by Ron Carter
Margaret did not know how long she sat on her bed. She only knew that a great black cloud was crushing her mind and heart and thoughts. John gone—Matthew—Tom—shooting—a second British column—Brigitte moving headlong into heartbreak. Slowly Margaret took control of her swirling thoughts and brought them under control and faced the single question that she had steadfastly avoided.
If John doesn’t come back?
She could invent no answer. Her hands began to tremble and she felt beads of perspiration, but she could not force her mind into a world without John. She rose and started for the door, then turned back to the bed and dropped to her knees.
“Dear God . . .” Minutes passed while she pleaded with all her heart, and finally she finished and dropped her face forward onto her clasped hands. Her shoulders trembled with quiet sobbing while she waited for an answer, a feeling, anything, and it would not come. The heavens were sealed against her.
By force of will she stood and wiped her eyes and walked to the kitchen. She finished the breakfast dishes, and made the beds, and started back for the kitchen.
The men will be back for supper. I better start supper. She glanced at the clock. Eleven-fifty a.m., Wednesday, April 19.
Too early. If I fix supper now it will be cold. I’ll wait.
She stopped to listen. Is that the children coming? No, it’s only noon. Did Matthew wear his walking shoes? She hurried down the hall to his bedroom and looked in his closet. Yes, he did. Good. He’ll need them, walking home.
Suddenly she gasped and stopped. What’s wrong with me? Supper in the morning—the children coming home at noon—Matthew’s shoes! If I keep this up I’ll lose my mind!
She walked purposefully to her room and quickly changed clothes, then opened the back door and called to Brigitte, “I’m going to see Phoebe. You wait here for the children. Give them honey and bread and milk, and keep them here. I’ll tell them about Father and Matthew.”
She tied her bonnet tightly under her chin and picked her shawl from the coat tree as she walked out the door into the beauty of the day. Ten minutes later she opened the gate into the Thorpe yard and walked to the front door and rapped. The door swung open and Kathleen stood in the door frame, face impassive, mouth set. For a moment the women faced each other, and then Kathleen’s chin began to tremble and Margaret stepped forward and folded her inside her arms, and Kathleen clung to her and began to sob. A time passed before Kathleen quieted and stepped back, and Margaret followed her inside and closed the door.
“How can I help?” Margaret asked quietly.
Kathleen’s eyes didn’t leave the floor. “You can’t. No one can.”
“It can’t be that bad,” Margaret said, and touched Kathleen’s cheek.
“It is. We’ve had visitors. With threats.”
“Who would do such a thing?”
“We didn’t recognize them.”
“Did they harm any of you?”
“They threatened to burn the house.”
“I’ll tell the sheriff. Is Phoebe awake?”
“The doctor gave her a powder. She’s sleeping. She should be awake soon.”
Margaret folded her shawl and hung it over the back of a chair. “Matthew said you sent him away.” She looked into Kathleen’s eyes, probing.
“I did. For his sake.”
“No, not for his sake. Matthew wants you.”
“I will never hold him to his promise.”
“He doesn’t want your release. He needs you.”
Kathleen shook her head slowly, and again her eyes fell. Then she raised them to Margaret’s. “There is no place my family can go. We have become outcasts among all we love.” She battled to hold back the tears.
“That’s not true.”
“It is true. Father could be hanged. The name Thorpe will be infamous. I would not put that on Matthew.”
“Do you love him?”
“More than life.”
“Then go west with him. Begin a new life.”
“It would follow us.”
Margaret drew and exhaled a weary breath. “One week ago our world was good. Now look. Henry gone. John and Matthew off to war. Neither of us knows if we will ever have our men back again.”
Kathleen recoiled, and her hand leaped to cover her mouth for a moment. “Matthew has gone to Concord?”
“Yes. John too. They left early this morning.”
“With muskets?”
“Yes. To fight, if it starts.”
Kathleen could not stifle the moan that rose to choke her, and she buried her face in her hands and her shoulders shook. Margaret remained still and silent, allowing her her moment of grief.
Finally Kathleen wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands and squared her shoulders. “If anything happens to either of them it will be partially the fault of my father.”
“Child, don’t think like that! John and Matthew made their choice, and they’re responsible for what comes of it.”
“Kathleen!” Phoebe’s voice reached from the master bedroom. “Is someone there?”
Margaret started for the bedroom wing. “I’ve got to see her,” she said, and Kathleen hurried to follow.
The door swung open and Phoebe rose on one elbow. Her eyes were wild, distraught, her face drawn and sallow. She saw Margaret and slumped back onto her pillow and turned away and covered her face as she sobbed. Margaret sat on the side of the bed and tenderly took hold of her shoulder and waited. The racking sobs died, and Margaret spoke. “Can I help? Can I do something? Anything?”
Phoebe twisted and reached to grab Margaret with both arms, and she clung to her as she wept. “Forgive us. Forgive us. Forgive us,” she repeated over and over.
Margaret held her close and stroked her hair. “There’s nothing to forgive. We all had choices to make. We can’t judge what’s in the hearts of others, or why they chose as they did. That is for God.”
“Margaret, Margaret, what am I going to do? Where will we go? Where can we take the children?”
“For now, nowhere. Stay here.”
“We’ve had threats.”
“The sheriff will watch.”
“What if they come at night to burn my home?”
“I’ll have the sheriff send a deputy to watch at night.”
Phoebe settled back onto her pillow and wiped red eyes with a handkerchief.
“Have you sent food to Henry?” Margaret asked.
Phoebe’s eyes widened. “I never thought of it.”
“I’ll send a basket,” Margaret said.
“Has John talked about Henry?” Phoebe asked hesitantly.
“John is gone to Concord. Matthew too.”
“To fight?”
“If fighting starts, yes.”
Phoebe’s tortured eyes turned to Margaret’s. “Our husbands are enemies. How did it ever happen?”
Margaret shook her head. “They both followed their loyalties. They are not enemies.”
The front door rattled and the sound of the children reached the bedroom.
Phoebe sobered. “The children are home from school.” Her face went white. “Kathleen, fetch them here, this instant.”
Kathleen led them into the room, and they stood facing their mother. They looked at Margaret for a long moment, then back to their mother. They were silent, subdued. Charles’s clothing was rumpled.
“What happened to you, Charles?” Phoebe demanded.
“Nothing.” Charles’s eyes dropped.
“Yes, it did,” Faith said. “Jeremy Gould said Father was in jail, and Charles wrestled him.”
Phoebe gasped, and Kathleen knelt beside Charles and brushed off his clothing and tucked in his shirttail.
“Mama,” Faith said hesitantly, “what is a traitor?”
Phoebe clamped her mouth closed to cut off a cry, and Kathleen faced Faith. “Why do you want to know?”
“Because that’s what Jeremy called Papa.”
“You two go on out to the kitchen and I’ll be
out in a minute to get bread and jam. Go on.”
Faith hesitated. “Why is Mama in bed? Is she sick?”
“We’ll talk about that later,” Kathleen said and took them both by the shoulders, turned them around, and gently pushed them towards the door. She waited until their footsteps stopped in the kitchen; then she closed the door and turned to Phoebe. “We have to tell them.”
Phoebe’s eyes closed and tears flooded. Margaret sat on the bed, leaned over and slipped her arms about her, and held her for a time while the silent tears rolled.
Margaret could find nothing to say. She stood and faced Kathleen. “I should go. You will be in my prayers.”
Kathleen nodded and led Margaret out the front door of the house, and Margaret paused and turned and looked deeply into Kathleen’s eyes. “I don’t know why this all happened—why you have to bear all this on your young shoulders. I don’t know. I will take food to your father. Can I bring food to you?”
Kathleen shook her head. “No. I love you, Margaret. For all you have been, and for being here now. But I can’t let you be drawn into this.”
Margaret reached and touched her cheek, and Kathleen grasped her hand and kissed it and held it, and tears came, and Margaret’s heart was bursting. She waited until Kathleen released her hand, and then she turned and walked with firm, measured stride to the front gate and turned up the street towards home.
______
Notes
Brigadier General Hugh Percy was given command of the relief column sent out by General Thomas Gage upon receipt of the message from Lieutenant Colonel Smith, delivered by Lieutenant Ambrose, requesting a support-and-relief column (see French, The Day of Concord and Lexington, p. 226).
Wednesday, April 19, 1775
Chapter XIV
* * *
Warm spring rains had greened the wooded hills that cradled Concord valley and drawn the grasses and flowers on the low, rolling meadows and fields of the valley floor into a brilliant mosaic of reds and yellows and blues.
Concord Town had grown near the center of the valley. The cemetery and liberty pole, courthouse, tavern, millpond, and meetinghouse formed the south end of the town, where the road from Lexington entered, curving around the base of the south hill. At the north end of town, the Assabet and Sudbury Rivers joined to form the Concord River, and the North Bridge spanned the Concord to give access from the town into the north end of the valley. Some distance north of the bridge, Punkatasset Hill rose to give a commanding view of the town. Just south of the bridge, the beautiful Emerson mansion stood at the head of the great, open green. The west side of town straddled the Mill Brook that flowed south from the Concord River to power the mill. The east side of town clustered about the road that carried traffic northward from the Lexington Road.
Concord was the county seat of Middlesex County, the center of politics, commerce, government, and colonial society for miles around. For decades it had been the hub to which all Middlesex roads led. Armies had ventured forth from Concord to punish marauding Indians and the French. For a century, news of the profound events that had changed the face of the new and struggling nation had proceeded from Concord. Thus it was that when the Massachusetts colonials stubbornly dug in their heels against the British, no one questioned that the munitions and cannon and supplies to fight would be gathered in Concord, to be hidden in barns and wells and attics, and the cannon buried in furrows plowed in fields. And no one questioned that inevitably, sooner or later, as certain as the tides of the sea or the rising of the sun, the British would come to Concord to get them.
As the British column on the Lexington Road marched steadily towards the south end of town, and the colonial militia and minutemen streamed into Concord from all points of the compass to meet them, a strange, unsettled feeling crept through the valley, as though it were in the very air they breathed. It was to be British regulars against largely untested farmers and craftsmen, with a single question riding heavy on both sides.
If shooting started, would the colonials buckle?
Tom Sievers felt the crackling tension as he led Matthew past the cemetery and millpond and courthouse into the south fringes of town, three-quarters of a mile ahead of the British. He stepped off the road to allow a colonial officer to lead a short column of militia trotting at double time directly towards the incoming British, and then Tom slowed to study the jumbled confusion that was Concord.
People with horse-drawn carts and wagons jammed with hogsheads of dried fish and salt beef, half barrels of gunpowder, kegs of shot, barrels of flour, and crated medical supplies moved away from Concord on every road, while men from outlying villages and towns trotted into Concord, clutching their muskets as they searched for the gathering point for their militia units. Some women and children mixed among them on the Green, and more stood near the homes that fronted on the roads to watch the gathering of the colonial army.
“There,” Tom exclaimed, and pointed to a knot of officers near the center of the Green, south of the Emerson mansion. They were shouting orders and giving emphatic hand directions as they struggled to get their confused command organized into rank and file.
“Follow me, and keep a sharp eye for your father.” Tom worked his way into the bustling throng. He grasped the arm of a stocky young man as he trotted past and asked, “Where’s Barrett, or Buttrick?”
“Right up there giving the orders,” he replied, and pointed, and was gone.
From earliest memory, the names of five families had been woven deep into the fabric of the history of Concord. Barrett, Buttrick, Hosmer, Prescott, and Davis. In times of war and peace, of famine and plenty, in politics or church, in joys and sorrows, the men and women of those families had taken their beloved valley on their shoulders and carried it, at any cost. Their dead lay in honored glory in the small cemetery on the hill south of town. And now it was Colonel James Barrett and Major John Buttrick who had been elected to assume command of the untried, unproven militia as they prepared to face the flower of the British army. Joseph Hosmer was appointed adjutant, and Captain Isaac Davis commanded the minuteman company from the tiny village of Acton.
Tom worked his way through the confusion and stopped in a press of milling men who were gathered around Barrett and Buttrick, listening for directions as to where the companies were assembling. Barrett was shouting the names of the towns represented and pointing in various directions, and Tom listened intently. Lincoln, Bedford, Lexington, Carlisle, Westford, Cambridge, Waltham, Menotomy, Mystic, Littleton, Chelmsford, Groton, Stow, and more—the men listened until Barrett called the name of their unit and pointed, then worked their way outward, looking for their officers and familiar faces.
“Boston,” Barrett shouted, and pointed toward the mansion of the Reverend William Emerson on the Green close to the North Bridge.
“Come on,” Tom said to Matthew, and worked his way out of the crowd and walked hurriedly toward the mansion, watching for the first familiar face from the Boston militia.
“Matthew!”
The shouted name and the familiar voice stopped Matthew short, and he exclaimed, “Billy! That was Billy Weems!” At that moment he saw the grinning face as Billy shoved his way through the crowd towards them. “Billy!”
Billy Weems threw his free arm about Matthew, and for a moment the two boys stood locked in the embrace of oldest and most beloved friends, and then they stepped apart.
“Billy! You’re here?” Matthew was incredulous.
“Wouldn’t miss it! I thought you’d be home with Kathleen.”
Matthew’s eyes dropped. “Things aren’t good.”
Billy’s face clouded. “Your father told me about Henry. I could hardly believe it.” He looked at Tom. “How are you, Mr. Sievers?”
“Good. Seen John?”
“Come on,” Billy said, and spun on his heel and started north at a trot.
They were there, east of the Emerson mansion—Telford and a host of the Boston militia—and as they approached, John
Dunson emerged from their midst and trotted to meet the incoming trio.
He threw his arm about Matthew’s shoulder. “You’re safe!”
Matthew nodded. “You’re all right?”
“Yes.” John looked at Tom. “Everything all right at home?”
“They got Ingersol. Margaret is holding up.”
“Thank you, Tom.”
John turned back to Matthew, studying his face, his eyes, searching for a sign that would tell him if his son was whole and sound, his mind free to work unfettered in the crisis that could come any moment. He saw the flat look in Matthew’s eyes, the clenched mouth, the preoccupation, and he felt a rise of concern. He opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by a shout from a thin man who came running.
“Boston militia!”
All eyes shifted to the thin-faced man. There was no time to talk to Matthew.
“Over here,” someone answered.
“Who’s in charge?”
“Captain Ben Telford,” John answered, and pointed.
The man turned to Telford. “Colonel Barrett wants you right now. And he wants John Dunson from the Committee of Safety, and Tom Sievers.”
Telford and John started back towards Barrett, and John turned and motioned to Tom, who fell in beside them as they worked their way to the colonel.
“Why does Barrett want me?” Tom asked, his face drawn in puzzlement.
“Barrett wants me to repeat the orders from the Committee of Safety, and he might ask you to talk to these men about the things we learned to stay alive in battle. Be ready.”
“You told him about me? us?”
“You can save lives by telling them.”
Tom shrugged.
Colonel Barrett, with Major Buttrick on his right, raised his hands and shouted, “Quiet! We have no time to waste.”
Thirty-eight men, the leaders of every unit of militia and minutemen, gathered close around him, brows furrowed, mouths straight lines as they concentrated.
At sixty-four years of age, Colonel Barrett stood just under six feet in height and was sturdy, with regular features and blue eyes that missed nothing. He was a born leader, called by unanimous vote to take command, despite his own protest that his age was against him. He raised his hand to silence the group and spoke. “John Dunson from the Committee of Safety is here. I’ve asked him to give you our orders.” He turned to John.