The Midwife's Revolt (40 page)

“It is but a scratch,” he replied, grimacing and holding his side.

His face was white and sweaty. I did not like his color, and my throat grew dry with fear. But I said, as if bemused, “Allow me to determine whether you speak the truth. One never knows with you.”

I removed his vest and shirt and gently cleansed the area around the wound. I then dropped to my hands and knees to examine the wound more closely. It looked to be the work of a knife. As gently and slowly as I could, I spread apart the wound and scoured the area with my eyes, looking for anything that might remain to fester, such as a scrap of cloth from his shirt or vest. I had to blot the blood away constantly, until one of the Quincys’ servants was drenched through with running back and forth to the fire. In the end, I had gone through a dozen rags and half a dozen buckets of water.

At last, satisfied that I had cleaned out the wound as thoroughly as possible, I asked Martha to run back to our house for bandages, honey, and cider vinegar, all of which thankfully remained to us from the night of the vandalism.

Thomas had been silent during my ministrations; he seemed to take the opportunity to rest, perhaps to doze, though my gentle touch might have been painful at times. But at the application of the honey and vinegar he sniffed, opened his eyes, and said, “Are you making a salad of me?”

“Lie quietly,” I commanded.

Half an hour later, cleanly bandaged and dressed in a good shirt of Colonel Quincy’s, Mr. Miller attempted to stand up, but I gently pushed him back down. He took my hand and whispered, “Lizzie.”

I held back my reply. No, I would not accept his tenderness on this night. On this night he was still a soldier, still in danger—as was I, of losing him.

It appeared, by Mr. Adams’s exhausted countenance, that our great statesman had no wish to tarry. However, the colonel quietly asked for a word and ushered him down the hall, where they would not be overheard. I rose and followed them to the door that gave out onto the hill facing the sea. The colonel whispered something lost to my hearing, to which John Adams replied, “But how did you all know of my arrival tonight? It was a well-guarded secret.”

Once again, the colonel whispered something. Then, perceiving me standing there, he turned to me. “Mr. Adams, you must know Elizabeth Lee Boylston.”

I curtsied, deeply moved. I knew myself to be in the presence of a very great man. I did not believe he could know how much his wife had meant to me during all these years of his absence, how fervently I had wished him a safe return for her sake.

“Oh, yes. ‘Lizzie,’ Abby calls you. I’ve heard a good deal about you. You’ve been a great comfort to her in my absence. Yet your life cannot have been easy these years?”

“No,” I admitted. “But then—whose has?” I attempted a smile.

There was something touching about the way he had phrased his thought as a question. Mr. Adams passed a pale hand over his face. His eyes sought out his son, and, finding him, he bade him approach.

“Would you like some refreshment, John, Master John?” Mrs. Quincy approached us and placed a kindly arm about John Quincy.

John Adams just looked up at his son and said simply, “I should like to go home now.”

What Abigail experienced half an hour later, when she awoke to the unexpected sound of the colonel’s carriage and three men at her door, can only be imagined. As we had kept her in ignorance of the grave and immediate danger of that day, so had she been in ignorance of his happy arrival. Oh, sweet reunion!

We returned to our cottage, holding Mr. Miller beneath his arms. We placed him upon the parlor bed, where he slept long and deep. Martha and Harry disappeared from sight, and I remained awake all night, watching Mr. Miller breathe, watching for signs of infection.

The following day, a bright sun dawned. Martha and I were in the kitchen when Mr. Miller hobbled toward us, wishing to join us for breakfast. I shooed him back to bed.

“One night with you, and she bosses you like a wife,” Martha commented.

“I wouldn’t throw stones if I were you,” I said, just as Harry made his disheveled appearance.

“Why—we did nothing untoward!” Martha objected. “As you see, I never even undressed.”

Now it was my turn to smirk.

“Many a babe has been conceived without a petticoat being removed,” I said.

“Lizzie!” Martha exclaimed in horror, and swatted me.

We had kept our emotions in check before this bright morning, but not so now. The chains of reason had broken entirely clear of our swelling hearts. Like mothers who dare not name their children for fear of grievous disappointment, we had dared not name our love. But now they would live. Mr. Miller had no fever in his eyes, no redness around the wound. After clearing the breakfast dishes, I moved to bring Mr. Miller his breakfast in bed. I felt his pulse; it was strong and steady.

“You see, I live to vex you another day,” Mr. Miller sat up to take his tea.

“It’s a good thing,” I said simply.

I had fervently wished to hide my long-suppressed joy but failed miserably: I burst into tears.

Thomas grasped my hand and he laughed most insolently at my tears. His laughter reminded me of the time he laughed at my mincing lady’s steps in Cambridge.

“You fool no one with your cool demeanor, Lizzie. You are not at all hard. And you love me to distraction.”

“I do.” I laughed with him, wiping my tears. “I surrender.”

Martha and Harry, still in the kitchen with Eliza, pretended not to have heard us, for in those days, privacy came not from an abundance of physical space, but from discreetly averted eyes and ears.

On this glorious day, we rested. We rejoiced. We took our men and bathed them, I most careful with my beloved’s wound, which I anointed once more with my humble elixirs. Oh, we knew we could not long keep them: Harry would need to return to his ship. Mr. Miller would head north, to aid John Watkins. But we had them now, these men, and all our arts we heaped upon them. We washed their hair and massaged their callused hands and feet with warmed and fragrant fat. We were quite practiced at this caregiving, if not at love. And so we made them good for a life of peace among gentlewomen, if only for a single day.

Epilogue

I WOULD BE remiss if I were
to leave off here and not tell you what followed upon the heels of these dramatic events.

The day after the foiled attack upon Mr. Adams, Eliza received a crushing letter from her mother. In it, Mrs. Boylston revealed that she would head to Portsmouth immediately, to locate the scoundrel who had ravished her daughter. Hearing this dreadful news, our friend left for Cambridge. Eliza would return about a week later, her situation greatly altered. She remained with us but two days, just long enough to scoop up her child and depart our hostile shores for distant lands, first upon Harry’s ship and then upon others.

But the details of Eliza’s story can be found in her own narrative of these times, and it is meet that I allow her to tell of them in her own words.

My brother and Thomas Miller left us, too. Harry’s ship departed for New York, and Mr. Miller received a message from His Excellency that his presence was urgently requested by General Sullivan, then at Tioga, New York.

I knew not whether or when I would see my beloved again. Thus, the night before he left me, we whispered our eternal vows to each other before God.

It may strike my reader as precipitate that Mr. Miller and I declared ourselves, hardly knowing one another—that we loved on faith, as it were. I had known the real Thomas Miller but a day or two, and he had never quite known the real Elizabeth Lee. I had packed much of her away in camphor after Jeb’s death. He had known Johnny Tucker, the revolting messenger boy from Weymouth, and Lizzie Boylston, the efficient midwife and farmeress. Soon, we would both discover Elizabeth Lee Boylston Miller, the woman.

On the last day with our men, neither Martha nor I spoke of departure. Instead, we took refuge in our usual pursuits and duties. It was in this state of quiet endeavor, pulling flax once more in the fields, that Abigail found us.

She had come on foot and was drenched in perspiration.

“Oh, Abigail!” I cried, rising to greet her. I fervently wished to hear her account of her reunion with husband and son. But she looked at us sternly and refused to smile or even embrace us.

“You cannot fool me,” she said, “though you think you can.”

“Fool you?” I began. “Fool you at what? We are, as you see, pulling flax. It is not entertaining, but it must be done.”

She proceeded to pull us up off our haunches and march us inside. Once safely there, she accosted us.

“John spoke of a skirmish on the beach after he had mounted the hill toward Uncle’s house. He wished not to speak of it before Johnny, but my child is not stupid. And I am not blind. I will not leave until you confess all.”

Could you have but seen this tiny woman—a woman who had borne six children and farmed with her bare hands, a woman who’d believed herself widowed a dozen times or more, clothing dark with perspiration, her hair all out of its pins, glaring at us—you would have either laughed or cried at the sight.

It was what we felt like doing, too. Relief at the notion of our men’s safety could not be suppressed. And so, God forgive us, we burst into laughter. We laughed and laughed, and only seeing Abigail near tears of frustration did we eventually grow sober, wipe our eyes, and divulge the full story that we had kept from her.

When we had finished, Abigail asked thoughtfully, “What if John or my boy had been killed? What if my ignorance had prevented my seeing them one final time? Could I have forgiven you for depriving me of those most precious moments?”

“’Tis for you alone to decide,” I said gently. “But I for one am exceedingly glad that nothing of the sort came to pass.”

There was a tense silence as Abigail mastered her anger. After what seemed an age, she said, “It seems I could not be a part of your Rebel circle, then.”

Martha replied, “We did not think so. Forgive us, dearest, if we were in error.”

“You wished to spare me the personal danger, and the horror, perhaps, of seeing my men cut down before my eyes.”

“’Tis true,” I agreed. We hung our heads.

“It was also an order from Colonel Palmer himself,” Martha added, taking what solace she could in the military chain of command.

Abigail came slowly toward us, her countenance softened. “I suppose I cannot blame you wishing to protect me. You did what I should have done in your place. You did what you had to do.”

At her forgiveness, we crowded around her and wept together. Afterward, we sat together for tea. Abigail soon got up to leave, not wanting to be long from John or her son.

“Now you must promise that we shall be sisters for the rest of our lives, with no secrets between us.”

“We promise,” Martha and I said in unison.

Abigail returned home, and Martha and I went to find our men.

On the morning Harry left,
La Sensible
awaited, and the winds were fair. There was little for me to do but wake him and Martha and bid them dress.

We had said our good-byes, and my brother was about to push off with the dinghy, when suddenly he fell to his knees before Martha. She raised a hand to her heart in surprise. I watched in stunned silence as he grasped Martha’s hands.

Martha gathered herself as if from within, becoming tighter and more erect as my brother spoke words I could not hear.

Eliza and I shuffled imperceptibly closer, the better to hear them. Harry stood up upon Martha’s urging but then pulled her close and whispered something to her.

We heard only Martha’s abrupt reply:

“Who can take such a creature for his wife?”

“Oh, I can. I can!” my brother cried, heedless now of those who overheard him. “Think you that
I
have not sinned these awful years? That I have not slashed men’s throats, shot men through, strangled men with my bare hands, and all for what? What had they done to me?”

He bent down on one knee once more, in a pose of supplication. I gripped Eliza’s hands, and we awaited her reply. Please, Lord, let it be the right one!

At last, she raised Harry up to face her. “I shall be your wife if you truly want me,” she said, “for I am not strong enough to bear life without you.”

A few minutes later, my brother, transformed by joy, helped Martha into the dinghy and bounded in after her, to be married immediately by his ship’s captain. Cheerfully he called after me, “Ready the house, Lizzie. Tell Bessie and Giles. For it seems we shall not shrink away to the land east of Eden. We are patriots, and it will be for God to judge us, not our fellow sinners.”

And with that, my beloved brother was off to marry Martha. I considered fretfully that there would be no time for them to consummate their marriage, but then I smiled to myself and shrugged, for I knew they had already done so.

Martha returned to shore half an hour later and could not speak for her tears. We merely held her to us and wept with her.

Soon, after many embraces and promises to write, they were gone. It was not for many months, not until April of 1780, that Martha and I laid eyes upon Harry again.

As for Eliza and Johnny, it would be not months, but years. But see them we did, in the end. It was in July of 1794 that Eliza returned to Cambridge with Johnny, to bring him to Harvard.

Our reunion was, as you may imagine, of such joy as hardly to be borne. Johnny was by this time a noble lad, brilliant in spirit and manner alike. His skin was taupy, his dark hair curly and heavily pomaded. But he had fair green eyes, and the truth of his lineage could be left to silent conjecture, for in every respect he was a true gentleman.

We hugged and pinched him without mercy, and he took it as affably as a young lad possibly could. Sadly, he remembered nothing of us except those things his mother had told him. Eliza, Martha, and I took up our friendship as if no time had passed.

Two years after Eliza’s return, our own John Adams was elected president. My dear friend Abigail became our country’s first lady. John Quincy was off to Prussia. All was well: all was as it was meant to be. At some point during Mr. Adams’s term, we three women got the idea to travel to Philadelphia, to visit with him and Mrs. Adams. Our joy at finding them so well, and so esteemed by all, may easily be imagined.

Several years into our marriage, as Thomas and I lay together in bed reminiscing about our early days, he turned to me and said, “You were a dreadful spy, you know.”

“Indeed I was not.”

“You were. You came to all the wrong conclusions, and when the truth stared you in the face, you would not believe it.”

I cringed. “Oh, do not remind me of that terrible time!”

He smiled warmly and placed a large hand on my hip.

“I’ll grant you that you tried. It was a brave, indeed a noble, effort. But a good spy must tear things apart, whereas your talent is to bring things to life. You are a woman in the best sense.”

“Best sense!” I poked him. “Is there a worst sense?” But he did not reply to my teasing, and I sighed. “For so long I did not feel like a woman. I felt certain no one could see through my manly disguise, because I felt it not entirely a disguise. Abigail helped me in this, I believed.”

“In what, dearest?”

“To feel less—freakish. Less alone in having an
. . .
active
. . .
mind. Oh, Thomas, I suppose I—I really am a woman, aren’t I?”

My husband then shifted his hand to my belly, big with our third child.

“Incontrovertible proof would have it so.”

Here, I slapped his hand and laughed.

But to end my story closer to where I began: the day before Mr. Adams was off again to write our first Massachusetts constitution—restless as Odysseus home from Troy—Martha and I received a visit from him. We were greatly surprised.

He came with a definite purpose, I was sure. It was how he did everything: no pursuit of his, even as a farmer, was ever casual. But what purpose could he have with me? I wondered.

It was, he informed me, to thank Martha and me on his behalf and that of his son. We attempted to protest, but he was quite firm with us. He was having none of our protestations. Two country midwives did not dare to contradict the great attorney and statesman John Adams!

Second, he wished to thank us for our work as patriots. He took our hands in his and told Martha she had made the ultimate sacrifice—the sacrifice of her self-love. Mr. Adams then turned to me and said, “As for you, Mrs. Boylston, I have heard from Abigail about your foolish exploits as a messenger boy. Johnny Tucker, was it?”