A Measure of Light (27 page)

Mary lived as if cloistered, caring for Dyota and Elizabeth, writing personal letters on behalf of those Friends who could neither read nor write, sending news to the north telling of the many in London who had embraced Fox’s message—“convincements,” they were called. She seldom left the stableyard garret, moving from room to room along the tilted hallway, eviscerating the chickens and chopping onions that Dafeny brought from the market, bending over hearths, emptying chamber pots, lugging water from the courtyard well, scrubbing clothes, sleeping at her cousin’s side, exhausted. She did not see beyond each day to her own future and yet awakened, every morning, surprised by how her heart no longer weighted her chest but was as if floating, shining—
as if, as Anne Hutchinson once promised, the Holy Spirit did dwell there
. The room’s window faced south. Sunlight warmed Mary’s Bible as she read aloud to Dyota or told her of the reports that came from the countryside.

“A young woman Friend hath gone to a judge and asked to substitute herself in jail for an old man.”

“What hath he done to be thrown in jail?”

“He travelled, spreading the truth. He fell afoul of the law against vagrants. He was searched and they did take away everything—money, Bible, inkhorns, paper. They did whip him and fastened irons upon him. He lies amongst common felons on straw upon damp earth. He is old and weak and like to die. She begged to take his place but the judge sent her away.”

Mary wore no whalebone stays, only a collared dress over her shift. Her diminished face bore lines, scribbles across her forehead
like the marks of bird’s wings in sand; etched more deeply beside her mouth. Her hair, unwashed, was stiffened by grey.

The boys dimmed in her mind. She struggled to picture them in Aquidneck—tiny, vague figures running beneath the apple trees.

William, however, she saw clearly. And Littlemary, who had cried at her departure, and whose girlhood would be passing. She saw, too, the boulders glinting with mica and the shore’s bursting, falling spray.

When Dyota dies …

A noisome fret began, a finger upon her heart.

Once her wounds had healed, Elizabeth Swale and another young woman left for Bristol, where they heard convincements had begun.

Dyota died in August, on a day of insufferable heat. Mary sent for an Anglican priest to administer the Holy Sacrament, for her cousin had remained steadfast to the Church of England.

In the stables, they heard less the sounds of the remaining squatters, and more the shouts of workers, with their saws and hammers.

One evening, Dafeny stood at the window, watching birds flying across the reddening sky. She brought the back of her hand to her cheek, ducking her head, and then paused, bent, forgetting to wipe away the tears, which came faster.

Mary came swiftly, put an arm around her shoulders.

“My babes,” Dafeny said. “All my dear ones.”

Mary wrote to William, and sent him the address of a London Friend, to which he could reply.

Mary stood at the window of a small room overlooking the Thames. She and Dafeny had left the stable a year ago.

The sun rose, a fiery radiance softened by spring mist. Below, in the courtyard, cart horses drowsed, nose-to-nose. Gulls flew low, heading up-river.

She saw the birds, the mist and the horses as separating particles, vaporizing from the dream that had wakened her. In the dream, a young man put arms around her and she had felt drawn not against a man’s body but into a love so sweet and vast that even in the dream her waking thoughts protested against its loss. He had placed her upon the back of a black goose. Stretching away on all sides were other people on dark-feathered geese. She had lain forward and clasped the bird’s neck as its wings lifted.

She heard the rustle of Dafeny’s awakening.

“Ah, such a dream I had,” Mary said, turning from the window. Dafeny rolled to her side; her red hair burned in the light like marigolds. Mary thought of the moment she had first seen Dafeny and the other Friends—how they had loomed in the rain, blurred, indistinct.

Dafeny sat, leaned against the wall. She shuffled her hair from her face.

“I have decided,” she said. “I mus’ take to the roads again. I mus’ make my way back north. I am going to go home.”

She took a long breath.

“My children, my dear Dougald, my Sibilla. ’Tis too long. I have done my part.”

Mary said nothing.

“Will thee come with me? Or …”

Dafeny’s face. More familiar, now, than any other. The fingers, tracing letters on a page as Mary taught her to read. Chapped lips, murmuring prayer.

Her dream had forewarned her and now she could not tell it to her friend for the aching of her throat.

“Could thee not, Mary?”

She shook her head, pressed her lips tight. She turned back to the window. The carters had arrived to harness their horses. Horses and men moved, thickened and wavery as behind a fall of water.

SINNIE STOOD IN THE CHICKEN
house door, eggs in a basket. The evening air bore the scent of turned soil.

She heard the slow clopping of hoofs.

Two horses turned in at the gate and came up the long laneway. A man rode one horse and a woman the other. Both lifted hand to forehead, shielding eyes as sunset cast long rays.

She ran to the house, heart skittering.

“They are come,” she called into the entryway, glancing up the stairs. She went into the great hall, set down the round basket. Littlemary was knitting by the fireside.

“They are come!”

Sinnie ran back to the entryway, wiping her hands on her apron. Littlemary, she thought. She be terrified.

She harried the four boys, who came down the stairs, nervous as their sister.
Where is she now?
they would always ask their father when he received a letter from their mother. Sinnie heard the jeering sarcasm that hid their hurt. Last autumn, they had received word that Mary had left England with another Quaker, Ann Burden; and then that their ship had been blown off course and landed in Barbados, where they had stayed at a plantation owned by Quakers, lingering to do their “work,” whatever that might be.

Ah, Mistress, you will lose them for sure now, Sinnie had thought, when William had raised angry eyes to announce this further delay.

And now. William had told them at supper, eyes communing only with his biscuit as he tore it in two. A letter had come from Massachusetts. “Come and get your wife,” the magistrates had written to him. A new law forbade Quakers to enter Boston. Mary and her companion had been searched, arrested and jailed as soon as their ship arrived.

The children gathered around Sinnie.

Like chicks. Sensing danger
.

She smoothed hair, straightened collars.

“There, now, ’tis your own mother who bore you, ’tis your own mother, my loves.”

They went out onto the granite doorstep. Peepers pulsed and the winnowing of snipes shivered like the sky’s lament. Stars appeared behind the chimney. The new house rose behind them, candlelight feathering tiny windowpanes.

The sun had set and the horses came dusk darkened past the fenceposts, hugely alive with their blowing breath, steaming flanks, jingling bits. Jurden heard the hoofs and strode from the barn. He took the reins as the horses came to a standstill, champing at their bits, tossing their heads.

William helped Mary dismount, since her legs were encumbered by stirrup stockings. Her first steps were hitching, stiff.

Aged, Sinnie thought. Stern.

Mary wore a grey cloak and a hat with a cock-eyed brim. Her face was weathered. Half-moon bags sorrowed her eyes and she bore a fretted, blind expression, as someone who has recently dwelt in darkness.

She turned from William, took Jurden’s hand.

“Jurden, thee has not changed a jot.”

She be half-starved. Her mouth, even yet so wide and beautiful
.

William came around from behind the horses.

“This is your mother,” he announced to the children, abruptly, as
if abandoning intended words. Sinnie saw that he was baffled and would blunder.

Not like this, Master. Take care, or …

Mary turned towards the children. They stood in a line as on the night of her leaving. She spoke to the tallest. “Is this … are thee … young William?”

She truly does not know. My poor dear Willie, not known by his own mother
. Fifteen, he was. Taller than Mary. Like his father, his face was narrow, his eyes predatory. Mary took the boy’s hand and did not shake it but only held it, formally. He chewed a lip, looked down.

“Maher,” William said, pushing the boy forward. Maher was a year younger, round-faced, with a spray of freckles. He, too, took his mother’s hand, but glanced at his older brother.

Mary looked at the remaining children.

“Not Henry?” she said. Ten years old, Henry was sharp-eyed, lithe.

“Hello, Mother,” he said. He tipped back his head to appraise her.

“Charlie, now,” said William gently. Charlie had been a baby when she left. Now he was seven. Round-eyed, full-lipped. His hand was soft, sticky.

“Hello, Mother.” A front tooth was missing; his voice wavered.

Sinnie nudged Littlemary, who stepped forward with a twisted smile. Black hair wisped around a broad, open forehead; she wore a white cap tied at the chin. Twelve, she was as tall as her mother.

“My dear Littlemary,” Mary said. Her eyes filled with tears and she held out her arms. “My dear Little—” She drew a breath.

The one she did love the best
.

“Hello, Mother.” Littlemary’s eyes met her mother’s and slid sideways. She stood stiff within Mary’s embrace and had not lifted her own arms by the time Mary released her.

“Samuel says he will come visit on the morrow,” William said. Twenty-two, Samuel no longer lived at home.

William went down on one knee. The children crowded round him. He rummaged in the pocket of his greatcoat, drew out a fistful of chestnut-wood whistles.

Sinnie stepped forward, uncertain whether to hold out a hand or spread her arms, but Mary came swiftly and caught her up, pressing her against the cold, horsey cloak. Sinnie breathed the stink of prison, felt Mary’s fierce energy.

“How I missed thee!” Mary whispered.

William and Mary’s first meeting after five years had been at the door of a cell, under the eyes of a jailor. They had stared at one another, stunned by time’s transformation; their embrace had been perfunctory. During the ride home, they had spoken carefully, feeling their way towards ease. The subject of Mary’s long absence remained unbroached. Her words
—George Fox, Dafeny, the stableyard dwelling
—had fallen like notes of music in a dead space. William had spoken, ramblingly, of political events incomprehensible to her; and of the children, whose names pierced her with guilt and fear.

In the bedroom, they undressed, backs to one another. They slid between the sheets.

Neither extinguished their bedside candle.

“I came to find you,” William said. “I sent you a letter telling you I was in London. Did you never receive it?”

Underbarrow. I did not tell Dafeny
.

In the long silence, she knew that he understood the answer to his question.

“The letter reached me, yes,” she said. “But ’twas too late.”