by Ron Carter
“Edward, do you hear me? There’s something bothering the horses. Can you hear it? A fox. It’s a fox. I can hear a fox barking.”
The effort was too much. A deep cough came welling up from her chest and suddenly she shook with a coughing spasm, fighting for air. Mary fumbled with flint and steel and struck a light for a lantern, then held it high while she raised onto her knees. She rubbed hard between Judith’s bowed shoulder blades, then poured a tin cup of water from the porcelain pitcher on the stand in the corner. She cradled Judith in one arm while she patiently worked the cup a little at a time while Judith tried to swallow. Mary saw the flecks of blood on her chin and around her mouth, and her heart ached as she wet a cloth and wiped them away.
Suddenly Judith sat bolt upright in her bed, staring at the far wall. She did not blink when Mary held the lantern close to her thin, emaciated face.
“Edward, you’d better go. The mare will be nervous with the new foal.”
Mary passed her hand directly in front of Judith’s face, but Judith did not blink or change expression.
“Edward! Are you there?”
“I’m here,” Mary said. “I’ll go tend the horses.”
“Good. Thank you, Edward.” Judith laid down, turned to curl up on her side, closed her eyes, and was asleep almost instantly. Mary tucked the blanket about the thin, bony shoulders and left the lantern burning, until she was certain Judith was sleeping soundly. She twisted the wheel on the wick and the room was plunged into blackness until Mary’s eyes adjusted and once again she could see the dark shape of the bed.
Soon. She’ll join Edward and Marcus and the baby soon.
For a long time she lay on her mattress with her blanket pulled up against the cold and her eyes fixed on the small window, high on the wall. It was a clear moonless night, and she studied the stars framed by the window while her thoughts ran unchecked.
Gone—all gone—everything gone—all I knew—all that was supposed to be forever. Home—Mother—Father—Marcus—our baby—my home—my town—my friends—my clothes—all gone.
She slipped a hand from beneath the blanket to rub tired eyes.
If God blesses the righteous and punishes the sinners, what did I do—what did my father do—to bring down His wrath on everything I knew and loved? What? Wealth? Father worked hard—earned it—shared it with the poor—taught his family to work. What monstrous crime have I committed? I remember committing no great crime. Then why? Why am I in a small attic room, held against my will by an army from around the world, tending the last member of my dead husband’s family in her final hours? Why? How?
She wiped at a tear that trickled cold from the corner of her eye.
I can endure it all if only the Almighty will whisper the reason to me. I only ask that I be allowed to understand—know why the destruction and the killing and the loss of my family and my home was necessary. Is it asking too much? Surely He will not deny me that.
She did not know when she drifted into an exhausted sleep filled with disjointed images of forgotten things from her childhood. Marcus was there, and then a lifeless baby, and her father weeping, and she moaned in her sleep.
The wintry sun had risen to cast a bright shaft of light through the small window when the knock came strong at the door. She jerked awake and sat up, clutching the blanket to her throat as the familiar voice came from outside.
“It’s Doctor Purcell. Are you all right?”
“Yes. I was sleeping. I’m sorry. I’ll be right down.”
She listened to his fading footsteps, then reached for Judith. Her forehead was hot, the skin on her face transparent and tight, and Mary quietly withdrew to let her sleep. She washed herself as best she could with cold water from the large porcelain basin in the corner, dressed, brushed her long hair and tied it back, then stepped out into the narrow attic hall and closed the door. The stench and sounds from below washed over her and she held her breath for a moment to adjust, then hurried to the steep stairway.
At half past nine she carried thin corn mush and hot coffee upstairs, wakened Judith, and patiently spooned tiny amounts into her mouth, wiping at the corners as she worked it and then labored to swallow. She held the coffee cup for her with a small hand towel beneath to catch the spills, watching as she sipped. She washed the frail, emaciated body with cold water, fastened a fresh diaper into place, worked a clean nightshirt onto her, brushed her hair briefly, then settled her back onto her pillow.
She looked into Judith’s frightened eyes, and smiled. “You’ll be all right. I’ll be gone for a while but I’ll be back later with something to eat. You rest. Sleep.”
The pale mouth opened to speak, but could not, and Mary reached to touch her cheek. “No need to talk. Just rest.”
She left the room and returned to the library where she took her place at her table. She continued with the painstaking work of sorting the confusion of medical records into stacks, ready to be sorted alphabetically and then assigned a number before being entered into a master reference ledger.
At noon she carried fish soup and a small amount of strained apples upstairs and raised Judith upright on her arm while she held a spoon to her mouth. The pale gray eyes opened but there was no recognition and Judith raised one trembling hand to push the spoon away. Mary laid her back onto her pillow and for a time sat listening to the rapid, shallow rattle of her breathing before she tucked the blanket around the curled body and made her way back downstairs.
Just before five o’clock Mary started at the sound of the library door opening, and she turned to watch Doctor Purcell slump into his chair, head down, palms flat on the desktop. Slowly he raised his face to meet her inquiring stare, and in that instant Mary knew.
He spoke quietly. “Judith Flint has gone to join her husband.”
Mary closed her eyes, bowed her head, and slowly the air went out of her, but there were no tears. She sat in silence for a time while Doctor Purcell waited.
He finally spoke. “I left her in her bed. I didn’t know if you wanted to prepare her for burial, or would allow me to do it.”
“Thank you. I will.”
“Is there a family burial plot on this estate?”
“Yes. Just north, in a grove of maples. Edward and Marcus and my son are there. There’s a place for her beside Edward.”
“You get what you need to prepare her. I’ll assign a carpenter to construct a coffin and assign a detail to prepare the gravesite. Is there anyone I should notify to be at the funeral?”
Mary shook her head. “No, there’s no one left but me. I don’t know where her family is. She’s the last of her immediate family. My father is gone.”
“There’s no military chaplain available to conduct the service. I’m sorry.”
Mary did not hesitate. “I remember enough to say the words. I will take care of it.”
“May I have the privilege of joining you?”
“It would be an honor.”
At eight o’clock the following morning, under a leaden sky with snowflakes and ice crystals stinging on a southwind, Mary stood in her black dress, coat, hat and veil, alone at the head of the mounds of black earth hacked from the frozen ground, staring down at the plain oak coffin. To one side, his heavy army coat blowing in the wind, Doctor Purcell worked his hat in his hands, eyes downcast. Fifty feet to the west half a dozen red-coated troopers waited with heavy army coat collars upright and scarves pulled up across their faces and shovels clutched in their stiff hands, waiting for the brief graveside service to end.
Mary spoke from memory.
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou annointest my head with oil; my cup runnet
h over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”
She stopped for several moments before she went on.
“Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”
Doctor Purcell murmured, “Amen.”
Staring into the open grave, Mary finished. “Dust to dust. Goodbye, Judith. Good-bye until we meet again.” She cast a frozen clod onto the coffin.
Mary left the head of the grave and Doctor Purcell came to her side and together they ducked their heads and hunched their shoulders into the storm to walk back to the house. They closed the massive doors and paused to knock the snow and ice from their coats.
“Mary, you are excused for the balance of the day.”
She squared her shoulders. “It would be a blessing if I could work—get my mind away from what’s happened.”
The doctor nodded and hung his overcoat on the peg beside the door as Mary worked her way through the cots to the stairway up to her quarters.
The storm held. By noon the south side of every bush, tree, and building was plastered white. By three o’clock the wind died and the snow came straight down. By five o’clock, in rapidly fading gray twilight, New York was blanketed. At half past six Mary stopped long enough to eat boiled cabbage and fish at her table and to drink black coffee, then steadily continued sorting the unending medical records.
At eight-fifteen Doctor Purcell entered the library and sat down at his desk. “We’ll have more wounded arriving from Sugar House in the next two days. I have no idea where we’ll put them. Maybe we’ll have to send some down to the hospital ships.” He shuddered involuntarily at the remembrance of the putrid conditions at the Sugar House infirmary and the inhuman conditions in the hospital ships anchored in the harbor and further south off the Long Island shores.
Mary glanced at him and kept working.
“Don’t you think you’ve done enough today?”
Mary shook her head and read the name on the next record. Hans Conrad Gerhardt. She sorted it into the “G” section and picked up the next one. Josephus Tanner. She dropped it on the “T” section and picked up the next one, but froze as the remembrance came flooding.
Tanner! Josephus Tanner!
Her thoughts leaped. Eli Stroud! Tall—dressed Iroquois—unloading the munitions wagon on Manhattan Island before the great battle—the night passage from Manhattan Island to Long Island with the army—riding beside her in the driver’s box, talking—orphaned and taken by the Iroquois at age two—leaving them at age seventeen to find his older sister—Josephus Tanner at the Fort Washington infirmary—saying he had heard of a family that knew of such a girl—Eli’s excitement—Josephus Tanner taken a prisoner of war by the British when Fort Washington fell—no way to trace him.
Mary spun on her chair, clutching the record, and Doctor Purcell raised startled eyes, waiting, as she strode to the front of his desk.
“This man,” she exclaimed. “Josephus Tanner. Have you heard of him? Do you know if he is still here?”
Doctor Purcell straightened in his chair, startled. “Is he family? A friend?”
“No. But he may know something that a friend needs desperately. Do you know anything of him?”
Doctor Purcell took the record and quickly scanned it. “No, I don’t have any recollection of him. Judging from this, I imagine he’s either passed on, or sent to one of the hospital ships in the harbor. This record indicates he was dying over two months ago.”
Mary spun on her heel and in a moment was back at her table. She set aside the single record of Josephus Tanner and forced herself to slow her racing emotions and think. She straightened the finished stacks of sorted documents and then began the process of going through the thousands of remaining sheets one at a time, seeking the crucial name: Josephus Tanner.
At eleven o’clock Doctor Purcell returned from his rounds and stopped at her table. She was asleep on her arms, a medical record still clutched in her hand, the lantern glowing in her face. He shook her gently. “Mrs. Flint, go to bed. You’ve done all you can today.”
At seven-thirty the following morning, in a world of dazzling white and bright frigid sunlight, Mary and the doctor and four other nurses braced themselves for the wrenching work of removing bandages from stumps of arms and legs, and from holes in human bodies where bayonets or musket balls or grapeshot or cannonball fragments had ripped and torn and penetrated. The cloth came away heavy with black blood and gray stinking matter. They threw the rotten bandages into a sack, washed the area of the wounds with hot water and soap where they could, worked carbolics into a fresh bandage and bound it in place. They looked for the dreaded, telltale pink lines creeping from the wounds towards the armpit or groin, pressed the nodules at both places for pain, and made notes on charts if the wounded winced. If blood poisoning had set in, it would kill them unless the remainder of a destroyed arm or leg were removed at once.
By eight-thirty Mary was back at her table, methodically moving through the stacks of records, sorting them, eagerly watching for the name of Josephus Tanner to again appear. She stopped at one o’clock to eat mutton strips and boiled carrots, then continued. At ten minutes before four o’clock, with the late afternoon dusk beginning to settle, she gasped and sat bolt upright in her chair clutching a sheet of paper. The name Josephus Tanner appeared at the top of a transfer record and she held her breath while she scanned it, then bolted from the room to find Doctor Purcell. She met him walking back towards the library, and she thrust the record to him.
“Doctor, I found this. Josephus Tanner was transferred.”
He took the paper and sat down while he settled his bifocals on his nose and carefully read the document.
“Yes, he was. Two weeks ago. Out to the Dolphin. That’s a prisoner of war hospital ship anchored in the harbor.” He drew and released a great sigh, then shook his head. “I don’t see how he can still be alive. This says he had a fever above one hundred three and was dying of dysentery and the plague.” He closed his eyes to block out the images of misery and death in the holds of the hospital ships. “I’m sorry.”
She leaned forward on stiff arms, intense, palms flat on the desk. “There’s a chance,” she exclaimed. “He might still be there. I’ve got to know.”
The doctor looked at her, puzzled. “What’s this all about?”
She straightened and felt her face redden as she fumbled for words. “There is a man who was kind to me when I needed help. He was orphaned as an infant and stolen by the Indians and raised by the Iroquois as one of them. He came back two years ago to find his older sister. Josephus Tanner may know where she is. If he does, it would mean more than you know.”
“Who’s the man?”
“Eli Stroud.”
The doctor’s eyes narrowed as he racked his memory. “I don’t recall the name.”
“Doctor, I beg of you. May I go try to find Josephus Tanner?”
Doctor Purcell’s mouth fell open and he clacked it shut. “To the Dolphin? Child, you have no idea what you’re asking. Those hospital ships are a death sentence. Things are bad here, but you have no idea what exists in the holds of those ships.”
“I want to try.”
The doctor leaned forward, face drawn in disbelief. “Does this Mr. Stroud mean something to you? More than a friend?”
She had never allowed herself to face the question, and now it was before her squarely, plainly, to be answered. She opened her mouth to speak but her thoughts came confused, unclear, undecided, and she stammered.
“No. I don’t know.” It caught in her throat and she felt her chin trembling on the brink of tears. She cleared her throat and shook herself to regain control. She started again. “
Yes. In a way. He’s known such pain. His family was killed before his eyes, and he was raised as an Iroquois Indian. His sister is gone and now he’s trying to find what was taken from him when he was two years old. If I can help him find his sister, I will. If I have to go onto the Dolphin to do it, I will do that too. Please, Doctor, help me.”
For long moments he studied her, slowly realizing that she did not know her true feelings for Eli Stroud. He pursed his mouth for a moment, then spoke, eyes locked with hers.
“Below decks on a prison ship is perhaps the closest one can come on this earth to being in purgatory. The ceilings are low, rooms small, no lights, no ventilation, no sanitation, no water, no toilet facilities. Ten men are stacked where there is scarcely room for five. Every disease known is down there. The air is poison. Each morning the dead are carried onto the deck and thrown overboard. The last morning I spent on one of those ships we dropped seventeen dead bodies into the sea. I have no idea how I avoided death.”
He stopped, and she watched a shudder tremble his body at the remembrance. Once again he raised his eyes to hers. “You wish me to help you go onto one of those ships? A young woman of your quality? I will not have that on my head.”
“It will not be on your head. It will be on mine. I won’t be on the ship for more than a few minutes. Only long enough to inquire of the doctor on board if Josephus Tanner is still alive. That’s all.”
“I can’t take the risk.”
“There is no risk. I will not go below decks, I promise. Doctor, you must do this.”
Her intense urgency reached to touch him like something physical and he lowered his face to study his hands for a moment.
“Let me think on it.”
He stood abruptly and paced from her, torn between a deep wish to help this young woman for whom he felt such empathy, and his duty as a British officer, hating the rising feeling that either way he decided, he would feel regret. He drew a resolute breath and turned back to her.
“You go change to warm clothing while I write orders for the captain of the ship.” He stopped and brought his eyes directly to hers. “I must have your solemn promise that under any circumstance you will not go below decks on the ship.”