Prelude to Glory, Vol. 1

by Ron Carter

  John stopped at the root cellar for the eggs before walking into the kitchen. He set them on the worktable as Margaret opened the oven door and carefully slid the meat pan inside. She latched the door, adjusted the draft in the firebox, and turned back to the worktable. Expertly she cracked the four eggs into the griddle-cake batter, and then she stirred with her large wooden spoon and raised it above the bowl to let the thick batter drip back while she watched to see if it was lumpy enough. It was.

  She quickly settled the four-legged griddle over the fourth fire, dropped a spoonful of lard onto it, and watched it melt and spread. She tucked the batter bowl under one arm, leaned forward, and rapidly scooped six large, round portions of the batter onto the griddle and watched to see how rapidly the bubbles formed on top and burst. Satisfied the griddle was not too hot, she called, “Matthew, get the children to the table.”

  Five minutes later they all bowed their heads and John clasped his hands before his face and offered grace. The first twelve cakes were buttered, drenched in sweet New England maple syrup, and half-eaten when Margaret brought the next twelve. She helped the twins butter theirs, poured the syrup, and began cutting the steaming cakes for them.

  “Let them do it, Mother,” Brigitte interrupted. “They’re old enough.”

  “I’ll help,” she answered defensively, knowing it was no justification, but afraid to speak of why she hovered over her two youngest, doing too much for them, refusing to let them grow up. Ever present in her mother’s heart was the ache left behind when Sarah, three years younger than Caleb, had come home from school in January four years ago, fevered and coughing. Nine days later she died of pneumonia. Months passed before Margaret smiled, and it was a year before she quit changing the sheets on Sarah’s bed along with the other beds in the house. From the day of the funeral, Margaret hovered over the twins. She knew she was wrong, that she had to let them grow up, but promised herself daily that there was time and that her need to protect them would lessen. But it had not.

  “Clear the table while I start the dough for muffins,” she said to Brigitte.

  Brigitte turned to Adam and Priscilla. “You two help, and be careful with the dishes.”

  “Caleb, fetch a dozen eggs in that bowl,” Margaret directed, “and be careful. Drop them and we won’t have custard.”

  Caleb laid down his fork and rose. At fourteen he was suffering the torments of a body that was out of control and a mind that did not know from one minute to the next who or what he was. His knuckles, knees, and elbows seemed nearly deformed in their rush to full manhood, and coordinated movement from any of them was a thing he could only vaguely remember. Life had become a nightmare of clumsiness. None of his clothes fit his frame, nor could Margaret alter them rapidly enough to catch up. He never knew from hour to hour whether he would be brave or burst into tears over nothing. He had stopped singing in school or church after his voice cracked for the third time and wandered off into sounds he had never heard before. He would be as tall as John and Matthew, but his facial features favored the fine, high cheekbones and aquiline nose and generous mouth of Margaret.

  “Yes’um,” he said quietly, and reached for the bowl. Margaret stopped to watch him carry it out the back door, then released held breath and shook her head with sympathetic understanding.

  The dough had risen before the clanging of the church bell, five blocks to the north, brought Margaret up short as she laid out her church clothes in her bedroom. “Where has the morning gone?” she exclaimed. “Brigitte, come here. Adam, Priscilla, church in fifteen minutes. Finish dressing.” She handed a brush to Brigitte and reached for a comb. “You do Priscilla, I’ll do Adam.”

  Ten minutes later she ran a critical eye over Priscilla and said, “Now, go stand in the parlor and don’t muss yourself.” Then she walked quickly to the kitchen, punched the dough, watched it collapse, and covered it again with heavy cheesecloth. She added eight average sticks of kindling to the oven firebox and twisted the drafts in the front door two-thirds closed. It took years to learn an oven.

  She called to Brigitte as she strode back to her bedroom, “Watch the twins while I do my hair.”

  John waited at the front door until they were all assembled, then gave them the usual inspection and stern reminder, “Mind your manners and restrain yourselves. This is the Sabbath.”

  Brigitte’s impish grin flashed. “Like you and Henry Thorpe last Sunday?” she chortled.

  John fixed her with a stern stare. “That’s enough, young lady.”

  “Oh! Sorry, Father,” she said demurely. Looking demure usually bridged any rifts.

  John turned on his heel to hide a smile, and marched out the front door, Margaret on his arm, the children following in the standard, accepted Boston formation. Past the front gate, John turned north into the processional of other proper families, dressed in their Sunday best, women in their Sunday bonnets, walking through the narrow cobblestone streets to Old South Church. Matthew called and waved to his lifelong closest friend, Billy Weems, who shouted from half a block and waved back and came running. From earliest recollection, Matthew and Billy had been inseparable. Billy, shorter, husky, freckled, sandy haired, was impetuous, impulsive, and when he grinned, irresistible. Somehow the boys had sensed that Billy’s open, cheerful view of life was the perfect counterbalance for Matthew’s serious side, and at twenty-one, they had no secrets from each other.

  “Good morning to you all,” Billy grinned to the family, and fell in beside Matthew.

  “Good morning, Billy,” Margaret said. “Looking well.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Dunson,” Billy replied, “and you’re lovely as always.” He grinned until his eyes closed, and Margaret blushed and ducked her head and Brigitte groaned and John smiled.

  “Matthew, how are you?” He whacked Matthew between the shoulder blades.

  Matthew winced. “I have a broken back, thank you.”

  “Well,” Billy said, studying Matthew’s back, “a hunch back there will add something to your natural good looks.”

  Families called greetings, hats were tipped, gossip exchanged, and children scolded, as the magic of a beautiful Sabbath spring morning spread through Boston.

  They were two blocks from the church when Matthew touched John’s shoulder from behind and his quiet words gripped the entire family. “We’re being followed.”

  John turned. Half a block behind, four British grenadiers with their muskets slung, bayonets mounted and pointing upward, were keeping pace with the family. Their red coats and the white crossed bands gleamed in the bright sun. John turned back and his eyes swept the street ahead. Two British officers stood on the next corner watching the family approach. The epaulets of a captain gleamed on the shoulders of one, and those of a lieutenant on the other.

  Margaret clutched at John’s arm, panic and fear in her eyes. They know about last night—they’re after John.

  “Keep walking,” John said evenly, “as though nothing were happening.”

  ______

  Notes

  The general description of the great fireplace in the Dunson home (such fireplaces being the area where, in colonial times, nearly all cooking was done in pots and pans hung on heavy, swinging arms) and of the root cellar (where milk and other perishables were kept cool) was gathered from several sources, chief among them Ulrich, Good Wives and A Midwife’s Tale; Furnas, The Americans; and Colbert, ed., Eyewitness to America.

  The reference to the snowshoe men and their resistance to the Huron Indians is historically accurate.

  The sending of Paul Revere on Sunday, April 16, 1775, to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock of the launching of the British longboats the night before is historically correct. Sam Adams and John Hancock were hiding at the residence of the Reverend Jonas Clarke in Lexington (see French, The Day of Concord and Lexington, p. 66).

  Sunday, April 16, 1775

  Chapter III

  * * *

  They held their steady pace, eyes locked onto th
e two officers ahead, Margaret clinging to John’s arm. She gasped when the officers stepped into the cobblestone street and two regulars appeared from the corner to follow the officers, in military step, muskets slung on their backs. Margaret’s eyes widened when the officers turned directly towards them, their shiny black boots clumping a steady cadence on the brick sidewalk. Margaret craned her neck to look behind where the four grenadiers marched thirty feet in back of them. Half a dozen families on both sides of the street slowed and conversations became hushed while fingers pointed as the soldiers closed on the family, front and back.

  The officers stopped when they were ten feet from John and blocked the sidewalk, side by side. John slowed and stopped, with Margaret white-faced, clutching his arm. They waited.

  The captain studied John dispassionately, without a word. For long moments the buzzing of bees and the quarrelling of jays seemed too loud in the silence. Behind Margaret, Brigitte’s mouth was clenched shut and her eyes were points of light as she tenuously held control of her temper, and then she could take no more. She strode forward in her white high-waisted Sunday dress and white bonnet, and opened her mouth to hotly confront the two officers and demand an explanation for being stopped in the streets of Boston. And then she slowed, and her face thrust forward slightly as her eyes grew large, and she stopped in her tracks.

  She was facing the young lieutenant, less than six feet away, who stood at attention in his red tunic with the white belts crossed over his chest, wearing the tall hat of an officer in the Royal Marines. He was taller than average, built well, and moved with a natural grace. His young face was not handsome, but it was regular, and strong, and striking. A noticeable scar showed in his right eyebrow, which was dark, as was his hair. It was his eyes that stopped her, froze her. They were hazel, and in them she saw gentleness and humility, and frankness and innocence, and a firmness, and she saw nothing of the condescending superiority that now glowed in the face of his captain next to him. Her eyes locked with his for a brief moment, and his nod of acknowledgment of her was nearly imperceptible. Then he shifted his gaze back to John, and for the first time in her life Brigitte felt her arms prickle, and she was unable to form words. She stood rooted beside her mother, mesmerized.

  Margaret had missed nothing of the silent exchange between the two.

  The captain’s eyes went over John, head to toe, and an ugly smile flitted for a moment, and then, without having spoken a word, he turned on his heel and began marching towards the church, the lieutenant beside him, with the two armed regulars in front of him. John waited for a moment, then moved forward, following, with the remaining four grenadiers marching thirty feet behind.

  The strange processional marched past white fences fronting square brick houses, one with a great maple in the yard, whose branches arched over the sidewalk and cast a filigree of sunlight on them as they passed. Margaret held her white-knuckled grip on John’s arm, scarcely breathing while John kept his face a smiling mask, watching ahead. They approached the first corner, crossed the cobblestones, and started the long journey of the last block to the church.

  Margaret turned her white face upwards towards John’s. “Why are they doing this?” she whispered.

  “To frighten us and show everyone else what happens when you oppose them.”

  “They’re succeeding,” Margaret muttered. She counted the unending paces for the last block, and suddenly they were at the corner and the tall, square, white frame church was across the cobblestone street. The high stained-glass windows glowed in the sunlight, and the big brass bell in the pointed steeple gleamed. Twenty families made their way on the walks and across the half acre of grass that surrounded the church towards the big open double doors. “Sanctuary,” Margaret breathed.

  John’s eyes were narrowed, scanning the entire churchyard. “Maybe, maybe not. Something’s wrong.” And in the instant of speaking he saw. Spaced throughout the incoming congregation were the tall hats and red coats and white crossed belts of British grenadiers with their muskets slung on their backs and bayonets mounted. The usual social buzzing and called greetings were missing while the congregation gathered in strained silence. John’s head turned while he looked for Warren and Thorpe and Palmer and Watson, but there was only Warren, walking with measured step towards the gaping church doors with his family, face a study of alert control. The captain and lieutenant leading John gave hand commands, and the soldiers that had boxed in the family for the last two blocks marched to their positions in the churchyard, while the two officers walked towards a sergeant near the street.

  “Keep walking,” John commanded his family, and they moved up the worn brick path through the open doors and down the narrow center aisle, following the family ahead of them. John slowed while his eyes adjusted to the light inside, waited until those ahead took their places, then continued towards the pew on the right side, fourth from the front, where the family usually sat. His eyes flicked over those already seated. Relief flooded as he picked out Thorpe and Palmer and Watson, each in his place, wives and children with them.

  The family settled into their seats, John on the aisle, Margaret next, Brigitte, the three children, and Billy beside Matthew. John waited for a moment, then turned to look. Spring sunlight flooded through the east bank of high stained-glass windows and cast a kaleidoscope of color on the congregation. The people sat wide-eyed, bewildered, whispering. The last person arrived and closed the main doors and took his place.

  Margaret closed her eyes, concentrating on the sounds outside in the churchyard. She heard faint, muffled commands of a British officer, then the sound of boots on the brick walkway, and then a muffled voice.

  “They’re not leaving,” she whispered to John.

  He pursed his mouth and nodded once and said nothing.

  “Would they dare come in here during church services with muskets and bayonets?” she breathed.

  “I don’t know. They’re here for a reason but I don’t know what.”

  “To arrest the committee?”

  At that moment the large clock on the wall behind the raised pulpit read ten a.m., and the small door beneath it rattled and the Reverend Silas Olmsted entered, cradling a large Bible in his right arm. His shock of white hair shined against his black robe, and he grasped the railing with his left hand as he climbed the two steps into the pulpit. He set the Bible down with a thump, and for a moment he struggled to set his wire-framed spectacles squarely on his nose before he tilted his head backwards to stare through them at his congregation. He laid his handwritten notes on the pulpit and raised his head to speak, when the rear doors burst open. Every person in the building jumped, their heads pivoted about, and they all gasped at once. Olmsted’s eyebrows arched in stunned surprise.

  The captain and the young lieutenant strode into the chapel, turned, and gave hand commands to the waiting regulars. The soldiers marched in, their boots clicking on the hardwood floor, and moved quickly, efficiently, down both outside aisles along the walls, groups of them dropping off at intervals. One marched past Olmsted to stand beside the exit door behind the pulpit. Another stopped squarely in front of the east exit door and stood at attention. The two officers remained at the head of the aisle by the big doors, facing Olmsted.

  Twenty men in the congregation came to their feet as one. Instantly Olmsted raised both hands and signaled them to sit down. Then he faced the captain at the far end of the center aisle. “Sir, this is a house of worship. What is the meaning of this?”

  “I have my orders,” the captain replied, and waved a folded document. “Control your congregation and the matter will be finished quickly with no one harmed.” His face once again showed the insolence that comes with authority and the force of arms. With the lieutenant beside him, he marched down the center aisle, stopped directly before the pulpit without looking at Olmsted, and pivoted on his heel. Then the two officers started back up the aisle side by side, the captain peering into the face of every person seated on his right, the lieuten
ant the left.

  “What are you doing?” Olmsted demanded. “Who are you looking for?”

  “Traitors!” the captain exclaimed, and his voice rang off the hard walls as he continued slowly up the aisle without looking back at Olmsted.

  The young lieutenant moved back up the aisle slowly, steadily, looking into every face. His eyes were noncommittal, probing, missing nothing. Margaret’s grasp on John’s arm became a death grip as he came to their pew. Brigitte felt her breath coming short, and suddenly her thoughts became confused and she felt the color rising in her face, and she did not know why. She could not focus her bewildered thoughts, and she stared straight ahead, feeling the outer fringes of fear for the first time in her life. John breathed shallow as the lieutenant stared into his face, and then the young, serious eyes moved on to Margaret, and then to Brigitte. The lieutenant paused in the instant of recognition, and suddenly Brigitte turned her face to his and she knew her face was flushed and that her eyes screamed her confusion and fear. She jerked her face forward and stared directly ahead while the lieutenant scanned the others and moved on. John drew a long, silent breath, waited five seconds, then turned to look at Warren, to his left, five rows back, on the far side of the aisle. Warren sat tall and rigid, staring defiantly at the captain moving towards him. The officer paused, nodded slightly to Warren, then passed on.

  “Adams and Hancock,” John whispered to Margaret. “That’s who they’re after. They know about the meeting last night and they think Adams and Hancock might be in town.”

  Margaret exhaled and loosened her grip and went limp.

  The officers reached the rear doors, turned once again to face Olmsted, and again gave hand signals to the regulars. The captain pushed the main doors open, and sunlight cast a bright rectangle into the chapel while the regulars marched clumping to the rear of the building and passed through the doors two by two, stooping to clear their bayonets through the door frame. The doors closed, and pandemonium exploded.