Brookland (54 page)

It was necessary to shut the brewhouse the rest of that week, but Tem and Prue employed many of the men in building a tun to replace that which had been marked with Jim Weatherspoon's blood, in constructing new ramps and ladders, and in checking each mortise and tenon in every building, that any man who worked for the Winships might do so in the peace of knowing the platform he stood upon was sound. The men thus had ample opportunity to come into contact with Ben's small crew of six, all of whom were at that time digging foundation holes in the sand of the mill yard. These were aligned parallel to the river—the large model would span nothing but bare strand—and almost sixty yards apart. Soon the men would drive piles into the bottoms of the pits to support foundation stones as large as those Matty Winship had placed under the distillery's buildings. This was not how they would build the actual foundation on the New York side, if the model proved a success: They planned to blast into the perdurable rock of Manhattan Island and build into the resulting hole. Ben and Prue both reasoned, however, that if the model bridge could hold when resting upon two foundations sunk into sand, a real bridge could certainly be built with one end that much more securely anchored. The holes he was digging were only five feet deep, but Ben built picket fences around them, that no one might stumble in. He held out hope he might receive his two great stones before the killing frost; if not, he would not see them until after the thaw. He also began assembling the pieces for the two cranes, each of which would be lifted and lowered by means of a Schermerhorn rope wrapped around a block and tackle and turned by a crank. Two strong chains depending from the crane's far end would hold the timber to be moved, and a single man
would work the crank to lift the piece into position. It would be an excellent device for saving men's labor, if Ben could be sure to build it both strong enough to do its appointed work and light enough for men to maneuver it without difficulty.

He set up shop in the assembly hall, and for the remainder of the winter, whenever Prue was upstairs in the countinghouse, she heard his stonemasons' chisels clanking, and the rasp of the carpenters' planes and saws. She would have liked to do some of the work herself—and saw Pearl's longing when she happened by the assembly hall's windows—but it was out of her hands now. Ben was the chief architect, and Ben had a commission from the state. It would be regular work, completed by professional laborers; and with each day that passed, Prue thought the bridge became less a thing of her fancy and more a citizen of the everyday world. The workers' heaps of stones, stacks of wooden beams, and barrels full of wooden dowels grew daily farther toward the rafters, until at last space had to be cleared for them in the storehouses. The cast-iron pulleys for the cranes arrived from the local foundry; and Prue kept up a passionate correspondence with Thomas Pope in Philadelphia, telling him of the model bridge's progress out in the weather and of how Ben's work proceeded. She thought it greatly to the famous bridge architect's credit that he answered her assertions and queries as thoughtfully as he might have done had his interlocutor been a man; and she was glad it was he Governor Jay had chosen to inspect the larger model as it progressed.

Prue, meanwhile, began to suspect a life might be quickening within her. She had no unmistakable signs—or was not certain what those might have been—but after the wedding, she had continued to employ Mrs. Friedlander's preventive methods only sporadically, and she had last caught sight of her menses in the autumn. By the New Year, she felt a fullness in her gut she imagined could be no other thing. At first the prospect of a baby disturbed her—how would she care for it, after all, while they built a bridge?—but as she went about her work at the distillery, she began to feel giddy with the possibility. Ben's birthday arrived before hers, in the dark days of January, along with a heavy snow; and she gave him no gift but her disclosure. He watched her a moment in the dim light of dawn and the bedroom fire he'd just kindled, then asked, “Are you certain?”

“No,” she answered. The room was still frigid, and her breath formed
plumes in the air. “Come back to bed.” He curled up around her under the covers. In the few minutes he'd been out of bed, his feet had grown cold as blocks of ice. “I haven't consulted Mrs. Friedlander, but I believe I know”

He reached around her to put his hand on her belly and said, “I feel foolish for not having noticed. When do you suppose it will come?”

“I don't know,” Prue said, feeling no doubt more foolish than he. “I imagine in the summertime.” She rolled over to face Ben, and found him smiling at her.

“Perhaps the second model will be complete by then. A perfect plaything for a little Horsfield.”

“Oh, it'll be a long while before the creature can play.”

“I know,” he said, and wrapped her more snugly in the bedclothes. “When may I tell Isaiah?”

“Why don't we tell everyone at once? Let's have them to dinner after church on Sunday.”

“With all their children? Oh, Christ,” he said.

“Ours'll be shouting and fighting like that soon enough.”

“I know,” Ben said, and kissed her before he left the bed. He stopped in at the countinghouse that morning to issue the invitation to Isaiah.

“Happy birthday,” Isaiah said. “I hope it augurs well for the year for you.”

“I think it does,” Ben said. It was a dull winter day, but he looked bright as a blue jay. “Thus far, I'd say it's the best year of my life. Though last year comes close on its heels.”

“Don't be so quick to judge,” Isaiah called after him as Ben trotted downstairs to his own men. To Prue he said, “He looks like he ate the Christmas pudding.”

Prue held both palms up in the air. “Perhaps he did.”

“Hmm,” Isaiah said. Prue suspected he knew their secret. “Someone has to go to the bank today. You or I?”

“I'll go with the shipment,” Prue said. “I'd be glad for the distraction.”

He shook his head at her as he took the pile of deposits from the safe. He counted out a hundred federal dollars—the amount they kept in case of emergency, though no emergency of such financial magnitude had ever yet arisen—and replaced it. Then he tallied up the rest for her.

“Is it me,” she asked, “or does the week's take look slight?”

“A bit,” Isaiah said, “but nothing to worry on. We're often sluggish from Twelfth Night to the thaw”

Prue accepted his answer—she tended to forget, from season to season, that business did not remain the same year-round—and had it corroborated by Mr. Stover at the bank.

Both families were thrilled at the news of the baby's imminence, and Tem and Isaiah made a series of toasts on its behalf. “You shall have to name it Archimedes,” Isaiah quipped, raising his glass to Prue.

Or Ptolemy
, Pearl wrote.

“Sir Isaac Newton,” Isaiah said.

“It may very well be a girl,” Patience counseled, “in which case you shall have to call it something ordinary, such as Alice.”

“Oh, not Alice,” Ben groaned, but he would have done so no matter what Patience had suggested; she had that sort of voice.

The child never lived to be called anything, however. Only a few nights after Ben and Prue made their announcement, Prue awakened with a start from an unpleasant dream she could not quite recall, and did not at once recognize her surroundings. After a moment, the room she still thought of as her parents' sprang into place—the small desk and its uncomfortable chair, the wardrobe, with Ben's britches hanging over the door, a fire screen Pearl had embroidered with flowers, which was tucked into a corner and difficult to make out. Ben lay burrowed under his pillow, and in the starlight, Prue saw it was snowing outside. When she stood to add wood to the fire's embers, a rush of warmth coursed down through her belly. She did not at first think it unpleasant, merely foreign enough to catch her attention. Then she recognized it as pain. When she looked down, a black, shiny pool was blossoming between her legs.

She must have cried out as she sat back down, because Ben recoiled as if he'd been struck, and she heard her sisters stirring across the hall. Ben gathered his wits and said, “Prue?” He sat up with one hand on her back. The other settled gingerly on her leg.

When he touched her, she could feel her heart racing and the ache in her gut. She doubled forward, and her head bowed down toward the space between her calves. She could smell the iron in her own rich blood.

“Prue,” he said, “should I get Dr. de Bouton?” He looked around the room and said, more loudly, “Pearl, Tem? Abiah?”

Prue shook her head no, feeling her hair brush against the blanket. “There's nothing they can do,” she said. Her breath felt hot upon her own legs and face.

“Surely—”

“Nothing.” She sat up, and the blood drained first toward her legs, then out of her. “Please, just get me some water and a cloth. I need to wash.” Mrs. van Nostrand's forget-me-not was burning against her chest; she had forgotten to remove it for the night.

Tem and Pearl stumbled in at that moment, and both stood looking at the scene before them. After a moment, Pearl sat down on the bed and put both hands on her sister. Tem stepped into the hall and called out, “Abiah? Quickly.”

“Coming,” Abiah said from downstairs.

“Bring water and cloths,” Ben said, and began to work Prue's nightshirt up over her head.

“Please,” Prue said, “it's cold,” but she could see the nightshirt was stained dark, as was the sheet and no doubt the mattress.

Abiah said “Mercy,” when she arrived, and first thing set to diapering Prue. Then she wiped her with a clean rag, took the nightshirt, and began to strip the bed. Prue huddled on the floor while she did this.

“It's no matter,” Ben said.

“They'll be ruined,” Prue said, though she could not imagine why she cared.

“I'll take them,” Abiah said. She took all the bedding, and the mattress was indeed stained. She laid cleaning cloths on top of it, then remade the bed with fresh sheets. Prue lay down immediately, and drew the covers close around her.

Pearl had neglected to put her book around her neck, and sat by helplessly, stroking Prue's arm and leg. “It'll be all right,” Prue told her, but Pearl didn't look convinced, and even Prue didn't believe herself. This was just repayment, she thought, for the curse she had so long ago laid on Pearl and on her own mother; this was a fair bargain. Everyone except Abiah sat with Prue until she fell back asleep, and the last sound she heard was of Abiah working the pump in the cold yard.

When she awoke in the morning, Dr. de Bouton was speaking to Ben at the foot of the bed. Pearl half reclined beside Prue, fingering the frizzy tips of her sister's hair. Prue could not meet her sister's eye, so fresh was
her guilt alongside this new pain; and for the first time in her life, Prue thought she understood why their mother had so often looked on them as intruders.

“Good morning, there, miss,” Dr. de Bouton said.

Prue looked at his familiar black brows beneath his shock of bright gray hair, but couldn't think of a thing to say.

“Prue?” Ben said gently.

“There's nothing to be done, is there?” she asked.

Dr. de Bouton sat down on the other side of the bed. “Not immediately, no. But you'll recover soon. And there will be another, by and by.”

“As I told you,” she told Ben, her throat full of accusation, though she didn't know why. She shut her eyes again. A moment later she heard them file out and the latch rattle shut on the door.

As she lay in the bed in which her mother had given birth to three daughters, miscarried an untold number of children, and finally died, Prue thought of the dogged manner in which Roxana had knit that small white jacket for Pearl, when any fool could have told her the baby wouldn't live a week. At the time, her singleness of purpose had frightened Prue, but she now saw her mother had worked the wool as an incantation, as a spell to keep away the encroaching darkness. Roxana would have scoffed at this explanation, but it was the truth; and Prue wished she herself knew a similar charm to ward off disappointment and pain. She feared the only true protection might be a clean conscience, which she would not have until she admitted her crime to Pearl; and she did not believe herself capable of owning up to such treachery.

All she dared hope was that if her bridge meant to take a life, this one she had just lost would suffice. If it could prevent anyone else being killed, she felt she might, in time, reconcile herself to the sacrifice.

Later in the day, Pearl brought her a baked potato, its nether part wrapped in a checkered napkin. The potato looked so odd, and Pearl so strange holding it, Prue laughed despite the unease she'd been feeling about her sister, and Pearl broke into a smile and hissed. Prue had never before eaten a potato without benefit of butter or salt, but she was hungry enough to have eaten it without chewing, had that been possible. Pearl sat down beside her and wrote,
I'm glad yr mending. There're more, dwnstairs, if you like
.

“Perhaps in a while.”

You know there will be Another
, Pearl wrote, and patted her own belly, perhaps in case Prue thought she was still speaking of potatoes.

“I don't know,” Prue said. She did not wish to discuss it, but felt she had to, now Pearl had begun. “Our mother had a rotten time of it.”

Yr diffrent
, Pearl wrote. I
am certin of it
.

Prue watched her sister closely. How easy it should have been, all these years later, simply to tell Pearl what she had done; but Prue could not. She did not believe she could survive the exposure of such meanness. Meanwhile, she was grateful for her sister's reassurance. “Thank you,” she said. “I hope you're correct.”