The Rebellion of Jane Clarke (23 page)

“No doubt the judges would think so.”

“I’m not concerned with judges at this moment, Jane. I’m concerned only with the question at hand, and this question is the only one I am in fact able to answer for you. The answer is no, Mr. Knox does not have a greater right to his opinion than you have to yours. And once you understand that, it becomes simpler, does it not?”

Yes. No.

Jane said, “May I ask you your opinion of what happened in King Street, sir?”

“I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there.”

“I mean to say—” Jane stopped. What did she mean to say? “I only wonder, sir, what you think of the situation in general. Of the soldiers. Of . . . of—” She stopped again.

If Jane’s grandfather had looked tired before, he looked beyond it now. “I think the taxes Parliament has imposed on these colonies are unlawful. I think it our right—no, indeed, our obligation—to protest against these unlawful taxes. As the soldiers were sent here to stifle that right, I think their presence unlawful, and they should be called home.” He shook his head, as if to clear it. “Home. There is all of it in a word. England is too distant from us for us to call it home anymore. And England has no idea of the thing that America has become. They don’t realize that we’ve grown. They don’t realize we’re not their children anymore.”

“But what of those who do think England home? What of those who wish to stay her children?”

“Well, then,” her grandfather said, “they’d best go home.”

CURIOUSLY, JANE DID SLEEP,
mental and physical exhaustion swallowing her up the instant she lay down. And when she woke in the middle of the night she found herself remembering, not the massacre or her aunt’s betrayal or any of the events that had occurred in town, but that long-ago carriage ride. Suddenly, however, the memory had changed. The three children had not curled up like puppies in the backseat—Bethiah had been little more than a toddler and fidgeted about from seat to floor; Nate had wanted the whole seat and more than once had used a heel to push Jane away; twice, the carriage had veered dangerously off the road, causing Bethiah’s mother to cry out, “Nathan, pay heed!” And if even that old, cherished memory was a lie, Jane must keep watch that no such lie would survive over Aunt Gill. She must remember these many months with her aunt, not for what she’d wished them to be, but for the lie they truly were. The whole of it, even the old woman’s supposed need of her, had been proved a lie the minute she’d gotten up and walked unaided across her chamber. But for the aunt to have allowed—or even cultivated—an affection in the niece was the greatest deceit of all. The greatest humiliation of all. Was nothing as it seemed? Aunt Gill wasn’t. Prince wasn’t. The massacre wasn’t. Miss Linnet wasn’t, nor was her brother. Or Henry Knox. But what of her father? And Phinnie? Phinnie had never seemed anything at all except in love with her, but even that had melted away like a spring snow.

And what of Jane? What could Jane claim to be, as she twisted in the face of every wind that blew?

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Jane wrote to her brother:
I have considered long and am now firm in my mind. I am unable to offer any testimony regarding Mr. White. I know you will accept this decision from your sister who loves you and prays you will continue to love her in return. I am staying with our grandparents for a time, as a result of a situation of which you have been apprised. I remain, as always—Your Most Affectionate Sister.

Jane read it over and felt as good as she’d felt since the events in King Street. She had, at last, left the “Bloody Massacre” behind.

A knock sounded on her door. Jane opened it on her grandfather, her letter book in his hand. She took it from him.

“What other trouble did it cause?” she asked.

“None we hadn’t already discovered.”

Hearing her grandfather’s words, the lingering tightness behind Jane’s eyes eased; knowing the bound of the trouble had diminished it somehow. She returned the letter book to her room and tucked it away in her trunk; she carried her brother’s letter below-stairs, and found her grandmother in the kitchen alone, gutting a chicken with what appeared to be unnecessary violence.

“I should like to know what Mrs. Poole was thinking when she brought this bird home. Look at these legs! Speckled! Rough! This bird is older than I am! Why is it not possible in this town to step out the door and return with a young and healthy bird? If I but had my coop at Satucket—”

“Can you not have a coop here?”

Jane’s grandmother sent the knife hard into the table. She looked at Jane in such a way that Jane wondered with an insane alarm if she was entirely safe from the blade. Well, of course her grandmother might have a coop if she’d only stay in town long enough to tend it.

Jane picked up a turnip and began peeling, and for a time she was able to leave off thoughts of letters written and unwritten, but not for long. The letter to her brother crackled at her from where it lay on the post table. The potential letter to her father started and stopped with each slash of the knife.

Jane’s grandmother lopped off the bird’s neck with a single blow, stared a minute at the offending legs, and lopped those off too.

THE NEXT DAY’S
GAZETTE
carried the news:

Along with a tar pot and feathers? Or the contents of their night jars? Even the
Gazette
might exhibit some reticence in reporting such treatment of a woman so old, traitor or no. But reading the story, Jane discovered that there was, after all, a reason to write a letter to her father.

THAT LETTER WAS NOT
so difficult. Jane put down what had happened at Aunt Gill’s and what had happened to Aunt Gill; she informed her father where she currently resided; no more was required. But as Jane laid down her pen she discovered there
was
something about the letter that troubled her; she began to feel that it was half-done. Her father had sent her away to what he had no doubt hoped, and what had indeed proved, to be an unhappy experience, but that was not the whole. She dipped her pen and put it to the paper again.
I send with this letter something to liven your bookshelf.
I purchased this book from my friend, Mr. Henry Knox, the bookseller at Wharton & Bowes—perhaps you have visited this store on one of your trips to town, but if not, I recommend you visit it on your next one. Mr. Knox would be most happy to attend you, if only on my account alone. You see that thanks to your clever negotiation of my wage I am able to supply myself with many fine things I could not afford before, although these things not being available to me at Satucket, I should hardly have known the lack.

Jane read over what she’d added and was pleasantly surprised at her own cleverness—to disguise so thick a vein of bitterness under so thin a skin of magnanimity was something perhaps only Phinnie Paine might appreciate. She copied the letter out, added her best hopes for the family’s health and her great affection for all, signed her name, and sat back, exhausted.

JANE AND HER GRANDMOTHER
were out in the garden, picking over an old, neglected bed of herbs, when Jane’s grandmother said, “I must put a choice before you, Jane. Should you like to return to Satucket with us when we leave or should you prefer to stay in town? You must know our house is yours.”

Jane said, “My father—” but found herself unsure of how to go on. All just seemed to begin with him. Or end there. She began again. “Until I receive my father’s answer to my letter—”

Jane’s grandmother rocked back on her knees and dusted her hands on her skirt. “When I say our house is yours I mean this house and
that
house, Jane. Your returning to Satucket does not depend on him unbolting his door to you.”

Jane sat back on her heels too. It had never occurred to her that she could return to Satucket on anything but her father’s terms. She imagined greeting her father not as a beggar but as a visitor, free to come and go as she chose.

Jane’s grandmother said, “You needn’t decide the thing now,” but of course it was decided the minute her grandmother mentioned it.

“When do you plan to return?”

Jane’s grandmother’s eyes changed focus, from near to far. She said, as her husband had, “Soon.”

JANE HAD LEARNED FROM
her grandfather what “soon” did and didn’t mean, but it didn’t matter. It would take little time to pack, as her trunk had never been unpacked. As she waited she resumed her place beside her grandmother in the kitchen and soon discovered that the job was not as simple as it had first appeared. As many times as her grandfather made it to the table for their dinner, as many more times he sent a note saying he was delayed and could not attend. When he did arrive for dinner he was often not alone, and besides seeing old acquaintances like John Adams, Jane met other lawyers involved in the upcoming trials. And so the “Bloody Massacre” wasn’t left behind after all.

The two most interesting men who came to call, aside from Adams, were a pair of brothers Jane had never met before—Josiah and Samuel Quincy. Josiah possessed a crossed eye and would appear for the defense, despite his father’s violent objections; Samuel’s eyes sat straight, but he would appear for the prosecution. The more interesting thing about the brothers, however, was that their political inclination should have put each on the other’s side. A true loyalist named Auchmuty filled out the defense team, and it was this man who caused Jane the greatest unease.

“The evidence is very strong that the firing came by Preston’s order,” he declared one day as Jane worked around the table, filling platters. “We must therefore build up the case of the soldiers’ provocation. The outrageous reports in the papers, the long months of orchestrated attacks by the inhabitants, the unrelenting efforts to provoke the soldiers into just such an event as has now transpired.”

“No, no, no,” Adams cried. “We must have no talk of orchestration! No long months of attacks!”

“What?” Josiah Quincy put in. “Against the kinds of witnesses the prosecution will provide?”

Adams shook his head. “The eyes of every friend in all the colonies and abroad are now fixed on us and will be fixed so throughout these trials. If the inhabitants are perceived as the instigators of this event we lose them all. This cannot become a trial of the town.”

“Then it shall be no trial,” Auchmuty said.

“And you’ll hang the lot,” Josiah Quincy added.

Adams, all there was of height and width and breadth to him, drew himself up. “If such an effort as just described is made by either of you, I shall stand down as counsel for the defense.”

And thus the matter was closed.

IT WAS NO CONCERN
of Jane’s. So Phinnie had said, and so Jane agreed; with her brother’s letter mailed there was no reason on God’s earth for Jane to be thinking about the massacre at all. She told herself this as she lay in bed, and she told herself this as she woke in the morning, and she told herself this as she labored over the dough tray beside her grandmother. It was no concern of hers, and she almost hoped Phinnie would stop by so she could admit the same.

But it was Henry Knox who stopped by. It was different with Henry at Water Street—he wasn’t ushered into any formal parlor but brought into the keeping room and set down among the bustle there. Jane’s grandmother asked a number of questions, the kind Jane’s father might have asked, and Jane discovered a number of things she was embarrassed to learn she hadn’t discovered before. Henry was the seventh of ten sons and the oldest now at home, supporting his widowed mother and the remaining three siblings; he only managed Wharton & Bowes for his employers, but one day he hoped to open a bookshop of his own. One thing about his visits, however, remained the same: after due attention was paid to their guest, Jane’s grandparents made their excuses and left the pair alone. It was there Jane might have told Henry about her letter to her brother, but somehow she did not, and when he reached for her she felt hollow under his hand, as if the core of herself had been left behind in the silence.

WHEN PHINNIE PAINE DID
stop by at last, it was over business with her grandfather. Jane was in the keeping room peeling and chopping onions for a soup and she heard his voice—the unmistakable lift in it:
Good-day, Mrs. Poole, how do you fare?

Phinnie had come, he told Mrs. Poole, to see Mr. Freeman about some shingles. Jane heard the pair of footsteps move off in the direction of her grandfather’s office, heard the rich, deep rise and fall of male voices, heard a laugh—her grandfather’s laugh—and a possessive wave of gratitude swept over her; it had been some time since she’d heard her grandfather laugh. Jane’s grandmother, just returned from the cellar, paused when she heard it too and smiled. She cast an eye at Jane and said, “Best bring that man a cider.”

Jane went to the jug, poured two tankards full, carried them down the hall and into her grandfather’s office. The room was like and not like her father’s in that the books that lined these shelves were most certainly full of words, words of which, no doubt, her father would not approve. As Jane entered, Phinnie rose to his feet and accepted his mug with a silent nod. Jane’s grandfather took his mug and peered inside.

“I’ve an earwig swimming in here.”

Jane reached for the mug, but her grandfather held it away. “No, no, I’ll tend it.” He left the room, leaving silence behind.

After a time Phinnie said, “An earwig. I thought him cleverer than that.”

Jane said nothing.

Phinnie said, “You might as well sit down, Jane. He’ll not be back soon.”

Jane stayed standing.

Phinnie said, “When I was last at Satucket your sister Bethiah engaged me in a private word. She said your father sent you here because of me.”

“I sent myself,” Jane said, which was, and wasn’t, true.

“To hide from me?”

“No.” True? Not true?

“When I saw you at your aunt’s I behaved poorly. Perhaps I understand something better now of how you felt. The difficulty I caused you. I would cause you no difficulty, Jane.” He stopped. He leaned over and set his tankard on the table. Jane looked at his back and remembered all the times she thought she’d seen it through the crowds. A wild, meaningless desire to lay her hand on that back rose up in her.

Phinnie turned to Jane again. “I wonder if you remember the day I met you, Jane. I was in your father’s office; I don’t believe you knew anyone had even entered the house. You tapped on the door and called out, ‘Papa?’ Your father called you into the room, beckoned you to his side, and circled your waist. ‘Mr. Paine,’ he said, ‘you now have the great honor of meeting my eldest daughter.’ How your face glowed! How happy you were to be inside the circle of that man’s arm, to be presented by him so proudly! ’Twas a thing I could not forget.” Phinnie paused. “Remembering such a thing, how could I answer your questions of that last night in Satucket, Jane? How could I say to you I thought your father self-serving in his politics and well capable of any number of dishonorable acts? Was he capable of cutting off a horse’s ears? I don’t know. I do know I could not work under a man of his temperament, nor would I care to live across the road from him, nor could I ever love him as you do. Is that what you would have liked me to say to you that night? Would that have swept you happily into our marriage? Tell me, Jane. What should you have done that night if I had said such things? Would you have gone ahead and bedded me, all in accordance with your father’s plan?”

“My
father’s
plan!”

“I’m not a fool, Jane. I knew well enough he would never allow me to lie with you under his roof and then remain a single man. I knew he pushed you into my bed to put the final seal on his scheme. But understand, your father’s plan and mine were up until a particular point one and the same. Aside from the usual passions at play, I was in even greater haste to see the thing done, before you discovered that I could not love your father as you should like me to do, before you discovered I could not agree to the second part of his plan. The plan for my future. For our future.”