Martha Peake (33 page)

Ah, but they did not go unobserved. In this small world, eyes were always watching, tongues whispering, small minds busy with scandal and malice. Martha’s friendship with Adam Rind had aroused strong resentment in certain of the townspeople, and she was made aware of it the day she celebrated her first Thanksgiving in America.

The morning dawned damp and cloudy, a strong breeze off the sea that spat rain against the windows and promised worse by nightfall. Adam had brought in turkeys from the forest, which were plucked and cleaned by the women, and now as they roasted in the fire they filled the house with smells which Martha had never smelled before. By noon the house was crowded, the men gathered in Silas’ parlour drinking Tobago rum and smoking Virginia tobacco as they talked about one thing only, that being the present public emergency. Martha made it her task to replenish the men’s glasses as they talked, and in this way she overheard much of what they were saying. She heard Nat Pierce loud with indignation that when twenty thousand patriots marched on Boston, Samuel Adams turned them back. Silas was in regular correspondence with Mr. Adams, and supported him now, saying that the moment to strike had not yet arrived. He argued that there were many in the colonies who had not come as far along the road to arms as had the people of Massachusetts. He feared they would fight on the side of the British. He feared a civil war, which the patriots would surely lose.

Joshua Rind was present. As his brother talked of those men in other colonies who would remain loyal to the crown, he interrupted, saying: “Civil war? I think not, Silas. I think a revolutionary war.”

“Will we have a revolution then, Joshua?”

“God help us, I believe we will,” said the doctor, “and if we lose it we shall all be off to London to wear the king’s rope.” He gingerly fingered his throat.

Also present was the minister, the small, thin, excitable John Crow, who worked alongside the other men six days of the week, and drilled with the militia up on Colchester Fields. This Thanksgiving
Day he had preached a blistering sermon, taking as his text the first verse of Lamentations, and voicing the memorable sentiment that Resistance to Tyranny was Obedience to God. Now he spoke with no less ardour about the stupidity of the British government.

“Free trade is all we ever asked!” he cried in tones he usually employed to depict the rigours of Hell. “They grew rich, they would have grown richer, selling their goods in America, but no, they must tax us, and they will lose the profits of trade, and they will not get their taxes either. Why are they blind?”

“The king is mad,” said Nat Pierce, and spat a gob into the fire, where it hissed like a snake.

“They have deformed the constitution,” said Joshua Rind. “Theirs is an old rotten state, and our own health demands we separate ourselves from them before we become sick with their distemper.”

Still fingering his throat he frowned most darkly.

“And they think us raw, cowardly men!” he then cried. “They think we will easily be beat in the field!”

“But that is all to the good,” murmured Silas, pushing himself off the mantel and pacing the floor, the other men all watching him now as Martha filled their glasses from her jug.

“We shudder at the prospect of blood, and rightly so. But we are in a state of nature now, and we must take up arms against them. Not yet, however. We must await the moment. Then you will have your revolution, Joshua.”

Martha had filled their glasses, her jug was empty, but still she dawdled by the door, unwilling to be out of the room if something truly dramatic was said. But she heard no more then, for Sara came looking for her, saying she was needed in the kitchen. Reluctantly Martha returned to the women, who were occupied with tasks that were at once of lesser and greater importance than those being discussed by the men; that is, they were making the dinner. The back door was propped wide open but even so the room was hot and steamy and full of the smells of roasting turkey, and her aunt Maddy was basting the birds as the other goodwives of New Morrock worked
around her, and the children were put to work too, laying the table and pulling corks from bottles and the like.

Here the mood was different. As the women worked they talked, and they talked of their husbands and brothers and sons, and in their voices Martha heard the fears that none of the men dared speak aloud. They feared that a great army would come, an army of men deeper blooded in war and better armed than their own men, an army that had seen battle in much of the world and had always emerged victorious. They did not doubt their men’s courage, but they knew they were not soldiers, they were fishermen and farmers, rather, and although many of the older men had served in the war against the French they had been commanded by English officers. Now those same officers would be ranged against them. The women in Maddy Rind’s kitchen did not deceive themselves. They saw no good reason to believe that the patriot cause would be victorious when the smoke cleared and the last of the bodies was hauled away in a cart.

Martha heard all this with growing agitation, for she believed the colonists must take up arms, no other course was open to them, this she had learned from her father; and if in some part of her mind a voice told her that it was not her place to speak her thoughts, she paid it no attention.

“But they will not be beat,” she burst out at last, “why do you say such things?”

There was a sudden silence, a sudden stillness in that steamy kitchen.

“Martha,” said her aunt Maddy, in her kindly, worried way; but she was interrupted by a sour widow called Purity Clapsaddle.

“Martha Peake,” said Goodwife Clapsaddle in a sneering tone which dripped with spite and contempt. “And what does our English cousin think she knows?”

Now Martha had never concerned herself much with what others thought of her, this too she had learned from her father. Small wonder
then that she had taken little notice of the reaction to her arrival of those beyond the Rind family circle, in particular women like Purity Clapsaddle and her daughter Ann, a girl of Martha’s age with a spirit as pinched and pickled in brine as her mother’s, and who was also in Maddy Rind’s kitchen that Thanksgiving Day.

“What do I know?” retorted Martha. “I know that your men will risk their necks on an English gallows so you can live as free people here.”

The sentiment was not new. It was spoken a hundred times a day in the kitchens and taverns of New Morrock. But these women did not expect to be told such a thing, in such a way, by a newcomer, a stranger—an English stranger! Nor was this Martha’s worst offence in their eyes. She and Adam had been seen up in the Old Burying Ground together, and it was much talked of that he had taken her with him to his father’s sawmill the night the
Lady Ann
was landed under Scup Head. Adam Rind was the eldest son of the richest man in town. The question of whom he would marry had long engaged the busy tongues of the New Morrock goodwives. Among those thought to be a suitable match was Purity Clapsaddle’s daughter Ann; and although Adam had shown little interest in Ann Clapsaddle, older wiser heads were quietly confident that good sense would prevail. Until, that is, this red-haired English hussy threw all their calculations into disarray.

“And you know better, do you?” said Purity Clapsaddle, moving toward Martha with flames of malice leaping from her eyes. “You who have come here with the stink of London still upon you.”

“English whore,” said Ann Clapsaddle, as her mother stood bristling and jutting at Martha, who had straightened up from the fire and stood now with her chin up glaring at this little snake of a woman spitting poison at her. Her colour was up, and her face was as red as her hair. The other women stared at Martha with fierce stony eyes, all but Sara, who at once ran to her cousin’s side, and Maddy, who was astonished at what was going on in her own kitchen.

“Ann, you be silent!” cried Maddy.

“She shall not be silent,” hissed Purity Clapsaddle, “and neither shall I. You scarlet creature—”

What would have happened next, had not the men at that moment been heard shuffling out of Silas’ parlour, their voices loud with joy at the smells coming from the kitchen, I do not know. But in an instant the women were back at their work and the men were rumbling in, rubbing their hands, none of them with any idea that but a moment before Martha had almost been set upon by their own wives and daughters.

In stamped the men, then, their spirits well-lifted with rum and the heady talk of revolt. Now they bantered with their womenfolk and were chided like children, and laughed it off, buoyed with the feeling that great doings were afoot. Martha’s temper subsided, in her mind she consigned the Clapsaddle women to a place of darkness, and she paid attention once more to the men. Later it occurred to her that if she could arouse such anger merely with her words, what would happen when her belly started to show?

The weeks went by, the weather grew colder, and it became ever more difficult for Martha to hide her condition. The day after Thanksgiving Sara had come to her and told her that she must never doubt the love and friendship that she, Sara, felt for her. Martha was much affected by this, as she had been by Sara’s coming to her side during the argument in the kitchen. She saw something of her own spirit in this girl, something of the adamantine element, and by God she wanted a friend. The two embraced, they clung together, Sara was surprised by Martha’s strength of feeling but she returned it, for she had recognized a quality in her cousin, she could not describe it precisely, a sort of wholeness, a directness, an unshakeable integrity of purpose; Sara had it too, I believe, but hers was an inner flame, whereas Martha’s whole being was imbued with it, she gave it off to the world as the sun gives heat, and she could no more hide her nature
than change it. Sara loved her for it, and she also feared for her. One day when the two were washing linen in the great tub behind the house, Martha suddenly felt weak and had to sit down. Sara wanted to fetch her uncle Joshua, but Martha could not allow her to. Sara began to insist, and Martha shyly told her she was with child.

Sara was at once full of curiosity, and asked if she might listen to the child’s heartbeat. There was nothing to hear, cried Martha, laughing now, but her cousin would not be denied, and so they went into the barn and Martha pulled up her skirt, and Sara laid her head on her belly. After some moments, and with shining eyes, she told Martha she had heard her baby’s heart beating. Martha said this was surely not possible, but Sara, laughing, insisted it was true, and as Martha pulled her skirt down, Sara stopped her hand and asked to hear it again. Martha allowed her, then pushed her off and sat up, and as Sara lay there dreamily gazing at her cousin she said her breasts were bigger than they had been when she arrived from England. Martha told her this was because of the child, and they hugged one another, laughing like a pair of happy lovers.

Some days later the two girls were wandering barefoot along the seashore at low tide on a cold and overcast day. They were carrying a basket between them into which they tossed anything they could find in the way of crabs and mussels. The sand was cold and gritty beneath their feet, and a breeze was coming off the sea in short damp chilly gusts. Martha must have told Sara something of her fear at the prospect of her belly betraying her, and Sara was silent for a while. Then she spoke.

“I know who the father is,” she said.

Martha stopped in her tracks.

“Who?” she whispered.

The girl smiled shyly at her.

“Who?” shouted Martha, and Sara shrank away from her.

“Sara, who?” said Martha, gently now.

“Adam,” said Sara. “It is Adam. You must tell him, and he will marry you.” Poor dear Sara, it all seemed so simple to her.

Martha said nothing more, and hid her confusion by stooping to seize up from a rock pool a little scuttling crab, and dropped it in her basket with the rest.

Martha found that the swelling of her belly went unnoticed if she wore her clothes loose and tied her apron slack, and invented frequent reasons to haul on her boots and greatcoat and work in the yard. She spent many a frosty morning that winter out behind the house, up to her elbows in a basin of hot water and lye, her face flushed red with cold and steam, scrubbing sheets and shirts so as to escape the kitchen, and the goodwives of New Morrock, who went in and out of each other’s houses with bewildering frequency, having some kind of sixth sense as to when extra pairs of hands were wanted.