The Gentle Rebel (17 page)

“Pitcairn, what
happened
out there?” Charles demanded. “We’ve heard rumors, but they can’t be true!”

“Did you hear that we got shot to pieces?” Pitcairn rasped in anger. “Did you hear we lost over 250 men? Did you hear that some of the King’s finest troops were routed by a bunch of farmers?”

Charles stared at him, dumbfounded, then said quickly, “I’m sorry to bother you, Major, but I’ve had word that my nephew might—”

“Nathan was there,” Pitcairn said wearily. He passed a trembling hand over his face, then groaned, “Oh, my God, what have we done? What have we done?”

“You saw him?”

“He was right in front of our troops, Charles—and his
brother was with him.” He shook his head, whispering, “I pray God they survived!”

Then a voice called out that General Gage was waiting, and he left, saying only, “I can’t tell you anything.”

Charles wandered around a town gone mad, but could find no word of Nathan, so finally he went home. All that day he waited, but there was no word. The family had supper, and once Martha uttered something about “rebels.” Charles snapped instantly, “Mother—shut your mouth or leave my table!” The old woman had stared at him, but he had stared back with an intensity that drove her to silence.

He was walking the floor after midnight when he heard a wagon come across the small bridge, and he threw down his cigar, picked up a lantern and ran outside. He ran to a small wagon that was pulling up in the yard and held the lantern up. He saw the haggard face of Nathan, and then his eyes went to the coffin in the rear, and the words stuck in his throat.

Nathan got down, and Charles saw that Laddie was there, too. There was nothing he could say, so he waited for Nathan to speak.

“I’m taking my brother home—to Virginia.” His voice was dead, and so were his eyes, Charles saw. “I had Murchinson take care of him at the funeral parlor.”

“Why, Nathan—” Charles began, but he was left alone with Laddie. He asked quickly, “What happened, Laddie?”

The dark eyes looked even darker in the yellow light of the lantern. “Caleb was killed at Lexington.” And then she, too, walked away into the house.

Charles did not know what to do, so he stood there in the darkness. But fear touched him, and he retreated quickly inside. He paced the floor, and in a few minutes Nathan came down the stair with a bag. He stared at Charles, then said, “Goodbye.”

Charles followed him out to the wagon, trying to reason with him, but it was useless. Nathan pulled himself up into
the seat, and turned the team around, but a voice cried out, “Wait, Nathan!”

He pulled the team up, and Laddie, carrying an awkward bundle, pulled herself up into the wagon, sat down and looked full into Nathan’s eyes. “I’m going with you to take him home. He was my friend.”

Nathan looked at her, and for the first time since the shot had killed his brother, the emptiness that had filled him seemed somehow bearable. Laddie’s eyes were huge in the darkness, but there was a stubborn set to the wide lips, so he nodded.

“All right, Laddie. Let’s take Caleb home.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“HE’S A MIGHTY FEARSOME MAN!”

Spring washed over Virginia in a way that Laddie had never seen in New England, and after Caleb’s funeral it became her habit to spend the cobwebby mornings roaming the open country that lay just over the ridge of Westfield. The columbines and wild violets perfumed the cool paths that wound in aisles beneath the gnarled oaks, and the cold spring-fed brooks, plump with sun perch, were shrill with the cries of peepers in the late afternoons.

Adam Winslow had brought Laddie to one of those swift streams that flung up fingers of white where the smooth green water struck an outcropping of rock. There was an abrupt elbow in the stream where the waters had gouged out a deep still pool under a huge white oak, and he had smiled at her, saying, “There’s so many hungry fish in that pool, Laddie, you’ll have to get behind that oak tree to bait your hook!”

Laddie thought of that moment as she sat with her back against the scaly trunk of the tree, and paused before putting a grasshopper on her hook, thinking as she often did of Nathan’s father.
That was just three days after Caleb’s funeral,
she thought, and the memory of that stark moment when the plain pine coffin bearing the body of Caleb had been lowered into the red Virginia clay came back vividly.
Adam Winslow was suffering himself—but he saw how out of place and miserable I felt.

The grasshopper she held between thumb and forefinger kicked his powerful hind legs, then registered its protest by spitting what looked like tobacco juice on her thumb. Ignoring this, she placed the point of the tiny hook just inside the hard collar forming the neck and threaded the struggling insect through the soft parts of the body. She took the limber cane pole, lifted it and dropped the bait into the green waters. One tiny round lead bullet was fixed a foot above the bait, which pulled him below the surface in a slow and natural way.

Mr. Winslow showed me that, too.
As the thin line drifted down the stream close to a clump of willows, the scene from that time came to her.

“See—you just slip the hook in like this,” Adam had said, and she had watched carefully as his thick fingers handled the delicate hook and the tiny grasshopper deftly. She had seen him pound a thick bar of white-hot steel at his forge with a fifteen-pound hammer, and his dexterity amazed her.

“Doesn’t it hurt them, Mr. Winslow?” she had asked shyly. She had been uncomfortable in the presence of Nathan’s parents since they had arrived. Nathan had been so stricken he had only mentioned that Laddie had been a friend of Caleb’s; it had been Molly Winslow who had arranged a place for her to sleep and seen to her meals.

“Got no idea, son,” Adam had answered, and he had suddenly paused to look at the struggling insect. He lifted his eyes and looked very much like his dead son at that moment, to Laddie at least, and then he had said very quietly, “Guess we don’t ever know how much another creature is hurting, do we?”

“No, sir,” she replied, then added, “But I’ve been wanting to tell you ever since I came how I grieve for you.”

Adam Winslow was not a man that hung his emotions out for all to see, but Laddie saw his guard drop, and the pain in his dark eyes was so stark that she had dropped her gaze, unable to endure it.

She sat there watching the line arch into the swift water. As
her grip tightened on the pole, she remembered how at that moment, he had gently let his thick hand rest on her shoulder, and he had said, “Molly and I—we appreciate your coming, Laddie. It means a lot to know that Caleb had a good friend who’d come all this way to see him home.”

Suddenly the line snapped taut, and she cried out, “Gotcha!” The lithe pole bent nearly double, and the line sliced wildly through the water as the fish tried to make it to the roots where it could shake off the hook. But she had too much skill. Slowly she played it, until finally she led it exhausted to the smooth bank. Carefully she reached into the water, slipped her hand inside its gaping gill, then lifted it out. “Oh, what a beauty!”

She admired the brilliant colors of the sun perch—deep blue, with green and red scales that glittered in the sunlight. “Must weigh a pound, at least,” she said happily, then with a deft motion removed the hook before adding it to a string of at least fifteen others about the same size.

Plenty for all of us,
she nodded; quickly she untied the stringer and tossed the few remaining grasshoppers into the stream. As they disappeared, snapped up by hungry fish, she picked up her Bible, stuffed it into a small canvas sack with the remains of a lunch, then quickly made her way up the creek. Twenty minutes later she was walking into the backyard of the Winslow house, and seeing Nathan’s parents standing outside the forge, she held the stringer up with a whoop.

“Looks like Laddie fished the creek out again, Molly,” Adam said, and a smile touched his broad lips. “Reminds me of how much Caleb liked to fish in that spot.”

“Yes. He did.”

Adam glanced quickly at Molly, and the look in her eyes made him move to her side and put his arm around her. “Sorry. I don’t mean to keep mentioning him.”

“No, that’s as it should be,” she said, and though her eyes half-filled with tears, she nodded and forced a smile. Patting his hand, she said, “He’s still our son, even though he’s
with the Lord Jesus now. I won’t let grief destroy my son for me—the way I’ve seen some do.” She dashed the tears from her eyes, and two elements of her Scottish blood—the quiet beauty and the rock-ribbed faith—were very real to Adam as he stepped back, an approving light filling his eyes.

Passing through the gate, Laddie caught a glimpse of this fragment of drama, and felt as though she were intruding. She hesitated, but Adam moved toward her, saying, “That’s a good mess of fish.” He took them from her, admired them, then said, “Molly, Laddie and I will clean these if you’ll cook them for us.”

“Fish would be good,” Molly smiled, then added, “Maybe Nathan will be back in time to eat supper with us.” She turned and disappeared into the house.

“I’ll clean the fish, Mr. Winslow,” Laddie said quickly.

“All right.” He walked alongside her toward the side of the forge, and as she stripped the fish from the stringer and put them on a rough slab nailed to a stump, he sat down, saying, “I always did like to watch another man work.”

She looked nervously at him, for his dark eyes were so sharp that at times she was sure he would see through her masquerade, but there was no guile in his broad face. Unsheathing her knife, she began cleaning the fish—a job which she’d hated at first, but Adam had taught her how to do it easily. Holding the fish with one hand, she raked the scales off with a few quick strokes of the blunt side of the knife. Putting the knife down, she took the head, broke the backbone with a twist, then pulled head and entrails free with a quick jerk.

“You learn quick, Laddie,” Adam remarked as she tossed the cleaned fish down and reached for another. “Can’t believe a young fellow like you never cleaned a fish.” He looked idly across the fields, then asked, “Where’d you say you were raised?”

“Philadelphia—” Laddie said, then realized with dismay that she’d given away too much. “Well—not really Philadelphia. We just lived there a little while, and then . . .” She
invented a likely history for a young man, complete with parents dying conveniently early, and embroidered the tale with hard times and struggles to stay alive.

“Nathan tells me you’re a good hand with books and figures.”

“Oh—I learned a little here and there, Mr. Winslow—not so much as Nathan thinks.”

He shifted, looked across the fields again, and as she cleaned the fish, she noticed that there was something restive in his manner. Finally he said quietly, “Nathan’s unhappy.”

“Well, yes, sir—but that’s natural.”

“No, it’s not.” Adam bit his lip, then shook his head, saying, “He’s got something eating him up inside, Laddie—and it’s not just his brother’s death—though that’s part of it.” He sat there thinking; then suddenly he asked, “What is it, Laddie? What’s wrong with him?”

“Why—” Laddie put the last fish on the stack, then picked up a rag and began to wipe her hands. “I’ve only known him for a few weeks,” she said hesitantly.

“He won’t talk to me—or to his mother,” Adam said, and it was not a plea, just a statement of fact. “But it’s plain that something happened in Boston.”

“I—I can tell you a little, Mr. Winslow. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I hate to see your family split.” She bit her lip, then said, “Nathan’s been seeing a young woman, Abigail Howland. I think he’s in love with her.”

“My brother Charles mentioned that in a letter.”

“Did he tell you that Paul and Nathan have been fighting over her for weeks?”

“No.”

“Well, they have. And the thing is—her people are Tory, and Nathan knows how you and Mrs. Winslow feel about such things.”

“We don’t agree, for a fact,” Adam said painfully. He got up and said, “I guess Nathan’s at Caleb’s grave again. He
goes there every day about this time. Somehow, it don’t seem right, Laddie, for him to be grieving so hard over his brother.”

“Don’t you see, Mr. Winslow? He feels guilty. He thinks he should have gotten Caleb out of Boston before—”

She didn’t finish, but he nodded. “He thinks I blame him, Laddie—but he’s wrong on that. Caleb was only a boy, but he had a strong will. I doubt if I could have made him leave myself.”

Laddie hesitated, then said, “Why don’t you say that to him, sir? I think he needs to hear it.”

“You think that?” Adam let the thought run through him, then said, “Thanks, Laddie.” He turned and left the yard, walking in the direction of the village’s small cemetery.

Laddie gathered up the fish and took them into the kitchen where Molly was rolling out a pie crust. Looking up, she asked, “Got them cleaned already, Laddie? Put them in that pot. Where’s Adam?”

“He—went to get Nathan.”

The hesitation in her voice caused Molly to look up quickly, and she studied Laddie’s face carefully. “Oh?” she said finally. Then she looked down, saying quietly, “I hope Nathan will come to himself.”