The widow's war (12 page)

Or nearly emptied. And Lyddie understood at once who had emptied it when she took note of what remained—cooking pot, kettle, iron spider, trivet, knives, spoons, dough tray, salt box, shovel and tongs, pewter plates, earthenware, candlesticks, wooden pails, great wheel, flax wheel, carders, hetchel, workbox, scissors, milk pans, cheese molds, churn, two beds, one bed key, all bedding, one dressing table, one chest—all the things that had come to Edward with her. Now missing were the keeping room table and chairs, hutch, Edward’s desk and chair along with pen and inkwell, tea table, candle stand, best room chairs, best room table and chest. Nathan must have had the inventory in hand and gone straight down the list, leaving her her dower and removing every other last item.

Lyddie stood in the keeping room and surveyed the empty floor, marveling at a mind that would take things it had no room for and had not wanted, simply out of spite, but after a minute’s quiet
thought another possible motivation struck her. Nathan Clarke wanted her out of the house so he could sell it. The quickest way to get her out was to starve her out, and the quickest way to starve her out was to leave her with little or nothing to sell or trade. She looked around. She wasn’t there yet, but she was closer.

Lyddie spent the day putting her house to rights as best she could. She salvaged a pair of old barrels from the barn, removed several planks from the loft, and balanced them across for a table. She piled up some old crates for her dishes and upended her washtub for a chair. She stopped at the first mellowing of the light to eat the remains of a pudding, and as she put away the empty bowl a thrill of fear overcame her. If the Indian meant it, if her work for him was over, how long would her few coins hold her? She thought then of Eben Freeman, and his last visit, and if he’d heard about her collecting the cow, and what he might think of it. Very little, she imagined. But what Freeman thought didn’t trouble her long. She was both emotionally and physically worn out. She staggered to her room, removed her boots and stockings, dropped her skirt and fell into bed, asleep before she’d conjured up a single worry, white or Indian.

Lyddie slept straight through the birds, past dawn and into the heat, waking in great surprise at the brightness of the light, at the way it rejuvenated her by its presence. Her next thought was of Sam Cowett. She would have to go there, of course, to see how he fared, pay or no, whether he wanted her or no; he might well have relapsed into a state far worse than the one in which she’d left him, leaving his wife untended. As she ate and dressed she tried to think of the soft
est way to present herself, but as her meal waned her anger waxed. She would go there and make such offer as would be made by any Christian woman, and if Cowett rejected it again she would leave as she had come and the devil take the pair of them.

She knocked on the door with excessive force; he opened it with a face locked shut, and in her determination not to let him intimidate her she came close to shouting at him.

“I’ve come to see how you are. How she is. Not as nurse but neighbor. Are you going to let me in, or are you done with neighbors, too?”

He stood still, assessing her, which Lyddie determined to stand to the count of three and no longer, but at two he stepped back and waved an arm in his wife’s direction. Lyddie moved through the keeping room into the little sickroom and looked down at the bed.

After four children and one husband Lyddie knew what she looked at. She opened her mouth, but Cowett held up a hand. “You may save your words and your prayers. They mean naught to me.”

“I was going to ask if you would like me to lay her out.”

He nodded. After a minute he said, “Dunne. The churchyard.”

“I’ll speak to him.” She washed and dressed the body alone and left Cowett standing over the corpse, looking down at it as if it were some great puzzle he might put back together simply by examining each of the pieces.

Lyddie found the Reverend Dunne at the back of his barn, digging out a stump. His vest lay on the ground; his shirt had turned translucent with sweat; he saw Lyddie and smiled, no doubt over the chance to lay down his shovel.

“Widow Berry! I’m delighted to see you. I’ve had in mind to come by for a small chat. A few concerns…Now, now, nothing to look such alarm at. Come inside and have some tea.”

“I’ve little time, Mr. Dunne. I’m on an errand for Mr. Cowett. His wife has just died.”

The reverend’s face fell, but Lyddie felt the change was less over the loss of Rebecca Cowett than the loss of the tea. In no time, though, he’d corralled his features and formed them into the appropriate respect. “Well, then, we must pray for her.”

“Her husband desires something else. He wished to honor her beliefs and lay her in the church ground.”

“Does he, now? He surprises me. I expect you’ve had a good influence, Widow Berry.”

“I’d naught to do with it. It comes from his great affection for his wife, for his desire to honor her wishes.”

The reverend’s mouth kilted sideways. “Indeed. Well, then, I would see less affection and more conviction in him.”

“He holds great conviction, Mr. Dunne. Not, perhaps, in concert with your own. We may bury Mrs. Cowett tomorrow morning?”

The reverend nodded.

Lyddie began to walk away.

“Widow Berry!”

She turned back.

“I hear things about town. God hears. The Lord is with you while you are with him.”

“Perhaps,” Lyddie said, “there lies the problem.”

Lyddie and Sam Cowett sat through the early part of the night, one on each side of Rebecca Cowett’s cleansed body. Lyddie said no prayers, and that, of all her recent lapses, seemed the most horrific.
She tried more than once, even came to move her lips in a preamble of sorts, but then made the mistake of opening her eyes at the sound of a snort from the chair opposite.

“Are you so afraid not to pray?” Cowett asked.

“I’m not afraid.”

“You are. I see it in you as if you were lit up with lanterns. Do you think one spineless prayer will save her? Or do you simper at your god on behalf of your own self? Or is it still your husband’s soul you fret over?”

Lyddie got up and left the house.

A bright, gibbous moon hung above the woodlot and sped her feet over the road, but as they sped her feet they sped others even faster. In no great stretch of time she heard him behind her.

“Widow Berry.”

She wouldn’t turn.

“Widow.” He came up and caught her arm, his fingers hot against her skin, but she didn’t know if she was cold or he was fevered. “I would not anger you,” he said. “You least of anyone.”

“Let me be, Mr. Cowett.”

“If you leave thus you shame me.”

“As you shame me.”

“I mean no shame to you or anyone. I mean only to free you from your torment.”

“You mean to free yourself from yours.”

“’Tis one and the same. And there’s what angers you. ’Tis one and the same, and you’d have us different.”

“Go back and watch over your wife, Mr. Cowett. ’Tis the last service you may do for her.”

“My wife is dead, Widow Berry. I’ve done my last service for her. And so is your husband dead. They neither of them concern themselves with us now; ’tis time we return them the favor.”

He had dropped his voice to the one she had often heard him use
with his ailing wife, but the new gentleness ripped through her in a way the harsher words hadn’t. Lyddie felt as if she were made of a thin paste that would dissolve with water, the water that had once filled Edward’s lungs and now, at last, leaked from her eyes. She rubbed at her face and Cowett turned away to leave her tears private, or so she first supposed, but as he turned, the moonlight caught the liquid gleam in his own eyes.

One and the same?

They stood around the grave with bowed heads: Lyddie, Eben Freeman and his sister, the two Grays, a handful of mariners not at sea, a small knot of Indians. The Reverend Dunne rolled out his prayers; the dirt was cast over Rebecca’s coffin; the reverend reminded them of their duty to God on the Sabbath day following; they dispersed in twos or threes or fours, Eben Freeman accompanying Lyddie.

“Were you surprised he didn’t come?” he asked.

“At first,” Lyddie said. “But not after thinking. He held a strong dislike for his wife’s religion.”

“Yet he put her in the churchyard.”

“It was what she wished.”

They had reached the road; Lyddie expected Freeman to turn left after his sister, but he turned right with her and kept on walking. She looked her question at him.

“I go there now,” he said. “To see him.”

“Ah. Then I may leave it to you to tell him she’s been seen safe into the ground.”

“You may, of course.”

They walked a way in silence before he said, “You and he appear to have grown friendly, then.”

“We’ve grown neighborly,” she said, but the word seemed to hang before her, empty. False. “And friendly.”

“Widow Berry, forgive me. What I’m about to say may be unwarranted, but I know something of the Indian’s ways, and as you have no other to advise you—”

“I’ve been well advised as to his habit of drink, thank you.”

“Drink, yes, and…other things. I would caution you as to…I don’t know just the way to say…Widow Berry. When a woman calls herself friend to such a man she exposes herself to a certain danger. You must understand my meaning.”

“I do. And I thank you for your advice, Mr. Freeman. Otherwise, as you say, I should be left with none but my own.”

Freeman stopped dead in the road. “I beg your pardon, Widow Berry, I did not mean to imply—” Again, words abandoned him. They resumed walking in yet another silence. At length he said, “I would have a word with you on another matter, if you’re willing.”

“Of course.”

“I’ve made progress, Widow Berry.”

“In what regard?”

“Yours.”

“Mine!”

“Indeed. I’ve prepared the papers and your son will be delivered a summons shortly.”

“I don’t understand you. You’ve prepared papers on my behalf?”

“Indeed.”

“But I didn’t engage you. I asked you for nothing. I expected nothing.”

“I’ll get you better than nothing, Widow Berry. I’ll bring him before the court for violating the terms of your husband’s will, and I’ll demand forfeit of his bond if I must, but I daresay when he receives the papers the threat alone shall bring him to comply with the terms of your husband’s will.”

“Mr. Freeman.” They had reached her house. Either their location or the sharpness in her voice brought the lawyer up short again, but as Lyddie had no intention of asking him in to see the depleted condition of her home, they stood face-to-face in the road. “I’ve not the means for court or any other thing. I can’t allow—”

“Rest easy, Widow, please. As I said before, it was your husband engaged me—”

“My husband is dead, Mr. Freeman. ’Tis myself here now. And whatever foolishness you may try on me of being well paid in the past for whatever you may do in the future—”

“I’ll not argue who speaks the greater foolishness, Widow Berry; you’ll get naught from Clarke without me, and I would no more take whatever little money you’ve managed to charm out of Cowett—”

Charm?
Thick, hot blood swept up into Lyddie’s face and neck. She thought of the shit and urine and pus she had cleaned to earn her pay, she thought of the anger and trepidation and desolation she had faced down day after day. She’d worked for her pay and she’d continue to work for it, and if she didn’t need Clarke she didn’t need Freeman, either. “I thank you for whatever you’ve done thus far, Mr. Freeman,” she said. “But now I ask that you desist henceforth in any effort on my behalf.”

“My dear Widow—”

“I dismiss you, Mr. Freeman. I discharge you, whatever the proper term might be. Before it’s all around the town that I ‘charmed’ your services out of you. Good day.”

Lyddie covered the remaining distance to her door riding hard on her anger, and she continued to ride it through the remainder of the day, but in the thickest part of the night the fear took hold. She dreamed she was alone at sea in Edward’s whaleboat, anchored by lines fore and aft to some unseen rock or pier or possibly another ship, but close enough that she could see a throng waving and calling to her from shore, but whatever they shouted she couldn’t hear. She picked up a knife and, one by one, cut the lines. She’d expected to drift to shore with the incoming tide, but a sharp wind came up and overrode the flow of water, carrying her seaward. The people on the shore grew smaller and their cries faded away. Lyddie thought of throwing herself over the side in the hopes of making shore; she knew of people who had taught themselves to swim but knew nothing of it firsthand; she decided to stay on board. In due time another whaleboat set off from shore, and as it drew near she saw Sam Cowett, the steersman, standing in the rear, with Shubael Hopkins, Edward, and the two Grays at the oars. They drew alongside and Edward called to her to jump aboard, but he wouldn’t let go of his oar to help her, and just as she had committed to the leap the boat yawed and she fell into the water. The boat drifted away and Sam Cowett reached toward her with an oar, but as she went to grab it he picked it up and brought it down sharp against her skull. She went down, deep down, into a forest of green weeds that wrapped around her legs and pulled at her, and in the middle of them Edward sat, smiling. “I knew you couldn’t,” he said.

“Couldn’t what?” she asked.

“Swim.” And he turned into a long, bleached, finned creature, half fish, half eel, that wriggled and beat at the water and disappeared through the gloom.

Lyddie woke with her heart galloping and her lungs pumping, every face and word and look of the dream alive in her mind. She threw back her blanket and sat on the edge of the bed, struggling to command her body’s functions, but she knew as long as she still saw
the dream in her head her body would not settle. She decided it would help if she moved. She got up, walked through the keeping room to the back door, and stepped out into the yard. The sky was a solid, dull charcoal, punched through with only a few pinprick stars. The air smarted with salt; somewhere too far off to bother her a wolf howled. She felt the cool stones under her feet, stepped off into the bedewed grass, and grew cooler. By now she could make out the dark outline of the woodlot against the less dark skyline, the barn, the cap to the well, and the necessary house. She turned and picked out the square of the house chimney against the slope of the roof, and the solid evidence of her real world comforted her. She stood until the real had replaced the surreal, went back inside, and got into bed.

In the morning the details of the dream had washed away, but the fear still chased her until she remembered the anger that had led to it, and the words that had led to that. So, yes, she was friend to Cowett. And a friend would see how he fared.

Lyddie washed, dressed, and set off, not down the road, but the short way, the friend’s way, through the woodlot.

He opened the door to her with shirt hanging loose, hair out of its queue, eyes puffy, but she could make other reasons than brandy for him looking so: he’d lost a wife, she’d come early so as to fit it in before meeting, he’d been ill, he’d not slept through a night in a good long while. And whatever else she saw in his face she saw he was glad, and surprised, to see her.

Lyddie looked around the house and saw that it was greatly out of sorts: a pile of clothes sat on the floor, broken crockery spattered the hearth, dirty plates and bowls covered the table, but she saw no bottle or tankard.

“Are you well?” she asked.

“Near enough to.” He turned around and waved her into the room, pushed away the plates and bowls, and sat down heavily, as if he’d just returned from a long trek. He rubbed his temples.

But distemper or drink? Lyddie wondered.

She picked up a plate and bowl and carried them to the bucket.

“You think to work for me yet?” he said.

“Some things are done without pay, Mr. Cowett, neighbor for neighbor.”

He watched her. “What say you, then, if I take clean dishes from the neighbor and clean house for one and six?”

Lyddie smiled. “Very well.”

He pointed at the clothes on the floor, and this time Lyddie saw they were Rebecca’s. “And you may take those, too.”

He took his pot down from the shelf, fished out the coins, put them on the table, picked up his canvas sack, and left for the water.

Lyddie first folded the clothes and put them in a pair of tow sacks: two shifts, two petticoats, three aprons, four pairs of stockings, two skirts, and two gowns in flannel, lawn, calico, cambric, a wool shawl, boots, shoes, mittens, gloves, all as English as Lyddie’s. She cleared the table and scoured the dishes, swept up the broken crockery and went outside to dump it on the midden. On the top of the pile of shells and bones lay some other detritus of Rebecca’s: a near empty tin of some sort of salve, a torn handkerchief, some unmended stockings, the empty laudanum bottle, evidence of the Indian’s efforts to clear away all signs of Rebecca; yes, Lyddie thought, he would leave the dead alone.

Lyddie returned to the house to collect her pay, and only at the feel of the coins in her hand did she remember: not only had she missed meeting, but she’d also been working on the Sabbath.

Lyddie picked up the tow sacks and went home. She put Rebecca’s clothes away at the bottom of the chest, below her own. She took the coins out of her pocket and marched to the front room, to Edward’s desk, and almost got there before she remembered the desk was gone, and with it all the money she’d stashed in its drawer.