Milady at Arms/Chapter 8
THE next morning, that of September eleventh, Mistress Williams had breakfast upon the table bright and early. It was a hot, breathless morning that made everyone inclined to lie abed, hating the thought of the exertion necessary to dress; but despite that. Mistress Williams moved bustlingly about the kitchen between fireplace and table and showed not a whit of mercy to her family or herself.
"Nay, Mother, what be thy hurry?" grumblec Master Williams, coming in with two foaming milk pails, followed by Amos and James, likewise laden.
Mistress Williams sent a keen glance at the latter across the table as she dished out, with rapid and skilful spoon, the cornmeal mush into nine wooden trenchers.
"Why did ye not tell your parents ye were planning to sleep over at Uncle Ben's last night, James?" she demanded sternly.
"Nay, I did not go to Uncle Ben's!" answered James in evident astonishment.
"Ye did not! Why, Sally said" His mother paused to stare at him perplexedly.
"What did Sally know o't!" returned James. He turned grimly to the scarlet-cheeked girl. "So 'tis you, mistress, I ha' to thank for being locked out o' mine own house!" he said in a sarcastic voice.
"Nay, James, remember thy manners! Sally be not to blame, forsooth, only thyself, for staying out betimes!" interposed Mistress Williams. Then, as Sally seated herself silently at the breakfast table, her hostess resumed her serving and glanced amusedly from girl to boy. It was obvious to her maternal eye that Sally, offended by something James had said or done, had played a trick upon him.
"And doubtless the young rogue well deserved it!" thought his mother, smiling to herself.
Aloud, she asked innocently: "How did ye reach your bed, James?"
"I climbed Granddad's grapevine," returned James sullenly, referring to the strong and ancient vine, planted years ago, in 1730, when old Amos had finished his stone house and had moved in with his family. Now the vine grew against the house walls, forming a most convenient flight of leaf-lined steps.
Sally sat in troubled silence, consuming her portion of mush and milk. Behind her troubled expression, however, lay more than girlish resentment. For, despite Uzal's warning, she had been shocked by the treachery James had revealed to her ears last night. She turned the matter over and over in her mind, wondering how to proceed. Mistress Harrison, she knew, would have everything ready, for the women to go ahead with the bullet moulding by this time—the fire would be built, with a slave to watch over it and smother its telltale smoke, in the cornfield, the kettle of lead would be slung into place over the blaze. What should she do? Should she tell Mistress Williams of her son's treachery? But if Mistress Williams were not loyal, either, doubtless she would find means to keep Sally at home and so the rest of the women would be unwarned. No, better to let the morning proceed as planned and say nothing. Then, if the Hessians or red-coats did appear, the other women could secure Mistress Williams, if she evinced any disloyalty, and hide in the cornfield until the raiding party had passed on.
So Sally, that morning, washed and scrubbed and toiled in the big, hot kitchen. It did not occur to her that, as a guest, she might be privileged to wander out into the cool of the garden and on to the bank of Wigwam Brook, there to sit with idle, folded hands. The fact that she was Mistress Todd's bond maid had nothing to do with it, for not one of the girls, daughters upon even the richest, largest plantation, visiting another family, would have done aught but similar to what Sally did. Girls in those days were taught to work, rich or poor, at the Mountain settlement and indeed, had the examples of their busy, hard-working mothers ever before them.
At last, washed and dressed, Sally and Mistress Williams were ready to depart.
"An I dared, I would have left little Nat with Brother Ben's family next door," said the latter as, warm and red-faced, she sat with the baby screaming upon her knee, highly indignant at being garbed by his mother for traveling.
"Dared?" repeated Sally.
"Aye—I mean, they do not agree with my political views, so I like not to ask favors of them!" returned Mistress Williams. "There, there, sweetheart, ye will like going by-by!"
Sally, ready first, held out her arms for the baby and, regardless of the heat, danced around the kitchen with the little soft body held tightly in her slender arms.
"By-by!" she chanted. "See, Nat, there be the horses!" She stopped before the open door that little Nathaniel might catch a view of the horses which were being led up and down by Zenas, the steady fifteen-year-old who was his mother's main prop. "Ye cannot guess how I do miss the Todd baby!" said Sally shyly, as she and her hostess went toward the road a little later.
"Of course ye do!" said Mistress Williams quickly and sympathetically. She leaned forward, after mounting to her pillion seat behind Zenas, to take the heavy baby Sally lifted to her.
Untying the horse Zenas had tethered for her, Sally mounted and followed Mistress Williams and her sons. And as she went, the girl studied those straight, square shoulders ahead of her, that high-held head, and became wretchedly perplexed. Surely such quick, sweet sympathy, such a noble carriage could not belong to a traitor! And yet, was it possible for a family to be so utterly diverse in their attitude toward the cruel war?
Once gathered at the log cabin belonging to Simeon Harrison and his wife Keturah, the patriotic women of the Mountain settlemet set out quickly through the orchard and the cornfields to work. No time was there now to harbor suspicion. Mistress Harrison told each worker what to do as they walked along, some carrying the articles they were donating to be melted into bullets. Sally exclaimed when she saw a lovely pair of silver candle-holders in one of the women's hands.
"Nay, Mistress Munn, art going to melt thy candle-holders!" she exclaimed.
Mistress Munn nodded. She was the wife of the innkeeper, Samuel Munn, whose inn, across from the training ground, was headquarters for all of the townsmen, and who, himself, a fine, jovial, well-liked man, was a keen patriot.
"What care I for the candle-holders!" returned Mistress Munn, now, gently. "Think ye, Sally, they be half so dear to me as the cause for which they are to be melted? I only wish I had fifty times as many articles to gi'!"
Sally sighed. She wished she had even a pair of candle-holders to donate! Her thin arms tightened around little Nathaniel, whom she was carrying out to the field for Mistress Williams.
"At least I can do that much for my country," she thought. "Save one o' its workers for her real work this day!"
Mistress Munn noticed the girl's sigh and looked at the heavy baby she was carrying. "Let me carry him, Sally, and do ye carry the candle-holders!" she offered kindly, mistaking the meaning of that sigh. "Indeed, he is a heavy burden for such a slender maid to carry!"
"Nay!" Breathlessly, Sally shook her head. It was truly hard work walking slowly through the hot fields, dodging the protruding spears of the corn stalks, stumbling over the ripening pumpkins that lay between the corn rows; but not for worlds would she surrender her fat, precious burden. Then, too: "Ye see—it—it makes me feel as though I belonged somewhere when I ha' a baby i' my arms," said Sally shyly.
"'Tis true, a baby doth gi' one that feeling!" Mistress Munn returned understandingly. "Poor little maid!" she added to herself. And late that night she related the pathetic little remark to her husband, whose kind face softened as he listened.
"Aye," he nodded, and his voice was full of sympathy. "I do fear the poor little lass hath ne'er known a home, for Mistress Todd, from what I ha' heard, did not make her welcome and doth possess a shrew's tongue!"
But that was much later. Now, Mistress Munn was about to insist that Sally let her carry the child, for the girl's face was crimson and her breath came in great panting gasps, when a negress came hurrying back through the fields to meet Sally.
"Missy Keturah, she done tole me to ca'y the baby fo' you-all," she reported.
"Aye, Sally, let Chloe do so, for I think she is to take care o' the little fellow for Mistress Williams and ye are to return to the kitchen to wait on guard, as soon as ever ye see where we are to do our work out here," interposed Mistress Munn. So Sally placed little Nathaniel in the slave's outstretched arms and followed Mistress Munn.
Arrived at the selected site, the girl found there a busy scene. For a little space around, the corn In the center two fires had been built, with workers ready to fan and spread the smoke, while over the fires were slung the great iron kettles. The bullet moulds of iron were lying near by, ready for the molten liquid which would presently be ladled into them. The gaze of the women, Sally noticed, kept seeking the tops of the waving corn stalks high above them, as though they were watching for the enemy; but the place was well chosen, for the side of the Mountain protected them from those passing by in the road, the cornfield having been set forth upon a slope above the road.
At length, Mistress Harrison, glancing up, motioned to Sally. "Wilt run back to the cabin and tell Zeke to fetch me that fourth set o' bullet moulds? Methought we would not need it, but"—the lady's gaze rested calculatingly upon the two kettles, an expression of elation appeared upon her face—"I be pleased to find we do! Good neighbors," Sally heard her say to the rest as she hurried away, "this will be a goodly supply o' gun provender when next the alarm reaches our Newark Mountain! And that. Captain Thomas Williams hath informed me, may be any time soon!"
"Aye," came Mistress Mary Williams's sweet voice. "So Cousin Tom did inform me, too. The enemy on Staten Island doth wax ever more and more bold!"
The feminine voices died away as Sally's light feet carried her farther and farther from them, back to the Harrison cabin. Unconsciously, as the sun beat down upon her, her pace slackened. It was hot! Every pebble she trod seemed to burn through the thin soles of her square-toed slippers. It was hot and she lingered more and more, reaching the cool of the orchard, to pause there for a moment and fan her burning face! But this served her well. For otherwise, she might have run full into the arms of a troop of red-coats who had dismounted before the cabin and were scanning it sharply as they secured their horses to some chestnut trees beside the road.
Quick as a wink, Sally snatched up her apron and commenced to pick some green apples from the low branches of a tree near her, carefully keeping that tree between her and the enemy. Then, leisurely, as though that had been her errand, with the corners of her apron held up to form a bag for the apples, she approached the cabin from the rear and entered its back door as two figures appeared at the opposite door from the front. One of them she recognized at once. It was young James Williams! The other, a handsome young fellow in his red uniform, was a stranger. James greeted Sally sullenly.
"You here!" he remarked, with a sneer.
"Did ye not see me leave?" asked Sally coldly. She dumped the apples upon a well-scrubbed table and commenced to sort them over, calmly humming to herself.
"I thought ye were to be our servant, mistress, and now I find ye here working for Mistress Harrison! Truly, ye be a will o' the wisp!" went on James hastily.
"Your servant!" Touched upon the raw, Sally forgot her apples and whirled around to face James with blazing eyes. "Nay, I be no one's servant, sir!"
"What relationship do ye bear Mistress Todd, then?" retorted James insolently. But before Sally could answer, the young British officer came forward from the door.
"Nay," he said hastily, "I came not to hear ye quarrel wi' a hapless maid, sir! Cease, then, I prithee! Young mistress," he doffed his high hat respectfully and turned to Sally, "I have had information which doth lead me to suspect that treasonable actions against his gracious Majesty be transpiring in this vicinity. Can ye tell me whether one Mistress Williams be here?"
"Aye," broke in James with a frown, "where be my mother? We would speak to her!"
"Why did ye not speak to her this morning?" asked Sally coolly, her eyes upon James.
"No affair o' yours!" James reddened with more than the heat. "Come—where be my mother?"
Sally hesitated. Then, "She is not here!" she told him quietly.
"Ye do lie!" said James hotly. "I heard ye, myself" He stopped and bit his lips, and the British officer glanced at him in unconcealed disgust.
"Aye," returned Sally, smiling, "I knew ye did hear me!"
"How knew ye?" His curiosity overcame his judgment and James glared at her.
"I saw ye—in your kitchen mirror—last night—eavesdropping!" said Sally. There was a little pause, then she added nonchalantly, turning back to her apples, "No use to seek her here, I tell ye! Neither your mother nor her friends be here!"
There was a little baffled silence. The two young men glanced around the quiet, empty, orderly kitchen. Even the fire was out and no sign was there of melting lead for bullets, to say nothing of a gathering of patriotic women, whom both James and the red-coat had expected to surprise at work. Finally, James glanced at the other.
"What would ye?" he asked sullenly.
"A fine help ye be to the King, sir," returned the young officer bitterly, evidently thinking of the long, supperless hours he had spent the preceding evening for nothing. "However, we will search the place!"
"'Twill do ye no good," interposed Sally hastily.
The red-coat turned and eyed her thoughtfully. "It doth seem to me, young mistress, ye appear too eager to be rid o' us!" he observed keenly.
Sally, seeing her mistake, assumed a calmness she was far from feeling and watched them ransack the house. All went well, despite her nervous forebodings that Zenas might happen back to the house, that Mistress Harrison might send someone else, Zeke not appearing, for the bullet mould, that a telltale glimpse of smoke from the distant cornfield might rise above the intervening orchard and meet the enemies' eyes when they loitered near the tiny-paned window. But all went well until she heard an exclamation, when, turning away from the window whither she had strolled to satisfy herself upon the last-named point, she saw James holding up his baby brother's cape.
"Ah!" he said triumphantly. "My mother hath been here! Tell me, wench," he turned roughly to Sally, "where she be!"
"Oh, la!" Sally looked at him amusedly. "No one hath said your mother was not here at all this morning, James. How think ye I got here? Why, you, yourself, must have seen us leave wi' little Nathaniel!"
"Nay," blurted out James, "I had to leave afore ye did!"
"So?" Sally smiled at his angry stupidity. "Well—all I shall say be this—your mother be not here now!"
James uttered a snort of rage, drew out his hunting knife, and with it in his hand, went through the cabin once more, while the red-coat walked around the house outside. At last he brought up before Sally again.
"What did ye expect?" she asked tantalizingly. "Thought ye your mother would attack ye that ye needed the knife?"
James turned purple. "How knew I that no rebel might be in hiding!" he shouted. "They be the kind who hide behind their womenfolk!" he added.
Now it was Sally's turn to flare up. "That be a lie, James Williams, and ye know it!" she cried. "What about our splendid victory at Trenton last Christmas, forsooth! And on January third last at Princeton? I' truth, It seemed to me our men were not so afraid!"
"Here, here!" The red-coat eyed the two irate young people from the door. "Well, the place be empty, sir, so far as I can see," he added grimly to James, who could only look back at him in crestfallen silence. "I do hope," he added, turning away, "that the rest o' your information be more accurate. The rebels most certainly chose some other place for their work than this!"
"Nay," grumbled James, flinging a last malignant glance at Sally as he followed the other, "how was I to know an they changed their plans! At any rate," he added indiscreetly, "I be sure about Uzal Ball! That rebel be home this day—for he does not leave until to-morrow for the Town by the River!"
"Will ye hush!" Angrily the British officer turned upon James.
There was a little silence, broken only by the crunch of their boot soles upon the garden path as they went toward their horses. Then Sally, standing unobserved within the door, heard James speak in a quick, sharp voice.
"I tell ye," he declared, "the maid yonder doth know where these women be! She it was who did gi' the message to my mother! Why not make her tell?"
Sally clutched dizzily at the wall behind her. The words "that the girl be branded i' the arm!" flashed terrifyingly through her mind. Was she to be tortured here, now, and forced to betray her friends? The British officer's next words, however, dispelled her newborn fears. Apparently, more than Jerry Lawrence in the King's army knew humanity. Not all were of Stockton's or Cunningham's caliber!
"We war not on women or children under my command!" he returned coldly. And Sally, in tremendous relief, saw both James and him rejoin the company of waiting horsemen, mount their horses hurriedly, and ride away in the direction whence they had come, toward the Town by the River, finally disappearing around a bend in the road.
Sally, apparently loitering idly out into the garden, watched with keen eyes the swirling clouds of dust settle back into place. Even after peace returned to the country road she made no hasty movement, for fear of Tory gaze from some quiet underbrush. As she plucked a late rose here, a marigold there, however, her thoughts were darting this way and that, planning, planning. She must save Uzal Ball from capture, not only for the sake of the kindness he had shown toward her, but because of his mother, who had taken the homeless little orphan into her house and made her welcome! But how was this warning to be gotten to Uzal, with the red-coats already upon their way thither!
There was but one way, Sally decided—she must go across the mountain path through the forest, many feet above the Second Road, many feet above the mountain plantations, and she must go a-horseback, despite the fact that the trail was only a narrow, dangerous footpath, for there was no time to be lost.
"No time to be lost; but where are the horses?" For the first time Sally thought of the horses and realized the amazing precaution Zenas had taken in hiding them, thus displaying an exceedingly wise head upon his young shoulders. For had the red-coats discovered the horses, all would have been lost!
Fortune now seemed to favor the girl. At that moment, raising her eyes, she saw Zenas himself coming through the orchard toward her. Breathlessly she met him halfway, telling him of the British raid.
"Canst get my horse to me up on the road above the cornfield?" she begged, when Zenas had told her, in turn, how he had hidden all of the visiting steeds in the cornfields. "An there be traitors lurking near, they will be confused an we separate," she added shrewdly. "So I will walk up by the road and meet ye at the furtherest corner o' the field, Zenas."
"Aye, Sally," nodded the boy, turning to retrace his footsteps. Suddenly he stopped short, whirled around. "Was it—it—James who led the raiders?" he demanded bitterly.
Sally hated to tell him, but she finally nodded. Deep, angry color surged into the younger brother's face.
"The traitorous varlet!" he burst forth. "Indeed, my mother shall" He paused at Sally's head-shake.
"It does no good to feel so, Zenas," she said sadly. "It must be neighbor against neighbor, it seems! Will ye not run, now, and get my horse to me—for, indeed, an I do not hurry, poor Uzal will be i' the hands of the red-coats! I must ride to warn him!"
"Nay!" The boy shook his head. "I did not know Uzal was I' danger! But an he be—let me go, Sally. 'Tis man's work riding across the face o' this Mountain!"
"Why thought ye I wanted my horse?" asked Sally sharply, her patience tried by Zenas's tarrying, even while she was grateful to him for his offer. "Nay, I be the one to go, lad! Ye are your mother's mainstay, while I—I would not be greatly missed an things went wrong." Her voice faltered. Then she lifted her head gallantly. "So hurry, Zenas," she finished, smiling. She turned away, then, only to be recalled by the boy's voice.
"I know ye do think I be wasting time, Sally," he said apologetically, "but I wanted to tell ye that 'tis nearing noon and I feel sure the red-coats, an they go by the Second Road, as they will, will stop at Ned Tompkins's Tavern at Freemantown for dinner."
"And that will gi' me more time," ended Sally, brightening. "Aye, 'tis true, Zenas, and relieves my desperate haste. Yet must I hurry, for the way be hard!" And she started toward the road. "James doth love to eat," she glanced back over her shoulder to say, "and he will, no doubt, delay the rest. Yet" She stepped out into the country lane with an eloquent gesture of her hands, and Zenas, laughing, turned and hastened back through the orchard.
But the road was dusty and hot. Sally, trudging along, wished that she had at least taken time to visit the well; tantalizing visions of a cool, brimming gourd of water danced before her. But, too, there were other hallucinations, induced by the heat. Mistress Ball's face, for instance, convulsed with terror and grief, seemed to peer at her from every dust-covered bush. The stern white face of Uzal Ball, too, seemed to be staring at her from every glimmering, sun-glinting rock. Unconsciously, poor Sally goaded herself along by these images of her brain, so that by the time she found herself arrived at the designated spot, at the end of the field, she was glad enough to sink down upon a piece of trap rock and mop her streaming face.
It was not long then, before Zenas's faithful, sturdy figure could be seen clambering out between the corn stalks, leading Sally's horse stumblingly along behind him. Sally watched them apathetically.
But all at once she stiffened into attention. Her keen ears had caught the suggestion of a sound upon the road below her. She waited breathlessly. It came nearer, yet nearer, revolved into the muffled hammer of a horse's hoofs, at last, rising and falling upon the dust of the lane.
Sally sprang to her feet, her face toward Zenas. She must warn him! Her horse must not be seized by some renegade red-coat or wandering Hessian as the newcomer might very possibly be! Or by some Tory, who would be only too glad to delay her rescuing mission and so effect Uzal's capture by the British troops!
Her heart in her throat, Sally forced herself not to shout to Zenas. Somehow, she must make him look in her direction that she might warn him silently to hide the horse once more. For it was almost certain that he would reach her at that precise moment which would bring the unknown traveler to the same place. Waiting there, she kept sharp, sidelong watch upon the turn of the road below her. Was it friend or foe approaching?