The Emerald Embrace Page 2

  Hurrying to where she stood under a poplar tree, I asked breathlessly, “Why this early drill?”

  “It’s no drill. The British have landed in Benedict.”

  “Benedict!” I cried. “But Benedict’s not thirty miles off.”

  “Don’t look so worried, child. The drummer boy who came to rouse Mr. Hodges told us it’s only another little band of marauders.”

  “Fifty-one vessels,” I repeated mechanically.

  She turned, staring sharply through drab early light at me. “Fifty-one sails? Why, that’s a whole fleet!” she exclaimed. “Liberty, you mustn’t listen to rumors.”

  “A lookout counted them entering the Chesapeake. Secretary Monroe told Mr. Thornton.”

  Her mouth tightened with dislike. “When did you talk to him?”

  “Last night.”

  “Then you should have called me over. It’s not right, this staying by yourself. The only sensible thing is for you to take the vacant room.” Her tone changed to kindness. “Child, there’s no need to look so worried. The British fleet’s not the end of the world. We took care of the redcoats last time, and that was a real war. We’ll manage them again.”

  “It’s not the British.”

  “What’s wrong then? I’ve never seen you look so pale. Was it something Amos Thornton said?”

  I nodded and quickly told her the facts of his visit, without alluding to the baffling sense of menace I’d felt coming from him.

  I finished, “And he says if I refuse to go this morning, he’ll get Judge Lee to give him custody over me, and I’ll have to obey.…” My voice faded.

  Mrs. Yarby’s sensibly determined expression was gone and without it she looked years older and very vulnerable.

  I asked uncertainly, “A judge would do that?”

  “You just turned seventeen,” she sighed. “So for almost a year you legally need male guardianship over your person. After that, of course, it’s only for your property, An uncle, brother, husband. In your case it should be the captain, but he’s not here, and with the blockade who knows how long this voyage’ll take?”

  “Doesn’t it matter that I hate Mr. Thornton?”

  “Not if he’s made up his mind to have you as his ward. He’s rich, he has important connections and he’s sharp enough to pull a sanctimonious face when the judge mentions that it’s not decent for a single man to have a young girl living with him. Liberty, believe me, the law is strict about providing male protection to us women.”

  Mrs. Yarby’s sad, practical voice made my plans of last night seem stupidly frivolous.

  By nature, though, I’ve never been able to give in easily. “Mr. Key was a student of Father’s years ago, and I’m sure he’ll help me,” I said with more hope than I felt. “He’ll know what to do.”

  “Yes, Francis Key’s a fine attorney.” But as Mrs. Yarby said this she didn’t look at me; instead she watched a Militia man pass by. “Wait until I punch down my dough and we’ll go up to his house.”

  “Mr. Thornton’s coming at eight.”

  She started to protest her bread could wait, but I explained that my plight would seem the more harsh if I went to Mr. Key’s house alone.

  A maternal warmth shone in her brown eyes. “Liberty, you’re a brave girl.”

  It was as close as she ever came to a compliment. We both flushed. I kissed her quickly on the cheek, and then hurried up Pennsylvania Avenue in hopes of salvation while the men of the District Militia passed, going in the opposite direction to form their ranks.

  Three

  That morning, nothing went as I hoped—or feared.

  The sky had brightened to the milky opalescence that precedes a hot, clear day, and if I’d been less distracted, I would have been looking about me with pleasure.

  Washington was different from all other cities in that it hadn’t grown higgledy-piggledy with narrow alleys and twisting lanes, but instead had been properly laid out. On a site chosen by President Washington, Charles L’Enfant, the renowned French engineer, had designed streets to cross neatly, the checkerboard effect gracefully broken by diagonals of broad, tree-lined avenues that radiated out from the plateau of Capitol Hill.

  I lived on Pennsylvania Avenue, approximately halfway between the magnificent limestone Capitol and the White House. I hurried by the presidential mansion, for once not pausing to admire the beautiful Corinthian columns and long windows with their elegant molding. In a ferment of anxiety I was planning phrases that would convince Mr. Key to help me. I would explain I meant to use my knowledge and inherited house to start a dame’s school for little children, I would tell him that Father intended Captain Yarby to be my guardian.

  But as I neared the Keys’ tree-shaded garden, doubts made my mouth go dry. I was very early. What if Mr. Key told me that Amos Thornton’s guardianship was not only inevitable but desirable? He won’t say that, I thought, and if he does it’s up to me to convince him otherwise. Lifting my chin, I marched quickly to the fanlit front door.

  Almost immediately a very young, round-eyed serving girl answered. From the back of the house came children’s voices—it wasn’t yet six, but the household was up.

  “Is Mr. Key busy?” I asked.

  “He ain’t in, miss.”

  “When do you expect him back?”

  “We don’t know. He went off in a rush an hour ago. To search for the British. Oh, miss. They say a million redcoats is landed, but nobody knows where. And you’ll never believe what other gentlemen was with him! Secretary Armstrong, Secretary Monroe.” Her greenish eyes grew yet rounder and she paused to give weight to her next utterance. “And President Madison!”

  I gasped. The President was sixty-three years old, a frail man who wore black wool clothing all year round to warm his thin, arthritic bones. “The President’s scouting personally?” I asked.

  The importance of being the bearer of grave news left her, and she looked a frightened child. “It’s that serious,” she said shrilly. “Is there a message?”

  I shook my head. How could I burden Mr. Key now with my problems? “No … no, thank you. I’ll come back another time.”

  Pennsylvania Avenue was empty. The Militia must be gathered on the drill grounds. I trudged along, my slippers sinking into the powdery earth, my head bent. I was dispirited, and only in a small way because my plan hadn’t worked. Mostly I was beginning to realize the war was real. What had been excited patriotic talk, bright uniforms and swift-racing couriers had just touched my personal life.

  I was a block from home when a carriage swerved onto Pennsylvania Avenue. Through a cloud of brown dust, I could see the fine lacquer and the coachman’s vivid crimson and white livery.

  It was one of Amos Thornton’s carriages!

  Darting behind a crepe myrtle hedge, I hid. He’s sent for me earlier than he said, I thought, holding a hand over my heart. Maybe he figured I’d try to escape.

  Glancing around the dusty foliage and tubular pink flowers, I saw the carriage halt at my house. Amos Thornton didn’t emerge. Instead, a black coachman knocked at my front door, taking off his three-cornered hat to wait.

  After what seemed hours, he knocked again. Then he rapped on the parlor window. Was Amos Thornton in the carriage, waiting, watching? I couldn’t see that far. Where was the wagon to carry all my things from my home?

  The coachman cut across my vegetable patch, stepping over the bean vine that divided the property from the Yarbys’. He knocked on their side door. It opened. My hiding place was too far away to see who answered, but the coachman backed away. Leaping onto the carriage box, he cracked his whip at the matched roans. The carriage turned on the broad avenue.

  Long after the handsome equipage had disappeared onto A Street, I remained paralyzed. Finally forgetting modesty, I lifted my narrow black skirt and raced down the deserted block to hammer frantically on Mrs. Yarby’s side door.

  She opened it, her hands white with flour.

  “Mr. Thornton?” I gasped.

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p; “It’s all right, child, it’s all right. He left Washington a couple of hours ago. He was called to active duty in Baltimore earlier than he expected. His coachman came for you, but I sent the man off with a flea in his ear.”

  I sipped a glass of cool water, relaxing a little as she went on with her homely task of shaping loaves.

  “What did Mr. Key have to say?” she asked.

  “He’s not here either. He’s gone with the President’s group to look for the British.”

  She glanced up sharply. “Jemmy Madison’s taken to scouting?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we really are at sixes and sevens,” she said. But her large, capable hands continued to mold the dough.

  Whatever Mrs. Yarby’s fears for herself and for her daughter in Georgetown, who was expecting a fourth child, she kept them to herself. I, too, was silent. Pouring myself more water, I couldn’t repress a guilty sigh of relief. For the time being anyway, I was free from Amos Thornton.

  At midday dinner I was still at Mrs. Yarby’s, helping her hand around food to the five remaining boarders.

  Then a round of musket fire rang out, startling us all.

  The hired girl dropped the bowl of summer salad, and scattered greens were crushed into the rag rugs as everyone ran outside in terror. People were pouring from shops and houses.

  From the Capitol Hill drill field rose the smoke of the just fired guns. The dark square of District Militia had been joined by lines of brown-clad Union Light Infantry as well as Irish Riflemen in green coats. Under the hot sun well over a thousand men stood at attention as drummer boys beat a tattoo.

  The rifle shots had been a signal to march.

  “The British ain’t been sighted, so where are they off to?” someone demanded.

  Mrs. Yarby clasped my hand. The crowd was shoving and jostling, everyone trying to keep in the shade of the poplars as we ran toward the Lower Bridge.

  The band struck up a tune. The Union Light Infantry, professional soldiers, marched in effortless rhythm. But the Irish Riflemen and the Militia were part-time volunteers, men of every age from schoolboys to graybeards and they strode along in a jaunty, independent way that made my heart swell with pride. I waved my handkerchief to Mr. Hodges and Wally Bruton and the others I knew.

  The ranks disappeared into the green tangle of trees across the Potomac. The crowd didn’t disperse. Instead, people clustered in the shade to discuss what had happened.

  “Them’s our Militia, our Irish. They’re needed right here in Washington to defend us,” said a loud, masculine voice.

  “Everybody knows four hundred thousand redcoats is on their way, killin’ and rapin’,” a woman whimpered.

  A blacksmith announced, “Commodore Delaplane’s got a flotilla under sail to defend Washington.”

  “I heard it’s New York, his home town, where Commodore Delaplane’s headed.”

  These last two remarks made my ears burn, and for the most foolishly romantic of reasons.

  I’d had a schoolgirl crush on the commodore.

  Oh, I’d never set eyes on him. But, like a lot of American schoolgirls, I adored him for being young, handsome and brave. When I was quite little, our fleet had sailed to the Mediterranean, where Barbary Coast pirates had been preying on American merchantmen: Stephen Delaplane, disguised as a Corsair, penetrated the harbor of Tripoli to burn most of the pirate fleet. In my bedroom, there still hung an etching of an impossibly handsome youth in pirate cap and boots leaping with flaming torch between ships. I told myself I was too old to blush at his name—yet I knew my face was crimson.

  Mrs. Yarby had been listening to everyone, her square jaw increasingly set with disapproval. “Come, Liberty,” she said. “The dining table needs clearing and there’s no sense at all standing here to listen to a pack of confusion.”

  That very afternoon refugees began streaming in from Maryland on their way to Virginia. The rich rode in carriages followed by slaves, wagons and oxcarts piled high with furniture and gilt-framed pictures. Most families, however, lugged their possessions in homespun blankets or plodded alongside an overloaded mule.

  Wearily, people tottered through my gate to ask if they could rest on the sun-browned grass. The children were flushed, cranky, hot, thirsty. My arms ached from raising and lowering the well bucket I gave out slabs of bread and ham: when these ran out, I picked apples and plums from my trees. I would ask each group, “What’s happened? Where are the British?”

  The replies varied wildly. The British were in Nottingham, they were in Long Old Fields, in Lower Marlboro, Upper Marlboro. Of course no one actually had seen a redcoat. No one had heard a shot being fired.

  The elusiveness of the British strained people’s nerves more than any truth—however terrible. The next three days the hot, muggy air of Washington rang with the sound of houses being boarded up, and many families joined the refugees awander in Virginia’s tangled woods while others kept their carriages laden and on the ready.

  Wagons piled with sacks of official records lumbered away from the big brick building that housed the Departments of Army, Navy and State. No signs of packing came from the White House, but the elderly, black-clad President continued to ride wearily on futile scouting expeditions. When he was home, uniformed officers came and went constantly.

  In this furor I remained strangely calm. The Maryland Militia was stationed outside of Baltimore. Amos Thornton was thirty-eight long miles away.

  Then, on the afternoon of August 24, I was jolted into reality. The National Intelligencer hastily put out an ink-smeared special edition.

  Four brigades of sweating British had been sighted marching along the Patuxent River Road.

  Mrs. Yarby and I sat in the shade of her porch sharing a brief respite from tending the refugees. She held up the special edition of the National Intelligencer to protect herself from the clouds of dust. Along Pennsylvania Avenue strode two hundred volunteers, some white, some black freedmen. They carried spades over their shoulders. They were going to Bladensburg, five miles away, to dig entrenchments.

  “But why Bladensburg?” I asked. “It’s just a sleepy village. What makes us so sure the British’ll continue on in that direction?”

  “They must. The roads all converge there,” said Mrs. Yarby.

  She was right, I realized. “At Bladensburg Bridge, yes,” I said.

  “And it makes sense for us to take our stand there. To protect Washington.”

  I remembered our jaunty but untrained Militia marching off. “Against four brigades of Wellington’s veterans,” I sighed.

  “Men always fight hardest for their own land,” Mrs. Yarby said. “And the British—well, the truth is, they have no deep hatred of us.”

  I remembered that Mrs. Yarby, like Father, had been against declaration of war. Silently we watched the volunteers tramp toward Capitol Hill, where they turned north.

  A small figure astride a huge brown and white Percheron had followed them along Pennsylvania Avenue. The horse halted at Mrs. Yarby’s carriage block, and a thin, hunched young man dismounted, fixing the reins to the ring. Taking off his high hat, mopping his dust-caked brow, he came toward us, and bowed at the foot of the porch steps. “Mrs. Yarby?” he inquired politely.

  My godmother stood. “Yes.”

  “I’m Jack Beart, clerk to Mr. Woods.”

  Richard Woods was Mrs. Yarby’s son-in-law in Georgetown. The newspaper dropped from her normally adept hands, yet her tone was calm as she asked, “My daughter?”

  “Mr. Woods sent me to bring you to her.”

  “The new baby?”

  I knew nothing about childbearing; however, Mrs. Yarby had indicated that her new grandchild was due at the beginning of November, more than two months hence. Alarmed, I stared down at the thin young clerk. His neck turned red with embarrassment.

  “Mr. Woods felt you should be in Georgetown,” he mumbled.

  “I’ll be ready directly,” Mrs. Yarby replied.

  In less than fi
fteen minutes she emerged from the house, her brown riding hat on squarely, her serge habit looped under one arm. She said to the clerk, “If I’m not back tomorrow you’ll ride back for Miss Moore.”

  The frail, hunched young man continued untying the reins, not looking at me, yet a smile of shy pleasure curved his pale lips as he nodded.

  “He’ll be here in the morning,” Mrs. Yarby promised, “if my daughter is really in labor.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. Yet the sight of my godmother climbing onto the carriage block to mount the horse made my heart hammer with anxiety, and I understood how much my calm had depended on the knowledge that her reliable presence was nearby.

  “Lock yourself in properly, Liberty,” she said. “Don’t let a soul in until I return or Jack comes.” Concern on her face, she bent from her perch in the front of the saddle to warn, “Liberty, child, for once don’t be reckless.”

  “There’s no need to worry about me. And give Mrs. Woods my best.…” But the sturdy Percheron was plodding away and my voice trailed off.

  From the carriage block I watched the mighty horse with its double burden become part of the stream of refugees hurrying toward Virginia.

  “Hello, little lady.” A rough-bearded man reined his paired mules near me. “Lookin’ for a ride?”

  “No. But thank you.”

  “Them men trampin’ off to dig rifle pits in Bladensburg means one thing. There’s a battle in the offin’. And don’t you know we ain’t got nobody but a few sailors left from Commodore Delaplane’s flotilla to defend Washington? What if the fight goes the wrong way? What if them redcoats wins? A pretty little lady like you best be clear of here.” Above the ragged beard his eyes were an intense amber, glowing as if they could see through my dress. “I got room aplenty,” he said, stroking the rough board next to him as though he were fondling human flesh.