Pillar of Light Read online

  The thing which made the quern different from a simple hand mill held between the legs was that the quern stick was about five feet long and inserted into an overhead beam that projected outward from the side of the barn. This not only allowed the person to stand while grinding the grain, but with the quern stick inserted into the overhead beam it also provided a swivel, greatly increasing the leverage and therefore simplifying the work.

  But Melissa was aware of none of those refinements. All she knew was she hated her time at the quern. It seemed the perfect representation of her life. Round and round, grinding, grating. Just three weeks ago she had had her sixteenth birthday. Some girls she knew were married and had their first child by the time they were sixteen. And yet here she sat. The young men who had showed interest were now several hundred miles to the east. And with the demands of forging a homestead from the wilderness she had been allowed a trip into the village only twice in the six months since their arrival in western New York. Twice!

  She gave the quern stick a hard twist, sending the stone flying even faster. She knew time was still on her side, but at the rate things were progressing here, she would be nineteen or twenty before she could turn around, and then…She shuddered slightly, unable to bring herself to say the horrible words. What girl in America was not filled with foreboding and dread at the thoughts of perpetual maidenhood?

  Glumly she reached down for the leather pouch and poured more corn into the hole of the upper millstone. Pull. Pull. Pull. The kernels were sucked between the heavy stones. The grating sound dropped in pitch. And the shapeless mass of cornmeal fell into the barrel.

  As a girl, Mary Ann Morgan had always hated the prospects of making soap. She had never quite mastered the knack of collecting the wood ashes and pouring hot water over them to get the necessary potash without getting herself and her clothes filthy black and reeking of smoke in the process. And the smell of the animal fats, melting in the large kettle over the fire, always left her feeling faintly sick. The resulting soap—strong, harsh, reeking of the rancid smell of lard—no longer seemed worth the effort it took. Not now that ready-made soap was available.

  By 1805, when she had become the young bride of Benjamin Steed, soap manufacturing was getting its first hold in America. Budding entrepreneurs would collect the animal fats from the various farms, then after making it into soap, pour it into large wooden frames and let it harden. They would then cut it into bars and peddle it from door to door. That had ended Mary Ann’s soap making career right then and there.

  She smiled fondly, remembering when a Yankee peddler named B. T. Babbitt had started to make soap cakes of uniform size and wrap them in paper. It had been an electrifying development, and Mary Ann had been one of the first in the township to buy them. The other women had at first refused, thinking they were paying extra for the paper. Finally Babbitt had started printing the word coupon on each paper and then redeemed them for other merchandise. But Mary Ann had no such reservations. Somehow he had managed to make a milder soap without the strong odor of animal fat. Even if it meant paying a premium, it was worth it to her.

  The smile faded. Then Benjamin had announced he was selling the farm and they were moving west. Though there had been a cash surplus, it had to be carefully hoarded to see them through until the first crops could be sold. And for the first time in twenty years or so, Mary Ann was back to making her own soap. Like her daughter, Mary Ann had also felt dismay at Benjamin’s announcement they were leaving Vermont. In spite of its harsh winters, she loved the area, and she had made many friends up and down the valley. It also meant leaving a farm which represented years of toil. The stories of fantastically fertile ground and wheat crops of staggering yields had taken less than a week to turn Benjamin’s heart. Within a month the farm was sold and her husband was on his way to scout for land in the western part of the state of New York. She sighed, and turned back to the fire.

  Benjamin had built her a rack—two forked sticks with a stout hickory branch between the two—to hold the heavy black kettle now filled with potash water and the fat from the pig they had butchered the previous day. The water had a thin skim of ice over it, and there were crystals on the lard as well. She had hoped leaving the sticky mass out in the cold air overnight might take away some of its smell, but the moment she had laid the fire and got it going well the odor had started to rise again. She was only grateful she had chosen a spot down-wind of the house. Holding her nose, she took the wooden paddle and pushed the fat deeper into the water.

  Matthew exited from the barn, still tucking one end of his shirt into his pants. He saw her and changed directions. “Good morning, Mama.”

  “Mornin’, Matthew. How are you this morning?”

  He shivered a little. “Still cold.”

  “You should be. Out here without a coat. You’d better get back in the house.”

  He peered into the kettle. “Can I do that, Mama?”

  “You don’t have a coat.”

  “If I get one, can I stir the soap?”

  She looked at him closely, then smiled. He wasn’t really daft; he just had the bubbling exuberance and poor sense of smell common to most six-year-olds. With a nod, she smiled again. “Get your coat. I need to start breakfast anyway.”

  By ten o’clock the overcast had burnt off and the sun was starting to dissipate the ground mist, leaving the air softly diffused and muting the starkness of the leafless trees and undergrowth. Off to the left, somewhere nearby, the raucous chatter of a gray squirrel carried clearly through the woodland. A raven answered with his impudent cawing.

  But Benjamin Steed had neither eyes for the beauty of the morning nor ears for its sounds. He made one final adjustment to the logging chain wound twice round the thickness of the hickory stump. Satisfied it would bite deep into the bark and not jerk free, he stepped back, then clambered out of the three-foot trench they had dug around the stump. Joshua, his oldest son, watched from the edge of the hole.

  Benjamin turned to Nathan, his second son, who was standing at the head of the two mules, waiting for the signal. He nodded. “Go.”

  “Hee yaw!” Nathan cried, yanking the halters forward sharply. “Giddyap, mules!”

  The well-matched team hit the end of the traces at precisely the same instant, and the singletrees cracked like the slap of thunder across the rolling hills. For a century or more the old hickory tree had sent its roots deep into the soil of western New York. The previous fall its towering mass had finally succumbed to the ax and saw as the Steeds had cut it down for lumber and firewood—one cord of hickory produced as much heat as three cords of maple or four cords of white pine. But the stump was not about to surrender so easily. It barely quivered as the chain gouged into the bark. The mules snorted with the strain, hooves carving great scars in the moist ground, the veins standing out on the sleek dampness of their necks.

  Benjamin leaped into the hole and threw his shoulder into the stump. Joshua was instantly by his side, clawing his fingers into the muddy dirt beneath one of the thick roots and heaving upward. There was a soft screech of tortured metal. Joshua jerked up. A few inches in front of his nose, one of the heavy links of the chain was pulling open.

  “Watch out!”

  He hurled himself at his father, knocking him aside. There was a sharp snap, then a lightning blur. Almost too quick for the brain to register, Benjamin felt a whistle of air pass his ear and a hard tug at his shirt. There was another loud crack. A young birch tree at the edge of the hole toppled slowly and fell to the ground, its three-inch trunk shattered as if from a blow from some mighty sledgehammer.

  With the snap of the chain, suddenly there was nothing holding the mules back. They plunged forward, the off animal going down to its knees and nearly dragging the other one down with it. Nathan was jerked violently, and almost went under the flashing hooves, but he hung on, backpedaling furiously to stay clear. “Ho, mules!” he screamed. “Ho!”

  The mules pulled up, forelegs trembling, eyes rollin
g, clouds of steam exploding from their flaring nostrils.

  In the hole, Benjamin pulled himself to his feet slowly, holding his ribs where Joshua’s body had slammed into him. He stared at the stump. It hadn’t budged so much as an inch. Then he lifted his eyes to gaze at the shattered trunk of the birch tree. The chain now lay alongside it, unmoving, belying the deadly force which had driven it only moments before.

  He turned to Joshua. His oldest son was staring at his father’s shirttail. Slowly, eyes wide, he reached out and touched it. Benjamin looked down and felt a sudden lurch in his stomach. A fist-sized hole had been torn from the shirt. The fabric was cut as cleanly as though done with a tailor’s shears.

  Benjamin gaped at the shirt, then once more at the stub of the birch tree. If I had been two inches closer…He leaned back against the soft dirt and took a deep breath.

  “You all right, Pa?” Nathan stood looking down at them, still breathing hard from his own near miss with the mules.

  Benjamin nodded slowly, finally letting his shirttail drop. “Yes.” He dropped to his knees, staring at the white slash where the chain had barked the stump before it snapped, trying not to think about how close he had come to disaster. Finally he turned to Joshua. “Thanks, son.”

  In spite of the coolness of the air, Joshua was now perspiring heavily, the sweat running in tiny rivulets from the heavy thatch of dark hair that poked out here and there from beneath his flannel cap. He stared at his father for several moments, then just nodded, looking away.

  Above them, Nathan was moving slowly around the hole, sizing up the stump. “We’re gonna have to go deeper, cut more of the roots.”

  Benjamin looked up, faintly pleased. In typical fashion, and in contrast to his older brother, Nathan always moved on quickly, looking for solutions instead of dwelling on the problems. No one was hurt, and so Nathan had already focused again on the task at hand.

  Benjamin stood, brushing the dirt from the back of his pants. “Ain’t nothin’ gonna happen without a good logging chain.” He looked down at his oldest son. “Josh, take the mules back to the barn, then saddle one up and take the chain into the blacksmith. That will be faster than trying to fire up the forge and do it ourselves. Nathan and I will try to get under this thing and see what’s holding her down.”

  Joshua didn’t turn.

  Benjamin leaned forward a little. “You hear me, son?”

  Still he didn’t move, but Benjamin could see his son’s lips had compressed into a tight line. Then he understood. “You got somethin’ to say, boy?” he said quietly.

  Now Joshua turned to face him. “Yeah, I got somethin’ to say. We’ve spent more than half a day on this stump. All of yesterday afternoon, now this morning. It ain’t budged one inch. I say we leave it and get on with clearing the land.”

  Benjamin’s jaw tightened a little. True, most farmers did just that. They cut down the trees and undergrowth, dragged the resulting brush into piles, and left them until they were dry enough to burn. Smaller stumps were taken out, but the big ones were simply left in place and the land plowed around them until they rotted away. But Benjamin Steed was not just another farmer. Born in 1785 to a revolutionary war veteran, Benjamin had been deeply infused with the idea that the new struggle—and one in which Benjamin’s generation could participate—was the struggle to tame the newly won land. And land pockmarked with stumps was not part of Benjamin’s vision of the new America.

  He took a quick breath, determined to hold his temper in check. “We’ve been over this already, Joshua. The stump comes out. Now go get the chain fixed.”

  Joshua reached out and flipped the torn shirttail. “You was nearly killed, Pa,” he said quietly. “I say it stays.”

  Benjamin straightened slowly, but Joshua stood his ground, glaring back at him. Nathan hopped down into the hole, stepping between them, facing his brother. “Look, Josh,” he said, keeping his voice easy. “Ain’t gonna do no good to argue about this one. The hole is already dug. It’s got to come out. Pa and I will have it ready by the time you get back from the village.”

  For a moment Joshua glared at his brother, then finally shook his head, muttering in disgust. Without looking at his father, he climbed out of the hole. He drug the heavy chain back over and hooked it up behind the mules, his face still twisted with anger. He snapped the reins and moved off behind them.

  If Benjamin saw, he gave no sign. He just stared across the field at Joshua’s receding figure. Finally, with a bitter sigh, he turned, picked up the shovel, and confronted the stump once more. Nathan fell to work beside him.

  Benjamin Steed was tall, almost six feet, and solidly built, but most people did not think of him as a particularly big man. His bone structure was lean, and the few pounds he had put on over the winter had quickly melted away once they had started clearing the forest again. His features were finely cut, albeit with a nose slightly out of proportion to his mouth. His eyes were pale blue, almost lighter than the sky when he smiled, but darkening quickly when he was angry. That was not often, for Benjamin was fourth generation New England stock and had been born and bred to hold his emotions in check. That was what infuriated him most about his deteriorating relationship with Joshua. Normally he was slow to anger, deliberate in his choice of words, taciturn sometimes to a fault. But lately Joshua had a gift for overturning his father’s determination to stay in control.

  He stopped, leaning on his shovel, letting his eyes run across the land that was now his. The soil where they had recently cleared the underbrush lay dark and rich, waiting for the seed they would soon plow into it. He estimated they now had nearly thirty acres cleared—more than his entire farm in Vermont—with that much again and more yet to go. He loved it and reveled in the pleasure it gave him to be taming it.

  This was the Finger Lakes region of New York, so named by the Seneca Indians, who just fifty years previously had been part of the mighty Iroquois confederation of nations. Lakes Canandaigua, Keuka, Seneca, Cayuga, Owasco, Skaneateles, Oneida—all were set in long, narrow valleys, as though the Great Spirit had dug his fingers into the soft earth and gouged out places for the clear blue water to fill. It was wonderful country, rich with promise. And from the moment Benjamin had laid eyes on this place, he had known it was to be his. Now with six months of work into his particular corner of it, those feelings had only deepened. In a few years their farm in Vermont would pale in comparison, and then his family would understand why he had come.

  Fifteen minutes later a shout from across a small meadow brought Benjamin’s and Nathan’s heads up together. Benjamin took off his hat and mopped at his brow with a rag from his back pocket. His face softened, the eyes crinkling around the corners. His youngest son was coming on the dead run, the big, rawboned, half-breed dog loping alongside him, tongue lolling crazily out one side of his mouth. Further behind, he could see the figure of his wife, following in the track Matthew and the dog had made across the brown grass, wet now from where the frost had melted. She was carrying a pitcher and two tin cups.

  He tossed the shovel out and climbed out of the hole, knowing what had brought about this unexpected visit to the fields. His wife would have seen Joshua come in, and whether or not she had talked with him, she would know there had been trouble between him and his father again. This was her way of assessing the damage, seeing if there was anything to be done to repair it. “Looks like it’s time to take a break,” Benjamin said.

  “Mama always knows when it’s time,” Nathan said with a grin. He likewise tossed his shovel out, taking his father’s outstretched hand for a pull up.

  “Pa! Did you get it out yet?” Matthew was calling to them even before he was close enough to see the stump still in place. He pulled up with a frown as his father shook his head. The dog stopped alongside Matthew, took a quick disinterested look into the hole, sniffed briefly at the shovels, then bolted into the trees to see what might be waiting to be stirred up.

  Looking very much like a miniature Nathan, Matthew wa
lked around the periphery of the hole, soberly sizing up the situation. “Looks like you’ve got the biggest roots, Pa,” he said soberly. Then nodding, sure of his assessment, he added, “Can I chop that root there, Pa?”

  Mary Ann came up in time to hear the question, and shot her husband a sharp look. But Benjamin was already shaking his head. “Not quite ready for that yet, Matthew.”

  Nathan looked at his father. “There’s a lot more dirt to come out of the hole before we can chop the root,” he said, his face grave. “But I’m too tuckered to do any more right now.”

  Benjamin nodded, equally sober. “Me too. I’m plumb bushed.”

  “I’ll do it,” yelled Matthew. He grinned up at his father, knowing he was being teased, but not caring. Benjamin smiled again, his eyes clearly reflecting the pride he felt for his youngest offspring, then pointed to the shovel. With a whoop Matthew was into the pit and stabbing awkwardly at the soil around the roots of the hickory stump, barely able to manipulate the length of the shovel in the confined space.

  “Still haven’t got it out?” Mary Ann stopped next to her husband and peered down at what was left of the huge old hickory tree.

  Benjamin wiped at his forehead with his sleeve and shook his head. “It’s hangin’ on to the earth like a baby possum to its mama’s belly.”

  Mary Ann just nodded, biting back a comment. She had loved the giant old tree and had suggested way back last fall that they just clear around it and leave it be. But Benjamin had grumbled about nothing growing in its shade and having to plow around it all the time, and the issue was eventually dropped.

  She lifted the pitcher. “I brought some cold buttermilk.”

  Without waiting for an answer, she set the cups on a nearby log and poured, then stepped back as husband and son picked them up and began to drink. She smiled, her eyes softening with affection. Benjamin drank his steadily, the pale blue eyes shaded by heavy dark brows, completely lost in thought as he surveyed the land over the top of his cup. Mary Ann wasn’t even sure he tasted the sweetness of the buttermilk. For a moment she compared him to Joshua. Her oldest son, now almost twenty, was so like her husband in the lean hardness of his body, the angular features, the mouth perpetually set in what appeared to others as grim determination. If he were here, she knew without doubt he would down the milk in three gulps, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing up and down with each swallow. Then with what would almost be a groan of pleasure he would hold out his cup for a refill.