Our Own Country: A Novel (The Midwife Series) (30 page)

39

JOHNNY WOKE AT SIX THIRTY, AND I
gave him to suck. Martha returned from Abigail’s house soon thereafter, looking triumphant.

“She knows of someone leaving this afternoon. Isn’t that auspicious?”

“That’s marvelous.” I smiled, having resolved not to make our lives harder by sulking. I then noticed that Lizzie was missing.

“Where’s Lizzie?” I asked.

Before Martha could reply, Lizzie descended the stairs. She was dressed, most oddly, in a man’s clothing: breeches, blouse, and an old cap with her hair tucked beneath it.

“What do you do, dressed like that, Lizzie?” I asked.

Martha came up behind me. She rested a hand companionably on my shoulder. “She goes to place her neck in the enemy’s rope, Eliza.” Martha approached Lizzie and stuck something on her face. She then backed away to admire her handiwork. It was a mustache! The ruse was now complete: Tall Lizzie, in Jeb’s breeches, waistcoat, and blouse, looked convincingly like a young man. Martha had tied Lizzie’s hair in a single plait and secured it with a bit of linen.

“But what on earth is going on? What is it you plan to do, dressed in such a costume?”

“It’s a long story, Eliza,” Lizzie sighed, her breath moving the hairs on the false mustache. “Suffice to say it involves something I learned from the admiral at dinner last night.”

“She thinks she goes to save the Cause,” Martha snorted.

“No, indeed,” Lizzie objected. They were about to get into one of their arguments when I interrupted them.

“Please tell me what’s happening. I should like to know.” But here, I couldn’t help but begin to laugh, for the sight of Lizzie was so absurd.

“Allow me to begin at the beginning.” Lizzie glanced at Martha. “Come.” She led the way into the kitchen.

“But do remove the mustache,” I begged. “For you cannot expect me to listen to you dressed like that.”

Lizzie began to pull the mustache off her face when Martha intervened. “Allow me,” she said, reaching for the mustache. “I have no wish for you to damage it.”

“Well,” Lizzie began, once that had been accomplished. “Last night—it is as I said. It was an extraordinary evening. But, as Abigail and I took our leave, I happened to hear the admiral say something to Colonel Quincy. He said it in French, but I understood it, for I learned French as a child.”

“What did he say that makes you go to this mad extreme?”

Martha looked pointedly at Lizzie and said, “I fear that we must go back several months.”

“I think so as well,” Lizzie added.

Martha began. “This past August, at the height of the smallpox, there were two murders in the North Parish.”

“Murders?” I stood up and glanced toward the parlor, where my child slept.

“Yes. Two patriots, lodging in the house of Abigail’s sister Mary Cranch and her husband, Richard. They were poisoned. I myself discovered the deeds when I was called to prepare the bodies for burial. We had a terrible epidemic of the pox, and the two men died several weeks apart—of this disease, we thought. At first, the Cranches, and even Martha here, believed it to be the pox. Yet I suspected something amiss with Dr. Flynt, and at the death of Mr. Thayer, I knew it for certain. They had been murdered. Poisoned.”

“I can’t believe this. You said not a word about it.”

I was suddenly quite fearful, and my heart pounded—not for myself but for my child.

“I’m sorry, Eliza,” said Lizzie, and indeed she looked remorseful. “Thomas Miller had been instructed to say nothing. Your parents would not have chosen to place you in harm’s way had they known.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain.” I shrugged, thinking of Mama. “But is there yet danger here? I fear not for myself, but for Johnny—”

Lizzie looked at Martha and then said, “Not with regard to the pox, at any rate. That is gone, thankfully.”

“And the—villains?”

“We
believe
they’re gone.” Lizzie took my hand. Hers was warm. “This is precisely what I wished to explain. The admiral told the colonel where he believed the culprits could be found. Speaking of which,” Lizzie added, “it’s time I left.” Lizzie rose from her chair, straightened her breeches, returned the mustache to her upper lip, and went to mount Star.

“But wait!” I called after her, realizing that she had not told all. “Where do you go? And why must it be you?”

“She thinks she shall discover what they plan to do next. Lizzie takes her gifts of detection far too seriously. But I for one cannot stop her.”

Lizzie paused at the door. She gazed at both of us with a tender expression. Despite my confusion, I now considered her the bravest woman I had ever known.

“What if you don’t return? Where shall we begin to search for you?”

“We shall place a notice in the paper, Eliza,” Martha replied. “Escaped madwoman sought by family. Approach with caution.”

“Ha, ha,” laughed Lizzie without smiling, for fear of unseating the mustache. She opened the door, letting in the frigid air.

Martha was not very satisfied. “You should take a cape. It’s cold.”

“I have none that will serve,” she said as she climbed upon Star.

“A blanket then,” Martha insisted.

“Nay. That would look strange, a blanket upon a man’s lap. Never mind. The riding shall warm me.”

She leaned down to kiss us good-bye, nearly falling out of her saddle. Her mustache tickled our faces, but we did not laugh at it.

40

TWO PATRIOTS MURDERED. TWO POISONINGS—AND SMALLPOX
as w
ell! All was not well in the North Parish. Still, I was glad to be out of ignorance, to know the truth. My idyll had perhaps crumbled, but not so my friendships, or my growing love for this town.

The following morning, we received word that Lizzie had arrived safely in Cambridge. Several days later, however, we received a more substantial, and more enigmatical, letter:

My servants Bessie and Giles are well. At the tavern, I met Mr. C! Imagine that, Martha. He praised my horse but suggested that “to be too busy was perhaps some danger.”

Hearing the news that Lizzie had chanced upon Mr. Cleverly, Martha scowled.

“That is the man who proposed to Lizzie?”

“
Nearly
proposed,” said Martha, slapping the letter against her hip.

“I gather you don’t like this Mr. Cleverly?”

“A pompous ass would be putting it mildly.”

“She is well out of it, then.”

“Indeed, she is.” Martha turned as if she would walk into the kitchen, but I persisted:

“What happened to him, exactly? Why did he leave town, and so suddenly?”

Martha proceeded to tell me that Mr. Cleverly had been a friend and associate of the murdered men, Dr. Flynt and Mr. Thayer. He had, like them, been staying at the Cranches’ boarding house, visiting Lizzie nearly every day while he worked on his watering machine. But he fled Braintree like a coward the day Mr. Thayer, the second victim, died.

“That very morning, Mr. Cleverly had been about to propose marriage to Lizzie. They stood there in the orchards when Richard Cranch came to tell us of Mr. Thayer’s death.”

“I can hardly believe it,” I said. Nor did I understand precisely what those murders were about. Of what importance had been those two patriots, for some dastardly villain to dispatch them so?

“Believe it,” said Martha. “The truth is, Eliza, that you’ve left one fry pan only to jump into another.”

Lizzie was gone for near two weeks. During that time, we lost flesh. It grew quite cold, and we had so little wood left that, to conserve our supply, Johnny and I moved into Lizzie’s chamber with Martha. For two weeks we froze and went hungry during the day; at night, we lay in a heap, the bed piled high with bolsters. I slept poorly, fearing that one of us would roll over and smother my babe.

Every day, I expected a letter and would start at the least sound abroad. Or I would sit with my tea in the unheated parlor, so that I could look out the window, the better to see the approach of a messenger. Nothing came, neither from John nor from Colonel Langdon. I saw only the white puffs of my own breath.

On the night of November 14, at midnight or perhaps a little earlier, I started up in bed, having heard something in my sleep. It was a noise like breaking glass. The noise was so sudden, and so unabashedly loud, that I believed it to be one of those details of a nightmare that can seem so real to the dreamer. However, I was just sitting up, eyes open to the darkness, moon hidden by the clouds, when I heard another noise—footsteps.

“Martha!” I whispered.

Martha’s eyes were already open. We had left our flint in the kitchen and thus had nothing with which to light a candle.

“Help me, quickly,” she whispered, her breath like clouds of smoke. We leapt from the bed at the same moment. Trembling, I whispered to her, “They’ll hear us.”

“Perhaps. But they mustn’t reach us. Help me.” Here, she took one end of Lizzie’s heavy chest of drawers, and I took the other. We slid it with a great, groaning, scraping sound, against the door. The footsteps below halted, and we stopped; we dared not even breathe. Then the movement resumed.

“There are two of them,” Martha said. I looked about the dark chamber for a weapon, lamenting the fact that I had not thought to bring Lizzie’s musket up to our chamber. I then knelt down beside the bed and prayed to God to spare my son, if not myself.

“Will you not pray with me?” I asked Martha.

“It’s pointless.”

I was shocked at this blasphemous reply but had no time to dwell upon it because, suddenly, amidst all the great crashing and smashing below, we heard feet upon the stairs. One pair. They endeavored to be stealthy, but the cottage was old and the stairs creaked. We heard every footfall and held each other in terror. The chest, we knew, would be no great protection for long. Martha’s eyes darted toward the window. I did not see how we might escape that way without breaking a limb or being caught at once. And, even were we to try it, what of Johnny?

We were at their mercy, and God’s.

I put my hands together and bowed my head. “Please, Lord. I know I have sinned. But do not let them harm my innocent child.” Suddenly the footsteps ceased their creaky climb. I rose to my feet, and there was a moment of silence in which Martha and I were locked together as one person. The steps then descended and were lost amid the other pair. Both soon removed to the kitchen. That was the first moment wherein I felt that, whatever these marauders’ sinister purpose, it was not to harm but to frighten us. We released our hold upon each other and breathed. Next we heard them, they descended to the cellar. There was the sound of more crockery being smashed. Ten minutes later, they were gone.

We slept not that night, nor dared to move nor push the chest away from the door till break of day, when we rose.

The parlor window had been smashed through. The barrels of cider in the cellar had been cleaved with an ax. Several chickens in the yard had been beheaded, their glassy eyes glancing wistfully toward their distant bodies. In the kitchen, Lizzie’s medical sack had been rifled and many costly supplies taken. Teas and powders had been removed from their boxes and poured all in a heap. The entire scene possessed a personal, vengeful quality. What a waste lay before us!

A thought then occurred to me. “This is someone of your acquaintance,” I said to Martha.

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

41

WHILE I STOOD THERE IN SHOCK, MARTHA
ran to Colonel Quincy’s, who had his coachman ride to Cambridge to deliver the news to Lizzie. Martha then returned to help me with the task of cleaning up the mess. We were at it nearly all that day, working in silence punctuated only by Johnny’s hunger.

It was near four
o’c
lock, and we had been picking up the broken jars and bottles, spilled provisions, and smashed glass for many hours when Lizzie finally returned.

“Oh, God,” she said, coming upon us in the parlor. We were on our hands and knees picking out shards of glass from between the plank flooring. “Thank God, you’re unharmed.” We stood, wearily, and she embraced us both. Johnny woke just then; and we heard his cry from above us. Lizzie went to fetch him and soon returned with my son, who was ready to be fed. I sat on the parlor bed and nursed him.

Finally, when he had settled, I turned to Lizzie. “But who should want to harm you? I cannot conceive of it.”

Neither Martha nor Lizzie replied, but I saw a glance pass between them.

“So, you shan’t tell me?”

Martha looked away. Lizzie said, “Not yet, Eliza.”

I had been strong all day, picking up the shattered bottles and spilled grain, smoothing out the violence that had been done to us. But at Lizzie’s words, I felt the truth of my situation. I was not one of them, not one of the inner circle. I was a visitor, nothing more.

“Oh, Eliza,” Lizzie saw my hurt at once. “It is for your own good. We wish only to protect you.”

“I do not
want
to be protected. I want—I should
like
to face this danger, whatever it is,
with
you.”

Lizzie looked at Martha, who shook her head.

“We can’t do that, Eliza. Not yet.”

“Patience,” said Martha.

I said nothing, resigning myself to this virtue of silence if none other.

Soon after these events, the drear misery of winter descended upon us. There was still no word from John, though I had by this time written him many letters. Colonel Langdon, I learned, was not in Portsmouth at all but had gone south to be with His Excellency. I now doubted whether he had even received my letter. But I could feel in my soul that Uncle Robert had left Portsmouth at last, and the whereabouts of John and Isaac were unknown to all but him.

I spoke little of my troubles with my friends, though we each felt the others’ grief. Lizzie, I suspected, cared for Thomas Miller, about whom rumors grew daily. And it had been four years since she had heard from her brother, Harry, though Lizzie told us she had heard encouraging rumors about Harry’s whereabouts while in Cambridge. As for Martha, she seemed burdened by some leaden weight in her soul.

I took my own model of strength from Abigail, who had not heard from John Adams in many months. What’s more, she had to suffer the near-daily reports of his death in the London papers. But I was not insensible to the fact that there was a difference between Abigail and myself: namely, that she was married to John. They were bound forever by a spiritual connection before God. I, on the other hand, wasn’t certain that John still loved me—or even that he lived.

Toward the end of December, it snowed near a foot, rained, then froze solid. The ground was so slick that one could not step out of doors without risk of breaking one’s neck. Darkness, cold, hunger, and fear were our loyal companions.

My friends were often obliged to go abroad at night, leaving me to stare into the glowing embers of the kitchen hearth. Low on wood as we were, I dared not light a fire in the chamber but slept on a straw pallet by the kitchen hearth, Johnny snuggled next to me. Whole nights I went without a single candle, too, and at these times tears of self-pity ran freely down my cheeks—my one luxury. And why not? By them I importuned no one but myself.

A bright spot in these dark times was Christmas Eve, when Abigail and her two youngest children, Tommy and Charlie, came for dinner. Nabby had gone to Plymouth to visit her aunt; John Quincy was in Paris with his father. At around four in the afternoon it began to snow, but we were snug within. Abigail had brought wine and a pie. Lizzie stuffed and roasted two chickens.

Tongues loosed by wine, we all spoke freely that night—of husbands, dreams, grief, and the small pleasures of the everyday. The boys focused on the excellent repast and heeded not our conversation.

“Save room,” Abigail warned them. “For I have brought a fine plum pie, and I’ve had to sell your father’s books for it.”

The boys looked up at her, aghast, as if she might be in earnest. Their worried faces made us all laugh.

The bright star of Christmas soon faded.
January found us hungry, depressed, and continually fearful. Then smallpox invaded yet again, and Lizzie was called upon to care for the sick and dying. Martha accompanied her, and I was left alone once more.

Only Johnny, insensible of the degraded world in which he lived, persisted in flourishing. Oh, he was my little beacon of hope! I so wished John could see him: Having learned to smile, he now smiled at everything he saw. He smiled at the chickens beyond the window; at night, he smiled at the shadows the candle made upon the wall. He always had a smile for me, and there is naught to do when a child smiles than to smile back, though it be through tears.

About a week after the New Year, Lizzie went abroad in the afternoon without a word as to where she was headed. She returned a few hours later lower in spirit than
I’d
ever seen her. She threw off her cloak and entreated me, “Allow me to hold Johnny.” I relinquished him at once.

Lizzie shook her face and puffed her cheeks, which sent him into melodious gurgles of laughter. Lizzie, however, had tears in her eyes.

“What is it?” I asked. “Where did you go?”

“To Abigail’s,” she said, still making faces for Johnny.

“And did you learn something there?”

“I did,” she said, still mugging for my child.

I expected her to continue, but she said nothing more.

“Lizzie, please tell me what has happened.”

She took a breath, then let it out. “Abigail has had a letter from General Sullivan about Mr. Miller. Apparently there is evidence of his Tory loyalties from the highest levels. What’s more, they suspect he was involved in the murders of Mr. Thayer and Dr. Flint.”

“No, Lizzie. Do not believe it.”

“I don’t
wish
to believe it,” she said.

Martha had gone to tend a woman in travail, and so I felt free to inquire of Lizzie’s true feelings for Mr. Miller.

“What is Mr. Miller to you? Are you in love with him? I won’t mind if you are. Jeb would not have wished you to be alone forever.”

“Of course I’m in love with him,” she laughed through her tears. “Am, and have been, for many months.”

“Then do not believe the rumors.”

“Is it a rumor, when Mrs. John Adams says that it is so?”

“In these troubled times there are so many uncertainties, uncertain loyalties. Who is good, who evil? We have but our instincts to go by. Mine tell me that Mr. Miller is a very good sort of man.”

“Perhaps you are right,” she said thoughtfully. “Yes, perhaps. For my instincts tell me that he is no traitor to the Cause.”

At long last, winter ebbed. The sky lightened. The mountains of crusty snow melted, and the ground warmed. The parish, terrorized first by the murders of Dr. Flynt and Mr. Thayer and then by the break-in at our house, began to breathe freely once more. Sunday meeting was held again. People began to stroll the main road, stopping to talk to neighbors. Babes continued to be born.

March came, and we set to work clearing the fields of winter’s debris. We pruned the fruit trees and broke the soil. We carried manure and loam in great, heavy baskets and worked these into the soil. Then, in April, we tilled more finely, planting the seeds we had gathered the previous autumn.

We planted row upon row of vegetables: long squash, cranberry beans, brown beans, cabbage, carrots, turnips, beets, onions, and yellow bush beans. It took us a week to plant the potatoes and corn.

In Portsmouth, I had learned to fish and shoot. But never had I exerted myself for this long, or this hard. Abandoning all pretense of ladylike behavior, I threw myself into the work at hand, discovering not only the very great satisfaction that came with self-sufficiency but an age-old secret: that physical pain dulled the pain of the soul.

In May we managed to get the cucumbers and peas into the ground. In the kitchen garden, we planted Lizzie’s medicinal herbs: saffron, sage, chamomile, and feverfew.

Johnny kept pace with the growth all around us. In May, he began to crawl, and Abigail’s boys built a crib for him so that he would not crawl off while we worked. Soon, he was sitting up, sucking upon a biscuit to ease his sore gums.

That month, there came a bird infestation that threatened our tender seedlings. The town selectmen offered the citizens of Braintree thirty shillings apiece for an old crow and six shillings for a blackbird. One fair Sunday at meeting, after hearing this news, I returned home with a certain resolve in my step. Lizzie and Martha trailed behind me, calling, “Wait up! Why do you run ahead?”

I arrived home, set Johnny in his crib, and removed Jeb’s musket from the parlor wall.

Lizzie and Martha were right behind me in the doorway. I turned to them with the musket in my arms, and for a moment they were struck speechless. Then Martha asked, “You know how to use that?”

“Yes. An old Portsmouth friend taught me. Have you bullets and powder about?”

Lizzie hesitated. “Whom or what do you plan to shoot, may I ask?”

“The crows, of course.”

She moved to her cupboard, pulled open a drawer, retrieved a powder horn and bullets, and returned to place them in my hand.

“Thank you,” I said. I then strode into the garden, my friends trailing uneasily behind.

“Are you certain you know how? I shouldn’t like you to shoot yourself, or one of us,” said Lizzie.

I did not reply, but focused my attention on properly loading the musket pan and barrel.

“Would you look at that?” Martha observed, impressed. “What has happened to our prim Eliza?”

“Prim, indeed!” I snorted, pointing the musket toward the fence up the hill, where a number of crows perched.

“Should we be afraid?” Martha asked.

I laughed easily, enjoying myself now. “Only if you’re a crow.” I looked at Martha. “You do look a little crow-like, Martha, now you mention it.”

I then pointed the musket in the general direction of the fence, as my friends ducked in fear. “Well,” I remarked, “this musket is not so fine as the flintlock I used in Portsmouth.”

“Used in Portsmouth? Against someone?” asked Martha.

“Nay.” I smiled. “Rabbits. But I like not to kill birds. Well, we must do it, I suppose.”

“Yes,” said Lizzie. “We could use the money. I hope you share your skills with us, Eliza.”

“Of course.” Here, I blushed. My pride at knowing something these women did not was great indeed.

What would Louisa Ruggles have said
, I wondered,
had she seen me in my homespun, with my musket, shooting crows off a fence?
I recalled how I had once taken such pride in being the most fashionable girl in all of Cambridge. How distant that life seemed now!