As we returned to the farm, my thoughts were on the scene of horror we’d witnessed from atop the hill. Despite Prudence Blood’s assurance that none of our men would be killed or wounded, the words of my silent prayer ran in endless circles through my mind. Please, God, keep them safe.
When Ben opened the gate to the cow pasture and climbed back onto the horse behind me, I caught a glimpse of movement at the side of the barn.
“I see ’em. They’re comin’,” Jane shouted.
I had hoped no one would notice we were missing, but I should have known better. Mother and Bethy hurried around the side of the barn, and Goody Boatrick came at a half run from the orchard.
“Where have you been?” Mother demanded after we’d crossed the pasture.
“We’ve been worried sick,” Goody Boatrick added.
Ben slid off Dolly’s broad back. “We went to watch the fightin’.” His chest expanded, and I think in his eyes, he’d grown several inches.
“Fighting?” Mother asked.
“I told you I heard guns,” Jane said.
Like Ben, I slid off the mare. “The redcoats are retreating from Concord and have opened fire on our men who wait behind trees and fences. Our men are firing back. We watched them from Hardy Hill.”
A tiny moan escaped from Goody Boatrick. “Dear heaven,” she whispered.
“Your Father?” Mother asked. “Did you see him?”
“My Thomas and Israel?” Goody Boatrick echoed.
“As near as we could tell, they are safe,” I said.
“Prudence Blood said not one of the Mayfield men would be hurt or killed,” Ben put in.
“Mistress Blood to you, young man,” his mother corrected, though it was obvious from her expression that Ben’s words had lifted her spirits.
“Mistress Blood was there too?” Mother asked.
I nodded and began to explain, with Ben interrupting and giving his opinion every time I paused for breath.
To satisfy Goody Boatrick, we were obliged to go over the details of what we’d seen more than once. It wasn’t so much that she was particularly dense as it was that she needed reassurance that her husband and son were safe.
I noticed then that Mother was frowning. “What are you doing in your brother’s clothes?” she demanded. “And why did you leave without telling me where you were going?”
“Because I knew you’d forbid it.”
“As I would. You have no business riding off . . . or taking Ben with you. His mother has been beside herself.”
To prove her right, Goody Boatrick gave her son a hard swat across his behind.
I returned Mother’s frown with a steady gaze. “I’m sorry for the worry and that Ben got a whipping . . . but I’m not sorry we went. If we hadn’t, we wouldn’t know what was happening or that, so far, Father and Thomas and Israel are all right. Most likely we’d have had to wait for days . . . worrying, not knowing . . . thinking the worst. Now we not only know, but we have Mistress Blood’s assurance that the Mayfield men will be safe.”
Silence settled over the pasture. Goody Boatrick pulled Ben close. “I was right worried,” she said softly. “But now I know what you done . . . and why ye done it, I’m right glad you went.” Her voice turned stern again. “Such don’t mean you can run off whenever ye please, so ye’d best be watchin’ what ye do.”
Jane’s voice broke past her mother’s. “Can Mistress Blood be trusted . . . what she said about none from Mayfield being hurt?”
“I think she can,” I replied, glad to have words other than those of justification leave my mouth. “The old woman has a way of knowing things before they happen. She told us she had a dream two nights ago. There was shooting and fighting, but when she saw the Mayfield men, none had been killed or hurt.”
In the silence that followed, I became aware of the sun beating down on the shoulders of Jon’s jacket and that the heavy woolen fabric that had been welcomed earlier was now too warm for comfort. I glanced up at the clear, blue sky of the perfect April day. It seemed unfitting that fighting and killing had commenced on such a beautiful spring day.
After the final questions had been asked and answered, Goody Boatrick and Jane returned to the laundry house and Mother, Bethy, and I went back to the kitchen. Ben stayed behind to see that Dolly was properly taken care of.
“Please change out of your brother’s clothes,” Mother said after she’d closed the back door. Pain showed in her eyes, and I realized how it must hurt her to see me, instead of Jonathan, wearing them.
Had all gone as planned, Mother would never have seen me in my brother’s clothes. Even so, I wasted no time in doing her bidding. When I went to close the shutter, I pressed a finger against the glass pane to feel the radiating warmth of the sun. It was the warmest day we’d had in more than six months. With the thought came the realization that it had now been a year since Jonathan’s death, twelve long months of pain and sorrow.
“I miss you, brother. How you would have enjoyed riding off to battle with Father.” I blinked back tears as a new thought slipped into my mind. Perhaps Jon’s spirit had been there today, riding with me on the gray mare, an essence of him lingering in the fabric and seams and stitches of the clothes I’d been wearing.
***
Mother was busy at the hearth when I returned to the kitchen. Using tongs, she lifted coals onto the lid of a cast-iron pot sitting on a bed of coals. Only when she finished did she turn to me, her voice still holding remnants of anger. There was a plea for conciliation too. “After all these years of living with you, I still don’t fully understand you, Abby. Why you’re so impetuous and quick to speak your mind. Why you—”
“If I didn’t speak and act so, none of us would know what our men are doing and that the redcoats are in retreat. Nor would Father have his broadsheets . . . and the message he sent to Boston wouldn’t have been delivered.” I paused, knowing that in my reply, I’d shown the very qualities she didn’t understand.
Mother slowly rose to her feet, her face looking as if she wanted to cry.
I regretted speaking so frankly and feared I was about to receive another scolding.
“I’m sorry, Abby,” Mother said instead. Tears brightened her eyes as she crossed the space between us and pulled me into her arms. “I feared you’d run off to fight and . . . and that I’d lose you as I had your brother.”
“No, Mother . . . I went only to watch.”
Taking a deep breath, she went on. “Though I criticize, I also have great admiration for you, Abigail. You’re brave . . . just like your father and Jonathan . . . and ’tis a great comfort to me to have you with me when there’s just the three of us.” She pulled me close in another embrace.
***
Father and the Boatricks didn’t return the next day, nor did they return on Thursday. Thursday night when Mother led us in prayer, her voice was strained with worry. After fastening the bolts on the outside doors, her steps, like mine and Bethy’s, were slow on the stairs. Over the following days, our ears were turned for the sound of hoofbeats and a rider bringing news. Had a battle taken place when the redcoats had reached Boston? What was happening?
Besides worrying about Father, thoughts of Gideon were never far from my mind. How had the events at Concord-Lexington affected him? Was he safe? While I helped Mother, I sent a prayer heavenward that he sat in his room and not in some dank prison cell. Surely after the redcoat retreat, General Gage’s officers had more to occupy their minds than a Tory gentleman at The Rose and Crown.
Impatient for news, I decided to visit Prudence Blood to see if she had returned. After telling Mother where I was going, I asked Ben to ready Dolly and the cart. A few minutes later, I was on my way. Many of the farms lay idle, their men harassing the redcoats back to Boston. Only the Tory men remained.
My heart lifted when I saw the old woman working in her garden. She looked up when I stopped at her sagging gate and was on her way to open it before I could get down from the cart.
“I’ve been expecting you,” she said by way of greeting.
“How did you know I’d come?”
“’Twas a feeling I had.”
“Have you news of the Mayfield men? Did you see them when you went to help? Were they all right?”
“They were . . . at least when I left them two days past.” Her eyes looked beyond me as if she saw something other than Dolly and the cart. “’Twas a terrible day of bloodshed and killing,” she went on in a voice hollow with sorrow. “Those poor soldiers. So many killed . . . picked off like birds sitting on a fence.” She shivered as if she were there again, caught in the slaughter and the noise of guns. “Those poor soldiers,” she repeated, “harassed all the way to Boston, their ranks getting smaller while the number of those who fired at them grew with every mile.”
“You seem to have more concern for the redcoats than you do for our men.”
Mistress Blood’s dark eyes fastened on mine. “They were men who needed my help. ’Twas what I did that entire day . . . offering sips of water, staunching blood, trying to ease the pain. It mattered naught to me whether they wore coats of red or homespun brown. They were God’s creatures needing my help.”
Taken aback by her fervor, I said not a word, though several skittered around in my head—words like the rightness of the patriot cause and the need for us to govern ourselves. But when I set my words next to hers, I found them lacking. Instead, I asked, “Weren’t you afraid you might be shot?”
The little woman shook her head. “I was too busy to give any thought to that.” She paused and went on in a subdued voice. “I followed them all the way to Cambridge, staying a safe distance from the fighting and trying to help any who fell. Men from both sides helped too . . . carrying a friend or dropping behind to assist as best they could.”
“And Father?” I prompted.
“I saw him in the distance a time or two. When the redcoats finally reached Boston, those that had fired at them camped on the hills around . . . hundreds . . . thousands . . . so many I couldn’t find the Mayfield men. I continued to nurse and help those I could and slept on the ground by their fires.”
My admiration for Mistress Blood increased—risking her life to help others instead of holding back and thinking of her own safety.
She paused, and a look of wonder crossed her wrinkled face. “There were so many campfires it looked like heaven had lowered itself to spread her stars across the hills . . . hundreds of stars lighting the hills and the night. Tired as I was, I couldn’t help but stare. “’Twas a sight that told those in Boston as surely as if the men on the hills had shouted it. They had come, and they meant to stay.”
I pictured the lights outlining Boston and the sweep of the bay—Bunker, Breed, and Charles Town hills covered with innumerable fires and men and guns. It would be a sight those both within and outside of Boston would long remember.
The sound of Mistress Blood’s voice brought me back to myself. She had turned to stare across the meadow to the east. “This fighting is but the beginning,” she said as if she could see all the way to Boston.
I wished she could and that I could know of Gideon’s safety too.
“’Twill go on for years . . . so long men will weary of fighting.”
“Will we win and be free from King George’s rule?”
Mistress Blood suddenly looked weary, the deep seams of her numerous wrinkles proclaiming every one of her seventy-odd years. “The dream didn’t tell me.” As she spoke, her narrow shoulders lifted. “Though my dream was grim, it also spoke of hope. ’Tis what I cling to . . . what you must do too, Mistress Abigail.”
The dread around my middle lessened at the mention of hope. At least for now, Father and the Mayfield men were safe. As for Gideon . . . Like Prudence Blood, I stared long and hard toward the east, wishing I could see and know. How had the return of the defeated redcoats affected him? Was he safe, or had their return only made his life more perilous?