Chapter Two

We drove around town a great deal but never seemed to leave behind the houses, roads and buildings that we knew so well. Mrs. McHenry said we should go back to Father DeWaere and tell him it was impossible to leave, but Kit was confident. "What's impossible is getting down to where the bridges are--at the Delaware, where the contagion's said to be worst. Let's go north. We're bound to find a crossing somewhere."

"Coryell's Ferry, with our luck," said Mrs. McHenry, referring to the crossing scores of miles away.

So we drove north. Slowly, the city gave way to fields, farms and roadside inns. Mrs. McHenry controlled the toddlers, and Dona bored them to sleep with her stories about growing up in France before the Revolution. Every now and then Kit rested the horses at the side of the road.

The first night should have taught me that ours was no ordinary trip. We could not find a place to sleep, as the inns were filled with people who had already fled the city. When Kit asked an innkeeper if he knew any farmers who might shelter us in home or barn, the man sharply replied that nobody he knew was of a mind to shelter strangers lately come from Philadelphia.

"Why not?" I asked. The man looked at me as if I were an idiot child.

Kit drew me away and smiled that calm, reassuring smile of his. "Don't trouble yourself, Jan. If the individual can't make room for us, then he's not the kind of person we want to do business with."

We piled back into the wagon. As twilight tinted the world a deep, dusty pink, Mrs. McHenry told Kit he should use the letter of introduction his father had given him to find lodgings with members of the nearest parish. Kit said he wished he could oblige, but no churches were in sight.

"Then stop at the first house we see," Mrs. McHenry commanded. "There should be no trouble. My goodness, your father is a chaplain for the Congress, not some uneducated retailer from the wharves."

"Yes, Mrs. M."

Kit obeyed out of respect, but he must have known that our search would be in vain: the first few homes we passed were farmhouses tightly shuttered for the night.

The wagon had no lamps. Kit pulled off the road, lit a lantern so we could better see what we were doing, then unhitched Sinecure and Stipend and tied them to the trees. Dona and Mrs. McHenry lowered the wagon's blinds. Wrapped tightly in our cloaks, we ladies took the toddlers and huddled together for warmth as the temperature dropped slightly below comfort. Kit made a small fire and invited us to sit close. I could still feel the warmth of the flames on my face as I fell asleep, comforted by the heat and assured that Kit would stay awake to fuel the pleasantly crackling blaze. Dona jokingly called him Vestal Virgin, a reference to the women who kept watch over the sacred fire of ancient Rome.

The next two days were a repetition of the first. Nowhere could we find either the elusive crossing to New Jersey or a place to rest. Once our provisions were gone, we ate at inns or bought bread and milk or cider from farms along the road. The expense consumed our funds. Faced with hunger and no money for the ferry, Kit decided to sell Sinecure and Stipend along with the wagon. We were compelled to walk, burdened by two trunks and the four small beings that seemed to fuss every minute of their waking hours. Kit and Dona each carried a child and dragged a trunk with their free hand. Mrs. McHenry and I managed one toddler apiece. My back ached as I bent to accommodate their miserably short stature. None of the passing carriages or wagons stopped to help.

"They fear we've got the contagion," said Mrs. McHenry.

"The contagion," Dona muttered bitterly. "Their lack of charity is a contagion."

"As evidenced by your disposition?" Kit piped up.

Dona groaned. "I'm not like you, 'Father' DeWaere." I refuse to suffer in silence, especially when people think evil of me when they don't know me."

Kit was unflustered by the girl's petulance. "Don't mind what people think, or what Mrs. McHenry thinks people think! We're all together, reasonably fed, reasonably rested and, what's most important, reasonably away from the city. I'll wager anyone that we're close to a crossing. All we need to do is turn east at the next crossroad. So keep your eyes open for the next crossroad, Jan. Can you do that for us?"

I nodded, and Kit sought to hearten us with a few verses of William Billings' anthem "Africa," the one that begins, "Now shall my inward joy arise and burst into a song."

After hours on the road without a town or crossroad in sight, Mrs. McHenry suggested we preserve our sorely acquired funds by hunting for our meat. When Kit seemed not to have heard, Mrs. McHenry quickened her pace until she was in front of him. He stopped.

"Did you hear me, Kit? We need to hunt. Where's your pistol?"

Kit hesitated. "You can't hunt with a pistol. The range is too short. You have to move in so close, you scare the animal away."

"Get the pistol, Kit."

He set down the toddler, opened the trunk he was pulling, placed every folded article of clothing it contained one by one on the road, then took out the long narrow box that held the pistol.

Mrs. McHenry stood over his shoulder, impatiently tapping her foot, as he painstakingly pulled back the hammer until it clicked, tore open a paper cartridge that held black powder and shot, tapped powder from the cartridge into the pan near the hammer, poured the rest of the powder down the barrel, shoved the ball and paper in after it, and then tamped everything down with the little rammer that attached to the gun beneath the barrel. Mrs. McHenry was noisily clearing her throat when he stood and commenced to peer for a long time into the woods at the side of the road. It was a cool, bright day. Sunlight fanned through the early autumn woods, making it hard to discern game amid the confusion of brightly colored leaves. After some moments in which he never left the spot where he stood, Kit admitted, "I don't see anything."

Snorting with disdain, Mrs. McHenry took the pistol and shouldered into the dense foliage farther back from the road. Kit shrugged. "She seems to know what she's doing."

"More than you, mon cher," Dona said softly.

The sound of the muffled explosion was closer than we expected, and we jumped.

With a triumphant holler, Mrs. McHenry burst from the woods, a bloody squirrel flapping from her fist. "Dinner, children! Now all we need is a knife. Excuse me, sir?" she shouted at Kit. " Did you just say,'I don't have one'?"

Kit nodded.

"How did you think we were going to skin it--with our teeth?"

Mrs. McHenry broke a stick so it had a sharp end and set off to part our dinner from its fur.

We found a pretty, sun-dappled clearing around a massive, ivy-girdled oak tree. Kit managed to start a fire, but he refused to eat Mrs. McHenry's kill. He said Mrs. McHenry could have his share, as she was eating for two. I think Mrs. McHenry ate most of the little animal. Dona and I could do no better than gnaw upon a roasted leg apiece. The toddlers gummed stringy slivers, then lay about us, rolled into thumb-sucking balls.

Mrs. McHenry propped herself against the mossy base of the oak, folded her arms across her girth, and dozed. Dona read a French novel. Kit opened his sketchbook on his knees. He worked quickly, with light, feathery strokes that formed images of the carts and coffins in the streets of Philadelphia.

"Why are you drawing that?" I asked, slightly repulsed.

He took no offence. "Because these things should be remembered."

"Why don't you just write about them?"

"Because everybody else is going to be writing about them. Why? What's the matter, Jan? You look disgusted."

"People want nice pictures hanging in their homes. Those aren't nice."

Kit smiled and added a few more strokes of charcoal. "I mean to illustrate the Bible with scenes of what we left behind, and of what we find along the way."

I knelt beside him. "What do you mean?"

He tapped the picture of the coffins. "This could be used in Revelation. This--" a rendering of an empty street--"would serve for Lamentations. You know, 'Behold how the city sits solitary.'"

"And this?" I pointed to the image of Mrs. McHenry preparing to stab the dead squirrel with the broken stick.

"Judith slaying Holofernes?" Kit tried.

I knew the story about the Hebrew heroine who slew the enemy general. The story's familiarity did not console me. I hugged myself against a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. "They frighten me."

"The pictures? Why, cherie?" Dona sat beside Kit, carefully tucking her skirts around her legs. "It's only life. Life is what afflicts us while we wait for death."

"Are you afraid?" Kit asked her.

Her chin quivered. "I can't believe that I should have survived one hell to meet my end in another. I'm not ready to die. I think of all that has happened to me, and I wonder, 'What have I done with my life until now?' And the answer is always the same: Nothing." She hid her face in Kit's shoulder, lest I see the tears that accompanied her sniffles.

Kit put his arm around her. "It's not what we do with our lives that matters. What matters is what we do for the lives of others. You haven't been living for yourself. You've been a blessing to Mr. Watters. You've even turned Janet into a young lady. She couldn't draw, sew or boil water until you taught her."

I was irked that he should comfort the girl at my expense, but he softened the blow by winking at me over Dona's head. "Cheer up! We've come this far; we'll go farther. I won't let anything happen to you--or to any of us."

Dona sat up, touching tears from her blotchy face. Her smile was brave. "If anything bad does happen...I can think of no other people that I would rather be with." She held out her hand to me, and I took it. "We will be friends for life, Janet. The three of us."

"What about Mrs. M?" I asked, thinking it rude to exclude her.

Dona studied the sleeping woman, then turned glistening eyes upon Kit and me. "How shall I say this so you don't think I'm mad?" she whispered. "I can't see her with us. She's gone. Not there. It's as if she never existed. I'm going out of my mind, am I not?"

Kit regarded Dona with wide-eyed honesty. "Sometimes...I feel that way about my father."

"Oh, mon cher, you mustn't. There's no worse feeling in the world than being bereft of your parents. You ask yourself, 'Who will take care of me now?"

Dona stroked his hair with gentle determination, as if she was goading Margaret into purring. There was something about Kit's expression that suggested he would indeed purr, and I listened for the sound to begin low in his throat. Within moments, he and Dona were nuzzling each other. Their foreheads came together. Kit framed Dona's face with his hands as he kissed her, and Dona's hands were roaming inside Kit's coat. The sketchbook slid to the ground, still open to the image of the squirrel slayer.

The third friend for life sensed with no small bitterness that she had no place in the affection flaming between the other two, and she silently removed herself from their presence.