by John Smolens
This morning, Father was wearing his toga. He sat at the head of the dining room table, taking his biscuits and tea as he leaned over several leather-bound tomes, muttering in Latin. When Abigail took her place at the table, always to his left, he did not look up from his reading, though she detected that the arch to one bushy white eyebrow was intended to convey disapproval. Pulling back the sleeve of his toga, he picked up his tea and sipped loudly.
Like many men of his station, John Lovell believed that he was a direct descendant of the learned Greeks and Romans. Boston was the new city, the new Athens, with its philosophers and senators. Daily newspapers such as the Boston Observer carried letters and broadsides that were signed with aliases: Archimedes, Euthymius, or Democritus. As schoolmaster of the Latin School, her father at times spoke English only as a last resort. But the toga at breakfast had become a recent development, as worrisome in its own way as was Abigail’s mother’s frailty in the wake of her extended winter illness. As the weather had warmed, he began wearing the loose, flowing toga around the house more and more frequently. Benjamin assured Abigail that their father wore nothing beneath the garment, and on more than one occasion she had noticed the front of his garment stained with urine. They simply never knew what to expect from their father. He was often pompous and distant, or relentlessly overbearing. Yet at times he would seem to possess the innocence of a savant. And there were also moments, perhaps most trying, when he would fawn lovingly over his children, taking satisfaction in simply watching them perform a task as mundane as tying a boot lace.
“Tea, dear?” her mother said.
Abigail only stared down at the biscuit on her plate.
While turning a page, her father cleared his throat.
As her mother took up the teapot, Abigail said, “No, thank you, Mother.”
He removed his spectacles and laid them on top of an open book. “Why is it incumbent upon my children to begin each day with this mild form of gastronomic protest?”
“You know very well why,” Abigail said. “We’ve been through this … for years.”
“We have,” her father said. Something about his voice seemed to rise up from the very depths of his lungs. It was a quality, a resonance that could fill a crowded Old South Meetinghouse, and could also strike fear into the hearts of the most recalcitrant pupil at the Latin School. “We have indeed for too long,” he said, “and today, at last, it’s going to stop.” He leaned toward her. “And do you know why?”
Abigail ventured a look at her father, his eyes bulging beneath those brows. “Yes.”
“Yes!” he shouted. “Because George the Third has finally taken matters in hand! Clearly, he’s instructed General Gage that it’s time to put a stop to this nonsense. You know he sent an expedition out into the country during the night?”
“Really?” Abigail said. “I trust they have a good map.”
“They have a map, they have their Brown Bess firelocks, they have bayonets! They have orders to break this, this rebellious nonsense.”
“Nonsense,” Abigail said. “That’s your favorite word. In English.”
“It is,” he said, now quietly, as though explaining a subtle philosophical point. “It means ‘without sense,’ the ‘opposite of that which makes sense.’ It perfectly defines what you and your brothers—and all those pathetic people out in the hills—think they’re up to. Patriots, revolution: nonsense. We are all subjects of the king. And as of today, he’s directed his military to reassure each of us that he holds us all dear to his compassionate bosom.” He glared down the table toward Abigail’s mother, who was still holding the teapot. “Pour, my dear. Pour our daughter a cup of English tea—tea that was brought here so that we might partake of its beneficial properties and give thanks to that fair island from whence it came!”
“Taxed tea,” Abigail said. “No thank you, Mother.”
“Tea, like liberty,” her father said, “does not come free.”
“Taxed tea, taxed stamps,” Abigail said.
“Mob rule,” her father said. “That’s what the likes of Samuel Adams are after.”
“And you do understand,” Abigail continued, “the issue is not the taxes—”
Imitating a whining child, her father said, “Taxation without representation!”
“Next thing they’ll tax the air we breathe, or perhaps the salt in the ocean?”
Her father raised his hand and slapped the table loudly, causing the china to clatter.
There was silence. This was the moment, usually, when Abigail could look across the table at her younger brother; on some occasions he would diffuse the moment with some remark that was so inappropriate that even his father would, if only momentarily, be drawn back from the brink of his rage. Recently, during such a pause in the argument, Benjamin had leaned sideways, crossed his eyes as he stared at Abigail, and then he broke wind—a long, resonant fart, which caused their father to get up from the table and storm off to his study.
But now Benjamin wasn’t at the table, and there was only the silence, a deep, treacherous silence, which for years had made the days in this house often intolerable. Silence, until Abigail’s mother put the teapot back on the coaster and said, “Well, my arm is growing weary.” She spread butter on her biscuit, but soon put her knife down with a clatter, and stared at Abigail with round, moist eyes. “Tell me, is he in the attic?”
“No, Mother.”
“He’ll return,” Father said, chewing. “Always does. Just like a dog that wanders off, sniffing about, only to return when he gets hungry enough.”
“Benjamin is not like a dog,” Abigail said.
“I suppose you’re right.” He pushed the last of his biscuit into his mouth. “More like the water rat, always going down to the wharves, or rowing out into the harbor, returning with sacks of fish or clams. The tides, that’s about all he knows. Once we get this port in operation again, I should inquire about a position for him aboard some merchant vessel. See the world, a different sort of education, that.”
“It would pain Benjamin greatly,” Abigail said, “to leave Boston.”
“You and I, as well,” her mother murmured, without looking up from her plate.
“Well,” Father said, “he can’t learn anything. Lord knows I’ve tried to educate him.”
“With your ferule,” Abigail said. “He’s not someone you can beat into submission.”
“Can’t hardly read or write—Latin or English.” Father suddenly laughed, which he often did as an announcement that he was about to make a joke. “He’s only well schooled in haddock, flounder, and cod.” He slapped the table and howled. “Why, when the boy was three he could tell a fluke from a flounder! And he lacks patience to learn a trade. So send him to sea, where it’s difficult to wander far from the deck of a boat.”
“I do not want our youngest shipping out,” Mother said firmly, though her voice quavered slightly. “It’s no place for a boy who’s—”
“Don’t,” Abigail said. “You think you can control our futures, dictate our lives.”
“You need direction,” her father said. “You both require direction.”
Mother said, “And besides—”
Abigail pushed her chair back and sprang to her feet. “I can’t listen to any more.”
She rushed out of the dining room, veering down the hall to the kitchen. For a moment she was at a loss for what to do, and she considered simply going back up to bed. But she recalled that her mother had mentioned that they would need eggs for dinner, so dutifully, even thankfully, Abigail went out the kitchen door and crossed the small yard to the chicken coop.
It was warm inside, and dark. If Benjamin had his hiding places all about Boston, Abigail had the coop. Since she’d been a girl, she had often sought refuge here among the chattering hens, perched in straw bins. She had come in anger, sometimes in fear. And at times simply to be alone. She used to talk to the hens—as a child, she’d had names for all of them—and they seemed to respond with
a nervous intensity that led her to imagine that when she was not there, they would talk about her amongst themselves. Mother insisted that chickens had no brains, but Abigail was convinced that they were actually quite perceptive, that they knew when it was she who reached into their straw nests to retrieve eggs. As she pulled the door shut behind her, they greeted her with a flurry of cackling and feather-ruffling.
Behind her, there were footsteps out in the yard, and then the door opened behind her. This time the hens went into a panic as her toga-clad father bent forward as he entered the coop. He yanked the door closed behind him and sat on the small crate in the corner.
“That door,” he said shortly. “With the coming of warm weather it sticks—I have asked Benjamin to plane it down.” He busied himself with tamping and lighting his clay pipe. “You really have no idea where he is?” He exhaled smoke, his voice soft now, almost pleading.
“No.” Abigail extended her arm into the top bin and felt around in the straw. It was like being blind. The hens moved aside at her gentle insistence, reluctantly yielding their secret, their treasure.
“This hiding,” he said. “It used to be a game when he was small, but now, now it’s dangerous. The world is a dangerous place, Abigail. Boston is—we have been on the brink for so long now.” He drew loudly on his pipe a moment. “You think I don’t worry, we don’t worry?”
She picked up an egg, warm in her palm.
“Loyalty is not a terrible thing,” he said. “You know that. There is no greater loyalty than ours.”
Abigail found another, and then another. “I know that, Father.”
She went to her father then and carefully released the eggs in his lap—he spread his legs, allowing them to sink into the folds of his toga. Often, when she’d been younger, when she was upset (often after they had argued), he would know that he could find her here, in the coop. She would sit on his lap. He would pat her back, stroke her hair, his large hands warm, loving. Still, there was the scent of his tobacco, which she had always loved.
Now he merely took her hand in his (which no longer seemed so large, but frail, and disconcertingly so) and pressed her palm to his lips, before gently holding it on his shoulder. Perched, she thought, like a small bird.
“I—your mother and I—we believe in order, in learning. It’s all we have to give to you. Without these things, I don’t understand how one can thrive. We have always been loyal to the king. It’s a source of pride, of honor.”
“I understand that, Father. But we—we Bostonians—are not treated fairly.”
He didn’t answer for a moment, but with his other hand placed the long stem of his pipe in his mouth and inhaled, slowly releasing a blue plume of smoke which curled languidly in the dim light. “Suppose, for the sake of argument,” he said. “Suppose I abandoned my allegiance to the king. What influence do you imagine that would have?”
“I imagine that James would think you’d come to your senses.”
“And you? What influence do you think it would have, on us?”
“Us.” Abigail felted tricked: the terms were changing. “The school would suffer.”
“Indeed. We pride ourselves on accepting only the boys from Boston’s best families, but what if they did not seek admittance? What if they elected to attend another school?”
“I imagine—” She paused. “I imagine that you could admit girls.”
She expected him to laugh, but he only drew deeply on his pipe. “Perhaps,” he said. “One day, perhaps. You have learned well. You are as bright as any of the boys that matriculate at the Latin School. It gives you a power, I see it in the way others address you. Some admire you, but others fear you. It is something a father can take pride in, that.” He glanced up at her. “Is that the only result?”
“General Gage would no longer invite you to dinners at Province House.”
He nodded his head. “True. I enjoy his company.”
“He is a fair man,” Abigail said.
“Most of our English brethren are.”
“Some, indeed, Father. But if it were a majority, we would not be at such odds.”
He considered this a moment and, surprisingly, seemed to accept the logic of it. “If I were no longer loyal to the crown, it would be met with great disappointment. It would be seen as giving up something precious, some might say sacred.”
“You might find that you are free.”
“Ah, yes. Freedom.” He smiled as he gazed straight ahead. “Free to do what? I’m doing it now, don’t you see? All that I do is for this, for us. How else could I provide for you, properly provide? I suspect you think I keep my nose close to the pages of my Latin texts and read my pupils’ lessons, but I know how short the walk is from here on School Street down to Long Wharf. I do see this, Abigail.” He pressed her palm into his shoulder. “Sometimes I feel I’ve lost James. Years ago, he drifted away, despite the fact that we work side by side in the school. And Benjamin, I’ve never been able to reach him, not the way I would like. Only you have—you and he have this bond, for which your mother and I are grateful. So I must confess that my fear of losing you is compounded by the fear of losing Benjamin as well.”
Abigail turned slightly, causing him to hold her hand more tightly. “You would never lose me, Father,” she said. “This is not possible, no matter what our differences.”
“I thank God for that.” He released her hand then. Carefully, he gathered up the eggs from his lap and placed them in her joined palms.
There came the sound of the kitchen door opening, and Mother called across the yard. “John, Abigail—you must come, quickly!”
He pushed himself up out of the chair and opened the coop door, admitting a blinding light. “What is it?”
He ducked out through the door and Abigail followed, and then they both sensed it, standing in the yard: at first, it was felt more than heard, a faint shudder, a rumble, which seemed to come up from the ground. Then there was sound, coming from the street out in front of the house—a rhythmic pounding—and there was dust, rising up above the shingled roof and chimney, obscuring the sun. Abigail rushed across the yard and into the house, placing the eggs in a bowl on the kitchen table, and then she continued down the hall, her parents following after her. She opened the front door and went out onto the stoop. Hundreds of soldiers were marching in formation down School Street, their officers shouting commands.
Behind her, Father shouted, “They’re headed for the Common!”
“More soldiers?” Mother asked. “What does it mean?”
“Reinforcements,” her father said.
“But why?” Abigail asked.
Her father held the sleeve of his toga over his face, as protection against the dust. “Perhaps General Gage is sending them in another direction.”
Her mother turned to go back into the house, saying, “I just don’t understand.”
“It means …” Father said. “Well, we don’t know for certain what it means.”
Abigail stepped back inside the front door and took her shawl off the peg. “It means that something terrible is about to happen.” She threw the shawl about her shoulders and leaped off the stoop.
“And where do you think you’re going?” he shouted.
“I must find Benjamin.”
Abigail walked away from the house, her father’s voice quickly lost in the cadence of marching feet. She broke into a run alongside the column of redcoats, until she reached Tremont Street, where she turned the corner and headed for the North End.
Rachel Revere sat across the kitchen table from Abigail, her infant son Joshua in her arms, and at the end of the table, her mother-in-law, Mrs. Deborah Revere, was pouring the tea. Some of the older children could be heard laughing out in the yard.
“Contraband,” Mrs. Revere said as she placed the teacup before Abigail. “No tax on these tea leaves. Landed at Newburyport and brought down the turnpike. But we don’t have any sugar either.” She struggled to pronounce each word because of the false
teeth her son had affixed in her mouth by a series of wires.
“It’s fine, thank you.” Abigail took a sip of the tea, which was bitter but hot.
“Why are you so upset?” Rachel said. “You’ve been having the same argument with your father for years.”
“I know,” Abigail said. “But walking over here, I realized that it’s not that we differ so. It’s this: Father is convinced I only hold such opinions because James does. I’m not capable of truly comprehending an idea, so how can I form my own opinion? He believes it must be all James’s doing, polluting the impressionable minds of his younger brother and sister.”
“It’s just what they do all day in the Latin School,” Mrs. Revere said. “I’ve known your father a long time, and he has a reputation as a harsh disciplinarian.”
“Yet he’s revered for it.” Rachel was a somewhat harried woman, mindful, and known to be outspoken. Her moods tossed easily between melancholy and a gleeful, desperate humor.
“Most every man of position and influence in Boston passes through the Latin School,” Mrs. Revere said. Very slowly, using both hands, she picked up her cup of tea and took a sip. She was a Hitchbourn, a respected family that had long built boats and operated a wharf in the harbor. “Your father, and men like him, they represent order. He has to be a Tory. To be otherwise would be to deny everything he has ever known or stood for all these years.”
“You speak of him with such sympathy,” Abigail said.
“Yes,” Rachel said, unbuttoning the top of her dress. “As though trying to explain why one breast gives more milk than another.” She guided Joshua’s mouth to her left nipple. “Why some women give out, bear children and die early, while others—”
“It’s not sympathy, really,” Mrs. Revere said. She pushed herself up from her seat. “It’s observation, which leads to a form of curiosity. For instance, your brother James. For years now he’s been the usher at the Latin School. Everyone knows that he and your father are opposites, the Tory and the Whig, the loyalist and the patriot. But your brother has a reputation for being the stricter disciplinarian of the two. He not only wields his ferule often, I understand that he seems to take pleasure in giving his pupils welts.”