“You are a merry, bruff sort of soul,” Jotham Herrick said to her.
“So unwontedly merry that I am always falling out with my mother and sister or gaining a reproof when I make a little bother in the meetinghouse, though at least it is not with fits and shalming like my sister.”
We chattered long, Bel Holt on Jotham Herrick’s left and I on his right. Mr. Herrick told us how he had in the morning been chosen among the selectmen as sealer of weights and measures, and how that would increase his income a little, for anyone who sold by weight would have to come to him and have their weights certified as standard and stamped with the town seal.
“Why you, sir? I mean, why a goldsmith? You might have been asked to be culler of fish or constable or corder of wood or some other thing,” Bel said.
“A pipe stave man or a fence viewer,” he said.
“A hog reeve!” That was my thought, and it made him laugh.
“I could have been asked to do many jobs,” he said. “And maybe some sound kin to what I do, like the searchers of coin. And some might seem right because I am in the militia. Like the searcher of powder. But Andover is no Boston port with a multitude of duties.”
“The post must be open, and it must fit,” I said.
He grasped at my fingers, wrapped in strips of wool.
“In London, the assay-master reports on the fineness of silver, setting it down by half-penny weights, penny weights, and troy ounces, and with gold he must set down karats and karat-grains, and half and quarter grains. But here there is no Cheapside with goldsmith shops, and we smiths in metals must measure for ourselves and be honest.”
“Expect you are,” Bel Holt said.
“I mean to be,” he told her.
“Mr. Dane spoke of silver and gold in that way to me,” I said.
Jotham laughed and said that the minister had once used touchstones and silver and gold in a sermon. “That man never forgets what you tell him,” he added. “So take care what you say.”
In the evening wind and the fast-falling dark, the three of us walked close together for warmth, and I held Jotham Herrick by the hand in the gloom, the life that flowed through him making sparks and flares of invisible light in my fingertips and flashing through me. I fancied that if only that inner glittering were visible, we could be seen as a beacon for many miles.
All afternoon, he had been working the silver, turning what was hard and dull into something fluent and shining. The image of him at his labors made me think of how it would be when his hands fell upon me, and whether when we would be together, we would make something glowing and beautiful of ourselves.
“It is not long now,” Bel Holt said. “Soon the handbells will be ringing and the pots banging for Mister and Mistress Herrick. I shall marry Goodman Richard Dane. And won’t my sister Lizzie be wroth with me? But I may be kind to her because I shall have my sole desire.”
We laughed at her evident satisfaction, but I was glad of the twilight to hide the blush that tinged my throat and face as easily as a drop of crimson ink unfurls its veils in water. I was always so, I and two of my brothers, John and Joseph. Jotham Herrick pressed my hand and leaned toward me, and when I turned to him, I saw the first stars reflected in his eyes.
“I intend to be as pleased with my husband as Mistress Anne Brad-street was with hers,” I said.
Jotham Herrick knew the poem I meant. “As she wrote, ‘If ever two were one, then surely we.’ ”
“Yes, I like that line.”
“I shall be pleased as well,” Bel said. “There will be no stopping my home pleasures.”
At the Dane house we parted. Until I slept, I still had a sense of being connected with Jotham Herrick, and that he had somehow taken up residence in my body and mind. My fingers held the memory of his.
Bel Holt and I traveled back to the Wardwell house a few times, by ourselves or with Goodwife Deliverance Dane, finishing up the work we had started and helping with preparations. No visit was so peculiar as the first, which lingered in my thoughts like a dream of strangeness that clings long after waking.
But I had much else to do and ponder, and for some considerable time I forgot about the half-house with its odd chimney, patched remains of rooms, and tunnel, and even about Goodwife Phoebe Wardwell, so kind and fragile seeming, and her child-to-be. The date of the marriage had been arranged, and Mr. Herrick and I were to be wed at Mr. Dane’s house—there being no groom’s family, no bride’s family, and all irregular—perhaps by Mr. Dudley Bradstreet, captain of the militia and justice of the peace, son of Mistress Anne Bradstreet, and the man who had freed me from Goody Holt’s control on the day that Lizzie fell into fits. That, I thought, was a collection of many fine accomplishments! We would sign the register book and add to its record yet another of the civil ceremonies of Andover. Goody Deliverance Dane and some of the other Danes might be there, and Bel Holt, along with a few others. Bottles of wine that had been sent from the Saltonstalls in Haverhill would be used for making sack posset, and the Dane daughters had promised to supply a meal of roast venison with parsnips and to sing a psalm for me. (They were generous to me, those women: I have not forgotten.) And Bel Holt, still my best-known friend in that place, vowed to make bride cakes spiced with dried black and red currants and iced with sugar. I would be made a wife. After three married nights in our own house, Jotham Herrick and I would be riding on my own dear Hortus to Haverhill.
And all that happened in good time as promised and arranged, and the hours of my wedding day swept by as in a dream, and though I missed my own family and especially my mother and Mary and felt a flash of grief at times, I was happy. The great surprise was that Mr. Nathaniel Saltonstall was waiting at the Dane house to marry us, for he had arranged to meet with the militia officers in Andover that morning, and Jotham Herrick knew but kept the secret. So I had that honor, as well as the congratulations of Captain Bradstreet, who accompanied the town’s clerk and register book, and the chance to tell him (with a little stammer of nervousness) that Jotham Herrick and I meant to be as pleased, each with the other, as his father and mother, portrayed in her poems.
Major Saltonstall brought a wooden box filled with little birds, fish, and honeybees, sprinkled with gilt, and a little book so small I could hide it with one hand: A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen, or the Art of Procuring, Conserving, and Candying. With the manner how to make divers kinder of syrups, and all kinds of Banqueting-Stuffs: Also diverse Sovereign Medicines and Salves. Inside were receipts to make marmalades and violet syrup, petals and fruits crusted with rock candy, quodiniack of plums and flower waters, and the directions for making cunning little creatures like the ones he brought us: “To make all kind of Birds and Beasts to stand on their legs in casting work.” I spied a note tucked between the pages by my dear benefactress: May you find in each other through this lawful knot a friend and a comfort, a companion for pleasure, and a co-servant in the work given you to do. Tears pricked at my eyelids, for I always loved books, and the tiny beasts wrapped for safety in thrums made me long for Mistress Saltonstall and for my own mother, so that I could hardly speak my thanks.
The asking if we agreed to be husband and wife as long as we lived was the matter of a moment only; we were wed, and the major greeted me as Mistress Herrick.
After the ceremony, I could hardly eat more than the smallest bride cake and a spoonful of pyramidis cream, and my name was inked in the clerk’s book with an unsteady hand. My new name. Charis Herrick. The sack posset went to my head, and I clung to Jotham Herrick’s arm as we walked to the house with the silver gleaming through the window, the others following behind with bells to ring and pots to bang with spoons, even Mr. Dane and Major Saltonstall, a member of the General Court. That was a grand parade! Afterward, I changed into a new gown, and Deliverance Dane and Bel Holt helped me to bed.
What I remember most about the scene is how Jotham Herrick, who had no one to do him service, had a floor that was all beggar’s velvet, as it is sometimes cal
led, from the turning of a feather bed. The finest down had sifted out and scattered across the floor so that I stood in my bride’s gown on a thin layer of cloud. And it seemed like something heavenly to me, though it was only the lack of proper sweeping, for the gossamer drifted and moved as I slowly stepped barefoot across the floor, holding hands with the two women and letting them tuck me into bed to await Jotham Herrick.
Earlier, Bel Holt had set out some of the gilded animals on a table near the bed, placing the fish on a silver tray for a pond, and strewing the birds and honeybees all around it. I was glad, seeing them there, because of Mistress Saltonstall’s work and because of the friend who thought I would be charmed by the sight. Close by stood a bowl nigh brimming with water, a few summer-pressed flowers floating on the surface.
What a noise outside the bedroom door, what a raucous banging of pots and silvery ringing of the bells and shouts! Tumbled cries of Board her! Bounce her! Broach and board! Shoot the bolt, clasp and caper, pike the gap! ended in a crescendo of battering metal and a burst of merriment from the revelers. In came my husband, thrust laughing into the chamber by the whole party. They trooped away, huzzahing and shouting in mirth. The occasional bang of lid and pot dwindled into the distance until at last we were left alone with naught but our own words and desires.
“My wife is like cherry and blood-root ink in milk,” my husband said, tightening his arms around me.
“Ink,” I repeated, pressing against him. “You be the quill.”
“I meant your blushes,” he said.
We laughed, giddy with wine and the pleasures of the day.
The beggar’s velvet shifted and stirred with the motion of the air, so that a cloud seemed to be running on the floor, yet never leaving. And the red hair undone on my shoulders and the thick, light hair of Jotham Herrick were blent together, and my breath, tasting of cinnamon and wine, mingled with his. For us, it seemed that no one had ever loved as we loved in the history of the world, that we were set apart in our passion and our striving. And the velvet trembled on the boards, and the lightning trees of our veins burned together in the chamber all night until the dawn came.
7
Wedlock
Haverhill and Andover, December 1690—mid-January 1691
On the fourth day of my marriage, I journeyed to Haverhill with Jotham Herrick—sometimes holding the reins, sometimes riding pillion, and sometimes walking—and was welcomed as warmly as any newly married daughter by the Saltonstalls. My old room, where memories of the time before stood all around, was restored to me, though all was changed for the better. We had brought with us nothing but garments and as many lidded dishes and utensils as Hortus could carry, and occasionally we welcomed visitors from the town who, hearing of Mr. Herrick’s skill, wished to inspect his wares. We had not been there ten days when we were quite depleted of silver, in great degree due to a traveling party of merchants who spent a night with the Saltonstalls.
At times, my hours seemed nothing but an idyll of easy work and pleasant talk. As before, I sewed with Eliza Dennison and her mother and young Damaris Hathorne, although now we sat close by the fire and never out-of-doors. John was larger, and the months had taught him new words. Now he called me Care, and I thought it not so wrong a name for someone who had owned many cares and had been a care to others—who felt at fault in the death of someone she loved. In March, he and Eliza were to return to Ipswich for a visit to their former haunts if the weather was clear.
The air was fragrant with the pastilles I had made at the close of summer, and the time moved strangely—often the afternoon only a day before seemed like some golden fall hour already long past. The days fled from me. My time in Haverhill was mostly sweet, and I shall not forget it—and yet the memory glides by with only a few distinct moments that stand above the rest like splashed, glittering stones projecting above a stream.
We would sew and laugh and tell stories; the major would come in, followed by his younger sons, Mr. Richard Saltonstall and Mr. Nathaniel Saltonstall, arrived from college, and my own Mr. Herrick, and all would be changed. The brisk, snow-charged air of December came with them, and often their shoulders were sprinkled with snowflakes. Once we met the party with cinnamon water, made with good sack infused for three days and three nights, and then they were glad to be home! Their talk was of the militia or town business, for Major Saltonstall and Jotham Herrick had much in common and spent some considerable time visiting Haverhill notables or gathering with soldiers of the militia, inspecting arms and readiness.
One time, the youngest son read aloud from a letter from his brother, Mr. Gurdon Saltonstall, already serving as a minister in Connecticut and seeming fair to be an important personage in that colony. It struck me that Nathaniel and Richard Saltonstall were both quieter in their ways than their sister Eliza. At the table, Nathaniel was often silent, or leaned to his neighbor and spoke in words I could never catch, and I thought it might be hard to be the youngest in so eminent a family, with so fine a father and a brother who had already finished several degrees at Harvard and was rising irresistibly in the world—not to mention Eliza, who was much talked about as owning a well-managed wit and as being a virtuous and a clever woman. Her late husband, too, had been much beloved as an occasional preacher in Ipswich, and his name was often mentioned.
On a bitter morning, a visitor from Boston spoke to the militia of Major Church’s incursion into Acadia in the past September, and when they came home, the men were full of details about the expedition. It made me melancholy to know that while I had been suffering the slings of Lizzie and Goody Holt, colony soldiers were thrashing through the wilderness, battling the French and the Wabanaki confederacy. Perhaps they had even fought the two men I had encountered by the mountain of flesh that was our English people of Falmouth, murdered and flung aside.
After the midday meal, when the younger Saltonstall men and my husband headed back into town, Major Saltonstall drew me aside to talk, asking his wife to come with us to a private room.
“Pray pardon me; perhaps Jotham Herrick should be here. I do not know whether it is best to share this with you first or whether, indeed, he should be present. My sense is that you may want to hear alone, and recover yourself from any surprise. I did not want to say in front of all, but I have received the names of the captives that were found in Wabanaki wigwams, victims of late incursions, or else sent north to the French,” he said.
The hope that one name or more—or all!—belonged to me flared up. Elizabeth Saltonstall slipped her arm around my waist.
He shook his head. “I am sorry. None of your family were among them.”
“It should be no—no surprise to me.”
And yet it was a surprise. Hadn’t I dreamed of my family? Hadn’t I had a fantasy of at least one surviving to comfort me for such a loss? Didn’t I feel my mother’s arms around me many mornings when I woke, or hear my father’s voice dissolving with a dream as it fled? Didn’t I see in fancy that my brother Joseph had been ransomed and returned to me, that he and Jotham Herrick were as brothers to each other? Hadn’t I spent hours over my needle, imagining the return of my brothers and other relatives, and how I would care for them after long trials and make them glad to be alive in the world? But their shapes were all gone from me into smoke or the dark ground and their spirits to the world to come.
“Mary and I should have stayed with the rest in the house.”
“Oh, no, not that.” Elizabeth Saltonstall shook me lightly.
“Indeed, no,” the major said. “Think on your husband and those who are fond of you and wish you well here.”
“We care for you as for Eliza,” Mistress Saltonstall said.
“Yes, you are as our own kin,” Major Saltonstall said. “And we admire what you have done. You have endured and stood up under a greater blow than most will ever feel, and I trust that the remainder of your life will shine as bright and polished as your Jotham Herrick’s gold and silver.”
I nodded, unable to spea
k.
“And there are, we hope, the children to be,” Elizabeth Saltonstall said. “Are not our living children a consolation in the midst of grief? For this life is full of sore partings.”
“Yes, think on the infants to come in good time,” Major Salton-stall said, “and on God’s mercy and love that are lights even when the acts of men are dark and unfathomable. Because the heart of man can grow unsavory and blacker than broth.”
He went on, his voice low. “A foul plot stains the reputation of the French officers, that they accepted surrender and promised safety but allowed the Wabanaki to murder those that honor should have protected. Governor Frontenac was displeased, or so it is said, yet was so far without conscience as to excuse his officers, claiming that our men, women, and children were rebels against King James, that the Prince and Princess of Orange usurped the throne. In this manner, a governor approves barbarity and bloody crime.”
My eyes prickled.
“There is more,” he said. “Do you wish to hear?”
Again I nodded. Elizabeth had caught up my right hand, and now he held the left between his own.
“This week I received a letter from my friend Mr. Sewall in Boston, whom I had asked to make inquiries, not being satisfied with the news acquired earlier. And I believe there is little hope of further survivors. The bodies you saw—that wretched hill of flesh—were buried by Major Church’s men in the summer. Bones were also found in the remains of a house not so far from the fort, and more bodies, adults and children and a cow, were discovered in the woods nearby. Perhaps some escaped the firing of a house and were killed later.”
The tears fled my eyes, though I meant not to cry, and he pressed my hand between his.
“It is my belief that these were your kin, whose bodies now sleep buried inside the stone foundation of the largest house.”
Charis in the World of Wonders Page 20
