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9

Crown

APRIL–JUNE 1775

Marcus juggled the pail of fish between his hands and pushed open the door to Thoery Buckland was one of the few h he was neither the most prosperous nor the best educated, he was by far the safest choice if you wanted to survive a visit to the doctor The htly, announcing Marcus’s arrival

The surgeon’s orking in the front room, where Buckland’s equipment—forceps, teeth-pullers, and cauterization irons—lay in a glea row on a clean towel Pots of herbs, ery’s s overlooked Northampton’s main street so that interested passersby could witness the pain and suffering going on inside as Buckland set bones, peered intolimbs

“Marcus MacNeil What are you doing here?” Mercy Buckland looked up fro ointment into a stone crock

“I was hoping to trade soave my mother last ht at the falls south of Hadley”

“Does your father knohere you are?” Mrs Buckland had witnessed the arguht hi with Tom about how to make a salve to heal bruises After that, his father had forbidden hi to Northampton for cures Obadiah insisted that the fahted doctor in Hadley instead, as half as good and twice as expensive, but whose age and tendency to overindulge in spirits made him less likely to interfere in MacNeil family business

“There’s no point in asking, Mercy Marcus won’t answer He’s become ahead shining in the spring light “For ”

Marcus felt Mrs Buckland’s eyes on him as she studied his thin arms, the piece of rope that cinched his breeches to his narroaist, the hole in the toe of his left shoe, the patches on his blue-and-white-checked shirt made frorown on their farm

But he didn’t want the Bucklands’ pity He didn’t want anything—except some tisane Marcus’s mother was able to sleep after she had soeon’s wife had taught him as in it—valerian and hops and skullcap—but these plants weren’t grown in the MacNeil faarden

“Is there news froe the subject

“The Sons of Liberty are rallying against the Redcoats,” Toh his spectacles at the shelves in search of the right herbal mixture “Everyone is fired up, thanks to Dr Warren Sofield said h God hopes it won’t be another massacre”

“I heard the same, down at the falls,” Marcus replied It was hos traveled through to sossip at a time

Tom Buckland pressed a packet into his hand “For your mother”

“Thank you, Dr Buckland,” Marcus said, putting his pail on the counter “These are for you They’ll make a fine dinner”

“No, Marcus That’s too much,” Mercy protested “Half of that bucket is h for Thomas and me You should take the rest home I’ve moved the buttons on Thomas’s breeches twice this winter”

Marcus shook his head, refusing the offer “Thank you, Dr Buckland Mrs Buckland You keep it I’ve got to get home”

Tom tossed him a small crock “Salve For the extra fish We like to keep our accounts current You could put some of it on your eye”

Toht it was faded enough to risk a trip into Northa But Tom was sharp-eyed and didn’t miss much

“I stepped on a hay rake, and the handle hit me square in the face You kno clumsy I am, Dr Buckland” Marcus opened the shop door and tipped his moth-eaten hat at the couple “Thank you for the tisane”

—

MARCUS BORROWED A RICKETY RAFT to cross the river rather than take the ferry, and was on the puddled road back ho struck down by a rider on a fast horse headed toward the center of Hadley

“What’s happened?” Marcus snatched at the horse’s reins in a vain attempt to hold the animal still

“Our ton Blood has been shed,” the rider cried out, his lungs heaving with effort He turned the horse’s head, ripping the reins frohouse

Marcus ran the rest of the way back to the MacNeil far to join the rass in front of the garden gate, narrowly avoiding a furious goose that snapped at his breeches as he passed

“Bloody goose,” Marcus said under his breath If not for the eggs, he would have wrung the creature’s neck long ago

He slipped through the front door with its faded red paint Old Widow Noble said the split in the door’s upper panel was a relic of an Indian raid that had taken place in the last century—but the old wohosts, and headless horseular ticking of his mother’s old clock on the mantel in the parlor

“I heard the bell” Catherine MacNeil rushed out froround floor of the house, drying her hands on a worn towel His mother was pale, and her eyes were dark-ri, his father was always off drinking with his friends, and the winter had been hard and long

“The ar out the militia”

“Boston? Is it safe?” As far as Catherine was concerned, the city of her childhood was the center of the world, and everything that was great or good came from there

At the moment, Marcus was less concerned with the threat Boston faced than with the one that shared their hearth and home

“Where’s Pa?” Marcus asked

“Ahtened “Your father won’t be back anytime soon”

Soone for days and returned with torn clothes and bruises, his knuckles bleeding and his breath ston and be back again before his father sobered up and noticed his son was

Marcus went into the parlor and took the old blunderbuss from the hooks over the fireplace

“Your grandfather MacNeil owned that gun,” his mother said “He had it when he arrived from Ireland”

“I reers over the old wooden stock Grandfather MacNeil had told hiun: the first tih to eat, how he’d carried it when they went out to hunt wolves when Pelham and Amherst were just tiny settlements

“What will I tell your father when he comes back?” His ht happen if there’s another war”

Obadiah had fought in the last war against the French He had been the flower of the localMarcus’s father andplans for i the farm he had purchased, or so Catherine rens weak in body and broken in spirit, caught between conflicting loyalties to kin and king