The Rebellion of Jane Clarke (3 page)

Horse.
Just touching on the word brought it back again, the image of Winslow’s horse tossing its head, the look of the blackened stumps. She yanked at the bolster and pressed it against her eyes, forgetting about the sleeping Bethiah, but it was too late.

A whisper no louder than a child’s breath tickled her ear. “I saw it too.”

“Saw what?”

“The horse. Mr. Winslow’s horse. The one with no ears.”

Jane made no answer.

“ ’Tis an awful sight.”

“Yes.”

“They say Papa did it.”

Again, Jane made no answer.

“Is it true?”

“Of course not.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he was here at the time it happened.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I lay right here and listened to him snoring.”

“You heard him snoring last night?”

“Don’t you hear him now?”

“Well, yes.”

“So.”

“But I didn’t hear him last night.”

“Well I did. I told you. Now be quiet.”

Bethiah fell silent. Across the hall Jane could indeed hear her father snoring, and outside she could hear the millstream fussing over the rocks, and from below-stairs she could hear the tick of the clock. What
could
Winslow’s horse hear?

What kind of man
could
cut off the ears of a horse?

P
HINNIE PAINE ARRIVED
as promised on the nineteenth. When Jane heard his horse in the yard she looked out the window in her usual way only to discover that she’d lost her usual way, that she found herself looking at him as if he were a stranger and she were taking her first measure. She watched him swing his leg over the horse’s rump with becoming grace, hand his reins to the Negro Jot, and stand a minute in the easy chat of a man comfortable with all creation. She watched him remove his jacket from his saddle and bravely shrug it on over his sweat-stained shirt, a nod to civility that Jane didn’t require but nonetheless drew him credit. He’d collected a number of pine needles in his hat brim, but of course he couldn’t have noticed that; when he swept the hat off as he entered the house the needles floated to the floor.

Jane crossed the room and scooped up the pine needles. When she lifted her head Phinnie was gazing at her with amusement. “Ah, Jane. What a fine housekeeper you are.” It was an old joke between them, and one Jane would rather forget, but of course Phinnie couldn’t know that. At Phinnie’s second visit he had grown confused over Jane’s mention of stepmothers and she’d set out the list for him: her father’s first wife, mother to Nate and Jane; the second, barren wife; the third, who’d mothered Bethiah; and Mehitable, the fourth, who mothered the rest. After she’d finished she’d looked at Phinnie’s startled eyes and said, “A man must get his housekeeping somehow.” Phinnie had tipped back his head and laughed, but remembering it now Jane felt the disservice she had done her stepmothers, especially Bethiah’s mother, whom Jane had loved well.

Jane’s father brought her back. “Why do you hang about, Jane? Get the man a cider.”

Get the man a cider
meant that Jane was to get both of the men a cider; she removed two tankards from the cupboard and went to the cellar for the jug. When she returned, her father and Phinnie had settled at the table, her father pulling himself up in the way he always did when seated opposite someone taller. He said, “I make no official speech, Mr. Paine; I never do till a deal’s finished; but allow me to say that on this occasion my wife and I are most particularly happy to welcome you to our home.”

Phinnie said, “Thank you, sir. Thank you, madam. I’ve seldom been so eager to arrive at a place or so loath to think how soon I must be gone from it.”

“Then we must see that you make hay, sir!” Jane’s father barked out a laugh and reached for the new
Gazette
Phinnie had brought him. Jane braced, and sure enough, her father came to a point that disturbed him straightaway.

“Here now! Here! Do you read this chamber-dung of the troops at Boston? If half these tales of beatings and rapes were true there’d not be a soldier with the strength to stand!”

Phinnie said, “ ’Tis true, sir,” which could have meant one thing or the other, but Jane’s father seemed to take it as agreement, and needing nothing more, if he needed it at all, talked on in like manner through supper. It was the fault of a small collection of men with the surnames of Otis and Adams and Molineux for feeding the lower classes tyrannous articles in the paper and rum in the tavern, then sending them out to so abuse the soldiers it would try the patience of Job. And so forth.

After supper Jane’s father took Phinnie and his rum and disappeared into his office, where no doubt the details of mill and tannery and house would be laid down. Mehitable and Bethiah herded the children up the stairs to their beds, leaving Jane to the clearing up, but as soon as the family had disappeared from the keeping room Jane sat back down and picked up the
Gazette
her father had left on the table; long ago Jane had learned that this was where she might find the words that had been missing from her father’s ledgers.

The first newspaper story she encountered told of another attack on an importer, and as Jane read she found she agreed with her father’s opinion on the matter. The Townshend Act had levied new taxes on paper, paint, glass, and tea the previous year, and the old ban on importing British goods had been resurrected in hope of forcing their repeal, but there were still some importers and businessmen who didn’t think this the way to proceed, and Jane’s father was among them. As for Jane, she could not understand how a man could talk liberty out of one side of his mouth and then brand another man’s free choice to import a little tea or cloth as tyranny. And these very men who broke into merchants’ shops, threatening tarring and feathering, were the reason the offending king’s troops had been sent to Boston in the first place.

But Jane found the next series of stories more troubling.

Were the stories true? Or were they, as her father said, naught but cheap propaganda? Jane went back to read the last few stories again, but somewhere in the middle of them she found herself thinking of Winslow’s horse. The same kind of man who would spread such a rumor over a small village was no doubt the same kind who would write lies for the newspaper if it served his purpose, the purpose being the same in each instance: to convince the populace that a terrible evil lurked among them. Having discovered a motive for a man to write a lie in the paper seemed closer to proving that lie, and yet the stories troubled her. Could so many acts so vividly recorded all be false?

Jane set down the paper, cleared and scoured the dishes, and had just swept up the floor when Bethiah returned to the keeping room. They took up their work baskets in expectation of the usual hour of mending, but they’d barely threaded their needles when Jane’s father emerged from his office with Phinnie behind him. He said, “Time for bed. Bethiah, come. Jane, you see our guest comfortable.” He barked out another laugh and pushed Bethiah up the stairs ahead of him.

PHINNIE SAID, “AH, JANE.
What are you fussing at? Come.”

Jane left the lamp and crossed halfway to the bed where Phinnie lay atop the coverlet. He’d removed his boots, stockings, and jacket while Jane had fiddled with the smoky lamp; she could see little of him but the liquid shine of his eyes. He patted the bed tick beside him; Jane crossed the rest of the way and sat on its edge, but Phinnie reached up and pulled her down. Jane and Phinnie had lain clandestinely kissing on that bed after the rest of the house had retired before, but nothing beyond that; this time, with his intentions publicly declared, Jane suspected things might go differently.

Phinnie was better at the business of kissing than Joseph Woollen—he didn’t cling as if he were drowning; his lips were neither liverish nor cold; he tasted as if he’d drunk a tot of rum, not bathed in it. After a time his hand slipped down to the ribbon tying up the neck of her shift and after a very little more time she could feel his man’s part, as solid as the bedpost, through both their clothes; it was there Jane began to think about the consequence to the sin of fornication as she’d been taught it at meeting. If Phinnie got her with child he would have done so under her father’s eye and would find himself married in a fortnight, whether he wished it or no, but if she gave birth to a babe before the full nine months of marriage they would be required to stand up at meeting and confess their premature coupling.

All this spun through Jane’s mind while her laces were being undone, perhaps in no great compliment to Phinnie, but such was the world she lived in that these matters needed to be considered ahead of time. She might have considered them a little farther ahead of time if she’d thought of them ahead, but as she hadn’t . . . And there a new thought occurred to Jane. It would be Phinnie’s babe as much as hers, his trip to meeting, his long life with Jane beyond. Had
he
considered these matters ahead? Was he considering them now? Or did his mouth and hands and man’s part carry him along without any thought at all? Jane didn’t know. There was so much to Phinnie she didn’t know. But she had her father’s essay on Phinnie’s character to reassure her, and she also had her father’s dislike of Woollen to add to the sum—to find him in such perfect accord on the matter of Woollen allowed her to double the value of his assessment of Phinnie. She might also add to the sum the fact that Phinnie’s hand had left her breast and traveled under her skirt to cause a sensation which certainly helped to explain all those meetinghouse confessions. And so Jane had now arrived at the fateful crossroads; she might follow that sensation down or she might back away from it, but if she wished to back away from it she needed to do it now, while she still kept firm grip on the reins.

Reins. Horse. Winslow.

Jane pushed Phinnie away and sat up. “I should like you to tell me something. You said ‘’tis true’ tonight when my father talked about the soldiers. What did you mean? Do you think the stories in the paper are true, that the soldiers beat and rape the inhabitants?”

Silence. Jane could see nothing but the dark shape of him lying beside her. She poked his arm, and Phinnie rose up on an elbow. “Let me be clear. You’re asking me . . . Are you in truth asking me about the behavior of the soldiers in Boston?”

“The ones sent by the king to keep the peace. I want to know if you think the newspaper reports are true, that the soldiers beat and rape the inhabitants.”

Phinnie dropped onto his back. “I think all soldiers beat and rape.”

“So you don’t agree with my father that the newspapers lie?”

“I think all newspapers lie.”

“You can’t think both.”

“Perhaps all ardent suitors lie.”

When Jane didn’t speak he rose up on his elbow again. “Why do you ask me this, Jane?”

“I want to know what you think.”

“Ah! Then I shall tell you. I think we should get married very soon. And I think if talking is to be the thing, then that’s the thing we should be talking about. Your father has shared some ideas with me that want discussion, for one.”

“When you came through the village did you hear something said of Winslow’s horse?”

Silence.

“Did you?”

“I did.”

“And did you hear it said my father was behind it?”

Phinnie dropped onto his back again. “Jane. Jane. I know how this talk of Winslow’s horse must distress you. For that reason it distresses me too. And for both together I see no gain in continuing the subject.”

“But does not the talk of the horse distress you on your own account? Does not the mere suggestion that a man—”

“There are many things that distress me.”

“What? What distresses you?”

“Your distress.”

Jane looked down and noticed the loose ribbon on her shift. She began to retie it. She said, “My father asked if it were settled between us to be married, and I knew that it was but I didn’t know how. I don’t recall you asking it of me, or me answering you. ’Tis as if the idea arrived out of the air.”

“Like breathing.”

“But when did we decide it? How?”

“So this is what troubles you? That you have no day or hour or minute to point to and say, ‘Ah, there our love began’? You have no pretty speech to turn to and say—”

“A pretty speech? You think I worry over a pretty speech?”

Phinnie sat up. “Then what is it, Jane? What’s all this about ‘settled’ or ‘unsettled’? Nothing in the world is easier to settle. You have only to answer a single question. Do you want to marry me or no?”

The answer arrived as if out of the air. “No.”