The Rebellion of Jane Clarke (22 page)

Jane turned around.

J
ANE TRAVELED THROUGH
the streets locked inside her own rage. She saw nothing of the remains of King Street or Quaker Lane or Water Street until she’d reached her grandparents’ door and realized that the street had been swept clean, the top of the elm that had fallen had been chopped and stacked, the shutters rehung, and the windows repaired. The sight of such redemption soothed her only enough to bring her into something that resembled calm as she knocked on the door. Mrs. Poole answered, but Jane’s grandmother was close behind; Jane had given no thought as to how she might explain herself, but when she saw her grandmother’s face she understood there was no need. Her grandmother cupped a strong hand under Jane’s elbow and drew her to the keeping room without a question asked.

No fire had ever felt so comforting as the hissing logs on her grandmother’s hearth, no fine imported Bohea so welcoming as the piss-yellow swamp tea her grandmother served. Jane wrapped her hands around the stoneware mug and leaned over the steam; her grandmother busied herself over a plate of bread and butter, and by the time she’d delivered it to the table, Jane felt ready to begin. But she hadn’t gotten far before her grandmother stood up and walked to the foot of the back stairs. “Eben!” She called.

Jane’s grandfather mumbled an answer.

“Best come now!”

He came, still holding an open book in his hand. “Why, Jane! How did I not hear you arrive?” He stepped up to her and dropped a kiss on the part of her hair, a thing he’d done often enough without causing that hot press of tears at the back of her eyes. He looked from Jane to his wife and back again at Jane. “Have we some trouble here?”

Jane began again. The part she knew was short; the part she began to suspect and piece together grew longer as the short part got told, and her grandfather interjected a number of questions that pieced together more; the fuller the picture appeared, the greater the fool Jane appeared. Had it not been clear from the minute Jane had arrived at her aunt’s home? The old woman’s great concern over Jane’s father’s Tory views, not because she disagreed with them but because she was afraid they would give her away. Her collapse the morning after the tarring and feathering of the customs informer. Her intensified fears when the royal governor left town. The money in the desk, not inherited from her family but paid to her for information by a representative of the Crown, paid out to Prince no doubt. Prince who came and went as he pleased, carrying only the aunt’s letters and never Jane’s. Once Jane discovered the cache in the desk they must have changed their hiding place, of course, and so the coins always remained, fooling Jane into believing
she’d
fooled Prince and Martha, while protecting Aunt Gill. Protecting Aunt Gill! That she could think she had come along and made it their two against the other two, when all along it had been their three against her one.

“I wonder what other papers she might have hidden away that would be useful to us,” Jane’s grandfather said after a time, and the single remark caused another wave of recollections to flood in.

“None, now,” Jane said. “The night the governor left, Martha took a leather case out of the house, right under my eyes. To protect it from fire, she said, my aunt said. To protect it from any rampaging mob, more like, now the governor was gone!”

“But in truth, Eben,” Jane’s grandmother cut in. “What of value could that one old woman pass along?”

“The cache of arms at Faneuil Hall,” Jane said, thinking furiously now. “The planned signal to raise the countryside with a flaming barrel on the beacon hill. She heard the first from Henry. She heard the last from Nate, right here in your home.”

“And she heard things from Adams and Otis as well,” Jane’s grandfather added. “No doubt she used you, Jane, for access to news of such men through your brother—indeed, for access to the men themselves; I’d never heard of her entertaining in such fashion before.” He turned to his wife. “And as I included the aunt in my invitations to Jane, I abetted her as well. We must think now. What besides the arms, the beacon, did we disclose?”

Together Jane and her grandfather attempted to reconstruct the conversations they’d shared with Aunt Gill, but Jane could recall only the things that she should have seen before: her aunt’s insistence on including herself among the rebels in her talk with that pompous and artificial
we
; her agitation, not fatigue, when the talk had turned to hanging traitors; her false concern over Otis after the beating and for her grandfather after the storm; the glee she had been unable to disguise over a British soldier becoming Otis’s son-in-law. Jane thought of that smile she had described as a child’s but now saw as a cat’s, a smile that had met Jane every time she offered up evidence that her affection had been engaged, the wool successfully drawn.

After a time Jane’s grandfather stood. “I must speak to some gentlemen about this. I trust, Jane, you will now stay here with us. On my return I shall call upon your Aunt Gill and ask for your things to be sent along.”

And no doubt he would ask other things as well. After he left, Jane’s grandmother, proving her thoughts once again in line with Jane’s, said, “He’ll get what he can, make no mistake. But he’ll see no harm comes to her.”

Jane searched, but could find nowhere in her that she cared.

JANE’S GRANDFATHER RETURNED LATE,
long after Jane and her grandmother had eaten a scrabbled-together supper before the fire in the keeping room. They had cleared away the effects and settled back to talk away what they could of the day’s grime when he entered the room. He was not at ease. He talked for a time about Aunt Gill and the abuse she had vomited his way, but she had told him all he needed to know. They had been correct in all their suppositions—she had been in constant communication with an aide to the governor; Jane had been right about Prince as well. He was no slave; his name was in fact Prence; he was descended from one of the colony’s first governors. At first Jane thought such a disagreeable interview must be enough to account for her grandfather’s state, but it proved not to be so.

“I spoke to the gentlemen I mentioned before,” he began. “I must tell you, Jane, I’m not always in accord with these gentlemen; but I must also tell you that I see the purpose in what they ask of me now. In what they ask of
you
. They ask to see your letter book. They wish to discover what else Aunt Gill might have passed along, things that you might not consider compromising, not having the larger picture in mind. I offered the alternative that you might allow me to see it and me alone—flattering myself that you would honor me with a greater degree of trust than you might a stranger—they accepted the plan on condition that if you didn’t voluntarily hand me the book I must examine it in secret. I promise you that will not happen. Either you agree or you do not, and so it will rest.”

Jane’s grandmother said, “ ’Tis no time to ask this of the girl.”

“Indeed, it is not, if it ever would be. They wanted to come and confiscate the book at once, but I put a stop to that only by suggesting this alternative.” He stood up. “But now we are done with the subject, and Jane may think on it, and in due time inform me of her wishes. Your trunk has already been brought upstairs, Jane; best make sure all is as it should be. Now if you would excuse me please, I’ve work—” He left the room, his mind already gone on ahead of his tongue.

JANE TOOK A CANDLE
above-stairs. She had been too distressed earlier to take much solace from her room, but now she took it in and was surprised—pleasantly so—to feel how familiar it had already become. It could not be called home any more than Aunt Gill’s, but what could be now? Perhaps her trunk. She opened it and checked through all her belongings; her pouch with her earnings was the first thing she sought out, and she took a long, relieved breath at the sight of it. Next she looked for the letters from her family, her paper and ink, the books she’d either bought or received from Henry as gifts. She rifled quickly through the clothes without removing them from their storage place. But what now? The trunk held her life as it had been, without any hint of what it might become.

Jane sat, at great waste of the candle, pondering her choices. She supposed she might count on her grandparents to keep her, but for them to be forced to do so out of necessity rather than generosity seemed unfair to all three. She supposed too that she could write her father the letter that Mehitable had suggested she write. Jane had been away from home a long time; her father’s bluff had been called and hers in due turn; surely by now they might consider all debts paid? Surely Mehitable would not have suggested such a letter if she weren’t confident of her husband’s willingness to suffer her return? And now there was no question that her father
knew
of the dangers of town. A small corner of her mind, the child’s corner, wondered if a letter should not be traveling the other way, demanding that she return home, but the adult Jane pushed that wondering aside.

Jane collected her writing things and arranged them on the small table by the window. She sat down, adjusted her candle, dipped her pen, and opened her letter book. Her letter book. She laid down the pen. She began turning pages in the book, stopping at this or that place as her eye got captured. Sometimes she had used the book to compose a draft of a letter that she planned to copy over; sometimes she had used it to make a sketchy copy after the fact of a hastily written effort, in order to remind herself where she’d left off in the correspondence; but sometimes—she could better see it now where she hadn’t before—sometimes she’d used her letter book as a journal.

The pages that were journal were the pages that concerned Jane the greatest. The reason they’d been kept as journal and not sent as letter was because their content had proved either too confused or too troubling or too private to share. Now she was to hand these pages to her grandfather? Or wait for them to be confiscated by one or another of the famous Sons—perhaps an Adams or a Molineux or even a Knox? No. Before they did that she’d let the fire take them. Indeed, why
not
let the fire take them? Why allow her grandfather, however trusted he might be, to wander about inside her private musings?

Because Aunt Gill had already wandered there. Because no doubt half the governor’s men had wandered there. And if Jane wished to undo any of what Aunt Gill had done, not just to this already disordered cause but to Jane, she must let at least one other person wander there. And there was one other reason to allow the thing, and in the end that was the reason that carried Jane to the stairs: her grandfather’s careworn face. Jane had only the barest idea of what he dealt with in the legislature and with the Sons and in the town itself, especially now with Otis out of it, but she had a fairly good idea of how small her own embarrassment stood beside it. She picked up her letter book and went below.

JANE FOUND HER GRANDFATHER
sitting at the keeping room table alone, hands splayed flat on the bare boards, eyes fixed on the single log that sighed weakly atop the embers.

He lifted his head. “Why, Jane, I should have thought you long asleep.” He smiled. “Or perhaps not.”

“And you, sir.”

Jane’s grandfather made no answer. He pointed to the chair opposite; Jane sat down, setting the letter book on the table. Her grandfather looked at it, and at her. “This shall be returned to you on the morrow. And I promise you, Jane, no eyes shall touch it but mine.”

“Thank you.”

“No, Jane, ’tis we must thank you
.
” He paused. “I took the liberty of stopping at your brother’s and acquainting him with the situation regarding your aunt. I felt a word of caution might be wise.”

Jane nodded. “He was angry enough before; ’twill be worse now. There’s one soldier he believes took deliberate aim at him to repay him for some past words. He’s made out a deposition that condemns him.” There Jane paused. It was late. Her grandfather was no doubt near exhaustion. And yet she added—she couldn’t help but add—“Now he awaits mine.”

“I see. And perhaps yours might not agree so precisely with your brother’s?”

“Or many of the others that are being passed about town.”

“Which should not have been passed about,” her grandfather said with some heat. “Which you should never have seen.” He drew up his shoulders and let them fall. “There have been times as a lawyer, Jane, when it has been necessary for me to ask a juror to ignore a particular testimony, as if his ears had not heard the very thing he’d just heard. ’Tis a difficult thing to do. But this is what you must do now.”

“Phinnie Paine sees no need of me giving testimony at all. He says it doesn’t concern me.”

Jane’s grandfather smiled. “Mr. Paine’s opinion must be adjusted to account for his bias concerning the witness, as your brother’s must likewise be adjusted to account for his bias concerning the accused. Are there any other opinions troubling you just now?”

Just as he seemed to know all about Phinnie Paine, so he seemed to know about Henry Knox too. And why should he not? She’d been seen all about town with the man; his deposition had been spread out in print for all to see. “Mr. Knox and I arrived together at the scene,” she said. “I didn’t see all that led up to the shooting in just the same light as Mr. Knox saw it. He believes the larger good outweighs a strict rendering of facts.”

“And do you believe so?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well then, you must think on it. And as you think on it, you must think on this too. Do you believe Mr. Knox has a greater right to his opinion than you have to yours?”