Even so, I answered carefully.
When once you’ve faced a beast and overcome it, and you’ve put it at your back and barred the gate, you’d be a fool to let the latch swing open.
V
I’m frequently told, while I’m writing this down, that I need to be more clear when setting my narrative.
Henry, I’m firmly reminded, would never have said anything within earshot of Gilroy about Barbara being a whore—which is true. Yet, the way I have written it, someone apparently might think he had, even though the one mention of Barbara’s profession took place between Barbara and Lily alone, at a time Henry had not observed, meaning therefore that detail must then have been told to me later by Lily and added in afterward.
Time is a fluid thing, and when you’re weaving the memories of witnesses into a single tale, it does ask much of the reader—I realize this.
But the one narrative I have control of, completely, is mine.
So if you will permit me the digression, I will share with you, in summary, what I told everyone at dinner on that day at Caldow’s Land—not because I think that you, like Violet, wish to hear my history, but because there are in life some people who do cross our paths and change our course forever, and they ought to be remembered.
Lily had her Colonel Graeme.
I had Jacob Wilde.
In the year I met him, 1690, we lived on a small farm carved out of the woods on the north shore of Long Island in the Province of New York. Our nearest town was called Cross Harbor, though in those days it was not a true town but a mere handful of houses, with a church and store close by the harbor, from which you could see across the narrow span of water to the white house on the eastern shore of Messaquamik Bay.
That house, the white one, had been built by Wilde—an Englishman who’d emigrated to Long Island several years before. Some said he’d come across to the Americas because he’d killed his brother and was fleeing justice, and when his house was struck by lightning and burnt to the ground they called it God’s own vengeance. But he rebuilt on the same spot, and his white house stood there as a beacon for the small ships that sailed frequently into the bay with cargoes from the greater harbors of New London and New York.
I met him for the first time that same spring, in 1690, when our town raised its militia for the war against the French, who with their Native allies had just led a raid upon Schenectady, on our frontier.
There had long been skirmishes and raids and even battles, but this new fighting grew from the much larger conflict begun on the Continent when the French king threw his own support behind James Stewart—who, after all, was his cousin. King William declared war on France and soon that war, inevitably, bled across the sea to both their colonies.
At length, Cross Harbor received word to furnish our quota of soldiers to send north to strengthen Albany, and I reported to the town’s officials.
Our colonial militias operated very much like the trained bands in Scotland—able-bodied men above the age of sixteen were required to meet for training every year, and muster when their officers did call them to, and make themselves available to watch and ward and guard the town and countryside if enemies did threaten.
Some people were exempt. Enslaved men did not serve in the militias, nor did servants, and there were certain professions, such as schoolmasters, who also were not obligated, but most other men in the community stood with me on the field that day.
Among them was a barrel-chested, fair-haired man who stood at least a head above the rest of us, and stepped up to be counted when the captain called out, “Wilde?”
The captain had not been long in Cross Harbor, and knew few of us. In fact, there’d been a change all through our town the past few months. We’d not escaped the revolution—when the word had reached us that King James was overthrown, there’d been rebellion here as well. The governor was seized at Boston and imprisoned, and in New York City the mob rioted and took the fort and overturned the government, while all across the province countless ministers and magistrates and military officers were turned out and replaced with those whose loyalty lay firmly with King William and Queen Mary.
Our new captain, from his Dutch last name, was likely to be overjoyed to see a Dutch prince crowned the king of England, which would safeguard the religion and prestige of all his countrymen still living in this province they’d once held as their own colony, before the English took it from them.
The captain, seated at a campaign table that was set upon the field with a full list of all our names upon it, looked a long way up at Jacob Wilde, who with the broad strap of his bandolier slung over his broad chest and shoulder looked more like a pirate than a soldier.