Chapter 14
Gretchen shivered miserably under the cold drizzle that was turning into a steady, icy rain, huddled under her sodden cloak.
All around her, soldiers grumbled and stamped their boots in the clinging mud, clutching their coats over their powder flasks to keep them dry.
Their breath rose in icy plumes like the frozen mist that clung to the river.
They had slogged their way up the river for about an hour, Gretchen clinging to the mule's harness with fingers growing numb from the cold.
According to Patrick, they were to be met at midnight by the boats that would ferry the army across the Delaware, and from there it would be a march of perhaps an hour to Trenton and certain victory over the Hessians, taken unaware by Washington's soldiers.
It was well past midnight now, though, the clouds above the far shore beginning to turn silver with impending dawn, and there had been no sign of any boats yet.
Gretchen's brain churned wildly as she stood beside the cannon wagon, stomping her feet to try to force some warmth into them.
Part of her hoped the delay foretold a chance to rush ahead and warn Anna and Sarah and the Hessian boy; they could perhaps at least hide from the army on the march, move valuables to the cellar, even attempt to divert the relentless column with hasty barricades.
But delay only forestalled the inevitable: Anna's farm was surely doomed, destined to be crushed between the determined hammer of Washington's army and the unyielding anvil of the Hessian regiments.
Perhaps it was better to submit to the cruel fate as quickly and abjectly as possible, surrendering hope where no hope was possible. Resistance would bring them only tears.
But the thought of the Hessians in disarray, the King's mercenaries thwarted and driven from these shores, made Gretchen smile.
The British had finally decamped from Boston, retreating to Nova Scotia before putting New York and New Jersey beneath their heel; to play a part, however small, in liberating her new home from the tyrant made Gretchen's heart swell with pride.
They would strike a blow for freedom today and take a step toward avenging everything Gretchen had lost over this terrible year.
All that stood between her and the horrible, glorious victory was the Delaware's dark and icy water; all that blocked her progress into a future of joy and sorrow were the missing boats.
Gretchen pulled her cloak tighter and shivered, hoping the boats would arrive, hoping the boats would never reach their shore.
Then she heard a shout on the rising wind, and another and another, and soon a chorus of cheers rose from the ranks around her. The mules stomped impatiently in their harnesses, and the wagon's axles groaned as the wheels broke free of the sucking mud.
"They're here at last!" Patrick called, pushing his way toward her through the soldiers who were resuming their slow, steady march toward the river. He took Gretchen's elbow and pulled her along; her feet dragged, numb, and she shuffled forward. "Victory or death!"
***
Gretchen stood at the bow of the ferryboat, a hand on the steaming flank of the mule she had ridden to steady herself on the icy deck.
The boat moved as slowly as if it were plowing through molasses, its boards groaning under the weight of the river ice that grudgingly yielded to its progress.
Ahead of her, she could see another, smaller boat, laden with soldiers huddled against the cold rain, and beyond that, the snow-robed shore of the New Jersey side.
She strained to see the opposite shore through the sheets of icy rain and the clinging mists.
They were crossing north of the place where Gretchen had made her own perilous passage across the ice, and she was unfamiliar with the shape of the bank and the turn of the river in this area.
The river was broader here than at the narrow ford closer to Trenton, shielded from the pickets along the road from Birmingham by low, rolling hills and stands of snow-covered trees.
Washington's plan, according to Patrick, was to send his main force along the Pennington Road, and then divide them at Birmingham to attack the Hessians from the north and west. Gretchen tried to picture the route that the two forces would take, and where Anna's farm lay to the east of Trenton; she knew that the Hessian barracks near the river would slow the force from the west, but the force from the north would have farther to travel to reach the farm.
If Gretchen followed the troops taking the road along the river, perhaps she could break from them and reach the farm first, giving Anna and Sarah time to prepare and perhaps save themselves, if not their livelihoods.
The ferryboat gave a sudden lurch as it struck the shore, and Gretchen had to hold fast to the mule's harness to keep herself from sliding across the icy deck and into the river's dark waters.
The mule team bellowed and shivered as the boat rocked, and men shouted back and forth while they released the blocks on the cannon wagon's wheels and guided the balky beasts toward shore.
Up and down the bank, Gretchen heard more shouts, the rattle of gear, the strain of wheels turning on rock and ice.
She stumbled along beside the mules, slipping on the slick shore and scrambling up the bank on hands and knees before she found her footing.
There was no point now in trying to plan her route to Anna; Gretchen was swept up in the march as the boats unloaded and the troops took to the road under the icy rain, the winter wind at their backs. Gretchen struggled to keep pace, her legs aching, driven relentlessly toward Trenton.