During the long rains of autumn, I filled my secret room above the loom with cloth, stockpiling it in the barn, too, searching twice a week for moths and weevils. I traded bolts of it for precious indigo and whiting. Once, on a street in Lexington in broad daylight, my skirt heavy with vials of indigo, my wheelbarrow light and empty, I glared at some young British conscript until he turned from my eyes.
I worried much about my sons, but not my brother, for I held great faith that because I heard nothing from him, August was somewhere doing what he could in the name of the Continental army. I moved some boxes and crates and came upon the first chests he had once hidden with me. Neither was locked.
I turned the latch of one and raised the lid. It held a few papers. They seemed to be letters, from August to a woman. Love letters. I smiled and held them to my bosom. I hoped he was happy at least for a while, as I had been. I set them down reverently. Under the letters sat a boxed set of dueling pistols and a box of shot and powder. I lifted them out. We might need them. Beneath that was a small casket, about the size of two loaves of bread. Its latch was closed and no key sat in the lock. I set it on the floor, and took out some clothes. They looked to be a boy’s clothes, with stains and holes. Ripped keepsakes of his past, I supposed. In the pocket of the waistcoat, I found a small key. It opened the casket. The casket held doubloons. Dozens of them. We would be able to eat, I thought, and buy more wool. I could make more coats. No American who crossed my path or my doorway would leave without a coat if he needed one.
The second chest was lighter than the first. It was loaded with ships’ maps. A captain’s logbook, and another. Four of them. A sextant. A long glass. At the bottom lay five cutlasses. One of them was battered, dented, its tip broken off. I feared to touch it, though I supposed if the thing were haunted with the blood, we would have seen the spirits by now. I closed the lid and held my hand against it, thinking of my brother’s hand having lain upon this very wood, and I wished him health and life.
In the mornings oak leaves captured the slanted sunlight, fooling the eye, as if they held the last golden rays of summer suspended for a few more days. The nights turned cold. One day, just before noon, a hand knocked at my door. A winter wind was howling. Before me stood a boy dressed in rags, thin as Roland’s poor frame had been so long ago. “M-m-mistress? Have you got a spare crust? Anything?”
“What are you doing abroad in this weather, young man?”
“Going to join the rebels, Mistress.”
“Where is your musket? Your cartridge bag?” He ducked his head in a clumsy bow and pulled his weapon, an ancient blunderbuss, from where it leaned against the wall. “Come in this house.” I fed him bread, such as I had, and meat, both of them meant for our noon.
He drank every drop of the broth in the pot. “Thank you so, Mistress. I hain’t et in two days.”
When he rose to leave, I pulled at his sleeve. “Wait,” I said. “Take this.” I draped my cloak across his shoulders. It was too small, for though he was all bones and angles, he was tall. “This will not do you. Wait, boy, would you please? I have something else.” I hurried up the stairs to my room. There behind the door hung a new cloak I had made for Cullah. I pulled it from the hook. I held it against my cheek.
When I put it across the boy’s shoulders, he took hold of it with reverence. “Oh, Mistress, this is so very fine. It must belong to the master of this house.”
“It did. Now stand there while I bless it upon you,” I said. I chanted the old Gaelic words, circling the boy, my hand upon the wool of the cloak. It began, “Nar a gonar fe-ahr an eididh. Nar a reubar e gue- brath,” and the words settled oddly, going from asking protection for the man who wore the garment, to describing the leg bone of a deer piercing the tail of a salmon. I believed the meaning was long lost, for even Goody Boyne, who had taught it me, knew them not, but I imagined, too, since the words had survived all this time, that they had strength, and perhaps the leg shank referred to the sharpness of a spear tip, so that the wearer of my goods would be swift in battle and safe from all piercing. Perhaps I was wrong to say the words, but they were said, and I patted his shoulder.
“Wait,” he exclaimed, stepping back. “Do you cast a spell upon me for having asked food?”
I smiled. “It is not witchcraft. It is a prayer older than this time. We must not question what has stood since before King Richard’s day.”
“Oh. It’s a Christian prayer, then? What language?”
I almost said Scottish, but the tongue was outlawed in its own land and I dared not. “The tongue of angels. When you wear this cloak, you will embody courage and cunning skill in battle, clear thinking, and bravery. Yours will be the mind of a general at arms, a strategist. Keep it always with you, even on warm days when you cannot wear it. Never forget the power of it.”
“Mistress, your words give me fear.”
“Let them give you comfort instead.” I questioned him with my expression and changed my tone to be more motherly. “Would you rather not have the cloak? You may leave it here if you wish. It is not a spell, I promise you on the Holy Cross.” He took one look at the snow piling against the glass over the kitchen table, shook his head no. I said, “Then see that you wear it well and proudly. This belonged to a great man, a Patriot. A gentleman and an American Patriot.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
When I closed the door after him, I said, “Alice? Let us make another cloak. Another man will come along soon enough. They will all be hungry and cold.”
“Mistress, you give away Master Cullah’s cloak.”
Tears dripped from my chin, already rushing the moment his name crossed her lips. “Yes.”
“Why you do that?”
“The boy needed it. He will fight for freedom.”
“How you know that?”
“Well, I do not know it. He said it, and I believed him.”
“Not every man comes to the door going to tell the truth.”
“Alice, did you suspect him of something?”
“No, Mistress. He was honest enough. Just hungry enough to tell you what you want to hear. Any boy might be hungry. Can’t feed ’em all.”
I smiled. “Then I have done him no harm. If it keeps him alive, it is given gladly.”
Alice stared at the fire, then without turning her head, she glanced in my direction and asked, “Mistress, would you give me a cloak?”
“Is something amiss with your own?”
“I gave it to a slave woman I know.”
I held out my hand. Somewhat reluctantly, she reached out with her own. I held her hand in mine. We both welled up with tears, and her face darkened as did mine.
Alice asked, “I suppose we making another cloak?”
“Probably better make two.”
“Yes, Mistress. We have to sew all night or wear blankets to Meeting tomorrow.”
The next week two fellows came, cold and hungry. One of them was smaller, and so I gave one of Brendan’s old coats to him. I had nothing finished yet for the larger man, except Cullah’s old and tattered cloak. “I am sorry it is so poor,” I said.
“Mistress, it is marvelous warm. Thank you kindly.”
January 2, 1776
Christmas and Hogmanay we celebrated in Dolly’s kitchen. I made a pudding the size of her new babe’s head. His name was John Paul. By Epiphany, Roland returned home to tell us of a place called Valley Forge, and that our own Congress had left the men naked and starving after promising food and uniforms. Smallpox, he said, killed scores every day. Men deserted whose enlistments were up because to stay meant starvation. I had little money left. I rummaged through trunks and every hidey-hole in the house for coins or clothing to send. He offered to return to the field with anything I could find.
On a shelf in the attic, a little crate held some old clothes I had never meant to part with. I pulled out my quilted petticoat made by Ma. Almost nothing remained of the original, though I expected it still lay inside the other layers. In a sort of d
esperate hope that I had overlooked some odd ha’penny, I carried it downstairs. By the fireplace, I took up scissors and began to cut it apart, carefully opening every wide place where anything might be hidden. I found a lump that was not tow or lint. I cut into the place and pried it open. A length of gold chain fell out, and when I pulled it, it was a ruby necklace. Three large stones set in pure gold hung from the chain. I saw by the familiar design that they had been meant as a set with the ruby ring, the only thing of value I yet owned. Ma had given one of her daughters part of the set, one another, as sisters should be two parts of something that went together. I put it in my pocket and returned to Dolly and Roland’s house. A great lump stilled my voice, as I tried not to weep, and held it up so that the fire showed through the stones. “Roland,” I said, “take this. Take my wagon, too. We will use yours. Take everything we can spare, and use this to buy whatever it will buy.”
March 21, 1776
It was a blustery, muddy spring. With Bertie driving the wagon, Alice sat next to me as we made our way to Boston, for now women could trade a little there, and the soldiers did allow us to buy flour though it was costly. She seemed oblivious to the uniformed army all about us, busy at her tatting. I remarked to her that in a moving coach that was no small feat, for I could do aught but stare at the trees when I rode else I suffered motion sickness. I asked her to look about, just to appear more natural, but she said, “Mistress, you admire all the pretty gentlemen’s red clothes for me, as I have got a knot here I am trying to fix and I am vexed out of my eternal life over it.” Then she winked at me, slyly, and wrinkled her lips in disgust. Bertie was filled with a fervor that I reckon could be accounted for by his being so great a part of the events that had called us all to arms. It was all I could do to remind him not to thrash the horses into a run, and that decorum and a straight face would serve us both. We passed line after line of British soldiers, fusiliers, and marines, ranks of artillery and wagons full of ammunition pulled by mules.
Tied under my petticoat by their stocking straps and overlapping like great pleats hung four pairs of men’s buff breeches. Two more were rolled into each side of my small farthingale. Under our feet in the false bottom were seven blue coats of differing size, all cut to resemble General Washington’s fine habit. I had not attached braids of rank, for I knew not to whom the coats would go, but I had sewed on gold buttons, rows of them, and turned up the cuffs so elegantly. I had prayed the chant over every one of them, that the man wearing it would never be wounded, that blood would not touch the work of my loom and my needle.
We reached the woods beyond Menotomy, and Bertie began to sing “O Waly, Waly.” A man walking past wearing plain clothes and a flat parson’s hat looked up at us as we passed. He nodded, touching his hat brim. I smiled. In a few minutes, after crossing and heading up the road, toward the Neck, three plain-clothed minutemen appeared from the woods and walked ahead of our horse. One more came from behind, carrying a pack as if he were a craftsman on his way to sell his wares though I knew him from the Committee of Safety.
At the green in Boston, we turned right and made for the lower end of town, at last into the yard behind Boston’s First Church, traversed the gravel between the walls, and made for a shabby mercantile and warehouse district centered behind Faneuil Hall. Our aim was an old house, which had been converted into a storefront, though the door of it was battened and nailed shut. In the alley next to it sat a hogshead seeping with tar and treacle, printed with MOLLASS on the side.
Checking for eyes upon us, I stepped down from the wagon, opened the back where the concealed drawer lay, and pulled out my bundles, stacking them against the wall. By reaching into my skirt where a pocket might have hung, I could untie the first pant leg and all the others slithered to the ground. Alice took the two from the farthingale then got quickly back aboard the wagon. I pulled the lid from the molasses keg. It was so tall the top was even with my elbows. First came a four-inch trough filled with reeking, soured molasses. Under it was another trough, also marked molasses, but this one I knew was filled with clay and bore a top drilled full of holes to sop up any leaking of the real molasses. Under that, the opening was lined with tarred cloth and paper and I packed the buff breeches and blue coats with great care into it. As I laid in the sixth coat, pressing it down, Alice began to hum, “Gloomy Winter’s Now Awa’,” and as we had planned, Bertie flicked the reins and the wagon moved forward, carrying them away, leaving me behind. The committeemen vanished between buildings and into shadows. A boy driving a black-skinned nurse or maid on an errand seemed as normal a sight as any could be.
Peering around the corner of the building, I saw three armed Redcoats across the street, talking to each other. One of them looked to be no more than a boy, a lad like my Bertie. He pointed my direction with a finger, then looking at the other men, nodded.
I laid the clay trough into the hogshead, on top of the coats. I put the molasses trough upon it, but it was full; the lid would almost not shut. On the ground were two broken bricks, so I laid them atop the lid. If I had put in the seventh coat it would not have shut, and we would have been found out.
I saw Redcoats halfway across the street so I turned my back to the soldiers, pulled the string from the wrapping of the last coat, and as if it were my own garment laid it over my arm, pulling my cloak over it. As I strolled from the alley and turned to the left, one of the Redcoats pointed at me.
“Ho, there, granny!” a voice called behind me. I quickened my steps. “I say, stop there, old woman!” He had a decided lisp that was hard to understand.
I stopped before the road that led to the front of the hall. I turned. I searched their faces, and decided upon a tactic of indignity combined with innocence and silliness. “Were you addressing me, young man?”
“Yeth! You, granny. We ordered you to th-top.” It was the youngest. He not only had a lisp but had a vile accent, as far removed from nobility as could get. One of the many pressed into service with no other hope of employment, one of the many who just as well made up our rebel army here.
“It is a great thing I am not your grandmother, young man, for if I were I should box your ears. How despicably rude. Good day, gentlemen.” I wheeled around, keeping my cloak about my form with my hands, and stepped off the walking stones, moving around a large, fresh pile left by horses.
One of the older Redcoats quick-stepped in front of me and placed his musket across my path at an angle. “Where are you going, Goodwife? What have you got there? We have orders to question all passers-by.”
“I am not ‘Goodwife.’ I am ‘Widow.’ I have naught to do with you or your questions. Now be off with the three of you before I report you to General Howe. Yes, I see you know him. I have—” At that moment, the youngest man took my shoulder. I could control my face but not my body, and at his touch I wrested myself away from him with a turn that opened my cloak.
“Ho! Wha’ ’ave you there? Why, thith granny ith one of them bath-tardth!” he said. He reached into my cloak and tore the coat from my hands. “We’ve caught a rebel thpy, a traitor against Hith Thovereign Majeth-ty.”
“Give me that,” I said, reverting to a whining tone. “I found it fair and true. It is not yours and I can make many a good covering for my babes with it. Now let it go. You shall get it filthy before I have had a chance to sell the buttons. I found it.”
The third man, who until then had yet to speak, asked, “Where did you find it?”
“It was rolled up natty and squashed into the center of a bush, as if the man who wanted it was coming back but could not carry it into town. You would not want such a thing left there for the use of rebels, would you? No. I thought to myself, I thought, what others have lost is mine to gain, is it not? I am a poor old widow with seven mouths to feed, and I can sell these buttons and cut the rest to clouties for my grandbaby’s bottom.”
He watched my face as I spoke and I saw that he was a little too wise. Perhaps his quietude meant he had better judgment than the
others, and he was not believing my tale. He said, “Let’s take her to the colonel. See what he says to do.”
I stood before his colonel in the parlor of Lady Spencer’s house where once I had danced a reel, where I had made Wallace a traitor with us, where I had helped August escape. The brigand did not so much as ask me to sit or offer tea. He did not recognize me from the day August escaped, either. He talked with the soldiers for a moment and then came toward me, adjusted his powdered wig, and leaned forward. “You know, do you not, what this coat is, Mistress?”
“I do, sir.” I leaned toward him and crooked my finger at him, then cupped my hand across my mouth as if to tell a secret to a child. “It is nearly new. I found it in a bush.”
He snarled. “Since you had to walk past breastworks and artillery to come here, I warrant you know that this color of coat, this blue, is the one chosen by the outlaw Washington and his men—soon to be hung, mind you—as a uniform of their treason against the King, His Royal Majesty Charles Third, do you not?”
I smiled and nodded. “I do know that, sir.”
“And here, in broad daylight, you are caught carrying just such a coat.”
“Yes, your lordship, that is true.”
“I am not a lord.”
“No, sir.”
“Have I met you before? You look familiar.”
I knew the colonel from his raid on August’s house. I smiled. “Perhaps it was last market day. Did you buy my hog foot stew?”
He made a face of disgust. “Did you make that coat?”
“Why, everyone knows the rebels get these from France. See this weft? Only French mills make such. The color is—”
“Where were you taking it? And to whom? I suppose you would not confess to treason, but would rather some poor fool hang in your place? You tell me who was to receive the coat and who made it, and then I will let you go, grandmother.”