The widow's war (14 page)

Lyddie lay awake, got up and walked the house, lay awake some more. When she finally slept she dreamed. She was fishing for herring in the creek when she heard a cry, the sound carrying over the trees and down the creek on the wind. Mehitable, in labor. Lyddie hurried to the Clarke house, clutching a writhing fish, and found her daughter’s bed walled in by the women Nathan had sent for: Cousin Betsey, Patience Clarke, Granny Hall. Lyddie tried to work her way to the bed, but the women stood shoulder to shoulder against her. Mehitable’s cries scourged Lyddie’s ears, pierced her skin, pressed on her lungs, but when they stopped the silence was more terrible. Lyddie knew that silence, knew the stiff necks of the women looking down at a stillborn child; she elbowed Cousin Betsey aside and leaned over the bed. Mehitable lay white and still; on the sheet between her legs lay a living babe, black-haired and chestnut-colored.
The women pointed at Lyddie. “’Tis your child. We all know ’tis your child. ’Tis
you
lies with the Indian.”

Lyddie scooped up the child. Mehitable rose in a shriek, clutching for the babe; Lyddie bent to hand it to her, but the thing in her hand was fish, not babe; she turned to find Sam Cowett holding the infant, the two of them one face, one color.

“Tell them,” Lyddie said. “Tell them we did not do this thing.”

“Did you not hear what your reverend told you?” he said. “A sin in the heart is as great as a sin in the flesh.”

“Give my daughter back her child,” Lyddie said.

“I can’t. Your daughter’s dead.”

Lyddie whirled around and saw that her daughter had indeed gone gray and limp.

Lyddie woke filled with black, whirling fears. She lay still and sweating until she grew angry. She would not live in fear of her own mind. Mehitable was not dead. But Mehitable had not been the only fear floating through the dream. Sam Cowett. Of him, or of herself, or of the near thing between them, it didn’t matter which was the true fear; the same thing would get rid of all of them.

Lyddie looked out the window at the pink-gray sun and tried to recollect the tide. She tossed back her sheet, got up and dropped her skirt over her shift, tying the tapes as she searched out her shoes and stockings. She raked up her hair and pinned it on her way to the necessary, not troubling with breakfast.

Cowett opened the door with his feet still bare and his shirt hanging loose over his breeches.

She said, “I can’t work for you any longer.” She turned around, stepped back through the door, and everything, all of it, was over.

Lyddie now had time to tend to her own household chores that had been let go while she had tended to Cowett’s. She collected the corn husks saved in the barn from last fall’s husking and restuffed her summer bed tick. She set a barrel of beer to brew. She pickled her cucumbers. She gave the house a top-to-bottom cleaning. She made sure her head stayed full of the next chore and that way she kept it free of Cowett, but that night, in the weakness of near sleep, he took possession, invading her through all her senses. She saw his black eyes reading her, she smelled his sassafras smell, she heard that deep, quiet voice: “Some things get done without pay,” she felt his hand on her. But after she’d slept a little she saw that all the wildness in her head only proved that she’d been right to sever ties with him.

The next morning Lyddie sat down with her pot of coins and counted out her earnings: two pounds, four shillings, eight pence. How far would it take her? Through summer with no great trouble, but no great distance into winter. The cow’s hay alone would take it all, and although she was owed the hay from Clarke she had as great hope of getting it from him as she did of it raining down from heaven. She would have to make some sort of income.

One idea struck Lyddie when she went out to the buttery to turn and rub her cheeses—she had two of Edward’s favorite sage cheeses just ready, and even Betsey admitted Lyddie’s superiority when it came to cheese making. She might get a shilling for each cheese. She wrapped one up with care and set off for Sears’s store.

The Myrick sisters stood in deep conversation outside the store, as if they lived at either end of town instead of at either end of the same house. When Lyddie came up the elder turned friendly enough eyes on her and asked how she was faring.

“Well enough,” Lyddie said. “And yourselves?”

“We’re well,” said the younger. “And how fares your Indian?”

“My Indian?”

“Oh, now, you know who I mean—that fearsome big thing—Sam, they call him. The one you work for.”

“I’m afraid I no longer work for Mr. Cowett.”

“Well, now! But I’m not surprised, if I might say so. I don’t know how you got on with him. So violent a creature.”

“I saw no violence in him.”

“Well, in drink—”

“I saw him take but one drink, in distress over his wife. I spoke to him about it, and he desisted.”

“You spoke to him!” The sisters changed looks. “Well, you did get on, didn’t you? Or should I say ‘you do get on’?”

“As he’s my neighbor, I certainly hope we continue to get on. Excuse me, I’ve business with Mr. Sears.”

Lyddie stepped past the women into the store.

But Mr. Sears stopped her before she had unwrapped the cheese. “I get my cheese from Winslow. You know how it is, Widow Berry. Can’t turn my back on Winslow.”

And she was told much the same thing at Smith’s store and Bangs’s inn.

Lyddie walked home in hard thought. There were, no doubt, some houses in town in need of nurse or housekeeper, but short of knocking on all doors, she had no way of finding them. If she attended meeting, or was still visited by Cousin Betsey, she would have known this information as she knew the day of the week, but as she had spent so long isolated with no one but Sam Cowett to talk to, she knew nothing. Lyddie shifted the weight of the cheese to her other arm. Of course, there was nothing to say that she couldn’t visit Betsey; in fact, the case could be made that she yet owed Betsey a cheese.

Lyddie set off down the King’s road and covered the three miles to Shubael’s house with fair speed. When Betsey opened her door
Aunt Goss lifted her sunken face from her chest, saw who she was, dropped it back, and resumed snoring. Shubael came from the back room, greeted her with a flustered “Cousin! Well, now! How do?” and reversed direction.

Betsey held out longer, but barely. She was so sorry, she was just on her way out, and in a great hurry, too. Lyddie would have to return another day. Although to suggest a free day just now was out of the question. Such a busy time in the village…

Lyddie found herself back in the road, but she hadn’t got a rod along it when she realized she still held the cheese in her hands. The cheese had now become a point of honor with her; she turned around and heard the raised voices from well outside the Hopkinses’ door, beginning with Shubael’s.

“I say you might have talked to her, is all I say.”

“Oh, do you? ’Tis all how-do-do and out the door with you, but I’m to talk to her!”

“You know my trouble with Cousin Lyddie. If she starts talking about her husband to me—”

“Oh, you and your trouble! Your trouble is you’re afraid of that Indian!”

“And why shouldn’t I be?”

“Because you’re not talking to him, you’re talking to Cousin Lyddie. Or you should be. And if you’d talked to her in the first place that Indian wouldn’t be in it at all, now would he? She’d have signed that paper instead of disgracing the entire family!”

“Now you don’t know for a fact—”

“Oh, you and your facts! You and my brother! A pair of fools, the both of you.”

Sturdy heels clacked away. Lyddie retreated to the road with her cheese, her mind swimming in senseless information. Shubael dreading a conversation about Edward? Shubael afraid of the Indian?
Shubael convincing her to sign the paper, to keep away from the Indian?

“Widow Berry!”

Lyddie pulled up and discovered Eben Freeman, dismounted from his horse, standing in her path. “For a minute I thought you might walk right over me.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

He held up a hand. “No, I’m sorry. For the manner in which I spoke to you at our last meeting. It preys on me nightly. I’d not be surprised if you did walk over me.”

“I won’t walk over you, Mr. Freeman. I’ll accept your apology and make one of my own. I said something that might lead you to think I don’t consider you a friend. Never think I don’t know everything you’ve done for me.”

“I, done? I’ve done nothing. You allow me nothing. When I think what I would like to do—”

Lyddie held out the cheese. “I would allow you to do this, if you’re willing. Please give this to your sister. It pays an old debt.”

He remembered. He understood. Lyddie watched it work through his features, and a few other things besides. “Did you not just come from there?”

“I did. I forgot to leave it.”

“And did you have a pleasant visit?”

“It was…hurried.”

He flushed. He tucked the cheese under his arm and turned his horse. “Allow me to walk a ways with you.”

They stepped out along the road in awkward silence until Lyddie asked, “Are you just come from Barnstable?”

He nodded. “Winslow and Clarke, back in court again. If this goes on as did the last, I shall spend the rest of my life back and forth between villages.”

He continued on about the details of the case, but Lyddie barely listened; she had noticed that whenever they passed a walker or rider coming in the other direction Freeman made a point of turning on her some little attention: a hand under the elbow, an agreeable nod, an attentive smile. Was he out to prove her respectable? When they reached the landing road Lyddie said, “You’d best turn back. No doubt your sister waits dinner on your arrival.”

“My sister’s dinner may wait till it freezes,” he said with a passion Lyddie had only heard once before in him. She looked up in surprise.

“Widow Berry,” he said. “I must confess to you. I have done a degree of research since our last meeting and I find that my sister appears no great distance behind every rumor concerning you, the only person any closer to it being your own son Nathan Clarke. I’ve spoken to her; I’ve suggested she take a different course; if you’d been able to tell me you had a pleasant visit with her just now I would perhaps have been able to sit calmly at her table, but as you cannot—” He waited.

Lyddie said nothing.

“I’ll leave you now, Widow Berry. But I’ll come by to see you another time, if you’re willing.”

“Of course.”

“Very well. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I intend to deny my sister the pleasure of my company and book myself a bed at the tavern.”

“Mr. Freeman, if this is on my account—”

“There are a great many things I would do on your account, Widow Berry, but I do this on my sister’s account. May I tell you something you perhaps don’t know of me? I am, at times, a man of temper. In such mood as I’m in at present, I fear for my treatment of her. I intend to send her a message declining her hospitality on the grounds of some business at the tavern. Shall I include the cheese, with your compliments?”

If that was his definition of “temper” there were few need fear
him, Lyddie thought. And then she thought of something else. It hadn’t occurred to her to brave the men-only world of the tavern in search of a market for her cheeses, but people ate there as they ate elsewhere.

“You may give the cheese to Mr. Thacher with my compliments. And tell him he may have another at any time, for a shilling.”

A young Indian woman from the nation began to walk down the road in the direction of Cowett’s every morning. Lyddie traveled through town, leaving her name at the shops in case anyone had need of nurse or housekeeper. She even stopped at the tavern to inquire if they were in need of more cheese; she made her trip early in the morning so as to avoid the busiest part of the day and actually found the main room empty, but even so, Elkanah Thacher rushed to meet her at the door in an effort to preserve what might be left of her reputation. When she stated her business he said, “Widow Berry, as much as I’d like to buy my cheese from you, I’ll get nothing out of Winslow if he hears I’m doing business with a Clarke.”

So there it was in all its black-and-white irony: Lyddie would be shunned by some because she was not with Clarke and shunned by others because she was. Lyddie thanked Thacher and turned to go,
but before she’d swung the full way around her eye caught a curious sight: Eben Freeman coming down the stairs trailed by a dun-colored girl with black hair and blue eyes, who took her leave of him by sliding a hand along the seam of his breeches. Lyddie continued out the door, but soon enough she heard him behind her. “Widow Berry!”

She turned. “Good morning, Mr. Freeman.”

“Good morning to you. I’m surprised to see you here.”

“No doubt. Do you find your accommodation acceptable?”

“Acceptable, yes. Not quite the stuff of home.”

“But not as lonely.”

He peered at her.

“An old acquaintance, is she?”

“We’ve met before, yes.”

“You must have made a good impression.”

“I daresay she’s not suffered at my hand.”

“I daresay she’s not bettered at it, either.”

“One might ask what ‘better’ would be. She’s no poorer, surely.”

“Ah, yes. And we all have our way to make.”

“Perhaps you’d care to choose another subject, Widow Berry.”

“I’m afraid I’ve run out of subjects.”

“Very well, then. Good-day to you, Widow Berry.”

“Good-day to you, Mr. Freeman.”

Freeman came to see her the next afternoon and stepped inside with something akin to sheepishness in his manner. It didn’t suit him. He began at once. “Widow Berry, in regard to a recent unseemly conversation I inflicted upon you at the tavern—”

“You forget ’twas I inflicted the conversation on you, Mr. Freeman. I’m afraid I’ve grown too used to my own company and have lost the knack for polite society.”

“No, no, I’ve always found your conversation most—” He hesitated. “Might I say open?”

“You might better say brazen. But for that you must blame Edward. He nurtured in me a free way of speaking between us that is ill suited to outside company.”

“In that case I take it as nothing but compliment that you would speak so with me. May we consider the subject now closed?”

“We may.”

After that visit things returned to normal between them, except that Lyddie began to dream strange dreams of blue-and black-eyed Indian children, until the first of July, when Lyddie looked up at the sky and saw the waxing moon and wondered as it rounded if it would pull Mehitable’s child from her womb. From then she dreamed of other children, some dead, some alive, some motherless, all white.

On July sixth Lyddie had already put up the cow, bolted her door, and let down her hair when she heard a gentle tapping against the door. The day had begun with a soft southwest wind that had built up into a good breeze, and she thought the shadblow had dropped another limb until she heard the small voice. “Grandmama?”

Lyddie flung back the bolt and wrenched open the door. “Bethiah!”

“’Tis Mama. She says, would you come? ’Tis her time. She asked Papa to send for Granny Hall, but he said no, he would fetch the doctor.”

“The doctor! Why the doctor? What’s happened?”

“Nothing’s happened. Papa said if a Mrs. Winslow would have the doctor so would a Mrs. Clarke.”

Lyddie found her pins, stuck up her hair, and set off with Bethiah, asking what questions she thought the girl might be able to answer.
Was Mama up or in bed? Did she lie still in the bed or did she move about? How long had she been in the bed? Was there anyone with her?

They reached the Clarke house in tandem with Nathan and Dr. Fessey. Dr. Fessey hailed Lyddie with good cheer and hurried inside, but Nathan Clarke stepped square in front of her.

“You may turn right around home, Mother. Have I not made it clear? You’re not welcome in my home any longer.”

“My daughter asked for me. She sent Bethiah. Excuse me.” Lyddie stepped sideways, but he grabbed her by the arm.

“You’ll not set foot in my house. Today or any day hereafter.” He swung back through the door, dropping the bolt down after him.

Lyddie stood in the darkening air, her mind and body stalled, until a bullfrog in the nearby creek sounded and her mind, at least, went into motion. She considered and discarded any attempt at forced entry on the grounds that such commotion would not be helpful to Mehitable, but should she stay in the yard or should she go? If Lyddie stayed where she was she would at some point find out how her daughter fared; Dr. Fessey would come out and he would tell her. If Lyddie left, she would know nothing until her one visitor, Eben Freeman, arrived, bearing some third-or fourth-or fifth-hand account of the result.

Lyddie stayed where she was. Bethiah had vanished inside with either the doctor or her father, and Lyddie had some hope that the girl might come out to look for Lyddie, but no one came out at all. The dark thickened. The air cooled. Lyddie walked up and down the drive until she stepped into a hole and went down on a knee. Hours passed. Or minutes. The bolt rattled and Dr. Fessey stepped out onto the stoop, leaving Nathan Clarke framed by firelight in the doorway.

“I thank you, sir,” Clarke said. “We’ll settle the fee when we have something to show for it, shall we?”

The door closed and the dark returned. Lyddie stepped out of the shadow.

“Dr. Fessey.”

“Good God! Who’s there? What the devil! Widow Berry. You near cost me the last breath in my body. Why do you lurk there?”

“I would know how my daughter fares.”

“Oh, yes, yes. An awkward situation, haven’t we? Well, let me tell you, we’ve naught but a false alarm. I’ve given her some laudanum and she’s deep asleep, and if I may say, she’d best make a better job of it when the real time comes. Quite the timid thing, isn’t she?”

“She’s not had a child.”

“No, and she won’t, either, if she doesn’t put some backbone into it. Say now, are you limping?”

She had walked beside the doctor as he started for the barn, but she hadn’t realized until he said it that she was, indeed, limping. He offered her a ride home, and Lyddie accepted. He walked the horse to the block, mounted, and pulled her up behind him. The doctor’s coat smelled of the usual smoke and tobacco with none of the Indian’s sassafras, Edward’s salt, or Freeman’s sweat. His hair smelled of camphor. His horse had such a rough gait, even at the walk the doctor had to maintain to keep Lyddie behind him, that by the time she dismounted her limp had worsened.

“Here, now,” Fessey said, sliding down after her. “Let me come in and look at that knee.”

Lyddie tried to discourage him, not wishing to owe a doctor’s fee over nothing but a routine lameness, but he stepped around her into the house, and once he’d spied the Indian’s brandy bottle on the homemade shelf he said, “There now, I’ll take a dram of that in payment.”

Lyddie poured the doctor a dram. She sat on one of the chair’s Sam Cowett had brought and Dr. Fessey pulled the other across from her. He lifted her skirt, lowered her stocking, poked the knee, gripped her foot, and turned it in all directions.

He dropped her skirt and patted the knee. “You’ve done no great
damage. Wrap it tight in a flannel soaked in this, and if you give me another dram there’ll be no charge for the liniment.” He pulled a small jar from his pocket.

Lyddie got up and refilled his glass.

“Now here comes some advice free of charge. Are you ready?”

“I don’t think—”

“No, you don’t think, Widow Berry. If you did, you would see that your little adventure must come to an end eventually. You can’t keep on without support of any kind forever; before long you’ll be on the charge of the town and stuffed up in the attics of the lowest bidder. I say, why prolong the inevitable? Now before you say anything else, I know all about you and that Indian, and I tell you I’ve lived and worked in this village a long time and there’s nothing that doesn’t get forgotten the minute the next thing comes along. Put it behind you. You’ve already quit him; now make your confession before the church, sign what you have to sign for Clarke, and get on with what anyone might call a very nice life for a woman in your situation.”

Lyddie stood up. “Thank you, Dr. Fessey.” She limped to the door and opened it. The doctor set down his glass but remained seated.

“All right, then, Widow Berry, if you won’t take the help that’s offered you—”

“I would take this. In your journeys through town if you hear of someone in need of nurse or housekeeper—”

The doctor leaned back in his chair and drained his glass. He got up and closed the door, but with himself still inside of it. “Let me tell you something, Widow Berry. There are those in town who take a thing like the Indian in one way, and those who take it in another. Myself, I don’t let such details bother me. I’ll go to meeting when I can, but if I can’t, if someone else’s physical need happens to outweigh my own spiritual one, I don’t let it trouble my sleep. Now, as it happens, my wife has entered a frail state and I find myself in need
of what you might call some housekeeping. You’re a fine, strong woman, and me being the sort of man not greatly troubled by a woman’s past, being the sort, in fact, who sees some advantage to a certain openness of character, if you take my meaning—”

Lyddie did.

She opened the door. “Good night, Dr. Fessey.”

The doctor’s face, one minute happily rounded with lust and hope, emptied and lengthened. “Oh, the devil.”

He stepped onto the stoop but blocked her closing of the door with his arm. “I’ll tell you another thing free of charge, Widow Berry. The person in town who’ll want nursing is your daughter. She’s not near the stuff of her mother.” He walked off.

Lyddie closed the door, the dark, pulsing fear that had dozed in her chest for her daughter now fully wakened. What had Dr. Fessey meant, not the stuff of her mother? It was true, she supposed, that the fate of her children had not been caused by any physical weakness in their mother. She’d suffered long but unremarkable travails in each birthing, entering each childbed with a fierce determination to make the next babe live and breathe. She’d never suffered from fever, she’d been able to return to her kitchen within days of each of the births, but once she’d lost the first living boy, the fear had overtaken her. When the second girl passed her dead brother’s age Lyddie took her first clear breath; when the second boy passed the dead sister’s mark she knew better. But for the last precious boy to go all the way to five, to run and play with such vigor, to put her mind so near to rest and then to die…Was God about to make Lyddie pay for her recent sins with the life of her last child?

If ever Lyddie wished for a prayer she wished it then, but still the words would not come for her.