While I watched them eat and presided over the laying out of blankets and bedding, I could not but feel atremble at what the two men wore. They had long black capes and each wore a beaten but black tricorn hat, just as the one in which our graveyard ghost appeared. Their shirts were black as well as their waistcoats, stockings, and trousers. Both also had wide black kerchiefs around their necks. August carried a leather pouch, rough sewn and oft patched, all stained black, too.
“And, my dear sister,” said August after draining his cup. “I have brought you a gift.” He pulled from his pouch a smaller cloth sack and handed it to me. “Taken from the captain’s quarters of His Great Buffoonery Wallace Spencer’s Long Ridge out of Jamaica with a hundred barrels of sugar, and I fear, not a ha’penny of tax paid for any.” He and Nathaniel laughed conspiratorially.
I slipped the drawstrings and looked inside, then let out a long breath. “August. Cashews! Quick, Dolly, get me a skillet. But”—I stopped, my nose into the sack—“these are stolen?”
“I didn’t take them. Some outlaw pirate did. I came by them honestly. A gift from your brother in thanks for all you have done.”
“August. If we eat these we shall be guilty.”
He cocked his head at me. “I didn’t say I stole them. And don’t eye me like that, I did not give him a taste of my blade. I traded a sash for them.”
I roasted and salted two handfuls of the cashews, sizzling them in their own oil until the house filled with the buttery fragrance. Then I poured them into a trencher and we all sampled. I said, “I have not tasted these in thirty years. Oh, dear August.” Then I closed my eyes and my mouth for I could say no more. The taste and smell carried me home, long ago, far away. Warm breezes laden with flowers, sea-green lagoons, hot spices, and the murmur of voices from the kitchen as our women shelled and roasted cashews. Tears ran down my face. Cullah spoke to the men while I drifted on a sea of memories.
Before dawn, I made a large breakfast of meats and tomatoes, beans with onions, and Indian flour cakes dipped in treacle thinned with rum. I served also coffee and hot milk with nutmeg across it and lump sugar in the bottom of each cup. My brother and Nathaniel left while it was still dark in order to arrive at home before anyone saw their strange clothing. Cullah waited until they were gone down the road to pick up his leather apron and sack. He said, “Three men will come to take the shipment into Pennsylvania. They will give you the signal of a white feather in their hatbands. Feed them if you will. I trust them, but keep Dorothy in the house.”
“Who is it? Someone we know?” Dorothy asked.
“One of them is one of the Revere boys. The other is your brother Benjamin. The third is a rake and a scoundrel of passing fair. Son of one of the Prescott family. It’s better you don’t see them, and cannot say when last you did.”
Dorothy pursed her lips. “I like Samuel Prescott.”
“Aye. I thought you might. Good day, wee one. Help your mother.”
“Do you not trust me, Pa?”
He smiled with one side of his mouth. “With my life, yes. But with your pretty face before three strong lads on their way to a foreign land, one of them who might lay eyes on a greater prize than what’s in the barn? I’d have to hunt them down and kill one of them and then where would be your uncle’s plan?”
“I’m not a child, Pa.”
“That’s the trouble.”
I put my arm around Dolly as he left and I whispered, “Your presence at the Reveres’ dinner persuaded half the young bachelors of Boston to become Sons of Liberty.”
“As they should,” she said. “I would have no man who did not believe in my father’s cause.”
“I thought you were determined never to marry?”
“I was a child then.”
*
After Margaret’s insistent urging, I told her she might be amused to meet Serenity Spencer, who was now living again in Boston while Wallace conducted business. Why, I could not fathom, but though I told Margaret only about my past with Serenity and hinted that I had as a child been enamored of Wallace, her eyes sparkled like diamonds at the prospect, and so she made a date to call upon Serenity provided I would accompany her.
“Was he handsome?” she asked with a sly smirk.
“Very. He is still, I think.”
“The devil, they say, goes about in finery.”
“And if you believe Beelzebub is as cunning as he is attractive, then I think we have found him.”
“Delicious!” Margaret crowed, and clasped her hands to her bosom.
I drove my wagon to August’s house and he came with me to the Gages’ home. He looked the aristocrat in every way except for his darkened skin and the scar on his face, but it made him present as bold, rakish, and dashing to my lady friend. The air was alive with the fire of their attraction to each other. It grew to the point that I felt odd, as if I should excuse myself and let the lovers at it, until I reminded myself that Margaret was married. For her own sake, I stayed in the room to keep them from each other and we sipped Madeira as sweat flushed my face. Thankfully, August found reason to attend to some business or other on foot, and left us alone.
When the door closed behind him, Margaret turned to me with guilty eyes.
I said, “My brother thinks you quite the beauty.”