Bound (12 page)

I
n October, while out in the orchard helping the widow pick apples, Alice felt the first quickening in her womb, and the shock of it dropped her onto her knee. The widow rushed over to her.

“Alice! What’s the matter?”

Alice struggled to right herself and collect the scattered apples, already nesting half-hidden in the grass. She pointed to a vague spot on the ground and said, “Skunk hole”; of all the lies she’d told the widow that seemed the most awful because of how easily it fell off her tongue. She moved away from the widow to the next wind-stunted tree in the row, but she had some trouble settling again to her task. With that first kick of life everything Alice had been attempting to push away to some distant point in her future came plummeting down into the present. The seed Verley had planted in her was no longer mere seed but life, a life that would grow and grow until it got born and ruined her own.

THAT NIGHT THE
widow stayed even quieter than usual throughout their supper. After Alice had been in bed some time, sorting through all the old daydreams in search of sleep and not finding it in any of them, she saw the quivering light of a candle working its way up the stairs. The widow rose up out of the dark stairwell, her loose-bound hair a mix of night-gray and candle-gold. She crossed the floor to Alice’s bed and held the candle over her as Verley had done so often; either that or the fear of what the widow had come to say set Alice trembling.

The widow said, “I’ve come to ask you this again, Alice, while Mr. Freeman is absent, in case his presence hindered you from answering as forthrightly as you might have when we last talked of it. Before you answer know this: you needn’t fear telling me the truth. Never the truth. Are you with child, Alice?”

Oh, to tell the truth! To remember how large a heart stood before her, and how it might, oh, surely it might, take pity on her again, as it had done before on the deck of the
Betsey
. But the voice that spoke to Alice now wasn’t the voice that had spoken to Alice on the
Betsey
. It had lost some of that heart. Alice understood that she had cut away at that heart herself, that the hollowness she heard now was the offspring of her attack on Freeman and the lies she’d told after it. She understood too that to tell the widow a new truth now was to confirm the old lie; what more certain way to provoke the widow’s rage at her? She didn’t know what else could happen along the road that might save her, but she knew it wasn’t this, now.

“I am not,” she answered.

THROUGHOUT OCTOBER THE
days stayed unseasonably warm, but the nights grew chilled; the widow and Alice turned away from flax and went back to wool; as the yards of worsted and broadcloth and shirting reeled off the loom, Alice carted them to the fulling mill and then to Sears’s store. Foreign cloth still appeared on Sears’s shelves, but it seemed to Alice that it sat there longer than it used to do, and so it also seemed that homespun gowns had begun to blossom throughout the village, whether made from the widow’s cloth or no. Once Alice saw Mrs. Cobb stop and speak to a young woman in silk, flapping her own homespun skirt in the air like a flag until the young woman’s face reddened. A week later Alice saw the young woman at the store purchasing the widow’s homespun.

FREEMAN CAME. HE
was all bright, crackling cheer, and the widow was in return; Alice couldn’t bear to be near them. After clearing away the supper she went upstairs, not interested in listening from her near-worn-out stair tread, for what could they say that Alice didn’t already know? Even if Alice managed to conceal her condition through winter under layers of thick clothing, by March there would come a thing impossible to conceal, and Alice and her bastard would be sent away together. So why did Alice’s feet drag along the stairs? Why did she sink down and cant her ear to catch each stilted, stumbling phrase from below?

“How do your textiles sell?” Freeman began.

“They sell faster. Alice moves slower.”

“I saw a fair display of homespun as I rode through town. More so here than at Barnstable.”

“You might have noticed both Alice and I have made new gowns, although Alice covers hers with both shawl and apron at all times now.”

“We should send you to Barnstable. How their silk parade must burn Otis’s eyes whenever he comes home!”

“’Tis mild weather yet for a constant shawl.”

“Yes, it has stayed mild.”

“Mr. Freeman, you don’t hear me.”

“I hear you, Widow Berry. I merely struggle to determine if your words are informative or accusatory.”

“Informative or accusatory! Can you not tell a cry for help when you hear it? I’m beside myself, Mr. Freeman, as to what’s to be done with the girl! You saw the truth the minute you walked in, I saw it take you. Have you nothing to offer in this dilemma?”

“What the devil would you have me offer?”

“I don’t know. Indeed I don’t. If she won’t admit to the thing—”

Silence. After a time Freeman said, “I have my own dilemma, not entirely unrelated. Nate has written her a letter. I confess to a struggle as to whether or not to give it to her.”

BUT THE NEXT
day Freeman did, indeed, hand her the letter.

Dear Alice,

I took up my pen with the idea of writing to my father and in thinking of the great divide between what I wished to say and what I would be compelled to say I set my pen back; in no long time the idea came to me that the two might better meet if I addressed my letter to you. Perhaps you are now thinking that you have come up a poor second, but as you hold the only letter I shall find time to write this entire week you must conclude that you have triumphed over all.

I see your soft, solemn eyes as you read this, and although I don’t dare imagine any great joy lighting them, I hope I may feel convinced of some curiosity to read on, as I have long detected a share of that commodity in you that equals mine. The question now before me is what shall I tell you that might satisfy it? Perhaps as you have inquired of me about the College from time to time I’d best begin there.

On my arrival here I expected to find myself surrounded by souls most kindred to my own, eager to begin their instruction not only in the way of advancing themselves on a profession, but in the way of educating themselves on the many other subjects that would better qualify them for learned discussion. I have found instead a silly gaggle of boys more determined over a bottle of rum and a game of cards, not at all deterred by the fines for this behavior, which of course are paid by their parents and so don’t disturb their gaming at all. You wouldn’t wish to converse with one of these lads more than two minutes altogether, I assure you.

As to the place itself, it is more farm than town and overrun with livestock most of the time. The marketplace is busy enough, but with few stores. They have given me a room in the new dormitory, Hollis Hall, which should please me well enough if it weren’t for the closeness, the smokiness of the air here. I know how you must feel for me, trapped in such a place while you bathe in the sweet breezes of Satucket!

My main study this term is in English and Greek literature as well as oratory in Greek, Latin, and English; I have a fine tutor in mathematics and natural philosophy, a Professor Winthrop, and get on with him well, but I miss my talks with Mr. Freeman. He has sent me a fine letter, even enclosing a word of advice from Mr. Otis, that “a lawyer ought never to be without a volume of natural or public law, or moral philosophy, on his table, or in his pocket,” which I beg you to tell him I now follow. Please also give Mr. Freeman my warm regards, and my duty to my grandmother. How I miss my happy, happy visits to her home! How much I wish I could feel your hand against my cheek again! I must stop my wishing there or ruin all.

I am,

Yours Most Respectfully,
Nathan Clarke, Jr.

Alice was greatly surprised to get such a letter. She read it and wondered at it, and read it again and wondered again. She didn’t know her eyes to be soft or solemn. She didn’t think herself greatly curious. She didn’t remember inquiring about Harvard College beyond asking when he was to go there. Nor did she feel at ease passing on his regards to Freeman or his duty to the widow; she didn’t feel it her place to be the keeper of his regards, nor did she think Freeman or the widow would feel it her place.

Alice read the letter once more and began to think that she and Nate must have talked a good deal more than she remembered.

T
he days darkened, and Alice saw the threat of winter all through the village. Wagons full of hay rumbled to and fro, hog and cattle carcasses hung bled and skinned from barn rafters, woodpiles grew, extra layers of clothing were pulled on in the chill morning and discarded at midday only to be reclaimed again by late afternoon. Along with the smells of hay and warm blood and fresh-splintered wood the air lay thick with the sweet scent off the apple presses and the tallow vats heating up to dip the winter’s supply of candles. Within doors at the widow’s, pumpkins and squash were sliced and dried or stored whole in the cellar; a meaty, thick mince stewed at all times over the fire, and the loom was now continually warped with the coarser yarns for cloaks and blankets.

Alice also saw winter in the faces around the village: a new alertness appeared, a new wariness, a certain testiness, all drawn that much tighter by the politics, which lay like a smoldering ash over all. Alice heard it at Sears’s store, where she seldom walked into silence now, someone either arguing with Sears over something missing from the shelves, or, more often, something still appearing on them, and she heard it at home, where the men still came to discuss it with Freeman. Alice had heard it so many times now it had come to sound to her like the weaving of a check, the warp and weft of each side laying down their own bright color, the places where they crossed forming a third, muddier version of the other two shades.

The Crown’s threads were two: they wished to be paid for the great expense of defending the American colonies in the late wars against the French and Spanish, and they wished the American colonies to trade only with Great Britain, so as to more easily market their own goods. Looking to one measure to serve both, the Crown had put down a new tax on any imported French and Spanish goods and stepped up its search and seizure of smuggled items.

The American colonies, in their turn, laid out their own pair of threads, but whereas the Crown laid fresh ones, the colonies preferred to keep to the old favorites: they wanted to keep their French molasses and Spanish wine without the costly duties, and they wanted their own legislatures to lay down their own taxes, as they’d previously been allowed. Looking to make their point they determined not to buy any goods made in England, which meant they had to provide the goods themselves or smuggle them in from the West Indies, despite the British men-of-war lurking off the coast. The names of French and Spanish ports rolled off the men’s tongues as familiarly as the names of their children: Madeira, Azores, Canaries, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Santo Domingo, places, it seemed, where the shipmasters had all been many times, places where they still went, and perhaps this new danger also helped to drop that dark, wintry edge down over all. Or perhaps it was the fact that the non-importation plan seemed to be taking hold.

Myrick raised the specter first. “I tell you what troubles my mind. What if the agreement holds, but nothing changes? What if Parliament just orders their merchants and manufacturers and tradesmen to tighten their belts and goes on taxing us as it pleases? What then?”

The men all looked to Freeman.

“Then we tighten our belts, gentlemen. Don’t forget, they need us more than we need them. They’ll not hold against a strong non-importation agreement. They can’t hold.”

The men quieted, but when Freeman raised his mug in his traditional toast to the king, the echoes rang thinly.

And the edge within the widow’s home lived and breathed yet. Despite Freeman’s long absence the “unpleasantness” hadn’t been forgotten. He walked around the keeping room like a stiff, wood-carved doll, giving Alice wide buffers of space, addressing her with brittle courtesy if at all, and in the lack of the old attentions Alice saw what she had forfeited. Between the widow and Freeman things hadn’t come right, either; it was as if a husk had grown up around each that neither would strip off.

And then, as if overnight, without any cause that Alice could discover, the mood in the house lifted. One night Freeman beckoned Alice to the fire to show her a sketch in a book of a fine castle in Austria, the next the widow admired a pair of worsted stockings Alice had knitted in only two evenings. The widow and Freeman no longer sat up talking at night as they used to do, but they developed a strange habit of finding humor in each other’s conversation where Alice could see none. Freeman might prod the fire and the widow would say, “Watch the sparks,” at which Freeman would smile. Freeman might ask whether the night’s rain was sufficient to settle the dust, and the widow would smile. They together seemed to think an ad in the newspaper offering a new kind of horse liniment the most amusing of all.

Although Alice didn’t understand it, she greeted the improved air in the house as she’d greeted her first breath of Satucket air after two days in the sail locker. She stayed up late mending or knitting with the widow; she cleaned Freeman’s boots each night and she brushed his coat each morning. The widow thanked her for her late hours by chiding her and attempting to send her to bed, while Freeman gave her an extra coin, or a new hair ribbon, or a packet of raisins. Alice could feel her face begin to relax into its old answering smile, and she noticed that once it did, Freeman’s began to answer her as it used to do. One morning he thanked her by patting her hair, perhaps without thinking, and something live began to grow again from the bare ground of Alice’s heart. She lay in her bed at night and thought out all the things that fed it: he had said she’d won him utterly; he had said she drew half the light from the room; he had warned Nate away; he had stiffened under her hand; perhaps above all he appeared to have forgiven her a most vile transgression. Who could do that without the underpinning of a great deal of affection? Perhaps he was no Verley who would have her simply because he could, but perhaps he would have her because he cared. Perhaps he missed his old dead whore. Perhaps a sad, crag-faced, aging man now realized he might better keep a young girl such as Alice instead of an old whore, even if she came with another man’s bastard.

Alice’s new hope lived only until the hunter’s moon. She’d always slept fitfully during a full moon, and the October one troubled her more than ever, riling up the thing in her womb until it jerked her around in her sheets. The moon had dropped low enough to fill the room with a cold white light when she finally yanked away her coverings and went downstairs, thinking if she ate something it would calm the tumult in her.

The moonlight had done its work below as well and drawn a clear path on the keeping room floor; Alice walked across it without faltering to the pantry. She unwrapped the remains of the day’s loaf, broke off a piece, and dipped it in the beer barrel. She stood in the darkness to eat it, and almost at once the thing inside her quieted. She stepped out of the pantry into the light path again, but as she did so she heard the latch to the widow’s bedroom door lifting. Alice ducked back into the pantry, not wishing to be caught thieving, but then considered that the widow might be on her way to the pantry herself, and it would look worse to be caught lurking. She stepped forward again and froze there. It wasn’t the widow backing out of the room but Freeman, his shirt hanging loose to his thighs, his breeches unbuckled at the knees, his feet and legs bare, carrying his shoes and stockings. He set the latch down with care, laying his fingers against the widow’s door in a silent, unseen good night, and Alice had never felt a blinder, deafer, dumber fool in all her life.

ALICE LAY IN
her bed shivering, not troubling to close her eyes, tracking the moon shadows on the rafters. She would understand what she had seen. At first it appeared a simple enough case of another Verley, but after a time Alice found something troubling in that version: she couldn’t make the widow another Alice. If there was one thing certain in life it was that the widow held no fear of Freeman; Alice had witnessed the widow’s lack of fear the first minute of their acquaintance as she’d followed the couple through the streets at Boston.
I’m glad to see you noticed something.
No, the widow was not an Alice. Freeman wasn’t the widow’s master; he didn’t own her; she didn’t even have to keep him under her roof now the cloth sold; why should she give way to him in such manner? But as Alice thought a little longer she reconsidered. Perhaps, in a way, Freeman did own the widow. Perhaps she did have to keep him under her roof. Surely she couldn’t have survived before the textile manufacture without the money he paid her for his room and board; what would happen to her if the non-importation agreement ended? She must, indeed, depend yet on what he did for her.

What he did for her
. Why, of course! The man had saved her from a fire; no wonder she’d think she owed him her person! Yes, Alice thought, she could cut open the widow’s head and find an Alice inside it, just as she could cut open Freeman’s chest and find a Verley there. He may not have held the widow by the throat, but he had shamed her. Boarder and landlady they might well have been at one time, but somewhere in the two years Freeman had claimed to live under her roof he had left his room for hers, and all the town knew it. Why, of course all the town knew it! Clearly, clearly, the widow was the Myrick sisters’ “other one” that Freeman’s reputation had managed to survive, the “other troubles” Nate had mentioned that now estranged her from her son-in-law. And of course although Freeman’s reputation might have survived the widow, no such courtesy would be offered the widow. The men of the village might come to visit Freeman, but no one came to visit the widow except one grandson, and he did that against his father’s orders, no doubt because his father well knew what went on within the household. Freeman could enter the meetinghouse with head held high, secure in having been forgiven both the widow and the whore; the widow would never, ever, be forgiven Freeman. The widow might be past bearing Freeman’s bastard, but she wasn’t past shame or ruin, and this Freeman had put on her as callously as Verley had put his seed in Alice.

Once Alice understood she understood all, including all that had followed her attack on Freeman. The widow had been sorely angered, yes, but more at Freeman than at Alice, at his supposed unfaithfulness to her. In his turn Freeman’s greatest rage had come not over the trap Alice had set for him but over the widow’s mistrust of him. So it was that they could fight and make their peace, finding in their peace their old charity toward Alice. But could such a charity extend to March and the arrival of her bastard? Alice doubted it. It was true that the widow could no longer stand in all innocence and point the finger at Alice, but neither could she afford to house the evidence of the very kind of behavior she worked so hard to conceal.

Only after Alice had worn down her brain with such thinking could she sleep, but it wasn’t the old sleep, with Verley chasing through it. She dreamed again of the hot flames, the cool sheet, the strong arms carrying a bundle of burned flesh, but this time he carried them toward the flames, not away from them, and the face swathed in the sheet was sometimes the widow’s, sometimes Alice’s.