THE PECULIAR PEOPLE

A Novel

by JAN DE HARTOG





Physically Handicapped, by the American
Printing House for the Blind, 1996.













Copyright 1992 by
Jan de Hartog

All rights reserved.
BOOK JACKET INFORMATION

THE PECULIAR PEOPLE

"Jan de Hartog is a magnificent
storyteller. Like the ancient mariner, he holds
you with his glittering eye and his stirring tales."
--New York Times

The Peculiar People completes Jan de
Hartog's three-volume epic of Quaker
life in America, which began with his best-selling
The Peaceable Kingdom. The Civil War is
still twenty-five years away, but the Abolitionist
movement is gaining in strength and popularity. The
Society of Friends (or "Peculiar People," as
they wryly refer to themselves) struggles to maintain
its nonviolent way of life as the bitter
debates over slavery and the abuse of American
Indians that are beginning to tear the nation apart rage
within this closed community as well.
Determined to heal the Quakers' rift are
Mordecai Monk, a charismatic preacher
battling his own personal demons, and Lydia
Best, a single-minded idealist who listens to no
one but her conscience and her God. Upholding a
centuries-old treaty of friendship, Mordecai
and Lydia join a convoy of Mahanoy Indians
who are being evicted by the United States
Cavalry from their ancient hunting grounds.
As they share the Mahanoys' suffering,
Mordecai and Lydia achieve a personal
triumph of faith and deed, and the Society of
Friends renews its own compassion and nobility of
spirit. De Hartog weaves this dramatic tale
into the very fabric of the American experience: the
aspiration to settle a great continent, the desire
to do God's will, and the need to be human.
The Peculiar People stands fully on its own
as a novel. It is also part of a true epic, the
dramatic adventures and spiritual strivings of those
known as Quakers.

Jan de Hartog, born in Haarlem,
Holland, the second son of a Calvinist minister
and a Quaker mother, ran off to sea at the age of
ten. At sixteen he entered Amsterdam Naval
College, ending up as a junior mate in the
Dutch oceangoing tugboat service. When war
broke out in 1940, and Holland was occupied by the
Nazis, de Hartog was trapped in his
native country. During this time he wrote and
published his first major novel, Holland's
Glory, which became an instant and historic
best-seller and a symbol of the Dutch Resistance;
the German occupying forces banned the book in
1942, but it went on selling in large
quantities in the underground market. When he
escaped to London in 1943, he was appointed
war correspondent for the Dutch merchant marine.
There he gathered the material for his postwar
novels The Distant Shore, The
Captain, and The Commodore.
In the late sixties de Hartog, himself a
Quaker, undertook the ambitious project of a
multivolume novel on the history of the
Religious Society of Friends. The
Peaceable Kingdom was the first book, followed
by The Lamb's War.
De Hartog has written many plays, among
which the most famous is The Fourposter, which won
a Tony in 1951 and was later turned into the
musical I Do! I Do!, and several
volumes of essays, the best known being A
Sailor's Life (memories of life at
sea before World War II) and The Children (a
personal record for the benefit of the adoptive
parents of Asian children).
In 1953, de Hartog was made an officer
of the French Academy. In 1983, he was
nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
BOOKS BY
JAN DE HARTOG

The Peculiar People
The Centurion
The Commodore
Star of Peace
The Trail of the Serpent
The Lamb's War
The Peaceable Kingdom
The Children
The Captain
The Call of the Sea (including The Lost
Sea, The Distant Shore, A Sailor's
Life)
The Hospital
The Artist
Waters of the New World
The Inspector
The Spiral Road
A Sailor's Life
The Little Ark
The Distant Shore
The Lost Sea

PLAYS:

William and Mary
The Fourposter
Skipper Next to God
This Time Tomorrow
SPECIAL SYMBOL USED
IN THIS VOLUME

@ (4) Accent sign. Placed immediately before the
letter marked with an accent in print.




















CONTENTS

Chapter Page

VOLUME I

Author's Note ................. xiii

1 Birmingham, England, December
1832 ........................... 1
2 Birmingham, England, December
1832 .......................... 16
3 London, England, March 1833 .... 35
4 Philadelphia, May 1833 ..... 53
5 Pendle Hill, Indiana, June
1833 .......................... 70
6 Pendle Hill, Indiana, June
1833 .......................... 96
7 Pendle Hill, Indiana, June
1833 ......................... 126

VOLUME II

8 Philadelphia, July 1833 ... 177
9 Pendle Hill, Indiana, August

Chapter Page
1833 ......................... 195
10 Richmond, Indiana, September
1833 ......................... 245
11 Pendle Hill Forest, September
1833 ......................... 270
12 The Prairie, September 1833

VOLUME III

12 The Prairie, September 1833
(continued) ...................... 351
13 The Prairie, October 1833 .. 371
14 Pendle Hill, Indiana,
October 1833 ................. 415
15 The Banks of the Mississippi,
November 1833 ................ 449
16 Pendle Hill, Indiana,
December 1833 ................ 479
17 Pendle Hill, Indiana,
January 1834 ................. 490
18 Philadelphia, January 1834
19 The Prairie, May 1834 ..... 522


This braille edition contains the entire text of the
print edition.
Author's Note

This is a novel, a story about people who lived a
century and a half ago. Like all of us, they had
ancestors whose lives shaped them, and
descendants whose lives they molded. The
salient difference between them and the majority of
humanity is that they were Quakers and lived at a
dramatic time for the Society of Friends and for
America.
It was over three hundred years ago that the name
"Quaker" was first used; the founder, George
Fox, sentenced to six years in prison in
England for interrupting a church service in
1660, said to the judge: "One day thou too
wilt quake before the Lord," to which the judge
responded: "Take the quaker away." For some
reason, the name stuck; when William Penn landed
in Pennsylvania with one hundred of his
coreligionists, the accepted epithet for members
of the Society of Friends was Quakers.
The "peace testimony" of the Quakers served
them well during their first century in America.
It brought peace with the Indians in Pennsylvania
at a time when, elsewhere in the colonies,
massacres and revenge raids were common. It also
brought about a climate in which trade and business
flourished.
During the War of Independence, however, their very
peaceableness became their downfall, as they refused
to bear arms for either party. The British expressed
their displeasure by turning Philadelphia, that
most staid and orderly of all American
cities, into a "recreation area" for their
Hessian mercenaries, with brothels, gambling
dens, bars, and alehouses. There were fights in the
streets, women were raped, shots were fired; Friends
withdrew into the safety of their homes, behind bolted
doors and barred shutters, and prayed for
deliverance.
After the British had been defeated, the
Hessian troops were replaced by the
Congressional Army which, jubilant in its
victory, had acquired a taste for battle.
When its commander received the order from Washington
to arrest "forty merchants known as Quakers for
treason and trading with the enemy," his men welcomed
the opportunities this presented.
The result was wholesale persecution.
Quaker houses were ransacked, Quaker farms
put to the torch; of the forty arrested, thirty
were banished to Virginia, all their possessions
confiscated; two of them were hanged on the
Philadelphia Commons. Quaker farmers in the
interior took shelter among the Indians; one
Friend, whose farmhouse was set on fire, begged the
Indians who came to defend him "not to use
violence, for the sake of their souls." He was
severely beaten by the mob.
Finally, the persecution in Philadelphia
petered out. No more houses were looted, no more
women brutalized, Quakers were no longer jeered
in the streets. An orderly society was
reestablished; but there had been a change. Friends
who refused to swear the federal oath of
allegiance, because of their testimony against oaths,
found to their dismay that this meant exclusion from all
official and quasi-official functions. Not
only could they no longer take part in the government
of the colony they had founded, they were barred from
virtually all other positions which, historically,
had been theirs; only in commerce and farming could they
find employment.
The result was a closing of the ranks. The
Society, excluded from public life, turned
inward. It was clear that "the Holy Experiment"
had failed; contrary to their expectations, the
Peaceable Kingdom of Isaiah, where the lion will
lie down with the lamb and the wolf with the fatling, was not
about to be realized. They felt it their duty
to nurture that concept in what they called "the
remnant," so that when times changed, their children would
be ready to take up once more the "motion of
love" that had almost, almost brought about the ideal
society. It was in fact a withdrawal from the world,
but they did not see it as such. They saw it as
creating an intimate, protective community for
their offspring, "a garden enclosed," a place
of tenderness and unity. A time of soul-searching
began, a purification of the Society from worldly
endeavors.
They decided on a series of reformations. The
first was the decision, arrived at unanimously--
Quaker fashion--to adopt greater simplicity in
dress, in their homes, in behavior, in speech,
even in gravestones: from that day on, all
gravestones were banned as "creaturely
activity." They started their own schools, where
their youth would be protected and kept unspotted from
the world. Gradually, without their being aware of it, the
garden enclosed turned into a fortress
under siege.
The flock needed shepherds, so the elders
took it upon themselves, in all humility, to serve as
overseers who would guide those in error or
confusion. Before they realized what they were doing
to themselves and their Society, they became
inquisitors, and the committees for Ministry and
Worship star chambers. The overseers visited
Friends at home and "labored" with the family,
meanwhile sniffing the air for the smell of tobacco,
glancing about for glasses that might indicate the
use of spirits, frowning at portraits and
miniatures as "inducing a spirit of vanity"; they
checked the table linen for lace edging, which constituted
creaturely activity, and if the table itself had
curved legs it had to be removed as being too
worldly. Singing, dancing, balls and garden
f@etes, clubs, associations, and even
non-Quaker charities were "severely
discouraged."
Soon, the American Society of Friends
seemed to have withdrawn from the world forever. From a living
religious and moral force in society they had
turned into a quaint, xenophobic sect who
called themselves "the peculiar people," wore
peculiar dress, used peculiar speech, and were
concerned only with themselves and their peculiar
shibboleths. They had become virtually a
secret society, and the garden enclosed a
prison; in the year 1827 they went stir
crazy.
It was a time of sweeping reforms in other
religions, a time of revivals and schisms, of
established churches splitting apart into young
offshoots, usually in response to the fervor of
individual evangelists. Every church had that
problem; so too the American Society of
Friends. Outside evangelists started to stir up
trouble; in 1827 five "ministers" from England
were active in Philadelphia Yearly
Meeting's territory, and they created mayhem in
the garden enclosed. On theological grounds that
now seem byzantine and obscure, the Society
of Friends split into two warring camps: orthodox
and "activists," later called
"Hicksites" after their spokesman Elias
Hicks. Rather than "holding one another up with a
tender hand," the members of the two fractions,
named after their Meeting Houses "Arch Street"
and "Cherry Street," went for the
jugular. Intermarriage between the two Yearly
Meetings was punished by excommunication, in
Quaker terms: "being read out of Meeting."
All contact between the two Yearly Meetings was
banned; each behaved as if the other did not
exist, each called themselves the only true
Quakers, and woe to those who said otherwise.
As a result, Friends involved in the great
"concerns" of the times felt suddenly bereft of the
spiritual support that had, over the centuries,
been the source of their strength. The Underground
Railroad, the secret route by which escaped
slaves were smuggled from farm to farm on their way
to Canada and freedom, was suddenly declared to be
"in error" because it did not "minister to the
slaveholders." Other concerns which depended on
the support of the Quaker community were considered
to be "a source of uneasiness" by one or the
other splinter group. Those out in the field lost the
sheltering arms of the Society of Friends, which had
been both their inspiration and spiritual refuge down
the ages.
It is in these years of darkness and doubt that we
take up the saga of the Quakers in America.
But first, a visit to Birmingham, England.
THE PECULIAR PEOPLE

CHAPTER 1
BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND
December 1832

The atmosphere in the sickroom was stifling.
Mordecai Monk, a portly, middle-aged
cherub in Quaker garb, stared in horror at his
mother dying on the fourposter bed. The old woman was
breathing haltingly, in gasps and pantings, as if
climbing a hill: stumbling, recovering, clawing
herself toward higher ground where she would be safe. The
room smelled of vile medicinal potions. The
doctor at the foot of the bed rummaged in his bag
of instruments, unaware of the fact that he had
become more a hindrance than a help to the panicking
woman battling her way up the hillside.
Suddenly Mordecai decided that everyone had
to leave, himself included. It was obscene to stand there
and watch her torment. He put his hand on the
doctor's shoulder and whispered, "Out!" The
doctor bridled in proprietary pride; birth
was his, death was his, this layman was the intruder.
But, being the son, Mordecai had the authority.
"Out!"
He opened the door. The doctor and the nurse
obeyed; he was about to join them when it occurred to him
that this constituted a flight on his part. He was her
son, he should not leave her alone in her terror,
panting, trying to scramble up that invisible
hillside. He closed the door and went back
to the foot of the bed.
She had kicked the quilt aside. Her
feet, toes cramped as if to gain a
foothold, looked young. He had once shared the
life of the body now expiring. He had been part
of her, like those feet. He leaned over and said,
"Mother?"
She halted briefly, looked about her in
confusion. When her eyes found his, she gazed beyond
him with a look that made him turn around to see who
it was, standing behind him. There was no one; yet she
lay scarcely breathing, eyes wide, staring beyond
him. "Basil, love," she whispered, out of
breath after her frenzied effort to escape, "how
wonderful of thee to come ..."
He did not know what to say. There was no
Basil in the family. He knew no Basil;
neither, he was certain, did she. Who did she
see in her last moments?
"Basil who, Mother?"
"Thy father," she said, panting, but no longer in
panic. It was as if she had reached her mysterious
sanctuary.
"Father's name was Amos, Mother," he said,
reduced to an obstinate child by the enormity of death.
"No," she said, "his name was Basil.
Don't tell! He loved me." She smiled.
"He is here now."
Who was she talking about? In what secret
room, what adulterous bed-- His thoughts fell
silent at the stillness of her smile. He
realized that she was dead.
He stood looking at her with an abstract
sense of loss. He had never truly loved her.
She had been a tiresome old woman,
scatterbrained, sentimental, a silly spoiled
widow who loved pugs and fed them chocolates
till they died. She had had no sense, and loved
only the snoring little dogs she was killing with her
brainless tenderness. After his daughter Becky had
died at birth, and his wife Emily a month
later, Mother had tried to take their place in his
life with a greed that had, at the time, filled him with
revulsion. Now her frozen smile filled him with
guilt.
He turned away and opened the door. The
doctor and the nurse came in to take possession
of what was no longer a person but a thing.
"Sir?"
He became aware of young Hodgkins, the
parlormaid, curtseying. "Tea is served in the
drawing room, sir."
"Thank you, Hodgkins." As an afterthought he
added, "Go and tell cook that Madam has
died."
Back in the security of his study he gazed out
the window. Snowflakes were drifting through the halo
of light around the streetlamp across the road. He
was born in May '88. It must have been summer
'87 that his mother had spread her adulterous thighs
to receive the mysterious Basil. He gazed at the
falling snowflakes with growing anger. Basil's
seed had squirted, life had leapt into the warm
darkness of his mother's secret depths; nine months
later Amos Monk, the cuckolded husband, had
cradled a squalling infant, the son,
Mordecai, he would love above all others
until he was felled by a stroke.
Anger turned into pity. How lonely she
must have been. Lost, helpless, not knowing what to do
with the gift of love God had granted her and which
no one would accept, except little dogs.
How could he find out who his real father had been?
Better not even to try. Let her rest in peace.
He drew the curtains and went to bed.

Four days later, a memorial service for
Hannah Monk was held by Birmingham
Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends. As
the only next of kin, Mordecai Monk was
granted the privilege of joining the elders on the
facing bench. There he sat, unmoved, staring at the
hall full of faces. It was a combined gathering,
the partition between the men's and the women's sections had
been hauled up for the occasion. It seemed a lot
of people for the slight body in the coffin. It bore no
connection to the living Hannah Monk, who had
gone to join her lover in the great beyond.
One of the elders to his right began to speak.
"O great mystery of death." "Darkness, which
awaits us all." "God's love." He was
irked by the man's professional piety, and grew
aware of boredom settling over the meeting. Ten
minutes later the second ministry came. He
recognized the voice: Sarah Moremen, clerk
of the Women's Meeting. "Hannah Monk--
farewell to a courageous soul." "Remembered
with affection." "Good works." "Ready
hospitality--example to us all."
Silence. Then the third voice: Barbara
Harrison, the women's chairman of Ministry and
Worship. "Hannah Monk--dear soul--always
ready to help--pure and chaste--radiant."
Silence. Waiting for the fourth voice to start a
pious paean for the newly proclaimed saint, he
suddenly felt outraged. Her soul was gone but,
my God, the body still lay among them in a
coffin, dead to all passion. Late summer
'87, thrusting, arching, it had surrendered to a power
vastly superior to the small flickering flame of
her will; now she was being remembered for
"hospitality," "good works," "love of
dogs." At the time she had been swept away
by a hurricane of passion; to deny that now seemed
a degradation. Insufferable!
He had never spoken in meeting, never risen
during worship to spout some fatuous thought. Now
he suddenly found himself on his feet, saying,
"Is this all Friends have to remember her by?
Hannah Monk, never been on earth before, never
to be seen again?" He tried to end it there, but something
stronger than his sense of decorum or even his own
will made him press on. "Is this all we have
to present at Hannah Monk's death? Will no
one say, "She was a helpless, lonely woman,
at the mercy of passion, a victim of forces
crushingly superior to her slim, gilt soul"?
There can be no love without truth. If we want
to honor Hannah Monk's memory in the spirit of
love, we must say, "Hannah, thou wert a
fool. Hannah, thou didst not have any sense.
Hannah, thou wert at times an embarrassment
because of thy muddled emotions, thy rudderless tenderness
trying to find a harbor." But we must add also,
"Hannah, dear Hannah! If only we had
loved thee in return, without conditions, without the
implied suggestion that thou shouldst calm down and
organize thy feelings first, so we might converse
in rational terms!" Damn us! Yes, damn
us! We are the damned, not she! We are the
ones who did not recognize in the generous,
scatterbrained woman the essence of God, the
force of love, the force to which we all owe our
presence in this world. Now we carry the burden of a
guilt that came too late, decisions that can no
longer be made, a belated insight into Hannah,
now home, we hope, with God. But even if she
is not with God, even if she is out there somewhere in
the void, cast out into darkness and damnation, she will have
a person, a man on whom to spend the gift that
all of us rejected." He suddenly realized he
had been indiscreet. He must get out of this! A
final phrase, something that would enable him to stop,
gracefully. "Truth and love. They are
inseparable. That is the essence of our Friendly
persuasion. Farewell, Friend Hannah. Forgive
us, love. Farewell."
He sat down and hid his face in his hands.
He had made a spectacle of himself. He had
said things about his mother that were slanderous. He prayed
to God to free him from this situation, which he had
brought upon himself. Then a hand entered his field of
vision. Meeting was being broken. He shook the
hand. Then another, on his left. He rose;
together with the elders, he shuffled out of the facing bench,
head bent, praying to be gone, never to set eyes
on them again.
As he walked up the aisle he became aware
of voices around him. Whispering. Coughing.
Out, out. He was almost there when he found his way
barred by a woman. He felt like turning to flee:
it was Sarah Moremen. She looked at him with
eyes full of crocodile tears and gushed,
"Friend Mordecai! That was the most moving,
marvelous ministry I have ever heard, in any
meeting for burial! Thou wert truly in the power
of the Lord! Thou hast spoken for us all, and by us
all, I mean us women. Bless thee, beloved
Friend!" To his horror she reached up for his head,
pulled it down and planted a wet kiss on his
forehead. He turned to flee, but another woman
barred his way. Women, women everywhere, grabbing his
hands, gushing, "Thank thee, Friend! Thank thee!
Wonderful! How true! Love and truth!
Inseparable! Friend ... Friend! ..." Frank
Henderson, chairman of Ministry and Worship,
came to his aid, taking him by the arm and escorting
him into the open.
"Can I drop thee anywhere, Mordecai? Thy
mother's house?"
"Thank thee."
They spent the short journey in silence,
listening to the muffled footfalls of the horse's
hooves in the snow. Frank Henderson's
silence said it all.
That evening Hodgkins, the parlormaid,
curtseying, brought him a letter on a silver
salver. An official invitation, signed
by Sarah Moremen, clerk, and Barbara
Harrison, chairman of Ministry and Worship
of the Women's Meeting, for him to address the
Meeting next Friday at eight P.m., on
the subject of "Truth and Love."
Refreshments will be served in the interval after the
lecture, before questions.
The young maid, apple-cheeked and with wide blue
eyes, looked like someone living in a world of
sanity.
"Thank you, Hodgkins," he said. "That will be
all for tonight."
The girl whispered, "Yes, sir. Good
night, sir," curtseyed, and made off with the
silver salver pressed against her bosom as if
to shield her virtue. What was the matter with
women today? "Truth and Love"? What in the
world could he say about truth and love that he had not
already said in that emotional outburst this morning? How
could he get out of it? Refreshments after the
lecture, before questions. Somehow, that seemed
to strip the last vestige of sincerity and
spontaneity from his outburst.
The small impulse of curiosity as to what
he might have said about truth and love made him go
to his late father's bookcase and take out a
tome he would never have expected himself to consult: a
concordance of the Bible. He took it to the desk,
lit the gas lamp over it, and looked up
"love." There turned out to be many kinds of
love: Love (verb); Love of God; His
Love; In Love. He turned the page and
found a small square of newsprint, yellowed with
age, pressed between the pages. It did not say which
newspaper, but it must be old: the letters were
old-fashioned, with f for s. He wondered what
it was doing in this book; then he saw a name and
started to read, his heart in his mouth.

INVITATION

to an afternoon of Scripture, Prayer
and Worship, on July 8th,
A.d. 1787, at 3 P.m.,
in the annex to Birmingham Town Hall.
The Meeting will be led by the Reverend
BASIL GOODLOVE
from
Maryland, America.
Hymns! Testimonies!
Laying on of Hands!
Speaking in Tongues!
Glimpses of the Future!
Admission 3 pence.
All proceeds to go to the Rev.
GOODLOVE'S
Fund for the Suffering Poor.
Families welcome!
(no dogs, please.)
Nota bene: the doors will be
closed at 3:15 P.m., sharp.
Praise the Lord!

He put the piece of paper back between the
pages. Basil Goodlove. His true father.
Why else would Amos Monk have put the cutting
in this book, in this precise spot? "Clave
unto these in love." "Be without blame before
Him in love." "Father in truth and love."
Father in truth and love! This awful man, this
mountebank with his "glimpses of the
future" and "all proceeds to go to the Rev.
Goodlove's Fund for the Suffering Poor"!
He took out the newspaper clipping again.
July 8th, A.d. 1787. He was born
May 14th, 1788. The lecherous false
prophet! The dates could be a coincidence.
Coincidence? The name, the fact that Amos Monk
had hidden this clipping in a tome that no one but
himself would ever open? Under the heading "love"? It
added up to an awful sense of truth. This man, this
sanctimonious salesman of hymns,
testimonies, and the laying on of hands had lured his
love-starved mother to his bed, or, God knows, the
floor, and--
He closed his eyes; he shut the book and
put it back on the shelf. He returned to the
window and watched the snowflakes float through the
halo of the gas lamp across the street.
"Father in truth and love." The real
sorrow, the deepest, was that after reading the clipping,
he had called his father "Amos Monk" in his
thoughts instead of "Father".
Father in truth and love. He should accept the
invitation. But what could he say to those women? For the
moment there was nothing but held-back tears at the
death of the father he had loved and the emergence of one he
loathed. He loathed the foul, slimy swindler
with the greasy hair, the lecherous lips, the bulging
trousers--how did he know, for God's sake?
Maybe Basil Goodlove had been a dashing,
handsome preacher, who inspired ... Inspired?
Lured women into his bed and squirted his foul
seed and--
It was simple: he was a bastard.
Out of it all came the strange conclusion:
thank God Becky died at birth, before the
capacity to know that she was a tainted child. A bastard
father had tainted her. And sainted Emily, her
mother, so thin and worn. The two of them: Becky
beautiful and perfect, Emily thin and worn. And
now his own mother had gone. And his father. All there was
left was the knowledge that somewhere inside him, somewhere within the
successful chocolate manufacturer, the proud
inventor of the patented liqueur-filled bonbon
Heavenly Smiles, within the soul of the good
Quaker, the honest trader, the pillar of
Birmingham Society, slumbered another
self: the seed of Basil Goodlove,
layer-on of hands and lifter of skirts, speaker
in tongues, benefactor of the suffering
poor, fornicator of helpless, lovelorn
women--
Enough! "Truth and Love." Next
Friday, Women's Meeting, eight P.m.,
with refreshments before questions. What part of him was
Basil Goodlove's? Who had spoken at her
meeting for burial? "Is this all we have
to say about Hannah? Will no one say, "She was
a helpless, lonely woman, at the mercy of
passion, a victim of forces crushingly superior
to her slim, gilt soul"?"' He had not said that;
he had been in the power of the Lord, as the saying
went. Could it be that he had spoken in the power of
Basil Goodlove?
He turned away from the halo of the street
lantern and covered his face with his hands. Truth and
love. But the greatest of these is love.
Goodlove. O God, give me Thy power,
only Thine, come Friday night!
What nonsense. He did not believe in
God. Hush! Not to be repeated, his well-kept
secret for over thirty years. He would be
insane to do it, insane. Back to chocolates,
my friend! Back to the safety of the factory.
Lecture the foreman about too much sugar in the
last batch of Heavenly Smiles; or get thyself
a dog to talk to, nights. A dog.
Lecture a dog about truth and love, then give
him a ham bone.
Truth and love. Women!
He rang for Hodgkins and ordered some port.
Still snowing, outside. Too snowy for walking. And
too late, to go to Liza.
He tore up the invitation and tossed it into the
fire. He was watching the flames leap and devour
when Hodgkins came in with the port. Virginal
breasts. Nice little bottom. Good night,
Hodgkins.
"Good night, sir."
A dog, Mordecai. Get thyself a dog!

CHAPTER 2
BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND
December 1832

He arrived at the hall half an hour before
he was due to speak: a portly middle-aged man
out of breath, already sweating, cherub's curls going
limp over his ears. He took out his notes before
entering.
To his astonishment, every seat was taken; women were
standing in the aisles. Was there another speaker? He
was received by the gushing Sarah Moremen. "Never
seen such a turnout for any speaker before!" she
cried.
He must have struck a chord in women with his
emotional outburst; to be expected to do the same
thing twice was ludicrous. He had spent the
week earnestly preparing for this speech.
"Love and truth," "Truth and love"
--he suddenly realized that he was the last person
to hold forth on any subject other than the
manufacture of chocolates or the running of a
factory. Please, God, let me lecture
on Heavenly Smiles! One day, as I
inspected the bonbon section, the foreman said--
He was taken to the facing bench and seated between the
meek Barbara Harrison and the aggressive
Sarah Moremen. The hall was full of women,
standing room only; obviously, they were expecting
another emotional sitz bath. Did they not
realize that the funeral of one's mother was a one-time
occasion? If he were to carry on in the same vein,
God forbid, he would reveal that he was a closet
atheist! "Sir," the foreman said, "I'm
afraid that this batch may have to be remelted, all
chocolates have an air bubble inside." Then the
thought hit me: what if we filled-- Sarah
Moremen rose beside him with a rustle of skirts,
her mere bulk imposing silence. She asked,
bassoon-like, "Friends, may we have a moment of
worship to enable this meeting to center down?"
She thudded down beside him and continued breathing.
He prayed, not to the Creator of the universe but
to a chairman of the board in the sky, that this cup
might pass from him and be handed to someone else, like the
female Minotaur by his side. But after what
seemed a condescendingly short period of
worship, the Minotaur rose once more. "As
Quakers, we are not given to false praise,"
she bassooned, "but I must laud this evening's
speaker for the sensitivity, the fulsomeness of feeling
with which he spoke at the meeting for burial of the
late Hannah Monk, his mother. All of us who
witnessed that occasion were united in the desire to hear
him develop more fully the concept of the relationship
between truth and love. Friend Mordecai." She
sat down, propelling him to his feet as if they
were sharing a seesaw. He took to his notes,
looked up, and saw a hall full of
white faces turned up at him in anticipation.
He gazed at the back of the hall, looking for a
way out; then, suddenly, he was met by something
unexpected: a source of strength. It was not
his, it was his audience's. They seemed to fuel
him by their expectancy. He opened his mouth for a
squawk, then heard himself say, "Friends, good
evening," in a conversational tone, as if they were
gathered in front of a fire and not in a hall with
moths swirling around the gaslights. "Now I
face you, I realize that my labored preparations
for this evening were fatuous. Allow me to dispose of
them." He found himself tearing up his notes,
slowly, demonstratively, dropping the
snippets on the podium. He thought:
"Impostor! Con artist! All thee is
doing--"' But he silenced the panicking, still
small voice, took a deep breath, like a
draught from that well of power, while the women, their
white faces turned upward, waited in innocent
surrender. Then he said, with a shudder of sudden
exhilaration, "Truth! Let's start with the truth.
Who am I, to claim the right to address you tonight?
A rich man's son who inherited at the age of
thirty a successful factory which runs itself.
Only child, married at forty. Had a stillborn
little daughter a year later. Wife died within a
month thereafter; moved in with his mother. A solid
member of Birmingham Monthly Meeting, who
never opens his mouth. A contributor to worthy
causes. A lonely reader, during firelit
evenings, of Byron, Shelley, Blake.
Ah, moribus vacuum vires consilium
declamavunt! Ah, thou vacuum, while other
men hold forth in wisdom!"
There was a nervous titter of laughter, growing
into a ripple. An inner command demanded that he
turn the laughter back into silence at once.
"What right have I to hold forth at you tonight? God
knows! I don't." The silence became stillness.
In the stillness he said, "Yes, only He
knows. And He is here, now, tonight, in this hall, in
Birmingham, vibrant, awesome, among us. So
let's ask Him." An impulse made him
let the stillness last, until it was released
by his saying, "No answer? That was "truth."
Now for "love." Let me tell you what I
know of love. I loved my wife. I courted
her in the accepted manner. We were married under the
care of this Meeting. We were happy in a
self-conscious way until our first child was born,
little Rebecca, expected with tenderness and awe.
All I really know about love is what I felt
when the midwife placed into my hands the cold,
white, perfect little body from which all life had
gone. All I know about love has its origin in
that one brief moment, when I looked down upon the
perfect little body of Rebecca Monk, aged
three minutes, dead."
He had a moment of awareness that this was awful.
He was telling strangers about something he had not
even told Emily. Then the power of those in
front of him fused with the power within, and he cried,
"That moment, I hated God. I spat on
God! I tore my heart out and flung it at the
sanctimonious mug in the sky and cried with all
the rage within me: "I hate you, you cruel
monster!""
The silence was still with shock.
"I never recovered. Neither did Emily.
We lived, briefly, in melancholy tenderness,
beset by tears. Then she died, and a meeting for
burial was held during which I said nothing. I
moved in with my mother. She too died, and there was
another meeting for burial. Then, at last,
something within broke in me and I spoke. I do not
believe I can ever speak like that again. The funeral
of one's mother is a one-time occasion."
He remembered thinking of that; it made him
falter. He had broken the spell by introducing
an element of planning into something that was totally
spontaneous. Grasping at a straw in his
confusion, he took a sip from the glass of water
on the lectern. When he looked at those faces
again he was overcome by the strangest feeling: a
motion of love. Suddenly he loved them, all of
them, because they were women. Women who lived by their
emotions--like himself, he now discovered, after years of
unemotional horse sense. He became aware that
he was actually saying this, to that hall full of
faces: that he loved them because they were women, because
they lived by their emotions, because he did too, which
he had discovered only recently, after years of
priding himself on his calm common sense.
Now what? He almost expected a group of them
to come and grab him by the collar and toss him out into the
street. What was this wild, passionate nonsense
he was spouting? But they remained as still as the leaves
of a tree, waiting for the breeze. "Forgive me,"
he said. "You asked me to speak the truth
about love. It is a dangerous, narrow road we
are treading, lined on both sides with
snakepits, shrieks, howls of frenzied
passion. But we can only begin to understand the love of
Christ by loving one another as men and women, not as
neuters. I speak to you in the terms of a man.
We Friends have always considered equality between man and
woman to be the cornerstone of our persuasion. We
must adhere to that, we must hold one another up with a
tender hand so that, together, we may experience the
presence of God. All I can do, myself, is stand
before Him with, in my hands, the white, perfect little
body of dead Becky, and weep. That is the
truth about my love. Now, I hand you over
to yours."
Suddenly faced with a lack of words, he sat
down, his head in his hands, exactly as he had
during meeting for burial.
The silence seemed to last and last. Then he
realized that it had turned into worship. He sat
motionless, empty of all thoughts, until Sarah
Moremen reached out and took his hand, and Barbara
Harrison the other; there was a rustling of
crinoline, meeting broke. But a feeble voice
came from the audience.
"Would the Friend who just spoke please speak
again?" Barbara Harrison asked. "We are
unable to hear thee."
The voice called out, "Is Friend Mordecai
prepared to answer questions?"
Barbara Harrison looked down at him. He
rose to his feet, waited for the silence
to settle, and said, "No."
There was a moment of stunned surprise, then
another woman's voice in a corner of the hall
said, "Amen."
There was laughter, applause, a great shuffling
and rustling. Sarah Moremen, with unexpected
tact, managed to shepherd him out a side door
into an alley. Snow was falling. In a daze he
walked toward the gaslit street, where his
carriage was waiting. Suddenly a woman stepped
from the shadows, barring his way. He halted,
startled; she kissed him on the lips. Before he
could recognize her, she was gone.

At home, he found that Hodgkins had set
up a cold supper for him in the empty dining
room. He still felt bemused by what had happened:
the brief emotional speech full of
embarrassing confessions, the refusal to answer
questions, the unknown woman's kiss. All of it
bewildering, dreamlike: it could not really have
happened to him. Everything seemed a dream,
except for the power that had come to him from the audience.
But had it? Or had it been, again, his old devil
father?
"Have you all you wish, sir?"
He looked up.
The girl curtseyed and whispered, "Sorry,
sir."
"I have all I wish, Hodgkins, thank you,"
he said kindly. "You may turn in now."
"Thank you, sir." She curtseyed and turned
to go. He watched her leave without mental comment.
He had to stop blaming his father. Ridiculous.
He should be his own man.
He took his glass of port up to his
study. One thing was obvious: if he were to open his
mouth again in front of an audience, he should have more
to offer than this incoherent outpouring of raw emotion.
He should have a message, a concluding thought, a
theology. Looked at coldly, "We can
only begin to understand the love of Christ by loving one
another as men and women, not as neuters" was
hogwash. He could not believe he really said that.
He had better come up with a rationale for
advocating copulation in order to receive revelation.
He needed dogma, a structure to his
emotional rantings. He should address people's minds
rather than cause women to leap at him from the shadows
and kiss him on the mouth. Who on earth could it have
been? He did not even know if she had been young
or old. A bereft mother, perhaps? No, it had not
been a motherly kiss.
Suddenly he experienced an overwhelming
carnal urge. Liza. It was time he visited
Liza again. How was it possible? After speaking of
love and truth, however garbled it might have come
out--to end up feeling the urge to visit a whore?
He went to the window to look at the street. It
was still snowing. The lantern across the road had been
turned off by the lamplighter. As in a glass
darkly he saw the reflection of his face on the
windowpane. A strange face. He, yet not
he. Basil Goodlove? He had not looked like
his mother, at all. Whose face was this? Pudgy,
ringlets, innocent blue eyes ...
Suddenly it scared him beyond words. He fled.

It was a long walk; he ran part of the way.
When finally he rang the bell of the sleeping house
he had to wait a long time before shuffling steps
approached on the other side of the door; then it
opened a crack and a voice asked, "Who's
there?"
"It's me," he said, "William. Is she
free?"
"Oh, Mr. William." After a brief
hesitation the door opened wider. The Negro
maid, who had obviously retired for the night,
reluctantly let him in.
"Is she alone?"
"Yes, Mr. William--but she's asleep.
Do you realize what time it is?"
"Never mind."
He pushed her aside, made his way
upstairs, knocked on the door and went in. The
room was dark and smelled of a woman. Her little
lapdog, in a delusion of grandeur, barked and
attacked his right trouser leg, but its tiny jaws
could not get hold.
"Who's there?" her sleepy voice asked in the
darkness.
"It's me. William." He undressed in
a frenzy, threw off his clothes, tossed them on
the ground; the little dog barked and barked, prancing
around him. He threw his trousers at it, his
underwear; naked, frenzied with lust, he found his
way to the bed, tore the cover aside, groped,
felt her softness, the silken slickness of her
hair, muttered, "I love thee, I love
thee," and mounted her like a bull.
She cried out, he did not know whether in lust
or pain or anger; he possessed her with a fury
that destroyed all illusions of tenderness, and
collapsed with a sob when, in an instant, he was
spent. He found himself ashamed, abased, lying on
top of the half-clad body of a woman he had
treated as a commodity, a receptacle for his
seed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry,
Liza. I just-- I'm not myself." As he lay
there, in the depth of self-loathing, he felt her
hand calmly, kindly stroking his hair. Then her
voice said, "Aren't you the cheeky one! You
waited too long, love. You should have come sooner.
Now, of course, you jump in through the window."
"It wasn't me, it was--"
"Nonsense," the voice whispered while the hand
stroked his hair. "You talk as if you were
two different people."
"I am! I am! That's what I came
to tell you! Part of me--"
"Hush." The hand pressed on his lips. "Not
tonight. I was fast asleep, and suddenly there you
were, right inside me; tonight we are not going to talk
about the other parts of you. We're going back
to sleep together, all of a piece."
"No, we are not!" He sat up and swung his
legs out of bed. "We're going to talk."
"Then let's talk in comfort. Come." She
pulled him down, he toppled awkwardly onto
his back. She rose beside him and pinned him down with
her opulent, warm weight. "Talk," she
whispered, and kissed his nose. "Talk, wild
Willy." The hand stroked his hair with
humiliating motherliness.
"I want to talk about my soul!" he
cried, ridiculously.
She said, "Good," and kissed his lips.
Somehow, the kiss lifted him out of his confusion,
self-loathing, fear. "I have to hand it to you," he
said, when her lips left his, "there you were,
fast asleep; in comes a man who first rapes you
and then wants to talk about his soul, and--"
"Hush," she said. "It's all right. You're a
nice man. I like you. Stop pulling faces at
the mirror."
Pulling faces at the mirror? Was that what
he had been doing? Was that all there was to his
frenzy, his desperation, the flight from his father's
ghost?
"How about a cup of tea?" she asked, toying
with a little curl above his ear.
"God," he sighed, "is that all there is?"
"What else do you want? Champagne?"
"I want to talk about my soul!" he cried
obstinately. "I want thee to tell me who I
am!"
"You're a sweetie," she said
matter-of-factly. "I'm going to make the
tea." She climbed across him, arousing his lust
against his will. She struck a tinderbox and lit the
lamp by the bedside. She was ample and homely in
her nakedness in the soft light.
"I swear I will never abuse the word of God
to seduce women," he said to the ceiling.
"Bully for you," she responded. "Just lie
there and be good while I make the tea, then we'll
talk." A moment later, tinkling with
spoons and crockery, she asked, "You didn't
frighten Harriet, did you?"
"Maybe I did. I just asked if you were in,
and alone, and then I went ahead."
"You're a dear man, William," she said with
unfeigned kindness. "I know nobody else who
worries about himself so desperately. Why do you
want to? You're a sweetie, you'd better know
it."
"My name is not William," he said, after a
decision.
"Of course it isn't. But to me you are. Now,
if I bring you a cup of tea, will you promise not
to upset it?"
She came toward him in the lamplight, all
globes and glossy hair, carrying a cup and
saucer like a lighted candle. For a brief moment,
in an ecstatic flash of recognition, he knew
that this was salvation: a wife like her, who told him
to be himself. But which self? The moment passed, and
there it was again: the frenzied lust, the sin of the father
visited upon the son, the curse of Basil
Goodlove, the demon within. "Come here--here!"
he cried, reaching for her.
"Just a tick!" She put cup and saucer on
the night table, careful not to spill; then she let
him grab her, pull her down into the bed, roll
her on her back, thrust inside her with a howl of
passion and rage. When it was over, he groaned,
"God--dear God--" and once more collapsed
on top of her.
She briefly stroked his hair again, kissed his
earlobe, then pushed him off her and reached for his
teacup. "Be a good boy, drink it nicely.
There now. Better?"
"My mother died since we last saw each
other," he said. "Before she died she told me that
I was a child of love."
"Good," she said. "I'll be right with you." She
climbed out of bed and went to get her own teacup.
He continued grimly, "Not "good"--bad!
The man I have taken to be my father all my life
was not my father. She gave herself to a charlatan, a
lecher, an evangelist who used his powers of
persuasion to bed her and put her with child before he
pranced on to preach some more about Jesus and topple
more virtues as he went."
"Hush," she said. "Let me get settled
first. Move over." She climbed back into bed with
her teacup. How could a man bare his
soul, uncover the truth about himself, in bed with tea?
"Liza," he said, in a final effort
to achieve truth, "tonight I started to minister. I
preached to a hall full of women. They opened like
flowers to me. I have the feeling it was not I speaking
to them, but ... God, I can't face it. Am
I like my father? Was it my father?"
There was her soothing hand again, toying with the curl
above his ear, the other ear this time. It was impossible
to achieve truth under the circumstances, it was as if
everything she said and did conspired to break down his will
to know and made him slump back into the comfort of being
a nameless male nuzzled by a woman who knew her
job.
"I felt pure, and clean, full of power and
light. But then, as I came out of the hall and
hurried to my carriage down a dark alley, a
woman jumped out of the shadows and kissed me."
"Poor sweetie," she said, twirling his
curls.
"You don't understand! It wasn't "poor
sweetie" who spoke! It was I, yet not I.
It was "poor sweetie" who had himself kissed
and fled."
"Good," she said. "Now kiss me."
"You don't want to hear," he said--
unreasonably, for it was not her function.
"You talk too much." She pulled him down
into the warm nest of no-thought, no-words, the
tactile world of the rutting mammal.

He stayed the night. The bill handed to him the
next morning by the black maid was one shilling and
sixpence, "for breakfast." It was Liza's one
small sin of hypocrisy.
He set out for home, determined never to preach
again. Then, as he stood in the cold morning, the
glassy dawn, he found himself thinking: "the warm
nest of no-thought, no-words, the tactile world of the
rutting mammal." It sang; it lifted mindless
lust out of its darkness. But men would never stand still
to listen to that kind of thing; they would think it
offensive, a shock to their womenfolk who would
hide their faces in shame. He knew now that this
was not so. Women would love it, open the
floodgate of their power to him, the power of a
hundred white faces turned up, radiating
love.
"God," he wondered, theatrically, "what
is happening to me?"'
As if he cared. He was beyond caring. Since
when? When had he changed?
Whenever it had been, there was no turning back
now.

CHAPTER 3
LONDON, ENGLAND
March 1833

Meeting for Sufferings--the ruling committee of
London Yearly Meeting--gathered on Third
Day, Third Month, 1833. It was a hazy
day with a promise of spring, the still air spiced with the
smoke of fires.
A large amount of business had to be dealt with;
Obadiah Woodhouse, visiting young lawyer from
Pennsylvania, thought it an inordinately long
list. He had come out of curiosity, to observe
how English Friends handled their business in a
public meeting open to interruptions and questions from the
floor. In Arch Street, Philadelphia,
committees met behind closed doors; none of their
members would tolerate discussing business in
front of an audience at liberty to throw a
wrench into the holy works.
The clerk, a ponderous banker called
Horatio Barnes, dispatched the items with
measured speed. Then, when the patch of sunlight
on the floor beneath the high window had reached the
committee table, he handed the meeting to the chairman
of Ministry and Worship and sat back to listen.
There was a sudden tension in the audience, which was made
up mainly of women.
The chairman, a mousy elder with a high
collar, read from notes: "I have been requested
to put to Friends present a sense of unclearness
experienced by many Meetings nationwide, at the
ministry of Friend Mordecai Monk from
Birmingham. Friend Mordecai has taken it upon
himself--with the best of intentions--to put into question the
spiritual origins of Quakerism and its social
concerns. Friend Mordecai has voiced this concept
on several occasions in terms that have given offense
to many--"
He was interrupted by a woman rising to her
feet in the audience: "I protest! Friend
Mordecai has not given offense to "many,"
he has given offense to men!"
Horatio Barnes said, in a calm voice that
brooked no contradiction, "Will Friends
please restrain their ministry and give this meeting
a chance to center down?" He closed his eyes and
folded his hands, creating a silence that lasted a
few minutes, then he opened his eyes again and
nodded at the committee chairman, who resumed in
a strained voice: "The committee for Ministry and
Worship, burdened by the concern to present a
solution, or an advice, has given long and
prayerful thought to this situation, in the spirit of love
..."
London Meeting for Sufferings, Obadiah
decided, was as adept at the use of
sanctimonious Quaker jargon as was its
counterpart in Philadelphia.
"After long and arduous seeking after truth," the
chairman concluded, "our committee has finally
achieved clearness. Friend Mordecai's unique
ministry should be tested in other Meetings than
English ones alone. We therefore suggest that said
Friend be given a traveling minute to America, so
he may present his message to our beloved
brethren across the ocean."
For a moment Obadiah remained openmouthed,
then, without thinking, he rose to say, "How dare
you! How dare you export a destructive element
like this man to your "beloved brethren across the
ocean"? Is it to nip in the bud a schism
among you, like the one that has destroyed the
American Society of Friends? Many American
Friends, myself among them, believe that there would have
been no schism but for the Quaker evangelists from
England whom you sent across the ocean to your beloved
brethren, and who fanned the fire of dissent! Now
you seem to be about to expel another firebrand
to cause havoc in my country, to rid yourselves of his
divisive ministry! May I ask: Is it
Quakerly to foist upon us this person, about whom there
appears to be a nationwide sense of unclearness?
Why not deal with him yourselves, at home?"
Horatio Barnes gazed at him, stunned it
seemed. Obadiah decided to take it as an
invitation to proceed. "By the way--my name is
Obadiah Woodhouse, Philadelphia
Yearly Meeting, Arch Street. Have you any
idea what you have done to us? What you are about to do
to us again? Right now?"
"I wonder if the subject is timely," the
chairman of Ministry and Worship commented in a
small voice.
"Let him speak!" a woman shouted from
the center of the meeting; she rose, a statuesque
Brunhilde, swathed in what looked like a toga
with a cloth helmet like the goddess of the French
Revolution. There was a stir in the audience; she
obviously represented an important body of
opinion.
"Bathsheba Fugat," Horatio Barnes
said stonily, "we would appreciate to hear the
opinion of the Women's Meeting on this matter
presently, but right now--"
"Never mind our opinion!" the massive
woman bugled. "We want to hear him!" She
pointed at Obadiah with a commanding finger.
For some reason, it took the steam out of his
fervor; suddenly, he felt he had been making
a fool of himself. But now he must plow on for a
bit, alas. "Let me take myself as an
example," he continued. "The schism has led
to a breakup of American Meetings into two
hostile camps headed by Arch Street for the
orthodox, Cherry Street for the activists. We
not only no longer speak to each other, we behave
as if the other simply does not exist, except
when it comes to intermarriage. I was engaged to be
married to a girl I have known since childhood.
When the madness of the schism took hold, we
suddenly could no longer pass meeting together, as she
belonged to Cherry Street and I to Arch Street.
Both of us would be disowned if we married out of
Meeting, and as a lawyer representing mainly
Quaker clients I would commit social and
economic suicide. So we turned into the
Pyramus and Thisbe of Philadelphia
Yearly Meeting, and we are by no means the only
ones. A young couple who were appointed teachers in
a rural area in Pennsylvania had a
stillborn child and discovered that the local Meeting,
which belonged to Cherry Street, refused to bury the
child because the couple belonged to Arch Street. This
epidemic of insanity now rages nationwide; you,
here in England, would find yourselves in the same
situation if you had not rid yourselves of your
religious fanatics by giving them traveling
minutes to America. You are about to do it again today.
If you had kept previous Mordecai Monks
at home, I would have been able to marry my
beloved, the young teachers would have been able to bury their
baby in a Quaker cemetery, and American
Friends would be living in peace with each other, as before.
In the name of God, keep your carriers of
glad tidings at home! Stop this man, here!
Thank you."
He sat down, knowing that he had presented his
case with a passion unworthy of a professional
advocate. There was a whispered exchange among
the committee members at the table; in the audience
people muttered and coughed. Horatio Barnes rose
once more in corpulent splendor and said, "I am
sure everyone present has been moved, as I
was, by this cry from the heart. How would it be if the
Friend who spoke so eloquently were asked
to accompany and guide Mordecai Monk in the
early stages of his mission, so as to keep him
mindful of the sensitivities of those who might
feel victimized by the ministry of an
evangelical English Friend? Before I ask for the
sense of the meeting on this, may I have the reaction
of Friend--er--our American Friend?"
Obadiah was struck dumb by the cunning of the
move. In the face of such political acumen,
upstarts like himself were helpless. He should have seen it
coming; it was an old Quaker trick to turn the
weapon around and invite the member who urged action
to lead the way so others might follow.
"I shall, of course, be happy to offer assistance
as far as I am able," he said feebly. "But, as
a lawyer, I have many commitments--"
"Why don't we stop this nonsense?" the
woman in the toga shouted, silencing all others.
"To call Mordecai Monk divisive is
ludicrous! May I ask the American
gentleman--sorry: Friend--if he ever heard the
man in question? Has he ever been present at one
of his lectures?"
"No, I haven't," Obadiah had
to respond.
"May I suggest that thou dost so, Friend, before
shooting off thy mouth? Mordecai Monk is
speaking tonight to the Women's Meeting, Westminster
Square. Thou art invited to be present. See
me afterward." She swung her gun turret on the
target behind the committee table. "As to you, members
of Meeting for Sufferings, all I can say is:
Phooey! Just because the man speaks like an angel
and appeals emotionally to women, something none of you can
hope to achieve, all you cowards can think of is
to send him packing! I won't let my emotions
run away with me, but let me tell you that all this
is an embarrassing example of chicken-livered
politics!" She turned to sit down,
then fired her final broadside: "I speak in
the spirit of love!"
Never before had Obadiah heard the word
"love" used as a projectile. She sat
down to a cheerful murmur of women. Horatio
Barnes stared at her, then said to the recording
clerk at the far end of the table, "Would thee,
Barnabas Knuckles, please surpass thyself
and provide us with a minute which expresses the
sense of the meeting?"
In the silence that followed, the quill of the
recording clerk scratched. Obadiah wondered
what Barnabas Knuckles, a dry little man,
could come up with; he wished, fervently, that he had
kept his mouth shut.
The recording clerk sanded what he had
written, shook the paper, rose, and read in a
seedy voice: "Minute 63, Third Day,
Third Month, 1833. The meeting labored
over the sense of unclearness created by the ministry
of Friend Mordecai Monk of Birmingham
Meeting. After a lively discussion in the spirit of
love, it was suggested that Friend Mordecai be
granted a traveling minute to America. After a
spirited intervention by (name to be verified), a
visiting American Friend, it was suggested that said
Friend be appointed Virgil to Friend Monk's
Dante." He sat down with a self-satisfied
smile, as well he might.
"Does this minute express the sense of the
meeting?" Horatio Barnes asked.
The helmeted woman rose once more like an
angel of wrath. "After Pyramus and Thisbe,
now Virgil and Dante! Would it be possible
to describe in contemporary terms what exactly
our American Friend is supposed to do with
Mordecai Monk, other than drown him at the
earliest opportunity?"
Horatio Barnes gave the recording clerk
at the far end of the table a pleading look. The
quill scratched again, the silence deepened;
everyone must be curious as to how a truly
professional scribe would summarize this. The
quill stopped scratching, the paper was sanded,
shaken, and Barnabas Knuckles rose in
self-confident neutrality. "After a
good-humored intervention by Bathsheba Fugat, which
liberated the meeting of untoward solemnity, the
conclusion was affirmed that Mordecai Monk shall
travel to the United States and that our
American Friend (name to be verified) will assist
him in his ministry as way opens."
"Thank thee," Horatio Barnes said
blandly. He surveyed the meeting and asked,
"May we take it that the minute is now accepted
as written?"
The combative woman Friend realized that she had
been checkmated; she remained seated in stolid
silence. An obliging soul rose somewhere in the
back and piped, "I unite." A few others
followed, all men. Horatio Barnes concluded
by asking, "May we now unite in worship?" and
demonstratively closed his eyes.
The silence of battle fatigue descended upon
the meeting.
During the twenty minutes of motionless silence
that followed, the patch of sunlight groped up the
folds of the tablecloth like a male hand.

The lecture by Mordecai Monk was given in
the hall of Westminster Square Monthly
Meeting. The audience consisted mainly of women;
Obadiah tried to make himself inconspicuous in
the back. Someone on the facing bench rose;
instantly the meeting centered down in the
obligatory silent worship. After a few
moments, with a sigh, as of a huge animal
stretching, they relaxed.
In the meantime, a plump man in his forties with
ringlets over his ears had appeared on the
podium. His manner was apologetic, unsure,
not the type of firebrand Obadiah had
expected. He seemed disarmingly harmless.
The audience fell silent. The speaker began
in a quiet, almost casual tone. "Time? What
is time, in the world of the planets, the stars, the rings
around Saturn, the moons of Uranus? Time, in
the mind of God, means nothing. The man who
eighteen hundred years ago stood under a tree
in a Levantine garden and prayed, "Father, if
it be possible, let this cup pass from me," did
so only yesterday, in God's time. Last night,
the world lay sleeping. Everyone slept: Jesus'
followers, even the disciple He loved above all
others. They had seen Him enter the garden, watched
for a while as He stood under a tree; when nothing
happened, they dozed off, except for a little dog which
peered through the bars of the gate, anxiously,
wondering why it had not been allowed to follow its
master inside."
Obadiah realized that he had made a fool
of himself that afternoon. This was no rabble-rousing
evangelist. A dog? In scripture there was
no talk of a dog. Or did Jesus have a
dog ...?
"A bobbing lantern approached in the night.
The little dog yapped. A clatter of armor; a
horse whinnied. It was a patrol of Roman
guards, not menacing, not aggressive, moving in the
calm security of a power that had ruled the world for
five hundred years. The disciple Jesus
loved above all others leaped to his feet and
tried to bar their way as they headed for the garden
gate; the little dog yapped; the gate squeaked on
its hinges. The Romans proceeded to arrest
Jesus, kindly. They led Him out of the garden with
no more than a hand on his shoulder. He went along
meekly; then one of the disciples who had been
asleep drew his sword. There was a skirmish,
a clumsy, almost comical one; Peter, who was no
swordsman, sliced off one of the guardsmen's
ears by accident. The blood changed the mood; the
prisoner was dragged away, so was Peter. After
sniffing at the ear lying in the road, the little dog
lolloped after them."
The storyteller had thrown a spell over the
audience, no one stirred.
Then, suddenly, he shrieked with startling
shrillness, "Ayee!" and cringed in agony. "The
first pain! The first terrible, muscle-locking pain!
They had made Him lie down on a cross, again
almost kindly, as if putting Him to bed. They had
spread His arms wide, crossed His feet, then
--"Ayeee!"--drove a nail through His
wrist. An eternity later, an eternity of
blue and green pain, the cross was raised to the
cheers of the crowd, and the crucified man cried
piteously, "Father! Why hast thou forsaken
me?"'"
To Obadiah, the hackneyed words, set
to music countless times over the centuries,
acquired a heartbreaking immediacy because of the
extraordinary evocative power of the speaker. A
man, nailed through his wrists to a cross, shrieked
in pain, abandoned by his father; it was so graphic that
he saw it happen.
"Where was the father?" the speaker cried. "Where was
he? Where among the stars, the planets, the streaking
comets, the rings of Saturn, the moons of
Uranus, was he? Did he not hear the
shriek of his tortured son? "Help, Father!
Help!""
Extraordinary: the man was not acting out the
story but living it; he lived through Christ's
Calvary himself, and his audience with him.
"Why did the father not save his child? Why did he
allow him to be flogged, spat upon, gored by a
spear, taunted by jeers as he cringed in mortal
pain and terror? Why? Why? God, for the sake of
our peace, our souls--answer! Answer!"
The cry echoed and died. Nothing moved in the
hall, except the huge swooping shadows of the
moths circling the gas lamps. Then the answer
came, in a whisper. "For thee ..." The man
opened his eyes, slowly raised an arm, and
pointed at a woman in the first row of the audience.
"For thee!" he shouted, with spine-chilling force.
The woman sat transfixed, stunned at being
singled out.
"And for me ..." The tone had changed back
into a whisper. "Why thee? I do not know. Why me?
That I do know. Because I am steeped, soaked,
drenched in sin, from the moment the seed sprang into the
womb that gave me life!"
It did not seem to shock anyone; yet it must
be the first time in any Quaker meeting, Obadiah
thought, that the moment of impregnation was described in
such graphic terms. Then he realized what the
man was. Quakers were historically inartistic;
sculpture, painting, music, literature,
all forms of art were lumped together as "creaturely
activity" and therefore shunned. The cuddly man
who stood there flushed with exertion, his curls lank
with perspiration, was a poet. The first Quaker
poet in captivity. His passionate, stirring
speech was not a sermon, it was art.
"In the solitude of damnation," the man
continued, "there is only one consolation: a hand
reaching out in the dark. A hand that assures: Thou
art not alone. A friend, a woman who
recognizes thy desperate condition and comes
to join thee and kneel in prayer. But that, of
course, is a dream ..."
To Obadiah's startled surprise, the woman
in the front row who had been singled out suddenly
rose, climbed onto the podium, and kneeled
by the speaker's side in prayer. She did so
spontaneously, and seemed to embarrass no one.
On the contrary, all over the hall women rose
to join her, two, four at a time. A
number of others rose to leave, mainly men.
Fascinating, never seen before in any Quaker
meeting--of that Obadiah was certain.
Finally those who wanted to join the women at the
preacher's feet had done so, those offended by the
spectacle had left the hall. Now the poet
started the second act of his one-man drama: an
impromptu, intimate reverie on "love and
truth." He spoke with such artless intimacy that
there no longer seemed to be a division between
audience and speaker, it became a shared experience.
Obadiah's attention wandered as he tried
to envisage what it would be like to take this phenomenon
on tour in America. He relished the
prospect of watching his father's reaction, and that of
his uncle Bernard, clerk of Arch Street
Meeting, to the little dog sniffing the ear in the road
before lolloping to catch up with Jesus. At the
seed springing into the womb, Aunt Agatha's
eyes would turn into saucers. Would it result in
the same love feast of women clustered around the
poet's feet?
Suddenly, meeting broke. Obadiah let the
crowd pass. Eventually, he came face
to face with the artist himself. At close quarters,
Mordecai Monk looked even more harmless, and
surprisingly short.
Obadiah introduced himself. "I am
supposed to be thy Virgil, Friend Dante.
Remember me?"
After a moment of confusion the poet said, "Ah,
yes, of course! Excuse me, I wasn't
there, but I was told about thee. How kind of thee
to come! We must have supper together."
"With pleasure, thank thee."
"It's not for thee to thank me, Friend,"
Mordecai Monk said, smiling. "It was generous
of thee to offer to act as my guide in thy country.
I want to hear more about this schism in America.
How sad, how very sad for thee and thy bride! Is
there anything at all I might do to help?"
Obadiah's answer was cut short by the
assault of about a dozen women, throwing themselves on
the succulent man with less piety than when,
virginal and subdued, they had kneeled at his
feet. Supper might be late tonight.
There was to be no supper. Half an hour
later, after managing to detach himself for a moment from the
crush, Monk suggested, "Maybe on some later
date ..."
It was as far as they got, that first night.
As a matter of fact, there was no further
contact until they met on board ship two
weeks later, destination Philadelphia.

CHAPTER 4
PHILADELPHIA
May 1833

The young American lawyer turned out to be a
charming traveling companion. The weather was
pleasant, the sea lenient; the voyage easier
than Mordecai had foreseen. He tried to form
an impression of American Quakerism by questioning
Obadiah Woodhouse; weary of the unrelenting
curiosity, the young man gave him a book
to read, The Journal of Boniface Baker,
1754-1766. "This," he said, "will tell thee more
about early American Quakerism than I can."
"Who was this man?"
"The first Pennsylvania Friend to free his
slaves and give them his plantation. He went
west with two daughters--three, for he had
adopted a slave girl as his own. His eldest
daughter Becky was raped and murdered by Indian
marauders, his youngest he sent back
to Philadelphia. He stayed behind in the
wilderness with the black girl, Cleo. They started
a Friends' Meeting of Indians, whites, and
Negroes, his ex-slaves, who had joined him of
their own accord. It was a utopian community,
until the wave of new settlers hit them.
Read his journal, his motivations remain at the
heart of American Quakerism. Or did so,
until the schism of '27."
The young man had schism on the brain. Nice
chappie, though. Helpful, and as keen as mustard.
"Quaker poet!" Would anyone have called
Basil Goodlove a poet? Not in the
circles where his father reaped his harvest. All he
was, himself, was a luxury edition of the sins of his
fathers; God knows, there might have been more
silver-tongued rapists in the family tree. Enough
of this!
He settled in a deckchair, out of the sun, and
opened the book on his knee with a mug of porter
beside him. After the first twenty pages he almost
gave up; the blessed Boniface certainly took
his time getting into his stride. Then, suddenly, it
came. "That night, I discovered I
was not the grandson of Boniface Baker, martyred
sta2oy of Swarthmoor Hall, but the offspring of
an unknown rapist who assaulted my grandmother on
board the ship that brought her to the New World. She
was twenty, and alone."
He could not believe it! Yet there it was, in
black and white:
"I was utterly shaken. It had been
important to me that I was the grandson of a saint,
it was the foundation of my self-respect. The truth
struck me with such force that I sank to my knees
and asked God, "Why? Why has this been
revealed to me? Why now?" There came no
answer; only the chirping of a cricket in the
night."
How was it possible! A brother, an
American brother!
"The discovery changed the course of my
life. Until that moment I had accepted
circumstances which I considered to be beyond my
control. Both my grandmother and my father had been
slaveholders. They deplored slavery, but
accepted it as a commercial necessity. They had
assuaged their consciences by being kind to the slaves,
educating their children. My father justified his keeping
human beings in bondage by thinking of himself as a
member of a spiritual aristocracy, offspring of a
Quaker saint who tried to give them humanity,
a soul. I, in my turn, thought that God had
placed me in a position of dominance because my
ancestors had earned that position by their godly
lives. The discovery that my grandfather was an unknown
rapist who had violated a helpless girl in
mid-ocean on a pile of rope shattered my
arrogance. Far from being a member of any
aristocracy, spiritual or otherwise, I was
simply a slaveowner. That night I was forced
by God to decide to free my slaves, give them
my land, and strike out into the wilderness to start a
new life.
"There is a plan underlying our lives which
is not ours. Our fates are predestined without our
being aware of the hand that guides, the wind that
propels, the tides that carry our souls to their
predestined goal ..."
It was a revelation! The miraculous contact
with a kindred soul, whose words seemed to be directed
straight at him!
During the rest of the voyage he read the
journal, over and over again, until he
had become as familiar with Boniface Baker's
life as with his own. Obadiah Woodhouse was
right: now he understood American Quakerism,
totally. He discussed it at length with
Obadiah, until the eyes of the polite young
man glazed over. No wonder! How could a city
lawyer understand the reality of being a bastard,
outcome of rape, redemption, passion, and
glory that had gone into the making of the life of
Boniface Baker, his soul mate, four
generations and a world apart? In America, he would not
minister about himself, not about Rebecca's perfect little
white body, fount of eternal tears, but about
Boniface Baker, knight in shining armor,
John the Baptist of the American Society of
Friends!

On arrival in America, Mordecai
Monk was received into the rich, patrician
Woodhouse family. The next day he met
Simon Weatherby, chairman of Ministry and
Worship of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting,
Arch Street.
At the Meeting House, a brooding pile of
red brick in a courtyard lush with the green of
trees, he was given a guided tour. He was
shown William Penn's treaty with the Delaware
Indians and a number of other historical
treasures before Simon Weatherby took him to the
clerk's office, a white room with high windows
and nothing on the walls.
"Make no mistake," Obadiah
Woodhouse had warned him, "Friend Weatherby is
chairman of the committee for Ministry and
Worship, but not the way thee understands it: a star
chamber." It seemed a dramatic exaggeration;
Simon Weatherby was a sweet, doe-eyed man
in his early fifties with an endearing tuft of
baby hair on an otherwise bald head and a
mouth almost feminine in its vulnerability.
Obadiah must have suffered a delusion; whatever this
man was, he could never be the head of a secret
thought-police, regimenting the lives of thousands with
absurd edicts against pianos, tables with curved
legs, the drinking of tea, contact with activists,
balls, games, intermarriage between the two
Yearly Meetings. The man proved to have an
endearing propensity for touching those with whom he
spoke; during the tour of the Meeting House his
delicate hand sought Mordecai's
sleeve whenever it was within reach. This was not a
fanatic but a man full of eagerness to understand,
full of gregariousness, love.
The first hint of a darker truth came when, back
in that white, high-windowed office, Mordecai
began to talk about Boniface Baker. Simon
Weatherby listened, his moist brown eyes tender with
attention, his feminine mouth soft and trusting. Then
he said with a smile, "I am sorry to disabuse
thee, Friend Mordecai, but the truth about
Boniface Baker is somewhat different from the
image thee has formed of him after reading his
journal."
"Different in what way?"
"In his relationship with his adopted daughter
Cleo, the young slave girl he took with him
into the wilderness."
Was this where the schism began to show its ugly
face? Mordecai had expected to be told that
Boniface Baker's theology had erred; instead,
Weatherby asked, "Thee knows they had a child?"
"The foundling the Indians put on their
doorstep? Certainly."
There was a pause. Then Weatherby said,
"I'll tell thee this only if I can be
absolutely sure of thy discretion. There are still
a number of Bakers around, I don't want
to cause them distress."
Some tawdry family secret? How
unfortunate.
"The boy was not a foundling, but their natural child.
Born from the loins of the black girl, begot
by Boniface Baker, her adoptive father."
Mordecai Monk stared at him, shocked.
The delicate white hand touched his sleeve.
"I know, dear friend, it came as a shock to us
all, the few of us let into the secret. There is
overwhelming proof, alas, that Boniface Baker
cohabited with his adoptive daughter. They made
quite a spectacle of themselves, it seems. Roistering
in the reeds around the lake in summertime. Swimming
in the nude, chasing one another like otters. In
several letters and diaries of the time, written by men
who visited them, and whom we trust, there are
references to--well--shrieks of lust. A
feminine voice screaming in ecstasy inside their
cabin after dark. Most unfortunate."
Mordecai Monk stared at the delicate
face, the doelike eyes, the smile, and rose.
"Excuse me. I'll have to digest this at
my ease." A cowardly way of saying: This is
foul gossip, evil, rank with deception!
"Of course," the soft voice said, full of
understanding. "The truth is not always comfortable."
Outside, in a graveyard empty of
tombstones in accordance with one of the most cruel
testimonies of American Friends, Mordecai
sat down on a bench in the shade of a tree.
Instead of feeling betrayed by the mystical brother
he had revered, he felt the reverse. Another
fumbler in the dark. Another failure at
virtue and godliness. A real twin soul, after
all, as unworthy of God's grace as he
himself.
Under that tree in the burial ground, that morning,
with birds twittering in the foliage, he understood
at last why God had sent him to America.
Suddenly his future ministry became clear: he
would be an apologist for Boniface Baker.
Two days later he was asked to address a
joint session of the Men's and Women's Meetings
in Arch Street. He did not mention Boniface
Baker by name. He spoke, with sincerity and the power
of truth, about sins of the flesh, the blood-red
darkness in which men grab and thrust, groan and cry
out, rutting mammals in a primeval forest of the
soul. He spoke about his bewilderment when facing the
truth about himself, the chains of lust, greed,
ambition, heartlessness weighing him down. Only
after those chains had been slaked by the grace of
God did the Light begin to shine, the blinding
light of the Thought behind it all, behind men's ruttings
and grabbings, women's plotting and beguiling, behind
lust, greed, dreams of riches, power. The Thought
underlay the tides of Man, the same Thought that
revealed itself in the starry sky, the rings around
Saturn, the moons of Uranus ...
The mighty music came in profusion:
images, alliterations, poetic descriptions,
soaring language, passion, love. At a
particular moment, he became aware that no power was
coming to him from the audience, this time. Closed white
faces listened to him with, it seemed, mounting
disapproval.
Not a single person came to meet him afterwards.
The only one overflowing with praise was Simon
Weatherby. His delicate hand touched
Mordecai's arm and shoulder in effusive
admiration.
Well, no one could say he had not
asked for it. What now? He remembered the cry
from the cabin in the wilderness, and wondered if
Boniface Baker and Cleo were watching him from
hell or heaven.
"Come," Simon Weatherby said, touching his arm.
"Let's have some sustenance and talk about the
future."

During a closed meeting of the committee for
Ministry and Worship, Arch Street, at which
Mordecai Monk was not present, it was decided
without dissent that the English evangelist should be
kept away from all urban Meetings. Rutting
mammals, indeed! All in that insufferable
English accent. Grab, thrust, groan, cry
out--in the presence of women! It was disgusting. The
man must be mad. Let country yokels get the
benefit of his asylum ministry; maybe he would
speak to the condition of those who reared cattle and
milked bulls to sell their seed. Maybe their
women would relish hearing their menfolk referred to as
rutting mammals. Make up an itinerary for this
madman that will take him as far away as possible
from civilized Meetings and, maybe, lose him
somewhere in the wilderness. Sell him to the Indians
as a saltimbank, for their entertainment. The clerk
was requested to record this in less emotional
terms and omit all untoward levity; but it was good
for the soul to speak one's mind after such an outrage.
Obadiah Woodhouse was charged with spiriting the man
away, Simon Weatherby delegated to write a
note to his opposite number in London
Meeting for Sufferings, asking what had possessed
them to export this rutting mammal to their brethren
across the ocean.
It was left to Obadiah to explain
to Mordecai where they would go and why. Pendle
Hill, Indiana: the settlement started
by Boniface Baker in 1755, now a small
town on the edge of the prairie between the Wabash and the
Mississippi. There was a personal reason for
Obadiah's visit at this particular time. The
Friends' Boarding School for Indian Children, founded
by Boniface Baker and Cleo, was no longer
worthy of its name, for there was only one
part-Indian child left, a girl called Himsha,
last of the far-western Woodhouses, an orphan.
Obadiah, her guardian, went there every year at
this time for Founders' Day.
"How appropriate," Mordecai
said.

Warthell, Croydon, Croydon and Havers
were situated on a busy street in the heart of
Philadelphia, among shops displaying a wide
selection of worldly goods. Mordecai had chosen
the law firm because it was clearly not part of the
Quaker establishment.
The inside of Warthell et cetera's offices
was less worldly. Three peruked clerks stood with
their backs to one another behind high desks; there was
no sound except for the scratching of their quills
and the occasional rustle of paper. Behind a wall,
male voices mumbled. The street noises
seemed louder: the pistol shots of cracking
whips, the shouts of coachmen, the to-and-fro of
rattling wheels. After ten minutes of waiting under
the occasional sidelong glances of the clerks,
Mordecai was ushered into the office of Mr.
Henry Croydon, Junior.
If this was Mr. Croydon Junior, his father
must be decrepit. A dry old hand touched his as
if in test and withdrew rather hastily. Washed-out
blue eyes peering at him over half glasses,
mouth hidden behind piously folded hands, Mr.
Croydon Junior waited for him to state his
business.
It was a matter of legal research,
Mordecai explained. An ancestor--well,
an uncle: Goodlove. Basil Goodlove.
Intimidated by the nerveless eyes and the folded hands
hiding the mouth, Mordecai produced the yellowed
newspaper clipping from his wallet and put it on
the solicitor's desk.
Mr. Croydon Junior did not pick it
up. He observed it, owllike, from above. An
old owl, waiting to make sure the prey was dead
before he swooped. Finally, he picked it up.
"H'm. I see. H'm." For some reason he
looked at the back, as if something essential
might be found there. He did not find it.
"Who recommended us to you, Mr.--er--
Goodlove?"
"Monk. Mordecai Monk. Mr.
Goodlove was an uncle on my mother's side."
"H'm. Indeed. One might have expected your
--er--coreligionists to recommend a Quaker
firm. There are several in town."
"Mr. Croydon, do you want my business
or don't you?"
The old man lowered his hands to fold them on his
desk. Then he said, "It may be expensive."
"I am prepared to pay you an advance, sir."
"Yes, of course. Of course." He picked
up the clipping again and looked at the front of it
this time. "Quite costly, if it involves research in
another state. Was your--er--uncle from another
state?"
It became unnerving that, despite his repeated
scrutiny of the clipping, Mr. Croydon
Junior still did not seem to have read it.
"He was from Maryland. As you will find if you
look at the clipping."
"Clipping?"
"The newspaper clipping. On your desk."
"Ah! I see. Maryland. Well, that is
another state."
"Please name your price, and I will give you
an address where to send your report."
"H'm. May I ask you a question, Mr.--
er--"
"Monk."
"Ah, Monk. Yes. Would this by chance involve
a birth out of wedlock?" The washed-out eyes
suddenly turned out to be uncomfortably
perspicacious.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because in that event it would not appear in the
records of either parish or community."
"I simply want to know more about the man. Who
was he? What did he do?"
"Well ..." the old hand picked up the
clipping. "It would seem fairly obvious what
he did."
"Q."
"Do you have any reason to suppose the--er--
Reverend led a double life?"
"Why?"
"That might involve an alias, not listed in the
records of either parish or community. Was he a
Quaker?"
"I do not know."
"I see ... Twenty dollars, to start with.
You'll be asked to pay by the hour, plus
expenses."
"I would rather pay in sterling, if it's the same
to you."
"Very well: five pounds advance, one shilling
an hour, plus expenses."
He counted out the money. "The address
where to send your report is--"
"Tell my clerk," Mr. Croydon
Junior said, pocketing the coins. "He will
take down the details."
"Thank you, sir."
At the door, Mordecai was stopped by the
cracked old voice. "Are you prepared for--er--
unpleasant surprises?"
"Should I be?"
"Traveling clergy, you know. In this country,
there is chaff among God's wheat."
"A crook, you mean?"
Mr. Croydon smiled. "We will let you know
in due course, God willing."
Mordecai gave the clerk the address of the
Rebekah Baker Friends' Boarding School,
Pendle Hill, Indiana, and asked for a
receipt.
For that he had to wait another ten minutes. But
he was certain: if anyone could put salt on
Basil Goodlove's tail, it was the canny
old man behind that door.


CHAPTER 5
PENDLE HILL, INDIANA
June 1833

The warm wind of summer came sweeping down the
slopes of the Rocky Mountains at dawn. It
gathered speed as it stormed unhampered across the
empty prairie, growing in power; by the time it
reached the wooded hills of north Indiana it had
grown into a gale and hurled itself against the highest
building in the little town of Pendle Hill, the
Rebekah Baker Friends' Boarding School.
In the assembly hall, students, parents,
faculty, and guests of honor were gathered in
silent worship prior to the highlight of the
celebrations for Founders' Day: a historical
pageant presented by the students. Dr. Leon
Rossini, circuit-riding physician of
Baker County, was seated among the nodding elders
on the facing bench, sweating blood. Why did
it always have to happen like this? You organize everything
according to a well-planned scheme, and suddenly:
chaos. The arrival of the slaves had been
planned for after Founders' Day and Quarterly
Meeting. Everything would have been ready for them by that
time: transport, food, hiding place
under cover of the school's daily routine. Now,
an hour ago, an amateur tragedian had
burst into his room crying, "Doctor!
Doctor! They're coming in tonight! The station before us
has been betrayed! They'll be here in a few
hours!" Without pausing for a rational explanation, the
half-wit had cried, "I must run!" and indeed
had run off. Nobody here seemed to understand that in
this operation you could not change plans at the last
moment. The slaves would arrive in a school
bulging with parents and guests of honor; its
grounds, normally deserted, would be swarming with people.
Some underground railroad! At times like these,
everybody involved in it seemed insane. Take
that ravishing Lydia Best, for instance: putting on
a historical pageant, today of all days! Although
not a Quaker himself, Rossini knew enough about them
to realize that "historical pageants" were
"creaturely activity" the moment they became
a play; anything that smacked of the theater, music,
or art was the snake in paradise. If the children on
the stage, now waiting in their costumes to enact a
historical event, actually spoke lines and
pulled faces, they were certain to cause "a
sense of unclearness" in parents who had entrusted
their precious offspring to this school, thinking they would
be educated according to the testimonies. They would
suddenly see them being turned into mimes indulging
in make-believe, lies; as a result, parents
would be walking the grounds and traipsing up and down
the corridors of the school into the small hours,
congregating in excited clusters to discuss the
heresy, while he was expected to take fifteen
slaves, as black as the night, through the teeming
crowd to the potato cellar. He wished he had
realized in time that he was dealing with a staff of
innocents in this school, who had no idea what
danger they were courting by using the children as a smoke
screen for an illegal activity.
The school was the last place he should have
selected as a station. But maybe the fact that it was
so obviously unsuitable would prove
advantageous; maybe some security might be
found in its very unsuitability. Maybe there was a
God for the barmy.
The ravishing Lydia Best putting on a
play was not the only minor disaster; her brother
Abner, the henpecked principal, and his icicle
of a spouse were another. The only one who was any
good--
A sheet of paper appeared in front of his
face. Abby McHair, the old matron of the
tribe, was handing it to him with a toothless grin.
Meeting for worship had ended; now was the moment for
him to make his getaway. But it might be too
obvious. Better wait until everybody rose
and started to move around.
The paper turned out to be a program of the
festivities. "Two P.m.: Presentation
of the Founders' Day Pageant: "The Martyrdom
of Rebekah Baker," words by Lydia Best,
costumes and scenery by Lydia Best and
Bathsheba Tucker (6th grade). The action
takes place in the spring of 1755, on
Pendle Hill, Indiana, then territory of the
Miami Indians.
"Dramatis personae, in order of
appearance: Abigail Baker: Elizabeth
Martin (4th grade) ..."
Rossini remembered the fact that the old
woman by his side was the original Abigail
Baker. Must be a bizarre experience to watch a
reenactment by children of the most bloody, horrendous
episode of your life, seventy-five years
later. Yet old Abby was beaming, lips parted,
watching the stage with eager anticipation, innocent
again in her second childhood.
Lydia Best rose, facing the audience with
boldness. After the death of both her parents and
three little brothers in the '18 flux epidemic,
she had, bizarre enough, turned into a daredevil,
full of reckless mischief, but this was insane.
They were all insane, truly.
"The Baker family," she began, "first
arrived on this very hill in the fall of 1754.
Boniface Baker--" She indicated
William Martin, the midget, grotesque with
his wizened old face among the child actors.
"Rebekah Baker, his eldest daughter--" Little
Lucretia McHair, flushed with excitement in
a white organdy dress, curtseyed.
"Cleopatra Baker, adoptive Negro
daughter of the founder--" Himsha Woodhouse, the
last of the Indian children for whom this school had been
founded, bowed. They had blackened her face with
burnt cork, unnecessarily, she was an
exotic creature as it was, a tropical
bird among the crows. "His great friend, Chief
Running Bull--" Little Boniface Baker,
great-grandson of the founder, his baby face
full of war paint, wearing an Indian
headdress like a feather duster. "The play begins
on the day our beloved school was founded
by Boniface Baker and his adopted daughter,
Cleo. Boniface Baker, as we all know, was
a saint: pure, selfless, a man transformed
by grief after the murder of his daughter Becky--"
Suddenly, a loud male voice bellowed,
"I protest!"
"Here we go," Rossini thought, "battle
commences." He looked around to see who the first
protester was; to his surprise, it turned out
to be the English evangelist.

The cry was torn from Mordecai against his will;
he found himself on his feet before he knew it. He
was about to sit down again when he sensed the mysterious
energy flowing to him from his audience: they wanted him
to continue, to express their inarticulate emotion in
words. He did not know exactly what their emotion
was, but it must be like his own. He let them have it,
pulling out all stops. It was their will.
"In the name of truth, for the sake of the memory
of Boniface Baker, stop this mockery!"
On the podium, the children stood rigid with
shock. The wanton young woman stared at him
openmouthed.
"We cannot suffer any longer this mealymouthed
travesty of a godly man's tormented life!
Listen!" He pointed at the ceiling; the storm
rumbled in the silence. "Outside, the power roars
that created the world, the primeval force that
Boniface Baker had to do battle with during his
years in the wilderness! He was no saint, no
ethereal spirit, no golden-feathered neuter swooping
through the forest on celestial wings! His was a soul
blown about the sky by the gale that now shakes this
building! He had not achieved freedom of sin
by freeing his slaves and giving away his
possessions, or by adopting a black girl as his
daughter. Before receiving salvation by repentance, he
had to crash into a thicket of carnal passion, lost
in the forest, drunk, bedeviled by lust; grab his
black daughter from behind like a tiger, sink his teeth
in her neck, making her scream in the night with the
shriek of the cheetah. The child of love born--"
"Stop!" an outraged woman's voice
shouted. "Stop this, you madman!"
Breath caught, he looked about him. It was the
wanton young woman on the stage. She
stood glaring at him, eyes blazing, bosom
heaving. "How dare thee? How dare thee slander a
dead man in the presence of his daughter?"
The old woman! He had forgotten that
Boniface Baker's youngest daughter was here.
There she sat, hiding her face in her hands.
Someone touched his shoulder and said calmly,
"Let's go outside for a moment, shall we? A
breath of fresh air."
"I did not intend--" he started. The man
cut him short: "This way."
He let himself be led away; halfway up the
aisle he shook himself free and ran to the lobby.
It reverberated with the thunder of the gale. He pushed
open the outside door with difficulty because of the
pressure of the wind, stepped into the open, and was
nearly blown off his feet.
The gale surged like the surf; trees
groaned, wildly waving their arms. He
struggled, leaning into the gale, as far as the monument
in front of the school, a huge rock with the
inscription: Rebekah Baker,
1736-1755. Now let us try what love can
do.
He had prepared his ministry about Boniface
Baker during the interminable stagecoach rides
down wilderness trails, in wolf-haunted
nights, lying awake in overcrowded
dormitories of roadside inns. Now it had
burst forth at a totally inappropriate moment,
triggered by a word ... "Dear God", he
prayed, his face in his hands. "Lead me! Lead
me, Lord!"
He felt suddenly lost, alone in the vastness
of this continent, confronted with bewildering awareness of
his mortality. A thought forced itself upon him: "I
will never go home to Liza. I will die somewhere in this
hostile emptiness ..."
The spell was broken by a bell tolling. What
did it signify? Food? He should go back
inside, seek out the young woman, apologize,
explain the screech of the cheetah, the lovers'
cry heard in the night. In his journal
Boniface Baker described, in detail, the
nature of the temptation, not its consummation. He
had written an impassioned paean on Cleo's
carnal attraction, as lyrical as the Song of
Songs; then, suddenly, a child was found on their
doorstep. After that, no more intimate
descriptions of his emotions, only of his
good deeds: the school founded, the Meeting
organized. One moment he had been leering at
black breasts inside a loose smock, breathing
the scent of her body, drunk with wild,
irresistible desire; the next moment he wrote
a school curriculum, a dry report of
committee meetings, full of pious
platitudes. Why his sudden silence? What had
really happened?
Loneliness crashed upon him once more, like a
wave; loneliness and homesickness for Liza. A
cup of tea; her soothing voice saying,
"Don't spill it now, sweetie. Drink it
nicely, there's a good boy."
What had Cleo said to the tiger, after the
cheetah's cry? How odd, to feel closer to the
dead of this place than to the living. "I love
thee, Father." Was that what she had said?

"Well, well," Obadiah Woodhouse
thought, "this time Mordecai has surpassed himself
in extravagance." How explain to these rural
innocents that the man was a poet? Or even what
a poet was? That "the shriek of the cheetah" was
poetry, a verbal exuberance trying to express
the intensity of an emotion, like "Tyger, tyger,
burning bright in the forests of the night"? They
probably had never heard of William
Blake.
He watched the faculty of the school file
into the principal's study: abashed, in a state of
shock, stunned by the impact of a meteor slamming
into their stagnant pond.
The principal, Abner Best, closed the
door, unable to hide his outrage. "You all know
Obadiah Woodhouse from Philadelphia?
Himsha Woodhouse's guardian. Let me
introduce you, Friend Obadiah: my cousin
Jesse McHair, who runs the school
farm--" A rugged young man with a scowling face,
definitely not forthcoming.
"My brother-in-law Uriah Martin,
housemaster boys--" The grossly obese
creature averted his eyes. His limp hand was
damp with perspiration.
"My brother-in-law William Martin,
assistant principal--" This was the dwarf who had
impersonated Boniface Baker in the afternoon's
pageant, or tried to. He was the size of a
ten-year-old; a wizened face with an
amused smile.
"My wife, Saraetta, housemother girls--"
Obadiah remembered her from the facing bench; again
he was struck by her oddly sepulchral quality.
She looked at him without interest as they shook
hands.
"My sister, Lydia Best." Now, this was a
different story! On the podium, the young woman
had evoked his instant sympathy; face-to-face
she reminded him of Charity, whom he had tried
to forget, without success. Maybe it was just her
un-Quakerly dress. Very pretty.
She shook him warmly by the hand. "Nice
to meet thee, Friend. I hope thee will be able to give
us some guidance."
"And these are Adam Higgins, the gardener, and his
wife, Margaret, the school's cook." The
stolid Negro couple wore plain dress; they
must be descendants of the slaves who had followed
Boniface Baker into exile.
There was a knock on the door. Whoever it was
did not wait for the principal to call "Come" but
barged straight in. It was the doctor, to whom he
had been introduced earlier. "Old Abby is
all right," the man said, as if in answer to a question.
"I put her to bed, she's being looked after by her
daughter. Mr. Monk has been directed
to his room. You are traveling with him, sir?"
"Yes, I am."
"Does the man normally behave this way, or
was it an emotional crisis on his part?"
"Yes and no," Obadiah started. "To begin
with, he is not an evangelist but a poet, a
Quaker William Blake ..."
"Come now!" the doctor snapped. "I doubt
Mr. Blake would have made a Quaker patriarch
grab his black adoptive daughter, sink his
teeth in her neck, and set her screaming like a
bobcat. Given the circumstances, I would
certify Mr. Monk insane without a qualm."
Obadiah laughed in an effort to make light
of the whole thing; it was not easy. "Rutting
mammals" was mild compared to lecherous Quaker
saints biting the necks of their adoptive
daughters.
"It is difficult to describe Mordecai
Monk," he soldiered on, manfully. "I
appreciate that he must seem unhinged to you, but after
traveling with him this last month I have come to the
conclusion that he is indeed a Quaker
poet, a flower in the desert. Do understand me, I
am not trying to excuse what he did today. I have
no idea what brought it about. He is an ardent
admirer of Boniface Baker. He has a rather
personal concept of the man's witness--"
The doctor patted him on the shoulder. "High
marks for loyalty, dear sir, but I am a
physician. I know a madman when I see
one. Your friend is as crazy as a coot; any
experienced physician would realize within five
minutes that he was dealing with a borderline
lunatic. Take my advice: bundle him
into the next stagecoach and take him back to where
he came from. People in his own world, assuming such a
place exists, presumably know how to deal with
him."
"Well?" Abner Best asked after a silence.
"Anything else we should discuss at this point?"
"Yes," Dr. Rossini said. Then he added,
"In private."
Obadiah responded cheerfully, "Well, in
that case I think I'll go and have a chat with my
ward, Himsha."
"I'll take you to her," said the black cook.
Following her out the door and down the
corridor, Obadiah had the feeling that they were not
altogether concerned about Mordecai Monk. Something
else was going on, something they wanted to keep from
him.
It worried him. Himsha was his
responsibility; as her guardian, he had to know
what was happening in the school.
What on earth could it be?

"Out with it," Rossini said, trying to keep the
anger out of his voice. "What the hell happened
--excuse me."
"I don't rightly know," Jesse McHair
answered. "Farnham chickened out at the last
moment, so now they arrive twenty-four hours
early."
"Not twenty-four hours, dear friend, two whole
days! It was agreed that we would wait until
everybody had left!"
"Well, what do you want me to do?" Jesse
asked.
"Do not speak to Viola without having talked
to me first, that's what."
"You may want that, Doctor, but Viola
has a mind of her own. She jumped me
with this. Can you handle her? Can you tell her no,
if she says yes?"
"I certainly can," Rossini said, confident
he could handle the violent black woman. "I have
an appointment with her--" he glanced at the
clock on the mantlepiece. "Don't do
anything, don't decide anything, let me have a
word with her now. I'll be back within the
half-hour." He left them abruptly and set
out for the spot on the grounds where Viola and he
usually met.
Dusk was gathering, he had to make a detour
with the buggy to avoid attracting the attention of the
parents milling around outside the school, in shock
and outrage. They hadn't heard anything yet;
once they found out that their children had served as cover for
an illegal operation there would be hell to pay.
The woods belonging to the school were virgin forest;
darkness fell early under the ancient trees. When
Rossini arrived at the arranged spot, Viola
was not there. Maybe she had slipped out of sight
at his approach. He waited, his anger
deepening; then a shadow materialized beside him, like
a ghost. Without the uncanny knack of rendering
herself invisible, the woman would have been captured
long ago.
"All right, Viola," he said, "I'm
impressed. How did you arrive this time? On a
broomstick?"
But she was not in a joking mood. "What the
devil's going on?" she whispered, hoarse and
urgent. Above them, the wind surged in the trees,
her voice seemed part of the voice of the forest.
"We can't put them up tonight, Viola, it's
impossible. The place is full of angry
parents, and tomorrow people start arriving from all over the
county for Quarterly Meeting. The school won't
be safe until three days from now."
"Can't do it," she said angrily. "My
niggers must be moved tonight. The town is swarming with
slave catchers, all I need is this!"
"Maybe so, dear, but I cannot take fifteen
Negroes through a crowd of parents and expect
nobody to notice."
"I'll bring 'em late tonight. Three o'clock?
Surely everybody is in bed by then, no?"
He sighed. "Viola, listen. Try and listen
carefully."
"Piss on you!" she hissed in a sudden
outburst of violence. "My niggers are
stashed away in the swamp! It's driving them
crazy, they're afraid of hounds! If I
keep 'em there any later than tonight three o'clock,
God knows what they'll do. You tell Adam and
Penny that I'll bring 'em in tonight, three o'clock."
"Viola," he said, "something happened today at
the school that makes it likely parents will still be
around at three o'clock, arguing--"
"If I don't take 'em out of that swamp
tonight I lose 'em! I can tell 'em a hundred
times that hounds are no good in swamps, they won't
believe me. If I don't take 'em out of
there, they'll go off half cocked and run straight
into the slave catchers."
"Very well," he said, weary of the argument, "on
your head be it." As he turned away, she
grabbed his arm. "Here," she said, "you better
take this." She found his hand in the dark and pressed
something warm and sleek into it. "Hang on to it for
me, in case the paddyrollers get me. Stick
it in your medicine bag. I'll be back for it
later." She vanished as abruptly as she had
come.
Rossini looked at what she had given him:
a small package wrapped in oilcloth. She
must have carried it next to her skin, for it to be
warm. He wondered what it contained.

Abner was standing at his study window. Night was
falling. The wind still whisked the tops of the trees;
heavy clouds, pregnant with rain, were massed
over the prairie. He did not hear his
brother-in-law come in; the voice startled him.
"It is going to be tonight, Abner," Little Will
whispered, "three o'clock in the morning. I guess
everybody will be settled down by then."
"Oh? Yes. Would thee watch out for them?
Take them to the hiding place? I should stay around.
Be available, just in case."
"Right," Little Will said, without a smile. He was
a man who took everything as it came.
"How many are there, Will?"
"Fifteen. Full house tonight. What about the
mad Englishman?"
"What about him?"
"Is thee going to lock him up, or what?"
"By three o'clock he'll be asleep."
"Please God," Little Will said.
In the upstairs guest room next to the
boys' dormitory, Dr. Rossini lit the
candle on the bedside table and looked at the
small package wrapped in oilcloth Viola
had given him. Curiosity got the better of
him; he unwrapped it.
Some money. A paper envelope with a small
lock of black hair. A folded letter which, after a
moment's hesitation, he opened and read by the light
of the candle.

"Dear wife, a kind person is writing
this down for me at my dictation. I find myself on
free ground and wish that you were here with me. But you are
not here. When we parted I did not know that I should
come away so soon. I hope that you will try to come.
Do not be descuradged. I was sory to leave you.
Keep trying even if you are afraid and I will
take care of you and treat you like a lady so long as
you live. The talk of cold in this place is
all a humbug. It is warmer here than it was there
when I left. Yours in body and mind, and if we
do not meet on earth I hope that we shall meet in
heaven. Your husbern. Good night."

Folded inside the letter was a newspaper
clipping from the Bourbon County Eagle,
Kentucky, May 12th, 1832. "Fifty
dollars reward: negro woman named
"Viola," about six feet tall, slim
build, long face, black gums, long
crooked teeth, white eyes and braided hair.
Wore white linsey dress and took along red
changeable silk and black dress, also a white
robe and striped gingham dress. Viola is the
biggest devil that ever lived, having poisoned a
stud horse and set the stable on fire, also
burned General R. Williams' stable and
stockyard with seven horses and other properties
to a value of $1500. She was handcuffed and got
away at Ruddles Mills on her way
downriver, which is the fifth time she escaped when
about to be sent out of the county. She has a scar on
her right cheekbone, several on her breastbone, one
on her arm occasioned by the bite of a dog, and her
back is badly scarred with the whip."
Rossini lowered the paper, then put it all
back in the oilcloth wrapper.

After hours of tossing and turning in the
unfamiliar bed, with its hard school
mattress, Mordecai Monk was on the verge
of sleep when the sound of distant thunder wakened him.
It shook the bed--could it be thunder? There it was again:
a deep, shuddering rumble, rattling the
windowpanes. An explosion? Someone had warned
him before he turned in not to be alarmed
by explosions, it had to do with blasting for the canal and
seemed to go on twenty-four hours a day.
Candlelight trembled on the etched portraits
of George Fox and Margaret Fell on the
wall above the bed, making their eyes look
alive; they seemed to stare down on him in disgust.
He was disgusted himself. What had got into him,
to scandalize that hall full of country bumpkins
with his lurid defense of Boniface Baker's
incestuous passion? To appreciate his argument
demanded a degree of sophistication he should not have
expected from a crowd of rustics and a stageful of
children. The wanton young woman had done it; her
brazen challenge had aroused him to the point where he
unleashed on her the full blast of his oratory.
It had been in response to her haughty,
high-breasted, slim-hipped, flat-bellied
defiance of Quakerly maidenhood that he had
sallied forth into his Birmingham Song of
Songs, culminating in "the shriek of the
cheetah." Nice metaphor, that. Well,
to hell with it. He had blotted his copybook.
He had fired a broadside at a Quaker
maiden out of pure randiness. This country did it
to him; the moment he had set foot in the New
World he had been hit by an energy, a vitality
in the air which in his case, alas, had become
sexual energy. He wanted to go home to Liza.
Let's leave for Richmond, right now, and--
But, no, he had to speak to Quarterly Meeting
the day after tomorrow; he wondered what reaction
awaited him there. The whole trip had been a
disaster, so far as audience reaction went. The
curse of the schism? were people no longer open
to beauty, spirituality, because the atmosphere was
poisoned with hatred? Could he say something about that
in his ministry to Quarterly Meeting?
He asked himself what exactly had triggered his
outburst that afternoon. The challenge of the wanton young
woman had caused it, but the trigger had been a
name. The name of one of the characters in her pageant:
Rebekah. It had evoked an image, the
perfect little body of newborn Becky, dead in
his hands. A sacrificial lamb,
demanded by a man-eating God.
Hit by guilt, regret, he slid out of bed
to pray for forgiveness, but all he could come up with was
a cry of pain.
"Becky!" he bellowed, with the full power of his
mighty lungs. "Becky! BECKY!"

In the room next door, Abby Baker
heard, in a dream, a man shout Becky's name.
She and Cleo, in the storm cellar, listened,
horror-struck, to Becky's screams as the
Indians raped her. Then she surfaced in the
present: the wild wind outside, the distant
rumble of blasting in the prairie. She was lying in
bed at the school, her heart thumping in her
throat. She sat up, threw back the quilt,
climbed out of bed, and opened the door to the
passage. Trailing the horror of her dream,
she wandered in her nightgown down the corridor,
down the stairs to the lobby, opened the front door
at a crack; the wind tore it from her hands and
blew it wide open. Then she saw the Indians.
They were coming out of the forest in single file, headed
straight for her. She must flee, or they would do
to her what they had done to Becky; she stumbled
outside, felt her gown ripping as she fell,
scrambled to her feet and went for the Indians, her
hands made into claws, crying, "Boo! Boo!"
When she was a child it had frightened other children; and now it
worked again. They were murderers, who had raped and
murdered screaming Becky, but as she went for them,
claws bared, they turned on their heels and ran
back into the forest. Sick with terror and relief,
she collapsed, sobbing. Then someone put an arm
around her; she looked up: a black face.
"Cleo!" she cried. "Please, Cleo,
please, please!"
Cleo said, "Hush, baby, hush," and rocked
her soothingly, like a child. There were men's voices,
but Cleo did not let go of her. Steps hurried
away, Cleo lifted her in her arms and carried
her away, whispering, "All right. All right,
baby. Everything's all right." She had always been
strong, Cleo. How she had hated her as a child!
Now Cleo was full of love, and tenderness, and
understanding.
"Cleo," she whispered, "I was afraid."
"I know, baby," the black face said. "I
know, but all's well now, they's gone, all
gone. Hush, baby, hush." Cleo
kissed her forehead; it made her want to go
to sleep.

As Viola held the exhausted old woman in
her arms, she knew a rare moment of weakness.
God only knew where those crazy niggers of hers
had run off to in their terror of the white ghost;
maybe straight into the arms of the slave catchers
at the school gates. For a moment she felt like
running in the opposite direction and leaving them
to their fate; then the doctor and Jesse
McHair joined her. She got a hold of
herself, left the addled old woman in their care, and
set out to look for the fugitives. Maybe
nobody had spotted them yet; they might have
crossed the road to run back into the graveyard.
Or she might find them huddled together on the boat
dock. They would not dare take a rowboat across the
ghostly lake without her. At least, she hoped not.





CHAPTER 6
PENDLE HILL, INDIANA
June 1833

The girls' wing of the school had the hush of a
convent when Obadiah visited his ward, Himsha,
the next morning. The children looked demure as
nuns in their gray dresses, white pinafores, and
bonnets. Himsha welcomed him with an adult
smile and sat down beside him on the visitors'
bench in the lobby, her hands in her lap, as good as
gold. But he had read her report card:
"At times, Himsha can be a handful, indeed."
He talked, self-consciously, about
Philadelphia, asked about the pueblo where she
lived, life at school. Her demure
composure began to get the better of him; she was a
disconcerting child, full of mysterious dignity. Where
did it come from? Her parents had been the last
representatives of the Society of Friends among
the Hunis, before being overwhelmed by the Roman
Catholic Church. Seventy years ago his
great-uncle Joe, together with his Indian wife
Himsha, had started a Quaker school in the
pueblo. The Hunis had adored his celebrated
great-aunt Gulielma, the traveling
physician; the family talked about the pueblo
Woodhouses as "the branch that went native."
"I suppose thee knows all about thy
great-great-aunt Gulielma?" he asked, for
want of a better subject.
"Of course," the girl said. "She is still with
us."
He thought it was just a pious platitude,
until she continued, "She sits on a chair in
the cave of the bats."
"Excuse me?"
"She looks pretty gruesome now, of
course. We hold services in front of her,
with dancing and silent worship. People say she was
once a beautiful woman. Well, the thing she
is now looks like a scarecrow." She gave him
a smile.
"I--er--still sitting there?"
"Her mummy. In her deerskin suit, and the
hat with the arrow. Her hands have gone very brown and
look eerie. Her face has gone off too.
What they could not keep when they embalmed her were the
eyeballs, so they put in moonstones instead."
"Did they really ..."
"When I'm home I sometimes go and sit at
her feet, especially at sunset, when the back
of the cave catches the light. Her eyes look
almost real. As a child I used to tell her everything,
and sort of pray to her. Now I just go and sit and
think of nothing. Like in meeting for worship."
"I see."
There was a silence. She smiled, waiting for him
to continue. Thank God, her teacher turned up and
joined them.
"Having a nice visit?" she inquired in her
educational voice.
"Yes, teacher Lydia," the child said with gloomy
patience, "I guess so." He felt the urge
to escape. "Face gone off" was a bit much,
really. "May I have a word with thee, teacher
Lydia?" he asked, rising.
"Of course. If it's all right with thee,
Himsha?"
It was not all right with Himsha. The girl stared
at them with regal contempt.
"Well, I'll be seeing thee before I leave,"
Obadiah said. "We still have lots of things to talk
about, haven't we?"
"I guess so." A handful, indeed.
"Well ..." He left it to the teacher
to take the lead.
"Let's go to my office," the young woman said.
"This way."
He thought she would take him to one of those little
offices where teachers had conversations with parents;
to his surprise she led him out of a back door,
walked to a vegetable garden behind the school, opened
the gate, and said, "I thought it best if we
talked somewhere undisturbed. A little further still
would be best, if that's all right with thee?"
"Of course ..." He became conscious of the
fact that she was a strikingly beautiful young
woman.
He followed her deeper into the vegetable
garden. She halted between two rows of runner
beans. "Now," she said, "this is serious.
Mordecai Monk must on no account be allowed
to address Quarterly Meeting day after tomorrow. He
should be taken home, or wherever, as fast as
possible. Would thee take charge of that?"
Suddenly he had enough of imperious women. First
a girl aged twelve treating him like a queen
receiving a minor ambassador, now a woman
teacher telling him to tuck England's most
obstreperous prima donna under his arm like a
ventriloquist's dummy and make off with him.
"I'm afraid my power of persuasion has its
limits," he said with a lawyer's smile. "And
isn't this going a bit far? I know Mordecai
Monk has committed a social offense,
interrupting your pageant, but--"
"As a result of that social offense, Friend,
a convoy of escaped slaves was scattered in the
forest and may be captured any moment by slave
hunters who are swarming all over the place."
He looked, bemused, at her blue eyes.
"I'm afraid I don't understand."
She waited a moment, listening, then she said,
her voice low, "I should not be telling thee this, but
this school is a station on the underground
railroad."
"Excuse me?"
"Surely, Philadelphia Quakers have
heard of the underground railroad? Or are you so
wrapped up in mutual backbiting that you are no
longer aware of any Quaker concerns?"
He realized he was in court. "Dear Friend,"
he said, in the tone that went with a wig, "I would be
obliged if thee could see thy way to enlighten me.
What railroad is thee talking about?"
She gave him a look which, supposedly, was
meant to express condescension; but she was too
pretty for it. "Friends, from Kentucky
to Canada, have organized a secret escape
route for runaway slaves," she said. "It is
made up of farms, safe houses in towns, and
places like this school, called "stations."
Passengers are transported from one station to the
next hidden in farmers' carts, mainly at
night. This section of the railroad is under the care
of our school. When thee and thy friend arrived, a
convoy of fifteen escaped slaves was on its
way here. Thy friend's ministry so upset
Boniface Baker's ninety-two-year-old
daughter that she, either sleepwalking or in a
hallucination, wandered outside in her nightgown just
as the convoy was coming out of the forest. The slaves took
fright and are now in the process of being gathered up,
at great personal risk, by their guide. The
slave catchers have noses like bloodhounds. So
I beg of thee, for the sake of our concern,
to remove that idiot Monk from the scene. If thee
cannot do that, prevail on him to fall sick or have
a sore throat, but don't let him stir up more
trouble at Quarterly Meeting. The railroad can
only function if there is peace, preferably
boredom. I will be holding thee responsible for his
removal."
He vacillated between admiration and outrage at
her bossiness. "It would mean my telling him the
reason why. Would thee want me to do that?"
"No," she said firmly.
"Look, Mordecai Monk is a sincere,
compassionate Friend. Because thee did not allow him
to finish what he was saying, thee missed the point
he was trying to make: that despite Boniface
Baker's transgressions he was a paragon of
virtue."
"I don't care. If he speaks again he is
going to cause excitement and controversy when this
place is full of people from all over the county. It
couldn't happen at a worse time."
"Nonsense," he said firmly. "The man is
a poet, an artist. He is not a troublemaker,
he is the voice of the Society's heart, if it
still has such a thing."
Suddenly, to his anger and dismay, she burst
into giggles.
"I was not aware of any levity on my part,"
he said in his courtroom voice.
She looked at him with bewildering amusement.
"I'm sorry," she said, "I must have sounded
self-righteous. Look, Mordecai may be a
Quaker William Blake, but he is the wrong
man to address five hundred stodgy farmers from
the backwoods at this particular moment. He
won't be able to resist the temptation of having a
few more saints sink their teeth into a few more
necks--"
"Friend Lydia, I am not his keeper. I cannot
tell him what to do, no one can. He is a force
of nature. Can't I get that through to thee? Thee cannot
snap thy fingers and say, "Off with him!" The
least amount of upheaval would be not to thwart him.
Unless thee wants me to put before him the whole
story of the underground railroad."
"Are you crazy?" a rough, male voice said
harshly behind him. Obadiah turned around and saw
it was the keeper of the farm--or whatever his function
was--Jesse McHair. "What do you mean,
bellowing "underground railroad" for all to hear
as far as the school?" the man snarled. "The fact
that you're hidden from view doesn't mean that
nobody can hear you!"
"I'm sorry if this disturbs thee," Lydia
said meekly, "but--"
"Come," the man said, pushing Obadiah aside
and getting hold of Lydia's arm.
Obadiah tried to intervene.
"What do you--"
"Shut up," the man said, with such bluntness that
Obadiah turned on his heels and marched off between
the runner beans, muttering "Yokels! God
protect us from rural yokels with a concern!" But
he was not exactly proud of himself; he should have
stood up to the brute for the way he treated that
delicate, pretty woman. But he was out of his
depth: a city slicker in hogland. Home,
home! Damn Mordecai Monk and his solos
for kettledrum!

Lydia was furious with Jesse. She pulled
her arm free and turned to go; but he grabbed her
by the shoulder and hissed, "Stop that! Listen to me!"
Her anger collapsed. His grip exuded
strength, maleness; tension gave way at his touch.
"Is this how thee treats all thy hussies?" she
asked, in self-defense.
"I'm asking thee to take a rowboat, this
evening, and deliver a message to the
slaves on Nightingale Island."
"Is that where they ended up?"
"I got a message from Viola that she will
collect them at nine o'clock at night, day after
tomorrow, when everybody will be in the Meeting House.
She wanted to go to the island herself today, but I told
her she cannot risk being spotted in one of our
rowboats out on the lake. The place is alive
with slave hunters."
"But I don't understand ..."
"All right," he said with a sigh. "Let me
explain. Last night, after old Abby scared the
slaves on their way to the cellar, they took off
and ended up in the graveyard. Viola took them
across to the island in two rowboats, towing one. She
brought both boats back to the dock, and I have
padlocked them and taken away the oars, because we
don't want children at Quarterly Meeting ending
up on the island while the slaves are still there.
Now, thee will have to take the message to them, from
Viola, that they'll be picked up after dark, day
after tomorrow. Tomorrow there'll still be many people arriving for
Quarterly Meeting. Got that?"
"Why doesn't thee do it thyself?"
"Because," he said with strained patience, "I have
to go to the next station to arrange for their transport.
So, this evening, when everybody is at dinner,
take a boat, go to the island, and tell them."
"Tell who?"
"Come on, Lydia!"
"I'm serious. Thee wants me to just holler?
Surely I have to give the message to a person.
Who?"
"Give it to Jake. Got that? Just-a-knowledge-every.
He's their leader. A large buck with crooked
teeth."
"Buck?"
"A Negro male, sweetheart."
"Charming. How Quakerly."
He walked off; then he stopped and added,
"By the way, I'll unlock one boat and put
oars in it. When thee is through, shove them under the
porch of the Meeting House." Without waiting for her
reply he stepped through the beans and was gone.
Row to Nightingale Island at dusk? She
had done it often enough, but always with someone else, a
friend or--well, a friend. Nightingale Island was
the standard outing for courting couples; full of
bundling nests and winding footpaths. She had
never gone there alone, not after dark.
Well, it was the least she could do now for the cause.
She set out for the school. She should find
Himsha Woodhouse's uncle, apologize for
Jesse's boorish behavior; he would never do so
himself.
After she arrived, she looked for the man, but he
was nowhere to be seen. The dinner bell sounded; she
waited for him in the lobby between the two dining
rooms, but he did not appear.
Where was the man? Was he not hungry?

Obadiah, in his room at the school, heard
the bell but decided to ignore it. He was writing
to Charity, something he had not done since they had
given up all hope of ever being allowed to marry.
He could not join Charity's Meeting without committing
professional suicide; Charity would never be
accepted by his Meeting unless she abrogated her
errant ways and cut herself off from family, friends,
her entire life. Too much to ask of either of them,
so they had separated with a chaste kiss and managed
so far to abide by their decision not to communicate in
any way. His encounter with Lydia among the
runner beans had, for some reason, opened his eyes
to the fact that, with their decision, Charity and he had
turned their backs on life itself. He was not
interested in other women, not about to select a
suitable bride from the right family with the right
connections and the right dowry. Here, in the wilderness
of the frontier, Quakers had retained their
essential testimony: the "underground
railroad," with all the risks it involved,
represented the essence of the Friendly persuasion. In
her fearless dedication to escaped Negro slaves
Lydia Best was like Margaret Fell.
Mordecai Monk ministered, like George Fox
had, about "the power of the Lord thundering among us," but
it was thunder for thunder's sake, for the benefit of
swooning women. The notion of the man being a
Quaker poet was a seductive one, but a poet
worthy of the name Quaker had to sing about more than his
stillborn daughter and Jesus' little dog.
Obadiah gazed out the window at the
treetops, still and serene now against the empty sky
swept clean by the gale. What could he write
her? If they wanted to live a normal married
life, they would have to flee beyond the reach of their
Meetings to a place like this: a rural outpost.
Alas, there was no employ here for a lawyer.
Charity might find a post as a teacher,
maybe even in this school, but he? Was he
prepared to give up the career he had worked for so
long and so hard in exchange for teaching history?
Or English?
"Dear Heart," he wrote. "I
know we agreed not to take up contact again, but I
have come to the conclusion that our decision was wrong.
To me, saying farewell to thee has meant saying
farewell to life. I suddenly realized this a
few hours ago. The reason for my change of
heart--"'
He wavered. If he wanted her to understand why,
he would have to write about the underground railroad, the
slaves being helped to escape to Canada, the
passionate young woman among the runner beans who
had suddenly burst into giggles. How odd: her
giggling had somehow thrown open a door, made him
understand the reality of Margaret Fell's dictum
"Service unites, theology divides." For
centuries this concept had determined the nature of
their Quaker witness to the world; before the schism, to be
a Friend had called for deeds, not words. Words ...
Was his change of heart all words? Had he been
struck by a momentary emotion, seduced by the
excitement of being involved in a concern? To turn
his decision into reality called for deeds.
His education, his family tradition had prepared
him for words, certainly not deeds without words.
Take away words, and as a lawyer he would be
useless to man or beast. He and Mordecai
Monk turned out to be of the same ilk. Compared
to Margaret Fell and the giggling Lydia Best,
they were gasbags of the Lord.
Chuck it all and join the underground railroad?
As what? Engine driver? Crazy. But then, they
had all been crazy, the saints upon whose godly
lives the corporate witness of the Society of
Friends rested. Margaret Fell, wife of a Lord
Chief Justice, joining condemned children in the
dungeons of Lancaster Prison. Boniface
Baker giving away his plantation to his slaves
and setting out with two pampered daughters and an
adopted slave girl into the wilds of what was then
the Far West. Craziest of all had been his
great-aunt Gulielma, the circuit-riding
physician in men's clothes with an arrow for a
hatpin and a freight-mule carrying her pharmacy.
For forty years she had trudged the trails of the
American wilderness as far as Mexico,
hobnobbing with buffalo hunters, Indian medicine
men, and French voyageurs on the
Mississippi, to whom she had been known as
"Pissing Gulie" because of her propensity
to relieve herself in plain view of the campfire.
And how had she ended? As a mummy in a
bat-filled cave in an Indian pueblo, where
she sat staring glassily through moonstones, a
goddess to the locals.
In the end, he wrote the letter all the same,
asking her to join him. Then he put away the
quill and went down to dinner, looking for Lydia
Best. But she was nowhere to be seen. Where was the
woman? Was she not hungry?

Abiding by Jesse's instructions, Lydia
waited until the last of the crowd in the graveyard
had trooped into the Meeting House for the opening of
Quarterly Meeting. There might be latecomers,
and they might notice a solitary woman setting
out in a rowboat across the lake, so she hung around
a while longer in the lengthening shadows. The first
mist of evening began to form over the water; that was the
danger of setting out in a boat at dusk. She
had known this ever since she was a child: if you waited
too long, the island would be hidden from sight by fog
and all you had to go by to find your way there was the song
of the veeries. She swung her legs over the edge
of the dock, jumped into the boat, cast off, and
struck out, rowing fast, in the direction of the island.
The shore quickly disappeared from sight, the mist was
thicker on the lake. She rested her oars and
listened. There was only silence. She waited,
suspended in a darkening cloud, for the rippling
rills of the veeries' song to guide her. Then it
occurred to her that the veeries never sang when
disturbed. There were people on the island! The veeries
would not sing tonight. She started to row again, hoping she was
heading in the right direction.
It was farther than she had thought; then, suddenly,
the bow of the boat hit the shore with a crunch. She
sat listening for a while, motionless, certain someone
must have heard her. She thought she heard voices,
then it became silent. After a while she heard
them again. She felt a shiver of apprehension,
overcame it, took off her shoes, swung her
legs over the gunnel, lowered herself into the water,
and tied up the boat in the reeds. Standing in the
water, skirts gathered, she hesitated. Her
feet were slowly sinking deeper into the ooze; she
waded ashore. She could not see far because of the mist,
but it was light enough to make out the beginning of a
little path into the brush, one of the many that
crisscrossed the island, made by fishermen and
lovers, the only visitors to this innocent little
wilderness. The path was soon choked with nettles;
she put her shoes back on. Standing still, one
foot lifted behind her while pulling on the
second shoe, she heard a child cry.
The cry was so forlorn, so frightened, that, not
thinking, she hurried toward it, jumping across
logs, rustling through brambles, catching her skirt.
She broke out of the undergrowth with a suddenness that almost
made her lose her balance.
She was standing on the edge of a trail, much wider
than she had ever seen on the island. It could not be
the island! She had missed it in the fog! This must
be the wagon trail through the wood across the lake!
But where was the child she had heard? were the slaves
here, in the wood?
A secretive but massive sound drew nearer
from the darkness of the forest. Down the trail she
discerned a row of weary people, five abreast, who
came stumbling toward her. As they drew closer,
she realized there were not just five. A whole
column of people, dazed, their faces frozen in
despair, were emerging from the darkness. Prisoners?
As they drew level with her, she realized they were
Indians. But there were no Indians left anywhere
near! Their faces were masks of sweat-caked
dust; impossible to distinguish men from women. Never
before had she seen such utter hopelessness; they
stumbled by, staggering under loads on their heads or
shoulders; some of the women carried babies on their
backs. Hundreds of them, scores of rickety
wagons pulled by emaciated horses, an
unending procession of misery and despair. But
apart from the creaking of the wagons and the thudding of the
horses' hooves, the only sound was the crying of
one child.
She found it lying by the side of the trail. An
Indian couple were bending over it. Lydia
kneeled beside them; when she saw the child she was struck
with horror. The little face, ghostly in the mist, was
like the ones that had haunted her ever since the
epidemic when she was a girl. She knew, before
she took the child's hand in hers and felt its burning
heat, that the child was dying.
She looked at the parents. Their faces were
expressionless masks of resignation. Then, beyond
them, she caught sight of a horseman cantering
their way, a white man.
She rose, stepped into his path, lifted her
hand and cried, "Stop! There's a sick child here!"
The horse reared, the rider cursed. He was
an army officer, in his twenties.
"What the hell do you think you're doing!" he
shouted, bringing his animal under control. "You damn
nearly--" He saw she was a white woman, and
his face went blank with amazement. He touched his
hat and said, "Sorry, miss. I didn't see
--what can I do for you? Are you lost, or something?"
"There's a child here that needs help," she said.
"It must be taken to a doctor at once. Has
thee a cart or a buggy?"
"Miss," the officer said, still in a tone of
apology, "we've had many of them dying by the
roadside. I can't--"
"What does thee mean, many?" she cried.
"Who are these people?"
"Mahanoy, miss. They're being removed
to their new reservation in Kansas territory."
"Why?"
"Because of the Indian Removal Bill,
ma'am. They have to make room for civilization."
It seemed unreal, a nightmare. "How can
thee?" she asked.
"Excuse me?"
"How can thee do this to children? Is thee a
Christian?"
"Well, yes ..."
"Then get off that horse at once and behave
like one! Pick up this child and take it to a doctor!
I'll tell thee where to go."
"But, ma'am--" He gave up and dismounted.
He was tall, lanky, and smelled of sweat and of the
honeysuckle he'd brushed against as he rode through
the forest. He looked down at the child. It had
stopped crying and lay, still and spent, between its
parents, who had not moved.
"Ma'am," the officer said, "I've been on
this trail for months ..."
Ignoring him, she said to the parents, "We are
going to take your baby to a doctor. We're
going to help your baby. Do you understand?" They did
not respond. She lifted the child and carried it to the
officer. "Get back on thy horse," she said.
"I'll hand it up to thee."
The young man looked down at the child, then at
her. "Sorry, ma'am," he said,
apologetically. "Even if I could, it's too
late."
Startled, she looked down. He was right. The child
in her arms was dead.
"Better put it back, ma'am," the officer
said.
She looked up at him, his image blurred with
tears, then gently put the child down in the weeds between
its parents, who had not looked up when she took
it away. She heard the officer tell someone he
would be right back, then he touched her shoulder.
"Come, ma'am," he said. "I'll take you
home, if you don't mind sitting in front of
me."
She let herself be helped up onto the horse.
Then the officer swung into the saddle behind her, put
his arms around her, and took the reins.
"Where to, ma'am?"
"The Quaker boarding school, in town. I
don't quite know how to get there from here."
"The little town across the lake?"
She nodded; unable to control her emotions any
longer, she burst into sobs. He said nothing: the
horse started to move.
After a while he asked, "Would this be the
turn-off, ma'am?"
She opened her eyes and saw that they had reached
Lovers' Lane. She nodded. "To the right ..."
The horse turned and walked down the soft center
of the road. The air was fragrant with the scent of
honeysuckle. Startled thrushes called shrill
warnings. A crow swooped down on them, cawing.
"I'm sorry about this, ma'am," the officer said
behind her. "I'm a soldier, obeying orders. It
wasn't my decision to remove the Indians.
It's a law, passed by Congress." When he
understood that this made no impression, he added,
"They're not human beings like you and me, ma'am.
They don't feel things the way we do. They--"
"Shut up!" she cried. Startled by the violence
of her own voice, she added, controlling herself,
"I'm a schoolteacher. I have taught Indian
children. I have Indian children in my school now."
He said politely, "Yes, ma'am."
They rode on in silence; at the junction the
horse stopped. He asked, "Ma'am, where
now?"
"Turn left here, please. Follow the
pike."
"Yes, ma'am."
They said no more until they arrived at the gate
to the school. She said, "This will do, thank
thee," and slid down the horse's flank. Her
feet hurt when they hit the ground; she winced.
The officer landed beside her with a clank of spurs and
put an arm around her shoulders. She shrugged him
off. It was unkind, but she could not bear him to touch
her.
"Please, miss," he said, concerned. "You are
in no fit condition to walk, let me take you
there."
She shook her head. "No, thank thee," she
said, trying to keep the tears out of her voice.
"I'm all right. Thank thee for thy kindness. Thee
had better be on thy way back now."
He hesitated, then blurted out, "Look,
miss, in case you should be tempted to come back:
don't. Captain Stewart, who's due with the
next convoy tomorrow, is not of the same mind as I
am. I have three sisters, you see, I know about
women. I also know Quakers, I'm from
Pennsylvania. But Captain Stewart is from the
South, he's likely to act different, should you come
back and mess with his Indians. What's more, I
wouldn't want for one of my sisters to have any
truck with Captain Stewart. If you see what
I mean."
"Thank thee," she said.
He saluted. "So long, ma'am. A
pleasure, I'm sure. Should you ever need me:
Second Lieutenant James Goodall, at
your service. Jim Goodall. Good night,
ma'am." He climbed back in the saddle,
turned his horse around, and cantered off.
She walked up the driveway in a daze.
"In case you should feel tempted to come
back ..." Would she? Should she? What could she
do other than stand helplessly by the roadside and
watch them file past?
If she wanted to go back, it should be with a
specific purpose, not just to stand there, wringing her
hands, berating men who were following orders. But
to what purpose? She was not a nurse; even if
she were, there was nothing one could do other than give
them food and a drink of water. "They don't
feel things the way we do." What had been the
power in which Margaret Fell confronted the jailers
who hanged children? How had Boniface Baker
managed to stand up to Philadelphia Yearly
Meeting on the issue of slavery? What power
had they possessed? For one thing, they had had
courage. She had none. The mere thought
of watching another child die made her want to run.
Only as she was about to open the front door and
slip inside did she remember the slaves, the
rowboat in the reeds. She could not go back now, it
was too dark, the lake was shrouded in fog. There were
committee meetings all morning tomorrow, at which she
had to be present; the only time would be after the
general meeting had started, which was at two o'clock; and
she must be back before the keynote speech,
visibly present on the facing bench ...
Jesse would have to do it, first thing in the morning.

Mordecai Monk had a dream--a daydream.
One night, after his ministry, while he was alone,
exhausted, in his hotel room, there would be a
timid knock on the door. He would think at
first that he was mistaken, then there would be another
knock, firmer this time. He would open the door,
and there, trembling, shy, terrified, yet helpless
in her passion, would stand one of the women who had come
forward at his call and kneeled with him in prayer.
A woman like the one who had kissed him on the
lips in the alley after his first sermon and fled
back into the shadows. She would be young, willing, or
unwilling, passionate, terrified, shocked by her
own daring, praying him, maybe God, to stop her
doing this, to save her from her own desire. One arm
would press her against him as the other pulled up her
skirt; then, in a whirl of lust, loneliness,
desperation, love, hunger, he would topple her
onto the bed and feel her nakedness, the nakedness of
her thighs, the--
"No!"
He got up from the bed on which he had been staring
at the ceiling, where he had seen it happen, all
of it: the knees arching sideways, upwards, the
shriek--
He went to the washstand and splashed a handful of
water from the jug onto his face, snorting as the
water went up his nose. Still, there she was: arching
backwards, up, up, the shriek, the shriek of the
cheetah ...
"Liza!"
He must kill the dream, strangle these insane
imaginings: they only made the loneliness worse.
The loneliness was an ache, a physical pain.
He had never known such loneliness in his life before
ending up here in the wilderness, among these stolid,
thick people, these self-righteous, humorless clods from
whom came no laugh, no smile, no
kind word, no look of understanding. Clodhoppers,
that's what they were, bucolic morons,
creatures from the abyss of this untamed land.
Give them a horse and they would know how to handle
it; give them a prophet, a singer of God's
praises, a bard, minstrel of the Lord, and they
stared at him unblinking, hostile, as they would at
a theatrical performer, a salesman, a seller
of glass diamonds.
Well, tomorrow another performance. Already buggies
and wagons full of rural troglodytes were
arriving; he would have a house full of them and their
womenfolk: staid, stodgy matrons, with thighs
like bears and bellies like--enough!
He washed his face again. Sat down at the
school desk, a sheet of paper before him. No
need to write anything down, he knew it by heart:
Where in the universe, among the stars, the
moons, the rings around Saturn, the balls of
Uranus ...
One thing was certain: in this school no trembling
maiden would turn up; there was no such thing as a
trembling maiden among the troglodytes from the
abyss. "Come kneel with me! Easy, now!
Not like a stampeding herd of heifers!"
Oh, my God! If only Liza were near,
if only she--
If only he. The folly had been his, the
recklessness, the hubris, the daydream of the maiden
trembling at his door. One of these days God
would strike him with His lightning, the world-large
whiplash of His fury. "Away! Out into the
desert with thee, fornicator! Fake! False
prophet! English groper on America's
frontier!" Adam, at least, had not been cast
out alone; there had been a naked woman with him,
shivering with cold, stunned by the fury of the Lord.
"Come, Eve, come, love, let's sit down
for a moment, lie down, here ..."
Outside, in the far distance, yet with shocking
closeness, thunder rumbled, shaking the room. More
blasting for the canal. More violence in the air. More
despair. More loneliness.
The loneliness, that was what would get him in the
end. Adam without Eve, cast out into the American
wilderness. Heavenly Smiles. The innocence
of it, when he had first made up the recipe for the
liqueur-filled bonbon! The joy of creation,
the delight of the first woman who tasted the sweet
chocolate, still soft and warm on his finger.
What had been her name? The little secretary with the
huge gray eyes? Licking his finger, looking up
with a hint of boldness--all that had achieved was
to drive him back into Liza's embrace, that
night. One more cry in the lamplight. One more
cup of tea--careful!--not to be spilled onto
naked breasts. One more bill of one shilling and
sixpence for breakfast. And this man would have the
temerity to rise in front of Quarterly Meeting
tomorrow, in the name of God?
Another distant explosion shook the room,
setting the jug clattering in the basin, the candle
flame trembling. Suddenly he had a feeling of
danger. Some incomprehensible, all-swallowing
calamity was about to engulf him. Him and the naked
Eve, fleeing down narrow trails, while fire
and ashes rained down upon them.
Good ministry, that!
And so the Lord set about destroying the wicked
couple--Let's write it down.




CHAPTER 7
PENDLE HILL, INDIANA
June 1833

The next afternoon, at the time of the opening
addresses of Quarterly Meeting, Lydia
entered the winding lane to the wagon trail in the
forest again, and realized only then how hasty and
ill-considered this expedition was. What did she
expect to achieve with a few pieces of fruit,
a handful of candy, a couple of toys, all of which
might be the opposite of comforting to a frightened
Indian child? What power did she presume
to represent in the face of angry men on
horseback: a Quaker busybody with a
basket, planning to mess with "their" Indians?
Maybe by this time they had all passed, anyway.
But she was committed now. As she neared the end
of the lane, she stopped for a moment to catch her
breath. All was still in the dappled forest. Not a
sound, not the crack of a twig betrayed the presence
of any Indians. But when she turned the corner
to the trail, there they were: a soundless procession
of trudging shapes covered with dust, images of
misery and despair.
Her fear was overwhelmed by their
monstrous suffering; she stepped onto the trail,
uncovered her basket, and proffered an apple
to the first figure that came stumbling past. But the
glazed eyes of the man did not notice the
tempting red fruit; so she offered it to the next
one, an old woman, carrying an incredible
burden of junk. "Please," she pleaded,
"take this, it will be so good for thee ..." But it was like
offering an apple to a creature from another world,
who did not associate the succulent fruit with
eating.
A family with two small children passed, the
man pushing a cart with blanket rolls,
mattress, pots and pans, the woman pulling;
the narrow wheels of the cart plowing the dust of the
track. She held out the apple to the children; when they
did not respond she tried the rag doll. Any
child she knew would at least have looked at it; these
children just trudged past with staring eyes, like damned children
in hell. She tried to hold back her tears and
prayed, "God, help me--please, God,
help ..."
A voice called, "Hey, you there! Get out
of the way!" A whip cracked viciously, so
close to her face that she felt the wind of it.
She opened her eyes and saw a coarse,
unshaven man on a dust-covered mustang among
the mass of stumbling Indians, knocking them
aside, pushing them over, scattering their belongings.
"Get off the road!" he yelled. "No
peddlers allowed! This is a government convoy,
get the hell out!" He raised his whip again, this
time to strike her.
A great calm came over her. She picked
up her basket and said, "I am not a peddler,
Friend, I am a Quaker, offering these people
sustenance."
"Huh?" He did not understand. His mouth, stained
with tobacco juice, showed as a dark hole in his
face as he gaped at her. Then he said,
"Well, you stop that. Nobody is allowed
to talk to these here people. This is a government convoy.
Go on, clear outa here!"
"I am sorry, Friend," she said firmly.
"I cannot obey thee, I obey a higher
authority."
"But the captain--"
"I do not mean the captain, Friend. I mean
God."
Even as she said it, she felt she was
overdoing it. Her basket with fruit and toys
did not warrant the grandiose statement.
But the drover seemed impressed. He swung
his horse around and loped off toward the end of the
column.
She went on trying to press gifts on the
Indians, without success; they did not even seem
to be aware of her existence. Then she heard the
labored breathing of a fast-approaching horse; the
Indians moved out of the way in obvious terror.
When the horse loomed over her she thought for a
moment it would knock her down, but it was reined in just
in time, covering her with dust. "Stop that!" an
angry voice shouted. The horse took a step
and pushed her over. She fell to her knees, and
could not help screaming when she heard its hooves
crush the basket. "Please, please!" she
pleaded, struggling to her feet.
The man on the horse was an officer with a
florid face, a rusty beard, dark holes for
eyes under his hat. He seemed inhuman; she
knew at once that he had no respect for her
Quaker garb, no awareness of her femininity
even, only of the fact that she was messing with his
Indians.
"Move!" he said.
Frightened as she was, she pleaded, "Please,
Friend. All I am trying to do ..."
The horse stepped closer; she backed away
from the hooves, the demolished basket, the
squashed apples. "Move!" the man shouted,
"Move!"
The horse advanced. Terror swamped the last
vestige of her courage. She turned around and
ran. The dust of the trail was deep and soft, she
tripped on the hem of her skirt, stumbled,
fell to her knees, when she tried to rise, something
kept her skirt pinned down. The horse was standing
on it.
She screamed, screamed, tugging at her
skirt, tearing it; above her the horse shook its
head with a jangle of chains, spraying her with
spittle. She tore herself loose, lost a
shoe, stumbled along as fast as she could; then she
saw that she was bare-legged, she had lost her
skirt, and her petticoat as well.
Terrified, panicked by awareness of the temptation
she offered, she ran for her life. "Move!" the
voice shouted close behind her.
The jangling horse shooed her along,
faster, faster, until her lungs seemed
to burst, her eyes could no longer see; finally she
fell headlong by the side of the trail, panting,
waiting for the horse to stop beside her, for the man
to jump down, grab her, turn her over. She
waited for the pain.
But nothing happened. She had no idea where she
was--a winding lane, like the one by which she had come.
When she saw her nakedness, she burst into tears,
her face in her hands. She lay there, aware
only of the trembling of her body, the slamming of
her heart. Disjointed images rose and sank in
her mind. The apple. The black hole of the
drover's mouth. The jangling head of the horse
above her. The feeling of her skirt ripping
away, the unspeakable fear of rape.
Finally, she recovered sufficiently to sit
up. She was still trembling and had a vile pain in
her abdomen, as if something had really happened, but
that was nonsense. Her drawers, her stockings were in
place. It was pure fright. For her to have tried
to face down the cavalry acting on instructions from
Congress had been insane. If only there were a
man to help her! If only there were a real man
at the school! But they were all weaklings,
cripples, physically or emotionally, Little Will,
Uriah, and Abner, the vacillating weakling.
Jesse was the only real man among them, but he
was always hard to find, and would certainly not want
to be involved in yet another concern, he had his
hands full with the underground railroad. What had
possessed her to think that she could carry yet
another concern, apart from the railroad? She should go
back now. Attend Quarterly Meeting. But how
could she, in the state she was in? If she did not
intend to walk into the meeting half naked, she should
go and look for her skirt and petticoat. They
must be somewhere along the trail, if the Indians
had passed by now. Unless the Indians had stolen
them--picked them up, she meant. But suddenly she
felt deeply ashamed of herself, her delusion of
being a second Gulielma Woodhouse.
"Unless the Indians had stolen them"--that was the
truth about her noble attitude toward the helpless
and the downtrodden. Hallelujah.
For some reason, the realization of her
unworthiness set her moving. She went back in
the direction of the trail, stopping often to listen.
Not a sound. Had they gone? Finally she emerged from
the brush. The trail was empty.
Knock-kneed in a silly effort at chasteness,
covering the front of her drawers with her hands, she
minced through the dust, looking for her skirt, her
petticoat, and her shoe.
In the end, she did find them all. The
petticoat was undamaged, but her skirt showed a
big tear at the waist. She put them back on.
The shoe was hardest to find. First she found the rag
doll; then the crushed basket. The fruit was
gone. Had the Indians found it? She hoped so;
oh, God, she hoped so. "Forgive me," she
thought. "God, forgive me."
Then she found the shoe. It was undamaged, even
the heel was still there. She put it on, adjusted her
petticoat, her skirt, combed back her hair
with her hands.
Sobered, she set out for the Meeting House.

When Friend Monk finally rose to face
Quarterly Meeting for the keynote speech,
despite the dire warnings from the local Meeting,
Obadiah Woodhouse watched the by now familiar
performance with sober objectivity. First,
Mordecai allowed his audience to cough, whisper,
rustle, and stir for a few moments after the motionless
discipline of worship. He stood, eyes
closed, face lifted, in total stillness;
soon this created a hush. Even the restless children in
the gallery were captured by the silent man standing,
face lifted, hands spread, as in a bewildered
question to the Almighty.
When the hall became silent, he muttered,
softly, as if talking to himself, "Time? What is
time, in the world of the planets, the stars, the rings
around Saturn, the moons of Uranus? Time, in
the mind of God, means nothing. The man who
eighteen hundred years ago stood under a tree
in a Levantine garden and prayed, "Father, if
it be possible, let this cup pass from me," did
so only yesterday, in God's time ..."
As the silence deepened, Obadiah asked himself
what gave this hackneyed opening its power. What
was the animal magnetism in this man, who in
daily life was so unprepossessing,
petulant, given to sudden excesses of emotion?
Again he watched, spellbound, as before his eyes the
English chocolate merchant changed into something the
Quaker movement had never seen before: a poet in
the act of creation.
Obadiah had heard the opening many
times now; yet each time he found himself caught up
in the haunting reality the poet evoked, a reality
entirely of the man's own making: the young Jesus
praying under the tree, the sleeping disciples at the
gate, the little dog peering through the bars, softly
whimpering, the Roman patrol with its bobbing
lantern drawing near in the night, the yapping
dog, the disciples jumping to their feet, the flash
of steel, the ear lying in the road, the little dog
briefly sniffing it before lolloping after the
soldiers who led its master away.
As Obadiah settled down for the next
episode, the crucifixion, he scanned the
faces in front of him. It was the one
advantage of sitting on the facing bench: you could
observe the audience, see their faces. They were still
suspicious, uncertain, yet attentive.
Farmers, small tradesmen, trappers,
loggers, the face of rural Quakerism. Not one
of them had any idea what would be done to their
wives and daughters in the next half-hour, no
one could conceivably guess.
"He was told to lie down on a cross on the
ground, almost kindly, without hostility or
violence, by professionals doing their job. He
obeyed, meek as a lamb, showing no outward
sign of fear or apprehension except for the
trembling of a corner of His mouth. No sound
came from the crowd, breathlessly watching, only the
anguished whimper of the little dog, restrained by one of
His disciples. Then, with a butcher's cold
precision, the henchman with the shaven head put a
nail to the delicate wrist--yes, wrist!
Painters throughout the ages have depicted the nails
as piercing His hands; but the soft bones of the palms
cannot carry the weight of a body. But why am I
telling you this? Some of you may have seen neighbors
crucified by Indians."
So complete was the spell he had thrown over his
audience that nobody demurred, although Obadiah
was sure no one had ever seen a white settler
crucified. Indians did not crucify people, the
poet had taken them into a world of fable and myth.
There was something unhealthy about the wide-eyed,
openmouthed, horrified fascination with which the women
drank it all in, mysteriously spellbound by the
graphic details of the crucifixion.
""Ah!" Jesus shrieked, cringing in
agony as the cross was raised, to the cheers of the
crowd ..."
Obadiah watched the women: lips parted,
eyes filling with tears.
""Father! Why hast thou forsaken me!"" The
howl of agony was left to die in the silent
hall. "Where was the father? Where was he? Where
among the stars, the planets, the streaking comets, the
rings of Saturn, the moons of Uranus was
he? Did he not hear the howl of his tortured
son? Would you have remained silent seeing your child
trussed, tortured, crucified? "Help,
Father! Help!"" Mordecai let the shout die
into silence. "Why did the father not save his child?
Why did he suffer Him to be lashed and spat
upon, gored by a spear, taunted by jeers, left
to cringe in mortal pain and terror? Why?
God, for the sake of our peace, for the sake of our
souls, answer! Why?"
No one stirred now, not even the children.
The answer came as always in a dreamlike
whisper: "For thee ..." Then the shout: "For
thee!" With spine-chilling deliberation,
Mordecai's finger jabbed at a woman in the first
row. This time, the victim was the principal's
wife. She had, so far, remained unmoved, as
if frozen in secret grief; now, as she gazed
up at the speaker with startled eyes, tears began
to run down her face in amazing profusion.
Obadiah looked away in embarrassment, as if
he had been spying upon her in a moment of utter
privacy.
"Thee!" Mordecai repeated, ramming home
the harpoon.
Then, again in a whisper, "And me ..."
Pause.
"Why thee? I do not know. Why me? That I do
know. Because I am steeped, soaked, mired in sin!
And have been, ever since my father's seed sprang
into my mother's womb and sparked my life! Even in
that first, red darkness I was corrupt, lecherous,
devious, vain, an abomination in the face of the
Lord!"
He went on extolling his own wickedness with
utter conviction, a soul in the throes of damnation.
There could be no doubt that he meant it, at that
moment: he was a sinner, he was a lecher, and he
hurled at the stunned audience the howl of his
damnation.
"Let no man, no child, especially no
woman dare tell me that she is not steeped in
sin!"
Here we go, Obadiah thought with distaste, as
Mordecai started the second phase of his
performance, the act of seduction. Again he singled out
the wife of the principal in the front row; the
woman's sallow face and haunted eyes meant
an easy victim. "Can thee face God and
say, "Father, I am without sin"? Can thee
say, "There is enough of God within me to free my
soul of the sin which smote me before I was born"?
Can thee say, "There is a light in my breast
that will lead me out of the midnight of the soul without the
help of a Master, a Friend, a Savior, the
Messiah"? It is not true, and thee knows it
is not true, thee knows there is only one way:
surrender! Surrender to Jesus, now! Give
thy all to the only One, the precious One, the
ultimate, final One, so He may gather thee
into His embrace, now!"
The poor woman closed her eyes, the
knuckles of her hands folded in front of her
mouth went white.
"Now!" Mordecai persisted. "Cast off
all sin now! Cast off thy shackles, thy
earthly garments, thy self-will, thy envy, thy
pride; tear off all that is furtive and
afraid; surrender, now, to the gentle,
all-knowing, all-loving Savior bending over thee!
Open thy arms, open thy very self and whisper,
"Take me, Jesus! Take me, take me,
do with me what Thou willst! I am Thine,
Thine! I'm coming!"" The woman was trembling
visibly now. "Come! Cast aside all
timorousness, thy last trepidation, be free!
Free in utter surrender! Cry with me:
"Jesus, take me!"" He closed his
eyes and swayed in almost salacious rapture.
"Thy soul will melt in bliss as thee throws thyself,
body and soul, into the warm, all-dissolving,
sin-swamping glory of His precious, saving,
sacrificial blood!"
The pathetic woman began to moan, to roll her
eyes. Some men in the audience rose and started
to leave. Obadiah wished he could follow them,
ashamed to be associated with this shocking performance.
It was new; on previous occasions Mordecai
had flagellated himself verbally until he cried
out for help, for someone to join him in his darkness, which
had moved some women to come forward and kneel with him
in prayer. This shameless mating call was a
scabrous innovation. How must the
principal feel as he watched his wife
respond to the lowing of this rampant bull, in
full view of the elders, the children on the balcony?
Other women began to show signs of agitation; some,
mainly the young ones, were reduced to giggles and
nudging their neighbors.
"Rise, now! Now!" Mordecai shouted.
"Come forward, now, to the foot of the cross!
Surrender, now, to Him without whom thy life is
empty, thy heart barren, thy body dead!
Rise, Sister, rise!" he cried, pointing at
the poor woman again. "Rise! Surrender! And
live!"
There she went. She staggered forward, threw herself
at his feet, arms spread, raised her contorted
face to him, and wailed, "I am coming! I am
coming, Jesus! Now! Now!"
Obadiah closed his eyes. From the hall
came a rumbling of seats, a shuffling of feet.
A double movement disrupted the audience: a number
of people, mainly men, were leaving the hall, a larger
number, all of them women, were coming forward as
Mordecai, in full force now, challenged them
to do so. They climbed onto the platform and knelt
at his feet in response to the call:
"Surrender! Surrender thy all to the ultimate
One, the final One, to be hurled aloft, torn
asunder, thrust into the thundering surf of His power,
swept along in rapturous suspension of that
pinnacle of bliss--forgiveness! Forgiveness!
To be forgiven! Ah! Forgive, Father! Forgive!
Take me, take me! I am Thine, Thine
alone! Now, now!"
Then a last woman climbed onto the
rostrum. She was without a bonnet, her hair
hung loose, her dress was torn--to his
horror, Obadiah recognized Lydia
Best. But instead of joining the others around
Mordecai, she stepped over them, moved to the
facing bench, and took up position in front of
it, facing the remainder of the audience.
When it became obvious that she was about to speak,
Obadiah's heart leapt with incredulous joy.
Could it be that Mordecai Monk was about to meet his
match?

After slipping into the Meeting House
unnoticed, Lydia had started listening
to Mordecai Monk's ministry with reluctance.
Then, gradually, it became tempting
to succumb to his plea, to stop agonizing over the
cruel contradiction of a God of love and a dying
Indian child, and throw herself into the arms of Jesus,
crying, "I believe! I repent, I am
sinful, save me! Save me!" Why should she go
on trying to combat the cruelty, the absurdity of
life with nothing but the inward light which, according
to Margaret Fell, every woman carried within her in
the form of love for suffering children?
The memory of Margaret Fell made the
difference. She suddenly became aware of the
hollowness, the selfishness of the man's appeal.
She rose, walked to the podium, climbed the
steps, stepped over the women lying there in prayer,
took up position in front of the facing bench, and
spoke, quaking. "It is true! George
Fox did say all that. But he also said that God
was an infinite ocean of light and love. For
centuries Friends have based their conduct not just on the
knowledge that God is love, but that He has no way of
communicating this love other than through us, through thee and
me. That has been the essence of Quakerism from the
beginning: All He has is thee!"
Suddenly she did not know how to go on. She was
shaking like a leaf; she wanted to flee; but something
forced her to continue, some power that was within her and yet
not hers. The words came without thinking. "Even in the
face of dying children, in the face of the cruel suffering
of our own little brothers and sisters during the
epidemic which broke our hearts and darkened our
lives, we did cling to that concept: "All He
has is thee!" How else could God--despite
all his stars, planets, oceans, storms--reach
out to one soul cowering in terror?"
She found she had talked herself into a blind
alley. She fell silent, faced by the same
absurdity as when she had kneeled beside the dying child.
How could she prove that all that God had was she?
She became aware of a commotion in the hall. People
were leaving, others argued. She waited until the
meeting centered down. While doing so, peace
seemed to settle over her. It did not matter
whether she could prove that all God had was she.
She did not have to prove anything, all she had to do
was tell them what had happened and leave it to that of
God in each one of them to respond.
Her very patience as she stood there, waiting,
seemed to have an effect. Gradually the meeting,
half its original size by now, calmed down.
When silence returned she said
quietly, "Let me tell you what this is about.
Within a mile of this meeting, down the wagon
trail in the forest, hundreds of Mahanoy
Indians, helpless, defeated, degraded, are
being herded to the prairie by the United States
Cavalry--in our name."
Those who had been standing started to sit down. She
waited.

"Magnificent!" Obadiah thought. There was
no other word for it. The women at Mordecai's
feet rose, rather sheepishly, and started for their
seats, or so it seemed: in fact, most of them were
heading up the aisle and out of the hall. After a
moment of total bafflement, Mordecai himself
stepped down from the podium and marched up the
aisle; many people, men as well as women, rose,
forcing others to stand and allow them to pass. They
followed Mordecai and the women out of the hall.
With a shock Obadiah realized what this meant:
the schism had arrived in Pendle Hill. In her
innocent spontaneity, fired by an experience which
had deeply shaken her, Lydia had done something
half the Society of Friends would never forgive her
for. To say that to serve others as an embodiment of the
love of God was more Quakerly than to kneel and
whine about your own soul's salvation was the central
issue of the schism: salvation by Christ's blood
on the cross versus serving those in need and thereby
turning love into a verb.
Those who were left of the audience sat in motionless
silence, as if waiting with the woman on the podium
for God to manifest Himself. Then, when the silence
had deepened to stillness, she continued calmly,
"Yesterday, I found myself in the forest and came upon
an abomination: hundreds of Indians,
bewildered, robbed of all their possessions, being
herded along the other side of the lake toward a
"reservation" in Kansas by the United States
Cavalry. In our name, men on horseback,
called "drovers," whip them with total
heartlessness. In our name, they are treated like
cattle, lashed along with curses and whips,
while exhausted, sick children are left to die by the
roadside. The Mahanoy are the last of the
tribes with whom William Penn made a
pact, which still binds us. All that God has
to alleviate their unspeakable suffering is us.
How, I do not know. What we could possibly do
to help them, I do not know. But I am
certain that way will open the moment our prayer
changes from "Lord, save me" to "Lord,
let me embody Thee.""
Obadiah became aware that he was witness to one
of those historical occasions when Friends take on
a major concern when, after a long silence, somewhere
in the hall someone rose and called, "Let's form
a Meeting for Sufferings--now!"
Within half an hour an action committee was
formed under the ancient name of Meeting for Sufferings,
this time for the care, protection, and legal
representation of the Mahanoy Indians--
especially the children--forcibly removed from their
hunting grounds to unorganized territory.
All over the hall people rose to donate money,
food, personal involvement. With every decision, every
promise, the Meeting took on life.
Mordecai's leaving became shameful, the
elephantine pout of a demagogue interrupted in
mid-oration. Obadiah was certain that the man had
no idea what had happened, other than that he had
been rejected.
After pledging fifty dollars as his contribution
to the Meeting for Sufferings of Mahanoy children, a
reckless sum of money, Obadiah left.

Abner Best waited until everyone had gone,
his arm around the shoulders of Saraetta, who sat
beside him sobbing despairingly, a lost soul. When
at last they were alone, he made an effort
to help her to her feet.
"Why did she?" she whimpered. "Why did she
take him away from me?"
"Who, love?"
"I was happy!" she cried. "I was reaching out
to grasp his hand, and she took him away from me!"
"Who?" He had not seen Mordecai Monk
reach out to her.
"Jesus! My Savior, my Lord! From His
tears, His wounds, His blood--His awful,
awful loneliness on the cross! They were all
mine, all mine, then she took Him away ..."
Convulsed with sobs, she leaned against him. He
pulled her to her feet almost brusquely. She was
in a state of collapse; he stood with her
slight body in his arms, not knowing what to do next.
Dr. Rossini, who must have been watching from
afar, came to his aid. "Let me take her
home," he said.
"She is distressed because--"
The doctor silenced him with a warning shake of the
head. "Leave her to me. This has to do with--other
things. She is not well. I'll put her to bed and
give her a sedative. She'll be all right."
Reluctantly Abner let go of her, feeling
he had failed her. He followed them,
miserably, up the aisle toward the porch. At
the doors, he could no longer take it. "What
is the matter with her?" he whispered when
Saraetta, howling like an animal in pain,
seemed about to collapse.
"Not now," the doctor replied, trying to keep
her from falling.
"I must know!" Abner whispered foolishly.
"What she needs is a child," the doctor said,
then he steered her through the doors into the open.
A child? Weariness struck Abner; he felt like
sitting down with his head in his hands. Should he tell
the doctor that she had refused all physical
contact since Vestal died? She seemed
to blame him for it, for the epidemic, the massacre
of the innocent, all the dead who had disappeared under
the harsh unforgiving grass of the burial ground without
a headstone, not even a tiny cross to mark their
graves. It had been fourteen years now, how
could--
A loud voice on the porch alerted them, it
sounded like a woman wailing. They hurried
outside.
On the porch a large black woman was
lamenting as only Negro women did; it took a
moment before Abner realized it was Peggy Higgins,
the school cook. "All of them!" she wailed.
"All of them taken to jail, even the babies!"
Dr. Rossini, suddenly distracted, thrust
Saraetta back at Abner. "Take her
home," he said, "put her to bed. I'll be
back as soon as I can." He ran toward his
buggy.
"What happened?" Abner asked, his arm around
Saraetta's shoulders.
"Arrested!" Peggy Higgins wailed. "Lordy,
Lord! They've all been arrested and taken to--
oh, Lordy! Lord, have mercy on us!"
Dr. Rossini's buggy disappeared down the
pike, his horse's shoes striking sparks off the
cobbles.
In the meantime, Obadiah, who knew nothing
about all this, was accosted on the way to his
room by Lydia, looking determined. "Friend
Obadiah!"
"Yes?"
"Forgive me for jumping on thee like this, but would
thee mind driving me into town? I want to go and
apologize to Mordecai Monk for interrupting
his sermon, and I'd rather not go alone, with all the
riffraff that's out in the streets right now."
"Mordecai? But isn't he here, in his
room?"
"It seems he left in a huff and moved to the
inn. I feel guilty about him so I thought I
should go to see him, in the spirit of love. Would thee
take me there?"
"I--I'm not a very good driver but--"
"Oh? All right, in that case I'll take the
reins. Would thee mind ...?"
"Of course not. My pleasure."
He followed her into the courtyard, where she
disappeared to fetch a horse from the stable. Bats were
swooping and diving, it seemed, for his hat. The
horse was very noisy as she led it out; it sounded
gigantic, with hooves like sledgehammers in the
echoing courtyard. What tripped into the light was a
delicate little mare with restless ears. While he
held its head, or tried to, the animal
sniffed all over him like a dog. Lydia fetched
the buggy, put the rig together with practiced ease,
hoisted up her skirts, and climbed into the
driver's seat. "Need a hand?" she asked.
"No, no!" But he did; he missed the step
and would have ended up on his chin had he not managed
to grab something soft and yielding at the last moment.
It turned out to be her thigh. "Er--forgive me,"
he stammered.
"Help thyself," she said cheerfully and clacked
her tongue. Caught off balance, he was tossed
backward onto the seat, as they took off at
breakneck speed. She rounded the corner outside
the gate without slowing down and nearly lost him over
the side.
As they started to rattle down the dark tunnel
of the pike, he recovered and began to mull over the
reason for their journey. Her going to see
Mordecai "in the spirit of love" seemed a
terrible idea. But then, presumably, she did
not mean it carnally; it was just one of those Quaker
platitudes that had the tendency to take on a
life of their own. Mordecai, hopefully, would
have calmed down by now; even so, the sight
of her might inspire some symphonic prose.
But she seemed capable of taking care of herself.
"You don't mind waiting in front of the inn?"
she shouted over the rattle of wheels and the clatter
of hooves.
"Until you are catapulted out?" She did not
hear that, fortunately.
"What?!" she shouted.
"Excellent idea! Very Quakerly! Like me
to go with thee?!"
"No! Can handle him! Thanks!"
They reached a roughly paved section of the pike;
the racket of the wheels put an end to all
conversation.
The inn was on the edge of town. The saloon
sounded noisy; he did not care for the idea of her
running the gauntlet of singing drunks. Handing him
the reins she said, with a laugh, "Listen to that! The
Methodists are at it again." Only then did he
realize it was hymn singing. "They do that every so
often," she continued, histo discourage people from imbibing
alcohol." She jumped down with a bounce, like a
gymnast, and said, "Pray for me."
He managed a laugh, and watched her stride
into the inn, reticule swinging. He wished he could
be a fly on the wall during her encounter with
Mordecai. A high wall. The ceiling.
What ravishing lunacy! Within minutes the
saloon doors might slam outward, and a
projectile, skirts fluttering, might come
cannonballing out. And he had thought of the Indiana
backwoods as the home of boredom!

At first, when Mordecai Monk had seen the
woman heading for him down the aisle, he had not
recognized her. Hair loose, eyes staring--
he had assumed that she wanted to join those at his
feet. When she walked past him, he forgot about
her, for more of them were coming, eager to join his flock.
Then, suddenly, a commanding female voice issued
from somewhere behind him. He turned around, bewildered,
and realized who, of all people, had the gall
to brazenly address the meeting over his head.
After a few stunned seconds, he was
overcome by unholy rage. This was intolerable,
outrageous! The creature went on and on; his little
flock of mesmerized women dispersed to their seats;
he was being turned into a figure of fun!
As he could not vent his wrath without engaging the
unspeakable female in a slinging match,
he stalked out, went to his room, packed his
valise, and looked for a hansom among the
carriages lined up in front of the school. When
he discovered that there weren't any, he had himself
driven to the inn in town by a sallow youth who had
ducked meeting in order to canoodle in his
parents' rockaway; the girl had fled like a
startled chicken.
Now, hours later, he was still beset by waves of
rage alternating with sinking lows of despondency.
Fit to be tied, he was about to hurl a boot through
a windowpane at one moment, only to collapse
on the bed the next. No post-oratorial
daydreams about faceless virgins swooning at his
door; instead, he saw, in his fevered lust for
revenge, the woman who had challenged him--for the
second time!--being chased, cornered, raped
by apes ...
It was this accursed country! In England he had
been a serene Christian widower dreaming of his
late wife, with whom he would be reunited in the
hereafter as two disembodied saints. His romps with
Liza had not tarnished that vision; their cavorting in
the double bed had been guiltless, innocent, like children
playing. But in this country of vibrant energy
resulting in continuous sexual stimulation, his
daydreams had turned to plain lust. After
Philadelphia, he had dreamed the dream of
getting even with the snooty women who had smiled
at him with one corner of their thin-lipped mouths;
now he daydreamed about the wanton young teacher who
had turned him from an archangel into an aging
windbag vainly bellowing at a disappearing
audience.
He crashed against the wall and slammed his head
in fury. Even as he did so, he saw in the red
darkness behind his closed eyelids the naked
challenger rise with sneering disdain.
He pushed himself free and resumed his pacing.
He was corrupted, infected with the foul pox of
doubt. Never again would he be able to dominate a
crowd. The power had been taken from him. He should
steal away now, before they noticed that Samson had
lost his hair. He tried to picture them
beseeching him to return, but he knew they would do
no such thing. They were going to forget him. Before the
sun rose on the prairie he would be forgotten,
remembered only by some children as the evangelist with the
accent who had talked about an ear lying in the
street, sniffed at by a dog. Struck
by loneliness, he sank to his knees beside the bed and
sobbed, shoulders heaving, "Emily! ...
Emily! ..." The image of her, staring down from
heaven, brought him the opposite of comfort; he
changed to "Liza! ... Liza!"
There was a knock on the door. He raised his
head.
Another knock, more urgent.
"Who's there?"
"Mordecai Monk--" He could not hear the
rest. A girl's voice; must be a serving wench
with a message.
He stood and put on his coat. "Come in!"
He saw the door open in the mirror. It was
the wanton young woman.
After seconds of stillness, he turned slowly
around.
"Please, Friend Mordecai," she said, at the
sight of his face. "I come to thee in the spirit of
love ..."
The partition between dream and reality broke.
"Wha!" he roared, and threw himself on her in one
maddened bound. She darted back, he crashed on
his knees at her feet, threw his arms around her
thighs, buried his face in her skirts; the
imagined scent of her femininity drove him mad.
Passion, tenderness, rage, and lust became
tangled in fury as he felt the softness of her
belly; he reached up, grabbed her bodice
to bare her breasts as he would have Liza's, but
instead he grabbed her hands, kissed them, mumbled
insane words, tried to pull her down into an
embrace. She struggled free, crying, "Stop!
No! Stop!" and battered him with a handbag full
of hard objects. She walloped his shoulders, his
head, which he shielded with his hands. They both
stopped, panting. He looked up at her, she
looked down on him. Then she tore herself free
and fled, down the passage, without closing the door
behind her.
He rose shakily to his feet. He would
destroy her. He would chase her to the far corners
of the earth, the way God had chased the twinbacked
beast from Paradise. He would--
He slumped sprawling across the bed.
Hollow words reverberated in his mind.
"Sword of God." "Caliban."
"God-tempered ax of retribution."
There he lay, slain by a reticule, yearning
for home.

Lydia saw, as she reached the door to the
taproom, that her bodice was undone. She
paused to button it, smoothed her hair,
hurried past the singing drunks to Obadiah
Woodhouse, waiting for her in front of the inn.
"What happened?" he asked, as she clambered
into the buggy. "What did he say?"
She felt the urge to burst into tears, but
managed to sound calm as she replied, "I'm
afraid he was not open to the spirit of love."
"I didn't think he would be, quite frankly."
He sorted out the reins. "Ready?"
She settled on the seat; his taking over gave
her a chance to recover. She could not hold Monk
responsible; before he threw himself upon her, he had
stared at her the way the mother of the Indian child had the
moment after it died. That was what she should remember
--the rest had been sheer foolishness. She was all
set to be driven back to the school when, to her
utter surprise, she burst into tears, after all.
Obadiah Woodhouse put his arm around her
shoulders; she shook herself free. "Let me
drive," she said.
"Relax, Lydia," he said. "I'm not a
good driver, but I suppose the horse knows the
way."
She let him be. He started to tell her,
by way of entertainment, about his fianc@ee, a
distant cousin whom he could never marry because her
family belonged to Cherry Street and he to Arch
Street. He told it humorously, while the
horse walked them home, calling himself and his
girlfriend "the Pyramus and Thisbe of the Quaker
schism." He meant well, but for some reason it
deepened her depression.
The moment they drew up before the school, she
saw there was trouble. The windows of both the girls'
and the boys' dormitories were lit; from both came
the sound of screaming voices, loud and strident in
the summer night. Obviously it was complete
chaos up there, not one child had gone to bed. Where were the
teachers? She left it to Obadiah to take the
horse to the stable, hurried up the steps to the
front door; once inside, she ran up the
stairway to the first floor. From there, the noise in
the dormitories was deafening; she stood for a moment
in indecision, then ran to the study. Everybody was
there, including Peggy and Adam Higgins, looking
as if they were taking part in a wake.
"What on earth is going on?" Lydia
asked. "Why is nobody taking the children in hand?"
Abner closed the door behind her; the noise from
the dormitories faded into the distance. "Tell
her, Jesse."
Jesse said, "We're discussing what the arrest
of the slaves means as far as the school is
concerned."
"The slaves? Arrested?" Lydia asked,
shocked to the core.
"Yes," Jesse said. "They were taken off the
island in two boats while everyone was in the
Meeting House; when they landed, the slave
hunters and the sheriff were waiting. Someone must have
betrayed them. The sheriff managed to keep the
hunters at bay, he and his deputy took them
to jail."
"And Viola?"
"They got her too."
There was a knock on the door; at Abner's
"Come in!" Obadiah entered.
Jesse continued, "As far as hiding slaves
here in the future is concerned, we've botched
it."
"I will speak to that later," Abner said, sounding
very detached. "I have a plan which is not yet ripe
for discussion."
His pose of being in control of the situation while
the children were running wild seemed unreal, he must be
living in a dream. Suddenly Lydia's shock
about the slaves turned into concern for her brother;
she knew him better than anyone else,
certainly better than did Saraetta; something was
very wrong.
Obadiah asked, "Do I understand that the
slaves have been intercepted?"
"Yes, indeed," Dr. Rossini said. "The
first item on the agenda should be: What are we
going to do about the prisoners? There'll be a
trial. The law says they have to be handed back
to their owners. As to Viola, what she needs is the
best lawyer money can buy. And that, I'm
afraid--"
"Who is Viola?" Obadiah asked.
"A Negro woman, an escaped slave
herself, with a police record. She was the conductor
on this section of the railroad. She--" He
stopped abruptly. "By the way--does he know
about all this?"
"He does," Lydia said. "Go
on."
"Well, she's an impossible woman,
violent as a bobcat, who'll have everything against
her when it comes to a trial. The best she can hope
for is to serve her prison sentence in this state, but
they may try to extradite her to Louisiana, and
we all know what that means. It's a great loss.
She was the heart and soul of this section of the
railroad."
Lydia looked at Obadiah in a manner that
left him no choice. "I'll defend her," he
blurted out. "And them!" The smile on her face
made him add, somewhat lamely, "However,
I'm not familiar with Indiana law, not yet.
But if this were Pennsylvania she would have a fair
chance of being found innocent. The courts are, on the
whole, very sympathetic in these cases."
"Not here," Rossini said.
"Has she committed violence? Now, or
earlier?"
"I have some documents belonging to her that you should
read, if you are serious about this."
"I am serious, and--"
"And suppose they're not acquitted, what do
we do then?" Jesse interrupted.
"I'll speak to that, as I said earlier."
Abner rose. "But I want the whole school
to be present when I do. So, Lydia, Will--
please go and get the children. Assemble for meeting in
the hall. I want everyone there, everybody under this
roof."
"Come now, Abner!" Little Will's childish
voice sounded the most adult of them all. "Has
thee any idea what that means?"
"I know what that means," Abner replied, with
fragile determination. "Now will you all please do
as you are told? We have no time to lose. What
I have to propose concerns us all, and it is
urgent."
Something in his manner persuaded them; in
Lydia's case, it was his vulnerability. None
of them seemed to realize that all it needed was an
angry push or a harsh word to make his courage
crumble and leave him no protection from the world
except her sheltering arms. "Very well,
Abner," she said. "We'll go at once."
When she entered the girls' dormitory, it
took all her composure to retain a fa@cade of
authority. The place was a shambles; bedsheets and
pillows were strewn all over the floor,
cots had been pushed about until they stood at
crazy angles; children were bouncing on the beds like
monkeys, screaming shrilly with mad glee; here
and there groups of them were slamming at each other with
pillows, feathers swirled in the air.
"Girls!" she cried at the top of her
voice. "Girls! Listen to me! Girls!"
She was unable to make herself heard above the din; but
gradually the noise abated as a few of the girls
spotted her and alerted the others. She decided
to remain calm and ignore the shameful chaos.
"All right, girls! Listen to me! There is to be
an emergency meeting downstairs in the main hall
in five minutes. Please get dressed--those of
you who undressed--and get in line. Quickly now!"
Grudgingly they obeyed and started to line up
inside the door. Had it not been dark, with owls and
whippoorwills screeching outside, they might have
been lining up for morning worship.
On the landing, they had to wait to let the boys
file past.
"All right, girls, here we go!" she called
when their turn came. They filed down the stairs,
into the main hall, with its flickering candles.
The children sat down in their customary rows with the
usual rumble, the boys to the right, the girls to the
left. She saw Will go to the facing bench, but thought
it better to stay with her girls to control them should the
need arise. She took a seat halfway down the
aisle; at Abner's request, Dr. Rossini
took her place among the faculty. The only
place left open was poor Saraetta's.
Lydia wondered how she was, alone in her bed
with all this going on; but of course, Dr.
Rossini would have given her a sleeping draught.
To her surprise, Abner did not call for a
moment of silence. He rose, frail and
determined, in the restless light of the candle flames
dancing in the draft.
"Boys and girls, fellow Quakers," he
began in a strained voice. "I have called on you
because of an urgent concern that burdens us all. I
am talking about the slaves, captured by the
sheriff's posse and taken by force to jail where, no
doubt, they will be kept until their so-called
owners come to claim them."
It took a few moments for Lydia to take it
in. Had Abner gone insane? The children knew
nothing about the slaves, or the underground
railroad. But there was something about him she
had never seen before, which yet seemed familiar.
Abner continued, his voice high-pitched and
quavering: "To us Friends, the plight of the slaves
presents a challenge to the essence of our calling.
We either accept the challenge or forfeit the right
to call ourselves Quakers."
She recognized now what had seemed so
familiar: he was imitating Father. Father had used
those same words when the first rumors of the schism had
reached Pendle Hill Meeting. It had been an
emergency session like this one; with his immense
authority and unquestioned personal integrity he had
called upon everyone to forget about "Arch Street"
and "Cherry Street," and never to use the words
"orthodox" or "activist" again, only
"Quaker."
"Our principles are familiar enough, we have
mouthed them ever since we were taught to speak,"
Abner continued. "We are, as Friends, guided by the
principle that every man and woman is unique,
irreplaceable, never been on earth before and never will
be again, and that this individuality is the most
precious thing we have. As Quakers, we say,
"We shall never, under any circumstances,
violate that individuality in our neighbors or
ourselves." Well, we are tonight confronted with an
intolerable violation of that principle. Twelve
individuals, unique, irreplaceable,
precious to God, have been chained together like cattle
and herded into prison, there to await their collection
by another unique, irreplaceable individual,
who in his tragic blindness considers himself to be their
owner. This is, to us Friends, an intolerable violation
of their humanity; not just that of the slaves, but of the
owner as well. If we acquiesce in this, if
we do not rise to the challenge and do whatever we can
to free those slaves, we ourselves will become tainted
with this sickness of the soul." He looked about him,
took a deep breath, and continued: "I
propose, not as principal of this school but as
clerk of our School Meeting, that the setting
free of those slaves shall be made a concern of the
Rebekah Baker Boarding School. That all of
us--children, teachers, all those present in this hall--
shall unite without reservation in this concern. After a
moment of silence, I will disclose my plan. But
first I ask for the sense of the meeting." He sat
down and bent his head in prayer.
The silence that followed should have been full of
joy and light for Lydia, in honor of
her brother and the spirit he embodied, but something held
her back, a doubt, a sense of darkness. With a
vast rustling sound, the children rose to their feet.
Abner, startled, looked up and stared at them,
uncomprehending. Then the teachers on the facing
bench rose too.
It was an impressive moment. For meetings
to rise silently to their feet was very rare, she had
only witnessed it once before, in approval of her
father; that time she had felt the indefinable but
unmistakable presence of God. It was obvious
that the others, everyone else in the hall,
experienced this at that very moment.
But to her, alone among the multitude, He was
not there. This was wrong; Abner should not have involved the
children. But then what? Leave the Negroes to be
shipped back into slavery?
She waited for the silent part of the meeting to end,
for Abner to disclose the plan he had mentioned.
She had little faith in whatever he might
propose, for he surely was the world's worst
conspirator.
But when it came, the moment of disclosure, she
was struck with admiration. His plan was bold,
brilliant; she could not believe that her meek,
brooding brother could have come up with this ingenious,
cunning stratagem. He had, in a moment of
grace, surpassed himself.
Grace? Perhaps not quite that. But it held every
promise of success; the slaves could never be
set free without the children.
Yet, it was a call to break the law ...
She gave up.
"Yes," she said, when asked. "I understand. I
will do my part. I--I will."
The only one who read her thoughts, it seemed,
was Obadiah Woodhouse, of all people. He
looked very worried.
Meeting did not break until the candles
guttered. Finally, the children marched back to the
dormitories--disciplined, calm, composed. They
seemed suddenly to have reached maturity.

They were now going completely overboard,
Obadiah thought to himself. To use the children under their
care to break the law could not, by any stretch of the
imagination, be called Quakerly, or Christian
for that matter. He was baffled by the innocence with which
these thoroughly decent people had arrived at the
conclusion that this was the only nonviolent
way in which to help the slaves escape. Instead of
turning up with a bunch of bandits firing shotguns,
they were going to use children to create a disturbance in a
courtroom on the day of sentencing, in order
to give the defendants a chance to abscond.
To spring the prisoners from jail, in their eyes,
made the whole episode an exercise of love
in action.
Was it innocence? Or was it, in fact, the hard,
steely core of the Friendly persuasion? He had
often wondered at the unruffled toughness of the
Quaker princes in Philadelphia when it
came to "defending basic principles," which
meant getting their own way. This was a bucolic
version of the same thing: in the eyes of God (read:
Rebekah Baker School's Monthly
Meeting) slavery was an abomination, no man should
own another man. Therefore anything that would serve
to set the slaves free and spirit them to Canada was
doing God's work. All He has is thee,
to blast the vitals out of the judicial process,
incite children to create mayhem, and fill the
streets outside with a herd of cows so no deputy
could go after the fugitives other than astride a
bucking steer. And he, a lawyer, should aid and
abet this riot?
The only one ill at ease with her brother's
Quaker version of Guy Fawkes Day was
Lydia Best, it seemed. She had shot
Obadiah a glance while everyone was rising to their
feet to express unity; she might as well have
said, "This is awful," in so many words. Afterwards,
when everyone had left except for a few excited
teachers hobnobbing in a corner, he went up to her
as she stood in the aisle. "What does thee think
of all this?"
She thought it over; then she said, "It's the end
and the means, isn't it?"
"Indeed. And that ethical question, as I remember
it, was settled quite a while ago."
"Not tonight," she said.
There was a silence; they slowly walked up the
aisle.
"I don't like it," he said finally.
She stood still, then turned to him. "Thee is not
involved in any of this. Thee should prepare thy
case and defend those slaves as best thee can; who
knows, they may be set free and the whole thing will
prove unnecessary."
He smiled. "Is this how our
forebears slid out of awkward situations?
By praying for tunnel vision and proceeding, hands
folded in prayer, in a Friendly version of the three
monkeys?"
He saw she was perplexed.
"Hear, see, and speak no evil," he
explained.
She frowned. She was quite beautiful, in thought.
"Let's look at the alternative," she
suggested, and then fell silent.
"I'm waiting," he said, with a smile. An
impish little devil in his mind whispered: "The
alternative is: let's go for a walk in the
grounds." This was no way to solve what might be
a crucial problem in his life as a lawyer. The
other crucial problem ...
"The alternative is to send those people back
into slavery while we indulge in the luxury of
an unresolved moral conflict."
"In other words, let's all be heroes and
corrupt the law?"
"We would not be corrupting the law. Sentence will
have been passed, we would be corrupting the
execution of the law, if I am putting it
correctly."
Ah, those Quakers! Jesuits were innocents
by comparison. "Let's look at it from a different
angle," he suggested. "What will be the
consequences for the school, and for each one of us
personally?"
She gave him a heart-melting regard of
stunning blue eyes. "Thee would suffer none. Thy only task is to defend the slaves. If thee
loses the case, leave the rest to us."
"There is such a thing as complicity by silence."
"There is such a thing as twelve people being sent
back into slavery, three infants included. Thee
does understand that I'm acting the devil's
advocate?"
"Lydia, my--"
The other teachers made their way past them up the
aisle, casting pre-gossip looks.
"Yes?" she asked. The blue eyes were questioning
now.
He took a hold of himself. "All right.
Let's each of us solve this according to--what is the
term?"
"According to the measure of light granted us."
"Right."
She smiled. "We'll come back
to it. Now I should pay a token visit to the
girls' dormitory."
"Right." But nothing of it was "right." All of
it was wrong.
He watched her until she disappeared into the
lobby. He had better go and bone up on
Indiana law, and pray for tunnel vision. With
his heritage, that should come easy. During the French
and Indian Wars, the Quaker-controlled
Pennsylvania Assembly had been forced
to contribute to the military, despite the peace
testimony. They had solved the problem
by contributing "wheat and other grains." How many
of them had known that the military would interpret
"other grains" as meaning "gunpowder?"' Had
Great-grandpa Woodhouse known? You bet.
He had felt a great deal clearer when all
he had to do was deal with Mordecai Monk's
antics. Moral challenges were not his forte. He
did not want to be challenged, he wanted to be
comfortable.
Now who was it, who had said that before? Ah! His
great-aunt Gulielma, about the Quaker
establishment in Philadelphia. He wondered
how Pissing Gulie would have solved this ethical
conundrum. All it took was tunnel vision.
Pontius Pilate had been a good lawyer.
One of the best.
CHAPTER 8
PHILADELPHIA
July 1833

Charity Woodhouse, a pretty young woman in
Quaker dress, read Obadiah's letter over
again, seated on a bench under a tree in the Cherry
Street burial ground. She thought,
"Nonsense! I cannot possibly travel five
hundred miles, or whatever it is, on
impulse!" The letter was romantic,
adventurous, and very seductive; but to leave all
this ...
She gazed at the old Meeting House, the
manicured lawn no one outside the Society
would suspect of being a graveyard. Granny
lay there, somewhere, and Uncle Peleg, and
Uncle Joshua. She picked up the letter again and
read it once more, from the beginning. Halfway, she
stopped.
"The one outspoken member of the rather timid
faculty is Lydia Best, a captivating,
courageous, and, I must admit, strikingly handsome
young woman."
She lowered the paper. The message was clear:
now, or never. Well, then, it had to be never.
The price was too high. She wished, fervently,
he had never sent it. It was over, forever. She
folded the letter and put it back into her reticule.
On her way home, she passed the office of the
Western Transportation Company on Race
Street. Just out of curiosity she went inside
to ask how a lady, traveling alone, could get
to a place called Pendle Hill in Indiana
in the shortest possible time and greatest comfort. Before
the man behind the ticket window was able to reply, a
jolly voice with a heavy Irish accent cried behind
her, "Pendle Hill? Dearie, that's where
I'm going! My son is an engineer there! When
are you leaving, sweetheart?" It was a fat,
middle-aged woman, a cook or a midwife.
"He is working on the canal, and he asked me
to join him! Are you leaving tomorrow too?"
Suddenly, without knowing why, she found herself
telling the woman and the unfascinated agent behind the
ticket window an outrageous lie: that she was a
teacher who had been offered a post in Pendle
Hill, an emergency, someone had fallen ill.
"Dearie!" The woman embraced her
with smothering arms. "This is God's will! I was so
nervous of traveling all by myself, and now, behold!
An angel!" She held Charity at arm's
length and beamed at the ticket agent. "Book us
together! I don't care when she's going, I am
going with her! When are you going, dearie? I'm
Molly O'Grady, everybody calls me
Moll. Are you leaving tomorrow? Then I am leaving
tomorrow! What time's the stage, sir? Where does it
leave from?"
"The corner of Broad and Vine, between seven and
eight in the morning. I still have room for you."
"No, no," Charity protested hastily. "I
could not possibly go tomorrow!"
"Well, day after tomorrow!" the woman cried.
"Whenever you say, dearie! As long as there are
two of us they'll give us a separate room at
the inns, but a woman alone, dear girl--those
men!" She rolled her eyes.
"The morning coach to Columbia," the agent
droned, "connects with the Harrisburg stage, which
leaves at six o'clock the next morning. There,
you'll take the Western Transportation Company
stage to Johnstown, change to the coach
to Pittsburgh. You'll make the journey without
fatigue in six days. The tables are
plentifully provided, the accommodations ensure
comfort and render the tour most interesting to the
traveler. Only eight dollars to Pittsburgh, all found."
"And after Pittsburgh?" she asked, keeping
up the shameful pretence.
"You will have to make your own arrangements in
Pittsburgh. Check with the agent there, ma'am.
I'm sure the trip will be comfortable, the Cumberland
Road has been improved."
Charity realized to her surprise and alarm that
she was actually ready to do this insane thing: throw
away all she had, family, security, friends,
position in society--and why? Why?

The letter was among the batch Peggy, the school
cook, had collected at the coach station.
"Here," Saraetta said, sorting out the mail.
"Here's one for Obadiah Woodhouse."
"I'll take it," Lydia said, "I have to go
upstairs, anyhow." She took the letter from
Saraetta's hand.
On her way up to his room, courage
failed her. For days she had been
agonizing over her sudden and surprising change of
feelings about Obadiah. Should she approach him
boldly, never mind the feminine passivity she was
supposed to show at this point? Goad him into declaring
himself with the coyness she detested in other women?
Even as she lifted her hand to knock on his
door, she had not decided; all she knew was that
it was a fateful moment. Now or never; no other
man like him was likely to come her way: cultured,
civilized, bright, funny, courageous ... How
could she sell herself that sickening stuff? She was
twenty-nine years old! Even if he were
knock-kneed--
She rapped on the door. Too loud. Be
feminine.
"Come in!"
She opened the door and there he stood, in hat
and coat, dressed to go out. As elegant as
Quaker garb allowed. Smiling. God, what a
catch! She stepped inside, leaving the door
open.
"Thee has a letter," she said, handing it to him.
"Ah?" He looked at the envelope, turned
it over and put it in his pocket.
"Is thee going out?" she asked stupidly. She
had never seen a man more ready to go out.
"Yes, I have an appointment to meet the
judge. He only holds court on
Thursdays." He headed for the door.
"Obadiah," she said, barring his way. Too
forcefully! Take it easy! "I have been
thinking." Silly remark. So she had been thinking
--that might have been extraordinary had she been a
pig. "All night," she added lamely.
The regard of his calm gray eyes seemed
to rest upon her like a friendly hand on her shoulder.
She knew at that moment, as if he had spoken the
words himself, that he knew exactly what she was about
to say.
"Here," he said, taking a sheet of paper off
the mantelpiece. "Read my arguments and give
me thy reaction. While thee does that, I'll
read my letter."
A sick, sinking feeling in her stomach. She
had made a fool of herself. She felt as if she
had lain down on the floor before him, skirts
up, and he had turned away. "Thank thee," she
said, and took the sheet of paper.
But she did not read it. That is to say, she
read it, but not a word registered. Keeping
her eyes on the paper, she watched, with the
peripheral vision of a duck, as he opened the
envelope, unfolded the letter, took it to the window
to read. She guessed who it was from. She felt
ashamed, because her body refused to accept the
conclusion of her mind. She felt wildly,
furiously excited. She wanted to rip that sheet
of paper from his hands, tear it up, throw her arms
around his neck and kiss him, kiss him until he
caved in with his silly hat and his city manners and
his wonderful gray eyes, and roll with him onto
the bed--
"I'm afraid I have a problem," he said with a
wan smile, folding the paper.
He had a problem! For a moment she thought that her
body had been right and her mind wrong: his
girlfriend, whatever her name was, had written to him
that she loved him, but he no longer loved her.
"Tell me about it," she said. "About these
arguments, by the way--they're very good. Thank thee for
letting me read them." She put the paper on the
bed. Why the bed? She wanted to run from the room,
back to hers, throw herself on her own bed and sob,
curse, beat the pillow.
"My fianc@ee, Charity Woodhouse, who
is also a distant cousin of mine, has responded
to a lighthearted letter I sent earlier, when
circumstances were different."
God, dear God, her body had been right!
He was going to propose!
"Tell me about it," she said, startled by her own
bland reaction.
"I casually suggested--well, I--er--
suggested she might consider joining me here, never
expecting-- Well, for her it meant leaving
everything she had in the way of family and
possessions, friends, status--I did not for a
moment expect ..."
"Pretty rash, Friend Obadiah." She
managed a comradely smile.
"It now turns out, alas, that I misled
her."
Ha!
"There is no post for her at this school, not under
the present circumstances. Or is there?"
She looked at him for a long moment before saying,
"Does it matter, Friend Obadiah? I gather
she is on her way?"
"Yes," he said. "I'm afraid she is."
She took a deep breath, smiled,
and said, "Well, way will open. See thee
downstairs." She turned to the door. No--no
more. Say no more!
She let herself out, closed the door behind her, and
stood in the empty corridor, eyes closed,
thinking, stupidly, "Next month I will be
thirty."

No wonder the ticket agent had been
reticent about the second part of the journey. Never
in her wildest dreams had Charity imagined such
ghastly discomfort as when she and the moaning Molly
O'Grady were jolted, tossed, and rattled in
stagecoaches that became more and more primitive and
roughshod, until they ended up, in
Indianapolis, in the worst contraption of all:
the South Bend Stage, a six-horse Conestoga
wagon; according to the coachman, a Concord was unable
to negotiate the ruts, gulleys, and potholes
of the rest of the road west.
And the inns! The last one, somewhere in the wilds,
was so filthy, so hot, so swarming with flies, that
even Molly O'Grady's indomitable
cheerfulness collapsed. When they complained to the
landlord about the flies on the food, the uncouth
creature replied, "Why don't you quit feeding
till mornin'? At breakfast there ain't no
flies, they're all in the outhouse."
That night, the irresponsibility of what she
had done was brought home to Charity. The horrible
little room, the creaky bed she shared with the huge,
smelly woman, the certainty that they would be
attacked by bedbugs the moment she blew out the
candle made her get up, sit on the
windowsill, and gaze out at the dark, menacing
forest. Alien odors were wafted toward her by the
breeze. Even the fluting and ululating of birds
in the woods seemed hostile. Above the forest was the
vastness of the starless sky. She thought, "I am a
liar, lost in the wilderness. A liar, a liar.
I lied to my parents, my family, my friends,
to this woman. I lied to myself. What really brought
me here were the words "a captivating,
courageous, and, I must admit, strikingly handsome
young woman.""
Could she still turn back, at this moment? Rush
home, hide her face in her mother's lap, and
never again venture outside the sheltered life of
her family? Below her, alien creatures
chortled, whistled, hooted in mindless
merriment. A captivating, courageous,
strikingly handsome young woman. Could such a person
exist in this world of open privies, bedbugs,
drunks vomiting in the courtyard, and, as at that
inn a week before, giggles and screams from a
brothel across the street? What chances had a
captivating, courageous, strikingly handsome young
woman to survive among these yokels and
brutes? In the stagecoach, where the stench of sweat
was such that people passed out from it, one of those brutes
had that morning pulled off a boot and stuck his
stinking foot under her elbow, nudging her at every
bounce of the coach. If she had not been
protected by the presence of the huge Irishwoman
now snoring behind her, heaven knows what would have
happened to her. She would have arrived ravished,
distraught--and to what purpose? To push a
captivating, courageous, strikingly handsome young
woman out of her way? What wicked nonsense!
Childish jealousy! What was their future going
to look like, after marrying out of Meeting, cast out
by both Cherry and Arch streets, disowned by their parents? Fool! What a fool she had been!
Despite the late hour, a fiddle struck
up a scratchy jig in the courtyard below, and a
male voice started to bellow the indistinct words
of a song. Laughter, the tinkling of broken
glass. The voice fell silent; the fiddle
went on scraping and chirruping like a giant
cricket in the night. To her amazement, it
slowly began to call forth a response in her.
An awareness, slowly expanding; the opening of a
door to dormant spaces within herself. She was
larger, more primitive than she had suspected.
Who was she, really? Who was the woman hiding behind
the smiling face, the hazel eyes? Suddenly, the
girl called Charity Woodhouse from
Philadelphia seemed to be a pretence, a
pretty picture; the true woman inside the
petulant little doll began to respond to the
jerky, male chirping of the fiddle, calling her,
challenging her to come out into the night. Then a
coarse, repulsive noise sounded behind her like the
tearing of a piece of taffeta, and the bulbous shape
in the bed muttered, "Bejesus--those beans ..."
In a few days she would face Obadiah, the
man the pretty, petulant Charity with the winning
little ways had imagined herself to be in love with. A
creature just as conventional as herself: an earnest young
lawyer, sensitive and bookish, whose
future depended on his family, his Meeting, his
father's money. All of which he stood to lose, were
they to marry.
Suddenly frightened, she crawled into bed and
snuggled up to the warm bulk of Molly
O'Grady, a child afraid of the dark.

In Richmond, Indiana, at Yearly
Meeting, Mordecai Monk ministered with great
power to a packed house. It felt different,
though, from previous occasions. There was the same
power, no doubt about that, the same mysterious
exchange of energy between himself and his audience, growing
into an ever faster spinning vortex of emotion, ending
in a spiritual consummation of almost orgiastic
ecstasy. But this time, instead of flaring joy, a
sense of triumph, his ministry had a strange
undercurrent of melancholy, an edge of loss.
For the first time, he dwelt on the grief of the
small band of disciples left behind after the
crucifixion, the emptiness of their lives, the
bewilderment, the incomprehension, the sense of
guilt. "Am I to blame? Did He die
because I failed Him?"'
The words came, as always, by magic, from nowhere.
Words he had never used before, phrases that had, so
far, never occurred to him, emotions he had never
articulated with the same haunting realism. Yet,
even as he moved people to tears, he became aware that
he had not been speaking about the disciples mourning
Jesus, but about himself mourning little Rebecca,
Emily, his mother, even--bewilderingly--Liza,
whose nature, looks, and generosity he borrowed
to describe Mary Magdalene. He even went
so far as to mention how, at the depth of their
heartbreak and sorrow, Mary Magdalene had
made them a cup of tea. The meeting swallowed
it without a murmur: the crushed little band of
disciples had been consoled by a prostitute making
them a cup of tea.
Only later, in his room at the inn, did he
conclude that what happened at Pendle Hill had
dealt a blow to his mastery, maybe his innocence.
The wanton young woman who had twice silenced
him and made a hall of spellbound listeners
forget about him proved unforgettable herself. The
feel of her hips in his arm, her thighs when he
embraced them, the softness of her bosom, the scent
of her loins, haunted him, obsessed him,
troubled his dreams. Liza, rolling over
on the bed, her breasts, thighs, cries, were less
real in his memory than those long seconds during
which he had actually held the Quaker maiden in his
arms, before she had started to batter him with whatever it
was she had had in her hand. Alarmingly, the memory
did not bring thoughts of love or tenderness, but a
violent vision of rape, which made him wake up
with a sense of horror to the real nature of his
musings. He must forget her, put her behind him,
carry on: new Meetings, new faces. But
Richmond was the end of the line; after this, no more
visits to outlying Meetings were planned. After this,
he would go home to England.
After the sermon, he was physically exhausted and
longed to lie on his bed, arms flung out,
to recover from the usual draining of his vitality.
But the clerk of Yearly Meeting and its school
committee wanted to hear his impression of Pendle
Hill and his report on what had occurred at the
Rebekah Baker Boarding School on
Founders' Day. Was there any truth to the rumor
of a stage play, or a theatrical event, being
performed by the pupils of the school? Was it true that
Pendle Hill Meeting had made the removal
of the Mahanoy Indians their concern? It had
made him aware, again, that Richmond Yearly
Meeting belonged to Arch Street.
He wanted to change first, his undershirt and shirt
were soaked with perspiration; but there was no time for that,
he had to join them, now. The members of the
committee were gathered in a side room, four
somber, worried men. They had more questions. Was it
true that the schism had now reached Pendle
Hill? That half the Meeting had walked out in
protest after a call for repentance, had refused
the Sacred Fount of Salvation--Christ's
blood, shed on Golgotha--in favor of a
social concern? Talk, talk, talk, talk--
finally, they wanted to hear his version of what had
happened at Pendle Hill. At the school.
He spoke slowly and carefully, trying to be
objective, feeling totally drained. He wished
people would realize how exhausting it was to pull along
an audience of hundreds, to cause an upheaval
in many individual souls which made them rise and
come forward, why afterward he was merely an empty
shell. He gave as sympathetic a picture
of the faculty as he could, but, alas, there was no
doubt: a teacher had organized a historical
pageant acted out by children.
When they asked if the same woman teacher had
been the instigator of the Meeting's decision to form
a Meeting for Sufferings of Mahanoy children, he
felt he had said enough. "I really don't know,
Friends. When the deliberations started I left the
gathering. As an outsider I felt I had no
business there."
"But is it true that the woman actually said:
"Individual salvation through Christ's atonement
is self-indulgent," or words to that effect?"
"I would not know."
"And that to come to the aid of those who suffer, the
Indians, without vocal ministry, was the true
way of embodying God's love?"
"I cannot confirm that. By then I had left."
After more probing they finally let him go. He
left, feeling dirty, soiled by betrayal. He
did not really care what the wanton young woman
believed, or anyone else, for that matter, as
long as they listened to his sermons. For his
sermons were glorious, with lots of excitement and
love and heroes, and a little dog.
Oh, that damn little dog! Bet you anything it was
all some of the children would remem-- For God's
sake! Not again!
A bosomy young woman showed him to his room.
But hers were not like the breasts that haunted his dreams,
his thoughts, his ministry. Could he? Could he dare
to say, at the height of the ecstasy, as the women
lay twitching at his feet: "Bare thy breasts
for thy Savior?"'
No. Definitely: no. Even so ...
Just to be rid of the thought, he wrote it down and
slipped it inside his Bible, which was full of little
notes like this one. Better be careful; to hear him
sing, at the height of his peroration, "Let His
love penetrate thy soul, thy very womb" was quite
enough; to have these slips flutter down from his Bible,
to be caught by some stranger like falling
snowflakes--
Snowflakes. Gaslight.
Homesickness for Liza made him bury his
face in his pillow and howl. The howl of the lone
wolf in the prairie.
Good, that. Better write it down.
CHAPTER 9
PENDLE HILL, INDIANA
August 1833

The morning of the trial, just after sunrise, the
school's vegetable garden was fresh and wet with
dew.
"Was that the bell?" Himsha Woodhouse
asked.
Boomer McHair, her cousin from fourth
grade, climbed on the workbench and peered into the
garden through the window of the potting shed. "Don't
think so. Don't see anybody moving."
"Well, we'd better go." Himsha turned
to Bonny Baker. "Come, Bonny, we're
leaving."
"Just a minute," Bonny replied, squatting
in front of the cage with his mice. "I'm not through
feeding them."
"Thee and thy mice!" Boomer scoffed.
"They've had enough fodder to last them a week! Come
on, or they'll be too fat to move."
"No," Bonny said, "you go ahead, I
won't be a minute. I still have to give them
water."
Himsha grabbed Boomer by the arm and pushed him
to the door. "Leave him alone," she said with an
authority that even her cousin found it risky
to flout. "Move!"
"Take thy paws off me! One of these days
I'll grab thee!"
She ignored him and turned back to Bonny. "Don't be long. The bell's about to go."
"Don't be long, sweetie!" Boomer
mimicked. "Don't be long, pussypie!"
She pushed him out; Bonny heard him cry
angrily, "Stop that, Himsha Woodhouse!" and
then them racing off to the school, down the path between the
runner beans.
In the sudden silence, the twelve mice
squeaked and rustled in their cage. All these
weeks, days, nights he had worried about them
being hurt in that courtroom. He closed his eyes
and prayed to God to protect them.
The mice were not their old selves this morning.
They had not scurried toward his open hand but
scrabbled up the sides of the cage in an effort
to get out. Did they know what was going to happen
to them? Or was it the explosions at the canal?
They had been very loud last night. He filled
their dish with water; not too much or they
might be sick. He was so engrossed in what he
was doing that Himsha speaking behind his back made him
jump.
"Come along, Bonny," she said gently.
"Thee'll be in trouble when the bell goes again."
She stood, tall and dark, in the open doorway.
"They're scared," he said. "I wonder if
they know. Look how jittery they are."
She came and squatted beside him to look, her
braids dangling. "Thee loves them, doesn't
thee?"
He had never thought about them in those terms. They
just were separate mice to him, like people became
separate as you got to know them better. He would have
worried about them less if they had been merely a
dozen white mice; now they had each become
different from the others, each with its own character and
personality. He had even given them names.
"Oh, I don't know," he replied.
"It is wrong," she said. "Thee should not love
animals as if they were people."
"I just don't want them to get hurt."
She straightened up and said, "It is wrong,
Bonny. They won't get hurt today, thee will.
Don't squander thy love on mice."
"Why not?" he asked defiantly. "Who
else is there?"
"That's unfair, and thee knows it."
"We're different."
"I should hope so!"
"I--I love thee, Himsha," he said,
trying to explain. "But thee does not need me
to stay alive. Thee can look after thyself, everybody
is afraid of thee. But if I'm not around, the
mice--"
"That has nothing to do with love! Love has to do
with that of God in the other person. There's nothing of
God in a mouse."
"How does thee know?"
"Animals have no souls. Come along! The
second bell will go any minute." She took
him by the arm.
"What about John Woolman's chickens?"
he asked, as she pulled him toward the door.
"What about them?" She pushed him outside and
closed the door of the shed behind her.
"When John Woolman went to England, he
had a concern about the chickens, cooped up on the
deck of the ship. He went to see the captain about
them."
"If thee thinks that thee is like John
Woolman ..."
He did not hear the rest; she was crawling through
the gap in the hedge. He crawled after her.
"I'm not saying I am like John
Woolman," he said, once on the other side.
"I mean: he didn't want those chickens to get
hurt, even if they didn't have that of God in
them. What about God, anyway? Doesn't He
worry about the fall of a sparrow?"
Somewhere a whippoorwill struck up its
mournful tune.
"Bonny," she said, so close to him that he had
to look from one eye to the other, "those mice are going
to die to set fifteen human beings free, three
of them babies. Does thee understand that?"
"I know," he said miserably. "I wish
God would open another way."
She put her arms around his neck and kissed
him. She did not startle him, he was used to it;
she was like his sister. She let him go, took his
hand, and said, "Come, I'll race thee."
He ran with her toward the school as the second
bell began to clang in the distance.

Before the trial, Dr. Rossini took part in
the final deliberations of the faculty in the
principal's study. He disapproved of the
involvement of the children, even though he was impressed
by the thoroughness of Abner's planning. He
wondered what an action like this would do to the children's
respect for the law; once again he was confronted
with the mystery of the Quaker character, seemingly so meek
and forbearing. Even after years of dealing with them, their
ultimate toughness remained an enigma.
Lydia Best seemed subdued this morning,
possibly because her part in the plot was the most
difficult: she was in charge of the babies.
"Let's hope they won't cry," she said.
"Has thee brought their medication, Doctor?"
"Yes. I'll give it to the mothers in prison.
I'll have to see them before the trial anyhow,
to check their scars and birthmarks with the owner's list.
It should be administered ten minutes before the
verdict."
"How long will it keep them drowsy?"
"About an hour. I could not make it more potent,
because of their age."
"But can it be given to the babies in the
courtroom, in view of everybody?
Won't that alert the slave catchers that something's
in the wind?"
"I have prepared three sops containing the drug.
Their mothers will give them to the babies. I need to have
some idea how long Obadiah's plea is going
to take. Does anyone know?"
"He's upstairs working on it," Abner said.
"I'll go and see him. Anything else I should
know at this point? We won't meet again until
after the trial."
"Thee'll tell the slaves what to do?" Little
Will asked.
"I will. One thing isn't quite clear, though. Where
do the cattle come in?"
"Never mind, Doctor," Jesse McHair
said, "that's no concern of the niggers. All they have
to do is head for the wagon and get in as fast as they
can."
"All right." Rossini rose. "I don't
know if it's un-Quakerly, but keep your fingers
crossed."
As he closed the door behind him and faced the
empty corridor, he was overcome by a sense of
foreboding. What if the marshals used force? What
if the slave catchers, who were certain to be
present in the back of the courtroom, tackled the
schoolchildren and started to kick them out of the way? He
did not share the Quakers' faith in a benevolent
Providence; someone was bound to get hurt, most
likely the children. There were also long-term
implications: whether they failed or succeeded, their
relationship with the townspeople would never be the same
again.
He climbed the stairs and knocked on the
door of the second-floor guest room. A
voice called, "Yes!" He found the young
lawyer in shirtsleeves at the table by the window,
a stack of open books before him.
"Sorry to interrupt, but I need more information
before I see the prisoners. Give me an idea
how long your plea will take. I must tell the
mothers when to give their babies the sedative."
"Good heavens!" The young man looked strained.
"I have no idea. Ten, fifteen minutes? From
what I hear, this judge can be long-winded,
especially if he gets on his hobbyhorse:
federal law versus state law. How long does
it take your sedative to work?"
"In the case of children this young, ten minutes."
"And it lasts how long?"
"About an hour."
"In that case, let the mothers give it to them as
soon as the judge starts his summing up. He'll
certainly not take less than ten minutes."
"Thanks. See you in court. Good luck."
"Likewise, Doctor."
The rain which had been threatening all morning was
coming down with a vengeance by the time Rossini arrived
at the courthouse. He tethered his horse and went
to the sheriff's office.
"Morning, Sheriff. All right if I go and have
a look at their identification marks? I have
to check them before the verdict."
The sheriff, feet on desk, handed him the list
of names and drawings and tossed him the master key.
"Help yourself, Doc. Downstairs, first cell
on the left. Need any help?"
"No, thanks."
"I needn't tell you, the whole thing is a
pain in the ass to every decent man in town." The
sheriff took his feet off his desk. "The law's
the law, but--well, I'm glad it's not a bunch of slave catchers getting them."
"Have you seen the owner?"
"He asked me over to the hotel. Looked like
a real gentleman. He has a little boy with him.
As humane, I'd say, as you can expect of
any slaveowner."
Rossini went to the door. "I won't be
long. I'd appreciate it if you could keep your
men away till I'm through. I'll have to ask some
of the women to bare their buttocks; I don't
want to turn it into a peepshow."
"Don't worry, Doc," the sheriff said, with
feeling. "Jake's down there; send him on up.
Hell, he'd as soon stay around to see those
nigger wenches in the raw as leer at his own
daughter."
When Rossini pulled open the heavy door that
led to the cellar, the stale air that came up was like
that of a morgue. A man's voice called from the
bottom of the stairs, "That you, Sheriff?"
"It's me, Dr. Rossini." He went down
the stairs. "I've come to check on the
prisoners."
"Oh, Doc!" The deputy seemed
relieved. "They're right over there. Hope you can
do something about them."
"What's wrong?"
"Well, Jesus! They know what's
going to happen to them. How would you feel? It's the
babies that get to me, and their mothers. I don't
mind the men, but the mothers--"
"All right, Jake," Rossini said. "Go and
have a cup of coffee with the sheriff. I have to examine
them."
"Sure, Doc, sure ..." He seemed
eager to leave. "I'll just open the cell for you.
Holler when you're through."
"I will."
The man went down the dark passage between the
cells; Rossini heard the sound of a key
turning. "All yours, Doc. Here's the key.
Lock up when you're through, will you?"
The cell was darker than the passage. The
Negroes, standing motionless at the bars, watched
him approach like horses in a stable. A tall,
middle-aged man with prominent front teeth
stood in the doorway.
"I am Dr. Rossini. I'm here to give you
your instructions."
The man moved aside; Rossini entered the
cell. They all simply stared at him. They were
a sad lot, browbeaten and totally demoralized
after all these weeks in prison. Even so, you
never knew. They had escaped once, from their
masters; they might have the gumption to do it again. But
not by the looks of them.
"I have a message for you from Viola."
"Yassah," the tall man said.
"Your escape has been arranged. If the
verdict goes against you, we won't have much time, and
I have instructions for you. Who do I speak to?
You?"
"Yassah," the tall man said.
"You will be defended by a Quaker lawyer, but
chances are, the judge will order you to be returned
to your owner."
"Yassah."
The others went on staring at him. Their stillness
was unnerving.
Rossini opened his bag and took out the three
pacifiers. "These contain a medication meant
to keep the babies quiet. Give them these the
moment the judge starts his summing up. That means:
when the judge responds to the speech by the Quaker
lawyer. The drug won't harm them, even if an
escape should turn out to be unnecessary." He tried
to hand the pacifiers to the women holding babies, but
they refused to accept them. The tall
man took them and put them in his trouser
pockets.
"Don't squeeze them, the medicine is
inside."
"Yassah," the man said.
"You'll be asked to rise for the verdict at the
end of the trial; then the marshals will want to take
you back to your cell. What we are counting on is
that they will not walk ahead of you when you leave the
courtroom, but wait until the last of you has
left the dock. When you move up the aisle,
toward the exit ..."
He continued his instructions, uneasy at their
lack of response. None of them so much as
blinked. They just stood there, motionless, staring at
him. Then a baby started to cry in a corner of the
cell; one of the women waded through the straw toward
it.
"When you arrive at the farm," he concluded,
"you'll be moved to a loft in one of the barns.
You're supposed to stay there until after dark, when
you'll be taken to the next station. Any questions?"
Silence. Then the tall man asked, "Does
Viola know about this?"
Rossini felt a twinge of irritation; they would
never trust a white man, even if he risked his
livelihood for them. "Viola is in prison
too," he said, as if they didn't know; she was in
a cell a few doors from theirs. "I'll visit
with her. If she does not agree with the plan,
I'll come and tell you."
"What's this stuff we's to give our children?" a
woman asked.
"A mild sedative. All it will do is make
them drowsy, so they won't give you away by crying
once you are in the wagon. I'm a doctor, I
promise you it is safe."
The woman said nothing. The tall man said,
"Yassah."
Rossini looked around the circle of staring
eyes. "I'm supposed to check on your
identification marks, but I suppose you all are
--were--the property of Mr. Armand Delatour
of Morning Rose Plantation, Louisiana?"
"Yassah," the tall man said.
"All right, then, this seems to be all.
Goodbye, good luck, if all goes well,
I'll see you at the farm." He turned away,
opened the door of the cell and stepped outside.
He was about to close it again when he
became aware of the tall man staring at him with an
odd look. "Sorry," he said, "but I'm
supposed to lock this door. We must not arouse their
suspicion. All right?"
"Yassah," the man said.
He pulled the door shut and locked it with the
key. He hesitated for a moment; his next
assignment was a tough one. The other cell was at
the far end of the corridor, where it was darker, and the
air more dank. He peered through the bars but could not
discern a thing in the gloom.
"Viola?" he asked, his voice low.
"Well, well," the hateful voice sneered.
"Look who's here. Want my confession, boy?"
Rossini looked over his shoulder; the
corridor was empty. He opened his medicine
bag and took from it the master key the locksmith
had copied. "I'm not coming in, Viola," he
whispered, "it's too risky, the deputy may
come down at any moment. I'll give you your
key now." He did so, relieved for some reason
when she took it.
"Well, well," the voice said,
unimpressed. "What you want me to do, boy?
Run out and get myself lynched by the paddyrollers?"
"In about an hour there will be a disturbance in the
courthouse upstairs. The sheriff will be in the
courtroom, the deputy upstairs will run out
to see what's going on. There'll be a lot of
confusion. You have two alternatives."
"I have what?"
"There are two things you can do, depending on how
it works out. If all goes well, the slaves will
run from the courtroom and climb into Farmer
Ely's covered wagon, parked right in front of the
main doors. If you can get outside in time,
join them. If they are on their way by the time you
get out, turn left and walk away. Nobody
will notice, for--here ..." He took from one of the
pockets of his coat a tightly folded thin
skirt, from the other a blouse, and from his medicine
bag a Quaker bonnet. He pushed them through the
bars. "Put these on. Leave what you're wearing
right here."
The straw rustled, a shadow moved and
disappeared. Not a word of thanks, that was not her
nature. But if she got away this time it would be
a miracle.
"Anything else I can do for you? Do you need
medical attention?"
"Do I need what, boy?"
"Did those brutes hurt you? Are you wounded?
I'd like to know what your condition is."
"My condition is fine. I'm dragging one leg, and I was lucky they didn't rape or
bugger me before the deputies arrived. Maybe if
I do this they can make up for lost time."
"Maybe," he said. "Good luck, Viola."
"Same to you, boy. See you in heaven."
There was more rustling of straw. Then, suddenly,
terrifyingly, a ghoulish mug loomed through the bars.
It took him a second before he realized it was
she, wearing the Quaker bonnet.
He could not discern her face, only the grin of
yellow teeth. "Purty?" she asked.
"I have seen prettier," Rossini said.
"Godspeed, Viola."
"Godspeed yourself." She made it sound
obscene.
He hurried up the stairs. In the office, the
sheriff and the deputy were waiting.
"All through, Doc?" the sheriff asked, taking
his feet off the desk.
"Yes." Rossini handed back the key and the
list. "Thanks. See you in court. See you,
Jake."
"See you, Doc."
"Be good now," the sheriff called after him.

When Lydia saw Obadiah enter the
courtroom, he appeared shaken by the sight of the
unruly crowd. He obviously had no
experience with raucous trials; in
Philadelphia they were conducted with more decorum.
Here, the spectators were divided into two
camps, those in favor of helping slaves
escape and those against. It was that simple; neither
party showed any inhibitions when it came to making
clear which side they were on.
Obadiah looked so disconcerted by the whistles
and boos directed at him by some rowdies in the
back that Lydia rose and went up the aisle
to meet him. His face lit up the moment he saw
her. She put her arm through his and said, "Don't
worry, it's just noise. Would thee like me to sit
by thee?"
"Yes, please!" he said with such enthusiasm that
she felt like kissing him. But she had made enough of a
demonstration as it was; already the rowdies were
yoo-hooing and whistling lecherously. Most
of them were Irish laborers from the canal, out for
entertainment; but there was a sprinkling of slave
hunters among them. In the plaintiff's bench
sat an elegant, stern-looking gentleman with a
child by his side, a boy of no more than eleven, in
a velvet suit.
"Come, sit down," she said.
"All rise!" the bailiff bellowed at that
moment.
There was a huge noise of shuffling and grunting
as the crowd rose to their feet. The islands of children
on either side of the aisle looked prim and
virtuous in their Quaker garb. The judge
entered.
"Well," Lydia whispered, "this is it.
God be with thee, Counselor."
"The Court of Baker County, Indiana, is
in session!" the bailiff bellowed. "Judge
Ezekiel Saunders presiding! You may sit
down!"
The many-headed beast sat down, growling.

In her mind, Charity had pictured her
arrival in Pendle Hill many times: a sunny
little town in the hills, helpful people to show her the
way; hire a hansom; Obadiah stunned by the
sight of her in the lobby of the school ... Reality
proved to be a drab roadside shelter in
driving rain; only one person was waiting for the
stage to arrive: a hairy, coarse-featured
man, hat and coat sodden with rain, calling,
"Mother!" Molly O'Grady descended the
wagon steps backwards, jabbering, "Tom!
Tommy! Tommykins!" and fainted in the man's
arms. She had fainted before, it was something she did
well.
No one else, apart from a hansom and an
empty buggy, the horse of which was kissing the nose
of its opposite number.
Noisy Irish laborers spilled out of the
Conestoga wagon with jeers, shouts, drunken
curses at the rain, clamoring angrily for their
luggage off the roof, answered in kind by the angry
coachman, who flung grips and valises at
them with a vengeance. Then Molly O'Grady,
back among the living, smothered her face in wet
kisses, wept, and was led away by her son to a
waiting buggy. That was it.
Charity walked through a drenching rain to have a look
at the hansom. She opened the door and
was met by a smell of whiskey, which she had come
to recognize during the journey. A sozzled
old man, slumped on the seat, leered at her.
"Hansom, miss?"
"Are you spoken for?"
"No, miss."
"All right. Take me to the school."
"School?"
"The Quaker boarding school."
"Ah, but there won't be anyone there, miss."
"I don't understand what you are saying."
"Everyone will be in the courthouse, miss, for the
verdict. I'm going there meself."
"What are you talking about, man? What
verdict?"
"On slaves, miss! The whole Quaker
school will be there. They should be, it was them that hid
'em."
"Hid who?"
"The slaves, miss! They'll all be there.
Every blessed one of them."
"But, surely, there must be someone left at the
school? The children, for one thing?"
"Like I told you, the children are there too.
They've been there every blessed day since the trial
started, last Thursday. How would it be if I
took you to the courthouse, miss? We'd go in
together, you could leave your valise in the cab.
Drive you to the school after the verdict. I aim
to hear what the Quaker lawyer has to say.
Placed a small bet meself."
"Bet?"
"Aye, the whole town's been wagering. You can
get five-for-one on the Quakers. I'm betting
on that fellow Woodhouse."
"All right," she said. "Take me there at
once. Now!"
"Yes, miss--excuse, miss, while I
get out--thank you, miss. Would this be your
valise?"
"Yes! Yes! Hurry!"
"Sure, miss ... Mind the door, miss
..." The door slammed. He heaved her
valise onto the roof, climbed into the driver's
seat, and they set off.
Obadiah in court! The rain started up again,
drumming like hail on the roof of the carriage.
When they arrived at what had to be the
courthouse, there was no place to park the cab.
Sulkies, carriages, and wagons were
jammed side by side all along the curb,
restless horses were nibbling each other's necks,
and rain, rain everywhere, flailing the roof of the
hansom, blown by the wind into gusts whirling down the
pavement and soaking her as she stepped out. God!
This was awful ... "I go inside! I'll see you
later!" She made a run for it under her
umbrella, leaving the coachman behind.
Inside, the courtroom was stifling hot. The
crowded hall reeked of sodden clothes, tobacco
smoke, sweaty bodies. There were a lot of children
in Quaker dress who must be from the school. The
majority of the audience was made up of rough men in
an angry mood. Where was Obadiah? The
judge, a bewigged old man, brooded on his
bench; in the dock huddled a row of Negro men and
women, some with babies. There was no counsel for the
defense to be seen. She looked around for the
prosecutor, he was not there either. All she saw
were children, some Quaker women, and rowdy,
vicious-looking men, shouting, stamping their feet,
laughing. She found a seat in the back row; then
she spotted Obadiah.
He was sitting in front of the dock, a woman
beside him. Charity knew at once who she was,
even though she was not "strikingly handsome" but a
thin-faced, blue-eyed person in her thirties
watching the crowd with an expression of defiance on
her beaky face. Next to her, making sheep's
eyes as he whispered in her ear, sat Obadiah
in a wig that was too small, his shoulders
sprinkled with dandruff, or so it seemed, his
cravat awry. His gown looked as if he had
slept in it.
The judge gaveled and cried, "May we hear
the case for the owner, please?"
A fat man, who must be the bailiff,
bellowed, "Silence in court!"
A rake-thin gentleman in wig and robe
rose and approached the bench. Somewhere in the crowd
a coarse voice yelled, "Let him have it!" The
judge gaveled. The bailiff, like a giant
frog rising on its hind legs, bellowed,
"Silence in court!"
"Your Honor," the thin man began, in a tone
of indifference, "these endless procedures have been a
parody. The ownership of the slaves is
incontestable, proven by documents, birthmarks,
and the testimony of sworn witnesses. The fifteen
slaves were apprehended looking for the
person or persons meant to further their escape,
one of whom was apprehended. When approached
by officers of the law and representatives of the
owner, they resorted to violence and had to be
forcibly placed in custody. If it please Your
Honor, having deposited with the court exhibit
number one, the list of names and full description
of the slaves, and exhibit two, a drawing of their
identification marks, followed by the testimony of the
witness Leon Rossini, physician, who
identified ..."
As the man droned on and on, naming each of the
slaves as "male" and "female," Charity
observed Obadiah with mounting anger, directed not
at him but at herself. What had possessed her
to burn all her bridges behind her and make this
insane expedition for a man who sat there smooching
with another woman, shoulders dusted with dandruff, a
cravat like a hangman's knot, his wig a bird's nest? The elegant, debonair young
lawyer she loved had turned into a tramp. What
in the world could have happened to him?
There followed more dry, legal parleying about
ownership and the circumstances of the prisoners' arrest
as the prosecutor continued his deposition; finally,
Obadiah rose to make his plea, reading from a
brief. His discourse was carefully worded and spoken
with dignity and composure, but Charity soon lost
confidence, and so, it seemed, did everyone around her
on the back row. It was wrong to read from a piece
of paper; even though he appealed to Judge
Ezekiel Saunders "as a man, not the
impersonal representative of the law," he
never actually looked at the man. The judge
listened politely, nodding occasionally in
approval, which Charity found disconcerting. "I
plead with thee to shed thy robes," Obadiah
intoned, changing to plain speech; the suggestion
might have interested the judge had it not been read from
notes. "I challenge thee to remove thyself from thy
awesome seat of office and consider the human
plight of these miserable slaves, not as an
official of the state but as a man." It seemed a
foolish suggestion; to ask a judge to act as a
private person was to ask him to step out of
office. "Here they stand, Friend Ezekiel, about
to be handed back into bondage. Passing judgment,
thee will be passing judgment not on the fate of these
Negroes alone, but on thy own Christianity."
The judge's nod seemed to say,
"Well put, young counselor." Charity began
to suspect that Obadiah was walking into a trap.
"I have the temerity, Friend Ezekiel, to compare
thy predicament to that of Pontius Pilate
..."
Charity stopped listening. Did Obadiah
realize that by challenging the judge, he was in some
obscure way serving the man's purpose? He
ended, saying, "I know, Friend Ezekiel, that from a
purely legal point of view my plea is an
exercise in futility. All I plead, standing
before thee as a representative of the Least of these
His Brethren, is Christ's plea for mercy, the
only key to our deliverance from evil. It is in
thy hands, Ezekiel Saunders, to relieve not
only our friends in the dock from the fear of that most
ignoble condition to beset man, the fear of
bondage, but to deliver us all from evil." He
gathered his notes and sat down, welcomed with a
smile by the middle-aged woman. He obviously
was totally smitten with the creature. Well,
Charity decided, she might as well get out now
and go home. What was she doing here? She did not
know this man. She had no desire to know him. She
was totally clear in her own mind, in an icy,
terrified way, that she had made the biggest
mistake of her life. What she should do now was
disappear as fast as she could, go to an inn, and take
tomorrow's coach back to civilization, back
to Philadelphia, back to the Charity she had
been all her days, who would marry an upstanding,
solid young man who shared her views.
The judge started his summing up in an almost
conversational tone. "Let me start by thanking
counsel for his moving plea in behalf of these
unfortunate people. I am grateful, and so should all of us be, that at this moment, in this courtroom, the
voice of humanity and mercy has been raised in
such an admirable manner. Counselor, not only
the bench but all of us present are indebted to you for
speaking in behalf of our consciences. Be assured:
as a private person, I would rejoice if I could
now say to my dark-skinned fellow men in the
dock, "Go free, and may God go with you."
Therefore, I will now address the plaintiff."
He turned to what must be their owner, a stern,
prosperous-looking man at the plaintiff's
bench, and continued in the same conversational tone:
"Armand Delatour, would you at this solemn moment
join in the sentiments and the wishes of this
community, as expressed by counsel for the defence, and
retract your request that the defendants in the
dock be handed back to you in slavery?"
The urbane owner patted the shoulder of the little
boy beside him, who looked very worried. He
rose, bowed to the judge, and said, with a French
accent, "Your Honor, I too was impressed
by the eloquence and sincerity of counsel for the
defense. However, this is a court of law, in which
all men, of necessity, act as symbols,
whether they like to or not. I cannot set a precedent that
will harm a cause which overrules my personal
feelings in this matter. The slaveowners of the
southern states have been increasingly subjected
to injustice in courts north of the Ohio. Their
growing indignation at these breaches of laws passed
by Congress will have grave consequences for our
country, unless our grievances are heard and
redressed. So, much as I may regret this
personally, fate wills it that I stand here as an
instrument of the law on fugitive slaves, voted
by Congress and duly signed by the President of the
United States." He sat down, welcomed
by an adoring expression of the face of the little boy.
The judge cleared his throat, arranged the
papers in front of him, then said, still in that
conversational tone, "Because of the unusual nature of
this case, I will not rebuke the plaintiff for
reminding the bench of its duties--as I did not
rebuke counsel for deviating from normal
procedure when addressing the bench. We are
faced, as a community, with an insoluble conflict.
The citizens of this town and this county would like nothing
better than to turn down the plaintiff's
request--"
Some men among the audience booed; the bailiff
rose, but the judge gestured him to sit.
"To consider one man as the owner of another
man," he continued, "is abhorrent to us all.
But, alas, the law knows no emotion. Dr.
Leon Rossini has checked the identification
marks of the defendants; these leave no doubt that
under the law, as it stands, the plaintiff is
entitled to apply for the restitution of these people as his
property. So, in the fervent hope of nobler times
to come, I, Ezekiel Saunders, Justice of
Baker County in the State of Indiana, hereby
order and direct the bailiff to restore to Armand
Delatour of Morning Rose Plantation,
Pointe Coupee Parish, State of
Louisiana, the following individuals, at
present aligned before me ..."
He began to read out the names of the slaves;
Charity did not stay to listen.
She hurried up the aisle to the doors of the
lobby, passing a young girl--from the school, no
doubt--who stood with a kerchief pressed to her
mouth; outside, beyond the carriages and the wagons
jammed together, sounded the lowing of cows.
She stood on the courthouse steps wondering
if she should wait inside the hansom cab for the
driver when she heard behind her the angry shouting of
men, the high-pitched shrieks of children.

In the courtroom, at teacher Will's signal,
Bonny Baker had released his mice. As
arranged, Himsha Woodhouse started to scream,
"Mice! Mice!" The slaves, in a stunning
burst of speed, sprinted from the dock to the doors;
the moment they passed, Bathsheba Tucker threw
herself in the aisle, in the way of the marshals going
after them. She rolled on the floor, screaming,
kicking, showing black stockings and white
knickers; other girls threw themselves on the
floor, climbed the backs of benches, screaming,
"Mice! Help! Mice!" The women in the
courtroom ran squealing into the aisles, blocking
them totally as they stood there yelling "Mice!
Mice!" holding their skirts around their ankles.
The Negroes reached the street, piled
into Farmer Ely's wagon; the farmer's wife
whipped the horses, the last of the escapees
barely made it.
A small band of slave hunters from the back
of the courtroom reached the street, wanting to run
to their horses tethered across the road, but to their
fury and confusion they found themselves confronted by the
chaos of a milling herd of cattle. It looked as
if hundreds of cows, lowing, bellowing, tails
raised, were crowding the street outside the
courthouse.
It was quite a while before the men, joined by the sheriff
and his deputies by then, could gallop off in
pursuit of the wagon which, someone shouted, was racing
down Martin Street toward the pike. The crowd
from the courtroom was now streaming outside; inside,
teacher Abner called the children to order. They rose
to their feet, dusted themselves off, and started to leave.
Instead of joining them, Bonny Baker went
down on hands and knees between the benches
to try and recapture his mice. During the trial
he had peeked at them often in the box at his
feet, secretly; each time, they had turned their
little faces up to him in mute supplication,
especially Plumpy, the friendliest of them all,
who had seemed frantic with fright. Now Bonny
crawled along between the benches, making sucking
noises as he always did when he came into the
potting shed with food. "Plumpy! Spotty!"
Then he saw Plumpy.
It was she; she was the only one with three white
socks on her feet. All that was left of the rest
of her was a blotch of bloody pulp and dirty
fur. He pulled his handkerchief out of his
pocket, tried to scrape up the filthy mess;
it was wet and sticky, so he spread the handkerchief
over her and crawled on. But although he called and
whistled, peered under the benches in all directions,
he saw no fleeting little shadows. Fervently
hoping not to find other horrible blotches, he
crawled on; then a boy's voice asked,
"What are you doing there?"
He rose to his knees and saw, standing at the
far end, the little boy who had been sitting next
to the slaveowner. The boy was white as a sheet, his
face was wet, as if he had been crying.
"I'm looking for my mice."
"Your mice?"
"Yes ..."
"You brought them here? With you?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because they told me to." He felt like crying
himself.
The little boy's face became ugly with anger.
"You did it on purpose? Let those mice
loose on purpose?"
Bonny did not reply; he wished he had not
told him.
"Those slaves were my father's!" the little boy
cried, his voice thick with tears. "He worked for
them all his life! You are a thief, a thief!
You are all thieves!"
A voice called from the lobby, "George!
Where on earth--"
"Coming, Father!"
Bonny ducked between the benches, waited a
while, then straightened up and found himself face
to face with the slaveowner. The man looked down at
him sternly. "My son tells me you
are looking for your mice."
His voice was pleasant enough, but his eyes
made Bonny turn on his heels and run as
fast as he could down the narrow gap between the benches,
up the aisle, and out into the lobby.
He stopped running only after he had reached the
street. It was full of cows; in the distance, he
saw the children march down the sidewalk in a single
file, pressed against the houses because of the cows.
He leaned against the wall to catch his breath, heard
angry men's voices, and saw a bunch of
irate slave hunters headed straight for him.
Terrified, he ran.

A stunned Charity had watched the chaos of the
slaves' escape with pure astonishment, which
changed to unease when she realized that the children had
played a crucial part in what had clearly been
a planned operation. When the angry deputies,
or whatever they were, gave up trying to force their
way through the herd and turned around, she felt she
had better get out of their way. Looking for the
hansom, she heard shouts behind her, screams of
pain. On the steps of the courthouse, the angry
men were now flailing sticks and fists, beating up
somebody. A woman screamed, "Stop! Stop,
you monsters! Stop, in the name of God!"
Charity caught a momentary glimpse of a
woman kneeling beside the man, her hands uplifted,
trying to stop the beating; when she recognized who it
was, she realized, sick with the shock, that they were
beating up Obadiah.
She did not stop to think. She ran up the
steps and fought her way through the rowdies, kicked,
shoved, used her elbows, battled her way to where
the woman sat. There he lay, bleeding, covering
the back of his head with his hands, face down; they were
beating him, kicking--
Before she knew what she was doing, she threw
herself on top of him, sheltering him with her body.
Blows hammered on her back with searing pain, the
like of which she had never felt before; but she managed
to get hold of one of his hands and whispered at the
back of his head, "It's all right! It's all
right! I'm here, it's me!"
By the time the sheriff's deputies got to her she
was lying quite still, only her mind alive in a body
that no longer felt pain.
The first Rossini heard about the beatings
was when Harlan Tucker accosted his buggy, in
Baker Street, while waiting for Farmer
Kowalski's cows to pass.
"Thee had better go and have a look at them,
Doctor," the dour old Quaker said, peering up
at him from the sidewalk. "They took them to the
school."
"What's that?"
"The Philadelphia lawyer and some city
woman. Reckon she's his wife, by the way she
behaved, she's too young to be his mother. Where was thee?
I thought I saw thee in the courtroom?"
It did not seem wise to tell the old
buzzard more than he already knew; he was an
arch-orthodox who disapproved sternly of the underground
railroad. "I was called out to see a patient,
before the verdict." In effect, he had gone to the
sheriff's office to make sure that the deputy would
run to the courtroom when the riot started.
"Well, thee has two more waiting for thee at the
school. Badly bruised, I reckon." He
said it in a tone implying that it served them right.
"Who did it?" Rossini asked.
"The slave hunters," the old man replied.
"Ten more seconds, I'd say, and they would have
kilt them, at least the woman. She got the
worst of it. Well, there thee goes."
The cows had passed, and Rossini took off
for the school at a fast clip. A city woman
shielding the Philadelphia lawyer? So far as
he knew, Obadiah Woodhouse had no
wife. Well, he'd soon find out.
He did indeed. The school was in a state of
great agitation, part triumph, part outrage.
Children's voices as well as Lydia's welcomed
him as he entered the lobby.
"Well, who do I see first? I gather the
woman took the brunt of it. Is that so?"
"Yes, Doctor," Lydia said. "I'll
take thee to her. She was unconscious when we
carried her up there. I hope she's going to be
all right."
"Who is it?" he asked as they climbed the
stairs.
"Obadiah Woodhouse's fianc@ee,"
Lydia replied, in a tone that made him look
at her.
"You don't say," he said.
They went the rest of the way to the hospital
room in silence.
On the bed nearest the window lay a still form.
Himsha, the Indian girl, sat stiffly in
attendance beside her.
"Thee can go now, Himsha," Lydia whispered.
"The doctor is here, he'll take care of
her."
The girl rose; Rossini addressed her:
"Thank you. Is she conscious?"
"Oh, yes," the girl said calmly. "We
talked."
"Talked about what?" Lydia asked.
"I told her I was Uncle Obadiah's
ward. She said they were going to be married."
"You don't say," Rossini said. "Now
leave us to it, will you?"
The girl turned around and left the room.
"Miss--er--" He looked up and asked,
"What's her name?"
"I believe it's Woodhouse," Lydia
replied. "They are cousins."
"Miss Woodhouse?"
The still form, lying on its stomach, grunted.
There was a dark patch on the back of her head where
blood had coagulated in her hair. What he
could see of her face seemed unbruised, but was
distorted in agony.
"I'm Dr. Rossini. I would like to have a
look at you and see what I can do."
She grunted.
He signaled Lydia on the other side of the
bed to help him remove the blanket. The woman
had been put to bed in her gown, which was sticky and
discolored with blood.
"I'm afraid I may have to cut your gown,
Miss Woodhouse," he said.
No reaction.
He took the surgical scissors from his
medicine bag and was about to start cutting from the collar
down when Lydia said, "There's no need for this,
Doctor. I can unbutton it."
She did so deftly; when she was through, her
fingers were red with blood. The undergarments, however,
had to be cut, and when finally he bared the girl's
back, he shook his head in anger and concern. That
hooligans could bring themselves to so cruelly beat a
helpless woman! He could only hope they had not
damaged any vertebrae, or ribs.
It took a bit of gentle probing and questioning, which
she answered in grunts and moans, before he could
conclude that there was no internal damage;
but the skin was broken in several places. For that
to happen through a layer of clothes, they really had
had to apply maximum force, the bastards.
Finally, he said, "Well, she seems to be
basically all right. Now get me some warm
water, will you, and some bandages; meanwhile, I'll
give her a sedative."
Lydia hurried out. When the door was closed
he asked softly, "Can you hear me, Miss
Woodhouse?"
The young woman grunted without opening her eyes.
The wound on the back of her head was the most serious. He hoped the Indian girl had not
told a lie when she said that she had spoken to her
and received a reply. It was important that he
find out. "I don't want to press you for
answers, but I would like you to just tell me how you're
feeling."
"All right ..." she said thickly, her eyes
still closed.
"Which part of you hurts most? Your head? Your
back? Your neck? Can you tell me?"
"Neck," she said.
"Could you open your eyes for me?"
She was lying on her right eye, but at last she
opened the left. It was blue and young, and
bloodshot.
"Mind if I lift the eyelid for a moment?"
He did so. "Could you roll your eye for me,
please?"
She did. "I'm sure you're in pain," he
said, his hand on her shoulder in a gesture of
reassurance, "but I don't think it's serious.
You'll just be very stiff for a while."
She grunted.
"That was a very courageous thing you did, Miss
Woodhouse."
She did not answer. Then the eye opened again and
gazed at him. She grimaced, in an effort
to smile.
Lydia came in with hot water.
"Well," Rossini said, "let's give her
a wash-down. Have you got the bandages?"
"Yes, Doctor, here ..."
Ten minutes later, he had done all he could
and gave the patient a sedative. "Now, where's
the other one?"
"Thee means Obadiah?"
"So I gather."
"He is in the large guest room,
one floor below, number fifteen."
"Get some help to change her into a nightgown,
or whatever. It may be best if you just cover her
with a sheet and leave her for now. Once the medication
takes effect, it will be less painful to change
her into a nightdress."
"Yes, Doctor. May I come and see thee
after thee has seen Obadiah?"
"Certainly," he said.
Too bad. They would have made a good couple.
In the guest room he found Obadiah fast
asleep, but looking hale and healthy. The young
man barely woke while Rossini examined him.
His bruises were superficial; the only really
painful location was his left knee. He screamed
dramatically when Rossini tried to bend it;
nothing seemed broken, so the doctor decided
to let it be and covered him up again. The young man
asked drowsily, "How is she?"
"She'll live," Rossini said, irritated
as usual by male antics. Compared to the girl
upstairs, who had truly saved him from serious
injury, his performance was like that of a husband in
couvade. One of the first discoveries any family
physician makes is that the attributes men
ascribe to themselves are, in effect, those of women:
courage, constancy, loyalty, stoicism under
pain. All the female faults agreed upon by men
are typical of their own sex, down
to histrionics under pain and the inability to keep a
secret.
Faintly disgusted, Rossini closed the door,
to be met in the passage by Jesse, who was in a
state of great excitement.
"Doc!" he cried. "You know what? Viola
has escaped! She managed to get out of prison
while the slaves were running away! The whole
town is full of it, the sheriff is spitting with
rage."
"You don't say," Rossini said. As he
crossed the lobby to the front door, the Indian
girl stopped him.
"Doctor?"
"Yes?"
"Is he all right?"
"He is very much all right," he replied. "The
one who took the beating was--isn't she a
relative of yours?"
The girl said coldly, "A distant aunt."
"Well, if any laurels are to be
distributed, they should go to her. She has the
courage of a lioness."
"I should hope so," the child said, much too adult
for her age. "Gulielma Woodhouse was her
great-aunt." She turned her back on him and
walked away.

A few hours later, in bed at the school,
Obadiah finally found a position in which nothing
hurt any more. Not much, at least, on condition he
did not move. In that forced stillness, eyes
closed, he was drifting back to sleep when he
heard the door open, the rustle of skirts; his
eyelids darkened when someone moved between him and the
window. He opened his eyes and saw it was
Lydia.
"How is thee?" she whispered.
He tried to answer, but his jaw was too
painful, all he could do was smile with his upper
lip, which must make it look like a snarl. "Tha--
ee." Impossible to make it sound like "Thank
thee."
"Don't talk," she said, stroking his
sweat-soaked hair.
But he should say more. What she had done was
heroic, magnificent. What other woman would
try to shield a man from kicks and blows with her
own body? He remembered the weight of her
body on his back, he remembered thuds, as if
they were beating him through a mattress or a thick
carpet. He gazed at her silhouette in the
window. How come she was so calm, unscathed? They
must have stopped kicking and beating virtually at
once after he passed out. Even so--what a
woman! "How's--" he could not get out "thee,"
it hurt too much.
"She's all right," Lydia said. "Dr.
Rossini has been to see her. She--well, she
is hurt, but he does not think there is permanent
damage."
Who was she talking about? He wasn't
interested. One of the children. Oh, God! That would be
serious. That was exactly what he had foreseen when
he warned them against involving the children. The parents--
"Who wah't?" he croaked.
There was a pause, as if she had to think. Then
she asked in an odd voice, "Thee doesn't
know?"
Stupid question to ask of a man who had been lying
with his face squashed on the courthouse
steps while they beat the living daylights out of
him. "No," he said. Smiling turned out to be
painful in a different way. Why had the doctor
been so casual? He might have a broken jaw!
"It was Charity."
"Chee--hoo?"
"Thy Charity. Charity Woodhouse. She
came to surprise thee."
He froze. "Huh? Huh?!"
"She was the one who shielded thee, not me. I just
sat there and yelled at them."
"Huh? Huh?"
"She arrived on the Richmond coach, while
the trial was in progress. A cabby took her
to the courthouse. When they were beating thee, she was there
all of a sudden, and threw herself on top of thee.
They really let her have it, the swine."
"No--ee?"
"Sorry, not me. She's a plucky girl,
all power to her. Thirsty?"
"Huh."
"Meaning what?"
"Huh."
"She's upstairs, in the hospital. Don't
worry, she--"
He tried to get up; it was like trying to lift a
tombstone. Maybe he was dead, and all this was a
dream.
"Don't move!" she warned. "She's all
right. She's fine! The doctor is with her.
Don't move, thee'll hurt thyself."
He wanted to say: "Thee was wonderful. I
remember thee trying to keep them away. I
remember thinking: What a glorious woman."
Now it turned out to have been Charity. Damn the
mail! It was too damn slow between here and
Philadelphia! What a mess! Charity throwing
herself on top of him? Without thinking, straight from the
coach? Marvelous, terrific; but what a mess!
"Don't cry," she said. "She is fine.
Thee is fine too. You'll be fit to pass
meeting in no time. Don't cry."
Stupid woman! Please, God, give me
time! Make me pass out again!
He did pass out. Almost. He stayed passed
out until he heard the door close. Then he
wept some more, at his ease.
At dead of night--at least it felt like night
--he could stand it no longer. He was as stiff as a
plank, every movement hurt like blazes,
but he had to go and see Charity if he had to crawl
on all fours.
It almost came to that: if he had not been
afraid of waking people behind the closed doors along
the passage, he would have screamed with pain. He
made it to the hospital, where he presumed she
was; he had seen it once before: a high-ceilinged
room full of white beds smelling of
mothballs. He did not remember which door; he
found the right one at the third try. It was indeed a
high-ceilinged white room, looking bright with the
light of the full moon. In the bed closest to the
window lay a still, slight form; the other beds were
empty. He tiptoed--ouch!--to the foot of the bed,
still not sure that it was indeed Charity. But who else
could it be?
The small, slight form gave a surprisingly
masculine grunt. Was it a man?
It was not. He tried to kneel beside the bed, but
could not manage because of his damaged knee; he just
lay, one leg outstretched, one elbow on the bed,
in a bizarre ballet stance. The girl's face
in the moonlight opened one eye and said, "O--"
Was it O for Obadiah, or "Oh" for
"Not him again"?
"Hallo, love ..." he whispered, or
tried to. It came out as "Ah-oh."
"Grr."
Was it a groan? Was it ... He peered
closer, to check if she was really awake or
whether they had sedated her; then an arm came from
under the blankets, reached around his neck, and
pulled him down screaming, smothering his yowls with a
kiss.
After a moment of stunned shock he threw himself
into an irrevocable future by climbing, wincing,
onto the bed. He threw an arm around her; this time
it was her turn to scream, and his to smother her scream
with a kiss.

Himsha Woodhouse, who had been delegated
by teacher Lydia to keep an eye on her aunt and
to sound a warning the moment there was any change in her
condition, woke up with a start in the armchair in the
anteroom where she had been sleeping.
From the sickroom came agonizing screams.
Startled wide awake, she was about to run to warn
teacher Lydia when she decided to go in there and have a
look first, for the screams had sounded desperate.
She rushed to the room, opened the door
and saw, in the moonlight, Aunt Charity,
twice normal size, struggling and thrashing under the
covers. She thought for a second that the woman,
insane with suffering, was wrestling with death, then she
realized there were two people in the bed. Far from wrestling
with death, Aunt Charity was bundling with what could
only be Uncle Obadiah.
Deciding that teacher Lydia should not be alerted but
kept away, Himsha closed the door and went
back to the anteroom.
She sat upright in her chair, staring at the
moonlit window, wondering what Aunt Charity
would look like. For some reason, this was the moment she
decided not to marry Bonny Baker after all.

CHAPTER 10
RICHMOND, INDIANA
September 1833

The morning before his departure for
Philadelphia--and thence home to England--
Mordecai was called upon to attend an emergency
meeting of the school committee of Indiana
Yearly Meeting. The latest news from Pendle
Hill was that something utterly scandalous had taken
place: children under the school's care had been used,
without the knowledge, let alone permission, of their parents,
to create a disturbance in a courtroom, as a
result of which fifteen slaves had escaped.
Now this had nothing to do with theology or differences in
the interpretation of God's love, this was a gross
abuse of parents' trust, not to mention the
disrespect for the law this action must have fostered in the
children.
The committee was unanimous in its condemnation;
those among the faculty who had hatched the plot and
taken an active part in its execution must not
only be dismissed from their posts but read out of
Meeting. It was decided that four committee
members would visit the school forthwith to announce this
decision.
They proceeded to discuss arrangements;
Mordecai had just closed his eyes when he heard someone ask, "Would thee, Friend Mordecai?"
What had the question been? He looked around the
table, saw their expectant faces, and realized
they were waiting for his reply.
"I would like to hear more," he said evasively.
The chairman explained to him: "We feel thy
presence would make our confrontation with the
faculty less impersonal, introduce an
element of caring. Would thee accompany us, perhaps
act as our spokesman?"
"I? Why should I? I am an Englishman,
not even a member of this Yearly Meeting!"
"Thy eloquence would help explain to them the
essence of their failing."
"And what would the essence be?"
"That whatever Friends may think individually about
Quaker involvement in the underground railroad,
to use children in an unlawful act without their parents'
permission is a betrayal of trust."
"No eloquence is needed to make that clear,
I would say."
"There are so many personality conflicts
involved, we would be most grateful if thee would
speak for us."
He looked from one to the other. It was a trap.
He was being drawn into a situation that did not concern
him.
"It seems thy er/while companion was
involved, not only as lawyer for the defense, but as
a fellow plotter," the chairman said.
"Well ..." He was struck by a thought that
unnerved him. This would mean he would see the
wanton young woman again.
"Would thee, Friend?"
He knew it was a momentous decision, but he
could not make out why. "As you wish," he said.
They closed the meeting with a period of silence.

Early in the morning, Jesse entered the
principal's study without knocking and said, his
voice low, "The sheriff and Harlan Tucker are
downstairs. They want to search the school."
Abner went to the window. In front of the school
a dozen horses were hitched; deputies were standing
around, chatting. Why so many? With his back
to Jesse, he said, "Ask Harlan and the sheriff
to come up."
Harlan Tucker, chairman of Pendle
Hill Monthly Meeting's school committee,
was the first to enter. A tall, gloomy man in his
sixties, he looked even gloomier now, as if
visiting a house in mourning. The sheriff
followed, taking off his hat.
"Good morning, Abner Best," Harlan said
gloomily. "Thee knows Joshua Standing?"
"Of course," Abner replied. "Good
morning, Joshua Standing." He would have
to take care during this conversation not to call the man
"Sheriff"; Harlan Tucker was a stickler
about the testimony against titles.
The two sat down in front of the desk,
Abner behind it. "What can I do for you?"
"Joshua Standing has a warrant to search this
school," Harlan Tucker said. "Before he
does, I wish to put thee a question. Are there any
slaves hidden in this school?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"Very well, Joshua Standing. Do thy duty."
Despite his martial bearing, the sheriff
appeared uncomfortable, like a pupil sent to see the
principal. "I needn't tell you people that I
hate to do this. I've always thought highly of you
Quakers--"
"Yes, yes," Harlan Tucker said dourly.
"We know all that. Now let us see thee put that
sentiment into practice."
This seemed to restore the sheriff's
self-confidence. "But let's get one thing
straight," he said. "I do not intend to give you people
preferential treatment. I am investigating a
serious offense. I--"
"Thee has a warrant to search this school,"
Harlan Tucker interrupted. "Get on with it."
"Allow me to run this investigation my own way,
Mr. Tucker!" The sheriff was angry now;
Abner wondered why wily old Harlan had thought
it necessary to goad the man. "To start with: was it you,
Mr. Best, who arranged for mice to be let
loose in the courtroom?"
Abner hoped the sudden wave of nausea that
overcame him did not show. He had not slept
all night, worrying about this question.
Harlan Tucker replied for him. "What
does thee mean, Joshua Standing: "arranged"?"
The sheriff looked from one to the other, his jaw
set. "I see," he said. "It's going to be like
that, is it? In that case, I might as well stop
now and leave you two to the judge."
"Meaning what, may I ask?" Harlan
Tucker became more formidable by the minute.
The sheriff replied grimly, "I've been
dealing with you people for sixteen years. I would sooner
question a riverboat gambler than a Quaker."
"Explain thyself," Harlan Tucker
requested.
"You people are supposed to speak the truth at all
times, aren't you?"
"So?" Harlan Tucker answered.
"Then why do you answer every question with a question? Dealing
with you is like--like groping for a needle inside a
feather pillow."
"I have no idea what thee is talking about,
Joshua Standing," Harlan Tucker said grandly.
"Why not do thy duty instead of sitting here making
small talk?"
The sheriff seemed to consider taking him on, but
thought better of it. He turned to Abner. "Did
you or did you not release those mice in the
courtroom?"
"No," Abner replied firmly.
"Think carefully now," the sheriff continued.
"The owner of the slaves is going to lodge a
complaint, and Judge Saunders is as mad as a
wet hen. So think carefully before you reply."
"Friend Joshua," Harlan Tucker rumbled,
"thee put Abner Best a straight question, he
gave thee a straight answer. Now shall we get
on with it?"
The sheriff looked from one to the other, then shrugged
his shoulders. "As you wish. But you would do well
to realize who your friends are in this community." When
there came no reaction to that, he continued, "Did
the wagon the bounty hunters were chasing belong to this
school?"
"No."
The sheriff sighed. "Very well," he said,
rising. "We'll search the building. Would either of
you gentlemen care to come along?"
"That will not be necessary," Harlan Tucker
replied. "We trust thee."
Without another word, the sheriff left.
The moment he was gone, the old Quaker turned
on Abner. "Pray explain thyself, Abner
Best," he said ominously. "I know thee did not
release the mice in person, but who did?"
"A little boy, pupil of this school. He
brought them with him into the courtroom; at a given
moment they got away. That much I can affirm."
Harlan Tucker stared at him. "This school
has become part of an organization known as the
"underground railroad" without being liberated to do
so by the Meeting. True or false?"
Abner wavered. Harlan Tucker was a harder
nut to crack than the sheriff. "Is this an
official inquiry, Harlan Tucker?"
The old man regarded him without tenderness.
"Abner Best," he said, "I warned
thee months ago that the way thee and thy sister were
running this school created a sense of unease in
Indiana Yearly Meeting. Instead of heeding that
word to the wise, thee has acted in a manner that
has now resulted in lawbreaking and scandal.
Surely thee does not expect me to protect
thee from the school committee of Yearly Meeting,
the way I protected thee from the world a moment
ago?"
"I understand," Abner said, feeling goose
pimples rise on his arms.
"In my capacity as chairman of the Monthly
Meeting's school committee, my advice
to Yearly Meeting will be that thee, thy sister, and
all others among the faculty involved in this
illegal action shall be dismissed from your posts.
Until then, thee is suspended."
They sat facing one another for a moment in
silence. It was a fateful moment, yet it made
no impression on Abner, for his mind was a
blank. He became aware of the breathless
wigwagging of the clock on the mantelpiece. Then
he asked, "When does this go into effect?"
Harlan Tucker replied, poker-faced, "The
school committee does not have the authority
to suspend anyone without a sense of the Meeting, in
this case, Indiana Yearly Meeting. Until
then, go ahead." The canny old eyes watched
him unblinkingly.
"I do not understand ..."
"Whatever thee or others do until then will make
no difference. Your goose is cooked." He
rose arthritically. Once on his feet, hand on
his hip, he said, "So go ahead. Help any
poor devil who might come to this school asking for
shelter, for as long as thou canst."
"Thank thee, Harlan," Abner said, trying
to sound equally stolid, but overwhelmed by the childish
urge to cry.
Harlan Tucker said, "Good day."
"Thank thee, Harlan."
The old man went to the door and closed it behind
him without looking back.

When Dr. Rossini returned to the school,
he found it in the process of being searched by the
sheriff and his deputies. Everyone was in a state
of utter dejection.
Its days as a station on the underground railroad
were definitely over; still, Viola, with a
brazenness that was either heroic or fatalistic, had
contacted him less than twenty-four hours after
her escape. She needed two nights' shelter
for a batch of twelve passengers, urgently.
Rossini had agreed to pass on the message, but
he hesitated as he stood before the door to the
principal's study. He knocked.
"Come!"
Abner Best behind his empty desk looked even
sallower than usual. "Yes, Doctor?"
"How is your wife?"
"God knows."
Never before had he reacted with callousness
to anything that had to do with his wife. Was it
rebellion, or part of his state of
despondency? The progress of the sheriff and his
crew through the school was far from orderly.
Overexcited children were running about unsupervised, the
faculty was steeped dramatically in gloom; the
whole town had turned against them, as had the elders
in Richmond. Abner looked as if he heard the
wheels of the tumbril turning; Rossini
hesitated to hasten his moment of execution. "I'm
afraid we have another emergency on our hands,
Abner," he said with an apologetic smile.
"Viola urgently needs shelter for a dozen
passengers, for two nights."
Abner, with startling calm, replied, "Of
course, Doctor. For when would that be?"
"Tonight, until day after tomorrow, in the afternoon."
"Any special requirements?"
Rossini could not believe his ears. Well,
better forge the iron while it was hot. "That
afternoon, you would need to call a general meeting, or
something, to get everyone off the grounds, children
included. Some event in the Assembly Hall.
I'd need two hours, say."
"Very well. A meeting for marriage. Would that
do?"
"That would do."
"Starting at two o'clock? That would give you your
two hours, with the reception."
"Splendid. Who'd be the happy couple?"
"Obadiah Woodhouse and his cousin."
"But she can barely walk!"
"She'll walk for the cause," Abner said with
uncharacteristic humor. He turned out to be one of
those who thrive on crises. Either that, or sheer
panic had caused a dissociation from reality.
"Many thanks, Abner."
"Any time, Doc!" Abner crowed,
alarmingly.

The meeting for marriage in the school's
assembly room had been gathered in silence for
twenty minutes when the doors in the back opened
and the bridal couple walked down the aisle. They
both looked like fresh casualties of war, the
groom limping with the aid of a stick and sporting
two ghoulish black eyes; the bride, whose
normal appearance no one as yet had seen, like a
young actress trying to impersonate an old
woman: shuffling, stiff-limbed, with the glassy
stare of those who dare not move their heads.
To Lydia, she looked like a very tough cookie
indeed, far too tough for sensitive, delicate
Obadiah--well, meow, et cetera. There they
went, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in
health, come slave hunters or sheriffs, till
violent death would them part, if the ravishing little
battle-ax had a taste for adventurous Quaker
concerns. Meow indeed.
Two seats were reserved for the couple on the
facing bench; Lydia, at the corner, rose
to let them pass. The meeting resumed its silent
worship. The children, well trained, relapsed
into motionless torpor after the momentary diversion.
After ten more minutes of silence, Lydia felt
Obadiah rise beside her. Charity must have done the
same, good for her.
"Friends," he started, in the solemn voice
befitting the occasion, "in the presence of God and of
this assembly, I herewith take my Friend Charity
to be my lawful wedded wife, and promise to be
unto her, with divine assistance, a loving and
faithful husband for as long as we both shall live."
Then Charity spoke, almost inaudibly. "In
the presence of my Friend Obadiah--I mean
God--I promise to be unto him--" She
realized she had left something out; after a moment's
hesitation, she resumed, "... be unto him with
divine assistance a loving and faithful wife for as
long as we both shall live." Luckily, the wedding
certificate, prepared before the event, carried after
each vow the rider "or words to that effect," or
she might have run into some stickler on some future
committee for Ministry and Worship who would have
frowned at her mixing up her husband and the
Almighty. Meow, meow, a chorus of cats.
Shame on thee, Lydia Best.
The meeting was supposed to continue for another
half-hour; Lydia expected someone to rise and
minister as was the custom after an exchange of vows.
But no one did, and Lydia found her mind
wandering. What would she have to say to the happy
couple, if she were to rise and speak her mind? The
two had a normal life ahead of them; she herself
and most of the others were certain to be fired. If
God was love, how could He desert them after what
they had done in His name? How could their involvement
in the railroad have ended in this disaster for themselves? But
that was water under the bridge, they had known what they
were doing before they did it.
She glanced briefly at Obadiah beside her.
He looked as radiant and flushed with happiness
as a man could with two black eyes. A
honeymoon, and then they would move to some large
city--
She saw the back door being opened. Five
strange men in Quaker garb came in. She had
no idea who they were, until she recognized
Mordecai Monk. The sight of him made her
go rigid with alarm. The slaves! Twelve
escaped slaves were hidden in the cellar, to be
collected any moment now! She looked about her;
no one else on the facing bench seemed to have
noticed as yet that they had been joined
by strangers. The bridal couple were sitting with their
eyes closed, the rest of the elders were probably
asleep. What to do? Where was Jesse? She dared
not look around too obviously.
The five men, after a brief hesitation, sat
down in the last row and joined in meeting for
worship; Mordecai Monk lifted his face
heavenward in a theatrical demonstration of
devotion. Immediately she was overcome by loathing for the
man. She loathed the rapist, hypocrite,
gasbag, mellifluous blatherskate! Her mouth
turned bitter with the bile of hatred as she stared
at him. There he sat, face uplifted as if
sunning himself, radiating devotion, a giant
toddler gazing up at Daddy. What was he doing
here?
She became so worked up about what he might be
up to that she closed her eyes, though not in
worship.

After the signing of the wedding certificate,
Harlan Tucker invited faculty and newlyweds
to join him and the five representatives
of Yearly Meeting in the principal's study.
Charity Woodhouse was tired and went to lie down
for a rest; Obadiah was collared by Mordecai
Monk. The man must have exerted superhuman
self-control not to minister during the meeting for
marriage; now he got his own back. The moment
the introductions had been completed he started
to minister--there was no other word for it, as no one could
get a word in edgeways--about "the sad, sad
fall from grace when teachers, especially Quaker
teachers, abused the time-hallowed sacred trust of
parents who placed in their care the harmless,
innocent souls of their little, little children, of whom
Christ had said--"'
It was a rather bewildering speech, Obadiah
thought. As always, the man phrased it sonorously,
came up with analogies and images which, if their
heads had not been on the block, they might have
admired. "Transforming the dove of peace into a
bird of prey" was what they were guilty of
by disturbing the court proceedings, and they had
"made off with the innocence of children, like eagles with
struggling silver fish." They also had "turned
the Shining Light into a will-o'-the-wisp," it was not
clear where or when. Actually, the mere fact of the
man's presence on this painful occasion was
bizarre, for what in the world did a traveling
English evangelist have to do with Indiana Yearly
Meeting chastising the faculty of a rural boarding
school? He had not been present at the trial,
he had not even been aware of the school's being a
station on the underground railroad; he had marched out
in a huff when Lydia had interrupted his
peroration, he had packed his bags, moved to the
inn, and left the next morning for Richmond.
Could he be responsible for this visit by the
Quaker Inquisition? Had he egged on the
hotheads of Indiana Yearly Meeting, who
fulminated against any involvement by Quakers in the
escape of slaves "because it did not minister to the
owners"? The more Obadiah observed him standing
there, sounding off like a harmonium with the vox humana
pulled out, the less sympathy he felt for the
self-obsessed poet. Three cheers for Quaker
Art; but Quaker artists were a different matter.
In America the man had turned from a minstrel into a demagogue.
Harlan Tucker, chairman of the local
school committee, and not a poetic soul, finally
interrupted Mordecai's peroration
to ask, "May we now hear what Yearly
Meeting has decided in this matter?"
Mordecai, winged in mid-flight, sat down
pouting. One of the four strangers, the chairman of the
Yearly Meeting's school committee, brought out
a piece of paper, cleared his throat, and read
aloud the recommendations of the committee. Abner
Best, William Martin, Jesse McHair,
and Lydia Best should be dismissed, Uriah
Martin, Adam and Margaret Higgins suspended.
Whether Abner Best, Jesse McHair,
William Martin, and Lydia Best could be
maintained as members of the Society of Friends was
up to the committee for Ministry and Worship of
Indiana Yearly Meeting, but the committee's
recommendation was that they should be read out of Meeting.
This, Obadiah thought, was excessive and
vindictive. He was about to speak when Lydia
asked, in her unfortunate imperious manner,
"And what are we supposed to do with ourselves after this,
Friend? Commit hara-kiri?"
The committee chairman obviously did not know
what "hara-kiri" meant, only a history
teacher would, or a salesman of Oriental
geegaws. Abner rose unheroically and excused
himself, presumably to be sick. The silence that
followed his departure seemed a good opportunity
to state a few home truths.
"I hope that Friends will allow me a few
words," Obadiah started, smiling to establish his
harmlessness. "Considering that both my wife and I have
been beaten like gongs in connection with the school's
action, and that we are not part of the faculty and do not
intend to be, it might be helpful if I were
to present a point of view slightly different from
yours."
The committee looked pained. Mordecai
Monk, despite himself, was interested. Drama,
that was what he lived by: master-scenes. Maybe
this would present him with new material for his
ministry, which was in dire need of refreshment.
"During the past few weeks," Obadiah
continued, "I have come to the conclusion that the problem of
slavery is more important to the Society of
Friends than meets the eye. We have all lived with
lip service to abolitionism since we were babes
in arms, so have our parents and our grandparents; but
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting took ninety
years before it finally accepted a minute against
slavery. We are victims of a
delusion if we believe that abolitionism is
merely a spiritual concern; slavery is an
economic necessity. The Southern States cannot
survive without slavery, Friends' plantations there
would all go bankrupt without slavery.
Boniface Baker, patron saint of this
school, proved as much by donating his plantation
to his slaves, with dire results for all of
them: their plantation was stolen, and they were resold in
the open market. I am a scion, I think the
word is, of a family of so-called Quaker
princes. They consider anyone who says that
slavery must be abolished to be a fool, although they
will not say so openly. They pay lip service
to abolitionism as a timehallowed ideal, but anyone who becomes involved in helping slaves escape
risks being read out of Meeting." He smiled,
despite the obvious discomfort of the committee.
"I am raking all this up because you are, in actual
fact, trying to silence the challenge facing all
Christians--what is described in the parable of the
king in St. Matthew: "I was ahungered, and ye
gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me
drink--"'"
At that moment the door was pushed open by Abner,
as white as a sheet. He said to a shadowy group
of people behind him in the hallway, "Come in,
please!" Then he addressed the committee.
"Friends, here are some people I want you to meet."
Slowly, hesitantly, twelve Negroes
filed into the room. They were clad in rags,
demoralized by terror and lack of sleep; one
woman was holding an infant. As they shuffled
in, the committee was clearly at a loss as to how
to react. Mordecai Monk rose to his
feet; one by one, the others followed suit. The
slaves facing them, ill at ease,
uncomprehending, averted their eyes.
"Friends," Abner said in a voice shrill with
stress, "these are guests of the school who arrived
unexpectedly, a few days ago ..." He
seemed to falter on seeing the anger in Harlan
Tucker's eyes, but continued bravely, "Let
me introduce them to you: Jonathan Curry ...
Henry Washington ..."
It was obviously an act of desperation,
typical, to Obadiah, of the muddleheadedness of
these good people. It might be a splendid gesture
to introduce slaves the school was hiding to the
committee; it was the death knell for the
slaves themselves. The moment this splendid
demonstration was over, the four gentlemen from
Richmond, not to mention Mordecai Monk, would
be on their way to town, and chances were that one of them
would alert the sheriff, which meant a posse in the
courtyard within the hour.
Abner must have realized that his ploy had failed
dismally; after the introductions were over he muttered
something about "each of these people being unique,
irreplaceable, never seen on earth before, never
to be seen again," but the five men were impervious
to Quaker platitudes. Suddenly, in obvious
desperation, Abner turned to the black mother, took
the sleeping infant from her arms, and proffered it
to Mordecai Monk, as if for inspection. It was
a ludicrous moment of bathos; in a last lunge
of folly he cried, "Take her! Take her,
Friend Mordecai! Hold her! Thee is not dealing
in abstractions, this is a matter between thee and she!
This is Rebecca McCauley. Will thee send
her back into slavery? Will thee? Can thee?
Look at her!"
To his astonishment, Obadiah saw a look
of panic on the face of Mordecai, who,
dumbstruck, had taken the baby. For a few
moments the Quaker poet stared at the black
infant in his hands as if he had been given a
boa constrictor to hold; then, in a gesture of
exquisite irrelevance, he deposited the child
on Abner's desk and hurried from the room,
whether in flight or in protest was unclear.
The others stood about in embarrassment; finally
Lydia picked up the baby and handed it back
to its mother with a gesture of tenderness. The baby, in
the meantime, had slept through all this; most likely
Dr. Rossini had sedated her for the journey.

After the slaves had been led out of the room
by Abner, Lydia joined the others as they
silently made for the landing. They dispersed in some
confusion; no one quite knew what to make of the
theatrical event.
On her way downstairs to the lobby, she
realized that she had nowhere to go. She was no longer
allowed any contact with the children; her career as a
teacher was at an end, not only in this school, in
any Quaker school. She would be
excommunicated from the church that had sustained her
all her life. Obadiah was married. She no
longer had any future, any future
at all.
Downstairs in the lobby, innocent Lizzie
Dowding, who had not been present at the wedding and
knew nothing of what had happened upstairs,
accosted her and told her in an excited whisper that
a new convoy of Mahanoy Indians had been
sighted by Farmer Kowalski, who had alerted
Maria Winslow, who had, in turn, alerted her.
With practiced efficiency Lydia set the
wheels in motion: food baskets, toys, warm
clothing, blankets. She drummed up the three
other members of the Meeting for Sufferings, and an
hour later six women set out by rowboat for the
Indian trail across the lake. At the last
moment, before pushing the boat off, Peggy Higgins
said to Lydia, "By the way, there was a letter for
Mordecai Monk among the mail. What do I
do with it?"
"Hand it to him," Lydia replied. "What
else did thee have in mind?" Without waiting for the
answer, she gave her the sign to push them off.
Peggy waited until they were out of sight before
turning away.

CHAPTER 11
PENDLE HILL FOREST
September 1833

Blindly, without awareness of where he was going,
Mordecai Monk blundered down the lane around the
lake in a state of shock. Little Rebecca ...
the perfect little white body ... All the years
since her death it had haunted him; now he had
been handed a perfect little black body, fast
asleep, and he had been on the point of sending this
little Rebecca back to the hell of slavery.
He roamed on, not caring where he went. The
truth was inescapable: his mission, which had started in
an illusion of love, had ended with his holding in his
hands an infant like the daughter he mourned, and he had been about to send it back into slavery.
Exhausted, he sat down by the side of the road.
Sweat stung in his eyes. He groped in his
coat pocket for his kerchief and felt something
hard, crackling: the letter the Negro woman had
pressed into his hand in the lobby as he left,
saying, "This came for you, a week ago." He
wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and tore open
the letter. It was from Warthell, Croydon,
Croydon and Havers,
Philadelphia.

"Dear Sir,
"Pursuant to our conversation dd September
12th of the present year, we are pleased to send you
the information you requested. Some of it has been rather
difficult to obtain, hence the tardiness of our
response, for which we present our humble
apologies.
"BASIL LEONARD GOODLOVE was born
in Earth, Virginia, on the 2nd of the 4th
month AD 1749, to William Bernard
Goodlove (father) and Maria Willemans
(spouse). In April '68 he entered
Haringer's Theological College (no
denomination) in New Orleans, where he received a
license as Minister of the Gospel in July of the
same year, the college being of a commercial
nature, i.e., little more than a printing press for
diplomas. He started his career as traveling
minister (no denomination) almost immediately. The first
record of his encounter with the civil authorities
(as a result of a complaint lodged with the
judiciary in Nashville, Tennessee) dates from
September 18th of the same year. The complaint
concerned "carnal assault on a female member
of (his) congregation" and was not pursued by the
plaintiff because, an official footnote
states, "the defendant had left the State with
tent and entourage." The documents concerned will be
available to you in our office at your next
visit, this letter being a preliminary report
to give you a general impression of the Rev.
Goodlove and his activities during his
lifetime.
"From the above it becomes apparent that the Rev.
Goodlove carried on a traveling ministry with a
tent, without fixed abode. No documentation as to the
nature of his ministry could be obtained other than
that he announced it as "The Christian Church of
Love." It would appear that Rev. Goodlove
was its only representative.
"The following twenty years present only
an occasional official reference to the Rev.
Goodlove's activities and peregrinations.
Among the incidents we have been able to trace are:
a complaint lodged about his management of "The
Rev. Goodlove's Fund for the Suffering
Poor" which, according to judicial records, was in
fact entirely used for his private
financial support. Another complaint,
"assaulting a female member of his congregation,"
was lodged with the board of elders of several
Protestant churches, all of whom publicly
denied having any ties whatsoever with Mr.
Goodlove; a letter from the Baptist Convention in
Atlanta, Georgia, of June 1770
calls him "a thorough scoundrel, well known to us
by reputation, who travels the countryside with his
own brand of evangelism, leaving a trail of
unpd debts, widows swindled out of their savings, and numerous seduced, assaulted, or raped
female followers who are, without exception,
abandoned together with eventual children fathered by him."
"In January 1787 Rev. Goodlove
crossed the ocean to England, a few days ahead
of a posse of citizens of the village of
Washington Crossing, New Jersey, who had
set out to lynch him for the impregnation of three
members of the same family, two sisters aged
17 and 21, and an aunt aged 42. In March
1787 the Rev. Goodlove arrived in
Liverpool, where he started a "crusade of
love" which lasted one year, of which no record has
been made available to us; we have, however, lodged
a request with our correspondents Hobson,
Sturgeon and Jones, solicitors in
London, for information and documentation. Five
years after his return to the United States the
Rev. Goodlove ran into serious
difficulties in Georgetown, Maryland, where
he was forced to go through a marriage ceremony with one
Belinda Walker. He cohabited with his bride
for three months, then absconded without leaving a
forwarding address; a posse was organized by the
parents, joined by other individuals whose female
relatives had consorted with the Rev.
Goodlove. They made common cause with the
relatives of the three women in Washington
Crossing, New Jersey, and sent a circular
to all Baptist congregations in the Eastern
United States, asking for assistance in tracing
"the scoundrel." They caught up with him in the
village of Pokoanoke, Virginia, where he
was cornered in the yard of an inn called "The
Boar and Stag." As he tried to escape, the
horse he had appropriated at random shied and
threw him, and he broke his neck.
"Basil Goodlove was buried in a
pauper's grave in the community of
Pokoanoke, January 3, 1794, aged 45
years."

Mordecai lowered the letter, folded it, put it
back in his pocket, rose to his feet, and
wandered on, oblivious of his surroundings. It was
all proven true, at last. When he had risen
to speak during the meeting for burial of his mother, he
had not spoken in the power of the Lord, but in the power of
Basil Goodlove. And on that evening of his first
lecture, when for the first time women had come forward
to join him on the podium in spiritual ecstasy, in
response to his call, it had not been his call
but Basil Goodlove's. Basil Goodlove
had been reborn from his own evil seed after it
sprang into foolish Hannah Monk's womb,
where it grew from fish into tadpole into mouse
into monkey until it was expelled, bleating, as a
homunculus christened "Mordecai." The
homunculus had been received by the cuckolded
husband, tears running down his face; how the
poor man had loved the son squalling in his
arms! All the while his mother had lain in the birthing
bed smiling, sweat-soaked, exhausted, dreaming
of the rapist who had besotted her with blather about
truth and love. And forty-five years later, at
exactly the same age when he had been cornered
in the yard of the Boar and Stag, thrown by his horse, and broken his neck, he had returned
to claim a new body, a new mind,
by overwhelming the law-abiding, colorless
personality of his bastard son. As
"Mordecai Monk" he had proceeded
to garner the old familiar harvest: women, women,
rape-ripe women, swooning, eyes rolling,
mouths slack with lust, kneeling at his feet.
He had resumed his waiting, night after night in
lonely hotel rooms, for a Quaker maiden
to knock on his door, an innocent like Hannah
Monk, who would stagger into his arms to be mounted and
put with child and--
No! No, no! God help me: to blame it
all on the ghost of a satyour who had taken over the
soul of his son was too easy! He himself was
to blame! He had done it by using his heritage of
words!
Words, words, words, words--glorious, glowing
words of love: "Throw thyself upon the mercy of
Christ, the Only One! Surrender, totally,
utterly, to His all-swamping,
all-consuming love--"
It had been he, Becky's father, who had been
about to sacrifice the black infant on the altar
of blarney, not Basil Goodlove; though
damned, damned, damned be his feral name!
Now what?
There was only one answer: stop the words. Stop
preaching, stop the blarney. He had no hope of
ever exorcising the evil spirit of his father as long as
he remained a word-lecher, besotted by bombast,
lusting after willing women mewling kitten-cries of
ecstasy, yet trapped by his own cowardice in
blather, a randy cherub ranting in a golden
cage.
H'm. Pretty good, that. Must remem--
No, no!
Silence! That was how simple it was: be
silent. Stop being a sewer disgorging putrid
poetry. Shut up, not for a week, a month, a
year--forever. Words had drawn him into this
labyrinth; he would never find his way out unless he
cast out words. Silence. One word, and his father's
ghost would leap at him again, screaming,
"Surrender! Surrender to his all-swamping,
all--"' One word, and he might find himself
holding another little black sleeping body, not
to put on a desk this time and flee, but to hand back
to its "owner." God, help me never to speak
again! No more ministry besotted with language!
Please, God, from now on, make me minister with
deeds!
Deeds? He did not even know where to start. He
was a singer of the Lord, not a doer. Where, what could
he do? For that matter, where was he? A narrow
footpath, along a lake ... Where did it
lead?
To a rutted cart track, coming in from the
prairie, leading into a forest, it turned out.
Somewhere nightingale-like birds were warbling. He
sat down again, not knowing whether to turn left or
right, and not caring. Then he heard, in the forest, on
his left, the soft, smothered whinny of a horse. He
was sure it had come from the left, down the cart
track disappearing among the trees. For some
reason he rose and stepped back into the shrubs.
A horse was approaching. A growing sound. More
than one horse, several. Dark shapes detached
themselves from the shadows and came toward him, slowly,
down the track. A transport? Laborers,
working on the canal?
The sound grew. Massive creaking. Rustling,
shuffling. A host of people on foot, five abreast,
heading in his direction. A guard, on
horseback. Prisoners? When they had come
close enough for him to discern their features, he saw
they were Indians.
He watched, fascinated at first, then with a
feeling of outrage. Women, babies on their
backs, bundles on their heads, staggering under the
load. Children dragged along by their parents,
stumbling, falling. Eeriest was the silence: no one
groaned, cried out in pain; the children did not
whimper. Creaking of wagons, muffled hoofbeats,
that was all. The silent ranks exuded such utter
desolation that, without thinking, he left his hiding
place to walk along with them, asking, "Who are
you? Where are they taking you? What is happening?"
No answer. No one seemed to notice him.
A feeling of unreality came over him; he had
become invisible.
A horseman came loping out of the forest, a
cowboy-like individual with a floppy hat and a
coarse face, brandishing a whip. "Can I he'p
y'all?" he asked, threateningly.
"Who are these people? What are you doing to them?"
There was no answer. The horse swung around and
loped off, back down the cart track.
Then he saw an image that stood out even in this
tragic procession of misery, an old Indian
woman dazed with exhaustion, carrying an infant.
He caught up with her and cried, "Please!
Let me carry the child for thee!"
The woman did not respond. Behind him,
hoofbeats approached at a fast clip, the
clanking of metal. Then a voice rang out,
"Stop that! At once! Come here, you!" A
different voice, harsh with authority. It was a
man with a red beard on a huge black horse.
He was wearing an officer's hat. "Answer me!
What are you doing here?"
He did not know what to say.
"Get out of there!" the officer commanded. "You have
no business here! Go home!"
He faltered, saw the old woman with the child
draw away. He hesitated, then went after her
again, taking off his coat as he went.
"Jake!" the voice behind him shouted. "Stop
him!"
As he put the coat over the old woman's
shoulders, a whip lashed his back. He
felt no pain, but the skin on his calves
tightened with shock. Again, the whip hit, this time with a
sharp pain. He suppressed the urge to flee and
moved closer behind the old woman, to protect
her. When the whip bit into his back for the third
time he cried out in pain, but in a strange,
dreamlike state of grace. He stumbled on,
shielding the old woman. The whip went on
flogging him with savage fury, the pain increased
until his back seemed to be on fire, but the
state of grace in which he stumbled along deepened:
"No more words! No words! Deeds!" he thought,
in growing ecstasy. Then, as the whip went on
lashing, another voice screamed, "Git, you
bastard! Git! Git, you goddamn
Indian-lover! Git! Git!" A blinding
pain struck his right eye. He shrieked, covered
his face with his hands, tripped up, dropped to his
knees. The whip went on lashing, lashing;
blinded, he could no longer bear it. The pain was
too much.
He heard a woman cry, "Stop! Stop!"
and fell headlong in the dust.

Hearing the strident sounds of an altercation--a
man's voice shouting obscenities, the cracking
of a whip--Lydia had hurried down the column,
holding on to the slips of her apron full of
apples.
A drover on horseback was viciously
flogging someone lying in the road; when she reached them
she realized it was a white man in
shirtsleeves, lying face down, protecting the
back of his head with his hands, bloody smears on
his shirt. "Stop! Stop that!" Without thinking, she
let go of her apron; amidst cascading apples
she fell on her knees beside the man to protect
him. She expected to be hit by the whip; but a harsh voice bellowed, "Column, halt!" and
she was roughly pulled back to her feet.
It was the red-bearded officer, the one who had
pushed her over with his horse last time.
"Sorry about this," he said above her.
"Sometimes, these civilian drovers get carried
away."
She gazed up at the red beard, the cruel
blue eyes, and said nothing.
"Let me have a look at him," the captain
said. "Jake!"
The drover dismounted, turned the man
over with his foot for the captain to see. Lydia
stared at him in disbelief. Mordecai Monk?
What on earth-- She knelt by his side. A
fierce red welt, oozing blood, crossed his
cheek and his forehead; his right eye, puffed and
swollen, was closed. He must be in agony.
The captain dismounted to have a closer look.
"That's a nasty bruise, mister," he said.
"You'd better have that looked at by a doctor.
Who is this man, anyway? Your husband?"
She shook her head, speechless.
"All right, I'll get you an escort back
to your village." He looked at the women who
had gathered around them, their Quaker bonnets, their
aprons full of toys. "How did you folks
get here? On horseback?"
Suddenly Mordecai Monk rose to his
feet, swaying. "Thank thee, Friend, but I intend
to stay with these people."
"Of course. I'll have you all escorted
back to your village together. You take it easy
now, hear?"
"No, no," Mordecai said, eyes closed,
swaying. "I don't mean these women, I mean the
Indians. I intend to stay with the Indians."
Despite the welt on his face, his clothes,
smeared with blood, he seemed to be serene, at
peace. The transformation was baffling.
The captain looked at him the way he had
looked down on her when he had pushed her over and
his horse had trampled the basket of toys.
"Say that again?"
"I will stay with the Indians."
"Stay? What do you mean, stay?"
"I will remain with them wherever they are going."
"Why, for God's sake?"
"Because it is God's will."
The way he said it was so unlike the man she
knew that Lydia wondered if the blow on his head
had affected him. The captain, when he spoke,
sounded calm, almost courteous, but she knew what
would happen; it had happened to her. "What
purpose would that serve," he asked, "apart from your
personal gratification?"
Mordecai Monk tried to smile, the welt
turned it into a grin. "I want to join them as a
witness."
The captain said, "Obviously, you know nothing
about Indians. I've taken six convoys to the
Mississippi, and I came to know them
intimately. Let me tell you, they'd sooner
cut their throats than as much as look at a
white man. So make no mistake: you'd join
them for your own sake, not theirs."
Lydia could not remain silent. "Can't thee
see? He is moved by that of God in him! There's
that of God within thee too, trying to be heard!"
The captain was not interested. "Okay,
Jake," he said to the drover, "go get the
chief." The man got on his horse and made
off.
Mordecai Monk looked as if he were about
to fall; Lydia put an arm around his shoulder
to steady him. But despite his suffering, she could not
help feeling an instinctive revulsion. She
might have misjudged him spiritually, but physically
he remained the man who had tried to force himself upon
her. The hands now covered with blood had tried
to tear her bodice, the mouth now smiling in eerie
bliss had covered her face with slimy kisses.
She should take him to their boat with the help of the other
women, row him to the school, call Dr.
Rossini. He might be getting a fever; if
he persisted in this, he would fall by the roadside
before long.
A tall Indian, two feathers dangling from his
crest, was pushed toward them by the drover called
Jake.
"Chief," the captain said, "this man wants
to join you by way of a sort of protest, God knows
why. I have no say in this matter, as it concerns
your internal affairs. Do you want this man to join
you, or don't you?"
The Indian did not respond.
"If you allow him to join you," the captain
continued, "he'll be an Indian as far as I'm
concerned. He'll be your responsibility."
Mordecai Monk began to tremble, and said,
"Chief, I am a Quaker. I want to honor
the treaty between William Penn and thy people. I
want to join you on your journey as a witness to our
brotherhood."
The Indian did not seem to hear him, or even
see him. He stared into the distance for a long moment,
then turned his back and walked away.
"What did I tell you?" the captain said with
satisfaction. "To him, you don't exist. He
wants no part of you, and neither do I. Go home."
He climbed back into the saddle, raised an
arm, and cried, "Column! Move!"
The mass of silent Indians was slowly set
in motion. Mordecai Monk shook himself free
and stumbled along with them.
Lydia caught up with him and pleaded, "Why?
What could thee do for them? Please, Friend
Mordecai! Tell me!"
He did not face her. "No words," he said.
"No more words." He stumbled, was about to fall; she
took his arm to keep him on his feet. He tried
to shake her off, even though it was obvious now that
he was blinded and would fall on his face if she were
to let go of him. "Please!" she urged.
"Don't do this, thee is in no condition to do this!"
"I must do it, I must," he said. "This is my
concern. Go home."
"I can't leave thee like this! I--where's thy
coat? Did thee lose it somewhere down the road?"
"I gave it to a woman, an old woman,
with a child."
"Save thy strength, sit down for a while.
I'll go and get it for thee." She let go of his
arm and walked ahead. When she looked back she
saw he had not sat down but was walking,
unsurely, along with the slow-moving column of
Indians.
She did spot an old woman with a man's
coat around her shoulders; when she caught up with
her, she realized the woman was carrying an infant
in her arms. She could not bring herself to take the
coat away, and made her way back against the
tide of shuffling Indians. She said to the other
women surrounding him, "We can't leave him like this.
I'll stay with him until help arrives. Go
back to the school, now. Tell them Mordecai
Monk has been wounded, blinded by a whip. That
he needs medical attention, must see the
doctor. And do get some of the men to come here and force
him to go. Quick!"
The women seemed reluctant at first, but
Lizzie Dowding took the lead. "Let's go!"
she said, and to Lydia, "I'll be back!"
After they had left, Lydia said to Mordecai
Monk, who was stumbling along, like a
sleepwalker, "Come, let's sit down for a
moment, please! I'll bandage thy eye."
"Not now," he said, "not yet."
All she could do was let him have his way. She
walked along with him, out onto the prairie,
thinking, "But this is absurd! Mordecai
Monk, of all people! Was he suddenly in
the power of the Lord? He must have been. Like Saul,
hunter of Christians, who was blinded by God on
the way to Damascus, who fell off his horse and
turned into Paul the apostle. But how odd of
God, to choose this--well, mountebank, this
would-be rapist, who had not only split the
Meeting but complained about them in Richmond, with the
result that--"'
A horse came snorting down the ranks.
"Keep moving!" a voice bellowed.
"Move!" A whip cracked; she felt him
cringe. "Don't worry," she said, "he's just
making a noise, not hitting anybody."
"Go home," he said wearily.
"Don't be ridiculous. Suppose I were
to walk away? Thee'd fall flat on thy
face. Then where would thy witness be?"
"Go home," he persisted. "God will
protect me."
"Even God needs help," she said. "At
times. But it would help if one knew what He
had in mind."

Night had fallen when the urgent call from the
school finally reached Dr. Rossini. He was
exhausted, had missed two meals, lost a
patient, and had been dogged all day by Farmer
Kowalski, whose wife wasn't due for another
week. The message, garbled and emotional, was that
Mordecai Monk, for some reason, had joined a
convoy of Indians, had been manhandled by the
drovers, and needed medical assistance. A party
had left to bring him back; Jesse saw to it that
the four members of the committee from Richmond went
along with them, so the coast was clear for moving the
slaves to the Ely farm.
This seemed to be the second urgent call from the
school, there had been one earlier. He was
tempted to send an excuse; presumably, the
man had been put to bed, and if he had managed
to survive this far he would live till morning.
But that was not how physicians were supposed to think;
what was more, the school was close to his heart,
even though he detested that English windbag. So,
in the end, he hoisted himself back into the damn
buggy and clippety-clopped through the night to the
damn evangelist.
Abner Best, pale and pinch-faced, was waiting
for him in the lobby. It turned out to be about his
wife, not the evangelist. Saraetta was
in bad shape. The party had come back with the news
that Mordecai had been blinded by a whip, but
refused to leave the Indians whom he had joined
as a witness; Lydia Best was staying with him
until he received medical attention. As a
result of all this, Saraetta--
"Well, come and see for thyself, Doctor."
There she lay in the marital bed, moaning and
gasping, drenched with perspiration. She must have been
thrashing dramatically; the bed looked like a dog's
nest. She really was an impossible woman;
Rossini was tempted to send her husband out of the
room, lock the door, and have it out with her.
"Saraetta, let's face it, you reject your
husband because for some insane reason you blame him
for the epidemic and the death of your child. You are a
full-blooded woman with normal carnal
urges, you have fallen in love with a windbag who
aroused you by spouting religion. It's time you
realized that you are not answering a call to come
to Christ, but a mating call." But no, that would
only make matters worse.
The moment she saw him, the woman wailed,
"It cannot be true! Not he, not he! Oh,
Doctor, Doctor!"
"Hush, Sara." Rossini put an arm around
her; she was trembling like a reed. Much too thin.
Her husband stood by in embarrassment.
"Please, Doctor!" she wailed. "Please
go to him! Bring him back!"
"Would someone tell me what exactly--?"
"He's covered with blood! He lost his
coat, his hat, all covered with blood! And
he's blind! They blinded him, with a whip!"
"You don't say," Rossini said neutrally.
"Yes," the miserable husband affirmed. "One
of the drovers--"
"Flogged! They flogged him!" the woman
cried. "Now he's blind!"
Rossini could take no more of this. "All right.
Do you know where they've made camp?"
"On the edge of the forest, where the buffalo
hunters used to have their bivouac."
"Very well, I'll go and see him first thing tomorrow
morning. Now, please, get a hold of yourself."
"Go now, Doctor! I beseech thee! Go now,
he may die!"
"Saraetta, pull yourself together. I cannot make
my way through the forest at dead of night. What's
more: Lydia is with him, he'll keep
till daylight." Actually, she was right: ten
years ago he would have saddled his horse and set
off at once to minister to the sick. But since he
had taken to driving the buggy, he no longer made
visits on horseback and had sold his sorrel
horse. The old mare wouldn't take a saddle,
and he was damned if he was going to venture into the
pitch-dark forest on someone else's horse and be
thrown into the brambles, or decapitated by a
branch when the brute took off at the screech of
an owl. Moreover, that man Monk was a born
actor. As was she.
"Don't come back without him!" she wailed.
"Promise me, Doctor! Promise!"
"I promise I'll do whatever I can."
While his wife went on moaning and sobbing,
Abner, deathly pale and looking somehow
elongated, stood helplessly by.
"You went with the posse, Abner?"
"Yes. We caught up with the convoy and--and
spoke to him."
"When was that?"
"Eight, eight-thirty this evening."
"Then what happened?"
"The Friends from Richmond labored with him for a
long time, trying to dissuade him; but he refused
to leave the Indians, so we came back.
Lydia insisted on staying with him until thee
arrives. She will have to spend the night in the open,
and--"
"All right, I'll go there at first light. Now
for God's sake give me something to eat, I
haven't had a bite all day. Here is a potion
for your wife ..." He rummaged in his bag.
"Here you go: one tablespoon twice a day.
Give her two now. Let her sleep! No
food, just sleep. Now, where do I go for that
bite?"
An entire escort had gathered outside the
door: the women of the Meeting for Sufferings. They
accompanied him to the kitchen and sat down with him,
talking, following his every bite with round-eyed
drama. These Quakers! He loved them, they
stuck their necks out for his slaves, but even so.
Now an English tragedian had taken it into his
head to give a one-man show in the prairie, an
hour's ride away. Two hours in the saddle
there and back. Leave at the crack of dawn.
God help us all.
"No, thank you, Peggy, no more
potatoes. I'll have a bit of that pie over
there, though, if I may ..."

Lydia had been shocked beyond words when the men
had made off without them. Surely they were not going
to leave her alone in the prairie with a wounded man?
Without blankets or food? She stood gazing
after them incredulously when she heard the jingling of
spurs. The captain, red beard stuck out, hands
clasped on his back, was standing behind her.
"Good evening, miss. Would you two do me the
pleasure of being my guests at supper?"
His sudden gallantry surprised her. She was
about to accept when Mordecai, whom she had thought
to be numbed by exhaustion, said, "No, thank
thee, Friend Stewart. Lydia Best will prepare a
meal for us, the way the Indian women do."
The captain seemed about to say something
intemperate, but restrained himself and strode back
to his horse, spurs jingling. Impulsively,
Lydia ran after him.
"Friend Stewart!"
The man turned around.
She asked, her voice low, "I--I wonder
if I could have a word with thee? In private?"
"Certainly. Join me in my quarters."
"Quarters?"
"I have a tent, with a porch. We can sit
outside. Look: over there, away from the crowd."
She hesitated, glanced at Mordecai who
had slumped back into his own world and sat huddled
on the ground. "Well--thank thee ..."
"My pleasure, Miss Best. Allow me."
He led the way through the crowd, which parted for him at
the sound of his spurs. The tent turned out to be a
square edifice made of tarpaulin with a front
porch, beside it a small shelter without roof. On
the porch were a table and two folding chairs.
"Please take a seat." He helped her up
the steps, and waited until she did before sitting
down himself. A Negro servant appeared in the
doorway. "What do you fancy, Miss Best?
Lemonade, tea, a mint julep?" He was a
different man; she wondered what had brought this
about.
"Nothing, thank thee."
He said to the Negro, "A double."
"Yes, sah." The man disappeared inside the
tent.
"What can I do for you?"
"I wanted to talk to thee about Mordecai
Monk. As thee can see for thyself, he is in a
bad way. One of his eyes is hurt, he
seems to be in considerable pain, yet he
refuses to leave. I think thee would be doing him a
service if thee would arrange for him to be taken
back to Pendle Hill."
The captain looked at her with a slow smile.
"Those friends of yours made the same request
earlier on."
"So they should!"
"Now, let's get this straight, Miss Best
--are you suggesting I use violence?"
"Pardon me?"
"You know he will not leave of his own accord. His
coreligionists have been unable to convince him that
he should return. The only way open to me, if
I want to respond to your request, would be to have
him trussed like a pig and carted back to your
village--what's it called?"
"Pendle Hill."
"Well, I'm afraid I cannot do that. Much as
I resent his presence among my Indians, I cannot use force to remove him. He is a free
man in a free country."
"But he is not an Indian!"
"As I had occasion to say before, Miss Best,
an Indian is anyone who says he is."
The Negro came with a glass on a tray, the
captain took it without thanking him, the man
withdrew. The captain lifted his glass, sipped,
and wiped his mustache with the back of his hand. "Let
me ask you something, miss--" Suddenly, his face
went hard. "Not now!" he snapped.
Startled, she looked around and saw an officer
walk away.
"Let me ask you something, Miss Best. Are
you familiar with the prairie?"
"As children we picnicked here, once in a
while."
He took a long draught from his glass and
wiped his beard. "These plains, in which we'll
disappear tomorrow, reach from here to the Mississippi.
Between us and the river is nothing but emptiness.
We'll be provisioned by the Illinois and the
Osage Indians, contracted to deliver four
buffalo a day. When they can turn the money
into alcohol, they don't turn up, sometimes for
days on end. During that time my own Indians do
some hunting, but as they are Woods
Indians it doesn't amount to much. In a few
weeks we can expect the first frost, after that the first
blizzard. This convoy moves at the speed of the
elderly, if we make it to the Mississippi in
five weeks we'll be on schedule. Someone like
yourself, without the practice of walking for hours at
a stretch, without a layer of callus under her
feet as the squaws have, simply could not make it.
Within a week you'd no longer be a civilized young
white lady, devoting herself to the well-being of
savages, but a limping squaw."
"But there is no question of my even considering such a
thing!"
He ignored it, she wondered why. "Squaws
on the prairie are treated--well,
differently," he continued. "We, the cavalry,
are merely a token force, the actual herding is
done by civilian drovers. I would be unable
to protect you against them, certainly after dark. So,
with your permission, I have to tell you that you'd be
insane to try it."
"But, my dear man, there is no question of my
doing it! I'm simply staying with Mordecai
Monk until the doctor has been."
"If he comes."
"Of course he will come! As soon as he gets
word, he'll be on his way."
"Very well." He rose. "You are the
mistress of your fate. I just want you to realize
what it would entail, should you decide to stay with
Mr. Monk. He, I'm sure, is determined
to act out his version of the Passion of Christ, with
bells on."
She gave him a cold look, rose, and was
about to go down the steps when his voice stopped her.
"I'll instruct my servant to provide you with the
wherewithal to set up a shelter for the night, and bring you
some food."
"Thank thee."
"Food rations are distributed daily by the
chuck wagon. As your Mr. Monk seems
to prefer the Indian way of life, you'll have
to cook your own meals from now on, I'm
afraid."
She set out toward Mordecai Monk in a
state of bewilderment. Why was the man so insistent
that she would end up staying with the Indians? It was
almost as if he willed her to do so ... Suddenly,
she remembered the words of the young officer who had
taken her home on his horse that first
day: I would not want for one of my sisters to have
any truck with Captain Stewart.
She did not feel like facing Mordecai
Monk quite yet; instead, she wandered for a while
among the Indians. The encampment was not really
worthy of that definition; there seemed to be only
one teepee, it must belong to the chief. The rest of
his tribe, which the young officer had said was not really a
tribe but a herd of five hundred head
corralled at random by the cavalry, had to make
do with flimsy shelters made of sticks and bits
of cloth. That was to say, couples and families
huddled together under shelters, others must have dropped
wherever they found themselves when the convoy halted. Some
of them, rolled in blankets, already seemed to be
asleep. Cooking fires were lit here and there; there
seemed to be one big communal one not far from the
chuck wagon. Chuck wagon! She had better
hurry back to Mordecai Monk; the captain
had promised to have food delivered to them.
She made her way back to where he was sitting
as fast as she could, difficult with all those
sleeping Indians. She had to walk around them; in
the end, she followed the example of other
Indians and jumped over those who were asleep. It
almost became a game, shame on her; but it brought
back memories of hurdle races, at which she
had been very good as a young girl, better than most
boys.
How odd of God to choose her too.

CHAPTER 12
THE PRAIRIE
September 1833

The next morning, at dawn, Dr. Rossini
found himself on a borrowed horse following
Jesse McHair down the footpath through the
forest. Presently they reached the prairie, a
misty immensity under a young mackerel sky. His
horse trotted along behind Jesse's, which cleaved
the man-high grass without hesitation, surefooted
and bold. A flight of starlings, flushed by their
passage, swooped overhead with the sound of a
whirlwind. As the mist dissipated in the heat of the
rising sun, the horizon widened, distant hills
emerged. Without warning they suddenly found themselves on
the edge of what was once the buffalo hunters'
campground, a clearing in the tall grass
trampled bare by Indians and horses.
They set out looking for Lydia and her companion,
then a raucous voice yelled, "Halt! Who
goes there?"
Jesse replied, "Take it easy, Friend.
We've come to have a look at the injured man and the
girl. This man is their doctor."
"Let's see your faces!"
Rossini saw the silhouette of a horseman
with a gun across his saddle, a civilian, not a
soldier.
"I can't give permission," the man said. "Go
see the captain in the command tent, over there."
"Thank thee, Friend," Jesse said. "Come on,
Doc. Let's go, I've met him before."
They made their way across the campground,
careful not to step on one of the many sleeping
Indians lying all over the place like corpses
on a battlefield. Here and there the embers of a
cooking fire glowed. Somewhere a child was crying.
They dismounted before the front porch of the command
tent; a Negro orderly appeared in the
doorway. Jesse said, "A doctor to see the
captain."
The Negro was pushed aside and an
ill-tempered man with a red beard came out,
buttoning his tunic. "What's going on?"
"We'd like to visit with the two Quakers, Friend.
The guard won't let us through without thy
permission."
The captain beckoned, crooking a finger.
"Come here."
Jesse obeyed. Rossini followed more
slowly, stiff-legged and sore after the ride.
"Weren't you here yesterday?" the captain asked
Jesse.
"Yes. I have with me a doctor to check on
them."
"Rossini, Leon, ex-medical officer,
U.s. Cavalry," the doctor said, saluting.
The transformation was magical. "Doctor? Have
a seat! What may I offer you? Boy!"
"Yes, sah."
"What is your pleasure, Doctor?
Julep, whiskey? Never too early for a
military man, eh?"
"Whiskey, please." Rossini saw Jesse
and his horse leave, picking their way among the
sleeping Indians toward the edge of the clearing.
"Make it two doubles," the captain told his
servant. "Doctor, make yourself
comfortable. Is the man a patient of yours?"
"No. His companion is."
The captain gave him a searching look. "A
lot of things have changed in the cavalry,
Doctor, since your time."
"How so?"
"Look about you! This is not a cavalry job.
Any officer worth his salt feels ashamed
escorting these people. Rounded up in one of the large
camps in Ohio, without regard for family
ties, to break any organized resistance from the
outset. Cut up into convoys of five hundred
without their own chiefs or medicine men, and it
didn't matter--"
The servant arrived with the drinks. Rossini
smiled his thanks, but the Negro withdrew without
having looked him in the eye.
"That's why I allowed the man Monk to stay,"
the captain continued after a sip from his glass. "It
came as a relief to see somebody doing something,
however unworldly, to redress the balance. Last
night a bunch of elders from his church came to ask
me to chase him off, but I told them he's a
free man, if he wants to be treated like an
Indian, I'll treat him like one. That's what
I told them."
"What if he wants to persist in this?"
Rossini asked.
The captain ignored it; he obviously liked
to hear himself talk. "The young woman is a
different story. I talked to her last evening and
didn't mince my words. For her to come along would
be lunacy. The civilian drovers may have a
shot at raping her out there in the grass, they do it
to squaws routinely. Even if I tell them that the first to touch her will have his balls shot off; if they
grab her after dark--"
"Cheers," Rossini said.
"Cheers. The man thinks he can live among the
Indians as an equal, but that's bullshit," the
captain continued. "Take them away from the
graves of their ancestors, force them to abandon the
spirits in every tree--to the Indians it's like taking
away their soul. Separate an Indian from his
tribe, his family, and you break his will. All that
has been done, on purpose. What you see
lying around are not braves any more, but hoboes.
Some politician in Washington worked it all out,
then locked his desk and went home to kiss his
wife, hug his children, and stroke his dog.
I have fought Indians, and came to respect them;
now I've been ordered to do the politicians'
dirty work. Castrated, that's what they are, those
people." He emptied his glass. "The
politicians would have a fit if they heard I
gave a Quaker permission to join the Indians.
But shall I tell you something? A secret? In my
heart of hearts I take my hat off to that man.
He is, I'm sure, going to milk it for all
it's worth, but in my heart of hearts: hats
off." He belched. "Excuse me. Hats off,
especially after those elders tried to force him
to give up. I'm telling you, just in case you
might be planning to drug him and cart him off
unconscious: he's not sick."
Rossini said, "All I'll do is check him
over. He's injured, I'm told."
"That man is as sound as a bell!" the captain
said, with a throwaway gesture. "Last night I
thought: he's only doing it for the good of his soul. But
since then, I've decided it's not just for his own
soul, but for mine as well, and yours; the soul of this
country. So, as far as I'm concerned he can stay.
But I'll treat him like an Indian, as I
told him."
"Well," Rossini said, "let me go and have a
look at him."
"Hey!" the captain cried, with tipsy
surprise. "Not yet, Doc! We've a whole
morning ahead of us! Here, have another. Boy!"
"Yes, sah."
"Same again! And bring us something to eat with it.
Hot sausages, bacon--something savory."
"Not for me," Rossini said.
"Okay, just for me," the captain said. "Doc,
you and I are going to talk about the old days, when
to be with the cavalry meant to be a man of
honor."
He pointed to Rossini's glass; the servant
obeyed.

A voice called, "Lydia! Lydia!"
Lydia emerged from under their shelter among the
sleeping Indians and answered, "Here!"
"I've brought thee something," the voice said, then
he stepped into view.
"Jesse!" She threw her arms around his neck
and kissed him on both cheeks. "What is thee
doing here? Where's the doctor?"
"He's with the captain right now. Could
I have a word with thee in private?"
Before she had been able to reply, Mordecai
Monk said, "Of course! Take thy time. I'm
all right." He spoke, eyes closed, in the
direction of Jesse's voice; but Jesse had
stepped away by then, taking her hand. "I hope
thee'll succeed in convincing her," Monk added.
"Of what?" Jesse asked coldly. He could
not stand the man.
"That this concern is not suitable for women. Not
even this woman." He smiled.
Jesse led her away, out of earshot, to the edge
of the tall grass. Then he asked, "Is thee
ready to come back with us?"
"No," she said, "not unless someone else is
prepared to take over from me. He cannot fend for
himself, not for the moment."
"Why thee, Lydia?"
"Nobody else has volunteered. Would
thee?"
"Me? I'd strong-arm him onto a horse,
tie him down, and take him home to be looked
after. What is this nonsense? He's off his
rocker! Why should thee--"
"Because I happen to believe in his witness. I
gather I'm the only one. I'll stay with him
until he can look after himself, then I'll ask the
captain for an escort to take me home. Where
is the doctor?"
"Does thee believe in his so-called witness
to the point of risking thy life?"
"Don't talk nonsense. Discomfort, yes.
But danger? With the cavalry in control?"
"Here." He took her hand and pressed something
cold in it. She stared at it, horrified. "A
pistol?"
"Hush! Make sure thee doesn't show this
to anyone. If thee's going to stay with the convoy
thee'll be needing this."
The object in her hand was so blasphemous that
she could not find any words; all she could do was stare
at him, aghast.
"I'm serious," he said. "Drovers are like
slave hunters: catching niggers or herding
Indians, it's the same thing. Put that gun
somewhere inside thy clothes, and be sure to take it
with thee whenever thee needs to--well, move out of
sight. If thee hears anyone following thee,
shoot. Don't try to frighten him with that thing,
shoot. And don't aim at the head,
it's too small. Aim at the body."
The fact that Jesse, a Quaker, tried
to force this monstrous thing on her was a fall from
grace. "I--I can't possibly accept this."
She wanted to give the pistol back.
He refused to take it. "Lydia, listen.
Thee can do more for the underground railroad than thee can
for these lousy savages, much more! Believe me,
Indians aren't worth it. They are
bloodthirsty, conniving--"
She threw the pistol away and covered her
face with her hands.
For a moment he stood motionless, then got down
on his knees to grope for the weapon in the grass.
He found it, stuck it in his belt, and said,
"Goodbye, Lydia."
She cried, her voice hoarse with tears,
"How can thee! How can a Friend talk like this about
people?"
"They kept slaves, and bred them like cattle.
Good luck." He walked away.
She stood, her hands on her mouth, staring after
him as he made his way among the Indians,
toward his horse. She wanted to run after him,
grab his arm, let him take her away; then a
kindly voice said, "Good morning, Lydia.
How are you?"
"Doctor!" she cried. "Oh, Doctor
..."
He put an arm around her shoulders. "Let's
go and have a look at Mordecai Monk, shall we?
How has he been?"
"Oh, Doctor! He's badly hurt! I
--I ..." She needed all her strength not
to burst into sobs; his presence gave her such a
feeling of security that she blurted out, "I am
afraid! I can't help it, I'm terrified!
But I must go with him!"
"Why?"
"I can't let him go by himself! He's blind!"
After a moment's silence, he asked, "How
come?"
"A drover flogged him and hit his left eye
with the whip. The other eye must be damaged too, because
he can't see a thing any more. Doctor, he cannot
go alone!"
He hugged her and said, "Calm down,
Lydia. I'll have a look at him. Maybe
it's not as bad as you think."
"It is, it is! I have been with him
all night long, he can't see a thing any more
..."
"All right," he said. "I'll go and have a
look. I'd better go alone. Wait here,
I'll be right back."
She watched him as he walked over
to Mordecai Monk, who was waiting.

"Good morning, Mr. Monk, I am Dr.
Rossini. We met briefly, on Founders'
Day."
The man looked up with a smile. A remarkable
change had taken place in that face since
Rossini had last seen it. Despite the bandaged
eye, the welt, and the bruises, it seemed
to radiate serenity. "Let's have a look at that
eye." Rossini cautiously took off the
bandage. "Looks pretty angry," he said.
"Would you open your other eye, please?"
The man obeyed and blinked.
"Try to look straight ahead, please. That's
right."
Rossini covered the sound eye with his hand. Then
again. And again. No doubt about it: the pupil
contracted and expanded normally. He repeated the
test a few more times; suddenly he stabbed at the
eye with a finger, without touching it. The man reeled
back. "Thank you," Rossini said. "Now let
me have a look at your back. I hear they
whipped you badly."
The man lay down on his stomach, his head on
his arms. Why had he made Lydia believe that
he was blind? He would not have backed away from the
stabbing finger if he were.
The shirt was soaked with blood, the lacerations
on his back were real enough. They must have thrashed him
savagely. Could a man be a malingerer and a
martyour at the same time?
While Rossini treated the wounds with
Peruvian balsam and applied a dressing and a
bandage, he reflected upon the enigma. Maybe
it was the enigma of human nature itself:
two-faced Janus, good and evil, compassion and
selfishness mysteriously intertwined. The man was
obviously trying to lure Lydia into accompanying
him. Rossini's first impulse was to warn her that
he was a trickster and to run for her life; but
something held him back. Something the captain had
said. It's not that he's saving just his own soul, but
mine and yours as well. The soul of this
country.
He decided to let it ride for the moment,
patted the man's shoulder, and said, "Well, this will
do for now. I won't bandage your eye again, the
open air is better for it."
The radiant face beamed at him; something--the
sanctimonious grin?--made him change his
mind. "I think you and I should be frank with one
another, friend. For some reason, Lydia is under the
impression that you are now totally blind. She'll be
much relieved to know that your condition was a temporary
one and that your vision has now been restored
to normal."
The man seemed stunned. "Blind? I did not
say I was blind! I close the other eye from time
to time because it hurts! What gave her the idea I
was blind?"
"Well, we had better reassure her,
hadn't we? Would you like to do it, or shall I?"
"By all means, go and tell her! I had no
idea! I was just sitting here, basking in the peace
of the Lord ..."
Rossini rose to his feet. "I think you should
return to Pendle Hill with us. There is nothing
basically wrong with you, but you are not in a fit
state to walk the three hundred miles, or
whatever it is, to the Mississippi. Someone will have
to look after the wounds on your back, or they'll
become infected. And you are likely to have a
reaction. You cannot suffer that kind of trauma without
any aftereffects."
The man looked up at him with the beatific
smile, which, on second thought, might be a
symptom of shock.
As Rossini made his way back to Lydia
he wondered what would be the best way to tell her,
for tell her he must.
"How is he?" she asked when he joined her.
"Is he going to be all right?"
Rossini put his hands on her shoulders. Her
face was haggard with worry and fatigue; she too
was in a state of shock.
"Lydia," he said, "he may be sincere in his
convictions, but in one respect he was not."
"What does thee mean?"
"He is not blind."
The expression on her face was enough to break a
man's heart. Then she said, "I see. Is he
otherwise fit to travel?"
"Not really."
"What if I were to go with him to look after his
wounds? Until someone else takes over,
perhaps?"
He did not understand the workings of her mind. Or
was it her soul? He had known her since she was a
small child; he had seen her survive, by sheer
force of will, the loss of her entire family in the
epidemic--leaving only her much older brother,
who at the time had been even more dependent on her
than he was now. He thought he had understood why the
cruel bereavement at that tender age had turned
her not into a victim, but a challenger of life.
At this moment, she was a closed book to him.
"If you have any sense, Lydia, you'll come
back with us. He will too, if you make it clear
to him that he would be on his own. He may want
to, but he cannot make it by himself. Not in the state
he's in now."
"I don't know about him, Doctor, but I cannot
go back," she said with a sudden, disquieting
detachment. She seemed a different woman, a
fallback to the dissociated calm of the child in the
epidemic.
"Would you mind telling me why not? I don't
mean to pry; I just want to understand."
She became her present-day self again, at
least outwardly: firm, in control, daring him
almost. "Doctor dear, use thy brains. There's
nothing left for me in Pendle Hill. I've
been fired as a teacher for corrupting the children.
I'm to be read out of Meeting for the same reason.
I--I have no personal prospects either, and I
am thirty years old. I want to go with the
Indians because I want to make my life count."
"Doing what, Lydia?"
"Who knows? Way will open. Teaching their children, for
one thing. Seeing this man through his present state of
weakness. I may not like him, but that's not the point.
I respect his witness. I expect thee, of
all people, to respect mine."
"Why I of all people, Lydia?"
"Because," she said with the daredevil smile he
knew well, "of the two of us, I seem to be the
one to take the rap for the underground railroad. Or
are they about to arrest thee?"
"Not that I know of."
"Are thy patients abandoning thee in droves?"
"Lydia, listen--"
"No, Doctor. I'm through listening. I
presume that God, if He is a
God of love, wants to express His love for
these Indians. Tough luck on His part, but all
He has right now is me and that--that enigma over
there. An odd choice, but there we are."
He saw in her eyes that the die was cast. "So
be it," he said. "I'll leave these dressings with
you. They should be changed daily. Now, are you
sure--"
"Goodbye, Doctor. Be well."
She turned away and did not wave when,
later, he and Jesse left. They did not even
see her; her slight elegant figure was lost
among the Indians.

Mordecai Monk, shocked out of his
dreamlike state of bliss by the doctor's
accusation, asked himself if it could be true. Had
he indeed pretended to be blind in order to make
sure the wanton young woman would stay with him? His
first reaction was, "No, no, absolutely
not!" But after spending all those months in thrall
to his father's ghost ... It might be true.
For some reason, the thought shattered his state of
inner peace. If he had managed to hoodwink
himself to that extent, what about his decision to give up
preaching? What about the very nature of his witness?
Had his decision to share the fate of the Indians,
come what may, been divinely inspired, or was that
too a delusion?
It shook him to the core of his being--whatever that
might be. If the way he had carried on after
being whipped had given the impression that he was as
blind as a bat, then his witness of joining the
Indians might belong to the same theater. Looked
at soberly, the notion of marching along with the convoy
in his present state, with only the clothes he
stood up in, no practice of walking any
distance let alone hundreds of miles, was
ludicrous. Could the key to his imitatio
Christi be the Quaker maiden, so tender, so
concerned? Is thee all right, Friend Mordecai?
--A root in thy path, Friend Mordecai! It
had been dreamlike, ecstatic. He could
happily stagger on till doomsday, blind eyes
squinting heavenward, supported by his latter-day
Mary Magdalene. If he had been Basil
Goodlove, this would have been his way of making
sure that Mary would not go home: who would leave a
blind man to his fate?
He had to face it: he might have shut
up for the time being, but that did not mean he had shaken
Basil Goodlove. Even to think of it as a
state of possession by his father's spook was
another piece of rustic theater; simple heredity
would do. Bulls were bred so that calves might
carry their characteristics; if he were a liar, a
fraud, a word-slinger, any cattle raiser would
put as his first question, "Which bull sired this one?"'
He had better treat all forms of ecstasy,
godliness, and spiritual delirium with suspicion.
What would Basil Goodlove have done? Would he
have joined the Indians as a witness? If there had
been an audience, yes. Was this woman his
audience? In the case of Basil Goodlove,
she would have been his prey; he would have enacted
Paul on the road to Damascus, fainted by the
roadside: "Lydia! Lydia! ..."
Next thing she knew, she would have found herself in his
bed, or sleeping bag, or whatever.
The Indians slept under blankets on the
naked ground; they just dropped wherever they found
themselves when camp was made, pulled their blanket
over them, and fell asleep as if felled by an
ax. Would he be able to do the same? An English
businessman astray on the prairie, without so much
as a change of underwear, a piece of luggage?
A spoiled, pampered--
He decided to put it before God. "God?
Am I insane? A fraud? A lecher?"
A voice in his mind said coldly, Yes
to all three.
"Father, if Thou still want me, if Thou hast a
plan--"
The voice within--not God's, surely--asked,
Which father are you addressing, boy?
"No!" he cried in anguished fury. "Get
out of my prayer, Basil Goodlove!"
He grabbed his hair. He was lost! Lost,
far away from home ...
The empty hall of his mind echoed with the sound of
slow clapping.

Roaming aimlessly among the Indians,
Lydia asked herself what in the world had made her
decide to do this. She had said it herself, to the
doctor: she was at the end of her tether and might
as well do something to make her life count. But was
this the way to do that? At home, she could return
to the underground railroad--
Could she? As a station on the
railroad, the school was finished. She could be of
use only as part of a station, an organized
group. And who would take her in? She would stand out
like a sore thumb anywhere else except as a
teacher. And what school would hire her now?
Well, there were other concerns, such as ... She
waited for the other concerns to reveal themselves, and
discovered there weren't any, not really. Distribute
fruit and toys among the occasional Indian
convoy to pass the village? This made more sense.
But what was "this"? She had made her case for the
doctor, but what could she really do here, other than
hobble along with the herd, handmaiden to the latest
Quaker saint self-elected to represent the
Lord among the suffering masses? And what was .his
contribution to be? Unfair to ask that now, while
he was still recovering from his wounds; but once he was
hale and healthy again, what could he do for the
Indians, other than be a symbol of unity with the
Mahanoy on the part of the Quaker movement?
Ha! That was all they needed: a fat white man
enriching his soul by "sharing" their deprivation,
waited on hand and foot--
Stop it! She should not break down his witness just
because she herself was overcome by doubt. What on earth
had made her suddenly strike that splendid pose
for the benefit of the doctor? Yet she had meant every
word of it, at the time. Well, so too--she was
sure--had Mordecai. "It is God's
will." It had been very impressive when he said
it, but now, a day later ...
She heard a child crying somewhere and went to see
what was the matter. But there was no child, only a
small shadow disappearing in the crowd. Children ran
away at her approach. Sad, because there were so many
children, children of school age, in the convoy. Most of
them were with their parents, but many, she was sure, were
orphans or abandoned children just tagging along, like the
stray dogs that also ran away at her approach.
Well, maybe after a few days they would get
used to her presence and be willing to be rounded up
each time the convoy made its bivouac. She had
worked it all out in her mind overnight: she would
pull them together into one big class, divide them
into sections according to age, like a small village
school. She was not quite sure what she would teach
them, once she spoke their language. The children were
as wild as monkeys; no point in coming at them
with the three R's. It would have to be
picture-book teaching; they would have
to draw the pictures themselves--
Suddenly, out of the blue, a trumpet blared just
behind her. She swung around and saw, on the
captain's porch, the black orderly,
pigeon-chested, standing to attention, blowing an
earsplitting staccato command. The sound flushed
birds from the grass, startlingly close. The
drovers on horseback began to move among the
Indians, who rose as from the grave. "Git!
Git!" they shouted, cracking their whips. "Git,
ya bastards! Git! Git!"
Oh, my God--Mordecai Monk! She
hurried to join him.

Weary beyond words, hurting, exhausted after his
emotional self-searching, Mordecai stood up.
All around him Indians were doing the same; some
humps he had taken for part of the prairie were
rising too. Where should he go?
Thank God, there she was. "Friend
Mordecai!"
Needlessly, he cried "Here!" The relief
at her appearance was such that he almost sat down
again. Maybe that was all he would be able to do; he
suddenly felt stiff and unstable. The mere idea
of having to walk--
"I see," she said, out of breath. "Stiff,
eh? To be expected. Try walking, just a few
steps."
He tried manfully. Too manfully; he was
a fraud. But even as a fraud he winced and
stumbled. "Pity we let the doctor go," he
panted. "I'm afraid I can't hack it ..."
The panting was overdone, but he wasn't going
to make it all the same.
"Just for a few days," she said, "it's likely
to get worse. But it will pass. Wait! I'll
see if I can find an army wagon with some room
left ..." She disappeared.
He felt quite faint. Giddy. And whatever the
doctor had done to his back, it had made things
worse.
"Come," she said.
He felt her hand on his arm.
"I found a wagon belonging to the army with some
room left in it. Come, I'll help thee get
inside."
"They--they won't let me ..." The mere
idea of one of the drovers spotting him and using his
whip made him feel sick.
"Don't worry, I'll fix it with the
captain. Easy now ..."
He let himself be guided. Supported.
Held close.
"Easy!"
How good it was. If it was going to be like this,
he'd rather-- "No," he said, and stood still.
"What? It's only a small distance from
here--"
"No. I will not be driven in a wagon when my
witness is to share the fate of the Indians. They
aren't given preferential treatment when they are
footsore." It was true--and not true. It was
his witness, but at the same time, he relished being
succored, supported.
"Right," she said, after a moment. "I can unite
with that. Luckily we must have left late because of
Jesse and the doctor. It's past midday, it
can't be long before we stop for the night. Come."
He let himself be led back to where their bedrolls
were, together with the tarpaulin and the shelter they had been
given, compliments of the army. The Indians
didn't get those issued either. The whole thing was a
fraud.

Lydia picked up the shelter, tarpaulin, and
bedrolls. Pity Mordecai Monk had
refused to ride in the cook's wagon, she could have
put it all in there with him. But good for him. He was
going to stagger on for the sake of his witness despite
the pain; the least she could do was carry their bundle
of belongings like the rest of the women. Some of them
pulled whole carts stacked high with stakes and
hides; others walked bent double under their load,
like exhausted beasts of burden. The image of
Lydia Best carrying two bedrolls, a
shelter, and a tarpaulin was not likely to be added
to the lithos of the Quaker saints on schoolroom
walls.
They joined the slow-moving herd. Its
progress was determined, the captain had said, by the
elderly; and the human cart horses were by far the
worst off; she should take turns with some of them if
she were worth the trumpet voluntary of her
self-sacrifice. Not a sound came from the
Indians as they shuffled along, not a whisper.
Obviously no one wanted to be singled out by the
drovers, still yelling their moronic chant,
"Git! Git! Git, ya bastards!" The only
other noise was that of the stray dogs,
racing around the convoy at top speed, yapping at
the horses, yelping when a whip stung them.
The sun, now high in the sky, lit up the
faces around her, harsh with shadows. She seemed
to be surrounded by people in a trance staring fixedly
ahead. The dazzling sky was empty of birds,
except for a flight of buzzards circling
lazily overhead. The convoy was moving slowly up
a slow rise in the endless plain. She looked behind
her and saw a long procession of people with only here
and there a horse or a wagon. At the
horizon, a platoon of horsemen brought up the
rear; she saw a glint of gold, that must be the
captain and his soldiers. There were only a few of
them, compared to the number of civilian drovers
trotting up and down the column, cracking their
whips, shouting curses.
After the first hour or so, she began to feel
tired. Her feet started to hurt; when she looked
down, she saw her shoes were scuffed bare, like a
beggarwoman's. The sight of them suddenly threw
her into a panic. What was she doing? What had
possessed her to think that she could make a difference
to the fate of these people? She and the man by her side were
being carried along by a river of humanity in which they
were no more than bobbing corks. And those shoes were not
going to last another day!
For the first time in her life she had the eerie
sensation of losing her identity. She saw, as she
looked down at her shoes, the person she was
turning into: a ragged scarecrow, with dangling
hair, cracked lips, expected to squat, like the
squaws, by the roadside to relieve herself. She
would never be able to do that, not with all those leering men
around--
Suddenly Mordecai Monk staggered and fell
to his knees. She hauled him up, untenderly.
"If thee starts doing that," she heard herself say,
"thee had better ride in the cook's wagon."
It changed her concept of herself as a strong but
gentle Quaker woman. How shameful, to turn
into a harridan on the first day of a journey that was
supposed to take weeks! Now was the time to be
loving toward the Indians, to approach that of God
in Mordecai, try to break through their staring
remoteness ...
But one could not "love" all by oneself. Even the
baby in its basket on the back of the woman
trudging ahead of her seemed to look straight through
her with its tiny black slitted eyes.
Stumbling in her unsuitable shoes, she
panicked. She was not going to make it. She had
taken on this insane thing not out of a motion of love
but because she had been at the end of her tether. Those
shining Quaker women from the past had set out in the
unshakable certainty that God was with them, that all
He had was them; she had simply run away from
an empty future. The captain would have
to delegate someone to take her back to Pendle
Hill, he--
With a strangled cry, Mordecai Monk
fell headlong in the grass. She tried to help
him back to his feet, but he seemed heavier
than the last time. "Lydia!" His open eye
roved sightlessly, his trembling hand touched her
arm, "Lydia!" He was like a child, three times
life size.
She managed to hoist him upright. Dusted him
down. Put an arm around his portly waist.
"Come," she said. "I'll take thee to the
wagon."
"No--no! The Indians must walk, so must
I! But what about thee? Thee must go back,
Lydia, thee must go back! This is not for a
woman, this will kill thee, it will kill thee ..."
"Hush," she said. "I can go on like this for
months, if need be. But how about thee? Please,
let me take thee to the wagon!"
"No," he whispered, lifting his face to the
sky. "No."
Suddenly it seemed very familiar--she had seen
this many times in kindergarten, after a toddler had
fallen flat on his face and decided to whoop it
up. His back might hurt, but this dramatic
collapse was a childish put-on. To have a
useless male on her hands was one thing, a
playacting male was unacceptable. But her instant
decision to ask the captain to ship him home that
night did not survive.
By herself she would never make it; with him to look
after, stumbling, collapsing, she might. Why?
Motherly instinct? Nothing of the sort. What she
felt for him was not the feelings of a mother. She
remembered something that George Fox had said about
someone, "I love that of God in him, but very little
else." That summed up her attitude toward
Mordecai Monk.
"Come on," she said, supporting him. "It
won't be long before we make camp. Then I'll
find us something to eat."
"Thee must go back," he panted, "thee must go
..."
She smiled indulgently, trudging along on
blistered feet, leading the monster toddler in the
power of the Lord.

It all seemed to be part of a dream. Who was
he? Mordecai or Basil? Whoever he was,
he was being mocked by God, in a landscape like
hell, prisoner of a woman who detested him.
She treated him like a child, but there was no love for
him, not even contempt; she took him along with her
just for moral sustenance, as a spiritual pig for the
road.
But that was nonsense. He was clinging to the
wreckage of his belief that God had a task for
him, that he had been sent among the Indians for a
purpose other than to serve as a female
weightlifter's emergency rations. What could
conceivably be left after his spiritual and emotional
castration? If only he could free himself from his
fatal addiction to words, experience life's
vicissitudes like everyone else, without turning
them into bombast! Oh, for a lyre, an audience!
A singer needed listeners; had David, God's
best friend, been a posturer too? A songster, an
entertainer?
"God," he started, but that was as far as he
got. God had left and gone home, bored with his
boring bombast. There he went, led like a pig.
Nothing left of beauty, music, imagery,
passion; no joy sweeping through him, no poetry.
Then the Romans came, gently almost, with the
inner security of having been the sole power on
earth for five hundred years. Bombast! No
more than foam, thrashed in the soapy water of
banal emotions. What could God possibly have
had in mind to send him, of all people, as His
messenger among the damned? What possible
purpose could he serve?
"All right?" she asked, with a firm grip on
his arm. The pig grunted. Another loss:
suddenly all carnal desire was gone. If
only he were fired by lust! If only he could have
trod this trail brandishing Priapus's lance! But
nothing; not a shiver of desire for the Quaker
jailer now guiding him in chains. Why had even
sin been taken away from him? Because the hunted do not
copulate? God had reduced all love,
poetry, beauty, promise, tenderness,
to ashes.
"Look where thee is going, Mordecai!"
He looked, and saw the ground rise, then
fall away, like waves. Waves on the sea of
grass. Was he dreaming all this? Would he wake
up in his comfortable bed in Birmingham? Or in
Liza's? Cup of tea, love? Please,
God, wake me ...
As if in response to his prayer, the
trumpet blared behind him, a shattered signal
partially blown away by the wind. The last trump!
But instead of rising from their graves, the dead, or
near-dead, dropped where they stood, drew
blankets over their thin bodies, and fell
asleep.
"Well," his jailer said, "this seems to be the
end of another day. How is thee? All right?"
"Ready to join the dead," he said, not meaning it
dramatically, just a visual observation.
"Easy does it," she said coldly. "Let
me get thee something to eat, before thee descends
into thy ornate tomb."

The day's march had ended earlier than Lydia
expected. She was amazed at her own
resilience; she could have walked on much longer,
preoccupied as she was with her plans for organizing
classes. When the column halted, she first
settled Mordecai under the little shelter, then
made a tour of the camp on her way to the chuck
wagon, counting children.
They were finally showing themselves. Including strays,
she counted sixty-eight, ranging from first to seventh
grade. She could commence with one class a day,
to start an hour after bivouac was made and they had
had their evening meal. They seemed to have nothing to do
at that time but just sit around, too tired to play after
the long walk.
As she moved among the Indians, anxious
to communicate, she was met by their now familiar
refusal to acknowledge her presence. The children
followed the example of their elders; when she sat
down beside a couple of small girls, they looked
through her, as if she were invisible, a ghost. Was this
how these sad people retained their self-respect?
Surely, the approach to conflict after the manner
of Friends would be able to get through to them? But first she
should be able to speak their language; at least some
words and phrases. It was time to go and see the
chief.
His teepee was the only one in the camp, a
high triangular edifice of hides, its entrance
screened with strings of beads. She stood in front
of it, mustering up courage, when she became aware
of a change around her. All movement had stopped.
The Indians, who had been scurrying around like
ants, had suddenly come to a standstill. She
looked at them; those whose eyes she met instantly
looked away. Yet she was sure everyone was
watching, waiting to see what would happen.
She tried to knock, but there was nothing to knock
on. So she approached the screened doorway and
called, "Chief? Friend Chief!"
No answer. The tent seemed empty. Yet
she sensed the presence of someone behind the screen.
"Chief?"
No answer.
"Friend Chief, there is something I must discuss with
thee! I am a schoolteacher, I--" Suddenly the
beads parted.
The stony-faced Indian with the two feathers
emerged, followed by a woman with heavy breasts;
clinging to her skirt was a child of about two, lip and
chin wet with snot. The woman eyed her
malevolently; the chief stared fixedly at a
point above her right shoulder.
"Good evening, Chief."
No response.
She drew a deep breath; it was time for
Quakerly bluntness. "Chief, I am burdened
by a concern about the children. I am a teacher from the
Quaker school in the town you have passed. The
school was founded for Indian children, we still have a
number of them among our pupils. I am well
acquainted with their needs."
The woman stared at her venomously; the chief
remained fascinated by the point above her right
shoulder. Maybe "Indian" had not been the right
word; she should have used "Mahanoy." Well,
no point in being delicate; either they wanted an
education for their children or they did not. Now was the time
to find out.
"I would like to remind thee of the fact that we are
united by the treaty between our ancestors," she
continued. "I intend to make this journey with you. I
propose to organize the children by age, in two
groups, to teach them reading, writing, and
arithmetic, or play games with them, depending
on their ages. In order to do so it is essential
that I speak your language. Would thee be
so kind as to appoint someone from thy tribe to teach
me some basic Mahanoy, so the children may understand
what I say?"
No reaction. Surely, she was entitled
to some response from the couple she was addressing?
The woman went on staring daggers at her, the man
refused to look her in the eye in a pitiful
display of hostility. The snotty child could not
resist, it peered from behind its mother's skirt with one
pitch-black inscrutable eye. When she smiled
at it, however, it withdrew at once. Then she
felt someone standing behind her.
She turned around and saw it was the captain,
arms akimbo, legs apart.
"Madam, you are wasting your time."
"In that case, I would like to have a word with thee, Friend Stewart."
"With pleasure," he said. "My name is
Ebenezer. This way, please." He gestured
toward his tent across the clearing.
She said, "Thank thee, Chief," and headed for the
captain's tent, chin high, ignoring the Indians
ignoring her as she walked past. Mordecai would
have to wait for his supper.
If she had not seen the captain's headquarters
being put up earlier, she would have thought it had never
moved. The view of the prairie was the same, and
likely to remain so for the next five weeks.
On the front porch stood the table and two
chairs. "Have a seat, please." The captain
helped her up the steps and waited until she was
seated before following suit. The Negro servant
appeared in the doorway.
"What is your pleasure, miss?"
"Nothing, thank thee, Ebenezer Stewart."
She felt on edge, but was determined not to show it.
"In that case, allow me to order for myself."
He turned to the servant. "The usual, boy.
And take care of the others."
"Yes, sah." The servant withdrew.
If there were other officers around, she had not
noticed them.
"Well, Miss Best, what can I do for you?"
She tried to read the cold blue eyes. They
gave her the shivers, but she shrugged off that
un-Quakerly reaction. "Thee must have overheard
the proposal I made to the chief. Perhaps thee could
help me get through to these people?"
"My dear Miss Best--"
She did not let him finish. "I know
it looks like I'm wasting my time, but I am not.
The moment they realize that I am serious about
teaching their children, that I honestly want to serve them,
not use them for--"
The servant returned, carrying a tray with a
glass of yellow liquid and some sprigs of
mint. The captain took it without thanking him; the Negro went back inside.
He raised his glass to her, took a
draught, and said, "I respect your courage,
Miss Best, but it is my duty to tell you that the
truth--" His face hardened and he said, "Well,
well, look who's here."
She looked. Jesse McHair was heading for the
command tent, leading a packhorse loaded with what
appeared to be supplies.
"Hello there," Jesse touched his hat. "I
brought some stuff, Lydia, for thee and fatso over
there."
"Who?"
Jesse and the captain exchanged male glances.
"I have most of what thee asked for. The women
sorted out thy clothes. Obadiah did the same
for Mordecai Monk. He didn't have anything
of much use in his luggage, but I brought him a
change of underwear and my second pair of
boots. I don't know if they'll fit him, but
all he seems to have in the way of shoes is what
he's wearing."
"How kind of thee," Lydia said, for some
reason suddenly close to tears.
"Well, where shall I dump all this, Captain?
Would there be room in one of the wagons?"
The captain said, "I'll find a spot. Just
unload it all where Mr. Monk is, right there,
across the clearing."
"Thank thee," Jesse said, and turned around.
"Well, Miss Best," the captain
resumed, with a smile, "you and I will have to postpone
our little t@ete-@a-t@ete. After supper I'll
send my orderly with another invitation."
"Thank thee, Ebenezer Stewart."
"You know where to collect your rations, don't you?
At the chuck wagon, over there."
"I know," she said.

Mordecai Monk watched his measly valise
and Lydia's trousseau being unloaded at his
feet. The mere thought of having to carry part of that,
even a small part, made him consider
joining the uncouth Jesse on the road back
to Pendle Hill, and never mind his female
jailer.
He felt better than he did a few hours
ago, as if the walking had done him good. His eye
still hurt, and the wounds on his back had begun
to suppurate, or maybe the fluid dribbling
down his spine was sweat. Anyhow, Lydia would
look after that. Otherwise, his mind was clear, the
feeling of being caught in a nightmare had
dissipated. All that was left, for some reason, was
a sense of dull resentment against the bossy
woman. "Ornate tomb" indeed! What about
food? Where, for that matter, were they?
He looked about him: the same scene as when they
had left: grass, grass, waving and
undulating, a darkening blue sky, and buzzards.
Always the buzzards. They were part of the nightmare.
He gazed at his worldly belongings stacked at his
feet. Well, "stacked" was too
grandiloquent: one valise, looking as if a
stagecoach had driven across it, and a pair of
boots sure to be too large for him; he had his
mother's dainty feet. That was all, for a hike of
hundreds of miles across virgin prairie. But,
soft! There came the maiden, ready to unpack her
hope chest. Indefatigable, talking about
classes for the children, unpacking school books,
dictionaries--"Ha! There's the abacus!" She
made him feel useless, a drone with a valise
full of unsuitable clothes, like nightshirts and a
nightcap with tassel.
For some reason, or for no reason at all,
he was moved by her determined activity. Poor
soul. To say something nice, he came up with,
"I hope, in time, to be able to follow thy
example."
She looked down on him with raised eyebrows,
and asked, "Am I to understand that thee is planning
to teach the children? Or are we going to have sermons?"
For a reason he could not fathom, her waspish
response pacified him. It made her sound
young, and frightened, and lost. Well, so was he. A
chocolate merchant and a schoolteacher, lost in the
Stone Age. What in the world could God have in
mind, if He was involved in this at all?
"I wonder," he said aloud.
"Ha!"
She had been rummaging in her hope chest and
now hauled out a purple dress. "Now
what in the world would thee say Saraetta expects
me to do with this?" She turned it around; in Quaker
terms it was quite "brittle," something
to associate with barn dancing. Only he had no
idea what barn dancing was; just a word he had
picked up somewhere along the road to nowhere.
"Maybe they visualized a weekly officers'
ball on the prairie," he suggested.
It brought her back to his contemptible
presence. Dress in hand, she contemplated him,
as if he had just slithered down from the apple tree
in Paradise. "Why?" she asked.
"Why what?"
"Why did thee fool me by pretending thee was about
to collapse today?"
He had no idea what she was talking about.
"When?"
"I see. We're going to have amnesia, are
we?" She folded the dress and put it back in
the chest.
"I honestly don't remember," he said,
sincerely. "As a matter of fact, I
remember very little of this afternoon, other than feeling,
well, a bit giddy."
She rose. "It's time I went to find us
something to eat."
She gathered her skirts and strode off in the
dusk full of Indians and horses. Neither of
them had any business here, except maybe the
Lord's. But the Lord remained silent, and
mysterious, and vast, like the prairie itself.
The young man Jesse intercepted her and
embraced her, in slow motion. Mordecai
watched him mount his mustang and lope off, leading
the empty packhorse behind him, the horse he
himself should have been riding, back to the real world. Why
hadn't he?
"Well," she said chirpily. "How about thy
taking a nap while I get the food?"
A nap. In the midst of a tribe of Indians
hopping around in a frenzy? Without having had
anything to eat?
"I might as well," he said, to be rid of
her.
He turned on his side, pulled a blanket
over his aching body, placed his hat on the side
of his head, and observed her horizontally as,
to his astonishment, she wriggled out of her dress,
let it drop in a heap around her feet, and
prepared to put on the one she had just put
away. He caught a glimpse of bare shoulders
before she pulled the new one over her head. The
glimpse made his mouth go dry.
"Lord," he thought, staring at her youthful
figure, "despise me. Despise me! I
am despicable. I am an abomination to Thee."
God did not respond.

Lydia, in her ridiculous purple dress,
defiantly joined the squaws lined up in front
of the chuck wagon to collect her ration of meat from
the sergeant in charge. After he had dumped it
into her cooking pot she joined the next queue, the
one for the communal cooking fire. As she stood
waiting among the other women, she became conscious
of their body odor, enough to knock you over
sideways. But where and when could they wash, poor
dears? It surely was only a matter of time before
she would be adding her own personal bouquet.
Finally, her turn came to roast her meat. She
squeezed herself in between two hefty squaws, who
stolidly ignored her. They went on talking
to each other across her, most insulting; their
language sounded high-pitched and chittering.
Squatting by the fireside, holding the cooking
pot by its long handle--quite a balancing act--she
came to the conclusion that they were giggling about her,
saying things to one another like "Look at that
silly female! Look at the way she cooks
her meat! She pretends to know everything, but she's
only copying what we are doing. And what in the
name of Manitou is she wearing?"'
Their rejection became so oppressive that she
went back to Mordecai Monk before the meat was quite
done. He was peering in her direction with a look of
expectancy. He sat up at her approach,
greeted her with childish delight, and wolfed down
the half-cooked meat. Only after he had eaten
did he worry about her having so much to do after a
grueling day's march: put up their shelter, cook
a meal, dress his wounds, wash his feet ...
"Sorry," she said, "but I am not going to wash
thy feet. Thee has two hands, thee was able
to move them from the pot to thy mouth, thee should be able
to reach thy feet. I will do thy bandage, but first
let's talk about how we can get through to the
Indians. They don't want any part of us. I
wonder if that will change."
"Oh," he said airily, "they'll accept us
in the end."
So she did his bandage for him; the wound on his
back looked angry but no more so than before. She
did wash his feet for him, as an act of contrition
for wondering why the captain had not sent his servant
with another invitation for a t@ete-@a-t@ete. She
unrolled her pallet and made sure the awning was
securely fastened, that it might not be blown away overnight. Finally she undressed, lay down,
pulled up her blanket, and rested her head on
the bundle she had carried all day. By then,
darkness had fallen.
Exhausted, about to fall asleep, she was
shocked awake by rustling in the tall grass behind
them. It sounded as if someone was slinking about there,
surreptitiously peering at her. In the
stillness, in the darkness, the prairie suddenly
became a world full of menace, of men inflamed with
lust by the mere fact of the presence of a white
woman.
Well, she would have to deal with them as way opened.
And they were not really the problem. The problem was:
Why? Why had God arranged things so she would end
up here, alone with a man she disliked among five
hundred disoriented Indians in the prairie?
If there was a divine plan, what could it be?
Her teaching the children depended on her knowing their
language. How could she learn it without help,
without communication?
Suddenly life was full of mystery, and fear,
and farewell. Farewell to all she had loved
despite everything, the old Lydia, so happy and
gay, with so many friends. True, there had been
sadness, unspoken, unremembered by an act of
will: the epidemic, the dying children, the slaughter of the
lambs. It had changed Saraetta; it had
changed her too. It had set in her once
radiant soul a core of darkness.
Was it all part of the plan? Was there a plan?
The darkness within grew slowly, like a shadow,
until she was touched by its chill.
CHAPTER 12
THE PRAIRIE
September 1833 (continued)

She did not sleep much that night; finally
morning came, blue and rose, with small clouds
like sheep, lit from below in the vastness of the sky.
To her amazement she felt rested. She put on
the high-button boots Saraetta had packed for
her; they were a blessing. Her feet, though painful,
did not prevent her walking.
She fetched some gruel from the chuck wagon;
while Mordecai sat slurping it, she rolled
up tarpaulin, shelter, and bedrolls.
Presently the bugle sounded, the drovers began
to rouse the Indians. "Git, git! Git, ya
bastards!"
The mass of Indians began to move. She
helped Mordecai up.
Then, as a godsend, there was the captain's
servant, sent to collect their luggage and put it
in a wagon. Bless the captain! "Thank thy
master for us, please. Thank thee!"
The black man said, "Yes, ma'am."
Together, Mordecai and she joined the herd;
soon she resumed walking in the rhythm of the march.
This time she deliberately entered a world of
daydreams. Cool water. Crisp bedsheets.
The smell of lavender. In her mind, she opened
her wardrobe full of clothes; pretty
dresses, delicate and silky. Stockings,
warm, soft, like friends first thing in the morning. She
recalled the day she had tried on the dress she
was wearing now: the feel of it, its elegance
despite the risqu`e color and rather daring cut.
And how she had loved these high-button boots
when she first wore them! Yet she had never
realized how precious they were, not even the first
day she wore them: symbols of refinement, of
human dignity.
As she trudged along with the herd under the
wind-swept mares'-tails in the autumn sky,
she was less distressed by the brutal heartlessness
of the drovers than by the angry bickering of the
squaws around her. In their alien world there seemed
to be no room for tenderness or loving kindness; it
seemed a world of anger, deprivation, violence.
She tried to evoke the Presence, but all she could
evoke was cool water, the smell of
newly baked bread, the beauty of the little mirror
her mother had given her on her twelfth birthday.
"Now, Lydia, don't give in
to vanity!" Tiredness, she discovered, was not
merely a physical thing; she had walked this far
before. Now, homesickness for the past sapped her
strength. Mordecai, to the contrary, had marched
all day with the steady pace of an elephant. No
theatrical crises, for once. Well, thank the
Lord for small mercies.
When, at last, the convoy made camp, she was
exhausted, but headed for the chuck wagon before the line
of squaws had a chance to grow. Yesterday the
sergeant and his soldiers who dealt out the meat had
acknowledged her as one of their own with bashful
smiles; now they treated her like the rest, just
another pushy female reaching through the bars for her
food.
She managed to be among the first at the cooking
fire and made no bones about pushing others aside
to get to it. She roasted her meat with the same
egotism as the rest of the squaws; this time when she
brought Mordecai his meat, he could sink his teeth
into it. A couple more days, and she would have mastered the
trick of roasting meat without burning it. The mashed
potatoes and the vegetable slop the soldiers
ladled out were foul, but that no longer seemed to matter.
When night fell, she fetched water for them
to wash with, pulled off Mordecai's boots,
helped him out of his jacket, rolled it into a
pillow, and covered him with a blanket. He was so
grateful that he managed to grab her hand and kiss
it. He had hot, wet lips; it gave her the
creeps. "Stop that!" she said sharply. "Go
to sleep."
"Could we have meeting first?" he asked.
"No," she said. But to make up for her
snapping, they had a brief one. At least, that was
the idea.
But soon she sat gazing at the stars instead of
centering down, daydreaming once more about freshly
laundered sheets, and the silk nightgown she had
almost bought but which Saraetta, who was with her, had
considered too worldly. Saraetta had a witness
against frivolity, she had even covered--
There was rustling in the grass behind her.
The drover with the squint? ...
She listened; but it had stopped. That afternoon, after
looking about her to see if the coast was
clear, she had hurriedly squatted a short
way off in the grass, and had the fright of her life
when, right behind her, she heard a heavy thud and a
snigger. As she ran back into the ranks, looking
over her shoulder, she saw it was the lanky young
drover, unshaven, as cross-eyed as a
Siamese cat, who had been leering at her all
day; he had jumped off his horse, right behind her.
His name, she had gathered from shouts addressed to him
by the others, was "Two-tone," or
"Boots," maybe both. She had noticed
when he trotted past, which he did frequently,
that he wore scuffed boots that at one time had
been black and white.
As she sat there, tense, listening, staring at the
night sky, the thought occurred to her that
"Two-tone Boots" might dominate her
life from now on. The rest of the day after the incident
she kept an eye on his whereabouts at all times.
Even now, listening, she was disturbed because she thought
it might be him. How had he managed? The moment
she had squatted in the grass, there he had been,
leering at her with his Siamese cat's eyes,
stretching his stringy neck as he tried to get the
full picture.
No more rustling. It must have been birds, or
grasshoppers, or whatever it was that filled the
night with their monotonous chirping. Yet she was
sure she was being watched. She angrily tried
to shake the obsession, for what could the man do?
Nothing, absolutely nothing other than gawk at
her during the miserable seconds that nature forced
her to squat in the grass. She would certainly not
be so foolish as to back out of sight of the column.
Suddenly she knew: this is how it will end. When
nature forces me to back deeper into the grass,
he will pounce. She would scream bloody murder
--no, she wouldn't. A calloused hand would smother
her cry. The other hand would rip her dress, as
she struggled when he forced her legs apart.
Again! A slithering sound! He was there, somewhere in
the grass, right behind her! She concentrated all her
awareness on listening. She heard panting.
Pant, pant, pant ... A dog? Had he a
dog? It took minutes of motionless, terrified
listening before she realized that what she heard was not the
panting of a dog, but the pounding of her heart in her
own breathing. When she closed her mouth, it
stopped. When she opened her mouth, it started up
again.
She tried to get a hold of herself by thinking about
the godly lives that had gone before: Margaret
Fell, Gulielma Woodhouse. What had
Margaret Fell done to protect herself against
rape in those hellish prisons of the seventeenth
century? In London she had organized a
volunteer corps of women to go into the dungeons,
and dressed them in green and red so they would be
recognized in the "perpetual gloom of the
dungeons," as the teacher had put it in First
Day school. And what about the prison in
Lancaster, when she had been all alone among the
children about to be hanged? What strength had she found
within herself to stop the rising panic growing into terror?
What had she done, in that dungeon, when she had
to relieve herself? Gulielma Woodhouse, who
had worked as a doctor all alone among the
Indians deep into Mexico, had made no
bones about it. Any time now, nature would force
her to back further into the grass. She would have
to absent herself, however briefly, unless-- Ah!
That was an idea! The captain's necessary! The little
shelter beside the command tent! Dare she ask him?
James Stewart-- No, wait, the man's
name was not James. What was
it--Nebuchadnezzar? Ebenezer! Good evening,
Ebenezer Stewart. Could I have a word with thee?
Of course, Miss Best. Have a seat.
Boy! The Negro servant would bring a glass
of lemonade.
Ebenezer Stewart, I know it is a
delicate subject, but let me be frank. That
little shelter by the side of thy tent--am I
mistaken? Is that a--a necessary?
No, she would never be able to ask so boldly.
More delicate, circumspect. Ebenezer
Stewart, what is that interesting little building I
see beside thy tent? Phooey! That was worse, it
turned her from a prude into an idiot. Why not be
blunt? Quaker bluntness was always the answer in
the end. Ebenezer Stewart, forgive me for being
blunt, but one of thy drovers, the one with the
squint, I think his name is Two-tone Boots,
is dogging me wherever I go, even when I--I have
to retire for a moment. No, no, I don't
want thee to do anything about him, it's fine with me,
let him peep his fill and good luck to him, but there
will come a moment when I must absent myself a little more
substantially. Substantially? Say that to a
man? Ebenezer Stewart, as thee knows
I have joined the Indians as a witness, to start
classes among the Indian children ... That was a
long, blathersome way to get around to his privy.
What if she borrowed, tomorrow evening, Mordecai
Monk's breeches, put on his hat, and
swaggered into the grass after darkness had fallen?
Ha! Two-tone Boots might be stupid, but as
he was aware of her whereabouts at all times, he would
no doubt be lying in wait for her. Interesting:
to strong-arm a woman into submission and have to cope
with a man's breeches first.
Good evening, Ebenezer Stewart. Could I have
a word with thee ...?
The one she should have a word with was God.
She tried. She tried to address Him as she
would a father, but she would not have confided this anguish
to her father either. As a friend? Dear God, sooner
or later, sooner rather, I will have to have a--
She could not mention "bowel movement" in a
prayer. If only she could ask Margaret
Fell! Maggie? How did thee do it? I am
terrified; was thee too?
But whereas Catholics could pray to the saints of
their Church, to pray to a Quaker saint did not
work, at least not if you expected an answer.
Maggie? ... Gulie? ...
Of course there came no answer; she was not in
their class. What those formidable women had done,
they had done in the power of the Lord, as a motion of
love, not because they had landed themselves in a hopeless
mess as a result of disillusion, fear,
unrequited love, stupidity. She was not in the
power of the Lord. She was not driven by a motion of
love. She was--
Mordecai stretched out his hand to her; they
broke meeting. She went on trying to formulate
what she was, in comparison to the saints, while
she undressed, lay down on her pallet,
pulled the blankets over her, and fell
asleep, exhausted.

The next evening, after she had put up the
shelter, collected their rations, elbowed her way
to the cooking fire, roasted the meat, and made her
way back to Mordecai with their supper, she saw
the captain being served his meal on the porch, his
black servant in attendance.
"I'll be right back," she said to Mordecai,
handing him his plate.
He mumbled something; she headed
straight for the command tent. Forgetting about her dusty
dress and scuffed boots, she said, in a tone
too regal by far, "I wish to have a word with thee,
Ebenezer Stewart."
He rose. "Of course, Miss Best.
Please ..." He dabbed at his mustache with his
napkin and pointed to the chair opposite.
"Thank thee." She lifted her skirts,
exposing the wrecks of her boots, and stepped
onto the porch. The table was decked with fresh
linen, silver, china, a glass half-filled with
red wine; on his plate a juicy steak, a
crumbled biscuit beside it. At his signal the
servant pulled out the chair for her.
"What may I offer you, Miss Best?
Coffee? A glass of liqueur?"
"Nothing, thank thee. I will not stay. I came
to ask a simple favor."
"You have not eaten yet?" the captain
exclaimed. "How stupid of me! May I
invite--"
She cried, "No, please! Don't offer me
anything. I--I have had my meal."
To her dismay she could see that he knew she was
lying; he spread his hands in mock surrender.
"All right. Boy, clear away, I'll have my
coffee later."
Deftly, the servant made plate,
cutlery, biscuit, and crumbs disappear, leaving
only the glass. He returned with another
glass and a jug, which he put on the table, then
disappeared again.
"At least share a glass of wine with me," the
captain said.
She shook her head.
"Surely, one glass? A cup of coffee,
then?"
"I do not want any special favors."
She realized too late that this was hardly in
accord with the reason for her visit. No Indian
squaw would take it into her head to ask the captain
if she might use his privy.
The man must have read her thoughts. "Surely you
are no longer under the illusion that those people care about you
one way or another?" he asked. "I would have
thought you had learned your lesson by now."
"These things take time," she said.
The captain had the good grace not to smile.
"Well, what is the simple favor, Miss
Best?"
She took herself in hand. She had decided
to think of him as a doctor. "I would not make the
request if thee had not shown thyself to be a
gentleman," she began, then lost heart at the
thought that this too was a lie: he had pushed her over
with his horse and made her flee half naked into the
bushes.
He picked up his glass. "This may be the
moment to remind you, Miss Best, that in order
to survive you'll have to turn into an Indian
squaw. Remember?"
"Of course."
"However, I have given the matter some thought. You
have a second choice." He took a sip of
wine.
She watched him with a frown. Something had gone
wrong.
"It will take us a while to reach the
Mississippi. You've spent only three days
with us, and look at you. No civilized white
woman is up to this. You will fall ill. Something
untoward may happen to you at any time.
Unless--"
"Yes?"
"Unless you were to avail yourself of the sanctuary of
this command post. I offer you my hospitality for the
rest of our journey."
She did not know how to react. All she could
think of was flight.
"I do realize," he continued, "that in the world
we left behind this would be a shocking proposition.
But we are on the prairie now, the world we left
behind is as remote as the moon. So, please:
avail yourself of the civilized amenities of my
quarters."
When she did not reply, he raised his glass
to her and emptied it. She saw his Adam's
apple move under the red fur on his throat as he
drank. His brazen maleness filled her with
terror. She rose. "Good night, Ebenezer
Stewart." She sounded self-possessed, but as
she swept off the porch she tripped on one of the
steps and nearly fell on her face. Dropping
all pretence, she ran toward the shelter as fast
as she could. She saw Mordecai Monk sitting
under the awning, suddenly a beacon of security.
"Thank God," she thought, "thank God for
that man! What would I do without him to protect
me? I would be lost in a nightmare ..."
In the far distance sounded the
grief-stricken howl of the first coyote of the night.
"Thank God!" he said as she appeared beside
him.
"Thank God for what? Thee hasn't finished
thy food."
"I was afraid," he said.
"Thee? Afraid? Don't be silly. Give
me thy jacket, I'll make up thy pillow."
"I thought thee was asking him--"
"Asking who?"
"To be taken home ..." he said, tears in his
eyes. It was a bit much, all the same. She
had forgotten what a showman he was.
"I would never do that without telling thee first," she
said.
"But thee might?"
"Mordecai," she said firmly, "if thee
does not stop this, I have half a mind to tell him
to take thee home. I trust God had a
purpose when He sent thee here; but occasionally a
person cannot help wondering what in the world it might
be."
"I know," he said, hanging his head in
exaggerated shame; he should go home and join a
traveling theater.
"It is time we both faced facts," she said.
"Here." She put down his pillow. "Lie
down."
He obeyed.
"What facts?" he asked almost eagerly, as
if expecting a bedtime story. Saraetta had
been right: in their hearts all men were seven years
old.
"The fact is that neither thee nor I have the
faintest idea why God sent us here. That is,
if we really, honestly believe He did."
He did not respond, he seemed unhappy
with the turn of the conversation. He would have preferred
Little Red Riding Hood.
"One of these days," she said firmly, "thee and
I will discover what He had in mind, and we had
better be prepared for a surprise. It may be
totally different from what we had in mind. Is
thee following what I'm saying?"
"Let's have meeting," he pleaded, eyes already
closed. An astute move. He was, on
reflection, an extraordinarily nimble man.
She wondered who he would ultimately turn out
to be, for eventually their true selves were bound
to be revealed. Not something to look forward
to.
"I am serious," she said. "Neither thee nor
I are what we have appeared to be for most of our
lives."
This was his cue to say "Speak for thyself," but
he had closed his eyes and folded his hands.
"We must stop fooling ourselves," she persisted.
"I was deeply affected by the Indians when I
first saw them, but it never occurred to me, not in my
wildest dreams, that I would throw in my lot with
them. So, why did I do it?"
"Thee was moved by me in my affliction," he
said, eyes closed, hands folded.
"Don't preach to me, Mordecai," she said
coldly, "and above all, don't preach to thyself.
Whatever anyone else may think, both thee and I
know that we find ourselves here because we were not
intelligent enough to get out while the getting was good."
"God may need us," he intoned.
"Well, good luck to Him. Maybe He is
just stuck with us, after the way we blundered into this
situation. What are we going to do, Mordecai?
What earthly use are we to them? We don't
speak their language, we--"
"That reminds me," he said, opening his eyes.
"Of what?"
"I found something among the clothing and
toiletries they sent me." He sat up.
"Where is my valise?"
She stopped herself from saying, "Get it thyself,
thee lazy slug," went to fetch it from the wagon,
and dropped it by his side.
He rummaged among the contents and came up
with a dog-eared sheaf of papers. "Here," he said.
"Have a look at this."
"What is it?"
"A dictionary of the Mahanoy language--
well, more like a list of words. Made up by a
Friend. Someone at the school put it in my
suitcase."
"Why didn't thee show me this before?"
"Look at it," he said. "Take it to bed with
thee."
She did. Snuggled down inside her
blanket, she looked at it in the faint light
of the dying day: twenty handwritten pages,
crudely sewn into an exercise book. Heaven
knows what the name of the Friend was who had composed this
list of words; one thing was obvious: he must be
dead. The list had to be at least a
hundred years old, maybe more.
"M'mitzi: I eat. M'g@auwi: I
drink. M'wachpacheli: I awake.
M'menne: I think." Just go ahead and try
to pronounce that--
Behind her the grass rustled. She lowered the
pamphlet.
Rustle. Rutsch.
In the distance a second coyote joined the first.
The grass had fallen silent.
"God," she thought. "Oh, God, have
mercy on us."

"Not intelligent enough to get out while the getting
was good." What a fascinating thought! She was,
really, quite an original, not the standard Quaker
maiden of past dreams.
But was she right? Should they have got out while the
getting was good? And if so, why hadn't they?
The stars were brighter than he had ever seen them in
England. The Milky Way was a white smear
across the sky. Never before had he felt so close
to nature, so overwhelmed by sheer space. Gazing
at the stars made him feel close to all
creatures huddled together on this one small
planet, in the immeasurable space that was God.
Under the world-large arc of the Milky Way it was
ludicrous to think that the Creator of this vastness could
be presumed to have any part at all in their finding
themselves here. They were here because they had not been
intelligent enough to get out while the getting was good.
If that were so, what was there left in the way of
hope, trust, faith in a heaven-ordained
destiny? How tiny they were. How evanescent.
As he lay there, staring, he became aware of a
soft animal sound, small and harmless in the
vastness. It took a while before he realized it was
her, snoring.
For a reason beyond comprehension it made him feel
furious with God. Look at her! Look at
her, Thou man-eating, star-squandering monster! There
she lies, with her courage, her fear, her
loneliness, her hunger for love, snoring in Thy
universe! Hear her! LOVE her, damn Thee!
No response came from the stars. And no
wonder.
CHAPTER 13
THE PRAIRIE
October 1833

The hornets came a week later, as camp
was being made. They descended in hungry swarms,
stinging like sparks from a fire, lusting for blood.
Everywhere Indians were slapping their faces, arms,
necks; dogs spun round and round, snapping, then
tried to flee with their tails between their legs.
Horses, exhausted and footsore as they might
be, burst from the corral and galloped through the
crowd, whinnying and kicking.
Mordecai was fighting off the vicious insects
when he heard a thunder of hooves storming past,
and a piercing scream.
A child had been hurt by one of the horses. Without
thinking, he ran toward it. It was a terrified little
Indian boy holding his leg, screaming,
screaming. Mordecai tried to calm him down, but
the child shrank away from his touch and tried to crawl out
of his reach. Still, he managed to grab hold of him
and take a look at the leg. There was no wound,
no fracture, yet the little boy went on
shrieking, holding it.
On impulse, Mordecai started to make the
passes with his hands that Nanny Maple used
to make when he had hurt himself as a child. It was a
silly pretence, more like a game; even as a child he
had realized it was Nanny Maple's own
invention. But for some reason it had worked, at the
time.
The assault of the hornets had abated; the little
boy calmed down as Mordecai stroked the leg
with both hands, without actually touching the skin, in
long slow passes; after each pass he shook his
hands to throw away the pain. He remembered the
accompanying rhyme. Nanny Maple had
probably made it up herself:

Hoopla! Hopla! Feel how it mends?
Stroke--and stroke--and shake your hands.
Froggy, piggy, baby bull,
Grab the pain and pull, and pull.
Hopla! Hoopla! There it goes!
Little boy back on his toes!

When the little boy scrambled to his feet and ran
off, Mordecai became aware that a small
crowd had gathered, watching the proceedings. He
gave them a wave, said, "Hello!
That's what my nanny used to do. Have a good day
now," and returned to the shelter. There was Lydia,
staring at him with what looked like awe.
"That was the first time!" she said.
"First time what?"
"The first time they actually looked at thee!"
"Ah?" he turned around, but the crowd had
dispersed. "Well, they could hardly do otherwise,
could they? Luckily the boy wasn't really
hurt. Just a fright, I presume."
"What was that magic rhyme?" she asked.
"No magic, just something I remembered from my
childhood. If there was any blood, Nanny
Maple had another one, something about a toad.
"Hop and skip and grab a toad, chase the
pain out of the road." "Out of the road" is
Yorkshire. Thee would say "out of the way.""
She seemed to want to ask more, but the line of
squaws was forming in front of the chuck wagon; she
hurried off with her pot to be among the first.
They had their meal. The meat was on the tough
side, and it had a faint odor he was not keen
to inquire about. He was lying on his back, gazing
at the first star in the deepening blue, when he heard
her say in a tone of warning, "Mordecai!"
"Huh?" He rose on his elbows.
She pointed, discreetly, at something behind him.
He heaved himself into a sitting position and saw
that a new crowd had gathered a few yards away,
a row of staring Indians, gathered for some ominous
purpose.
"Good evening," he said with a smile, wondering
what was going on.
An old squaw slowly advanced on him,
cautiously, as if approaching a fire. She
kneeled and stared at him with black expressionless
eyes. He was uncomfortable; he had no idea
what she wanted. He was about to ask when she
slowly raised a hand and tapped on her forehead.
"I do agree," he said heartily. "Sorry
about that. Anyone outside the family who heard
Nanny Maple chant her incantation must have thought
she was barmy. At least the boy managed to run
afterward."
Her face expressionless, her eyes those of a
different species, the old woman tapped her
forehead again.
"I am sorry," he repeated. He did not
know what else to say.
Another squaw, a younger one,
detached herself from the crowd and approached slowly,
warily, until she stood behind the old one, who was
still on her knees. The young one rocked her head with
both hands, as if in a demonstration, and rolled
her eyes, uttering moans. Mad? Madness? Was
the old woman insane?
"I think she means the old lady has a
headache," Lydia whispered behind him.
"So?"
"Maybe they want thee to--to do something about
it."
"Me?"
"Whatever thee did for the little boy ..."
He gazed at the old woman in disbelief.
She just sat there on her knees, staring at him,
her face a mask. The young one made a stroking
gesture in the air with both hands and then shook them.
It was an important moment. For the first time the
Indians had made contact. Now they were
expecting something of him. He could not repeat the
silly rhyme while stroking the old woman's
head. It was something for children, not for grown-ups.
"Recite from the Bible ..." Lydia whispered
over his shoulder.
"Think I should give her the King's Touch?"
he asked.
"What's that?"
"English kings used to, once a year, as the
sick passed in front of them."
"Do what?"
"Touch them and say, "I touch thee, may the
Lord cure thee.""
"Do it!" she urged. "Touch her ..."
But he decided not to. "Dutch King
William the Third of England refused to do it,
he thought it was superstition. So he touched his first
patient's head and said, "I touch thee, may the
good Lord give thee more sense.""
Something stopped him from laughing, something in the
face of the young woman: a desperate plea.
"Must be her mother," Lydia whispered.
Her mother. If someone had been present when his
mother lay in pain, and had laughed ...?
Out of sympathy, not expecting it to have any
effect, he reached out, touched the old woman's
hair, recited the poem again, making the passes,
throwing away the pain by shaking his hands, the way he
had done for the little boy. As he did so, something
extraordinary happened. He felt, coming from the
small crowd that was watching, the same
power that had come to him from those halls full of people in
the past. The power was there, he felt it surge through
him, so strong that it made him quake. He felt
a sermon coming on, but the power would have to stand by itself.
"God," he prayed, "have mercy on the soul
of Basil Goodlove."
Now what on earth made him pray that? The
power drained away; he awoke as from a spell.
Something had been given to him and all he had known
to do with it was to speak a prayer for the soul of his evil
father. He took the hand of the old woman in his.
It felt like a dead object, but he kissed it.
Just as a gesture; it made no sense. "Thank
thee," he said.
The old woman looked at him. There was now
something in her eyes that had not been there before. A
question? Amazement? Her face slowly changed. It
was alarming; with all those wrinkles it looked as if
a clay pot were slowly disintegrating in front of
his eyes. Then he understood it was a smile. She
rose with a surprisingly young movement, turned
to her daughter, and said something. The daughter stared
at him with a look of awe, then put her arm around
her mother's shoulders and led her away. The crowd
moved aside to let them pass. Then they turned
away and left. He saw they were all women.
"Well," he said, "how about that?"
Lydia looked at him with an expression he
could not interpret.
"As I remember it," he said, "each time,
after the King's Touch, the monarch had to wash his
hands."
Without a word, she picked up the pot and went
to fetch the water.

Lydia had no idea why, but after the first
impact she reacted to this development with anger.
She was filling the pot from the spigot of the water
wagon when she decided to have it out with him. She
went back to their shelter, prepared for the showdown.
Mordecai lay yawning on his litter,
knees pulled up, hat over his eyes, not a
suitable posture for a man who had just been
granted the power of healing.
"Here," she said, putting down the bowl. "Wash
thy hands. Then we must talk."
"What about, dear heart?" he asked, yawning.
"What is thee going to do if they bring in more people?
Has thee any idea what thee is playing with? This
is not a sideshow!"
"Hey," he said, and lifted his hat to look
at her. "What brought this on?"
"Thee has been given the gift of healing," she
said, hearing herself how shrill her voice had
become, "and thee treats it as if it were some
childish magic!"
He looked bewildered.
"It is a gift from God! But I did not for a
moment have the impression that thee was involved in a
religious ceremony. All I heard thee say
was "Good, love"; and then thee kissed her hand."
"I don't get this," he said, sitting up.
"What exactly is thee trying to say?"
"It was terribly important! The first time the
Indians sought contact with us! The first time they
acted as if they were seeing us! Where was thy
prayer? Was this a laying-on of hands in the name of
Christ?"
He thought it over, head bent, then he looked
up and said, calmly, "Lydia, it is none of
thy damn business."
She gasped. "That's right," she said, "throw in
a couple of blasphemies! Does thee not
realize what is happening? If they come back,
and thee gives another performance like that one, thee will not
become their Christian healer but a medicine man!
A magician, washing his hands like a monarch! And
I will find myself reduced to the role of a
magician's moll!"
It made him laugh uproariously. She
turned away and strode off, leaving him
hee-hawing like an ass.
Alone in the dusk, at the edge of the encampment,
she stifled a scream of anger and exasperation.
Dear God, what was happening to her? The image
she had built up of herself was crumbling: the
strong-willed, calmly determined frontier
woman cheerfully caring for a lazy, infantile
man who depended on her for everything. She was
returned once more to the truth of her condition: a
pampered creature plagued by constipation, scratching
her armpits, her hair a tangled mess, her
second pair of shoes in shreds, beset by terror
of a man with a squint called Two-tone Boots.
Tears began to flow. The pampered creature was
crying because the malingerer she had relied on to sustain
her self-image had shaken off the spell and
acquired power of his own.
Nonsense! He was still the same old
Mordecai Monk, posturer,
blatherer, stricken with the fantasy that he was now a
healer, not as representative of Christ, as the
apostles had thought of themselves, but like a snake-oil
salesman using a nursery rhyme for a magic
formula. That little boy had obviously suffered a
fright, easy to take away with some mumbo jumbo
and sleight of hand. The old woman's headache
had not been a headache at all, she had just
wanted consolation, encouragement.
"Stop it!" she cried aloud.
What was she doing? Was she so weak that she saw
no means of restoring her sense of superiority
other than by slandering the man? Diminishing what he
had done, calling it humbug? He had broken the
ice, the Indians had at last looked them
straight in the eye. Now she should move,
corral the children and form them into classes. Where was
her faith, her inner strength, her belief that,
maybe, she might come to know Christ by doing His
work? Some work!
At the bottom of it was the fear. Twelve
days now without a bowel movement. She scarcely
dared eat any more. She had begun to feel sick.
A person could not go for this long without falling ill.
Unless she managed tonight, at the latest tomorrow, she
would be in real trouble. She should force herself, now, this
minute. Disappear in the grass ... But even as
she stood there, tarrying, she heard him. Crack-
le. Rutsch! Two-tone Boots was peeping.
She ran back to the shelter. To Mordecai.
Maybe Mordecai could put his hands on her
stomach. "Hopla, hoopla--"'
She found him lying on his back, knees still
drawn up, hat over his eyes, and felt the
crazy urge to give him a kick. Choked with
emotion, she kneeled in the darkness, and prayed
to God for guidance, like all those women who had
gone before, in whose lives her faith was founded.

The next morning, just before setting out, another
patient was brought to the white medicine man for
consultation. Another old woman, on a litter
this time, exhausted and confused by the dramatic
change in her life. She was revived,
probably temporarily, by the now self-assured
Mordecai, who was loving it all. After the
trumpet had already blared its command to depart, a child
was brought to him by its mother. It was a spindly little
girl with a boil in her armpit. She was given
Nanny Maple's "hoopla"
treatment and sent back to the fold. At least,
Lydia concluded, the Indians now fully
acknowledged their existence.
Alas, as it turned out, only his. To the
squaws, she remained invisible. She dutifully
provided water for the circus magician to wash his
hands in, but was not even granted the humble status
of the girl sawed in half. To them, she remained the
insubstantial ghost she had been all along, the
limping, stringy-haired ghost of the former Lydia
whom everybody had loved so much.
Her constipation became an obsession. As she
stumbled along with the herd that day, visions of death
haunted her, agonizing death, poisoned by her own
intestine. Would she be buried, or tossed, like the
Indian dead, in the tall grass by the drovers,
for the buzzards to feast on? And her soul, where would that
go? Floating overhead with the buzzards? Or would it
sprout wings like a chrysalis and wing through the dark
valley of death to where the saints were? How would
they receive her? What would Margaret and Gulielma
have to say to the scolding harridan who turned up
expecting a welcome? Oh, what childish,
degrading nonsense! "God, dear God--what
is to become of me?"' Self-pity turned out
to be of no help either. If only something would
happen!
If that had been a prayer, it was answered
promptly. After the column had climbed another
rise that seemed to go on forever, she caught the first
glimpse of other human beings on the prairie.
On top of the next ridge, sharply silhouetted
against the sky, a row of motionless horsemen was
ranged, observing them for a while before disappearing.
That evening, when they were making camp, a party of
strange Indians on horseback emerged from the
prairie, different from the Mahanoy, naked and
wild, with feather headdresses. They dragged two
dead buffalo into the bivouac. Ululating squaws
threw themselves onto the beasts and started to stab and
hack away at them, each trying to tear off a
piece of the best meat. The drovers turned up with
their whips to force them away from the carcasses, one
of which was dragged across the clearing to the cooking fire,
the other somewhere else. Then the screaming assault
of the squaws resumed.
Lydia could not bring herself to join in. Only
after everyone else was through hacking and tearing did she
approach the bared skeleton. Nearly all the
meat was gone, dogs were tearing and gnawing
at the bones. She spotted some left near the
hump of the skeleton, too high for the dogs
to reach; but a rangy one with a patch around one eye,
with whom she had had a run-in before, was waiting for
her. As she stood with a blood-dripping hunk in
her hand, she was prepared for his attack; and when it
came, she dealt him a ringing blow with her cooking
pot. The yelp attracted the attention of the
squaws around the fire, but they turned away at
once when they saw who it was.
"Damn them!" she thought. "Damn!
Damn!" She strode toward the fire, elbowed
her way between the chief's wife and another
hellion; their body odor was stronger than the
stench of frying fat and smoke. But she should probably take herself down a peg, her
fragrance must outstrip theirs by now.
While cooking the meat, she looked at the
women around the fire. Her arrival had stopped
their conversation; they could not have clammed up more
thoroughly if she had been Two-tone Boots
himself.
Suddenly she decided she had had enough. She
put the pot down to reserve her place and ran
to the shelter. Mordecai was lying on his back
again, hands behind his head, hat over his eyes; when
he heard her unroll her pack to take out the
dictionary, he lifted his hat and smiled, thinking
she had come to feed him. She leafed through the
dictionary. Constipation was not listed. She felt
her eyes fill with tears again as she flicked the
pages; then, under H, she found the word
Pusil. "Help (help me):
Pusil." That would do! She walked away;
Mordecai called after her, "Where is thee
going?"
The pot was still there. She squeezed between the two
smelly women again, turned to the chief's wife
on her left, and said, "Pusil!"
The woman went on staring stolidly at the
fire.
"Pusil!" she repeated. "Pusil!
Pusil! Pusil!" and she shook her by the arm.
The touch of the soft feminine flesh became her
undoing. She burst into sobs.
She sat there, bawling like a child, unable to stop.
Then someone touched her shoulder.
For a moment she thought it was the captain coming to her
rescue. She looked up and saw it was the
chief's wife. All the other women were
staring stolidly into the fire; the chief's wife was
not looking at her either, but it was her hand on her
shoulder, a motherly hand.
"Pusil," she said, trying to master her
tears. "Constipation. Stomach cramp."
The hand was taken away, leaving such feeling of
abandonment that she grabbed it and put it on her
abdomen. "Ouch!" she cried. "Ouch!
Pusil!"
The woman slowly turned her head and looked
at her; the black eyes were as expressionless as
pebbles.
"Help me!" she cried. "Pusil!
Pusil! Please! I am in pain!"
At last, the stony face relented. The
woman frowned, trying to understand.
She let go of the woman's hand to make a
bulging gesture in front of her belly.
The woman smiled.
She thought she was pregnant! The other squaws
had turned their heads now too and stared at her,
fascinated.
"No, no, not pregnant! Ouch!" She must
make them understand, but how? Sign language!
She pressed her hands on her stomach, wailing
"Ouch!" She made the gesture of pregnancy
and vigorously shook her head. "No, not
pregnant! No papoose!" She tried
to think of a gesture that would express intestinal
blockage; all she could come up with was one fist
above the other, like wringing out a dishcloth. They
remained fascinated, but uncomprehending. The
face of the chief's wife now expressed concern,
but no understanding.
She pointed at the pot with meat, mimed taking
a bite of it, chewing, swallowing, following the
food down to her stomach, into her belly; then she
clenched her fists, wrung out the imaginary
dishcloth again, and cried, "Ouch!" Surely now
they would understand.
They did not. But now she had got this far, she
might as well see it through. She squatted on
her heels, lifted her skirts, proceeded
to act out as explicitly as she could an effort
to relieve herself, then cried, startled,
"Two-tone!" and jumped, to evoke the drover who
had flushed her time after time. She ended with the
desperate cry, "Pusil! Pusil,
please!"
The chief's wife talked to the others.
They all started talking at the same time;
Lydia looked anxiously from face to face,
trying to understand what they were saying. Then one of them
pointed at the sky, at the circling buzzards
waiting for the dogs to abandon the carcass. The
squaws all looked up, and shrieked with
laughter.
Her hopes were dashed. She was about to pick up
her pot and leave before she burst into tears again when
the chief's wife took her by the hand and pointed.
At what? A person? A place?
"Teepee," the woman said. Her husband's
teepee? She proceeded to pull Lydia to her
feet.
They walked toward the chief's teepee through a
crowd of staring Indian men, who, she now
realized, had been watching her embarrassing
performance from the start. The woman stooped through the
bead curtain, leaving it swinging. Lydia waited,
expecting her to come back; but a hand appeared through
the beads and beckoned her.
The inside of the teepee was dark; the stuffiness was
stifling. She heard the woman speaking rapidly,
but when her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw that
they were alone. The woman took her to a stack of
hides and made her lie down. The soft, springy
mattress gave her a sense of luxury; she
yearned to stretch out on it. The woman, chattering
all the time, offered her a beaker. Lydia sniffed
at the liquid, it smelled foul. Rotting
leaves? The woman made a drinking gesture,
rubbed her stomach, screwed up her face,
cried, "Ow!" and then, with a gesture that could not be
misinterpreted, "Poof! Ahh!" It was a
laxative.
She was reluctant to take it. If it worked,
it would make her the helpless prey of Two-tone
Boots. She stared at the woman, who smiled,
shook her head, and pointed at the sky. Heaven
knew what that meant, but she had to trust somebody.
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes,
pinched her nose, and swallowed the evil liquid.
It tasted better than it smelled: a strange,
nutty flavor.
She handed back the empty beaker; for some
reason the woman heaved a sigh of relief. When
she went to get up, the woman held her down.
"Ono, ono! Kakiwale aneeko!"
Presumably it meant, among other things,
"Wait for it to work." Lydia
relaxed and sank back onto the hides. The
woman kneeled at her feet and began
to unbutton her tattered boots.
"No, please! If I take those off I'll
never be able to put them back on again!"
The woman held up a pair of moccasins,
invited her to feel them. They were soft, made of
supple deerskin, they felt like sheer luxury.
The woman finished taking off the boots and started
to massage her feet. It was pure heaven. She
was beginning to relax when the doorway darkened. The
chief! Only after she had half risen did she
see it was the woman who had been sitting on the
other side of her, pointing at the sky, hooting with
laughter. The woman kneeled beside the chief's
wife, unrolled a bundle of cloth she had
brought with her, and held up the contents for Lydia
to see: a squaw's skirt, a blouse made of
deerskin decorated with beads, a headband. They
pulled her to her feet and took off her dress.
Then her petticoat and camisole. Then her
drawers. Now everything had come to an end, she had
never shown herself naked before, not since she was a child,
not even to Saraetta.
The chief's wife poured oil on her chest,
dollops of it, and started to smear it out on her
naked skin. It felt lovely but stank the
place up. She now realized that their smell was not
body odor but this Indian lotion. She was
obviously supposed to love it, so she said,
"H'm ... h'm. Nice! Lovely!" closing
her eyes to demonstrate her delight.
Now that they had brought her this far, they proceeded
to give her the full treatment. The chief's wife
produced another bottle and doused her hair with
its contents. The liquid stung her scalp: they
must have known she had lice. It was Indian hunting
water, bless them.
The sensuous feeling of having her scalp
massaged made her drowsy. There she lay, stark
naked, in an Indian teepee, worked over by two
grunting women, pervaded by a sense of peace and
well-being. They rolled her over, oiled her
back, kneaded and massaged the muscles of her
shoulders, her spine, her buttocks, her thighs,
her calves. Finally, as limp as a rag doll,
she was pulled upright into a sitting position. They
braided her hair, put on the headband, the
moccasins; she had to put on the clothes herself.
Despite the fact that they were made of
leather they felt warm and comfortable. She wanted
to hug the two women, then bawl on their shoulders.
But she was too limp, too groggy; they had
drawn all tension, tiredness, and terror from her
body and her mind. "Thank you," she whispered.
"Thank you, thank you." She fell asleep.
She was awakened by the first warning twinge in her
insides. Women's voices sounded outside.
She was pulled to her feet again, the women pushed
her out through the bead curtain; she emerged in a
blinding sunset. The first person she
recognized, after blinking in the sun, was
Two-tone Boots on horseback, staring at
her, mouth open, tobacco juice dribbling down his
chin. Then his attention was diverted by the distant
squealing of women.
All the squaws were rushing toward some
spectacle near the buffalo carcass. They
ululated, clapped their hands, advancing and
retreating in what looked like a tribal dance. A
huge bird was lying on the ground, helplessly
flapping its wings. She wondered what on earth
they were doing; suddenly, she doubled up in a
violent spasm.
The chief's wife was by her side in a flash,
took her arm. The distant cheering and stamping
increased in volume; Two-tone swung his
horse around and cantered off to investigate. With
her arm around Lydia's shoulders, the chief's
wife took her into the tall grass, deeper than
she had ever dared venture alone; then, after a pat
on the back, as if encouraging a child, the woman
vanished from sight.
What followed was plain torture. It felt
as if her body was being torn apart. The pain was
such that she finally had to cry out in agony, but no
pain could dim the relief she felt. When it was
all over, she must have passed out, for she came
to, lying on her back in a man-high basket
of grass, looking up at the sky. A huge
buzzard wheeled into view. Its wings were trailing
colored streamers fluttering in the wind, like a
living kite. Then the bird soared out of sight.
In the distance she heard the cheering of women.

After Lydia had been gone for over an hour,
Mordecai became worried. What could have
happened to her? And to his dinner? Then he heard
women cheering and applauding in the distance. They were
flying a kite which, he realized after a
few moments, was a bird decorated with streamers.
Had Lydia been caught up in whatever was going
on there? A young squaw turned up with an armful
of twigs--not another patient! He must get it
through to them somehow not to turn up at suppertime. Rather
touchingly, she built a fire for him with kindling,
lit it, and said, "Sorry I'm late. I was
held up by the kite-flying."
It was Lydia! Dressed as a Mahanoy
squaw! What in the world--
She started to rummage among the contents of her
backpack. "I'm afraid a dog got hold
of our meat while I was gone. It will have to be
biscuits tonight." She brought out the Mahanoy
dictionary again and started to flick through its pages in
the firelight.
"What happened?" he asked. "Why is thee
dressed like that?"
"A long story," she said, then she seemed
to find the word she was looking for. "How about that! In
the English-Mahanoy half of this thing it says that
pusil means "help me"; in the
Mahanoy-English half it says, "Embark!
All aboard!" No wonder they thought I was
raving mad. I was crying for help, but in fact
yelling, "All aboard!""
She tossed the dictionary into the fire.
"Lydia!" he cried. "What is thee doing?
We needed that!"
"We need it like the pox," she said.
Her transformation disturbed him. Her face in
the firelight was that of a half-breed; she suddenly
was no longer an alien among the Indians but one
of them. Her eyes seemed to have become lighter in
color now that her skin had become darker,
burnished by the sun and the wind.
"That dictionary was our only link with the
Indians! How are we going to communicate without
it?"
"By listening to them," she said, poking the fire.
"By pointing at things and asking. They have accepted
me now. Tomorrow I'll start rounding up the children. Now
that I look like their mothers, instead of a witch on a
broomstick, maybe they'll let themselves be
caught."
"But what happened?"
"As thee can see, they turned me into a
squaw."
"Who did?"
She turned away to put some more wood
on the fire; he now saw that her hair had been
braided, Indian fashion. Then she said, "I
think we're in real trouble."
"It certainly looks like it."
"We are in the process of losing our
identity. What does thee think happens to two
drops of water falling in a lake? I have been
accepted by the women, they dressed me up, they were
very kind to me, they made me one of them. Thee is
going through a different process, but in the end the
result will be the same. In the end we'll
disappear. Not die: simply disappear, like the
drops of water."
"Lydia, tell me what happened."
To his amazement her eyes filled with tears.
"I'm afraid," she said.
He was tempted to take her hand; for this tower of
strength to be afraid of disappearing was rather touching.
"I think I understand thy distress," he said, "but
I think also that, as long as we stay together, our
losing our identity seems unlikely."
She shook her head, and stared grimly at the
fire. "I am not strong enough, Mordecai,
neither is thee, to handle this, other than in the power of the
Lord. But did the Lord burden us with a concern?
Did He tell us: All I have is thee? We
may tell ourselves so, but did He really? I, for
one, was at the end of my tether. I had lost my
job. I was about to be read out of Meeting. The
man I cared for married someone else. For me
to say that I joined this convoy in the power of the Lord
would be a lie. And we must no longer deal in
lies, Mordecai, or we'll be lost. I'm
not going to say this again, it's difficult enough as it
is, but I am not in the power of the Lord,
Mordecai. I am not embodying Him. I am
a thirty-year-old spinster without a job who lost
her man and fled among the Indians." She
picked up a stick, but instead of poking the fire
she stared at the flames, dejected.
He did not know what to say to her, other than
"I am not in the power of the Lord either, Lydia. But
if whatever power I do possess can be used to heal
people, to give them heart, I want to do it. It may
not even be my power, but their own."
"Whose?"
"The Indians'. Those who are there when I do
it. In the past, when I first started to minister, I
soon found out that the power with which I seduced them
came from the audience itself. Maybe it's
the same with my healing."
She said nothing. The coyotes wailed in the
distance. Among the sleeping Indians a dog
answered with a long, drawn-out howl.
Then she said, "Please, let's have meeting.
Or try to."
He bent his head, folded his hands, and centered
down. Or tried to. It was not easy. Then he
became aware of a different power. Maybe
"power" was not the word--a different vibration.
No, that was not right either. A strange, yet
familiar feeling of inner security that had nothing
to do with God, but with the earth, the sleeping Indians,
the coyotes on the horizon. An inner
security that needed no words, but simply was.
Only it had nothing to do with Mordecai Monk the
English merchant, or with his real achievement:
Heavenly Smiles. It had to do with--nature?
It was bewildering. Maybe Lydia was right,
maybe they were losing their identity and on the way
to becoming Indians. Maybe it was their ancient,
mystical civilization claiming him as its
instrument. For the power was his, and not his. Theirs,
not theirs.
Could it be God, after all?

That night, the moment he had fallen asleep,
or so it seemed, Mordecai was running down a
narrow street with a woman--Lydia? Liza?--
holding a crying baby in his arms. They were running
for their lives, in utter terror; behind them flames
roared, buildings crumbled, burning timbers
came crashing down. It could not be! It could not be
the end! His whole life was still ahead of him! With a
shattering explosion, the world erupted in flames.
He tried to hold on to the baby as he reached for the
hand of the woman, but she turned out to be a man,
screaming, "Mah@onink! Mah@onink!"
Mah@onink? He woke, still terrified,
confused, and looked about him. The real world was
dreamlike too: stark white in the light of the
dawn, everything covered with hoarfrost. The tall
grass, the sleeping Indians, his blanket.
"Mah@onink!" the voice urged.
"Mah@onink!"
He turned and saw the silhouette of an
Indian against the sky. "What's the matter?"
"Man! Old man! Him die! Quick!"
He recognized the chief. The man had never
looked at him before, as that would have lessened
his prestige among the tribe, who were not a tribe
but five hundred Indians cut away at random
by the cavalry. Probably not a real chief either,
more likely just a male picked by the captain because
he knew some English.
"Excuse me--what was it thee said?"
"Man," the chief repeated, "old man. Him
die. Old man ask for medicine. Up! Old
man. Quick!"
Mordecai threw off his blanket and rose.
Lydia's still form, covered with hoarfrost, lay with
her back to him. He found his coat; half of it
was white, like a Pierrot's costume. Still
groggy, he put it on. He combed his hair with his
fingers and found it covered with hoarfrost too.
"All right," he said, "let's go."
He followed the chief, who weaved his way
among the white humps of the sleeping Indians,
occasionally stepping over one. He still could not shake
that dream. Whose baby had it been? What woman?
Was the disaster an earthquake? Had it been
Pompeii?
They reached a flatbed cart; on it lay a
body rolled in a blanket, white with frost.
A puppy dog that had taken to following him stood
up against the wheel in an effort to join him when he
climbed onto the cart.
In the misty light, the old Indian in the
blanket looked like a member of a different
species. His triangular face with its high
cheekbones was deeply wrinkled; a hooked nose
jutted out like a beak; the eyes were closed. Yet
he must have seen Mordecai, for a gnarled hand
reached out to him, but dropped with exhaustion.
"What does thee want me to do?" Mordecai
asked the chief.
"Him dying. Release him."
"Of what?"
"Free him. Set him free."
The old man's lips moved, he uttered some
guttural sounds. The hand reached for Mordecai
again.
"Him say: "Rain,"" the chief said.
""Children playing in rain.""
The slitted eyes opened and focused on
Mordecai. A startling grimace cracked the
surface of the ancient face. The clawlike hand
made a feint toward him with unnerving playfulness,
then he muttered something.
""Children play in rain,"" the chief
repeated.
The old man squealed eerily; his face,
despite the wrinkles and the crows'-feet, took
on a childlike glee.
"Little boys say: "Eee-eee."" the chief
explained.
"I see."
Mordecai did indeed begin to see: a clearing
in the forest, torrential rain, a pack of naked
little boys gamboling in puddles, chasing one
another, throwing mud. On impulse, he took
the gnarled hand, now waving erratically at the sky.
It felt alien, like an animal's paw. The
moment he got hold of it the old man gave a
hissing sigh, ending in a whistle.
Mordecai said, "Play, old friend. Play,
play, let it rain. Join the little boys.
Squeal. Throw mud."
The black slitted eyes gazed into his. The
cracked smile returned.
Staring at the old man, Mordecai saw the
naked little boys dance in the rain, screaming with
glee, rolling in the mud, ecstatically scared by the
thunder booming in the caverns of the forest. He
realized that the old man must be a Woods
Indian lost in the prairie, dreaming of his
childhood.
He stroked the alien hand. "Play ... play
in the rain ..."
"Eee-eee ..." the old Indian squealed.
"Eee ... eee ..."
The slitted eyes closed slowly, the smile
froze on the wrinkled face. The hand became
heavy; Mordecai gently put it on the man's
chest and was moved to say softly, "Free. Thee
is free now. Free ... free ..."
Squatting beside the body of the old man, he
went into worship. He had no idea whether his
reaction to the challenge had been pagan,
Christian, or Quakerly. Maybe
by identifying with the dying old Indian's last dream
of children playing in rain, he had managed
to relieve the man's loneliness, that was all.
He sat, eyes closed, hands folded,
until the bugle shattered the silence. The
Indians rose like the dead at the last trump.
A horse whinnied, answered by the braying of a
mule. He came to a decision. He looked up
and said to the chief, "Stop the convoy. We must
bury him first."
The chief gazed at him without expression.
"Tell them to wait," he repeated. "This man
must be buried."
"No stop," the chief said. "Cap'n never stop. Him--" he made a gesture of tossing
something away, and looked over his shoulder at the
rear of the column, where the captain and his soldiers
were taking up position. "Never stop," he said.
Mordecai was well aware of this, but his
decision was made. He rose and stared at the
captain in the far distance, now swinging into the saddle.
The first rays of the rising sun flashed in the gold
of his epaulettes. When the cart started to move,
he shouted, "Stop! In the name of God!
Stop!"
With a jolt the cart stopped. He lost his
balance but managed to stay upright. The convoy drew
slowly to a halt.
Drovers came riding down the column,
shouting, brandishing their whips. "Git! Git, ya
bastards! Git, git!"
The Indians did not budge. They stood staring
fixedly ahead, in silent defiance.
"Did you do this, you bastard?"
Mordecai looked up and saw it was the
squinting drover, glaring at him from his bit-chewing
horse.
"We must bury this man," he replied. "He
has just died. Go tell the captain."
"You goddamn old billy goat!" The
drover was about to lash out with his whip when suddenly,
four, six, ten Indians leaped at him with
chilling agility, dragged him off his horse,
yanked the whip out of his hand, and threw it in the
tall grass.
"Don't hurt him! Don't hurt him!" a
woman cried. It was Lydia; Mordecai had
not seen her coming. Her warning was not necessary; the
Indians gave the drover's horse a slap on
the rump that made it gallop riderless toward the
head of the column. Then they turned away and
vanished in the anonymity of their ranks.
The other drovers saw what had happened; they
made for the spot where their comrade had fallen. But
before they reached him, there was a rumble of hooves, a
shouted command. The red-bearded captain on his
horse loomed beside the cart. To the drovers, who
had come yodeling and shrieking to the aid of their
fallen comrade, he called, "Leave this to me!"
Grudgingly, they reined in their horses.
The captain gazed at Mordecai kneeling
by the side of the dead Indian. "Is this your doing,
Mr. Monk?"
"We must bury the dead," Mordecai
replied, feeling small. "He just died."
"We do not stop for burials," the captain said
calmly. "And please do not incite the Indians
to rebellion. I would have to shoot you." He said it
without animosity, simply as a statement of
fact.
Mordecai suddenly felt a powerless
nonentity, about to be overwhelmed. For the first time,
he experienced what it meant to be an Indian:
he responded instinctively with a rudimentary
hatred, a helpless fury. The fury and the hatred
made him do the first thing that came into his head: he
stabbed at the man above him with two fingers,
hissing, "Pestilence! Pus! Pus!
Pustules!" The motionless silence of the Indians
was so charged with hatred that he carried on, fueled
by their fury. "I curse thee! Curse!
Curse! Curse!"
"Well well," the captain said. "Quite a
conversion." Then he shouted, "Convoy, march!"
After a long moment, the huge mass of
Indians began to shuffle forward. Within minutes it
seemed as if the incident had never occurred; the
mule drawing the cart trotted ahead, the chief
had vanished among the ranks, the drovers rounded
up the loose horse, and the fallen Two-tone was
helped back into the saddle.
"How could thee?" Lydia asked aghast, walking
alongside the cart. "That was awful! What got
into thee?"
He did not respond. The cart lunged,
making the dead body slide. What had caused
him to do this vicious thing? The power, which for a brief
time had seemed to be godly, had been sullied
beyond redemption.
Two drovers dismounted, picked up the corpse
by its arms and legs, and tossed it into the grass by the
side of the trail. A brief rustle and it
disappeared from sight; but not from the buzzards'.

For Lydia, all was lost. Their mission, if
ever there had been one, had ended in violence. After
hissing that obscene curse at the captain, even
Mordecai himself could no longer pretend that they
embodied God's love. Whatever he had
embodied when he put the hex on
Captain Stewart, it certainly was not divine
love. She could only keep herself from despising
him by recognizing the naughty child. Nanny
Maple must have been familiar with the fat little boy
who yelled naughty words when thwarted in some
childish impulse. But this had been no childish
impulse. He had risen in fury at being
thwarted and had cursed the captain with spine-chilling
power. She could not shrug it off as a childish
prank. Lucifer was now his God, not Christ.
As she walked alongside the cart on which he still
sat, head in hands, she rued the depth of their
failure. She had finally been accepted by the
Indians, though not really. They tolerated her
skipping along with them, braids bobbing, occasionally
losing a moccasin, that was all. Mordecai had
appeared to do better with his voodoo, but had been
given the name Mah@onink, which he had mentioned
to her with the modest cough of the newly knighted,
assuming it meant "Great Healer" or
"Luminous Hands," or something like that. The
chief's wife, the only one with whom she
communicated verbally, had told her that it meant
"Deer Lick" because of the way he licked his
plate after finishing his meal. Well, "All
Aboard" was no crown of laurels either. All
Aboard and Deer Lick: the Indians clearly
considered them to be a couple of nuts who had
joined the convoy like the stray dogs they were unable
to shake, two harmless village idiots living in
cuckoo-land.
She had had illusions about teaching the children, but the
only ones who responded to her were the sopsus,
"the naked ones," children separated from their
families by the cavalry at the roundup. The
sopsus had got their name because they had not a thing
to call their own, not even clothes. About a dozen of
them now tagged along with her, she fed and tried
to clothe them. They, on their part, taught her the
language by naming the words for things she pointed out
or did. M'mitzi--I eat; Mg@auwi--
I drink; puff-puff-puff--I smoke; and,
with realistic retching and rolling of the eyes,
m'paisi--I am being sick. They had
nicknames which they had given themselves or one another:
Ilau, Great Warrior, and Lachpi, He
Who Runs Fast. One boy, with huge eyes
and a frail, almost girlish body, had a name he
clearly had not chosen himself, Tschol@entit,
Little Bird. He was a lost soul, but
shrank from her hand; when she reached out to him he ran
away.
The women who had been so kind to her, she now
suspected, had done so out of a sense of fun:
white squaw shouting "All aboard!" and asking
for help because she was constipated, what a hoot.
Massaging her, giving her a potion, and dressing
her up as one of themselves had all been part of a
joke, culminating in the decoration of the buzzard,
a way of cocking a snook at the drovers.
Afterward, they had turned their backs on her again;
she had the feeling she would become the focus of their
attention only if she were to provide the
opportunity for another practical joke. She
had heard that Indians made prisoner by another
tribe feared, most of all, being handed over to the
squaws for torture. She could well believe it
now. She and Mordecai should have introduced an
element of love and tenderness into this world of elementary
cruelty, but when Mordecai put a hex on the
captain by poking two fingers at him and hissing
"Pustules!" that chance was lost forever.
That evening, she was putting up their shelter when the
chief turned up with a handful of bloody entrails
from a buffalo carcass. He threw them at
Mordecai's feet and said, "Tomorrow."
Mordecai was perplexed; but Lydia knew
at once what this meant and her heart sank. The
chief wanted to turn him into a soothsayer as
well.
"Will I and wife live in new land and leave
to sons?" he asked.
Mordecai stared at the slimy offal at his
feet, then said, to her horror, "Thee and thy
wife will share the fate of us all." The chief
seemed satisfied and stepped aside; instantly,
his place was taken by a young squaw who hawked and
spat at Mordecai's feet. It startled
Lydia, even though she could identify with the
woman's sentiments.
The chief said, "Tell squaw tomorrow."
"From her spittle?" Mordecai asked. It
seemed too much even for him. He grimaced at
the phlegm in the dust, then said in a tone of
exasperation, "Tell her to beware of horses."
A sensible piece of advice; thank God, no
future-mongering. When someone else stepped forward
to take the squaw's place, Mordecai said
firmly, "No! No more! Enough! Finished!"
The chief translated it; the
Indians dispersed and left them alone.
"What in the name of God came over thee this
time?" she asked, her voice unmelodious.
"Oh, it means nothing," he said evasively.
"Nothing? Thee tells the future from entrails
and spittle and calls it "nothing"?"
"I said whatever came into my head, only to be
rid of them. Are we going to have any food tonight,
or what?"
"I have no words for this!"
"Dear heart," he said with infuriating
superiority, "when in Rome, do as the Romans
do. What they expect from me is what Roman
soldiers expected from their haruspex."
"Haruspex?" she cried. "Snake-oil
salesman!" She turned away.
He cried, "What about the meal?"
"Get it thyself!" she shouted. "Put a hex
on one of the squaws and let her fetch it for thee!"
The Indian orphans hanging around her were
fascinated. The one calling himself Great Warrior
called after her, "N'dellenowi, Pusil!"
That was all she needed: an urchin telling her she
was a "real man." As she walked away, on
the brink of tears, she realized they were lost. The
Indians had engulfed them, like the lake the two
drops of water.
Someone slyly slipped a hand in hers as she
walked over to the chuck wagon. She suppressed
a scream; it was Little Bird, naked as a stick.
What had the child done with the shirt she had stitched
together for him? "Where's thy shirt? Shirt una
hono i'agna?"
"Peewo!" he sang, skipping. He had
given it to a dog.
She let Little Bird carry the pot, to have a
hand free to scratch with. It occurred to her, as she
scratched and the child skipped along with the upturned
pot on his head, that Pissing Gulie would have
loved this. Margaret Fell might have frowned, and
Boniface Baker have sunk his teeth in her
neck to make her scream like the cheetah--if that
had indeed been his practice.
Rum lot, Quaker saints, she thought. The
salt of the earth, of which only a pinch is needed every
other generation. Thank God.
CHAPTER 14
PENDLE HILL, INDIANA
October 1833

Obadiah Woodhouse thought his wife had
discarded the harebrained notion of following Lydia
Best and Mordecai Monk into the wilderness, but
that morning she brought it up again.
It was First Day. They were dressing to go
to Quarterly Meeting and he was fumbling his way
up the row of minute eyelets on the back of her
dress. Suddenly she said, "I can't help it.
I find myself thinking about Lydia and Mordecai
all the time. Doesn't thee?"
"Can't say I do," he replied, with more
honesty than diplomacy; he was too busy
concentrating on the infernal little hooks.
"Not at all?" she asked, aghast. "Not even
once?"
"Of course!" he replied, irritably.
"More than once. Stand still!"
She obeyed, but her back expressed
disapproval. "Must thee breathe so
dramatically?" he asked. "Those hooks are
tight enough as it is without thy puffing thyself up with
indignation."
"I'm not indignant," she said. "I'm
disappointed, that's all."
"Why? Because I spend my time trying to make a
decent living for us, instead of meditating on
Lydia Best and Mordecai Monk? They are
minding their light, I am minding mine. Or trying
to, at least. Keep still."
There was a short, thoughtful silence, in which he
managed to hook her up as high as the collar.
Then she said, "I thought at one time that thee was in
love with her."
"Huh?"
"That's why I came. Because of what thee wrote
about her."
"When?"
"A captivating, courageous, and strikingly
handsome young woman. That's what thee wrote about
her, Obi."
"I did? Oh, well ..."
"Oh well what? Is thee now trying to tell
me that thee has not given a single thought to that
captivating, courageous, and strikingly handsome young
woman since she vanished in the wilderness?"
He sighed. He loved her, marriage had
worked out better than he could have dreamed,
but he would never get used to this feminine parlor
game of tricking a man into saying something and then
calling him to task for it. She was a ravishing,
passionate creature, she made him forget all
other women to the point where he even didn't care
whether Lydia Best would ever return. Yet--
"If I haven't given her a thought, it was because of
thee," he said and kissed the nape of her neck with
its curling tendrils of hair.
But the gallantry fizzled. She turned around
scornfully. "How like a man!"
"Hark, hark, the voice of experience," he
teased, trying to hide his exasperation by picking up
his boots.
"All right," she said. "I might as well
tell thee, here and now, that I have been weighing thy
argument in my mind and found it wanting."
He gazed at her, boots in hand. "What
argument, for God's sake?"
"I'll thank thee not to blaspheme in my
presence," she said. "If thee's going to behave like
that, I'm not going to discuss it with thee. I will
simply inform thee of my decision when the time is
ripe."
He suddenly felt the overwhelming desire
to give her a piece of his mind, but managed
to keep the violence out of his voice when he
replied, "Anything thee says, dear heart. It
would help if I knew what thee was talking about."
He sat down to pull on his boots, wishing they
could start this conversation all over. He hated
conflict, it always made him feel miserable and for
some reason sorry for himself.
"My idea of founding a school for Indian children
in unorganized territory is not harebrained,
it's the very way in which this school was founded.
Boniface Baker and Cleo Baker went first,
the way Lydia and Mordecai Monk are going.
They were followed by a wagon train full of young
Friends, and older ones with supplies and building
materials, and--"
"I know all that," he said tersely.
"Let me finish! Thy point was that I might
be--in a delicate condition, and that therefore our
going was untimely."
"Well?" He looked at her nonplussed,
his hands at his boot straps. Then a sudden thought
occurred to him. "Does thee mean to tell me
that--that--"
She frowned. "Don't be
ridiculous! We've only been married three
weeks! We'll have to wait at least--well--"
She stopped, obviously embarrassed, for he
saw her blush, which always made her look
delectable. This time it bewildered him a little. She
was so complicated, so mysterious, her reactions were
so unpredictable. Maybe she was pregnant;
he had heard that women in that condition always became
irritable and emotional. "I meant to say," she
continued, "that should it be the case, I would consider it
all the more reason for joining them."
"I beg thy pardon?"
"I would rather give my child an example than
security, if that security is bought with
cowardice. I want my child to be proud of its
parents, not ashamed--the way I am."
He looked at her, aghast. It was as if
suddenly, from within the childlike, tempestuous
creature he adored, a woman had emerged whom
he did not know at all, strong and distressingly
mature. He was overcome by a feeling of
betrayal. "Darling Charity," he said, with
judicious calm, "I think that is a lovely,
noble thought. And it leads me to believe, whatever
thee may tell me, that thee is with child. This whole
ridiculous argument is typical of a woman in
--in thy condition." He pulled on his other
boot, rose, and straightened his waistcoat.
"What exactly does thee mean, Obadiah
dear?" she asked sweetly. "That I am
unstable?"
"For heaven's sake!" He reached for his coat.
"Merely emotional." He put on his coat.
"Why is it," she asked, "that all our lives
we pay lip service to saints like Margaret
Fell and Gulie Woodhouse, and that the moment
someone wishes to follow their example we call
them "emotional"?"
"Don't be ridiculous!" He buttoned his
coat. "Thee is not following anybody's
example. Thee is suggesting that we remove
ourselves from civilization, all medical help, to go
and live on an Indian reservation. Sooner or
later thee will become pregnant, thee might as
well suggest having thy child on the moon. Our child!
I'm responsible for him too! I'm his father;
I'm not going to permit thee to put thyself and him in
jeopardy for whatever reason, I don't care if
it's a school or--or a three-ring circus!"
To his amazement she suddenly turned
back into the sensitive, delicate person he
knew and loved. "Oh, Obi ..." she cried in
the little girl's voice that signified surrender;
she rushed toward him, threw her arms around him, and
rested her head on his chest. "Forgive me,
forgive me, I know I'm impetuous, but I
must tell thee that they are terribly, terribly
much on my mind. I can't forget them, I can't!"
"I know, dearest, I know." He stroked her
hair, experienced enough now as a husband to do so
gingerly, for fear of mussing it before meeting. "I
understand. But we have to use our heads as well as our
hearts. Even if I were to accept thy argument about
where to have our child, thee has a certain
responsibility toward this school, in its
present state of disarray. Thee cannot walk out on
that responsibility on the harebrained pretext
of starting another school! I have an office in
town now, I can't walk out on that either. The first
thing people expect from a counselor at law is
stability."
She made no reply. It gave him a
feeling of relief; yet he felt a nagging
unease. "Come, dearest." He kissed her
hair. "We'll be late for worship."
"Oh, Obi ... where would I be without thee?"
She looked up at him with eyes full of love.
"Philadelphia," he said with a smile,
hoping she would not see the weariness in his eyes.

"Good evening," Captain Stewart said, rising
from the table. He patted his lips with a napkin.
"Kind of you to come, Mr. Monk. Won't you
sit down?" He indicated the empty chair; the
Negro servant pulled it out.
"Thank thee," Mordecai Monk said.
The table, the napkin, the tiny civilized world in
the heart of the wilderness seemed a hallucination.
An hour earlier they had halted near the
fire-scarred ruins of an abandoned farm, like
others they had passed; ageless ruins, remnants
of walls, broken wagons, vegetable plots
run to seed. This one had a windmill, starkly
outlined against the red horizon, which turned now and
then with a skeletal rattle in the evening breeze.
As Mordecai sat down he heard a whimper
and saw, level with the floor of the porch, the little
snout and pointed ears of the puppy that had attached
itself to him. "Ksht!" He tried to wave it away.
"Oh, let it be," the captain said,
"I don't mind."
"No, no," Mordecai said irritably.
"I want nothing to do with the animal. He's a
pest."
The captain smiled. "A little dog bothering a
powerful person like yourself?" The question carried a hint
of irony.
"He licks my face in the middle of the
night," he replied lamely. "Well, thee
sent for me?"
The captain, with a wince of discomfort, pulled the
napkin out of the collar of his tunic. "I want you
to have a look at this boil on my neck." He
unhooked his collar. "I have tried medicating it,
to no avail. I thought, as you may have put it there,
you might be able to take it away."
"I?" Mordecai was so amazed that he
momentarily lost his composure.
"That time I refused to stop the convoy for the
burial of the chief's father, and you put a curse
on me: "Pus and pustules.""
"His father?"
"Do you think the chief would have called on you for
any old man who happened to be dying?"
"I had no idea ..."
"Here, take a look." The captain stood
up, unbuttoned the rest of his tunic, and turned
around. His neck and the top of his shoulders were covered
with curly red hair, like fur; on the left side
of his neck was an angry abscess. It looked
revolting. "Sorry, Friend," Mordecai said.
"There is nothing I can do."
The captain showed the beginning of irritation.
"Are you saying you are prepared to act as a faith
healer for savages only?"
"If I'm able to do something for the Indians, on
occasion, it is by sheer suggestion."
"Your patient needs to believe in you before you can
cure him? Is that what you're saying? Well,
I do. Go ahead." He proffered the revolting
abscess again.
This might become unpleasant, Mordecai
decided. He was about to give the man the King's
Touch when it occurred to him that he should not pass up
this chance to bargain.
"I'll do what I can ... on condition that from
now on thee allow the Indians to bury their dead,
instead of having the drovers toss them into the
grass."
The captain stood quite still, for so long that
Mordecai thought he had not heard. Then he said,
"Very well, but only after bivouac has been
made. I cannot stop the convoy every time one of them
dies."
"Good," Mordecai said with a heady rush of
triumph. He lifted his hands, held them some
distance away from the hairy neck, and said, "I
touch thee, may the good Lord cure thee."
"I don't feel any touch," the captain said
suspiciously.
"That is not necessary. I felt the power pass
into thee."
The captain turned around. "You're not putting
me on, are you, Mr. Monk?"
"Why should I? We had an agreement."
The captain stared at his mouth, for some reason;
then he said, "I want the works, just as you do it to the
Indians. Nursery rhyme and all."
"As thee wishes," Mordecai said,
purse-mouthed. Then he recited, with gestures,
in genteelly accented English, like Nanny
Maple's:


Hoopla! Hopla! Feel how it mends?
Stroke--and stroke--and shake your hands.
Froggy, piggy, baby bull,
Grab the pain and pull, and pull.
Hopla! Hoopla! There it goes!
Little boy back on his toes!

After each line he made a gesture of stroking
the neck, and shook his hands to disperse the pain or the
infection, or whatever the hell it was.
"Thank you," said the captain when it was all
over. He buttoned his tunic. "Glass of
wine, Mr. Monk?"
"Thank thee, no," Mordecai replied.
"Now, if thee will excuse me, I have to arrange
a funeral."
"Ah! You have a customer, eh? Who is it?"
"An old squaw."
"The one carrying the papoose? The one you gave
your coat to?"
Mordecai stared at him, astonished.
"Don't look at me like that," the captain
said. "I know everything that goes on in this convoy,
that's my job. I have given you a lot of power,
Mr. Monk, by asking you to perform your voodoo on
me. You will find you are now the most
powerful man in the convoy, bar one." He smiled.
"Off you go."
"Thank thee," Mordecai said, stepping off the
platform.
"I hope you get your coat back!" the
captain called after him, in high spirits. He must
be pleased with his end of the bargain.
"Go away! Ksht!" The little dog ran around
him in circles, yowling with joy.
Halfway to the chief's teepee, Lydia
caught up with him. Her transformation was now so
thorough that he had difficulty recognizing her in
the dusk. Behind her hovered a shadow, the frail
boy with the huge eyes, Little Bird, now their
constant companion. He shared their meals, slept
with them, a few yards away at first, then a few
feet; now he was lying between them every night under her
blanket, part of the family. It seemed only a
matter of time before he would be joined by the little dog.
"What did the captain want?" she asked.
"He wanted me to cure a boil on his
neck."
That stopped her in her tracks. "He what?"
"In exchange for the promise that the Indians
may bury their dead when we make bivouac."
He expected her to be impressed; when he
got no response he looked around and to his
surprise saw her striding toward the command tent,
where the captain was dining on the porch in splendid
isolation. Little Bird flitted after her; the dog
was torn by indecision, then decided to stay.

"Miss Best? This is a rare pleasure!
Please, join me." The captain indicated the
chair Mordecai had occupied a moment ago.
Lydia climbed the steps reluctantly, not
knowing how to explain her presence. The black
servant pulled out the chair for her, she sat
down. Little Bird hovered in the shadows, not daring
to cross the invisible line that separated
headquarters from the rest of the world.
"A glass of wine, Miss Best? Ah, but
you don't drink alcohol, do you? May I offer
you anything else?"
"No, thank thee, Ebenezer Stewart," she
said primly. A bit too primly, perhaps.
"Your company, Miss Best, is a balm in
this wilderness, as always." He noticed her
glancing at his neck and said, "I gather Mr.
Monk told you I called him in for
consultation?"
"He did indeed," she replied with sudden
firmness.
"You must be asking yourself why I share the
Indians' superstition?"
"I am glad thee understands that it is a
superstition."
He smiled. "I am delighted you do not,
Miss Best. This may sound odd to you, but it is
as important for you not to believe it as it is for
Mr. Monk to do so."
"I'm afraid thee is talking in riddles,
Ebenezer Stewart." She now wished she had never
let herself in for this, but it was too late. Now she had to stand her ground and voice her repugnance.
Mordecai had, again, betrayed their witness.
"I gather that you disapprove, Miss Best."
"The Society of Friends has a testimony
against spirit healing and all other forms of superstition."
The captain said lightly, "You must forgive
me, but the fact that your church has decided to deny
a phenomenon does not mean to say it does not
exist."
"Let me make this clear, Ebenezer
Stewart. Our founder, George Fox, did
perform feats of healing that have never been denied. But
he did so as a representative of Christ, just
as the apostles did."
"Then who, pray, does Mr. Monk
represent? Satan, perhaps?"
She suspected she was being mocked. "I can
assure thee it is certainly not the power of
Christ. Friend Mordecai is in error."
"I'm glad to hear you say that." The captain
smiled. "As I said: it is important that you
stick to your guns, if you'll forgive the
unsuitable expression. Would you like to know why?"
"Please," she said without enthusiasm.
"Mr. Monk is indeed not acting in the power of
Christ. He is acting in the power of the
Indians."
She frowned. "I don't understand."
"People may think they are browbeaten, powerless,
destroyed, as individuals and as a race, but that
is a fundamental error, Miss Best. The
Indians are not defeated. They are indefeatable,
like the wind. You have to know them intimately, both as
enemies and as prisoners, to realize that Mr.
Monk may think he acts in the power of his own
tribal god, but he has, in effect,
been appropriated by theirs. The power of healing he
possesses is not his, but theirs." He read her
thoughts. "I am sure that comes as a surprise
to you. Why do I harbor such fancy theories? Like
the Roman centurions on campaign, officers
in my position are avid students of
philosophy, religion, native customs,
anything that exercises the mind." He made a
gesture at the compound. "The brutish reality in which
we are forced to live would otherwise get the better
of us. I have had many discussions on shamanism with
older colleagues, and read up on it whenever I
had the chance to visit an academic library. The
powers possessed by a shaman or witch doctor
are derived from the communal energy of the tribe, of
which he becomes the tool. Am I being
obscure?"
"I think I understand," Lydia said,
impressed despite herself. This was a different
man from the one she had assumed him to be.
"That is all there is to it, Miss Best. Of
course, it needs an individual who is
receptive to these impulses. Mr. Monk,
obviously, is one of those. In his healing, he is
as much a prisoner of the Indians as if they had
him in chains."
"I see ..."
"I'm telling you all this, Miss Best,
to impress upon you how important your firm stand
is. Now that Mr. Monk, through circumstances beyond
his control, finds himself enslaved in spirit, you are,
one might say, the only civilized person
left in our midst, the keeper of our souls. We
do want to come out the other end as Christians, do
we not? Despite the fact that, during our
journey, we may have called upon black magic?
I expect the boil in my neck to be cured in
a matter of days, by the way. Confusing, isn't
it?"
"I don't think so, Ebenezer Stewart," she
said, getting to her feet. "Frankly, I think
thee is trying to have thy cake and eat it. I wish
thee success. Now, I'd better get back."
Somewhere on the periphery a little shadow rose with
her, expectantly.
"Miss Best, you are an admirable woman,"
the captain said gallantly, with a little bow. "If
there is anything I can do to make your life
easier, do not hesitate to let me know."
"I will," she said, and hurried back
toward the security of her own world. The shadow
joined her; she put her arm around Little Bird's
narrow shoulders and pressed him against her in a
gesture of protection.
In front of their shelter Mordecai and the
puppy sat waiting by the fireside.
"I have a funeral after dinner!" Mordecai
said peevishly. "Where's the food?"
She looked at him as he sat there in the
firelight: a spoiled old cherub; the ringlets
over his ears had gone lank and gray. "I'll go
and get it," she said, turning the other cheek.
"Come, Little Bird. Thee may carry the pot."
The little dog knew where they were going, and stood
quivering with excitement. "Stay!" Mordecai
said; a change from "Ksht!" So the beast had
been admitted into the medicine man's family
circle.
You are the only civilized person left in
our midst. Men and their illusions! Another
month of this, and the shaman would barter her for a set of
female twins, one to take off his shoes while the
other massaged his shoulders.
Panting, the little dog overtook them on their
way to the cooking fire.

In the vain hope of preventing the body from being
disturbed by scavengers after they left, the Indians
had dug the grave in a plot enclosed by a
broken-down picket fence, which at one time must have
been a vegetable garden.
A small crowd of women, lit by a single
torch, had gathered around the grave. As
Mordecai approached, the puppy at his
heels, Lydia detached herself from the crowd and
joined him. In the background hovered the shadow of
Little Bird. Together with Lydia he sat down in
front of the squaws, facing the grave.
He had given it all a good deal of thought.
Some sort of nondenominational ritual seemed
indicated; he could not allow them to just dump the old
woman unceremoniously into a hole. The
squaws were clearly waiting for him to take the
lead. After a respectful silence, he intoned,
"Friends, we are gathered together to commit to the earth from
whence she came the mortal remains of our
Friend--?"
"Sedpook," Lydia whispered.
"Sed Spook, who departed from this life today.
Before we bid her soul farewell on its
journey to her eternal home, let us evoke the
Great Spirit, who is the Father of us all, in silent
prayer."
They entered the silence of worship. The red
dusk on the prairie, the primitive
creatures squatting around the grave, the rattle
of the windmill whirling intermittently in the gusts
of wind provided a dramatic setting befitting
the occasion. A flock of birds whooshed overhead
on their mysterious flyway, descending to settle
for the night. In the distance, coyotes howled at the
moon. The grave and the shrouded body seemed to be
part of earth, of cloud and sky, setting sun and
rising moon, the wind, the surge of the birds.
Then he became conscious of someone staring at him;
it was the puppy, ears cocked, head to one side,
gazing up at him adoringly. As soon as it
sensed he had become aware of its presence, it
began to wag its tail. "Ksht!" he whispered.
But it lifted its head and gave a high-pitched
yap, provoking an instant response from another
creature near the grave.
"Yap! Yap!" the puppy barked, shrill in
the silence. It started to prance in front of him,
begging him to throw a stick. "Yap! Yap!" The
small creature near the grave squealed in
response; the holy silence was suddenly filled
with their yelping.
It took a while before it dawned on him that the
creature was an infant, not another dog. It
lay at the foot of the shrouded body, a small,
dark form wrapped in a blanket. That must be the
papoose the old woman had been carrying all
these weeks. What a barbarous thing to do, to put an
infant at the foot of its grandmother's grave!
Or its great-aunt's, or whatever she was. were
they planning to bury it with the corpse? The infant
went on screaming, the puppy yapping. He
whispered to Lydia, "Do something!"
She rose to her feet, walked toward the
squalling bundle, and picked it up; suddenly,
as if by prearranged signal, all the squaws in
the circle, who so far had been frozen in
silence, began to ululate in high, keening
voices and clap their hands. The abrupt change
was bewildering; the applause and ululations continued
until Lydia returned to her place beside him,
the child in her arms. Then the chief's wife rose
to her feet, the others followed her example.
Their ululations mounted in fervor, they
started to clap once more, this time in unison. Before
he knew what had happened, the women were dancing
around the grave, bowing, throwing their heads back,
ululating, clapping their hands in ecstatic
rhythm, a mysterious celebration. Suddenly, the
answer struck him: according to some Indian tradition,
Lydia had adopted the infant by picking it up!
He looked at her; she was staring at the dancing
squaws with a strange look on her face. The child
in her arms started to scream, to struggle; instead of
protesting against this responsibility thrust upon her
by subterfuge, she cuddled it and kissed its little
face. At that, abruptly, the screaming ceased.
She turned to him with a radiance in her eyes he
had not seen there before.

From the moment old Sedpook died, Lydia had
wondered who was going to care for the little waif she had
so fiercely protected; not for one moment had she
considered the possibility of taking on the infant
herself. Now, as the clapping, dancing women began
to make her the center of their ritual, the
implications of her innocent act dawned on her.
The first thing that occurred to her was: "How can I
do it, alone?"'
She was not given time for reflection. The
squaws crowded in on her and touched her, a
gesture she had come to know as a rare sign of
approval. They hauled her to her feet,
ululating, hand-clapping, and danced her through the
gathering dusk to the chief's teepee. The shrouded
body of the old woman was abandoned by the side of the
grave.
The baby was squalling and struggling wildly in
her arms. The poor little mite had to be frightened out
of its wits, away from the old woman who had
cared for it for so long. Close up, it seemed an
ugly child, with a huge red mouth and puny fists that
waved frantically.
Once she had been led inside the teepee,
she was forced to sit down on the couch of buffalo
hides. The squaws pressed around her, at least
twenty of them, who had squeezed themselves into the
small space, chattering, giggling. The baby
became more frantic by the minute.
She knew them well enough by now to conclude that to them
the whole thing was a lark, another practical
joke pulled on the unsuspecting Pusil. But
as she pressed the baby against her breast and kissed
and hugged it in order to comfort it, she
realized that she didn't give a hoot.
Then the chief's wife turned up with a bowl.
The similarity to her first visit was reassuring
until, suddenly, two of the women got hold of
her, took away the baby, and started to pull her
jerkin over her head. She reacted by crossing her
arms over her chest to protect her nakedness; the child
shrieked in the other woman's arms. Then both
women pulled her arms away, exposing her
breasts; the chief's wife dipped two fingers in
the bowl and began to smear her nipples with some
ointment. Then the baby was stripped of its swaddling
clothes; it screamed bloody murder, as if it were
about to be slaughtered. The chief's wife took it
and handed her the naked little body. It was a boy.
The feeling of the little boy's naked body touching
hers was overwhelming. Instantly the screaming fell
silent, the little boy's hungry mouth searched for the
nipple of her left breast. When he found it he
started to suck frantically, painfully, and she
winced. The women applauded, but as the utter
helplessness of the child, his pathetic vulnerability
dawned on her, she forgot her surroundings. There
was now nobody to whom this little boy could turn for
love and protection except herself; she had
suddenly become the center of his world. She looked
down at the shock of black hair, the tiny hands
kneading her breast like a kitten feeding, and a well
of tenderness opened within her, a sense of
fulfillment she had never known before. But after only
a few moments the chief's wife took the child
away again, setting him screaming like a banshee;
she made a lunge for him, but the women forced her
arms back and put her jerkin back on. The
moment they had done so, however, they put the
frenzied, struggling little body inside, then
proceeded to tie a belt around her waist, leaving
only the top of the child's head exposed, as was the
practice among Mahanoy nursing mothers. The
chief's wife stuck her hand inside to smear some
more syrup on her nipple, the little boy began
to suck again with amazing, agonizing strength. She was
only dimly aware of being helped to her feet and
guided to the door; they had to push her head down as
she left the tent.
Outside, a large crowd of women had
gathered; they accompanied her, slowly, across the
camp to where Mordecai was squatting by the fire.
He looked up at her with, it seemed, total
bewilderment. Not so Little Bird, who
sat pressed against him, huge dark eyes shining in
the firelight; all he did was put his thumb in
his mouth.
She sat down opposite them, whispering to the
baby inside her jerkin, and turned away from
Mordecai in an effort at prudery. The women
left at last; the warm little body finally became
still in her arm. The hungry mouth let go of her
nipple; the little boy fell asleep with a suddenness
that seemed alarming. But when she peeked, his face
was at peace. What about real food? What could
she give him to eat, once he had calmed down
and become accustomed to her? Well, the squaws
would know.
She heard Mordecai get up beside her.
"Back in a moment, Lydia. Take thy time."
She forgot about him when the baby suddenly jerked
awake and started to wriggle inside the jerkin. The
hungry mouth groped for the nipple again; she saw
the women had left the bowl, dipped two fingers in
the gooey liquid, smeared some of it on her other
breast, and helped him find it. Instantly, his
mouth closed over the nipple, his little fists started
to knead; he tugged at her with such power that it
hurt, yet at the same time it filled her with an
all-pervading joy.
She bent over the child and kissed his hair. It
felt soft and fluffy, not as hard and alien as it looked. He sucked, sucked; her eyes filled
with tears, she threw her head back, and gazed at
the stars. The tears transformed them with brilliant
colors. She knew a moment of exultation,
sensuous and religious all at once, a
euphoric moment of love. Then she saw Little
Bird, squatting on the other side of the fire,
staring at her intently, sucking his thumb.
She wondered where Mordecai had gone.

Mordecai had observed the touching image of
motherhood in the firelight with growing disquiet.
Something alerted him, filled him with alarm. A
danger, deadly danger; only he had no idea
what it was. Jealousy? So far, he had been
her sole companion in this alien world. Her
initial hostility had gradually changed
into acceptance, then dependence, with lately a hint
of a growing affection, which had evoked a surprising
lack of response on his part. The hunted do
not copulate. If so, who was the hunter?
He was no longer the lecherous son of
Basil Goodlove, the preacher who mesmerized
women. The other self, which he had first become
aware of that night during meeting, after his first
healing, had now taken over: Mah@onink,
medicine man, fortune-teller, haruspex to a
random herd of Indians. Mah@onink was now his
dominant self.
Suddenly he was overcome by longing for Liza.
Not for the sensuous rapture of her embrace, but the
security he had felt in her arms. She seemed
his last handhold, last link with the portly widower
content within his limitations, living with no lurking
inner danger other than the occasional fantasy of
deflowering Hodgkins the parlormaid. The
realization that he might never see Liza again
filled him with panic, a sudden sense of
abandonment.
He stared from afar at Lydia going through the
motions of feeding the baby. Gradually, the cause
of his sense of abandonment revealed itself. It had to do
with the child--he was no longer the center of her world, but
that Indian brat. Until now, he had been the
anchor keeping her from being swept away into the
Indian world. She had been the same to him,
keeping him from being swept away and turning
into Mah@onink entirely, irrevocably. Now
he had lost her. What was to become of him? Of
her? And all that for the sake of a smelly,
slit-eyed--for one unfortunate moment he felt
like jumping up, grabbing the little cuckoo, and tossing
him out of the nest. Then he understood it was not the
baby who was challenging him, nor the foolish
virgin in her solitary rapture while
suckling, empty-breasted, someone else's child. The
one challenging him was God.
He felt the desire to confront God, now.
To meet Him, like Jacob, in the wilderness, and
cry, "I will not let thee go except thou bless
me." He must do so away from this scene of
imaginary domesticity. Lydia, the dauntless
one, the embodiment of the incorruptible soul of
Quakerism, had fallen into a trap set for her
by the Indians. She was no longer like the great
Quaker women who had saved the Society over
and over again during the past centuries, she had
become a squaw, with no other message than that
women love babies, even if they are not their
own. He had to get away, confront God
Almighty in solitude and clearness, to ask
Him: "What art Thou doing to me?
What dost Thou want of me, Thou
man-eater?"' But where? Indians, Indians
everywhere, especially squaws, waiting, watching,
preparing to waylay him with headaches, blisters,
pustules, and the unfathomable sufferings of their alien
souls. Where could he be alone with his mischievous
God?
The one place least likely to be invaded
by squaws seemed to be the graveyard. At the
gate, he came upon a group of them leaving. He
let them pass, then closed the gate behind him,
locking out the little dog. It protested with shrill,
desperate yapping, but he said, "Shut up!" and
"Stay! I say stay!" Alone in the darkness,
he approached a mound that had not been there before; the
body had been buried.
The grave was covered with a dark cloth. His
coat! It had been the old woman's most
fiercely defended possession. It was the first part
of himself that he had given away. How long ago it
seemed! Now here he was, about to give up the
last part.
"God," he said, "I am in danger. Help
me."
He was about to kneel in prayer when he heard the
dog yapping behind him. He turned around and saw the
squaws, wrapped in their blankets, huddled
outside the gate. This was the very scene he had so
often described in his Goodlove sermons: the
gate to the garden of Gethsemane, the huddled
figures of the apostles, the little dog waiting for
its master to return.
It was a coincidence, of course. It would be
demeaning to assume that the Almighty spent His time
imitating the theatrical fantasies of rogue
evangelists. But what could the purpose be of his
finding himself, as in a hallucination, confronted with a
scene that had been the most effective part of his
ministry? Was he supposed to draw some conclusion
now? Was he being mocked? If so, why? His
sermons had been theatrical extravaganzas--
so what? They were things of the past; his present
ministry was real enough. He was actually healing
people. His healing the captain had brought about that the
dead were now being buried instead of tossed into the
grass by the wayside. His protest had brought about
cohesion among this disorganized, despondent band
of homeless Indians. By joining them as an
equal, sharing their humiliation, he had given them
humanity in the eyes of the drovers. The
result was right here: the first grave. The first
burial, after a dignified ceremony; the
hoopla of the squaws dancing around the grave
was, of course--
Hoopla. Hopla. Feel how it mends?
Stroke, and stroke--
It was all nonsense. More theatrical
self-aggrandizement. Anyone could have done it: put
a hex on the gullible captain. Cure minor
ills with the aid of Nanny Maple's ditty.
Any ditty. Read from a blob of spittle that
you should be careful around horses. As a shaman he
was a fraud, as much of a fraud as he had been
when he preached his sermons, ogling the women about
to kneel at his feet. Only as an English
chocolate manufacturer, lover of a whore, could
he stand before God and say, "Lord, here I
am."
He lifted his head and gazed at the sky.
Fleeting clouds veiled the stars. The full
moon was ringed by a halo of haze. The old
windmill squealed and clattered in the moonlight,
like a living creature of the night.
"Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass
from me."
The hackneyed words came to him with a sense of
shame. How dare he impersonate Christ at that
terrible moment when he first saw what awaited him?
He asked the starry void, "Father, what am I
doing here? What is happening to me? Is this all
part of Thy plan?"
Alas, this too was pure theater. Even if there
had been Divine Intent in his healing, putting a
hex on the captain had taken care of it. The
way he sat there, gazing at the sky, captive
of the Indians of his own volition, must be the way
Adam had sat on the first night after being banished
from Eden, cast out into the wilderness with stunned Eve
...
The dream! That was the dream: cast out,
terrified, running for his life, together with a woman
holding a child, the erupting volcano, the narrow
street of crumbling houses--"Yap!"
A wet snout was pressed against his hand, a
tongue licked his thumb; the little dog had managed
to worm its way through the picket fence. "Good
boy," he murmured, stroking its fur. It was
unpleasant to the touch. Would Christ have thought the
same? "Piss off, little bugger"?
Hardly. That too was make-believe:
Christ had never had a little dog following him
everywhere. He was incurable. A liar, a fake, a
ballyhoo man, Basil Goodlove
redivivus. Hymns! Testimonies!
Laying on of hands! Speaking in tongues!
Glimpses of the future! Exactly, but
exactly what had been promised in that
advertisement for an afternoon of prayer and worship
by the Reverend Basil Goodlove he had found in
his father's concordance. Admission three pence, all
proceeds to go to the Reverend Goodlove's Fund
for the Suffering Poor.
There was no hope, no mercy, no
"mission." Only the blind, irrevocable fate
of the bloodline.
On the way out, he retrieved his coat from the
grave.

CHAPTER 15
THE BANKS OF
THE MISSISSIPPI
November 1833

The convoy reached Indian Landing on the
Mississippi on the afternoon of a very cold day.
Lydia had expected to see houses, streets,
a fort; she had looked forward to seeing white people
again, wondering what her reaction would be after all
these weeks as a Mahanoy squaw. The vision
of the little town with its white clapboard houses and
tree-lined streets, buggies and hansoms and
bakers' shop windows and warm, warm parlors and
bedrooms with featherbeds became a sort of life
buoy to her after, suddenly, winter had hit the
plains. Rainstorms, hailstorms, blizzards,
and hoarfrost that turned the prairie into a
beautiful picture and a veritable hell to slog
through: freezing, wet, shivering, endless, hopeless,
deadly. There had been burials virtually every
day, and not just of the old. Many of them had been children,
and her main fight these last weeks had been with
death stalking little Obadiah, relentlessly. Little
Bird had survived, but only because he slept in
Mordecai's bed and rode on Mordecai's
shoulders when the snow was deep, or the sludge
treacherous, or homesickness for a lost world rendered
him vulnerable. She had even promised him the
warm, welcoming little town full of kind people in
warm, hospitable teepees--luckily, he had
not quite understood, for the reality proved
grim.
Indian Landing was no more than a clearing of
dirty trampled snow on the bank of an
enormous river, without even the humblest of shacks.
It was strewn with the wrecks of wagons; a crude
dock jutted out into the slow, sliding river; tied
up to it lay the steamer that was to take them
to Kansas. In her imagination she had seen a
twin-funneled river steamboat with tiered decks
and decorated paddle-wheel boxes, pictures
of which she had seen. The ugly contraption awaiting
them did not look like a ship at all. What there
was in the way of a hull was dwarfed by a huge
superstructure, a blank wall of peeling
paint like the side of a dilapidated barn. Above
that, two decks supported by posts, the railings
broken in many places; perched on top of the
contraption was a single black funnel without
decoration, belching black smoke that smeared the
autumn sky. At the forward end of the deck was a
hutch with windows, which probably housed the steering
wheel; there were no paddle-wheel boxes, only
one huge wheel at the stern that ran the width of the
vessel, its spokes tangled with refuse. Her
apprehension deepened when she caught a glimpse
of the crew: a bunch of coarse white laborers,
who at the sight of her shouted words and suggestions
to each other that made her blush with indignation. Because
of the papoose in the carrying basket on her back
they must have taken her for a light-skinned squaw who
could not understand what they were shouting; even so, some of the
words were unknown to her, although their meaning was clear
enough.
It was a frosty day with a wind that cut like a
knife. The sunlit river had a dull glint,
like pewter; the empty landscape was bleak and
desolate. She was setting up their shelter as a
windbreak for Little Bird and the baby when the
Negro servant came to tell her that Captain
Stewart sent his compliments and wished to see her.
She hesitated; then she told Little Bird
to stay where he was, slung the baby in his
basket onto her back, and followed the man through
the desolate crowd of Indians guarding their
meager belongings. It had to be a frightening time for
them; the squaws were gathering their children together, casting
terrified looks at the louts waiting for them on
the deck of the riverboat.
The command tent had already been erected; the
captain received her on the porch with a
stiffness in his bearing that puzzled her.
"Sit down, please, Miss Best."
"Thank thee, Ebenezer Stewart."
He waited until she was seated, then sat
down in the other chair. He was wearing a different
uniform this time, gaudier than his usual one; it
contrasted oddly with the dismal surroundings: the clearing
strewn with refuse, the terrified Indians staring
at them in motionless desperation, the gawking ghouls
on board the ship.
He cleared his throat and said, "The time has
come for us to have a serious conversation, Miss Best.
Er--may I offer you some refreshment?"
"Thank thee, Ebenezer Stewart, nothing right
now." With a practiced movement she swung the
carrying basket with the baby off her back and put
it on her lap. The little boy did not stir; he
had just had his meal of mashed beans and gruel and
fallen asleep; he would go on sleeping until
wakened by hunger.
"Something for the child, perhaps? A mug of malt?"
She looked at him, surprised. He had
never mentioned the child before. "What did thee wish
to see me about, Friend?"
For a warrior decked out with gold tasseled
epaulettes, lacquered bandolier, and a sword in
an ornate scabbard, he was ill at ease.
"Miss Best, what I am about to say may
startle you, so let me take the bull by the
horns. Er--" He sounded as if he had lost
track, then he continued, in a formal tone, "I
have the honor to ask you for your hand in marriage."
She gaped at him, speechless for once.
"Your hand, Miss Best. In marriage."
He could not be serious! She wanted to say
something joky, lighthearted, to break that awkward
formality; but his discomfiture was so obvious that she
simply had to take him seriously.
"I--I am deeply honored," she said; but
the bright look in his eyes made her add
hastily, "but I must decline. Regretfully,"
she added.
The eyes narrowed. "Tell me why."
"Because--because I am committed to stay with these people--"
"You cannot stay with them," he said brusquely.
"Look at the brutes on that ship. Just look
at them! That's the kind of man you'll find waiting
for you in unorganized territory, with no
cavalry to protect you."
"I know," she said. "I--"
"Has it occurred to you that it is only owing to my
protection that you have, so far, been spared the fate
that awaits any presentable squaw from the moment that
ship casts off?"
"Fate?"
"Forgive me, it is too late for
niceties." He scowled at her. "You know what
rape is, I trust?"
His gruffness could not hide his embarrassment.
She suddenly saw that had she moved in with him at
the beginning as he had suggested, she could have managed
him without any problem.
"Yes," she said.
"Well, that will be your lot, Miss Best.
Look at the brutes! They can hardly wait.
To them you will be what you pretend to be: an Indian
squaw. And Indian squaws--well, need I
say more?"
She tried to read the truth in his eyes. Was he
exaggerating to serve his own purpose? "Is thy
proposal intended to prevent my being--molested?"
she asked, demurely.
For some reason the question appeared to restore his
confidence. "I propose to you, Miss Best, because
over the past weeks I have become impressed with
your sterling qualities, both as a woman and as a
Christian." The "sterling qualities" rendered
him innocuous, despite his resplendent garb, which
he clearly had put on for the occasion, complete
with a pair of white gloves tucked under his belt.
"Thank thee for the compliment," she said, "but thee
is idealizing me, Friend Ebenezer."
"What do you take me for?" His tone
probably was intended to be mortifying. "I'm not
one of your city slickers, proposing to any
presentable lady who happens to come their way. You
are the first woman for whom I have true admiration.
The first woman, as a matter of fact, to whom I
have ever made a proposal of marriage. I would
be proud to have you for my wife."
One thing was clear: her witness had spoken, at
least, to him. "I am very touched, Friend Ebenezer,"
she said sincerely, "but I cannot accept thy offer.
I am committed to these people. That is what God
wants of me."
"I fail to see how God could want you
to submit to rape for His sake. It makes no
sense, and it troubles me that it seems to make
sense to you. Either you are less intelligent than
I surmised, or incurably innocent.
Forgive me for being blunt."
She rose and swung the carrying basket onto
her back. He watched, his face set in a
scowl, his eyes full of hurt and anger. At the
very least, she owed him a kindness, a word of
appreciation. "Under normal circumstances I
would have seriously considered thy offer, Friend
Ebenezer. But, alas, I am burdened by a
concern. That may be what thee seems to have seen in
me; what attracts thee is not my person, but
my commitment."
He looked at her with an expression she could
not interpret. "As I cannot stop you, will you do me a
favor?"
"Certainly, if I can."
"Before going on board, take off those Indian
clothes and put on your own Quaker dress."
"But it is all crumpled!"
"It is your only protection. Dress as a
Quaker, not an Indian. In fact, this is not a
request but an order."
"And what about my son?" She used the word for the
first time, and realized at that moment how ludicrous
his proposal had been. A man like him would never
accept an Indian child as his own. To her
surprise he replied, "I would have been happy
to give him my name and be a good father to him."
For a moment they faced each other, then she said,
"Thank thee, Friend Ebenezer, in behalf of us
all. I do wish thee could come with us."
He gave her a wry smile. "I never thought
the day would come when my captives would invite me
to stay."
She resisted the impulse to kiss him.
On her way back to join Mordecai, she
wondered if he might be right about the Quaker
dress. But it was important for her to retain her
identity as a squaw; only after having become
one of them had she been able to do something for the
Indians, however little it might have been, and she was
not done yet.
What she had turned down was a good, decent
husband, a father for her boy. But there was no doubt
that she must stay. For the first time since the day she
joined the convoy, she accepted the possibility, the
remote possibility, that she might be in the power
of the Lord.

Mordecai, Little Bird, and the puppy watched
Lydia's approach after her visit with the
captain; but before he could question her he was accosted by the
Negro servant himself.
"Captain Stewart sends his compliments, sah,
and wishes to see you at once, sah."
"What is this all about?" he whispered
to Lydia.
"I don't know why he wants thee," she
replied, "but he asked me to marry him."
"He what?"
The orderly urged him, "Sah?"
Mordecai set his jaw and followed the man,
the puppy at his heels. When he saw the
captain waiting for him, in parade uniform, he
had still not recovered.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Monk. Please sit
down. What may I offer you? Gin? Whiskey?"
"Thank thee, nothing."
The captain waved the servant away. "Mr.
Monk, I have been trying to dissuade Miss
Best from boarding that steamer. I wonder if you would
convince her that it may be a matter of life and
death."
"Why?"
"Have you any idea what awaits her in
Kansas? Even on board that ship?"
"Well--" Mordecai began, preoccupied
with what Lydia had just told him.
"Obviously not, so let me enlighten you.
All unorganized territories are beyond the
law. People who settle there do so without the
protection of the army. A male settler can do
pretty well what he likes, unless he runs
into somebody quicker on the draw. The Indians,
however, will be at the mercy of whoever is waiting for
them when they arrive. The miscreants preying upon
them can only be described as human vultures.
Some of them haven't set eyes on a white
female for years. These men are not given
to courtship; what they want, they take.
Congress may have granted the territory to the
Indians as a reservation, but the white men you'll
find there have no intention of accepting that. It may
become necessary after a while for the government to send in
the cavalry to protect the Indians' rights;
until then, they have none. I don't know what
exactly you are planning to do, Mr. Monk,
it's your life; but Miss Best must not go. It
is our duty to stop her from committing suicide.
I have tried. Now it is your turn."
"I'm afraid I am as powerless as
thee is, Friend. I don't think there is a man
alive who could stop Lydia Best once she
sets out to do something out of conviction."
The captain set his jaw. "In my capacity
as commandant of this convoy I cannot allow anyone
to commit suicide, whether out of ignorance or
religious zeal."
"But I am there to protect her!"
The captain gave him a mortifying look.
"If you were to intervene, sir, those men would shoot you
without thinking twice. You may have acquired a
certain power among the Indians, but to white
outlaws in unorganized territory you will be a
figure of fun."
Suddenly it became clear: of course, the man
was furious! Lydia had turned him down!
The captain continued, "No point in pulling that
face, Mr. Monk." He said it as if he were
addressing a malingering soldier. "You had better
listen, for if you allow that woman to board the
steamer, her life will become your
responsibility. Your duty is to stop her and
take her home. If you decide you cannot do that,
then at least be honest with yourself and admit that you
don't want to."
"But what could I do? No one can stop her, I
tell thee!"
"All it would take is for you to say that you are
going home. The moment you do that, she will follow
suit. Even she will not go on alone."
"Thee is wrong," he said. "She will board that
boat whether I go or not. Her heart is with the
Indians."
The captain contemplated him thoughtfully for a
moment. "In that case, the only solution is for
you to marry her before the ship sails."
Mordecai stared at him in amazement.
"You Quakers marry yourselves, don't you? If
you don't, I'll do it for you. If she has to go,
at least make it known to those rascals waiting at
the railing that you two are Quaker missionaries, the
Reverend and Mrs. Monk. I told her she must
change into her own dress; I would advise you to do
the same. And put on your black coat."
"Black coat?"
"The one you took off the old squaw's
grave, as I suggested," the captain said
coldly.
The fact that the man knew even about this was
unnerving. "Thee must have a poor opinion
of me indeed," he said stiffly. "As a matter of
interest, how is thy boil?"
"Sir, I have not for a moment doubted your powers. The difference between Miss Best and you is that between a
Christian saint and an Indian shaman."
Mordecai could not help smiling. The poor
man was besotted indeed.
"It is amazing," the captain said, rising.
"You, presumably a man of God, have lived in
the presence of a saint for two months without
realizing it, while I, a confirmed agnostic--"
He turned away. "You are under orders to marry
Miss Best. You may perform the ceremony in my
presence. I will legalize the wedding
certificate. Do so now." He stooped into his
tent.
Mordecai slowly walked back to their shelter
through the throng of Indians. Lydia had indeed
changed into her brown and gray Quaker dress, which
was very rumpled; she was now pinning up her braids.
Seeing her like that gave him quite a shock, she
looked so unfamiliar. She bent down, picked
up the basket with the baby, and swung it onto her
back.
Puzzled by his scrutiny, she asked,
"What's the matter?"
"Our friend the captain has been cutting quite a
swath this afternoon, I must say."
"What did he want?"
"He has now ordered me to marry thee, for thy
protection."
She froze.
"He says thee may only go on board that
steamer as a married woman."
"Nonsense! He talks as if all of
America beyond the Mississippi is peopled with
criminals!"
"Whatever the case, I am under orders to put
on my black coat, marry thee, and announce
ourselves as the Reverend and Mrs. Monk."
"The Reverend?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact. I was
registered as a minister by Birmingham Women's
Meeting."
"I don't care!" she cried angrily. "Do
whatever thee feels thee must do! I myself will not go
beyond putting on this--this dress! And I will take it
off the moment we arrive at the reservation. I will
certainly not call myself "missionary" or
"reverend" or any other name for
"hireling priest." I am a settler in the
power of the Lord."
"Of course," he said, "we both are, and
hope for His protection."
"Hope?" she asked. "It is a certainty.
It is what enables me to face those men over there."
She nodded in the direction of the decrepit steamer
now belching white steam with a roar in front of its
stack. The crew, chewing tobacco, leaned on the
rail watching the squaws, whistling, laughing.
"We had better go on board and have a look
at the accommodations, especially for the children," she
said. "It is apt to be cold on the river at
night. We want to make sure they will be warm.
Please, be so good as to hook up the back of my
collar. I cannot reach it, with the basket on my
back."
She turned around and lifted her bonnet,
exposing the downy whiteness of her neck. It
looked young and vulnerable. He reached over the head
of the sleeping baby to close the two hooks at the
top of her dress, which turned out to have rusted; he
had difficulty putting them through the eyelets.
Suddenly, he knew that the captain was right. For
her to go alone, even in Quaker garb, was
suicidal madness. Her neck looked how Mary
Stuart's must have looked to her executioner, when she
put her head on the block.
"There," he said. "I think I did it."
She turned around. "Thank thee. Shall we go on
board?"
"Lydia," he said, "I think we should do what
the captain says. Our witness will end in
bloodshed and tragedy, unless thee goes on board
that ship as a married woman."
Her face went blank.
"Also, the two boys need parents. So,
let's get it over with, marry ourselves in the face
of God, and include Obadiah and Little Bird
in our wedding certificate."
"But, but--that's nonsense!" she cried, shaken.
"We cannot do that!"
"Why not?"
"Because it would be a lie! I have no intention of
stating before God that I will be a faithful, loving
wife to thee for as long as we both shall live!"
"Then make it "companion,"" he said. "The
Book of Discipline offers that formula merely as
a suggestion; we are at liberty to say anything
we like. "In the presence of God and this
assembly I hereby take my Friend Mordecai
as my life's companion, and I promise to be
a faithful and loving mother to our children, Obadiah and
Little Bird, for as long as I shall live." Would
that be acceptable?"
She looked, suddenly, forlorn. "Let me
think about it," she said. "Let me put it before
God. Please."
"No," he said. "There is no time. Thee must
decide now. Our concern is to serve the Indians
wherever they go. We must do what is needed to carry
out that concern. Thee need not say anything at all,
leave it to me, but we must set foot on board that
ship only as man and wife, parents of our children.
If we don't--"
She looked up at him; her eyes were brimming
with tears.
"If thee refuses," he continued, "I'll go
back to Pendle Hill. With the cavalry. I
mean that, Lydia. I will."
She did not answer, only closed her eyes.
A tear ran down her right cheek.
"Say yes or no, Lydia. Now."
He thought she would not reply, just turn away.
But she opened her eyes, gave him a look that
he would never forget as long as he lived, and said,
"Oh, God ... I will."

She was shaken by her own tears. They came before
she had articulated the reason in her mind: this was
the end of girlish dreams, of the secret certainty
she had had for a long time, that one day there would come a
man she would love above all others, a man for
whom she would go through fear and fire, a man who would
unlock her womanhood and free her of the burden
of physical loneliness that had begun to weigh more
heavily with every passing year. She had thought, at
one time, that Jesse might be the one. He had
never known. Then there had been Obadiah--so
close, so almost there. Now God had ordained that
she go through a form of marriage with this person, the
mere thought of whose touch upon her bare flesh made
her shiver. A total stranger, whose character changes
had been like the helter-skelter images of a
kaleidoscope. "A poet," Obadiah had
called him, "the first Quaker poet." But she
had never sensed any beauty in either his being or his
utterances; the images in the kaleidoscope she
knew had been of a loudmouth, a bully, a lecher
who had almost raped her, a mad
demagogue who threw spells over countless
women, a petulant monster toddler, a healer of
Indians by means of a nursery rhyme, a fake
fortune-teller--but he was right. Or rather, Captain
Stewart was right: she could not go it alone.
From the moment she stepped ashore in
unorganized territory, not to mention the steamboat
itself, she wouldn't stand a chance. The child on her back
would be no protection, but as the Quaker wife of the
Reverend Monk it might be a different story.
But, oh--the dreams! The dreams of a lifetime!
Farewell, great lover, mysterious prince
waiting beyond the horizon. Farewell, nights,
days, years of rapturous love, and laughter, and
little secrets, years of children and--well, the children were
real, and she was all they had. They were all she
had. Better accept her fate and turn her
back on girlish dreams. Better to dream of
what it would be like: the school, Little Bird playing
with his younger brother, the class full of attentive
children, the Meeting she--they--would start. Mordecai
Monk, of all people! The "Reverend" Monk!
God saved her from pointless anger and frustration
by making the baby cry like a whelp that had lost its
mother. The swinging of the basket off her back brought
her back to reality. The mother who lifted the child in
her arms for a cuddle and a kiss was Pusil.
Forget Lydia, sweetheart. Forget her
dreams. Who knows, baby Obadiah and Little
Bird may be just the beginning. Thee may end up as
the old woman who lived in a shoe.
Goodbye, love. Goodbye.

Stony-faced, Captain Stewart observed the
most bizarre wedding ceremony he had ever
witnessed. The two celebrants, looking like
tramps in their crumpled clothes, appeared before
him solemnly. The bride, press-ganged
into marriage, looked ready to run for her life
before the deed was done. The child the Indians had
foisted upon her was bouncing on her back; the little
orphan boy who had attached himself to them
squatted behind the couple, picking his nose. In the
background, the ghouls on the deck of the riverboat
watched the proceedings like a row of buzzards.
If they needed hymns, his porter would play the
mouth organ. But as it turned out, they married
themselves, without frills and in record time. They
simply stood before him against a background of
curious drovers, took one another by the
hand, and intoned, in turn, a formula that proved
to be virtually inaudible as the ship at the dock
started to blow off steam with a deafening roar. The
noise was so intrusive that he waved at the
sailors, managed to attract someone's
attention, pointed at his ears, and made a
gesture of slitting his throat. It took a
moment before the man understood what he meant and went
to turn off the deafening roar. Too late, as it
turned out; all he could hear was the bride
whispering, "... as long as we both shall
live." There was no ring, of course; they shook
hands as if in parting, then the groom handed over a
piece of paper, which turned out to be a wedding
certificate. It was a coldhearted business, like
a commercial contract.
The captain signed the certificate after the
two parties had affixed their signatures; one
witness was insufficient for legal reasons, so the
servant attached a cross to which the captain added,
"This is the mark of PFC Washington
McDonald, witnessed by Capt. E. Z.
Stewart II, US Cavalry." The wine
he had set aside for the occasion remained
unopened; the bride looked pale and in shock, the
bridegroom beamed like--well, the less said about
him the better.
In the meantime, the crew of the riverboat had
started to herd the Indians on board. The captain
escorted the bridal couple toward the gangway;
ahead of them, a demented brave who had walked the
whole way like a sleepwalker leading an
emaciated pony was trying to take his horse on
board with him. The animal stood precariously
perched on the gangplank, a line of squaws behind
it; then the brutes loading the Indians let out a
yell, panicking the horse. It backed away,
pushed over one of the squaws, and trampled her
underfoot. There were screams; the horse stampeded out
of sight; both bride and bridegroom hurried to the aid of the stricken woman. But the squaws were
ahead of them and carried her on board. The chief
turned to Mordecai Monk and said, "You told
her! She should have known better!"
"I did?" Monk asked, amazed.
"Yes!" the chief said. "You told her: beware
of horses!"
For some reason this seemed to upset the couple
deeply; they stared at each other, mouths open, as
if some horrible truth had been revealed
to them. It was time to go on board, certainly for those
children of theirs; the little boy clung to her skirts,
hiding his face, the baby screamed like a piglet
in her backpack.
Impulsively, in a gesture of sympathy,
the captain did something foolish: he took out of the
side pocket of his greatcoat the rabbit's foot
he always carried for good luck; it had a silver
cap on one end with his initials engraved in it,
given to him by a sentimental godmother years ago.
He fastened it onto the baby's bindings by one of the
tapes. The little boy looked on with envy and was
given a cigar. After that, the new little family
hastened on board.
Half an hour later, ropes were cast off and the
ship began to move away from the riverbank.
Captain Stewart stood among the abandoned
wagons and stray horses and scattered belongings,
watching the crush on the decks, looking for the two
Quakers. The sun set in a blaze of
orange, adding to the drama of the slave ship's
departure. On previous occasions, the captain
had left as soon as the last Indian was on
board, relishing the prospect of returning
to civilization at a fast clip, unencumbered
by his sad herd. This time he stood watching with a
sense of outrage at the sight of the lumbering
vessel, almost a wreck, manned by ruffians
known to help themselves liberally to the squaws and young
girls on the voyage downriver. By the time they
reached St. Louis, there wouldn't be a virgin
aboard. As for Lydia, he had done all he
could to ensure her safety; even so, he felt as
if he had delivered her to her executioners.
What were her chances of survival in unorganized
territory? Even before she arrived at the Indian
reservation, outlaws might make short shrift of
her; she was determined to return to Mahanoy
dress, and a white woman gone native must be a
delectation for those roughnecks after a steady diet
of Indian squaws. Even in the best of
circumstances, if she were to arrive unmolested and
start life among the Indians, who merely
tolerated her, what was her future? Those people were
unsentimental; already, behind him, a band of Plains
Indians had started to pilfer the horses and
wagons left behind.
He scanned the decks of the ship, now swinging
downstream, and spotted her on the foredeck, taking
the baby off her back and putting it
inside something that looked like a coil of rope. The
river was afire with the reflection of the sunset; the
vessel, belching black smoke, slowly gathered
speed. The captain, on impulse, was about
to salute when, suddenly, there was a blinding flash,
a shuddering blast. Bodies, planks, bundles
were hurled upward by the explosion; a shower of
wreckage came tumbling down into the river.
Captain Stewart stood petrified; clearly,
the worn-out boiler of the vessel had exploded;
he realized, with a heart-stopping sense of
horror, that after his request that the safety valve
be turned off, no one had thought to open it again.
He ran to his horse, swung into the saddle,
galloped down the river's bank looking for
survivors, followed by his men. For hours he
rode up and down the bank, calling, looking for
Lydia among the debris that drifted slowly
downstream. Behind him, the Indian scavengers
calmly went on picking over the spoils left
by the dead.
Finally, desolate and heartsick, he turned
his horse around and headed back to his command tent.
Then someone called, "Captain! Over there,
sir! Over to your right! Can you hear it?"
The captain halted. Indeed: a thin, high
sound, the yapping of a dog.
"Where?" he shouted.
The sergeant on his horse in the shallows, near
a clump of reeds, shouted, "Over here, sir!
Over here!"
On the river's edge, caught up in the reeds,
the sergeant had spotted a round leather coracle.
"Listen, sir!" The captain listened. There it
came, indeed: the distant crying of a baby, a
dog yapping. He wheeled his horse around, forced
it into the ice-cold water, and made it wade in the
direction of the sound.
When he reached the coracle, he saw, in a
nest of bedrolls and blankets, a frantic
puppy tied up and an Indian baby in a
carrying basket. He attached a rope from his saddle to it and turned his horse back to the shore,
towing the coracle. When he reached dry land the little
dog jumped out and the sergeant picked up the child.
He held it up for the captain to see. Just a
papoose. "See if you can find someone among those
Indians over there prepared to take it on," the
captain said. "I'm going to change before I catch
my death."
He was towering himself down, his orderly standing by with a
hot toddy, when there was a knock on the
doorpost. A voice called, "Captain,
sir!"
"See who that is," he said. "Put that glass
down, I'll get it in a minute." The orderly
obeyed. There followed some mumbling in the
background, while the captain was towering his hair.
At a given moment, he realized that the servant
was waiting for him to finish. "What is it?" he
asked irritably.
"Sah, this is what they found on the baby,
sah."
He held it out on the pale palm of his
black hand. It was Aunt Dinah's rabbit's
foot.
"Jesus Christ," the captain said. "Where is
the child now?"
"I don't know, sah."
"Ask! Ask, goddammit! Go find out where it
is! Bring it back! I want it back, now,
before those savages make off with it!"
The servant ran off.
The captain was dressed by the time the man
returned, trailed by the little dog and holding the
baby in his arms. It did not look any different
from all the others he had seen since he started this
foul assignment, but it had to be the one. For a
moment the thought crossed his mind that he was honor
bound to take care of it himself, after his assurance
to Lydia Best that he would have accepted this
creature as his son after marriage. But he said,
"You take care of it, boy. Know how to feed a
baby, change it, and so on?"
"Yes, sah," the Negro said, with the slightly
condescending obedience that, at times, made the
captain want to give him a sharp kick.
"We'll return it to the school in the
village where they joined us--what's its name?--
Pendle Hill."
"Yes, sah."
"Now get me a double, straight up." As the
man turned away with the child in his arms, the captain
added, "And take that dog with you."
Lydia Best ... Professional training and
battlefield experience had taught him never
to mourn the fallen, but this one was tough. This one was a
swine. This one broke his goddamn heart.
He changed his mind. "Come here!" he called
after the dog. "Like some bacon?" To his
orderly he said, "Okay, leave him here.
I'll take care of him. You take care of the
baby."
My God! Why did she have to die?
Why this, why that. No sense in asking questions.
She was dead.
"Here," he said. "Try some cheese."
But the dog needed time. Well, hell, so did
he.

CHAPTER 16
PENDLE HILL, INDIANA
December 1833

Abner the sta2oy was giving the horses their
evening feed; this humiliating position had been the
only one offered to him after he was read out of
Meeting. When he heard the clatter of hooves
on cobbles, he wondered who it could be; he had
to be careful to whom he showed himself now that
Saraetta had been made principal.
He started for the door and was almost bowled over in
the gloom by Adam Higgins. "Abner! Abner!
The cavalry's here! An officer with a baby who
says it belongs to thy sister!"
Lydia? A baby?
Abner went outside; a group of cavalrymen
were hitching their horses to the posts in front of the
school; among them was an officer carrying a
basket with a baby. Abner accosted him, forgetting
about the rule of secrecy Saraetta had insisted
on. "Yes, Friend? What can I do for thee?" Then
he recognized the man; it was the red-bearded
captain who had been in charge of the Indian
convoy.
The captain did not remember him. "I need
to see the principal. Where do I find him?"
"I--my wife--what is this about a baby
belonging to my sister?"
The child, thin and solemn with two pitch-black
eyes, gazed at him from the basket.
"Lydia Best was your sister?" the officer
asked, eyebrows raised.
"Yes. I used to be the principal of ...
was? ... You don't mean ...?" He was
unable to continue.
"I'm afraid so. The boat she was on blew
up as it left the landing. There were no survivors.
I'm sorry."
"I see ..."
He did not see at all. What did the man
mean? There must be some mistake. He looked about
him. "Let's--let's go in here ..." He
indicated the stables.
The officer followed him, spurs jangling.
While the hungry horses whinnied and snorted in
their boxes, the man told Abner what had
happened. Lydia had adopted a Mahanoy
waif. The riverboat's boiler had exploded
at Indian Landing. The baby and a little dog that had
belonged to Mordecai were the only ones to come off
alive. The dog must be around somewhere, it had
followed them all the way from the Mississippi.
Numb with shock, Abner could only guess at
what Mordecai's death would do to Saraetta.
She had started an official concern for the blind in an
effort to give a purpose to her hero's suffering;
now she had to be told the man was dead. "I--I
think I should go tell my wife," he said to the
officer. "I mean, before she hears it from someone
else. You will stay with us overnight?"
"No, sir," the officer said. "I only
stopped to deliver the infant. We have to be moving
on."
"Please! Please don't go yet! Just let
me take the child to my wife--I'll be right
back."
The captain, aware of Abner's distress,
nodded and handed him the basket.
Abner entered the lobby just as the classes were on
their way to the dining hall. He was stopped by a
crowd of chattering children, asking why the soldiers were
there, who the baby was, could they see it.
Scores of little hands reached out toward the child who,
frightened by the noise in the echoing hall, started
to bellow with a strength that was somehow reassuring.
"Careful!" Abner cried. "Quiet,
please! Let me through! You stay here!"
Peggy Higgins came waddling toward him from the
kitchen; he fled up the stairs, the baby
screaming in his arms. He nearly tripped,
regained his balance, slowed down as he entered the
dark corridor leading to their apartment. The baby
went into a paroxysm of shrieks; it sounded as if
it were choking.
Suddenly his courage, or whatever it was,
failed him. He could not see it through: facing Saraetta, her reaction to his news, handing her
the baby.
He turned around in desperate
indecision and found Himsha Woodhouse standing right
behind him, the only one from the crowd of children who had
dared to follow him. "Here," he said. "Hold this
baby. Take it to the kitchen, while I--I go
and call the doctor."
He fled, there was no other word for it. As
by magic, the baby fell silent behind him.
Maybe it had recognized Himsha's Indian
face. He started toward the children on the landing, but
found he could not face them, not just yet. There was
only one way to avoid them--he opened the door
to the attic and climbed the narrow stairs.
Standing in front of the window, overlooking the
barren treetops and the distant prairie, he
wept, struck by a grief he had never known before.
Lydia ... Lydia!
He did not know how long he stood there
weeping; but gradually he grew calmer. He should
go downstairs now, back to the captain who was
waiting below.
He opened the attic window, breathed the frosty
air, gazed at the prairie. A flock of
geese heading south drew an arrowhead across the
wintry sky. The horizon was clear and white.
Beyond that horizon Lydia had vanished forever.
It was unimaginable that the goodness and strength she had
squandered on people like himself and Mordecai Monk should
have been wiped out. It could not be that this was all there was
to the miracle, the irreplaceable marvel of
courage and love that had been Lydia. If she
were anywhere at all right now, if there were anywhere for
her to go, she must be with Margaret Fell,
Gulielma Woodhouse, Becky Baker, all
those women on whose godly lives the Quaker
witness was founded.
But as he gazed at the sea of grass, all
he had to hold on to was the Friends' old belief
that love was eternal, life immortal, and death
a horizon. And a horizon was nothing but the
limitation of our sight.

Dr. Rossini was hauled out of his first sleep
by his Cajun housekeeper, who, as always at this
ungodly hour, looked like a voodoo priestess
with her head full of paper curlers.
"Docteur!" she called. "Docteur!"
"Oui, H@el@ene," he groaned,
"qu'est-ce qu'il you a?"
It turned out to be another call from the school.
Rossini was of half a mind to tell the
messenger he would be there first thing in the morning, but
when he questioned the man, a vague shadow in the night
outside the doorway, he was told it was a
matter of extreme urgency, something about
Saraetta having a child.
Suddenly wide awake, Rossini dressed with
practiced speed, while H@el@ene prepared his
buggy. He ought to have a manservant to do that, but
H@el@ene might eat him.
Saraetta, a child? As he drove through the
night, he could not repress the irreverent thought that
it must have been an immaculate conception. To father
a child on that snow queen was a triumph--but as her
doctor, he would have known about it. It had to be a
false alarm. If anyone seemed predestined
for a phantom pregnancy, it was Saraetta
Best. What a curse to be married to a woman
like that! And now poor Abner had been demoted
to some menial job ...
He reached the school and handed the reins to the
sta8and in the courtyard. The man started to brief
him in the dark, but Rossini wanted to hear it
firsthand from the Bests themselves. Then he remembered
who the sta8and was. Poor Abner was virtually
in hysterics: the cavalry had turned up with a
baby, an Indian baby Lydia had adopted,
but Lydia herself was dead, also Mordecai Monk
and all the Indians, the boiler of the ship in which they
were being transported to Kansas had exploded--
Lydia dead? Rossini made his way to the
glass doors of the lobby, struck
by unprofessional grief. Lydia had seemed the
most enduring of them all. It simply did not
seem possible--a glorious life of courage and
gentleness, snuffed out as if God had trod on
a beetle, crushing His own creation.
He was not often personally affected by a death this
way; he was almost grateful when, on his way up
the dark stairs, some child stepped in his way from the
shadows, saying, "Here he is, Doctor."
It took him a moment to realize it was the
Indian girl Himsha, holding a baby.
"You didn't give it to her yet?" Rossini
asked, surprised.
"No, Doctor, I--I didn't dare go
in."
"Why not?"
"Listen ..."
He listened, and there it was again: the familiar
sound of hysteria, this time with trumpets,
cymbals, and temple bells. Not even
Madame Guijon, whom he had seen, and
especially heard, in New Orleans as a
student, had managed to fill the stage all by herself
quite as fulsomely as Saraetta Best when she let
it rip.
"All right," he said. "Come with me. Is the child
all right?"
"Yes, Doctor. He was crying, but we fed
him and he's asleep now."
She really was going full tilt, old Sara.
He wondered what exactly had brought about this
gargantuan demonstration of operatic grief;
she and Lydia had not been exactly bosom
friends. Then, just before he opened the door, it struck
him: it was not Lydia she mourned, but her idol
Mordecai Monk, the holy demagogue.
He opened the door and there she lay, Medusa
strangled in her own coils. My God, to turn
a bed into a nest of vipers all by yourself was quite a
feat unless you were insane. Maybe she was. She
howled and heaved, gasped, beat her breast and tore
her garments in the most Biblical fashion. He
felt like giving her a potion that would poleax her
into silence but thought, in the words of Will Penn, "First let us try what love can do."
"Saraetta?" he said, approaching the bed.
"Look at me, I am Dr. Rossini. There
is someone I want you to meet."
She swung around with such violence that he stepped
back involuntarily. "He's dead!" she
shrieked. "They murdered him! He has been
crucified!"
Rossini beckoned the Indian girl who
hovered on the periphery. "Give him to me," he
whispered, and took over the little papoose in its
tight swaddling clothes, an ugly child with motionless
features, old before its time.
"Here, look at this," he said, in a moment of
silence amidst the shrieks. "This is what
Lydia wanted you to have. This is ..." He was
forced to wait until more howling had run its
course. "This is the baby Lydia adopted a
few weeks before she died, a motherless infant she
made her own, now motherless again. Unless you--" With
perfect timing, he put the baby in her arms as
she sat, mad-eyed, struck with stillness at the
height of her passion. God, what the right man
would be able to do with this smothered volcano!
"He is yours, Mrs. Best--if you
want him, that is."
"Lydia's?" she asked, stunned for once.
"Yes. You are his only hope now, ma'am."
The "ma'am" was a bit much, but she looked at
the child in her arms, cradled it, and at that moment
God performed a miracle by making the baby cry.
"Come now, come now ..." She took over the
crying child with the tenderness she had waited all her
life to spend, comforted it, kissed it, hugged it,
said, "Hush baby, hush little beastie, hush, it's
all right, it's all right, thee's safe now, all
is well ..." She kissed the black hair,
pressed the child's face against her bosom. After a
while, Rossini said, "I'll go and order some
milk. Shall I leave him with you?" A reply was
unnecessary, she was now totally wrapped up in the child.
"Come." Rossini put his arm round the shoulders
of the Indian girl. Outside, in the corridor,
he said, "Keep an eye on him, will you,
Himsha? It seems you have a new brother. He
may need help."
"I will," she said. "He has a little dog
too. It's in the kitchen. Come and have a look,"
and she led the way downstairs.
Well, another foundling had joined the flock.
"Little Beastie" would need a lot of resilience
and personality to withstand the storm-tossed waves of
his adoptive mother's emotions; but what Rossini
knew of Indian babies was reassuring. And this
one looked as if he were made of drop-forged
steel. "Who knows," he reflected as he
followed Himsha to the kitchen, "one day this may
be someone to be reckoned with in the Quaker
establishment: an Indian Friend. They haven't
had one for a long time. Talk about landing on your
feet!"

CHAPTER 17
PENDLE HILL, INDIANA
January 1834

After the Christmas holidays, everything
returned to normal. The school resumed its
daily schedule of work, play, and worship.
Charity taught fourth grade. Obadiah
scribbled away at his desk in a corner of the
room that was now their home: an essay about
"Law on the Frontier."
The first meeting for business of the new year was
held separately by the men and the women in
the old Meeting House, with the partition lowered between
them as usual. It was a humdrum affair,
concerned with dreary minutiae like covered-dish
lunches to be given to neighboring Meetings and the
rota of those taking charge of First Day school
during the coming months. Within half an hour,
Charity noticed, everyone was getting drowsy; then
Amanda Tucker, cochairman of the school
committee, rose to make her report.
She started by eulogizing Mordecai Monk,
out of the blue. "Saintly, selfless Friend who,
despite his cruel blindness, joined the Indians as
a testimony of Christian love." She did not
mention Lydia Best at all; Charity felt the
urge to take issue with her. But as the youngest
member of the Meeting she had better hold her
peace. The paean of praise for Mordecai
Monk continued, and she waited in growing distress
for someone else to rise in protest, but no one
did. The old woman on her right, who must be at
least ninety, had fallen asleep soon after the
start of meeting and now sat peaceably snoring.
The woman on her left, a gruff-looking
farmer's wife with calloused hands and hairy chin,
grunted in disapproval but did not speak up.
Then Charity found herself beginning to quake. It
had never happened to her before; it took a while before
she realized that was what it was. The trembling
started in her hands; she folded them tightly. Then
the rest of her body began to quiver, until she
sat there shaking like a leaf. With a feeling of
reluctance she gave in, found herself on her
feet, and cried, interrupting Amanda Tucker,
"Please, Friends! Let's not pretend that
Lydia Best never existed! Not only
Mordecai Monk joined the Indians as a
witness, but Lydia did too! And she was a
member of this Meeting! I know I am the youngest
among you, but I beseech you: let us rise, all
of us, as a witness that we unite with her. Let us
rise and express the wish, in prayer, that somehow
God may give us the power to turn Lydia's
witness into a testimony of our own! We can either
kill her memory forever, or rise where she
fell. The choice is ours. Now!"
Whatever the power was that had forced her to her feet
stayed with her. She gripped the back of the bench in
front to keep herself from swooning; then, to her utter
astonishment, the meeting rose to its feet.
After a stunned silence, Amanda
Tucker asked, "Has our eloquent young Friend
any constructive suggestions to make? If so,
would she please come forward and submit them to this
meeting?"
Charity understood too late what she had done.
All that was weak and insecure within her wanted
to let the meeting decide for itself what to do next,
not take the lead. But she had no choice now but
to respond. To the dozing old woman by her side
she said, "Excuse me," and tried to pass her,
but a hand grabbed her skirt. The old woman
gazed up at her with rheumy eyes and a cracked
voice and whispered, "Don't do it!" The hand
tugging at her skirt urged her to sit down; for a
second she stood in doubt, then said,
"Sorry," detached herself from the hand, and walked
down the aisle, knees shaking, while the meeting
sat down again. On the rostrum, Amanda Tucker
stood waiting for her. "God," Charity prayed
as she walked, "please don't make me!
Please, I didn't mean it! It was just a thought,
an idea ..." She climbed the steps to the
rostrum, whispered, "Thank thee," to Amanda
Tucker, and confronted the meeting, a sea of
silent white faces. She folded her hands
tightly to hide their shaking and said in a firm
voice, "Lydia Best was the one who started
among the members of this Meeting a motion of love
that resulted in the Meeting for Sufferings of
Mahanoy Indians. I was not here when it
happened, but my husband has told me of it in
such vivid terms that I feel as if I had been
a participant. She, and others among you,
expressed our common concern by distributing food and
clothes, care and attention among the people in a passing
convoy. But it became clear to her that this was not enough.
A Meeting for Sufferings, the oldest expression
of a Quaker concern, is not just an instrument for the
distribution of food parcels and the odd discarded
garment. To be worthy of its name, a Meeting for
Sufferings, being an expression of the love of the
Meeting, has to do more, set itself a loftier
goal."
All this was an articulation of her thoughts as they
had developed over the weeks, by now months,
since Lydia's departure. Yet she felt
suddenly as though she were expressing not only her
own thoughts but those of many others in the hall, as they
sat listening in a deep, almost scary silence.
She continued bravely: "Lydia Best
joined the Indians as a witness, in behalf of us
all. In doing so, she was following the example of
Becky and Cleo and Boniface Baker, who
founded this school in what was then unorganized
territory, as the Indian reservation in Kansas
is today. We heard from the captain of the cavalry
who escorted her convoy that Lydia was planning a
class for Indian children when--when she died, together
with the children. We cannot know the mind of God, but one thing
is certain: He did not call her home to Him
because He does not want the Mahanoy children to have an
education. Maybe she was called home to Him because
no one can possibly undertake this momentous task
alone." She paused, then, taking a deep breath, said, "I therefore propose that Pendle
Hill Meeting liberate those of its members who
feel called to do so to follow Lydia Best's
example. Complete her task, start a branch
of our School for Indian Children in the Mahanoy
reservation in Kansas ..."
So far, it had come out firmly, calm,
controlled, the articulation of the plan she had
mulled over for months; now she suddenly stood
tongue-tied. The meeting, silent, white-faced,
stared up at her.
Beside her, Amanda Tucker's voice asked,
after a silence, "Any particular Friends in mind,
Friend Charity?"
Charity threw all caution to the winds and said,
"Myself and my husband, for a start."
In the stillness that followed, she suddenly felt
a sense of uncertainty. Obadiah was going to be
furious. But something, maybe sheer panic, made
her continue.
"I propose," she concluded shakily, "that a
Mahanoy branch of the Rebekah Baker
School for Indian Children be placed under the care of
Pendle Hill Meeting, to--to benefit from
Friends like--like Amanda Tucker ..." It had been
a sudden inspiration; to her alarm, the meeting roared
with laughter, and somewhere someone started to applaud.
She looked around for help and saw Amanda
Tucker stare coldly at her before asking in an
acid tone, "May I invite comments from the
meeting?"
None was forthcoming.
She continued, "Let me state, as
cochairman of the school committee, that touched as
we are by our young Friend's proposal, we must
consider the practical aspects of her
suggestion, not the least of which is the matter of
financing such an undertaking." She again waited for a
reaction from the meeting; when no one spoke, she
continued, "I propose that we appoint Charity
Woodhouse, together with two other Friends, to go to the
Men's Meeting next door with the request that they
appoint an equal number from their midst to labor
with them on this concern. We need action, Friends, not
words!"
"How was it possible?"' Charity thought. Was this
the way it happened? Had she, miraculously,
reached that of God in Amanda Tucker?

After her failed effort to stop the child rushing toward
her doom, Abby McHair decided that she must
speak up. The girl had been struck by the madness
of God, just as her own father and sister Becky had
been. She herself had been dragged into the wilderness
as a child of ten; this girl had no idea what that
meant, no idea of the hardship, the loneliness, the
terror, the heartbreak. All she saw in her
exaltation was the fact that God had chosen her to do
His work for Him. "All He has is
thee." It was the most bloodthirsty slogan in
Quaker history.
Amanda Tucker intoned, "As cochairman of the
school committee, I will accompany Charity
Woodhouse to the Men's Meeting in that capacity.
May we have one more Friend, please, to make up the
required number?"
Abby rose unsteadily to her feet and said,
"I will."
She was conscious of the silence she created.
Amanda Tucker replied, with reverence, "The
meeting will be honored, Abigail McHair.
May I have the sense of the meeting on the delegation
as proposed?"
Someone called, "I unite!" followed by a
chorus of approval.
Abby set out up the aisle on her way to the
Men's Meeting; someone rose to support her.
She acted more fragile than she was; her power
resided in the fact that she was ninety-three years
old, last surviving member of the founder's
family, all of which had, of course, nothing to do with
today's reality.
"Careful, Abigail McHair," Amanda
Tucker warned, as she opened the door in the
partition. "Mind the step!"
"Step?" she croaked, overdoing it.
"Here--"
"Ah! I see ... Thank thee." Smiling
vacuously, she staggered into the Men's Meeting like
a drunk. Nobody was aware that in her better
moments she remained a woman of thirty-five,
tough as nails, who knew intimately the
validity of the old Quaker adage that if you cannot
have violence, you must have slyness.

Obadiah wondered what was going on when he
saw Charity, Amanda Tucker, and Abigail
McHair turn up at the back of the hall. The
old woman shuffled down the aisle to the rostrum
supported by the two others; when they reached the
facing bench, Amanda Tucker spoke briefly
to the clerk, then turned around and cried, "The
Women's Meeting has delegated us to present
to you a concern of great urgency!"
Harlan Tucker had no choice but to invite his
wife to present to the meeting whatever it was that had
made them interrupt their deliberations. Amanda
Tucker took Obadiah's breath away
by saying, "Our young attender, Charity
Woodhouse, has informed the Women's Meeting
of a concern with which she and her husband are burdened.
They feel moved, in the spirit of love, to follow
Boniface and Rebekah Baker's example,
and that of Friend Mordecai Monk and Lydia
Best, by setting out for the Mahanoy reservation in
order to start a branch of the Rebekah Baker
School for Indian Children under the care of Pendle
Hill Meeting."
Obadiah could barely contain himself. There stood
Charity, looking pious, clearly avoiding his
eyes. What had got into her? How dare she!
He waited with rising fury for the impossible
Amanda to end her monologue, so he could rise
himself and announce publicly that he had no knowledge of the
insane plan and was dead set against it.
Then old Abigail McHair started
to speak. Obadiah had assumed she was there
merely as an ornament, to lend weight to the
women's message; the fact that she spoke at
all came as a shock. She spoke in a slow,
hesitant, croaking whisper that hushed the meeting
to dead silence. At first, Obadiah was
intimidated by her venerable age; but as she continued,
gasping for breath after every few words, frequently
pressing her breastbone, he became convinced that the
ninety-three-year-old woman was
dissembling. Nobody could be that feeble and be heard
in the back row.
She asked for the partition to be raised so that she
might address both meetings; her whispered wish
was reverently obeyed. She waited until the
creaking and squealing of the hoisting had stopped, then
she addressed the full house, and Obadiah's
suspicion became certainty. She seemed about
to keel over, but her breathy whisper was audible in
the furthest row; she was as adept at voice
projection as Mordecai Monk had been.
He was overcome by contempt for the old woman,
and for Charity. Both were arch manipulators; when
one of the men dared to pose a question, Abby McHair
went through a near fatal attack of exhaustion.
In a dramatic swoon, pressing both hands on
her chest, she closed her eyes. As a result,
the meeting hushed the man with an outraged "Sssh!"
and the old witch continued her performance.
What she said only deepened Obadiah's
scorn. She even went so far as to exploit the
gruesome death of her sister Rebekah to make a
point. "We must not let these children go alone, the
way Philadelphia Yearly Meeting allowed
us to go, eighty-three years ago!" she croaked.
"We must forbid them to go, for their own sakes, and for the
sake of their future children--unless we decide
to make up a wagon train of able men and women in
sufficient numbers to turn this reckless witness
into an organized, responsible concern, as was done
by Philadelphia Meeting after the gruesome death
of my sister Rebekah."
To Obadiah's amazement, a score of people
rose from the body of the men's meeting to cry, "I
unite!" men whom he would never have expected to do
such a thing: Little Will, Adam Higgins, Farmer
Kowalski, Cletus Brown. After ten minutes
of communal insanity, the combined meetings approved
a minute in which the founding of "a branch of the
Rebekah Baker School for Indian Children in
Kansas Territory" was made the official
concern of Pendle Hill Monthly Meeting and
placed under its care.
After that, madness took hold. Spontaneous
contributions of startling generosity were made to the
Mahanoy School Expedition. Farmers
donated horses, gear. A tailor offered
to furnish clothes for the first contingent of Indian children
in the school, then decided he might as well go
himself and asked if somebody present was
interested in taking over a fully equipped
tailor's workshop. A carpenter, a
blacksmith, a wagoneer, three buffalo
hunters, all offered their services. One man
donated a mule team, if someone else would offer
the wagons. A builder offered materials for a
schoolhouse. Two grocers, in a frenzy of
competition, promised to stock the wagon train with
food for two months. The climax came when
Harry Bascombe, owner of the Pendle Hill
Inn, a wet Quaker if ever there was one, pledged
bedding and blankets not only for the expedition but for the
entire school itself.
Everybody seemed to share in an orgy of
generosity, with the exception of Abner Best.
Deathly pale, obviously under stress, he
remained seated. Amazing, really; having been
dismissed and disowned, he seemed a natural for the
expedition. Uriah Martin seemed tempted
to follow his brother Little Will, but Abner grabbed his
pudgy wrist; the fat man obeyed the silent
command and stayed down.
That silent interchange suddenly opened
Obadiah's eyes to what was actually going on:
he was witnessing another demonstration of the schism in
Pendle Hill. The orthodox members were
satisfied to contribute; those who actually joined
this harebrained expedition were all activists. The
Meeting was ridding itself of dissent, in the spirit of
love.
Then it struck him what the true challenge
was. By joining this expedition--insane as it might
be, ludicrous as the concept was of a city lawyer
setting out for an Indian reservation--he himself would
help relieve Lydia's death of its
pointlessness. Then, in part thanks to him, it could be
said that if Lydia had not died the way she did,
the Quaker school for Indian children in the
Mahanoy reservation would never have come about. But was
he prepared to throw away his years of education, his
professional future, trotting along behind his
wife into the wilderness?
He was standing alone in the aisle after meeting had
broken when Charity threw herself against him,
collapsing, her head on his shoulder, crying,
"Obadiah! What have I done?"
As if she didn't know. "Let's go home,"
he said. "We need to talk about it."
Home was the poky room on the fourth floor.
A covered wagon could be no smaller.
The only thing smaller would be a coffin.
"Thee knows thee is crazy?" He took her
hand and sat down on the edge of the bed. "We had a whole life ahead of us--"
"We have!" she whispered. "We have! Kiss
me!"
And so, in their confusion, they made love, as if
that were the answer to everything.
"Today, at eight o'clock sharp, there will be a
meeting of the participants of the Mahanoy
expedition in the Meeting House."
Eventually, they found the note under their door.
Someone must have put it there while they-- "Oh,
no! Does thee think they heard?" she cried.
He smiled a wan smile. "They'll say that
I sank my teeth in thy neck, causing thee
to shriek like the cheetah."
Suddenly, there he was, awesome and ludicrous
even in death: Mordecai Monk, who had started
all this by interrupting the children's pageant with his
monstrous ministry. But for him, none of this would have
come about.
"God works in mysterious ways," he said.
She groaned.

As the first meeting of the participants got under
way, Dr. Rossini, listening in the back row
of the sparsely filled Meeting House, concluded
that the Mahanoy expedition was like a children's
crusade. Speaker after speaker rose to make
impractical suggestions; when Baker Jenkins
suggested taking along one hundred copies of
William Penn's No Cross, No
Crown, to be distributed among the outlaws in
unorganized territory, Rossini realized that
none of the forty participants had any idea what
awaited them in that lawless world. To them, Indians
were a homogeneous race full of friendship and
tenderness for their old friends the Quakers. Apart from
the handful of women who had distributed food to the
convoys, they had never set eyes on a real
Indian, only on tame ones. Nobody here
had the slightest notion of the differences between the
tribes, between Plains Indians and Woods
Indians. Plains Indians, in their natural
habitat, had no idea who Quakers were; they
would scalp, rape, and murder any isolated band
of whites like this wagon train the moment they
spotted easy pickings.
At a given moment he could no longer
resist raising his voice as their physician,
to try and restore sanity among the Pentecostal
dreamers.
"Friends!" he started; the moment they saw who was
calling for their attention, they fell silent; the
doctor should be listened to.
"Come forward, Doc!" Baker Jenkins
called. "We all want to hear what thee has
to say."
Rossini walked down the aisle to the rostrum
and faced the child crusaders. "Forgive me if I
mention a few facts from my own experience. First
off, to venture into Indian territory with a wagon
train, unarmed or restricted in the use of arms
by your peace testimony, is to invite disaster."
"I don't agree!" a man shouted from the
body of the meeting. "In many instances in the past,
the peace testimony--"
"Let him finish, Harm," Baker Jenkins
interrupted. "Let the doc have his say first, then
thee can sound off. Go on, Doc."
"Peace testimony or no, you must travel
under the protection of the U.s. Cavalry at
least as far as the river, possibly further. But
that means you must ask for it."
There was a rumble of protest.
"In order for you to acquire army protection,
the government has to issue an order to that
effect--"
"Which they will never do!" someone shouted.
"Which they may do, if you, as a religious
body, have some clout in Washington."
Hearty laughter was his response. The mere
idea appeared hilarious to them; then Obadiah
Woodhouse rose and said with unexpected
authority, "I happen to know that there are
individual Friends who carry a lot of weight with
Congress and the Senate. Both Philadelphia
Yearly Meetings, especially Arch Street, have
influence in Washington--"
Baker Jenkins interrupted. "Surely Arch
Street would be the last to support this concern?"
"Not necessarily. They may, under certain
conditions, be persuaded to do so."
"How does thee know?"
"I was a member of Arch Street Yearly
Meeting myself at one time," the young man replied,
smiling.
In the silence that followed, Rossini asked,
"What are those conditions, counselor?"
"To begin with, it must not cost any money."
They laughed; the baker called, "Silence!"
"Secondly, it must not involve their having
to do anything. Thirdly, and most important:
they must be pressured."
"By whom?" the baker asked.
"By their wives."
There was more laughter.
"This is where Mordecai Monk comes in," the
young lawyer continued soberly. The name brought an
uneasy silence; Mordecai Monk had become
the darling of the orthodox part of the Meeting. "If
we can present this concern as a continuation of
Mordecai Monk's inspired and inspiring
mission, there is a fair chance that Quaker women
on the Atlantic seaboard will urge their husbands
to give us their support."
"How could we achieve that?" Baker Jenkins
asked.
"I could write an essay," the young lawyer
said, poker-faced, "in which I describe
Mordecai Monk's Calvary and ultimate
crucifixion in inspiring terms."
"Would it be the truth?" someone asked.
The young man hesitated before saying, "Yes,
if speaking truth to power means speaking in power's
own terms."
"Explain!" someone called.
"When Arch Street accepts and approves of
ministry that says, "I give my heart
to Jesus," it is generally accepted that the speaker
is not about to have the actual organ removed from his
chest as a sacrifice. When Arch Street
vociferously adheres to the principles of the
Sermon on the Mount, it does not mean that the
owners of large shipping companies and the princes of
commerce are going to distribute their wealth among the
poor. It so happens that they are caught in the
snares of traditional verbal ecstasies which bear
no relation to the reality of daily life. I would
write on Mordecai Monk's life and death
in terms which, in other, less verbally oriented
Meetings, might sound like hypocrisy. I hasten
to add that I would not be misleading them, all I
would do would be to say, "Mordecai Monk was
crucified on the road to Golgotha," rather than
"Mordecai Monk paid for his convictions with his
life." It's a matter of identifying with the
adversary, as the approach to conflict after the
manner of Friends advises us to do."
There was an uneasy silence, but no one
demurred.
After the meeting, the rest of which was devoted to a
discussion of practical preparations, Rossini
accosted Obadiah. "Are you seriously considering
doing that?" he asked.
"Well, yes, I'd like to have a shot at it,"
the young man answered. "I don't know if I can.
It will take--well--a certain effort."
"Now let me get this straight," Rossini
persisted. "You do accept that any wagon train
may only travel under the protection of the
cavalry?"
"Yes."
"And to that end you want to prevail upon the
Quaker establishment to turn the man Monk into a
saint?"
"Something of the sort."
"You know that he wasn't?"
"I don't, frankly," the young man replied
with unconvincing innocence. "For all I know I
may have traveled in the company of a saint without
knowing it."
"Well, I can tell you that he was not,"
Rossini pressed on. "The man was a humbug
and a malingerer who pretended to be blind."
"It's all a matter of interpretation," the young
man said with a smile.

It was easier said than done. Obadiah,
seated at the tiny table in the corner of their
bedroom, faced the blank page feeling--there was
no other word for it--unclean. He was about
to smuggle an unworthy character into the gallery of Quaker saints, on whose godly lives the
spiritual edifice of the Society of Friends was
based. Having no dogmas, no creed, no
liturgy, no paid clergy, Quakers had to find
guidance and inspiration in the godly lives that went
before. There weren't too many of them as it was;
to infiltrate their sparse ranks with an impostor
might bear momentous consequences.
On the other hand, who was to say whether
Mordecai Monk had fallen from grace when he
allowed himself to be turned into a medicine man by the
Indians, as the captain had reported? Curing
ailments with a nursery rhyme? George Fox
had performed healings and miracles; he had even,
on one occasion, reputedly raised the dead. It
certainly was not new to have a Friend perform the
laying on of hands, or any other form of spiritual
healing; whether he sang "Hosannah!" or
"Hoopla, hopla!" while doing so might be
immaterial. Presumably, it was God Himself
who effected the healing; no one must think himself an
authority on the musical tastes of the
Almighty. His wondrous ways might include
nursery rhymes intoned by charlatans, if that was
all He had available at a particular moment.
Musing about it, Obadiah eventually convinced
himself that his firing the first shot in the battle for the
sanctification of Mordecai Monk--to coin a
phrase--would not require a gross violation of the
truth. Mordecai had shown a childlike
quality which had been endearing, and, after all, his
witness was there for all to see. How many godly
Friends had had themselves blown to Kingdom Come for the
sake of the Least of These Their Brethren?
But would the Quaker princes in
Philadelphia fall for it? That was the crucial
question. And if they did not, would their wives? How
about England? Should English woman Friends be
included in his--well--efforts? What had been
the name of that majestic woman in London
Yearly Meeting, the one with the cloth bonnet @a
la the French goddess of Reason? She had
made mincemeat of the males on the facing bench,
who wanted to give Mordecai a traveling
minute to America; how about enlisting her spiritual
artillery when it came to convincing old diehards like
his uncle Woodrow to pull out their wallets for a
saint? This, alas, was what it all came down
to: money. What he was engaged in, if truth
were told, was a hold-up of the Philadelphia
princes in the spirit of love.
"What is thee doing?" Charity asked. He had
not heard her come in.
"I'm supposed to write an essay on
Mordecai Monk's witness that will move my
aunts and uncles to support thy concern."
"Our concern, dear heart."
"Our concern."
"Surely, thee is not going to write about
Mordecai Monk alone? What about Lydia?"
"Ah, Lydia ... Alas, she would be a
source of uneasiness, as the saying goes."
"Thee means thee is going to write about
Mordecai, but not about Lydia?"
"Dear love: Lydia was read out of Meeting
for involving the children in the slaves'
escape from the courtroom. Then she took part in
a brittle--that's the appropriate Quaker word
--marriage ceremony with Mordecai Monk."
"I don't understand. What was brittle about
it?"
"Never mind, I'll explain it to thee later.
What I want thee to do now is tell me which
title thee thinks will speak most to the condition of the
women who have been Mordecai's main audience.
"Blinded on the Road to Damascus"?"
"Terrible."
""The Last Enemy Is Death"?"
"No."
""The Last Enemy," just by itself?"
"How about "Love in Action"?"
He smiled. "That, I'm afraid, would have a
mixed reception in Philadelphia."
"Thee asked me what women would respond to.
Well, his life was love, and love is a
verb."
Lydia had said that on one occasion, he could not
remember when. It gave him a sudden, agonizing
stab of grief; for the first time she was, to him,
really dead. How strange. How terribly,
terribly sad. What a waste! And here he
was, about to eulogize--
"Well," he said, "let me do some writing
first; we'll decide on a title later." He
turned his back on her and dipped his quill in the
inkwell. What it boiled down to was the old
problem of the end hallowing the means. If the
Mahanoy were to have a school, their only hope was
the canonization of Mordecai Monk.
He opened with: "God's ways are
mysterious. There are instances in which man, confronted
with an act of God, reels back in horror and
disgust at the wanton destruction, the cruelty,
the violence, the pointlessness of it all. If Friends
have one message to give the world, it is this: It is
not up to God to justify the apparent senselessness of
some of His most shocking acts. It is up to us,
individual men and women, to relieve our
brother's or sister's cruel fate of its
apparent pointlessness by turning it into a beacon that will
shine through the ages.
"One of God's most shocking acts of
destruction in recent history has been the
tearing, limb from limb, of Mordecai Monk in
the explosion of a Mississippi steamboat. It
is up to us to relieve his death of its
apparent senselessness by completing the labor of love
he set out to perform but was not allowed to complete.
God needs people--and "p" is thee, dear reader."
"H'm," he thought, "not bad. Could have been
written by old Mordecai himself."
But who was going to eulogize Lydia?
A troubling thought: the only Quaker poet to do
her radiant life justice would have been
Mordecai Monk.

CHAPTER 18
PHILADELPHIA
January 1834

A headline article in the St. Louis
Sentinel, forwarded by a helpful Missouri
Friend, created a stir in Philadelphia.
BATTLE CORPSES HEADING FOR OUR
CITY, it ran; INDIANS DISGUISED AS
QUAKERS.
According to the article, a major battle had
taken place upriver between the cavalry and a band of
marauding Indians. The Indians had been
defeated; hundreds of corpses had been about
to float by the town's waterfront in full view
of the city's women and children. The mayor had ordered
the snagboat Petunia to sail upriver,
scoop up the bodies, and deposit them ashore
for mass burial. But Petunia had not
succeeded in catching them all; some of the corpses,
which may have been floating below the surface, did
reach the city's waterfront, causing shock and
dismay. The proverbial perfidy of the redskin was
demonstrated once more by the fact that some of the
cadavers were disguised as Quakers.
Shortly after this, a firsthand report of the
tragedy reached Philadelphia in the form of an
essay written by Obadiah Woodhouse,
scion of the well-known Quaker family,
entitled "Love in Action: The Life and
Death of Mordecai Monk." It described
how the English evangelist had joined, as a
witness, a herd of dejected, despairing
Mahanoy in the process of being removed from their
ancient hunting grounds to a reservation in
Kansas by the U.s. Cavalry. Mordecai
Monk, stirred by the fate that had befallen the
tribe--once William Penn's partners in a
treaty of peace--had turned himself into an
Indian, been beaten, flogged, and
eventually blinded by a whip at the hands of
civilian drovers; but he had persisted, thereby
turning his life into a classic Quaker
testimony of peace, mercy, and identification.
He and the Indians had reached their Golgotha on
the Mississippi: the boiler of the dilapidated
riverboat about to transport them to Kansas
exploded after leaving the dock. There had been no
survivors; his must have been the body "disguised
as a Quaker" spotted as it drifted past the
St. Louis waterfront.
On the face of it, his had been a pointless
death. But, inspired by his example, a group of
Friends in the Indiana town of Pendle Hill were
planning to send a wagon train of forty hardy
souls to the Kansas reservation, with the intent of
starting a school there for Indian children, in memory
of Mordecai Monk.
The essay spoke to the condition of
Philadelphia Friends, especially the women, and
resulted in the acceptance by both Arch and Cherry
Street Meetings of the Quaker school in the
Mahanoy reservation as an official concern,
demonstrating the truth of Margaret Fell's observation: "Service unites, theology
divides."
The Quaker princes of commerce did not
demur; when Women's Meetings were on the
warpath, no man in his senses would even imagine trying to face them down. If the man Monk had
not had himself killed by that boiler explosion, none of
this would have happened; now, as always, it was they who had
to foot the bill.
For, in an accompanying letter, young Obadiah
Woodhouse stated blithely that the school
expedition could not hazard the voyage from Pendle
Hill to the Mississippi and beyond "without
protection." This meant "escorted by the
U.s. Cavalry," which meant the penny-pinching
senators of the Armed Services Committee, which
meant a sizable financial contribution,
recorded in the minutes of the meeting with the phrase:
"in order to promote government recognition
of a school for Indian children in the Mahanoy
reservation." In fact, it was a contribution to the
army; but because of the peace testimony, this was not so
stated.
It needed expert political footwork and
persistence, but in the end the Mahanoy school
expedition was granted government
recognition and scheduled to join the next convoy of
Indians in transport to the Mississippi and
beyond. The words "and beyond" were the ones that counted; the
wagon train had Simon Weatherby, clerk of
Ministry and Worship of Arch Street Yearly
Meeting, to thank for them.
"How would the American people react," he had
asked the chairman of the Armed Services
Committee, "if these good farmers and grocers with
their noble cause were massacred after entering
unorganized territory? Might this be the
inspiration for a new fort in Kansas? As long as
it is not referred to as "fort," and its peaceable
purpose is stressed, a sizable contribution on
the part of influential Philadelphia citizens
can be expected. Who is going to be the
political genius to reach the unreachable, by coaxing
a monetary contribution out of the Quaker
establishment for a military installation?" History
had seen several examples of such genius; but
then, politicians never read history, other
than that of the Roman Empire.
After solemn reflection and consultation with
"key figures," the secretary had obliged.
Simon Weatherby should have been flushed with
success, but a small sense of uneasiness
remained with him. Why had he cast himself as the
champion of that school expedition, an activist
concern if ever there was one? Guilt, because he had
been material in spiriting Monk and his "rutting
mammals" away to the Far West? No, that had
been a sane and necessary decision. Then why go so far
as to advocate the building of a fort? It had all
been handled sub rosa, but what had tricked
him into this Byzantine political maneuver?
Outside the window, a mockingbird taunted a
crow, by cawing its mating call most realistically.
Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.

CHAPTER 19
THE PRAIRIE
May 1834

One warm afternoon in spring, the seventeenth
Mahanoy Indian convoy emerged from the forest,
escorted by the cavalry, to find a train of
twelve covered wagons waiting for it, on the
site of the old buffalo hunters' campground.
The prairie had changed color during the
morning hours. The sky was clear and
bright; a warm wind swept whorls across the
shimmering sea of grass; birds warbled in the
shrubs, whole flights of them swept the
horizon like fleeting clouds. The vast emptiness
of the prairie seemed filled with life and the joy of
living.
The herd of Indians, as they came shuffling out
of the forest, seemed an alien element in the
abundance of renascent vitality. Rossini had
never seen them on the march before, only encamped, the
day he had visited the man Monk in his
so-called blindness. He had not paid much attention
to them then, preoccupied as he had been with poor
Lydia Best, determined to "follow the
light." A wasted life, it had seemed; now
here was this wagon train full of enthusiasts.
Mysterious breed, Quakers. It might seem a
suicidal enterprise, a lemmings' rush toward
probable extinction by rape and manslaughter in the
Wild West; but Pendle Hill itself had been
founded as the result of two crazies blazing a
trail in the wilderness, followed by a wagon
train like this one. That, ultimately, seemed to be
the secret of the elusive Society of Friends and
its record of good works: its actions all
appeared to be based on precedent, history
repeating itself. There must be a God for innocents;
either that, or Pendle Hill, even
Philadelphia, were the outcome of outrageous
luck.
"Well, well, if it isn't our medico!"
Startled, Rossini looked up and saw the
copper-bearded convoy commandant loom over him on
a huge black horse. "Good afternoon,
Captain," he said. "Nice to see you again."
"Likewise," the man said. "In a minute
my quarters will be up, then let's have a drink on
my porch."
"Thank you. I'd be delighted. I'll
introduce you to the members of this expedition."
"Later," the captain said. "Let me
settle down these savages first. Sergeant!"
An NCO came trotting through the crowd on a
placid horse. Any other but a cavalry
horse would have shied and foamed at the mouth with
wildly rolling eyes when forced to make its way
through this dense throng of Indians. They were a
sorry sight; the captain and his men managed
to sort them out in record time. Teepees
sprouted on allotted plots of
prairie, horses were corralled, wagons
ranged in an orderly manner. Meanwhile, the
commandant's quarters were raised with surprising
speed; within half an hour, the captain was holding
court on the steps of his porch, being introduced
to all forty members of the expedition by name and having
a private word with each one of them. Within the hour,
Rossini and he were sitting on his porch in camp
chairs, with glasses of bourbon beside them. The
captain yelled for bacon and sausages. The
orderly took it in his stride.
"Well, Doctor," the captain said, raising
his glass, "nice to have you with us. I'm looking
forward to making this a daily ritual. Cheers."
"Cheers. But, I'm sorry to say, I'm not
part of the expedition. I have a practice in town
to look after."
"I see." The captain looked as if he were
pouting behind that copper beard. "Well, sorry about
that. None of these good people drink alcohol, I
presume?"
"I'm afraid not. Quakers have a witness
against alcoholic beverages."
"Not even that lawyer, whatever his name is?"
"Obadiah Woodhouse? He may,
eventually. He's a city Quaker, member of
one of the founding families. I've been told they
drink like troopers--rum and sugar pot on every
hall table. But it may just be one of those stories,
you know. There are enough of them about."
"Telling me," the captain grunted,
drinking. Then he wiped his beard and said, "But
having known--er--Miss Best, I have no truck
with any of them. If ever there was a saint, it was
she."
He had obviously been much affected
by Lydia's death. Well, let him think of her
as a saint, it might help her successors. That
was another Quaker secret: none of their saints
had been saintly, except in one respect: if
they preached at all, they had preached what they
practiced. Except for that gasbag Monk,
whom Saraetta Best was in the process of
sanctifying as "the blind Friend of God." Some
friend. Or some God. "How about the man Monk,"
he asked, "in retrospect?"
The captain took a long draught from his glass, slammed it down empty on the table, and
bellowed: "Booze! And where are my sausages
and bacon?"
"Coming, sah," the orderly answered from inside
the tent.
"A con artist," the captain continued. "A
snake-oil salesman. But he had the touch."
"Of what?"
"Healing. Those wily Indians turned him
into their shaman, and it paid off. It was not his own
power, of course; it was theirs. He was just their
instrument. He put a hex on me one time and,
by God, next thing I knew I had a boil in
my neck. Which he later cured."
"How?"
The captain grinned. "You won't believe this.
His magic formula was a nursery rhyme.
Hoopla, hopla, feel how it mends? And
then, a bit further, Froggy, piggy, baby
bull, grab the pain and pull and pull. At
least, he didn't pretend he was an emissary
from God."
"Maybe he was at that, if God has a
sense of humor."
It became too sophisticated for the captain.
He grunted and yelled "Booze!" again. The
orderly emerged with a tray with two full
glasses and a plate of sausages and bacon.
No mean feat, in a tent that had just been
erected.
The captain did not see fit to thank him, but
grabbed a sausage which he stuck in his beard before
passing on the plate. "Help yourself," he said.
"Thank you." Rossini helped himself to a
slice of bacon, bit off a piece, and washed
it down with bourbon. It was salt enough to pickle a
fish. "Having this many Quakers in your convoy
won't faze you?"
"Nah," the captain waved the thought away with the
remaining half of his sausage. "They'll help
to keep my drovers in line. Those jokers have the
tendency to overdo it sometimes; forty beady-eyed
Quakers should do the trick. Two were enough, last
time. They even got my drovers to bury dead
Indians instead of tossing them in the grass."
"You don't say."
"They've been burying them ever since, as if
those two were still looking. Maybe they are." He
masticated the rest of his sausage. "If it
takes a couple of ghosts to keep those brutes from
helping themselves to my squaws, I'm all for it.
On the way back, last time, one of them hauled
a squaw into the grass and had his prick
stung by a wasp. Talk about a sun dance! He
yelled the place down. That's when they decided
those two Quakers must still be hanging around. No more
feeling up and bedding down since, for God knows
what the spooks might do. Well, peace and
quiet, that's what I like. With forty Quakers,
chances are I'll get it."
Listening to the monologue as an experienced
family practitioner, Rossini was struck by the
change in the captain since they had first met,
months before. Then he had been civilized,
austere, none of the coarseness he displayed this time.
He brought to mind the syndrome of the widower unable
to handle the loss of his beloved wife, who hides
his emotional disarray behind incongruous tough talk.
Rossini understood he was in the presence of
grief, clumsily disguised, and wondered if he
should speak to it. No, the captain was a lonely
man with one of the loneliest assignments in the army.
A man like that would resist any effort to make him
reveal himself; drink was the usual answer. In this
case too.
"Well, Captain," he said, "thanks for the
drinks, but I must be on my way. I want
to say goodbye to everyone here, and I still have rounds to do
back home. Thanks again, and good luck."
"The luck should be theirs," the captain said,
rising, "although things could have been worse."
"How so?"
"My orders are to take this convoy all the way
to Kansas and establish a fort there. The Quaker
school will be built within the confines of the fort, which should
solve a lot of problems."
"Glad to hear it," Rossini said. "Any name
yet?"
"Excuse me?"
"For the fort?"
"No. That's left to my discretion once we
get there."
Rossini turned to go; then he asked casually,
"How about Fort Lydia?"
The knowing eyes in their lair of beard and
eyebrows froze. Then he said, "It's sure as
hell not going to be Fort Monk. Goodbye,
Doctor."
"Goodbye, sir," Rossini said.

When Rossini reached the circle of Quaker
wagons, he was struck by the silence. He found
all forty Quakers sitting on the ground
in the center of the space. They had gone into meeting.
He considered joining them, but thought better of it
and sat down on the back step of one of the
wagons, waiting for them to finish. As he
surveyed the double row of bowed heads, the men and
women no longer separated, he was reminded of the
gathering on Founders' Day when it had all started:
the children standing motionless on the stage in their Quaker
and Indian costumes, Lydia Best among them;
the silent pupils in the audience, girls on the
left, boys on the right, and in the first row
Mordecai Monk, about to hurl his bomb into their
peaceable kingdom. Now Monk was dead as a
result of his intervention, so was Lydia, and here was
the ultimate outcome: a wagon train on its
way to start a school for Indian children in the
Mahanoy reservation in Kansas, the very heart
of the lawless world of the unorganized territories.
He looked at the well-known faces.
Jesse McHair, the roughneck. Little Will, the
dwarf. Obadiah Woodhouse, henpecked
husband in the making. His wife, Charity, as
gallant as they come. Black Adam and Peggy
Higgins.
He looked along the rows of bent heads and
felt a paternal pride. At least a third of
them, now heading for sainthood or martyrdom, or
both, or neither, might have been in their graves
by now without his care. Well, say a quarter.
All right: a fifth.
Bargaining with himself over the number of lives he
had saved, he was overcome by the feeling of an
unseen presence. It was nonsense, of course.
Just the sentiment of the occasion. Even so, someone was
there. Lydia? Mordecai Monk? Maybe it
was the phenomenon they occasionally spoke of among
themselves: "a sense of the Presence."
Meeting broke, they all shook hands and
rose. Rossini said goodbye to them, moving among
them with admonitions and farewells. He was kissed
by some of the women, Charity Woodhouse and Peggy
Higgins among them. Then he mounted his borrowed
mare and, turning slowly, headed for the forest.
One hour and he would be home. Back
to civilization. He spurred the horse to a
canter, for there was work to be done: babies,
terrified of the unknown, to be coaxed into the world; the
dying, terrified of the unknown, to be coaxed
into leaving it. It was a good life, serving
humanity. But as he approached the
forest, he could not escape the thought, "I should have
gone with them."
Why? He was not a Quaker, and there were only
forty of them. His practice numbered seven
hundred. He was needed where the need was greatest.
Wasn't he?
The horse and its rider disappeared into the forest.

















About the Author

Jan de Hartog, born in Haarlem,
Holland, the second son of a Calvinist minister
and a Quaker mother, ran off to sea at the age of
ten. At sixteen he entered Amsterdam Naval
College, ending up as a junior mate in the
Dutch oceangoing tugboat service. When war
broke out in 1940, and Holland was occupied by the
Nazis, de Hartog was trapped in his native
country. During this time he wrote and published his
first major novel, Holland's Glory, which
became an instant and historic best-seller and a
symbol of the Dutch Resistance; the German
occupying forces banned the book in 1942, but it
went on selling in large quantities in the
underground market. When he escaped to London in
1943, he was appointed war correspondent for the
Dutch merchant marine. There he gathered the
material for his postwar novels The Distant
Shore, The Captain, and The Commodore.
In the late sixties de Hartog, himself a
Quaker, undertook the ambitious project of a
multivolume novel on the history of the
Religious Society of Friends. The
Peaceable Kingdom was the first book,
followed by The Lamb's War and The
Peculiar P.
De Hartog has written many plays, among
which the most famous is The Fourposter, which won
a Tony in 1951 and was later turned into the
musical I Do! I Do!, and several
volumes of essays, the best known being A
Sailor's Life (memories of life at
sea before World War II) and The Children (a
personal record for the benefit of the adoptive
parents of Asian children).
In 1983, de Hartog was nominated for the
Nobel Prize for Literature.

THE END