Jack Donovan had sent Dex out to the street to keep watch while the rest of us bustled around the house taking care of last-minute chores. I was in the dining room fiddling with an arrangement of chrysanthemums and heliopsis in a cut crystal vase when young Dex came tearing through the front door shouting, ‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’
Within minutes, our entire household converged on the landing where Jack arranged us in two lines, one on each side of the steps, fussing over the alignment as if we were cars on his showroom floor. After switching Amy and French – the pecking order had to be maintained – Jack vacillated between positioning himself at the foot of the steps or at the massive front door, finally deciding that he’d stand near the gate so that he could be the first to shake George Washington’s hand.
Spectators lined Prince George Street, too, their cameras on lock-and-load. Someone had provided them with miniature flags – the fifty-star variety – but probably nobody noticed, they were flapping so briskly.
We heard the fife and drum before we saw it – playing ‘Yankee Doodle’ and ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home,’ which I thought was a Civil War song, but never mind. As I strained on tiptoe to see, two drummers and a fifer appeared. Dressed in red uniforms, they led the little parade straight down the street in our direction. Directly behind the musicians, mounted on a white horse, rode George Washington, accompanied by two uniformed aides, also on horseback. Sitting straight-backed and tall in the saddle, Washington looked splendid in a dark blue uniform decorated with gold braid and epaulets, as if he’d stepped right out of a portrait by Charles Wilson Peale. As he drew closer, Washington lifted his cocked hat, and the crowd went wild.
‘Who is that?’ Amy whispered. ‘He looks familiar.’
‘He really looks like George Washington, doesn’t he?’ I squinted, trying to focus on the actor’s face. Jutting brow, square chin, a prominent nose, the actor’s imperial features fairly screamed authority. No wonder Washington had been unanimously chosen to lead our fledgling nation. ‘Wait a minute! I think that’s David Morse!’
‘Who’s David Morse?’
‘The actor who played Washington in the John Adams series on HBO.’
Amy pressed a hand to her breast. ‘No way!’
Washington’s entourage halted at our gate and the actor dismounted, handing his reins to Jeffrey Wiley, Jack’s valet, who had been standing on the curb.
‘Welcome to Patriot House!’ Jack’s voice rang out.
Again, the crowd cheered.
‘Take care of the horses, Jeffrey, and ask Cook to rustle up something to feed Colonel Washington’s men.’
Standing on the steps directly across from me, ‘Cook’ gave Jack the evil eye, but she waited until Colonel Washington had passed into the entrance hall, curtseying along with the rest of us, before motioning for French to follow her down the steps and around to the outside door that led to the kitchen.
‘Think Karen’ll poison Jack’s hot milk tonight?’ Amy wondered.
‘It wouldn’t surprise me,’ I said as I led the rest of the household into the entrance hall.
Gabe, being the youngest, was the last to be introduced. He’d been waiting patiently by the punch bowl, hands locked behind his back, but when the moment came, he bowed slightly at the waist and said, as if he’d been practicing, ‘Welcome to Patriot House, your majesty.’
Washington snorted. ‘I’m but a humble colonel from Virginia, my lad.’
Gabe blushed, flustered. ‘Can I touch your sword, sir?’ he stammered.
With an indulgent smile, Washington unbuckled his belt and handed it and the sword over to Gabe, who sagged under the weight. ‘It’s heavy, isn’t it, son?’
Gabe nodded.
Jack Donovan snapped his fingers and Jeffrey appeared out of nowhere to relieve Washington of his hat and Gabe of the sword. I took the moment to lean closer, look up into the actor’s face and whisper, ‘You’re David Morse, right?’
George Washington winked a bright blue eye and said, ‘It’s been a long, hard ride, madam, and an even rougher crossing on the ferry. If that bowl contains punch, I could certainly use a cup.’
By the time dinner was served at three, we were all a bit tiddly. Jack lurched toward the head of the table while I sat down (carefully!) at the opposite end, one hand steadying my wig to keep it from slipping over my eyebrows. After I’d been seated, Colonel Washington took the chair to my right. His entourage, I learned after the food had been fulsomely blessed, had assembled on the campus of St John’s College, where they’d been filmed in front of McDowell Hall, another Georgian treasure that had been built in 1742 by Thomas Bladen, the Maryland colonial governor.
Over soup, the discussion moved on, focusing on the business of the Continental Congress at Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia. While French bustled about the table removing the soup plates, the room fell quiet for a moment.
Melody, evidently forgetting that in this century, children remained silent unless spoken to, took advantage of the pause in conversation to comment, ‘Mr Rainey taught us about the First Continental Congress in school.’
‘It may be the first Continental Congress,’ George Washington pointed out with a grin, ‘but we don’t call it “first” because the second one hasn’t happened yet.’
Below her powdered ringlets, Melody wrinkled her snow-white brow, as if trying to work that one out. Like me, she wore a thin veneer of zinc oxide on her face. We’d brightly rouged our cheeks and lips, but Melody looked surprisingly un-clown-like, while I could be applying for admission to Ringling Brothers Clown College. Up in my room that morning, giggling, Melody’d plastered a tiny half-moon to her cheek where a dimple ought to be. She’d argued for a half-moon patch over her left breast, too, but I’d put my silk slipper-clad foot firmly down. Breast patches are for harlots. Now you know.
‘Twelve colonies have sent delegates,’ Washington was saying when I tuned back in. ‘I, as you know, represent Virginia.’
‘Only twelve?’ Alex Mueller asked, being the dancer, not the historian among us. He’d clearly skimmed over the history tab in his orientation packet and hadn’t exactly been poring over books in the library.
‘Georgia is a state full of convicts,’ Washington replied, as if that explained everything.
Melody piped up again. ‘Like Australia?’
‘Exactly like Australia.’
‘What are you meeting about, then?’ Melody asked.
‘We’re there to discuss the taxes that have been levied against us of late by the British Parliament. You’ve heard of the Boston Tea Party?’
Melody and Gabe bobbed their heads.
‘That was our first act of protest. Now we’re considering a boycott of all trade with Britain if King George III doesn’t heed our petition and redress our specific grievances.’
‘We have a similar situation here in Annapolis,’ Jack chimed in. ‘Two days ago, the brig Peggy Stewart arrived in Annapolis carrying at least a ton of tea, as well as fifty-three indentured servants. Stewart has paid the tax so that the human cargo can be off-loaded, but in spite of the tax being paid, customs is justly refusing to let the tea come ashore. There’s to be another meeting of the committee in two days time, but until then, we have a stalemate.’
As Jack nattered on as if sucked through a time warp into 1774, I fought the almost overwhelming urge to stick the oyster fork underneath my wig and give my itchy scalp a good scratch. Fortunately, Jeffrey arrived – dressed in white gloves and full livery – bearing a platter upon which our roast pig lay in all its splendor.