He braced his feet apart and fisted his hands behind his back, rocking comfortably on his heels. "So, Captain Jones, we meet again."
Cad frowned. "I am captain no longer."
"Oh?" Livingston raised one eyebrow. "Lost the post, did you? What a shame."
"I retired. Voluntarily."
"Of course." The captain clucked understandingly. "Such a pity. However, I'm sure your wisdom will be invaluable. Thankfully, I have many years before I have outlived my usefulness."
Cad ground his molars together. "My son is captain now."
"My, so I'll be dealing with another one of you Joneses, then? How fortunate. Amazing how these children of yours keep popping up, isn't it?"
Cad studied the officer carefully. What had he meant by that? Cad had assumed that if his children were going to be arrested for the attack on the British camp, it would have happened by now. This captain was turning out to be entirely unpredictable.
"We are a large family," Cad said cautiously.
"Yes, indeed. Well, which one's, ah, in command now?"
"I am." Adam stepped forward, his huge shoulders squared.
"Of course. I should have known. You're the A one, right? Adam, I believe it is."
"You may address me as Captain Jones."
Livingston nodded in acknowledgment. "As you wish, Captain."
"What are you doing here?" Adam demanded.
"What are we doing here?" Livingston looked offended. "Why, this is my district. Have to keep an eye out, you know."
"With your full company?"
"There is that. Don't suppose you'd believe that I simply felt we needed a drill today, eh?"
"No." Adam crossed his massive arms over his chest.
"Well, then." Livingston gave a deep sigh. "I suppose you've heard we had a... bit of an inconvenience a few weeks ago."
Behind Adam, Henry and Isaac exchanged quick grins.
"I may have heard something about that," Adam allowed.
"I have no intention of letting it go unanswered."
"You're here to arrest someone? Because if you are, I will not permit it without absolute proof." Adam gave him a look that usually caused men to clear out of his way like mice before a predatory screech owl.
But Livingston merely waved his hand carelessly. "No, no. Not at all. I'll not waste my time digging around to find someone who's essentially unimportant."
"What, then?"
"I will not allow illegal munitions to be stockpiled in my district."
"Illegal munitions?" Adam shook his head. "I have no knowledge of such a thing."
"Well, that's certainly a surprise, isn't it. Nevertheless, we will be searching the town."
"We will not permit you to search private property."
"Such a shame. I have instructed my men to be careful, of course. But we will search."
"You will not."
Tapping his fingers against his thigh, Livingston stared at Adam for a moment. "So that's the way it is to be, then?"
"Yes."
The captain gave a slight smile. "Very well." He stepped back and nodded to his sergeant.
"Up!" Sergeant Hitchcock called.
In one motion, every British soldier lifted his musket to his shoulder. The guns gleamed black and malevolent in the bright sunshine, their gaping maws seeming to aim directly at the chests of the colonists.
"Ready!"
"Wait!" Adam shouted as the men behind him scrambled to ready their own weapons. "You cannot mean to fight over searching our homes. It's foolishness."
"It is duty," Livingston said calmly.
"We could all die."
"We all will die, Jones. I'd just as soon it not be today, but that's up to you."
"These are our homes, man!" Adam said desperately. "We have a right to defend our homes!"
"Defense is unnecessary. We simply wish to look around. We are not attacking—yet."
Adam could feel the sweat begin to trickle down his back—and felt the fear and tension of his fellow colonists. He had to decide. He knew his men would fight, well and hard, if called upon. But there had been so little time to prepare, so little time to decide what was right. He wanted time! Time to think, time to talk to the other men, time to know what was right.
There was none.
"All right then. You can try to search, we'll stop you, and God help us all," he said quietly.
He felt a reassuring hand on his shoulder. His father. "Where do you want to search?" Cad asked.
"Does this matter?" Livingston asked.
"Perhaps if you left our homes alone, we could allow you to search... someplace. One place," Cad said slowly.
The colonists began to breathe again. There might be a chance after all.
"This is possible." Livingston nodded thoughtfully. "If I may choose freely, I might be satisfied."
Cad exchanged a quick glance with his son. "Choose," he ordered.
"All right." Very deliberately, Livingston turned in a circle, appearing to study the buildings that perched around the perimeter of the common.
Although the muskets aimed at their chests rendered it impossible to relax completely, the militia allowed themselves small smiles. There was no possibility Livingston would pick the correct place.
"The church."
The colonists' smiles vanished abruptly. How could he know? They had spend two full days just after Christmas transferring the stockpile from the school, where it had been for months, to the church, because Cad had claimed that the British might know about the cache. And here the redcoats were homing in on the supposedly safe, sacred hiding place.
"You can't!" Henry burst out, rushing to stand beside Adam. "You cannot defile the church!"
"Easy, Henry," Adam said soothingly.
"But they can't!"
"Well?" Captain Livingston cocked his head. "Shall we go? Or do you prefer to fight it out, after all?"
"They can't," Henry protested again.
Cadwallader stepped forward.
"Let them search."
***
The entire company of British soldiers, along with an equal number of colonists permitted to "keep an eye on them," barely fit into the First Congregational Church of New Wexford. The troops swarmed through the place, their red coats bright and almost cheerful against the mellow wood and whitewashed walls.
It was a simple church, small, snug, and properly respectful. The single stained glass window was the town's pride and joy. Sunlight streamed through the colored panes, casting brilliant blue, green, and red streaks across the burnished floor.
It was a good place to worship. A good place to follow God.
And now it was blasphemed by the presence of men and guns and hatred.
Cad whispered a silent prayer of thanks that his father-in-law was no longer alive to see what had invaded his church.
They were efficient, he'd give them that. The soldiers swarmed throughout the old church like ants on a drop of honey, poking under benches and behind the lectern, climbing up to check the bell tower. They were quiet, perhaps subdued by the setting, and not at ail destructive, as Cad had expected searching soldiers to be. Instead, they were businesslike, restrained, and frighteningly determined.
It didn't take long. There weren't that many places to check.
"Cap'n?" A young soldier knelt on the floor, running his fingers along the edges of the floorboards.
"Yes?" Livingston and the sergeant strode over quickly.
"I've found something."
Livingston's triumphant gaze found Cad. "Let's get it up, then."
Sergeant Hitchcock rounded up tools and set three men to work. Within seconds they had pried up one of the boards.
"Cap'n, it's hollow under here. A large space, too, far as I can tell. Can't see the bottom."
"What's in there? Let's go men, get it up." Captain Livingston peered into the dark hole that was rapidly being torn in the smooth polished floor of the church. A beam of sunlight spilled through a high
window, shining directly into the black cavern like a ray from heaven lighting a follower's grave.
Hitchcock sat back on his heels. "It's empty, Cap'n."
"What?" Dropping to his knees, Livingston stuck his head down into the hole, nearly losing his wig in the process. "It can't be empty."
"It is."
The captain clapped a hand on his head to hold his wig in place and squatted back on his heels. "Empty," he repeated in disbelief.
Adam whistled as he strolled over to the stunned men. He poked at the pile of boards with his toe. "Finished here, gentleman? I'd like to get this place back in shape before the Sunday meeting."
***
Empty. The traitor still couldn't believe it. He'd had an opportunity to get rid of so many guns, so much ammunition—and it had failed.
His careful self-control had nearly given way when the floorboards of the church had been pried up and there'd been nothing—nothing—but dust and a couple of dead mice in the secret hold.
It had taken some careful work to get the information about the movement of the ammunition from the schoolhouse to the church to the proper people. Time had been short, and he'd had to take more risks than he cared to. But it would have been worth it, to take away so much potential death.
And then to find that Cad and Adam had spent every night the last week moving every ball and bit of powder to another location. They had done it all themselves, just the two of them. Adam had admitted it to the meeting of very relieved and startled men that had quickly gathered at the Dancing Eel after the British had marched back out of town.
But they wouldn't disclose why they had felt it necessary to shift the stores, nor had they been willing to disclose where the ammunition was stockpiled now.
They'd come into some disagreement over that one. The traitor had tried to argue that it was necessary for everyone to know the location. Otherwise, how were they to get to it when it was needed? Also, it was dangerous to have but two people who knew where it was; if something happened to those two, how would the others find it?
But he'd been overruled. The fact that the British had homed in on the church proved once and for all that they'd known too much, too quickly, to risk making the location widely known.
The colonists were worried. It made them nervous, and it made them careful.
His task had just gotten a great deal more difficult.
***
The colonies waited.
Four thousand British soldiers were stationed in Boston, straining the town of sixteen thousand at its seams. The soldiers drank and danced, drilled and patrolled, and waited.
Throughout New England, handpicked members of the militia were organized into companies of fifty that were charged with being ready at a moment's notice. Old men and young boys were formed into alarm companies to defend their towns if the militia were elsewhere. They drank and farmed, kissed their women, drilled, and waited.
The Provincial Congress met illegally at Concord. They argued and wrote papers and waited.
In New Wexford, Bennie waited too. She waited for her life to become safe and comfortable again. She waited for her brothers to stop keeping their muskets oiled and close at hand, and for them to stop jumping every time a horse and rider clattered through town. Waited for her father to stop shaking his head and mumbling under his breath, for Henry to stop practicing shooting every day and Isaac to stop trying to badger their mother into letting him join the militia.
And she waited for Jon. Waited for those rare days he came to sit in the stables and listen to her play, those days where politics and war and freedom talk were very far away. Those days there was only the music and a handsome man who sat quietly and listened, and then smiled at her like she was a miracle sent just for him. Waited—in vain—for him to touch her again, and herself to stop wanting him to. For although he was simple, he was pure and good and strong—and he smiled at her like no one ever had.
The colonies waited.
Spring was nearly here.
And the storm was coming.
***
***
"Da!" Henry tumbled into the taproom. "They're marching!"
Cad, swabbing the floor after the last customer had—finally—gone home, glanced over his shoulder. "What?"
"The British! A messenger just came into town. They're marching on Concord."
The mop clattered to the floor. Trickles of dirty water spilled across the clean boards.
"Let's go."
***
Fog drifted through the common. The mist was insubstantial, quavering, a gray scarcely lighter than the bleak sky. Men hunched their shoulders against the April chill and murmured together in voices that were subdued, seemingly muted by the absorbing fog.
It was nearly dawn.
Women were there, too; women who buttoned their men's coats securely, ran their hands over beloved faces, and handed out sacks of food and pouches of musket balls. Women saying good-bye to their men.
"Cadwallader," Mary Jones said, her voice quiet and stern. "You're too old to go gallivanting around the country."
She smoothed his plain gray coat over his chest. He lifted her hand and enfolded it in his.
"Mary, my Mary. You know it's important for all the colonists to support each other. We have no other strength but our unity."
"There are others. Why must you go?"
"It will take all of us, Mary. You know that."
"Yes." She tilted back her neat dark head to look into the face of her husband towering over her. "But you mustn't let Isaac go, Cad. He's too young."
"Ma!" Isaac protested, clutching his musket.
"Hush, Isaac." Cad smiled gently down at his wife. The intensely tender expression on his face was one that any person who had never seen him with Mary would have sworn that grizzled face could never wear. "It's not a battle, Mary. We are simply showing support. We will help out where—and if—we can."
"But Cad—"
"We'll be back in a day or two. Three at most. I will keep him safe for you, Mary."
She closed her eyes and leaned against her husband. "Keep them all safe, Cad. All of them."
Bennie stood in the midst of her family and wondered why they all seemed so far away. The blotting presence of the fog blurred details and muffled sounds. It was as if her brothers and father were there but she couldn't quite grasp the whole of their forms, their voices.
The damp cold soaked through her clothes and cape in no time, chilling her flesh to the bone. Her stomach was clenched and empty, every muscle in her body tight, screaming to do something, fix something, do anything.
But there was nothing she could do. She could only stand, shivering and praying, in the bleak predawn, and let them go.
CHAPTER 14
Bennie rubbed hard at the stubborn spot on the side of the simple pewter tankard, then swished it through a tub of warm water and inspected it again. The splotch was still there. Resolutely, she scraped at it with her thumbnail. If all she could do was make sure the Dancing Eel was kept the way her father expected it to be, she would do it.
Her father and brothers had been gone nearly two days. In town there'd been spotty reports of firing near Lexington, but little else. Her mother had spent the time drifting about, pale and composed, cooking abundant meals that were far too large for just the two of them. Bennie's sisters-in-law also wandered through, tense and uncertain, but they seemed somehow comforted just by being in the Jones' house.
Bennie had simply shouldered all her father's work, as well as George, Henry, and Isaac's. There were horses to be taken care of, supplies to be counted, and a tavern to be kept open. If it left her little time to sleep, what did it matter? Sleep was a solace that would have been all but denied her anyway, for she could only fall asleep when she was so exhausted her mind was too weary to worry about what might be happening on the road from Boston to Concord.
The only work she couldn't manage was Brendan's. Neither she—nor anyone else in New Wexford—had ever
learned the printer's trade, so she'd had to go ahead and close up his shop. She avoided passing it whenever possible, for the sign reading Closed, neatly lettered in Brendan's precise hand, was a too visible reminder of a world spun out of her control.
"You shouldn't frown so, my Bennie. 'Tis only a cup. I wouldn't want you to wrinkle your lovely face over it."
Her hands stilled and she looked up at the bulky form filling the door.
"Da!" The tankard plopped into the basin, sending up a small geyser of dingy water, and Bennie hurled herself at her father's chest. "Da! You're safe! We heard rumors of fighting, but no one knew anything for certain."
"I'm fine." She felt his arms, sure and strong as always, close around her, and she sagged against him.
"Bennie, let me sit down. I'm feeling my age a bit more than usual."
"Sorry." She ushered him to the nearest bench. He sank onto it gratefully.
Cad's hair hung in wild, bedraggled silver tangles around his face. His clothes were dirty, rumpled, and torn, and one of his socks was missing. Bennie had never thought of her father as an old man; he'd always seemed too vital, too unconquerable, to be old. But now the creases in his weathered face seemed deeper; his shoulders drooped.
And she was, suddenly, very, very afraid.
"Da?" she asked tentatively. "Should I go get Mother? We should let her know you are back."
He shook his head. "I just came from the house, Bennie. She knows I'm home. Isaac's there too."
"And the rest of the boys?"
He looked up at her, his hazel eyes dulled with weariness. "They're fine, Bennie. You needn't worry about them." He sighed deeply. "But they're not coming home. At least not yet."
She groped behind her for the back of a chair and managed to find her way to the seat.
"Where are they?"
"Cambridge. At least, they're on their way there."
"What happened, Da?"
Leaning forward, Cad braced his elbows on his knees. "It started at Lexington. Bennie. It was over by the time we got there, so I don't really know how it all began." He looked down at his hands, curled into the massive fists that had served him so well all his life. "They killed ten minutemen."
"No," she gasped, and wrapped her arms around her middle.
"We made them sorry." He pounded one fist into his palm. "We stuck together, Ben! There were colonists all over. I don't even know where they all came from, lining the road from Concord all the way back to Boston. Behind fences, up in trees, hanging out of windows. Those damn redcoats were fired on every step of the return march."
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