Caleb's Crossing Read Free Page A

poem from one of our reformed brethren there:
    We are on tiptoe in this land,
    Waiting to pass to the American Strand.
    I was used to offer a prayer for them, that God hasten their way hither, and that he grant their morning bring not fear, but a peace such as we here are come to know, under the light hand of my grandfather’s governance and the gentle ministry of my father.
    As I think of it now, I haven’t said that prayer in a while. I no longer feel at peace here.

III
     
    T he account of my fall must begin three years since, in that lean summer of my twelfth year. As newcomers will in a foreign place, we clung too long to the old habits and lifeways. Our barley did never seem to thrive here, yet families continued to plant it, just because they had always done so. At large expense, we had brought tegs from the mainland just a year earlier, mainly to be raised for their wool, for it was plain that we would need to make our own cloth, and linen did not answer in the foul winters here. But the promise of spring lamb at Eastertide proved very great, and so we put the ram to the ewes too early. Then we found ourselves in the grip of a stubborn winter that would not cede to milder days, no matter what the calendar might say on the matter. Though we all of us tried to keep the newborn lambs warm at the hearth, the bitter winds that howled across the salt-hay pastures, and the hard frosts that bit off the buds, carried away more than we could spare. All was common land then, and we had built no barns nor proper folds. With little store of saltmeat after so long a winter, and no promise of any fresh, fishing and daily foraging became our mainstay.
    First feast, then famine. Then out on the flats a’clammin’. Such was the doggerel that year. Since clamming was a despised chore, Makepeace ensured that it fell to me. He was always quick to assert his rights, he who was both eldest, and, since Zuriel’s death, the only son. If that was not enough to secure his liberty from whatever task he shirked, he would plead the heavy demands of his studies, with which, as he put it, “my sister is not burdened.” This last stuck in my craw like grit, for I coveted the instruction that Makepeace found so troublesome and he well knew it.
    Father permitted me to take the mare, since the best clamming flats were off to the west. I was meant to seek out my Aunt Hannah, and go in her company. It was a rule that none might walk nor ride alone more than one mile from the edge of our settlement. But my aunt was harried to a raveling by all her other chores, and was more than happy, one mild day, when a softer air had touched my cheek and I offered to do her clamming for her. That was the first time I broke the commandment of obedience, for I did not tarry for another companion as she bade me, but rode off by a new way, alone. It is no easy thing to be forever watched, and judged, as I must be as the minister’s daughter. When I was out of sight of the settlement, I hitched my skirt and galloped, as fast as Speckle would consent to carry me, just to be free and gone and away.
    I grew to love the fair, large heaths, the tangled woods and the wide sheets of dune-sheltered water where I had the liberty of my own company. So I would strive to get away to such places every day, excepting on the Sabbath (the which we observed strictly and prayerfully, my father adhering to the letter of the commandment—a day to be kept—not an hour or two at meeting and then on to other pursuits).
    As often as I could, I would hide in my basket one of Makepeace’s Latin books, either his accidence, which he was meant to have had by heart long since, or his nomenclator, or the Sententiae Pueriles . If I could get none of these unnoticed, then I would take one of father’s texts, and hope my understanding was equal to it. Aside from the Bible and Foxe’s Martyrs, father held that it was undesirable for a young girl to be too much at her book. When my brother