*
That summer when the wheat was green, the flax a sea of blue, and the barley still not more than a hand high, Brendan joined the British army for good. The war with the French had simmered down and yet new recruits were always needed. Because he had proved himself with valor during his previous stint, he was made a lieutenant and sent to Canada to relieve the forces at Montréal. I sighed. Montréal. I knew so little of the place, and yet it was so familiar. All so long ago and far away as if it were a story I once heard. I wept with his going for three days. And then I put on my apron and returned to my life and my loom.
The house felt quiet and empty. I taught Dorothy reading lessons and arithmetic and embroidery. Benjamin learned his lessons in Latin well. I hoped he might proceed to college. He might have the makings of the highest calling, a minister of God. I asked Reverend Clarke to speak to him, though yet a boy, for it was not too soon to plan. Jacob, of course, had never regained the forty pounds he had once promised, but no matter.
Town meetings went on now sometimes more than one a month. One night after being quite late returning from town, Cullah turned to me as we lay in bed and said, “Ressie? What do you believe?”
“On what subject?”
“I mean, what do you believe in? Do you believe there is a thing that is ordained and true and noble enough to die for?”
“I know you believe it. Men do; that is why they fight wars. Jacob fought for his beliefs and you ended up here.”
“I am asking you, wife. What do you believe in so that you would risk everything? Would you pick up a musket and kill a man?”
“Why do you ask me these things?”
“Would you?”
“For my children, yes.”
“There is talk. Among our friends in town. Talk of acting against the Crown. Refusing to be subject to another tax. Another war. No one in Parliament has ever been to this coast, did you know that? Everything costs more and more. Today I could not buy hinges because they weren’t to be had. If I must make them or buy them secretly, it will cost dearly, and I cannot sell my furniture for a price people will pay.”
“What do you mean to do?”
“Nothing, yet. The talk is just there, that we could band together to force prices down. Don’t buy British goods. Make our own or do without. Or depend on people like your brother to bring them from France or Russia or the Indies.”
“What goods are British?”
“That’s just it. Almost nothing and they buy and sell to us for three or four times what it’s worth. Cauldrons. Snuff and snuffboxes and shoes. They have passed a new law that no tradesman is allowed to make ironwork. Piggins and bars must be sent to England and we must buy it back after being worked. Any man caught working iron shall be arrested and tried for treason. Anyone buying iron from other than England faces the same. Not a horseshoe! We will have to take that iron we found in the fields years ago and melt it in secret or face arrest for having it.”
“You will wake the children.”
“Not a candlestick, I tell you. Not a single hinge. We have to be able to make our own. Don’t try to sell your cloth; even the silks from Lady Spencer will be taxed for half their value and I cannot pay it. We will be arrested if we don’t pay. Trade with the neighbors and don’t go to town. I heard from young Paul that their taking our iron will be the subject of the next town meeting. It will amount to having to smuggle home a crane for the fire or a shoe for a horse. There will not even be coin, but we will have printed money on paper that could catch fire like a twig. I am joining the rebellion. The whole of Lexington must be in one accord on this, for we must act together or hang separately.”
“The Quakers do such. They do not trade with outsiders. I do not know about iron, but they make shoes. But, Eadan, what is this talk of dying?”
“Sometimes I lie awake at night and think I am dying. Or I will be dying. And that war is coming. Everything feels so unsettled. Everything.”
I lay there, silent. To me, until he said this, everything in life had felt so settled and happy. Cullah was home. Brendan off on the career he chose. Gwenny married. Ben declining Latin nouns faster than I could think them up. Dorothy doing her first sampler. The land at last farmed and producing well. Life was good. “I am sorry for you, husband, to be so troubled. Perhaps you are worried so because of the hinges, and there will be some in town tomorrow. You have to wait.”