The Hollow Tree

by Janet Lunn

  “It’s in code,” she said. She looked around her furtively, fearing she might have been overheard. Quickly she refolded the papers into the tiny square they had been in and squeezed them into their bag.

  What am I to do with this, she asked herself. First she thought she would tear it into bits and throw it into the river, because she didn’t want anything to do with this message that had been to blame for Gideon’s death, but the words “protection for the families” leapt into her mind. She thought of Deborah Williams and her children.

  I cannot leave those other families to that fate. I cannot. I must take this to Elias Brant, she thought. But then she remembered that Elias was no longer in Hanover. All the Mohawk students had gone to fight with the British. She had heard Gershom Lake and John Barber talking about them in front of the blacksmith shop one evening when she and Anne had been walking home from a day’s quilting at Mistress Shipley’s. “Wal, you can’t expect loyalty from no Indian,” Gershom was saying. He had sneered at them as they walked past. “Never mind them savages.” He’d looked sideways at Anne. “It’s them others. Anyone with kin fighting for those damned redcoats had better have good friends on the right side of this war.” Anne had tossed her head and sniffed, and the girls had walked on. Phoebe had thought about her father’s Mohawk student Peter Sauk, who called her Little Bird and had brought her moccasins his mother had made. She wondered if he might be fighting somewhere with Gideon. He would be a good friend to Gideon.

  But, like Peter Sauk, Elias Brant had gone off to fight — he was not in Hanover to take Gideon’s message.

  What was she to do? Take it to Aunt Rachael? What could Aunt Rachael do? But the only answer she got was the sound of Constant, the squirrel, nibbling intently on a beechnut she held tightly in her paws. “And it is my fault. I should never have taken the letter to Polly. Never. I knew, I just knew, he meant to see her.” She put her head down on her knees again, her heart in turmoil.

  At last she grew quiet. “Well” — she sniffed — “I’ll just have to take it to Fort Ticonderoga myself.” She sat up straight. “But Fort Ticonderoga is on the other side of the mountains. It’s on the other side of Lake Champlain. In New York. I can’t go there.”

  From somewhere inside her the words came: “Yes, you can. You can do it for Gideon. You can show Anne you’re not a traitor.”

  “I’m not a traitor! I know I’m not a traitor,” Phoebe cried, answering that voice. “I’m not a rebel and I’m not a Tory. I don’t know what I am. Just because Papa was for the revolution, do I have to be? Oh, Papa, why did you have to go off like that, and now Gideon.” She broke down again, the tears streaming down her cheeks into the collar of her dress.

  “I don’t know what I am and I can’t go over the mountains all by myself.”

  “Then who will do it?” asked that voice. “I don’t know,” she answered. Back and forth, back and forth went the argument in her mind until she put her tired head down on her knees once more and fell asleep.

  The sun was setting when she woke. She remembered everything. She shivered from the cold and from the bleakness, but she felt more peaceful. Somehow, while she slept, a decision had been made. She knew what she had to do. Stiffly she stood up. She kilted up her skirt and put the message in her pocket. She smoothed her clothes with her hands, then undid her braid and did it up again. She washed her face and drank again from the river. Then, with new purpose in her every move, she went to Gideon’s canoe, still pulled up on shore where she had left it the night before, shoved it into the water, and set out across the river.

  Back in her own home, she searched for the rough map one of her father’s students had once drawn for her of New Hampshire and Vermont. He had wanted to show her his home on the Onion River, near Lake Champlain, and the way he had travelled to Hanover along the military road leading from the lake over the mountains to the Connecticut River. She had stored it in one of the desk’s cubby-holes. The map was not where she had always kept it. The only thing in the drawer was the tinder-box her father had forgotten to take with him. She picked it up. Then she realized that the map must have been the paper on which Gideon had written his letter. She took from her pocket the scrap with the hastily scribbled note he had left in the hollow tree. Sure enough, on the back of it were the lines showing the Connecticut River, where the White River emptied into it, and the easternmost part of the military road. She stared at it, heartsick.

  She searched frantically through the desk, under it, around the room, but the other half of the map was nowhere to be found. “Now what will I do?” she asked aloud, as though she hoped someone would appear by a miracle to answer. The miracle occurred. Gideon’s voice came into her head as clear and sure as it had been that day in the woods so long ago, when she’d asked him where Trout Brook began.

  “All you have to do to get across the mountains, Phoebe,” he said, “is follow our brook west, because that’s where it comes from. I mean to follow it one day, all the way to Lake Champlain.” Then he had laughed.

  “And now it is I who will go to Lake Champlain.” Phoebe spoke the words softly, like a promise to the memory of Gideon still so alive in this room where he had paced and paced only a day ago.

  She did not weep as she thought this. There did not seem to be any tears left. A calm had settled over her — not the cold calm she had felt when the certainty of Gideon’s death had come to her, but the calm that came of absolute determination. She knew what she was going to do and how she was going to do it. She wished she could leave without going back to the Robinsons’ house. She did not want to lie to Aunt Rachael, and she could not tell her what she meant to do, because Aunt Rachael would certainly stop her from going. And she could not bear to face Anne, but she needed her mother’s warm cloak and something to eat. Taking one last look around the room, Phoebe went outside and latched the door carefully after her.

  I Will Need to be

  Very Brave

  Dusk was deepening by the moment. The last of the rosy sunset hung over the deep green hills across the river, and the moon was not yet up, when Phoebe started down the Hanover hill. It had snowed a little, and a wind was coming up. Holding her shawl tightly around her, she hurried to keep warm and to keep from hearing the scuffling of wild animals in the wet leaves. She didn’t mind the pigeons cooing in the branches overhead or the plaintive sound of a late whip-poor-will somewhere in the trees, but the thought of wolves and wild cats made her shudder. Then, halfway down the hill, she heard a twig snap behind her. Someone was following her. She raced the rest of the way down the hill, jumped into the canoe, and pushed off from shore.

  Out on the river, well away from shore, she stopped paddling and forced herself to look back. There was no sign of anyone. There were only the branches of the alders and willows swaying silently in the wind. She rested back on her heels in the canoe and let the current carry her for a moment until she realized that she could soon be a mile down river unless she started to paddle. She looked into the deep, black water. She jumped and almost lost her paddle when she heard a beaver slap its tail somewhere along the river bank. How was she ever going to face the unknown wilderness for days and days — and nights — when she was this frightened of the part of it she knew so well?

  “I will need to be brave,” she whispered to the night. “I will need to be very brave.” But Phoebe had never felt brave, and she had never ventured beyond her own home, other than along the route between Hanover and Orland Village, and a small distance into the woods with Gideon on his plant quests.

  She dipped her paddle resolutely into the water. When she reached the shore, she pulled the canoe up by the willow trees and tried not to think about how long it might be before she did that again. She made her way silently along the brook up the hill and the several hundred yards along the road to the village green. There she stopped. And fell silent. She could not make herself walk past the tree where Gideon’s body had hung.

  Gideon’s body. She had not been thinking a
bout Gideon’s body. It would be laid out in the Robinsons’ parlour. The family would be there, watching over it. She swallowed back hot tears. She stood at the edge of The Green, irresolute. She wanted to be there with them, keeping vigil. Even more, she wanted to run away and never return to this place of grief and misery. She felt that she could do neither. She could not tell Aunt Rachael what she meant to do, but realized now that she could not leave without some kind of goodbye. And she knew she had to get something to eat and her warm cloak. When she thought about food, she realized that she had had none since supper the night before and that then she had eaten almost nothing because she had been so upset about Gideon’s letter to Polly.

  Suddenly the hair rose on the back of her neck. A dark shape moved in the shadows of the trees at the edge of The Green. There was someone there. She knew there was. She froze. It was now so dark she could barely distinguish one tree from another, but she could see eyes, and the only sound she heard was Trout Brook in the distance, burbling over the stones on its way down the hill.

  “Is someone there?” whispered Phoebe. There was no reply. She shivered, looked around again, and pulled her shawl so tightly around her shoulders she felt it strain. She edged around the village green, turning only once to peer over her shoulder, and went along the road to Mistress Shipley’s cabin. There she slipped behind the cabins to the Robinsons’ back door. Only Quincy, Moses Litchfield’s old dog, noticed her passing. He growled once, but settled back at the sound of her familiar voice.

  Gratefully she sank down onto the stone step, not bothering to brush the thin layer of snow from it. Within seconds, she felt an impatient nudging at her hip. She looked down. It was the cat. George was bad-tempered and demanding, and seemed to care for no one, except that he had let Phoebe — and only Phoebe — feed him. He had never before sat down beside her. She reached over to stroke him. He hissed, but he did not get up. A moment later Phoebe did. Her head ached from fatigue, from weeping, from making and unmaking decisions, and from hunger. She lifted the latch on the back door very quietly and let herself into the house.

  There was no one in the kitchen, and the only light came from the low-burning wood fire on the grate in the big fireplace. Its homey, acrid odour welcomed her. The remains of the evening meal had been laid by on the dresser. Phoebe cut herself a bit of ham with the paring knife that lay beside the plate, and a square of johnnycake, but, after two bites, she put it down.

  She took off her shoes and went on tiptoe to the front hall. She started up the stairs. She did not want to go into the parlour. She did not want to look into that room. But George gave her away. He had followed her so closely that she stepped on his foot. He let out a squawk.

  “Is that you, Phoebe?” Aunt Rachael came to the doorway. For a moment they stood there without moving, Phoebe with one foot poised to start up the stairs, Aunt Rachael, tall and still, her face ghostly grey behind the flickering light of her candle.

  “Where were—” she began.

  “I was—” Phoebe started to say.

  They both stopped.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Aunt Rachael. “You are here now. Come.” She took Phoebe by the hand, and Phoebe had no choice but to follow her into the parlour.

  There, under the front window, was the pine box resting on a pair of saw-horses, the scent of the fresh wood still strong. Phoebe couldn’t help but wonder who in the village had been bold enough to make a coffin for a Loyalist soldier. At either end of it a candle burned brightly in Aunt Rachael’s best pewter candlesticks. Wrapped in a shroud, Gideon’s body lay resting in the coffin. For just one instant Phoebe wanted to rip the shroud away, to look at Gideon’s face once more. Then she remembered, with terrible clarity, what his face had looked like early that morning. She gripped Aunt Rachael’s hand so hard that Aunt Rachael pulled it away. She put her arm around Phoebe.

  Uncle Josiah stood at the far end of the coffin. His head was bowed and he was reading from the Bible in a low, steady voice. Phoebe knelt with her aunt and prayed. She tried to listen to the words Uncle Josiah was reading, but, even more, she wanted to plead with God to be kind to this boy who had loved God’s world so much. It was all she could think, all she could pray about. How Gideon had treasured the plants and animals in the woods! How he wanted to know about them, to understand them! With Aunt Rachael she said the prayer for the repose of Gideon’s soul. Silently, she promised him again that she would finish his work, she would take his message over the mountains to the fort.

  As she stood up, she became aware that there was someone else in the room. At first she thought it was Anne and she steeled herself to face her. Then the girl moved into the light of the candle and she saw that it was Polly Grantham. Phoebe went to stand by her. They looked at each other; neither spoke, but Phoebe was sure that Polly felt, too, that they shared a terrible secret. She forced her eyes from Polly’s pain-filled ones. She took her hand in a tight, quick grasp, then turned and fled the room.

  Blindly she climbed the stairs to the bedroom she shared with Anne. The fire had died in the hearth and there was only the glow from the embers to see by. Carefully, she tiptoed across the room to the built-in cupboard beside the fireplace. From her corner of it, she took her moccasins and her mother’s tartan wool cloak. The red glow caught the silver clasp in its light, and Phoebe had a fleeting memory of herself, very small, playing with that clasp. She closed her eyes against the pang of longing that the memory brought. Resolutely, she eased the cupboard door closed. One of the hinges squeaked and Anne woke up.

  “Who’s there?” Her voice was thick with sleep. She sat up. Phoebe froze. She said nothing. She waited. After a moment or two Anne lay back down, turned over, and went back to sleep. Phoebe tiptoed out of the room. In the next room one of the boys cried out. When there was no other sound, Phoebe went downstairs to the kitchen. She picked up the paring knife to cut a bit of ham, then looked at the bit she had cut earlier and forgotten. She turned away; the sight and the smell of the food had taken all her appetite from her. She stuffed her feet into her moccasins, put her mother’s warm cloak around her over her shawl, squatted down to say goodbye to George, looked around her once more, and slid out the door.

  As silently as she had come, she skirted the village street, past the backs of the houses, through barnyards to the brook, bubbling and splashing over the stones, glistening under the stars and a crescent moon. How she longed to follow it down the hill to the river, to go home to Hanover to her own house, to shut the door and never come out. But she had made her mind up. She had made a promise to Gideon. She looked down at the brook.

  “This is the way Gideon said to go,” she whispered, “he said to follow the brook west, so that is what I will have to do.”

  She turned her steps to the west, up the hill, against the down-rush of the brook, and started forth.

  Alone

  It was a little over fifty miles through the dense wilderness and over high mountains from the Connecticut River to Lake Champlain, where Fort Ticonderoga lies. For a strong, full-grown man, wise in the ways of the woods, it was at least a week’s journey. Phoebe was strong, but she was not quite fifteen, not very tall, and a little plump. What’s more, she had not travelled any farther than Orland Village from Hanover since she’d gone there to live at the age of nine. She had listened, though, because she loved him, to Gideon’s long-winded lectures on woodland life and to her father’s Mohawk students when they talked of home in the Mohawk River valley, in New York, because they spoke of it so glowingly.

  But now, faced with a journey she had come to see might take weeks through dark, wild land full of dangerous animals, she wished desperately that she was an experienced hunter and that she had paid strict attention to Gideon’s every word about forest plants. And winter was not far off.

  She tripped over the protruding root of a big tree that grew beside a pool glinting in the moonlight, in a depression halfway up a steep hill. To her dismay, she realized Trout Brook went no farther. S
he had barely begun her journey and she had reached the end of the brook. She heard again in her tired mind Gideon’s voice. “I mean to follow it one day all the way to Lake Champlain.” And then he had laughed. She hadn’t paid attention to that laugh. Gideon had known Trout Brook would never lead all the way over the high mountains to Lake Champlain — of course, he had. How stupid she felt! Her feet were wet, and she was shivering inside her cloak, despite its warm fur lining. She felt as though she had been running, crawling, stumbling along and into Trout Brook for ever. Once or twice she had lost it because the little light the crescent moon shed did not reach far into the deep woods. Then her ear would pick up the bubbling sound of it as it tumbled over rocks or her foot would slip into it. And now she had come to the end of it.

  She dropped beside the pool. “Oh, Father in heaven,” she moaned, “I will surely perish out here in the wild, of cold or hunger or because a wolf or a catamount will take me.”

  There was a sudden rustling in the leaves under a tall bush about a foot from her. She sat up. The hair stood up on the back of her neck. The rustling grew louder. The head of a large house cat emerged from the bush. Phoebe stared at it, weak with relief.