The Schoolmaster's Daughter (20 page)

“Not good enough.”

“I wanted to hail you down in the streets, but you moved so fast—and I thought it best that we not be seen talking as it might, it might be misconstrued.”

“Corporal Lumley. You have followed me before, though never this boldly.”

“I apologize,” he said. “I have only wished the proper opportunity to speak with you … about matters … about my … situation.”

“Your situation?”

“Yes, but at the moment there's something more pressing that I must convey to you.” He was standing downhill from her, which made him seem small and frail. “It's about your brother.”

“James?”

“No, Benjamin.”

She grabbed him by the shoulders, and then, realizing what she had done, pushed him away. “What of Benjamin?”

Lumley took a deep breath. “He was captured last night.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

“In Boston?”

“Yes.” Lumley looked up at the sun and said, “It's getting warm. Might we—” He took a few steps off the path until he was in the shade of a tree. He waited for Abigail to join him, and then continued, seeming relieved to be in the cooler air. “We were on patrol last night, me and Munroe, and we came upon a fellow who seemed to be up to something, he be gazing in the window of a house on the shore in the North End there, and so we call out to inquire about his business and he immediately sets to running off, and I tell you he is swift, runs like you walk, if I might say so, Miss, so I conclude it be in the family blood.” He offered a thin smile to indicate he was attempting humor, but it disappeared almost immediately.

“You chased after him.”

Lumley nodded.

“But you said he was captured.”

“It be some chase, I tell you, yes, and we did collect him after he took a spill on the beach, being tripped up by the kelp and such.”

Abigail looked back down the path. “Where have you got him? I must go—”

As she began to move out of the shade, Lumley placed one hand on her shoulder, held her in place, and then, rather politely, removed his hand. “We don't have him, Miss.”

“What do you mean? Where is he?”

“Don't quite know. He skipped off.”

“Escaped?”

“He did, yes.” Lumley seemed pleased with himself. “Had a little assistance there.”

“What are you saying, Corporal?”

“Well, there wasn't much to it, really. We brought him to the jailhouse on Court Street, where he was thoroughly examined. This went on for hours, quite through the night, I tell you, until the captain he tires of it.”

“Tires of what?”

“The interrogation. Exhausting work, it can be.”

“My brother, was he hurt?”

Lumley looked away. “Some, indeed he was, but he'll be right soon enough. He's young and—and you see it was Munroe who, on the beach, he was a bit rough with the lad. But the important thing is they didn't get anything out of him. Your brother, he's strong-willed, which I suspect also runs in your family. Very frustrating for the captain, who's skilled at getting a man to talk.” Now Lumley faced Abigail. “But you see, the lad had an ally, and there was nothing for him to give up, and it helped him endure the interrogation.”

“What ally?”

Lumley stood up straighter.

“You?”

He nodded.

“I don't believe it.”

“When the captain was through with him, I took the lad to his cell, and there I allowed him to escape. Look, Miss, I'm going to catch hell for it, I can tell you, but they've been in for me a long time now, so I figure I got nothing to lose anymore.”

“You
let him escape—please, Corporal.”

Abigail began to turn away, but paused when Lumley began to fidget with the buttons on his uniform, saying, “Miss, I can prove it.” He undid the top buttons and reached inside his tunic. “Your brother couldn't be made to talk because he didn't know anything, you see. Because he was carrying letters.”

“Letters?”

Lumley removed several envelopes from inside his tunic and held them out to her. Reluctantly, Abigail accepted them, three envelopes, tied between two flat stones, their wax seals unbroken. She looked at the corporal as he fastened up his tunic.

“I got them off your brother shortly after we apprehended him on the beach. We were walking through the streets to the courthouse and Munroe takes a moment in an alley for the call of nature, and I found the letters on the boy. You see, at that point I near had to carry him.”

“Because he was injured.”

“Indeed.”

“The result of Munroe—”

“The butt of his Brown Bess. Gave him a good crack in the face, he did. And the lad hurt his knee when he took the fall in the sand.”

Abigail turned and walked away from the corporal, looking at the envelopes in her hand. “There's no way of knowing if these are genuine.”

“That be true, Miss. But perhaps you might let your brother James examine them? I suspect the lad intended to deliver them to him.”

“But he didn't tell you this.”

“No, not exactly.”

She gazed down toward the North End, where the noise from the construction of the redoubt on Copp's Hill continued to fill the warm spring air. “You say they have it in for you. What do you mean?”

“It be a long story, Miss. But I tell you they want to make an example of me.”

Abigail turned to Lumley. “Why did you do this?” she said, holding out the letters. “What is it you want?”

He took a few steps toward her, though he hesitated from getting too close. “Out,” he said. “I want out of Boston, out of this army.”

“You want to desert?”

He nodded. “We hear of the offers from the provincials. Land, in New Hampshire, in Vermont, if we come over.” His eyes brightened, a child conjuring a dream, a daydream. “They say there are valleys in Vermont with swift running streams full of trout, and good soil.” Then he took a few steps closer. “What I want, what I ask, Miss, is that you help me. You ascertain that these letters be genuine, and then you give me assistance in getting free of Boston. I will fight, I will fight for your provincials, I tell you. I will earn my land.”

“You want to be smuggled out.”

He took one last step toward her. “I need someone I can trust.”

Abigail tucked the letters away beneath her shawl. “Well, I need to find Benjamin.”

“I wish I knew where he be.”

“You said you and Munroe came upon him looking in a window?”

“North End. Down by the shoreline.”

“A fisherman's house?”

“From the looks of it, yes, Miss.” Now Lumley averted his eyes.

“What?”

“On the beach, there were others—an old man and a girl. The girl, she showed affection for your brother after he was struck, but Munroe, I fear he did worse by the old man.”

“Cole,” Abigail said. “Anse Cole.”

“Munroe, you understand, he believes only in force. You've seen it yourself, Miss.”

“That, Corporal, is the truth.” Abigail began walking down the path. Lumley followed behind. “No, Mr. Lumley,” she said over her shoulder. “We shall not be seen together descending this hill.”

“But will you help me?”

She walked faster down the path.

XI

Services, of a Certain Nature

F
ROM THE LOFT OF THE GRANARY,
B
ENJAMIN COULD LOOK OUT
a window and see across the graveyard to School Street. The granary was a large building where corn was stored, and since he'd been a boy he'd gone there often, drawn by the noise, the bustle; it fascinated him as much as watching a ship's crew as it made ready for the sea. There were dozens of men who drove wagons and worked with shovels mostly, strong men who were very kindly toward Benjamin. Obadiah was a Haitian, owned by the granary manager Reginald Fiske, and he had worked there so long that he was often referred as the Turnkey, because he had been entrusted with the keys to all the granary doors, large keys that hung from his belt and jangled when he walked. When he arrived at dawn to open the building, he found Benjamin lying in a hay pile half unconscious, and he carried the boy inside, all the way to a vacant storage room on the top floor. During the course of the day, he tended to Benjamin's wounds as best he could, washing the laceration that ran across his purple, swollen left cheek, and in the evening he brought some bread and soup, prepared by his wife. He also provided a crutch, fashioned out of a maple branch, which he said he'd used after taking a fall on some ice the previous winter.

“You know, there be talk about you,” he said, watching Benjamin carefully insert the spoon between his swollen lips—the teeth on the left side ached terribly from the blow from the soldier's rifle, coupled with the beating he'd taken while being questioned in the jailhouse. “You help Billy Dawes get through the Neck that night before Lexington and Concord. You must be hiding from the Brits.”

Even a simple nod caused pain that ran down his neck to his shoulders.

“You kin stay up here. We've cleared all the corn from this floor, so nobody'll be takin' the lift all the way up here.” Obadiah had enormous shoulders and his clothing was powdered with corn dust. He nodded toward the small window that looked out on School Street. “You don't want to be going home just now.”

Benjamin just managed to shake his head slowly.

“It's your father. Respected, educated man that he is, but he be a Tory. Well, you must rest now.” He glanced toward the pile of straw he'd sent up on the lift. “Not much of a bed, I know.”

“It's fine,” Benjamin said through his aching teeth. He put the empty bowl on the floor. “I'll be fine here. Thank you.”

“And I brung this horse blanket, 'cause it kin still get cold nights.” Obadiah started to duck out through the low door, but then paused. “No knowing how long this will go on. There be no shipments of corn coming into the city. And every day they been carting more away from here, to feed the troops. Their horses, they're eating better'n some Bostonians now. At this rate the granary will be empty before the weather turns. This continues into winter, people'll starve.” And then he was gone, his keys echoing in the vast open space beneath the rafters of the great building as he slowly descended the stairs.

Benjamin moved the stool in front of the window and sat down: a seagull's view of Boston, gazing down on shingled roofs clustered between winding streets. He could see the Province House, backed by its stable and vast orchard. Looking down School Street, his house looked small, but there was smoke curling from the chimney, which meant that his mother and sister were preparing dinner. One night, when they were all seated at table, Abigail had asked
Why is there Latin? Why Greek?
And their father glanced up from the books that he often read right through the meal. He didn't seem to understand the question. Benjamin must have been about nine, which would make Abigail fourteen, and she was often asking questions that baffled or angered their parents.
Why so many tongues, Father? Why don't people all over the world just speak one language?

“I said I'd meet him tomorrow,” Abigail said.

James raised his head. First there was reluctance clouding his eyes, but then they grew wide with alarm. “Where?”

“Trimount.”

Her brother took a moment to fold up the letters she had given him, and she knew he was deliberately taking his time. In this he and his father were quite the opposite: where father would react immediately in an outburst of emotion, James often gave himself time to consider his response. Abigail had always hated these moments, the waiting, the anticipation. James was like a third parent to her and to Benjamin, and he could be every bit the disciplinarian that their father was—but it was usually harder to accept, because he
was
their older brother.

“Not alone,” James said.

“I must. Lumley was insistent. He's very—he's frightened.”

“You shouldn't go up Trimount at all, Abigail. And certainly not to meet a British soldier.” He glanced down at the letters on his desk. “But maintaining communication with this corporal seems, under the circumstances, prudent.”

“So. Under the circumstances, I do as I had promised and meet him there.”

James said nothing.

“They're genuine, aren't they?”

He nodded slowly, without looking up from the letters. “They appear to be, but—”

“I believe Benjamin bore them across the water.” Abigail picked up the smooth, flat stones which lay on the desk. “Because of these. This is his doing—you know it is, James.”

Her brother nodded. “I believe so. Our younger brother, he's something of a beach stone, isn't he?”

“Shaped by the tides and currents and tides.” She put one stone back on the desk, and kept the other, which fit comfortably in her palm. “The letters, what do they say?”

She watched as James's hand drifted down his jacket and settled on his stomach. He was pale, his face as white as the wig he wore, despite the heat from the fire in the hearth. “What they say, I shouldn't reveal to you,” he said. “What if you are taken into custody—what if you are questioned as Benjamin was? It's better that you not know.”

“They're important?”

“Matters regarding our troop strength and deployment in the hills surrounding Boston.”

“So it's best I not know,” she said. “Though they'd be more likely to question you.”

He didn't deny this, but pressed on. “We have to consider this in full light. These are letters that were written by Joseph Warren, in Cambridge. Or so it appears. I would swear that this is his hand, which I know as well as my own. But I also know that General Gage is remarkably adept at matters of espionage, and who knows what he's capable of? I could be wrong. They
could
be very clever forgeries.” He paused to drink from the glass of water that he kept on the desk. “And look how we've obtained these letters. Purportedly, our younger brother Benjamin, whom we haven't seen or heard from since before the engagements at Lexington and Concord, received these letters from Dr. Warren, with the express instructions to slip into Boston—a difficult enough feat, though I think we both agree that if anyone is capable of such action it is our Benjamin—and deliver them to me.
But
. But he is captured. He is beaten. He is interrogated. And there's this British corporal, who took the letters from him in an effort to keep them from the hands of his own commanders, and then he aids Benjamin in his escape from the jail. And
then
he, this Corporal Lumley, follows you up Trimount and gives you the letters—be
cause
he wants us to help him desert and fight for our side, his reward being farmland in Vermont.”