Some Trust in Chariots

Chapter Nine

2007-03-31T15:42:00.000-07:00

There is an instant when we have no memory of what came before and no expectation of what is to follow. It is the instant we open our eyes to a new day.

When I met that new day, I was nested in a feather bed that smelled of clean, flannel linens. Emerald velvet curtains hung from a canopy over the bed, closed on one side but open on the other. A ceiling-high faience stove protruded from the corner into the center of the small room. Its milky white tiles, with their delft-blue designs of fantastic plants and animals, exuded soothing, dry heat. Steps away from the bed’s gleaming mahogany footboard, a double set of tall, wide windows glowed with the light of a lazy, late-season snowfall. Despite the weather, the air smelled of lavender.

Like the horses passing in the street below, relentlessly hacking the same unnerving hoof-fall on the stones, the fortepiano down the hall repeated the same passage of Handel’s “Israel in Egypt” as the player sought the chords and texture that fit his labored transcription of the oratorio.

Once again denied the privilege of snailing up abed, I crawled into the dressing gown muttering the words that belonged to the music: “The horse and the rider, the hooooorse and the rider, hath He thrown into the sea. The horse and the rider the horse and the rider…”
To be continued...

Chapter Eight

2007-02-18T09:59:00.000-08:00

There was some comfort in knowing that Papa didn't forbid me to be with Kit, but the threat troubled me. He never treated people in that manner. For two days I hardly spoke to him, lest I invite more wrath. On the third day, as we walked to The Refuge, he asked me what was wrong. I prefaced my explanation with care: "Please don't be angry with me."

He heard me out, frowning, watching the tip of his walking stick tap the stones. "I'm sorry, Jannie. I suppose I forgot to tell you--and Kit--that somebody else has to be wary of what he does--me. Kit may be the shepherd, but I'm the paterfamilias. I've got to keep the family together and in order. I don't want Kit to do anything that would ruin his career. It would break my heart, let alone his. He's worked too long and too hard for the distinction of being here. I didn't mean to threaten him. I wanted him to understand how serious the matter is." He patted my arm. "Will you talk to me now?"

"Of course." I smiled, though I resolved not to let Papa catch me anywhere near Kit without a chaperone, even in private.

About one week later Mal, who I still knew only as Le Maitre's master, was trimming a little girl's hair as she sat in her wing chair. I was helping Kit fill in some of the colors on the trompe l'oeil painting of a rose garden. I mentioned to Mal that I had quite forgotten to ask how he had enjoyed the show.

He keenly eyed the evenness of the trim. "What show?"

"The horse show."

"When?"

"Last week."

"Desole, citoyenne, but I never went to a horse show. It sounds like something I'd have enjoyed, though!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, I thought-"

"Soit calme--Don't worry! You must have me confused with somebody else." He blithely fluffed the child's hair, then held the mirror to her face. "Voila. C'est toi. That's you."

Kit held the brush but had stopped painting in mid-stroke. His face was the same white as the plaster wall and betrayed the same bewilderment I had seen five years before, when his father berated him for acting on pride instead of reasoning.

"Kit?" it was more of a breath than a question, I was that afraid of being overheard.

He shook his head and left the room, brush still in hand.

I followed. He stopped.

I hoped to sound discreet "Did she not go to see the horses?"

The answer was almost inaudible. "I told you once, a long time ago, that whenever you fretted about something, you should look at me and think, 'That's for Kit to take care of.' That still holds, Jan. Even here. Especially here."

"Why? What is she--"

"Janet."

His dignity and utter lack of rancor were enough to silence me. I let the matter lie.

As summer passed, Kit and Dona rarely worked or joined us for meals together. We never knew where Dona was. I never knew if any of us asked about her. Nor did I know if anyone received an answer.

Despite what I viewed as Kit's trouble, The Refuge flourished as both mission and orphan asylum. Papa was an administrator who raised funds as well as he managed books and stores, and Kit was the kind of vicar that people wanted to be with, especially in their time of need. I trusted he never spoke about his marriage with anybody. I did notice, however, that he refused invitations to social gatherings where the presence of Mrs. DeWaere was expected.

By the beginning of October--the middle of the month the French Revolutionary calendar called Vendemiaire--the mission and Kit's duties had grown to the point where everybody thought he needed an assistant. Jerry Reynolds mentioned this to Papa the day Kit came in from sitting up all night with the distraught family of a missing, troubled man and had to go out again to conduct a memorial service for somebody who had died in Paris ten years earlier. Papa said Kit himself would have to request an assistant. Only then would they write to the bishop, not before.

The matter was decided later that month. Mal was preparing a pot au feu that was to be the entree of a five-course meal that included his specialty, chocolate gateau. As he was cleaving raw meat when we heard the bell at the door, I took it upon myself to greet the visitor.

I opened the door and nearly dropped from shock. A man filled the doorway. I don't mean that figuratively. He was the width of the doorway and slightly taller. He had to bend under the lintel to address me. He beamed. All I could understand was "Salut, citoyenne." The rest was a musical babble.

I stepped back, mumbling "Pardons" and something else I hoped would excuse me for the moment, and went for Mal as calmly as my wildly beating heart would allow. "The Massif Central...is at the door--" I could hardly breathe, yet felt very clever to snatch my metaphor from the mountainous region of south central France.

Mal regarded me from the corner of his eye. "The what?"

"The Massif Central. I don't know how else to describe him. They don't make men like this where I come from."

Mal threw some meat into the pot and scampered to the door, shouting in French.

Giggling, the man bent through the opening and said something back. Mal wrapped his arms around him and tried to push him out. With no sign of resistance, the man giggled, "Non, non, non," as the boy dug into his tail pockets and pulled out a fistload of sweets.

Mal tossed one to me. "Voila! The last time Pierre was here, I forgot to fish out the bonbons, and he ended up sitting on them. It wouldn't have been that bad, but it was his uniform."

Mal flew into another French tirade that bespoke delight and a smattering of apology as he gestured between the enormity and me. The only French I understood was "Jeannette." Undeterred by my ignorance, the enormity bowed over my hand, spewed some pleasantry that I failed to grasp and gestured for me to precede him into the hallway.

"Pierre's here to see how the children are doing," Mal said. "I'll ask him to speak slower, so you can understand."

Mal's request was met with a jovial "Oh, oh, oh" and even more verbiage that flew through my ears. To my horror, Mal then excused himself to continue preparing the pot au feu. "Don't worry, Pierre will speak slowly, and you'll speak slowly," he called from the other end of the house. The big man beamed, undammed another stream of French and gestured me toward the staircase.

I had no idea what Pierre was saying as I led him to the children's parlor. My awkward silence did not deter his soliloquy. For all I knew, he could have been wondering aloud what I was doing in his country if I couldn't speak his language. Every so often I would glance back-and up-at him to find not that his face adorned by one continuous smile.

Candace bent in front of Anne-Marie, singing a French folksong. As we neared I could see she clasped the child's hands in hers and moved the little arms up and down, in time to the music. Anne-Marie squealed with delight, and rubbed her head against the soft back of the wingchair.

Seeing all this, Pierre went "Awwwww," pulled out his handkerchief, dabbed the corners of his welling eyes, then blew his nose with the delicacy of a trumpeter on a mail coach. The blast startled me, but my heart stopped to know a being of that size could go to pieces over helpless little children. I was saved from further attempts at communicating with the man when Candace stood and began chatting with him as if they were old friends.

In the kitchen, I confronted Mal as he tossed some tubers of unknown origin into the pot. "That was deliberate."

"What?"

"Leaving me alone with him!"

"You weren't alone. I was down here. Candace was up there."

"You're evil, you know that? You have no shame."

Mal grinned. "There are worse things in life."

"Like letting somebody sit on chocolates?"

Mal stirred the pot, thinking. "Oh, yes, that was indeed a serious error in judgment. Especially since it was his uniform. Oof! The launderers must have had a thrill figuring out how that had happened. They probably thought some lady tried to squeeze his--"

"Uniform? What uniform? Don't tell me! He's a bureaucrat! He's one of those people the government sends to spy on us!"

Mal feigned offense. "Now, now, Pierre's not a boobie. He's an administrator at Les Invalides. He tries not to come here in uniform, but that day he had a function to attend."

"Les Invalides? The veterans home on the Champs de Mars? He's a soldier?"

"An army surgeon, actually. If you think he's imposing in civilian clothes, you should see him in his uniform! You could use his epaulettes for side tables."

I'm afraid I laughed at the poor man's expense but managed to sober thoroughly when Mal mentioned how Pierre-"Colonel DuCrey, if you must know"-- had almost gone to Egypt with General Bonaparte's expedition that spring.

He shook his head. "Silly man. He didn't have to go. He asked to go. Said it would probably be the last marvelous adventure in a lifetime of adventures. It's a fully fledged expedition you know, not merely a military escapade. Pierre said the scholars are digging statues the size of castles out of the sands."

"Why did he not go?"

"His friends in the Assembly thought he would be of better service here."

"He has friends in the Assembly?"

"There are more than seven hundred men in the Assembly. How can anybody not have a friend in the Assembly? Here!"

I instinctively reached for the thing sailing through the air at me. It squashed in my grasp. Fearing the boy had thrown me an insect, I screeched, opened my hands, and leapt back. There on the floor lay a bonbon leaking liquid entrails.

Mal snatched up the gooey remains and popped them in his mouth. "Mmmmm, you don't know what you're missing!"

"Oh, I think I do."

At that moment, Kit came into the kitchen. "Salut!" we chirped, but Kit did little more than smile and reach into the pocket on the underside of his long coat tails, where he usually concealed his Book of Common Prayer.

"Glad to see you, too." Mal smirked as Kit placed the Book on the table. "Speak to us, oh great Testiclees. Was your day worse than ours?"

Kit continued to smile as he took the pot of chocolate from the hearth and filled a breakfast cup to the rim.

"Cat got your tongue?" Mal joked.

Kit lavished the boy with a scowl.

"Desole! Sorry!" brandishing the spoon as if for protection, Mal backed out of the kitchen.

I laughed. "You're supposed to suffer little children, not frighten them!"

Kit put down the pot of chocolate, mouthing, "Ha, ha."

I stepped closer, gasping in bemused disbelief. "You can't talk?"

"Shh!" It was the only time I had known him to "shush" anybody. Mouthing "No, no!" he pointed toward the kitchen door, which flew open, spewing giant Pierre into our midst.

"Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?" he bellowed--French for "What's the matter?" The long tirade that followed made Kit give a little wave and edge to the door, forsaking the breakfast cup that sat on the table, sending up inviting steam. He reached for the latch.

At that moment Pierre, with speed and grace that belied his size, lashed out and tickled Kit in the ribs with a ferocity that made him jump and emit a noise that sounded more like a retching cat than a yelping human.

Kit and Pierre regarded each other for a breath's span before Kit bolted into the hallway. Pierre followed. Another sick cat sound denoted the end of the pursuit.

Mal sauntered into the kitchen, cheek still bulging with bonbon. "He lugged the guts into a neighbor room."

Something about the similarity between Pierre's catch and Hamlet's removal of Polonius's corpse gave us the giggles.

For all the other noise and nonsense that had shaken The Refuge, Papa blamed our hilarity for driving him out of his office. His cravat was askew, and he clutched his pen between inked fingers. "What in the name of Creation is going on?" he angrily demanded.

Papa was not one of those people who laugh when they see other people laughing, even if they don't know what those people are laughing about. Mal knew this. He stirred the pot au feu, struggling to keep a serious face. "It's Colonel DuCrey. Chasing...one of the children." Mal coughed and bit his lower lip.

Papa stormed back into the hallway."Colonel!"

Mal simpered. "You think your father's mad now? Wait till he finds out he's got a mute vicar on his hands."

I had a revelation. "Who's going to tell him?"

"What do you mean, 'Who's going to tell him?' Pierre's going to tell him."

"Yes. In French. Papa doesn't understand that much French."

"That's no problem. Kit can translate."

"I'm sorry. Are we speaking English? Did I not understand something? Who's the mute?"

Papa shoved open the door, grabbed paper and ink from the small writing table we used for everything except writing and tramped away.

Mal and I doubled over, wracked by silent laughter. We could only hope that Kit would follow the tenets of his calling, not hide the facts, and write exactly what Pierre said.

So the mission was convinced the vicar needed an assistant. Within the week Papa and I were en route to Copenhagen, where we would post Kit's letter to Philadelphia. American ships were still prohibited from French waters; Denmark was still the nearest neutral nation from which we could send mail home.

At first Papa refused to let me go with him, but it was a good time of year to travel, and I had so deeply regretted not spending more time in the Danish capital on our crossing from America, that he relented. Away from the mission and all the pressures of running a successful business, Papa was a different man. He laughed much and grumbled little. On the way back to Paris, he confessed he feared Kit had spoiled the congregation; they might not accept an assistant.

I assured Papa that, if the assistant were one-tenth the priest Kit was, the man would have a long and happy life at The Refuge.

Papa chuckled. "Poor Kit. He's a foal of a man, isn't he? Wonderful, how the good Lord apportions brawn and brains among us. What we lack in one area, we more than make up for in another."

We had been walking to the mail coach that would bring us into Paris when this conversation took place. We were arm in arm, heads together, speaking low lest we be overheard. Papa's eyes shone with tears. He revealed that, had I been older, he would have encouraged Kit to marry me instead of Dona.

"But I wasn't older, Papa," I reminded him. "Clearly, this was the way things were meant to be."

He squeezed my arm and told me how deeply he wished I would find a husband who deserved me. If I desired, he would help me find a suitor. I thanked him but claimed I was quite content with my station in life. I prayed he would be, too.

I'm glad I told him that. I'm more than glad I meant it.

Only ten miles from home, amid light traffic on a fine road, there was a rumbling sound. I was pushed forward. The mail coach turned onto its side, then onto its roof, then onto its side again. It slid long enough for me to wonder what we were going to hit, or if something was going to hit us. Then it rolled onto its roof, then onto its side, then onto its roof. I thought I was going to die. But the coach had stopped turning. All was quiet. And still. I pulled myself out from the bottom of a heavy pile. A trail of luggage and debris led me up the hill to the road.

Men were shouting into the woods, and to each other. Women watched, their faces wrung with horror. Several coaches and carts waited nearby.

As I walked among them, more carriages stopped. A man in a blue-and-white uniform rode up. The women surrounded his horse, speaking excitedly, pointing toward a row of splintered saplings. The man's spurs clinked prettily as he dismounted. Somebody shouted and he turned in my direction. At the same time, somebody took me by the arm and made me sit on the grass. A man wiped my face with a wet rag.

I kept telling the people around me where I lived. They took me to a small, provincial hospital. I spent most of the night sitting in a chair, telling a wrinkled, white-haired woman that I wanted to go home. She did little except hold my hand and nod her head and listen to me mumble in English. I suppose she got tired of listening to me. She made me drink something that made me so drowsy that I had no choice but to lie down on the lumpy bed, thinking about all the other miserable souls that must have occupied that bed long before me. I thought I saw Kit. He was asking me if I could put my arms around his neck. I knew I was delirious because I was picked up, blankets and all, by somebody much bigger and stronger than Kit could ever be. But I saw Kit again. This time it seemed I was in a carriage that was rocking with speed. Kit was holding me, asking me if I was all right. I knew he would never hold me like that, so I surrendered to the nightmare, knowing that Kit's presence, however imaginary, made the nightmare less awful to endure.

Chapter Seven

2007-02-18T08:34:00.000-08:00

Not long after, the Moniteur Universel printed a notice for a horse show to be held that same day, and I wanted to ask Papa's permission to go. Candace told me all the gentlemen were taking stock in the wine cellar. I recall being in high spirits that day; I fairly tripped down the cellar steps, singing one of the Scottish songs that were then in fashion.

As I reached the foot of the stairs, I could hear Kit making a point, as if in the midst of a friendly discussion: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But...if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins..."

Papa, Kit and Jerry Reynolds casually stood between the wine racks toward the back of the cellar. I playfully chided them as I approached. "How can you discuss theology so early in the morning? It's like eating a whole hog for breakfast!"

It was at "hog" that I noticed the tiny, fat books in their hands. Recognition made me feel as though I had wandered into church wearing only my stays.

During the silence that followed my outburst, I understood that I was not moving fast enough to distance myself from my scandalous behavior. I spun around, silently lamenting the distance to the staircase. At the same time, everybody broke into good-natured laughter. "Didn't know you were coming to the catacombs, did you, Jannie," Jerry called. The description was appropriate, for, like the early Christians in Rome, they were enjoying forbidden services beyond the reach of the authorities.

"Dearly beloved brethren--" Kit barred my flight with an outstretched arm, then placed his Book in my hand. "The Scripture moveth us, in sundry places, to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness-“

Kit didn't proclaim the text the way priests do from an altar, looking out onto a crowd. He spoke as naturally as if he were indeed in the middle of a discussion. It was almost like fitting one of Shakespeare's soliloquies into ordinary life. Amazed by his manner, I let him gently usher me alongside Papa. Though I had Kit's Book, I clung to Papa's arm, sharing his. Kit continued Morning Prayer by heart.

I forgot about the horse show until later that afternoon. Kit had found time to work on the trompe l’oeil painting in the downstairs parlor. I said I would let Dona know, in case she wanted to help. But Dona was not on the premises. Candace said she had gone to the horse show with Le Maitre’s ebullient young owner, Malachi.

The news hurt and confused me. Why would they go without asking me? Trying not to wallow in distress, I simply told Kit what Candace had told me. Kit innocently added to my discomfort by asking, "Why didn't you go with them?"

"That's why I was in the cellar this morning. It was the last show, and I wanted to ask Papa if he would take me."

"Did you tell Dona you wanted to see it? I'm sure, if she knew, she'd have asked you to go with her."

Kit had a point. I had never told Dona I wanted to go.

But I also considered that she might have asked me to go, anyway. It would have been the polite thing to do, especially as she had appointed herself my guide to Paris. I wondered if she disdained me because I had neither her taste nor breeding, or if she thought I was still the child she knew so long ago. I said nothing, but evidence of the slight seeped through my eyes and stuffed my nose. I listlessly dabbed blotches of green onto the leaves, taking care to face away from Kit, lest he see my tears. He knew, anyway. He appeared at my side, extending his handkerchief.

"The oils can be a bit much," he said, as I attended to my nose. "Come on. Let's take some air."

I had always thought of a bonnet as a necessary head covering for out of doors and church. That day it became an accessory that forced us to keep our heads close together so each could hear what the other was saying over the sound of the traffic. We didn't want to talk loudly, lest we advertise the fact that we were foreigners.

At one point, we came upon three young women in flowing white dresses cinched beneath the bosom with long silken sashes. As they neared, it was apparent that the dresses were made of gauze so sheer you could see the girls wore neither stays nor any other garment to hide their charms.

I had never seen such a display in public, and I was simultaneously fascinated and aghast. Kit wasn’t about to let me ogle. At the first glimpse of the naughty goddesses, he went “Oh, my” in an exceedingly small voice and steered me in the opposite direction.

“How can women show themselves like that?” I asked.

“You’d be amazed at what people here will do if they have the money.”

“Such as…?”

“Anything to show off their ability to afford extravagance. Ruins from Italy. Statuary from Egypt. Private balloon excursions. What’s amazing is that two-thirds of the country’s civil servants are unemployed, people live in the streets, and the currency means little on the world market.”

Thanks to the nearly naked ladies, our route brought us past a hotel resplendent with fully dressed limestone and bas reliefs. Corinthian columns supported the front portico. Kit smiled. “Ah, voila! Chez Donatienne.”

I was afraid I didn’t hear him correctly.

“Dona’s house. Rather, the house where Dona grew up,” he said into my ear. “Shall we go in?”

“We can do that?”

“Of course. It’s an apartement building. Come on--Viens.”

Like so much of Paris, the foyer was a study in the use of expensive stone for mundane purposes: green marble walls, a white-and-black marble checkerboard floor, a white marble staircase with worn, low steps the width of the foyer.

A small office had been constructed to the right of the stairs. A gray-haired man sat with his feet on the desk, nodding over yesterday’s edition of the Moniteur.

“Salut et fraternite,” he muttered, sleepily crushing the paper and sitting up to greet the people who had imposed themselves upon his moment of repose.

Kit returned the greeting and asked the man about possible vacancies. The man advised him there was a waiting list, but if he liked, he could hasten the process with a pourboire. Kit thanked him for the information, and we left.

“Do you want to live there?” I asked as we stepped back into the street.

“Oh no! I was just justifying our reason for being there.”

“When you married Dona, did you ever think you’d be living in Paris?”

“Never! Funny how things work out, isn’t it?”

I dared ask him if he had asked for the mission.

“God help me, no. I had no idea any such thing was in the working until I was summoned to Philadelphia. And I still didn’t know until the bishop told me.”

“It’s an immense honor, Kit.”

We strolled a little longer before he said, “I’d rather not have it, Jan. But what I want isn’t necessarily what I’m called to do. What’s the Milton your father’s always quoting?”

I thought. “’Let me not rashly call in doubt Divine Prediction’?”

“Ah, yes,” Kit said, and continued: “What if all foretold had been fulfill'd but through mine own default?’”

“Whom have I to complain of but my self?” we said together, and laughed.

“What is that from?” I asked, only then aware that I had never tried to find it among Papa’s library.

“Samson Agonistes.”

“Ah, a Roundhead interpretation of Samson and Dalilah…”

“Which means it takes the Dalilah out of Dalilah! It’s incredibly ponderous. ‘Promise was that I Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver,’” Kit quoted like a deliberately bad actor. “’Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves, Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke.’-- Not to mention overwrought and short of hair. Or had his hair grown back by then?”

Our dialogue lapsed into musings about long hair and short hair and how long it would take for the current French fashions to reach America. Before I knew it, we were back at the Refuge, better fit to face the rest of the working day.

My walk through the Marais with Kit had not escaped Papa's attention. That evening, as we sat over a dinner of roasted chicken we had bought from a local eaterie, he chose his words with care.

"I know we all go back a few years, sweetie, but are you aware that you could not have done that in Philadelphia?"

"Done what?"

"Taken a walk with a vicar who is also a married man."

The admonition took me by surprise. "It was Kit, Papa. He's like a brother to me."

"He is not your brother, sweetie."

"What are you worrying about, Papa? He wouldn't do anything immoral. Neither would I."

"I know that, Jannie. What troubles me is what certain members of the community would think if they saw their vicar entertaining a young woman who is neither his wife nor remotely related to him."

"But, Papa! He's an old family--"

"--friend," Papa said with me. "Yes I know, but you're not the little girl he guided through the woods, and he's not the youth who had only his studies to worry about. Jannie, he's a young man with tremendous responsibility. The Church expects fine things of him. The community looks up to him. He mustn't do anything to betray everybody's trust and esteem."

My unshed tears blurred papa's face. "You make me feel like a fallen woman," I grumbled.

"No, no, no, sweetie! I know you're not at fault. I want you to understand that you cannot act as though this is still Ninety-Three. You're both older. You have your stations in life to consider. Remain friends. God knows, I'm not trying to destroy a friendship, certainly not one that goes way back when. All I'm asking is that you think, and do nothing to destroy anybody's integrity, including your own."

Though Papa plied me with chocolate and offered me the last slice of cake, I could eat no more. I had never suspected an innocent walk through the neighborhood would be fraught with so much insinuation. I resolved to clean up quickly and go to bed, and read. I was clearing the table when there was a knock on the door. Within a moment, Papa was asking me to come into the parlor. Kit stood with his hat in his hands, looking more philosophical than upset.

"Yes, Jan, I too was read the Riot Act. And I must say, your father is a wise man. He suggested I speak to you here tonight, in private, instead of at the Refuge."

"I certainly hope nobody saw you come in," I retorted.

Kit winced. "Please don't be angry at your father. If you must be angry, be angry with me. I should have known better. Forgive me. Please."

"There's nothing to forgive--" This is absurd, I thought. Without waiting for Kit's reply, I turned to Papa. "You said I wasn't at fault. I'm sorry, Papa, you were wrong. It was my fault. Kit walked with me because..."

I was about to say "Because his wife slighted me, and I acted like a little girl, and he took pity on me." All at once, it sounded childish, and I realized that I was about to further embarrass Kit by inferring something nasty about his wife. I claimed, instead, "The vapors from the paints were making me unwell. He told me to go outside. He came with me to see that nothing happened to me."

"Is that so, Kit?"

"Don't be silly, Papa. He wouldn't lie. Lying is a sin. He can forgive us our sins, but there's no other priest around to forgive him his own sins."

"Jannie, for someone in his position he had better not do so much as button his coat the wrong way."

"He's old enough to know better, Papa."

"Of course he's old enough to know better. What troubles me is that he's still too young to do anything about it."

The three of us were in the center of the room, arguing in whispers, lest we be heard by the neighbors. With narrowed eyes, Papa turned to Kit, who silently waited, still clutching his hat, his face painfully red. "If you have any reason to be in public with a female who's not your wife, make sure you're not alone. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

The acknowledgement wasn't enough for Papa. Showing Kit to the door, he advised, "It's a terrible thing when a man must tell his own priest to go and sin no more. I don't mean to threaten you, Kit, but know this: If I see the least hint of impropriety, I myself will put you on the first mail coach out of here."

Chapter Six

2007-02-18T07:56:00.000-08:00

Now twenty-four, Kit DeWaere retained the slender build of his younger self. And now that I was older, I could understand how his face, with those large hazel eyes and short, deer-like chin, bespoke more intellectual than physical substance. The soft profusion of rosewood-colored hair that floated around his face in a fashionable shag added to the ethereal effect. He wore a Directory coat and cuffed boots. His only concession to the trappings of clerical humility lay in his choice of somber color: the cravat was black, and the coat was a deep, charcoal gray. The contrast between the dark fabrics and his hair and fair complexion made a pleasing sight. Had he not been a clergyman, I'd have squeaked with delight at seeing him again and given him a friendly peck on the cheek. But decorum was in order.

I gestured to our surroundings. "This is...indescribable.”

Kit nodded. "As your father said, if you prefer, we could find you a position with a family."

"What do you yourself do here?"

As soon as the words were out of me, I realized that little Jannie had an aptitude for posing questions whose answers were self-evident.

Papa spoke as if I had given him the grandest excuse to proclaim the news, "Kit's our vicar, Jan."

"So this truly is your reward for getting lost in the woods with a wagon full of children," I challenged. I almost said I wondered what his father would think, but considered that it was neither the time nor the place to introduce a subject that could embarrass him.

Thankfully, Kit did not expect me to roll up my sleeves and jump into work at The Refuge, which everybody called the asylum. He asked Papa to give me time to accustom myself to my new hometown, which was ever so much larger and older than Philadelphia. My guide in this endeavor was Kit’s wife, Donatienne. My former governess had grown from a pretty girl into a voluptuous young woman whose beauty could not be contained by her modestly cut dresses. As soon as she saw me, she whirled me around in a crushing hug, squealing, “My little Janet! I don’t believe it! Look at you, you’re a woman!”

To my amazement, her accent was now almost that of an American. Still too innocent of the world to consider reasons for the transformation, I was thrilled that this former daughter of aristocrats had thoroughly embraced life as the American her marriage had made her.

Dona showed me sites every tourist wanted to see and that the Revolution had opened to commoners, including the Louvre and parks that had once been the private haunts of the ruling class. I especially liked the thousand-year-old University sector on the Left Bank. There, the scent of antiquity leached from the crammed, winding cow paths that had developed over the years into streets.

The one place I declined to visit was the architectural wonder once known as the Cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-Paris. The Revolutionary government had turned it into a “temple of wisdom” for the state’s official Cult of Reason, and I had no desire to go there because I thought my presence would suggest I approved of the DeChristianization of the country.
Perhaps the most important thing I had to learn about was French Revolutionary etiquette.

“Under French law, everyone is ‘tu,’ the singular familiar, never the formal ‘vous,’” Dona said as we had coffee in the DeWaeres’ sparsely furnished apartement on the upper floor of The Refuge.

“We don’t call anyone monsieur or madame any more, either. We use the French version of ‘citizen,’ the title used in the ancient Roman Empire. Men are citoyen; women, citoyenne. Oh!--And this is of the gravest importance, ma chere!--We never, ever call Kit by his clerical title. Traditional organized religion and services are outlawed. Call somebody ‘pere’ or ‘cure,’ and you and he will be thrown into jail—and possibly executed--on charges of sedition. Aside from that, we may come and go as we please--so long as we do nothing to attract suspicion.”

In time, I became used to the language, the crowds, the traffic that rattled through the narrow, twisting streets every hour of the day and night. Although Paris was nothing like Philadelphia, every day it became more familiar to me, and that sense of familiarity began to make me feel more at home. I settled down and, without making a conscious decision, became part of The Refuge.

I wondered what my fuss that first day had been about. The place was no repository of defective beings, but a sanctuary that offered protection from life’s harsher realities. Laughter, music and the fragrance of baking filled the air. The rooms were bright and clean, and decorated with trompe l’oeil paintings of lilac and rose gardens. Framed, pen-and-ink drawings of the children adorned the parlor’s plain, white plaster walls. I didn’t need to look twice to realize the portraits were in Kit’s hand.

“Most people’s homes have portraits of their children,” he said. “These are our children. They deserve no less.”

“Were you disappointed when you saw you wouldn’t be teaching normal children?” I asked.

“Ah, but I do teach them.”

“Like Francis of Assisi preaching to the animals?”

I meant no cynicism, but Kit wagged his finger at me. “Oh, ye of little imagination! Watch. And learn.”

He took a handmirror from the nearby table, crouched beside a little idiot girl in a wing chair and shook the mirror in front of her face. After some moments, the child stopped staring at the wall and gazed at the mirror.

“Look, look,” Kit coaxed in a light, high voice, as if cajoling a puppy. “Who’s that? Who’s that?” I couldn’t tell what the child saw in the mirror, but a smile widened her mouth, exposing large, crooked teeth.

“Marianne, Marianne,” Kit said. The girl gurgled, then the smile shrank, and she once again stared at the wall.

Kit stood, radiant with success. “It’s like getting a baby to laugh. And no less rewarding.”

“It didn’t last long.”

“It never does, not unless The Master is here.”

“The Master?”

“You’ll see. I don’t know when, and I don’t know how, but you will see. That’s all I’ll say. I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”

There was much to do at The Refuge. The children were not placed in chairs and left unattended. As I had seen for myself that first day, Candace Reynolds would sing for them. And as I later saw, her husband, Jerome, a free Negro who had owned a bookstore in Philadelphia, would read to them from some of the books in The Refuge’s library. It didn’t matter what language the children were sung or read to. Candace and Jerry believed that it was the sound of the voice that mattered--that sound, more than meaning, connected the children to ordinary life. The songs and readings also reminded us, the staff, that life must continue, even when we ourselves could not understand what was going on around us.

Kit worked at The Refuge whenever he wasn’t holding services at somebody’s home or seeing to all the other, ordinary duties of a vicar. Like each and every one of us, he did whatever had to be done, including daunting, less tasteful tasks like changing diapers or cleaning chamber pots. But unlike the members of the Refuge staff, Kit was inclined to take the most offensive tasks upon himself in order to spare somebody else. I was there the morning he came in from sitting up all night with the parents of a stillborn. Though he hadn’t slept in more than twenty-four hours and must have been spent emotionally as well as physically, he took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and commenced to gather the chamber pots so Candace wouldn’t have to do it that day.

He never lost hope for The Refuge’s little charges and believed that the more we did to interest them in their surroundings, the better.

“Are you ready?” he asked me one morning. He seemed anxious for my answer, but he grinned and went about his business when I replied, “Ready for what?”

I was helping Candace change the children’s bedding when it sounded like a parade coming up the staircase. It was only Kit and a slim, sloe-eyed boy carrying an open wooden box in his arms.

As they neared the top of the stairs, Kit attempted to introduce me to the visitor. But the boy, a black-haired beauty who I assumed to be around 15, edged past Kit and inclined his head toward me, saying, “My hat, s’il te plait, citoyenne, thank you. And toi—“ Freed of his headwear, he thrust the box into Kit’s middle, so Kit had no choice but to take the thing. The boy pushed back his coat sleeves, reached into the box, and brought out a mound the size of a small loaf of bread. Swathes of long, black and white hair draped the mound like a towel thrown over dough that is left to rise.

All I could see was the tip of the nose and the small, upside-down-V shape of the upper lip. The lower lip drooped, so a small “o” was formed in that part of the mouth seen between the upper and lower lips. Though the hair veiled the eyes, I knew the guinea pig would be regarding me with the species’ typical blank, round-eyed stare. The way the boy held it at me implied an invitation to pet it. I gently stroked the tip of the nose and was immediately rewarded with that distinctive, low-throated purr I had known so well in Margaret.

“Voici Le Maitre,” the boy was saying. “Le Maitre, je te presente—I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

“Janet?” Kit said, as if to remind the boy that he should have been listening instead of talking.

“Je te presente Jeannette. Janet, this is Le Maitre.”

I scratched the top of the guinea’s head. “Is he the boar of your herd? Is that why you call him Le Maitre, The Master?

“Supposedly. Except the big oaf hasn’t a clue what to do with the sows—-Do you, Maitre?”

“Maybe he wants you to teach him,” said Dona, who appeared at that moment to give Kit a pile of neatly folded towels.

The boy guffawed and noticed Kit turning deep claret. “What are you blushing for? I’m the child. I’m the one that’s supposed to go puce the instant anybody mentions a perfectly natural form of--“

Kit was halfway down the hall. “Come along, Mal, the ladies are waiting--“

“Do I look scandalized?” the boy called over his shoulder, rushing after Kit, still holding Le Maitre out in front of him.

Giggling, Dona signaled we should follow.

We all gathered in the upstairs parlor. As usual, the girls were propped in their wing chairs, staring toward the walls, grunting among themselves. Mal touched Le Maitre’s nose to Marianne’s until the girl smiled. He then placed Le Maitre in her lap, which was now wisely protected by one of the towels Dona had given Kit, and carefully moved the girl’s hand so she was stroking the guinea from head to rump. Le Maitre was still. Because of all the hair, it was hard to see whether he was contented or if he had frozen in fear, as guineas are wont to do. But as the petting continued, Le Maitre flattened, stretched his little hind feet out behind him, lay his head on Marianne’s lap, and purred. Marianne rocked back and forth, grinning with the kind of glee that only she could understand.

“Looks like she’s davening,” Mal muttered.

Grinning, Kit quietly stepped over to Dona and me.

“Do you believe that?” he whispered, as if not daring to do anything that would break the spell.

I had to agree I could, though I never would have thought it possible.

Kit studied the scene with the quiet rapture of someone witnessing a miracle. His wife, on the other hand, was not so enchanted. Though she smiled, her eye was cold and distant. Why? Did the children repulse her? If I were she, I should have adored what was going on if only for the effect it had on Kit.

Abruptly, Dona turned and left the room. I thought she murmured something about the kettle whistling, but I could have been mistaken. The only sounds were her footfall and the child joyously snuffling over the guinea pig.

Chapter Five

2007-02-18T07:55:00.000-08:00

I stayed in Bethlehem, flourishing in the Moravians' care. Papa knew that his decision to keep me there saddened me. He comforted me--and assuaged his guilt--by writing to me every day, assuring me that the country was ever so much safer and healthier than the city. His words proved his wisdom when more, less severe plagues befell the city during the summers of 1794, 1795 and 1796.

Secretly, I was glad to be in the country. I had no desire to endure another plague without the friendship of Kit and Dona to bolster me. Papa had found Dona a position with another family, and Kit had returned to his studies. In the beginning Dona and I wrote often, but over time, as we pursued new lives, our correspondence dwindled. Kit and I never wrote. We had no reason to communicate, if only by virtue of our stations in life.

The fact that we did not write did not mean that I never thought about him. In quiet moments, or lying awake at night, I would remember how he wrested me from the stream, or covered me with his coat when I fell asleep on the stable floor, rendered senseless by the stultifying prose of the Articles of Religion. I was thankful I wasn't closer to his age. I knew I would have been tempted to seek his affection, the way Dona did. But I also knew that my chances of success were nil. I had neither beauty nor intelligence. I was guaranteed nothing in life save extreme difficulty in, if not the impossibility of, finding a husband.

In the spring of 1797, Papa brought me to Philadelphia for what would be my last time in the house where I had been born and spent the first twelve years of my life. As we sat over dinner in the garden, he revealed that the Church was opening a mission for expatriates in Paris. Because the French government at that time banned religion not recognized by the state, the mission would be discreetly centered at an orphan asylum, which the presiding bishop himself had asked Papa to administer.

For the second time in four years, my father was separating himself from me with a passion that approached willful neglect of his only child. I regarded him as if he had just jumped from a hot-air balloon without a parachute. "Papa! This is your home! This is my home! How can you leave it? How can you leave me?"

Slowly, he cut his meat into minute pieces. "Sweetie, I'd like you to understand that we who have decided upon this mission are neither pious men who wish to put on a show of devotion to God, nor cowards who wish to run from the city. To paraphrase the psalmist, we have seen a thousand fall beside us and ten thousand at our right hands, so to speak, but it did not come nigh us. The Lord saved us and ours. Time has come to repay the debt."

"But France? You've got to do it in France, where they execute clergy?"

"Papist clergy, sweetie--Roman Catholics who plot to overthrow the Revolution. We're not Roman, and we have no intention of doing anything to arouse the government's ire or suspicion. We'll be there for the expatriates."

"Are there so many expatriate orphans that they need an asylum?"

"If there is one orphan or foundling, it would be enough."

All my life, Papa had entreated me to be truthful. Now he was embarking on a career that reeked of deceit. I wanted to admonish him by saying something Kit might have said, something wise or at least reasonable. But as earnestly as I wished to follow Kit's example, I could think of nothing appropriate. I was not Kit. I was Janet. I was still the child that must honor her father and respect his wishes. My silence and lack of enthusiasm must suffice for an answer.

I watched as flies washed themselves in my gravy. "What will become of me? What do you expect me to do?" My tone was bitter.

Papa's was not. "I expect you to join us in Paris once the mission is open."

I made a noise of disbelief.

Papa patted my hand. "Don't worry yourself, Jannie. We'll be safe. We won't flaunt our beliefs. Our neighbors won't even know there's a vicar among us."

As Papa took care of his business affairs, I prepared the house for sale. I remember listing items for auction while sitting at the kitchen table. It was a fresh, bright day; the windows were open wide, letting in the crisp, sweet scent of hyacinths. As I wrote, Evvie, the girl who had replaced our dear Mrs. McHenry, repeatedly slammed a lump of dough on the kitchen table and regaled me with gossip from her friend Gerard, a porter for the Congress. Though she spoke much and had her own way with the language, she had a stone face and rarely emoted during her dissertations. I half-heard her say something about a chaplain berating his wife for having spent money on a new dress at a time when the government was struggling to fund a water system meant to prevent future plagues. It sounded like something Kit's father would do.

Still writing, I absently asked, "And how is Father DeWaere these days?"

Evvie replied, "Which one?"

"Which one of what?"

"Father DeWaere."

I raised my eyes to see if she weren't addled. She continued assaulting the dough, not at all concerned about my interest in her mental state. "There's another Father DeWaere, ma'am. Said his first Mass in Christ Church a couple of months ago. He’s up at Trinity Church in Manhattan, running a school or something near the wharves."

"Poor fellow," I mumbled, setting back to work. "I tell you, Evvie, I've seen Rector DeWaere in his moods, and I dare say he's a man I shouldn't want to be confused with."

Evvie punched the dough, sending up a cloud of flour. "Well, I don't think these'll be confused. The other one's lots younger. He done something heroic-like. Preserved some children from the fever back in '93, I think your father said. Everybody knows about it."

Recognition twisted my heart. Struggling to appear nothing more than superficially curious, I asked, "Have you seen this new Father DeWaere?"

Evvie nodded. "Oh sure, ma'am. You know how the important families invite all the big society people to their sons' first Masses? This Father's family had nothing to do with it. He invited me himself. Was here one evening, visiting your father, and out of nowhere says, 'Evvie, what are you doing this Sunday?' Of course, I'm not going to tell a priest I'm doing anything but going to Mass, and he says he'd be honored if I'd drop in for his first, that Sunday at Christ Church. So I go and find out that just about everybody there's a servant or a plain worker, 'cepting your father, of course, and a pretty thing said to be the new Father's intended."

A pretty thing? I could not help remembering Kit and Dona in the clearing. I coughed to veil the tremor in my speech. "What does he look like, this new Father?"

Evvie made a face. "I don't know how to describe him. He's young, younger than most new priests and certainly the youngest one I've ever seen." She stopped pounding the bread, and for the first time raised her small, closely set eyes to mine. The corners of her mouth tipped upward in a fleeting smile. "A deer, ma'am. That's what he reminds me of. A deer that hasn't yet got its rack."

That, indeed, was Kit DeWaere.

I gathered my papers and went to my room, where I walked in circles, roiling with emotion. I was furious at Papa for not telling me all this. I wanted to race to New York to find Kit and tell him how happy I was that the community lauded what he had done for us even if his father did not.

After an hour of imagining what I would do and say, I had exhausted my mental excursions, and they had exhausted me. I lapsed into the belief that a kind, well-mannered letter must suffice. By the time Papa returned, I had composed something in which I congratulated Kit on his ordination and wished him well. I had no idea where I would address it, but I reasoned that I could always ask someone at Christ Church. I did not dare approach Kit's parents, for I nurtured an acute dislike for Father DeWaere which, I had no doubt, would endure into the life of the world to come. Nor would I ask Papa. He was so embroiled with preparations for his new venture, I believed I would be wrong to accuse him of hiding news from me when he had so many, more important things on his mind. I accepted the fact that he just plain forgot to tell me.

I cast the letter from my mind as soon as I had posted it with help from the Christ Church sexton. I expected no answer. It was enough for me to send Kit my best wishes and to let him know that I would never forget what he had done for me. My contentment allowed me to devote my time in Philadelphia to preparing Papa for his journey and for the sale of the house. I returned to Bethlehem knowing that I had done everything I could for Papa, and that Papa proceeded into his new life with a rare quality of faith that had taken him a lifetime to nurture. He sweetened the sadness of our parting by reminding me that we would meet again as surely as we believed in the Second Coming.

I begged him not to tease me with theology.

"It's not theology, Janet," he tenderly replied. "I'm telling you that I'll come back for you when we're ready for you. You will teach the orphans. It will be the best work you may ever do while on this earth."

I gave him my handkerchief and a lock of my hair to remember me by, and he, in turn, gave me something I never in my life expected from him--his pocket watch. "You're as dear to me as any son, sweetie. Let me honor you like one."

I had promised myself that I would send Papa off bravely, without tears, secure in the knowledge of his happiness. But that gift! It was an insurmountable surprise, and so noble. I shriveled in sobs on Papa's shoulder, devastated by the prospect of perhaps forever losing not simply the only parent I had ever known, but a man whose good heart surpassed all others.

It was a long year. Papa wrote to me every day that we were apart, but it could take two months for the mail to reach me in Bethlehem. Sometimes I received no letter; sometimes, I would be handed a dozen. I tried not to think about Kit DeWaere. He never replied to my letter. I considered that I had made a humiliating mistake: I had had no business writing to a man I had neither seen nor spoken to in years. Doubtless, he thought me a silly little fool and burned my childish letter lest it be seen by his "intended." (It had to be Donatienne!)

I began to think it strange, how anyone dear to me vanished from my life. It was almost as though I was not meant to be happy in this world. During my early days in Bethlehem, when I was unhappy or lonely, I would remember my home, my father, Mrs. McHenry, Kit and Dona. My memories were my refuge. Now I wanted nothing more than to forget the people and places I had once loved. My studies were my refuge. I took heart in the knowledge that, someday, I would have a new life in a faraway place that I had known only through Dona's tales.

My journey to that place began in the spring of 1798. Papa and I could not sail directly to France from Philadelphia. The United States and France were enjoying what the politicians called the Quasi War, a naval conflict, in the Caribbean, that marked the end of friendly relations between America and the nation that had helped her win her freedom from England. American merchant ships were prohibited from French waters. We had to sail to Denmark, a neutral country, and take a Danish packet to Calais, where we availed ourselves of the first of several mail coaches to Paris.

Papa lived in the Marais section of the city, on the Right Bank of the River Seine. More than one hundred years earlier, the Marais had been a fashionable area, home to noblemen who lived in stately mansions called hotels or smaller townhomes called maisons. Since the Revolution, those buildings had been hacked into apartements that became homes for as many as two dozen families, depending on the size of the hotel.

Papa's apartement was a huge ballroom that had been divided into several much smaller rooms. Each room had the same high ceiling, with plaster reliefs of ornate flowers and fanciful designs, and each room had the same high, wide windows and uncarpeted, parquet floor.

The building was noisy with the sounds of life: children, musical instruments, laughter, loud conversation. It reminded me of activity that could be heard throughout my dormitory at the Moravian school, but the familiarity of life could not dispel a feeling of foreboding. Perhaps the journey had unnerved me, or perhaps I was exhausted beyond the ability to think clearly. As I lay in bed that night, listening to the strange language and the new sounds, I had a feeling that this would not be my home for long. I fell asleep fearing what the days would bring.

Following a quick breakfast at a local coffee house, Papa led me through the Marais's maze of badly cobbled paths, barely one carriage wide, between rows of limestone buildings, some as high as seven stories, ground floors included. The way was crammed with people and vehicles.

The orphan asylum was a plain limestone house that sat on the street, facing a cobbler's shop, a bakery, a milliner, and cheap apartement buildings on the other side of the path.

Papa explained that the building was once a convent school, and I could see that the architecture reflected the former usage. The ground floor contained the kitchen and several small visiting parlors. The dining hall and small classrooms were on the first floor, while the dormitories and small bedrooms, formerly used by the nuns, were on the upper floors. The windows on the ground and first floors were tall and narrow. The windows on the upper floors grew progressively smaller, until the window in the attic was little more than a functional square.

As I followed Papa into the cramped foyer, I noticed a silence that had little to do with going indoors, away from the noise of the street. I had expected the orphanage to resound with the tumult associated with children, but the place was quiet. Papa and I were the only ones making noise as we trod the creaky staircase against the wall. "Is everyone in class?" I asked.

My ignorance of the situation was so complete that I suspected nothing even as Papa stopped and turned to me in the midst of our ascent, saying, "Yes, you may say that."

I listened, failing to hear anything other than a woman humming "Adelaide," a song, by the new German composer Beethoven, that was all the rage in those days. "A music lesson, Papa?"

He hesitated. When he spoke, his words were measured. "Mrs. Reynolds likes to sing to them. She, and her husband, believe that the children respond best to soft singing."

I had never heard of that mode of teaching. "Is this a French concept?"

Papa smiled. "It is Candace Reynolds's concept. So far it has not proved unbeneficial. The children really do seem to respond to it."

Intrigued, I reached the top of the steps before Papa and followed the fluty voice to a room where a black woman in a brightly colored shortgown and petticoats was brushing the long, dark blond hair of what I at first perceived was a porcelain doll the size and shape of a real little girl of perhaps five or six years of age. She-It?-wore a light blue dress with a muslin scarf at the bodice. She-It?--sat on the chair with legs sticking straight out, instead of bent at the knee. The arms hung straight down. The only thing that assured me this was a human child and not a porcelain creation was the face. A master dollmaker would have fashioned a spirited expression. This child's face offered no evidence of animation. The eyes were empty. The mouth hung open. Drool streamed down her chin.

"Other institutions shear off their hair and dress them in little more than a chemise," Papa said in my ear. "We prefer to maintain their dignity and keep them as fashionable as possible."

An odd snuffling drew my attention in the direction of the window. There, a similar child was propped in the corner of a wing chair. A smaller specimen lay full length on the faded Persian rug at her feet. Grunts passed between them, as though they were communicating with each other.

I cannot express what I felt as I realized these were not the children I had expected to teach. No teacher on earth could help them. They were incapable of learning. Struck mute by shock and fury, I trod purposefully through the hallway and down the stairs. I had half a mind to storm all the way back to Papa's apartement. Instead, I followed the comforting scent of almond and vanilla that now pervaded the ground floor and found my way to the kitchen. A small-bosomed woman in a modest Directory dress kneaded bread at the table. More bread and cakes were forming within the school's big, brick oven. I fitfully paced around the table, struggling to contain a raging sense of betrayal. The woman continued her work in a state of utter, uncompromised serenity.

"Jannie, you must understand what has happened to this country," Papa begged. "When the government banned the Church, they wiped out the religious orders that took care of people. The asylums closed. Normal foundlings and children were easily placed. But children like these? Nobody wants them. People started bringing them here. We couldn't turn them away."

"You should have told me this before we left America."

"Does it matter, Jannie? They're still children. They still need care. They still need family, just as you needed care and family."

"These are idiots, Papa. They know nothing about family. They know nothing about anything! They're worse off than animals. My guinea pig had more intelligence than these creatures ever will."

Never had I seen Papa look so helpless. His eyes brimmed with tears and acquired the redness often associated with inflammation. He took his handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped his nose. "I'm so sorry, Jannie," he said, sounding as if he had a cold. "I don't want you to be unhappy. Maybe the vicar can find you a position as governess for an expatriate family. Would you like that?"

There are few things so awful to a child as seeing a parent cry. It was my fault. I had acted like a spoiled, petulant ingrate. My throat tightened with my own, unshed tears as I hugged Papa and begged him to forgive me.

"Here, have some chocolate. Everybody likes our chocolate." A young man pressed a heavy, white, breakfast cup into my hands.

Papa said nothing. Indeed, as he patted his eyes and nose, he studied me as if waiting for what I would do next.

I don't deny that the chocolate was a great consolation. As I sipped the steaming, syrupy liquid, I wondered how I could have let myself become so upset. I took my time, not to enjoy the brew's incomparable taste and fragrance, but to compel Papa and the younger man to stew in suspense as they awaited my reaction to accepting a drink from somebody I had not seen for five years, and who, to my knowledge, was still living in New York.

Shaking from the peculiar shock of suddenly seeing somebody whom you believe has stepped forever out of your life, I set down the empty cup and said to Kit, "Forgive me for saying so, but if Dante had seen this place, there'd be a few more circles in Hell. Is this your reward for getting lost in the woods with a wagon-load of children?"

Chapter Four

2007-02-18T07:54:00.000-08:00

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."

Chapter Three

2007-02-18T07:41:00.000-08:00

For somebody who had been sleeping, Mrs. McHenry retained a remarkably detailed memory of the little scene in the clearing.

"Take care, Kit," she murmured as we plodded along the following day. "I know you want to help Dona, but I doubt she's worth your trouble. For all we know, the horrors she's told us about could be less gruesome than she wants us to believe."

Kit's interest was mild. "Why do you say that?"

"You really don't see what she's doing, do you."

"What should I see?"

"She's milking your attention. Hmpf! If I were her age, I'd milk your attention, too."

"She's a stranger in a strange land, Mrs. M. She's come here under circumstances we can't begin to understand. She has no family. Her friends are scattered. How could she not want or seek comfort?"

"Look at me, Kit. No, not my face. At ME. This is how it ends for a woman who seeks comfort. Understand?"

He frantically looked around him to make sure that Dona--and I--weren't listening before protesting, in a ragged whisper, "I wouldn't do that to her! I couldn't! What do you think I am?"

"A young man, and you're falling into the noblest of excuses for acting like a young man."

"I would never do that, Mrs. M. You know me better than that."

"If you say so, Kit."

"I do!"

"Good."

"Believe me!"

"We'll see, we'll see."

Kit walked alongside Dona and me, rather than continue in the lead with Mrs. McHenry. Annoyance crusted the hours as he and the housekeeper refused to speak or look at each other. I took refuge from their disagreement by asking Dona about Paris and the house she had lived in. She responded to my questions in a voice so overly cheerful that I felt she was patronizing me. I paid no attention as she chatted away. She was so taken with her memories that she never noticed my lack of interest.

The road brought us to thick, hilly woods. I had the feeling we had gone west, inland, and were no longer on the way toward the Delaware. At the crest of one hill we came upon a large, gray stone building and several smaller stone outbuildings framed by sycamores whose jagged, twisted leaves could have been hammered out of bronze. The voices coming from inside, and the presence of horses and carriages at the front door, indicated the place was yet another inn with no rooms to spare. We entered, nonetheless.

The landlord, a solid man with thin, gray hair, took one look at us and gestured helplessly to crowded tables where families, couples and businessmen enjoyed refreshments. "I'm full up."

Kit shifted the toddler in his arms as she reached for the man's hair. "Sir, it's been like this everywhere we stop. We fear these infants are going to be of marriageable age by the time we find a place to rest. What about your stable? We could stay in the hay loft. We won't trouble you or your guests."

The man regarded us with a sharp eye that settled on Mrs. McHenry. "Is this your mother, boy?"

"No, sir. This is Mrs. McHenry, a treasured pillar of my father's parish."

The unexpected praise made Mrs. McHenry modestly lower her eyes, but she looked pleased. Kit then introduced Dona, the children, and me. He failed to mention himself, and did so only when the landlord asked about his own name. At this point he pulled his father's letter of introduction from his pocket.

Reading, the landlord scowled. "To tell you the truth, young sir, I'm uneasy about the place you've come from."

Kit held his ground. "Sir, I assure you, we were nowhere near the contagion. Our only ailments are hunger, thirst and exhaustion. If we had the fever, we surely would not have been able to walk, and we most surely would not be standing here before you."

The landlord thought, handed the letter back to Kit. "Very well, you can rest in the stable. But only until nightfall. I've rented out horses. They should be returned by then."

The stable was one of the outbuildings we had seen from the road. It contained four small box stalls; only two had been mucked out. Kit proposed that Mrs. McHenry have one of the clean boxes to herself. "Dona, do you think you and Jan can survive with the children in that other box?"

Dona looked anxious, but her answer was firm. "It'll be close, but yes, I think we can survive. What about you?"

He gestured to the rutted, earthen floor in front of the boxes.

"I can take the little ones," Mrs. McHenry offered, her voice unusually gentle.

Dona refused. "No, no, Mrs. M. Enjoy the calm while you can."

"Very well. But I warn you, I'll probably be in there at the first whimper."

Dona smiled. "Don't worry yourself, ma chere. Your future is filled with first whimpers."

There is nothing to compare with going to bed in broad daylight, on a bumpy, hay-strewn floor where horses do their business. Scourged by an aching back and the scent of animals, I punched the rolled-up cloak beneath my head and agitated my legs.

Dona, huddled beside me, limply flapped her arm at me and muttered, "Settle down, Jeannette, you'll spook the children."

Immediately Kit intoned from the passage: "Settle down, Janet, you'll spook Donatienne." "Donatienne" was Dona's full name in French. People unacquainted with the language said "Donation, " but Kit used the correct pronunciation, "Dona-SYENNE."

There simply was no resting for me. I crawled over the slumbering logs of toddlers and joined Kit in the passage. He was reading a small, fat, Book of Common Prayer.

"Can't sleep?" he whispered.

I sat beside him, peered at the small print.

"It's the Articles of Religion," he explained. "I always read it when I can't sleep." He held the book so I could read, too.

I was honored that Kit would let me read with him, and I felt very grown up and important. Of course I didn't understand what I was reading. I must have lasted all of three sentences before I became aware of somebody shaking my shoulder.

"Come along, Jeanette!" Dona urged. "We've got to leave soon."

Not four hours earlier I had groused about not being able to sleep. Now I complained about having to rise. I had fallen asleep sitting on the floor, propped against the stable's wall. I awoke to find myself lying on the floor with my cloak under my head and Kit's coat covering me. Dona threw both garments over her arm. Together we gathered the children and went down to the stream that flowed beside the stable.

The light was mellow; the shadows, long.

We found Kit drying his face on his handkerchief. His cravat and hair were loose. He grinned at me. "Now you know why I read that when I can't sleep."

Dona gave him his coat and directed me to splash water on my face. We were tidying the toddlers when we saw the landlord lead a horse up the path toward the stable. The man waved. "Time to leave, children. The hires are coming home."

"I'll fetch Mrs. McHenry." Kit pulled on his coat and dashed to the stable ahead of our host. Some moments later, he reappeared and asked Dona, "Can being heavy with child make one so heavy with sleep that it's hard to wake them up?"

Dona gave him one of her "don't-be-silly-what-are-you-talking-about" looks, told me to stay with the children, and followed him back to the stable.

I gave no mind to what was taking place up there. I was too busy collecting the toddlers, who were teetering around like miniature drunkards. All at once I heard ravings coming from the direction of the stable. I turned in time to see Kit on the ground and the landlord standing over him, pounding him with extravagant sweeps of his fists.

Dona threw herself on the man, but he sent her tumbling down the path as easily as if he were flicking away a gnat. He then took Kit by the collar and the seat of his britches and slammed him into the briars clumped between the stable and the stream.

I thought the landlord was our friend; he had certainly displayed charity by giving us shelter though his inn was full. What had happened to him? What was he doing? Would he come after me next? Rubbed raw by fear, I bolted the way Margaret the guinea pig bolted whenever something scared her. I didn't know where I was going or what was in my way. I just ran, mindless of the thorns and branches that ripped my face and clothes. When I stopped running, my heart was pounding and I thought I was going to be sick. I could no longer see the stable, but I could hear the landlord roaring, "Burn it! Burn it! Get rid of it!" I heard other voices, too. I imagined the patrons had heard the commotion outside the stable and rushed to see what was going on.

I didn't know what to do or where to go. I knew only that I couldn't survive on my own. I needed Kit and Dona. What had become of them? Were they dead? I cried and screamed for anyone who could hear me. I was so scared that I never considered the possibility that the landlord would hear me, find me, and kill me, too.

I don't know how long I screamed or how far I stumbled through the woods. At last I discerned Kit's breathless voice. "Jan--Stop--Stop--" He burst through the underbrush and fell on all fours, taking huge gulps of air. A runny, red latticework of cuts covered his face and hands. Burrs tangled his hair and dangled from his coat, which was smudged with black matter. It was easy to believe that he'd been chewed up and spat out by an engine of unimaginable design and purpose.

"Mrs. McHenry...is dead," he emitted, trying to breathe and speak at the same time. "She died ...in her sleep. The landlord said it was the fever... He won't let us bury her. ...He wants to burn her... to stop the contagion... from spreading."

So we hadn't outrun the contagion after all.

I whimpered. "We're going to die, aren't we."

"Keep your head, Jan! We don't think it was the fever...We think it was her condition. But the landlord...he wouldn't listen to us."

"I don't want to die!"

"You're not going to die."

"Mrs. McHenry died!"

I couldn't believe him. He had said we were going someplace safe. He had said he wouldn't let anything happen to us. Now one of us was dead, we had no food, no horses, no money. It was a matter of time before we all perished of starvation or of the same contagion we had foolishly believed we had escaped.

I didn't want to die, not in that scratchy patch of forest.

As I watched Kit reclaim his breath, I knew what I had to do. This time I wouldn't run through the woods. I would run where I could see where I was going. I would run where nothing could hold me back.

Chapter Two

2007-02-18T07:39:00.000-08:00

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.

Chapter One

2007-02-18T07:38:00.000-08:00

Why does a certain set of people, and not another, come together to endure the unimagined dangers of life? Is it coincidence? Fate? The workings of a higher power? Or is it a little bit of everything, born not of the desire to not suffer alone, but of the desire to not die alone? Whatever the reason, in the latter years of the 18th century, we were that certain set of people. And even as events encircled us or took our lives, we were confident that we would not have wanted to bear those trials in the company of anybody else.

I'm sure our association began much earlier, but I remember that cool, misty day in September, 1793. I was playing in the garden of our home in Philadelphia, shivering in the flimsy sunlight. Margaret, my beloved guinea pig, nosed the short, stiff grass, purring as I stroked her cheek. I was only twelve. Despite the uncomfortable weather, my entire life at that moment consisted of nothing more than happily sitting on that fragrant stubble, communing with my pet. I was so ignorant of what had been happening around me that when my father walked toward me on the flagstone path, I never wondered why he was home when he should have been at work.

"Come along, Janet," he was saying, "There's something very important that I'd like you to do."

I reached for Margaret, but Papa took me by the hand and quickly led me inside. The back door opened onto the kitchen. Dona, my governess, was stuffing a loaf of bread into a canvass sack. She was short and round and pretty, with a creamy complexion, rosy cheeks and chestnut hair. When she saw me her eyes twinkled, and she smiled.

"We will have fun, cherie. There's nothing in life as invigorating as a good flight!"

"A good what?" I asked stupidly, as Papa gently pulled me through the house to the entrance vestibule.

The front door was open, allowing a partial view of a stagewagon at the curb. It was an open vehicle that had a roof from which blinds could be lowered in times of rain, and four backless benches set one behind the other the length of the wagon; the driver's seat was outside, in front. Stagewagons usually carried travelers between the city and points beyond, but the wagon parked outside my home that morning carried luggage and four toddler girls who were chattering nonsense and slamming their quilted dolls against the benches.

Papa brought me to the wagon, where I had a better view of the carnage. The smile he cast upon the destroyers was angelic. "These are the latest orphans of the parish, Jannie. I'd like you to help Mrs. McHenry and Dona bring them to Mrs. Allard's establishment in Princeton. They'll be safer there. So will you."

Mrs. McHenry, our housekeeper, was a hefty woman who must have been no more than thirty, but who always impressed me as aged. She had faded brown hair, a sallow, faintly lined complexion, and a manner void of joy. Immense with child, she directed a slender teenage boy in a dark green coat how to place a trunk between the seats.

In those days I lost no love on small children, and the thought of being confined with them for hours nearly made me sick to my stomach. I consoled myself by petting the bay geldings in the traces. "These are Sinecure and Stipend, the rector's horses, aren't they?"

Papa said they were indeed.

The horse nearest me, Stipend, chuckled as I rubbed his nose.

"Is Father DeWaere driving?" I asked.

"No, sweets, he's needed here. His son, Christian, will take you."

I dropped my arms and stepped back from Stipend, who followed me, bringing Sinecure with him. Papa took each horse by the cheek strap and pushed it backward into the street, unaware that the boy behind the wagon was instinctively lunging for the vehicle as it moved. I looked away as Mrs. McHenry gasped and something heavy hit the stones. The toddlers giggled. Papa stared at me benevolently, oblivious to the little havoc he had just created. "What's the matter, Jannie?"

I didn't know what to tell Papa. Christian DeWaere was a cherished agony. At eighteen, he was much older than I. Because our fathers were friends and active in the community, I had grown up hearing about him, and I liked him with intense secrecy. I wished he could like me back, but I knew that I wished in vain: Children have no place in the lives of young men. I was nothing to Christian DeWaere. I didn't know if I should be glad or annoyed that he was driving me somewhere.

I stole another glance at the back of the carriage. Christian--or Kit, as everybody called him--was holding Mrs. McHenry's lavishly embroidered handkerchief to his nose. He had a face that reminded me of a deer--a straight nose, large, trusting eyes and not much chin. Though it was tied back in the style of the time, his hair was a thick, light-brown tangle that glinted different shades of gold and red in the sunlight. Mrs. McHenry flitted around him, flicking street dust from his coat.

Dona came alongside Papa and me. She had slung the lumpy sack of food over her shoulder, crushing her short velvet coat. She extended her free hand, smiling brilliantly. "Come along, cherie!"

Papa kissed the top of my head. "Be good, Jannie. And be a better help."

Kit opened the wagon door, and Dona handed me up the step and onto the seat beside Mrs. McHenry. Dona followed, calling two of the toddlers to sit beside her. Mrs. McHenry took charge of the other two. Mercifully, I was left with nobody to look after except myself.

Settling down, I saw Papa look at Kit as if seeing him for the first time. "What happened to you?" The surprise was genuine.

A lesser youth would have railed about the idiot who had backed up a vehicle without looking. Not Kit DeWaere. He touched the handkerchief to the dripping tip of his nose and calmly claimed, "Gravity."

Mystified, but too much of a gentleman to admit it, Papa put his arm around the boy's shoulders and walked him away from the carriage. I heard him murmur, "Precious cargo, Kit. Are you able to drive?"

"Yes, sir." He lowered the handkerchief as if to prove he could control the horses with two hands.

"You know you may be turned away from New Jersey."

"Not to worry, Mr. Watters. I'll go north if that happens. We'll find a crossing."

Papa nodded, clapped Kit's shoulder with paternal fervor, then shook his hand. The two looked into each other's eyes, nodded in an agreement that I could not at the time understand, and broke away. Without another word, Kit climbed onto the driver's seat and turned the horses toward the road that would take us out of Philadelphia.

The trip began merrily enough. Dona, a sixteen-year-old French girl who spoke like an English aristocrat, entertained us with stories about how she had fled Paris at the height of the Revolution. "Ah, thank God for Julienne and her sisters! They dressed me like a kitchen maid, dirtied my face, and brought me to the country in an ox cart. I even pretended to nurse Julienne's baby, knowing that the authorities would never imagine a noblewoman doing such a thing in public!" Dona laughed loudly, but quickly covered her mouth with her hand and hunched forward, cringing. "Omondieu! You don't think Kit heard that, do you?"

Mrs. McHenry's eye was sharp. "If he did, my dear, I think we may be assured that, should tragedy befall us on the road, he'll die happy, having been filled with the image of your noble sacrifice."

Dona playfully swatted the woman's knee. Mrs. McHenry smiled, shifted position with effort. Dona was concerned. "Would you prefer a boy or a girl, Mrs. M?"

"I would prefer whoever it is to be of the age of majority and far away from me."

Suddenly serious, Dona studied the housekeeper's pale face. "One day, when the madness has passed, you'll come to Paris with me. You too, Janet. We'll find Mrs. M a French husband, someone who will appreciate her and her gifts for making a comfortable, happy home. Julienne has cousins who work as footmen and farriers. They’re good men. Hard-working. Reliable. And faithful, as my own experience with them taught me. Indeed, I swear to you, until I had nothing--no clothes, no food, no home, no family--I did not know what it was to live. Until I had nothing, all I thought about was what would happen next to make me happy. I was clothed, fed, amused both at my whim and without asking. I thought of nobody and nothing except myself. Until one day I had nothing except a handful of good people who gave me help and protection, and who by their actions taught me what it really means to live well. I'm still learning. I shall never stop learning, thanks to people like Julienne and her family, and thanks to people like you, Mr. Watters, and the DeWaeres, who make me want to live and make a life that reaches far beyond myself."

Mrs. McHenry grunted approval. "I think Kit heard THAT, my dear," she said, nodding toward the driver's seat.

It was then that I noticed the silence. Until that moment, Kit had been gently encouraging the horses with kind words and clucks. I noticed, too, that we were stopping. Carts and wagons clustered along the side of the road, surrounded by coffins of every taste and expense. A man approached on foot, saying something about no access to the road.

"Why, what's the matter? " I cried. "Why are these coffins here?"

Dona and Mrs. McHenry hushed me, but Kit turned to me. "That's how bad the contagion has grown, Jan. Our fathers and countless other citizens have been trying to stop it, but nothing's working. These men do what many people can't do for their loved ones: they take the dead and see that they're buried quickly."

"We need to get out of here quickly," Mrs. McHenry said between her teeth.

"Gladly, Mrs. M, but may I remind you that the law doesn't allow carriages to go faster than a brisk walk--"

"Just drive, Kit."

"But, Mrs. M--"

"Kit, if you don't move, I'll drop my infant out of me quicker than a heifer."

Kit urged Stipend and Sinecure into the fastest walk allowed by law.