Spider in a Tree Page 16

  She gave no sign of nerves, but inclined her head. “You are kind, sir, to agree to so unite us in the sight of God.”

  Spreading his hands over the papers on his desk, he spoke to her then of her precious soul and the light and gifts of God’s love. She had, he knew, a sweet and lively sense of spiritual things. This, he warned her, could grow cold, flat, and dark, which would pierce her with many sorrows unless she could increase and abound in love toward all others in the church. If she could do that, her path would shine more and more until it was bright as perfect day.

  Leah watched the chocolate in the cup grow cold and form a skin as he spoke of dark and light, but she wanted some of what he gave her, wanted words for being pierced with sorrows and letting wounds become openings that filled with sun, with joy, with Christ. She was never indifferent to God, and even though she was angry at Mr. Edwards and his defense of his right to own others—to own her—she did nothing to stoke a fury that she could ill afford. She wanted him to be an instrument of God at the next noon as he wed her and Saul, so she worked to hear grace in him there in the study.

  He was leaning back in his chair and finally picked up his chocolate, long past his initial uneasiness. He was feeling warm with the honor of having saved Leah’s soul for God, and confident that she was well-settled in his household as he asked, “Leah, is there anything else that you would want before you marry Saul?”

  He expected an expression of contentment, perhaps even gratitude, or maybe a request for a bit of bright cloth for her head or an extra gallon of rum for the wedding. She had been lulled by his voice, but now she snapped her shoulders back as if this were another Bible history question in his usual catechism, and, surprising herself, told him the truth. “Sir, I only wish I could see my mother.”

  He sat very still, taken aback, then set down his cup. “Would you tell her of God’s word?”

  She was by no means sure that this was an opening, but believed that she would never get the possibility of another. They hardly spoke of such matters every day. “Mostly, I would want to listen to her voice and look at her face. I would like to tell her about all I now know and understand, tell her about my religion, but I fear that the fact that her children were ripped from her by men of a Christian nation might leave her unready to seek salvation.” Her voice was full of palpable, complicated grief. She let him hear it.

  Mr. Edwards felt a heat in his skin very much like a blush. It seemed to start in his palms, which were still touching his notes. He felt not anger at her forwardness, no sense of danger or any chance that Leah might be susceptible to the depravity that had led to mass hangings of slaves in New York City after, according to the papers, they had recently conspired to burn everything down. He felt, not doubt in his convictions about slavery, but a slight shift in his arguments, with this idea that the seizing of slaves in Africa might make that continent slower to come to true religion as it must in order for the last seal to break and the glorious thousand year reign of Christ on earth to begin.

  “We must be your family, Leah,” he said, already making notes in his head. When she rose to take the dishes, he insisted that she eat the gingerbread.

  The ceremony was simple. It was held under the arch in the parlor with just the family. The only exception was Bathsheba, let off from her work by the Pomeroys, whom Sarah had also invited for cake and sack-possett since their servant was coming, but they had other guests, and had sent Bathsheba the day before with a pint of good honey from their hives, to sweeten the need to decline.

  After she delivered the message to Sarah, Bathsheba had found Leah alone in the kitchen and given her some basswood to make a poultice for her knee, where the meeting house injury had lately swelled. Sarah had come upon the two of them talking just as Leah, holding her belly, had said that she was worried that she was about to get her moons. Sarah had winced in sympathy and offered to send the girls to gather balm flowers to hold it off. Bathsheba and Sarah had agreed that Leah should touch her feet and then sniff her fingers as a way to relieve any cramps, although Sarah had hastened to advise that this should happen only at night, never during the preparation of meals.

  Leah wore a gown of red and green that she had dyed herself, which was usually saved for Sundays. Bathsheba had braided her hair the day before and bound it up in a cloth that matched both the gown and Saul’s red waistcoat. The girls had brought the balm flowers and a bunch of marigolds tied together with an embroidered ribbon long enough so that when they looped it around her neck, the flowers hung over her heart in a way that made Jerusha sigh happily.

  Bathsheba stood alone behind the gathered family as Saul stepped forward from his place beside the parlor door to stand with Leah before Mr. Edwards, who faced them through the arch. He had put on his good wig, and a damp mist of sweat rose on his forehead beneath it.

  He spoke to them about their duties and obligations as husband and wife with, Leah thought, at least half a mind toward his other listeners. Timothy, in his mother’s lap, was too young to be much improved by a sermon, but Mr. Edwards warmed to his subject as he gazed at his daughters; their earnest, pious, beautiful faces; the bit of ash on Lucy’s chin. Jerusha most reminded him of Sarah when he had first admired her, and he resolved to take the girls out to climb Mount Tom so that they could roam a bit, praying or singing alone under the sky, as their mother had once done.

  He brought his mind back to his servants, standing so close before him. Looking straight into Saul’s eyes, he said, “Remember that pride is the worst viper that is in the heart, the greatest disturber of the soul’s peace and sweet communion with Christ; it was the first sin that ever was, and lies lowest in the foundation of Satan’s whole building, and is the most difficultly rooted out, and is the most hidden, secret, and deceitful of all lusts, and often creeps in, insensibly, into the midst of religion and sometimes under the disguise of humility.”

  Saul gazed steadily back, only moving his toes a bit to feel the crackle of the pages from one of Mr. Edwards’s published lectures that Leah had lifted from a pile of duplicates in the scrap paper on the desk and tucked into Saul’s shoes as well as her own that morning. She said that ghosts would have to read every word before they could haunt, so would be too busy and distracted to trouble the wedding day.

  The gingerbread and cream were delicious. Sarah gave the couple the rest of the pan to share with their other friends at night after work when they might gather in the woods. She warned them not to have a fire, since people roundabout were highly suspicious of parties of Negroes and fire after a night frolic in Boston had burned a warehouse down, and the stories of arson planned in New York City and Charlestown were well known.

  It was a beautiful summer night, although buggy near the river. Leah used the sharp edge of the broken shell she carried in her pocket to cut the marigolds loose from their ribbon. When she tossed them at Sam, he laughed at her. People gathered, and Joab brought his drum. They danced to his rhythms with shaking gourds and a fiddle made out of pine shingles and lumber scraps, drinking rum with their cake in the dark. Looking at the sky, Leah remembered that a new moon purged a young woman, and wondered if that was still what she was, but the basswood and balm flowers had worked, and she moved happily, a bride. Afterwards, Saul dragged his chaff bed down from the loft, but left the bundling board up the ladder. They drew their bodies together and let the lantern burn all night.

  Chapter 11: September 1741, New Haven

  A few Yale trustees in town for commencement were at a sermon in the church on the New Haven green the night before, sitting stiffly in front pews as James Davenport screamed about hell and grace. Joseph, squeezed into a bench with friends from the college, felt uneasy watching the trustees, ministers all, who listened stonily as behind them those seized with the conviction of sins stammered, jerked, and fell. Joseph, who found himself feeling furtive rather than improved, hoped that the trustees didn�
��t see him. At least Mr. Davenport didn’t stand in the middle of the women’s pews shouting until they fainted, as he had been known to do. Nor did he, this time, call the local minister an unconverted hypocrite and the devil incarnate.

  Joseph kept upright in his seat with as much dignity as he could muster, willing his friends Brainerd, Buell, and Hopkins to do the same. Mr. Edwards was coming in the morning to preach the commencement sermon. Joseph wanted a good report of his conduct to go back to Rebekah. He knew that Mr. Edwards embraced the presence of strong emotion in religion—Joseph had intense memories of watching his father shiver at meeting and of his own body falling amidst the screams in Enfield—but it was difficult to imagine that he would approve of Mr. Davenport, who believed in the simple life so deeply that he never washed his clothes. Perhaps Mr. Davenport had such doubts himself, because at the end of the sermon, he announced that he was leaving town that night. Brainerd groaned, but Joseph found himself a little relieved.

  The college was too close for Joseph and his friends to go directly back after such a powerful, saving exercise, so they walked to the harbor, singing psalms in the dark. They made sure that they were far enough across the green so as not to disturb those in Rector Clap’s house, but did not take much care for the sleep of the other inhabitants of the town. Joseph felt freed and visited by mystery, passing still houses as the sea breeze stirred on his skin. It reminded him of going to the river to hunt eels with Elisha back home. Up ahead, David Brainerd, so pale that he was practically luminous and as zealous as they came, started a new hymn:

  Alas, and did my savior bleed?

  And did my sovereign die?

  Would he devote his sacred head

  For such a worm as I?

  Joseph, who sometimes wondered why anyone did anything for him, oaf that he was, felt the release in giving voice to this question. Once they reached the water, Buell unleashed his baritone, more like a choirmaster than a worm. Hopkins was singing off-key. Joseph threw back his head and half-tripped on a piece of driftwood. Hopkins reached out to steady him on his feet.

  Brainerd and Buell had been knocking on the doors of all of the other students to talk with them about religion. Hopkins, who at first had been annoyed, was Brainerd’s first convert. Joseph thought it might be because his own father had died in agony over the state of his soul that he found himself reluctant to confront the unconverted. His tutor, Phineas Lyman, studied law, and sometimes Joseph felt drawn to the worldliness of that vocation, but it could not compare to the glories of being a minister. Still, he hoped that their singing would not wake any seamen on their ships. They tended to curse and to make a corporal response to any annoyance.

  Joseph let himself lean against Hopkins for a moment, taking comfort in their common undisputable ignorance, in Hopkins’s bad singing voice and his willingness to belt out a hymn without regard to that. He would, no doubt, grow out of it, but, more sure in his footing with his arm around Hopkins’s shoulder, Joseph was glad that he hadn’t yet.

  The next morning as he was buckling his shoes in the chamber he shared in the hall, Joseph heard a knock on his door. He was expecting Hopkins, but when he opened the door, he saw Mr. Edwards holding a very large cheese. “Mr. Hawley. This is from your mother.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Joseph bowed and took the cheese, which he put into the chest at the foot of his bed, thinking of mice. He said, “I didn’t expect to see you until the ceremony.”

  “The cheese.” Mr. Edwards said, as if that explained everything.

  He had to stoop as he stood there in the doorway, assuming a proprietary air that both flattered and troubled Joseph. Mr. Edwards seemed to be expecting something, but Joseph had no idea what. “Would you like to come in, sir?”

  Mr. Edwards stepped back and straightened his neck. “I need air before my lecture. Would you like to accompany me for a stroll around the green?”

  As Joseph set out with Mr. Edwards, he glanced back and saw his classmates sticking their heads out of the many windows of the hall to stare at him proceeding in such a familiar way with the commencement-day lecturer. Mr. Edwards had become quite well known since his Faithful Narrative had been published in London. Buell gave a salute. Hopkins faked applause. Joseph mouthed, “Stop.”

  Mr. Edwards strode briskly along, oblivious. Turning firmly away from the sight of Hopkins flicking his own nose as if putting airs, Joseph looked sideways at Mr. Edwards’s gaunt face. He wondered if he should seize the chance to ask whether, upon the whole, Mr. Edwards considered him suitable to enter into the work of the ministry.

  He didn’t speak until they had almost completed their circumambulation of the green. Then Mr. Edwards reached out to pat one of two trees known to have been planted in the early 1600s as they passed them.

  “I used to serve meals when I was an underclassman,” he said. “Did I ever tell you that? A gang of seniors once hauled me off to the upper garret and fined me five shillings for carrying myself in an unbecoming way. Can you imagine?”

  Joseph, who had had his share of hazing, sadly, could. “Yes, sir,” he said, with feeling.

  Mr. Edwards looked at him sharply and was about to speak when they were suddenly surrounded by Rector Clap and what seemed to Joseph to be the entire board of trustees. They clumped around Mr. Edwards, murmuring intimately and urgently, while Joseph took himself away to a discreet distance. Watching out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mr. Edwards stiffen up as the rector threw an arm around his thin shoulders, and wondered if his cousin was always so awkward among his peers. Joseph thought that perhaps he was nervous away from home. He saw Rector Clap unfold a sheet of paper and give it to Mr. Edwards, who read and returned it, his expression inscrutable.

  Joseph, who had lapsed into staring, became aware that both Mr. Edwards and Rector Clap were looking directly at him. They leaned together as they did so, suddenly in league, and as he watched them whispering, Joseph was struck with certainty that the secret benefactor who had paid for his education was Mr. Edwards. Thinking of his cousin’s proprietary air as he had handed over Rebekah’s cheese, Joseph felt faintly sick. The last thing he wanted was to be beholden to Jonathan Edwards.

  Mr. Edwards beckoned to him, and Joseph hurried to join him and the leaders of the college with his manners firmly in place, already admonishing himself to remember, in his confusion, to be grateful.

  Joseph took his assigned place in the Hall, next to Hopkins, who whistled softly in admiration as he sat down. Brainerd glared at the irreverence from across the aisle.

  Rector Clap opened by reading a new decision from the trustees aloud.

  Voted that if any student of this College shall directly or indirectly say that the Rector, either of the Trustees or Tutors are Hypocrites, carnall or unconverted men, he shall for the first offense make a publick confession in the Hall, and for the second offence be expell’d.

  The sudden depths to the silence in the Hall helped Joseph quiet his mind enough to think about what this might mean. Beside him, Hopkins had started wheezing. They had both heard Brainerd, for one, say such things, and Joseph had no certainty that he would desist. Mr. Davenport, securely long graduated, surely would not. Brainerd, staring straight ahead, did not turn to meet Joseph’s eye, but, from the next row up, Buell threw him a sideways glance. There was trouble ahead.

  Joseph watched as Mr. Edwards stood up and began his lecture with scripture.

  Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

  Here it comes, thought Joseph, who, like his father before him, trembled every night in fear for his soul, here comes the wrestling match between propriety and true religion, with Mr. Davenport condemned as a false prophet and Mr. Edwards currying favor with the trustees. He didn’t question why he was so ready to attribute unclean motives to Mr. Edwa
rds. As he half listened, Mr. Edwards presented an elegant double twist of thought: a careful list of things that were not evidence that a thing was not a work of God. Joseph’s indignation was deflated before it had a chance to take hold, while, in the front rows, the trustees and the rector began to fidget and slump.

  Using logic and scripture, Mr. Edwards showed that neither effects on the bodies of men, such as tears, trembling, groans, loud outcries, agonies of the body or the failing of bodily strength; nor great noise about religion; nor that some had been in a kind of ecstasy, wherein they had been carried beyond themselves; nor the power of examples; nor even that many involved in it were guilty of great imprudences and irregularities in conduct proved that a work was not of God.

  Joseph was trying to reconcile what he knew of Mr. Edwards’s rigid and stringent morality with having just heard him say that even great imprudences of conduct did not prove that something was not of God when his cousin, preaching out, said that lukewarmness in religion was abominable. Zeal, he went on, was an excellent grace.

  Hopkins, whose breathing had quieted, was murmuring yes. Brainerd was gripping the bench, and Buell was listening with an intensity that brought his entire row to lean forward with him. All around them, young scholars were nodding, while the ministers in the front exchanged wary looks. Mr. Edwards was not backing up their proclamation against criticizing ministers.

  Mr. Edwards said much more about the distinguishing marks of a work of God: how such a work raised esteem in the people for Jesus, operated against Satan’s kingdom, caused in men a greater regard to the holy scriptures, and spoke as a spirit of love to God and man.