The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles (24 page)

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal
—”

Cheering.

“—
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness
—”

The crowd began to grow restive. Jefferson’s stirring phrases were just a bit lofty for the common man’s taste. But shortly, Nixon reached a section that stirred the people to frenzied huzzahs and hand-clapping. The speaker read off a lengthy bill of particulars accusing
the present king of Great Britain
of a host of
injuries and usurpations.
Each new accusation was greeted with an outburst more enthusiastic than the last; clearly, this was the section of the declaration that would prove the most popular, and be quoted most frequently in years to come:

“He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people
—”

Judson’s attention wandered a little, his eye drawn upward to the bell tower of the State House where he thought he saw a figure scrambling against the blue summer sky. Again he swung to peer at the tinker perched on the wall. But the man was watching Nixon:

“For imposing taxes on us without our consent. For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury
—”

Judson began to be troubled by the tinker’s earlier look. It had seemed to contain a warning. Of what? he wondered. When the reading concluded, he must find out.

“He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people
—”

As the sonorous accusations rolled on, Judson again felt the humiliation of having failed to carry out his role which his brother had arranged for him in good faith.
If only he’d sat through with the Congress to the end!
The Fletcher name—his name; and Donald’s—would have gone down with the names of all those others who would eventually sign the clean copy—

Judson’s mouth twisted. As he’d suggested to Tom Jefferson, not all men in the world could be great or important men. Some had to be flawed; failures—

The dreadful self-hate filled him again, relieved only by the rising volume of Nixon’s voice. He had evidently reached the document’s conclusion:

“We therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in general congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states. That they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved. And that as free and independent states they have full power to levy war
—
”

The crowd grew hushed at that sentence.

“—
conclude peace
—”

A stirring; whispers here and there; perhaps the conflict could be speedily resolved.

“—
contract alliances
—”

France, Judson thought. If only France could now publicly come to the aid of the fledgling country.

“—
establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other
—
”

Judson glanced up, saw more activity in the bell tower; ropes bobbing.

“—
our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

Bedlam broke loose. People shouted, stamped the ground, wept and clapped. Judson was punched, nudged, buffeted from every side as the crowd roared approval of all it had heard. He wanted to leave the Yard.

As he turned, so did Tom Jefferson, his red hair bright as fire in the sun. Their eyes met. Jefferson’s looked abruptly sad.

He seemed on the point of trying to speak through the rising tumult, a tumult heightened by the first clangorous peals of the huge bell in the State House tower. Ashamed, Judson turned away.

Clang! Clang!
The bell sang, each peal reverberating. As Judson struggled through the crowd, he thought he’d suddenly been afflicted with some malady of the ear. He heard echoes begin, sweeping from one end of the sky to the other. Bells of different pitch and volume, all responding to the signal of the first bell proclaiming liberty, filling heaven with their brazen music—

CLANG! CLANG!

The free and independent states of America. Judson wasn’t embarrassed to wipe tears from his eyes. He would be forgotten. But he had been here.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Clambering down from the wall, the old tinker fought toward him, looking decidedly out of sorts:

“Mr. Fletcher—stop pushing, woman, this is important!—Mr. Fletcher, you left Windmill Street ahead o’ me—”

“That’s right, what of it?”

“Just ’fore I come down here, a party of gentlemen arrived. Huntin’ for you.” The tinker was obviously unhappy about this latest disturbance of his quiet life.

Judson scowled, his gray-blue eyes hardening. “I know of no gentlemen who’d seek me out.”

“Not a one but didn’t have a mighty ugly phiz. And a couple o’ pistols, too. Tory gentlemen, I think they were.”

Trumbull’s crowd. He’d been lucky to avoid them thus far.

“I want no trouble, Mr. Fletcher! If you go back to the rooms, I’d at least wait until dark. I just won’t abide any more rows, or damage to my property—”

Judson’s decision was almost instantaneous. He shook his head:

“I don’t believe I’ll go back. I’ve no belongings of value there. And my account with you is in order, isn’t it?”

“Yes, square. But what do you want done with ’em things of yours?”

“Sell them, burn them, I don’t give a damn.” He turned and strode swiftly through the crowd as the bells pealed across the sky. In moments, he was mounted and lashing a path through the celebrating mob, heedless of whom he struck with his flying crop.

By early afternoon on the eighth of July, 1776, Judson Fletcher was riding southwestward along the Delaware, bound home for Virginia.

He knew his father’s strength of will. There would be no place for him at Sermon Hill. But he’d face that problem later. Virginia was the inevitable choice. It was the only land he knew.

Ah, but what did it matter where you lived when your only course seemed to be uncontrollable destruction of yourself and everything around you?

Still, as Jefferson had said, it seemed to him that there should be a place in the world—in this country—where a man could find contentment. An ordered existence. Peace for a troubled spirit. Unfortunately Judson had no clear and positive idea about where such a place might be.

The brief exhilaration of the morning faded under the wearying rhythm of the horse. Tom Jefferson was right about something else. The patriots who had gambled their futures and their very lives on a sheet of parchment—the men who had pulled and hauled with such dedication to create union out of disunion—would want no name like Judson Fletcher’s on their declaration. They would want no part of a man who was dishonorable and damned.

But why damned?
Why?

Was he, as his father contended, the bearer of some contaminant impossible to overcome? Some fatal flaw of body and soul?—providing, of course, such a commodity as a soul existed! The old man termed it the devil’s blood, but Judson reckoned
Fletcher blood
would be more accurate.

Whatever the name, was he absolutely powerless to escape the disastrous effects? Sometimes—as now—he felt so. But he could never puzzle out a certain answer. And just thinking about it was laborious and hurtful—

Do you suppose there’s an inn at the ferry crossing ahead? I’m plagued thirsty
—

Gradually, as he rode on, the last distant ringing of the bells of Philadelphia died away beneath the murmur of the hot July breeze.

What would become of the new nation? he wondered, trying to dismiss a sudden picture of Alice from his mind. What would become of him—?

Godamighty, he was thirsty!

And a great fool. The first question was certainly the only one of importance. The second—and its answer-counted for nothing at all.

F
EBRUARY ICICLES HUNG
outside the parlor windows, fiery crystal that dripped in the bright sun. The light spilling into the room sparkled the dark eyes of the baby Philip Kent swung high over his head, then down again.

“Philip, you’ll frighten him!” Anne said as she came in. The child, stocky as his father, and with the same thick, dark hair, disproved it with a delighted gurgle as Philip set him down gently, then brushed out a fold in the homespun smock Anne had sewn herself.

“He enjoys it,” Philip grinned, moving two paces backward. He stretched out his arms. “Walk to me, Abraham. Walk to Papa.”

Gurgling again, Abraham took three unsteady steps. He stumbled and sprawled, wailing.

Philip rushed forward. So did the two visitors. But Anne reached the baby first, snatched him to her breast and started out of the room:

“You’re so used to tossing muskets around at top speed, you’ve forgotten how to handle something more delicate,” she teased Philip. “I’ll put him in the crib for “his nap. Then we’ll eat.”

When she’d gone, George Lumden packed tobacco into his clay pipe and said, “A fine, strong boy, Philip. How old is he now?”

“Just turned sixteen months.”

“I hope we’re similarly blessed this spring.”

Lumden was a soft-spoken, gray-eyed man with a large mole on his forehead. Formerly a British infantryman garrisoned in Boston, he had deserted to the American side—and an American bride—with Philip’s assistance.

Reveling in the warmth of the two logs popping in the fireplace, Philip said to Lumden’s visibly pregnant wife:

“So this will very likely be your last trip to Concord before the baby’s born, eh?”

All vivid red hair and winter-pinked cheeks, Daisy Lumden nodded. She sat beside her husband, clasping his hand. “I wanted to see my father before it became impossible to travel.”

Early in 1775, Philip had stayed at the farm Daisy’s father owned out beyond the Concord River. The red-haired girl had been the cook in the Ware home in Boston. Lumden had been quartered there, as soldiers were quartered in houses all over the city, by royal decree. Romance had spurred his decision to join the hundreds of other redcoats who stole away, unwilling to take part in a war against people they considered fellow Englishmen.

“Even with the thaw, the trip up from Connecticut is difficult,” Daisy added.

Philip stretched his cracked boots toward the flames of the hearth. How well he knew.

“I’ll spend half my leave just riding to and from Morristown.” A pause. “But you haven’t told me how you’re finding life in Connecticut, George.”

“Satisfactory, more than satisfactory!” the ex-soldier smiled. “I obtained a small loan from my second cousin in Hartford, and I’ve put the training I got at my father’s smithy in Warwickshire to good use—”

From a traveling valise, he produced a long, slender oiled-paper package.

“I’ll never make a Continental soldier,” he said. “But at least I can do my share in other ways. Here, I brought this for you.”

Pleased and surprised, Philip unwrapped the package. Sunlight flashed on the gleaming metal of a new bayonet.

“I opened up a small forge, and I’m supplying them on contract to the army,” Lumden explained with pride.

“A beautiful instrument.” Philip balanced it on his hand. “And appreciated—as they weren’t when we tried to hold Breed’s Hill. I’d say a fourth of our men are equipped with bayonets now. More are getting them every day. Thank you, George.”

Daisy patted a loose curl of coppery hair. “When Anne wrote that you were coming home, we thought it might be permanently, Philip.”

He clucked his tongue. “I wish it were. But in January, I rejoined for three more years.”

“You very nearly had no army left to rejoin,” Lumden commented.

“That’s true.”

“In Connecticut, the criticism of General Washington has been bloody scandalous. Or it was until last month. People claimed he was such a poor commander, men kept sneaking away home by the hundreds.”

“It’s not the general who’s lacking, it’s the troops,” Philip replied. Yet he had to admit that during the grim days of the autumn of ’76 just passed, he too had again questioned the leadership ability of the squire from Fairfax County, Virginia. Now that he was home for a bit, the agonies of the preceding months had a dim, unreal quality; but the net effect lingered. The American army had failed miserably.

Washington had lost Long Island in August. Then came the humiliation of the British capture of New York City, as the Howe brothers—General Sir William in charge of the ground forces, Admiral Lord Richard commanding the naval squadron blockading the rivers and landing the regiments—forced Washington’s army into retreat after retreat.

Lumden said, “We understood Sir William and Black Dick Howe had the king’s authorization to pardon the colonials.”

“Yes, I think that’s correct. But that was
before
Long Island. And of course the effort came to nothing because they had no authority
except
to pardon us for our supposed sins. No power to deal with the issues that caused all this.”