by Jodi Daynard
By day, when I was well enough, we spoke to each other. There was so much to know and to tell. John’s fascination with me seemed inexhaustible. How had I come to love him? he wanted to know. I said, “When first I saw you disembark from the ferry, and you looked at me with those astonishing eyes of yours . . .”
John loved hearing this story. Over and over he made me tell it, the way a small child enjoys the story of his own birth.
Sometimes John and I lay together in my bunk and said nothing but simply held each other, Johnny in bed between us.
“Eliza,” he said to me one evening, upon a reasonably calm sea, “if nothing exceptional ever happens to me again—or if we perish in a storm at sea—know that I consider my life complete right now, at this very moment. Oh, you cannot know, but I have so much more than I ever imagined I would!”
“You shall yet have more, my love. A house that is yours, and an exceedingly pretty wife . . .” This latter I spoke with a smirk.
“Ha ha. Indeed, I have grown fond of your fair hair, which sticks to your head like glue. And the tart smell of sickness on your frock.”
“You’ve gone mad,” I laughed.
Meanwhile, Cassie, seeking to give us what privacy she could, engaged herself with Isaac. Now that she had escaped the heavy thumb of service, having no one to interrupt her or call upon her (though Mama would surely have liked to), she lavished upon Isaac all her maternal feelings.
“What a leetle peeg ’ee ’ees, Miss Eliza! I don’ bathe him, he never bathe himse’f. ’Ee never brush ’ees teef. ’Ee don’ wan’ to speak proper language, neither, but swears oafs like a pirate!”
“Oh, Cassie.” I smiled. “Be patient with the poor boy. He has been in a shipyard, among the roughest sort of men. Nor can you expect to imbue him with ten years of wisdom in ten weeks.”
“Oh, but I try, Mees Eliza. I try! We get to Barbados, ’ee gon’ be a propah gentleman.”
Sometime in our conversations—I could not tell you what day or even month, as all days at sea blended into one long rising and setting of the sun—John asked me why it was, exactly, that I loved him.
I looked at him, at his grave demeanor, and understood that I could not trifle with him, that his soul was wide open to me.
“From a small child,” I began, “I felt, rather than understood, that I lived a lie. Oh, I did what I was told. I enjoyed the luxuries I had been born into. But after Maria died, and then Jeb, I could be happy in one room, and that was the kitchen, with Cassie. Being useful—”
John nodded, but he did not interrupt.
“I wished to hear Cassie’s stories. True, wrenching stories. I could no longer abide anything else. The dinners, the parlor discussions, Mr. Inman—” I shivered. “But with you . . . you, John, were true from the start. Oh, the thought of being happy in all the rooms once more, not merely the kitchen!”
I could see that my love was moved, but he chose to lighten the moment with a joke:
“I hope that the bedroom shall be particularly . . . happy.”
“Mr. Watkins!” I cried. “Well, you’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”
“I’ve seen.” He grinned.
I punched him in the arm, and we laughed before the sudden bump of a wave threw us apart.
On the morning of September 21, 1779, we arrived at Kingstown, St. Vincent. No sooner had we disembarked, weak and disheveled, than we were met by a small coterie of French soldiers in smart blue uniforms. These turned out to be the Admiral d’Estaing’s men. With the greatest solicitude they brought our little gang and our luggage to the headquarters of the general. Apparently, through that same “web” of which Mr. Adams had spoken, a letter had made its way from Braintree to the captain of La Gabriel, who dispatched a sailor to deliver it up to the house the moment we arrived.
We were given several hours to bathe and rest before meeting the esteemed admiral himself, and thus were in presentable, if not exemplary, condition in time for dinner. The admiral provided us a light meal of fish and fruits, as our heads reeled and our appetites had not fully returned.
John and I were married on the island’s beautiful shores the day after our arrival. I might have been embarrassed by the presence of the esteemed general, but my dearest Abigail had paved the way by writing to the admiral of John’s extraordinary character and contribution to the Cause. During the brief ceremony, I happened to glance in the admiral’s direction and saw his smiling eyes. But then the French, I’ve heard, are less fastidious than the Americans are on this score.
By the second day, we grew eager to set off for our new home. Hearing that we desired to push on, the admiral hired a trader and his boat to escort us through the treacherous waves to Bridgetown. We said affectionate good-byes—everyone kissing on both cheeks twice, four times . . .
Johnny especially did not want to leave the admiral, having spent much of the time in his lap, being caressed and teased. Before we left his shores, the admiral told me in private that he believed Johnny would be a great man someday.
“Oh, I agree he is everything marvelous, but that is a mother speaking. How can you know it so absolutely?”
“I have known many people in my life,” he said cryptically. “Good and bad and indifferent. This little child—he is a good one.”
Well, who was I to disagree with the great Admiral d’Estaing? His efforts helped America win the war. He was one of the good ones. And for this virtue he was beheaded, a decade later, by his own cruel compatriots.
I kissed him tenderly and we soon left the shores of St. Vincent, arriving, at long last, at Bridgetown on the twenty-third of September.
The plantation looked nothing like the portrait that had hung above the fireplace mantel in Papa’s library. But it did bear some resemblance to the house in my dreams. The manse stood on a rise amid a stand of palm trees, overlooking Carlisle Bay. Before the house, a broad, circular drive made of smooth stone welcomed our carriage, and the horses’ hooves kicked up a gentle cloud of white dust. Behind the house were acres of rolling land, dotted with palm trees and abandoned shacks, and cane fields grown to seed.
At first, the home, too, appeared abandoned, but about ten minutes after our arrival, there materialized a very fine-looking Negro caretaker. He introduced himself as Moses and eyed Cassie with unabashed interest. She returned his look with a withering stare.
“What ’ee lookin’ at, you tink?”
“You, of course,” I said. “I suspect you shall soon be courted, Cassie.”
“Oh, go on, Miss Eliza.”
I set Johnny down in the entrance, upon fine plank floors of very red mahogany, and off he went on his own two feet, half running, half careening toward the open doors and the gold light beyond. Mama followed protectively after him.
Isaac whooped and hollered with joy, and went running past little Johnny, calling, “Come on, Johnny—want to play ball? I saw one just there, beyond the driveway.”
“Baw,” pointed Johnny, and went toddling toward the older boy.
The French doors, opened to the sea, let in a filling, warm light. Moses took our trunks into the house and up the stairs, but not before casting Cassie another assessing look. This time, her glance was not quite so icy, for Moses was a young and handsome fellow, with a sweet smile.
“I suppose we shall have to procure some furniture,” I said with a sigh. Cassie just shrugged.
Finally I turned to my new husband. “Can you believe it, John? Can you believe we are here, alive—and free?”
Still gazing about him, John wrapped both arms about my waist. “No,” he said. “I’m sure I dream and shall soon awake.”
“Oh, I hope not,” I said.
Acknowledgments
NOT ALL AUTHORS ARE AS SMART AS they seem—at least, this is true in my case. It was a smart move, however, for me to seek help from those whose expertise allowed me to create this illusion. I would like to thank Peter Hogan and Jessica Hogan for providing honest critiques of early drafts. Val
erie Cunningham, founder of the Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail, kindly read over the Portsmouth chapters; her book Black Portsmouth: Three Centuries of African-American Heritage, inspired me to create the slave characters in this novel. The Cambridge Historical Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Portsmouth Atheneum all provided invaluable archives. Thanks go to my ever-supportive agent, Emma Patterson of Brandt & Hochmann, who made the business end of things go smoothly. And finally, to Jodi Warshaw, senior editor at Lake Union, developmental editor Jenna Free, and Gloria Greis, director of the Needham Historical Society, all of whose insightful comments helped to make this novel as good as I sincerely wanted it to be.
Author’s Note
WHEN ASKED WHICH OF MY CHARACTERS ARE real and which are fictional, I usually pause before replying. The easy answer is that they’re all fictional. The more complicated answer is that they’re all real. In writing historical fiction, I have found, “real” characters come to life by virtue of my fictionalizing them, and fictional characters come to life when I impose on them rather strict historical parameters. Of course, my characters are free to act however they wish, but they cannot take a carriage ride on the day of a blizzard, buy a piece of meat when the price is too high, or go to their church if war has forced it shut.
Historical characters are bound by these laws and also by their own actions to the extent that I was able to learn them. For example, John Adams won’t appear in Braintree when he was actually in France. Nabby Adams won’t join Lizzie and Eliza for Christmas dinner if she’s in Weymouth on that day.
Our Own Country takes place during roughly the same years as its predecessor The Midwife’s Revolt, and thus, some readers will already have met certain of the characters: Eliza Boylston and her family are entirely fictional. While the name Boylston is meant to evoke prominence, her family is not related to the “real” Boylstons of early Boston fame.
Readers of The Midwife’s Revolt know my Braintree characters quite well: Colonel Quincy, uncle to Abigail Adams, John and Abigail Adams and their children Nabby, Tommy, John Quincy, and Charlie, are all real, as are incidental servants, pastors, and innkeepers.
John Watkins and Cassie Boylston are entirely fictional, as is John’s father, the “former Royal Governor of New Hampshire.” Logistics would have us point the finger at Benning Wentworth, but while Governor Wentworth did cause a scandal when he married his dead wife’s maid, he did not, so far as anyone knows, sire any children from his slaves.
In Cambridge, all the leaders and Tory families mentioned existed. The Inman family existed, too, as did George Inman. Poor George Inman fares badly in my treatment of him: in “real” life, he was merely guilty of being a Tory and an officer in the British army. There is no indication in the records that he committed any crimes against women.
In Portsmouth, John Paul Jones appears at a time and place that is factually correct. Others who existed, though perhaps not entirely as I imagined them, are Colonel John Langdon, the future governor of New Hampshire; master shipwright John Hackett; Colonel William Whipple; and the Whipple slaves, Prince and Cuffee. My Dinah Whipple is fictional, although I based her on the real Dinah Whipple, a freed slave who married Prince Whipple.
The house on Deer Street actually exists. I found it while driving around Portsmouth one snowy day, looking for my setting. Freakishly, it was exactly where I imagined it to be, at the crest of the hill on Deer Street. It was as if, like the house, my story was already there, needing only to be told.
About the Author
Photo © Nancy Daynard 2013
JODI DAYNARD IS THE AUTHOR OF THE bestselling novel The Midwife’s Revolt. Her short stories and essays have been widely published in journals such as the New England Review, Fiction, Other Voices, and in the Paris Review. Ms. Daynard has taught creative writing at Harvard University, M.I.T., and Emerson College. The third novel in the Midwife trilogy will be published by Lake Union in 2017.