Yesternight came to us all at the end of a long evening. What the officers had not et, Cook sat out for the family upon a cold plate, which we came to after long discussions cobbled together through silences in the sitting room. Silences that come from knowing how easily men staying in your own home may spy upon you, and may know whether your business be agreeable to His Majesty's soldiers or no.

Silences that I've yet to be fully adept at translating. I now think Outerbridges careful patriots, choosing where and when to rebel. Yet patriots that for all the world appear to the village (and the King's Men) as staunchest Tories.

Is it too late to mitigate that view for those who matter? Too late to ensure the right people know this truth?

Even Papa negotiating to have meals brought to Lucas Brewster and the Reverend will not be seen as an act anything more than merely Christian. As well he knows.

"I am astonished to arrive home to find the door to my office barred by strong iron, Wife," Papa had said, once we had commenced our cold supper.

"The door's lock was broken, Husband," Mama had replied, passing bread to Nan. "Jenny found it so."

"Was there aught missing?" Papa asked, and I well knew he had but shortly come from that room, and would have performed his own examination upon it, upon what it may now lack.

I looked at Papa across the table, as he looked to me for my answer.

And here it was that I decided to deal falsely with him. (I had certainly not chosen to do so even a moment earlier.) He would at this moment know the copy of the petition was absent from where he had worked to safely hide it. In the light of Reverend Tallmadge's arrest, I chose not to let him shoulder its burden again. Let him think it gone—retrieved, perhaps, by one of the men who had placed it in his keeping.

Let him be ignorant of its whereabouts, so that he might not need to lie to any King's Man who saw fit to question him upon it.

All he need be told was that it was not present when I searched his cache of papers.

All I needed to hope was that Sally B. (standing nearby to serve at table) might control her expression as I openly (and to her explicit knowledge) lied to my father.

"All that I might expect to be within was," I replied, "the small ledger safely in its place."

I said nothing of what I had learned within the small, encoded ledger.

There would then be no private conversation between Papa and I. No questions about the account he was keeping in code for Selah Strong, Sally B.'s not being in point of fact our property. No need for him to explain to me why he was in possession of a copy of the seditious petition.

As he had disguised what he was doing (possibly for our protection), so shall I disguise what I shall do. For his and Mama's protection. For the protection—hopefully—of all men co-signed upon that document.

Papa's face displayed a sort of hope and simultaneous disbelief upon my reply.

I willed myself not to look over toward Sally B.

But what say these actions about me, I am left to wonder. That I have become someone who might remove another's responsibility without their permission, without their being so informed?

That I am now a young woman who would lie to the very face of her father.

I cannot think that you would ever have done so, for all that you left without taking your leave of the Reverend, save in a letter delivered after the fact. For all that you must have packed and planned, keeping no one's counsel but your own.

But you are your own man.

There is no such vocabulary upon which I might style myself 'my own woman'. The very concept makes no sense.

Have I, along with courting, along with other such pleasures as keeping company with suitors-from which young Setauketers have largely been removed—have I put off my sex, as one might shed an outgrown garment?

Am I becoming something other?

Is this what war does? Propels us into roles we'd no particular interest in embodying? And denies us those we'd so long wished for? Sweetheart, wife, mother—beloved?

The night has passed.

But not comfortably. In addition to my own inability to fall into peaceful sleep, the Regulars were busy once the sun went down. Tumult was all about the village.

'Twas Second Lieutenant Simmons, the third billet here following Bess' absence (though by-far the quietest), who arrived home and shared the names with us of those men who had been charged and likewise locked up in the tavern cellar.

Ten men, all of whose names appear upon the petition copy unfolded now before me.

And yet I note the name (and presumably the person) of Walter Havens is not among them.

(Nor is Geordie Clemson, who has not been seen, but whose horse was found this morning saddled and prancing nervously about the stables—which he had somehow gotten free of, and whose condition we are told spoke of his being ridden some distance. And yet, his rider is missing.)

As I lay awake, unable to prevent myself from hearing the Regulars going about the village, knocking upon doors and taking people forcibly into custody—though I did not know for certain if it were the petition-declared Patriots, I felt they were. Robeson had claimed they were the very league for which the Army was looking.

And I thought over what I had done to Papa by not telling him the copy rested securely (for the moment) with me.

Was he abed, awake and in fear that these arrests were made possible, these conspiring Patriots betrayed by a fault in his own safekeeping of the document copy? Was this a worry I had, in my decision, given him?

It would have been easy enough to find him, to set his mind at ease.

And yet I did not do so.

I kept to the bed I share with Sally B. and thought at such a pace and with such a passion I had no expectation of dropping off before dawn.

And yet I must have done, else the dream would not have come to me.

In the dream it was early evening, candles had just been lit in my old bed chamber. Bess was there with me, stitching with a needle and thread cloth about me. It seemed natural enough in the dream that she was doing so. I told myself, as I was lying upon my old bed, that her handiwork was that of a tarrying bag. And I was excited by the notion, expectant of my partner's arrival. (Though Outerbridges have never taken part in such a custom.)

Bess spoke words to me that I do not recall, but they prompted me to turn and look at the other side of the bed, away from her.

I thought I heard your voice in the hall, making your way toward the room. My heart fluttered. I looked toward the other space in the bed, believing happily you would soon occupy it.

Only to find it already filled. Filled by the rictus corpse of Selah Strong.

And then I knew that 'twas not a bundling bag Bess sewed upon, but a shroud.

The unmistakable shadow of your dragoon's fine helm fell upon the doorframe, and when I tried to rise I found myself within the shroud, Bess at sewing it shut about my eyes. My mouth, which tried to shout to warn you of your father's arrest made no sound, but sucked the shroud's fabric into it.

I could not speak to be heard, I could not rise.

Thus I awoke to the dawn; chilled, affrighted, painted with disappointment and frustration.

I shall waste no further space listing out my distractions and anxious disposition with regard to the arrests. Papa has learned (no doubt to his great relief) that Moses Payne delivered the original petition into Major Hewlett's hands, hoping, it would seem, to himself escape punishment.

A hard and ugly decision, that. To value one's own safety so far above that of others'.

And so the Regulars had the names and evidence they needed to conduct their raid of the village last night.

You may note the prior page has been torn from this volume. Fear not that any of the narrative has been expunged. Early this morning when I rose, I ripped it thus, wrote upon it the most succinct news, 'Lucas Brewster and Nathaniel Tallmadge arrested for attempted murder, held in tavern cellar' and took it out to the boathouse and its high, forgotten cabinet in hopes that a certain stray dog might, in his nosy wanderings, come upon it, and in so doing, carry news of it to you.

But just as I cannot squander time or ink upon my frantic state of mind, neither can I spend my energies upon concocting faith that this message will be found.

I have done what I can to send such a message, now I must look elsewhere for ways to prove useful.

There is much hammering today upon the hillside, the trial to commence tomorrow.

It is gallows, we are told, the supervisory work of Appleton, a name with which we became familiar during the gravestone fortifications of the church, and by noon its shape and cruel purpose could be of no doubt to anyone's mind. This Appleton is become an architect of particular cruelty.

Papa remarked that he had never before seen such a large one.

I think they mean to hang them to a man.

Standing in the stocks, Moses Payne has had to watch every step of its crafting.

Walter Havens remains unaccounted for.

Geordie Clemson's body was located out near Crane Neck Point, nearby where Havens kept his boat (which is also said to be missing). Mr. Clemson had been shot, if not dead, then to the point of dying upon the road in the bullets' aftermath.

So, two less men to hang than His Majesty would like.

In the afternoon, when the gallows and the arrests had already become well-traveled jokes among the soldiery (I overheard such jests often as I walked into the village, never far, as usual, from being amongst the King's Men), I managed to leave the house on the heels of Sally B. who was carrying a meal to those held in the tavern cellar, as Papa had arranged.

When she realized I was following her she called me out. "You best go home, Miss Jenny—jail ain't no place for a young lady!"

"You'd best mind who you tell what to do—and do as you're told!" I sniped back.

Here she stopped walking, and turned herself toward me (we were not yet in view of the tavern). "Way I see it, ain't gotta do nothin' I'm tole. I's free, Jenny Outerbridge. All I's doin' is waitin' for me a ride to York City."

"This is how you take the news that you've been but hired out to Papa?"
"Crown done put attainder on Selah Strong afore he died. He don't own me no more. Your Papa can put all the coin he wants to in that dead man's account for my hiring-out, but he should be paying it to me. I needs that money to find 'Lijah."

I started toward her, to further close the gap between us, but she began to walk on, briskly approaching the guards at the cellar doors. Perhaps to try and call my bluff—that I wouldn't follow her and risk engaging those sentries.

"Food, Sir," she said, and they must have recognized her from earlier in the day, as one walked toward the doors and worked to open them for her and her basket.

I tried to devise a quick plan of how to also be let in, but nothing came to mind, and shortly Sally B. disappeared down the dark cellar steps, alone.

I did not have time to be much gloomy, though, as I heard a disturbance arise not afar off.

It was Second Lieutenant Simmons (whom I had not known was tasked nearby this location), and he was speaking in firm, but growing ever louder, tones to a woman in a cloak. "Miss, you have been told. You have been TOLD. There will be no admission for you to see the prisoner."

The Miss' voice was too quiet to hear it properly across the distance, but I saw her hand go up to reach for her cloak's hood, falling back from her face consequent her animated pleas to Simmons. There was a tremor in her hand, most pronounced.

It was Carrie Brewster.

I walked with purpose (and what I hoped appeared more of authority than anxiousness) toward the two. Carrie drew back, but did not leave.

Simmons began to look out into that middle distance to which the officers seemed to have been trained to resort as a way of ending unpleasantness with colonials and villagers. (And palsy-stricken nieces frantic about their palsy-stricken uncles being held in damp, sunless cellars.)

I nodded toward Simmons' direction, though did not keep my eyes upon him long enough to determine whether he marked my appearance on the scene.

"Carrie!" I said. "You have come to town! How good it is to see you!" how vapid my voice must have sounded. As though she had arrived for nothing of greater import than to buy a length of ribbon for a hat.

She turned toward me, her eyes bleary and more than a little like a dog's when too-oft kicked.

"Miss Jenny—" she said, but I took her hand and pulled it through my arm and walked off—before she could protest—away from the cellar entrance and toward the water. Away from where Simmons might overhear us, away from drawing any further attention to her.

"You are well enough?" I asked.

"I—yes, but I have had my medicine. Uncle has not had his in days."

"…and the trial to begin," I finished for her, in the interest of expedience.

"He would not wish to plead his case—to appear in public-without the tempering qualities of his elixir," she explained.

"Nor should he have to," I said. "Plead his case at all—much less when compromised by his malady. What have you for him?"

She pulled aside the cloth upon her basket and showed me a stoppered glass bottle of mottled dark amber.

"Knows he how much of it to use?"

She nodded.

"I need your basket," I said.

"What plan you to do with it?" she asked, her delicate features puckering as she tried to follow my line of thought.

"I will get this to your uncle," I told her. "I give you my word."

She gave a little gasp. "But the Lieut—"

"Simmons," I prompted her. "His billet is in our home."

"What if you are caught?"

"It's a bad time to be a Brewster—or a Tallmadge," I told her (I should perhaps have explained myself better), "but it is an excellent time to be an Outerbridge."

I felt the tremble of her hand inside the crook of my elbow where it lay. "You must go home, Carrie," I said. "Without looking back. I will do as I say. You, must pray. Pray that help will find its way here, for your uncle—for the Reverend, for them all."

I stepped briskly out of her grip (it seemed a good idea not to allow myself in that moment to dwell too long upon her easily-understandable misery) and toward the underling soldiers tasked with that shift's guard of the cellar door, and called up a displeased look to my countenance.

"That lazy girl?" I said, with a huff that (purposefully) knocked back the hood to my cloak, and showed the coiffure 'that lazy girl' had given me that morning. "She's forgot the rest of her load!"

The two soldiers sniggered.

"'Tis a sorry day," I told them, "when a mistress is at doing her own slave's work!" I let my hips dip just enough that my petticoats gave something of a swing. The corner of Carrie's basket was visible under my cloak, but not enough to reveal to anyone sharp-eyed that it was the self-same.

The soldier closest to the door grinned with what teeth were left in his head (there were not many) and beckoned to me, "c'mon then," and unlocked the door to where Sally B. and the prisoners were within.

"I'll leave this open, Miss," he said, "in case of any trouble for you."

"You are too kind," I told him, "but don't mind her wailing when I slap her good for making me come all the way down here."

What nasty subterfuge it was, smiling and simpering as though I were Rachel Clark's less-polished sister.

The cellar was dark, but in the interest of a fair report, I shall not overly characterize it herein as more sinister than it was. It was a tavern cellar; large, and certainly more well-lit than the cellars of most homes. It smelt of straw, of malt, of barley and ageing wood.

Anna Strong's store-keeping Mama would have lauded. The space was neat as a pin (as cellars go).

I could hear Sally B. further in with the prisoners, setting up the meal she had brought upon the tops of barrelheads. (Once she had set it all out, presumably the guards would come and release the men's hands so they might eat it under close guard. The cellar interior was absent any guards at present, King's Men preferring to stand guard within the light of day, rather than the mustiness of cellar.)

In the foreground I could easily make out the two men I had come to see.

Lucas Brewster's frail body hung from his shackled wrists, which periodically shook so violently his chains rattled like those of some haunting spectre.

I hurried forward toward him, pulling the bottle from Carrie's basket without attempting to explain my appearance there, nor exchanging what pleasantries one might within an improvised gaol.

"I've no spoon or cup!" I bemoaned aloud upon realizing the fact. "Can you mete out the correct draught?"

I believe he nodded. He trembled so it was difficult to be certain. I uncorked the bottle and held it near his lips at a tilt.

I held it up so until he grunted. I had no expectation of how long such an elixir might take to work, and had asked no such information of Carrie.

"Carrie has come," I told him—at a loss of what to do with myself now the medicine had been delivered (no matter my earlier singlemindedness about gaining admission to the captives). "The guards will not give her leave to see you."

Perhaps he trembled some less after his dosing, perhaps he was able to find a breath of peace clinging to the hope for what relief this medicine might afford him. He tried to speak in reply to me, but a wheeze was all his throat produced. In the half-light where he was strung up, I could not read his expression, beyond that of untenable misery.

"Child," the larger man beside him—undeniably the voice of Reverend Tallmadge—said to me, "you must not come here," his voice was mellifluous, but tempered by concern, unlike his contemptuous speech given the day prior as he surrendered his rifle.

"Leave the bottle hidden. Come, this barrel, not too far from me; lie it atop and I shall get it for him at what times we are released from our bonds for meals and our rare constitutionals. Hurry now, you must leave the medicine—and you must not scheme to come here again. These are dangerously uncertain times for decent-minded people."

Despite Lucas Brewster's feeble form so near to me, his labored breathing, I could not take my eyes from the Reverend as he addressed his words to me. Perhaps it was the training of long years in how to behave during his Sunday sermons, perhaps it was still that old belief within me that solutions to any problem spiritual or secular, lay within his learned mind. Perhaps it was merely that I wished to refresh myself upon which points exactly you most resembled him.

What I noticed was that, as always, his coat and waistcoat were tailored quite finely. Tailored in the way a man who took no hard labor upon himself might request. When stretching for a needed book upon a high shelf is all the range of motion one might require in one's everyday clothes.

It was not a suit of clothes meant for a man whose arms must be overextended above the level of his head, doubly bound by shackles and rope, and as such, the Reverend's buttoned waistcoat was causing him rather a lot of difficulty when breathing where it strained across his hearty chest.

Obediently, I placed the bottle of Carrie's elixir as he requested, upon a nearby barrel where the light and its unremarkable appearance might serve to conceal it. And I moved closer to him.

Further into the cellar, the noises of Sally B's work grew slighter, and further apart. She was soon to be finished.

"Let me help you, Reverend," I said, and began to loosen the buttons upon his waistcoat. His relief was sure to be immediate, but the task was not a simple one, with the strain his enforced posture placed upon those closures.

In this new proximity, he was perhaps better able to apprehend my face. "But, you are the girl—" he began, recognition coming across his face in waves, and I assume he meant to denote I was the girl who had run away from him so shamefully that Sunday those weeks ago. "You are Malachi Outerbridge's daughter. You—"

"Jenny," I said.

"Yes," and I do not think I imagined his voice catching. "Little Jenny—I, I know. You and Samuel—"

I shook my head. His recognition of who I was no longer mattered to me. "I am here to say I mean to get word to your son that you are being held here. Take heart. All is not yet lost."

"My son?" he asked, his brow puzzled. "Samuel can help no one, not even himself. I am told his is become captured, and imprisoned."

"Not Samuel," I said, and my own breath broke a little upon the name of my former schoolmate. "Benjamin. I shall get word to Benjamin of your plight, of this wrongful imprisonment."

I undid the last waistcoat button; his lungs were free.

He took an involuntary deep breath. "Benjamin," he said. "But I don't even—" he began to protest. "Child, what are you about?"

I had no further words prepared for him (not that what I did say had been truly prepared—anymore than had my Providential encounter with him in this cellar). I wanted to be able to answer him in a way that would prove my proficiency to my declared task, but before I could speak further, Sally B.'s face appeared between us.

"Miss, we goin'," she said, and I would have given her a stern talking to with regard to telling her mistress when she will be taking her leave, had the cellar doors not parted and a guard descended, ready to unshackle the men one by one so they might eat the meal brought them.

With the presence of King's Men, nothing more of any import might be said, no private words exchanged. I simply gave a short (but hopefully determined) nod to the Reverend, and walked up and out with Carrie Brewster's empty basket over my wrist, and Sally B. at my side.

I do not think it likely I will gain a second entrance to see the prisoners without garnering more attention than would be prudent. Certainly I do not wish Mama and Papa to learn I visited them so.

To my great dismay, the note I had placed earlier about Lucas and Reverend Tallmadge's fates remains in place yet, untouched, unread, its contents unknown.

I am home now, evening is well upon us, Sally B. shall arrive to bed ere long, and I am resolved that the whole of this diary shall be placed within the boathouse cabinet (abjuring even the oilskin cover so as not to truly conceal it). The petition copy I shall include within it. In this way, should things turn out for the worst, the names of these men loyal to the Patriot cause shall be known, even as their murders may be announced. This I shall do, and I shall pray for all I am worth that it be found by a certain stray dog before it be too late.

It is so late, Benjamin. So very, very late.