Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory (10 page)

She turned and looked back at the fire, using her ladle to stir the soup. The door opened and Peter slipped back in, pale-faced, shivering from the cold and the attack he had just suffered through.

She looked over at him.

“You all right, boy?”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

“You get to the necessary?”

His features reddened and he shook his head.

“No shame, boy, when you got the flux, you got the flux. Now sit down.” She fussed around in one of the kitchen cabinets, pulled out a jar and another wooden bowl. Spooning some of the contents of the jar into the bowl, she then put another half ladle of soup into the bowl, stirred it, and set it down in front of Peter.

“Now drink that down slow, it will bind you up.”

Harris looked over at Peter and saw that the boy had tears in his eyes as he looked up at her. He felt a lump in his own throat. Six months ago, before the British came up the Chesapeake and the campaign in defense of Philadelphia started, they were all hailed as heroes. But after the unrelenting defeats, Congress fleeing helter-skelter, and the bitter retreat out of the city, doors were now bolted shut, fall harvests hidden, and the countryside sullen, silent, and uncaring. Rage had grown in the army, particularly among regiments not from Pennsylvania. The soldiers wondered why they were even bothering to defend this state, which seemed poised to shift fully to the Tory side. Yet they were restrained by the strictest orders of the general to not forage, loot, or even speak crossly to the locals.

She looked down at Peter as he slowly drank down the concoction. Then back at Harris.

“One-hundred-dollar promissory note from the state. Not a penny less.”

“For how long?”

She shook her head.

“Chances are the bloody British will sweep you out of here in a fortnight. So let’s just say this. One hundred for however long you stay, be it for a week or until the last trumpet sounds, and that is my final offer.”

Harris smiled and stood up.

“It is agreed. One of the general’s staff will be down with a written agreement and payment within the day. And I thank you.”

Harris looked over at Peter.

“Come on, son.”

“No,” and she glared at Harris. “The boy can stay here.”

“Well, ma’am…,” and he hesitated.

Peter, finishing the last of the soup, shook his head and stood up. “I’m going back,” he said.

“Maybe you should stay and keep guard on her house,” Harris offered, as Mrs. Hewes’s gaze bore into him. He returned the gaze, hopeful that his ploy was working. The lad was at death’s door, if they didn’t get him out of the weather and some food in his belly. It was why he had brought him along, having heard the word that the old woman here had a sharp tongue, to be certain, but that perhaps she could be “worked on.”

“I think the general would want that, now that this is his headquarters, at least until he moves in,” Harris added. “Stand guard and make sure the place is kept safe. Consider that an order, which I am certain Major Tilghman will confirm.”

Peter looked from him to Mrs. Hewes.

“Stay, Peter,” Mrs. Hewes whispered, voice husky.

“No shame in it. Besides I’d feel better with someone garrisoned here to keep off marauders and such.”

Peter reluctantly sat back down.

“Only until the general moves in.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Harris whispered, turning back at the doorway. “He’s a good lad.”

“Tell your general, tell all the generals, to take a damn good look at what they are doing to the boys that follow them.”

“I can assure you, ma’am, General Washington knows and is in as great an anguish over it as you are.”

She stood silent for a moment.

“Damn all war,” she sighed.

“Yes, ma’am, damn all war,” Harris replied.

Closing the door, she returned to the kitchen. Peter looking up at her, anxious and embarrassed. She stepped closer and patted him on the shoulder.

“I had three boys with my first husband. Don’t know if they’re in this war or not, or on which side, for that matter. Haven’t seen nor heard from them in years.”

She didn’t say more, and then she pulled her hand back.

“Merciful God, you are crawling with lice!” She vigorously brushed her hand, knocking the offending creature to the floor and crushing it with her heel.

She stood back, hands resting on hips, glaring at him.

“Young man, you are getting a bath and don’t even try to say no. I’ll drag out the bathing tin and start some water boiling.”

Peter reddened with embarrassment.

“Ma’am, I cannot.”

“And why not? And don’t tell me you hold with the foolishness that bathing in winter will be the death of a person. You are filthy, you are lousy, and you are not staying in this house until you’ve bathed.”

“I can’t accept, ma’am. I’ll quarter myself in the barn.”

“And freeze to death. Not while I’m here.”

He struggled to hold back the tears that were clouding his eyes. She softened and stepped closer.

“I know, boy. You’re ashamed, aren’t you?”

He lowered his head and nodded.

She stormed out of the room and returned a minute later with a blanket.

“I’ve had three sons, so nothing will surprise me, young man. You strip down and I’ll keep my back turned. Now go on.”

She handed him the blanket and turned away. Bustling out to the storage shed, she pulled out the tin tub, dragged it back into the kitchen, clattering and rattling, set it down directly in front of the blazing kitchen fire, then went out to the well, returning half a dozen times with buckets of water that went into the large kettle over the fire.

Peter stood silent, blanket wrapped tight, shivering. She ordered him to pull a stool up by the fire and stay out of her way. The water was soon at least tepid and she started to ladle it into the tub. Going back to her larder, she returned with a small brick of soap and motioned for him to get into the tub.

“Ma’am, I must ask you to please leave.”

She laughed and shook her head.

“Boys and their modesty. Guess you all forget how many times your mothers wiped you clean.”

He looked at her, absolutely mortified. She set the soap down by the tub and turned to leave, picking up a fire poker. Using the poker, she prodded at the pile of clothes Peter had stripped off, which were nothing more than foot wrappings, the uniform jacket, a tattered shirt, threadbare and literally dark
gray from sweat and dirt, and trousers. The tails of his uniform jacket had covered his backside, but now the trousers were revealed.

She choked back a sob. They were stained with filth and blood.

“Merciful God, when will this end?” she whispered. The jacket at least she could boil, the rest she would burn.

She spared a glance back at the boy. He was sitting in the tub—squatting, actually—shaking, his white, naked flesh marred by the red welts of bites from lice and fleas. He settled into the tub and a sigh escaped him. Using the poker, she dragged the shirt and trousers out the back door of the kitchen and threw them into the yard and then returned.

In those few minutes it looked like the boy had actually drifted off to sleep sitting in the tub in front of the fire.

The hell with his modesty, she thought. Going to the large kettle over the fire, swinging it back out, she scooped out what was now warm water. She poured it over his head and he awoke with a start as she picked up the soap and began to scrub him.

“Please no!”

“You’re nothing but a boy,” she said softly, “Now let me take care of you…”

She acted like she didn’t hear his shuddering sobs of humiliation as he stopped being a soldier and retreated to simply being a boy who was scared, sick, hungry, and in need of some gentle mothering.

York, Pennsylvania
December 22, 1777

A cold rain beat against the windowpane. A gust of wind worked against the window sash, prying the window open a couple of inches, flooding the already chilled room with an icy blast.

Dr. Benjamin Rush, a former member of the Continental Congress, signer of the Declaration of Independence and now surgeon general of the army for the middle states, watched impassively as the keeper of the inn where he and most of Congress were lodged went over to the window, cursing, and slammed it back down. From experience Rush knew it would slip open with the next heavy gust, and he wondered if the thick-headed man had ever come to the conclusion that having it fixed, or repairing the broken lock to keep it in place, might be the better solution.

“Rush, are you listening to me?”

He turned and looked back at the general sitting across from him in their small booth off to one corner of the room.

“I was listening,” he replied absently, and even as he spoke his attention again drifted down to the letter.

It was from his wife and had been smuggled through the lines from Philadelphia. She reported that she was well and that the occupying British had not despoiled their home, even though he was a signer, because of the influence of her father, yet another signer. Her father had turned coat, going over to the Tory side, persuading Howe that if the house and the offices of his son-in-law’s medical practice were not burned, he might be persuaded to return to the royal side.

He wondered, scanning the letter, if between the lines she was indeed begging him to abandon the cause and sign the allegiance to the king.

After the carnage of Brandywine, and with Washington abandoning the capital, he had managed, as the most widely known physician in America, to gain a pass from Howe to move between the lines to help tend to the wounded on both sides, under the pledge that he would not use anything he saw to the advantage of the rebels. Although he was a signer and, as such, on the royal list of men who would be condemned to hang, Howe had accepted his parole and his word of honor not to use what he saw to advantage, and in return to use his famed skills for the benefit of injured British and Hessian soldiers.

The experience had shaken him to the core, and he realized that Howe had, without doubt, played a subtler game with him, letting him see the power England was bringing to bear and, in so doing, breaking down his resolve.

The British and Hessians typically had a well-organized medical corps. Immediately after Brandywine they had shown mercy to the hundreds of American wounded, abandoned by the retreating army, and allowed him to tend to their needs, in more than one case a British surgeon aiding him in a particularly difficult amputation. At least among physicians there was still civility in this war, and he had shared meals and traded experiences and knowledge with more than a few of them.

As surgeon general for the army in the middle states, he had felt shaken in his belief in the general who commanded that army.

Few medical supplies had been set aside for the eventuality of a major campaign, in spite of his months of pleading. No proper field hospital had been constructed outside of Philadelphia in the event that the city was lost. He was forced to rely on the charity of the British for bandages, splints, tonics, and
broth, a supply that had dried up as the fighting continued around Paoli and Germantown.

The impact on the large number of wounded and prisoners had been dreadful. At this very moment, hundreds were locked up in the prison house, which stood but a few blocks from where, a year and a half ago, he had put his name to the copy of the Declaration of Independence. What a staggering collapse of fortunes in just one year. The bravado of the colonists was gradually being overwhelmed by the wealthiest and most powerful empire on earth.

The occupiers announced that, given the stubbornness of Washington in not conceding defeat after the loss of the capital, and in not disbanding his army under the good terms offered by General Howe, rations for the prisoners, sick, wounded, or able-bodied, must be provided by the city or sent through the lines. Rush had to admit it was a fair response, since the American side had offered to buy rations from the British, but only with Continental currency, while demanding hard payment in British guineas for the ration supply of the thousands of prisoners now being held after the victory at Saratoga.

Unable to do anything more, he had at last turned in his parole and departed the city to rejoin the army in its retreat. Before he’d left, one of the British surgeons had informed him that the medical staff would quarter in his house, pay fair compensation, protect his property and the wife and servant left behind…and then conveyed the suggestion that he should use the power of his position to persuade Washington that the struggle was finished, that the suffering of tens of thousands must be brought to an end. Even Washington himself would receive a royal pardon if he surrendered honorably.

He suspected the suggestion had come straight from General Howe.

Rush scanned the room. Congress was down to barely a quorum—at times, fewer than twenty would show for the daily meetings in the courthouse across the street in this rude frontier town of western Pennsylvania, nearly a hundred miles from the front lines of the war.

General Thomas Mifflin, former quartermaster of the army and now a member of the Board of War, sat in a booth in the opposite corner of the tavern room, head bent low, obviously plotting away with several members of Congress, joined by the recently promoted General Thomas Conway, who would leave tomorrow as newly appointed inspector general of the army.

Rush sighed and looked back at his after-dinner companion, General Horatio Gates, hero of Saratoga, who had arrived from northern New York
to confer with Congress as to the current course of the war and to head up the newly created Board of War.

“Do I have your attention again, Dr. Rush?” Gates asked, his tone a bit peevish.

Rush sighed and rubbed his eyes.

“My apologies, sir. It has been a long day, and the arrival of this post from Philadelphia distracted me. I had to read it at once.”

“I pray the news is good, sir,” Gates replied.

Rush nodded.

“The British are respecting my property as promised to my wife by the surgeons I worked with after Brandywine.”