Jane sat back on her heels too. It had never occurred to her that she could return to Satucket on anything but her father’s terms. She imagined greeting her father not as a beggar but as a visitor, free to come and go as she chose.
Jane’s grandmother said, “You needn’t decide the thing now,” but of course it was decided the minute her grandmother mentioned it.
“When do you plan to return?”
Jane’s grandmother’s eyes changed focus, from near to far. She said, as her husband had, “Soon.”
JANE HAD LEARNED FROM her grandfather what “soon” did and didn’t mean, but it didn’t matter. It would take little time to pack, as her trunk had never been unpacked. As she waited she resumed her place beside her grandmother in the kitchen and soon discovered that the job was not as simple as it had first appeared. As many times as her grandfather made it to the table for their dinner, as many more times he sent a note saying he was delayed and could not attend. When he did arrive for dinner he was often not alone, and besides seeing old acquaintances like John Adams, Jane met other lawyers involved in the upcoming trials. And so the “Bloody Massacre” wasn’t left behind after all.
The two most interesting men who came to call, aside from Adams, were a pair of brothers Jane had never met before—Josiah and Samuel Quincy. Josiah possessed a crossed eye and would appear for the defense, despite his father’s violent objections; Samuel’s eyes sat straight, but he would appear for the prosecution. The more interesting thing about the brothers, however, was that their political inclination should have put each on the other’s side. A true loyalist named Auchmuty filled out the defense team, and it was this man who caused Jane the greatest unease.
“The evidence is very strong that the firing came by Preston’s order,” he declared one day as Jane worked around the table, filling platters. “We must therefore build up the case of the soldiers’ provocation. The outrageous reports in the papers, the long months of orchestrated attacks by the inhabitants, the unrelenting efforts to provoke the soldiers into just such an event as has now transpired.”
“No, no, no,” Adams cried. “We must have no talk of orchestration! No long months of attacks!”
“What?” Josiah Quincy put in. “Against the kinds of witnesses the prosecution will provide?”
Adams shook his head. “The eyes of every friend in all the colonies and abroad are now fixed on us and will be fixed so throughout these trials. If the inhabitants are perceived as the instigators of this event we lose them all. This cannot become a trial of the town.”
“Then it shall be no trial,” Auchmuty said.
“And you’ll hang the lot,” Josiah Quincy added.
Adams, all there was of height and width and breadth to him, drew himself up. “If such an effort as just described is made by either of you, I shall stand down as counsel for the defense.”
And thus the matter was closed.
IT WAS NO CONCERN of Jane’s. So Phinnie had said, and so Jane agreed; with her brother’s letter mailed there was no reason on God’s earth for Jane to be thinking about the massacre at all. She told herself this as she lay in bed, and she told herself this as she woke in the morning, and she told herself this as she labored over the dough tray beside her grandmother. It was no concern of hers, and she almost hoped Phinnie would stop by so she could admit the same.
But it was Henry Knox who stopped by. It was different with Henry at Water Street—he wasn’t ushered into any formal parlor but brought into the keeping room and set down among the bustle there. Jane’s grandmother asked a number of questions, the kind Jane’s father might have asked, and Jane discovered a number of things she was embarrassed to learn she hadn’t discovered before. Henry was the seventh of ten sons and the oldest now at home, supporting his widowed mother and the remaining three siblings; he only managed Wharton & Bowes for his employers, but one day he hoped to open a bookshop of his own. One thing about his visits, however, remained the same: after due attention was paid to their guest, Jane’s grandparents made their excuses and left the pair alone. It was there Jane might have told Henry about her letter to her brother, but somehow she did not, and when he reached for her she felt hollow under his hand, as if the core of herself had been left behind in the silence.
WHEN PHINNIE PAINE DID stop by at last, it was over business with her grandfather. Jane was in the keeping room peeling and chopping onions for a soup and she heard his voice—the unmistakable lift in it: Good-day, Mrs. Poole, how do you fare?
Phinnie had come, he told Mrs. Poole, to see Mr. Freeman about some shingles. Jane heard the pair of footsteps move off in the direction of her grandfather’s office, heard the rich, deep rise and fall of male voices, heard a laugh—her grandfather’s laugh—and a possessive wave of gratitude swept over her; it had been some time since she’d heard her grandfather laugh. Jane’s grandmother, just returned from the cellar, paused when she heard it too and smiled. She cast an eye at Jane and said, “Best bring that man a cider.”
Jane went to the jug, poured two tankards full, carried them down the hall and into her grandfather’s office. The room was like and not like her father’s in that the books that lined these shelves were most certainly full of words, words of which, no doubt, her father would not approve. As Jane entered, Phinnie rose to his feet and accepted his mug with a silent nod. Jane’s grandfather took his mug and peered inside.
“I’ve an earwig swimming in here.”
Jane reached for the mug, but her grandfather held it away. “No, no, I’ll tend it.” He left the room, leaving silence behind.
After a time Phinnie said, “An earwig. I thought him cleverer than that.”
Jane said nothing.
Phinnie said, “You might as well sit down, Jane. He’ll not be back soon.”
Jane stayed standing.
Phinnie said, “When I was last at Satucket your sister Bethiah engaged me in a private word. She said your father sent you here because of me.”
“I sent myself,” Jane said, which was, and wasn’t, true.
“To hide from me?”
“No.” True? Not true?
“When I saw you at your aunt’s I behaved poorly. Perhaps I understand something better now of how you felt. The difficulty I caused you. I would cause you no difficulty, Jane.” He stopped. He leaned over and set his tankard on the table. Jane looked at his back and remembered all the times she thought she’d seen it through the crowds. A wild, meaningless desire to lay her hand on that back rose up in her.
Phinnie turned to Jane again. “I wonder if you remember the day I met you, Jane. I was in your father’s office; I don’t believe you knew anyone had even entered the house. You tapped on the door and called out, ‘Papa?’ Your father called you into the room, beckoned you to his side, and circled your waist. ‘Mr. Paine,’ he said, ‘you now have the great honor of meeting my eldest daughter.’ How your face glowed! How happy you were to be inside the circle of that man’s arm, to be presented by him so proudly! ’Twas a thing I could not forget.” Phinnie paused. “Remembering such a thing, how could I answer your questions of that last night in Satucket, Jane? How could I say to you I thought your father self-serving in his politics and well capable of any number of dishonorable acts? Was he capable of cutting off a horse’s ears? I don’t know. I do know I could not work under a man of his temperament, nor would I care to live across the road from him, nor could I ever love him as you do. Is that what you would have liked me to say to you that night? Would that have swept you happily into our marriage? Tell me, Jane. What should you have done that night if I had said such things? Would you have gone ahead and bedded me, all in accordance with your father’s plan?”
“My father’s plan!”
“I’m not a fool, Jane. I knew well enough he would never allow me to lie with you under his roof and then remain a single man. I knew he pushed you into my bed to put the final seal on his scheme. But understand, your father’s plan and mine were up until a particular point o
ne and the same. Aside from the usual passions at play, I was in even greater haste to see the thing done, before you discovered that I could not love your father as you should like me to do, before you discovered I could not agree to the second part of his plan. The plan for my future. For our future.”
Our future. The words hung in the air as dead as the thing itself, dead as a thing never born. Phinnie had stopped speaking, no doubt waiting for Jane to answer, but she couldn’t raise a single word—Phinnie had said too many of them for her to sort them through. He had drained his tankard and picked up his hat when the first ones came to her.
“And how my father loved you.”
It sounded bitter and cold, not the way she wished it to sound, but she couldn’t think how to sweeten or warm it, because it was true.
THE NEXT DAY A note arrived from Jane’s brother. Dear Sister—I am in receipt of your letter; ’tis just as well; Mr. Adams should have made a hash of you. Indeed, if you can’t speak to the cause, best you don’t speak at all. I remain as I always have remained and always shall remain—Your Most Affectionate Brother.
There was no letter from her father.
Chapter Twenty-seven
AT THE FIRST of April Otis came by. In all Jane’s brief acquaintance with the man he had been finely dressed; this day he came in a soiled shirt, without a coat, his knee buckles unfastened. They were at supper when Mrs. Poole ushered him in; he stood at the keeping room door and peered at them as if he’d somehow arrived at the wrong dwelling.
“Welcome, my friend,” Jane’s grandfather said. “Will you join us?”
Otis looked over the table. “I will make thee think thy swan a crow.”
“You might at that,” Jane’s grandmother said, “but I believe you’ll find ’tis tasty just the same.”
Otis stared at her. “The devil can cite scripture for his purpose.”
“Come, sir,” Jane’s grandfather tried again. “ ’Tis no devil here—none but old friends.”
Otis looked in evident perplexity from face to face. He came around the table and leaned down until he could claim a fairer view of Jane’s. Did he know her? Jane was not at all sure of it.
“Truth is the trial of itself,” he said to her. “What can we know or what can we discern when error chokes the windows of the mind? No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth!”
“Mr. Otis,” Jane’s grandmother tried yet again. “If you please, it would be our greatest pleasure if you would sit and take some food with us.”
“I must cudgel my brains no more about it!” Otis cried and bolted out the door.
Jane’s grandmother started to speak and faltered. “ ’Tis . . .’tis all nonsense he speaks now.”
“Not all,” Jane’s grandfather answered. “He gave us Ben Jonson; Shakespeare. ’Tis Sir John Davies, I believe, who speaks of windows of the mind; Francis Bacon the vantage-ground of truth; he came back to Shakespeare at the end. ‘Cudgel thy brains no more.’ Poor, tormented creature; if only he could do so. I fear . . . I fear—” He stood up. “I must see him safe.” He followed Otis’s path out the door.
Near midnight Jane’s grandfather sent a note that he would be in attendance until Otis’s brother arrived, that plans were under way to deliver Otis into the care of his family at Cape Cod. Jane woke to her grandfather’s tread on the stairs in the early hours, to low voices coming from behind her grandparents’ chamber door. It went on long, but it didn’t keep Jane awake; she was now awake on her own account, thinking of Otis, unable to free her mind of the man. He had leaned down to her. He had spoken to her. What can we know or what can we discern when error chokes the windows of the mind? The solitary sentence held in it all that Jane had wrestled with since March the fifth. But she had put the fifth behind her along with her decision about Hugh White. Why must she cudgel her brains about it so?
Because of Captain Preston. Jane’s brother might think it all about Hugh White—Jane might once have thought it all about Hugh White—and her brother might absolve her from testifying about him, but he couldn’t absolve her from testifying about Captain Preston. But why must she care about Captain Preston when others didn’t? The captain stood so close to hanging he might look up and see the shadow of the rope, and his lawyer had voluntarily tied his own hands in Preston’s defense. And yet she must care. And why? Because Phinnie was wrong. It was her concern. If they hanged a man for a thing he did not do, it might be because of a thing she did not say. It didn’t matter who Captain Preston was or what he stood for or even whether or not Jane liked him, although, in fact, she did. She must say what she believed she saw. And she must soon discover if Otis—or Bacon—was right: that there was no pleasure comparable to standing upon the vantage-ground of truth. Judging by the great wave of nausea rising up in her chest, she held her doubts.
JANE ROSE EARLY, WASHED and dressed herself, made up her bed, and sat down on its edge. She listened and heard her grandmother’s steps on the stairs; she continued to sit. When she heard her grandfather’s heavier tread, she leaped up and opened her door, giving her grandfather a start.
“Jane!”
“I’m sorry, sir. But I have a question I needed to ask, and I wanted to ask it before you left on your business. It concerns Mr. Adams.”
Jane’s grandfather looked his surprise, but without hesitation he folded up like a crane and sat down on the next step. Jane sat on the step above, the better to even their heights. “I once talked to you about making a deposition at my brother’s request. I told him I could not say what he wished. He accepted that answer.”
“Then I would call the matter settled.”
“That aspect of it is. But I might be able to give some other testimony in favor of Captain Preston. My brother knows nothing of this.”
“I see.”
“Don’t mistake me, sir. My brother is not my concern. Or rather, he is not my total concern. I have some concern over Mr. Adams.”
“Mr. Adams!”
“I well know his political sympathies do not lie with the soldiers. If I were to go to him with something I saw that aided Captain Preston, if I were to take the trouble to myself, knowing I should make unhappy those I love—” Jane paused. “I only wonder if Mr. Adams is sincere in his effort.”
“Ah! I see. There, perhaps, I may be of some help. I have known Mr. Adams some years now and may say without reservation that he is the hardest-working, most honest man I know. You may have no fear that he will apply all of his considerable talents to freeing Captain Preston.”
Except if it required putting the town on trial along with the soldiers. But that could not be Jane’s responsibility. In truth, she’d known her responsibility from the minute Otis had peered into her face and begun to speak.
JANE AND HER GRANDFATHER conspired together. Mrs. Poole was sent with a note to Adams’s office which would occupy Jane’s brother on an errand and leave Jane free to speak without him present. Indeed, when she arrived, the lawyer was alone at a desk so covered with books it required him to hold his elbow in the air as he wrote. On seeing Jane his eyes first widened in surprise and then dampened. “Miss Clarke! How touched I was to receive your most expressive letter on the loss of my darling Susanna. You, who never laid eyes upon her!”
For a minute Jane stood puzzled. Of course she’d seen her, seen her in Adams’s arms—and then she remembered. It was only the father’s love she’d seen as he’d held Mehitable’s babe and thought of his.
Adams blinked, regaining himself. “I do hope you don’t come to me with some trouble of your own, Miss Clarke.”
“No, sir, I come to you with some help for Captain Preston.”
She explained herself. Adams’s round eyes grew rounder as she talked, first with disbelief, then with relief, and finally with an honest man’s joy, which she wished with all her heart she could better share.
HENRY KNOX CAME, and the minute he stepped into the keeping room Jane knew she could not tell him of her visit to
Adams. He would learn of it in due time—that was the way of things in town—but he would not learn of it today, from her. This self-imposed silence pressed so heavily on her that it took her some time to catch up to what Henry was saying to her. Jane was working at pies, and Henry had come around the table to examine her work. She’d just laid out the pigeons, peppered and salted her lumps of butter and stuffed them inside; as Henry lifted his eyes from the pie to her she at first mistook one kind of hunger for the other.
“Times are coming to a head, Jane,” he was saying. “Times are dictating a man’s behavior, prompting him to think ahead of himself and his circumstance, suggesting to him that the day must be seized before all is swept away before him.” He paused. “Perhaps, Jane, you recall something of my living situation. Perhaps you remember that I live with my widowed mother and younger siblings and work to provide their keep and care. One might think this left no room for another, but such is not the case; my mother has reached that age and state of health where she is ready to sit back and let another take her place at the hearth.” There Henry paused and looked at Jane, waiting for her to speak.
Jane looked at Henry and saw again her image in his eyes, but somehow her image had now taken on the coloration of her stepmother Mehitable. She said, “So you are in need of a housekeeper, then? Perhaps my grandmother would know of someone who might suit.”
Henry blinked. “Well . . . yes. Thank you.”
JANE’S GRANDFATHER BROUGHT THE talk home to dinner—Preston’s trial was to take place at the May sitting of the court—and it was as if his words sailed through the air and got caught in Jane’s throat.
But out of that same air Jane’s grandmother said, “Perhaps after the trial we might return to Satucket.”
The Rebellion of Jane Clarke Page 21
