A Mischief in the Snow - By Margaret Miles Page 0,2

her. Recalling the painful news once more, Charlotte felt a wave of sympathy. She willed it away. Diana would not be comforted by her sighs.

Grief! How much of it she'd felt in her own short life. First, her parents had gone; then illness had taken her sister Eleanor, soon to have become the wife of their new neighbor. And in the same dreadful week, six years ago, her own husband, Aaron….

Then, she and Richard Longfellow had mourned together. He, too, must now be remembering that terrible time, having learned only the week before that Diana's child had died. Two days after the letter reached them, his sister was brought to Bracebridge by a coachman, accompanied by a small coffin, without her husband, Edmund Montagu. She requested they bury the boy among Charlotte's family, atop a knoll on the Howard farm bordering her brother's own. Diana knew that Richard and Charlotte often visited the graves there. She told them Captain Montagu spoke increasingly of taking her to London. Should they go, she feared a Boston burial might mean their child would lie forgotten. And that was a thing she could not bear to imagine.

The morning after Diana's arrival, Richard, with Lem's help, had carried the coffin up the snowy slope of the knoll, as Charlotte and Diana followed. At the top they covered the small box with a layer of balsam, and then a cairn of stones. As soon as the earth could be broken in the spring, the coffin would be lowered into a permanent grave.

The child's death was tragic—yet they'd known from the first that Charles Douglas had come into the world too early, and was not strong. Dr. Warren warned them the boy might fall prey to a winter fever, a malady that gave cherubic faces a heavenly touch of blue, even while their mothers rocked them before high fires. Such women were frequently reminded new life can never be certain, and that they bore no blame. But the six weeks of life allotted to the boy had made his parents grow ever fonder, so they felt his passing most keenly. At least, Diana assured them with marked coldness, this was true for one.

She told them, too, that Edmund refused to allow himself to share her grief, no doubt for the sake of his duties. The captain was a King's officer, of course. But could this have hardened him to the death of his firstborn son and heir? Considering his respect for his own noble family, and his love for Diana, Charlotte could not bring herself to believe it. Though she had no way of knowing the real reason for his absence, she did know that heart-lessness was not a part of Edmund Montagu's character.

At the moment, there was a great deal in Boston to distract him. Bales of Parliament's new revenue stamps had arrived; still, they sat unopened in Castle William, out in the bay. These blank paper sheets of several denominations, their corners variously stamped with figures of red ink, were ready for sale and use, and were now required for the printing of newspapers, as well as for documents including deeds, degrees and licenses, court writs, manifests, and port clearances. The main objection to the stamps (beyond their added cost to business) was that for generations the colonial assemblies had raised royal revenues themselves. This new order given by a distant body— one that lately seemed to ignore the pleas of America's own popular houses—was not only an insult, but a threat to liberties long enjoyed in all the provinces. The people of Boston had made it clear enough that any official attempting to support or sell the stamps would be sorry for it—which was why Governor Bernard had gone to sit in his castle as well, comforted by two British men-of-war anchored nearby. Meanwhile, trade and legal business had come to a halt.

Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson had closed civil and admiralty courts, and promised he would keep them closed, as long as the stubborn colonists prevented the implimentation of the new law. While more distant counties might choose to ignore his wishes, Suffolk County could not. In Boston, without properly stamped and filed papers, it became increasingly difficult to borrow, and shipping languished; without the civil courts, merchants could no longer legally enforce the collection of debts. And with trade disrupted, the price of flour, which was usually imported from the colonies to the south, shot up like a rocket. There was good reason