The Witch of Blackbird Pond

by Elizabeth George Speare

  Now the long evenings about the hearth were seldom relieved by any visitor. For hours on end the whir of the spinning wheel and the twang of the loom were the only sounds. Except for a formal bow of greeting on Sabbath morning and on Lecture Day, Kit did not see William again till the day of Thankful Peabody's wedding.

  Thankful's wedding was the first festivity Wethersfield had enjoyed since the sickness. Through drifts of snow waist-high, by sleigh and sled and snowshoe, young people and old folks and children gathered in the spacious Peabody house, relieved to shake off the labor and anxiety of the past weeks and to rejoice with the happy couple. The feast spread out on the board would be talked of for weeks to come. There were apple and mince and dried-berry pies, little spicecakes with maple sugar frosting, candied fruits and nuts, pitchers of sweet apple cider, and great mugs of steaming flip for the men.

  "Seven different kinds of cake," Judith counted surreptitiously. "I'll never be able to have anything half so grand at my wedding."

  Kit scarcely heard her. She was remembering the last wedding she had attended, could it be only a year ago? in Barbados. She could shut her eyes and see the long damask-covered table, set with gold and silver plate. The banquet had lasted for four hours. Light from crystal chandeliers had twinkled back from gold braid and jewels. Deep windows had opened out on curving formal gardens, and the sea breezes had filled the room with the scent of flowers.

  An almost intolerable loneliness wrapped Kit away from the joyous crowd. She was filled with a restlessness she could not understand. What was it that plagued her with this longing to turn back? Was it that far-off memory of elegance and beauty, or was it just the look in Thankful's eyes as she stood, radiant in her rose-colored lutestring wedding dress, and listened to the toasts to her future?

  Kit and Judith, each lost in her own thoughts, stood together near the wall, unable to join in the merrymaking. From across the room William watched them gravely, making no move.

  When the bride and groom had driven off in their sleigh toward the snug new house that awaited them, the guests turned back to the laden tables. Two fiddlers in the corner scraped a lively tune, and some of the more daring young people began to dance. No one paid attention to the two tardy guests who appeared at the door, letting in a gust of wind, till suddenly a woman screamed and threw her arms about a snow-covered figure. Then abruptly the music stopped and the laughter was checked, and everyone crowded about the newcomers.

  They were two Wethersfield men returned from Massachusetts with the detachment of militia. The story they had to tell put a somber end to the happy evening. Of the detachment of twenty, only eight had come back to Hartford. Just south of Hadley, before they could reach Deerfield, they had been ambushed by Indians who attacked savagely with both arrows and French rifles. Four men had been killed outright and two others had died of wounds on the trail home. The rest had been surrounded and taken captive. For a few days the survivors had attempted to follow the Indians, till a heavy snow had made it impossible to go on. They had found the scalped body of one of the captives lying by the trail, and they had little hope that in that weather any of the prisoners would have been spared. They had turned back and made their way on snowshoes, barely reaching Hadley before another blizzard set in.

  The sobered guests crowded close, waiting for one answer. No, none of the Wethersfield men had been killed, but one of the captives was that young fellow who had been studying with the doctor, John Holbrook.

  In the mingled relief and horror, few of them noticed the faint wail that came from Judith, or saw her waver and fall. Kit and Rachel sprang forward, but it was William who reached her first, and carried her gently to the settle by the fire, and it was William who later tucked her carefully into his sleigh and drove her home.

  In the weeks that followed, watching Judith, Kit began to understand how the gray shadow that was her Aunt Rachel could once have been the toast of an army. Hopelessness had erased the color and animation from Judith's face, and set her lovely features into a still mask. Kit ached for her. But even more she was torn with pity for Mercy, whose grief could not find an outlet in a tear or word. Would Mercy's scant strength be equal to this burden? Rachel worried that her daughter did not gain, and fussed over the fire concocting nourishing stews which Mercy obediently tried to swallow. In some contradictory way grief seemed to have etched on Mercy's thin face a beauty it had never possessed. Behind the clear gray eyes the light still burned steadily.

  Should I tell her? Kit wondered. Surely now Mercy has a right to know that John loved her. But watching Mercy's stillness she found a new patience to resist her own impulse. Someday the time would come when Mercy could know.

  The Christmas season passed, unmarked by any rejoicing. There was no holiday in this Puritan town, no feasting, no gifts. The day went by like any other, filled with work, and Kit said nothing, ashamed that in this somber household she should even remember a happy English yuletide.

  January dragged by, and February. It was the hardest winter most of the townspeople could remember. Old people shook their heads, recalling blizzards of their childhood, but it was impossible for Kit to visualize anything more bleak than this first winter of her experience. She no longer saw any beauty in a world muffled in white. She hated the long days of imprisonment, when there was nothing to see through the window but shifting curtains of pale gray, when drifts stood waist high on the doorstep, and it took hours of backbreaking labor to carve a passage to the well. She hated the drafty floors and frigid corners, and the perpetual animal reek of heavy clothes hung about the fireplace to dry. Every night she shrank from the moment when she and Judith must make the dread ascent to the upstairs chamber with only the meager comfort of a warming pan. But impatient as she was with the long days indoors, the outdoors promised only aching misery. She resented the arduous preparation for the journey to Meeting, the heavy leather boots, the knit socks drawn over them, the clumsy little footstove they had to lug all the way, that cooled off long before the sermon was finished and left one to sit with stinging fingers and toes, while the breath of the whole congregation rose like the smoke from so many pipes.

  How could Hannah ever have endured it? Kit often shivered, alone in that cabin with the wind howling outside and no one to speak to for weeks on end but the cat and the goats. She hoped there was a cozy hearth at Nat's grandmother's house, and her own heart warmed at the thought of the two old ladies sharing it together.

  Then her restless thoughts would drift after the Dolphin. Nat had offered to take her with him. Suppose she had accepted his offer? If she had never come back, would anyone here in this house really have cared very much? By now she would be in Barbados. At this very moment she might be—The broom in her hand, or the treadle under her foot would idle to a stop as she walked in imagination up the wide drive to her grandfather's house, and stepped up to the long shady veranda. Then she would shake herself free. Such daydreaming was a weakness. The house was sold, and she was here in New England, and perhaps Nat had never really meant his offer at all.

  One night she woke from a vivid dream. She and Nat had stood side by side at the bow of the Dolphin, watching that familiar curving prow carving gently through calm turquoise water. They came soundlessly into a palm-studded harbor, fragrant with the scent of blossoms, and happiness was like sunshine, wrapping her round and pouring into her heart till it overflowed.

  She woke in the freezing darkness. I want to go back, she admitted at last, weeping. I want to go home, where green things are growing, and I will never see snow again as long as I live! Her tears, scalding her eyelids, froze instantly against the pillow. Lying tense beside Judith, she made a resolve.

  After that, all through the cheerless days, she hugged the dream close. Sometimes, driven by her restlessness, she would talk about Barbados to Mercy. "Once when I was quite small," she would say over the hum of the flaxwheel, "my grandfather took me to see a great cave. You had to go to it when the tide was very low, and when a wave das
hed across the rocks it made a sort of curtain across the opening of the cave. But inside it was very calm and still, and the water on the floor was as clear as glass. Underneath the water there was a sort of garden, made of colored rocks, and all over the roof of the cave there were queer hanging shapes, like those icicles outside the window, only pale green and orange and rose colored. It was so beautiful, Mercy—"

  Mercy would look across at Kit's wistful face, and smile in understanding. She knows, Kit thought. When I tell them that my mind is made up, she will not try to keep me. She will be sorry, I think, but truly, won't they, all of them, be a little relieved?

  In all honesty, she often argued, wouldn't she help the family most by leaving? Did the help she managed to give her aunt and uncle ever begin to make up for their trouble, and for the inescapable fact that she was another person to feed and clothe? Though no one ever so much as hinted at it, the grim truth was that where a short time ago two girls had been well provided for, there was now every likelihood of three spinsters in the Wood household.

  No, she amended, Judith would never be a spinster. Kit had watched William's face in Meeting, and she knew that he was only biding his time. And Judith, in spite of her downcast eyes, was well aware of this. By every right of beauty and accomplishment, Judith belonged in the new house on Broad Street. In their secret hearts all three of them, she and William and Judith, had really known that all along. It needed only time now to bring about the match which Kit and John Holbrook had interrupted.

  In March a fresh blizzard buried the town in drifts. The long days wore on, one as like another as the endless threads of the loom. Though the bitter cold did not abate, the daylight hours grew perceptibly longer. They lighted the candles a bit later every afternoon.

  Judith had just set the brass candlestick on the table one late afternoon, and the girls were moving the table nearer to the hearth in preparation for supper, when a knock sounded at the door.

  "See who it is, Kit," said Rachel absently. "I don't want to take my hands out of this flour."

  Kit went into the hallway, leaving the kitchen door open behind her, drew back the bolt, and opened the door. A gaunt, ragged figure stood on the step, and as she shrank back a man pushed his way through the door and halted on the kitchen threshold. Judith suddenly let fall a wooden bowl with a clatter.

  Rachel, wiping her hands on her apron, came forward, peering in the dim light. "Can it be—John?" she breathed tremulously.

  The man did not even hear her. His eyes had gone straight to Mercy where she sat by the hearth, and her own eyes stared back, enormous in her white face. Then with a hoarse, wordless sigh, John Holbrook stumbled across the room, and went down on his knees with his head in Mercy's lap.

  CHAPTER 21

  ON A LECTURE DAY in April two marriage intentions were announced together in the Meeting House. John Holbrook and Mercy Wood. William Ashby and Judith Wood.

  The Wood household was busy from dawn till close to midnight. There was so much to do if all were to be ready for the double wedding that was set for early May. There was the vital matter of two dowries. Judith had been carefully hoarding a small store of linens since childhood, adding one cherished bit from time to time, and her loom and needle had worked busily. But Mercy had never given a thought to a dowry. She had not a single pillowcase or linen napkin that she could call her own. Now, though Rachel fussed and stitched, Mercy still regarded the whole problem with indifference. Why did she need a dowry, she argued practically, when she was really not leaving home at all? She and John had already decided that for the first year at least they had best share the Woods' ample house. The company room was being readied with fresh whitewash and new linen curtains.

  John had resumed his studies with Dr. Bulkeley. All his uncertainty had disappeared, and his steady eye and voice plainly revealed the core of strength that Kit had always sensed beneath his gentleness. In the days of his captivity, of which he never spoke, in the waiting for a chance to escape, and in the weary hunted trail down the Connecticut River, John had found his answers.

  "Dr. Bulkeley is everything I ever thought him to be, a great scholar and a great gentleman," he explained. "In politics he is obeying his own conscience, but I think he is mistaken. We have come to an understanding. He will teach me theology and medicine, but I will think as I please." By June he would be ready to accept a call to one of the small parishes springing up to the south and west of Wethersfield.

  William's house on Broad Street was nearly finished. Piece by piece he was assembling the costly treasures for its furnishing—fine hand-turned bedsteads and chests and chairs from the skilled Wethersfield joiner, Peter Blinn, glossy pewter plates and a set of silver spoons from Boston, real china bowls of blue and white Delft from Holland. Judith knew where every piece would go in the new house, and how to care for each lovely thing to keep it shining. She and William spent their evenings in happy planning, and their contentment was good to see. Kit had never found William so likeable before.

  In the midst of all this preparation Kit silently made her own plans. She would not share them with anyone till every detail was carefully provided for. Her leaving would be a shock to them, she knew. Rachel, and Matthew in his own way, looked upon her as a daughter, but even a daughter, though welcomed and loved, could come to be a problem. There was no real place for her here. With John to help with the planting and Mercy still sharing the work of the household, there was no obligation now to hold Kit to the tasks she hated. They would protest, they might even sorrow a little, but in their hearts wouldn't they be relieved to see her go?

  The ice on the river broke into great floating blocks, and gradually thinned and disappeared. The ferryboat began its daily journeys from Smith's landing back and forth to the opposite shore. Small boats slipped out of their winter moorings, and one day a bustling cheering crowd thronged along High Street to greet the first sailing ship up from New London.

  That afternoon Kit climbed to the attic and surveyed the seven small trunks. She had not looked inside them all winter. Now, one after the other she threw back the lids and lifted the filmy dresses, holding them up to the dim light. How long ago it seemed that she had worn these things! Could it be not quite a year? The silks and muslins and gauzes still gleamed unworn and beautiful, and doubtless they were still fashionable. She touched them wistfully. It would be good to shed these shabby woolen garments and feel once more the softness of silk against her skin, and to hear the rustle of petticoats wherever she moved.

  But the dresses must serve another purpose now. Would they bring enough to pay her passage on a ship? Fine cloth like this was rare in Connecticut. In many families, she had learned, one dress such as these would be handed down through three generations as a cherished possession. Surely in Hartford, or perhaps even here in Wethersfield, she would find willing buyers, even though she had not yet worked out a plan for approaching them.

  As she lifted the peacock-green dress she hesitated. How radiant Judith had looked in this dress. "If only William could see me in it," she had said. She laid aside the dress, and very thoughtfully she chose another, a fine blue-flowered muslin. These two she would take directly to Uncle Matthew, and this time she felt sure he would let his daughters accept them, because he would know now that she offered the gifts with love instead of pride.

  All Kit's plans now turned toward Barbados. She had no illusions about the prospect before her. She would not be going back as Sir Francis Tyler's granddaughter. She would go as a single woman who must work for her living. Her best chance, she had decided, lay in seeking employment as a governess in one of the wealthy families. She liked teaching children, and hopefully there might be a library where she could extend her own learning as well as that of her charges. Whatever befell, there would be a blue sky overhead, and the warmth and color and fragrance and beauty that her heart craved.

  One day in mid-April she walked alone down South Road. She could not go far, for the river was still very high from the meltin
g snows. It had overflowed so that the fringe of poplar trees on its banks stood deep in water, and the cornfields were transformed into endless lakes. Blackbird Pond had been swallowed up, and Hannah's house, had it still been standing there, would have been flooded up to its thatched roof. Poor Hannah, how had she endured this ordeal year after year, watching while the water crept nearer and nearer, stowing her valuables higher in the rafters, moving away goodness only knew where to wait out the season in some deserted barn or warehouse, and creeping back when the water receded to scrub out her house and replant her soggy garden? Kit was thankful, as she had been so many times when the wind howled and the snow piled higher, that her friend was snug in a proper house. But she knew a pang of homesickness, nonetheless. The little cottage had been very dear to her.

  She perched on a sun-dried rock and sniffed the air. There was an earthy indefinable scent that stirred her senses. The new shoots of the willows were a sharp yellow-green. The bare twigs of the maples were tipped by swelling red buds. A low bush nearby had blossomed in tiny gray balls. She reached to touch one curiously. It was furry and soft as the kitten that Prudence had held in her arms that summer afternoon. All at once Kit was aware that this New England, which had shown her the miracle of autumn and the white wonder of snow, had a new secret in store. This time it was a subtle promise, a tantalizing hint of beauty still withheld, a beckoning to her spirit to follow she knew not where.

  She had forgotten that summer would come again, that the green would spread over the frozen fields, that the earth would be turned up to the sun and the seed sown, and that the meadows would renew themselves. Was this what strengthened these New Englanders to endure the winter, the knowledge that summer's return would be all the richer for the waiting?