The Schoolmaster's Daughter (7 page)

“Aye, a pity, that.”

“She's been good to me, my aunt.” Dawes searched his vest until he located the pocket, and then came the click of coins. He leaned over unsteadily and extended his arm toward Benjamin. “That's a good lad, for your assistance. Now you get on back home.”

Ben handed the reins up to Dawes, and then looking at the coin in his palm, he said, “Thank you, sir.”

He turned to start back across the Neck, but Fredericks stepped in his way. “A shilling, Billy,” he wheezed. “Rather steep, for a lad.”

“Perhaps, but I have been feeling sorely, because of my aunt and all.” Dawes reached inside his vest now, and for a moment he seemed unable to find what he was searching for, until he produced a small glass bottle. He removed the cork and took a pull, the sharp smell of rum spicing the salty air.

“Well, I'll tell you, Billy. We've got our orders tonight.”

“How's that?”

“Can't exactly say, but we're supposed to keep a tight fist on who comes and goes from Boston tonight. You understand. Maybe you could visit your aunt tomorrow.”

Dawes took another drink of rum. “Most likely I'll be visiting her grave tomorrow.” He offered the corporal the bottle. “This is my last chance, you understand. I don't see her tonight and—” He began to sob. Very convincing: just the slight intake of air, and hint of a quiver in his shoulders.

“Come now, Billy,” Fredericks said, his voice barely a whisper.

Dawes leaned over and rested his head against the horse's neck. Fredericks looked at the bottle in his hand, and then tipped it up to his mouth. He winced as he swallowed, but then he took another pull on the rum.

“Sir,” Benjamin said. “If you won't let Mr. Dawes pass, perhaps I could go to Roxbury and convey a message to his aunt.”

Dawes raised his head from the horse's mane. “No, lad, that won't do,” he said sternly, yet helplessly awash in emotion. “It's very kindly of you, but it wouldn't be the same.”

Fredericks raised his lantern and gazed hard at Benjamin. When he lowered his arm, the light cast deep shadows upwards on his face. After further consideration, he took a last pull on the rum and handed the bottle back to Dawes. “No, Billy,” he said. “The boy cannot go in your place. It wouldn't be right, for your aunt, I mean.” He looked out across the marsh toward Dorchester Heights. “It's not right, is it? I had a sister died last fall. Her lungs, you know. I didn't learn of it till January—near three months later, an' all's I gets is a letter from me mum. Priscilla was her name, me sister, that is. Had two little ones and a husband that's a cooper. Don't much care for ‘im, never did, and I worry about them kids, 'avin' no mum, an' all.”

“I'm sorry, Fredericks.” Dawes jammed the cork in the bottle and then held it out for the corporal. “At least keep this, to get you through the night. Fact is, I've had enough.”

“I can see that, I can.” Fredericks tucked the bottle inside his coat pocket. “Well now, Billy, you just be on your way before it's too late.” He turned and raised his lantern as a signal to the two soldiers manning the gate. “Rider comin' through,” he called out. “Open 'er up, boys.”

“Are you sure?” Dawes asked.

“It's only right.” Fredericks placed a hand on Benjamin's shoulder and giving him a firm squeeze. “And, like you said, this good lad should be on his way 'ome. In fact, it's well past me suppertime, so I may accompany 'im to that tavern there on down Orange Street so's I might take my evening repast.”

“You are most kind, Fredericks,” Dawes said. He straightened up in the saddle and walked the horse on as the gate was being swung open.

“Now, Ben,” Fredericks said. “I will just inform me men that I'm going off-duty. It's a dark night and a lad such as you shouldn't be out alone.”

“Much obliged, sir.”

Frederick's hand remained on Benjamin's shoulder a moment longer, squeezing tighter, and then he went back into the gatehouse and spoke to another soldier, handing over the lantern.

Benjamin was tempted to turn and run. Fredericks would never catch him. But the young soldier standing in the gatehouse doorway looked barely sixteen, and if he couldn't run as fast as Benjamin, he might be a fair shot.

So Benjamin stayed put, waiting for the corporal to return.

As he looked toward the gate, Dawes and his sauntering horse disappeared into the night.

When Abigail let herself into the house, there were the two candles, which her mother always left on the table by the front door. Benjamin had not yet returned home—his tricorn was not hanging from its peg. She climbed the stairs, but at the landing she sat in the window seat, blowing out the candle and placing the holder on the sill. The darkness was scented with melted wax and the house was silent, except for the sound of her father's snoring in the room at the end of the hall. Suddenly, she was exhausted, so tired that it would take too much effort to climb the rest of the stairs to her bedroom. Since her youth, the window seat had been her favorite place in the house, and she could dwell there for hours, reading, dozing, or merely gazing out the window. Now, leaning her back against the paneling, she curled her legs up on the cushions. She wondered where Ezra was now. She had lived her entire life in Boston and had rarely ventured from the peninsula. She thought of the rest of the continent as being a vast, uncharted place, darker than the city. Yet there was promise out there, and she wished she knew whether he had run away from something here in Boston, or whether he had been drawn toward something out there. Her brother James, in his subtle way, would suggest that this was not the time for such thoughts, reminding her of the sacrifices soon to come. And she thought of Paul Revere, crossing the Charles to warn the countryside that British troops were coming out from Boston. Perhaps this was the beginning of what was to come, the hard times James said were drawing near. She was tired, exhausted really, and she knew she should go up to bed. But this was her window, her view, and the moon was on the rise over Boston, reason enough to linger a few minutes longer. From this angle, she looked across the rooftops toward the North End and Christ Church, the tallest steeple in Boston.

IV

Tea and Togas

T
HERE WAS A KNOCK AT THE DOOR AND
A
BIGAIL AWOKE, LYING
on her bed, still fully clothed.

“You there, dear?”

“Why would you ask that, Mother?” Vaguely, she recalled getting up from the window seat in the middle of the night and making her way to her bedroom. “Where else would I be?”

“Coming down for breakfast, then?”

“I'll be just a few minutes.”

The floorboards creaked in the hall as her mother moved toward the stairs, but then she returned, and this time her voice was barely a whisper. “Benjamin didn't come home last night.”

Abigail was undoing buttons, but she paused and went to the door, saying, “He didn't?” Raising the latch, she opened the door—her mother looked startled and she shook her head. In the early morning light her pale eyes seemed to shine from within.

“I don't know what's happened to him,” she said. “And there's word on the street—Jonas, the milkman, says that hundreds of soldiers crossed Back Bay last night.”

“I know.”

“The streets, they're quiet this morning. It's strange, and frightening.” Her mother's voice had an unusual quiver to it. Over the winter she'd suffered from a long spell of the ague, and she still hadn't regained all her strength. Her step was slower now, her shoes often sliding along the floorboards, and, perhaps of greater concern, she seemed more forgetful. “Where would he be?”

“I don't know.” Abigail took her mother's fidgeting hands. “He'll be all right.” Her mother's hands, too, seemed reduced of late; thin, frail, and always cold, even though it was already quite a warm morning. “Let me just wash and change, Mother, and I'll be right down.”

“Tea!” her father hollered from downstairs.

“He's—” her mother said, pulling her hands free. “Please hurry, dear.”

Abigail watched her mother shuffle to the staircase and take hold of the banister as she eased herself down each step. At the landing, she paused to look back toward her daughter.

“I'll be right down,” Abigail said.

She stepped back into her room, and as she shut the door she heard her father's voice again, louder. “Tea, woman! And biscuits.”

After she finished getting dressed, Abigail quickly went down the hall and climbed the ladder to the attic. This was Benjamin's usual hiding place, in the house. Since he'd been small, she'd find him up here, sitting on some boards laid across the rafters. He would just sit, often after a row with Father, and he would refuse to speak, refuse to come down. But he was not in the attic this time. Still, this was not unusual. He had a tendency to wander, and sometimes days would pass without sight of him, and then he would walk through the kitchen door as though he hadn't been missing at all.

This morning, Father was wearing his toga. He sat at the head of the dining room table, taking his biscuits and tea as he leaned over several leather-bound tomes, muttering in Latin. When Abigail took her place at the table, always to his left, he did not look up from his reading, though she detected that the arch to one bushy white eyebrow was intended to convey disapproval. Pulling back the sleeve of his toga, he picked up his tea and sipped loudly.

Like many men of his station, John Lovell believed that he was a direct descendant of the learned Greeks and Romans. Boston was the new city, the new Athens, with its philosophers and senators. Daily newspapers such as the
Boston Observer
carried letters and broadsides that were signed with aliases: Archimedes, Euthymius, or Democritus. As schoolmaster of the Latin School, her father at times spoke English only as a last resort. But the toga at breakfast had become a recent development, as worrisome in its own way as was Abigail's mother's frailty in the wake of her extended winter illness. As the weather had warmed, he began wearing the loose, flowing toga around the house more and more frequently. Benjamin assured Abigail that their father wore nothing beneath the garment, and on more than one occasion she had noticed the front of his garment stained with urine. They simply never knew what to expect from their father. He was often pompous and distant, or relentlessly overbearing. Yet at times he would seem to possess the innocence of a savant. And there were also moments, perhaps most trying, when he would fawn lovingly over his children, taking satisfaction in simply watching them perform a task as mundane as tying a boot lace.

“Tea, dear?” her mother said.

Abigail only stared down at the biscuit on her plate.

While turning a page, her father cleared his throat.

As her mother took up the teapot, Abigail said, “No, thank you, Mother.”

He removed his spectacles and laid them on top of an open book. “Why is it incumbent upon my children to begin each day with this mild form of gastronomic protest?”

“You know very well why,” Abigail said. “We've been through this … for years.”

“We have,” her father said. Something about his voice seemed to rise up from the very depths of his lungs. It was a quality, a resonance that could fill a crowded Old South Meetinghouse, and could also strike fear into the hearts of the most recalcitrant pupil at the Latin School. “We have indeed for too long,” he said, “and today, at last, it's going to stop.” He leaned toward her. “And do you know why?”

Abigail ventured a look at her father, his eyes bulging beneath those brows. “Yes.”

“Yes!” he shouted. “Because George the Third has finally taken matters in hand! Clearly, he's instructed General Gage that it's time to put a stop to this nonsense. You know he sent an expedition out into the country during the night?”

“Really?” Abigail said. “I trust they have a good map.”

“They have a map, they have their Brown Bess firelocks, they have bayonets! They have orders to break this, this rebellious nonsense.”

“Nonsense,” Abigail said. “That's your favorite word. In English.”

“It is,” he said, now quietly, as though explaining a subtle philosophical point. “It means ‘without sense,' the ‘opposite of that which makes sense.' It perfectly defines what you and your brothers—and all those pathetic people out in the hills—think they're up to. Patriots, revolution: nonsense. We are all subjects of the king. And as of today, he's directed his military to reassure each of us that he holds us all dear to his compassionate bosom.” He glared down the table toward Abigail's mother, who was still holding the teapot.
“Pour
, my dear. Pour our daughter a cup of English tea—tea that was brought here so that we might partake of its beneficial properties and give thanks to that fair island from whence it came!”

“Taxed tea,” Abigail said. “No thank you, Mother.”

“Tea, like liberty,” her father said, “does not come free.”

“Taxed tea, taxed stamps,” Abigail said.

“Mob rule,” her father said. “That's what the likes of Samuel Adams are after.”

“And you do understand,” Abigail continued, “the issue is not the taxes—”

Imitating a whining child, her father said, “Taxation without representation!”

“Next thing they'll tax the air we breathe, or perhaps the salt in the ocean?”

Her father raised his hand and slapped the table loudly, causing the china to clatter.

There was silence. This was the moment, usually, when Abigail could look across the table at her younger brother; on some occasions he would diffuse the moment with some remark that was so inappropriate that even his father would, if only momentarily, be drawn back from the brink of his rage. Recently, during such a pause in the argument, Benjamin had leaned sideways, crossed his eyes as he stared at Abigail, and then he broke wind—a long, resonant fart, which caused their father to get up from the table and storm off to his study.