The Turning of Anne Merrick (5 page)

“Tuppence!”

Anne held a goose feather up for his inspection, demonstrating the resilience of the nib with her thumb. “A quality point, this. You’ll find my quills properly trimmed and tempered to last.”

“Here you have it…” The ensign dropped a two-penny piece in her cupped hand and took the quill. “The adjutant is yowling at me to get the company books in order.”

Giving a nod to the turmoil on the road, Anne said, “Make good use of the time. Looks like our lads will be at least another day fixing this mess.”

“Why the General chose this godforsaken route is beyond my ken.” The young man shrugged. “The rebels are a constant irritant, and every day we delay is yet another day for them to wreak further havoc.”

“Chin up, ensign. You are among the King’s finest fighting men,” Anne said. “I was in New York town, and I saw firsthand the stuff these jelly-boned rebels are made of. What a ragtag, misbegotten lot they are! When met on the battlefield, they will be easily routed. Never fear.”

Anne’s bombast earned her a soul-shrinking glare from the young officer. “I am
not
afraid, miss, but the rebels have proven they are nobody’s fool,” he said, tapping a finger to the ledgers under his arm. “
They understand how an army travels on its stomach, and how every delay serves to dwindle our meager provisions. These marauders move in our advance, burning crops and carrying off every bit of livestock, making it nigh on impossible for us to find forage. I fully expect the entire army will be moved to half rations soon.”

The gloom-and-doom subaltern scuttled off to his bookwork, and Anne penciled the sale into her ledger. It was encouraging to hear the rebel tactics were having an effect on British supply lines, sensibilities, and stomachs. A soldier’s daily ration of flour, salt meat, and dried peas was barely enough to keep a man in fighting fit—a move to half rations could only compound the many trials Burgoyne’s army was already bearing.

“Mrs. Merrick!”

Looking up, she smiled, and waved to Captain Pepperell in the company of another officer striding her way. Rising to her feet, she greeted the men. “Welcome to my emporium—such that it is.”

The officers whisked hats from heads, and Geoffrey Pepperell threw an arm around his friend’s shoulder. “Allow me to present my comrade-in-arms and all-around good fellow, Lieutenant Gordon Lennox.” Anne dipped a slight curtsy to the Captain’s ruddy-faced companion, and Pepperell continued the introductions. “And this, Lennox, is Mrs. Anne Merrick—Purveyor of Fine Stationery and Snake Vanquisher Extraordinaire.”

“The Rattlesnake Widow?” Lennox cocked his head in a nod and snapped a salute. “A pleasure indeed, madam! Geoff has regaled me with the tale of your kill.”

“My kill!”

“As you can see, Mrs. Merrick,” Pepperell added, “your fame precedes you.”

“I would rather find fame in a manner that did not include a poisonous viper slithering over my foot, thank you very much.” Anne’s smile came with ease. She found herself liking this Geoffrey Pepperell. Unlike many of the stodgy martinets populating the officer corps with their off-putting aristocratic affectations, he was possessed of a rascal’s charm combined with a sincerity that appealed—much like her Jack.

“
This is fortuitous, finding you here on my doorstep!” Geoffrey took her by the hand. “I was only just on my way to seek you out—wasn’t I, Gordie?”

“Coming to claim the promised cup of tea?” Anne asked.

“Coming to invite you to dine at the General’s table tonight.”

Anne pulled back her hand, and laced her fingers just beneath her breastbone, taking a moment to rein in her elation. “I don’t know… The presence of a woman at a table of fighting men can only serve to scotch the wheel of conversation—”

Lennox interrupted. “Other women will be in attendance, Mrs. Merrick—my wife, Lucy, among them…”

“I will not take no for an answer,” Geoff said. “As one of the providers of the feast, it is only fitting you should partake.”

Anne’s brows shot up. “A provider of the feast?”

“Rattlesnake soup!” Pepperell said. “Promise you’ll come…”

Anne laughed. “I don’t see how I can refuse.”

“Wonderful! I’ll come to escort you to the General’s camp at sundown.” Pepperell slapped Lennox on the back. “Away to the kitchen, Gordie, to see to our soup.”

“The General’s table…” Anne settled hands on hips, watching the pair march away. “Now, that is quite a chestnut!”

Sally threw back the painted canvas they had drawn over their barrow to protect the content from inclement weather, and Anne stood by, chewing her thumbnail.

“I really don’t recall packing it, Sal…”

“Well, I
do
.” Sally delved down to the very bottom of the barrow. “Hold on, now… Here ’tis!” She squirmed a misshapen, muslin-wrapped, twine-bound bundle from beneath the tarp, and tossed it over.

“Huzzah!” Anne peeled away the wrapping to unfurl her best day dress. As she held the gown at arm’s length, her brows merged in dismay.

The garment was made of quality fabric—yards of imported
indiennes printed with a happy pattern of forget-me-nots twining over a cream-colored ground—but the dress was terribly crushed and wrinkled. Limp with damp, the Mechlenburg lace edging the sweeping neckline and embellishing the three-quarter sleeves drooped in a sad display.

“Dinna fash, Annie.” Sally jerked her thumb to the plumes of smoke rising up east of the road. “The washwomen have their pots on the boil and their irons on the fire. A bit of starch and a good pressing will put your frock to rights.”

Anne threw the dress over her shoulder and pulled forth the mending basket from the barrow. “We’ve plenty of blue ribbon. I can make some rosettes to dress my hair.”

Sally tossed a hairbrush and a pair of iron curling tongs into the basket. “We can put a few curls in as well. Ye’ll be the prettiest lady at the table.”

They ran down to cross the road, and headed toward the stream where the camp laundresses took advantage of the easy access to water and a sunny day to catch up on the never-ending wash. Anne and Sally zigzagged through yards of clothesline stretched from tree to tree, hung with dozens of shirts pinned up to dry.

“Would ye just look at the amount of linen they have flaffin’ on the breeze!” Sally noted. “The campwives are th’ true workhorses of any army.”

They burst through the maze of wet clothing onto a small clearing flanking the stream. Abuzz with industry and redolent with the clean steam of lye soap, this laundry-on-a-wilderness campaign was an enterprise to be admired.

Sally shouted, “Ahoy, Bab!” and waved to a tall woman agitating one of two great iron cauldrons on the boil.

Swiping face to forearm, the red-faced woman stepped back from her task and waved. “Ho there, lass!”

A half dozen women were working the laundry pots, their skirts immodestly kilted up above their knees to protect the fabric from being scorched or—worse—catching fire. Armed with a long, flat-paddle battledore, Bab agitated the boiling wash water and fished clean
linen from the huge pot onto a sheet spread on the ground. Once cool, a pair of women twisted the sopping linen into ropes, wringing out the excess soapy water before moving it into a simmering copper tub filled with a rinse of starch and bluing. More stirring, another wringing, and the clothes were hung to dry.

While their mothers toiled, small boys and girls made a game of gathering and stacking piles of deadfall to fuel the fires beneath the pots. Bigger boys helped to tote buckets of water from the stream. Young girls flitted between the clotheslines, pinning up the wet laundry and gathering the dry for ironing.

“Bab! We’ve come t’ ye in dire emergency,” Sally explained. “My mistress is invited to dine among the quality at the General’s table this very evening, and we find her finest frock in this sorry state.”

“The General’s table, ye say!” Barbara Pennybrig leaned in on her battledore, clever eyes shifting from the dress Sally held out for inspection to settle on Anne. “Caught the fancy of an officer, have ye?”

“That she has,” Sally boasted. “A winning fellow, aye? A captain in Fraser’s Twenty-fourth.”

“So,” the washwoman met Anne’s eye and asked, “are ye aimin’ t’ become this captain’s ammunition wife?”

“Ammunition wife?”

“Aye. His bed companion for the duration.”

“Ochone, Mrs. Pennybrig, mind yer wicked tongue!” Sally bristled. “Mrs. Merrick is nothing if not a chaste and proper widow.”

“I mean no offense, Mrs. Merrick, but I’ve belonged to this army for five and twenty years, and I surely ken the way of it—I do. A proper young widow ought be very wary of this captain.” Bab dipped her battledore into the cauldron and pulled forth a sopping mound of linen. “A chaste young widow ought consider that this captain may have mischief on his mind.”

Anne said, “You misunderstand. This man is an officer and a gentleman…”

“This is no rough-necked regular we’re speaking of.” Sally’s brow crinkled with worry.

“An officer
and
a gentleman, you say.” Bab slapped the steaming
clothes onto the sheet. “I tell you true when I say it is no uncommon a thing for our gentlemen officers t’ charm and woo a woman simply to fulfill the comforts once provided by the proper wife left behind. A widow might save herself a heartbreak by heeding my advice, aye…”

“I appreciate your concern, Mrs. Pennybrig,” Anne said, “but I aim only to accompany the gentleman to dinner. I have no plan or desire to be any man’s wife—standard or ‘ammunition.’”

“Oho, Sally!” Bab laughed. “She’s a smart one, yer mistress. Let’s see t’ her frock.” The washwoman took the dress in hand and gauged the quality of the lace between thumb and forefinger. “Flemish, aye? Very fine, this. A dip in the starch and blue will bring it back to life.” Producing a seam ripper from her pocket, Bab began to pick at the stitches, carefully removing the lace from the gown. “The dress could stand an all-over pressing as well…”

“At what charge?” Anne asked.

“Sally tells me yer a scribe—a lady what writes letters?”

“I am.”

“And a lovely, schooled hand she has,” Sally piped in.

“We might trade skills,” Bab offered. “I’ve been wanting to have a letter scrieved to my Billy’s sister, since he fell at Breed’s Hill, but I haven’t the silver for it.”

“How sad,” Anne said. “I had no idea Mr. Pennybrig was listed among the fallen.”

“Ah no! Sergeant Pennybrig is hale and hearty as you or I. It was my first husband who fell at Breed’s Hill—Bill Galey—the finest grenadier in His Majesty’s Forty-seventh Foot. I followed Billy and the Forty-seventh for over twenty-three years.” Though Bab’s voice explained very matter-of-fact, Anne could see a sad softening in her eye. “Sergeant Pennybrig was kind enough to favor me with a convenient marriage when Bill died, so’s I could continue on with the regiment.”

“I’m so sorry…”

“Ahhh, yer sorrow’s wasted on me, dearie. Many a campwife were left widows and shipped back to England as paupers due to Howe’s misjudgment of the Yankees on that hill. Pennybrig’s a good man
with a big heart, and I’m lucky to have him.” Bab draped the delicate lace pieces over one shoulder. “Come along. We’ll take this dress to the Crisps for pressing, and then I’ll see to the lace.”

Anne and Sally almost ran to keep up with Bab Pennybrig’s quickstep, sweeping through the maze of drying linen to the ironing station situated in the shade cast by a fragrant grove of spruce trees.

Three ironing tables—nothing more than wide planks covered with thick felt pads—were propped between barrels. Nearby, a small fire blazed, where flat irons of various shapes and sizes rested on a grate just above a layer of red-hot coals.

A heavyset woman in her middle years and three young women stood off to the side near a tub of water, passing a dipperful in agitated conversation. Anne was amused to see that Mrs. Crisp, the aptly named ironing woman, was conversely as soft and round as a dumpling. Though younger and considerably shapelier, the three Crisp girls all shared their mother’s fair hair, blue eyes, and pretty features.

“Hey-ho, Emma!” Bab called.

Mrs. Crisp tossed the dipper into the tub and scurried forward, all a-swither. “Have you heard the awful news? Burgoyne’s savages have turned wild agin’ us!”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Scalping and… and murder!” Emma began to sob into her apron, her shoulders heaving. “Woe befall all bloody savages! My poor girls! Oh, what’s a body to do? What’s a body to do?”

“You must take hold, Emma.” Bab pulled a tin flask from her pocket. “Have a tot of rum and pull yourself thegither.”

Apple-cheeked Mrs. Crisp emerged sniffling from her apron to take a long, healthy draught from Bab’s flask.

“That’s better, aye?”

Emma blinked and nodded, helping herself to another drink before passing the flask back. The girls edged in, gathering around their mother. The eldest was no more than eighteen years—and the younger two were perhaps fifteen or sixteen, and alike enough for Anne to consider that they were probably twins.

Bab settled an arm around her friend’s shoulders. “Now that wits
have been collected, tell us exactly what it is yiv heard, and who ye heard it from.”

Emma drew a deep breath, and began. “My lad Will—the one Pennybrig took into the regiment as a drummer? He just fetched over the news. A local lass engaged to marry one of Burgoyne’s officers was seized by the General’s savages on a rampage, shot dead, and most horribly scalped.”

The eldest daughter added, “Her name was Jane MacCrea—a real beauty, Will says—with lovely red hair. She was on the way to marry her man—an officer here with the Loyalist brigade.”

One of the twins added to the lurid detail. “The drunken Indians came whooping into camp today, ye ken how they do, with those bloody scalps swingin’ from their belts…”

The eldest Crisp girl reclaimed control of the camp gossip. “Jane’s beau at once recognized his beloved’s red tresses, and he demanded the General avenge her death, and hang the murderer with all haste…”

“As he well ought,” Bab said with a nod.

Emma Crisp closed the tale. “But the Indians not only refused to give up their man; they threatened to leave the camp. Will says Johnnie Burgoyne, afeart of losing his Indian cohort, has capitulated in favor of the redskin murderers, who continue t’ roam free amongst us as we speak!”