He was not there. He was not there. I had failed to see the thing whole, I had missed a fragment, I had erred in my estimate of Harry’s courage, perhaps, or of Drogo’s cunning. The bones were elsewhere.
And so I shuffled out of the Museum of Anatomy, and pulled the door behind me, so all could rest in peace within. It creaked and screamed on its ancient hinges as it scraped across the flagstones, it resisted my force, and I paused, the better to seize hold of the iron ring. And then, in the silence, with a last flare in the shivering gloom, one wall sconce in the antechamber gave out with a sputtering sigh—and then, a second later, the other—and in the sudden darkness, a hand fell on my shoulder.
38
Martha shrank against the wall of the church clutching Harry to her breast. She was aware of Sara close beside her, reaching an arm round her shoulders, as hissing and whispering rose all round them, women emerging from pews and pushing toward them. Some small object was flung at her, a pebble, I believe; it struck her temple, and that stung her to life. She stepped forward, shaking off Sara’s arm, cheeks blazing and eyes on fire, and shouted at them did they think this was her doing? Oh, and a chorus of insults, a chorus of yes to this and she shouted her denial with all the force in her body. Little Harry was wide awake now and screaming, and she hitched him higher in her arms so they could scream at them together. The women screamed back, their insults were hideous, unspeakable, English whore was the least of it, but she understood they would not touch her with an infant in her arms.
A few seconds later she was not so sure, as she felt fingers clutching at her shawl. Harry was wrapped in that shawl! She tore it free and turned in fury on a small vicious woman she had often seen on the dock but had never spoken to. She felt someone pull at her hair, and whirled around, in a fury now, convinced that they would seize her child from her and tear them both to pieces, even as Sara flailed wildly at her attackers. It astonished Martha that so many were ready to presume her guilt on the strength of nothing more than the name of a ship! The whispering about Harry’s back, was it this that inspired such hatred among the women that they would at once see her as a woman who not only had lain with Satan but was a traitor? She did not know what it was she shouted at them but it did not drive them off, they only shouted and hissed and spat at her the more, clawed at her clothes, her hair, taunted her, crowding in upon her, and again she shrank back against the wall, tightening her grip on her child—
Suddenly there came a roar from the front of the church, a roar so loud that they all turned, and saw Joshua Rind standing there hammering his stick on the floor and shouting for order. The doctor had authority here. He shouted at them to sit down and to Martha’s astonishment they were cowed, they obeyed. She had never seen Joshua so angry! She had no idea he had it in him! She had forgotten he was a Rind, but now she saw what she had glimpsed in Silas, the dangerous quality she had been apprehensive of provoking in that complicated man. Now his brother the doctor by the sheer force of his character had silenced a churchful of angry women.
“That girl is not our enemy,” he shouted, “our enemy is at hand!”
“She brought them here!”
“She is their spy!”
“She is their whore!”
The clamour rose to a shriek but once again the doctor silenced the women, and at last they turned their minds to the ships bearing down on their harbour, and but for a few looks of loathing cast her way, Martha was for the moment forgotten. Once he had their attention Joshua set about briskly reviewing their situation. Knowing the British army at first hand, he said, for he had fought in the last war, and knowing their current bitter hatred of the patriots and their cause, he believed they must expect harsh treatment.
“They will burn our houses,” he cried, “and they will carry us off in their ships to Boston. Those who are able must get away from the town with all haste. Those who cannot go will gather here, in the church, where I will stay with you. I will plead for you here, in this church. No British officer will permit his men to harm those too weak or sick to leave.”
He could say no more; a great hubbub erupted, with some crying out in support of this plan, and others just as passionately opposed. Martha was badly shaken by her ordeal and felt a strong impulse to flee the church, but she did not, she stayed, thinking that to flee was to admit her guilt. She was guilty, but none of these women knew it, her conversation with Giles Hawkins in the saltworks had been overheard by no one. So she waited, she listened, she lifted her face defiantly and proudly against them. Her chin, her mouth, her eyes, all proclaimed an outraged innocence, and dared them to impugn her again.
Joshua Rind carried the day, and soon after they were all hurrying back to their homes, and none of them had time now to torment Martha further. But she was pushed as she left the church, she was spat at outside, and as she hurried back up the hill with her aunt and her cousins she heard hissing from the women even as they scattered to their homes. She did not bow her head or lower her eyes. No, she strode up the hill with lifted head and lifted eyes, her cousin Sara by her side and her little Harry carried high on her breast, and despite the cold wind off the harbour she pulled the shawl off his back and displayed his little hump, covered only in a linen nightshirt, to all who cast their eyes upon him.
When they reached the house Maddy Rind was already flying from room to room as her daughters flung food and clothing into baskets and bags. She put Harry down in his crib—since they left the church he had been quiet, he had regained his customary composure and now watched these frantic preparations for departure with an expression of approval—and she ran upstairs, and in a few seconds packed into her canvas bag all they would need on the road, and God knows she had experience enough of those sorts of journeys, and of these sorts of departures! She hauled on her stout boots and pulled her old greatcoat about her shoulders.
She was coming downstairs when Joshua Rind hobbled in through the front door in a state of intense agitation. He fixed her with a gaze of such fury that she quailed, her step faltered on the stair and she stood there and quailed before his eyes. He was unable or unwilling to speak to her. His jaw was clamped tight shut and the colour was up in his cheeks, as it was in Martha’s. His eyes burned with a terrible light. All he could say was, “Damnable girl! Damnable girl!”—then off he went down the passage to the kitchen.
Martha followed him and found her aunt’s party almost ready for departure. They would be thirteen, including Harry and herself, and a neighbour, Mary Coffin, and her children, who chose to travel with them. Joshua was talking rapidly to her aunt, a torrent of names, houses, instructions, advice. He pressed a purse into her hands, also a letter he had hastily scribbled to assure them all safe passage through the country. Then he told her to go, go, and turning to the room, said he wished them God speed but go, go, and as the women and children hurried out through the back door, and Martha lifted Harry from his crib and stowed him under her coat, he cast at her a last long look of direst reproach as he tapped his cane impatiently on the floorboards. He followed them out and locked the back door behind him. They had taken with them the muskets and pistols the men had left behind, and powder and shot as well. Sara had run into the meadow behind the barn to bridle the horses and bring them out onto the road, and even as they moved toward the gate they could see other women coming up the road with their children, pushing carts and barrows hastily filled with household belongings.
Then they were through the gate and on the road. They paused and stood a few seconds gazing out to sea. The two sloops were making full sail before a brisk westerly breeze, and the sight of them out on a strong-running sea, heeling in the following wind, would have struck Martha as a handsome scene, on a different day, in a different world. The fleeing women had several hours at the least, before the soldiers could be landed, nonetheless Joshua Rind was waving his stick and crying out to them to go, go, so they turned their backs on the bay, and the port, whose streets were alive now with women and children all heavily la
den and scurrying this way and that. The last Martha saw of the doctor he was descending the hill at as fast a pace as his gouty foot would allow.
The road climbed up around Black Brock then levelled off on the high ground above the town before plunging into the woods. Off they plodded, Maddy Rind in her swirling cloak and broad-brimmed hat glancing anxiously from one to another of her charges, and each one meeting her eye with a resolute expression as they laboured with their loads; and Sara, with a musket slung over her shoulder, bringing up the rear with the horses, three old slow animals left behind by the militia as unfit for service in the Revolution. Behind them other groups struggled up toward Black Brock, and here and there among them came a wagon hauled by some aged beast disturbed from pastoral retirement by the crisis. The day was clear, the wind sharp, and it had been decided in the kitchen between Maddy and the doctor that they would make for Cratwich, where the Rinds had friends, and try to reach it by nightfall; in the morning they would know more. Cratwich lay five miles off the Boston road, and they believed that the redcoats, if they pursued on foot, would not think to come there.
Slowly the caravan of women and children wound its way up the steep track that carried them round the side of Black Brock and out onto the high road. They were all accustomed to walking long distances and even the youngest had little difficulty keeping up with the pace set by Maddy Rind. The road was firm and dry underfoot, no rain having fallen for days, and all were comfortable with the loads they carried. Martha’s Harry never complained despite being jostled about and switched from arm to arm, he maintained the composure he had shown ever since they left the church. Martha had had no chance to reflect on the events of the morning, but now as she settled into her stride she recalled with horror how the women had turned toward her like so many snarling animals, all of them certain beyond any doubt that she was responsible for the presence of the enemy offshore; and it was suddenly clear to Martha that whatever sort of a life she had hoped to make here in Cape Morrock for herself and her child, with the coming of the Queen Charlotte it was destroyed.
Not until two hours later, when they had come up round behind Black Brock onto the high road, could they again see the sea, and now of course from a much higher elevation; and what they saw at once filled them with the blackest foreboding. In the town below there was still movement in the streets, but most of the women who had elected to stay behind, those unable to travel, those who remained to care for them, those who simply preferred to stay in their homes, those women stood about in groups in front of the church and they too were gazing out to sea. The two sloops had by this time come broadside at the entrance to the harbour, a protective claw of jagged black rock with a wide opening between. They had reefed all sail and dropped anchor, but as yet the women saw no sign of them letting down their boats to come ashore, and they turned to one another, asking why they did not, for surely their purpose was to occupy the town and prevent the escape of its people.
And then they had their answer. They saw a cloud of smoke appear midships below the gunwales of the sloop closer to the rocks, and a second later heard a distant booming sound that had the seagulls flapping off the water. A cannon had been fired. There was a commotion outside the church now, though the women on the road could hear nothing of it, but the doctor could be seen shepherding his people in. The cannon, if it had been firing ball, had missed its mark; perhaps it was a warning shot, but to what purpose? If simply to terrify those who remained in the town, then it had surely succeeded. They saw other figures running toward the church, and even from a great height their panic was unmistakeable.
It was no warning shot. That cannon was finding its range. A minute later another cloud of smoke, another boom—and they saw, and heard, a small explosion somewhere on Front Street, and seconds after that flames were shooting from the windows of a building not four doors down from Pierce’s Tavern.
The town was filled with defenceless women and children and the British were bombarding it. Up on the high road they heard the crackle of musket fire but they knew the ships were far beyond their range. The enemy could take his time destroying New Morrock unopposed; and that is what he proceeded to do.
There was no question of continuing along the high road. Silently, their eyes fixed on the scene below, where the flames from the building on Front Street were spreading to its neighbours, they set down their bags and watched. It seemed a dream, the blazing building under the high blue sky, sparks and fragments carried upward on the breeze, and the two ships lying at anchor and rocking on their cables in the harbour mouth. Then more smoke, more booms, and an old house behind the saltworks had its roof stove in, and again they saw the flames come licking up. The British were firing mortar, and balls that came red hot out of the brazier, and the old wood houses round the harbour were going up like kindling.
Pierce’s Tavern was on fire now. Where was Dan Pierce, where were the other men? Martha did not see them on the road; they had stayed behind to resist the enemy. Other women joined them on the road, and they stood together in silence. The ships had cannon the length of their gundecks and they were holding nothing back, now they had found their range. They were hitting other houses, higher in the town now, and the thought in all the women’s minds, as yet unspoken, was that they were trying to hit the church. Did Joshua not realize this? Why did he keep his people in there? Did he think the House of God enjoyed divine protection from cannon and mortar? All at once the women began to cry out these questions to one another, but none of them had an answer, and it was unthinkable to go back down with death and fire raining from the sky. Only Martha was silent. She stood dumb, like a rock, gazing down, all colour drained from her face, all life gone from her eyes. The churchbell was ringing wildly now.
At last there was a lull in the firing, the bell fell silent, the smoke was carried off by the wind and all was quiet; and into the sudden stillness emerged two women from the church, then others began to come out, but even as they looked about them, some hurrying off toward their homes while others set off up the hill—the firing resumed.
None of those who saw it will forget what happened next. The church was hit, even as women and children came streaming out. They saw them fall. They heard the screams. For a while they could see nothing through the billowing smoke, then all at once they saw that the roof was on fire, and flaming boards and shingles were falling into the church below, where people were still trying to get out, those too sick or slow and those who were helping them. They could see nothing of Joshua, he was still inside when the roof fell in. The fire had caught on the steeple now, the flames were like living things and the blazing steeple was a beacon, or a weapon, rather, a fiery spear thrust at the eye of God!
Smoke now covered the town, and rising from it great showers of sparks and charred floating remnants of books and rags that swirled in the currents of the same wind that had pushed the ships across the bay and now fanned the fires they had brought upon the town. On the high road the women heard great distant crashes as roofs came down, as houses collapsed into the street. All of Front Street was ablaze now, the saltworks and the warehouse, the boatyard and the foundry, and back up the hill the church steeple burned high above the general conflagration. Nor was the devil’s work finished yet, for there came now a series of explosions, great blasts of fiery debris flung high into the air with a violence that outdid all the other furies at work that day, and this was the distillery going up. On the edge of town a few scattered figures had got clear, they saw them running up the hill, others still down there they glimpsed through the smoke, and this Martha saw, a child with its clothing aflame running screaming along the street, and then collapsing, and writhing in a fiery heap on the hard ground.
How long did it go on? All day so it seemed; all eternity. There came a point when the cannons stopped firing but it meant nothing, the fire was all, the town was alight, the flames had surged up the hill, and the wind only dropped when it was too late to matter anymore. Martha was silent throughout. Sh
e stood apart from her aunt and her cousins, stone-faced and rigid while they wept, watching the fire devour her home.
As dusk came on, and darkness descended, the women still watched from the high road. They could not turn their backs on the town so they waited, settling with their children by the roadside for the night, they waited until they could go back down and bury their dead. A blessed rain fell just after midnight, by which time the flames were guttering and dying; the rain extinguished the last of it, and in the moonlight black smoke billowed up in foul-smelling clouds. Few of the women slept. Martha still sat apart from the others, rocking Harry on her breast and staring out to sea with fixed unblinking eyes. The hours of darkness dragged by. Over the sound of the sea came now the wail of a child, now the sob of a woman, quickly stifled. At first light, when Sara came to her with food, Martha seemed not to hear her cousin begging her to eat, she merely pulled her greatcoat closer about herself and her infant, and withdrew deeper into her solitude.
Sara persisted however. For Harry’s sake she must eat, she said, and this raised a response from Martha. Up came her head, she nodded, and Sara sank onto the ground beside her. In silence they ate. A mist had drifted in off the sea and partly obscured the horror below. The black smoky plumes of midnight were now little more than wispy gray fingers rising here and there into the dawn. In the harbour the two sloops rode gently on their cables, and the surface of the water all around them was scattered with blackened remnants floated high in the currents of yesterday’s hot winds. Martha rose heavily to her feet, leaving Harry bundled on the ground fast asleep. Sara could think of nothing to say to comfort her cousin. Getting up and drawing close to her, she slipped an arm about her shoulder.
Martha Peake Page 30
