“Wife’s gone to Connecticut. Found a note when I got home.”
“Yes. We’ll talk tomorrow. Good night.”
He sat down on the floor and began to weep, a ratcheting, coughing, strangling sound.
Lyddie slid out of bed and half pulled, half pushed him to his feet. He smelled of sweat and piss and grease and liquor. She walked him to his room, dropped him onto his foul bed, and shut the door. She returned to her room and jammed the latch down.
41
Silas Clarke appeared full of remorse the next morning, setting off to the tannery determined to leave off drink, earn his pay, save his money, buy back his house, and bring his wife and children home. He even returned from the tannery sober, during which period Lyddie discovered that Silas Clarke sober was little improvement over Silas Clarke drunk. He dropped tuppence on the table in front of Lyddie and demanded to be fed; when he’d finished his food he said, “By the way, Widow, you might care to know, the Indian’s got home,” and then he left for the tavern.
The Indian’s got home. The words made Lyddie’s heart race, but not in the old way, not in any kind of way she’d ever known. She didn’t look forward to seeing him; she didn’t fear seeing him; she knew she must see him, nothing more. She had to take that one step toward him to erase that other step taken away from him; she wouldn’t think beyond.
Lyddie waited until sun and water had both fallen so she could be certain Cowett was back from the shore. She ate an early supper and set off down the road. He opened the door when her first shoe touched the stoop, but he didn’t stand aside and usher her in; he stood square, with arms folded, shoulders nearly stretching from jamb to jamb.
“Mr. Clarke told me you’d got home.”
“Then you listen to him yet.”
Very well, Lyddie thought, it will take more than a step. She brought her feet together on the stoop. “I listen to all. I believe some. Among those I believe, Mr. Clarke is not one. I confess to a moment in the first flush of the listening, in a state of confusion over other things, when his one thing added to other things, wrong things—”
Something rustled behind him. Cowett stood away from the jamb, and without taking his eyes from Lyddie he reached back and pulled someone forward, a small, black-haired, cream-colored woman with oval brown eyes and a smooth oval face. She looked from Cowett to Lyddie to Cowett. She pointed to the table, where a fresh-baked meat pie sat steaming, then pointed to a chair as if it were her own. “Sit?” she said. “Eat?”
“No,” Lyddie said. “No thank you. I came to say…what I’ve said. I must go home.”
Lyddie met up with a stinking, leering Silas in the yard. He pointed down the road in the direction from which she’d just come. “What’s the trouble, Widow Berry? A little crowded for you now?”
Of course Silas Clarke would have known about the new woman. Of course the whole town would have known. Lyddie went inside and straight to her room without speaking, lying on her bed with yet another churning mind. Who was this woman? Where had she come from? Was she English or Indian? Had he brought her all the way from Canada or picked her up someplace closer to home? The thought most disturbing to Lyddie was the idea that the woman might be English, that some Englishwoman lived with such courage, but as she pictured the black hair and cream skin and scant words she felt sure the woman was not English. French perhaps, but not English. She’d heard that Frenchmen took up with and even married Indian women with some regularity, but what Frenchwoman would dare take up with an Indian man, and then, if that were not enough, carry her papist ways straight into the heart of this enemy Protestant land? That small, timid thing who had ducked behind Sam Cowett at first opportunity could not have had the courage for anything so bold, but Sam Cowett would, of course, and if Sam Cowett wanted a thing…Lyddie of all people could attest to the power of a Sam Cowett.
French, then. Or French and Indian mix, but certainly not all Indian.
That having been decided, Lyddie closed her eyes, and the minute she did so, the other questions swarmed in. Did the heathen Sam Cowett talk to this papist woman about the Indian gods? Did he talk to her about sin? Did they speak of his dead wife? Did they even speak a common language? And what did any of it matter to Lyddie? Well, what mattered to Lyddie was that Sam Cowett was no longer hers to lie with as she pleased, nor would he have need of her cooking and cleaning, or, in fact, any need of her at all.
42
The town called her Indian; it was the best they could do; Lyddie doubted the idea of English had ever been seriously entertained, and to call her French would certainly have confirmed for them every imagined papist evil, but then what to say about Cowett? They may not have liked him or trusted him, but all the men in town had dealt with him at one time or another and would likely do so again. Heathen Indian living with heathen Indian upset no one; Indian with French, and Indian man with Frenchwoman, came perilously close to something else they could scarcely name, never mind condone. Cowett, then, cohabited with an Indian named Marie, and no one’s opinion of him changed, up or down.
As for Lyddie, she found little time to think of the pair as she was so busy with Silas Clarke. Sometimes he made it home from the tavern before she bolted the door; sometimes he didn’t; when he didn’t, he stood outside and banged on the wood until he exhausted himself; once she found him half frozen on the stoop in the morning, but the next time it occurred to him that if wood didn’t break, glass would. She heard it in her sleep and thought it was the crack of lightning, until she heard the groan and the thump and the howl. She got up and looked into the keeping room to find Silas Clarke lying in a heap of broken glass, bloody hands curled into his chest. She sat him up, cleaned him off, and helped him into his bed, then dealt with the glass and returned to her own bed.
But there was one thing about Silas Clarke that eased Lyddie’s road—the money he dropped on her from time to time to cook or clean or wash—with it she bought ten cords of wood and guaranteed that the first quarter of the winter would be warm.
Lyddie was cutting up apple rings to string and dry by the fire when she heard the knock; it had been so long since anyone had visited her that at first she didn’t identify the sound. A woodpecker? A branch blown down? The knock sounded again, this time a clear knuckles-on-wood; she went to the door and tossed it back and Eben Freeman stepped into the room.
He looked older, stiffer, thinner. He cast his eye around the room, and Lyddie followed his gaze, feeling the shame. The window had been inexpertly boarded, the fireplace crane hung loose from one hinge where Silas had wrenched it, the hutch sat bare in defense against his penchant for throwing, two of the chairs wobbled over missing rungs. She’d managed to scrub the blood out of the floor and wash the stink out of his linens, but the air still carried a whiff of soured liquor and rank man.
“I’ve come by to inform you that papers will this day be served on Mr. Clarke,” Freeman said.
“I thank you. I hope you didn’t travel all the way to Satucket solely over my business.”
“No, I had some other things to attend—business with Cowett, the ship, Aunt Goss. Betsey’s run short of patience; Shubael would like her moved along.”
“Would you like to trade her for Mr. Clarke?”
Freeman smiled. “In truth, I would. My sister needs to see what a difficult tenant truly is.”
Lyddie opened the door wider. “Would you have tea? Cider?”
“Cider, if you please.” He came in and sat down by the fire. Lyddie poured him a cider and sat opposite. The silence that seemed to perpetually live and grow between them dropped down.
“I hear Sam Cowett’s come home with a woman,” Freeman said at last.
“He has.”
“You’ve lost your job, then?”
“I have. But Silas Clarke now pays me for his keep.”
More silence.
After a time Freeman said, “I’ve not had a sound night’s sleep since you left me at Barnstable.”
“Indeed.”
“Indeed. I roll and thrash and knock the bolsters. I think, Lydia Berry, friend? Can we not do better? Are we so far apart in all matters?” He stood up and crossed in front of the fire, casting a long, soft shadow along the floor. She saw the shadow of his hand move before the hand itself, felt it touch her face as softly as the shadow.
She caught his hand and held it. “I cannot—” Think. She wished to say, think, but the last time she’d decided not to think she’d ended up an Indian’s whore.
“You cannot what, Widow Berry?”
“I don’t know.”
“Nor I. But can we not go along a little way and see?”
What she might have said to that was postponed by the thunder of another set of knuckles on the door. Lyddie crossed to it and opened it on Nathan Clarke. He saw Freeman at the fire and hopped into the room like a disturbed rooster.
“So I find you here. I might have guessed. Very well, then, Freeman, you may explain this nonsense.” He waved a parchment at him.
“I should think it was clear enough.”
“Clear! Yes, damn you, it’s clear! Eighty cords of wood! One hundred pounds of beef! Ten bushels of rye!”
Lyddie looked to Freeman in surprise. Such figures were far higher than the last she’d heard quoted back in April when the first discussion of keep and care had taken place. But as they argued and she listened she saw Freeman’s wisdom; he gave a cord here, a bushel there; he began to give away some twenty pounds of meat and then appeared to remember Silas Clarke; perhaps it were better to settle the numbers high and have the widow feed him out of her keep? In the end it was settled with something less than what Freeman had first asked, but far more than Widow Howland ever got; they agreed to a future date to sign the amended papers and Nathan Clarke got to ride off with a smirk on his face at his fancy dealing while Lyddie got her third the house, a good deal more in wood and foodstuffs than she’d ever imagined, and Freeman’s threat of constant monitoring to keep the deliveries on time.
And Silas Clarke.
Once Nathan had gone Lyddie turned to Freeman and thanked him.
“It was all my very great pleasure,” he answered with a smile that seemed to stretch all the way to Lyddie’s face, and then stretch some more until it seemed the natural thing for her to say, “Would you care to come to dine tomorrow?”
Freeman’s smile blinked out so fast Lyddie began to doubt it had ever been. “I cannot. How I would wish I could do, Widow Berry, but I cannot. I’m engaged with Mr. Winslow over the dinner hour and then I must see Cowett. I have a little to do with Cowett, not a great deal, nothing that should take me into the supper hour—”
Lyddie took up the hint. “Perhaps a small supper, then?”
He accepted with a bow.
Lyddie was on the back stoop shaking the tablecloth when she caught a long form in her peripherals, working its way through the woodlot in her direction. She had expected Freeman to come from Cowett’s and was not surprised that he’d use the short route through the woods; she swung around to greet him and found herself facing the Indian. In the seconds it took him to reach her she formed and discarded a half-dozen different sentences. He crossed the yard and stopped a body’s length away, a rolled paper tucked under his arm.
“I’m told Freeman’s here.”
“He’s not arrived as yet. If you’d care to wait—”
“No. You tell him I’ve found what he was after.”
He swung around.
Lyddie jumped off the stoop. “Wait. Please.”
Cowett turned.
“I want—”
“Go tell Freeman your wants. I wager he’ll marry you yet.”
“I don’t want a husband, Mr. Cowett, I want a neighbor. As we were before—” She stopped.
“Can’t say it, can you? Can’t say ‘before I lay on my back with an Indian.’”
The sound was not loud; in fact, Lyddie couldn’t have said just what made it—a hurried breath? A creaky boot? A scuffed stone? She had already turned her head away from Cowett and needed only to raise it to see Freeman, who had come around the corner of the house and stopped at roughly the same distance that separated her from the Indian. He looked back and forth between them and then at her. Had he heard? Of course he’d heard. At such a short distance Lyddie could hear him breathing, working the air in and out, a short inhale and exhale, over and over as he struggled to get the best of it, but he could not. What remained in his lungs came out in a sharp blast. He turned on his heel and rounded the corner of the house without speaking to either of them.
43
Lyddie composed her second note to Freeman and discharged it via Jabez Gray. In it she again released Freeman, not from any engagement, but from any obligation to her as lawyer. She expected no return; she was surprised to open her door to him a week later.
He bowed in greeting, entered at her invitation, looked around with new wariness. “You’re alone?”
“I am.”
He took the chair she offered but leaned forward in it, ready to leap at the first opportunity. He opened the pocketbook he carried under his arm and took out a piece of paper. “Here are your new terms with Clarke. I agree, for the future, it would be best if you found another lawyer.”
She nodded.
“I believe I recommended Bourne before.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
He stood up.
“I should like to say thank you for everything,” Lyddie added. “Despite our difficulties—”
“Difficulties! You would call it ‘difficulties’?”
“And what would you call it?”
“I would call it a life inside a knot. My mind does nothing this past long week but travel round and round struggling to unravel it.” He returned to the chair, sat down, leaned forward again. “I must ask you. I must. What he said…Can you make no denial?”
“I cannot.”
He leaned back. “And yet right here in your house last spring you made such denial in plain terms.”
“Because, at that time, it was the truth.”
“And at Barnstable? When I spoke of him at Barnstable?”
“It had reached its end.”
He leaned forward. “And where had it begun? Can you not tell me that? When he came after you at Clarke’s house, what was between you then? No, you need not tell me. I saw it myself. And then at Barnstable, like a fool, I debased myself before you for my own eyesight. For my lack of trust. Trust!”
“Your trust, such as it was, was not misplaced. You and I had parted before—”
He leapt up. “Enough! I cannot fathom it. You are not any person I know.”
“Perhaps it would help if you think of me as yourself.”
“Myself!”
“At Thacher’s tavern.”
“Thacher’s…Good God! You would compare what takes place at a tavern—”
“It was little different. You were a man alone in want of comfort and you found a place to get it where it harmed no one. That was what you told me. It harmed no one. The only difference between us is that in return you gave her coin where I gave nothing but that same comfort. If your Mr. Otis were here, I believe he would declare our sins equal.”
“You may leave off Mr. Otis. God speaks on such behavior in clear terms.”
“And you may leave off God. I no longer trouble with him and he no longer troubles me.”
“Clearly.”
Lyddie stood up. “Mr. Freeman, if you came here to argue God with me—”
“I didn’t come here to argue God or Otis or Cowett—”
“Did you not?”
“I did not! I came here because I can make nothing of you, how you think and act, how you would have me think and act! I am a man of reason, a man of noble intention, a man of honesty, and you take and twist me—”
“I take you for all that and more beside, Mr. Freeman, which is why I strive so hard to bring us to understanding. I’ve said before and I say again that I would keep you as f
riend. You’ve gone far beyond any other in aiding me in my situation and I would not give you up over this one small thing.”
“Small thing!”
“Very well, not small. I grant you not small.”
Silence.
“You’ve said what kind of man you take me for. What kind of man did you take Cowett for, then?”
“Someone like myself. And not like. What brought it to its end was the unlike thing. I could not cross the gap.”
“As I cannot cross this one.”
“Very well.”
“‘Very well’? You say ‘very well’? I’m as far from well as a man may get! You ask too much! I am no more nor less than I am.”
“As I am no more nor less than I am.”
He stood dumb.
As Lyddie had nothing else to say, she joined him in it.
At length he said, “Good-day to you, Widow Berry.”
To which she could answer nothing but “Good-day, Mr. Freeman.”
44
Lyddie moved through the days in the steady motion of preparation for winter, making butter, pressing and boiling apples for cider and sauce, preserving currants and plums, storing pumpkins and turnips in the cellar. She worked and waited for the peace to descend, for some sense of victory or vindication, now that she had won her right to her third of the house, but nothing happened. Every other night she was wakened by Silas Clarke, either outside shouting and weeping or inside, snoring and farting, and when she rose one morning and nearly stepped in a slick of vomit she understood that her sense of victory would not come because she’d won nothing. This shabby, bruised house was no more her house now than it had been the week before the agreement; it would never be her house as long as Nathan Clarke controlled its upkeep, controlled who lived there. It would be all delay and neglect with him; Freeman had warned her of it long ago, and now she saw it all ahead, saw it as one long, uneven struggle. And Lyddie was tired. Her legs felt heavy when she pulled them out of the bed; her head ached behind the eyes most of the day; she developed a kink in her hip; she began to lie in bed past dawn most mornings and tumble back in as soon as she’d finished eating supper at night.
The widow's war Page 23
