Chapter 43
forty-three
Stand fast, my brave grenadiers!
General Charles Lee
The entire fort seemed to regard her differently now.
Since Coralie’s discovery, Mae moved about as if she wore a scarlet letter, a T for treason.
Traitor. As summer bled into autumn, she kept to their quarters, even shunning the officers’ table at meals.
She’d not seen Rhys since their confrontation.
His absence, now days long, not only cut her, it haunted and bespoke a finality she feared.
He hadn’t told her where he was going. For all she knew he had taken up quarters elsewhere in the fort. Only Lucy told her differently.
“He’s gone.” Lucy sighed when she said it. “General Washington ordered him to reinforce General Gates north of Albany. Isham and most of his riflemen have gone with him. Colonel Bohannon too.”
At least Rhys wasn’t shunning her within these walls but from a distance. Yet even that left her feeling half alive. He was too far to make amends. Too far for her to say she was sorry. Her brothers as well. James hadn’t bid her goodbye, nor Jon. Did they blame her too?
“You’ll be bone-dry if you keep crying,” Lucy cautioned, handing her a clean handkerchief. “’Tis not good for the babe.”
Mae cried harder. “How did you know?”
“You’re rarely weepy or sick to your stomach. And now you’re both.”
Mae blew her nose, a horrid sound that made her feel all the uglier. “I’ve not told anyone about the baby but the general.”
“Well, glad I am there’s that betwixt you. It’ll help mend the rift.”
“I don’t want him to forgive me because of the baby. I want him to forgive me because . . .” Mae couldn’t grasp the right words. Because he loves me. Trusts me. Because he believes I didn’t think to harm him or the fight.
“He’ll come round.” Lucy patted her shoulder as Petey looked on. “He just lost his head for the moment.”
“I’ve never seen him so angry.” The memory made her shudder. “In fact, I’ve never seen him angry at all.”
“Isham has.” Lucy’s full lips twitched. Whether grimace or grin, Mae didn’t know. “And ’tis not a pretty sight.”
“What’s more, he has reason to be angry with me. I fear he’ll never trust me again.”
“You meant no harm. That I know full well.”
“I should have told him back in Chatham.” Mae took a seat at the table. “I’ll regret that to the day I die.”
“There’s spies aplenty from here to Georgia, though I think it goes harder when one’s your sister.
” Lucy sat down across from Mae. “But it’s wrong to judge her harshly for where her loyalties lie.
She’s not a criminal. She’s a Loyalist. She feels you—all of us—are committing treason and she wants to stop it. ”
Mae dried her tears. “Nor are we criminals, just people who want to live free and independent of England.”
“But in the end only one side will win.”
Mae stared at the cocked hat Rhys had left hanging from a wall peg, the colorful cockade she’d made faded by the sun. “Worst of all is wondering if I’ll ever see him again. I might not have a chance to make amends.”
That was unendurable. If he sickened or had an accident or fell in battle, would their heated row be her last memory of him?
In the September forenoon, Rhys stood with other American officers atop a wind-blasted bluff along the Hudson River behind defenses thick with artillery, twenty-two cannons extending a mile.
The Continental Army’s nearly nine thousand men, including his own, ranged over a large area.
Save the river, dense woods surrounded them on every side, a single rutted road all that allowed passage from north to south.
The morning’s scouting reports were clear. Burgoyne and eight thousand men were advancing to attack, sending General Benedict Arnold into a fighting frenzy.
“Burgoyne has sent out a reconnaissance to test our defenses,” Arnold told General Gates as he joined them on the bluff. “General Fraser and Baron Riedesel and his Germans are at the forefront a few miles from here. There’s no time to delay.”
Gates nodded. “They’re approaching Freeman’s Farm in three columns, according to the latest reports. The left flank is led by Riedesel along the river, the right by Fraser inland through the woods, and the middle by Burgoyne himself.”
“Then they’ll meet with General Harlow’s riflemen and the Mohicans.” Arnold looked at Rhys. “Take to the woods and cause confusion in their ranks. Don’t allow Burgoyne to advance through the farm’s clearing. His aim is to break through American lines here and proceed on to Albany.”
Rhys raised a hand and turned north. Several hundred of his riflemen followed on foot, their faces set with purpose. This would be the last he’d see of some of them, but there was no time to be wasted. No time for mawkish thoughts.
“Scour the woods.”
His terse command dispersed the elite corps and their Indian allies into dense trees, their rifles ready.
He gave a last hard look at Private Hawkes.
The man was hardly as wide as his snare drum, its leather strap encircling one thin shoulder, his brown woolen coat wrinkled and bloodstained.
Painted on the instrument was an American rattlesnake and “Don’t Tread on Me.
” The hickory sticks in Hawkes’s tanned hands began a tight cadence communicating Rhys’s commands.
For now, the drummer would stay above the fray on the hillside.
Rhys led, the dry woods and uneven terrain a cauldron of color and confusion sure to slow the British’s advance guard as they approached Freeman’s Farm.
They stirred the dust of the road three men abreast, their own drums sounding at the center of the formation.
Their foolish line fighting did them no favors.
In their flaming red coats, they made as bright a target as Virginia’s cardinals.
At the crack of his rifle a hundred more weapons followed, dropping redcoated officers from their saddles onto the hard ground.
Choking smoke whitened the air as the first British column began to break under such an intense surprise attack.
Some regulars bolted toward the woods for cover while wounded and dying men cried out, their orderly ranks bedlam.
Rhys reloaded again and again, moving through the underbrush at will, aiming again and again, refusing to dwell on the fact that this unknown enemy had a name, a face, a family.
Heads split like melons. Chests burst with blood.
He’d never know who he brought to a final, fatal end. He only knew his own dead.
Kill or be killed.
Bedeviled by a swarm of flies, he stumbled, and his moccasin caught on a tangle of mountain laurel.
Nay, one of his own. A body lay face down beneath the sprawling bush, the listless hand gripping his rifle.
John Skelly. Steeling himself against the regret of it, Rhys kept moving, leaping over brush and rocks and a creek, firing and reloading as he went.
Finally he realized the British light infantry had nearly routed them.
“We’ve been outflanked from the west!” he shouted as his men scattered.
A second column of redcoats surged through the trees as the British main force arrived at the farm’s clearing. Rhys could hear the cadence of Hawkes’s drum above the melee as more redcoats rushed over a grassy rise like ants on a hill.
Still shouting, he ordered what Rifle Corps he could into the woods south of the farm. “Protect the line’s right flank!”
To his right, Hessians were advancing as cannons fired from both sides, bodies and earth shattering.
He dropped down on one knee, rifle raised.
Burgoyne was in his sights as he rode toward another officer atop a fancy saddle.
Sweat streamed into Rhys’s eyes, stinging and blinding him as another shot rang out, close enough for him to hear the whistle of the lead ball as it spun past and felled an unknown officer.
Everywhere he looked chaos reigned. Swiping his forehead with his sleeve, he aimed again and fired, reloaded and fired again, never missing a mark even as he became a prime target moving from forest to field.
Winded and so parched it hurt to swallow, he continued amid the blood and screams as men fell.
Artillery officers and crews lay in heaps about their armaments, allowing a few frantic moments for the Americans to capture several cannons. And then the enemy rushed in to take the cannons and turn them against the Continentals once again.
Where in heaven’s name were Gates and the Continental main body?
Held back at Bemis Heights, unwilling to venture out?
Though they’d started strong, reinforcements were needed lest they all die in a desperately undermanned fight.
Arnold had led the action, and now his own riflemen were ferociously forcing the British back even as the enemy rode in with more cannons to halt the American advance.
“Let it never be said that in a day of action, you turned your backs on the foe; let the enemy no longer triumph.”
Washington’s words ricocheted through his mind, driving him on despite a flesh wound to his shoulder. His hunting shirt was torn, scarlet soaking the linen in a warm rush.
“They brand you with ignominious epithets. Will you patiently endure that reproach? Will you suffer the wounds given to your country to go unrevenged?”
Dizzy, he blinked as two of his riflemen pitched forward, felled like trees, before the crushing roar of cannon fire that shook the earth left his ears ringing.
“Will you resign your parents, wives, children, and friends to be the wretched vassals of a proud, insulting foe? And your own necks to the halter?”
Taking cover behind a tree, he aimed at an advancing Hessian.
The expected crack of gunfire faded to a choked fizzle.
With no time to check the flint or clear the barrel, he swung the rifle like a club as the Hessian ran toward him, bayonet fixed.
The wooden stock struck the side of his helmeted head, knocking him to the ground.
A kick to the enemy’s musket sent the weapon into the brush as Rhys moved past him to an oak.
His back to the trunk, he heaved a breath as his bloodied hands took hold of his rifle’s ramrod and dislodged the fouling from repeated firing.
“Nothing then remains, but nobly to contend for all that is dear to us. Every motive that can touch the human breast calls us to the most vigorous exertions. Our dearest rights, our dearest friends, and our own lives, honor, glory, and even shame, urge us to the fight.”
He returned to the field as Burgoyne pressed reinforcements forward, threatening to overrun his Rifle Corps position.
Sick to his stomach, head splitting, he was reaching the end of his tether.
Back and forth, bluecoats and redcoats ebbed and flowed, a tide of men battling to the death amid choking smoke.
“And my fellow soldiers! When an opportunity presents, be firm, be brave; shew yourselves men, and victory is yours.”
More glaring redcoats, more Hessians tearing through the woods, bayonets flashing, Indian allies shrieking above the smoky fire and clash of weapons.
How much longer? How many had they lost?
Toward dark, the British held the field, but the Americans had pushed them back till they begged for reinforcements. Finally the smoke cleared and the fifes and drums quieted.
He hadn’t once thought of Mae.
In the bitter aftermath of battle, Rhys wanted to shut his ears to the groans of pain and cries for water or medicine from too many Americans. He emerged from the field hospital tent, his thoughts straying from Bemis Heights to Mae.
Jon Bohannon waited outside, his beleaguered face grim, battered hat in hand. A hole from a musket ball only added to its condition. “You all right?”
Rhys ignored the pain that tore through his bandaged shoulder. “I’ll mend.”
“How many Continentals dead?”
“Ninety all told and two hundred forty or so wounded. The British lost thrice that, mayhap more.”
There was no triumph in his words. Though the enemy proclaimed it a victory simply because they’d held their lines, it came at a frightful cost. A tactical draw, Howe said. Burgoyne was hemorrhaging troops and in dire need of reinforcements.
“God rest them all.” Jon shut his eyes as if uttering a prayer. “And preserve those suffering and still standing.”
The burial detail had been at work since both sides had withdrawn from the field.
Bodies were retrieved ahead of prowling wolves intent on the carnage, but identification was often impossible due to the sheer numbers and savage condition of the lifeless soldiers.
As it was, the battle had raged from noon till dark, finishing many who might have been saved had they had proper medical treatment. Mass graves were dug for both sides.
“If I hadn’t seen James fall, I’d remain uncertain,” Jon said as they walked toward Gates’s headquarters on a bluff. His voice broke, and he swiped at his eyes with the back of a grubby hand. “But there’s no surviving cannon fire.”
Bohannon had, unlike many, been killed instantly.
Mae would be undone. Rhys pushed the thought away, only to have it circle back again.
Outside the heat of battle he couldn’t not think of her.
Think of her he did, in equal parts ire, regret, and desire.
It didn’t help that a group of fifers burst into “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” The jaunty tune did nothing to soothe his ragged spirits.
Maebel Bohannon Harlow.
What was she doing this very moment?
Nearby, General Gates’s tent glowed with pale light. Rhys sat down to warm himself at one of many glittering campfires scoring the heights as Jon stretched out battered hands to the flames, his voice rising above the fifes.
“Did you hear the latest reports of the enemy pushing toward the twin forts while we sit here awaiting Burgoyne’s next move?”
“Aye.” The terse word carried a bushelful of angst. The miles between him and Mae had never seemed greater, every inch a powder keg waiting to ignite.