Freedom's Ring

by Heidi Chiavaroli

  I pushed aside my thoughts. If I was to survive this visit and move forward, I couldn’t dwell in the past anymore. I scrambled for a question to keep the conversation going. “And work for you? Your patients treating you okay?”

  She looked at me a long moment then. I couldn’t keep eye contact, and focused on arranging the saucers beside the Keurig instead.

  “I thought Mom would have told you.”

  “We don’t talk that much, really. Kind of a freak thing that she mentioned you guys moving to me the other day.”

  Lydia stared at the tan linoleum of my kitchen floor. “I left nursing. Too much for us right now. The kids—they’re not going to be home for much longer. I want to be there for them, as much as I’m able. Life can be too short.”

  I breathed around the tightness in my chest.

  “I’m a teacher’s aide now. At the high school. I get to see Grace every now and then, help struggling kids. It’s not bad. If the nursing position at the school ever opens up, I’ll apply for that.”

  Guilt wormed its way inside me again. I had been living my life worrying about no one but myself for the last twenty months. Meanwhile, my sister’s life was entirely rearranged. I couldn’t help but wonder if her job move was a healthy one. Had she taken the job for the sole purpose of watching over Grace? I mean, the girl was seventeen. She didn’t need her mom hovering over her every minute.

  “You loved nursing.”

  “And I’ll go back to it. Someday.” She readjusted her purse, glanced at her phone. “Yikes, didn’t realize it was so late. I really do need to run home. Joel’s got a friend coming for dinner.”

  She wanted out. Out of my apartment, out of my life, probably. I couldn’t let her get away so easily. She had made the choice to come. There must be some part of her that wanted things right between us again. “But coffee . . . ?”

  She closed her eyes, shook her head, dark hair swinging around her chin. When she opened her eyes, it was with an exasperated sigh. “I’m trying here, Annie. Really I am. But you don’t get it, do you? You can’t waltz back into our lives after all this time of silence and expect everything to be like it used to. I mean, listen to us. We don’t know anything about one another anymore. We’re—we’re different people than we were two years ago.”

  “I—I know. But—”

  “We needed you. Grace and I needed you. But you bailed. Now that the mess is over, now that we’re not waiting on doctors every minute of our lives, now that I’m not lying with her in bed at night just to reassure her everything’s okay when she wakes up and remembers she doesn’t have a leg, when she wakes up screaming that her foot—the one she no longer has—is killing her with phantom pain—now you want in? Sorry, but I have a family to protect.”

  The comment made blood rush to my limbs. True, I already saw myself as the culprit. But to hear Lydia claim she had to guard her family from danger—from me—was just too much. “I know I made a mistake, and Lydia, you have no idea how very sorry I am. But believe me when I say I never meant to hurt you or Grace.” I didn’t know what words could make the situation better. For whether I’d intended to or not, I had hurt my sister and niece. I looked at the carefully arranged coffee, knew it would be entirely inappropriate to ask her if now was a good time to choose a flavor. Instead, I swallowed, made an effort to mollify my tone. “I know I don’t deserve—”

  “You deserve nothing.” Lydia reached for the door handle. “I came here for Grace, but you know what? Maybe it’s time I think about me. Because seeing you—knowing what you expect—”

  “I don’t expect anything!”

  She froze at the threshold. “It’s just too hard right now, Annie. For me. Please don’t call or come by.” Her gaze flicked to my feet and her voice softened. “Not yet, anyway. I just—I need more time.”

  Then she was gone, her footsteps echoing on the wooden stairs of my apartment.

  I rubbed my eyes, waited for her car to pull out of the driveway before I shut off the outside light and flopped onto the couch. I’d known this wasn’t going to be easy. But Lydia’s visit grounded me thoroughly in that reality.

  Before visiting Grace the other day, I thought Lydia and I could take some time, work out our problems, and eventually reconcile. Now I realized that if we ever came to the point of understanding, there would still be this ugly thing hanging between us. This harbor of resentment. Maybe it would ease with time. Perhaps the sting would settle to a dull annoyance—like the pain in my leg—but I couldn’t imagine it ever going away.

  On the coffee table, my cell phone vibrated. Christina Perri’s voice sang out “A Thousand Years,” and I scooped it up. Brad Kilroy’s name flashed up at me and I tried to push the disappointing visit with my sister from my mind and focus on the call I’d been waiting for all week.

  “Hey, Brad.”

  “Hey yourself. How’s it going?”

  “Okay.” A trite lie to the guy who saved my life didn’t bode well for my conscience, so I settled for the truth.

  Maybe should’ve gone for the lie. I sounded like a definite downer.

  “Rough day?”

  “Kind of. . . . My sister just stopped by—you know, the one you gave your card to. It didn’t go so well.”

  “Sheesh, I hope I didn’t cause any problems between the two of you.”

  I laughed, a dull, humorless sound. “No, we’re pretty good at causing problems on our own.” I shook my head, as if he could see me. “Anyway, sorry. Didn’t mean to vent. We’re not at that stage yet.”

  I could’ve kicked myself for the overly familiar comment.

  “I don’t mind.” He cleared his throat. “But I did want to talk to you about something I stumbled upon today.”

  My fingers found the ring at my neck. “About the ring?”

  “I think so. I wanted to see what you thought.”

  I sat up, pushing my feet farther into my fuzzy slippers. “You have my attention, that’s for sure.”

  “I found something in the newspaper today. Are you up for a ride and maybe some dinner? It might be better to see this in person.”

  MARCH 5, 1770

  “‘My soul impels me! and in act I stand to draw the sword; but wisdom held my hand. A deed so rash had finished all our fate, No mortal forces from the lofty gate could roll the rock. In hopeless grief we lay, and sigh, expecting the return of day.’”

  I listened to the lulling cadence of the lieutenant’s voice as he read aloud to me the struggles of Odysseus in the Cyclops’s cave. The fire crackled in the small sitting area, and I kept to the task of darning the captain’s socks.

  When the captain had left for Deblois’s Concert Hall on Queen Street a few hours earlier, the lieutenant had stayed behind. I couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement when he came down from his room to sit in the chair beside me, then asked if I might like to hear him read The Odyssey aloud.

  He paused now, raised his eyebrows. “’Tis too gruesome for you? Shall I continue?”

  I smiled. “I helped my grandmother midwife all manner of complaints. I believe I can handle Pope’s translation of the death of Odysseus’s two men.”

  “Yes, but ‘the pavement swims with brains’ is perhaps too gruesome for even me, a soldier in the King’s Army.”

  If only he hadn’t reminded me. For a short, blissful time I had imagined there were no such vast differences between us.

  “Is something troubling you, Miss Liberty? Besides Homer’s poem?”

  I allowed my darning to fall in my lap. “I have found my brother.” Three days had passed since James and I had spoken in the burying grounds. He had not tried to contact me since.

  “That is good, is it not?”

  Instant regret tore through my being in bumpy waves. With five words I had been disloyal to my brother, to my family. Was it not horrid enough that I worked for the Crown? Must I also discuss the person I loved most dearly with an officer in the King’s Army? Inexcusable.

  “It is nothi
ng, sir. Please disregard a rambling lass.”

  He put down the book and leaned forward in his chair. His long legs almost touched my skirts, and my heart took up a traitorous beat.

  “Do you wish to leave our employ, Miss Liberty? Does your brother plan to provide for you? If that is your intent, we would of course understand . . . though I fear I would grieve your absence.”

  I raised my eyes to his solemn gaze, saw only sincerity. Heat traveled over my body, and quite suddenly the fire felt too warm.

  He swallowed, the movement of his throat speaking of a nervousness I couldn’t quite comprehend. “Perhaps ’tis not proper, perhaps I should not even say it, but I have come to—to care for you . . . Liberty.”

  The wings of a butterfly beat against my chest. An invisible weight drew me toward the lieutenant, and at the same time, I pictured James’s clenched fists and tight jaw at the news I had shared with him three days before. I couldn’t fathom his disapproval over my forbidden feelings for a man of the Crown.

  “Lieutenant—”

  “Alexander, if it so pleases you.”

  Alexander. His name was Alexander.

  “Lieutenant, while I have . . . fond feelings for you as well, I do not see what could ever become of them. I—”

  He scooped up my hands within the secure embrace of his own. The gold signet ring he wore pressed warm against my fingers. The scent of cedar and mint washed over me. “Then you care for me also?”

  I tried to wrest my hands from his—at least in my mind. My disobedient body, however, would not obey. “It seems you are a sentimentalist,” I whispered. “Perhaps you have read too much poetry.”

  He leaned closer to me until his knees touched my skirts, until we were but a breath away from one another. I would only have to close my eyes, lean the slightest measure forward, to close the gap. My limbs began to tremble at the anticipation. My mind swam. I should not encourage him so.

  He looked down at our joined hands, did not move away. When he spoke, his voice was soft. “How old are you, Miss Liberty?”

  The question caught me unawares. I pulled back but kept my hands resting in his. “I am seventeen.”

  He bowed his head and sighed, pressed our entwined fingers to his forehead. “So very young.”

  I slipped my hands from his, feeling the insult in a storm of turbulent emotion. “And yet I am not a child, Alexander.” Using his Christian name would surely assure him of this.

  “We are far apart in years. And with your position in the house . . . I do not wish to compromise . . . Forgive me, Liberty; I should not have spoken in this manner. I will wait—”

  The door burst open and the fire shuddered, the cold air disturbing the warmth of the house. The captain’s booted footfalls sounded from behind me.

  “This is quite the snug picture.” His words slurred even as he attempted to pronounce each syllable with precision.

  The lieutenant stood, took a step back from me. “Sir. You are home early. You are welcome to join us, of course.”

  The chill of the captain’s coat brushed against my arm as he came in front of me, his back to the lieutenant. He towered over me in full uniform—silver gorget, red coat, sash and epaulets, silver-laced hat. Snow melted off his boots onto the Persian carpet. He leaned down, placed his hands on either side of my chair. The scents of rum and pipe smoke and snuff swirled in nauseating waves around me. The sock I darned fell from my lap as my entire body took to quaking. “Perhaps it is my turn to get cozy with the help, eh?”

  “Step away from her, sir. Now. You have had too much rum. You will not talk to Miss Liberty in that manner.”

  At first the captain didn’t move. His addled gaze pinned me to the chair, and at Lieutenant Smythe’s words, a lazy grin spread across his face. “And I suppose you, Lieutenant, are just the one to set me to rights?”

  The lieutenant cleared his throat. “If need be, sir, yes.”

  The captain stood, swayed in front of me. Sounds from outside—shouts and knocks—pushed their way through the paned windows. Without warning, the captain spun, clenched the lieutenant’s shirt in his hand, and drew back a tight-knuckled fist.

  More noise from outside. A rapid knock on the door, and then a voice echoing down the street. “Town-born, turn out!”

  Fire bells begged our attention, and I sat up, straining my ears for the sounds outside. The captain lowered his hands from their offensive position. In the distance, another bell took up the same call as the first. In such crowded confines, one fire could signal the destruction of the entire town. More shouts and frantic knocks. The clink of metal on metal—a shovel or bucket to fight the fire?

  The captain seemed to sober quickly. He straightened his uniform and searched the room. When he found his musket, he grabbed it up.

  “I fear ’tis not a fire this night,” the lieutenant said, gathering his own coat and musket.

  I thought to ask him what he meant, but I knew. He spoke of the tension that had built for months between the colonists and the king’s soldiers. The fracases in the street, the mobs, the sentries taking abuse from schoolboys. The Sons of Liberty gathering at The Salutation on Ship Street, talking treason and working their rhetoric into the minds of the colonists through publications such as the one my brother worked for. The death of Christopher Seider and the great funeral that had followed. Just a couple nights earlier there had been another incident at the ropewalk. What would it all come to?

  “Parcel of blackguard rascals. Those blasted Americans.” The captain strode to the window, pushed aside the curtain roughly, and looked at the sight on the street. “Do not leave the house,” he said to me. And then they were gone.

  I scurried from the chair, tripped over the sock I’d been mending on my way to the window. Dark forms milled about the street, a great crowd, swelling in one direction—Queen Street.

  My breathing quickened as I thought of James at the print shop on Queen. Of James and his ardent fervor for this living, breathing, fiery rebellion sweeping through the streets of Boston. I went to the keeping room and thought how to busy myself. I took two tankards from the cupboard, prepared to have cider for the men when they arrived home. Outside, the swell of people passed the window, lanterns and pine knot torches lighting up sticks and clubs and shovels. The bells continued their persistent ring, rattling my nerves further.

  Then I heard it. Musket fire? I thought I recognized it from the many times the British infantry had taken up their shooting practice upon floating targets in the harbor.

  Was this it, then? Had the Regulars—or perhaps the Sons—finally started their war? Or had the shots come from the harbor? Were they nothing more than a common drill?

  My only thought was to help if in fact the shots had come from the center of town. At the risk of the captain’s wrath, I left the jug of cider and searched the linen closet for old sheets to strip into bandages. Thankful I’d gone to the apothecary the week before, I grabbed a tincture of honey and camphor I’d mixed that morning. Who knew if I could help; who knew if my help would be welcome? Lord willing, the shots were to disperse a mob or merely a shooting practice, and no one would need aid.

  My mind’s eye conjured up an image of the woman grieving over Christopher Seider’s grave in Old Granary. In this blistering town of chaos, bloodshed was possible, even probable. And all in the blasted name of freedom.

  My petticoats dragged through the frozen mud and snow as I ran up Queen Street. The sound of drums echoed in the night, calling the soldiers to arms. The few paned windows that didn’t hold latched shutters revealed curious little faces, a mother’s skirts within grasp, no doubt behind bolted doors.

  A din of conch shells and whistles, drums, and pounding feet. Then the haunting echo of shots rang through the air again, and unlike the last time, they were followed by an eerie sense of quiet that rippled from the center of town. Just as quickly, the din began once again.

  I passed the Edes & Gill print shop, where I hesitated, yet instinct tol
d me James would not be safe and warm in the back room with such a fabulous fray outside the door.

  The crowd took on a life of its own as I neared King Street. I was carried along with the throng, fearful of its sudden force, cognizant that I would be trampled if I didn’t keep up with the swell and press of it. Men, lads, and women joined around me. I tightened the basket I held against the crook of my arm. Someone stepped on my petticoats, and I tripped but caught myself, my skirts dirtying in the mud. A line of soldiers from the 29th Regiment formed what looked like a defensive barrier, their bayonets aimed at the crowd. I glimpsed a captain—Captain Preston, I knew, for he had come to the officers’ house for tea—behind the barrier of grenadiers with their bearskin hats, along with the sentry I had seen tormented by school-age boys on more than one occasion before the Custom House, and several other soldiers. The crowd appeared mad for their blood, pushing toward them with shovels and catsticks despite the threat of the bayonets. The faint scent of musket powder clung to the air, as horrid as rotten eggs and a thousand times more terrifying.

  Above us, from the balcony of the Town House, came a loud voice. I recognized Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson, calling for the crowd to return to their homes.

  A man in the midst of the mass called up to the governor. “Order your soldiers to go inside the guardhouse, then, before we depart. See the position they are in, ready to fire on us!”

  Governor Hutchinson’s thin face wrinkled. “Indeed.” He ordered them inside the guardhouse.

  The soldiers of the 29th shouldered their guns and began to march inside.

  Hutchinson again beseeched the crowd to go home. “Residents of Boston, believe me when I say I will see justice is done. I ensure a full inquiry on the events of this night. The law shall have its course; I will live and die by the law.”

  Slowly, the crowd began to disperse from King Street, their anger still united and burning. I wondered who had been hurt, who had been shot, for I could see no one in the midst of the tumultuous bodies.