The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles (50 page)

“For all his coarseness, he wasn’t a bad sort.”

“No—” Philip ached at the memory of the older man dying from the chance cut of the saber. “No, he really wasn’t, he—”

“Look sharp!” Royal exclaimed. “Horsemen coming!”

A man behind suddenly groaned and pitched sideways, overcome by the heat. Royal jumped to grab him and support him as Philip caught a clatter of hoofs in the shimmering air down the road to the west.

At the head of their company, Captain Webb called for a left-face to the roadside. With fair precision the men executed the movement as von Steuben had taught them, holding their lines in the damp weeds at the shoulder. Royal lowered the fainted man to the ground and fanned him with both hands.

“Bet we got to fight here,” someone said. “Bet the fucking British swungaround the flank and cut off the road—”

For a moment there was more cursing, and consternation until Captain Webb cried:

“Shut up and listen! Hear that cheering? That’s not for the enemy—”

Men craned insect-bitten necks, jostling to see. And suddenly, out of the west, Philip heard it: a massed roar of voices.

The outcry grew louder and louder under the sweltering sky. A wave of sound, it rolled toward them along with a cloud of boiling dust in the center of the road.

A rider emerged from the leading edge of the cloud. Hatless, wearing blue and buff, he galloped his huge white horse in the direction opposite that of the retreat.
Toward
Monmouth Court House—

Behind Washington an entourage of officers rode full speed. The cheering was unbelievably loud.

The commander-in-chief glanced neither right nor left to acknowledge the bellow that rolled across the countryside as he passed. He paid no attention to the muskets thrust up in the air in rhythm with the huzzahs. Philip had only a momentary glimpse of the tall general’s face before he disappeared beyond the dust streaming out behind the horses. But that glimpse was enough to give Philip pause.

Washington’s profile had looked savagely scarlet. If not with sunburn, then with anger.

Almost stupefied, Royal and Philip gaped at one another. They heard yet another new sound, this time from the east. A different pattern of flams and ruffs—

Tootling fifes joined the drums. And from man to bedraggled man, cries ran along the roadside:

“Counter-march!”

“They say he caught Charlie Lee and blistered him with curses!”

“Called him a damned poltroon—a coward—”

“Lee’s relieved. Washington’s in personal command—”

“No more retreat!”

“All right, form up!” Captain Webb shouted, vainly trying to shove his men back onto the road as the uproar all but drowned him out:

“We’re going back!”

“We’re going back!”

“WE’RE GOING BACK!”

Mid-afternoon.

They were in an orchard, behind a hedge that rimmed its eastern perimeter. As far as Philip could tell, they were holding the orchard somewhere near the center of the American lines. They were south of the Englishtown road, still west of Monmouth Court House—and firing through the shrubbery as the British grenadiers advanced in those splendid, never-wavering formations.

Philip’s hands were beginning to blister from the combined heat of the weather and the musket-metal. Royal was still alongside. Wayne was in over-all command of the orchard position; Philip could see him peering through the barely breathable powder-smoke that drifted from muskets and the cannon booming on their flanks. The entire afternoon had been mind-numbing. Endless shifts of position; charge and counter-charge.

Philip wearily pointed the musket through the hedge and picked off a fur-capped, perspiring grenadier coming toward him in rote step. The grenadier toppled forward, his bayonet stabbing into the ground. The soldier knew he was dying, but he clung to the butt of the Brown Bess to keep himself from falling, as if that in itself could undo the effect of Philip’s shot.

Slowly, the grenadier’s slippery hands gave out. He slumped to his knees, fingers sliding inexorably down the muzzle. Philip blinked twice. When his vision cleared, the grenadier had let go of his musket and lay on his back, unmoving. The upside-down weapon stood beside him in the earth like some obscene parody of a churchyard marker. Other grenadiers with bayonets at the ready marched past the corpse, never glancing down.

Philip wondered how much longer he could survive without water. Just to his rear, an older man flopped in the grass, felled not by a wound but by prostration that purpled his cheeks. The man’s tongue protruded like a frog’s as he compressed his hands against his belly and made retching sounds—

Philip had no energy for thinking of the danger of their situation. No energy to speculate about strategies, or the over-all success or failure of the engagement of the entire American army. Clinton had struck swiftly, throwing unit after unit against them across a broad front. But for Philip, the world had again constricted to a small patch of ground where he crouched behind the hedge, concentrating on the steps of von Steuben’s ten-count drill.

Philip’s flayed hands almost worked independently of his exhausted mind. He loaded, fired, dodged instinctively whenever he heard a ball hiss through the leaves—

The American fire broke the grenadier charge thirty yards from the hedge. In the smoke, Philip saw redcoat after redcoat falling. Suddenly someone stumbled against his legs.

Philip wrenched his head up. Saw Webb, a sooty ghoul who grinned and pointed a bleeding hand through a break in the foliage:

“We’ve hit Colonel Monckton, their commander.”

Up and down the line, men picked it up:

“Monckton’s killed—someone shot Monckton!”

As the grenadiers began to pull back, re-form for another charge, Webb’s hand closed hard on Philip’s shoulder.

“He’s one of their kingbirds. Can you two bring him back to our colors?”

Gulping for air, Philip said, “Can try. Come on, Royal. Leave the musket. Stay low—”

The two of them crawled forward on their bellies, out past the hedge into tall grass. Occasional musket fire still crackled over their heads. All at once, Philip stopped.

He burrowed his elbows into the soft ground. His ears rang. He let his head hang like an exhausted dog’s. Waves of nausea left him helpless.

“Royal, I can’t,” he gasped. “The damned heat—”

“It’s only a little further,” Royal panted, grabbing the back of Philip’s hunting shirt and giving him a tug. “They want Monckton’s body at the colors. You can make it—”

The perimeter of the orchard was a miasma of smoke and dimly seen sky. He was tired beyond the limits of comprehension. He rolled his head sideways, saw Royal watching him with almost wild-eyed intensity. The boy had lost his little black wool cap during the day, Philip realized.

“Come
on!”
Royal said.

Philip dug his elbows into the grass, pulled his numbed body forward a few inches. And a few more—

Royal Rothman speared out one hand, closed it clawlike on the powder-blacked uniform of the grenadier commander who lay with eyes and mouth open. Out of sight in the tall grass, the British drummers changed cadence to start the next advance.

“Help me pull him!” Royal pleaded. “If you don’t, the grenadiers will catch up to us—”

Philip’s right arm felt dead. He forced it to move by will alone, reaching down across Colonel Monckton’s nose and open mouth to dig his fingers into sweat-drenched wool. Then he began to crawl backwards, feeling as if he were dragging the weight of the world.

His head buzzed. Buzzed and rang. Distantly, as though in a windstorm, he heard Royal’s voice, now louder, now fainter:

“A little more. Only a little more, Philip.
Don’t let go of him—!”

“I can’t stand to look at him that way!”
Philip screamed, shifting his hand to the dead officer’s face. One by one he pushed down Monckton’s eyelids.

Just after he touched the corpse, something started his hand shuddering; then his whole arm. It was all so damned senseless. The heat; the slaughter—

He just wanted to give up. Stop. Rest. Close his eyes—

“Keep pulling, Philip! The grenadiers have spotted us. But we’re close.
Pull!”

He tried. God, he tried. He had no strength left. His arm shook uncontrollably—

What sort of man had this Monckton been? Surely he’d loved someone. A wife. Children. Surely he believed he was just as right as those on Philip’s side. It was a waste. A wretched, damnable
waste
—

All that kept him tugging the corpse was a memory of Anne and Abraham on which he forced himself to concentrate.

He knew there was a purpose to the struggle beyond the immediate one. He knew because Anne had revealed it to him, little by little, in their first months of courting.

He’d believed in it when he married her. Did he now—?

Yes, he supposed so. But he was spent; so spent, the nature of the purpose was beyond his power to recall. What he clung to—what kept him floundering and flopping on his knees and elbows to drag the body were two faces. All else was stripped away; dross.

A woman. A child—
that
was why he was here. Why he had to fire his musket. Obey orders. Stay alive, so he could return to—

“Up, Philip! Drag him through! Quickly—I can see grenadiers aiming at us—”

A foot from the hedge, Philip struggled with the incredibly heavy body. He seemed incapable of raising it properly. Warning shouts rose from the American side of the hedge. He wondered about the reason, the instant before musket fire exploded behind him.

Royal shouted and flattened out, letting their burden drop. Dazed, Philip was a fraction slow. On hands and knees, he presented a clear target. He seemed to see Royal’s sweat-shiny face across some great abyss of smoke and noise. Royal’s mouth opened to utter a cry of warning. Something buzzed near Philip’s ear. Leaves rustled, a dream-like sound—

The buzz was a grenadier ball. Royal’s yell dinned suddenly:

“For God’s sake get down
—”

Another musket-blast obliterated the rest. Philip felt something thump his right calf. There was searing pain.

A moment later his dazed mind finally recognized that something had pierced the top of his right boot. He flopped on his buttocks, propped up by one hand on Monckton’s shoulders. Incredulous, he stared at the hole in the boot’s thin, worn leather.

Something large and hurtful was lodged in the flesh inside that boot. All at once, another peculiar sensation made him grimace. His lower leg not only hurt like fury, it felt as if it had just been plunged into a pot of boiling honey—

Idiotic,
he thought, blinking back a haze that wouldn’t go away. It was in his mind.
Honey’s never warm, never
—

He saw the redness pouring through the place where the ball had penetrated the leather.
My God, I’m hit,
he thought with a curious, light-headed detachment.

Royal shouted urgent warnings he couldn’t understand. The drums of the advancing grenadiers hammered. Trying to focus his eyes on the glistening blood, he sagged over against Monckton’s corpse.

Blearily, he came back to consciousness a few minutes later. Royal was slapping his cheek. His whole lower leg and foot burned fiercely. When he rolled his head sideways to squint down the side of his body, he saw his trousers soaked with blood where the fabric was stuffed into his boot-top.

“Get up, Philip. If you stay here you’ll be caught or killed. We’ve got to get you to the surgeons.”

“I—” Cracked lips formed thoughtless words. “I’m hit.”

“I know you’re hit! That’s why we have to get out of here.”

“Not sure—I can walk.”

“Try.”

“Tired. So damn tired, Royal—”

“Listen to the drums!”

“The grenadiers?”

“No, ours. We’re pulling back.”

“Don’t think—don’t think I—”

“You
have
to! I didn’t drag you through the hedge to see you left for the enemy.”

“Good of you,” Philip mumbled, afraid he wasn’t making much sense. “Good of you, Royal. But I’d rather rest. You go on—”

“You don’t know what you’re saying!” Royal panted, his face a barely recognizable blur. He pressed his hands against Philip’s cheeks. “Listen to me! I’ll help you walk.”

“No, I—”

“Yes! You must walk!
Listen
—
!”
So desperate that he was close to tears, Royal wrenched Philip’s head from side to side, trying to rouse him from his wound-induced lethargy. “Do you want to spend the rest of the war on one of their prison ships in New York harbor?”

“No.”

“What kind of medical help do you think they’ll give you? None! They won’t see to your wound. They’ll probably let the gangrene take over—rot your leg—do you want that?”

“No, but—”

“Then stop fighting me and
get up!”

Savagely, Royal dug his arms beneath Philip’s back. Philip saw Royal’s musket lying on the ground. It seemed to bend and quiver like a snake even as he watched.

Royal almost dropped him. Philip thoughtlessly put weight on his right foot, cried out. But somehow, he got upright, Royal beside him.

Philip hooked his right arm around Royal’s neck, bent his right leg at the knee. Something Royal had said drove him to the effort.
Gangrene
—

Mustn’t think of that. Just hang onto Royal.

The younger man was panting now, his retrieved musket dragging from his right hand. They hobbled away from the hedge on Philip’s one good leg and Royal’s two, moving through the orchard.

After a few minutes, it was a little easier. Philip’s head cleared slightly.

But why couldn’t he feel anything in his right foot?

Sweat streamed down his neck. Mosquitoes and sand flies stung him. “Must be—hundred and ten—” he mumbled.

“At least. Come on, we’re making it—”

The drumming pulsed in Philip’s ears. He felt ashamed of his lack of strength. Biting his upper teeth into his lower lip, he stung himself out of the dulled weariness that made him want to lie down again. In the nightmare of smoke and noise, of thudding drums and steadily reddening afternoon light, they crossed the orchard, the last stragglers in a column retreating to the next holding position. The two kept up as best they could.