Rabble in Arms, page 5
“Gone where?” I asked.
My father shook his head. “Nobody knows. Some say he went to live in the woods, where he can’t hear about the war. Some say he was—” My father stopped; then cleared his throat and repeated, “Nobody knows. It’s considered dangerous to talk about it, even.”
Nathaniel raised his eyebrows. “You said somebody opened one of my letters. Who did it? How could anyone open a letter?”
“You’ve been away a long time,” my father said. “Too long. When you’re away too long, you lose the feel of your own people, just as you lose the feel of a ship when you’re too long ashore.
“Same with us that live in big houses and have servants. We only talk with others like ourselves, who have comfortable homes and plenty to eat. We forget what poorer people think, and it’s next to impossible to make ourselves think the way they do. You’ve been away so long you’ve forgot how some people feel about England. There never was anything like it! They’re all a-boil inside. They won’t have the English back! They just won’t have ’em back! They say England wants to run this country the way a man runs a mill: wants to use it for nothing but making money for the owner: regards the people in it as no better than mill-stones, to be worn smooth for England and then thrown into the creek.”
“It’s the truth,” I said. “The English think we’re just rabble! They call us that—rabble! I’ve heard ’em!”
“What’s that got to do with my letter?” Nathaniel persisted.
“Why,” my father explained patiently, “those that hate England feel everyone’s got to think the way they do. Everyone’s got to. They’re watching all the time to make sure nobody thinks different. Knowing I had two sons in England, they watched me. They watched your mother and your sisters, too. When they couldn’t find out what they wanted to know, they opened letters.”
He took his spectacles from his pocket and perched them on his nose: reached into a compartment of his desk to draw out a soiled square of paper.
“Here,” he said. “They opened this one, and right away they read this that Nathaniel wrote:
“There’s no place like London, with its fine theatres and palaces, and soldiers parading in the park. It’s a city that makes you feel at home. Peter and I went down to Salisbury and saw where Great-great-grandfather Merrill lived before he went to Ipswich a hundred and fifty years ago. We found Merrills living there still—relatives. Long ago their name was DeMerle. They were Huguenots who came from Auvergne—Place de Dembis—at the time of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. One of them, Sir Peter, was a captain in the English army, and was knighted in 1634.”
My father folded the letter and looked at Nathaniel over his spectacles.
“What’s wrong with that!” Nathaniel demanded indignantly. “Damn’em! Who gave em the right to open my letters!”
“Right or not, they opened this one,” my father said. “Then they called me before the Committee of Safety and questioned me.”
“About what?” Nathaniel asked.
“About you and Peter.”
“What did they want to know?”
“Whether you were well disposed to the cause of Liberty, after being in England and finding there was no place like London.”
“Liberty!” Nathaniel exclaimed. He laughed. “Where’s the liberty in having your letters opened! It’s almost enough, I should think, to make you want never to see this place again!”
My mother cried, “Oh, Nathaniel!”
My father shook his head. “No! I’ve lived here all my life. It’s part of me. It’s in my blood. This land we’re on was granted to your great-grandfather Peter Merrill by the town of Arundel for killing an Indian. My roots are in it. I can’t leave it. The smell of the sea and marshes and meadows is sweeter here than anywhere else in the world.”
My sister Susanah put her handkerchief to her lips and went suddenly from the room.
“What did you tell the Committee?” I asked, feeling choked myself.
“I told ’em,” my father said slowly, “that you were well disposed. They didn’t believe me. They—well—the men on these committees aren’t the sort of people you’d expect to find running things. So we’ve been watched—all of us. We have trouble buying necessities. Shopkeepers don’t like to sell to folks under suspicion: they might be suspected themselves. Some of ’em will, but only if we accept Congress money at par, when they make change for us, even though it’s worth less than the paper it’s printed on. We can’t complain, because if we did, it would mean we were spreading reports about the currency; and instead of being ruined gradually, we’d be ruined quick. Talking against the currency’s worse than having sons in England.”
The room was silent except for the soft sound my mother’s hand made against Nathaniel’s.
My father hesitated: his next words seemed irrelevant. “There’s been a drought. The crops last year were terrible, on account of so many men being away in the army. Theodore Lyman speculated in corn last fall, and now he’s selling it at two dollars a bushel to those in the village.”
Theodore had been clerk in the store of Waldo Emerson, a rich man and a kind one, but dead almost three years.
“That’s robbery,” I protested.
“We have to pay three dollars,” my father said. “He’ll only sell to us secretly, and only if we pay him in hard money. Theodore’s smart.”
“We’ll see about that!” I said. “We’ll see about that! I’ll step over to call on Lyman after supper.”
My father shook his head. “Don’t do it! Lyman’s a rich man. In a few months he’ll be richer, because he’s marrying Waldo Emerson’s daughter.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Waldo Emerson only had one daughter. She’s a baby.”
“Not quite,” my mother said. “She’ll be fourteen years old some time this year.”
“Keep away from Lyman,” my father said. “He does favors for the Sons of Liberty. We’re under suspicion; and people under suspicion don’t have any rights. Folks can assault us or blackmail us or slander us, and we have no standing in the law courts. We can’t buy land or sell it, or make a deed of gift, or make a will, even, while we’re under suspicion.”
I looked at Nathaniel, feeling as though the veins in my neck would burst the fastenings of my muslin neckcloth. Nathaniel stared moodily at his knuckles. I knew the best way to handle him was to let him alone, so I waited for him to speak first; but I told myself that if he said the wrong thing, I’d wait no longer.
Twilight was on us, and from the meadows came the sweet piping of baby frogs—a plaintive chorus that seemed to hold us, speechless, in a spell. The spell was broken by a violent thumping on the front door.
“That must be Nason,” I told Nathaniel. “If you can’t make up your mind, get upstairs. I’ll talk to him. I’ll—I’ll tell him you’re sick.”
“What do you think I am!” Nathaniel exclaimed. “My mind’s made up.”
VI
MY SISTER Susanah opened the door while my mother and my sister Judith slipped away to the rear of the house. A moment later Steven Nason stood in the doorway; and over his shoulder I saw the round red face of Cap Huff—the hulking man who had bellowed at the crowd in Wells, and pried into our coach. Their brown smocks had been replaced by coats of dark green cloth.
Nason was a big man, though not as wide as his companion. He looked slow and a little thick-witted, like many of our Arundel seafaring people, who move and think as quickly as anyone if the need arises. There was nothing slow about his eyes, however. They moved from our clothes to our faces and back again, and missed nothing in the moving.
My father bustled around, lighting the whale-oil lamps. “Come in, Steven,” he said. “How’s your wife? I guess she’s glad to have you back from Quebec.”
Nason smiled and came into the room. Behind him his clumsy ox of a companion edged sideways through the door, as if fearful of wedging himself there.
“Yes, come in,” I said, anxious to get in the first blow if there were blows to be struck. “What’s this they’ve been doing to my father?”
“Your father?” Nason asked. He stared at me as if puzzled, while Cap Huff hopefully eyed the pitcher of flip.
My father stood up, his face gray. “It means nothing to Steven, Peter. He’s just back from Quebec.”
“I guess I can make it mean something to him.”
“Now, Peter!” he protested. “First thing you know you’ll be in trouble yourself.”
Cap Huff cleared his throat noisily. “That thing on the table looks something like a pitcher.” His eyes became more protuberant. “Ain’t it maybe a pitcher?”
Nathaniel jumped up and gave each of them a tumbler of flip, and when he had refilled our own glasses, Cap Huff held out his glass to be filled again.
“Now,” I said, “I want to tell you about my father. These damned midwives here—”
“By God, that’s right!” Cap Huff bawled, surprisingly. “That’s what they are! Half of ’em don’t care whether we win or not, as long as they can go on making a dollar! That’s all they think of! Money!”
“Cap,” Nason said, “I’ll thank you to put a curb on your tongue. Those from this town that went up Dead River and down the Chaudière with us weren’t midwives, and there’s plenty more like ’em. Just bear that in mind.”
“I think your friend’s right,” I told Nason. “Theodore Lyman’s been charging my father three dollars specie for a bushel of corn. Why suspect my father of being a public enemy when there’s bastards like Theodore Lyman running loose?”
Nason stared at the ceiling. “He’s a Patriot. He’s planted a row of elms to celebrate the Battle of Bunker Hill.”
“He’s a hell of a Patriot!” I said.
Cap Huff hitched his chair forward, and his voice was hoarsely eager. “Three dollars? He charges three dollars for a bushel of corn? Whereabouts does he live?”
Nason eyed him suspiciously, but spoke to me. “I heard about your father. It was too bad, but it appears to me it was his own fault. If he hadn’t thought the war was going to be over soon, or if you hadn’t thought so, you’d have come home before this, wouldn’t you? And if he thought the war was going to be over soon, he didn’t think it was because we were going to win it, did he?”
“Well—” I said, and stopped. Nason had it right, and there was nothing I could say.
“Such opinions don’t bother me,” Nason said. “I wouldn’t think we could ever whip the English, either, if I didn’t know they’d blunder into trouble sooner or later. But people in Arundel don’t look at it like that.”
“Not anywhere they don’t,” Cap Huff growled.
“It’s pretty serious business,” Nason went on. “If we get whipped, we’re rebels, and rebels pretty often have their last words with the hangman; so those in charge of things aren’t going to let anybody even talk about being whipped. If they do any hanging they’ve got to hang us all, because we’re all going to hang together. Everybody’s got to be a Patriot or get out. There’s some sense in it, too. If it came to hanging, and there were Loyalists still living everywhere, the Loyalists would probably help to hang everyone else, wouldn’t they?”
Cap Huff wagged his head. “You got to meet a few Tories before you know how people feel about ’em. Why, over around Albany there’s so many of ’em that they go prowling through the woods, skinning Patriots and making saddlebags out of the skins to sell in New York. That’s why we ain’t going back to Quebec by way of Albany. Winooski River and St. John’s: that’s the route we got to take, on account of those damned Loyalists or Tories or whatever you want to call em.”
“But my father’s no Loyalist!” I told them. “Why, he’s no more of a Loyalist than I am.”
The two men were silent, staring into their empty tumblers. Nathaniel looked in the pitcher and laughed: then went to the dining-room and took the rum bottle from the sideboard.
I knew what was on their minds, so I added hastily, “I’ve been aching to get home and fight the British ever since I heard Burgoyne was going to use Hessians and Indians against us.”
Nason and his huge companion stared at me, their mouths wide open.
Nathaniel added a tot of rum to all our tumblers. “I’m with Peter,” he said. “I’ll go wherever Peter goes. That ought to settle my father’s case.”
What he said made me feel better than any amount of rum. For months I had fretted over his perverse admiration for the British, and then been in a stew for fear he might become infatuated with Marie de Sabrevois; and finally I had worried myself sick at what might happen to my father and mother and sisters if he persisted in his determination to be what he called logical about everything. Now he had committed himself; and my relief was such that I could have forgiven even Theodore Lyman.
“There you are,” I said to Nason, who was peering into my face as though he doubted his own senses. “If anyone in this family’s a Loyalist, you’re one too.”
“Burgoyne!” Nason whispered. “Burgoyne! And he’ll use Hessians!”
“And Indians. Five thousand Indians. God knows where he’ll get that many, but they say he’s got ’em!”
Cap Huff got up and moved his great arms backward and forward, as if his coat bound him. “Did you say Burgoyle or Burgloyd? Who in God’s name is Burgloyd?”
“Burgoyne,” I repeated. “He was a general at Bunker Hill. He writes plays and poetry. They say in England he’s an illegitimate son of Lord Bingley, but that’s not so.”
“How do you know it ain’t?” Cap demanded hoarsely. “All the Englishmen we’ve seen so far, they’ve all acted as if they was illegitimate sons—not Bingley’s, of course, but somebody’s. And you know what the Bible says about—”
Nason’s voice cut sharply into Cap’s. “Hold your tongue! You’re in a decent house!”
“What if I am!” Cap muttered. “Ain’t the Bible a decent book? And ain’t it the truth, what I say about Englishmen? Ain’t it the simple truth?”
Nason ignored him and took me by the lapel of my coat. “Five thousand Indians! How could Burgoyne—where could Burgoyne—who told you so?”
“All England knows it. He was supposed to sail for Quebec soon after we sailed from France. Part of his troops, we heard, would sail with him, the rest to follow through the month, and in May.”
“Troops?” Nason said. “You mean regulars?”
“Five thousand regulars was what we heard. Five thousand regulars and three thousand Hessians.”
“And they’re going to Quebec?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s why I felt we had to get home quick. They figure on landing in Quebec and marching down the Hudson to join Howe. Everybody in England seems to know about it. The idea is to split the colonies in two—cut off New England from the rest of the country, and then smash the rebellion by smashing New England. If they’re going to turn western Indians loose on these settlements, there’s got to be something done about it, hasn’t there?”
A silence fell on us—a silence so profound that the shrill sweet piping of the baby frogs grew and grew until it seemed to come not only from out-of-doors, but from the cornices of the room in which we sat: even from the fireplace, and from the chairs and sofa and pictures.
Nason looked up at Huff, a wry smile on his lips. “We’ll waste no more time. Well set off tomorrow with what men we’ve got. Send Doc Means back to Wells to tell the rest of the men to be at Littlefield’s Tavern at noon tomorrow, ready to march.”
“By God, Stevie,” Cap Huff said, his voice rumbling like thunder, “not even Arnold could stop that number of men with what he’s got!”
“Arnold?” I asked.
“General Arnold,” Nason said. “The one we serve under: the one that got us to Quebec safe. There isn’t another man in the world could have done it. He was wounded when we stormed the city. If he hadn’t been—if he hadn’t been—”
“If he hadn’t been,” Cap Huff declared, “we’d be sitting on top of that damned big rock this minute, swigging cider and brandy.”
“How many men has he got?” I asked.
Nason’s laugh was one of exasperation. “We’ve had a little trouble getting men. That’s why Cap and I came home—to get twenty scouts. When we left Quebec, the end of March, Arnold had two hundred and eighty-six effectives. That’s the kind of general Arnold is! Two hundred and eighty-six men, and he had the British bottled up in Quebec!”
“Bottled up!” Cap Huff echoed. “Bottled up and scared to death! Had the strongest city in the world surrounded, by God, with two hundred and eighty-six men! Surrounded and damned near starved, and the garrison afraid to take off their breeches when they went to bed, ever since January, for fear Arnold would climb over the wall with his two hundred and eighty-six men and club em to death with icicles!”
“That’s about right,” Nason agreed. “He’s a great man—a great man! There isn’t anything he can’t do! If they’ll send him enough men and let him alone, he’ll take Quebec this spring just like this!” He tossed off the remainder of his rum and rose to his feet to tap Cap Huff on the chest. “I want word taken back to Wells that we’re marching in the morning. Tell Doc Means. Have him start right away.”
“What about us?” I asked Nason.
He looked blank, seeming to have forgotten our conversation. “Well, what about you?”
“Aren’t you going to take us with you for the army?”
Nason scratched his chin as if in doubt. “This is for scout duty. A man has to be handy with an axe. He has to know how to shoot.”
“Nathaniel and I worked in the shipyard when we were boys,” I reminded him. “We can lay a tree on a peg, both of us. I can trim a beam with an adze so you’d think it was planed. As for shooting, I’ll go out with you tomorrow morning, and if I can’t fill a hogshead with plover in fifteen minutes, I’ll eat the hogshead.”
Nason nodded slowly. “I guess maybe you can. I forgot, seeing you in good clothes, you’d been brought up around here. To tell you the truth, though, you probably wouldn’t get any pay. Cap and I haven’t had any for three months.”
