Chapter 16
Yara's flanks steamed against Gretchen's knees, and she clung to the mare's bridle with numb fingers.
She had dozed the last mile or so to the farm, teeth chattering and head heavy, the icy rain thoroughly soaking her borrowed wool coat.
Gretchen was awake now, or so she thought; dream visions still clouded her mind: horrible scenes of the farmhouse in flames, of Anna and Sarah put to the sword by the tyrant's cruel mercenaries, of fields running red with blood as soldiers tramped across the mud and snow.
As she crested the pasture hill, Gretchen could see that the distant farmhouse was still intact, but she could also see the blue-coated Hessians massing at the orchard while the Colonials ran ahead of her.
Gretchen had been swept along with the mass of marching soldiers when the ferry landed on the New Jersey shore, stumbling as she struggled to keep pace.
There was an air of deadly determination in that ragged column, driving their feet forward.
She heard none of the usual grumbling of soldiers on the march — the only sounds had been tramping feet, jingling harnesses, and the steady creak of the cannon wagons on the icy Pennington Road.
She had lost Patrick somewhere in the crowd, the soldiers' faces all blurring into a mask of dauntless resolve.
When David had gone off with his militia to Breed's Hill — on a warm summer night that felt a million years and twice as many leagues from this wintry hell — he had been in high spirits, the Boston militia as yet unbloodied.
The grueling months of war had turned that joy to grim tenacity, all the bright banners and polished brass faded and scuffed by the hard winds and relentless storms of a beleaguered army set back on its heels by the empire.
It felt to Gretchen that the dream of liberty that had driven the first months of the rebellion had succumbed to the harsh winter, replaced by an endless struggle for struggle's sake.
But Gretchen clung to a dim shaft of sunlight in the grim winter darkness: Anna's farm, nestled in the hills east of Trenton, was a hope worth fighting for.
The laughter she shared with Anna and Sarah around the table at night, the satisfying ache of her muscles after a long day of work in the pastures and fields, the blessed stillness of the dark nights, far from the din of Charlestown's streets and busy Boston harbor.
It wasn't the dream of a new nation, it wasn't the lofty words about liberty and equality drafted for an uncaring king's eyes, but it was home.
Gretchen's home.
And well worth a fight.
As Gretchen struggled down Pennington Road with the column of Washington's soldiers, the landscape gradually became familiar.
She recognized the snow-laden trees that flanked the road, the trail that led to a shortcut to Birmingham, and the cut into the woods, almost hidden behind a snowdrift, that led down to the river, where she had left Yara before making her crossing.
If any of the soldiers noticed her slipping away, none of them raised an alarm.
She scrambled over the snow and slid down the path, barely able to keep her feet beneath her.
Her heart pounded as she approached the copse of trees where she had left Anna's chestnut mare, fearing the worst, but she found the horse patiently nudging at the snow with her nose, looking for the last dry shoots of grass.
"Good girl," Gretchen had whispered, pressing her hand against the mare's warm muzzle. Yara made a low, whinnying response, lifting her eyes to Gretchen's for just a moment before returning to her foraging.
On the road above them, Washington's soldiers marched on, row upon row. Gretchen leaned against Yara's warm flank, waiting for the last of them to pass, imagining the shortcut through the snowy woods that would let her beat the soldiers to Anna's farm.
***
Johann Rall braced his feet and swore as Hessian soldier after Hessian soldier ran past him, guns falling and feet slipping on the icy ground.
A sneer of disgust twisted his lips: in all his years and all his campaigns, from the bloody fields of Perthshire in 1745 to the shores of Anatolia in 1770, he had known Hessian soldiers to stand their ground against the fiercest odds, facing down Highlanders and Ottomans alike with courage.
To see them break before an undisciplined mob of American rebels drove him nearly blind with rage.
"Stand and fight, you cowards!" Rall hollered, his voice growing hoarse in the chill air.
If only I had a musket ball for each of you yellow bastards, I'd happily shoot the lot of you, he thought wryly, counting the papers in the cartridge bag at his hip with one hand while he noted each terrified face that raced past him.
The rebels were making their way over the snowy hill with shouts and jeers, mocking the fleeing Hessians.
Rall had been awakened at dawn by a courier from one of the pickets along the river, carrying news of a raid against their forward positions, but Rall had assumed that it was a mere skirmish, like the nuisance attacks that had plagued his regiment on the march from New York.
And though this was indeed a larger and more determined force than Rall had imagined the Americans capable of raising, they still should be no match for his J?gers and grenadiers.
He heard the crack of the musket shot that felled Sergeant Ritter, and saw another soldier fall before the advancing rebels; if his men would simply stand and shoot, damn it, he was sure the Americans would scatter in terror.
He sheathed his saber and reached for his pistol, ready to show his men how a true soldier stands up to the rabble.
A surprised shout went up from the rebels at the crest of the hill, and a horse and rider suddenly appeared, trotting down the slippery fields toward the few Hessians standing their ground.
The rider wore the blue and buff of a Continental soldier, lighter than the rich royal blue of the Hessians and, from the look of it, poorly fitted.
Hatless, the rider's long flaxen hair flowed in the wind, and Rall realized with a jolt that the rider was a woman: it should be no great surprise, perhaps, that the rebels would field a woman in their desperation.
He leveled his pistol toward the rider as she approached, waiting patiently for her to come into his range. Though he did not relish the thought of shooting a woman, he had no choice but to show his recalcitrant troops how to hold the line.
A movement at his feet caught his eye, and Rall looked down to see a young man rifling through the coat of the fallen Seargent Ritter.
Rall narrowed his eyes and took him in: he was shirtless despite the cold, breeches barely hitched to his hips, boots clearly on the wrong feet, but there was something familiar about the young man's face when he looked up at Rall.
"You there!" Rall said when he saw that the young man was retrieving Ritter's cartridge bag. He had a Hessian musket at his knee. "Why aren't you with your regiment?"
The young man looked at Rall with wild, unfocused eyes, turning from Rall to the approaching rider and back again. His mouth moved as if to speak, but no sound came out.
"At least you're not running away," Rall said with a reluctant sigh. "Stand up, boy, and let's show the rest of the regiment how a Hessian soldier fights."
The rider was close enough now that Rall could clearly see her face — a pretty face, he thought, it's such a shame that this foolish war has come to this. He extended his arm and steadied his pistol's aim.
***
Tear the cartridge ... prime the pan ... draw the rammer ...
Even though his fingers trembled when he pulled a cartridge from the sergeant's bag — he closed his eyes as he pulled it from beneath his still-warm body, pretending not to notice that the flap was sticky with blood — Hans moved through the steps like an automaton.
Every movement had been drilled into him until he would have successfully readied his weapon in his sleep had the sergeant barked out the order to prepare to fire.
His heartbeat thundered in his skull, louder than the beat of Yara's hooves, louder than the shouts on Gretchen's lips.
He could see only the musket resting against his thigh, ready to fire; the officer standing above him, pistol extended toward the approaching horse; and the flowing waves of Gretchen's hair, an incongruous river of gold in the gray and sodden winter pasture.
The drills had been about switching off reason, locking away the decision-making mind so that hands and arms could move with the precision of a machine.
A machine cares not what task it's turned to, so long as it's a task to which it is suited; and a soldier is a machine finely engineered to the task of killing whatever stands before it.
Hans should have had his musket at his shoulder, ready to put a shot through Gretchen's breast before he was aware of his target.
And yet that shot went far wide of its mark.
Hans dropped his knee to the icy ground, swung the musket in his arms, and pulled the trigger.
The pan flashed in his ear, loud as a cannon, and the ball flew at Colonel Rall, striking his flank.
The Hessian officer gave out a startled cry, spun on his heel, and let his own ball fly.
It felt like a mule kicking Hans' shoulder, and he fell back senseless on the ground, Rall tottering unsteadily above him.
The noise must have startled Yara, for she tried to stop, but her hooves found no purchase in the frozen mud.
The mare slid across the ice, slammed into Rall, and threw Gretchen headlong before her.
The last thing Hans heard before the veil of darkness closed all around him was Anna crying his name, and Gretchen's, as she ran across the field to where they lay in a tangled heap.