It didn’t seem fair. Oh, Molly would go down to the tavern and speak her mind about it when discussions were being held as to who should stand for election. She said she had a right to speak out because Peter was in jail and couldn’t speak for himself. They let her. They figured Peter might be angry at them if they didn’t, and nobody wanted to be on his bad side when he got out of jail. She even tried to claim the right to Peter’s vote, but she couldn’t convince them of that. Once they let one woman vote, they’d all want to vote, they said. Voting was men’s business, they said.
Finally election day came. The voting was held at the meeting house. I went over toward evening to see how it had come out. They were all pretty drunk. It was a big night. And when they counted the ballots, we found our man had won. Then, of course, we had to wait while the news gradually trickled in from the towns around. Eventually we found we’d won all over the state. In Amherst, Mattoon had lost. Not only did people on our side get a huge number of seats in the General Court, but Governor Bowdoin was put out of office, too. In his place there was elected John Hancock, who’d been our governor before. Now, finally, we had hope that some of our grievances would be redressed. Thomas Johnson was sent to the General Court from Pelham. He’d been a Regulator, so he and all the others who’d been elected to town offices, even Uncle Billy, had to take an oath of loyalty to the government. It didn’t go down so bad, they said, because all the towns around sent men who’d fought with Daniel Shays to represent them and now the Regulators would have their say about making the laws. Maybe they’d even be able to get all the prisoners like Peter pardoned.
But Peter was still in jail. Molly wrote up a petition asking the new governor to be merciful and pardon him, and sent it over to Boston. We waited. Finally on April 30th, the Governor’s Council handed down their decision. Peter was sentenced to hang.
The strange part was that out of the seventeen who’d been found guilty, only six were going to be hanged—two men from Hampshire County, two from Berkshire County, one from Worcester County, and one from Middlesex County. The two from our county were going to be Peter and a man named Nathaniel Austin. The date was set for May 24th, three weeks away.
“They’re just trying to make an example,” Molly said. “They don’t dare hang a lot of people for fear of stirring up another rebellion. But they want to hang a few just to show who is master. They only picked men from the most rebellious counties.”
“But why Peter?”
She shrugged. “Who knows? I don’t think it mattered to them who they picked, so long as they have somebody to hang. Oh, they probably picked Peter because he stands out. He was always in the thick of things. He was up front at the Springfield Arsenal and he was at Petersham and he was one of the leaders at Sheffield where those two militiamen got killed. Everybody all around this part of the state knew about him.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We can still hope that they’ll pardon them all in the end.”
But Molly wasn’t the type to just hope. She went over to Northampton and came back with another woman—Nathaniel Austin’s wife, Abigail. “We’re getting up a petition,” Molly said. “We’re going to take it to Boston.”
They got a man named Theodore Sedgewick to help them write it up. It was pretty fancy:
Let not! Oh let not! one rash action shut each avenue of mercy . . . acknowledge the impartiality of trial and sentence and recognize the error of our conduct. . . wholly ignorant of the rights of the constitution and privileges therein contained . . . unskilled in the true principles of government . . .
It was a lot of stuff like that. We took it around town to get people to sign it. I took it over to the tavern one night. There were a lot of people willing to sign. In fact, pretty near everybody in town would have signed it if there’d been space enough at the bottom of the page. They all thought it was unfair for Peter and Nathaniel Austin to hang when practically everybody else around town had done the same things. A lot of people thought there would be trouble if the six men were hanged. “The old Regulators will rise up again if it happens,” some said. But that wouldn’t do Peter much good if he was already dead.
So Molly and Abby Austin borrowed some horses from Uncle Billy and rode all the way to Boston. It was an awful long, hard trip—it took three days. But Molly could do almost anything any man her size could. They finally got into the State House and gave the petition to the Governor’s Council. It did some good, but not very much. They came back with a reprieve until June 21st. It said that they should be “hanged by the neck until dead between noon and three o’clock of that day.” But Molly as always still had hope.
“What will we do now?” I asked her.
Molly was pretty grim. “Peter has to beg for mercy. He has to humble himself. I’m going to write a letter for him to sign.” She wrote:
Feeling the deepest sorrow and remorse and in full knowledge of the evils of my conduct, I now admit great shame and guilt. But I was never an officer in the Regulators, but having a good horse and a foolish fondness to be thought active and alert I was persuaded to take an old cutlass and ride at the head of a column during the attack on the Springfield Arsenal. I had left home unarmed and was guilty merely of uttering foolish and wicked expressions for which I am deeply ashamed. My part in the engagement at Sheffield was strictly defensive, being merely part of a party that was out foraging for provisions when we were ambushed. I humbly ask the mercy and pardon of the most gracious and loving fatherly Governor and Council.
“Peter will never sign that,” I said. “It’s all lies. He was one of the best fighters we had.”
“He’s going to sign it if I have to take a club to him. He’s got to humble himself, he’s got to grovel in front of the Governor’s Council. That’s what they want to see him do.”
“He won’t sign it,” I said. “He couldn’t stand to grovel.”
“It’s easier to grovel than to hang,” she said. She was right. He signed it. “He didn’t like it very much, but he did it,” she said when she got back. She got Uncle Billy Conkey to take the letter to Boston, because he was an important man around our part and hadn’t been in any of the actual fighting, although he’d helped provision us. Along with it, Uncle Billy took a letter from Nathaniel Austin, and another one from Sheriff Porter, which said that it would be dangerous to hang the men because the whole county might rise again. Hardest for me to believe, she had a letter from Mattoon himself. I guess they really were afraid of starting up the rebellion all over again if even Mattoon would try to save Peter’s neck. Maybe Mattoon only wanted to be sure he got his forty shillings back—with interest.
So we waited. The days passed and no word from Boston. All we could do was wait, and finally on the 19th of June, two days before the execution, Uncle Billy came back from Boston. It was no good: The men were to be hanged on schedule.
That night Molly and I sat in the kitchen talking about it.
It was a nice night—warm and balmy, with the peepers going like mad outside. It sure was the wrong kind of night to talk about Peter dying. “What can we do?” I said. “It’s pretty hopeless.”
“No,” she said. “It’s never hopeless. “We’re going to get him out of jail.”
“I don’t see how,” I said. “They’re not just locked up in jail, they’re shackled to the wall. And a guard outside besides.”
“The guard is only sixteen. He’s not very smart, either. Maybe we can get around him.”
“If you and Abby Austin got him into a conversation, maybe I could sneak around behind him and knock him out with a club.”
“I’m not sure that would work,” she said.
“Do you know the guard pretty well?” I asked.
“Sure. I’ve been going over there regularly for four months. His name is Abel Holman. It wouldn’t be hard to get him into a conversation.”
“Maybe we can come up with a better idea,” I said.
“Maybe,” she said.
The
next morning, June 20th, the day before Peter was to be hanged, we took the little ones over to the tavern where Uncle Billy could look after them. Then we got up a package of food and a large jug of rum. Uncle Billy gave us a couple of good files. Molly pushed one of them into a loaf of bread. It left a mark where it went in, but you wouldn’t notice it. I put the other one in my pocket. We’d have to see how things went. That afternoon we walked into Northampton.
Chapter Fourteen
THE THING THAT GOT ME WAS THE HUGE crowd that had come into Northampton to see Peter and Nathaniel Austin hanged. It was like a holiday. They were laughing and getting drunk. Sometimes, as we walked through the streets toward the jail, we heard people making jokes about it—-how there was a lot of “suspense” in a hanging, because the prisoners were going to be “suspended” from a rope. It was pretty terrible to hear. I couldn’t understand it. “I thought these people were all Regulators,” I said. “I thought they were all on Peter’s side.”
Molly shook her head. She looked pretty mean. “People like a hanging. It makes them feel glad it isn’t them.”
We got to the jail. It was a wooden building made of squared logs. There were a few small windows in it, and bars in the windows. There was one door in front. An older man was on guard. He unlocked the door and let us in. We went into a small room with a couple of doors off it. The guard unlocked one of the doors, which opened on another small room. Peter and Nathaniel Austin were inside. Each of them had an iron ring around his ankle. A chain ran from the rings to beams in the wall, where they were fastened with great staples. Abby Austin was already there, talking to Nathaniel.
It was the first time I’d seen Peter since the fighting at Sheffield. It made me feel awful to see him chained up like an ox. He hadn’t been able to shave since he’d been locked up. “What a beard you’ve got,” I said.
“I understand they’ll trim it tomorrow. It gets in the way of the noose.”
It was a joke, but it made me feel sick.
“Who’s that on guard duty?” Molly said. “Where’s that boy?”
“He comes on later,” Peter said. “He’ll be on the night shift.”
She kissed him. We all talked for a while. It was hard to think of things to say. Finally Molly said, “We’ll be back later. Keep up your courage.”
We left. Abby Austin came with us. There was nothing we could do until dark; we had to wait until Abel Holman came on duty, anyway. We wandered around town for a little while, but we couldn’t stand the way everybody was making a holiday out of it, so we walked a mile or so out of town and sat under a tree at the edge of a field. “I still can’t understand why people would act that way,” I said. “I mean, roaring around and drinking when somebody on their side is going to be hanged.”
“I think they’re drinking so much because underneath they feel disgusted with themselves for coming out to see a man die.”
“It’s going to make it easier for the men to get away if everybody’s drunk,” Abby said.
We ate a little and then lay down to rest in the shade of the tree. The sun was hot on the hay field, and raising the smell of the growing grass. I tried to just lie there and smell it, to keep my thoughts away from what was going to happen. We stayed there for a couple of hours, and then it began to get dark. We got up and walked back into town. There were throngs around the tavern singing and drinking, and lights were on everywhere. We slipped past the singing people to the jail.
Abel Holman was out front, leaning on the jail wall and picking his teeth with a twig. His musket rested against the wall beside him. “Hello, Molly,” he said. “Hello, Abby.”
Molly gave Abel a big smile. “Hello,” she said. “Abel, this is my brother, Justin.”
We shook hands. “You going to see Peter?”
“In a minute,” I said. “I think I’d better have a drink of rum first.” I unwrapped the food pack and took out the rum bottle. It was a full quart. I put the bottle to my lips, tipped back my head, and pretended to take a long drink. Then I handed the bottle to Molly and wiped off my lips. “You’d better have one, too, Molly.” Molly pretended to drink and then she gave the bottle to Abby Austin and she tipped the bottle back, too. I took the bottle from her and started to wrap it up in the food parcel. Then I said, “Hey, Abel, how about you? Want a drink?”
He looked at me and then at the bottle. He wanted it, all right. “I’m not supposed to drink on duty.”
“I wouldn’t let that bother me,” I said. “The whole town is drunk. Nobody will ever know.”
He hesitated. “Well, no, I’d better not.”
I shrugged. “It’s no skin off my nose. I think I’ll just have another.” I pretended to drink again. When I was finished I sort of gestured toward Abel with the bottle. “Sure?” I said.
“Is anyone looking?”
“It’s pitch dark, Abel. Nobody can see you.”
He took the bottle, tipped it back hastily, and drank. The strong liquor made him cough. “Take a big one,” I said. “There’s plenty.” He took another swallow.
“We’re going in to see Peter,” Molly said. Abel unlocked the door, and she and Abby went in. I stayed outside. Abel handed me back the bottle.
“Do you like this job?” I said.
“It’s all right,” he said.
“It must be pretty boring. I mean, just standing here all night long with nothing to do.”
“It sure is.”
I took another pretend drink and then I handed Abel the bottle. This time he took it without saying anything and had a long drink. That was three. I figured he’d begin to get woozy soon. We had lots of time. We had all night. So I stood there making conversation with him about his job, and what the General Court was doing, and so forth; and every once in a while I’d pretend to take a drink and he’d take a real one. After a bit Molly came out again and joined in the game. Faintly, from inside the jail, I could hear the soft sound of filing. The bottle kept going around; and before an hour was up Abel was leaning against the wall of the jail, shaking his head and blinking. “I don’t feel so good,” he said. The musket slid down the wall and fell onto the ground. He let it lie there. “I feel terrible,” he said. He belched. And then suddenly he staggered around the corner of the jail. I could hear him throwing up. We waited, Molly and I, until he finished. There was silence. I tiptoed around the corner. Abel was lying face up on the ground, snoring. He’d be sleeping for a good long time.
Now we ran back to the jail. Peter had cut himself free of his shackles and was kneeling in front of Nathaniel Austin, filing at the chain. “I’ll have this one off in ten minutes,” he said. “It’s only iron, it’s not steel.”
Molly nodded. “Justin, you stay outside and keep watch.” Then she and Abby began to take off their dresses. I went outside and knelt down at the corner of the jail where I could keep an eye on Abel Holman and still see anybody coming up to the front. In my nose was the smell of rum and vomit. I didn’t like that very much, but I wanted to stay close to Abel so I could whack him over the head if he started to wake up. I knelt there, waiting, listening to the distant shouting and singing of the drinkers and the soft sound of the file cutting iron, and then suddenly the jail door swung open and out ran two figures. One of them was wearing women’s clothing. This one glanced back and gave me a little wave. It was Nathaniel Austin. He and Abby had changed clothing. In a moment they disappeared in the dark.
I leaped to my feet and ran back into the jail. Peter and Molly were standing there, both half-undressed. Peter was hastily putting his own clothes back on. “I can’t get into Molly’s dress. We shouldn’t have wasted time trying.”
Then there was a sort of croaking noise from the door. We all spun around. Abel Holman was standing there. His face was covered with sweat. “Holy God,” he said. Then he turned and ran. I dashed after him and we burst out into the night with me just a few feet behind him. “Help,” he shouted. “Jail break. Help.” He was still drunk and wobbling as he ran. I closed in
on him and dove onto his back. He pitched forward on his face. When we hit, I bounced off him. He raised up to his knees. “Help,” he cried. I leaped on him again, flung him to the ground, slapped my hand over his mouth, and lay across his body to keep him still. There was a shout somewhere and the sound of running feet.
“If you make any noise, I’ll strangle you,” I said. He lay still. He wasn’t in much condition to defend himself. The running feet were coming closer. “Peter,” I shouted. “Somebody’s coming.” Five seconds later Peter came flying out of the jail as fast as he could go. Molly was right after him. They swung off into the darkness and as they did so two men came wheeling up the street.
“They got away,” somebody shouted. “Stop them.” They raced past where I was lying over the body of Abel Holman, but then there were more men coming and I jumped to my feet and began to run myself, heading through the dark streets away from town. All I could do was pray that Peter had got away. It didn’t matter about Molly—they weren’t going to hang her.
I zigzagged through one street and another until I was clear of town, and then I found a barn and slipped inside to sleep. It was a warm night, I was tired, but I dozed only in bits and pieces the rest of the night.
At first light I got up and out of the barn. It was hot already, and it was going to be muggy. I started walking back into Northampton to see what I could find out. I was hungry, but there was no way I could get anything to eat. As I came into town, I kept to the side streets. I figured Abel Holman had told people what had happened to him and they’d be on the watch for me. But nobody in Northampton knew me, and I figured I’d be safe unless Abel himself spotted me. Still, I wasn’t going to expose myself more than necessary.
Finally, I came to a tavern where two or three men were lounging around outside. I stopped. “Excuse me,” I said politely. “Does anybody know what time the hangings are?”
“Hanging, you mean. There’ll only be one. There was a jail break last night.”
The Winter Hero Page 12
