Someone shouted, “To the palace!”
Stepping back against a building, Amanda inhaled sharply. The cry was going up on the air. The mob seemed to seethe, the people within it angry, impassioned, ugly in their reckless force.
“Stop, stop!” a voice called out.
Amanda climbed upon shop steps to see. It was Peyton Randolph. Carter Nicholas was at his side, Eric was behind him.
The noise from the crowd dimmed. Randolph began to speak, advising the people that they might defeat their own purpose. They needed to issue a protest drafted in the Common Hall.
Carter Nicholas echoed the warnings, and then Eric spoke, urging everyone to caution.
Slowly the crowd dispersed.
Jostled in the sudden stream of humanity, Amanda was startled when she was suddenly clutched from behind and turned around to meet her husband’s angry eyes. “I told you to go back to sleep!”
“But, Eric—”
“Damn you, Amanda, I am trying to avoid the shedding of your dear Tory Dunmore’s blood. Jacques is taking you back to Cameron Hall. Today. I want you out of this!”
She tried to protest, he wasn’t about to allow it.
And by noon she was on her way home.
News trickled to her slowly at Cameron Hall. She listened avidly to the servants, and she eagerly awaited the news in theVirginia Gazette.
The people drafted a demand to know why the governor had taken their weapons. Dunmore replied that he had been concerned about a slave insurrection and had removed the powder for safety’s sake.
Eric arrived exhausted one evening to tell her that meetings had been taking place elsewhere. Randolph and Nicholas had managed to keep the people of Williamsburg under control, but the people of Caroline County had authorized the release of gunpowder to the volunteers gathered at Bowling Green. Edmund Pendleton, however, chairman of that committee, would not allow action until he heard from Peyton Randolph.
Fourteen companies of light horse had gathered in Fredericksburg, and they were ready to ride on the capital. On April 28 the reply from Randolph reached those ready to fight—he requested caution. While there was any hope of reconcilation, it was necessary to avoid violence.
The people had ridden home. The message had been tactfully written, and men such as the Long Knives were quieted.
“Thank God!” Sitting in the elegant parlor at Cameron Hall, Amanda turned anguished eyes on her husband and fervently whispered the sentiment.
Eric, worn and dusty from riding, stared at her with a curious look in his eyes.
“There is more,” he told her.
She rose, her hands clenched in her lap. “What? You—you’ve been in Fredericksburg. You would have ridden on the capital!”
He did not answer the question. “Amanda, shots were fired in Massachusetts. At Lexington and at Concord. The British went after the arms stored there, and the colonists—the ‘minutemen’—fought them every step of the way back to Boston.”
“Oh, no!” So blood had been shed after all, not in Virginia, but in Massachusetts.
“Patrick Henry marched with forces toward Williamsburg, but Dunmore added sailors and marines to the palace, and dragged cannon out upon the lawn. An emissary came out on May second to pay for the powder that had been taken.”
“You were with Patrick Henry!” she gasped.
“I was a messenger, Amanda—”
“How could you—”
“I can caution reason on both sides, my lady!” he snapped, and she fell silent.
“That is not all.”
She stared at him, extremely worried by his tone of voice.
