NEVER DID the word honorable translate into so much fun for me, and pain, as over the next few years of courtship.
It had taken me a while to get accustomed to the fact that the handsome young man who came a-knocking at Uncle Greene's front door was knocking for me.
Of course, he still came for Whig meetings and I would wait in the parlor, distractedly doing needlework while the meetings went on, praying for them to be over, while Aunt Catharine scolded that I should not appear so anxious.
"Be a little less interested," she would whisper. "Go upstairs to your room. Let him wait for you!"
"Wait for me?" Is she daft? "Why should I act disinterested? Don't you remember how it was when you and Uncle Greene were courting? How the minute your eyes met across a room you were together? Couldn't you feel each other's hands? And faces, side by side?"
"And what would you know of faces, side by side?" she would ask. "I hope he is behaving with you. I hope you are behaving as you are supposed to be."
I would sit there and think of Nathanael's broad shoulders when he took his jacket off, of his strong hands, of the way his face felt when he needed a shave. I would close my eyes and thank God for having made men the way he made them because He, God, had been so clever about it. The way He'd know what we women would want and need.
***
ONE DAY, Nathanael and I had ridden over to the house he was building in Coventry. It overlooked the Pawtuxet River. Along the river a family was picnicking. Of a sudden we heard a scream from the mother. A little boy had ventured to the edge of the water, fallen in, and was being carried downstream.
In a second Nathanael was off his horse, had torn off his boots and coat, dived in, and brought the boy out. I sat my horse, mesmerized by the sight of him so strong and dripping wet as he handed the boy back to his parents and lingered to make sure the child was all right.
My Nathanael had dove into the river without a thought of his own safety at all! I was besotted with him, and the word honorable became more difficult by the day as our courtship went on.
But if it was difficult for me, what was it for Nathanael?
I saw the difficulty for him, as in winter he visited our cozy parlor regularly, as he took me to dances, concerts, fish fries, skating parties. Summertime we went picnicking, sailing, and riding—and more dancing. He was inordinately fond of dancing because when he was young, his Quaker father had never allowed him to dance.
"Once I got beaten because my father was told that I was just watching a dance," he told me. So he constantly ran away from home to dance. And was often beaten for it.
But much of the time in our courtship, we gathered in Uncle Greene's house with other Whigs and spoke of the rising rebellion, and many terrible things that happened after the Stamp Act was repealed, like the Boston Massacre in 1770.
By this time, when we said good night, he kissed me, held me close, murmured my name, over and over, then pulled away abruptly. "God," he would say. "God." And I knew it was not an oath, that it was a prayer, as he would turn on his heel and walk away.
It was in that year of 1770 that Nathanael's Quaker minister father died. And upon his death I learned he was not only a minister but a shrewd businessman who owned not only many forges and mills in the area but a merchant ship that was engaged in the Caribbean trade.
The slave trade, Nathanael explained to me.
Of course all of the fruits of his father's industry now went to Nathanael and his seven brothers.
"The merchant ship is called the Fortune," he told me, "and we've got to get out of that business soon. But it isn't so easy getting out, once you partake of it. Right now the Fortune is carrying fourteen hundred gallons of rum, a hogshead of brown sugar, and forty gallons of Jamaican spirits."
"Who captains the Fortune ?" I asked.
"Our young cousin Rufus Greene."
"There are Greenes all around me," I accused.
"Yes, dear, and they are all watching how I treat you."
We did not discuss marriage, though the word hung in the air between us, constantly. For, though we were courting, most of the time I did not have him to myself.
It wasn't long before I decided that if I wanted Nathanael Greene at all, I would have to share him with his books, his work, and his politics.
He always had a book in his hand. Heavy reading, I decided, too heavy for me. He read Frederick the Great's Instructions to His Generals, for instance. And An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, by Robert Barclay.
Right after his father died, Nathanael moved into his own house in Coventry. With permission from Aunt Catharine and Uncle Greene, I helped him move. I assisted with the lighter household things—curtains and pots and dishes—although his brother Jacob's wife, Peggy, was really in charge.
The house, called Spell Hall, was on a small hill overlooking the Pawtuxet River. The first and second floors had four rooms each, with hallways in the center. The third floor was a garret.
In back, overlooking the river, on the first floor, Nathanael had his library. He had at least three hundred books lining the walls.
I could fancy a rainy afternoon with a fire crackling in the hearth, a tray of tea sitting on a low table, and Nathanael sitting at his desk, while I, in that comfortable chair over there, sat reading. What a wonderful way it would be to start a marriage!
Nathanael worked hard most days in the forge that was situated a short distance from the house. He often made miniature anchors, which he sold on his business trips to Newport.
He gave me one. I would treasure it always.
In his "spare" time, he worked in the fields surrounding his house, planting wheat and corn for the animals.
***
IN FEBRUARY OF '72, the Gaspee, a royal schooner that patrolled the waters off Rhode Island to make sure the Revenue Acts were enforced, seized the Greene brothers' merchant ship, knocked about young Rufus Greene, and towed the Fortune into Newport Harbor.
Nathanael would not abide this. He brought a lawsuit against Lieutenant William Dudingston, commander of the Gaspee, won the case, and became a hero all over Rhode Island.
On the ninth of June, the Gaspee was going about its business again when its upstart captain, Dudingston, fired a shot across the bow of an American ship, the Hannah. Captain Benjamin Lindsay of the American merchant ship outraced him and led the Gaspee aground into shallow waters at Namquit Point, just below the town of Pawtuxet.
I was with Nathanael, Uncle Greene, Aunt Catharine, and other leading citizens in the Green Grapes Tavern that very night in Pawtuxet, taking a supper of fish and chips, when the news came about the Gaspee being run aground after what it had done.
Immediately the group of enraged citizens urged Nathanael to row out and destroy her. I could see Nathanael wanted to. I could see them all plotting over their glasses of ale.
Two other women, sweethearts of two men in the group, were planning on joining them.
I had long since decided that when next I saw my chance, I would be part of what Nathanael was about. I wanted to be included in what he did. And I knew I might never again get the chance.
"Can I go, Nathanael?" I begged. "Oh, please, can I go?"
"You ought to be asking your aunt and uncle that," he said. "Not me."
"Uncle Greene?" I looked at him appealingly.
"She can come with us," said one of the women. "We're going in a rowboat. We'll take care of her."
Uncle Greene said something then that I shall ever be grateful to him for. He looked at Nathanael. "If you two were wed, would you allow her to go?" he asked.
Nathanael appeared taken aback for a moment. But just for a moment. His eyes met Uncle Greene's directly, in solemn understanding. And then he gave a small nod. "Only if she stays with the women. And away from us," he pronounced.
It was done. But what? What was done? Uncle Greene and Nathanael knew. And then, as Nathanael rose and put his hand on my head and left the table, so then, finally, did I.
Whatever happened this night, Uncle Greene had given his blessing for me and Nathanael to be wed. He had turned me over to the care of Nathanael, there and then, over a dish of fish and chips in the Green Grapes Tavern.
***
SILENTLY, AS figures in a dream, I and the girl named Sally and the other, named Judith, rowed quietly across the waters a good distance from the men. I heard the voice of one of Nathanael's men carry toward us, as voices will carry on the water. "There are scarce more than three or four manning her." Next thing you know, Nathanael and his men were scrambling aboard the Gaspee. There was some scuffling in the night. We heard some thuds, some curses, and then a shot, and a man screamed.
"Nathanael!" I started to cry out, but Judith put her hand over my mouth and muffled the sound. Then all went silent. In the next moment, we saw the outline of three men being escorted into our men's boats and then a giant blaze, which grew bigger and bigger in the night, as the Gaspee was set afire. We girls sat entranced by the flames that ate up the darkness around us.
"What'll we do with 'em?" a man's voice called out.
"Put them in one of the ship's rowboats," Nathanael's voice answered.
"Lieutenant Dudingston is badly wounded, sir."
"He'll make it back," Nathanael insisted.
Somebody gave the boat with the Englishmen in it a push toward shore, and in the light from the burning ship, I could see the lieutenant seated and bending over in pain. What I did not see was Nathanael's rowboat, with three other men in it, row up beside ours.
"Oh, Nathanael, I'm so glad you're all of a piece."
He handed his oars to one of the men in the boat, who happened to be his brother Jacob. "Take it back to shore," he directed. Then to Judith, "Is there room for me in there?"
All agreed there was. And he hopped into our rowboat and put his arm around me. And I was not at all cold on the way back to shore.
The next day the two of us took a double ender and visited Pa and his wife and family on Block Island. Nathanael was alone with Pa awhile in Pa's study. I petted the cat. I held the new baby. Nathanael had a private talk with Pa. Exactly what was said, I do not know, but when we left, Pa kissed me and said, "If you wish to wed that young man, you have my permission."
***
LIEUTENANT WILLIAM Dudingston of the Gaspee had been critically wounded in the escapade that night, and the Loyalists had raised a hue and a cry.
For the first time in the delinquent American colonies, British blood had been spilled. Nathanael was accused, and it struck fear in my heart, but then, with all of New England talking about the incident, Nathanael's name was on everybody's lips again.
He joined the Kentish Guards, a group of fifty-four men around East Greenwich who received a charter from the General Assembly to form a local militia. Nathanael ran for lieutenant, but when the votes were counted, he found that he had lost. His friend James Varnum, a lawyer, became head of the Kentish Guards. Nathanael became morose and thought he had lost because he was a Quaker and had never fired a gun.
Then he thought it was because he had a limp, a stiffness in one knee that he'd acquired from working in the forge.
He wanted to quit the Kentish Guards before he even started. "The uniform is ostentatious," he told me.
It boasted a red coat with green facings, white pantaloons and white vest, silver jacket buttons, knee garters.
He was going to resign, but then his friend Varnum talked him out of it, reminding him how he was needed. He not only stayed on but secured a British deserter to work as a drill master for them. Nathanael drilled with the Guards three nights a week and he pledged his financial support.
All as a lowly private. That was my Nathanael.
I spent many a golden afternoon that fall watching them drill as the trees shed their leaves in the crisp autumn air. Under the British deserter, they were well trained.
No sooner was one crisis solved, however, than another one cropped up to take Nathanael's attention from me.
Now it was the tax on tea.
What could we do to help the people in Boston who'd had their harbor closed by the British Parliament?
In December 1773 things had gotten even more serious with the advent of the colonists throwing the tea off the ships into the water at Griffin's Wharf in what has come to be known as the Boston Tea Party.
My Nathanael went from being a lowly private in the Kentish Guards to a member of the Legislative Committee charged with the responsibility of preparing Rhode Island's defenses.
Then the General Assembly needed an officer to lead its "army of observation."
Somehow that marked a crossroads in our relationship.
"It's time we married," he said to me one day as we were taking a walk behind his house, looking at the river.
I stopped dead in my tracks. I just stared at him.
"Well, what's wrong? Don't you want to marry me?"
"Nathanael Greene," I said. "It's past time. You've been torturing me for years!"
"Caty, a woman is not supposed to say things like that!"
"Well, I'm saying it! Because it's true!"
"Talk about torture! What about what I've been through! This business of being honorable has driven me mad!"
We embraced. "But you've been so good about it," I told him. "I love you for it. I've watched you suffer and I've loved you for it. You are a dear, good man, Nathanael Greene. You gave me time to grow up."
He rested his chin on top of my head. "You will marry me, then?"
"Try and stop me."
More kissing, then he said, "No more will I have to say a prayer and turn away and say good night. No more."
***
AND SO we were married soon after, from the wedding-cake house of Uncle Greene's. My friend Sarah was my maid of honor. Sammy Ward was Nathanael's best man. Nathanael's brothers and their wives, my family, and Aunt Catharine and Uncle Greene all gathered around us and wished us the very best of everything to come.
To come was the war. I didn't really believe it then, though I sensed the men did. Surely Mother England would stop her nonsense, with all those ridiculous taxes, and reopen Boston Harbor and go home and leave us be. I wouldn't have believed it if Nathanael told me Mother England would not let us be.
All I knew was that no matter what happened, I would be safe in Nathanael's arms.