He appeared at the kitchen door in the afternoon, in an old brown coat and a roughly knitted cap instead of elegant livery, though his thick curling hair was still neatly clubbed with a leather strap at the nape of his neck. I’d forgotten how tall he was, and how he had to duck his head to clear the head of the doorway.
It had been an easy day for us in the house, with Mistress and her family having gone to sup with friends after attending church. The rest of us had walked back together, and now sat in the kitchen to relish the warmth of the fire.
Sunday was the only day of the week when we were permitted to take our ease and enjoy light tasks for our own use. I was spinning wool for the purpose of knitting. Hetty had been amazed by how quickly I’d taken to spinning. By comparison to the cobweb-fine cotton I’d once spun in Pondicherry, this thick wool seemed to spin itself between my fingers and onto my spindle.
Chloe was mending an old apron, and Caesar was drowsing, his arms folded over his chest and his head nodding heavily forward. No wonder, then, that we welcomed the diversion Lucas offered. Caesar and Chloe greeted him warmly, while I kept my own excitement to myself. He conversed first with them, sharing news of people from other farms whom I did not know. I listened and waited and tried not to fidget, silently hoping that he hadn’t forgotten his promise to me, or dismissed it as inconsequential.
But at last he took a newssheet from his pocket and spread it on the table, carefully smoothing the creases flat with his palm.
“There, Mary,” he said, the first time he’d acknowledged me that afternoon. “Choose whatever item you wish, and read it aloud to us.”
“What are you about, Lucas?” Caesar asked, curious. “Don’t shame our little Mary over nothing.”
“I’m not shaming her,” Lucas said. “When I was here last, she asked for me to help her learn. There’s no shame to that.”
Blushing at the attention, I put down my spindle and went to stand at the table, and stared down at the open sheet. In those days, a newspaper truly was a single paper or sheet, printed into four pages, with as many words packed into the columns as was possible on account of the costliness of paper. I wanted to do well to impress Lucas and the others, but the letters were small and dense with ink, row upon row of them, and very different from the humble child’s primer that had been my only other experience.
In desperation my gaze landed upon one of the few pictures in the sea of words, a small, crude woodcut much like the ones that had filled the primer. The picture showed a woman hurrying along with a bundle, and I hoped that if I faltered on the words that picture might offer me a clue, the way that the pictures had in the primer.
I put my finger beneath the first word to keep my place.
“‘No,’” I began, sounding out the letters the way the Quaker gentleman had instructed. “‘No-tyce. No-tice. Notice’!”
I grinned, pleased that I’d managed to untangle at least one word.
Lucas nodded. “Go on.”
“‘Run ah-wah-yy,’” I continued slowly, sounding out most words, but recognizing others. “‘Run away. From. Her. Maa-stt-er. Run away from her master.’”
I frowned, the meaning of the little picture suddenly becoming clear.
“That’s plenty of reading for now, Mary,” Chloe said quickly. “Fine reading, too, but no more.”
“Let her finish,” Lucas said, his voice firm. “She won’t learn anything by quitting now. Read to the thick line at the bottom, Mary.”
“I’ll finish,” I promised. “I won’t stop.”
Part of me wanted to. I could guess what more I’d read before I was done, but now that I’d begun I didn’t want to disappoint Lucas. I went on, slowly, carefully, taking my time to find the sense in each painful word by speaking it aloud, until I could read it all from beginning to end.
NOTICE
Run away from her master, on the fourth instant. A negro wench HANNAH, aged about 15, speaks good English, of slender make and middling height. Her back is much scarred from whipping. Carried with her a coarse blue and white chintz gown, a strip’d petticoat, a red broadcloth cloak, new black cloth shoes, and other good clothes stolen from this house. Whoever returns her to the Subscriber shall have Two Dollars Reward, and all charges paid by JOSEPH LINVILLE.
When I finally finished, the only sounds in the kitchen were the pops and cracks of the fire in the hearth and the constant slow drip of melting snow from the eave outside. I continued to stand by the side of the table, and traced my fingers lightly over the words I’d read.
I’d longed to read and learn more about liberty, freedom, and bravery, the things that Lucas had spoken of before. This notice wasn’t what I’d expected. I should’ve known rewards like this were offered for slaves who ran away.
Seeing the notice printed there in the newspaper, in words that I could read for myself, was a raw and aching reminder of my own history. The satisfaction I’d felt earlier over my accomplishment before the others no longer mattered. Instead, my only thought was for Hannah, who’d run away from her master with scars on her back.
“Thank you, Mary,” Lucas said. “That was good reading.”
I shook my head, not looking up.
“I hope Hannah ran clear away,” I said vehemently. “I hope they never catch her.”
“Some do,” Lucas said. “Mark and Sary did.”
“Mary doesn’t know about them,” Chloe said quickly. “Didn’t see the purpose in telling her.”
“Ah.” Lucas frowned. “Then I will. Mark and Sary belonged to your Mistress and Master, and they ran away before you came. Major Prevost offered a reward for them like this, too, but they were never found, nor taken.”
I nodded, though for once I wished he hadn’t told me what I hadn’t known.
“I am not surprised,” Lucas continued, “for Mark is a brave, resourceful man. God willing, he and Sary are free and happy.”
“God willing,” Chloe echoed. She turned back toward me and tapped her fingers on the advertisement I’d just read. “If this little girl Hannah was quick and clever like Mark and Sary, and had friends that was already free to help her, then she could’ve gotten herself away and safe.”
“I didn’t.” I’d never before spoken of my own past to them. Now I couldn’t help myself, the words coming fast in a rush of bitterness and regret. “I tried to run away. I tried over and over. I never went far. They always caught me, and beat me for it. When I wouldn’t stop trying, they put a collar around my neck, and then they chained me at night to my mistress’s bed. And I . . . I stopped running, because I couldn’t.”
Chloe came to stand beside me, her arm around my shoulder.
“Poor little duck,” she murmured, holding me close. “What a share of misery you’ve had.”
I know she thought I’d cry. But at that time in my life, I’d already wept so much that I felt as if my sorrows were too much a part of me, like the scars on my back and around my throat. They couldn’t be soothed over with the pat of a hand. My sorrows were buried so deep that they’d be impossible to separate and mourn with tears.
Yet Lucas understood. I could tell by how he didn’t try to comfort me, but only nodded once.
“We all do what we can, Mary, and what we must, no matter what others do to us,” he said. “We must try, always try. Continue that path and you will find your own reward, whether in this life, or the next.”
Chloe’s arm tightened protectively around me. An ungrateful part of me didn’t want her protection or, worse, believed I’d no need of it.
“Don’t tell her things like that, Lucas,” Chloe said. “If she tries to run like Mark and Sary—”
“I didn’t say she should,” he said.
“Then I don’t know what you said,” Chloe said angrily, and I sensed her anger included much more than Lucas alone. “Anyone else who tries to run from Mistress now wouldn’t even get free of this county. This time Mistress’d have soldiers on horses and dogs after them so fast to make sure they was brought back.”
Lucas frowned, rubbing his forefinger over his cheekbone. “That’s not what I meant. There’s other ways to freedom besides running away.”
“Maybe there was for you,” Chloe retorted. “Not for the rest of us, specially not for us women. The world is unfriendly enough without your nonsense.”
“Forgive me, Chloe, but what Lucas says is true,” I said slowly. “Besides, he didn’t make me read that notice. I chose it. I read it. He didn’t.”
“You did at that.” Lucas rose, and reached out to slide the newssheet away from me. Before I could protest, he’d refolded the paper and tucked it back inside his waistcoat. “I should leave now. The Captain is traveling in the morning, and he’ll want everything ready and done tonight.”
“Please don’t leave yet,” I said quickly. “I wanted to read about change and freedom and all those other things that you said before were in the newssheets from New York.”
He pulled his cap over his ears and smiled as he unlatched the door. “That’s what you did read, Mary. You might not have realized it, but you did.”
And I had. The more I thought of what Lucas had said, the more I realized how right and wise he’d been. He couldn’t have guessed that I’d choose to read the runaway notice, but once I had he’d made me see that the lesson to be learned was much more than simply sounding out letters and words.
I came to understand this more clearly every time that Lucas returned to the Hermitage. From him, I learned the geography of the American colonies, of Boston to the north and Philadelphia, Williamsburg, and Charleston to the south. I learned that fiery speeches and protests were being made in all these places, but only in Boston had blood already been shed. And I also heard for the first time the notion of free white men who believed themselves in bondage because of taxes, not actual chains or whips, something that even Lucas could not fully explain.
In my short life, I had never been blessed with a father, a brother, or an uncle who had cared to view me as a worthy person. Before long Lucas became all these to me. Whenever he spoke, I listened. This was, of course, to be expected from any young woman. But what was so much more rare was that whenever I spoke, Lucas in return listened to me, my words and my thoughts.
As the weather warmed, we often sat outside. Sometimes the others joined us; sometimes we were alone. It was then that I shared my history and he shared his: how as a boy in Gambia he’d been captured by warriors from another tribe, sold to slave traders, and brought to New York. There he’d been bought first by a stable owner, where he’d learned to work with horses, and then by Captain Vervelde. He’d known pain and loss, as had I, but the greater bond between us rose not from the common experience of suffering, but because we’d both survived it.
* * *
Once winter became spring and then summer, Hetty spent most days and nights at the other house with Mrs. DeVisme, leaving Chloe and me together to keep Mistress’s house, launder and press the clothes, tend the kitchen gardens and fowl, and prepare and serve the meals for the family and refreshments for evening entertainments.
My day was ordered by the desires of others. I had no choice in what I did, who I saw, what I wore or ate, or where I went. I cooked and served food that I was permitted to taste, but forbidden to eat. I had neither friends of my own age, nor any family. I was paid no wages, and owned nothing, but was instead the property of another.
Mistress did not understand this. Like every other white person in my life, she truly believed that I had been improved by her ownership. Because my skin was a different color than hers and I’d been born in another country, in her eyes I would forever be childish and incapable of acting upon my own.
It was always the same among the English and the French, even for a woman as learned as Mistress. She wasn’t silly or selfish, as Madame had been. Instead, she read many books and wrote many letters, as if she were a gentleman instead of a lady. In company, she didn’t simper or demur like other ladies, but spoke her thoughts aloud, which made the gentlemen admire her all the more.
She hadn’t before kept a lady’s maid, but once she learned I’d helped attend Madame she’d begun to summon me to dress and powder her hair for special evenings. With little personal vanity, she was considered handsome rather than a beauty, and as I brushed and pinned her hair, she sat as docile as could be, without any suggestions or judgments. Most often she read from a book in her hand rather than gazing at her own reflection in the dressing-table looking glass, the way Madame had done.
“You are quite skilled at hairdressing, Mary,” she said as she sat before me one evening. “I marvel that your last lady would have parted with you.”
“She died, Mistress,” I said, carefully rolling a thick curl with my fingers to pin against her temple. She’d never spoken to me like this, as a friend might. It made me uneasy, and from instinct I fell back on the simplest of answers.
“I am sorry,” Mistress said gently, consoling me as if I’d felt any genuine loss or sorrow for Madame. “That must have been terrible for you.”
“Yes, Mistress.” What had been terrible had been my life at Belle Vallée. Given how Madame’s dislike of me had grown on the voyage from Pondicherry, I doubted she would have done much to protect me had she lived.
“I am so grateful that the Major was able to rescue you, and bring you here to us where you’re safe,” she said. “Especially after being sold from your parents as an infant.”
“I was eight years old when my uncle sold me, Mistress.” I don’t know why I told her that. I still don’t. Perhaps, in that moment, I spoke that truth for my mother, who could not. “My mother died when I was born.”
“Oh, poor little Mary!” she exclaimed, twisting around on the bench to face me. “What of your father? Did he not look after you?”
“My father was an English soldier, Mistress.” My voice hardened and grew flat, the way it always did when I spoke of the faceless man who’d sired me. “He did not know of my birth.”
“Ahh.” Mistress’s dark eyes softened with sympathy I did not want. “That explains so much.”
I flushed, and turned away to take more hairpins from the dish. I could guess that what was explained to her was the color of my skin and eyes.
“There are few things in this world more irresistible than a handsome man in a red coat,” she continued softly. “It’s only later, when the heart is less blind, that the true measure of the man appears behind the gold lace.”
I listened, mute, as she’d twisted the nightmare of my mother’s rape into a romantic tale of broken hearts and handsome officers.
Later, on Sunday, I told Lucas what she’d said.
“I was wrong to speak of my mother to her,” I lamented as we walked together in the shade beside one of the ponds. “I should never have told her. I don’t know why I did.”
“You weren’t wrong, Mary,” he said. “There’s no harm done.”
I shook my head, unconvinced. “But for Mistress to think my mother would have loved the man who—”
“She didn’t know,” he said. “I doubt she would have said that if she had. She is not a bad woman, like your first mistress. She showed you kindness, and you warmed in it. There is no harm, no sin, to that.”
I sighed, kicking restlessly at the tall grass beside the path. Even though I had no memory of my mother, I’d always defended her. It was all I had, and all I could do.
“Think instead of what she told you,” Lucas continued. “She as much as confessed that she’s unhappily wed.”
I glanced up at him quickly. “Why would she tell me that?”
“Who else can she tell?” he reasoned. “She told you, because you cannot judge her.”
I frowned, thinking. I accepted most of what Lucas said, but I wasn’t certain of this.
“But how do you know that Mistress is unhappy?”
“Women and love are not difficult to understand,” he continued. “When you are older, you will understand these matters for yourself.”
I didn’t like it when he reminded me of how young I was, and stopped walking. “You’re not married, Lucas.”
He stopped, too, looking away from me and up at the trees. Sunlight through the leaves dappled his face, and masked his true emotions.
“No, I am not,” he said evenly. “I won’t marry until I can support my wife and children by my own labors. That is what a man does.”
“Major Prevost has done that for Mistress and their boys,” I said. “Besides, she still writes letters to him. Long letters, too.”
He began to walk again. “Do you ever see those letters?”
“I?” I hurried to rejoin him. “No. I know when she writes to him because she takes care to guard her words against anyone else reading them.”
“As she should,” he said. “But the time is coming when being a British officer’s wife will not be a good thing for her.”
It wouldn’t be good for me, either. If the Major’s enemies came to attack his wife here, they likely wouldn’t pause to ask my name or beliefs. I’d only be considered another of her belongings, more plunder of war. I didn’t want to think of what would become of me then, and my trepidation must have shown on my face.
“If you ever see or overhear anything that hints that she—or you—might be in danger,” Lucas said slowly, carefully, “send word to me at Mount Joy, and I will tell Captain Vervelde. He has always considered Mrs. Prevost a friend, and will do what he can.”
I nodded, every bit as solemn as he. So long as I kept to the fields instead of the roads where I might be seen, I could find my way to Captain Vervelde’s house if I had to.
I hoped I never did. It was no secret that the Captain’s loyalties lay with those opposed to the king, and while he was still invited to the Hermitage, I’d noted that those invitations only came on nights when there were no British officers in attendance. Mistress was already keeping the two sides separate from each other, and though there was still plenty of laughter and music in the parlor, there was often a tension to the conversations that had not been there before.
Lucas had never revealed how deeply the Captain was involved with groups like the Sons of Liberty, or exactly what manner of business took him again and again to New York. This promise of protection, however, hinted at more connections and power than I’d ever have guessed, and also of more danger, too.
* * *
On a cold, clear day in January, Chloe and I were together piping white sugared icing over the sides of the Great Cake for Mistress’s Twelfth Night supper. The cake truly was aptly named, dark and heavy with rum-soaked fruit beneath the icing, and larger than any other I’d ever baked. Chloe had already made the twelve little sugar swans that had been set aside to harden before they were placed in a circle around the top of the cake.
Although it was afternoon, Mistress herself was lying abed with one of the fierce headaches that had begun to plague her, and trusting that an hour’s time with the shutters drawn and a cool cloth across her eyes would make it depart before it was time for her to dress. The boys had been sent to their grandmother across the field, and the house was quiet and still, as if it, too, were resting before the night.
Working in the back kitchen as we were, neither Chloe nor I heard the rider pull up outside the front porch, his horse’s hooves muffled by the packed snow, but we both jumped when the man thumped his fist loudly on the door.
“Bah, what a racket!” exclaimed Chloe. “Go to the door, Mary, and tell him that Mistress won’t receive company for another two hours.”
I wiped my hands on my apron and hurried through the house, glancing quickly into the parlor to make sure the fire there was still respectable. Chloe could bluster all she wanted about turning away whichever gentleman had arrived early, but I knew Mistress would want him welcomed regardless, and settled into the parlor with either tea or punch.
I unlatched the heavy door, leaning my weight into the lock to open it against the ice that often made it stick. But instead of the gentleman I expected, there was a young British soldier on the porch, his cheeks red from the cold and his cocked hat tied in place with a checkered scarf, with a letter for Mistress. As I closed the door, I turned the letter over in my hand. I recognized the signet pressed into the red wax seal, the insignia of Colonel Faulkner, the commander of the British troops in the area.
“Mary, who was that?” Mistress asked, her voice faint from the top of the stairs. She wore her silk dressing gown over her shift, the color as bright as a flame in the winter shadows.
“A British soldier, Mistress,” I said, climbing the stairs to her with the letter outstretched. But instead of accepting the letter, she returned to her bedchamber, clearly expecting me to follow. She climbed back into the bed without taking off her dressing gown, and with a deep sigh drew the coverlet high over her chest and squeezed her eyes shut. By the light of the fire, her face was pale and pinched, with the pain of her headache twisting her brows together.
“Faulkner and his infernal letters,” she muttered. “Few things are as tedious as a self-important colonel with more ink and paper than sense.”
I dipped the cloth in the bowl of lavender water on the table beside her bed, and wrung it out. Gently I placed it across her eyes, and then began to make tiny circles over her forehead with my fingertips, the way I’d learned to do long ago for Madame.
“You are a godsend, Mary,” Mistress said, sighing with relief. “That is better, much better. Perhaps I shall return to dwell among the living after all.”
Her breathing grew more measured, and I thought she’d fallen back asleep when abruptly she spoke again.
“Mary, that letter,” she said, still masked by the damp cloth. “I’m certain it will be of no importance whatsoever, but I suppose I should know its contents before tonight. Are you able to read it aloud to me?”
“Yes, mistress.” I carefully slipped my finger beneath the seal, unfolded the sheet, and went to crouch beside the fire to read aloud by its light.
Madame Prevost,
I trust you are well and in good health despite the cold weather. I have had fresh reports this day from Boston that will interest you and other citizens loyal to His Majesty. The city remains in a state of war-like confusion, with the lawless mob having destroyed significant property. Governor Hutchinson has requested Parliament to send a military force to the city at once to restore peace. Sorrowful tidings indeed, but it is hoped that this act will soon quell the unrest for the good of us all.
I remain, madame, your—
“My obedient servant, on and on and on,” Mistress finished for me, and sighed again. “The fellow can scarcely contain his glee, can he? All these foolish men long for a war, as if death and mayhem have ever solved anything. No matter. I shall write and praise him tomorrow as if he were Mars himself, clad in the shining armor of victory that still won’t hide his belly.”
“Yes, Mistress,” I said, refolding the letter, and resolving to share this news with Lucas as soon as I could.
“You read that letter very well, Mary,” Mistress said absently. “I didn’t realize old Mr. Satterthwaite was such an uncommon tutor.”
“Yes, Mistress, he was.” There was no purpose—and perhaps some harm—in revealing that old Mr. Satterthwaite had taught me only the barest of letters, and that it was instead Lucas Emmons who had made a reader of me. “Will that be all, Mistress, or shall you dress now?”
“Return to me in another quarter-hour and I shall dress then,” she said, drowsy.
I was already closing the door after her when she called back to me.
“And Mary,” she said in the same drowsy voice. “Pray recall that what you read in Colonel Faulkner’s letter is not to be repeated or discussed with anyone. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mistress,” I said, already understanding far more than she’d ever know. “I do.”
* * *
Mistress needn’t have pledged me to secrecy. By the time Lucas came the following week, Colonel Faulkner’s “fresh reports” were so widely known as to have been printed in the broadside that Lucas brought in his pocket.
“You see how in Boston the people are taking matters into their own hands,” he said, scarcely able to contain his excitement as he pointed to the broadside from the Boston Gazette. “Instead of being forced to pay the king’s tax on tea, our men disguised themselves as savages, intercepted the ship carrying the tea, and tossed it all into the harbor. Not a single man, patriot or Tory, was injured, and all was done as civilly as could be. Read it for yourself, and may His Majesty do the same.”
Caesar and I crowded together to read the broadsheet, while Chloe sniffed and ignored it, and Lucas, too.
“Three hundred and forty-two chests of tea tossed into the sea!” marveled Caesar. “That’s a poke in the eye to the old East India Company, isn’t it?”
“‘The people are almost universally congratulating each other on this happy event,’” I read aloud. “Do you believe that, Lucas? That this—this destruction was celebrated? So many crates of tea must have made for a considerable loss.”
“A loss that the East India Company is bound to miss from its pocket,” Lucas said blithely. “It’s all the fine work of the Sons of Liberty, true patriots all, and I only wish we’d acted first in New York. But we will. We will.”
“Colonel Faulkner wrote to Mistress that British troops were already on their way to Boston,” I said uneasily. “What if they come next to New York, or New Jersey?”
“If they do, then they’ll find they’ll have more than they reckoned for,” Lucas said. “If they want a fight, then we shall give them one. It’s for the sake of freedom, Mary, freedom for us all.”
His eyes were bright with fervor for his cause, his jaw set and determined. I desired my freedom as much as anyone, but not this way. Not like this.
I had been only a small child when the British army had fought the French over Pondicherry. None of us who’d been born there had cared which army of foreign soldiers claimed victory. But I remembered all too well the desolation that their fighting had caused, with once-fine buildings destroyed and torn and bloated corpses rotting in the sun and devoured by the hyenas that had come out of the brush. I remembered the famine that had followed after fields of crops had been burned, and new widows wailing in the smoldering ruins of their homes.
And I remembered, too, what Mistress had said after I’d read her the Colonel’s letter: that all these foolish men longed for a war, as if death and mayhem have ever solved anything.
War had solved nothing in Pondicherry, and it wouldn’t here in the colonies, either, and as I listened to the excitement in the voices of Lucas and Caesar I could only fear where this all would lead.
* * *
I could always tell when Lucas had come from New York. In place of his livery, he’d be dressed like a common sailor or dockworker, in patched loose trousers, a shapeless jacket, and an old kerchief. To my eyes, it was not a good disguise: Lucas was too tall, his gait too distinctive, for clothing alone to change his appearance. He claimed it didn’t matter, that to the watch he was only one more Negro. Nor did they know or care that he was a free man. If stopped, he need only say that he was on his master’s business and he was permitted to pass.
When we walked together outside the house, out of the hearing of anyone else, he told me more, of how he and others like him took delight in intimidating New York Tories, shouting foul names, throwing stones at their carriages, and breaking the windows of their shops. To him, they were the enemy; they deserved no better. He explained to me how the Sons of Liberty were creating secret stockpiles of gunpowder and arms around the city in readiness.
“In readiness for what?” I asked uneasily.
“For the time when we must take action to set ourselves free,” he said, the words sounding glib and practiced.
“For war,” I said softly.
“If necessary,” he said. “Mary, consider what we can achieve. Imagine a country where we rule ourselves, without the interference of a king or parliament. Imagine a land where everyone is free, a land without slavery of any kind.”
I nodded, wishing I could believe these sweet and heady dreams as completely as he did.
“But at what cost, Lucas?” I said. “You’ve seen how Parliament has treated Boston. You’ve told me yourself of all the acts and laws they’ve passed to try to stop us. What will you do if they send warships to New York?”
“We will do what we must,” he said resolutely. “Mary, we know what kind of world we’ll have if we do nothing. Isn’t it worth fighting for the chance to create one that’s better?”
There was no quarreling with him, and I sadly knew that nothing I could say would change his purpose. He was determined, and he’d company enough with the same beliefs.
In December, Lucas had told me of how the grand mansion of New York’s royal governor was burned to the ground, with all the governor’s belongings inside. He said the flames were the brightest he’d ever seen: the flames of the righteous destroying the corruption of the Crown. What I saw in the newspaper was the price of this righteousness: the cost of the damage was placed at over five thousand pounds. I feared for Lucas, knowing how he and his Sons of Liberty took credit, though not a one was charged with the crime.
In April, they grew bolder still, and copied the actions of their brothers in Boston. As soon as the tea ship London arrived in the harbor, they painted their faces like savages and set upon the customshouse and ship itself. They dragged every crate of the tea from the hold to the deck, and took care to break the crates open with hatchets before heaving them over the side, so the tea could not be salvaged.
“The harbor was afloat with these tea leaves, Mary,” Lucas told me afterward. With a carelessness that terrified me, he hadn’t bothered to wipe away the last daubs of paint along the edge of his jaw and around his collar. “They say the governor wept with fury when he heard the news—not that his tears could undo what’s already been done.”
On the kitchen table before me, he placed a long leaf of tea that he’d fished from the water, still wet with salt water. He’d thought I’d want it as a memento of liberty’s cause. I refused to touch it, and I was glad that the next morning Chloe tossed it into the fire.
By June, the rebellion—for so it was—came closer to us in New Jersey, with most of Mistress’s neighbors declaring themselves as Whigs and openly supporting the new Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Those who did not were branded as Tories.
In public, Mistress took no sides, and continued to welcome old friends to her home, regardless of their beliefs. She gaily, and bravely, made it a rule that no politics would be discussed in her parlor, and because of the goodwill and hospitality she’d so carefully created over the years, her friends obliged.
But Lucas told me her loyalties were openly discussed and questioned and Major Prevost’s continued absence only fueled the talk for both sides. Some of her oldest acquaintances began to speak against her in public, and I heard guests in her own house question her allegiances the instant she stepped from the room.
I now could see for myself how on edge New Jersey had become, not only in Mistress’s parlor, but on market days and at Sunday worship. The more I witnessed and overheard, the more I began to fear for my own safety, too.
One rainy morning late in April, Lucas came to me full of excitement, and waving the newssheet that told the world of what had occurred in a small village outside of Boston, a village that could just as easily have been Hopperstown. The heading was “BLOODY NEWS,” and indeed it was: an unprovoked attack by the king’s soldiers on a group of humble farmers and townspeople before their own homes, as their wives and children watched in terror.
Last Wednesday the troops of his Britannic Majesty commenced hostilities upon the people of this province.. . . We are involved in all the horrors of a civil war.
Nothing in my life would ever be the same.