by Jodi Daynard
As I stood at the water’s edge, a thought occurred to me: Could I envy Martha? Like myself, she was an orphan with neither money nor connections. Yet there was a difference. She had a living brother.
There is no more despicable emotion on earth than envy, yet none so common to the human heart. Could it be? Could envy have poisoned my heart so? This thought had the ring of truth in my ears.
I needed to repent my sin and beg forgiveness at once, and I returned to my cottage. I banged through the door, threw down my cloak and bonnet, placed my boots by the fire, and announced, “Martha, I’m heartily ashamed of myself. I’ve searched my soul and do believe I’ve found the source of the poison in my breast: envy! You have a brother to love, and I know not what has become of mine.”
Martha closed her eyes and nodded.
Abigail merely observed, “Your leg is bleeding.”
I looked down and, sure enough, bright-red blood spread along the edge of my petticoat.
“Come, let me stanch that before you track blood all over the house.”
After Abigail had bandaged my ankle, neither of us spoke much. And while Martha stared at the ceiling in a rigid state of hurt, I divulged that secret I had dared not say before: “Well, I suppose if John is to risk his life to make a treaty with the French, the least we ladies can do is make some good blankets for him for the crossing.”
I saw Martha blink, but she said nothing. Abigail, however, had a slight, satisfied smile at the corner of her lips.
Abigail and I began dyeing wool the next day—a smelly, messy task best done in warmer months. In a few days’ time, though her left hand was still bandaged, Martha joined us. She had few words for me at first. It was her turn to judge me, and I let her. She had great powers of observation, and I prayed humbly that she would merely dislike me from then on and not loathe me enough to leave.
Martha let me flap in the breeze a good while—several weeks, in fact—before letting me know, as we read companionably by the kitchen hearth of an evening, that she had forgiven me. She let me know not by words but by leaving off work a moment and placing her hand on mine. So forcefully did I feel her touch, bereft of it as I had been, that I wept.
“Oh, Martha, you don’t hate me, then?”
She sighed. “I tried, but could not. For, were the situation reversed, I should feel just as you have felt.”
I hugged her to me then, grateful I had not destroyed our friendship.
That same day, Abigail, Martha, and I hung the dripping skeins upon the warping board. We dressed the loom and tied the heddles to make a nice warm overshot weave. And with this wool, we wove two blankets, one for John and the other for John Quincy. One was red and white, the other blue and white. They each had thirteen stars and were signed: M. M., A. A., and E. B., November 24, 1777.
20
FEBRUARY 1778. I come at last to the heart of my narrative: that period of time, lasting roughly eighteen months, during which John was in France and we found ourselves entirely alone in a hostile environment.
We lived on dreams. Indeed, our conversation those dark weeks, as we sipped our Liberty tea, often went something like this:
“Oh, to have a cake of jam and butter frosting . . . light as air.”
“For toast with fresh butter,” Abigail added.
“What would you give for it, Abigail?” I asked.
“For a large, moist, fluffy sponge cake with good tart jam and butter?” Abigail considered, shutting her eyes for a moment. “Mr. Adams, I believe, would be a fair trade.”
As it happens, the day John Adams left, Mr. Brown, Susanna’s husband, a handsome, good-natured lad, came by with an apple pie to “pay us” for another daughter we had birthed the week before. We were all smiles, but could not wait for him to leave. The moment he did so, we raced for spoons. But then I stopped and said, “Martha, we must bring this to Abigail. Tonight John and John Quincy leave for France.”
You could see her shoulders sink at this, for the pie was nearly on her tongue.
“Yes, you’re right.”
We both stared sadly down at our pie.
That evening we were nearly frozen solid by the time we reached Abigail’s. The walk took us an hour. We saw her through the window before she spied us with our gift, which I hid behind my back, the better to surprise her. I couldn’t feel my hands or my feet, however, and so I hoped she would hurry to the door.
Abigail was lost in a letter she had obviously just received. Tears glistened on her face as she sat before the fire, her children around her. Mr. Thaxter, the tutor—not to be confused with my Thaxter, the profligate—and Mr. Rice, Mr. Adams’s law clerk, stood listening with grave faces.
I rapped gently on the window. She started, smiled, and came swiftly to the door.
“Oh, I’m glad to see you!” she cried. “I have had a letter. John has not yet sailed but writes from the ship in Boston Harbor. Listen.” She read:
On Board the Frigate Boston 5 O’clock in the Afternoon Feb. 13, 1778
Dearest of Friends,
I am favoured with an unexpected Opportunity, by Mr. Woodward the lame Man who once lived at Mr. Belchers, and who promises in a very kind manner to take great Care of the Letter, to inform you of our Safe Passage from the Moon Head, on Board the ship.—the seas ran very high, and the Spray of the seas would have wet Us, but Captn. Tucker kindly brought great Coats on Purpose with which he covered Up me and John so that We came very dry.—Tomorrow Morning We sail.—God bless you, and your my Nabby, my Charley, my Tommy and all my Friends.
Yours, ever, ever, ever yours, John Adams
When she had finished, Abigail grew so pale I thought she would faint. I motioned to Martha to put the kettle on and knelt by Abigail’s side, resting the pie on the floor.
“I can’t bear it,” she wept, signaling Mr. Thaxter to remove the children, which he did with great celerity. “Lizzie, terror and self-pity overcome me in equal measure.”
“Now, now,” I said, taking her hand, “you will bear it. You know you will, because you must.”
She quieted, then laughed shortly. “You’ve stolen my own words to use against me.”
“Not against. Never against. For what choice have you, dearest?”
“He left in such haste, he forgot our blankets,” she replied sadly.
I smiled. “They will keep till he returns.”
But Abigail continued upon her other train of thought. “I have thought many times of the possibility that I might lose John. But Johnny, the thought of Johnny—”
“Abigail, listen.” I took her hands. “Johnny is at this moment more wildly happy than he has been in his life. Think of the adventure! The learning! The exposure to a new language, new ideas. He’s ready—you know he is, being far in advance of the other boys his age both in learning and sensibility. He’ll be a great man someday, in part because his mother let him go to France for the Cause.”
My words seemed to fortify her; she breathed easier.
“Now look here,” I continued. “I have brought something to sweeten your anguish. And, as it is a very great sacrifice for me and Martha”—here, Martha and I exchanged nods—“I’ll thank you to enjoy it as greatly as possible.”
“What have you here?” she asked in a small voice, looking at the cloth that covered a rounded shape. I thought I saw her nostrils flare at the smell of the pie beneath. Her eyes widened. “It’s not—”
“It is,” I insisted, unveiling the treasure.
“A pie! Oh, a pie! You’re an angel!”
We removed to the kitchen, and the children were called, and for a while all thoughts of the treacherous sea crossing and the forgotten blankets were abandoned to the heavenly sensation of real wheat crust and fruit. Thus, in a sense, Abigail had indeed exchanged Mr. Adams for a dessert. Heavenly Maker, forgive us!
John Adams was gone, and n
ot just him, but any semblance of safety we might have derived from his presence. For in dependence is safety, or at least the illusion of it. This is the lesson we all learned from the Revolution.
I wish I could say my suspicions of Martha disappeared. However, they did not. Reader, I had the good sense to say nothing and to behave in no way that might expose my deepest feelings. I knew her too well by then, as we all came to know one another. We could read a single facial muscle, the minute adjustment of a shoulder blade. No doubt she read my continued doubts as well, but she, too, thought it best to pretend as if she did not.
Around this time I began to dream of my ancestral home on Brattle Street. I dreamed of it all that February, not once but near a dozen times. I had heard it had been taken over by one of Washington’s officers after the evacuation of March 1776. The dreams were dark and persistent. In them, others occupied the house, but I nonetheless returned by the front door and slept in my own room, only to be discovered the following morning. In one dream, I was found by a haughty captain; in another, a filthy crowd of militia entered my chamber.
So vivid was this recurring dream that in it I recalled furniture—tables, dressers, Turkey carpets, china cabinets, and even storage chests—I had long since forgotten about. Upon waking, such grief would overcome me that I could hardly bear it, and the sensation that I had left unfinished business there did not leave me for many hours.
I had no notion what the dreams signified. I supposed that to depart from one’s home in such haste had inflicted a wound of some kind. Yet, even were I to return, I felt certain that destruction within—tables used for firewood, spoons and window muntins used for bullets—would wound me doubly.
Spring unfolded itself gradually. Purple crocuses emerged, the sight of them lifting my heart. April was still cold, the ground hard. People long indoors began to walk abroad, no longer hunched against the cutting winds. It was at the end of April, or perhaps the first week of May, that I happened upon Mary Cranch as she walked home from the cobbler’s. Seeing me, she approached with great excitement and proceeded to tell me that they were expecting some very interesting boarders, men who counted themselves among the very highest echelons of our patriots.
“One, I hear, Lizzie, is quite renowned for his good looks,” she added archly.
“Well, then, you must certainly have us ’round to meet him.” I spoke in jest, of course: I had no expectations of meeting a man, not then or ever. But I was of a mind to enjoy a dinner at which I could speak about Hamlet with Richard Cranch.
“His name’s Mr. Cleverly,” she added.
“He is not related to our Cleverlys?” I asked, alarmed, for the Braintree Cleverlys were prominent Tories.
“Oh, no.”
“Cleverly,” I mused. “A good name for a handsome man. Though I do think it would be more equitable for an ugly man to receive the wits, don’t you? Let the handsome man content himself with winning the ladies.”
“Well, I think it is auspicious,” Mary slyly replied. “But you have no need to wait for our invitation, Lizzie. The colonel has plans to invite us all to dinner.”
“I look forward to it.”
But two other pieces of news soon made me forget about the men who were expected at the Cranches’ home. The following week, a terrible rumor caught fire in our parish that Benjamin Franklin had been assassinated in Paris. For several weeks, we lived in abject terror of its being true. I watched Martha’s face for signs that she had intelligence from her brother, but could discern none. Abigail was nearly dead with worry for her “men,” whom she could not reach. She would not hear from John until October, and only a report in the British newspaper, brought by some traveler to our village, assured her that he had arrived safely in Bordeaux.
The second piece of news, about the repossession of Tory houses by their owners, would have more direct bearing upon me.
One week after I met Mary on the road, we went to dine at the colonel’s. The day of the much-awaited dinner party was unseasonably warm, and Martha and I chose to walk through the fields rather than take the long way around by the road. We had just emerged upon the path leading to the house when we came upon a large party that seemed to be headed the same way. When I saw who was among them—Abigail, Charles, Thomas, and Nabby—I clapped my hands in delight. I had not seen the children in a long while; they were beautiful in my eyes, both for their origins and for themselves.
Charles was nearly eight and full of mischief—he ran ahead of everyone, playing some game or other; Tommy, six, followed him like a shadow. Nabby, now a prim girl of near thirteen, exhorted the boys to slow down.
As we mounted the steps, I embraced Abigail.
“Your children have grown.”
“Yes. Nabby is now just taller than I.”
I observed the girl admiringly; she looked a great deal like her mother, though softer and rounder in her features. Then I looked about us and asked, “But where is your sister?”
“Oh, I believe they’re already within.”
“What hear you about their esteemed guests?” I whispered.
“Not much,” she admitted. “But I’m greatly looking forward to meeting them. Mary tells me that one of them, a Dr. Flynt, hails from Philadelphia.”
“He must know John then.”
“Indeed.” She smiled broadly at the mention of her husband.
The butler opened the door, bowed, and brought us inside. The children were sent off to the kitchen, presumably to join their cousins. We found ourselves before the colonel himself. Standing just behind him were Richard and Mary Cranch and three strangers.
Upon first seeing these men, the idea of Goldilocks and her three bears came to me: one was very tall, one was very short, and one was neither too tall nor too short but just right. I knew not why, upon first sight, I found these men faintly ridiculous, but the sensation was alarming.
Seeing us enter the parlor, all three men bowed.
Abigail, Martha, and I curtsied.
Dr. Flynt, the stout one, had graying hair and spectacles perched at the end of a bulbous nose. When he bowed to us, a piece of hair flipped to the side, revealing a sweaty bald spot. I had a terrible, sudden urge to laugh and grasped Abigail’s wrist.
Pushing back against me to forestall laughter, Abigail inquired, “I have heard tell, Dr. Flynt, that you come to us from Philadelphia. You must have met my husband, then, for he has resided there these past three years.”
“I have not had that great pleasure, ma’am.” He proceeded to bow once more, so deeply that his spectacles actually fell off his face, and I feared all was lost. I glanced quickly at a portrait upon the wall as he scrambled to retrieve his spectacles from the Turkey carpet. “But upon my return, I most assuredly shall seek him out.”
“You shan’t find him in Philadelphia, for, as everyone knows, he is in Paris now,” I said tartly.
Abigail shot me a look, but Dr. Flynt’s manner had annoyed me almost from the moment I set eyes upon him. It is an unfortunate part of our nature that we judge others quickly—and often incorrectly.
The tall one, Mr. Thayer, reminded me of portraits I had seen of Judge Thomas Sewall, our Puritan forefather who had sent the Salem ladies to their fiery ends. Hollow-cheeked, with a tall forehead and a firmly set, grim mouth, he said he hailed from Exeter, New Hampshire, and was a surveyor by trade.
“Then you must certainly know my sister Betsy, who has lately moved there with her husband, the Reverend Stephen Peabody,” said Abigail.
“Indeed, I have had the pleasure,” he said unsmilingly, but nothing more could be gotten from him on the subject.
Martha nudged me and whispered, “It seems we are to have an exceedingly dull evening.”
I nudged her back, shushing her.
Meanwhile, Abigail addressed Mr. Thayer, “Would you be kind enough to take a note to my dear Betsy for me when you ret
urn?”
“I would, most gladly, Mrs. Adams.” Mr. Thayer raised his eyes slightly. “But, unfortunately, I have no thoughts of returning there at the moment.”
“It is not illness in the village that prevents you?” Abigail asked, growing alarmed by his grave manner.
“No, no. Business matters, business matters.”
“I’m very sorry for it. I hear it’s a lovely little village. My sons have been, but I’ve not yet had that pleasure.”
“Indeed, it is a pretty village.”
“Full of Tories, is what I hear!” declared Josiah Quincy, who had come up to us. “All those little backwater villages— lousy with ’em.”
“My dear uncle, one might say we live in such a backwater village,” Richard countered tactfully.
“Touché!” Josiah cried, nearly spilling his cordial.
The third man, who called himself Cleverly, sat in one of the colonel’s high-backed chairs with his pipe and cordial, looking the very picture of an easy country gentleman. Unlike the two other men, who were past their prime by several decades, Mr. Cleverly was quite young, and his blue eyes brimmed with a sort of amused mischievousness. He had a fair complexion and wavy blond hair.
Mr. Cleverly also struck me as someone made of a different fabric from the other two—richer and more refined. He could have been a neighbor in Cambridge, or a cousin of my mother’s. And Mary was right: he was alarmingly good-looking. But I was not so shallow as to be won over by looks alone.
I turned to him. “And you there,” I said. “While we’re raking everyone over the coals, we may as well not spare you.”
“By all means, do not.” He smiled easily. “You must be Mrs. Boylston. Elizabeth, if I may. The Cranches have praised you to the skies. I’m nearly ready to propose marriage, if you will have me.”