“They are my neighbors.”
The two men tried to maintain their composure, but I saw John Adams’s eyes flick nervously to John Hancock’s, and he turned as if his attention were caught by a robin whose russet fluttering crossed the window. Hancock smiled and said softly to me, “Dodsil and wife are Tories to the bone.”
“Ah,” I said. “I feared it was a trap. She brought stockings for the militia. I have them hidden in the wagon.”
“Deliver them to the first British soldier you come across, Mistress. No doubt they have something in them of the nature of itching powder or poison.”
Adams pursed his lips and added, “Or a length of rope.”
*
Alice and I removed our bonnets in my parlor. It had been that simple. This gave me a joyous feeling of being part of something wonderful, and the great relief of having escaped a trap by such a sweet-voiced neighbor.
Late the following night, the sounds of a horse in full gallop stopped just outside our door. A hand rapped. Cullah opened the door. August darted in. “Ressie, put out the candle.”
“Yes, but why?” Without answering, he pulled his horse right into my parlor, straight through the kitchen, and down the narrow passage to the barn. I followed him and yelled, “Take it all the way to the far stall. There are two cows on either side, and the smell will mask a run horse.”
Cullah ran after him, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll tether it. Ressie, you go in the house and sit by the fire as if nothing happened. I’ll watch from the doorway. Tell Alice to hide Bertram.”
August turned, saying, “I’m going into the hidden room. Sweep your floor. Trust no one except my man Nathaniel—do you remember he came with the messages?—or Rupert, unless they give you the word gumboo.” Before I could say another word, he crawled behind the stairway panel.
In the kitchen, Alice already had the floor swept and leaned the broom against the chimney just as we heard more horses at a gallop headed this way. I blew out all but one candle, took off my apron and house cap, pulling my hair loose about my shoulders as if I had been ready for bed. Bertie hid at the staircase with Alice. I sat in the settle with a book close to my nose, as if I were too poor to light another candle.
Their words came through the door, “This way. In here.” One of them put his hands around his eyes against the window in the kitchen. I was sure he could see me but I did not look up. A few moments later, they opened the door. “We’re chasing an outlaw, Goodwife. Did anyone come by here? Did you hear a horse? Anyone enter this house?”
I closed the book. I cupped my hand behind my ear and asked, “I am gone deaf, young man, you will have to speak up. Did you say you were raising dust? I should say. Look at this floor!” I looked beyond him to the soldier behind him. “What did he say? Can you not understand English? Now, do not mumble. Is he speaking to me?”
With frustration upon their faces, they left. I waited until I heard horses’ hooves striking the stones in the road before I dropped the bar inside the door.
CHAPTER 38
April 17, 1775
That Monday afternoon, Cullah, Bertie, Alice, and I were sitting in the shade of the flowering apple trees, petals so delicately scented as a whisper drifted about the shadows like lights falling at twilight, when a messenger arrived. He was sent from the governor’s house, with another invitation from Margaret for me to come to tea on Tuesday at four. It was handwritten, folded and sealed with her husband’s seal and a very large glob of wax holding her own. When I opened it and the wax came off, a shilling was pressed under the red wax. In truth, I felt so busy, so exhausted, and so weary of the soldiers in Boston, that I wished to tell her my regrets. But her last line said, “Make me no excuses, dear friend. I shall have no greater joy in my life than the sight of you that day. As a candle warms the night.”
“Terribly dramatic of her to write such a thing, is it not?” I said.
Cullah said, “That’s odd.”
Suddenly, without explanation to them, I ran with the message to the house. I pulled a stob from the fire and lit a candle, holding the paper across the flame. After a couple of minutes of warming the whole thing and worried it would burst alight, writing appeared at the side margin. “The tide turns tomorrow. Come.”
Cullah stood behind me. I watched the mysterious lettering disappear as it cooled. “I must go.”
He said, “I’ll drive. Take the note with you. If soldiers stop us, we will need it.”
We left in the morning after sending Bertie and Alice to Dorothy’s house. While Lexington had been busy with troops, commerce had not stopped. Boston, however, was closed down, a city under siege. So many streets were blocked, so many soldiers crowded the way, that getting to the governor’s mansion was an hour from the Neck, where it had used to be but a few minutes.