The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles Read online

  “Annie, look at me. Don’t you know me?”

  The brown eyes closed. Her breathing became more regular.

  Despairing, Philip stumbled to his feet. In the shadows behind him, a sneeze exploded.

  “I’ve caught a plagued disease myself! Guess I shouldn’t be in here—”

  Sneezing into a kerchief a second time, Abraham Ware stumped back into the lamplit parlor crowded with large and small trunks: the belongings of a prosperous Boston lawyer who had been forced to flee his home, and his livelihood, because of his patriot convictions. Philip heard his father-in-law walk into the other bedroom.

  Gently, he stroked Anne’s forehead. He wished she could speak to him. Wished she could listen to a pledge that he would desert the damned army, if necessary, to locate a physician. But she neither saw nor heard.

  Just looking at her pale, drawn face was agony for him. Despite her youth, she bore little resemblance to the pretty, quick-witted and independent girl he’d first encountered in Henry Knox’s London Book-Store. She seemed frail and altogether vulnerable as she muttered in her sleep.

  Close to tears, Philip remembered the joyous moments of their courting. And the times when he had questioned his own feelings for her, tempted as he was by the daughter of the Earl of Parkhurst, who had almost lured him away from Anne in Philadelphia—

  Then the past receded. Only the present counted. He loved his wife with every fiber of his soul That love made his helplessness all the worse.

  He uttered a frustrated curse, blew out the candle, tiptoed out leaving the door ajar. Abraham Ware, disheveled in an expensive suit that showed hard use, had returned from the bedroom with a fresh kerchief and was helping himself to what amounted to little more than a thimbleful of precious claret. With overseas trade at a standstill because of the hostilities, everything was in short supply—including money to buy life’s necessities. Ware was spending his savings to shelter himself, his daughter and her near-penniless husband during these days when no man could accurately predict what would happen next.

  Philip sat down wearily on the battered travel trunk in which Anne had carefully stored the sum of his worldly possessions—three items. The first was a small, worn leather casket with brass corners. It contained letters from James Amberly, Duke of Kentland, to the French actress from Auvergne whom he’d loved and reluctantly left in Paris. The Duke, still alive in England, was Philip’s father.

  Just the preceding spring, after fruitless and near-fatal attempts to claim the portion of Amberly’s fortune which he’d been promised, Philip had finally burned one particular document from the casket. That document was a letter declaring Amberly’s intention to share his riches with his illegitimate son. Philip had decided he wanted no part of Amberly’s world, in which the rich and the powerful exploited others. Destroying the letter, he’d become an American in spirit as well as in fact.

  Also in the trunk was a memento of his boyhood in the French provinces: a splendid sword. The grenadier’s briquet had been presented to him by a young nobleman he’d helped out of a difficult situation. The nobleman’s title was the Marquis de Lafayette. But Philip would always think of him by one of his given names—Gil. One day, he’d hang Gil’s sword in a place of honor above the mantel in his house. Provided he lived long enough to build a house!

  The last of the three items was a small bottle of green glass filled with flakes of dried English tea. He’d found the tea in his shoes on the December night in 1773 when he’d joined Samuel Adams’ band of bogus Indians and helped destroy three shiploads of tea chests in Boston harbor, as a protest against one of the king’s repressive taxes. The souvenir of that evening had another, much more memorable meaning as well. That same night, in his cheap cellar room at the Edes and Gill printing house in Dassett Alley, he had first made love to the young woman he’d married—

  The young woman whose condition now tormented him with anxiety.

  “How long has she been feverish?” Philip asked his father-in-law.

  “Since last evening.” Ware’s protuberant eyes were doleful. The man had lost weight. Appeared bent; shriveled. He extended the decanter. “You’d better down some of this yourself, lad. You look like you bathed in mud, and your teeth are knocking like a bride’s knees.”

  Philip didn’t move. From the hem of his soaked coat, a drop of water plopped to the shabby carpet. The rain beat on the roof.

  “Damn it, there’s got to be a doctor someplace!” he exclaimed suddenly.

  “Not one. I’ve asked everywhere.”

  “But we’ve got to do something! I don’t know how to tend a pregnant woman. Annie’s liable to die from plain neglect!”

  Ware drank, and shivered. “Do you think the possibility hasn’t occurred to me? I am as worried as you.”

  “You’re sure there are no doctors here in Watertown?”

  “None. They’ve all gone off to the lines.”

  “A midwife, then.”

  “I located one. But she’s taken to her bed, out of her wits with grief. Her son was bayoneted to death in the Breed’s Hill redoubt. There’s no telling whether she’ll recover in time for Annie’s delivery—and I’d hate to trust my daughter to a woman in such a precarious mental state anyway.”

  “God, I wish the whole abominable mess were over, so we could go back to living like human beings!”

  Ware tried to smile. “Annie would scold you if she heard that, Philip. No, more than scold. Tongue-lash you—and make you like it, as only she knows how—”

  His son-in-law didn’t answer. Ware’s forced smile faded.

  Philip jumped up, began pacing. To take his mind off the seemingly insoluble problem of Anne, he asked, “Has there been any more word on the petition?” He referred to the so-called Olive Branch resolution drafted in Philadelphia before the Congress adjourned. A direct appeal to George III, the petition pleaded for the king to effect a reconciliation before further conflict developed.

  Ware shook his head: “’Twas only dispatched in July. With six to ten weeks of sea travel involved each way, we won’t have the answer for a long while, I expect. Besides, you know what that answer will be. It’s the king as much as his puppet ministers pushing this break to the limit. Too many fail to understand that fact.”

  What the lawyer said was true, Philip knew. He’d heard similar views expressed by everyone from Samuel Adams to Dr. Benjamin Franklin, the eminent scientist and diplomat whom he’d known in London and met again in Philadelphia just this past April. No, there wasn’t any realistic basis for hoping the fighting would end before his enlistment ran out—

  A moment ago, he’d decided not to drink any claret. Now he changed his mind, and poured half a glass. The wine warmed his belly but not his mood.

  Ware stifled another sneeze. “I don’t doubt that when and if His Majesty replies to the petition, it will be with a ‘damned to you, sirs!’ I encountered Hancock the other morning. Before the Congress closed its session, there were already rumors afloat that His Majesty has dispatched confidential agents into Europe. To Brunswick, Anspach, Hesse-Hanau—”

  Philip shook his head, not understanding.

  “Those are principalities in Germany. There, the house of Hanover would find receptive ears.”

  “Receptive to what?”

  “A plea for troops, perhaps. Troops to crush the rebellion.”

  “Would the Germans ally themselves with Britain?”

  “For money they might. If that should ever happen, there would be no turning back.”

  “Well, all I care about is Anne. I’ve got to find someone—”

  “I will continue my inquiries. I don’t hold out great hope. I—” Abruptly, Ware was seized with a long, wheezing cough that drained every last bit of color from his sunken cheeks.

  “Perhaps you ought to be in bed too, sir,” Philip said.

  Ware rejected the suggestion emphatically: “I know you must return to the lines soon. I’ll watch Annie after you’ve gone. Don’t think you
need stay here and chatter with me, Philip. Go where you want to be—in there with her.”

  Philip thanked him and left the room.

  He sat at the bedside for almost an hour, holding his wife’s hand and listening to her stertorous breathing. She cried out whenever pains in her belly twisted her from side to side. Philip’s own hands were chill and stiff by the time he heard the small parlor clock chime eleven. He’d be almost an hour late returning to the encampment—

  “Annie. Annie.” He felt so helpless, no other words would come.

  She didn’t answer. He crept out.

  Lawyer Ware had fallen into a drowse, his mouth hanging open. Philip bundled himself into his damp coat and let himself out, sick with fright as he half walked, half ran through the rainy September darkness.

  iii

  Two days later, the sky cleared and the British batteries started rumbling again.

  In the mellow twilight, Philip sat on the ground outside his quarters, trying to bite through the petrified leather that passed for the day’s ration of corned beef. Even washing the stuff down with the locally brewed spruce beer that was regular issue failed to make it more palatable. At least the royal troops in Boston were faring no better. The American soldiers had guffawed over a story about a prominent officer, the Earl of Percy. The Earl had given an elaborate dinner at which, by necessity, the main dish was roast colt.

  On the ground next to Philip lay a scrawled note from Abraham Ware. The note had arrived earlier in the day. It reported that Anne’s fever had broken but she remained weak, and was asking for him. It would be two more nights before Philip could get leave to return to Watertown—

  An elongated shadow fell across his legs. He glanced up and started, spilling his mug of beer. An immense, gangly figure silhouetted against the sinking sun warned him of danger—

  Until he recognized the face, and saw it bore no signs of malice.

  A vast display of crooked teeth partially masked a certain shyness as the Virginian with the cocked eye and unmercifully ugly countenance scratched at his scrotum and shifted from foot to foot. In one hand the man carried his Kentucky rifle. At last he said:

  “Hello.”

  Philip’s nod was cautious. “Hello.”

  A long silence. Then:

  “Got sent to Cambridge with a dispatch. Got lost on the way back. Seen you sittin’ there. Figured I should stop and say thanks for keepin’ me from gettin’ kilt the other night.”

  Philip waved. “I doubt that drunk would have done much damage.”

  “Listen, he could of busted my neck, coming at me like he did. I’m obliged to you.”

  “Did you boys get punished pretty severely?”

  “Damn if we didn’t,” said the other, in slow, soft speech that contrasted with Philip’s somewhat more nasal New England tone. “We’re down to half rations and confined to quarters ’cept while we’re on duty or ’ficial business. Next time any of us bust out, Squire Washington says he’s gonna put the cat on our backs. And when that man promises, he don’t forget.” The tall frontiersman spat once, eloquent emphasis.

  “Gather you think he’s a pretty good soldier.”

  “They don’t make ’em no damn better. The difference ’tween the colonel—I mean the general—and some o’ them peacocks on his staff like that Charlie Lee is this. When Washington takes the wrong fork once, he don’t ever do it again. He ain’t perfect, but he’s got balls, and he knows woods fightin’, too. That may count for more than all the fancy-dancy soldierin’ that’s been done by Lee and his crowd. By the way—” The ugly man extended a callused hand. “Been jawing and jawing and ain’t even said hello proper. I’m Experience Tait of Albemarle County. Most call me Eph.”

  They shook. “Kent’s my name. Philip Kent.”

  “Well, you’re a little rooster, but you fight pretty good—” Tait grinned. “For a wise man.”

  “Thanks. From a Virginian, that’s a real compliment.”

  “Well—” Tait spat again. “Guess I better haul shanks. ’Ficial business, y’know. And soon’s I get back, I’m ’sposed to sew up a lieutenant’s hand. Fuckin’ fool can’t handle his own sword proper—be seein’ you, mebbe—”

  Philip ran after the backwoodsman. “Wait a minute, Mr. Tait.”

  “Eph, I said it’s Eph.”

  “You also said something about sewing up a hand. You—you’re not any kind of doctor?”

  “Only the back country kind,” Tait shrugged. “I do smithing, barbering, mix up tonics to cure boils and minor complaints of the bowels, minister to expectant heifers an’ women, includin’ my wife—little of everything, guess you could say. In the Blue Ridge, a man’s got to know a smatter of this and a smatter of that just to stay alive.”

  A lump had formed in Philip’s throat. He was almost afraid to speak for fear he’d be refused. But the hesitation didn’t last:

  “Eph, would you have a minute to share a drink of spruce beer?”

  Tait reflected. “Well—no more’n a minute. But I drink fast,” he grinned. “Fast as I shoot with this thing—”

  He lifted the long, beautiful muzzle loader with its grooved barrel: the rifling that imparted such speed, distance and accuracy to the balls it discharged.

  Philip gestured. “Come on, then—”

  Experience Tait cocked his one good eye at the entrance to Philip’s shanty. “There’s some of your friends inside, ain’t they? Will we have a set-to? Much as I wouldn’t mind one, I cain’t afford ’nother fight.”

  “I’ll fetch the beer and we’ll drink it out here. I’ve a favor to ask, Eph—if you’re really serious about thanking me.”

  “Shit, I ain’t goin’ to pay or nothin’, if that’s what you mean,” Eph Tait returned with a grin abruptly tempered by suspicion.

  “No, it’s something else. And you’re the man to do it.”

  “Don’t sound good,” Tait commented as Philip ducked inside. “They warned us to stay away from twisty wise men. Trick the buttons right off a man’s pants, you Massachusetts fellas. Least that’s what we got told—”

  But he leaned on his Kentucky rifle in the sunset light, and waited for the beer anyway.

  iv

  Philip walked up and down, up and down—just as he’d been doing for half an hour.

  At first, between sneezes and swallows of the dwindling claret, Lawyer Ware had expressed annoyance. But when Philip showed no signs of calming down, the little man drained the rest of the decanter and went to sleep after a final tense glance at the closed door.

  Philip had been alternately walking and sitting for about three hours. His eyes itched. His clothing stank. His stomach hurt. He hadn’t eaten since early morning. The clock ticked loud as the strokes of judgment sounding—

  Quit thinking such morbid thoughts! Philip chastised himself. But he couldn’t help it. All he loved or cared about in the world lay hidden from his sight behind the bedroom door. Occasionally he heard a small sound. Water sloshing. A stifled cry from Anne. The murmur of another voice. His mind built monstrous imaginings—

  Death.

  Deformity.

  An outcome so devastating, she would never want to have another—

  A squall rooted Philip to the carpet. His scalp crawled. White-faced, he stared at the closed door.

  The squalling gurgled away to silence.

  Philip wiped his stubbled cheek, crossed the room to where his father-in-law was on the point of sliding out of his chair. Philip shook him.

  Ware grumbled, smacked his lips. Philip shook him again, still staring in hypnotic fascination at that door. Why was there no more sound?

  Suddenly Lawyer Ware bolted up. “My God, what’s happened? Is Annie—?”

  Before he could finish, the door was open. Experience Tait said:

  “What’s happened is, everybody done a good job—me and your wife and the Almighty and the youngster too. He come out kickin’ and I’m thirsty as hell. If you ain’t got any likker in this place, somebody go
fetch some because I figure I deserve some kind o’ reward for my first-class work.” As he spoke, the tall Virginian wiped his hands and forearms on the large piece of rag tied around his waist. The lean hands and big-boned arms left bright blood on the rag. The long hilt of a skinning knife stuck up from his belt.

  “Well, go on, go on!” Eph Tait waved to Philip, exasperated. “Don’t you want to see your own child? An’ you, you runt,” he added to Ware, “go find me that drink!”

  Ware licked his lips, bulging eyes on the doorway. “Is—is she—?”

  “Fine, fine! But she wants to see him, not you. God!” he sighed to a still-stunned Philip. “You’re some husband—get a move on!”

  Philip looked swiftly at the clock. A quarter past twelve. At a quarter past twelve on the morning of September 29, 1775, in Watertown, Massachusetts, his son had been born—yes, Experience Tait had distinctly said he—

  Philip pushed past the bloodied, craze-eyed woodsman lounging against the jamb. From the bedroom’s dimness he heard the miraculous sound of an infant making moist sucking sounds.

  “Annie?” he bellowed.

  “Jesus blue lightning, don’t jump all over her!” Tait shouted behind him. Philip paid no attention. For the second time in his adult life, loudly and without shame, he was crying.

  v

  Anne Ware Kent was awake, propped up on the bolster and several rolled blankets. Philip knelt beside two basins of pink-tinged water. In one of them floated something that resembled a short piece of bloody rope.

  Anne looked sleepy and pale. Yet there was a radiance to her face. In the crook of one arm she cradled a small, rag-wrapped bundle from which protruded a reddish gnome’s head almost as sinfully ugly as Eph Tait.

  Philip couldn’t find words. He reached one trembling hand toward a miniature fist whose longest finger was shorter than his thumb from knuckle to nail.

  “You can touch him,” Anne said softly, smiling. “He’s yours, after all.”

  Marveling, Philip stroked the clutching little fist. The child whose head was capped with dark fuzz promptly screwed up its face and shrieked.