MY PA IS A HERO now to everybody. After he got back from Richmond, people of all persuasions came to see him. And the traveler's room was always ready with food and drink on the sideboard, a fire glowing, and more bearskin rugs on the floor.
The talk from the room went on long into the night. And much of it had to do with the war that was coming.
Pa was sure it was coming.
Hadn't he insisted at Richmond that "this colony ought to be put in a posture of defense"?
Grandma sent a package by post.
In it were two tomahawks once used by Aunt Annie's husband, Colonel Christian, on the frontier.
***
SOMETIMES GRANDMA sent packages. Most of the time they contained a new chemise or petticoat for one of us girls, sometimes a new hunting shirt for Pa or the boys.
"A tomahawk," MyJohn said. "I haven't seen a tomahawk around here in ages."
With the package came a letter. "Did you hear what a Tory merchant in Norfolk is saying of your pa? That he never heard anything more infamously insolent than P. Henry's speech!"
Insolent. Give me liberty or give me death.
Patrick, please, give me my freedom or let me die.
"You know," Grandma's letter went on, "those words 'peace, peace,' that your pa cried out in his speech, are in the text from Jeremiah. And I dragged your pa often to hear Mr. Whitefield's sermons when he was a boy. Glad to see they took seed."
So then, I thought, if Pa got "peace, peace" from Jeremiah, isn't it possible he got "liberty or death" from Mama?
I don't know what gave me the notion to put the question to Patsy. But I did, finally. And she got into a regular tempest. "It's Pa's speech! He got it from no one but himself!"
And it was then that she told me that if I mentioned the matter again, she would put me out of the house.
***
I WAS NOT ANGRY with Pa for using Mama's words. I told Pegg about it, and she said that if a person comes on in their life to doing a great thing, the greatness doesn't come from the moment.
"It comes from all the pain they've ever known," she said. "And don't want to know again. It comes from all the times they hurt others, and did no-account things, and couldn't make them right again. And," she said, "it comes from everything they have ever suffered, or given, or become, or been part of."
So I suppose that put Pa in line to do great things.
I was put out with Patsy for not believing Mama had said the words, is all. I felt Mama should have been given at least as much credit as Jeremiah.
***
BUT I DID NOT have time to be in a pet. There were other things I had to worry about.
Betsy, for one. She looked like she'd been living inside a cave these days. After Mama died, I determined to take more care of her.
It was not a simple matter. Betsy was not accustomed to care. She had become used to Patsy's sharp orders, to keeping her fingers busy stitching, to being satisfied to be left alone in a corner with a book and taken no notice of.
She had come to like it that way.
So I made overtures to Betsy.
I taught her how to blow soap bubbles. Would you believe that a child of six had never blown soap bubbles? What had happened here? I wondered. How did Betsy go from being a laughing two-year-old always running free to somebody who looked like they lived in a cave, hiding with a book in a corner?
Will always liked to use a pipe stem for bubble blowing, but I found a quill better for making the bubbles larger.
I taught Betsy how to play Old Man in His Castle. We helped Pegg's husband, Shagg, make building blocks for Edward, and painted them with numbers and letters.
I got her smiling. Not much. Her wan little face offered a crooked, polite smile. And it made me want to cry. But I had to be happy with it, seeing it was all I was going to get.
And then there was John to be worried about, too.
Oh, John looked robust enough. No cave look for him. His shoulders had gotten even broader, and he was looking more and more like Pa these days.
But he was going three times a week now to muster. I watched him at the table when he didn't know I was watching. I saw that his sureness of self was growing as broad as his shoulders. Was it the musters with the militia? Or was it his plans of running Doormouse in the steeplechase this summer?
Or was it Dorothea?
She'd ridden over one day after Pa had come home from Richmond. On her sleek horse and wearing her velvet riding outfit. She'd come for coffee. On her head was a little silk hat with a feather that I knew did not come from hereabouts. It had England written all over it. And she wore delicate leather gloves. Oh, how I envied her pert nose, her gleaming white teeth, her curls, her slim waist!
"Mr. Henry," she said to Pa. "I'm hoping for your son's horse in the steeplechase this summer."
"We're all hoping," Pa said.
"Dr. William Flood's chestnut is running again, I hear. So is Colonel Taylor's filly. Is it true that this summer the race will be held across the river in Surrey, at Devil's Field? And people will come from both sides of the James?"
"It's true," John said.
"It's a large purse," she said. "I hope your horse wins." Like it was Pa's horse and not John's.
And she was not looking at John. But at Pa.
"I have a surprise for you, Mr. Henry," she said as we were leaving the dinner table. "May I use your pianoforte?"
We all gathered in the parlor. John stood next to the pianoforte as Dorothea sat and smiled sweetly at Pa.
"Did you know they are putting the words of your speech into song?"
Pa shook his head no.
"Well, I was at a gathering in town three days ago, and it is certainly so. Here, let me play and sing it for you."
And she did. "Each free-born Briton's song should be, Or give me death or liberty."
And I thought, what can I do about John? He already knows how to blow bubbles and play Old Man in His Castle. But what if he went to war? And I can't talk to him every day to see how he is faring? What if I can't watch him?
***
CLEARLY, THE MENFOLK in our house were expecting war. It was all they talked about.
And they had enough to talk about.
Governor Dunmore issued a proclamation forbidding the appointments of any delegates to the next Congress in Philadelphia.
All gunpowder shipments from England were put to a halt.
Express riders raced through our green, spring countryside, wild of eye, with the news.
"They talk to make themselves brave," Pegg said.
It took a grievous amount of talk between Pa and MyJohn, John and Will, to get brave.
It took polishing of muskets, and making of musket balls. It took the readying of haversacks and shot pouches. And considerable handling of those tomahawks Grandma had sent.
But what they were readying for, I did not know. Nobody did.
And then, of a sudden, it came. The pounding on the door in the middle of the night of April 20. The instant lighting of lanterns.
I stumbled into the hall to see Pa, in black cloth breeches and nightshirt, talking to a messenger at the front door. Then the man left.
"What's happened?" asked MyJohn.
"An armed schooner came to Williamsburg from Burwell's Ferry and took all the powder out of the magazine," Pa said.
"What are you going to do?" John asked.
"Dunmore gave the excuse of slave uprisings. At least four in surrounding counties. Says it is not wise to leave the powder in the hands of agitated people."
I saw MyJohn and Pa exchange looks. Like they knew something the rest of us didn't.
"Whether there are uprisings or not, the powder belongs to the people, not to the government," Pa said.
It was enough. We all knew that now there would be trouble.
Pa insisted we all go about our regular business. For two days he went quietly about the house, studying papers he'd brought home from Richmond, reading his law briefs, riding out to see the spring fields, meeting with men callers in the traveler's room.
Then, on the third night after the governor seized the gunpowder, Pa and the boys left to join the Hanover Volunteers.
The citizens were assembling on the town green in Williamsburg, armed and fearful. And the governor was threatening to free the Negroes.
***
IN THE WEEK that followed, we found out about the war starting up north at Lexington and Concord.
Their war had started before ours. And we had Pa, speechifying.
The week after that, Patsy became terrified. Not of the war. Of our Negroes.
She refused to eat anything until Pegg tasted it first. "They're going to poison us," she said.
Betsy started to cry. Patsy scolded her and, for lack of anything better to call her, said she was a sissy boots. Edward, who was four now and said everything, told Patsy he wanted his morning hominy.
"Pegg has to taste it first," she said. "Wait."
"Want it now!" Edward banged a pewter spoon on the table.
Edward was the darling of the household, and he knew it. He was a cunning child, with his straw-blond hair, his peach-white skin, his smiling blue eyes, and his delicate ears that added to his fairy-child-like appearance.
Patsy slapped his hand, then pulled him off the chair and slapped his bottom. "No breakfast for you."
Edward commenced to wail.
"Don't hit him!" Will scolded. Will was taller than Patsy already, well onto becoming a young man and commissioned by Pa to be head of the household with the other men gone. But he was no match for Patsy.
"Hush. I'm head of this family," she snapped.
I got up and took Edward and Betsy by the hands.
"Where are you going?" Patsy demanded.
"To the kitchen. To have breakfast in peace with the children."
"Don't you dare take those children to the kitchen! Pegg will poison them!"
I left the room. So did Will.
"You hear me?" she yelled.
All I heard was her. Sounding like Mama.
***
I PULLED THE children outside. Spring had been with us for a fortnight, and nobody had paid mind. Trees were in bloom, crops already growing, new lambs and colts in the fields. If I were spring, I thought, and I got myself all gussied up for these people, I'd pack up and leave soon's I got here.
Edward was still sobbing, and I knelt down next to him. "Don't cry," I said. "Pegg will give us breakfast."
He stood wiping his tears. Then he pointed up to the sky. "I want Mama," he said.
I hugged him tightly. His little body responded. And I said, "Edward, I shall always protect you; please don't cry."
It worked. He and Betsy ran toward the kitchen. But I was crying now instead.
***
IN THE DETACHED kitchen, I did not see the cowed figure in the corner at first. I saw only Pegg and the children running to her, she sitting them down at the old wooden table and pouring them bowls of hominy and honey and milk. She set a bowl in front of me, too. I was about to put the first spoonful in my mouth when I heard the whimper.
"I's hungry, Pegg. Why cain't I eat?"
And there, cowering under a blanket in the far corner, I saw a slight Negro girl I did not recognize.
"Who?" I asked Pegg, but she put her finger to her lips and shook her head. "Hush now." But the children had already seen her and turned to stare.
"You all promise not to tell Neely be here?" Pegg knelt down beside Edward and Betsy. "Can't let Patsy know."
Neely! The girl I'd written my letter to the Gazette for! The girl who was always running off, whose master beat her.
I wondered where Will had gone, then minded that he was also to take care of John's horses.
I stared at the girl, but she was hidden in a blanket the color of old mushrooms.
"They won't tell," I assured Pegg. "But why is she here? I spoke to Pa about her master. And he said the burgesses gave Mr. Estave warning."
"Yeah, well, they didn't warn him enough, did they?" She motioned to Neely to get up, and the brown mushroom turned into a comely girl, who stood, shakily.
She had a round, pretty face. Her dress was of good fabric but torn. Her eyes were like lanterns in a storm, the light in them going off and on. She shied from me.
"He beat her ag'in," Pegg said. She sat the girl down at the table and gave her a bowl of hominy.
Neely ate, about starved. She ate quickly, casting an eye around to see who was watching, like a dog who had been mistreated.
"Neely," Pegg told her, "this be the young miss who wrote that letter to the paper to defend you."
Without looking at me, Neely nodded. "Much obliged."
I couldn't stop watching her. But I knew better than anybody what her presence would cause. "You can't stay here," I said. Patsy would have apoplexy. She would think there was a Negro uprising starting here and now.
"I'se takin' her to the Governor's Palace," Pegg said.
"The Governor's Palace?" Of course! She had heard what the governor was threatening. The Negroes had a better intelligence system than we did.
Pegg went about her business. "Tha's where she wanna go. Gonna ask the governor for help."
"He's got his own troubles now."
"The Negroes part of 'em. He say he gonna free the slaves."
I said nothing.
"Tha's why your pa go ridin' out of here so fast, ain't it?"
"He went to get back the gunpowder," I found myself saying. "He went to defend the honor of Virginia."
Dear God! I sounded like Patsy!
In one swift movement, Pegg pulled Neely to her feet, whipped the blanket off her, then ripped the cotton chemise she wore.
"This!" she said angrily. "This be the honor of Virginia!"
And there I saw the whip marks on Neely's back. The girl bowed her head and whimpered.
So did Betsy and Edward. Quickly I gathered them to me. "Don't cry, children," I said. "There, there, don't cry."
I fetched some rock candy from a bowl and gave them each a piece. I settled them by the hearth, where there was a mother cat nursing her kittens. Soon they became distracted and I went back to Pegg.
"I'm sorry," I said. "My pa doesn't countenance such," I told her, "and you know it, Pegg. So don't go blaming Pa."
She helped Neely adjust her clothing, then gathered her things. "I'se takin' her to the Governor's Palace," she said again.
"I won't stop you."
"I'se takin' a horse and gig."
"I said I won't stop you."
Should I? Was I supposed to? How could I? Then I thought about something. "Are you going to get yourself free?" I asked.
"That sister of yours. Think I doan know what she's about? Thinkin' I gonna poison her? Makin' me taste the food afore they eat it? How you think it make me feel?"
"I know how," I said.
"Was me took care of your mama."
Again I said nothing. I never had learned to go up against Pegg.
"That governor give us our freedom, we ready. At least this girl gonna be ready. She not takin' any more beatin's. Lots of Negroes goin' there. He got an armed guard of Negroes round the palace by now."
I felt helpless, stupid, and foolish. For all my studies, my pa being an important man, I felt like a cornstalk in a hailstorm here.
"My Nancy make the meals. Let Patsy think I'se sulkin'."
They went out the door. "Will you be back, Pegg?" I called after her.
"Maybe I will, and maybe I won't," she said. "I'se thinkin' on it."