A Buss from Lafayette (2 page)

I went into the dining room, a little breathless from my run, but exhaled a sigh of relief that Prissy was not yet there. Almost immediately, my brother Joseph came in to join me. This was not surprising, as Joss was never late for any meal. Four years my senior, he was of a medium height, several inches shorter than Father. Joss found this disappointing and always insisted that he still had one more growth spurt to go. He made up for his lack of length by the impressive muscles on his frame, put there by years of hard labor in our fields.

Our stepmother soon came into the room. Tall and thin, except for her growing belly, she wore a
voluminous, high-waisted, blue-striped gown. As always, her head was covered by a white lacy mobcap. Her neck was concealed by a ruffled collar called a “betsy” after Queen Elizabeth, who apparently had worn gigantic ruffs in her day. Sometimes I thought such queenly attire suited Prissy, especially when she made proclamations and expected me to obey. Sometimes I did feel like her lowly subject, a somewhat rebellious one.

Now I felt the usual twinge of resentment as I watched her take Mother’s place at the foot of the table.

Father, who had entered closely behind his wife, was carrying a large, covered china bowl. Over six feet tall, he was a handsome man, with only a few strands of silver in his short brown hair. Despite the heat, his neck was swathed in a cravat, as Prissy liked to see him “dress” for dinner.

Joss and I bowed and curtsied to our elders, as dictated by good manners, before taking our own seats.

“How are you feeling, my dear?” Father asked, as he moved to sit down at the head of the table.

I smiled at him. I always liked it when Father called me “my dear,” just as my mother had often called me “dear daughter.”

“Very well, thank you, Father,” I answered.

“Actually, Clara, I was not addressing you,” he
replied. “You yourself are nearly always very well.” He turned to his wife. “Priscilla?”

My smile faded. I did not like sharing Father’s attention with Prissy, especially on my birthday.

“I am well enough, Samuel,” she answered, “for a woman who’s near to bursting with child.”

That was another reason I was unhappy. Mother had told me that babies came from a father and mother loving each other, but how could Father love someone other than Mother? It filled me with such a sea of emotion that I could hardly speak.

I grimaced and shifted my feet under the table.
I know that most families do not mark birthdays with any particular celebration, but still, I know that Mother would have remembered by now that today is my birthday
, I thought. Taking a deep breath, I said, “Yes, it is very hot, but after all, it is the summer solstice today—the longest day in the year.” Surely this hint would remind my father that it was my birthday.

But it only reminded him of something else.

“Oh, yes, the solstice. It is our wedding anniversary, is it not, my dear?” Father lifted Prissy’s hand to his lips and gently bussed it.

Her face, already pink from the heat, flushed a little deeper. She looked at my brother and me and pulled her hand away. “None of that nonsense, now, Samuel,” Prissy said primly, looking as if she might give Father’s
hand a smack in return, but with a ferule instead of her lips. After all, she had been a schoolmistress for many years, so she had probably used the two-foot-long willow switch on plenty of children’s hands. And people did say, “old habits die hard.”

The serving dish was full of salmagundi, a salad made of cold vegetables and meats, dressed with herbs, oil, and vinegar. Prissy filled plates for everyone and passed them around the table.

I was so upset about everyone forgetting my birthday that I had lost my appetite, but Joss dug right in to his supper. He located a piece of beef in the pile of salmagundi on his plate, speared it with the tip of his knife, and brought it to his mouth. This was his habitual way of eating, despite Prissy constantly urging him to use the new-fangled three-pronged forks she set on the table.

“When we cooked our dinner at midday, Clara and I nearly swooned from the heat,” my stepmother said. “But I thought a nice, cool salmagundi for supper would fill us all up tonight. Even Joss.”

“I do not think anything will fill up Joss,” Father said, grinning at my brother. “But I was exactly the same at eighteen, a sort of combination of an empty pit and a starving horse when it came to meals. Or between meals, for that matter.”

At that, Joss stopped eating—something that did
not happen often—and spoke up. “Dickon Weeks says his mother told him that they eat salmagundi on pirate ships.”

Hearing the name of one of my chief tormentors brought a momentary blush to my face. “Really?” I asked. “Dickon claims that pirates eat salmagundi? Is not salad rather too girlish a dish for them? I always picture them gnawing on joints of beef. Maybe even bloody joints of beef.”

“I think Mrs. Weeks—or perhaps Richard Weeks himself—is confusing two different dishes, Joseph,” Prissy said. “Perhaps she is mistaking salmagundi for Solomon Gundy, a kind of pickled fish paste from Jamaica.”

I listened intently. My stepmother did have a lot of information stored under that white mobcap, and I liked learning new things. I even liked learning about disgusting things like pickled fish paste, no matter how much I resented and disliked the source of the information.

Hearing her interesting explanation, however, I glanced at the vegetables on my fork, happy that we were eating the
salad
, and not the
pirate
, salmagundi.

C
HAPTER 2

We all ate our salmagundi in silence for a few minutes, until Father took a drink from his glass of ale and smiled at my brother and me. “I saw Dr. Lerned today, children. He is quite excited about what is happening this week,” he said, with a deliberate air of mystery.

“You mean Aunt Pris—er, the baby coming?” I asked.

“No, this is someone much more famous than your baby sister or brother is likely to be, Clara. And, yes, your stepmother
did
used to be your aunt Priscilla, but now she is your mama. Please try to remember.”

“Yes, sir. I shall try,” I promised sullenly, fixing my eyes on my food and finally starting to eat.

“What was Dr. Lerned so excited about?” Joss asked.

“The Nation’s Guest,” Father replied. “He arrives in New Hampshire today.”

“How can a
nation
have a guest?” I scoffed. “What a silly idea!”

“This is a man who actually helped us
become
a nation, Clara,” my father said, waving his fork in the air for emphasis. “If it were not for Lafayette,
France would never have fought on our side in the Revolution. And without help from France, we would not have won the war. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the war, Lafayette is visiting all twenty-four of our states. And yes, he is our most honored
guest
.”

“Lafayette,” said Joss, overloading his knife with food again. “Frenchman with lots of names. Rich young nobleman, a ‘marky’ or some such thing.”

“He was a
marquis
, Joseph,” Prissy said, pronouncing it as Joss did, but emphasizing the second syllable. She smiled. “Our troops grew so fond of him that they often called him ‘Our Marquis.’ Lafayette later renounced his title, however, during the French Revolution.”

I did not know what “renounced” meant, but I did not have to ask because Prissy was quick to explain that it meant “officially gave up.”

“He was only nineteen when he came from France, and they made him a major general!” Joss set down his knife. “That’s a very high rank. Only General Washington himself had a higher rank.”

Father said, “Yes, they did give him a high rank. But they did not give him any troops to command, not at first, anyway.”

“Wait a minute. A Frenchman in
our
army? That does not make any sense,” I protested.

“He came to fight alongside Washington, of course.
When he heard about the American conflict with England, our cause inspired him so much he came to help us. He hated the English because when he was a small child, his father had been killed in one of the wars between France and Britain,” Joss explained in a know-it-all tone.

I narrowed my eyes. I hated it when Joss knew more than I did about anything. He had been able to keep going to school, while I had stayed home to assist with the housework and to care for our mother when she had fallen ill with consumption. I bathed her, fed her, and read to her when she could no longer get out of bed. I was happy that I had been able to help, but losing her broke my heart. It has never mended.

After Mother died, however, I had to stay home from school to assist a citified stepmother who did not know the first thing about being a farmer’s wife. Things had only gotten worse when she had sickened with pregnancy and stayed so for most of the winter, when school was in session for older pupils. When Father had asked me to forego schooling to help her, he had said that bearing a babe at the age of forty-two was what made it so difficult for her. He had not seemed to understand how difficult it was for
me
to miss so much school.

“So what battles did Lafayette win, Mr. Know-All?” I asked, with an edge to my voice.

Joss hesitated. “Battles? Er . . . I am not sure.”

Father looked over at his wife. “Can you remember? You are the schoolteacher, after all.”

Prissy patted her mouth daintily with her napkin, then explained that, like Washington himself, Lafayette had won very few actual battles but was still a great leader. He had been one of the richest men in France and knew the French queen well. His father-in-law, an extremely powerful aristocrat, had not wanted him to go to America, so sent Lafayette off to England, hoping to change his mind. During his brief visit there, Lafayette had met the English king, George the Third, as well as General Clinton, who later was the commander of all the British forces fighting against us in the War of Independence. Even this did not budge Lafayette from his determination to help America, however.

“So Lafayette’s connections were of the highest, even with the
British
, ironically enough,” she finished.

Father chuckled. “Yes, I suspect that those high connections were certainly part of the reason Congress and Washington gave him such a high rank. They thought such connections might help our cause. Not to mention that the young nobleman’s pockets were well-nigh lined with gold!”

“But I have also heard that the young man was most
charming,” my stepmother said. “Tall and gangly as a beanpole, but still most charming.”

“So it was
charm
that won our revolution, my dear?” Father said with a grin.

The corners of Prissy’s mouth were curved upwards ever so slightly as she said, “It never hurts to have a little charm, Samuel.”

“And he ended up doing just fine as a soldier, though he was so young,” Joss put in.

“Well,
I
did not have the chance to learn about him, Joss, so stop showing off!” I exclaimed.

“I am not, you ninnyhammer!”

“You are too, you sapskull!”

“Not!”

“Are!”

My stepmother put her hand to her head and sighed. “Please stop arguing, you two. You’re making my head ache. I declare! It is like living under the same roof with two feuding porcupines!”

I turned to Joss and stuck out my tongue.

“
Clara Summer Hargraves!
You are far too old to stick out your tongue like that! You are old enough to start behaving like a lady!” Prissy exclaimed.

I glared at her, but all I said was, “Yes . . .
Mother
.”

“Speak to her, Samuel.”

Father regarded me with a stern look on his face.
“Yes, my dear. You are too old for such childish actions. After all, you are thirteen years of age.”

“Fourteen,” I muttered.

“Fourteen? Last time I checked you were but thirteen.”

“Then you have not checked today, Father.
Today
I am fourteen.
Mother
would have remembered, though it has apparently slipped
your
mind. You remembered the anniversary of replacing her in our family easily enough, however.”

My outburst shocked even me. “Oh, I am so sorry, Father,” I said. “I did not mean to say that. Truly, I did not. It just popped out. Do forgive me, sir.”

I held my breath, waiting to see what Father would say.