It was Dan’s turn to grow red, and he glanced at his mother. “I—I can’t deny it,” he said quietly. Then he looked up with a sudden smile that lighted his face, and the load that had burdened him seemed to roll away. “Thank thee for telling us, Laddie,” he said.
“I knew in my spirit thee were not evil,” Sister Greene said, and she rose to come over and embrace Laddie. She held her for a long moment, and when she drew back there were tears in her eyes. “I don’t fault thee for anything, daughter. God has preserved thee in this strange way.”
She turned and left the room abruptly, and Dan said in surprise, “Mother doesn’t show her feelings much. She’s been more concerned about thee than I thought. Even more than—”
“More than thee?” Laddie smiled quietly.
“That’s what I was going to say.” He had risen and came to stand beside her. Looking into her clear eyes, he seemed to have no words, and she saw the struggle that was going on inside him.
I must not hurt this man, she thought instantly, and as if he had discerned that thought, he said, “I’ve always been a pretty easygoing chap, Laddie—never had much to do with women. Matter of fact, I’ve had an idea that God wanted me to give my life completely to Him—and that was fine with me. But thee has changed all that,” he finished with a light of wonder coming to his warm brown eyes, and he reached out and took her hand, looking at it as if he had found some strange and wonderful thing.
“Dan . . . !”
She spoke with a breathless quality in her voice, but he paid no heed. He looked directly at her and said evenly, as if he were commenting on the weather: “I love thee, Julie Sampson.”
“You—you mustn’t say that!” she whispered. His words set up an agitation in her heart, and she tried to turn away to hide her face, but he held her fast.
“I know thee love Nathan Winslow,” he said quietly. “But he doesn’t love thee, does he?”
“No! But he doesn’t know I’m a woman!”
“And we both know why thee won’t tell him, don’t we?”
“I—don’t know what you mean!”
“Thee won’t tell him because thee knows thee’ll lose him, Julie,” he said remorselessly. “Thee know he’ll hate thee for what thee’ve done to him. No man likes to be deceived, and even though thee had to do it, it’ll make him feel like a fool!”
She pulled away from him, and the truth of his words stabbed her. She had said the same thing to herself a hundred times, had felt blind rage when she thought of Abigail in Nathan’s arms—but as long as the words were unspoken, somehow she could still dream that he was hers.
Now she nodded slowly, and she looked at him steadily, saying, “I—I know all that—but I’ll never let him know.”
“Thee should,” he insisted. Then he shrugged; suddenly a surprising grin touched his lips. “Well, one good thing will come out of all this.”
“What’s that?” she asked in surprise.
“I’ll help with the guns.” He smiled more broadly at her expression and said, “Thee is not the only one who is self-deceived, Julie. I’ve been saying that I wouldn’t help because it went against my doctrine, but I knew all the time, it was really because I was jealous of Winslow.”
“Oh, Dan, we’re a couple of fools!” She looked at him and the grief in her face was replaced by an anxiety, and she put her hand lightly on his arm. “I—don’t want to hurt you. I’m in love with Nathan.”
He shook his head, a stubbornness in his face as he answered, “Thee thinks so, Julie—and no wonder. A young girl is rescued by a tall handsome young man in a romantic fairy-tale sort of affair—why, it would be more surprising if thee didn’t have an infatuation for him!” Then he reached out and before she could stop him, he kissed her lightly, and smiled as her eyes widened. “But when thee kissed me that night, Julie, thee was not thinking of Nathan Winslow—but of Daniel Greene!”
“Why . . . !”
“Just give a little time, Julie,” he said, and though there was a smile on his lips, she saw that he was deadly serious. “I’m coming with thee to Boston, and I’m staying so close that one of these days thee will fall in love with me.”
She shook her head, but there was only wonder in her voice as she said quietly, “I don’t think it will work—but Knox will be happy about the oxen.”
She was right about that, for when the morning dawned for the caravan to leave, Knox was beaming with admiration at the fine array of animals that had been secured.
“By Harry, Friend Greene . . . !” he exclaimed as he looked at the train, all ready to pull out, manned by fresh, strong animals, “You may be a Quaker, but you’ve done more for this war by helping get these guns to Boston than you’ll ever know!”
“I’ve had to bend my doctrine, Captain Knox,” Greene admitted with a shrug.
“What will your fellow Quakers say about this?” Knox asked.
“They’ve already said it, I’m afraid.” He reached into his pocket and pulled a paper out. Unfolding it, he said, “This is an affirmation of the traditional Quaker stand on war. It’s just been sent out to all Friends.” He read from the paper, his voice steady:
It is our judgment that such who make religious profession with us, and do either openly or by connivance, pay any fine, penalty, or tax, in lieu of their personal services for carrying on war; or who do consent to, and allow their children, apprentices, or servants to act therein, do thereby violate our Christian testimony, and by so doing manifest that they are not in religious fellowship with us.
Knox stared at him. “Does that mean they’re kicking you out?”
“That’s about it, to put the matter bluntly.”
Nathan had been listening to all this, and he suddenly grinned, saying, “Well, Friend Greene, you can always find a bunk with us! We can use a good man, eh, Laddie?”
Laddie smiled and nodded, but then Nathan added, “Laddie claims I snore too loud, so I reckon you two will have to share the blankets on the way to Boston. That all right with you?”
“I think it would be fine, Friend Nathan,” Dan said with a smooth expression. What does thee think, Friend Laddie?”
But Sergeant Smith had turned and walked away abruptly with a scowl.
Nathan apologized for Laddie’s behavior. “He’s a strange youngster, Dan,” he said regretfully. “I’ve tried to toughen him up, but he’s so blasted sensitive!” He clapped the other on the shoulder and grinned. “Well, we’ll make a man out of Laddie Smith, won’t we, Friend?”
The broad-shouldered Quaker looked at Nathan with a gleam in his eyes.
“Such a task may be harder than thee thinks, Friend Winslow!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MESSAGE FROM BOSTON
General Gage, out of favor in England because of the massacre at Bunker Hill, had been replaced by Sir William Howe, a man who fought and wenched doggedly. In November he had received orders from London to give up Boston and move south to New York, but he could not obtain the shipping to evacuate his men, so he settled back to stay until spring, occupying his time with a certain Mrs. Loring, the wife of his Commissary of Prisoners.
Washington created a small navy of privateers who darted in and out of the rocky harbors they knew so well. They nipped at the slow British merchantmen who came with supplies, and much of the food that did arrive was rotten. Captain John Manley of the schooner Lee scored a major coup when he took the British brigantine Nancy with her cargo of 2,000 muskets, 7,000 cannon balls, 10,500 flints, and a huge 13-inch mortar, which Israel Putnam christened “The Congress” by smashing a bottle of rum over its gaping muzzle.
Cut off by land and throttled by sea, the British made do with what they had. The Old North Church came down for firewood, as did the Liberty Tree, an arching elm under which Sam Adams and his rowdies had often met. Governor Winthrop’s 100-year-old home in the middle of town went to the flames.
To fight boredom, if not the revolution, the British held elegant balls, and Abigail missed
none of them. She was usually accompanied by Nathan’s old rival, Paul Winslow, and the two of them arrived at Faneuel Hall one evening to attend a farce written by General John Burgoyne. Known to most as Gentleman Johnnie, Burgoyne had arrived in March with Howe and General Henry Clinton and declared, “What! Ten thousand peasants keeping five thousand of the King’s men captive? Well, let us in and we’ll soon make elbow room!” He was later to be called “General Elbow Room” by the troops for this remark.
But now Howe was gambling and gamboling with Mrs. Loring, so Burgoyne, a man of great concern for his men, had concocted the play for their entertainment. Paul led Abigail through the shouting ribald crowd, composed mostly of soldiers accompanied by many painted women, to a seat down close to the front.
“Noisy, aren’t they?” He had to speak loudly to make himself heard, and added, “If they can fight like they can play, the rebels are doomed.”
Abigail looked around and then smiled at Paul. “So far they haven’t done much but get butchered at Bunker Hill and tear our town up. If Father hadn’t been a faithful subject, they would have burned our house down.”
“Ours too, I suppose,” Paul shrugged. The British troops, frustrated with the remaining Bostonians who were thought to be signaling the rebels with burning gunpowder, had burned and pillaged the property of any American who could not prove his loyalty to the Crown.
Paul thought about it, then said, “It would be bad for us if the rebels came back. Some of the patriots who’d had their houses burned would be sure to come calling on every one of us who’ve stayed loyal to the King.”
She stared at him with troubled eyes. “But—there’s no chance of that, surely? They’re just a rabble!”
“I hope you’re right, sweetheart,” Paul said. He had a dark streak of fatalism running through him, and he added as the curtain went up, “I’d hate to be at the mercy of our rebel ‘neighbors.’ I really think they’d be more dangerous to us than the soldiers in the army.”
She turned to watch the play, but he saw that she had been shaken by the idea that she and her family might be on the losing side. The farce was taken from a play called Maid of Oaks, written by Burgoyne and produced in London by David Garrick. This humbler Boston production starred a caricature of Washington in a huge wig and rusty sword. The soldiers and their women roared with laughter at the farce, calling out lewd suggestions loudly, but as the play was nearly over, a sentry burst into the room crying out: “Turn out! Turn out! They are hard at it, hammer and tongs!”
The audience, thinking this was part of the play, clapped prodigiously, but the sentry yelled, “What the devil are ye about? The rebels are raiding Charles Town Neck, I tell you!”
There was a wild scramble then, as the officers and men saw that the threat was genuine, and Paul led Abigail through an almost empty hall to the carriage. On the way home, she said in a frightened voice, “Paul, can we lose?”
“No, not the war,” he said moodily. “But we can lose here. If the rebels ever find out how weak we are—or if they ever get any cannon on those hills up there, it’s all over.”
“But—what will we do?”
“Get away, if we can, to England. But we’ll lose everything. I talked with Father about it last week. He says there’s no hope except maybe in Adam.”
“Adam?”
“Nathan’s father,” he said with a strange smile at her. “Didn’t Nathan ever tell you our family history?”
“No.”
“He’s more noble than I would have been. I didn’t think your father would say anything, but I thought Nathan might.”
“What’s my father got to do with it?”
He chuckled and said, “Why your father and mine made a valiant stab at diddling Nathan’s father out of his share of the family business years ago. Adam found out about it and just about shook my father’s teeth out until Dad repented.”
“My father never said a word!”
“Not too proud of that part of his life, I should think.” Suddenly he laughed and clapped his thigh. “By George, it’s funny now that I think of it! Here we’ve thrown our lots in with the British—sure that these rebels were going to lose. If the British win, Nathan and his father would be paupers and we’d be rich. Now, if Washington comes back with his army, Nathan and his family will be on top, and if we’re not hanged for being traitors, we’ll be poor as church mice.” He laughed again, then gave her a sudden hard glance. “I think about this time you’re having second thoughts about choosing me instead of Nathan, aren’t you, sweetheart?”
“Don’t be silly,” she said quickly. But she was quiet on the ride home, and when he kissed her good night, she was preoccupied.
“May I come up?”
“Not tonight, Paul. I’m tired.”
He looked at her cynically, then left immediately, but she tossed and turned long that night, unable to sleep. Finally she thought, Nathan wouldn’t let me suffer. He may be hurt, but he still loves me! Then she smiled, stretched luxuriously, and felt much better.
* * *
Adam and Molly made their way through Cambridge, noting that most of the soldiers who filled the town had little in the way of uniforms. There were some exceptions, of course. The Rhode Islanders were there with their neat tents, each equipped with its own awning. The Twenty-first Massachusetts, men from Marblehead, had given up their occupations as shipwrights and fishermen, but not their seafaring heritage. Molly said quietly as they passed by, “How neat they look!”
Adam glanced at the troops, dressed in trim blue seacloth jackets and loose white sailor’s trousers. “Look funny off a ship, don’t they now? Make our boys look pretty sloppy.”
He was now Captain Winslow of the Virginia Rangers—a rank which he had not wanted, but which General Washington had insisted on, and Molly was proud of him. She said as they approached the house that Washington used for a headquarters, “Our men are so different from the others!”
That was true. The Virginia riflemen had little in common with the other troops. They were tall, violent men with skins the color of tanned leather, and under Adam’s command, they had marched seven hundred miles in three weeks, arriving in Boston with no one ill and no deserters.
The Virginians wore voluminous white hunting shirts and round, broad-brimmed caps with dangling fur tails. Their garb alone would have made them a target for attention, but their behavior provoked the other troops even more. They automatically pushed aside anyone who got in their way, and their height and obvious toughness awed most of the troops. They carried guns much longer and narrower than the familiar smoothbore muskets—and they won most of the loose money in camp by challenging all comers to shooting contests and winning every time—shattering bottles at three hundred yards. The Brown Bess would not even carry half that distance!
They fought anyone—kicking, biting, gouging out eyes—and if no stranger offered himself, they fought each other. Washington had said when giving Adam his commission, “It’ll have to be you, Winslow. The officer of these men will have to be as tough as they are!”
They reached the house, and while the guard went inside to give his name, Adam said, “I’m glad you’re here, Molly. This would be a lonesome place for me without you.”
She smiled at him, a coquettish look in her eyes as she pinched his arm. “You think I’d let a good-looking thing like you loose in a place like this?”
“Not much danger,” he grinned. “I wonder what General Washington wants?”
They did not have to wait long, for the door opened and Washington himself stepped outside, wearing a spotless uniform. Adam noted instantly that the air of expectancy he had come to know in this leader was obviously missing. The pressure had been enormous, and only a few days earlier he had written to his aide Joseph Reed:
I have often thought how much happier I should have been if, instead of accepting a command under such circumstances, I had taken my musket on my shoulder and entered the ranks; or if I could have justified the measure
to posterity and my own conscience, had retired to the back country and lived in a wigwam.
But now the tall Virginian had a buoyancy in his walk, and his eyes shone as he said, “Captain Winslow—Mrs. Winslow, you are prompt.”
“Yes, sir,” Adam nodded. “I thought the matter might be urgent from the sound of your message.”
“So it is,” Washington smiled. “Mrs. Winslow, would you be pleased to ride in my carriage while I ride with your husband? It’s only a short journey, but this weather is still sharp.”
Adam put Molly into the carriage, then mounted a horse provided by an aide. As Washington wheeled his own horse, a magnificent white stallion, Adam thought, How this man can ride a horse! As they made their way out of Cambridge, heading for Boston, Washington chatted about small things, which left Adam mystified. He didn’t need me to go for a ride with him!
Then when they reached the turnpike, Washington pulled up and waved toward a small camp set off the road. “I think you’ll be interested in this, Captain.”
Adam knew at once what it was and exclaimed, “Knox made it with the guns!”
“Thank God, he did!” Washington said, and then he spurred his horse forward. They reached the camp, and as Adam swung down and helped Molly out of the carriage, Knox came out of a tent and almost ran to meet his commander.
Knox had a dramatic streak in him, and he drew himself up to his full height, saluted and said in a full voice, “Your Excellency—the mission is accomplished! Now the cause of liberty is safe!”
Washington laughed delightedly and said, “Henry, you are a little premature, but you have my thanks—indeed, the whole country owes you much, Colonel Knox!”
Knox’s eyes flew open at his sudden promotion, and for once the huge bookseller was speechless. Then Washington said, “Now, you and I will have a talk on how to best use these little beauties of yours—and Captain and Mrs. Winslow here would like to see their son.”
The Gentle Rebel Page 24
