The Indentured Heart Read online

  “No doubt!” Chauncy’s face turned red, for he had gone on record from his pulpit condemning Whitefield and the revival that had swept the Colonies in the early thirties as spurious, and more than once had come close to consigning the whole thing to the devil. “I suppose people were wallowing all over the ground—as usual?”

  “Tell us about it, William,” Saul Howland said with interest. He was Rachel’s only son, and along with his sister, Esther, constituted the only family that Robert Howland had left at his death. Saul was a thick-bodied man of medium height, with his father’s heavy features, while Esther looked much like her mother. Saul was thirty-two, a rising businessman, much sought after by the mothers of Boston with marriageable daughters. Neither of them, to Rachel’s quiet sorrow, was devout in his Christian commitment. They were worldly and ambitious, though they attended church more or less regularly.

  Miles said brusquely, “Oh, it was the usual sort of affair, Pastor—preaching in the open field to a mob of the lower classes. Of course, the man is an orator—never heard a better voice!”

  “It’s his theology I’m worried about!” Rev. Chauncy snapped. “He’s made a name for himself in England by attacking the clergy, and I have no doubt he’ll try the same tactic here!”

  “Oh, he’s already done that,” William said cheerfully. He helped himself to a slice of boiled beef, cut off a bite and put it in his mouth. Chewing comfortably he went on. “Mr. Whitefield has let it be known that at Harvard—and I quote—‘Its light has become darkness’!”

  “Why, the man’s a heretic!” Chauncy sputtered. “He’ll not preach in Boston!”

  “I understand from Mr. Franklin—who’s quite an admirer of Mr. Whitefield, by the way—that we will be honored by a visit in the not too distant future.” He sighed sadly, adding, “I’ll not be able to hear him, for I’ll be at my church by then.”

  “Why do you dislike the man so, Reverend?” Esther asked curiously. She had no interest in theology, but everyone was talking about the sensation of Whitefield’s preaching, and she longed to see the spectacle.

  “Why, the man says that most of the clergy do not even know Christ! And he insists that everyone in the church must have what he calls a new birth! Makes little of baptism, good works, communion!” He gave William Winslow a sharp look, then said pugnaciously, “Your church is very close to Northampton—you’ll be seeing something of Rev. Jonathan Edwards?”

  “Why, I trust so,” William nodded. “He’s an able man.” The words were not unkind, but there were marks of anger on Chauncy’s face, and he suddenly burst out, “He’s responsible for the whole thing! It was in his church back in ’32 that the whole miserable business of revival had its start.”

  “He’s quite a scholar, Pastor,” Miles said evenly. “None better in the Colonies, I hear.”

  “Oh, as to that, Edwards is quite brilliant—but he has some wrong ideas. I suspect he’s an enthusiast.”

  The word enthusiast was much used at the time, and never with a good connotation. England in the eighteenth century was immersed in the age of reason, and any expression of emotion was frowned upon as being enthusiastic. In the course of the Wesleys’ work in England, some followers had gone too far; every movement had some of these, of course. But now, simply to name a man such in religious circles was enough to classify him as an irresponsible character incapable of reason and on the brink of lunacy.

  Men like Rev. Chauncy had forced the Wesleys and White-field out of the churches into the streets. They saw the revival as a threat to their offices, and were contemptuous of the emotional content of religion.

  “Nothing but a bunch of hysterical women!” Chauncy summed it all up, then took a huge draught of ale from the silver tankard beside his plate. “Troublemakers, William—have nothing to do with Edwards if you can help it!”

  Suddenly Martha Winslow interrupted the minister, saying shrilly, “Adam—let me see those hands!”

  Every eye turned toward the boy, who was shoveling his food into his mouth methodically, paying little heed to the table talk. As he felt the weight of so many eyes, a flush darkened his tanned face, and putting his knife down, he slipped to the floor and moved reluctantly around the table to where Martha stood to her feet glaring at him.

  She snatched one of the boy’s hands, peered at it, then cried, “Filthy! You won’t eat at my table with hands like that. Go wash again, and then you may go to bed! Why can’t you ever be clean like your brother Charles?”

  Adam cast a look at the young boy sitting next to Rachel, and said nothing. His stepmother took that as an act of sullen rebellion, and twisting him around, propelled him toward the door with a strong hand. “If you go to bed with those black hands, I’ll have the hide off your back!” she said, giving Adam a nudge out toward the kitchen.

  “I think it’s tar on his hands, Mother,” Charles said with a smile. “Soap and water won’t take it off.”

  Charles Winslow, Miles’ only child by Martha, looked very much like all Winslow males—which is to say, he was very handsome. One year younger than Adam, he was already taller, and his thick shock of reddish-blond hair and bright blue eyes drew attention everywhere he went.

  “Maybe you’d better go help him with a little turpentine, Charles,” Rachel suggested with a smile.

  “Yes, ma’am, I will.”

  William watched his father, who did not take his eyes off Charles; he shook his head almost imperceptibly, then looked up quickly to see that Rachel had seen and understood. She had talked to him once about his father, and he had never forgotten it. He had been fourteen years old and had made some remark to his aunt about how strict his parents were on Adam.

  She had put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes, saying, “William, you are very sensitive. I am going to tell you something about your parents. I want you to remember it and I want you to say nothing to anyone. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I promise,” he had said.

  “Your father,” his aunt had confided, “loved your mother to distraction. He worshiped her, William—maybe too much! And when Adam was born and she died bearing him—why, I hate to say it, for I love your father—but he blamed Adam for her death.”

  “But that’s not fair!” William had protested.

  “People are not always fair—even good men like your father! But there’s more. He was so lonely after your mother died that he made a mistake. He married your stepmother. She is not a woman who can make your father happy, and as soon as she found out that he would never love any woman in this world but your mother, why, she became bitter. I can’t exactly blame her—but it has made your father unhappy—and since you and Mercy are both too old to whip, she takes her unhappiness out on poor Adam.”

  “I know. She beats him all the time, Aunt Rachel.”

  Rachel had taken his hands then and looked up at him, for he was already taller than she. There was a break in her voice and sorrow in her eyes as she said, “Adam needs your help and your prayers, William. He isn’t quick with books as most Winslow men have been. He looks much like my mother, Lydia—your grandmother—and that endears him to me—but not to Miles, I fear. Help him, William!”

  William looked at his aunt, and saw a fierce compassion. He nodded to her, making a silent promise to do his best for the boy.

  Charles found Adam in the kitchen scrubbing listlessly at his blackened hands with a sliver of lye soap. “You’ll never get that stuff off with water,” he commented. He went to a shelf and pulled down a brown glass bottle, pulled the cork out, sniffed it, then said, “Try this turpentine.”

  “All right.” Adam seldom questioned anything that his younger brother said, and he obediently cupped his hands. He was not surprised to see the pungent liquid cut into the dark stains. “That’s what it took, Charles,” he said. “I wonder I didn’t think of it.”

  “Where’d you get all that tar on you?”

  “On the ship. The sailors let me help them tar the ends of the ropes. I
wish you could have been there. You feeling better?”

  “I’m all right. Tell me about the trip.” Charles sat down and listened as Adam, in his slow manner of speaking, told him about everything. Scrubbing methodically at his hands, he told about the voyage and the events in Philadelphia. Charles pulled a stool up close and said nothing, for he had hated to miss the trip. His mother said that he had a cold, but he was certain that she just wanted to keep him at home with her.

  Adam was slow of speech, but he told a story strangely well for a boy with a reputation for being mentally slow. Sometimes he had to search for words, but he made it come alive for Charles—the pushing, pulling crowds who listened to Whitefield, the smells of unwashed bodies, the crying of the women, and the solid clunk of a head striking the earth as a man fell down under the spell of the preaching.

  “Sounds like fun,” Charles smiled. “Tell me some more.” He looked at Adam’s hands and said, “That’s good enough. Why didn’t you think of turpentine yourself, Adam? You’ve used it before.”

  “Don’t know. Just didn’t think.”

  Charles was irritated. “You’re so good at some things—and so dumb at others! If Mother had beat me as much as she has you, I’d think of ways to get out of it. That’s the difference between you and me, Adam. Why, Mother’s thrashed you a dozen times for coming to the table with dirty hands, and here you do it again! I take better care of myself than that!”

  Adam looked ashamed and mumbled, “I just got to thinking and forgot, Charles.” Then he looked up and said humbly, “You don’t ever forget anything, do you? Wish I wasn’t so dumb!”

  Charles shrugged, saying, “You’re smart enough in everything except books—and learning how to watch out for yourself. All you have to do, Adam, is find out what people want and give it to ’em. Then when you get big enough, you can tell ’em to jump in the river! Now, tell me some more about the trip.”

  The adults had moved to the parlor, and the talk soon turned to business. Saul was saying, “Uncle Miles, you ought to get out of the fur trade. I know your father made a lot of money, but it can’t last.”

  “I’m doing all right,” Miles grunted. He stretched his legs out and said, “Rachel, this boy of yours may get rich, but tell him to leave me alone.”

  Saul shook his head. “You’ve not looked at it in the right light, Uncle Miles. Sooner or later you’re going to go broke—and Mother is your partner.”

  “Why should we quit the fur trade? They’re still buying furs in England, aren’t they?”

  Saul had a didactic streak in him; he loved to inform people. He leaned against the fireplace and began a lecture on the fur trade. The fur trade was based on beaver, he informed them. By the 1600s fashion had decreed that men should wear large hats of felt, and beaver fur was the best. The skin itself was not used, but the short underfur, the so-called “beaver wool,” was stripped from the skin and formed into a hat by the felting process. And by the end of the 1600s New France was exporting about 150,000 skins a year, while New England sent only about 8,000.

  “And there’s your problem, Uncle Miles,” Saul concluded with a wave of his hand. “Beaver and all kinds of fur are getting more scarce all the time.”

  “Then we’ll send our trappers farther west,” Miles said.

  “Ah, but you won’t be able to do that—because France won’t permit it. We’ve just had two wars over that territory in the Ohio River Basin—and mark my words, we’re about to have another!”

  “I don’t believe it,” Miles said in a bored tone.

  “You’ll see! Martha, you’d better talk to your husband. In a few years you’ll be broke if he doesn’t change his profession.”

  “I’ve already talked to him,” Martha said, shooting a dour glance at Miles. “We ought to get into the plantation business—tobacco, perhaps.”

  “We have to have slaves for that,” Miles objected.

  “What’s wrong with that?” Martha shot back. “In Virginia the Hugers, the Lees, the Washingtons—they all have slaves, and I think they’re good churchmen, are they not, Pastor?”

  “Yes, indeed!” Chauncy nodded. “Leaders in the community.”

  “Tobacco is a bad thing.” William rarely said much about business, but he felt strongly about this one matter. “It just about ruined most people in Jamestown! It’s a one-crop system and it makes the ground worthless. If you want to farm, don’t go to tobacco. And you don’t have to go to Virginia. There’s good land right here in our own colony.”

  They argued about the matter for an hour; then Rachel suddenly got up and stretched her back. “Well, if you want to get out of the fur business, Miles, and go to farming, it’s all right with me.” She turned a smile on her brother and went to pat his arm fondly. “It’s all going to burn anyway, isn’t it?”

  Miles laughed and hugged her, saying, “Yes! That’s what Grandfather would have said. He didn’t give a bent pin for anything in this world—had all his treasures in heaven, didn’t he, Rachel?”

  “But God prospers the righteous, Miles,” Martha reminded him sharply. “Being poor is no virtue, is it, Pastor?”

  “I shall preach on that very subject next Sunday, Mrs. Winslow!” the rotund preacher said with a smile. “Miles, you be there and take some good spiritual advice—and listen to your nephew. He’s a sound man—though he is somewhat lax in his church attendance,” he added with mock severity. Then he made his thanks and departed.

  Rachel, Saul, and Esther left soon after, but Rachel went off first to find Adam before she left. She said goodbye to him and to Charles, giving them both a gold coin. She kissed them both, then said, “Adam, you come to stay with me soon, you hear? I have lots of things that need fixing, and you’re the man to do it! All right?”

  After she left, Charles said enviously, “Aunt Rachel sure does think a lot of you. Wish she liked me half as much!”

  Adam stared at him in amazement. “Why, she likes you as much as she does me!”

  “No, she don’t,” Charles said regretfully. He looked at the gold coin and added, “You can get more of these out of her, Adam. If you’d just learn to butter her up, why, she’d give you ’bout anything you asked for!”

  The idea had never occurred to Adam, and he stared at the coin in his own hand, pondering the thought. Then he shook his head, saying, “No, she doesn’t like me more than you.”

  Charles looked at the dark face of his brother with disgust. “You are dumb, Adam! You gotta learn to watch people and when they can do you some good, why you gotta play up to ’em! It’s the only way to get what you want, see?”

  * * *

  Three days later, William left to go to his new charge in Amherst, but his departure was marred by a rare scene with his father.

  He had packed his clothes and Sampson was loading the trunk into the buggy when he heard his father’s voice raised in anger. Descending the stairs, he saw Adam standing in front of the older Winslow, who was holding a heavy crop in his right hand.

  Miles was saying, “You have been nothing but a lazy drone with your books, boy, and I’ll not have it! There’s never been such a thing as a stupid Winslow, but you seem to be just that! Now, you did not do this Latin—why not?”

  Adam’s answer was slow, and William’s heart went out to him. “I—I can’t do Latin very well, sir—”

  “Nonsense!” William caught a glimpse of his father’s face, and he saw it was swollen with rage—something quite unusual. “You shall learn what it means to work, and I’ve had enough of your loafing at the forge and in the shop! Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The very submission of the boy seemed to anger Miles even more, and he grabbed his arm, whirled him around and began to strike him viciously across the back with the crop, breathing heavily with each stroke.

  William hurried down the steps and through the front door, his face pale and his lips drawn. He took ten paces across the yard, then his eyes met those of Sampson. The black man did not sa
y a word, but every time the whip fell, his eyes seemed to blink.

  William stood there, listening; then suddenly he whirled and dashed into the house and into the parlor. He grabbed his father’s wrist and held it in a strong grip, saying, “Sir! That’s enough!”

  “What’s that?”

  Miles stared at his eldest son’s face, not a foot from his own. He would have been no more shocked if the roof had fallen, for William had never once in all his life challenged his father’s authority. But he did so now, and Miles grew suddenly furious. He pulled to free his arm, but it was held in a steely viselike grasp, and he was shocked again.

  He knew, of course, that he was getting on in years, and William was a strong young man. But now as he stood there, helpless in the unyielding grip of his son, he knew what it was to grow old—and it angered him even more.

  “Sir! You are my son!”

  William did not raise his voice, but it carried a steely note, a toughness that Miles had heard in that of the boy’s great-grandfather, Gilbert Winslow—a voice he had heard and admired.

  “So is this your son, Father—and you are beating him as if he were a slave!”

  Miles bit his lip, and his own face lost its angry glow. “I—was simply chastising the boy, William.”

  “You were beating him as if he were a grown man, sir, and I must say, for the first time in my life, I do not admire my father!”

  “William . . .!”

  Miles’ lips suddenly trembled, and he looked down at Adam’s face, taking in the pinched lips and the misery in the dark eyes, so unlike his own, and he was ashamed. Those dark eyes suddenly brought back the memory of his mother—Lydia Carbonne, and he bit his lips. She had been a cheery woman, dark with French blood, and beautiful enough to win the heart of his father, Matthew. He thought of her dark beauty and looked down, seeing something of it in the face of this undersized, silent son of his, and he turned away from both his sons, his eyes suddenly blinded by tears.