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 sh
ould 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?”
“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?
Chapter Twenty-six
THE 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:
A group of patriotic citizens of the town, being informed that a woman residing at Royal Exchange Lane having informed against them, called on the house and not being received took up stones, then breaking the windowpanes on both floors. The woman and her servants subsequently fleeing to a neighbor’s house, the citizens followed but were turned away by a presentation of arms. The household’s attempting to leave for the country being discovered, they were escorted on their way by a number of patriotic citizens of the town.
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.”
The Rebellion of Jane Clarke Page 20