Caleb's Crossing (20 page)

“Life is better than death. I know this. Tequamuck says it is the coward’s talk. I say it is braver, sometimes, to bend.”

He turned to me. “That is why I will go now to this Latin school, and the college after, and if your God prospers me there, I will be of use to my people, and they will live. But you. There is nothing for you in that place. Why should you go? You know full well your brother is a dullard. He will not profit from this schooling, even though you give your freedom to buy it.”

“Caleb,” I said. “I do not go to save grandfather his precious few guineas. Neither do I go for the love of my brother, and although I will rejoice in his success, I am not so blind as to conceive that my efforts for him will in any way assure it. If I am enslaved, as you call it, it is not to any but God. I go to Cambridge for the same reason you do. Because I believe God wants it.”

“I do not understand you, Storm Eyes.”

“Caleb, please. Do not call me by that name. We are neither of us children who may run hither and yon, as if this isle were another Eden. If it were so, once, then those gates are closed behind us now. That life is over and done.” He looked at me, and then away. I could not tell if he was puzzled by my words or hurt by them. I softened my voice, and touched his arm lightly. “You taught me once that names might serve for a season or two, then pass away. The season of Storm Eyes has passed. It is time we both of us stopped looking behind us and set our faces to the toil ahead. I told you once, long ago, that Bethia means God’s Servant. It is what I am striving to be, Caleb; it is the right name for me now. Call me so, as befits one who is my brother.” He said nothing but kept his gaze upon the sea. I felt a strong desire to make everything plain and open between us, for as he had said, such opportunities to speak one to the other had become so very few.

“There will be a time,” I said, “perhaps soon, when our paths will go separately onward. But for a little while yet, it seems, we will walk forward together. I, for one, can say that I am glad of it. As for understanding me, I think that you do, better than any other now alive, whatever name I go by. As I would understand you.” I plucked up my courage then, and asked what I yearned to know.

“Caleb, will you tell me what happened to you, when you went alone into the wilderness? Did the serpent come to you, in the end?”

His chin went up as I put the question. He did not look at me, nor did he answer. There had been a light, warm breeze, all morning, from the southwest. But while we sat in speech, the wind had turned around, and freshened. Now a sudden, sustained gust blew from the north. You could see its shadow passing across the face of the ocean, pushing up flecks of white foam. The beach grass, bending to its force, sent up a whispering, and the oaks behind the dunes answered with a low roar. Sand grains stung my face.

“He came.” He had switched into Wampanaontoaonk. Even though the glare upon the beach was intense, his eyes had darkened, the black of the pupils swallowing the brown. “The night was cold. So clear. The stars were so bright you could count the trees by their light…. I had fasted many days…. I drank the white hellebore, and cast it up, many times…. I passed between this world and the other world. And then he came, and I took him up, into my hands, and the power flowed into me.” He had raised his hands in front of him, the palms curled to grasp the muscled, twining form as he remembered it. “I took it, Storm Ey—Bethia. I took it.” His voice had deepened, finding the resonance of his native tongue. “Pawaaw.”

The word hung there. I thought of Tequamuck. I do not know if the wizard had the power to reach into my mind, whether my thought of him called upon some dark art that he had, or whether he, by some demonic rite, had formed up visions out of sage-scented smoke and breathed them into me across all the distance between us.

The sky cracked open and I was in a storm, wreathed in fog. I turned away from the lacerating sheets of rain, but all at once the wind lifted and blew me off my feet, into the swirling air. Then I was falling like a plummet, deep into roiling waves. When I came to rest, on the ocean bottom, there was a great silence. Father’s body floated, an arm’s length from me. Seaweed-shrouded, bloated, tugged this way and that by unseen tides moving deep beneath the waves. I reached for him, but even as I willed myself forward, I was tugged backward, speeding through water and into air. I was in our garth, the sunlight so dazzling I could not see. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, Caleb stood there, Solace limp in his hands. He held her up to me, but as I reached out she turned into a snake, writhing, head rearing to strike….

I felt my gorge rise. Caleb grasped my hands then and shook me. The vision crumbled into bright shards and fell away.

“What is it? Are you ill?” His eyes were once again their normal color, treacle brown. He stared at me, full of concern. I swallowed, and gulped the clean salt air, fighting down the sickness. I could taste the bitterness of hellebore in my mouth. I closed my eyes and drove my fists against them, hard, as if I could push the monstrous visions out of my sight. I wanted to confess to him what I had done at Takemmy, tell him what my sin had caused, warn him that this so-called power he had reached out for was a devil’s snare. But all that came out of my mouth was the one word: “Pawaaw.”

“Remember what it means, Bethia: I taught you, long since….”

“Healer,” I whispered.

“Just so. That is all my intention. To use this power to heal the sicknesses that beset my people.”

“But Caleb, the power comes from Satan….”

“And from whence did Satan get it? Was it not from God, who created him a great angel? So your Bible says.” The wind had eased again; the trees behind the dunes quieted to a low rustling. He had switched back to English, his voice low and weary. “I am a man, Bethia. A man must take power where he finds it. If I find it in your books, I will take it. If I find it in visions brought to me by my familiar, then I will take that, too. It is what the times demand of me.”

“Power? Does not a lightning bolt have power? Reach for it, and become a blackened husk….” My voice cracked. I drank the cold air again in greedy gasps. Caleb’s eyes regarded me.

“Maybe,” he said at last. “That may indeed prove to be the cost.”

I did not have the courage to look at him. I just shook my head and tried to swallow away the bitter taste that lingered in my mouth, and the salty tang of suppressed tears. When Caleb spoke again, his voice was calm and steady.

“Not long ago, Bethia, when your father yet lived and taught us every day, your brother was struggling, as is his wont, with the Greek. When he could not get it, he became very agitated, and at the last he turned to your father, and demanded to know why we, as would-be ministers, must needs learn these things.” I have set down before that Caleb was a natural mimic, and here he pitched his voice higher and gave it a hectoring edge, becoming, to the life, the mouthpiece of my brother. “‘What has Apollo to do with Christ? Is not the study of these pagans akin to Eve and Adam’s prideful seeking after forbidden knowledge?’”

As Caleb spoke, I could easily imagine the scene in my mind’s eye. Despite my agitation, my lips twitched with amusement. “And what did father say?”

“He said that of course all learning must have Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation. But since God had seen fit to give us Christ’s gospel in Greek, there was surely a sign for us in that. And then he told us the Greeks’ story, of how Prometheus stole fire from the gods. He said that fire represented the lamp of learning that had been lit by the ancient Greeks and passed to us, to keep alight. So am I a thief of fire, Bethia. And since it seems that knowledge is no respecter of boundaries, I will take it wheresoever I can. By light of day, in your schoolrooms. By candlelight, from your books. And if necessary, I will go into the dark to get it.”

We were kindred indeed, Caleb and I. I cast my hands over my face, but Caleb reached out and pulled them away. “Tell no one, Bethia. You must never speak of this. There is not another soul alive who would understand it. Not even Joel.” His eyes bored into me. “I am not even certain that you do.”

“Oh, I understand. Perhaps more than you think.” My voice was as weak as a mewling kitten. I stood then, unsteadily. I could not speak anymore. I felt wrung out. The shadows had begun to lengthen on the other side of the noon hour. Makepeace would be looking for his dinner.

“I must go,” I said, still shaken, struggling for self-command. “Caleb, you should know that I mean to accept this indenture, and if my reason remains obscure to you, all I ask is that you believe it is my willing choice. As I try to accept what you say, even though it scalds my heart.” I brushed the sand from my skirt, pulled out my crumpled cap, and tried to knot up my hair. Caleb made to walk back to Great Harbor, but I would not have him do so. He climbed up behind me on Speckle, and we rode by a slow way, through the woods, so as to be unobserved. When Speckle foundered slightly on an uneven tussock, his hands grasped my waist for a moment, and I was conscious that however much I might feel him to be my brother, it was not so in fact. In the town, we would need to be even more wary of our manners one unto the other.

A half mile short of the plantation, he dismounted. As he turned to go, I reached down and touched him lightly on the shoulder. “One thing further: hold some charity in your heart to grandfather and Makepeace. Even if they do not always do well, they mean well. I truly believe so. And it is what father would want of you.” He lifted his chin in a gesture that might have been assent, might have been dismissal. I rode on then, alone. When I glanced back, my hand raised in farewell, he had melted into the trees, invisible. He had not lost the art.

A good thing I had been prudent, because Makepeace was in the dooryard when I rode up, and when he saw my state, he turned a bilious shade. He barely held in his wrath, even though I could see it cost him. I tried to imagine what would have happened had I added a half-clad Caleb to the spectacle. The thought of it caused a smile to break across my face, and at that, Makepeace snatched his hat and staff and stalked off, needing to put some distance between us or else loose what remained of his composure.

By the time he arrived back, I had seen to the mare, dressed my hair decently, donned a fresh cap and set a hearty board. When he saw the plate of roasted cod and green beans, he made an eloquent and heartfelt grace, including in it a blessing upon the hands that had prepared the food. I let him eat a slice of treacle pudding and a dish of raspberries. As he scraped up the last of it, I told him I meant to accept the indenture. I would dearly have liked to keep him on my pin a few days longer, but we all of us needed to plan for the journey, and time was short.

XI

I
had never seen a set of indentures, and had surely never thought to see my own. In as much as I had given my mind to such a thing, I had thought perhaps that I would, as a wife, one day in charity assent to take into service some poor young person in need of a roof and sustenance.

Grandfather, sensible of the awkwardness of the moment, paced his chamber as I read over both copies of the paper. I could tell that it irked him when I insisted to read them, just as he was about to set his name and seal. But willing or no, he handed them to me. It was a short form of words, but since it bore so heavily upon my future I read it over slowly.

This indenture, made the 25th day of August one thousand six hundred and sixty between Elijah Corlett of Cambridge on the one part and Thomas Mayfield of Great Harbor on the other part, that the said Thomas Mayfield has bound and does hereby bind minor child Bethia Mayfield his granddaughter and ward by law to any lawful work for and to reside with the said Elijah Corlett until the 25th day of August one thousand six hundred and sixty four. During which time Elijah Corlett covenants to use all means in his power to provide for said Bethia Mayfield boarding and lodging and such attendance as is necessary to her keep and care in health and sickness and further covenants to afford her brother, Makepeace Mayfield, full scholar’s privileges, board and lodging at the Cambridge Latin School and to educate him in Literature as he is capable.

The papers already bore Corlett’s sign and seal, and both had been laid together and cut around the edges with a set of indentations so that the one paper exactly matched the other. When I had read and compared them, I handed both silently to grandfather and watched as he dipped his pen and made his usual flourishing signature.

“So, that is done,” he said. “I will send the one copy with you to Master Corlett and keep the other safely here, not that I expect for one moment that Corlett would transgress any particular of the agreement … but … just to be prudent…”

I watched him place the paper in the box where he kept wills and deeds and debtors’ bonds. He locked it with a key that he kept on a fob. I thought how glad I would be, four years hence, on the day I could retrieve that paper, tear it into small pieces and feed it into the fire.

From Great Harbor to Cambridge as the crow flies is no great distance. But alas, we are not crows. The choice lay between a short sail across seven miles to the nearest point on the mainland, and then a long and difficult trek west and north upon narrow Indian paths through wilderness; or else a longer sail, up and around the arcing arm of the cape and onward to Boston, which takes the better part of a day and night to accomplish, in fair weather. From there, one must arrange a barge up the river to the town landing at Cambridge—an hour with a fair wind and a flood tide, but an impossible journey should an easterly prevail. As we needed to fetch books and clothing with us, we decided to go by the longer sea route—despite great misgivings.

There was much to do. I had to instruct the neighbor’s young boy, who was good with the tegs, on the special care of my ewes, and show him how to make my earmark on the lambs in due season. I saw Speckle into the hands of grandfather’s manservant, and, before I left her, spent some time stroking her long nose, telling her not to become too spoiled while we were gone. The day before we were to sail, I conceived an errand to the Iacoomis cabin, telling Makepeace that I thought it would be charitable to let that family have the last of the season’s unspun wool, since I was not about to fetch it with me to Cambridge. He raised an eyebrow, saying that a nearer neighbor would be just as glad of that kindness, but in the end assented. I walked out to what had once been the extreme edge of Great Harbor. When I was small, and Iacoomis had first settled down there, he had built a rude sort of a hut, made of poles and timber sheets in the native manner. Over the years he had enlarged and amended it to a sound wattle-and-daub dwelling, not much different to its English neighbors. The cabin had once been set off at a distance from the nearest English house. But now the town had grown out and past it, and no one save the Aldens thought anything about it any more, the Iacoomis family living just exactly as we did in every particular.