt it, at least for most of us. It seems like He set us here free to decide most things for ourselves. If we stay to fight with the army we’re more likely to be killed than if we went home. I think we decide that. And even in battle, experience and good sense make a difference.”

  Billy added more sticks to the fire. “Maybe we decide most things. Right and wrong, good and bad.”

  A knot popped in the fire and a tiny column of sparks spurted and settled.

  Eli asked quietly, “Don’t most things finally come down to right or wrong?”

  Billy shook his head. “I’m not sure.”

  Eli drew a weary breath. “Neither am I. We’ll have to wait. Maybe someday …”

  They drank cold water and rewrapped what was left of their meat and biscuits. Billy was working his small packet back into his coat when he touched the envelope Turlock had given him, for Eli. Quickly he jerked it from his coat and thrust it towards Eli.

  “Turlock gave me this. A letter for you.”

  Eli looked at him in disbelief. “Me? From who?”

  “A British doctor.”

  “A what?”

  He broke the seal, unfolded the paper, and turned it to the firelight. He read the scrolled lines, then reread them, and lowered the document, eyes wide in surprise.

  “This is from Mary Flint! She had a doctor write it. She was a nurse in his hospital. She says the reverend who got my sister a long time ago was named Cyrus Fielding.” He paused to look directly into Billy’s eyes. “The doctor says Mary’s sick. She was nearly killed getting the name of the reverend. She was in this doctor’s hospital in New York when he wrote this.”

  Billy gaped. Eli rose, nervous, pacing in the stall, needing to do something. “Someone’s got to go help her,” he exclaimed, and his words echoed.

  Billy waited while Eli slowed before he spoke. “If she’s in the hospital now, she’s getting help.”

  Eli stopped and slowly sat back down. “I guess you’re right. I hope she gets well. I surely do.” He read the letter once more, then his head dropped forward and his shoulders slumped as he stared at the cold dirt floor of the stall. In his mind he was seeing the dark, brave eyes and the dark hair, and he was feeling the pain she had endured from the loss of her infant and her husband and all a woman holds dear. He felt the soul-wrenching ache as though it was his own, and he wished he could take it from her, but he could not.

  Billy checked the horse, then walked to the loose hay scattered in the corner of the barn. He pushed it into a pile as Eli came from the stall. They burrowed into the stack for warmth, and in the dim light of the dying fire Eli spoke quietly.

  “The British have some wagons loaded with gunpowder and about two hundred horses at their camp. If we get there in the morning before it’s light we can likely cause them some trouble. Slow them down. Give Washington a little more time.”

  “We’ll do it.” Billy waited a few moments. “She’s all right. You’ll see her again.”

  Notes

  Many, perhaps most, of the Marblehead Regiment under Colonel John Glover chose to leave the Continental army when the enlistments expired. Most historians agree that some of Glover’s men turned their attention to privateering. During this period of time, General Washington was issuing “Letters of Marque” to civilian ship owners, granting them authority to take British ships on the high seas. Some historians also indicate that a possible motivation for Glover leaving the war was because his wife was ill and his personal businesses were failing (see Ketchum, The Winter Soldiers, p. 279; Freeman, George Washington, vol. 4, p. 333; Billias, General John Glover and His Marblehead Mariners, pp. 129-31).

  General Washington sent Colonel Joseph Reed and twelve soldiers towards Princeton to scout out the strength and position of the British forces. Nearly within sight of Nassau Hall, Reed captured twelve British Dragoons at the Wilson farm where the British had stopped to eat Mrs. Wilson’s mince pies. The prisoners were interrogated by General Washington and they confirmed that the British would have about 8,000 prime troops available to march on Trenton. General Cadwalader had obtained the same information from American spies and had drawn a rough map for General Washington (see Ketchum, The Winter Soldiers, p. 283).

  General Washington ordered the French General de Fermoy to take a small command of soldiers to the bridge spanning Five Mile Run that intersected Princeton Road, and to send word when the British marched. Among the men under de Fermoy’s command was a small company of Pennsylvania riflemen led by Colonel Edward Hand (see Ketchum, The Winter Soldiers, p. 288).

  New York City

  January 1, 1777

  CHAPTER XIV

  You have a slight touch of pneumonia still lingering.”

  Doctor Otis Purcell leaned from his chair beside the bed to tuck the thick, down-filled comforter under Mary Flint’s chin, and he smiled into the serious, d
ark eyes. “Your fever’s gone. Another week of rest and strong soup and vegetables and you can get up and around for an hour or so each day, but for now you remain here in your bed.” He reached to touch her cheek tenderly, as he would a beloved child. “It’s late. You go to sleep.”

  Mary smiled up at him. “Thank you. How can I ever repay you?”

  “Get well. That will be pay enough.”

  He turned down the lamp on the table beside her bed. “I’ll be back to check on you in the night. If you need anything, call.”

  “I will.”

  He picked up his lantern, walked from the small room on the third story of the Flint mansion, left the door ajar three inches, and silently walked down the hardwood floor of the hall with his lantern high, casting a giant shadow behind him. The stairs creaked once as he descended to the ground floor, and he made his way to the French doors into the library where he had set up his office, and entered. He set his lantern on one corner of his desk, then turned up the lamp on the other, and glanced at the mantel clock above the huge, stone fireplace.

  Twenty minutes past nine o’clock. Wearily he slumped into the leather upholstered chair behind his desk and ran a hand through his rumpled hair, then leaned back to rest for a few moments in the yellow light.

  Night rounds. One hundred sixteen men. Maimed and crippled and sick because the human race cannot rise above war. He closed his eyes for several moments. Every monarch, every military officer should be forced to spend one month in a makeshift hospital like this one. Try to heal these men—save them. Amputate some arms and legs. Hear the screams. Listen to men rant in fever deliriums. Watch their eyes when they die. Every officer. Might help end wars.

  He rose exhausted and rubbed eyes weary from peering intently at too many wounds, making too many critical decisions. He picked up the lantern and quietly walked from the library feeling old and drained. Amid the moaning of men in pain, the rattle of rapid, fevered breathing, and the heavy, oppressive stench of carbolics, medicines, gangrene, and human refuse, he paused at the bedsides of the wounded and sick and dying to hold the lantern high while he leaned over. He laid his hand on foreheads, and held a cup of cool water to parched lips, and whispered encouragement to those who turned questioning eyes to him in the dim light. Where there were no beds, men lay on blankets arranged on the floor, and he knelt briefly to arrange pillows and straighten blankets before he listened to their breathing and felt for fever.

  He finished his rounds on the first and second floors, then silently stole up the stairs to Mary’s small room on the third floor where he had ordered his staff to arrange a good bed, away from the crowded rooms and the heartbreak below. He silently pushed the door open and held his lantern high while he peered inside. In the dim light he saw her dark head on the white pillow, with the comforter drawn to her chin, and he listened to her deep, regular breathing for a time before he swung the door nearly closed and returned to the stairway at the end of the hall. On the ground floor he stopped at the small storage room he had converted to an apothecary and briefly checked the scant stock of medical supplies remaining. Four of the five one-gallon bottles of alcohol were empty, the fifth one half gone. He closed the door and walked on to his office in the library.

  The mantel clock read ten minutes past eleven as he dropped into his chair, bone tired in mind and body. He unbuttoned his vest, then leaned back in the chair to close his eyes while he allowed himself the luxury of shutting off his mind for a few precious minutes. He started at the sound of the French doors rattling and he sat upright, trying to focus.

  “Sorry, sir. The lights were on. I wouldn’t of bothered if I’d known you were asleep.”

  Purcell cleared his throat. “It’s all right, corporal. What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, sir. I just wanted to know if there was anything else I could do before I go to bed.”

  Purcell dug his knuckles into his eyes for a moment while he forced his mind to once again accept the grinding burden of running a makeshift military hospital in a foreign land. He sighed as he looked at Corporal Victor Welles. The lantern light added lines to the man’s already aged face, and his brows seemed too large in the yellow light. His right hand was lightly bandaged while it finished healing from having three fingers blown off by an exploding British cannonball. The blast had left Welles a little addled, sometimes disturbed in his thinking and judgment. His thumb and index finger were free, and the old soldier had begged to help in the hospital while his hand finished healing. He knew nothing of treating the sick, nor was he capable of learning, but he had faithfully followed orders in doing what he could and was helpful in cleaning and scrubbing and carrying out the soiled bandages to burn each day.

  “Nothing tonight, corporal. But in the morning would you fill the alcohol bottles from the barrel in the cellar?”

  “Are they empty again, sir?”

  “Four of them.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll do it.”

  “Good night, corporal.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  Purcell turned down the lamp, shrugged out of his vest, dropped it on his desk, and sat down on the cot he had long ago arranged against one wall. He took off his shoes before he lay out full-length on his back, one arm across his eyes, and he felt the unending tension begin to drain from his muscles, and then his mind, as he slipped into deep sleep.

  Corporal Welles quietly made his way to his own cot in one corner of what had once been the grand dining hall and sat in the shadows for a few moments.

  No reason I can’t fill those bottles tonight. It’d please the doctor. With the bottles filled I could do something else in the morning.

  Proud of his reasoning, he lighted the lantern he kept beneath his cot to answer any call he may get in the night and made his way to the makeshift apothecary where he took the first empty bottle from the shelf. Holding the lantern high he worked his way to the kitchen door leading to the cellar, and carefully descended the stairs into the chill, dank air. He turned into what had been the cement wine room and walked to the far wall where four twenty-five gallon kegs of alcohol had been placed on the rack that had once held six kegs of nine-year French wine. He placed the lantern on the cement floor by his feet, jerked the stopper out of the bottle, raised the neck to the spout on the wooden spigot with his left hand, and turned the spigot handle with the thumb and index finger on his right.

  The stream of medicinal alcohol hit the bottom of the bottle, it began to fill and the acrid fumes rose and reached into the room. Welles wrinkled his nose against the bite and turned his face away as his eyes began to water, and as he did his grasp on the bottle slipped. He made a desperate grab with both hands for the tumbling bottle and missed, and it shattered on the cement floor. The splashing alcohol drenched his shoes and the lantern by his feet, and there was a whump as the alcohol caught. The spigot to the twenty-five gallon barrel was still wide open, spewing a steady stream of alcohol onto the floor. With his shoes and trouser legs on fire, Welles staggered backwards away from the keg, frantically pounding at his blazing pant legs. The alcohol running from the spigot was rapidly spreading and it caught and the flames came licking at Welles. He turned and ran from the room, raced up the stairs, burst into the kitchen and slammed the door just as the keg in the cellar exploded.

  The blast shattered the rack and the other three kegs dropped crashing to the cement floor where they split and instantly exploded. The concussion blew every door in the basement to pieces, ripped the kitchen door off its hinges, and shattered every kitchen window outward into the black of night. Welles was thrown headlong against the far kitchen wall and slumped to the floor, unconscious, clothing still smoldering. An instant later the entire basement of the proud Flint mansion was a holocaust of blue and yellow alcohol flames, reaching up the stairs into the kitchen, filling it with thick, choking, black smoke.

  The first muffled explosion and instant tremor reached deep into Doctor Otis Purcell and a quiet, faint urgency arose in his sleep-locked
brain as the second, heavier sound came rolling and the floor of the library shook. Bottles rattled on the desk and the cot shuddered as the voice inside Purcell’s head rose demanding. His eyes opened wide in the darkness while he tried to force his fumbling brain to identify what had wakened him. He swung his feet off the cot and lunged for the large French doors and threw them open. The rank stench of burning alcohol struck him like something physical and he recoiled, bewildered, unable to grasp what had happened. He threw one hand over his nose and mouth and started down the dark hall where smoke and flames were billowing from the kitchen door when the first frantic cries erupted from the sick and wounded in the huge room adjoining the entryway. Five seconds later the first floor was plunged into a chaotic bedlam of sick and wounded men, shouting, screaming, scrambling from every room in the dim light for any door or window through which they could escape the stench of burning alcohol and the smoke that was strangling them.

  “Stop! Stop!” shouted Purcell, and he grabbed the man nearest him. “Maintain order! We can all get out if we will maintain order!” The man wrenched free and plunged on towards the two great front doors, pushing his way, stumbling over cots, heedless of the men underfoot who had fallen and could not rise. Purcell seized another man and screamed, “Stop! Order!” but he could not be heard in the roar of terrified voices. The man struck Purcell’s hands away and was gone in the mindless stampede for the doors.

  “Useless! Useless!” Purcell cried, and turned towards the corner near the great entryway where the broad, graceful, curving staircase led to the second floor. Smoke was filling the room and flames were leaping from the kitchen down the hallway towards the entrance when Purcell reached the base of the stairs. He leaped them two at a time and was halfway to the second floor when an avalanche of panic-driven wounded came pounding downward, sweeping him aside in their headlong plunge for the nearest door or window on the ground floor. In the smoke he could hear windows being smashed as men threw cots, or tables, or chairs, crashing through them.