Crow Hollow (24 page)

But what if she meant nothing to him? If he thought of her as a trifle, no more than Lucy Branch and her animal passions? For that matter, how could she be sure he hadn’t slept with Lucy and lied about it?

Prudence shouldn’t have done it. She had been a maiden on the eve of her marriage to Benjamin, and if she hadn’t been married before, she had little doubt that she would have been able to resist offering herself to James. But those passions, once awakened in marriage, were not so easily stilled by widowhood. Even so, she’d managed to convince herself that he loved her, that he would take her to wife. Otherwise, she’d have never done it.

What a fool you are, Widow Cotton.

James had taken what he wanted. Now he would sail back to London, colonial charters in hand, the stolen virtue of his New England conquests a delightful memory.

Stop,
she told herself.
You will devour yourself from the inside.

And then Mary whimpered in her sleep, and Prudence pulled her daughter closer, forgetting any other worries.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

By the time they stopped, late on the second day, James was exhausted, and not solely from hiking through hills and dales for mile after mile. He’d barely slept during the night, afraid to relax his vigil against Tictok, who had led them through the wilderness without once shedding his hostile demeanor.

The Indian was an enemy, and make no mistake. His father may have compelled him to guide James, Prudence, and her child, but the farther from his own village he was, the less likely that anyone would notice if a mishap befell the two English and he came back with the child. After all, Mary was the adopted daughter of his wife, and therefore his own property.

This time when they stopped for the evening, Tictok returned victorious from his hunting expedition. He had shot a deer and already had it cleaned and dressed, which surprised James.

“We don’t want to attract wolves,” Prudence explained. “He left the entrails and pelt in the woods, where ’twould distract them.”

They cooked huge chunks of sizzling venison on skewers made of birch saplings. It was well after dark before the food was finally done. They ate like ravenous wolves themselves.

When James lay down, he tried to stay awake until he was sure Tictok was asleep first. Prudence and Mary were already breathing heavily, both snoring softly, but the Indian was still shifting about. To distract himself, James counted the days since he’d arrived in Boston. It had been nine days now. He was startled to realize that today was Christmas. It hadn’t occurred to him earlier, and now it was too late to even offer good cheer to Prudence.

Back home in England, his family would be fast asleep, their bellies full of fruitcake and fat Christmas goose. In a few short hours they would wake on Boxing Day and load the carriage or the sleigh and go visit uncles and aunts, friends and cousins. More feasting and merrymaking.

From the time they were young men, James and his brother Thomas had set out on Boxing Day with sprigs of mistletoe. They used it not to seduce girls, but to tease and delight old women. Once, when they were handsome young men of nineteen and seventeen, the brothers leaped from their sleigh to run up behind a crofter’s widow from the village. She’d been trudging wearily under a bundle of sticks with her back turned, and she let out a terrified shriek at the unexpected assault. But she giggled like a girl when they held up the mistletoe and kissed her cheeks. As James and Thomas leaped back into the sleigh, she called playfully after them that she was widowed and free to remarry either or the both of them. Thomas turned and blew her kisses, while James threw imaginary flowers in their wake. Every time they saw her after that, the brothers would give her winks while she blushed furiously.

James smiled at the memory. He wondered if the old woman was still alive. If so, he hoped Thomas would pay her a visit tomorrow.

The night was warmer and his belly full. Soon, he could no longer fight sleep. When he woke in the morning, he was momentarily alarmed, but grateful that no harm had come to them at the hands of their reluctant guide.

By the morning of the third full day after leaving the Abenaki village, Mary’s first tentative English words had become two words, then three together. She still spoke more Nipmuk and Abenaki than her native tongue, but it was clear that her English was thawing from some deep memory. And she was thawing, too, toward her mother. When they stopped, she wanted to stay in Prudence’s arms, and finally called her mother “Mama.”

Tears of joy streamed down Prudence’s cheeks. It warmed James’s heart.

Tictok soon had them traveling in silence, and about an hour after setting out there was a tense standoff with two young Indians, armed with muskets, who met them on the trail and argued for several minutes with Tictok before letting them past. Later, they heard a musket fire in the distance, and Tictok kept them hidden in the woods for almost an hour before they continued on.

A few hours after that, now late afternoon, they came out of the woods and onto a wider trail. It was not much bigger than the one they’d been traveling on for the past three days, but wide enough that James at first supposed that it was a road between two Indian villages. They were still deep in what felt like wilderness.

Here Tictok would go no further. He pointed at the road. “
Postoni.
”

“What does that mean?” James asked.

“Boston people,” Prudence said. “It’s one of their words for the English. This must be an English road.”

James turned to Tictok, but the man was already disappearing into the woods, his snowshoes crunching on the snow. An instant later and he was gone.

It was then that James looked back to the larger trail and saw that it was marked with hoofprints, pressed into the snow and mud and then frozen.

The road was nothing but a sleepy country lane, too narrow even for a full-sized wagon, and they had no idea what lay on the other end. A farmstead? A town?

James and Prudence passed through another wooded stretch that led them up over a gentle hillock. When they came down the other side, the landscape opened into meadows and cleared fields overlaid with a blanket of glistening white. Below the fields sat a tidy English village. Not a large town like Springfield, but larger than Winton. Perhaps the size of Natick, which surely meant there would be an inn.

They stopped to toss aside their snowshoes and Mary’s sling but couldn’t decide what to do about the child’s leather breeches and tunic. They were clearly of Indian manufacture and would raise suspicions. Being strangers on the road, they needed to avoid unwanted attention. Prudence suggested wrapping Mary in her cloak as if she were simply cold. This would serve until they gained lodging, but what then?

“I can sew,” Prudence said. “If you venture out to buy fabric, needle, and thread, I can make her some clothes in our room.”

James chewed at his lip. “That will take time.”

“I’ll work every waking minute.”

“I’m sure you will. That’s not my worry. Let me give it some more thought.”

Their paces quickened in anticipation, until soon Mary was flagging. James picked her up and she wrapped her little arms around his neck.

Prudence studied him with a curious expression.

“Thank you, James.”

“You’re tired. I can carry her the rest of the way.”

“For keeping your word. I shouldn’t have doubted you. You are a good man, and true.”

He shrugged, unused to such compliments and embarrassed as a result. “There’s a reason you doubted me.”

“If anyone should doubt, it would be you. You promised to help me find my daughter, and I betrayed you when I left the letter for Cooper’s confederate. It might have sabotaged our entire journey.”

This much was true. It might still sabotage them, depending on where that letter had landed.

They continued into town, drawing a few curious stares at their bedraggled appearance, but no comments. When they reached the inn, a small place named The Goose and Turkey, James went in first to secure lodging, being wary of who might be waiting inside. They were so far east from Winton and Springfield that they were unlikely to meet enemies, but he’d committed several errors in judgment already and wasn’t keen to commit another.

The proprietor was a red-faced fellow, as stout as a Dutch burgher, with shiny brass buttons on his jerkin. His hair had receded to a fringe around his uncovered head, but he didn’t look older than forty, and the sound of children, ever present in New England, came from a back room.

James paid for lodging and supper for two people and a child, making up a story as to why they didn’t need stabling for animals (he had lost his team and wagon and intended to hire transport in the morning), and then hesitated when the innkeeper asked if he needed any special considerations.

James had emptied the contents of his purse in Kepnomotok’s hand, but he now retrieved several silver pennies and a half crown tucked into hidden pockets in his cloak, worth thirty shillings in total. He still had more than enough to get them back to Boston, if he were frugal. But there was one indulgence that he was craving.

“Can your mistress draw up a hot bath?”

“Of course. Piping hot water.” The innkeeper made a note in his ledger. “That’ll be an extra nine pence.”

“Wait, make that two baths. One for me, and one for the missus. We’ve been too long on the road. And some hard soap—do you have it?”

The innkeeper looked up from his abacus where he’d been tallying the expenses. He raised his eyebrows. One bath was a luxury, two an extravagance. The act of emptying the tub and refilling it with clean hot water would cost. And hard soap, too, not the soft tallow soap that could be made in any home.

“Yes, of course.” His expression sharpened. “What did you say your name was, good sir?”

“Pray pardon me, I didn’t give it. My name is John Clyde.” Clyde was the name of his maternal grandfather.

“And how is it that you travel in such bedraggled circumstances?” He glanced over James’s shoulder at the door. “And where are the missus and the child?”

“We are emigrating from Hartford to Gloucester, but we lost the wagon crossing the river when it broke through thin ice. And two good mules, besides. One drowned and the other broke his leg on the ice. Very nearly lost our own lives. Had a rough scramble of it these last two days. The good wife is ashamed of her appearance. We haven’t much in the way of possessions, or even clothing for the little one.”

“Yes, well. For a man who has lost so much, you have resources and to spare.
Two
baths.” The innkeeper rang the bell for one of the servants. “You must love your wife dearly.”

“Aye, that I do.”

James unfolded a map of the Bay Colony and spread it on the bed while Prudence settled Mary in the little cot and covered her with wool blankets. To Prudence’s relief, her daughter fell asleep almost at once. The room was warm from a crackling fire, and their bellies gloriously full from the meal. And they were clean. The bath had been almost scalding, with fine Castilian soap made of olive oil. The water had been dirty when she finished, but by the time Mary was through, it looked like someone had poured in a bucket of mud. James had bathed in a separate tub of water.

Upon hearing of their supposed catastrophe on the frozen river, the innkeeper’s wife sprang into action. By the time the servant girl had drawn up the first bath, the goodwife had collected spare outfits from the village for the lot of them, and she gave Prudence a bundle of clothing in Mary’s size, tied in twine.

The charity made Prudence sting with guilt. Soon enough, the scandal would reach every corner of New England, and the woman would realize that she had been hoodwinked. Her guilt increased when the goodwife personally served a delicious supper of beef stew, dark bread, and the ever-present corn pudding.

Now upstairs, Prudence stroked Mary’s face for several minutes after the child was asleep. She was so sweet and innocent and clean, her cheeks rosy and fair. Again, Prudence was struck by how much she looked like her father. So much the child had lost. No life was ever spared tragedy, Prudence reminded herself, and at least the two of them were reunited. That was a blessing.

“I didn’t realize how far east Gloucester is,” James said, still studying the map. “Well out on Cape Ann. We’d be better off traveling to Salem instead.”

She came over to look at the map James had borrowed from the innkeeper. Crosses marked the English settlements, widely spaced here on the frontier, more numerous near the coast. Even there, many of those settlements had been destroyed during the war.

“Why not go straight to Boston?” Prudence traced her finger down the east highway cutting through Concord and Woburn. “Here, where they’re not expecting us.”

“You must think like our enemies. Knapp will hope that we’ve perished in the wilderness. Perhaps he’s still searching for us on the Winton and Springfield road. But maybe he captured Cooper. Under torture, Cooper would give up everything.”

That was a horrifying thought. “You think it likely?”

“Nay, I think Cooper escaped toward Hartford. With a bit of good fortune, he has reached New York by now and has made contact with the king’s agents.” James wiped the side of the candle to smooth out the hot wax that was threatening to drip onto the map. “By now Knapp and his devils know that I’m relentless. They must know I’ll return to Boston and press matters with the General Court, or perhaps regain the
Vigilant
and flee for England. From there to return in greater force.”