The Turning of Anne Merrick Read Free

“Listen!”
    After a moment’s concentration, they could all discern the sound first detected by Isaac’s sharp ears—a thudding canter of ironshod hooves on wood.
    “Dragoons!” Titus jumped to his feet.
    Jack stuffed both message and bottle into his pouch, and swung his rifle down from his shoulder. With weapons cocked, Neddy and Isaac took the point. Jack and Titus fell in behind, and the foursome melted back into the trees.

Part One

    SARATOGA
    With Loyalty, Liberty let us entwine,
    Our blood shall for both, flow as free as our wine.
    Let us set an example, what all men should be,
    And a toast give the world,
    Here’s to those who dare to be free.
    Hearts of oak we are still;
    For we’re sons of those men
    Who always are ready—
    Steady, boys, steady—
    To fight for their freedom again and again.
    H EARTS OF O AK , A UTHOR U NKNOWN

ONE
    Those who expect to reap the blessings of Freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
    T HOMAS P AINE ,
The American Crisis
    O N C AMPAIGN WITH THE B RITISH A RMY
    “I wonder what has gone awry—” Anne Merrick collected her skirts, planted a mud-caked shoe on one barrow wheel, and hoisted herself up by a foot and a half. “Perhaps a wagon has thrown a wheel…”
    “I dinna think so…” Sally Tucker drew the brim of her straw hatforward to shade her eyes, noting the sun pulsing in its zenith. “A cart with a bad wheel is easily pushed to the side. This column has not budged in some time.”
    Anne stepped up to improve her view, scaling the cargo piled high in their barrow.
    Sally encouraged the precarious perch by taking hold of her mistress’s apron strings. “Steady now, Annie…”
    After establishing a foothold on the surface provided by their bundled tent, Anne fished a spyglass from her pocket, snapped it to full open, and scanned along the congested roadway all the way to the bend. Other than the lazy swish of bovine and equine tails chasing swarms of black flies, and the here-and-there tendrils of tobacco smoke twisting up from the wagoneers’ clay pipes, Anne could detectno commotion. The forward movement of British might on the march had once again been brought to a complete standstill.
    “What d’ye see?” Sally asked.
    “Absolutely nothing.”
    The man driving the cart ahead twisted around in his seat and shouted, “Don’t put yourself to such a bother, missus. I’d wager pounds to pence those damned rebels have bedeviled our progress with mischief of some sort. Before you know it, the drummer boys will come along, beating the call to make camp.”
    “You’re most probably correct, Mr. Noonan.” Anne hopped down from the cart. “Did you hear that, Sal? More rebel mischief, no doubt.”
    Soon enough, a pair of drummers wearing bearskin caps andgreen wool coats marched toward them along the shoulder of the road. Confirming Mr. Noonan’s prediction, they beat the call to halt on roped drums marked with the Crown’s insignia and the number twenty-four—the advance guard—the 24th Regiment of Foot.
    “Hoy, lads!” Sally shouted. “What news?”
    “Rebels!” one boy shouted, without missing a beat. “Dammed up the stream and flooded the road.”
    “No little thing, either,” the other boy added, marching by. “A terrible mess—a right carfuffle up there.”
    The drum call touched off a frenzy of activity, and the ordered file became a noisy, confused jumble as teamsters whistled, whipped, and wrestled their beasts to claim a campsite alongside the road General Burgoyne’s artificers had engineered through the wilderness. Anne and Sally joined the confusion, pushing and pulling their overladen barrow off the rutted road, coursing a path through the pasty muck churned up by hoof and wheel, aiming for a place upwind of where the teamsters were gathering their fly-plagued oxen into herds.
    “Phew!” Sally’s freckled face scrinched in disgust. “The smell of this camp rivals that o’ the tanning pits on Queen