by Ann Rinaldi
Lucy and I had no idea what was going on. There was all sorts of activity outside, and someone told us that General Washington had taken up headquarters in the home of Major Barnes, which was right up the street from us.
At nine there was a knock on our door. It was Daniel. He stepped in out of the cold with another officer. “This is Lieutenant Edward Rawlings, a friend of mine. My sister, lieutenant.”
The lieutenant was tall and rangy, and he bowed. I remembered to curtsy. “Have you any hot coffee?” Dan asked. “We’ve just traveled that nine miles for the third time in a week.”
In the kitchen Dan told us that Washington was reestablishing himself in New Jersey and that the British were marshaling forces in Princeton. “I’ve only an hour before I must get back. I’ve come to tell you to pack up and take the wagon to the Moores’. Plan to stay for a day or so. It looks like another battle is shaping up.”
“Oh, Dan, we were all right in the last one. I don’t want to leave!”
He turned, mug in hand. “Do you hear that, lieutenant? Didn’t I tell you? Jemima Emerson, you have exactly half an hour to pack your things. Lucy will help you. The lieutenant and I will shut up the house and hitch up the team. If you think I’m going to be out there worrying about this house getting hit by cannon fire with you two in it … or what will happen if we don’t win this battle …” He paused. “I warn you, miss, I’m not accustomed to having my orders disobeyed.”
The lieutenant stood up. “I’d do as he says, miss. He gets powerful mad when you give him an argument.”
But he’s only my brother, I wanted to say. Then I saw the look on Dan’s face and I didn’t say it. Lucy and I went to pack.
Dan and the lieutenant accompanied us on horseback to the banks of the Assunpink, where the army was standing in formation. David and Cornelius were somewhere in its midst, but it was impossible to spot them. We stopped. Dan dismounted and helped me down. We walked a bit away from the wagon. “Here are two notes. One for Betsy. And one for you from John.”
I gave a small cry. He hushed me. “He slipped into our camp across the river last night in the disguise of a farmer selling tobacco. I told him about Father’s death. He was devastated. He thought much of Father. And there in the dark, while he sold me tobacco, he asked for your hand.”
He smiled. “He said he had intended to wait, but Father’s death changed things and he didn’t know when we’d meet again. I said yes. So you’re betrothed. He said he wouldn’t marry yet, not until he’s finished with certain work. I’m sure you’ll hear from him soon. He’s very busy. Go along now and give my love to Mother.”
I looked up at him. How well he’d taken Father’s place in the last few days! “Thank you, Dan. Do take care.”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll write.” He kissed me, mounted Gulliver, and rode off to join the troops.
We sat watching. A very heavy young officer on a noble-looking horse was addressing the troops. From Dan’s description, he would be Henry Knox, who had once been a bookseller and who had brought the cannon down from Fort Ticonderoga. His words rang out in the cold air. He was urging the men to stay on a few days longer since enlistments were up this last day of 1776.
When he finished, Washington spoke. He told them they had served with great fidelity and that they had a right to be discharged. And then he begged them to stay. He promised them a bounty of ten dollars each from his own private fortune for another six weeks of service. He begged them to look at the position in which they would place the cause of liberty if they left now. All would be for naught, he said, if they did not attempt to check the advance of the foe. He stopped speaking. The silence that followed was terrifying. Somebody coughed. General Washington’s horse moved its head restlessly.
Then one or two of the soldiers, like ragged scarecrows, poised their firelocks to signify their willingness to stay. One after another, the others followed. And if there were tears on General Washington’s face, I could not see for the tears on my own.
“Come on, Lucy, let’s go,” I said.
My dearest:
Please don’t worry about me. I am doing what I want to do and have thus far been successful. I have seen your brother and scribble this note by firelight to tell you he has given permission for our betrothal. He has been more than generous in giving you a dowry, and says he will write the necessary letters for its arrangement to your grandfather Henshaw in Philadelphia as soon as he can. I have been offered a commission in the American army and, at Dan’s urging, have decided to take it. It will be a help in my work if for no other reason than I’ll have decent clothes to wear. What could be warmer this winter than the uniform of an American officer? I rejoice in the victory at Trenton. There will be others. I have had to say goodbye to my friend, Charles Apgar, in Philadelphia since I shan’t need to see him once I accept my commission. I shall write to you. My deepest regrets about your father. I know how he loved you. Remember all I have taught you.
Your obedient servant and loving intended.
John
I could barely see the road ahead for my tears. As usual, I had to decipher much of his meaning, but this wasn’t difficult. He was joining the American army to have the protection of a uniform in case he was picked up on any future missions. That way he would only be taken prisoner and not hung as a spy. He would not be placing ads in the Philadelphia newspaper anymore. He would write directly to me as would any officer in the American army. My heart was so full as Lucy drove the wagon to the Moores’. A commission in the American army! Now, wasn’t that fine! And then there was Daniel, arranging for my dowry before he went off to the next battle. A girl never had a more bittersweet bethrothal, I was sure of it.
“Mama?”
She was sitting in the Moores’ parlor, hemming an apron and humming a little song to herself. Hesitantly, I walked in. The sun splashed in the window onto her lap as her slender hands worked the stitches.
“Hello, Mama, how are you?”
She looked up at me and smiled. But in the blue eyes there was no recognition. There was peace and contentment, such as I had not seen in those eyes for months. But she did not know me.
“Do you like it?” She was embroidering the letter E on the corner of the apron. And I remembered how, in the past few months, she and her Society ladies had made coats for the army and stitched the name of the lady who had sewed the coat, and the town, inside.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
“Dear, you look as if you could use a new apron. The one you have on is rather worn. Doesn’t your mama mind when you go out like that?”
I thought my heart would burst inside me. I looked down at my apron, which I had forgotten to take off when leaving. I felt my head spin and thought I would faint. Dear God, I said to myself, David is somewhere with that army out there. And Daniel is there, preparing for battle. Father is dead, I don’t know when I’ll see John again, and my own mother doesn’t know me.
“My mama doesn’t know I’m out looking like this,” I said, “and I’d love to have a new apron. Would you make me one?”
At five in the afternoon we heard the cannon fire from the Moore house. It continued through dusk but shortly after dark it stopped.
Betsy and I watched from her chamber upstairs. When it got quiet, I looked at her.
“What do you think has happened, Betsy?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t thee say our army was on the high ground?”
“Yes.”
“Well, look, the fires still burn there.”
She was right. She went down to help her mother feed the livestock, for her father hadn’t returned yet. Only then did I realize that she had referred to the Americans as “our army.” I went to sleep that night comforted by the sight of those fires.
In the morning, after breakfast, I convinced Lucy to take me home. When we got back we were told that during the night our army had slipped out of town. The campfires had been decoys to fool the British! Rumors flew around town. Some said the
Americans had wrapped rags around their wagon wheels so the British wouldn’t hear them leave during the night. But no one knew where they went, not even the surgeons working for Washington who came to tend the wounded.
CHAPTER
31
The war left us, finally. I speak of the one with the guns and the shooting, for I discovered that there was terror in our lives that could be equal to war. After the war went, my fears did not leave me.
I had new things to worry about. I wanted to keep the shop open, but I feared I wouldn’t be able to get enough supplies. And if I shut it down, it would be like another death in the family.
There was talk that General Howe was going to blockade the whole coast. The southern colonies were still importing powder, arms, clothing, rum, and sugar from Saint Eustatius and Bermuda. There was talk that if Howe succeeded with his blockade, it would break the American rebellion.
I did not know what to think. Men had flocked to the colors after the victories at Trenton and Princeton, but in the spring of 1777 the British still held New York, Perth Amboy, New Brunswick, and Newark. Our army was in Morristown.
I worried about inflation. Last year, according to Father’s books, flax was seven pence a pound. Now it was fourteen. The price of tobacco had risen, and there was no reason to believe it would stop. Planters were talking of thirty shillings per hundredweight.
Molasses was forty-eight dollars a gallon and coffee twelve dollars a pound. The rising price of cotton was exceeded only by that of pepper and rum, all items that I carried when I could get them. And I could not get salt, even with saltworks right in New Jersey at Egg Harbor. The army needed it to cure its meats. I could not keep cotton in the shop. Small supplies came in to Philadelphia from Port-au-Prince, but the shipments were never big enough to satisfy the demand. And the army got first choice of everything.
In February David wrote to me from Morristown saying he had killed two British soldiers at the Battle of Princeton, which they had fought on January 3. “I’ll get a few more before I’m finished,” he wrote, “to avenge the death of Father.”
Then a letter came from Daniel, also at Morristown, saying he was fine but concerned about David’s need to kill. Now I had something else to worry me—dear brother David, always so anxious to prove himself a man.
John wrote to me in the beginning of February when he got his commission. He was dispatched on a special mission by the American army. He could not tell me where or when I would hear from him again, but if I did not hear, I was not to despair. If he was caught, he would not be hanged, for he was now in uniform. Since officers were often freed on parole—released from confinement and allowed to move about within limits—I would hear from him if he was captured.
This news didn’t make me feel any better, however. I went to see Mama once a week at the Moores’, and that only made me feel worse, for she still didn’t know me.
I did not hear from John for almost two months, but finally in April a letter came from New York City. He had been picked up by British cavalry in Perth Amboy and sent, as a prisoner of war, to New York. He could move about freely but he had to give his word of honor that he would not try to escape. I should not worry. He was fine.
I had turned seventeen in March, and my father was dead and my family scattered. All I had was Lucy and the shop. And then, in early May, Rebeckah came home with a baby. My fears took a new direction and my worries a new shape.
“Hello, Rebeckah.”
She stood in the hall in rustling crimson silk, the sunlight dancing off its silver trim, baggage and baskets surrounding her. I felt shabby and poor in my coarse clothes, with my uncared-for hands. The child in her arms was sleeping.
“How are you, Jem?”
“I’m faring well.”
“Well?” She went straight to the parlor and set the child down on the sofa. “How can you be well? You look frightful. Come here and let me look at you.”
She studied me closely. “No one who looks as you do can be faring well. Child, you look frazzled.”
“I’m not a child anymore, Becky.”
She searched my face for evidence that I was being my old saucy self. “No, you aren’t, are you? I heard of your betrothal to John Reid. Grandfather Henshaw wrote me from Philadelphia. This happened right after Father’s death, I understand. Am I right?”
“And what of it?”
“And Mother gone out of her senses.”
I felt the anger rushing through me at her accusations.“Nothing improper has gone on, Becky. Daniel has given his permission. As head of the family, he’s very happy about it.”
“He would be.” She smiled. “Well, you and John Reid. I can’t picture it.”
“Then don’t.”
She stiffened. “Where is he?”
“He’s in New York, a prisoner of the British. He’s an officer in the Continental army.”
“John Reid?” She laughed. “John Reid is a Tory.”
“He isn’t anymore.”
“So. He changed his politics for you.”
“Not for me, Becky. For himself.”
“Oh dear, everything is so different.” She looked around the parlor. “Father dead and Mother gone daft from the war. Well, the house still looks decent enough, I will say. But where is the cradle? I wrote and told you to have it ready.”
“I received no letter from you, Becky. I didn’t know you were coming, or that you had a child.”
“Oh, I do have a child. This is Oliver Blakely the Second, who is exactly six weeks old. Last June when General Howe returned to Staten Island I left Philadelphia and met Oliver in New York. He was assigned there.”
“He’s so tiny.”
“Yes, and I am so exhausted. The stage ride was ghastly. My maidservant became ill at Elizabethtown. I was counting on Lucy to be here with open arms. And tea. Where is Lucy?”
“She’s in the shop. She works very hard to help me there.”
“So you’re doing it, aren’t you? Daniel wrote Grandfather that he’d given you permission to keep it open. You always did get your own way in this family, Jemima. You’re mad, running the shop. You know that, don’t you?”
“I haven’t had time to consider the question.”
“Why are you doing it? There’s more than enough money to keep you and Mama comfortable. I know how generous Daniel can be.”
“It’s more than money. If I can keep the shop open until David gets back, he can take it over. The customers depend on us. And it’s part of Father, still living.”
“It sounds terribly romantic, but no respectable young woman runs a shop alone. It just isn’t proper.”
“There’s a war on, Becky!”
“Oh, don’t remind me. I am sick to the teeth of this endless, dragging, ridiculous war! I was bounced all over the roads in that stage for nearly a week. New York is ghastly. Have you ever tried living in a garrison town? There is nothing to be had to make life decent. Then Oliver suggested I come home after the baby was born. I made the journey as soon as I was up to it. Where is Lucy?”
“I’ll call her in. She can get the cradle. Do calm down, Becky. We don’t have tea, but Lucy can fix you coffee.”
“Coffee! Oh no, Jemima Emerson, don’t you dare tell me you still don’t have tea in this house.”
“We haven’t had it for years, Becky.”
“Well, I’m home now, and I will have it. Have Lucy bring some in from the shop.”
“We don’t stock it in the shop either.”
She looked exasperated. “I am here, Jemima Emerson. I am home. I have had enough of this insane war. And I will have my tea. You and Lucy can drink your precious coffee until it comes out of your ears. Life is not bearable without tea. Do you understand?”
“Life has not been bearable for a long time, Becky. Not since Father was killed.”
She sighed. “Oh, I still can’t believe it! Father dead. Mother out of her senses. And for what? I ask you. All for tea. Do you realize that’s what started
this whole mess? The stupid tea?”
“It was more than that, Becky.”
“More? More?” She looked as if she were going to kill me for a moment, and I became frightened, the way I used to when she’d put the fear of God into me in the old days. But only for a moment.
I drew myself up straight. “We shouldn’t discuss politics,” I said. “I’ll ask Lucy to get the cradle and put up some coffee.”
CHAPTER
32
“Mama, Becky has a baby now, an adorable little boy.”
I watched her eyes closely, but they were dead. How could that be? How could she not care about her first grandchild?
I had gotten Bleu back from Otter Hall in March and twice a week rode to the Moores’ to see my mother. But it pained me every time I went. I couldn’t stand seeing her as she was, still under her spell of grief. She had always been busy, attending to seven things at once, running the house, managing everything. I needed her so desperately, and she was not there for me.
What right had she to melt away like a candle in front of my eyes? I was just about an orphan now, with Grandfather Emerson and Daniel away. I was growing, I needed new clothes, it was spring and time for a garden. And all I had was Lucy to help me, and she was so overworked, she never even knew what was going on.
If Becky had gone and seen Mother, that might have helped, but Becky wouldn’t go. She was comfortably settled in Mother and Father’s room, and she pleaded headaches every time I suggested she pay Mama a visit.
Headaches from what? From afternoons of visiting with her Tory women friends? She’d been having tea in the parlor with two of them when I’d left. Tea! In our house!
The fragrance of it had nearly driven me wild. She drank it in front of me at the table, too. The first time she did it, how my mouth had watered! My very eyes had teared!
All day long I worked in the shop, which accounted for the fact that Becky and I had not yet come to blows. We didn’t see each other that much. In the evening she insisted on a formal supper. She had an indentured servant girl now to care for her clothes and the baby. The girl was fourteen and terrified of her.