by Smith, Skye
Maya smiled at him and then laughed. Thank goodness for teen boys. They were so guileless that they would ask anything, openly ask anything for no reason other than healthy curiosity. Not like teen girls who were filled with mustnt's and shouldn'ts and secrets. "You mean, am I a schizophrenic? Sorry, no.
Well maybe. When it comes to sex all women are a bit schizoid. It comes from having to constantly repress their natural sexual needs because of society. You know. They can't be seen to be eager for sex without society hanging the slut label on them.
Other than that, no, I'm not mental. It's just that these crystal memories are so clear that it is sometimes like they are my own memories."
"So it's like at the carnival where the gypsy looks into a crystal ball?" he pulled his plate closer and picked up a spoon.
"Yeh, kinda. Except that the crystal I read belonged to one woman only, Britta, and contains only her memories, and I can't see the future, only her past."
* * * * *
* * * * *
Britta had always enjoyed the hearty feasting of Christmas in England. It was a time when village folk came together in the longhouse and kept warm together during the darkest days of the year. It was a time for sharing food and drink and stories and a time to keep everyone in good cheer despite the howling storms outside. Around Boston, the only folk that were gathered together in a longhouse to keep each other warm and entertained through the shortest days, were the Red Indians.
Though Puritans did not celebrate Christmas with feasting, it was a holy holiday and between that and the cold weather, the counthouses around the shop were mostly closed, so the coffee shop was never very busy. Three nights after Christmas Eve, it started to snow. The docks, which had already been quiet because ship arrivals were few and far between in the winter months, now closed completely.
That morning, while still curled up warm but alone in her bed, Britta knew from the hushed silence that it was snowing. She sat up to look out the window, but couldn't. The inside of the window was frosted with ice.
Since she was awake anyway, she decided she would stoke the fires early, to stop more ice from forming inside. She threw back the covers of her bed, and immediately pulled them back over her again. The room was icy. To stay warm, she reached for her clothes and put them on in bed, then she pulled her heavy woolen cloak from the hook and wrapped it snug around her. She decided to put on her boots rather than her slippers just in case she had to go outside for more wood.
One look at Robby in the next bed told her that he was still sleeping and still warm in his blankets. Jon and Lydia were sure to be warm and in each other's arms she thought with an envy that made her long for Jim. After getting a good flame going in the sitting room hearth, she went downstairs, to light the big Franklin stove. It could throw out so much heat that by the time the shop was warm, the floors of their rooms above the shop were also warmed.
Luckily Jon had stoked the Franklin before going to bed so the shop was not as icy as her room had been. Unluckily, he had used the last of the inside wood to do the stoking so it was lucky she had put her boots on. She had to push the back door with all her might to break the ice that had formed around it so and swing it open. Outside she was struck by how cold it was. Everything was frozen. Boston's usual heavy wet snowflakes had been replaced by snow that was drifting down like dry white dust.
As she dropped pieces of split wood and kindling into the sooty basket, something fell from the wood pile. A small bird. She pushed at it with her foot. It was dead, frozen stiff. Was it that cold. She shivered and went back inside to stoke the fires and get water heating.
As she was doing so, a worry kept crossing her mind. What of the people that slept out? The market people? Oh no, what of the pie ladies. They slept in a shack down by the fishing dock. Would they be all right? Today, a holiday, they couldn't even go to the bakery to get warm for it would be closed. Perhaps she should send Jon out to invite them back here.
Bah, it was only three streets to the dock. She would go herself. Why wait for Jon to get up, when she was already wearing her boots and cloak. Without more thought to it, she locked the outside door behind her and started down the street towards the market and the docks. The street was treacherous with frozen clumps of what used to be wet snow, and she wished she had a stout cane to help her to walk.
By the time she reached the clapboard shack by the fisherman’s dock, her feet were so cold that she was limping. She knocked on the door of the hut. She knocked again. There was a cry from inside. She pushed on the door but it did not move. She kicked at it and almost screamed from the pain that shot through her frozen toes, but the door swung opened.
The pie ladies and their children were all inside huddled under thin blankets. They were asleep, but not a normal sleep. She knew this kind of sleep from her years wintering in the English Fens. Their bodies were making them sleep to save them from the cold.
The only one awake was the smallest child. It was she who had cried out. "Wake up, wake up!" she yelled and shook every shoulder she could reach. A woman peered up at her. "You must not sleep. It is too cold to sleep. You will not wake up. Please come back with me to the coffee shop. I have a fire going. It is warm."
The woman seemed to understand and started to stir the others. Britta looked around. There were no men. "Where are the men?"
"Sleeping on the sloop like they always do when a storm threatens. Have to keep a watch, you know."
"Get everyone ready to walk to the shop. Wrap them in their blankets." said Britta. She had to say it three times before anyone moved. "I will get the men."
She slipped and slid along the wharf. The icy wood was treacherous. She climbed down onto a float and called out to the fishing sloop. "Hello. Can anyone hear me?"
"Who's there?"
"It's Britta from the Anchor Coffee Shop. I came to help. It is too cold to be on the wharf. Come to the shop and get out of this storm."
A man pushed back an oilcloth cover from a hatch. "Bugger it's frigid out 'ere. Oye, wake up you lot. We’ve got trouble. The sea is freezing." A second and then a third head popped out.
"You men seem warm enough,"
"Aye we have our sea brazier going. It keeps the worst of the chill away."
"Well, your women are not doing so well. I just woke them. They were in a sleep forced by the cold. We have to get them moving and to the shop."
Three men climbed onto the deck. A fourth, the old one, stuck he head up and said he would stay behind and keep a watch on the ship.
The men got their women up and moving, and decided to carry the children to keep their feet from freezing. Meanwhile, Britta rolled all the leftover thread bare blankets together and tied a length of rope around the bundle to make it easier to carry. She followed the families up the street half carrying and half dragging the bulky bundle. By the time they arrived at the coffee shop she was exhausted and she couldn't feel her feet or her cheeks, and her fingers were so cold that they felt like they were burning.
Her hands were so cold that she couldn't find the key. She started yelling to the upstairs windows. She tried to make a snowball to throw at Lydia's window, but the snow was so cold it would not stick together. She kicked some ice free of the road and threw the ice up. She could see the shadow of someone trying to open the frozen window and then giving up. Finally, after what seem like hours, the door opened and Jon peered out.
"Jon, the sea is freezing. The children are near dead from the cold. Help us in. We must get them warm."
Jon took the closest child out of a woman’s arms and pulled the woman inside. He pulled the tables away from the fireplace and sat the child and the woman in front of it on the floor. Britta was the last left in the street. She couldn't pull the bundle through the door and she started to cry in frustration, which was a mistake because her tears froze her eyelashes together.
She heard Jon repeating something over and over. Then she realized he was telling her to let go of the bundle. He pulled her inside
and then manhandled the bundle through the door. He took her hands between his and started to rub them.
The fishermen were doing similar things to the women and children. They had pulled men from these cold seas before and they knew the importance of getting the blood running again. The first thing they did was to pull all the boots off and rub them to belay frostbite.
Jon grabbed a tray of clean cups and tipped them right side up and started filling them from the kettles. The water wasn't boiling yet but it was hot enough to warm the hands that clutched the cups, and any lips sipping from them. He passed them around. Until everyone got their own hands working, they couldn't help themselves.
Lydia had come downstairs for a moment only, looked around and then ran back upstairs. Now she was back with armloads of blankets.
"Oh, dear," said Britta in a fearful voice, "how many other will have been caught out by this cold?"
"We can't help them all," said Lydia, matter of factly, "but we can certainly help the ones near to us, and hope that other good people are doing likewise."
"How did you know to come and wake us?" asked the elder pie lady.
"Early this morning I went to get firewood out back, and there was a bird in the stack who looked asleep, but the poor thing was frozen," replied Britta. "Where I come from we treat frigid cold with respect. In our folk lore, hell is a place so cold that it freezes the flames of fires. That is why we have such a hard time believing in the Christian hell, where it is so nice and warm."
The building creaked and the windows rattled. The youngest fisherman, David, went to the door and looked out. "Here it comes," he said, "here is the wind that Pa predicted. We got here just in time. I was thinking of going back to help him watch the sloop, but not in this wind."
"No, don't sit on the nice lady's clean blankets," said one of the pie ladies to a child. "We'll sit on our own blankets and use hers to cover our backs to keep the heat from the fire in. Come on, everyone shuffle into a horseshoe around the fireplace." As she spoke, Britta could see a funky smelling steam rising from their cloaks and wondered how Lydia's blankets would smell after a day of this.
Another woman began shrieking in panic. "He's not warming up. He is too far gone," she said. David went over to them and looked at the young boy in the woman's arms. Britta went and knelt beside him.
"Jon!" Britta yelled. "Get the laundry tub and be quick about it." She looked into David's eyes. They were steel grey. He was handsome in a rugged kind of way. "The only way to save this child is to let him soak in a hot bath."
They used the hot tub to warm all of the children, and afterwards the water had turned almost black. So as not to waste the still warm water, the women threw all the children’s dirty clothes into it to soak. The way the wind was now howling, nobody was going anywhere anyway. The children could all stay beside the fire wrapped in blankets.
That day the only customers who braved the bitter cold to come for coffee, were the regular old men that lived in the same building, or across the street, and who on normal days would sit for hours and read all the news papers. Today they came to get warm, and to borrow firewood. None of the buildings in Boston were built for this kind of cold. Everyone was suffering and doing anything they could to stay warm.
* * * * *
The winds that brought the bitter cold from the north blew themselves out overnight, and then it was absolutely still, and very cold. Fresh winds then started from the south, and Boston was blanketed with feet of snow. Heavy, wet snow. The meeting room became the bedroom for the families. Two of the old men brought their blankets from their own freezing rooms and bedded down with everyone else in the warm shop.
So after all, Britta wound up having a longhouse style Christmas like the ones in her Fen's village. Between the side of ribs that Jon had brought with him back from the farm, and the now frozen fish that had been the sloop's last catch before the storm, and the cooking skills of women who made their living by making and selling pies, they feasted well for five days until the snow was melted by warmer winds, and the sun decided to once again favor Boston.
By the time the families left the shop to go back to the sloop and their shack, all had bathed, all the clothes including their funky woolen cloaks had been washed and dried, and even some of the blankets were cleaner than they had been for two months.
David had told Britta that there were many good reasons that they lived in a shack by the wharf, like because it was close to both the ship and the market, but the main reason was that they could not afford to rent a house with such a good location. There was no rent on the hut because it was theirs by squatter's rights.
"We are still paying off the moneylender for buying the sloop. When it is paid off, then we will rent a house," He shrugged his shoulders. "It is the same with most new immigrants to Boston. They start a business, and live in squalor until the business is paying, and only then do they look to their own comfort."
"Well next time the sea begins to freeze," Britta told him sternly giving him a hug goodbye, "I am not coming to get you. You can bloody well come here before it gets that cold."
* * * * *
Early the next morning, Britta saw the Otis cart from her window upstairs and raced downstairs in just her flannel night gown. She had not seen Jim since before the blizzard. She unlocked the shop door and prepared to launch herself into his arms. And then stepped back. It was not Jim, but Jemmy and Daniel. She tried to cover her jiggle with her arms as she looked hopefully, longingly, beyond them into the street.
"Jim is still at home. We came early, for this may be a long day," said Jemmy, taking her arm and turning her to walk inside. "Please go and fetch Lydia. Tell her that we have much to discuss."
Britta did not wait for Lydia to dress, but came back down immediately, this time modestly covered in her cloak. She built up the fire and put water on to heat. When Jemmy called to her, she went and sat beside him.
Jemmy's voice was low and private. "Jim will be dropping in later. He has a very important question to ask you, and a big decision to make. He told me that he will do whatever you decide." Jemmy took her hand. "We mustn't tell Jim that we are having this talk, but I must say something to you before he comes."
He made himself more comfortable in his chair before continuing, "When I was young I was a hot shot lawyer. One of the youngest to ever leave Harvard. Ruth was a wealthy heiress. Her father died when she was just nineteen and she inherited an estate valued even then at over six thousand pounds. I helped her to take care of it. We married. With her wealth, I could quit law and pursue my true passion, politics.
Ruth hated my politics. It has always come between us. She blames my... my illness on politics. I can't fight both her and my illness so I am withdrawing from politics. If I die before her, which I surely will, then Jim will be dependant on her generosity unless he can support himself. As you know, she does not favor your betrothal to Jim. For that reason I want him to go back to Harvard next week."
Britta was silent, thinking. She had over a year left in her bond. Harvard was only four miles up river in Cambridge, enough of a distance to complicate both their lives. "But ..."
"...you cannot go with him," finished Jemmy. "but he must go. You see, men don't go to Harvard just to be educated. They go to Harvard to rub shoulders with the men most likely to be rich and powerful in the future. It is like an elite club. Jim will make connections there that will assure his future, both of your futures, no matter what Ruth says or does."
"She hates me so much."
"Actually, she quite likes you, but not as a daughter in law. She has dreams of him marrying a noble's daughter, and with her wealth that is quite possible. In England right now, many noble families are near financial ruin due to the banking crisis."
"How long would he be away from me?"
"A year, or a little more. Britta, I know that you can force him to marry you. Even if he didn't love you so much, you could simply seduce him repeatedly until you carried his child. You must
see what a disaster that would be. Not only would Ruth cut him off, but he would not have the Harvard connections."
He reached out and held her hand. "Lydia has told me that you want to marry a kind and wealthy man. Jim is kind, but if you marry him now, he will never be wealthy."
"And when he comes back?" she asked.
"You will have my blessing to marry him."
"And Ruth?"
"It won't matter. She is foolish enough to think that he will forget you while away at school. My worry is that he will pine for you so much that he will fail at school. Let him go, Britta. A year will make such a difference. Your bond will be finished. Next year, in his final year, he will be allowed to live away from the College. Ruth will eventually relent. Let him go."
"Is that what he is going to ask me? My permission to go to Harvard?"
"Yes. But do not tell me your answer. You must think about it, and tell him the answer."
Lydia came through from the stairwell. "What is so urgent that you must wake me so early, Jemmy?"
"I came to tell you to pack a bag and your child. We must leave for your farm immediately."
"What? What did you say?" sputtered Lydia.
"I pressed the judge with the papers that Jon brought me, and the will was settled last night. You have your estate. We are still bargaining about the money from the sale of the Blacks, but that is mere bargaining. We must be the first to the farm to tell the trustee. I do not trust the man not to do some mischief if he hears of it before we get there."
"But why Robby? Wouldn't it be best to leave him here with Britta."
"No, our business will take as long as a week."
"Why so long?"
"Because you must arrange for someone to replace the trustee, if you do not want to stay and run the farm yourself."
She nodded. "Do I have an hour to pack?"
"Of course, that is why I came so early to wake you."
"Will we be safe?" she asked, more thinking about Jemmy's health than her or Robby.
