Prelude to Glory, Vol. 1

by Ron Carter

  “Sir,” Matthew exclaimed, “it would be most appreciated if you and your family would share dinner with our family next Sunday afternoon.”

  Phoebe stared wide-eyed at Margaret while John stared at Matthew. Henry’s eyebrows arched in utter surprise, and for a moment his mouth dropped open. He snapped it closed and looked at John inquiringly.

  Matthew did not flinch. He looked steadily into Henry’s eyes and concluded, “Would that be agreeable, sir?”

  Henry glanced at Kathleen for an explanation, but she stared at the ground and refused to raise her head. He turned to Phoebe, who signalled she was as stunned as he. Invitations by one family to another to share a Sunday dinner never came from other than the head of the house, or at least the wife. What ailed Matthew?

  “Why, uh, of course,” Henry blurted. “That would be nice.” He recovered some presence of mind and battled a smile as he spoke to John, just approaching with the family. “I presume Matthew speaks for the master of the house?”

  John was caught flat-footed. He choked down a smile and answered, “I presume he does.”

  Henry threw back his head and laughed, and a moment later John joined him. Margaret and Phoebe clapped their hands over their mouths in their struggle to avoid loud laughter on the Sabbath, and the Reverend Silas Olmsted appeared to quietly remind the two men that it was unseemly for two of the pillars of the church and community to engage in such an uproar on the Lord’s Sabbath.

  Both men sobered and apologized, and then battled to contain another outburst while they gathered their families for the walk home.

  Kathleen Thorpe was the eldest of the Thorpe children. Dark eyed and dark haired, approaching her twenty-first birthday, she was tall, striking, spirited, capable, a born mother. In her third year at school she somehow knew in her child’s heart that she would one day marry Matthew, despite the fact she was then a confirmed tomboy, to the unending consternation of her modest, quiet, reserved mother. In her fourth year, with two front teeth so large they seemed to fill her entire smile, she beat Alvin Wasselman at hoops, then hoisted her skirt to her knees and wrestled him to the ground when he accused her of cheating. In her sixth year she changed; no longer the tomboy. In her eighth year she knew the pain of ultimate tragedy when Matthew told her he would be going to sea the next summer. She knew in her heart that he would be shipwrecked on a desert island, where he would languish without food or water and die, never knowing the breadth and depth of her love. And she would never love another; rather, she would waste away until she was old and gray, a martyr to her all-consuming love. When he didn’t go to sea, she pouted for a week, angry at him for cheating her of her one shining opportunity for martyrdom.

  In their ninth year Matthew had used his father’s clockmaker’s tools to carve a small, beautiful snow owl for her birthday gift, with painted eyes and the feathers veined and delicate and snow-white. It instantly became her treasure of treasures. She kept it locked in her cedar chest, to be taken out and held tenderly while she gently stroked it and pressed it to her heart when she knew she was alone. In the tenth grade she had spent two months patiently creating for Matthew a watch fob of royal blue silk with his initials beautifully cast in red letters edged in white. His eyes shined when he saw it, and he put it away in his drawer, to be used only when he got his first gold-plated watch.

  When he left for college she told him she would be waiting when he returned. He wrote faithfully, and she tied his letters and put them with the owl; and she wrote him every week, and waited for his visits. Four times his first year he walked from Cambridge to Boston, just to see her. The two summers he later spent on the sea mastering maritime navigation were endless, and she waited at the window for the postman to bring news of what exotic port he had last visited.

  Margaret smiled at the warm memories, and her thoughts settled on the dinner she was preparing. Matthew’s spontaneous invitation to the Thorpe family had caught everyone by surprise, including Kathleen. Is he planning to make the big announcement? No, not yet. That will come after he’s been approved to graduate in September, and discussed it with John and me. He wouldn’t just suddenly jump into it without talking to us. Would he? Her forehead wrinkled in frustration. Would he?

  In the week since the startling invitation, she had noticed him glancing restlessly at the calendar, then the clock, and she knew the thought that was running through his mind like a chant, like an impatient drumbeat: Kathleen’s coming . . . Kathleen’s coming . . . Kathleen’s coming. She softened as she remembered the sweetness of it twenty-three years ago when it pulsed in her blood—John’s coming . . . John’s coming . . . John’s coming.

  She heard the soft padding of feet behind and turned. “What brings you into the kitchen so early?” she asked.

  Matthew, fully dressed, settled onto a chair by the big table. “Couldn’t sleep. You’re up early.”

  “A lot to do. Can’t stop thinking about Kathleen, can you?”

  Matthew ducked his head for a moment and reddened. “Making custard?”

  “No,” Margaret said, “I thought I’d serve ashes and seashells.”

  Matthew snorted.

  Margaret glanced at the clock on the massive oak mantel above the fireplace. About seven forty-five, Sunday morning, April 16. John had made all the clocks in the house, and they were among the most accurate in the colonies. They were Dunson clocks, sought after over the entire Chesapeake Bay and in shipping ports as far north as Portland, Maine.

  She remembered the day she saw John across the Boston green—June, over twenty-three years ago. He was standing alone, dressed in moccasins and buckskin breeches and a homemade woolen shirt, one arm cocked over the muzzle of his musket, long hair pulled back by a buckskin string, staring at her. Though she had pondered it many times, she could never decide what had stopped her, made her return his frank gaze. His features were regular, firm, strong set to his shoulders, and his feet were planted like tree stumps. Was it the total honesty she felt from him? Or was it the solid feeling that he knew what he wanted, and that whatever it was he would get it? He had learned to read and write and cipher in the tiny log school of the hamlet of Marsden, forty miles north, where he was orphaned by Indians. He was a crack woodsman, and could drive nails at fifty feet with a ball from his musket. He had come to Boston to learn a trade, and within days was an apprentice clockmaker and gunsmith. They had married at the end of one year, and steadily, relentlessly he pursued his chosen trade until Dunson clocks and muskets were renowned throughout the colony. He chafed at the oppression of the British and spoke out. His common-sense steadiness and resolve were soon recognized—the Provincial Congress, the Committee of Safety—and inevitably, one day at a time, he was emerging as a natural-born leader, prominent and popular in town meetings.

  Margaret spoke to Matthew without turning. “Go tell Brigitte to come. I need her help and she needs to learn.”

  Matthew stood. “When did Father return?”

  For a moment Margaret’s face clouded. “Nearly four o’clock.”

  Matthew blew air softly through rounded lips. “Trouble?”

  “He’ll tell you, but don’t wake him. He needs sleep.”

  Matthew quietly wakened Brigitte, then returned to the kitchen and sat down and asked again, “Was there trouble? Last night, I mean.”

  “Not the kind you mean.”

  “Then what kind?”

  “The British may be planning a troop movement.”

  Matthew leaned forward, voice suddenly tense. “Where? When?”

  Margaret shook her head. “Wait till your father is awake.”

  Brigitte walked into the kitchen wearing her robe, her long blonde hair tied back with a bit of ribbon. Her heavy woolen slippers were silent on the polished floor.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” Margaret said cheerfully. “Put on your apron. We’ve work to do if we’re feeding half of Boston this afternoon.”

  “Oh, Mother, it’s just the Thorpes,” Brigitte groaned. “Fe
ed them hominy grits and well water.”

  Margaret shook with a silent laugh. “That’s an improvement on the ashes and seashells I’d planned. Get the leg of lamb from the root cellar.”

  Brigitte reached for the large, shallow copper pan and walked out.

  Margaret opened the door to the firebox beneath the oven, built into the front of the fireplace, beside the great opening. She scooped burning coals in a copper shovel and dumped them onto the floor of the firebox, then stuffed in shavings, then larger sticks, and watched until they caught. She closed the door and set the draft openings on the front.

  Brigitte walked back in with the pan. Her eyes glowed, and she was smiling. “Beautiful out there.”

  “The Lord’s own Sabbath,” Margaret said. “Now, wash the meat and get busy with the basil leaves and thyme.” She turned to Matthew. “Busy hands are happy hands. Go fetch a pan of potatoes and knock the sprouts off.”

  “My hands are happy the way they are.”

  “Then they’ll be overjoyed when you fetch the potatoes. Move.” Her eyes snapped. Matthew picked up the copper pan and walked out.

  Margaret turned back to Brigitte and watched with approval as her daughter worked the spices into the leg of lamb. Matthew walked in the back door with the potatoes.

  “Now scrub the potatoes,” she said to Brigitte, “and then get started on the griddle cakes. I’ll wake the children.”

  She stopped to lift the lid on the milk kettle to be certain it was not boiling, then started for the archway to the bedroom wing as John entered.

  “You can sleep for twenty more minutes before breakfast,” Margaret said.

  “I’m fine.”

  She continued through the archway and then down the hall to awaken Caleb, growing daily at age fourteen, and the seven-year-old twins, Adam and Priscilla.

  Matthew faced John. “What happened last night?”

  John glanced at Brigitte and gave Matthew a head signal. “Let’s take a walk.”

  Brigitte straightened and stopped working with the potatoes. “Something I can’t hear?”

  “No, something others can’t hear.” John led Matthew out the back door, past the root cellar, to the rear fence, while Brigitte stood for a moment at the back door with her hands on her hips and called, “What do you think I’d do? Shout it from the pulpit at church? Humph! Men!” She finished with the potatoes and went to the pantry for flour, sugar, and salt.

  Outside, the two men settled onto the bench that circled the oak.

  “What happened last night?” Matthew asked.

  For five minutes John spoke while Matthew listened intently, and he sat silent for a few moments while the facts settled in. “Revere’s gone?” Matthew asked.

  “Left before daylight.”

  “Tom Sievers?”

  “Trying to find out who’s spying for Gage.”

  “Tell me about Tom. Why is he the way he is? What is there between you and him? Why do you feed him and let him sleep here when he needs it?”

  John leaned forward, elbows on knees, and for a moment slowly rubbed his palms together in deep thought.

  “Maybe you’re old enough.” Again he paused. “Have you ever heard of the snowshoe men?”

  “A little.”

  “I was seventeen, and Tom was twenty-one. He was married and had a son a year old. We lived north of here in a little village named Marsden. It’s gone now. The Indians raided those small towns to get rid of us. We had to fight them. We found out they didn’t like to fight in the winter because we could track them in the snow. So we made snowshoes and organized patrols. We carried the fight to them and drove them farther north. We became known as the snowshoe men.”

  John paused.

  Matthew stared. “You never talked about this before.”

  “There was no reason to.”

  “Look at Tom now! A filthy drunkard that talks to himself and wears a knife and tomahawk all the time. What happened?”

  “Tom and I were assigned together. He was one of the finest woodsmen I ever knew. He was a dead shot at one hundred yards. I never saw anyone handle a knife or tomahawk the way he could. He was without fear. He loved his wife and his son with all his heart. Her name was Elizabeth, the boy was Jacob.”

  Matthew stared in disbelief.

  “The Indians hit our town in February, and several of us followed them. We caught them—Huron—about fourteen miles north of town and there was a fight. We killed over half of them before the others ran. We thought we had seen the last of them until we returned to Marsden, or what was left of it.”

  Matthew licked dry lips.

  “The party we followed had been a decoy. About a hundred others had waited until we were gone before they moved on Marsden. No one was left alive in town. My family was all killed. So was Tom’s.”

  “I knew about Grandmother and Grandfather, but no one ever said how it happened nor that Tom lost his family too. You didn’t become a drunkard. What happened to Tom?”

  Moments passed before John answered. “We found his wife in the yard and his son by the milking shed. Everything had been burned to the ground and the livestock slaughtered.”

  “But why has he become—”

  John cut him off. “Let me finish. I said we found his wife and son dead. The truth is, we found part of them. It took us over an hour. There were parts of them we never did find.”

  Matthew choked.

  John stared hard at his hands. “We buried what we had, and two days later Tom disappeared. A year later we heard there was a wild man up north, killing every Huron he could find. I guessed who it was. The following summer I spent two months tracking him. I think he was insane when I found him, and I understood why because I saw what they did to his wife and son. No one ever knew how many Huron he killed. He had eaten part of some of them.”

  Matthew did not move.

  “He said he wasn’t coming back until he found Elizabeth and Jacob. What he meant was, he wanted to find what had been missing.”

  Matthew closed his eyes and his head rolled back.

  John continued. “It took me another month to get him to come back. He never stopped mumbling about Elizabeth. Sometimes he’d disappear all day in the woods, looking for her.”

  John drew a deep breath and released it. “I came to Boston, and Tom came with me because he had no other place to go and no one else who understood. In time, he changed enough to be in town. He still mumbles to Elizabeth once in a while, but he doesn’t realize it. He drinks to forget.”

  “I didn’t know,” Matthew whispered.

  “Your mother knows most of it, so she feeds him and lets him sleep here once in a while. Despite what he is, Tom’s still one of the best fighting men I know.” John stopped and for a time stared unseeing at his hands. “Keep this to yourself. Not many in town know about it, and they don’t need to.”

  They sat quietly in the warmth of the morning sun for a time while Matthew struggled. He raised his head and looked at his brick home, square and solid and whitewashed, and at the tulip and hyacinth beds along the white fence, and the giant oak spreading above his head, and the pruned cherry and apple trees just bursting into blossom. He looked, and he thought, and said nothing.

  He turned back to John. “I didn’t know you had fought the Indians—that you were a fighting man.”

  “There was no reason to tell you until now. It’s far behind me.”

  “You carried a musket? a knife and tomahawk? You killed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that how you became a dead shot?”

  “Yes. Tom taught me most of it.”

  Matthew stood for a moment and walked away. He gathered his thoughts and returned. “I never knew that.”

  “It happened. It was necessary.” He reflected for a moment. “Or at least we thought it was.”

  Matthew slowly sat down beside his father and studied the ground for a time. He raised his head and spoke firmly. “You said Revere was riding to tell Adams and H
ancock what’s happening.”

  John realized Matthew was changing the direction of their thoughts. The talk of Tom Sievers and of the events from long ago was closed, and Matthew had accepted it.

  “Yes. He is.”

  “Is this the beginning of the war?” Matthew asked.

  “No one wants it, but it could happen. We’re not ready for it. But if they go after Adams and Hancock, or our arms, it will probably end in a fight, and if it’s bad enough it could bring on war.”

  “When will we know?”

  “No way to tell. We stall and prepare. But one thing we all agreed on last night. They have to provoke it. They have to fire on us first.”

  “Why?”

  John studied the deep-set eyes. “Principle. We must have the advantage of being the victims.”

  “They’ve already done that at the massacre on King Street.”

  “Too long ago.”

  “What’s happening today?”

  “Wait for their next move, and for Revere.”

  The back door swung open and both men turned. Margaret walked out and called, “Come get ready for breakfast, and bring four eggs.”

  The men looked at each other, and both recognized that in their time together beneath the oak something new, something binding had occurred between them. They started back to the house together.

  “What about you and Kathleen?” John asked.

  “I intend to marry her this spring.”

  “Good. Have you told your mother?”

  “No. I was going to wait until later this week.”

  “They’re coming for dinner today.” John grinned at the remembrance of the unplanned invitation. “Didn’t you get all this backwards? The talk first, the announcement dinner after?”

  Matthew shrugged through an embarrassed grin. “Well, you know, I didn’t mean to. It just came out that way.”

  “I thought so.” John chuckled softly, then sobered and spoke again. “Your mother said someone might have been prowling last night.”

  “About two o’clock I thought I heard something, but I don’t know. Nothing happened.”