The Widow's War: A Novel

by Sally Gunning

She picked up a plate and bowl and carried them to the bucket.

  “You think to work for me yet?” he said.

  “Some things are done without pay, Mr. Cowett, neighbor for neighbor.”

  He watched her. “What say you, then, if I take clean dishes from the neighbor and clean house for one and six?”

  Lyddie smiled. “Very well.”

  He pointed at the clothes on the floor, and this time Lyddie saw they were Rebecca’s. “And you may take those, too.”

  He took his pot down from the shelf, fished out the coins, put them on the table, picked up his canvas sack, and left for the water.

  Lyddie first folded the clothes and put them in a pair of tow sacks: two shifts, two petticoats, three aprons, four pairs of stockings, two skirts, and two gowns in flannel, lawn, calico, cambric, a wool shawl, boots, shoes, mittens, gloves, all as English as Lyddie’s. She cleared the table and scoured the dishes, swept up the broken crockery and went outside to dump it on the midden. On the top of the pile of shells and bones lay some other detritus of Rebecca’s: a near empty tin of some sort of salve, a torn handkerchief, some unmended stockings, the empty laudanum bottle, evidence of the Indian’s efforts to clear away all signs of Rebecca; yes, Lyddie thought, he would leave the dead alone.

  Lyddie returned to the house to collect her pay, and only at the feel of the coins in her hand did she remember: not only had she missed meeting, but she’d also been working on the Sabbath.

  Lyddie picked up the tow sacks and went home. She put Rebecca’s clothes away at the bottom of the chest, below her own. She took the coins out of her pocket and marched to the front room, to Edward’s desk, and almost got there before she remembered the desk was gone, and with it all the money she’d stashed in its drawer.

  27

  On the short walk to Nathan’s house Lyddie saw nothing of the road or the trees or the houses or the sky; she saw nothing but a gray wall of anger before her eyes until she reached her son’s house and rapped on the door. Hassey opened it. Lyddie took only enough time to note what she might have noted anytime before: instead of a mahogany skin an oaken one, instead of a broad, flat nose a narrow, beaked one, instead of a soft brown eye a gleaming black one.

  “I would see my son,” Lyddie said.

  Hassey stepped back without argument.

  Lyddie swept in. The family sat in the best room, Nathan reading to them from the Bible. Lyddie stared at Mehitable’s swollen womb and could not move her eye along. Nathan clapped the book shut and rose.

  “Have I not made myself clear? You’re not welcome in this house.”

  “I’m not looking for welcome. I’m looking for seven and sixpence, taken from me with Edward’s desk. It was in the drawer.”

  “There was naught in the drawer.”

  “Then allow a sharper pair of eyes to look, as it was most definitely there.”

  “All right, Mother, I’ll look again, if it pleases you.” Nathan left the room.

  Lyddie addressed her daughter. “Are you well?”

  “As you find me.” She looked down, and up. “And you, Mother?”

  “I am not unhappy. I wish only—”

  Nathan returned and handed Lyddie her letter book. “This was all that was found of yours, Mother.”

  “There were seven and sixpence in that drawer. In a brown leather pouch with a white bead on the cord.”

  “I’m sorry, I found no money. Perhaps that neighbor of yours—”

  “’Twas the neighbor gave it me. My pay for nursing. You may take the desk and table and hutch as yours; you may not take my pay for nursing.”

  “An interesting point. I wonder how the law applies it. Your wages would belong to your husband if he were living, but in this instance, if I were charged with feeding and clothing you while you continued to make an independent income of some sort—”

  “My husband is dead, Mr. Clarke, and as we all well know, you neither feed nor clothe me. The wages are mine.”

  “Perhaps Jot—” Mehitable said.

  “’Twas no Jot in this,” Lyddie said. “Look at your husband’s smile and you will see every penny in it.”

  “Good evening, Mother,” Nathan said. He crossed to his chair, picked the Bible off the seat, and sat down.

  “I would not have thought it,” Lyddie said. “Truly, I would not have thought it. That you would steal from your wife’s mother and smirk about it in front of her and in front of your own children. I’m sorry, indeed, I’m greatly sorry, that another child will be born to a father such as you.”

  “Oh!” Mehitable cried. “How can you speak so to him?”

  “Ladies, please,” Nathan said. He turned back the pages of the Bible. “We were at Isaiah, but I think we might now try Paul. ‘Let your women keep silent in the churches.’ I might add, ‘Let them keep silent on the Sabbath as a whole.’”

  Lyddie turned to Mehitable. “Daughter, I wish to say this only. I will not lay blame for his actions at your door, and I ask you not to lay his at mine.”

  She walked out of the room, out the door, and into the road. She heard footsteps behind her and whirled with a single wish, but it was Bethiah who ran toward her. Lyddie caught her up and squeezed her fiercely; the girl squeezed back and melted away as if she’d never come.

  The shilling and sixpence sat in a cup in the middle of the plank table. Around it Lyddie collected what items she could spare to sell, totting each up as she set it down: white dish, two shillings; pewter plate, ten shillings; brown mug, one shilling; teapot, one and six…Lyddie stopped there. She might sell all her goods, eat off a board and drink out of a boot, but the money would still run out before she did. She would have to make her way in the end, so why not do it now and keep her belongings?

  Make her way. She thought of the women she knew who had done so: Widow Baker ran an inn, but Lyddie could imagine Nathan Clarke’s response if she usurped his two-thirds of the house toward that end. Widow Crosby at Eastham ran a tavern, but only because her husband had done so, and when he died the selectmen allowed her to continue so doing until some months later she married her best customer, and he took up the deed while she continued the pouring. The Widow Selew, who had been willed life use of her house entire, opened a store in her front room, but in order to open a store, one needed money to stock it. The other single women in town, widow or spinster, lived with their families and earned their keep by spinning, weaving, or nursing, but Mehitable had not required any of this from Lyddie, and with a pound of wool at Sears’s store charged at a shilling four pence, Lyddie would have to risk all her funds to card and spin and knit a pair of mittens in hope of selling them at two shillings the pair. She went to bed no further ahead, in fact, a good deal further behind, than she had been that morning.

  The salt tang of the flats at low tide woke Lyddie, and her immediate hunger dissolved what little remained of her pride. She put on her most worn skirt, took up her hoe and the tow sack she’d brought Rebecca’s clothes home in, and headed shoreward. The sky was barely gray, the beach as empty as she’d hoped to find it. She sat on a drift log, removed her shoes and stockings, pulled her skirt between her legs, and tucked it in her waistband. She waded through the channels and out to the high bar, digging at holes like the poorest Indian, having little idea what hole meant what type of creature, but after twenty minutes she had six clams for her dinner. She straightened her back, and in so doing she realized that the tide had come in fast around the single high bar; now, to reach shore, she’d have to wade through thigh-deep water. She stepped into the current. It caught at the cloth between her legs, tugging it loose, the billowing skirt acting like a drag and pulling her feet from under her. She went down and away, into the cold, the current taking her, numbing her, the water far deeper than she’d imagined. Her clothing pulled harder, like Edward in the weeds; they wanted her down, under. She swallowed water. She thrashed and shot her mouth clear, but the trade was to sink deeper afterward; she thrashed harder and sank deeper and she saw the
end to it, all of it, but after one blink of sheer relief she rejected such an end. She would not die over six clams. She would not exit life before she’d seen her daughter safe in it. She would not leave Nathan Clarke free to do as he pleased with a house that had once been home to her.

  She heard a shout from shore. She thrashed harder, and it brought a louder shout, and with it her sense of direction. She rested a minute and as she did she sank, and in sinking, her foot touched bottom. She pushed off, not with the current and not against it but across it; she felt sand again and pushed again, and continued bouncing until she could stand.

  Sam Cowett and Jabez Gray were slogging through the water toward her.

  “’Tis the widow!” Cowett said.

  “Bloody hell!” Gray said. They each caught her by an arm and half carried her shoreward, to collapse on the same log that had launched her. They wrapped her in some sacking off the boat and pumped her with questions. How long were you in there? Are you numbed through? Are you wet in the lungs? Can you walk?

  But neither man asked what she was doing in the water.

  Lyddie emerged from her room in flannel gown and wool stockings, her hair streaming down her back like seaweed. Jabez Gray had gone; Sam Cowett sat on the barrel looking over the sparse collection on the table.

  She offered him a portion of her dwindling supply of tea and bread, but he refused it. She was hungry, but more exhausted than hungry; he got up and she sat hard on the barrel. Cowett looked around and located the brandy bottle on the upended crate. He tipped the coins out of the cup, poured a stiff measure, and handed it across. Lyddie drank, one sip, then a second.

  “If you’re thinking I threw myself in after my husband you’d be mistaken,” she said. “I was out for clams. I dug out every hole and found but six.”

  Cowett walked to the fire, picked up her bread peel, smoothed out a patch of ash, and drew a shape that looked something like a keyhole. “That’s the hole you’re after.”

  “Thank you. I’ll remember next time.”

  “And the tide. ’Tis at the neap now. Not the time for clamming.”

  Lyddie took another sip of the medicine. It had just begun to warm the inner parts, but not the outer.

  “Do you plan to stay?” she asked.

  “Till you’ve come the right color.”

  “Then perhaps you’d like to see if there’s another barrel in the barn.”

  He left and was gone some time. When he came back he had a ladder-back chair over each shoulder.

  “I’ve no need of these. What I’ve need of is a woman to set up a pot and scour me out mornings.”

  “For the price of two chairs?”

  “The chairs are loan. For the other, I’ll pay a shilling.”

  The door rattled. Cowett strode over and tossed it open. Deacon Smalley stepped back, startled.

  Cowett turned to her. “What say you, Widow Berry? A shilling a day for setting me right mornings?”

  “Yes,” Lyddie said.

  Cowett left.

  The deacon looked after him and back to Lyddie. “So. You work for him still.”

  “As I would eat, yes.”

  He looked around the room, spied the brandy bottle on the table, and looked harder at Lyddie. “You’re ill?”

  “I’m wet. A small mishap at the shore this morning. Sit down, Mr. Smalley. Would you have tea?”

  “No, thank you. I’ve come at the direction of the reverend. You were not at meeting.”

  “No. I was waylaid.”

  “You’ve missed several, Widow Berry.”

  “Indeed.”

  “We—the reverend and I and others of the church fathers—have great concerns over your conduct, Widow Berry.”

  “If your concern is in regard to my missing meeting—”

  “It is in regard to meeting, it is in regard to your disrespect of your son, it is in regard to your relation with this Indian.”

  Lyddie set down her cup, warm enough now, and not from the brandy. “You may tell the church fathers that I’m duly chastised about meeting and will strive to attend better. You may tell them they may take up my disrespect of my son at the same time as they take up his failure to honor his obligation to me. You may tell them nothing of the Indian, as it’s not their business. Is there more?”

  “There’s a good deal more. You put yourself at grave risk, in this life and the next, if you continue without the Lord, if you continue in your willfulness, if you continue in the company of heathens.”

  “And I see the greater risk in starvation.”

  “You might return to your son’s any time you sign the proper papers, and there you might eat your fill. ’Tis naught but pride keeps you here.”

  “So, ’tis not the church fathers who send you here, but Mr. Clarke? But of course, you would like my house for your daughter. You should enjoy having her so near at hand, would you not?”

  “My dealings with Clarke are not your concern.”

  “As my dealings with him are not yours. As my dealings with Mr. Cowett are not yours.”

  “I am deacon of the church. I arrive at an early hour to find him handling your door as if it were his own and you undressed in his company.”

  Lyddie rose. “I am undressed, as you call it, in your company as well. Best you take yourself off before that’s all over town, too.”

  A rich, bruised color suffused the deacon’s face. “You’ve been warned, Widow Berry.”

  He left without good-bye.

  Lyddie refilled her cup and drank it down.

  28

  Lyddie set up the Indian with stews and pies and bread, swept out and scoured down, fed the chickens in exchange for eggs, trading some mending for three laying hens, and added one and six to her week’s pay whenever she did a washing. The deacon’s visit had had a certain perverse effect on her; from that day forth she didn’t attend another meeting, but she still observed the Sabbath by not working, until one Saturday Cowett said, “Another two shillings if you come on the morrow.” Lyddie worked the Sabbath and felt nothing but richer.

  The days passed into weeks, dragging May into June by the heels. The viburnum bloomed. The strawberries reddened. Eben Freeman came. He stood and looked around and sat and looked around and stood and burst out roughly, “Widow Berry, you must know what’s said about town.”

  “What is said, Mr. Freeman?”

  “How can you be unaware? You shun your church, you shun your friends and family, you seclude yourself for over a month with this Indian, they think…well, good God, what might they think?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “You and the Indian. A rumor flies. Of him. Here. With you.”

  “You have this from Deacon Smalley?”

  “I have it from all the town! My sister told me of it. The miller told me of it. ’Tis tossed about at the tavern.”

  “Well, then, it must be true.”

  “You’d do nothing to help yourself, Widow Berry?”

  “What would you like from me, Mr. Freeman? My assurance that I do not lie with the Indian? Then you have it. Will that do?”

  He stared at her. “You’re greatly changed, Widow Berry. You’re very greatly changed. I don’t know what to say to you.”

  “Nor I you. And if you’ve come from my son with the aim of forcing me to give up my employment with Mr. Cowett—”

  “I? Come from your son? This is what you think of me?”

  “What should I think of you, Mr. Freeman, having just learned what you think of me?”

  He had the sense to fall silent, but soon enough he began again, although in more subdued tone. “I think nothing ill of you, Widow Berry; I never have and I never could do. I’ve spoken badly. I came with no intent but to warn you of the harm aimed at you.”

  “But how can they harm me? Unless they drive me away from Mr. Cowett and my sole source of employment?”

  “But don’t you see? That very employment allows them this weapon against you. There are other me
ans to make your way. If you allow me to help you to regain your keep from Clarke by law—”

  “And leave me in debt to you and fighting Clarke every month for my wood and rye? Do you forget? ’Twas you described how it would be.”

  “You have no other recourse.”

  “I have my employ with Mr. Cowett. And I’d sooner count on Cowett than Clarke.”

  “Count on Cowett! You don’t begin to know the man; you don’t know what moves him. He has grudges to feed, old and new. He’s ruled by them.”

  “And I thought you a friend to him.”

  “He has no friend in this town.”

  “Well, then, it makes us two.”

  “You would say this to me?”

  Lyddie didn’t answer.

  Freeman stood up. “My sister awaits my report on your condition. It will not be a happy one. I see now you have been corrupted by him, if not in one way, then in another equally as damaging. Good-day to you, Widow Berry.”

  “Good-day, Mr. Freeman.”

  After he had gone Lyddie sat, half shamed and half angered, the anger fed by the shaming, both warring inside her. It all warred inside her. Was Freeman indeed a friend to her? What poor opinion must he hold of her to say all he had said of Cowett? But what of all his early kindness and defense of her? Even today, he had heard what was said around town and instead of believing and staying away he had come to warn her. Or had he half believed, the half that believed then coming straight to her to hear her denial? But even if that were so, the fact of his coming here spoke to a certain courage no other had possessed, including her daughter. And speaking of her daughter, where did she fall in this? Mehitable had believed her husband over her mother once before; Lyddie could put no faith in her in this matter. And after this last visit, perhaps she would be foolish to put any faith in Eben Freeman. Lyddie was surprised to find that the second thought gave her almost as much pain as the first.

  Lyddie returned to Cowett’s late in the day to collect the linens she’d left on the grass to bleach; she found the Indian just in from fishing, and she followed him inside to set out his supper. Long, gold rays followed her through the door and across the clean, bleached floorboards; the smell of sassafras but not sassafras was strong and she found it soothed her. Cowett talked of a fine day at sea and his hope for the morrow; once he’d put away his sack he turned and gave her one long look, then another.