Hart's Tavern

By Elaine Kiesling Whitehouse

In the autumn of 1775, the year prior to the Battle of Long Island, four young women meet their destinies at an inn called Harts Tavern on the south shore of Long Island.

Hannah Hart is the motherless 14-year-old daughter of Peter Hart, the inns proprietor. She is strong, independent and curious, with a thirst for intellectual discovery. Yet her days are occupied with chores and caring for guests at the inn.

Evie is their slave who was sold to Peter Hart when she was just a little girl. She is in love with a Patriot spy and longs to be free. Violet White is the beautiful schoolmistress who came to America to seek adventure, but who finds herself caught in the dilemma of being a loyal British subject among the colonists who no longer view themselves as such.

Wyanjoy is a Native American, one of the last members of the Secatogue tribe that inhabits the outskirts of town. She is pregnant, unmarried, and sees the members of her tribe dying off from disease brought by the white men.

Set against the background of the British occupation of Long Island the women find themselves caught up in historic and profound change and hardship in the midst of trying to figure out their own destinies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491740279

Elaine Kiesling Whitehouse

Elaine Kiesling Whitehouse is an award-winning journalist and former editor of the Fire Island Tide. Elaine obtained her master’s in International Relations at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and has taught at all levels in public, private, and international schools. The Unicorn Trap is her third historical romance. She lives in Sayville, New York.

Book preview

Chapter One

Let us step back in time to 1775, when the Redcoats filled the countryside of the colony of New York, causing fear and uncertainty among the colonists, slaves and Native Americans who lived there. Walk along a dirt road with the horses and carts, peddlers and travelers on their way to the town of New Kensington. Some of these travelers will stop at a small inn beside a pond where ducks and swans swim peacefully and the tips of a willow tree’s branches brush the water as they sway in the breeze.

Look carefully. Near the weeping willow you will see a 14-year-old girl. Her unruly chestnut brown hair is tucked under a mobcap, but many curls escape. She is wearing a long brown dress, covered with an apron that used to be white but is now stained with streaks of deep blue-purple. She stands over a deep cauldron held in place over a low burning fire by an iron pole resting on crisscrossed posts. She is stirring the contents with a large stick.

The girl is Hannah Wainwright Hart, daughter of Peter Hart, owner of Hart’s Tavern on the south shore of Long Island.

Hannah lifts her eyes skyward, squinting in the bright sunlight, cheered by the brilliant blue, cloudless sky. She hums a tune, to make the work seem easier. Perhaps she will see her friend Jeremy tonight. Perhaps he will stop at the inn for a glass of ale, and smile and wink at her as he sometimes does.

Hannah wipes the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand as she pounds the long stick up and down in the cauldron. It is hot and heavy work on such a warm day; her arms and back feel the strain. Steam rises from the purple-blue froth bubbling up from the bottom of the pot.

Round and round she stirs the thick, heavy wool. The indigo blue is a rare color. She will use it to dye the wool she has spun and sell it in the market. Perhaps she will save enough of the wool to make a shawl – no, two shawls – one to keep and one to give to her teacher, Miss White.

Nearby on the clothesline white linens billow in the breeze like the sails of the ships that sail off the barrier beach. Yes, Monday was always laundry day. There was no getting around it, and one might as well make the best of it.

The clothesline and dye pot stand behind her father’s inn. Nearby are carefully cultivated rows of hops, tied neatly to stakes, almost ready to be harvested to make ale. Also nearby is the old, Dutch oven where Hannah bakes bread nearly every day. She also bakes pies and cakes every week to serve the guests, as well as jelly tarts and raisin scones. The aroma was delicious.

Hannah was happy. Yes, she had lots of hard work to do, and yes, life would have been better if her mother had lived, but she had her father and her older brother Thomas. Thomas was a wonderful brother. He showed her how to do things and protected her from people and events that might otherwise have made her life more difficult. But Thomas had left New Kensington to go to Boston. She missed him so! Why did he have to leave the inn, and her father? Why couldn’t everything just stay the way it was? Why all this talk of liberty and war?

Suddenly Hannah’s thoughts were interrupted. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash of steel and scarlet. She thought again that her wish for peace was hopeless, because the enemy was all around, all the time.

She did not know how many British troops were close, but she knew they would take all her cakes and pies and bread. They might even force themselves into the inn and demand to remain there, drinking all her father’s ale and eating all their food. A sense of dread began to overtake her, rising like some black shroud from the soles of her feet to the top of her head. The sky no longer seemed so blue.

What could she do? She quickly wiped her hands on her apron, took a ladle and dipped it into the dye pot. She poured the ladle of dye into the bowl of flour on the table, and just as the British officers came into full sight she began to knead her dough.

Good heavens! said an officer. Is that the way you mix your bread?

Aye, your honor, ’tis a bit weevily this year. Then she sneezed loudly over the dough, wiped her hand under her nose, and continued with her kneading. But, Sir, what difference does it make?

What difference! Why it makes a pile of difference to me! snorted the officer. The others went away, shaking their heads and muttering, The filthy, damnable rebels. Even their bread is dirty.

Hannah waited for a long while, continually kneading the blue-grey dough, until her hands were quite discolored with it. When she was sure the soldiers were gone she took the dough to the trash pile and buried it under the leaves. Then she washed her hands in the water bucket and made her way to the Dutch oven.

She opened the oven door and gathered up the fragrant bread, pies and cakes. These she would bring to the kitchen of the inn. She had made a special strawberry tart for Jeremy with the last of the strawberry jam, for she knew that was his favorite.

There is more than one way to mix your dough, she said with a wry grin. Perhaps her blue bread would keep the British soldiers away for a bit longer. Perhaps her sneeze would keep them away from the inn.

Chapter Two

The sign outside the inn had a red heart painted inside a pentagram under the name Hart’s Tavern. The logo was an instantly recognizable symbol of the well-known Hart family business – an inn where people from town could enjoy a meal and conversation, or, if they had traveled a long distance, could comfortably spend the night.

The tavern was originally a small, wood structure built around 1650 by Ezekiel Redmond Hart, Hannah’s great grandfather. Over the years, additions had been built so that now, in 1775, the inn was a three-story building with a barn and large kitchen at the back. There was also an attic with a gabled window. Hannah, her father and her brother, Thomas, had rooms on the first floor behind the dining room and bar. Evie, their slave, slept in a tiny room near the kitchen pantry. Upstairs there were five rooms where guests stayed.

Hart’s Tavern was a small establishment, but it was well known for serving good food and having clean beds. Weary travelers, including merchants from New York en route to the easternmost reaches of Long Island, were their main customers, but occasionally a hunter or a traveling clergyman would stay.

When you entered the inn you would see on the left side of the doorway a rack containing clay pipes. Visitors could rent a pipe for the evening, but they had to bring their own tobacco.

On the other side of the doorway, a broadside was tacked to the wall, describing the news of New Kensington and listing advertisements and notices. Jeremy Moore, the print shop apprentice, would bring the latest broadsheet whenever he stopped at the inn.

When Hannah was little, before her mother died, the inn was a happy place. Sometimes a fiddler would play and people would dance. Once, a traveling magician put on a show. Hannah remembered jumping up and down and clapping her hands as the magician pulled a dove from his hat. But when her mother died, it seemed that some of the joy left Hart’s Tavern.

Now meetings were held there, where a group of villagers and Hannah’s father’s friends would sit around the big oak table and discuss politics or the latest happenings in town. Sometimes her father would walk to the barn with a person Hannah did not recognize, or go down the narrow stairs into the ale cellar. Hannah suspected that these meetings were secret, having something to do with the Sons of Liberty, and all the talk of war.

Somehow, without her mother and with Thomas gone to Boston, Hannah, her father, and Evie managed to keep the inn going. It was hard work, cleaning the rooms, cooking and baking for the guests and themselves, growing hops to brew the ale, spinning, weaving, sewing … Hannah felt she did not have a moment to herself. But she still made time to go to school. Each morning, from seven until ten she went to the one- room schoolhouse, where she and six or seven other pupils met with their teacher, Miss Violet White, to learn history and geography, reading and arithmetic.

Hannah loved school, especially since Miss White had become their teacher at the start of the term. Hannah was grateful that she could go in the mornings most days, except, of course, for the weekends when she went to church. The Bible was the only book the students had to read, but Miss White told them other stories, about ancient Greece and Rome, Egypt and the pyramids. She described the latest fashions of France, and what the ladies of the court in London were wearing. It all sounded so wonderful to Hannah.

On the morning after her encounter with the British officers Hannah could not wait to get to school to tell Miss White what had happened. Only five students were present this day – Adeline Squires, the Jewell twins, and another lad from a neighboring farm. Hannah slid into her seat before any of the others. She observed Miss White, who sat waiting for her students on a high stool in front of the room, near the potbellied stove. The sun streamed in the windows, creating a golden glow of early autumn light.

Hannah admired the way the light shone on Miss White’s lovely russet-colored hair. It was almost too beautiful to show off, yet Miss White did not cover it with a cap. Her dove-gray dress did not hide her feminine figure, either, and her straight, white smile was a rare sight among the colonists. How did she end up here, in New Kensington? Hannah wondered. Why she had left England, with its all sophistication – the art, the music?

Hannah said, Miss White, I saw the soldiers near the inn yesterday. I am afraid they will try to force their way into our home. She hesitated for a moment, and then asked somewhat boldly, Why did you leave England and come here?

Miss White tucked her neat little boots onto the rung of her teacher’s stool and said, I came here to see the New World. I want to live a life of adventure. I want to see as much of the world as possible, and enjoy everything. When I have seen enough here, I will move on. I hope to visit India one day.

Hannah was fascinated with the idea of a life of adventure, of traveling around the world, a woman alone … Then with a shiver she realized that what Miss White said was close to blasphemy. Hannah knew the church taught that people were to suffer here on earth, and that their duty was to serve God and to live simply. A Christian’s reward was a place in heaven in the afterlife. As far as Hannah knew, the Bible said nothing about seeking a life of adventure.

Hannah wondered what Miss White would do if the British took over New Kensington. Would she try to go back to England? Was she a Loyalist? Hannah did not know. At any rate, no one cared about a woman’s political views. But somehow Miss White was different. Hannah suspected that she was a Patriot.

Chapter Three

New Kensington consisted of a Main Street with a few shops, the church, and the Town Hall. Hart’s Tavern was a good three miles down the road, and Melancholy Hollow was well beyond that. The Great Bay, with its miles of marshlands lay to the south. Separating the bay from the ocean, about four miles out, was the Barrier Island.

Reed grass as tall as a man grew alongside the marsh. Here there were nests of ducks, black skimmers, terns and kingfishers. Black and orange ladybugs, monarch butterflies and bright peacock-blue dragonflies darted among the reeds. Occasionally one of them would stray from the reeds and alight on a young woman’s basket.

The young woman was Evie, slave of Peter Hart. On this golden September day she walked barefooted on the marsh. She was pressing her feet into the thick, gooey black mud in what looked like a curious dance, but she was actually hunting for the fat eels that lived beneath the shallow water. Out popped a head and Evie quickly scooped it up, its glistening black body writhing and twisting like a snake. Evie thrust it in her basket and closed the lid. She repeated this action until her basket was full of squirming eels, ready to be baked into pies or jellied or pickled for future use. The basket grew heavy, and Evie was getting tired. She gathered her skirts with her free hand and made her way through the reeds towards the road. She stopped when she saw a flash of color. Quietly setting down her basket, she stood motionless. Three Redcoats stood talking, no more than ten feet away. She could not hear what they were saying, but she sensed a restlessness about them. She feared these men and their swords.

Then a wave of claustrophobia came over her and she suddenly felt weak in the knees. There was something about these