by Ron Carter
The two women were half a block away before the old, unpainted door closed. They walked back to the ferry in silence, each lost in her own thoughts, her own heartache for the small recluse whose pain of years ago had been so intense she had survived only by denying herself to love again, or be loved. They boarded the evening ferry and crossed the river, with the riffled water gold in the setting sun, and walked back to their homes in gathering dusk. Before they separated at Dorothy’s front gate, they both involuntarily looked northward, towards the river, across to Charlestown, at the place where the small house stood near the water.
In deep dusk, Beatrice McMurdy lighted a single lamp and walked to a cupboard in her kitchen. She held the lantern high and studied the cans on the shelf, then selected one with faded colored illustrations on the sides, unscrewed the lid, and raised it to her nose.
“Coffee. I can make coffee when they come back.”
She returned the can, then walked to another cupboard and carefully lifted down half a dozen dust-covered cups with hand-painted roses, and for a moment held them tenderly before replacing them.
The sudden knock at the door caught her by surprise and she stiffened for a moment, and then her heart leaped. “They came back,” she cried aloud, and hurried to the front door and threw it open, lamp held high. She gasped and recoiled.
“He’s not here!” she exclaimed. “He’s gone.” She tried to close the door, but one of the two men before her reached to hold it open. He was tall, dressed in the uniform of a ship’s first mate, full beard, black cap in hand. Behind him the second man, shorter, wore the clothing of a dockworker. The two had been at her home twice before, both times to speak in hushed tones and exchange papers with her son.
The tall man spoke. “We know, ma’am. We’re sorry to bother you at night, but before your son left we gave him some papers he was to return. He said you would be able to deliver them to us if he was not here.” His smile was wooden.
“What papers?”
“Business letters.”
“What kind of business?”
“Ships. Commerce.”
“He took all his papers when he left. Go away.” Again she tried to close the door.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. It’s important I have those papers. Would you look for them?” It was not a question.
“Come back in the daylight. I’ll look.” She was trembling, her voice scratchy.
“I sail in the morning. I need them now.” The forced smile was gone. His mouth was ugly, eyes narrowed.
She threw the door open. “His room is there. Satisfy yourselves.” She pointed and stepped back to give them passage. In the dim lamplight they walked through the parlor and opened the door into a small room with a bed against one wall, a chest of drawers against another, and a small, scarred table and chair in one corner with pen and ink. The air was close, dank. The taller man lighted the lamp on the desk, and the two began a systematic search of the room.
They stripped the bedding from the old grass mattress and tossed the mattress on the floor to search the bed frame. The smaller man brought a knife from the inner folds of his coat, slit the mattress on both sides, dumped the dried grass onto the floor and scattered it, then threw the mattress back onto the bed frame. They emptied the tiny closet and turned out the pockets in the old coat and the two soiled pairs of trousers, then threw them and the old shirts onto the pile of bedding. The tall man struck the closet walls with his fist, listening for any hollow sounds. There were none. They took the drawers from the chest one at a time, sorted through everything, and threw it all onto the growing pile. Then the shorter man kicked the chest to pieces, searching every part before they shoved the splintered wood over by the bed. They turned to the table in the corner, swept the pen and inkwell onto the floor, turned the table upside down and searched the underside, then did the same with the chair. There was nothing. Hanging on the wall was an old, faded framed painting of a green valley bordering the sea in Ireland, and they pulled it from the wall.
“Leave it! It’s my birthplace,” the woman cried.
They ripped the frame from the canvas, then slit the painting to be certain there were not two pieces of canvas with something between. They threw the wreckage beside the bed with the smashed chest.
There was no place else to look, no other article of furniture in the room. The tall man turned to the woman, defiant in a corner. “Did he keep anything in the rest of the house?”
“No,” she shrilled. “He kept himself and his business to his room. You’ve been there before. You know! He took your papers with him. I saw him. They’re not here.” She darted through the door, through the parlor, and into the kitchen, where she snatched up her broom. They followed and she met them in the middle of the parlor. She frantically flailed the taller man with the broomstick, shouting, “Get out of my house! Get out!”
He caught the broomstick and jerked it from her, then thrust his head forward and spoke low, thick anger in his voice. “We’ll leave for now, but if we find out he didn’t take the papers, we’ll be back, and you’ll give them to us.”
“Get out!” she screamed.
The shorter man turned, and the taller man backed up one step, then turned and followed him out the front door into the night. The woman slammed the door and dropped the oak bar into the brackets, then slumped onto a chair at the dining table and buried her face in her arms. She sat thus in the dim lamplight for a long time before she raised her head and wiped her eyes. She blew out the lamp, then settled against the back of the chair, staring wide-eyed into total blackness, listening for every sound. There was only the whisper of the night breeze from the Charles River.
A little past midnight she lighted the lamp and silently entered her son’s bedroom. She moved the bed frame and dropped to her knees near the wall. Then she carefully lifted a loose floorboard, set it aside, reached into the darkness beneath the floor, and lifted out a small wooden box. Inside were the treasures of her son’s life—a pocketknife with a broken blade; a top with the string still wound; a small worn book about tall ships that sailed to China; a note passed to him from a girl in his fourth year of school; a bosun’s whistle. She tenderly lifted them out one by one and looked at them through silent tears, until she reached the bottom of the box, and they were there. Six heavy brown packets tied tightly together with cord. She set them aside, replaced everything, and lowered the box back into its hole before she inserted the floorboard and moved the bed frame back to cover it.
Carefully she wrapped the packets in a cloth and clutched them to her chest. In her own bedroom she changed to her sturdy shoes and a better dress, tied her bonnet onto her head, and walked to her closet, where she opened a strong, small wooden chest on the floor and removed a leather pouch held closed by drawstrings. She opened it, counted the thirty-two gold coins, then closed the pouch and dropped it into her purse. She again sat at the dining table, put out the lamp, and waited for dawn.
At two o’clock her eyes closed and her head dropped forward. At two-fifteen she started, instantly awake. She sat motionless, staring, waiting to hear again the sound that had wakened her. Without moving, she closed her eyes and listened intently until she heard it again and knew whence it had come.
My bedroom! They’re trying to open the window!
She battled an overpowering urge to scream, to run, and rose to her feet. Without a sound she clutched her purse under her arm, moved through the kitchen to the back door, and carefully lifted the bar, then the latch. It opened soundlessly, and she slipped out into the darkness of a sliver of moon and stars. Turning to her left, she moved away from the house on the dirt path through the unfenced backyard, over a small sandy rise, and on down towards the sea. She hid behind the wreckage of a longboat long since washed ashore and half-buried in driftwood and rotting seaweed, and waited. A little past four o’clock she saw a glow rise in the sky and she watched, and she knew. She settled back into her hiding place and bowed her head in tears while her home burned to the ground.
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nbsp; In the bright eight o’clock morning sun she stood and carefully studied the beach, the streets leading to it, and the people as they went about their daily tasks. Then she quickly walked to the nearest street, into the safety of the morning traffic, and hurried on, watching furtively, to the dock of the Charlestown ferry. At eight-thirty she paid her fare and boarded the boat, and obscured herself in the crowd crossing the river for business in Boston.
The tall white spire of the Old South Church in Boston shined bright against the clear blue of the midmorning sky. The front doors were thrown open to the fresh smell of the flowers and the sea, while the Reverend Silas Olmsted swept the hardwood floors and Mattie, his wife, patiently worked with cloth and compound to shine the woodwork on the pulpit. Neither was prepared for the small, bent figure in an ancient dress, an old, faded bonnet, and a shabby, worn shawl that intruded into the vacant chapel, heels tapping loudly as she hurried down the aisle. Silas stopped the broom and walked to meet her.
“Good morning.” His words echoed in the cavernous chapel. “Is there something I can do for you?” He studied her cautiously.
Beatrice McMurdy glanced back at the doors nervously before she answered. “Is this the South Church?”
“Yes. I’m the Reverend Silas Olmsted.”
Beatrice’s eyes brightened with hope. “Do you know Brigitte Dunson? Dorothy Weems?”
Silas pursed his mouth for a moment. “Yes, I do.”
“Can you find them?”
He hesitated. “Do you have business with them?”
“I do.”
“Do they know you?”
“They were at my house yesterday.”
“I see. Where do you live?”
“Charlestown. Can you help me?”
Silas raised a hand to stroke his jaw thoughtfully for a moment. “I can take you there.”
“No!” Beatrice reached to grasp his arm. “Bring them here. I must talk to them here.”
“Are you in some kind of trouble?”
Beatrice ignored the question. “Will you bring them here?” Her bony fingers were clamped onto his arm, face drawn, eyes like points of light.
“Now?”
“Now!” She turned her head to once again look back, then faced Silas, waiting.
He patted her hand. “Brigitte works at the bakery, but I can probably bring Dorothy. Wait here. What is your name?”
“It’s not important. Tell her she visited me yesterday.”
Silas called to Mattie, “I’ll be gone for a few minutes. Could you make some coffee for this lady?”
Beatrice shook her head violently. “No coffee. Hurry.”
Silas turned on his heel and walked rapidly from the chapel, closing the doors behind. Ten minutes later Dorothy answered his knock. Five minutes later she had her flatirons off the stove and onto the cupboard and had Trudy on her way down to Margaret’s house. She hurriedly changed out of her housedress, and was tying her bonnet as she walked out the front door with Silas. Ten minutes later Silas swung the tall chapel doors outward and Dorothy entered and stopped. For long moments her eyes darted as she searched, Silas beside her, eyebrows arched in surprise.
“Where is she?”
They both started at the high voice from the corner. “Here. Is that you Dorothy Weems?”
Dorothy walked to her. “Yes. Why, Mrs. McMurdy, you’re terrified! What’s wrong?”
“I must talk to you alone. Is there a room?”
Silas nodded. “You can talk here. I’ll leave.”
Beatrice waited until Silas closed the door into his quarters behind the pulpit, then turned eagerly to Dorothy. She opened her purse and thrust the bundled letters into Dorothy’s hands. “Here. You take them. They came after them last night.”
“What are they?”
“I don’t know. I only know that the men who came had been at the house twice before and they left them with my son. Last night they came back and wanted them and I wouldn’t give them, so they ransacked my son’s room. I sent them away. They came back in the middle of the night and tried to break in, and I left with these. Those men are evil. They burned my house.”
Dorothy gasped. “They burned your home?”
“When they couldn’t find me, or these letters, they burned it. These letters must be important. I think they have something to do with my son being a Tory and getting killed. You take them. You’ll know what to do.”
Dorothy looked at the packets in her hands in utter disbelief. “I can hardly . . . you want me to have these? I have no idea what they’re about—what to do with them.”
“Read them. Take them to the sheriff or to the army. You do it.”
Dorothy forced her mind to settle. “You have no place to stay. Come to my home while we decide what to do.”
“No! If they followed me, they’ll come to your house and do damage. That’s why I had you come here. When I leave here I’m going to the docks and get passage on the first ship going north I can. After I’m gone you watch for those men. One tall with a beard and a black cap, the other shorter, red hair, from the docks. If you see them, go tell the militia.”
Dorothy hesitated a moment, accepting all Beatrice had said. “You’re going north?”
“I have family in Falmouth, what’s left of it. I can find someone there.”
“Falmouth? the one burned by the British?”
“Yes.”
“You have no clothes, no money.”
“I have money. I saved it.” She held up her purse. “I have to go now. Promise me you’ll take care of the letters. Maybe it’s one way to get something good from what Darren did.” Her lip quivered and she choked back tears. “Will you do it?”
“Yes. Of course. But won’t you at least stay tonight?”
“No. I won’t bring this down on you. I’ll get my ticket and I’ll hide until the ship sails. I’ll be all right. I have money.”
“I’ll do all I can.”
“Thank you. Thank you. Tell the young lady—Brigitte—that I thank her, too. Such a pretty thing—looks so much like my Madeline. You were both good to me. Don’t think too bad of my son.”
“Your son died bravely for something he believed in.”
“Maybe. I’m going. Watch for those bad men.” She turned from Dorothy and walked hurriedly to the front doors, with Dorothy following. With tears on her cheeks, she embraced Dorothy, and then she was out in the sunlight, hurrying from the church, head turning as her eyes darted everywhere.
Dorothy stood transfixed, the bundle of documents in her hands, watching the small, hunched figure until it was gone. She looked at the bundle for a time, while her mind struggled to understand all that had happened. She started at the sound of Silas’s voice from behind. “Did she leave?”
Dorothy turned. “She did. Silas, I need to talk.”
They sat facing each other in the high-ceilinged chapel, with the sun streaming through the stained-glass windows, making color patterns on the plain hardwood benches and floors, and for more than forty minutes Dorothy spoke in hushed tones while Silas’s eyes grew ever larger.
Dorothy stopped and heaved a great sigh. “This is the bundle of letters. I don’t know why those men wanted them.”
Silas leaned back, struggling to gather his scattered thoughts. Finally he shook his head. “Maybe we better look.”
For half an hour they pored over the documents, one at a time, and finally organized them into three piles. The first appeared to be a map showing a street and a house, but neither of them recognized the street or the house. On the back of the diagram was a tiny dot of ink, which meant nothing to them. Two documents had nothing more than two lines each drawn on them—one set of lines straight and parallel, the other curved and parallel. The other three documents appeared to be letters in which a business transaction was described involving freight rates for shipping hogs-heads of salt fish to an unnamed port.
Silas shook his head. “They burned her house over these?” He gestured at them, baffled
.
“She was terrified,” Dorothy said. “That poor woman.”
Silas stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Maybe there’s a secret message in this somewhere. Code, maybe.” He narrowed his eyes at Dorothy. “You said her son was in the Boston regiment. Should we take these to the militia office? Maybe they know about such things.”
Dorothy shrugged. “Maybe they do.”
Silas glanced out the door. “There’s still time this after-noon.”
“Let’s stop at the bakery for Brigitte.”
Brigitte walked with them in shocked silence as Dorothy talked. They stopped on the corner of Prince Street and Middle, before the old brick building with the plain sign “BOSTON OFFICE, PROVINCIAL CONGRESS.” Twenty minutes later a uniformed corporal showed them into a small, plain office with a sign on the door, “COLONEL J. ROBERT PEARLMAN.” The tall, sparse young officer motioned them to chairs and sat down facing them. His uniform was ill fitted, the blouse open at the throat.
“You have some documents you want us to see?” His eyes were steady as he studied the three civilians before him.
Dorothy leaned from her straight-backed chair to lay them on his desk.
“What are they? Why should the militia have an interest in these?”
“I don’t know. I only know two men burned the home of an elderly woman to get them, and that the woman’s son who had these documents was shot for spying.”
Pearlman’s eyes came to sharp focus. “Was he the one with the Boston regiment on the way to New York?”
“Yes.”
“I heard about it.” For ten minutes he concentrated on the documents, then raised his head and shrugged. “There’s something odd here, but I can’t tell what it is. Can I show these to our experts?”
“Yes. Can they make copies?”
He nodded. “Come back tomorrow at noon. I’ll return these to you.”
At eleven-thirty the next morning Brigitte and Dorothy stopped at the South Church. At twelve o’clock, with Silas, they entered the militia headquarters. Ten minutes later they were sitting at a table in a private room with Colonel Pearlman, opposite a square, dour, iron-chinned major with a clipped beard.