His natural beliefs, they were not far behind, though they still needed time before they would be fully developed.
ten
Caleum joined Stanton’s militia in October, and they began immediately to prepare for battle. Stanton himself drilled the troops in the beginning, having experience of warfare from the French and Indian campaigns. However, as the seriousness of the political situation grew, he had recourse to hire a seasoned colonel to give the men greater discipline and lead them like conscripts in a full army. Each Saturday they could be seen out on the town square practicing maneuvers, as the colonel lectured them on various theories of warfare. These discourses were sometimes formal, as when he spoke about the use of mobile artillery, and other times they were ribald tirades on the privation of war, or else dissertations on the rights of the colonists. No matter the conversation, though, it inevitably spilled over and continued at Content’s tavern afterward, where the men argued the day’s lesson and often made merry.
To assemble his army, Stanton had gone through all the families in the valley and hill country and picked those he thought were best fit to serve. Caleum knew many of the other men in the militia by name or reputation, but he could not claim friendship with any of them, as they were from so far and wide, and he seldom associated beyond his small circle. Because they had been individually selected by Stanton, though, it was considered quite an honor to serve, and they bonded over their position as the ablest young men in the county.
They were also envied by those men who had not been asked to join, a thing that turned to jealousy whenever womenfolk mentioned the militia with approval. “I don’t think those British would dare show themselves in Berkeley with Stanton’s militia guarding us.”
They were a fine assembly, who feared very little of the sacrifice they were being asked to make and, though young, heeded Stanton’s admonishment to be farsighted enough to ask what their colony and country should be after the strife of war had passed and gone.
At Stonehouses this looming reality still yet to settle, and everything seemed to move and progress as normal for that time of year. In June the corn was high as a yearling, and in July they prepared for the harvest that would soon be upon them. Libbie’s pregnancy was well advanced, and though Caleum urged her to stay off her feet, she was defiant about it — helping with the summer chores as any other maid of the country. Adelia worked her garden, and was trying that year to introduce orange trees from seeds Magnus got for her after they saw Libbie’s embroidered picture. Magnus, as he went to work that season, thought for the first time in years of his past humiliations, first at Sorel’s Hundred, then at the hands of the tax assessor — and also those little assaults that are too small and diffuse to be given name in memory but only stored away. Through this reminiscence he managed eventually to convince himself in the rhetoric and need for war, and that what came after it would outlive what had been before, as everything would be equal in it, and none captive to the major part against his will. It was not something he shared with anyone, but whenever he saw Caleum ride into the stable in his militia uniform his own heart was made very proud, though of course not vengeful or thirsty for blood.
Whenever she saw her boy in his uniform and considered the news that reached them out there that summer, Adelia too had no doubt but that there would soon be a war of some kind. She remembered when Caleum first showed up there on the land with his guardian, Rennton, and how fearless he seemed, as only a small child can be. It was the same confidence that seemed to reawaken in him during that summer, and where before it had worried her to no end, now she allowed it to dispel her natural fears for his safety. She had thought from the moment he came there and became her son that he would always be with her. Now she realized she was foolish as any mother to have ever harbored such hope. She wept in private like an old woman, as it dawned in her mind that he was leaving.
Libbie was even less certain what shape the events unfolding would take and still had hope they might reverse their seeming course. She began in secret nonetheless to make her own war preparations and to craft for her husband a new suit of clothes for the winter months, including a hunting shirt and a greatcoat, the inside of which was decorated with a scene from Stonehouses, with everyone who lived there represented. There was but one face she could not weave in yet, as she had never seen it, but left a space for it to be filled in later.
Caleum himself worked all day long, as if nothing were out of the ordinary, even though there was a weighty congress taking place in Philadelphia that summer, which would determine the future of the colonies. At night, though, heeding Stanton’s suggestion, he would read books borrowed from the library at Acre, which made his positions better reasoned, as he considered what his own future, and that of Stonehouses, should be. He struck on many plans in those days, each of them fired by a sense of new possibilities and in its own way utopic.
Because Stanton approved of his young intellect, Caleum had complete access to the books at Acre and was free to go and borrow a volume even when Stanton himself was not home. Caleum was at first intimidated by the big airy rooms. He had thought when he finished at Miss Boutencourt’s that he was educated, and he had always carried himself as such. In the library at Acre for the first time, though, he felt his immense ignorance hit him like a storm wave slapping an untested vessel. It took all his self-control then to keep from showing untoward emotion, for his first instinct was to cry.
He threw himself at the books with zeal then, so he should be as strong in mind as in body. However, even in his enthusiasm, he took care not to go softheaded with their pleasures and also not to become like some men, who read only part of a book or, worse yet, learned only its reputation, then prattled on as if they had read the entire volume.
He moved slowly through the shelves, letting one book lead him to the next by way of suggestion, so that this folio would take him to that folio and in turn to such and such octavo; from there it was on to a certain quarto or duodecimo, then back to the original folio, and so on. When he could not find a clear answer to something using this method, he was scrupulous in questioning Stanton, especially about Greek or Latin terms.
“Mr. Stanton, what is the difference between a priori and a posteriori knowledge?” he might ask in those early days.
Stanton always answered these questions with the utmost patience and care, so that if the young man was led astray in his thinking it would not be because he had been provided faulty maps and teaching but because he had sought to go wandering in too curious a place.
One day while returning a philosophy text, a slim leather book with gilt lettering caught his eye because of its great beauty. When he removed it from its shelf, he realized it bore the name — Antigone — his grandfather had once told him to give his daughter should he ever be so blessed. Although he was not usually one for made-up stories, he opened the little book, intending to read it. As he gazed at the first line, however, he felt he was doing something wrong. “I have heard this story,” he reasoned to himself. “What if the second telling changes its original meaning?”
Although it was contrary to his usual discipline with books and their information, he had read enough by then to know stories that have been heard or otherwise interrupted were often very different than those seen with one’s own eyes and mind. In this case he preferred Jasper Merian’s rendering, with whatever faults of interpretation and possible misinterpretation, so chose but once ignorance over knowledge.