Time Enough for Drums Read online

  “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.

  CHAPTER

  4

  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.”

  He excused himself. “Jem, for heaven’s sake, why are you up and about on a night like this?”

  “I must talk to you.”

  “If it’s about tomorrow, you know I said you could come along.”

  “Not about tomorrow.”

  “What then?”

  I moved farther back into the hall, lowered my voice. “Dan, it will soon be ten o’clock.”

  “And did you come downstairs to tell me that?”

  “No. I came to tell you that someone is waiting in the barn to see you. He wants to enlist.”

  In the candlelight he searched my face. “What are you telling me? Anyone who wants to see me can come to the house.”

  “If I tell you his name, you’ll know why he doesn’t dare.”

  “Then will you tell me? Or do we stand here playing games?”

  “It’s Raymond Moore.”

  “Moore? A Quaker? Are you daft, Jem? The Moores would never allow—”

  “That’s why he’s in the barn, Dan.”

  He stood in silence as the enormity of what I’d said embraced him. “Raymond Moore! I’d never have guessed. He never said a word to me!”

  “He came to me today in the street and begged me to get word to you. He says he’s been praying on his decision for weeks. His mind is made up, he says.”

/>   “Well, I’m glad his mind is made up. But where does that put me? His parents will never forgive me, and I’m about to ask for Betsy’s hand.”

  “He says if you won’t take him, he’ll enlist elsewhere. And that Betsy won’t blame you. If his mind is made up, mightn’t his parents feel better about it if he served with You?”

  “You certainly can make things sound simple.”

  “Raymond says it isn’t seemly that others should fight for his land. Things are simple to him.”

  He sighed. “A good man. I’m honored he wants to sign on with me.”

  “You still need men. You said so yourself.”

  “I’ve seventy privates. I need six more. Since October when the Provincial Congress authorized a second battalion from this colony, it seems like half the county has knocked on our door in the middle of the night. But this is the first time I’ve had a recruit hiding in our barn like a runaway slave.”

  “Will you take him, Dan?”

  “I’ll talk with him first. Now go to bed.”

  “Dan, there’s one more thing. Do you think Mr. Reid will tell about the musket?”

  Over the rim of my candlelight he scowled at me. “He gave his word that he wouldn’t. That’s good enough for me. It should be good enough for you.”

  “I don’t trust him, Dan. He’s a Tory. How did he know Fitch was making gunlocks at the mill?”

  “It’s common knowledge in town. The Methodist Society is threatening to dismiss Fitch because he was doing it on the Sabbath. John is our friend, Jem. He would do nothing to hurt any of us. And you’re only making it worse for yourself by provoking him.”

  “Is everything all right, Dan?” John Reid came toward us. It was not so dark that I couldn’t see the amusement in his eyes at the sight of me in my flannel nightdress and blanket.

  “If you two are plotting the overthrow of George the Third, you should at least do it by the warm fire.”

  “Jem was just going to bed,” Dan said firmly.

  “And I was just leaving.” John put on his cloak. “Good night again, Jemima,” he said, bowing. Dan walked him to the door. “I expect you to be your usual saucy self for your lessons on Friday,” he said as he went out.

  CHAPTER

  5

  John Reid’s words about Dan and me plotting to overthrow George the Third danced around in my head as I lay in bed. Sleep would not come. I lay watching the light snowflakes swirling against my window and seeing Reid’s brown eyes filled with mockery. And lying there in the dark, it came to me. Ever since he had come home from Boston in September, Reid’s mockery had boasted an air of assurance, as if he were privy to special information. There was nothing about him at all to indicate the rejected lover. It was too bad he hadn’t married Becky. They deserved each other.

  “Jemima, are you asleep?”

  Mother stood in the doorway, a candle in one hand, a bundle in the other. “No, Mama, I haven’t been able to.”

  “I heard you moving about. I’ve been lying awake myself, so I wanted to give you this to take to your sister tomorrow.”

  “Are you sending Becky a present after the way she’s treated you?”

  “Jem, Becky is still my daughter, no matter what she’s done.”

  Had I done half of what Becky had done, I would have been soundly punished for it. Of course, Grandfather Henshaw was a Tory, which was probably why she preferred to live with him. There he was, Mother’s own father, and he and Mother barely spoke. They’d been at odds for months before fighting broke out up at Lexington, last spring. Right before that Becky had gone to Boston to visit Mother’s sister, Aunt Grace. Another Tory. And when the fighting started in April, Becky just stayed on.

  It was Aunt Grace who introduced her to the British officer, Lieutenant Oliver Blakely. And within weeks of meeting him, Becky was writing home saying she would marry. As if he were going to melt away on her in the summer heat.

  David and I were recovering from measles, so we couldn’t go. Dan and John Reid accompanied Mother, who said, seige or no seige, she wasn’t going to be kept from her daughter’s wedding.

  The British held Boston, the harbor, and a few islands. The Americans settled in across the Charles River. And neither side could get to the other. Dan told me that only spies and travelers could get through.

  Boston had been awful, Mother told us when she came back. The drought, the drain on provisions, and the heat had been intolerable. And there was fear of sickness, dysentery, and distemper. She worried about Becky for months. Then in November Becky came home to Trenton, leaving her husband in Boston, and went to live with Grandfather Henshaw.

  Mother set down her candle and bundle and came to smooth my quilt. “It’s only homespun for a cloak, Jem.”

  “Silk is more to Becky’s taste.”

  “Well, silk has gone the way of our tea. Some of the finest women in Trenton are wearing homespun these days.”

  “Patriot women. And that leaves Becky out.”

  “Jem, I want no politics spoken between members of this family if it sets them apart.”

  I was about to say that Becky and I were already set apart and it hadn’t taken a war to do it, but mother continued. ‘I want your promise that you’ll act kindly toward Becky tomorrow.”

  “Mama, you know we never got along.”

  “I know you never tried. That’s what I know.”

  “She was the one who provoked me when I shared this room with her. She chided me constantly.”

  “She was trying to teach you to be a lady.”

  “Well, if it means courting one man and marrying another right under his nose, I want no part of it.”

  Mama smiled. “I didn’t know you had such sympathy for John Reid.”

  “I hate John Reid.”

  “You hate too easily, Jemima. John is an excellent tutor and he’s fond of you.”

  “And that’s why he brings his birch rod with him and sets it behind the door in Papa’s study, I suppose.”

  “I have it on good authority that he’s never used it in his school yet. The sight of it alone makes the boys behave.”

  “And so why does he bring it to our house?”

  “He comes here directly from school. He brings all his things.”

  “And he isn’t above setting it down with a flourish.”

  Mother’s round face was serene, as always. “Jem, there is no more decent and gentle a man than John Reid. If your father and I weren’t sure of that, he wouldn’t be your tutor.”

  “Mama, how can you say that? He’s a Tory! He’s sneaky and mean. He told father about David being at the mill this afternoon, and he’s mean to me when he teaches.”

  “Could it be that he’s mean, as you say, Jem, because he can’t control you? You ran off on him this afternoon.”

  I looked down at my quilt. “Did he tell you that, Mama?”

  “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yes, but that’s not the whole story. I meant to be back at lessons. I just lost my sense of time.”

  “He might be trying to teach you a sense of time, Jem. And responsibility. As well as sums and French. Did that ever occur to you?”

  I was silent for a moment. “Mama, I only know that I don’t like being tutored by a Tory. And when I went with Father last week to see the militia drill, Father said this quarrel we have with the king isn’t likely to be made up without bloodshed. And John Reid’s on the side of the king.”

  “Jem, do you remember last week when you told me you would never marry because, under this law of ours, once a woman marries she ceases to exist as a person? Do you remember that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember what else you said?”

  “I said I’d like to exist as a person for a while if it was all right with everybody.”

  “And when I told you that I never felt I’d ceased to exist as a person, married to your father, did you believe me?”

  “Oh yes, Mama. You’re more of a person th
an anybody I know!”

  “Then believe me about this.” She got up. “Believe me when I say that John Reid is a good man. People are much more than they appear on the outside. Why, when I was in Boston I even started to like Oliver Blakely. I found him to be very pleasant and considerate.”

  She kissed me and left. Sometime I just didn’t understand Mother. It was she who organized the Patriot women in town to boycott imported textiles and make their own liberty teas with sassafras or sage or strawberry. On one occasion she got the women to bring their spinning wheels to the courthouse yard where they worked spools of flax for a full day.

  But talk of war or say something against someone she cherished, even if that person was a Tory, and she acted as if it had nothing to do with the war at all.

  CHAPTER

  6

  “Your mama say you’re to be up right quick. Your mama say she never see such a lazy girl in the morning. Dan’l be out of the house on business two hours already.”

  I opened my eyes to see the sun streaming through my window and Lucy standing over me. “Your mama say breakfast be ready soon and your father be in from the shop any minute. And you know he don’t tolerate no latecomers at the table. You be hearin’ me?”

  “I hear you, Lucy.”

  “Then sit up so’s I know you’re awake. Your mama say I’m not to come down and leave you to go back to sleep.”

  Lucy and her husband, Cornelius, were slaves, although you’d never know it the way they bossed us children around. A lot of families in Trenton had slaves. Even the Moores. But Mother was teaching ours to read and write. And Father was apprenticing Cornelius to Benjamin Smith to learn harnessmaking. They intended to set Cornelius and Lucy free one day.

  It cost two hundred pounds to set a slave free, and they must be guaranteed an income of twenty pounds a year in earnings. But Father was determined to do it. My parents had endless discussions about it.

  “You sleepin’?”

  “No, Lucy, I’m saying my prayers.”

  “You bein’ blasphemous, is what you doin’. And I aim to tell your mama if’n you don’t get yourself out of bed this minute.”