I begin this new volume, writing upon the clerk's standing desk in Papa's office. The slant of the wood surface as my pages face away from the public door (once again open and inviting business) lends privacy to my words, as does the covering sheet of figures I have been given to sum up. I must only take best of care not to slide the sheet too quickly over my yet-drying ink in hopes of it masking my true task.
The village is very much alive with news and gossip; half-triumphant, half in horror, following the events of but a sennight ago.
Neither ball nor grand occasion could have so invigorated all sides. (And indeed, in my recollection never before has.) Patriots and Tories-those who but wish to live unaccosted without regard to who rules this country; all have a tale to share with neighbors, shocking developments to report and hours of speculation to weigh in upon.
As a village we are all (at least for the present moment) not only speaking to one another with no respect to another's present political positions—we are seeking one another out. Shops and tradesmen are flooded with bright-eyed customers, showing up to socialize as much as to contract business.
Papa declares if Comfort Tiffen, best among the village's weavers, is not careful, she will be operating an ad hoc tea room alongside her loom and wheel.
But it is a frenetic energy, brought about by an unexpected stirring of the humours, and whilst we cannot expect it to long endure, the events that have precipitated it we need not fear will be forgotten.
Certainly I shall not forget my own journey back to my Outerbridge family and home here in Setauket.
Of necessity, in the prior volume of this diary, I was unable to relate with any specificity the events both external and interior that led to my and Sally B.'s flight into the Setauket woods, toward the coast with two horses taken from Carrie Brewster's stable in search of blue coats, and the eldest son of our Reverend Tallmadge.
And so herein I shall now do.
As Setauketers, Mama had decided for our family that there was no other proper action but to attend the joint trial of Lucas Brewster, Reverend Tallmadge (Nathaniel as is his Christian name), and the other men whose names were found scriven upon the petition to elect Setauket's Selah Strong to the New York Congress (lest there be no friendly faces looking-on at the military proceedings).
My own mind wished strongly to be present, though I found also myself torn with worry over this diary's original volume being still lodged in our boathouse, important news within it (it not having been discovered by friendly hands), and no other way having presented itself to me overnight to get word of the direness of this situation to the Patriot encampment that can clear-enough be spied occupying the shore just across the water.
Oh, if I but knew enough forest-craft to send a signal in smoke, had flags with which to gesture in a manner to be understood, or unnatural, unworldly power enough to guide a bottle across the water with a message sealed into it.
Or, had I had but the presence of mind-when warning Walter Havens to flee the village-to add the caveat that he ought seek you out, bid home with all haste.
But I had not such level-headedness to my credit in those stolen moments.
I attired myself for the trial day somberly, but made certain my hair was dressed as charmingly as could be mustered; even condemned men no doubt wish to have something pleasant fall into their gaze. And yet I found no joy in the process, nor in the effect of the outcome.
I was not certain I could affect a sanguine expression as I sat opposite men most certainly set to hang within hours, knowing that what I had taken care to affect had not reached even its first point of contact, but lay bound up as tightly as the pages upon which it was written, coldly waiting in the shade and damp of our unvisited boathouse.
We took none but Abner along with us, hopeful that he would bridle his twelve-year-old tongue and behavior.
Our journey up the hillside to Major Hewlett's improvised courtroom was sobering. The day was clear, and the scaffold that had grown up overnight seemed to cast shadows far longer than Nature might grant it.
Moses Payne stood, clapped into the stocks, wherein he had well-earned a place by his actions in surrendering the original of the now-notorious petition.
If one wished to tread slowly and with dignity toward the outline of what had once been Reverend Tallmadge's church upon the hill, one's wish to be well-past Moses and his on-going punishment increased one's pace, at least insofar as by-passing that unpleasant sight.
The church itself is hardly describable to those who once cherished its modest but loved timbers, its high windows providing much light, and when open, welcome breeze. Major Hewlett's soldiers had carried in some six our more of our pews (which most days are littered out-of-doors upon the grounds surrounding what the bloodybacks name their barracks). One shuddered to think what evils have been thought of and perhaps even wrought upon them, as we moved to seat ourselves among the other Setauketers assembled.
There were fewer present than would have attended one of the Reverend's sermons, though some number did stand as space in the pews ran short.
Abraham Woodhull, we are informed, shall stand as magistrate in the Judge's place, though he be not able to boast of accomplishing his complete education, and Major Hewlett will rule over the proceedings—this being, it would seem, a military matter.
None of which makes sense. The Major to preside over a trial of treasonists, yes. But a common farmer to argue the case against them? One glance to Papa, and he could not conceal his dissatisfaction (at least to my eye) over such unconcealed partiality. And as for the case of Lucas Brewster—charged with attempting to murder the Major (and slaying the Major's horse instead)? How could Hewlett possibly rule without prejudice in that matter?
How, then (one thinks each spectator must be asking) can Abraham-of all people-guide this court's claims against Reverend Tallmadge, the man accused of trying to shoot Abraham's own father dead, with any fairness?
But what more could one expect of a military matter of murder and treason being tried in a desecrated church where not a fortnight gone a horse died, and now a group of men who once worshipped here, praising God and striving to do His work, now stand shackled, unkempt, and without intervention most likely dead following tomorrow's dawn?
But this, even this, was nothing to the unimaginable idea that 'twas your best friend since childhood shortly set to insert himself into the architecture of your father's death by hanging.
This will not happen, I told myself—ignoring the memory of my diary—my claxon call for aid—and its becoming-permanent place in the boat house. Rescue will arrive. Abraham will not go along with this immoral folly.
Angels, their very selves, will descend to prevent this fractured forum of justice from going forward.
This will not happen.
Abraham Woodhull, as I know him—the Abe of the past—would not blacken his soul by condemning Nathaniel Tallmadge to such a fate.
This will not happen.
And yet, an hour later, and half the accused had stood and had the charges read, that of their signatures upon the document Moses Payne surrendered.
Their signatures all being well-known to Maarten DeJong, his merchant business robust, his trade widely used by all of Setauket. He alone was called to testify to their hands.
I found myself relieved (though I had not thought to worry of it prior) that Papa was not similarly called to aid in the condemnation of his neighbors and associates, and find himself forced to betray them in such a way.
Even so, the sweat on his wrists and palms took all starch out of his cuffs.
Thom Brown's name was called, and Abraham began going through much the same rhetoric as he had with the others. Thom is younger than Abraham—nearer to my age than his. And one of the few young men unmarried and not soldiering left in Setauket (though it is considered by all that he will marry Precious Becken when his fortunes allow).
"I should have left here when King George's men arrived," Thom said, his voice sounding of defeat.
"To save yourself from a day such as this?" Abe asked, his brow still furrowed from the moment his part in this trial began.
Thom's face snapped to life. "To save you—to save all of you from a day such as this arriving." He threw his arm out toward the trial clerk who held the petition. "I should have joined the Continentals within the hour of signing that petition. But my heart was here. It has always been here, in Setauket, with my neighbors, my family—my church." Here he looked at Reverend Tallmadge, who shared a kindly look in return. "I believed it was here my time and efforts would be best spent."
"And yet you were wrong, Thom Brown," said Abraham, in a tone not at all sympathetic, but rather, rude and impatient. "What could you offer Setauket, but your betrayal of all your village holds dear? Loyalty, dependability—peace and goodness?"
Among those watching, a murmur rose. Thom Brown's role in the village as an upright neighbor always willing to aid another, a hardy worker with a strong back, and a generous citizen—had never been called into doubt before.
Thom shook his head, deliberately and slow. From my place I could see his anger grow into his own impatience. "I see now that I was wrong. I do not deny that is my signature. I stand here and own it, own the action I took that day in agreeing to appoint what I now see was one of our last goodly, decent men to a post in which he could work to throw off an unjust and oppressive government—and save Setauket-save all of you! I own that." His gaze upon Abraham was heated in its steady constancy. "But as I stand, this day, I disown you all."
The watching crowd now grew properly noisy with unease at his damning words, his condemnation of them. Major Hewlett's frown line increased, and as he called for order he announced a momentary recess. None of us in attendance had eaten since the early morning (nor had he).
One hour, he said, and court would reconvene. The review of Thom Brown's treason would not be revisited, he ruled. The court would move on to the final two signed to the petition, and then to Lucas and the Reverend.
As the spectators moved to disperse, I found myself shaken by Abraham's systematic handling of the accusations of the petition signatories. As he prosecuted them there was nothing in him that I could find that recognized any familiarity among these men, this neighbors. Yes, many of them would have had angry words for his father the magistrate, and the Judge's Tory-ways. Many would have had their wives' tongues—or even their own—at wagging about Abraham and Anna Strong—about how often Mary Woodhull and his son were left alone, seen alone; neglected.
Abraham was tenacious as a hound half-starved and oft-kicked. Were he on a leash (held in Hewlett's hand) more than once he appeared to be straining at it, baying for blood.
I began to believe that Abraham had come to see them—the men accused-all as his personal enemies—to see himself as abandoned by his village, his home; ostracized and alone. It seemed clear to me the man Abraham Woodhull had become might well be a man who believed Reverend Tallmadge shot to kill his father, who believed that ailing Lucas Brewster plotted to poison Major Hewlett unto death.
I felt chilled with such convincing. When I closed my eyes I could see nothing but the silhouette of the new scaffold against the dull Setauket sky.
I walked down the hillside toward home trying not to look up from where my bent head showed me only the safe, occasional view of the toes of my shoes. In doing this I lost my place beside Mama and Papa as they, too, traveled home, and my journey became solitary, my thoughts ran wild and unchecked with apprehension and jittery fear.
Our midday victuals were as chilly as we were solemn. Cook had not known to prepare us much in the way of a luncheon. The bread was day-old, the meat unwarmed. Our military boarders took their meal among the soldiery, all of those seeming, for this day, to be concentrated around their barracks church. The King's Men's spirits were high, celebratory—as in a victory soon to be declared.
In their absence, rare as it was, we Outerbridges would have usually rallied, our home once again briefly our own. But not this day. We ate our repast as one might a funeral supper.
Afterward Mama and Papa (Abner at their heels lest he be told to stay behind) left again to journey back to the court. I was set to follow them directly, after a trip to our pail closet, when as I was crossing our backyard, I spotted Sally B. and noted that she was behaving in the odd way of a person making a deliberate effort to look as though they were not about to set out upon a journey.
It was abundantly clear she was struck by finding me still about and not having gone along with the others.
"You ain't up to the Court, Miss Jenny?" she asked, though as I stood before her, it was obvious I was not.
I asked her what she was up to, and her eyes narrowed at me, and then widened as she seemed to have made a decision.
"I's gone," she told me. "Goin' today, and ain't nobody here gonna stop me. I's for York City, and findin' 'Lijah."
I took a moment to consider this news. (Not at all my usual way of conversing with Sally B.) A thought occurred to me. "And anyone who could stop you is occupied just now up in the soldiers' barracks?"
She did not vocally agree or confess, but her plan was sound, if not seaworthy. Anyone of consequence in our lives was indeed up at the court proceedings. It was just the right time to make such an abscond. One could not plan (or hope) for a better moment.
"You are being foolish," I heard myself tell her. "Once you are away from Setauket, what do you think will be thought of you, alone, on the way to York City? How might you protect yourself from what you may come upon in the forest? Or unscrupulous travelers on the road? The minute you walk away from here you become no one to anyone. If you do not serve Outerbridges—or Strongs—who will care for you? What will you be? Have you monies?" I asked hurriedly. "Or do you intend to resort to highway robbery?"
Her expression had flared into anger at my taunt.
"'Lijah's sister," she told me. "Myself. Is I so different in your mind from you? What do you become if you leave Setauket? If you haven't Outerbridges or Belards to fall back on? We've shared a life and a bed, Miss Jenny. We both missin' folk what aren't here anymore. Maybe we ain't so different as you think."
The folk I was missing (to her mind) I can only assume she meant to be Bess. Surely she cannot have apprehended more, no matter our time in such close quarters.
I had of certain not given any mind to thinking of leaving Setauket, much less attempting to do so alone, but the day's shocks of seeing good men brought low—even so low as to that new scaffold—of seeing Abraham Woodhull, whom I had long-believed to be a good man-had taken something of caution out of me, and made even the name Setauket taste sharp with vinegar.
"Go to Carrie Brewster's," I told her, despite her declaration that she was through taking commands from Outerbridges, or anyone. "Saddle and take two horses—without speaking to anyone. Bring them to the Horst Wood just outside of the village."
"An' why would I do that?"
"Because I have money," I told her, suddenly impatient. "And a pistol. And because you can travel unquestioned with your mistress."
"Mistress?" her nose pinched with her dislike of that term in association with me, and not Mama. (Or, perhaps at this point for her—in association with anyone.)
"Yes, you had best remember to call me that." A thought struck. "And I should be a widow. Gemma Crain. No one local is of that surname, and we will therefore easily avoid any questions of relation."
Sally B. looked perplexed at my words, but I did not let her stand longer than a moment contemplating them. That she could do on the walk to and back from Lucas Brewster's farm.
Perhaps I should have waited for her to agree to my altering of her original plan, but as mine was a superior stratagem in all regards, I only shooed her off to the task assigned.
Myself, I tried not to examine too closely the many ways in which this action of mine might backfire, and hurried upstairs to throw what little I might into Papa's saddlebag before I would need to meet her in the wood.
I packed in haste, and wrote my two farewell letters, raided Papa's safe place of coin, and left with the wind to my face, and my fear (of what was shortly to come were it not mitigated) alone stopping me from turning back.
I could no longer wait for help to come to us. I must go out and seek it, however dangerous and fraught the journey carrying the news to you might prove.
My plan, while outstanding in its overall aspects, lacked finesse in its deployment. How could I possibly manage a proper toilet whilst bivouacking in the woods? A proper toilet necessary to convince those we encountered on the roads that I was a well-to-do young widow, traveling with my slave girl? We had no passes, no papers of any kind.
I had the money I took from Papa's office. I had the pearl-handled pistol (which Major Hewlett had turned away from his commandeering of all firearms), and in a small bag, what was needed for several shots.
I had not been able to take much in the way of foodstuffs (Cook and the Kitchen Girl not having left home) without raising suspicion.
We would surely spend more than several hungry hours together, chilly and uncomfortable in the woods where no inns might be found, and homes might unknowingly shelter those opposing my self-assigned mission.
When Sally B. would question the direction I took for our horses, I knew I must have some excuse or explanation ready; that I was aiming us not at all for York City and the King's Army and her brother there, but toward the coast roads, and then the coast itself, hugging it in the hopes of spying a Continental boat, or civilian in the London Trade who might ferry us across into General Washington's territory with camps of Continentals that would know the name Ben Tallmadge.
How close the opposite shore would look, save when one thought about what it might take to truly cross over to it!
Locating Sally B. in Horst Wood proved no accomplishment at all. The horses were far from quiet, and her own ill-ease at being in charge of two of them made for no small amount of noise.
I was covered in burrs, my dress near picked apart in places by the time we found a spot to shelter for the night. I had no looking glass, but seeing Sally B's bedraggled appearance, I could not in good logic expect much better of my own.
I had taken one of Mama's caps to wear—I was to be a widow, after all-and was thankful for the covering. At least my hair remained untangled, and free of leaves and twigs. It was a slight comfort.
We lay close beside each other upon the ground—in the way we had become accustomed to sleeping in the shared bedroom.
I was unsatisfied that we had not been able to travel further along the coast before having to stop, for it was a night with only intermittent moonshine, and what stood for a road not as familiar to my eye as might be had I ridden it with any frequency.
We were no great distance yet away from Setauket.
Sally B. appeared to drop off without delay, but my journey to sleep proved not so effortless. I went over what little I had for a plan.
I thought on the letters, both public and private, I had left at home for my family to find. I thought of just going, as I had said I was, on to Amity, and the safety of her home. Her home, without such tight control of the King's Men. Her home, where I would not have to pass scaffolds and hear of good men I knew hanged. Of Amity's and an attempt at forgetting. This I could do.
But even as I pondered on it, I knew it was a daydream. There would be no 'new start' for me. I had put myself willingly into a dangerous situation. And for good reason. Naught remained but to see it to its end.
Strangely, it did not occur to me that anyone would come after us. I expected Mama and Papa to be horrified at my letters, but not to attempt to pursue me. I do not know why I held such little faith in their desire to recover me, and yet I did.
Perhaps I simply understood the strength of my own determination, and assumed they also would see I was not to be deterred or detained.
I did not fret that bloodybacks would be looking for or find us in the wood. I assumed (and quite rightly) that all eyes were on the court's outcome. I also assumed (as had we all at the moment I left) every man in irons was to be hanged following Major Hewlett's standard day-long assessment of the concluded trial. Therefore, I had the day to come to get a message to you, for any hanging would come at the second dawning following my flight.
And still I could not sleep. Upon the discomfort of the root-filled forest floor, I told myself stories of you, a soldier often bivouacked under the stars, determined to discharge your duty to all of us. To America, to Setauket and those whom you loved best.
It was to these impassioned imaginings I finally dropped off.
There was little of passion come dawn. The ground in the wood was wetter than we'd either expected, and thus so were we. I grabbed the cap from my head with the realization, and flung what damp there was upon it off before re-settling it on my head.
The best that could be done for our clothes was to brush them off with our hands.
I had not expected re-saddling the horses to take as long as it did—though Sally B. informed me that she had no such illusions after having saddled both the day before at the Brewster farm before she took them.
We'd made no fire the night before, and kindled none now. We each took a small amount of what food I had brought, and chewed the old bread and cold meat in the hopes it would not choke us, our water skins being far less full than I would have expected.
I did my utmost to hurry us along, we needed to get back on the coast road and be on the look-out for a way to cross to the opposite shore.
If only I knew where there might be a fisherman's boat! I would have scarred my hands gladly for a chance to row us across, and a sound possibility of finding someone to carry our news to you.
I was trying to talk myself out of a feeling of defeat before we had even begun, when in the distance a sound so unexpected and unusual—yet arriving with great, undeniable force—met both our ears.
It was as loud as if we were standing in the center of a thunderclap. But louder, I think. The ground gave a tremble. It was like a musket shot—if it were to go off in your own head.
Sally B.'s immediate reaction was to set off running—queerly pulling the reins on her horse while she remained on foot. She ran in the direction I had us aimed in, toward the coast road, and (what she thought was) York City and Elijah beyond. 'Twas her horse with the food and small provisions saddle bag. She must have feared the noise in some way concerned our absence. That it heralded some force arriving to return us home, perhaps to punishment. I did not think to call after her.
The noise and trembling ground threw anything resembling processed thought out of my mind. I could only think it had come from Setauket—from home.
I could think only of Outerbridges. Were they safe? Were Hewlett and his men taking a terrible revenge upon the entire town? Wiping it and its citizens from the face of the colonies?
As I write this now, my fearful conclusion seems both a ridiculous assumption, and yet, in the same breath, a not implausible one.
We are a den of patriots and rebels to them. The group who signed the petition showed to them that revolution has not passed over and out of Setauket. It has only gone underground.
A full cemetery would be an efficient way of putting down such insurrection. Anything left could be given to established Loyalists to rebuild and run.
What an example such an action would stand as to all of Long Island! To the colonies entire.
Hanging a clergyman, after all, is no doubt but a small step on the way to razing a village.
Already mounted, I turned my horse from the coast road, threw my leg over the saddle, and raced toward Setauket without thought to exhausting or overheating the borrowed beast.
Through no concerted intent, Sally B. had found me a fast mount, and one that was willing to run, no doubt expecting a pleasant arrival with oats and a rub-down once he ran home after his odd night spent in the Horst Wood.
Before Setauket came into sight, black smoke was visible on the horizon. As we drew closer, I was able to discern the destruction was not as vast as I had expected.
At first any figures of people I could see looked tiny and black in the distance. As we grew closer to arriving on the edge of the village, I noted some wore red coats (nearer the church barracks), and some wore blue. Many others scurried about in clothes the color of earth and wood.
I tied up Carrie's horse when I found a tree some distance from the action. I ran past our house—no one was within, not even Cook and the Kitchen Girl. I went next door. No one there, either. The village was empty.
I ran (ridiculously—what was I running toward? Certainly not safety, I had abandoned that when I ran back toward the great thundering) toward the village square.
Across the way—a way littered with men jogging to-and-fro, clearly at some urgent task—several columns of Continentals marching out of the village, I spied you, Ben Tallmadge.
You were too distant to hear any cry I might have spoken toward you, especially over the noise and bustle of the men all about.
But I recognized you in your blue coat, your forelock troubled, askew with whatever opposition you had found on your foray here. It was the sort of unkemptness in appearance a woman longs to put right with a knowing flutter of her hand, smooth into harmony as she might the furrow in a worried brow.
Your uniform was in some disarray. And you were in concentrated conversation with Abraham Woodhull, whom I recognized from the rear by his queue and frockcoat.
I stood, dumbstruck, the back of DeJong's mercantile behind me, awed that you would be here—not knowing how your arrival had come about (nor how long it had lasted). I had set out to find you, to bring you home-and failed, and yet here you were. Without my help, without having received my message.
Surely Providence had intervened for your father's sake.
Both you and Abraham were keenly intent on one another. And why shouldn't you have been? All those years without speaking. And now, in the light of a Setauket morning, here you were, meeting near the common, so like in older days, yet you in your blue coat—and Abraham just having prosecuted your father for the Crown—so unlike.
I could make no decision upon whether your conversation be genial or no. It did not last very long, not long enough for me to un-lock my lower limbs and walk through the dusty fray toward you.
As Abraham walked off, though, my eyes trained to your face, your jaw—I saw your expression pull into a familiar one. That tug of your lips when something had unexpectedly pleased you, given you a pleasurable pause. So quickly done, one had to be quick to observe it.
Whatever Abe had said, you approved of its conclusion. Whatever had taken place, Abe was still your friend. As far as you were concerned, he was still a good man.
Relief, that I had not known I was in need of, flooded through me. There was more at work here than I could have guessed. I did not attempt to make sense of it in that moment, I rested only in the realization that if Abraham had your approval, he had mine as well.
Your expression was just beginning to fade, when your eyes cast about, and found me—and mine, across the distance separating us.
After an interval of surprise, yours seemed to hold a question of curious query: what was I doing here, out among this military bustle (for I had by then discerned the men not in blue but in forest-dark colors were also part of your assault on Setauket) when the rest of the village was elsewhere?
Before I could open my mouth to shout across the distance, I recalled my cap. I reached up and grabbed it away, lest you take me for the married woman I had intended to playact at being. It seemed very important that you did not so mistake me, mistake what had become of me.
I grabbed it off my head, all haste and ungainly effort-not intending to, but with the rough and tumble night spent upon the forest's floor, also losing the hair pins that had kept my coiffure in place.
My hair caught the wind and tumbled down, a terrible mess, kempt only insofar as it had not tangled, courtesy of the cap.
Your face leapt into a grin at this. (Surely, you were thinking: Jenny, yet again making a near-disaster of herself.) And your right foot set off in my direction.
But your left was not to follow. A clutch of men descended upon you, no doubt reminding you that you had no time for further detours on your departure from Setauket. As if in a whirlwind, you were spirited away. Moments later, had you thought to once again look in my direction, you would no longer have found me, nor I you.
And thus the Continentals withdrew from the Battle of Setauket. The villagers I found, for the most part, sequestered within the Tavern.
Lucas Brewster, and two others that signed the petition were killed by the King's Men. (Lucas murdered by Captain Simcoe, others felled when they joined in the skirmish.)
Thom Brown and others (even ones who had not signed the petition) escaped with the blue coats. No doubt to join up.
With my family I am reconciled and returned.
No news has reached us of Sally B. and Carrie Brewster's horse, for good or for ill.
Cleopas I have sent to return Carrie Brewster's other horse, with a note of condolence regarding her uncle (whose body she cannot even have to bury), and a request to call on her later in the week.
Abraham Woodhull's story does not end with the Battle, but I shall save the specifics of that narrative for another time. The shock of Selah Strong having been not only alive, but among the Continentals. The shock to Anna Strong, and his embrace of her passionately and publicly. A man who had been to the Jersey returned, alive.
The burning of Abraham's farm, which many a Setauketer now credits to Selah, as Anna Strong jumped from the rebel boats and into what are reported to be Abraham's arms, before the very eyes of her husband.
In fact, I am wise enough now to know that I must tear from these pages once written any reference to your approval of Abraham; I must do so, and I must see it burned, for it would damn him were it to be found, surely. Henceforth any reference to him shall be rendered as dully and un-insightfully as can be crafted. For the safety of your best friend. For the safety of whatever Abe's part in your life might yet be.
I have thought of you standing there, Benjamin Tallmadge, back on Setauket ground, where you had so comfortably belonged, part of the warp and weft of our lives. Of how your queue had grown from barely-there when you left us, to a very fashionable length at present. I have felt dismay that we were not near enough one another to speak, nor for me to again gaze upon the color of your eyes.
I have puzzled over and over in my head how you knew to return here—and when.
In hopes of discovering what impelled your trip, I returned again to our boathouse, to the cabinet there. The diary book I had positioned—which was still in its place at the time I left the village for Horst Wood-is there no more. It has been removed, albeit not in time to have brought you here.
Taking its place was but a small sliver of paper, clearly torn from a diary page. So small as to go unnoticed save by one scouring that cabinet for evidence of a book no longer there. Scrawled upon it in smeary pencil (no doubt from a forest-dark coat, its pockets still slick with whale oil), the marking, "S - - dead". No date.
And so Reverend Tallmadge is saved, and his son. And yet not his son, nor the Reverend and you saved from the grief of Samuel's passing.
Nor Caleb. Nor Carrie and he from Lucas'.
I imagine you in your father's embrace after so much time apart, after such dire happenings. After a time when he could not have known you as alive or dead. The expression on Reverend Tallmadge's face to be with his son. How he has always loved you!
How the two of you would help Caleb as he works to bury Lucas, the words ancient and holy you would say over his uncle's grave.
And then the moment, the bleak moment you must tell the Reverend. That despite your joy at being reunited, you shall never be a whole family again.
That the King has taken yet one more thing away from you. And that with no amount of fighting can it ever be regained.
Oh, Samuel. I wish to never see a red coat again.