The Fiddler's Gun Read online

  Fin was shaken. She backed against the wall and slid to the floor in tears. Bartimaeus threw the gun—Betsy—down on the table in disgust and sat with his head bowed, breathing heavily. The only sound in the room was of tears and regret.

  “I’m sorry, missy,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  Fin stared at him and cried. She huddled against the wall as if trapped in a cage with a wild animal.

  “Was Reverend Whitefield that found me.” He spoke softly and kept his eyes to the floor. “He was preachin’ outside London. Must have been ten thousand folks come to listen. More people than I ever saw in one spot. Listened to him for a bit, and it reminded me of the talks my mother used to give. All that about sinnin’ and redeemin’ and repentin’. Sounded like foolishness to me, maybe ’cause I was drunk. Don’t know why, but thinkin’ about my dead mother started me to cryin’. Next thing I see is Reverend Whitefield bendin’ over me, tellin’ me to stand up. So I done like he asked, and he told me it weren’t like a man to lay drunk while he was preachin’ the Word, and if I was ever to be a man I’d have to stand up like I just done, only to keep standin’. Couldn’t never lay down, he said. Told him I couldn’t do that, and he says, ‘I know, son, but God will pick you up when you fall.’ Told him there wasn’t no God where I live, and he said I best find a new place.

  “That’s how I come to Ebenezer, see? Reverend Whitefield told me he knowed of a place needed a good standin’ up man to help out, a place there weren’t so many temptations for a man with layin’ down troubles. Told me the Good Lord chose all us sinners to be saved way back in the old days, and all the devils in hell wasn’t goin’ to come between God and a man he done chose. Figured I might as well stop puttin’ devils between us if that was the case.

  “And so, here I am. Put away ole Betsy and spent the last of my money on a fiddle I seen layin’ in a shopwindow in Charleston the day I set feet off ship and sea for the last time.” He finished and wiped his hand across his forehead. His face was familiar again and loving. The creases and wrinkles of his face relaxed back to their places, but it seemed to Fin they ran deeper than they had before.

  “How did you know he chose you?” she whispered.

  “Oh, I don’t know. When the reverend went to tellin’ me, I wasn’t in no place to do much arguin’.”

  “And what if God didn’t choose us?” she whispered from the shadows. “Does that mean all the angels in heaven can’t stand between us and hell?”

  “What’s this talk? See here, you got no place thinkin’ like that, missy. If ever there was a little miss I’d say God chose, it’d be you.”

  Fin didn’t answer. Chosen was what she wanted to be more than anything. Not chosen to do chores or work with Bartimaeus but chosen to simply belong.

  “I been standin’ up for nigh on twenty years now.” He smiled. “Got lots of help along the way, from the Reverend, from Mr. Bolzius, from the sisters, and maybe you don’t know it, but this last year you been helpin’ me stand up too.” He offered her his hand and she took it. He pulled her to his chest and hugged her.

  “I’m sorry, Bartimaeus.”

  “Don’t you be sorry, now. Don’t you be sorry. Sometimes we got to look in the dark to see how bright’s the dawn.” Bartimaeus released Fin and gently pushed her away. He reached out and grabbed up Betsy from the table and put the gun back in its case. Then he lifted the fiddle and cradled it in the crook of his arm. “I reckon I got fiddlin’ to do. Got to turn it beautiful.” He smiled and winked and walked out into the morning.

  CHAPTER VII

  In the weeks after the horseman’s proclamation of war, the townsfolk met British patrols with more suspicion than ever. People came to dread the sound of their stomping boots and the rattle of their shouldered muskets. Families called children indoors and watched from behind drawn curtains as they marched through town armed with threatening glares and unspoken accusations.

  The walls were up on the chapel, and all the major stonework was complete. Mr. Hickory kept Peter busy through every daylight hour, honing his carpentry skills as they raised the roof and bell tower. Swinging around in the high rafters looked a world of adventure to Fin, but she didn’t mourn the missing-out as much as she used to. She enjoyed her days spent with Bartimaeus and jumped at any opportunity to play the fiddle down at the river or to sit quietly in the bell tower of the old chapel so she could look over the walls and see Peter dancing among the trusses of the new. Sometimes he’d spy her watching from his perch and smile at her across the gulf between.

  In addition to offering him an apprenticeship, Mr. Hickory had invited Peter to his house for dinner on several occasions and Fin didn’t have any trouble admitting she was jealous.

  “I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to come with you.”

  “It wouldn’t be proper,” Peter protested, though he couldn’t point out why. “It’s a family dinner, Fin. If you came—”

  “What? I’d embarrass you because I don’t powder my nose and wear a bonnet?” She planted her fists firmly on her hips and Peter eyed them closely, sensing she might let one fly at any moment.

  “No, Fin. It’s just—I don’t know. Look, maybe next time, all right?”

  Without answering, she spun on her toe and walked away. A passel of younger children parted before her like chased geese as she stomped her way back to the dining hall.

  Whenever Peter was absent from the dinner table, Fin usually found out later that he’d been invited to the Hickory’s “at the last minute.” Foolishness if ever she heard of it.

  As summer tumbled into autumn, the chapel was all but finished. The tower and steeple had been painted white, and the interior was furnished with pews enough to seat nearly two hundred people. The sisters were in a constant state of excitement about the coming dedication ceremony, and even Sister Hilde beamed with pride when the subject came up. Reverend Whitefield promised to preach on the first Sunday of its opening, and Bartimaeus, especially, was looking forward to seeing his old benefactor again.

  To Fin’s dismay, the completion of the new chapel meant the time had come for the dismantling of the old. The boys that had previously occupied themselves with the business of construction turned their labors to the reverse. Day by day Fin watched the old chapel wither away. It was first gutted and then stripped of its cypress board-and-battens until all that remained were the beams and rafters of a sad skeletal framework. On the day before the old chapel’s final destruction, Fin and Peter stole away to the barely recognizable remnant of the bell tower to honor their secret place with laughter and call out of memory its role in so many of their pranks and games.

  “Remember when Hilde caught you fishing during Sunday vespers?” asked Peter. He was smiling, and his eyes were quick and bright. The reminiscence transformed his usually reserved nature, and Fin sensed a lilt in his voice that she rarely heard.

  Fin threw her head back and cackled. “She was going to switch me for calling her a smelly fishwife!”

  “And you ran all the way up here from the river with her chasing you and trying to swat you with your own fishing pole!” Peter laughed and made mock swatting motions at Fin.

  Fin doubled over in laughter, wheezing and breathless. “She couldn’t climb the ladder, and you should have seen how her nose waggled while she screamed at me.”

  “And you were making faces at her the whole time!” They laughed until they were red-faced and could hardly breathe.

  Fin calmed her laughter at last and wiped her eyes to look out at the new chapel. She and Peter were suddenly quiet and a wave of melancholy filled her and slowed her breath. “I’m going to miss this. It’s the only place inside the walls to find any quiet.”

  “You’ll have the tower in the new one. They don’t have bells for it either.”

  “Then why build a bell tower?” Fin rolled her eyes.

  “Mr. Hickory says when you build a thing you build your purpose into it, and sometimes you have to let others finish it. That chur
ch will be there for a hundred years and in time someone’s bound to find a bell to crown her.”

  “It won’t be the same.”

  “I suppose it won’t, but the new one is even higher. You can see for miles from up there. Just wait, Fin. You’ll love it.”

  She didn’t reply, just gazed off into the evening. Peter shifted closer to her and took a deep breath.

  “You remember what I told you about Mr. Hickory and his offer?”

  “I remember,” she said.

  “He’s asked me to start after the dedication.”

  Silence sat between them like an intruder.

  When Fin spoke she was almost whispering. “You’re leaving, Peter LaMee.” It wasn’t a question.

  “No, I’m not, Fin. It’s just into town.”

  “You’re leaving me for your own world, Peter, to start your own life. And I’ll be here, cooking chickens and wishing I wasn’t. There’s nothing for it, Pete. I’m never leaving this place. I’ll be right here, under Hilde’s thumb, right where she wants me. And you’ll be,” she waved her hand at the horizon, “out there.” She turned her head and refused to cry.

  “Fin—” Peter started, but she kept on.

  “I understand, Peter. I’ve been watching orphans leave here my whole life and never once saw one come back. Not really. It’ll be the same—you’ll come for dinner once or twice a week at first, then once or twice a month. Then I’ll hear you’ve married some girl from Savannah, and then I won’t hear any more at all.” Fin looked away from Peter again and raised one hand to wipe her eyes.

  “What if I married some girl from Ebenezer?”

  Fin gave a start and laughed, “Like who?”

  He didn’t answer at once and she ran through a list of all the girls she knew in town, trying to picture each of them with Peter. Each one she imagined seemed more preposterous to her than the last. As she ticked down the list in her head, she realized that Peter still hadn’t spoken and was patiently watching her.

  “Who else, Fin?” he said.

  She balked at him with her jaw hanging to her chest then he grabbed her up and kissed her. She took his face in her hands and laughed and kissed him again, and again, and again.

  The next morning, Fin arrived at the dining hall before dawn to prepare breakfast, and she found Bartimaeus bent over the dinner table, rubbing it furiously with a rag.

  “Bloody spots . . .” He was muttering at the table as he tried to eliminate the scuffs and stains on the finish. Fin put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Let me do that. You go on and get the fire started.”

  He acquiesced with a grumble. Fin swiped the rag in the wax and rubbed it across the surface of the table, obscuring the finish with a cloudy film. She picked up a clean cloth and buffed the wax off to bring out the luster of the wood. She could see her reflection in the table: it rippled and distorted with the subtleties of the wood, almost (but never quite) a perfect picture. She thought that if she rubbed hard enough and long enough that maybe she could force a true reflection to reveal itself.

  She and Peter decided not to make any mention of their intentions, at least not until Peter had worked with Mr. Hickory long enough to settle into his new position. Fin didn’t mind the wait so much, but the thought of being cooped up in the orphanage without Peter depressed her. The promise of living together with him, on their own, was motivation enough, however, for her to endure a hundred nose-wagglings and cook a thousand chickens. She would wait. However long, however hard, she would wait.

  She finished off the table, not having cleared the marring on her reflection to any noticeable extent, and went to help Bartimaeus cook.

  After breakfast, she sat on the porch and watched the last of the old chapel brought to the ground. With a thunderous tumult, the bell tower came down in a heap of rubble, and her corner of solace disappeared forever.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The sisters were in a fury of activity preparing for the first Sunday in the new building. They sent out invitations and argued over what songs they’d sing and fussed about the order of the service and even made sure a reporter from The Georgia Gazette would be in attendance. The town council decided to name the new building the Jerusalem Lutheran Church, and the naming lent it a certain weight that it lacked when it had been a simple chapel. As word spread that the Reverend Whitefield would speak on the day of the dedication, people began to arrive from hill and vale all across Georgia. For a week prior to the ceremony, Fin and Bartimaeus worked night and day to ensure they had food enough to feed the multitude.

  Two days before the big event, though, Sister Carmaline received ghastly news. Reverend Whitefield had died. On the very day he was to set out for Georgia, he had been “called home” as Carmaline would say. She was a wreck trying to think of how to break it to the crowds and was certain she’d be lynched when the news broke. Bartimaeus hadn’t taken it well either. When he heard, he walked out of the dining hall, and the sounds of fiddle-play floated up from the river for the rest of the afternoon.

  The night before the ceremony, Sister Carmaline was in terrible a state at the dinner table. “Land o’ Goshen! What will we do? There will be a riot!” she worried. She didn’t eat a bite. She sat and patted her chest and rocked back and forth and prayed for help.

  Midway through the meal, a rapping at the door quieted the room and Hilde answered. A handsome white-haired gentleman strode into the dining hall, removed his hat, and bowed.

  “I should be delighted to speak with Sister Carmaline Baab,” said the gentleman.

  Carmaline fanned her faced and patted her heart and bade him leave her be.

  Hilde rolled her eyes. “How may we help you, sir?” she said.

  “Ma’am, if you will permit it, I would speak in the Reverend Whitefield’s stead.”

  Carmaline ceased her hysterics and eyed him up and down in bafflement.

  “Well, a stranger off the streets will never do,” said Hilde rather shrewdly. “Are you even a preacher?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m afraid I am,” said the gentleman without the slightest hint of being offended.

  Carmaline resumed patting her chest and rocking back and forth and raised one hand to her forehead and warned the gentleman of her worries. “The crowd will riot, I fear, when they find they’ve come all this way for a common preacher instead of the Reverend himself.” She paused herself again, and turned to look at the gentleman. “What did you say your name was, sir?”

  “John Wesley, ma’am,” he said with a bow.

  Sister Carmaline fainted.

  If the sisters held George Whitefield to be the greatest Christian of the age then second place surely went to Reverend John Wesley. Though the Reverends Wesley and Whitefield had virulently disagreed on more than one point of faith, they accounted each other friendly rivals. Sister Carmaline suspected that were these two pillars of Protestantism ever thrust into the same space that blows might come of it, but Reverend Whitefield’s passing had rendered the thought moot and she was elated that the Reverend Wesley had arrived to rescue her from certain lynching.

  Early the next morning, Fin was once again made to put on a dress. She scowled about the courtyard, muttering curses and looking awkward until she spotted Peter dressed in a suit and preening like a rooster. Though Fin thought he seemed gentlemanly and more handsome than any man in town, she rolled her eyes up and told him immediately that he looked preposterous.

  “You’re one to talk.” Peter chuckled as he eyed her dress and bonnet. Fin threw him a sarcastic smirk, clenched her fists, took a deep breath, and calmed her urge to rip the bonnet off her head and feed it to him.

  They walked out the gates and up to the steps of the new church. There was a wooden scaffold erected to the right of the door that reached as high as the steeple atop the tower. Fin wondered why they hadn’t taken it down for the opening day, but when she asked Peter he just shrugged.

  The interior had remained strictly off limits to everyone except those wo
rking on the final details. Even the windows had been curtained against peeking eyes, and Fin was eager to see the inside of what Peter had spent the past year and a half working on. They walked through the doorway and the brick exterior opened up into a shining white sanctuary. Towering windows pierced the walls, and the space between them was a canyon of light filled with carved oaken pews. The ceiling seemed as high as the sky to Fin; she’d never been in anything of such size before. The centerpiece of the great room was the organ and its brass pipes climbing from the floor at the center of the dais to the ceiling high above. Fin looked around in awe.

  “It’s beautiful, Peter!” she said. He led Fin to their seats, and they sat down to await the ceremony. The crowd streamed in and packed every corner of the room until an usher announced the room full and they opened up the windows to let people outside lean in to see what they could.

  Mr. Bolzius stepped to the pulpit and led the congregation in an invocation. Then Peter stood and walked to the front where Mr. Hickory and the other boys of the work crew joined him.

  “I wish to recognize the men without whom this building would not have been accomplished.” Mr. Bolzius motioned to Mr. Hickory and his workers. The young men on the dais bore little resemblance to the boys Carmaline and Hilde had chosen a year and a half before. They stood taller and their shoulders filled the coats that once had swallowed them. “Danny Shoeman, Lachlan McEwen, Thom Nodger, Hans Richter, Peter LaMee, and the architect and chief builder himself, Mr. Thom Hickory.” Applause erupted. Mr. Hickory took a deep bow and Mr. Bolzius continued. “Gentlemen, we are in your debt. May the beauty of your hand be a pleasure in the eye of the Lord.”

  The organ bellowed as the men returned to their seats and Mr. Bolzius led the congregation in song. The people, both outside and in, sang together, and for miles around music filled the forests and fields. When the singing ended, Mr. Bolzius introduced Reverend Wesley. He took the stage amid a murmur of questions and stepped to the lectern.