by Ann Rinaldi
He paused. “Do you know what this is?”
Was this a lesson? It might be, for recently my education had been going beyond the boundaries of books. One fine April day a few weeks before, he had announced in the middle of my studies that we were going for a walk. We ended up going to the market in King Street for Mother. I loved to go to the market with Mother or Lucy, but with John Reid it was an adventure. He pointed out the farmers in their stalls, told me where they came from, and speculated on what profit they were making. Then he gave me some money and I purchased the fish, lemons, and nutmegs Mother had asked for, under his watchful eye. He bought a small sack of sweetmeats, and we ate them on the way home.
Now he was poking at the goods with his shoe. “This is the last shipment of goods your father will be sending to his friend Thomas Riche. Flour, pork, flax, seed, let’s see what else … wigs, stoneware, and lumber. Your father has found out that Riche is shipping to the British. Do you know what that means?”
“It means my father has lost a very dear friend.”
“It also means Riche won’t be sending your father any more sugar, wine, salt, saltpeter, coffee, or molasses. And he’ll miss having those items in his shop. The war has its price, Jemima, and we feel it more and more each day.”
I matched his stride on the wooden walk to our front door, happy that he was talking to me as an equal. He’d done it most often over the last five weeks. I hadn’t once referred to his spying; I’d worked in the shop every morning and sat with the utmost decorum and attention at lessons each afternoon. Only once in the last month did he have to scold me, and that was for gazing out the open window into the inviting April day.
In the wide entry way to our house he took off his tricorn hat and linen coat.
“Good day, Mr. Reid.” Lucy came out of the study and gave him a quick curtsy. “Hello, Jemima,” she said to me. She’d just left our noon meal in the study, where we ate every day after he came from his boys’ school and I from the shop.
“A fine day it is, too,” John Reid said, nodding to her.
Our midday meal had become a ritual. He would pull out my chair and serve my food, and pour me some milk or cider, then serve himself. He might glance at the Pennsylvania Gazette that Lucy had set by his plate and ask about my morning in the shop. As I recited the morning’s events, he would question me, making sure I understood why so-and-so would say such a thing or why the cost of coffee or sugar cones was rising or where my father’s imports were coming from and how.
Occasionally he still corrected my speech or manners, and if I wanted to go anywhere, even to Betsy Moore’s or Grandfather Emerson’s, I had to ask his permission. It was only right, my father said, since I had taken it upon myself to go through his papers, and his life was more or less in my hands.
That day he didn’t ask about the shop, however. “You didn’t respond to Lucy,” he said.
I looked at him, uncomprehending.
“She greeted you good day. You ignored her. I’ve noticed you do a lot of that with Lucy. Sometimes you are outright insulting to her.”
“It’s always been that way with Lucy and me.”
“Why?”
I could give him no answer.
“I despise slavery,” he said. “It’s a loathsome practice, and someday we’re going to pay for it in these colonies. It’s one of the reasons I came late to the Cause. All that talk of liberty when we were keeping slaves.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“When I went to Boston for Rebeckah’s wedding and I saw the arrogance and pompous stupidity of the British troops there. I was loyal to the King until I saw his troops quartered in the houses and on the Commons. Mobs roamed the streets at night and refugees constantly streamed into the city. There were empty warehouses and British ships in the harbor, and everyone was hungry, it seemed. I went to Harvard College and I loved Boston. It broke my heart as much as seeing Rebeckah marry that British officer.”
I was under his spell. He had never confided such things to me before. “So, when I found out spies were needed by Washington, I volunteered on the spot. But we were talking about your rudeness to Lucy. Your father plans to free her and Cornelius one day soon. I would like you to make an effort to be decent to her. I don’t like it when you hurt people by being thoughtless or superior.”
“All right, Mr. Reid, I’ll try.”
He smiled. “And when are you going to answer the latest letter from Raymond Moore? You’ve put it off for a week. Is there a reason?”
My heart became chilled, like a cold meatcake inside me. There was a reason, but how could I tell him? Raymond’s letter suddenly seemed stilted and childish. I’d come to realize, under John Reid’s tutelage, that I had grown much older and wiser. Raymond was just a childhood friend, and I was no longer a child.
But there was more, and my heart, the cold meatcake, was bursting for being unable to say it.
“Well?” he insisted.
“I don’t know how to answer his last letter.”
“Why?” His brown eyes scrutinized me.
“He …” I stammered it out, “… He’s asked to court me when he comes home, and I don’t want it.”
He nodded, sipping his coffee. “Why don’t you want to?”
“Well, goodness.” I blushed. “I feel a great distance between us—not because he’s away, but because I’ve grown up so and there is no common bond with us anymore.”
“Don’t you want to marry someday, Jemima?”
“Yes, sir, but not Raymond Moore.”
“Who, then? Have you someone in mind? Your mother tells me you languish about the house and stare at nothing. She thought you were smitten with Raymond.”
I did not know where to look. At my hands in my lap? Why wouldn’t he stop staring at me? I worked my linen napkin between my fingers.
“Stop twisting your napkin in that distracting way and look at me,” he said quietly.
I did. My eyes filled with tears as I raised them and looked full into the dear, familiar face of the man who had been my hated teacher, who had teased and tormented me and made me suffer. The man who had taken the trouble to teach me to curtsy correctly and hold my fork right, who had berated and shamed me into being a lady, even while he hammered French and Latin and geography into my head. We had made a long journey together. I knew I pleasured him, for I saw the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t taking notice. Yet never once in our long hours together did he dishonor the faith my parents had in him by so much as touching my hand with his own.
He saw the anguish in my look and more. He got up. I thought I heard him murmur, “Dear God,” as he turned away, but I couldn’t be sure. He went to the window and stood with his back to me, looking out on the fine May afternoon.
“You must write to Raymond. You promised, and I’ll not have you go back on your word.”
“But—”
“No buts. He’s far from home, waiting for your letters. You must not treat him the way Rebeckah treated me.”
“I’ve angered you.”
“Yes, you have. You had no right to get yourself into this. Now you must get out—as gracefully as you can, without destroying him.”
“But how could I destroy him?”
“A woman can destroy a man, Jemima. I will not have you be that kind of woman!” He turned from the window. “Now you know the consequences of giving your kisses so freely. He took them for more than you intended.”
The tears from my eyes spilled down my face onto my hands in my lap.
“Stop that silly crying. It will get you nowhere. I’ll help you answer his letter this afternoon if you wish. There are ways of doing what you must do without destroying him. Certainly, you have to put a stop to his romantic notions. But not in one letter. Not all at once. It will take time. You must continue to correspond with him and let him down easily. But you need time for this. Time.” He came back across the room and looked down at me. “We all need a little time. Come,
now, let’s have lessons.”
CHAPTER
18
“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another …” Old Sam Tucker, the head of the Provincial Congress, was reading on the courthouse steps. The Declaration of Independence had been rushed in from Philadelphia. It was Monday, the eighth of July. The militia stood lined up below the courthouse steps. Sam Tucker wore a brocaded waistcoat and powdered wig, and his voice rang out clearly.
“A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.…”
The crowd could hardly be contained. I was standing next to Betsy Moore. “Does thee see the fat man in the powdered wig? Next to him is thy grandfather.”
Indeed, it was. Grandfather Emerson stood out in the crowd, tall and commanding in his frontier clothing. Canoe was with him, listening attentively.
“Oh, Canoe is handsome,” Betsy said.
“Hush, Betsy, you’re betrothed to my brother.”
“And thee is writing to Raymond. Only thee walks in town all the time with John Reid.”
“Raymond and I are just corresponding, Betsy. We’re only friends.”
“I’ve heard so many stories about Canoe. Is it true he is thy grandfather’s son? If so, that would make him thy uncle.”
I had never thought of Canoe that way. Sam Tucker went on reading. I should listen. John Reid had excused me from lessons to come and listen. Everyone in town was here, even the Tories. I saw my parents standing off a little to the right of us, with the Moores. Joseph was lined up with the militia. He had joined the week before.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …” The words rang out and the crowd began to stomp and cheer. Some of the men threw up their hats. Sam Tucker had to wait for the noise to subside. I looked around, knowing what a wonderful day this was. I should be bursting with pride like everyone else. After all, my father had served with the Provincial Congress on New Jersey’s new state constitution that declared our colony’s independence from the Crown two whole days before they did it in Philadelphia. My brother Daniel was serving under General Schuyler in the Mohawk Valley, west of Albany, in the heart of the Iroquois Six Nations. And there was Mama, whose essays in the Pennsylvania Gazette defended Tom Paine’s Common Sense, six weeks in a row already.
Why wasn’t I feeling the surge of joy that went through the crowd like electricity through Benjamin Franklin’s kite?
“… and by authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states;…”
The applause was deafening. “… that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown.…”
“I’ll see you later, Betsy,” I said.
“Where are thee going?”
“I have something to attend to.”
The front door of our house was open, and July sunlight dappled the polished floorboards of the main hall. My shoes echoed, and I made an effort to walk quietly. I went to the end of the hall to my father’s study. The house was cool and inviting.
He was in the chair behind Father’s desk, half facing the window, which was open. In his hand was a goblet. I stood in the doorway.
He turned, not surprised. “Hello, Jemima.”
I curtsied. “Hello, Mr. Reid.”
“Why are you back? Everyone is at the reading. I sent you as part of your lessons today, did I not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, then? Must I scold on one of the happiest days this young nation has ever had?”
“I hoped you wouldn’t. I came back for you. You should be there.”
“Wouldn’t that look nice? A Tory listening to the reading of the Declaration of Independence. They’d tar and feather me.”
“There were other Tories there. Daniel Coxe, Dr. William Bryant from Bloomsbury Court, Isaac Allen and Charles Harrison.”
“And do I belong with them?”
“No, sir.”
“Where should I have stood, then? With whom? I belong nowhere, Jemima. That’s why I am here alone.”
“You belong there more than anyone!”
He flung me one of his old dark, forbidding looks, silencing me. I went into the room and sat in a chair near the desk. “You can hear the crowd from here,” I said.
“Yes. They won’t be contained today.”
“Will you come to Mama’s celebration dinner tonight?”
“No. Others will be there who don’t know of my … special circumstances, and for them I’d ruin the celebration. I have my packing to do anyway. I leave at the end of the week.”
“I know.”
He set the goblet on the desk, twirled the stem around, leaned back in the chair, and contemplated it. The white of his shirt contrasted with his browned face and neck. I sat, intrigued by the sun-bleached hairs on his forearms. I shivered.
“What is it Jemima?”
I shook my head, unable to answer.
He sighed, leaned forward, and rested his arms on his knees. “We’re going to have to talk, aren’t we?”
I gave him a weak smile. “Yes, sir, I suppose so.”
“Lord, don’t look at me like that, Jemima.” He got up and went to the window. “I’ve been watching you look at me like that for weeks now, and I haven’t known what to do about it.”
But he had, for he had managed to be completely in charge of his feelings and continue my lessons with a gentle firmness. It was I who had been so obvious. Several times he’d scolded me when my attention had lapsed. Once, lost under the spell of his voice reading French, I’d accidentally dumped the ink, spilling it onto his breeches. As he’d jumped up, yelling “Damnation,” I turned and fled the room in tears, running into Mama in the hallway, who made me turn around and go right back in.
There was a sudden wild cheering in the distance, followed by the firing of muskets. A cannon went off, then church bells.
He smiled at me.
“The bells are from the First Presbyterian,” I said. “St. Michael’s is closed down.”
“I know. Jemima …”
“Reverend Panton is leaving to join the British army. He’ll be chaplain of the Prince of Wales Regiment.”
“Your mother told me. Jemima …”
“Father will dearly miss playing chess with him.”
“Jemima Emerson, will you listen to me!”
There was another burst of cheering in the distance and more musket fire. Then there was silence. “Jemima, I am nine years older than you.”
“Eight years and seven months,” I said.
“Are you correcting your tutor?” He scowled.
“Yes, sir.” I got up and stood in front of him.
“I’m going away to do a filthy, thankless job. I don’t know when I’ll return.”
“But you yourself told me there are lapses in between your missions. You could come back then.”
“I have no right to declare my feelings to any woman, with the kind of life I’ll be leading.”
“Then I shall declare mine to you.”
“A properly brought up Christian young woman does not declare her feelings for a man first, Jemima.”
“I never was very proper. As my tutor, you should know that, Mr. Reid. But you should also know that I … that I have held you in such high esteem since the day you told me I must write to Raymond Moore that I’ve thought my heart would burst just being around you.”
I thought I saw his eyes fill with tears, but he lowered his head. His lashes were very black and thick, and I saw the pulse beating in his temple. He bit his lower lip, and composed himself, and his voice, when he spoke, came from some chamber far inside him that he had kept sealed until now. “These last few weeks, Jemima, I have had to be stern with you so I would not give myself away.”
“Well, you’
ve had fair enough practice at it, I would say.”
“Oh, Jemima …” His voice broke as he closed his eyes and shook his head. “I have loved you for so long now.” He placed his hands just above my hair then lightly touched the top of my head as if I would break. Then, finding out that I was not about to, he slid his hands down my hair to my shoulders and drew me to him. I thought I heard the cannon go off again, but it was the sound of my own heart beating. For his arms were so strong and yet gentle, as I’d dreamed for weeks they would be. And when he kissed me I felt as if the world was exploding inside me for the wonder of it.
When he stopped, I felt an anguish I had not known a body was capable of. And in that moment I possessed and lost the whole world and everything in it and was left with the feeling and the knowledge, which is love, that no matter how we give ourselves we always end up losing. That to love is to lose, the moment we agree to the bargain. And that, being human, we keep standing there wanting to lose more.
He smiled down at me and his eyes welcomed my newfound knowledge with a reassurance that it was all right, after all.
“Do you think you can call me John now?”
He broke my heart when he said that. I couldn’t speak. He turned away and reached into the pocket of his linen coat, which was over a nearby chair. “I have something for you.”
He drew out a small sack and removed something gold that caught the sunlight.
“Oh, what is it?”
“Something I bought for you when I was in Boston in February.”
“In February?”
“I told you I’ve loved you for a long time.” It was a delicate locket of gold and mother-of-pearl.
“Oh, it’s beautiful!”
“It’s from France.” He showed me how it opened, and inside was a likeness of him, deftly sketched. “An artist in Boston did it.”
“Oh, John! You’ve had it all this time!”
“All this time.” He smiled. “When I came home from Boston, we fought, if you’ll remember. You hadn’t done your lessons and I was angry with you.”
