two young men. Gerry Malory studied the boot in his hand. He frowned.
“Well enough,” he said. He opened the small chest and fumbled inside
it, took out a wooden last, hammer, and awl, a packet of pegs and
nails. “Ah, this should do it,” he murmured judiciously. He selected
a strip of leather and tried to fit it over the ragged hole Tom had
pointed out.
All eyes were upon him. No lips made any comment. He gripped the boot
with one hand under the instep. He fitted the leather over the hole
with the other hand. Then he stood there, conscious suddenly that he
had no third hand to set the nails in place, no fourth hand to wield
the hammer. He put the boot down and started all over again.
But his face was growing hot and his fingers even more clumsy. Suddenly
he ceased his efforts. “I am sorry,” he said. “I forgot my most needful
tool. You must wait until you get to Cambridge, unless you can find
another cobbler.”
Tom Trask stood up. He held the old gun lightly in his hand. “Your most
needful tool is there,” he said, “but you don’t know enough to know it.
Put the boot on the last, you should have. That would ha’ held it firm,
and left your hands free to get on with your cobbling. Right enough,
we’ll go to Cambridge, and we’ll take you along as our prisoner,
Captain Malory o’ the Twenty-third. All the world can see you’re no
shoemaker. Johnny Stark will know what to do with you. Landlord, have
you a length of rope, or better, a few links of chain, about the place?
For safety, we’ll tie him up now.”
Gerry Malory, of Barnstaple in English Devon, bit his lip and stared
around him somewhat wildly. That cursed Yankee with the gun that looked
as if it came out of Noah’s ark stood between him and the open doorway.
He doubted if it would shoot, but even if it didn’t, its owner looked
like no easy man to handle. And the Yankee had his friends about him.
While he hesitated, two old men ambled forward and bound his wrists
together with a heavy length of clanking chain. Then they stepped back,
and the whole company continued to stare at him.
“Captain,” said Tom Trask thoughtfully, “I be not so sure as I was
that you come this way to see a girl. Likely you did, but likely, too,
you might ha’ spread the false report that the British was upon us. It
might ha’ been a word o’ yours that sent us flying over hills far and
wide as if the devil was after. A fool’s prank, maybe--maybe a smart
trick to spread confusion amongst us.”
Suddenly Gerry Malory remembered the scenes of the afternoon: lean
spinsters rocking along like giraffes in the animal garden on Tower
Hill, fat men waddling off, their faces red and their eyes popping with
panic. He laughed aloud and looked down at his hands bound stiffly in
front of him.
“In either case, it was fun while it lasted,” he said.
_Chapter Seven_
OFF TO THE WARS IN BOSTON
“Cousin, I see no future for us in this place,” said Sally Rose bleakly.
She was sitting in the soft grass on the hill behind the Frog Pond,
looking down the dusty street that led through the Port, straight to
the wharves and warehouses along the river.
Kitty pulled herself up on her elbow and let her glance follow her
cousin’s. There appeared to be as many white sails in the channel as
usual, the same blue spring haze on the far shore, and the familiar
curve of sky overhead. But the town below them, commonly bustling with
life on a warm May afternoon, looked strangely deserted and still. A
brown dog slept in the middle of High Street, and two old men hobbled
past the Wolfe Tavern in the direction of Market Square. A farm cart
ground its slow way towards Old Newbury, and a group of children ran
hither and thither across the training green with laughter and shrill
cries.
Kitty pulled a golden dandelion blossom from the grass and began to
tear it apart in her fingers. “I think I see what you mean, Sally
Rose,” she said. “It is dull here with no one to talk to but grown
folk--and of course, the other girls. I never realized how many girls
there are in town. There never seemed to be so many before. I never
thought I bothered myself much about the lads, but what a difference it
makes--now they are all gone away.”
“Gone, and not likely to return very soon, from what I hear,” said
Sally Rose thoughtfully. “A few have come home, but mostly the older
men with families, or the fainthearted ones. Last night I heard Uncle
Moses telling Granny they plan to stay where they are and form a mighty
army that will circle round like a wall of iron to keep the British
penned in Boston.”
“Then there’s no knowing when they’ll be home,” answered Kitty. It made
her uneasy to admit to herself, as she had been forced to do, that
all her eagerness and anxiety were not for her long-time friend, Dick
Moody, but for that other one, the thin lad from New Hampshire who had
taken her father’s blunderbuss away.
“No knowing,” agreed Sally Rose. “Three weeks it’s been since Concord
Fight, maybe more. More than a month since I’ve seen Gerry. I thought
he might write to me, but he never has. Some of the Tory girls in
Boston are very fair,” and she sighed. “I thought I might find someone
to take his place, but I should have known I never could--here in this
dull, stupid, country town.”
“You’re better off not seeing him, since he’s British,” said Kitty
sharply. “I’m sure, most times, you’d find better lads than him,
walking down Queen Street any day. But just now--well, you know where
they’ve all gone. They’ve gone to fight for the rights of our colony,
and you ought to be proud of them, Sally Rose.”
“Ummmm,” said Sally Rose, chewing a dandelion stem and then making up
a face when its bitter white milk puckered her mouth. “Of course I’m
proud of them. How old does one have to be before they’re an old maid,
Kitty? It seems like I might be approaching the time.”
“Oh no,” cried Kitty. “We’re only sixteen. No one would think that of
us--not for at least two years more!”
Sally Rose stood up and tossed her bright hair in the sun. “Two years
isn’t long,” she said. “Well, you can sit here in the Port and wither
if you want to, but I’ve got other fish in the pan.”
She started walking quickly in the direction of Granny Greenleaf’s
weathered house.
Kitty watched her with apparent unconcern for as long as she could.
Then she jumped to her feet and hurried after.
“Where are you going?” she panted.
Sally Rose smiled at her. “Why,” she said, “I think I’ll go back to my
father’s house in Charlestown. If there’s a war in Boston, we’ll be in
the midst of everything there. Why don’t you come along, Kit? Tom Trask
may not be back this way, you know.”
Kitty felt her face turning hot and red, but she chose to ignore the
last part of her cousin’s remark. “You can’t go to Charlestown,” she
said. “Granny won’t let you go where there’s likely to be fighting. You
know that as well as I.”
They had turned in at the front gate now, and were walking under
the budded lilac bushes, Sally Rose in the lead, Kitty following
breathless, a few steps behind.
“A fig for Granny!” cried Sally Rose. “I love her, of course, but she’s
a timid old lady, fit only to huddle in the chimney corner. She doesn’t
know what it’s like to be bold and daring--the way a girl has to be
these days. Of course she won’t let me go, and so I shan’t ask her.
She drove out to see Nancy Davis this afternoon. When she gets back at
suppertime, I won’t be here. I’ll be halfway to Rowley--or further on.”
She opened the unlocked kitchen door and ran lightly up the back stairs
to their chamber.
Kitty followed, a little more slowly. She sat down on the edge of the
high four-poster and dangled her feet over the side; watched while
Sally Rose gathered ribbons, laces, and a few toilet articles and tied
them up in a shawl.
“It’s a long walk to Charlestown,” she said tartly.
“Not so far for a horse,” answered Sally Rose.
“You have a horse then?”
“I know where to borrow one. I know where I can borrow two. Uncle Moses
Chase keeps half a dozen in his barn on the Old Newbury road, and he’s
gone with Granny, so he won’t know if we take them. He won’t care, when
he finds out. Why don’t you come with me, Kitty? We’ll have a gay time
in Charlestown.”
Kitty shook her head, but without much conviction. “I couldn’t go
behind Granny’s back,” she said.
Sally Rose smiled sweetly. “I’m sorry you feel so, Cousin. Perhaps I do
wrong to make a jest of everything, but that is my way. Have you never
thought, when you hear all these preparations for war, that there is
work for us as well as for the lads? Who’s to cook and wash and sew for
them, and bind up their wounds when the fighting is over? I’m going
where I can be of use to my country. If you’re afraid to come with
me--well, you can stay here and sleep in the sun by the Frog Pond every
afternoon. You’ll surely be safe enough--unless a horsefly bites you,
or the dry rot settles in.”
She took a quill pen and inkpot from the mantelpiece, sat down at the
dressing table, and began to write.
Kitty jumped from the bed and took a few turns up and down the room.
“Do you really think we ought to go, Sally Rose?” she asked. “Do you
think--we might be needed there?”
“I certainly do think so,” said Sally Rose. “Don’t bother to pack any
clothes, Kit. At home in Charlestown I have more than enough for two.”
Under Sally Rose’s urging, Kitty opened a top drawer in the old
mahogany chest and began slowly to sort out the few possessions she
wanted to take with her, if she did go; an ivory comb, a pleated linen
fichu, her mother’s cameo brooch. Her fingers flew faster every minute,
as her heart warmed to the plan.
Her throat grew tight, and she felt tears of eagerness and excitement
sting her eyelids. She was going to serve her country, like Tom and
Johnny and Dick, and all the Newburyport lads, all the lads of the Bay
Colony, and maybe other colonies, too. She was going to take part in a
serious, and a mighty, and a very grown-up thing. Wars were history,
and she was going to help make history. It had been done before by
other girls who were just as young. She was glad, she thought, that she
was to have a chance to do it in her time. Her heart stirred just as it
did in church when one or another of the old warlike hymn tunes rose on
the air.
“You’d better take a cloak, Kit, for it’ll grow cold after sundown, and
we may ride late,” advised Sally Rose, pulling her own fleecy shawl
from the carved old press. “Come, let’s be off to the wars in Boston!”
On her way to follow Sally Rose’s bidding, Kitty caught sight of her
cousin’s note as it lay open on the dressing table.
_Dear Granny_, the note began, in dainty, pointed script, _Forgive me
for leaving you so suddenly, and practically forcing poor Kitty to
go along. But I dare not travel by myself, and I find that a sudden
yearning to see my father takes me...._
Kitty stood still for a moment and almost gave up all idea of this
desperate journey.
“We’ll have a gay time in Charlestown.” “I want to serve my country.”
“A sudden yearning to see my father takes me.”
Sally Rose could give many reasons for what she wanted to do. And she
would always give the ones most likely to get her what she wanted. And
what was her true reason? No one knew except Sally Rose.
Nevertheless, Kitty found she did not turn back, but folded her cloak
over her arm and hastened downstairs after her cousin. After all, what
was her own reason for wanting to go to Charlestown? She did want to
serve her country, but she was quick enough to see that she could serve
it quite as well at home, if she had chosen so. But she had not so
chosen. Was not she, Kitty, slyer, more secret and stubborn than Sally
Rose in getting her own way?
* * * * *
It was black dark when they rode into Ipswich, very few lights in the
town, and very few people still awake. The moon was hidden away behind
the clouds somewhere, and a light mist had begun to fall.
“I hoped we could get as far as Beverly,” said Sally Rose, “but we’ve
come only half the way. Uncle Moses said he had plenty of horses in his
barn, but he didn’t say they were plow horses. Well, there’s a light
in the tavern. I’ve stopped there before, and I know the landlord’s
daughter. A pert, homely little wench, but I’m sure she’ll find us a
bed.”
“I hope so,” said Kitty dubiously, climbing down from her horse and
following her cousin up the wide stone steps and through the low front
door.
The taproom smelled of cider and fish and the smoky wood fire burning
on it blackened hearth. It was dimly lit and empty, except for three
old men who sat at a table with glasses in front of them, and a
sharp-faced, sallow girl polishing other glasses behind a narrow bar.
When Sally Rose walked across the uneven floor, her head up, her eyes
shining in the candlelight, her hips swaying ever so slightly, the
heads of the old men turned toward her as sunflowers turn to follow
the golden light of day. Kitty walked demurely behind her, but nobody
noticed Kitty.
“Nanny,” cried Sally Rose, putting out her hand to the girl eagerly,
as if there was no one in the world she would be gladder to see than
Ipswich Nan. “Nanny, we’re o’ertaken with darkness, and we need a bed
for the night, my cousin and I.” She drew Kitty forward, and they stood
together at the bar. “We’ll need supper, too, Nanny,” she said.
Nanny curtsied. “Yes, Miss Sally Rose,” she answered, beaming adoringly
at the pretty, smiling face turned toward her. “The bed in the east
chamber is aired and ready. Should I serve you there, or....” She
glanced about the taproom.
Sally Rose began to pull off her embroidered gloves, put up a hand to
pat her golden hair. “Oh--at that table by the fire, please. It was
chilly, coming the last mile through the swamp willows, and with all
the fog about.”
Nanny lighted a candle in a pewter holder and carried it to the table
by the fire. “I’ll bring you supper right off, Miss Sally Rose. We got
dandelion greens and a ham bone--”
Sally Rose made up a face. “Oh Nanny,” she pleaded, “you know my
stomach’s delicate.”
Kitty clapped her hand over her mouth so that she would not giggle.
Sally Rose had never been sick in her life, and could probably digest
brass nails if she had to.
“Couldn’t you find a bit of chicken, Nanny?”
“Chicken I’ve not got,” answered Nanny. “But there’s a piece of spring
lamb I just been a-roasting for the minister’s wife. She’s got Salem
company coming tomorrow.”
“The lamb will do nicely,” said Sally Rose, sitting down at table.
“About our horses,” asked Kitty, taking the chair across from her
cousin.
“Oh, of course. I’ll speak to one of the men and have them seen to. I
noticed the landlord as I came in.”
They turned to look at the three men by the table. The men were all
staring at them and talking together in low voices. One of them now
rose and came forward. He wore a leather apron tied around his middle
and walked with a decided limp.
“Job Townsend’s daughter, ain’t you?” he demanded of Sally Rose. “Visit
kin in Newburyport on occasion?”
Sally Rose smiled and dimpled. “Why, how clever of you to remember
me! Of course I’m Job Townsend’s daughter,” she said. “And I’m on my
way home from Newburyport right now. I’ve often told my cousin Kitty
here, about your tavern--there isn’t a better one in the whole of Essex
County.”
Strangely enough, the landlord was not smiling at Sally Rose, and he
ignored her compliment.
“We had a young fellow here a short time back. A young fellow who said
he hung around the Bay and Beagle some.”
He waited, his face expressionless, for Sally Rose to speak. In the
silence Kitty heard the rattle of dishes from the kitchen. She caught
the delicious odor of roast meat, the tang of crushed mint leaves.
Sally Rose’s smile grew no whit dimmer. “We’ve many young fellows who
hang around the Bay and Beagle,” she said. “My dad would go poor, if we
didn’t. They keep the till full. Did he tell you his name?”
The landlord spoke accusingly. “He said his name was Gerry Malory. He
said he was going to Newburyport to see a girl.”
Sally Rose shrugged her graceful shoulders. “Plenty of girls in
Newburyport,” she said.
“Do you know this Gerry Malory?”
“I might,” she answered cautiously. “Was he a dockyard hand now, or
maybe a farmer from Breed’s hill--”
“This one was took up for being a British officer,” said the
landlord grimly. “Took up, right here in my tavern. Irons put on his
wrists--part of an old ox chain I had--and he was took to the camp at
Cambridge under guard. Likely they’ll hang the damn redcoat. I hope
they do.”
Sally Rose’s smile looked a bit frozen, but it did not vanish away.
There was a tremor in her voice, but she spoke imperiously still. “All
very interesting, Landlord, but your daughter has undertaken to fetch
us a supper of spring lamb. We are tired with long riding, and if you
could ask her to be spry about it, we should be grateful. Our horses,
also, are at your door and in need of attention.”
She sat down and turned her back upon him.
Kitty watched the lame man shake his head. Then he stumped off toward
the kitchen. She looked again at her cousin, and Sally Rose’s eyes were
shining with more than the candlelight.
“He was coming to see me,” she murmured happily. “Gerry was coming to
see me when they caught him.”
Kitty felt her face twist in a frown and spoke her disapproval. “Which
he shouldn’t have been doing, of course. He belongs with the other
British in Boston. Well, he’s got himself in trouble now. A prisoner of
our men, and the landlord talked of hanging. Aren’t you worried about
him?”
Sally Rose took off her bonnet and shook back her shining hair. “Not
a little finger’s worth,” she said. “They won’t hold him long. He can
come and go like a breath of east wind, Gerry can. My, oh my”--and she
patted the front of her muslin gown--“I’m so hungry. I wish Nanny would
hurry and bring that spring lamb!”
* * * * *
Twenty-four hours later they were hungry again, much hungrier, and very
tired. But they were riding down Crooked Lane in Charlestown, with
the Bay and Beagle almost in sight, and over the river the lights of
Boston.
“My, it’s been a tiresome day,” sighed Sally Rose. “Losing my purse,
horse going lame, taking the wrong turn in Danvers--I don’t see how I
could have been so stupid as to do that.”
“The black flies were the worst,” complained Kitty. “I’m bitten in a
dozen places, I vow. And I don’t dare scratch the bites, for if I do,
I’ll look as if I had smallpox.”
She thought back over their long day’s riding: village greens with
white steeples--Wenham, Beverly, Salem; long stretches of salt marsh
with the sea beyond it; then Lynn and Malden, as the towns drew
closer in. It was already night when they came to Medford, and there
a constable had ridden with them through town, straight to the Penny
Ferry. Part of the great New England Army was camped on the hills about
and overflowing the streets and taverns, he said, and he feared for the
safety of young maids abroad so late. What were their folks thinking
of, anyway?
For once Sally Rose had been too tired to be charming. She bowed her
head meekly and accepted his rebuke. But her spirits rose as they left
river and causeway behind them and took a field path so as not to have
to pass the Sign of the Sun tavern where there were apt to be British
officers about.
“My, but Daddy will be surprised,” she said. “I want a glass of Spanish
wine and a meat pasty. And then, bed! Oh Kitty, think what it’ll be
like to have a featherbed under us again! I swear, I’ll roll and
wallow in it! Why--why here we are, and there aren’t any lights in the
windows!”
They drew up their horses uncertainly in the deserted street. All the
houses were dark around them, and the cloudy sky was dark overhead. A
lantern burned at the top of a pole a little way off, so that Kitty
could make out the weathered sign before her uncle’s tavern, the wooden
profile of a tall bay horse pawing the air, and at his feet a trim,
alert hunting dog. But as Sally Rose said, the diamond-shaped panes
were dark. Peering closer, however, she noticed some letters traced in
whitewash on the iron-bound door.
“Look, Sally Rose, there’s a sign, but I can’t read it,” she said.
They got down from their horses and walked closer. “Neither can I,”
said Sally Rose. She tried the door. It was locked tight.
“I know how to climb in by the buttery window,” she murmured, for once
a little crestfallen, “but I still want to know what is written on the
door. I wonder where Father can be. He always keeps late closing time.”
She stood irresolute a moment. Then she drew a quick breath as if
something pleased her, and ran down the street to the lantern swinging
on its pole. Reaching, stretching, pulling herself up, she managed to
lift it down and hurry back, holding it proudly aloft, flashing it on
the paneled door.
In the light that flared uncertainly behind the thin panes of horn, the
two cousins bent close and read aloud the words, “Closed. Gone to the
wars till the damn British be beat. J. Townsend.”
They stood still and looked at each other. A salt-smelling wind blew
down the old street, and a wisp of fog came with it. Fog was dimming
the lights of Boston, that even now, close to midnight, still burned
on the other side of the river. The lights looked unfriendly, Kitty
thought, as she remembered that Boston was in the hands of the enemy.
Down by the wharves men were shouting and the shouts had an angry
sound. A burst of musket fire broke out, somewhere off Medford way. The
girls looked at each other and shivered. They were hungry and tired and
fly-bitten. They were a little frightened, maybe.
“What will we do now?” asked Kitty. The tone reminded Sally Rose that
she was to blame for the plight they were in, even if the words did
not.
“I--don’t--quite know,” faltered Sally Rose. “We can get into the
house. We’ll have a roof over our heads, and a bed to sleep in. Maybe
there’s something to eat in the cupboard. We’ll be safe for tonight.
But it’s after that I’m thinking of. We can’t run the tavern alone,
without father, and how are we to live if we cannot run the tavern?”
“We could send for Gran,” said Kitty a little mockingly. “Of course
she’s a timid old lady, but I notice she’s able to do most everything
that comes her way. I’ll bet she’d be able to serve up cider, or rum
toddy, or hot grog--or whatever it is they drink.”
Suddenly Sally Rose was smiling again. “Kitty, that’s a wonderful plan.
Let’s climb into the house now, and have supper, and sleep forever.
When we wake up we’ll send her a letter by the first post. The buttery
window’s around here at the back, under the apple tree. Come along. I
can unfasten the catch, but you’ll have to hoist me in.”
_Chapter Eight_
SAVED BY A PIPE-SMOKING MAN
Standing in the wet salt grass at the end of Chelsea Neck, Tom Trask
shifted the old blunderbuss from one shoulder to the other.
“Wisht I had my own gun,” he said to himself. “I’d rather try to lug a
young pine tree, roots and all, than this critter here.”
Then he smiled sheepishly as he thought of the pretty girl who had
loaned him the aged weapon. She was a pretty girl, too. Likely he’d go
to her house and see her when he went down river with the logs next
spring. Guess she wouldn’t have any eyes for the Newburyport lads when
he was about. This fuss would all be over by then, and folks back where
they belonged, plowing their own ground.
He shivered with the cold that goes before sunrise and tried to peer
through the blackness and mist around him to see if the others were
getting as restless as he. There were three hundred or more of them,
New Hampshire and Massachusetts men, here where the Neck narrowed down.
Not a torch, not a lantern, General Putnam had warned, and if any man
felt the need of tobacco, let him cut plug and chew, like an old cow
with cud. It was worse than being lost in the devil’s pocket, but even
at that, it was better than sitting around camp playing cat’s-cradle,
like they’d been doing for the past month. A man could get gray
whiskers before his time, that way.
Some of the lads who came a-running so quick after Concord Fight had
got tired of the game and put for home already, but Tom hadn’t quite
been able to convince himself he ought to go along. No, so long as
Colonel Stark saw a reason to sit around waiting for the British to
jump, he guessed he, Tom Trask, could wait too. He himself hadn’t been
far from the camp at Medford, but he’d heard Boston was all ringed
round with Massachusetts and Connecticut men keeping the redcoats shut
up tight.
“Can you hear me, lads?” bellowed a gruff voice up ahead.
“Aye,” came a dozen shouts from the tall reeds around him, and an
equally gruff voice added, “Aye! We be listening all.”