The Midwife's Revolt (28 page)

Was it fear of discovery that had me shaking? I would be less than honest if I said this were my sole concern. I had little fear of this. My disguise was excellent: my own mother would not have known me. My emotions then can be summed up in one word:
longing.
Oh, to unmask myself and throw my poor benumbed body into the arms of a tender protector! I knew this to be the fantasy of a love-starved widow. And yet, oh, if only I could forget about my mission and the war and the necessary taking of sides! Were we not all Colonials? Were our parents not all friends, even relations? Which part of my warring self was I to trust—head or heart? Surely both could not be right.

Thomas Miller had gone back to his conversation, and I drank a third rum. Head and heart were both on fire half an hour later when I paid my bill, donned my cap and coat, and endeavored to walk a straight line out the tavern door toward my horse.

I never drank strong drink. I disliked the dizziness it produced, just as I disliked the rocking of a boat. Now, with three drinks in my burning belly, I found myself quite drunk.

The wharf was dark save for the firelight that spun about me as I mounted Star. Firelight from homes and other establishments swirled together, creating flitting butterflies of light in the blackness above. The white smoke of my own breath and this swirling light spun about me as I set off for Cambridge. Luckily, Star’s footing was much firmer than my own.

I was oddly exultant, heedless of my own perilous swaying. The world spun about me, and twice I nearly slid off Star’s back. My stomach burned from the drink, and I felt not the cold in my extremities. I shook my limbs as I rode and was much occupied with this task when I heard a horse’s hooves galloping toward me from the rear. Suddenly hands were upon my reins, startling Star and myself equally.

“Lizzie, stop!” a hushed, intense voice whispered. Hands stopped my horse and pulled me off into a side street. Had I not heard my own name, I would have thought I was done for. Roadway robbers and worse were quite common at this lawless time.

“Oh, Lizzie, are you
mad
? Raving, raving mad?”

I felt a hand grope blindly across my head, and my cap fell to the ground, pulling the bit of string from my plait as well. My hair fell about my shoulders. I knew the voice, knew the hands that grasped both sides of my head in the dark and pulled me into an embrace far more filled with terror than desire.

34

NOWADAYS IT IS common to exaggerate the
virtue of our “women of the revolution,” of which I was one. Each year broadsides marking the anniversary of our victory, replete with caricatured renderings, make us out to have been stone statues of righteousness.

But I am here to say that it was not the case. We were flesh and blood. We suffered great loneliness and loss. We felt the spectrum of contradictory desires, intensified by starvation of body and spirit. We felt drawn to unsuitable men. The temptations of improper conduct warred with parental whispers and exhortations. But it was not merely our virtue at stake. It was our place in history. We did not work for such a place, but we were uplifted by the notion. We hoped our stories would not go entirely unnoticed.

But I have left my poor reader at a critical moment: myself, drunk, in an alleyway with Mr. Miller! My eyes closed as Thomas leaned in to kiss me. I was still wearing Martha’s mustache and Giles’s smelly jacket. At the touch of his lips on mine, I felt all my hours and years of strength dissolve. I felt my coldness and loneliness begin to burn, my womanhood begin to escape from my costumed manhood like a genie released from a bottle.

Thomas pulled away, looked at me, and laughed sheepishly at having kissed what any passerby would have believed to be a boy.

“You are very convincing in your repulsiveness,” he said. “And you are also dangerously drunk.” Then he muttered to himself, “My fear for you shall be my undoing.” Addressing me once more, he said, “Promise me you will not entertain such a foolhardy pursuit again.”

“I cannot promise that,” I said defiantly, yet slurring the
s
in the word
promise
.

“Truly, Lizzie. You must cease this foolhardiness.” He pulled Star deeper into the alleyway, his voice hushed but intense.

“Why must I, if I find out the truth? Already I have heard such things as lead me to suppose
. . .
”

“Lizzie, by God. Will you not listen to reason? It is dangerous. There are those among us who wish you ill.”

“Me?” I laughed. “Why would anyone care about me? I am of no importance.”

“You are among a handful who know those men were killed. Do you think that such men as are willing to assassinate John Adams or Abigail and her children would have any compunction about ridding the world of a snooping midwife?”

“Assassinate John or Abigail?” Then my worst conjecture was true.
“How come you to know these things?”

Thomas was silent. I stared at him, fury growing out of me at the thought of harm coming to Abigail. Star must have sensed my tension, for he lurched forward toward the road. Mr. Miller hung on to my cape.

“You must be close to these scoundrels. Indeed, you must—I
loathe
you,” I said, wresting myself from his grip. “Leave me be. You cannot stop me.”

“Lizzie, don’t!” He reached out in the darkness, getting my cape, but no more.

“Leave me be,” I said again, weeping now, for what I wanted and needed I could never have. Tears of confusion and self-pity flooded my eyes. But it was with renewed commitment that I rode off toward Cambridge, leaving Mr. Miller alone in the alleyway with my cape for consolation.

The following morning, I woke with a massive headache. I lay in bed most of the day with the curtains drawn. Bessie buzzed about me like a wasp, condemning my behavior of the previous evening.

“Bessie, please. This hardly helps.”

“I dare say it doesn’t.” She removed a cloth from my head and slapped a cool one on to replace it.

“Ow!” I cried, putting a hand to my head.

Bessie would not let me leave the house for the next several days, and in truth I had not the energy to do so. What’s more, I feared another encounter with Mr. Miller.

Did I think of him as I lay in bed? Did I recall that kiss over and over in my mind? Though mortified, did I believe myself to be in love with him?

I knew it as the most hopeless fact of my existence. Worse, I could not blame it entirely on the drink. Should Mr. Miller have approached me stone sober, I might have behaved just the same. He was not a handsome man, as Cleverly was. His bearing was dignified, but his person was rather unkempt. What, then, had undone me? In two words: his eyes. Not their color, which was beautiful, nor their clarity, nor their occasional warmth, nor even their mocking intelligence. No, it was the way they looked at me. It was as if his eyes saw me as I was. They saw everything true and little else, much the way Star knew me though I was in disguise. Like my beloved Star, he had an instinct for me.

But youth is resilient, and by the end of that second week in Cambridge, I had recovered sufficiently to rise from my sickbed and return to the tavern. I was surprised that Mr. Miller had not visited me, then hurt. Finally I put all thought of him aside and made my way to the tavern.

What passed by my ears in the next several days was enough to set a Rebel’s hair on end. Mr. Holland and one other associate, whose name I did not glean, were most assuredly in town. They continued to plot ways to bring down our forces.

As I listened to the tavern gossip, I became confused by the fact that not one but several plots were in the works. The worst, and most fearsome, involved the deaths of our great leaders. Another involved a counterfeit money scheme. Yet a third involved a surprise attack on Boston. If I had imagined that our war took place through official channels only, I was soon disabused. My time at the tavern taught me that our enemies were everywhere. They were very close. I could only pray that so, too, were our friends.

After several days of such bombardment on my ears and dispirit of my soul, I decided to visit the Golden Ball. I would go in the comfort of a coach, dressed as a woman, if not entirely as myself. It was Bessie’s idea, actually. She said there was a coach “as left at noon reg’lar” every day from the Common, returning at seven the same evening. For the Golden Ball, I would go as my former self: a Cambridge lady. Mr. Isaac Jones, the tavern’s proprietor, would be alert to strangers, but I would give him no cause to question me.

“Bessie, you come with me,” I said one evening after we had taken our supper in the parlor.

“What need have you for my poor body?”

“Well, I can’t very well go alone, can I?”

“You go alone astride that pacer of yours in the freezin’ cold and in a rough part o’ town, but you wiln’a take a coach to an elegant country tavern?”

“Of course not. In the former scenario, I am a man. It won’t do at all to be a woman traveling alone.”

Bessie wasn’t convinced.

“Well, you’ll be needin’ to think o’ yer options then, as wild horses won’t be draggin’
me
on such a journey.”

She turned her back on me, then pivoted around again as poor Giles made an entrance.

“Giles!” She grinned wolfishly at him.

Bessie accompanied him toward me. Reader, I have told you previously that my old servant was quite clever. Indeed, it had not taken her five seconds before she lit upon my solution. “The missus has a plan what needs your help.”

“Anything, ma’am,” he said, setting the tray down and bowing.

“Giles, would you have a seat?” I asked.

Giles sat, but his legs were so long, and he was so unused to sitting that his knees danced; his hands tapped the chair legs. He then ceased all activity and sat like a marble statue, only to begin dancing again a few moments later. Bessie handed him a teacup in the hopes that holding it might still him. The teacup rattled perilously.

I explained my desire to go to Weston, to the Golden Ball tavern, and my need for a companion. He listened attentively, his grizzled head bowed. When I was done, I asked him would he accompany me the following day. He nodded.

“Am I to go as your slave, then?”

“As my slave? Heavens, no.”

“It would be a most convincing guise, madam.”

“You’re no doubt correct, Giles. However, there is only so far I am prepared to go for the Cause. That would be too far. You shall come as my—my husband’s valet. My husband had been
. . .
in Worcester
. . .
”—I thought aloud—“
. . .
and is to meet us there. However, he does not show up, and we must return home. Only if we are asked, you understand.”

“I can think of worse stories,” Giles muttered.

“A ringing endorsement!”

“It’s good—it’ll do,” encouraged Bessie, glad to be well out of it herself.

“But remember, say nothing unless asked,” I cautioned.

Giles replied, “Miss, I never say anything unless asked.”

“Oh! My apologies.” I blushed, for I had forgotten my place, and, more importantly, his.

The following day, we strolled to the Common. I had donned my finest gown and cloak; Giles wore a dusty black suit and held a large hat box—filled with what, I knew not. Certainly not a hat. Still, it seemed perfectly correct to both Giles and me that, as my servant and traveling companion, he would hold a large box. God help us if he were obliged to open it!

The sky above the Common was bright blue: no cloud or breeze told of the frigid temperature. I was glad of the half-dozen passengers standing there, for they lent some warmth to the air around me. I nestled in among them. Waiting for the carriage, I observed young men walking briskly in and out of the entrance to Harvard College. The college had recently opened its halls after being occupied by our army and then by Burgoyne’s troops.

The ride was very slow, uneventful, and silent. I have observed that the closer in proximity one is to others, the stronger are the walls one erects to preserve one’s space. At least, that is true for those of my class. I know little of how such a ride among farmers might have been—friendlier, I suspect, if perhaps more odiferous.

For two hours, we clopped slowly down the road to Weston, during which time I read upon my book (something conveniently borrowed from my house—I cannot recall its title). Giles peered out a window, taking in the view. It was almost certain he had never been anywhere beyond Cambridge and its environs. His eyes did not turn away from the snow-sprinkled, fallow fields. The landscape became wild and unspoiled once we crossed the river in Watertown; only the smell of burning wood and the occasional plume of smoke told of the human race.

At last we arrived at the Golden Ball. It was not large but was quite handsome. The front looked much like any house on Brattle Street. To the side and rear, through wavy panes of glass, I espied beautiful rooms, all large and fine. Before me lay a quaint country scene. Society came and went, laughing and cheerful with drink, heedless of the cold, seemingly heedless of the war. “Oh, but he shouldn’t have!” and “Oh, but he did!” and “Wicked man!” I heard as two ladies passed me, exiting the tavern.

Giles, of course, could accompany me no farther. He went off to a back room where the Negro servants were able to take refreshment. He had gone off with my command to “give every man thine ear but few thy voice.” I had turned to explain, but Giles nodded, saying he understood my meaning.

I entered.

At once I saw a large public room hosting a blazing fire. The wide floor planks glowed with recent waxing. Such a spirit of conviviality pervaded the room that I nearly forgot my mission. I sat at a table that afforded a vision of a dusky field beyond the house. A red-tailed hawk swept across my view and disappeared. I turned to find a man I believed to be Mr. Jones awaiting my request. He was stooped and flushed in the cheeks; sweat rolled down his temples as he juggled a half-dozen orders at once.