Chapter 10
"You could have been shot."
Gretchen held the tin cup of warm tea in fingers that were still numb from her ordeal and lifted it slowly to her lips.
She sat on a cot in a hastily pitched tent, dressed in a soldier's wool trousers and jacket while her own soaked clothes hung above a fire beyond the canvas doors.
Feeling was returning to her feet, wrapped in linen bandages and stuffed into too-large stockings, and a swallow of the tea made her sigh at the warmth that blossomed in her belly.
Across from her knelt Patrick Foster, one of the men who had accompanied David to the fortifications on Breed's Hill on that fateful night.
He had followed the militia from Boston to New York, and on to Pennsylvania when Washington retreated into the wilderness.
Gretchen had found him again on her first trip across the Delaware — it was not a particularly happy reunion, dredging up hard memories — and he had been glad to take her report about the Hessian presence in Trenton.
"I probably should have been shot," Gretchen said, "for all the good I've done on this errand."
"The information you had about the barracks in Trenton has been valuable," Patrick said. "I'm sure you wouldn't have made so perilous a crossing if you didn't have more to share."
Gretchen sighed. "All I can confirm," she said, "is that the river is cold and wet, the British are convinced you'll all give up before spring, and there's a Hessian soldier in my house."
Patrick raised an eyebrow and reached for the tin pot beside the cot to refill Gretchen's cup.
"A Hessian soldier, eh?"
"A boy, really. Hans. A guest of the farm's owner, Anna Lotz."
Patrick's eyebrows rose higher yet, threatening to climb to the back of his head.
"Has Anna thrown in with the British, then?" Patrick asked. "You could be a valuable asset indeed if she's working with the Hessians."
Gretchen laughed bitterly. "Hardly," she said. "In choosing sides in this war, I'd say that Anna is solidly on Anna's side. She has no more love for the British than I do, but she certainly has an agenda of her own."
"And a Hessian soldier ..."
"Just a boy."
"Aren't they all?" Patrick grinned wryly, but humorlessly. "We'll be sending them all packing soon enough. We shall take Trenton back tonight."