by John Jakes
The American fire broke the grenadier charge thirty yards from the hedge. In the smoke, Philip saw redcoat after redcoat falling. Suddenly someone stumbled against his legs.
Philip wrenched his head up. Saw Webb, a sooty ghoul who grinned and pointed a bleeding hand through a break in the foliage:
“We’ve hit Colonel Monckton, their commander.”
Up and down the line, men picked it up:
“Monckton’s killed—someone shot Monckton!”
As the grenadiers began to pull back, re-form for another charge, Webb’s hand closed hard on Philip’s shoulder.
“He’s one of their kingbirds. Can you two bring him back to our colors?”
Gulping for air, Philip said, “Can try. Come on, Royal. Leave the musket. Stay low—”
The two of them crawled forward on their bellies, out past the hedge into tall grass. Occasional musket fire still crackled over their heads. All at once, Philip stopped.
He burrowed his elbows into the soft ground. His ears rang. He let his head hang like an exhausted dog’s. Waves of nausea left him helpless.
“Royal, I can’t,” he gasped. “The damned heat—”
“It’s only a little further,” Royal panted, grabbing the back of Philip’s hunting shirt and giving him a tug. “They want Monckton’s body at the colors. You can make it—”
The perimeter of the orchard was a miasma of smoke and dimly seen sky. He was tired beyond the limits of comprehension. He rolled his head sideways, saw Royal watching him with almost wild-eyed intensity. The boy had lost his little black wool cap during the day, Philip realized.
“Come on!” Royal said.
Philip dug his elbows into the grass, pulled his numbed body forward a few inches. And a few more—
Royal Rothman speared out one hand, closed it clawlike on the powder-blacked uniform of the grenadier commander who lay with eyes and mouth open. Out of sight in the tall grass, the British drummers changed cadence to start the next advance.
“Help me pull him!” Royal pleaded. “If you don’t, the grenadiers will catch up to us—”
Philip’s right arm felt dead. He forced it to move by will alone, reaching down across Colonel Monckton’s nose and open mouth to dig his fingers into sweat-drenched wool. Then he began to crawl backwards, feeling as if he were dragging the weight of the world.
His head buzzed. Buzzed and rang. Distantly, as though in a windstorm, he heard Royal’s voice, now louder, now fainter:
“A little more. Only a little more, Philip. Don’t let go of him—!”
“I can’t stand to look at him that way!” Philip screamed, shifting his hand to the dead officer’s face. One by one he pushed down Monckton’s eyelids.
Just after he touched the corpse, something started his hand shuddering; then his whole arm. It was all so damned senseless. The heat; the slaughter—
He just wanted to give up. Stop. Rest. Close his eyes—
“Keep pulling, Philip! The grenadiers have spotted us. But we’re close. Pull!”
He tried. God, he tried. He had no strength left. His arm shook uncontrollably—
What sort of man had this Monckton been? Surely he’d loved someone. A wife. Children. Surely he believed he was just as right as those on Philip’s side. It was a waste. A wretched, damnable waste—
All that kept him tugging the corpse was a memory of Anne and Abraham on which he forced himself to concentrate.
He knew there was a purpose to the struggle beyond the immediate one. He knew because Anne had revealed it to him, little by little, in their first months of courting.
He’d believed in it when he married her. Did he now—?
Yes, he supposed so. But he was spent; so spent, the nature of the purpose was beyond his power to recall. What he clung to—what kept him floundering and flopping on his knees and elbows to drag the body were two faces. All else was stripped away; dross.
A woman. A child—that was why he was here. Why he had to fire his musket. Obey orders. Stay alive, so he could return to—
“Up, Philip! Drag him through! Quickly—I can see grenadiers aiming at us—”
A foot from the hedge, Philip struggled with the incredibly heavy body. He seemed incapable of raising it properly. Warning shouts rose from the American side of the hedge. He wondered about the reason, the instant before musket fire exploded behind him.
Royal shouted and flattened out, letting their burden drop. Dazed, Philip was a fraction slow. On hands and knees, he presented a clear target. He seemed to see Royal’s sweat-shiny face across some great abyss of smoke and noise. Royal’s mouth opened to utter a cry of warning. Something buzzed near Philip’s ear. Leaves rustled, a dream-like sound—
The buzz was a grenadier ball. Royal’s yell dinned suddenly:
“For God’s sake get down—”
Another musket-blast obliterated the rest. Philip felt something thump his right calf. There was searing pain.
A moment later his dazed mind finally recognized that something had pierced the top of his right boot. He flopped on his buttocks, propped up by one hand on Monckton’s shoulders. Incredulous, he stared at the hole in the boot’s thin, worn leather.
Something large and hurtful was lodged in the flesh inside that boot. All at once, another peculiar sensation made him grimace. His lower leg not only hurt like fury, it felt as if it had just been plunged into a pot of boiling honey—
Idiotic, he thought, blinking back a haze that wouldn’t go away. It was in his mind. Honey’s never warm, never—
He saw the redness pouring through the place where the ball had penetrated the leather. My God, I’m hit, he thought with a curious, light-headed detachment.
Royal shouted urgent warnings he couldn’t understand. The drums of the advancing grenadiers hammered. Trying to focus his eyes on the glistening blood, he sagged over against Monckton’s corpse.
Blearily, he came back to consciousness a few minutes later. Royal was slapping his cheek. His whole lower leg and foot burned fiercely. When he rolled his head sideways to squint down the side of his body, he saw his trousers soaked with blood where the fabric was stuffed into his boot-top.
“Get up, Philip. If you stay here you’ll be caught or killed. We’ve got to get you to the surgeons.”
“I—” Cracked lips formed thoughtless words. “I’m hit.”
“I know you’re hit! That’s why we have to get out of here.”
“Not sure—I can walk.”
“Try.”
“Tired. So damn tired, Royal—”
“Listen to the drums!”
“The grenadiers?”
“No, ours. We’re pulling back.”
“Don’t think—don’t think I—”
“You have to! I didn’t drag you through the hedge to see you left for the enemy.”
“Good of you,” Philip mumbled, afraid he wasn’t making much sense. “Good of you, Royal. But I’d rather rest. You go on—”
“You don’t know what you’re saying!” Royal panted, his face a barely recognizable blur. He pressed his hands against Philip’s cheeks. “Listen to me! I’ll help you walk.”
“No, I—”
“Yes! You must walk! Listen—!” So desperate that he was close to tears, Royal wrenched Philip’s head from side to side, trying to rouse him from his wound-induced lethargy. “Do you want to spend the rest of the war on one of their prison ships in New York harbor?”
“No.”
“What kind of medical help do you think they’ll give you? None! They won’t see to your wound. They’ll probably let the gangrene take over—rot your leg—do you want that?”
“No, but—”
“Then stop fighting me and get up!”
Savagely, Royal dug his arms beneath Philip’s back. Philip saw Royal’s musket lying on the ground. It seemed to bend and quiver like a snake even as he watched.
Royal almost dropped him. Philip thoughtlessly put weight on his right foot, cried out. But s
omehow, he got upright, Royal beside him.
Philip hooked his right arm around Royal’s neck, bent his right leg at the knee. Something Royal had said drove him to the effort. Gangrene—
Mustn’t think of that. Just hang onto Royal.
The younger man was panting now, his retrieved musket dragging from his right hand. They hobbled away from the hedge on Philip’s one good leg and Royal’s two, moving through the orchard.
After a few minutes, it was a little easier. Philip’s head cleared slightly.
But why couldn’t he feel anything in his right foot?
Sweat streamed down his neck. Mosquitoes and sand flies stung him. “Must be—hundred and ten—” he mumbled.
“At least. Come on, we’re making it—”
The drumming pulsed in Philip’s ears. He felt ashamed of his lack of strength. Biting his upper teeth into his lower lip, he stung himself out of the dulled weariness that made him want to lie down again. In the nightmare of smoke and noise, of thudding drums and steadily reddening afternoon light, they crossed the orchard, the last stragglers in a column retreating to the next holding position. The two kept up as best they could.
Soon Philip completely lost track of his surroundings. He heard a clatter of hoofs, a creak of wheels—then Royal’s jubilant exclamation:
“Here’s a medical wagon! We’ll have you aboard in no time.” Royal raised his voice: “Driver, hold up! Wounded man—”
Royal’s supporting arm inadvertently relaxed. Philip sagged forward onto his knees, then slammed face first into the dust, never feeling the impact.
vi
He woke in the inferno of a medical tent, wishing he hadn’t. It was like living Brandywine all over again, except that this time, the man writhing on the gory planks wasn’t Lucas Cowper.
He tasted rum in his mouth. Bit the ball when he was ordered. Shifted and moaned softly as unseen pincers dug into the flesh of his calf just a few inches above his ankle.
Then he saw two spheres floating near; one huge, white and moist, the other smaller, red and wet—
“Got her out nice and clean.”
The white sphere was the surgeon’s perspiring face, the red one the flattened lead ball held in dirty pincers. The surgeon discarded the ball and the instrument, gripped Philip’s shoulders.
“Hold steady, now. We’re going to cauterize it with an iron.”
Before Philip could move his lips, the heated metal touched his skin. He started to scream. From behind, a hand jammed his jaws together so he wouldn’t swallow the ball held between his teeth.
A foul odor of burning flesh rose into his nostrils, starting uncontrollable gagging. At once, the ball was jerked from his teeth.
Rough hands seized the injured leg, held it. His calf and foot, numbed again by the searing iron, felt curiously thick. The surgeon’s sticky face peered down. A lantern hanging above him lit droplets of sweat in his unpowdered hair.
“They’re wrapping it with clean rags, and we’ve a crutch for you,” he said. “One of your messmates is outside. He’ll help you walk. We can’t let you lie in here, we need the room for more serious cases. You understand—”
The man’s exhausted voice indicated that he didn’t care whether Philip did or not.
The surgeon barked over his shoulder, “Let’s have his crutch! And one of the chits, so he can draw all the rum he needs to kill the pain.”
“Is—will I walk all right?” Philip gasped out.
The surgeon wiped his hands on a filthy scarlet apron. “You saw the ball. It came out clean. I can’t say whether or not there’s muscle damage.”
And that was the end of his attention, because another patient on the next table was shrieking as the bone-saw rasped back and forth. Philip’s doctor ran to answer a cry for assistance.
Like some animal being shunted out of a pen, Philip was propped up on one foot, dizzy as he was. The crutch-pad was jammed under his right armpit. Then he was helped to the tent entrance, where Royal waited anxiously, his face indistinct in the glow of the lanterns flaring in the twilight.
Philip breathed hard. Moving was difficult. But he wasn’t excessively uncomfortable. The rum, the cauterizing iron and the rag bandages had reduced his lower leg and foot to little more than a lump of meat, devoid of feeling.
“Come on,” Royal said, maneuvering Philip’s left arm over his back again. “I think I can locate our unit. Are—are you all right?”
“Little—out of my head,” Philip answered truthfully. Something fluttered from his hand. “Royal—that paper—need it for extra rum tonight—”
Dutifully, Royal stretched and half-squatted, recovering the chit. Philip closed the fingers of his hand as if the bit of paper were a nugget of precious metal or a priceless gem.
He was too dazed to worry about the possibility of gangrene, or how his leg would feel when the mortifying effects of the hot iron wore off. He wondered if he would ever walk properly again, but he couldn’t bring himself to think much about that, either. For that he was thankful.
vii
Not long after dark, they were resting in another apple orchard, among several hundred men, quite a few of whom had light wounds. Philip was grateful the day’s action had been called to a halt. He couldn’t have hobbled one more step if General Washington had personally ordered him to do so under threat of court-martial.
Royal lay near him, sprawled on his side. Philip sat against the trunk of a tree, his right leg stuck out straight, the bandage that wrapped him from sole to mid-calf looking gigantic and grotesque in the dim light. His crutch rested across his thighs.
Royal had brought Philip his extra ration of rum. He sipped it from his hand-carved wooden drinking mug, taking a little every time the pain became hard to bear. With his other hand, he slowly slapped at sand flies deviling his cheek. It was all the effort he could manage.
Once twilight came on, the fighting had ended. In the steaming darkness Philip heard a dim buzz of many conversations. He wondered which portions of the field he and Royal had occupied during the frantic maneuvering of the afternoon. He supposed he’d never know—
He grew aware of Royal speaking in a tired monotone:
“—some say we whipped them. But I’ve heard just as many say it was a standoff. Clinton’s gotten away in the dark with his baggage, and we’ll never catch him now.”
Philip could only utter a single wordless syllable to show he’d heard.
“They say we lost over a hundred dead from sunstroke, too.”
Again Philip could do no more than murmur.
A lantern spread a widening glow off to their right. Several subalterns and a senior officer, shadow-figures, were slowly working their way among the resting men. Philip thought he recognized a voice that was asking a question for which no one had the answer.
Royal did, though:
“General Wayne?”
“Who spoke?”
“Over here, sir.”
“Who is it—?”
The party of officers approached. Philip lifted his head, saw a disturbing double image of a bedraggled Anthony Wayne.
“Private Rothman, sir. I heard you ask about General Washington.”
“Can’t find him anywhere.”
“One of the other fellows told me he’d already gone to sleep. Yonder under a tree at the far side of the orchard. He found General Lafayette lying exhausted and spread his cloak over both of them.”
“Many thanks—”
Wayne started on, then hesitated, his eye fixing on Philip.
Wayne said, “I recognize you. Kent, am I right?”
Each word seemed to weigh a ton in his mouth:
“Yes, sir.”
“You were at McGellaird’s Brook.”
“Yes, I was.”
“Took a British ball, it appears.”
“Yes, sir. Nothing—” He forced each word, hoping they were true. “—nothing too serious.”
“Well, savor that rum, Kent. You and the rest of
these men earned it.” His handsome face broke into a prideful grin; the kind of devil’s; grin that had earned him his fierce reputation. “Today wasn’t Brandywine, by heaven.”
“No, sir,” Philip said. “Thank God for that.”
“We can thank the commander-in-chief while we’re at it. God grant you a swift recovery.”
Before Philip could offer a reply, Wayne strode off, a tall silhouette between the two resting soldiers and the subaltern leading the way with the lantern.
Philip closed his eyes, let his whole body go slack. No conscious effort was required. His right leg was throbbing again.
He brought his hand up; tilted the cup; dribbled rum over his chin before his tongue caught the rest.
Royal sighed. Then:
“Philip?”
“Uh?”
“Do you feel any better?”
“Some.”
“Then I think I’ll sleep a little myself.”
“Good.” It was barely audible.
After a moment’s silence:
“Philip?”
“Mm?”
“Captain Webb told me General Washington ordered a huge celebration back in camp at Englishtown tomorrow. Said we’d behaved like a real army, and won a victory over the flower of the British troops.” Royal’s tone was unmistakably proud. “The flower of the British troops, those were his exact words. Captain Webb said there was very little panic, despite all the confusion at the beginning. I suppose a lot of the credit goes to that German. Maybe our luck’s changing. Maybe we’ll win against them yet—”
Philip’s answer was a snore.
viii
Before a week passed, Philip knew something was seriously wrong with his right leg.
The wound had been re-dressed twice by army doctors. Each commented that Philip had been lucky to escape the kind of ravaging infection that produced gangrene, then amputation. But when Philip was told by the second doctor to test his weight on the wounded leg, he fell over in a child-like sprawl. The doctor avoided Philip’s eyes when he was back up on his crutch. Philip demanded an explanation.