by Jodi Daynard
In my own defense, and for the sake of Truth, I must reveal certain facts that I have thus far omitted from my tale. Since earlier that spring, I had caught Martha reading or writing letters, which she did not offer to share with me. Passing by her chamber one evening, I happened to notice several drafts of a letter made out to her brother in which General Howe was mentioned.
But what of that? Was the poor girl not entitled to communicate with her one living relation on earth? But the mind must have the story and, missing the truth, will piece together a fiction from ragged scraps. Thus, as we drove to Boston, my concern grew feverish in my brain until I had worked myself into a genuine panic.
We stayed at the house of Abigail’s uncle, Isaac Smith, where Abigail occupied her favorite room—a closet of her very own. It had a pretty little writing desk by a window. Abigail pronounced it a very great luxury to be without her children for a full day. She said she would use the time to write John a letter. Martha and I were quite comfortably installed down the hall, where we shared a bed.
I watched Martha undress for bed. To say I observed her might be more accurate, for in my overwrought state I fancied she would at any moment betray herself in word or deed. I don’t know precisely what I expected. Would she mutter “Long live King George!” in her sleep?
“You stare at me quite profoundly,” she said mildly. “One would think you’d never seen a naked woman before.”
I caught the irony in her tone, as we both knew I’d seen women in every naked particular. Indeed, Martha’s slender little body was quite worth looking at. She had the kind of body clothing hides rather than complements. Her full breasts, slender, curving hips, and long, well-turned legs would have smitten any man who gazed upon them.
“I’m thinking you are very attractive without your clothing.”
She raised her eyebrows and placed her shift before her, suddenly as self-conscious as Eve after biting the apple.
“Well, you parade about in manly garb astride a horse. Why then can’t I be like Guinevere and fly naked through the streets? Oh, Lizzie”—her tone became cheerful—“I’m vastly contented! For tomorrow I see my beloved brother. It has been too long.”
It was arranged that we would take the colonel’s carriage the following day, and that Mr. Miller would meet us at the wharf. We set off in some trepidation, for while few Tories remained in town, it was not unknown for sudden personal conflagrations to occur. More than one man had been caught in a crossfire of muskets.
At the wharf the celebration of Burgoyne’s surrender was in full swing, with fire displays and loud demonstrations. We stood observing a band of jokesters burning the king in effigy when a fine carriage pulled up beside us and a servant descended, then helped a tall young man to alight from the carriage.
“Thomas!” Martha cried. She went running toward him. It was Mr. Thomas Miller, the notorious and beloved brother.
“Oh, sweet sister!”
He lifted her off the ground and hugged her fiercely. There were tears of joy on the poor girl’s face. When her brother finally released her, Martha saw fit to introduce us. Another young, quite dandified man alit from the carriage behind Thomas and bowed, though I doubted he knew to whom he was bowing.
Mr. Miller introduced his friend, whose name I now forget. But he was the owner of the carriage and no doubt from a family of considerable wealth. Thomas’s friend soon mounted the carriage and waited there, not wishing to intrude upon the family scene.
Martha then said formally, “Abigail Adams, this is my dear brother, Thomas Miller. Thomas, Abigail.”
Abigail allowed him to kiss her hand. She bowed slightly, but not without casting me a fleeting sideways glance. I gave him my hand limply, with obvious reluctance. To his credit, Thomas Miller bowed deeply and appeared not to notice my slight. He then gazed across the crowded wharf. “Quite a celebration, isn’t it?”
“We’ve all been in ecstasies since we heard the news,” I said.
Mr. Miller’s was not a countenance one could exactly call handsome. He had a large, straight nose; big, wide-set eyes of an astonishing amber color; and a full mouth. His hair, like his sister’s, was a rich auburn brown.
Mr. Miller looked entreatingly at Martha, who saw her cue to end the awkward scene by mounting the carriage. He took her hand and helped her up. From her perch, she cast me a regretful look. As they pulled away, Thomas Miller glanced down at me briefly, then nodded respectfully to Abigail as he bade the horses go.
“Regards to your husband.” He tipped his hat to her. “General Howe is a very great admirer, as am I.”
Abigail and I looked at each other without a word. We both knew that, while General Howe might admire John Adams, he would not be distraught by the appearance of a noose around his neck.
“Insufferable platitudes!” I cried once brother and sister were gone.
But Abigail replied, “I thought his manner quite pleasant and sincere.”
“Then you have been too much out of company to recall the meaning of pleasant or sincere,” I replied sullenly. I was angry with Mr. Miller, not her. But she took the offense, and rightly so.
“And you must take care not to judge men too hastily, for grave mistakes have been made by those more perceptive than you.”
Here, she turned her back on me.
This was the closest Abigail and I ever came to having an argument. She was older than I by eight years, and I had been insufferably rude to her.
We sat across from each other in silence on the journey back to her uncle’s house that afternoon. I had regretted my words moments after uttering them. Who was I to tell Mrs. John Adams that she had been so much out of company that she did not know pleasant or sincere—she who had dined with Dr. Franklin and John Hancock, and even His Excellency and Martha Washington?
I felt miserably ashamed of myself. And yet, so much had my obsessive thoughts taken hold of me that, by the time we approached the house late that afternoon, I could not prevent myself from saying, “It would do well, I think, to take care what you say in Martha’s presence.”
I had said it to puff up my own flagging sense of importance and perhaps to regain some of my lost esteem in her eyes. It was an egregious error. For what had we, in those days, if not our loyalty to one another?
The effect of these words was fat upon the fire.
Abigail pulled herself up and faced me squarely. Though she was tiny, I felt she towered above me. “And how do I know that you yourself are not a spy?” she said. “You, of all people, have my ear and my trust. You are privy to my most private correspondence with John. You profess to be my friend and Martha’s. Perhaps you are not who you profess to be!”
Reader, if you had any idea how these words cut me, you would pity me. I watched her stride into the house, saw her aunt’s servant racing after her most officiously, leaving me alone and utterly bewildered on the road.
Moments later I was able to compose myself sufficiently to move toward the house. I dropped my bonnet, cloak, mitts, and scarf on a chair, crossed into the hallway, and followed her upstairs. I found her sitting with her back to me by the window, staring out at the steely-gray autumn sky.
“Abigail, forgive me,” I said. “I can’t live knowing I have fallen in your esteem.”
“There are many things we say we cannot bear, and yet we do,” she said calmly.
“No, truly, I cannot bear it. I will die.” And with these words I fell by her feet, took her hands, and lay my head pitifully in her lap. “You are my only friend. Without you, I am alone in the world.”
I thought she would say that Martha was my friend, too, and that I had grossly wronged her. Instead, she said, “You must learn to love yourself and your own company. As for others, there is no guarantee. You have only yourself for certain, until the last breath.”
“What a lonely thought!” I cried. “A most terrible, lone
ly thought.”
My misery and distraught tears pricked her maternal sensibilities at last. She placed a hand on my head and caressed me, and the touch of her hand made me sob like a child. I threw my arms around her calves and hugged her tight.
Finally she said, “All right. Enough. Ready yourself for bed, dearest. You will weep yourself into a terrible cold, and then you will give it to the rest of us.”
I smiled, though my face must have been frightful.
“Dr. Franklin believes we must sleep with an open window.” I sniffed.
“Then we must do as Dr. Franklin says.”
She nodded toward the window, bidding me open it slightly. Then she patted the edge of her bed to let me know that I might stay the night if I chose.
And, with this brief exchange, our trust was reestablished. I forsook Martha that night, and Abigail and I slept soundly, snuggled against each other, until late the next morning.
I wish I could say that the painful argument with Abigail spelled the end of my suspicions about Martha, but it did not. However, I am of such a nature that, once an idea enters my head, it is like a tapeworm—no amount of pinkroot will rid me of it.
Martha stayed on several days with her brother, and when she finally returned to snowy Braintree, she looked refreshed in spirit. My jealous love of Abigail had, if anything, grown since I’d quit Boston. I asked, “How was your visit?”
“Oh, wonderful. Lizzie, if only . . .” Here, she gave an enthusiastic rendering of that happy reunion, about which I asked not a single question, and she soon fell silent. While at first Martha might have ascribed my coolness to indifference toward her brother, she quickly sensed my coolness toward her person, as well. The house felt cold and lonely, though we both were at home.
We had been back in Braintree but a few days when Abigail called upon us to say that she had, that same morning, received a letter from her husband with both the most excellent and the most bitter news.
“Well, don’t stand there—tell us,” I said, ushering her in from the freezing cold. It had begun to snow, and I had tarried nearly all night delivering a woman of her first child.
Martha, who had tarried all night with me, stood by the fire. She was making bread, and it was nearly done. But she had hardly slept, and twice already that morning she had burned herself in the task of retrieving the loaves from the back of the oven. It was one of those blasted old fireplaces that often consumed its poor housewife in flames. Martha seemed to have grown particularly careless with herself; her right forearm oozed two nasty open blisters.
When she saw Abigail, though, her wan face lit with joy.
She wiped her hands on her apron and went to greet her.
Having set her cloak and hat over the back of my tall chair, Abigail began, “Well, the good news is that John shall be home early this year. In a fortnight!”
“That’s wonderful,” I agreed, smiling. “And what is the bad news?”
I set before us three bowls of a hearty ham-and-bean soup with Martha’s warm rye bread, upon which we greedily lathered sweet butter.
“The bad news is that he has just received word that he’s to leave again in February. For France.”
“France!” I stared at her. “You’ve agreed to this?”
“Do I have a choice?” She smiled. “It’s a mission of the utmost significance.”
“What is in France that could be of such importance?” I asked in ignorance. Abigail looked at me, aghast.
“What is in France? Why, France is in France, Lizzie,” she said. “John will be instrumental in—”
“Abigail!” I stood, rudely interrupting her and making Martha jump. Martha spilled her spoonful of soup and burned herself for the third time that day.
“Abigail,” I said again, more softly this time, “I have full forgotten the cider. How stupid of me. Martha, would you kindly fetch some cider from the cellar?” I handed her a pitcher for the task.
Though exhausted to the point of faintness, Martha complied without complaint. “Of course,” she said. “I’m thirsty as well.”
Once she was gone, Abigail hissed, “Lizzie, what is the matter with you? Have you gone mad?”
“Indeed, I’m not mad. But don’t you think it unwise—terribly unwise—to reveal something of such patriotic import, some fact upon which our very success or failure depends, to the beloved sister of a man in General Howe’s employ?”
She moved close to me. “Lizzie, you’re incorrigible. Surely we have enough problems without suspecting each other at every turn. This has got to stop before—”
Suddenly we both perceived Martha standing before us, holding a pitcher in her hand. The cellar door was open; apparently she had never descended. She set the pitcher on the table. Her hand hovered there for a moment, shaking, as if unsure of its purpose. A bread knife sat upon the table. She took it up and held it in one fist. Her face was white when she turned to us, taking us both in. Slowly, her eyes focused on me. Neither Abigail nor I uttered one syllable.
“You think I’m a traitor, don’t you?” she asked me.
“I—”
“Say it. You think my brother a spy and I his willing accomplice. Since you hardly know your own brother, you cannot conceive that I might love mine without the least regard to his politics. Perhaps you cannot imagine it. Imagine laughing with one’s brother about silly things, old memories, distant hopes. Such lack of understanding I can bear, as it stems from ignorance. But what I cannot bear is the thought that you”—she stared at me—“and even you”—she turned to Abigail—“believe me capable of being disingenuous with my friends. My sisters. Did I not weep for you, Lizzie, when first you told me about Jeb? Did we not cry together upon hearing of the terrible retreat at New York? Did we not laugh together with joy at the news from Saratoga? You think me capable of such crocodile tears of joy and grief? What a monster I must seem to you.”
“We think no such thing,” Abigail said gently.
“You may not,” she conceded, tears of misery flowing now, “but what of her? And to think of the bed I’ve shared with you, and the night upon night I’ve tarried by your side. Not for gain—God knows, there’s been none of that—but because I so admired you . . .”
“Martha,” I began, but she interrupted me.
“What will it take to convince you? Must I suffer a deep wound for the Cause, as you both have? Will you believe me true then? So be it.”
Before we could move to stop her, Martha thrust her left hand out and sliced across her palm as a butcher cleaves a fillet. And though the pain must have been extreme, she neither flinched nor cried out, but merely took a single sharp inhale of breath before dropping the knife and collapsing to the floor.
I ran to her, Abigail close behind. There was no time for reproach. Blood flowed everywhere. I grabbed my sack and pulled out a dry cloth to press to the wound. Blood seeped through it at once, and I knew she had cut very deep.
Martha nearly fainted as I removed the bloody cloth and pressed another to the wound. After this had been accomplished, we led her toward the bed in the parlor, though she muttered it was a scratch of no consequence. Abigail eased Martha’s stays and bodice as I transferred some hot coals from one fire to another, soon warming up the room.
Martha’s eyes were open and blank as I applied a cool cloth to her face. Looking at her full on in this objective manner, like a patient, I recalled how young she was—not seventeen—and how I, although quite young myself, was the world to her: mother, sister, and friend. In my suspicion, I had robbed her of all three at once.
“Rest awhile,” said Abigail. “I’ll watch her.”
“I cannot rest,” I replied quickly. Having ascertained that the bleeding had fully stopped and that there was as yet no redness or swelling at the site of the gash, I put on my cloak and took up my bonnet and mitts. Turning to Abigail, I smiled weakly and
said, “I must walk. I won’t be long.”
As I left the house, the cold wind off the sea assaulted me. I wished to see no one and headed down the dunes, making my way toward the open, iron-gray winter sky above the water. The snow was thick in places, covered by a dense, slippery crust made by a brief rain the day before. I slipped; the jagged ice scratched my calves. But my legs were numb, and I felt not the tearing of flesh. I walked across the snow toward the sea, letting the wind and the salt air slash my face. Ice froze between my wet eyelashes and nostrils and lodged in my throat and lungs with every breath; still, I did not stop.
I reflected upon my ignoble suspicions of Martha. I knew them to be ignoble, and yet I was still not convinced that she had told me all there was to tell. Some important detail was missing. Perhaps I would never know it. Was it my right to know her secrets? Martha owed me nothing. She did not owe me—nor did I merit—her most profound confidences.
I reached the town landing. It was desolate save for two old men hoisting a coffin-size crate from a dory. They grunted with the effort and soon succeeded in tying a rope twice around the heavy load and dragging it toward a waiting cart and horse. The horse’s breath made clouds in the frigid air; it stomped its foot impatiently and shivered, gazing myopically at me with big brown eyes.
I wondered what was in the crate, hoping it was sacks of flour, but doubting of it. Finally curiosity got the better of me. I inquired what lay within.
“Oh, a body, miss. That of a boy died at Freeman’s Farm, what’s family wanted him buried here.”
Freeman’s Farm had been one of the battle sites in New York a few weeks earlier. I apologized and thanked them for telling me, then turned away. It seemed an ill omen.
I held my cloak around myself as I gazed out at the black sea and black sky. The sun retreated. Men, women, animals—even the sun seemed to shrink from my company. I thought perhaps I was unfit to live. Over there, across the water, lay England, where my father had died. In that water, in its cold deep, my brother floated, whether beneath the waves or upon a ship’s deck I did not dare to guess.