The Tea Chest by Heidi Chiavaroli

Author:Heidi Chiavaroli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Christian / Historical, FICTION / Women
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2020-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Emma

May we ever be a people favoured of God. May our land be a land of liberty, the seat of virtue, the asylum of the oppressed, a name and a praise in the whole earth.

GENERAL JOSEPH WARREN

MEDFORD, MASSACHUSETTS

APRIL 1775

The hard lump that spoke of new life growing within my womb seemed to contradict the preparations for battle around me. The preparations for the taking of life, rather than the birthing of it—endlessly grinding sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal to be made into gunpowder; wrapping it in paper packets crudely called “cartridges”; even melting lead and pressing it into molds to make musket balls.

Life with Noah, living out our love in the back of his simple printing shop, had proved everything I dreamed. Yet while the work of being his wife was satisfying, I couldn’t ignore the doubt that rose within me at the melting of the snows that seemed to propel us toward an inevitable future, one that included battle.

Noah would be a part of it—that much was never a question. Among the first to join the Medford militia, he spent most of his time hunched over his press, printing news for those hungry for it in Boston’s outlying towns, mostly Patriots who had fled Boston more than a year ago after word of the port closure—our punishment for the dumping of the tea.

It did not seem to matter a whit that the Sons tried to separate themselves from the unruly Mohawks and mobs that ran amok in Boston’s streets—King George peered right past it all. But the rest of the colonies did not. Like siblings who sympathized over the harsh discipline of a brother, all rallied around Boston, even as loyalists sought refuge there, among some four thousand members of the King’s Army.

Supplies coming out of Boston had dwindled with the increasing presence of the king’s troops. The distillery where John worked ran short on molasses. The thriving marketplace, where so many country traders from New Hampshire and Vermont visited to peddle their brassware and broadcloths, silks and spring locks, grew pitiable. And Mr. Hall’s—now Captain Hall’s—lightering business, which made it possible to send Medford’s goods down the river and into Boston, had become nonexistent.

The call to arms came in the dark of night before dawn on the nineteenth of April. A rider came barreling through our streets, shouting. I woke to it, stretched my fingers to the warmth of Noah’s body beneath our coverlet, terror seizing my chest.

I knew the time would come, and yet I had denied it.

Noah pulled me close for a moment, where I huddled in the crook of his arm for much too short a time; then he pressed a kiss to my forehead and caressed the expanding mound where our child grew before throwing the covers back and pulling on clothes.

I emerged from the bedroom in my dressing gown, poked to life the embers of the stove to heat water for something warm to fill my husband’s belly. Noah went outside to confer with Captain Hall, the commander of our militia.

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