The Rebellion of Jane Clarke (11 page)

Bethiah had also written—a letter of surprising gloom with an undercurrent of anger in it—blaming Jane for going off as if it had been an elopement, hinting at a father in constant temper and a stepmother in her bed more often than she was out of it. At its close she wrote:
I read horrible things in the papers. Papa says ’tis none of it true but I hear other talk in the village. Our brother never writes. I may count only on you. You must tell me all that happens there. I wish you would come home. Your Affectionate Sister, Bethiah.

So it was to Bethiah that Jane wrote her longest letter. She wrote of the fracas on King Street and her anger over its abuse in the paper. She wrote a fuller version of Nate’s visit than she’d included in the letter to Mehitable, more of the distressing nature of the evening at her grandfather’s. She admitted to the fear she’d tried so hard to disguise at the governor’s send-off.
As the town rages our brother rages
, she wrote,
but I can’t help but think his rage comes from something other than the soldiers—he rants so against our father.

When Jane finally set down her pen she was shocked to discover she’d filled three pages of her letter book with Bethiah’s letter. As she read it over she saw that she could never send such a letter to such a child. But
was
Bethiah a child? The fourteen-year-old sister Jane had left behind would never have troubled with a newspaper, and here she was reading it and asking for more news of town. Could she have indeed grown up so far so fast? Perhaps she had only needed Jane’s absence to find the space to do so. Or perhaps Jane was the only one who had changed, so in need of someone to share this new experience that she would advance Bethiah’s understanding to meet it.

Whichever the case, it little mattered. Bethiah wanted to know. Jane wanted to tell. She copied out and signed the letter.

I
N THE
BOSTON GAZETTE
of August fourteenth Jane read:

The first name belonged to the cousin with whom her father did business; the next two belonged to the sons of the acting governor; the fourth belonged to the publisher of the
Chronicle
. Jane didn’t know the cousin, and certainly her father was safe at Satucket, but the governor’s sons, the newspaper publisher, to name these men was another thing altogether. How bold, thought Jane. How foolish.

THAT SAME DAY AUNT
Gill sent Jane to Wharton & Bowes again for letter paper. At the corner she risked a quick look at the sentry, but the soldier who stood in the box was a stranger to her—someone older and darker. She continued along King Street, noticing that it lay queerly empty; when she got to Wharton & Bowes she found the shop closed. A languor she wasn’t ready to call disappointment dropped over her; she stood in the street before the shop, all purpose washed out of her, until the door opened, and Knox came out with his hat under his arm. “Miss Clarke! How delightful to see you, but I’m sorry to say we’re closed. I’d be happy to assist you later, but just now I’m off to the festivities.”

“Festivities?”

“Why, Miss Clarke! ’Tis the fourteenth of August—the fourth anniversary of the union of our noble Sons of Liberty and their glorious protest of the stamp tax. They assemble at the Liberty Tree to mark the occasion. Pray, do come with me.”

A sudden thrill ran through Jane. To step out into the town, to see something of it besides Royal Exchange Lane and King Street and the few shops that lined them—the idea pushed aside duty and caution together. She would see this place and this festivity; she would follow her own desire for the first time since she’d arrived in Boston. “Very well,” she said.

“Delighted!” Knox cried, and indeed he was, or Jane had never stood under a moonbeam. His high spirits drew her along; she forgot about Aunt Gill and began to look forward to her first real enjoyment in two months. Two months? More like three—her last moment of joy in Satucket certainly must have occurred a good long time before her miserable departure. She scoured her memory to recall the last bright day but could call up only dark ones. Well, then, she decided, it was time to begin the count over, and she would begin it today. Today, she would be joyful.

Someone bumped into Jane, sending a second thrill through her, this time of mild alarm, but at once Knox took her hand, pulled it through his elbow, and snugged her securely to his side. Jane felt the muscles in his arm expanding and contracting under her hand as he steered her clear of manure, carts, and the numerous small boys who inevitably ran everywhere without looking. There was no doubt that this man, of all men, could keep her safe amid the strife and clutter that was Boston. She relaxed against him.

They now walked so close that Jane discovered she could recognize Henry Knox’s smell: books, ink, tobacco, the beginnings of the day’s sweat. Phinnie Paine always smelled of horse and sweat when he arrived, but after he’d been with her father a time he smelled more of rum and tobacco. Under those surface smells there had always been the real Phinnie-smell, of course, a thing no other smell could quite wash away—part soap, part leather, part something else that was like but not exactly like the smell of fresh-cut salt hay. The fact that Jane couldn’t better describe how Phinnie smelled troubled her until a more troubling thought struck her: if Phinnie were indeed in town, might he be tempted to attend the celebration? Another thing she didn’t know.

Jane made an effort to turn her attention back to Knox—he had now decided to educate her on the history of the day. Four years before, in protest over the new stamp tax, an effigy of stamp agent Andrew Oliver had been hanged on the Liberty Tree, carted in a long funeral procession to the steps of the Governor’s Council, and burned in a bonfire kindled by Oliver’s own household furniture. The next day Oliver resigned his commission as stamp agent; no soul being brave enough to take his place, the false funeral had indeed signaled the death of the stamp tax in Boston.

“But the day marks more than the death of the stamp tax,” Knox went on. “The day marks the birth of the Sons of Liberty.”

“And who are these Sons?”

“Men from the high and the low. Men from all the factions in town, brought together and forged into a powerful weapon against tyranny. Men you know. Men you don’t. Men whose names cannot be committed to paper for fear of their safety.”

Jane considered this and decided she didn’t like it—these men might engage in any actions they desired and never be held accountable for them—but there was a new fire in Knox that reminded her uncomfortably of Nate and kept her silent.

They had by now covered five blocks along the High Street, and as they walked Jane noticed that Wharton & Bowes wasn’t the only shop that had closed in order to observe the celebration. When they reached the intersection of Essex and Frog Lane and she spied the crowd around the Liberty Tree, Jane understood where all the shopkeepers and shoppers had gone. The tree was hung with flags; below it stood a large knot of men and any number of barrels and casks of beer and cider; spreading outward in a tightly packed circle stood what surely had to be most of the inhabitants of the town—women, children, servants, tradesmen, gentlemen, all mixed in together. Jane thought she spied the tall figure of Otis but couldn’t be sure; she looked for her brother and might have seen his pale hair under one of the hundreds of tricorns standing next to another diminutive figure that might well have been John Adams; she was three times convinced of Phinnie Paine and three times disabused of the conviction.

Henry Knox seemed content to hang about at the perimeter of the crowd, but whether because he wasn’t notable enough to take his place at the core, or because Jane had made him late for his party, or because he wished to protect Jane from the crush, Jane couldn’t determine. Standing at the outskirts as they were, they missed something of the speeches, and Jane, at least, couldn’t identify any of the speakers, but the toasts rang out loud enough to be heard at Satucket.

“To the king!”

“To the queen and the royal family!”

“To America and her brave Sons of Liberty!”

“To the virtuous, loyal, and spirited House of Representatives!”

“To American manufactures!”

“May the fourteenth of August be the annual jubilee of Americans till time shall be no more!”

The sun bore down; the toasts ran on; Knox joined in with every huzzah from the crowd. Jane tried to imagine Phinnie Paine in such a free expression of his feelings but could no more picture it than she could picture him sitting in the Liberty Tree among the flags. After a time the speechifiers and the casks ran dry together, and the crowd began to drift away. Knox pointed to the group of men mounting their horses or climbing into carriages. “There they go. The brave Sons.”

Jane had grown hot on the walk and even hotter standing in the sun; she’d also recognized several of the boys who had been pestering the sentry on King Street. She said, “You call it brave for a man to stand under a tree and make a speech that excites small boys to make his trouble for him?”

Knox looked down at her in surprise. “I call it brave when any one of them could be shipped off to England and tried for treason.”

Jane snorted. “As if our king would trouble with this lot!”

“The treason list has already been drawn. I believe you’ll find a number of your acquaintances and even one distant relation on it. John Adams, Sam Adams, James Otis, Mssrs. Edes and Gill of the
Boston Gazette
—”

Jane stared at him. “They would ship these men to England and try them for treason?”

“In full knowledge that no jury in America should convict them. Perhaps in full knowledge that no
English
jury should convict them, for they will be tried without a jury in England. Do you know the punishment for treason, Miss Clarke? To be hanged by the neck and disemboweled while yet alive. I don’t know who you would put on your list of brave men, but anyone who faces that and dares speak out at a meeting such as this would appear at the head of mine.” He was looking down on Jane, but he did not look the same—his little speech had changed him. Or perhaps it had changed Jane. Until that moment she had seen his size and strength and his good-natured ease—now she saw his conviction. Now, perhaps, she saw something better of her brother Nate’s conviction. Perhaps these were more than boy-men at play.

Knox still held Jane’s gaze. She could not pull away. Here lay all her objection to Phinnie, she thought—his lack of conviction—or so it must be, for it was not the physical strength of Knox that held her but the thing that was held inside
him,
hard and bright at the back of his eyes.

In the end it was Knox who drew away. “We’d best get back.” He took her elbow, wheeling her back the way they’d come. Slowly, Jane came out of herself and began to look about at the crowd, now surging with them in the opposite direction. The mass parted and she thought she saw her brother ahead; the gap closed and she decided no; it parted again and she was sure.

“Nate!” she called.

The man kept on. Like Knox, he was gripping a young woman by the elbow, attempting to shepherd her through the crowd. Jane shook free of Knox and took a pair of skips ahead of him. “Nate!”

The man turned around. Yes, Nate. He bent to speak to the woman. He turned again. He stood and waited for them to catch him up. “Jane.”

“This is Mr. Knox,” Jane said. “My brother, Mr. Clarke.”

Nate said, “Hello, Mr. Knox.”

Knox said, “Clarke! Delightful to see you again. Fine show, was it not?”

Nate made no answer. He was busy looking at the woman beside him, as was Jane. She was white-skinned and dark-eyed, her hair the blue-black color of a crow’s wing; she wore the edgy thinness that came from either illness or nerves. She tipped her head down and left it there, leaving Jane little to examine further but the scarlike part of her hair. There Nate seemed to remember Jane. “Please allow me to introduce Miss Linnet,” he said. “My sister, Miss Clarke. And Mr. Knox.”

Miss Linnet raised her head. She gave a quarter smile and tugged almost indiscernibly on Nate’s arm. If Nate gave any resistance it was indiscernible to Jane; if he had recovered from his outburst over the soldier that too was indiscernible. Nate and Miss Linnet moved on.

THAT EVENING, AS AUNT
Gill was going through her boiled rice a grain at a time, Jane heard a cry out on King Street that might have shaken the lion and unicorn on top of the Town House to the ground. Prince was again nowhere to be seen; Martha was shifting a heavy kettle; it was left to Jane to go to the parlor window to survey the scene. When she saw what appeared to be a parade going by on King Street she ignored Aunt Gill’s yelping from behind and stepped out the door. She recognized them at once: the Sons of Liberty, passing in a great procession of carriages, huzzahed through the street by a cheering crowd, the usual swarm of boy-men running alongside. The last carriage in the line carried Otis, and the frenzy rose there to its highest pitch before it died.

THAT NIGHT JANE BEGAN
a new letter to Bethiah, including the events of earlier in the day, spending a fair amount of paper and ink on Miss Linnet, finishing with the parade. She concluded:
Having seen something more of town today you might expect me to have more in the way of description, but one bit of it is like the other—shops, houses, taverns, crowds, noise. Always noise. Why is it we only listen to those who shout the loudest? Oh, how I miss the stillness, the quiet of Satucket!