While he hesitated, two old men ambled forward and bound his wrists together with a heavy length of clanking chain. Then they stepped back, and the whole company continued to stare at him.
“Captain,” said Tom Trask thoughtfully, “I be not so sure as I was that you come this way to see a girl. Likely you did, but likely, too, you might ha’ spread the false report that the British was upon us. It might ha’ been a word o’ yours that sent us flying over hills far and wide as if the devil was after. A fool’s prank, maybe—maybe a smart trick to spread confusion amongst us.”
Suddenly Gerry Malory remembered the scenes of the afternoon: lean spinsters rocking along like giraffes in the animal garden on Tower Hill, fat men waddling off, their faces red and their eyes popping with panic. He laughed aloud and looked down at his hands bound stiffly in front of him.
“In either case, it was fun while it lasted,” he said.
Chapter Seven
OFF TO THE WARS IN BOSTON
“Cousin, I see no future for us in this place,” said Sally Rose bleakly.
She was sitting in the soft grass on the hill behind the Frog Pond, looking down the dusty street that led through the Port, straight to the wharves and warehouses along the river.
Kitty pulled herself up on her elbow and let her glance follow her cousin’s. There appeared to be as many white sails in the channel as usual, the same blue spring haze on the far shore, and the familiar curve of sky overhead. But the town below them, commonly bustling with life on a warm May afternoon, looked strangely deserted and still. A brown dog slept in the middle of High Street, and two old men hobbled past the Wolfe Tavern in the direction of Market Square. A farm cart ground its slow way towards Old Newbury, and a group of children ran hither and thither across the training green with laughter and shrill cries.
Kitty pulled a golden dandelion blossom from the grass and began to tear it apart in her fingers. “I think I see what you mean, Sally Rose,” she said. “It is dull here with no one to talk to but grown folk—and of course, the other girls. I never realized how many girls there are in town. There never seemed to be so many before. I never thought I bothered myself much about the lads, but what a difference it makes—now they are all gone away.”
“Gone, and not likely to return very soon, from what I hear,” said Sally Rose thoughtfully. “A few have come home, but mostly the older men with families, or the fainthearted ones. Last night I heard Uncle Moses telling Granny they plan to stay where they are and form a mighty army that will circle round like a wall of iron to keep the British penned in Boston.”