Day of Honor 01_ Ancient Blood - Diane Carey [84]
Amy Coverman nodded as she placed a bowl of fruit on the table, but she said nothing. Picard looked at her, expecting her to speak up, as the women did in his own time, but obviously this was a discussion for the men. Yet, she didn’t seem to disagree with a single one of her husband’s words, for she nodded and beamed proudly.
“We pay taxes here,” Jeremiah continued, and looked at Picard suddenly, “but no one speaks for us in the British Parliament. Since the Magna Carta, the Crown has shared power with the Houses of Lords and Commons, but no one represents us in the colonies. We are less than commoners here. Men born to their titles are running our lives. We understand the need for taxation, but who goes with our portion to speak for us in Parliament? No one. Our voice is mute. We have no lords here, because no one is ‘born higher’ than anyone else. Some colonists have been here for centuries. Amy’s family, for instance, since Plymouth!” He motioned to his shy wife. “She is an American, not an Englishwoman at all. Yet England would have rule over her. Yet England tells her, ‘Lowborn you are and lowborn you will remain, for you have no birthright. You will have a meager existence and then die, because that is what God wants, because the king’s right is divine. Accept your place and harbor no ambition.’”
Picard glanced up as Mercy came down the stairs with a pile of folded clothing in her arms. He hadn’t even noticed that she’d gone up there, but apparently these were the disguises he and the sailors would wear to keep from being hanged as “spies.”
“For the first time,” Jeremiah went on, “average men are demanding that no one have arbitrary power. All government power should be answerable to those whom it governs. How can such a thought be forever so foreign to humanity?”
“Only a thousand years or so, Mr. Coverman,” Picard pointed out. “A very brief period, once you have a more cosmic perspective.”
“But troubling, Lieutenant, troubling. Power should flow from the people on up, not from God to the king and on down.”
“God ordains who should rule,” Sandy rasped, putting down the bread for which he had no appetite. “There is divine right of kings. God blesses the highborn with their place in society.”
“Then God has a jester’s humor,” Jeremiah challenged, “given the shabby judgment of those who call themselves the’blessed.’”
Sandy looked sharply at him and for a moment seemed about to explode again. Instead, he spoke rather quietly, like a storm rumbling on the horizon.
“This is a waste of breath,” he told his cousin. “You can’t possibly win a war against the might of Britain. The Colonial militia will be slaughtered. You have no navy… what will you do, my dear cousin, when this is over and you are still British? Will you travel into the western wilderness where you cannot be found? Drag these women and this child even farther from civilization until you all die where there are no roads?”
Jeremiah looked with deep regret at his young wife, then drew a long breath. “No,” he said. “Win or lose, I shall not leave Delaware”
“Then do you realize,” Sandy asked, his voice finally softening, “that you will be executed for treason?”
As Amy Coverman came around the table and took her husband’s hand to steady him, Jeremiah beamed at her, then nodded at Sandy. “Yes. I know.”
Picard looked at Alexander. The boy had stopped eating too, and was staring at Jeremiah with new realizations. Jeremiah was no scoundrel. All he wanted was possession of his own life.
Beset with confusion, Alexander looked hard at his other cousin, and the hero worship for Sandy Leonfeld got sudden competition.
“Someone will remember,” Amy Coverman finished on her husband’s behalf.
With those three words, the young wife told her whole story. She believed in her husband,