The Turning of Anne Merrick Read Free Page A

Street, na?”
    Anne drew out the lavender-infused hankie she kept tucked at her shoulder, and pressed it to her nose. “I say we find a spot on higher ground today—out of the mud and among the trees where the air is wholesome and cool.”
    “Oooooh…”Sally cast a wary city-girl eye up at the dark grove of hardwoods. “I dinna think tha’s a wise course. All manner of heathens, beasts, and wee deevilocks are creepin’ about in those woods. Best we just cluster in here amongst th’ wagoneers and camp women.”
    “Deevilocks! Pish!” Anne mocked Sally’s brogue. She grabbed the barrow handle and steered toward the trees. “Do you want to know what we’ll find in those woods? Shade and fresh air, that’s what… and if it storms again, those big trees will help to shelter us from the wind and rain.”
    “Och, but yer a willful woman.” Sally ran to catch up to her mistress and help push their barrow up the slope.
    Once beyond the tree line, they found many others of the same mind, validating Anne’s logic. A sutler had set up a grogshop in the shade, and a company of German artillerymen were pitching their tents nearby on forested sites carpeted with fern.
    Though Anne and Sally were simply attired in muslinet shifts, front-laced bodices, and summer-weight skirts, wrangling their heavy barrow up the slope proved hot work on a sultry day. Once they chose a level site beneath the canopy of broad-leaved trees, straw hats were swept back to dangle by ribbons and skirt hems were tucked into waistbands at each hip. Soon garters were loosened, and stockings were rolled into circular sausages and jammed into kicked-off shoes.
    After sweeping a spot beneath a sugar maple clear of deadfall and stones, they unfurled their tent, drawing out the four corners, and orienting the door flaps to face the road. Anne pulled a strapped bundle of short poles from the barrow.
    “This is much better than that first campsite we chose at the very base of a slope, don’t you think, Sal?”
    “What a pair of featherheads we were!” Sally said with a giggle. “An ill-wrought wobbledy mess, that tent was… on a rainy night, no less. That tempest was as fierce as a West India hurricane.”
    “I thought for certain we’d be whisked away.” Anne laughed, recalling their unfortunate maiden campsite. Once the storm had let up, they claimed one of the camp kitchen fires and, soggy and sleep-deprived, commenced to baking. With a dozen bannocks and a crockof berry jam, Sally was able to entice a trio of Scots grenadiers into schooling them in the art of pitching a proper tent.
    The short poles were joined with tin sleeves to form three long poles. Anne dove under the canvas, slipping the ridgepole into the canvas channel sewn into the ridge of their wedge tent. The two poles equipped with iron pins at the ends were used to prop the ridgepole at fore and aft. Once raised, Sally circumnavigated the tent and used the blunt end of her hatchet to pound iron stakes through peg loops interspersed around the base, pulling the canvas taut and pinning it to the ground. When finished, she stepped back with hatchet resting on shoulder and one hand on her hip, admiring the trim lines of their shelter.
    “Perfect, na?”
    “Not quite…” Anne poked her head out through the door flaps and pointed to the neighboring German soldiers, who were busy digging the narrow trenches around their tent meant to catch and divert rainfall.
    “Fegs!” Sally’s shoulders slumped. “I thought we might forgo th’ trenching today. After all, there’s nary a cloud in the sky…”
    “It has rained practically every night. A little work now will save us from having a torrent running through our tent later.”
    While Sally trudged off to borrow digging tools, Anne dragged their cots from the barrow. The ingenious oak frames scissored open to support a narrow canvas sling that was surprisingly comfortable. She recalled that, back in Peekskill, when they were