There is much conversation about the village these last few days.
Major Hewlett, the garrison's commander, has set his mind, we are reliably told, upon fortifying Reverend Tallmadge's church ('the barracks' as it is referred to by King's Men hereabouts, where pews have been dragged out into the open, and the pulpit-we are told, none of us having been within the sanctuary-torn out).
In these later days military fortification, in and of itself, would hardly be a matter of great note for the people of Setauket. And yet, it is the manner with which the Major plots to implement his plan that has raised the hackles of nearly every citizen to a height we have not seen here since...well, since ever I can recall, and I am to be nineteen next summer.
Not the landing of the King's Men here, not even the debasing of Reverend Tallmadge's church (I do still believe we were all still grappling with a confused numbness around that time) has threatened to incite such opposition to the King's representatives planted among us.
'Twas Bess who came home with the news first, in the form of gossip got from the very mouth of Mrs. Abraham Woodhull (Mary, as Bess may call her), daughter-in-law to Judge Woodhull. He, who has accepted the task of selecting which of the gravestones shall be used to safeguard the canon already placed upon the churchyard.
This horrid occasion has come about from what I well-know to be Caleb Brewster's early morning abscond (the night before recorded here in these pages), though many residents here declare the man in the boat (now believed to be a Continental advance scout) was too far offshore when he showed himself to be reliably recognized.
It is best, no doubt, that this has proven to be the prevailing belief. Caleb's elderly uncle Lucas Brewster and his ailing sister Livia need not find themselves troubled by soldiers thinking they'd any hand in their (long-ago departed from Setauket) nephew and brother now skulking about.
And certainly, despite any personal dislike I may carry for that particular Brewster, he'd no thought that his business here (whatever it was, and with whom) should spark such controversy, or create such an opportunity for Major Hewlett to once again prove how little our lives and cares matter to both officer and King.
Outerbridges have not long claimed Setauket as their home. There were none present at the village's founding. It was my mother's brother who first came here (and him not an Outerbridge but a Belard).
As a young man, Philip Belard had been apprenticed to a stone mason of Setauket, a master craftsman whose business was growing rapidly, and whose portable work was frequently shipped up and down the coast to villages and churchyards where no mason existed nearby to work upon their stone.
As the Setauket mason's business flourished, Philip's prospects in the world grew with it. He took a wife, Prudence Smythe. By the time Prudence was expecting their first child, Philip had convinced Mama and Papa to move Papa's business here, so that he and Mama might be close to family (other relative Belards and Outerbridges had not made the voyage to the New World, or had passed on from their time here).
And so we Outerbridges arrived in Setauket. I was aged six. Papa's business did well. He traveled to York City as needed. He built our house, had his offices attached to it. And then the pox came to Setauket. Mama went to nurse the Belards, as she had been ill before and survived it, but those were to be the last days she spent among her family.
They are buried in the churchyard. Forgive me, in Major Hewlett's barracks' parade ground. Not all, but a great many of the stones there were carved by the hand of my uncle. What were meant to be lasting memorials to not only the fineness of his handiwork, but to those people whose graves they marked.
I include this information herein, though most in the village could recite something of our history here. The Belards died, most of their belongings were burned in fear of the pox. The Outerbridges stayed on in their new house, their business flourished, their children grew. Their mother loved the stones in the church's graveyard-not only those of her brother and his young family, but also the stones upon whose faces she could recognize his handiwork.
Earlier this afternoon we were called upon by Judge Woodhull.
It was thought-perhaps for a moment-that he had stopped by (none could recall the last time this may have come to pass) in order to ill-advisedly inquire as to which stones my parents might suggest for Major Hewlett's project. For surely no others in the village have such a strong connection to the churchyard as a whole. Or, it was thought, in those moments after he was announced, that possibly he had come by to call and offer his condolences to Mama and Papa that such a thing was about to be done.
With his keen intellect and eager recall of local history, it would be folly to suggest that the Judge has forgotten my mother's connection to the Belards. Folly to think that he has misplaced his memory of Philip Belard as stonemason hired to carve his own wife's stone.
It is always possible that Judge Woodhull hears the ring of something French in the Belard surname that now distresses him. He would not be mistaken in that, and yet it is a truth that would have given him no pause prior to Major Hewlett's moving into Whitehall.
Unlike many in Setauket who seem to have early-aged into weariness and low spirits in the face of the King's Men arriving, Judge Woodhull has instead appeared energized by their garrison settling here. He is an old client of my father's business, and though he makes business calls to my father in his attached office, it is unprecedented in the last few years for him to call socially upon our home.
And yet I know Mama thought it an honor to have him here. No one in the village holds such a safe position with the King's Men as Judge Woodhull. His paying a social call she took (and others would take) as an approval of us, an endorsement of Outerbridge loyalties.
But it seemed to me apparent early on that he was distressed by Bess and my presence in our parlor. Or, if not distressed, disconcerted-as though we had foiled him in some way. Bess did not appear to notice, and chatted on at some length about village matters and, as it is often on her mind, the hoped-for possibility that Papa might someday sooner rather than later, acquire a pass by which she might accompany him to York City on a visit to old friends there.
But as she was starting to detail her aspirations for such a trip, I found something in my father's face I have grown more and more accustomed to finding-though not usually on display in public. A weariness, a reluctance of spirit. That is, what little spirit he may at this time have left.
"Forgive me, Bess," he interrupted her, something I have never heard him do since we were small children. The sounds of 'forgive me' so soft they could nearly not be heard. But his voice increased in volume and steadiness as he spoke on. "Richard, why are you come?" he began.
And at that moment Judge Woodhull himself, wearing a look I hardly know how to describe, other than unhappily determined, over-spoke my father's last words. "Malachi. Claire," he addressed my parents familiarly, giving only an uncomfortable glance toward Bess and I also in the room. "Will you come forward in a show of-support-for this necessity? I feel I can depend upon your offering no resistance to Major Hewlett's desired military objective."
The silence that followed his request was thick in several directions. The Judge had, by his uncomfortable reaction to Bess and my presence there (and his lack of including us in his plea) effectively censured anything we two might have to say or offer on the matter. We had been excluded from his entreaty, therefore we remained silent. He had over-spoken my father, the head of this family in his own home, a breach of social etiquette so severe it must surely speak to Judge Woodhull's uneasy state of mind. He had been exclusionary, and rude. And yet he was widely known to be about as well-versed a man in the social graces of the day as any Setauket man might be.
Of my father, he had asked an impossible thing. A thing of which no man happily married to my mother could ever do. The Judge had failed to even give lip service to the mention of his regrets upon the action he wished to take. He had failed to acknowledge that the family of this household might know best which stones ought be sacrificed if they must be so. He had failed utterly in understanding what he was asking of the family in this house.
And he had failed to apprehend something about this household that went into effect when Hewlett and his men first arrived in Setauket: we are Outerbridges. Outerbridges do not set the standard. No, they are built to follow it.
Had he arrived to call upon us with Lucy Scudder at his side (who no doubt would have been clever enough to offer her deepest condolences over what was about to be done), perhaps our reception to his need for compatriots might have been less silent, less stunned. Perhaps.
To the surprise of all in that room, it was Mama who spoke in reply to him first. "It is said this man-this suspected Continental Scout-that has the Major so concerned was naught but Caleb Brewster, come back home for an ill-timed visit. How can there be such a great need to fortify the Major's-" her words stuck a bit here, but she got through them, "barracks from a Setauket boy?"
I was close enough to Judge Woodhull to apprehend the sweat that began to stick out on his upper lip and forehead, so much he disliked this subject. He shook his head. "Caleb Brewster is more than likely passed out from drink on the deck of a whaleboat off Greenland, Claire," he said, and made quite an effort, it seemed to me, to laugh, but as no one joined in with him he grew grave, and cautionary. "And if he is not," he added, his disposition bottoming out to mimic ours, "let us pray for the sake of Lucas and Livia this speculative gossip never reaches any of the soldiers' ears. Much less those of Major Hewlett."
No one spoke in reply. It was not like the Judge to speak so plainly, nor to remind anyone (much less seem to contemplate it himself) how close to the edge of disaster certain families in Setauket lived. (And, by his tone, how he still took care for them.)
It must have been this that emboldened me.
"Will you take Belard stones," I asked, and my eyes flicked over to Mama. "Prudence, and the baby?"
My father said nothing. His gaze was cold, and I knew his mind and tongue at war with each other. He could not afford to speak when his words were not yet formed, and the Judge such an important man to Major Hewlett.
Judge Woodhull looked to my father. "Malachi," he began, perhaps in the hopes of offering another appeal, but he stopped, and looked back to me. "It seems," he said, "I will have no stones to present the Major, as I...as I..." but he did not finish.
Silence again, with no one moving, either. Stillness, into which my father finally said, "Many of the stones in that yard bear the work of my wife's brother's hand." He of course did not need to remind any present of this fact.
"Then, even after the Major culls his, you will have many left to cherish," Judge Woodhull attempted to counter, but slowly, and with proper reverence in his tone now to the subject at hand.
"Would you say that to Job of his children?" my father asked. "That though he lost all the first, he had then still the last?"
"You equate gravestones with children?" the Judge's voice was low, but yet incredulous at the analogy.
"Children are a legacy, Judge," Papa said, refraining from using the Richard Woodhull's Christian name. "Those stones are the Belard legacy. They are all my wife has left of her family. I cannot ask her to abandon that anymore than she would ask me to abandon our children. And I cannot in good conscience agree to helping you in your political need at the expense of her familial one." Papa looked as though he might be sick in the speaking of this.
"But the town needs them for protection," I do not know if the Judge believed this when he said it. It may have merely been a final attempt to strengthen his plea.
"I cannot believe Setauket needs protection from its own people," Papa said, quietly, and with great effort.
Mama rose slowly, elegantly as always, and signaled that she wished to excuse herself and retire, and that Bess and I were to join her.
Papa and the Judge stood and observed the required social graces as we left the room.
I do not know what the ultimate outcome of any further discussion was.
It is now the fourth day since Major Hewlett demanded his stones. And all is resolved, all mended between Judge Woodhull and the town. I do not know what Papa may or may not have agreed to in that room alone with the Judge; the Outerbridges stayed at home the morning Judge Woodhull was to announce his list, and have only heard what transpired second-hand.
How Judge Woodhull dug up the stone of his own son, Thomas, to give to Major Hewlett. How others followed his example. Mama has tried not to hear which stones were unearthed. She would rather not know. Nor do I think she ever plans to look at the church atop the hill again. Her eye, one assumes, will now search out the water instead.
I do not know if it will be drawn to that distant shore where it is well-known Continentals make camp.
And I find I am left with this question: Would a certain Captain in the Connecticut Dragoons take a spade to his mother's stone in order to fortify the earthenworks if Setauket were held by Continentals needing to protect it from the British? Would Caleb Brewster freely offer the stones of his parents for such an enterprise?
Do we citizens of Setauket despise the 'necessity' of this extreme action, or protest so against it because it is only the worst and most-recent imposition from this garrison of soldiers who hold us in little or no regard, and daily treat us so? Would the King's Men, for example, have taken stones from an Anglican churchyard?
Would I hesitate if I believed (truly, wholly believed) tearing a gravestone-just a stone-from the earth might bring him back again, and safely? Even that of the wee Belard babe, my cousin?
Would such an action shock so deeply or feel so perverse if it were in service to other men-Setauket men-American men-and the protection of their lives, and our liberty?
It is a question I shall never ask my mother.