The Rebellion of Jane Clarke (20 page)

He closed his eyes. Opened them on Jane. “And then you came.” The mad, white tightness in his features eased. “Do you remember when Father whipped me and you stole the whip and threw it down the dung-hole?”

“And he blamed you and whipped you again.”

Nate grinned. “We’ll fix the blame right this time.”

T
HE NEWS CAME
first from John Adams, second from Jane’s grandparents, and third, as it seemed, through every crack in the door and wall. On the afternoon of March the eighth there was to be a massive funeral procession for the four men who had died victims of the “Bloody Massacre.” Having read the depositions through, having seen the Revere print, having heard from Prince the minute description of the funeral for the boy killed by Richardson, Jane felt she knew well enough what this funeral procession might be like and would have been happy enough to stay at home. But to Jane’s alarm, Nate had risen from his bed, his arm still strapped across his chest, insisting on going out to watch the show; Jane could not let him go out alone. Aunt Gill was as alarmed as Jane and only subsided in her protests when Nate startled her into silence by kissing her cheek; Jane might have kissed her aunt too had she prevailed in detaining Nate, but she had not done so.

As Jane assisted Nate in hanging his coat over his bandaged shoulder, she thought for a minute his fever had returned, so bright had his eyes become. At the corner of Royal Exchange and King they pulled up; indeed, they were forced to by the crowd; the taverns and shops had once again emptied, and the mass of inhabitants pressed thick along each side of the street to await the procession. As they waited, Jane lifted her voice over the constant tolling of the bells to ask her brother, “Have you read the pamphlet with the depositions in?”

Nate pulled his eyes off the street and onto Jane. “
You’ve
read it?”

“Why should I not read it? Or do you forget I was there too?”

He stared at her. “Indeed, I do forget you! Now this is a happy thing! We must get your deposition taken down. I see nowhere in any statement that White drew down on me—’twas all my word alone till now. ’Tis too late for the pamphlet, but no matter. It was kept out of the papers, anyhow, so as not to influence the trial.”

Jane looked at her brother, unable to decide if he spoke in jest, or if he was in fact so naive as to believe that as long as the paper hadn’t printed it, the pamphlet might float around town without harm to the soldiers’ cause. Or was Jane the naive one to think for a minute that her brother cared a whit about the soldiers’ cause? Again she wondered why
she
should care about their cause. They’d held and beaten Otis into madness; they’d tussled her about outside the ropewalk; the soldier she’d defended for months had clubbed a small boy to the ground and tried to murder her brother where he stood in King Street. Or had he? Jane stood taking birdlike glances at her brother’s profile, trying to find in him the answer to her question, but all she saw was the angry whipped boy, the angry boy-man standing in King Street dressing down Hugh White, the injured man lying in bed lifting his gaze to Miss Linnet. Which of those brothers was the one she looked at now?

“I must get to Adams’s office tomorrow and see how he gets on,” Nate continued. “And I must get my own deposition taken down; blast this arm! ’Tis a thing I should like to write out myself.” He shrugged his shoulder, which no doubt set loose new pain—some of the brightness and color drained out of him, but not the mosquitolike obsession with the subject at hand. “You must go to the clerk’s, Jane, and get your deposition taken down too. But no, as I think on it, you must come to Mr. Adams’s office with me tomorrow and let him take a draft before you go to the clerk’s.”

“But Mr. Adams works
against
your side.”

Nate smiled. “Mr. Adams never works against our side.”

Jane looked across the road and spied her grandfather and grandmother in the crowd; her grandmother saw her and lifted her hand, in much the same pledgelike manner in which she’d said good-bye to her at Satucket. A pledge. An oath. Jane turned toward her brother. “Nate, I didn’t see Hugh White shoot at you. I didn’t even know you were in the crowd.”

He looked down at her. “And you didn’t see my father whip me.”

Indeed, she had not. She remembered the whip, Nate’s red face, the raging tears, but she could not remember what had been his crime, or why she hadn’t simply told her father she’d tossed the whip in the dung-hole and saved her brother the second beating. That had been
her
crime.

The funeral procession had at last made its turn onto King Street—the four coffins of Attucks, Maverick, Caldwell, and Gray at the fore, behind them a stream of mourners that widened with the road, like a snake swallowing a rat whole. Jane spied many of the Sons of Liberty in the crowd directly behind the coffins, including Henry Knox, but after them came wave after wave of the town’s inhabitants, high and low, rough dressed and well dressed; the dead boy’s parade could have been nothing compared to it.

As the coffins passed by, an appropriate deathly hush befell the crowd. After a time Nate whispered into it. “Do you see, Jane? Have you ever seen such a crowd collected anywhere? If anyone doubts the Sons control the town now, they’re as thick as the governor.”

APPARENTLY THE CUSTOMS COMMISSIONERS
were not as thick as the governor; two days later the
Gazette
reported that they had sailed for England. Nor could Captain Preston be called a fool, as he had submitted his own advertisement to the paper:

But printed farther along:

AGAINST JANE’S AND AUNT
Gill’s arguing, Nate returned to his rooms at Cold Lane. His arm was no longer pinned to his chest, but he couldn’t yet write a clear hand, and would not be taking his place as Adams’s clerk anytime soon. The thought of being kept out of Adams’s most famous case had him spewing the kind of language at an invisible Hugh White that Jane was not happy for Aunt Gill to hear, although she looked to be of like enough mind.

ON MARCH FOURTEENTH THE
last massacre victim, an Irishman named Patrick Carr, succumbed to his wounds and died. Prince carried the news home, along with a rumor that on his deathbed Carr exonerated the soldiers, declaring they had borne more than he’d seen any soldier bear in England and Ireland combined. That same day the newspaper reported that Preston and the other soldiers had been indicted before the grand jury; someone named Robert Goddard had even been brought to the jail and positively identified Preston as the man who had ordered the soldiers to fire.

Jane had slept poorly since the fifth, but that night she believed she might have counted every minute from ten o’clock till dawn. She’d been so sure that Preston had not issued the call to fire; she’d had her eye on him, standing in front of the soldiers right up until the second call came, his mouth always in that hard silent line; could the single word have slipped from his mouth in one of the split seconds when Jane blinked her eyes? But why should she believe this Robert Goddard any more than she believed the other reports in the paper? Why should she believe a Goddard over her own eyes? She had seen what the witnesses had done with the other facts of the night, how they had shrunk and castrated the crowd—even Henry Knox, open, honest Henry Knox, had done so.
Was
she wrong? She wished to talk to Henry, but for once, he didn’t come.

PHINNIE PAINE CAME.
He’d
come again to see how Nate fared, but Jane could only direct him to Cold Lane. Phinnie had turned to go when Aunt Gill chirped from the front room for Jane to bid him sit and take a cup of labrador with her; Phinnie was, of course Phinnie would be, happy to oblige.

Another listener might have been amused at Aunt Gill’s effort to determine Phinnie Paine’s political frame of mind.

“What think you of the recent events in King Street?” she asked.

“I think them unfortunate.”

“Do you know this Captain Preston they speak of?”

“We’ve met from time to time.”

“What say you of the soldiers being ordered from town?”

“I see both dark and light in it, Miss Gill.”

“But what of Mr. Adams’s defense of the soldiers? What kind of show do you think he might put on?”

“I’m quite sure Mr. Adams will defend his clients, guilty or innocent, with all the skill he owns.”

Did Phinnie speak of Jane’s father now? Jane looked at him, stared at him, willed him to look at her. He sipped his labrador and smiled at Aunt Gill.

SOONER THAN SHE COULD
have expected, Jane received a letter from her stepmother. Jane had written nothing since the night of the fifth, unwilling to alarm her parents over Nate, equally unwilling to falsify by omission. That Mehitable had received news of the troubles was evident in the first paragraph, but no one seemed to have included Nate in the list of wounded. Mehitable urged Jane to keep herself safe; she urged her to avoid all those types who might expose her to the tempest.
The loss of your person to this house has been a great enough grief to me; the loss of you to this life could not be borne. If I could describe to you how alone I feel since you’ve been gone you would weep for me.
She closed with,
I’ve not said nor will I say anything to you of Mr. Paine. I will say only that a letter to your father at this time might work toward seeing you safe home, considering such additional proof as he now possesses of the situation in town. In the meanwhile you must go to my mother if you find yourself in any difficulty—it much relieves my mind to know she’s near. God bless you and watch over you—Your Most Affectionate Mother.

Jane spent a fair time reading over this letter in some amazement. It was as if she’d never heard her stepmother’s voice before. And yes, Jane could weep for her, but not over the loss of Jane.
How alone I feel,
she’d written, as her husband sat by her side.

HENRY KNOX CAME AT
last, full of apology for events keeping him too occupied for too long. Aunt Gill interrogated him much as she had interrogated Phinnie: she wanted to know what was being said in town about Mr. Adams’s defense of the soldiers; she wanted to know how it was on the streets; she wanted to know how long the soldiers were to remain in jail. Unlike Phinnie Paine, Henry was more easily drawn.

“Indeed, Mr. Adams is much vilified through the streets of town, and this on top of the death of his little daughter has him walking about a most glum creature.”

“Not Susanna!” Jane cried. “ ’Tis not his little Susanna who’s died?”

Henry gave a nod.

But Aunt Gill had never seen Adams cradling Mehitable’s babe in his arms, as if such care of a stranger’s child might keep his own safe from harm; the old woman continued on without pause. “What of the trials?” she asked. “When do they commence?”

“Preston is to be tried first and separately from the soldiers. The mood is high; the time is now; ’tis imperative the trials begin soon. Instead we have judges disappearing, falling ill, court postponed. These are the tricks worked by the Crown, Miss Gill.”

Such news was too much for Aunt Gill; she called for Martha and retired.

As soon as she was out of sight, Henry said, “Should you like me to read something more from Pope?”

“No,” Jane said. She was no longer as fond of Pope as she had once been. She said, “I’ve something to read to you.” She picked up the pamphlet that Phinnie Paine had brought around, turned to Henry’s testimony, and began. “ ‘While I was talking with Captain Preston, the soldiers of his detachment had attacked the people with their bayonets. There was not the least provocation given to Captain Preston or his party, the backs of the people being toward them when they were attacked.’ ”

Jane stopped reading. Henry’s eyebrow rose. “You have a concern?”

“A concern! Yes, indeed, a concern. It was nothing like. You saw the crowd attacking the sentry before Preston came; you saw them press in on the grenadiers as they tried to march along; you saw the sticks, the great chunks of ice—”

Henry crossed to Jane and removed the pamphlet from her hand, tossed it on the table, and claimed the hand. “Jane, how long since I’ve been with you! Must we waste time on this talk?”

“Waste time! My brother wants my testimony against Hugh White. He says the sentry took careful aim at him in an effort to shoot him down. To kill him. Over some words exchanged on the street over half a year ago. Hugh White, the fellow you walk past each week when you come to call, the fellow who twice tried to keep me from harm.”

“The fellow who split open a small boy’s head with the butt of his musket.”

Jane fell silent.

“I can’t tell you where Hugh White aimed his musket,” Henry went on, “but I can certainly tell you he discharged his musket into the crowd. I can further tell you the soldiers should not have been sent here, but the minute that order was given, the events on King Street were ordained, and now the soldiers have done what they’ve done and must be tried, as would any citizen of this town. I, for one, shall give my testimony, keeping in mind the best outcome for my town and for my country, and I should hope you would do the same.”