The Hollow Tree (14 page)

Phoebe waited for her to ask how Jonah was, meaning to tell her the boy was not really injured but that he needed to eat, but his mother turned away, intent on straightening the bundles in her cart, and she did not offer any food. Phoebe was so angry that Jonah’s mother should care so little for him that she was determined she would not ask for any.

“We’ll manage without her,” she muttered to herself as she marched away. “What a horrid woman! What a jest her name is!”

She had just sent the two boys to find their mothers, pulled both Jed and Noah from Bartlett’s back, and given Jonah his spare clothes, explaining to him that she would get his broken crutch later, when a soft voice beside her said, “Forgive me for troubling you. I am Lucy Heaton, and Joseph, my husband, bade me inform everybody that we’re preparing to move soon.”

Lucy Heaton was a small, neat woman with mouse-grey hair tucked under a grey bonnet. She had a grey knitted shawl pinned tightly over a patched grey gown. Phoebe thought of a big-eyed deer mouse she had surprised once in the kitchen dresser at Aunt Rachael’s. And Mistress
Heaton’s voice, she thought, was just the sort of soft, quiet voice a deer mouse would have. It sounded furry.

“We have only to figure out which way to go,” said the furry voice. There was a note of humour in it that Phoebe understood better after she had seen who Lucy Heaton’s husband was.

Joseph Heaton was one of the most self-important people she had ever met. He was a short, stout man with a big, jowly face, the man who had pushed his way to the front of the crowd to stop Anne’s cries the evening before. His grey hair was hidden, all but its braided queue, by a large black cocked hat. He had leather breeches, and a grubby vest with a dark flowered pattern on it, a shirt with torn ruffles, and a dirty white linen neckerchief. He’s as pleased with himself as Elihu Pickens, thought Phoebe. I hope he is not as mean.

Phoebe, Jonah, Tibby, Jed and Noah (who had made a grudging peace with Tibby), along with everyone else in camp, had gathered near the path by the four carts. Joseph Heaton was standing a little apart, at the front of the assemblage. Clearly he had undertaken the role of leader. “Without so much as a by-your-leave,” Jem grumbled to his mother. He was standing on the other side of Aunt Rachael with his sister Jeannie on his shoulders. Phoebe heard him
plainly and she bit her lip to keep from smiling. Although they had spent only one day together, and in spite of his painful hostility, Jem seemed like someone she’d known for a long time, and his quick temper made her want to laugh.

Joseph Heaton heard him, too, and glared in his direction.

“As we need to move on from here, and as my party got started on this here exodus with a Injun guide — though the varmint up and left us two days since — I got me a good idea of how to git on with it. But if there’s any a you got a better idea” — he glared at Jem again — “I’ll be plum pleased to hear about it.”

People looked at each other questioningly. Phoebe knew that the Morrissays, the Andersons, and the Collivers had all come up from New York only two days before, and not with any knowledge of how to reach Fort St. John’s. The others were all Vermonters, Green Mountain people, but neither had they any knowledge of the more northern parts of this republic. And none of them knew the geography of Canada. They only knew that the river — the one Jem called the Iroquois River but Rachael had told Phoebe was also called the Richelieu — flowed north from Lake Champlain into Canada. And they were almost a hundred miles from its source at the top of Lake Champlain, so Jem had said back where they had met. Her thoughts
were interrupted by hearing Jem say her name. She looked at him, startled.

“Phoebe Olcott’s got notions about finding direction.” He shifted uncomfortably and did not look at her.

Joseph Heaton looked at Phoebe. “Wal” — he looked around slowly at everyone else — “I wouldn’t want no rebel spy leadin’ me to Canaday. I can see it sits well enough with some of you” — he looked from Mistress Anderson to Mistress Yardley — “to keep this suspicious person in our amongst, but I ain’t so easy bamboozled ’n’ I aim to keep my eye strict upon her.” He glowered at Jem.

Jem’s mouth was clamped shut. From where she stood, Phoebe could not see his eyes, but she knew they’d be cold and hard. She could guess how it must have galled him to suggest to Joseph Heaton that she knew how to figure out direction, and to have to listen to that tiresome man do his best to humiliate him. Then she realized something else from what was being said. She understood that these people — including Jem —
were
going to allow her to travel with them to Fort St. John’s. Suddenly they all looked more like friends.

The result of Joseph Heaton’s certainty that he knew which way to go was that, with much bullying and blustering on his part, the children were herded into the carts, the fires quenched,
the oxen hitched, the cows slapped on their rumps to get them going, and the company moved off west towards Chimney Point on Lake Champlain the way she and Jem had come, the start of the military road back to the east. Phoebe was scared to tell Joseph Heaton this, but she was more scared when she thought about heading back towards that road, towards rebel settlements or maybe companies of rebel soldiers.

“Do you think, girl,” Master Heaton sneered, “that I don’t know north from west, or where there’s like to be danger?” All the same, he stopped and conferred with Jem and Thomas Bother, “jest to satisfy the whiners.” Jem, who had paid close attention to Phoebe’s lesson the day before in spite of himself, looked for the clues the birds and the moss gave, then realized he was looking towards where he and Phoebe had come into the clearing the evening before. And the company set out once more — to the north.

As they travelled, the cat stayed close to Jonah. In fact, George, who had never shown any affection to anyone, not even to Phoebe, had taken one look at Jonah Yardley, rubbed up against his good leg, and purred loudly. What’s more, he slept curled up against Jonah every night. Bartlett stayed near Phoebe most nights, but he worried her by disappearing for hours
during the day, longer hours and more frequently than he had on the journey through the mountains from the east. His presence had made the refugees nervous until they saw how he would roll over for the children and let them ride on his back, then they were even grateful to him. It wasn’t long before everyone began to take him as much for granted as they did George.

What an ill-assorted company they were, the twenty-three Loyalist refugees. The Yardley’s had been well-off shopkeepers in Boston when Charity’s husband had died after being shot by a rebel mob in the first days of the war. She and Aaron, her father-in-law, and Jonah had gone to relatives in western Massachusetts, but the relatives had been, like the Robinson relatives, too frightened to let them stay. More generous than the Robinson relatives, they had given the Yardleys a cart, an ox, a cow, and provisions that they hoped would keep them warm and fed until they reached safety in Canada.

The Yardleys had come upon the Heatons and the Bothers north of Bennington, where both those families had been farmers. Thomas Bother was, like Phoebe’s uncle Josiah, a peace-loving man. He came of Quaker people and had been unwilling to go to war, so he and his wife, Margery, and their eighteen-month-old son, Zeke, had had to leave their farm and all but a
few bundles of belongings, and head north. An Abenaki friend of Thomas’s father had agreed to guide the party, but Joseph Heaton had treated him so badly he had quietly taken off the second night out.

And then there were the refugees from New York, the three families Gideon’s message had named. They had all come from just beyond Skenesborough, near Wood Creek, below Lake Champlain. The Andersons had owned a mill, but the other two families were farmers. Peggy Morrissay’s husband, Charles, was fighting in a Loyalist regiment. Abigail Colliver did not know whether her husband, Jethro, was dead or imprisoned. He’d simply disappeared one day. Bertha Anderson had the same conviction about her husband, Septimus, although he, like Charles Morrissay, had left to be a soldier.

Back in Hanover, Phoebe had heard about the feuds between the people from New York, the “Yorkers,” and Vermont’s Green Mountain people, how they had never gotten along well because the governors of New York and New Hampshire had fought for so many years over that mountainous land that lay between them. While there had never been major battles, there had been skirmishes. Settlers had been run off the land they’d been granted by their province by gangs from the other province, houses had been burned down, people had been beaten.
While there had been no actual killing, there were hard feelings. Now, even though the refugee band held common cause, they did not really trust one another. So the families were more than willing to blame one another for whatever went wrong, and after only a week of travelling together, frightened, heartsick, cold, never certain of enough to eat, they were an unhappy lot. By the end of the first week, they had travelled no more than twelve miles, more often through treacherous swamp, dense spruce and hemlock woods, often up hills so steep that the oxen could not pull the heavy carts and goods had to be unloaded and carried. It had snowed and snowed and, for the last two days, there had been such high winds they had been forced to stay camped in the shelter of a pine woods.

On the third morning everyone felt better when the sun rose in a clear sky and the temperature had warmed. Joseph Heaton had just barked out the order to “git a-goin’ now!” when three rebel soldiers burst into the camp. They were dressed in ragged breeches and homespun hunting shirts. One had stockings and shoes, the other two had rags wrapped around their legs, and one had rags for shoes as well. The only way anyone could know they were soldiers — or rebels — was that the youngest, boldest one taunted them, “Come along, you Tory cowards!
George Washington’s fighting sojers is needin’ a helpin’ hand.”

At the first sound of the soldiers’ shouts, Jem Morrissay and Thomas Bother ducked behind the carts. Phoebe saw Jem pull his knife from its sheath, and Thomas had his musket at the ready. By the time the soldiers were upon them, Jem and Thomas were nowhere to be seen.

One soldier grabbed Jed Robinson and five-year-old Sam Colliver and held them at bayonet point while the other two rummaged through the carts. While the refugees watched helplessly, the men took a blanket, a side of salt pork, and a pair of shoes from the Heatons. They took one of Charity Yardley’s cows and a flitch of bacon. They took flour and a quilt from Bertha Anderson — she told Aunt Rachael later than it was the one her grandmother had brought from England. She shook her fist at the rebels, but the young, brash one gave her a shove, then knocked her down with the butt of his musket.

“Here, you old sow,” he jeered, “we ain’t took it all, we only borrowed the loan of one of your cows. And you won’t be needin’ this here quilt — you got lots of fat to keep you warm. Now you jest give our love to old King George when you sees ‘im.”

Laughing uproariously, the soldiers tramped off. The sound of the bawling cow seemed to go on for ever. For a while Sam and Jed clung to
their mothers, too frightened to make a sound. Even Tibby Thayer said nothing. Jem Morrissay and Thomas Bother reappeared. Thomas took one anxious look at his wife. Jem was tight-lipped and looked at no one. Joseph Heaton began, in a loud voice, to rebuke them, but six or seven voices instantly silenced him. They all knew three armed soldiers could have overpowered two young men before any one of them could reach a musket, tied them up, and marched them off to fight in the rebel army, or “hanged them for traitors,” said Margery Bother, tearfully clinging to her husband. Phoebe glanced quickly at Jem and shuddered.

For a day or so there were fewer harsh words, fewer disagreements about sharing provisions. Then, only a few days later, a pair of bedraggled British soldiers limped into their camp. There was no doubting that they were British. Dirty, sweat- and blood-stained though they were, the redcoat uniforms were unmistakable.

“To be sure, we have stumbled on a party of his majesty’s loyal friends,” the one said with an accent that made it immediately clear he was from across the sea.

The relief the refugees felt was short-lived. “What news is there of the war?” Jem asked impatiently.

“Not good news for us.” The soldier grimaced ruefully. “Burgoyne lost his campaign on
the Hudson River, and we’ve been in retreat ever since. Your Americans from the captured Loyalist regiments are up at Fort St. John’s under convention not to fight — that means they can’t go into battle, but they’re bloody well free to lay about the fort. We regulars from over the bloody sea were taken prisoner; only some of us managed to escape. We’re making our way to headquarters in Montreal as best we can. Now, if you will be so kind” — he made a deep bow to Joseph Heaton — “we are in desperate need of sustenance. I feel sure you will not begrudge two of his majesty’s regular troopers a few necessaries.”

“You can’t take our supplies!” cried Bertha Anderson.

“Now see here —” Joseph Heaton began, but when the soldier pointed his gun at him, Master Heaton backed off.

Then, while his mate kept watch, his gun at the ready, and while Master Heaton sputtered indignantly, and the rest watched, tense and silent, the soldier took a ham from the Yardleys’ cart, a sack of corn meal from the Heatons’, and a sack of flour from the Robinsons’. He searched the Andersons’ and Collivers’ possessions, but when he found mostly children’s blankets and shirts, he shrugged. “Not much use for these, or this” — he snorted, holding up Betsy Parker’s penny wooden doll.

He caught sight of Anne half hidden behind Jem. He swaggered over to her and pulled her towards him. He grinned and bowed. “Jack Turner, at your service, ma’am.” He took her by the shoulders and kissed her soundly on her mouth. Someone gasped. Anne’s mother stepped forward, and Jem moved towards the soldier. Anne just stared at him. He laughed and bowed again, swung the sack of corn meal over one shoulder, tucked the ham under the other arm, and marched off whistling “The Dashing White Sergeant.” The other soldier lowered his gun, picked up the sack of flour, and followed his mate into the woods.