Queen Esther

Chapter 1 The Townspeople of Pennacook

The present-day James Winslow, who was called Jimmy as a child, was unimpressed by his Winslow ancestry—he’d learned not to care who his ancestors were.

“When it comes to your forebears, you deserve no credit, you should take no blame—you don’t get to pick your parents, do you?

” Jimmy’s grandfather, an English teacher, had told him.

James Winslow would be a student abroad for only one year, yet what happened to him in a foreign country confirmed his belief in his intrinsic foreignness.

It seemed a contradiction that Jimmy Winslow would always say he was just a New Hampshire boy.

He wasn’t New Hampshire enough for the townspeople of Pennacook; the townsfolk had made it their business to know where the Winslows came from.

What did the Mayflower matter to those Pennacook Academy boys?

Their class consciousness wasn’t aroused by America’s first settlers—least of all, by the ship they sailed on.

The day boys distrusted the boarders and vice versa.

In an international school, nothing is universally true, but the boarding students were generally more worldly; in comparison, the townies seemed unsophisticated.

James Winslow was distrusted by both the day boys and the boarders, because he was in a subclass of townies.

Faculty children were in a difficult position, but Jimmy Winslow was an unusual faculty brat.

He was the grandson of the most revered member of Pennacook’s English Department.

Thomas Winslow was the most popular teacher at the academy; his students adored him.

You might suppose, then, that James Winslow would have been trusted by his fellow students and welcomed by the faculty, above all the other boys—but he wasn’t a real Winslow.

Jimmy was a nobody’s boy. This much was understood: his mother had adopted him; his father was an unknown.

As for the boy’s birth mother, she put no one at ease. For starters, she was an orphan.

To the townspeople of Pennacook, James Winslow was (and would always be) the orphan’s kid.

The academy was kinder. To the students and faculty alike, maybe Jimmy wasn’t a real Winslow, but there were a whole lot of Winslows and they all loved and looked after that boy.

(Well, no wonder, the townspeople of Pennacook pointed out—Jimmy was the only Winslow boy.)

Years later, whenever James Winslow was being modest, or he was otherwise at a loss for words—and he always spoke excruciatingly slowly—he would repeat he was just a New Hampshire boy.

Naturally, the townspeople of Pennacook thought they knew better; the Winslows weren’t like the rest of the locals, the orphan’s kid included.

For all their meddlesomeness, what the townspeople of Pennacook actually knew amounted to only this.

The circumstances of James Winslow’s birth were fraught with irregularities.

When babies are born and transferred in such a way that you don’t even know whose babies they are—not exactly—aren’t things bound to go off the rails in a family?

The townspeople of Pennacook were poised for things to go awry with the Winslows—with that adopted boy, especially.

Maybe then those Winslows wouldn’t seem so proud.

The townspeople of Pennacook were sick and tired of the respect shown those Winslows as a model family, even when it came to their adopting an orphan’s child.