The widow's war (7 page)

Lyddie slept poorly. The room she’d been given smelled like paper and ink and horse and tobacco and sweat-dampened broadcloth; she began to suspect she’d been put to bed in the room Eben Freeman used while visiting his sister. The Hopkinses had two girls only left at home, but had in addition taken in an old woman called Aunt Goss, no living person’s aunt as far as anyone knew, but called so by Eben Freeman, who had been great childhood friends with her son. Aunt Goss’s husband had gone out of Nantucket on a whaler and not come back—it had been rumored he lived in the Azores with a mistress—and her one son had been gored by a bull and died some years previous. When Aunt Goss had become enfeebled, Eben Freeman had made arrangement with his sister and her husband to keep her at his charge. Aunt Goss lived in the tiny northeast bedroom, while Shubael and Betsey occupied the southwest one and Lyddie the southeast.
Which left Freeman where, up in one of the old beds on the boys’ side of the attics?

The suspicion seemed confirmed at breakfast when the table had to be cleared of several thick wallets of paper, and the thought that Lyddie had disrupted a second household made her dull. The conversation moved around the table with no great help from the others; the two girls fetched and carried in dragging silence; Aunt Goss seemed at best blind and deaf, and at the worst witless; she dropped her shriveled face as close to her plate as she could and picked at the same crust of bread with knotted fingers; Betsey chattered into the air on a variety of subjects that could interest no one but herself; Freeman ate with a steady concentration and an occasional indiscriminate “indeed,” or a nod of the head in his sister’s direction.

As Betsey wrapped the bread in a cloth Lyddie said, “Thank you for your hospitality, Cousin. I’ll be off as soon as I get my things together.”

“Off?” Freeman said. “I don’t know that I call that wise. Best you keep my sister company in my absence. I leave for Barnstable this minute.”

“Barnstable!” Betsey said. “What’s this news? And when was I to be told of it?”

Freeman attempted to signal his sister with a lifted finger, which Lyddie caught, but Betsey didn’t. Even Aunt Goss raised her head and looked back and forth between them like a small brown sparrow hunting seeds.

“Did I not say it yesterday?” Freeman said. “I’m sure I said it yesterday. I distinctly recall asking you what you wished me to bring you from Barnstable as my way of thanking you for your kind hospitality.”

“Hospitality! What a word between family! You fuss over me too much and I’ve often said it. Perhaps some small trifle; last time you gave handkerchiefs, did you not? Very nice. You know my taste; I’m much more simple-minded than some others in our village. Have you
seen Mrs. Smalley’s hair comb? Far too grand for me. But if you’re off to Barnstable, let me give you a package for Henry.” She left the room.

Freeman glanced at Aunt Goss, whose chin had dropped to her chest as if she were sleeping. He turned to Lyddie. “I’ve some trouble understanding my sister,” he said. “For instance, this gift. Common sense suggests a repeat of the handkerchiefs; instinct, however, directs me to the hair comb.”

“I think you understand your sister very well.”

“My wife was of a different nature. In some ways, you remind me of her. What you mean to say, you say.”

“And what I’d better not say as well.”

He smiled. “A small price to pay for the larger principle.”

Betsey came back with her parcel. Eben Freeman took it and stood. “Good-bye, Sister. Good-bye, girls. Good-bye, Widow Berry.” He glanced at Aunt Goss. Her mouth lay open, but her eyes had closed. Nonetheless, he stepped over to her and touched his lips to her temple. The eyes never opened, but Lyddie noticed the gnarled hand lifted just far enough to pat Freeman’s. He turned back to Lyddie. “Enjoy your visit.”

As soon as he was gone Betsey started up again. It was hard, very hard, to be left alone with an old woman and two sickly girls, her husband and sons all gone, not a single male relation left in the village. She’d understood her brother had had a good deal of business with Winslow over the millstream, and she’d looked forward to his having a nice, long stay in Satucket, but now he was gone to Barnstable. She hoped he remembered to stop at her son’s and deliver her package. Henry’s wife had served Betsey a turned leg of mutton on her last trip to Barnstable and she’d been determined not to say a thing about it, but when it appeared again the second day…

Lyddie stood. “I must be off,” she said.

“Off! Whatever are you saying? Did you not hear what Brother told you? You’re to stay here, he said. He said—”

“I must go, Cousin.”

Lyddie went to her room; Betsey followed and fussed around her as she assembled her belongings, but once she saw there was no turning her she gave over and went to fetch a wedge of cheese and loaf of bread for Mehitable in exchange for the eggs she’d delivered.

Lyddie left the house with Betsey’s voice and Aunt Goss’s sparrow eyes, open now, following her closely. She headed straight along the King’s road, but at Foster’s way she found herself cutting shoreward, thinking to avoid any traffic on the main road, and along with the traffic, any questions. The road was wet but firm and she found the first decent sun of April comforting. She thought of nothing else but the unexpected fineness of the day until she reached the Point of Rock and saw Bangs’s sloop in the channel, unloading lumber across the flats. Several men looked up as she passed, raised their arms in greeting, and went back to their business. What was one more housewife on the beach with her sack, collecting sand to scrub her floors? She turned left and strode the track along the sedge ground behind the lip of dune. She made poor time over the rough surface, and after a few rods, with a growing damp under the heavy hair at the back of her neck, she came to another opinion about the sun; by the time she reached Robbin’s landing she was dripping under her arms and between her breasts and thighs, but she had managed to come the whole way without speaking to anyone.

Lyddie left the shore for the landing road and continued down it until she reached the Cowett house. She saw Rebecca Cowett setting plants and waved to her but continued without stopping. When she reached her old house she circled it and went straight to the well. The dark, silky water gleamed up at her; she pumped a bucketful, and before the water even touched her lips she could taste the cool sweetness. She drank hard, and when she was through she dipped both hands in the bucket, splashing her face and neck and halfway up her arms. She bent down, removed her shoes and stockings, and dashed
water up under her skirt. She stood still until the breeze took hold of the wet spots and she shivered; she sank down and stretched her length on the grass to dry off in the sun. When had she last done such a silly thing as lie in the sun? she wondered. Before she’d become old enough to sew and scrub and cook; before the age of four, then.

Lyddie lay in the grass a long time, not to rest, but to feel her space between the two worlds: the damp earth below, the warm sun above. And in what world might she find Edward now? Lyddie wondered. But as she wondered, she discovered that along with her loss of faith in God she’d also lost faith in his heaven and hell. And had she also lost faith in Edward’s soul? No, she decided. He was too much with her. Which left her the problem that if Edward’s soul were neither above nor below, where was it? Did he walk the earth? And if he walked the earth, would he walk it here, in this place of his domestic comforts, or would he choose a place of power, such as the deck of a sloop, or the meetinghouse during town meeting, or even the tavern, where, as Edward had once said, ideas were born, along with the bastards? She knew too little of the world of men to say for sure what Edward might choose; she could say only what she might choose in the same instance. But even to say what she might choose didn’t answer the question, because Edward’s choices were not her choices. Her choices were this house or that house, this man or that man. Or herself, alone.

Alone. The word rang through her head like a promise. This house that was written so deeply on her heart, why must she leave it now? She had Betsey’s loaf of bread and a wedge of cheese that would keep her two days, three if she were parsimonious. Betsey would think her at Nathan’s; Nathan, if he cared, would think her at Betsey’s. Two or three days in her old corner, and she would ask for nothing more.

Something set off a trio of crows. They shot out of the woodlot, beating and screaming at the air. Lyddie sat up. The birds settled in
the garden on last year’s pumpkin vine, but whatever had spooked them continued to disturb their peace; they retched out their warning until Lyddie began to believe them. She got up, no longer wet, but certainly damp and most certainly stiff. She worked her spine straight and faced the birds. “Be gone!” she shouted.

The birds flew off, rebutting her all the way. Lyddie returned to the dooryard, picked up her sack, and went into the house. A hush as thick as pudding met her. And more damp. She felt a strong desire for tea and looked without hope at the shelf. Little of value remained on it but the odd bits of crockery, the salt box, the worn dough tray, several wooden trenchers and—she saw it without lifting her expectation—her rusted tin tea canister. She pried open the lid and found enough stale leaves for a day or two. She could feel her mouth relax, the corners rise. She went straight to the tinderbox and worked the flint, worked it and worked it without a spark. The fear rose in her. She had crossed her son and her lawyer. She had spurned her cousin. She should never have left Betsey’s; she should never have come here.

The rag caught. Lyddie fed it a few sticks from the bottom of the wood box and sat back on her heels, as breathless and sweating as she’d been during the walk. She picked up the bucket and returned to the well. The day had gone the way of most fine April days: one minute all sun and warmth, the next chill and gray. The crows had left their post in the garden; either the danger had not materialized and they had returned to the wood, or whatever it was that had scared them in the first place had now chased them farther away. Lyddie pumped the handle and filled her bucket, feeling the rawness of disuse in her upper arms, and again as she lugged the bucket up the path. Half the bucket went straight to the kettle and the kettle to the fire; the rest went by the door for washing. She was ready for food but decided not to eat; a meal postponed meant a meal saved. She went instead to her old room, the east chamber, the one Eben Free
man had posited as hers under law. She had left nothing on the bed but an old blanket to protect the tick; she’d expected Smalley’s daughter and her new husband to sleep on it next, but instead she would sleep on it, in her clothes, under the musty blanket, alone.

Alone. But why did she not feel alone? She pulled the blanket off the bed and carried it outside for a shake and a snap. She draped it over the inkberry bush and went back to inspect the bed tick. It had survived the mice but needed a good fluffing; she wrestled it outside to join the blanket. Next she swept up the mice droppings and dead insects and cobwebs that had collected in the corners, and by then she was starving. The tea was ready; since she had no milk or sugar or even molasses she took it straight, but Betsey’s loaf was sweet, and it all went down together in a welcome paste. She cut a thin wedge of cheese and looked around the keeping room, noticing other things that had been removed since her last visit: Edward’s pipe and tongs, his musket, the clock. And why not? Those things were Nathan’s now. Lyddie was surprised to discover in herself the sense of greatest loss over the musket. Edward had taught her to fire it back in the early days of their marriage, after a band of Iroquois had beaten in the door of his brother’s house in Duxbury, and although the Cape Indians had never troubled their English neighbors, Lyddie had shot more than one fox with that musket. She had taken comfort in that musket.

Lyddie finished her meal, scoured her plate and cup, brought in the bed tick and blanket, and stood idle.

In Lyddie’s old life there would have been much to do, so much that she wouldn’t see the end of it, but now she had no workbox for sewing or knitting, no flour for baking, no soap for washing, no tallow for candle making. Neither had she a garden to tend, a cow to milk, eggs to collect, or husband to feed and clothe.

It grew dark. Lyddie found three candles in the candle box, but as she had no book or handwork she decided not to waste them. She
banked the flame, went to her old room, and still in her clothes, got under the old blanket. She was more exhausted than she’d been in months, but instead of sleeping she lay awake, listening to the house.

She’d forgotten it. That creak, was it the shadblow outside the window, or the dried-out ship’s knee beam in the attic? And that scratching sound—bullbrier against glass, or mice? In the woods an owl—or was it a dying rabbit?—let out a wild screech, and Lyddie sat up. She swung her feet to the floor and felt the smooth planks that Edward had laid.

“Are you here?” she whispered.

Something answered with a dry rattle that could have been a man’s rusty laugh, watery cough, or last year’s corn husk.

Lyddie came awake with the mourning doves. As she walked to the necessary a lemon-pink band was just pushing up the gray sky on its eastern edge, and the tang of the sand flats caught at her nose. On her return trip to the house she noticed the plum bushes were in bloom and that a number of shoots had cleared the accumulated leaves in the garden.

She blew up the fire, boiled herself some weak tea, and cut a thin slab of bread; after that, for no good reason that she could think of, as she had nothing to put in it, she decided to go out into the garden and clear away the rot. She visited the barn first. It smelled of old dung, musty hay, and something dead, probably a trapped bird or a rodent. Nathan must have had no need of a new shovel or an ax because she found both of Edward’s left behind for Smalley to buy, but the only hoe was a broken one, with a bare foot of handle attached; she took it with her, along with an old sack to kneel on.

The minute Lyddie settled down on her knees the crows in the woodlot started up again; well let them, she thought, there’d be no corn for them to scavenge this year, and no flax for her to pull and spin into linen thread, and no cucumber or cabbage or squash or beans or anything else. So why did she bother over this bit of ground?

Lyddie’s mind continued to work along that theme, but her fingers paid no attention. They picked away the dead stuff first and then attacked the earth with the broken hoe—the soil came up in thick chunks like molasses candy, and she had to work it loose with her fingers.

Lyddie had worked well past the dinner hour and cleared an eight-foot square of earth when Eben Freeman rode up. He dismounted stiffly; it might have been that or it might have been the lack of his usual effort to disarrange his face that made him appear to have aged since their last visit.

“I’ve just been to Clarke’s in search of you,” he said. “My sister said you’d gone back, but the Clarkes were adamant you hadn’t.”

“And then you came here?”

“I knew full well where you’d be.”

“Clever.”

“I’m surprised to hear you say so. Having ignored my counsel, having deceived both my sister and myself—”

“I intended to deceive no one, Mr. Freeman.”

“And what do you intend to live on?”

“Your sister sent me away with a loaf and cheese for Mehitable, a small theft I hope to make good at a later time, but for now—”

“Do I understand you? You alienate all source of support and hinge your existence on a loaf and a cheese? Or do you count on whatever it is that might sprout by divine intervention out of bare ground?”

He pointed to the earth at Lyddie’s feet. She’d been prepared to
admit her intention of staying only two or three days, but how, then, to explain the garden? “Did you find your sister’s gift in Barnstable?” she asked instead.

By the look he gave her she might have asked him if he’d found the king’s jewels in Barnstable. “No, I did not. I was otherwise occupied the short time I was in town, and was in some hurry to return, thinking I might now resolve—” He broke off.

Lyddie dusted her hands and walked toward the house. Freeman followed her.

“I would ask you to dine, but you might guess the menu.”

“You can make a joke of this?”

“Yes,” Lyddie said, realizing it only as she spoke. “I’ve dirt on my hands, a catch in my back, and an ache in my stomach, but I feel more like myself than I’ve felt in months. My one difficulty at the moment is determining how I might repay a loaf and cheese. And I’m well aware I owe you for your recent services.”

“You owe me nothing. Your husband compensated me previously for all matters that might arise relating to his estate.”

“Very well, then.”

“Very well? By now I suspect he would like to strike me dead. To have set you off here alone, at odds with your son—”

“You’re not responsible for what I’ve done, Mr. Freeman, although as such an admirer of Mr. Otis I should think you of all people would understand it.”

“I am at a loss to know what Mr. Otis might have to do with this.”

“Did he not talk of a man’s right to sit as secure in his house as any prince in his castle?”

“A man, yes. A woman is another matter entirely.”

“Your Mr. Otis spoke of giving women the same rights as men.”

“He also spoke of giving them to the Negro, and yet he doesn’t free his own servant. Mr. Otis speaks in theories only. You cannot—”

“Why don’t you tell me what I
can
do, Mr. Freeman? If you must
continue this conversation, that would be a more useful topic. Am I or am I not allowed by law to be here?”

“You’re allowed by
law,
yes. But you must see, you’re too clever a woman not to see—”

“That the law will be of little use to me? I do see that, yes.”

Freeman’s face took on a muddy, slapped appearance. “Excuse me for disturbing you. Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon,” Lyddie said. She might have added something else to ease the parting, but her easing skills seemed to have played out along with Edward. She considered it no mean gift that she at least managed to say nothing else until Freeman had remounted his horse and departed.

Lyddie had just finished her much delayed dinner of bread and cheese when she heard another horse. She looked out, identified her son-in-law, and decided to take up a position of strength on the stoop, if for nothing else than to raise herself above him as he approached. It seemed to work. He bounced off the horse and strode up the walk like a deer flushed from the woodlot but slowed as he drew close and came to a full stop with some feet yet left between them.

“Well. ’Tis true, then.”

“I don’t know. If you mean am I here, then, yes.”

“And you think to stay.”

“I see no lawful reason why I should not occupy my third of the house.”

“While you deny me the sale of my portion? Do you expect me to feed and clothe you at the same time that you take food out of my own family’s mouth?”

“I expect nothing which—”

“You expect rightly, then. You’re no mother to me or to my wife. As of this date you’re cut loose.”

He turned and walked back to his horse. Nathan had always chosen leggy beasts, no doubt hoping it would augment his own stature; in fact, it made him appear nothing but what he was: a small man on a big horse.