Chapter Fifteen
brAINTREE
Massachusetts
The summer had made us tremble. The fall of Fort Ticonderoga. The scalping of Jane McCrea. The Battle of Oriskany, where Mohawk,
Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, and Mississauga warriors helped slaughter patriot forces.
It wasn’t until autumn that we had good news. The best possible news. We’d won the Battle at Saratoga, capturing British General
Burgoyne and more than six thousand of his men. His whole army.
Hopefully this meant the tide was turning. Either way, my husband was now coming home for a visit. Waiting for him, I stood
in the yard, pulling my coat tight around me against an unseasonably cold wind with hopeful eyes on the muddy road.
From our earliest days of marriage, John had ridden circuit for the courts, returning home dusty and smelling of horse, with
toys for the children. But since the start of the war, the distance between our partings and reunions had grown such that
I could no longer bear for partings and reunions to be the whole pattern of our marriage.
We’ve sacrificed enough to the cause was my guilty, sullen thought. Whatever I had said or consented to before, from this day hence, I wanted John home with me.
Here on this farm in all its frosted bleakness. Here in our simple saltbox house that the stinging wind had washed of its
color. Here where all that remained of our hopes and dreams resided.
At last, through the cold fog of the morning, I glimpsed my husband’s red roan emerge, John astride a cheery saffron saddlecloth.
And at the sight of him, no sense of decorum could hold me back.
Lifting my skirt to fly into his arms, I quite outran all semblances of dignified reserve, chased by our geese who followed the trail of grains and garden trimmings I dropped in my wake.
Oh, the flapping, hissing, and honking fuss they made at the return of a master they’d quite forgotten. I behaved little better—nearly
dragging my poor husband off his mount into my embrace.
John laughed as we rained down profligate kisses upon each other’s cheeks, lips, noses, and brows. What a spectacle we made—the
delegate and his lady.
Or, I hoped, the former delegate and his lady.
With the familiar scrape of John’s unshaven cheek against mine, my fingers tangling in his snow-dusted cloak, my laughter
suddenly dissolved into sobs.
“Now Mrs. Adams, what is this?” John asked, wiping my tears with his gloved thumbs. “I expected well-deserved remonstrations.
A welcoming embrace if I was lucky. But not tears. Why do you weep?”
“For love. Do you know I dreamed that you’d finally returned home but met me coldly—as if you cared little or nothing about
me? To feel your rejection was so distressing that my heart ached half an hour after I waked, even as I tried to reassure
myself it was only a dream.”
With a shake of his head my husband drew me against his warm chest. “Your dream will never come to pass. You can never be
coolly received by me. Not while my heart beats and my senses remain.”
I could feel for myself that his heart was still beating under his coat. Steady and strong. I paused a while longer to hear
it before I was willing to go inside where I must share him with the family.
I thought Nabby would come bolting from the house, her braid flying behind. That the boys would crash into his knees as they’d
done before. But nearly a year’s absence is a long time for children—letters are a poor substitute—and I think it broke John’s
heart to see our little ones regarding him with cautious eyes.
“Such a reserved girl our Miss Nabby has become,” John said, greeting our daughter with a hug and a parcel. “But I doubt she’ll
remain shy when she sees what I’ve brought.”
Nabby tore off the paper and held the book inside close to her heart, though she knew not what it contained. “A book of French?”
“Every day I see the French language will become a necessary accomplishment of American ladies and gentlemen,” John said.
“Thankfully, your mother can read it and understand it.”
More gifts followed. Toys for the boys and a loaf of sugar for me, along with pins and tea. It made our cozy winter evening
very agreeable. I held a teacup near my nose, savoring the precious drink almost as much as I savored the feel of my husband’s
warm fingers in my other hand.
That night, in the quiet of our canopied bed, we grieved together over the loss of the baby we conceived during our last brief
reunion. And we came together in love and relief that the war was finally turning our way.
For two weeks we basked in the glow of family harmony and the blessings that remained to us. During the day, John bundled
up the boys against the cold and took them to look after livestock, sharpen blades, repair the barn, and chop firewood.
It pleased me to see how John Quincy blossomed under his father’s direction. The two would get to talking philosophy as they
worked, each insisting that any trees planted in the spring would shelter and provide for the new nation in the future. But
when it came to the younger boys—especially our sweet Charlie—their father could be a touch too stern. When our cherub suggested
a snowball fight, his father snapped, “How can you boys even think of play fighting when young men—now soldiers—are making war in earnest in this country?”
What weighed upon John, of course, was that he’d helped send young men to fight in this war. Those soldiers were suffering,
even now, in their winter encampment at Valley Forge. But I hated to see our boys shrink from their father in shame. Boys
who were not so unmindful of the suffering of others as their father supposed, for they’d seen soldiers bleeding on our floor.
They ought not be robbed of all semblances of childhood. But before I could find the words to say so, Nabby stepped forward to wrap her arms around her brothers.
“Instead of a snowball fight, might you take us to build a snowman instead, Papa?”
Building something appealed to her father’s nature. But still my husband hesitated. “With all that must be done around this farm? Why, your mother will think me a wastrel for abandoning her near a year only to return for tomfoolery in the snow.”
“Oh balderdash!” I cried. “After all our struggles we deserve a little frivolity. Come, children. I believe I can even spare a carrot from
the root cellar for a snowman’s nose.”
In the end, it was six carrots.
For as we frolicked in the yard, the children insisted upon making a snow family. A stout snowman father with a lawyer’s tie
wig. A mother with stone eyes both front and back—for I’d told the boys all mothers have secret eyes behind their heads and
that’s how I always knew what mischief they were up to. Then we built three boys, with twiggy arms. Johnny’s had pinecone
buttons. Charlie and Tommy had turkey feathers because they liked to pretend they were Sons of Liberty dressed as Mohawks
dumping tea in the harbor. Lastly, we built a snow girl and used berries to give Nabby’s likeness her enigmatic smile.
When we finally went back inside, our noses stinging from the cold and our faces sore from smiling, I couldn’t remember when
last we’d had such a wonderful day.
At dinner, John was in much better spirits. “Abigail, I’m grateful for how well you’ve maintained the farmstead. And how frugal
you’ve been with our dwindling savings. Fortunately, I mean to refill our coffers with my next case at the bar.”
“You’re taking a case?” I asked, hoping with all my heart and soul that it was true. “You’re not returning to Congress?”
He shook his head. “I have done my part. I am wearied with the life I’ve been leading, and if I spend any more time away,
I shall scarcely know my own children. I think Elbridge Gerry will take my place. In any case, it’s someone else’s turn to
serve.”
I smiled, savoring these words, until he added that his wandering ways were not quite over. “There’s an important shipping case that ought to pay quite well, though it will involve a little ride to the courts
in New Hampshire.” Feeling me tense beside him, he added, “New Hampshire is not so far. I shall visit your sister Elizabeth
and Reverend Shaw and return home before you notice I’m gone.”
Brooding, I whispered, “Oh, I shall notice. After the bruising my heart has taken this year, it shall notice every absence the rest of our lives.”
John smiled indulgently, pressing a kiss to my hand. “Can you make yourself amenable to it anyway?”
I knew I was being unreasonable. My good man had to earn his living. And it was only a short trip. So, returning a kiss at
the corner of his lips, I teased, “I suppose I can resign myself to it for the sake of small matters like keeping food on
the table.”
“Small matters indeed,” John said, pulling me into his arms. “Small matters indeed to hearts bruised by my wandering.”
While John was away in New Hampshire, an official packet from Congress arrived adorned with elaborate wax seals. I let it
sit on the table because we were finished with that business. Someone else would take John’s place in Philadelphia. Someone
else’s poor wife would be left home alone. And someone else’s children would wonder when their papa might return.
But in the end, I thought it might be too important to ignore, and so I tore open the seal, revealing the terrible news. Congress
had appointed my husband to go to France and negotiate a treaty of alliance.
This hit me with the shock of a thunderclap from a clear blue sky. My heart dropped to the pits of despair. This couldn’t
have been a surprise to John, and yet, he’d sat at our dinner table pretending that he’d leave off public service for the
sake of our family.
The nerve of him.
The moment I heard John’s horse approach upon his return from New Hampshire, I hurried to the barn, my bonnet askew and my
breath puffing steam on the air. Instead of greeting him with an embrace, I asked, “When did you know?”
Without meeting my eyes, he said, “Word reached me on the road.”