The Taker (11 page)

“Forgive me for coming to see you unannounced, but I had to speak to you alone,” I said, looking over my shoulder to be sure her husband wasn’t close by. “I will speak plainly, as there is no time for niceties. I think you know what I have come to discuss with you. Jonathan shared with me—”

She crossed her arms and gave me a steely look. “He told you, did he? He had to boast to someone that he has made me with child?”

“Nothing of the sort! If you think he is pleased that you are going to have a baby—”

“
His
baby,” she insisted. “And I know he’s not pleased.”

I saw my opening. I’d been thinking about what I would say to Sophia from the moment Jonathan had ridden away from me the day before. Jonathan had come to me because he needed someone
who could be ruthless with Sophia on his behalf. Someone who could make clear to her the weakness of her position. Sophia would know that I understood what she faced; there would be less room for conjecture and appeal to emotion. I wasn’t doing this because I hated Sophia, I assured myself, nor because I resented that she’d usurped my place in Jonathan’s life. No, I knew Sophia for what she was. I was saving Jonathan from this wily harridan’s trap.

“With all due respect, I must ask you what proof you have that the baby is Jonathan’s? We have only your word, and …” I trailed off, letting my implication linger in the air.

“What are you, Jonathan’s solicitor now?” Her face reddened when I didn’t rise to the bait. “Aye, you’re right, it could be either Jeremiah’s or Jonathan’s, but I know it’s Jonathan’s. I
know
.” Her hands wrapped around her belly though she showed no sign of pregnancy.

“You expect Jonathan to ruin his life on your
assurances
—”

“Ruin his life?” she shrieked. “What about my life?”

“Yes, what about your life,” I said, drawing myself up as tall as I could. “Have you thought what will happen if you publicly accuse Jonathan of fathering your baby? All you will accomplish is to let it be known that you are a loose woman—”

Sophia chuffed, spinning on her heel away from me, as though she couldn’t bear to hear another word.

“—and he will deny the affair. Deny that he could be the father of the child. And who will believe you, Sophia? Who would believe that Jonathan St. Andrew would choose to dally with you when he can have his pick of any woman in the village?”

“Jonathan will deny me?” she asked, incredulous. “Don’t waste your breath, Lanore. You’ll not convince me that my Jonathan would ever deny me.”

My
Jonathan, she’d said. My cheeks burned, my heart hammered. I do not know where I found the nerve to say the evil things to Sophia that I said next. It was as though another person was hidden inside me, one with qualities I’d never dreamed I possessed, and this hidden
person had been summoned from inside me as easily as a genie is conjured from a lamp. I was blind with rage; all I knew was that Sophia was threatening Jonathan, threatening to ruin his future, and I would never let anyone harm him. He wasn’t
her
Jonathan, he was mine. I’d claimed him years ago in the vestibule of the church, and foolish as it may seem, I felt that possessiveness rise in me, fierce and primordial. “You’ll make yourself a laughingstock—the homeliest woman in St. Andrew claiming that the most eligible man in town is the father of her child, not the oaf who is her husband. The oaf she despises.”

“But it
is
his child,” she said, defiant. “Jonathan
knows
that. Does he not care what would happen to his own flesh and blood?”

That gave me pause; I felt a guilty twinge. “Do yourself a favor, Sophia, and forget your mad scheme. You have a husband—tell him the child is his. He’ll be glad for the news. I’m sure Jeremiah has wished for children.”

“He has—for children of his
own
,” she hissed. “I cannot lie to Jeremiah about the child’s lineage.”

“Why not? You’ve lied to him about your fidelity, no doubt,” I said ruthlessly. Her hatred was so palpable at that moment, I thought she might strike at me like a snake.

The time had come to drive the stake through her heart. I looked her up and down with hooded eyes. “You know, the punishment for adultery for the female partner, if she is married, is death. That is still the position of the church. Consider this, if you insist on going through with your decision. You will seal your own fate.” It was a hollow threat: no woman would be put to death for being an adulteress in St. Andrew, nor in any frontier town where women of childbearing years were scarce. The punishment for Jonathan, if the townspeople decided by some wild chance that he was guilty, would be to pay the bastardy tax and perhaps be ostracized by some of the town’s most pious for a short while. Without a doubt, Sophia would bear most of the burden.

Sophia whirled around in circles as though searching for unseen tormentors. “Jonathan!” she cried, though not loudly enough for her
husband to hear her. “How could you treat me like this? I expected you to behave honorably … I thought that was the kind of man you were … Instead, you visit upon me this viper”—she shot me another venomous look through teary eyes—“to do your evil work for you. Don’t think I don’t know why you do this,” she hissed, pointing a finger at me. “Everyone in town knows you’re in love with him but that he will not have you. It’s jealousy, I say. Jonathan would never send you to deal with me in this way.”

I had prepared myself to be cool. I backed a few steps away from her as though she was mad or dangerous. “Of course he told me to see you—otherwise, how would I know you are with child? He has despaired of being able to make you see reason and has asked me to speak to you, as a woman. And as a woman, I tell you: I know what you are up to. You are using this misfortune to better your lot, to trade in your husband for someone with means. Perhaps there is not even a baby. You look the same as always to me. As for my relationship with Jonathan, we have a special friendship, pure and chaste and stronger than that of brother and sister, not that I would expect you to understand it,” I said, haughtily. “You don’t seem to be able to comprehend a relationship with a man that doesn’t involve lifting your skirts. Think hard on it, Sophia Jacobs. It is your dilemma and the outcome is in your hands. Choose the easiest path. Give Jeremiah a child. And do not approach Jonathan again: he doesn’t wish to see you,” I said firmly, then left the barn. On the path home, I trembled with fear and with triumph, burning from spent nerves despite the cold air. I had summoned all my courage to defend Jonathan and had done so with a single-mindedness I didn’t know I possessed. I had rarely ever raised my voice and had never forced my position so vehemently on anyone. To know I had such an inner power was frightening, and yet also thrilling. I walked home through the woods, light-headed and flushed, confident that I could do anything.

NINE

I
t was the noise that woke me the next morning, a musket fired, ball and powder. A musket shot at this hour meant trouble: a fire at a neighbor’s house, a raiding party, a terrible accident. This shot came from the direction of the Jacobses’ farm; I knew it as soon as I heard it.

I pulled the blanket over my head, pretending to be asleep, listening to the murmurs coming from my parents’ bed below. I heard my father rise and dress, and go out the door. My mother followed, probably wrapping a quilt around her shoulders as she went about the tasks she did every morning, stoking the fire and starting a pot of water to boil. I swung around to sit upright, reluctant to put the soles of my feet on the cold plank floor and start what seemed heralded to be a strange and ill-fortuned day.

My father came back inside, his expression grim. “Get dressed, Nevin. You must come with me,” he said to the groaning lump in the bed downstairs.

“Must I?” I heard my brother ask in a voice heavy with sleep. “There’s the cattle to feed—”

“I’ll go with you, Father,” I called down from the loft, pulling on my clothing hastily. My heart was already beating so hard that it would be impossible to remain in the house and wait for news of what had happened. I had to go with my father.

A snow had fallen in the night, the first of the season, and I tried to clear my mind as I walked behind Father, concentrating only on stepping into the footsteps he made in the fresh snow. My breath hung in the crisp air and a drop of mucus beaded on the tip of my nose.

Sitting in the hollow before us was the Jacobses’ farm, a brown saltbox on the broad expanse of white snow. People had begun to congregate, distant small dark shapes against the snow, and more were coming to the farm from every direction, on foot and on horseback; the sight made my heart start to race again.

“We’re going to the Jacobses’?” I asked of my father’s back.

“Yes, Lanore.” A taciturn reply, with his customary economy of words.

I could barely contain my anxiety. “What do you think has happened?”

“I expect we’ll find out,” he said patiently.

There was a representative present from every family—except the St. Andrews, but they lived at the farthest reach of town and could scarcely have heard the shot—everyone in mismatching layers of dress: dressing gowns, uneven hems of a nightshirt peeking out from beneath a coat, hair uncombed. I followed my father through the small crowd until we’d nudged our way to the front door, where Jeremiah kneeled in the muddied, chopped snow. He’d obviously shoved himself hastily into breeches, boots unlaced on his feet, and a quilt draped over his shoulders. His ancient blunderbuss, the gun that had fired the alarm, leaned against the clapboard siding. His great ugly face contorted in agony, his eyes red, his lips cracked and bleeding. He was usually such an emotionless man that the sight was unnerving.

Pastor Gilbert pushed his way to the front, then crouched low so
he could speak softly into Jeremiah’s ear. “What is it, Jeremiah? Why did you sound the alarm?”

“She’s missing, Pastor …”

“Missing?”

“Sophia, Pastor. She’s gone.”

The hush of his voice sent a wave of murmurs through the crowd, everyone whispering to the person on either side of them, except for me and my father.

“Gone?” Gilbert placed his hands on Jeremiah’s cheeks, cradling his face. “What do you mean, she is gone?”

“She is gone, or someone has taken her. When I awoke, she was not in our home. Not in the farmyard, not in the barn. Her cloak is gone but her other things are still here.”

Hearing that Sophia—angry, perhaps feeling she had naught to lose—had not revealed my visit to Jeremiah eased a tightness in my chest that I hadn’t realized was there. At that moment, may God forgive me, I was worried not so much for a woman wandering bereft in the great woods as I was for my own part in her undoing.

Gilbert shook his white head. “Jeremiah, surely she has just stepped out for a bit, a walk perhaps. She will be home soon and sorry to have caused her husband worry.” But even as he spoke, we all knew he was mistaken. No one went walking for recreation in weather this cold, first thing in the morning.

“Calm yourself, Jeremiah. Let us take you inside, to warm yourself before you get a bone chill … Stay here with Mrs. Gilbert and Miss Hibbins, they’ll see to you while the rest of us search for Sophia—won’t we, neighbors?” Gilbert said with false enthusiasm as he helped the big man to his feet and turned to the rest of us. Speculation passed in the sideways glances of husband to wife, neighbor to neighbor—so the new bride has left her husband?—but no one had the heart to do anything but take up the pastor’s suggestion. The two women escorted Jeremiah, stumbling and dazed, into his house and the rest of us broke up into groups. We looked for a line of footprints in the snow leading
away from the house, hoping that Sophia’s path had not been trampled by those who had answered Jeremiah’s shot.

My father found one set of tiny footprints that could have been Sophia’s and the two of us began to trace her steps. With my eyes trained on the snow, my mind raced ahead, wondering what had drawn Sophia from her house. Perhaps Sophia had stewed over my words all night and woke with her mind made up, to have it out with Jonathan. How could our confrontation not have something to do with her disappearance? My heart beat fiercely as we followed the footprints that I feared would lead to the St. Andrews’ house, until the snow disappeared in the deeper woods and with it, Sophia’s tracks.

Now we followed no discernible path, my father and I, the forest floor a dizzying patchwork of bare, hard ground and thinly scattered scabs of snow and dead leaves. I had no idea if my father was picking up telltale signs of Sophia’s path—snapped branches, crushed leaves—or if he pushed on out of a sense of duty. We traveled parallel to the river, the sound of the Allagash to my left. Usually I thought the sound of water rushing over rock comforting, but not today.

Sophia had to have been moved strongly by something to venture into the woods by herself. Only the hardiest villagers went into the forest alone because it was easy to lose your way in the sameness. Acre after acre of forest unfurled in a repetition of birch and spruce and pine, and the regularity of boulders pushing their way up through the forest floor, all covered with extravagant mosses or crackled with celadon lichens.