Chapter Fourteen
WEYMOUTH
Massachusetts
We made our New Year’s visits to friends and family, delivering gifts of fruitcakes. The parsonage offered a warm respite
when we stopped to visit Phoebe and my widowed father, who was in much need of good cheer. There, we were also reunited with
my sister Mary and her husband, Richard Cranch, with whom we shared mulled wine.
We also had at the table a very pleasant guest—the bespectacled James Lovell, who would this term go to Philadelphia with
my husband to serve in the Continental Congress.
I remembered the man well from the marvelous oration he’d given to mark the anniversary of the Boston Massacre. But I wouldn’t
have recognized him because Mr. Lovell was still recovering from his arrest and yearlong ordeal on a British prison ship.
He was so thin that Mary plied him with slice after slice of my fruitcake, which he readily complimented. “Mrs. Adams, your
servant deserves an increase in wages for this delicious concoction.”
I tried not to preen. “It is my own baking entirely.”
His eyebrows rose. “And here your Mr. Adams has described you to all and sundry as his stalwart Portia, such that I thought you more apt to wield a dagger than a baking spoon.”
I laughed, glancing to my husband, who folded his hands before him as if in prayer. “Lord preserve me if Abigail should ever
take up a dagger—her intellect alone is sharp enough to cut my vanity to ribbons.”
I laughed again, resisting the urge to poke him in the ribs.
Then he smiled and said, “But she is my Portia. Even with baking spoon, she sacrifices for my sake and the sake of her country as courageously as any Roman matron.”
I loved John then as much as I’d ever loved him and maybe more. For his good humor, self-knowledge, and the way he made me
feel appreciated. For the warm affection in his eyes. For the man he was becoming. Not simply a foot soldier of good order,
but the father of a new nation.
That night we spent long hours by the fire whilst Mr. Lovell shared harrowing details of his captivity. The tight, dark cell.
The rats and the bite of irons at his wrists. The cold and maggot-infested meals. What kind of people held their fellow man
in such conditions?
My heart truly went out to him. Mr. Lovell had been a Latin master—he’d never encouraged or been part of any mob. But the
British needed to arrest someone, and he’d been easier to capture than Sam Adams. Owing his freedom to a prisoner exchange, Mr. Lovell now said, “Such injustices
will never take place in the new nation we build.”
I could see the doubt in my husband’s less idealistic eyes as he considered human nature. But John kept his counsel, and I
squeezed his hand in gratitude for that, and so very many other things.
With the blizzards of January, my dearest friend was gone to Congress, but within weeks, I knew he’d left me with the stirrings
of life within my womb.
It made me happier than I’d been in some time, despite the trials of winter. I stretched salt pork into stews seasoned with
withered onions from the root cellar. I rationed pickled vegetables. I never dared crack open a jar of fruit preserves unless we had visitors—which we seldom did during cold weather. Occasionally Uncle Tufts
sought respite after helping a patient, and I always saw to it that he was fed and warmed by my fire.
But few others stopped. Thus, I was shocked one wintry evening to find my father at my door, having come by horseback. Urging
him in from the cold, I scolded, “Surely you didn’t ride from Weymouth by yourself in the snow.”
My father merely stamped his boots. “The Lord has seen fit to force me to do more in life on my own.”
As a godly man, he’d always been forbidding, so I hesitated to reach for his hand to comfort him. Instead, I tried to convey
with my voice that I understood—at least in some small part. “It’s difficult to be without one’s dearest friend.”
If he appreciated my sympathy, he couldn’t show it. “In any case, riding horseback is a trifle for someone so young as I am.”
In truth, he was nearly seventy years old, but I dared not point it out, because if his grief over my mother was easing, I
didn’t wish to discourage his renewed vigor. “Nabby, help your grandpapa with his boots and set them by the fire to dry.”
Nabby did as I bid while Johnny scrambled to pull an extra chair to our sparse dinner table. And while I tried to make little
Tommy sit still and not spill his soup, I distractedly shared what news I had. “Dr. Tufts was here sharing tales of a woman
who died in childbirth.” Letting my hand drift to my pregnant belly, I said, “Would that he had kept that story to himself.”
“Rejoice, for the woman is with her maker now,” my father said. “She resides in paradise.”
I did not feel much like rejoicing about a woman dying in pain and blood, leaving an orphaned infant behind. So, I remained
silent until my father said, “I don’t suppose you’ve heard the family news that your sister Elizabeth is to marry John Shaw
this autumn.”
John Shaw? I nearly choked.
Of all the men for my younger sister to wed! Shaw was a clergyman, like my father, but a dour Calvinist—the sort who saw sin
everywhere and in everything. Incredulous, my hands gripped the back of the chair. “Don’t say you gave your blessing!”
The same father who thwarted my own match for years now shrugged helplessly. “She loves the man.”
This was news to me. “He’ll take her away from us, all the way to Haverhill in New Hampshire!”
“Abigail, I know you’ve read the book of Ruth. A wife must go with her husband and his family. Besides, Shaw will let your
sister read books and write those poems she dreams of publishing.”
No, he will stifle her, I thought. There were few more consequential things for the quality of a woman’s life than whom she married, and I could
scarcely imagine a man less suited for her. My high-spirited little sister, Elizabeth, forced to adhere to every severe restriction,
and held up for the community as an example as the Calvinist minister’s wife!
I sat stewing about it during our meager supper, wondering at Elizabeth’s strength of character if she could give herself
over to the control of a man like that. “What does Phoebe say?”
“She won’t speak against a love match,” my father replied. “Especially since Phoebe has her mind set to make the leap with
a certain gentleman if he ever asks.”
I knew Phoebe’s certain gentleman was Mr. Abdee, a Black merchant of Boston. A far better choice in husband than Reverend Shaw, in my opinion. “Does this mean
you finally intend to free Phoebe? She’s a deserving woman who has given us nothing but kindness in return for the cruelty
of servitude.”
“Abigail—”
“You are a parson meant to lead by moral example.”
My father gave me the weary look of an exasperated elder. “Slavery is mentioned in the Bible.”
“How many slaves did Jesus own?”
My father did not answer but plainly thought me a simpleton. “If Mr. Abdee asks for Phoebe’s hand, perhaps I’ll manumit her
as a wedding present. Otherwise, I can’t just set loose a woman alone in the world with no way of taking care of herself.”
My lips pursed because my father was far less capable of taking care of himself than any woman I knew. And here I was taking care of myself alone, and my children, too.
I was still vexed the next day while taking inventory of the larder. I sent my little sister a letter in an attempt to dissuade
her but now wondered if it would be better to ride to Weymouth and shake some sense into her.
In the end, I decided there was no accounting for what a woman would do when nearly thirty and still unmarried. My sister
was leaping at what might be her last chance to be a mistress of her own household. It would be cruelly unfair of me to begrudge
her.
But John Shaw!
Perhaps I was so cross because of my pregnancy; having spit up twice that morning already, I was out of sorts. I wanted a
bite of fresh bread to soothe my stomach, but there was no flour to be had. There was not a bushel of rye within sixty miles
of this town. We were also out of sugar, rum, coffee, and chocolate.
Peering over my shoulder, Nabby said, “We have just enough molasses to make Indian pudding.”
We did at that! How fortunate I was to have a daughter who was both a companion and an assistant, possessing a prudence and
steadiness beyond her years. In truth, Nabby’s help sustained me through that hard winter, into the first buds of spring.
And though Johnny wasn’t nearly so helpful, he was at least now big enough to ride to the post and back.
Their father often sent a few lines to the children—who, shivering over a fire, would compare each letter’s length to see
which one was longest, bickering over whom their father loved best.
“Not me,” Tommy whined. “Papa never writes me.”
“Only because you can’t read,” Nabby consoled him.
As for me, as my time of birth neared, I looked round with a melancholy sigh for my absent partner, wondering what would happen
if, like Dr. Tuft’s patient, I should perish in the ordeal of childbirth.
Most widowers would take another wife to be a mother over his children; but I couldn’t imagine John courting anew. It would
all fall upon Nabby to tend to her father’s household and raise up her brothers. A fate from which I wished to spare her,
as much as I wished God to spare me and the child in my womb.
A drought-cursed summer baked our fields, leaving me to wonder if I was forever to be standing in the dust, praying for rain.
The farm work went hard because our gray horse was lame with age. The wise thing to do would be to sell her for stew meat,
but my husband had a soft spot for animals, and I was relieved that he wrote from Congress that I should let the mare enjoy
the rest of her life in our pasture as a reward for long service.
Certainly, the horse served us longer than my head farm worker—a formerly enslaved man who came to us with Phoebe’s highest recommendation.