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The cold was pervasive.
Never before had Caleb been so keenly aware of each shift as the temperature edged down by degrees, the meager day’s heat fading with the sinking sun. The chill of a December night stole in with the breeze, snatching away the precious heat of the fire he had nurtured into a roaring blaze.
Undoubtedly, he had faced colder nights, on the icy seas where his stints as a sailor had taken him. He had seen morning when men break their fingers and toes off like brittle sticks, and nights that turned cheerful sailors into corpses. But never had he been so afraid of the cold.
His mind kept flickering back to the handful of moments before and after Ben had fallen (or jumped, or half of each, in which case Caleb already had in mind some of the choice words he had about why a swivel gun was not worth jumping into cold water in the winter) into the Delaware. His panic, instant and all-encompassing, as he realized what was going to happen, as Ben hit the water and went under. His friend an icy deadweight as he dragged him from the water. The weak flutter of Ben’s pulse against his fingers, as he knelt by the bank and cursed Benjamin Tallmadge, Washington, Providence, and all else for putting them on that boat. The raw pain of the cold air drawn into his lungs as he shouted orders to the men, because he was going to save Tallmadge and damn the whole Continental Army for all he cared.
A fire had been built, and the men sent onward, to Trenton, where some sort of attack was to be launched. That was all information Caleb had absorbed that wasn’t related to Ben. He had done what he had to in regards to those who had been under Ben’s command, knew he had to send the soldiers onwards, but his attention had never left Ben.
He almost preferred those moments, the panic and the frenzy of activity, to these. At least he had had something to occupy him then, a task, however panicked he had been. Now he sat by the fire, with Benjamin’s limp, blanket-swaddled form in his arms, and waited. His initial panic had faded into the background, a dull, throbbing fear that felt half like nausea and half like pain; his fingers were pressed to Ben’s wrist, and he counted the faint, steady beats of his heart under his breath. Every beat, he was afraid would be fainter than the last. Every shuddering breath Ben took Caleb feared would be the last.
Sleep was out of the question. He sat and waited and waited, all through the night.
When Benjamin Tallmadge was ten, he had fallen into a creek in the winter.
No, that was wrong. When Benjamin Tallmadge was ten, he had jumped into a creek in the winter, jumped after his friend, Abraham Woodhull.
“You were just as much of an idiot then, weren’t you, Ben?” Caleb said, his eyes fixed on Ben’s face. The early morning light cast his features in a warm glow, softening the wan pallor of his skin to something that resembled its normal hue. “Even more than our friend Abe. He fell; he can blame his clumsy arse. You jumped.” He smiled, though the memory was not entirely a good one. “He could swim just as well as you.” Just an early manifestation of one of Ben’s many endearing qualities: the stubborn noble streak that had spurred him into so much trouble in his short life. And usually he dragged Caleb along with him.
That cold November day, Ben had dragged Abe from the creek, and hollered for Caleb and Anna to fetch help. More than a decade later, Caleb could still remember how his heart had beat painfully in his chest as he raced through the woods, back to Whitehall.
In true Woodhull fashion, Abe had escaped the slip unharmed, after he was warmed up. Ben had caught a chill that had turned into pneumonia, and for a week he had hovered between life and death. Caleb remembered sneaking to the Tallmadge residence in the middle of the night, climbing up to Ben’s window, and pressing his face up against the glass to watch the candlelit silhouette of Ben’s mother tend to her sick son. From outside, he hadn’t been able to hear the rasp of Ben’s breathing, but his eyes had been fixed on the rise and fall of Ben’s chest.
Maybe jumping into the creek hadn’t been so foolish; cold water was enough to shock men into floundering, never mind little boys, and Abe might not have walked away from the escapade relatively unharmed if it hadn’t been for Ben’s quick action.
“Anna never did give you that kiss she promised you, for savin’ Woody, did she?” Caleb said. “I think she woulda jumped in after Abe herself, if she hadn’t been wearing all those skirts.” He ran a hand through Ben’s hair, brushing it back from his eyes. It was an action that he sometimes had the irrational urge to do, whenever Ben let his hair down, but until that moment had never actually done. It made him feel slightly… intrusive. “I just thought of a reason you can’t die just yet; Anna would be awful cross at not seeing you again. She’d probably take it out on me, too.”
“Someday I’ll drag you with me, on one of my grand adventures,” Caleb said. “When this war is good and over, good and won.” Ben’s color had improved a bit over the course of the day, but his breathing had taken on a pneumatic edge, raspy and choking. After agonizing over it for the better part of an hour, Caleb had left Ben wrapped in all the blankets and cloth that he had, and gone hunting. He had returned with two rabbits.
Ben had stirred for the first time, as he had skinned the rabbits and rambled on. His heart had leapt into his throat at the sight of those clear eyes again, but it had only taken a few moments for Ben to slip back into unconsciousness. Caleb took his waking as a good sign, because he didn’t want to think about the alternative.
Now, the stew he had made with the rabbits had cooked thoroughly, and he was trying to get a little of the broth down Ben by dipping a scrap of cloth into it and squeezing it into his mouth.
“We’ll sail to some faraway port, somewhere where I can drag you into trouble for a change. There’s another reason you’re not allowed to die yet.”
“Your father wouldn’t approve of all this lying about. Sinful, is what it is,” Caleb told Ben as he settled the final log to make the makeshift shelter. It would shield them from the wind, and trap the heat of the fire, Caleb hoped. “Not right of you, to make me do all this work. Even if you are an officer and a gentleman.”
It had been another day, and Ben hadn’t stirred again. The terror coiled inside Caleb was rearing its ugly head more and more, telling him that Ben was in a downward spiral. That he wouldn’t wake again. That that fall into the cold Delaware had hurt him in some irreversible, invisible way, and his brilliant, stubborn, good-hearted friend was no more.
True to form, Caleb ignored the devious little voice, and filled up the silence with his own words instead.
The lean-to successfully completed, Caleb climbed back under it, and pulled Ben back onto his lap.
“We hove our ship to, with the wind of sou’west boys,” he hummed to himself, brushing back the hair from Ben’s eyes.
“If you die, then there would be no thorn in General Scott’s side, and we can’t have that, can we Tallboy?” Caleb murmured, tipping his flask to dribble a little water into Ben’s mouth. “Who would try to talk sense into that bastard? No one would listen to me. I don’t have a fancy uniform like you.”
It had been six days now, and Caleb was starting to despair. A few times, he thought Ben was close to waking; he had shifted around, and murmured in his sleep and Caleb had been ready to thank God and any other entities that might have interceded on his behalf. But Ben had lapsed deeper into unconsciousness again each time, leaving Caleb hollow and afraid.
He had a point. If he forced himself to consider the impact of Ben’s death, beyond the vast emptiness it would open in his world… all of Ben’s ideas would die with him. All the work that they had put into the little spyring would go up like smoke. No one of any influence in the Continental Army had any reason to listen to a scruffy courier; as it was, they barely listen to Tallmadge.
Ben couldn’t die. He just couldn’t.
Caleb would not allow it.
On the days went.
Caleb kept up a constant stream of chatter, talking as if Ben could hear him, to keep himself sane. On occasion, Ben had questioned if he was capable of prolonged periods of silence, and the answer was a definite yes; just not around Ben. And not when Ben’s life hung in a balance, not when the only other sound was the lap of the water against the shoreline and Ben’s raspy breathing.
It was the second day of January when Ben finally woke. Caleb was standing on the riverbank, staring back to where their boat had launched from, a week before, when he heard his friend stir, and start to cough.
He knew, whatever they might face from then on, Ben was alive, and they would face it together. After the days and days of worry, he couldn’t stop a stupid smile from breaking over his face.
“Happy New Year, Tallboy,” he said, turning to kneel by his friend.