Jane stood before her father and waited, his attention already gone back to something in one of his letters, but Jane didn’t mind the waiting. She had always liked her father’s office—the look of the great rows of books on the shelves, the feel of the heavy wood desk, even the odor of musty paper and pipe smoke and her father’s sweat. When Jane was younger and jealous of her brother’s attention to his primer she’d once snuck into the room, climbed up on her father’s desk, and removed one of the books from his shelf, but she’d found it a large disappointment—the “books” as she’d thought them were in fact account ledgers full of nothing but names and numbers marked off in pounds, shillings, pence. But an addition of a few years had added to the significance of the ledgers, teaching Jane something new about the man with whom she’d lived her entire life. Up to then she’d known that his rule was law, that when he was not to be bothered it was best not to bother him, and that when he wasn’t bothered he loved her as well as any father should. But inside the account books Jane discovered the names of nearly every man in the village, and the numbers alongside each name represented considerable sums of money, either paid or owed; from this Jane learned that her father was also successful, important, smart.
Which was no doubt why men who were none of those things talked about him the way they did around the village.
Jane’s father finished his second examination of the letter in question and raised it in the air. He smiled at Jane. “Well, daughter, my congratulations to you—Paine has made his offer. How many visits has it been now, ten? A dozen?”
“Not near a dozen. And most on business with you.”
“Hah! Business with me! Here is all his business with me: he’ll have a house across the road as I promised for your marriage portion, half interest in the mill, full charge of both mill and tannery. You’ve picked yourself an able man, Jane; and an agreeable one; a clever man I’d even call him. I can talk politics with him without fear of disrupting my digestion as always happens whenever your brother engages me on the subject. But I expect you need no essay from me on Phinnie Paine’s character; let me say, however, if I’d got this letter from Joseph Woollen he’d have got another answer. You’re not planning to argue Woollen to me, are you?”
So her father had seen them at the wedding. “No, Papa,” Jane said.
Jane’s father leaned across and patted her cheek. “So we are agreed. I had little doubt of it. Paine says that pending my approval he’ll speak to you when he arrives, but I’m not the fool he takes me; I know the modern way. No doubt ’tis all settled between you.”
“Only as far as I could trust in your good opinion of him.”
“Hah! Yes! Very pretty! You’re a good child. Now leave me be. I’ve a letter to answer.”
Jane left him.
AFTER DINNER THE MIDWIFE Granny Hall’s neighbor boy came for Jane. It was a thing the old woman had begun to do of late, ever since an epidemic of dysentery had brought her to her bed along with the rest of the village, and Mehitable had offered Jane to go about delivering her cathartics. Since that time Granny Hall had got in the habit of calling on Jane for the more mundane tasks that occupied her practice—digging roots, planting herbs, brewing her decoctions—and Mehitable, a steady customer, had been willing enough to spare Jane from any household task in exchange for a poultice, an ointment, a tincture in payment.
Granny Hall lived in a half house covered with honeysuckle vines along the road to the Southside near the meetinghouse; in Jane’s first remembrance of her the woman had been very old and had since only grown older. It was an irony of the old woman’s age that her white hair had come around again to yellow, but it hadn’t youthened her. Nor did the way she pulled out the chair and dropped into it, as if in doubt of ever rising. Indeed, she must have weakened, because for the first time, she allowed Jane to pay her calls with her. At the Snow house Jane administered the brandy while Granny Hall put three stitches in Jabez Snow’s thigh where the bull had got him, but at Crowell’s Jane was allowed to give a puke for a stomach complaint, and at the Bakers it was left to Jane to gargle the putrid malignant sore throats of all five of their children. To Jane’s surprise and pleasure everyone except Jabez Snow felt better after her ministrations; as she worked her way home she made note to herself that next time she’d be more generous with the brandy.
JANE WALKED INTO THE HOUSE to the sound of her father barking in his office. She paused at the door long enough to identify the recipient of the bark as the nephew he’d taken on as his tanner’s apprentice. Any such noise always brought on Mehitable’s sick headache—Jane looked for her in her bed and found her there, eager for an application of the midwife’s headache decoction, given to Jane in her last payment.
Jane returned below-stairs to find the apprentice gone and her father on his way to the tavern in no fine mood; Jane hurried the children’s supper so she might have them in bed before he returned, it being her experience that the tavern had never improved a bad mood and indeed often ate up a good one. Bethiah—sometimes not so great a fool—followed the children to bed soon after they’d finished the clearing up, but Jane stayed below. If she made haste she might have time enough in the peace and quiet to answer her brother’s letter.
Jane settled herself at the keeping room table, brought the candle close, and picked up her pen, but she watched the candle lose an inch of grease before she was able to make a single mark on the paper. She’d thought first to tell Nate of Phinnie Paine’s letter to their father, but on reconsideration she decided it was better to wait till Phinnie had come and gone and they had, indeed, “settled the matter.” She next thought to tell Nate of Winslow’s horse, but Nate hadn’t leaped as eagerly as his cousins into the next generation of feuding, and she worried that this last rumor might push him, if not to some regrettable action, then at least to some regrettable words. Nate had grown quite talented at regrettable words, especially around Jane’s father. Or perhaps Jane should say he’d grown quite talented at words Jane regretted.
In the end Jane did as she so often did in her letters—she asked Nate a string of questions that he would no doubt ignore when he wrote his answer. Had he seen a doctor for his injuries? Wouldn’t he like to take the next ship home to Satucket and recover under the care of a sister who’d been lately cultivating her skills at nursing? What was a qui tam? She folded the letter, sealed it, addressed it, and left it on the post table near the door to await the next likely conveyor.
JANE’S STEPMOTHER REMAINED IN BED the next day; Bethiah took over the babe, and Jane took the two little girls with her on her errand to the cobbler’s. Both girls were in the high spirits that came with such a rare unleashing until they turned onto the King’s road and saw the horse. Winslow had reined up at the side of the road in order to speak to the Indian Sam Cowett, and the horse bobbed and tossed its head, as if bothered by flies, or pain, or the whistling of the wind across the exposed stumps. Jane pulled the girls close and clucked them along the far side of the road as fast as she was able. She looked once more as she passed and noted that in contrast to the fretful horse its rider sat still and calm with his head held high; he saw Jane and tipped his hat to her as politely as if her name were Snow or Doane or Baker. Jane dipped her head in answer.
THE LITTLE GIRLS COULD not recover from the sight of it. They tugged at Jane’s skirt and peppered her with questions that she attempted to push away by pointing out every distraction along the road. Look there, the miller’s cart . . . See here, the strawberries in blossom . . . Watch out for that rut . . . They’d gotten so little satisfaction from her that as they entered the house they overcame their usual timidity and began to pester their father, who sat at table being served a plate by Bethiah. What happened to the horse’s ears, Papa? Where are the ears, Papa? Can it hear if we call it? Can it hear a wolf? A crow?
Throughout the questions the only sounds the girls received in answer were Jane’s orders to hush until Hitty braved one last question. “Would you ride a horse with
no ears, Papa?”
To Jane’s surprise, her father chose to answer that one. “I would not.”
“Why not, Papa?”
“Because such a man can have no dignity.”
There, at last, the little girls quieted; they would not know what dignity was, but they knew enough of their father’s face to know all questioning had ended. Jane, thinking of Winslow tipping his hat, thought she did know what dignity was, and that her father was wrong about it. She’d known her father to be wrong about a thing before, but for some reason she found this instance of it more troubling. It made her want to ask her own question. It made her not want to ask the question. It made her look away as she collected the empty plate in front of him.
BY THE TIME JANE reached the bed she shared with Bethiah she found that her sister’s musty body had already dampened the sheets and she’d locked her elbows around both bolsters. Jane eased in beside her and lay as still as a pan of milk; it wasn’t worth waking the girl and risking a stream of chat just to reclaim a bolster. She lay listening to the house: the tick of the clock in the front room, the choonk of a log settling into the fire, the breeze rattling her window. On another night these sounds might have soothed her into sleep, but tonight each one attacked her ears like a dog’s bark. Thinking of dogs, she began to wonder if in her new house across the road she’d hear Paul Wing’s dog, who barked every time a leaf dropped. Or did Phinnie have his own dog? Jane didn’t know. She began to wonder what else she didn’t know about Phinnie, outside of her father’s testament. She remembered meeting Phinnie for the first time in her father’s office and liking what she saw—features not too bold or too soft, clothes not too new or too old, the smile that stayed in the eyes after the mouth had given it over. She also remembered liking the way he stood with his hands at perfect ease at his sides, the way he measured his words without rush, the graceful way he mounted his horse as she watched from the window.
Horse. Just touching on the word brought it back again, the image of Winslow’s horse tossing its head, the look of the blackened stumps. She yanked at the bolster and pressed it against her eyes, forgetting about the sleeping Bethiah, but it was too late.
A whisper no louder than a child’s breath tickled her ear. “I saw it too.”
“Saw what?”
“The horse. Mr. Winslow’s horse. The one with no ears.”
Jane made no answer.
“ ’Tis an awful sight.”
“Yes.”
“They say Papa did it.”
Again, Jane made no answer.
“Is it true?”
“Of course not.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he was here at the time it happened.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I lay right here and listened to him snoring.”
“You heard him snoring last night?”
“Don’t you hear him now?”
“Well, yes.”
“So.”
“But I didn’t hear him last night.”
“Well I did. I told you. Now be quiet.”
Bethiah fell silent. Across the hall Jane could indeed hear her father snoring, and outside she could hear the millstream fussing over the rocks, and from below-stairs she could hear the tick of the clock. What could Winslow’s horse hear?
What kind of man could cut off the ears of a horse?
Chapter Three
PHINNIE PAINE ARRIVED as promised on the nineteenth. When Jane heard his horse in the yard she looked out the window in her usual way only to discover that she’d lost her usual way, that she found herself looking at him as if he were a stranger and she were taking her first measure. She watched him swing his leg over the horse’s rump with becoming grace, hand his reins to the Negro Jot, and stand a minute in the easy chat of a man comfortable with all creation. She watched him remove his jacket from his saddle and bravely shrug it on over his sweat-stained shirt, a nod to civility that Jane didn’t require but nonetheless drew him credit. He’d collected a number of pine needles in his hat brim, but of course he couldn’t have noticed that; when he swept the hat off as he entered the house the needles floated to the floor.
Jane crossed the room and scooped up the pine needles. When she lifted her head Phinnie was gazing at her with amusement. “Ah, Jane. What a fine housekeeper you are.” It was an old joke between them, and one Jane would rather forget, but of course Phinnie couldn’t know that. At Phinnie’s second visit he had grown confused over Jane’s mention of stepmothers and she’d set out the list for him: her father’s first wife, mother to Nate and Jane; the second, barren wife; the third, who’d mothered Bethiah; and Mehitable, the fourth, who mothered the rest. After she’d finished she’d looked at Phinnie’s startled eyes and said, “A man must get his housekeeping somehow.” Phinnie had tipped back his head and laughed, but remembering it now Jane felt the disservice she had done her stepmothers, especially Bethiah’s mother, whom Jane had loved well.
Jane’s father brought her back. “Why do you hang about, Jane? Get the man a cider.”
Get the man a cider meant that Jane was to get both of the men a cider; she removed two tankards from the cupboard and went to the cellar for the jug. When she returned, her father and Phinnie had settled at the table, her father pulling himself up in the way he always did when seated opposite someone taller. He said, “I make no official speech, Mr. Paine; I never do till a deal’s finished; but allow me to say that on this occasion my wife and I are most particularly happy to welcome you to our home.”
Phinnie said, “Thank you, sir. Thank you, madam. I’ve seldom been so eager to arrive at a place or so loath to think how soon I must be gone from it.”
“Then we must see that you make hay, sir!” Jane’s father barked out a laugh and reached for the new Gazette Phinnie had brought him. Jane braced, and sure enough, her father came to a point that disturbed him straightaway.
“Here now! Here! Do you read this chamber-dung of the troops at Boston? If half these tales of beatings and rapes were true there’d not be a soldier with the strength to stand!”
Phinnie said, “ ’Tis true, sir,” which could have meant one thing or the other, but Jane’s father seemed to take it as agreement, and needing nothing more, if he needed it at all, talked on in like manner through supper. It was the fault of a small collection of men with the surnames of Otis and Adams and Molineux for feeding the lower classes tyrannous articles in the paper and rum in the tavern, then sending them out to so abuse the soldiers it would try the patience of Job. And so forth.
After supper Jane’s father took Phinnie and his rum and disappeared into his office, where no doubt the details of mill and tannery and house would be laid down. Mehitable and Bethiah herded the children up the stairs to their beds, leaving Jane to the clearing up, but as soon as the family had disappeared from the keeping room Jane sat back down and picked up the Gazette her father had left on the table; long ago Jane had learned that this was where she might find the words that had been missing from her father’s ledgers.
The first newspaper story she encountered told of another attack on an importer, and as Jane read she found she agreed with her father’s opinion on the matter. The Townshend Act had levied new taxes on paper, paint, glass, and tea the previous year, and the old ban on importing British goods had been resurrected in hope of forcing their repeal, but there were still some importers and businessmen who didn’t think this the way to proceed, and Jane’s father was among them. As for Jane, she could not understand how a man could talk liberty out of one side of his mouth and then brand another man’s free choice to import a little tea or cloth as tyranny. And these very men who broke into merchants’ shops, threatening tarring and feathering, were the reason the offending king’s troops had been sent to Boston in the first place.
But Jane found the next series of stories more troubling.
A Woman at the North End entered a Complaint against a Soldier, and some others for a violent Att
empt upon her, but a Rape was prevented, by the timely Appearance of a Number of Persons, for Protection . . .
A Country Butcher, who frequents the Market, having been in discourse with one Riley, a Grenadier of the 14th Regiment, who he said before abused him, thought proper to offer such verbal Resentment as led the Soldier to give him a Blow, which felled the Butcher to the Ground . . .
A Girl at New-Boston, was lately knocked down and abused by Soldiers for not consenting to their beastly proposals . . .
Were the stories true? Or were they, as her father said, naught but cheap propaganda? Jane went back to read the last few stories again, but somewhere in the middle of them she found herself thinking of Winslow’s horse. The same kind of man who would spread such a rumor over a small village was no doubt the same kind who would write lies for the newspaper if it served his purpose, the purpose being the same in each instance: to convince the populace that a terrible evil lurked among them. Having discovered a motive for a man to write a lie in the paper seemed closer to proving that lie, and yet the stories troubled her. Could so many acts so vividly recorded all be false?
Jane set down the paper, cleared and scoured the dishes, and had just swept up the floor when Bethiah returned to the keeping room. They took up their work baskets in expectation of the usual hour of mending, but they’d barely threaded their needles when Jane’s father emerged from his office with Phinnie behind him. He said, “Time for bed. Bethiah, come. Jane, you see our guest comfortable.” He barked out another laugh and pushed Bethiah up the stairs ahead of him.
The Rebellion of Jane Clarke Page 2
