But Abraham’s brandishing mood soon faded. As Caleb told him of the impact of the lost letter, the old man dropped his pistols, then dropped into his chair. “It was I who lost the letter. It was I who caused this. I should use my gun on myself.”
“None of that,” said Caleb. “We must make reasoned decisions, in case the mob turns on the members of the Mandamus Council.”
“I should be punished. I should be forced to confess publicly.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” said Caleb. “Simply let this rabble dissipate.”
“This rabble,” said Lydia, “may not dissipate. And the best of them are no rabble.”
The mob did nothing more than finish Brattle’s liquor; then they straggled back to the Common, while Caleb went back to the college and climbed into the cupola of the new Harvard Hall. What he saw from there reminded him of a commencement pilgrimage, but these pilgrims came armed and called themselves minutemen.
They came from every station of life, from minister to merchant, blacksmith to barrister, and they spread rumors that flew faster than the truth could ever travel:
Gage had ordered the disarming of everyone in Boston . . . there had been fighting in Cambridge and six killed . . . the Royal Navy had fired on the city . . .
Caleb watched their campfires flicker to life, and he waited the night through for more trouble. By morning, four thousand men had gathered, a quarter of them armed militia under the command of elected officers. But the truth had made its mark: Gage had removed only the king’s powder and the Cambridge cannon. But that was reason enough to make protest. Word was passed about ten o’clock. Then the men at the north edge of the Common turned, and like a migrating herd, all four thousand began to move toward Elmwood, the riverfront manor of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Oliver.
Caleb followed, impressed and frightened by the sense of purpose that now invested these men. This was no window-breaking mob. With officers to lead them, they were orderly and disciplined and careful not to step on the flower beds as they surrounded Elmwood in a series of concentric circles.
Caleb had seen enough. Before Oliver came to his door, Caleb was hurrying back down the Watertown Road, past the handsome houses of one frightened Loyalist after another, so many houses that the road was now called Tory Row.
He was glad to see that the chaise was hitched and waiting in front of his grandfather’s house. Then Lydia came to the door. “Grandfather said he’d shoot the horse if we tried to load the chaise.”
Caleb found the old man sitting in the study with two pistols on his lap. It seemed that he had regained his spirit, for as soon as he saw Caleb, he picked up a pistol and said, “No one will put me out of my house.”
While Lydia and Mrs. Beale rushed around collecting piles of clothes and books, Caleb tried a bit of reason. “They’re makingThomas Oliver resign from the Mandamus Council, Grandfather. If you resign, you won’t have to flee . . . or fight.”
Lydia said, “He refuses to resign and refuses to flee.”
“I’ll tell them the truth.” The old man rose, took his wig from its stand, and placed it on his head. “I’ll admit that it was I who told Gage to seize the powder.”
“Tell them that,” said Caleb, “they may tar and feather you.”
Abraham took a powder horn from the desk and primed a pistol.
Lydia looked at her brother and gestured to a lap blanket on the chair by the fireplace. Caleb gave her a nod, so Lydia lifted the blanket, as if to shake it out, and with a quick motion threw it over the old man’s head. At the same time, Caleb pulled a tieback from one of the drapes and wrapped it around the blanket, right at his waist.
“Unhand me!” demanded Abraham. And he kept demanding and kicking and struggling all the way down the hall and out of the house, but a second tieback secured his arms, and once they had him in the chaise, another was wrapped round his ankles.
“Keep him tied up till you’re on Boston Neck.” Caleb helped his sister into the driver’s seat. “I’ll face the mob.”
He watched them gallop away, then went inside and stood for a moment, wondering what to hide.
The Turkish carpets?
Too large.
The wines in the cellar?
Four pipes of Madeira and a dozen cases of port—too much to move.
But the books?
Those that mattered most—a quarto of
Love’s Labours Lost,
the last evidence of Burton Bones, and a far more valuable manuscript of
Love’s Labours Won
—were hidden behind a panel in the library, where a brother and sister had put them on the morning after Harvard Hall burned. There was no reason to seek a safer hiding place, and no time, because there came a mighty pounding on the door.
Mrs. Beale said, “Oh, Good Lord.”
Caleb tugged at his waistcoat and said, “Open the door, Mrs. Beale.”
And four men from the Committee of Correspondence stepped into the foyer while four thousand more surrounded the house. The leader said, “We seek Mandamus Councillor the Reverend Mr. Abraham Wedge.”
“He leaves his compliments,” said Caleb, “but he has gone to Boston.”
“To see Gage?” asked another one. “We know he’s gone to see Gage before.”
“He’s gone to Boston to apprise the governor of your anger,” said Caleb politely.
“When he returns”—the leader pulled out a sheet of paper—“he’s to sign this.”
Caleb took it. “A resignation from the Mandamus Council. I’ll see that he gets it.”
“If he don’t sign, he’d best stay in Boston with Brigadier Paunch.”
iii
“I would not sign in September or November. Why would I sign in January?”
“Because,” answered Caleb. “’Tis time for you and Lydia to go home.”
“Lydia may go home anytime she wishes.” Abraham bundled his scarf around his neck and pulled his hard-backed chair into the shaft of sunlight by the window. “Brattle’s daughter lives in his house unmolested.”
“But Brattle lives under the Crown’s protection, in Castle William.” Lydia measured three spoons of tea into a strainer, held it over the pot, and poured hot water from a kettle hanging in the fireplace. “Considering the looks we get in the Boston streets, we may be joining Brattle soon.”
“We will stay here,” said Abraham. “This is our property.”
The room smelled of leather and vibrated with the tapping of small hammers striking small nails. This was the house where John Wedge had lived out his days and Reverend Abraham Wedge had grown up. The first floor was rented to a cobbler who had stored supplies in the upper rooms until the arrival of Abraham and his granddaughter.
Caleb told Lydia, “The Committee of Safety says you may go back at any time.”
As Lydia filled the three cups on the little tea-stained table, she shifted her eyes to her grandfather and shook her head.
Abraham said, “I am perfectly capable of living on my own.”
“Grandfather”—Lydia pressed a cup into his hand—“your legs are not strong, and neither is your memory.”
“My memory is better than yours. I remember my responsibilities. So keep your Committee of Safety. I’ll keep my seat on the council.”
“There are others who can take care of these things,” said Caleb.
“Who?” demanded the old man. “You? Your only interests are in solving mathematical problems and torturing cats.”
Caleb looked at his sister. “What have you been telling him?”
The old man got up and came close to his grandson. “’Tis time that you took a stand, Caleb Wedge, either for the government or against it.”
“I take my stand, Grandfather. I teach young men.”
“But
what
do you teach them? What do you stand
for?
Or do you simply lower your head and let others lead, as you did when they used to taunt me in chapel?”
“You’re right, Grandfather.” Caleb gulped his tea and put on his surtout. “There’s nothing wrong with your memory.”
Lydia followed her brother down the stairs and out into the cold afternoon.
A few inches of snow had fallen, giving Hanover Street the look of a clean country lane. A pung went by carrying firewood, but there was little other commerce in a city whose port had been closed for more than seven months.
Lydia asked, “All is in order at the house? The books are safe?”
“Behind the panel on the third shelf, third case.”
“Good,” she said. “Keep them there.”
“What if I go to Philadelphia?”
“So long as Grandfather lives, we must keep evidence of Burton Bones hidden. Remember that after Burton disappeared, Grandfather was the moving force behind the anti-theater statutes of 1767. If it were found that we kept plays in his house, he’d become a laughingstock. And as I’ve told you so often since Harvard Hall burned, if you admitted how you obtained the plays, people would believe that you started the fire.”
“What if I returned the manuscript secretly, as Uncle Benjamin did.”
“He was a fool,” said Lydia. “That book is too valuable to hide under a library case for another forty years. Better in our hands, safe from neglect.”
Caleb noticed two British soldiers coming down the street, two privates from the Forty-seventh Regiment of Foot. He expected them to walk on, but they stopped, spoke politely to Lydia, and went into the house as though they lived there, which they did.
“The king considers it his right to quarter troops in our homes,” said Lydia.
“He sends them where they’re welcome. ’Tis a Loyalist house, after all.”
“Do you think I am a Loyalist, Caleb?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
“I’m here because an old man needs me.”
“Then you
are
loyal”—Caleb gripped his sister’s shoulder—“in the best sense.”
“In what sense are you loyal, Brother? And to whom?”
That question echoed in his mind all the rest of the winter.
Each week, he traveled to Boston to visit his sister and grandfather, and the conversation changed little, though the supply of tea finally dwindled to nothing.
After he visited them, he would go down Hanover Street, past the Government House at the head of King Street, along Orange Street, to the handsome Summer Street home of Christine Cowgill.
Theirs had been a long courtship. Caleb was not the most passionate of men, nor Christine the most insistent of women. He had approached romantic love as an equation to be solved. She had viewed her suitors as her father had viewed potential business partners. To Caleb, her quick smile, quicker wit, fleshy bosom, and rich father were balanced by her demand that he leave the employ of the college before they marry. To Christine, his intelligence and height were the best assets any man had brought to her.
One or the other might have ended this tepid romance, but Caleb admitted comfort in her presence, and Christine accepted his argument that in the long run, comfort would supersede passion.
His visits to her home, however, grew less comfortable by the week. Her father was a leading Whig merchant. But the local committeemen knew that Caleb’s grandfather was a Loyalist, and they suspected him of the same tendencies. Whenever he visited, there were men watching. From the shadows, they might see Caleb and Christine steal a kiss as she greeted him at the door or said good-bye later. But they would not hear the conversation, which was as predictable as Caleb’s talk with his own grandfather.
“Have you determined which side you are on?” asked Christine yet again on a windy March Sunday.
“I’m on the side that says we can talk our way out of these troubles.”
“But are you Whig or Tory?” she persisted. “I want to know. My father wants to know. The Sons of Liberty who follow you around the town want to know, too.”
“Which answer would better suit you?” he asked.
“I don’t care. Tell me which side you’re on, and I’ll take that side, too,” she said, “so that I may tell my father how I feel about you.”
“Tell him that you love me and I love you. Tell him we’ll marry when the times allow. But I can’t leave the college now. Why, today, Tory students brought tea into commons, and the tutors had to put down a riot. I simply can’t leave.”
“I’ll not marry you otherwise, no matter what your beliefs.”
Nothing, thought Caleb, was simple in such times.
Lydia thought the same thing. She thought it when she tried to get food in the morning or firewood in the evening. She thought it when she walked down the street and heard the insults of Bostonians who considered her a Loyalist simply because she cared for one. She thought it when she considered the fate of the Wedge house and all its contents, should the Whig rebels succeed.
So, on a Wednesday night in early April, she went down to the ferry landing, politely answered the questions of the British soldiers as to her destination and reason for going out of the city, and then took the ferry to Charlestown. She walked the rest of the way to Cambridge, timing her arrival to the hour when her brother and certain of his students began their weekly dissection in the barn.
All was dark behind the Wedge house on Tory Row, except for the slivers of yellow light poking through the cracks in the barn wall. Caleb and the students were inside, with blankets covering the windows.
So Lydia let herself into the house, listened a moment for footfalls, then tiptoed upstairs, to the back bedroom, to make sure that Mrs. Beale was off on her weekly visit to her family. The bed was empty. But as Lydia turned to go downstairs, she heard a cart roll up behind the house. So she stepped to the window and peered down.
Though it was a moonless night, there were no lanterns on the cart. And it looked as if the horses’ hooves were wrapped in burlap. Two young men, both wearing black tricornes and cloaks, jumped down.
“Just our luck to dig up a fat man,” said one, going to the back of the cart.
The other went to the barn door and delivered two knocks, then one, then two. The door opened a crack and two more figures emerged.
“How long did it take you?” said the tall shadow of Tutor Wedge.
“Half an hour to Watertown. Half an hour to dig him up.”
“That gives us five hours before you must take him back,” said Wedge.
“You didn’t tell us he’d be so fat, sir.”