The Endless Forest (71 page)

Finally Mrs. Wilde leans back in her chair, her lips pursed while she thinks. With her right hand she strokes the silk embroidery on the arm of her chair
.

“Well,” she says with a grimace. “Sugar water only goes so far. You’ll have to do. Go wait in the kitchen until Marjory comes to fetch you.”

There is no talk of salary or sleeping quarters, but those things can wait. She dare not make a sound that might change Mrs. Wilde’s mind
.

The servant called Marjory brings the infant to her in the kitchen. It looks like all new infants, its crumpled napkin of a face blotched bright red. It mewls like a kitten and then breaks into a thin cry. With trembling hands Lorena begins to undo her dress, but Marjory stops her with a sharp word
.

“No time for that. The coach waiting.”

She tells Lorena to bring her satchel, and leads her out into the rear courtyard where a coach is indeed waiting. The baby starts to cry in earnest. Lorena knows she should be asking questions, but she is so hungry and Marjory has put two baskets in the coach. From one comes the smells of roasted meat and new bread
.

As the coach makes its way through the lanes Lorena looks to the child, who latches on to her breast with a furious purpose. Her bodice soaked with milk, she can no longer ignore her own hunger. With her free hand she reaches into the food basket. The bread is rough and dry, the mutton burned on the outside and blood-red at the bone, but she fills her stomach, pausing only long enough to burp the child and put him to her other breast. There is a bottle of elderberry water in the basket too, and Lorena finishes it off in three long swallows
.

The child is asleep at her breast, its cheeks still working. There is the distinct smell of soiled clouts, and at that moment Lorena realizes she doesn’t know if this is a boy or a girl, or what name she should call it. In the half hour of talk in Mrs. Wilde’s parlor, she had said not one word about this baby
.

There are fresh clouts in the basket, and she sets about undressing the baby
.

A boy
.

Lorena’s breath catches in her throat, in sorrow, in relief. When she puts this baby to the breast she might, one day, be able to put aside the memory of her own child
.

When they stop to change horses Lorena learns that the driver knows no more than she does. He was hired only a few hours earlier, and his instructions are brief: He is to take the wet nurse and her burden to a house in Banfield, next to the Congregational Church, where Reverend TenHouten is expecting them. The rest Lorena can reckon for herself. She has been sent away from the city to take up the work of raising this unnamed, unwanted burden of a child who was most likely born on the same day, maybe in the same hour, as her own daughter
.

He yawns, the silky white cheeks rounding like pillows, and Lorena wonders who she is weeping for
.

Callie’s color had risen while Lorena talked. She had folded her hands on the table, but still they trembled. “Do you mean to say Jemima had nothing to do with raising him? It was all you?”

“Reverend TenHouten was kind. Nicholas thinks of him as an uncle.”

“But what of the baby’s name? He went almost ten years without a name?”

“Reverend TenHouten wrote to Boston and got a letter back saying we were to call the boy Nicholas.”

For once Ethan’s calm seemed on the verge of deserting him. “Jemima?”

Lorena’s brow lowered. “After the interview in Boston I never saw her again until the first of this year. First thing, she introduces Mr. Focht, says she’s remarried.”

There were so many questions to ask, Elizabeth could hardly order them in her mind. The others were not so hampered, and Lorena answered them one by one with a dignified calm.

“So you kept house for this minister—”

“TenHouten,” Lorena supplied. “A widower. I cooked and washed and kept his garden for him because he couldn’t anymore.”

“Wasn’t Nicholas frightened when Jemima showed up at your door? Had you told him about her?” Elizabeth asked.

“Of course I had,” Lorena said. “I told him everything I knew about his mother.”

“But you didn’t know if she was his mother,” Callie said. “You still don’t know. He could have been hers or some child she got out of the almshouse nursery.”

Lorena inclined her head, to acknowledge that Callie was right; there was no direct proof that the boy was in fact Jemima’s son by Callie’s father.

“What happened next?” Elizabeth asked.

Lorena was studying the table linen, her eyes tracing the pattern woven into the damask.

“They wanted to take Nicholas with them, to travel, they said. And they asked me along because Nicholas wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Ethan said, “Lorena, what do you know of Jemima’s plans? Why she brought him here just now, and what she hopes to gain.”

“They never talked about anything in my hearing,” Lorena said. “But they did talk in front of the other servants. The Africans, and Harper.”

That name hung in the air for a long moment.

“What did Harper know?”

“I don’t know. I never heard him talking about the orchard or apples or any bleeding heart.”

Levi put a hand on her shoulder in a gesture as simple and intimate as a kiss. He caught Elizabeth’s eye, his expression resolute. He was claiming Lorena as his own, which must be a good thing for them both, but was likely to confuse things even further before the current problem could be sorted through.

Ethan cleared his throat, and all faces turned toward him.

“It’s pretty clear to me that Jemima has been planning something for a good long while. The first step was making sure Martha didn’t marry in Manhattan. A husband’s claim nullifies a mother’s, and she would have been cut off right then.”

“Seems like Daniel and Martha handled that on their own. She is married now, after all,” Nathaniel said.

“And so am I,” Callie said. “But I think I understand now what is supposed to happen. If my father has a legitimate male heir in Nicholas, then the orchard and everything in it belongs to Nicholas and not to me. In that case it doesn’t matter if I’m married or not. But there is a solution. I’ll sell the orchard to Levi.”

Levi himself drew in a sharp breath, but Callie went right on. “We can draw up a sales contract right now. Everything goes to Levi for—how much would he have to pay for the courts to uphold the sale?”

“I don’t know that they would uphold it,” Ethan said. “Most likely they wouldn’t. But I am sure that any legal challenge they mount would take many years to come to trial.”

Nathaniel said, “Levi, could you pay a hundred dollars?”

Levi shook his head. “I got thirty, saved up over the last years. But Lorena has got some put aside too. Don’t you?”

In the silence that followed Callie said, “Does this mean you’re getting married?”

“We were hoping to,” Levi said.

“Well, then,” Callie said. A pulse was beating in her throat. “If you get married tomorrow and we settle the sales contract right after—” She broke off.

“What?” Ethan said. “Finish your thought.”

“Then I’d be free of it all, the cider press and the new house and the Bleeding Heart. And Jemima, once and for all.”

Lorena said, “What about Nicholas?”

Callie pushed away from the table so suddenly that her chair almost toppled. She looked at each of them in turn.

“Nicholas isn’t going anywhere,” she said. “I’ll see to it.”

Martha said, “I have never had so much fun playing a game. My ribs are aching from laughing so much.”

She yawned widely and put her head back against the wall of the new stable, watching Daniel as he went about the evening chores. Hopper was tugging at her skirts, and she tugged back companionably.

Daniel ran a hand over Little Jo’s back and the mare nudged him affectionately. Beside her Abel rocked his head and knickered.

“Two days and the horses are already under your spell,” Martha said. “Maybe horses talk to each other about men, the way men talk about horses. Maybe they heard from Florida that you speak horse and are generous with oats.”

Daniel grinned at her. “And what do they say about you, do you think?”

“That’s easy. They know I’m just another woman who sits a saddle well enough but is too dense to understand them when they talk to me.”

Daniel was still laughing to himself when they left the stable, walking toward the house. Tonight the stars were bright enough to throw a shadow, so that they didn’t even need a lantern. Hopper leaped ahead of them, and Martha yawned again.

Daniel opened the door for her and she went into the darkened house. Then he spoke a firm word and the pup slunk over to his blanket and settled down with a put-upon sigh.

Daniel said, “Does all this yawning mean that you’re so tired you want to go directly to sleep?”

She bit back a smile. “What else did you have in mind?”

“Chapter twelve of the French Lady,” Daniel said, his hand sliding down her back to cup the curve of her hip. “If you can stop yawning long enough to listen.”

A half hour later Martha interrupted Daniel and said, “I hate that she calls it that, the little death.”

Daniel slipped a marker between the pages and put the book aside. Then he took her wrist and pulled her up closer for a brief kiss.

“Wait,” Martha said. “It doesn’t bother you to compare that—that event—to death?”

He smoothed the hair away from her face. “You have heard how dramatic the French can be on this subject, but yes, I suppose it is a strange way to describe it. Do you have a better suggestion?”

Martha fell back against the pillows. “I have no idea. I don’t think it’s possible to name something like that. Could you describe what it feels like to sneeze?”

“What an odd conversation,” Daniel said.

“Don’t you see? Everyone knows what it’s like to sneeze, so there’s no need to worry about explaining it.”

“You don’t like
climax?
The word, I mean?”

She made a face at him. “It’s a very cold word.”

Martha started to roll away from him, but Daniel pinned her down. “Are we done talking?”

“Not yet,” she said, and he kissed her through a broad grin. “I think I know what the problem is,” Daniel said. “It’s impossible to think clearly wearing clothes. Let’s take care of that first.”

Martha said, “I believe you could make a fortune wagering at cards. You are ruthless when you want something.” She took a deep breath and then another while her nerves kicked and her heart settled into a normal rhythm.

Daniel had collapsed beside her. He said, “Is that a complaint?”

“Lord, no,” Martha said, smiling in the dark.

“You haven’t come up with a substitute for ‘the little death,’ I take it.”

“Right now my own name is a bit of a challenge. And if you don’t stop that, I’ll have to pinch you.”

“I don’t remember you being so quick to retaliate as a girl,” Daniel said. “Except maybe for that time the Ratz boys put a snowball in your boots.”

“You remember that?” Her voice came muffled because she had turned onto her stomach. “I did love those Saturday afternoons playing in the snow.”

She sat up suddenly.

“What?”

“It’s like sledding,” she said.

“What’s like sledding?”

Martha wished she could keep from blushing and decided she should simply ignore what she could not control. She had something to say, and she could say it to Daniel. She could.

“You know, the—climax.”

“Ah,” Daniel said, one eyebrow riding up his brow. “Go on.”

“Well, it’s like sledding. You work your way up the hill dragging the sled. All you can think about is getting to the top so you can let go and
feel the wind rushing over you on the way down. Sometimes you don’t get to the top and you go slipping back down and you have to start all over again.”

Daniel laughed. “Go on.”

“You know the way your stomach drops when the sled tips over the top and starts down? That clenching excitement? That’s what it’s like. It takes your breath away and your whole body curls into itself to hold on to that feeling. And the longer the climb to the top, the greater the excitement. When you finally get to the bottom, you’re covered with sweat no matter how cold it is, and you’re breathless.”

“Sledding,” Daniel said.

She rubbed her face against him. “Isn’t it like that for you?”

“No,” Daniel said. “I can say with complete certainty that there’s nothing even remotely snowy about it for me.”

“Too bad,” said Martha.

“Too bad?” Daniel let out something that could only be called a giggle. “There’s nothing bad about it at all.”

“I mean, I wish I could understand what it feels like, for you.”

Daniel shifted her so they were lying face-to-face. “I’m right fond of sledding,” he said. “And I’ll chase you up that hill any time the mood strikes you. On the way down maybe I can tell you what it’s like for me. Your heart just picked up a beat, Mrs. Bonner. You like talking about this?”

“Um,” Martha said, a flush crawling up her breast. “I think what I like best is when you talk, and I listen.”

When Callie thought back on her school days in Elizabeth Bonner’s classroom, the lessons that came to mind first, the ones she took most to heart, had to do with logic. Or, as Miss Elizabeth had called it, rational thinking.

Many times over the last years she had felt herself on the verge of despair and even desperation, and in every case she was able to talk herself into a better frame of mind. Hard work was no guarantee of success; she understood that, because she had lived it. On the other hand, hard work was all anyone needed for a good night’s sleep. She herself always fell to sleep straight away and she slept deeply. She woke at five every morning without a clock and without fail, and by six she was hard at work. Even
in the deep of winter when blizzards held her captive she was busy. There were tools to repair or sharpen; the hearth must be fed, and if she did not cook, she could not eat. She made clothes for herself and Levi both; she traded her own cider for Molly Nobel’s raw wool, which she spun into yarn, which she knitted into socks and mittens; she made soap and dipped candles. Once a year she bought a pig from one of the farmers and helped with the butchering in order to bring the price down, after which came salting or smoking.