Or Give Me Death (18 page)

She was giggling. John had his arms around her, tight. I left.

***

T
HAT NIGHT I
told Pa about Neely. He was in the front parlor, getting his books and papers ready for the Congress in Philadelphia. A large group of Hanover Volunteers were coming to Scotchtown to escort him on the first leg of the journey, the day after tomorrow.

"Pa."

"Yes, Anne, come in."

"Pa, I must needs speak to you."

He gestured I should sit, and I did. "Pa, Mr. Estave killed Neely, Pegg's niece. He whipped her, then poured hot embers on her back."

"I know, Anne," he said sadly. "I heard."

"She was here, Pa. A couple of days ago."

"Here?"

"Yes, because Pegg is her aunt. Pegg took her to the Governor's Palace for safety, but he was gone. Then she went to find his ship and they caught her. Oh, Pa, I met her! She was so sweet. And scared! How could he do such?"

He held me and I cried.

"We have sent a delegation to his place to bring him to justice, child."

"What justice?" I pulled away from him. "They'll tell him they don't countenance such, and he'll say he's sorry. And Neely is
dead,
Pa!"

He wiped my eyes. "He shall be subject to whatever the courts decide. I promise you."

"And they'll decide nothing."

"Most crimes committed against slaves go unpunished," he admitted, "but whites are betimes tried, convicted, and punished. Still, laws against cruelty to slaves are easy to evade, Anne, which is why he got away with it the last time."

"Pa, you must do something!"

"I'll do everything I can, child. Our servants should have the strongest claim on our charity. They should be well fed, well clothed, nursed in sickness, and never be unjustly treated. I have stood for that, Anne, but to our shame, others don't. And now we're fighting a war and must become free ourselves, first. But I am sure men will bring up slavery, in Philadelphia, at the Congress."

"Talk," I mumbled, "more talk."

"We are civilized men, Anne. We must keep within the boundaries of the law. It's one reason I held back from attacking Dunmore at Williamsburg."

"Estave isn't civilized."

"No, but likely he was acting under the fever of the moment. That's what war does to people, Anne. In some it brings out the latent evil in their nature, and they use it in the name of patriotism. You're a good girl to grieve. We must never close our door to the suffering of humanity. And as soon as I can, I shall visit Neely's family."

"Pa, there's something else."

"Yes, child."

"There's John," I blurted, surprising even myself. It had been in the back of my mind all along.

"Yes. He's young and spirited up. And angry. I know that, too."

"You can't let him go to war when the time comes, Pi."

"When the time comes, he'll have to obey his commanding officer. Don't worry, child."

"Pa, don't let him go, please."

"You have an urgency about you, Anne. Is there a reason?"

"I worry for him."

"I know you do. As do we all worry for him and MyJohn, and all the good men who will make the sacrifice and go. But what I said in my speech, Anne, 'is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?'"

"Pa."

"You do John an injustice by not crediting him with more courage. Unless there is something here that I don't know. I haven't been home that much. My children have fair grown up without me. My dog, Charger, scarce recognized me. Tonight he barked when I rode up. Is there something I don't know, Anne?"

When do you tell the truth and when do you he?

When do you keep a secret? Do you keep it, even if, when it comes out, it will hurt the person, anyway?

I said nothing.

Not even to Patrick Henry, who held sway over learned men. And made them declare for independence and march to war. Who had driven Lord Dunmore onto his ship.

Two days later, Pa left for Philadelphia.

W
HEN
I
AWOKE
, it did not come to me for a minute. I lay in my bed, looking around. And then I felt a sense of dread. There was something terrible I had to do this day. For a moment I could not recollect what it was.

And then it came to me.

I must write to my brother John, who was away with the army in New York, and tell him.

Tell him that yesterday Fa had taken to him a new wife, in St. Martin's Church here in Hanover Township.

Pa had wed Dorothea. Some of the wedding guests were still about the house, sleeping downstairs, upstairs, even on the floor in the parlor. And I had to tell John.

***

P
A WAS GOVERNOR
now. Many was the time I made the trip with Dorothea to the Governor's Mansion in Williamsburg to see to the decorating, which was not finished yet. Pa still made the trip on horseback to meet with the governor's council and do his work.

The mansion had to be redone before we moved in.

"You can't have animal skins on the floor of the Governor's Mansion, Mr. Henry," Dorothea would say to Pa.

And "We must get those weapons out of the entry hall. They symbolize the Crown's power."

And "I think blue for the draperies in the upstairs chambers. I love blue. Patrick, you must receive visitors and transact business in the middle room upstairs."

Pa was the first governor in the colonies who wasn't appointed by royal authority. And when the mansion was finished, we'd all live there. Not Patsy and MyJohn, no. That was the only good thing about moving. I'd miss MyJohn, but Patsy would no longer be in charge.

I sensed that Dorothea would not be that easy to manage, but she'd be better than Patsy, anyway.

I got up and got dressed. I would go out for a ride on Small Hope this morning, before the rest of the house was up. I often helped Barley exercise John's horses, and the ride would help me think.

What would it be like in the Governor's Mansion? I already knew there were servants and soldiers all over the place. That by eight in the morning there were people already sitting in the parlor off the entrance hall, waiting to see Pa.

Betsy and Edward, now eight and six, loved it. When we went with Dorothea before the wedding, they ran through the sixty-three-acre park, played in Governor Dunmore's elegant carriage that was still in the carriage house, ran through the ballroom, and hopped about the formal gardens. Betsy almost seemed happy again with the excitement of it.

I dressed warmly and quickly. Outside, the sun was just a promise in the east. Yesterday had been warm, and all the windows in our house had been open when Pa and Dorothea received their guests after the wedding ceremony.

But last evening it turned cold. I put my boots on and went out into the hall to creep out to the kitchen. Pegg would be up, starting breakfast.

"Where are you going?" It was a whisper from the end of the hall. I turned.

Dorothea stood there, wrapped in a shawl, her beautiful hair around her shoulders.

I smiled. "Out for a ride. I often ride early in the morning."

She did not try to stop me, as Patsy would. "Tell Cook, if you see her, that I wish to have hominy cakes as well as eggs and ham for breakfast."

"Yes," I said. She was near in age to Patsy, who was twenty-two.

I went out the back door to the walkway to the kitchen.

"You can no longer appear in plain dress, Mr. Henry," she had told Pa. "You must have black breeches and coat, a scarlet cloak, and a dressed wig. The people will not want the governor of a republican state to be less honored than that of a royal colony."

Pa listened to her. About everything. He was tolerable smitten. And there was nothing any of us could do about it.

***

W
HEN DO YOU TELL
a secret, and when do you keep a lie?

We did not tell Pa, when Dorothea first started coming regularly to supper at Scotchtown, that John and Dorothea were in love.

"It is Dorothea's place," Patsy whispered to me. "And only she knows what matters lie between her and our brother. If any."

I argued, of course, for John. But it was as if Dorothea had never known him, once she and Pa started walking out. And she was not about to talk of John.

And, thanks to all of us keeping John's secret, Pa never knew of it. That must be noted in Pa's favor.

Then, once there was talk of making Pa governor, after he resigned his command in the army in February of '76, Dorothea was seized with a passion to help him redecorate the Governor's Mansion.

And she was always around Scotchtown, it seemed. Always there were fabrics, bought from Williamsburg shops, on our dining room table. And papers with plans and measurements drawn upon them.

When Pa was sworn in as governor in July of that year, right after the Declaration of Independence was signed, we were all there to see him handed the big key to the mansion. To see him open the front door and walk in and up the great staircase to sit in the middle room at Dunmore's desk.

All but MyJohn and John, who were away at war. All but Will, who was away at college.

We knew die wedding was coming. But there was nothing we could do to stop it. And the reason we didn't tell John until afterward is my fault, too, not only Patsy's.

Patsy wanted Pa to wed Dorothea. "Why, her grandfather was Governor Alexander Spotswood, the best of colonial governors," she told me. "And Mrs. Washington herself is a niece of Dorothea's father. You know Pa will wed again, Anne. It might as well be to someone of gentility, who makes him happy."

"Then write and tell John," I begged.

"Why? He's so far away from home. What can he do?"

"He should know," I insisted.

But she would not. And she forbade me to. I should have, I know. But in this instance, I was glad of Patsy's forbidding me.

In this instance, I made the worst mistake of my life.

Then, somehow, Dorothea was taken with an attack of conscience. And right before the wedding, she told Pa about John. And Pa called me into the parlor at Scotchtown and asked me himself.

***

D
OROTHEA WAS THERE
. Oh, how I hated that she should be there when Pa and I were to talk. But she was. And she wasn't about to absent herself, either.

"Anne, did you know that John is enamored of Dorothea?" Pa asked me.

I said yes.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

I did not answer.

"Anne, I would not have John's sensibilities hurt. I would have told him early on that Dorothea and I had become close in his absence."

Why didn't Dorothea tell you? I wanted to ask. But I did not. "I don't know, Pa," I said. "John wanted us to keep it a secret."

"According to Dorothea, there was no secret to keep, Anne. Though she fears John might think so. She was never serious about him. I fear she was playing, as she played with so many other beaus." And he smiled at her. "But we ought to write and tell him of our wedding."

"'We'?" My voice cracked.

Dorothea smiled at me. "It occurred to me that you were closest to him, Anne. Why don't you write to him and tell him of our wedding?"

"Me?" I asked again.

"I shall write, also," Pa said. "But a letter from you would serve him well. And you must back me up, Anne, when I tell him you never told me."

It was agreed then. I would write the day after the wedding. Which was today. Pa would write, too. This very day.

But first I would go to the kitchen to see Pegg.

***

I
WALKED OUTSIDE
a bit first. Sun rose in the east, streaking the sky with its rosy promise. I knew I was wrong, keeping all those secrets.

So many secrets.

John's love for Dorothea, kept from Pa. Pa's courting her, kept from John.

Mama's saying, "Oh, Patrick, give me my freedom or let me die."

Even riding Small Hope, and dressing as a boy that day, so long ago now, to bring Doormouse home.

Lying to Betsy and Edward about Mama having brain fever.

Keeping Patsy's lies about drinking tea, too long.

Keeping Nancy's he to Patsy, when she told her Pegg was in the quarters sulking, when indeed her mama was taking Neely to the Governor's Palace for safety. Who knows, but Neely might still be alive today if
I
'd gone into the house that day and sought help for her.

Lying to Pa when he asked me if I knew of any reason why John should not go to war.

And worst of all, lying to all of them about who would inherit Mama's bad blood.

But every time, I told myself as I walked around the house, every time I thought I was helping the person I was lying for.

And every time I thought I was keeping a secret to protect someone.

And now, this very day, all my lies had come home to roost.

***

O
H, IT DID MY HEART
good to see the outline of that solid house against the morning sky. To see the trees around it all dressed in red and gold, the smoke coming out of its chimneys, the even lines of white fencing, the horses and cows in the fields.

And I thought, this place of all on earth owns me. And cherishes me. And at the same time is the seat of all my sorrows. And yet it has talons that reach out and grab me, then embrace me.

This place will always be home.

Pegg was in the kitchen, and she knew why I'd sought her out. It must have been written all over me.

"What gonna happen now?" she asked.

I sat at the table, drinking coffee. She was making me some ham and eggs. Fresh biscuits were in the brick oven. The smell near drove me mad.

"We could use you at the mansion, Pegg. Dorothea says the cook can't make biscuits like you."

She set my plate in front of me. "You gonna write to that boy?"

"Yes. Today. Me and Pa both."

She grunted. "Tha's no kinda letter a boy needs when he goin' into battle."

"He's going into battle?"

"Tha's what he wrote to Barley."

"Then, maybe I shouldn't write now."

"You gots to. Your Pa will. And John needs to hear from you."