Sarah Bishop (4 page)

I was unable to move or think. I stood there staring at the flames and screaming at Birdsall. I have no idea what I said. Then I ran past him, thinking to lead the cows out of the milking shed. I had taken no more than a dozen steps when the old mare staggered out of the barn. Her throat had been cut and she fell sprawling at my feet.

Someone seized me from behind. Others bound my arms and legs. They pulled me off, away from the barn and the house, which was now also burning. They tied me to the trunk of a tree and left. One of them was Quarme.

The house and barn and the cow shed and the pigsty were now one mass of sparks and leaping flames. I heard strange sounds, men yelling at each other and laughter. When the moon came up I worked myself free from the tree.

I heard a wagon drive away. I heard horsemen galloping off up the hill. I kept moving through the grass toward our house, which was now only smoldering. I called out with all the strength I had left.

A figure came toward me out of the leaping shadows, through the trees, across the meadow. It was like a figure you set up in the field to scare away crows. But it was not such a figure. It was my father, with his arms stretched out toward me. He was covered with tar and feathers. They looked like the same feathers that I had used to make our sleeping pillows.

A
FEW PEOPLE
had come to see the fire burn our house and all the outbuildings. Most of them just stood around and watched, fearful of Birdsall and his gang. Only Mrs. Jessop helped us.

She was a widow woman who lived down the road, two miles away. She came toward the last with her two strapping sons, after Birdsall had gone, and they lifted Father into their wagon. She was known as a neutral, not caring much whether the patriots won or those who
were loyal to the King, so she was willing to take us in. Besides, she was a Christian woman.

As we drove into the Jessops', there was only a faint glow against the sky to mark where the house had been. A wind had come up. It smelled of bitter smoke. The boys carried Father inside and laid him on the floor in front of the fireplace.

His hair hung down in dirty black strings. His nose and ears were stopped by great smears of tar. Birdsall's mob had stripped him down to his small clothes and tarred all his body, even daubed tar between his toes. Then they had strewn feathers so thick that he looked like some monstrous fowl that had come from the devil's hen coop.

Mrs. Jessop sent the boys into the cellar for a barrel of lard, which we rubbed into the tar. We used up the barrel, half of another barrel, and three big sheets, rubbing, rubbing, before Father's body began to appear. Through it all he was silent.

By the time dawn came and the sky clouded up, he was breathing only in gasps. One of the boys had gone off on horseback to fetch Mr. Laurence, the apothecary, but when he arrived, hours afterward, Father was dead.

He was buried two days later in the cemetery at Mott's Corner and I returned to the Jessops'.

A week later by myself I went back to the farm. The little shed where Father had kept his tools had not
burned for some reason, but the rest—the house and barn and milking shed and sty—were all in ashes. The old horse, the pigs, the two cows, and the chickens were gray and shapeless lumps.

I didn't stay long. Nor did I try to find the silverware Father had hidden. Wherever it was, it most likely was melted down, but I didn't have the strength or the will to look.

I stayed with kind Mrs. Jessop for another week. Then I decided to go to the Lion and Lamb, where Chad had helped out in the kitchen before he enlisted, and ask for work. It was two miles west of the Jessop place, near the East River. The boys got out the wagon to give me a lift along the road and Mrs. Jessop packed me something to eat. She also gave me a Bible.

"I have three of the Holy Book," she said. "One for me and two for the boys. You take mine. You'll need it now that you'll be alone."

She got out her Bible and pressed it on me, saying, "I find the Twenty-seventh Psalm, verse five, of comfort at times like these. 'For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock.'"

I thanked her for the Bible and the food, and climbed up in the wagon beside the two boys. The day was hot with restless rain clouds moving around. We went slowly up the road toward the Lion and Lamb. All the clothes I owned were on my back.

T
HE TAVERN WAS
owned by Mr. and Mrs. Pennywell. It sat upon a hill that overlooked the estuary that opened into the East River. It was a big white building trimmed in green and had two stories with six dormer windows. There was a wooden gold sign hanging over the door that showed a lion and a lamb lying down together under a spreading oak tree.

Mr. Pennywell had long hair and mean little eyes that were set too close together, but as things turned out he wasn't mean at all. When I told him that I was Chad Bishop's sister, he gave me a job in the kitchen right off, saying that he needed help, bad, that Chad was a fine boy, that he was sorry to hear about the farm and my father's death.

"All of the girls I've had in the last month," he said, "since the militia moved into the fort up on Brooklyn Heights, only thought about one thing, soldiers. A seedy-looking lot they are, too. No uniforms. Most without muskets. Just farm boys."

He gave me a good breakfast before I started to work—eggs and ham and corncakes. Mrs. Pennywell cooked it. She had a pretty face; at least, it must have been pretty
before she got fat and her nose sort of melted into pink and white folds.

"Eat up," she kept urging me when I slowed down. "You look peaked. Don't blame you. Can you bake bread? The militia boys come down here half-starved, and baked bread hits the spot. You should be able to bake real good. Cooking for your family as you've done. For two years now, isn't it?"

"I can bake," I told her.

"What do you need?"

"Indian maize, rye flour, and white flour."

"Have them all, fresh from the mill."

She bustled off and came back with three sacks. There was no special way I had to make bread, besides the equal parts of rye and cornmeal and white flour. Also you can use water, but milk is much better if you have it. Then you add salt aplenty and a gill of yeast to the quart of milk or water. Like all other bread, it should not be made so thick that you can't stir it well with your hand. I made two dozen big loaves, all the two ovens would take. They turned out well, golden-brown and bursting.

The militia boys ate the two dozen loaves in a hurry. They came trooping in from the fort late in the afternoon. There were about thirty of them. I looked for Chad and inquired, but none of the soldiers knew him. One of the boys from a village near Hempstead said that he would ask at the fort and let me know. I needed work,
for I had no money, but the real reason I was here at the tavern was to find out about my brother. I could think of little else.

We were standing at the kitchen window, a big one with a dozen small panes, one of them broken and papered over.

"A bird tried to fly in. Poor thing; thought it was flying through air," Mrs. Pennywell said. "The world is full of surprises, my dear, things that seem what they ain't. We have new glass ordered, but the way things are now, there's no telling when we'll get it."

The militia officers I heard before I saw them come riding out of the dusk. The hoofs of their horses struck fire on the stone. They shouted as they galloped up to the inn. The sounds were the same ones I had heard on the night that Birdsall and his mob came to destroy our farm. Suddenly I felt pale and fearful.

"Don't mind the clatter," Mr. Pennywell said. "They're just trying to keep their spirits up."

He pointed down the hill at a stretch of water I had not noticed before. It was swarming with tall-masted ships.

"Admiral Richard Howe sailed in this morning early," he said. "There must be a hundred ships out there, lying snug up to Staten. Twice that many boats. You can see them scurrying about between the ships and the shore. They're landing soldiers, British soldiers. You can see tents going up on the island. If you look close, you will
see a hundred flags flying. That's why the rebels shout and wave their hats. They're scared but don't want anyone to know how scared they are."

I set another batch of bread to rise and carried trays into the dining room. Before I went in, Mr. Pennywell cautioned me to keep my opinions about the war entirely to myself.

"Today," he said, "we are in the hands of the rebels, who sit up there on Brooklyn Heights. Tomorrow, it may be different. We may be in the hands of the British and the fort may be full of British soldiers. Also, there is usually a spy or two loitering around, on one side or the other, with ears cocked. Remember, the Lion and Lamb is neutral."

I served the food and kept my mouth closed tight, but still I listened to what was said, hoping that my brother's name would be mentioned. I hoped in vain. I planned to ask the officers, as I had asked the soldiers, if they had ever heard of Chad Bishop and where I could find him.

M
Y ROOM WAS
high up under the eaves. It had a small window that looked out on New York Bay. When I went up to bed that night I could see the lights of the
British ships. There were hundreds of them twinkling in the dark night.

I lit a candle and read from the Psalms. I knelt down and prayed to the Lord that there would never be a battle. And if there was, that Chad would not be in it. And if he was in it, that he would not be hurt.

Drums and the far-off sound of marching feet awakened me at dawn. When I went down to the kitchen, Mr. Pennywell told me not to be alarmed.

"There'll be much drum beating and soldiers marching," he said. "But there won't be any battles for a week or more. Perhaps not then. I hear that Benjamin Franklin is coming up from Philadelphia to talk to Sir William Howe, the British general, about making peace. Let's hope they do."

"Let's hope," I said.

There was a lot of talk that night among the officers and soldiers from Brooklyn Fort about the chances for peace. Most of them didn't want peace. They wanted to fight and sink every British ship in the bay and kill every British soldier that dared set a foot on American soil. They never seemed to think that they might be killed, too. It was curious to me that they didn't.

Mr. Pennywell said, "Young men never think about death. That's why they make good soldiers."

Not so many of them came to the tavern that day, and every day fewer and fewer came. I kept asking about Chad, asking those I had asked before and those
I hadn't. Then one night at the end of the week I was serving four soldiers a bowl of Jamaica punch. One of them knew Chad by name and promised to carry word to him. I wrote out a message. I said that his father was dead and that I was at the Lion and Lamb tavern waiting for him.

"I'll see Chad Bishop tonight," the soldier promised me.

The next morning I woke again to the sounds of drums and marching feet. Chad did not appear that day nor the next. For a week and more the sounds of coming battles began my day. I prayed for Chad each morning when I got up and when I went to bed at night.

Early one morning Mr. Pennywell came running into the kitchen while I was making bread. He was so excited I scarcely could understand him as he spoke.

"My friend John Butler just stopped by," he said. "He tells me that the British army is on the move. Their tents over on Staten Island are still standing, but ten thousand of their men have marched all night. A battle's coming. A big one."

I pushed away the dough I was kneading. "Where? At Brooklyn Fort?"

"Likely," Mr. Pennywell said. "Everywhere around this end of Long Island."

The British struck the next morning. A thunderous roar shook the tavern windows and rattled cups.

The roar of cannon went on most of the day; that and the far-off rattle of muskets. A farmer dropped in to
sell cabbages and potatoes, eager to get rid of the produce before the British soldiers raided his farm. No rebel soldiers came to the tavern from Brooklyn Fort or from anywhere else.

But a few days later the British came, a half-dozen officers at first, then dozens more, until the tavern was full all day and into the night. No soldiers ever came, because it was against the rules of the British army for them to mix with the officers.

Mr. Pennywell hired two farm girls to help out in the kitchen and moved me inside to make change at the bar. Mrs. Pennywell gave me a pair of shoes with silver buckles to wear and a pink dress trimmed in white lace ruffles.

"You look like a picture," she said.

"I have seen ugly pictures," I answered.

"A pretty picture," she replied.

It was the first time I had ever been called pretty in the fifteen years of my life.

The British officers had good manners. They said "please" and "thank you, miss," and "may I bother you?" But the Hessians were different. They were very tall, fierce-looking men, and, as I found out, really had blond hair and blond mustaches, which they had blackened with black shoe polish. They bragged a great deal about how they never took prisoners, but ran them through with a single thrust of their bayonets. I hated to serve them at the bar and didn't after the first day.

The British officers smiled whenever I asked them if
they knew my brother, Chad Bishop. But I kept asking, and at last one of them, Major Stirling, helped me. It happened in this way.

Since most of the officers wore wigs, Mr. Pennywell, hoping to increase his profits, turned one of his closets into a powder room, like one he'd seen in New York.

He cut a round hole in the door, big enough for a man to put his head through, and put a table in the closet and set up three candles in a holder. At five o'clock each night he moved me from the bar to the closet. I sat inside for an hour, with a comb and brush. An officer who wanted his wig fixed thrust his head through the hole. I covered his face with a cloth cone. Then I combed his wig and dusted it with sweet-smelling powder. I could do four wigs in an hour.