Love's Pursuit

by Siri Mitchell

  “Aye. The very best. Good day, Susannah Phillips.”

  As John walked away, my father came to stand beside me.

  “Good man, that John.” My father said the words as if he had spent some time thinking about them.

  “Aye.”

  “And Simeon Wright as well.” He left the words for me in parting.

  Simeon Wright? What did Simeon Wright have to do with aught? Besides the fact that it was him upon which my father depended to practice his trade.

  I returned to my berries, unsettled in my thoughts. The expectation of happiness that John had brought with him had somehow been pushed aside. My hands worked of their own volition. My thoughts refused to be gathered.

  Simeon Wright.

  He could have no interest in me. No more than in the other girls in town. Why should he? And, furthermore, he was not one of us. He had not been part of our congregation in Boston, though he had been welcomed quickly enough once he made it known he intended to build a sawmill. And, further, once the move had been made and the town lots established, he had volunteered that his house be the garrison to which half the town would retreat in the event savages attacked. He had even brought brick from Boston for the building of it. Simeon Wright was a town selectman, indeed the town’s premier citizen. But unlike most of the other girls my age, I had never given one thought to marrying him.

  I had John.

  Of course, marriage to one like Simeon Wright might be advantageous, and unions were arranged for lesser reasons, but I did not know the man. It was said he had two and thirty years. And he was handsome. He stood shoulders above the rest of the men in town and his fair hair seemed to shoot sparks at the sun. Though I had noticed, more than once, that his ready smile and his eyes seemed at odds.

  But there was no reason for me to think of him. And even less reason for worry.

  I had John.

  I am my name. I have small hopes. But the largest of my small wishes is that I be overlooked. In my experience, the less one is noticed, the less trouble one encounters. There are those by whom I have no wish to be seen. Simeon Wright is one of them. I have no wish for trouble from that man. Nor from any like him.

  I have had trouble enough already.

  I recognize Simeon Wright for what he is. I doubt the Phillips sisters do; I doubt they can. The younger chases after him, yapping like a puppy at his heels. The elder is puzzled by his glance. She does well to question. He is a riddle. Will she solve him in time?

  How can she? She possesses no clues. I know the answer, but then I have seen such riddles before.

  They cannot read the signs, those sisters. They have been petted and worshiped and adored. They have been raised by a father who loves them and provides for them. Why should they have knowledge of any other kind of man? Of any other kind of life?

  They do not know what it is like to wish you had never been born.

  Yea, better is he . . . which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.

  Mary returned from Simeon Wright and soon picked her way out into the barren in front of me. Nathaniel picked toward me to close the gap she had created.

  “Susannah, I have been thinking . . .”

  I dipped my head to hide my smile. Nathaniel was always thinking. “Of what were you thinking?”

  “These blueberry canes grow along the ground.”

  “They do.”

  “They grow in the dirt, and at times they plunge their heads back beneath the soil, but always they resurface.”

  “Aye.”

  “And though it might seem like a new plant, every time it raises its head again, you have only to pull at it to bring to light the whole. ’Tis all one cane.”

  “It is.”

  “Is that not an example of grace?”

  “How so?”

  “The canes are like people. We all live in a state of sin. And sometimes we plunge ourselves into it and hide from the love of God. But if we do, have we not only to raise our heads once more toward heaven to be rescued from our filth?”

  “ ’Tis one way of looking at things.”

  “We try so hard to bury our sin. But if we look back on what we have done, we realize that God can create something from the whole of us. And that we cannot hide ourselves from Him.”

  “Aye. ’Tis true.”

  “Can this not be my conversion experience?”

  I sighed. I had conversations like this with Nathaniel by the dozens. “ ’Tis not internal, your example, Nathaniel. ’Tis external and wrought from your own knowledge. ’Tis God that must do His work in your heart to convince you of His love. What is wanted is an experience of the inward work of grace. There must be some sign, some change. Otherwise any who wanted could call themselves Christian, and who could doubt them? If we are truly part of the elect, then God will show us.”

  “But I want to be a member of the church. I want to have an experience so I can tell everyone about it. I want so much to be saved. Why does God not want me? Why can He not speak to my heart? Why can I not know?”

  “It is not given to us to know God’s mind.”

  “But how then shall I be saved? How then shall I know? Does God not want me?”

  Did God not want him? Who could say? How could any of us know what God wanted? How could any of us know who God intended to save? The best we could hope for was a sign. An experience. A sort of indication from God that might signal that He had indeed chosen us. And then one could be permitted to join the church and receive communion. But, even still, one could not know for certain. The only hope was to keep working, keep hoping, keep praying. Keep proving oneself worthy of God’s grace. “I do not know who God wants, Nathaniel. How can any of us know? We can only do. And hope.”

  “But—”

  “Keep hoping.” I only told him what I was telling myself. I had not had a conversion experience either. Though I heard the Holy Scriptures read each night, though I had attended meeting on the Sabbath since I had been born, though I had knowledge aplenty, and though it had always been my hope that I might become a member of the church before my marriage, I had no conversion experience to declare. No inward change that would signal any faith. Keep hoping: It was all that I could do. That . . . and discover how to become the good person that everyone thought me to be.

  A babe’s cry sliced through the drowsiness of the afternoon. It was ours. I looked round for Mother.

  She saw me and inclined her head toward the tree where the town’s infants had been drowsing in the heat.

  I pushed my bucket toward Nathaniel and then went to see to the child.

  This one always woke angry and just now he was sitting, legs splayed in the dirt, rocking back and forth, face red as a beet. I picked up his cap from the ground and set it back on his head, tying off the strings beneath his chin. Then I bounced him to my hip.

  Little legs circled my waist and tiny hands clasped the collar of my shift.

  “Hush-a, hush-a.” I kissed his tear-streaked cheek. “Nightingales sing in time of spring! Time cuts down all both great and small! An eagle’s flight is out of sight! A dog will bite a thief at night!” As I jostled it, the babe shushed and finally smiled. I took it as a sign to disengage its fingers from my collar.

  When little heels began to kick at my hip, I set him down on the ground and took up the leading strings that trailed from his dress so that he would not fall as he toddled.

  How many times had I done this? Looked after a babe of our mother’s? My earliest memories included the cries of a babe. There was always one to be had, to be held. And this one . . . this one looked to be healthy. And strong. He might yet live to the age of seven, when he would be breeched and take his place among the boys of the village. He might yet live to pass down my father’s name to his own children.

  There had been another John Phillips, named after my father. A boy older than I. The firstborn. And he had lived until just after Nathaniel’s birth, when he had died of a lung sickness. Af
ter that, after Nathaniel, there had been two others with that name, but they had died in quick succession. I stooped and embraced the mite. There was joy to be had in a babe, and until Mother birthed another, Babe is who this boy would be.

  I chased him round the tree first this way and then that, enjoying the cool of the shade. But the berries waited and soon I gathered the child into my arms to take him back with me to the barren.

  But as I did, I noted a crackling in the wood behind us. And then something snapped.

  A savage? Were they upon us already, just as Simeon Wright had warned?

  Nay. A savage could go like a spirit through the woods, leaving no sounds to mark his presence. Least that is what the men said. This thing then could be no savage. It must be a bear. One which would not be pleased to have its access to berries denied.

  I moved to warn the guard, but he had already come to the alert.

  He put fingers to his lips and whistled.

  Behind us, the work ceased of a sudden in the barren. And then the field exploded with movement. Mothers leapt through the canes to gather up their children. Men came at a run with their muskets. Quickly, shoulder to shoulder, they walled off the women and children from the danger. And even as the men moved into position and the women and children shrunk back from them, Simeon Wright was barking orders.

  The noisome rustling grew louder and closer and then, finally, it broke out of the wood into our clearing.

  In the time it took Simeon to tell the men to stand down, a sigh of relief rippled through the women and laughter broke out among the boys.

  It was not a bear.

  It was a man.

  3

  THE MAN MIGHT AS well have been a bear. His black hair fell in shaggy waves long past his shoulders. The wide brim of his hat had been pinned up on one side with a drooping feather, and his great boots flopped open at his knees. It looked as if he had been at battle with the forest. And if he had, I must say that the forest had won.

  “My horse slipped a shoe, and I find myself to be quite lost. Is this, by any chance, Stoneybrooke Towne?”

  Simeon Wright held up a hand to stay the laughter. “It is.”

  The stranger pulled his hat from his head and swept it toward the ground as he bowed. “Captain Daniel Holcombe. From the king’s army. At your service.”

  A great murmur arose at his words.

  With one look from Simeon Wright, however, the wordless noise ceased. “And what has His Majesty to do with us?”

  The man smiled. It was an easy smile, a smile that ignored the dozens of muskets that were still trained fast upon him. “His Majesty? Not one thing. But the governor heard you have fear of savages. And he sent me to train up a militia.”

  “We have a militia.”

  He replaced the hat upon his head and passed a finger along the feather to prop it up. “Do you, now? All the better. It will make the task that much easier.”

  There was a tightness to Simeon’s mouth that I did not understand. “And how did the governor learn of our . . . threat?”

  My friend Abigail’s father cleared his throat. “I mentioned it when I went to Boston for the vote. Asked if we could be sent some help.”

  Simeon Wright stepped toward Goodman Baxter. “We do not need the help. We can contend with the savages.” He turned his head, as if to address those of us who stood behind him. “As long as everyone stays close and does not wander far, no one will be harmed.”

  The captain had been glancing back and forth between the two men. “Seems to me that if there is fear of savages, then there must be some doubt as to your ability to repel them. And, besides, the governor asked me as a personal favor. Cousin to cousin.”

  To give shelter to a captain of King Charles’s army—a king who held himself above the law, who had no ear for his people, a king who tortured the pious and dredged up ancient and devious schemes to tax his citizens—was one thing, but to give shelter to a cousin of the governor was another matter entirely. The governor’s loyalty to a higher law, to God’s law, could not be questioned.

  And neither, then, was the captain’s.

  In a matter of minutes it was settled. My father was a carpenter and his profession had allowed him to build us a comfortable house. Unlike most houses in Stoneybrooke Towne, it had both a kitchen and a parlor as well as a loft upstairs for storing goods. Last year, he had added a lean-to for use as a dairy house. After Simeon Wright’s, it was the largest house in town.

  The captain would board with us.

  Thomas Smyth would shod his limping horse.

  The town would train up a militia.

  And then, the captain would leave.

  The care of the stranger arranged, we retrieved our pails and returned to our labor. The sun was fast slipping toward the horizon.

  Our work was nearly finished.

  Thomas had finished the Bible reading.

  The hour was late. I took the book from him and placed it back into its box.

  He banked the fires while I slipped from my clothes, hung them on a peg, and then pulled a night-shift over my head. Quickly, before he had finished his task, I creased the bed linens and slid beneath them, all the way to the wall. The cracks in the logs sometimes let in a breeze that freshened the close summer air. But the reason I placed my back to it was so that I might not sleep defenseless.

  I closed my eyes as Thomas changed. Opened them as he got into bed.

  But he did not look at me. He never did. He entered with his back to me and would not turn over for the entire night.

  I am certain he hoped nothing more than to set my mind at ease with his habits. It was the kind of man he was. But still I lay there awake until I knew he had fallen into sleep. Deep sleep. ’Twas a habit formed long ago, and nothing I did, nothing I thought, nothing I reminded myself of allowed me to break it. Even the mice had ceased their scrabblings by the time I closed my eyes.

  4

  THE NEXT DAY THE captain was up with us at dawn’s first light. He left the house with Nathaniel and Father, the three of them like ducks in a row.

  Mary and I took turns washing our face and hands, then brushing off our clothes and helping each other into them. While Mother sat and put the child to her breast, we found a coal to start the fires and added more water to the porridge.

  Mary poured out a drinking cup of cider and put it in front of Mother.

  I started the preparation of the day’s biscuits. Taking a crock from the shelf, I measured out a portion of mother dough, added flour and water, kneaded it smooth, and set it aside to rise. My sins ever before me, I filled the smoothing iron’s heater with coals and set the iron within it to heat.

  Some time later the men returned. Nathaniel might have been fetching water and Father might have been milking cows, but it was quite clear that the captain had not joined them in their labors. As we ate of Indian meal porridge, he gave a succinct report on our town.

  “How am I to guard you? Were there a stockade, it would be much easier. Were there even just one road to watch, ’twould not be difficult. But there are three roads, with marshes and meadows and streams running betwixt them. And hills and valleys and the wood. The savages could approach from twenty different directions and slaughter you all before I could even put my musket to my shoulder.”

  Father had not bothered to look up at the captain’s tirade. But when the captain paused, he spoke. “ ’Tis why there are garrison houses.”

  “And where are they?”

  “There’s the meetinghouse midway along this road here. There’s Collier’s on the road to Newham. And there’s Simeon Wright’s at the mill. When we are attacked, we’re to retreat to the garrisons. With walls built three feet thick, they’re meant to withstand any onslaught.”

  “ ’Tis a good plan once one determines there is an attack. But tell me this: How does one know? What will be the signal?”

  Father looked up once more from his trencher and inclined his head toward my brother. “ ’Tis Nathaniel w
ill tell us.”

  “Nathaniel? By what sort of magic?”

  “Get the drum, son.”

  Nathaniel rose from the table and pulled his drum from under the bed. He came to stand beside Father.

  “Tell him how it will be done.”

  “If there is an attack, then I am to go to the meetinghouse as I do on the Sabbath, and I am to beat a warning.”

  The captain stared at our brother for a long moment. “And how are you to get there? Nay! How are you to know that the town has even been attacked?”

  Father signaled for Nathaniel to return the drum to its place. And then he turned his attentions to the captain. “Do you not know the Holy Scriptures? ‘Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.’ ”

  “I have no doubt that such an attack would be brutal . . . savage. But what I ask you is this: How shall you know?”

  “Do you not think that if the savages come, then ’tis the Lord’s judgment fallen upon us? And who can stay the Lord’s judgment? Who can withstand God’s wrath?”

  “So you say that if the savages do come, ’tis some . . . divine judgment?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then why am I here? I can train you to fight. I can post a watch, but this town is indefensible. If they come, then many will die.”

  “Aye. ’Tis the way of living.”

  “ ’Tis foolishness! There is danger and it is known. If you would allow yourselves to be gathered into a stockade . . .”

  “ ’Tis God who holds our times in his hands. ’Tis God who decides when each person should die.”

  “So then you do nothing?”

  “We watch. And we pray. ‘Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.’ ”

  “ ’Tis well and good for you to watch and pray, but ’tis I tasked with the problem of how to make you ready. And how would I defend my actions before God if I fail at my duty?”

  “There are things that do not fall within our control. The time of dying is one of them. You seem, like your king, to have a lamentable lack of knowledge of the Holy Scriptures.”