Читать книгу The Incredible William Bowles - Joseph J. Millard - Страница 5

Chapter 2

When Thomas Bowles returned an hour later, he seemed to have aged ten years. He tramped in heavily, his shoulders sagging, his face drawn and ashen. Will’s mother looked up from her sewing, then sprang to her feet, scattering the baby dresses she was hemming for Mary Neil.

“Thomas, something dreadful has happened. Don’t keep it from me. I’ve a right to know everything.”

“You will, Eleanor.” He sank into a chair and looked at Will, standing wide-eyed and rigid by a window. “You, too, William Augustus, since part of this concerns you.”

Will sat down, too shocked at his father’s appearance to speak. Thomas Bowles was silent for a long moment, gripping the chair arms so fiercely that the cords stood out white and taut on the backs of his hands. When he spoke his voice came thickly.

“Yesterday noon a committee of so-called patriots arrested Peter Sueman, Henry Shell, and five others, including John and Adam Graves, on charges of communicating with the British on Long Island. They’re to be tried for high treason, and I’ve little doubt that by hook or crook, they’ll be found guilty.” He drew a deep, ragged breath. “The usual penalty is hanging.”

Will felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach. These men were friends and neighbors, their children his classmates. His mother’s gasp was almost a sob.

“Oh, no!” she cried. “Why, those men are the very souls of honor. They have given freely of their time and money to aid every worthwhile project in this county. Has everyone gone stark, raving mad?”

“Yes,” Thomas said flatly. “Stark, raving mad. The world has turned upside down. Scoundrels who defy law and reason and foment bloody revolution dare call themselves patriots. We, who remain loyal to king and country and to the English Constitution—the wisest and fairest framework of law ever granted to mankind—are branded and persecuted as traitors.”

He dropped his face into his hands. Eleanor Bowles wrung her hands helplessly, tears running down her cheeks. Will’s eyes blazed with hot anger. He clenched his fists, longing to strike out wildly at this evil that was closing around them.

“That’s not all,” his father said, “nor the worst. The Peabodys have been good friends and good neighbors to the Suemans ever since they came here. Last evening, Ben Peabody did the neighborly thing and went over with his boys to take care of the milking and chores for Mrs. Sueman.”

“Of course,” Will’s mother said. “With no grown sons and her husband in jail, Mary Sueman could never have done it all by herself. It was the decent, neighborly thing to do.”

“Not any more,” his father said harshly. “About midnight, a pack of ruffians calling themselves the Liberty Boys dragged Ben Peabody and his sons from bed and horsewhipped them for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Before they left, they burned Ben’s henhouse to the ground with all his setting hens, more than two hundred of them, trapped inside.”

Will’s mother could only stare in horror. In the silence he heard his own voice croak, “What about Judge Kennerly and the tutoring, Pa?”

“I’m coming to that, William.” His father sounded calmer, but it was the calm of controlled fury. “I knew the judge would be in the coffeehouse so I went directly there. The place was full of idlers and town ruffians, swilling rum and muttering together under their breaths. Except for a polite ‘Good morning,’ which none returned, I ignored them and went straight to Judge Kennerly’s table. He was delighted with my offer and promised to begin the instruction of the boys on Monday morning.”

“Thank heaven,” Will’s mother said, snatching for the one small crumb of comfort. “At least…”

“I’m not finished, Eleanor. We were shaking hands on it when Sib Roebaum, the blacksmith”—he shot a quick glance at Will—“swaggered over, smirking and stinking of rum. He leaned on our table, bold as brass, and looked at the judge with those little pig eyes while he said his say.”

His voice dropped and roughened, mimicking the coarse accents of the blacksmith. “Judge, that’s a mighty nice house you’re livin’ in with your son and his wife. It’d be a pity if it got burned down one of these nights because somebody did somethin’ careless—like teachin’ book-learnin’ to a pack o’ Tory whelps.”

“Thomas, that brute wouldn’t dare speak so to his betters. What did Judge Kennerly say?”

“The judge, Eleanor, is an old man, poor in health and dependent upon the bounty of his children. When I saw the abject fear in his eyes, I had no choice but to tell him that our agreement was off. He almost wept with gratitude. Then our gallant patriot turned his attention to me.

“‘I hear that loose-tongue squirt o’ your’n got his comeuppance today, Bowles,’ he said with a sneer. ‘You kin tell him that’s only the beginnin’. My boy’s a real, true patriot, he is, and he hates Tories wuss’n he hates skunks an’ rattlesnakes.’”

Will was on his feet, his eyes blazing, cheeks crimson with anger. He shook his clenched fists. “I’m not afraid of Garf Roebaum. I’ll find him and pound him to a pulp. I’ll…”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Thomas Bowles interrupted, his voice harsh. “Until this madness has blown over, I absolutely forbid you to go near Frederick Town. If you encounter any of the rebel riffraff on the roads outside, you are to turn aside without speaking. Is that clearly understood?”

“Y-Yes, Pa,” Will muttered in a choked voice.

“Then I suggest you go to your room and read or paint until your temper cools and your reason returns.”

Will stumbled out and up the stairs, his jaw still tautly set and his fists clenched. From the upper hall came the shrill voices of Tom and John, romping with five-year-old Cathy. From the other end he could hear the colored nursemaid crooning softly to the baby.

He turned quickly into his own room. For a while he only wanted to be alone, to fight down his helpless anger and to try to grapple with this abrupt and violent upheaval that was tearing his comfortable, familiar world apart. He considered shutting his door, but that would only stir the younger boys’ curiosity and bring them storming in to see what he was doing.

The room was big and pleasant and bright with the midday sun. Its walls were hung with pictures, large and small, that had been painted by Will. Almost from the time his baby hands were big enough to hold pencil or brush he had been painting or drawing whatever caught his eye. Most of them were crude and amateurish because he had never had an art lesson in his life, yet there was something about each that revealed more than a spark of real talent.

A homemade easel by the window held an oil painting of his brother, Tom. Although still unfinished, the likeness was clear and unmistakable. Sometimes Will thought he would like to be a real artist, painting portraits for a living. The only trouble was, that career seemed too dull. What he really wanted most of all was a life of excitement and adventure in wild, far-off places.

His eyes were drawn irresistibly to the table beside his easel. Spread out beside his palette were real store-bought brushes and tubes of oil paint, the first he had ever owned and his most treasured possessions. His father had brought them from Baltimore only recently as an advance gift for his coming birthday on November 2.

Until that unforgettable day, Will had made all his own art supplies, burning twigs for charcoal and boiling up roots, bark, and berries for colors. His brushes had been clumps of pig bristle glued to sticks. He still made his own frames and stretched the canvas, lacing it with green rawhide that shrunk as it dried, pulling the surface drum-taut.

There was a whooping from the hall and his brothers came charging in, with Cathy riding piggyback on Tom’s shoulders, shrieking, “Giddy-ap, horsey! Giddy-ap!”

“Hey, Will,” John shouted, “why don’t you finish up Tom’s picture today so you can start mine? You promised.”

“Not today, Johnny. I don’t feel like painting today.”

“Paint my pitcher, Will,” Cathy squealed. “I want my pitcher, too.”

“You’re too little yet, Baby. People have to sit real still while their picture’s painted and you squirm around like a sackful of angleworms. I’ll do it when you’re older.”

His father appeared suddenly in the doorway. “You children run along and stop pestering William. He has had a bad time of it this morning and I’m sure he would like to be alone for a while. And before you make any grand plans for next week, I’ll tell you that school will take up as usual on Monday morning—right downstairs. I believe I remember enough from my teaching days to give you your lessons and see that you study them.”

When they had filed out, looking crestfallen, he came in and laid a hand on Will’s shoulder in a gesture of silent sympathy. A lump came into Will’s throat. He had a dismal feeling that some nameless thing had gone out of his life that morning, a warm and good and secure something that would never return.

“Pa,” he said suddenly, “tomorrow being Saturday, I’d like to take my paints and go off somewhere by myself, maybe up to my secret place on High Knob. No one else ever comes up there and I wouldn’t go anywhere near town.”

His father frowned a moment in thought, then nodded. “I see no reason why not, son. A day of quiet and relaxation will do you good. We may not see many more such days for a long time to come. Just remember what I said about avoiding others and doing nothing that could give the patriots an excuse for deeper hostility.”

* * * *

It was nearing noon when Will reached the little rocky glen, high on the mountain’s shoulder, that he called his secret place. Here a spring trickled out of the rocks to form a cold, clear pool whose bottom was carpeted with watercress. On three sides the glen was hemmed in by rocks and woods, but the front was open so that he could look down onto Frederick Town and off across endless miles of Maryland countryside.

He had stumbled into the hidden glen in midsummer and had immediately claimed it for his own private sanctuary. His claim was there before him, carved bold and deep on the smooth, blue-gray trunk of an ancient beech.

WILLIAM AUGUSTUS BOWLES

HIS PLACE

JULY 6, 1776

He leaned his pack and musket against a tree and looked around anxiously. His face cleared when he could find no evidence that anyone else had been there. He threw himself flat to drink from the pool, then plunged an arm in to pluck some tangy, tender watercress to garnish his lunch of cold meat and bread.

When he had eaten he sat down beside the pool with his paints and brushes on the mossy rock beside him, his empty canvas propped against another rock in front. He squeezed careful dabs of scarlet and yellow and umber onto his palette to capture the riot of autumn colors below and began to paint. As the picture began to take shape on the canvas, the weight of trouble lifted from his spirits and the quiet solitude of the glen seeped in to soothe his agitated thoughts.

Completely absorbed in his painting, Will heard no sound, sensed no presence, until directly behind him a rough voice said, “Well, would you look what’s here?”

He spun around, his eyes going wide with unbelieving dismay. A few yards away, at the edge of the glen, stood Garf Roebaum and his crony, Alvin Tomes. Both boys carried muskets and had game bags slung from their shoulders. They stood grinning, enjoying his shock.

“I told you this would be our lucky day, Garf,” Alvin snickered. “We go out to hunt varmints, and what do we stumble on but the worst of ’em all—a yellow Tory skunk.”