Mercy:

Mornings are not what they once were, now that I find myself abed with our Sally B.

Needs must that she rise earlier than the rest of us, and it will come as no surprise that with her absence, also departs her body's warmth. Yet even so, with long nights of darkness in which I lie awake contemplating whether Papa and Bess (and Cleopas) are safe from harm, arrived (or not) to York City, so weary am I become the closer to the dawn, I have hardly noticed the cold 'til at least a quarter if not an half-hour gone.

This morning it seemed to me she rose earlier than usual, even with the new demands the addition of Corporal Eastin to our household brings with it. When I readied myself (as I must now do, Cleopas gone and Cook, Sally B. and the kitchen girl accomplishing their own work as well as taking on his) and made my way to the kitchen to find her, she was already washing up a plate. Before any of us had broken our fasts.

When I asked what she was doing (with the plate), she said she had been feeding a stray dog out by our empty boathouse.

As this diary shows in previous pages, there is a very particular breed of dog known to frequent our boathouse of late. A dog who once told me Sally B. took care of him.

I gave her what I hoped was a soul-piercing look. "And did this dog have anything of import to say?" I asked.

I can barely relate the look she gave me in return. "Dogs don't talk, Miss Jenny," she told me, adding slowly, "You know that." Just as though I were grown soft in my intellect.

I gave a huff meant to show my dissatisfaction with her and her unvoiced suggestion about my wits, and walked out to the privy, detouring to the boathouse on my way. It was as it has more or less always been since the King's Men came to town. The only thing I could even come close to telling myself MIGHT have been out-of-place was the small patch of oil cloth in the upper cabinet where I once stowed this very diary for the sake of secrecy.

Perhaps, perhaps someone (out of boredom, out of curiosity or pure hope of deviling me) had been rooting around up there, hoping to still find it within.

It was no doubt that very possibility (that Caleb Brewster had again come to Setauket) that caused me to ask permission of Mama to pay a call on Carrie Brewster, living out from the village, beyond Hayman's farm, on her uncle Lucas Brewster's orchard.

"It is too early, yet," Mama had replied, referencing the season for growing to not yet have begun. "And yet, with Bess-" she did not finish with what she might think Bess' fate was, "I should not be surprised you are wanting for the conversation of a young woman your own age."

I do not know what Mama might think my relationship with Carrie Brewster might be, but intimates it certainly is not (nor never has been). We were long ago schoolmates, before either of us learnt to spell or scribe, before her family withdrew her from the school, an environment within which she never grew comfortable, her palsy becoming more accentuated with age, and her naturally backward disposition anathema to wider society of any kind.

Even so, I had made a promise to carry news of her brother when time (and good sense) allowed. Caleb's visit in which I encountered him, and which resulted in the desecration of the stones from our churchyard, was distant enough that I thought I might attempt a call to share what news-what very very slender news-I could share with her of her brother.

As I stood, preparing to sit in the very modestly appointed and sized Brewster drawing room, I recalled that if Caleb had been Carrie Brewster's staunchest defender, then Benjamin Tallmadge would have been her knight-errant, performing any number of kindnesses towards her, acquiring things which would please her. Bringing what there was of the larger world with him here, placing it without threat or menace within reach of in her timid grasp.

There had been talk (what little talk of Carrie Brewster that there ever might have been amongst Setauketers) that it was Benjamin who sporadically tutored her once she left school, and that he maintained a correspondence with her during his scholar's sojourn in New Haven.

She was such a little thing. (I had known this, of course. She was no stranger to me-though a distant acquaintance at best.) I had forgotten her delicacy. Carrie was petite in stature, as becomes a lady, and her features were childlike-but without being babyish. And yet her hands and style of dress were hardy (as becomes an orchardist's niece). It is possible in her adulthood she bore a strong resemblance to her brother, though it would be hard to judge such a thing through his chosen wiry, unkempt beard.

She invited me into the kitchen, as she reminded me they kept no slaves, only seasonally hired men, and it was time for her to mix her and her uncle's daily palsy dose, and she dared not risk being late with the administering of it.

We exchanged many standard pleasantries, and, as was her way, she spoke little. I had been chatting cordially (which is not too difficult when one sets one's mind to it, and has had Bess as an excellent example), and she working, when she stopped.

"You were always kind to me, Jenny," she said abruptly as she pulled down mortar and pestle. "Thank you. When you looked at me you looked into my eyes, not at my arm." As she said this, her arm seized and she had to re-adjust not to see the pestle tumble from her now compromised grip.

I resisted the urge lunge forward and take it away from her.

I found myself thinking that I could not have been the only one to have looked so into her eyes. They were (as they had always been) a charming, light brown. Awash in trust and quiet goodness.

I nearly forgot what I had come here to say, so strong did the notion come to me that in just such eyes I might well have discovered a rival. A rival who had known you longer, your mind perhaps better, as longstanding correspondence might gain such a one.

"Caleb is well," I did said, for I had no response to offer to her unnecessary and disarming thanks. I did not speak loudly, but had no doubt that she had heard me. "Or was, quite well-asking to be remembered to you, not so long ago."

"Hush!" she said, her arm no longer a-tremble, her hands now stilled from her task. And then more loudly she announced, "It is made with hackberry-" and listed off several other ingredients of her homemade palsy elixir in a similarly loud voice, as I watched on not sure what was taking place.

Her voice stopped and she continued in a hushed tone, "quietly now, tell me. But not so loud as my uncle may hear."

"Your uncle disapproves?"

"He has been unsettled in his mind since some folk thought 't might have been Caleb rowing away that day that made our stones forfeit. He fears 'twas Caleb's bold nature, and 'twill get him shot."

"And well it might," I agreed, in low tones of my own, seeing no reason to speak against this eminent sense of Lucas Brewster.

I told her what I could-which was arguably not much-and she received it like sight to a blind man. She made me tell her twice. At some point she returned to the work of mixing the elixir.

"I shall tell him when the time is right," she said of her uncle, nodding. "He shall be better for knowing it."

I felt the time of my visit drawing to an end, yet she stopped her toil and took a step toward me. "Because you have carried this to us-what may I do for you in return?"

It seemed odd to me; small, crippled homebody Carrie Brewster offering a favor. And yet the moment her request for my bidding occurred, I found I needed no further prompting.

"Do you ever hear news of any of the other boys," I asked, as she attended on my speech eagerly. "The Tallmadges? You need not confess to me how you may come to know anything. You are away from the village here, woods and coves abound. 'Twould be nothing for a courier to find his way to you."

Her brows had drawn together. "Samuel," she said, and though I am as fond-or fonder-of Sam as any young man I may know, my hopes did drop a bit upon hearing his name, "has been captured at Valcour Island, and taken to the prison ship."

"The Jersey?" I asked, "-where they have sent Selah Strong?"

"I pray they live to find each other," she said, ardent hope within her voice.. "I pray Caleb is never taken to join them."

"And Ben?" it felt choked out, though it did not sound of it.

"Benjamin?" she said, and I refused myself any speculation upon her tone of voice. "I do not know how we might hear if he were so taken," her mind still on the news of Samuel's fate. "The last news I have of him is long ago, now. It was in a letter."

"A letter? Is it a very...personal letter?"

"It is not too private to share with you on such a day," she said, smiling. "Let me finish here and I will find it for you."

Bless her naivete for never once seeming to think me a Loyalist intelligencer, with all my questions and my unexpected call, my getting her to admit she had information and even a written communication from Continental officers.

Her uncle came in and she and he took their elixir as I was offered coffee. It was but a short break in his work of the day, and he left the house within moments of finishing. He is an elderly sort of fellow, but he is pleasant enough in his manner, and I could see he would have preferred to sit a bit longer with the two of us rather than return to his barns. For a Brewster of the line that begat Caleb, one might call his manners gentlemanly. Perhaps his nephew's are an anomaly. Perhaps they are related not at all by blood, but Caleb Brewster was set upon their doorstep by a bear when he was yet in his infancy.

Lucas excused himself, Carrie went to find the chest where she kept such correspondence, and returned with the letter for me to read. It was now far past the time I should have been going, particularly as I had had to leave Sally B. out with the wagon, there being no slaves or even servants here for her to visit with while I was with within. And she and I without a male escort such as Cleopas.

But I had no intention of leaving before opening the letter I'd just been given. What might I learn from it? About Benjamin? About Carrie Brewster in relation to him? About his life since he enlisted? Would I recognize the hand it was written in? The mind and heart that had formed the text?

Would I regain any contentment once its contents were known to me?

As I read, I found the letter from Captain Benjamin Tallmadge of the Second Continental Dragoons to be warm and friendly in its tone, the contents generally regarding those in Setauket that he missed, something of the rigors of camp life. There was nothing too specific about his military life to be classified as secret, there was nothing of overpowering or even deep sentiment, nor devotion exchanged or proclaimed. And, as she had said, it was an old letter, written within the six month of his first buying his commission. And so, also within the six month of the letter of farewell he had written to me.

I wanted to ask her how she had come to receive it. Wanted to ask her if she hoped to receive another some day, but I knew I should not. I have no wish to work against writing what I know here because I need to protect someone.

Suffice to say: Carrie Brewster has a letter from you, and sad confirmation of the rumors about Samuel. She is your friend, and you are hers, and though you wrote her from your new place with the Continentals, you felt no compunction to take your leave of her.

She has no way to get news to you.

Do you know about Samuel? Are such informations exchanged among enemy armies? And the Reverend? What knows he?

Do I dare attempt to pass such information on to the stray dog that frequents our boathouse?

And if so, how?