The Turning of Anne Merrick (10 page)

Anne fumbled through the folds of her gown for her pocket fan with downcast eyes, happy for the dark to conceal her face, which was ablaze with shame.

Pepperell picked his hat up by the crown and bowed with a feathery sweep of his arm. “Madam—I enjoyed your company immensely.”

Fluttering her open fan at her breast, Anne managed a slight curtsy. “A lovely evening, Captain. Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” Pepperell fit hat to head, pulling the wide brim to a dashing angle. “Till we meet again, my darling, I will see you in my dreams.” Touching two fingers to his lips, he threw a kiss and marched off.

Fists to hips, Sally watched Pepperell disappear into the darkness. “Gweeshtie! In’t he a winsome devil!”

Without a word to Sally, Anne trudged into the tight quarters of their tent, wishing she could dive under a blanket, bury her face in her
pillow, and hide in the oblivion of sleep. Instead, she fished nippers from the mending basket and began snipping away at the stitches at the front of her bodice. In silence, she shrugged out of the sleeves, pushing the gown into a circular puff in the narrow aisle between the two cots. Shoes, then garters and stockings, were added to the careless pile.

Sally stepped behind to undo the knot in Anne’s stays, whipping the loose laces free of the eyelets. “So? How’d we rebels fare at th’ General’s table?”

Anne peeled off the stiff-boned article with a sigh and stretch of relief. “I’ll tell you all tomorrow.” She swung her peddler’s case onto her cot. “It must be past midnight already and I’ve a long report to write—”

Sally tumbled the discarded clothes into a ball. “Ye harvested some fruit, then?”

“Mm-hmm.” Anne sat down and opened her box. “A bumping crop—very ripe.”

Sally sat down on her bed, opposite Anne. “It was plain to my eye tha’ ye were successful at winning yer man’s devotion…”

“He’s
not
my man.” Anne peeled a page of rose-colored foolscap from the short stack in the box, creased it long ways, and carefully ripped it in two. “You know, I really didn’t mean to kiss him that way…” She glanced up and met Sally’s eye for the first time. “I think perhaps I had too much to drink. Champagne, claret, Madeira—my glass was never empty.”

“So ye drank overmuch an’ gave yer Redcoat captain a peck.” Sally reached over and slapped Anne on the knee. “What of it? Ye were on th’ job.”

“Oh, Sally!” Anne flung herself backward, throwing her arms over her face. “I’m no better than some dockside Betty.”

“Come now, lass…” Sally pulled a jug of water out from under the bed. “Dinna be so hard on yerself. ’Twere naught but a brief kiss…”

“You don’t understand.” Anne bolted upright. “I think his kiss gave me pleasure.”

Sally was quiet for a moment. She took a small beaker from the writing box and filled it to the mark with water. “Ours is a tricky business, Annie. ’Tis hard to keep a balance on this razor’s edge we tread. But I believe ’tis one thing to gaze over the edge, an’ quite another to fall. Ye needna fash—ye didna fall—tha kiss was but a wobble, is all.” She leaned forward and picked a brown glass jar from the box and handed it to Anne.

Anne peeled back the beeswax cap on the jar of hartshorn salt. “A wobble, you think?”

“Aye… Given time, ye’ll ken exact how t’ wrap this lobsterback round yer wee finger, just as ye did th’ other back at the Cup and Quill.”

“I hope you’re right…” Anne sifted a measure of hartshorn into the beaker Sally held. “It was easy to bend Edward to my will—he was a kind enough fellow, but there was no substance to him. Geoffrey is a man who knows what he wants and goes after it, much like Jack—strong-willed and dogged persistent.”

“And there’s why ye gave in t’ his kiss, no doubt. He reminds ye of Jack. Ye see? Yer heart is ever true, even in its wobbling.” Sally handed Anne the beaker, and stood to hang the lantern from a hook on the ridgepole just above their heads.

“Maybe that’s it…” Anne stirred the liquid in the beaker until the powder dissolved, the silver teaspoon dinging a bright tune until the water showed crystal clear when held to the light.

“Yer writin’ a report, so courtin’ the Redcoat has already reaped results for our cause, and that suits our purpose here, aye? So quit yer bleatin’ an’ yer ditherin’—ye did well.” Yawning, Sally slipped under her blanket, curling onto her side to hug her pillow. “Write it all down an’ get some sleep.”

Maybe Sally is right…
With quill in hand, Anne bent her head to her work, first penning an innocuous recipe in black ink on the two long slips of paper. Switching quills to write with the invisible ink, she filled the spaces between the lines with all of the pertinent intelligence she’d learned that night.

With the hartshorn ink yet wet and visible, Anne reread the words she’d written. Geoffrey Pepperell was the key to valuable information that might save rebel lives, win battles, and help to end the war. She could not afford to risk alienating his affection, or losing his interest.

Waiting for the pages to dry, Anne plucked the pins from her hair, dropping each into a tin cup, as she tallied the sins she’d committed for the sake of her cause—lying, treason, counterfeiting, killing—
plink, plink, plink, plink
. Proving faithless to Jack Hampton was a crime she’d never considered—not until this night.
Plink.

If only I could join ranks, and face the might of the King’s Army head-on, how much simpler life would be.

She eyed the bottom of the second page wishing she could at least add a line to let Jack know how much she missed him—let him know that no matter what, it was only he who held the key to her heart. Anne dipped her pen into the invisible ink and wrote the words, “Message ENDS,” between the last two lines of the recipe.

Without thinking, Anne moved her pen to the empty space right above the bottom edge of the page and drew with quick strokes. Blowing on the wet ink, she watched her little drawing disappear. When dry, she rolled the two sheets into a tight and tiny scroll, tied it off with a snippet of waxed thread, and dropped it into an empty scent bottle she stoppered with a cork. Holding the blue glass up to the light, she gave the bottle a little shake and smiled.

A secret message within a secret message…

Most likely Jack would never reveal the image—placed as it was at the bottom of the page—but for some reason just knowing her little drawing was there provided a great measure of contentment.

Anne closed the writing box and shoved it under the cot. She found her pocket in the tangle at the foot of the bed and, as was her habit, withdrew the half-crown token and placed it, along with her pistol, under her pillow.

Lying flat on her back, hands laced over belly, she stared wide-awake at the canvas overhead. A cooling breeze moved in through the door flaps, washing over her sweat-dampened shift. The wind-rippled
canvas turned a liquid shade of gold in the lantern light, reminding Anne of champagne illuminated by the warm waver of beeswax candles.

Anne jumped to her feet and snuffed out the lantern. She fished the cast-iron piece from under her pillow, and clenched it tight, feeling the raw edge bite into her skin. With token in fist, and fist to heart, she lay back in the dark, focusing her memories on those few nights when Jack had shared her bed—calling up the feeling of his hard body pressed to her side… the weight of his leg thrown over hers… the caress of his hand heavy on the curve of her ribs…

With a groan, Anne squirmed and knocked knuckles to forehead, whispering, “What manner of woman am I?”

“One made of flesh and bone, just like any other,” Sally’s sleepy voice responded. “T’ sleep, ye silly gomerel, for tomorrow’s a new day, aye?”

THREE

You are fighting for what you can never obtain and we defending what we mean never to part with.

T
HOMAS
P
AINE
,
The American Crisis

O
N A
R
IDGE
, F
ACING
E
AST

“Hey-ho! Striped skirts today!” Titus passed the brass spyglass to Jack. “Have a look.”

On a ridgetop overpeer, hidden in a thicket of furze, Jack lay on the flat of his belly beside Titus. Propped on elbows, the eyepiece of the scope to one eye, his other eye squashed asquint, he panned from left to right across the ordered procession of artillery, wagons, and people amassed on the road below.

“I don’t see ’em …”

“Right there.” Titus pointed. “Sally’s in a white cap, and Mrs. Anne’s wearing her straw hat with the blue ribbon.”

Jack aimed his scope to follow the trajectory of Titus’s arm and snorted. “You’ve just described practically every woman down there.”

With the tip of his finger, Titus directed the lens end of the glass to the correct position. “Start at the head of the line, then count about a dozen wagons back.”

Jack pushed back the brim of his hat and began counting. Just behind the eleventh wagon he found Anne and Sally at their barrow,
waiting for their turn to cross the jury-rigged timber bridge the British had engineered to span the flooded road.

“Yep—there they are!” Even from a distance, the sight of the women always served as a dose of instant relief. Though fully dedicated and willing to risk his own life for the rebel cause, Jack was not at all comfortable that Anne and Sally bore the highest risk in their pursuit for enemy intelligence. Excited to see the women not only safe, but signaling a message, Jack gave Titus a rough shove. “The last time they both wore the stripes, we caught us a courier, remember?”

The women were ensnared in a massive standstill at the foot of the bridge, and he trained his scope on Anne. There seemed to be a slump about her shoulders, and Jack was concerned by the tired way she leaned on the handle of the barrow. The morning was closing in on noon, and from his position high up on the ridge, her face was lost in the shadow of her hat and he couldn’t make out her features.

“The bloodybacks seem awful concerned about the quality of their bridge,” Titus noted. “Very careful, they are, letting only one wagon cross at a time.”

“Their column is moving slower than a toad in a tar bucket…” Jack swung his glass to the left and watched a single teamster, on foot, leading his oxen up and over the span. “Flooding the road was one of your most clever ideas, Titus. That hour’s handiwork cost Burgoyne two days in time and rations.”

Riding in from the opposite side, a Redcoat officer astride a chestnut mare came cantering over the bridge, the horse’s gait drumming an echoing rhythm on the puncheon logs. Once across, the officer paused and rose up in his stirrups, the black ostrich plumes on his cavalier-style hat streaming grand in the morning breeze as he maneuvered his steed with skill around the periphery of the waiting crowd.

“Now, there’s a fine hat for horseback!” Jack said. “Better-looking than those ugly leather helmets the dragoons sport.”

“Let me see—” Titus took the glass and brought it to focus on the officer. “That
is
a fine hat… Hold on, now… He’s having words with Mrs. Anne.”

“Who is?”

“
Captain Feather Hat…”

“Hand me back that peeper—”

Jack pulled focus to see the feathered officer had dismounted, cutting as fine a figure on foot as he had on horseback. With hat tucked under one arm, the man was intent in conversation with Anne, and it was clear to Jack that she was on familiar terms with the officer.

“The shitsack! I can see from here he ain’t worth wrapping a finger around.”

“C’mon, Jack…” Titus said. “The man’s a captain in the King’s Army, after all…”

“Exactly.” Jack nodded. “Where any drooling idiot willing to part with a few guineas can buy himself a commission.”

“I can see you’re workin’ yourself into a lather over naught,” Titus said. “You best hand me the glass, brother.”

Jack kept his eye to the spyglass, riveted to the unfolding scene like a hungry hawk soaring over an unknowing rabbit. He watched the officer pull a packet tied with a broad red ribbon from his breast pocket and offer it to Anne. At first demurring, then shaking her head, Anne cast a furtive glance over her shoulder as she accepted the item, almost as if she knew Jack was watching. Without taking his eye from the scope Jack announced, “He just gave Anne a present.”