The widow's war

by Sally Gunning

  “Are you well?”

  Lyddie nodded. She set down the meat pie.

  Cowett pointed to it. “Will you share?”

  Lyddie accepted.

  She accepted other suppers. For several weeks she ate, cleaned up the remains, and left immediately after; but one night near the end of June she lingered. They’d been talking of the Indians. She asked him: who were the Indian gods? And his answer had bewitched her. The two biggest were Kiehtan and Hobamock, the first delivering good, the second evil. Kiehtan created the heaven and earth and the sea and all its creatures, all the Indian humanity springing from one man and one woman, as did the Christian’s, but the Indian sent his prayers and gifts to Hobamock, to keep on his good side—hence the Christian perception that the Indians worshiped the devil. Hobamock was the more powerful; Hobamock would send or not send their wounds and droughts and diseases. Lyddie asked where these gods dwelled, what version the Indian might have of a heaven or a hell, and Cowett referred to a vague place in the west, where good and bad went together, but from there the bad were sent away to wander. Lyddie asked what sins sent man to wander and Cowett listed among them adultery, but then explained that married or no, Indian men and women were free to leave one mate and try another whenever they wished it.

  “Then where lies the sin?” Lyddie asked.

  “When the trying comes before the leaving.”

  Lyddie considered. There were scandals in every Cape Cod village, and Satucket had its share of them: Abigail Gray had been got with child while her husband was at sea; Keziah Doane and Winslow Myrick had each left their spouse to set up housekeeping in Yarmouth; it was rumored, and denied, that the youngest Cobb had got a child on the family Negro, Sarah. But Lyddie believed herself the first Englishwoman in town to be paired with an Indian. She tried to sort the crimes along the Indian rule, but she could only vouch for the last, the one that had never happened, as free of any trying-before-leaving. If one counted dying as leaving.

  Lyddie looked up and found Cowett watching her. She flushed. He said, as if he could read color as he read words, “You hear what they say of us.”

  She nodded.

  “It troubles you?”

  “Some.”

  “Enough to stop you coming?”

  “’Tis been said already. What good would stopping now do?”

  He nodded.

  She said, after a minute, “It doesn’t trouble you.”

  He shrugged. “Naught to lose.”

  Lyddie considered. And what had she to lose? She had lost her daughter and her last friend. She looked across the table. Her last white friend.

  Lyddie got up to go, and Cowett followed her into the yard on his way to the barn. The sun’s last glancing blow filled the tops of the trees in the woodlot. Lyddie pointed toward the trees. “Did you divide, then?”

  He nodded.

  “And do you regret it?”

  He came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. He turned her to the east. “That way to Namskaket Creek.” He turned her south. “There to the Great Long Pond.” He turned her west. “And there to the Sauquatuckett, or as you say, Satucket River, or Stony Brook, or Mill Creek.” One more turn. “And north to the bay. My great-grandfather sold all of it to the English for fifty-eight pounds. Why trouble over half a woodlot?”

  Lyddie made no answer. In fact, she barely breathed. Cowett’s hands had stayed on her shoulders, as if he’d forgotten them there, and no doubt he had forgotten himself, thought he was standing in the yard with his wife, as Lyddie could think she was standing so with Edward. But no, she could never take this Indian for Edward. She could sense his great size behind her even if she couldn’t see him, she could smell that sassafras smell that she’d never smelled on Edward. He shouldn’t be touching her. But of course she shouldn’t be letting him touch her. And still she stood there with breath held and knees locked because it had been so long since she’d felt the heat and weight of a man’s hands on her, so long since she’d been so physically connected to any living thing, white or Indian.

  With great effort of will she stepped out from under the hands. She said, without turning, “But your great-grandfather kept this piece.”

  “He kept it.”

  “And gave some to Edward’s great-grandfather. Why?”

  Cowett made no answer.

  “I must go,” Lyddie said. She stepped away, deeper into the wood.

  He called after her, as if nothing had happened at all, “’Twas a fine pie.”

  And Lyddie called back, “Thank you.”

  Lyddie slept little and arrived late the next day, after Sam Cowett had gone. She put the house to right in a hurry, set him out a cold meat pie, a loaf, and some pickled greens for dinner, and left before he returned.

  After she’d finished her own baking she took Edward’s ax out of the barn and went into the woodlot to see what she might do on her own about wood for winter. A piece of old fence lay on the ground, and she set to hacking it apart with the ax. When she stopped to get her breath she heard a noise and turned around to see Sam Cowett coming through the trees toward her.

  He took the ax from her, cut up the fence with dispatch, took two small, wind-felled trees down to log size, and helped her to stack the lengths on the edge of the woodlot nearest the house.

  When they were finished she said, “I’ve a fresh-baked mince pie by way of thank-you,” and stepped toward the house, but he caught her elbow to stop her.

  “Some things get done without pay, neighbor for neighbor.”

  “Yes. Well, then. Thank you.”

  He continued to hold her arm, and when his thumb slid across the hollow inside her elbow she understood what a fool she’d been to imagine he’d thought nothing had happened in the woods; the whiteness of her skin wouldn’t stop him from feeling its heat just as the darkness of his hadn’t stopped her. But the thumb slid to the hollow and stopped there, its message clear: it was up to Lyddie which way they went now. If she moved in one direction one thing would happen, and if she moved in another nothing would happen at all. She could smell the Indian’s sassafras smell, and she wanted above everything to move into it and let it wrap around her, let those competent hands move over her flesh as they had moved over Rebecca’s. What held her? God? Edward? Deacon Smalley and the Reverend Dunne? Not God. The speed with which she could dispense with God shocked her. She’d lost the prayers first, then meeting, then the Sabbath altogether, and if God didn’t hold her, what could Deacon Smalley or the Reverend Dunne matter? But what of Edward? No. If Lyddie’s doings on earth mattered anything to Edward now, which she doubted, he would understand this one act above all others. So if Edward didn’t hold her now, who did?

  Eben Freeman. The name came up by surprise, but once up, it stayed. Lyddie had told him she didn’t lie with the Indian, and he had believed her.

  Lyddie pulled back. Cowett’s hands tightened briefly on her arm, just long enough for the old bolt of fear to find her, and then he released her.

  29

  Lyddie lay awake, got up and walked the house, lay awake some more. When she finally slept she dreamed. She was fishing for herring in the creek when she heard a cry, the sound carrying over the trees and down the creek on the wind. Mehitable, in labor. Lyddie hurried to the Clarke house, clutching a writhing fish, and found her daughter’s bed walled in by the women Nathan had sent for: Cousin Betsey, Patience Clarke, Granny Hall. Lyddie tried to work her way to the bed, but the women stood shoulder to shoulder against her. Mehitable’s cries scourged Lyddie’s ears, pierced her skin, pressed on her lungs, but when they stopped the silence was more terrible. Lyddie knew that silence, knew the stiff necks of the women looking down at a stillborn child; she elbowed Cousin Betsey aside and leaned over the bed. Mehitable lay white and still; on the sheet between her legs lay a living babe, black-haired and chestnut-colored. The women pointed at Lyddie. “’Tis your child. We all know ’tis your child. ’Tis you lies with the Indian.”

  Ly
ddie scooped up the child. Mehitable rose in a shriek, clutching for the babe; Lyddie bent to hand it to her, but the thing in her hand was fish, not babe; she turned to find Sam Cowett holding the infant, the two of them one face, one color.

  “Tell them,” Lyddie said. “Tell them we did not do this thing.”

  “Did you not hear what your reverend told you?” he said. “A sin in the heart is as great as a sin in the flesh.”

  “Give my daughter back her child,” Lyddie said.

  “I can’t. Your daughter’s dead.”

  Lyddie whirled around and saw that her daughter had indeed gone gray and limp.

  Lyddie woke filled with black, whirling fears. She lay still and sweating until she grew angry. She would not live in fear of her own mind. Mehitable was not dead. But Mehitable had not been the only fear floating through the dream. Sam Cowett. Of him, or of herself, or of the near thing between them, it didn’t matter which was the true fear; the same thing would get rid of all of them.

  Lyddie looked out the window at the pink-gray sun and tried to recollect the tide. She tossed back her sheet, got up and dropped her skirt over her shift, tying the tapes as she searched out her shoes and stockings. She raked up her hair and pinned it on her way to the necessary, not troubling with breakfast.

  Cowett opened the door with his feet still bare and his shirt hanging loose over his breeches.

  She said, “I can’t work for you any longer.” She turned around, stepped back through the door, and everything, all of it, was over.

  Lyddie now had time to tend to her own household chores that had been let go while she had tended to Cowett’s. She collected the corn husks saved in the barn from last fall’s husking and restuffed her summer bed tick. She set a barrel of beer to brew. She pickled her cucumbers. She gave the house a top-to-bottom cleaning. She made sure her head stayed full of the next chore and that way she kept it free of Cowett, but that night, in the weakness of near sleep, he took possession, invading her through all her senses. She saw his black eyes reading her, she smelled his sassafras smell, she heard that deep, quiet voice: “Some things get done without pay,” she felt his hand on her. But after she’d slept a little she saw that all the wildness in her head only proved that she’d been right to sever ties with him.

  The next morning Lyddie sat down with her pot of coins and counted out her earnings: two pounds, four shillings, eight pence. How far would it take her? Through summer with no great trouble, but no great distance into winter. The cow’s hay alone would take it all, and although she was owed the hay from Clarke she had as great hope of getting it from him as she did of it raining down from heaven. She would have to make some sort of income.

  One idea struck Lyddie when she went out to the buttery to turn and rub her cheeses—she had two of Edward’s favorite sage cheeses just ready, and even Betsey admitted Lyddie’s superiority when it came to cheese making. She might get a shilling for each cheese. She wrapped one up with care and set off for Sears’s store.

  The Myrick sisters stood in deep conversation outside the store, as if they lived at either end of town instead of at either end of the same house. When Lyddie came up the elder turned friendly enough eyes on her and asked how she was faring.

  “Well enough,” Lyddie said. “And yourselves?”

  “We’re well,” said the younger. “And how fares your Indian?”

  “My Indian?”

  “Oh, now, you know who I mean—that fearsome big thing—Sam, they call him. The one you work for.”

  “I’m afraid I no longer work for Mr. Cowett.”

  “Well, now! But I’m not surprised, if I might say so. I don’t know how you got on with him. So violent a creature.”

  “I saw no violence in him.”

  “Well, in drink—”

  “I saw him take but one drink, in distress over his wife. I spoke to him about it, and he desisted.”

  “You spoke to him!” The sisters changed looks. “Well, you did get on, didn’t you? Or should I say ‘you do get on’?”

  “As he’s my neighbor, I certainly hope we continue to get on. Excuse me, I’ve business with Mr. Sears.”

  Lyddie stepped past the women into the store.

  But Mr. Sears stopped her before she had unwrapped the cheese. “I get my cheese from Winslow. You know how it is, Widow Berry. Can’t turn my back on Winslow.”

  And she was told much the same thing at Smith’s store and Bangs’s inn.

  Lyddie walked home in hard thought. There were, no doubt, some houses in town in need of nurse or housekeeper, but short of knocking on all doors, she had no way of finding them. If she attended meeting, or was still visited by Cousin Betsey, she would have known this information as she knew the day of the week, but as she had spent so long isolated with no one but Sam Cowett to talk to, she knew nothing. Lyddie shifted the weight of the cheese to her other arm. Of course, there was nothing to say that she couldn’t visit Betsey; in fact, the case could be made that she yet owed Betsey a cheese.

  Lyddie set off down the King’s road and covered the three miles to Shubael’s house with fair speed. When Betsey opened her door Aunt Goss lifted her sunken face from her chest, saw who she was, dropped it back, and resumed snoring. Shubael came from the back room, greeted her with a flustered “Cousin! Well, now! How do?” and reversed direction.

  Betsey held out longer, but barely. She was so sorry, she was just on her way out, and in a great hurry, too. Lyddie would have to return another day. Although to suggest a free day just now was out of the question. Such a busy time in the village…

  Lyddie found herself back in the road, but she hadn’t got a rod along it when she realized she still held the cheese in her hands. The cheese had now become a point of honor with her; she turned around and heard the raised voices from well outside the Hopkinses’ door, beginning with Shubael’s.

  “I say you might have talked to her, is all I say.”

  “Oh, do you? ’Tis all how-do-do and out the door with you, but I’m to talk to her!”

  “You know my trouble with Cousin Lyddie. If she starts talking about her husband to me—”

  “Oh, you and your trouble! Your trouble is you’re afraid of that Indian!”

  “And why shouldn’t I be?”

  “Because you’re not talking to him, you’re talking to Cousin Lyddie. Or you should be. And if you’d talked to her in the first place that Indian wouldn’t be in it at all, now would he? She’d have signed that paper instead of disgracing the entire family!”

  “Now you don’t know for a fact—”

  “Oh, you and your facts! You and my brother! A pair of fools, the both of you.”

  Sturdy heels clacked away. Lyddie retreated to the road with her cheese, her mind swimming in senseless information. Shubael dreading a conversation about Edward? Shubael afraid of the Indian? Shubael convincing her to sign the paper, to keep away from the Indian?

  “Widow Berry!”

  Lyddie pulled up and discovered Eben Freeman, dismounted from his horse, standing in her path. “For a minute I thought you might walk right over me.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

  He held up a hand. “No, I’m sorry. For the manner in which I spoke to you at our last meeting. It preys on me nightly. I’d not be surprised if you did walk over me.”

  “I won’t walk over you, Mr. Freeman. I’ll accept your apology and make one of my own. I said something that might lead you to think I don’t consider you a friend. Never think I don’t know everything you’ve done for me.”

  “I, done? I’ve done nothing. You allow me nothing. When I think what I would like to do—”

  Lyddie held out the cheese. “I would allow you to do this, if you’re willing. Please give this to your sister. It pays an old debt.”

  He remembered. He understood. Lyddie watched it work through his features, and a few other things besides. “Did you not just come from there?”

  “I did. I forgot to leave it.”
r />   “And did you have a pleasant visit?”

  “It was…hurried.”

  He flushed. He tucked the cheese under his arm and turned his horse. “Allow me to walk a ways with you.”

  They stepped out along the road in awkward silence until Lyddie asked, “Are you just come from Barnstable?”

  He nodded. “Winslow and Clarke, back in court again. If this goes on as did the last, I shall spend the rest of my life back and forth between villages.”

  He continued on about the details of the case, but Lyddie barely listened; she had noticed that whenever they passed a walker or rider coming in the other direction Freeman made a point of turning on her some little attention: a hand under the elbow, an agreeable nod, an attentive smile. Was he out to prove her respectable? When they reached the landing road Lyddie said, “You’d best turn back. No doubt your sister waits dinner on your arrival.”

  “My sister’s dinner may wait till it freezes,” he said with a passion Lyddie had only heard once before in him. She looked up in surprise.

  “Widow Berry,” he said. “I must confess to you. I have done a degree of research since our last meeting and I find that my sister appears no great distance behind every rumor concerning you, the only person any closer to it being your own son Nathan Clarke. I’ve spoken to her; I’ve suggested she take a different course; if you’d been able to tell me you had a pleasant visit with her just now I would perhaps have been able to sit calmly at her table, but as you cannot—” He waited.

  Lyddie said nothing.

  “I’ll leave you now, Widow Berry. But I’ll come by to see you another time, if you’re willing.”

  “Of course.”

  “Very well. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I intend to deny my sister the pleasure of my company and book myself a bed at the tavern.”