Dysentery rampaged through Boston, then started in Lexington, too. Influenza hit that December of 1769, and then smallpox was found on a sailor dead in an alleyway. His body had been eaten by rats, and for two days no one thought unusual a man lying facedown in a gutter after a ship of the line made port. The disease spread to three fourths of Boston, others being already immune, and then through the countryside.
And then with the new year it took my Gwyneth. I had sat by her side and sung to her, old nursery songs of windy days and Maypoles. Baby Peter got the scourge as well. Gwenny held Peter in her arms when she followed him to the next world, for the babe was already gone though she knew it not. We buried them together in the same grave. Gwenny and Roland’s oldest son died also; the eldest daughter, Elizabeth, recovered. Though Roland became ill it was short-lived, and little Sally suffered a day of fever and then was up playing. I watched her as she visited my house, fearing that she would return to illness even worse, but she did not. Two weeks later, she continued in good health. Dorothy escaped, too, though I knew not why. All one can do in these times is to be thankful for survival.
My dearest Gwenny. I missed her so. She was both a child and a sister to me. Cullah put down his musket, barely ate, and spent nine evenings sighing, staring into the fire. Alice, like me, had come through smallpox as a child.
I traded a bolt of silk for several bushels of roving, and wove a hundred yards of plain gray wool with no more color than the sheep had bestowed it for dyes were not to be had. I wore black. I did little embroidery for I could not buy silk thread and I could not embroider with my needles worn so small I could not hold them. I found that there was always someone who knew our signals and codes, and who could get me five pounds for a bolt of wool, ten for a bolt of linen. When I was not at my loom I spent days hackling linen in the barn.
*
On March 5, 1770, in Boston, some drunken young men threw snowballs at a soldier in uniform. They had caught the Redcoat alone and had been having fun at his expense when some of his fellows heard the commotion and rushed to his aid. Taunts and ignored orders came from both sides. The snowballs coming at the soldiers turned to ice chips and rocks, broken bottles, then horseshoes. The soldiers fought back with what they carried. Muskets. In a moment, five young men lay dead, a score more wounded.
Now a craftsman in his own right in Revere’s shop, Benjamin told me that he had helped, working well into the night on an etching, so that by March 6, the newspaper published a print of soldiers firing upon an innocent crowd. “They were warned to stop, Ma,” Benjamin said as I looked at the drawing. “They were told. Why would a person not take hold of themselves when faced with a musket? Why not simply cease? It was all in fun but they grew violent.”
“The human heart is harder to turn from its course than a river,” I said.
“Five died, Ma. Five boys. I knew two of them. They were just drunk, Ma. Fools full of drink, throwing snowballs. Redcoats should all die.”
“No. Your brother is one of them, too. They are not all cut from the same cloth.”
“Few of them have any intelligence at all, then.”
“That may be true. Then again, a soldier follows orders and it is his ranking officer we must blame if something is amiss.”
As spring drew on we worked our own farm from sun to sun. Cullah’s strength seemed to come back to him, though not his size. He seemed thin, but he could still fell a tree and split firewood just as quickly as before.
One afternoon in mid-May, Roland came to the door. He sat at the table before us. He looked into Dorothy’s eyes, and asked her to marry him, to take her sister’s place. She already knew and loved the children, he said. They needed a mother. He needed a wife. Would she accede to his offer? He promised he would make her a good husband, and provide for her all the days of her life.
“But will you love her?” I asked.
“Fondness grows,” he said. “Like a wild rose. She lived with us for years. We are comfortable together. I am old, but I will be a good husband.”
Cullah turned to Dolly. “What say you, of this?”
She smiled. “Pa, Ma, I have always loved Roland. I loved Gwenny, too. When I felt my heart growing attached to my sister’s husband, I came back to your house so I would neither tempt nor be tempted. I could never marry another. I will go with Roland. I love Gwenny’s children.”
“Well,” Cullah said, “a girl needs a husband. But it seems so soon. I suppose if Reverend Clarke will approve it, I will not stand in your way.”