To Try Men's Souls - George Washington 1 (31 page)

The plan was ruined.

He glared down at the captain, and he could see the fear in the man’s eyes.

The look disarmed him. The young man and his comrades had crossed over the river the day before, an act few would undertake, and was most likely returning expecting praise, and now he towered above him, filled with rage.

Washington closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

If Providence, in His wisdom has willed all this so, then what more can I do? Gates, the storm, the maddening delay at Jacob’s Creek, and now this. Is this the will of Providence?

We cannot turn back now, and to rage at this man will solve nothing. His heart told him the assault was truly doomed. But if that indeed was his fate, and of the men who had trusted in him, he would face it . . . and not curse an innocent man who believed he had been doing his duty.

He opened his eyes and shook his head wearily. “Captain, it is not your fault. Do you still have some fight in you?”

The captain was, startled, having expected something far different.

“Well, do you still have some fight in you?”

“Well, sir, we were planning to try and raid one of their outposts just down the road and then you came along, sir, and, well, I thought, sir——”

“Good then,” Washington replied softly. “Fall in behind me, captain, and I will lead you into a bigger fight.”

The captain, almost like an eager boy, saluted and shouted for his men to follow.

Washington’s headquarters company had gathered around behind him, most likely hearing a fair part of the exchange. He could only hope that word of it did not race back up the column, for it would surely unnerve men already staggering with exhaustion and cold to realize that any hope whatsoever of surprise was gone. This attack, advancing against an enemy rested, warm, and already aroused, was doomed.

Indeed it was a time to try a man’s soul.

“Forward, men. Forward,” he announced to his headquarters company. The men of the raiding party were falling in with him.

“Anyone got any dry powder?” he heard someone ask.

“If your powder is wet, use cold steel,” Washington called to him. “Pass the word back. Fix bayonets if your powder is wet.”

He could hear his order picked up, shouted back to the marching column.

He caught a glimpse of the two boys from Jersey. Both had un-slung their muskets and advanced with them leveled. Neither had a bayonet.

He drew his sword and spurred his mount forward, picking the pace up again. In the early light of a stormy dawn, he saw a scattering of houses ahead.

Philadelphia
December 13, 1776

A cold wind rattled the windowpanes of the bedroom.

Tom Paine woke up, confused, not sure for a moment where he was. The room was semidark, curtains drawn. It felt stifling, confining, and chokingly hot, with heat radiating from one of Franklin’s stoves. Pulling back the covers, still not sure where he was, he was startled to discover he was naked. The room was elegant in its simplicity, candlesticks of fine pewter, sideboard of well-polished cherry wood, bed with a wool-stuffed mattress and down comforter.

Memory finally came back. His army uniform, which but a few months before he had worn so proudly, was gone, burned in the fireplace of Rush’s kitchen. He remembered now the exclamations of disgust of the old woman who had picked it off the floor, holding the rags between forefinger and thumb before hurling them into the roaring fire. Michael had bathed him in the tin tub set by the fireplace, the old woman pouring gallons of warm water over him. In his exhaustion he had not even been embarrassed by her ministrations as she helped Michael to clip off his beard and shave him clean.

Several times she had drawn back in horror as one of the surviving
lice still clinging to his body tried to make a dash for a new haven. She would vigorously slap her hands, then peer at the floor to make sure the pest had fallen to the brick paving where she could crush it.

In exasperation they had cut his hair short, picking out the nits with a fine-toothed comb. Then he had dozed off, having drunk the whole tankard of hot buttered rum that Michael had given him.

He stepped close to the mirror mounted in a dark mahogany frame over the sideboard. Leaning forward, he peered into it.

It was the first time he had looked at himself in weeks, and the reflection startled him. His features were gaunt, pale in the soft light. Was it dusk or dawn streaming in that gave his features a sickly tinge of gray? His leathery skin was deeply lined, as if several months at war had aged him ten years or more. Gray eyes peering back at him showed a weariness of body and soul.

His nearly shaved head was covered with red welts from the lice and flea bites. In fact, his entire body itched with the small pinprick sores. When living on the streets of London he had been lousy, too; everyone was. But this time the infestation had been especially acute, and it felt strange now to be standing naked, in a warm room, looking at himself.

He felt aged, bowed down by weight and by guilt. He remembered how he must have looked six months past. After
Common Sense
had been published, he was “the Thomas Paine,” and had never had to buy a meal for months. He had merely to walk into any inn and someone would call out his name; sometimes it would be one of the workers he had known from the docks and warehouses before his fame; or if he chose the right place at a convenient time when Congress was not in meeting, it would be one of the hangers-on seeking favor or appointment and believing that buying a meal and rum for “Mr. Thomas Paine” might help his cause. And he had been more than happy to accept that largess. At times it might even be a member of Congress. He had dined with Jefferson and Stockton off fine china with a servant at his shoulder. Or late at night in a back room,
he had drained tankard after tankard of the finest rum while debating the meaning of this thing called Revolution.

And he had grown fat.

He remembered now how he had looked in those heady days of July and August. A man of some renown at a time when all toasted the Revolution, General George Washington, God bless him, and these United States. And always the drinks had been free. The roast beef thick with fat, the pies covered with cream, the sausages and fresh lamb chops brought in from the countryside by German farmers——all of it free for Mr. Paine.

Now what am I?

He was again a skeletal scarecrow, pinched sallow cheeks making his hook nose even more pronounced.

Laid out on a chair by the side of the bed were breeches and a jacket of brown broad cloth, soft cotton shirt, hose, and shoes . . . actual shoes. The sight of them flashed memory to a few days before, the struggling march from Princeton to Trenton, men sliding calf deep into the churned-up mud, most of them barefoot. How much would these shoes have fetched then in trade?

No, the thought was absurd. With an army they were useless; the mud would suck them off your feet within a few hundred paces. If you managed to somehow keep them on, they would be disintegrating from the mud and slush by the end of the day, the leather gone soggy and useless.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and picked the shoes up, examining them, the fine stitching, blackened tanned tops and leather bottoms, and pewter buckles. Such simple things, and how many men were dying for lack of proper boots. Yet here these waited for him.

My papers?

There was a flash of panic. Frantic, he looked around the room. Where are the papers?

“So the dead have arisen!” Benjamin Rush stood at the open door.

He felt a flash of embarrassment as he sat there naked.

Rush came into the room, Michael his servant following, carrying a tray covered with a cloth.

Tom let the shoes drop and reached around, pulling the comforter around his naked waist.

“Now, no false modesty, Thomas,” Rush announced. “I was a doctor before I got swept into all this revolutionary madness.”

Michael put the tray down on the sideboard, left the room, and returned a moment later with a smaller tray, this one with a steaming cup of coffee and a plump roll slathered with melted butter.

“Breakfast, sir,” Michael announced.

“Breakfast?”

“My good man, you’ve been sick and sleeping for days. It’s dawn. We wanted you to sleep as long as you could.”

Days? What a luxury. There had been days over the last month when he had actually dozed off while marching, leaning on some unnamed comrade. Twenty minutes of sleep was a blessing.

“Go ahead, a light repast first, then more later downstairs,” Rush said cheerfully.

Tom did not wait for formalities. He gulped the brew down after devouring the roll and sighed, the coffee helping to jolt him awake.

“Now let me look you over.”

The ministrations of a doctor, one who many claimed was the finest in the Americas, was still something of a shock to him, for, after all, only a few years ago he was one of the nameless poor of London, where from womb to grave visit with an actual doctor was as rare as an audience with the king.

“Stand now and let me look you over.”

He nervously stood up, staring past Rush as if he were not there. Again he felt nervousness and shame over his spindly, emaciated body, sagging with an exhaustion that no amount of sleep could wash away.

Rush looked at his scalp, poking at a couple of the bites, muttering to himself, then asked him to open his mouth and stick out his tongue.

Next his eyes, peeling a lid down and staring closely.

“Jaundice, for starters,” he muttered.

He drew a silver stick from his jacket pocket, and poked around inside Tom’s mouth. There were flashes of real pain.

“Your breath is as fetid as a goat’s. I think a couple of those teeth will have to go. I’ll arrange for a man who is quick and nearly painless.”

Tom shuddered at the thought of that.

Rush thumped at his chest, putting an ear to his sunken ribs, poked hard just below his ribs at the right side.

“Liver swollen. Bile is backed up for certain. And your bowels?”

“What the hell do you think?” Tom retorted, feeling embarrassed.

“Dysentery perhaps, bloody fluxes, definitely worms.”

Tom sighed, saying nothing.

Rush drew out his pocket watch. Gold, of the finest, one of the newer ones with a second hand, and taking his wrist he counted off the beats, then put his head to Tom’s chest, listening.

“Pulse is quick and reedy. Your blood is thick, my friend, your heart labored, lungs rattling.”

“What does that mean?”

“In a moment, Thomas.”

He looked back at Michael and rattled off a few sentences in Latin, Michael nodding.

“What was that about,” Tom asked testily as Michael went out of the room.

“I believe sleep to always be the best of cures and thus I have not attempted to physic you until now,” Rush proclaimed.

“First step is a good purging, my friend. That army food has filled your gut with worms, and I propose we get them out now.”

Michael returned a moment later carrying a beaker and offered it to Tom. He sniffed it and wrinkled his nose.

“What in hell?”

“Chamomile, some other herbs, my own special formula, a good strong purgative, for starters. You’ll be on the chamber pot for a day
or two and will feel better for it, I promise you. A good purging now, so drink it quickly!”

The doctor almost seemed happy with his diagnosis and what was to come.

“I already have the fluxes and the trots,” Tom exclaimed, “and you propose to have me sit on a chamber pot for the next day after drinking that?”

“Must worm you. The entire army is wormy. And you certainly came back with your fair share.”

He shook his head emphatically.

“No.”

“I’m your doctor.”

“I have no time to be squatting here for the next day, sir,” Tom argued. “No.”

Rush sighed.

“Feared you might try and postpone the inevitable. I’ll let you go for a day or two, but not for longer.”

Rush sighed, shaking his head, and went to the sideboard. There was the clatter of metal and he turned. Tom blanched.

“Oh God, not that,” he sighed.

“No helping it Tom. I’ll let you ignore my professional judgment with the worming, at least for the moment, but this treatment you cannot escape, nor will I let you. Agree to this and we will skip the deworming for now.”

He suddenly felt weak, light-headed, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Just a few cups of bleeding, my good man, and you will feel like a new man. Your humors are all out of balance. Your blood is too thick and needs to be tapped off so that new blood will emerge and thin it out. It will also help to drain the fluid out of your lungs. Agree to that and I will not force you to be dewormed . . . for now.”

Tom looked at the instrument half concealed in Rush’s hand. A spring-loaded lancet, a palm-size brass metal box. Using a small key,
like the type used to wind up a child’s music box, Rush wound up the spring-loaded mechanism inside.

“Come now, my friend. A quick flick, hardly a pinch of pain, and in minutes I promise you, you’ll feel like a new man.”