The Gentle Rebel (12 page)

Julie, in the guise of Laddie, had given much thought to the matter of concealing her sex, but the old plan of merely covering up with loose fitting, bulky clothes would not serve for this new life. Her quick mind had seen at once that she would have to dress like a clerk—but that meant wearing clothing much tighter and therefore more dangerous. All the time she had been choosing the clothing, this had been in her mind, and she had done well. She had, first of all, bound her upper figure tightly with a broad strip of cotton cloth ripped from her old clothes. Then she had donned the white stockings and a pair of buff knee breeches, the universal garment of young men everywhere. A light brown waistcoat, as loose-fitting as she dared, was buttoned up to where a white ruffle rose and covered her slender throat. Over all this she wore a dark brown broadcloth coat with wide double lapels and white ruffles from a shirt extending past the cuffs. A pair of high-topped brown boots covered her slender legs.

What Nathan saw was a thin young man with eyes perhaps too large and features more delicate than most his age, but looking very well in a suit of new clothes. He smiled and slapped his hand on the table. “Stab me!” he cried out with an approving smile, “I think that idiot of a clerk had
some
sense! Clothes
do
make the man, don’t they, Nelson?”

“Why, I could get the lad a post as midshipman on the
Victory
right this day, sir! He’s a proper gentleman, he is!”

“Well, and if he’s good enough for the Royal Navy, why, he ought to be good enough for the Winslow Company,” Nathan grinned. “Eat up, Laddie, then we’ll get you gainfully employed!”

The interview with Laurence Strake took little time. Strake, a tall man with a lean face and sharp black eyes, shoved two papers toward Laddie. “Total up the figures on the one—and write a letter on the other,” he demanded. He sat there and waited, surprise crossing his face when Laddie totaled the figures faster than he himself could have done and got
it right. The letter pleased him even more. “Why, it’s a fair hand you have, Smith! You’ve been well trained.” He nodded to Nathan, adding, “I’m satisfied, but you’ll have to gain Mr. Charles’s approval.”

“No problem there, but we’ll have to go to the house. Come along, Laddie.” They took the carriage and arrived just in time for an early lunch with the family.

“Now don’t be nervous, Laddie. My uncle isn’t a hard man.” The servant admitted them, and he led the boy straight to the dining room. Charles looked up in surprise, as did the others. “Sorry to interrupt your meal,” Nathan said hurriedly, “but when you finish, Uncle, could we have a word with you?”

“What is it, Nathan?” Charles asked, looking curiously at Laddie. “Who’s this with you?”

“This is Laddie Smith, sir—it’s a matter of business, but if you don’t mind . . . ?”

Dorcas was staring at the pair, and she gave a quick frown toward her mother-in-law, then said sharply, “Get on with it, Nathan.”

“Well, it’s just that I remembered you and Mr. Strake spoke of needing a clerk last week, and I’d like to recommend this young man.”

“A clerk?” Charles frowned, then nodded absently. “I believe we did have that in mind.” He looked at Laddie more carefully, then said, “We’d thought of an older man—what’s your age?”

“Oh, I took him by and Mr. Strake gave him a very strict examination,” Nathan spoke up quickly. “He’ll give you the result himself, but I can say he’s ready to employ Smith at once.”

“Well, it’s Strake who’ll have to work with him, so you may consider yourself hired, young fellow.”

“Thank you, Mr. Winslow,” Laddie said breathlessly. “I’ll do my best for you.”

“By the way, Uncle, Laddie here has been a little under the
weather lately, so would it be all right if he started work in a few days—just until he can get his strength up?”

“He looks frail to me, Charles,” Martha said.

“Clerks don’t have to lift anything heavier than a pen, Mother,” Charles said idly. “Yes, that’ll be all right, Nathan. Anything else?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, we haven’t spoken of wages, but if we could find a room here, we could count that as part of his wages.”

Dorcas suddenly straightened up, her interest piqued. “You are competent with figures—and a fair penman?”

“I trust so, ma’am.”

“Charles, Anne is doing very poorly with her studies. I suggest that it might be wise to let Smith have the room over the stable in exchange for lessons for her.”

Always ready to do anything for his daughter, Charles gave Laddie a quick look, then asked, “Would this be acceptable with you, Smith?”

“Why, I’m no teacher, Mr. Winslow, but I’ll give the young lady what pointers I can.”

He put his hand out to Laddie, surprising the boy, and shook his hand warmly. “I’ll have the room put in order at once—and this would be a good place for you to recuperate. Nathan, you’ve done well.”

Anne jumped up and ran around the table, “Mama, can I show Mr. Smith his room, please?”

“All right, and tell Else to have it cleaned up.” Dorcas was tight with money, and it pleased her to think that she had managed to wring a free service out of the young man. “You can begin your tutoring at once, young man. And I’ll expect great improvement in my daughter’s work.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Laddie turned to follow Anne out of the room, but paused to stop and say quietly to Nathan, “I must thank you again, Mr. Winslow.”

After the two had gone, Charles said as he headed for the
door, “Seems a fine chap—but a bit frail, as Dorcas says. Known him long?”

“Oh, not very—but I feel he’ll make you a good clerk.” “You’re very like your father, Nathan—the way you help people, I mean,” Charles said. He paused and looked into his nephew’s face. “I know Adam doesn’t think too much of me, but I must tell you, I’ve long considered him the most honest man I’ve ever known.” He paused; then a cloud crossed his face, and he said with a shrug as he wheeled to leave, “Indeed, perhaps the
only
honest man I’ve ever run across!”

A warm breeze drifted through the small window of Laddie’s room, bringing in the odor of freshly turned earth and the sound of the martins building a nest outside the window. The iron hand of winter had relaxed a few days earlier, and warm spring winds had stirred the land to life.

Laddie looked down at the book before her, reading what she had written. Keeping a journal had never been a thing she cared to do, but in the isolation imposed by her secret, it had come to be a pleasure to be totally honest, even if only in a closely guarded journal. She looked back at the first entry, dated, Feb. 18, 1775, and smiled at the words: “

Here I am, like Jonah out of the whale’s belly!”

She shook her head, thinking
I was pretty dramatic about everything then.
But as she slowly turned the pages, it struck her now that there was something dramatic in her life. It was a role she had to play, and unlike real actors who got off the stage and had a life of their own, she was
never
off stage—except for times like this alone in her room. She had a flair for capturing scenes on paper, and knew that she could write fiction if she turned her hand to it. As she read her own rather breathless accounts—how she had managed to keep up the charade of being a man, how in this case she was almost found out, how in that case she learned another useful trick for adding to the illusion of masculinity—she grew sober, and
looked out the window, musing.
Sooner or later I’ll be found out. A girl can’t get by with pretending to be a man forever.
Then she gave her head a rebellious shake, and read the entry she’d just made:

She slammed the journal shut, slipped it into a cloth cover, put that into a box, and then carefully placed it in the false bottom of a small chest packed with her things.

She failed to understand the anger that raced through her
when she thought of the problem, but it was, she knew, getting more severe. She closed the door, went across the fresh green grass from the carriage house and into the back door. The cook, a fat black woman named House Betty (to distinguish her from Field Betty), looked up, saying, “Dey’s already havin’ brekfust, Mistuh Smith.”

It had been difficult at first, taking meals with the family, but during her first days, while giving Anne lessons, eating with the Winslows had evolved as the simplest way; now the first part of “Laddie’s” work was tutoring the girl after breakfast, then she went into town to the business.

“Laddie, I showed Papa the letter I wrote,” Anne said at once, her face beaming, “and he said it was the best he ever read!”

Charles smiled and nodded. “You’ve done wonders, Laddie—both here with Anne and at the office. I don’t see what we ever did without you.”

“It’s easy to be a good teacher,” Laddie said with a fond glance at Anne, “when you have a willing student.”

Paul spoke up. “Let me say, Laddie, that the best day’s work that Nathan here ever did in the business was to find you.”

Nathan smiled, but there was a restraint in his manner. He was subdued, and Laddie wondered if there had been some sort of problem. She asked no questions, but later in the meal, Charles said with a peculiar look in his eye, “I think I mentioned a while back that someone from our office would have to go to New York very soon to learn that new bookkeeping system from Johnson? Well, it’s got to be now. I want it set up here as soon as possible.”

“Well,
I
can’t go,” said both Paul and Nathan at the same instant, then paused and looked at each other.

“Neither of you want to go?” Charles said in surprise, but there was a gleam in his blue eyes. “Well, that’s too bad.” Everyone at the table, except Anne, knew that the rivalry between the cousins for Abigail had grown so heated that
they stayed awake nights scheming new ways to edge one another out.

The two of them began to bicker, each trying to shove the trip off on the other, and although they were polite enough, it was obvious that they were both determined to be the one left in Boston to court Abigail.

Finally Charles raised his hand for silence. “All right, I’ll have Strake go.” He watched as they settled down, then set off his little bombshell. “But it will be a shame—because he’ll be wasted on Abigail.”

“Abigail?” Paul demanded. “What’s she got to do with a trip to New York?”

“Oh, didn’t I mention that?” Charles tried to look surprised. “Why, she’s gotten Saul and her mother to let her go for some shopping there, so we agreed that since she needed clothes and I needed someone there to learn some business, they might as well make the trip together. But it will be good for Abigail to spend some time in the company of a serious man like Strake, don’t you think so, Nathan?”

Laddie gave a sudden grin at the blank expression on Nathan’s face, but tried to look sorry when he glared balefully at her. “Why, Uncle Charles, I suppose I’ve been selfish about this whole thing.” He put a look on his face that was revoltingly pious, and added smoothly, “I suppose I
could
make that trip.”

Then Paul raised his eyebrows and said defiantly, “I’m going to New York, and that’s that!”

The next fifteen minutes were tense, both young men ready to fight in order to go, but in the end Charles wearied of it. He raised his voice over the strident tones of his son, who was speaking much too loudly, and said, “All right! That’s enough! I knew when this came up, there’d be no way for
one
of you to go—so
both
of you will go—and you’ll have to go along as well, Laddie.” He laughed at the surprise that crossed her face, and said, “You’ll have to do the real work while these two pound each other over the fair lady.”

“Charles, it’s not dignified!” Dorcas said.

“Love hardly ever is,” he said sourly.

“Please, Uncle Charles, I’d like to go along.”

Caleb had said nothing for so long at the table that he was usually forgotten. Now he spoke up clearly, and added, “Will it be all right? Maybe I can learn something, too.”

Charles stared at the young man, then slowly nodded, a strange expression on his face.
He looks so much like Adam!
“Well, it can’t do any harm. You’ll have to take the big carriage to hold all of you, but I have no objections.”

“When do we leave, Father?” Paul asked.

“You’ll pick Abigail up at ten in the morning.” He gave them a sly smile and said, “I told her you’d
both
be going—and that seemed to please her a great deal.”

It would!
Laddie thought angrily.
She’ll have them shooting each other in some fool duel before we get back!
Then she had to try to console Anne, who felt left out. She took one quick look at Caleb, trying to fathom his motives, for it was one of the last things he’d have wanted to do—be away from the Sons of Liberty—but there was nothing on his face but a slight expression of satisfaction.