by Jodi Daynard
The maidservant, a plump woman wearing a starched white pinafore, had the morally superior manner of someone who has been up for many hours. Handing me my tea, she said, “Whenever you’re ready, ma’am, the mister and missus wish to see you.”
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Past eleven,” she replied.
I had only yesterday been at a field hospital near the battle at Charlestown. I now found myself amid the fading luxury of those to whom time had been kind. Their home, on its third generation, bespoke a sense of ease and permanence. Only the large wooden crates placed here and there suggested that change was imminent.
Facing the Charles River, the Boylston house presented eight large, glitteringly clean glass windows to the world. Behind the house lay vast gardens and stables. On this day, cotton-tree blossoms had fallen to make a gauzy white carpet in the front garden.
But within moved a family in crisis. In the unreal brightness and brokenness of that morning, it took me some time to realize that the Boylstons were packing, readying, no doubt, to flee as soon as Jeb was buried. Where they planned to go, I knew not.
I rose and dressed. My limbs refused to move without constant command. While I was dressing, Eliza Boylston, Jeb’s older sister, entered my chamber without knocking. She looked as tall and haughty as I remembered her. Tears stained her red face, and she wiped them with the ruffled silk sleeve of her French gown.
“I see you’re awake,” she said.
“Yes, I hadn’t slept since early Saturday morning. I was overcome . . .” Upon saying the word overcome, I was indeed overcome and could not utter another word. There is nothing so humiliating as a show of grief before someone whose heart is unmoved.
“Indeed, none of us has slept. You have slept fourteen hours together. Mama despairs of your ever getting up. Shall I tell her you are coming? Papa is waiting, too.”
“I wish to see my husband,” I said. “Where is he?”
“He lies in his chamber across the hall. You may go there,” she said.
As if I needed her permission!
“Indeed, I shall. I must finish dressing.” As I stared at her, signaling her to leave, a smile played across her thin lips.
“Your skirts and bodice are being cleaned. You will find some of my things in that closet. Something will no doubt be suitable.” She nodded to the deep closet across the room—a real sign of the Boylston wealth. Jeb and I had not a single such closet. Each room in our house looked like a workshop of some kind: tannery, spinning shop, butcher’s, or bakery.
Eliza moved toward the door, cast me a look, and then departed. I hastily finished dressing, then peeked into the hallway. My heart beat quickly, though no one was there. Twice I nearly turned away, losing courage. But I told myself that some things are more important than one’s own grief. I had to say good-bye. I had to do him that honor.
He lay in an unfamiliar blue vest and jacket and clean breeches, his hair neatly brushed and pulled behind his ears. Scented candles surrounded him, casting a torpid yellow glow upon his once-handsome face. In the very neatness of his dress, he had already ceased to look like Jeb. In life he had been far too impulsive, too quick, to be tidy. But someone had tidied him, probably one of the maids. I gazed at his mouth; it, too, was still, set in a painfully grim expression. And in this stillness and grimness I knew Jeb was gone.
His arms lay at his sides. I touched one just below his shirtsleeve. It was quite cold. Then I kissed his cold cheek and turned away. I cried a moment—out of grief for him, pity for myself. I knew my womanhood had died with Jeb. Who would lay his tender hands upon me now? Who would kiss me in the dark of night, with the sea crashing upon the shore behind us?
Annoyed at my self-pity, I stopped crying and looked about me. His articles—such small, pathetic things!—stood on the dresser. Some were still in the sack he’d worn over his shoulder when we said good-bye. Other items, like his ring and billfold, lay alone. I took them all up in my arms and brought them to my room to go over with great care later. For now, I had to hurry to the parlor.
I found only Mr. Boylston. He sat in a wing chair by an unlit fire. His hands rested on his knees, as if to steady him. The haughty, self-satisfied air I recalled was gone.
“Sit, Elizabeth,” he said, nodding toward the sofa across from himself. “Would you like tea? Cassie can bring us some.” He turned to a small Negro woman who stood in silence by the parlor door. “Some tea for us, Cassie. And cakes.”
Far from appearing grief-stricken, Mr. Boylston appeared agitated, almost angry. I dared not tell him I’d already had my tea.
“The—the funeral will take place on Wednesday. At King’s Chapel,” he informed me.
“In Boston?” I asked, surprised.
“We have little choice in the matter.”
I then recalled that the church by the Common had been closed for regular service for many months now. Here again, I dared not suggest that Jeb would have preferred to be buried on our own land in Braintree, or even where he fell on Breed’s Hill, rather than in King’s Chapel.
Suddenly, Mr. Boylston slammed his fist on the parlor table and blurted out, “Deuced troublemakers!”
I bounced up from my seat with the sudden noise of his explosion.
“Deuced so-called patriots! He was smitten by the Devil! He was no more one of them than you are!”
I kept my eyes down, my heart mute. I feared that, were I to open my mouth, a wind the likes of Aeolus’ sack upon Odysseus’ ship might blow Mr. Boylston back to England. I recalled the grief that Mr. Boylston had given Jeb for not wanting to be a merchant like himself. When Jeb had told him he would enlist, Mr. Boylston had bellowed, “As useless and foolhardy a pursuit as ever I’ve heard! It’ll as soon get you killed as win you glory.”
Well, he had been right about that.
“After the funeral, we will send a man to return Mr. Adams’s mare and to pack your things.”
“What mean you, sir?”
“That naturally you shall come with us. We would not think of leaving you alone.”
“Come with you! In exile?” I cried. Many things had occurred to me since first standing on Penn’s Hill and realizing that Jeb might not live through the day, but one plan had never entered my thoughts: to join his family.
“Mr. Boylston,” I said, “I thank you for your kindness. But I cannot possibly come with you.”
“Of course you’ll come with us. Where else could you go? We can’t in good conscience send you back to that hell pit of a North Parish, what with the Adamses and Hancocks getting people killed every day. We can’t possibly abandon you, a gentlewoman and the wife of our son, to tend a farm alone. What would people say?”
“It’s my home, and I will return to it.”
Mr. Boylston turned red in the face and muttered, “Obstinate creature!”
“Mr. Boylston,” I entreated more gently, “the women need me there. They have no midwives such as myself. And soon there will be no men, either. There are many animals in need of tending and a rather large garden.”
I recalled my promise to Jeb to be a good farmer in his absence, and my resolve hardened within me. “I hardly need mention that we could not see more differently upon the subject of the current conflict, and that I consider certain members of the North Parish to be the best of people and my friends.”
“Yes,” he grumbled. “How that happened, and you with a father so respectable, I cannot guess.”
To this, I had no reply.
What I had said about my prospects in Braintree was not entirely true. While the women needed me, they still called upon me only in the direst extremity. The truth was, they did not yet trust me. The entire parish knew that my father had been a royal judge and had fled the country. Rumors abounded, as well, about my mother and myself: that she had been practiced in the alchemical arts, and that I myself gre
w strange plants in my garden and made powerful potions and poisons. This last fact was partly true. I grew deadly nightshade, whose derivative, belladonna, served me well for stubborn cervixes. I enjoyed delicious tomatoes as well, the seeds of which a friend of my mother’s sent her from Europe. But some believed the rumors about alchemy and poisonous potions and shunned me.
Jeb’s father grasped my hand hard, and a cry caught in his throat. “It is unsafe, woman.”
Here, the old man’s entreating look made me feel that perhaps Mr. Boylston did have some feelings for me after all.
“Come now,” I replied, grasping his arm, “there is nothing unsafe about the North Parish.”
He shrugged off my grasp. “I can’t reason with you now. We’ll discuss it by and by. Rest assured, I shan’t leave you in Braintree alone. You shall come with us.”
I stood, curtsied, and left just as the maid was bringing us tea.
Back in my chamber, I bolted my door and let out an exasperated groan. I took Jeb’s sack and musket. I could smell the powder and knew he had fired it. I pressed the sack to my face, smelling for traces of him. Then, carefully opening it, I removed its contents: the oatmeal biscuits I’d given him, now but two broken ones remaining; a bladder that had once contained water, but now had neither cork nor liquid. My heart flooded. Had he reached for it, parched with thirst, at the last? A small piece of dried beef. A lock of my hair tied with string. Then, tucked far at the bottom, my last letter to him. I unfolded it and read:
Dearest Jeb,
I am grieved to hear you move closer to danger. But what can I, a mere woman, do to steer the course of generals, colonels, and the world? I steer my shuttle to fashion you a shirt, and the plough to make a straight line for the corn. You see I keep my promise to be your good little farmer while you are gone. Come back, and I’ll be your better wife.
Your ever loving Elizabeth.
Overcome, I lay back in my bed clutching the sack and willed myself into unconsciousness until dinner, when one of the servants woke me.
The funeral, a solemn affair, took place two days later, and we were alone neither in the church nor at the cemetery. Several other families surrounded us, including some quite prominent ones. They looked as flushed and harried as the Boylstons, as if at war within themselves. The choice was acute: leave Boston immediately or grieve their dead.
It was another hot day. Women in black skirts fanned themselves and looked upon the point of fainting as they listened to an unfamiliar parson and wept.
It was a group service and burial, and we mourned as one. Perhaps because of this, I felt somewhat buffered from my own pain. I looked about me and felt mostly a welling pride for all those boys whose families had discouraged them, boys who had nothing to give in going off to Breed’s Hill except their mortal selves.
As the parson finished his business and moved to condole with each family, Jeb’s family and I walked slowly away, heading toward our carriage to return to Cambridge. It was then that I saw an officer emerge from the crowd and approach me.
He was quite tall, over six feet, and bore himself like a man of some rank. His hair, parted in the middle, was braided in the back, revealing a high forehead and brilliant blue eyes. His grim face betrayed a compassion that threatened to undo me. As he approached, I saw that he was holding something in his gloved hand. Then I knew who this man was.
“Madam Boylston?”
“Yes?”
“Colonel William Prescott.” He bowed to me and kissed my gloved hand. “I’m so very sorry. Would you allow me to give you this?”
He handed me a folded paper.
I took it from him without breathing. Then I swayed, as if a strong wind had tipped me to one side.
“Ma’am,” he said. “Let us sit. I have important things to share.”
He took me by the arm and led me toward a stone bench. I looked back at the Boylstons, who were speaking to the parson and making their way slowly toward us. Colonel Prescott sat by my side and spoke quickly, rightly sensing that his time alone with me was short.
“Your husband was among the few who did not desert me when the fighting began. He fought right by my side. I have rarely seen anything like it. But we were far outnumbered, and easy targets. Still, he refused to hide himself behind a barricade, but stood tall. I’ve never seen a braver man.”
“He was a fool!” I cried, then felt instantly ashamed. For, to this brave and noble man who did not know my heart, I must have sounded just like my father-in-law.
I stood up. The colonel stood as well.
“You will be anxious, no doubt, to read that. He gave it to me the morning of the battle. Why he believed I would make it out alive, I know not. I was as close by his side in the battle as we are now. It was only blind chance that the Regular’s bayonet ran him through and not me. He was but a boy himself, perhaps sixteen. I killed him.”
I shut my eyes at the horror of Colonel Prescott’s narrative, yet was glad he did not spare me.
“But what’s done cannot be undone,” he concluded. “If you need anything, anything at all . . .” He grasped my hand.
“Thank you. You are very kind. I did not mean to say Jeb was a fool. I am very much for the Cause. I meant—”
The colonel looked me in the eye. “I know what you meant. Perhaps we are fools, Mrs. Boylston. You are an honest woman, and Jebediah was a lucky man.”
He bowed and left, and I was alone with my letter. I had to read quickly; the parson was just bowing and taking his leave of the Boylstons. Soon they would be upon me. Carefully, I broke the seal and read:
Dearest Lizzie,
I pray you never have to read this Letter, for I of all people know the great Joy and the great Suffering of which your fine soul is capable. I know you would not distract yourself from the grief of my death, and this alone gives me pain now.
I am glad to hear you carve a straight row for the corn. You are a good farmer, and all the wife I should ever want. Now, though it shall give you pain, I must say this. Resist the Attempts of my family to o’ertake your life. You should remarry, if at all possible given your unsightly intelligence. Tho you can’t keep a fellow from hoping that he will never be quite so handsome or so gallant as your First, Yours Always—Jeb.
P.S. Cherish my Star, if he survives. I love him second only to you.
“What’s that you read?”
Eliza was standing over me, her black parasol casting a sudden shadow.
I was awash in tears but hastily folded the letter and put it in the pocket of my skirt. “Something Jeb left me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to intrude,” she said, adding, “but we must hurry. Dinner is set for two o’clock, and our guests will be there before us.”
I felt neither hungry nor inclined to society, especially not the society of those Tories who might have secretly rejoiced at the British victory. But I resolved to bear it as best I could, for I had plans.
I arrived back in Cambridge quite exhausted. Still, I pushed forth with my plan. I engaged a servant boy to take two messages home for me. The first was to Abigail Adams. I apologized for having detained Mr. Adams’s mare and let her know that she would be returned the following day. The second message was to Thaxter, asking him to borrow a horse and chaise of Colonel Quincy and to fetch the horse as soon as may be.
At the reception, Mrs. Boylston smiled at her guests but spoke to no one. Jeb was the Boylstons’ second loss. A younger daughter, Maria, had died of the throat distemper. It seemed to me that the loss of her children one upon the other had closed her heart forever.
She was still beautiful, however: white skin; thin, grim mouth; graying brown hair mounded high above her crown. There was no question of my condoling with her, even had I been so inclined. While she had never approved of me for Jeb’s wife, she now ignored me entirely. She had not the courage for pain. My suffering—so obv
ious, so overt—was odious to her.
My messages sent, I rested easier, and while the small gathering was still politely eating baked meats, I watched Eliza making conversation with the guests, some of whom I knew to be her jilted suitors. It was said she had already turned down half a dozen eligible men. But Eliza was not content merely to foil her suitors’ plans. She, like her mother, had tried to talk her brother out of marrying me. For this I had not forgiven her. True, my father had left me little in the way of money, but he had been a man of excellent learning and solid background. My mother, on the other hand, was a true aristocrat, far above the merchant-monied Boylstons. Indeed, my mother once told me she could trace her ancestry back to Queen Margaret, wife of Henry VI. That knowledge, though, gave me little solace now.
I turned away from Eliza and made my way out of the parlor. Once in my room, I fell onto the bed in my hot black mourning gown and there lay as if dead.
But I had yet one more letter to write. I knew it to be a great rudeness to shirk my leave-taking, so I thanked Mr. and Mrs. Boylston for their kindness and condoled with them. I wished them a safe journey. I left the note on my desk and, after gathering my and Jeb’s things, slipped out to the stables.
The stable boy seemed surprised to see me.
“I hadn’a any message to ready the carriage,” he apologized with a pained expression.
“Oh, a carriage won’t be necessary. If you could saddle Star, that will be sufficient.”
He looked at me as if I were mad, but I stood there quite resolutely until at last Star was saddled and his girth tightened. The boy made a step with his hands for me to mount, and I rode Star into the darkening afternoon, down Brattle Street, across the Common, across the Great Bridge, and east toward home. I felt the saddle warm against me and felt the aura, one last time, of my husband’s thighs on mine.
6
THE MORNING AFTER my return from Cambridge, I wandered my house like a newly blind person, brushing my fingers across the once-familiar objects. I touched the old pewter tankard Jeb had liked to take his cider in after milking the cows. I grazed my fingertips across his soft, but dusty, pillow lying next to mine on the bed. I lay my cheek against his farming breeches—grass-stained and smelling of hay and sweat—which were cast heedlessly where he had last left them across a chair in the corner of our chamber. Oh, how his smells lingered! I smelled them once every hour, ever fearful that this act might rob them, little by little, of their perfume.