Abiding Peace (14 page)

Samuel smiled. “Here we’ve stood idle while you children worked. I shall stay and help Miss Christine husk the corn.”

“You shall do no such thing.” She stood and brushed off her skirt. “You shall go and study, and we shall husk the corn.”

The next day, the minister and Ben left with William Heard and Joseph Paine for Portsmouth, pledging to bring back a magistrate or the promise of one’s soon arrival. Christine took her quilt and her few extra garments and moved into the parsonage, expecting the pastor to return by Saturday evening.

The pilfering in the village had ceased, but gossip ran rampant. Tabitha and Jane brought Christine reports of what was whispered at clotheslines behind the cottages. The outlaw the Reverend Jewett had captured was behind it all. Goodwives cudgeled their memories and pulled out anecdotes describing items they had lost over the past few months and ascribed them to McDowell’s evil doings. Christine had to laugh when she heard old Mrs. Squires say McDowell had surely stolen her hoarded pouch of coins. The woman’s savings had disappeared more than a year earlier, long before McDowell came to Cochecho, and on the same day, as it happened, that her knave of a son had run off.

Christine, ten-year-old John, and the three Jewett girls spent a quiet day on Friday, working in the garden and about the house. Abby had a weaving lesson in the afternoon, and Goody Deane came over to partake of supper with them. Christine urged the old woman to spend the night with them, but she refused, saying she would sleep better in her own bed.

In truth, Christine was anxious about where she would sleep that night. No matter what the reverend had said before he left, she could not stay in his room. The very thought made perspiration break out on her brow. His chamber and that occupied by his daughters were built the year before, added on to the parsonage by the men of the parish. The cramped family had sorely needed the extra space. However, Christine was sure the parson must feel quite lonely now, with a fine bedchamber all to himself. She thought it a pity that he and his dear wife had slept on a pallet in the great room, and the new chambers were only constructed after Elizabeth’s death.

John solved her problem when bedtime neared. His tone held a note of jest, but Christine felt he half meant it when he said, “I shall miss old Ben tonight. What shall I do, tossing about all alone up there in the loft?”

“What, afraid of the dark?” Abby asked.

“Nay.”

Christine said, “I expect he feels as you would if Constance and Ruth were elsewhere tonight.” She smiled at John. “I tell you what. Would you like to sleep down here by the hearth, as you and Ben used to do when you were younger? We shan’t keep a fire tonight—’tis too warm. You may set up your wooden soldiers on the stones, and I shall climb the ladder and sleep above.”

“You, Miss Christine?” Constance asked, her eyes round with wonder.

“Aye. Not much more than a year past I slept up there every night with you and your sisters. Have you forgotten?”

Constance’s face darkened. “Aye. When Mama was with us.”

“That’s right.” Christine infused her voice with cheerfulness. “And I shall do it again tonight.”

“May we sleep up there with you?” Abby asked eagerly.

“Me, too,” Ruth cried.

Christine caught her breath. Would the pastor approve? She had feared that the funeral they attended the previous day had reminded the children strongly of their mother’s service last year. The diversion of sleeping in the loft would certainly keep the little girls from thinking about the morbid events they had witnessed lately.

“All right. And when we’ve settled our bedding up there, I shall tell you all a story, and then John shall come down and blow out the candles, and we shall all sleep well.”

It happened just that way, and even Christine did not lie awake long. After a sincere prayer for the safety of the men who went to Portsmouth and a petition for the outlaw’s soul, she drifted into slumber.

She had barely dressed and got the fire going the next morning, when a quiet knock came at the door.

John scurried to open it and admitted Stephen Dudley, who was now seventeen years old and living quietly with his parents and sister. However, from his tenth year to his fifteenth, he had dwelt among the Algonquin in Quebec and had made the choice to return on his own a few months after Christine had come to Cochecho. “Good day, Miss Hardin.”

“Good morning, Stephen. You’re about early.” Christine noticed that he carried a large basket. “May I help you?”

“Be the pastor at home?”

“Nay. He’s gone to Portsmouth with Mr. Heard and Mr. Paine and Ben to fetch the magistrate.”

Stephen’s mouth tightened. “I’d best go to Captain Baldwin then, I suppose.”

Christine’s curiosity was piqued. “Is there anything I can do? The pastor will return this evening, I expect.”

“Some of us poked about yesterday afternoon, near the place where Pastor Jewett flushed out the knave, and we found a camp.”

“A camp?”

“Aye. Someone had stayed there. Built a fire and made a bed of pine boughs.” He pulled a dirty, ragged blanket out of the basket. “This were nearby.”

Christine drew in her breath. Filthy though it was, she recognized the old blanket she had left for the outlaw.

“And this.” Stephen lifted the basket toward her. “I found the basket beside his fire ring. Think you it belonged to Goody Ackley?”

Christine grasped the corner of the table to steady herself. The basket indeed resembled the one she had often seen the late Mahalia Ackley carry about the village.

“It may well be hers. Perhaps you should take it to her husband and ask him.”

Stephen hesitated. “I could do that.”

Christine sensed that, in spite of his adventures and his solitary travel for hundreds of miles through the woods, the young man was reluctant to face Roger Ackley alone. He had probably hoped the minister would accompany him.

“I could go with you,” she offered.

Stephen’s expression cleared at once, telling her she had assumed correctly. Stephen disliked the thought of confronting the bereaved man and perhaps suffering further disparagement from his acerbic tongue.

“John,” Christina said to the boy, who had hovered near and listened to their exchange, “run yonder and fetch Goody Deane, if you please. Your sisters will be rising soon, and I don’t like to leave you four alone while I run this errand.”

While John ran across the street, she hung up her apron and fetched her shawl. Though the sun was well up, the air promised to be less stifling than it had been lately. She wished she had some fresh baking to take to the widower, but she had none.

“Shall I ask Captain Baldwin to accompany us?” Stephen asked.

It would take him time to go to Baldwin’s house and back, but it sounded like a wise idea to Christine. “Perhaps you could go now and speak to him. I shall stay until Goody Deane is here, and then I’ll meet you on the path to Goodman Ackley’s. Oh, and Stephen …”

He had turned to leave, but swung around to look at her.

“You needn’t take the blanket. That came from this house.”

“Ah.” He held it out.

She took it with distaste and wadded it into the corner where dirty laundry awaited her ministrations.

Stephen left, carrying the basket, and Christine set about cooking cornmeal mush for the children’s breakfast. John soon came racing back, with Tabitha Deane hobbling along behind him.

Christine stood in Goodman Ackley’s house a half hour later with the owner, Stephen, Captain Baldwin, and Alice Stevens. Christine was surprised that they found Alice there, with the mistress of the house dead and buried, but on their arrival Alice left her work in the garden and joined them inside.

Baldwin handed the basket Stephen had found to Goodman Ackley. “Be this not the market basket your wife always carried to the trader?”

Alice gasped and covered her hand with her mouth, staring at the basket.

Ackley appeared to study it with care, fingering the woven reeds. “It might be that,” he said at last.

Baldwin fixed his gaze on the maid. “What say you, Miss Stevens? Be this your late mistress’s basket?”

“Aye. The mistress had it on her arm the day she left here.” Alice looked away.

“Young Dudley found it in a thicket near where we caught the prisoner,” Baldwin said. “There were a blanket and the remains of a fire near it.”

Goodman Ackley’s eyes took on an interest. “Then he did it. That man, McDowell. It were his camp, where he lurked. And he went about his nefarious business from there, no doubt.”

“But your wife’s body was found at least a mile from there, much nearer this house.”

“He stole her basket of provisions,” Ackley said, nodding eagerly. He looked again at the basket, peering inside it. “Yes, it’s Mahalia’s. Don’t you see? She’d been to the trading post, and he attacked her as she made her way home. He took what she’d bought. Ye didn’t find any packages of food lying about, did you?”

Baldwin looked at Stephen, and he shook his head. “I’ll go with Stephen and examine the spot myself,” the captain said. “But whatever foodstuff the thief didn’t use may have been ravaged by animals.”

Stephen said nothing.

Christine hoped this evidence would not hang McDowell. It seemed rather thin to her, when a man’s life was at stake. As they were leaving, she said to Baldwin, “Mayhap we should keep the basket as evidence for the magistrate?”

“Aye, you may be right. Do you mind, Ackley?”

The farmer shook his head.

They set out along the road to the village. When they were out of sight of the Ackley farm, Stephen said to the captain, “What think ye, sir?”

Baldwin frowned. “I’m not sure yet, Stephen. Let us wait and see what the future brings.”

Christine looked at them in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

The captain stopped and eyed her soberly. “Stephen told me that he and his brother went over that area in the woods yesterday, after the funeral service. They found the outlaw’s camp then.”

“But … Stephen only came to us this morning with the basket.”

“Aye. The basket were not there when they went yesterday.”

“I only went back this morning at dawn to be sure we hadn’t overlooked anything,” Stephen said. “We’d found the blanket, but it was an old rag.” He hesitated, throwing her a look of embarrassment.

“Aye, so it was,” she said. “That is why I gave him that one when he demanded a blanket, and not one of the parson’s or Goody Deane’s good quilts.”

Baldwin nodded. “When Stephen came to me this morning with that basket, I knew something was up.”

“It was lying right beside the blanket,” Stephen said. “We’d have tripped over it if it had been there yesterday.”

Baldwin fixed them both with a somber look. “Let us keep this among the three of us. We shall let the parson and the constable be privy to it when they return, but none other, saving the magistrate. Agreed?”

Stephen and Christine nodded gravely.

Samuel strode swiftly with his son along the dusty road toward Cochecho. Paine and Heard had elected to stay in Portsmouth over the weekend in order to do some business on Monday, but Samuel had to be back in time to preach his sermons on Sunday. He and Ben had taken a boat to Dover Point but had to walk the last few miles to the village. They should reach home before sunset.

Home. Thoughts of the humble parsonage now included Christine, and the knowledge that she and the other children waited there for his return. He knew she took good care of John and the three girls in his absence, just as he knew she prayed for his safety. She had perhaps done a washing today, or maybe she had baked. She had surely prepared the meals and supervised the children in sweeping the floor and washing the dishes. If nothing pressing called her attention, she might be sitting right now mending, or more likely, weaving.

Christine. The parsonage would not be home without her.

And yet, he might lose her soon. Samuel felt keenly the possibility that she might leave his employ. She had said nothing to that effect, and yet … He had promised to help find the truth in McDowell’s case. If the outlaw were proved innocent, would Christine champion him and perhaps set her affections on him? It was unthinkable…. The man was a thief, if nothing more. And yet Samuel still considered it.

On the other hand, if McDowell were found guilty of Mahalia Ackley’s murder, Christine might be angry. In spite of her meekness yesterday morning, did she resent Samuel’s role in capturing the outlaw? Would she deny his guilt even if the magistrate and a jury declared it? If so, she might not wish to be around the pastor anymore.

The thought caused him to slow his steps. Christine now held a firm place in his heart, as well as in his home. He didn’t want that to change, unless … How good it would be for the children if she were his wife!

“Father?” Ben was eyeing him carefully.

“What is it, son?”

“You seem distracted, Father.”

“Aye. Long thoughts. Let us hasten. I long to be home with my family.”

Ben seemed to have no objection, and they hurried forward.

An hour later, they reached the village. Samuel’s steps were slower. It had been a long and tiring day. But his spirits rose when he saw Constance and John come running around the corner of his house. Beyond, Christine followed more slowly from the vegetable patch with Ruth clinging to her hand.