Spider in a Tree Read online

  She had tasted the honey, dripped with honey. She knew the holy spirit, knew sweetness. She hadn’t just read about it, touched the jar. Her whole soul was sticky with it, and her shoes fell from her feet, dropped to the floor. Her feet were bare and sticky, and there were crumbs, she was dabbled with crumbs. They looked like bread, remnants, crusts, ordinary leavings from an ordinary meal, but there was a light from them, and she was filled with sweetness, sweating honey, honey dripping from her pores, honey dabbing her forehead and capturing her hair, honey making her simple clothes darken from within. Her eyes were closed, but honey dripped down her cheeks like tears. He could look below her and see many slow viscous drops falling from her body as she floated waist high above the floor, reclining with the firm dignity of the righteous dead, but she, his wife, his consort, was, of course, alive.

  The drops from her body fell slowly toward the floor, but as they fell, they spread and lightened and dissipated until they were no longer gold but took on the color of the air, thinning in slow curls of light so that there was nothing of them left to hit the floor. In vision, he slowly reached out and let his fingers pass beneath her to catch a drop before it was lost. He tested his fingers with his mind’s tongue. The taste was there. Sarah knew honey. He might doubt himself, but she could bear anything. He was sure of it.

  He was leaning heavily against his horse, but he had reached the forted-in house. He took one more step and fumbled with the gate as the horse breathed heavily into the back of his coat. He opened it to Timothy and Eunice chasing chickens while Esther gave instructions from the kitchen door. They ran to him, calling their mother. Refuge. He hugged both of the little ones at the same time, while they blinked in mild surprise, then kissed Esther before he led the horse to drink. The bristled bug dropped from the saddle and lit on the edge of the trough. He saw it fly before the rush of water spilled by a thrust of the horse’s great-lipped mouth as Timothy and Eunice talked over each other to tell him that Northampton had finally gotten some rain.

  Chapter 22: July – November 1749

  When he walked into the kitchen, he said, “My horse is nearly dead of thirst. What happened at the hearing?”

  Sarah cleared the children out of the kitchen and insisted on getting food in front of him before they talked. While he faced cold tripe and chopped greens alone at the table, she scoured the brass skillet, both feet very much on the ground. He found that strangely comforting. Ignoring the tripe, he said, “If you’re trying to protect me from bad news, it’s too late for that.”

  “Some days I wish that we’d never left New Haven.” She set the skillet in the fire to dry and put the written findings next to his plate. “The council sent a runner with this. It’s not good.”

  He read aloud.

  “On the question of whether it appeared to be the duty of Elisha Hawley to marry Martha Root with whom he had been guilty of fornication and who lay a child now living to him as the father, the council resolves in the negative.”

  He looked at her. “That’s preposterous.”

  Sarah came over to the table and took a forkful of his greens. Her hands were red and chapped. “I know.”

  He continued to read.

  “However, we are far from determining that Lieutenant Hawley is not bound in conscience to marry Martha Root. Tho, it don’t appear to us in so clear a light that we care to say that it is his duty. We therefore hold it must be left for the determination of his own conscience, and upon the whole we recommend it to the first Church of Northampton to receive Mr. Hawley (upon his making a penitent confession of the sin of fornication) to their Christian charity and fellowship again.”

  Mr. Edwards threw the paper onto his plate. “Lukewarm squirming.”

  Sarah snatched it back, already stained brown and green. “There’s no call to waste paper.” He stared at his plate while she put the findings on a stool then sat down beside him. “Or food.” She handed him the fork. “You’re still married yourself, Mr. Edwards. Give thanks.”

  He ate.

  The next day, Martha Root leaned into steam over the wash kettle in the yard while her two-year-old sat on the ground turning the pages of an old newspaper without ripping them. It was too hot to be making soap, but Martha wanted the smell of lye to clear her brain. She had been thinking of nothing but the hearing for too many days. She hoped that it was finally all over and hated that she couldn’t be sure. She had been under the scrutiny of the town for so long. She looked down at Anne, who was delicately tasting a corner of the paper, newsprint smeared on her lips.

  “Don’t,” Martha said, stirring the pot with a stick.

  Anne nodded and offered her the paper with an encouraging air, as if the only sensible thing for her mother to do would be to sit in dirt, pretend to read year-old Boston news, and perhaps try to catch a grasshopper if one should come along. Martha was tempted.

  “Martha!” They both looked up to see a figure coming across the pasture, lifting a fistful of skins. Simeon, Martha thought. She straightened up and gave him a wave. Still not a member of the church, her brother had built a small house on the far edge of the Root family woodlot for himself and his wife. He stopped by often to do chores for her mother or bring a treat for Anne.

  As the man came toward them down the hill, though, she could see that he had a limp and a dog at his heels. And a uniform. It wasn’t Simeon. She knew who it was before he called again across the grass. “These are for you.”

  She stopped stirring the lye. Dear God, he couldn’t suddenly be feeling bound in conscience to marry her, could he? She despised herself for knowing exactly how the findings had phrased it, but she did. Martha had wanted Elisha, once, but none of the rest of it: not marriage, not the trials and hearings, not even, at first, her lost Esther and her very present Anne, who jumped up and ran toward him and the dog with all her might. Anne was wild for dogs.

  Loving her daughters fiercely, both the living and the dead, Martha shouted, “Anne! Stop!”

  Anne paused and turned toward her. Elisha kept coming with his dog and his skins. Martha took a deep breath of hot lye until her eyes teared up and her chest burned. “Wait,” she said to Anne, who sat down on the grass, staring with longing toward the little black dog. Martha put her stick beside the pot and put a stone down on the newspaper so it wouldn’t blow all over the pasture. Then she walked slowly to stand beside Anne, watching Elisha come. The limp looked painful.

  When he was close enough that she could see that his expression was both reckless and abashed, he said, “Rabbit. I do a little trapping at the fort, and thought that the little girl might need a winter coat.” He must have been watching her face, too, because then he said the name. “Anne.”

  Anne got up when she heard it and held on to Martha’s leg, looking shyly over her shoulder. Martha picked her up. She was in no mood to mince words. “I didn’t see you at the hearing.”

  “No.” He was next to them now, holding one of the skins out to Anne, who touched the fur with her finger. “Joseph advised me not to come, but I couldn’t wait to hear the decision.” He watched Anne petting the rabbit skin while Delilah sniffed around the fire. Martha felt acrid inside and out. Joseph had strutted at the hearing.

  “Anne,” Elisha said again, following her eyes. “That’s Delilah.” The dog glanced up and gave a brisk wag. The little girl blushed a little, her hand buried in fur.

  Martha looked away toward the edge of the woods. “You’re hurt.”

  “Not badly. I’m getting raisins and currants from Mother for a curative. There is nothing but shortages at the fort. No raisins, no peas, no rum. No pay for the men.” Anne laid her cheek against the fur. They both let her. “Still, it suits me to be a soldier.” He looked at her. “You can’t have had an easy time, yourself.”

  Martha put Anne down, keeping a hand on her head. The little girl let go of the skin wit
h no fuss, smiling a little as Delilah raised her leg on a stump. Martha shrugged at Elisha. “They insult me from carts and shun me in church,” she said.

  He looked pained. It would be like him to feel his conscience now that the hearings were done. Martha felt panicked. “My family treats me well. And the money helps.” She didn’t say the word bastard, never in front of Anne, but others did. “What is it that you want from us?”

  Elisha put the rabbit skins on the ground. Delilah came and stood next to them, tail up, on alert. “Martha, I never meant you to come to harm.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Well, harm’s been done.”

  He nodded. He knew that. “And the baby. The one who is gone. I am sorry.”

  She had nothing to say to this. She could not stand it if she cried.

  He looked at his feet, then at Anne, who was holding on to Martha’s skirt. When he looked at Martha’s face again, he said, “I am thinking of Elizabeth Pomeroy. One day, I hope, as a wife. I wanted to tell you myself.”

  A Pomeroy. Of course. Who else for a Hawley? Received by the church or not, perhaps it no longer mattered to a man like Elisha. He had bestirred himself to tell her this, after years of nothing but hearings and absence. Martha was glad that the hot lye was out of arm’s reach. Spattering it in his face with a stick would do no one good. She said, “I make no more claims on you, Elisha. Wed who you will.”

  As Elisha and Martha stared at each other, Anne let go of her mother’s skirt and reached for the dog. Delilah ducked her head and looked at Elisha as Anne grabbed a handful of her fur. Martha pulled her daughter back. Elisha whistled Delilah away.

  “Keep the skins,” he said, turning to follow as his dog sprang back up the hill.

  One August night, Joseph sat down at his father’s desk to finish reading Mr. Edwards’s new book. A friend had brought twenty copies from Boston just as talk began to spread of acting against Mr. Edwards without waiting for anything else the man might have to say. There were those who felt that they had been listening to him too long as it was. Joseph, who suspected half the town of holding grudges against Mr. Edwards from that business with the midwives’ books five years back, had been staying away from the acrimonious meetings, where respectable men were working themselves up into more and more bitterness against their minister. Joseph was all for just insurrection, but he had family loyalty, as well. He could hear Rebekah pulling irons in and out of the fire and smell the hot linen as she ironed his shirts in the kitchen.

  He took off his wig and slipped a silk-tasseled cap over his shaved head. It was, perhaps, too hot for a cap, but sweet Mercy Lyman had made it for him, so the warmth radiated inward. He picked up the book, glancing at the title: An Humble Inquiry into the Rules of the Word of God, concerning the Qualifications Requisite to a Compleat Standing and Full Communion in the Visible Christian Church. Joseph, who heard it all in Mr. Edwards’s dry voice, rolled his eyes, as he did every time he looked at it. The title page included a rather lengthy quotation in Latin, which was not inviting to many readers in the town, and a brief quote from the book of Job:

  Behold now I have opened my mouth: my words shall be of the uprightness of my heart.

  Joseph was sure that most people would not read An Humble Inquiry. Not all of it, or most of it. They would, perhaps, be quieted for some months, though, as they tried to or intended to or thought about whether they would. He himself had been at it a week, drilling through Mr. Edwards’s strict definitions and logic, thinking about how he would counter troublesome propositions and winning every argument in his head. He had beat Mr. Edwards at Elisha’s hearing; in the man’s absence, it was true, but still. It was exhilarating now to take issue with things he had received as sacred truths, and to apply reason to beliefs he had been taught to accept without expecting to understand. It was as if he had the chance to rebel and defend tradition, both, but more than anything else, he felt enormous pleasure at engaging his cousin’s mind as an equal, rather than as a deferential boy, the recipient of charity, studying at the family hearth.

  His face was sweating. He took off Mercy’s cap, after all, then turned to the twenty objections Mr. Edwards had formulated to his own main argument, matched with the twenty answers he provided; each one, it seemed to Joseph, more impatient than the last. He read objection number ten:

  Objection: The natural consequence of the doctrine which has been maintained, is the bringing multitudes of persons of a tender conscience and true piety into great perplexities; who being at a loss about the state of their souls, must needs be as much in suspense about their duty: and ’tis not reasonable, to suppose, that God would order things so in the revelations of his will, as to bring his own people into such perplexities.

  Joseph felt a sharp pain in his head that forced him to close his eyes and block the light from the candle for a moment, thinking of his father, who had killed himself in the midst of perplexities about the state of his soul. Trembling as if his father’s body were still stretched out bleeding on floor behind him, Joseph returned to Mr. Edwards’s answer:

  Perplexity and distress of mind, not only on occasion of the Lord’s Supper, but innumerable other occasions, is the natural and unavoidable consequence of true Christians doubting of their state. But shall we therefore say, that all these perplexities are owing to the Word of God? No, ’tis not owing to God, nor to any of his revelations, that true saints ever doubt of their state; his revelations are plain and clear, and his rules sufficient for men to determine their own condition by: but, for the most part, ’tis owing to their own sloth, and giving way to their sinful dispositions. Must God’s institutions and revelations be answerable for all the perplexities men bring on themselves, through their own negligence and unwatchfulness? ’Tis wisely ordered it should be so, that the saints should escape perplexity in no other way than that of great strictness, diligence, and maintaining the lively, laborious and self-denying exercises of religion.

  Joseph struggled to stay with the words on the page.

  Not but that doubting of their state sometimes arises from other causes, besides want of watchfulness; it may arise from melancholy, and some other peculiar disadvantages. But however, it is not owing to God’s revelations nor institutions, which, whatsoever we may suppose ’em to be, will not prevent the perplexities of such persons.

  Sloth. Sin. Negligence. Unwatchfulness. Joseph made himself note the disclaimer at the end about melancholy and other peculiar disadvantages, but, for the most part, Mr. Edwards was blaming souls in terror for their own fears. Joseph lifted his hands away from the book open on his desk and, leaning back in his chair with his face slack, let himself drop in mind down the dark chute that he had always known was there waiting for him, down into the devil’s cave where blacksmiths forged pinchers to use hot to twist his fleshy soul. It was agony.

  He didn’t know how long he stayed there in torment, but he made his way back. As he listened to the clanking sounds of Rebekah working in the kitchen, he lifted his head and cooled the memory of his father’s suffering and the immediacy of his own with unsteady zeal.

  He sharpened a pen and wrote to Elisha that he expected there to be a separation between Mr. Edwards and the people of the town.

  It was a warm afternoon when Bathsheba watched in the Edwardses’ parlor as Rose married Joab Binney, he in a new brown jacket with pewter buttons and red cuffs. As Sarah gave the couple a trencher of apple pudding to share with those who stopped by the shed to congratulate them, Bathsheba felt a loneliness so familiar that she was coming to think of it as part of her nature. How she missed Saul and Leah. Breathing slowly, she did Rose’s work in the kitchen while the younger woman walked out into the yard to bid Joab goodbye. Because he belonged to Mr. Hunt, they could not live together. He would be back in the evening, when his services were not required at the Hunts.

  Once the pots were scoured, Bathsheba went to find Rose. She was
in the shed, taking a taste of pudding. She offered a spoonful to Bathsheba. “He’ll have to leave in the middle of the night to get to the Hunts by sunrise.”

  Bathsheba took the offered sweetness, both warm to Rose’s happiness and alive to her own losses. She made a mild joke. “At least Mr. Hunt doesn’t get up in the dark like Mr. Edwards.”

  Rose covered the pudding with a cloth to save for later. “Joab’s working in Hunt’s tannery, but he’s been helping out at Seth Pomeroy’s blacksmith shop, too. He’s talking about buying his freedom, then mine.”

  Bathsheba was settled on a stump where she had sat many times with Saul and Leah. She didn’t bring up the obvious fact that the struggle between Mr. Edwards and the rest of Northampton made Rose’s future with Joab very uncertain, since Mr. Hunt was a leader in the fight against the minister. Instead, she touched Rose’s forehead as if soothing a fever. “Happy day, Rose. I’ll bring bread and cider tonight.”