Some Trust in Chariots

By Rose Healey

Copyright 2006

One

Why does a certain set of people, and not another, come together to endure the unimagined dangers of life? Is it coincidence? Fate? The workings of a higher power? Or is it a little bit of everything, born not of the desire to suffer alone, but of the desire not to die alone? Whatever the reason, in the latter years of the 18th century, we were that certain set of people. And even as events encircled us or took our lives, we were confident that we would not have wanted to bear those trials in the company of anybody else.

I'm sure our association began much earlier, but I remember that cool, misty day in September, 1793. I was playing in the garden of our home in Philadelphia, shivering in the flimsy sunlight. Margaret, my beloved guinea pig, nosed the short, stiff grass, purring as I stroked her cheek. I was only twelve. Despite the uncomfortable weather, my entire life at that moment consisted of nothing more than happily sitting on that fragrant stubble, communing with my pet. I was so ignorant of what had been happening around me that when my father walked toward me on the flagstone path, I never wondered why he was home when he should have been at work.

"Come along, Janet," he was saying, "There's something very important that I'd like you to do."

I reached for Margaret, but Papa took me by the hand and quickly led me into the house. The back door opened onto the kitchen. Dona, my governess, was stuffing a loaf of bread into a canvass sack. She was short and round and pretty, with a creamy complexion, rosy cheeks and chestnut hair. When she saw me her eyes twinkled, and she smiled.

"We will have fun, cherie. There's nothing in life as invigorating as a good flight!"

"A good what?" I asked stupidly, as Papa gently pulled me through the house to the entrance vestibule.

The front door was open, allowing a partial view of a stagewagon at the curb. It was an open vehicle that had a roof from which blinds could be lowered in times of rain, and four backless benches set one behind the other the length of the wagon; the driver's seat was outside, in front. Stagewagons usually carried travelers between the city and points beyond, but the wagon parked outside my home that morning carried luggage and four toddler girls who were chattering nonsense and slamming their quilted dolls against the benches.

Papa brought me to the wagon, where I had a better view of the carnage. The smile he cast upon the destroyers was angelic. "These are the latest orphans of the parish, Jannie. I'd like you to help Mrs. McHenry and Dona bring them to Mrs. Allard's establishment in Princeton. They'll be safer there. So will you."

Mrs. McHenry, our housekeeper, was a hefty woman who must have been no more than thirty, but who always impressed me as aged. She had faded brown hair, a sallow, faintly lined complexion, and a manner void of joy. Immense with child, she directed a slender teenage boy in a dark green coat how to place a trunk between the seats.

In those days I lost no love on small children, and the thought of being confined with them for hours nearly made me sick to my stomach. I consoled myself by petting the bay geldings in the traces. "These are Sinecure and Stipend, the rector's horses, aren't they?"

Papa said they were indeed.

The horse nearest me, Stipend, chuckled as I rubbed his nose.

"Is Father DeWaere driving?" I asked.

"No, sweets, he's needed here. His son, Christian, will take you."

I dropped my arms and stepped back from Stipend, who followed me, bringing Sinecure with him. Papa took each horse by the cheek strap and pushed it backward into the street, unaware that the boy behind the wagon was instinctively lunging for the vehicle as it moved. I looked away as Mrs. McHenry gasped and something heavy hit the stones. The toddlers giggled. Papa stared at me benevolently, oblivious to the little havoc he had just created. "What's the matter, Jannie?"

I didn't know what to tell Papa. Christian DeWaere was, for me, a cherished agony. At eighteen, he was much older than I. Because our fathers were friends and active in the community, I had grown up hearing about him, and I liked him with intense secrecy. I wished he could like me back, but I knew that I wished in vain: Children have no place in the lives of young men. I was nothing to Christian DeWaere. I didn't know if I should be glad or annoyed that he was driving me somewhere.

I stole another glance at the back of the carriage. Christian--or Kit, as everybody called him--was holding Mrs. McHenry's lavishly embroidered handkerchief to his nose. He had a face that reminded me of a deer--a straight nose, large, trusting eyes and not much chin. Though it was tied back in the style of the time, his hair was a thick, light-brown tangle that glinted different shades of gold and red in the sunlight. Mrs. McHenry flitted around him, flicking street dust from his coat.

Dona came alongside Papa and me. She had slung the lumpy sack of food over her shoulder, crushing her short velvet coat. She smiled brilliantly. "Come along, cherie!" she cried, holding out her hand.

Papa kissed the top of my head. "Be good, Jannie. And be a better help."

Kit opened the wagon door, and Dona handed me up the step and onto the seat beside Mrs. McHenry. Dona followed, calling two of the toddlers to sit beside her. Mrs. McHenry took charge of the other two. Mercifully, I was left with nobody to look after except myself.

Settling down, I saw Papa look at Kit as if seeing him for the first time. "What happened to you?" The surprise was genuine.

A lesser youth would have railed about the idiot who had backed up a vehicle without looking. Not Kit DeWaere. He touched the handkerchief to the dripping tip of his nose and calmly claimed, "Gravity."

Mystified, but too much of a gentleman to admit it, Papa put his arm around the boy's shoulders and walked him away from the carriage. I heard him murmur, "Precious cargo, Kit. Are you able to drive?"

"Yes, sir." He lowered the handkerchief as if to prove he could control the horses with two hands.

"You know you may be turned away from New Jersey."

"Not to worry, Mr. Tunnicliffe. I'll go north if that happens. We'll find a crossing."

Papa nodded, clapped Kit's shoulder with paternal fervor, then shook his hand. The two looked into each other's eyes, nodded in an agreement that I could not at the time understand, and broke away. Without another word, Kit climbed onto the driver's seat and turned the horses toward the road that would take us out of Philadelphia.

The trip began merrily enough. Dona, a sixteen-year-old French girl who spoke like an English aristocrat, entertained us with stories about how she had fled Paris at the height of the Revolution. "Ah, thank God for Julienne and her sisters! When the authorities arrested my parents, they dressed me like a kitchen maid, dirtied my face, made me cast off my shoes and stockings, and brought me to the country in an ox cart. I even pretended to nurse Julienne's baby, knowing that the authorities would never imagine a noblewoman doing such a thing in public!" Dona laughed loudly, but quickly covered her mouth with her hand and hunched forward, cringing. "Omondieu! You don't think Kit heard that, do you?"

Mrs. McHenry's eye was sharp. "If he did, my dear, I think we may be assured that, should tragedy befall us on the road, he'll die happy, having been filled with the image of your noble sacrifice."

Dona playfully swatted the woman's knee. Mrs. McHenry smiled, shifted position with effort. Dona was concerned. "Would you prefer a boy or a girl, Mrs. M?"

"I would prefer whoever it is to be of the age of majority and far away from me."

Dona studied the housekeeper's pale face. "One day, when the madness has passed, you'll come to Paris with me," she said, suddenly serious. "You too, Janet. We'll find Mrs. M a French husband, someone who will appreciate her and her gifts for making a comfortable, happy home. Julienne has cousins who work as footmen and farriers. They are good men. Hard-working. Reliable. And faithful, as my own experience with them taught me. Indeed, I swear to you, until I had nothing--no clothes, no food, no home, no family--I did not know what it was to live. Until I had nothing, all I thought about was what would happen next to make me happy. I was clothed, fed, amused both at my whim and without asking. I thought of nobody and nothing except myself. Until one day I had nothing except a handful of good people who gave me help and protection, and by their actions taught me what it really means to live well. I'm still learning. I shall never stop learning, thanks to people like Julienne and her family, and thanks to people like you, Mr. Tunnicliffe, and the DeWaeres, who make me want to live and make a life that reaches far beyond myself."

Mrs. McHenry grunted approval. "I think Kit heard THAT, my dear," she said, nodding toward the driver's seat.

It was then that I noticed the silence. Until that moment, Kit had been gently encouraging the horses with kind words and clucks. I noticed, too, that we were stopping. Carts and wagons clustered along the side of the road, surrounded by coffins of every taste and expense. A man approached on foot, saying something about no access to the road.

"Why, what's the matter? " I cried. "Why are these coffins here?"

Dona and Mrs. McHenry hushed me, but Kit turned to me. "That's how bad the contagion has grown, Jan. Our fathers and countless other citizens have been trying to stop it, but nothing's working. These men do what many people can't do for their loved ones: they take the dead and see that they're buried quickly."

"We need to get out of here quickly," Mrs. McHenry said between her teeth.

"Gladly, Mrs. M, but may I remind you that the law doesn't allow carriages to go faster than a brisk walk--"

"Just drive, Kit."

"But, Mrs. M--"

"Kit, if you don't move, I'll drop my infant out of me quicker than a heifer."

Kit urged Stipend and Sinecure into the fastest walk allowed by law.

We drove around town a great deal but never seemed to leave behind the houses, roads and buildings that we knew so well. Mrs. McHenry said we should go back to Father DeWaere and tell him it was impossible to leave, but Kit was confident. "What's impossible is getting down to where the bridges are--at the Delaware, where the contagion's said to be worst. Let's go north. We're bound to find a crossing somewhere."

"Coryell's Ferry, with our luck," said Mrs. McHenry, referring to the crossing scores of miles away.

So we drove north. Slowly, the city gave way to fields, farms and roadside inns. Every here and there small houses or fieldstone cottages bordered the road. Bright, autumn foliage stood out against the mottled gray sky in a combination that I would later connect with dreaded events, but that morning I had little to concern myself with. Mrs. McHenry controlled the toddlers, and Dona bored them to sleep with her stories about growing up in France before the Revolution. Every now and then Kit would pull off the road to rest the horses.

The first night should have taught me that ours was no ordinary trip. We could not find a place to sleep, as the inns were filled with people who had already fled the city. When Kit asked an innkeeper if he knew any farmers who might shelter us in home or barn, the man sharply replied that nobody he knew was of a mind to shelter strangers lately come from Philadelphia.

"Why not?" I asked. The man looked at me as if I were an idiot child.

Kit drew me away and smiled that calm, reassuring smile of his. "Don't trouble yourself, Jan," he said in confidence. "If the individual can't make room for us, then he's not the kind of person we want to do business with."

We piled back into the wagon. As twilight tinted the world a deep, dusty pink, Mrs. McHenry told Kit he should use the letter of introduction his father had given him to find lodgings with members of the nearest parish. Kit said he wished he could oblige, but no churches were in sight.

"Then stop at the first house we see," Mrs. McHenry commanded. "There should be no trouble. My goodness, your father is a chaplain for the Congress, not some uneducated retailer from the wharves."

"Yes, Mrs. M," Kit said.

He spoke out of respect, but he must have known that our search would be in vain: the first few homes we passed were farmhouses shuttered for the night.

The wagon had no lamps. Kit pulled off the road, lit a lantern so we could better see what we were doing, then unhitched Sinecure and Stipend and tied them to the trees. Dona and Mrs. McHenry lowered the wagon's blinds. Wrapped tightly in our cloaks, propped against the luggage, we ladies took the toddlers and huddled together for warmth as the temperature dropped slightly below comfort. Kit stayed with the horses. I've no idea how long we tried to slumber before he made a small fire and invited us to sit close. I could still feel the warmth of the flames on my face as I fell asleep, comforted by the heat and assured that Kit would stay awake to fuel the pleasantly crackling blaze. Dona jokingly called him Vestal Virgin, a reference to the women who kept watch over the sacred fire of ancient Rome.

The next two days were a repetition of the first. Nowhere could we find either the elusive crossing to New Jersey or a place to rest. Once our provisions were gone, we ate at inns or bought bread and milk or cider from farms along the road. The expense consumed our funds. Faced with hunger and no money for the ferry, Kit decided to sell Sinecure and Stipend along with the wagon. We were compelled to walk, burdened by two trunks and the four small beings that seemed to fuss every minute of their waking hours. Kit and Dona each carried a child and dragged a trunk with their free hand. Mrs. McHenry and I managed one toddler apiece. My back ached as I bent to accommodate their miserably short stature. Sometimes a carriage or wagon passed us on the road, but nobody offered a lift.

"They fear we've got the contagion on us," said Mrs. McHenry.

"The contagion," Dona muttered bitterly. "Their lack of charity is a contagion."

"As evidenced by your disposition," Kit said.

Dona groaned. "I'm not like you, 'Father' DeWaere." I refuse to suffer in silence, especially when people think evil of me when they don't know me."

Kit was unflustered by the girl's petulance. "Don't mind what people think, or what Mrs. McHenry thinks people think! We're all together, reasonably fed, reasonably rested and, what's most important, reasonably away from the city. I'll wager anyone that we're close to a crossing. All we need to do is turn east at the next crossroad. So keep your eyes open for the next crossroad, Jan. Can you do that for us?"

I nodded, and Kit sought to hearten us with a few verses of William Billings' anthem "Africa," the one that begins, "Now shall my inward joy arise and burst into a song."

After hours on the road without a town or crossroad in sight, Mrs. McHenry suggested we preserve our sorely acquired funds by hunting for our meat. I recall that Kit continued walking. Mrs. McHenry quickened her pace until she was in front of him. He stopped.

"Did you hear me, Kit? We need to hunt. Where's your pistol?"

Kit hesitated. "You can't hunt with a pistol. The range is too short. You have to move in so close, you scare the animal away."

"Get the pistol, Kit."

He set down the toddler, opened the trunk he was pulling, placed every folded article of clothing it contained one by one on the road, then took out the long narrow box that held the pistol.

Mrs. McHenry stood over his shoulder, impatiently tapping her foot, as he painstakingly pulled back the hammer until it clicked, tore open a paper cartridge that held black powder and shot, tapped powder from the cartridge into the pan near the hammer, poured the rest of the powder down the barrel, shoved the ball and paper in after it, and then tamped everything down with the little rammer that attached to the gun beneath the barrel. Mrs. McHenry was noisily clearing her throat when he stood and commenced to peer for a long time into the woods at the side of the road. It was a cool, bright day. Sunlight fanned through the early autumn woods, making it hard to discern game amid the confusion of brightly colored leaves. After some moments in which he never left the spot where he stood, Kit admitted, "I don't see anything."

Snorting with disdain, Mrs. McHenry took the pistol and shouldered into the dense foliage farther back from the road. Kit shrugged. "She seems to know what she's doing."

"More than you, mon cher," Dona said softly.

The sound of the muffled explosion was closer than we expected, and we jumped.

With a triumphant holler, Mrs. McHenry burst from the woods, a bloody squirrel flapping from her fist. "Dinner, children! Now all we need is a knife. Excuse me, sir?" she shouted at Kit. " Did you just say, 'I don't have one'?"

Kit nodded.

Mrs. McHenry could not believe what she was hearing. "How did you think we were going to skin it, with our teeth?"

Undeterred in her quest for food, Mrs. McHenry broke a stick so it had a sharp end and set off to part our dinner from its fur.

We found a pretty, sun-dappled clearing around a massive, ivy-girdled oak tree. Kit managed to start a fire, but he refused to eat Mrs. McHenry's kill. He said Mrs. McHenry could have his share, as she was eating for two. I think Mrs. McHenry ate most of the little animal. Dona and I could do no better than gnaw upon a roasted leg apiece. The toddlers gummed stringy slivers, then lay about us, rolled into thumb-sucking balls.

Mrs. McHenry propped herself against the mossy base of the oak, folded her arms across her girth, and dozed. Dona read a French novel. Kit opened his sketchbook on his knees. He worked quickly, with light, feathery strokes that formed images of the carts and coffins in the streets of Philadelphia.

"Why are you drawing that?" I asked, slightly repulsed.

He took no offence. "Because these things should be remembered."

"Why don't you just write about them?"

"Because everybody else is going to be writing about them. Why? What's the matter, Jan? You look disgusted."

"People want nice pictures hanging in their homes. Those aren't nice."

Kit smiled and added a few more strokes of charcoal. "I'll tell you a secret," he offered. "I want to illustrate the Bible with scenes of what we left behind, and of what we find along the way."

I knelt beside him. "What do you mean?"

He tapped the picture of the coffins. "This could be used in Revelation. This--" a rendering of an empty street--"would serve for Lamentations. You know, 'Behold how the city sits solitary.'"

"And this?" I pointed to the image of Mrs. McHenry preparing to stab the dead squirrel with the broken stick.

"Judith slaying Holofernes?" Kit tried.

I knew the story about the Hebrew heroine who slew the enemy general. The story's familiarity did not console me. I hugged myself against a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. "They frighten me."

"The pictures? Why, cherie?" Dona sat beside Kit, carefully tucking her skirts around her legs. "It's only life. Life is what afflicts us while we wait for death."

"Are you afraid?" Kit asked her.

Her chin quivered. "I can't believe that I should have survived one hell to meet my end in another. I'm not ready to die. I think of all that has happened to me, and I wonder, 'What have I done with my life until now?' And the answer is always the same: Nothing." She hid her face in Kit's shoulder, lest I see the tears that accompanied her sniffles.

Kit put his arm around her. "It's not what we do with our lives that matters. What matters is what we do for the lives of others. You haven't been living for yourself. You've been a blessing to Mr. Tunnicliffe. You've even turned Janet into a young lady. She couldn't draw, sew or boil water until you taught her."

I was irked that he should comfort the girl at my expense, but he softened the blow by winking at me over Dona's head. "Cheer up! We've come this far; we'll go farther. I won't let anything happen to you--or to any of us."

Dona sat up, touching tears from her blotchy face. Her smile was brave. "If anything bad does happen...I can think of no other people that I would rather be with." She held out her hand to me, and I took it. "We will be friends for life, Janet. The three of us."

"What about Mrs. M?" I asked, thinking it rude to exclude her.

Dona studied the sleeping woman, then turned glistening eyes upon Kit and me. "How shall I say this so you don't think I'm mad?" she whispered. "I can't see her with us. She's gone. Not there. It's as if she never existed. I'm going out of my mind, am I not?"

Kit regarded Dona with wide-eyed honesty. "Sometimes...I feel that way about my father."

"Oh, mon cher, you mustn't. There's no worse feeling in the world than being bereft of your parents. You ask yourself, 'Who will take care of me now?"

Dona stroked his hair with gentle determination, as if she was goading Margaret into purring. There was something about Kit's expression that suggested he would indeed purr, and I listened for the sound to begin low in his throat. Within moments, he and Dona were nuzzling each other. Their foreheads came together. Kit framed Dona's face with his hands as he kissed her, and Dona's hands were roaming inside Kit's coat. The sketchbook slid to the ground, still open to the image of the squirrel slayer.

The third friend for life sensed with no small bitterness that she had no place in the affection flaming between the other two, and she silently removed herself from their presence.