Time's Convert

“Chivalry is dead, sir!” Adams declared.

“Not while Gil breathes,” the chevalier de Clermont murmured.

“We are fighting a war to loosen the grip of tradition, not to be enslaved by it further,” Adams continued, undeterred. “And if the Moravians of Bethlehem will not fight with us, they must prove their loyalty in other ways.”

“But it is our duty to protect these women. Imagine if it were your own dear wife, Mr. Adams, or my Adrienne.” Lafayette looked genuinely pained at the prospect. He wrote at least one letter a day to his distant spouse, who though not yet eighteen was already the mother of two children.

“Mrs. Adams would not hesitate to take in four thousand wounded soldiers if it were asked of her!” Adams, like Ettwein, did not like to be challenged.

Mr. Hancock, who had a formidable wife of his own by all accounts, looked doubtful.

“If I may,” Dr. Otto interjected. “Would it perhaps be better for the surgeons if the soldiers were kept closer together? Already we are stretched too thin, and running all through town for supplies. Perhaps we might use the gardens, and put up tents for the patients who are convalescing so that they might be in the fresh air, away from the fevers that are already spreading?”

“Fevers?” A man with the distinctive drawl of the southern colonies frowned. “Not the smallpox, surely.”

“No, sir,” Dr. Otto hastened to reply. “The general’s orders last winter have spared us from that. But camp fever, typhus . . .” His words drifted into silence.

The members of Congress looked at each other nervously. Ettwein’s eyes met de Clermont’s, and the two exchanged a meaningful glance.

“These common illnesses threaten the health of the entire community,” de Clermont said. “Surely the brethren and sisters must not suffer unduly. Why, Brother Ettwein’s own son is nursing the soldiers and risking his life to care for them. What greater form of patriotism can there be, than to put one’s own child at risk?”

Marcus eyed the young man standing next to him. The younger John Ettwein was far more amiable than his father but otherwise resembled him closely, with his upturned nose and wide-set eyes. Though John was indeed a skilled nurse, Marcus suspected that Ettwein’s son had been seconded to the hospital to make sure that the brethren’s house was not harmed during the army’s occupation.

“Let us adjourn to the inn,” Hancock said, “and deliberate further.”

* * *

—

“YOU KNOW HOW TO HANDLE a hoe as well as a lancet, I see,” said young John Ettwein.

Marcus looked up from the patch of herbs that they were cutting in anticipation of the tents that would soon spring up on the hillside overlooking the river. The apothecary, Brother Eckhardt, had ordered the two of them to harvest every medicinal simple they could before the soldiers destroyed the gardens.

“And you don’t sound like you’re from Philadelphia,” John continued.

Marcus resumed his task without comment. He pulled a mandrake from the earth and put it in the basket next to the snakeroot.

“So what’s your story, Brother Chauncey?” John’s eyes were bright with unanswered questions. “We all know you’re not from around here.”

Not for the first time, Marcus was glad he had been born on the frontier and not in Boston. Everybody knew he was from somewhere else, but no one could place his accent with any precision.

“You needn’t worry. Most people in Bethlehem came from elsewhere,” John remarked.

But most people hadn’t killed their fathers. Marcus had barely spoken a word around the delegates from Congress for fear someone might recognize that he was from Massachusetts and ask difficult questions.

“Cat’s still got your tongue, I see.” John wiped the sweat from his brow and peered down at the riverside road. “Mein Gott.”

“Wagons.” Marcus scrambled to his feet. As far as the eye could see, there were wagons. “They’ve come from Philadelphia.”

“There are hundreds of them,” John said, thrusting his hoe into the earth. “We must find my father. And the chevalier. At once.”

Marcus abandoned his basket of roots and leaves and followed John toward the Brethren’s House. They had not made it more than a few yards when they ran into de Clermont and Brother Ettwein. The two men were already aware of the invasion from Philadelphia.

“There are too many of them!” Brother Ettwein was saying to de Clermont, his eyes wild. “We have already unloaded seventy wagons in just two days. The Scottish prisoners are in one of our family houses. Their guards are living in the pumping house. The army’s stores have filled the lime kilns and the oil house. The single brothers are displaced. And now more locusts descend! What are we to do?”

The wagons from Philadelphia pulled to a stop in the fields on the southern bank of the river, one after another, flattening the buckwheat planted there. A troop of horse accompanied them.

“So much for our peaceable village!” Ettwein continued, his voice bitter. “When Dr. Shippen wrote, he said the army would be an inconvenience—not drive us out of hearth and home.”

Still the wagons came. Marcus had never seen so many at one time. The drivers unhitched their teams and led them to the water. The wagon train’s guards dismounted, allowing their horses to graze.

“Shall I speak to them, Johannes?” The chevalier de Clermont looked grim. “There is probably little I can do, but at least we will know their plans.”

“We settled in Bethlehem to avoid war.” Ettwein’s voice was low and intense. “We have all seen enough of it, Brother de Clermont. Religious war. War with the French. War with the Indians. Now war with the British. Do you never get tired of it?”

For a moment, the chevalier de Clermont’s composed mask slipped, and he looked as bitter as Ettwein sounded. Marcus blinked and the Frenchman’s face became as inscrutable as it was before.

“I am more tired of war than you know, Johannes,” de Clermont said. “Come, Chauncey.” He beckoned to Marcus.

Marcus scrambled down the hillside in de Clermont’s wake, trying in vain to keep up so that he could reason with the man.

“Sir.” Marcus struggled to regain his footing. “Chevalier de Clermont. Are you sure—”

De Clermont wheeled around. “What is it, Chauncey?”

“Are you sure you should be interfering in this matter?” Marcus asked, adding, “sir,” again as an afterthought.

“You think the citizens of Bethlehem will fare better if John Adams argues their case?” The chevalier snorted. “That man is a menace to international relations.”

“No, sir. It’s just—” Marcus stopped and bit his lip. “Those are Virginians, sir. I can tell from their clothes. They’re wearing buckskin, you see. Virginians don’t like being told what to do.”

“Nobody likes to be told what to do,” de Clermont observed, his eyes narrowing.

“Yes, but they have rifles. Very accurate rifles, sir. And swords,” Marcus continued, determined to avert disaster. “We’re not armed. And the marquis is alone at Brother Boeckel’s house.”

“Sister Liesel is with Gil,” de Clermont said curtly, resuming his blistering descent of the hill. “She is reading to him about the Moravian missions to Greenland. He says he finds it soothing.”

Marcus had seen the fervent glances that the marquis had bestowed on the Boeckels’ charming daughter, and was glad that Lafayette was married, as well as that Sister Liesel was a paragon of virtue.

“Nevertheless, sir—”

“For God’s sake, Chauncey, stop calling me sir. I’m not your commanding officer,” de Clermont said, wheeling around to face him once more. “We need to know why these wagons have arrived. Has Philadelphia fallen to the British? Are they here on Washington’s orders? Without information, we cannot determine what must be done next. Are you going to help me, or hinder me?”

“Help.” Marcus knew this was his only real option, and followed de Clermont in silence the rest of the way.

When they reached the southern bank of the river, all was confusion.