Or Give Me Death (16 page)

I sensed the truth between us. And the lies.

And I thought, what good to give words to the matter? To even tell anyone?

Negro servants poisoned their masters and mistresses all the time. Had Pegg poisoned Mama?

If so, she could be hanged. Or be burned alive.

But to what end? To bring more anguish to Pa? To make him the center of gossip?

I'll leave Pegg be, I told myself one moment. And then in the next I'd think, no, I'll tell. But tell what? Where is the proof?

When do you keep a secret, and when do you tell a lie?

And who would listen to me if I told? Mama had started going addled by thinking Pegg was about to poison her.

Patsy might put me in another room in the cellar.

So I kept my silence.

***

T
HOUGH
M
AMA HAD
been in the cellar room for the last four years, her presence was missed in the house.

We walked around, missing the fact that she was no longer under us all the time. I did, and I know the others did, though we spoke not of the matter.

Truth to tell, we scarce spoke to one another at all. We mumbled at table and avoided each other's eyes.

We were inordinately polite to each other, even the little ones. We shared no memories or sense of loss. We each went about our separate ways, afraid that if we opened our mouths, the memories and sorrow, the blames and regrets, would flow out and create a surge of bitterness that would wipe us out of the house, as if the New Found River had overflowed its banks and was full of hurtful debris to wipe us all away.

***

P
A LOCKED HIMSELF
in his own room in the two weeks following her death. He ate there; he slept there.

We children did not see him.

And then one evening when we were at table, Pa walked into the dining room. And we all stopped eating and stared.

"This distraught old man must soon be off to Richmond," he said.

MyJohn was the first to unfreeze himself. He got up to pull the chair out for him. Pegg ran to get a plate of food.

"Are you up to it, Pa?" Patsy asked.

"I must be. The convention is going to address questions of public security."

"Why Richmond?" John asked. "It's just a little trading village."

"So as to be out of the reach of Lord Dunmore," Pa said, "who has a force of marines on several warships anchored in the James River, a few miles from Williamsburg."

"Trouble, Pa?" Patsy asked.

Pa took a drink of wine that MyJohn poured for him. "If Dunmore decides to move against our convention and seize its leaders, we'll at least have some warning in Richmond, and a chance to escape. Rather than be trapped in Williamsburg and shipped to England to be drawn and quartered on Tyburn Hill."

"Oh, Pa!" Patsy moaned.

"I'll be back," he said.

And we started talking then about troubles outside the house. It seemed, I thought, as if everyone was grateful to have something to talk about.

***

Two
DAYS LATER
Pa rode off for a little town where Shockoe's Creek spilled into the river.

When he left that morning it was snowing again, a March snow, which is always colder, and wetter, and more discouraging than any in midwinter.

As we went back to the breakfast table, MyJohn, who'd spent hours with Pa last night, told us of Richmond.

"It has six hundred souls at most. A modest courthouse, some mercantiles, wharves, tobacco warehouses all belonging to Glasgow firms. The houses cling to the bluff."

"Where will they meet?" John asked.

"St. John's Church, I believe. They're all going, Richard Lee, Peyton Randolph, Colonel Washington, Richard Bland."

"It's important, isn't it?" Will asked.

MyJohn knew more than he was saying. He did not want to frighten us. "Yes," he said, "it is. And I know you all need your pa here right now. Times have been bad. And they are going to get worse before they get better. But I want you to feel you can come to me with anything that troubles you."

He looked across the table at me as he said it.

***

P
A CAME HOME
in a little less than two weeks. But we'd already read all about his speech in the
Gazette.

How proud Clementina would have been of Pa, I thought while Patsy stood there in the parlor and read it, her voice rising and falling, as if she were giving a dramatic presentation.

"Oh, oh, listen," she said. "All of you listen to Pa's words!"

So we listened.

I closed my eyes as Patsy read. I thought of Mama, and heard only bits and pieces.

"'It is natural for a man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth.'"

A painful truth.

"'I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and to provide for it.'"

To know the worst.

"'Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. We have done everything that could be done to avert the storm.'"

We even put her in the cellar for four years.

"'In vain, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope.'"

Oh, Pa, I thought.

"'They tell us, sir, that we are weak—unable to cope with So formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be next year?'"

We may never be stronger, Pa.

"'Gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace!—but there is no peace.'"

You know, Pa, more than anybody.

"'Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?'"

Or a strait dress?

"'Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!'"

Oh, Patrick, please, give me my freedom or let me die!

***

P
ATSY FINISHED
reading. We all stood dumbstruck. I more than the others. "People are already saying he is the greatest speaker since Demosthenes," she said.

I wanted to tell her it was Mama who had uttered those words about freedom or dying. Not Demosthenes. I didn't even know who he was. I didn't want to know. Some silly old Greek, likely. She put much store in silly old Greek writings.

I just turned, wiped the tears from my eyes, and ran from the room.

M
Y PA IS A HERO
now to everybody. After he got back from Richmond, people of all persuasions came to see him. And the traveler's room was always ready with food and drink on the sideboard, a fire glowing, and more bearskin rugs on the floor.

The talk from the room went on long into the night. And much of it had to do with the war that was coming.

Pa was sure it was coming.

Hadn't he insisted at Richmond that "this colony ought to be put in a posture of defense"?

Grandma sent a package by post.

In it were two tomahawks once used by Aunt Annie's husband, Colonel Christian, on the frontier.

***

S
OMETIMES
G
RANDMA
sent packages. Most of the time they contained a new chemise or petticoat for one of us girls, sometimes a new hunting shirt for Pa or the boys.

"A tomahawk," MyJohn said. "I haven't seen a tomahawk around here in ages."

With the package came a letter. "Did you hear what a Tory merchant in Norfolk is saying of your pa? That he never heard anything more infamously insolent than P. Henry's speech!"

Insolent. Give me liberty or give me death.

Patrick, please, give me my freedom or let me die.

"You know," Grandma's letter went on, "those words 'peace, peace,' that your pa cried out in his speech, are in the text from Jeremiah. And I dragged your pa often to hear Mr. Whitefield's sermons when he was a boy. Glad to see they took seed."

So then, I thought, if Pa got "peace, peace" from Jeremiah, isn't it possible he got "liberty or death" from Mama?

I don't know what gave me the notion to put the question to Patsy. But I did, finally. And she got into a regular tempest. "It's Pa's speech! He got it from no one but himself!"

And it was then that she told me that if I mentioned the matter again, she would put me out of the house.

***

I
WAS NOT ANGRY
with Pa for using Mama's words. I told Pegg about it, and she said that if a person comes on in their life to doing a great thing, the greatness doesn't come from the moment.

"It comes from all the pain they've ever known," she said. "And don't want to know again. It comes from all the times they hurt others, and did no-account things, and couldn't make them right again. And," she said, "it comes from everything they have ever suffered, or given, or become, or been part of."

So I suppose that put Pa in line to do great things.

I was put out with Patsy for not believing Mama had said the words, is all. I felt Mama should have been given at least as much credit as Jeremiah.

***

B
UT
I
DID NOT
have time to be in a pet. There were other things I had to worry about.

Betsy, for one. She looked like she'd been living inside a cave these days. After Mama died, I determined to take more care of her.

It was not a simple matter. Betsy was not accustomed to care. She had become used to Patsy's sharp orders, to keeping her fingers busy stitching, to being satisfied to be left alone in a corner with a book and taken no notice of.

She had come to like it that way.

So I made overtures to Betsy.

I taught her how to blow soap bubbles. Would you believe that a child of six had never blown soap bubbles? What had happened here? I wondered. How did Betsy go from being a laughing two-year-old always running free to somebody who looked like they lived in a cave, hiding with a book in a corner?

Will always liked to use a pipe stem for bubble blowing, but I found a quill better for making the bubbles larger.

I taught Betsy how to play Old Man in His Castle. We helped Pegg's husband, Shagg, make building blocks for Edward, and painted them with numbers and letters.

I got her smiling. Not much. Her wan little face offered a crooked, polite smile. And it made me want to cry. But I had to be happy with it, seeing it was all I was going to get.

And then there was John to be worried about, too.

Oh, John looked robust enough. No cave look for him. His shoulders had gotten even broader, and he was looking more and more like Pa these days.

But he was going three times a week now to muster. I watched him at the table when he didn't know I was watching. I saw that his sureness of self was growing as broad as his shoulders. Was it the musters with the militia? Or was it his plans of running Doormouse in the steeplechase this summer?

Or was it Dorothea?

She'd ridden over one day after Pa had come home from Richmond. On her sleek horse and wearing her velvet riding outfit. She'd come for coffee. On her head was a little silk hat with a feather that I knew did not come from hereabouts. It had England written all over it. And she wore delicate leather gloves. Oh, how I envied her pert nose, her gleaming white teeth, her curls, her slim waist!

"Mr. Henry," she said to Pa. "I'm hoping for your son's horse in the steeplechase this summer."

"We're all hoping," Pa said.

"Dr. William Flood's chestnut is running again, I hear. So is Colonel Taylor's filly. Is it true that this summer the race will be held across the river in Surrey, at Devil's Field? And people will come from both sides of the James?"

"It's true," John said.

"It's a large purse," she said. "I hope your horse wins." Like it was Pa's horse and not John's.

And she was not looking at John. But at Pa.

"I have a surprise for you, Mr. Henry," she said as we were leaving the dinner table. "May I use your pianoforte?"

We all gathered in the parlor. John stood next to the pianoforte as Dorothea sat and smiled sweetly at Pa.

"Did you know they are putting the words of your speech into song?"

Pa shook his head no.

"Well, I was at a gathering in town three days ago, and it is certainly so. Here, let me play and sing it for you."

And she did. "
Each free-born Briton's song should be, Or give me death or liberty.
"

And I thought, what can I do about John? He already knows how to blow bubbles and play Old Man in His Castle. But what if he went to war? And I can't talk to him every day to see how he is faring? What if I can't watch him?

***

C
LEARLY, THE MENFOLK
in our house were expecting war. It was all they talked about.

And they had enough to talk about.

Governor Dunmore issued a proclamation forbidding the appointments of any delegates to the next Congress in Philadelphia.

All gunpowder shipments from England were put to a halt.

Express riders raced through our green, spring countryside, wild of eye, with the news.

"They talk to make themselves brave," Pegg said.

It took a grievous amount of talk between Pa and MyJohn, John and Will, to get brave.

It took polishing of muskets, and making of musket balls. It took the readying of haversacks and shot pouches. And considerable handling of those tomahawks Grandma had sent.

But what they were readying for, I did not know. Nobody did.

And then, of a sudden, it came. The pounding on the door in the middle of the night of April 20. The instant lighting of lanterns.

I stumbled into the hall to see Pa, in black cloth breeches and nightshirt, talking to a messenger at the front door. Then the man left.

"What's happened?" asked MyJohn.

"An armed schooner came to Williamsburg from Burwell's Ferry and took all the powder out of the magazine," Pa said.

"What are you going to do?" John asked.

"Dunmore gave the excuse of slave uprisings. At least four in surrounding counties. Says it is not wise to leave the powder in the hands of agitated people."

I saw MyJohn and Pa exchange looks. Like they knew something the rest of us didn't.