Abiding Peace

by Susan Page Davis

  Print ISBN 978-1-60260-256-4

  eBook Editions:

  Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-60742-914-2

  Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-60742-915-9

  ABIDING PEACE

  Copyright © 2008 by Susan Page Davis. All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the permission of Truly Yours, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., PO Box 721, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683.

  All scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  All of the characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.

  Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.

  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Contact the Author

  Author Bio

  one

  Cochecho, New Hampshire, 1696

  Christine Hardin sat up straight on the backless bench in the meetinghouse as the Reverend Samuel Jewett finished his sermon with a stirring benediction. The congregation rose to blend their voices in the final hymn. Christine glanced sideways, along the line of Jewett children—all five of them, from three-year-old Ruth up to Ben, who was nearly as tall as his father now. At the far end of the row sat the Widow Deane. All eyes stayed forward, except Ruth’s. The little girl swiveled her head and looked up at Christine. She smiled and raised her arms in a gesture she used many times a day, begging Christine to pick her up.

  Christine couldn’t help smiling back at the sweet child, though the reverend wanted his children to be sober in church. She tousled Ruth’s dark curls, which were the exact shade of her dead mother’s. As she turned toward the pulpit once more, hoping Ruth would follow her example, Christine let her hand rest lightly on the little girl’s shoulder. All five of the children grieved their mother, and Christine mourned her dear friend. Each time she looked into the minister’s eyes, the emptiness there tore at her heart.

  “You may be seated,” the Reverend Jewett intoned, and the children stirred and looked to her with confusion. Wasn’t it time for dinner?

  Christine sat down quickly and pulled Ruth against her side, nodding to Abby and Constance to sit, as well.

  The congregation quieted, and the parson raised his voice once more. “Hear ye, hear ye, the marriage banns of Mordecai Wales, a freeman, and Parthenia Jones.”

  A soft murmur rippled through the congregation.

  “A fortnight hence, on the twentieth of August, in the year of our Lord, one thousand, six hundred and ninety-six, the marriage shall take place, if so be the will of the Almighty.”

  Christine saw ten-year-old John Jewett start to turn his head, but his older brother, Ben, elbowed him. The Jewett family occupied the front pew in church, and the children learned very early that they must never, never look behind them during services. But she recognized how tempting it was just then.

  Most of the congregants must be staring at old Farmer Wales. He had buried his second wife a mere month ago, and now it seemed he intended to marry a third—and much younger—woman in two weeks’ time. Parthenia Jones was also widowed, and she had two small children. It would no doubt be a good match for her, as Mr. Wales would provide for her and the little ones. She, in return, would take over management of his household and the half-grown offspring of his second marriage. She would tend him in his old age. And, if she didn’t succumb in childbirth first, she would be well taken care of after he died.

  Still, Parthenia couldn’t be more than eight-and-twenty, Christine calculated, and Mordecai Wales must be all of sixty. Ah well, the farmer probably wanted a stout young woman who could work hard and perhaps bear him more children. Christine felt her cheeks redden just for thinking it.

  People behind them rose to their feet and shuffled toward the aisle, and she realized the pastor had dismissed them.

  On the common outside the stark meetinghouse, Christine’s friends, Jane and Sarah, waited for her. Their husbands, Charles Gardner and Richard Dudley, stood off to one side, talking with Richard’s brother Stephen. Charles held his little son, who was eight months old, on one arm, his musket in the other hand. The baby tugged at his father’s beard, much to Charles’s delight. Ben Jewett, the pastor’s eldest son at fourteen, joined the men and was welcomed into the circle.

  Christine kept a close hold on Ruth’s hand and drew her over to where Jane and Sarah stood. Sarah held her little girl, Hannah, who would soon be a year old. Constance Jewett followed Christine, but Abby flitted off to spend a moment with her friends.

  “What did you think of the announcement at the end?” Sarah Dudley asked with arched eyebrows. She shifted Hannah to a more comfortable spot on her hip. Hannah promised to grow up to be as lovely as her mother. Christine was happy that her two friends had found loving husbands who treated them well.

  “He didn’t waste any time picking out a new wife,” Jane noted.

  Sarah chuckled. “True. But the marriage will be an improvement in situation for Parthenia, even though he is so much older than she.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t come courting you, Christine.” Jane smiled at her impudently.

  Christine shuddered. “Please. You ladies have convinced me by your example that marriage is not necessarily all bad. But to a man of Goodman Wales’s years? I think not.”

  “Aha! You witnessed what she said.” Jane turned eagerly to Sarah. “Christine is open to the idea of marriage at last.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Of course you did,” Jane said. “And we must look about for a young man for her.”

  “Or at least one not yet in his dotage.” Sarah seemed perfectly willing to enter into Jane’s teasing.

  “Miss Christine.” Constance tugged at her overskirt.

  Christine felt a pang of contrition. Here she was gossiping with her friends and setting a poor example for the parson’s daughters, who were in her care.

  “What is it, Constance?”

  “Are you getting married?”

  Christine stared down at the six-year-old’s innocent face, at a loss for words.

  “Not yet,” Jane said, reaching out to tweak Constance’s braid. “But we shan’t stop trying to find a match for her.”

  “A match?” Constance’s brown eyes widened.

  “A husband,” Sarah said. She glanced at Jane and Christine. “I think this conversation has gone about as far as it should for now.”

  “I agree. I implore you ladies to put it out of your minds,” Christine said. She had long maintained that she had no desire to marry. Indeed, she cringed at the very thought.

  Pastor Jewett came out onto the steps of the meetinghouse carrying his musket, which he had traded for in the spring. Renewed threats of Indian attacks had prompted the peace-loving minister to make the purchase. Only two weeks had passed since some of his congregation had been attacked by hostile savages as they left the church service. None of the men went about without their guns these days. He rested it again
st the wall and spread out a sheet of parchment against the church door, then pulled a hammer from his coat pocket.

  “Come, girls. Your father is posting the marriage banns.”

  “Ah, he’ll be wanting his dinner,” Jane said.

  “Yes. Time to go home.” As she turned to look about for Abby and John, Christine noticed a portly woman approaching her. She usually tried to stay out of the path of Mahalia Ackley, who was known for her sharp tongue. Indeed, her reckless gossiping had sent the goodwife to the stocks on more than one occasion. This time there was no avoiding her, however.

  “Miss Hardin.”

  “Good day, ma’am.”

  The older woman pulled up before her, panting, with her skirts swirling into place. “My hired girl left me last week. Her father moved his family to Cape Cod.”

  “I heard that.” Christine sensed what was coming, but she waited out of courtesy.

  “I be looking for a stout girl to do for me. Cleaning and washing mostly, but I hear you’re a fair hand with spinning and weaving, too.”

  Christine forced a smile. She had lived with the Jewett family for nearly a year before the pastor’s wife died and still worked for them more than a year after Goody Jewett’s death. Her position made her privy to all the secrets of Cochecho, and she knew that Goody Ackley had run through the list of available domestic help in the village.

  “I’m sorry I can’t accommodate you, ma’am. I’ve all the work I can handle at the Jewett house.”

  “Surely the parson’s children are old enough to do for themselves.”

  Christine had the distinct feeling the woman was chiding her. She sought for an appropriate reply. “The children are a big help with the work about the parsonage, to be sure, but the girls are very young yet. They can’t do the cooking and washing themselves. Goody Deane and I go across the road nearly every day to help them.”

  Mahalia Ackley looked furtively about.

  Sarah Dudley had joined her in-laws’ family and handed Hannah to her husband, but Jane Gardner still stood by Christine, listening with apparent interest.

  Goody Ackley took Christine’s sleeve between her plump fingers and tugged her aside. She leaned close and said in a confidential tone, “Surely the parson can’t pay you much.”

  Christine felt her cheeks color. She wanted to end this line of conversation firmly, but she couldn’t embarrass the pastor by flinging a rude retort at one of his parishioners. She cleared her throat. “I receive adequate compensation, and since Goody Jewett died last year, I feel the family needs me more than ever. You understand.”

  Goody Ackley’s dark eyes snapped with displeasure as she pulled back slightly. “Oh, yes, yes. The poor, motherless children. Some people don’t understand that as folks get older they need more help than the able-bodied young ones.” She gathered her skirts and whirled away, stirring up dust in the dry churchyard.

  Jane stepped closer to Christine. “Good for you. You stayed calm. I’d have spat in her eye.”

  Christine gave her a rueful smile. “I felt tempted to say what I thought, but …”

  “I know. It’s not in your nature, and it is Sunday.”

  “Their children are all dead or moved away, and I suppose she does need help.”

  “My husband is waving at me,” Jane said. “I suppose we and the Dudleys shall all take dinner at the Heards’ today, so the men can discuss building the new pews with Brother William. Of course you mustn’t tell the parson they are talking about work on the Sabbath.”

  Christine chuckled, but Jane seemed to take the matter seriously. She left Christine and joined her husband. The neighbors living close to the meetinghouse opened their homes on Sunday afternoon to the farmers from outside the village, so they would have a place to eat their Sunday dinner in relative comfort. Then all would return to the meetinghouse for the afternoon service, which sometimes went on until the supper hour. Christine waved and gathered the pastor’s three little girls about her.

  “Goody Deane, be you joining us for dinner at the parsonage today?” Samuel Jewett called to his elderly neighbor, who was saying good-bye to a knot of other ladies.

  “Aye, if ye want me,” the wrinkled old woman replied.

  “Of course we want you.”

  “Especially if you’ve baked gingerbread,” the impish John added.

  Samuel swatted playfully at his younger son. “Here now, be polite. The lady will think you a greedy pig.”

  “He is that when it comes to gingerbread.” Goody Deane cackled as she hobbled along toward the street.

  Samuel and Christine matched their steps to hers. John, Ben, and Abby ran ahead, but Ruth toddled along holding her father’s hand, and Constance stuck as close to Christine’s skirts as a cocklebur.

  The two women set to work getting the meal ready as soon as they reached the parsonage. Samuel helped little Ruth change out of her Sunday dress and watched with approval as the children helped carry dishes and set the four pewter plates and mismatched mugs on the table.

  He sat down at the table with the two boys and Goody Deane for the first sitting. When they had finished, Christine and Abby quickly washed their dishes and set the table again for themselves, Ruth, and Constance. It was the regular routine of the family. Samuel wished he could afford more dishes, but they got along. Elizabeth had never complained, and he had carved wooden bowls enough to go around. Perhaps he could purchase a couple of tin mugs from the trader. But there were so many other things they needed, and his small stipend was paid only if the tithes amounted to enough to cover it. Members of the congregation occasionally brought his family a load of wood or a sack of meal, it was true, but the pastor’s family was one of the poorest in the community.

  He saw Christine cast a wistful glance at the loom in the corner of the room. Samuel gave her free use of his deceased wife’s loom and spinning wheel. Christine had shown a talent for weaving soon after her arrival two years earlier. She had learned the craft from the nuns at the convent in Canada where she’d lived for four years. Of course, they both knew she wouldn’t be weaving on Sunday.

  Samuel turned his attention to the meal—a simple stew, corn bread baked yesterday, and the promise of gingerbread after. The spicy smell of ginger tantalized them all from beneath one of Goody Deane’s threadbare linen towels.

  He didn’t like to recall Christine’s background or the events that had brought her into contact with his family. A number of the village’s residents had been captured by Indians, either at the massacre of 1689 or in other raids. Several members of the Otis and Dudley families, as well as Charles and Jane Gardner, were survivors of captivity. Busybodies set rumors flying about the conditions under which the captives had lived and the state of their souls as a result. But none of the others had lived in a nunnery for years, as Christine had. The people of Cochecho had accepted most of the redeemed captives back into their ranks, but he knew a few still looked on Christine with suspicion because of her years at the convent.

  He saw growing acceptance as Christine attended church faithfully and performed good deeds with a self-effacing humility. Most of the prominent women of the community now treated her well. Samuel’s close contact with her had taught him that her faith was firm, and her love and tender care for his children was exceeded only by that which their own mother had bestowed. Christine was indeed a blessing to their family.

  “Will you have some greens?” Goody Deane stood at Christine’s elbow with a wooden bowl of boiled greens the girls had gathered at the edge of the woods on Saturday.

  “Aye, thank you.” Christine held her plate up.

  “We’ll be eating corn from the garden soon.” Pastor Jewett set the kettle of steaming water for the dishes aside and raked the coals into a heap on the stone hearth. He covered them with ashes, banking them. They didn’t want to keep burning wood all afternoon since it was now very warm in the house, but they would want the live coals later, when it was time to cook supper.

  “Yes, and cucumbe
rs, too.” Goody Deane put a small portion of greens on each of the girls’ plates.

  “I can’t wait for fresh corn.” Constance rubbed her tummy.

  They all laughed.

  “Me, either,” Christine said. All that was left of last year’s crop was dry ground corn and a barrel of parched corn kernels, and those supplies were dwindling. “It will be a little while longer before we get corn, though.” The summer garden supplied them with plenty of green beans, leaf lettuce, and tender carrots and beets. This time of year, the Jewetts ate as well as most other families in Cochecho.

  Samuel sat down and opened his Bible on his knees. He wanted to refresh his mind for the afternoon sermon.

  When Christine and the girls had eaten and washed and put away their dishes, Goody Deane threw out the dishwater, and Christine put Ruth on her pallet for a nap.

  “There, now,” Christine said to Abby and Constance, “Goody Deane and I shall see you at worship. We’ll go home now for a short rest. Be good girls, won’t you?”

  “I be going to call on Richard Otis after the service this afternoon, to see how he is recovering from his wounds,” Samuel said.

  Christine straightened and looked at him. “Do you wish me to stay with the children then?”

  He hesitated. Richard Otis, the blacksmith whose father had been killed in the massacre six years earlier, was one who had suffered grievous wounds in the attack two weeks ago. Since that fray, the elders had posted a lookout on the meetinghouse steps during each service. But the parsonage lay in the middle of the village, and he would not be gone long this evening. If the service did not run overly long, he could be home before dark. “Nay. You’ve done so much. There’s no fire hazard, and Ben is a responsible enough lad to watch his sisters for a couple of hours. Eh, son?”

  Ben grimaced. “Yes, Father.”

  Samuel stood and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Good lad.”

  Christine hung up her apron and glanced once more toward the loom. She couldn’t work at her weaving today. In fact, scripture bade them do no more work than they found absolutely necessary on Sunday. Samuel strictly enforced the Sabbath rest in his household. He knew Christine understood this, but still, her plain features took on a wistfulness when she regarded the loom.