“You’re right.” Francis stood up. “What escort did you bring?”
“Why, just my coachman, my faithful footman, and an outrider.”
“Not enough.” He put down his glass. “Should have apologised for joining you in my riding clothes, but now I’m glad of it. With your good leave, I’ll see you safe home. No need to look so anxious, Mamma. I’ll spend the night in town, do some business with Gordon in the morning, and be home for dinner, with the latest news and such silks and laces as you ladies trust me to buy.”
This was a clincher so far as the two older ladies were concerned, and if Mercy thought he was more eager for news than for silks and laces, she kept her thoughts, as usual, to herself.
In Cambridge, it had been an unusually mild winter. Hart was lucky, the Pastons told him, to have his first experience of a New England winter such an easy one. “Why, here you are for your spring vacation,” Mrs Paston greeted him on a fine April Saturday, “and the ground’s thawed already and the spring ploughing well begun. Poor Mark has had to leave his books to help.”
“Then I will go and join him,” said Hart. “I’d like to see how you manage this bleak New England soil of yours.”
“Bleak!” She laughed up at him. “Just because it has a few rocks in it. And see how useful they are for our walls. You’ll find Mark in the pasture beyond the Common, the one by Jonas Clarke’s house. Unless he’s sneaked in for the latest news from Jonas. He’s got Mr Adams and Mr Hancock staying with him, has Jonas Clarke, while the Provincial Congress meet in Concord. I don’t know how Lucy Clarke manages, with those eight children and dear knows how many guests besides. In fact”—she had ushered him into the big main room of the house as they talked—“if you do reckon to go and join Mark, I might make bold to ask if you’d take some of my cookies to Lucy as you go. She must be hard put to it, with things the way they are. Would you mind?” She had suddenly remembered the Southern gentleman they used to think him.
“Mind? Of course not.” Hart, too, remembered a time when he would have thought this an extraordinary commission. “In fact”—he had put his grip in the small downstairs room he always used, and now turned back to her—”I’m as bad as Mark, I’m afraid. I’ll be glad of an excuse to go and hear the latest news from Concord. Besides, I’d like to see Mr Adams and Mr Hancock; I’ve heard so much about them.”
“I dare swear you have!” Once again, laughter creased the familiar lines across her weather-beaten face, and he found himself wondering what Mark’s father had been like. “Don’t tell the twins you heard me swearing,” she went on. “I’d never live it down. They’re at the dame school. Village school’s closed. Economy!” She sniffed. “I don’t call it economy to stint the children of their learning. There.” As she talked, she had been deftly packing fresh-baked cookies into a home-made flat wicker basket. “With my kind love, for Lucy. And I’ll expect you and Mark for dinner, and no excuses. If the Minutemen need drilling, let Captain Parker do it, and let Mark take an evening off for once, in honour of his guest.”
“I’ll do my best, ma’am.” Hart took the basket and set off down the familiar road to the Common. As he passed Widow Mulliken’s house, young Nathaniel raised a friendly hand in greeting, and Hart, shouting a “good day,” thought how pleasant it was to have near neighbours, as one did in New England. It was very different from the remote plantation life of Georgia. But he did not much want to think about Georgia. He would talk about his mother’s letter presently, when he and Mark had a moment alone. And, thinking this, he thought all over again how lucky he was to have found such a cousin and such a friend.
Reaching the Common, he took the right fork of the road by Buckman’s Tavern and paused for a moment outside its stables to look across to the silent school and wonder which of the village dames was teaching the Paston twins. At the next corner, where the Bedford road turned off, he shouted a greeting to Ruth Harrington, who was hanging out her washing between the blossoming apple trees beside her house. She called back a cheerful answer and added, “If you find my Jonathan up at Clarke’s, send him home with a flea in his ear for me, Mr Purchis. All these politics are mighty grand, I reckon, but we’ve got the boy to feed and the spring planting not started yet.”
“I’ll tell him,” Hart called back. “And I’ll give him a hand, too, when Mark can spare me.”
“Thanks.” She turned back to her clothes line, and he strode on towards the Clarke house, and the meadow that Mark had hired from Jonas Clarke, because the minister was too busy to farm it. No sign of life there, so he crossed the road towards the Clarke house, only to see Mark emerging from it.
“Hart!” Mark shook his hand warmly. “It’s good to see you. What’s the news from Harvard?”
“Not much. Everyone’s gone home. And what from Concord?”
“This and that. Next time the British come out on one of those marches of theirs, we’re to call out the Minutemen and keep an eye on them. Good training for the men, I reckon, and might teach the British something.”
“Mark! You wouldn’t attack them!”
“Lord, no, it’s just a gesture. Defensive only, the order is, unless they should be fools enough to attack.”
“Which they won’t,” said Hart positively. “You know how cool General Gage has played it all winter. I’m sure he’s hoping for a settlement that will leave us all friends again.”
“Let’s hope you’re right,” said Mark. “So long as it really is that. It’s going to take a good deal to satisfy men like Sam Adams, I can tell you.”
“I know.” No need to go back over the long winter’s discussions, which had left them such good friends and, Hart sometimes thought, so surprisingly close in their beliefs. Up here in New England, things seemed different, somehow. He must remember to ask Mark’s advice about how to answer that disturbing, angry letter of his mother’s. She actually seemed to think that his loyalty to the Crown was in doubt. Absurd. He did look at things differently, perhaps, but he remained a loyal subject of King George, and so did Mark, who was often scandalised by Sam Adams’ revolutionary pronouncements.
The next day, Sunday, April 16, saw an unusual amount of activity in Lexington. Mrs Paston, who did not believe in Sunday travel, was scandalised. “They keep riding by,” she told the young men. “I don’t see how I can teach the children to keep the Sabbath if they see so many breaking it. I’ve a good mind to speak to Jonas Clarke. They’re all going to his house.”
“It must be urgent,” said Mark, “or he’d not allow it. I’ll walk along there later on.” He did not invite Hart to join him.
The rumour was soon all over the village. The British were planning one of their armed excursions into the countryside. There were various explanations of this. They were coming to arrest Mr Adams and Mr Hancock. No, they were coming to seize the stores of powder and provisions that had been carefully gathered and hoarded in Concord throughout the winter. Or, no again, they were simply making one of their occasional displays of force.
“But this time,” said Mark, “we are going to watch and follow them. How glad I am you’re here, Hart. I’d not much like to leave Mother and the girls on their own if they do call out the Minutemen.”
“Absurd,” said Mrs Paston. “As if any harm could come to us! But”—recognising Mark’s tactful intention—”that’s not to say I won’t be happier with a man about the place.”
Two days later, a breathless messenger tapped at the door of the Paston House, just when Mark and Hart, who had done a long day’s ploughing, were beginning to think of bed. “The British are coming,” he told Mark, and then qualified it with “I think. All events, Sergeant Munroe’s got a guard at the Clarke house, and we’re to rally on the Common.”
“Right!” Mark was already reaching for his musket, powder-horn, and cartridge box from their place behind the door. “I won’t rouse Mother.” He turned to Hart after the messenger had hurried on to the next house. “No need to fret her, and it’s most likely just another
rumour.”
“Right.” But it was strange to be left alone in the house with only the sleeping women above stairs. Strange and sad. Those were his friends who were gathering on the Common. Mark and Nat Mulliken and Jonathan Harrington and Captain Parker. He heard footsteps hurrying by and wondered which other of their neighbours had been roused and gone to join his friends and do his duty as he saw it. Strange to think how horrified his mother would be if she could know that he was sitting here, watching over the Paston women, while Mark attended what she would think a treasonable assembly.
It was very quiet in the house, and getting cold. He put more wood on the fire, determined that he would stay up until Mark returned, and fetched Hume’s History of England from his room. But he could not concentrate. From time to time, the sound of a horse passing on the road took him to the window, but it was too dark by now, with the moon not yet risen, to make out faces. Lunatic to think the British would come tonight. And yet there was still much more activity than usual on the road.
Time dragged. The old clock in the kitchen struck midnight, then one, then two. The moon was up now and he longed to walk a little way towards the Common to see what was happening. But Mark had left him in charge here. He turned another page, then realised he had not taken in a word. Was that the sound of voices? He hurried to the door and, looking out, saw a little group of men approaching, the muskets they carried making strange shapes in the moonlight.
“False alarm.” Mark had seen him standing in the lighted doorway. “There’s not a sign of the British. Good night, boys. Let out a holler if you find the redcoats camped up at Munroe’s Tavern.”
This raised a laugh from the other men who lived farther down the Boston road. “Phew, I’m frozen.” Mark closed the door and moved over to the fire. “Thanks for keeping it up for me. Get any work done?” He had noticed Hume lying on the table.
“Not much. Is it really all a false alarm?”
“Seems so. Not a word from our scouts. Parker’s left a guard on the Clarke house, and the men from farther out are stopping the night at Buckman’s Tavern, but the rest of us are stood down. If anything should come up, young Bill Diamond will summon us with that drum he reckons so much to. Too late to go to bed now.” He pulled his favourite chair to the fire. “I reckon I’ll see the night out down here, just in case, but there’s no need for you to.”
“Oh, I’ll stay.” They were both tired and sat there in companionable silence, dozing and waking in the mellow light of the fire. The clock had struck four and, outside, a first bird was chirping in salute to a pre-dawn change in the quality of the darkness, when Mark stirred and sat bolt upright in his chair.
“What was that?” He moved a little stiffly over to open the door and peer out into misty darkness. It came again, unmistakable, the sharp tap of a drum. “Bill Diamond. They must be coming after all. And most of us dispersed. We’ll make a poor show of it, I’m afraid. Don’t let the girls do anything stupid, Hart, if they should wake.” As he spoke he had quickly collected his equipment. “See you at breakfast. Tell Ma some of her griddle-cakes wouldn’t come amiss.” He shut the door quietly and was gone.
It was getting lighter momently. The relentless beat of the drum continued, and Hart was not surprised to hear footsteps in the bedroom above. “What is it?” Mrs Paston opened the door at the foot of the attic stair, her hair bundled up under her cap, a shawl held closely round her long flannel nightdress.
“The British really seem to be coming.” Hart quickly told her of the night’s events.
“And you’ve been guarding us. Thanks. Well, I’d best get dressed and go to work on those griddle-cakes. Mark will be fair famished after this night’s alarms. I hope the British don’t loiter. I suppose they’re for Concord?”
“I don’t know. Mark said something about a guard at the Clarke house.”
“They’d never come all this way just for that old windbag Sam Adams. Dear God, what’s that?”
A new noise. A kind of dull counterpoint to that agitated drumming. The sound of marching feet? And another drum? “So soon?” Pulling her shawl more closely round her, she stared at him, eyes dilated with what he recognised, anxiously, as fear. “Hart! It sounds like a whole army. It could mean trouble.”
“Surely not. Just a demonstration.” He looked longingly at the door. “They’ll be here any minute. Do you think …”
“Yes! Run, quick! The back way. Tell them to be careful—tell them it’s a whole army. They’ll be tired, the British, marching all night. Tired men act stupid sometimes. I wish it was day.” She saw him hesitate. “Go on, Hart, please. They won’t hurt us, that’s one thing certain—women and children. Not the British.”
“No.” When he opened the door, the thud of marching feet sounded alarmingly near, the tap of a drum, the rattle of harness; he was across the road, making for the path that skirted the hill behind Mulliken’s and cut a corner off the road to the Common. Lucky he knew it so well. There were lights in the Loring and Merriam houses. He cut behind them, splashed through the Vine Brook, and emerged, panting, just across the road from Buckman’s Tavern. Now, the urgent tap of William Diamond’s drum almost drowned that other, more menacing sound of marching feet.
Torches flared here and there on the Common. People hurried to and fro. The door of Buckman’s Tavern was open, casting its beam of light on to the confused scene and making faces harder to distinguish. Where was Mark? He must give his warning, and only Mark was sure to listen. Captain Parker was shouting, trying to urge his men into line. Into line? Why? No—two lines. Absurd, ridiculous. About two dozen men, or maybe three, forming up to challenge the armed might of Great Britain. They’ll laugh at us, he thought, and then, Us?
Where was Mark? Somewhere in that awkwardly forming line, but where? Speak to Captain Parker? Too late. As he had hesitated, the marching feet had caught up with him. It was hypnotic—the beat of the blood, the pulse of the heart. Instinctively, he retreated to the shadowed entrance of Malt Lane as the British tide surged out onto the Common. There were orders now, snapped out. “Disperse … don’t fire!” Parker’s voice, thank God. And an English voice, too, “Don’t fire … surround them!”
Horsemen galloped past the end of the lane, cutting behind the Meeting House. The Minutemen on the Common were dispersing, slowly. It was lighter, but he could still not make out faces. And all the time the measured tramp of marching feet, the menacing drum, shaking the nerves, troubling the blood. He had not thought it would be like this.
Red and white uniforms were between him and Buckman’s now. No hope of finding Mark. No use anyway. The red and white tide flowed smoothly out on the Common, dawn light catching, here and there, the polished tip of a bayonet. He was so near he could smell the soldiers’ fatigue, hear their grunted curses as they spread out to form into line on the edge of the Common. And then, crashing across the dawn, one shot. Who fired it? He had no idea. He had thrown himself on his face in the mud of Malt Lane as the British infantry let out a ragged volley of fire and went in with the bayonet.
When he sat up, sick with disgust at himself, it was over. A British drum was beating. Furious British officers were cursing their men back into line. On the Common, some men lay still, others were moving, shakily, this way or that. It was much lighter now. He recognised Jonathan Harrington as he crawled across the Common towards his own house. He ought to help him. He must find Mark. If the British attacked him as he searched, he thought he would be glad. He had proved himself the coward Mercy had once called him. Redcoats were swarming all over the Common now; an officer was beating back a party who threatened to break into the Meeting House. Horrible. The British. So who am I?
A rebel. And, on the thought, a voice, a whisper, Mark’s. “Hart? Thank God.” The redcoats were so busy around the Meeting House that they had not noticed him come staggering across the Common.
“You’re hurt?” Hart went to meet him, got an arm under his, and felt him shudder with the pain of it.
; “In the side. As I turned to go. Obeying orders. Get me home, Hart, if you can.”
“Soon.” Very gently, he eased Mark to the ground, cradled his head in his lap, and watched as the British slowly drew off, drew together, reformed in marching order, and then, unbelievably, fired a triumphant volley, gave three cheers, and marched off down the Concord road. Could he be crying? Yes. Coward again. A tear fell on Mark’s face.
“Don’t mind it so much.” Mark’s eyes flickered open. “It had to come. Not all their fault. Ask … ask Jonas. But first, Hart, get me home.”
He got him home, to die there, as Jonathan Harrington had, on his own doorstep, and Mrs Paston, dry-eyed, closed his eyes, and said, yes, she and the girls would indeed be grateful if Hart would take them to her cousins’ secluded house five miles from the road. “They’ll be back,” she agreed. “The British have to come back from Concord.”
Chapter 9
It was May. The huge magnolia down by the bend in the river was covered in blossom, and Indian corn was a foot high in the fields. Mercy had her choice of catalpa, dogwood, or garden roses for her father’s grave, but the flowers withered fast in the hot sun. It was strange to see the seasons coming round again at Winchelsea and to feel how much she was at home there. Hard to remember the frightened girl who crept about, afraid of masters and servants alike.
That was a year ago. Now her anxieties, or most of them, were shared ones. There had been no letter from Hart for over two months, and Mrs Purchis was beginning to fret herself ill over him, while Jem, who had been furious at being left behind by the master from whom he had never been parted, mooched about the plantation, grey-faced with worry. “It’s too long, Miss Mercy.” He reached up to pull down a high branch of catalpa for her. “He’d never leave Madam Purchis so long without a letter.”
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