Love's Pursuit

by Siri Mitchell

  Very soon, I knew, she would have little left. Of anything.

  Simeon Wright looked up from his labors, from slitting a pig.His eyes sought her. He did not move from his work but kept his eyes fixed upon her all the same.

  Fly like a bird, Susannah Phillips! Fly swift, fly far.

  Once our animals had been slaughtered and the meat dressed, Father took it home where we submerged some of the pork in brine and placed our flitches of bacon in salt.

  I stirred the fire, the one for the pottage, chopped up a pig’s liver and added it to the broth, and then I put my biscuits in a second fire to bake. Father headed back to the town green while I stayed behind and tried to gather my wits. When I found myself jumping at every snap of the fire and turning at an imagined scrape of the door, I took myself back to the green as well. At least with all about me, I would not have to conjure my fears. I would be able to see them well enough.

  To see it.

  Him.

  The next day soapmaking began. Mother was part of a group of neighbors that came together for a whang. They worked at a task as a group and so, in the course of a day, everyone’s soap would be made, but none would have to do it alone.

  It was hot work, but it was not lonely. We shouted across fires, keeping up a conversation all the while. Soapmaking was not a task I minded in the winter’s air. At least it kept one warm.

  Mary delivered food to us at dinner. Biscuits and cheese and a nice chill ale.

  Later in the forenoon, after the remaining soap had cooled, Father helped me turn it into a last barrel. And there they sat: three barrels filled with soap. A soft clear jelly, a grained soap, and the soap that would eventually harden into a cake. My first barrels, and good ones all! They would be enough to last Mother for a year.

  Though my arms were wearied from stirring the soap, the passages inside my nose seared by lye-scented fumes, and my eyes itching from the smoke of a dozen fires, still I must confess that I looked forward to the week’s nitpicking that night. Aside from our evenings on the settle, during which we could not speak, it was the one time I spent with the captain.

  With Daniel.

  In truth, it was the only time that I could touch him. And I knew I was not alone in partaking of that pleasure. He had come to lean into me as I worked. I could feel, through my skirts, the broadness of his back and the shape of his shoulder’s blades. And every time, he urged me on long past when I could find nothing more. And it was then, my fingers could do as they wished. They could slide through his hairs at their leisure and luxuriate in the feel of his scalp beneath their nails.

  But that evening, as I worked through his hairs combing and parting, parting and combing, I found nits without number and more lice than I could count. The captain sat on the bench before me long after Mary had finished both Father and Nathaniel.

  “Do you hurry, daughter.” A reproach could be detected in Father’s voice.

  “I cannot—they have multiplied beyond comprehension!”

  The captain’s hands reached up to grab mine. “Simply do as always you have done.”

  “But—your hairs. They are so thick and so long . . .”

  “Too long?”

  “I do not . . . the moment I see one, it takes refuge elsewhere—”

  “Then cut them. Cut the hairs.”

  “I cannot—”

  Father took Mother’s sewing box from the shelf by the door. He rummaged in it for a moment and then came toward me, Mother’s scissors extended. “If you cannot do as he asks, daughter, then I will.”

  “Nay! I will . . . I can do it.”

  He handed me the scissors.

  I took them, heavy, into my hands. And then I grabbed a lock of Daniel’s hairs and I did it. I cut them. Hanks of those long, beautiful hairs dropped to the floor around us. I had the thought to save a length of it, but Mary stooped to gather them as I cut and then threw them all into the fires before I could stop her.

  I was able to keep my tears at rein as I went about the task, but as soon as I was finished and I saw Daniel sitting there, his hairs as close-cropped as the rest of Stoneybrooke’s roundheaded men, the enormity of the change and the cruelty of it overwhelmed me, and I fled the house.

  All those long, beautiful hairs. The waste of them. The pity of it.

  After a while, I heard the door slam. Looked around to find him walking toward me. Seeing him, without the cloak of his hairs flowing out behind him made me cry all the more.

  He knelt before me in the snow and succeeded in wresting the scissors from my hands. “Here now! Does it snow? Or rain?” He glanced up at the sky. And seeing it cloudless, he looked at me.

  I moved to hide my tears, but he saw them.

  Laying the scissors on the snow, he put an arm around my waist and drew me down to sit upon his knee.

  “Daniel . . .” Throwing my arms about his neck like a child, I buried my face in his shoulder and wept.

  “They are but hairs.”

  I tried to laugh and only succeeded in wailing. “You are shorn.”

  “They will grow.”

  “But you look like one of us now.”

  “Rest assured, I will not act like one of you.”

  I did laugh then. But my laughter stilled as his eyes came to rest upon my lips. As he tipped his head first down and then toward me. But at the last moment, just before our lips touched, he hesitated.

  ’Twas me who closed the gap between us with a kiss.

  He broke from it. “You should not let me kiss you. I might just want to stay. And you would not want that. I would not want that.” He sounded as if he were trying to convince himself of the words.

  And so I did it again.

  We kissed for a few sweet moments, and then he drew us apart. “Was it so very difficult?”

  “The cutting of your hairs?”

  “The saying of my name.”

  “Daniel? Nay.” And once said, I only wished to speak it another thousand times. What was wrong with me, that I could not stop kissing him, could not keep myself from lapping at his lips like some enamored pup? Surely this was not what a woman should do. How a good, godly woman would feel. But truly, I did not care. Not one whit!

  “And so . . . does this mean . . . that you think of me as a brother?” He bent to touch his lips to mine once more.

  “Nay.” I reached up to kiss him in return. In gratitude.

  “Good. Because I must confess that brotherly thoughts are far from my mind.”

  I leaned forward to kiss him again.

  But he laughed softly and held me gently away. “However, I must not let them stray too far.”

  I went to sleep that night with the memory of his lips upon mine. And for the first time since Mother’s leaving I slept peacefully, and without dreams.

  27

  IT WAS THE NIGHT for nitpicking, and I had already completed my task. Thomas’s head had been picked clean and it was time then for me. I sat before him on the bench placed in front of the fire for light.

  He put the comb to my hairs and began his work. He went about it ably, being neither too swift nor too slow. There were times when his fingers wandered about my head that I wondered he did not cuff me or strike me or simply crush my skull between those two strong hands in frustration. Or anger.

  But he did nothing.

  I wished, how I wished, that I could give him what he wanted.But I could not do it. Not even for the kind, patient, gentle man that stood picking through my hairs with a comb too small for his hands.

  I loathed myself for not giving to him what he wanted, and I despised him for not demanding what was his, by right of marriage, to take. If he would just take me, just seize me and be done with it, then I might know how to live. But he did nothing. Nothing save being kind. And patient. And gentle. And good.

  And oh, how it shamed me.

  I woke the next morning light of heart with a smile upon my face, remembering Daniel’s kisses. But my mood soon moderated as I went about my tasks, pu
lling Nathaniel from bed and peering into the lean-to, making certain the meat was curing as it should. I set porridge upon the table and took it away after breakfast.

  As I worked at making dough for biscuits, I remembered that there was pewter to scour and asked the day-girl to fetch the scouring plants. Leaving her to accomplish the task, I turned my attentions to preparations for dipping candles. But in doing so, I glimpsed Mary’s pile of mending and recalled that my own cap needed mending as well. Leaving the dough, I went to get my cap, but as I passed the bed, the babe cried out, having woken from his sleep.

  I put aside all my thoughts to take him up and soothe him awake.

  Upon Mary’s return, I committed the child to her care. Instructed the day-girl on the intricacies of scouring. Returned, finally, to my dough.

  It was after the kneading and the overseeing of the scouring that my thoughts returned to the fires. I grabbed several corn cobs from a pile and turned and tossed them into the fires for the purpose of curing the bacon.

  But there were no fires. Not a one. Not any longer.

  They had all gone out.

  I grabbed a poker and stirred it through the ashes, hunting for a coal. Even the smallest one would have done, but I could find none.

  I stopped for a moment and forced myself to think. I could try to spark a flint, but that rarely worked . . . least not for me. I could see if Father had a coal to spare. But why should he? He was not working in his shop this day. He was out chopping what remained of his wood. There was only one thing left to do, and it needed to be done quickly. There were biscuits to be made, bacon to be cured, and porridge to be cooked. I would have to beg a coal. There was nothing else to be done.

  That my mother would live to see her eldest daughter begging a coal!

  I sent Mary and the day-girl out for water and then I bundled up the babe, threw on my cloak, took the fire spoon to hand, and started off down the road.

  Of whom would I beg it?

  Goody Newman?

  Nay. She was too much a gossipmonger. Word would be all over town that I had let my fires die before I even reached home with her coal. And then all would know me as I truly was.

  Goody Turner?

  Perhaps.

  But her aid ever came with sermons and lectures, and I had neither the time nor the patience for them. Though perhaps, if I were truly good, I would look upon it as a sort of trial sent by God to test my character. But then, I was not truly good and I did not truly like her!

  Goody Hillbrook?

  She was a pious soul that took no pleasure in gossip, but seemed to pass it on as her bounden duty. And she was worse than Goody Newman, since she treated the passing on of scandal as a wearisome, though moral, obligation.

  The babe squirmed, poking his head out from the shelter of my cape.

  “Do you be patient. I promise you, ’twill not be long ’til we are warm at home.”

  And then I knew of whom I could beg a coal: Goody Baxter!Abigail’s mother. Surely she would understand the misfortunes that could befall a young woman trying to manage a household on her own.

  I stepped up to her door and pulled on the latch string.

  She turned to greet me from bright, blazing fires. “Susannah Phillips! How do you fare without your mother?”“ ’Tis been . . . difficult.”

  She cocked her head to the side and peered at me with squinting eyes. “ ’Tis not an easy thing to manage a household: a father, two siblings . . . and a stranger as well. You’ve the look of weariness about you.”

  “I have not much been sleeping.” I shifted the babe to my other hip.

  “And neither has my Abigail. That child of hers is a good one for bawling. Half the day and half the night. There does not seem to be aught to please him.”

  I nodded. I did not know what else to do.

  “And how does this one do without his mother?”

  “Mam, mam?”

  I bent to kiss the child’s head. “Aye, she speaks of your mam.” I turned my eyes from the child to Goody Baxter. “He does not forget her as quickly as I would like.”

  “Then try some small beer, warmed. ’Twill work like a charm to sweeten its disposition.”

  “Goody Baxter?”

  “Aye, girl, speak what’s on your mind.”

  I revealed the fire spoon that had been hidden in depths of my cloak. “Could I . . . borrow . . . a coal . . . ?”

  “A coal? Goodness me! You let me stand here chattering when you’re in need of a coal?”

  “I just . . . I did not mean to let the fires go out—!”

  “But one thing led to another and then it was too late?”

  I nodded, relieved that there was no judgment here.

  “We’ve done it, all of us, a time or two.” She reached out a poker toward one of her fires and isolated several glowing coals. “Bring your fire spoon here.”

  I did as I was bid.

  She took it from me and scooped the coals into it. And then handed it back and opened up the door for me.

  “Now go. And quickly!”

  Stumbling through the snow, I walked just as fast as I dared, balancing the child with one hand and the fire spoon with the other.

  By the time Mary and the day-girl returned with water, the fires were hot and high.

  “Have you a wish to burn the house down?”

  I lifted my eyes from the shaping of biscuits to my sister. “Only stirring up the fires for a bit of warmth.”

  A raised eyebrow told me she questioned my skills. “Stirring and adding wood to the flames are two different things.”

  I gestured to the cap to be mended, ignoring her question.

  Though Goody Baxter’s trick with small beer satisfied the child that morning, he was back to his old tricks by dinner, pushing food out his mouth and refusing to swallow. But this time, at least, the refusal was not accompanied by loud protests. Through the afternoon, the child was quiet. Not quite content, neither was he obstinate.

  “Lay him on the bed, Mary. Maybe a sleep is what’s wanted.”

  She did as I asked and then came back to the table to help me.

  He woke for dinner but was silent and pale.

  “Has he got a fever?”

  Mary put her lips to his forehead. She left them there a long moment. “Nay. I think . . . ? Nay. He does not.”

  Her answer put my mind at rest. The child was simply as numbed by the cold as the rest of us.

  That night as I lay sleeping, a sound intruded upon my dreams.It was a wheezing sort of noise that conjured the shape of a hoarse, rasping bullfrog in my night’s imaginings. I begged it to tell me what it wanted, but it could do no more than wheeze and gasp in reply. As I turned and tossed to dismiss the image, I came to realize that the sound came not from a frog, but from someone in the bed with me.

  I reached out a hand and pushed at Mary.

  She protested groggily and then turned over and went back to sleep.

  I could hear Nathaniel snoring, so it could not be him. . . . I sat up, reached over Mary, and put an arm out, feeling for the child.

  The wheezing stopped for a moment. Started once more.

  I thrashed about, trying to rid myself of the covers entangling me. Finally pushed myself over Mary’s legs and felt for the child.

  Pulling him away from the wall, I pushed through the bed curtains with my elbows and climbed over the rail at the foot of the bed.

  Daniel rolled to his feet as I made my appearance. “What is it?”

  “The child—he’s choking!”

  He grabbed a taper from a shelf and stirred the coals with it to get it to flame. Holding the candle in one hand, he took the child from me with the other and laid him upon the table.

  The babe’s eyes bounced back and forth, up and down, with each hard-won breath.

  As Daniel held the taper, I brushed a string of drool from the child’s chin and forced a finger inside his mouth, using it to pull open his tiny jaw. I had expected the light to illuminate the n
ormal pink tones of the mouth, was looking, in fact, for a button or a piece of carrot or some other object stuck fast in there, but there was none. And all of his mouth had gone white: the tongue, the back of the throat, the flesh that bulged from the sides. I had seen a mouth such as that one before.

  “Father!”

  There was a rustling from the parlor and then a thud of feet hitting the floor. From our bed, Mary poked her head through the curtains.

  As Father came into the room, I motioned him toward the child. “Look!”

  He took the candle from Daniel. Bent to peer inside the child’s mouth. When he straightened, his mouth was set in a grim line. “ ’Tis the strangling sickness. The one that took our little Bess.”

  Bess had been five. This child was not yet even two.

  “Is there—”

  “There is nothing to be done. Not even your mother could save poor Bess. ’Tis in the hands of God.”

  “But . . .” I could not let my mother’s child die. Not while she was gone. Not when that child had been left in my keeping.

  Father placed a heavy hand upon my shoulder. “If you wish to help the babe, then pray.”

  I took the child from the table, sat upon the bench, and held him to my chest.

  His heart beat against mine, fast as a baby bird’s.

  If only a way could be found to ease his breathing. As I sat there and rocked back and forth, the sound of little Bess’s gasps passed through my thoughts like a ghost. I shivered in remembrance. It had been like this. Exactly like this. And then her breathing had become louder. And slower. And then finally, it had stopped.

  Mary sat beside me and put a hand to the child’s forehead.Frowning, she moved to touch his cheek. And then she grasped one of his tiny hands. “There’s a cold sweat come to the skin.”

  “Bring something to wrap him in.”

  She grabbed her cloak from its peg on the wall and spread it on the table.

  I set the child in the middle of it and wound the material around his small body. Eyes wild, skin pallid, he accepted our ministrations without complaint. After each breath, the tiny face would crumple, his mouth go open as if to form a cry. But then, lacking any energy, lacking any breath, his eyes would go round as a wheeze squeezed from his chest.