American Queen by John Oller

Author:John Oller
Language: ara
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2014-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

22. “The Bird Has Flown”

There was not much time now—they would need to hurry. The Governor was dozing in a front room of the mansion, taking his customary late-afternoon nap after a swim in the bay, but he might rouse at any moment. He had his loyalists among the household staff—Morris the overseer, Ernest the black cook, and that officious, busybody relative of his, Arthur Watson, who had been keeping vigil over Kate and the children during their captivity the past two weeks. One of the help was sure to sound the alarm the moment they noticed the inmates’ escape. But Kate had her accomplices as well—Narragansett Pier locals she had taken into her confidence. Tom Handy would meet them with his carriage around back, beyond the stable and barns; Gaius Smith, the railroad depot clerk, made the arrangements with Handy and furnished a trunk for Kate’s belongings, and the nurses were dressing the three girls, awaiting the signal from Kate that all was ready. At half past five on this next-to-last day of August 1879, they took their flight.

First Kate, then the girls and their nurses, carrying as many personal items as they could, slipped out the back and hurried along a private lane past the Robinson family cemetery. Tom Handy picked up the girls and two nurses at the prearranged spot. After a feint in the direction of the waterfront village to throw off anyone who might have seen them, he drove them a few hundred yards inland to a place along Tower Hill Road, where Kate had gone to wait. A second horse-drawn wagon, driven by Richard Brown, joined them there. Kate was helped into the buggy while the girls and nurses were crammed into the four-seat wagon with the belongings they managed to smuggle out with them. With that, they took off over the interior road in the direction of Wickford, about eleven miles north on the water, where they planned to catch a boat for the shore of Massachusetts, from where they would travel overland up into New England and to the safety of friends. As the two vehicles drove as fast as the bumpy Tower Hill Road would allow them, on what would be a two-hour journey, the occupants looked nervously behind them at intervals for any signs of an approaching William Sprague.

Sitting alone in her carriage as it trudged along the Tower Hill Road, Kate knew she was saying her final good-bye to Canonchet. She had spent years turning it into the house of her dreams, but during those same years, as the house grew in grandeur and splendor, the love in her marital life had dissolved. Now all of it was gone. Backward though her thoughts must have drifted, she needed to look forward and to get to Wickford. She knew Sprague would not let them go without giving chase, which is why the passengers kept looking back, fearing to see him in pursuit.

Sprague had been catnapping on a sofa in the mansion, listening to the noise his children were making, when it suddenly ceased.

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