Peter Loon (12 page)

The rooms upstairs were small and without fires, but each shared a portion of chimney and something like warmth emanated from the bricks next to the pinebox bed, which was covered with a thin down mattress and some wool blankets. There was a single window of nine tiny panes. Simple as it all was, it was more than Peter was accustomed to, and he stood by the door while Parson Leach sat down and hauled off his own boots. “Are we sleeping here?” asked the young man.

“It puts a heap of oak leaves to shame, doesn't it, lad. I'll wake up and think I've a church and a congregation.”

The jest put Peter in mind of an earlier conversation. “This morning,” he said, “Mr. Cutts said you couldn't be a Congregationalist, because you preach from the saddle.”

“Yes,” said Parson Leach.

“But Mr. Barrow called you a Congregationalist, and Miss Tillage, this afternoon, said something like it and more.”

“So you
were
down by the lake with the girl,” said the parson.

“I didn't know she was there,” said Peter, which was more or less the truth.

“There's no harm, in my experience, talking to a young woman. Yours is more seemly companionship than what she keeps, I'd guess.”

“She said her father gave her up.”

Parson Leach put his stockinged feet on the floor, lowered his head and rubbed his brow. “Lord preserve us!” he said under his breath. As he drew his hand down over his face, he looked up at Peter, wondering perhaps what the young man understood. “We take more note of difference than similarity, Peter,” he said, choosing to answer the original problem.

Peter frowned and shook his head.

“We most of us walk on two legs, lad, and speak with our mouths, and breathe with our lungs, but ever since Cain and Abel, we ask each other, Which are you? Are you the hunter or the farmer? Are you Catholic or Greek? Are you Reform or Catholic? Are you Church of England or Puritan? Are you Puritan or anything
but
Puritan?” The clergyman leaned his sharp elbows on his bony knees and gazed, almost with longing, toward the wall. “And here we've asked, are you Patriot or Loyalist? Federalist or Jeffersonian? And now, are you Congregationalist or Evangelical? The words get longer, is all.”

“Are you?”

“What?” Parson Leach's tone was sharp. Peter did not respond, and the preacher's expression softened. “I read the Bible and distrust sudden conversions of bitter men, and that view, lad, would suspicion a backcountry evangelist. But I ride a horse and preach where I may, without benefit of established church or diocese, which makes me unwelcome among the Congregationalists. Neither worship claims me, yet I preach in similarity to both. We all claim Christ!”

“But is there such difference between them?” asked Peter.

“Twins will argue whose mother was prettiest,” said Parson Leach, almost with a laugh, and when Peter frowned again, the gaunt fellow said, “Men often fight most fiercely over the smallest differences.” The clergyman threw off his coat and crossed around to the other side of the bed. “Though I fear
this
difference in land and claim is not so slight.”

“It seems strange, Mr. Tillage's daughter with Mr. Barrow,” said Peter, proving that he was himself capable of digression.

“I dare say it is,” said the parson, without having to think very long on the subject.

“I thought they might be married, too.”

“I thought they
should
be, perhaps.”

Peter felt something tighten inside of him, and he had to clear his throat before he spoke. “They say Mr. Barrow is a preacher.”

Parson Leach lay back on his side of the bed with a sigh. “He is an Antinomianist,” and he hardly gave Peter the chance to show his nescience before he let out a short laugh and explained, “He believes that once he has been covered by God's Grace, he is no longer bound by moral law. His sins past
and
future are wiped clean, so since he
has
salvation, it matters not how he sins.”

“But that would include murder!”

“Well,” said the parson, one arm over his eyes, “he must still consider the law of the land, I suppose. But, yes, that would include any outrage.”

“I can see how such a belief might draw folks,” said Peter, innocent of humor. The
tap tap
of rain at the window startled him.

Parson Leach peeked from beneath his arm to see just how innocent a person could be, and the sight of Peter's honest astonishment made him smile again.

“I thought she was frightened of him,” said Peter, unnoticing. His head still throbbed.

The preacher let out a wordless sound; the smile left his face and he covered his eyes once more. “He frightens
me,”
said Parson Leach.

Peter lay down and tried to imagine what it would take to frighten Parson Leach, which was about as much as it would take to frighten his mother, he guessed.

When Peter was only nine or ten, a wild-haired self-proclaimed prophet had come to Sheepscott Great Pond, but Rosemund Loon had kept her family from the fiery meetings the man held in the settlement. The man appeared, one afternoon, at Loon Farm, and standing before the front door he threatened the entire family with damnation and hellfire if they did not attend his next gathering. “Get him away, Silas,” said Rosemund Loon evenly to her husband, “or I will brain him with a kettle,” and she disappeared into the cabin.

Peter's father had done his best to reason with the man, but to no avail, and soon Rosemund flew out of the cabin with the promised article of cookery. She had very nearly proved as good as her word, and the prophet of Sheepscott Great Pond scurried off in the direction of Beaver Hill, jumping stumps and dodging brushpiles like a deer.

Having only run about half a mile or so, Rosemund Loon had returned, calm as ever. Peter's father had smiled just a little when she went back inside and he allowed how the matter had been “good for all involved.” Half asleep, Peter smiled just a little to recall his father's face as he said this.

Sometime in the night, Peter woke to find the shadows strange in the room. He peered out from beneath his half closed eyes and eventually located the parson, who was sitting on the floor with a single candle beside him, his spectacles on his nose and a book in his hands.

“ARE YOU COMING WITH ME?”

Peter Loon came awake with Parson Leach shaking him by the shoulder.

“With you?”

“Are you coming with me, lad? You've time for some breakfast before we leave.”

The quality of light through the single window was not encouraging; the sun, which would not be seen today, had hardly raised its head above the curve of the earth. Peter could hear rain rattling the isinglass panes.

“Are you coming with me?” asked the parson again.

“Yes,” said Peter, and the clergyman seemed satisfied. He tossed Peter's coat at him, gathered his own kit and left the room.

A few minutes later, Peter hurried down the outer staircase and into the tavern. He was surprised to find Manasseh Cutts and Crispin Moss sitting at the table nearest the fire. Peter greeted them and looked around for Parson Leach.

“He's gone for his horse,” said Manasseh. “He said, ask for some breakfast in the kitchen.”

Peter stumbled at the threshold as he stepped into the room at the rear of the tavern. Something had been left to burn in the fireplace and Mr. Tillage was berating one of his children for the transgression. The taverner stood straight and looked at Peter.

“Parson Leach said to get some breakfast,” said Peter.

Mr. Tillage took a sausage out of a pot and wrapped some bread around it. He placed this in Peter's one hand and pressed an apple into the other. The back door opened and Nora Tillage, damp from the rain and looking like a sleepless night, stepped inside with an armload of wood. She paused just long enough, at the sight of Peter, for her father to take note. “Leave it there,” he said, hooking a thumb at the kitchen fireplace. “Go see to the hogs.”

The young woman tossed the wood on the pile by the hearth, then scooped up a bucket of slops and hurried out with only a quick glance at those behind her.

“Can I help with the firewood?” asked Peter.

“Lad,” said Mr. Tillage, “I want nothing disagreeable with Mr. Leach or any of his friends, but you're not to be talking with Nora.”

Peter just blinked. He wondered how many people had noticed him down on the shore the day before.

“You're leaving with Mr. Leach?” asked the taverner.

Peter nodded.

“Well, God speed, then,” said Mr. Tillage and he turned his back on the young man.

“Mr. Cutts and Mr. Moss have elected to join us,” said Parson Leach, when Peter stepped out the front door. The clergyman had on a hooded cape against the rain and he was tying off his saddlebags and checking his gear and musket, which was wrapped now in a fringed leather sheath.

“Where are we going?” asked Peter. He tugged on his father's hat and joined the three men in the wet yard.

“New Milford.” Parson Leach made no wasted motions, and in fact seemed to be in a hurry to leave, despite the weather, though nothing he did in particular could be called rushing.

Peter went over to the trough, which was dancing with rain, and drank a handful or two of water to help down the sausage and bread. He was surprised when he looked up and discovered Nora Tillage standing a few feet away with the empty slop bucket. Peter hesitated between retreat and greeting. She hardly acknowledged his presence, at first, and only looked at him glancingly; but she said, before she turned and hurried off, “Are you with Parson Leach, then?”

“Yes,” he answered, and would have said more, but she was gone.

“What was that?” asked Parson Leach over Mars's back, and when Peter told him, he said, “Your questions last night convicted me, lad. I spoke to her father this morning, first thing, but he is adamant that his own salvation rests on doing as Nathan Barrow deems fit. So Lot would give up his daughters to Sodom.” He tightened a strap with rather more firmness than he had intended, and needed to let it out. “But I did speak to him,” he added. “Sometimes a word does not have a straightforward effect.”

Manasseh Cutts had a horse himself, this morning, and he was mounted and ready to go, hunching in the rain with the water dripping from his battered three-cornered hat. Again Peter looked curious, squinting up at the old woodsman. Manasseh said, “Crispin's family was cleared out, and not a one of them left behind. A land agent came with the sheriff and demanded they pay or abandon their farm, so they packed up and headed for the backcountry to start again. Two or three weeks ago, this was. We doled most of the buck out to the neighbors.”

“There's been more news from New Milford since last night,” said Parson Leach to Peter. “Throw this over your shoulders,” he said, tossing a blanket at the young man. “It'll keep the rain off you–for a bit.”