The Hollow Tree (6 page)

“I will need to be brave,” she whispered to the night. “I will need to be very brave.” But Phoebe had never felt brave, and she had never ventured beyond her own home, other than along the route between Hanover and Orland Village, and a small distance into the woods with Gideon on his plant quests.

She dipped her paddle resolutely into the water. When she reached the shore, she pulled the canoe up by the willow trees and tried not to think about how long it might be before she did that again. She made her way silently along the brook up the hill and the several hundred yards along the road to the village green. There she stopped. And fell silent. She could not make
herself walk past the tree where Gideon’s body had hung.

Gideon’s body. She had not been thinking about Gideon’s body. It would be laid out in the Robinsons’ parlour. The family would be there, watching over it. She swallowed back hot tears. She stood at the edge of The Green, irresolute. She wanted to be there with them, keeping vigil. Even more, she wanted to run away and never return to this place of grief and misery. She felt that she could do neither. She could not tell Aunt Rachael what she meant to do, but realized now that she could not leave without some kind of goodbye. And she knew she had to get something to eat and her warm cloak. When she thought about food, she realized that she had had none since supper the night before and that then she had eaten almost nothing because she had been so upset about Gideon’s letter to Polly.

Suddenly the hair rose on the back of her neck. A dark shape moved in the shadows of the trees at the edge of The Green. There was someone there. She knew there was. She froze. It was now so dark she could barely distinguish one tree from another, but she could see eyes, and the only sound she heard was Trout Brook in the distance, burbling over the stones on its way down the hill.

“Is someone there?” whispered Phoebe. There was no reply. She shivered, looked around again, and pulled her shawl so tightly around
her shoulders she felt it strain. She edged around the village green, turning only once to peer over her shoulder, and went along the road to Mistress Shipley’s cabin. There she slipped behind the cabins to the Robinsons’ back door. Only Quincy, Moses Litchfield’s old dog, noticed her passing. He growled once, but settled back at the sound of her familiar voice.

Gratefully she sank down onto the stone step, not bothering to brush the thin layer of snow from it. Within seconds, she felt an impatient nudging at her hip. She looked down. It was the cat. George was bad-tempered and demanding, and seemed to care for no one, except that he had let Phoebe — and only Phoebe — feed him. He had never before sat down beside her. She reached over to stroke him. He hissed, but he did not get up. A moment later Phoebe did. Her head ached from fatigue, from weeping, from making and unmaking decisions, and from hunger. She lifted the latch on the back door very quietly and let herself into the house.

There was no one in the kitchen, and the only light came from the low-burning wood fire on the grate in the big fireplace. Its homey, acrid odour welcomed her. The remains of the evening meal had been laid by on the dresser. Phoebe cut herself a bit of ham with the paring knife that lay beside the plate, and a square of johnnycake, but, after two bites, she put it down.

She took off her shoes and went on tiptoe to the front hall. She started up the stairs. She did not want to go into the parlour. She did not want to look into that room. But George gave her away. He had followed her so closely that she stepped on his foot. He let out a squawk.

“Is that you, Phoebe?” Aunt Rachael came to the doorway. For a moment they stood there without moving, Phoebe with one foot poised to start up the stairs, Aunt Rachael, tall and still, her face ghostly grey behind the flickering light of her candle.

“Where were—” she began.

“I was—” Phoebe started to say.

They both stopped.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Aunt Rachael. “You are here now. Come.” She took Phoebe by the hand, and Phoebe had no choice but to follow her into the parlour.

There, under the front window, was the pine box resting on a pair of saw-horses, the scent of the fresh wood still strong. Phoebe couldn’t help but wonder who in the village had been bold enough to make a coffin for a Loyalist soldier. At either end of it a candle burned brightly in Aunt Rachael’s best pewter candlesticks. Wrapped in a shroud, Gideon’s body lay resting in the coffin. For just one instant Phoebe wanted to rip the shroud away, to look at Gideon’s face once more. Then she remembered, with terrible clarity, what
his face had looked like early that morning. She gripped Aunt Rachael’s hand so hard that Aunt Rachael pulled it away. She put her arm around Phoebe.

Uncle Josiah stood at the far end of the coffin. His head was bowed and he was reading from the Bible in a low, steady voice. Phoebe knelt with her aunt and prayed. She tried to listen to the words Uncle Josiah was reading, but, even more, she wanted to plead with God to be kind to this boy who had loved God’s world so much. It was all she could think, all she could pray about. How Gideon had treasured the plants and animals in the woods! How he wanted to know about them, to understand them! With Aunt Rachael she said the prayer for the repose of Gideon’s soul. Silently, she promised him again that she would finish his work, she would take his message over the mountains to the fort.

As she stood up, she became aware that there was someone else in the room. At first she thought it was Anne and she steeled herself to face her. Then the girl moved into the light of the candle and she saw that it was Polly Grantham. Phoebe went to stand by her. They looked at each other; neither spoke, but Phoebe was sure that Polly felt, too, that they shared a terrible secret. She forced her eyes from Polly’s pain-filled ones. She took her hand in a tight, quick grasp, then turned and fled the room.

Blindly she climbed the stairs to the bedroom she shared with Anne. The fire had died in the hearth and there was only the glow from the embers to see by. Carefully, she tiptoed across the room to the built-in cupboard beside the fireplace. From her corner of it, she took her moccasins and her mother’s tartan wool cloak. The red glow caught the silver clasp in its light, and Phoebe had a fleeting memory of herself, very small, playing with that clasp. She closed her eyes against the pang of longing that the memory brought. Resolutely, she eased the cupboard door closed. One of the hinges squeaked and Anne woke up.

“Who’s there?” Her voice was thick with sleep. She sat up. Phoebe froze. She said nothing. She waited. After a moment or two Anne lay back down, turned over, and went back to sleep. Phoebe tiptoed out of the room. In the next room one of the boys cried out. When there was no other sound, Phoebe went downstairs to the kitchen. She picked up the paring knife to cut a bit of ham, then looked at the bit she had cut earlier and forgotten. She turned away; the sight and the smell of the food had taken all her appetite from her. She stuffed her feet into her moccasins, put her mother’s warm cloak around her over her shawl, squatted down to say goodbye to George, looked around her once more, and slid out the door.

As silently as she had come, she skirted the village street, past the backs of the houses, through barnyards to the brook, bubbling and splashing over the stones, glistening under the stars and a crescent moon. How she longed to follow it down the hill to the river, to go home to Hanover to her own house, to shut the door and never come out. But she had made her mind up. She had made a promise to Gideon. She looked down at the brook.

“This is the way Gideon said to go,” she whispered, “he said to follow the brook west, so that is what I will have to do.”

She turned her steps to the west, up the hill, against the down-rush of the brook, and started forth.

Alone

I
t was a little over fifty miles through the dense wilderness and over high mountains from the Connecticut River to Lake Champlain, where Fort Ticonderoga lies. For a strong, full-grown man, wise in the ways of the woods, it was at least a week’s journey. Phoebe was strong, but she was not quite fifteen, not very tall, and a little plump. What’s more, she had not travelled any farther than Orland Village from Hanover since she’d gone there to live at the age of nine. She had listened, though, because she loved him, to Gideon’s long-winded lectures on woodland life and to her father’s Mohawk students when they talked of home in the Mohawk River valley, in New York, because they spoke of it so glowingly.

But now, faced with a journey she had come to see might take weeks through dark, wild land
full of dangerous animals, she wished desperately that she was an experienced hunter and that she had paid strict attention to Gideon’s every word about forest plants. And winter was not far off.

She tripped over the protruding root of a big tree that grew beside a pool glinting in the moonlight, in a depression halfway up a steep hill. To her dismay, she realized Trout Brook went no farther. She had barely begun her journey and she had reached the end of the brook. She heard again in her tired mind Gideon’s voice. “I mean to follow it one day all the way to Lake Champlain.” And then he had laughed. She hadn’t paid attention to that laugh. Gideon had known Trout Brook would never lead all the way over the high mountains to Lake Champlain — of course, he had. How stupid she felt! Her feet were wet, and she was shivering inside her cloak, despite its warm fur lining. She felt as though she had been running, crawling, stumbling along and into Trout Brook for ever. Once or twice she had lost it because the little light the crescent moon shed did not reach far into the deep woods. Then her ear would pick up the bubbling sound of it as it tumbled over rocks or her foot would slip into it. And now she had come to the end of it.

She dropped beside the pool. “Oh, Father in heaven,” she moaned, “I will surely perish out
here in the wild, of cold or hunger or because a wolf or a catamount will take me.”

There was a sudden rustling in the leaves under a tall bush about a foot from her. She sat up. The hair stood up on the back of her neck. The rustling grew louder. The head of a large house cat emerged from the bush. Phoebe stared at it, weak with relief.

“George?”

His eyes were two glowing coals in the dark. He did not move, but Phoebe knew by the way he thrust his head forward so belligerently that it was George.

“What are you doing here, George?” She reached for him. He darted up a tree, perched himself on a branch just out of reach, and turned his back to her.

“Stay there, then. I am much too tired to even try to fetch you down.” She lay down, rolled her shawl up and put it under her head, pulled her cloak over her, and fell asleep with the soft gurgling sound of the brook in her ear.

She woke, hours later, to see an arrow of sunlight strike a patch of leaves on the ground in front of her. On that bright patch a chipmunk stood on its hind legs, rigid with fear. George crouched, inches away, ready to pounce. Phoebe shot out her hand and grabbed the chipmunk. George’s tail lashed angrily. For a second he looked as though he might lunge at her. Then he
stalked off. She stroked the chipmunk with her finger along its black stripe. “I think you will do nicely now,” she murmured. She lifted her hand. The chipmunk scooted from her lap, leapt onto a nearby log, chittered rapidly at her, then disappeared under the log.

Phoebe got up stiffly. She found a place to pee. She washed her hands and face in the pool, then cupped her hands and drank deeply from the icy water. She shook out her cloak and shawl and put them around her, looking down rue-fully at a rent in her skirt. She sat down and took off her wet stockings and her moccasins. She was glad she had thought to exchange her shoes for the moccasins. “Better in the woods — they make you more sure-footed and make less noise,” Gideon had said approvingly when Peter Sauk brought them to her in thanks for so many dinners.

Dinner. Phoebe did not want to think about dinner. She realized, as she hung her stockings over a bush to dry, that she felt brighter for her drink and her wash in the pool but that she was very hungry. How she wished she had brought with her that ham and johnnycake she had spurned in Aunt Rachael’s kitchen. What was she to do? She knew she had to eat. She looked around her as though a well-stocked larder might suddenly appear among the trees and bushes.

It’s hopeless, she thought. It truly is hopeless. I will have to go back.

Go back. It was, at the same time, a wonderful and a dreadful idea. Anne might already be sorry she had screamed at her and hit her. Anne’s hysteria never lasted very long. And Aunt Rachael would be needing help with the boys. And, oh, the sorrow would not seem so unbearable among the others who had loved Gideon. But, if she went back, she would fail Gideon again and could never atone for having carried that accursed letter to Polly Grantham. And those families who names were on that list would lose everything. No, she could not go back.

But, I must eat, she realized all too painfully, and I must plan. She leaned against a tree while she took stock of her situation. There wasn’t much to take stock of. She had no spare clothes, no provisions or cooking utensils. She had no map to help her find her direction. She had two things: in her pocket she had the tinder-box she had taken from her father’s desk and, amazingly, she had left Orland Village with Aunt Rachael’s paring knife gripped tightly in one hand. Through all those long hours climbing the hills beside Trout Brook she had never let go of it. It had lain beside her while she slept and was there now, on the ground where she had left it. She moved over and picked it up.