The Hollow Tree (2 page)

Whenever Phoebe could slip away across the river — if there was no time to climb the hill to
Orland Village, where her cousins lived — she would leave a note in the hollow tree. The note would let them know she had been there, give them news, and tell them when she might come again. They would do the same.

Anne was two years older than Phoebe and she liked to remind her cousin of it. She could be sharp-tongued and had a temper that came and went like a lightning storm in June. Phoebe wasn’t always comfortable around her, but she couldn’t help but admire Anne’s high spirits, her easy manner, and the way she attracted people to her. Gideon was two years older than his sister, as serious as Anne was frivolous. Every moment he could steal from his daily chores he spent in the woods, collecting plants. He had no interest in farming or studying at the college with Phoebe’s father; all he wanted to do was to catalogue Vermont’s wild plants. Phoebe loved Gideon, his steady nature, his rare smiles, his patience with Billy Wilder, the gentle boy the villagers called simple, who followed him everywhere with slavish devotion.

Phoebe and her cousins had been like sisters and brother almost all their lives. Their mothers had been sisters and their fathers were friends. The Robinsons had chosen to settle on the Vermont side of the river because they had come with friends from Connecticut Province who were settling Orland Village. Phoebe’s father
chose the New Hampshire side because he had accepted a teaching post at the college. But the families, like the two provinces, were separated only by the wide, swift-flowing Connecticut River, so Phoebe and Anne and Gideon met when they could in their favourite meadow. This time there was a crumpled note from Anne. It read only: “Thursday after dinner.” And it was Thursday afternoon after dinner.

Before Phoebe had time to do more than lift her skirt and stuff the note into the pocket she wore on a string around her waist under her gown and sit herself down under the tree, Anne was there beside her.

“So” — she smiled down at her cousin — “you came.”

“Yes I did, and my hand is sore from spinning, I worked so swiftly this morning. I was bound I would have at least one portion of this perfect day to do with as I pleased. So here I am, but not because of your note. I’ve only read it this minute.”

“Phoebe.” Anne shook her head. “You are so dutiful. Do you never, ever just cast off your work without a thought?”

“No. How could I?”

“Well, we are not the same.” Anne tossed her shawl to the ground and dropped down on it. “No,” she said with a note of satisfaction in her voice, “not at all the same.”

Nor were they — not in looks, not in temperament. To begin with, Anne was not only two years older than Phoebe, she was at least four inches taller. She was graceful and slim, with long hands and feet, and light brown hair — which she preferred to call golden — that curled softly around her pale, oval face. Deep violet eyes tilted up at the corners just enough to make her face interesting. She laughed easily with the young men in the village and always had a quick response to their jokes. She was considered by them all to be the best-looking girl in the village — and by a good many of the girls to be the vainest. She dressed every morning with great care and was always neatly turned out. The gown she wore this afternoon was rose-coloured and there was a bit of lace in its collar. Her shawl had a checked pattern in black and white.

Phoebe, on the other hand, was somewhat awkward and she was timid. She was short and round, and she had a round face. Her dark brown hair was so straight and fine that it was forever coming loose from its braid to fly around her face. Her brown eyes were bright and large, her nose small, her mouth wide — much too wide, Anne often told her, but would sometimes add out of kindness, “But your eyes are fine, Phoebe. I expect they are your finest feature.”

“Well, they are not crossed and I can see out
of both of them,” Phoebe had responded tartly the first time Anne had said that, but, truly, she didn’t spend much time thinking about what she looked like or what she wore. There was no lace on her collar and she had not troubled herself to dye the cloth for her everyday gown. It was the much-washed grey-white colour of old linen and wool. She had determined early on that she was no beauty and did not see much point fretting about it.

“Gershom Lake brought me a gift last night,” said Anne. She leaned back against the tree. When Phoebe made no response, she asked, “Don’t you wish to know what he gave me?” There was a note of annoyance in her voice.

“Oh, I do indeed.”

“It is but a little thing,” Anne said carelessly, “a good-luck charm, a heart he fashioned from a broken silver spoon of his mother’s.”

“Oh, my!” Phoebe took the rough little silver heart Anne held out to her. She wondered what it would be like to have a young man bringing her gifts. “It is fine indeed. Do you mean to have Gershom Lake, then?”

“Oh, mercy, no!” Anne took the heart from Phoebe and began to toss it back and forth between her hands. “But I like well the things he brings me.” Her smile was so self-satisfied that Phoebe was shocked into saying, “Anne, how can you be so unkind! You’ll be left on the shelf
with no husband at all. You—” She stopped. She had no wish to be the target of Anne’s sharp tongue. What’s more, she knew, only too well, Anne’s opinion of her own chances of finding a husband.

“I’ll not mind,” Anne said with a sniff. “I do not mean to marry a village boy. I mean to go to Boston or New York, or perhaps even across the sea to London. I certainly do not mean to spend my life working myself to the bone in this backwoods. I mean to be a fine lady and wear silk gowns, and kid slippers with diamond buckles on them. Old Mistress Shipley was a fine lady in Boston before her husband was lost at sea with all his ships.”

“I know. I know all about Mistress Shipley.” Phoebe clapped her hand to her heart. “Mistress Shipley has suffered mightily,” she intoned, “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”

“Honestly, Phoebe” — Anne rose to her feet — “you needn’t make speeches at me out of your father’s old books. Mistress Shipley was a fine lady, and it’s truly dreadful she must live in that horrid shanty. That lazy Robert might at least build a proper house for his mama.” Whatever she was going to say next was interrupted by the sound of someone on the forest path. In a moment a tall, brown-haired boy came hurtling down the hill through the bushes into the meadow.

“There’s going to be a war,” he announced breathlessly. “I knew, of course, there must be. After those idiotic, hot-headed farmers fired on the British soldiers over in Lexington, in Massachusetts, ’twas certain the King would not permit such outrage.”

“You knew, of course, you knew,” scoffed Anne. She drew her shawl tightly around her shoulders. “But, Gideon, it’s not the King who is starting the war — if there is to be a war; it’s those farmers and their Boston friends. I heard Papa say that.”

“It does not matter, infant.” Gideon stood in the centre of the meadow, his feet apart, his hands behind his back, his head thrown back in excitement. “The King will never let them go free with their rebellious nonsense,” he said.

He looks like a preacher, thought Phoebe crossly. She loved Gideon so much she abhored his smallest flaw. And here he stood sounding pompous in his passion.

“Furthermore,” said Gideon, “our king will want to know that not everyone in his fourteen American colonies is disloyal. I shall most assuredly have to enlist in his service.”

“Oh, la, Gideon.” Anne was amused. “You can’t do that. Papa will never allow it. You know he will not.”

“I know. I know how he hates fighting.” Gideon thrust his hands into the pockets of his
breeches. “He will say Jesus himself bade us turn the other cheek. But, Nan, war is different. War is … is … ” He began pacing back and forth across the little meadow. His stiff self-importance had disappeared. He spun around to face the girls. “This war is important!” he cried. “We cannot let those no-account rowdies like Hiram Jesse and Elihu Pickens run our lives. Some of those traitors are talking about going off to Boston to fight the British soldiers. We have to stop them!”

“Papa says—” Phoebe began timidly.

“Your p-papa!” Gideon stuttered in his agitation. “Your papa supports those rebels. Patriots, he calls them. Only last week he was sitting in our parlour, supping our cider, talking of Paul Revere and Samuel Adams, those Boston rabble-rousers, as though they were heroes. Before you know it your father will rush off to fight with those Boston rebels. Patriots! How can they call themselves patriots? They’re disloyal. They’re traitors! Your father is a traitor!”

Phoebe was horrified. Gideon thought it, too: Papa would go off and fight. Suddenly she was sure that Gideon, too, would fight. He would fight for the King. The two people she loved most in the world would go to war and fight on opposite sides. Dear God, they might end by killing each other.

She could not listen to any more. She grabbed
her shawl from the ground where she’d left it and, without a word, crossed the clearing in a dozen steps, pushed the canoe into the water, and jumped in so fast she nearly tipped it over. Quickly she knelt and began paddling furiously towards the New Hampshire shore. She heard but did not answer Anne and Gideon’s surprised shouts. She paddled with all her strength against the strong current and a rising wind, glad of the need for the exertion, and the soreness in her arms.

War. They would go to war. Now she could not keep it out of her mind.

Two evenings ago she had heard her father say to his gathering of students, “This war has been in the making for years.” On that evening, talk of philosophy had quickly become talk of the right and wrong of war against King George III.

“It was the perfect gesture the Boston patriots made when they threw those chests of tea into the Boston harbour. The perfect gesture!” Papa had slammed his fist down on the heavy wooden table. “The King should know that we cannot, we will not, tolerate taxes on tea or any other goods. If we may not send our elected representatives to the Parliament in Great Britain that makes decisions about our lives, if we are not to be treated like proper British subjects, then, say I, we will no longer be British subjects.”
He had pounded so hard on the table that the dishes had bounced on the dresser across the room.

“If it be necessary,” he had finished slowly and unexpectedly softly, “every American who cares for the rights of free men must perforce go to war.”

The students had left the Olcott cabin that night without their usual banter and their cheery goodbyes. They had been silent, and their faces had borne withdrawn, thoughtful looks.

Now, only two days later, here was Gideon calling her father a traitor and saying that war had begun already, with fighting in Lexington and Concord, near Boston, only one hundred miles away.

Panting from the strenuous paddling and the hurried climb up the hill from the river, Phoebe pushed open the door of her home to find her father sitting by the fire, bent over his musket. He was cleaning it. He looked up and stared blankly at her, as if he wasn’t quite sure who she was. She was used to her father’s thoughts being far away. “Papa, what are you doing?” she asked, eyeing the musket uneasily.

“Oh, yes, Phoebe, it’s you. I’m glad you’ve come. Phoebe, we are going to war. We are demanding our rights from that obstinate king over in London.”

Phoebe blew back a wisp of hair that had
floated into her eyes. She leaned against the door jamb. Her heart-beat was thundering in her ears. She was very frightened. “Papa, you know how you hate firing a gun. You … you are a teacher.”

“Daughter, this is not a time to hold back. We in America have tried again and again and yet again to make the government in London understand that we will not be bullied and taxed and ordered about like children. Even here in Hanover we cannot sell our four-hundred-foot pine trees for lumber! They have to go to the government overseas to make masts for British naval ships so that those same ships can keep us in order. It is wrong. So now we must fight!”

It hadn’t been an hour since Phoebe had heard those same ringing tones from her cousin Gideon. She tried to swallow back the fear rising like a slow tide inside her. “Papa,” she whispered, “you can’t go, you’ll be killed.”

“I must take that chance, child. Heart and mind I stand with the Virginian Patrick Henry, when he said, ‘Give me liberty or give me death’!”

The next morning Phoebe watched her father, three other teachers, a dozen students, and other soldiers-to-be from along the Upper Connecticut River gather on The Green to march off through the forest towards Boston to join the growing rebel army. A month later
Jonathan Olcott was killed at the battle of Bunker’s Hill, just outside Boston. The booming of the cannons was so intense that the reverberations were felt in Hanover, one hundred miles away.

Traitors and Spies

T
wo years later, Phoebe was living with her Robinson relatives in Orland Village. Almost fifteen years old in the fall of 1777, she hadn’t grown more than an inch. Round-faced, and still a little plump, she still considered herself to be as plain as pudding — something Anne never tired of telling her.