Banners

by Diane Carey

  “We are,” the doctor agreed. “The word is that the British were infuriated by the burning of York, the capitol of Ontario, last week. We can look forward to more attacks and more anger. If Havre de Grace is any template, they will not target uniformed militia alone. They will target our homes and families. Since the militia is all of us, I don’t suppose we’ve given them a reason to spare anyone.” Beanes pushed to his feet and took his walking stick in hand. “I must take my leave.”

  Key stood up and protested, “But you’ve barely arrived. We made a duck for you.”

  “Thankee, but I shall have to take my grim tidings and return to Marlborough. I’ve left Sarah alone to ponder this news without comfort. And of course I must prepare my clinic for the wounded who will come my way. I had thought to retire to a passive life of gardening or winery, and here I’ve been handed another war in the sunset of my service. It changes everything. Francis … Captain.”

  “Doctor.” Boyle extended his hand.

  Beanes took it. “I’m glad to see you in good health after your latest cruise, Thomas. We all worried about you when they clapped a bounty on your head.”

  The captain seized his day coat and dragged it on. “I must see to my wife and children’s protection. Comet’s still docked in Fell’s Point. I’ll have to get her and myself to another port before the redcoats turn on Baltimore or they’ll target my family.” At the foot of the stairs, he turned to his disappointed host. “Brace yourself, Frank. Washington will be a tasty target and that means Georgetown and this house, smack on the Potomac in the line of fire. You’d better do more than pray. You’d better find a warrior in yourself.”

  Wool

  63 ALBERMARLE STREET

  BALTIMORE

  JUNE 6

  CAPTAIN BOYLE OPENED THE door of his home himself, handsomely, for he was carrying a two-year-old asleep on his shoulder.

  From under her white bonnet and dark ringlets, small-statured Mary Pickersgill smiled at the sight of them.

  “Mary,” the captain said, “good day. How nice.”

  “Look at your littlest sweetie,” Mary cooed. “God loves a happy child.”

  “Especially when she’s sleeping.”

  Mary whispered, “Oh, Tom, look how hale she is. I’m glad for you.”

  He stepped outside and carefully closed the door behind him. “Let’s talk in the garden. I’ve succeeded in getting the whole houseful to take a nap at the same time. I am lord and master of all I survey. That is, until this one wakes and the world begins revolving again.”

  With his daughter molded to his body, he managed to sit on a stone bench and lean back against the house, then beckoned Mary to the bench across the tiny pebbled path.

  “Is everyone well inside?” she asked.

  “All’s well,” he said, rubbing his child’s back distractedly. “It’s good to set sail and good to come home. Though coming home these days is a bit trickier. Well, so’s getting out, but you know.”

  “What is the blockade like now?”

  “Dense,” he told her honestly. “More Royal Navy ships and patrols, angrier captains … we follow the darkness and fog and hope not to hit the shoals. We can outrun them, but it’s safer to see them without their seeing us. It’s a gamble every time.”

  “But you love a good gamble.”

  He grinned in that rascally manner that showed what he was thinking. “I do, don’t I?”

  His manner was born of his courage, she knew, as was his desire to shield her and the women in his life from the grim truths of privateering.

  Mary was not one to need coddling, or to be fooled. “It’s not a game, dear. If they capture Captain Tom Boyle, they’ll hang you just to say they did.”

  “After they parade me though the streets of London and nail my hand to Lloyd’s front door.”

  “Tom …”

  He gave her a one-shouldered shrug, since the other was occupied under a baby head. He could have stated outright that he and his crew were soldiers in a war, but she knew already and they sat in companionable quiet, listening to the birds sing.

  “How is the packing going?” she asked then.

  “We’ve moved two wagonloads a day for two days. I’ve had some shipmates come to help.”

  “I’ll be sorry to see you move away, Tom. I’ll miss you and your family so.”

  “We’re only moving one block down and three blocks over,” he told her reasonably. “Hardly ‘away.’”

  “For which I’m very glad. I’ll be strict about visiting and looking in on them while you’re gone, and I hope you’ll do the same. The only thing Caroline seems to truly enjoy is taking care of your children now and then.”

  “You know, Mary, I’ve found that we see our dearest friends even more often when we’re not right next door. I suppose it’s because there’s some effort involved in keeping them in our lives and we all like to have results from our efforts.”

  She laughed. “Or we take each other for granted when we’re close by.”

  Across the street, Mary’s daughter Caroline came out the front door of the Pickersgill house with two buckets, accompanied by her cousins Eliza and Margaret, who had arrived to live here for a while. They also carried buckets, so Caroline was probably showing them the way to City Springs, six blocks away, to collect the day’s water. Grace was not with them, so she was probably stoking fires and ironing flags, the almost-constant sub-stratum of their business. Hard worker, that girl. If only she would sneeze on Caroline and pass on the habits.

  “All right,” she finally said. “I need some advice or help, if I can get it.”

  The captain shifted his daughter a bit as she slept. “Anything I can do, of course.”

  “There’s a new commandant at Fort McHenry, a straight-up young man with unalloyed patriotism that I deeply appreciate. He has made a request for an ensign of rather alarming proportion. Says he wants the British to be able to see it from quite a way down the Patapsco. He also wants a smaller storm flag, but even that one will be massive.”

  “What can I do?” Boyle asked.

  “These two flags require a great reserve of English wool bunting. There’s not enough immediately available and I need it all at once so the dyeing can be done correctly. There’s no time to place an order through the usual channels. I’ve inquired as far as New York. Stocks are so low.”

  “Have you tried Jesse’s connections?” he asked, about her brother-in-law, another sea captain and owner of a Fell’s Point shop which usually would be perfect as a source, were times different.

  “I have,” she said. “He’s in the South Atlantic, out of contact.”

  “Oh—that’s right. How much do you need?”

  “Almost two-thousand square feet.”

  “Feet? He must mean inches.”

  “We were very clear about it. The big ensign alone will be twelve-hundred-sixty square feet. Thirty feet on the hoist, by forty-two.”

  The captain let out a low whistle, and almost wakened his child. He rocked her and she settled down again. “That’s the size of a gaff main. Where will you lay this creature out? In the street?”

  “I’m pondering that.”

  “Explain to me what you need.”

  “It must be Worstead wool, combed, not carded, loosely woven, high quality and light of weight, and all the same size of yarn and weave. The standard size is fine. Length doesn’t matter, since the stripes will have to be pieced anyway.”

  A twinge of doubt jumped in. So much to think about, to figure out.

  “This will be a very important flag, Tom,” she told him, suddenly earnest. “It will be a proclamation to the enemy that we mean to fight. We will defend our port and our homes. We want to show them that we won’t be bullied.”

  The captain simply fixed his pleasant blue eyes on her. His black hair reflected the morning light and made an appealing portrait of a daring adventurer holding a sleeping child.

  “Yes,” he quietly agreed. “This McHenry man …
I like him.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Armistead.”

  “The same Armistead who was second-in-command?

  “Yes. He went away, but now he’s been assigned back here.”

  “Never knew him personally. But he thinks as I do. As you do.” Boyle smiled again, this time seeming to admire Mary herself for being the kind of person he and his crew were fighting to protect, and in some kind of gratitude for her demonstrating that she would do her part. Somehow he got his message across so effectively that Mary felt herself blush a little. They were partners of the best kind.

  “I’ll get the word out to the privateer fleet,” he promised. “I’ll keep it private, captain to captain. We could rely on luck, of course, but if you want a better product, and sooner—”

  “Then pay for it,” Mary anticipated. “I shall advance five hundred dollars, which I have calculated as the cost of the bunting.”

  “That will guarantee our success. Somebody’ll simply make a landing and purchase the yard goods, if that can be done. There’s always the problem of finding it, then having a landing party of Americans flocking into some textile factory in England. But as you say, we love a challenge.”

  “Dare I ask how soon?”

  “I can’t take the message myself. Not yet. Comet’s in the south of the Chesapeake, patrolling—well, hiding, mostly. I sent her there because I thought the British were coming here, but they haven’t yet. There are two schooners shoving off tonight after midnight. I can get this order to them this evening. Can’t tell how long it’ll take for them to run the blockade, but after that, serendipity’s in command. Messages going ship to ship as fate has them passing, then the goods coming back the same way. This product may travel the length and width of the Atlantic before it finally makes landfall, God knows where, and finds its way here. Bunting might be available in the Indies, some English colony maybe. One of us will find it.”

  Mary felt the nervousness about the project suddenly become a bit easier to suppress. Her level of hope cranked up a notch. “You’re wonderful.”

  “We’re wonderful. Let’s show the world how to be wonderful.”

  With a little laugh of relief and enthusiasm, she wordlessly agreed.

  Boyle stretched his back carefully and patted his little daughter’s round rump. The child opened her bright eyes, blinked in rediscovery of the world, and sat up on her father’s lap. Abruptly the singing birds caught her attention and she craned toward the trees.

  “What lives we have,” the captain mused. “Smuggling English wool to make two majestic American flags for the English to see as the lay siege to Fort McHenry. What a privilege, to be alive and enraged in Baltimore today!”

  National Ensign

  ACROSS THE STREET

  60 ALBEMARLE

  “MAMA. ARE YOU AWAKE?”

  “What, what? Come in, cupcake.”

  Mary stepped into her mother’s room, glad the old woman was still awake and alert. Rebecca Flower Young—Mary had always liked her mother’s full name—sat in bed under a cloud of white linen, but she was sitting up and knitting, listening to the birds from outside her open window and to the buzzing of a dozen flies that had come to circle the soup bowl on the tray at the end of the bed. They were an unavoidable consequence of open windows in the summer.

  Mrs. Young was industriously knitting, working on the second of a pair of tan stockings. She had reached a level of manual infirmity and trouble seeing that prevented her from doing much sewing other than perhaps basting, so she had taken up knitting stockings and shorter socks, which were sold at Frearer’s dry-goods in town. On the dresser top was a pile of stockings of various sizes and colors, waiting to be delivered. Her physical force may have flagged, but her sense of purpose was still youthful.

  “I need advice,” Mary said as she sat on the edge of her mother’s bed.

  “Find a man to marry.”

  “That’s not the advice I’m seeking.”

  “A grown-up one with his own store.”

  “I’ve accepted a new client. Fort Jefferson’s commander.”

  “That Armistead fellow?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Gossip, of course.”

  “Oh. Good. He wants a very large national ensign for the fort. Dauntingly large. Thirty feet by forty-two.”

  “You misheard, cupcake. He meant inches.”

  “I heard perfectly. The flag will be as big as this whole house. I must admit that I’m intimidated.”

  “You should be. Oh—I missed a purl.”

  “Stop knitting for a moment and help me think.”

  “I can knit and think.”

  “Well, then, what do you think about this?”

  “Let’s see,” Mrs. Young said, and stopped knitting. “You’ll have to piece the stripes. How wide will the stars be?”

  “Almost two feet, point to point.”

  “They’ll have to be pieced too.”

  “They’ll be three layers of fabric through. I’m concerned they’ll be difficult to see with that much fabric blocking light.”

  “Reverse appliqué.”

  Mary sat straight up. “Oh!”

  “I did it on the Valley Forge union jack, the white stripes and St. Andrew’s cross. To make the white shine.”

  “Mama, that’s it. That’s it! Will you remind me how to oversew the reverse side?”

  “This flag is wool? Bunting?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “If you make the fifteen stars out of cotton, they’ll be more luminous.”

  Mary laughed. “Mistress Young, you’ve done it!”

  Her mother began knitting again. “Still a twig or two to offer.”

  “If I put the girls on basting, will you supervise?”

  “When will you start?”

  “Right away, with a pattern in muslin. Now we can start cutting and piecing the stars. We have plenty of white cotton.”

  “Have the girls come to me in the morning and I will show them a manner of basting that will keep their hands from getting tired quickly on large projects.”

  Springing to her feet, Mary said, “All these years and you’re still teaching us.”

  The elderly woman made a crooked grin. “It’s why we women live so long, isn’t it? To teach the grandchildren. After all, their parents can’t be counted upon, can they?”

  “Thank goodness you are. This is encouraging, most encouraging. I’m beginning to think this mad jim-jam can actually be done! Pardon me—I have walk around the block. I must speak to the proprietor of Brown’s Brewery.”

  “Oh?” her mother responded, with narrowing eyes. “Are you planning to become an imbiber of malt spirits?”

  Red-Blooded Legend

  FELL’S POINT

  JULY 13

  “GOOD AFTERNOON, CAPTAIN! OVER here, Captain.”

  Samuel Yambrick’s round elfish face, made only a little more masculine by the whiskers, grinned at Tom Boyle from the doorway of the ship’s chandlery.

  “Mr. Yambrick,” Boyle began as he paused there in the street. “Another chance meeting? I’m sensing a pattern.”

  He peered past the man, to see whether the shadow’s shadow lurked there also, but there was no sign of the niece or daughter or whomever she really was. Boyle approached the habitually cheerful gentleman.

  “Sir, am I your new hobby?” Boyle stepped to the chandlery door while John Dieter, Tommy Ring and two of their ship’s boys waited in the street with armloads of parceling strips, boxes of surgical supplies, and two new checkerboards.

  “Provisioning the Comet?” Yambrick asked.

  Boyle shrugged. “Eternally.”

  Vague answers were always best, especially with this wily fellow who always seemed interested in the whens and wheres of Boyle’s business, and always seemed to know the answers before he even asked the questions.

  Boyle turned to his mates and boys. “I’ll be along
shortly. Carry on.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Tommy Ring said jovially, making a good show for passing pedestrians and the two boys.

  As his crew headed back to the dock, lanyards wagging from their belts to the knives sailors always carried, Boyle leaned on the doorframe and pocketed what was left of his provisioning money. Then he looked at Yambrick. “And your story is …”

  “Perhaps you’d like to join me for—”

  “Not today.”

  Yambrick smiled in that accommodating way that revealed nothing, and said, “Perhaps again some time.”

  “If fortune favors,” Boyle said, equally elusive. “I don’t mean to be sharp, but I have iron-casters to meet.”

  Yet he did not step away.

  Finally Yambrick broke the uneasy pause. “Your instincts are correct, of course. I am the bearer of some news.”

  “Please don’t make me ask.”

  “I’ve had a meeting this morning with the owners of the Comet.”

  Boyle stepped forward to let a woman and three children pass behind him. “That’s artful of you, considering I’m one of them and I was not summoned. Courting subterfuge?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t that kind of a meeting, that you should have been bothered from your more important concerns. I’m doing some menial legal paperwork on behalf of Mr. Carerre, and I happened to meet over breakfast with—”

  “I’m sure you did. And they sent you with a message?”

  “Nothing so graceless,” Yambrick said. “But something was discussed that concerns you, and I suggested that it should be brought to your attention before you set sail without knowing about it. Since no one knows when you’ll set sail—”

  “You thought to bring me this information yourself, since you were coming here on your way to having your whiskers curled or the city hall moved underground.”

  Yambrick laughed, which seemed genuine enough. He might have been easier to read were he a smuggler. “Well, I did offer. They seemed to have no reticence about it, but if you are uneasy, I shall—”