Prelude to Glory, Vol. 6

by Ron Carter

  Men came swarming. They raised the dead horse, and as gently as they could they moved Arnold and his broken, twisted leg from beneath the animal while Arnold groaned through gritted teeth and clenched eyes. With sweat running in a stream he opened his eyes to peer up at Learned, who spoke.

  “Don’t you move! You let us move you. Hear?”

  Arnold grasped Learned’s arm. “Ebenezer, the redoubt. Did we get it?”

  “We got it. We’re in behind Burgoyne’s headquarters, and they haven’t got enough men left to move us. It’s over.”

  Arnold tried to rise, and a great paw of a hand settled onto his shoulder. He turned to look up into the big, square, homely face of Dan Morgan. “Gen’l, you stay still. We got men rigging a stretcher right now. We’ll get you back home. You’ll be all right.”

  Six men lifted Arnold high enough to slip a stretcher fashioned of pine limbs and a blanket beneath him. They forced a rifleball between his teeth when they straightened his leg, and then they picked up the stretcher. Two hours later they settled him onto a table in a crude field hospital and the surgeons ordered the men to leave. Generals Learned, Morgan, Glover, and Poor quietly told the surgeons they would remain there until they knew Arnold would be all right.

  Major Armstrong burst into the room, and all eyes turned to him. He swallowed, and approached Arnold. “Sir, General Gates has sent a direct order. You are to return to headquarters at once.”

  Half-unconscious with pain, bleeding from a shattered left leg with a .75-caliber musketball embedded in the bone fragments, weakening from loss of blood, Arnold focused only momentarily on Armstrong. Then he laid his head back on the operating table, and he laughed.

  Armstrong glanced around, embarrassed, and without a word quietly turned and left the hospital.

  The chief surgeon, with two assistants beside him, slit the pant leg wide open and washed the wound. His face fell as he peered at the purple bullet hole and the angry flesh, swelling with each passing minute, and at the great gout of crimson blood that would not stop. With skilled fingers he gently probed the wound, assessing the damage done inside. He turned to one of his assistants, then the other, and a silent communication passed between the three of them. His face filled with pain and compassion as he leaned over Arnold and spoke quietly.

  “General, the leg is beyond hope. It has to come off. I’ll need your permission.”

  Arnold opened dazed eyes and tried to focus. He licked dry lips as he forced his brain to understand what had been said. He closed his eyes, and as he began the drift into a coma, he spoke.

  “It stays on. See to it.”

  The chief surgeon let out his breath and his shoulders slumped. He turned to first one assistant, then the other, silently pleading. They looked into his eyes, and he saw their anguish at not having an answer. He turned to the four generals facing him. Each of their faces was streaked dirty from sweat and musket and cannon smoke. Their hair was disheveled, their uniforms sweated and filthy from desperate, mortal battle. They stood solid, swords at their sides. Morgan had a pistol jammed through his belt. Their eyes were flat, noncommittal as they stared back at him.

  The surgeon pointed at the bleeding leg. “The bone is shattered,” he pleaded. “Setting it properly will be impossible. The musketball is still in there. If we probe, we’ll do more damage. If we do not remove that leg, it is certain to develop gangrene—go rotten. When that happens it is only a matter of time before the poison will kill him.”

  For three seconds the room was locked in strained silence before Morgan spoke.

  “Get the musketball out and set the leg. It stays on.”

  For two days, three doctors gave Arnold what opiates they had to dull the pain, shoved a lead rifle bullet between his teeth, and sweated over the shattered leg. They worked in the swollen, angry flesh with forceps and probes and scissors to get the musketball out, then the tiny bone fragments. With the sun setting on the second day, they gathered around a table, strapped Arnold down, forced him to drink more opiates, thrust the rifle bullet back between his teeth, and for three hours did what they could to set a leg with a two-inch gap in the bone. Exhausted, they dressed the wound and assigned the head nurse to remain by Arnold’s side. Should he awaken she must come get them at once. Then they sought their own cots and blankets and fell into dreamless sleep with their clothing on.

  In the three o’clock cold and black of morning, a thick, wet fog rose from the broad, silent expanse of the Hudson to shroud the American camp. Pickets stood their watch shivering, with faces and hair and beards and clothing glistening wet, unable to see the length of their musket barrels while they listened to familiar sounds that were strangely loud, distorted. Dawn broke gray and chill in the dead air, and the blanket of mist held while the soldiers rolled out of wet blankets to build sputtering, smoking breakfast fires with wet wood to boil coffee and cornmeal mush. By nine o’clock the sun was a dull ball in the fog drifting overhead, and quiet men went about their grisly duties of placing the maimed and crippled from both sides—American farm boys and British and Hessian soldiers—on carts or sleds or wagons or buggies or horses—anything that would move the wounded south twenty-five miles to the village of Albany, with its hospital and small cluster of homes and barns.

  As they worked, they were seeing again the flame and smoke leaping from cannon and musket muzzles, and they were hearing the sustained thunder of the guns and the sickening smack of lead balls ripping into bodies and the hideous screams of men maimed and mortally stricken. They were feeling again the transport from the world they knew into the world of battle, that strange place that was filled with thoughts and deeds that could be neither understood nor explained in quieter times. In the illusory, white heat of deadly battle, men did heroic things, and cowardly things, and thought thoughts that left them confounded and bewildered when the battle died and they were alone in the stillness of night, wrapped in their blankets or doing the habitual things that left their minds free to remember.

  At half-past nine o’clock, Colonel Harold Talmadge, slender, thin, hawk-nosed, one of the surgeons assigned to the care of Benedict Arnold, concluded a close examination of the swollen, discolored leg, and shook his head in despair. All too well he knew that the small, make-shift hospital at the Saragota battlefield was little more than a death trap. It reeked of gangrene, putrid flesh, human waste, and the odor of the powerful astringents used in a vain attempt to mask the smells of the dead and dying. The military hospital at Albany was not measurably better, but at least it had a wooden floor to cover the cold dirt, and a fireplace for warmth. With spidery veins of ice forming overnight on the streams and rivers, and the daily threat of the first of the winter snows, it was clear they must get General Arnold to Albany immediately or run the risk of the weather killing him during the trip over a frozen, rutted dirt road.

  He turned to an assistant and gave crisp orders. “Have a carriage at the front door in one hour, suitable to transport General Arnold to Albany. Have an armed escort prepared to accompany him. We leave the minute he’s inside the vehicle.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  At ten o’clock, with the morning fog lifting, Sergeant Abraham Claiborne came back on the reins to the four horses hitched to the largest spring buggy to be found, and the rig came to a rocking stop at the front door of the low log hospital. Captain Noel Milner gave orders to his twelve-man cavalry squad assigned to escort General Arnold to Albany, then dismounted. On Milner’s orders the squad entered the stench and the twilight inside the hospital, noses wrinkled, breathing light. Fifteen minutes later the interior of the van of the buggy was packed with blankets, and General Arnold was seated facing forward with his crippled leg tied to a plank that rested on the heaped blankets. With Talmadge seated opposite, next to the leg, watching every move, Captain Milner ordered his squad mounted and turned to the driver.

  “Let’s go, Abe. Slow and gentle. Watch for rocks and stumps.”

  Abe, tall, lean, dressed in worn buckskins, th
readed the reins between his fingers, two in each hand, spat tobacco juice arcing out and down, wiped at his beard with a battered sleeve, and slapped the reins on the rumps of the wheel horses.

  “Giddap!”

  The horses leaned into the scarred leather collars, and the buggy moved forward, rocking. Abe came back hard on the left reins and the wagon made its turn southward, down the gentle slope toward Bemis Tavern and River Road. Scattered for miles ahead were wounded men of all uniforms, walking, riding, clustered in groups, helping each other, moving steadily southward to Albany and the hope of a better hospital, more physicians, and the blessed warmth and food to be found in the cluster of homes and outbuildings in the small settlement on the west bank of the Hudson.

  The buggy had scarcely traveled one mile before Arnold was white-faced, writhing with pain and dripping sweat. Abe was holding the horses to a near standstill, but it was impossible to move at all without a slight pitch and roll to the van of the buggy; the heavy cushion of blankets could not stop all the vibrations and jolts caused by the pits and ruts of the road.

  Doctor Talmadge ordered the coach halted, and with Captain Milner tried to rearrange the padding, but nothing would immobilize the leg completely. Midafternoon Talmadge loosened the binding that held the leg on the wooden plank, and opened the bandage. The bullet hole had broken open, and bright, frothy blood was flowing. The leg was dusky, swollen, and the odor turned his head for a moment. He washed the wound, repacked it, closed the bandage, tightened the bindings on the plank, and spoke to Arnold.

  “I believe gangrene is coming. I will not be responsible for the results if we do not remove the leg.”

  Through gritted teeth Arnold answered. “I would rather be dead than live as a cripple.”

  Talmadge signaled to Milner, and they moved on, the carriage rocking on its springs, Arnold grimacing, sweating, groaning at the unrelenting torment, mumbling, sometimes incoherently, sometimes lucidly, as he slipped into and out of delirium.

  It was the evening of the second day that Doctor Talmadge ordered the coach stopped. While four of the armed escort built a supper fire and boiled water for stew, Talmadge directed the moving of Arnold from the coach to a bed prepared on the ground near the fire. Blankets were piled a foot deep and Arnold was laid full length on his back, then covered with six more blankets, his leg still bound to the board.

  They fed him a stew of steaming beef and potatoes, thickened with cornmeal flour, and held a mug of hot coffee while he sipped. Talmadge opened the bandage and his face fell at the gather of puss and black clots of blood that came away from the puffy, discolored leg. Half an hour later the leg was wrapped in a fresh bandage and once again bound to the heavy maple plank.

  In full darkness Talmadge mixed the last of a powdered sleeping opiate and patiently held it to Arnold’s lips. It was a little past eleven o’clock, with an eternity of stars and a half-moon turning the overhead branches of the bare trees into a silvery network when Arnold groaned, then cried out. In three seconds Talmadge was at his side, holding Arnold’s shoulders down as he tried to rise, twisting and turning.

  “Captain Milner,” Talmadge called, and in a moment Milner, and then Abe, were beside Arnold, holding him steady, keeping the leg immobile. Arnold’s eyes fluttered open, vacant, unfocused, and he stared up at them unseeing.

  Talmadge started to speak when Arnold cut him off.

  “Father? Where’s mother?” He blinked his eyes and licked dry lips, then raised his voice again. “Dan, did . . . the redoubt . . . got to take . . . watch out . . . follow me!”

  His voice trailed off, and his eyes closed as his head rolled from side to side. Talmadge held his hand to Arnold’s forehead, then his throat, hot to the touch. “Fevered. Delirious.” He shook his head. “That leg . . . He might not make it to Albany. Nothing more I can do for him. Just keep him from trying to get up. The bone in that leg is in splinters. We operated—got the bullet and tried to put it all back together—I doubt it will knit, heal. Even if it does, the leg will be shorter than the other.”

  Milner interrupted. “Can’t you give him something? More powder?”

  Talmadge shook his head. “I brought what we had left at Saratoga and it’s gone. All we can do is be certain he doesn’t roll on that leg, or try to get up.”

  Milner set coffee to boil. The three of them wrapped blankets around their shoulders and took places on two logs bordering the fire, with Arnold at their feet. They sat with the moonlight on their shoulders, and the glow of firelight on their faces, caught up in the incoherence of Arnold’s ramblings. The coffee boiled, Milner poured, and they sat with both hands wrapped around steaming pewter mugs, squinting as they sipped, singeing their lips and mouths, sipping again, their breath beginning to show vapors as the cold of night settled in.

  Arnold’s eyes opened. In the firelight he turned his head to peer directly into Talmadge’s face, but he was seeing a scene from long ago. He spoke, and there was anger and defiance in his voice and face.

  “They made fun of me . . . clothes . . . cousins. Why?”

  He became quiet, still staring at what only he could see, then spoke again. “No . . . no . . . said father not away on business . . . drunk . . . tavern . . . said that . . .”

  Again he became silent, as though listening, then went on, voice rising. “All of it . . . gone? Ships . . . store . . . money . . . everything? How? How?”

  Milner turned to look at Talmadge and ask the silent question. Talmadge shook his head, and both of them turned back to Arnold as he continued his jumbled rambling.

  “Died when? . . . Richard . . . Henry . . . Benedict . . . who will . . . Hannah is that . . .”

  He quieted for a time, and the three men, shoulders hunched beneath their blankets against the cold, worked at their coffee, each lost in his own pondering of Arnold’s fevered hallucinations.

  They started as Arnold shouted, “Get the wall . . . where’s Montgomery . . . haven’t heard . . . hide at Valcour . . . let them come past . . . watch that . . . get that man . . . get him . . . the redoubt’s ours . . .”

  His eyes remained closed, his head twisting from side to side as his words became indistinguishable. Talmadge turned to Milner.

  “Recognize any of those names? Richard? Henry? Benedict? Hannah?”

  Milner shook his head. “Might be his children. I heard he was married.”

  “Hannah? His wife?”

  Milner shrugged and remained silent. Talmadge went on.

  “Wasn’t Montgomery an officer who was killed in that Quebec expedition?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s Valcour? And what redoubt is he talking about?”

  “Valcour’s an island in Lake Champlain. Arnold built about fifteen little boats and fought a British flotilla there. I think he hid his boats in a cove at Valcour Island and let the British sail on past, then surprised them with an attack. Stopped them. Likely saved the Continental Army. Sounds like he’s getting Quebec and the Lake Champlain battle mixed up with a fight at some redoubt. Maybe Balcarres or Breymann. At Saratoga.”

  Abe interrupted, his deep voice purring in the darkness. “I was there. We was storming the big redoubt. Breymann. Gen’l Fraser—he was British—come close to breaking us. It was Arnold saw him coming and gave orders. Dan Morgan called Tim Murphy and Tim put Fraser down. We took the redoubt. That’s likely what he meant about getting the man and taking the redoubt.”

  Talmadge turned to Abe. “Know what he meant about his cousins and his clothes? Or his father being drunk at a tavern? What was that about everything being gone? Money, ships, all of it?”

  Abe shook his head. “Don’t know much about him before he come into the army. Heard he ran an apothecary business, maybe some other things besides. Maybe he lost it all. No idea about his father, or his cousins. Ask him when he’s fit.”

  Milner reached for the smoke-blackened coffeepot and poured for each of them. “Should be interesting.”

  They wrapped their finge
rs about the mugs, settled back, shivered, and pulled their blankets tighter. From the forest far to the west came the inquiring call of an owl. All three men paused for a moment, then turned to peer west, knowing they would see nothing, but unable to resist the primitive instinct to look at sounds in the night.

  A reflective mood crept into the little group, lifting them above their fatigue and weariness. For a time they stared silently into the yellow embers and flames of the fire without seeing, lost in their own thoughts. From time to time Arnold mumbled disconnected words, and they listened, and waited for him to settle. It was nearing one o’clock in the morning when Talmadge set his cold coffee mug on the ground between his feet.

  “He’s settled. I’ll watch. You two sleep. I’ll call if something happens. We should be in Albany in the forenoon, day after tomorrow.”

  While Milner and Abe went to their beds, Talmadge laid more firewood on the ebbing fire, watched the column of sparks wink out as they spiraled upward in the blackness, then went back to his log. Half an hour later Arnold stirred, and once again his mumblings drifted randomly from one scene to another. Talmadge knelt to feel his forehead, then his throat, hot in the cold night. He pulled his blanket tight beneath his chin and took his place on the log, listening to Arnold mumble an incomprehensible mix of names and places and events locked in his memory. Margaret . . . Peggy . . . Norwich . . . Sally . . . Cogswell . . . Canterbury . . . waterwheel . . . ridgepole . . . His grace . . . New Haven . . . apothecary . . . Wooster. The names came tumbling, quickly, then slowly, with no pattern to connect them.

  Minutes before three o’clock Arnold quieted again, and in the firelight, Talmadge saw him lapse into stillness. Instantly he was at his side, fingers thrust against the inert throat, searching for a heartbeat. It was there, slow, steady, and then Talmadge felt the sweat cold on his fingers. He clapped his hand against Arnold’s cheek, then his forehead, where sweat was running strong. Talmadge rounded his lips in relief, and blew vapor into the night air. “Fever broke,” he said quietly. He wiped away the sweat, then took his seat once more on the nearby log. At four o’clock he wiped the last of the cold perspiration from Arnold’s face, and sat back down. He felt the tension drain from his mind and body, and then the overpowering drowsiness coming on.