A Measure of Light (28 page)

“I had already left England?”

Silence.

“William.” Her voice hardened. “It was not in truth for me that
thee came. It was for the charter. It was a scheme between thee and Clark and Williams, for the sake of Aquidneck.”

He did not answer, and Mary knew that neither of them had been wholly truthful with the other.

Air passed over the windowsill, bent the candle flames. He reached for her hand, and she turned her palm upwards. Their fingers closed. Suddenly, it was as if no years had intervened: London, the red-curtained bedstead, their young bodies. Tears sprang to her eyes. She saw that his eyes, too, glimmered in the candlelight.

He touched her neck, pulled her lips to his. She tasted the salt of his tears, felt the dimension of his hurt.

Sinnie slept in a four-poster bedstead in a small room on the second floor, across the hall from the master bedchamber.

She made certain never to go upstairs before William.

She would tarry, banking the fire, setting sourdough, putting beans to soak; then would slip up the back staircase. She stood by his door, listening for his snores, hand shielding candle flame. Sometimes she could not keep herself from laying a hand on the door, stroking the adzed pine panel with the tips of her fingers.

A mirror hung on the wall over her dresser, too high. Ten-year-old Henry could stretch to his full height and press his nose against hers. On this night of Mary’s return, she rose to her toes, held the edge of the dresser, peered into the glass. Her job was to teach them to love their mother.

Sinnie, Sinnie. Where is my hornbook? My buckle? Sinnie, I have cut myself. I am hungry, I am tired, I am …

She studied her own troubled, blue eyes, wondering how she was to do it.

—

The next day, Sinnie watched from her post at the hearth, pained, wishing that work and school had been set aside and the day made one of celebration.

They show how they do not need her
.

After breakfast, William and young William rode to the Newport office. Charlie, Henry and Maher walked to dame school.

Mary sat by a window, hands laid palms upward, a random nesting, like fallen leaves. One side of her face was hazed with sunshine. She watched Littlemary, who was busy at the fire, avoiding her mother’s eyes.

Twelve years old
.

Sinnie set a wooden tub on the hearth, filled it, brought a cake of bayberry soap. Mary undressed and eased herself into the water.

“Canst tell us of the prison?” Sinnie said, running a cloth over the knobby curve of Mary’s spine.

Mary ducked face in hands, splashed water, dragged fingers through her scalp. She drew a long breath.

She has hardly spoken
.

“’Twas dark. Dark, cold, silent. I could hear rats chewing, especially in the night. Yet ’twas nothing as bad as some are enduring now in England.”

Her voice was low, stark, with no attendant shades to enfold her listeners.

Littlemary left the room with a bucket. Sinnie watched her cross the yard, heading for the well—saw that her steps were confused, neither going quickly nor turning back, and that her shoulders drooped.

May on Aquidneck was the loveliest time of year.

The cows grazed hock-deep in dandelions and star grass. The sheep wandered on the hillsides where junipers exuded the scent of gin and milk-snakes coiled on boulders.

Sinnie threw open the windows of the big house, let the salt air blow through. She spread linens on the greening grass. She worked in the vegetable garden, watching flocks of birds coming up over the sea, so many that the sky was reduced to a crumpled blue between their fanning wings. She knelt, planting seeds saved in twists of paper. She stood at the trestle table, kneading dough, laughing at the sight of Littlemary who stood outside in a whirling, prickly cloud, stripping feathers from chickens. She scrubbed. Clothes, stone floors, wood floors. Her mind sifted the contents of pantry, root cellar, buttery—scrambled the findings into imagined meals. She proceeded steadily as the migrating birds, knowing by the soil in her fist when to plant, by palm’s memory how to knead or knit, by heart’s instinct how and when to soothe. Aquidneck, finally, was as familiar as Shetland.

She straightened from planting carrots and gazed at the house. Like a ship, it was—solitary on the point of land, the sea beyond, the fields like smoothed blankets. Beneath its eaves, swallows hovered, shoring up last year’s nests.

William’s great house, bigger than William Coddington’s or anyone else’s.

Sinnie loved its shelves of folded quilts, pillowbeers, sheets, linen drawers and stockings, silk caps and dimity waistcoats. She loved the hall and pantry, with its pewter platters, salt cellars, kettles; its store of cheeses and cured hams, its crocks of pickled cabbage and nasturtium buds, applesauce, grape juice.

Sinnie watched Mary come from the house and stand in the herb garden. She wore sad-coloured clothing without lace. She had politely bidden William return a bolt of pink-flowered dimity and exchange it for plain brown wool.

“Give me the herb garden to care for,” she had said to Sinnie, on the first morning.

“But Mistress, the whole household is yours.”

“Sinnie, for now I am content to leave the running of the house in thy hands. But I do know my herbs, from my aunt’s teachings.”

Often, on these glorious days, Mary sat in the parlour, studying her Bible, writing letters—to London, she told Sinnie, who asked. To Yorkshire, to Barbados, or to the Boston magistrates, since her friend, Ann Burden, remained in jail. “I seek my friend’s release,” she said. “She hath no husband to rescue her.”

She studied letters that came to her from other “Friends,” as she called them.

She does not love the house, Sinnie thought, sorry on William’s behalf.

“Will she like this valance, these curtains, dost think, Sinnie?” he had asked her, preparing for Mary’s return. The elaborately patterned copper warming pan, brought home from Boston. He showed it to the children, smiling. “’Twill warm her sheets nicely.” In the bedchamber dresser, one day, Sinnie had found a pair of gloves. Lambskin, dressed flesh-side out. They were lined with peach-coloured silk and embroidered with silver thread. Sinnie had slid them onto her hands, remembering the nobleman who had taken her from Fetlar as his serving girl and how proud her parents had been the day she had ridden away on her shaggy pony.
Gone into service in London!
Sinnie had removed the gloves and closed the drawer, thinking of how she had come to Mary and William, filthed. How she could meet no man’s eye and felt that the sun would never again be as her friend, nor the wind stroke her hair, nor the flowers nod.

Sinnie dropped back to her knees, scrabbled carrot seeds from the paper and resumed sprinkling the drill. The seeds slithered from her palm, a pile that she nursed into line with a fingertip.

We be true friends. The poor thing, how she do suffer
.

—

Sand glinted on the scoured floor. Sinnie offered the women cider, gingersnaps. The windows were open and in the spaces of their conversation came the creaking of a wheeled ox-drawn plough and the screaming of the gulls that followed it.

“There are two churches in Newport, one Baptist, one independent.”

“Your husband has not made up his mind? For we
glimpse
him at both.”

Three Newport women, visiting Mary.

Friends for you
, Sinnie’s eyes implored. Mary looked at each woman, pondering. A smile quivered at the corners of her mouth but did not spread.

“Has he not?” Mary inquired. She turned to Sinnie. “Does he not take the children to church?”

Sinnie started and the gingersnaps slithered on the plate.

“Sometimes, Mistress. Not always.”

“Ah.” Mary’s voice, closing the subject.

So thin. Her eyes, like torches in the dark. She frightens them. She waits for them to speak. Oh, Mistress, talk of …

Sinnie stood stock still, so distressed that her urgings found voice.

“My mistress hath skill in herbs.” She felt the burn of a blush, saw the women lower their mugs and look between Sinnie and Mary.

“Sinnie, Sinnie!”

Sinnie set down the plate, ran to the door. Charlie burst into the house holding his wrist, hand in a fist. She put an arm around his shoulders, eased open his bloody palm.

“Ah, not so bad, my pet.”

Mary had risen from her chair, came swiftly, put out her hand.

“Go to your mother,” Sinnie whispered. “She is a healer.”

Charlie buried fist and face in Sinnie’s apron. Forehead, hard against her breastbone.

I am sorry, Mistress, oh, I am sorry
.

Mary stepped back, stood watching them—eyes tender, the smile that had quivered finding focus: acceptance. She turned back to the women.

Sinnie took Charlie to the kitchen and knelt on the hearth, dipping a cloth in the kettle. She murmured to the boy, while her mind apologized, explained.
You see, Mistress
 … Still the boys and Littlemary turned to her with their questions, complaints, requests—and behind their masked eyes were the tear-swollen faces that Sinnie had seen. And Mary had not.

It was a sweltering evening. Sinnie’s door was cracked open to encourage the passage of air from her window. Mary and William’s door, too, stood half-open, and she heard their voices across the hall, a familiar night sound from all the small houses they had inhabited. Mary’s. Agitated. Not bothering to whisper.

“She had no one to post bond for her, William. She had no husband nor influential friends.”

“I did enough, Mary. It would not have reflected well on me if I had intervened.”

Outside Sinnie’s window, teeming of insects; surf, with its regular accents—roar and sigh of a vast wave.

“Well. ’Tis done.” Mary’s voice, again. Harsh. “I received word that they compelled the master of the ship that brought us from Barbados to take her directly back to England. She was allowed nothing,
nothing
. No goods, no money. Only sixpence did she have. ’Twas the
hangman
who rowed her out to the ship. They are not subtle.”

Baby swallows chattered. In the crepuscular light, shadows were slowly absorbing the knobs of Sinnie’s chest of drawers, six chestnut circles.

William, whispering. She could not hear the words.

Mary, pleading, her voice lower, dark.

“…  never again,” Mary said. “I could not bear it.”

“No more children,” William said. “I will …” A lower voice. “…  my pull-back …”

Sinnie clapped hands to ears, slid from her bedstead. Her shift fell down one shoulder, her hair was twisted and pinned, sweat beaded along her collarbones. She held her breath and raised a hand to her door.

Will it creak
.

The voices in the next room fell silent. She heard the slight squeal of wood, the groan of a mattress rope. She eased her door shut.

Littlemary sat in a low chair by the door, bent over a bowl of wild strawberries. Shoulders raised, drawn into herself.

Sinnie glanced at Mary, gutting a fresh-plucked chicken at the table.
She is still a good worker
. Only she would rather let Sinnie or William organize, supervise. Most days, before William rode to Newport, he allotted the day’s work, murmuring to Mary that she might help Sinnie should she desire.
He treats her like the sick lady she was before she went away
.

Mary caught Sinnie’s eyes.

“Three more,” she said. “Then I shall cut them.” Pimpled pink carcasses sprawled beside a plate of viscera. She waved a hand—flies rose, a spinning iridescence. Deftly, she disengaged the crop.

“I would have thought this a feast beyond imagining when I was on the road with Dafeny.” She worked her hand wrist-deep into the next carcass. “We were accustomed to walk miles on empty stomachs. To ask food of strangers and passers-by. To break ice from ponds, kneel to drink.” She pulled out her hand, flicked kidneys onto a plate. Her voice sharpened, as if she realized her words were unwelcome and sullied the summer day. “Strange to say, but
after a time I did not hanker after food, nor sleep, nor a soft bed. ’Tis good to strip away worldly possessions and walk in the light of the Lord.”

Sinnie glanced at Littlemary, who bent lower over her bowl. Mary resumed her work—tugging, scooping, flicking. She wished to say more, Sinnie saw, but a muted insularity had come over her when neither she nor Littlemary had questioned or encouraged.

Silence, the ticking fire and the calls of men in the field.

Littlemary looked up.

Her chin crept forward, her eyes darkened. Sinnie remembered the angry thoughts that Littlemary had whispered to her.
Why
had her mother undertaken such hardships?
Why
had she bothered to return, if she did care so for her new friends?

Sinnie turned back to the fire, wool apron protecting her from the flames, sweat staining her cap and collar. She stirred the strawberries, boiling them down into a thick preserve. Charlie and Henry arrived at the door, mosquito-bitten, fingers stained red. They emptied their baskets into the one on Littlemary’s lap. They went to the water butt, drank from the ladle, and were gone.

Littlemary sighed, pausing to contemplate the fresh supply of bleeding berries with their minuscule hulls.

No one was idle, ever. Maher was in a shed making a broom with last summer’s broom corn, for Sinnie’s old one was worn to a point. She could see Willie out in the fields working along with the hired men. They hoed weeds from long rows of cabbages, corn, beans.

She tries to love the children, especially Littlemary, but …

Sinnie paused, wiping sweat from her forehead. Mary stood with one hand resting on the last carcass. She gazed out the door, watching the travelling clouds, her mouth bent in a slight smile.

What do she think of? Who?

The children were afraid of her, this woman who had been in prison for an outlawed belief.

Perhaps, Sinnie thought, turning back to the strawberries. Perhaps William, too, is afraid, but for different reasons.