In spite of the August heat (which seemed destined never to break) and the imminent threat of British invasion (which seemed never to come), Philadelphia thrived. The streets were packed with carriages and horses, their wheels and hooves making a racket on the cobblestones. Every inch of space that wasn’t a residence or a tavern was taken up by someone making and selling something: saddles, shoes, medicines, newspapers. The air rang with the sound of hammers and the whir of lathes.
He walked west into the quieter residential streets where the rich merchants lived. The heavy summer air further muffled the sounds of servants tending to children in walled gardens, the drone of insects sipping at blossoms, and the occasional call of a delivery boy as he dropped off his wares. Marcus had never crossed the threshold of such a grand house, but he liked to imagine what it would look like: black-and-white polished floors, a curved banister reaching toward the second floor, high windows with sparkling glass, white candles in brass sconces to beat back the twilight, a room full of books to read, and a globe for imagining a voyage around the world.
One day, Marcus promised himself. One day I will have such a house. Then he would go back to Hadley and collect his mother and Patience, and bring them to live in it.
Until then, Marcus enjoyed the pleasures associated with simply being near such luxury. He drank in the honeyed scent of the chestnut trees and the tang of coffee that escaped through the windows of elegant drawing rooms. Dr. Otto had bought him a cup of the dark elixir at the City Tavern when they arrived in Philadelphia. Marcus had never tasted anything like it, having drunk only tea and the black sludge that was served in the army. The feeling of elation that accompanied the tiny cup stayed with Marcus for hours. He would forever associate coffee with witty conversation and the exchange of news. Sitting for an hour in the City Tavern with Philadelphia’s merchants and businessmen was, in Marcus’s estimation, the closest he was likely to get to heaven.
As Marcus walked, the fine houses gradually gave way to the tall brick buildings where more ordinary Philadelphians lived and worked. He traveled a few blocks farther, and the outlines of the city’s two hospitals came into view, both topped with cupolas. The Pennsylvania Hospital was attached to the city’s college and was where the university-trained physicians performed dissections and gave medical lectures. Dr. Otto, his family, and his staff were in charge of the other hospital: Philadelphia’s Bettering House for the indigent, criminal, and insane.
When Marcus stepped into the Bettering House, the entrance was filled with boxes of every size, several large wooden apothecary chests, and more doctors bearing the surname of Otto than any army should have to endure. All four men in the Otto family—Bodo; his eldest son, Frederick; Bodo’s second son and namesake, called “Dr. Junior”; and his youngest son, John, who was usually called “boy”—were busily checking their inventories. Nurses and orderlies rushed around fulfilling the doctors’ requests. Mrs. Otto alone remained serene, winding strips of bandage into tight rolls despite a hospital cat’s determination to play with them.
“There you are,” Dr. Otto said, peering over his spectacles at Marcus. “Where have you been, Mr. Doc?”
“He’s been in a tavern reading newspapers,” Dr. Frederick said. “His fingers are black, and the smell of beer is overwhelming. You might have at least rinsed out your mouth, Doc.”
Marcus bristled, his lips pressed firmly closed. He said not a word but picked up a box of stoppered bottles and took it over to Dr. Otto.
“Here is the camphor! I asked you for it three times, boy. How did you not see it? It was at your elbow this whole time,” Dr. Otto exclaimed.
John, who had recently married and was often thinking about more pleasant matters than apothecary chests and jalap, heard his name and looked around in confusion.
Dr. Otto muttered in German, clearly irritated. Marcus’s knowledge of the language was growing. He caught the words for “idiot,” “lewd,” “wife,” and “hopeless.” John heard, too, and turned pink.
“Where will you go first, Bodo?” Mrs. Otto packed her rolled bandage away in a basket and picked up another length of cloth. “To the hospital in Bethlehem to wait for the wounded?”
“I leave such decisions to the Big Man, Mrs. Otto,” the doctor replied.
“Surely we will be going straight to the battlefield,” Junior said. “They say the whole British army is at the mouth of the Elk River, and marching north.”
“They say many things, most of which turn out to be false,” Frederick observed.
“There is one thing that is for sure,” Dr. Otto said, his tone sober. “Wherever we are going, we are going soon. The battle is coming. I can feel it, pricking at my soles.”
Everyone within earshot stopped to listen. Dr. Otto did have a preternatural ability to anticipate the orders that Washington handed down. No one had realized Dr. Otto was getting his intelligence from his feet, however. Mrs. Otto looked down at her husband’s shoes with new respect.
“Don’t stand there gawping, Mr. Chauncey!” After her husband’s prognostication, Mrs. Otto was seized with anxiety and spurred to greater efficiency. “You heard the doctor. You are not pulling a cannon any longer. There is no time for idleness in the hospital service.”
Marcus put down the box of camphor and picked up another. Not every tyrant, he had discovered, was a man. Some wore skirts.
* * *
—
WHEN AT LAST the battle came, at a small town outside Philadelphia on the shores of the Brandywine, the chaos was unspeakable.
Marcus thought he knew what to expect. He had been with Dr. Otto since January, had inoculated hundreds of men, and had seen soldiers die of smallpox, typhus, camp fever, wounds acquired during foraging expeditions, exposure, and starvation.
But Marcus had never been behind the advancing army with the medical service, waiting for the casualties to arrive after the orders to fire had been given. From the rear, it was impossible to tell whether the Continental army was inches from victory or if the British had routed them.
The medical corps set up their first hospital in a mercantile just outside the battle lines, where the surgeons’ mates transformed the dry goods counter into an operating table. They stacked the dead in a small room where extra flour and sugar had once been stored. Those awaiting treatment lay in rows on the floor, filling the hall and the porch outside.
As the battle commenced, and the number of wounded and dying men rose, Dr. Cochran and Dr. Otto decided that a dressing station should be set up closer to the action to evaluate the wounded. Dr. Otto took Marcus to his new field hospital, leaving Dr. Cochran in charge at the store.
“Dressings. Why are there no dressings? I must have dressings,” Dr. Otto repeated in a low mutter as they set up the treatment areas.
But the dressings and bandages that Mrs. Otto had so assiduously rolled and packed had all been used. Marcus and Dr. Otto were forced to use blotting paper and soiled dressings from dead men instead, the blood wrung out into buckets that attracted the summer’s black flies.
“Hold him there,” Dr. Otto said, directing Marcus’s attention with a shift of his eyes. Underneath their hands, a soldier writhed in agony.
Marcus could see crushed bone and raw muscle through torn clothing. His stomach tightened.
“The patient may faint, Mr. Doc, but not the surgeon,” Dr. Otto said sternly. “Go out to the porch and take six lungfuls of air and then come back. It will steel your nerves.”
Marcus bolted for the door but was barred from leaving the farmhouse by a stranger who cast a long shadow in the hall.
“You.” The shadow pointed at him. “Come.”
“Yes, sir.” Marcus wiped the sweat from his eyes and blinked.
A man came into focus, one so large he filled the doorway. He was wearing a dark blue coat with a standing collar, few buttons, and no gold braid. French. Marcus recognized the cut and style from the parades he’d seen on Market Street in Philadelphia.
“Are you a doctor?” The Frenchman spoke perfect English, which was unusual. Most of his countrymen got by with hand gestures and the occasional English word.
“No. A surgeon. I’ll call—”