Prelude to Glory Vol, 3

by Ron Carter

  Gray-haired Rufus Broadhead, a widower, tall, slender, aging, proud, shrugged into his heavy winter coat and scarf, and walked the frozen ground to the Flint mansion, where a small, sparse British picket stood with vapor rising from his face, arms wrapped around himself, shoulders hunched against the cold. Broadhead stepped up the two steps and the picket stopped him between the two towering columns that framed the great entryway.

  “‘Ere, yer can’t go inside. This ‘ere building is now a hospital.”

  Broadhead pulled himself to his full height, eyes blazing. “I have come to see my daughter. She’s being held a captive nurse inside.”

  “No visitors. There’s fever inside.”

  “I know what’s inside. It’s urgent that I see my daughter.”

  The picket shook his head. “Move on.”

  Broadhead held his temper. “May I speak to your superior officer?”

  “You may dig the wax out of your ears and listen. Move on. No visitors.” The picket raised his musket.

  Broadhead kept a tenuous hold on his rising anger. “I will see my daughter or you will have to use your bayonet!”

  The picket eyed Broadhead’s tailored coat with the deep blue velvet on the collar and lapel facings. His lip curled in contempt. “One of those rich American Patriots that figgers to tell the world wot’s wot, eh? Well, yer money won’t do you no good ‘ere. My orders is clear. No visitors. Now remove yerself before I ‘ave to do it meself.”

  Broadhead bristled and raised an extended arm, his finger pointed into the face of the picket. “I am Rufus Broadhead. Your army plundered my home half a mile from here and turned it into a hospital. I was ordered to live in my own cellar. Before I submit to that I will leave all I own, but not until I have spoken with my daughter, Mary Flint. She married Marcus Flint and lived here with him until he was killed, and she remained here to nurse his widowed mother. Now she’s being held inside as slave labor. I will speak to her before I leave, or you will have to kill me where I stand.”

  A sneer crossed the picket’s face. “As you please, only I doubt killin’ will be required. Just a good bash on yer bloomin’ ‘ead with ol’ Bess, here, and then you can talk to yer daughter all you want while yer inside recoverin’. Or dyin’.”

  Broadhead took two steps forward, and the startled picket raised the iron-plated butt of his Brown Bess musket to start his stroke as Broadhead closed with him. Broadhead caught the stock of the upraised weapon with both hands and wrenched it towards himself with all his strength. Caught by surprise the picket was jerked forward, off balance, and Broadhead released the musket to catch the man by both lapels, and he again jerked the man forward. He shifted his feet, twisting to half throw the man from the portico, down the two steps, sliding on the ice and patchy, frozen snow as the musket dropped clattering to the stairs.

  Broadhead picked up the musket, jerked the cover of the powder pan open and shook the gunpowder onto the walkway. He threw the musket thirty feet into the bushes lining the front of the portico while the stunned picket scrambled to his feet. Without another look at him, Broadhead strode to the great double doors and banged on them with the flat of his hands.

  “‘Ere, you can’t do that,” the picket shouted and started forward.

  Broadhead turned to meet him just as the big door swung open, and Broadhead turned back to face a round-shouldered man with rolled up shirtsleeves. He was wiping his hands on a soiled towel. He lowered his face to peer over wire-rimmed spectacles with tired eyes as he studied Broadhead. There was irritation in his voice as he spoke.

  “What’s the clatter out here?”

  The warm air within the home spilled out over Broadhead, reeking, overpowering with the smell of unbathed bodies, human excretia, rotting flesh, carbolics, and in the dim light Broadhead heard the sounds of dying men, and men in pain.

  He did not flinch. “I am Rufus Broadhead. I have come to speak with my daughter, Mary Flint. You have her inside under restraint, serving as a nurse. May I know your name, sir?”

  “We have several nurses inside …”

  The picket stopped beside Broadhead and reached to grasp his arm. “Yer under arrest fer—”

  The man in the entryway shook his head and wearily raised a hand. “Stop that. Just stop.”

  The picket turned surprised eyes. “But sir, I’m under orders. No visitors. I told ‘im—”

  “Where’s your musket?”

  The picket pointed. “Over there, sir, in them bushes. This ‘ere intruder jerked it away when I wasn’t lookin’ an’ threw it.”

  “How did your clothing get soiled?”

  “‘Im, sir. ‘E threw me down.”

  The man sighed. “Brush yourself off and get your musket.”

  He turned back to Broadhead. “I’m Doctor Otis Purcell. Colonel in His Majesty’s Fifth Northumberland Fusileers. What’s this about your daughter?”

  “Her name is Mary Flint. It’s urgent that I speak with her.”

  “Flint? Wasn’t this the Flint mansion?” He glanced over his shoulder.

  “It was.”

  The doctor removed his spectacles and pressed a thumb and forefinger against his eyes to rub them before settling the spectacles back on his nose.

  “You don’t want to come in here. Half a dozen contagious diseases. Fever. Stench.” He shook his head sadly. “I’ll see if I can find her. You can talk with her out here.”

  “I would be happy to come in.”

  “No. We have enough sickness spreading in town. Wait here.” The doctor walked back through the heavy door and closed it behind. Broadhead turned his head to watch the picket work his musket out of the bushes. The man brushed at frozen mud and ice stuck to his knees and elbows and down the front of his heavy coat. He walked back to the entryway, glancing darkly at Broadhead before he resumed his position at the side of the door.

  Five minutes later the door opened, the doctor stepped aside, and Mary Flint emerged from the dimness within, a heavy gray woolen shawl over her head and clutched tightly about her. At the sight of her father she gasped and threw her arms about him and he held her close for a time. The doctor closed the door and Broadhead led his daughter off the portico and stopped on the broad brick path to the street.

  Mary turned her face up to his and by force of will he did not let his own expression change as he looked at his once beautiful daughter. Her dark eyes were shadowed and sunken, her cheeks hollow, face pale. He reached to touch her cheek tenderly and spoke quietly.

  “You’re ill. You need good food and to be in bed.”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Where are you sleeping?”

  “In the cellar.”

  “The wine cellar? Dry? Solid floor and walls?”

  “No. The storage room. Dirt.”

  “Heat?”

  She shook her head.

  Anger and pain rose in his heart and he struggled for control. “Judith Flint?”

  “Fever. Delirious. She’s been talking to Edward and Marcus the last two days.”

  “How long has Edward been gone?”

  “Eight years. Thirty-two years of marriage. She sees him as though he is standing in front of her.”

  “Will she be all right?”

  Mary’s gaze dropped and she shook her head, but said nothing.

  Broadhead cleared his throat. “They took our home. I will not remain there under their rule. I have to go.”

  She caught and held her breath. “Father! You’re going?”

  He nodded and suddenly she could no longer control herself. She dissolved into tears and buried her face in his chest. For a time he wrapped her inside his arms while she shook and trembled with the wrenching sobs. Slowly she brought herself under control and wiped at her eyes with a corner of the shawl as he spoke.

  “Can you come with me? I’ve packed what little the British left in a carriage.”

  “Where? Where will you go?”

  “Boston. There’s no fighting there. I will le
ave a message at the mayor’s office when I have a house. Will you come?”

  “I would if I could, but I’m not free. The British have pressed me into servitude.”

  “They can’t do that. You are not a prisoner of war.”

  She reached to clutch his arm. “I tried to leave once. At night. I was over five miles north—half a mile from the Murray house—when they caught me next afternoon. For three days they kept leg irons on me. I can’t go with you, but you leave. Please. I’ll come as soon as I can.”

  A south wind came in off the harbor and rattled the barren limbs of the oaks and maples of the estate, and Mary shivered.

  Broadhead raised his head to study the picket for a moment, standing sixty feet away by the door, and he slipped his hand inside his coat and drew out a leather purse with the drawstrings tight and tied. He carefully laid it in Mary’s hand.

  “There are eighty pounds in gold coins, and some of the family jewels—most of what I could hide when they took the house. I kept forty pounds for myself and the two servants I am taking with me. You take this and use it to buy your way north to Boston. Promise you will do that.”

  She raised concerned eyes. “I can’t. You keep this. I’ll be all right. I will come when I can, I promise.”

  He folded her hand closed on the purse. “Put it inside your shawl now, before the picket sees. You’ll freeze out here. I’ll take you back inside.”

  For a moment they stood in the bitter cold, facing each other with the queer, undefined sense they would never see each other again. Neither dared put it to words, while a thousand remembrances flooded.

  In that brief moment, Broadhead saw Mary wrapped in her swaddling blanket, held to her mother’s breast—the two year old with the great, brown, wide-set eyes and brown hair that curled about her face—the gangly eight year old with a great gap in her smile while she waited for two new front teeth—the thirteen year old trembling on the brink of womanhood—the confident seventeen year old who was hopelessly in love with Marcus Flint—the nineteen-year-old bride, breathtaking in her white wedding dress—the glowing, expectant mother. The frightened, white-faced woman in a bed soaked with her sweat as she labored for twenty-two hours to deliver a baby that was hopelessly twisted in its own cord—the doctors taking the baby to save Mary. Marcus at her bedside weeping, holding her, rocking her back and forth in his arms—the call for him to come to the waterfront where they had to have a militia officer to unload a munitions ship—the great cannon lifted out of the hold of the ship in the net—the paralyzing moment the two-inch hawser snapped—the great gun falling—Marcus looking upward too late, too late—the two-ton gun driving his body onto the massive timbers of the wharf—the three officers at Mary’s bedside with downcast eyes—Mary turned her face away from them while they listened to her shriek, and then sobs they hoped never to hear again as long as the Almighty allowed them to remain in mortality.

  Standing in the freezing wind that swept the vapor from their faces, staring into the hawkish face of her father, Mary saw him twenty years earlier—tall, eyes glowing with pride as he bent to pick her from her crib and hold her close—the smell of costly clothing and expensive pipe tobacco—the supreme security he brought to her little world—the shock on his face when he realized his brown-eyed little beauty had become a full, beautiful woman—the devastation he bore alone when Mother had died—his pride at her marriage—his joy at her announcement of a child coming—the deep sorrow as he stood at her bedside after the birth of the stillborn child—the agony in his eyes when he learned of the death of Marcus.

  The memories came and faded in the few moments they studied each other, memorizing the lines of the face, the expression in the eyes. Once more Mary reached to hold him and he closed her inside his arms, her cheek against his breast, and they stood there for a time, giving and receiving the strength, the love, the empathy.

  Mary pulled back. “You go. I’ll follow when I can. I love you, Father.”

  He looked deep into her eyes and nodded his head once and whispered, “I love you, Mary.” Then he turned on his heel and walked away into the wintry wind without looking back.

  Shivering, Mary pulled the shawl tightly about her head and shoulders and watched him out of sight before she turned back towards the massive pillars and the entryway into the Flint mansion, clutching the leather purse. The sentry swung the door open and she braced herself against the stench and the sounds as she entered. She worked her way through the confusion of cots and men to the library where Doctor Purcell had set up his office, and she knocked.

  “Enter.”

  She pushed the door open. The doctor sat at the heavy oak desk seized from the Flint family, sorting through hopelessly disorganized piles of medical records. Medicines, medical books, surgical instruments, boxes of bandages, stacks of papers, and some clothing belonging to the doctor were jammed onto the polished oak shelves that lined three walls of the spacious room. In one corner away from the windows, a rumpled blanket and pillow were draped over an army cot where the doctor rested when exhaustion overtook him. The windows were covered by army tarps and blankets; the costly draperies that once graced them had long since been torn from their rods and disappeared, to be sold for what they would bring down in Canvas Town or on the East River waterfront.

  Mary spoke as the doctor raised his head. “I want to thank you for letting me talk to my father. He’s gone. I’m going back down to Mrs. Flint.”

  The doctor eased back in the leather-covered, overstuffed chair and drew a great, weary breath.

  “I’ll need you to change bandages in half an hour.” He settled the bifocals back onto his nose. “Ever kept medical records?”

  “A little. Enough to know what they contain.”

  He pursed his mouth for a moment and leaned forward, fingers interlaced on the desktop. “You’re not well, Mrs. Flint. You shouldn’t be working with your mother-in-law, or those poor souls out there.” He gestured and she saw the revulsion in his eyes against war and what it could do to the arms and legs and bodies of men. He continued, eyes sweeping the piles of paper on his desk. “Somehow I’m supposed to keep these records accurately while I tend the injured. I don’t have half enough staff to take care of the wounded, let alone all the paperwork. I would consider it a great personal favor if you would help with these records. There’s a small room in the attic with a lock on the door where you can take quarters. You can take your meals there, or here in my office, as you choose. I need you healthy, and you are not going to get well sleeping in a damp cellar and working with the diseased.”

  Mary’s eyes widened. “You want me working on records?”

  “It won’t be permanent—only until the records are in some sense of order, and you’ve had time to regain your strength. One thing I want clear. This has absolutely nothing to do with any personal matter or thought. I’m old enough to be your father and I look upon you much as I would if you were my own daughter. You need have no fear—I pose no threat. Am I understood?” His eyes were steady, clear.

  “I understand, sir. When do you want me to begin?”

  “We’ll change the bandages out there, and then I’ll have someone clean out the attic room and help move your cot and bedding there.”

  “May I make one request?”

  “What is it?”

  “May my mother-in-law be moved up with me?”

  “I doubt there’s room.”

  “I’ll make room.”

  He studied her long and hard. “What is her full name?”

  “Judith Draper Flint.”

  “As you wish.”

  At half past six, with the bitter south wind rattling branches against the library window, Mary stood before the desk while Doctor Purcell spoke and pointed.

  “That stack should be records of incoming wounded. That one, those who died. That one, those still here. That one, those who were transferred to other hospitals, or the ships in the harbor. That big stack is the personal records—medicines and d
iagnoses and treatment—for all who have been here, whether they’re still here or not. They all have to be sorted and put into alphabetical order and then assigned numbers. I have a table and chair set up in the corner for you. Can you handle it?”

  “Yes. It will take time.”

  “When can you start?”

  “Now.”

  At half past seven Doctor Purcell interrupted Mary’s work to place a tray on her table with a steaming bowl of beef soup, a slice of heavy brown bread, and a cup of steaming coffee. At fifteen minutes past nine o’clock he opened the door, walked to his desk, and slumped into the chair.

  “Your mother-in-law was able to accept a little of the beef broth, and she chewed some bread.” His eyes dropped and for long moments he was silent before he raised his head. “She has a high fever. Pneumonia in both lungs.”

  Mary slowly straightened in her chair and turned to face him as she took charge of herself. “She’s dying?”

  He nodded. “There’s nothing anyone can do. I’m sorry.”

  Mary folded her hands in her lap and lowered her face, and her shoulders shook silently. Doctor Purcell waited a long time before he spoke again. “You’ve done enough for today. Go up to your room and get some rest.”

  A little past midnight the wind died. At two-thirty Mary jerked erect on her mattress, jammed on the floor between the wall and the low bed where Judith Flint lay. Starlight through the tiny window showed only vague black images in the small room and Mary opened her eyes wide, searching for what had awakened her. She started at the sound of Judith’s voice wheezing in the darkness.