Cape Cod

by William Martin

  “Names of traitors.” Bigelow was considered a solid man, calm in demeanor, careful in speech, at fifty-seven the very study of the judicious attorney. His fleshy white face, framed by the wig, seemed set in marble, with gray stones for eyes. Seldom did he use a word so strong as “traitor.”

  “Some respectable names among them. Cape Cod names as old as your own—Nye, Freeman, Otis, Crocker, Sears.”

  “All men who should know better.”

  “I’m surprised to see no Hilyard.”

  “The Anonymous Outcast? Simply a nay-sayer.”

  Hutchinson sipped his wine. “ ’Twill be a great joy to escape the nay-sayers. I intend to revive my scholarship. Perhaps even write another volume of Massachusetts history.”

  “Pity you’ll not have the Reverend Mr. Prince’s New England Library to draw upon.”

  “I shall borrow a few of the books”—he poured more wine—“for safekeeping. Only God knows what may happen here ’fore the Crown regains sway. ’Twould be a true sin if manuscripts like Bradford’s history were lost to rebel mobs.”

  “My worry is for the deeds in the county courthouses.”

  “You protect the deeds. I’ll protect the history. After all, my great-grandmother lived in Bradford’s time.”

  “Anne Hutchinson—something of a rebel herself.”

  “They were all rebels, even your ancestors.”

  Bigelow nodded gravely, though he did not like to be reminded of such truths. “Rebels of the soul. That distinguishes them from the mob.”

  Hutchinson leaned close to Bigelow. “There is a manuscript of the First Comers that even now may be in the hands of the mob. Have you ever heard of the log of the Mayflower?”

  Bigelow shook his head. A small trickle of powder fell from his wig and settled on his shoulder.

  “Mr. Prince believed it to be in the possession of your friend the Anonymous Outcast of Billingsgate. She alluded to it in one of her excrescences against you, just after the Otis incident.”

  “Prince is long dead, Excellency, and I have never been much for such tales. I’m a man of the here and now.”

  “Even a man of the here and now may imagine the use the mob would make of a manuscript that portrays the First Comers as rebels. Should you discover the existence of this thing, move quickly, for it may be a dangerous symbol.”

  Benjamin Bigelow seldom moved quickly in anything. “Act in haste and repent at leisure” was a motto close to his heart. And as he had heard nothing about this mythical Mayflower log, he saw no reason to speak of it to his brother, who grew more nervous all the time, like an unsaddled horse hearing the trumpet sound.

  Throughout the summer, Benjamin tried calmly to present the Loyalist position. What could be more suicidal, he asked of his Whig friends, than to rebel against the greatest military power on earth? What could be worse for Cape Cod than the British fleet sinking shipping and raiding towns at will? “Economic ruin will result. And for what? A few pence tax on tea?”

  But while he conciliated, others inflamed. Solomon, a customs inspector rendered all but useless by the Whigs’ Solemn League and Covenant against importing British goods, railed on in the taverns about fools who would destroy prosperity to call themselves patriots. Aunt Nabby shouted her contempt for every patriot parade and refused to give up her tea when local agitators came to enforce the covenant. She would damn well sell what she wanted where she wanted.

  They and those like them were a walking provocation but nothing as compared to the Intolerable Acts, which closed the port of Boston and brought more troops to the city and more ships to the coasts of the Cape. Benjamin Bigelow told his wife that he no longer held hope for the future. But still he was shrewd and careful and tried to gauge the position his family should take when the fighting began.

  Before he could decide, a choice was forced upon him by the first openly treasonous event of the Revolution. It was a fine September day, and the county court was about to open the autumn session. But the Crown had revoked the right of the Massachusetts court to select jurors. Trouble was in the wind, and Benjamin was in his office when he heard the beating of a drum.

  What frightened him was that they were not a mob but an unarmed army. Dr. Nathaniel Freemen, on a fractious black stallion, rode at their head, the drummers followed, and then, in columns of two, came a thousand men or more.

  They called themselves the Body of the People. They marched into the town and packed themselves in front of the courthouse, blocking the high sheriff and Justice James Otis, Sr., father of the patriot, from taking their seats. In the most polite terms, Otis ordered them to retreat. In the most polite terms, they refused. The court did not open.

  That accomplished, the Body of the People turned their attention to the officers of the Crown and the Loyalists in Barnstable.

  By now Solomon and Benjamin, their wives, and Solomon’s son and daughter, were watching from the upstairs windows of Solomon’s house. The so-called patriots were taking some people from the crowd and leading others from their houses and forcing them to sign public recantations. There was no violence, but a fine measure of intimidation in the presence of the Body of the People.

  Two men went into Aunt Nabby’s grocery and came out a moment later, their recantation flying after them. “I’ll sign nothin’! I’m a loyal subject and always will be. And if you put that damn liberty pole up in my town, I’ll chop it down with a butter knife if there’s none man enough to do it.”

  The crowd roared with laughter at the furious old lady, but Solomon whispered that she was braver than he. Then he suggested they slip out the back and down to the wharf, where they could sail away on one of their schooners.

  “Nothing of the sort,” said Benjamin.

  “We can’t refuse. They may tear us apart.”

  “We shall sign,” Benjamin said placidly.

  “Sign? Are you daft?”

  “Sign. If they win, we win. If they lose, we have been coerced. Refuse to sign and suffer the consequences.”

  And little Hannah asked, “Does this make us patriots?”

  “No dear,” answered Benjamin. “We are simply being expedient.”

  That afternoon, up went the liberty pole, gaily painted and topped with a gilded finial. That night, it was cut down. No one knew by whom, but the next morning, Widow Nabby announced that justice had been served—if not in the court, at least on the town green.

  The following night, justice was served to the Widow Nabby in the form of tar and feathers and a ride on the severed pole. Whatever she had said about the cause of liberty, she recanted. Whatever the cause of liberty had gained at the courthouse, it lost.

  vii.

  TAR AND FEATHERS AND COMEUPPANCE

  We have warned them not to stand in the way of history. We have told them that comeuppance awaits, and still they chop down liberty poles and laugh at the future.

  Ask the Widow Nabby what happens to old crones who hold to old ways. Ask her if the turpentine burned when they took off the tar and feathers. Ask her BIGELOW relatives about history. They have tried to hide it and hide from it. They have denied that they are TORIES and liars, but the Book of History proves otherwise, and someday, they will meet their comeuppance.

  “It was terrible, what they did to her,” Serenity told her grandson a few nights later. “But she’s a Bigelow. And nobody gets my blood boilin’ faster.”

  “Speakin’ bad about her won’t make her nephews give back Jack’s Island, will it?” The boy threw several driftwood sticks onto the fire.

  “If there’s rebellion, the Tories’ll sail off to Canada. They can’t take their land with ’em.”

  “But the Bigelows signed the pledge.” The boy was now eleven. His hands and feet had begun to outgrow the rest of his body, and his grandmother thought that his mind was outgrowing the hands and feet.

  “They’re liars. Always has been.” She took a mouthful of rum and held it around her remaining tooth. “I sure wish your Pa was to home. I could
use a good man with the pliers.”

  “Why… why must we get toothaches, Grandma?” The boy folded his legs and sat before the fire.

  “ ’Tis a fair question, lad.” She tightened the cloth around her head, which squeezed her jaw and soothed the pain. “Because we’re slaves. Women are slaves of men. Men are slaves of gover’ments. Gover’ments intone the name of God. And God makes us all slaves to pain, then looks down on us like we look down on a nest of ants afore we step on it. So I write my broadsides.”

  “Because you’re mad at God?”

  “To break the chain and set us free.” She took another mouthful of rum, which puffed out her cheek like a wineskin.

  “Is the book of history about God?”

  Serenity tried to laugh, but it hurt her face too much. “It’s about good men and God and slaves to God. The lost log of the Mayflower, the Bigelow book of comeuppance. And what a tale it is, of Indians and First Comers, battles, murders…”

  The wind came out of the northwest, booming down in gusts that were the first breath of winter. The black cat named Lucinda the Tenth purred by the fire. And Serenity began the story. She had told the boy’s parents, but they had been little interested. Just a book about something that happened a hundred and fifty years ago. What importance could it hold?

  She hoped the boy would have more imagination. “I first was told of it by a pirate who was also an Indian—”

  Then the boy heard a sound.

  “What?” asked Serenity.

  “A sail lowerin’ or the clank of an oarlock.”

  Serenity took a swallow of rum. Below the wind, she heard the crump of the waves hitting the beach. It sounded as if the tide had turned and was rising. If they were coming, they would take the tide. And she had never deceived herself: some night, they would come. “My ears ain’t too good, lad, but if you think you heard somethin’, bar the door, and bring me the blunderpiece.”

  The color drained from the boy’s face.

  “ ’Tis prob’ly nothin’,” she said. “But go out the back and fetch some help.”

  “The Hatches?”

  “They’re off fishin’. You’ll have to go to the Tebbets.”

  “They’re almost as far as my ma.”

  “They’re the closest there is tonight. Now bolt the door like a good lad.”

  As Sam touched the bolt, the door blew into his face, striking so squarely that the world went black before him.

  “Comeuppance is here.” The first man through the door wore a hood and was dressed in black.

  Under the seat of her chair, Serenity had fastened a lethal little pistol called a duck’s foot, a spread of five barrels, all fired by a single pull of the trigger, the perfect weapon for the sea captain facing mutineers or the old woman facing intruders.

  She pointed it at the four hooded men now crowding through the door. “Get out!”

  She would have done better simply to fire, because the back door burst open, and as she turned, the man in black smashed an axe handle into her wrist. The duck’s foot fell to the floor, her arms were pinned behind her, and a rag was stuffed into her mouth.

  “Comeuppance,” repeated the man in black, his voice sounding like the cry of a querulous old gull. “Comeuppance. You like the word, don’t you?”

  Serenity tried to speak.

  The black hood came close. “Scream and you’re dead.” Then he plucked the gag from her mouth.

  “My grandson?”

  Two of the men had trussed the boy and gagged him. Then they picked him up and threw him like a sack of oysters into the sand.

  “He’ll be fine,” said the one in black, “as long as his grandmother cooperates.”

  “Get out.”

  One of the men knocked the kettle off the fireplace hanger and put up a bucket of tar. Then he threw several logs onto the flames to make them jump.

  “When my son sees your boat, he’ll come in here and harpoon the lot of you.”

  “Your son’s a thousand miles away. And there’s none on this island who’ll hear you scream over a blowin’ wind.”

  “You won’t hear me scream. Now get out, afore I sic every Son of Liberty on Cape Cod after you.”

  The man took a spoon from the table and dipped it into the hot tar. Then he brought it over and held it under her nose. “This is what happens to old crones who think Tory ways are wrong.”

  “So, you can read, eh?”

  “Tar and feathers and comeuppance.”

  The burned stink of hot tar stung her nostrils.

  “We’ll make it boil, so it covers good.” He let a glob fall onto the table and spread out before her.

  One of the others stirred the tar until it fell smoothly back into the bucket. “Ready.”

  Another one dropped an old feather pillow onto the table. “Let’s do her.”

  “Did you tell your wife where you’d be tonight?” said Serenity. “Or do you wear that hood ’cause you’re too ugly to find a woman who’ll look at you?”

  “I ain’t ugly,” said the one with the pillow.

  Another one brought over the tar. “She won’t be so feisty after this.”

  “Shut up,” snapped the man in black. Then he turned his hood at Serenity.

  She tried to see his eye color and gauge his measurements. She would remember their gaits, their clothes, the shoes they were wearing. But she would never forget the voice of the one in black.

  “There is one way you can avoid the tar, woman.”

  “I’ll recant nothin’.”

  “Tell us where to find the so-called book of history.”

  And she grinned. “You’re a Bigelow.”

  For a moment, the black hood was motionless, soundless. But the nervous, chicken-head twitching of the others told her she was right.

  “I’m anyone who’s heard about the book,” said the black hood.

  “You’re a Bigelow.”

  “The book of comeuppance, woman. Tell us where it is and escape the tar. Refuse and suffer like Widow Nabby.”

  “Then you don’t have it?” She had wondered for decades if her brother had sold the log to the Bigelows. Now she knew. He had taken it with him, wherever he went.

  The man in the hood stared at her for a moment. Then he took a spatula covered with tar and brought it toward her. “We’ll start with the hair first. Like Nabby.”

  Serenity looked at the others. “This ain’t about Tories and Whigs. This is about Hilyards and Bigelows. Do this for politics, if you want, but don’t let this Bigelow bastard do it for what he wants from me.”

  “Where is the book?” demanded the man in black.

  “I don’t know.” She closed her eyes and clenched her jaw as the boiling tar burned a patch of her scalp.

  “Where is it?”

  “Get out, Solomon Bigelow. Or are you Benjamin? Which coward are you?”

  “I’m a Tory, sunk like the Sons of Liberty to frightenin’ old crones.” He took more tar and poured it onto her head. It was so hot that it soaked through her hair and burned through her skin and set her brain on fire.

  “Where is it?”

  “Get out!” she screamed. “Get out.”

  The man in black ordered one of the others to sprinkle feathers on Serenity’s head, and they fell like gentle snowfall on a burning bed of ash.

  “Now strip her,” he commanded.

  “No one stripped the widow Nabby,” said Serenity.

  “Then the book? Where is it?”

  “I don’t know. It disappeared. Sixty years ago.”

  “Who would expect the truth from one who has lied so often on foolscap?” He tore the top of her dress away.

  “We’re Tories, man, not monsters,” protested one of the others.

  But the man in black tore off her shift. “There. Nothing but a hag.”

  Serenity’s head felt as if it were covered with a burning hat. Her breasts shriveled in the cold air. But she would fight with every last fiber, because it was bred into her, i
n her backbone and her blood. She aimed a kick to his groin and nearly lifted him off his feet.

  He struck her face and screamed, “Bitch!”

  She kicked like a trapped deer, at everything in sight. She struck a shin, then another groin.

  And the man in black grabbed the tar bucket from the fireplace hook. A tarring might go no further than a few cold daubs on the hair, for a little chiding. Or it could threaten a victim with burning and suffocation. The man in black may have planned on the first but was giving the second, dumping the tar over Serenity’s shoulders and breasts like a bath of fire.

  Her flesh seared and blistered, and the smell of her own death burned into her head. But still she would not surrender anything, and if she screamed, it would be with the same voice of defiance she had brought to the beach on that night almost six decades before. “Damn you! Damn you all for bloody night-ridin’ cowards!”

  “This is what happens to old crones who stand against good men of the Crown.” And he dumped more tar onto her back.

  She screamed and damned them again.

  Then the feathers flew around her head and up her nose, and she nearly passed out from pain and fury.

  The man in black tore into the chest of drawers by the fireplace and the box of broadsides on the table.

  “The book’s not here,” she said. “You’ll never find it.”

  “Liar!”

  Two of the others ran in a long painted pole with a gilded finial, the liberty pole from Barnstable, cut down again and brought to Billingsgate. They raised Serenity, kicking and cursing, though every move caused the cooling tar to pull on her flesh and lift more skin from her burned back.

  They were losing their taste for this. They had started willingly enough, but the old woman’s pain seemed to be draining them of their hatred. If they rode her on the rail, they would do it simply because it was the final act of a miserable little dumb show that had been played out in every one of the thirteen colonies.

  “Enough,” said one of them. “She’s had enough.”

  “She’s the chief rabble-rouser on the Cape,” said another. “She’s the cause of all our troubles.”

  “Rail her and run her,” cried the leader, “like they did to my aunt.”