The morn of our departure I saw a crow fall from the sky. Eben saw it too and shot me a worried glance, for it was an omen of disaster. I opened my haversack and pulled out my small tin box, which held the last of the salt from my rations. I pinched it in my fingers and threw it over my left shoulder to ward off the bad luck.
“Should have gone over the right shoulder,” Eben said.
I did not answer him.
We stopped at Newtown in Pennsylvania and took on a wagon filled with heavy barrels of salted beef bought for the army. The roads were little more than rivers of mud, and the wagons got stuck over and over again, making us late by several days.
We arrived at the Gulph, the spot of the winter encampment, as the rain turned into falling bits of ice. There was no army to be seen, just a vast field of mud around a small stone house.
Captain Stanwell ordered the Eighth Company to take their muskets and stand guard, then he went into the house with his sergeants. Our company stood upwind of the wagons, for the barrels had begun to stink. We blew on our hands, rubbed our arms, and stomped our feet to keep warm. Bits of ice bounced from the brims of our hats.
“They brung us to the wrong place,” said Silvenus. “We’re gonna march all winter and then the British will shoot us dead.”
Brown coughed and muttered in agreement.
“No,” Greenlaw said firmly. “Look at the boot prints in the mud, the remains of fire pits.” He pointed behind us. “You can even see where the tent pegs were driven in the ground. They were here.”
“They ain’t here now,” Burns snarled.
“Here comes the sergeant,” said one of the Janacks.
Captain Stanwell and his officers walked out of the house as the falling ice turned to thick flakes of snow. The captain mounted his horse and started down the road that led west as companies scrambled to follow him.
Sergeant Woodruff hurried toward us, leapt into the wagon, and picked up the reins.
“What did you learn, Uncle?” Eben asked. “Where are we going?”
“The army moved to a new camp. If we make haste, we might reach it by nightfall.” He turned up his collar. “Captain says it’s in a more secure location. Let’s hope he’s right.”
“Where is it, sir?” I asked.
“Valley Forge.”
Part II
CHAPTER XIV
Sunday, December 21, 1777
WHAT THEN IS TO BECOME OF THE ARMY THIS WINTER?
—GEORGE WASHINGTON, WRITING FROM VALLEY FORGE TO CONTINENTAL CONGRESS PRESIDENT HENRY LAURENS
IWHISTLED AS WE TRUDGED ALONG the muddy road.
Yes, I was hungry, footsore, tired, and cold. But it mattered not, for we were a few hours away from the winter encampment.
“How can you be in such good humor?” Greenlaw asked.
Eben, walking a few paces ahead alongside his distant cousins and Burns, glanced back, but he quickly turned around when I stared at him. We had been avoiding each other since Kingston.
“I was in Morristown last winter,” I said. (This was truth.) “With the army.” (A half-truth.) “We had a grand time.” (Falsehood.)
“Did you have parties?” Benjamin Edwards asked. “With ladies who liked to dance and drink punch?”
This caused much hooting and laughter and shoving of poor Edwards’s form. He protested loudly until we stopped.
“No dancing or punch, but we had regular rations,” I said once we were again under way. “And there was plenty of firewood. And a commissary with fresh clothes and blankets.” (All true, tho’ Isabel and I partook of none of it as we had no proper ties to the army.)
Everyone groaned with pleasure at the notion. Our blankets had been worn bare since Saratoga and our clothes had not fared better. I wore the shirt I stole off the redcoat; my own shirt had been reduced to the rags that I wore around my hands and neck. Eben’s only shirt had barely survived the washerwomen of Albany. Luke Greenlaw hadn’t worn stockings for weeks and his coat was worn through at both elbows. Both of the Janack twins wrapped scarves over their heads on cold mornings, for their hats had been stolen one night in an Albany tavern. The shoes of old man Silvenus were made more of dirt than leather. He felt it necessary to remind us of this every day.
We were a filthy pack of tatterdemalions.
Greenlaw picked a bug crawling along his sleeve. “I can’t figure how the officers are going to fill our hours. Won’t be any fighting. General Washington might as well send us home till spring. We could come back after Easter, thrash the British, and return home in time to plant the corn.”
“Ha!” exclaimed Silvenus. “His Excellency is no fool. He’ll keep us busy a’marching and a’drilling because if we left for home, he might never see us again.”
“The fellows at Morristown kept busy,” I said. “They made musketballs, repaired guns, rolled cartridges; they had more to do than hours to do it in.”
“What was your role?” asked Greenlaw. “Adviser to General Washington on the proper method of stone throwing?”
I waited for the laughter to die down. I had, in fact, once served General Washington a dinner of steak and kidney pie at my master’s house in New York. But they would never believe that.
“I worked with a blacksmith,” I said, which was both true and believable. “Warmest job in the entire camp. I’ll wager you right now I’ll get to do it again. Blacksmiths don’t want clumsy oafs helping them in the forge. They need skilled chaps like me.”
I stumbled upon a new thought and near tripped over a rut in the road. In Morristown some of the officers had hired privates to be their manservants for the winter. I was well suited to the task, and it would be less work and more comfort than working the bellows and breathing charcoal fumes at a blacksmith’s. Once I got my bearings in Valley Forge, I’d make inquiries.
“I have no use for poxy blacksmiths or generals’ advisers,” grumbled Silvenus. “I need a cobbler before my shoes lie down and die.”
“I’d be content with a cook,” Greenlaw said.
The sun was in the west by the time we made our way up the winding road to the encampment. We passed by a first, then a second set of guards and were directed to a road that branched away from the river. All of us had fallen quiet. The sunset burned red, a coal buried deep in ash.
Darkness fell a mile later. We passed campfires ringed by tired-looking fellows warming their hands, tents pitched like sagging ghosts behind them. There was little talk. No laughter. On the far side of a muddy field stood a collection of large marquee tents fashioned for high-ranking officers, with room for proper furniture like beds and tables and chairs. Shadows moved inside them.
We removed our muskets, tents, and cook kettles from the wagon, then watched as the sergeant drove it into the darkness, taking with him Burns and Eben to help with the unloading of the beef barrels. He’d told us to wait whilst the captain reported to the general’s staff.
The first stars shone overhead.
“Thought you said there’d be food,” Greenlaw groused at me.
“The sergeant will bring back our rations,” I said, still pretending to be an authority on winter encampments.
We fell quiet enough to hear the voices in the officers’ tents, as well as loud voices in the distance. Then Sergeant Woodruff and another Massachusetts officer ran past us without a word, straight to the tent that the captain had entered.
“That don’t bode well,” muttered Silvenus.
Shadows in the tent rushed to and fro like puppets on a stage, and then there came all manner of shouting and foul explosions of language.
“What are they carrying on about?” Silvenus asked.
The sergeants burst out of the tent, putting an end to our palaver.
“Follow me,” spat Sergeant Woodruff. “Not a word.”
We tripped our way across a flat field in the darkness until we neared campfires bright enough to show a long line of cannons. The air smelled of burning wood, but not of roasting meat or bread. The fellows r
ound their fires were uncommonly quiet.
Sergeant Woodruff halted. “Gather round,” he said low.
We formed a circle around him. Eben and Burns had caught up with us but stood a few paces away.
“The blasted meat is spoilt,” the sergeant said. “Every bite of it.”
A few fellows groaned.
Sergeant Woodruff dropped his voice to a whisper. “The brine didn’t have enough salt in it. Likely a British trick; they’ve been paying merchants to sell us spoiled goods, according to the officers. Some flour is due to arrive from Reading in the morning. That will tide us over.”
Greenlaw could not keep quiet. “We haven’t eaten all day, sir!”
The sergeant raised his hands in warning. “Most of the soldiers here haven’t eaten for two days.”
“I smelled food by the officers’ tents,” Greenlaw protested. “Surely they should share it.”
The sergeant pointed at him. “That is the last word out of you on that subject, Private Greenlaw. Officers get fed first and best; that’s the way of the army, and you shall not question it.”
Greenlaw breathed hard but bit back his reply.
“Most of the Sixteenth Massachusetts will be sent to forage tomorrow. Our company has been attached to Fourth New Hampshire. We’ll camp with them in the morning. Tonight you’ll pitch your tents near those”—he pointed toward the shadows beyond the firelight—“with the artillery.”
“Uncle,” Eben asked softly, “wouldn’t it be better to find the New Hampshire barracks tonight?”
“There are no barracks.” The sergeant rubbed the back of his neck. “Not yet. His Excellency General Washington has ordered the army to manufacture a city of logs. Each squad is building themselves a cabin. Only he calls them ‘huts,’ the way they do in Virginia.”
“Where do we sleep until the hut is finished?” Silvenus asked.
“In your tents,” the sergeant answered bluntly. “Which you will now pitch.”
“This is madness,” Burns muttered.
Much as I loathed him, I agreed.
We fumbled with stiff fingers to put up the tents in the dark, but it was impossible. At last we laid the canvas on the ground and laid ourselves upon it. I was forced to sleep at the edge, with one side next to Eben and the other exposed to the night air. I wiggled until my back no longer touched his, then pulled up my collar, pulled down my hat, and tried to warm myself with thoughts of blazing bonfires and buckets of hot tea. Brown coughed without cease until Silvenus cursed at him. After that, he coughed with his face buried in his arms. Above his cough, I heard owls, the wind, and a chant echoing from campfire to campfire: “No meat!”
Thousands of hungry soldiers took up the cry. “No meat! No meat! No meat! No meat!”
CHAPTER XV
Monday, December 22, 1777
THREE DAYS SUCCESSIVELY, WE HAVE BEEN DESTITUTE OF BREAD. TWO DAYS WE HAVE BEEN INTIRELY WITHOUT MEAT. . . . THE MEN MUST BE SUPPLIED, OR THEY CANNOT BE COMMANDED.
—RHODE ISLAND GENERAL JAMES VARNUM’S REPORT TO GEORGE WASHINGTON IN THE EARLY DAYS OF VALLEY FORGE
WE WOKE TO THE SOUND OF CRASHING drums, the brigade’s drummer boys pounding out the reveille five paces from where we lay.
“Get up! Rise! Rise!” shouted officers far and near.
We were all dusted with frost like loaves of bread sprinkled with flour. One by one, we sat up and struggled to our feet. Greenlaw and Faulkner stumbled off in search of privy holes. Peter Brown rolled to the middle of the damp canvas, curled on his side, and coughed without cease.
Eben sat rubbing his hands together. “I’m a brick of ice.”
“Your mouth isn’t froze shut,” Silvenus said.
I walked briskly to and fro, slapping my hands against my arms to warm my blood. Eben said nothing to me, but he followed my example.
After more officer shouts and drum calls, we marched to the large, muddy field we’d crossed the night before, aswarm now with thousands of ill-dressed soldiers, even more drummer boys, a few fife players, and officers trying to turn the maelstrom into something orderly.
“This is called the Grand Parade,” explained Sergeant Woodruff.
’Twas neither grand nor a parade, but I kept that notion to myself.
The sergeant looked down our line. “Where’s Brown?”
“He didn’t get up,” called Faulkner.
The sergeant sighed and pointed to the Janack twins. “Go back. If he’s that poorly, take him to the hospital tent.”
“What if he’s dead?” asked one.
“He is not permitted to be dead!” snapped the sergeant. “The rest of you, shut yer gawps and stand proper.”
I’d never stood roll in such a large and bedraggled company. Ancient blankets were wrapped round the shoulders of a lucky few. Many more stood in torn shirts with neither waistcoat nor greatcoat to keep out the cold. The sight of soldiers standing barefooted in the snow gave me a right shock. My own toes, warm and dry in my British boots, curled in horror. I blew on my stiff fingers and stuck them in my armpits to warm them up. How many days could a fellow go shoeless in the snow before the cold killed his toes and the doctors had to cut them off?
Sergeant Woodruff took our company’s report—fourteen present, two present but unable to appear at roll, and four sick—to a lieutenant. He returned holding a cloth bag close to his chest. I studied it hard. A small side of bacon might fit in a bag such as that. A collection of biscuits would too, or bread, or cheese. Eggs. No, not eggs. They’d be long broken, or served to the highest-ranking officers. But it might contain oats. Or dried beans or peas. Mayhaps gingercake.
My belly rumbled.
After collecting the regiments’ reports, an officer in a blue coat delivered a long paper to the officer of the day, who stood at the front of us all. He glanced at it, then shouted out orders from General Washington. Any soldier who fired his musket without permission would suffer twenty lashes on his back immediately. Major General Sullivan was going to build a bridge over the river. Each hut would soon be issued one pail for carrying water from the creek.
Finally, he nodded to the drummer standing to his left. The boy beat his sticks crisply as a woman wearing a muddy skirt, a man’s greatcoat, and oversized shoes was led to the front. The way she held her head high reminded me of Isabel.
The officer shouted that this washerwoman from Virginia was being drummed out of the camp for stealing food. No one in the camp was allowed to help the woman, and if she was seen in the camp again, she would be arrested. She started shouting so loud, we could not hear the fellow’s last words. The washerwoman was led away, screeching like a scalded cat, by two tall fellows carrying muskets.
“But it’s wintertime,” Eben protested as we walked off the field. “’Tain’t right! Where will she go?”
“Hush, boy,” scolded his uncle. “The general has to keep discipline. It’s none of our concern. Besides”—he hefted the cloth bag—“it’s time for grub.”
CHAPTER XVI
Monday, December 22, 1777
“WHAT HAVE YOU FOR YOUR DINNER, BOYS?” “NOTHING BUT FIRE CAKE AND WATER, SIR.” “. . . WHAT IS YOUR SUPPER, LADS?” “FIRE CAKE AND WATER, SIR.”
—DIARY OF DR. ALBIGENCE WALDO, SURGEON, FIRST CONNECTICUT REGIMENT, VALLEY FORGE
THE CLOTH BAG HELD ONLY COARSE-ground flour.
“A pox on all the generals in the world,” swore Silvenus after the sergeant left us. “We’ve got to make firecake.”
“What’s that?” asked Eben.
Silvenus swore violently. I cannot tell you the words he used out of respect for your tender ears.
“You two”—he pointed at Aaron and Henry—“fetch us water from that creek yonder. The rest of you build the fire higher and then find me rocks the size of your hand or bigger. I’ll borrow a cook pot from somewhere.”
We were all dazed with hunger and lack of sleep and did as he demanded without question. Once the rocks were gathered, Silvenus picked out the flattest an
d made us rinse them in the creek before he set them right on the coals of the fire.
With all of the elements in place, the cooking began.
Silvenus slowly poured our flour into the pot of muddy water, stopping every now and then to stir the concoction with a bayonet blade until it was thick as stonemason’s mortar. Then Greenlaw, who had the longest arms of us all, wrapped his hand in some rags to shield it from the heat and spread the dough onto the stones with the blade. We crouched around the fire, wordless. The dough hissed and sputtered. One of the rocks exploded, sending a piece of firecake into the heart of the flames.
Fellows from the artillery units gathered behind us.
“We had firecake three times yesterday,” one said. “Best eat when they’re hot enough to burn your tongue. That way, you don’t taste so much.”
I’d expected to smell bread, for bread was little more than flour and water. Instead, the firecakes gave off a scorched smell, like damp charcoal. The thinnest of the smears caught fire right atop the rock.
“Must be they’re ready,” Silvenus said.
Greenlaw wrapped his hand again and chiseled each piece free, then scooped them from the rock and laid them atop his haversack spread on the ground. Smoke rose from the charred edges.
“Who’s first?” Silvenus asked.
A few fellows shook their heads and stepped backward.
“I’ll take a piece,” I said.
“Good lad.” Silvenus broke a piece of firecake in two pieces, handed one to me, and bit into the other.
I did the same.
“What’s it taste like?” asked Greenlaw.
“Ashes and dirt.” I gnawed the hot splinters. “It’s hard enough to break rat’s teeth.”
Silvenus held up another piece. “Are ye real soldiers, or boys who just want to march in the sunshine? Eat this to find out. Who’s next?”
“Not me,” Burns said. “I’m off to find something better.”