The sun lowered and the evening’s mist arose, adding gloom to my fears as I pulled the veil across my eyes. I felt some courage in that I could see quite well through it. How I wished I had stayed in bed and nestled next to Cullah, wished all of us were not part of this terrifying world around us. August and I crept through the lower window, dressed in blackest black, wearing gauze upon our faces.
August was adept at slipping through shadows and alleyways I would never have dared to breach had he not been there. At the river’s edge, we stepped into a shallow boat well hidden in the reeds. The boat was a leaky hull with a shallow draft and August’s oars had been wrapped in sacking and tarred so that they made little noise. At the center of the river, he believed he heard something and we bent low in the hull. I remembered my ride in such a craft, a much larger boat, remembered the haughty slave girl upon my knees, and I remembered my blue silk gown and how little I had valued such things, thinking only that it must be replaced. The boat rocked and I was ten years old for a moment. Then we were at the other shore, and I stepped into the water and mud, soaking myself to the knees.
In one hand, I carried the wrapped bundle of blue cloth. I held August’s hand with my other, holding it with all the strength I bore as I pulled my feet from the mud. “August, please stop a moment.”
“What’s the matter?”
I reached for his neck and hugged him. “I never said before now that I love you.”
His broad shoulders and strong arms held me for a moment, in a way Cullah could never have done. He held me without desire, but in a loving way that gave courage in his touch. “Let’s go.”
We reached the stable. He leaped onto the horse and pulled me up behind him, and we made it to Menotomy in less than an hour, and made my home before midnight. I pulled at the string that knocked a hammer against the jamb inside, then gave three taps followed by two, and Alice opened the door.
“Mistress? Sir?”
I said, “Alice, please hide this in the inglenook next to the fire. The nails in it are loose and all we must do is raise the lid.”
August and I ate some bread and had a small ale. Then we mounted and left Alice, heading for town. About halfway through the swamp, he stopped and reined his horse to one side so abruptly I nearly fell. “What—” I began.
“Quiet.”
Men ambled past us. They talked among themselves, we guessed about five of them. After a while, we followed them at a good distance for a time so that we would not overtake them. My heart bumped. I closed my eyes. From somewhere in the distance I believed I heard drumming and smelled smoke. It was so like hiding from the dangerous Indians when I was a child. I wondered what ghosts wandered these woods. The path narrowed in a few places. All felt familiar, yet terrifying. The deeper into the forest we went, the more fear gripped me. The horse shifted its weight and I nearly fell off again. August told me to “toe a line” and stop my foolishness.
How had Cullah done this, and on foot? He, who was more afraid of a fairy than a soldier with a musket trained upon him? My brother, I believed, had no such goblins to fight. His whole person seemed to bristle with excitement at the notion of a confrontation. An owl wooed overhead and glided above me on silent, silver wings. Crickets sang. Night thrushes warbled, their spooky song part of the mystery of darkness that kept good people in their homes at night with the doors barred. In the distance, the howl of a wolf made the hair rise on the backs of my hands. I remembered Massapoquot and the other Indians leading us through the north woods, carrying us at times, ever moving, never afraid of the dark. The Indians had seemed one with the forest, to embrace it as a familiar place, a hearth side populated with its own furniture. I straightened my frame and took several deep breaths. My skirt was soaked with water over my knees, and the weight and cold of it made it seem as if I were pulling anchors on my feet when we finally left the horse and crossed the river. Slinking through the shadowed alleyways, I nearly fainted when a dog barked. A cat yowled and I heard voices overhead from a window left open.
The greening sky and the smoky heaviness of morning fires added urgency to my feet, though by then August had my hand in his again, and pulled me along. We reached the courtyard of his home and got through the window before the watchman called five.
We joined Anne at breakfast. I sat at table in August’s dressing coat. August said Anne would give me the clothes she had worn, but that he wished I would sleep and spend another night. “I will,” I said. “But I have much to do when I get home. How do you have horses always at the ready?”
He smiled. “It’s a web like that of a spider, Ressie. One must simply tug at the right connection, and things fall into place. I leave the boat where it was, too. No one has found it though it be used every night. Revere and Dawes run across the river at least once a week. Prescott had it yesterday. It’s all a silken, invisible web. You know the strength of a single strand of silk.”
“I do.”
When I arrived home the next noon in Margaret’s gilded chaise, Alice sat at the fire tatting lace, her feet upon a hassock.
“What are you making?” I asked.