by Ann Rinaldi
She asked after his favorite sister, Jane Mecom, and told him about how I was living with them now. Please come home soon, she begged.
I put the page back on the desk. Aunt Catharine was coming into the house. I quickly went to greet her at the door. "Was he a Tory?" I asked.
"Yes, and the worst of them. The king's shilling, indeed. What does the man think we use now? Gold doubloons?" She gathered up her skirts and sat herself down again in her chair by the desk. "I must finish this letter. Do you think you could post it for me, darling? I do want to get it in the mail today."
I said yes, I could.
***
JUST AROUND the corner from our house, on my way to posting the letter, I saw him standing there in the middle of the street under the arching trees, looking at me.
"Ah, the little miss who belongs in the big white house. What is your name, little miss?"
"Are you the Tory who's been yelling at us all day?"
"I wouldn't call it yelling, child. I would call it trying to enlighten some poor souls who have lost their way in the middle of all the claptrap that's been circulating around the colonies of late. I would save you from yourselves. Why do you go against your king?"
"I think you should get off our street."
"This is, by rights, the king's highway."
"Well, I don't see him anywhere about, do you?"
"Ah, a feisty little piece, is it? We could use you on our side. What do you say?"
"I didn't know there were sides."
"Come, now. Isn't your uncle the popular Whig known as Greene?"
"He's my uncle Greene, that's all I know."
"And he attracts the Whigs round and about to his abode. To discuss dissension."
"Could you please let me by? I have to post this letter and get home. It'll soon be suppertime."
His eyes had been on the letter in my hand. "You are feisty, aren't you?" He was speaking softly now and in a hypnotizing tone. "Aren't you afraid I'll report you to someone important?" All the while he was reaching his hands out. With one, he took my wrist. With the other, he wrested the letter from my hand. "Important correspondence to a Boston Whig, perhaps? Shouldn't it be stamped and taxed by the Crown?"
I tried to resist him, but it was too late. He had the letter. And in no time he had it opened.
"Give that back to me!" I demanded. "It's my Aunt Catharine's private correspondence!"
But he held it above my head, and me at bay while he read it. "Ah, so I see. She corresponds with the most notorious Whig of all. Benjamin Franklin. 'And when are you coming home?' she asks. 'You must come and have dinner with us.' Good to know, little miss. Now we'll really have to keep an eye on your house."
I was crying out of agitation by now. Hating myself. I couldn't even post a letter without failing.
"Don't cry," he told me. "Here, I'll restore the envelope for you." And out of his haversack he took some magical things and resealed the letter so no one would know it had been played with.
He gave it back to me with a mock bow. "Go on your way, with God," he said in a most polite manner.
All kinds of wonderful words wanted to run off my tongue, words I'd learned from my cousin Sammy Ward, but I could only nod and run, terrified by what had just happened.
I had been accosted by a Tory! He had taken a letter of Aunt Catharine's from me and read it, and now he knew Benjamin Franklin was coming!
I ran all the way to post it and all the way home again. When I got there Aunt Catharine knew something was wrong, but I would not tell her. I could not tell her. I just said I'd been chased by a wild dog.
CHAPTER FIVE
IN JULY, Benjamin Franklin did come to dinner.
He and his nineteen-year-old daughter, Sarah, drew up in a chaise in front of the house. In back of the chaise a saddle horse was tethered.
Aunt Catharine ran out to meet them. She hugged Sarah and then, after Mr. Franklin gingerly allowed himself to be helped down by his daughter and Uncle Greene, she embraced Mr. Franklin, too.
"Easy, my dear." he advised, even as he returned her embrace. "Easy. I suffered a fall on leaving Mecom relatives in New York. I bruised my chest."
"Oh, my dear." Aunt Catharine drew away, but placed a hand on his coat front, tenderly. "The poor chest." Then she kissed the side of his face.
I was embarrassed for her. How could she act so? I looked quickly at Uncle Greene, but he was only smiling.
"And did you not yet invent something to heal it?" Aunt Catharine asked coyly.
We brought him into the house, into the parlor, where Aunt Catharine immediately brought coffee for him and Uncle Greene. She hovered over Mr. Franklin while he and Uncle Greene launched into a lively discourse about the Stamp Act, which Mr. Franklin said would be repealed soon. "Until they come up with something else," he added.
What I was taken with most was the flirtatious manner that Aunt Catharine used toward him. And so openly! How can this be? I asked myself. Uncle Greene is a good-looking and respected and prominent man. How can she flirt so openly with Benjamin Franklin, in face of all the gossip that has swirled around about them?
In face of the fact that she herself had never cleared up the matter of the affair which she still thought lived between her and her husband?
The Franklins stayed for a week. In that time, I twice came upon Aunt Catharine and Mr. Franklin alone in the parlor. Once they were sitting together on the settle, heads bent over some papers they had in hand, giggling about something.
Another time Mr. Franklin was seated in a chair and near to dozing and Aunt Catharine came up behind him to wrap a throw around his shoulders in the most tender manner.
He came sharp to attention to look up at her. She smiled lovingly down at him, put her head down near his so their cheeks touched, then their lips brushed and, for a brief second, lingered.
I gasped. Both looked up to see me.
And then, from her position behind him, Aunt Catharine gave me a wink and a small smile. And I recollected her words to me: Women always have a right to flirt. If it is kept a harmless pastime. Done properly, it gives us power.
I ran from the room, my feelings swirling in my head. I admired Aunt Catharine on so many counts. I wanted to be like her in so many ways. But in that place inside you where you know things are wrong but you don't know yet why, and you don't want them to be wrong, I knew that someday I would find that she was lying.
***
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S daughter, Sarah, was a student of the harpsichord, and during their stay she played it constantly. Uncle Greene went to Providence almost every day, and on two days he took the esteemed Mr. Franklin with him, thank heaven. Or Lord knows what might have transpired in our house. Twice Aunt Catharine took me and Sarah on visits to friends.
It soon became plain to me that Sarah adored her father, who often put his arm around her and told her how wonderful her harpsichord playing was. My heart ached for my own father, now happily married to Rebecca Ainslie, who was expecting their first child. Pa was building another family now.
In that week I became morose. My spirits fell low. I scarce spoke at the table.
Of course, Aunt Catharine took notice right off, she who was training me to be a social butterfly. "Caty, what's wrong, child? You're not eating."
It was not the evening to be unsociable. We had other guests, too, some of Uncle Greene's Whig friends.
I looked up at her. I did not answer.
"Caty?" she asked again.
This time I answered. "I miss my pa," I said.
She sighed. "Caty, this is not the way I expect you to behave when we have guests. If you can't behave, you must apologize and go to your room. Now."
One of the Whig friends, a young man named Nathanael Greene, had frequently been a visitor at Uncle Greene's house. I'd never paid mind to him. He was some distant kin to Uncle Greene and had usually been morose in his own right.
My cousin Sammy had told me Nathanael had been totally smitten with
Sammy's older sister Nancy, and that she had grown tired of him and severed the romance and broken Nathanael's heart.
I had never known anyone with a broken heart before. I did not know how to speak to anyone with a broken heart. So I had studiously avoided Nathanael Greene, except to notice that he limped. Did that come from a broken heart as well?
Now he spoke up for me.
"I know what it means to miss one's pa," he said, in a rich, mellow voice. "I live with my pa. And I miss him."
What a curious thing to say! Our eyes met across the table.
He had clear, quiet eyes. He was a large man—I had noticed that—at least six feet. He had a firm, no-nonsense face, a mature face. He must have been at least ten years older than I, but there was, somehow, a twinkle in his eye when he looked at me, as if to say "I know all about pas—don't you worry."
Only what he did say to Aunt Catharine, without looking at her, but still looking at me with that twinkle in his eyes, was "Don't make her go to her room, please. She's going to eat. And if she isn't making conversation, well, I'm sure it's because she hasn't got anything to contribute to this tired talk about politics. Isn't that so, Caty?"
I blushed. Just because of the way he was looking at me. No man had ever looked at me that way before. "Yes, sir," I said, "that's so."
"Don't call me 'sir,' please. It makes me feel old. Call me Nathanael. And Mrs. Greene"—he nodded at Aunt Catharine—"Mr. Greene"—he bowed his head at Uncle Greene—"much as I'd hate to miss the lively discussion I know is to follow this scrumptious dinner, I would be delighted if you'd both give me permission to take a walk in the garden later with Caty. I can't help but notice how she's grown up over the time that I've been coming here. I promise to be nothing less than honorable."
***
HE WAS, in reality, twelve years older than I. And when we sat down on the bench in Aunt Catharine's garden, he fair made me shiver and shake and aware that I was a woman and he was a man.
It was the first time in my life I had ever felt this quickening.
He sat close to me though he could have left space between us. I was well aware of the closeness, but he never touched me, not even my hand. His mere presence was sufficient to put me in a state of terror. To think that this man, this handsome man, wanted to take time to pay mind to me.
We talked. He left no spaces, no silences.
He was the son of a Quaker preacher. His mother had died when he was eleven. He was curiosity driven. He loved reading—Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society, not to mention Roman history—but he did not lord it over me.
"Why, until a certain age, my only education was the Bible," he said. "I had to beg my pa for a tutor."
"And do you spend most of your time at books, then?" I asked.
"I wrestle iron into anchors. I stoke furnaces. I plow fields. And now, with the help of some of my brothers, I'm building myself a house in Coventry. But I still live in the family home in Potowomut. And I've often seen you, Caty, when you ride your horse by my house."
I stared at him. "You saw me? Did you know who I was?"
"Of course. I'd been here in this house to your uncle's meetings many times, though you'd never spoken to me. I thought you didn't like me. Or thought me a pipe-smoking old man who cared nothing about anything but politics."
"You're not an old man. And no, it wasn't that."
"What was it, then? Why did you never so much as give me a glance?"
So he'd noticed! And he'd cared! And here I'd thought all along that he hadn't even known I'd existed. I felt my face flush, knowing I had to say some words, make some sense, or come off like a complete idiot.
"I heard from my cousin Sammy Ward that you had a broken heart. I was afraid to talk to you."
His face went sad of a sudden, but just for a moment. "His sister Nancy. I'm over that now."
"Since when?"
"Since tonight, when I got to know you."
I gulped. What did one say to that? I wished Sarah were here. She'd know. But I found then that I knew, too.
"But you are so much older," I protested. "Why would you even be interested in me?"
"I warn you, Caty, I am. And tonight I intend to ask your uncle if I may begin to come round and see you on a regular basis. We both have time to get to know each other. I can wait. Are you agreeable to that?"
I said I was. Then he said he thought we ought to go back into the house. He must keep his word to my aunt and uncle. For, after all, he had promised to be nothing less than honorable. Could I abide with that, he wanted to know?
I told him yes, I could. He took my arm and guided me back into the house. And his touch thrilled me, even though it was honorable.
CHAPTER SIX
NEVER DID the word honorable translate into so much fun for me, and pain, as over the next few years of courtship.
It had taken me a while to get accustomed to the fact that the handsome young man who came a-knocking at Uncle Greene's front door was knocking for me.
Of course, he still came for Whig meetings and I would wait in the parlor, distractedly doing needlework while the meetings went on, praying for them to be over, while Aunt Catharine scolded that I should not appear so anxious.
"Be a little less interested," she would whisper. "Go upstairs to your room. Let him wait for you!"
"Wait for me?" Is she daft? "Why should I act disinterested? Don't you remember how it was when you and Uncle Greene were courting? How the minute your eyes met across a room you were together? Couldn't you feel each other's hands? And faces, side by side?"
"And what would you know of faces, side by side?" she would ask. "I hope he is behaving with you. I hope you are behaving as you are supposed to be."
I would sit there and think of Nathanael's broad shoulders when he took his jacket off, of his strong hands, of the way his face felt when he needed a shave. I would close my eyes and thank God for having made men the way he made them because He, God, had been so clever about it. The way He'd know what we women would want and need.
***
ONE DAY, Nathanael and I had ridden over to the house he was building in Coventry. It overlooked the Pawtuxet River. Along the river a family was picnicking. Of a sudden we heard a scream from the mother. A little boy had ventured to the edge of the water, fallen in, and was being carried downstream.
In a second Nathanael was off his horse, had torn off his boots and coat, dived in, and brought the boy out. I sat my horse, mesmerized by the sight of him so strong and dripping wet as he handed the boy back to his parents and lingered to make sure the child was all right.
My Nathanael had dove into the river without a thought of his own safety at all! I was besotted with him, and the word honorable became more difficult by the day as our courtship went on.
But if it was difficult for me, what was it for Nathanael?
I saw the difficulty for him, as in winter he visited our cozy parlor regularly, as he took me to dances, concerts, fish fries, skating parties. Summertime we went picnicking, sailing, and riding—and more dancing. He was inordinately fond of dancing because when he was young, his Quaker father had never allowed him to dance.
"Once I got beaten because my father was told that I was just watching a dance," he told me. So he constantly ran away from home to dance. And was often beaten for it.
But much of the time in our courtship, we gathered in Uncle Greene's house with other Whigs and spoke of the rising rebellion, and many terrible things that happened after the Stamp Act was repealed, like the Boston Massacre in 1770.
By this time, when we said good night, he kissed me, held me close, murmured my name, over and over, then pulled away abruptly. "God," he would say. "God." And I knew it was not an oath, that it was a prayer, as he would turn on his heel and walk away.
It was in that year of 1770 that Nathanael's Quaker minister father died. And upon his death I learned he was not only a minister but a shrewd businessman
who owned not only many forges and mills in the area but a merchant ship that was engaged in the Caribbean trade.
The slave trade, Nathanael explained to me.
Of course all of the fruits of his father's industry now went to Nathanael and his seven brothers.
"The merchant ship is called the Fortune," he told me, "and we've got to get out of that business soon. But it isn't so easy getting out, once you partake of it. Right now the Fortune is carrying fourteen hundred gallons of rum, a hogshead of brown sugar, and forty gallons of Jamaican spirits."
"Who captains the Fortune ?" I asked.
"Our young cousin Rufus Greene."
"There are Greenes all around me," I accused.
"Yes, dear, and they are all watching how I treat you."
We did not discuss marriage, though the word hung in the air between us, constantly. For, though we were courting, most of the time I did not have him to myself.
It wasn't long before I decided that if I wanted Nathanael Greene at all, I would have to share him with his books, his work, and his politics.
He always had a book in his hand. Heavy reading, I decided, too heavy for me. He read Frederick the Great's Instructions to His Generals, for instance. And An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, by Robert Barclay.
Right after his father died, Nathanael moved into his own house in Coventry. With permission from Aunt Catharine and Uncle Greene, I helped him move. I assisted with the lighter household things—curtains and pots and dishes—although his brother Jacob's wife, Peggy, was really in charge.
The house, called Spell Hall, was on a small hill overlooking the Pawtuxet River. The first and second floors had four rooms each, with hallways in the center. The third floor was a garret.
In back, overlooking the river, on the first floor, Nathanael had his library. He had at least three hundred books lining the walls.
I could fancy a rainy afternoon with a fire crackling in the hearth, a tray of tea sitting on a low table, and Nathanael sitting at his desk, while I, in that comfortable chair over there, sat reading. What a wonderful way it would be to start a marriage!