Love's Pursuit (3 page)

It was not a bear.

It was a man.

3

THE MAN MIGHT AS well have been a bear. His black hair fell in shaggy waves long past his shoulders. The wide brim of his hat had been pinned up on one side with a drooping feather, and his great boots flopped open at his knees. It looked as if he had been at battle with the forest. And if he had, I must say that the forest had won.

“My horse slipped a shoe, and I find myself to be quite lost. Is this, by any chance, Stoneybrooke Towne?”

Simeon Wright held up a hand to stay the laughter. “It is.”

The stranger pulled his hat from his head and swept it toward the ground as he bowed. “Captain Daniel Holcombe. From the king’s army. At your service.”

A great murmur arose at his words.

With one look from Simeon Wright, however, the wordless noise ceased. “And what has His Majesty to do with us?”

The man smiled. It was an easy smile, a smile that ignored the dozens of muskets that were still trained fast upon him. “His Majesty? Not one thing. But the governor heard you have fear of savages. And he sent me to train up a militia.”

“We have a militia.”

He replaced the hat upon his head and passed a finger along the feather to prop it up. “Do you, now? All the better. It will make the task that much easier.”

There was a tightness to Simeon’s mouth that I did not understand. “And how did the governor learn of our . . . threat?”

My friend Abigail’s father cleared his throat. “I mentioned it when I went to Boston for the vote. Asked if we could be sent some help.”

Simeon Wright stepped toward Goodman Baxter. “We do not need the help. We can contend with the savages.” He turned his head, as if to address those of us who stood behind him. “As long as everyone stays close and does not wander far, no one will be harmed.”

The captain had been glancing back and forth between the two men. “Seems to me that if there is fear of savages, then there must be some doubt as to your ability to repel them. And, besides, the governor asked me as a personal favor. Cousin to cousin.”

To give shelter to a captain of King Charles’s army—a king who held himself above the law, who had no ear for his people, a king who tortured the pious and dredged up ancient and devious schemes to tax his citizens—was one thing, but to give shelter to a cousin of the governor was another matter entirely. The governor’s loyalty to a higher law, to God’s law, could not be questioned.

And neither, then, was the captain’s.

In a matter of minutes it was settled. My father was a carpenter and his profession had allowed him to build us a comfortable house. Unlike most houses in Stoneybrooke Towne, it had both a kitchen and a parlor as well as a loft upstairs for storing goods. Last year, he had added a lean-to for use as a dairy house. After Simeon Wright’s, it was the largest house in town.

The captain would board with us.
Thomas Smyth would shod his limping horse.
The town would train up a militia.
And then, the captain would leave.

The care of the stranger arranged, we retrieved our pails and returned to our labor. The sun was fast slipping toward the horizon.

Our work was nearly finished.

Thomas had finished the Bible reading.

The hour was late. I took the book from him and placed it back into its box.

He banked the fires while I slipped from my clothes, hung them on a peg, and then pulled a night-shift over my head. Quickly, before he had finished his task, I creased the bed linens and slid beneath them, all the way to the wall. The cracks in the logs sometimes let in a breeze that freshened the close summer air. But the reason I placed my back to it was so that I might not sleep defenseless.

I closed my eyes as Thomas changed. Opened them as he got into bed.

But he did not look at me. He never did. He entered with his back to me and would not turn over for the entire night.

I am certain he hoped nothing more than to set my mind at ease with his habits. It was the kind of man he was. But still I lay there awake until I knew he had fallen into sleep. Deep sleep. ’Twas a habit formed long ago, and nothing I did, nothing I thought, nothing I reminded myself of allowed me to break it. Even the mice had ceased their scrabblings by the time I closed my eyes.

4

THE NEXT DAY THE captain was up with us at dawn’s first light. He left the house with Nathaniel and Father, the three of them like ducks in a row.

Mary and I took turns washing our face and hands, then brushing off our clothes and helping each other into them. While Mother sat and put the child to her breast, we found a coal to start the fires and added more water to the porridge.

Mary poured out a drinking cup of cider and put it in front of Mother.

I started the preparation of the day’s biscuits. Taking a crock from the shelf, I measured out a portion of mother dough, added flour and water, kneaded it smooth, and set it aside to rise. My sins ever before me, I filled the smoothing iron’s heater with coals and set the iron within it to heat.

Some time later the men returned. Nathaniel might have been fetching water and Father might have been milking cows, but it was quite clear that the captain had not joined them in their labors. As we ate of Indian meal porridge, he gave a succinct report on our town.

“How am I to guard you? Were there a stockade, it would be much easier. Were there even just one road to watch, ’twould not be difficult. But there are three roads, with marshes and meadows and streams running betwixt them. And hills and valleys and the wood. The savages could approach from twenty different directions and slaughter you all before I could even put my musket to my shoulder.”

Father had not bothered to look up at the captain’s tirade. But when the captain paused, he spoke. “ ’Tis why there are garrison houses.”

“And where are they?”

“There’s the meetinghouse midway along this road here. There’s Collier’s on the road to Newham. And there’s Simeon Wright’s at the mill. When we are attacked, we’re to retreat to the garrisons. With walls built three feet thick, they’re meant to withstand any onslaught.”

“ ’Tis a good plan once one determines there is an attack. But tell me this: How does one know? What will be the signal?”

Father looked up once more from his trencher and inclined his head toward my brother. “ ’Tis Nathaniel will tell us.”

“Nathaniel? By what sort of magic?”

“Get the drum, son.”

Nathaniel rose from the table and pulled his drum from under the bed. He came to stand beside Father.

“Tell him how it will be done.”

“If there is an attack, then I am to go to the meetinghouse as I do on the Sabbath, and I am to beat a warning.”

The captain stared at our brother for a long moment. “And how are you to get there? Nay! How are you to know that the town has even been attacked?”

Father signaled for Nathaniel to return the drum to its place. And then he turned his attentions to the captain. “Do you not know the Holy Scriptures? ‘Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.’ ”

“I have no doubt that such an attack would be brutal . . . savage. But what I ask you is this: How shall you know?”

“Do you not think that if the savages come, then ’tis the Lord’s judgment fallen upon us? And who can stay the Lord’s judgment? Who can withstand God’s wrath?”

“So you say that if the savages do come, ’tis some . . . divine judgment?”

“Aye.”

“Then why am I here? I can train you to fight. I can post a watch, but this town is indefensible. If they come, then many will die.”

“Aye. ’Tis the way of living.”

“ ’Tis foolishness! There is danger and it is known. If you would allow yourselves to be gathered into a stockade . . .”

“ ’Tis God who holds our times in his hands. ’Tis God who decides when each person should die.”

“So then you do nothing?”

“We watch. And we pray. ‘Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.’ ”

“ ’Tis well and good for you to watch and pray, but ’tis I tasked with the problem of how to make you ready. And how would I defend my actions before God if I fail at my duty?”

“There are things that do not fall within our control. The time of dying is one of them. You seem, like your king, to have a lamentable lack of knowledge of the Holy Scriptures.”

“Perhaps. But I know much of the baseness of men. I was the king’s man once, ’tis true. But more than that, I was a man of wrath bent on destruction. ’Tis one thing to follow an order and ’tis another to find pleasure and delight in it. To kill because I was . . . skilled. ’Tis why I left England. There is a madness brewing there that I want no part of.” He stood from the bench, nodded to Mother. And then he moved to leave the house. But not before one last word. “And perhaps there is a sort of madness here as well.”

“ ’Tis God alone who saves!”

The captain’s reply was a salute.

It only served to enrage Father the more. “He is a heathen.”

The babe fussed on Mother’s lap. “Then perhaps God has brought him here for the saving of his soul.”

Father glared at her.

Perhaps not.

The captain kept himself from our presence during the next few days, coming back only for meals and to retire in the evenings. He did nothing to interrupt our routines and gladly gave himself over to Mother’s hand during the week’s nitpicking, and so we ignored his presence when we could. But during meals it was impossible. He assailed Father with questions.

“There is an area far to the east of the town that looks to have some industry at work upon it.”

“Across the river?”

“Aye.”

“ ’Tis the common.”

The captain ate in silence for a while, examining our faces as he did so. Finally, after Nathaniel looked at him with blank face, he laughed as if he were at the receiving end of some familial joke. Then he turned back to Father. “The common what?”

“The common wood.”

“But it must belong to some man in particular. There were signs of recent work done there.”

“Nay. ’Tis no one man’s, but the town’s. There might have been some work done there this spring past, but it has been made quite clear that no one is to venture so far as that. Not with the threat of savages.”

“But what if someone did wander that far? And cut that wood?”

Father shrugged. “ ’Tis for the cutting, but ’tis also for the paying.” He shook his head. “And one would have to pay dearly for those old oaks. . . .”

“I saw no oaks.”

Father looked at him sharply.

“What would happen if someone did cut them? Without paying?”

“You saw no oaks?” Father pierced him with his gaze for a moment, but then his mien relaxed. “Then you must not have known on what you looked. There are oaks aplenty there, and I will have to pay to cut some of them myself this winter . . . or would have before the savages made themselves known. ’Tis Simeon Wright who supplies me now.”

“Have you no woods of your own? I would think a carpenter—”

“I did have. They were destroyed by fire in the spring.”

“Just your own woods?”

“Mostly. The wind blew the flames into the neighboring plot. But mine was the only one completely destroyed.”

“Before or after the Indians were seen?”

Father thought about it for a moment. “Before, it was . . . I might have petitioned then to cut wood from the common, but ’twas March and then April, the busiest of the year’s months. And by then it was too late. The savages had come.”

“Must you get your wood from Simeon Wright?”

“From where else would I get it? Boston is too far, and we have been banned from our own wood.”

“Yet he has wood enough to spare?”

“ ’Tis his profession, though he charges a—” Father broke off speaking.

“He charges . . . ?” The captain seemed as interested as the rest of us in what Father had meant to say.

“Aye. He does.”

“A miserable piece of work that you are left with none.”

“ ’Tis the way of it. Once the threat of savages is lifted, I will trade what’s left of my woods for someone else’s land. ’Tis certain one of these farmers will be glad to get it.”

“Tell me about that threat.”

Father’s lips pressed into a thin straight line. “If you have ques– Love'sPursuit_ tions about the savages, then ask Simeon Wright. ’Tis he who saw them and he who put us all on watch. With double the men.”

“Is he the tall one? With eyes that could freeze a sea?”

“Aye.”

“Was there no one else with him when he saw them?”

“Nay.”

“So he saw them . . . one time? And that was it? And then a report was made in Boston?”

“Aye. And you were sent.”

“Pardon me for asking, but why should the governor—”

“Why should the governor respond to a cry for help from such as us?”

The captain nodded.

“If he does not, then ’tis only a matter of time before the savages that wander through our wood wander right into his mansion. ’Tis
that
the reason why. If we do not stop them here, then what is to prevent them from going there? We are the first and last defense for Boston. But building a Zion was never meant to be easy. We must press on to fulfill our high calling. God prepared the way for us. Now ’tis our duty to take it. Both the land and its people.”

Following his business with Thomas, I had seen the captain often about the township. He was always peering about, looking around. And once, when I had been on the ridge walking the hay meadows, he had looked right at me.

It had surprised me. Astonished me. Usually no one saw me. And never unless I was with Thomas, when they were required to greet me for reasons of civility.

I relied upon my invisibility. It was my protection. My refuge.

But though he had seen me, the captain simply nodded. Smiled. Walked by without speaking.

I turned to watch him after he had passed by.

He had a remarkable way of being. Of walking. A confidence that appeared unshakable. A self-assurance that bordered on the extraordinary. And he seemed completely unafraid of the savages.

One could feel safe in his presence.

I felt safe in his presence.

In fact, the temptation was strong to follow him and revel in that feeling.

Nay. Some things were better conquered alone. Fear was one of them. Just two years ago I would not have even left the house by myself, never mind climb the ridge entirely and utterly alone. But my convictions did not stop me from watching him until he disappeared from my view.

There was a man to stand up to Simeon Wright.

The essence of him was good. And honest. While Simeon’s was pretense and deceit. The captain would never surrender to one such as Simeon Wright, but if the two clashed . . . when they clashed . . . I did not know who would triumph. Nor what would be the outcome.