The widow's war (17 page)

August came as it always came: hot and humid at the start, then drying and dropping down until by the end they’d had their first night’s chill. Schooners full of blubber began to arrive from Canada and the try yard grew busy, filling the air with the heavy, noxious smell that had always meant prosperity, if not for Lyddie’s house now, then at least for the village as a whole. The English hay, salt hay, flax, and rye were harvested. The mill wheel never stopped churning. Lyddie picked her watermelons, took them to Sears to trade for turnip seed, and sowed the seed for a late harvest; at the same time she managed to sell Sears two pair of wool stockings, and her hopes of survival rose, to dash quickly once she returned home and saw her dwindling woodpile. She collected Edward’s ax and a tow sack and returned to the woodlot, intent on cutting up the windfall for kindling, but she hadn’t been at it more than an hour when she looked up and saw the
long, dark shadow moving through the trees as smoothly as warm oil. Lyddie propped the ax against a tree and turned to meet him, her own movements stiff as scorched paper.

He came up and stopped an easy distance from her. “So Freeman puts you to chop his wood?”

“Mr. Freeman’s gone back to Barnstable.”

“And when do you marry?”

“We do not. He’s thought better of the idea.”

“And what do you think of it?”

“I don’t think at all. I’ve given it up as bad practice.”

He bent over to pick up the ax, but Lyddie stopped him. “Please don’t, Mr. Cowett. I wish to say something to you. I wish to express my great remorse over what transpired at our last meeting. My son—”

“Owns no remorse, I’d wager.”

“No.”

“I see you don’t live with him any longer.”

“I do not.”

“You stay here and make your own way?”

“I attempt it, yes.”

Cowett picked up a dry branch, snapped it under his boot, and tossed it into the tow sack. “I’m in want of housekeeping yet.”

Lyddie hesitated, the reason she’d given up the job hanging thick in the air between them. She reached for the ax, but he caught her elbow with one hand and removed the ax with the other. She expected him to set off chopping, but he dropped the ax and stood staring down at the part of her sleeve that his fingers still encircled, transfixed. Rebecca’s gown, Lyddie realized. She was wearing Rebecca’s gown, and of course he would know the gown as he’d known the wife. It took him some time to pull his eyes off the dress and fix them on her face, but the hand stayed as it lay. “You’ll come to work?”

“I think—”

“You said you gave up thinking.”

“One must think at times.”

“One must give it up at times.”

If Lyddie hadn’t understood the words, she would have understood the hand. It slid upward, over Rebecca’s sleeve, familiar and warm, cupping the softer part of her arm. She had stepped away from that hand once and she could step away from it now, or she could stop thinking and take this simple thing that was being offered: the comfort of someone else’s living, breathing flesh to knock the dead out of her own. And where lay the sin in it, Indian or English? Neither of them belonged to another. When she thought of Eben Freeman now, she thought of him lying warm and sated in a pair of hired arms at some Barnstable tavern.

Sam Cowett’s other hand cupped her other elbow; Lyddie found herself leaning forward until his breath rippled her hair; he slid both hands upward along Rebecca’s sleeves until the backs of his fingers brushed against the edges of her breasts, and he turned his hands and caught and lifted them. Lyddie felt as naked as if her clothing lay beside her on the ground, but he didn’t attempt to take away the dress, he used it as a pair of handles to push her backward against the rock. His hands slid upward over Rebecca’s calico to Lyddie’s breasts again and down to Lyddie’s thighs; she felt the cold loss in one part as he brought up the heat in another, the desolation when the hands left her altogether, until she realized he’d just reached for his breeches and pushed them down. She clutched at his massive back, his hard buttocks, his long thighs; there was too much of him, not enough of him, over her, around her, in; she lost track of her hands, his hands; the dress balled up between them, but he wouldn’t take the time to remove it, Lyddie wouldn’t take the time, there was no time, they were finished.

It had seemed so easy: the plunging together and falling apart without any heavy landing; they’d caught their wind leaning on the rock, he’d touched her face, she’d touched his wrist, they’d departed in their separate directions. But as soon as Lyddie regained her own house, in front of the few remaining markers of her old world, Lyddie felt the sting of shame.

She spent a hot, burning, sleepless night, and the next morning she went to see Cowett to tell him that what had once been done could not be done again, but he was waiting for her; he pulled her straight into his damp, distressed sheets, and she went with him, thinking,
once more, just this once more,
but he must have felt it in her, felt her as stiff and awkward as that young girl Edward had lain with in the barn. He pulled back and looked at her.

“What’s tied you up?”

Lyddie called up the old list, thinking this time she might find a different answer to each question, but she sailed by all of them without flinching, landing once again at the foot of Eben Freeman, but this time for a different reason. Did she wish to be no more than that girl in the tavern? What now described any difference between that girl and herself, a few coins passed from hand to hand?

Sam Cowett gave her a shake. “Come. What’s got you?”

“There’s a girl in town makes her way off traveling men,” she began.

“So you wish to charge for this now, too, along with the cooking and cleaning?”

Lyddie lifted her face to look at him. She remembered a time when she’d been unable to see inside the black eyes; now they were laughing, mocking her shame, and it blew away like so much wind.

The Lyddie who sinned walked about town more comfortably than the Lyddie who hadn’t, and perhaps for that reason the new secret stayed secret, aided by the fact that Nathan Clarke had so thoroughly squelched the old rumor once he’d determined to accept her back into his family that to try to circulate the old tale now would have made him, not Lyddie, appear foolish. Lyddie officially returned to work for Sam Cowett, but as this was now old news, the townspeople paid little notice, and she found she could come and go under cover of that employment. Whenever Cowett was in from fishing Lyddie took all her meals with him and often lingered in his bed to be stroked awake at dawn, but she wished to court no trouble; when she traveled from his house to hers at such odd hours she traveled through the wood, not the road, and Cowett never came to her house at all.

During Lyddie’s waking hours the person she lay with was always Sam Cowett, their mournful, desperate urge their own, but in those first days she would sometimes come out of her dreams with the Indian’s hand between her legs and think it was Edward, or feel the stroke of sure, gentle fingers along her throat and be convinced they were Freeman’s. In either case, when she opened her eyes and saw the dark, carved face beside her a wild panic would wash over her, but as the weeks went by both the half-dreams and the panic left her.

Lyddie continued collecting coin for her cooking and cleaning, and bargained separately for Cowett to supply her with wood; she carefully measured out her remaining coins in piles: this for hay, this for meat, this for grain.

Sometimes, as the weeks went by and the days chilled and Lyddie mended Sam Cowett’s breeches or emptied his night jar or woke beside him hot and naked, she felt herself as married as she’d ever been to Edward. Sometimes she even thought of him as much like Edward, especially when they came together in that same old rush between his comings and goings, but other times she surprised a look in Sam Cowett that was total stranger, and whenever that happened, she felt a small seed of panic that she had dared to tie her fate to this man in a way she had not dared with Eben Freeman. But whenever such thoughts tried to topple her she reminded herself of the one big difference between the two situations, the one cornerstone of her existence: whatever else she might lose, she still had her own bed, and her own third of a house to keep it in. For the rest, she would manage.

One day at the end of September Lyddie milked the cow and put her to grass and was about to leave for Cowett’s when someone knocked violently on her front door. She rushed to open it and found Nathan Clarke on the doorstep.

“Good morning, Mother.” He stepped in and minutely surveyed the keeping room, stepped into the southwest chamber and surveyed that as well, then ran nimbly up the stairs and trod around in the attics. Lyddie’s first thought was that he’d come to reclaim his furnishings, but when he returned to the keeping room he said, “Very good, Mother. I’m pleased to see you’ve got things back to rights.” He stepped outside and in a minute was back inside, holding a stiff-jawed Silas Clarke by the elbow, a crumpled Patience and the five children trailing behind, carrying or dragging a meager collection of parcels.

“Sad to say, my Brother Clarke has lost his home to debt, but fortunately I was able to offer him accommodation here. Now then, Brother and Sister, you will understand that my mother holds right to a third of the fireplace and that chamber over there, as well as the buttery and pantry and cow space in the barn, but you’ve the run of the rest. You’ll find ample room and a nice collection of assorted beds for the children in the attics, and I’m sure the two of you will be quite comfortable in that southwest chamber. Your rent will be deducted from your pay at the tannery, Brother. I believe that takes care of all our business. Good-day to you both. And good-day to you, Mother.”

He left them.

Silas Clarke sat at the keeping room table and began to eat the pie Lyddie had set out to take to Cowett’s, while Clarke’s wife and children and Lyddie pulled beds out from under the eaves, aired and restuffed ticks, and spread them with the thin bedding Patience Clarke had managed to save from auction. Lyddie could no more afford to feed a family of seven than she could afford to sail to England, but as the five small faces watched in obvious torment as their father devoured the pie, Lyddie set out a loaf and a wedge of cheese and six good-size cups of the milk she had meant to turn into a pudding.

By the time the meal was eaten and the dishes cleared it was midmorning, and Lyddie was unsurprised to hear a second knock or to
open the door on Sam Cowett. The five children shrank back at the sight of him, and Lyddie couldn’t blame them for it—the Indian’s face was as hard and dark as her iron kettle.

“You don’t come,” he said.

Lyddie waved a hand at the various Clarkes, ranged behind her like a row of tombstones. “My son has just moved in his tenants.”

Cowett surveyed the silent Clarkes. The two men gave each other minimal nods. “I thought you sickened. Or dead.”

“I’ll be along shortly.”

“I’ll be gone shortly.”

“Is there new instruction?”

He surveyed the room again. “No.” He left them.

When Lyddie reached his house he was, indeed, gone, but she was not unhappy to find the place empty. Without him catching her up to take her into his bed she was able to complete a good number of tasks that had been let slide and still leave before the house’s shadow had stretched as far as the barn.

But when she returned to her own house she found Silas Clarke had already disposed of half her brandy bottle. She moved swiftly across the keeping room and snatched it off the table, went to her room and stowed it under Rebecca’s gowns, which had been put back in the bottom of her chest. She took up her new, unused letter book, returned to the keeping room and slapped it on the table.

“This is the tally book. I begin writing in it tomorrow. Any food or drink you take from me will be paid for, Mr. Clarke. Mrs. Clarke, you have the main cupboards for your larder and I’ll clear a shelf for you in the cellar; the pantry, however, is mine only.”

“Hah!” Silas said. “I’ve two vultures to live with now, have I?”

“I work to make my way, Mr. Clarke. I feed off nobody.”

“You feed off that Indian. ’Tis him pays you, doesn’t he? And so he should. So he should. Him who widows you supports you, that’s what I say.”

“Mr. Clarke,” Patience said, “would you care to give me some assistance with an unstable bed leg?”

“I give my assistance where ’tis most needed, and ’tis most needed right here. Widow Berry. Poor fool. Do you not hear what they say?”

“’Tis wobbling terribly, Mr. Clarke,” Patience said. “If you wish to sleep in comfort anytime soon—”

“A wobbly bed leg. That’s my brother, you may count on it. Never give away a whole when you might give away a part. And at such a rent.”

But he got up from the table and worked his way into his new chamber, where nothing was heard resembling repair of a bed leg, but something was heard resembling a poorly governed body falling onto a husk-filled bed tick. Soon afterward a snore that left little to an angry hog filled the house, and Patience Clarke emerged. Her worn-out face and the hollowed-out eyes of the children, still standing stumplike around the walls, pulled at Lyddie’s heart.

She spoke quietly to the mother. “Have you any funds?”

“I’ve kept out a small purse. Brother Clarke has set up my husband with a job at his tannery. Tomorrow I’ll go to Sears’s store and stock our cupboard, but for tonight, for the children—” She reached into her apron and pulled out the purse.

Lyddie pushed it away. “Tomorrow begins the tally book. Children, come.” The children rushed the table and Lyddie set out what seemed a vast part of her store of pickles, cheese, beer, and bread.

Lyddie ate her own meal in her room and retired early.

That night the first real cold and the new dream descended together. Since Edward’s death, Lyddie believed she’d not slept two solid nights together; she woke with every creak of pine bough, every
shriek of owl, every snap of fire. These abrupt wakings kept her dreams fresh for at least the period of time it took her to fall back asleep; some stayed fresh till morning. Most of her dreams were old stories, peopled with dead husbands or children, and at least initially this new dream seemed no different. It started as many of Lyddie’s dreams did: with her daughter Mehitable. Mehitable sat by the fire, sewing on Edward’s coat, shortening a sleeve so as to accommodate her husband’s lesser stature. Lyddie sat on the other side of the fire, knitting a pile of stockings that grew up so high it nearly hid her daughter from her. But Lyddie could see the coat; she recognized the coat; she spoke to her daughter.

“Why trouble yourself over that hem, Daughter? The coat wants a sleeve.”

But there Mehitable held up the coat, intact in every way, Edward’s coat, the coat he’d drowned in.

Lyddie woke to a flying pulse, accompanied by a lift of something like hope. The coat was whole. Edward was alive. That was his explosive breath across the passage…

But it wasn’t. Lyddie sat up. She had long experience with what the night could do to reason; she would not give way to it. She lay back down and cushioned her ears with her bolster.

The Clarkes were up and out early, Patience and the children to Sears’s store, Silas to the tannery. Lyddie arrived at Cowett’s before he’d set out.

Without hello he began, “Clarke means to keep those people there?”

“He’s within his right. He’s made the division according to the plan laid out by Mr. Freeman.”

“Mr. Freeman.” Cowett pushed away his plate and mug and stood
up. Lyddie leaned over to clear away the table, but Cowett came up at the rear, hooking her around the waist, burying his face in her neck. “I’ve no love for that man Freeman,” he said. “Or Clarke.”

“Which Clarke?”

“Either. But the one you’ve got under your roof ’s the greater menace. You’d best watch him.”

“I think I’d best watch you,” she said, laughing, because he’d already pulled up her skirt, but it was too late, he’d found her damp crevice and begun to work her with his fingers till she quickened, then he pushed into her from behind until she was left knee-less, clutching at the table.

He settled his breeches, shoved the remains of the loaf in his sack, said, “Come tonight,” and left her.

But Lyddie didn’t go back that night; the house never lay quiet enough for her to feel safe in making her exit. Patience stayed up arranging her pots and trivets around her side of the fire; a bat got in and swooped through the attics; the smallest child was finally gotten to sleep and almost at once woke crying, and, at last, when Patience had given up and gone to bed, Silas came back from the tavern and stood on the stoop, thundering, “Open the door! Open the bloody door, you vile woman! Will you shut me out? I’ll lay you open if you try it!”

Lyddie got up and found Patience Clarke hunched in front of the door, unwilling or unable to take the next move to open it.

“We needn’t fear a man who can’t find a latch and lift it,” Lyddie said, and she stepped to the door and opened it.

“Oh, the bloody pair of you. You’d keep me out, would you? Or did you think I was that bloody murdering Indian? You should thank your stars I’m here to protect you.”

“The door’s not bolted, Mr. Clarke. But as of tomorrow night it will be. See you’re in before dark or you may sleep at the tavern.”

Lyddie left them in a stunned silence, but until she heard Silas’s
snore, a signal that he’d trouble them no further, she couldn’t fall asleep. And when she finally slept, she dreamed, again, of Edward.

He lay on the keeping room table in Nathan Clarke’s house, with the wound in his skull and a terrible grayness in the skin, so absolutely dead that Lyddie could only listen to herself in astonishment as she argued with Mehitable over her husband’s clothes.

“No, you can’t have the boots for Nate. No, no, Edward needs his coat, he’s so greatly cold. Do you not feel his cold? And besides, you see? The coat is torn.”

But Mehitable was already easing the coat off the cold body, the dead body, which Lyddie knew full well to be dead, and still she reached out to stop her daughter, slapping away her hands, and Nathan Clarke said, “Mother, don’t be silly. You know that coat is mine now, to do with as I please.”

And the next minute there was Nathan in an untorn coat and there was Edward naked on the table with the great hole in his head and Sam Cowett looming over him, saying, “You see, Widow Berry? Did I not tell you he was dead?”

But Lyddie knew she shouldn’t believe him. She woke knowing it, and it stayed well into daylight, the insane notion that she shouldn’t believe Sam Cowett when he told her Edward was dead.