by Vicki Delany
Maggie guarded her little wooden box carefully. The people in the house where she lodged seemed honest enough. But she had thought the same of her neighbors, once. She spent a few of her mother’s coins on a new dress for herself so she could get out of the over-large homespun, boots so she needn’t walk the filthy streets of New York on feet torn and blistered from ill-fitting shoes. She bought food for the household, trying to do her share.
Her bed was in what had once been a servants’ room, in the attic, as hot as Hades in the humid August heat, with dormer windows which looked out over Fifth Avenue onto the restless crowds passing back and forth day and night. The war was not going well, everyone knew that.
As for Maggie, she didn’t much care who won and who lost. She spent her days hanging around the fort, begging the authorities for news of Hamish, and stopping soldiers on the street, searching for anyone who might be able to tell her where he was.
She met men who knew of him, who’d seen him, maybe a year ago in Montreal, or was it two years ago in Niagara? They shook their heads sadly, and walked away.
She did not know the man who stood waiting for her at the door. “I’m Mrs. Macgregor,” she said. “Do you have news? My husband?”
“Do you not recognize me, ma’am,” he said. He took off his cap with his left hand.
She looked closely. She sucked in a breath.
Elijah Taylor who’d been one of their tenant farmers. He’d been a round man once, with fat red cheeks, and a twinkle in both eyes, and a roar of a laugh. He stood on the step, perhaps a hundred pounds lighter, his back stooped, a cut running from his hairline, through an empty eye socket to end in a twist of a lip. His right sleeve hung at his side. Empty. He’d gone with Hamish to join the King’s Royal Regiment. His family, mother and wife and seven children, had left with Mrs. Dietrich.
“Oh, Mr. Taylor,” she said.
“Aye. It’s me. What’s left of me. I’ve got news of Mr. Macgregor. And it’s not good, I’m sorry to say.”
The sun disappeared from the sky and a cold fog settled over her. Her heart stopped beating.
“Tell me,” she said.
At one time a man such as Mr. Taylor would have taken his time to give a lady tragic news. Today he said, “Mr. Macgregor’s dead, ma’am. I saw it myself, and I heard word his wife was in town, so knew it was my duty to tell you. It was last month, July. We were captured by the cursed Rebels in the spring. Taken to Simsburg.” His one eye looked into hers. “You know about Simsburg?”
“Yes.” Everyone knew about Simsburg Mines. Turned into a prison for Loyalist soldiers. The Rebels recognized British soldiers as soldiers, and treated them not unwell, subject to exchanges and pardons. But the Loyalists they threw into the depths of the mines. To rot.
“We were there together. Me and Mr. Macgregor and some of the other men from the Valley. It was a hellish place, ma’am.” He touched his loose sleeve and his face twisted with remembered pain. “We knew we had to get out of there, or we’d die without ever seeing the sun again. Six of us made the break. Mr. Macgregor, he was a good man, a real leader, unlike some others I could mention. He came last, after making sure the rest of us were well away. He didn’t make it, ma’am. Shot in the back by a rebel bastard.”
“Are you sure? Perhaps he was only wounded. Perhaps he’ll recover from his injuries and try to escape again?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Macgregor. But no. I’ve seen battle, though I wish to God I hadn’t. I know a deadly shot when I see one. That’s all I’ve come to say. I wish you well, ma’am, and I’m right sorry to have to bring you this news.”
“Thank you,” a voice said. Maggie felt an arm around her, although she hadn’t heard anyone approach. The front door was closed silently, and Maggie was led into the kitchen. A cup of tea, fortified with an extra teaspoon of valuable sugar, was placed in her hand.
***
September 22, 1783
“Mrs. Macgregor.”
“Yes?”
Once again Maggie stood in the doorway, facing a man she did not know.
The Van Alens had left for England, although they had never been to that country and knew no one there. Maggie had wondered what she would say if they asked her to accompany them, but they did not. She lost her room in their relative’s house, but with the last bit of money from the sale of her mother’s emerald brooch, she found new lodgings in a house on Broadway, not far from the fort.
She had been in New York City for three years. Time passed in a blur as she mourned all she had lost. She lived with three other childless women, the others waiting to join their husbands whose regiments had gone ahead to Canada. The war was lost, everyone knew, and the British commanders werepreparing to evacuate the city. Any Loyalist who wanted to leave would be given passage.
The victors were unforgiving in their triumph. There would be no mercy, no forgetting or reconciliation. Old grievances were resurrected, and theft, pure and simple, became the order of the day when one party could be accused of treason simply for following the laws or norms of the pre-Revolutionary society.
Tents and make-shift huts were thrown up on every bit of vacant land in and around the city. All summer long ships left, loaded with some of the more than thirty thousand refugees that Sir Guy Carleton, the last governor, had sworn to protect.
She had not wanted to believe what poor Elijah Taylor had told her. Perhaps he was mistaken and Hamish was only wounded. Men said the chaos of battle could be a confusing thing. But as the months, and then the years, passed Maggie accepted that Hamish would not be returning to claim her.
She wrote to her mother. She did not ask to be allowed to come home, had merely stated her situation in prose as stiff and formal as a business communication, and waited for a reply which never came. Either her letter had not arrived, or her father had intercepted and destroyed it. All over New York everyone had stories the same. Adult children estranged from parents, brother from brother, father from son. Best friends, turned the bitterest of enemies.
One of Maggie’s roommates, a hearty Scotswoman almost as round as she was tall named Fiona, had been a cook in a big house. These days she made a living cooking for soldiers tired of military rations or single men needing a good meal. Not that the facilities, Fiona constantly complained, were anything like the kitchen she’d had in the house in Philadelphia. “Ye could turn an ox on a spit, the hearth was that wide,” she said. “I had three young lasses to give me a hand, and more help they were than this useless lot, ye ken.” Maggie helped by tending the fire or chopping onions—at which she’d almost sliced off the tip of her index finger—and slowly began to learn. Not only to cook, but to shop, to clean. One of the women took in laundry, and Maggie learned more than she’d ever wanted to know about soap and about the filth that could get into men’s clothing. Her skill with a needle, learned only so she could embroider her trousseau and baby clothes, earned her some extra money sewing for the wives of British officers.
The days full of hard work passed as they waited to find out when they’d be evacuated. Maggie scarcely knew whether or not she wanted to leave New York City. Her friends were going; she had nothing to stay here for. There was no point in going home, back to Hamish’s farm in the Mohawk Valley to try to rebuild. As his wife she had no rights to his property. Not that there was anything to inherit. Word had come that all Loyalist property had been confiscated.
Stolen, more like it.
She’d put her name on the list and waited.
“Yes,” she said to the man standing at her door.
“Mrs. Hamish Macgregor?”
“Yes.”
“I’m so glad to have found you at last.” He took off his cap to reveal a shock of blond hair and gave her a big smile. He was quite handsome with most of his teeth, good skin, and unusual gray eyes. “My name is Nathanial Macgregor.�
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“Yes?”
“Your husband, Hamish Macgregor, was my cousin. Our fathers were brothers.”
Maggie’s stomach rolled over. “You’re Hamish’s cousin?” She desperately searched his face, looking for something, anything, familiar. She did not find it.
“Don’t stand there gossiping, lass,” Fiona shouted from behind a cloud of steam. “I’ve got cabbage boiling over here.”
Only a few years ago Maggie would have been mortified to be found answering her own door, clad in a ragged second-hand dress with a dirty apron tired around her waist, being summoned to strain boiled cabbage. She had no pride left, and her circumstances were not much worse than most of the refugees trapped in New York City.
“If you don’t mind waiting a moment,” she said to her visitor. “I’ll finish the cabbage and be right out.” There was no room in the crowded house to entertain a visitor. They’d have to stand in the street.
Chapter Twenty-two
At dinner that night Lily toyed with her sausage and then asked, “When you die, what will happen to the farm?”
“What on earth brought that question up?” Joanne threw a worried look at Jake. Lily had spent the day upstairs in her room with the books she’d brought home from the Harrisons’. Clearly death, in the form of not only Hila but funerary relics, was on her mind.
“I’ll run it,” Charlie said. “You’ll have to live out in the trailer and do whatever I say.” He’d had way too much sun at the beach and the top of his pert little nose was very red.
“I will not.”
“First of all,” Jake said, “We aren’t about to die any time soon.”
“Hila did.”
Joanne put down her fork. “What happened to Hila, sweetie, is hard to understand. But you have to remember that we’re upset precisely because Hila’s death was shocking and unexpected. That’s why the police are working so hard on finding out what happened to her.”
We’d been told we weren’t to go into the woods, and all day we’d caught glimpses of police moving through the trees. Lily’s bedroom faced the back, looking out over the forest, and it had a window bench, a comfortable cozy spot piled high with brightly colored pillows, where she liked to curl up and read. She would have had a good view, from up there, of the comings and goings.
I hadn’t been questioned again, but Jake and Joanne, Connor, Liz, and Allison had. Even Lily, in her parents’ presence, had been asked what she’d seen on our ride.
“We aren’t planning to die until we’re very old, like your great-grandma did,” Joanne said. “When we do, you and your brother will inherit the farm. Together.”
“Why doesn’t Aunt Hannah get it?” Lily asked.
“I doubt she wants it,” Joanne replied. “But even if she did, she can’t have it. You are our children, so all that we own,” she spread out her arms to encompass the kitchen, the house, the farm, “will be yours.”
“Not that that amounts to much,” Jake grumbled.
“It amounts to everything I want in this world,” Joanne snapped back.
Tensions were growing between those two, and the disappearance and death of Hila wasn’t helping. Jake was furious at the amount of working time he was missing and at having to pay his employees while they answered police questions.
Jake had grunted his thanks after Joanne told him I’d pay the horses’ expenses and for my own keep, but his gratitude hadn’t lasted long. My presence wasn’t helping this marriage any, but where could I go? To Mom and Dad’s? They’d take me in, of course, and make room, pretending it was a delightful idea.
I thought about their two-bedroom condo on Collier Street in downtown Toronto. Right near Bloor and Yonge, perhaps the busiest intersections in the whole country. The lights, day and night, the traffic, the crowds, the pollution, the noise.
Brecken had told me I couldn’t leave, but I didn’t much care what he said. The police might be letting him take the lead, but he had no authority over me. Made a nice excuse to stay, though.
“The farm’s important to me, too, okay.” Jake made an effort to smile at his daughter. “Your mom and I worked hard to buy this place. To bring it back into my family. I hope it can stay in the family, and that means you and Charlie.”
Lily’s forehead crunched up in thought. “What if people die who don’t have children? What happens to their stuff?”
“It usually goes to their brothers and sisters. Cousins maybe. Even the government, if they don’t have a will or any obvious heirs.”
“What’s a will?” Charlie asked.
“A legal document providing for the disposal of one’s property and possessions in the event of death,” Jake said.
“Oh,” Charlie said, not understanding and not caring. He reached across the table and grabbed the bottle of ketchup. He squeezed a generous amount onto the plate beside his sausage. He drew a face—a circle, eyes, a smiling mouth. Then he dragged a slice of sausage through it, smearing the remains of the face into a lumpy red mess. My stomach lurched, and I felt my own few bites of sausage, cabbage, and mashed potatoes rise into my throat. I looked quickly away.
“Dead peoples’ things belong to their family?” Lily’d put down her knife and fork and her face was intent.
“Yes,” Joanne replied. “That’s why you have Great-Grandma’s ring and why you and Charlie and your children will have the farm someday. My cousin Jennifer, who was always close to my grandmother, has her pearl necklace and I have her cookbooks. People can also leave things of value or sentiment to their friends or the children of their friends, if they wish.”
There was, of course, a lot more to the laws of inheritance than that, but Lily gave a satisfied nod and turned her attention back to her meal.
We were finishing up dessert, freshly-picked blackberries over ice cream, when the doorbell rang.
Jake got up to answer it and came back with Rebecca Mansour.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “I don’t mean to interrupt your dinner, but I was nearby and thought I’d pay a house call.”
“You’re in time for tea,” Joanne replied. “Please, join us.”
Rebecca gave her a smile and took the spare chair.
“Would you like some ice cream and berries?”
“Don’t mind if I do.” She turned to me. “You look well, Hannah. How are you feeling?”
“Okay.”
She pointedly eyed the bowl of melting ice cream in front of me. “Eating well?”
“Yes,” I said.
“No,” my sister said. “She doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive.”
“I eat when I’m hungry.”
“Which is precisely never.”
“Come on, Lily,” Jake said, getting to his feet. “Time to get the horses in for the night. “
“Can I watch TV?” Charlie asked.
“No,” Joanne said.
“You can help me, buddy,” Jake said. “Let’s go.”
“Any more trouble since yesterday?” Rebecca asked as Jake and the kids left and Joanne made more tea.
“Not a bit. “
“Is that right, Joanne?”
“Hey. I’m the patient here. You don’t ask someone else for a diagnosis.”
“I will if I have to. If you won’t take your injury seriously enough to let your doctor help you.”
“Time, isn’t that what you and your colleagues keep saying I need, time? Well in the time that’s passed since yesterday, I’ve been perfectly fine.” To my horror, I felt tears behind my eyes. I got to my feet to help Joanne with the tea.
“Why don’t we take our tea outside,” my sister said. “The mosquitoes haven’t been too bad this year.”
“Good idea,” Rebecca said.
“Hannah, would you get the cushions?”
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I found the blue and yellow patio cushions in the office and brought three outside while Joanne prepared a tea tray and an extra serving of dessert.
We settled ourselves and Joanne served. The sun was almost set. A gentle breeze stirred the humid air.
“Oh, look,” Rebecca said as the first flashes of white light danced in the bushes and across the fields. “Fireflies. I love them.”
We fell silent, watching the sparks of light.
“You’re impatient, Hannah,” Rebecca said, picking up her spoon. “If you’ve been told you need time, it’s because it’s true. You will get better, but you have to take care of yourself. Or at least allow your sister to do it for you.” She smiled at Joanne. “If you have any more blackouts, you simply have to tell us. In the meantime, I want you to have another MRI. I’ll schedule the appointment for you on Monday.”
“If I must.”
“You must.”
“Do you hear anything in town about…you know, about what happened out here?” Joanne asked.
“Rumors are running wild. Some people say it’s a serial killer and we have to lock up our daughters, some say it’s the Taliban and we’ll all be slaughtered in our beds.” Her short black hair bounced as she shook her head.
“That’s pretty much what Connor said he was hearing.”
“It’s got people looking over their shoulders, and that’s never a good thing. Not in a close-knit community like this one.”
“And not at tourist season, I’d imagine,” Joanne said, cradling her mug in her hands. Her fingers were long, nails chipped and broken, scratches climbed up her arms, and a Band-Aid was wrapped around her thumb. Hardworking hands. Hands that grew food and raised children and cared for sisters. Impulsively, I reached across the table and touched her arm.
Jake and the kids came out of the barn. Charlie first, then Lily dashed off after him, chasing the fireflies. Jake stopped to watch them, hands on his hips. The children’s cries of glee filled the soft night air.
