It wrapped itself tighter and tighter until you could scarce breathe from the constraint, and then, finally, it sewed itself shut. Once the cloak was fastened, it could not be cast off, for by then, it had joined itself to the flesh, to one’s very soul. It was only then that one realized just how stifling the cloak had become; only then that one began to wonder why it was that no one else wore such a thing. But by then it was too late.
Beneath the binding of the cloak, the secrets of the heart festered. And what had once been shame turned into a shield, a safeguard. For it was certain by then that the secret one had tried so hard to protect, no one—not one—would ever wish to see.
I knew exactly what would happen to Susannah Phillips.
The cloak she took on to preserve her life would soon become a guarantee of death. A slow, daily death that rotted the soul and gutted the mind. And once wrapped around her shame, it would absorb her, putrefy her. And soon, without it, she would be nothing. Aye, once the cloak joined to flesh and heart, it could not be cast off.
I could no longer think. Not about any one thing for any particular length of time. If I did, then my thoughts would spin toward Simeon Wright and my impending marriage. And so, I determined not to. I did not think. Instead, I acted. And it was easy enough to act when there was so much to be done. The first task of which was the washing.
The day-girl fetched the water, Nathaniel fetched the wood, Father built frames above the snow to hold the kettles, and I lit the fires. Mary gathered the clothes, giving a pair of stockings to the babe to carry as they stepped out of the house.
It was brutally cold. A northern wind blew around our ankles and up our skirts, tried to wrench our hats from our heads, and dove down the necks of our waistcoats. Worst of all, it limited the fire’s reach, dispersing the flames’ heat as soon as it had gathered.
As we waited for the water to boil, I went inside to mix the dough for the day’s biscuits. Tipped the crock of mother dough to take a measure from it, but the crock slipped from my hands and tipped too far. The whole of it plopped out into my bowl. And then I heard the babe’s cry.
Leaving my work, I rushed out the door to find the child wailing, intent upon pulling his arm from Mary’s grasp.
“Goodness and mercy, let him go!”
“If I do, then he will only launch himself toward the fires as he has already done these three times.”
“Let me have him.” I grabbed hold of his other hand and coaxed him away from Mary and the fires. Then I promptly put him into the day-girl’s care. “Do you not let him wander from your sight!”
I returned to the house, added flour and water to the dough, kneaded it smooth and set it aside.
In my absence, the water had begun to boil. We added the clothes to the kettle, pushing them toward the bottom with the beating staffs. After adding soap, we worked the clothes with the staffs, trying to loose the dirt from them. The chill air sapped the heat from the clothes the moment we pulled them from the washing water to transfer them to the rinse water.
Again, we worked them over with staffs to get them to release the soap. As I beat Daniel’s shirt against the side of the kettle, the fabric began to disintegrate beneath my hand.
With growing dismay, I plucked it from the water, and spread it out to see the length of it. It was done for. I left off washing it since it was fit only for rags. Sighing, I turned my attention to Nathaniel’s, and then to Father’s. After I had hung the wash on a rope inside the house to dry, I bundled the remnants of Daniel’s shirt upon the table. But next to it, I placed the shirt I had made so long ago for John.
As he came into the house for dinner, he saw it sitting there. “What’s this?”
“ ’Tis your own shirt. And a new one.”
“A new one?”
“Your old one is . . . become . . . old.”
He held up the old one and shook it out. Light poured through its holes. “I would offer it up to you for some use, but I confess, I cannot think of any.”
I took it from his hands and placed the new shirt into them.
“You cannot have made this for me.”
There was no use in prevaricating. “I made it for John, but as he will never wear it, ’tis yours.”
The captain unbuttoned his doublet and took it off, pulled the shirt off that he was wearing and put the new one on. “If he had any kind of sense in his head, he might change his opinion.” The look in his eyes as he gazed at me let me know he hoped that would never happen. He crossed his arms in front of him, pulling the shirt taut in back. Then he stretched out his arms in front of him.
He had broader shoulders than John had. And longer arms. “ ’Tis a bit short in the arms . . . but then, beggars cannot be choosers.”
“Nay.” I gestured for him to take it off. “But I can take off the cuffs and add some length.”
“You do not have to clothe me.”
“You do not have to . . . protect me.” I said the words beneath my breath so none would hear them. Though I took refuge in his presence, I knew I would not have that luxury for long. He had proposed marriage, ’twas true, but how could I run away with him from my family? From the town? My name would be tarnished forever. My reputation ruined beyond all redemption. Somehow, I would have to learn to live without his constant intervention.
His smile turned grim. “I will do it as long as I have breath. And if, for any reason I cannot, then have no doubt: God will.”
God would? He said it as if he believed it. And if he did, he had more faith than I.
When I woke the next morning, it was to find the clothes frozen upon the rope. I pried them from their perch and stacked them in front of the fires to thaw. Then I turned my attentions to the making of the day’s biscuits. I retrieved a bowl from the cupboard. Got the crock of mother dough. Opened it up to take a measure from it. But there was none.
I looked again.
Tipped the crock over and shook it.
Nothing. Not one sticky glob. Not one clinging residue. There was nothing left inside.
Where had it gone?
And how could . . . I thought back to when I had mixed the dough the day before. Realized that I had been distracted in the making of it. The child had shrieked. I had gone outside. But of course I had kept a bit back. I was certain of it. I closed my eyes, set my thoughts to the previous day.
I had taken a bowl from the cupboard. Taken down the crock. Tipped it over to take a measure and . . . it had slipped. All of it had come out into the bowl. ’Twas then that I had gone outside. And when I had returned to my task, I had added water and flour and kneaded it smooth . . . my ears grew thick and warm with the realization of what I had done.
Where had the mother dough gone?
Into my stomach and Mary’s. Into Father’s and Daniel’s and Nathaniel’s. I had baked it all up in our last batch of biscuits.
A cold sweat broke out upon my brow.
Using up the mother dough was not like using up the last bit of corn or the last grain of salt. That dough had a heritage. It had been passed down to my mother from her mother. And to my grandmother by her mother . . . and who knew from how many generations in the past that dough had descended?
All of the women in my mother’s family had touched it. All of the women had left a bit of their touch, a drop of their sweat in that mixture. All of them had made biscuits from it which, more than flour and salt, had been composed of their hopes and dreams. A portion of it was to have been passed on to me upon my marriage. And now my legacy, my inheritance, had vanished. The connection with the past had been severed. And it was entirely my fault.
I might have wept over my transgression, but there were still biscuits to make and I would have to beg a bit of someone else’s dough in order to do it. I could not ask just anyone or it would soon be common knowledge that I was worthless. That I could be no man’s good wife. I might have returned to Goody Baxter’s, but I decided to go to Abigail’s instead. Surely she would understand.
&nbs
p; “You want a bit of what?” Abigail had leaned forward as if she could not hear me.
“A bit of your mother dough. Just a small amount. Not very much. Enough to make a batch of biscuits. And then I can expand it.” My tone made it sound as if I were pleading, but that was foolish. Abigail was a friend, even if the eyes beneath her raised brows had just narrowed.
“What happened to yours?”
“I . . . used it all up.” Feeling quite suddenly rebuked, the words issued from my mouth in a whisper.
“All of it?”
I nodded.
“But how did—”
“Please, Abigail. I would not ask if I did not need it.”
“How could you use it all up?” She railed at me as if I were daft. “Is that not the first thing we were taught? Always set aside a portion of dough. And do not forget to feed it.”
“Well, I forgot!” I took a breath in. Slowly, slowly let it out. “It has been dreadful since Mother left. The child was sick. And all the work. I cannot sleep. I just . . . and Simeon Wright.”
Her face closed up. “Why can you not ask his mother?”
“I—but—please. Do not send me there!”
“Why not? The largest house in town? With servants aplenty?
And everything you could ever need? Find what you are looking for there.” The door swung shut in my face. She had denied me.
I stood there at her door, not knowing what to do, not knowing where to go. I could not go to Simeon Wright’s house. Would not.
Not one second earlier than I had to.
Nay.
But where was I to get what I needed? If I chose to ask the wrong person, my failing would soon be known by all.
I turned away from Goody Clarke’s and in doing so, Thomas Smyth’s house came into view. Small-hope. Perhaps I could ask Small-hope. The worst she might do was send me away. The best she might do was fulfill my request.
The door cracked open at my knock.
“Small-hope?”
“Susannah?” She opened it wide, something like pleasure crossing her face as she did.
“I need to . . .” When I looked into her eyes, my words left me. It seemed to me that she understood everything. That she knew. That she saw.
She gripped me by the hand and drew me into her house. Bid me sit on her bench. And there, in that clean, ordered, tidy space, I felt peace for the first time in many months.
Susannah sat on the bench, staring at the house around us. When I had answered her knock, she had looked so care-worn, so agitated, so harried. But as she sat there, in Thomas’s house, some of those worries seemed to fall from her.
“ ’Tis so . . . tidy.”
“We are only two.”
An odd look crossed Susannah’s face. Guilt? Shame? She did not seem to want to speak and I did not know what to say, so I picked up my knitting and moved to sit beside her.
“I am to be married.”
I nodded.
“To Simeon Wright.”
She said the name as if she summoned her own death. And, indeed, perhaps she had.
“My own sister, Mary . . . ?”
I nodded. I knew very well of whom she spoke.
“She thinks I stole Simeon from her.”
“You did not. He always had eyes for you.”
She looked up at me, sharply.
I looked away. “He has been watching you for these last three years . . . at least. I could not say for how long before I came.”
“Half the girls in town want to marry him . . .” She let the thought linger for a moment and then abandoned it.
We sat together, side by side, the fires snapping, my needles clicking.
“Perhaps . . . it is just me. He cannot possibly be so—”
He could be. He was. I stilled my needles, stretched out a hand, and put it atop one of her own.
She looked over into my eyes.
“It is not just you, and aye, he can be. He is.”
“Our banns have been published. Thrice. To withdraw now . . .”She looked up at me, eyes wide with desperation. “It would be an embarrassment. A humiliation.”
I knew it. And like me, she now knew enough of Simeon to be careful. Very careful indeed. I knit first one row, then two. A third and a fourth.
Susannah sat there beside me.
We were not friends. She could not have called just to . . . sit . . . and talk. “Did you come to . . . ?”
She started. Seemed to work at gathering her thoughts. “I have come to beg a bit of your mother dough.”
“For biscuits?”
“Aye.”
I put down my knitting, moved to take a crock from a shelf.
Measured some starter out onto a trencher. “Is this enough?”
She looked at it, a flush spreading over her cheeks. “You should not be so generous. I used up all of mine.”
I gave no pause but felt my eyebrows rise just the same. The perfect Susannah Phillips had used up all her dough?
“I was . . . I did not . . . It was not . . .” She stuttered for a moment, and then she dropped her head. “I used it all up. All of it.”
We are none of us what we seem. None of us what we would like to be. “I have enough for you and myself both. Will it keep until you get home?”
She drew it into the warmth of her cloak, clasping it to her chest. “It will. Thank you.”
“It is not, perhaps, so good as your own.”
With a smile something like the one she used to bestow, Susannah laughed. “ ’Tis far better. My own is gone.”
I felt my cheeks warm with the idea that Susannah Phillips was sharing a jest. With me. It was an unfamiliar sensation, but not unpleasant.
She clasped my hand in hers then. “I came for a bit of mother dough and I found a friend. You are the only—” Her words seemed stuck to her throat for a moment. She flashed a smile. Tried again. “You are the only one here who truly sees. Who understands.”
“ ’Tis because I am the only one here who knows . . . I know what it is like to live with a man like that. Not with such as his mother, but . . .”
“She is not quite right.”
“Nay. It has changed her.”
She clutched at my arm. Suddenly. Fiercely. “Will it change me as well?”
“It already has.” And it would get worse. She would become an animal, shrinking from human touch, keeping to the shadows; seeking not to be seen, not to be known.
34
I WALKED HOME IN despair, carrying a burden of affliction.Like a yoke newly acquired, it chafed. Was Small-hope right? Had I changed so much?
Ahead of me a door creaked open. I shrunk into a shadow at the corner of a house before I even realized where my feet were taking me.
From what was I hiding?
I did not have to create the answer. It was there, in my thoughts, at the ready: I was hiding from the truth. From the truth of Simeon Wright. For if I told what I knew, then I would be shamed. And if I did not want to be shamed, then no one must know. No one must even suspect. I had to pretend, I had to make certain all was as it seemed. And because I could not do that, I had to hide.
When I returned home, Mary was teaching the day-girl the catechism. I went straight to the other end of the table, but I blocked the dough crock from sight as I scraped Small-hope’s gift into it.Then I took off my cloak, hung it on its peg, and went to work making biscuits.
As much as Abigail’s rebuke had stung me, my time at Smallhope’s had more than covered over that offense.
I worked through the morning, dreading the coming dinner. ’Twas then I would have to admit to what I had done. It came all too soon and long before I had decided what to say. I set the tray of biscuits before Father. Took my place on the bench. Waited for what I had no doubt would come.
Father picked up a biscuit. Put it to his mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. “ ’Tis . . .”
My mouth went dry. I could not swallow, nor could I speak.
“ ’Tis good! Your mother
would be proud.”
The next Sabbath at meeting, a fog of hoary breath rose from us, ebbing and flowing from our mouths and noses, as regular as a tide. I wriggled my toes within my shoes, trying to persuade warmth back into them. A surreptitious lifting of my thighs allowed me to slide my hands beneath to warm them.
After the service the captain came round the side of the building where he had stood watch and joined us on our walk home. “ ’Tis cold enough to freeze the teats off a cow.”
I frowned. ’Twas true, but not all truths were worth mentioning. “If God had wanted us to have warmth in February, then He would have done it.”
“He has. Have you never heard of the Indies?”
Nathaniel heard Daniel’s words and came to his side. “Is it true what they say?”
“That there is gold to be had for the taking, savages walking about unclothed, and mosquitoes big as birds?”
“Nay. Is it true that sugar grows from the ground like grass and that all one has to do is pluck it in order to eat it?”
“Aye. ’Tis true.”
“It must be . . . paradise.”
“ ’Tis very much like it.”
“You have been there?”
Daniel looked over Nathaniel’s head at me. Winked. “Nay. But I have desired to. ’Twas my plan to head to Virginia, and then from there to catch a ship bound for the Indies. Go along, lad.”
Nathaniel obliged and sped his pace to join Father and Mary.
At his leaving, Daniel glanced over at me and smiled. “ ’Twas in the Indies I had hoped to settle and bask my miserable self in the hot sun.”
“I have never thought you miserable. A heathen, perhaps, but—”
He lifted a finger and brandished it like a sword. “Ah ha! I have caught you out.”
I continued walking, endeavoring to ignore his foolishness. “But, I confess I cannot think of you in that way any longer. You speak of a God who saves and protects and . . . loves. You have a knowledge that even the godliest among our men do not.”
“ ’Tis because I put my faith in what is found inside God’s book instead of what is not. On the words of God himself, instead of what those sanctimonious, knobbly roundheads say about him.”
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