The widow's war

by Sally Gunning

  Lyddie dropped the log on the fire and sent up a shower of sparks. She reached for another and tossed it on, then another and another. She pulled back her skirt with one hand and stretched out her other, almost into the flame, and still it felt cold.

  The door rattled behind her. In one motion Lyddie pulled the spit from the fire and spun around to find Sam Cowett, the Indian, standing in the doorframe and staring at the spit, held like a lance in front of her.

  Lyddie eased the spit to the floor. “Good morning, Mr. Cowett.”

  The Indian shifted his great shoulders and allowed the door to close behind him. “I saw smoke.”

  “I’ve come to pack up my things,” she said. “I live with son Clarke now.”

  The Indian looked around the house. “And who lives here?”

  “Perhaps Deacon Smalley’s daughter. He meets my son here Thursday nine to discuss the matter.” Saying the words cost her. She turned away to jab the fire and collect herself; when she turned back she found the Indian’s black eye fixed on her.

  The door rattled again; the Indian swung around; Nathan Clarke stepped in. “Hello, Sam,” he said.

  The Indian brushed past him and out the door without a word, the furrow in his brow deep enough to grow corn.

  “I see your neighbor’s in his usual fine fettle,” Nathan said.

  “Because you address him as Sam. He’s made it plain all over town: he’d be addressed by his surname like any Englishman.”

  “Bah! He’s too full of rum to notice what he’s called.”

  “I smelled no spirit on him.”

  “Mark me. He’ll have measured his length by sundown.”

  “Or yours, if you persist in so calling him.”

  Nathan gazed at her coolly and dropped his eye to her collection. “What need you of two kettles for one little fire? Leave the big one for Smalley. And we’ve a glass at home. I’ll send Jot for you at half the hour.”

  He left. Lyddie returned the large kettle to the hearth but slid the glass inside the coverlet.

  The cold hovered. Nathan ordered that while such weather continued they should keep but one big fire in the evening, so after supper Lyddie huddled with the family around the keeping room blaze. Bethiah worked at hemming an apron and Jane a sleeve; Mehitable sat altering those of Edward’s clothes that could be made to fit husband or son, and young Nate sat studying his Latin grammar. Lyddie had suggested she take over the spinning as her contribution to the household tasks and had been shocked to find that her daughter had put away both her wheels; with the low price of English cloth she saw no need to “trudge around in homespun.”

  So Lyddie sat turning a heel in a stocking until Eben Freeman disrupted them, arriving encased in mittens and muffler. He handed Nathan a letter he had intercepted in Barnstable, and Nathan carted him away to his study.

  The fire was hot enough to sear Lyddie’s face, and still her back felt as if it had iced over; young Nate left for his bed rugs first, and the minute he was gone Jane set down her sleeve and picked up his grammar, puzzling over the pages. Lyddie had often done the same with her brother’s books, but had had such little time with them she had made poor progress, until her marriage. Edward had taught her to keep his accounts in his absence and had read aloud to her on winter evenings as she sewed. She had often taken comfort among his books while he was away and on his return would pepper him with questions.

  “My husband had some fine books, Jane,” Lyddie said. “They reside now in your father’s study. Perhaps he would allow—”

  “If you intend to do nothing but play with books,” Mehitable cut in, “you might do your sister’s hemming for her. I’ll get nothing of my own done if I’m jumping up each minute to fix her messes for her.”

  Bethiah dropped her apron and fled for the stairs. Jane set down the book, picked up the apron, and began to finish the hem herself.

  Lyddie held out her hand to Jane. “Here, child, give the apron to me. And your sleeve. ’Tis too cold to sleep alone. Go with your sister.”

  Jane gave over the two pieces and went happily after Bethiah.

  Lyddie turned to her daughter. “Bethiah only wants instruction. Perhaps if I took her in hand—”

  “You say I neglect her?”

  “I say only that she’s lost her mother young, and those early lessons were denied her. As I have time to spare where you do not—”

  “I’m able to manage my house, Mother.”

  “Indeed you are, but for a minute or two, here and there, you might give it over. For example, right now. You sit and shiver and rub your eyes raw. Why don’t you go to your bed and leave me the sewing?”

  “I’ve the men to tend.”

  “I’m able to carry a jug yet.”

  Mehitable got up. “There’s fresh tart in the pantry if they wish it.” She departed, her face a lovely, tight mask.

  Lyddie finished off the apron and Jane’s sleeve, then picked up a waistcoat of Edward’s that Mehitable had been altering for Nate. Lyddie raised her needle but had some trouble seeing the seam; when she had last touched her needle to that cloth Edward had been sitting beside her, reading to her from Richardson. She set the piece down and turned to prompt the fire. She was still staring blindly into the flame when Nathan called from the other room for more cider.

  The men sat close on either side of the fire, angled toward the blaze, the empty cider pitcher on the table at Nathan’s elbow. As Lyddie entered the room the lawyer’s face did its odd creasing and he looked about to speak, but Nathan waved one hand at the jug and one at the lawyer. “Go on, go on. Who’s to challenge the Writs?”

  “Our own James Otis. From Barnstable.”

  “Otis! And will he be able to put a stop to this nonsense? Why, they want to search for smuggled goods anywhere, anytime, without cause or evidence! What the devil! If we’re forced to pay duty on every barrel of French molasses—”

  Lyddie picked up the pitcher and left the room. She went into the pantry and located the cider barrel; as soon as she removed the bung the tiny room filled with the sweet scent of fermentation. She filled the pitcher and returned to the study.

  The two men were still at James Otis.

  “I don’t know,” Nathan was saying. “I hear strange talk of him. He would free the slaves. I don’t mean he would do like some others and abolish the import of any new slaves, he would actually set free all slaves, right here, right now. Will you think on the carnage?” Nathan held up his pitcher, and Lyddie filled it. She crossed to Freeman’s chair, and he held up his mug; she wasn’t sure, but she thought he winked at her as he did it.

  “Yes, he would free the slaves,” Freeman said. “And he would not enslave our women, either. He declares them born as free as we are; he would give them education and suffrage alongside us.”

  Yes, he had winked, she was sure of it. She left the room as Nathan burst out in a stream of vitriol against James Otis, freed slaves, voting women, unlawful search and unlawful duties, mixing them up with one another until he couldn’t find his own tongue in the middle of it.

  5

  At a quarter to the hour of nine on Thursday Mr. Clarke left to meet Deacon Smalley at the house. Mehitable was in bed with a stomach gripe, Hassey had gone out to kill a chicken for dinner, Nate was at his tutor, Jane worked a crust, and Lyddie and Bethiah were making soap, Bethiah leaching the ash with boiled water and Lyddie mixing it with the winter’s collection of grease. When Mehitable called out from her chamber Lyddie’s hands were the easiest freed, and so she was first to the chamber door. She found Mehitable curled under two rugs, her face pale and damp, her hair tangled, her cap missing.

  “Have you taken a vomit?” Lyddie asked. “A little violet root will induce—”

  “I know well enough how to induce a vomit, Mother. I would have a mint tea, if you would tell Jane—”

  “I’ll get it.”

  “Send Jane, please. I’ve some other instruction for her.”

  Lyddie returned to the
kitchen. The mint tea barely covered the bottom of the canister. She directed Jane to brew up the remains, returned to her room for her cloak and boots, and set off for the store.

  The minute she stepped outside Lyddie was choked by the smell from the try pots. She had once welcomed the foul odor as a sign of unexpected bounty, but not now; by the time she reached Sears’s store she felt as ill as Mehitable. She selected her tea and took it to Caleb Sears to mark it off the account. When she saw him write it in the ledger under Edward Berry she corrected him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It goes to Mr. Clarke, now?”

  “Yes, to Mr. Clarke.”

  It was a little thing, but it unsettled her, and when she left the store she turned wrong, moving a dozen rods past the Clarke house before it struck her. Did she think she was going back to her old house, then, one last look before Smalley took possession?

  And why not?

  Lyddie kept going, turning left at the landing road, leaving off the muddy ruts for the sandy track and the general for the familiar. Here the shadblow cracked by the wind, there the old wall, next Edward’s fence, and there, or was it? Yes, the chimney and roof and there the barn; from the distance she could even see the horse tied in front and think it was Edward’s chestnut darkened with sweat from a lengthy ride, and the sound of an ax ringing out in the woodlot could well have been made by Edward as he set up next winter’s wood to season over summer.

  Lyddie shook herself to earth. The horse was a bay, not a damp chestnut, and no doubt Smalley’s. But if the horse was so easily explained, the sound of the ax wasn’t. She moved around the far side of the house until she had a clear view of the woodlot. The pitch pines, used for a quick start or a bright light, had lost their north side to the wind, and gave the lot an appearance of tilting away from the sea; the oaks, used for steadier, slower heat, were more evenly grown, but in disparate heights: those that had recently shot up from the old stumps and those that had been growing at least a decade and a half and were again ready for cutting.

  The Indian stood in front of one of the adolescent oaks. Lyddie watched him swing the ax up and bring it down in one long, smooth motion, gouging a thick yellow chip out of the trunk, the slap of ax almost but not quite drowning out whatever it was that Nathan was shouting at him. Lyddie caught the words devil and trespass and constable, but none of them disturbed the Indian’s stroke, and at length Smalley turned away and strode toward the barn so that Nathan was forced to turn and trot after him, still shouting.

  “Hold! Smalley! You’re not put off by such a trifle, are you? I’ll have it sorted by morning. He likes to make trouble; you know that as well as anyone.”

  Smalley stopped by his horse. “He says he’s got deed to the wood.”

  “And so have I got deed to it. And we’ll soon see whose deed holds up.”

  “You’ll have it in writing?”

  “I bloody well will,” Nathan said. “In blood, if I have to.” He thrust a hand at Smalley, who shook it, but Lyddie noticed Smalley’s upper body leaned away, like the pines, as if he would commit no more than he had to.

  Eben Freeman arrived again, not long after supper. He had barely shaken off his hat and coat and greeted Mehitable and Lyddie when Nathan Clarke appeared and swept him into the study, barking over his shoulder at the nearest pair of hands, which happened to be Bethiah’s, for cakes and cider.

  The men were not long out of sight when Nathan Clarke’s first outburst traveled through the door, left open by Bethiah.

  “Thieving, bloody cannibal!”

  Eben Freeman responded in normal tones, but used to the courtroom, his voice carried to the keeping room with little trouble. “There was no thieving,” he said. “Sachemas, Cowett’s great-grandfather, made a gift of the piece to Edward Berry’s great-grandfather.”

  “There you have it, then! He gave it. And once the will’s proved, it’s mine.”

  “Yes, he gave it, but he kept for himself and his heirs the right to cut wood for fence or fire on the woodlot. It’s all there in the deed. And as Sam Cowett is son and heir of Paumecowett, who was son and heir of Sachemas, he’s well within his right to cut wood on that lot. Therein lies the problem.”

  “Too bloody right it’s a problem! So what’s your solution?”

  Silence. “If you’re asking me for a legal opinion—”

  “I’m asking you how to get rid of that bloody Indian!”

  More silence.

  “You might inquire if Mr. Cowett would be willing to sell you his wood rights,” said Freeman at last.

  “What? Give him hard money for something I already own? Are you daft?”

  “Then perhaps you’d prefer to sell the lot to Mr. Cowett outright.”

  “And get what for a house with no woodlot? You’re getting dafter by the minute.”

  “Then divide it with him.”

  “Which is the same as giving it to him!”

  “Or you might maintain the status quo, and sell the house and woodlot with the deed restriction. I can recall of no instance when it posed a problem for your father-in-law.”

  “We’re not dealing with my father-in-law now, we’re dealing with that bloody old woman Smalley! He near shed his skin when he saw that Indian. No, I want you to run Cowett off that lot and sew it up in whatever legal jargon you have to. Do you understand me, Freeman?”

  Again, silence. Lyddie had a vision of Eben Freeman uncrossing a pair of long, jackknifed legs, carefully wrapping his fingers around his mug, and draining the remnants.

  “I believe I do understand you, Clarke. Let me make sure you understand me, or at least the reason for my presence here. I was legal representative to Edward Berry, and, I like to think, a friend to him, and as such have made a point to be on hand at the settlement of his estate. I’ll see the will proved; I’ll see you take lawful possession and the widow settled. I’m in no way free to undertake any additional representation on your behalf in the matter thus described as relates to the Indian. Now, if that remains the only subject left to discuss between us, I’ll say good evening.”

  If Nathan said good night to the lawyer, Lyddie didn’t hear it. The next audible sound from him was a shout for Bethiah to refresh the pitcher.

  Bethiah leaped to her feet, but so did Jane, no doubt in a well-practiced shoring up of sisterly defenses, and Lyddie waited alone, thinking something in the way of courtesy was now due Eben Freeman. He emerged from the front room, attempting an adjustment to his features that did little to improve them.

  “We had no trouble with the Indian over the woodlot,” she said.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “I overheard your conversation, Mr. Freeman. I find it best to admit such things at the beginning.”

  Freeman’s features improved. “A safe policy, Widow Berry. So your husband acknowledged the Indian’s right to the wood, did he?”

  “I don’t know if he did or didn’t. In my life I never saw the Indian cut within sight of our house.”

  “Indeed? Then I find it curious that he did so today.”

  “Perhaps he wished to make known his claim.”

  “Perhaps. Finding land held in common is a rare thing, nowadays.”

  “Why so?”

  “Well, with so few Indians remaining in the village…Only look at their sad little nation at the pond—” Freeman either shivered with the cold or shook himself off the topic. His eye came to rest on her.

  “You’re well, Widow Berry? You’re comfortable?”

  “I’m well.”

  Had he noticed she’d only answered half his question? He started to say something that began with a when, changed it to an if, and then left it off entirely.

  6

  February arrived and with it more bone-cracking cold; first the well froze, then the clock, next the ink, and finally the bay, in great chunks that separated on the ebb and crashed together on the flow to forge rooftops of ice all along the shoreline.

  Sam Cowett sat under Nathan Clarke’s
skin like a wood tick. Smalley would not commit about the house; in desperation Nathan decided to take the advice offered him by Freeman and make the Indian an offer for the wood rights.

  Lyddie had just ventured into the keeping room with a pair of stockings for Mehitable and been met with a stiff thank-you when Nathan burst into the room.

  “Well, Mother,” Nathan said, “what do you have to say for your neighbor now? He will sell no wood rights, nor will he divide, nor will he engage in civil converse on the matter. I’ve a good mind to talk to the constable. ’Tis not to be borne! If a man can’t sell his own lawful property—”

  “You might sell it to someone other than Deacon Smalley,” Mehitable said. “Mr. Dillingham’s daughter is to be married soon.”

  “Dillingham’s a damned Quaker, that’s what he is, and he’s already cost me dear. The town’s now voted to exempt them from paying the soldier’s bounty, in honor of their peaceable principles! I said at meeting, ‘ ’Tis my principle not to pay any man’s share but my own, what say you to that principle?’ And Smalley—by God, it was Smalley—stood up and said—”

  Bethiah, who had been cutting up pumpkin, gave out a screech.

  “God’s breath!” Nathan shouted. “May I not have a minute within doors without all this noise rising to the ceiling?”

  Lyddie rushed over, a step ahead of Mehitable. The child had cut her finger, but not deeply. Lyddie took her to the bucket, washed and wrapped the wound, and settled her in front of the fire with some yarn to unravel, the girl’s already pale face now the color of watered milk. When Lyddie’s first boy had sickened he’d turned just such a color. Edward had left a pale boy and gone to the Carolinas after spermaceti; he’d come home with his casks full of blubber to find his child dead in the ground. He’d shed no tears, voiced no despair, was all concern for Lyddie’s sorrow only, until one evening after supper he’d gone out to meet his cousin and was gone so long Lyddie had walked out to the King’s road to look for him. She had found him in the churchyard, staring down at the fresh-mounded dirt.