Time's Convert

9

Crown

APRIL–JUNE 1775

Marcus juggled the pail of fish between his hands and pushed open the door to Thomas Buckland’s Northampton surgery. Buckland was one of the few medical men west of Worcester, and though he was neither the most prosperous nor the best educated, he was by far the safest choice if you wanted to survive a visit to the doctor. The metal bell that hung over the door tinkled brightly, announcing Marcus’s arrival.

The surgeon’s wife was working in the front room, where Buckland’s equipment—forceps, teeth-pullers, and cauterization irons—lay in a gleaming row on a clean towel. Pots of herbs, medicines, and salves were displayed on the shelves. The surgery’s windows overlooked Northampton’s main street so that interested passersby could witness the pain and suffering going on inside as Buckland set bones, peered into mouths and ears, drew teeth, and examined aching limbs.

“Marcus MacNeil. What are you doing here?” Mercy Buckland looked up from the table where she was putting ointment into a stone crock.

“I was hoping to trade some fish for a bit of that tisane you gave my mother last month.” Marcus held up his pail. “Shad. Freshly caught at the falls south of Hadley.”

“Does your father know where you are?” Mrs. Buckland had witnessed the argument that broke out a few months ago when Obadiah caught him talking with Tom about how to make a salve to heal bruises. After that, his father had forbidden him from going to Northampton for cures. Obadiah insisted that the family see the nearsighted doctor in Hadley instead, who was half as good and twice as expensive, but whose age and tendency to overindulge in spirits made him less likely to interfere in MacNeil family business.

“There’s no point in asking, Mercy. Marcus won’t answer. He’s become a man of few words.” Tom Buckland joined his wife, his balding head shining in the spring light. “For myself, I miss the boy who couldn’t stop talking.”

Marcus felt Mrs. Buckland’s eyes on him as she studied his thin arms, the piece of rope that cinched his breeches to his narrow waist, the hole in the toe of his left shoe, the patches on his blue-and-white-checked shirt made from coarse cloth his sister Patience had woven from the flax grown on their farm.

But he didn’t want the Bucklands’ pity. He didn’t want anything—except some tisane. Marcus’s mother was able to sleep after she had some of Mrs. Buckland’s famous concoction. The surgeon’s wife had taught him what was in it—valerian and hops and skullcap—but these plants weren’t grown in the MacNeil family garden.

“Is there news from Boston?” Marcus asked, trying to change the subject.

“The Sons of Liberty are rallying against the Redcoats,” Tom replied, peering through his spectacles at the shelves in search of the right herbal mixture. “Everyone is fired up, thanks to Dr. Warren. Someone passing through from Springfield said more trouble is expected—though God hopes it won’t be another massacre.”

“I heard the same, down at the falls,” Marcus replied. It was how news traveled through to small towns like these—one piece of gossip at a time.

Tom Buckland pressed a packet into his hand. “For your mother.”

“Thank you, Dr. Buckland,” Marcus said, putting his pail on the counter. “These are for you. They’ll make a fine dinner.”

“No, Marcus. That’s too much,” Mercy protested. “Half of that bucket is more than enough for Thomas and me. You should take the rest home. I’ve moved the buttons on Thomas’s breeches twice this winter.”

Marcus shook his head, refusing the offer. “Thank you, Dr. Buckland. Mrs. Buckland. You keep it. I’ve got to get home.”

Tom tossed him a small crock. “Salve. For the extra fish. We like to keep our accounts current. You could put some of it on your eye.”

Tom had noticed the blackening on Marcus’s cheekbone. He thought it was faded enough to risk a trip into Northampton without setting any tongues wagging. But Tom was sharp-eyed and didn’t miss much.

“I stepped on a hay rake, and the handle hit me square in the face. You know how clumsy I am, Dr. Buckland.” Marcus opened the shop door and tipped his moth-eaten hat at the couple. “Thank you for the tisane.”

* * *

—

MARCUS BORROWED A RICKETY RAFT to cross the river rather than take the ferry, and was on the puddled road back home when he narrowly avoided being struck down by a rider on a fast horse headed toward the center of Hadley.

“What’s happened?” Marcus snatched at the horse’s reins in a vain attempt to hold the animal still.

“Our militia engaged the regulars at Lexington. Blood has been shed,” the rider cried out, his lungs heaving with effort. He turned the horse’s head, ripping the reins from Marcus’s grasp, and shot off in the direction of the meetinghouse.

Marcus ran the rest of the way back to the MacNeil farm. He would need food and a gun if he was going to join the militia on the march east. He slid through the damp grass in front of the garden gate, narrowly avoiding a furious goose that snapped at his breeches as he passed.

“Bloody goose,” Marcus said under his breath. If not for the eggs, he would have wrung the creature’s neck long ago.

He slipped through the front door with its faded red paint. Old Widow Noble said the split in the door’s upper panel was a relic of an Indian raid that had taken place in the last century—but the old woman believed in witches, ghosts, and headless horsemen, too. Inside the house was quiet, the only sound the regular ticking of his mother’s old clock on the mantel in the parlor.

“I heard the bell.” Catherine MacNeil rushed out from the kitchen, the only other room on the ground floor of the house, drying her hands on a worn towel. His mother was pale, and her eyes were dark-rimmed from lack of sleep. The farm wasn’t thriving, his father was always off drinking with his friends, and the winter had been hard and long.

“The army attacked in Lexington,” Marcus replied. “They’re calling out the militia.”

“Boston? Is it safe?” As far as Catherine was concerned, the city of her childhood was the center of the world, and everything that was great or good came from there.

At the moment, Marcus was less concerned with the threat Boston faced than with the one that shared their hearth and home.

“Where’s Pa?” Marcus asked.

“Amherst. He went to see Cousin Josiah.” His mother’s lips tightened. “Your father won’t be back anytime soon.”

Sometimes Obadiah was gone for days and returned with torn clothes and bruises, his knuckles bleeding and his breath smelling of rum. If Marcus was lucky, he could go to Lexington and be back again before his father sobered up and noticed his son was missing.

Marcus went into the parlor and took the old blunderbuss from the hooks over the fireplace.

“Your grandfather MacNeil owned that gun,” his mother said. “He had it when he arrived from Ireland.”

“I remember.” Marcus ran his fingers over the old wooden stock. Grandfather MacNeil had told him stories about his adventures with the gun: the first time he felled a deer when the family didn’t have enough to eat, how he’d carried it when they went out to hunt wolves when Pelham and Amherst were just tiny settlements.

“What will I tell your father when he comes back?” His mother looked stricken. “You know he’s worried about what might happen if there’s another war.”

Obadiah had fought in the last war against the French. He had been the flower of the local militia once, brave and strong. Marcus’s father and mother had been newly married, and Obadiah had big plans for improving the farm he had purchased, or so Catherine remembered. But Obadiah had returned from the campaigns weak in body and broken in spirit, caught between conflicting loyalties to kin and king.

On the one hand, Obadiah believed wholeheartedly in the sanctity of the British monarchy and the king’s love for his subjects. Yet Obadiah had witnessed atrocities on the frontier that made him question whether Britain had her colonies’ best interests at heart. Like most of the militia who fought in the war, Obadiah found little to admire about the British army. He believed the officers had knowingly put him in harm’s way with their blind obedience to orders that arrived from London weeks—if not months—too late to be of any use.