Time Enough for Drums (13 page)

The tears from my eyes spilled down my face onto my hands in my lap.

“Stop that silly crying. It will get you nowhere. I’ll help you answer his letter this afternoon if you wish. There are ways of doing what you must do without destroying him. Certainly, you have to put a stop to his romantic notions. But not in one letter. Not all at once. It will take time. You must continue to correspond with him and let him down easily. But you need time for this. Time.” He came back across the room and looked down at me. “We all need a little time. Come, now, let’s have lessons.”

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another …” Old Sam Tucker, the head of the Provincial Congress, was reading on the courthouse steps. The Declaration of Independence had been rushed in from Philadelphia. It was Monday, the eighth of July. The militia stood lined up below the courthouse steps. Sam Tucker wore a brocaded waistcoat and powdered wig, and his voice rang out clearly.

“A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.…”

The crowd could hardly be contained. I was standing next to Betsy Moore. “Does thee see the fat man in the powdered wig? Next to him is thy grandfather.”

Indeed, it was. Grandfather Emerson stood out in the crowd, tall and commanding in his frontier clothing. Canoe was with him, listening attentively.

“Oh, Canoe is handsome,” Betsy said.

“Hush, Betsy, you’re betrothed to my brother.”

“And thee is writing to Raymond. Only thee walks in town all the time with John Reid.”

“Raymond and I are just corresponding, Betsy. We’re only friends.”

“I’ve heard so many stories about Canoe. Is it true he is thy grandfather’s son? If so, that would make him thy uncle.”

I had never thought of Canoe that way. Sam Tucker went on reading. I should listen. John Reid had excused me from lessons to come and listen. Everyone in town was here, even the Tories. I saw my parents standing off a little to the right of us, with the Moores. Joseph was lined up with the militia. He had joined the week before.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …” The words rang out and the crowd began to stomp and cheer. Some of the men threw up their hats. Sam Tucker had to wait for the noise to subside. I looked around, knowing what a wonderful day this was. I should be bursting with pride like everyone else. After all, my father had served with the Provincial Congress on New Jersey’s new state constitution that declared our colony’s independence from the Crown two whole days before they did it in Philadelphia. My brother Daniel was serving under General Schuyler in the Mohawk Valley, west of Albany, in the heart of the Iroquois Six Nations. And there was Mama, whose essays in the
Pennsylvania Gazette
defended Tom Paine’s
Common Sense
, six weeks in a row already.

Why wasn’t I feeling the surge of joy that went through the crowd like electricity through Benjamin Franklin’s kite?

“… 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;…”

The applause was deafening. “… that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown.…”

“I’ll see you later, Betsy,” I said.

“Where are thee going?”

“I have something to attend to.”

The front door of our house was open, and July sunlight dappled the polished floorboards of the main hall. My shoes echoed, and I made an effort to walk quietly. I went to the end of the hall to my father’s study. The house was cool and inviting.

He was in the chair behind Father’s desk, half facing the window, which was open. In his hand was a goblet. I stood in the doorway.

He turned, not surprised. “Hello, Jemima.”

I curtsied. “Hello, Mr. Reid.”

“Why are you back? Everyone is at the reading. I sent you as part of your lessons today, did I not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, then? Must I scold on one of the happiest days this young nation has ever had?”

“I hoped you wouldn’t. I came back for you. You should be there.”

“Wouldn’t that look nice? A Tory listening to the reading of the Declaration of Independence. They’d tar and feather me.”

“There were other Tories there. Daniel Coxe, Dr. William Bryant from Bloomsbury Court, Isaac Allen and Charles Harrison.”

“And do I belong with them?”

“No, sir.”

“Where should I have stood, then? With whom? I belong nowhere, Jemima. That’s why I am here alone.”

“You belong there more than anyone!”

He flung me one of his old dark, forbidding looks, silencing
me. I went into the room and sat in a chair near the desk. “You can hear the crowd from here,” I said.

“Yes. They won’t be contained today.”

“Will you come to Mama’s celebration dinner tonight?”

“No. Others will be there who don’t know of my … special circumstances, and for them I’d ruin the celebration. I have my packing to do anyway. I leave at the end of the week.”

“I know.”

He set the goblet on the desk, twirled the stem around, leaned back in the chair, and contemplated it. The white of his shirt contrasted with his browned face and neck. I sat, intrigued by the sun-bleached hairs on his forearms. I shivered.

“What is it Jemima?”

I shook my head, unable to answer.

He sighed, leaned forward, and rested his arms on his knees. “We’re going to have to talk, aren’t we?”

I gave him a weak smile. “Yes, sir, I suppose so.”

“Lord, don’t look at me like that, Jemima.” He got up and went to the window. “I’ve been watching you look at me like that for weeks now, and I haven’t known what to do about it.”

But he had, for he had managed to be completely in charge of his feelings and continue my lessons with a gentle firmness. It was I who had been so obvious. Several times he’d scolded me when my attention had lapsed. Once, lost under the spell of his voice reading French, I’d accidentally dumped the ink, spilling it onto his breeches. As he’d jumped up, yelling “Damnation,” I turned and fled the room in tears, running into Mama in the hallway, who made me turn around and go right back in.

There was a sudden wild cheering in the distance, followed
by the firing of muskets. A cannon went off, then church bells.

He smiled at me.

“The bells are from the First Presbyterian,” I said. “St. Michael’s is closed down.”

“I know. Jemima …”

“Reverend Panton is leaving to join the British army. He’ll be chaplain of the Prince of Wales Regiment.”

“Your mother told me. Jemima …”

“Father will dearly miss playing chess with him.”

“Jemima Emerson, will you listen to me!”

There was another burst of cheering in the distance and more musket fire. Then there was silence. “Jemima, I am nine years older than you.”

“Eight years and seven months,” I said.

“Are you correcting your tutor?” He scowled.

“Yes, sir.” I got up and stood in front of him.

“I’m going away to do a filthy, thankless job. I don’t know when I’ll return.”

“But you yourself told me there are lapses in between your missions. You could come back then.”

“I have no right to declare my feelings to any woman, with the kind of life I’ll be leading.”

“Then I shall declare mine to you.”

“A properly brought up Christian young woman does not declare her feelings for a man first, Jemima.”

“I never was very proper. As my tutor, you should know that, Mr. Reid. But you should also know that I … that I have held you in such high esteem since the day you told me I must write to Raymond Moore that I’ve thought my heart would burst just being around you.”

I thought I saw his eyes fill with tears, but he lowered his head. His lashes were very black and thick, and I saw
the pulse beating in his temple. He bit his lower lip, and composed himself, and his voice, when he spoke, came from some chamber far inside him that he had kept sealed until now. “These last few weeks, Jemima, I have had to be stern with you so I would not give myself away.”

“Well, you’ve had fair enough practice at it, I would say.”

“Oh, Jemima …” His voice broke as he closed his eyes and shook his head. “I have loved you for so long now.” He placed his hands just above my hair then lightly touched the top of my head as if I would break. Then, finding out that I was not about to, he slid his hands down my hair to my shoulders and drew me to him. I thought I heard the cannon go off again, but it was the sound of my own heart beating. For his arms were so strong and yet gentle, as I’d dreamed for weeks they would be. And when he kissed me I felt as if the world was exploding inside me for the wonder of it.

When he stopped, I felt an anguish I had not known a body was capable of. And in that moment I possessed and lost the whole world and everything in it and was left with the feeling and the knowledge, which is love, that no matter how we give ourselves we always end up losing. That to love is to lose, the moment we agree to the bargain. And that, being human, we keep standing there wanting to lose more.

He smiled down at me and his eyes welcomed my newfound knowledge with a reassurance that it was all right, after all.

“Do you think you can call me John now?”

He broke my heart when he said that. I couldn’t speak. He turned away and reached into the pocket of his linen coat, which was over a nearby chair. “I have something for you.”

He drew out a small sack and removed something gold that caught the sunlight.

“Oh, what is it?”

“Something I bought for you when I was in Boston in February.”

“In February?”

“I told you I’ve loved you for a long time.” It was a delicate locket of gold and mother-of-pearl.

“Oh, it’s beautiful!”

“It’s from France.” He showed me how it opened, and inside was a likeness of him, deftly sketched. “An artist in Boston did it.”

“Oh, John! You’ve had it all this time!”

“All this time.” He smiled. “When I came home from Boston, we fought, if you’ll remember. You hadn’t done your lessons and I was angry with you.”

“You took away my novel. And Bleu. And all the time you had this for me? I hated you then.”

“Did you?”

“Well, I did think you looked rather dashing when you came back from Boston. Yet I was angry with you at the same time. And then I got sick and you gave me that book of poems and I was so confused! I didn’t know what to think of you.”

“Ah, yes, the book of poetry.”

“I read it time and time again. It meant so much to me.”

“You would have had a hard time convincing me of that. You were still a plague to me.”

“Oh, John, don’t tease. But tell me, sir, what made you so sure when you were in Boston that I would …”

“That you would learn to love me? I was never sure. But I was hoping.” He kissed my forehead. “It was most difficult for me to be stern with you when I loved you so.”

“But you managed it just the same.”

“Only because I was trying to help you grow up.”

“And have I?”

“Yes, Jemima. I would say you have grown up very nicely.”

I pinned the locket at the neckline of my short gown, and then I let him kiss me again. Because I had already resolved that if you’re afraid of love, your heart will break anyway, only in not half so nice a fashion as it does when you let somebody love you.

He went away.

He left on a July day when the town was under a stupor of white heat. He packed his saddlebags and took his long musket and put on the hat pinned up with the turkey feather and rode out of town on Star.

One minute he was in Father’s study telling me how he expected me to keep on with my lessons, leaving his books for me to read. His hands were on my arms as gentle as goose down, yet like hot irons. He cradled me against his chest, pressed his face against mine, and said my name in terms of endearing promise. The next minute he was striding through the wide hall, and I was standing on our front steps watching him ride down Queen Street.

He left on the pretense that he was gathering information on the war for a Tory paper in New York. He would write for that Tory paper but he would also post notices once a month in the
Pennsylvania Gazette
about his runaway slave, Portia, under the name of Charles Apgar. As long as those notices appeared, I would know he was all right, for his letters to me under his own name might cease at any time.

I stood watching him go, thinking my heart would break. But it didn’t. It had to stay whole, for there were too many other things yet to come that would break it.

“Are you crying again, Jemima Emerson?” I turned from the window in the upstairs hall to see David standing next to me. How tall he’d grown this past summer, how brown he’d gotten, how his voice had deepened.

“All you do is cry over that damned Tory, Reid. Honestly, Jem, I never thought you’d go daft over a Tory.”

“Oh, David.” I sniffed and turned to put my hands on his shoulders. “Don’t scold. You’ll be in love one day yourself, and you’ll see that politics doesn’t have a thing to do with it.”

“I should think it would with you. There’s Dan, a personal aide to General Schuyler, helping to negotiate with the Iroquois. And Mother getting a whole wagonload of shirts and coats off to the army in New York. And Father with his work in the Congress.”

“David …” I wiped my eyes and looked up at him coyly. “Don’t be angry with me. I can’t bear it.”

“I’m not angry with you. It’s our parents’ fault for allowing him to tutor you so long. You couldn’t help it. He did sweet-talk you. And everybody knows that girls can’t help
falling in love when they’re sweet-talked. It’s all right with me, Jem, if it’s what you want.”

I hugged him. How dear he was! “I’m so glad Father didn’t let you go off with the group of New Jersey militia that left last week.”