Finally, the soldiers assembled themselves at my front door, and began to walk away, leading my cow. Two of them held folded woolen blankets, our best quilted ones, the warmest for winter. Off they marched, as much as they could with a cow in step.
I took a breath, ready to protest again, but Cullah nudged me. I ran to the highboy chest, now stoved in at the back of it, splintered wood everywhere. I threw my arms about it and cried. Every inch of it had been touched by Cullah. With tender fingers I pressed the splinters in at the poor broken side.
In the parlor, a blanket smoked at one corner where it lay too near the fire. I pulled it back, and as I did my mind spun to the parlor on Meager Bay, the night of devastation caused by cannonballs falling through the roof. Not one thing had escaped their search. I ran to the stairs down to the loom. Slid open the panel. They had not found the secret room. Upstairs in my bedroom, I sighed with relief. They had not pushed the wall and found the other stairway.
In the barn, August’s crates lay untouched in the room above the loft. Cullah joined me there. I asked, “Did they find your new musket?”
“No. I hid it in the last place anyone would look. Plain sight.” He stood upon a barrel and reached above the door where, standing, its length almost invisible in the shadows, stood the fowling piece. “It is my best guess,” he said, “that men hunting something or someone almost never look up, and certainly never look back after they’ve gone through a door.”
It took all three of us, Cullah, Alice, and I, with Roland’s help, to get the highboy back up the stairs and set in place and it took weeks to restore a semblance of order. Even so, the drawers would not close in their tracks.
January 1771
The new year found us thankful that the last year had been a mast year for acorns—for the bulk of them fell every other fall—and that I had gathered acorns to hoard against the worst of winter. By February, we grew weary of boiled acorns, but we stayed full on them, and ground them, adding them to hasty pudding and bread, too.
The last week of February, we got word that our poor Rosalyn died in childbed. Brendan brought his boy Bertram to my door shortly after the letter had arrived. I asked him, “Why do you not leave the army, then? Is it possible? You could care for your boy and live here if you like.”
“Ma, I am a proud soldier of the Realm.”
“Well and aye. I am a proud mother of a soldier. But son, the Realm is sapping the life out of her people like a canker. We are poor farmers now. The Realm has taken your father’s shop and all his tools, and others of those proud soldiers have come to this house too many times to despoil it.”
“Will you not welcome my son, then?” he said, sadly.
“Of course I will. Bertram may stay with me as long as he likes; as long as I live, he has a place. Just know, my bonny Brendan, that I—”
“I will send you money for his support.”
“If you do I shall put it by for his education. Brendan—”
“Mother, please speak no more of this. I must trust you to raise my son to be a loyal British subject. Promise me you shall?”
“I promise to raise him in truth and honor, seeking ever the high ground. I will take him to church. I will feed him. He will have everything I can give him, Brendan, but loyalty? As he grows to be a man, just as you did, he will choose.”
“Very well, then.” He turned to the lad. “Son, you know I have no choice. Mind your granny, and be helpful. I’ll come for you when I can.”
“Pa, take me with you.”
“I cannot. You know that, boy. Straighten up, now. Let’s see my little soldier. Take it with pride and hold your chin up. That’s the lad. Your mother would be proud.”
The boy Bertram, deprived of his mother, now lost his home, too. I knew well the taste of that abandon, but when I tried to speak to him, he turned away.
“Brendan,” Cullah said. “There is something I must tell you.”
“Pa, there is something I must tell you. The rebels are all but shaking pitchforks in the streets. They throw rocks at His Majesty’s men. That is why I want Bertie here, away from Boston town. You must be very careful. Uncle August has long been suspected of smuggling goods to the colonies, and I’m told his path leads often to your door. The suspicion may fall upon you as well.”
“It has already,” Cullah said. “At least you were not among those sent to search and destroy our property.”
I chewed my lip, weighing words. “Brendan, you brought a French man home from the war, the way some men brought home a string of wampum or a necklace of bear claws taken after a battle.”