“A stick,” Jane said, with credible assurance, considering she hadn’t seen the man at all.
The Freeman house was more like the houses Jane was used to in Satucket—wider than it was long and but one and a half stories tall—the only great external oddity was that it was painted white, something Jane had never before seen. Internally it was so sparsely furnished that it gave the look of a temporary abode, and as Jane thought on it, and on her grandmother’s as yet unrealized intention of spending most of her time in Satucket, she saw in it something of the woman’s strength of purpose. Her father might have called it her stubbornness.
The women were brought into the parlor by a middle-aged servant named Mrs. Poole, whose fire-chapped face seemed to beam wildly at them until Jane realized she was comparing those lively features to Martha’s dead ones. Nate had already arrived, and he and Jane’s grandfather were deep in conversation, Nate sitting with eyes wide and lips parted as if drinking his grandfather’s words as they came. Exactly what her grandfather talked of Jane couldn’t say, as he broke off as the women entered the room, but she guessed it to be political by its tone.
Mrs. Poole collected the men and led the way to the table. As they went Jane again took note of empty walls and cupboards, but the meal that had been set out was far from bare: the traditional plain pudding to start, but followed with soup, fish, roast beef, greens, bread, cheese, butter, jam. Aunt Gill delivered to Jane her second surprise of the day by eating much of everything, so much so that it made Jane look the laggard. Her grandfather was just urging the beef at her a second time when Mrs. Poole ushered in another visitor.
“Mr. Otis,” she announced, and Jane stopped chewing. The visitor was perhaps as tall and broad as Henry Knox, but his reputation lengthened and widened him so that Jane was surprised at the ease with which he glided through the door. Even Jane knew of Otis, partly from the invectives her father frequently delivered against him, and partly from the praise her brother heaped on him. It was Otis who had first raised the question of man’s natural rights to such things as life and liberty and property, Otis who had written pamphlet after pamphlet denouncing the policies of Parliament, Otis again who had spoken out as moderator at town meeting and representative in the legislature on the tyranny of Britain’s taxation without representation.
Jane looked at the visitor as carefully as she might in all politeness, expecting to see either god or devil in him, but she saw neither thing. He greeted her grandfather with a smile as easy and comfortable as an old shoe; he tipped his head to Nate; he gave Aunt Gill an elegant bow; but when he was introduced to Jane his eyes drew down on her like one of the gulls that forever hovered over the herring in the millstream. There were several empty seats at table, but he pulled out the one beside Jane and sat down.
“Would this be the Miss Jane Clarke of the affair at the corner of Exchange and King?” he asked.
“ ’Tis,” Nate answered for her. “But at least it taught her to keep wide of the soldiers.”
Jane said, “Or the boys.”
“The boys!”
“I’d prefer a ‘good-day’ to a mud ball. Or to a slander in the paper.”
The herring gull’s eyes fixed harder.
“I should say it stops short of slander,” Jane’s grandfather put in. “An unsolicited greeting by a stranger might well be called ‘accosting.’ And you were in fact ‘brought to the ground’ by whatever means it happened, and it would not have happened had you not been so ‘accosted.’ And we don’t in fact know what might have happened if Mr. Molineux hadn’t come upon the scene and assisted you home.”
Otis, at last, removed his eyes from Jane. “All very well, my friend, but I must side with Miss Clarke here. The soldiers in this town have been treated abominably.”
The table went still.
Otis went on. “Admit it, Freeman. Mud throwing and name-calling are one thing, but the courts—any flimsy charge against a soldier upheld, outrageous fines put down—criminal! The law must not be conscripted to serve one particular cause. To lose the law is to lose the fight.”
“With respect, sir,” Nate said, “I say when a people are under an illegal occupation they must fight with what they’ve got to hand.”
Aunt Gill said, “And what have we got to hand but a few stories in the paper?”
Jane looked at her aunt in surprise. Another we.
“We have the people, Aunt,” Nate answered her. “Thirty thousand from all the outlying towns, ready to march at a minute’s notice, and all it takes to call them is a flaming barrel of pitch on the beacon hill.”
“But what use thirty thousand unarmed people?”
“Oh, we have arms,” Nate said softly. “We have arms.”
Jane said, “So you would pick up these arms and shoot down the patient and forbearing Mr. White, all for bidding me good-day?”
Again, Otis looked at her, and Jane saw in the look something she would not dare to call admiration but might certainly call acknowledgment, perhaps even endorsement. How strange, she thought, that of all in the room, Otis, the voice of the rebellion, should be the only one to feel for the sentry with her. But as Jane looked at the man again she saw something else. She saw he was not at ease with this feeling. She saw the war in him.
“No thinking man can wish for armed insurrection,” he said. “The soldiers must be ordered out by official decree, but such decree will only come once their presence is seen to decrease, not increase the peace.”
“The king has already agreed to our petition to recall the royal governor as an enemy of the people,” Jane’s grandfather said.
“He’d better, or we’ll hang the governor as traitor,” Nate said.
Otis pushed back his chair so abruptly it knocked into Jane’s. “I must go,” he said. “I cannot stay. I cannot. I must. I must go.” He dashed into the hall; seconds later they all heard the outer door open and close.
The table fell as silent and still as the mill wheel in an ice storm. Jane looked to her grandfather for some hint of what had just happened, but he was sitting as motionless as the rest, eyes fixed on the hall door, as if willing his friend to reappear. She looked at Nate, but he’d dropped his head and begun jabbing at the fish bones on his plate. It was some time before Jane bothered to notice Aunt Gill. She’d gone white with fatigue, and her hands trembled as she reached for her teacup; no surprise then, that she dropped it on her plate and it shattered. One of the shards must have caught her wrist as it went down, for a bright slash of red sprang up on it. Jane leaped up and went to work on the wound with her napkin, but it was her grandfather who proved more useful, coming around with a large dose of brandy. The pink began to return to her aunt’s cheeks, but it was clear to Jane—belatedly clear to Jane—it was time for them to go.
Jane’s grandfather called for the carriage. The solicitations and good-byes and thank-yous went back and forth in their usual course, but at last Jane had her aunt secured inside; she’d just put her own foot to the step when someone caught her arm. She backed up and whirled. Her brother tipped his head as close to hers as his hat would allow and spoke at her through a tight jaw.
“I want to know what you think you’re doing. I want to know what you’re up to with that soldier.”
“The soldier!”
“You keep to Paine.”
“Paine! You think yourself our father now?”
“Me our father! ’Tis you takes his side. But you hear me, Jane. You keep away from that soldier. The lot of them.” His hand tightened and released. He strode off.
Jane stood on the street, numbed. Who was this person who had been her brother? What had he become? What was this rage in him? She gripped the side of the carriage and swung herself in, stewing in her own heat, only to find Aunt Gill slumped in the corner, as if she lacked the strength to sit. All Jane’s anger washed away under the cold flood of guilt. Jane’s selfish desire for an outing and her aunt’s unselfish desire to please her had caused the old woman to tax herself p
ast her endurance; indeed, it had been Jane’s annoyance at the talk over the sentry that had caused the conversation to grow overheated and overlong, draining her aunt’s limited reserve. And what, after all, had any of it to do with Jane? What had she been thinking in even going to the newspaper? What if the correction, along with her name and address, had actually been printed in the paper? What other than mud balls might she have drawn to her aunt’s door? How could she have risked such a thing after all her aunt’s explicit warnings on the subject, after all her kindness?
The carriage jounced hard on a curb, and Jane put out her arm to cushion the old woman’s frail body. The jolt roused Aunt Gill and added another regret to Jane’s list, or perhaps this one was to be laid to her grandfather, as there Aunt Gill launched into a nasty rill of gossip so unlike her that Jane could only blame it on the brandy.
“Perhaps you don’t know, Jane, that the great rebel Otis’s wife is high Tory; she curtain-lectures him like a schoolboy. Whenever he speaks out against the king in her presence she denies him her bed chamber. And perhaps you don’t know either, Jane, that Mrs. Otis has secretly arranged an engagement for her daughter to a captain in the British army. Imagine a British captain in the great patriot’s family! But I forget! I forget to tell you! How very rich the wife is! And beautiful! But you make your bed, you lie in it. Alone!” And there Aunt Gill descended into such an alarming cascade of giggles that Jane began to fear an hysteria.
A long carriage ride later they reached their home. Concerned about her aunt’s unsteadiness, Jane called through the door for Prince and Martha, but neither appeared. After an ordeal full of more silliness than unsteadiness, Jane finally secured the old woman in her bed and was able to climb the stairs to her own. She made the usual preparation for sleep, but even as she did so she knew how fruitless the act of closing her eyes would be. She lay between her sheets like a chastised child, staring into the night shadows, repeating every one of her brother’s words, burning again over every one, but especially over three of them. Keep to Paine. What did he know of it? What right did he have to speak to her of it?
After Jane had worn down over Nate, she thought she might sleep but discovered instead that Otis lurked behind her brother, Otis and all she had learned afresh of him from Aunt Gill. What might Otis’s family have thought of his choice of wife? Had Otis married her, despite her Tory views, only because she was rich and beautiful? Or had he only discovered her views after they were married? If the first, he’d earned his suffering. If the second, perhaps he’d earned that too, for not looking past the sum to the parts before it was too late to do so. Or perhaps the wife had earned it for presenting herself dishonestly. Or the pair together had earned it, just as she and Phinnie Paine would have had to share the blame for their own mismatching.
There Jane came around to her brother again. Keep to Paine. And who was he to say? His last great infatuation had been over a runaway indentured servant who’d gone off to Philadelphia in search of a father she’d last seen a decade before when he’d sold her into servitude. What use his advice then?
Chapter Twelve
ON THE TWENTY-FIRST of July Jane read in the Gazette that the governor had dissolved the General Court in response to the legislators’ efforts to have him removed. On the twenty-second her grandfather sent word that being free of his duties he was off at the week’s end for Satucket, and to send with the bearer any letters Jane wished him to convey. Jane had rushed to her pen and ink, but once again had difficulty in beginning. It was one of those irresistible summer days that had persuaded even Aunt Gill to open the window, and a breeze wafted over Jane like a beckoning hand. She could smell the usual town smells of excess humanity, but behind it she could smell the cleaner smell of the sea—diluted and disguised, but still recognizable as the one she had long known. She allowed her mind to waft away with the breeze to Satucket, thinking to bring her letter to better focus, but a bee had wandered in along with the breeze and begun to knock distractingly against the upper part of the glass. She watched the bee for a time, but at length pulled away and went back to her letter.
Trouble awaited her in the first line. Thus far Jane’s letters home had been written as if in continuing answer to the original request from Mehitable for news of her safe passage, and the letters had therefore been addressed to Mehitable alone. Now Jane found herself allowing of a question—was it time to include her father’s name in her address? She turned again to the window, to watch the bee fumble his way out, and continued to sit staring out at the chimney tops, thinking of bees.
She had been six or seven years old, her own mother dead, Bethiah’s mother not yet arrived, the stepmother in between having put Jane at the task of cracking hazelnuts while she went about the week’s baking. It was summer—perhaps late summer—and the door had been left open in the hopes of capturing a breeze to offset the oppressive heat of the oven. Jane had grown tired of cracking nuts and was taking a little rest, pushing damp hair off a damp forehead with an even damper hand, gazing out the door with longing, when a bee zigzagged through it and into her father’s empty office. Jane had slid off the kitchen bench and raced in after the bee; as seemed to be the habit with all bees, it had gone straight for the window and begun to bump against the pane. Jane took off her shoe and smacked the bee, crushing it impressively, but at the same time putting a good-size crack in the glass.
The operation made enough noise to bring her stepmother running; her stepmother made enough noise to bring her father running; the whole history of the crime was laid bare in front of them: the crack in the glass, the dead bee on the sill, the shoe in Jane’s hand.
“What the devil are you smashing up my windows for?” Jane’s father cried.
“To keep the bee from stinging you, Papa.”
It wasn’t the kind of answer that could have saved Jane, and indeed it had not—she was sent out to scrub down the necessary house in place of eating her dinner—but her father never did fix the pane, and years later, so many years that it couldn’t possibly have been the first time he had repeated it, Jane overheard him telling the story to his then-lawyer, Mr. Doane: “ ‘To keep the bee from stinging you, Papa!’ ”
So Jane sat, thinking about the bee and writing nothing, when a second message arrived from her grandfather—he would not be able to leave town after all, due to new matters that had “chained” him again.
ON THE FIRST OF August Jane woke to the clashing of all the town bells. Bells at the off-hour meant fire, and Jane had been in town long enough to know the different tolls—the church nearest the blaze would begin and the others take it up as the news went around, but today they set off all at once, nearly indistinguishable one from the other, except for the Anglican church with its royal peal of eight bells, and the sour note at New North. No matter the reason, the tolling of King’s Chapel always sounded sad, but for some reason today it didn’t; it swelled and rose and sang out in a happy cascade, joining the others from all quarters. But if not for fire, for what then? Jane was at the window, looking at the blank skyline when the china in the cupboard began to rattle, and behind it came the rumble of a queerly repetitive thunder. She looked up at the sky a second time, and saw nothing but clear blue to the horizon. She dressed in a hurry—Aunt Gill’s voice was now ringing out as well—and rushed her aunt into her clothes and down the stairs, the old woman for once as eager as Jane to get below. They arrived in the front hall just as Prince was coming in from the street with the news.
“ ’Tis the town sending off the governor.”
Aunt Gill gripped Prince’s arm. “He’s gone?”
“Set sail on the Rippon. Or would do if he had the wind. Ship sits dead in the harbor.” He slipped out the door again.
THROUGHOUT THE DAY THE cannon and bells crashed on, and Jane couldn’t help summoning some feeling for the unpopular governor, forced to lie offshore and listen to the merriment caused by his departure, until Prince came back again, grinning his imbecile grin at Jane, reporting that t
he Rippon carried with her thirty-six thousand ounces of Custom House silver, custom paid by the inhabitants of the town. Prince continued to go in and out, reporting to his mistress: townsfolk now lined the shore, jeering at the still becalmed Rippon, a great pile of wood was being assembled on Fort Hill for a bonfire, drink was going around and firearms were being discharged into the air, the one no doubt in relation to the other. Jane wished her aunt would order Prince to stay at home and tend to his chores, but he continued to come and go and report, to no good effect for Aunt Gill. Any joy she might have felt over the town being rid of its tormenter seemed overridden by the strain all the noise took on her nerves. She sat white and still in the front room, undistracted by the newspaper or any conversation Jane struggled to offer. Jane brought her some tea but had to hold it to her aunt’s lips in order for her to get any of it down.
AUNT GILL DID AS poorly by her supper. As dark came down, a wide fiery band of yellow painted the sky above the roofline—the bonfire on Fort Hill. So brilliant was the effect of the flames that it would have been visible all the way across town; it would have been visible across the harbor aboard the Rippon; and it was certainly visible to Aunt Gill. That was when Jane learned that Aunt Gill didn’t do well with fire, either—she turned pale and flushed in turns; she wanted to be taken up to her bed, but then asked to be brought down again in case the fire escaped the hill and she got burned up in her bedclothes. Only when Jane insisted the fire had subsided would she agree to go back up again, but long after Jane thought her aunt settled for the night she heard steps on the stairs, and went into the hallway to find Martha coming down them. Jane hadn’t heard Martha go up and was startled to see her. Jane was also startled to see Martha carrying a thick, leather case, the kind her father used to hold his most important papers.
The Rebellion of Jane Clarke Page 9
