jabbed her. “Of course I do,” she cried. “Go quickly, do, and come back
and tell me what he has to say. Then we’ll have to get the shears and
cut me out of this thing. Oh Kitty, go now!”
And so it was that Kitty Greenleaf slipped away to Charlestown’s old
graveyard that night to meet her country’s enemy, her cousin’s exciting
young man.
* * * * *
An eerie little wind was blowing through the town that night, a warm
wind, and it had the tang of sea salt in it, and the heavy sweetness of
the new mown hay on Bunker Hill. It ruffled Kitty’s hair and cooled her
hot face as she walked through the empty streets, past the Two Cranes,
the courthouse, and the meeting house with its tall white spire rising
against the dark. Few of the windows were lighted, but down by the
docks she could hear the familiar cry of the watch, and over the bay
the lights of Boston shone out bright and clear. It was hard for her to
remember that Boston was no longer a friendly town.
When she reached the graveyard she felt her way along the low wall that
protected it from the street. Shadow lay thick about the grassy mounds
inside, and crooked elm boughs meeting overhead shut out the thin glow
of the starlight. There was no moon.
Leaving the wall she blundered forward, now and then brushing against
one of the old headstones. She knew what they looked like well enough:
short thick slabs of greenish slate with a death’s head at the top;
some of reddish sandstone; beyond them the granite tombs where the
great families lay. But she could not seem to find the path that would
lead her through. And then, somehow she did find it, and groped her
way to the wall on the far side with the open fields beyond. He was
standing there, just as she knew he would be.
He carried a dark lantern, half open now to let a little light shine
through, and he wore the rough shirt and breeches of an American
farmer. Sally Rose would have been disappointed had she hoped to see
the scarlet coat. As he heard her footstep on the worn grass he drew
in his breath sharply.
“Ah, Sally Rose!” he whispered, and turned the lantern full upon her.
“I--I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I’m her cousin Kitty. She sent me to
tell you--”
And then suddenly, to her own horror, in spite of the awe she felt for
this handsome young stranger from the enemy camp, in spite of the need
to keep this tryst in silence and secrecy, she began to giggle. She
couldn’t help it when she thought of Sally Rose trapped in the stays;
of her pretty, angry face on top of the body of a pinched white worm.
She put both hands to her mouth and rocked and rocked with stifled
mirth.
Then she realized that he was shaking her. “Stop it, Kitty, if that’s
your name,” he said. His voice was firm but not unkind. “Where’s Sally
Rose? Tell me what you are laughing at? I want to laugh, too.”
He had put the lantern down and was holding her by both shoulders. She
could not see his face, and yet she knew what he looked like. She would
always remember him, she thought, from that day when he marched past
the Bay and Beagle and she was standing at the door. Suddenly she found
herself telling him all about the stays and Sally Rose.
He kept very quiet until she had finished, but then he did not laugh
as she had expected him to do. When he spoke again, his voice had an
impatient sound.
“I’ve often heard the men in barracks say--the married men, that
is--that women have no sense at all. And I guess they be right. I’m
sorry Sally Rose did such a foolish thing. I--I wanted--tonight it
really mattered that I should see her.”
“But she will be here tomorrow night, sir,” answered Kitty, not quite
sure how one addressed a British officer who pretended not to be a
British officer. “It will be such a little time till then.”
“A little time,” he muttered, “but much may happen in it. I may be here
tomorrow night--but I trust she will not be.”
“What do you mean?” faltered Kitty.
A bough rustled a few yards off, and he flashed his lantern that way
and listened. After a moment he spoke again in a lower tone.
“How does it happen you womenfolk are still in Charlestown? I
understood that it had been evacuated.”
“Oh, it has been--nearly. But Granny says she will not abandon my
uncle’s property here until she must. She says she will stay and try to
keep it intact for him, if she can.”
“It’s been known since April that we might burn the town any day.”
“I know. But time goes on, and you do not do it, and we grow less
afraid. And all the while our Army is growing larger and more strong.”
“So is ours,” he retorted. “Three new generals arrived from England;
martial law proclaimed in Boston yesterday. General Gage denounced you
for rebels and traitors. If you don’t disband and go your ways in peace
soon, we’re coming out to make you go.”
“Then I suppose there will be a battle,” sighed Kitty. “I’ll never
know why it is men can’t settle a squabble without trying to kill each
other.”
Again he flashed the lantern on her face and held it there a moment.
Then he spoke to her from out of the dark, and his voice had a
different sound.
“You know--Kitty--I don’t think I understand it either. I never really
wanted to be a soldier.”
“A captain,” she corrected him. “A captain in the Twenty-third.”
“Ah yes, a captain. I can hear the watch coming down the street, and
we cannot leave here until he is gone. Sit down on the grass.”
Indeed it was the watch, and she could hear him shouting as he turned
the corner by the brick well. “Ten o’ the clock, this thirteenth night
o’ June, and the weather fair. Town’s empty, Sons o’ Liberty gone to
camp, Rogues and Tories to Boston!”
The young Englishman drew her down in the shadow of a flowering quince
tree. She sat there straight and proper and he sprawled with careless
grace beside her, not alarmingly near.
“No, I never meant to bear arms, and how I came to do it is no matter,
but I, too, wish England and America could settle their differences
without spilling blood. Do you think I am a coward, Kitty?”
“No,” she said slowly. “I do not think that.”
The voice of the watch grew louder. He must be passing very close by.
“I have cursed the Americans, and yet I am not sure I was right when I
did it. I have gone amongst them some, even been kept in gaol by them,
and yet I can’t see that they’re any worse fellows than I. I cannot
help thinking that I myself might have been an American. Except for a
choice a man made some hundred and fifty years ago. The right choice,
of course--and yet--”
Kitty felt her blood stir in a different way now. She had been
thrilling to his strangeness and his handsomeness, and the excitement
of this secret meeting. But now she had the uncanny feel that there
were ghosts about. Mighty ghosts, ghosts of countries coming together,
here in the dim starlight in the shadow of Bunker Hill.
“You an American? How?”
He settled comfortably in the grass. “Listen, Kitty, I’ll tell you more
of myself than I ever told Sally Rose. I do not know why, unless it
is because you are less distractingly fair. Alas, I am afraid I like
overwell to talk, Kitty.”
“So does everyone, it seems,” murmured Kitty. “But what happened--a
hundred and fifty years ago?”
“I like to talk, I suppose, because my mother was a strolling player,
and famous for the way she spoke her lines as well as her good looks.
She traveled the fairs and market towns, and everywhere she was made
welcome and a stage set up for her. My father was a West Country
farmer, and a dull husband I think he made her. I cannot recall her
too well. But it was through his blood that I might have been born an
American.”
The voice of the watch was fading now, down by the tannery and the
distilleries, but Gerry Malory kept on talking.
“My father would shake his head, I remember, whenever anyone mentioned
America. ’Twas a legend in our family that once an old grandsire of
ours, about the time I mention, had journeyed to Plymouth and watched a
shipful of people leaving that country to settle in this one. That he
thought for a time to go with them, but decided against it. Sometimes I
wonder if he had gone--”
The watch was coming back. They saw the light he carried. It wavered
to and fro. Then it stopped just at the wall of the graveyard. Gerry
Malory sprang hastily to his feet. “Kitty,” he whispered, “go back and
tell Sally Rose--I don’t know when I’ll see her--but tell her to get
out of Charlestown. We’re getting ready to move against the Americans.
I don’t know when. At least by the end of the week. Some say we’re for
Dorchester Heights, and some say Bunker Hill. Tell her to be gone. And
you go with her--Kitty.”
He vaulted over the low wall and disappeared in the darkness between
the fields and the flats along the river. Kitty peered after him, but
she saw only a scatter of fireflies and a light mist rising from the
earth. She was not afraid of the watch, but he did not challenge her
as she crept back to the Bay and Beagle. He did not know she had been
keeping a tryst with the enemy. Well, she had been, and felt herself
none the worse for it.
She, too, was wondering what would have happened if old Grandsire
Malory had taken that ship so many years ago.
_Chapter Eleven_
A GREAT SECRET
“We been long enough getting here,” said Tom Trask, as he dragged the
prow of a small rowboat up the shaly beach. “Are you sure this be
Charlestown Neck, Johnny?”
Tugging away at the other side of the boat, Johnny Pettengall answered
him. “Charlestown, sure enough. Hold on. Give me your hand. I got my
foot caught in a patch of eel grass or summ’at like.”
Tom did as he was bidden, and in a moment the two were climbing up a
steep bank into the hayfield above. Just to their left loomed a low
hill, sharp on its eastern side. A taller, more gently rounded hill
stood up behind it, and through the thick, fragrant grass around them
a rail fence wound away toward higher ground. Tom could see no lighted
windows anywhere.
“You ever been here before?” he asked doubtfully.
“No,” said Johnny, “but I come by here yesterday when I was aboard our
sloop that went up to the Penny Ferry to meet the supply carts from the
eastward. I had it pointed out to me. This is Breed’s Hill just ahead
of us, and Bunker Hill’s behind.”
“Charlestown’s said to be a village,” Tom continued to object. “I can
see orchards, and what looks like a brick kiln over there, and by the
smell there’s clay pits somewhere about. But I don’t see any houses at
all.”
“Town’s the other side of the hill,” Johnny reassured him. “Come on. We
got to get to the Bay and Beagle before Ma’am Greenleaf locks up for
the night.”
Uncertain and on his guard, Tom followed his companion up the slope
through the firefly-studded grass. More than a week now, he and the
Newburyport lad had been sleeping at night with their feet toward the
same campfire--when they did sleep--sharing the same ration of salt
pork and corn meal. He had not gone back to Medford after they burned
the _Diana_, for he and Johnny kept telling themselves that they would
borrow a boat and row over to Charlestown to see the girls, but not
until tonight had they been able to get away. They had not wasted their
time, though. They had gone with the raiding parties that constantly
scoured the islands all the way from Chelsea Neck to the deep sea. They
had helped to burn Tory barns and steal Tory cattle. Tom felt he could
give a good account of himself when he got back to his own company,
but he was not so sure Captain Moore would consider it a good account.
He was even more dubious about the attitude of the Colonel, his old
friend, Johnny Stark. That they were old friends wouldn’t make any
difference at all, when there was business in hand.
Yes, tonight after he’d seen Miss Kitty again and stolen a kiss or
two, he thought he’d better make for Medford, with or without young
Pettengall. Maybe he’d better ask now just what his companion intended
to do.
At that moment they reached the crest of Breed’s Hill and paused to
look down.
“Them lights over there must be Boston,” Johnny told him. “You ever
been there, Tom? I heard it’s the greatest city in North America. The
best anyway.”
“Didn’t know we had any other cities,” said Tom, grinning in the
darkness.
Johnny took him seriously. “Course we have,” he hastened to protest.
“There’s New York, and Philadelphia where the Great Congress meets.
Some others further south, I guess, and all of ’em sending help to
Boston. There’s talk they’ll even send their soldiers here.”
“Believe it when I see them,” said Tom skeptically. “But you ask me,
and I say no, I never been to Boston. I live a sight of a ways off, you
know, up the Merrimack.”
They stood there together a moment in the starlight and cool sea wind,
the sweetness of ripe hay.
“I know,” said Johnny. “You didn’t go back there, ever--after we got
news of Concord Fight, did you? Ain’t you got some folks waiting for
you to come home?”
Tom shrugged. “Folks is all dead,” he told Johnny. “Won’t nobody miss
me. Well--maybe a girl or two.”
Then he spoke more quickly and in a lighter tone. “But I know where I
will be missed, I bet, and that’s back in Medford. My company was less
than half full strength when I left, and I better be getting myself
over there. How about you?”
“I ought to be in Cambridge, I guess, with Captain Little’s company.”
“Moses Little? Heard he’d been made a colonel, just like Stark.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t hear.”
They were starting down the hill now, toward a cluster of roofs and
gables with a tall spire in the midst of it, toward a shadowy line of
wharves along the shore.
“I know sure enough about Johnny. I was there in the tavern when we
chose him by a show of hands. They say some voted twice. I know I did.
He was my neighbor up in Derryfield. I worked in his sawmill some and
went hunting with his son Caleb. Caleb’s a right smart lad.”
It was harder going down Breed’s Hill than going up, for the western
side was as steep as the eastern, and they had to hold back. There were
stone walls to climb, and the dew-wet grass was hard to wade through,
but Tom scarcely noticed that. Funny, he thought, as he heard his
tongue run on, how he never had very much to say, unless it was about
John Stark.
“Oh, Johnny’s the man for you,” he was saying. “Once when the Indians
captured him and put him to hoeing their fields, he cut down the corn
and left the weeds standing. When they made him run the gantlet, he
whacked them as he went through, instead of t’other way. Kept singing
while he ran that he’d kiss all their women. He never liked the British
either, after he fought beside them at Quebec. ’Fore I was high as a
rail fence, I heard him say we’d have to fight against them sometime.
There was folks who laughed at him, but I guess they ain’t laughing
now.”
“Here we be,” said Johnny as they came to the beginning of a street
that led past the darkened windows of Charlestown. “I got no idea where
the place is. Likely there’ll be a horse and a dog on its sign.”
But Charlestown was no very extensive metropolis, and after a little
wandering through its dim lanes and uncobbled streets, they found the
tavern they were seeking. The door stood open to let in the night
breeze, and the two boys stepped uncertainly through.
A few candles burning in iron holders lit the dim taproom. Clean mugs
and glasses stood neatly on shelves behind the bar, and the long brown
braid of tobacco leaves hanging near it swayed gently in the draft from
the open door. Tom thought that the braid looked like a cow’s tail. He
made up a face when he remembered the pipeful of tobacco he’d had to
smoke the night they burned the _Diana_. Here was one customer of Ma’am
Greenleaf’s who wouldn’t ask her to cut off a few inches for him, that
was sure. But where was Ma’am Greenleaf? Or Kitty? Or the other girl?
The room was empty, so far as he could see.
Johnny, too, was looking around him. “Don’t see where they could have
gone to,” he muttered, “and left the door open and the lights burning.”
Just at that moment there came an anguished wail from somewhere
overhead.
“Stop it! Oh stop! You’re killing me!”
“Robbers!” gasped Johnny.
“Or them British devils!” cried Tom, looking desperately for the
staircase. He finally saw it, winding up from a little alcove that led
to the kitchen, and in a flash he and Johnny pounded up the narrow
treads, bursting breathlessly into a long hall at the top. From a room
on the side toward the river emerged another half-stifled cry.
“In here!” shouted Tom, flinging the door open.
Then he stood quite still. The sight before him was such a one as he
had never seen by the falls of Derryfield. Johnny’s astonished gasp
told him that his friend was as taken aback as he.
Sally Rose Townsend sat precariously on the edge of a four-poster bed,
her face flushed and distorted. Granny Greenleaf stood in front of her,
her hands busy about the girl’s dress--except that Sally Rose wore no
dress. Her shoulders were bare and gleamed whitely in the candlelight,
but her entire body below her shoulders seemed to be shut up in some
sort of cage. The cage gapped apart in the middle to show an expanse of
some white fabric underneath. It was gripped firmly together at a point
just above the girl’s waist, and again below.
“It’s no use, Sally Rose,” Gran was muttering. “I can’t get this
foolish contrivance apart, and there isn’t a locksmith left in town.
I believe there’s a blacksmith, though. We’ll send Kitty to fetch the
blacksmith. Mercy, where is Kitty? I never thought of her before. Where
has Kitty gone?”
“Quick! Cover me up, Gran!” gasped Sally Rose frantically, her breath
short, her words not quite clear.
Gran glanced backward over her shoulder. Then she turned completely
round and faced the intruders.
“Johnny Pettengall! And you--” she peered closer, “the thief who made
off with my son’s musket! What are you doing in the bedchamber of a
decent lass?”
“We didn’t mean no harm, Ma’am Greenleaf,” explained Johnny. “We just
came from camp to see the girls, and walked into the taproom like--like
anybody would. Then we heard Sally Rose scream she was being killed--”
He broke off and stared again at the bent golden head of his adored
one. Sally Rose was beginning to weep tears of embarrassment.
“I see,” replied the old lady grimly. She stood protectingly in front
of her granddaughter. After a moment she seemed to come to a decision.
“Well, since you’re here, you’re here. And it’s plain some male critter
will have to help us. ’Tisn’t as if the girl weren’t decently covered
underneath. Can you boys get her out of that contraption?”
Johnny swallowed and made inarticulate sounds.
“We can try,” said Tom. “What is it? What’s it made of?”
“It’s a pair of stays. An outlandish pair brought from New York for
some Tory hussy.”
“My mother’s stays are laced together,” said Johnny, his embarrassment
lessening a little. “Won’t they come off if you unlace them?”
“I cut the laces--first thing I did when I came upstairs and heard her
moaning,” snapped Gran. “But these are fastened with locks at top and
bottom. Come and look at them.”
Gran motioned the boys forward and they gingerly approached Sally Rose.
Tom reached out coolly and fingered the jeweled padlock.
Sally Rose sucked in her breath and closed her eyes. Johnny looked the
other way.
“I could force it apart,” said Tom thoughtfully, “but it’s too small
for me to get a grip on. What we need is a file. You got one about the
place somewhere?”
“Does your father keep a tool chest handy?” demanded Gran of Sally Rose.
“I think--in the barn--out the back way through the garden,” Sally Rose
whispered.
“Go find it, Johnny,” ordered Tom.
Johnny dashed for the stairway, and the Derryfield lad walked to the
window and stood there with his hands behind him, gazing into the
summer night. Nothing could be done until Johnny came back, and he had
no wish to embarrass the poor girl further by staring at her.
He looked at the gable windows of the house across the street, and
then down the narrow way that led to the market place. Then he craned
his neck at what he saw, and felt a little smile crooking the corners
of his mouth. Miss Catherine Greenleaf was coming hot-foot home from
somewhere, and he guessed he’d see she got a proper welcome. He turned
back to Gran who still stood in front of Sally Rose, tapping her
slippered foot on the pine floor.
“Think I’ll go help Johnny hunt for the file,” he said.
He stepped into the taproom of the Bay and Beagle just as Kitty entered
from the street. He had the advantage, for he had expected the meeting.
She stopped still and gave a little gasp, but he spoke calmly enough.
“You ought to stay to home when you have company, Miss Kitty,” he
rebuked her mildly.
Kitty recovered herself quickly, lifted her head, and smiled.
“Perhaps I would have,” she said, “if I had known. Wherever did you
come from?”
“Sit here,” he said, and drew her down beside him on the wide ledge
that ran under the window. “I come from Chelsea Neck on my way back to
the camp in Medford--”
“You--you’re going back to camp?” she interrupted him.
He looked at her keenly. Something was the matter with her. She was all
upset like, but trying not to let him see. He’d thought to steal a few
kisses, but he felt pretty sure she wasn’t in the mood for kissing. Too
bad. Well, another night, maybe. He shrugged his shoulders.
“Yes, I think likely they can use me there. I been away driving cattle
off the islands the last week or two. Met up with Johnny Pettengall and
he told me you was here. Tonight we borrowed a boat and rowed over the
Mystic. But I didn’t see you anywheres as I come across Breed’s Hill
and through the town. Where you been tonight, Kitty?”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “I don’t know that--but maybe I ought--”
“Here ’tis!” cried Johnny triumphantly, rushing into the room with a
small iron file in his hand. He paid no attention to Kitty. “Come on,
Tom! Let’s go file Sally Rose!”
Tom waved him away with a flippant gesture. “You go file Sally Rose,”
he said. “She’s your girl. I got business with Kitty.” He turned his
back on the other lad.
Kitty put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I forgot!” she gasped. “Sally
Rose is still in the stays!”
“Sure enough she is,” agreed Tom. “Johnny’s got a file, and he can
shave the lock away. I asked you where you’d been tonight, Kit. Walking
out with some other lad, maybe. No moon, but it’s sweet-aired and
warm. A good courting night.”
Kitty sat twisting her hands in her lap and did not answer. Johnny made
a pitiful noise of dismay and turned reluctantly toward the staircase.
“Where’s Gran?” asked Kitty.
Tom smiled widely. “With Sally Rose,” he said. “Likely to stay there
awhile, wouldn’t you think so?”
“Oh, of course. She wouldn’t leave Sally Rose like that--and with
Johnny. I--I--” she stopped again.
“What’s on your mind, Kitty? Something, I can tell.”
“Yes. Yes, there is. I don’t know--maybe I should--or maybe I should
wait and tell Sally Rose first. But maybe you’re the one.”
“You better tell me,” he said, trying to put strength into his voice,
and a little tenderness, but not too much. He didn’t want her breaking
down.
“Yes,” she said after a moment, lifting her head and looking straight
into his eyes. “Yes, I think I should probably tell you, for you’ll
know what to do about it. If you’re going back to camp--it ought to be
made known to the officers there.”
“I aim to go tonight, not tomorrow morning,” he said. “Say what’s got
to be said, Kitty.”
“Well then, I will.” She was not looking at him now. She fixed her eyes
on a candle burning in a sconce across the room. “Tonight I went out to
meet--a man--who was expecting Sally Rose. You can see why she couldn’t
go.”
He grinned. “Yes,” he said. “Sally Rose ain’t geared right now to
travel far. Who was the man? Oh--I bet I know--that redcoat she took
such a notion to.”
“Yes, it was Gerry. Captain Gerald Malory of the Twenty-third. I did
see him, and he warned me. He told us to get out of Charlestown, for
the British are about to strike.”
Tom leaned forward. “When?” he demanded. “Where?”
“Any night now. By the end of the week, surely. Here, or in Dorchester.
Gerry wasn’t sure. But if it should be Bunker Hill--”
“Bunker Hill would be a right handy site for them to hold,” muttered
Tom. “We thought they was about ready to go. But before this we had no
real word.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he laid his hand over hers. Then he
stood up.