Time Enough for Drums (2 page)

“She’s speaking the truth,” Dan said. “I was at the Moores’ and left poor Jem here freezing in the cold.”

“All right, Jemima. I’ll let you off this time. But you’d better concoct some tale to tell your mother. She knows you missed your schoolwork today. Lying shouldn’t be too difficult for you. You’re telling tales all the time.”

He veered his horse toward town, leaving me with the sting of his unkind words. I watched his retreating figure and wondered if he would indeed keep this musket lesson a secret from our parents. And how he knew that John Fitch was making gunlocks at the steel mill. And why it mattered that he had hurt me when I considered him so despicable.

I had an errand to run after leaving Dan, so I hurried along Queen Street. Mrs. Pinkerton was ailing and Mother said I was to deliver a copy of
Gulliver’s Travels
for her to read. I delivered the book to David Pinkerton’s shop, inquired after his wife’s health, took quick note of the price of his printed calicoes, as Father had asked me to do, and then looked to see if he was still stocking tea.

He was. My father was a merchant too and hadn’t sold tea in his shop since early 1774 when Dan and the other students at the College of New Jersey in Princeton had burned the school’s supply in protest of the tax on tea the British had imposed on us back in 1773. I went back out into the cold, thinking of how dearly the decision not to carry tea must have cost Father. Many people patronized Pinkerton’s shop now instead, and my father had a lot of other difficulties, too. Since October he’d been a member of the Committee of Safety, which meant he had a say not only in the commissioning of military officers for our army but also in how the money should be spent that the legislature issued. And he had to keep an eye on the activities
of avowed Tories, those who were loyal to the king, in our town. And many of them were his friends.

“Jemima. Jemima Emerson!”

Up ahead a figure came running toward me. I recognized Raymond Moore instantly in his round, flat-brimmed Quaker hat and somber clothes. The Moore farm, where Dan had been earlier, was two miles outside town. Raymond was the younger of the two sons and always my favorite. We’d played together as children, Dan, David, and I and the Moore children. But in the last year or so, he’d been looking at me with different eyes. I must say his looks quickened my heart, though I was determined it would be a long time before I married.

His parents and mine were friends, in the steadfast but inscrutable way Quakers were friends with people. Dan was just about betrothed to Raymond’s sister, Betsy.

“Hello, Jemima.”

“You would think the devil himself was chasing you, Raymond.”

He stood holding his hat in both hands against his heaving chest. The Moores grew their corn and their sons tall, Father always said. He’d forgotten to add handsome. But Raymond’s handsomeness was obscured by some private anguish.

“I would speak with thee.”

“Fine, you can walk me home.”

“No. Here. We mustn’t let thy parents see us together.”

“Why? Do we have some secret they wouldn’t approve of?”

“Don’t jest. In fact, perhaps we soon shall if I persist in my plan.”

“And what plan is that?”

“My plan to enlist in thy brother’s regiment.”

“Oh, Raymond!” I stopped dead in my shoes. Our eyes met, and in his I saw all the pain and determination of his decision. “Why, Raymond? I don’t want you to go away and fight. Isn’t it enough that Dan is going? And perhaps David too? And almost everyone I know?”

“I have seen thy brother running himself ragged these last six weeks to recruit men for the company he’s had to raise to prove himself worthy of his commission. I have watched and stood by in silence while others I grew up with have signed on. And I know he hasn’t reached his quota of men yet. Betsy has told me.”

“Has Betsy also told you what it will do to your parents if you enlist?”

“She’s not had to tell me that. I have anguished and prayed on my decision. Thy brother and I have been close for many years. I cannot stay and let him fight the British so we can keep our land.”

“But it’s against your faith to fight.”

“It is part of the Quaker philosophy that if thee has a concern, thee has the responsibility to follow through on it. I have a concern.”

He looked at me, waiting. I was cold through to the bone and anxious about the trouble I was in at home. I was annoyed with Raymond, who had suddenly become very dear to me as he stood there talking about Quaker philosophy.

“I’ll never forgive you if you get killed. Do you know that?”

He smiled. “Thee will help me, then?”

“How can I help?”

He cast glances up and down Queen Street, which was deserted. “Will Dan be home tonight?”

“He comes and goes as he pleases these days. Sometimes
when he’s out recruiting, he doesn’t come home until morning. And sometimes young men knock on our door in the middle of the night to enlist. He did promise Mother he’d be home for supper, though. We’re having Indian pot roast. He wouldn’t miss that.”

“I will be in thy barn at ten tonight. All thee has to do is tell Dan. It would anguish thy parents if I came to the house.”

“Oh, Raymond!”

“It disturbs thee.”

“Yes, it disturbs me. I know the Patriot women are supposed to send their men off to war with pride. And I am proud. But it still disturbs me. And what will Betsy say about Dan taking you? He’s about to ask for her hand, you know.”

“Betsy knows I will enlist elsewhere if not with Dan.”

The wind gusted around us, wrapping us both in guilt and misery. “All right,” I agreed. “I’ll tell Dan.” His eyes sought mine as he lingered. He started to speak, then stopped.

“Yes, Raymond?”

“I hold thee in very high esteem, Jemima Emerson. I’ll not forget thee.” He turned and ran, leaving me with my mouth open in the middle of the street.

Dan did come home that night as he had promised, but the chance to tell him about Raymond Moore was lost because of the presence of John Reid at our table.

Reid was a weasel if there ever was one. He bullied me in my lessons, scolded me constantly about my penmanship, and was not “agreeable to the newest rules and truest methods practiced by the best teachers,” as he advertised in the
Pennsylvania Gazette
for his boys’ school in Trenton.

And he was a Tory, reason alone for me to hate him. I’d heard that he birched the boys in his school when they misbehaved. If it was true, it added a menacing quality to him, which he did nothing to dispel.

Mother said nothing about my misadventures that day. She was too busy supervising Lucy in the kitchen. She sent me to the parlor to fetch both Reid and Dan for supper. In the hall I met David, freshly scrubbed and dressed. David was fourteen and at the moment very sullen.

“That Reid is a rat.”

“What did he do, David?”

“Told Father I was with Fitch again today.”

“What did Father do?”

“Nothing yet. Hasn’t said a word to me about it.”

That was worse than anything. Father was slow to anger, but when he did, he demanded intellectual argument. You had to defend yourself, and he didn’t back off until you were in tears.

“Reid sent Dan for me, that’s what he did.”

“Did Dan scold?”

“No. Dan understands what I’m trying to do with Fitch. All he said was to be careful. Then I got back here and found that Reid had told Father. Who does he think he is, a member of this family?”

“Mother and Father have practically adopted him, you know that, David. We just have to put up with him.”

“You, maybe. But I don’t. I tell you, he’s a rat.”

“A weasel was more what I had in mind.” I kissed the side of his face. He was taller than I, even though I was fifteen that December of 1775. I would be sixteen in March. “Just be good at supper. Maybe Father will forget it.”

“Some chance.”

I found Dan and Reid in front of the hearth in the parlor, each with a mug in his hand, conspiring. Then Dan gave a hearty laugh. The firelight slanted their shadows across the room.

John Reid was twenty-four, and I would be lying if I said he wasn’t handsome. He was finely dressed in rust-colored breeches and coat with a lace cravat at his throat. His parents were dead. They had drowned at sea when their ship went down on a trip to England three years ago. His father and mine had been boyhood friends. His inheritance had allowed him to open his school for boys on King Street. He lived alone above the establishment, as befitted a weasel.

Dan was twenty, as tall as Reid but broader and more
direct in manner. He wore boots and immaculate linen breeches, shirt, and waistcoat. The blue and red coat of his regiment, the Second New Jersey, lay over a chair. He wore it not to affect a uniform, but because no other coat fit him since he’d come home from school.

“Dan, Mother says you’re to come in to supper immediately. You too, Mr. Reid.”

“How nice you look, Jem. Doesn’t she look pretty, John?”

Reid inclined his head. “Certainly not like the little girl I started tutoring two years ago.”

I blushed. Usually he treated me as if I were still thirteen. But I preferred that to the way he was looking at me now. Had I known I would elicit such a look from him, I’d have worn sackcloth instead of my blue English gown.

“Jem, I’ve been telling John some of my adventures traveling through the county.”

“Should you? Mr. Reid is a Tory.”

“Jemima! John is our friend! And I think that’s uncalled for. You should apologize.”

“Mr. Reid doesn’t apologize for being a Tory, do you, Mr. Reid?” I looked up at him.

“One should never apologize for one’s beliefs, Jemima.”

“Are you saying that if one believes in something or in doing something, they should do it?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then why did you tell Father about David’s activities this afternoon?” I asked.

“Jemima,” Dan interrupted, “David is a child and he ran away from his responsibilities with Mr. Singer. As for John Reid’s politics, they’re his business. Our parents have opened our home to him. You know how it is in Trenton these days. Lots of Father’s friends are Tories. Reverend Panton, for instance.”

“He’s different.”

“Why?”

“Reverend Panton didn’t go up to Boston last summer and mingle with the Tories and stay until autumn.”

“Jemima! I’m ashamed of you! John Reid accompanied Mother and me to Becky’s wedding. We couldn’t have done without him in getting around a town held by the British.”

“Then why didn’t he come home with you and Mother after the wedding? Why did he stay on so long in a town held by the British?”

Dan set his mug on the mantel and turned to me. I could see why he would make a good officer. His scowl was fierce enough. “Jemima, I must insist that you apologize to John as a friend of this family and a guest under our roof.”

There was nothing in his look to indicate that he would stand for anything less. But John Reid put a hand on his arm. “It’s all right, Dan.”

“It isn’t,” Dan insisted.

“Jemima is only provoking me, much the same as she does when I tutor her.”

“And do you take this from her then? Constantly?”

John smiled. “I have my ways of getting back. Jemima will be doing extra doses of French and penmanship Friday, I can assure you.”

Dan shook his head. “I don’t know why you two can’t get along. It makes me sad. I love you both. Jemima, it was your choice to have John for a tutor, wasn’t it?”

“Only because if I didn’t, I’d have to go to Miss Rodger’s like Rebeckah, and learn to play the harpsichord and mingle with all those silly girls.”

“Ah, you see John? You’re the lesser of two evils.”

Reid gave a mock bow. “Your sister’s honesty is refreshing, and more than I enjoyed with Rebeckah, who wrote
from Boston within two weeks of marrying a British officer that she loved me.”

“Ah, Rebeckah.” Dan reached for his coat and put it on. “My darling sister hasn’t set foot in this house since she returned from Boston. You’re well out of it with Rebeckah, John. Don’t remind me of her. It’s bad enough I have to go to Grandfather Henshaw’s tomorrow and see her. Father’s orders. No doubt Grandfather wants to talk to me about joining up. I was hoping you’d come along, Jem. You always can sweeten Grandfather’s mood.”

“Oh, can I come, Dan?”

He smiled. “If you apologize to John. The war is out there, and we’ll all be involved in it soon enough. Let’s not allow it to enter our lives just yet. I’d like you two to become friends before I go away.”

He had me cornered. Reid saw it and took pleasure in it. “I’m sorry, Mr. Reid,” I said. The haughty gleam in his eyes brought tears to my own as I ran from the room.

I lay in my bed under my warm quilt but I could not sleep. The December wind howled around the house, echoing my own mournful thoughts. The clock in the upstairs hall had chimed the half hour. Nine-thirty. I had heard Mother and Father come to bed at nine and David a few minutes earlier. Downstairs, Cornelius and Lucy, our house slaves, would now be retired in the small room off the kitchen where they slept.

From the parlor, underneath my room, I heard the voices of Dan and John Reid by the fire. I hadn’t had the chance to tell Dan about Raymond Moore, who was probably at that moment making his way into our barn. Why did Dan spend so much time with a Tory?

All of the eligible men in Trenton were joining up, either with the American or the British army. All the Patriot women were using their spinning wheels to produce cloth for the army. Every Patriot family we knew had given up British goods and drinking tea. In St. Michael’s, our church, half the congregation didn’t speak to the other half because of the war, and there sat Dan, as friendly as ever with a Tory.

I put on my moccasins and wrapped myself in the heavy blanket that Grandfather Emerson, my father’s father, had brought me from Hudson Bay.

The candles were burned down in the parlor, and in the semidarkness I saw Dan and Reid before the fire. I stood, half hidden, in the shadows of the hallway. “Dan.”