Vanderslice looked at Marcus. Swift looked at the ceiling.
“We wanted to use it for target practice. Sir,” Marcus replied, looking Moulder in the eye. He struck Marcus as a bully, and Marcus had some experience with them. “It was my doing. Vanderslice and Swift tried to stop me.”
Vanderslice’s mouth gaped open in astonishment. This was not at all what had happened. At Princeton, Marcus had climbed up on Swift’s shoulder and used a British bayonet taken from the battlefield to behead the portrait of the king. Vanderslice had encouraged him every step of the way.
Swift shot Marcus an approving glance.
“And who the hell are you?” Moulder’s eyes narrowed.
“Mar—Galen Chauncey.” Marcus still tended to blurt out his baptismal name when under stress.
“We call him Doc,” Vanderslice volunteered.
“Doc? You’re not from Philadelphia. And I don’t remember signing you up,” Moulder replied.
“No. That was me, Captain.” Cuthbert lied with breezy assurance, the mark of someone skilled at fabrication. “Distant cousin. From Delaware. He’s a good shot. Thought he could be useful manning a musket in case the cannon were overrun.”
This tale of Marcus’s origins was complete fiction, but it served to quiet the captain—at least about how he’d become a part of Moulder’s regiment.
Moulder spread the piece of canvas wide. There was little left of the face of George III. The eyes were gone, the mouth was nothing more than a gaping hole, and the monarch’s powdered hair was peppered with shot.
“Well, at least one thing you’ve told me is true,” Moulder admitted. “The boy is a good shot.”
“Doc saved my life at Princeton,” Swift said. “Put a ball right through the eye of a British soldier. And he doctored the lieutenant’s hand when he burned it. Useful boy to have around, sir.”
“And these?” Moulder picked up two brass semicircles, finely engraved, that had been found in Marcus’s haversack when the captain searched it for other spoils of battle. “Don’t tell me they’re medical instruments.”
“Quadrants,” Swift replied. “Or they will be when we’re through with them.”
In addition to the head of George III, Marcus had taken the two pieces from the orrery that stood outside the room where he’d found the king’s portrait. Other soldiers had smashed the glass and part of the fine mechanism that marked the passage of the planets across the sky. He had pocketed what remained because it reminded him of his mother, and home.
“General Washington is bound to hear about this target practice of yours.” Moulder sighed. “What do you propose I tell him, Swift?”
“I’d let him think Captain Hamilton did it,” Swift replied. “That popinjay likes to take credit for everything, whether he’s responsible or not.”
There was no denying it, and Captain Moulder didn’t even try.
“Get out of my sight, all of you,” Moulder said wearily. “I will tell the general that Lieutenant Cuthbert has already disciplined you. And I’m docking your pay.”
“Pay?” Swift guffawed. “What pay?”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll see to it that nothing like this happens again.” Cuthbert took Swift by the scruff of the neck. “Enjoy your lunch, sir.”
Outside the tent, Vanderslice, Swift, and Marcus were greeted by silence. Then the pats on the back started, the offers of swallows of rum and gin, the proud smiles.
“Thanks, Doc,” Vanderslice said, relieved that he was not going to be beaten.
“You lie like an Irishman, Doc,” Adam Swift said, clapping his hat on his head. “I knew I liked you.”
“The Associators take care of their own,” Cuthbert murmured in Marcus’s ear. “You’re one of us now.”
For the first time since leaving Joshua and Zeb in Hadley, Marcus felt that he belonged.
* * *
—
SEVERAL DAYS AFTER being hauled before Moulder, Marcus and Vanderslice were sharing what qualified as a fire in Washington’s winter encampment: a pile of damp logs that smoked and gave off very little heat. He had no feeling in his fingers or toes, and the air was so cold that it seared the skin before burning a pathway into his lungs.
The frigid temperatures made conversation difficult, but Vanderslice was undeterred. The only topic that the boy refused to discuss was his life before he became part of the Philadelphia artillery company. This was the root of the friendship that had sprung up between Marcus and Vanderslice. While most of the soldiers talked about nothing but their mothers, the girls they’d left behind, and male relatives who were fighting for Washington in other regiments, it was as though Marcus and Vanderslice had been born in November and only remembered life with the Associators: their retreat from Manhattan following the loss of Ft. Washington, the battle at Trenton at Christmas, and the most recent battle near the college at Princeton.
“‘Two angels came down from the north; one named Fire, the other Frost; Frost said to Fire go away, go away; / in the name of Jesus go away,’” Vanderslice said, blowing on his cold-reddened fingers. He had only one glove, and kept swapping it back and forth between his hands.
“Wonder if we could expel the cold if we said it backward.” Marcus burrowed into the woolen muffler he’d taken off a dead soldier after the battle at Princeton.
“Probably. Prayers have power,” Vanderslice replied. “Do you know any others?”
“Frostbite in January, amputate in July.” It was more of a prophecy than a prayer, but Marcus shared it anyway.
“You can’t fool me, Yankee. You didn’t learn that in church.” Vanderslice reached into his pocket and pulled out a small flask. “Want a nip of rum? It’s got gunpowder in it, to give you courage.”
Marcus took a precautionary sniff.
“You’ll shit your brains out if you drink any more of that,” he said, returning the flask to Vanderslice. “It’s castor oil.”
Lieutenant Cuthbert strode toward the fire, attracting the attention of the other Associators who gathered around to see what was afoot.
“You’re in a hurry,” Adam Swift remarked in his decidedly Irish drawl. He had been one of the first to sign up when the Associators were established, and was Cuthbert’s de facto second-in-command.
“We’re going home.” Cuthbert quickly hushed the cries of relief. “I heard it from one of the whores, who learned it from one of Washington’s aides, who heard the general talking to the other officers.”
Conversation burst out between members of the regiment as they began making plans for what they’d do once they were back home. Marcus shivered as the cold whistled through his coat. Philadelphia was no home to him. He would have to find another regiment to join—and soon. Maybe he would have to change his name again. If Washington was breaking up their winter camp and sending everyone back home, Marcus would need somewhere to go.
“You coming with us, Doc?” Swift elbowed Marcus in the ribs.
Marcus smiled and nodded, but there was a cold knot in his stomach. He didn’t have any skills that would be useful in Philadelphia. There wouldn’t be farm work until spring.
“Of course Doc is coming. He’s going to hang a shingle outside German Gerty’s and sell his medical services,” Cuthbert said. “I’ll stand outside and testify to your skill.” He held up his thumb.
“Let me see that.” Marcus stood, his cold joints creaking at the change in position. What he wouldn’t give for some of Tom Buckland’s liniment to soothe the ache in his bones.
Obediently, Cuthbert offered his hand to Marcus. Marcus looked at it closely, pushing up Cuthbert’s sleeve to examine the arm as well. At Princeton, Cuthbert had grabbed the wrong end of a gun brush, and some of the wire had become embedded in his thumb. It was still angry and red, but not nearly as swollen as it had been.
“No red streaks. That’s good—no infection.” Marcus probed the skin around the wound. There was a bit of discharge, but not much. “You must have the constitution of an ox, Lieutenant.”