Charis in the World of Wonders

by Marly Youmans

  The ice behind him cracked and retorted as Hortus, who I thought would stay for us until I called him by name, stepped gingerly onto the frozen river.

  “Hurry! He may shatter the ice. . . ”

  Jotham Herrick jumped, his arms flying out like wings as his soles met stone; once balanced, he looked back over his shoulder. Climbing down from his landing perch, he pulled Samuel and the bags nearer. Turning, he began to cross the ice between the last ledges and the shore.

  A great boom shivered the ice. The surface waved, undulating up and down.

  “Haste,” I shouted.

  Jotham moved faster, at last running and sliding ahead of the parade of sled and parcels, until he grasped my outstretched hand and vaulted onto the slippery bank, grabbing at a tree trunk and hanging on till he found his footing.

  The cloth braids wound around his wrist had dug into the skin, which looked raw and chafed.

  “Let me,” he said, but I took hold of a rope and drew Samuel to the edge of the river.

  Jotham slid down the bank, dragging Samuel close. He hoisted the crude sled, passing it to me, holding on until I seized the branches and began to haul it upward. Despite the keen air, our child was smiling up at the stars and moon and babbling to them in his own private language.

  Catching sight of me, he whooped as if to tell me that he had seen something marvelous, which perhaps he had. I freed him from the branches and yarn and held the bundle of furs and cloth against me, once more warming Samuel’s nose and cheeks by gently rubbing my face against his.

  “Your little moon face, so cold and white,” I said, near to crying now that we were safe, all but Hortus.

  Hand over hand, Jotham Herrick was towing in the rest of our sacks.

  Hortus clambered over the ice, his feet sliding and the surface ponderously rolling as though it might slip away entirely and leave only current.

  Jotham scrambled up to me, carefully pulling up the ropes so that nothing would be snagged on the scrub and young trees on the bank.

  “He’s going to knock the river into pieces and fall in,” I said. My hand reached as if to grip Jotham’s.

  But my husband was kneeling on the snow, still heaving our parcels onto land. Glancing up, he said, “The river is frozen like a January pond—but unevenly, especially where the current flows strongest.”

  “I cannot lose him.” I whispered those words, knowing that in this life, everything gets lost.

  Hortus kept moving forward, pushing through the dark and snorting when he sniffed at the unearthly cold of the rocks.

  “Come to me, Hortus,” I called. “Hortus!”

  The ice buckled under him; he plunged into the water and abruptly breached. His head reared up like the bowsprit on a ship, and he screamed in protest at the solid world tumbling into pieces. A coverlet on his back flapped away and caught fast to the frozen surface.

  “No! I will fetch it,” Jotham exclaimed.

  “Leave it! They will see and presume us surely drowned. So it will be useful to us still.” It was a warm bed covering that we would miss on our journey, but I could not bear for any of us to trust the ice again.

  “Hortus!” Jotham Herrick yelled, and I added my voice to his.

  Hortus appeared to be swimming but then stood and slammed into the ice between us, charging fore and back, whinnying as he shattered the ice with the hard bulk of his body. He reared up, striking the surface again and again, gathering force as he reached the shallows. At last he battered his way up the slope and bolted past us, not slowing though we called and called his name.

  Propping our bundled Samuel against a tree, I raced after him, leaving Jotham Herrick to watch the babe and reel in the last of our bags, soaked with water when Hortus burst open the ice. If I had owned witch magics, I do not believe that I could have flown faster, for I was determined not to lose my precious horse. I ran hard and caught Hortus by the bridle and shouted at him. Though shuddering violently from the shock or cold, his legs and belly ice-shagged, he let me stroke his muzzle.

  I forgot everything but his need. Coaxing him back to our household of bags, I hastened to unpack some of our clothing and rub him down. Fine crystals of ice had collected on his jaw and clung to the threads of his mane. Jotham came to help me with Samuel tucked against his side, the babe looking about in fine curiosity and prattling volubly in his infant language.

  My spare petticoats served to dry my poor bruised horse. “I hope it will not kill him, all this struggle and ice and wet.”

  “Hortus will survive. A usual, lesser sort of horse would have given up long ago,” Jotham Herrick said. “Probably back in Falmouth. He is one of The Goldsmiths’ Company of Merchant-Adventurers, and he will not dare flop down and render up his ghost.”

  “He does have spirit, though I am doubtful, sir, whether horses are welcome in most such companies.”

  “In this one, he is. And so are babes,” Jotham said. “This one, wife, is hungry.”

  We built up the fire in and around the colander with brush and branches, all four of us gathering near. I fed Samuel and afterward walked Hortus round and round the flames, bringing him as close as he would tolerate.

  “Mr. Jotham Herrick! I did not realize you were clever to bring the colander, but you were,” I said. “Quite nimble-witted.”

  “Metals and fire go together, madam. Fires go under pots and crucibles; why not inside as well, so long as air can find a way to whisper sparks into flames? And I will never fail to remember the sight of you walking and sliding across the river with a vessel of fire in your hands.”

  “I expect, Mr. Herrick, that we will recollect this night for many a year. Though I am tired enough to sleep and forget it forever.”

  “Indeed, I shall not forget the night when I lost my crucibles but kept my wife. And the swap is a well-struck barter.”

  “Look there!” I pointed up at the strangest thing that I had seen in all that wild, extraordinary night.

  “How astonishing,” my husband said softly.

  A branch, confused by this hardest of winters, had flowered in the midst of ice and snow. Faintly bathed by starlight, the petals seemed to shine from within.

  “What is it?”

  “And what does it mean?” Jotham reached up as if to touch the branch but paused, his hand open. “We have had no spell of warmth but only brute cold this season.”

  “Perhaps a fair sign for us,” I said. “In the midst of a cruel winter, we shall flourish. And if the whole world should turn to ice, we should still blossom and be filled with light.”

  “But the flowers will die, cursed by cold,” my husband said. “So I do not know. A sign, yes, but of what?”

  I stared up at the bough. “All things die, though we will be gone away when the blooms are ice. But the unfurling and beauty is for us.”

  “Perhaps you are that white spray,” he said. “You keep on despite so much bitterness around you. And you seem filled with light and are lovely to me.”

  “Jotham.”

  I smiled at him under the branch and stars, though I knew better than he that sometimes the bitter was sheathed within me as well. We glanced up at the bravery of the flowers once more before departing with Samuel and Hortus and all the earthly goods one horse could bear.

  The remainder of the way to the Saltonstalls was a brute of a ride, Hortus with his head down, me fighting to stay awake and not drop Samuel, Jotham leaning back against the wet bag that we left on top to dry if it would. But it would not, and froze instead. Occasionally we took turnabout in walking to give Hortus a respite from our weight.

  Meanwhile, the stars kept on affirming their glory, but I was too weary to greet them.

  Jotham Herrick, who had managed more sleep of late than I, admired them for me and made sure I did not topple off. In fact, he tucked bedding around my legs to make me more comfortable and not so disgraceful-looking, my gown and shift and petticoats askew. I felt much warmer than before and wished for an elephant-and-castle so that
I might nap. A howdah, the sailors of the East India Company call an elephant’s crowning castle, the whole stuck round with gems and furnished with silk-garbed chairs and bed.

  “Imagine if each one of those stars could be a white fire on a hearth,” Jotham Herrick said, “and the heavens a country just above our heads. Surely it would be a pleasant land.”

  I blinked to see more clearly, for the scene was blurry and glowing to my eyes, worn from too long a wakefulness. “Mr. Dane said all are pilgrims and strangers in the world. Looking for a better one. And now here we are on the road.”

  When a person has been accused as a witch, stayed up the whole night long, climbed through trapdoors and tunnels, scrambled over town when the sane and content are in bed, and crossed the Merrimack on foot rather than ferry, well, that person is grateful to see her destination looming against the stars, no matter how sparkling they are. And when the babe she treasures has wailed from the cold and the weary way, she is also glad to see the only door in the world that might safely let her in.

  We walked the horse right up to the portion of the house where the Saltonstalls slept. An occasional touch of gout meant that the major preferred a bedchamber downstairs, and for that I was grateful. The room had a window—a luxury on the side of a house, for it is generally better to keep in warmth than to let in light. We were careful not to knock on the outer shutters of such a rare and handsome window, a leaded English casement that opened to the inside. We tapped on the walls with a stick and called their names. Soon the noise made by an iron bar showed that we were successful, and we waited with some apprehension as the major opened the inner shutters, casement, and outer shutters to peer out.

  “Is that the voice of our young Charis Herrick? And Mr. Herrick? And a sobbing babe? Whatever is the matter?”

  “Nothing,” Jotham said. He paused, evidently unsure how much he should say. “I mean, sir, yes, something is the matter, but just now we just need to be made warm. And the horse likewise.”

  “Let me just find my breeches,” he said, and vanished from view.

  Elizabeth Saltonstall appeared at the window.

  “My dear Charis,” she said, “give me the child. Eliza’s cradle is still standing here by the fire, but they are gone away to Ipswich.”

  I handed Samuel to Jotham, who leaned down and passed his bundle to Mistress Saltonstall.

  “You poor babe, all tied up in skins and out nightwalking in the cold,” she said.

  Samuel looked at her and became quiet, and she sat down on the edge of the bed to talk to him.

  “We took turns holding him,” I said.

  “Come in and explain yourselves,” the major said.

  “My wife has had no sleep in a long time,” Jotham Herrick said.

  “Give me a moment,” Elizabeth Saltonstall said. She put Samuel in the cradle, speaking to him softly, and came back to the window.

  “Hand her in,” she said. “She can climb into bed and get warm. And I shall heat oatmeal to thaw your hands. All three of you must be aching from the cold. And toss in those sacks as well.”

  As Jotham reached for me, I dismounted clumsily on the side away from the window, shaking out my cloak and dragging the bedclothes from my legs.

  “Shall I wake someone for the horse?” The major leaned from the window, his hands out. “You remember young Lud?”

  “Yes, yes,” I said.

  “He is asleep by the kitchen fire, not having wanted to trudge home to his mother in the dark. I hired him for the day to chop wood, fearing our mountain of logs was not enough for this grim winter.”

  The major lifted me into the room and looked me in the face searchingly. I was beyond being able to feel anything except weariness, so I doubt he found any news there.

  “To confess truth, the fewer who know we are here, the better,” Jotham Herrick said. “For we have found ourselves among the devils, in the place of dragons, for no fault of our own. And by that I mean neither the Indians nor the French. I must ask you to forget what I say.”

  “Ah. Yes. Take heed what you divulge; think ere you speak. Tell me your need more than the cause. Rumor will arrive here soon enough. If you will be good enough to ride around to the door, I will tug on my boots and meet you there,” Major Saltonstall said.

  By this time I was lying in the still-warm bed and wishing the shutters were fastened again. But no sooner had the thought come to me than I dropped asleep, and stayed so through the night and most of the next day, swimming up from oblivion now and then to feed Samuel. Although I might have had some fear of Major Saltonstall’s reaction to our story, I was too done-in to have the least apprehension. We were at his house on sufferance and at his mercy.

  In what might have been dreams, I heard fragments of voices arguing.

  “Do not tell me—better that I know nothing but your need—”

  “Has suffered too much—”

  “Do not say more—”

  “And did not Providence arrange—”

  But I sank right to the bottom of the river where the sleep-fishes wave their fans in calm bedchambers below the ice, and there I heard nothing and dreamed of nothing but the cold shapes that breathe in and out the river water and never think of the summer urge to clench and let go, springing into the air, or of autumn and swerving among the bright leaves that strike the water and rock slowly to the bottom.

  When I finally rose and changed my gown for a cleaner one, our cloaks wet from the river had been dried to stiffness and brushed clean, and the major had spent a long time pondering and had already announced to his wife and Jotham Herrick that we must depart the next day.

  And so I had little to do but hear the plan that Major Saltonstall had devised and agree that it was the best we could hope for. My luck was having missed the wrangle over what had happened in Andover: the major stopping my husband whenever he would say too much; the major striding up and down before the fire, arguing with himself over what was meet and right to do. For we were asking far too much of a magistrate and high man in the colony who served on the General Court, advised the governor, and led the Northern Essex militia. I missed his many questions to Jotham Herrick, the doubting of our judgment in departing so hastily, the careful refusal to hear any accusations against me. Also, I did not hear the major’s praise, though I will be forever thankful that he found me above the rank of the common in boldness, courage, and strength of mind, as much “as the diamond is above other stones, the sun above the other stars, and fire above other elements.” Even now, I am grateful but know that mettle and strength are sorely tested when the covenant between a woman and her town is trampled. Perhaps we should have done differently. Perhaps. But we did not, aroused and alarmed as we were. We were threads in the fabric of place; then, abruptly, not.

  Jotham Herrick told me later that Major Saltonstall would not hear particulars and insisted that he knew nothing save that we had decided suddenly to leave Andover. And though the major stopped my husband each time he tried to explain, I felt sure he understood my plight.

  “You will forgive me if I am a little deaf and did not hear your words,” he said, more than once.

  As magistrate, he knew well enough what happens to a jailed woman from our little settlements in the forest. Too often they die in Salem or Boston while waiting for trial, and any children with them, no matter how wild or feeble the claim against the mother. All these matters he mulled, finally judging that we had done as was fitting. By law, it was wrong of him, and yet I knew why he felt the force of a greater law. All I had to do was remember how providential my coming here the first time had been, and how that first saving of my health of mind and body had given me a place where, if I went in need, someone had promised to take me in. For that means home.

  “But what of the child? What of Samuel?”

  Elizabeth Saltonstall had found some fresh clouts and wrapped him up anew, so that he was now more comfortable and smelled faintly of lavender. His eyes were wide open, as round as clay marbles. Whe
n he saw me, he jerked under the wrappings and let out a tiny cry.

  “What do you mean?”

  I sat down beside Mistress Saltonstall; she clasped my hand in hers. She had been the one to bandage it while I slept.

  “Should you entrust Samuel to us for safekeeping? A woman in town lost her babe only last week and could nurse him, if you wished to leave him behind. Since you do not know precisely what will come or where you will go. We would teach him right principles of reason and honor until he could be sent away.”

  Tears stung my eyes.

  Surely I could not desert him! Had not my story been one where I was abandoned in a strange wise by everyone? I could not bear for Samuel to be without family, even among people I loved. It happens to us all to be parted from those we hold dear. But not so soon, surely. He had a mother who had survived her troubles to rejoice in his infant vigor and changing face: for a babe is not the same from one day to the next but grows like a flower in the light, one moment low to the ground, the next shooting up and budding, the next opening its central eye to stare into the eye of the sun.

  In one lightning flash of thought, I imagined sailing away in a ship, its sails stacked high, to some other port—to Europe with its castles, or to Rhode Island where the Quakers had fled from Massachusetts Bay, or to Barbados, where rumor said that sweet-smelling bunches of fruit dangled from all the trees. Could I ever get over relinquishing my babe, even to Elizabeth’s kind mercies? Would the major ship him to me when he was a young man of thirteen or fourteen and well able to travel on his own? And would he know me or care that I was his mother? Perhaps I would never see him more. He might sicken and die, but I would not know for months or years. All the time I would be dreaming about him, and yet he might have walked out of the world, his spirit streaming to where all my kin had gone.

  I looked at Jotham Herrick, standing by the fire with Major Salton-stall. He gazed steadily back at me. It seemed to me that I was glass and that he could see through me and into my heart, also glass, but illumined by the lights of his face and the face of our child.