Loyalty by Avi

Author:Avi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

Part 4

1774

Friday, September 2, 1774, continued

In the morning, having slept poorly, I woke tired and distressed. All those people in Cambridge, had they done anything? Had war begun? I listened for gunshots. Cannon fire. All I heard were church bells, which rang the way they always did, slowly, gravely.

The bells reminded me of Father, which led, with greater force, to what my mother had said about him. Why had she never said anything like that before? I could not help but remember what Father often said: “It was pride that turned angels into devils and humility that made men angels.” She said he believed he was right about everything. Was she suggesting Father was full of pride?

It was too hard for me to consider. Instead, I made myself get up, only to realize I’d overslept. I rushed out—ignoring my mother’s pleas to stay. The truth is I was afraid to speak to her.

The streets appeared normal and calm. People were going about their regular Boston busyness. I went straight to the Green Dragon. When I got there, Jolla demanded: “Where have you been?”

I’d forgotten he wouldn’t know. “Long story. Can I explain?”

“Get to work first. Tell me later.”

I threw myself into my tasks, cleaning tables, gathering dirty dishes. What I wanted to gather was news.

I soon learned that the patrons all knew about the taking of the Charlestown powder. They said nothing about shooting deaths, though they knew the wild rumors. They also knew that something like four thousand wrathful rebels had assembled in Cambridge from all over New England because they believed there had been a massacre by the British army.

I discovered that it was Doctor Warren—with other rebel leaders—who had gone to Cambridge and told the great crowd that there had been no killing in Charlestown, that the British were not about to attack, that all of it was false rumors. Doctor Warren and his friends were somehow able to break the fever and get those vast numbers of people to disperse. I was glad that some rebels had sense. People were already referring to what happened as no more than a “powder alarm.”

By afternoon, my feelings grew so disturbed by the combination of what I had witnessed in Cambridge and what my mother had said that I could no longer contain myself. I needed to talk, and Jolla was the only person I could talk to. I felt an almost desperate need to tell him what I had seen in Cambridge and to figure out what it meant—and to do that, I was convinced, I would have to start with what had happened in Tullbury. It all seemed connected, though I hardly knew why or how to put all the pieces together.

I waited for a lull in the tavern, and when one occurred, I found Jolla and said, “I need to tell you where I was yesterday.” We went out back, sat down, and right off—having practiced in my mind—I made myself say, “I can’t tell you about yesterday until you know how my father died.

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