Martha's Surprise

                                            Martha's Surprise

    Slowly the darkness lifted, steadily bringing forth a severe throbbing beneath my skull.  Delicately, I lifted one hand to test its condition.  What in the name of heaven had happened?  At the sight of the bloodied knife in my raised hand, panic joined the painful pounding in my head.  Jackie and Patsy!  Where were my children?  I watched the long and pointed flay knife shake in my hand, blood drying to tackiness, gluing it to my palm.  I wanted to scream, but forced myself calm, slowing my heaving breast. Think Martha! I demanded.

    Jackie and Patsy, were safe in Virginia at our home Mount Vernon.  I had traveled alone to Massachusetts to surprise George, my husband, a General in the Continental Army, in Boston to build an army to fight Mother England and take America's independence from her greedy over taxing hands.

    But where was I?

    The flay knife, the smell of fish...the heat.

    I was in the kitchen of the townhouse that George had rented.  I gulped down a sudden wave of nausea.  In the heat of the kitchen the iron scent of blood merged sharply with the tang of raw seafood.  Still clutching the knife, trying to ignore my throbbing head and sickened stomach, I rolled onto my left side and screamed.  A man, his head mere inches from my own, stared with dead eyes directly into mine.  The blood that had pooled from his chest had created a shallow, stagnant lake between us.

    'Mother of Mercy!' I cried, lifting up to push away from the pale, ghastly corpse, my hands sliding and slipping in the slick blood spill.  Once more I looked at the knife in my hand.  'Dear God, what have I done?'

    I backed away from the dead man until my back struck the wall.  Then I covered my eyes and sobbed.  How could I have done this?  How?  And more importantly...why?

    Tentatively, I uncovered my eyes to study the dead man.  Like George and me, he appeared to be in his late thirties, his features plain beneath graying brown hair, his brown eyes dark and wide in death.  Had I known this man?  The banging in my head grew more painful as I struggled to remember.

    'Why did I kill you?!' I screamed at the corpse, throwing the knife across the kitchen where it struck the stones of the fireplace and clattered to the floor, the blade breaking from the handle.  I stared at it.  Separated.  And in two.  That would soon be George and I.  Forever apart, because I had committed this sin!  This murder!

    'Wait,' I senselessly told the dead man, wagging a blood tacky finger at him, seeing the white blood soaked apron that hung, twisted at his waist askew.  'You're the Generals new cook.'

    Shakily, I got onto my hands and knees; then stood.  The kitchen began to whirl and I fell against the wall for support, closing my eyes, my head pounding as I fought another wave of nausea.  When I could open my eyes, I saw the iron frying pan on the floor beneath the cooks table, and rubbed the back of my afflicted head.  Surely, the cook had struck me with it...but, why?

    What had I interrupted?

    Slowly, I made my way closer to the table where the cook had been preparing halibut--the fish at one end, vegetables and herbs at the other.  Even banged over the head with a heavy fry pan, not able to recall what had just happened, I knew about herbs.  And I knew that it was poison hemlock, not parsley, that the cook had planned to dish up to my beloved George.  The unpleasant smell that rose to my nose from the poisonous dark green leaves sent the recent missing memory suddenly into place.

    The new cook had hammered me over the head when I'd accused him out-right of being a British loyalist out to kill my darling husband, General George Washington.  But as the pan had rushed toward my head I'd grabbed the flay knife from the table and plunged it into his unprotected chest.  Surprise!

    Goose egg and horrible headache not withstanding, I would endure much more to protect what is mine...never hesitating to take up arms to defend!