Chapter 26
twenty-six
I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.
Nathan Hale
“Sister, it’s time you learned to fire a gun.”
Mae looked at Jon across the vegetable garden where she’d been gathering, her apron full of herbs. If he’d asked her to jump into the well she’d have been more willing. “Your flintlock?”
“Aye. I have two. One is with me at all times and the other is kept inside.”
“Let me take these herbs to Joanna first.” She hurried to the house and stepped into welcome shade as the early morning promised more heat.
By the time she rejoined Jon, he was waiting in the open doorway to the barn, Alexander beside him with his own gun.
Her thoughts flew to Rhys, who seemed so at home with his rifle that seeing him without it gave her pause.
Wary, she took the weapon from her brother, wincing at its weight. “I doubt I’m a fair shot.”
Jon chuckled as Alex handed his father a powder horn. “We’ll soon find out.”
“You’ve never handled a gun, Aunt Mae?” Alex asked.
She paused, thrust back to a frigid night and smokehouse thieves who were now friends. “James showed me how to use Father’s pistol before he left home. But a rifle is another challenge.”
“Welcome to the wilds of New York.”
She tried to smile back at him. “A far cry from Jersey.”
“Ever heard of Margaret Corbin?” Her nephew’s face wore respect. “When her husband fell at Fort Washington last November—I refuse to call it Knyphausen—she took his place at the cannon, loading and firing it against those redcoats till the very last.”
Mae tried to imagine it. “Was she hurt?”
“Badly, aye. But she kept at it even wounded.”
Margaret Corbin’s mettle reminded her of Lucy Hawkes. She sensed that same underlying strength, the ability to withstand whatever life handed her. No doubt Lucy could fire a rifle and man a cannon.
“Mind the weight of the gun,” Jon said, taking it back from her and tipping the muzzle upward. “Hold it like this. I’ll measure out the powder this round, then you’ll do the same next.”
She watched as he poured a small amount of priceless black powder.
“Now, take the lead ball and patch and ram it down the barrel’s length with this ramrod.”
Her clumsy attempts led to her heated cheeks and Alex’s half-hidden grin as he scratched his jaw.
“The flint strikes the steel frizzen and lights the powder,” Jon instructed patiently. “Now cock the hammer.”
She pulled back the hammer as Alex corrected her stance. “Stand with your feet as far apart as your squared shoulders.”
Clearly enjoying the process, Jon gestured to a distant post. “When the gun is firmly in hand, aim at that target over there. Take a breath, then lightly squeeze the trigger.”
She tried to keep the weapon steady as the sun beat upon her head and back and turned her sweaty.
One, two, three, pull. The ensuing crack stole her breath as the rifle kicked like a mule and sent her back a step.
Jon reached out to steady her as white smoke curled around them with a sharp, sulfurous smell.
“You nearly hit the target, Aunt Mae!” Alex’s pleasure eased her awkwardness somewhat.
“Reload and try again,” Jon told her.
Mae went through the motions a second time, finding the gun cumbersome at best. She was hard-pressed to school her astonishment when Jon said, “With enough practice you might best General Harlow’s reloading in twenty seconds on the run.”
Alex gave an admiring whistle. “Uncle James said his best time is five shots in under a minute.”
“That matches the British army’s three to four shots per minute with a smoothbore musket, which is far easier to reload than a rifle,” Jon said as he helped Mae measure the powder.
Composing herself, Mae fired again, this time wide of the mark. The jolt to her shoulder left her wondering how Rhys managed repeated firings. “Coralie’s turn.”
Both Jon and Alex chuckled. “Coralie’s refused. She said you’ll make a far better markswoman.”
Mae handed back the rifle, more than ready to return to the garden. “Can Joanna shoot?”
“Joanna won the last women’s competition at the valley’s spring gathering,” Jon said with obvious pride. “She and Alex hold the farm when I’m away at the fort.”
Mae mulled this over as Jon and Alex returned to the fields. She looked after them as they moved beyond the small, heavily leafed orchard. Wheat would soon be flowering, the maize tasseling and bending slightly in the breeze. She turned in a slow circle, still chary of the landscape.
“Mae, quit your woolgathering,” Coralie admonished, coming up behind her. “There’s far more to be done than firing a gun. I’ve been told to water the horses and turn them out to pasture, then feed the chickens. How I miss our hired help at home.”
“This is a working farm, remember. Feeding chickens and helping with the horses aren’t herculean tasks. We’re not guests but family.” Mae turned toward Fort Montgomery, wishing she could see its bastions. “Your attitude needs mending.”
For once, Coralie seemed contrite. “I apologize for being fractious. I’m just impatient. Joanna said a courier rides through here, but I doubt mail delivery is reliable or timely. Long gone are the days we went to the tavern for the post.”
“You wrote Lieutenant Gibbs before we left?”
“I posted a letter from Morristown the day before our departure, yes, but who knows when he’ll receive it? Once he does, I hope he’ll write back quickly, given we’re both in New York.”
“You still want to marry him, then.”
“I do indeed, no matter how you or Jon or James feel.” Coralie fanned her flushed face with her apron hem. “And I know what you’re thinking. You keep waiting for me to tell them.”
“Would you rather I do it?”
“I’ll announce our plans once Eben replies and all is in place.”
“Did you ever think the post might fall into the wrong hands? That by telling your whereabouts this farm and valley might be raided? Overrun by the enemy?”
“We’re talking about Eben, a longtime tie from Chatham, not the British and their allies.”
“We’re talking about a redcoat officer determined to quash at all costs what he and his fellows call a treasonous rebellion. Do you deny that?”
“I refuse to think of Eben as the enemy!”
“Then are we the enemy, Coralie? Your family?”
“I don’t want to take sides, Mae!” Her taut features bespoke her turmoil. “This madness must have an end. And you are mad if you think the Americans—outgunned and outnumbered—will win this ill-founded, misbegotten war.”
“They may be outnumbered and outgunned, but this war is neither ill-founded nor misbegotten. General Washington and those committed to the cause will prevail.” Mae spoke quietly lest they be overheard, though anyone watching would realize their tense exchange.
“Any man who will stake his very life on winning independence is not easily overtaken or undone.”
Before she’d finished, Coralie turned and walked toward the barn, leaving Mae to the garden’s weeding. But her thoughts were in a tumult, and she wondered again just how dire the American cause was. Her entire future with Rhys seemed to depend on it.
When the dinner bell sounded, they all gathered again, then spent the afternoon hours inside the house. Joanna spun on her Saxony wheel while Mae sewed and Coralie washed dishes and set the table for supper.
Dierdre, not yet ten, took out her own sampler to sit beside Mae. “What are you making, Aunt Mae?”
“Cockades.” She held up a rosette fashioned from scraps of silk she’d gotten from Madame Jaquett before leaving Chatham. “Soldiers wear them on their hats. I noticed your father doesn’t have one, so this is his.”
Dierdre reached out a hand and stroked the silk. “I like this blue color best, not the scarlet of the redcoats.”
“Would you like me to teach you how to make cockades? Your father would rather have one made by you, I’m sure. Or there’s white silk if you’d rather.”
At Dierdre’s glee, Joanna smiled. “She begs a break from her sampler, I’m sure.”
“’Tis better than carding wool.” Dierdre cast a sympathetic look at her sister, the carding brushes in her hands moving swiftly to prepare the wool for spinning into yarn.
Mae reached into her sewing kit where the pincushion rested.
“Pretty!” Dierdre touched it with a careful finger. “Did you make this?”
“Not I. My friend who travels with the army did—Lucy.”
“Lucy is a comely name. I should like to meet her.”
“She learned to sew from her mother like you do yours.”
“Is Lucy a lady like you?”
Mae smiled. “I don’t consider myself a real lady, not like British aristocrats or even the genteel Bostonians and Philadelphians and such. As for Lucy, she and her drummer husband don’t have a home yet and follow the army.”
Joanna clucked from her corner. “Lucy sounds to my liking. Would she come to sup with us on a Sabbath, you think? She and her husband?”
“Do you really need any more to feed, Joanna?” Coralie’s teasing held a bite as she finished setting the table. “I certainly don’t want to wash more dishes.”
“Mercy, living out here so far-flung, I always welcome company so long as they’re honest, God-fearing folk. Our Lord tells us to practice hospitality, does He not?”
“I’d settle for a single letter.” Coralie took a seat by a window, turning her face toward the breeze riffling the curtains.
Waiting for the post, no doubt. They’d been in the Hudson Highlands less than a week. Did Coralie think the post would be swift across enemy lines? Mae felt just as impatient. She’d not rest till this matter with her sister was settled.
“The post will come.” The whir of Joanna’s wheel underscored her certain words. “I recall the Seven Years’ War. Even in the worst of times letters eventually found their way.”
Mae gave silent thanks that Joanna was good-natured. She bore Coralie’s complaints like a long-suffering older sister. As for this letter, when and if it came, would it be as terse as Eben’s last? The unknown made the wait even more nettlesome.
“Soon Jon will return to the fort and leave the rest of us to manage the farm.” Joanna continued her spinning with deft hands. “But before he goes, he’ll have to tell you our valley’s history.”
Curious, Mae slipped outside and rounded the house to admire the early-budding rose she’d found climbing the house’s south wall. Jon wasn’t far, mending fences in the pasture where Orion grazed.
She walked toward him, glad to stretch her legs after so much sewing. “Is now a good time to tell me about the history here?”
“Joanna must have whetted your appetite.” He struck a nail, driving it into the wood. “Her grandfather actually named nearby Buttermilk Falls.”
“A true waterfall?”
“Aye, some seventy-five feet high and foaming like buttermilk.” He gestured toward the foothills where a footpath was visible. “Grandfather Fowler was among the English who came into this valley and routed the Dutch, who’d routed the Lenape through fighting, failed treaties, and disease.”
“A sorry tale much like Chatham’s,” Mae said.
“Chatham—what?” He grunted his discontent. “I cannot make peace with Day’s Bridge being renamed Chatham in ’73.”
“Even if it’s to honor the earl of Chatham who’s been somewhat sympathetic to our American cause?” At the firm shake of his head she said, “I think once the war is won we shall see a great many name changes. Perhaps Chatham will return to being Day’s Bridge once again.”
“If it’s still standing, you mean.”
They exchanged a grim look. “I fear for those who remain,” she said. Hanna and Aaron especially were never far from her thoughts. “I pray the Americans prevail.”
“You’re as staunch in your belief they will win as Coralie is in her belief the war is lost.”
“I hold on to hope. And I pray. ’Tis the least I can do when so many decent men are dying on both sides.”
“Aye, pray. Without ceasing.” He looked up from replacing a rotted post with one newly split.
“Any more valley history you want to share?”
“Aye.” He winked while continuing his work. “Buttermilk Falls is known to be a comely place for courting.”
Mae’s sudden fluster left her tongue-tied. He knew?
He settled the log into place. “It’s plain as print the both of you are thoroughly smitten, though General Harlow covers it better than you do.”
“All right, then,” she confessed. “I’ve not been the same since he first set foot in Chatham.”
“You light up like a firefly around him. Joanna’s noticed too.”
“Do you give your blessing?”
“There’s none finer than the general, unless it’s Washington himself.”
“But you’ve just met him.”
He nodded. “The measure of a man oft happens before you reason your way through it. I’ve long heard about him even before he left Virginia, including his exceptional marksmanship, mayhap the best since Boone.”
“Colonel Boone of the Virginia militia?” Mae thought back to countless conversations around Chatham’s dining room table. “He and General Harlow surveyed together in the Shenandoah Valley a few years ago.”
“As has been said, birds of a kind and color always flock and fly together.” Jon winked again. “Maebel Bohannon Harlow sounds quite fitting.”
Smiling, Mae pushed away from the fence, saying over her shoulder, “I hope we all live to see it.”