The Glassblower

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  “We won’t be homeless once the bank—” Meg slapped her hand across her lips—too late. She’d let the cat out of the bag.

  Colin nodded to Louis, the senior apprentice who usually helped him. “This is the last of the purple bowls we’ll be making for this order if you’d like to go to your supper.”

  “Not if you’re going to stay and work, sir.” Louis, young, fair, and eager to please, hovered near Colin’s bench. “We still have the purple silica if you’d like to finish that set of goblets. I was counting them, and with the twelve at the Jordan house, you only have three to go.”

  Colin had made several of Meg’s goblets on Monday out of pique that she insisted she was responsible for fixing everything. Other than carrying her off to one of the states he’d heard about, where couples could marry without any sort of notice—rather like Scotland’s own Gretna Green—he didn’t know how else to stop her, except to pray for the truth to come forth and the situation to resolve. Even if that meant he was wrong and Joseph Pyle was a decent, if somewhat greedy, man, Colin wanted the best for Meg.

  Finishing the goblets felt like defeat, as though he had given in—or up. Yet his practical side told him not to let the already-heated purple glass go to waste and have to be reheated at another time.

  “All right,” he agreed, “we’ll finish the goblets.”

  “Right.” Louis took Colin’s pipe and dashed off for the vat of molten glass.

  Colin pulled the crate of finished goblets off the shelf and set several on top to study their lines. His tongs, pincers, and calipers lay spread out on his workbench. Other than the crackle of the fire in one furnace and the grate of the door as Louis reached in to draw out the hot glass, the factory lay quiet. Lamps lit the interior. Darkness spread across the outside save for the luminescence of the snow.

  A shadow moved against the whiteness. Footfalls crunched past the windows. Then the door opened and Joseph Pyle stood in the opening, frigid air swirling around him and through the building.

  “You’re dismissed, Grassick,” he announced.

  Colin met Louis’s gaze and indicated he should proceed with the glass, before turning back to Pyle. “By whose orders?”

  “Mine.” Pyle smiled, his eyes cold. “I own this glassworks now.”

  “Is that so?” Colin reached out one hand for his pipe, molten glass glowing on the end. “I’ll be hearing that from Mr. Jordan before I take an order from you.”

  He set the pipe to his lips and began to blow in a slow, steady stream that belied the turmoil inside him. Pyle couldn’t possibly own the glassworks yet. Jordan said he had until Christmas.

  “Put that pipe down, and get out of here.” Pyle marched forward.

  “The door, sir.” Louis ran to close it. “The cold air will ruin the glass.”

  “Quitting will ruin the glass, too.” Pyle’s smile widened. “Quite unfortunate for Isaac Jordan’s former customer.”

  If he didn’t need to maintain an even exhalation, Colin would have laughed.

  Pyle turned to Louis. “Get out, boy. I wish to say a few things to Grassick in private.”

  “But—but—” Louis stammered.

  Never taking his eyes from his work, Colin pointed a pinkie toward the door.

  “If you think it’s all right.” Louis snatched up his coat and cap and fled.

  Colin continued to work, turning the pipe, watching the bubble form, the glass shape.

  “If you weren’t here, Grassick,” Joseph growled, “Margaret would be grateful to me for offering her marriage.”

  Colin picked up his tongs.

  “You’ve turned her head.” Pyle advanced, stepping sideways to avoid the hot glass at the end of the pipe. “You, a mere workman.”

  Colin applied the tongs to pinch the glass for the stem.

  Pyle slid behind him, raising the hairs on the back of Colin’s neck. “I could make her a governor’s wife, and she wants a glassblower.”

  Contempt dripped from Pyle’s tone.

  The tone, the words rang like sweet music in Colin’s ears. Meg must have said something to Pyle.

  “You’ll give her nothing but grief,” Pyle continued.

  Not so. Colin would give her love.

  “That is, if you’re still here. Which you won’t—” Pyle lunged, snatching the pipe from Colin’s hand.

  The glass flew off the end. Colin ducked, twisted, rolled away from the pipe’s hot tip.

  “Think she’ll like you with your face scarred?” Pyle plunged the pipe toward Colin.

  He snatched up one of the finished goblets and threw it. Pyle deflected it with the pipe like a cricket ball and bat, sending the heavy glass soaring toward Colin. He sprang to his feet. The goblet missed and smashed against a workbench.

  Colin vaulted the bench and snatched up the crate. Glasses flew, shattering like discordant music.

  Another note sounded, high-pitched and shrill. Meg’s scream. Colin looked. A mistake. Pyle leaped at him, the pipe swooping toward Colin’s face.

  “No!” Meg cried.

  Colin dove for Pyle’s legs. Meg sprang at his back. They struck at the same time. Pyle dropped with a shout, a thud and tinkle of glass, and clang of metal on stone. He lay in a shower of shattered amethyst glass, the hot end of the blowpipe against his cheek.

  seventeen

  For several seconds, nothing, no one in the glasshouse moved. Even the fire merely hissed as it began to die on its grate. Then Colin shot to his feet, kicked aside shards of glass, its tinkling breaking the stillness, and crouched beside Joseph to pull the pipe free.

  “Is he—gone?” Meg whispered.

  It sounded like a shout to her ears.

  “Stunned is all.” Colin touched the blowpipe. “And he’ll have a frightful scar.”

  “He intended you to have one.” Meg staggered to her feet and closed the distance between her and Colin. She wanted to touch him, hold on to his solidity and strength, but she kept her hands pressed to her sides. “He was swinging it at your face.”

  “Aye, he thought you would not care for me if I had the scar on my face.” Colin set the pipe on his workbench then slipped his arms around Joseph and rose, all without looking at Meg. “If you’ll be kind enough to get the door for me, I’ll carry him to my cottage. Perhaps Hans could be fetching the apothecary.”

  “Of course.”

  Before Meg or Colin reached the door, it flew open and Louis, Thad, and Hans rushed in. They halted at the sight of Colin’s burden.

  “What happened?” Mr. Weber asked.

  “He had a wee bit of an accident.” Colin shifted Joseph to drape him over his shoulder. “Louis, be a good lad and fetch an apothecary or whatever you have here.”

  “Yes, sir.” Louis bolted out the door.

  “He said Pyle was talking ugly,” Thad explained, “so he came to fetch us. We’re sorry we didn’t get here sooner. Are you or Miss Margaret injured?”

  “I’m all right,” Meg said.

  Except for her spirit, which ached like a wound.

  “I am, too.” Colin headed out the door, paused on the threshold long enough to face Meg. “I’ll be calling on you later, if I may.”

  “Of course.” Her response was automatic not warm.

  A light flared in Colin’s eyes then dimmed. Without another word he spun on his heel and vanished into the night.

  Thad slipped his arm around Meg. “Let’s get you back to the Webers’. Ilse and Martha will likely have gallons of coffee brewing and piles of sandwiches waiting.”

  “I’m sure Colin will be hungry.” Meg felt too numb to be hungry, though a hot drink sounded good.

  Thad led her away. Hans stayed in the glassworks to close up the furnace and extinguish the lamps. The broken glass would be swept up and melted down to make something else. What, Meg neither knew nor cared. It wouldn’t be goblets for her new home. The notion should elate her. Joseph had shown his true nature, and no one would expect her to marry him.

  Not tha
t anyone would want to marry her, she realized, now that she knew her own true nature.

  They reached the Webers’ cottage. Thad took her cloak. Ilse nudged her into a kitchen chair and curled Meg’s hands around a mug of hot coffee with instructions to drink. Meg felt like a marionette with several people pulling her strings.

  “We all want to know what happened,” Ilse said. “Thad, go see what’s afoot. Where did they all go?”

  “Colin’s.” Thad opened the door. “I’ll send Martha over and head to Colin’s.”

  “I should go do something to help.” Meg started to rise.

  Ilse held her in place with a hand on her shoulder. “You stay there and warm yourself.”

  “I’m not cold.” Yet as she took a sip of coffee, Meg realized she was.

  Ilse draped a quilt over Meg’s shoulders. “There now, you’ve had a terrible shock. We all thought Mr. Pyle was such a good man.”

  “He always wanted his own way.” Meg’s hands shook, and she set her cup down. “He picked out things he wanted and did anything necessary to get them. I was one of those things—like fine windows and furnishings for his house. And Colin—” She put her head on her folded arms atop the table. “I nearly killed Colin.”

  “Nein. Nein.” Ilse knelt and wrapped her arms around Meg. “You did no such thing. Now then, would you like to go to your bed?”

  “I’d rather wait.”

  Colin arrived within the hour, along with Hans and Thad.

  “The sheriff took Pyle to Salem City,” Thad announced.

  Meg dropped the knife with which she was cutting slices of cake. “The sheriff took him?”

  “Aye, Louis is a quick-thinking lad.” Colin retrieved the knife from the table and slid it into her hand. “He sent the apothecary here then went on to collect the sheriff.”

  “And Pyle was arrested?” Ilse shook her head. “I never thought I’d see it.”

  “Is he well enough to go to jail?” Meg gazed up at Colin, so close to her yet too far away.

  “He’ll do.” He tucked a curl behind her ear. “He’s got a headache and a nasty burn, but he’s awake and blaming—well, he’s a frightened man.”

  “You can say it, Colin.” Meg gripped the edge of the table. “He’s blaming me. It’s all my fault, and I’m no better than he is.”

  A chorus of protests rose.

  Colin tilted her chin up with a forefinger and looked into her eyes. “What makes you say something like that, hinnie?”

  “He would stop at nothing to get his own way. I insist on mine, too.” Meg licked her dry lips. “I claimed I was doing the Lord’s work, but I was doing mine. Is that so different than Joseph wanting the best of everything to glorify himself?”

  “You were not trying to bring glory to yourself. How could you ever think so?”

  A murmur of agreement ran around the kitchen.

  “Isn’t going my own way, saying that I want to do this and I want to do that bringing glory to myself?” Meg hugged her middle. “I never once asked God if I was doing what He wanted. I asked my earthly father, who always gives me what I want, except for freedom from Joseph, and I’ve brought harm through my willfulness. I was so determined I wouldn’t marry Joseph that I told him too much and he went straight to the glassworks to attack you.”

  Colin gave her a gentle smile. “Nay harm’s been done. We’re all right.”

  “Are we?” Meg flung out her arms and stalked across the kitchen so she could face everyone. “Joseph may be in jail, but my father still owes him money. He will still own the glassworks, and Colin can still lose his position if Father can’t get the loan he needs. You could all lose your positions. You’ve witnessed Joseph at his worst, and he apparently harms those who thwart him.”

  “Which is why you cannot wed him,” Colin said.

  “No, I cannot, and although I want to marry you so much, I can’t ever hope to do so.”

  Colin set down his pipe and rubbed his eyes. He felt as though the sand that went into making the silica had been poured into his sockets. He needed rest. Yet sleep eluded him and had in the three nights since Joseph Pyle tried to attack him with a hot blowpipe. Pyle was out of the jail, though facing charges of assault. He claimed he was defending himself, but even if people doubted the word of a mere glassblower, no one questioned Meg’s integrity in her account of the incident.

  The other incidents, the hot grate on the workbench, the broken bottle, and the hacked tree, Pyle denied and no one could prove. Since he lay at home, suffering a septic wound from his assault on Colin, he would likely have to pay a fine and nothing more. That left him free to do as he pleased with the glassworks if Jordan didn’t obtain the loan money by other means, since Pyle no longer wished to marry Meg for payment. Despite her freedom from that burden, Meg refused to let Colin court her.

  “My wanting to be with you has caused nothing but trouble,” she insisted.

  “But surely You don’t want us apart now, Lord,” Colin cried aloud to the empty factory.

  And why not?

  That question sent him pacing the aisles of the glassworks between workbenches and molds, furnaces and lehrs, until he came to rest at one of the windows, his brow against the cold glass.

  He’d come to America to help his family. Or so he had told himself. Now he began to wonder if he acted no differently than Meg—going his own way because it was something he wanted, yet excusing the behavior with the claim it was what God wanted.

  “But I’m here now, Lord, and my family is thousands of miles away. Meg may as well be. I don’t know what to do.”

  Which might be the best place in the world to be—so uncertain he had no choice but to let the Lord take over.

  “But my family—” He stopped, recalling a verse his mother often quoted.

  “Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? … Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.”

  She was a great one for having the faith through difficult times. If she, a widow with five children to care for, believed the Lord would show them a way to get through life, then Colin could do the same. Or at the least, he could try. He would trust that the Lord would see to the future and keep working as long as he was allowed to do so. He knew exactly where to start.

  Fatigue slipping from his shoulders, Colin returned to his workbench and picked up the drawing he’d made of the goldfinch.

  Candles blazed in every room of the Jordan house, and fires blazed on the hearths, staving off the cold sweeping through the rooms each time the front door opened to admit another group of people. Thus far on this Christmas Eve, friends and neighbors braved another snowstorm to partake of the Jordans’ Christmas Eve party. People Meg loved to see were laughing and chattering and consuming mounds of food and bowls of hot, spiced cider. She especially enjoyed watching Peter and Sarah together. They glowed whenever they caught each other’s gaze. Meg’s heart leaped with joy for her dearest friend’s happiness.

  She jumped with anticipation and apprehension every time the door swung in; Gretta rushed up to take hats and cloaks, and Ilse collected contributions of sweets and savories. She anticipated Father’s arrival, hoping, praying for good news, fearing the answer because she wanted it so much.

  She wanted Colin to walk through the door, too. But she’d given him up, and only the Lord could give him back if He wished.

  Knowing this didn’t stop her from jumping and staring toward the kitchen every time she moved near enough to hear the back door open.

  “Mar–ga–ret.” Sarah drew the name out close to Meg’s ear. “I’ve been talking to you for five minutes, and you keep staring at that door.”

  “I’m sorry.” Meg rubbed her hot cheeks. “I thought I heard someone arrive through the back door.”

  “How can you hear anything above this din?” Sarah slipped her arm through the crook
of Meg’s elbow. “Let’s steal five minutes in your room. No one will miss us, and I simply must know what happened with Joseph. How could we have all been so wrong?”

  “We were deceived by his good looks and wealth.”

  “You weren’t deceived.” Sarah hugged Meg. “I owe you an apology.”

  “You had my future security in your heart, as Father did. So no apology—oh!”

  “Isaac, you’re home!” someone cried from the parlor.

  “Father.” Meg whirled on her heel, sending the lace flounces on her gown swirling around her like snow. “You got home in time.” She dashed through the crowd of guests and flung herself into his outstretched arms.

  Snow covered his coat, and he smelled of leather, wet wool, and pipe smoke. Dark circles rimmed his eyes, but the dark amber irises glowed as though candles burned behind them.

  “You look lovely, daughter.” He held her at arm’s length. Around them guests stood back and grinned at the reunion.

  “I didn’t think you’d get here and feared I’d be spending Christmas alone.”

  “I wouldn’t make you do that if I had to swim across the bay to get here.” He hugged her again then released her. “If my study isn’t full of people, may we have a few minutes there?”

  “Shed that wet coat first,” Meg said, “and I’ll shoo anyone out.”

  By the time she’d displaced a handful of gentlemen complaining about how President Madison’s policies would ruin them all then collected a hot drink and plate of food, Father had changed his clothes and joined her in his study. Not until the door closed, blocking out the gaiety of the guests and clatter of crockery, did Meg realize what news he might bring. Her stomach began to ache, and she sank onto the edge of a chair.

  “What—happened in Philadelphia?”

  “First things first.” Father began to munch on a slice of ham rolled around a hunk of cheese and spread with mustard. “Tell me what happened here. I’ve heard some of it, but I want to know everything.”

  Meg told him. “It was all my fault. I slipped and told Joseph what you were doing in Philadelphia.”

  “He was bound to find out anyway.” Father selected a dried cherry tart and took a healthy bite. “They don’t have food like this in the city.”