The Midwife's Revolt

by Jodi Daynard

  “If that concerns you, rest assured he still exists. But these rough times are not auspicious for him.”

  During this conversation, Mr. Miller had gradually, almost imperceptibly, been closing the distance between us. The hands that had taken mine were now above my elbows and fast approaching my bare shoulders.

  “I’m relieved to hear it,” I said. “No, I believe I suffered most when—” Now it was my turn to hesitate.

  “When . . . ?”

  “When for a moment I thought you loved Eliza. Oh, I despised you then.”

  “Jealous, eh?” He smiled. “Ah, so that was it. I recall being angry with you then for the first time. I had no thought of your being jealous, only petty and spiteful.”

  I shuddered. “You cannot know how I despised myself for that! Envy is the Devil himself.”

  “I never meant to make you feel so. But it is wonderful to hear!” He smiled openly now. “You must have loved me somewhat, even then.” He moved closer to me, hopeful as he had not been before.

  “Fighting myself at every turn,” I said, frustrated at the memory. “Yes, I knew it as the saddest fact of my life when you ran me down outside the tavern.”

  “I can never forget that kiss.” He laughed, pulling me closer to him. “You in your mustache and that appalling vest!”

  “Oh, do not remind me of my foolishness. An auspicious beginning, indeed!”

  “Never apologize for that, Lizzie. It was the most wonderful kiss from the bravest woman. And I should like to repeat it now . . .”

  Here he kissed me tenderly, unencumbered by either resistance or an unsavory mustache.

  We walked then through the orchards, not saying much, but every minute or so asking the remaining few questions that lingered in our minds.

  “And was that you at the Golden Ball, after all?”

  “It was. I felt compelled to follow you wherever you went. I knew there to be danger, though you did not.”

  “And the Rose and Crown? You were not there on—”

  “Orders? Oh, no.” He smiled. “I learned little in the taverns, though I spoke with a number of men. I made myself out to be a gambler at cards. In this noble pursuit, I lost what little family money I had inherited. We had long suspected Mr. Cleverly of his pseudonymous involvement, and others as well. I daren’t say how we learned things. When we have won . . .”

  “Not if?”

  “No, we shall win. And when we have, I shall reveal everything to you. Oh, dearest Lizzie, how good it is to finally speak to you! You, as yourself, and I as myself.”

  “And who are you, Thomas Miller?” I looked up at him inquiringly. “What are your likes and dislikes? What are your particular habits? Your favorite foods? You see, I know nothing about you. I fear that if I fell in love with you as a despised Tory, I am sure to faint dead away when I learn of Thomas Miller the hero, intimate acquaintance of His Excellency himself.”

  “ ‘He was a man, take him for all in all,’ ” he said, his voice tinged with sadness.

  I looked up at him. “You have read Hamlet?”

  “Oh, Elizabeth.” He laughed. “I am not so well read as Mr. Cranch, I admit, but I’m not an ignoramus because also a soldier. Like all good Cambridge boys, I took my degree at Harvard and planned to pursue the law before our Troubles began. Then I could not sit idly by. And when the colonel asked me on behalf of Washington himself whether I would accept a most delicate position, I felt it my duty to accept.”

  “Oh, do not mention the colonel to me. I reserve the right to be furious at him for some time yet. He fooled us all with his jovial drinking and vulgar gossiping. He had us all convinced that you were the worst of all our enemies. Even Abigail was fooled!”

  Here, not wishing to join our friends just yet, we stopped by the side of the barn. My hand was still in his.

  “Every night I thought of you, knowing I could not love you, knowing that I did. Of all the things I suffered, I should say that was the worst. And I had no one to share my feelings with. Abigail thought you the worst sort of traitor. Martha needed me to believe it as well. When she warned me against you—it was with a ferocity I had not yet seen in her. Only your sworn promise to me gave me any hope at all. I could not entirely let go of that promise, even when all hope had gone.”

  “It’s over now.” He pulled me close, and his hands, which had begun in mine, made their way around me at last. “Think no more of it, darling. All those secrets and lies are behind us. But, Lizzie”—he pulled away from me to have a better look—“can you truly love again? I have never loved before, but you—”

  “Yes, I have loved. I loved Jeb. We were so young. He was the best sort of man. He taught me that I could love. Without that, I should have had no hope at all. But I’m just now thinking . . .” I hesitated.

  “What is it, dearest?”

  “Well, I suppose if we are to be together, you must learn to tolerate the language of midwifery.”

  “I’m not squeamish, or entirely ignorant, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Well, I was thinking just now that perhaps the heart is made of the same stuff as the womb. It can stretch and may easily be reused.”

  I placed a finger to my chin and must have looked like a true philosopher when, grinning involuntarily, I said, “Indeed, I find it quite a miraculous thing that I love you now quite as much as if I had never loved before.”

  Here I close the scene, for it is not meet that every scene be described.

  It was a day of great joy but also of fearful waiting. Our nerves were jangled, our bodies tense, awaiting this decisive encounter. Who besides Cleverly would pop out of the gloom to harm John Adams and his son upon their homecoming? Would it be those we knew, or strangers?

  The long day of waiting passed in various pursuits, and as the sun descended, the men finally took their leave of us. My eyes followed Thomas—in my mind, “Mr. Miller” had begun to disappear—as he gathered his compatriots for departure. He was focused on his task. Only once did I catch him looking in my direction. He smiled, and his amber eyes shone for a moment, but then he moved on with the business at hand.

  Martha was less reserved. As my brother prepared to depart, she ran up to him and embraced him.

  “May God keep you,” she said.

  “Let us go to the colonel’s,” I said to Martha. “To be among society might help us all bear up.”

  The men left for their ship, thanking us profusely and kissing our hands as the sky darkened over the dunes. All then grew quiet. As we made our way silently to the great house, I heard a lone dog howl.

  That same afternoon, little Johnny took his first steps. Eliza was so overcome with emotion—joy at his steps, grief that his father had not been free to see them—that she seemed almost wooden, reminding me unhappily of her mother as we walked together, Johnny riding joyously on Martha’s shoulders.

  Arriving at the colonel’s, Mrs. Quincy embraced us all and bade us enter. She had a supper prepared of tea, cod stew, and a fine apple cake. At first I felt too sick with tension to eat; we all did. Not wishing to be rude, however, we soon availed ourselves of this bounty and found it a welcome distraction.

  After supper, the colonel began a game of Memory with his wife, but neither Martha nor I had the nerves to concentrate. We paced, holding on to one another. From time to time, we peered out the windows onto the descending dunes and the splendid view of the sea. From the window in the dining room, with the fine summer moon rising brightly, one could make out the contours of my barn and cottage.

  When we grew tired of pacing, we stood by the window and discussed among ourselves how the ambush might occur. I burned with questions. Surely Martha, having known about the plot longer than I, had formed some opinion as to how the villains would go about it. The shore below the colonel’s house and my farm was vast, stretching for miles. Tall grass wavered up
on rolling dunes, and winds startled swallows and plovers from their nests in gray-white clouds. From whence would they begin this ambush?

  There were several possibilities. A party could come down by boat from the north, but this would lack the element of surprise, for surely they would be seen. They could not come up from the coves at Black’s Creek, since those presumably still hidden on Harry’s ship would report them. That left the dunes themselves, or the very land where we now stood.

  “It seems impossible to surprise anyone arriving by sea on this shore,” I said, attempting to convince myself.

  “It would be difficult,” Martha agreed, “but hardly impossible. The men would have to lie in wait in among the dunes. They are probably there now.” Whereupon she nodded toward the window, to the wavering grasses below.

  “Ugh!” I shivered. “Must you say such things?”

  “But you’ll admit it is the most likely scenario.”

  Suddenly, the colonel was upon us. “What do you ladies speak of?”

  “How the villains plan their attack,” I said directly. “Have you any knowledge?”

  The old illusion of his innocence, or ours, had been broken. We now conversed freely and nearly as equals, though I still harbored some anger against him—not so much for his deceit as for my own naïveté.

  “No. I wish I did, certainly.” The colonel gazed out his window, hands grasped behind his back. He scanned the waters and the dunes. “In among these trees there, probably,” he concluded finally, nodding at the woodlands to the side of the very house in which we stood. We had not considered these woods, being rather far off and to the left of the beach where La Sensible would anchor.

  “That’s a very long way. Surely our men will see them descending the hill,” I said.

  “Indeed, indeed,” said the colonel, turning away but seeming much concerned. “Yet, they may have a signal to those below. Yes, that’s how I should do it.”

  Then, perceiving his wife approaching, he cast us a guilty look. Unlike us, Ann remained in the dark about certain particulars. It was the colonel’s wish.

  “What do you all discuss so earnestly?” She smiled. She held on a plate half a dozen tiny cordial glasses filled with amber liquor. The colonel reached to take one, then thought better of it and offered them to us without partaking himself.

  “What do we discuss?” He turned to us, at a loss for a ready lie. He left it a question to which, awkwardly, not one of us had an answer.

  “Oh, merely that it looks to be a very clear night,” Martha commented ambiguously.

  We sipped our sweet wine in silence. Poor Ann, apparently used to being shut out of conversations, asked nothing more.

  For four years, we had lived in dread of such a night as this: war not beyond our town, but in our own yards. Citizens killing citizens—or gentle horses in their stables. Civil war. Neither Martha nor I could be in any doubt that the men we loved would now fight. We might now lose them. But we didn’t dare utter such words aloud.

  Johnny entertained us by crawling around and lurching from chair to chair like a drunken sailor. But he soon grew exhausted and began to cry, not knowing he was tired. It was Martha, needing something to do, who took him to bed in Dr. Franklin’s chamber, returning half an hour later.

  “He sleeps at last.” She sighed. “He senses our excitement and hates to miss anything.”

  Midnight came and went, but no one spoke of retiring. It was a clear, fine night. A full, bright moon meant that we dared not go abroad for fear of being perceived. At one o’clock, the colonel was still playing at cards when, looking past him through the window, I spied the bow of a vessel pulling slowly, silently, sails furled, into our port.

  “It’s here! It’s arrived! John Adams is here!”

  The colonel ran for his spyglass. He looked through it. But even with the naked eye, one could see someone cast off the anchor. Then nothing. It seemed an eternity. No doubt ignorant of the ambush, the sailors on board awaited an all-clear signal from their captain before helping these two illustrious citizens ashore.

  What happened next was so extraordinary that I fear I have not the talent to describe it:

  In the darkness, lit only by Nature herself, a dinghy was lowered quietly into the lapping water. I took the spyglass from the colonel. By and by, I saw a man and a tall boy standing in wait for the captain’s help; others shook their hands. Some even bowed before the famous Braintree patriot and his son. The captain nodded, and two sailors helped each of them into the dinghy.

  We had extinguished all but one candle so as not to be seen, but we did not want the house to appear uninhabited, either. Thus, by the light of one solitary candle flickering behind us, we stood all in a row by the open veranda doors, silent as shades from another world.

  Now they approached; John rowed. He spoke quietly to John Quincy. His voice carried, though we could not make out what he said.

  Martha asked me to pass the spyglass. I handed it to her. When the dinghy reached the shore, John Quincy stepped out to steady the dinghy for his father. The boy had grown quite tall, the size of a man. Stout Mr. Adams, with the dinghy wobbling to and fro, stepped into water up to his knees and helped his son pull the dinghy safely ashore. They both turned and waved silently to the men on La Sensible.

  At last they began to head up the beach toward the footpath. They had brought nothing with them—no parcels or trunks, but only what little hand luggage they could carry. No doubt their trunks would follow by the safer light of day.

  None of us breathed. We saw them reach the path and disappear into the dune grass. For a long moment, I thought that perhaps my friends had been mistaken about an ambush. There was no movement, no disturbance of any kind. The likelihood of such a thing seemed, for a moment, quite far-fetched.

  We heard a whistle. Then, from the leftmost point of our vision—the dense, dark brush near the house—emerged a band of men with painted faces and a single fiery torch. They were silent, organized to the very breaths they took. They raced toward the path, and I involuntarily gasped. The colonel had been right about that patch of woods.

  For several seconds, I was convinced, as we all were, that our men had not left their ship in time and had bungled the rescue. Ann Quincy turned away, unable to stifle a cry. One of the bandits actually turned at the sound of this human noise above the dunes. We all believed that John Adams and his child would perish within seconds.

  Eliza exclaimed, “Oh, God, I cannot watch. I can’t!”

  She ran to be with Mrs. Quincy when, suddenly, from the right of our vision, an overturned dinghy upon the beach came preternaturally to life. As if by levitation, it lifted itself up. Out came half a dozen men, crawling like sea creatures from a shell.

  I gasped at the boldness of this plan. They must have been hiding beneath that overturned dinghy for hours. We had seen it, of course, but it was so much a part of the landscape that we had not given it a thought. Luckily, they had. They had even dug out the sand beneath the dinghy to make room for the six of them.

  Two of our men instantly lit torches, while four others raised ready muskets. Then I heard one shout, “You are undone! Unmask yourselves!”

  At that moment, we lost sight of the scene as the entire assemblage passed below the dunes. Three rough musket shots popped and spluttered in the night air, but we saw not from whence those shots came or whom they had found to destroy.

  Martha and I shrieked and grabbed each other. For a moment I thought we would both sink to the floor. Not knowing which of our men had been hit was beyond our endurance. But we did not sink down, nor was it in our power to remain where we were. We pushed open the back door and ran, heedless of the colonel’s frantic shouts.

  At first, I could see nothing at all. As we approached, we heard voices, and our eyes adjusted to the dark. Then the assemblage emerged from behind the dunes. Hardly breathing, we saw our me
n. They were alive and had surrounded the traitorous band.

  “They live. They live, Martha.”

  “And yet, look, oh, look!” She grasped my wrist hard and pointed.

  Still holding his rifle, Thomas Miller appeared to sway unsteadily on his feet. Another moment, I feared, and he might fall down. He did not fall, however, but merely bent forward at the waist, wiping the sweat and tar from his face with the back of a sleeve.

  “Oh, he is hurt! Martha!” I moved as if I would climb down the dunes to them, but Martha arrested me.

  “Don’t be a fool. You cannot aid him now.”

  She was right. There was nothing I could do but watch in agony.

  The traitors stood with their hands in the air, and though their faces were painted, I could see one man unmistakably.

  “Do you see him, Martha?” I cried. “Do you see Cleverly?”

  “Benjamin Thompson, you mean,” she replied. “And regard who stands next to him. Isn’t that your man, Whitcomb?”

  “Oh, Lord. It is,” I said. For several weeks this boy had lived on my own property, just outside my open door. I shivered.

  With wrists now roughly tied behind him, the man we had known as Mr. Cleverly stared up suspiciously into the darkness, as if somehow he knew we were there. Had I dared to move closer, I would have spat in his face.

  As colonels Palmer and Livingston prepared to row the prisoners out to the Cantabrigian, John Adams and John Quincy Adams arrived at our door flanked by Harry and Thomas. So anxious was I over Thomas, however, that I hardly stopped to greet Mr. Adams or his son.

  I ran to Thomas’s side as he held himself upright in the doorframe. A manservant aided me, and together we brought him to a sofa in the parlor.

  Behind me, I heard many scuffling footsteps, then shouts of joy. I turned momentarily from Thomas to look into the hall: Mr. Adams and his son had just entered and were being swarmed by an overcome Colonel Quincy and his wife.