"May 20th." Keziah said as she took the cup from him. His sudden question of the year made her pause and look at him with wide eyes. Surely he hadn't hit his head too? "It's 1775...you don't have any history of hitting your head, [i]repeatedly[/i], do you?" She asked. Keziah and Samuel had given him a once over, with her tending to his wound and him checking the man for any other injuries. Samuel had objected when she had opened the man's shirt. He claimed that her modesty was at stake and she'd leveled a glare at her brother in response. Keziah had seen a man's body before, knew what everything did and looked like. She was Samuel's nurse for crying out loud! She had tended to his sick and injured patients when he could not, and more often than she liked to admit, it meant wiping butts and cleaning soiled linens. 

The woman filled the cup for a third time, dipping it into a large bucket of water that was on the old oak table her parents had left to her. It technically was part of her dowry, hand carved and expensive. Her father, bless his heart, had thought she would have married the man she'd been courting. She thought so too until this war had started up. She left the cup on the oak table and grabbed what remained of the loaf of Bread Samuel had brought the other day. It was crunchy but at least it was food. With the fighting going on outside she couldn't go to the market or even out into her garden yet. 

"Supper will be ready in a few hours. Eat this for now. It isn't much but it's all I have right now." She held the bread out to him, watching him closely. He looked no different than any man she'd pass on the street but she could tell there was something a little off about him. Perhaps her views were colored because she found that she couldn't trust many men nowadays. 

She would have started supper now but with the man laying on the table that she usedto prepare meals. (Her father had forbid her from using the expensive table across the room to cut vegetables on. "No daughter of mine is having a tarnished table as part of her dowry!" He exclaimed.) 

She busied herself with washing the vegetables that she took from her garden the other day. When Samuel finally came back into her small home, he gave the now awake man a hard look beofre turning to his sister. Samuel was a bit more traditional like their mother was, and by contrast Keziah was the opposite. This was a time of war, a time when the usual rules didn't apply because men fighting for their lives don't play by the rules. The fighting outside died down and it was a miracle that no Lobsterbacks came in and demanded that Samuel tebd to their wounded. They even would have likely asked for Keziah's help too.

He pulled his sister aside and kept his voice low as he spoke to her. "Peter is dead." 

Peter had been one of Samuel's good friends for as long as Keziah could remember. He had often taunted Samuel that they would become brothers because he planned to marry Keziah. It had been a joke of course but sometimes the look that Peter got in his eye when looking at Keziah made her stomach turn. Keziah was rather plan, mousy almost, and that was fine with her. It wasn't until she'd woken with sharp pain in her belly and blood on her thighs that she'd actually started to look like a woman. That was when Peter started to look at her differently. She just looked at her brother with a shocked expression, unable to say anything. They'd already lost so many people they had known. 

"He was killed less than an hour ago." Peter had, like many they knew, sided with the Patriots. He firmly believed that they could rule themselves. "I will see if they need any help patching up their wounded." Samuel told her. "Please keep an eye on my wife," he looked at the other man again, "and you know what to do if he behaves inappropriately." 

Samuel left again, cramming his hat onto his head and straightening his jacket as he closed the door behind him. Keziah released the breath she'd been holding. Seeing her brother go out there, to where men had died and were dying, made her nervous. With their father living so close to Lexington, where a battle had taken place not so long ago, she didn't want to lose Sam too. Elizabeth and her baby would need him as well. She wiped her sweaty hands on her apron and returned to preparing the vegetables. Her brow furrowed as she weighed her options of letting the man rest on the hard table or giving him a chair so she could use that same table. In the end Keziah decided that a few cuts in the oak table wouldn't diminish it's price. 

"What is your name?" She asked, looking back at the man as she put a few clean potatoes on the oak table.