The Hollow Tree (4 page)

Anne and Aunt Rachael had come up behind Phoebe. Anne turned a white face to her. “It’s because John Williams is said to be off fighting for the King, isn’t it?” she whispered. When Phoebe did not respond at once, Anne grabbed her by the shoulder. “It is, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

“Yes. Yes, I expect so.” Phoebe shivered.

Deborah’s husband, John, had disappeared a few months earlier, and a lot of people believed that he had gone to join a Loyalist regiment or was spying for the British. It did not matter that Deborah told her neighbours he had had word
that his mother back in Massachusetts was very ill and he had packed his necessaries and gone off at once.

“But Phoebe, only last month Elihu Pickens——”

“Hush!” Before Anne could say anything more, Phoebe slipped her hand over her cousin’s mouth. With her other hand she dragged her frantically up the road and into their house. Aunt Rachael was right behind. Jed and Noah, for once, had nothing to say. They followed their mother into the house without a sound. Aunt Rachael closed the door firmly behind her. Anne turned on Phoebe.

“Don’t you dare put your hand over my mouth,” she cried. “If I want to speak out, I will speak out. You’re a little coward, Phoebe Olcott. Well, I am not. I am not afraid and, what’s more, I’d like to upset that Elihu Pickens — and Moses Litchfield and Hiram Jesse, too. Stealing Deborah Williams’s clock! That was her mama’s clock. And what of all her other things and her house and … and … nobody in this whole village doing a thing to stop them!” Anne’s face was as red as autumn sumac. “Oh, them and their Committee of Public Safety! I know what bug got up Elihu Pickens’s nose and, if I want to shout that he was trying to court Deborah Williams whilst her husband was away, I will!”

“Anne” — Aunt RachaePs tone did not allow for argument — “Phoebe is right. This is no time to be shouting words like that out where people can hear you. She’s thinking about Gideon, and so should you be. Remember where your brother is. No one knows for certain where John Williams is. The poor man might be with his mother, or he might be drowned in the river. Or he might be off serving in Pennsylvania with George Washington himself. But everyone knows where Gideon is. He made no secret of where he was going. It’s not safe for people in our perilous position to rile men like Elihu Pickens.”

“But they wouldn’t …” Anne’s voice quavered.

“They well might.” Her mother sighed. “And there is not a living, breathing soul in this village who could or would stop them. We saw what happened to Deborah Williams and her children. No one is safe. If Jonas Marsh were not the only blacksmith in the village, who knows what might have happened to him merely for speaking out like a decent human being. Come, children, we must eat breakfast.” Aunt Rachael took the silent boys by their hands and walked purposefully into the keeping-room, heading towards the kitchen. The orange cat meowed loudly at Phoebe, then followed Aunt Rachael and the boys.

“I hate this war,” cried Anne. She flung herself
into the hard ladder-back chair that stood in the hallway. “When men like Elihu Pickens get to turn everything upside down. Nothing is any good now. The boys have all gone off like beef-wits to fight in their sacred war. Even stupid Gershom Lake has gone.” She burst into tears, wiped them away angrily with her fists, sniffed, and fled up the stairs to her bedroom, for once not thinking about what effect she might have on anyone else.

Phoebe hugged herself against the fear. “What will Deborah Williams do out in the cold, frosty nights with all those children? It
can’t
be right,” she whispered.

That afternoon Phoebe did what she had not done for months. She packed herself a bit of bread and meat and went to spend a few hours alone in her old home. The day had gotten warmer and there was little wind. The whole trip down the hill along Trout Brook, across the meadow to where Gideon’s canoe was pulled up in the reeds by the river edge, and across the dark water, took scarcely an hour. She stood outside her own cabin door for a minute or two, thinking about her father, the pain of missing him turning her suddenly dizzy. He had been such a dreamer to think he could make a good soldier, a man whose mind was always lost in his books.

She pushed open the door. And froze. In the dimness of the room, she saw a man standing at
the single table, his back to her. At the sound of the opening door, he spun around. He had a knife gripped in his hand.

“Gideon!” Phoebe sagged against the door jamb.

“Shut the door,” he whispered. “For God’s sake, shut the door.”

“Gideon?” Phoebe moved into the room. She shoved the door closed behind her, staring, stunned, at him. Her heart was pounding violently. She couldn’t think.

He stuck the knife into the sheath at his waist, then took a step towards her. “I didn’t mean to frighten you, Mouse.” His voice was still a hoarse whisper. “But, if I were to be found here like this, I’d be done for.”

“But Gideon, what …?”

“Don’t ask me anything, Phoebe. Oh, but it is good to see you!” In two steps he had reached her, lifted her off her feet, and squeezed her until she cried out.

“Oh, Phoebe.” He set her back on the floor. “I have missed you all so much. You must tell me all the news. How is Mother? Father? Anne? the little ones? And Polly, what of Polly Grantham? Phoebe, is she … has … is she courting another?” He asked this last so softly Phoebe had to strain to hear him.

“No. Polly turned away Seth Andrews. She keeps to herself. She’s afraid now because everyone
in the village is so against the Loyalists. Seth has gone off to fight with the rebels. So have Gershom Lake and Ephraim Lewis and the Thatchers — the father and all the sons but Jake. He’s gone with the British. There aren’t any young men left at home. We girls have to tend to the livestock now, and the farming as well as the housework.”

“Oh, Phoebe,” Gideon groaned. “I so long to see her — or even get word to her. I know I oughtn’t. I know but … ” Gideon began to pace around the room.

Phoebe said nothing. She was still in a state of shock at finding him there. And it was so soon after the terrible thing that had happened to Deborah Williams and her children. What was he doing here? He was so distraught. And so changed. He had grown taller, thinner. Thinner, she supposed, was what happened even in the British army, which, by all reports, was better off than the half-starved American army. But it was more than that. Gideon’s face, which had always shown on it every thought in his head, was tight and closed. And there was something else. She realized, suddenly, that Gideon was not dressed as a soldier. He had on a woodsman’s fringed deerskin leggings and shirt, and there were moccasins on his feet. Only his hair, braided and tied back in its neat queue, suggested the soldier.

“Gideon,” she asked timidly, “are you not in the army?”

“Yes, yes, of course, I am.” He stopped his pacing to stand before her. “But, Phoebe, it is not at all what I thought.” There was a bitter note in his voice. “The British don’t think much of their loyal Americans. We’re all rude backwoodsmen to them, a pack of know-nothings. I don’t believe the King over in London cares as much as a flyspeck about any of us. If I had known …” He fell silent.

“But why are you dressed like a woodsman?”

“God in Heaven, Phoebe, it’d be my death to go skulking through the woods in uniform.”

All at once Phoebe was aware of how cold and dark the room was. She didn’t understand what Gideon meant, not really, but she knew one thing. “You must leave, Gideon. You must not stay here,” she entreated. “We all know what happens to soldiers found out of uniform by their enemies. Gideon, they are hanged!” She shivered. “Why have you come here? You cannot know how bad things are now for Tories.” She told him about Deborah Williams. “And no one dared lift a hand to help her. Everyone is frightened of Elihu Pickens and his committee. Go away, Gideon! Go away!”

“I know.” Gideon sighed. He started up his pacing again. “I did not know about the Williamses, but I know how it is for us Loyalists
almost everywhere in Vermont and New Hampshire. I guess I should be glad I didn’t ask Polly to marry me. No one will bother her. And you are all safe because of your father. Oh that this war would end!” His voice broke. He came back abruptly to stand before Phoebe. “Will you do something for me?” He took her hand.

Phoebe was filled with sudden alarm. She knew Gideon was going to ask for something she was not going to want to do, and she was just as sure she was going to do it. Her shoulders slumped.

“I want you to take a letter to Polly Grantham.”

Phoebe didn’t answer at once. She had a terrible feeling that what Gideon wanted was dangerous — that it could bring him nothing but harm.

“Phoebe, will you take the letter?”

She still said nothing.

“Will you?”

“If I take the letter, will you go away? Don’t come near Orland Village. Don’t try to see Polly. I’ll take the letter and you’ll go from here.” She knew there was pleading in her voice when she so wanted firmness, but she couldn’t help it.

“Yes. Yes, I will.” Gideon turned at once to Phoebe’s father’s desk in the corner by the window. There he rummaged in its cubby-holes
until he found a sheet of paper and a bit of a lead pencil.

It was late afternoon by this time. Day was fading fast. What little light there was was filtered through the months of dust and dirt collected on the glass of the single window. Gideon wasn’t much more than a dark shadow hunched over the desk. The dark figure, the sense of fear and sadness around him, reminded Phoebe of a picture in one of her father’s books of Thomas More writing his last words in the tower of London before his head was to come off. Phoebe shuddered. “Gideon, do not write the letter.” She started towards him, but he turned then and pressed the folded paper into her hand.

“If you will take this to Polly, Mouse, I will be in your debt for ever.”

Phoebe did not have the heart to say she would not. She could do nothing else for him and he wanted so badly to reach Polly.

“Mind” — he fixed her with a fierce look — “you are not to let on, not to anyone but Polly, that you have seen me. Not anyone. Not even my mother. Remember what I say. It’ll mean my death if these rebels find me. So I’m for the woods again, dear little Mouse — and thank you,” he added softly.

Phoebe was so frightened by the thought of what might happen to him that she couldn’t say anything. She threw her arms around him
and kissed him. Then, with the note to Polly Grantham gripped in her hand, she left him.

All the way home, until it was way too dark, she was tempted to read what Gideon had written. She couldn’t bring herself to pry into his thoughts and feelings — she loved him too much for that. But had he, as she so feared, asked Polly to meet him somewhere? Would he risk that?

It was fully dark by the time she reached Orland Village. There was no one around, no one to see her creep silently up to the Granthams’ house at the top of the hill by the brook, no one to see her edge her way towards the woodpile, where, by good fortune, Polly was getting logs for the fire; no one to see the quick, furtive exchange of words or paper, no one to see her slip along the road to the Robinsons’ house.

When Anne asked her crossly where she had been all afternoon, Phoebe said truthfully that she had gone “over home” but told her no more.

“You left Jed and Noah with no one but me to look out for them. What kept you until past supper time?” Anne demanded. Phoebe mumbled something about having to make sure the hearth fire was doused. She could not tell Anne about Gideon because she had promised. She was heartsick to have to keep her knowledge from Aunt Rachael and Uncle Josiah, knowing that for them to even hear he was alive would light up their faces with happiness.

All evening she tried to concentrate on Uncle Josiah’s Bible reading, but she could think only of Gideon. How she wished she had read what he’d written in his letter! Did he mean to try to see Polly? He had said he would leave, but, she remembered, he had not looked her in the eye. Now she was sure it was what he had meant to do.

The lump of fear in her throat grew until she could barely swallow. She needed all her willpower to keep from jumping up and crying out for someone to stop Gideon from coming to the village to see Polly. But she didn’t do that. She sat still in her straight ladder-back chair, her hands busy with her knitting, with George, the orange cat, asleep by her feet. She appeared, she hoped, to have no thoughts in her head but those arising from her uncle’s reading.

Later she lay stiff and wakeful in the big spool bed beside a sleeping Anne. Gideon’s words, “It’ll mean my death if I am found,” echoing over and over in her head in a macabre chant.

It wasn’t much past dawn when the knock came on the door. Aunt Rachael went to open it. It was Billy Wilder. His high, thin wail pierced the silence of the house. “Oh …oh … oh … m-m-m-mistress,” he cried, “th-th-they strung him up, oh … oh … oh … ohh! ”

Aunt Rachael pulled him into the house and
tried to get him to sit down, but he only tugged at her hand and she could get no sense from him. In the end, she pried her hand loose and left him with Uncle Josiah while she dressed hastily. In a very few moments the whole family — Aunt Rachael, Uncle Josiah, Anne, her shawl trailing after her, and the little boys, still half asleep — were hurrying after the howling figure running down the road towards the village green.

Only Phoebe stayed behind. She knew. The moment she heard the sound of Billy’s voice, she knew. Standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at him, she turned cold, then dizzy. Then a kind of calm settled over her. Methodically, almost ceremonially, she put on her shift, her petticoat, her skirt, her blouse, and her warm waistcoat. She pulled on her stockings and put her feet into her shoes. Then she brushed and braided her hair. She wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and walked slowly and steadily towards the village green.

Under the great oak tree in the centre of The Green, with its crude “Liberty Tree” label, she could see a dark mass of people in the early light. The Robinson family was huddled together at its edge. A stout rope had been slung over a branch about eight feet from the ground. Gideon’s lifeless body was hanging from the rope. On his shirt a note was pinned. It read: “Death to all Traitors and Spies.”