The Family Greene (6 page)

They did not pick the natural choice, General Simeon Potter, who was a veteran of the French and Indian War.

They did not pick James Varnum, captain of the Kentish Guards.

They picked a lowly private in the Kentish Guards, Private Nathanael Greene.

Why me?
Nathanael wrote to me from Cambridge.

Because,
I wrote back,
they know a good man when they see one. Because you are intelligent and you study books. Because you have been reading military tactics for how long now in the bookstore of Henry Knox in Boston. Do you think they do not know this? Because you were the head of a hundred workers at the forge.

My husband had gone from being a private to being a brigadier general in a few weeks.

***

I
KNEW WITHIN
days of his leaving that I could not bear to stay in our house in Coventry with Jacob and Peggy. Jacob was all right, but he spent all his time overseeing the running of Nathanael's forge next door, something Nathanael would be doing if he were home. It was Peggy who was the sister-in-law from hell.

She took over the household the first day she was there.

"Here, let me do that for you—why don't you sit down and rest" became her battle cry.

I did not want to sit down and rest. It was my house. I knew what time the dogs should be fed, that the cats didn't eat what they brought in but only caught it and left their catch to be admired and praised, then must be fed, too, how much the chickens should be given to eat, and yes, that we let the chickens roam free ... so that I was the only one who knew where they were likely to lay their eggs. Nathanael had shown me.

Peggy thought we were two children playing at house. She quickly "straightened things out."

Within two weeks, the chickens stopped laying their eggs. The dogs stopped eating. The cats stopped bringing in mice.

"What chaos," Peggy said. "How can you run a farm like this?"

Amanda, the cook, quit, and instead of being horrified, Peggy seemed pleased.

"Now," she said with smug satisfaction, "I can teach you to make all the dishes your husband and mine like best."

I had no intention of learning. There was nothing I would hate worse, I knew, than having bossy Peggy standing over me telling me the right way to slice carrots to put in Nathanael's possum stew. Besides, I hated possum stew. I would suffer it if Nathanael were here, but otherwise I'd likely throw up making it.

At home, Aunt Catharine never had time to teach me anything to do with the domestic arts. I led the life of a lady, and the most I'd had to do was learn to stitch a pillowcase or embroider a sampler to be framed and put on the wall.

Besides, in his last letter to me, sensing my unhappiness, Nathanael had written:
I have recommended you to their care, unless they should so far forget their affection for me as to request anything unworthy of you to comply with. In that case, maintain your independence until I return, and if Providence allows I will see justice done you.

Independence, it seemed, was Nathanael's middle name. I knew he had an excellent rapport with Amanda and loved her cooking. I was sure he would be less than pleased with Peggy to learn that Amanda had quit because of Peggy's troublesome ways.

I decided to make a shopping trip to Providence to settle my mind about things. Mayhap all I needed was a day away from this place, the sights and sounds of different people and scenes. The hustle and bustle of Providence to make me feel part of something again.

I had great sport that day buying dresses that would cover my growing middle. And then, at midafternoon, who did I run into in front of the Cake 'n' Chat, the ladies' tearoom, but Charlotte Varnum, wife of Colonel James Varnum, he who had been captain of the Kentish Guards and friend of Nathanael's and was presently a colonel in the army. He, too, was now in Cambridge.

"Caty Greene!" she cried out on seeing me.

"Charlotte Varnum!" We hugged warmly.

"What in the name of Caesar's ghost are you doing alone on the streets of Providence?" She looked down at my figure. "Why, you're expecting!"

"I had to get away from home," I blurted out. "Nathanael's sister-in-law is driving me mad. Nathanael left her and his brother Jacob in charge. Today she wanted to teach me how to make possum stew!"

"Oh, that's right, my husband wrote me. Nathanael is at Cambridge with the newly formed army. My dear"—she put a hand to her mouth to shield her words—"don't breathe a word of it to anyone until it is made public, but my husband wrote that the head of the whole army is going to be Mr. George Washington from Virginia."

I gasped. "A Virginian? The Continental Congress would never pick a Virginian! Nobody will ever listen to him!"

"What better way to bring this country together?" she asked. "That's what my husband says. Now why don't you and I go inside and have some cake and tea. There are so many things we both need to catch up on."

There are some times in the life of a woman that only another woman can put reasoning and understanding on a certain situation in her life.

We had tea and cakes. Neither one of us would have ventured in alone. It wouldn't have looked right. Ladies did not take tea alone.

We asked after family at first, of course. We boasted about our husbands, since neither of us had become acquainted, up until then, with the maiming and death this war would bring. Until then it was all military training and practice, music and color.

Finally she said, "Your spirit has been brought low, Caty Greene. Is this because you are carrying? Or because of the gloomy people you are made to associate with? You were always so lively in your aunt's house, so witty and bright. Do you miss Nathanael so?"

"It's all the pieces of a quilt," I said.

She took a deep breath. "Then I think I have a solution for you."

"Short of throwing myself in the Pawtuxet River?" I teased.

"Don't even speak such. Just listen." And she leaned back in her chair and looked at me. "James says that many officers' wives are talking of joining their husbands at headquarters."

What was she saying? That I, wife of a brigadier general, should not stay confined in a house and allow myself to be tortured and brought low in spirit by my sister-in-law when I could go and join my husband at his headquarters near Cambridge?

My heart beat faster. I could be with Nathanael!

"They say that even Mrs. Washington is planning on coming to camp.

"Won't Nathanael object?"

"I'd like to see one man object to having his wife join him. Especially one as pretty as you!"

I blushed, then nodded. "I'll write to Nathanael," I said. "I'll give him some warning, anyway."

I hugged her and thanked her, then, after parting, I told my driver to hurry home. And as we did so that warm July day, I planned, with all the spite in me, how I would act with Peggy, and how I would take no more of her terrible treatment. I was, after all, the wife of a brigadier general, was I not? And I would be treated accordingly from here on in. And it would commence with not having possum stew for supper.

I got home to find the post had come and there was a letter from Nathanael, telling me how much he loved me and missed me and wished he could see me. He had moved his headquarters to Prospect Hill, two miles from Cambridge. He wrote that George Washington had been appointed commander in chief of the whole army by the Continental Congress.

I've met him. He's a fine fellow. The kind you want on your side,
he wrote.
We can't but be the victors with him in charge...

I wrote back, telling him how I met Charlotte Varnum, how she'd told me that many wives were talking about traveling to Cambridge to be with their husbands. Did he not want me to come?

He wrote back. He said a lot of things—news, gossip, how he could see the enemy's garrisons from where he was. But he never said no, I should not come.

I seized on that. I betook myself to Providence another day. I bought a whole new wardrobe and a trunkful of baby clothes, and when the driver, whose name was Sergeant David Shaw and who was one of Nathanael's Kentish Guards on leave, dropped me off, I bade him pick me up at the house at six the next morning.

"For Providence again, Mrs. Greene?" he asked.

"No, for Cambridge," I answered.

"But that's fifty-two miles, ma'am, a two-day drive. We'll have to make an overnight stop. Change the horses."

"Aren't you up to the task, sergeant? To bring your commander's wife to visit him?"

He snapped to attention, if such can be said of one sitting in the driver's seat of a carriage. "Yes, ma'am. I'll tell my wife, make arrangements. I'll be here to pick up you and your bags at six in the morning!"

"Good. I'll bring a basket of vittles, for we'll surely get hungry along the way."

Begrudgingly, Peggy packed a basket of food, a stone jar of tea, a bottle of wine, biscuits, cold meats, cheese. As she slammed about the kitchen the next morning while Jacob carried my bags to the front door, she, not he, scolded.

"Nathanael will not like this. He'll hold us responsible. And I'll not take the blame for your foolishness."

Jacob took my part, I must say. "She's a grown woman, Peggy. It's up to her to decide. She misses her husband."

Peggy slammed down the stone jar of tea so I thought it would break. "War means sacrifice! Trouble with young people these days is they don't know the meaning of the word."

She went on and on about the failings of young people. The last thing I heard as I went out the door—as Jacob kissed my cheek, helped me into the carriage, and told me to give my best to Nathanael, slipped the driver some extra shillings, and reminded him to avoid the bumps in the road—was Peggy yelling, "And you'll lose the babe on that ride, sure as God made cedar trees!"

A
S IT TURNED OUT
, I did not lose the baby along the way.

Sergeant Shaw, on leave because he and his wife had a newborn of their own, avoided the bumps in the road as Jacob had requested. The ride was, indeed, most pleasant. We stopped to take our refreshment. We paused again just to rest, and about five in the evening we stopped for the day. I am not permitted to say where, for the sake of secrecy, because it was at a safehouse halfway to Cambridge, a farmstead owned by Shaw's brother-in-law, a simple saltbox house that had been in the family since 1712.

Shaw's sister and brother-in-law treated me elegantly. They gave us food aplenty for traveling the next day and a fresh team of horses, and shortly after first light, we were on our way.

After the second day of travel, we found the village of Cambridge, surrounded by earthworks. The buildings on Harvard campus were converted into barracks. And where there had heretofore been students, there were now armed soldiers on the streets. Although I had never seen the pretty village of Cambridge before, I felt a pang of loss for what must have been.

But then we got to Nathanael's Prospect Hill Camp. And I saw the stamp of Nathanael's command in the neatness of the soldiers and the precision of their marching routines. More than that, they looked healthy, and I'd heard that they were well fed.

Corned beef and pork, four days a week,
Nathanael had written.
Salt fish one day and fresh beef on the other two, with a daily pound of flour, butter, and fresh vegetables.

As we drew up to the front of Nathanael's headquarters, some troops practicing their drilling across the road came to a halt under directions of a smartly clad officer, raised their muskets in salute, and stood at attention.

The smartly clad officer was, of course, Nathanael. He came over to the carriage and helped me down. As the soldiers had a chance to see I was pregnant, on their own they gave a verbal salute: "Hazzuh, hazzuh, hazzuh!"

Nathanael dismissed them and bent over to kiss me.

"I didn't know you were coming."

"I heard Mrs. Washington was coming, and so I'm here."

"She isn't here yet. Everyone is making ready. And
she
isn't pregnant."

"Are you angry with me?"

"Let's go into the house. Eulinda will make us some tea."

"Who is Eulinda?"

"Her husband is part of the Negro unit we have here. She isn't a slave. She gets paid to help keep my house in order. So she'll be a help to you. How long are you staying?"

"Can Eulinda deliver babies? Are there any women here who can deliver babies?"

"We have doctors," he said.

And then, of a sudden, to show me he was not sorry I came, he lifted me off my feet and carried me into the three-story brick house with the elegant ceiling-to-floor windows and drapes and highly polished wood floors.

He nuzzled his face against mine before setting me down in front of the hearth.

"Eulinda, bring some tea and cakes. This is my wife, Caty," he introduced me.

Her face was young, but her eyes were old and they frightened me. She went out of the room and we heard her shouting some orders, then she came back in.

"Now, why did you make this trip without my permission?" Nathanael asked.

I put my arms around him.

"The baby is due when?" he asked.

"Whenever he chooses to come. He's like his mother."

His voice softened. "What makes you think it's a boy?"

"It is a boy," Eulinda pronounced.

Nathanael hugged me tighter. "Eulinda sometimes knows things," he said. "If only the first one could be. God's stockings, I'd teach him everything I know."

We stood like that, embracing, until a younger version of Eulinda came in with the tea.

"This is her little sister, Patsy," Nathanael said. "She's a treasure. Fetches things that Eulinda won't. Does things, like polishing my boots, that you can't get servants to do anymore."

"That's men's work, Gen'l," Eulinda reminded him. "An' you need a young man around to do such."

"I know," Nathanael said. "Cooper, my last man, went and joined the army. Left me to fend for myself. Patsy, that young man I saw you kissing behind the meat house last night, do you think he'd like a job?"