The Wood's Edge

by Lori Benton

  Agnes McClaren, tucking a strand of graying hair beneath her cap, replaced the pot lid with a clank and swung the crane back over the flames. Unfortunately, the noise failed to mask Anna’s voice as, still holding the red-coated soldier, she repeated, “Papa.”

  Mrs. Aubrey’s smile vanished. She set down her knife, crossed to the children, took the soldier from Anna, and put it back into her son’s hand. “He is not your papa. He is William’s.”

  The little girl flinched, then stared at the soldier in William’s hand, her rosebud mouth drooping.

  Lydia drew a breath, caught her mother’s warning glance, and exhaled it wordlessly.

  Time and again her mother had admonished her. No matter how she might love the child, or think her unfairly treated, Anna was the Aubreys’ charge. Not theirs.

  Let it be different now. Lydia flung the prayer heavenward as she stalked to the hearth to check the herbs she’d left steeping, thankful Major Aubrey was returned. The child hadn’t even had a name when the Aubreys came to them, fresh from the harrowing of Fort William Henry. Of course they couldn’t know what her name had been, but to have come all the way from Fort Edward to Albany calling her nothing at all?

  Lydia had taken one look at the girl and knew—just knew—her name was Anna Catherine. Before the major departed she’d suggested the name. Mrs. Aubrey had shrugged, but the major…Lydia hadn’t forgotten how his face had lit, like a candle flaming up behind it. “That’s lovely, that is,” he’d told her. “Aye, let’s call her so.”

  “I regret she’s such a bother,” Mrs. Aubrey said into the kitchen’s silence.

  “She’s no such thing,” said Agnes. “She’s a biddable child, and quiet with it.”

  “Now Reginald is here,” Mrs. Aubrey went on, “he’ll find a place for her to bide. She’ll not be long underfoot.”

  Lydia, stooping over the clay jar she’d left on the hearth, straightened with a blazing face. “You would give her away after all this time? Like some unwanted kitten?”

  Mrs. Aubrey stared, patently bewildered by the question. “Why not? She is nothing to me.”

  “But—”

  “Lydia,” her mother said. “The child isn’t ours.”

  Lydia clamped her lips over what she wished to retort, that God—and Major Aubrey—would have the last word on Anna.

  The clay jar in which she’d left calendula petals steeping at the edge of the embers had been pushed aside. Stooping again, she touched the lid with a finger. Cool. “Mama—you moved the jar?”

  Her mother’s petticoat swished past. “I need space on the hearth to cook, young lady. I cannot be concerned with your little diversions—”

  “Trials, Mama. I’m attempting to ascertain if steeping calendula at a warmer temperature will enhance its efficacy for Jacob’s blemishes. Now I’ll have to begin over.”

  “Oh, Lydia. I’m not sure I even know what you just said.” Her mother slid a pan of cornbread into the hearth oven. “Would that you showed such devotion to something of matter to a girl your age.”

  Lydia scooped up the jar.

  “She’s not our child either,” Mrs. Aubrey cut in, reverting to the subject of Anna. “Yet Reginald chose to spend his first hour with her.”

  Lydia schooled herself to silence while Agnes reminded Mrs. Aubrey that the major would have spent that same hour with William, had attempting to do so not sent the boy running from the room in tears.

  “The girl cannot remember him any better than does William,” Mrs. Aubrey protested. “Reginald favors her. I cannot understand it.”

  Lydia ground her teeth. Rarely was it helpful to argue with Mrs. Aubrey once she fixed on a notion, and never on the subject of Anna. Or William. Or Wales. But to judge the major so, when for the past two years she’d showed complete indifference toward the child they rescued?

  It was too much. Fearing she might erupt in an unseemly fit of temper if she didn’t escape Mrs. Aubrey’s presence, Lydia slipped from the kitchen while her mother’s back was turned, gripping the clay jar fit to crush it.

  6

  Lydia hurried along the street outside the McClaren’s gabled home. She’d left the house too precipitously to fetch her cloak but wasn’t going far, and the afternoon was mild for October.

  Nearing the center of Schenectady’s stockade, private homes mingled with trade shops in an odorous clash of livestock, humanity, and the river curving round the town to the north and west, sending out marshy tendrils hither and yon. Passing a baker’s shop, Lydia nodded to two of her mother’s friends exiting with baskets on arms, a yeasty breath of air escaping with them. She hurried on before they could inquire after the McClarens’ new houseguest.

  Mrs. Aubrey made her blood boil. For two years their household had been afflicted by her dark moods, the bouts of weeping, the near hysterical fear of Indian attack. Then there were those days of hand-wringing when she nigh drove them mad insisting William was colicky, fevered, bilious, and a dozen other ailments the boy never suffered. Whereas if Anna should fall bleeding at her feet, no doubt the woman would step over her to offer William another biscuit.

  “We must show her patience,” George McClaren had explained. “We dinna ken the horrors she’s endured. As for Anna…have ye nay thought the wee lass may be too sharp a reminder of Fort William Henry and what happened thereafter?”

  Lydia tried to mind her father’s admonition, but when Mrs. Aubrey’s dislike of Anna bordered on the cruel, it made her suspect the child was less a reminder of a terrible ordeal than a source of jealousy, a rival for the major’s paternal affection. As if a man couldn’t love two children at once.

  She’d reached the shop with the white shingle bearing the scripted letters G. McClaren, Apothecary. Huffing from anger more than exertion, she pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  The shop was devoid of customers, but a rush of aromas greeted her like a clamor of voices—exotic voices from distant lands mingled with those from as nearby as Papa’s physic garden and the woods and meadows surrounding Schenectady. The heady smells would soon recede from notice, but those first seconds were like walking into the embraces of friends.

  Which wasn’t what Jacob van Bergen—seventeen, gangly, big-eared, and pimply—could be called. Her papa’s apprentice paused his work of rolling pills behind the dispensing counter as Lydia crossed the shop. He brushed aside a hank of coppery hair that had slipped its binding.

  “Back so soon? Where’s Mr. McClaren?”

  “With the major, last I saw.”

  Jacob quirked a rusty brow at her glum inflection. “He didn’t let you examine the wound?”

  Lydia sighed. She’d borne such teasing for well over a year now, ever since Jacob discovered her interest in all things apothecarial. “What do you think, Mr. van Bergen?”

  She rounded the counter, an eye to Jacob’s work. He’d mixed the ingredients and rolled a thick paste into a slab on the tile, ready to be cut into uniform pills. A sniff identified the components, among them aloe, chicory, endive, rhubarb, agaric, and cinnamon.

  “Why won’t you call me Jacob?”

  Lydia looked up to find the apprentice studying her as intently as she’d observed his work. She drew back, wary of further teasing. “Is that Angelic Pill you’re making?” she asked, knowing the answer. “For Mrs. Stowe?”

  “How did you guess?”

  Guess? She shrugged, mistrusting her sharp tongue, and started to head for the distillation room.

  Jacob’s next question halted her. “Did you run all the way from the house to flush your cheeks so pink, or is it Mrs. Aubrey again?”

  Lydia supposed she deserved the hot blush now prickling her cheeks. Obviously her annoyance with Heledd Aubrey was no secret. At least she’d a ready excuse so she didn’t have to admit it. She held up the clay jar. “Mama ruined my decoction. I wish Papa would let me work here in the shop.”

  “Oh? What work might that be?”

  Without dignifying that with an answer, Lydia pulle
d out a drawer in a vast bank of them lining the shop’s back wall, seeking calendula. They were running low. Jacob would have to treat his pimples by some other means.

  A customer entered the shop, requesting hawthorn for her husband’s kidney stones. Jacob hesitated over where in all the shelves and crannies to find what the woman requested.

  “I’m closer. I’ll get it.” Lydia extracted a bundle of dried flowering tops and berries, which she handed to Jacob to measure into the woman’s leather wallet.

  Alone again, Lydia asked, “Is there more calendula stashed away somewhere?”

  “Let me see…” Jacob went to the account book and leafed back through a page. “No. Mr. Mayfield came in asking for it yesterday, just after you took that bit for your work.”

  Lydia heaved a sigh. “We’re low on hawthorn as well. Calendula I can get from the garden, but I’ll have to ask Papa to accompany me out to collect the hawthorn berries.”

  “With Major Aubrey to look after, as well as his other patients? He won’t have the time.”

  “Well, I cannot go beyond the stockade alone, can I?”

  The threat of Indian attack that so terrified Heledd Aubrey was unlikely now that the Six Nations—the Mohawks, Oneidas, Tuscaroras, Onondagas, Cayugas, even most of the fierce and distant Senecas—had come over to the English side of the conflict with the French. It was nevertheless a concern to take seriously. There’d been that terrible attack last November, in German Flatts, an isolated settlement sixty miles upriver. But there was Fort Stanwix now at the head of the Mohawk River to keep the French and their Indians at bay. And she didn’t like to let their stock of any herb run low if she could help it. Perhaps she could strike a bargain with Jacob…

  “The calendula was for you,” she said.

  Jacob’s brows shot high. “Me? Why? Oh…” Spots of red unlike his normal affliction stained his cheeks. “Think calendula might help, do you?”

  “I thought it worth the undertaking. I’d be willing to brave Mama’s ire for another try…if you’ll accompany me tomorrow outside the stockade.”

  “Before work, you mean?”

  “The early bird gets the hawthorn berry.” She grinned at her attempt at cleverness—admittedly weak—but was surprised to see the apprentice’s expression soften. “Please, Jacob?”

  She hadn’t meant to call him by his Christian name, but it seemed to aid her cause. His dark blue eyes widened with pleasure before he said gruffly, “Long as we’re straight back. No sidetracks. Just the hawthorn.”

  “Naturally.” Lydia made for the door. “Though maybe some sassafras as well,” she called over her shoulder as her hand touched the latch.

  “Why do you need sassafras?”

  “Never you mind,” Lydia said and pushed her way out onto the street.

  Heledd Aubrey’s plaintive voice troubled the house as Lydia shut the front door: “But I do not understand it! Never return to Wales? How can he mean to stay in this godforsaken place?”

  Lydia huffed. Schenectady godforsaken? They had three churches within the stockade—including their own Presbyterian meetinghouse. Avoiding the kitchen, she ducked down the passage that led to the back stairs, above which waited the sanctuary of her room under the gables. But the stairs were outside Major Aubrey’s door, and it stood half open. The third stair creaked like a rusty hinge beneath her foot.

  “Miss McClaren?” He said her name softly, but it froze Lydia on the stair. Except for her heart, which leapt beneath her stays and ran off at a gallop.

  She descended the stairs and peered into the room.

  Major Aubrey was abed, reclined upon pillows. The coverlet outlined his legs. He looked weaker than when she’d served him tea, his features pinched with fatigue, as if her papa had prescribed a stroll round the stockade during her absence. Then she saw the shirtsleeve rolled high. A linen strip, red-spotted, wrapped his arm below the elbow joint. The bleeding bowl and lancet had been removed, but Papa’s medical case rested on the table beside the bed.

  Lydia flushed but didn’t lower her gaze, wanting to seem accustomed to the sight of a patient in bed. “You called me, Major?”

  “I did.” Major Aubrey raised a hand and worried the curls at the base of his neck. “Do you come in. But softly, see.” He directed his gaze toward the hearth.

  Lydia pushed the door wide to view the room. On a quilt between the wing chairs, guarded by a sentry of painted soldiers, William and Anna lay napping, mussed fair head to mussed fair head.

  The major kept his voice low. “Seems he’s over his fright of me.”

  Lydia forgot to be embarrassed. “Oh, I’m glad. He’s a good boy—a handful at times, but sweet.” And astonishingly unspoiled by his mother’s constant doting, she didn’t add. “Did Mrs. Aubrey show him your coat?”

  “Aye. ’Tis what did the trick.”

  The woman had known what she was about, this time. Even so, mention of her creased the major’s brow. Here at the end of the passage, his wife’s complaints were muffled but audible still. Or was it physical pain that distressed the major? Sweat beaded his face. His fever was up. Ought she to get basin and rag, cool his brow?

  “Can I fetch you anything, Major?”

  “No. I have all I need.” Major Aubrey’s gaze went briefly to the children, then returned to her. “Your father has been telling me of you and Anna, though well do I remember how you cared for her from the start. I see that hasn’t changed.”

  Lydia drew in a breath, unsure what to say. She’d known one day the major would return and take Anna away. She’d tried not to think of it. Or if she did, she imagined the Aubreys settling in Schenectady, where she could go on seeing Anna from time to time. Not across an ocean.

  Never return to Wales. The import of Mrs. Aubrey’s unhappy words struck her now not with annoyance but hope. “I know it isn’t my place to ask but…shall you be keeping Anna?”

  Some emotion Lydia couldn’t read rippled across the major’s ashen face. “I’ve every intention of it. She’s the one pure thing—”

  Lydia waited, but the major had bitten off whatever he’d meant to say. Or begun to say inadvertently. “And you’ve told Mrs. Aubrey.”

  “That I have—” His voice caught again. This time his unhappiness was plain.

  “I wish Mama would gag her, so she’d hush. I’m sorry you must endure her senseless fretting.”

  On the heels of those blurted words, Lydia felt her face burn, as the major’s look sharpened. “Never say that, Miss McClaren.”

  The words, though soft-spoken, were edged with disapproval. Lydia felt as though she’d been slapped—and deservedly so.

  The major must have realized it. “It is only that you cannot begin to imagine…” He shut his eyes. “Do you be thankful, Miss McClaren, that you haven’t endured what I and His Majesty’s army have put my wife through these years past. And if you must complain of her, then do your complaining to God. Ask Him to grant her peace.”

  Lydia took a step toward the bed, her heart twisting at the major’s bitter tone. She could barely get breath enough to say, “I’m sorry, Major. Of course I’ll pray for her.” And she had done, though not as often as she might have.

  The major cleared his throat. “I have no doubt you will, dear girl. But let that bide. I called you in to say…’twas about Anna, see. I realize Heledd…” He spread his fingers on the coverlet, then made them into fists. His lips compressed as though against a stab of pain. “Thank you—that is what I mean to say. Thank you, Miss McClaren, for the kindness you have shown my Anna.”

  My Anna. Lydia felt a thread of warmth enter her soul, even as his suffering constricted her throat. She’d added to it with her thoughtless words. Now he thanked her?

  Tears burned her nose, which by now must be going hideously red and puffy. It did whenever she cried. She had no words. She could only nod at the major—who wasn’t looking at her now—and beat a retreat up the stairs to weep her heart out in private.

  7

 
; July 1761

  Perched on the cart’s tail, hedged by sacks and barrels and what looked like part of a plow, Lydia watched Schenectady’s stockade vanish behind a rise of piney meadowland and waves of humid heat. Summer grasses, seeding between the road’s twin ruts, slapped her stockinged feet as they passed.

  “A young woman of ten-and-six mustn’t gad about shoeless,” her mother had admonished weakly from her bed that morning. Though Lydia had no intention of presenting herself shoeless to the Aubreys, clinging wisps of the child within made her long to whip off her cap as well as her shoes, to feel the breeze on her scalp. But what sort of example would that be to Anna, for whose home upstream on the Mohawk River she was bound?

  She hummed aloud, happily off-key, until the cart’s driver detected the tune she was attempting to render and raised his pure tenor to join her.

  “He breaks the power of canceled sin, He sets the prisoner free. His blood can make the foulest clean, His blood availed for me.”

  Lydia glanced behind her at the narrow, brown-coated back of the Irishman Major Aubrey had hired to oversee the planting of his new farm. Rowan Doyle, hair hanging in graying tendrils below his hat, turned a beaky profile to call over the cart’s rumble, “ ’Tis right gladsome you are today, Miss Lydia.”

  “What’s not to be glad about, Mr. Doyle? The sun is shining, the French are beaten, and the Aubreys have settled in Schenectady—or near enough.”

  “So it is. So they are. And so they have—to me own content as well.”

  Mr. Doyle chirruped to the horse to liven its pace. Lydia clung to her bouncing perch, a hand to the satchel at her side, which she planned to fill with gleanings from the woods that edged the Aubreys’ new farm. The major told her he’d spotted a patch of ground holly. She hoped also to replenish the shop’s supply of milkweed root. Who knew what else she might find?

  Mr. Doyle fell to whistling in the bee-buzzing warmth. Fields and scattered dwellings fell behind. Patches of forest crept nearer the road. Lydia leaned against a sack and with eyes shut raised her face to the sun…and thought again of her mother. Though bedridden with a fevered cough—a malady that had plagued her since the spring—Agnes McClaren had insisted Lydia take this opportunity to visit the Aubreys’ new home, knowing how she’d missed having Anna and William about their house the past month. Jacob had agreed to sit with her mother. Papa was down the street at the shop. It was a beautiful day. She was going to see Anna and William, and, should he return from town in time, perhaps the major as well.