His voice grew fainter as he rounded the end of a low hill and swept
out of sight.
They stood looking at one another. “If you ask me, his wits are
addled,” said Gran stoutly. “He had a mad look in his eyes. I’d want
some further word--”
Then a chaise hurtled down the road, swaying from side to side, driven
by a lean woman with gray hair streaming about her shoulders and a
swansdown hat hanging on one ear. “The British!” she choked as the
chaise went rocking by.
After her came a young couple on horseback, and then three farm wagons
loaded with family groups and household goods. A wooden churn fell off
and rolled into the brimming gutter, but they did not stop to retrieve
it; they drove furiously on.
Nance stood there, as silent and rooted to earth as one of her own
hickory trees. Kitty and Sally Rose held hands tightly and looked at
each other, uncertain whether to laugh or be afraid, waiting to see
what would happen next.
Then it seemed as if half the Port went streaming by. Gran stood at the
side of the road and waved her beaded purse at the mad rout of chaises
and wagons, but nobody would stop for her. Finally a farmer hastened
by on foot, leading a plow horse that had gone lame. She stepped up
smartly and caught him by the front of his tow-colored smock. “Young
man, what is the meaning of this?” she demanded.
“God Almighty, are ye deaf, Mother?” he growled, spitting tobacco juice
into the dust of the road, just missing her dainty kid slipper. “The
British ha’ come ashore. Come ashore at Ipswich, and hacked their way
past Old Town Bridge. I rode over twenty dead bodies as I come from
there. They’ll be at the Port now, heading this way.”
For the first time Kitty began to feel that this was not some
ridiculous mistake. Her throat grew tight, and her nerves began to
tingle with fear.
“Where is everyone going?” she cried.
The farmer turned to answer her. “They’re all trying to get across
the river into Hampshire,” he said. “Some’s for the woods and swamps
nearby. Better get along yourselves. You’ll be the safer, the further
you can go.”
He urged his old horse forward again.
Gran turned back from the highroad as another half dozen wagons rattled
past. “He looked like an honest lad, and he saw it with his own eyes,
Nancy,” she admitted reluctantly. “You bundle up the children and
whatever food you’ve got on hand, and come along in our wagon. I’m
going to drive as hard as I can for Haverhill Ferry. I trust we’ll get
across.”
Nance, bewildered and numb with terror, tried to follow out Granny’s
instructions. Back in the kitchen she fumbled through the bin, brought
out a sack of potatoes, and stood there helplessly, holding it. Gran
reached past her. “Take the apples, instead,” she advised. “They’ll
taste better if we have to eat them raw.”
Finally the young wife got herself, the two children, and the
shawl-wrapped infant into the wagon. She sat on the seat with Granny,
and Kitty and Sally Rose crouched on a sack of turnips a farmer had
given them early in the afternoon. How long ago that seemed! In the
gathering twilight they drove swiftly along the winding river road.
The lower Merrimack Valley above the Port was not sparsely settled
country in those spring days of 1775. There were farmhouses and parish
churches and crossroads villages scattered all about it, and few
dwellers there who could not see their neighbor’s chimney smoke or
the lights of his kitchen when they looked out at night. But now the
peaceful district was overrun with strangers and refugees streaming
through.
Kitty and Sally Rose huddled together on the turnip sack for warmth,
looking back down the road every now and then, to see if the British
were in sight, if the glare of burning towns lighted the sky. But all
they could see were the frightened folk of Essex County hurrying for
the swamps and the forests, for the low hills of New Hampshire Colony
across the wide dark stream.
Women, and a few old or feeble men, were toiling across the farmyards
here and there, carrying favorite gowns, or chests of silver, or
pewter teapots to conceal them in wells and hollow trees. And from
almost every doorstep strong arms laboriously hoisted old folk and
invalids into carts to haul them away.
“What do you think’ll come of it, Kit?” asked Sally Rose in a low
worried voice. “Do you think Gran will take us over the river to
Haverhill? I don’t want to go to Haverhill. It’s a sleepy country town,
and it’ll be worse than the Port, with all the lads away. I’d almost
rather get caught by the British, I think.”
“But they’re cutting and slashing all before them,” Kitty reminded her
grimly. “That farmer said he rode over twenty dead bodies on the way.”
“Well, I do not think they would cut and slash me,” said Sally Rose,
smiling confidently in the dark. “Oh, Kit, look there!”
They were passing a tiny cottage half hidden by leafy apple trees. An
armchair had been placed firmly on a scrap of lawn, and in the chair
sat a man with a lantern beside him and a musket across his knees. He
was enormous, and almost perfectly round. “Let the British come!” he
shouted, and waved his musket. “I be too fat to budge for ’em! I’ll
stay here and shoot the bloody devils down!”
A little way farther on they came across a group of women bending over
another woman who lay on the ground in the curve of a stone wall.
Granny hesitated, and then drew rein. “Is the poor critter sick?” she
called to them. “Can I help? Perhaps we could make a place for her.”
A tall woman in a gray shawl straightened up. “No, thank’ee, Ma’am,”
she called crisply. “It’s only Aunt Hannah. She wheezes so with the
asmaticks, her noise would give us away to the British. We’re going to
cover her over with leaves and let her rest, all snug and out of sight,
here by the wall.”
At that Nancy Davis began to laugh. She laughed and laughed, and then
she began to cry. Gran slapped her face hard and drove on. “None o’
that foolishness, Nance,” she said severely. “Mind your children.
’Bijah would expect you to. Kitty and Sally Rose”--she lifted her
voice--“is all well with you back there?”
“Let’s not go any farther, Gran,” pleaded Sally Rose. “There are lights
at the inn we just passed by. If the folks haven’t run away, maybe
they’ll have beds for us. Maybe if we hide in bed, the British will
ride on and never know we’re there. I don’t want to go to Haverhill,
Gran.”
“When I say you’ll go to Haverhill, to Haverhill you’ll go,” said Gran,
and drove on into the night. “I hope I can make the ferry in time.”
Kitty sensed the note of anxiety in Gran’s voice, and that frightened
her more than anything that had gone before it. Not when the smallpox
struck and folk lay dying in every house in town, not when a great
tree crashed through the roof in the midst of an autumn storm, had she
known Gran to feel afraid. She looked over her shoulder again, and then
around her at the dark fields, the thickets here and there along the
road. Frightened women had come this way in other times, she knew, when
Indians with tomahawks lurked behind every tree. She had heard, too, of
the dreadful times at Salem that Nancy spoke about, when the devil had
walked abroad in Essex County, or folk thought that he had, though they
never saw the devil. The most terrible fear, she thought, is the fear
of an unseen thing. A British Army marching toward them with drums and
banners and bayonets would not be so terrible as the shadows that might
hold any nameless menace, the shadows drawing closer in....
She turned to Sally Rose, but Sally Rose was humming a little tune.
There was boredom rather than terror in her hazel eyes. Sally Rose had
found one redcoat to be a gallant and handsome lover, so she believed
they would all be that. But Kitty had heard tales of their cruelty to
Boston folk. She remembered that blood had been shed at Concord Fight
and on Lexington Green. She crouched on the turnip sack and shivered
with cold fear.
Somehow the road seemed to be less crowded now. No one had passed them
for half an hour. Then they met a little group of horsemen slowly
riding back. Granny hailed them.
“Are you headed for Newburyport? Is the battle over? Where are the
British?” she wanted to know.
The leader took off his cocked hat, and Kitty noticed that he had a
bald head and very black eyes. “We begin to think the British are in
Boston and have been there all along, that they never stirred from
there. We have found no trace of them, and we scoured the countryside.
The whole commotion is either a sorry jest or a coward’s error, it
seems. At least, we have recovered sufficient courage to ride back
toward Ipswich and see.”
“I suspected as much,” said Gran, tightening her mouth.
“Ho hum!” said Sally Rose.
The men rode off, and Gran pulled the wagon to one side of the road.
They were facing a small common with a white steepled church at the
edge of it. Houses clustered round about, darkened and deserted, their
doors hanging open, their inhabitants fled away. Overhead the elm
boughs tossed eerily in the light of the cold moon.
“Get out, girls, and stretch your legs,” Gran ordered. “Then I’m going
to turn around and drive back to my own house at the Port. You can come
with me, Nance, if you’re afraid to bide at home.”
“I’m not afraid any more,” said Nance wanly. “Not if the British
are still in Boston. Do you think they are still in Boston, Ma’am
Greenleaf?”
“I feel sure of it,” declared Gran firmly. “Well, the Bible says the
young men shall dream dreams. That’s what that lad who said he rode
over twenty dead bodies must ha’ done. Let’s all go over to the church
steps and give thanks to God. Dream, joke, or error, I don’t care which
it was. It’s over now, and high time we went home.”
The two children were asleep on the seat of the wagon, but Nance
carried the shawl-wrapped baby and held it in her arms as they knelt on
the church steps of gray old stone. Gran lifted up voluble thanks to
the Almighty, and Kitty’s attention wandered. She watched a husky youth
who had been hiding in the crotch of a pear tree climb sheepishly down
and sidle off, gnawing a piece of salt pork. He had apparently taken
provisions to his refuge, in case the British kept him treed for a long
time. The sight of the pork made her hungry, and Nance must have seen
it, too, and thought of food, but not for herself. The minute Gran rose
from her knees, she asked if they could wait while she suckled the baby.
“Why of course,” said Gran heartily. “My, there’s not been one peep
out of the little thing. I trust it hasn’t got smothered in all this
uproar.”
Nancy sat down on the step, carefully pulled the shawls away, and bent
her head while the others stood looking on.
Suddenly she screamed. They peered closer.
“God save our souls alive!” gasped Granny.
Sally Rose giggled. Kitty swallowed and made no sound at all.
In her haste Nance had wrapped up the wrong creature, and now it was
the half-grown yellow cat that slept peacefully in the crook of her
arm.
_Chapter Six_
FUN WHILE IT LASTED
The young man sat on the steps of the tavern by Ipswich Green and
stared about him; at the old brown roofs with yellow moss growing on
their seaward sides, at the little rocky river that flowed like liquid
amber under its stone bridge, at the steepled church on the rocky hill.
Shadows lay long in the deserted streets of Ipswich, and far to the
west the sun was going down.
The young man wore a rough woolen shirt and homespun breeches. He had a
cleft chin, deep blue eyes, and black curly hair. He looked uncommonly
pleased about something.
The landlord came to the open doorway behind him and stood there,
peering into the dusk. He was a short plump man with a lame leg and a
worried expression.
“Not a sign o’ the British yet, be there, lad?” he asked anxiously.
The young man shrugged his shoulders. “Could be they’ve turned aside
and gone another way,” he said in a lilting tone. “Well, I guess I’ll
be taking the road myself, while there’s a bit o’ the daylight left.
How far did you tell me it was to Newburyport, sir?”
The landlord shifted his feet uneasily. “It’s a piece of a journey yet,
and the roads will doubtless be clogged with fleeing folk, if one’s
to judge by the rout that streamed out of here; likewise the half o’
Beverly tagging through. Why not stay the night? I’ll give ye free
lodging. It’ll mean there’s one able-bodied man in town, besides a
handful of petticoat folk.”
Again the young man shrugged his shoulders. “Well enough, if ’twill
please you--and supper be included in the offer.” He got to his feet
and stood there smiling.
“Come in, lad, come in,” cried the landlord in relieved tones. “Come,
and I’ll give ye supper, such as ’tis. Cook’s run off to the hills like
all the rest, but my daughter Nanny’s here, and Nanny can do. Come and
bring your box, if ye will. Where’d ye say ye be from? Have ye traveled
far?”
The young man stooped and lifted a small leather chest bound with iron.
Deep in the lid was burned the name “G. Malory.” It was a peculiarity
of his that although he often played other men’s parts and wore other
men’s clothing, he would never abandon his own name.
“Barnstaple,” he said. “Gerry Malory of Barnstaple, shoemaker.”
“Barnstable? Down Cape Cod, ain’t it? A fair ways from here.”
“Yes, Barnstaple’s a fair ways off,” said the young man.
Together they stepped into the dark smoky taproom. It was deserted
except for a little maid, scarce more than a child, who stood in the
doorway of the kitchen.
The landlord went to the hearth and stirred the dwindling fire. “What’s
in the pot, Nanny?” he asked.
“Dandelions,” said Nanny pertly. “Dandelion greens and a ham bone. But
the ham bone don’t smell like it should, Father.”
“Warm up the chowder then,” he ordered, and turned to his guest. “Are
ye handy with firearms, Gerry?”
“I’ve a pistol in my chest here, among my shoemaker’s tools. Guess I
know what to do with it.”
“No, no,” cried the landlord impatiently. “I got no faith in such pop
guns. I mean a man-sized weapon. Son Rob took my musket to Cambridge,
but there’s a fowling piece hung up on the kitchen wall. I don’t see as
well to aim as I did once. Who was it spread the word about town? Did
ye happen to hear?”
The shoemaker shook his head. “I couldn’t say, sir. As I told you
before, I was just passing through here on my way to Newburyport to see
a girl, when all at once a great stir began, and folks went rushing to
the green. Somebody shouted that the British had landed at Ipswich Bar
and were cutting and slashing all before them. Next thing I knew, the
wagons started rolling out of town, and everyone took to the highway,
afoot and on horseback. I watched them for awhile, and then came here
to catch my breath and maybe have a bite of supper.”
Again the landlord went to the door and peered nervously into the
thickening night. “Not a light in town,” he said. “Folk that hasn’t
fled away be keeping their houses dark, ’twould seem. Do ye mind if I
don’t light up, lad? Can ye see by the glow o’ the fire?”
“’Tis no trick to find a mouth the size of mine,” said the young man
gallantly. Then as Nanny put a steaming bowl on the table in front of
him, his nostrils quivered. “Did the ham smell stronger than this, my
lady?” he asked her.
“Yes,” said Nanny flatly, stepping back into the kitchen.
He sat down on a bench, picked up a ladle, and tasted the chowder
gingerly.
“None for me, Nanny,” called her father. “I be that worried about the
British, I wouldn’t relish victuals none.”
“Right, sir,” said Gerry, putting down the ladle. “It comes to me that
I, too, am worried about the British. Still, a piece of bread now--it
need not have butter--I could eat it dry.”
“Slice up a loaf of bread, Nanny,” called the landlord.
Nanny’s thin piping voice came back from the kitchen. “The bread’s
moldy. All that wasn’t, we sent to Cambridge.”
Gerry Malory sighed resignedly. “Well, perhaps a glass of milk
then--unless all the cows have fled away. Nothing stronger. I must keep
a clear head on me.”
The landlord himself brought a pitcher of milk and poured two glasses
full.
“Be ye just up from the Cape, Gerry? And did ye come by Cambridge?
We’ve had no news from there since the word o’ Concord Fight come
through.”
The young man shook his head. “I haven’t been near Cambridge, and it’s
a long time since I went Barnstaple way.”
“Where ye been, then?”
“Oh--round Charlestown most of the time, I guess. You know Job
Townsend’s tavern there?”
“Job Townsend? Keeps the Bay and Beagle, don’t he? In Crooked Lane near
Harvard Street. I knowed him when he was your age. Too bad. He lost his
wife young. Got a right pretty daughter, I’ve heard. Sally Rose, or
something like.”
“Yes, he’s got a pretty daughter,” said Gerry Malory, draining his
glass. “I been around the Bay and Beagle some.”
“I don’t get down that way much myself,” said the landlord
thoughtfully. “What’s the news thereabout? Do they think the British’ll
fight? And if they do....”
The young man shook his head solemnly. “You got no chance against the
British,” he said.
The landlord looked up sharply. “Ye say ‘you’ and not ‘we,’” he
protested. “Does that mean Barnstable don’t intend to join against
the cruel laws o’ the King? That they be not with the rest o’
Massachusetts? The Hampshire towns be with us, and I hear that so be
the west and south, New York and Virginia, too.”
“Oh no, no, I do not mean that at all,” cried the young shoemaker.
“’Twas a slip of the tongue. Of course Barnstable--on Cape Cod--will
join cause with you. I only mean that the outlook is dark, sir, dark,
for those who would fan the flames of rebellion in America.”
He put down his empty glass and leaned forward, his hands clenched
before him on the table. “How can _we_ defend a thousand miles of
seacoast with only a few scattered towns, against a great battle fleet
of three hundred ships and armed men? We can scarce put thirty thousand
soldiers in the field. England has one hundred and fifty thousand, and
can summon more. We lack guns, ammunition, money, and trade. More than
that, we lack the tradition of love of country, a tradition that will
make the meanest man fight and die bravely. For a thousand years men
have been giving their lives for England. What man has ever given his
life for America before?”
“Sounds like you been listening to some Tory make speeches, lad.
Happens there was a few gave their lives at Concord and Lexington the
day before yesterday,” retorted the landlord. “There’s a first time
for everything, Gerry.” His voice was milder than the milk in his
half-empty glass, but his eyes held a sharp look, a look of question.
Suddenly his face went white.
“Lord in heaven, I’ll fetch the gun for ye! Here they come!” he cried,
dashing from the room, tripping over a footstool unseen in the light of
the fire.
Gerry Malory lifted his head. He heard a shouting in the road, the
creak of wagons rumbling along. He, too, got up, went to the door, and
stared out into the soft April night. The moon had not yet risen, but
as he turned to look to the north he could see swaying lights and
shadowy figures, moving painfully slow, but drawing closer. He waited,
silent, to see what would emerge out of the dark.
As the cavalcade became more sharply visible, he saw that it consisted
of three oxcarts piled with boxes, kegs, and baskets, escorted by some
half dozen men. The oxen lumbered along wearily, and the men seemed
weary, too, as they plodded at the side. They were not young men, but
grayish and old and frail, except for a thin-faced lad with tow-colored
hair and an ancient gun gripped casually in his right hand. The wagons
drew to a halt in front of the tavern, one man stayed with the oxen,
and the others came forward eagerly, seeking refreshment.
Gerry stepped back into the taproom and turned to face the landlord who
rushed out of the kitchen with a badly rusted gun held in front of him.
“No British,” he said reassuringly. “Just some teamsters who want to
wet their whistles, I expect.” He retired to the shadows near the great
chimney, found a stool there, and sat down.
The landlord bustled forward to welcome the visitors. In a few moments
they were seated at the table, and Nanny was helping her father to set
out food and drink, greens, ham bone, chowder, and all.
“Not a fit man amongst us,” sighed the oldster with a face like a
russet apple and a scar across his forehead. “I fought in too many wars
already. But once we get these stores to Cambridge, likely I’ll stay
there and enlist for one more.”
“Don’t know how we’d ha’ got this far, if this Hampshire lad hadn’t
o’ertaken us,” said another. He turned to the thin-faced youth who was
eating chowder, the old blunderbuss leaning against the table close to
his elbow. “We was sure glad to see you, Tom Trask, when our cart broke
down the other side of Rowley last night. A proper wheelwright you
turned out to be.”
Tom Trask did not look up from his chowder. “Be a wheelwright when I
have to,” he muttered, “or most any other sort of thing.”
“Tell me, lads,” questioned the landlord eagerly, “did ye see aught of
the British that’s supposed to be marching on us, cutting and slashing
all before?”
“We heard the rumor, o’ course,” went on the russet-cheeked man, “and
saw the rout go past. Didn’t trouble us none. We kept on our way.
Word’s gone about now, that there be doubts the British ever was nearer
than Boston. Truth to tell, sir, I surmise we been made fools of.”
The landlord made a clucking sound with his thin lips. Tom Trask was
staring hard at the small iron-bound leather box on the table in front
of him.
“Who’s that there belong to?” he asked suddenly.
“That--oh, that belongs to Gerry Malory over in the corner. Gerry’s a
shoemaker from Barnstable--on his way to Newburyport to see a girl.”
The landlord’s voice was gay and jovial in his relief, now that he
had no further cause to fear the British. After all, he had not fled
away at the false rumor. He had not been made a fool of. He strutted a
little as he walked about the room, filling the glasses, replenishing
the fire. When his shame-faced neighbors came straggling back, he’d be
able to indulge himself in a boast or two. Then suddenly he pricked up
his ears. The tow-headed lad from New Hampshire Colony was speaking. He
held the leather chest in his hands, turning it about.
“‘G. Malory,’ it says here. And Landlord says G.’s for Gerry. Gerry
Malory--going to Newburyport to see a girl.” He sounded thoughtful.
The landlord noticed that the young shoemaker from Barnstable had edged
his stool further back into the shadows. He said no word.
“Seems to me,” went on Tom Trask, “I might know what girl he’s going to
see. A peacock-proud girl named Sally Rose, I wouldn’t wonder. Seems to
me I heard o’ Gerry Malory.”
His voice deepened, and there was a sharp edge to it that caught the
attention of everyone in the room and made them listen.
“That’s her!” cried the landlord excitedly. “Sally Rose! Job Townsend’s
daughter! He said he hung around the Bay and Beagle some!”
Still the young man in the shadows did not speak.
“The Gerry Malory I heard of,” went on Tom Trask, “was said to be a
captain in the Twenty-third. That’d mean he’s a British officer.” He
waited accusingly.
The landlord slapped his thigh. “Well, pickle my brains in rum!” he
cried. “I think ye be right, lad. He was talking like a Britisher just
before ye got here. Saying times was dark for us, and no man would give
his life for America. Out o’ that corner, sir, and answer the charge!
Be ye a lobsterback come in disguise among us?”
Then indeed Gerry Malory stepped forward. “You’ve mistaken yourselves,”
he said easily. “There may be a man with the same name as mine in the
ranks of the British. I doubt that I be the first Gerald Malory since
the world was made. I doubt if I be the last. I be a shoemaker of
Barnstable, loyal as any man here.”
“Loyal to what?” demanded Tom Trask. Then he bent down, pulled off one
crude cowhide boot, and held it out. “Here. I got a hole clear through
my sole leather tramping these rocky roads of Essex County. If you be a
shoemaker, prove it! Cobble my boot!”
Gerry Malory took the boot in his hands and examined it. Then he
shook his head. “’Tis scarce worth fixing, my good man,” he said
condescendingly. “Get yourself a new pair when you arrive in
Cambridge. That is the best advice I can give you.”
“You lie,” said Tom Trask steadily. “I can fix it myself, if you’re
unable. All I ask you to do is prove you be a shoemaker.”