I stop now in my self-appointed catalogue task.
Following our visit to Whitehall, it came to me that I was then in a most peculiar position to notate certain things about the house, its arrangement, rooms, servants and lodgers. As may be seen among prior pages, I have endeavored to do so, rather exhaustively.
It is the headquarters of the King's army here in Setauket (for all that Reverend Tallmadge's church on the hill is so during daylight hours). Yet there would be little sense in attempting to attack the church (at the very least it would make little sense to me, though I've only an anemic knowledge of battle strategy), which is alone and highly visible, with an unobstructed view nearly down to the water's edge. There is but a meagre stand of trees off to the side within which to seek cover. The parade ground near the church is overrun most hours with all manner of soldiery.
Whitehall, however, whilst guarded by two men at all hours-and housing other soldiers within it-is the lodging of the most powerful military man hereabouts, Major Edmund Hewlett. It is away from the village, and it is fortuitously (for any raiding party) nearby thick woods.
Such information about its contents and in-doors arrangement may surely prove helpful at some future date. This diary has also been put to use keeping daily track of the actions and orders of soldiers in Setauket, their numbers and their dispositions as can be surmised by one such as I.
To what end, cannot presently be known.
And yet now I must detour from that task and detail something far more personal.
It has been six weeks since Mama and I called upon Major Hewlett at Whitehall, at which time I learned very publicly that our Bess was to leave us for York City and a chance at a broader acquaintance. (And a removal from such an intimate company of soldiers as a single young lady in hopes of making a match finds here in Setauket.)
I have endeavored to keep the majority of my disappointment upon this happening as much to myself as possible, and to share only in the excitement and planning Bess has had before her.
This resolution of mine has worked better for me in some situations than others. Particularly with the fact that Bess and I have been sharing a bedroom since the altercation with Lieutenant Davis, and privacy has been in short enough supply to enable me to write herein, much less to overly dwell upon my feelings at her impending journey.
She and Papa, with Cleopas, are to depart tomorrow, early, in the hopes of traveling a goodly distance before they must stop for nightfall. Papa is not pleased to be needing Cleopas, as he is our only manservant, and his absence leaves Mama and I alone in the house with only Sally B., our cook and kitchen girl to manage the soldiers now lodging here.
(This notion frets Papa, though I do not believe Mama has yet shared with him the inciting factor in Lieutenant Davis' removal from our home.)
The second of Major Hewlett's promised two (in exchange for the dismissal of one which Mama negotiated) will arrive before tea time the same day to take his place in Bess's room-the bed likely not even turned fully cold from where she and I will have shared it for the last time.
I say last time, and admit-though only within these pages-that it has not slipped my mind that with another Lieutenant here, and me now sleeping-in with Sally B., that if Bess were to return home, there will be no little question as to where she might sleep. Though Mama would not concur that she has noticed, Papa looks at Bess as one might look at someone from whom they are about to make a long-lasting farewell.
I do not forsee Bess back at home in Setauket.
Nor do I feel we Outerbridges are likely to all of us journey to York City until such a time as the war has ended, should we live to see that day come to pass.
The house has been, for all Mama's skill at management, thrown quite off-kilter with Bess' departure. We have sent off family members before. Michael and James had each left us (and Setauket) when they grew of an age to make their own ways in the world, and Papa was in need of widening the reach of his business. Papa's apprentice Simon had lodged here, before returning to York City and the home of Papa's oldest friends (and business associates) the Fisks, who will soon be entertaining and lodging Bess.
We are perhaps sorrier to lose Bess (though I was quite young when Michael and James left us for New Rochelle and Norwalk, respectively, and my recall of those years can be incomplete), and we have had less preparation than we might. And it is also quite likely that Bess, in her eagerness, is enjoying the bustle and topsy-turvy created by her plans.
Chests were opened, dresses gone over with a fine eye to any misplaced detail that must be mended and set right, or the gown discarded and not packed. Conversation must be had throughout such tasks going over again and again the route best to be taken there, the street names she must learn, the arrangement of the Fisk's house. The birth order and nicknames of their children, their children's spouses.
Mama has been, in addition to all else, attempting to bring about a final finishing of Bess' education, particularly in her social deportment.
Setauket days are full enough with running the house, seeing to family mending, the few social calls we may expect. We none of us Outerbridges have ever been solely at our leisure, no matter what the village may think. It has now become quite a challenge to find both time enough and privacy for this diary, and I snatch at either whenever slightest promise of them appears.
Today for reasons unknown (and which I had no desire to discover), Sally B. and Cook had both been tasked with going into the root cellar on some errand of Bess'. The snow has lessened in the last week, and is mostly gone from the ground ('til a new fall), but the cold has not. And no matter the relative warmth and windbreak our root cellar, I'd much rather be here with pen.
Bess has found me, not half-hour gone, and she entered our (now-shared) bed chamber laughing. It was a laugh of enjoyment, without malice or edge. She was happy: everything now pleased her that it wore the promise of York City.
"Jenny!" she sang my name as she had when we were children. "See what I have found!" she declared, holding up a sealed packet of paper above her head, as though I might try to snatch it from her grasp and she, with the advantage of height, might pull it away.
The very kind of game an older sister might practice upon a younger.
"What is it?" I asked, attempting to show a decided lack of curiosity and wealth of world-weariness, knowing such a game can only intensify if the younger sister appears to want that which the elder possesses.
She smiled. "Oh, it's too silly," she laughed again. "I don't even know what it is-only that I have found it among my things as Sally B. and I are packing. But it bears your name!"
"My name?" I asked, throwing off all pretence of disinterest. Packets of sealed paper that bear the name of Jenny Outerbridge are few and far between.
Some activity out of the window must have captured her attention, she walked straight toward the pane glass, and her hand, like an afterthought, trailed behind her, allowing me to grab hold of the packet.
"I was cross with you when it arrived. I cannot recall why," her voice had lost its boisterous edge in her distraction. "I had forgotten all about it."
"When?" I asked, almost too afraid to stare down at the writing it bore. "When did it come?"
"Oh, forever ago," she said, still straining to see something out-of-doors, likely between the docks and the Strong's Tavern (where most of the bustle in the village occurs). "I could not possibly recall when." And then she turned. "After all, Goose, I can't remember why I was so angry with you that I would hide it and not tell you about it in the first place!" She chuckled as though I were being just the ridiculous gooseberry she had called me out as and, her mind clearly already on to what task of preparation was required next, floated out of the bed chamber, each step taking her farther away from me, from her family, from all of life she had known.
I looked down, no time for the moment to reflect further upon Bess' coming journey and change of station. The packet sat, rough and yet still-crisp in my hand. The side addressed to me (I still had not seen it) faced my palm. The seal was up, my thumb ran over it, as it might over a particular collection of stitches in a needlepoint for comfort, for orientation.
I dared to turn it over. It could not be very old, I told myself: the paper was in too good a condition. It could not be. It could not be. It was nothing.
It was, perhaps, part of a greater joke of Bess' (though it was clear Bess had things well beyond laughing at me on her mind at present).
My thumb flipped the unbroken seal back to my palm.
"Miss Jenny Outerbridge" the script read, clear and unsmudged.
It was written in the practiced hand of a schoolmaster.