Martha Peake (42 page)

But he had already spoken of his plan to Silas, and he could not withdraw now. So Martha went to her uncle to ask him to forbid Adam to go. Ah, such misdirected feeling, in one who always saw things true—thus did the knowledge of her treachery distort the motions of her heart. Silas heard her out, his eyes hooded, his chin resting on his fingertips, there in his great chair in the flickering masculine gloom of his sanctum. He heard her out and then allowed a silence, before saying at last: “I believe him to be stronger than you think.”

“He is not strong!” she cried. “He is a boy!”

“Is he not your husband?”

“He is my husband but he is not yet a man!”

Silas began quietly to laugh at this, which made her angrier still, and for some moments she could not speak. She rose from her chair and paced back and forth—waddled, rather—scarlet with frustration.

“Perhaps you cannot see how he has changed.”

“How has he changed?” She sat down heavily. She was no longer
capable of storming about a room. “He is still a boy, and you are sending him to do a man’s work and risk his life.”

“How does a boy become a man?”

“He grows to it, like a tree.”

“We have not time to grow our men like trees.”

“So you send him to his death.”

“We have all chosen to risk our lives. You have so chosen, Martha. You could have gone with the English officer. You chose to stay.”

Did nothing escape this man? Did he see into all the workings of her heart? No, not all its workings, he surely did not see her violation of the trust he had reposed in her.

“He is a boy!” she wailed.

“He must be allowed his choice. He has made it.”

She was sobbing now. Oh, she hated to give any man the satisfaction of seeing her weep, but since her child had begun to grow inside her she could not control her feelings as she once had. Silas had her come to him and took her on his lap, where she wept silently into his shoulder. As he stroked her hair he told her she had nothing to fear, this expedition would meet little resistance from the British, for they were not expecting a move of such boldness from the American side.

“They think us fools,” he murmured. “You know that, Martha, you helped me give the Englishman that lie. They do not know we are coming. There are only a few men at the fort, and we shall take them by surprise. Adam will come to no harm.”

By this point she was more liquid than solid, and she could not think, she could not argue, her will was turned to porridge. Sniffling wetly she mumbled,

“No?”

“No.”

“And you will go too,” she wailed, “and what will I do then?”

He pushed her gently from his shoulder so as to gaze into her splotched wet red mess of a face and asked her: “Do you not think first of your husband?”

Mess though she was, she saw the danger here.

“Yes, yes,” she cried, “but he is young!”

“And I will perish because I am not?”

Nothing for it but to wail and bury her head once more in his shoulder, crying, “I don’t know, I don’t know!”

“Martha,” he said, “this is not you. Where is my brave daughter, who understands me better than all the rest? Where is the girl who fled a madman and came to this country alone? You crave safety for those you love, but that is because you are with child. It is your nature now not to fight but to protect. This will pass. After your child is born you will remember that we must face dangers greater than anything Adam is about to meet.”

She had no argument left in her. She had done what she could. Oh, but to think of Adam off in the mountains of New York—!

“Martha Peake,” murmured Silas, and laid a hand on her great belly. Then he laughed shortly and his eyebrows lifted. “Martha Peake? You are Martha Rind now. You are my daughter.”

She said nothing to this. She did not like it at all. She climbed down clumsily from Silas’ lap. She had resolved that whatever the world called her she would not abandon her father’s name. She would add her husband’s name to her own but she would not displace her father, and she intended to inform Adam and Silas of this when she was stronger. Martha Rind Peake, this is how she would be known.

Early one wet and dismal morning Adam joined a group of militiamen marching to Boston. From there he would travel on to join Captain Arnold’s expedition to Fort Ticonderoga. They were cheered on their way, and then the women of the Rind family turned to one another with pale grave faces. Martha was strong now, she did not weep. Few men were left in New Morrock, and of those few the able-bodied would be gone within days. Then it would be only the women to hold the town until the men returned. None of them was
afraid that day. I believe women are never afraid when they know what must be done. Martha was not afraid. Adam was gone, poor brave boy, and Silas would be gone in a day or two, but Martha remained calm. She had stilled the voice of anxiety within her, and once more convinced herself that all would be well.

The last of the militia left two days later, Silas with them on his horse, his cloak billowing about him, and on his proud head a large black tricorn hat with silver edging and a blue cockade. Once again the women gathered outside Pierce’s Tavern. A clear brisk day, and it was strange, the women were saying, and not for the first time, to be by the harbour on such a day in April and not see the boats going out. Many a goodwife cast her eyes seaward then turned away, shaking her head; all life was in disorder. The men formed up, Silas strode about giving instructions, inspecting this and that, until all was ready.

Then he came over to his womenfolk where they stood in a group on the dock with their shawls clutched about them in the wind. There were wordless embraces, kisses and tears, and Martha he left almost to the last.

“Martha Peake,” he said, and took her hands and gazed into her face as he had so often done before, as the wind picked at her hair and set it fluttering about her face, to which the blood now rushed from the fullness of her heart, and the emotions warring within it! She gazed back at him, holding his fingers tight and wanting only to fling her arms around his neck and tell him to be careful! But his gravity prevented her. He told her he wanted a strong and healthy grandchild, would she see to it? She would. He wanted his household to keep faith with the cause no matter what happened, would she see to it? She would. He wanted them all waiting when he came home from the war, would she see to that too? Oh she would, she would—! Then he swung himself onto his horse and cast a glance out to sea. Removing his hat, he murmured a brief prayer.

Then after saying a last tender farewell to his wife he turned his horse and cried to his men to go forward. Off they marched, off up the hill, and the women wandered after. The drum was beating a lively tattoo, the fife trilled a lilting light air, and there was laughter now amid the tears as the small boys ran alongside their fathers and brothers and uncles, and among the women a brief hope arose as they glimpsed in the step of the men and heard in the fife and drum a spirit that would surely carry them through the darkness to come. Martha knew now she could keep the promises Silas had asked her to, and that he would come home to a fine grandson and a family intact, a household united and sustained in his absence by hope and resolve. Caesar took up the rear of the column, and the last Martha saw of them was that man’s broad back as the road turned off through the woods up the hill and the whistling fife grew fainter and fainter and then was heard no more.

32

F
or Martha and the other women the waiting began. With all the men gone off to Boston—save Joshua Rind, whose gouty foot made him unfit for service—there were no riders from Mr. Adams, as there used to be; they could not spare riders just to keep the women informed, and so the women lived in ignorance of what was happening on the hills above Boston. They could only speculate, and try to convince themselves that the British would sue for peace, having seen the resistance at Concord, and being trapped in Boston under the American guns, what few there were.

So there they sat by the fire of an evening, busy with their needles in the candlelight, murmuring to one another about the men of the household and the men of the town, finding good reasons why each would be sure to acquit himself well in this business. Often the doctor sat with them, so there was at least one less empty seat at the table, and silently smoked his long white pipe; and the candle-flame caught the women’s flashing needles and threw out little sharp splinters of light as they stitched and stitched and with their hearts and their words made their men safe, one by one; and then they went back to the beginning and made them safe all over again.

The nights were more difficult, and Martha soon moved back in
with her cousins rather than be alone in the bed she had shared with her husband. Still the night brought its terrors. The girls fell asleep quickly, leaving her to gaze from her pillow at the sky, to watch the moon racing among the clouds, and think of what would befall them all but particularly poor Adam, who was least able of any of them, so she thought, to survive the dangers he would face.

Would some good man look out for him, take him under his wing, this stripling boy? He gave her much worry, she felt he should never have been allowed to go, she daily grew less able to hold out hope for his return; and the thought that she might never see him again, this filled her with the utmost wretchedness and despair. His welfare was hers to vouchsafe, and she had lost him, she had allowed him to slip off into the Revolution, to be swept away into the howling wilderness of the Upper Hudson Valley and the lakes beyond—oh, he would perish, she was sure of it, and she would carry the shame of it to her grave. To think of him tramping through the wilderness for days and days and at the end being part of an assault on a fortress garrisoned by redcoats—! He would not survive it, he would perish if not from a musket ball then from weakness or sickness or a hundred other perils of the north woods. He would be scalped!

She would have made herself busy, the better to keep from brooding on these things; though such brooding was, in truth, but an expression of that anxiety which had gnawed at her heart since her last encounter with Giles Hawkins. Ah, but her condition prevented her doing little more now than sitting by the fire with her needle, and Joshua Rind was quick to notice her low spirits. She admitted they came of concern for her husband, and the doctor reassured her, telling her that Adam was stronger than she gave him credit for.

Could she believe this? She tried to, but whenever she saw him in her mind’s eye he was the soft, tender, curious boy to whom she had taught the lessons of love high among the hay bales in the barn behind the house; or up in the woods, in a bed of leaves, himself
filled with delight at discovering pleasure he had never dreamed of, living in his father’s stern house, with the long shadow of his Puritan ancestors cast always across his soul. Was she wrong to believe that she knew him better and saw him more clearly than this gouty doctor? The boy who had clung weeping to her in a transport of ecstasy when first she had brought him to the height and climax of passion? Was she wrong to think that this tender youth would surely perish in the woods?