room in her own house where the smell of them wouldn’t be detected by guests.
She understood, of course, the need to keep up appearances, but she knew also what Colonel Smith was paid as John’s secretary. Though a hero of the War, the handsome New Yorker had no family money, a fact which had not entered into the discussion when Smith had asked for Nabby’s hand. And indeed, in a new nation, with the Colonel’s obvious ambition and drive, family money was less important. John’s father had been a farmer, like the Colonel’s, and a ropemaker in his spare time.
At all events, a cheerful fire burned in the bedroom where Nabby sat, propped among pillows, on a sheet-draped chair before the blaze. In spite of herself Abigail glanced at the sides of the hearth. She was relieved to find that it, at least, had been swept the previous day.
“Mama…” Nabby caught her mother’s hands, and Abigail dropped to her knees to hold her.
It was as if the stiff, withdrawn silences, the indifferences of the war years had never been.
Abigail didn’t know how she could have endured the War, if it had not been for Nabby at her side. Nabby had turned nine four months before the tea was dumped in Boston Harbor; the first shots were fired at Lexington bridge three months before her tenth birthday.
When a man weds, he gives hostages to fortune,
John Dryden had said a century and a half before. Unspoken in Abigail’s partnership with John was the promise that it was she who would keep those hostages safe.
With the closing of the port of Boston after Cousin Sam’s so-called Tea Party, John and Abigail had moved back to Braintree, to the house on the Plymouth road. Abigail was infinitely thankful for the move in April, when the Minutemen drove the British back into Boston and barricaded them there by encampments on the Boston Neck. Only weeks after that, while John was away at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, four British warships dropped anchor not four miles from the house. Their goal was to seize hay stored on the nearby Grape Island as fodder for their horses in the town, but they could just as easily have come ashore in force and burned the farms.
All that summer, the countryside seethed. Refugees fled Boston and militiamen marched toward it, and all of them had to be provided with food, drink, and in many cases lodging for a night or a week. With her farm help disappearing into the Army and the tenant in the farm-cottage refusing to either pay rent or vacate, Abigail had been worked to a shadow milking, weeding, mending, cleaning. In June the British had tried to break the seige, and from the top of Penn’s Hill, Abigail and eight-year-old Johnny had watched through her spyglass as crimson-coated British regulars had twice charged the patriot defense works on Breed’s Hill, before the ragged militiamen had finally been driven away. Too mauled to follow up their victory, the British had returned to Boston. The settlement of Charles Town, beneath Breed’s Hill, lay in ashes.
Keep your spirits composed and calm,
John wrote her that summer,
and don’t suffer yourself to be disturbed by idle reports and frivolous alarms.
Every refugee and soldier carried rumors. They spread them like an infestation of lice: of British attack, of smallpox in Boston, of Indians in British pay poised to murder. Moreover, every village and farmstead bubbled sullenly with suspicion, as patriots burned the barns and mutilated the stock of those who remained loyal to the Crown, and Loyalists fled to Boston carrying with them intelligence about the countryside and the disposal of patriot troops.
In case of real danger,
John wrote,
fly to the woods with our children.
Abigail was aware that John’s place was unquestionably with the Congress, fighting to unite the disparate colonies into an entity capable of fielding an army—
But if he’d been in the same room with her then, she’d have brained him with a stick of firewood.
Through all
She understood, of course, the need to keep up appearances, but she knew also what Colonel Smith was paid as John’s secretary. Though a hero of the War, the handsome New Yorker had no family money, a fact which had not entered into the discussion when Smith had asked for Nabby’s hand. And indeed, in a new nation, with the Colonel’s obvious ambition and drive, family money was less important. John’s father had been a farmer, like the Colonel’s, and a ropemaker in his spare time.
At all events, a cheerful fire burned in the bedroom where Nabby sat, propped among pillows, on a sheet-draped chair before the blaze. In spite of herself Abigail glanced at the sides of the hearth. She was relieved to find that it, at least, had been swept the previous day.
“Mama…” Nabby caught her mother’s hands, and Abigail dropped to her knees to hold her.
It was as if the stiff, withdrawn silences, the indifferences of the war years had never been.
Abigail didn’t know how she could have endured the War, if it had not been for Nabby at her side. Nabby had turned nine four months before the tea was dumped in Boston Harbor; the first shots were fired at Lexington bridge three months before her tenth birthday.
When a man weds, he gives hostages to fortune,
John Dryden had said a century and a half before. Unspoken in Abigail’s partnership with John was the promise that it was she who would keep those hostages safe.
With the closing of the port of Boston after Cousin Sam’s so-called Tea Party, John and Abigail had moved back to Braintree, to the house on the Plymouth road. Abigail was infinitely thankful for the move in April, when the Minutemen drove the British back into Boston and barricaded them there by encampments on the Boston Neck. Only weeks after that, while John was away at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, four British warships dropped anchor not four miles from the house. Their goal was to seize hay stored on the nearby Grape Island as fodder for their horses in the town, but they could just as easily have come ashore in force and burned the farms.
All that summer, the countryside seethed. Refugees fled Boston and militiamen marched toward it, and all of them had to be provided with food, drink, and in many cases lodging for a night or a week. With her farm help disappearing into the Army and the tenant in the farm-cottage refusing to either pay rent or vacate, Abigail had been worked to a shadow milking, weeding, mending, cleaning. In June the British had tried to break the seige, and from the top of Penn’s Hill, Abigail and eight-year-old Johnny had watched through her spyglass as crimson-coated British regulars had twice charged the patriot defense works on Breed’s Hill, before the ragged militiamen had finally been driven away. Too mauled to follow up their victory, the British had returned to Boston. The settlement of Charles Town, beneath Breed’s Hill, lay in ashes.
Keep your spirits composed and calm,
John wrote her that summer,
and don’t suffer yourself to be disturbed by idle reports and frivolous alarms.
Every refugee and soldier carried rumors. They spread them like an infestation of lice: of British attack, of smallpox in Boston, of Indians in British pay poised to murder. Moreover, every village and farmstead bubbled sullenly with suspicion, as patriots burned the barns and mutilated the stock of those who remained loyal to the Crown, and Loyalists fled to Boston carrying with them intelligence about the countryside and the disposal of patriot troops.
In case of real danger,
John wrote,
fly to the woods with our children.
Abigail was aware that John’s place was unquestionably with the Congress, fighting to unite the disparate colonies into an entity capable of fielding an army—
But if he’d been in the same room with her then, she’d have brained him with a stick of firewood.
Through all
Similar Books
