“Why do you stop?”
“If I cut it this way it will be too small, and if I cut it that way,” I said, turning the remainder as I spoke, creating havoc amongst the papers on the desk, “it is long and narrow. Look, it has padding inside. That will hold a wet bottom, will it not? Thank you, sir, for the use of your scissor. I would have had to take a knife to it on the kitchen table, and you know how clumsy that might be.” I shoved papers, strewing them to the floor. I stacked the scraps of blue wool, leaving shredded bits across his desk and whisking the papers about again; I reached for the buttons. He brushed them from my hand. I could not hide the dismay on my face. I said, “Those might be gold on top. I could feed my family with ’em, sir. Would you not give me a few?”
He poured them from one hand to the other, then into my outstretched hand, saving one last button. He took the last gold button and tossed it twice, catching it as he stared at my face. “I could have you searched, madam, to see if you are hiding blue coats elsewhere on your person.”
I stilled the rather silly smile I wore and stared. I unhooked the frog on my cloak and dropped it behind me. I unwrapped my shawl and let it fall before me, and took my apron by the strings, holding it loosely while never letting his eyes free of my stare, and made as if to drop it, too.
A harried soldier came in a far door. The colonel shifted his gaze. “All right. You are a simple old woman who found a rebel coat. Take your foul-smelling rags and be off with you, and for heaven’s sake wash yourself when you get home. All you rebels reek of rancid treacle.”
That very afternoon in the stone room below the house, where no sound penetrated outside, I sat upon the bench and put my feet on the pedals of the loom. Bertie lifted the strap over his shoulder and pulled his sticks from his back pocket. Back and forth on the pedals, click with the right foot, clock with the left, my hands pushed the shuttle loaded with blue across the warps of pure, good wool warping of rebel blue. I determined I would make five more in place of the one ruined coat. I had told a pack of lies to keep it yet no blood of any Son of Liberty had stained it. It was not ruined. It would become patching, buttonhole binding, facing, and pockets. It was the cost of war. I rubbed my sore hands with sheepskin. These hands are given, too, I thought. My soreness was nothing compared to what others suffered and gave.
I knew what I believed and I knew at last, not what I would die for, but for what I would live. I was caught up in this land, and its time. I no longer wished to go home, for this was home. And I believed in what I had heard all my years on these shores. First of all, the right of free people to live without tyranny.
Liberty.
The very word tattooed a cannonade across my soul as Bertie trotted the sticks on the drum to the rhythm of the loom. Faster and faster we went, Bertram’s eyes locked into mine, the drum and the loom beating out the words to a song. He added flourishes that would do any commander proud. We dared to raise our voices above the rattle and rhythm, singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”
I watched closely this boy, whose skin was so like my own. His eyes had my color and spark, his hair more like Cullah’s than mine. He had come home yesterday for food and clothes and he would leave with the Massachusetts men in two days more. The battle was not done. The boy’s feet stepped with lively art, his dark hair, tied with a white ribbon, lifting against his back. I closed my eyes and felt my hands and feet moving quick-step, brandishing the only weapon of war I could use, my whole being doing the dance of freedom, as a man with a claymore and an axe once told me to fight, wielding my loom.
EPILOGUE
November 11, 1781