Chapter Four

I ran into the stream. I didn't care that the water was above my ankles, or that the day was cold and the water was icy. I sank in silt and slipped on stones. Nothing mattered. I was going to run all the way home to Philadelphia. I ran as I had never run in my life. But I was still a little girl. I couldn't run forever. I had to catch my breath. I stopped. The woods were quiet. The sound of the water had a gentle, melodic quality. Despite the coolness of the air, I was hot and thirsty. I knelt to drink. It was then that I saw the reflection. Before I could move, Kit had his arms around me and was pulling me onto the bank.

Sometimes my guinea pig Margaret would refuse to return to her cage after a day in the garden. When I picked her up, she would snarl and bite and flail her legs, making sure that each of her fourteen little claws carved a jagged pink path in my flesh. I could have been Margaret that afternoon in the woods. As Kit pulled me to dry ground, I snarled, bit, and flailed my own arms and legs. Despite the assault, he never fought back. Though the struggle brought us both to our knees, he held me as tightly as I would hold Margaret. He let me carry on until I dropped, wailing, in a morass of anguish. He continued to hold me until I had neither strength nor tears to continue.

"You know why it's so hard on us, Jan?" he asked when I had quieted down.

I shook my head.

"Because we know the difference between good and bad. If it weren't for the bad, we'd never know the good. Do you follow?"

I shook my head. I was a child, not a philosopher.

"No matter." I heard the smile in his voice. "I want you to do something important for me. I want you not to worry. That's what I'm here for. Whenever you lose heart, whenever you fret about something, I want you look at me and think, 'That's for Kit to take care of.'"

"I can't."

"Why?"

I sat up and faced him. It was the first time I had ever looked at him so close. I remember being surprised that his eyes weren't the deer-black I had so long imagined. They were, instead, a disarming blend of green and warm, reddish-brown. I say disarming because they fascinated me into utter quiet. I'm afraid I stared. When I at last remembered it wasn't polite to stare, I pulled away and stood. "I'll die anyway."

We were on the stream bank, where the turf was a mush of mud and soggy grass. As Kit gazed up at me, my heart sank. From cravat to coattails and stockings, mud spattered his clothes like crewelwork done by a blind girl. To my childish mind, it was an odd desecration. I felt ashamed. To this day, I don't know why. I hung my head and stood with my hands at my sides.

Kit clutched my arms. "Look at me, Janet."

I liked looking at him, but thought it proper not to respond too quickly to the demand.

"It's my place to worry, not yours," he said. "Remember that."

"It won't stop me from dying."

Kit nodded, a gesture of understanding, not of letting a child have her way. "You know the saying, 'Man was born to die?' It's also true that Man was born to live. I don't want you to be so afraid that you can't live. Let me worry, and let me be afraid, so that you can live."

We returned to Dona, who had managed to shepherd the toddlers close to where Kit found me. She was crying, but her sorrow didn't prevent her from commanding me to remove my sodden stockings and put on the ones she had been wearing. When I balked, she put them on me herself and fastened the garters. My shoes were soaked, but Dona assured me that I was better off with wet shoes than no shoes at all. I asked why I couldn't simply get a dry pair of stockings from my trunk. She kissed the top of my head and, with an expression of ineffable sadness, said, "Ah, ma petite, we don't dare return to the stable to retrieve our things."

So once again we set off. Kit carried one toddler, Dona held another, and I led the remaining two by the hand. We didn't walk, we trudged, slowed by the children's agonizingly small steps.

We hadn't gone half a mile when we smelled a wood fire and roasting meat. "It smells like a boar roast," Dona muttered. "My cousins hunted boar. They would skin it... gut it... stick it on this monumental spit in the formal gardens, of all places..."

"There are no boars in Pennsylvania, Dona." Kit's voice was small.

"Surely, all the Americas have boar."

"No. Sorry."

"Not even wild pig?"

"Only domestic pig...and, of course, guinea pig." Kit's mouth twitched in the palest of smiles.

Dona persisted. "But it smells like a boar roast."

Kit sighed. "Most likely, our gallant instrument of Satan has set his barn ablaze, and the smoke is drifting."

Dona gasped. "But that's meat. My God! Kit! He wouldn't kill the horses, would he?"

Kit plodded a few more paces before grimly advising, "That's not horse, Dona."

Dona stopped. Her face was deadly white. She swayed. Kit threw his free arm around her waist so as she fainted, the child she was holding was secured between him and Dona, instead of falling to the ground. Weighed down by the girl, he dropped to his knees and bent with her as she noisily flopped upon the turf. The toddlers gurgled peacefully, safe between the boy and the senseless girl.

It took a few moments, but we were able to extricate the toddlers without incident. Dona awoke to Kit calling her name and patting her cheek in a mild panic. Her eyes widened and she sat up, straightening the kerchief at her bodice. "Oh...Oh, mon cher! I didn't!"

"You did--"

"But I never--Not in my life! Not even when they paraded my mother's cousin's head around on the pike! It's your fault, telling me such horrid things--"

"I didn't tell you anything!"

"You said enough. My God, imagining that anyone would cremate a woman and her unborn child. That's depraved!"

"It was no imagining, Donatienne. He said he would do it, and he has done it. God have mercy on her. She didn't deserve such a fate."

Nobody proposed praying for Mrs. McHenry. It happened spontaneously. Horrified by the scent of the fire, we unwittingly kept silence. After a few moments, Kit said we should go.

Though we spoke no more of Mrs. McHenry, she--or, more accurately, her fate--remained in our thoughts. Not long before we stopped for the evening, I heard Kit softly singing Billings's "Chesterfield" to the toddler sleeping on his shoulder: "Death may dissolve my body now, and bear my spirit home. Why do my minutes move so slow, nor my salvation come?" The lovely, minor-moded melody carried through the breezeless air.

We stopped at nightfall. Having none of the means to light a fire, we sat against the trees, coddling the toddlers against the chill, and they in turn acted as human blankets on our laps. The night smelled of damp decay. Crickets chirmed, cruelly reminding us of a happier, warmer time. An owl hooted in the distance. We rose at dawn, hungry, sleepless, near despair. Kit reminded us that the forest held water somewhere, else the trees and vegetation would never grow. Swaddled in misery, we hardly spoke as we followed scruffy trails through the underbrush. At last, toward evening, the woods thinned, and the landscape rose before us in a gentle, expansive slope. We entered a town of shady streets lined by cozy clapboard houses and brick shops. Smoke spewed from a blacksmith's forge. A long, log house attached to a fieldstone chapel dominated the town green.

We were a sorry sight--filthy, gaunt, torn, bloodied, hobbled by four tiny children. When we weren't staggering from exhaustion, we moved with the labored deliberation of people who wish to hide the fact that they have drunk too much.

A man of indigenous features tipped his hat to us and asked, in oddly accented English, if we needed assistance. His approach seemed to signal others to stop as well. Soon we were surrounded by a crowd of men and women who shook their heads and made sympathetic noises at the state of our clothing. Kit pulled his father's letter from his pocket. The man read. "You're from Philadelphia?"

Kit knew what the man was thinking: These people brought the plague with them. His face flamed. He formed his words with care. "We've already been forced out of one location, sir, and denied entrance to many others. If you prefer we not stay--"

"No, I do not prefer it," the man replied. The crowd softly echoed the sentiment.

Kit started, unsure that he had heard correctly. "All...All we request is a small corner in which to rest ourselves. And some direction as to where we might find food and water...with the understanding that we have lost all of the usual means to pay and will gladly work off the debt."

The man's smile was sad. "You really don't know where you are, do you."

Kit faltered. For the first time in days he looked lost. "We were supposed to go to Princeton. It was supposed to be a half-day drive."

"Then it may astound you to know that you are sixty miles north of Philadelphia. This is Bethlehem."

We had wandered into the community founded by Moravians earlier in the century.

The man, an Indian convert, and several men and women in the crowd brought us to the home of one of the community's elders, who immediately sent word to our families that we were alive and in good company.

While we waited for our fathers to retrieve us, we were housed in the Moravian tradition, in schools, or choirs, according to our age and sex. The orphans were accepted into the Nurseries. We were treated with the same care and kindness we had known in our own homes but had not found among strangers during our misadventure.

Papa and Father DeWaere did not come for us until a gray, frosty day in November, when they were certain that the contagion had left the city. By then we had recovered our looks and our weight, and bore not the smallest evidence of our ordeal. I remember how we were brought to a small, sparsely furnished room in the Gemeinhaus, the large, log building that formed the heart of the Moravian community. Papa greeted us with outstretched arms and staggered as I threw my own arms around his neck. Despite her excitement, Dona restrained herself from such a familiar act. All the same, upon hugging me and saying he thanked God we were safe, Papa wrapped me in one arm and held out the other to Dona, who accepted the invitation with tears of joy.

Kit, meanwhile, stood before his own father, composed, but with a face that bespoke bewilderment.

"They tell me your conduct was above reproach," Father DeWaere was saying. "I don't deny that you preserved Donatienne and the children. But every single trial that befell you was your doing. None of it had to happen. You should have returned home the instant you realized you could not leave the city."

"My task was to bring the women and children to safety," Kit said. "I acted with reason, according to the circumstances--"

"No, Kit. You acted out of pride."

"That isn't fair. You weren't there. You don't know what he had to do!"

Papa and Dona shushed my outburst, which had no effect upon Father DeWaere's chastisement, whihc he continued without stopping for breath.

"You're a brilliant boy, Kit, but you have failed to learn the difference between academic brilliance and common sense. I never suspected you would do what made you look worthy in the eyes of others before doing what was right. I fear for you. You're young. You have a lifetime ahead of you--a lifetime you must necessarily spend with your peculiar way of thinking. I can only pray that God saves you from yourself. Now come along. At least your mother will be glad to see you."

He opened the door and stood aside, clearly meaning for Kit to precede him. Kit raised his eyes to my father, creaking, "Forgive me. I didn't think--"

"No, you didn't think. You never think."

Father DeWaere could not have hurt his son more if he had leveled him with an anvil. At the moment, however, Kit cast a dreamy look upon his father and left without saying goodbye. After shaking hands with Papa as if nothing had happened, Father DeWaere followed.

The door had barely closed when Dona cried out, "That man! How can he call himself a priest yet be so cruel to his son?"

And I, at the same time, demanded of Papa, "How could you shake hands with him? Why didn't you say something?"

"Ladies, ladies, please!" Papa entreated. "Each man has a duty to look after his own household. How can I interfere between a man and his child? How would it seem if somebody started questioning the way I manage my own child?"

"Christian is not a child, Mr. Watters."

"He's not twenty-one, Dona. Under the law, yes, he is a child."

"He was considered enough of a man to drive us to Princeton."

Papa's patience thinned. "Indulge an old man, my sweets. Listen to him for but one minute. Janet, do you hear?"

"Yes, sir," I mumbled from my position at the window, where I watched the DeWaeres' chaise vanish along Bethlehem's bustling streets.

"Mrs. McHenry is dead," Papa said, "and the rector's horses and wagon are no longer his. I'm not saying Kit's to blame, but you can't deny that some unfortunate things happened on his watch."

Dona was defiant. "The only unfortunate thing that happened was the death of Mrs. McHenry. If the rector is so concerned about his horses, then perhaps he should buy them back. Would that not be the reasonable thing to do?"

For an instant I thought Papa would reject Dona's argument. He must have considered--as I consider now--that, as a child of privilege, she had been instructed in how to manage servants and to maintain a household. She could be blamelessly practical when she so desired. He asked her, "That is what you would do?"

"Yes, Mr. Watters. Without question."

"And that is what I would do. But Father DeWaere? I have no doubt that he means for Kit to learn a lesson and take responsibility for his actions."

"Only a fool fails to see that life is its own lesson."

"On the contrary, Dona, sometimes life fails the fool."

Dona's color flared, but she held her tongue.

Papa was conciliatory. "Ah well, what does any of us know? Remember Milton: 'Let me not rashly call in doubt Divine Prediction. What if all foretold had been fulfilled but through mine own default. Whom have I to complain of but myself?' Kit will get what he deserves. You'll see."