Forever Ashley (4 page)

“Now, Dr. Kenneman.” Her smile was decidedly cool. “If you
would be so kind as to tell me what is going on?” Dreams have an odd way of
leaving a person at a disadvantage at times.

His smile was as cold as his eyes. “Going on? Why, my dear,
you’re in the Green Dragon Tavern. You didn’t know?”

Ashley frowned. “In Boston?”

“In Boston,” he verified dryly.

Ashley’s eyes moved around the room curiously. “What is the
date?”

“Date?”

“Yes, tell me the date.”

“April 15, 1775.”

“The Green Dragon Tavern. April 15. Income tax day. ” And
she still had her tax forms lying in the front seat of the car. The rest of
what he’d said suddenly penetrated her mind. “Seventeen seventy-five.” Ashley
hesitated. Seventeen seventy-five? Three days before Paul Revere’s famous ride.
Oh, this was cute. The dream had taken her back to Paul Revere’s day! “And I
suppose this ‘meeting’ I’ve disrupted is to decide what to do about the
British?” She grinned. Sure it was.

“Aha! I told you she was a spy!” one of the men exclaimed.
“How else could she know about our meetings, Aaron?”

Oh, this was rich! Ashley stared at the man who had just
spoken, and it suddenly dawned on her who he was. Paul Revere. It was Paul
Revere!

Well, sure, why not? Ashley leaned forward to get a closer
look at the men now seated at the table staring at her. The dream was
remarkable. These men looked even better than the pictures of the American
Patriots in the history books.

“Paul Revere?” she said aloud, pointing to the portly,
fortyish-looking man.

He had been momentarily distracted by her tangled wig, which
lay amid the rubble on the table, but he glanced up when she said his name.

“Yes?”

“It’s really you? Paul Revere?”

Paul looked at the other men.

Ashley grinned as she looked slowly around the table.
Yes...yes, the dream was exceptional, all right. She remembered seeing all
these men in the history books—except Aaron Kenneman.

She pointed to the man sitting next to Revere. “John
Hancock, first signer of the Declaration of Independence.”

“It is assured. She is daft,” Hancock grumbled.

Her finger moved about the room randomly. “And...you are
John Adams, and you are...Church...Dr. Benjamin Church.”

Each man nodded solemnly.

Ashley smiled, enthralled by the dream’s authenticity. “And
you’re Dr. Joseph Warren?” Ashley’s gaze focused on the man in his mid-thirties
sitting to her right. “From Lexington.”

Warren nodded gravely.

Dream or no dream, this was amazing! “‘Dr. Joseph Warren,
the greatest incendiary in all America’” she quoted. “You’re a member of the
Massachusetts Committee of Safety, and temporary president of the Provincial
Congress, and the man who sent William Dawes and Paul Revere to Lexington to
warn Hancock and Samuel Adams of British plans to arrest them.”

Warren paled. “Gentlemen, the woman is ruinous. She must be
disposed of with no further delay.”

Ashley sprang to her feet. “No!” she exclaimed. “No, I’m not
a spy.”

“Then pray tell, lovely lady, who are you?” Aaron Kenneman
demanded.

“I'm...I’m...” Ashley shrugged helplessly. Turning her palms
up, she smiled at the men. “Dreaming?”

Chapter
Two

“Dreaming?” Eyes of cold gray steel challenged Ashley. “I
think not, wench. State your name!”

“We can delay no longer, Aaron,” Warren warned. “The woman
must be done away with.”

Ashley tensed, vividly recalling the methods of punishment handed
out in 1775. Visions of dunking stools and the pillory mixed with branding,
mutilation, and hanging haunted her.

“Lashes would loosen her tongue, I assure you,” Warren
threatened.

Names that had meant nothing to her when she’d studied
history suddenly sprang to Ashley’s mind: John Morris found, guilty of sheep
stealing and receiving a brand in the middle of his hand, Daniel Martin
receiving fifteen lashes for stealing a wooden horse. Good heavens! What would
they do to a spy? What if they paraded her up and down the street, or put her
in the stocks?

“You can’t do that,” she whispered, grabbing the tall man’s
shirt. “I’m not a spy.”

Aaron coldly peeled her hand from his sleeve. “One must be
prepared to pay for one’s actions.”

“But I’ve done nothing! Nothing!”

Church lost his patience. “God’s teeth, cease her babbling,
Kenneman. We must choose our course of action!”

“Babbling! Can’t you see I’m not a spy? Do I look like a
spy?”

The men studied her costume. “‘Tis a fine garment,” Revere
conceded. He reached out and felt the material of her sleeve, rubbing it
between his fingers thoughtfully. “Excellent cloth.”

After a moment’s hesitation Church did the same, his face
flushed with anger now. “‘Tis only further proof.”

“What proof?” Ashley exclaimed.

“Proof you are not a patriot,” Warren accused.

“You judge me guilty by the dress I wear!”

“And a wretched spy you are,” Church jeered. “Patriots have
sworn not to purchase English goods. The colonists are sworn to wearing only
their hand-woven cotton and wool. The cloth you wear is too fine not to have
been imported from England. Do you deny this?”

“Yes, I can and do,” Ashley said emphatically. ‘This is a
simple polished cotton blend, so the costumes won’t wrinkle when they’re
washed. And this lace is plain old polyester...” She faltered when she saw her
words were falling on deaf ears.

“Babble,” Church muttered beneath his breath.

“It’s not! It’s the truth!”

“I say we take her to the jail and be done with it,” John
Hancock interjected. “We have wasted enough time.”

“No!” Ashley clutched Dr. Kenneman’s arm again. “Don’t let
them do this to me!” This was crazy! Was she actually going to have to endure a
hanging before she woke up?

“My dear young woman, we are indeed serious,” John Adams
assured her gravely. "We are in the midst of a struggle that will change
our lives. Our mission cannot be endangered from any quarter. Most especially
not by the prattlings and rantings of a demented young woman, whether that
guise be a ploy to gain information, or the true ravings of a depraved mind. Be
you a witch? Or be you a spy?”

Visions of burning at a flaming stake flashed through
Ashley’s mind. “No, I’m not a witch! I don’t know what’s happening to me, but you’ve
got to help me!” She looked beseechingly at Aaron Kenneman.

“One should more seriously consider the consequences before
becoming a spy for George.”

“George?” Ashley asked.

Kenneman’s look was disdainful, and Ashley’s back stiffened
in resentment. Obviously the man meant King George of England, but this whole
thing was so absurd....

“She knows something of what we’re about,” Revere conceded.
“Mayhap she could be persuaded to share her information, or its source?”

The men’s eyes focused on Ashley.

“I don’t know anything about what you’re doing,” she vowed,
although that wasn’t quite true. In college, she had elected to major in
history with an emphasis on the Colonial American period. But five weeks into
the course she had dropped out, realizing that she really didn’t like history
all that much. Yet six months ago, an unexpected five-hundred-dollar car repair
bill had forced her to accept the part-time job at the museum. One of the job
requirements was that she memorize large segments relating to the Revolutionary
War period, and be able to answer questions concerning that period.

“If you’re reenacting the Revolutionary War, through—”

The men visibly tensed again. “War? Explain your words.”

“Could she have intercepted one of our messages?” Warren
murmured.

“If she has, we’ll soon know of it.” Aaron grasped Ashley’s
arm and turned her around to face him. “You are a Tory spy!”

“I am not!”

“Then you claim to be a patriot?”

Ashley drew a deep breath, trying to think. If she wasn’t a
spy then there was little choice but to be a patriot. “Of course I’m a
patriot.”

But the men did not believe her.

“Utter nonsense she speaks,” Revere muttered. “We should be
done with it before more precious time escapes us.”

“Join or Die,” Ashley suddenly murmured.

Hancock whirled. “What say you?”

“I said ‘Join or Die.’ Isn’t that one of your mottoes?” She
was sure she had read that somewhere.

Revere glanced at Aaron. “But how...?”

“I read it in a book,” Ashley explained.

The men stiffened.

“Gentlemen, a word in private,” Revere requested.

Ashley tried to collect her thoughts as Aaron drew five of
the men to the opposite side of the room. She was aware that they were
discussing her fate, but she now felt oddly detached from their quandary. It
was only a dream, and dreams eventually ended no matter how scary they became.

Heads pressed tightly together, the men spoke in hushed
tones, glancing up occasionally to stare in her direction.

When this was over, she and Sue would have a big laugh,
Ashley decided. Here she was, dreaming of Paul Revere, John Hancock, Joseph
Warren, John Adams, and Dr. Benjamin Church. Men—vitally important men who had
formed the colonial resistance against England. She couldn’t place Aaron
Kenneman, though he did seem to be a strong part of this farce. But why dream
of the Revolutionary War? She’d obviously been working too many hours at the
museum. She needed a vacation.

Ashley glanced back to the men as they conferred among
themselves. She smiled. The dream was quite exciting, actually. Naturally, the
men would be concerned about whether she was a spy for the British if the dream
was indeed reality and not fantasy. But if, by some broad stroke of fate, it
was reality and not just a dream, and if the men were convinced she was a spy,
they would very likely order her death.

Whether she liked it or not, she had to consider that
possibility. If she wasn’t dreaming, then where was she? Had she fallen into a
time warp?

Ridiculous. Time warps existed only in movies and comic
books, didn’t they?

While the men continued to converse among themselves, Ashley
struggled to remember all she could about the era in which she found herself.
They’d said it was April 15, 1775. That meant that the Revolution had actually
begun fifteen years earlier, in October 1760, when a pop-eyed, twenty-two-year-old
in England became King George III. Though young, King George had been certain
that kings never made mistakes, which was, in Ashley’s opinion, at the crux of
the problem.

The Americans were loyal to King George and were under the
mistaken impression that Parliament, not the king, was responsible for
England’s poor policy in dealing with them. England’s war with France had been
expensive. The English found themselves deeply in debt, and British taxes were
exceedingly high. Lord Grenville, who became prime minister in 1763, was a
notorious penny pincher, and he suggested that England raise taxes in the
colonies. He thought the Americans should support the army sent to protect them
from the Indians.

Grenville began trying to enforce some old laws called the
Acts of Trade and Navigation. This included taxes payable to Great Britain on
imports shipped into colonial harbors. The law also restricted the places where
American ships carrying produce could go to sell their cargoes. The law
affected virtually everyone’s ability to earn a living.

Ashley brushed at her skirt, glancing at the men again. If
she could get the facts straight in her mind, she could convince them that she
was not crazy and not a spy. She did not understand what was going on, but she
was not here to interfere with history. She frowned. This was incredible.
Ashley Wheeler, American patriot.

She began to pace, struggling to arrange her thoughts in the
proper sequence of events.

The men turned, their conversation dying away as they watched
her talking aloud to herself as she paced.

“Grenville’s next plan was to tax a variety of papers: legal
documents, newspapers, marriage licenses, college diplomas, ships’ papers, and
a good many other things. All such papers were required to carry a large blue
paper seal called a ‘revenue stamp’ as proof that a tax had been paid.

“The mandate created two major problems: The tax denied
Americans the right to fix their own ‘internal’ taxes, and it was very
expensive. Americans began to hate the stamp. The rallying cry became ‘No
taxation without representation.’” Ashley ticked off the points on her fingers
as she paced back and forth across the room. “The confrontation was now between
the American assemblies elected in each colony by the people against the
English Parliament.

“In July 1765 Lord Rockingham succeeded Grenville as prime
minister. Rockingham recognized that the Stamp Act was costing more than it
brought in. He began to talk with British merchants and persuaded them to
complain to Parliament. As a result, in 1766 Parliament repealed the Stamp Act,
which overjoyed the colonists. But a new law surfaced: the Declaratory Act,
another unfair law that Parliament passed at the same time it repealed the
Stamp Act. If anything, the Declaratory Act was worse. It stated that
Parliament had the power to write laws for the colonies ‘in all cases
whatsoever,’ which meant they could write all tax laws.”

“Mistress Wheeler?” Paul Revere prompted from the sidelines.

Ashley continued pacing, deeply absorbed in her thoughts
now. “England still wasn’t satisfied with its money situation, so King George
changed prime ministers, but he made a poor choice. William Pitt was a sick man
and spent little time at his job. Younger cabinet ministers took over, namely,
Charles Townsend, who was chancellor of the exchequer, or head of treasury.”

“Mistress Wheeler...” Revere prompted again.

Ashley paused, meeting the men’s stupefied expressions.
“Yes?”

 “Ur...mayhap you should sit down. The fall seems to have
left you a bit...addlepated.”

“Thank you, but I’m fine. Please.” She dismissed his concern
with a wave of her hand. “Go on with your meeting.”

The men exchanged alarmed looks as she resumed pacing. “In
1767, on Townsend’s suggestion, Parliament passed a new set of taxes for
Americans to pay: import duties on shipments of paper, paint, glass, lead, and
tea from England coming into American ports. Parliament also ordered suspension
of the New York Assembly, which had rejected the order to pay the costs of
keeping a few British soldiers in New York City. The colonists hadn’t minded
the fact they were there, but they didn’t want to be ‘ordered’ to do it.”

"Mistress Wheeler!”

Having concentrated so deeply on recalling historical
events, Ashley was startled once more by the sound of Revere’s thundering
reprimand.

“Yes?” Paul didn’t look much like Ashley thought he would.
The little silversmith was short and rather portly. Certain ly nothing like a
man destined to father sixteen children.

“How do you know these things of which you speak?”

“I told you. It’s in the history books.”

Paul exchanged a grim look with Aaron.

“If I had my I-phone I could show you proof of my words.”
She scanned the room. “You don’t get the internet here, do you?”

Church spoke up again. “She shall be taken to authorities
immediately. They will deal with her.”

“No!” Ashley burst out.

“We cannot do otherwise,” Warren said firmly. “We cannot
allow ourselves the folly of believing her denials. Even the knowledge that we
have met together will be enough to put us under suspicion. We must protect
ourselves at all cost.”

“Warren speaks the truth,” Revere agreed.

“Now wait just a minute!” These men truly intended to report
her as a British spy!

“We can wait no longer.” Church seized her arm.

Kicking and screaming, Ashley could do nothing to prevent
Church from dragging her across the room, pain shooting through her. Clearly he
intended to deliver her to the proper authorities. Church. Church! What was it
about the man that bothered her more than the others?

“Gentlemen, mayhap we are being hasty.”

Ashley went weak with relief when she heard Kenneman’s deep
voice. But when she looked at him, it was obvious that he felt no sympathy for
her predicament.

“Perhaps we should contemplate this further,” he said
quietly. “Besides, who would believe any words from her lips? She insists on
speaking of things only a seriously demented mind could conjure.”

“What thinking is there to do?” Church demanded. “She is
obviously not a patriot. And if she is not demented, then she is a spy. Either
way, we must rid ourselves of her. And immediately.”

“But in what manner?” Aaron asked calmly. “Are we to drag
her through the tavern, drawing attention to ourselves? Are we to take her out
and publicly stone her? There will be questions, gentlemen. She is not likely
to remain silent of all she has witnessed.” His gaze swept over Ashley
indifferently. “If we take her before the authorities, what will she respond
when questioned? That she ‘fell’ in among a strange meeting? She will name
names,” he warned.