The Family Greene

by Ann Rinaldi

  "That's it, Nathanael ... Did they make me look stupid? I didn't know what to say when they asked me if I knew the Lord."

  "Say no, that you haven't been around as long as they have, but that the Lord knows you. Come, smooth your hair. We mustn't keep Washington waiting."

  ***

  GUARDS STEPPED aside so we could go in to His Excellency's office.

  He was a presence. What more can be said of him? General Washington rose from the chair behind his desk in the paneled, book-lined, and map-filled office, and his height was greater than that of any man I'd ever met. His uniform, also, was impressive. Only a few scars from a past case of smallpox marked his face.

  As Nathanael introduced me, the general took my hand and kissed it. Then, noting the spread of my dress in front, he congratulated us and asked when the baby was due.

  We both answered at once. "Late December."

  "Will you go home for the birth or have it here, where we have doctors and you are surrounded by an army for protection?"

  We said we didn't know yet.

  "My wife has had children," he said. "She comes in early December. When she does, stay close to her. She can advise you."

  Then he looked at Nathanael, smiling. "How did you get on with your Quaker friends? Did they invite you back to Meeting?" He was enjoying the joke.

  "You set them on me this night," Nathanael accused, "but no, they did not invite me back to Meeting. Only said they would pray for me. Apparently they thought I needed it. But I had their respect. I was in charge of myself."

  "You are always in charge of yourself, my boy, which is why you were put in charge of the army of Rhode Island. I would say the General Assembly of Rhode Island made an excellent choice."

  Nathanael blushed. "General, may I have your permission to name our babe George Washington Greene if it is a boy?" he asked.

  Washington put his arm around Nathanael's shoulder and walked us out of the room. "You may, and I am honored," he said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I BECAME a dear friend of Lady Washington's when she came to camp in December, and, in a short time, I became a belle of the camp. We dined frequently at the John Vassal house, where the Washingtons made their home.

  There were other guests, of course. The Horatio Gateses, the Thomas Mifflins, he still a Quaker, and most important, General Israel Putnam, near sixty now and a hero of Bunker Hill, and with a scar on his face that bespoke his Indian-fighting days. I begged tales of his escapades from him, and although others had heard them before, they were still intent on listening.

  All through this I'd minded General Washington, of course, when he didn't know I was watching him. He'd lean back in his chair and his eyes would sparkle and his face would settle into a small smile as if he himself were remembering his days in the French and Indian War. And he'd sip his wine or his coffee and crack nuts and enjoy himself.

  Nathanael and I were invited to every party, every dance. Word got around that I was a "joyous and frolicsome creature," and some of the young aides became downright smitten with me.

  "Do you mind," I asked Nathanael, "that people speak of me this way?"

  "When I mind, I'll tell you, love. How can anyone mind you, all of nine months with child, joking and smiling and cheering up the homesick men and making them joke and smile. You are the promise of a glorious future to them. You are what they will be fighting for."

  And he kissed me.

  "Where will I be having the baby?" I asked.

  "That is up to you, my girl. Do you want to go home?"

  "To what? Your sour-faced sister-in-law? I have friends here in the officers' wives. Might I stay and have the baby here, Nathanael?"

  Again he kissed me. "It might be nice someday to tell the young man that he was born in Washington's encampment in Cambridge, while the British guns fired away in Boston."

  Just then a shell from a thirteen-inch gun exploded and the very windows rattled. It was, at first, unnerving. And then, on second thought, it was as if God himself had given an answer to my question.

  ***

  OUR BABY BOY, George Washington Greene, was born in the camp at Cambridge in late December. On the first day of January in 1776, I was up and about for a special event, the unfurling of a new flag of the American union at Cambridge.

  Everyone gathered on the parade ground to see thirteen red and white stripes snapping in the wind, with united crosses of St. George and St. Thomas on a dark blue canton. Certainly it could be seen by the British garrisons in Boston and Charlestown as our cannon roared.

  In early February, Nathanael was brought low by a sickness the camp doctors named as jaundice.

  "I'm as yellow as saffron," he told me from his bed. "I am so weak, I can scarce walk across the room. I am grievously mortified by my confinement, as this is the critical period of the war. Should Boston fall, I intend to be there if I am able to sit on horseback."

  "They will have to do without you for now, love," I told him.

  But he recovered rapidly, in time to renew his friendship with Colonel Henry Knox, who had just arrived at camp.

  Knox was a hero. And we had a party for him. He was the man who'd once been the bookseller in Boston whose shop Nathanael would frequently tarry at to talk of military tactics and, of course, politics.

  In a feat of bravado that had people enraptured, Knox had gone on a three-hundred-mile wintertime trip to the captured forts of Crown Point and Ticonderoga, New York. He and his men had traveled over frozen lakes, the Berkshire Mountains, and impossibly high snows to bring back for the American army more than fifty cannon, mortars, and howitzers, and supplies of shells and powder.

  Doing all this in late January had been a monumental task and had made it possible for Washington to fortify Dorchester Heights, surrounding British-occupied Boston. Now Washington's guns towered over Boston, bombarding it. The British would either have to be killed or get out.

  At the party, I studied the Knoxes. Henry had recently wed.

  He was portly. No, he was downright fat.

  And she was as fat as he was. But there was something so sad about her that I immediately felt sorry, and I wound my way through the crowd until I found myself next to her, to start up a conversation.

  "Aren't you proud of your husband?" I asked. "He's a hero."

  Over a plate piled with food, she looked at me with lovely blue eyes filled, but not overflowing, with tears. How can she keep the tears from falling? I wondered. How does she do that? Oh, if only I could learn to do that!

  "Yes, I'm proud," she said. "But my mother and father are inside the city of Boston, which is even now being bombarded by the guns that my husband brought back for Washington."

  For a moment her words made no sense to me. And I had none of my own to respond to them. Only a question, which I knew was intrusive.

  "Why are your parents inside the city?"

  "Because they are Tories," she answered straightforwardly. "My father is royal secretary to the province of Massachusetts. He never gave his approval to my courtship with Henry, because Henry was a patriot. When we wed, my father disowned me."

  "Oh." I minded my own pa and how he'd blessed my union with Nathanael. And I thought, Why is there always some sorrow attached to the joy and the pride that is given to us?

  Later, when the British evacuated Boston, Lucy Knox told me that her parents had gotten out safely, and she thanked me for my friendship that first night, and for my concern. I had been such a comfort to her, she said.

  I had not realized I had been a comfort. What had I done? All I had done was speak to her, listen to her.

  I was to remain friends with Lucy Knox most of my life, and as I did not know I helped her, she did not know she helped me that evening.

  I learned that once I started speaking to her I never minded at all that she was so fat. I learned that sometimes all you have to do to be a comfort to someone is to speak to them in their moment of anguish, to listen to them.

  I learne
d to control my tears. Anyone, after all, can have tears come to their eyes, but not everyone can keep them from falling over.

  It took me a few years, but I learned how to do it. And I am ever grateful to Lucy Knox for showing me the way.

  PART TWO

  Cornelia

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Nathanael Greene's Plantation, 1786 Mulberry Grove Fourteen miles north of Savannah, Georgia

  "CORNELIA? CORNELIA Greene, if you don't come out of hiding this minute and make me stop chasing you like a fool, I'll fetch your father. You hear me?"

  Mama was running after me, chasing me. I knew it was not good for her to run seven months into her time, but I also knew that if she caught me, I'd get swatted good and proper. Mama swatted. Pa didn't. And I'd skipped class again this morning. I deserved a swatting.

  I hid behind the dry sink in the kitchen. Only my older sister, Martha, who was nine, saw me go behind the dry sink. Would she tell where I was? Likely she would. She was a water snake, Martha was. She never let me forget she was named after Martha Washington, as if a hundred other girls weren't. She was always besting me for Pa's attention and love. She'd even lie to get it. I was always in trouble because I wouldn't lie.

  Pa hated liars like he hated "little dirty politicians."

  "She's behind the dry sink, Mama!" Martha yelled.

  Mama ran into the kitchen after me, then of a sudden there came a thump and a distressed cry. "Oh!"

  It was not good. Peeking out from behind the sink, I saw that she fell.

  Martha was beside her at once.

  I got up from my hiding place and went to her. "Here I am, Mama. Are you all right?"

  "How can she be all right?" Martha snapped. "Can't you see? She's bleeding!"

  I saw. Blood was seeping out of her, dark and evil, through her dress and onto the floor. She was biting her lip. I knew we couldn't get her up.

  "We need help," Martha said. "The servants are never around when you need them. Not even Eulinda." She sounded just like Pa.

  But she was right. Old Eulinda, the only paid black servant on the place, who'd been with Mama since the beginning of the war at Cambridge and was usually always at her side, was nowhere to be seen this morning.

  "Go and get Pa," Martha said. "I saw him headed toward the coach house."

  I ran. Out the back door, down the brick path, past the kitchen garden, and through the yard. Pa was in the coach house, overseeing the brushing of his horse, Tommy.

  He looked up as I came in. "Good morning, Cornelia. Where have you been? Mr. Miller said you were not in class this morning."

  "Pa, Mama is hurt. She tripped in the kitchen. She's on the floor and she needs you."

  The look in his eyes told me he was in the kitchen with Mama already. He brushed right past me and, with long, purposeful strides, walked to the back of the house, giving orders, for there were servants everywhere of a sudden.

  "Charles, fetch Dr. Kinney quickly—my wife has trouble. Alice, bring some warm dry blankets to the kitchen and get two other women."

  Before going in, he stopped and looked at me. "Where's Eulinda?"

  "Don't know, Pa. She's not around."

  "How did your mother fall?"

  There was no lying to Pa. He'd been a general in the war. An assistant to General Washington. "She was chasing me." I suddenly found the hem of my dress very interesting.

  His breath came in spurts. "We'll talk, then."

  "Yes, sir," I said.

  He went inside. I followed. Martha was still kneeling over Mama, comforting her.

  Mama, white-faced, with dark circles under her eyes, reached out her arms to Pa. "Oh, Nathanael, I'm sorry," she said.

  Pa knelt next to her. "The doctor is on his way," he told her.

  But it was what Martha said that affected us most.

  "It's Cornelia's fault," she told him. "She was running away from Mama and she wouldn't stop when Mama said to stop. She made Mama run after her."

  Pa went right on talking to Mama, and for a moment I didn't think he paid mind to Martha at all. I thought he scarce heard her.

  But, as it turned out, he did. Pa's experience as a general had taught him to take account of everything at once, to listen to what six people were saying at the same time while the guns were booming. And there weren't any guns booming at the time in our kitchen.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  PA PICKED Mama up, wrapping her in blankets that Alice had fetched, and brought her upstairs to their room.

  "Go to your rooms and stay there," he ordered me and Martha.

  Martha did but I didn't. I set to helping Alice and Polly and Janice clean up. Because it was my fault what had happened. When they wiped the blood up from the floor, I made some tea for Mama, and when the front door knocker sounded, I took off my apron and answered it and walked Dr. Kinney upstairs.

  That good man stared at me. I must have been God's own mess. "Are you hurt, Cornelia?" he asked.

  "No, sir, my mama is. I was just making her some tea."

  He nodded and went into Mama and Pa's bedroom. "You're a good girl," he mumbled. It comforted me, his saying that. If only Pa would think so.

  As I went back down the stairs, the others were coming up.

  George, who was the oldest at almost eleven, born during a heavy bombardment at Cambridge at the beginning of the war and named after George Washington himself.

  And Martha, who had come out of her room where Pa had sent her.

  Nat came with them. He was near seven, born after me.

  Louisa, the baby, toddled last. She was two.

  I had the singular honor of being conceived at Valley Forge. "That camp on the west bank of the Schuylkill," Pa called it, "that had no valley and no forge. Your mother was happy there."

  "Of course she was happy," Martha once told me. "Surrounded by all those army officers who danced and flirted with her."

  Martha seemed to know a lot about it. Oh, there was no mystery as to the reason she knew a lot about it.

  Eulinda told her things. In all honesty, Eulinda told us all a lot of things about the war, about the interesting stories in Mama and Pa's past, for as far back as she knew, anyway. How else would we know about "the dark huts and leaky roofs" the men lived in at Valley Forge? About how the men lived mostly on "fire cakes," a paste of flour and water cooked on hot rocks over an open fire.

  How else would I know that when I was born, in our Coventry, Rhode Island, home, Mama was in travail for two days. And that at the time, Pa had wanted another boy but he didn't get one until Nat came along. And that somewhere in between, Mama lost another baby to whooping cough.

  But always, always, Martha knew more. Because Martha badgered Eulinda to tell more.

  Up ahead in the hall, Pa came out of Mama's room. My brothers and sisters were all chattering on the steps below me.

  "Downstairs, all of you," Pa ordered. "The doctor is seeing to your mother. I want no noise. Where is your tutor? Where is Mr. Miller?"

  "He's in the kitchen, seeing to some food for us," George said. "He wants to take us on a ride this afternoon. Can we go, Pa?"

  "No. I'll speak with him. I want you all here, in case I need you. Now go downstairs." He shooed them and they went.

  What did he mean, "in case I need you"? Was Mama failing? Dying? A shock of fear went through me. I cast Pa a look of appeal before I turned to go downstairs, too.

  He put a restraining hand on my shoulder, then said, "Go in and see your mother."

  Eulinda was in there. She glared at me as I entered. "Bad girl," she snarled, "to bring your mama to such a state."

  Mama lay, eyes closed, pale and beautiful, in their large tester bed.

  To the side, in a white, lace-trimmed cradle, lay the baby. From somewhere, some servant had hastily procured a pink bow and tacked it on the cradle. Another girl, but so tiny you would not believe she could manage to breathe. Yet she did.

  "Mama?" I whispered.

  The violet eyes looked up
at me. "Cornelia," she said.

  I could think of nothing to say. My mouth was dry. I needed some water. And then Pa came back in.

  "What do I say?" I asked him.

  "Nothing. Just hold her hand for a moment or two. Then go to your room. I'll be along when she falls asleep."

  ***

  I HAD CHANGED my clothes by the time Pa came knocking at my door. He came in, leaving the door half open, and leaned against the doorjamb, looking at me. I sat in a chair, my bloodstained dress and apron on the floor next to me.

  I had changed into a calico he'd given me last Christmas. Did he notice? Did he care? "Is Mama all right?" I asked.

  "She's been brought awfully low, but she will recover. With rest."

  "And the baby?"

  "Seven months. Dr. Kinney says she won't make it through the night."

  The calm with which he said this shocked me. I think he too was in shock.

  "Is it my fault, then?" I asked.

  He shook his head no. "We don't play that game in this house. I've told you that before. In the army, Washington never laid blame when a battle was lost. He gathered his officers and made plans for the next one. But I would like to know why you were running from her. That would be a help right now."

  Sarcasm. With Pa, it was on the way to anger. I must be careful. "I didn't go to school this morning," I said quietly, "and Mama was after me for it. And so I was hiding from her."

  "Why didn't you go to school?"

  There was nothing for it but to tell. "I don't like Mr. Miller."

  "You don't like Mr. Miller," he repeated flatly.

  "No, sir."

  "Why?"

  Well, there was no telling this, now or ever. What could I say? That one day I'd left my notebook in the classroom and gone back for it and found Mr. Miller, all of twenty-five, sitting behind his desk and Mama standing in front, leaning over it, and then him, of a sudden, standing up, taking her by the shoulders, and kissing her.