The Turning of Anne Merrick

by Christine Blevins

  Anne’s heart stopped for a moment; then she glanced over her shoulder and grabbed the Indian by the sleeve. “Don’t take him in there—it’s a madhouse.” She steered Ohaweio to the far end of the stoop, and gestured. “Here. Lay him here…”

  Ohaweio very carefully laid Geoffrey down onto the boards, centered in the skewed rectangle of candlelight streaming out the window. The Indian bent down and placed Pepperell’s cavalier hat on his chest, the once-proud ostrich plume reduced to a sad little remnant.

  Anne’s world went suddenly quiet, and she dropped down to her knees, eyes scanning Pepperell’s blood-covered form from head to toe. He’s a sieve… Blood was seeping from every part of him. She brushed the hat aside. Candlelight flickered on his handsome face and his quite peaceful features were drained of all color. She pressed a finger to his neck, and felt the feeble pulse of his heart. “He’s alive!”

  “Yes.” Ohaweio sat opposite, legs crossed. “You fix.”

  “Fix?! He needs a surgeon…” Anne began to stand.

  Ohaweio leaned across Geoffrey’s unconscious form and grabbed Anne hard by the upper arm. Dark eyes serious, with a voice deliberate and stern, he repeated, “You fix.”

  Anne spoke very slowly, pointing to the most obvious wounds. “He’s shot in the shoulder here—the arm—this knee is shattered—this leg, shot through… I can’t fix. He needs a doctor. I’m going to fetch a doctor…”

  “He means for you to stay with me, Anne.”

  She looked down to see Geoffrey, smiling up at her, the charming sparkle in his blue eyes dulled by pain. Anne sank down onto her heels.

  “How happy I am to see you.” His voice was a whisper. He flailed and managed to grasp her hand for a moment before losing strength.

  “You need tending, Geoff.” Anne rose up on her knees. “I’m getting a doctor…”

  “No point…” With erratic fingers, he grasped the bloody buttonhole edge of his jacket and flipped it aside. The waistcoat and shirt beneath were ripped open. A hasty field dressing had slipped and she could see blood burbling up and his insides spilling from a ragged hole—the length of two handspans—torn in his side.

  “Oh no… Oh, God!” Anne pulled off her apron. Folding it into a pad, she placed it over the awful wound. The linen was imbrued with blood in an instant, and she shouted, “We need a doctor here! A doctor!”

  “Shhhhhh…” Geoffrey cautioned with one trembling finger upraised. “I’ve little time. Please—no doctor.”

  Anne slumped down to sit with her legs curled to the side. She took a breath and wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her forearm. She looked through the door to see the Baroness sitting with one of her girls on her lap, reading to Simon Fraser from the Bible.

  “Do you want me to read some prayers for you?” Anne asked.

  “God, no!” Geoffrey laughed, then coughed.

  Anne used her skirt hem to swipe away the blood trickling from his mouth. “What would you have me do?”

  “Just promise you’ll stay.”

  Anne took Geoffrey by the hand. “I promise. I won’t leave you.”

  She sat by his side as he drifted in and out of consciousness, and witnessed three times the wondrous smile come to his face as he opened his eyes to see she was still there—as she said she’d be—holding his hand. The look in his eye was so sweet and childlike, she was reminded of the vigil she kept at her son’s bedside. The night Jemmy slipped away…

  Anne sat and watched the twilight deepen and the endless stream of lights and shadows bouncing along the road as carts and wagons and foot soldiers came rolling and trudging in from the battlefield. A horse and rider peeled away from the parade, galloping through the field up to the farmhouse. General von Riedesel swung down from the saddle and stomped right past without seeming to notice the man dying on his front stoop.

  The Baron’s entrance was greeted with a wild scream from the Baroness, and squeals of glee from his little daughters. Anne leaned back and watched the happy family reunion through the doorway. She turned back to find Geoffrey awake, and said, “The Baroness is much relieved. An odd couple, those two.”

  “He’s such a toad, and she’s…” Geoffrey closed his eyes for a moment. “She’s mad in love with him, though, isn’t she?”

  There was such a heartfelt ache in his voice and such sad yearning in his blue eyes, Anne was compelled to ease his way onward. In another place, at another time, Geoffrey Pepperell might well have been her one true love. She smoothed a tendril of bloody hair away from his forehead, and brushed his cheek with the back of her fingers.

  “Now, you and I, Geoff…” she said, choking back her tears. “We are the most perfect couple, don’t you think? A true love match.”

  “Love match,” Geoffrey repeated with a smile, and squeezed her hand. “I knew you were the one, the moment I saw you lop the head off that snake.”

  Anne leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. “And I knew you were the one when you swooped me up into your arms and carried me across that mud puddle.”

  Geoffrey’s once-easy laugh turned into a choking cough. Anne slipped her arms under his shoulders and said to the Indian, “Help me raise him up…”

  Ohaweio stripped the blanket from his shoulders and rolled it into a bolster to support Pepperell’s shoulders and head. The coughing eased, and Geoffrey was able to catch his breath. He managed to pat Ohaweio on the knee. “Much better… Leave it to you, my old friend.”

  Ohaweio reached in and rested a hand on Pepperell’s shoulder. “Good Pepperell. Brave man.”

  “Oh, Anne.” Geoffrey blinked, held tight to her hand. “You are so very beautiful in the light…” His grip relaxed. His smile faded, and the bright of his eye waned, like a candle being carried off into the distance, diminishing until it disappeared.

  Anne looked up at Ohaweio, her throat aching so, she could barely utter the words, “He’s gone.”

  Ohaweio said nothing as he closed his friend’s eyes, salty tears tracking a trail through the smoky grime and paint on his cheeks.

  Anne stood and smoothed her skirts, unable to stay the tears streaming down her face. “He needs to be seen to. I’ll find Gordon.” Pushing her way through the crowd standing vigil around Fraser’s deathbed, Anne went from room to room, looking for Lennox.

  The house was in turmoil, the floors of every room crowded with the wounded. Some wives had come to find their husbands, and one woman grabbed Anne by the hand as she passed by. “Bring water,” she said.

  Anne pulled away and stumbled out into the hallway to lean against the wall. The farmhouse was stuffy with the unwholesome smell of blood and fear, and cauterized flesh.

  The smell of war. Anne covered her eyes. How… How could I have ever wished for this?

  She lurched out the back door and, leaning over the back stoop railing, sucked clean fresh air into her lungs. The gray hills in the distance seemed so round and soft and peaceful against the clear black, star-filled night, but Anne knew the book-match to the British aftermath was being played out beyond them, on the Patriot side. Victorious or vanquished, men on both sides were wounded, maimed, dead, and dying in pain. The living were suffering the loss of their loved ones, and if lucky, brave men like Geoffrey Pepperell clung tight to the hand of a stranger for comfort in their last moments.

  For possession of a patch of ground. No… it isn’t that simple. Anne puffed out a breath, and remembered what Jack had once said, when she questioned his commitment to the cause of liberty. Blood has been shed, and our countrymen are dying. I do all I can for our cause—wholly in it, heart, mind, and soul, for I will not have our men perish for naught.

  She fixed her gaze upon a bright star and pressed her fists to her breast, beginning her prayer by whispering the names of her love, her brother, and her good friend. “Jack. David. Titus… be whole and safe…” She gulped another breath, and finished by saying, “Peace be with you, Geoffrey. Ohaweio has the right of it—no matter the color of your coat
, you were a good and brave man.”

  “Mrs. Merrick…” A hand fell heavy on her shoulder. Anne turned and blinked through tears. It was Gordon Lennox.

  “Geoffrey’s dead,” she said.

  Gordon leaned with both hands on the railing, and heaved a shuddering sigh. “He went right into the thick of it without a thought. So reckless… so courageous…”

  “Ohaweio is with him on the front stoop. You need to see to him, Gordon.” Anne stepped down and took a few backward steps. “You were a true friend to him.”

  Anne ran. She ran as fast as her legs could carry her, all the way to the baggage camp. There was a light in their tent, and she fumbled at the ties on the flaps, her lungs aching, unable to catch her breath. Sally pulled the tent open.

  “Annie! Yer drenched in blood!”

  “There was a battle. A bad one.” Anne sank down onto her cot, her palms open on her lap. “Pepperell’s dead. He died holding my hand…”

  Sally sat down, not saying a word, her eyes bloodshot and swollen.

  “What’s the matter with you? It’s what we’ve been hoping for, isn’t it?” Anne plucked at her bloodstained skirt, unable to temper the note of hysteria in her voice. “Now’s our chance—what are we waiting for? Let’s go. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Th’ chances of our getting back t’ David and Jack are less to none. Burgoyne’s pulled what’s left of his regiments to this position. We are now at the front, and the Continentals will no doubt press their attack at daybreak. The defenses are set and solid—there’s no getting through in any direction.” Sally bit her lip, trying very hard not to cry. “What are we t’ do? It’s all such an awful mommick…”

  Anne shrugged. “Trapped on a sinking ship…”

  “Aye.” Sally nodded. “A sinking, pocky British ship.”

  Anne stared for a moment at the flame flickering in the lantern, and she smiled. “Would you listen to the two of us? By all our sniffling and whining, you’d never know our side came out victors in the mess.”

  “Aye—’tis true…” Sally’s smile was weak. “Our lads did well, did they na?”

  “They did! And reinforcements or no, Burgoyne will be hard-pressed to recover from this defeat. It is the beginning of the end for them…”

  “I s’pose…” Sally wiped her face with a tear-drenched hankie. “I s’pose I thought victory would feel better than it does…”

  Anne fingered a sticky smear of blood on her forearm, and said, “So did I.”

  * * *

  The day broke with cannon booming.

  All British forces had retreated back behind the safety of the Great Redoubt, the hilltop fortifications built to protect the artillery park and baggage camp. The rebels turned their newly acquired cannon on these defenses. The Continental Army was closing in.

  Carted, carried, or staggering in all through the night, there was not enough shelter under which to house the multitude of wounded soldiers, and all able hands were pressed into service to deal with the massive influx of battlefield casualties. The drummer boys organized the camp children into a bucket brigade, passing endless buckets of water up from the river to the hospital. The laundrywomen fashioned shrouds for the corpses, and the teamsters piled the dead onto wagons like cordwood, to be taken and buried in a mass grave. Armed with water and packets of ship’s biscuit, Anne and Sally were among the brigade of camp women giving succor to row upon row of wounded men lying in the open field near the hospital. Given no time to mourn their dead husbands lying among the bodies awaiting burial, many a tearful wife coursed these rows, stoic in performing her duty to the regiment.

  Throughout the day, Anne and Sally gleaned information from the soldiers and officers they tended. The tales often shifted with the storyteller, but certain constants remained—the rebels fought ferociously and in great number. Burgoyne’s forces were routed, and the army’s position with its back to the river was untenable, with little hope for reinforcement.

  Anne knelt down beside a wounded ensign lying on a scrap of oiled canvas, head cradled on his furry goatskin pack. The surgeon managed to dig the lead out of his hip, but the young officer was fevering. She offered him a dipper of water.

  Sally ran up and crouched down beside Anne, keeping her voice low. “Burgoyne has ordered the entire army to retreat north.”

  Anne drew a rag from her pocket and dipped it into the water. “When?”

  “Now.”

  “Now? But the wounded…”

  Sally leaned in and whispered in her ear, “They’re leaving the wounded behind.”

  Anne wrung out the cloth and sponged the soot from the ensign’s face. Setting the bucket beside him, she placed a packet of ship’s biscuit in the crook of his arm. “Remember to drink,” she told him, tugging his woolen blanket up to his chin.

  “Away—” Sally gave Anne a pull. “This mess is beyond your fixing. Look—” She pointed to the row of artillery carriages being assembled on the flat. “They’ve brought the great guns down from the Heights.”

  Burgeoning with all regiments in residence, the camp was in motion as never before. From hospital, to artillery park, to baggage camp, the urgency to get the army packed and under way was palpable. Teamsters were frantic, yoking and hitching their draft animals to wagons being loaded with provisions and matériel. Officers shouted orders to soldiers rolling casks of meal and flour down to the riverside, where the provisions were loaded onto bateaus and floated upriver. Women ran about, searching for and gathering their children. By the time Anne and Sally reached the baggage camp, more than half of the tents had been struck and packed for the march.

  “It’s goin’ t’ be a sharp night,” Sally noted. “I can already see my breath.”

  They hurried to change into more suitable clothes, augmenting petticoats and skirts with a second layer. Loose linen jackets were belted at the waist with cotton sashes. They tied their hair up in checkered kerchiefs, and swirled hooded cloaks of cardinal red wool over the entire ensemble. Handled baskets prepacked with their few rations, and other odds and ends, were brought up from under beds. Sally tucked the leather coin purse between her breasts. After doing the same with her keepsakes, Anne held the tent flap open for Sally and said, “This is it—we’re leaving.”

  The neighboring Sandiland sisters were also preparing for the retreat. The two young women and their boys were dressed in several layers of clothing, and Sally smiled at the sight. “Like a family of roly-poly bugs, they are.”

  Viney carried the heavy canvas tent folded and strapped to a wooden frame she wore on her back. Prue hefted their bundle of bedding onto her shoulders, tied her toddler’s leading strings to her wrist, and adjusted the sling she used to carry her new baby girl on her chest. Tent poles became walking staffs, and like good shepherds, the women used them to prod the children into order.

  “Viney!” Anne called. “Make use of our barrow, and take whatever you want—the tent and anything within.”

  Viney’s eyes popped wide. “For truth? Won’t you be needin’ yer things, missus?”

  Anne held up her basket. “We’re traveling light. Sally and I are heading south, to my brother.”

  Viney and Prue ran to the barrow, unloading their packs and parcels into it. They turned to quickly strike the wedge tent, stuffing it into the barrow as well. The cots were all they left behind.

  “Husbands wouldn’t care for those,” Prue explained with a shy smile.

  “But we’ll each have our own tent now, sister!” Viney sighed. “What a luxury!”

  Anne hoisted the two smaller boys to sit atop the cargo pile, and Sally took the Indian sausage she’d saved and snapped it into five even pieces, giving one to each of the boys.

  “A little something to chew might keep them quiet for a mile or two,” Anne said, stuffing a sack of raisins and a packet of ship’s biscuit into Prue’s pocket.

  Prue said, “Yiv worn a soft spot into my heart with all your kindnesses.”

  Anne and Sally bid t
he Sandilands farewell in an onslaught of hugs and kisses from the teary-eyed sisters—Prue and Viney turned back every now and then to wave or blow a kiss as they bumped the barrow along, disappearing in the human mass funneling down to the river road.

  Sally waved and said, “Ye ken we just gave away all our food.”

  “I know,” Anne said, waving as well. “They’ll be needing it more than we.”

  “True enough.”

  As the sun melted into the horizon, they stood and watched the exodus on its northern path until nightfall, when the long snaking column disappeared beyond their sight. But for the lights at hospital, where a few physicians and some women stayed behind to care for the wounded and infirm, the camp seemed deserted.

  Anne slapped Sally on the back, and, baskets in hand, they set off down the muddy track that, only a few hours before, had been flanked by crowds of tents and wagons. Drainage ditches carved into the ground and piles of unused firewood beside river stones gathered into circle hearths were the only signs marking where the Redcoat army had, for a short time, laid claim to the land.

  “Mrs. Merrick! Sally!”

  Anne turned to see Sergeant Pennybrig running toward them, a company of soldiers with muskets in hand trotting right behind.

  “Should we make a run for the trees?” Sally asked.

  “They’re armed.” Anne sighed. “Best wait and see what it is he wants.”

  Pennybrig pulled up huffing and puffing. He shouldered his musket and ordered the rest of his company off with a terse, “Get to it.” The soldiers scattered to the abandoned campsites, tossing firewood onto the deserted hearths, sprinkling it with lamp oil and setting it alight.

  “What are they up to?” Anne asked.

  “A ruse for the rebels, to make the camp seem inhabited.” Pennybrig crossed his arms over his chest, his countenance stern. “Why is it you two have strayed so far behind the others?”