MacFarlane's Ridge (31 page)

“I have a job, remember?”

She snorted. “But you don’t like it, Troy. You told me once that being a deputy in Haver Springs was boring.”

“True.” He looked around doubtfully. “I suppose I could get help from Alice or Hal if I needed it once in a while.”

“There you go,” she beamed.

Troy poured himself another cup of coffee and thought for a long time. Cam didn’t press him. Finally, after what seemed like forever, he said simply, “You win.”

She leaped up and hugged him. “You are the best, Troy. You know something?”

“What?”

“I’ll miss you,” she said quietly. “You’re a good man.”

“Do you think --- never mind.”

“Do I think what?” she grinned.

He sat beside her and held her hand. “Do you think that if you hadn’t met him, I might have had a chance with you? Ever?”

Cam blinked. “Oh, Troy,” she sighed. “I think,” she began, “if I had never met him…” She paused. “I think maybe I was waiting all along to meet him. Maybe that’s what Wanda meant, when she was talking about fate and predestination. Does that make sense?”

Troy nodded. “Yeah, actually it does.” He thought for a moment. “How will you find him? Assuming it’s him?”

“Wanda,” she said. “Wanda is the key. If I can find her, she can lead me to Robert.”

“New Jersey is a big place,” he said doubtfully. “And there aren’t any freeways in 1777.”

“We know that she was at the Battle of Trenton, right? And she’s following Washington and his men, and soon she’ll be in Philadelphia. How hard can it be to find a six-foot-tall redheaded woman among the Continental Army?”

Troy shook his head. “You’re nuts, you know.”

She smiled wistfully. “Troy, I’ve never felt saner in my life.”

March 30, 1777

I am miserable. If this child does not arrive soon I shall probably drive Ian away with my short temper and constant tiredness. I sleep all the time and it is hard to do even the simplest of tasks. Yesterday it took me all morning to walk down to Sally Kerr’s house and back. We tried to hang a Ring on a piece of twine over my belly to see what the baby will be. If it swings clockwise, it shall be a boy, and counterclockwise indicates that the babe shall be female. Well, oddly enough, first it swung one way and then another! I do not know what to think anymore, and just wish this Baby would come.

Sally’s grandson – although I suppose he is to be raised as her son now and I shall have to start calling him that – is doing well. Despite Betsy’s hard pregnancy and her awful death after the boy’s birth, the baby is thriving. Sally has named him Thomas Jefferson Kerr. Her husband is beginning to show some affection towards the boy but I believe he will Grieve for Betsy for a long time to come. She was the first of his children to die, and he is taking it hard.

I received yet another letter from Lt. Wm. Clarendon, the British officer who wrote to me about the sinking of the
Lady Meg
. He claims that he is somewhat acquainted with Winnie, and has asked me to give her his regards should I see her. I have no idea how she would be associated with a member of the Royal Dragoon Corps, and quite frankly it makes me more than a little uneasy. Angus knew little about her when they married, and I am worried that she may not be as loyal to the Patriotic Cause as my brother is.

This child is so large, I cannot even see my feet.

April 17, 1777

Oh, blessed and most joyful day of days!!!!

I am exhausted and ready to sleep for a week, but I am compelled to write down what has happened.

Yesterday afternoon, I began to feel the first pains of labor. I sent Ian for Sally, as she was promised to help me in the birth, and as soon as she arrived she placed a knife under my mattress to cut the pain and then whisked me off to my bed. I shall not go into the rather Undignifying Details, but suffice it to say that this morning, just as the sun rose, my daughter was born! Sarah Cameron MacFarlane made her appearance in the world and she was the most beautiful and perfect thing I had ever laid eyes upon! I began to nurse her, but was having some trouble with the afterbirth.

To my great surprise – and that of everyone else present, I should add – it was not the afterbirth that was problematic, but yet another child!! Half an hour after Sarah’s birth, little Robert Hugh MacFarlane arrived! They are both sleeping now beside me, and I am watching them in awe. Now I understand all that my sister felt and went through during the birth of her children, and it makes me realize the despair she must have felt when she lost Jamie so soon after his birth. If anything were to happen to either of these two precious souls, I would curl up and die. I also now know what Sarah must have felt when the Shawnee came to her door, as she hid little Hamish bundled up in the plaid – I would give my life to save either of my children, without a single question or doubt.

I feel as though everything I have ever done or said in my life pales in comparison to this Moment.

Our son Robert – I think we shall call him Hugh – is dark like his uncle was, and has a tangle of coal-black hair that sticks up in all directions like the straws of a broom. Little Sarah is fair skinned, with long lashes and light hair like her Duncan ancestors. My father’s hair was like that, and his father before him as well.

I remember once when Sarah – my sister – and I were very small, and Da told us a story about the Duncan hair. He said that long ago, back when the faeries were still roaming about the countryside in Scotland (as apparently they are wont to do) a faerie princess fell in love with a mortal man. She wished to marry him, but his family forbid him to marry one of the Wee Folk, princess or not, and said he must instead marry someone they chose for him. The night before he was to marry his mortal bride, the faerie princess came to him in the moonlight, and she said to him, “I shall have just one kiss from you, for us to remember one another in the years to come.” And so she kissed him, and when she did, his hair turned as pale as the snow. Da told us that this man was his grandfather’s grandfather, and that we all have the light hair so that we do not forget the time of the faeries.

I can honestly say I am the happiest woman in the world right now. I am probably the most exhausted as well, and I must sleep before my wee ones get hungry again.

Near Morristown, New Jersey

April 1777

Angus Duncan was trying, rather unsuccessfully, to warm his hands over the small fire in front of the tent he shared with his wife. As the dawn broke, he saw a few men around him emerging from their own tents, teeth chattering in the frigid air. Angus’ nose had been running for what seemed like months, his feet had chilblains, and he was entirely miserable. He wanted to go back home to Virginia, where although the winters were cold, they were never quite as merciless as this horrible place called the Loantaka Valley.

However, Angus would not be leaving any time soon. He was a junior member of General Washington’s intelligence staff, and he was needed here at the Continental Army’s winter quarters. Furthermore, his wife, Wanda – he couldn’t quite get used to calling her Winnie – was renowned for her healing skills, and worked tirelessly in the infirmary where dozens of men lay. The camp had been ravaged by an epidemic of smallpox. Since Wanda’s arrival at the camp, General Washington himself had commented on the increased survival rate among his men, allowing that Wanda’s insistence upon frequent hand-washing by the surgeons had something to do with it. Washington himself was not quartered in the camp; rather, he was ensconced in a tavern on Morristown Green.

The men were poorly provisioned, and looked more like a band of hungry skeletons than the army which had successfully taken Trenton and Princeton just a few short weeks ago. Angus’ boots had holes in them, and he lined them with newspaper to keep his toes from getting frostbitten. He scraped a rusty razor down the side of his cheek, trying to eliminate the stubble that appeared every morning. Many of the men were bearded, and he occasionally toyed with the idea of growing one himself, but every time he mentioned it, Wanda scowled and protested heartily. Angus thought a beard might be unsightly, but it would certainly keep his face a lot warmer.

A ragged youth of about fifteen came trotting up to him. Angus thought he recognized the boy from the drum corps.

“Master Duncan, sir?”

“Aye. Joseph, is it?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy nodded. “Joseph Ludington, sir, of Danbury, Connecticut.”

Angus smiled at the eager young man. “Your father’s a colonel, I believe?”

“Yes, sir. Master Duncan, sir, Major Basham is asking for you, sir.”

Angus stroked his cheek thoughtfully. Peyton Basham was a Virginian like himself, from the settlement of Liberty, and was one of the men responsible for gathering and analyzing intelligence for the Continental Army.

“Joseph, tell the Major I’ll be there as soon as I’ve cleaned up a bit,” replied Angus. The boy saluted smartly, even though Angus wasn’t an officer, and disappeared down the row of tents.

A pair of hands slid around his waist, and a warm body pressed against his back. “Good morning, handsome,” purred a soft voice.

“Mm,” he sighed. “Good morning yourself.” He turned to face her.

Wanda was dressed in several layers of skirts and petticoats, and had a thick woolen cloak fastened at her neck. Her red hair hung loose down her back, and she blinked her catlike eyes at him. Although it was so cold he could see his breath forming tiny droplets of ice on his mustache, he suddenly felt warm all over.

He pushed his glasses back up. “You look lovely. I didn’t want to wake you.”

She stretched and yawned delicately. “I needed to get up anyway. It looks as though there have been no new cases of smallpox in two days, but I still need to tend the men in the infirmary tent.”

The hospital was quartered in a large tent half a mile away from the main camp, and Angus feared for his wife’s safety each day when she tended the ill men.

“You know I worry about you, Wanda. Ye’ve not taken sick yet, but—“

“And I won’t,” she said firmly, with a tiny smile. “I’ve told you about the inoculation procedure. Just like the one I did on you, but I had mine when I was a child.”

Angus was skeptical. Wanda claimed that people who submitted to inoculation were unlikely to get more than a mild case of the disease. He had reluctantly watched as she passed a needle and thread through an infected sore on a sick man, and then stared in horror as she passed the same thread through his own skin. Angus had felt feverish for a day or so, found one or two red lumps on his hands, and then, suddenly, it was over. He had lived through it, and had not sickened since then. Like his sister, Mollie, he had learned not to question Wanda about some things.

“Do you have plans for today?” she asked casually.

He nodded, and studied his reflection in the looking-glass that hung on a string outside their tent. “Aye. Basham’s asked to see me.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll tell you as soon as I do,” he whispered in her ear. She laughed, a low, throaty sound, and he burrowed his face into her hair. Even amidst all the squalor and filth of the camp, Wanda Mabry Duncan still managed to smell magnificent. “Will you be here later?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I have patients.”

“They’ll still be there, even if ye take a bit of time off this afternoon,” he murmured.

Wanda laughed. “We’ll see about that, you horny ol’ goat.”

Angus frowned. “What is this, horny? Ye keep calling me that.”

She smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll explain it to you some day. Listen, I need to run. Go see what Basham wants, and I’ll find you later on for supper.” She kissed him passionately, and then grabbed her box of medical supplies and headed for the hospital tent.

As Wanda passed through the rows of tents, men called out greetings to her. They liked Wanda, and respected her abilities as a healer. At first they had been reluctant to allow her near them. She had fought long and hard to get Washington to allow her in the infirmary, but when the bayoneted men began rolling in, even the great general himself did not argue with her. After that first horrible, bloody battle in Trenton, word had filtered through the men that Wanda’s patients seemed to have a lower mortality rate than those of the other surgeons. When the smallpox came, nearly every man wanted Wanda to care for him.

She had obliged, driving herself to the point of exhaustion, caring for the dying men as the horrible red sores spread along their bodies, and inoculating those few who would allow it. And now, it had been more than two full days since any new cases had been detected. Perhaps, she thought, the worst was over.

As the wind shifted, she could detect the faint stench of decay from the bodies stacked like cordwood a quarter mile past the hospital. The ground was too hard to dig a burial trench, and so there they lay, packed in snow until the first thaw. Although the corpses were frozen solid, she could still smell the bilious odors of human waste and the oozing, infected pockmarks.

The hospital was a large tent, hastily erected along the banks of a small creek, downstream from the main camp. Above her, on the point of a high ridge projecting from the southwest into Morristown, were the beginnings of a redoubt Washington had ordered built. The fort would be used as a refuge for the regiment detailed to guard military stores. Wanda suspected the hill was also intended as the site of a beacon for summoning the Morristown militia in the event of attack.

“Mistress Duncan, good to see you,” boomed a voice. Solomon Deane was an elderly physician from Morristown, who had joined Washington’s men when the smallpox epidemic had broken out. Deane had suffered the smallpox as a youth, and was in little danger of contracting it again. Unlike many of the younger doctors, he had been receptive to Wanda’s theories on inoculation.

“Good morning, Solomon. Anything new?” Wanda gazed around the tent, where nearly a hundred men lay. Two dozen of those, she reckoned, would not live to see the next sunset.

He beamed. “No new cases in three days now. Looks like we may beat this thing after all.”

Wanda sighed. “Like I keep telling you, Solomon, the key is to inoculate those who are willing, and isolate those who aren’t.”

He laughed grudgingly. “I tell you, Mistress Duncan, you are quite an enigma. One minute you say you are a simple girl from the mountains of Virginia, and in the next you stand and lecture me on sepsis theory or the healing properties of foxglove in cardiac patients!”

She winked at him. “Have I been wrong yet, Solomon?”

Deane shook his head. “Not so far, you haven’t. One of these days, when this is all over, although I am sure I have colleagues who would frown upon it, I may invite you to go into private practice with me!”

Wanda smiled. “Sorry, Solomon. You know I can’t commit to that sort of thing. I have no idea where I’ll be three months from now, let alone three years.”

The old doctor bent over to change a poultice on a feverish man. “What makes you so certain this war will last that long?”

“Just a feeling, honey,” she murmured. “Just a feeling, that’s all.”

When Angus arrived at Peyton Basham’s tent, the major was sitting at a table strewn with papers. He didn’t glance up.

“Duncan. I sent for you half an hour ago,” he drawled.

Angus shrugged. “Aye, well, I’m here now. The boy didn’t say it was urgent.” Angus felt no need to remind the major that as a civilian, he wasn’t technically part of the chain of command.

“Yes, well, be that as it may…” Basham’s voice trailed off. “One of our operatives has intercepted a document from Johnny Burgoyne. You are, I assume, familiar with the gentleman?”

Angus thought a moment. “General John Burgoyne. Born in Lancashire, I believe, attended Westminster School, fond of the ladies. Wasn’t there a bit of scandal about an earl’s daughter?”

“That’s him. You have a good memory. Burgoyne eloped with the sister of a school chum, whose father was the Earl of Derby. A horrible breach of etiquette, if nothing else, and it should have ended his military career. He sold his commission and moved to France in 1746.” Basham stretched his long legs out on the table, and flicked a speck of dirt from his polished boots. “It seems, however, that after a while Derby’s heart softened, and he managed to gain Burgoyne a captaincy in the 11
th
Dragoons. A few more years, Burgoyne is off to Parliament, fights in Portugal against the Spanish, and back to London as a hero. Most recently, he’s been in Canada, reinforcing the royal troops.”

“Wasn’t he under Simon Fraser at Trois Rivieres?” asked Angus.

“Correct. He managed to assist in the murder of hundreds of Will Thompson’s men.”

Angus nodded. He knew the story. In June of 1776, General Thompson had moved a detachment of two thousand men to Trois Rivieres, on the north bank of the St. Lawrence River, halfway between Quebec and Montreal. His French-Canadian guide had managed to get them lost, some said on purpose, and by the time the troops reached their objective, they were exhausted. To their dismay, intelligence reporting the presence of eight hundred British troops had been horribly underestimated. Burgoyne and Fraser had six thousand men between them. General Carleton could have easily cut off the Americans’ retreat, but simply had no idea how to feed or shelter two thousand prisoners. Instead, he left them to the mercy of the swamps, where they were ambushed by Canadian militiamen and the local savages. British casualties had numbered less than twenty, but over four hundred Americans were wounded, killed or captured.

“So what is Burgoyne up to now?”

Basham handed him a sheet of paper. “This.”

Angus pointed to a chair. “May I?”

“Please, sit.”

To Major Peyton Basham, Continental Army, Fort Nonsense, New Jersey

Angus looked up. “Fort Nonsense?”

Basham shrugged. “That’s what folks are beginning to call the redoubt. Some say General Washington is only having the men build it to keep their minds off starvation and sickness. I heard a fella the other day say he expected Washington would have ‘em tear it down as soon as it was built, just to keep them busy.”

“Mm.” Angus continued to read.

Burgoyne has submitted a document to Lord Germain, secretary of state for the American colonies, entitled “Thoughts for Conducting the War from the Side of Canada.” He has outlined a threefold attack on New York, which may be implemented within the next few months. Objectives are as follows: (1) a principal force to advance south from Canada, down Lake Champlain and the upper Hudson River, effectively dividing the State of New York; (2) a smaller detachment operating through the New York Frontier country, from the Mohawk valley to Oswego; and (3) coordination of the above operations with those of General Howe, who shall send another major force up the Hudson River, meeting Burgoyne’s men at Albany, in essence, separating New England from the rest of the Colonies. This plan has been endorsed by HRH, and Lord Germain has authorized Burgoyne to carry it out. Furthermore, he has approved Howe’s plan for attacking Philadelphia
.

Angus looked up. “How accurate is this information?”

“Very. The operative is very reliable. Knowing what we know of Burgoyne, what problems do you see with this operation?” postulated Basham.