Читать книгу Rabble in Arms: A Chronicle of Arundel and the Burgoyne Invasion - Kenneth Roberts - Страница 9

Table of Contents

By six o’clock the following morning our new belongings were laid out on the front steps in the brilliant sunlight, so we could see what we had and what we lacked.

Early as the hour was, our unnoticeable, quiet guest, Mr. Leonard, had departed, saying no more than that he had a mind to see something of the country, and might not soon return, and that if he did not return, he would write to us; but the truth is that as Nathaniel and I looked over what Nason had called our requirements, we had already forgotten the existence of this shadowy companion of ours.

My mother and sisters sat on the iron benches beside the door, sewing at our tow-cloth smocks, and between thrusts of their needles doubtfully eyeing our piles of clothes. My father stood by the front gate, whisking flies from our bay mare Bessie with a willow shoot; while Zelph and Pristine, our two negro servants, bobbed in and out of the house and kept up a meaningless conversation as if to ease the silence that hung about us.

I call them servants; but in reality they were slaves, Zelph having been bought in Wells for fifty-three dollars to keep me from falling in the river when I was young, and Pristine having been bought for forty dollars to help my sisters around the house and make a wife for Zelph.

Even they were silent at last, and in the stillness the singing of the bobolinks, as they sank fluttering on to the flat land at the bend of the river, seemed almost to pierce our ears with a metallic shrillness.

When I looked up at the two negroes, standing together on the top step, I saw they were staring down the road that curves at our front gate, and stretches straight away toward the ocean.

I turned to look. At the crest of the rise in the road, where it cuts through the tall pines that have sprung up in this section since the Indian troubles ended, I saw a straggling knot of people, men and women, with Steven Nason striding along at their head. The men had muskets over their shoulders.

“Hurry up,” I told my mother. “Here they come.” I gathered my belongings in a pile, so to stuff them into my blanket and knapsack.

“Put all of it in the chaise,” my mother said. “We’ll take it as far as Wells for you.”

“No,” I said. “We’ve got to carry it. I want people to see us carrying it.”

My mother nodded and smiled brightly: then bent her head over the smock as though she found trouble in seeing where to thrust her needle.

“Let Pristine finish that,” I urged her.

“No,” she said. “No! I want to do it myself!”

The little company came up to our front gate with a gabbling of voices and a clatter of accoutrements. I recognised Thomas Bickford, who had gone to school with Nathaniel and was regarded as a paragon by all the mothers in Arundel, because he was tall and handsome and polite beyond all reason, even to persons his own age, and so should have been hated by all young men, but was not. He had wished to go to Harvard College with my brother, so that he could be a minister; but his oldest brother Eliakim would not hear of it, and made him go to sea instead. Also I recognised Thomas Dorman, a cousin of Tom Bickford; and Paul Durrell, whose father and mother had been captured by Indians when they were young. The others I did not recognise; but all of them had womenfolk with them—sisters, they may have been, or cousins, with a mother or two thrown in for good measure—in addition to a sprinkling of fathers and small brothers.

Nason opened the gate and came into the yard. His wife was with him, carrying his canteen and powder horn over her arm and clinging to him by a finger hooked through one of the loops of his belt. She was a thin, dark girl, no bigger than a ten-year-old boy. She wore sea-boots and breeches, like a man, and a blue handkerchief bound around her head in place of a hat, with almost nothing to show she was a woman except the smallness of her waist and a string of glittering brownish beads around her throat. Yet I knew that for all her size, she was a seaman and a good one, able to navigate better than most masters who sail out of our river.

“Almost ready?” Nason asked.

His wife smiled at my mother and sisters and came to look at our piles of clothes. “They’ve got too much, Steven,” she said at once.

“Weed it out,” he told her.

She went down on her knees on the bottom step, and reached among our clothes with both hands, tossing a shower of stockings, shirts and other odds and ends into the front hall between Zelph and Pristine.

“They’ll need those things, Phœbe!” my mother protested.

“You’d be surprised what you don’t need if you haven’t got it,” Phœbe said.

“But there’s others might need ’em,” my father ventured.

“That’s right,” Phœbe agreed cheerfully, “only it’s better to be able to carry what you’ve got than to throw away what you need because you’ve made yourself sick trying to lug what you don’t need.”

Nason cast a sharp eye over the piles that Phœbe had left untouched. “Roll ’em up and come ahead.”

“Can’t we put all those things in the chaise for a few miles?” my mother asked.

“Of course,” Nason said. “Throw ’em in.”

I took my smock from my mother and struggled into it; then strapped on my knapsack and blanket. “I’ve got to carry ’em,” I said again. “I don’t want any misunderstanding in this town about where we’re going.” I gave Nathaniel his tow-cloth garment and helped him with the rest of his things.

“Get in the chaise,” I told my mother. “We can’t keep these men waiting.”

My mother looked at Phœbe. “You’d like to ride with us, wouldn’t you?”

Phœbe shook her head. “The time’s too short. I guess I’ll walk.”

“It’s too short!” my mother cried a little wildly. “It’s too short! I won’t ride! I’m going to walk with the boys.”

“It’s seven miles by the road,” my father said. “You’ll tucker yourself.”

“I’m going to walk!” my mother repeated. “Jane, get my shawl!”

We followed Nason out of the gate. My father began to shout for Zelph. “Zelph! Come here and take Bessie! I’m going to walk, too!”

We left him shouting. The little crowd disentangled itself from before our gate and straggled around the bend in the road. My mother walked between Nathaniel and me. My father, overtaking us, plodded silently at my right. My sister Jane had Nathaniel by the arm, and skipped a little as she walked beside him. Judith and Susanah attached themselves to Tom Bickford, staring over their shoulders at us so that we perpetually dodged their lagging heels.

As we went through the village, we were as far removed in appearance from anything martial as a lot of Spanish fisherwomen plodding up a beach. I looked at Nathaniel and caught him eyeing me sidewise, a bitter smile on his flushed, perspiring face. Something told me he was thinking, as was I, of the British regiments we had seen parading before the King in St. James’s Park, drums beating and bands playing, flags waving above them, and the sun glittering on the regular ranks of bayonets and on the brass buttons that flashed like sparks against their red coats.

A few people came out of the stores and the sawmill to watch us go by, but none of them did anything, barring Sammy Hill, the village idiot, who pointed at us and made uncouth sounds: then pretended to shoot himself and fell down in simulated death throes.

We crossed the river and mounted the hill beyond. As we trudged off to the southward through the thick pine forest, a meditative silence settled on most of us—a silence that may have been caused by a sudden blank foreboding of what lay before us.

My unaccustomed knapsack and the truck with which I was hung weighed heavily on me; and the others, I suspected, were in no better case, for there began to be complaints among them concerning their dryness: hoarse suggestions as to the quality of toddy to be had at Pike’s Tavern and the large size of the beer mugs at Storer’s Tavern.

Nason turned and eyed them coldly. “There’ll be no lally-gagging for liquor till we reach Littlefield’s Ordinary,” he announced. “The sooner you get there, the sooner you’ll get it, and the sooner we’ll get started on the road to St. John’s.”

In the moment the last words fell from his lips I had a picture in my mind of how Marie de Sabrevois had stood with Nathaniel before our London lodgings, her little hand resting on his sleeve and her blue eyes raised to his, telling him that some day she might be in St. John’s. I looked over at him quickly: caught his furtive glance across my mother’s head; and then I remembered another thing. It was immediately after Cap Huff had spoken of going to Canada by way of Winooski River and St. John’s that Nathaniel had agreed to go to the war with me. I cursed myself for a fool to have such thoughts—such petty and ungenerous thoughts; but in spite of all my cursing, they buzzed within my brain like the flies that followed us to light again and again and yet again on nose or cheek or neck.

The post-rider came up behind us, clopping westward for Portsmouth, his saddlebags and elbows a-flop as though he aimed in time to rise and fly. He made what he conceived to be an Indian whooping, howling dolefully and breaking the howls by slapping his hands briskly against his open mouth. “Ice was late going out of the lakes,” he shouted to us. “Six regiments got through to St. John’s a week ago!”

He flopped forward, leaving me agape at his mention of St. John’s at the very moment when the name of that distant town had come to fill my wandering mind with odd fancies about my brother.

When we passed the first log huts of Wells, the talkativeness came back to the women who walked beside us. My sisters gabbled to Tom Bickford. My mother reminded us of this and that: to air our blankets, lest the moisture cling in them and chill us into sleeplessness at night: to keep our feet dry: to read the Bible regularly and give thanks to Providence for all blessings; to drop wild cherries in our canteens against the flux.

She was interrupted by a suppressed exclamation from my father, who stared unbelievingly over his shoulder. When we turned to look, we saw our bay mare Bessie drawing close. From the chaise peered the anxious black face of Zelph, our negro servant. He wore an ancient suit of badly tanned mooseskin, fuzzy and brownish, so that he had the look of a small brown bear with a bad case of the mange. What was more remarkable than his garb, however, was the fact that beside him lay a pack and musket.

My father spoke to him sharply. “Zelph, where you think you’re going, and where’d you get that musket?”

“Cap’n Asa, sir,” Zelph said, “that musket was gim to me by Cap’n Steven Nason’s friend, Cap’n Huff. I’m goin’ to war, along with Cap’n Peter.” The mare Bessie breathed heavily, sniffing at my father’s shoulder and wrinkling her upper lip pleasurably.

My father dropped back to walk beside Zelph. “Zelph,” I heard him say, “I don’t believe you’re cut out for a soldier. It appears to me you’d do better to stay right in Arundel where you can take care of Pristine and the girls—and where we can take care of you.” He shook his head sadly. “Nobody’ll ever know, Zelph, how hard it is to make you work!”

“Cap’n Asa,” Zelph said, leaning forward in his seat to speak confidentially, “Cap’n Huff said that was the nice thing about a war: there ain’t any regular work to do—only wear a uniform and walk around a lot, and camp out. Cap’n Huff, he said I’d make a real good soldier. He said I was twice as good a soldier, right now, as any of them York troops that went to Quebec.”

Steven Nason, hearing the talking, had come back to investigate; and at these words of Zelph’s, he spoke to him even more sharply than had my father. “Did Cap Huff ask you to join the army?”

Zelph made a dignified reply. “Cap’n Nason, Cap’n Huff never said a word to me, only come along after you set out, an ast was there anything to eat in the house. I brung him a punkin pie, Cap’n Nason, an he et it all.” Zelph made two turkey-like motions with his head to give us an idea of the rapidity with which Cap had demolished the pie. “Nen he ast who made that pie, an I said I made it.”

“Then what?” Nason asked.

“Nen he breathed sort of loud and kind,” Zelph said, “so’s I told him about being scairt somebody’d think I was an Englishman, an I ast him how much a man had to pay to get into the army.”

“You were scared of being taken for an Englishman!” Nason exclaimed. He stared from Zelph to my father and back again.

Zelph nodded. “I was listenin yesdy,” he told Nason frankly. “I was listenin outside the winder when you was in the house talkin. I wouldn’t choose to be mistooken for a Englishman, Cap’n Nason, nor for a Tory, on account of how they’re hated around here.” To my father he added, “I wouldn’t be no good around here no more, Cap’n Asa, not till the war’s over, on account of never knowin when I might be mistooken for an Englishman. Meks my hand tremmle, jest thinkin bout it, Cap’n Asa, so’s I’d drop dishes—bus’ ’em all over the place! In the army, they won’t be no dishes to drop.”

My father and Nason eyed Zelph distrustfully; but it was Nason’s wife, Phœbe, who settled the matter. She had come back to walk with her husband, and now she nudged him sharply with her shoulder. “Steven,” she said, “don’t fly in the face of Providence! This boy knows how to make rabbit stew and fish chowder! There’ll be times when a good fish chowder’ll be more help to you than all the powder and generals and sharpshooters in the world.” She laughed and added, “When anybody thinks war consists of a lot of nice walks, it’s high time he completed his education.”

Nason stared hard at Zelph and nodded grimly; so Zelph, grinning happily at the vacation in store for him, slapped Bessie on the rump with the ends of the reins and clumped past our little column to escape the crowds of townsfolk who stood at the Wells crossroads, watching our approach.

In spite of the poverty of the town and its people, the place had a gala air, for two red blankets hung from upstairs windows of Littlefield’s Ordinary; and farmers, flushed and noisy with rum, stood in the doorway, shouting encouragements at the militia company drawn up across the road.

Some of the militiamen wore no shoes; but they might have looked worse; for all of them had muskets, and they wore red handkerchiefs around their necks to provide a flavour of uniformity. Also there was a man thumping on a drum, and a number of women and children and old men standing around with food on bark trays and in milk pails; and in front of the crowd was a barrel of beer on a wooden horse.

Sitting on the steps of the Ordinary was Doc Means, fumbling helplessly with a number of clumsy parcels, each one thrust into the leg of a woollen stocking for protection. He was tucking the bundles into his brown smock, only to remove them and tuck them in elsewhere, as if hopeful of so disposing them that they would interfere neither with his comfort nor his appearance. The odour of his asafœtida bag was powerful—so powerful that it rose piercingly above the scent of dust and crushed grass and unwashed bodies and stale beer from the inside of the tavern.

While we stacked our muskets and packs and made free with the beer, Nason had a word to say to Doc Means. “Doc,” he said, “we’ve got a long trip ahead of us. You’ll never make it with any such load as you’ve got there.”

Doc Means’s blue eyes were meek. “Those things might come in pretty handy,” he said mildly. “They don’t weigh as much as one goose, and I’d hate to say how far I could carry a goose, if I wanted to use it when I got where I was going.”

“Maybe,” Nason said, “we could divide ’em up, if you’re set on taking ’em.”

“No,” Doc Means said faintly. “No. I couldn’t spare none of ’em. When you want one of ’em, you’re like to want it quick.” Baffled, he removed the bundles from his smock; and to watch him was like watching a magician remove from a hat more things than the hat could possibly hold. Plaintively he added, “If only they was as soft as a goose—even as soft as a frozen goose—I wouldn’t have no trouble.”

Phœbe Nason sat on the step beside him, looking, with her tightly-bound head and her sea-boots, like a sympathetic boy. She reached for Doc’s parcels and piled them beside her on the step. “What are they, Doc?” she asked. “Asafœtida bags?”

Doc’s glance wandered over the shouting, milling crowd in front of the ordinary; then returned to rest on the brown beads at Phœbe’s throat. He shook his head. “I don’t recommend asafœtida bags,” he said gently. “The reason I wear one myself is because it gives me more room in case I get in a crowd. Crowds ain’t good for my rest, and rest is the most important thing you can get. People don’t bother you if you wear an asafœtida bag—not unless they’re real used to you.”

Phœbe nodded thoughtfully. “I didn’t know, from the smell around here, but what you were trying to carry enough asafœtida bags for the whole army. What is it you’ve got in these bundles?”

Doc pawed weakly at them. “Medical supplies,” he said. “Medical supplies and my medical liberry. This here’s my Culpeper’s Herbal. It tells you how to make medicine out of any kind of plants or leaves. This here’s my book by Tryon, that tells you how to cure yourself by not eating nothing. This here’s my Almanac. It tells you what’s the most favourable time to do things and take things. This here’s my Venesection Mannekin and my trigger-lancet, and my hazel wand for finding minerals and water. And this here’s my Digby’s Sympathetic Powder.”

Phœbe picked up the bundle that held the Almanac; stared at it, back and front; then eyed Doc Means doubtfully. “What does your Almanac say about to-day?”

Doc took it from her and dropped it carefully into his smock. “To-day?” he asked gently. “It says to-day is the most favourable day there is for embarking on any enterprise.”

Phœbe fingered her brown beads and squinted at the sky through one of them. Then she pounced on another bundle and had it out of its protective stocking before Doc Means could prevent her. “Digby’s Sympathetic Powder!” she said. “I never heard of it. What’s it for?”

Doc would have taken back the bundle, but Phœbe moved it beyond his reach and unknotted the string that bound it. “What’s it for?” she repeated.

Doc sighed. “It’s the greatest remedy there is. It’s good for everything. There ain’t anything, hardly, that it won’t cure. It’s so powerful that if you got stuck with a bayonet, I could cure you by rubbing the bayonet with Digby’s Sympathetic Powder.”

“Did you say you could do it by rubbing the bayonet?” Phœbe asked.

Doc nodded, and the watery blue eyes that he raised to Phœbe’s were as innocent and helpless as those of a new-born babe surfeited with milk.

Phœbe had the bundle open by now. Nason and I, peering over her shoulder, saw it held a yellowish powder. Before Doc could stop her, she placed a pinch of it on her tongue. While she tasted it, she stared pensively at Doc; and Doc’s eye again roamed over the noisy throng that pressed around the beer barrel.

Strangely, then, Phœbe laughed. “Here!” she said. “I’ll show you what to do!” She replaced the Digby’s Sympathetic Powder in its wrappings, took the Almanac from Doc’s smock, and neatly knotted together the stocking that held the two. Then she pushed one of the bundles under the belt of his smock, so that the two of them hung snugly against his back, a little below the level of his belt. “There!” she said. “Do the same with the other two, and you’ll find ’em no harder to carry than that goose you spoke of.”

Doc rose waveringly to his feet to paw delightedly behind him. Phœbe went to Nason and hooked her finger in his belt. “Well, Steven,” she said, “the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll get back.” Together they went to the man with the drum, who had drunk so much beer that he had trouble finding his drumsticks.

The drum rolled twice in such a way that a thickness came into my upper chest—a thickness like wool, that seemed to keep the air from passing into me. The crowd fell silent, except for a drunken man inside the ordinary, who kept bawling that even though a lobster pot should be coopered around his head and shoulders, he could whip King George without half trying; and the faces around me grew vacant, as is the habit of New Englanders when their feelings are in danger of becoming noticeable.

“Get your packs on,” Nason said. His voice had a flat sound, as if he spoke from the depths of a heavy fog. I saw him press Phœbe’s shoulder, and heard him clear his throat. “We’ll go alone from here,” he added. “No stragglers—neither women nor boys. We’ve got to go fast—and alone.”

My father helped me with my blanket-cord, and I saw my mother go around behind Nathaniel and fumble with the straps of his knapsack, but to no good purpose, since tears filled her eyes and splattered on her dress. The militia company lined up raggedly and presented arms.

“Come along,” Nason said.

My feet seemed turned to rock; I could do nothing but stare at my mother: see nothing but the slender streaks of moisture her tears had left on her gray dress. Doc Means wavered past me, looking as though half the town of Wells were fastened to his aged back. My father’s words came out loud above the sudden gabbling of the crowd: “—no worse than a voyage to Cadiz, and not near as long.”

A moment later, without knowing what had happened, or how, I had my hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder and we were going rapidly around the first bend in the narrow mountain road, headed north.