Letters

From one of these latter — an aged, notorious former whore named Mag Mungummory, he learnt three valuable things. 1st, that Ebenezer & Anna Cooke’s childhood nurse, Roxanne Russecks, née Édouard, had had a romance with their father, Andrew Cooke II, and borne him a daughter named Henrietta Russecks (as shown on the family tree, or thicket, in my last), who herself later bore a daughter named Nancy Russecks McEvoy. 2nd, that Mag Mungummory’s mother, Mary, call’d in her prime “the Traveling Whore o’ Dorset,” had once known Henry Burlingame III himself, in various of his guises, & fear’d him — tho of his disputed role in the Bloodsworth Island Conspiracy, Mag knew nothing. 3rd, that about the same time when Ebenezer Cooke regain’d his lost estate by marrying the whore Joan Toast, and Henry Burlingame III left Cooke’s Point for Bloodsworth Island, and Henrietta Russecks married one John McEvoy, this Mary Mungummory had purchased from Roxanne Édouard Russecks a tavern own’d by the miller Harry Russecks, Roxanne’s late husband. She had establisht a brothel in its upper storey and flourisht with the common-law husband of her old age, the miller’s brother, Harvey Russecks. Mag herself, the fruit of this autumnal union, had inherited the business on her parents’ death and, tho nearly 80 at the time of this interview, continued to operate both tavern & brothel with the aid of a young woman she’d taken in as an orphan’d relative four years past.

The establishment was the same in which my father was lodging, and where this conversation was taking place: Russecks Tavern, near Church Creek, below Cambridge. The young woman — herself chaste, tho uncommonly worldly for her age — was the same he had been unable to take his eyes off thro this interview as she bustled about the place. More, she was the Nancy Russecks McEvoy aforemention’d, whose family had been lost at sea in the ship Duldoon out of Piraeus for Cadiz in 1771. Then only fifteen, she had made her way from Paris to Philadelphia & thence to Maryland to seek her one known relative, her great-uncle Harvey Russecks. In his place she found his daughter (still call’d by her old working name, “Mag the Magnificent,” but by Nancy rechristen’d “Magnanimous Maggie”), who had welcomed her as a grandchild, seen as best she could to her education, protected her from the establishment’s rougher patrons — and gratified, insofar as she was able, the girl’s tireless curiosity about her ancestry. Perhaps Mr. Burlingame could be of assistance in this last? Hither a moment, pretty Nancy…

And so my mother & father meet — he nearly 30, she nearly 20—and their matchmaker withdraws for the present, tho she has one crucial thing more to do for us. And they very soon fall in love, Henry & Nancy, whilst the country goes to war. Colonel Arnold’s plan to move against Ticonderoga has been approved by Massachusetts; but to mollify Connecticut, which is jealous of both Massachusetts & New York, Arnold must yield command of the operation to the “Vermonter” Ethan Allen, who himself would separate New Hampshire from New York even if it means “making this state a British province” (so he assures Governor Haldimand of Canada in secret letters!). Even so, jealous officers in Massachusetts mount an inquiry into Arnold’s “conduct,” about the same time that Ethan Allen is superseded by a rival of his own as commander of the “Green Mountain Boys.” Both men angrily resign their commissions & return to Cambridge, where Burr, having ignored his tutor’s advice and stay’d with Washington, is dying of inaction. All three take up the Canadian campaign — but Allen, under General Montgomery, gets the key assignment of moving from Ticonderoga to take Montreal, whilst Arnold & Burr must take the bitter northern route thro the Maine woods from Castine — named for our 1st émigré Baron — to Quebec. (The 3rd crucial thrust, to Niagara thro the Mohawk Valley, is never mounted.)

As A. & B. freeze, Nancy & Henry bask in Chesapeake Indian summer (still call’d Goose-summer then, after the millions of wild geese moving down from Canada as “our” troops move north); they admire the rusty foliage & browning marsh grass, the endless clamoring vees in the limpid sky; they move thro the gossamers named for the season named for the geese and spun delicately out, like their own feelings, from every reed, rope, twig.