“Yes, that’s my understanding.”
Mrs. Varney snorted. “I don’t know how much help she is. Every time you look around there’s a mob of boys around her. Not that I’ve ever heard anything against the girl, mind, but you have to wonder. They always say that where there’s smoke, there’s sure to be fire. You just really have to wonder.”
“Well, no, Mrs. Varney, you don’t. You don’t have to wonder at all.” He nodded his goodbyes and began to walk around the edge of the crowd, many of whom were lighting fires in preparation for the evening meal while giving half an ear to the preacher on the platform.
He stepped around old folks, mothers and babies, and small children playing at the edge of the field. As he picked his way through an entire encampment of what seemed to be one huge, extended family, he stumbled into the small weaselly boy that Rachel had commented on with disgust, who had been picking his way in the opposite direction.
“Isn’t this wonderful,” he exclaimed when he realized that he had bumped into a minister. “It’s incredible to see the spirit of the Lord at work. By the way, I saw that you were standing with Rachel Jessup. You don’t happen to know which way she went, do you?”
So, he had been right. Morgan Spicer’s mind had been on girls instead of on the Lord.
“I believe she’s sitting with her sister-in-law at the other side of the field,” he said. “What did you want her for?”
He seemed a little taken aback at the directness of the question. “Why, to let her know that I’m saved, that I have seen the glory of the Lord. Besides, I have a present for her.”
He opened his hand to show Lewis one of the little pocket-sized books that were for sale all over the campground. This one had a cheap red leather cover, the colour from which was already smudging the boy’s hands. The print inside was minute, so small that he had to squint to make any of it out. It consisted of the Book of Proverbs, an odd choice for a young man to give to a girl, he would have thought. Several sections of the Bible had been bound up separately, some in red covers, some in green, still others in brown, but all of them cheaply made and sure to fall apart with much use. He wondered why these miniature unreadable trinkets were so popular. The young man looked pleased with his purchase, though, so he kept his comments to himself. He shrugged. “Well, carry on then.”
He knew Spicer was expecting him to rejoice, to congratulate him on being saved, but the truth was that he wasn’t at all sure that there was anything to rejoice about. It had happened too easily, in too mealy-mouthed a way to sit comfortably. He’d wait and see the depth of the boy’s commitment before he offered any encouragement.
He kept an eye on the weedy little figure as he continued his journey to the other side of the field, and noted that he was probably far too late to grab much of Rachel’s attention. She was already surrounded by a group of young men and was deep in conversation with one of the Caddick brothers.
VI
Upon his return home the next day, Betsy informed Lewis that some men had come to the house, again asking why her husband had not yet reported to Kingston.
“I told them you’re a minister now and won’t fight. They said it didn’t matter, everyone was to report, and that if you didn’t, it would prove what everybody knows — that the Methodists are traitors. You won’t have to go, will you?”
“I won’t go to fight, but I will have to go to Kingston and straighten it out,” he said. He had put it off too long already. He made arrangements with the local preachers to cover his meetings for a couple of days, repacked his saddle bag, and set off.
As he picked his way along the road, he reflected that, conscience notwithstanding, he was happy of an excuse not to go to war again. He had been a young man when he fought the Americans in 1812, full of himself and ready to achieve glory. The reality of the thing had been quite different than he had imagined: smelly, noisy, chaotic, and at times terrifying. Blood, vomit, and lice had been everyday companions.
When he wasn’t terrified, he had been bored. But it was those moments of terror that stuck with him most, those moments that still caused him to wake from the nightmares in a cold sweat. He had seen legs blown off, a man with half his face shot away, dead bodies stiffening in the winter wind.
He’d got off lucky, in a way. He had fallen ill — a malady that later proved to be typhus — and he had been invalided home. After he had recovered, he’d begun to drink and had been drunk for fifty days straight, he was told, though he could scarcely remember any of it. He could only recall not wanting to remember anything about the war. After he recovered from his binge, he’d found both Betsy and the Lord in the same week. He felt sure that the juxtaposition was no accident. Without Betsy, he would never have realized the depths he’d sunk to; without the Lord, he wasn’t sure that Betsy would have given him the time of day.
He was perspiring by the time he reached the gates of the stone fort at Kingston, even though it was a brisk day and the wind was switching to the north. He asked the sentry if he could speak with the officer in charge.
“Why do you want him?” the sentry asked in that arrogant and challenging way that soldiers adopt when dealing with civilians.
“That’s my business,” Lewis replied.
“Are you ex-militia? If you’re militia that’s been called, you have to wait in the ready room.”
“I’m ex-militia, but I have no intention of being called.”
“You’ll have to wait in the ready room.”
Lewis shrugged and went in the direction the sentry pointed.
It was cold in the room; no one had made a fire for the soldiers being called in. The place was overflowing with grumbling farmers and tradesmen who were annoyed at the time that was being wasted while work waited for them at home. Lewis finally found a seat beside an old man who must have been seventy if he was a day.
“Good afternoon,” the man said pleasantly, “although it could well be good evening by now.”
“How long have you been waiting?” Lewis asked him.
“I got here this morning.”
This was unwelcome news. Lewis had been hoping to dispatch his business in a few minutes and be on his way back home.
“Are you here for the fighting?” the old man wanted to know. “They say the Americans are coming across to burn Kingston.”
“I was supposed to be, since I’m a militia veteran, but I won’t fight again. I’m a Methodist Episcopal minister, and I’m here to get an exemption.”
The man peered at him closely, and Lewis realized that he was half-blind, his eyes clouded with a milky film. “Oh, I should have seen that you’re a man of the cloth. Of course you won’t fight, or at least not for anything less than men’s souls, eh?”
“I should have thought that there was an age exemption as well,” Lewis said.
“Oh, there is, there is. I ignored it. I don’t hold with revolutions or with Americans invading either, for that matter. Don’t care how bad things are, there’s no call for armed insurrection. Nasty things happen during revolutions, I tell you. Nasty, nasty things.”
Lewis took a guess. “Loyalist?”
“And proud of it. I was a young man back then in Dutchess County, New York. Had a wife and two children already. Damn Yankees came and took all my livestock on the first go round, then they came back and took the farm, too. I’d have stayed out of it if I could, but they didn’t leave me much choice. Fought with Rogers’ Rangers on the British side just to get back at them. Settled up here on land the government gave me for fighting. Fought them again in 1812 … lost my oldest son in that one … and I’m telling you, I’ll fight them again tomorrow before I let