Halestorm

by Becky Akers

“We don’t want his help,” he thundered as Rev. Huntington cried, “We daren’t stand for it!”

  “That there’s treason!” Jason Daggett shouted. “I won’t listen to it. You’d talk out the other side of your mouth, Hale, and you, too, Preacher, you see what I seen in the backcountry. You’d be begging the king for help then. As for me,” he clapped his tricorn on his head, “I’ll be finding more patriotic company. You coming with me, Guy, or you turning into one of them damned Sons of Liberty?”

  The room hushed, and Guy wet his lips as every eye fastened on him. “Well,” he said with a weak smile, “after all, ah....”

  His uncle snorted and headed for the door.

  Eliphalet Root sighed. “There’s a sad sight: man robbed of his money and defending the thief.”

  Jason Daggett stiffened before turning to face them once more. “And you be a sadder sight. You got a honest debt, and now ’tis time to pay it, you say you won’t. I done that to you, you’d throw me in debtor’s prison.”

  Guy sat long after his uncle had gone. No man talked with him, though two or three nodded. Their hostility to government unnerved him. He had not actually collected any taxes for some time, but the next morning, he hastened to Hartford, thankful that snow barely dusted the ground, though it was the day before Christmas. He saw the governor and resigned his commission, visions of tar and feathers searing his brain.

  The Hale family rejoiced over the Tea Party, with the Deacon declaring they would do without the drink since Parliament sought to enslave them with it.

  “Best not eat any more fish, neither,” Joseph said.

  The Deacon glanced at him, puzzled. “Why, son?”

  “Well, can’t tell where all a fish’s been. Any of them swam into Boston Harbor and took a draught afore we fried them up, we’d be getting the tea secondhand.”

  The Deacon seldom recognized a witticism and seemed about to agree, so Samuel hastily said, “No need to go that far.” He was partial to salt cod, particularly when Abigail made it over his mother’s recipe.

  Enoch abruptly got to his feet. “Come on, Joseph, Samuel. Let’s get the stock fed.”

  “Too early yet,” Joseph said, but a look from Enoch silenced him.

  Out in the barn, Joseph started for the feed bin, but Enoch handed him a musket.

  Joseph squinted at it. “We going hunting this time of day?”

  “You touched or something?” Enoch asked. “This tea business could mean war.”

  “War?” Joseph stared as though he’d never heard the word. “What are you—War? You can’t be serious. What, you think the army, our army, will start shooting us? And we’d shoot back? Come on! You’re mad!”

  And it did seem absurd. Their peaceful flocks and fields, the snow falling gently over both, life’s daily round with farmers and townsmen struggling to raise their children and thinking far more on the next day’s chores than the administration’s crimes, girls giggling together, boys playing hoops after school, sweethearts marrying with nary a concern for Parliament’s latest outrage, mothers reciting stories at bedtime as if politicians were as harmless as they were distant, fathers downing some rum at the tavern and arguing politics, yes, but wasn’t that what men did? Didn’t they always criticize government’s incompetents and thugs? Talking and even dissent were a long way from war.

  “War,” Enoch insisted.

  “Samuel, we got a moron for a brother,” Joseph said.

  Ever the peacemaker, Samuel shrugged. “Look, we can always use some practice loading and firing. Comes in handy at butchering time.” He finagled another gun, old and rusted, from behind the corncrib. “But Enoch, do me a favor. Don’t say anything in front of Abigail or the girls. No need to worry them.”

  More personal matters occupied the women. Beth was to marry on December 30, throwing Abigail into a frenzy of preparations, while Alice’s baby, the first grandchild, was due any day.

  The pains began Christmas morning, yanking Alice from sleep. Dawn was still an hour or two away, and rousing Elijah was difficult. When at last he woke and understood that her time had come, he scrambled from bed to fetch Abigail.

  “Oh, Elijah, hurry,” she begged as another pang twisted her.

  He lifted his brows. “Certainly, madam.”

  The door closed behind him, and she collapsed on her pillows, fighting the spasms, longing for Nathan or Guy. What joy if one of them were the child’s father instead of—

  How could she be so wicked? She might die before the day was out and face the Judgment, yet she could not stop hating her husband. As another wave crushed her to leave her gasping, death seemed less trouble than shoving the child from her body.

  Then her mother was bending over her, gripping her hand while the agony threatened to rend her. She screamed for Nathan, moaned for him rather than Elijah, and Abigail’s lips tightened.

  Her labor was mercifully short so that by noon, a boy filled the air with his wails. She watched as Abigail wrapped the baby against December’s cold and opened the bedroom door.

  “Mama.” Her voice was a scary shadow of itself. Please, she wanted to say, his name is Nathan. But then sense returned. “Nothing,” she rasped, throat almost as dry and aching as her marriage. “Never mind.”

  Abigail studied her a moment before stepping into the hall, cooing to the infant as she headed downstairs to the parlor. Elijah would be sitting there, hunched before the fire, a glass of apple brandy on the table beside him. Alice fought her way from bed, staggered to the head of the stairs.

  “—a son, a fine boy, one to be proud of,” Abigail was saying.

  “Isn’t he beautiful?” Elijah’s voice trembled. “He’s all right, isn’t he? Got all his toes? No marks or anything? You know, Alice cried so much while she was carrying him—”

  “He’s perfect, straight from the hand of the Lord. What’ll you name him?”

  She closed her eyes. Please, let it be Nathan, the only name possible, one that sang like music, full of courage and life and—

  “Deacon had a son,” Elijah’s shrill voice clanged in her ears, “died a week after he was born.”

  “That’s right, he was a twin to David, would have been twelve years old by now.”

  “Thought I’d call him Jonathan, for him.”

  The hall whirled about her and went black, and she knew nothing more until a hungry cry woke her. They had carried her back to bed, but though she burrowed into the quilts, there was no escaping the cacophony. She opened her eyes to find Abigail handing the child to her, and the last bar on her cage slid into place.

  “Listen to me, Alice Ripley,” her mother whispered. “You’re married to a good man. ’Tis sinful to be thinking about Nathan. Stop it, you understand? You got a fine, healthy boy. That’s enough to make any woman happy. You ought to be grateful instead of crying for what you can’t have.”

  Alice wiped her tears against her right arm as she cradled Jonathan in her left. For the first time, she looked into her son’s face and nearly dropped him. There, staring up at her, were Nathan’s eyes. Huge, blue, sparkling with joy, those eyes regarded her mischievously.

  And then he winked.

  “Mama,” she breathed, “you see that?”

  “He’s a beautiful baby. Never saw so much hair on a child.”

  “No, Mama, he winked at me.”

  Abigail smoothed the bedcovers. “Alice, babies don’t wink.”

  “But he did. I saw it. As though he knows me.”

  “Well, of course he knows you. He’s your son. Such a beautiful boy. He’s got your eyes, Alice.”

  No, she thought, gazing dreamily at Jonathan as he nursed, I know it’s impossible, but those are Nathan’s eyes.

  CHAPTER 7

  Though a year had passed since Alice’s wedding, she dominated Guy’s thoughts by day and night. He doted on her proud carriage, the way her nose wrinkled when she laughed (though her laughter was scarce and quickly finished since her marriage), the passion coursing through her at h
is touch. That the Deacon had squandered her on a buffoon like Ripley seemed blasphemous. Guy was sure she preferred him to her husband but just as certain that she preferred her stepbrother to him. What wrung his insides until they cramped was the certainty that neither man understood her. Ripley was too dense, Hale too fine. They would never make her happy, not as Guy could.

  She had nearly married him once. He knew he could persuade her again, if Elijah Ripley and Nathan Hale were to disappear. Guy admitted he would do anything to own her, even murder.

  Nathan, too, thought of Ally more than he cared to, though immersed in his teaching and the parties of which Haddam’s Landing never tired. He advanced, bowed, and promenaded in minuets and reels, but none of the ladies who skipped across the floor with him could match Ally. They were pretty and engaging as they chattered about hair-ribbons or a neighbor’s oddities, but they weren’t Ally. When he steered the conversation to history or literature, they listened politely, not with his stepsister’s shining eyes and eager questions. Lying abed at night, having discouraged yet another flirtatious partner, he knew he had made the biggest mistake of his life in rejecting Ally. And now it was too late. He would pound his pillows, pull one over his head to chase the visions of her.

  He wrote letters, mostly to his friends from college, and received even more, including ones from Ally. These worried him. They were not the cheery, loving notes she used to send, full of references to the books she was reading, but were instead the sodden cries of an unhappy wife. He did not trust himself to answer, fearing he would speak against the man who was now her husband, whatever she felt for him. The only sunshine in her sentences concerned little Jonathan. She wrote of how he had that morning learned to play with his toes or called her Mama, she was sure, though no one else thought so, of how she would one day enroll him in his Uncle Nathan’s school. He smiled and at last responded, advising against that lest he spoil the child beyond bearing.

  Nathan was restless and lonely. At Yale, he had been an unmarried boy among many such; wedded couples were rare. But here all was reversed. The whole world went two by two but for his students and him.

  He was eager for a change when a man appeared at the schoolhouse one afternoon in March. He introduced himself as Judge Law, to Nathan’s amusement, from New London, a town twenty miles to the southeast. He offered Nathan a position as headmaster of their new academy. They hoped to make it one of the finest in the Colonies, grooming boys for college with study in the classics.

  Nathan covered his surprise with a bow. “This is an honor, sir.”

  “You’re right about that, young man. But we’ve heard excellent things of you. Some of my partners wanted an older man, maybe a tutor from over at Yale. One of them talked of sending to Oxford. But I told them there’s no reason to pick grapes in the neighbor’s vineyard when we got such a harvest in our own. The responsibility’s fair-sized, but so’s the salary: seventy pounds per annum.”

  “How many students?”

  “Well, we got about forty boys signed up, so you’ll be not only preceptor but master for the present. School grows, we’ll want you to hire more tutors and set out the courses.” He extracted an ivory pick from his pocket and scratched his scalp through his wig. “In short, Master Hale, we covet you for the head of our school.”

  “You’re very kind, sir.”

  “I mention that the young ladies of New London are a handsome lot? Not married yet, are you? Well, you can hardly ask for a better place to take a wife than New London. Got both my first and second wives there, though the present one’s from Boston. You’d be free to take other students of your own before or after school, if you want. Oh, and one more thing, Master Hale.” He hesitated, then, and lost some of his verve. “Well, sir, there’s some girls who want to learn, and we’d welcome the money from their tuition. You object to teaching them? Once you’ve settled in, of course, and for a good share of the profits.”

  Mrs. Snow and Matt were heartbroken to see him go. “You’re sure you can’t stay another few months, Master Hale?” Mrs. Snow set her finest creation, a dish of apples baked with cinnamon and piled with whipped cream, before him. “They’re fixing to raise a liberty pole, you know. You don’t want to miss that. And Sons of Liberty’ll be meeting at it regular, remember.”

  Nathan attacked the apples, then said around a mouthful, “Mrs. Snow, when I come to marry, you’ll teach my wife how to cook these, won’t you?”

  “Oh, go on with you now.” Pleasure turned her scarlet.

  He chewed appreciatively. “I hear that pole’ll stand as high as this cream.”

  “They’re laying two or three oaks end to end and binding them together. Gonna be fearful tall, but I don’t know. Seems if the good Lord meant for trees to be that high, He’d have growed them that way to start. Sets a body meditating on the Tower of Babel. One thing’s certain, I’m not letting Matt near it, what with the thing maybe falling over and smashing him.”

  “But you’ll go to the ceremony when they raise it, won’t you? I’m counting on you to write me all about it. There’ll be cheers and toasts, and they’re going to fire off that cannon from over in Weatherbee’s barn. You’ll have to let me know if old Mr. Weatherbee shoots anybody or not.”

  “Well...” She eyed his dish. “More apples, Master Hale?”

  “Obliged. Ephraim Hand’s carving ‘Liberty’ into one of the trunks, he told me, and his wife’s sewing a flag for it with a fine tableau.”

  Mrs. Snow glowed. “’Twas me as give her the idea for it. I told her, ‘Ophelia,’ I says, ‘everyone always thinks of Liberty as some shy, frail maid all a-tremble and scared and needing protection. But me, I see her strong and angry and fighting for us against the politicians.’ And she says to me, she says, ‘Hannah, I’ll make my flag like that, that’s what.’”

  The back door banged, and Matt stood before them. “Oh, boy, apples and cream. Can I have some, Ma?”

  Mrs. Snow bustled to the cupboard for another dish, and Matt brought a hand from behind his back to present Nathan with his frog. “Here, Master Hale, this here’s for you.” He wiped it clean on his shirt, leaving a streak of manure across his chest. “Figure there’s no one up at New London gonna have anything good as this.”

  “Probably not, Matt.”

  “Probably just a bunch of blockheads up there. Wouldn’t give ya nothing like this even if they had it.”

  Nathan reached for the toy. Then he saw Matt’s yearning gaze fixed on it. “Matt,” he said, “hate to do it, but I reckon I’d best leave him here with you.”

  “Why’s that?” But hope lit Matt’s eyes.

  “Well, I’d play tricks with him all day long instead of teaching. They’d fire me, and then what would I do?”

  “Come back here.” Matt sniffled as he pocketed his treasure.

  The next week, Nathan stood at the head of a new class. He resumed almost where he had left off in Haddam’s Landing, reciting lines from Virgil for translation each morning, correcting their Greek, debating English history with them as well as the Bible’s conundrums.

  In May, he announced that a class for young ladies would commence in the mornings at five o’clock. They would read the ancient authors and consider the scientific advances of Europe and the colonies, as time permitted. This news caused a sensation, and a regiment of his prospective students’ mothers under Mrs. Law’s command surrounded him the following Sunday after Meeting.

  Since her marriage to the judge ten years ago, Mrs. Law had enforced the unofficial rules of New London as her husband did the official ones. Few women dared call a party or wear a new fashion without her benediction. But the judge had not told her of this class. “She’ll say it’s too radical, and pitch a fit, Lord help me,” he sighed to Nathan over a glass of shrub in the tavern. “Let her hear it at the dressmaker’s like everyone else. ’Course, she’ll never forgive me for that. And she’ll blame you too, son. She’ll say you been in town long enough to know everything’s got to be run past h
er.” Now, as she advanced on him this morning, Nathan saw how prescient the judge had been.

  “Young man, what’s this I hear about a class for girls?” she said while the other women closed ranks around them. “You going to keep your mind on your books and your hands off the girls?”

  He spoke gravely as he took her fingers and bowed over them. “’Tis maturity, not youth, that beautifies a lady.”

  That disarmed Mrs. Law so effectively she retired from the field, bewitched and bedazzled. Her second-in-command, a Mrs. Hawkins, launched the next offensive. “Now, Master Hale, I’m going to send my Nancy to your class, but I warn you, sir, don’t try anything. I guard her as Midas did his gold.”

  “Perhaps I can set your minds at ease.” He glanced around the circle and lowered his voice. “This can’t get back to the men, though, or I’ll be out of job. Promise you won’t tell?”

  They nodded breathlessly, leaning close as the schoolmaster murmured conspiratorially.

  “Your husbands seem to fancy me a scholar in Latin, but truth is, I hardly read it. I’ll have to concentrate on the text, you see, or the girls’ll have it translated before I do. I won’t have time for flirting.”

  The ladies exchanged glances, uncertain whether he was teasing. Finally, Mrs. Ames, the youngest and a flighty sort on whom Mrs. Law kept a strict eye, said, “Master Hale, I always wanted to read Latin. Could I—”

  “Now, Mary,” Mrs. Law said, “you’ve much call for it every day with your spinning and baking and churning, haven’t you?”

  “Master Hale,” Mrs. Hempstead said, “I’m sending my Sally to you. She hankers after Billy Barlow, but I don’t. And I don’t want her speaking with him. She’s to mind her studies. Though you, sir,” she spoke quietly lest Mrs. Law, still scolding Mrs. Ames, overhear, “if you want to call on her, why, her father and I would be honored.”

  The next morning, the first of his new class, Nathan mislaid his watch. It was a handsome piece, a gift from his parents before his mother died and engraved, “With love and pride in our Nathan.” It was his only link to her besides memory, the one possession he cherished, else he would have waited to hunt it and not made himself late. When he arrived, he found his desk buried beneath cross-stitched bookmarks, knit stockings, handkerchiefs embroidered with his initials, and each girl dressed in her go-to-Meeting best.