"for Mischief done" Part four of a four-part serialization

"for Mischief done"

Jan Schenk Grosskopf

To purchase:  www.andresblanton.com

 

 

Molly snatched up her bucket. As they worked, the sound of

cannon and musket fire traveled over the river from Fort Griswold

on Groton Heights. Even though all of them had relatives and

friends at the fort, no one dared to stop and watch the battle unfolding

between shifting clouds of gun and cannon smoke. One of

the maids, whose brothers and sweetheart were in the fight,

sobbed as she stumbled back and forth between the well and the

ladder.

When the hellish flames around them finally burned to embers,

the women dropped their buckets and pan and literally fell

in their tracks. The stableman and boy climbed drunkenly down

the ladder on rubbery legs and collapsed by the bottom rung. As

the twilight deepened and the stars came out, mistress and servants

sprawled in the yard, too exhausted to register the pain radiating

from bleeding, blistered hands and feet. When they finally

gathered the strength to sit up, they stared through red, smarting

eyes at the sooty, tear-streaked faces of their companions and

marveled at the filthy tatters, liberally dotted with cinder burns,

that barely covered their bodies.

After they finally managed to stagger to their feet, Molly and

her servants gazed around, mouths agape, unable to comprehend

the devastation surrounding them. They had awakened that morning

in a busy, wealthy seaport. Now, piles of collapsed timber and

rubble glowed and smoked in the cool night air, and the smell of

fiery destruction overwhelmed the salt breeze. All of the buildings

along the waterfront and the Parade and large swaths of the town

lay in ruins. Down at the harbor, gentle waves lapped charred

wharf pilings and pushed bobbing debris to and fro in the oily

waters. But the Red Lion serenely faced the destruction, its larders

and cellars bursting, the animals safe in the barn and the coop.

While the people at the Red Lion wolfed cold beef and spider

bread with trembling hands, Arnold’s men piled thirty-five

bleeding, thirsty Patriots, including Stephen Hempstead with a

smashed leg, on the floor of the Avery house, down by the river in

Groton, and left them to their fate. After prodding thirty prisoners

of war onto His Majesty’s ships, the British sailed away. Eighty-five

New Londoners lay dead on the ground.

 

Morning, The Red Lion Inn, September 7, 1781

Creaking wagon wheels and loud voices dragged Molly from

the depths of exhausted slumber the morning after New London

burned. She sat up in bed, dazed and bewildered, looking stupidly

around the room. When she realized that the noise came from

outside, her heart skipped a beat. Molly threw the warm sheets

aside, leapt out of bed, and ran barefoot to the window. Without

thinking, she pushed up the sash and leaned out of the window to

gawk at the ragged parade of weary refugees clogging the street

below.

Dozens of families returned to smoldering ruins. Those fortunate

enough to find intact houses and barns did not expect to

find much left in them, and for once, reality lived up to expectations.

Hastily secreted pewter and silver plate had disappeared,

along with any livestock and household goods the owners hadn’t

been able to cart away. The houses on the outskirts of town came

through untouched, but only because the British didn’t have time

to plunder them.

By mid-afternoon, a horde of anxious homeless people

poured into the Red Lion, begging for food and shelter and promising

to pay later. Molly squeezed in as many as possible, and for

several days, people and their belongings stuffed the inn from garret

to cellar. Outside, horses and cows spilled out of the stable and

barn into the yard and lot, which were choked with carts, wagons,

and carriages of all descriptions. Excited dogs and children darted

among the tangled legs and wheels; the dogs snarling and nipping

one another, the children shrieking with hysterical laughter. Sooty

specters wafted into the stable yard, carrying whatever they had

managed to salvage, and then stood, wondering what to do with

their rescued things. The weighted well arm seemed to be in perpetual

motion; the creak of its pivoted joint an oddly soothing

background accompaniment to the uneven human din that lasted

from dawn till well after dark.

By the end of the month all of the refugees, except a destitute

widow with several small children and an old woman, had gone to

homes with friends and family. Town officials and their sons, harassed by

problems of their own, could not see to the old woman

or the widow and orphans. Too many leading citizens had been

killed or captured, and more than a few of the ones left were

wounded or had lost their own homes.

Molly refused to turn poor women and children out onto the

streets. She and her father gave the mother a job and a room in

the garret, and let the elderly woman have a comfortable bed in

the warm kitchen. The family lived and worked at the Red Lion

until a new husband and father took them to his farm. The elderly

lady left the Red Lion in her coffin, Molly following behind and

crying tears of real grief on the way to the graveyard.

Captain Coit died a few years later and left his daughter the

inn. Although the Red Lion demanded her every waking moment,

Molly reveled in the work, and, unlike far too many women of her

acquaintance, she did not chafe under a husband’s authority. Instead,

Molly ran her business to her own liking, and picked her

own company. Although the common room continued to be a

place of masculine conviviality, the inn’s pristine reputation for

orderliness and well-dressed victuals brought respectable women

to the dining room. And as Molly’s New London recovered from

Arnold’s raid and began to thrive again, she prospered with it.

 

Chapter Six

Early Morning, Quaker Hill, July 22, 1786

Sheriff Richards and Colonel Halsey reined their horses to a

stop at the top of the rise overlooking Bolles Cove. They sat in

companionable silence in the shade of a large oak, admiring the

peaceful view of Mrs. Rogers’ house at the head of the cove below

them. When Hempstead rode up and joined them, the investigators

put light spurs to their horses’ flanks and trotted down the hill

into the Widow’s yard.

As the three investigators approached the house, Mrs. Rogers

opened the front door and stood, hand resting on the door latch,

watching them dismount and pull their bridle reins through the

iron ring on the granite hitching post in the front yard. Mrs. Rachel

Rogers, Widow Rogers’ kinswoman and neighbor, came up

behind the Widow and peered over her shoulder. Neither spoke

or called out a greeting. Although he barely registered it at the

time, Richards later remembered noticing an apprehensive expression

flicker across Widow Rogers’ face as they walked toward her.

Halsey took off his hat. “Good morning, Mrs. Rogers,” he said to the Widow. “And

 to you Mrs. Rogers.”

“Good morning,” Rachel said over the Widow’s shoulder.

“Widow Rogers, we have some more questions.”

“I can’t help you,” the Widow said, clasping her hands in front of her. “I’ve told

you all that I know.”

“If we could come inside and speak to your servant girl.”

“Hannah? Why do you need to talk to her again?” Mrs. Rog

ers’ eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What did she tell you yesterday?”

“I’m not at liberty to say during the investigation. If we could come inside . . .”

“Well, come in then.” The Widow grudgingly pushed the door fully open and led

the way to the front room. “Sit down. I’ll go find Hannah.”

“If you don’t mind, I have some questions I’d like to ask before we see Hannah.”

Mrs. Rogers stopped at the door and turned around to face the Colonel, one hand

lightly gripping the doorframe.

 

Halsey gestured for Rachel Rogers to come into the room. He took out his

notebook. “How did Hannah come to live with you?” he asked, looking at the

Widow Rogers.

“Sarah Occuish brought Hannah to Quaker Hill about five or six years ago and

 asked me to mind the child for a spell, which I did, though she was too young to

 be of much use to me. Sarah came back a few weeks later and told me she

wanted to go up north to visit her kin. She thought that if she could get away

from alcohol, she might have a chance of curing herself, but she didn’t want to

take Hannah along. She thought that traveling so far through the woods on foot

would be too much for the child. I agreed to keep Hannah, but only until she

came back.”

“When was the last time you heard from Sarah?” The Colonel looked up from his

notebook, pencil poised. The Widow shook her head. “I’ve heard nothing from

Hannah’s mother since the day she left.”

 

“Not even through friends or family?”

 

“Nothing,” the Widow repeated, mouth tight.

“Has Hannah troubled you?” Hempstead asked, his tone polite.

The Widow flinched slightly, and her fingers tightened on the wooden doorframe.

 “How do you mean, Mr. Hempstead? I don’t understand what you mean to ask of

 me.”

“Mrs. Rogers,” Colonel Halsey smoothly interjected, “We know that you have

 provided well for this abandoned girl, but she came to you a difficult child, or so

 we have heard.”

 

“Heard? What do you mean?” the Widow repeated, looking at each of the men in

turn, her face guarded. “I don’t know what you’ve been told about Hannah . . . or

me.”

 

When no one moved to enlighten her, the Widow continued. “Well, yes, Colonel,

you might say Hannah is sometimes a handful. For months after Sarah left, the

child cried all the time for her mother, but she finally stopped asking about Sarah

after a while.  Then . . .” The Widow sighed before briskly continuing. “Hannah

doesn’t always obey as well as she should, and some of the neighborhood

children are unkind to her.”

 

“Unkind?” Halsey glanced at the Sheriff, as if for confirmation. Richards looked

away.

 

“I seem to remember something about Hannah attacking another child when she

lived in Groton,” Hempstead remarked, almost offhandedly.

“She did, years ago.” The Widow paused. “But she was only five years old at the

 time, and her older brother instigated a quarrel with Mary Fish. It was all his

doing.”

 

“You say some of the neighborhood children are unkind to her. Does she get

along with those who aren’t mean?”

“Get along? Mostly she does. It’s true that Hannah has argued with children in the

 neighborhood, but she has never used force against them.” The Widow turned in

her chair. “Isn’t that true, Rachel?”

“I can’t say that it is, Mary,” answered Rachel.

“What do you mean? How can you say that?”

“Hannah has bullied and hit other children.”

“Just children’s arguments that don’t mean anything.”

Rachel Rogers took a deep breath. “Mary, everyone knows that Hannah stole the

smaller children’s strawberries and threatened to give Eunice a whipping for

 telling on her.”

“Oh, that was all talk,” the Widow said dismissively. “Hannah was angry at the

time. She didn’t really mean it. Besides . . .”

“Hannah threatened Eunice Bolles? Why didn’t you mention  this fact to us

yesterday, Mrs. Rogers?” the Colonel demanded.

“I didn’t think it was important. I tell you, it didn’t mean anything.”

“When did Hannah make these threats?”

“Tell them the whole story, Mary,” Rachel urged. “You gave Hannah a whipping

for it.”

 

The Widow Rogers let go of the doorframe. Looking suddenly old and tired, she

came into the room and sat down.

“Several weeks ago, my granddaughter, Mary - she and Eunice are - were - 

playmates, went berrying in the woods with some of the other children from the

neighborhood. Not long after they left, Eunice and Mary came to me crying. When

 I asked them what was the matter, the girls told me that Hannah had snatched

all of their strawberries and eaten them. When I went to see about it, I found out

that Hannah had taken the berries, just as the girls claimed. I gave Hannah a

whipping and put her to work, away from the other children.”

Rachel took up the story. “The next day, Hannah stopped Mary and Eunice on

their way home from school and told Eunice that she owed her a whipping for

 tattling, and vowed to pay it to her right quick.” Rachel made a face. “It’s not the

 first time Hannah has caused trouble. She intimidates the younger children, and

even some of the bigger ones. They’re all afraid of her.”

Surprised, Halsey looked over to Richards as if he expected the Sheriff to say

something, but Richards only shrugged.

 

“Is it true?” the Colonel asked the Widow. “Have there been problems with

 Hannah for some time?”

Mrs. Rogers sat quietly, staring into the distance, seemingly lost in thought.

“Mrs. Rogers? Is it true that Hannah is a bully?”

The Widow jumped slightly and refocused on the Colonel.  “Yes,” she admitted

slowly. “I suppose that she does argue with other children on occasion, but

mostly all she does is make idle threats. She’s not capable of actually hurting

anyone.”

“Mary Fish might disagree,” Rachel replied acidly.

 

The Widow snorted. “That was years ago.”

 

Rachel stood up impatiently, somewhat regretting her candor, specially in front of

Mrs. Rogers, a kinswoman. If the investigators wanted more details, they would

have to question the neighbors, some of whom would be more than happy to

describe Hannah’s unruly behavior. They would also be happy to voice their

anger at Mrs. Rogers for keeping Hannah. The child’s presence had been a point

 of contention in Quaker Hill for years.

Seeing that pressing for more information would be a waste of time, Halsey

thanked Rachel Rogers and asked the Widow to fetch Hannah. Mrs. Rogers

reappeared so quickly with the child in tow, Richards suspected Hannah had been

eavesdropping in the hall.

The child balked at the threshold, but her mistress grabbed her by the arm and

yanked her through the doorway. She put her hand on Hannah’s back and pushed

her into the room. “Get in there.”

 

To purchase:  www.andresblanton.com