by Mary Calvi
George joined her in her mirth. They both laughed to the point where her belly hurt. Mary took his hand in hers and guided him onto the second-level staircase. They soon found themselves up another flight, still laughing, until they were outdoors on the roof balcony of the manor.
The stillness of night would have been glorious for most with the moonlight shining upon a calm river. But the sound of a raven in the distance disrupted her thoughts, making her feel an anxious chill. As the pitch began its descent into her bones, George stepped nearer to her and gently placed her body in front of his and wrapped his arms completely around her.
He brought her close to him, protecting her. They remained quiet, taking in each other and the view before them.
“What is it that will make you a happy man, George?”
“More evenings like this one.” His voice sounded soft in her ear.
She was absorbed by his loving tone and there, in the night, became lost in his arms. In his strength, her fear dissipated. His cheek touched her temple, and she could feel the roughness of his skin. “And what would make you truly happy, Mary Eliza Philipse?” Her name sounded divine when he said it.
She adored him. “Hearing more of your poetry.”
“My mediocre poetry?”
“I wouldn’t say mediocre, more like poetry on the verge of distinction.”
He covered the side of her face in light kisses. “More like on the verge of extinction.” His lips found her dimple. “Very well, ‘What will make a life truly blessed?… A good estate on a healthy soil, not got by vice, nor yet by toil.’”
“Ah. He gifts me with rhymes.”
“‘Round a warm fire, a pleasant joke, with chimney ever free from smoke. A strength entire, a sparkling bowl, a quiet wife…’”
“A quiet wife—where might you find one?”
“‘A quiet soul, a mind as well as body whole.’”
She sighed.
“‘Prudent simplicity, constant friends, a diet which no art commends.’”
“If an evening like this, ’tis a diet where no eating commences.”
He laughed and continued. “‘A merry night without much drinking, a happy thought without much thinking. Each night by quiet sleep made short, a will to be but what thou art.’” His voice sounded more tender. “‘Possessed of these, all else defy, and neither wish nor fear to die.’” He turned her shoulder so that she would now be face-to-face with him. “‘These are things which once possessed will make a life that’s truly blessed.’”
Her lower back tingled as his left hand caressed it, his right through her hair, and she let her head fall back. George placed small kisses at her neck as he spoke to her. “The charms of your person, and the beauties of your mind, have a powerful operation.”
“George…” She turned her face away from him. “I am undeserving of your kind attention to me. There are things you should know about me—scars that live deep within me that I may never erase.”
He cupped her face in his hands. “These have endeared you to me.”
Her world changed as his lips found hers. The intensity set her thoughts on fire, her heart into a rapture, her body toward a heavenly serenity.
With earnest ardor, his mouth parted her lips, sending delicious shivers down her spine. Love’s radiant luster shone ever bright, awakening in her a new passion she had not known was within her.
“How do you affect me so?” she whispered to him.
His cheek brushed against hers. “Everything which partakes of your nature has a claim to my affections.”
She treasured this man, everything he stood for, everything he was. In his arms, she let go, until their hearts were beating as one. She remained in her blanket of protection as he took her will and breathed it back to life.
With George in her world, she felt whole.
Chapter Eighteen
Cromwell’s Head
There is a Destiny which has the control of our actions,
not to be resisted by the strongest efforts of Human Nature.
—GEORGE WASHINGTON
BOSTON
If only he had more time with her. Another week. A year. A lifetime. Instead, he left the manor the morning after the tantalizing grip of affection devoured them on the roof’s balcony. He might have asked her right then to be his forever … if they weren’t interrupted.
Now, more than two weeks later, George was spending his final night in Boston. He journeyed here to Massachusetts where there was business to attend to. He also used a few hours to visit a jeweler, one highly recommended, who melted metal into the shape of a ring.
George’s journey to meet the commander in chief of the British forces in North America was only partially successful. George hoped to be granted a royal commission in the British Army, but that was not to be. The general did establish a level of respect for him. British officers had previously refused George’s command, claiming that a Virginia officer did not outrank a British officer of lower rank. The commander in chief ordered that that form of disrespect would no longer be acceptable.
Tonight George found himself at the Cromwell’s Head Inn, a musty and dusty old place that looked as if it hadn’t been tidied up since the turn of the century. On a wall, a whale’s jaw opened wide, and on shelves were displayed the trophies of hunts at sea.
George lowered his head when he entered. The ceiling planks hung low. He was also in need of a larger seat. The small stool was hardly big enough for him, nor was the table, which he towered over. Still, he followed his edict: When you sit down, keep your feet firm and even, without putting one on the other or crossing them.
Captains Mercer and Stewart sat at the table with him, leaning over to read his instructions. They traveled with him to the northern colony.
George was writing with his quill. “Blood-warm?”
“Little more than blood-warm, Colonel,” advised the inn’s owner, Anthony Brackett, a short, stout man with bulging eyes. He offered George and his contingent lodging during their stay in Massachusetts. When they first entered the center of town, Captain Stewart knocked his head right into the tavern’s low-hanging swing sign as they walked by it, causing him to need a moment to recover.
“Then put in a quart of yeast,” Brackett instructed.
George read the recipe aloud, wanting to double-check his transcibing of it: “To make small beer, take a large sifter full of bran hops to your taste, boil these three hours; strain out thirty gallons into a cooler and put in three gallons of molasses while the beer is scalding hot. Let this stand till it is little more than blood-warm. Put in a quart of yeast. Bottle it the day it is brewed.”
“Aye,” answered Brackett. “If the weather is very cold, cover it with a blanket and let it work in the cooler twenty-four hours; put it into the cask and leave the bung open till it is almost done working.” Brackett placed wooden trenchers of a dark meat and a dish of porridge in front of the men, for what would be their final dinner in the colony.
Stewart and Mercer watched out the window as nearly every person showed respect in front of that low-hanging tavern sign. “Are they bowing to the sign?” Stewart still had an obvious red mark on his forehead.
“I’ve hung the sign for Cromwell’s Head low to force each passerby to make a reverence to our Lord Protector. We pay homage to a man whose design was not dominion. His judges were the traitors. They were the enemies. Oliver Cromwell was a man who refused the title of king.”
“’Tis true, Cromwell’s head was put upon a stick?” Mercer prodded him.
“Carried about like a trophy,” Brackett grumbled with disgust in his voice as he walked away.
“Was he hero or traitor?” Stewart turned toward George. “Oliver Cromwell. Was he a hero or traitor, Colonel?”
George could have been very clear about his feelings regarding the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland. It was during the usurpation of Oliver Cromwell in the mid-1600s that George’s family had emigrated fro
m one of the northern counties of England, but whether from Lancashire, Yorkshire, or one still more northerly, he did not know precisely. “Hero?” He showed one palm. He turned the other hand over. “Traitor? One’s character is rarely drawn until decades, even centuries, after the sphere of action has long come to a conclusion.”
George watched as Brackett lumbered to the table with a small sculpted head on a stick and placed it right in the center of the table with a thump. “They should exhume his judges and behead THEM!” Brackett said. “The wretches humiliated the legacy of an honorable man by removing his body from the grave, dragging his corpse through the streets, and taking off his head.”
“But what of his body?” Mercer interrupted him.
“His daughter, Mary, removed it from the burial site, protecting it from harm,” Brackett replied.
“’Tis a memorable name, Mary.” Mercer looked at George.
The name was memorable indeed; however, George felt a bit of irritation when Mercer uttered it.
Mercer’s attention was quickly taken by the belles outside the front window of the tavern. “A man who hopes to retain control of his heart should never venture to the north. The ladies are beyond lovely.”
“Magnificent,” emphasized Stewart. “Our north country is made of beauties.”
“Better than those other ladies we’ve seen, with their bad air and bad shape, like crooked boards.” Mercer continued his diatribe, yet again, contorting his body to show a sloping of the back. “Quite different from the enticing, heaving, throbbing, alluring, exciting, plump breasts common with our northern belles.”
Let your recreations be manful not sinful. George was careful in this, and hence, he could hold back no longer. “In forming a connection, many considerations besides the mere gratification of the passions are essential to happiness.”
“Aye.” Stewart nodded.
Mercer puffed, clearly irritated.
“Do we soon return to New York, Colonel?” asked Stewart.
George had learned the answer from a letter he received from stable master Joseph Chew. In it, Chew wrote on a number of matters. He added a postscript on the back of the letter, stating, “I have this moment a Letter from our Worthy friend B. Robinson. He, Mrs. Robinson, and the agreeable Miss Polly and all his family are Very well.”
This was the answer to his request that he had desired to hear: agreeable.
George reached down to feel the small box from the jeweler in his pocket. “We leave in the morning.”
Chapter Nineteen
A Soldier and a Lover
… know my good friend that no distance can keep anxious lovers long asunder …
—GEORGE WASHINGTON
YONKERS-ON-HUDSON
Mary wished George had stayed longer. Another hour. Another day. Forever. He asked for a return visit. She said she was agreeable to it. Of course she was agreeable to it.
Here on the hills’ northern pasture, Mary stood alone, her only company the mare named Diamond and her foal. The horse gave birth while George was away in Boston. Mary bore witness to the miracle. Her tears flowed when the filly emerged after a trying delivery. No matter how many times Mary saw the birthing process in the stable, each was a wondrously emotional event.
Today, in the open air, she watched the foal—a young one experiencing life with a mother to help guide the way, a bonding, an intimacy that would remain for a lifetime. Infancy is a splendid thing, she thought, a masterpiece of the heavens, when is born a destiny that, if allowed to flourish, will see its bestowed graces realized.
Taking in the chorus of robins in the trees, she listened for their whistles proclaiming the approach of the new season. Their melody was leading her into the throes of a wistful embrace. Mary found the harbingers of spring exhilarating. Her mother had been right: This time of year offered great possibility as the day followed a more capacious circuit in the hemisphere; even the shriveled bud began to break through winter’s tomb—nature on the threshold of glory. The grass displayed its wee blades. The new shoots upon the weeping cherry tree emerged. Their fragrance wafted on a mellow breeze.
“Each flower must emerge from the darkness to bathe in the light.” Mary recalled her mother’s words, as well as the emotional inflection she had used to express them. Mama had always sounded as if she were singing. If her voice had been a season, it would have been spring, for there had been such hope in Mama’s words.
Mary squinted to see as far as she could. From this highest point of Yonkers, she could canvass the fine landscapes stretched out before her—valleys and hills and waterways; the Hudson and the rivers to the east of it were in view.
She found the entire picture breathtaking—hope in its inception.
For so long, she refused it entry. She turned hope away. Those times she did try to find a light within her, her spirit blocked this vision, chained it and shut it down. Despair always defeated her, dragging her into its abyss.
Mary found a place to lay her heavy blanket and put her quill to paper:
How came you to this place
Where virtue and vice hide
With ardor in your embrace?
Shall I allow you to be my guide,
Or remain behind the guardian’s wall?
Let me succumb to dreams of sweet delight.
Into your arms, allow me a fall,
But, alas, a cursed star only lives in the night,
And destiny must be allowed to bloom.
For what I am, I may never know,
There was such grief and gloom.
That was long ago.
Today, grant me release from my cry,
On Cupid’s wings, let me fly.
If only she had reached for the flower that day. If only …
Regret is not a pretty thing.
The sadness of that day and the many other sadnesses that followed remained for so long. She was tired of the torment. She was tired of living in the past.
George, my love. Without him even knowing it, he was showing her the way.
As she peered about, she thought she could see an image of him, moving quickly. She rubbed her eyes to clear her mind’s confusion. When she opened them, she saw with clarity. It was George. In the distance, her hero, her charming. George was coming! With the most perfect posture, he rode with exact rhythm to the stride of his Woodfin. She watched him coming closer.
Without caution, she arose, took one step and another. Soon she was allowing her feet to hit whatever ground was beneath them. One foot leaped in front of the other. Her legs were flying free, for she adored how his eyes gazed into hers, how her heart trembled each time he neared her. She loved the way he touched her without even touching her. If joy could be writ upon her chest, it would be inscribed in capitals. Cupid’s feathered dart struck her hard. Today she was ready to surrender to sweet dream’s delight. Had she felt this way before? Never.
The belle of the North was in flight on love’s wings. Mary Eliza Philipse was running to him. She was a dream—pleasing, beautiful, captivating, with a hundred pure charms. He longed to bring her into his arms as he watched the morning sun and its majesty of light glimmer in her long waves, which came undone, flowing up and down with her graceful movement. She didn’t try to cover herself, though her breasts pressed against the fabric of her dress. As he dismounted and laid his feet upon the fertile ground of her land, he moved to meet her, knowing the season had now come.
Love refused to take pity on her as she reached him. Mary, overpowered by emotions, threw herself into his arms. She laid her head upon his chest. She felt his heartbeat on her temple and listened as he released heavy breaths. “I worried you wouldn’t come,” she said as she sank into his arms. She never wanted to let go.
He stroked the side of her face. He felt her shiver. He placed his other hand into the back of her hair, feeling silkiness through his fingers. He felt her relax in his arms, soften. “Mary Eliza Philipse, my fond heart overflows with joy to see you.” She smiled and he
r lips trembled. A thrill ran through him as he took in her smell: lavender.
How perfect her name sounded coming from his lips. This left her in ecstasy. She couldn’t say a word, for there were no words to express the feelings of her heart. First she felt anxious to greet this man. Then she feared kissing him. Now that she knew she adored him, she was afraid to lose him. She realized that she had fallen for him the first moment her name came from his lips.
Sensing her comfort, he felt at ease to make known his sentiments. “If my expression was equal to the feelings of my heart…”
His lips were calling her to where warm kisses play. She shyly turned her face from him, for the intimacy of the moment was too much for her to take in. “How did you find me?”
“Mr. Chew directed me to Diamond and the foal. He tells me of the trials you had to bear in helping to deliver her. How brave of you.”
“She is beautiful and bears the most lovely patch of white, shaped as a heart. She hath not a name, George.”
“What do you suggest we call her?”
We. What a beautiful sound that word carried. She had never known it to be so glorious until he said it. We. “Shall we call her Valentine?”
He brought her close to where her body was against his. “I find that name entirely perfect.” He was beginning to feel such a deep attachment to this woman. He wondered if it was the sort of devotion that belonged to a man who loves only once in a lifetime. He prayed it would be so. “My poor heart. How will it stand to oppose thy might and power?”
She cherished his words and the way he said them, sounding like love in perfect rhythm.
He placed his face against hers and began to take in her breath. “And now lies bleeding every hour, for she will not take pity on me.” He removed his long red greatcoat and laid it on the ground. He knelt on it and guided her down to him. Both faced each other, their bodies close, near close enough to touch.
“I believe it is you who should take pity on my heart.” Her voice was tender.