Love's Pursuit (4 page)

5

I DECIDED TO VISIT Abigail one forenoon after having tended the garden. Before she had been wed, Abigail had lived just two houses down from ours and been my dearest confidante. Now she was at the opposite end of the road, a good two dozen houses away. It was not often I could afford the time to visit her.

Mary begged to accompany me, and since she had finished scouring the pots, Mother allowed it. I toted the child on my hip while Mary walked beside me.

As we passed the first house, Goody Ames’s, she stepped out of her door to greet us. “I saw that captain of yours today.”

Mary answered before I could. “He is not Susannah’s captain.”

“Nor should he be! He was up to Mister Wright’s, pacing atop that hill where their house sets. He had his musket up to his shoulder. What do you think he was doing? Drawing sights on something?”

I shrugged. How would I know?

We passed on by Goody Baxter’s but were stopped at Goody Turner’s, three houses down. “Do you know where I saw the king’s captain yesterday?”

I jounced the babe to keep him from complaining.

“He was down to the river, climbing all over the bridge. His breeches were wet. Do you think he fell in?”

“If he did, it was his own fault.”

“Mary!” Though propriety made me scold her, she had only said what I had been thinking. And good thing, for if she had not said it, the words might have slipped right off my tongue. And then I would have been known for what I truly was.

Mary turned from Goody Turner to me. “If it was not his fault, then whose was it?”

The child began to squawk and so we turned away and continued on. But not long, for we were slowed once more as we reached Goody Hillbrook’s.

“That captain sure gets around. I sent my girl to the pond for scouring plants after her lessons and she said the man was there, ducking behind trees and then wading right into the water. What do you suppose he was doing?”

This time we had not truly stopped, and so, walking backward, we both pled ignorance.

Once Goody Hillbrook had gone back inside, we set our faces toward Abigail’s and picked up our pace. But the questions galled me. “If this is the thanks we get for boarding that man . . . ! Now everyone will know our business.”

A frown set a crease between Mary’s eyes. “And what will have changed? They have always known our business.”

Perhaps I should have kept my sentiments to myself.

As we approached the next house, Goody Blake stepped out.

Mary linked an arm through mine. “Quick! Turn your head.

Pretend you do not see her.”

But it was too late. I lowered the child to the ground, keeping tight hold of its leading strings. Since Goody Blake was a gentle soul, we paused. But we were soon joined by Goody Ellys and her daughter Goody Metcalf, who were walking toward us down the road.

“That captain has been skulking through the wood. Nearly frightened Goodman Ellys to death.”

“My boy told me he saw him down to blueberry barren where he first appeared.”

“And I heard he was down to the brook.”

I smiled, nodded, and tried to disentangle ourselves from their conversation. “If we’re to see Goody Clarke before our mother needs us, we should be about the doing of it.”

“Abigail? She has a pale look to her.”

“That babe of hers might be teething. He’s gone red in the face and drippy in the nose.”

“ ’Tis about the time for it.” Goody Blake turned to me and reached out to pat our babe. She reached wide and I turned so that her hand could fall on its head. “Still and all, don’t let your little one linger there too long.”

“Tell her to spread some ale on the babe’s gums.”

“Or press her thumb up to the top of the child’s mouth at night.”

A none-too-gentle tug on my arm from Mary led to us taking our leave.

“If one more person asks me what the captain might be doing, I might just tell them he’s getting ready to kill them all. And I know it because I watch him clean his musket every night while Father reads the Bible!”

I could not save myself from laughing at Mary’s words.

The rest of the length of road we received reports on the captain’s whereabouts. He had been to the brook and down to the pond. He had visited the minister’s way down at the end of the south road and had been seen at the top of Newham Road. It was evident that in all his wanderings, he had walked the extreme limits of the township. From the swamp in the north, to the brook in the south; the river and the blueberry barren to the west and the sawmill to the east.

And then, finally, there was only one house left to pass: Smallhope Smyth’s. We slowed our step, expecting at any moment to be stopped, though I don’t know why. She was rarely seen. She never went anywhere, never spoke to anybody. ’Twas Thomas who drew their water and went to the grist mill for meal.

Past Small-hope’s house stood Abigail’s. My friend’s door, like all the others in town, was open in an attempt to entrap a breeze. I stepped in the door. “Greetings, Abigail! We have come to—”

She came at me with the hiss of a serpent, pushing me right back out the door. “Hush!”

“We wanted—”

“I just got the child to sleep. He’s been crying and shrieking and wailing and . . .” She paused, an ear cocked toward the door, then sighed. “And now all my work is for naught.” She turned on a heel and went back through the door.

I glanced at Mary.

She pulled a face.

I shrugged. How was I to have known? I followed Abigail back inside. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I could see her in the corner by the bed, holding the babe to her chest, turning first this way and then that with him. The little mite was crying so hard, he choked on his own tears.

“Abigail, do you want me to—”

She spoke without stopping, without turning. “Go.”

“But we could—”

She did turn then and walked toward me. “What? Do you think you can stop him from crying?”

Surprised by the harshness in her tone, I found I did not know what to say. And if I was not mistaken, Abigail herself was on the verge of tears just as hot and heavy as her babe’s.

“Just go.”

“But—”

“Please.”

As I looked around I saw much that I could have done. Put dishes away, tended to the cooking, done the mending. Stoked a fire that had almost extinguished itself. If she had asked, I would have stayed. And Mary and I together could have worked wonders.

Abigail’s hands, gripped around the bundle of the child, were trembling.

I extended my arms toward the babe.

She only clutched it tighter, shaking her head. “Go.”

Why should I fight her when she was in such pitiful a state? But then, how could I not? I stood there, undecided, until Abigail turned her back on me and began singing to the babe.

I gave up. Turned on my heel and nearly walked right into Mary on my way out.

She picked up our own mother’s child and hurried to catch up with me. “What is it? Is the babe sick?”

“I do not know.”

“Is Abigail sick?”

“I do not know.”

“Is—”

“I do not know!” It seemed I knew nothing about my friend anymore.

“And so now what are we to do?”

“About what?”

“About going home. I have no wish to be questioned once more like some prisoner before the king’s bench about the goings-on of the captain.”

Neither did I. The road that unfurled before us seemed more like a gauntlet than a simple path leading toward home. “We could go by the hay meadows.”

Behind the road we had just walked, the earth rose steadily up to a ridge. On the other side of the ridge lay a vast meadow that the town had divided into hay lots. If we kept to the meadows and fashioned a path through the hay, then we would, God willing, meet no man or woman intent upon asking unanswerable questions about the captain.

And ’tis that which we did.

With the child straddling my waist, it took some work climbing the hill and clomping through the grasses, but at least we did it at our own speed, without being stopped every twenty paces. Wresting our skirts from the clutches of the grasses behind us, we held them up before us as we walked.

Crickets jumped now and then through the hay, pursued by sparrows. But aside from that activity, it was a lonely, desolate place.

It came to me of a sudden, that though the hay lots were not forbidden us, no one knew we were there. The hairs on my arms stood on end as I realized that a shout given up from the ridge might not reach the houses down below. And a spider began to creep up my spine. A sure sign of being watched.

By a malignant eye.

Perhaps my lack of moral fortitude and laziness in wanting to avoid the townspeople had resulted in bad judgment. I knew a sudden, desperate urgency to descend the ridge for the relative safety of the road below. Even spurious questions were preferable to being discovered defenseless in the hay lots by a savage. Especially when charged with the safety of the babe.

I lowered my head to kiss the sweat-dampened curls at his neck beneath his cap, and he squealed in response and reached up with both hands to grab the rim of my hat.

“Mary?” No need to alarm her; I simply wanted to be freed of the child to find the quickest route toward home.

“Aye.” The sound of her voice came from behind me and to my left.

I held out the child toward where I supposed my sister to be. “Could you take him?”

When I felt her take him up, I worked at his tiny fingers to pry them from my hat. Cries of protest came as I was finally released.

“Hush-a, hush-a.” Mary held the child out in front of her and pulled a gruesome face to make him laugh.

I turned forward and began to walk at an angle that would intersect with the ridge, intent on finding a path down to the house. After several minutes, I realized that my unburdened strides had taken me far ahead of Mary’s encumbered ones. I paused for a moment on the ridge, looking down at the houses below, and then I pivoted, intending to rejoin my sister. Instead of striking earth when I set my foot down, I encountered a stone. With my balance thrown off, my weight fell onto my other foot, the one anchoring me to the incline. But it collapsed, causing a sudden burning pain, and pitched me down the slope.

I landed hard on my shoulder. The suddenness of the fall cast my legs over my head, and I rolled several times before I came up against something hard and stopped.

That something wobbled.

Looking up, squinting against the brightness of the sun, I saw a form waver for an instant above me, and then it bellowed and threw up its arms.

A savage!

They had finally come.

6

I TRIED TO SHOUT, to send up some warning, but my breath was expelled by the force of the savage as it pounced atop me.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Waited for death.

To my amazement, instead of words spoken in a heathen tongue, I heard laughter. “And here I was, waiting for savages!”

I opened my eyes and found myself looking straight into the captain’s.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

I gasped for air, then finally succeeded in pushing the words from my throat. “I would be better if you would remove yourself from me.”

“I am certain you probably would.” With amusement flashing in his eyes, he rocked forward, off my stomach. Then he dropped a knee to the ground and extended a hand to me.

I ignored it and tried my best instead to sit. Successful, I took a careful deep breath. It caught. I coughed. Tried again. My chest trembled as it expanded.

The captain leaned close and began to pluck grasses from my sleeves. “Did all savages look like you, I would quit my worries and welcome them here without another thought.”

“You did not have to dive down upon me.”

“Neither did you have to roll yourself into me. Although I must say, it was completely unexpected and therefore tactically sound. Perhaps I should have the men at watch post themselves right there,” he gestured toward the ridge, “in preparation for launching themselves in a roll at the enemy. ’Tis as good a strategy as I have ever devised.”

I pushed his hand away from my sleeve.

His gaze left my eyes and came to rest at some point beyond my shoulder. “Tsk.” He leaned closer.

My breath caught once more.

He reached out behind me but then almost immediately straightened, putting distance between us. “Such a bad end to such a dreadful hat.” He handed it to me.

Streaks of dirt were smeared across the crown. The brim had been battered. “You do not like my hat?” Why did he not like it? It was just like everyone else’s.

“I could never look without prejudice upon anything that would hide your lovely locks from view.” He reached out a hand to capture a curl that spun in the breeze below my shoulder. It was then that I realized that my coif had disappeared as well.

I gathered up my hairs, spun them around my hand into a bundle and slapped my hat atop them. Then I pushed from the ground, intending to start a search for the coif. As I gained my feet, however, my ankle buckled once more. I cried out in pain as I stumbled.

The captain, still on one knee, caught me as I fell. “I place my humble person at your service.”

I could only protest his falsehood. “You are not humble!”

He chortled as he gathered me to his chest and came to his feet. “Nay. I have been graced with many things, but that particular quality does not number itself among them.”

Had he no shame? No remorse? To clutch my person to his broad chest in the plain light of day? Such things were not done. And why was I so fixed upon his chest and his eyes . . . those eyes that were as varied as the ocean, shifting from light blue to indigo with every glance.

With great effort, I brought my fascination with his person to a halt and concentrated upon his words instead. Had he not just recognized within himself a sin? But though recognized and identified, he appeared to suffer no guilt from it! What kind of man was he?

A shout from the ridge above us made the captain turn. As he did so, he faltered for an instant as if trying to keep his footing.

I threw my arms up around his neck.

“I wish I always had my arms filled with such a grasping woman! ’Twould be Paradise indeed.”

He made as if to drop me and when I screamed, he tossed me above his head instead. And then he caught me up close against his chest again. He smelt of tobacco and leather and . . . the wind.

“You must let me go!”

“Must I?” We both watched Mary as she appeared at the ridge. He called at her to come join us.

“Truly, you must.”

“But then how would you get home?”

“You cannot carry me,” I protested.

“I cannot? I think I can. I am.” He glanced at me. “Ah, I see. You mean I
should
not. Are you certain?”

“ ’Tis not . . . seemly.”

I felt his shoulders shrug beneath my arms. “As you like. I suppose there are other ways of going about it.” He shifted me within his arms and then threw me over his shoulder. Gripping me at his chest about the knees with his arm, he let my own arms and head flop loose at his back.

Beating upon him with my fists did nothing but make him laugh. I doubted a hammer could knock a dent in that rigid back of his.

Mary was smiling long before she reached us.

“A new manner of transport, Susannah?”

I might have glared at her, could I have lifted my head high enough to see her.

“I would think walking more comfortable, if not more prudent,” she continued.

“She has turned an ankle.”

“And so you turned her over your shoulder?” There was a sauciness in Mary’s retort that ought to have shamed her. Indeed, it ought to have shamed me. But the thing of it was, she had me wishing that I were walking beside the captain, talking with him, looking into those changeable eyes instead of being flung over his shoulder like a sack of meal.

“What else was I to do when she eschewed my arms?”

“I did not—”

My words were jolted from of me, as the captain began the descent toward home. Mary walked beside him, keeping him in conversation as I tried to keep my hat on my head and clutch at the captain’s waist for security at the same time.

I walked up to the hay meadow after the Phillips sisters had left Goody Clarke’s house. My path had nothing to do with following them. As I had on the day when I saw the captain, I often walked the meadow of a forenoon, after weeding in the garden or sewing and before beginning preparations for supper. Despite the grime of his profession, Thomas was a simple and tidy man who left little in the way of a mess behind him. Our home was small. There were but two of us living within it. On a day like this one, the air heavy with humidity, I liked to walk the ridge to catch the breeze that skipped off the crest of the hill and continued on without descending into the valley. It was a good thing to build beneath a ridge for shelter from winter’s cruel gales. But in the summer, it was insufferable. And in this one thing, I chose not to. Suffer.

I treaded lightly, carefully, not willing to step through a sparrow’s nest from sheer carelessness. The sisters’ trail was easy enough to spot. It bored straight through the meadow grasses, oblivious to beast or fowl. My eyes scanned the field, looked through the bowed grasses to see movement. Over there, where they rustled first this way and that, might be a fox. And over there, where they shook in clumps forming a jagged line, might be a hare.

I wandered over to the edge of the ridge and looked down upon the houses, so orderly, so precisely placed upon the meandering road. I liked knowing that none of them, none of those goodwives in those houses, imagined that I was up here. None of them knew that I was looking down upon them. After feeling, so often, for so long, that they and those like them were looking down upon me, it gave me great satisfaction to do the same to them.

The string of my thoughts was severed by a motion down the hill and to my left.

I turned in that direction, shifting my hat to shade my eyes from the sun.

It was Susannah Phillips.

And that captain.

I took a step closer. They were . . . she was . . . he had lifted her into his arms. But now he was throwing her over his shoulder.

I felt myself smile, so I tucked my chin into the collar of my shift. But that did not stop me from watching.

Susannah’s sister had joined them and now they were walking down the hill toward their house, all three of them. Four of them. Mary carried the child.

That they would cavort so openly. And laugh so freely. Did they not know they tempted God? I knew how quickly laughter could turn to tears. I knew how swiftly madness could follow mirth. Better not to laugh. Better to keep one’s head down, keep one’s hands busy, and keep one’s self in hiding. As much as possible.

Susannah’s hands reached up to clamp her hat onto her head.

The captain spun round, causing her to fly out from his back.

I could not hear the sisters from where I was, but I could see them. Quite clearly.

What would those goodwives say? With any luck, they would never see, never know. Surely on this day, at this hour, I was certain to be the only one watching.

I turned my eyes from them and kept to my course, but again, my attention was drawn by a motion. I looked up across the valley to the other side of the ridge. The side where it curved around by the sawmill. And it was there I saw him.

Simeon Wright was standing on the crest of the hill, fists at his hips, watching the goings on beneath us both.

I let myself sink down into the grasses and then sat there for a long while, rubbing my arms against a sudden chill.

Mary went before us into the house.

I could hear Mother long before I could see her. “ ’Tis the last time I will give you leave for visiting of a forenoon! What have you to say to account for yourselves?” I heard her step closer. “And why do you carry my daughter across your shoulder like a sack of flour?”

“Because she turned an ankle and did not think it seemly for me to carry her in my arms.”

As he dumped me onto a bench beside the table, it seemed to me that there was a smile lurking in my mother’s eyes. She knelt before me, lifted my skirts, and untied my garter.

And then she paused for a moment and lifted her head to look at the captain.

He sighed, threw up his hands, and left the house.

Then she slid the stocking from my injured foot and poked and prodded until I was near to writhing at her examination.

“There is no break, but there is a swelling. And you won’t be much use to me for a week.” She shook her head as she drew my stocking back on and settled my skirts around my legs. “I had thought you had a sound head upon those shoulders. ’Tis Mary with her candor and high spirits that I have worried over all this time, and now I see that it should have been you.”

She pushed to her feet and took the child from Mary, sending her out to the garden for field balm.

“What am I to do with you?”

“I am sorry.”

Her face softened and she came close to pat my arm. “I know you are, child. What were you about?”

“We were coming back from Abigail’s. By the hay meadow.”

“The hay meadow? And why?”

“Because we were stopped along the way, going, at every house by every goodwife wanting to know about the captain.”

“Ah. Well, then you have paid for your folly.”

I supposed I had.

For the remainder of the week, I was relegated to the menial duties of knitting and scouring pots, entertaining the babe, and churning milk into butter as Mary took over my tasks of biscuit making and fire tending and cooking.

But worse, I was subjected to the captain’s amused glances whenever I happened to meet his eyes.

At least my humiliation was limited in its scope. None but the family, and the captain, knew of it. It would have shamed me to think of John having seen us. But it shamed me even more that though I could recall with vivid clarity the captain’s scent, and though I could remember the many variations in the color of his eyes, I could not do the same with John. Had he gray eyes or green? Blue or brown? And why was it that I did not know?