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“Contagion,” I said “Of course Smallpox would spread like wildfire in a crowded encampment”
“Discipline was a probleton hiadventure For every runaho enlisted, though, it see that nobody could keep track of as there and asn’t, or which regied to, or where you’d come from”
“Did you go to Albany, like Joshua suggested?” I asked
“Yes,” Marcus said, “but the ar Island”
“So that’s when you joined the ments of what I knew
“Not quite First, I joined up with a coht for more than a month I was alone, spooked like a newborn colt whenever anybody spoke to ht and hauled back to Massachusetts to answer for my father’s death,” Marcus explained “The Philadelphia Associators took me in without any questions It was my first rebirth”
But not his last
“I had a new father—Lieutenant Cuthbert—and brothers instead of sisters I even had a new mother of sorts” Marcus shook his head “Gerht of her for decades And Mrs Otto Christ, she was formidable”
Marcus’s expression darkened
“But there were still so many rules, and so much death And precious little freedo silent
“Then what happened?” I prompted
“Then I met Matthew,” Marcus said simply
Washington Papers, United States National Archives
George Washington to Dr William Shippen Jr
Morristown, New Jersey
6 February 1777
Dear Sir:
Finding the S that no precaution can prevent it froh the whole of our Army, I have determined that the troops shall be inoculated This Expedient es, but yet I trust in its consequences will have the most happy effects Necessity not only authorizes but seems to require the measure, for should the disorder infect the Are with its usual virulence we should have more to dread from it than from the Sword of the Eneun and favoured with the common success, I would fain hope they will be soon fit for duty, and that in a short space of tireatest of all calamities that can befall it when taken in the natural way
15
Dead
JANUARY–MARCH 1777
Marcus looked down the barrel of the rifle he had taken at Bunker Hill, toward the head of George III The ie was mounted to a distant tree with the point of a broken bayonet
“Eyes or heart?” Marcus asked his audience, squinting as he took aim
“You’ll never hit it,” a soldier scoffed “He’s too far away”
But Marcus was an even better shot now than he had been when he’d taken his father’s life
The face of the king transformed itself into the face of his father
Marcus pulled the trigger The gun cracked into life, and bark flew When the se’s eyes
“Take your best shot, lads” Adam Salked around the croith his cap like an entertainer at a fair He was Irish, wicked, clever—and a source of as and pranks “A halfpenny will buy you a chance to kill the king Do your bit for liberty Make Georgie pay for what he’s done”
“I want to go next!” cried a fourteen-year-old Dutch rigger named Vanderslice who had run away from a ship newly arrived in Philadelphia and joined up with the Associators soon after
“You haven’t got a gun,” Swift pointed out
Marcus was just about to loan Vanderslice his when two uniformed officers came into view
“What is theof this!” Captain Moulder, the nominal head of the Philadelphia Associators, surveyed the scene with disapproval Lieutenant Cuthbert, a rawboned man in his midtwenties of Scottish extraction, was at his side
“Just so at Marcus and Swift
Cutherbert’s assurancesGeorge
“Did you take that froe at Princeton?” Captain Moulder dee would like it back”
Swift pressed his lips together and Marcus stood at attention
“Captain Ha, sir,” Cuthbert said, diverting the possible blame onto soht through the canvas”
“Ha to do with it, Cuthbert It was the three of us who cut it out of the frame”
This was precisely what Captain Moulder had feared
“In my tent Now All three of you!” Moulder barked
—
MARCUS STOOD IN FRONT of Captain Moulder, with Swift and Vanderslice on either side Lieutenant Cuthbert stood at the entrance to the tent, keeping the rest of the regih within earshot Cuthbert was greatly beloved He refused to put up with any nonsense fro iven to him by his superior officers It was an ideal style of leadership for the Continental army
“I should have you all flogged,” Captain Moulder said He held up the lie of their former ruler “What on earth persuaded you to take it?”
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 so Vanderslice and Swift tried to stop me”
Vanderslice’s aped 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 fro 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 fro you up,” Moulder replied
“No That was me, Captain” Cuthbert lied with breezy assurance, the mark of someone skilled at fabrication “Distant cousin Froht he could be usefula 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 becoiment
Moulder spread the piece of canvas wide There was little left of the face of George III The eyes were gone, thehole, and the monarch’s powdered hair was peppered with shot
“Well, at least one thing you’ve told ood shot”
“Doc saved h 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 seraved, 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 e’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 roo’s portrait Other soldiers had slass and part of the fine e of the planets across the sky He had pocketed what remained because it reion,” I said “Of course Smallpox would spread like wildfire in a crowded encampment”