The widow's war (9 page)

The fish shrunk to nothing over the fire and tasted like one of Edward’s dirty stockings. If she didn’t wish to sink to the true poverty food of clams or lobsters she’d have to sell something. Lyddie walked back and forth from room to room, trying to choose the best thing to give up. Although Mehitable had been meticulous about returning her linens and clothing, she had not sent back the pewter or the looking glass, which left the tea table or the candle stand remaining. She had nearly decided on the table when the door trembled under someone’s fist.

“Widow Berry!”

She opened the door to the Indian. Every muscle in his body was clenched, his head and shoulders already half turned, ready to run. “She’s in a fit. I’m for the doctor. Will you come?”

Lyddie stood, unmoving, for the space of second. “Come!” he rapped out.

Lyddie caught up some clean linen napkins and went, the Indian already out of sight by the time she reached the road.

She rapped at the Cowett door and swung it open without waiting for an answer. A light smoke hung in the air, leaving the house in an afternoon gloom, which made the scene in the tiny sickroom, the one nearest the keeping room fire, seem half surreal. The woman lay twitching on the bed, her eyes rolled back, her teeth clenched, her muscles rigid, the sheet that covered her slimy with vomit. Lyddie folded down the sheet, rested a hand on the woman’s brow, and felt the searing fever. She left the room after cold water, and when she returned from the well she dipped her napkin and began to wipe the woman down.

Gradually the twitching eased; Rebecca Cowett’s mouth and eyes relaxed, but the body stayed rigid and the eyes closed.

“Mrs. Cowett?”

She moaned. The chest rose and fell in sharp, shallow gusts. Lyddie found a cup, raised the woman’s head, and helped her to drink, then eased her back down, listening to her moan with each movement. Lyddie returned to the keeping room and hunted the shelves for brandy, but found no spirit of any kind. Had the Indian drunk it all? Or in an effort not to drink it had he kept it away? Lyddie sniffed. Something was cooking, something rich and greasy and gamy and delicious. She went to the pot and looked in. Stew. With great chunks of dark meat and beans and potatoes and onions and carrots. Lyddie returned to the bed and sat until Sam Cowett arrived with Dr. Fessey.

The Indian moved to the far side of the bed and knelt down. “Beck,” he said.
“Beck.”

Rebecca’s eyelids flicked open and then crunched back together as if in pain. Dr. Fessey stepped into the room. He’d attended all of Lyddie’s sick children with poor result and she had long harbored ambivalent feelings toward him, but he now looked so gray and shriveled, and he nodded to her with such grave courtesy that she felt
the full weight of her previous foolishness. She rose and gave her chair to the doctor. He set his bag on the floor and sat down. He uncovered the patient and set to work listening to her chest, looking in her mouth and ears, palpating her neck and abdomen. Each time Rebecca was touched or moved she moaned, but she kept her eyes closed.

He sat back and looked at Lyddie and then at the Indian. “How long has she been unwell?”

“A few days. No more.”

“What’s she complained of?”

“Headache. A great headache. Can’t bear light or noise. Neck pain. She won’t eat. Today she vomited. Then the fits came.”

Fessey nodded. “Your wife has brain fever, Mr. Cowett. Naught to do but rest and quiet, but you’ll need someone to tend her.”

“I’ll tend my wife.”

The doctor looked skeptically at Lyddie. “Very well, then. I’ll leave some laudanum with you. The pain in her head will be severe. Twenty drops to an ounce of brandy, no more. You might try a catnip tea every third hour and an onion poultice to the feet to draw the fever. And fluids only. Do you understand?”

The Indian looked at him. The doctor looked at Lyddie. He reached into his satchel and pulled out a small vial.

“Twenty drops only. Do you understand?”

The Indian made no answer.

The doctor leaned toward Lyddie. “You’re a kind woman to come. Before you go, you might look to the poultice.” He stood up. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Good afternoon, Mr. Cowett. Good afternoon, Widow Berry.”

As soon as the doctor left Sam Cowett said, “I’ve no brandy.”

“Nor I,” Lyddie said. “Let me tend your wife while you go.”

“I’ll tend her.” He left the bed and reached into a pot on the shelf, pulled out some coins, and handed them to her. He picked up the cloth Lyddie had used and began to bathe his wife’s flesh with a prac
ticed intimacy that made Lyddie flush. She hurried out. Once in the yard Lyddie counted out the money—three shillings—more hard cash than she’d held in her hand in some time.

Sears’s store was a mile to the east; Lyddie covered the ground on foot as fast as she might have done riding pillion. She stepped into the room and Caleb Sears looked up, then down, then up. After a time he said, “Good evening to you, Widow Berry.”

“Good evening,” Lyddie said. “I’d like two pints of brandy if you’d be so kind.”

Sears didn’t move.

“Is there a difficulty?” Lyddie asked.

Sears cleared his throat. “No. I mean to say, yes. I mean to say, there is some difficulty with the account. Your son—”

Lyddie reached in her pocket and dropped the coins on the table. “If my son is unable to settle his account I should be happy to assist him.”

“No, no, Widow Berry,” Sears said. “I meant only to say…There’s absolutely no need…You said…a pint?”

“I said two.”

He hurried away and came back with two bottles. He picked one of the coins off the counter and pushed back the others.

When Lyddie returned she found the dirty sheet replaced with a clean one and Cowett sitting with his hands loose at his sides, staring down at his wife.

“It hurts her,” he said. He pointed to her head. “I touch her and she twitches.”

“Perhaps best to leave her alone.” Lyddie fetched a cup and mixed the tincture with the brandy, brought it to the bed, and signaled the Indian to raise his wife’s head.

Rebecca’s eyes opened and she stared at Lyddie a half second before they closed.

“Here, Beck, drink,” Cowett said.

She drank and Cowett eased her back down.

Lyddie went into the keeping room and rooted out a cheesecloth and bowl. She ladled stew over the cloth and strained the liquid into the bowl, trying not to inhale the enticing smell. She returned to the little room and handed the bowl to the Indian, but when he went to take it from her, his hand shook.

“Mr. Cowett,” Lyddie said. “Let me feed your wife while you go into the other room and eat some of that stew.”

To her surprise, he obeyed. It seemed to Lyddie he stayed gone a long time, but when he returned his hand was steady. Lyddie stood up and removed the change from her pocket. The Indian pointed to it. “Yours.”

“No.”

“’Tisn’t half a day’s nursing.”

“No, I cannot.”

“Shames you, does it?”

“I can’t afford shame, Mr. Cowett. But what little I’ve done this day I’ve done as a return on your wife’s kindness.”

He looked at her. “’Tis true, then? Clarke’s struck you off?”

Lyddie didn’t answer. She left the room, climbed into the Cowetts’ cellar, and retrieved the last of the winter’s store of onions. She sliced them up and laid them out in another of her own napkins, then returned to the patient and bound the napkins to her feet. Sam Cowett never looked up from his wife’s face or the bed or the floor, whatever it was that he stared at so hard.

In the morning Lyddie found Rebecca Cowett much the same and her husband much altered, his eyes hollowed, his jaw lumpy, his hair loose, his linen shirt stained with his wife’s vomit, or the broth, or the brandy, or all three together. He stood up the minute Lyddie reached the bed and studied her face, as if it would tell him how his wife might do.

“Have you seen change?” she asked.

“Another fit. Less pained.” He pointed to the laudanum.

“Does she speak?”

“She mumbles. Moans. She looks at nothing, at me as if I’m nothing.”

Lyddie rested a hand on Rebecca’s forehead and thought it felt cooler. She felt the sheets. Damp. “She’s sweated out some of her fever. If you have fresh linens I’ll change them.”

Cowett pointed to a six-board chest in the other room. Lyddie opened it and found one set only; someone would need to do a washing. Lyddie wondered if a woman from the Indian village might be got to help out, but the little she’d seen of the Cowetts she’d never seen them with anyone from the Indian nation, and she also remembered his words to the doctor, and to her: “I’ll tend her.”

Lyddie looked again at Sam Cowett and decided he wouldn’t make it many more nights through. “Best you sleep a while and let me tend to your wife,” Lyddie said. “You can’t afford to sicken yourself.”

“And you can’t afford another day’s kindness. If you stay you take your pay.”

Lyddie hesitated. “I would take dinner.”

He stared at her, nodded. After a minute he said, “Will she die?”

“Best you ask Dr. Fessey.”

“I ask you.”

“I don’t know.”

“She might?”

“She’s very ill.”

He stood up and walked to the door. “If she looks for me—”

“I’ll wake you.”

He left the room.

Lyddie waited until she heard the sound of bed ropes strafing and boots hitting the floor, then got up and went into the keeping room.

Stew.

The doctor appeared at noon, drawing Sam Cowett with him into the sickroom.

“Widow Berry,” the doctor said, as if surprised to see her still there. He looked at his patient, palpated her neck, felt her pulse. He opened one of her eyelids and dropped it closed. “Non compos mentis, eh?”

Lyddie took a quick look at Cowett; his face had gone dark, and he glared at the doctor.

“I don’t know if she comprehends,” Lyddie said quickly. “She doesn’t speak or move except to flinch if we move her. She’s had no more fits or vomits. She swallows the tincture.”

The doctor peered at Lyddie. “Yes, well, you seem quite in touch with the situation.”

“Mr. Cowett has hired me to nurse.”

The doctor swung around to the Indian. “Then you’ve got her in good hands, I’d say, Mr. Cowett. Quite the lucky situation for you. All right, then, everything seems as good as can be expected—”

“Will she die?” Cowett asked.

The doctor drummed the edge of the bed tick several seconds, then shoved his hands between his vest buttons, as if to keep them still. “Well, my good fellow, I’d have to say yes, I expect she will do. I’m sorry to say it, but as you ask, I feel I must. Not a thing for it other than what the good widow’s doing; and I wouldn’t exactly give her up; we deal with more than what we see in cases like this, you know. The body keeps its secrets; you might say ’tis a good sign the heat has left her, but she’s in what we might call a comatose delirium. That we don’t take as a good sign. Altogether—”

“How long?”

The doctor leaned over, lifted Rebecca’s arm, and dropped it. She screwed up her eyes and flinched. “You see? She responds to pain yet. We may take that as a good sign.”

“How long?”

“A week. Maybe two. Ah, well, naught to do but keep up the regimen I described to you and send for me if you need me.”

As Sam Cowett said nothing, Lyddie said, “Yes. Thank you.”

The doctor motioned to Lyddie. She followed him to the door of the house, and he leaned over, speaking low. “You watch out for yourself, Widow Berry. There’s of course not a shred of hope for that poor woman, and when she goes, there’s no telling what he’ll do. I understand you’ve managed to complicate things with your son, but if you don’t mind my saying, considering that I’ve known you a long time now—”

“I’ll watch out for myself,” Lyddie said. “Thank you.”

She reentered the sickroom. Sam Cowett sat staring at his wife.

“A week or two.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve a boat needs caulking and graving. She’s had a hard winter at whaling.”

“Then why don’t you do it? I’m able to stay, I told you.”

“For pay.”

“Yes, for pay. Let’s not talk that round again. I’m through with kindness, I assure you.”

His face did something that reminded her, absurdly, of Eben Freeman.

They settled on meals plus two shillings a day, or its equivalent in goods.

Lyddie would have liked to say that her head was filled with concern for Rebecca Cowett, and that thought did occupy a fair portion of her mind, but the rest of it was filled with food. In addition to the stew she found the remains of a turkey pie and an Indian pudding and milk and dried fish and dried meat and dried pumpkin and pickle and applesauce and a fine, heavy rye loaf and a tub of butter and a whole cheese and a basket of eggs and tea, fresh bohea tea, and a tin of seedcakes. The Indian wolfed down the turkey pie before he left, but Lyddie went back for the stew, spearing out fat chunks of meat and vegetables to conserve the broth for Rebecca, icing a thick slice of dark bread with butter, brewing up a strong pot of tea, finishing all with seedcake and applesauce and counting herself well paid for that day and the next one, too.

The Indian was gone three hours. He returned in the middle of the afternoon to find no change in his wife. He would not return to the shore. He would not try to sleep. He paid Lyddie for the day, by mutual accord, a pound of cheese, one of butter, and a half-dozen eggs.

The next day the Indian worked at the shore again, this time through heavy rain. As soon as he got home he retreated to change into dry clothes, then went directly to see his wife. As Lyddie had yet to make her report, and as it was supper hour, she set out a plate with bread and butter and cheese and waited. At first all was silent in the little room, but soon she heard his voice, deep and low and so intimate it took her aback. “Beck? Beck. Wake up, now.”

More silence.

He reappeared and looked at the plate. “I said naught about you feeding me.”

“I’ll not charge you, if that’s your worry.”

“’Tis your not charging worries me.”

“Very well, then, add this to today’s nursing and give me an ounce of tea for all.”

He got up, shook two ounces of tea into a napkin and shoved it across the table. “Put down a plate and tell me how she fared.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Cowett, I see no change in her. But she swallows. The worst that can be said—”

“The worst. You say naught of the best. Because the best is the worst. For her to lie there in pain—”

“But she swallows. She takes the tincture. I must tell you, we’re near run out of brandy, so if you would like me to stay while you visit the store—”

“No.” He returned to the money pot, held out more coins. “You go.”

Lyddie felt a hot prick of anger. She was not his servant; it was not her job to fetch and carry for him.

“You go,” he said again, and this time she caught it, the fear in him, the doubt, what he might do with a bottle of brandy in his hand.

Lyddie took the coins. Sam Cowett went into the little room and sat beside his wife. Lyddie could see nothing of him but his broad back and hear nothing but his wife’s name, over and over, “Beck. Beck.
Beck,
” louder and louder.

She left them.

The rain still pelted hard at the ground, but Lyddie moved gratefully through the wet. She felt fevered herself, her skin tight and hot, her mind raw. Would he sit and shout his wife’s name all night? she wondered. If it were Edward who lay ill, what would she do? The same, she thought. Or, rather, she knew. Once, when Edward had been out in a storm, she’d stood on the black shore and yelled his name until she’d heard her own foolish voice thrown back to her on the wind. She’d been shocked by the anger in it, as if Edward could have known the weather, or sent a message home, or made as fair a living with his feet on land. When Edward had finally come home she had not wanted to touch his cold, sodden body. Later that night, when Lyddie had shifted in the bed for the hundredth time, Edward
had stilled her with the weight of his hand. “My friend,” he said, “you bear it all while I’m away, my house and my child and my affairs, but when I return, you may give it over. Let me toss and turn. Go to sleep, now.”

“I cannot. You cannot. You cannot so suddenly take up the torch and blow me out like some candle.”

Edward rose up on his elbow. “What’s this, now?”

“I had to buy a cow because the last one sickened. There’s not enough to pay your tax.”

“The oil will pay the tax.”

“And what if you’d not come back with oil? What if you’d not come back at all?”

“Shubael has his instruction.”

“And should I not be told of such instruction?”

“Why trouble your head with thinking on such matters?”

“And what else do you guess troubles it? I must steel myself for you to be gone and then steel myself in case you don’t return, and when you come home I must put it all away and—”

“Ah! Now I understand all. You would have me stay gone.”

“No,” Lyddie said. “But I would perhaps save some worry over your tax if I knew Shubael’s instruction.”

“Well, now, you might. Indeed, I see now that you might. Mind you, never did I think you sat here worrying over my tax…Very well, my friend, in for a penny, in for a pound. From hence we share all tossing and turning. Now then, were I not to return, which would only happen, I promise you, if the vessel I am mastering did not return, Shubael pays your keep out of my shares in his sloop.”

“In
Shubael’s
sloop!”

“If I and my ship go down, what good are my shares in that? So, I took an additional interest in Shubael’s, which interest he inherits on my demise and may then sell in exchange for keeping you and our daughter and whatever other children we might have acquired in the
meantime. And as we speak of that, if you plan on tossing and turning yet, why not do so in this direction?”

That night they had started a babe, or perhaps it was the next night, or the next, and then Edward had gone, and the babe had come stillborn, and she’d miscarried three more, and lost three others wellborn, with only Mehitable surviving. Mehitable had been a babe in Lyddie’s arms that day on the beach in the storm, and despite the heavy wrappings her fair hair had been plastered dark with rain and her cheeks turned clammy and red with cold; Lyddie had done that to her, and yet Mehitable had lived and thrived and grown up to marry a man who sat warm at his fire and let others do his seafaring for him. No doubt if any of Lyddie’s boys had grown up, they would have followed their father to sea, so there was that blessing in it, that Lyddie had none of Rebecca Cowett’s pain over a boy gone off the rigging at Hatteras.

Lyddie arrived at the store, purchased the brandy without incident, delivered it to Cowett, who still sat by his wife, but silent now, collected her tea, and set off home. When Lyddie reached her house she saw Eben Freeman’s long form huddled just inside the barn door.

He ran out from under cover. “Good Lord, Widow Berry, you’re soaked to the bone, and no wonder, you stroll along in this odious rain as if it were the first sun in April.” He caught up her provisions and hustled her through her own door. “What prompts you out into this weather?”

Lyddie explained.

“And you nurse her? Why doesn’t Cowett call in Granny Hall, or one of the women from the nation for that matter?”

“Mr. Cowett seems content with my services.”

“I didn’t mean to say…It merely strikes me odd that the task falls to you.”

“It falls to me because I need to eat.” She opened her parcel of tea. “Today’s pay. May I offer you some?”

Freeman looked down at the black leaves and up at her. “Do you mean to say—?”

“I’ve been cut off by my son, as you predicted.”

“Predicted! I did not predict it. Not this. Not cut off. This is—” He stopped.

It occurred then to Lyddie that for a man who made his living by the fluidity of his tongue, Freeman’s stuck too often. “Tea?” she repeated.

“Yes. Thank you. I—” He looked again at the tea. “I must say, the Indian pays you well. Bohea’s at three shillings an ounce now.”

Lyddie felt the usual flush to her skin but was unsure if it marked shame or anger. Why shouldn’t the Indian pay her well? She moved around, delivering their tea, the conversation going along in fits and starts, in favor of weather over Indians, until the tea was finished and Freeman at last came to the purpose of his visit.

“You’re determined to remain here, Widow Berry?”

Lyddie considered and discarded several long answers. “Yes,” she said.

“You’re within the law, of course—”

“And my son is without it. And we’ve long established there’s naught to be done about it.”

“We’ve established nothing like it. We established there was another course, which it now appears you’ve definitively rejected, against my counsel and advice. And with
that
established—”

“We may say our good-byes and part with no rancor between us. At least that would be my hope.”

The lawyer’s face went through an entire series of its convolutions and settled into something new and slightly frightening. He leaned forward in his chair. “And mine would be something other, Widow Berry. I attempted in good faith to carry forward your hus
band’s wishes, but as that is now done with, I look to my own ideas. If I may say, as much as I respected your husband—” He paused. “He would see a better nature in a man than I. I would have spelled out my direction. But now we may amend the situation. I have an idea—”

But Lyddie didn’t fully hear the rest, her brain stalled on Freeman’s previous sentence. Yes, Edward would have seen a better nature in a man—he would have trusted Nathan with all matters concerning her, as he had once trusted Shubael—and now, as she looked, she found she could not blame him for it. He had done as most men would do. She had confessed her worry over a sick cow, an unpaid tax, and he had tried to spare her more of it.

“Widow Berry?”

“I’m sorry. I was after a stray thought.”

“And did you catch it?”

“Perhaps.”

“Would you forgive my curiosity if I asked what you think about so intently?”

“Edward.”

“Ah. Yes. Of course.”

He stood up. “I must go. We’ll talk more on this later. Please send Cowett my sincerest wishes for his wife’s speedy recovery.”