Sarah Bishop Read online

  "Maybe Mr. Purdy didn't mean it," I said. "Maybe he only means to scare you into thinking about the King the way he does."

  "He means to scare me all right. He's been at it for months now, ever since the first of summer. But he hasn't, Sarah. It's the crowd that hangs around him and listens to his rantings that scares me—Hubert Hines, the surveyor; Burton, the drayman; the post rider, John Seldon, who spreads gossip like the pox from here to Boston and back. And also Birdsall. He's the worst of them."

  "Mr. Purdy wanted to know why we haven't enough money to pay for a bag of meal when you do tinkering for people and get paid for it. I wonder, too, sometimes. Why we are so poor in money that I have to ask for credit every week." I grew bolder. "Perhaps you bury it in the ground somewhere."

  "Perhaps I do."

  I wasn't surprised. I'd had suspicions for a long time that he was hiding money.

  "Been burying it since early summer," Father admitted. "Since Purdy first threatened me, and Birdsall began to ride."

  "Shouldn't I know where it is, just in case?"

  "No, if you knew and they came looking for it, Birdsall and his gang, then you'd be bound to tell them."

  "I never would."

  "You don't know what you'd do. The other day, over at Hempstead, Birdsall broke in on Seth Parsons and his wife and asked them for silverware he knew the Parsonses owned. Parsons said they'd sold it. Birdsall's men clouted him over the head and knocked him unconscious. He died two days later. Mrs. Parsons they hung up by her thumbs until she told..."

  "No matter what, I'd never tell."

  "You'd be foolish. Valuables aren't worth your life. I'm not going to say where I hid them. Nobody knows but me. And it's not money. It's silverware."

  "Silverware?"

  "Yes."

  Father began to eat his chowder and said no more. When he was through eating, he opened the door. He stood for a long time gazing toward Purdy's mill, at the fast-running stream and the wheel turning.

  Father was dark-skinned and his hair was soot-black and long. He wore it in a club tied with a leather string. He looked like an Indian. Many people took him for an Indian. Sometimes I felt that he wished he'd been born an Indian and lived in the wilderness and could travel about from place to place when the seasons changed.

  He had the courage of an Indian, too; the courage to stand up to Purdy and Birdsall. He could have kept his thoughts to himself. He could have said that he hated King George. Or just kept quiet, like most of the people we knew.

  4

  FATHER ATE HIS food and went back to work on Mrs. Ryder's grandfather clock, which had something wrong with its pendulum. He laid it out on his bench and did some soldering and put it back in the case and gave it a little nudge.

  The pendulum had just begun to move when my brother, Chad, came into the barn. With him was a skinny young man who lived on a farm on the other side of Purdy's mill. They both had been drinking, from all that I could tell.

  Father was strict about young men drinking, so I was surprised that Chad would walk right in and stand up bold in front of him, even if he had the help of skinny David Whitlock, who was a student and very religious.

  "Good morning, Mr. Bishop," David Whitlock said.

  "Good morning, Father," Chad said.

  They spoke this greeting at the same time and both bowed stiffly from the waist. Now I was certain that they'd been drinking.

  "Chad, why aren't you at work?" my father asked sharply. "The day's only half over."

  Chad and David glanced at each other and grinned, as if they were sharing a momentous secret. Then they clutched each other like long-lost friends.

  I noticed that Chad had a pamphlet in his hand that had printing on its gray, dog-eared cover, something about Common Sense by someone called Thomas Paine.

  Father noticed the pamphlet, too. "How did you come upon that pack of windy nonsense?" he demanded.

  Chad and David were still grinning. They grew serious of a sudden.

  David said, "Since you call the writing nonsense, I doubt, sir, that you have read it."

  Father snorted. "I need not read it. I have heard it mouthed often enough. The colonies are English by birth. They enjoy English traditions and English law."

  Young Whitlock took the pamphlet from Chad, fixed his thick, eight-sided spectacles upon his nose, and read: "We may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty."

  "But England is our parent country," my father said.

  David steadied himself on his skinny legs, turned a page, and continued: "Then the more shame upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young nor savages make war upon their families."

  He wet his thumb, steadied himself once again. "Europe, and not England," he said, quoting Mr. Paine, "is the parent country of America. This New World has been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe."

  David gave the pamphlet back to Chad and said from memory, moving his arms and speaking like an orator, "Hither have they fled from every part of Europe ... And the same tyranny which drove the first immigrants from home, pursues their descendants still."

  The boys stood together in the doorway, with the hot sun pouring down, David still posing like an orator, Chad clutching his dog-eared pamphlet. They breathed out strong odors of rum.

  Father's expression had not changed through all of David Whitlock's recitations. I doubt that he had heard them. Without a word, he walked over and took the pamphlet from Chad as if he planned to read it. Instead, he tore it into pieces and threw the pieces on the floor.

  Chad said nothing. He glanced at David. There was a long silence. Then David Whitlock stepped forward and gave a salute as if he were a soldier in the militia.

  "Sir," he said to Father, who had gone back to his bench, "we have this day signed papers of enlistment."

  "We leave tonight for Brooklyn Fort," Chad burst out.

  Father put down the hammer he was getting ready to use and slowly turned around. "You what?"

  "We have enlisted," Chad said. "We are soldiers in the militia, and we shall fight the King until he surrenders."

  I don't think that Chad expected Father to clasp him to his bosom at this news, considering what Father had done to the pamphlet, but I am certain that he didn't expect what did happen.

  "Fool that you are," Father said. He said it again and in three long strides crossed to the doorway and there fetched Chad a cuff on the ear.

  My brother opened his mouth to say something but made only a small noise. David Whitlock backed away, acting as if he thought that his turn might come next.

  "You'll get more than that," Father shouted. "The King's men won't bother to box your ears. They'll fill your skin full of hot lead."

  David Whitlock spoke up bravely. "The King's men are on the run, sir. They have fled from Boston. It is said that they have scurried off to Nova Scotia."

  "They will be back one of these days," Father said. "And you'll be the worse for it. King George has the finest troops in the world. And the finest ships. Hundreds of ships."

  There was a short silence while David Whitlock was thinking up a reply. Chad mumbled a word or two that didn't make much sense. With his long hair tumbled in his eyes and his red face, he didn't look much like a soldier. I asked if there wasn't something I could fix him to eat.

  "Something to carry along, Chad. Like bread and cheese and some milk?"

  He shook his head. "The army will supply me."

  "More likely you'll live off the country," Father said. "Stealing goats and chickens and fruit from law-abiding farmers. Burning their barns down if they refuse, as they've been doing up in Boston and other places."

  "The sergeant told me that I'd be in the commissary," Chad said. "Since I've been working in the kitchen up at the Lion and Lamb. I'll ride in a wagon stuffed with food and I'll have plenty of
it to eat."

  "Chances are," Father said, "that you'll not ride so much as you'll walk. And be hungry more than you're not. And freeze your tail."

  Chad peered at his friend David Whitlock for help.

  "We signed up for only six months," David said.

  "Long enough," Father replied, "to have your skulls split. By the Hessians, probably. YouVe heard of them. They're professional soldiers. Mercenaries, they're called. Come from Germany. The fiercest fighters in the world."

  Old Lady Ryder's clock cleared its throat and struck the hour of one.

  David Whitlock glanced at the clock through his thick glasses, which made his eyes look twice as big as they really were. He grasped my brother's arm and informed him that it was past time to be on their way.

  Chad was eyeing the clumsy musket that Father hunted wild fowl with. He walked over and picked it up and made a sighting on an imaginary foe.

  "I need a weapon," he said. "I'll return it when my enlistment's over. If you don't mind, sir."

  "I do mind," Father replied. "It will kill no mother's son in this barbarous war. Put it down."

  Chad did as he was told. There were tears in his eyes. I ran into the house to get him a loaf of bread to take along, but when I came back he was gone.

  I watched the boys cross the cornfield, marching like soldiers. At the stream Chad stopped and waved. I waved back. Father shouted, "We'll pray for you, son."

  And we did pray right there, kneeling on the stone floor while the boys came to the rise near Purdy's mill and disappeared among the trees.

  That night I lay awake and thought about Chad. I wondered if he'd had anything to eat. I'd cooked his favorite dishes, succotash and Indian pudding, for supper, and he wasn't there to eat them. I wondered, too, where he would sleep. Most likely on the ground. He had a soft mattress on his bed in the attic. It was stuffed with duck feathers.

  I thought about the pamphlet that Father had torn up and thrown on the floor. I remembered some of the words David Whitlock had recited: "This New World has been the asylum for the persecuted..."

  We had not fled from persecution, but we had been dispossessed of our farm and its belongings, our sheep, our plough, our scythe and butter churn. Still, it wasn't the King's fault that we lost everything. It was the law's fault.

  I was thinking about this and why some people were rebelling against the King and some were not and some didn't care one way or the other so long as they weren't bothered. I was thinking hard when I heard an explosion. It was a musket shot. The sound came from upstream in the direction of Purdy's mill.

  Next morning Clovis Stone, one of our neighbors, came by to say that Purdy had shot a cat, a big one, big as a catamount and black. The cat somehow got away but had left a trail of blood behind. Purdy was sure that it was the cat that had caused the mill wheel to stop every day exactly at midnight.

  Then a curious thing happened. Old Lady Ryder came in that afternoon for her clock, with her hair flying every which way and her green eyes, which never looked straight at you, peering around.

  It was a hot day but she had a shawl thrown over her shoulders. When she went to pay my father for fixing the clock, the shawl fell back and I saw that she had her left hand wrapped up in a rag. Father asked her how she came to hurt herself.

  "It's a sprain," she said in her wheezy voice. "Fell on a cobble over in New York."

  It was then I noticed that there was a bloodstain on the rag she had wrapped around her hand.

  I hadn't believed in witchcraft and witches since I was ten years old, but it gave me a start, nevertheless.

  5

  THE NEXT MORNING was Sunday. We usually went to church on foot, but it had rained hard in the night and the road was muddy, so we hitched our two horses to the carryall and set off. I wore my old shoes and toted the good ones to put on after we got there.

  The church was two miles away, on the edge of Mott's Corner, surrounded by a grove of shagbark hickory. When we arrived, all the places among the trees were filled with wagons and tethered horses.

  "A goodly number," said my father. "Come to hear the word of God, but, alas, they will hear instead the word of Caleb Cleghorn hastily thought of as he ate his morning mush."

  My father didn't think much of Preacher Cleghorn. Before the war started up north, he was preaching loyalty to King George. But now that the British had been driven out of Boston and many people were against the king, he was talking in a different way. If my father had not been a religious man, he would have stayed home on Sunday and read the family Bible instead of going to hear Caleb Cleghorn preach.

  While I changed to my good shoes, Father tied the horses to a shagbark tree and gave them each a nosebag to keep them contented. There were several men standing on the church steps. Among them was Ben Birdsall, who was eyeing all the people as they went in and tipping his cap to each of the ladies. He had a red face and little eyes that were sharp as a pig's. Colonel Bird-sail was the leader of a mob of patriots who rode around at night, burned barns, threatened people like the Parsonses, and robbed them if they had the chance.

  The first person I saw inside was Old Lady Ryder, who thanked Father again for fixing her clock. She still had her hand wrapped up. The next person I saw was Mr. Purdy, his round face pink and smiling, standing right behind her. I told him that I'd heard he had shot a black cat as big as a catamount. No sooner were the words out of my mouth than Old Lady Ryder coughed twice and whisked herself away without a sound.

  There were seats down in front, but Father chose to stand up in the back. "If Caleb begins to rant," he said, "we can slip out without causing a ruction."

  Caleb Cleghorn didn't rant. He spoke in a quiet voice of things that were happening in our peaceful community, the mistreatment of the Parsonses, of property burned and animals stolen.

  "It is not a revolution," he said. "It is a civil war, a war among people who once were friends. Let us strive to be understanding of those who have different thoughts from ours. For we share a common speech and do worship the same all-merciful God."

  I looked about for Ben Birdsall to see if he was within the reach of the preacher's voice, but in vain. I did see Jim Quarme. He was standing near the doorway, nodding his bony head in agreement with everything that was said. I felt his eyes upon me from time to time, but he was nowhere around when the services ended.

  On the way out of the church my father was stopped by Master Wentworth, who taught reading and writing at Mott's Corner where I went to school in the winter-time.

  "Do you plan for Sarah to enroll with us this year?" he said to Father.

  "I am pondering the question," Father said.

  "Why, may I be emboldened to ask, need you ponder?" Master Wentworth asked.

  "Because, sir, you have become a mouthpiece for the rebellion. I question the wisdom of stuffing my daughter's head full of nonsense."

  Master Wentworth had a pale, sad face. "What do you say, Sarah? Were you happy in school last year?"

  I glanced at Father and hesitated, not wanting to contradict him.

  "You seemed happy," Master Wentworth said.

  Master Wentworth was a good teacher. If you ever made a mistake and used "mayn't I" for "may I not" or left a loose participle, he didn't make a big fuss of it. He had mentioned the war several times, but I never remembered that he took one side or the other. I liked my classmates, too.

  Master Wentworth had a scant amount of hair, and the hot sun made his bald spots glisten.

  "We shall miss you, Sarah, if you don't come," he said. "You were an excellent pupil."

  Father was trying to stare me down, but I looked straight ahead and got up courage. "I learned much, Master Wentworth," I said. "When the crops are in, I would like to come back. That is, if Father doesn't mind."

  "Good," Master Wentworth said. "I shall save a seat for you."

  Father fell silent as we went down the steps. It was his way of saying that he was angry with me for having stood up against him. It seemed t
hat most every day now there was some kind of ill feeling about the war.

  Father started to say something and stopped. We had come to the big shagbark hickory where we had drawn up the wagon and tethered our horses. The traces were empty. The horses were gone.

  Father swore a hair-raising oath. I had never heard him swear before. Nearby, Lem Stewart, our neighbor, was shouting, "Thieves! Thieves!" at the top of his voice. His horses were gone, too. From around the grove came other shouts.

  When it was over, we found that six families had been robbed of their teams. And of the six all but one were loyal supporters of the King. Everyone thought it was the work of Ben Birdsall, but no one was sure.

  6

  FOR TWO WHOLE weeks nothing was heard about the stolen horses. Then Mr. Kinkade carted a load of early apples over to Newtown. While he was there he heard that a drover had been seen hurrying east just the day before, driving twelve horses. That was all we ever heard.

  Father did not have the money for another team, but he sold some tools and managed to buy one horse, a mare. She wasn't much of a horse; she was spavined and at least as old as I. However, she could pull a wagon if it was not loaded full. No one knew her name, so I called her Samantha, because I liked the sound.

  We started harvesting the corn three days after our team was stolen. It was beautiful corn, mostly four ears to the stalk, plump and the color of fresh butter. I took three half-loads to Purdy's mill and had them ground into meal. I paid Mr. Purdy what we owed and had some left for winter.

  I caught only a glimpse of Quarme's bony head sticking up above a stack of barrels and his small, mean little eyes peering down at me. Mr. Purdy told me about the cat he had shot, how it had left a trail of blood behind, how afterward the mill hadn't stopped at midnight. I didn't tell him about Old Lady Ryder and her hand.

  The next week we picked a few early Roxbury Russets, which always go to a good market. They are not a pretty apple, having sort of a brownish blush; but underneath the blush is a green-gold and the flesh is sweet and crisp. We also had a fine crop of Golden Russets coming on. It is a smaller apple than the Roxbury but richer to the taste.