Saratoga (2 page)

"Sorry, lad," he said. "We'll have to do this the hard way."

Grabbing him by the collar, Skoyles began to drag him slowly across the grass with his left hand. Ottley did not protest. He pressed the bundle of clothing against his stomach, gritted his teeth and prayed. They had gone almost a mile before Skoyles passed out.

"Take a swig of this, Jamie," Tom Caffrey suggested, offering him a bottle of rum. "It's going to hurt."

"Where am I?"

"Not far from the camp. One of the Indians found you."

Skoyles had opened his eyes to look up at the reassuring face of his closest friend, Sergeant Tom Caffrey, an assistant surgeon with the regiment. The wounded officer lay on the ground where he had fallen. Caffrey had stripped him to the waist so that he could get at the wound to extract the musket ball, exposing a slim, muscular body that bore the scars of earlier battles. Brain still swimming, Skoyles recalled how he had come to be in that part of the wood.

"Where's Ottley?" he asked.

"Forget about him."

"See to him first, Tom. I can wait."

"The boy is way past my help," said Caffrey sadly. "There was so much damage to his innards that no surgeon in the world could have recovered him. Besides, I got here too late. He was already dead, Jamie."

"Damnation!"

"They've taken him back to camp for burial."

"I let the poor lad down."

Burning with remorse, Skoyles was also furious with himself for having
unwittingly led Farrar and Ottley into an ambush. Both of the soldiers had paid for the mistake with their lives. Killing three rebels did not atone for the deaths of his men. Skoyles was chastened. His attempt to get Ottley to a place where he could receive medical attention had been doomed from the start. During the latter part of the exhausting journey, Skoyles had probably been dragging a corpse.

"Tell me what happened, Jamie," said Caffrey. "It will give you something to think about while I'm hunting for that piece of lead you've got lodged inside you." He held a bottle to Skoyles's lips. "Only drink this first. You'll need it."

Skoyles took a long sip of rum and let it course through him. It helped to steel him against what lay ahead. With his eyes closed, he told his friend what had befallen them in the wood. Caffrey, meanwhile, cleaned away the dried blood so that he could ease open the wound and search for the musket ball with his probe. Skoyles felt as if he had been shot all over again, and he winced, but he made no complaint. He simply raised his voice to tell his tale with more deliberation.

Caffrey worked quickly but carefully. He was a solid man in his forties with broad shoulders, a barrel chest, and thick arms. His face had a ruddy complexion, a broken nose, and the kind of pleasant ugliness that women somehow found disarming. The son of a Devon butcher, he had unaccountably ended up as an army surgeon. The irony of the situation never ceased to amuse him.

"We lost our way, Jamie," he said, probing gently until he made contact with the ball. "Both of us. We betrayed our birthright. Your father was a doctor, saving lives, whereas you get paid to take them. I come from a family of butchers, yet I spend all my time treating the effects of butchery—for what else are British soldiers except sides of beef, ready for the slab?" He twisted the instrument then pulled it gently toward him. "Got the little bugger!" he declared, holding the blood-covered musket ball on the palm of his hand. "You were very lucky. It missed the bone."

"I don't
feel
lucky, Tom."

"No, it must have hurt like hell." He cleaned the wound again so that he could stitch it up. "What you need now is a long rest."

"No," said Skoyles, trying to sit up, "I've got to lead a burial detail back to the place where it happened."

"Lie still," said Caffrey, pushing him gently down again with a hand on his
chest. "I need to do some embroidery on you. And don't worry about Sam Farrar. The Indian scouts will find him easily enough. All they have to do is to follow the trail of blood that Nick Ottley left behind."

"I have to show them where I hid those muskets."

"All in good time, Jamie."

Skoyles recoiled slightly as the needle penetrated his skin, but he made no sound. Now that the musket ball was out, he was ready to bear any pain. What he was not prepared for was the shock that awaited him.

"You'll have plenty of time for this shoulder to heal," said the other with his soft West Country burr. "The fighting is over for this year."

"What do you mean?"

"General Carleton has decided to turn back."

"The devil he has!" exclaimed Skoyles, stung by the news. "Have we come all this way to let the rebels off the hook? It's lunacy, Tom!"

"It's orders."

"Then they're bloody stupid orders. Why, in the bowels of Christ, must we retreat when we're only fifteen miles from Fort Ticonderoga? Take that and we destroy their northern army."

"Only after a long siege and that would take us into winter."

"Not if we strike hard enough."

"There are twelve thousand men in Ticonderoga, Jamie. They could hold out for months. By that time, we'll all have frozen to death."

"There are
reports
of a large garrison," argued Skoyles. "But I don't believe a word of them. They're devised to frighten us off. And even if there were that number at the fort, what state would they be in?"

"A better one than you at this moment."

"No, Tom. They'll be like those three ragamuffins I killed this afternoon—human scarecrows without a decent uniform or a pair of good boots among them. They looked as if they hadn't eaten for a month." With an effort of will, Skoyles sat up, glad that his friend had finished his sutures. "For heaven's sake, we have them on the run. Doesn't our commander appreciate that?"

"General Carleton is a cautious man."

"This is not caution—it's fucking madness!"

"Calm down, Jamie," said Caffrey.

But Skoyles was seething. "We chase the rebels out of Canada," he said with passion. "We build a fleet so that we can pursue them down Lake Champlain.
We demolish their makeshift navy, and when we reach Crown Point, we discover that they've burned the fort and taken to their heels." He pointed with his left hand. "You saw those corpses that we found littering the ground. They were riddled with smallpox. The garrison was so anxious to escape that they didn't even bother to bury their dead. The rebels are there for the taking, Tom. What else does General Carleton
need?
"

"Warmer weather."

"Strike now or we lose a golden opportunity."

"I agree with you, Jamie," said the other, wiping the blood off his probe and needle before putting them away with his other instruments, "but, for some strange reason, I wasn't consulted on the matter."

"General Burgoyne would have been consulted, and so would General Phillips. Neither of them would want to give up when victory was within our grasp."

"They were overruled, Jamie. We head north tomorrow."

Skoyles was rocked. "
All
of us?"

"Every man jack."

"We give Crown Point back to the rebels?"

"So it seems."

"Then why bother to take it from them in the first place?" Anger had dulled the pain in his shoulder and roused his spirit. "Whoever controls Crown Point has mastery of the lake. At the very least, we should leave a garrison here."

"It would take too many men to rebuild the fort."

"The rebels will rebuild it. As soon as we move out, they'll occupy it again and strengthen its defenses. Christ Almighty!" said Skoyles in exasperation. "We're supposed to be at war with the bastards. We should hold on to every inch of land that we take from them."

"Not with the winter coming, Jamie. It can be very harsh." Caffrey stood up and gave a shrug. "General Carleton has made the decision. We pull out tomorrow and withdraw to St. John's."

"Shit!" cried Skoyles.

The word summed up his day perfectly.

CHAPTER TWO

W
hen he set sail for America for the third time, Lieutenant General Sir John Burgoyne did so with mixed feelings. He was still grieving over the death of his wife, Charlotte, dogged by guilt and haunted by the fact that he was three thousand miles away when the tragedy occurred. The prospect of another voyage across the treacherous waters of the North Atlantic was not an enticing one and was bound to induce a certain amount of dread even in someone as supremely confident as Burgoyne. But his sadness and his apprehension were tempered by a quiet elation because he was returning to the colonies with an exciting new status. After some skillful lobbying in London, Burgoyne had gotten himself appointed to command the army that was to launch another invasion from Canada. It was the ideal cure for seasickness.

Burgoyne's ambition had been fulfilled. His plan of campaign had been approved, and he had been given command in place of his erstwhile superior, Sir Guy Carleton, governor of Canada. There remained the small problem of handing over the letter communicating the news to Carleton—a proud Irishman who would take it as an insult—but Burgoyne believed that he could soften the impact with some honey-tongued diplomacy. In doing so, he would take special care to conceal the fact that he had deliberately undermined Carleton's position during meetings with the secretary of state for the colonies. Burgoyne had no qualms about doing that. He was convinced that he was the better man for the job, and the more deserving of the glory that it would surely bring.

His ship was the
Apollo
, a square-rigged, three-masted frigate that traveled in convoy with various transports. Burgoyne's reinforcements consisted largely of hired soldiers from Germany. The holds of the vessels were packed
with muskets, bayonets, ammunition, private tents, bell tents, drum cases, powder bags, hatchets, kettles, canteens, knapsacks, axes, forage ropes, picket ropes, blankets, water buckets, and all the other paraphernalia of military life. While Burgoyne ensured that the
Apollo
carried a substantial store of champagne, brandy, and claret, the Germans had less control over their baggage. Instead of the consignment of boots that had been ordered, they were sailing with a vast quantity of dancing pumps and ladies' slippers, clear evidence that the contractor was either monstrously inefficient or possessed of a wicked sense of humor.

A single day in oceanic waters could be a trial by ordeal. To spend, as they did, almost five weeks at sea was a test of nerve and endurance that many were destined to fail. Crammed together belowdecks, the men who were due to fight for paltry wages were fed on the meanest rations and subjected to the stink of vomit, the stench of unwashed bodies, and the most primitive sanitary arrangements. Water was green with algae, hardtack was alive with weevils, beef was like salted teak. Scurvy and other diseases soon began to claim some of the passengers.

But it was the sea itself that was the greatest danger. Whipped by the wind and rain, it frothed with fury and tossed the vessels, making it almost impossible for them to remain in convoy. On good days, there was the ceaseless swell and the stiff breeze; on bad ones, there was a violent tempest that turned the sea into colossal liquid mountains that threatened to drown every last one of them. Sudden waves could scour a deck and sweep even the most sure-footed sailors overboard. The noise was deafening, the discomfort extreme. As the convoy zigzagged its way across the Atlantic, the death toll slowly rose.

Burgoyne took advantage of periods of calmer weather to enjoy the voyage as best he could. He dined with the captain and with his officers, drank copious quantities of claret, played cards, and listened to a trio of musicians. Parading his men on deck, he tried to keep up their spirits with words of encouragement, telling them, with a confiding smile, that the horrors they were now suffering were worse than anything they would meet in the line of fire. Burgoyne could see the misery etched in their faces, and he knew that not all of them would survive to step ashore on Canadian soil.

It was not something that troubled him overmuch. Casualties were unavoidable. Burgoyne was about to write an important new chapter in his life, and he tried to direct all his attention to that end. Brooding on the fate of
some of his fellow passengers would only hamper him. His prime objective was to wage a successful campaign against the American rebels. Having left England with some misgivings, he was certain that he would return as a national hero.

Everyone was heartened when land finally came into sight. There was even greater relief when the flotilla entered the huge St. Lawrence estuary. Winter had been relatively mild, and the ice had started to melt earlier than usual. As they sailed upriver, they had to contend with a continual uproar as the surging runoff buffeted the massive chunks of ice that came floating down from the Great Lakes. There were compensations. In place of the turbulent sea that stretched for miles in every direction, the passengers could now look out on spectacular panoramas.

Thick forest adorned both banks, broken from time to time by a sudden clearing, a sparkling river, or a glistening lake and dominated by majestic mountain ranges that seemed to stretch to infinity. In the distance, a first waterfall was glimpsed, bursting over some rocks with foaming power before disappearing from sight among the pine and maple trees. Colors were dazzling in the bright sunlight. The enormous scale of it all was breathtaking.

Burgoyne was content. Thanks to the timely thaw, they would be arriving in Quebec a fortnight earlier than he had anticipated. It was a good omen. His ship finally sailed into the harbor on May 6, 1777, and he celebrated his arrival in characteristic fashion. Making light of the onerous voyage, he donned his dress uniform and took up his stance on the quarterdeck, adopting the military pose he had used when having his portrait painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

They were waiting for him. Regiments stationed in the city were lined up to greet him and to welcome the reinforcements he had brought from England. When the gangplank of the
Apollo
was eventually lowered, the first person to walk down it was the tall, handsome, debonair Lieutenant General John Burgoyne in his scarlet coat with gold piping and epaulets, white waistcoat and breeches, and gleaming black boots. Now in his midfifties, he was a warrior in his prime, looking less like a weary passenger than a triumphant leader about to claim a coveted prize. Showing the white lace at his cuffs, he waved a friendly greeting to the assembled ranks of redcoats. A resounding cheer went up from the soldiers at the quayside.