Stranger in Williamsburg Read online

  Then she addressed Abigail and Tabitha again. “While Hester and I turn some of those blackberries in the kitchen into jam, you can air and tidy the bedrooms. In fact, there isn’t a room in this house that doesn’t need sweeping and dusting!” she said, as she went briskly into the kitchen. “And hurry back, Sarah,” she called. “I’m sure they can use your help!”

  Sarah exchanged a look of resignation with Abigail, as Tabitha hurried to get the dust cloths and beeswax for polishing the furniture.

  “Tabby is definitely a candidate for Williamsburg’s mental hospital!” Abigail whispered. “She actually likes housework!”

  “She’ll clean all morning, dreaming about keeping her own house, with Seth Coler in it!” Sarah whispered back, giggling.

  “Girls, I assume you know the carpet sweeper is in the closet under the stairs and the broom is here in the kitchen,” Aunt Charity prompted. “You can do the upstairs first, before it gets too hot up there.”

  Abigail rolled her eyes and headed for the closet, as Sarah, still smiling, left the house.

  Chapter 7

  Sarah wanted to run all the way to Waller Street, but the hot July sun convinced her to walk by the second block. She stopped on the stoop of the brown house to wipe perspiration from her brow and straighten her apron. Then she pushed against the latch of the blue door and walked into the milliner’s shop, the bell jingling over the door.

  “Gabrielle!” she called, walking straight through the shop and into the parlor, as they did for lessons each weekday.

  A man jumped up hastily from the round table, spilling tea on the white cloth. Sarah noted that their tea table was now set for breakfast, as she grabbed a napkin and began dabbing at the widening stain.

  “I’m so sorry!” she almost whispered. “I didn’t know Gabrielle had...I didn’t mean to....” She stopped in confusion. Slowly, she raised her eyes and was startled by the intensity of the pale blue gaze that met hers.

  “I am Gabrielle’s cousin, Alistair,” he explained, reaching for her hand and bowing over it. His blonde mustache tickled as it brushed her knuckles. “And you must be Gabrielle’s star pupil I have been hearing so much about this morning,” he said with a smile that did not reach the cold, pale eyes. “Miss Armstrong, is it?”

  “Moore,” she corrected. “Sarah Moore. Charity Armstrong is my aunt. Where’s Gabrielle?” She suddenly felt uncomfortable talking with this strange man alone in Gabrielle’s parlor.

  Just then, Gabrielle entered the room carrying a small tray which held a covered bowl and a silver-topped glass jar filled with red jelly.

  “Well, Alistair, the bread is just right, and this is the last of the currant jelly. Oh, Sarah!” she gasped. “I did not expect you so early!” She stopped in confusion, a frown creasing her forehead and a flush mounting her cheeks. Her gaze darted from one to the other.

  “I have introduced myself to your pupil, Gabrielle, and explained that I am your cousin, here on a brief visit to the colonies,” the man put in smoothly.

  Gabrielle laughed nervously. “But we are no longer colonies, Alistair!” she chided, setting the tray on the table. “We are the United States of America, fighting for the freedom to make our own rules and regulations.” Her eyes never left Sarah’s face.

  “Forgive me, ladies.” He gave a slight bow. “I have only been in the colonies...in America for a few days, and it is my first visit to your delightful Virginia. You must give me time to get accustomed to your new government and its terminology.”

  Gabrielle patted his arm. “We will allow you that one small error, cousin! But no more!” she admonished, shaking her finger under his nose.

  She turned to Sarah. “But what are you doing here so early, cherie? Is something wrong? Our four weeks are up. Is Madame Armstrong not pleased with your progress? Has she decided to cancel our arrangement?” There was an anxious look in her eyes.

  “Oh, no, Gabrielle!” Sarah hastened to explain. “She is very pleased. But she wants me to ask you to excuse us this morning. She will call on you this afternoon, if that is convenient for you, to make arrangements to continue our tutoring at a new time next week.”

  Gabrielle looked relieved, and Sarah wondered if the money was so important to her. Perhaps the millinery shop did not bring in enough to live on, with the competition from the older shop on Duke of Gloucester, as well as some from John Greenhow’s store.

  “Very good, cherie. Tell Madame Armstrong I shall await her visit with pleasure, and I will hope to see you, Abigail, and Tabitha next week.”

  Sarah knew she had been dismissed. She curtsied, then turned and left the room, and the shop. Only after she was out on the stoop did she remember the lesson Gabrielle had taught them about always responding to an introduction by expressing pleasure at making the person’s acquaintance. She felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment. What a dolt Gabrielle must think her star pupil was, to shame her in front of her cousin, and after she had praised her to him!

  Sarah stood on the stoop uncertainly. Should she go back inside and correct her faux pas, as Gabrielle would call it? Or should she go on home and hope they hadn’t noticed? But Gabrielle would have noticed! She was sure of that!

  Sarah turned to reenter the shop. Then she heard the man say, “It is perfect, Gabrielle! There won’t be the close family allegiance of the others to overcome, and it is obvious she adores you. She will do anything you ask.”

  “I do not like it, Alistair,” Gabrielle answered in a voice so soft Sarah had to strain to hear the words. “...using someone who trusts me....” Her words faded away.

  The man’s laugh was short and harsh. “It is all part of the game, my dear,” he said. “All part of this deadly game we play.”

  Sarah turned and ran all the way back to the house on Nicholson Street, where she joined her cousins at their housekeeping chores without a word.

  By eleven o’clock, the upstairs rooms were neat and dust free. Even little Megan, with some help from Sarah, had cleaned her own room. Then the girls descended on the downstairs rooms, with their mops and pails and dust cloths.

  “You do the parlor, Abigail. Sarah, you do Pa’s study. I’ll tackle the dining room and all its dusty china!” Tabitha assigned, already on her way.

  Sarah opened the study door, breathing in the musty odor of books and old leather, mingled with the wax from the candle on her uncle’s big walnut desk. One side of the room was filled, floor to ceiling, with bookshelves.

  As she ran the dust mop over the floor, around the deep red rugs with the hunting scenes dyed into them, Sarah noticed on the opposite wall, a frame holding a paper filled with words. She moved over to get a closer look, and saw that the words were surrounded by a sketch of a cedar tree with an eagle perched on its top branch. It was the same puzzling design that was on the tin cup that now lay hidden in her travel bag upstairs.

  The paper said the verses were from Ezekiel 17. She repeated the words as she read:

  Thus saith the Lord God; A great eagle with great wings...took the highest branch of the cedar...he placed it by great waters....

  Thus saith the Lord God; I will also take of the highest branch of the high cedar, and will set it...and it shall bring forth boughs, and bear fruit, and be a goodly cedar: and under it shall dwell all fowl of every wing....

  And all the trees of the field shall know that I the Lord have brought down the high tree, have exalted the low tree, have dried up the green tree, and have made the dry tree to flourish.

  What do those verses mean? Sarah wondered, as she dusted the bookshelves. Why does Uncle Ethan have them framed and hanging on his study wall? She promised herself she would ask him when he came home.

  By noon, the sweeping and dusting were done, and Aunt Charity had inspected their work.

  “Very good, girls,” she commended as she came back into the kitchen. “Now, set the table, and we will have a bite of cold lunch. Hester and I are too busy to stop to cook right now.” And they sat down to cold leftove
rs from last night’s roast, and slices of bread from a crusty loaf left from that week’s baking day. They finished off the meal with the rare treat of a bowl of Hester’s blackberries topped with sugar and cream.

  “You haven’t said three words all morning, Sarah,” Megan chided as they gathered the dishes and put them beside the tub of water sitting in the dry sink. “I do believe the cat’s got your tongue!”

  Sarah made a grab for Megan’s tongue with her thumb and forefinger. “Then I’ll just have to take yours, I guess!” she said, chasing the little girl out the back door and into the garden.

  Laughing, Megan ran around the flower beds, crawled under the fence, and ran through the fields where the Armstrong cattle, sheep, and horses grazed. Sarah started to go after her, but the animals seemed gentle enough, and her heart wasn’t really in the chase.

  She sat down under the cedar tree, her thoughts still troubled by the conversation she had overheard between Gabrielle and her cousin. What on earth could they have meant? The soft breeze through the cedar branches above her head seemed to whisper a warning, but she couldn’t quite grasp its meaning.

  She got up and walked around the house, where she saw Aunt Charity, her basket over her arm, going out the front gate. She headed up Nicholson, then turned toward Duke of Gloucester Street. Sarah knew she would complete her shopping, then visit Gabrielle to make arrangements for further lessons.

  Sarah waited a moment, then followed along Nicholson, turning in the opposite direction once she reached the Palace Green. Quickly, she passed through the open palace gates and crossed the ballroom gardens. She skirted the maze, and came out into the lower gardens, where flower beds added happy color to the greens and browns of the grass and trees.

  She sat down on the bridge at the north end of the canal, remembering the journey to Kentucky. Sarah would take off her shoes and stockings and dabble her hot, tired feet in a stream whenever Pa would let them rest a moment. The water was too far below the bridge for dabbling today, though.

  What was her family doing on this hot July day? The crops would be laid by until harvest time. Ma, like Aunt Charity, might be preserving berries, if she had any sweetener. Pa was likely building a new shed or fence, or maybe a new room on the cabin. Luke might be helping Pa, or swimming with the Larkin boys. And little Jamie would be running around, getting in everybody’s way.

  How I miss them! Sarah thought. Just a few short months ago, she was in Kentucky pining for her former home in Miller’s Forks, Virginia. She had vowed she’d never be a Kentuckian, that she would find a way to return to Virginia someday. Now, here she was in Virginia, longing for the cramped log cabin back on the banks of Stoney Creek.

  Sarah thought about the big log room where they cooked, ate, and slept. She pictured the rough wooden table with its scars from the Indians’ tomahawks which had nearly scalped Ma. She could see the crude wooden bowls and utensils they had to use.

  Then she thought of Aunt Charity’s elegant dining room with its rich dark furniture and soft carpet. She thought of her aunt’s polished, glass-front china cabinet, and felt her resentment rise at the thought of Grandma’s china sitting there. Grandma had willed it to Ma, and Ma should have it. Aunt Charity had been willed the harpsichord.

  Sarah wished her ma could have all the nice things she had left behind in Virginia. She wished Pa could have the tools and supplies he needed. She wished Luke and Jamie could go to a good school like the boys’ school here in Williamsburg.

  Pa always had answered her longings with the promise of “someday.” Someday Kentucky would have hard-packed dirt roads like Virginia’s. Someday there would be brick houses instead of log cabins. Someday there would be shops and schools and churches.

  Well, maybe I will just stay here in Williamsburg until “someday”! she thought. But she missed her family so much, especially Ma. And she missed little Jamie, toddling after her, yelling, “Wait, Sadie! Jamie go, too?”

  Here she had Megan following everywhere she went. She had never had a younger sister, and she had grown very fond of her little cousin. Unlike everybody else in the Armstrong household, little Meggie seemed to think everything Sarah did was perfect.

  “It’s perfect. She will do anything you ask.” The man’s words came back to haunt her, along with Gabrielle’s almost whispered response, “I hate using someone who trusts me.”

  Sarah pushed the troubling thoughts aside, determined not to let the mysterious conversation between Gabrielle and her cousin spoil her joy in being with her friend, in continuing their lessons together.

  Now, though, Megan would be wondering where she was, and why she had stopped playing their game. It was time she headed back home.

  Not home, she reminded herself, getting up from her perch above the canal and brushing off her skirt. If she had leaned anything from her trip back to Virginia, it was that home is not a house. Home is where people who love you live.

  Sarah sighed, suddenly feeling very lonely.

  Chapter 8

  As the long summer days moved slowly past, and the thick dust gathered in the streets and on the thirsty gardens, Sarah felt that she had learned all the social graces she cared to know, and more about running a household than she wanted to know.

  She, Abigail, and Tabitha had also studied a little geography and history, and Gabrielle had assigned them books to read from Uncle Ethan’s library. Tabitha had spent several weeks on one book that Sarah had read in two days, and Abigail simply refused to read anything that didn’t have something to do with fashion or playing the harpsichord or dancing.

  One afternoon, Gabrielle sent a note to Aunt Charity, asking if Sarah could come back and study an hour or so after supper three days each week, at least while the days were long enough for her to get home before dark. Sarah held her breath until Aunt Charity agreed.

  “I certainly don’t envy you, Sarah!” Abigail said spitefully, as Sarah prepared to go back to Gabrielle’s for her first private lesson. “I love the fashion and music lessons, but Latin? And who knows what else she’ll expect you to study! You’ll end up with awful headaches!”

  After a lesson in Latin and one in world history, tutor and pupil sat drinking spiced tea, and Gabrielle commented, “You did very well with these harder subjects, Sarah. I am pleased. But I knew you would. You are so different from your cousins.” She sipped her tea, absorbed in thought, while Sarah hugged the compliment to herself.

  “Tabitha is like my old tabby cat over there,” Gabrielle mused, looking at the gray and yellow cat dozing on the hearth. “She will always be content to sit on her own hearth and purr over her own things and people. But she makes up for her lack of interest in literature and the world by her near perfection in all the household skills.”

  Sarah hoped she would not pursue that topic, for her own crooked stitches and hard, flat bread fell far short of Tabitha’s standards.

  “And our Abigail,” Gabrielle continued, “is like the alley cat, I think. She’s not opposed to using her claws to get what she wants. But she is adept at fashion, and intent on grooming her own fur. She is graceful as a cat, too, and excels in the music and the dance.”

  “What am I, Gabrielle?” Sarah questioned, eager for compliments of her own. “Am I, too, some kind of cat?”

  “Well, Cherie, you are like a cat in your lively curiosity. But I think, maybe, you are the wild cat, having come from the untamed Kentucky, and being so determined to do things your own way.”

  “Is that bad?” Sarah asked, uncertain that she had received the compliment she craved.

  “Oh, non, Cherie!” Gabrielle answered. “I hear this is the way of the wild Kentuckians—very stubborn, but very brave, and determined to be free at any cost!” She smiled and came over to give her a brief hug. “You are the best of all, you know. My star pupil.”

  The words brought back the memory of Gabrielle’s cousin, but refusing to let the cold Alistair intrude into their comfortable companionship, Sarah asked, “And you, Gabrielle? What
kind of cat are you?”

  The tutor gave that some thought, then answered with a saucy grin, “I think, perhaps, I am not a cat. I am the fox, Cherie, wily and cunning, and not very well loved by those who keep the chicken coop.”

  “I don’t understand, Gabrielle,” Sarah said. When the other woman did not respond, she went on, “I don’t think you are like the fox, anyway, except maybe for your copper-colored hair and eyes, and the graceful way you walk. But surely everyone loves you! Even those who have chicken coops!”

  Gabrielle smiled sadly. “You would be surprised, then, Cherie. But it is this war, perhaps. It has everyone’s nerves on edge. I can see why your family moved to Kentucky! Your father is a wise man.”

  “But Pa did not move to Kentucky to escape the war,” Sarah said. “He wanted to claim new land. The war had not touched us in Miller’s Forks, except that my brother Nate joined the army. And he got that idea here in Williamsburg, when he was in school. He was involved in the Sons of Liberty. He heard the fiery speeches of Patrick Henry.”

  “Ah, oui! The Governor Henry with his, ‘Caesar had his Brutus, Oliver his Cromwell, and George the Third…may profit by their example!’ They say excited Patriots and disturbed Tories rioted in the taverns the day he uttered those words.” Gabrielle sat in thought a moment, then sighed. “Most of the Tories are gone now,” she said.

  Sarah frowned. Why did it matter? The fewer Tories, the better!

  “Nate says Mr. Henry also told the General Assembly, ‘I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!’” She laughed. “I guess Kentuckians and Virginians are a lot alike,” she added.

  “That was two years ago, and yet they all still follow their feisty governor like so many sheep,” Gabrielle said scornfully. “Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Waller, Tom Jefferson, even George Wythe, the most scholarly and learned man in Virginia!—all march behind Henry, playing their war games like little boys!”