“That is what old people say when it is most miserable,” he said. I smiled.
“Come on, lad. Blisters and a sore back,” Cullah added, “will make a man hungry for an education.” As they left, Alice and I laughed as we went back to work sewing, and now and then, we laughed again.
Two days later I answered another knock on my door to find Emma Dodsil again standing there, holding a bushel basket topped with boiled eggs. I heard Alice rushing the blue cloth from the room even as I greeted her. “Emma? How nice to see you. Would you come in for some pie?” I dared to glance over my shoulder before I opened the door wider.
“Yes, thank you. I mean, yes, I will come in. But I won’t ask you to share food today. I have come to share other things.” She stopped talking, sat down, faced me, and deliberately touched her bonnet twice. I was not convinced. She said, “Virtue and I have been long married, and all our lives have tried to live above any contempt, above reproach, above rebellion.”
“Very admirable of you, I am sure,” I said.
“Your husband has helped us often, when he can.”
“Cullah is a good neighbor.” I felt hairs on the back of my neck rise. She was leading to something, and I felt I could easily be trapped if I were not circumspect with my words.
“As am I,” she said. “Oh, Mistress Resolute, we feel we must support our neighbors who have done so much for us. Will you not take these things for the rebel militia? I know they might help someone.” She raised the sack with its eggs again, dumping it none too gently on the floor, and this time revealing a stack of shirts and pairs of stockings.
I watched closely as her gaze charted the room. “Take those things to the rebels? Mistress, I am not in the business of outfitting a militia that stands against King George.”
“Neither am I,” she said, with a touch of anger in her tone. “I am in the business of outfitting a militia that stands for my family and lands against a tyrant of a governor. I—I have no use for these stockings and shirts. Do with them what you will. Only know, please, that I am no less a Patriot, and no more a criminal, than any of the other wives who make stockings for people they care about.” Emma dropped the stockings and shirts at her feet, scooped up the sack of eggs, and dropped it into the basket again, then headed for the door. “You’ll see someone gets them?” When I said nothing, she went rather angrily out the door and down the path.
Alice came from the stairs and said, “Mistress?”
“We will see if we can know their sympathies from a source other than her words. Cullah said Virtue is never at the meetings. If he is one of us, we have to find out before I say anything to his wife that will put all of us on a gibbet.” I could imagine a certain number of shirts and stockings, being found in my possession, and placed in the hands of another of our friends, could be enough to hang us all if she were to be plotting.
The next morning I wrapped the coats in layers of old rags. I took Emma’s stockings and shirts, too, but wrapped separately, so that if this were a trap, they were not mixed with my work. I set them into the bottom of the wagon and put a blanket across them and my feet upon them. Bertie drove and Alice sat beside me. Soldiers walked up and down the road in groups of five or six. They were not armed, and paid us no attention, so that when we arrived at John Hancock’s house, I felt confident that all would go well. A butler answered the door, and when I asked to see John, he showed me to a fitted parlor.
“Mistress MacLammond, oh, how good to see you,” John said. “Do you know my friend here? Quite an irascible lawyer. I am forced to entertain him, for I think no one else can stand to do it. Please let me make you acquainted with Mr. John Adams of Braintree.”
A man no taller than I, but stout, stood and bowed. “Good morning, madam,” he said grandly. “Will you have refreshments with us?”
I had heard of him, and it was none too flattering, so I simply smiled. “Good morning, sir. Thank you but I cannot stay. I have people waiting for me. I only came to deliver some goods ordered by August Talbot to be sent here.”
John scratched his head. “Adams, lend a hand here. We shall both prosper by some physical labor, eh?”
So my parcels were carried by the twine around them, one in each hand, by John and John, Alice, Bertie, and myself. As I said farewell, John Hancock kissed my hand and, leaning his head, said, “Mistress MacLammond, your work will serve a mighty purpose. Keep an eye on this fellow here. Mine are the pockets. His are the brains. My regards to your friend Talbot.”
“Mr. Hancock? Are you familiar with all the families who provide supplies for the Patriots?”
“Not really, no.”
“Would you be so kind as to let me know anything you discover about a man and wife, Virtue and Emma Dodsil?”
“Where did you hear those names?”