The Turning of Anne Merrick (4 page)

Anne put her skirt to rights, working her hems free from her waistband, and she exchanged a look with Sally. Tall and lean, with skin tanned as tawny as his Iroquois companion, this Redcoat captain was the highest-ranking officer they had yet to engage in prolonged conversation, and a member of Brigadier General Simon Fraser’s Advance Guard to boot. “Widowed five years now…” she said, drawing her hat onto her head. “Hence the need to peddle my own wares, and kill my own snakes.”

“A trying time for you, no doubt.” The Captain slipped his hat under his arm and struck a casual pose, when the Indian stepped forward. Spewing a long string of unintelligible syllables, Ohaweio brandished the decapitated snake torso in his fist, sending Anne and Sally skittering back in a yelp.

“Fear not, ladies,” the Captain assured with a laugh. “Ohaweio simply wonders if you intend to eat your snake.”

Sally’s blue eyes went agog. “Eat it?
Feich!
”

Pepperell flashed a charming grin. “Snake meat is quite a delicacy, considered by many a welcome change from salt meat.”

Sally puckered her face and shivered. “I’d sooner eat my weight in cow patties than nibble on the meanest morsel of tha’ poisonous viper…”

“Captain Pepperell.” Anne stepped forward. “Please tell Mr. Ohaweio he is more than welcome to the snake. I would like to offer you something in thanks as well… perhaps a cup of tea? We’ve a fine bohea on hand, and Sally could have a pot brewed in no time.”

“I
wish, Mrs. Merrick, I could join you, but as I was en route to a meet with my command when diverted by your distress, I really must be on my way.” Geoffrey Pepperell fit his hat on his head. “Perhaps I might be allowed to impose upon your tea supply another time?”

“I assure you, sir”—Anne smiled—“it will by no means be an imposition.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Merrick.” The Captain waved a gallant salute. “Till we meet again.”

The women stood side by side watching Pepperell and Ohaweio weave a path through the trees. “It’s a wonder how he babbles on in that outlandish heathen tongue, na?” Sally noted. “A spruce fellow, though—cuts a fine figure wi’ a fancy feather in his cap and all…”

“Quite a handsome man…” Anne added, her eyes yet on the Captain. “Pleasing to the ear and to the eye.”

“Oh, it’s clear yiv caught his eye, as well,” Sally said, with a waggle of her brow. “But best not let Jack know how charming and handsome your quarry is. Ye remember how he was the last time ye worked yer wiles on a Redcoat.”

Sally’s mention of Jack caused Anne to turn from the sight of the handsome Captain, and in a voice sharper than intended, she said, “That was before Jack knew I was working for the cause.”

“Still, I worry.” Sally placed a hand on Anne’s shoulder.

Anne jerked away. “Don’t waste your worry. This Pepperell is a very likely source for us. Jack would know, as
you
should know, the only interest any British soldier holds for me is in the intelligence I might glean from him to aid our cause. Becoming one with the enemy is how you and I soldier, Sally.” Marching over to the barrow, Anne tugged a pair of tin pails free. “Let’s get a fire going. I’m going to fetch some water for a wash.”

“Aye, Annie—make yourself pleasant, and I’ll commence baking,” Sally said. “Time for us t’ go a-soldiering.”

Face washed, hair combed, and outfitted in a spotless apron, Anne Merrick marched up the road. The peddler’s case she wore suspended
by straps on her back like a soldier’s knapsack bounced in time to her step and the cheerful tune she whistled.

This day is bright with possibility
.

The business of gathering intelligence was an art—a complex combination of happenstance, intuition, and reason. It was an art, Anne found, she had a talent for.

When the British Army invaded New York City the summer before, the world was turned upside down, and Anne adjusted hercoffee house business to cater to the Redcoat occupiers, doing as she must in order to survive the occupation.

Under the sign of the Crown and Quill, she learned the true value of keeping mind open, eyes sharp, and ears ready. She and Sally moved from table to table serving tea and scones to their very British clientele. They gathered empty mugs and plates along with earfuls on Redcoat military strategy and policy, sweeping up intelligence regarding troop movements and munitions shipments like so many crumbs into a dustpan.

To make the information useful to the rebel cause, Anne connected with an old friend of Jack’s who ran a tailor shop on Queen Street. She and Sally were at once enmeshed in the tailor’s spy ring, collecting valuable intelligence for the flailing Continental Army Command.

Under martial law, Anne was compelled to quarter British soldiers in the rooms she and Sally kept above the Crown and Quill. Seizing the imposition as an opportunity to expand their operation, the women set to beguiling the enemy officers housed under their roof. Not only did Anne gull Captain Edward Blankenship into divulging military secrets; Edward escorted her into the social echelon of the British High Command—where she was able to winnow even more vital information from the heedless prattle around punch bowls, gaming tables, and dance floors.

The peddler’s case on her back seemed suddenly heavy, and Anne stopped for a moment, to shift its weight and catch a breath.

Poor Edward! A decent man used most cruelly…

Try as she might, she could not dispel the memory of him—lying
on the floor of her shop wreathed in red-black blood—killed by a lead ball fired point-blank to his head by her own hand.

Blankenship was a casualty of war,
Anne told herself for the hundredth time. She should not—could not—regret pulling the trigger. That one shot rescued Jack from Edward’s expert blade and certain death. That one shot also safeguarded her dearest friends from the hangman’s noose.

That shot saved my life.

Anne put a kick in her step, and set her mind to the business at hand. Defeating the British and driving them from America’s shores would put an end to such casualties, for all.

Upon rounding the bend, she slowed her pace. Twenty yards ahead, the road disappeared in a swirl of murky water that had washed over the banks of a parallel running stream. A huge maple tree—its trunk at least four feet in diameter—lay across the stream. Large slabs of limestone and mounds of loose scree had been tumbled from the adjacent hillside to collect around the maple in a solid, water-diverting mass. Due to the recent rains the stream was flowing strong and high, and the rebel dam was perfectly situated to create an impasse on the road Burgoyne’s engineers had carved between the foothills of the Adirondacks.

The air was filled with the ring of sharp iron on wood and punctuated by the crash of falling timber as axmen harvested the lumber from the adjacent woodland to bridge over the flood-damaged road. In a mix of English and German, officers strode about shouting orders at the soldiers standing waist deep in the stream, prying up stones, and shoveling up buckets of gravel. The debris was passed from hand to hand in a human chain snaking out onto dry land.

Straining on ropes lashed to the maple tree trunk, at least a dozen soldiers struggled with slippery footing trying to dislodge the dam. Others scrambled with hatchets and axes, hacking away at the tangle of branches and limbs.

A right carfuffle indeed!
Duly impressed by rebel ingenuity, Anne veered from the road to the nearby encampment. She selected a tree stump near a marquee tent as an inconspicuous place to set up shop
and observe enemy operations under the guise of purveying her wares. Slipping the shoulder straps, she set her case near the stump. Cleverly wrought with brass fittings, the box opened like a clamshell to lie flat in display, each half fitted with suitably sized cubbyholes fully stocked with her wares.

Anne straightened the jostled contents to make a more attractive display. The supplies for letter writing and record keeping were in high demand, and she did a fair business among the Redcoats. She carried a good stock of quill pens, ink, and pencils—both graphite and lead. Sundries like sealing wax, wafers, and the small sacks of ground soapstone for dusting freshly inked pages sold tolerably well. When all was said and done, individual sheets of writing bond and the pocket-sized notebooks she and Sally stitched into leather covers were top among her best sellers.

Anne removed a pair of placards strapped to her case, and set out her sign. Hinged at one end to stand like an easel, fancy gilt block letters on a black ground proclaimed her business:

On the alternate face, she advertised her letter-writing service in her best cursive script:

Anne took a seat on the tree stump. Adjusting her hat brim to shade her eyes from the sun, she crossed her ankles and surveyed the area.

A cat’s paw in this revolution, I am… and who knows what chestnuts might be scratched up from the ashes today…

Oh, she had not thought twice when her brother David, aide-de-camp in General Washington’s command, asked her to infiltrate Burgoyne’s camp. Operating under the same guise of staid Tory widow that had served the cause so well in New York, she and Sally were able to roam the British encampment freely, gathering information to pass along to Jack and Titus for delivery to the beleaguered Continental Army of the North.

Anne pursued her vocation with an egalitarian awareness, for gossiping with the camp laundresses at the washtubs could prove more fruitful than a conversation with the high-ranking officer whose linen was being scrubbed. And the gossip so readily gathered from sutlers providing rum and ale to the Redcoats could be as telling as any battle map.

At the very onset of their venture, this awareness reaped instant results. While waiting in a long queue to present her peddler’s permit to the camp quartermaster for approval, Anne had noticed a young couple bidding each other farewell. She pointed to the pair and used the euphemism often applied to American girls who had succumbed to the charms of a Redcoat soldier.

“See there, Sal… Another poor girl struck with a bad case of scarlet fever.”

“A soldier’s farewell is aye bittersweet.” Sally nodded, no doubt recalling her recent parting with David.

“Strange…” Anne’s brow knotted. “We’ve both taken him for a soldier, yet he’s not in uniform, is he?”

Touched by the tender kiss the pair exchanged, sentiment did not blind Anne to the soldier’s bearing, ill-concealed by the yeoman’s smock shirt and broad-brimmed hat. A moment later, she gave Sally a confirming nudge to the ribs when the lovers were parted by an officer ordering the young man to be on his way, to which he responded with an “Aye, sir!” and a snappy military salute.

Anne and Sally scurried over to comfort the tearful girl with the offer of a clean hankie and a commiserating,
“There, now, lass…”
In no time at all, the girl revealed her beau’s true calling as special courier for General Burgoyne to General Howe, and—most important—she
divulged the location of the secret missive he carried in the false bottom of his canteen.

Between the lines of an innocuous recipe for peach cobbler, Anne conveyed these details written in an invisible ink she concocted with water and salt of hartshorn. The next morning, she and Sally donned their striped skirts and tied a scrap of blue ribbon to a low-hanging branch of a sycamore tree.

An auspicious beginning…
If Jack and Titus had indeed found the message, and captured the courier, then they had intercepted an urgent message en route from General John Burgoyne to General Sir William Howe, the Commander-in-Chief of British forces in North America—information that could prove vital in achieving a battlefield victory the American forces so badly needed.

Palms pressed together like a penitent in supplication, Anne could not help but think on the less than happy consequences of her pursuit. If Jack and Titus had indeed captured Burgoyne’s courier, then the young man she’d last seen tenderly kissing his lass farewell was most certainly hung for a spy—led straight to the gallows by the careless words of the woman who loved him so dear.

It was a tragedy very real and horrible to Anne, and the thought of it brought about a familiar wrench in her heart as the image of her son, Jemmy, bounded unbidden into her mind’s eye—the boy she’d lost to smallpox five years before. The son she loved and missed with all her heart. Anne took in a deep breath.

At least that girl will never know she was responsible for the death of her beloved.

Be they Tory or Patriot, a steep toll was exacted on all who were unlucky enough to be arrested as spies. Anne had witnessed a spy’s hanging on the Commons just days after New York City fell to the British. She massaged the sun-warmed skin curving up from her shoulder to her ear, recollecting the stoic patriot’s single-minded clarity as he faced ignoble death, his last words a testament to his true purpose.

I only regret that I have but one life to give my country.
Anne thought on those words whenever she found herself dwelling on the tragic by-blows
of her pursuit or pondering over the variety of “what-ifs” and “maybes.”

Anne gave her head a shake.
Deep thinking—a perilous pastime for soldiers at war.

And she
was
a soldier. Like the brave patriot she’d seen stand the gallows, Anne endeavored to keep the ideals of the cause she fought for at the forefront of her brain, pushing the heavy consequences down into the depths of her heart.

“How much for a quill, miss?”

Anne glanced up. A bone-thin subaltern stood before her, juggling a heavy stack of ledgers under one arm while digging for coin in the pocket of his baggy breeches. Taking note of the number twenty-one embossed on the pewter buttons of his jacket, she answered, “Merrick’s quills are but a tuppence for one of the King’s finest fusiliers.”