Martha Peake (52 page)

It was in the mouth, the lips were set now, closed firm, the tiny lines about them etched with the effort of self-control called up repeatedly in the face of God knew what horrors. He was leaner and harder, his hair was cut short, there was a few days’ growth of dark beard on his cheeks, and the fingers cupping Harry’s face were strong and scarred. He lifted his eyes from Harry to Sara and grinned his horsey grin—and there he was, her Adam, still there within the man.

Now the other men were standing about them, peering gravely at little Harry, who peered gravely back at them. Harry was then introduced to the company, Adam becoming formal as he spoke the names, some of which would long be remembered in the annals of the struggle for independence, while others—those of men who would play parts of no less importance in these great events—History would forget; coming at the last to him of the hook nose and the blazing red-rimmed eyes, who rose to his feet and shuffled forward, as Adam told the infant boy that this man,
this
man, had so well caught the spirit of the American Revolution that Harry would dine out for a lifetime on it, when it was known he had shaken his hand.

That gnarly hand was now extended, and the fierce wild face of the Englishman peered into Harry’s placid eyes; and Harry, for the
first time in all the days of hard travelling he had endured, and to general amusement, burst into a howl of misery even as Adam introduced him to Mr. Tom Paine.

A little later, after she had eaten, Sara went with Adam to a room separate from the others where they could talk. She laid Harry in a drawer in the corner and at once he fell asleep. Two candles burned on a table with papers and pamphlets spread across it, a quill lying on a sheet in the middle. Bare floorboards with bunches of drying herbs hanging from hooks in the old ceiling beams, and a shelf loaded with books and papers. A pair of boots by the door, and a peg above from which hung a muddy cloak and a battered hat. Adam flung himself into a chair.

“By Christ I am glad you are safe, Sara!” he cried, not for the first time that night.

“I came from Cratwich with the soldiers,” she said, wandering about the room. “I could come to no harm with them.”

A snort at this, a manly snort, a snort that knew soldiers. He stood up and went to the chair to gaze some more at the sleeping Harry.

“He is exhausted,” he said.

“We have been on the road for days. The country is starving.”

Still he stood gazing at the sleeping boy.

“A handsome child,” he said. “He looks well. He has the Peake spine.”

“Oh, he is well,” said Sara. “He is strong as an ox, and as heavy.”

She sat down at the table. His back was still to her.

“He will need to be strong,” he murmured, and then, without turning: “Not mine?”

It had to come, good that it came at once.

“No,” she said, “not yours.”

They sat up late talking in the candlelight. Sara told her brother everything. Oh, she was happy he had become a man, he had seen so much of human nature since they were last together, she needed to explain little but the bare facts of the thing and he understood. In the last year he had seen strong men turn into animals under the hardships of campaigning against the British. He had seen brave men weeping like children after a musket ball had shattered a bone, or a bayonet had sheared their flesh, left them gazing in astonishment at a mangled limb or an opened belly with the guts spilling out. He knew the limits beyond which even the strongest could not go without the sacrifice of their humanity. He spoke of all this, saying that what he had learned in the north woods did not incline him to judge Martha harshly, nor her father either. Sara was strongly affected, and in a second her eyes were brimming with tears; and when he reached across the table and took her hands in his own, her heart heaved and the tears came streaming down. She took a little wine. She had come to the heart of the thing.

“So you will give him your name? He will be your son?”

He sat gazing at the table, and the wavering candle-flame brought out the new-made clefts and knottings in his face and brow. For an eternity of seconds he sat like that, still as death. Then his head came up, his hands reached for hers once more, and she saw with a great leaping of the heart that he understood, that the answer was yes. Ah, her brother, her beloved brother—he understood. And understanding, accepted, and in that draughty ill-lit room in Foley’s Tavern, as directly beneath them Mr. Tom Paine, citizen of the world, drank brandy and talked on through the night—Harry’s future as an American was assured.

Some months later, in the autumn of 1776, Sara met her father in that same room in Foley’s Tavern. Sara knew the truth, of course, Martha had told her everything, but for the sake of little Harry she had determined that only Adam would know why Martha had done
what she did. So she held her peace as Silas talked. He knew, he said, that Martha betrayed the town to the British, but he also knew that she was no enemy of the Revolution. Why then had she done it? Because, he said, she was seduced by Captain Hawkins. The Englishman slipped into her heart like a snake, he said, and like a snake he poisoned her, and so she gave up her secrets to him. And only when the town was in flames did she understand how he had repaid her. It drove her mad, said Silas, the Englishman’s treachery, and so she took a musket and loaded it with powder and ball and went to the harbour to shoot down the man who had used her so ill.

Silas’ own responsibility in this had not escaped him, though when Sara questioned him closely—asked him
why
he had sent Martha to Scup Head with Adam that day, and then thrust her into the captain’s way, armed as she was with intelligence that had to stay hidden from the British—Silas was evasive. He shook his head. He muttered the Englishman’s name. Ah, but she only winged him, he said, lifting his dark eyes to hers, and now she is a martyr of the Revolution. Sara began to speak, but he silenced her at once. He laid a hand flat on the table and stared into his daughter’s face.

“And so she must remain,” he said. “So she must remain.”

He then explained to Sara why she must speak of this to nobody, saying that
the Revolution required a martyr
. We need her, he said, we need her legend, which every day spreads further into the country, and wherever it spreads it rouses the people. With every new telling of it they love their country the more and the British the less; indeed, he said, their hatred of the British burns with a fierce heat when they think of what was done to New Morrock, and to Martha Peake; and that hatred will win the war, if we can sustain it. She is the spirit of the Revolution, said Silas, and so she must remain. She destroyed the town, but she will make us a generous compensation, for the story of Martha Peake’s courage on the wharf that day will be a rallying call when we are without bread or boots, and have little ammunition left, and Washington is leading us deeper into the back country, to keep us from being destroyed by the enemy on an open field. This war will
not be won easy, he said, and we must have
gestures
to lift our spirit and drive our purpose forward. Sara, he said—and she found her father staring intently at her in the wavering candle-flame—you see it does not matter that the legend is a lie?

Sara nodded. She knew all about lies now. Silas rose heavily to his feet. He paused at the door, then he went out, and she heard his footsteps on the stairs. She got up from the table and leaned over the sleeping Harry.

42

I
slept late into the afternoon after my nightmare experience in the cellars, and by the time my uncle had finished describing the bombardment of New Morrock, and Martha’s magnificent fatal gesture, the clock in the hall downstairs was chiming midnight. I had for some time been anticipating her end, but when it came I confess I was profoundly shocked, and sprang up from my chair with a shout of dismay. My uncle, as I have said, was no less distressed; and as I paced the room, pushing my hand through my hair, the tears came, yes, they came in floods, so real had she become to me; nor did he remain dry-eyed for long.

“Shot down,” I whispered, “in cold blood, by
Englishmen—
!”

William applied a large white handkerchief to his streaming face, murmuring: “She fired on them first.”

“Ach, she stood no chance at all. And she did not kill him?”

The old man shook his head.

“Then let us hope the wound festered,” I said darkly. “Let us hope it went bad, and he perished slowly, and in great agony.”

My uncle lifted an eyebrow but said nothing; and I think, for once—indeed, for the first time!—we two were in agreement.

Oh, I could not think of sleep, my mind was in turmoil! I drank more brandy, indeed I made free with the bottle, for the first time in my life I used the fiery liquour to still the turbulence that roiled and seethed within me. It had the effect, however, over the course of the next hour or so, not of stilling but of
inflaming
, rather, my passions, and I admit that I wept a good deal during that time, the memory of my own horrid ordeal lending heat and fire to my dawning horror as I tried to take hold of the fact of Martha’s death. Oh, the mind could grasp it, it was the heart that rebelled, and time and again I rose from my chair and wandered about my uncle’s room, crying—“Why? Why?”—and finishing with my head against the wall, pummelling the panelling with my fist.

My uncle stayed with me throughout, and for once he allowed that better part of his nature to come forth, the doctor in him, that is, buried beneath the scaly skin of the cynic. He slowed me in my fervid consumption of his brandy, and allowed me to talk, and oh, my rebel heart overflowed that night, and William Tree for once proved himself a friend to his agitated nephew.

Came the moment at last when I was drained of emotion, weak and ready for sleep, as in the hall below the clock chimed out the melancholy hour of four. I murmured something to this effect, and rose up out of my chair, only to lurch sideways, and seize the mantelpiece so as not to fall down. I was not sober. I stood a moment, gripping the mantel with both hands, my head bowed and my eyes all damply red with brandy and spent passion, gazing unseeing at the ash and embers in the fireplace. I felt my uncle’s hand on my arm.