Into His Arms (34 page)

Williams eyed his stubborn parishioner, then the couple who stared coolly back. His face had maintained a consistently ruddy hue, and now it but deepened. “Do you leave today?” he asked Geoff.

“Nay,” Jonathan answered, surprising Faith and Geoff, “they stay the night and return to Boston on the morrow. When do you sail?”

“The day after,” Geoff replied.

“Well then,” Williams said, “I will speak to you again at meeting, Goodman Cooper.” He nodded curtly and took his leave without a backward glance.

“He walks as though he sat on large stick and keeps it with him still, in a most uncomfortable place,” Geoff observed casually.

Faith’s hand flew to her mouth. Her husband and father had formed a fragile bond. She could not believe he would so stupidly jeopardize it with such a statement.

Her father’s response was more shocking yet.

He rubbed his chin and contemplated the retreating figure. “Aye, I have oft noticed that.”

The afternoon passed quickly and ended far more cheerfully than it had begun. Noah went home and fetched Esther and Matthew, a healthy butterball of a boy. The lamps burned later than ever they had before in the Cooper house, but at last weariness won them all over and they retired above.

Faith took her old bed and Geoff Noah’s. She missed his warmth but did not believe she could have shared a bed with him in her parents’ house. How long had it been since she had fallen asleep in such quiet? She had grown accustomed to a creaking ship, raucous sailors or singing tree frogs.

*

It was nigh onto midnight when the family awoke to a loud banging on the front door along with shouts of alarm. “Fire! There’s a fire in the village! Jonathan, come along!”

Jonathan pulled on a shirt and breeches and raced down the stairs, his new son-in-law a step behind. “Why do I not hear the church bell? It should be ringing the alarm!”

“‘Tis the church itself, and the rectory, as well!” their neighbor cried.

Chapter 31

The two men flew out the door and had gained the road ere Faith and Naomi finished donning their dresses. Isaiah followed, dragging a wide-eyed and bleary David behind him.

Every available man and woman, as well as older children, had begun to form a bucket brigade, but it was clear that the buildings could not be saved. The streets were bathed in a flickering kind of twilight glow from the holocaust, despite the darkness of the sky. The best that could be hoped for was to save the structures around them. Faith and Naomi joined the line while their husbands climbed to the roofs of neighboring houses, pouring the buckets of water handed to them over the shingles to guard them from flying sparks.

The labor of passing buckets blistered the hands, but it required no real concentration, and Faith sadly watched glowing beams of wood collapse and crumble within the blackened ruins of the church. It mattered not that the structure belonged to a religion she no longer embraced. The church had been a second home to her, a place of welcome and calm contemplation. As for the rectory, well, it held little meaning for her, but Owen Williams stood before it, weeping bitterly and wailing at the top of his lungs that he had been poorly served by the One to whom he had devoted his life.

Her mother took in the spectacle and shook her head. “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.”

“Blessed be the name of the Lord,” Faith agreed. She did not miss the fact that her husband and father valiantly fought the burning embers that swarmed around them while the village leader threw a tantrum and railed at God.

The heat from the conflagration blasted the people who battled it, and those closest had to soak their clothes to keep from being set aflame themselves. The labor was backbreaking, and though it took surprisingly little time for the fire to consume what had taken many days to build, all were blistered, sore, and exhausted ere it burned itself out.

The villagers stood before the charred rubble from which wispy tendrils of smoke rose. The smell was acrid and burned noses and throats. This place had sheltered them in times of joy as they forged new families in marriages and baptisms, as well as in times of sorrow, when beloved elders and often even those but newly baptized were sent into God’s care from this harsh land. Women wept softly, children stared in frightened awe, and men scratched their heads, wondering what they had done in their tiny village to so incur God’s wrath.

The minister had been sitting, his head cradled in his arms against his knees, snapping at anyone who dared to offer succor, but suddenly he jumped up and looked frantically about him.

“You!” he screamed, his red, swollen eyes fixed maniacally upon Faith. “You are to blame for this!”

She had been standing among old friends, offering softly murmured words of comfort, accepting subdued congratulations on her marriage. The little group around her disbursed in alarm, and for an instant, she stood alone. Without hesitation, her family joined her—her husband, parents, and brothers. With her father on one side, Geoff on the other, each with an arm wrapped protectively around her, she could almost pity the wretched man before her.

“Calm yourself,” Jonathan chastised. “Surely you’re not saying that Faith set fire to the church.”

“Aye, she did! The very fires of hell your godless daughter has brought upon us! We were purged of her, and now that she has returned, God’s wrath smites us all!”

“That’s a lie, Owen Williams, and well you know it!” Goodwife Hobbes, the blacksmith’s wife, stepped forward from the crowd that had formed a circle around the scene.

She turned to address her neighbors. “My youngest is yet recovering from that stomach ailment that swept my poor family, and I was awake and cleaning up after him. I was at the pump, and I noticed that a light burned in the minister’s window. Doubtless up concocting another serving of that hellfire and brimstone he dishes every Sabbath! The fiery torment that awaits all but him, to hear him tell it,” she added with disgust. “I saw the flame overturn in the dim light, then a sudden brightness as it caught the curtains.”

She advanced upon the minister and poked an accusatory finger at his chest. “Anyone with an ounce of sense would have sought to douse the fire while it was small, but you screamed like a foolish chit being chased by a mouse and ran out of the house. While you stood in the yard flapping your arms and howling, waiting for others to tend to the situation, the fire spread. If you’d acted upon it yourself, the church would never have caught.”

All eyes turned to the minister, whose face went purple with rage. “What was I to do?” he shouted. “Would you have me stay in the rectory and burn with it? I tell you, ‘twas the hand of the Almighty overturned that candle, a hand moved by contempt for that creature there!” He pointed to Faith who stood in her wet, soot-stained gown that had once been so rich.

“Then why did He not strike my father’s house or my husband’s ship? Why do I stand here, soaked and sore for helping my neighbors, while you stand unscathed, useless even to yourself?”

“You are a pathetic excuse for a man, much less a minister!” shouted Roger Smith.

George Mayfield chimed in, as well. “We’ve had enough of your holier-than-thou preachin’ and meddlin’! We’ll have a meeting in the village, but ‘tis a fair bet you’ll be looking for a new position ere the sun sets. Imagine, a man of God blaming an innocent woman for something he knows full well he did himself!”

Williams stalked over to this latest parishioner to speak his mind. “Look who is changing his tune! When first I came to this village, you and Smith were the earliest to tell of this woman’s pride and wantonness. Now you defend her?”

Roger flushed a little guiltily. “Do you not know two poor losers when you see them?” It would cost him much in the eyes of his neighbors, but he faced those around him, his face contrite. “I’ve searched my soul since I helped drive my friend and neighbor’s daughter from her home. I thought myself a wealthy man of some importance, and it irked me that she would pass me over. If she was prideful, I was the more so.” He turned back to his friend George. “Can you not admit the same, George?”

“Aye. Roger has hit the mark in that. You seemed to me an ally to soothe my wounded pride. That didn’t last long! Time has shown you a pompous busybody, Williams!”

The clergyman looked about him, but in the multitude could not find a single sympathetic face. What he saw was a collection of people to whom he had grown tiresome and singularly uninspiring. Mayfield was right; they meant to turn him out.

“Will you send me into the wide world with naught but the clothes upon my back?” he whined. “All I ever owned was in that house!”

There was general murmuring among the throng. Mayhap they were not the world’s most forgiving lot, but they were not callous. Indeed, the man was entirely bereft.

“I’ll give you a horse and saddle,” volunteered Timothy Hobbes. “After all, it was my wife set these wheels in motion, however deserved.”

“Aye, that’s good,” said Roger Smith. “And we’ll take up a collection among us for your severance.”

“Severance! I have lost everything in the world, man!”

“‘Twas no one’s fault but your own,” Jonathan answered. “We will give as generously as we may. That and God’s grace will have to suffice.”

“If God’s grace you have,” Faith muttered under her breath, but her mother scowled, and she fell silent. Justice had been served. It would be far better not to carry a grudge. Besides, if it had not been for the odious preacher, she would never have met her beloved Geoffrey. Aye, she could well afford to be charitable, and the Hamptons were the first to contribute to the minister’s severance.

*

Williams had been sent packing, and Faith and Geoff had finished one last meal with her family. The couple stood by the wagon, where Noah waited to drive them back to Boston.

“Write often,” Naomi admonished Faith. “And give Elizabeth my love.”

“I will,” Faith assured her. “And Father, do not forget that you promised to send a new table. I would be so proud to have something of yours in our home.”

Geoff and Jonathan exchanged smiles, and Geoff said, “‘Tis not goodbye just yet.”

Faith gazed at him, baffled. “Nay?”

“Nay. I have decided to delay our departure a few days. I trust Giles will understand.”

“Well,” Faith said, her voice still puzzled, “then I guess we shall have another visit ere we leave.”

“Actually,” Jonathan said, “we shall have many long visits in the weeks to come.”

“Jonathan?” Naomi asked, her face tenuously hopeful.

“Aye, Naomi. Our son-in-law here has granted us a few days to make arrangements with Noah to care for the animals and the shop while we are away. I think we shan’t much miss the snow this winter.”

“You’re for Jamaica?” Noah asked, his face mirroring the surprise in his voice.

“If you’ll mind our home and the business,” Jonathan said, and his oldest son nodded enthusiastically.

“Never worry, Father. I’ll take good care of it all.”

Isaiah and David let out whoops of joy, and Naomi threw her arms around her husband. Then she pulled back and looked deeply into his face. “Perhaps...” She stopped, but her eyes pleaded with him.

He hesitated only a moment, then said, “‘Tis a long journey. It would be foolish to come so far and not see how your sister fares. Too much love has this family missed for differences in religion.”

Amid smiles and laughter, plans were made to meet in Boston in two days’ time. Once in the wagon, Faith took her husband’s hand and felt its warm strength. Aqua eyes met golden-brown and held steady.

There would be no more second-guessing of a Being beyond her comprehension, only certainty of a loving presence that she could ever trust. Her life stretched before her with the promise of love, laughter, and family. Eternity could take care of itself.

About the Author

Paula Reed is an English teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. After surviving the tragic shooting there, she, not unlike many students and teachers who were there that day, decided the time to pursue all of one’s true passions is now. Paula’s passions are teaching and writing.

Visit her Website at
http://paula-reed.com
.