Part 4

“Folks is all upset at the Port, too,” said Gran soothingly, getting out of the cart to go to Nancy.

The girls scurried into the mossy-roofed rambling barn, climbed to the loft, and began searching through the hay.

“Which are you the most worried about, Kit,” asked Sally Rose. “Dick, or--?” She sneezed violently and wiped her eyes and nose with a lace handkerchief. “My, this hay dust makes me think of the time when I was little and got to playing with Father’s snuffbox. Which one? Tell me, Kitty.”

“I’m worried about all of them,” said Kitty slowly. “Even your wretched Gerry. I wish men would keep their guns for deer and wild ducks. I don’t see why they have to kill each other.”

Sally Rose shrugged. “I know,” she said. “I don’t understand it either. But you have to realize, Kitty, some things about men we’ll never understand.” She pulled a large brown egg out of the hay and placed it carefully in the basket. “I wonder,” she said thoughtfully, “if the men on both sides were all shut up in gaol, just how the women would go to work to settle the matter.”

“I don’t know,” said Kitty, adding two more eggs to their collection, “but I’m sure there’d be cups of tea for everybody.”

“Tea doesn’t have much to do with this war, Father says,” went on Sally Rose quickly. “And Gerry says the same. They both say it’s to decide who will rule America--King and Parliament, or the men who live in this country.”

“I should think King and Parliament would have enough to do at home,” answered Kitty. “What’s that? I thought I heard someone shouting.”

Both girls sat up in the shadowy mow to listen.

“Turn out! Turn out! For God’s sake!” thundered a hoarse voice from the highway.

“Maybe he’s brought news of the lads,” cried Sally Rose, upsetting the basket in her haste to scramble down the ladder. Forgetting the eggs, Kitty followed her. They ran out of the barn and across the yard under the hickory trees. Granny and Nance, with the children straggling after them, had already started up the lane.

A black-coated rider came spurring toward them from the direction of the Port, waving his cocked hat with one hand and whipping his horse with the other.

“Turn out!” he shouted. “Turn out, or you will all be killed! The British have landed at Ipswich and have marched to Old Town Bridge! They are cutting and slashing all before them!”

He paid no attention to the huddled group of women, but galloped past.

“Turn out! Turn out!” he panted. “The British have landed at Ipswich!” His voice grew fainter as he rounded the end of a low hill and swept out of sight.

They stood looking at one another. “If you ask me, his wits are addled,” said Gran stoutly. “He had a mad look in his eyes. I’d want some further word--”

Then a chaise hurtled down the road, swaying from side to side, driven by a lean woman with gray hair streaming about her shoulders and a swansdown hat hanging on one ear. “The British!” she choked as the chaise went rocking by.

After her came a young couple on horseback, and then three farm wagons loaded with family groups and household goods. A wooden churn fell off and rolled into the brimming gutter, but they did not stop to retrieve it; they drove furiously on.

Nance stood there, as silent and rooted to earth as one of her own hickory trees. Kitty and Sally Rose held hands tightly and looked at each other, uncertain whether to laugh or be afraid, waiting to see what would happen next.

Then it seemed as if half the Port went streaming by. Gran stood at the side of the road and waved her beaded purse at the mad rout of chaises and wagons, but nobody would stop for her. Finally a farmer hastened by on foot, leading a plow horse that had gone lame. She stepped up smartly and caught him by the front of his tow-colored smock. “Young man, what is the meaning of this?” she demanded.

“God Almighty, are ye deaf, Mother?” he growled, spitting tobacco juice into the dust of the road, just missing her dainty kid slipper. “The British ha’ come ashore. Come ashore at Ipswich, and hacked their way past Old Town Bridge. I rode over twenty dead bodies as I come from there. They’ll be at the Port now, heading this way.”

For the first time Kitty began to feel that this was not some ridiculous mistake. Her throat grew tight, and her nerves began to tingle with fear.

“Where is everyone going?” she cried.

The farmer turned to answer her. “They’re all trying to get across the river into Hampshire,” he said. “Some’s for the woods and swamps nearby. Better get along yourselves. You’ll be the safer, the further you can go.”

He urged his old horse forward again.

Gran turned back from the highroad as another half dozen wagons rattled past. “He looked like an honest lad, and he saw it with his own eyes, Nancy,” she admitted reluctantly. “You bundle up the children and whatever food you’ve got on hand, and come along in our wagon. I’m going to drive as hard as I can for Haverhill Ferry. I trust we’ll get across.”

Nance, bewildered and numb with terror, tried to follow out Granny’s instructions. Back in the kitchen she fumbled through the bin, brought out a sack of potatoes, and stood there helplessly, holding it. Gran reached past her. “Take the apples, instead,” she advised. “They’ll taste better if we have to eat them raw.”

Finally the young wife got herself, the two children, and the shawl-wrapped infant into the wagon. She sat on the seat with Granny, and Kitty and Sally Rose crouched on a sack of turnips a farmer had given them early in the afternoon. How long ago that seemed! In the gathering twilight they drove swiftly along the winding river road.

The lower Merrimack Valley above the Port was not sparsely settled country in those spring days of 1775. There were farmhouses and parish churches and crossroads villages scattered all about it, and few dwellers there who could not see their neighbor’s chimney smoke or the lights of his kitchen when they looked out at night. But now the peaceful district was overrun with strangers and refugees streaming through.

Kitty and Sally Rose huddled together on the turnip sack for warmth, looking back down the road every now and then, to see if the British were in sight, if the glare of burning towns lighted the sky. But all they could see were the frightened folk of Essex County hurrying for the swamps and the forests, for the low hills of New Hampshire Colony across the wide dark stream.

Women, and a few old or feeble men, were toiling across the farmyards here and there, carrying favorite gowns, or chests of silver, or pewter teapots to conceal them in wells and hollow trees. And from almost every doorstep strong arms laboriously hoisted old folk and invalids into carts to haul them away.

“What do you think’ll come of it, Kit?” asked Sally Rose in a low worried voice. “Do you think Gran will take us over the river to Haverhill? I don’t want to go to Haverhill. It’s a sleepy country town, and it’ll be worse than the Port, with all the lads away. I’d almost rather get caught by the British, I think.”

“But they’re cutting and slashing all before them,” Kitty reminded her grimly. “That farmer said he rode over twenty dead bodies on the way.”

“Well, I do not think they would cut and slash me,” said Sally Rose, smiling confidently in the dark. “Oh, Kit, look there!”

They were passing a tiny cottage half hidden by leafy apple trees. An armchair had been placed firmly on a scrap of lawn, and in the chair sat a man with a lantern beside him and a musket across his knees. He was enormous, and almost perfectly round. “Let the British come!” he shouted, and waved his musket. “I be too fat to budge for ’em! I’ll stay here and shoot the bloody devils down!”

A little way farther on they came across a group of women bending over another woman who lay on the ground in the curve of a stone wall. Granny hesitated, and then drew rein. “Is the poor critter sick?” she called to them. “Can I help? Perhaps we could make a place for her.”

A tall woman in a gray shawl straightened up. “No, thank’ee, Ma’am,” she called crisply. “It’s only Aunt Hannah. She wheezes so with the asmaticks, her noise would give us away to the British. We’re going to cover her over with leaves and let her rest, all snug and out of sight, here by the wall.”

At that Nancy Davis began to laugh. She laughed and laughed, and then she began to cry. Gran slapped her face hard and drove on. “None o’ that foolishness, Nance,” she said severely. “Mind your children. ’Bijah would expect you to. Kitty and Sally Rose”--she lifted her voice--“is all well with you back there?”

“Let’s not go any farther, Gran,” pleaded Sally Rose. “There are lights at the inn we just passed by. If the folks haven’t run away, maybe they’ll have beds for us. Maybe if we hide in bed, the British will ride on and never know we’re there. I don’t want to go to Haverhill, Gran.”

“When I say you’ll go to Haverhill, to Haverhill you’ll go,” said Gran, and drove on into the night. “I hope I can make the ferry in time.”

Kitty sensed the note of anxiety in Gran’s voice, and that frightened her more than anything that had gone before it. Not when the smallpox struck and folk lay dying in every house in town, not when a great tree crashed through the roof in the midst of an autumn storm, had she known Gran to feel afraid. She looked over her shoulder again, and then around her at the dark fields, the thickets here and there along the road. Frightened women had come this way in other times, she knew, when Indians with tomahawks lurked behind every tree. She had heard, too, of the dreadful times at Salem that Nancy spoke about, when the devil had walked abroad in Essex County, or folk thought that he had, though they never saw the devil. The most terrible fear, she thought, is the fear of an unseen thing. A British Army marching toward them with drums and banners and bayonets would not be so terrible as the shadows that might hold any nameless menace, the shadows drawing closer in....

She turned to Sally Rose, but Sally Rose was humming a little tune. There was boredom rather than terror in her hazel eyes. Sally Rose had found one redcoat to be a gallant and handsome lover, so she believed they would all be that. But Kitty had heard tales of their cruelty to Boston folk. She remembered that blood had been shed at Concord Fight and on Lexington Green. She crouched on the turnip sack and shivered with cold fear.

Somehow the road seemed to be less crowded now. No one had passed them for half an hour. Then they met a little group of horsemen slowly riding back. Granny hailed them.

“Are you headed for Newburyport? Is the battle over? Where are the British?” she wanted to know.

The leader took off his cocked hat, and Kitty noticed that he had a bald head and very black eyes. “We begin to think the British are in Boston and have been there all along, that they never stirred from there. We have found no trace of them, and we scoured the countryside. The whole commotion is either a sorry jest or a coward’s error, it seems. At least, we have recovered sufficient courage to ride back toward Ipswich and see.”

“I suspected as much,” said Gran, tightening her mouth.

“Ho hum!” said Sally Rose.

The men rode off, and Gran pulled the wagon to one side of the road. They were facing a small common with a white steepled church at the edge of it. Houses clustered round about, darkened and deserted, their doors hanging open, their inhabitants fled away. Overhead the elm boughs tossed eerily in the light of the cold moon.

“Get out, girls, and stretch your legs,” Gran ordered. “Then I’m going to turn around and drive back to my own house at the Port. You can come with me, Nance, if you’re afraid to bide at home.”

“I’m not afraid any more,” said Nance wanly. “Not if the British are still in Boston. Do you think they are still in Boston, Ma’am Greenleaf?”

“I feel sure of it,” declared Gran firmly. “Well, the Bible says the young men shall dream dreams. That’s what that lad who said he rode over twenty dead bodies must ha’ done. Let’s all go over to the church steps and give thanks to God. Dream, joke, or error, I don’t care which it was. It’s over now, and high time we went home.”

The two children were asleep on the seat of the wagon, but Nance carried the shawl-wrapped baby and held it in her arms as they knelt on the church steps of gray old stone. Gran lifted up voluble thanks to the Almighty, and Kitty’s attention wandered. She watched a husky youth who had been hiding in the crotch of a pear tree climb sheepishly down and sidle off, gnawing a piece of salt pork. He had apparently taken provisions to his refuge, in case the British kept him treed for a long time. The sight of the pork made her hungry, and Nance must have seen it, too, and thought of food, but not for herself. The minute Gran rose from her knees, she asked if they could wait while she suckled the baby.

“Why of course,” said Gran heartily. “My, there’s not been one peep out of the little thing. I trust it hasn’t got smothered in all this uproar.”

Nancy sat down on the step, carefully pulled the shawls away, and bent her head while the others stood looking on.

Suddenly she screamed. They peered closer.

“God save our souls alive!” gasped Granny.

Sally Rose giggled. Kitty swallowed and made no sound at all.

In her haste Nance had wrapped up the wrong creature, and now it was the half-grown yellow cat that slept peacefully in the crook of her arm.

_Chapter Six_

FUN WHILE IT LASTED

The young man sat on the steps of the tavern by Ipswich Green and stared about him; at the old brown roofs with yellow moss growing on their seaward sides, at the little rocky river that flowed like liquid amber under its stone bridge, at the steepled church on the rocky hill. Shadows lay long in the deserted streets of Ipswich, and far to the west the sun was going down.

The young man wore a rough woolen shirt and homespun breeches. He had a cleft chin, deep blue eyes, and black curly hair. He looked uncommonly pleased about something.

The landlord came to the open doorway behind him and stood there, peering into the dusk. He was a short plump man with a lame leg and a worried expression.

“Not a sign o’ the British yet, be there, lad?” he asked anxiously.

The young man shrugged his shoulders. “Could be they’ve turned aside and gone another way,” he said in a lilting tone. “Well, I guess I’ll be taking the road myself, while there’s a bit o’ the daylight left. How far did you tell me it was to Newburyport, sir?”

The landlord shifted his feet uneasily. “It’s a piece of a journey yet, and the roads will doubtless be clogged with fleeing folk, if one’s to judge by the rout that streamed out of here; likewise the half o’ Beverly tagging through. Why not stay the night? I’ll give ye free lodging. It’ll mean there’s one able-bodied man in town, besides a handful of petticoat folk.”

Again the young man shrugged his shoulders. “Well enough, if ’twill please you--and supper be included in the offer.” He got to his feet and stood there smiling.

“Come in, lad, come in,” cried the landlord in relieved tones. “Come, and I’ll give ye supper, such as ’tis. Cook’s run off to the hills like all the rest, but my daughter Nanny’s here, and Nanny can do. Come and bring your box, if ye will. Where’d ye say ye be from? Have ye traveled far?”

The young man stooped and lifted a small leather chest bound with iron. Deep in the lid was burned the name “G. Malory.” It was a peculiarity of his that although he often played other men’s parts and wore other men’s clothing, he would never abandon his own name.

“Barnstaple,” he said. “Gerry Malory of Barnstaple, shoemaker.”

“Barnstable? Down Cape Cod, ain’t it? A fair ways from here.”

“Yes, Barnstaple’s a fair ways off,” said the young man.

Together they stepped into the dark smoky taproom. It was deserted except for a little maid, scarce more than a child, who stood in the doorway of the kitchen.

The landlord went to the hearth and stirred the dwindling fire. “What’s in the pot, Nanny?” he asked.

“Dandelions,” said Nanny pertly. “Dandelion greens and a ham bone. But the ham bone don’t smell like it should, Father.”

“Warm up the chowder then,” he ordered, and turned to his guest. “Are ye handy with firearms, Gerry?”

“I’ve a pistol in my chest here, among my shoemaker’s tools. Guess I know what to do with it.”

“No, no,” cried the landlord impatiently. “I got no faith in such pop guns. I mean a man-sized weapon. Son Rob took my musket to Cambridge, but there’s a fowling piece hung up on the kitchen wall. I don’t see as well to aim as I did once. Who was it spread the word about town? Did ye happen to hear?”

The shoemaker shook his head. “I couldn’t say, sir. As I told you before, I was just passing through here on my way to Newburyport to see a girl, when all at once a great stir began, and folks went rushing to the green. Somebody shouted that the British had landed at Ipswich Bar and were cutting and slashing all before them. Next thing I knew, the wagons started rolling out of town, and everyone took to the highway, afoot and on horseback. I watched them for awhile, and then came here to catch my breath and maybe have a bite of supper.”

Again the landlord went to the door and peered nervously into the thickening night. “Not a light in town,” he said. “Folk that hasn’t fled away be keeping their houses dark, ’twould seem. Do ye mind if I don’t light up, lad? Can ye see by the glow o’ the fire?”

“’Tis no trick to find a mouth the size of mine,” said the young man gallantly. Then as Nanny put a steaming bowl on the table in front of him, his nostrils quivered. “Did the ham smell stronger than this, my lady?” he asked her.

“Yes,” said Nanny flatly, stepping back into the kitchen.

He sat down on a bench, picked up a ladle, and tasted the chowder gingerly.

“None for me, Nanny,” called her father. “I be that worried about the British, I wouldn’t relish victuals none.”

“Right, sir,” said Gerry, putting down the ladle. “It comes to me that I, too, am worried about the British. Still, a piece of bread now--it need not have butter--I could eat it dry.”

“Slice up a loaf of bread, Nanny,” called the landlord.

Nanny’s thin piping voice came back from the kitchen. “The bread’s moldy. All that wasn’t, we sent to Cambridge.”

Gerry Malory sighed resignedly. “Well, perhaps a glass of milk then--unless all the cows have fled away. Nothing stronger. I must keep a clear head on me.”

The landlord himself brought a pitcher of milk and poured two glasses full.

“Be ye just up from the Cape, Gerry? And did ye come by Cambridge? We’ve had no news from there since the word o’ Concord Fight come through.”

The young man shook his head. “I haven’t been near Cambridge, and it’s a long time since I went Barnstaple way.”

“Where ye been, then?”

“Oh--round Charlestown most of the time, I guess. You know Job Townsend’s tavern there?”

“Job Townsend? Keeps the Bay and Beagle, don’t he? In Crooked Lane near Harvard Street. I knowed him when he was your age. Too bad. He lost his wife young. Got a right pretty daughter, I’ve heard. Sally Rose, or something like.”

“Yes, he’s got a pretty daughter,” said Gerry Malory, draining his glass. “I been around the Bay and Beagle some.”

“I don’t get down that way much myself,” said the landlord thoughtfully. “What’s the news thereabout? Do they think the British’ll fight? And if they do....”

The young man shook his head solemnly. “You got no chance against the British,” he said.

The landlord looked up sharply. “Ye say ‘you’ and not ‘we,’” he protested. “Does that mean Barnstable don’t intend to join against the cruel laws o’ the King? That they be not with the rest o’ Massachusetts? The Hampshire towns be with us, and I hear that so be the west and south, New York and Virginia, too.”

“Oh no, no, I do not mean that at all,” cried the young shoemaker. “’Twas a slip of the tongue. Of course Barnstable--on Cape Cod--will join cause with you. I only mean that the outlook is dark, sir, dark, for those who would fan the flames of rebellion in America.”

He put down his empty glass and leaned forward, his hands clenched before him on the table. “How can _we_ defend a thousand miles of seacoast with only a few scattered towns, against a great battle fleet of three hundred ships and armed men? We can scarce put thirty thousand soldiers in the field. England has one hundred and fifty thousand, and can summon more. We lack guns, ammunition, money, and trade. More than that, we lack the tradition of love of country, a tradition that will make the meanest man fight and die bravely. For a thousand years men have been giving their lives for England. What man has ever given his life for America before?”

“Sounds like you been listening to some Tory make speeches, lad. Happens there was a few gave their lives at Concord and Lexington the day before yesterday,” retorted the landlord. “There’s a first time for everything, Gerry.” His voice was milder than the milk in his half-empty glass, but his eyes held a sharp look, a look of question. Suddenly his face went white.

“Lord in heaven, I’ll fetch the gun for ye! Here they come!” he cried, dashing from the room, tripping over a footstool unseen in the light of the fire.

Gerry Malory lifted his head. He heard a shouting in the road, the creak of wagons rumbling along. He, too, got up, went to the door, and stared out into the soft April night. The moon had not yet risen, but as he turned to look to the north he could see swaying lights and shadowy figures, moving painfully slow, but drawing closer. He waited, silent, to see what would emerge out of the dark.

As the cavalcade became more sharply visible, he saw that it consisted of three oxcarts piled with boxes, kegs, and baskets, escorted by some half dozen men. The oxen lumbered along wearily, and the men seemed weary, too, as they plodded at the side. They were not young men, but grayish and old and frail, except for a thin-faced lad with tow-colored hair and an ancient gun gripped casually in his right hand. The wagons drew to a halt in front of the tavern, one man stayed with the oxen, and the others came forward eagerly, seeking refreshment.

Gerry stepped back into the taproom and turned to face the landlord who rushed out of the kitchen with a badly rusted gun held in front of him. “No British,” he said reassuringly. “Just some teamsters who want to wet their whistles, I expect.” He retired to the shadows near the great chimney, found a stool there, and sat down.

The landlord bustled forward to welcome the visitors. In a few moments they were seated at the table, and Nanny was helping her father to set out food and drink, greens, ham bone, chowder, and all.

“Not a fit man amongst us,” sighed the oldster with a face like a russet apple and a scar across his forehead. “I fought in too many wars already. But once we get these stores to Cambridge, likely I’ll stay there and enlist for one more.”

“Don’t know how we’d ha’ got this far, if this Hampshire lad hadn’t o’ertaken us,” said another. He turned to the thin-faced youth who was eating chowder, the old blunderbuss leaning against the table close to his elbow. “We was sure glad to see you, Tom Trask, when our cart broke down the other side of Rowley last night. A proper wheelwright you turned out to be.”

Tom Trask did not look up from his chowder. “Be a wheelwright when I have to,” he muttered, “or most any other sort of thing.”

“Tell me, lads,” questioned the landlord eagerly, “did ye see aught of the British that’s supposed to be marching on us, cutting and slashing all before?”

“We heard the rumor, o’ course,” went on the russet-cheeked man, “and saw the rout go past. Didn’t trouble us none. We kept on our way. Word’s gone about now, that there be doubts the British ever was nearer than Boston. Truth to tell, sir, I surmise we been made fools of.”