(This selection is part of a novel currently in work.)

I was having the strangest dream; everywhere I stepped, my footsteps sounded like broken glass. People were shouting with my every step, my feet were bleeding, yet they did not hurt. Charles and Eliza were crying out; I had to walk across the glass to get to them, but they seemed farther away with every step. I bellowed in frustration, wresting myself from fitful slumber.

The sounds of broken glass and shouting were still there; a diffuse orange glow showed through the window. I threw back the blankets and dashed to the window—the redcoats were torching Camden.

“Fire! Everyone! Quick! We must get out!” They hadn’t yet reached our shop and house, but they would. Soon. “Betsey! Grace! Take the children out through the garden. I shall see if I can stop them.”

I grabbed father’s pistol from the top of the cupboard as I tore down the stairs. Just as I crossed the threshold two panes of glass shattered as two lit torches flew in and landed on top of and behind the counter. Time seemed to slow down, I dropped the pistol and clambered for the ewer in the back room. Too late. The fire reached our jar full of grain alcohol and exploded, engulfing our shop. A wave of searing hot wind hit my face and knocked me backwards. I cracked my head on something; bright white flashes danced around my vision. I felt for the edge of the counter, found my ledger and dispensatory books by feel, and crawled for the back door as best I could in my night rail and heaving two heavy books. The back door seemed to be miles away; the acrid smoke robbed my breath and sight as the rest of my senses seemed to be shutting down. I pushed the books along the floor in front of me until I felt them drop over the first step. I felt the gentle hand of oblivion beckoning me to escape—quiet, soothing, merciful.

“Abbie! Abbie! Look! She’s there!” Charles screamed, ceaselessly, his voice a lifeline back to my family, and away from the burning wreckage of our home. “Abigail! Don’t leave us!”

“We got ye!” I felt a firm grip on both of my hands, a rock solid anchor tethered to life. Grace and Betsey pulled me down the steps and away from our burning house. “Eliza, fetch me the pitcher of water,” said Grace. “Yer safe, Abbie. Which ye ain’t gonna leave us, ye damned stubborn goat!” I attempted a laugh at Grace calling me a goat, which only made my hacking and gagging worse. Betsey rested my head on her knee and rubbed my back as I lay upon my side. Once Eliza brought the water, Betsey poured it over my eyes, mercifully washing the acidic soot out of my eyes. Once my coughing had abated I sipped a little, though it didn’t slake my burned throat.

“Buttermilk,” I croaked, unable to say much else, and Eliza fetched it. All over our neighborhood, glass broke, and fires raged. The bells were tolling as Camden’s citizens turned out to fight fires and save what they could—shouting, wailing, cursing as the British marched out of the chaos in an orderly fashion.

I would have been raging mad if I were not so tired and infirmed. I needed not to say anything, for Eliza said it for me. “You live in our homes, you eat our food, you killed my father, and this is the thanks we get? Damn you all to hell! Go back to England, you filthy devils!” Shocking language for a young lady…and my sentiments, exactly.