Rebel Enchantress (50 page)
Authors: Leigh Greenwood
Delilah muttered some response, but she was searching the crowd for a glimpse of Nathan. Common sense told her he wouldn’t be there, but she couldn’t give up hope, not until she had seen every face.
By the time they reached their position next to the scaffold, Delilah knew Nathan was not present. She felt certain he wasn’t going to be.
He was gone.
He had left her, and she had nobody to blame but herself. He had told her months ago she would have to learn to put him first. She had told him she would, that she had, but that wasn’t true. And, unable to believe she would change, he had finally gotten tired of waiting.
Why couldn’t she have seen it? Everyone had told her what to do, but she never took advice. She even had Priscilla’s example, but she had continued to believe Nathan would always be there when she wanted him. It wasn’t the war or their differences or Reuben’s family that kept them apart. It was her own inability to see what was important, to make up her mind as to what she wanted.
Now she didn’t have to decide. Nathan had done it for her.
Exactly at noon, a drum roll captured Delilah’s attention, and cold terror ran down her spine. They opened the prison door and brought Reuben out. The crowd was so dense by now she couldn’t see him. People behind her craned their heads in an attempt to get a glimpse. In a moment Delilah could spy a double line of marching militiamen, drummers in front, coming toward her. Her heart pounded painfully in her chest as the procession came closer. She saw Reuben, head held high, hands behind his back, walking between the rows of militia.
Involuntarily she looked at Jane, but her sister-in-law had eyes for no one but her husband. The boys gripped their mother’s skirts. Today, at least, none of them needed to hold on to Delilah. They stood alone, as a family.
They didn’t let Reuben stop and hug Jane and the boys. They didn’t even let him speak. They pushed him toward the platform.
But even as they forced him to mount the steps, a bayonet in his back, Delilah heard the galloping of a horse.
Someone afraid he is going to miss the spectacle.
But the sound didn’t go away. As the ministers spoke to Reuben and then addressed the crowd, the thundering hooves grew louder. They came on and on, the hoofbeats audible over the sound of the drummers’ dreary, thumping rolls.
Soon the horseman would be in the middle of the street filled with people. The crowd began to crane its necks to see what madman would gallop into the center of town. Even the sheriff looked toward the approaching horseman rather than the man he was about to hang. Then the crowd parted with screams and shrieks, and Delilah’s heart stopped beating as the horseman galloped to the very foot of the scaffold.
It was Nathan.
He vaulted from the saddle, bounded up the steps, and thrust a rolled-up piece of paper into the sheriffs hands. The crowd held its breath as the sheriff started to read:
“By the order of the Governor and the Council of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in their infinite mercy, the man Reuben Stowbridge is granted a reprieve.… ”
Delilah snuggled contentedly in her husband’s arms.
The sounds of early summer filled the warm air of the garden: the swish of the river eddying around the roots of trees growing along its banks; the rustle of the afternoon breeze through the fresh green leaves of elms, maples, and oaks; the chirping of two robins as they built their nest; the loud chatter of two squirrels as they argued over ownership of a particularly fine beech tree.
Some late tulips still dipped and swayed in the wind, but the spring garden had given over to the heavy scent of lilac, apple blossom, and flowering poplars. Already the hum of bees heralded the butterflies, hummingbirds, and dragonflies of summer.
“Do you think they’ll be happy in New York?” Delilah asked Nathan. She didn’t seem particularly concerned about his answer. She rested in the circle of his arms, her head against his shoulder, her eyes closed. She was utterly at peace.
“Why shouldn’t they? He’s got a hundred acres of bottom land, another three hundred for grazing, and that much again in virgin timber.”
“You didn’t have to be so generous. I didn’t think Reuben was going to be able to speak for weeks after you told him.”
“I thought they would be happier away from Springfield. It’ll be easier to forget.”
Delilah could still feel the sadness of her family’s departure. They had stayed until after the wedding. After Nathan’s gift of land, it would have been unthinkable for them not to remain, but it had been a difficult time. Reuben would never like Nathan. Delilah wasn’t sure why, but she knew it was so. And she realized that Nathan didn’t think much of Reuben. They were too different. They saw the world in different ways, but her great love for both men would never change that.
Jane had changed, though, From the moment Nathan had put that pardon in the sheriffs hands, he’d become a deity in her eyes. She allowed no one, not even Reuben, to say anything against him. And when he’d given them the farm … well, there didn’t seem to be any words good enough to describe Nathan Trent. It was already understood that the Stowbridges’ next boy would be named Nathaniel. Delilah guessed the one after that would be called Trent.
“I know why you gave them that farm,” Delilah said. “You don’t have to get upset,” she added when she felt her husband tense. “You sent them away so they couldn’t turn to me when things go wrong.”
“They can visit as often as they like,” Nathan said.
“Visits are different. Confess now. Am I right?”
“Do I have to admit all my sins?”
“Yes. I’ve been confessing for months. It’s your turn now.”
“Very well,” Nathan turned so he could look into her eyes. “I confess I want you all to myself. I don’t want to share you with a brother, a sister-in-law, or nephews and nieces. I want every moment of your time, every bit of your attention, and every scrap of your love. There, I’ve said it and I’m glad.”
Delilah laughed.
“You sure you can’t stand to share me at all?”
“Not one minute.”
She snuggled even closer. “You’ll be tired of me by fall. You won’t mind so much then.”
“I’ll never tire of you, not this fall, not any falls.”
She rested against him, her face averted, her smile blissful.
“Suppose you had to? Suppose you had no choice?”
“Dammit, Delilah, I didn’t consign Reuben’s family to the end of the earth for you to dredge up somebody else to mother. It had better not be Priscilla. I’d make her a widow before the week was out.”
“It’s not Priscilla. In fact, it’s no one you know.”
“Then don’t let them come.” Nathan paused. “You know, you’re not making any sense” He put a hand under Delilah’s chin, raising her head. “You’re playing games with me, woman. Just what are you talking about?”
“A visitor.”
“I won’t have any visitors.”
“A tiny permanent resident.”
“Delilah … Delilah?”
His wife gurgled with happiness.
“I think it’ll be just in time for Christmas.”
“Do you mean …?”
“Yes, you silly man. I’m going to have our baby.”
Nathan jumped to his feet. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
He picked Delilah up and whirled her around. She laughed with happiness.
“You keep that up, and the child’s going to come out with addled wits,” Lester said, as he approached them along the garden path. He handed Delilah a shawl. “Mrs. Stebbens says you got to put this around your shoulders. Otherwise you’ll get a chill and that baby will have the sniffles for the rest of its born days.”
Mrs. Stebbens had been promoted to housekeeper, with a cook, two maids, and a washwoman under her. She still tyrannized Lester and Tommy.
“Am I the only one in the house who didn’t know you were going to have a baby?” Nathan demanded.
“I just told Mrs. Stebbens this morning. I guess she can’t keep a secret.”
“A strainer can hold water better’n that woman can keep secrets,” Lester said.
“She can’t wait to have a baby she can spoil,” Delilah told Nathan. “She’s already making plans on how to rearrange the household schedule so she can be his nurse.”
Nathan directed a piercing look at his wife. “Do I detect the approach of someone who will oust me from first place in your heart?”
“There’s nothing more important to a woman than a baby,” Lester volunteered. “To hear my mama talk, you’d think she was put on this earth to love nothing else.”
Nathan looked thoughtful. I wonder how soon they accept children at boarding school,” he mused.
“Nathan!”
“They’ll be sent to England, of course.”
“Nathan Trent!”
“Until then they’ll need a full nursery, including a wet nurse. Hector’s old place ought to be just perfect.”
“You will not install my baby in some nursery miles away,” Delilah said. “And especially not with a wet nurse.”
“Then you’d better make the nursery big enough for two cribs.”
“Why? I’m not having twins.”
“The second one’s for me.”
Delilah stifled a gurgle of laughter.
“See, I have no pride, and it’s all your fault. I’ll do anything, even to sleeping in the baby’s room, to keep you from forgetting me.”
Hugging Nathan more tightly to her, Delilah looked into her husband’s eyes. “This is your baby as much as mine. It will bring us closer together. It won’t separate us. I want you in the nursery. I want you to hold our baby, to see our child learn to turn over or crawl or laugh aloud. But just as important, I want you to be with me. I can’t live without you.”
“Always?”
“Always”
In the years immediately following the American Revolution, economic collapse threatened many of the new states, but nowhere were economic conditions worse than in Massachusetts, where an alarming uprising known as Shays’s Rebellion flared up in the western counties in 1786. Impoverished backcountry farmers, many of them Revolutionary War veterans, were losing their farms through mortgage foreclosures and tax delinquencies. In August at a Hampshire County convention of some fifty towns, the delegates condemned the Massachusetts Senate, lawyers, the high costs of justice, and the tax system. Led by Captain Daniel Shays, a veteran of the American Revolution, these desperate debtors demanded cheap paper money, lighter taxes, and suspension of mortgage foreclosures. Hundreds of angry agitators attempted to enforce their demands by closing the courts. Insurrection in eastern Massachusetts collapsed with the capture of Job Shattuck on November 30, but the insurrection in the western counties continued to gain momentum.
When Shays and his followers attempted to capture the federal arsenal at Springfield, state authorities raised a small army under General Lincoln. Supported partly by contributions from wealthy citizens, forty-four hundred men enlisted for one month to march on Springfield in January, 1787. Several skirmishes occurred—at Springfield three Shaysites were killed and one was wounded—and the movement collapsed. Daniel Shays and several other leaders were condemned to death, but were later pardoned.
The uprising had the effect of inducing the state legislature not to impose a direct tax in 1787 and to enact laws lowering court fees and exempting clothing, household goods, and the tools of one’s trade from the debt process.
While the condemned rebels of Massachusetts awaited what the General Court called “condign punishment,” delegates from every state except Rhode Island met in Philadelphia “in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, and insure domestic tranquillity.” More than any other single factor, the lack of justice and of domestic tranquillity, as evidenced by Shays’s Rebellion, caused the Continental Congress to call that convention.
The miraculous result of the delegates’ months of labor was the Constitution of the United States. John Quincy Adams would say that it had been “extorted from the grinding necessity of a reluctant nation,” and that “Shays’s Rebellion was the extorting agency.” Historian Charles Francis Adams would write that Shays’s Rebellion was “one of the chief impelling and contributory causes to the framing and adoption of the Constitution.”
The people of Massachusetts, farmers and merchants alike, could see the republican form of government the Constitution guaranteed to every state promised protection for all classes. In spite of some querulous opposition from the diehard westerners, they were among the first to ratify the document and to swear to abide by its provisions.
I have tried to remain faithful to the historical sequence of events and to the roles played by specific leaders. For the sake of clarity, I have exaggerated the role of Daniel Shays in the early days of the uprising. The text from Shays’s letters, the letter Reuben wrote to the senate begging forgiveness, and Reuben’s pardon are taken from the actual documents.
Other than the rebellion’s leaders and a few other persons, such as Governor Bowdoin and General Lincoln, all the characters in this book are products of my imagination. Any likeness to an actual person is purely coincidental.
Leigh Greenwood is the award-winning author of over fifty books, many of which have appeared on the USA Today bestseller list. Leigh lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. Please visit his website at
http://www.leigh-greenwood.com/
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