The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles (59 page)

“This isn’t a holy medal, Mr. O’Brian. There’s a Liberty Tree on it. Won’t you look?”

For the first time, O’Brian appeared a shade less skeptical.

“You’re one of the Boston band?” he asked.

“I am.”

“Let me see.”

Philip approached the lower step. O’Brian’s thick, gnarled fingers turned the medal, examining both sides before he let go.

“ ’Pears real enough. Could be stolen, though.”

“But it isn’t.”

“He’s telling the truth, Mr. O’Brian,” Lumden said despite his chattering teeth. “I have deserted from the Thirty-third Infantry, in these clothes your daughter found for me.”

“You really mean to say that you and my child—? That the two of you—?”

“Yes, sir. I was assigned to quarters at the house where Daisy works. Mr. Ware’s house. That’s how we met.”

Philip waited tensely while O’Brian continued to study them. Then the farmer’s features seemed to relax a little.

“Well, I’m damned. I’m waked from sound slumber by a musket banging and find two beggarly fellows shivering in my yard—and that’s how nuptials are announced these days? Arthur—”

“Sir?”

“What d’you think?”

“It’s mighty peculiar, sir.”

“It’s so goddamn peculiar, there must be a kernel o’ truth to it. Let’s fetch ’em inside and hear the whole fancy tale.”

Still keeping a watchful eye on Philip and his companion, the Negro followed them through the front door and the heatless front rooms. In the kitchen, O’Brian stamped barefoot to the hearth and struck a fire under some kindling.

“Now,” he ordered, “sit yourselves down and let me hear it from the beginning. Then I’ll decide whether to march you to Concord and the stocks.”

Philip decided he liked the crusty old man. He certainly couldn’t blame O’Brian for his suspicion. At least they’d gotten out of the cold. He edged his stool a little closer to the crackling blaze and joined O’Brian in staring at Lumden.

“One o’ you start talking!” O’Brian cried.

Turning red, Lumden said, “What my friend Kent has told you is gospel truth, Mr. O’Brian—” He got busy fingering his mole. “I am George Lumden, late of the Thirty-third. While I lived at the home of the lawyer, Mr. Abraham Ware, your daughter and I developed—” He turned redder. “A—a—” He mumbled the rest.

“Louder! Speak up!” O’Brian roared.

“A mutual affection for one another,” Lumden said in a strangled voice. “At the same time, it became clear to me that I had no stomach for this colonial quarrel with fellow Englishmen. I say that to you without shame, sir—I want no part of it! I only desire to marry your daughter, be a good husband and provide for her for the rest of our lives.”

O’Brian’s blue eyes narrowed. “How?”

“Well, sir, in England, my father was a smith. I know something of that trade—”

“God’s wonders! I’d say your head’s cracked—or mine is!—except you really talk like all this blather is the truth.”

“Sir, it is. Daisy and I are—” Scarlet again, Lumden mumbled the rest.

“You expect to marry my child without asking my leave?” O’Brian challenged.

“Indeed not! I—I’m asking it now.”

“Well, I ain’t giving it! Not yet.” The farmer hunched forward. “What’s your faith?”

“Church of England, sir.”

“Oh, Christ help us—!”

“—but Daisy and I have agreed to marry and raise our offspring in her church!”

O’Brian blinked. “You have?”

“Definitely.”

Scratching his chin, the farmer turned to the Negro. “Arthur, what’s your opinion now?”

“It’s too crazy not to be true, Mr. O’Brian,” said the grizzled black. “But I’d like to hear the other one talk some, too.”

Before Philip could speak, Lumden said matter-of-factly, “I didn’t know men in the colonies asked the opinions of their bond slaves.”

Arthur slammed the musket butt on the pegged floor, glaring. For the first time, Philip noticed rings of thickened tissue on the inside of each black wrist. Shackle scars?

O’Brian made a placating gesture. “Arthur, he only speaks out of pagan ignorance.” To Lumden: “We don’t hold with slavery in the Massachusetts colony. Arthur is a free man of color. He works for his wages and board like anyone else—and can cease to do so and move on whenever he chooses. Bear that in mind when you speak to him.”

Lumden flushed still another time. “I meant no offense, certainly. My apologies, Arthur—if I may address you that way.”

“Guess so. Only name I got.” But the black looked mollified.

Philip felt certain the shackle marks meant the man was a runaway. Perhaps from one of the southern colonies, where the peculiar institution so disapproved by many Boston liberals had long flourished with the assistance of Boston sea captains who brought human cargo from Africa as part of the vastly profitable triangular trade.

O’Brian resumed, “The blessed Lord saw fit to deliver nothing but females from the loins of my sainted, departed wife. Five of my daughters are already wed and living in various towns around the province. Daisy went traipsing off to Boston in the hope of improving her fortunes in similar style—” Another glance askance at Lumden, as if to say he wasn’t sure she had. “So there’s none but Arthur and me to run the place. If it’s sanctuary you’re seeking, the price is work.”

“We’ll gladly pay it,” Philip told him. “George plans no return to Boston. And I can’t go back for some weeks—if at all. I—” He hesitated only a moment. He felt he could trust the old farmer with at least a portion of the story. “—I encountered some trouble with one of His Majesty’s officers. There may be arrest warrants out for me.”

“Is Daisy in any danger?” O’Brian asked suddenly.

Philip didn’t like lying. But he felt it best to spare the man undue concern.

“I am not aware of any, sir. She and Mistress Ware helped George find clothing for his escape, that’s all. Your daughter directed us to come here, and said she’d send a message—”

“About what?”

“Joining us.”

“How soon?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“But you, the lobsterbacks want to arrest?”

“Possibly, yes.”

At that O’Brian broke into his first genuine smile of the morning. “Well, that’s a good recommendation!”

Already Philip felt better. The kitchen was warm now, flooded with the gold light of the winter morning breaking across the hillside behind the farm. The Irishman went on:

“And you’re in top company. We understand the lives of such men as Sam Adams and Johnny Hancock aren’t worth a shilling if they linger in Boston many more days. Fact is, we’ve been hearing they may seek sanctuary out this way. If you’re all you claim, Kent, you’ll want an introduction to my neighbor down the road. Jim Barrett—the Colonel. In charge of our Concord militia.”

Philip nodded. “Indeed. I’ve already mustered with the Boston Grenadiers under Captain Pierce.”

“Good. Arthur—hang up the porridge pot. Let’s feed these scarecrows, and ourselves too. I guess I’d best become acquainted with Tommy here, since it appears I may be stuck with him, like it or not. As soon as they’ve eaten, you can put ’em to work.”

At last the big black managed a grin.

“Mr. O’Brian, I’ll keep ’em busy, don’t you worry.”

Arthur proved a hard but fair taskmaster. He set Martin O’Brian’s two unexpected boarders to hammering and sawing from sunup to dark, completing needed repairs on the siding of the rickety barn. Philip was grateful for the labor. It drained his body of strength by day’s end, and the exhaustion helped drain his mind of worry about Anne Ware.

But no matter how tired he became from his chores, worry about Anne never escaped him completely. January turned into gray February, and still no message arrived.

During long evenings by the kitchen fire, O’Brian and his prospective son-in-law held lengthy conversations. They exchanged views on the seesaw struggle between Crown and colonies, impressions of British military capability in the event of open warfare. O’Brian was also fairly consistent with questions about the sincerity of Lumden’s intent to become a Catholic convert.

O’Brian had by this time taken Philip down the road to the home of leathery Colonel James Barrett, who was readying the Concord militia and minute companies in the event of hostilities. Philip’s sincerity and background convinced Barrett that the younger man was a worthy recruit. He drilled in Concord village with men of all ages. Some of the older ones were veterans of Rogers’ Rangers in the French and Indian War—the struggle that had been called the Seven Years’ War in that lost, dim time in Auvergne. Then, the men had fought on the King’s side.

Out in the country, as Philip had heard, equipping the militia with muskets, powder and ball was no problem. The stockpiles had been building up for months. Barrett’s smokehouse was a major storage point for arms. Other stores, including half a dozen cannon, were bidden in Concord’s meeting house.

But because of the stockpiles, Barrett frequently reminded his companies, their quiet little village in the wooded hills where the Sudbury and Assabet flowed together to form the Concord might well be a major target of an expedition by Gage’s soldiers.

Though security at the Neck was now reported tighter than ever, word of the heightening tensions in Boston reached Wright’s Tavern with fair regularity. Patriots managed to row across the Charles by night to carry the news—

Revere had organized a secret company of mechanics to keep track of any sudden troop movements out of the city.

Ships newly arrived from England bore word that America’s partisan, old Pitt, the Earl of Chatham, had responded to the declaration of grievances from the Congress. He had laid a plan of conciliation before Parliament. The plan included a provision for withdrawing all royal troops from Boston.

Pitt’s plan was defeated. Next, it was rumored that while pretending to draw up a reconciliation program of its own, the North ministry was privately readying even more repressive and economically disastrous measures, including bills to bar New England ships from commerce in any ports save those in Britain and the British West Indies, and to forbid New England fishing vessels from working the North Atlantic banks.

Most ominous of all were reports of another act, already said to be passed in London and awaiting only formal transmittal to Gage. It would authorize the general to use whatever measures he deemed necessary to enforce the various Crown edicts.

As the ice of February thinned under the first onslaught of March winds, the Concord patriots met in dark old Wright’s to hear that despite the pleadings of men such as Pitt and Burke, both Lords and Commons had already declared the Massachusetts province
“in rebellion.”
Gage seemed to act accordingly. He sent soldiers to Salem to seize the colonial arms stored there.

The night it happened, loud knocking at O’Brian’s door roused Philip from his pallet. He grabbed his musket and ran all the way to Concord.

The provincial alarm system, a combination of mounted couriers and ringing bells in every village steeple, had been perfected now. All the Concord companies were ready to march within a couple of hours.

Then a horseman pounded in to report that the Salem supplies had been moved safely out of reach of the troops—and Gage’s officers had chosen not to search and force combat in order to capture them.

But the patriots who made Wright’s a rendezvous—Concord’s Tory families wisely avoided the tavern—swore that it was only a matter of weeks, or perhaps days, before inevitable bloodshed.

In preparation, the Provincial Congress sitting at Cambridge under the direction of Hancock and Dr. Warren passed a resolve which put the militia companies on notice that any troop movements from Boston
“to the Number of Five Hundred Men”
would be considered grounds for mobilizing to a war-ready state.

Philip supposed he should take a more serious interest in all these dire tidings. But he was too preoccupied with the lack of any communications from Anne. O’Brian was equally worried about his daughter. As was Lumden.

By the second week in March, after discussing the situation with the Irish farmer and the ex-sergeant, Philip decided he would try to re-enter the city.

The very next morning, a cold, rain-spattered day, he was inside the barn preparing to saddle the sway-backed mare O’Brian had offered him. He heard wheels creak, hoofs plopping, looked outside—

The farm wagon appeared on the road at the front of the property. Arthur had driven to Concord for some flour and other staples. There was a second person returning with him. Squinting through the gray rain, Philip detected bright red hair—and shouted to the back of the barn where Lumden was sawing a plank:

“George! Daisy’s here!”

Both men went racing through the drizzle as Arthur turned the wagon down the rutted track alongside the house. Laughing and weeping at the same time, Daisy flung herself down into Lumden’s arms.

When the embrace ended, she ran to Philip and hugged him impetuously. “Mistress Anne’s waiting for you at the tavern in Concord.”

“You mean she came with you?”

Daisy nodded. “She and her father have taken rooms there. Adams has fled Boston for good—Mr. Hancock too. Sneaked out like criminals at night.”

“The danger’s grown that great, then?”

“So everyone says. Only that Dr. Warren stayed behind, Mr. Ware told us.”

She glanced around, wiping the joyful tears from her face while Lumden simply stood, his saw forgotten in the mud at his feet. He beamed with almost comical happiness.

“Where’s my father?” Daisy asked.

“Gone down the road to speak with Colonel Barrett,” Arthur informed her.

She turned to Lumden. “Have you—? That is, will he let us—?”

Lumden just grinned and nodded. Daisy squealed and rushed into his arms again. Philip started for the house to get his surtout. He called over his shoulder:

“Tell Mr. O’Brian I’ve gone to town to see—”

He stopped suddenly, looking at Daisy.

Holding Lumden’s arm, she was staring at him with all trace of happiness momentarily wiped away.

“Daisy, what’s wrong?” he asked.

She rushed to him, whispering: