Love's Pursuit (23 page)

She looked over into my eyes.

“It is not just you, and aye, he can be. He is.”

“Our banns have been published. Thrice. To withdraw now . . .”She looked up at me, eyes wide with desperation. “It would be an embarrassment. A humiliation.”

I knew it. And like me, she now knew enough of Simeon to be careful. Very careful indeed. I knit first one row, then two. A third and a fourth.

Susannah sat there beside me.

We were not friends. She could not have called just to . . . sit . . . and talk. “Did you come to . . . ?”

She started. Seemed to work at gathering her thoughts. “I have come to beg a bit of your mother dough.”

“For biscuits?”

“Aye.”

I put down my knitting, moved to take a crock from a shelf.

Measured some starter out onto a trencher. “Is this enough?”

She looked at it, a flush spreading over her cheeks. “You should not be so generous. I used up all of mine.”

I gave no pause but felt my eyebrows rise just the same. The perfect Susannah Phillips had used up all her dough?

“I was . . . I did not . . . It was not . . .” She stuttered for a moment, and then she dropped her head. “I used it all up. All of it.”

We are none of us what we seem. None of us what we would like to be. “I have enough for you and myself both. Will it keep until you get home?”

She drew it into the warmth of her cloak, clasping it to her chest. “It will. Thank you.”

“It is not, perhaps, so good as your own.”

With a smile something like the one she used to bestow, Susannah laughed. “ ’Tis far better. My own is gone.”

I felt my cheeks warm with the idea that Susannah Phillips was sharing a jest. With me. It was an unfamiliar sensation, but not unpleasant.

She clasped my hand in hers then. “I came for a bit of mother dough and I found a friend. You are the only—” Her words seemed stuck to her throat for a moment. She flashed a smile. Tried again. “You are the only one here who truly sees. Who understands.”

“ ’Tis because I am the only one here who knows . . . I know what it is like to live with a man like that. Not with such as his mother, but . . .”

“She is not quite right.”

“Nay. It has changed her.”

She clutched at my arm. Suddenly. Fiercely. “Will it change me as well?”

“It already has.” And it would get worse. She would become an animal, shrinking from human touch, keeping to the shadows; seeking not to be seen, not to be known.

34

I WALKED HOME IN despair, carrying a burden of affliction.Like a yoke newly acquired, it chafed. Was Small-hope right? Had I changed so much?

Ahead of me a door creaked open. I shrunk into a shadow at the corner of a house before I even realized where my feet were taking me.

From what was I hiding?

I did not have to create the answer. It was there, in my thoughts, at the ready: I was hiding from the truth. From the truth of Simeon Wright. For if I told what I knew, then I would be shamed. And if I did not want to be shamed, then no one must know. No one must even suspect. I had to pretend, I had to make certain all was as it seemed. And because I could not do that, I had to hide.

When I returned home, Mary was teaching the day-girl the catechism. I went straight to the other end of the table, but I blocked the dough crock from sight as I scraped Small-hope’s gift into it.Then I took off my cloak, hung it on its peg, and went to work making biscuits.

As much as Abigail’s rebuke had stung me, my time at Smallhope’s had more than covered over that offense.

I worked through the morning, dreading the coming dinner. ’Twas then I would have to admit to what I had done. It came all too soon and long before I had decided what to say. I set the tray of biscuits before Father. Took my place on the bench. Waited for what I had no doubt would come.

Father picked up a biscuit. Put it to his mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. “ ’Tis . . .”

My mouth went dry. I could not swallow, nor could I speak.

“ ’Tis good! Your mother would be proud.”

The next Sabbath at meeting, a fog of hoary breath rose from us, ebbing and flowing from our mouths and noses, as regular as a tide. I wriggled my toes within my shoes, trying to persuade warmth back into them. A surreptitious lifting of my thighs allowed me to slide my hands beneath to warm them.

After the service the captain came round the side of the building where he had stood watch and joined us on our walk home. “ ’Tis cold enough to freeze the teats off a cow.”

I frowned. ’Twas true, but not all truths were worth mentioning. “If God had wanted us to have warmth in February, then He would have done it.”

“He has. Have you never heard of the Indies?”

Nathaniel heard Daniel’s words and came to his side. “Is it true what they say?”

“That there is gold to be had for the taking, savages walking about unclothed, and mosquitoes big as birds?”

“Nay. Is it true that sugar grows from the ground like grass and that all one has to do is pluck it in order to eat it?”

“Aye. ’Tis true.”

“It must be . . . paradise.”

“ ’Tis very much like it.”

“You have been there?”

Daniel looked over Nathaniel’s head at me. Winked. “Nay. But I have desired to. ’Twas my plan to head to Virginia, and then from there to catch a ship bound for the Indies. Go along, lad.”

Nathaniel obliged and sped his pace to join Father and Mary.

At his leaving, Daniel glanced over at me and smiled. “ ’Twas in the Indies I had hoped to settle and bask my miserable self in the hot sun.”

“I have never thought you miserable. A heathen, perhaps, but—”

He lifted a finger and brandished it like a sword. “Ah ha! I have caught you out.”

I continued walking, endeavoring to ignore his foolishness. “
But
, I confess I cannot think of you in that way any longer. You speak of a God who saves and protects and . . . loves. You have a knowledge that even the godliest among our men do not.”

“ ’Tis because I put my faith in what is found inside God’s book instead of what is not. On the words of God himself, instead of what those sanctimonious, knobbly roundheads say about him.”

“ ’Tis as simple as that?”

He smiled. “ ’Tis no harder.”

“But—”

“There are no buts in faith. There is only grace.”

“And work.”

“
God’s
work. God’s saving grace.” He spoke the words with quiet confidence.

“And our own to go along with it.”

“Nay. That is something I do not believe. ’Tis all on God’s side, the work. We have nothing to add to it that He has not accomplished.”

He seemed to be fully informed about matters on God’s side of things but remarkably lacking in knowledge of our own. “But we must labor to show ourselves approved by Him.”

“You mean you must labor to save yourself?”

“Aye.” That was exactly what I meant.

“You leave no saving work for Him to do at all!” His protest was evident in his volume.

“Then . . . what must I do to be saved?”

“Throw yourself at God’s feet.”

“And . . . ?”

“And trust that He will go about the keeping of His promises.”

’Twas curious strange in the way of gospels. It sounded much too . . . simple.

Thomas had gone to the smithery for his morning’s work. He returned for dinner, carrying a sack between his hands. Before I could lay the board with a board cloth and the trencher, he touched my hand for a moment.

“I . . . have something . . . brought something . . . for you. I bought it. Last time I was to market.”

Last time he was to market? That had to have been at least two months ago. Before the snows had come. And stayed. “For me?” Had I ever asked him for something? I did not have need of anything.

He drew a red bundle out of the sack and then he laid it on the board and pushed it toward me.

I took it. Unrolled it. Held it up. It was a cape. A cape of some of the softest, finest wool I had ever seen. But it was scarlet. A bright, blinding red that could never hope to be hidden. He had brought me a new cape. But why could it not have been green like Susannah Phillips’s, or blue like Abigail Clarke’s? All I wanted was to live my life unnoticed. But how could I do that in a red cape?

I could have wept. From Thomas’s simple kindness and for my inability to welcome it. Must I be forever marked? Would I forever be soiled?

“I thought . . . yours has holes.”

Holes aplenty. I took the stuff between my two hands, though what I wanted most to do was to rub it against my cheek. It had the feel of a chick’s downy feathers, it was that soft.

“Do you . . . like it?”

Though I could not look at him, I nodded. “Aye.”

Did not one say ’twas the thought that counted? In the whole of my life, no one had ever thought of me before.

Not like Thomas had.

He moved toward the pegs where my old cloak was hung. “Shall I put this somewhere else?”

Aye. “Nay.”

He paused in his movements, hand still reaching out for it. “I shall put it elsewhere so that you can put up the new one in its place.”

“Nay. Do not move it. I thank you for the gift, but ’tis far too . . . fine. I shall soil it. I will put it away, keep it—” I did not finish my thought because by then he had left, pulling the door shut behind him.

I stood there for some time, holding the scarlet cloak to my face, letting it absorb my tears. I wept silently. I wept in wonder.Who would have thought that I would ever be given something so fine? And because I would never have thought it, never expected it, I settled the cloak about my shoulders and went to find my husband.

I heard Thomas at work before I saw him. But it was only after I stepped into the smithery that I fully understood the violence of his mood. He had stripped to the waist, flinging his shirt over the handle of his bellows. As I watched, he bent again and again, striking his hammer against a piece of iron with such ferocity that it birthed sparks.

“What do you do?” Whatever it was that he worked at, the iron had long since cooled, rendering his work utterly useless.

He threw one more savage blow at the iron before setting his hammer atop the anvil. Pausing, he stood, cheeks reddened, panting, steam rising from his body into the chill air. “I am beating your father.”

I did not know what to say.

“If I could kill him I would, and I am more than half convinced that God would forgive me. But, alas, he is not here. So . . .” He picked up the hammer and continued his pounding. “I am beating that despicable, vile, loathsome coward for beating you. For tormenting you. For torturing you. For condemning his only daughter, his only child, the woman that I love to a life of fear.”
Clang.
“And terror.”
Clang.
“And shame.”
Clang.
“That is what I am doing.”

35

SMALL-HOPE. THOSE WERE THE first words my father spoke to me. “Small hope of ever amounting to anything now.” He said them as my mother lay dying, as her life blood poured out of her, wrenched from her womb by my birth.

Least that is what I was told.

I was not a boy child. I had killed my mother. I was despised by my father.

At first his anger was manifested only in neglect. He left me to the care of a day-girl until he threw her into the board one day at dinner. She struck her head and died. ’Tis my first real memory.Not the confrontation that proceeded it, nor the vile curses that came after—though I have no doubt they occurred—but the red, red color of her blood and the way that it glistened upon her temple as it flowed down her face.

Now I wonder at the fact that no one approached my father about taking another wife. He was not a destitute man. There were widows aplenty and young girls ripe for marriage. But unlike other widowers, he never courted any of them.

He had no need because I provided all that he required.

Perhaps they suspected, those goodwives of Newham, for they convinced my father to offer me to them in service. They told him it was so I could be groomed under the influence of a watchful feminine eye. It was in their homes I learned to read and recite the catechism. To bake biscuits and take up a needle. It was there, I am sure, that those townswomen thought I was safe. But they erred. They always sent me home at night.

And so I became two persons. The Small-hope who worked and laughed and prayed in the midst of those good townspeople and the Small-hope who went home at night. I existed in the middle of a town, in the middle of a people, sitting with them of a service every Sabbath, and they did not know me. Or if they did, they chose not to see me. They did not wish to see me. And there was nothing I could do.

I wonder now about that. I wonder now why I took no action. Why I did not run away. But when one is made to feel so very small, when one has been shamed by the unthinkable, when words cannot be shared, be spoken . . . then there can be no help. When one doubts the merit of one’s own existence, when one is nothing to begin with, then why should anyone care? Why should anything be changed?

But then Thomas came.

Of course, he had come before. He was a blacksmith and he came to the market to deal in his wares. But when he came that day three winters ago, he saw my father strike me in the middle of the green. And instead of diverting his eyes, instead of pretending he had seen nothing at all, he spoke.

And he moved.

He moved toward me and then went right on past. He had a gaunt, wormy look to his height, but he gripped my father by the collar of his doublet and hauled his feet from the ground. “ ’Tis a puny coward of a man who strikes a woman.”

“She’s my daughter. ’Tis my own business.”

“If she is your daughter, and a daughter grown, well, then ’tis certainly my business. I have seen you exercise unnatural severity toward her, and I will stand as witness to it. She shall have free liberty to complain for redress. The Code of Liberties guarantees it.”

“ ’Twas but a simple disagreement.”

“Aye. And preceded by several weeks—several months—of disagreements, if I do not read the marks on her hands and round her eye incorrectly.”

I drew my hands out of sight beneath my apron. The bruising about my eye I could not hide and so I lowered my head. They were not the only marks upon my body, but the less he saw of them, the better.

“I have seen your daughter in town on previous visits. And a girl of her years should not be hobbling about like an old woman.” He cast my father to the ground, far from him, like a dirty old rag.

The crowd gathered round us stepped back.

The blacksmith turned to me. “Come. We will make a complaint to the authorities for redress.”

At my hesitation, he extended his hand.

I looked at my father, who had picked himself up from the dirt, and I read the look in his eye. It was well and good to have a champion, but what would become of me after the stranger had gone? I was already certain that it would go twice as bad for me now that someone had come to my defense. And if I went with the man and lodged a complaint . . . I had good reason to fear for my life. The sight of that poor day-girl sprawled across the floor, bleeding, dying, had never left my memory.

And so, eyes downcast, I shook my head at his invitation.

He stepped closer. Spoke to me in a tone only I could hear. “You have fear of him.”

I did not dare to answer, but I lifted my eyes to his.

“And you have reason for this fear.” He did not expect an answer.

He had already obtained it. From my hands, from my walk, from the dread in me that even I could smell.

He spoke a bit louder now, to be heard above the murmurs of the gathering crowd. “Will you trust me?”

How could I answer that? And for what cause?

“Marry me.”

I remember stealing a glance at my father. And then stealing a glance at the stranger.

He took one step closer. We were toe to toe. My father was approaching, and so he spoke rapidly. “If you marry me, I will take you from here. You would have no need for fear.”

Behind him, my father clenched a fist and came at the stranger in order to accost him.

Interpreting my sudden stiffening and intake of breath, the stranger turned, dodged my father’s blow, and then dropped him to the ground with a solid fist to his gut.

My father kneeled there before him, gasping for breath.

Surely this man could be no worse than the one I had lived with for all of my life. And if he was, then I would run away. Or kill him.

“Will you marry me?” He asked it loud enough to be heard above my father’s groanings. Loud enough to be heard by the crowd.

I nodded.

He stretched out a hand to me. “Then come.”

I put my hand in his quickly.

My father called out as he stumbled to his feet. “I have not given my permission.”

The stranger placed himself between us. “You lost your right to give permission the moment you started to accost her.”

“She’s my girl.”

“And I wish to marry her.”

“You cannot have her.” My father put up his fists and lowered his head as if to assure there would be no mistaking his words.

“I will give you five pounds.”

A gleam shot from father’s eyes at the stranger’s words. He dropped his hands. “Agreed.”

The stranger placed me in the care of the deputy’s wife, who cleaned me up and tended to my wounds. He saw to it that our banns were read each Sabbath at the meetinghouse three Sundays in succession. And after that third reading, the next week when he came to town for market, we were wed.

I rode pillion behind him when he brought me to his house in Stoneybrooke Towne. It was new. And clean. It smelt of freshly planed wood. I breathed deeply and held the scent of it within my nostrils. There was no smell of stale sweat, no scent of rodents hiding in the corners, no fumes of liquor here.

I made him a supper of bread we had brought from the market and a cheese I found in his lean-to. I explored the place while I was at it. There was sugar and salt in abundance. Both of them things that I had seldom had.

I placed the food and drink upon the table and then stood back to let him eat.

“Do you not join me?”

“Do you wish me to?”

“Was it not the custom in your father’s house?”

I shook my head. He would not want to know what was done to me in order that I might eat. But I sat down on the bench beside him. There was only one bench in that place.

I ate my food quickly, as was my habit. And then there was nothing left for me to do but sit, since he ate slowly. Once finished, he laid aside his napkin and took up a Bible. After he finished reading, I stored away the bread. Put back the rest of the cheese. Wiped clean the trencher. Stirred the fires.

And then, there was nothing else left to do.

“I will just . . . step outside and . . . while . . .” He shrugged and disappeared out the door while I stood staring after him.

Quick as I could, I stripped to my shift, grabbed a knife, and slipped into the bed. I would not give up my newfound freedom so easily. The sheets were clean and soft. They smelt of him. And if he tried to attack me, then they would be soaked with his blood.

He returned some time later. I had almost fallen asleep.

He came toward the bed and then took off his own clothes, hanging them upon a peg.

I clutched the knife in my hand.

He drew back the covers, saw my knife. “I married you to protect you; to free you. I would never take you unwilling and I will never force myself upon you.” He held out a hand for the knife.

Could I trust him?

He waited for a long moment, and then he sighed. He slid between the sheets, turned his back to me, and fell asleep as if he did not care what I might do to him. As if he trusted me.

I stayed pressed to the wall, trembling, knife in my hand, until I knew him well and truly asleep. Then, knife clasped at my chest, I gave myself to sleep as well.

I slept that way, with the knife between my breasts, for three months. And then, when I realized I would not need it, I placed it beneath my pillow.

He wanted me, Thomas did. I could see it in his eyes whenever he looked at me. But . . . I could not do it. How could a good man like him want one such as me? I would soil him, shame him, besmirch him.

Nay.

I would protect him from me at all costs.