The Turning of Anne Merrick (29 page)

“They’re readying another assault.” Morgan handed Arnold a telescoping spyglass and pointed to the second rail fence where frantic, retreating Redcoats were being rallied into order by an officer on an imposing gray stallion.

Arnold peered through the eyepiece. “The man on the gray horse is General Simon Fraser. He’s a host in himself—worth your whole regiment…” He snapped the glass shut. “He must be disposed of.”

Morgan nodded and called out, “Send me Sergeant Tim Murphy!”

Jack’d heard of Murphy. The man was legend in the rifle corps—a veteran who proved his skill at the siege in Boston, and battles at Long Island, Trenton, and Princeton—Tim Murphy was the best marksman in a regiment of crack shots.

When the sharpshooter reported to duty a few minutes later, Jack almost burst out laughing. Tim Murphy was about six inches shorter than the double-barrel rifle he carried. Small and skinny as a beanpole, the ginger-headed Irishman wore a farmer’s smock shirt, his cheerful, elfish grin belying a reputation as the deadliest shot in the corps. Jack edged in close to get a better look at the man’s gun. It was a beautiful piece—the polished metal fittings were engraved with meticulous scrollwork, and the stock was embedded with three silver shamrocks.

Morgan grabbed the sharpshooter by the shoulder and pointed. “
See the man on the gray horse? That gallant officer is General Simon Fraser—a devilish brave fellow—but he should die. Pick a tree and do your duty, Murphy.”

After a moment gauging the distance to his mark, judging the position of the trees and the strength of the wind, Murphy scrambled up onto the jutting limb of a grandfather maple.

“Good choice,” Ned muttered.

The sharpshooter did not waste any time. He settled in, aimed, and fired off a shot.

General Arnold peered through the glass. “Miss.”

Murphy raised rifle to shoulder and took a second shot.

“That double barrel sure is a handy thing, ain’t it?” Titus noted.

“Goddamn it!” Morgan said. “Grazed his mount’s mane! The bastard won’t keep still, will he? Give it another go.”

Tim Murphy had already bit the stopper from his powder horn, and was recharging both barrels.

“You haven’t spooked him yet, Murphy,” Arnold announced, still peering through the glass. “Your mark is staying in range…”

“FIX!” General Fraser shouted to his Redcoats, and the order was repeated down the line.

“Fix!”

“Fix!”

“Fix!”

Morgan ordered, “Pour some fire on them, boys!”

The riflemen peppered the Redcoats with lead. Titus dropped a regular. Ned picked off the soldier who stepped forward to fill the gap in the line. Isaac targeted a horseman. Jack rushed his shot, and only managed to knock the furry hat from a grenadier.

General Fraser rose up in his stirrups, and ordered, “BAYONETS!”

“Bayonets!”

“Bayonets!”

“Bayonets!”

The Redcoats locked deadly blades to the muzzle ends of their muskets, and the British line was suddenly bristling with the formidable glint of honed steel.

Jack rammed a bullet down his rifle muzzle, and watched Tim Murphy wait for his shot. One eye asquint, the tip of the sharpshooter’s tongue poked out the corner of his mouth, weapon held steady, as he waited for the veil of smoke to lift. Murphy squeezed the trigger and, after a moment, cast a grin over his shoulder.

“Got him!”

Simon Fraser slumped in his saddle. Several mounted officers maneuvered in, ensconcing their wounded commander in a protective cocoon to lead him off the field.

“Well done!” Benedict Arnold swung back onto his horse, sword in hand. “If the day is long enough, my brothers, we’ll have them in hell before nightfall. Victory or death!”

“Victory or death!” They all cheered as the General tore back across the field to rally the Continental forces on the left.

“Make ready to advance!” Morgan stood with his arm upstretched, his blade raised high.

Jack looked down at his feet and muttered, “Good legs, do your duty now!”

The sword fell and the order rang out. “Charge!”

A furious mass of riflemen streamed out onto the field, shouting, shooting, and loading on the run. The enemy soldiers at the center of the formation were the first to collapse, toppling over like the wooden skittles in a game of ninepins. Redcoat discipline held out long enough for the British company to fire off a single volley, before grabbing their colors and turning tail to run harum-scarum back to the safety of the main lines.

Jack and Titus ran through the abandoned field strewn with the bodies of horses and men, wounded and dying, and took cover behind one of two twelve-pounders the British had left behind.

Jack blew at a tendril of smoke still trickling from his rifle, and pushed a sweaty hank of hair from his eyes. “I lost my hat.”

“Take your pick,” Titus said, jerking his thumb toward the field they’d just crossed, littered with tricorns, bearskin caps, and jacked leather helmets.

Jack got busy reloading. “Do you see where Ned and Isaac have landed?”

Titus peered over the carriage wheel. “Yep. I see ’em …” A musket ball whistled past his ear, spinning him around and down onto his knees. “Shit!” he cursed, hunkering down between the big wooden wheels with Jack. “Where’d that come from?”

Another spate of lead ball came squealing by, pinging off the cannon and thunking into the artillery carriage, sending off a spray of splinters. Titus inched up and peered out above the wheel rim with his spyglass. “A bloodyback platoon making a stand,” he said, pointing to the right. “At least a dozen muskets in close array, no more than fifty yards away. Something tells me they don’t favor our position here, with their big gun.”

Jack wheedled under the carriage to lie flat on his belly beneath the axletree. “Let ’em come and root us out. I’m not budging, Titus. This gun is ours.”

“Too bad our gun ain’t pointed in the other direction,” Titus muttered, scooching in to lie beside Jack. “Start picking ’em off. I’ll reload. We don’t want any of them lobsters getting close enough to soil their bayonets in our carcasses, right?”

“That’s a fact.” Jack scooted to sit up crouched against the wheel hub, poking the barrel of his rifle out between the spokes.

Another volley of lead buzzed by like a swarm of angry bees, whittling away at the carriage. One missile ricocheted off the cannon, grazing Titus on the cheek. He swiped at the trickle of blood. “Get to it, Jack! Take a shot.”

“Keep your breeches on. I can’t see anything to shoot at just yet…” Jack peered down the sights at an enemy shrouded in a thick veil of gun smoke. A breeze swirled by, breaking through the smoke screen, and a small cadre of red jackets came into view. Jack trolled along the line and found his mark—a saber-wielding officer with a large ostrich plume adorning his hat, shouting the firing orders.

“Well, I’ll be!” Jack pulled his eye away. “It’s Captain Feather Hat.”

“You sure?”

“
Yep. It’s him.” Jack kept a bead on the man, following Pepperell’s movement up and down the red line. “I have to admit, he’s one brave bastard. He’s got sure command of those men—has ’em firing in two directions.”

“Get rid of him,” Titus advised, “and maybe the others will scatter.”

Jack smiled and pulled the trigger, sending a ball whizzing to shear the fancy feather from the Captain’s hat. The man barely flinched. Removing his hat, he first considered the frowzy stub of a feather, then looked up in Jack’s direction. The distance was too great, the smoke too dense, and the action too hot, but Jack could swear he and Pepperell met eye to eye in that moment.

The pause was brief. With a shout and a wave of his sword, Pepperell turned the attention of his company’s muskets and ordered, “Fire!”

Jack and Titus flattened, faces into the earth, as a curtain of lead came flying across the field to scour their position.

“What happened?” Titus asked, brushing flakes of wood from his hair.

Jack shrugged. “I guess I missed.”

Titus snatched the smoking rifle from Jack, and handed over his fully loaded weapon. “Quit playing. Knock the man down.”

British drums began to beat the retreat as Jack took aim. The dense smoke lifted, he could see Pepperell’s company had abandoned their stand, and were running off at full speed toward the redoubts, with Pepperell trailing the pack, driving his men forward. Jack kept his sights on the Captain, the muzzle end of his rifle slowly tracking his moving target. He fired.

“Did you get him?” Titus asked.

“Hard to tell,” Jack answered. Squinting through the smoke, all he could make out were red jackets disappearing one by one, into the trees. “They ran off.”

Jack and Titus crawled out from beneath the carriage and sprinted to join up with Isaac and Ned and the rest of Morgan’s riflemen coming out from behind their cover to give chase to the retreating British forces. Dashing through trees, hurdling a small creek, they broke
through to a clearing, and charged across the field heading straight toward the enemy redoubt on a slight hill.

Through a barrage of blazing iron, the Americans stormed the fortification, scrambling up and over eight-foot earth and log walls with a fearsome battle cry. Overwhelmed by American numbers and ferocity, the defenders turned and ran, only to be met by more Patriot forces attacking through the sally point at the rear of the redoubt. Outnumbered and surrounded, most of the German regulars sensibly dropped their weapons, threw off heavy brass helmets, and flung their arms up in surrender. Hessian officers railed and prodded their soldiers to stand and fight. One frustrated officer—much braided and bedecked in a golden satin sash—berated and slapped his surrendering Hessians with the flat of his saber, until he was felled by a bullet to his back—shot dead by one of his own men.

The redoubt enclosure was strewn with forsaken snarls of regimental colors, drums, brass helmets, muskets, cartridge boxes, and haversacks, and writhing with the throes and groans of the wounded and dying. Scores of German prisoners were being herded at bayonet point while American soldiers began plundering the spoils, tugging the boots off of Hessian corpses, gathering swords and pistols from the dead officers.

Rifles shouldered and tomahawks in play, Jack, Titus, Ned, and Isaac skirted the chaos and ran to the sally port, encountering no resistance. Once through the breach, they slowed to a halt at fifty yards. But for a few sporadic shots, the gunfire had all but ceased, and there was no more fight to be had.

The foursome gathered on a small rise, side by side, breathing hard, watching British Redcoats, German blue coats, and Loyalist green coats streaming from fortifications like ants from anthills, disappearing into the darkening forests, retreating back to their base camp on the Hudson.

“What the hell?” Jack raised his rifle over his head and shouted, his throat raw, his voice hoarse, “Come back, you bloodyback bastards! Come back here and fight!”

No one answered his challenge.

Jack dropped his rifle breech-end in the dirt, and leaned in on the hot iron. Panting, he caught his breath, and wondered at the handful of stars shining on the deepening twilight in the eastern sky. Spinning about, he was surprised at how dark it had become—not even a sliver of sun shone above the glowing western horizon. From the first turkey call in the woods to this moment, time had hurtled along at breakneck speed, and the battle that seemed to rush by in a few minutes had actually lasted hours.

“I guess that’s that.” Titus slipped his tomahawk back into a loop on his belt, and brought out a leathern flask from inside his shirt. After taking a hearty sip, he wiped the rim on his shirtsleeve and, with a poke of the elbow, offered the bottle to Jack. “Peachy?”

Jack took a deep swig and passed the bottle on to Isaac, who took a gulp and handed the brandy to Ned with a nudge.

“
Kwe
. Have a drink, nephew—this battle is won.”

Anne stopped mid-pour. She glanced up at the sound of sporadic gunfire, and checked the position of the sun lowering on the western horizon. The day began and progressed with such order and quiet, she feared all the conclusions drawn the evening before were in error, making the plans she and Sally devised pointless.
A wasted effort.

Sally dumped an armload of wood and looked to the western hills, one hand on her hip, the other shading her eyes. “Did ye hear tha’? Sounds like a battle in the making, na?”

“Just see to your chores,” Anne snapped, “and leave the soldiering to the soldiers.” Shaking off the twinge of remorse brought on by Sally’s crestfallen expression, she moved on to fill the next kettle.
Best to squash such thoughts before they have a chance to take root…
She was tired of rising up on waves of optimism only to be dashed on the rocks of false hope.
Tired of the whole mess…

“Most likely skirmishers,” Bab offered, coming over to help Sally feed the kitchen fire. “A reconnaissance force went out this noon. Pennybrig said Burgoyne was taking a few regiments forward to get the lay of the rebel works on the Bemis Heights.”

Anne finished filling the kettles with water, and moved on to measuring in the salt and cornmeal for the dinner porridge. Growing in intensity, the gunfire not only continued, it became amplified by artillery barrage.
More than skirmishing, I think.

She moved from kettle to kettle, stirring the thickening mush with a paddle, listening to the pounding artillery and watching swathes of smoke rise up to hover over the hills. Once the porridge was cooked, Anne moved the kettles off the fire, and noticed the cannonade had become so incessant, the women working the hospital kitchen no longer flinched at the blasts. She and Sally carried the porridge, biscuits, and beer down the slope to their assigned tent, neither of them daring to utter an encouraging word.

Best not to raise hopes…

“Only a reconnaissance force,” Anne repeated as Sally ladled out corn porridge to the tent full of soldiers on edge.

“Reconnaissance, my arse!” Sergeant Foley declared without a stutter.

“Sergeant Foley,” Captain Thorn reprimanded, “mind your language.”