Jamie nodded.
“Ye needna worry about bein’ first or last, Captain. Entertainment’s scarce.”
JOHN QUINCY MYERS had, during his short stay with us, opined that mountain-dwellers were so lacking in opportunities for entertainment that they would travel twenty miles to watch paint dry. This thought was part of his modest disclaimer to being entertaining in himself, but he wasn’t wrong.
One new preacher would have been enough to draw a crowd. Two was unheard of, and two preachers representing different faces of Christianity …! As I stood with Jamie outside the new Meeting House, waiting for Captain Cunningham’s service to begin, I heard muttered bets behind me—first, as to whether the two preachers would fight each other, and if so, who might win.
Jamie, also hearing this, turned round to address the gaggle of half-grown boys doing it.
“A hundred to one says they willna fight each other,” he said, in a carrying voice, adding then in a lower tone, “But if they do, I’ll have ten shillings on Roger Mac, five to one.”
This caused a minor sensation among the boys—and a clucking of disapproval among the few actual Methodists and Anglicans present—which died away as the captain approached, in full naval uniform, including gold-laced hat, but with a surplice over one arm, and his mother—fine in black, with a black lace bodice—on the other. An approving murmur broke out, and Jamie and I made our way to the front of the crowd to bid them welcome.
The captain was sweating a little—it was a warm morning—but seemed both in good spirits and self-possessed.
“General Fraser,” he said, bowing to Jamie. “And Mrs. General Fraser. I hope I see you well on this blessed morning.”
“You do, sir,” Jamie said, bowing back. “And I thank ye. I’ll thank ye further, though, to grant us a title more modest, perhaps, but more fitting. I am Colonel Fraser—and this is my lady.”
I spread my calico skirts and curtsied, hoping I remembered how. I wondered whether the captain had caught the intimation that Jamie had, did, or could command a militia. Yes, he had …
The captain had stiffened noticeably, but Mrs. Cunningham executed a beautiful straight-backed curtsy to Jamie and rose smoothly.
“Our thanks to you, Colonel,” she said, not batting an eye, “for providing my son the opportunity to bring God’s word to those most in need of it.”
ROGER HAD BEEN of several minds regarding attending Captain Cunningham’s service.
“Mama and Da are going,” Bree had argued. “And Fanny and Germain. We don’t want to look as though we’re avoiding the poor man, do we—or high-hatting his service?”
“Well, no. But I don’t want to look as though I’ve just come to judge the competition, as it were. Besides, your da has to go; he can’t seem … partial.”
She laughed, and bit off the thread she’d been sewing with, hemming one of Mandy’s skirts, which had somehow contrived to unhem itself on one side while the owner was supposedly virtuously occupied with helping Grannie Claire make applesauce.
“Da doesn’t like things happening on the Ridge behind his back, so to speak,” she said. “Not that I think Captain Cunningham is going to preach insurrection and riot from the pulpit.”
“Neither am I,” he assured her. “Not first thing, anyway.”
“Come on,” she said. “Aren’t you curious?”
He was. Intensely so. It wasn’t as though he’d not heard his share of sermons, growing up as the son of a Presbyterian minister—but at the time, he hadn’t had the slightest thought of becoming a minister himself, and hadn’t paid much attention to the fine points. He’d learned quite a bit during his first go at sermonizing on the Ridge, and more during his try at ordination, but that was a few years past—and many of the present audience wouldn’t know him as anything other than Himself’s son-in-law.
“Besides,” she added, holding up the skirt and squinting at it to judge her work, “we’ll stick out like a sore thumb if we don’t go. Everybody on the Ridge will be there, believe me. And they’ll all be there for your service, too—remember what Da said about entertainment.”
He had to admit that she was right on all counts. Jamie and Claire were there in their best, looking benign, Germain and Fanny with them, looking unnaturally clean and even more unnaturally subdued.
He cast a narrow glance at his own offspring, who were at least clean, and—if not completely subdued—at least closely confined on the bench between him and Brianna. Jemmy was twitching slightly, but reasonably quiescent, and Mandy was occupied in teaching Esmeralda the Lord’s Prayer in a loud whisper—or at least the first line, which was all Mandy knew—pressing the doll’s pudgy cloth hands piously together.
“I wonder how long the sermon’s likely to be,” Bree said, with a glance at the kids.
“Well, he’s used to preaching to sailors—I suppose with a captive audience that doesn’t dare leave or interrupt, ye might be tempted to go on a bit.” He could hear from the shuffle and muttering at the back of the room that a number of older boys were standing back there, similar to the lot who’d loosed a snake during his own first sermon.
“You aren’t planning to heckle him, are you?” asked Bree, glancing over her shoulder.
“I’m not, no.”
“What’s heckle, Daddy?” Jem came out of his comatose state, attracted by the word.
“It means to interrupt someone when they’re speaking, or shout rude things at them.”
“Oh.”
“And you’re never, ever to do it, hear me?”
“Oh.” Jem lost interest and went back to looking at the ceiling.
A stir of interest ran through the congregation as Captain Cunningham and his mother came in. The captain nodded to right and left, not precisely smiling, but looking agreeable. Mrs. Cunningham was glancing sharply round, with an eye out for trouble.
Her eye lighted on Esmeralda, and she opened her mouth, but her son cleared his throat loudly and, gripping her elbow, steered her to a spot on a front bench. Her head swiveled briefly round, but the captain had taken his place and she swiveled back, amid the shufflings and shushings of the congregation.
“Brothers and sisters,” the captain said, and everyone straightened abruptly, as he’d addressed them in what Roger thought must be the voice used on his quarterdeck, raised to be heard over the flapping of sails and the roar of cannon. Cunningham coughed, and repeated more quietly, “Brothers and sisters in Christ, I bid you welcome.
“Many of you know me. For those who do not—I am Captain Charles Cunningham, late of His Majesty’s navy. I received a call from God two years ago, and I am endeavoring to answer that call to the best of my ability. I will tell you more about my journey—and yours—toward God, but let us now begin our services this morning by singing ‘O God, Our Help in Ages Past.’”
“I think he’s actually going to be good,” Bree whispered to Roger as the congregation obligingly rose.
The captain was good. After the hymn—which roughly half the congregation knew, but it was a simple tune, and easy enough for the rest to hum along—he opened his worn leather Bible and read them Matthew 4:18–22: