The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles (16 page)

Just as the man fastening the checkrope around the tree finished his last knot, the sledge’s back end swung all the way left, pointing toward the drop. The newly tied knots failed to hold. The rope snapped, uncoiled from around the trunk, end whipping free—

Another rope broke, leaving two in place. At that precise instant, Crenkle’s maniacal beating of the oxen achieved results—disastrous ones:

The left-hand ox lurched up and lunged ahead. The other beast felt the pull and responded in tandem. The sledge was jerked forward too precipitously—no longer in danger of slipping over the drop, but given a sudden giant yank that started it sliding straight down the melted, slippery track—

The sledge picked up speed, spuming snow from the runners despite the drag chains. Crenkle saw the sledge gathering momentum. His reason deserted him. Before Philip could react, Crenkle dropped his stick, jerked a hatchet from his hide belt, started chopping the traces.

“Don’t release them, Crenkle!” Philip yelled. But the frightened farmer paid no attention. He hacked the last of the traces, stretched out his free hand and jerked the pin connecting the yoketree to the front of the sledge.

The freed oxen lunged to the right, off the dangerously melted path. An instant later, the sledge left Philip and Crenkle behind, then hurtled by the oxen, still gathering speed.

Philip reached Crenkle and knocked him down with one mauling fist. “You stinking yellow animal—!”

Crenkle snuffled, on his knees and trying to stop blood leaking from his nose. The sledge was a good way down the hill now, thundering toward the bottom where Eph Tait was just releasing the last drag chain from the coehorn carrier.

Tait heard the rumbling, turned his head. For a moment, sunlight made his bad eye glow like a star—

Time seemed to suspend. Philip was only marginally conscious of his legs pumping through the deep snow. He shouted incoherent warnings.

He saw Eph Tait frozen with surprise in the patch of sunlit snow; Eph’s jaw dropping at the sight of the juggernaut hurtling toward him. The Virginian started to run.

The drag chains draped over his arm fell to the ground. Somehow he tangled his feet in one of them. Thrashing, he sprawled in the snow—

The mortar sledge hit the bottom of the slope and careened ahead. Tait threw an arm up in front of his face—

He disappeared as the sledge ran over him and slid on past the coehorns, losing momentum on the flat. The sledge’s front end rose at the bottom of the next slope, the hillside soon braking its forward progress completely. In the snow behind, something grotesque and loose-limbed flopped.

Philip kept running toward his friend. Then the Virginian screamed.

Philip’s beard-matted face distorted. Other teamsters were rushing to Tait’s side. Squinting in the sunlight, Philip whirled and ran back up the hill in a shambling gait.

Above him, Crenkle crouched defensively, hatchet upraised. The defensive posture crumpled the moment Philip came close enough for the yellow-bearded farmer to see his almost bestial face. Crenkle threw his hatchet away, turned and jumped from the edge of the drop-off.

At the bottom, he struggled to his feet, flung himself on down the slope, vanishing into a thick stand of pines. Philip retrieved the hatchet, raced for the drop. A voice got through to him then; one of the men from the coehorn sledge:

“Leave him go, Kent! Help us with Tait. He’s still alive.”

Philip hesitated. The numbed hand holding the hatchet shook. In the distance, the pathetic Crenkle put more ground between himself and the caravan, a scurrying figure appearing and disappearing in sun and shadow.

The teamster at the bottom of the hill shouted Philip’s name again. Making a guttural sound, he flung the hatchet down. With a last look at the tiny figure fleeing into the snowy fastness, he went to answer the summons. He never saw Crenkle again.

Forward progress of the artillery train stopped. The sledge carrying The Old Sow had survived the runaway descent with no damage. Nearby, Philip and some of the teamsters erected a crude tent from fresh-cut branches and blankets.

Ten minutes after the tent was put up, Philip crawled out of it backwards and let the end blanket fall. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the blaze of the snow. The blinking didn’t clear his vision.

A horseman was struggling down the slope where the Sow’s sledge had come to rest. Philip watched the horse slip sideways, falter, then gallop forward, the mountainous figure of Henry Knox bouncing in the saddle.

Inside the improvised tent there was a tormented moan. Philip tried to hide his face by pretending to wipe his nose. But the other teamsters weren’t looking at him. They studied the treetops, or gazed at the churned snow marked by Eph Tait’s blood, or they simply stared at their rag-wrapped boots. Not a man said a word. The silence was broken only by the occasional whisper of the wind, the frozen creak of a bough, the soft thudding of the hoofs in the snow as Knox swung out of the saddle.

“I got your message and sent ahead for a doctor from Westfield,” he said to Philip. He started toward the tent entrance.

Philip grabbed his arm:

“I wouldn’t, Henry.”

“I must see what attention he needs—”

“From here down—” Philip swallowed, touched his own waist. “No amount of attention is going to help.”

Knox turned white as the snowfields. “My God. Is he awake?”

Forcing back tears, Philip nodded. “We dosed him with some whiskey. That stopped the worst of his raving. I even talked to him a minute or so. He—he knows how badly he’s been hurt. He wants his rifle with him.” Philip’s stiff hand lifted in a sad, ironic gesture at the mortar sledge. Fastened to the bed by ropes tied to pins, Eph Tait’s Kentucky rifle gleamed blue through a patchy dusting of snow.

“Well, fetch it if it’ll be any comfort to him!” Knox said. “It’ll take the doctor a while to trek here, so anything that—”

He stopped as Philip shook his head.

“Eph asked me to write his family later, Henry. He wants his rifle loaded.”

Knox swayed. Philip had never seen him look so drained. He glanced around the little circle of York State drivers, face after weatherbeaten face, as if hoping one of the men would speak. Philip said to him:

“I’d say the decision’s yours, Henry.”

“No. No, it’s his. Still—” Knox swiped at his face. “There is a moral question—”

“Then you tell him that, Henry. You look at what’s left of him and tell him that. I won’t.”

Silence. The wind mourned through the pines. A branch broke loudly and fell.

“Get the rifle, would you please, Philip? I’ll take it in to him. Unless you—?”

“We did our talking. You’ll probably have to use more whiskey to wake him.”

He turned, trudged to the mortar sledge, dimly aware of shouted curses and snapping whips beyond the crest of the slope down which The Old Sow had plunged. A new sledge struggling for the summit. Maybe the messengers sent in both directions from the scene of the accident had missed one of the vehicles laboring through the woods. The noise almost seemed a blasphemy as Philip laboriously untied the frozen ropes, opened the ammunition box lashed down beside the rifle, loaded the piece and carried it back to Henry Knox.

Another groan sounded from inside the tent. Then Eph Tait cried someone’s name. A woman’s, Philip thought. Knox bent to enter, carrying the rifle. Philip walked away.

About five minutes later, leaning his forearm on the cold iron of the giant mortar, Philip heard the shot. Hideously loud; echoing and reechoing through the tree-clad ridges and valleys. He stared at the mortar’s maw as if he could destroy it with a single glance. He started when someone touched him—

Knox.

The drivers were shuffling away from the tent. The end blanket flapped in the wind.

Drifting clouds started to obscure the sun. Whorls of white powder danced on the hillsides. At the western summit, the sledge coming up had stopped. The teamsters peered at the peculiar scene below. The wind sang again, a low, pained sound.

“I think we should bury him here, Philip.”

“I think so.”

“The rifle’s to be yours. He told me. We’ll dig a proper place and I’ll say a few words and—” His voice broke. “—and then we’ll get these goddamned guns going again.”

“Yes. All right,” Philip said, staring at nothing. Knox left him standing in a cloud of wind-driven snow.

The arrival of the artillery in the village of Westfield produced almost a carnival atmosphere.

Townsfolk followed the sledges on both sides, and small boys couldn’t be kept from jumping aboard to touch the marvelous cold solidity of the great weapons.

The Westfield citizens offered the weary drivers huge quantities of food and drink. The men accepted eagerly, nearly starved after their passage across the worst of the mountains.

In return for the hospitality, the people of Westfield begged Henry Knox to show off the artillery by firing the most spectacular piece of all, The Old Sow. The exhausted Knox obliged. Philip made himself scarce during the demonstration, taking refuge in the local taproom. But he still heard the boom of the mortar, and the subsequent cheers, applause and shouted insults to King George. Philip immediately helped himself to another ale. Like everyone else, the landlord was outside enjoying the celebration.

“Anne? Annie—I’m back!”

Yelling at the top of his voice, Philip climbed the stairs of the house in Watertown on the night of January twenty-sixth. The preceding day, the artillery train had arrived in Framingham, its journey complete for all practical purposes. Philip had ridden ahead with Knox, who gave him leave to go see his family. Knox galloped on to the Vassall House to report to General Washington.

Filthy and almost drained of strength, Philip shouted his wife’s name again as he reached the landing. He shifted Eph Tait’s Kentucky rifle to his left hand, raised his other hand to knock—

And stopped, paralyzed by what he saw hanging on the door.

A poorly made wreath of black crepe.

Fears for Anne and little Abraham flashed through his mind. He stood motionless, aware of doors opening on the lower floor, heads popping out—the whole house had been turned into a honeycomb of emergency apartments. He was certain his wife or his child had died in his absence—

The door opened. Philip almost wept at the sight of Anne’s fatigued face.

Her chestnut hair was disordered, her dress stained and wrinkled. Philip couldn’t speak. He was afraid to ask the obvious question.

“The baby’s well,” Anne said quietly. “He’s sleeping now.”

“Then it’s your father. Oh, Annie—”

Suddenly she was tight against him, unable to hold back her sobs. He let the valuable rifle fall where it would. Heedless of how he was dirtying her with his filthy coat, he hugged her; buried his bearded, unwashed face in the warmth of her hair. She cried loudly for a minute or so, then fought to get herself under control.

Philip retrieved his rifle, guided her gently into the dim-lit parlor, shut out the curious faces at the bottom of the stairs.

“When, Annie?” he whispered.

“The fourth of January. All during December, the illness grew worse. And you know how it’s all but impossible to find a doctor. Mr. Revere finally located a retired, half senile old fellow and practically kidnapped him from Roxbury. He diagnosed pleurisy—just as I’d done myself, weeks before—and of course he couldn’t prescribe anything except the usual emetics and laxatives and—well, when he hauled out this positively filthy bleeding basin and a fleam with every last blade caked with rust, I paid him and thanked him and told him to leave. I knew it was hopeless.”

Anne’s face was white; Philip understood why. Pleurisy was the name of a dreaded disease of the lungs and chest; more common in bad weather, it took a high toll of those who contracted it.

Anne looked around in a strange fashion, almost as if seeking her father in the gloomy corners. Then:

“Papa was fortunate in one way. He went peacefully—in his sleep. But dear God, Philip!—at the same time, there was no word from you. Nothing except rumors from Cambridge that Henry Knox was still on the road. Having difficulties—accidents—” Her agony poured forth in one strident cry: “
I was afraid you were going to die too
—”

Again he held her close, touched her, stroked her shoulders, trying to soothe away the remembered horror. All at once he heard the impatient gurgling of his son waking in the bedroom. Even as he listened, the gurgling turned to a yell. He felt a shameful, completely inappropriate urge to whoop.

This time Anne broke the embrace, dabbing at her cheeks. “I’m sorry I took on so. Really, the worst has passed. I just broke down.”

“You had to bury him yourself?”

“Yes, I arranged it here in the local cemetery. Ben Edes helped. There was no telling when we could get back to Boston. Philip—at Christmas, Papa asked me to say goodbye to you. I’m sure he already knew what was going to happen—”

She started away, bothered by the baby’s cry: “I must feed him—and you too. Why, you must have lost twenty pounds—”

She fought to hold a wan smile in place. That was so like her, he thought, filled with a wordless tenderness that somehow eradicated his exhaustion, his hunger, the unpleasantly cold, smoky stench of his clothing.

“There is one happy circumstance in all the grief,” Anne added. “Papa left what money he has to both of us. And—oh wait, Abraham, wait, I’m coming!” she exclaimed as the squalling grew louder. “Papa said that if we could keep from spending all the money to live, we should use it to start your printing business one day. He thought well of you, Philip, he really did. He wanted you to know.”

It should have been heartening news; something to bank away for the future. But he was again struck with grave doubts about that future.

He thought of Dr. Warren perishing in the redoubt.

Of Eph Tait, buried in the wintry wastes of western Massachusetts, so far from the southern mountains from which he’d marched.

And he thought of Abraham Ware, who perhaps would never have contracted his fatal illness if he’d been warm and comfortable in his home on Launder Street, Boston—