The Schoolmaster's Daughter (18 page)

“What's that?”

“There's Munroe, the sergeant he was on patrol with when that incident occurred in Dock Square. I met with him yesterday and his responses weren't altogether satisfactory.” He glanced at her. “There's something he was trying to tell me, about Lumley, but—the men, they usually keep mum about each other because it doesn't go down well if it becomes common knowledge that they've been spouting off to their superiors, that's not good. But it seems that Munroe and Lumley had some falling out. Munroe said, in effect, that Lumley wasn't to be trusted. That's the best I could make of it. But, you see, you can't trust most of them. By and large they're a miserable lot. Most of them don't want to be here. There's a reason why General Gage insists that we maintain stiff discipline. The first sign that men aren't following orders, we look for an example.”

“But Lumley hasn't done anything—”

“Not that I know of. Is there something you're not telling me?”

“No,” she said. “He just seems, I don't know, curious.”

“I'd keep clear of his sort.”

“That, Colonel, is hard to do. We are occupied, you know.”

Cleaveland said no more, and after a moment he got to his feet. “I should get you back. Don't want your father to think you disappeared in the fog.”

They began walking through the orchard, Province House looming faintly above the trees. Abigail removed his coat and handed it to him. When he took it, he stopped, pulled it on, but then gathered her in his arms and kissed her again, gently. “We might try another picnic?”

“All right,” she said.

When they emerged from the orchard, they found that carriages and chaises had lined up in the courtyard as the general's guests were preparing to leave. Abigail squeezed Samuel's arm, smiled up at him, and then waded into the crowd to search for her father.

PART TWO

May: The Siege

There are but very few who are permitted to come out in a day; they delay giving passes, make them wait from hour to hour … One day, their household furniture is to come out; the next, only wearing apparel; the next, Pharaoh's heart is hardened, and he refuseth to hearken to them, and will not let the people go.

—Abigail Adams

From a plentiful town we were reduced to the disagreeable necessity of living on salt provisions, and fairly blocked up in Boston.

—Ensign de Berniere,

British Soldier

X

Tea and Sympathetic Ink

A
S HE HAD IN
B
OSTON,
D
R.
W
ARREN MADE USE OF
B
ENJAMIN
as a currier. Every day he came and went from Hastings House, which was becoming the seat of the provincial government. Often for Benjamin it was a matter of idling away hours, waiting for meetings behind closed doors to conclude, but there were also times when the doctor or one of his colleagues would summon him and give him a correspondence that had to be delivered quickly. He often ran, though occasionally he was given the use of a horse.

One rainy afternoon, Dr. Warren called Benjamin into his chambers in Hastings House. He found the doctor alone, lying on a daybed staring out a window. “This weather isn't helping the condition of our men,” Dr. Warren said.

“I suppose not, sir.”

“Still interested in slipping into Boston?”

“Yes, sir.”

Dr. Warren turned from the window. He suffered from frequent and severe headaches. Though he was an unusually pale man with delicate features, his eyes appeared weary from enduring intense pain. He had a small writing board on his lap, his quill standing in the inkpot on the windowsill, and there were several sealed envelopes lying on the floor. With some effort, he gathered them up and held them out to Benjamin.

“You mentioned swimming across the Charles, but these must be kept dry.”

“I will find a boat.”

For a moment the doctor massaged his forehead. “You are to convey these to your brother James. He will give you instructions from there.”

“Yes, Doctor. I'll leave immediately and should make Boston after dark.”

Dr. Warren gazed up at Benjamin a moment, as his fingers continued to knead his brow. “If you are stopped by the British, they can't get those.” He nodded toward the letters as Benjamin tucked them in the pocket of his coat. “Better you destroy them, if it comes to that. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” Dr. Warren did not appear fully convinced. “I will find two small flat stones on the shore,” Benjamin said. “I will place the letters between them and tie the bundle together with a piece of leather. That way if a British boat approaches and I drop them in the water, they will sink to the bottom of the Charles.”

“And if you are stopped on land?”

“I have been stopped and have never given up a missive yet.”

Despite his migraine, the doctor managed the faintest smile as he dismissed Benjamin with a wave of the hand.

Benjamin went to the field hospital, where he found Ezra leaning over a barrel of rain water, washing his hands and arms. His surgeon's apron was smeared with blood. “I fear that my greatest service to this war,” he said, “will be performed with a saw. Years from now there'll be plenty of fellows who'll see me coming down the street and they'll say ‘There's the bloke that hacked off me hand—or me foot. Right quick about it, too. Like pruning a tree, There was a towel hanging from a post, and Benjamin handed it to Ezra. As he toweled off, he said, “Long face.”

“Dr. Warren's sending me into Boston with letters for my brother.”

“If anybody can get in there, it's you. Good luck.”

“I was wondering …” Benjamin hesitated.

As Ezra hung the towel on the post, a nurse came to the open flap that served as the entrance to the hospital tent and waved to him urgently. “Duty beckons.” He took a deep draught of air. “It's the smell. The air in there is—” He suddenly regarded Benjamin with a cautious stare. “You were wondering, what?”

“My sister,” Benjamin said. “It's just that, if I see her, I was wondering if you—is there some message you wish to convey?”

Ezra folded his arms and studied the ground. He might have been trying to determine whether a limb could be saved. Finally, he said, “No. No message. I would prefer it if you didn't mention me to her at all. Don't even tell her you've seen me.” He began to walk toward the hospital tent, but then paused and looked back at Benjamin. “It's better that way. I don't exist.”

Supply wagons were constantly moving in and out of Cambridge, and Benjamin had no difficulty getting a ride to Charlestown. Like Boston, Charlestown was a peninsula, a smaller fist of land that jutted into the harbor, which could only be accessed by a narrow spit of land that crossed a vast salt marsh. Most of the peninsula was open pasture, cattle grazing on Breed's Hill and Bunker Hill, with the village clustered at the water's edge, looking across the water to Boston's North End. There were several British naval ships at anchor, the
Somerset
being perched close to the river mouth, and farther down the harbor the prison ship, the
Preston
, her streaked and fouled sides giving some indication of the conditions below decks. Ordinarily there was a ferryboat that ran between Charlestown and the North End, but that service had been suspended since the siege began.

Early evening, Benjamin stood on a pier below the village, glad for the smell of low tide. The rain had passed but there was a heavy sky above the water. The only real activity was fishing smacks gathering their nets and clam diggers working the marshes upriver off Lechmere Point. Occasionally in the failing light he could make out a British longboat, patrolling the harbor.

He waited until after dark. There were plenty of dinghies tied up along the piers and he took one and sculled away from the shore, careful not to splash as he dipped the oars. He rowed well out into the harbor to avoid the lights of the
Somerset
, and then worked his way east toward the lights of the North End. The tide had turned, so it was heavy work pulling against the current. Even in the dark, he knew the Boston shoreline—the seawall across Mill Pond, the creeks and inlets, the marshes, all beneath the dark, looming presence of Trimount.

He heard the splash of oars between his boat and the shore, and finally he located it: a longboat, barely visible. An officer, a faint white cross on his chest, stood in the bow. Benjamin shipped his oars and slid off his thwart. Lying down in the bottom of the dinghy, he peered over the gunwale, watching as the longboat drew near, close enough that he could hear the officer's command to his tillerman. “Steady on with this current, Mr. Paltreen—two points to starboard.” The oars were becoming louder, creaking in their locks. Benjamin considered slipping over the transom and swimming for shore, which was at least three hundred yards off, but the letters, the letters must be kept dry. Abruptly, with a sense of urgency, the officer hollered, “Port now. We're getting too far out to observe activity ashore.” And the longboat began to turn, taking the waves broadside, creating a slapping sound that diminished with each stroke of the crew.

Benjamin began rowing again, working his way east, heading for Anse Cole's small pier, which ran out from the beach below a row of clam shacks. There were few lights along the shoreline there, only the occasional lantern in a window, its reflection dancing on the chop. He pulled well past Cole's pier, and then let the tide draw him in, only working the oars to keep his bow to the current, which allowed him to sit facing the shore. The beach emerged as a faint line of white, and Cole's pier was perhaps fifty yards off to the right. He turned the dinghy around and drove it up through the small beach break, until the bottom scraped sand and came to a stop. Climbing out, he dragged the boat a ways up the beach, and then began walking toward the pier.

Anse Cole's house was up a lane above the pier. It was dark—this part of Boston didn't have streetlamps. It was quiet except for the occasional caw of a seagull. The house was small, its shingles weathered and curled. Benjamin looked in a front window and saw Mariah sitting in the rocker by the fireplace, and her father was stretched out on the floor with a pillow under his head—something he often did for his sore back after a long day of fishing. Benjamin tapped on the isinglass, and just as Mariah looked up from her needlepoint, a voice said, “What do you think you're doing there?”

He turned and saw two redcoats coming down the lane. Without thinking, he began to run back toward the beach. He heard the soldiers' boots pounding behind him, but they were loaded down with rifles and gear and he was faster. When he reached the row of shacks he headed toward the dory, thinking he could pull out into the safety of the dark harbor. At the very least, he could get into water deep enough to drop the letters, still wrapped in stones, overboard. He raced along the firm, wet sand just above the shore break. He looked back and saw that the soldiers were well behind him, but then he tripped on some kelp and hit the sand hard.

His knee was painfully twisted, and when he struggled to his feet he could barely put weight on it. He hopped toward the dory but had difficulty pushing it down the beach. The pain in his leg was overwhelming, causing him to collapse in the sand, where he watched as the redcoats came toward him, one of them slinging his rifle down off his shoulder. Benjamin held his knee and he was out of breath—they were all out of breath—and there were voices, other voices now, coming up the beach toward them. Benjamin tried to get to his feet again, but then he was struck in the face with the rifle butt.

He may have passed out, because he realized he was now lying curled up on his side. He tasted blood, and sand coated his tongue and mouth. His head, as well as his leg, throbbed, and he wasn't sure what was happening, other than he was lying on a beach and there was some fierce argument going on about him. Then he realized it was Anse Cole who was yelling at the soldiers, while Mariah knelt in the sand and lifted Benjamin until his head was nestled in her arms. She was crying, saying “Benjamin, Benjamin,” but then she screamed when the redcoats began to pummel her father. There was a great deal of shouting, until the old man lay motionless in the shore break. The soldiers, winded, cursing, pulled Mariah away from Benjamin, and the last thing he remembered was being hauled up off the sand by his arms.

Abigail gazed at the cup of tea. Her mother had poured it, as she did every morning, as though it were nothing, no more significant than the biscuits, the butter, and the blackberry jam—all of which they had made themselves—that also graced their breakfast table. And every morning Abigail ignored the cup of tea, while her father and mother drank theirs and talked, pretending to ignore their daughter's untouched cup of tea.

But this morning was different. She was not outnumbered; she had an ally: her brother, James, seated across the table from her, with a second untouched cup of tea in front of him.