The Rebellion of Jane Clarke Read Online Free

answer.
    “Is it true?”
    “Of course not.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Because he was here at the time it happened.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Because I lay right here and listened to him snoring.”
    “You heard him snoring last night?”
    “Don’t you hear him now?”
    “Well, yes.”
    “So.”
    “But I didn’t hear him last night.”
    “Well I did. I told you. Now be quiet.”
    Bethiah fell silent. Across the hall Jane could indeed hear her father snoring, and outside she could hear the millstream fussing over the rocks, and from below-stairs she could hear the tick of the clock. What could Winslow’s horse hear?
    What kind of man could cut off the ears of a horse?

Chapter Three
    P HINNIE PAINE ARRIVED as promised on the nineteenth. When Jane heard his horse in the yard she looked out the window in her usual way only to discover that she’d lost her usual way, that she found herself looking at him as if he were a stranger and she were taking her first measure. She watched him swing his leg over the horse’s rump with becoming grace, hand his reins to the Negro Jot, and stand a minute in the easy chat of a man comfortable with all creation. She watched him remove his jacket from his saddle and bravely shrug it on over his sweat-stained shirt, a nod to civility that Jane didn’t require but nonetheless drew him credit. He’d collected a number of pine needles in his hat brim, but of course he couldn’t have noticed that; when he swept the hat off as he entered the house the needles floated to the floor.
    Jane crossed the room and scooped up the pine needles. When she lifted her head Phinnie was gazing at her with amusement. “Ah, Jane. What a fine housekeeper you are.” It was an old joke between them, and one Jane would rather forget, but of course Phinnie couldn’t know that. At Phinnie’s second visit he had grown confused over Jane’s mention of stepmothers and she’d set out the list for him: her father’s first wife, mother to Nate and Jane; the second, barren wife; the third, who’d mothered Bethiah; and Mehitable, the fourth, who mothered the rest. After she’d finished she’d looked at Phinnie’s startled eyes and said, “A man must get his housekeeping somehow.” Phinnie had tipped back his head and laughed, but remembering it now Jane felt the disservice she had done her stepmothers, especially Bethiah’s mother, whom Jane had loved well.
    Jane’s father brought her back. “Why do you hang about, Jane? Get the man a cider.”
    Get the man a cider meant that Jane was to get both of the men a cider; she removed two tankards from the cupboard and went to the cellar for the jug. When she returned, her father and Phinnie had settled at the table, her father pulling himself up in the way he always did when seated opposite someone taller. He said, “I make no official speech, Mr. Paine; I never do till a deal’s finished; but allow me to say that on this occasion my wife and I are most particularly happy to welcome you to our home.”
    Phinnie said, “Thank you, sir. Thank you, madam. I’ve seldom been so eager to arrive at a place or so loath to think how soon I must be gone from it.”
    “Then we must see that you make hay, sir!” Jane’s father barked out a laugh and reached for the new Gazette Phinnie had brought him. Jane braced, and sure enough, her father came to a point that disturbed him straightaway.
    “Here now! Here! Do you read this chamber-dung of the troops at Boston? If half these tales of beatings and rapes were true there’d not be a soldier with the strength to stand!”
    Phinnie said, “ ’Tis true, sir,” which could have meant one thing or the other, but Jane’s father seemed to take it as agreement, and needing nothing more, if he needed it at all, talked on in like manner through supper. It was the fault of a small collection of men with the surnames of Otis and Adams and Molineux for feeding the lower classes tyrannous articles in the paper and