Charity ate her dinner in the common room of the inn, savoring the baked codfish, the bread made of rye and Indian corn, and the numerous fresh vegetables—all most welcome after her dull shipboard fare. She spent her first night in months in a bed that did not rock and pitch beneath her and went to sleep planning the gifts she would give her relatives in Dynestown: for Cousin Patience, a lovely swatch of rose silk, for Cousin Matthew a length of russet woolen fabric, and for Aunt Temperance a large quantity of glossy black silk lutestring.
The ride to Dynestown was made on the back of a sorrel mare, following a laconic guide who bestrode a big gray horse. Two packhorses carrying her trunks labored along behind her. It seemed a daunting venture to Charity as they plunged into the trees that rose up like a green wall before them, picking their way along a narrow trail. Surprisingly, there was an inn or “ordinary” tucked into a bend of the trail at the end of their day’s journey, which served a satisfying dinner of wild turkey and carrots, pumpkin bread and apple cider.
Her guide, Goodman Tolliver, a middle-aged man of grumpy appearance who by now, under the influence of large flagons of hard cider, had become quite friendly, opened his mouth as if to speak, closed it again, and then said suddenly, “Methinks you do dress dangerous, to be goin’ where you do be goin’.”
Flagon in hand, Charity puzzled over this. “How so?” she asked.
He nodded at the sober dark blue serge of her full-skirted dress, which she had worn against the rigors of riding side-saddle through brush and briars. “I’d be takin’ off those ribbons afore we reach Dynestown,” he said dryly.
Charity looked down at the dress’s sole decoration, a gay little fringe of yellow ribbons trailing down the bodice, and stared at him. “Why?”
“They be puttin’ women in the stocks for less,” he said. “Last fall old Goody Bennington, and her all of seventy-six year, were put in the pillory for speak-in’ ill of her husband. And Mistress Phoebe Blackwood, and her not yet eighteen, was whipped twenty lashes for wearin’ a red petticoat.”
“How did they know it was red?” demanded Charity tensely.
“Mistress Phoebe tripped and fell in the churchyard,” he said in a moody voice. “So then everybody knew.” He took another great draught of cider.
Charity thought uneasily of her own petticoat, which was of a light-hearted yellow to match the ribbons on her dress—and which Goodman Tolliver undoubtedly had seen as she swung up onto the back of the sorrel mare.
“It be a fierce upright town, Dynestown,” he mused. “Last December . . .” His voice trailed off.
“What happened last December?”
“Two Quakeresses walked naked up the church aisle.”
“Naked?” asked Charity weakly.
“Stark naked. It was their way of sayin’ the preachin’ was nonsense and should be shucked off, y’see? I were there,” he added with a sigh, “and what happened to them weren’t pretty.”
Charity swallowed, waiting.
“They let those women put on their petticoats, but kept them stripped to the waist, tied them to a cart’s tail and walked them through the snow right out of the Colony. Eleven times they stopped the cart and gave them each ten lashes on their bare backs.”
Charity shivered.
“You do well to say not too much, nor yet smile too much, if you would live in Dynestown,” he reflected.
“But surely—” cried Charity.
“There’s some as has been branded on the forehead, and others as has had their ears nailed to the pillory and then cut free—cut their ears off, that is. And many terrible whippings.”
Charity no longer felt hungry. She pushed away her wooden plate and went off to her bed, which was in a loftlike upper room of the tiny inn. She did not think of gifts that night. A fear of the place she was going to had taken root and was growing.
Leaving at dawn the next morning, they once again plunged into the woods. Charity, who had removed the yellow’ ribbons from her dress and changed her yellow petticoat for a white one, noted the approval of her guide as she swung up on her mount. It sobered her as they rode through the dense forest. Twice they crossed water, fording it, the horses splashing through the shallows, slipping dangerously on the rocks.
The monotony of the ride, the jogging gait of her horse, made her brood about a dream she had had the night before. She had had the same dream many times in England, had dreamed it intermittently from the time she was twelve years old. It always brought blushes to her cheeks, for in that dream she stood stark naked in some strange place, her bright hair rioting about her white shoulders, her whole body trembling with desire—and walked into the arms of her lover.
As always, his face eluded her. Would he be dark or fair? Rich or poor? Would she find him easily, would she know him at once? Or would her search for him be long and difficult?
She only knew deep in her heart that some day, some wonderful day, she would live out that dream, and it would have beauty and meaning for her beyond anything she had ever known.
Her face softened, thinking of it.
Then her horse stumbled in some berry bushes and she got a long scratch on one arm The lover-yet-to-be was forgotten as she came abruptly back to reality.
Looking about, she saw that they were approaching cultivated fields, and in silence they rode into the village of Dynestown.
They passed a handful of cottages made of wood with big chimneys and high sloping roofs and a few small windows with leaded panes that seemed somehow to peer after her as she passed. Several dogs wandered listlessly in the streets. Near the meeting house, a large and forbidding building, stood the stocks and the pillory.
There was no victim. Charity gave a sigh of relief. Goodman Tolliver might have been trying to scare her for reasons of his own; perhaps he had told her tall tales because he enjoyed seeing her look frightened.
When he turned and gave her a sardonic look, she wasn't so sure.
“This be Dynestown,” he announced unnecessarily. “You’ll be to Goodwife Arden’s, which is t’other side of town.”
After that pronouncement, he rode forward with Charity following.
She passed two women in sober Puritan dress, and smiled at them.
They did not smile back.
Charity rode on through the village, feeling rather forlorn. As she reached the end of it, she turned and looked back. Several people, both men and women, had come out of their houses and were staring after her.
She told herself uneasily it was because she was a stranger, and nudged her horse with her knee to move closer to her guide. She rode the rest of the way close beside him through the dappled sun and shade of the New England afternoon. He turned off after a bit and they plodded down a green country lane thickly shadowed by tall trees, and came at last to her inheritance: Uncle Jason’s farm.
The house was a disappointment. Built of weathered wood and innocent of paint, its graying boards exposed to the weather, it loomed before her out of the trees. She took an instant dislike to its steeply slanted roof, its bulging overhang and tiny windows that peered down from the second floor.
As they entered the yard, aflap with running chickens and geese, a woman came out of the house. She was dressed in the plain garb of the Puritans, dark brown holland, full-skirted, with a white collar and cuffs and white cap. Her expression was noticeably dour.
Could this be Aunt Temperance, wondered Charity uneasily, hoping against hope that this was a maidservant and Aunt Temperance would be a rosy-cheeked, bustling, kindly soul.
Her guide stopped his horse and said gravely,
“Good even’, Goodwife Arden. I do be bringin’ your niece from England.”
Charity slid off her horse and her aunt stepped forward, eyes narrowing. She was a big woman, tall and spare, with turned-down mouth and pale smoldering eyes.
“You do not look to be from Cheltenham House,” she muttered.
“Nevertheless I’m Charity Woodstock,” said Charity, taken aback at her t
one of welcome. “And you’re Aunt Temperance?”
The woman nodded, her gaze sweeping critically over Charity’s lissome young figure in the tight-bodiced dress. She compressed her lips, then turned to the driver.
“Wilt thou take a drink of cider, Goodman Tolliver?” she asked.
“Aye,” he said, dismounting. “Twould ease my thirst some. But I must make it quick for I’m for Wvefield this night.”
“And pray what’s in Wyefield that you must hurry there so fast?” she asked, as the three of them—Charity feeling rather lost—went into the big kitchen where Aunt Temperance poured three flagons of cider.
Charity sipped hers gratefully, for she was hot and tired after the long ride. But she set her flagon down when Goodman Tolliver said grimly, “I’m to escort two Quakers to the border, tied to a cart end.”
“Good riddance,” said Aunt Temperance tersely. “Be they the ones that broke bottles in meeting there last Sabbath?”
“The same,” he said heavily. “And now they’ll be whipped to the border.”
“Why did they break bottles?” wondered Charity.
“Why, ’twas to symbolize how hollow is our faith, so they said.” He shrugged.
“They be the devil’s brood,” muttered Aunt Temperance. “We’ll be well shut of them.”
When Goodman Tolliver had gone Charity felt suddenly forlorn without him; he had at least tried to warn her what Dynestown was like.
Aunt Temperance, who was sparing of words, went to the door and called, “Matthew.”
Cousin Matthew, a big bulky fellow with heavy features, strolled in, gazed at Charity with awe as he was introduced, and at Aunt Temperance’s direction picked up the heaviest trunk. His big muscles did not even strain at the task as he carried it up the narrow wooden stairway to the second floor.
“Mother says she be puttin’ you in my room,” he said to Charity, who followed.
“But—where will you sleep?” wondered Charity.
He nodded down the hall. “The attic.”
Charity protested, weakly. The house was a dark shivery place, for all its small size, and she would have been afraid to sleep in the attic end herself. “That’s very nice of you, Matthew,” she said gravely.
He grunted and went down for her other trunk, his heavy footsteps shaking the wooden stair.
After he had gone, leaving her to open her trunks and unpack, Charity sat down on the edge of the four-poster bed, which was the best article of furniture in the room. It had a hard lumpy mattress and a serviceable brown linen coverlet. A rude chest of sorts occupied one corner of the room, and a wooden straight chair. A little pine washstand held a bowl and a pitcher, and inside its door a chamber pot. Flimsy unbleached cotton curtains hung limply at the small window. No rug adorned the floor planks. Charity looked around her in dismay.
Was this the inheritance she had traveled so far to receive? This gloomy farmstead, peopled with her dour relatives, on the outskirts of a fanatical village that whipped young girls and put old ladies in the pillory?
With shaking hands she unpacked a few of her things and put them in the rude wooden chest—then in panic, grabbed them up again and replaced them in her trunk and closed it. She tried to find something suitable to wear to dinner, and settled at last on a dove-gray satin with slashed sleeves that showed to advantage the frothy white lace of her chemise sleeves. Surely no one could object to gray! With feverish fingers she tore off the pink satin rosebuds that decorated the shoulders and skirt. There—completely plain! And elegant, as befitted her new position. Stéphanie had warned her that when she went to the New World she must at all costs keep up appearances. Now, wild laughter welled to Charity’s lips at the thought. Appearances! Here in this savage place Stéphanie would probably be executed for the gorgeous, low-cut and diaphanous gowns she wore!
Her hair brushed and shining, Charity took a deep breath and, carrying the gifts she had brought, went down to dinner.
The family was ranged below stairs—ranged, she felt, against her—as she came down, and she could not know how sophisticated her gray satin dress seemed to them, or how evilly wicked her slashed sleeves.
Aunt Temperance stepped forward and cast a venomous look at Charity’s sleeves. “Slashed sleeves be sinful,” she declared. And peering further at the full froth of white lace chemise that issued fashionably from them, “Lace!” she cried as if she had discovered a viper hiding there.
Charity remembered again how, under Stéphanie's urging, she had sought to bring only the finest with her. She bit her lip. “I—have none without lace,” she said, remembering how most of her lovely underthings had been torn to shreds in an attempt to staunch the leaking ship during the great storm.
“You have none without lace?” demanded Aunt Temperance incredulously and rolled her eyes to heaven.
“That’s right,” said Charity unhappily.
“Then thee will not go out of doors until more canst be made for thee,” instructed Aunt Temperance severely. “Wouldst end up in the stocks!”
Charity blanched and looked nervously down at the offending lace that had seemed so lovely when Stéphanie had touched it and said, “Ah, ma chérie, you will break all hearts when you wear this!”
“Well, no matter now, there’s none to see you save ourselves,” Aunt Temperance said, and abruptly introduced her to Cousin Patience, a pale, round-faced girl with dull brown hair pulled back severely under a cap. Patience, who also wore serviceable brown holland, stared at Charity with the same fixed attention one might give a snake.
Cousin Matthew continued to stare at her with his brooding gaze.
“What have you got there?” asked Aunt Temperance sharply.
“Why—gifts for you all,” stammered Charity.
“Put them down,” said Aunt Temperance in a more mollified tone. “After we’ve supped, we’ll see them.”
Somewhat nonplussed, Charity put down the three packages wrapped in tea paper and joined them at the narrow board in the kitchen. One of the two large downstairs rooms served as both dining room and kitchen, the other was a sitting room where presumably they would retire after dinner.
They were a long time saying grace, and Charity was quite hungry by the time she could sample her pigeon pie and brown bread and baked beans. She noted unhappily that the food was served on wooden trenchers with wooden spoons, although the flagons were of pewter. Plainly there was no great wealth here; possibly it had seemed more to the lawyer because the other dwellings in the village were so mean. It was wealth by Dynestown standards, perhaps, but it was not wealth to a girl who had lived in Stéphanie’s home in Bath.
At dinner she learned that Cousin Patience had spent the day quilting at a neighboring farm. When Charity admitted that she had never “quilted,” Patience looked at her as if she must be a liar.
“I saw no one in the stocks as I came through town,” said Charity, still nervous from the ominous references to people being tied to cart ends.
“They will be there soon enough,” said Aunt Temperance.
“What—what are their crimes?”
“Slothfulness, not keeping the Sabbath, wearing such clothes as are on thy back—such like.”
“It seems—harsh,” said Charity lamely.
All at the table looked at her, surprised.
“They do be receiving no more than their just due,” frowned Aunt Temperance.
“I did tell Sally Fawkes today she would be in the pillory if she did wear the red petticoat she has been stitching in secret this past month,” remarked Patience, with a spiteful look at Charity.
“You’ll go no more to their farm then,” said Aunt Temperance severely. “I did not know her to be about the devil’s work.”
Patience looked dismayed, then gazed meekly down at her plate.
After this exchange, conversation languished, and during the respite Charity studied Patience’s clothing and asked herself if she could ever wear that. The draping of Patience’s serviceable brown ho
lland dress had, to Charity’s eyes, a strangely old-fashioned look. She wore a corseted bodice over a too-thick waist, which was fastened with hooks down the center of the front. Her white chemise cuffs were folded sedately back over plain gathered sleeves. Over her shoulders flowed a shapeless white collar, and her thin mousy hair was tucked severely into a cap.
It was Charity’s opinion that such trappings would ill serve Cousin Patience in getting a husband. As if she realized she was being scrutinized, Patience looked up and glared at her.
Charity turned to consider Cousin Matthew. He sat slightly hunched over, his mouth full of food, stolidly feeding. Perhaps, she told herself, Patience’s clothes would not matter, for she might marry such a man as her brother. For him, a hard-working upright woman to do the chores and bear the children would be enough.
Suddenly, and quite inexplicably to Charity, her aunt seemed to warm to her. Temperance began to ask her numerous probing questions about her life in Torquay. Most of Charity’s answers were greeted with dismay by Patience, but were received stolidly by her aunt. Cheltenham House was mentioned more or less continually and Charity, remembering how modest it had been compared with Stéphanie's, found their reaction puzzling. She looked around her at their faces: her aunt’s dour malevolent one, Patience’s shocked round one, Matthew’s big dull one.
“Why do you keep asking me about Cheltenham House?” she asked curiously. “I mean, Torquay was beautiful and we loved our house, but it was so tiny—only barely big enough to hold us. The countess’s house in Bath that I told you about was much more interesting—a big place and old.”
Her aunt and her cousins exchanged significant glances.
Dinner was finished almost in silence, and after the dishes were cleared away and everything cleaned up—Charity’s offer to help was brusquely shrugged off—they retired to the sitting room. Patience led them, carrying a large candle, and they settled themselves on hard wooden chairs.
There Charity somewhat shakily presented her gifts.
Cousin Patience’s hard young eyes softened, and she exclaimed with delight over her swatch of rose silk, but Aunt Temperance snatched it from her.
This Loving Torment Page 5
