Peter Loon (23 page)

There was a voice from across the hall, and he approached the parlor on the other side of the house, hoping to find the sisters, or Martha perhaps. James stood outside the parlor door, which was shut, and the young man appeared as if there were something on the toe of his boot that fascinated him. Peter realized that the boy was in an attitude of concentration, and that the voice of one of the sisters was coming from behind the door.

James looked up at Peter with a sly smile, and said in a whisper, “Emily says Sussanah should leave you be.”

Peter was astonished. “She does?”

“They drove me out,” hushed James, not at all ashamed to be caught eavesdropping, “and I pretended to walk down the hall.”

“You did?” Peter felt his scalp stiffen.

“Emily says it was Nora you rescued, and that Sussanah should leave you be.” James's voice had unconsciously risen in volume and the voices behind the door had correspondingly silenced. “Are you fixed on Nora, then?” wondered James, all mischief, but Peter had turned face about and was following Captain Clayden and Parson Leach to the kitchen.

PETER THOUGHT HIS HEART COULD FALL NO FURTHER, CONCERNING
the events of the afternoon, till Parson Leach told Nora that he and Peter would be leaving. Tears coursed down her face and she trembled so that Peter feared she might fall into convulsions again; but Sussanah and Martha gathered round her and let her cling to them while she wept. Emily appeared more puzzled than troubled, and she watched Peter throughout this with an interest he could not interpret. He feared that Parson Leach might ask him to stay, for Nora's sake, and indeed, the man turned to him with question on his face, but said nothing.

“She will be fine,” Captain Clayden insisted, several times over. There were tears in the old man's eyes, and he blinked energetically before turning away.

Mrs. Magnamous prepared them a cold supper and after grace, Peter and the parson ate mainly in silence till James sat with them, wishing aloud that he could go as well. He had gleaned enough from the conversation in his grandfather's den–some of which, to be honest, he may have overheard from the hall–that he believed Parson Leach and Peter were standing into adventure, and James very nearly said as much.

“Getting to New Milford tonight by moonlight will prove enterprise enough for me,” said the parson.

Emily turned up next in the kitchen and, deflecting Mrs. Magnamous's mandate to “let the poor souls eat in peace,” asked the parson and Peter if they would be coming back.

“I can't promise where I'll be led next,” said Parson Leach, “but I'll return in season, God willing.”

“I must come back to return these clothes,” said Peter, still astonished by the fine things he was wearing. When he first arrived, Emily and the other young Clayden women might have imagined that the state of his apparel had been the consequence of his recent encounter with Nathan Barrow and his men, and of the rigors of the road; by now they must realize that they were his only garments. His father's coat, in fact, had been the finest thing he had ever worn till he came here.

“Did you get that scar rescuing Nora?” asked Emily.

“Peter will be back,” said the parson, before the young man could respond.

Emily appeared satisfied with this. She sat at the table and watched them eat.

“How
is
Nora?” asked Peter, though he could almost believe the question implicated him somehow.

“She fell asleep,” said Emily. “Sussanah says that Mamma used to cry like that when Papa left for sea, but he takes her with him, now he's a captain.”

This intelligence did not ease Peter's heart. Rather than separate him from what happened on the river bank, the ensuing hours had obscured his memories of how it came to pass; the gaps in his recollection had filled with self-damning possibilities, and he began to place an increasing weight of blame for the unpleasantness upon his own shoulders. His self-accusation was not tempered by flashes of other feelings when he recalled Nora's kiss, or when he experienced a physical memory of her body beneath his.

They avoided the parlor when they were finished with their meal, but came into the Captain's den another way. The parson presented Captain Clayden with a bound and beribboned volume of
Don Quixote
, and refused any recompense for it. The Captain's eyes lit with pleasure and anticipation, and clearly he would have liked to sit with the book then and there, and to leaf its pages lovingly. He laid it aside, however, and offered Parson Leach and Peter his hand.

“I've had Ebulon saddle a horse for you, Peter,” he said. Peter had no idea what to say, but stammered his thanks several times over. “Bring it back in your own time, lad. With a horse under you, you'll be that much quicker coming to the next person's rescue.” This last was said with humor, though not without a touch of real regard mixed with it. “I hope you find your uncle,” said the elderly fellow finally. He did not see them beyond his den, and when they left the room Peter thought that, if he looked back, Captain Clayden would already be ensconced in his chair, perusing his new and beloved book.

The temperature had dropped considerably since Peter came in that afternoon. Their breath puffed before them. The sun had set behind the western ridge some time ago, and the last glow of it underlit a bank of airy clouds. Stars had already broken through a blue-black canvas to the east. In the darkening yard, Ebulon Magnamous waited by Mars and another horse, which was called Beam for the streak of white across its otherwise brown forehead. The animal was a good deal smaller than Mars, but Peter felt she had a sturdy carriage and a steady gait as he moved her in a circle through the yard. He was not an experienced horseman, certainly not in a saddle, but he had always liked horses and he found riding natural enough. He begged a length of rope from Ebulon and with this tied his father's hat and coat in a roll at the back of the saddle.

Peter could see the silhouettes of Emily, Sussanah, and Martha at the parlor window as he and Parson Leach bid goodbye to Ebulon. Mrs. Magnamous waved to the departing guests from the door, and they waved, in a general way, to the entire house as they left the yard.

Parson Leach led the way, past the barn and down a sloping pasture, across a gully and up again. They crossed a road and traveled, to the tune of a barking dog or two, by several houses. A steep ridge loomed against the retreating light, till it was like night itself approaching. When they reached a line of hardwood at the foot of the slope, the parson climbed down from Mars, and Peter followed him as they led their mounts among the trees. Half way up the ridge, they came to a brush fence and skirted it to the north till they reached a stile that the horses could clamber over. Then the slope steepened and by the time they achieved the top of it, Peter was all too glad to climb atop Beam again.

From the height of this ridge, the first light of the rising moon was visible over the rim of the east, but they left the pale light behind as they advanced into the shadow of the land. The parson drew Mars up at the next knoll, and Peter reined in beside him. Stretching a mile or so to the west, and a good deal further to the north, was a treeless progression of low hills, where the night wind could fan the grasses unhindered. Peter strained his eyes in the dimness, but understood that the fields were clear of stumps as well as trees; it was by far the largest, most immaculate expanse of pasture he had ever seen.

“It's handsome, isn't it,” said the parson. “But it's nothing, I've been told, to the miles of treeless fields, west of the Ohio. They call them prairies.”

Peter had known the close attendance of the forests all his life, with only an acre here or there that had been cleared of stumps; he felt a little dizzy looking out over the rolling fields, as if he might topple from that knoll and fall head first into them. He hardly liked to think of the parson's prairies; the very notion of them was overwhelming.

“They call this Great Meadow,” said Parson Leach, “and that crease running north to south is Great Meadow Brook. Beyond–though you can't see it from here–is the Dyers River Valley, and the Sheepscott Valley after that.”

Peter did his best to discern what the parson was signifying, but it was difficult to tell the further swells of land from the sky. Stars came to life, even as they watched, and several other lights–the lamp in a window, or the flicker of a distant hearth–also prinked the darkness. The wind, moving among the grasses, made a sound unfamiliar to Peter, and it added to the sense of something remote to his previous experience.

“If we head north,” said the parson, “we'll strike a track that will take us north and west, then, to a tavern where the New Milford folk will be meeting.”

Peter couldn't have guessed that there was something like a single road between the coastal waters and the backcountry.

“This path we're on now,” added the parson, “was tromped down by an old reverend in the days a gun was necessary to ward off Indians. He traveled between two parishes in his day, and its been known as Parson's Path ever since.”

So, they nudged their mounts north, and in this expanse of field, Parson Leach slowed Mars's natural pace so that Peter could comfortably keep up, astride of Beam. As their horses' hooves realized separate cadences, Peter fell to wondering on the richness of these acres; how difficult it was, in Sheepscott Great Pond and the other backcountry settlements, to scrape enough feed from a few rocky acres to keep a cow or two, and maybe a horse over a winter. But here, he thought, was pasture for an entire village and more.

They came to the track the parson had spoken of and their speed increased. Peter saw a bluish light to his right, but couldn't find it again when he turned his head. He nudged Beam up beside Mars.

“Something happened this afternoon, Parson,” he said.

“What did you say, Peter?”

“Something happened,” he said again, his own voice unnerving him a little in that open expanse. “This afternoon.”

“Did it?”

“Yes.” Peter wondered that the parson seemed uninterested.

But the parson was merely thinking, perhaps, for in another moment, he said, “To do with Nora?”

“Yes,” said Peter, a little startled, “to do with Nora,” and he wondered, Had she spoken to Parson Leach already?

“Did she tell you something, then?” asked the clergyman.

“No.” There was a silence that Peter found awkward. The parson moved Mars to more speed, and when Peter spoke again, his voice jounced with the gait of his mount, as if he were out of breath. “We went out of doors to eat–by the river, on a quilt.”

“So I was told. You're learning of the prosperous folk.”

“We played some games,” said Peter, feeling bashful to tell the parson.

“Hide and seek, no wonder,” said the parson.

“Yes! That was one of them!”