Midwife of the Blue Ridge (16 page)

Huron by order of the French. A band of Shawnee found the boy

Midwife of the Blue Ridge
107

and adopted him into their tribe. When I met up with Simon three

years ago, he was scouting for the British. He’d been with the

Shawnee so long he could only manage a few words in English.

Even now, he blacks his hair with soot and bear grease, desperate

to look Indian, at the same time mingling with whites.” Tom

shrugged. “Simon’s a contrary. Makes folk uneasy.” He picked up

Maggie’s basket and they strolled back into the station.

Seth rushed up, breathless and scowling. “Maggie! Where’ve

ye been? Naomi has a gaggle of customers a-waitin’ on ye.” He

pointed to a gathering of women and children standing near the

cookfi re.

“Losh!” Maggie took her basket from Tom, saying, “I might

yet earn a penny or two.” She bade the men good-bye with an

excited smile and hurried away.

Tom leaned in on his rifle and watched her every step as she

moved across the fortyard. “That Maggie is a prime article—a

real up-headed gal.”

“Hmmph.” Seth slouched down to sit on a large stump. “I

spied Bess Hawkins come through the gate not too long ago.

Why don’t ye seek her out? I’m sure she’s willing t’ sell ye a pair

of socks.”

Tom turned and considered Seth with narrow eyes. “Why

don’t you just outright tell me what’s on your mind?” He settled

onto the stump, laid his rifl e across his lap, and drew a tiny cop-

per pick from a compartment built into the stock of the weapon.

“Aye then, I will.” Seth fumbled through his pouch for his

flask. “Ye ken well our Maggie’s far from home—on her own

here with no kinsmen t’ uphold fer her.”

Tom stuck the pick through the touchhole on the fl intlock,

scraping away the powder residue built up around the edges. “Go

on . . .”

“And, well . . .” Seth fiddled with the cork in his fl ask. “She’s

a good lass, aye? Like a sister t’ me, she is—like the wee sister I

lost at sea, and it’s on me to see to her best interests.”

108 Christine

Blevins

Tom nodded, pulled a square of sueded leather from his pouch,

and rubbed small circles into the walnut stock. “You’re yammer-

ing, Seth. Line it out plain.”

“I want ye t’ stay away from Maggie, Tom. There ye have it.”

Seth gulped a swig.

Tom set his gun to the side. “I’m sorry t’ hear you say that, for

I have an inkling Maggie is of another mind.”

“She doesn’t know ye th’ I way do. She sees ye starched into

yer best Quaker-go-to-meetings, payin’ her court—but I ken yer

busked out for a hunt of a different sort. Aye, a wolf may lose his

teeth, but never his nature.”

Tom laughed. “What’s that s’posed to mean?”

“Och, Tommy . . . scrape yer whiskers, comb yer hair, carry

her basket . . .” Seth sighed and threw an arm across Tom’s

shoulders. “I love ye like a brother, lad, but at the end of the day,

yer the sort who plants his corn without building a fence.” He

handed Tom the flask. “I willna stand for it. I paid twenty-three

hard-earned pounds for th’ lass to tend
my
bairns, not one o’

yourn.”

Tom took a long swallow from the flask and handed it back.

“There’s something you seem to have forgotten, Seth—you’ve

contracted Maggie’s labor, not her heart. Of all people, you

ought be one to know the difference.” He stood up and slung the

rifle over his shoulder. “It was a pleasure sharing a drink with

you—
brother.
”

H

Maggie set up shop under a tarp on the long trestle table near the

cookhearth. She spent the morning conducting a brisk trade,

dispensing remedies, offering advice, and sharing recipes with

the women who’d gathered there, all with a mind to forming a

bond of trust, hoping the women would call upon her in their

time of travail.

Eager customers, the frontier women were quick to trade for

remedies. The paper twists filled with tooth-cleaning powder

Midwife of the Blue Ridge
109

Maggie concocted of white clay, salt, and peppermint proved

most popu lar. Eileen Wallen exchanged a Luckenbooth brooch

for a jar of comfrey ointment for her infant’s rash. Susannah

Bledsoe parted with a yard of blue ribbon for a packet of tansy

tea to rid her twin boys of roundworm.

While the women worked together preparing a communal

supper, Maggie saw to her last customer, examining a carbuncle

the size of a robin’s egg on the back of Ada Buchanan’s neck.

“I’m afeart it must be drained, missus.”

Ada heaved a sigh and settled her generous backside onto the

stool Maggie offered. “Aye, then yid best have at it, lass.”

Maggie put her pestle to work crushing equal handfuls of

chamomile fl owers and poppy seed. She poured half the mixture

into a drawstring sack and dropped it into a bowl of steaming

water. She heated her darning needle to red- hot in the candle’s

flame as the poultice steeped.

“Best keep an eagle eye on your men, ladies,” Ada announced,

“for I see Bess Hawkins is in station, totin’ a basket full o’

socks.”

Maggie glanced up. Near the smithy, a woman wearing a

broad-brimmed straw hat stood with her back to the cookhearth.

With a large rush basket resting on one jutting hip, the woman

entertained a semicircle of smiling men, Tom in the forefront

among them.

“My Sam bought a pair last week.” Very pregnant Susannah

Bledsoe stirred the johnnycake batter. “Those socks are so badly

fashioned I was hard-pressed to tell toe from heel. Not a total

waste, though—I put ’em in the outhouse to use as bum fodder.”

Everyone laughed.

“There’ll be a bit of a pinch now, missus,” Maggie warned

before she slipped the tip of the needle into the center of the boil.

Ada scrunched her mobcap in her fists as Maggie squeezed yel-

low matter from the carbuncle onto a wad of cotton lint. “We’ll

poultice this once it’s drained. That’ll give ye some ease.”

110 Christine

Blevins

“If Bess’d but scour and card her wool properly,” Naomi

noted, “those socks wouldn’t reek so and she’d not have near as

many slubs in her yarn.”

“Bess is no fool. Why should she bother with hard work?”

Rachel Mulberry said as she hung a pot full of scrubbed potatoes

to boil. “The woman never fails to sell every pair of socks she

makes, slubs or no.”

Bess Hawkins must have said something awfully funny, for

the men she held in thrall burst into laughter. Tom pushed his hat

back on his head.

Maggie stood with the chamomile poultice hot in the palm of

her hand, transfixed by the scene—Tom’s handsome smile and

bright blue eyes focused on another. He delved into his pouch

and handed the woman a coin. Bess boldly reached up, teased

her finger along his jawline, and handed him a pair of socks. The

other men began to digging in pockets. Amid a flurry of giggles,

Bess Hawkins exchanged socks for silver, emptying her basket.

“Mr. Wallen deems buying Mistress Hawkins’s wares a Chris-

tian kindness.” Eileen Wallen hoisted her baby onto her shoulder

for a burping. “After all, the woman’s husband has gone missing,

poor thing.”

Smiling and waving gaily to her hapless customers, Bess turned

and sauntered toward the cookhearth, well aware of the many

eyes admiring her departure.

“She doesna look so bad off t’ me,” Maggie observed.

Bess wore a gray silk skirt cut so her ruby-red petticoat fl ashed

with every step. A bright blue bodice set off a crisp white blouse fi t

tight to slender arms with flounced lace at the elbows. The straw

hat pinned over a ruffled mobcap was trimmed with crimson rib-

bon roses. With one hand deep in the pocket tied to her slender

waist, Bess jingled the coins just earned and greeted the women at

the cookhearth with a hearty “Good day, good wives.”

“Good day, Bess.” Naomi was the fi rst to return the greeting,

spurring the others to chime in with halfhearted “good days” of

Midwife of the Blue Ridge
111

their own. Maggie collected her wits and pressed the poultice to

Ada’s neck, securing it there with a strip of linen.

Ada sighed. “Och, Maggie-lass, that is pure heaven.”

“I thought I heard tell of a midwife come to station . . .” Bess

set her basket on the table and gave Maggie a good once-over.

Naomi beamed. “That’d be our new gal—Maggie.”

Flustered under Bess’s keen-eyed scrutiny, Maggie gathered

her things into her basket. Acutely aware of her drab, threadbare

attire and capless head, she couldn’t help but compare herself to

the woman.

Where Maggie was dark, Bess Hawkins was as bright as a

new-struck coin, with fresh, fair skin she carefully kept shielded

from the sun’s ravage. Wisps of copper-red hair tickled the ruffl ed

edge of her mobcap and she watched Maggie with confi dent blue

eyes.

“Maggie, is it?” Bess Hawkins called with a tilt of her head.

“Might we have a word?”

Surprised, Maggie took her basket and joined Bess at the far

side of the hearth.

“They say you have a tooth powder . . .”

“Aye.” Maggie set her basket down. Squat on haunches, she

fished out a twist of the powder and held it up to Bess. “Mix a

paste in the palm of yer hand. Use it with a birch twig t’ give yer

teeth a good scrub—one penny.”

Bess dropped to a crouch and pressed a Spanish dollar into

Maggie’s hand.

“Ah, no, mistress.” Maggie stared at the coin in her hand. “I

dinna have the silver t’ make change . . .”

Bess folded Maggie’s fingers over the dollar. “Wild carrot—

d’you have any?”

Maggie met Bess’s eye with a curt nod and slipped the silver

into her pocket. She dug through her basket and produced a

bulging sack the size of her fi st.

With a furtive glance over her shoulder, Bess snatched the sack

112 Christine

Blevins

and stuffed it into her pocket. Maggie laid a hand on the woman’s

forearm and whispered, “Chew it well afore ye swallow, aye? A

generous spoonful—no more’n a day after ye correspond with a

man.”

“Mind your tongue,” Bess rasped. Shrugging Maggie off, she

stood upright and a smile blossomed on her heart-shaped face. She

straightened her skirts and fluffed the lace at her sleeves. “Thank

you ever so, Maggie. Such a nasty toothache . . .” She patted the

bulge in her pocket. “I’m certain this will do the trick.”

Maggie stood with folded arms, watching Bess Hawkins swing

and sway her way over to where Tom, Seth, and a few men gath-

ered at the smithy.

Ada came to stand beside Maggie. Issuing a Scottish snort, she

muttered, “Toothache, mine arse.”

H

Ada Buchanan paid in chicks. Maggie cradled the three peeping

balls of fluff in her apron until Naomi came to the rescue with a

borrowed egg basket in hand. The baby birds tumbled into the

basket in stunned silence, offering a brief interlude before strik-

ing up the peep chorus anew.

“Well, they’ll be good in the pot one day,” Naomi said.

“Aye, but it’s coin what buys cloth.” Maggie jangled the silver in

her pocket—six triangular bits lopped from Spanish dollars plus

one whole dollar from the transaction with Bess Hawkins. Though

the Martins had a legal right to her earnings, they insisted the pro-

ceeds were hers to keep. She closed her fist tight to the loose silver,

relishing the bite of clipped pieces digging into her palm—her fi rst

profit in the New World—more than she’d ever earned before.

Something thumped into the dirt at her heels. Maggie turned

to find the renegade lad, Simon Peavey, looking every inch a Red

Indian brave. Shiny-chested and smelling strong of yarrow mash

and bear grease, he’d discarded his silly wig and red coat for a

striped blanket draped over one shoulder and belted at the waist.

Silver trinkets decorating his long braids and ears fl ickered in the

Midwife of the Blue Ridge
113

sunlight. He gestured with flat hand extended to the furry bundle

at her feet. “For you, miss.”

“For me?”

“A pair of beaver pelts.” Simon pointed to his face. “For tendin’

to my wound.”

“Fine pelts like these are worth a pretty penny,” Naomi noted.

“At least three dollars apiece.”

Maggie shook her head. “It’s too much, lad . . .”

“’Tain’t too much for me.” Simon blinked green, guileless eyes

and his features softened in a hopeful expression. “Please, miss—

a gift—I’d be right shamed if you didn’t keep ’em.”

Maggie thought a moment and nodded. “Aye—a lovely gift,

and I thank ye kindly.”

Simon turned about-face so abrupt, she almost didn’t catch

the boyish smile he flashed. Maggie muscled the bundle up onto

the stump, watching him stride straight-spined through the gates.

“Truly an oddling, he is . . .”

“Poor boy was too long among them Injuns.” Naomi ran a

hand through the lush fur. “Try as he might, that one’ll never

shite a white man’s turd.”