Abiding Peace (3 page)

They all went inside, and Christine stirred the embers in the fireplace while Goody Deane hung up her bonnet.

“There, now,” Christine said. “I’ll fix the tea, and you can get a loaf of that new bread, Abby. We’ll all have a slice.”

The girl headed for the worktable near the window where two loaves of crusty brown bread awaited her. The widow had risen early, set her bread, and had it baked and cooling before she ever left for the trading post.

“Goody Deane?” Abby’s voice rose in uncertainty.

“What is it, child? I shall fetch the knife, is that it?”

“Nay.” Abby turned and looked at Christine and the widow. “Were there not three loaves when we left this morn?”

Christine and Tabitha Deane stepped toward the table.

“To be sure,” said Goody Deane. “Miss Christine must have put one away.”

Christine shook her head. “Not I.”

“Well. Isn’t that strange? I’m sure we had three. But sometimes I get addled.”

“Nay, you remember correctly.” Christine looked on the floor and at the shelves on the nearby wall. “Where do you suppose it got to?”

Constance and Ruth came over to stare at the two remaining loaves.

“Perhaps it’s with Mr. Heard’s shirt,” Abby offered.

“How is that?” Christine glanced at her keenly.

Goody Deane waved a hand through the air. “Ah, she heard it told at the trader’s how Mrs. Heard missed her husband’s second-best shirt off the clothesline last washday.” The widow drew in a quick breath. “Perhaps there’s some sense in that, though, Abby. After all, when Mrs. Heard told it, Goody Ackley chimed in with a tale of a missing roast of lamb.”

Abby nodded solemnly, her wide brown eyes still on the loaves.

“Well, come on,” Christine said briskly. “Let’s have a slice of this good bread before it walks off on us.”

She poured hot water over the crushed mint leaves, and Goody Deane set about cutting the bread. Christine took down the only two cups in the house, a chipped saucer, a small pannikin, and a custard dish. The girls wouldn’t mind drinking out of the odd assortment of dishes. At last each was settled about the table with a thick slice of the good rye bread before her, slathered in butter that Sarah Dudley had brought them on Sunday.

“I believe young Mrs. Dudley makes the best butter I’ve ever tasted.” Goody Deane smacked her lips.

“Aye, Sarah has a fair hand with it. She says it’s because of all the clover in the field where their cow grazes.” Christine reached over to tuck a linen towel securely in the neckband of Ruth’s dress.

“Goody Ackley was rude today.” Abby licked a smear of butter off her fingers.

“Really, Abby. Let us be kind,” Christine said gently.

“She be honest,” Goody Deane said. “That woman was rude, indeed, but it were nothing new.”

Christine inhaled slowly, wondering how she could teach the girls not to gossip if their hostess encouraged it.

“Who did she rude to?” Ruth asked.

“To whom was she rude,” Christine murmured.

“Aye.” Ruth nodded vigorously, and Christine had to smile.

“Goodman Ackley.” Abby took a big bite of her bread and butter.

“Her husband?” Christine eyed Abby then shot a glance at Goody Deane.

“As I said, nothing new in these parts.” The widow sipped her tea. “Roger Ackley was with her, and she kept needling him about this and that, things she needed that he seemed reluctant to buy. I heard him say once that something could wait until after harvest, but the wife went on about how she always has to wait, wait, wait. So he put it on credit.” Goody Deane shook her head. “And she treats the trader’s clerk shamefully. She as much as accused him of cheating her this morning, but when the coins were laid out and counted, the clerk was in the right.”

“Well.” Christine didn’t know what else to say.

“Aye. But did she apologize?” the widow asked.

“She did not,” Abby cried, her eyes glittering. “She scooped up the pennies and said, ‘Hmpf.’”

Christine held back a giggle. She reached for her cup to give herself a chance to recover her decorum. After a sip, she said, “Well, perhaps we should introduce a new topic.”

“Do you be going over to the parsonage today?” Tabitha asked.

“Aye.” Christine glanced at the window and noted how the sunlight shone through from nearly overhead. “It’s getting on for noon. I must go over and get dinner on.”

“Father will be home from church soon.” Abby jumped down off her bench and ran to fetch her doll.

“He could do his studying at home, now that they have the two new rooms,” Christine said.

“But people would talk if you spent the day there while he was home,” the widow reminded her.

It was true. She couldn’t stay at the parsonage all the time, especially when the master of the house was in it. Though she had lived there while Elizabeth was alive, that was no longer acceptable. When the pastor’s wife died, Goody Deane had offered her a bed in her cottage across the way, and she often accompanied Christine to lend an added air of propriety.

“I can go with you,” Goody Deane said.

“You are far too kind. Don’t you have things you wish to do here?”

“Nay. You keep this little place so tidy, I’ve naught to put my hands to. But the children always have washing and mending to be done at the parsonage, and one can never bake enough corn pone to keep those boys sated.”

Christine patted her hand. “Thank you. If you wish to come over later and do some mending and perhaps stir up some biscuits, I might put an hour in at the loom. I’m nearly done with that length of linen, and I’d like to warp some black woolen soon.”

“The boys be outgrowing their togs?”

“I’d like to weave enough for new trousers for both John and Ben, and their father’s winter coat is disgracefully shabby. I hope he’ll have a new coat before snow falls again in New Hampshire.”

Goody Deane brushed the crumbs off the table into her apron. “Be Sarah Dudley giving you the wool?”

“Aye, she traded me a great quantity for Ben’s work at planting time. Well, she traded with the pastor and Ben, that is.”

“She’s a good soul.” Tabitha frowned as she covered the remaining bread in a towel. “I do wonder where that loaf of bread got to. We might have to bake again before the week is out.”

“Move along, John. We haven’t all day.” Samuel hastened to fill the woodbox, while the boys carried water and fed the few chickens that scratched the backyard bare.

When he returned to the house with his last load of firewood, Christine was tying Ruth’s skirt on over her diminutive cotton shift. Constance sat on the bench by the table. Abby knelt before her, wielding the buttonhook.

“Almost ready, Father,” Abby called as he dropped his wood into the woodbox.

“Good girl.”

Christine caught his eye, and he smiled at her over Ruth’s head. They
were
good children. Well behaved and diligent. Since their mother’s passing, Christine had proved trustworthy to continue their training. She even did a bit of spelling and ciphering with Abby and Constance on mornings when John and Ben joined him at the church for their lessons. He would have to talk to her before harvest to see what she thought about the dame school Mrs. Otis planned to start. It would ease Christine’s burdens a mite to have the two girls out from underfoot a few hours each day. Still, she didn’t seem to mind having them about.

“We’re ready,” Constance cried, jumping off the bench. She stumbled forward, toward the hearth, and Samuel reached out just in time to catch her.

“Careful, now. Even though the fire’s banked, you could get hurt badly if you fly into the hearth.”

“Yes, Father.”

He locked eyes with her and nodded sternly before releasing her. Cooking and scalding accidents accounted for many deaths among the women and children of the colony, and he demanded caution in the kitchen. In his capacity as makeshift healer, he’d seen too many charred bodies. If he could help it, his children would never be among them.

“Will we get to see Catherine?” Abby asked as they left the parsonage.

“Perchance,” Samuel said. His girls had a fondness for Catherine Dudley, Sarah’s young sister-in-law, who often told them stories and brought them treats. “My purpose is to visit her parents today and see what their needs be and to make arrangement with Goodman Dudley about the work he needs from Ben.”

“And we ladies shall call on Sarah Dudley and Jane Gardner as well,” Christine said.

The searing August sun already baked through Samuel’s clothing. He rarely went about without his coat, but the weather had given him pause. Would he rather be thought a proper parson and risk taking ill from the heat, or seem informal to his parishioners and live to tell about it? He had compromised on a waistcoat over his best linen shirt. He hung his powder horn and bullet pouch over his shoulder, hoisted his musket, and swung Ruth up with his other arm. “Come, littlest. We shall make better progress if I carry you.”

As they traversed the path between the village and James Dudley’s palisaded compound, he considered the progress his family had made since Elizabeth’s death and that of their infant son at the end of March the year before. The rift was still fresh in his heart, but they had fallen into new routines and habits, made easier by Christine’s ministrations.

She was a capable housekeeper and a gentle caregiver for the children, though she exacted obedience from them.
Too bad she doesn’t wish to marry
, he mused. Christine might make a natural mother. But she had voiced her disinclination to marry and bear children several times to his wife, back when she lived at the parsonage. He was sure her captivity and her years in the nunnery had strengthened those feelings. She seemed content to work for a family not her own, to the point of exhausting herself. He recalled how ill she had been after she and Jane cared for his family during the smallpox epidemic.

Although most grateful for her selflessness, he desired to make things easier for her. He supposed the best thing he could actually do to lighten Christine’s burdens would be to remarry. Then she could go and work for someone else for real wages. Or, if she preferred to stay on, she could at least share the labor with the mistress of the house.

The thought made his head swim. Some men remarried quickly after being widowed, with Mordecai Wales a case in point. But the idea of taking another woman as his wife repelled Samuel. Elizabeth had been his joy, and she was gone little more than a year.

I’m nowhere near ready for that
.

No, it was not to be considered. He squared his shoulders, relieved to have faced the thought.

All in Your time, heavenly Father
.

As they passed Roger Ackley’s farm, he heard the good-wife’s shrill voice through the open window of the house.

“Mr. Ackley! Mi–i–i–i–ister Ackley! Where be that tub of water you promised to fetch me for washing?”

Christine looked askance at him, and Samuel shrugged.

“I hear Alice Stevens is going to start working for the Ackleys soon.” Privately, he questioned how long that would last. If Mahalia Ackley treated her maids the same way she treated her husband, it was no wonder she couldn’t keep domestic help.

They trudged on, and when they were past the house, he could see Goodman Ackley toiling toward the side door, pushing a wheelbarrow that held a squatty barrel Samuel assumed was full of wash water.

If the children had not been along, he would have stopped to have a word with the couple, but he had no desire to expose his family to the farm wife’s critical eye. He had heard the damage her tongue could do all too often. He wouldn’t want her telling others, for instance, that Abby’s skirt was scandalously short. Why hadn’t he noticed before how tall she was getting? Perhaps Christine could make over one of Elizabeth’s old skirts for his eldest daughter.

James Dudley and his sons were in the hayfield when the Jewetts and Christine approached. James and Richard sliced the tall grass with sweeping cuts, while Stephen stood guard with a musket.

Samuel had no doubt the other two had guns lying close at hand as they worked. He lowered Ruth to the ground and let her walk with Christine and the older girls toward the gate in the fence surrounding the garrison house. He walked into the field with John and Ben. The smell of the newly cut hay hung in the hot air. “A fine crop you’ll have,” he called to James as he neared his host.

“Aye, thank ye. That we shall, if the rain holds off.”

“The Lord willing, it shall come when needed,” Samuel said with a smile. “We’re later than I’d planned. Forgive me. But Ben brought our scythe along.”

James shrugged. “It takes a big family time to pack and remove. I should be shocked if you arrived at dawn with all the young’uns in tow.” He leaned for a moment on his scythe handle and wiped his brow with a kerchief. “I allow Catherine and my wife will be glad to see all your womenfolk.”

Samuel waved to Stephen, who waved back and returned to scanning the edges of the field. “Any sign of Indians?”

“Not since that fracas after meeting a fortnight past,” James Dudley replied.

Samuel nodded. “They usually come at night or early morn. You’re probably safe.”