Time Enough for Drums (17 page)

No sooner was I in my flannel nightdress than I heard my parents arguing. I waited until Lucy left the room, then slipped into the hall.

“James, on such a bitter night. It terrifies me.”

“It isn’t like you to know fear, Sarah.”

“It isn’t like me to show it. I show it now because I saw the orders issued by General Howe threatening to hang without trial anyone firing upon or molesting British soldiers or peaceable inhabitants.”

“I have no intention of firing upon anyone. I’m simply delivering dry foodstuffs and rum to General Dickinson’s militia in the woods of Penny Town. I’m a merchant doing business.”

“Why didn’t the note come directly to you? Why to the Moores?”

“Sarah, be sensible. It was the only way they could get the note to me. Isaac Moore sent word to the shop yesterday that I should come out. Those men are freezing in the woods, and if I can help them I will.”

“On such a night you can be tracked easily in the snow. You’ll endanger them.”

“I’m only taking a horse. The snow will cover our tracks easily. I know the roads better than the Hessians. You must allow me this, Sarah. It’s something I can do to help. How do you think I’ve felt seeing my town taken over and being able to do nothing?”

I didn’t hear Mother’s reply, but I heard him telling her to secure the doors. “I’ll go out the back way and stay overnight with the militia. Don’t wait up for me.”

After he left, I went to the window in the upstairs hall and saw him come out of the barn with Romeo. He threw a bag of supplies over the horse’s back. He wore his civilian clothes, for he had no uniform, yet I was thrilled with the importance of his mission. He had only his musket. I watched him pull the hood of his blanket-coat up over his head and ride off into the flurries of snow.

I slept the sleep of the dead that night from the fever concoction Lucy had given me. I awoke to see the sun slanting across the floor in my room the way it did when it was very late. For a moment I could not figure out what was going on.

I had been sound asleep one moment, but a sound had pulled me awake the next. There it was again.

A scream. It pierced the air, long and protracted and filled with agony. I recognized it instantly as Mother’s, and
it pulled me out of my childhood forever and thrust me headlong into the world of adulthood, a world where nothing was ever secure again.

I did not have to ask what was wrong when I went downstairs and found Lucy and Mother in the parlor. I knew, from the look in Mama’s eyes, that Father was dead.

“Child, you gotta eat sumpthin’.”

“Lucy, if I’d gotten up on time it wouldn’t have happened.”

“That ain’t true. Your papa weren’t killed here. He be killed someplace on his mission last night. They just leave him in the shop. What could you have done?”

“I could have gone with him. I know how to shoot. Dan taught me. I could have killed them.”

“Hush. ’Nuf talk about killin’ now.”

“Why did they do it, Lucy? They had no reason.”

“They don’t need no reason.”

“That’s no good, Lucy. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s all we got, child. These times got no sense.”

“They beat him to death. They smashed his head in.”

“Hush. Don’t say it.”

“I have to say it. I hurt inside, Lucy. It helps the hurting.”

“Then say it.”

“They beat him to death. They smashed his head in. And they ransacked his shop. He’s dead. My father is dead.”

“Yes, he’s dead. I saw him.”

“I saw him too, Lucy. The Indian women from Otter Hall let me see him.”

“They shouldn’t have.”

“I wanted to. I had to. His eyes were open. How can you be dead with your eyes open, Lucy?”

“His eyes are closed now, child.”

“Lucy, he was a good father.”

“Yes, he was.”

“He was always threatening to birch me. And you know what? He never even had a birch rod. He never hit any of us.”

“He loved you, child.”

“How can I live without him? I don’t want to live without him. The way I feel, I want to die too.”

“Nobody dies from grief.”

“But I want to.”

“Lucy ain’t gonna let you.”

“Where’s my mama?”

“She be upstairs with Mrs. Moore. She be all broken up. She gonna be no use to you today. You gotta depend on Lucy.”

“You’ll stay with me? You won’t leave?”

“Yes, I’ll stay.”

“My father made you free, Lucy. You can go if you want.”

“None of us be free, child. When you white folk gonna learn that? We all be tied to sumpthin’.”

“I’ve been mean to you. John Reid scolded me because I was mean to you. So why should you stay?”

“ ’Cause I wants to.”

“Lucy, do you think I’ll ever see John again. Or Daniel? Or David?”

“Don’t you be thinkin’ that way, now. Don’t you let your mind turn against you like that. Sure, you will.”

“Lucy, Mr. Moore is asking the Hessians if we can bury my father in St. Michael’s churchyard. I wonder if they’ll move the artillery when we bury him.”

We buried my father on Monday, the twenty-third. The ground gave up a coldness that made the air feel like the grave. The guns had been removed from the churchyard, and the detachment of Hessians that stood nearby behaved with utmost respect. I stood very close to Mama. She had spent the last few days in her room, cared for by Lucy and Mrs. Moore. I don’t think she knew what was going on. She seemed dim-witted now. She barely ate and her eyes did not look at you, they looked beyond. She seemed almost bewitched.

At the burial she showed no feelings, not even when Betsy Moore hugged her, crying. She seemed not to recognize anyone or even pay mind to the fact that she was in a churchyard. But it was just as well, for when the doors of the church opened, I could see the Hessians’ horses stabled inside.

I felt almost relieved that Father was dead and could not see that.

Back at our house the few neighbors we had left had assembled and brought hot soup and cornmeal pudding and
cured meats and pies. I sat quietly and ate while people came up to me and said good things about my father and called me a poor child.

“It has a thin coat of ice on it already,” Mrs. Potts was saying to Mr. Moore. “It looks as if the Lord is with the British. If the river freezes, they’ll be able to walk across it and take Philadelphia.”

I hated Mrs. Potts at that moment more than I’d ever hated anyone. As soon as I could, I cornered Mr. Moore.

“Mr. Moore, do you think the Lord is with the British?”

“The day is not over yet, Jemima. I’d wait a while before venturing to say what side the Lord is on. There is a swift current beneath that river. It will stay alive and moving and strong under the coat of ice.”

“So will I, Mr. Moore.”

He smiled at me. “I would speak with thee, Jemima. We have offered to take thy mother until she comes out of her bereavement. Would thee think of coming home with us?”

“No, sir. I wasn’t thinking on it. I’ll stay here with Lucy.”

“But a young girl and a servant alone in a town occupied by Hessians—”

“We’ll be all right, Mr. Moore. The Hessians wouldn’t dare bother us. Killing my father was bad enough. You told me yourself how upset Rall was over it.”

“We don’t know yet that it was these Hessians who killed him, child. Control the hate in thy heart until thee is sure.”

“I’m sure. And I hate them for it. I don’t care if it’s sinful to hate. And I’m staying. If you take Mother, that will give Lucy and me more time to care for the house and the shop.”

“The shop!” He was dumbfounded. “Certainly thee can’t be thinking of running the shop! I could not, with the affection I have for thy parents, allow—”

“Oh, Mr. Moore, please! It meant so much to my father.
And it would make me feel so much better! It would be like … keeping a part of Father alive!”

He was shaking his head. “Two women alone, child.”

“The shop is our livelihood, Mr. Moore. Would you have me give it up? And if we leave, the shop will be ransacked again! And the house! I’d die if that happened. You wouldn’t want me to die, would you?”

It turned out he didn’t want me to die. He summoned Lucy into Father’s study, though, and satisfied himself that she was not only devoted but quick-witted and sensible before he would give permission.

“Jemima, thy father often told me that thee was the most difficult one to reason with,” he said. “I’ll check on thee whenever I can.”

Lucy and I were sitting before the fire in the parlor that night when there was a knock on the door. Lucy put a finger to her lips. We waited, but the knocking became a pounding. It kept on until Lucy got up and opened the door.

There were five Hessians—three hulking men dressed in the red and white of the Von Lossberg Regiment and two women who wore coarse clothing.

“You cannot come into this house. We have had a death here.” Lucy stood her ground, speaking in perfect English. But they pushed past her and came into the parlor, warming themselves before the fire.

Again Lucy demanded they leave, but they ignored her. I looked over at the fireplace where Father’s musket would be, but it had been lost that night when he went out on his mission.

“Leave this house!” I said firmly. “We have friends and they’ll be here to check on us.”

They only laughed at me. One of the women came toward
me, muttering in a pacifying tone. Then, reaching out, she touched the gold and ivory locket I wore pinned to the front of my short gown. She said something I did not understand. Was she directing me to take it off? I shook my head no. Then she yanked hard and pulled it off, ripping the material of my short gown with it.

I screamed. “Give me that! It’s mine!” She slapped me on the face, hard. I reeled and caught myself, and in an instant Lucy was between us, holding onto me.

“How dare you come into this house and behave in such a manner? This is our
home!
Have you no respect?”

The Hessian captain stepped forward and rebuked the woman sharply. She moved back, cringing under his harsh words.

“I want my locket. Give it back to me.”

She held it against her bosom. The captain spoke sharply again, and like a child she yielded the locket to me. The captain bowed, speaking in halting English to Lucy. He explained that they had been sent to secure quarters for a British officer and our house was suitable, since it was so nice and large. And he had his orders. The British officer would take possession in a day or so. In the meantime, if we stayed confined to our chambers, no harm would come to us.

The captain himself saw us upstairs. He bowed, assuring us that we had no worries. If we would bolt our door from the inside, we would sleep safely through the night.

Inside my room, I started to cry. “What will we do, Lucy?”

She quieted me, bathing my face and making me undress before I got into bed. Then she lay down next to me and held me, for I was trembling.

“But Lucy, what will we do?”

“We stay together,” she said, “and we say our prayers.”

I marveled at Lucy’s courage. The next morning when we went downstairs, I screamed when I saw Hessian women cutting up dead chickens on Mama’s good cherry dining room table. But Lucy just pulled me along to the kitchen. There she directed the Hessians to leave, saying it was her kitchen and that she would make the breakfast. They obeyed.

She set a mug of hot coffee and corn bread down before me. “We don’t bother them, no matter what they be doin’. No matter what they take. You hear? Don’t be afraid. It be only a house, only furniture, only
things!”

“I’m not afraid, Lucy.”

“Yes, you are. It don’t matter bein’ afraid. It matters
showin’
them. They won’t hurt us.”

“How do you know?”

“I knows. Because if they try, I’ll kill them.”

That day and night the Hessians stayed in our house, and Lucy became my whole sanity and hope. She became my family. It still hurt, though, when the Hessian women went through Mama’s linen press and took out her finely woven things, and when they confiscated some of Father’s clothes from the bedroom.

When their men came back that night they gathered downstairs, eating and drinking my father’s best rum, singing their songs, laughing and banging things around.

Upstairs in our chamber we listened. “They be drunk,” Lucy said.

It got cold. We had no more wood for the fire and we’d had no supper. We wrapped ourselves in quilts and listened to the commotion. Laughter resounded through the house. Once or twice something smashed. It sounded as if my mother’s whole sideboard crashed to the floor in the dining room.

“Maybe I sneak down and git some food,” Lucy said.

“No, Lucy. We do have something.” I jumped up and went to my wooden chest, where I’d kept the supply of pemmican Canoe had given me. And so we ate pemmican that night.

At about ten o’clock, there was a knock on the front door. We heard a sharp, clear voice with a British accent, then silence. It got quiet after that, with only the occasional sounds of low conversation.

There were murmurs, exclamations from the Hessians, and then it seemed like an argument between the British and the Hessians. The door banged and we heard the Hessians out in the street. I ran to the window and saw them bundled up, walking away.

“They’re leaving, Lucy!” I was jubilant.

“The British,” she said, “they come.”

I didn’t know whether to rejoice or be more worried.

“They be civilized, at least,” Lucy said.

“I’ve heard stories that they’re not so civilized sometimes, Lucy.”

“We see in the morning. In the morning I be up early. We see about the British.”

He was so young. He was as young as Daniel, surely. In the bright sunlight he stood in the middle of our parlor, and the red of his coat sent a shock through me.

The British were in our house.

He was pacing restlessly. He wore snow-white breeches, and his black boots covered his knees in front. His spurs were silver and flashed in the sun, as did the silver fringe on the blue velvet epaulets on his shoulders. His crimson sash was silk, I was sure of it, and his sword had an elaborate silver hilt.