TEARS OF THE FOOT GUARDS

ADAIGO - STAVE XXX

S T A V E

XXX

26th June, 1778

On the March from Philadelphia –

Hot night. Feels like death. Obedience in a sticky heat trying to sleep, the kind that wraps from legs to neck, made worse by the warm ground. A heat like fever that magnifies sound – Billy Gill, in her dream, raging. She mops his brow. He mumbles, but she can't make it out and lays him down near the fire pit with its hiss of green wood, the flames beating. Mosquitos buzz her face. Marshland frogs chirp. Jaruesha Tree snores. Friday, Billy died on a Friday. Friday's Child is filled with woe . . . Too hot to breathe . . . Billy doesn't breathe. He's dead and then he's gone . . . She feels herself walking. Nine days on the march. The baggage train, miles long, on the hot, sandy road; it gets in your shoes and works up blisters. Your feet burn. She holds onto a wagon that pulls her. A cut on her cheek. It throbs and is swollen. She opens her eyes to stare at the night.

Sleep. She shutters in exhaustion.

"Push it," the Highland sergeant cries. Obedience, Grace and Jaruesha try to rock the

wagon wheel. Rain pummels them. "Push," the sergeant cries again and leans in with a shoulder. Mud sucks at their shoes. Soldiers march around them. Some give a hand. The wagon lurches and Obedience falls, her cheek smacking the wheel's iron tire. The soldiers leave her there in the mud, facedown. Grace and Jaruesha pick her up. "You all right?" Jaruesha asks. Jaruesha asks! And then the three of them are standing in the village where the army's camped. Soldiers and women on the 'grab' in broad daylight; if a villager resists, they're beaten to within an inch of their life. Some past an inch, 'til the dragoons come, rounding the looters up – three soldiers and a woman marched to a tree with their hands tied; the men are weeping, the woman looks unsure 'til a bag is put over her head and she screams. An officer unsheathes his sword and stabs them in the heart . . . Waste not powder.

She props up on an elbow. Fire pits flank the road on either side; the baggage column laid down where it'd stopped outside the village of Freehold. Nine days out of Philadelphia, a great Column many miles long: Women, Civilians, Troops with a line of wagons. They're to march to Sandy Hook to rendezvous with Lord Howe and be ferried to New York. Washington followed and General Gates coming down with his army, the same army that took Burgoyne. A rumour of battle, the baggage train harassed by enemy fire. Clinton ordered the columns switched with the baggage train in the middle and the elite, under Lord Cornwallis, to the rear – a restless Cornwallis, back from England. As for Henry Clinton, he welcomed a fight, anything to save face from this Retreat. How it will be perceived. What it looks like, and this, his first act of command. He pitched camp for a Resting Day, clean Arms and prepare . . .

She gets up to pee. A mosquito bites her cheek. She slaps. Slaps again as she trudges off to a field. Her urine's strong; she's drunk little water. In the summer kitchen, it'd be hot, but was theirs, and away from this rotten crew – the god-awful barracks with soldiers pissing behind doors, under stairs, shitting in corners and shoveling it into cellars when not burning it to keep warm 'cause the Latrines, doubling as open graves, stunk to high heaven. A Shit-Hole – Philadelphia, despite the Balls and Plays and the great Mischianza. The Army made it so. Too long a welcome. And Billy off to London so others can sort it out. The Peace Talks fail, the Commissioners hamstrung with the Army's departure. Tories load furniture into carts. Officers stuffed their saddlebags with plunder; they can hardly mount. Clinton sends the Anspach regiments by sea in fear of their desertion. A French fleet could appear at any time. Clinton left the Rebels nothing: cannon too large to trail with speed were spiked and dumped into the river, tons of salt pork drowned as well. Shipyards torched. Bales of cloth and blankets burned. He kept the rum, the Army would mutiny, might as well hand over the Country. All this after the Mischianza. How quickly it unravelled.