Sarah Bishop

His voice sounded friendly. I felt hopeful as I sat there on the hard bench. But hopeful about what, I couldn't have said.

  "You are under arrest by Captain Cunningham's orders," the lieutenant said. "But you are now in my custody." He reached in his desk and took out the money I had given him to buy food for my brother and handed it to me. "Before I forget."

  I felt mean, thinking, as I had, that he had tried to cheat me. "Thank you," I said and tried to smile.

  "It is strictly against rules," the lieutenant said, "but I am going to break the rules and send you over to Wallabout Bay to see your brother."

  He called two orderlies, one of them a tall Hessian with a blackened face and a heavy musket fixed with a two-edged bayonet. The British orderly, who introduced himself as Sergeant McCall, was armed.

  The sky hung heavy with gray clouds, but the fire seemed to be smoldering out. At the river we got out of the cart and into a boat with two men at the oars.

  Wallabout Bay was a shallow notch in the Brooklyn shore, and here seven floating prisons were anchored. Once they had been ships, roaming the far oceans, I learned from Sergeant McCall, who liked to talk. Now they were listing hulks, with their masts cut down to blackened stumps.

  One of the oarsmen said that this was the fourth time that day he had rowed across the river.

  Sergeant McCall, who had not stopped talking, said, "Be advised, my friend, that what you refer to as a river is not a river at all. It is an estuary, an extension of the sea. A body of water subject to the vagrant will of the tides that wander back and forth, first northward then southward, from the vicinity of Staten Island to the heights of Haarlem and beyond, four times each day, summer and winter, the year round. Or so I am told and on good authority."

  He smacked his lips as he spoke each word, as if he found them tasty. The oarsmen quit rowing to listen. The boat drifted for a while. I felt like shouting at them.

  We passed six of the hulks before we came within reach of the Scorpion. The last of an angry-looking sun shone on its gray, unfriendly decks. There was a fresh breeze blowing in from the sea, but the hulk's horrible stench as we came abreast of her turned my stomach over.

  "It will take a little time to make arrangements," an officer in a red coat called down. "We're badly crowded. We have twice the number we should handle. The ship's in disorder. Come aboard but ask the girl to wait until we find her brother and get things straightened out."

  Sergeant McCall and the two oarsmen clambered up the ladder. The Hessian, who had been sitting while we crossed the river, stood up. He looked down upon me from his great height and said a few words in German, which I didn't understand. Then he said in English, "Pretty." I acted as if I still didn't understand him.

  After what seemed like a long time, a young man came to the rail. He leaned down toward me. It was Chad's friend, David Whitlock, but I didn't recognize him until he spoke. His cheeks were pale and sunken to the bone. A hand as he hung it over the rail looked like a bundle of dry sticks. He had lost his eight-sided glasses. He squinted as if I were miles away. I could barely hear his voice.

  "It is terrible here on the Scorpion," he said. "They will us to die. We sleep without blankets on bare boards. The hulk rots with disease. They feed us flour that crawls with worms."

  "I have money for food," I shouted up at him.

  "It will do no good," he answered. "They want us to die. They carry away a dozen dead every day. They bury them in the sea."

  David coughed. He started to speak and stopped and then he spoke again. "They want us to die, Sarah. Chad is dead. He died this morning."

  I had not known these words were the cruel words I had feared to hear. I heard them now as if I had heard them before. I felt little, only lost, lost and alone.

  14

  I SAT QUIETLY in the bow of the longboat. It was night now. Lights began to show among the hulks scattered along the shore. A farmer was milking a cow in a field less than a furlong from where I sat, so close I could hear milk splashing in the pail. His lantern cast a trailing light across the dark water.

  I heard Sergeant McCall tell someone that Chad Bishop had been carried away. To where? Where? To be thrown into the sea, David Whitlock had said.

  I screamed with all the breath I had in my body. I screamed again. Then I felt quiet all over, as if I were dead. But I was not dead; I felt my heart beating. I heard the lapping of the waves against the boat. I saw the shore and the light from the farmer's lantern shining on the water.

  The Hessian had put his musket down and was still standing in the stern of the boat, singing to himself.

  I took off my shoes and tied the laces together. I kilted my dress and put the shoes in its folds. The oarsmen were starting down the ladder. The first one stopped to shout something, then the other laughed. The rope ladder creaked as the men came down. I saw Sergeant McCall standing at the rail and David Whitlock standing beside him.

  Silently, I let myself over the side and struck out along the path east by the farmer's lantern. The water was so cold it took my breath. I had never swum in all my life, and I didn't swim now, but driven by fear I managed to stay afloat.

  I had gone no more than a dozen yards when my feet touched bottom. I began to walk forward on a mat of thick grass. I kept the lantern in sight. Behind me I heard the oarsmen shouting. Then it was quiet and Sergeant McCall's clear voice called out, "Come back. We'll find you. You can't hide. Come back, you fool."

  I took my shoes out, but I didn't take the time to put them on. I ran along the shore, away from the farmer's light. I heard the Hessian's musket go off, then the whine of a bullet near my head. I didn't stop. I ran until my stockings were torn and my feet were cut and bleeding; then I sat down and put on my shoes.

  Far off in the east I saw a small cluster of lights that I took to be a village. I found myself on a path trending in that direction, and I followed it. The moon came up, which helped me to move faster.

  I reached the village about an hour later. None of the houses showed lights, so I found no one who could tell me where I was. At the last house on the street a dog ran out of the bushes and barked. A man, holding a musket, opened the front door and asked me where I was going at midnight. He came close and peered at me.

  "It's no hour for a girl ;o be out," he said. "Where you bound, all sopping wet?"

  "The Lion and Lamb tavern," I told him.

  "It's a far piece from here. You'd best spend the night. Come in; we'll put you up."

  "I'll be going," I said. "Just tell me the way, please."

  The man showed me a path that ran off to the southeast and took me a half mile along the way. When he turned back, he wished me a safe journey and said for me not to be afraid.

  "The countryside's calm," he said. "But I wish you'd stay the night."

  I thanked him kindly and went on, with the moon at my back, casting a faint moon shadow in front. Toward morning, as the first light showed in the east, I reached the Lion and the Lamb.

  I went quietly around to the back of the tavern, not rousing the dog, and made myself a bed among the trees in the hickory grove. It was nearly noon, with a hot sun shining, when I woke. Mrs. Pennywell was staring down at me and asking questions.

  15

  MRS. PENNYWELL BUILT a fire and heated water for me in the big iron tub. I washed away the soot and mud and smoke of the journey.

  I washed away everything but the memories and my fear. I could still see the round face of Captain Cunningham leaning over me with his pale eyes and his false smile. I could hear David Whitlock croaking out the grievous words about my brother, Chad. I could still hear the sound of the musket shot as I stumbled along the shore in the dark night.

  Mrs. Pennywell seemed uneasy. She kept untying and tying her apron strings. Suddenly she said, "You shouldn't have run. The King's men aren't like the rebels. Not like Birdsall and his gang."

  "There's no difference."

  "You're not guilty. They'll have a trial and set you free. Then you won't need
to worry."

  I said nothing. Everything seemed unreal. The kitchen, the crows cawing in the hickory grove, even Mrs. Pennywell herself, talking, fussing over me, were shadowy things. They were happening to someone else. Demented people, I thought, must feel this way.

  I feared Captain Cunningham. Yet fear was only a small part of everything. It was anger that I felt most. Anger at the war that had caused Chad's death and my father's. Anger at the rebels and the King's men alike. And at all the needless killings.

  Mr. Pennywell came out. He disagreed with his wife. "What if they have the trial and find Sarah guilty?" he asked her. "What then?"

  She didn't answer.

  "Best that we hide her," Mr. Pennywell said. "We have a safe place in the cellar. It's hidden many a King's man before."

  "Maybe they won't come looking," his wife said.

  I felt that she wished me away. I didn't blame her. "I'll be leaving," I said. This seemed to make her feel better. "I can go now."

  "Nothing of the kind," Mr. Pennywell said. "They'd catch you on the road before you went a mile. If they'rehunting you, that is." He told his wife to go up and get my things and bring them down. "What do the men look like?"

  "One is a tall Hessian with a blackened face," I said. "The other is short and thin."

  "What's he wearing?"

  It was hard for me to think. "A green coat," I said, "and white trousers and green gaiters. He has a pistol that has two shiny barrels. There were three men with him. I guess they'll all be on foot, because the cart and horse are in New York."

  "Not likely," Mr. Pennywell said. "You know there's a British camp near Wallabout Bay. They'll find horses to ride. Did you tell the sergeant or anyone that you live here at the Lion and Lamb?"

  "I don't remember. I must have, but I forget."

  "You stay in the kitchen and I'll keep an eye out. They may not come, but if they do I'll ring the ship's bell. I'll show you where to hide."

  "I should leave," I said. I wanted to. But he took my arm and led me down a staircase that went from the kitchen into a cellar stored with barrels of rum. One of the barrels was empty and had a doorlike bottom that slid aside. That is, half of it did. Below this opening was a small room lined with rock.

  "There's water and food," Mr. Pennywell said. "Enough to last three people for a week. We hid Judge Stillwell down there for twenty days one time. He looked like a potato sprout when he came up, but he was alive."

  He put my clothes and the Bible in the empty barrel, the things his wife had brought, and gave me a blanket.

  "In case," he said, "you have to stay all night."

  They came near dusk through a light rain. We heard them ride into the courtyard, two men on dapper horses. Mr. Pennywell did not need to ring the ship's bell, because I saw them when they rode up the rise and recognized the Hessian and McCall in his green uniform and blond hair flying.

  I went down the stairs, taking along a candle. I climbed into the barrel and slid back the trap door and waited there while the men entered the tavern. They made a lot of noise, stamping mud from their feet. I heard them talking to Mr. Pennywell but I couldn't hear what they were saying.

  They talked a long time, perhaps half an hour; then it was very quiet. I heard steps in the taproom, which was above my head, and, a few moments later, the sound of boots striding across the kitchen floor.

  I let myself through the trap door, closed it, and lit the candle. It was cold, so I put the blanket around me and waited.

  Shortly a door opened and I heard steps on the cellar stairs. Sergeant McCall asked someone to bring a lantern. There was a sudden streak of light above me and the sound of quiet voices. One of the men put his boot to the empty barrel and after a moment I heard the kitchen door open and close.

  The ship's clock in the taproom struck the hour of nine. I could not tell whether the men were eating supper or not. The clock struck ten. Soon afterward Mrs. Pennywell came down to tell me that Sergeant McCall had decided to stay the night.

  "Don't come out until they leave in the morning," she said.

  16

  THE CANDLE BURNED itself out. I sat in the dark until the ship's clock struck midnight.

  Then I slid back the trap door and gathered up my oddments Mrs. Pennywell had brought down and wrapped them in the blanket. Mr. Pennywell gave me a coin. I put the money, silver and paper, which was less than two pounds, in my dress and I climbed the stairs to the kitchen. I took a loaf of bread from the hearth and left sixpence to pay for it.

  I waited in the hickory grove until dawn. Then I set off for Mrs. Jessop's to return her Bible. I walked fast, among the trees most of the time.

  Mrs. Jessop saw me on the road and came running out to meet me. All the early morning clouds had rolled in from westward. Now it was raining and I was wet through.

  She took me into the house, built up a fire, and helped me dry off. I told her as best I could what had happened during the time I had been away, some of the things. I thought she might want to get rid of me, the way things were, but she said she had a place for me to sleep and I could stay as long as I wanted to.

  "You can't go back to the farm. People are squatting in the ruins. The Sullivans. Three brothers, black-haired and black-hearted. You'd best not go near them."

  I didn't want to go back to the farm. I wanted to go as far away from the sounds of battle, the hatred and the killings, as my feet would take me. Everything was mixed up in my mind, but this I knew for certain.

  I untied the bundle and took out her Bible.

  "Keep it," she begged me. "Hold it close. It'll guide your steps in the paths of righteousness. It'll comfort you. It'll protect you from evil."

  Her words angered me. "It did not protect my father," I burst out. "Nor did it protect my brother."

  Mrs. Jessop stared at me as if I had suddenly sprouted the devil's horns. She snatched the Bible from my hands, opened it, and marked a place with a finger.

  "Job Five, eighteen," she said. "'He woundeth, and his hands make whole.'"

  "I am not whole. I am sick and alone."

  Mrs. Jessop frowned, but went on. "Job Five, seventeen. 'Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth.'" "I am not happy," I said. "And why should God correct me by killing my father and my brother? What of them? Why should they die for me? I don't understand."

  Mrs. Jessop said, "You will understand, later, when you grow older. As Job understood." She turned several pages of the Bible, but spoke from memory, fixing her gaze upon me. "'Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind ... Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?... When the morning stars sang together?... Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea?... Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?... Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven?... Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are?'"

  Her eyes bored in upon me, two sparks of fire under her dark brows. "Like Job, you do not know all there is to know," she said. "Therefore, despise not the chastening of the Almighty."

  I bit my lip, but answered her in a clear voice. "I do despise the chastening."

  My words were barely spoken when lightning streaked across the lowering sky and a thunderclap shook the house.

  Mrs. Jessop threw up her hands in horror. She plucked at the air. The Bible fell to the floor and lay there, its leaves fluttering.

  "God has spoken," she cried.

  A second flash of lightning flashed across the heavens. Thunder rolled, louder this time and closer. The smell of burning entered the room.

  "Repent!" Mrs. Jessop croaked.

  A yellow cat that was dozing on the hearth arched its back and showed its teeth. Mrs. Jessop's aunt, who had been sitting quietly near the fire, tried to rise from her chair, but slipped and fell.

  "Repent thy words ere God destroys us," Mrs. Jessop cried. "Repent!"

  I did not answer. Her aunt lay groaning on the floor. I gathered up my bundle and the Bible. I do not know why I too
k it, except that the Bible, my father's Bible, had been a part of me all the days of my life. I thanked Mrs. Jessop and fled out the door. It had stopped raining.

  There was another roll of thunder. I walked fast along the road toward the farm, but when I neared it I cut off through the stubble field and came back at the stream so that I wouldn't see where our house had been.

  Quarme was standing in the doorway of Purdy's mill. He was looking up at the stormy sky, his scrawny neck stretched out and his bony head raised up. He glanced at me with his wild, forest-cat eyes, but didn't let on that he saw me. Nor did I let on that I saw him.

  Yet seeing him there in the doorway brought back all the bitter memories of my father's death. I couldn't get them out of my mind. Even after the mill was far behind, I kept thinking of the night that Ben Birdsall had descended upon us.

  The sky cleared toward dusk. I came to some oak trees and went far back in the grove and made a small fire, using the tinder Mrs. Jessop, unbeknownst to me, had put in my bundle. I was well off the traveled road to the ferry, so I didn't worry about being seen. I ate the last of the loaf I had taken from the tavern.

  Afterward I got out the Bible. By firelight I read from Matthew. I came to Chapter 5, verse 44, and read, "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you."

  I read aloud. The words sounded strange in the darkening grove. They hung above me and drifted away. I heard an owl speak softly. I read the verse again, leaning down to see by the dying fire.

  "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you," I read.

  The words sounded strange to my ears, stranger than they had before. I looked at the fire and saw my father standing at the doorway. Birdsall was holding a light, and his mob behind him was tossing a flaming torch into the dry hayloft. I saw Quarme standing beside me, tying my hands behind me.

  Through the trees the stars were shining now. They looked cold and far away. I threw a stick on the fire. I said aloud from memory, "And pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." But I saw before me David Whitlock leaning over the rail of the Scorpion, calling down to me the word of my brother's death. I heard the shot from the Hessian's musket and Sergeant McCall shouting, and his footsteps above me as I crouched in the cellar.