Caleb's Crossing

by Geraldine Brooks

  “My dear. I know this must be a very big change of circumstance for you. But you must not fear Master Corlett. He is a kindly gentleman. No one here means you any harm.”

  Her only reply was to look down and keep on shaking her head, so I let the matter lie. No profit to rush her, shy and frightened as she was. I needed to get to my chores, in any case, so I started peeling turnips for the pot, thinking of this child, snatched from her people into such an improper arrangement. Clearly the trader had fed and educated her. Perhaps he had been a godly person, saving a child from a disease-ravaged town, raising her with a kindly fatherliness. But her fearfulness implied something other than fatherly affection.

  She rose and made to help me, but I laid a hand on hers, removing the knife she had taken up. I put the knife down upon the table. “No, Anne. You are a scholar here, not a servant. You must be clear about your place from the first, and insist upon what is due to it, because you can be sure there will be some always more than happy to reduce you.” I went into the master’s study and fetched Tully from his shelf. I set it before her. “Can you read it?” She nodded. “If you like, read aloud to me, and where I hear that your pronunciation errs, I will correct it, as far as I am able, although I, like you, have got my learning from books. I must confess I have had no formal Latin instruction myself, only what I have gathered from listening an ear to my brother’s lessons.”

  She read with very little hesitation, the slight remnant of her Nipmuc accent making the words sound well in her mouth. That was how Master Corlett came upon her, some time later. She did not at first observe him, standing just back from the doorway, and she read on, until, when she reached the end of a sentence he gave her a hearty “Well done, indeed! Remarkable.”

  She started, glanced at him, and then away, and commenced to tremble again.

  “Very well then,” he said, washing his hands together uncertainly. “You seem to have made a good start. Carry on there, and I shall see you in my study after commons, and we shall make some determination as to how we shall go on.” He turned, and then he hesitated. “Bethia, I think it best if Anne takes her commons here, with you. We can make introductions to the others in due course. No need to hurry these matters.”

  “Very good, Master Corlett. I shall see to it.”

  Anne barely touched her broth and bread as I bustled about fetching the pupils’ meals and scouring their dishes. When it was time for her conference with the master, she pushed herself up from the table with what seemed to be an immense effort of will. “Would you like me to come with you?” I said. She reached for my hand. “Very well,” I said. “But just for today. I have work I should be about at this hour, and as I said, you have nothing at all to fear from Master Corlett.”

  It was difficult to say who, of the two of them, was the more shy and awkward. The master’s stumbling manner of speech was worse than I had ever heard it, and her voice, as she construed the passages he set before her, was barely audible. Each time he corrected her, she started as if she had been struck. I burned to know what had put this child into such a state, beyond anything that mere shyness, or the novelty of the situation, could account for. On the other hand, if the answer was as I feared, then I preferred not to know it.

  I felt this even more strongly after I passed the first night sleeping beside her. I should say, rather, attempting to sleep beside her. Hers was the wracked slumber of the tormented. I had set us head to toe, as is the usual way with a bedfellow, but I soon had to revise my position as her long legs thrashed about so, I thought she might blacken my eye with her violent kicking. Despite the difference in our ages, she was fully as tall as me, and despite her slenderness, there was a sinewy strength to her. As I laid my head down beside hers, I caught a sharp fragrance from her long braid—a clean scent of wintergreen and sassafras that made me ache for home. I had just managed to drift to sleep when her hand locked about my forearm and tightened there like a noose. She was still asleep, but whimpering and pleading withal. She did not waken even as I peeled her fingers away. I got up then, realizing that I could not share her pallet and expect to close my eyes. I took a threadbare quilt to wrap about me and lay down on the stone hearth with a grain sack as my pillow, feeling cold seep into my bones until weariness claimed me.

  She was standing over me when I waked. “This night you have the pallet.” I started to say of course not, since she was the pupil and I the servant, but she interrupted me.

  “Did I say aught in my sleep?” The beautiful eyes slanted away from me as she spoke.

  “Nothing I could make out,” I said. “Though it seemed you had troubled dreams.”

  “Always.” She turned then to go out to the necessary. “I am sorry I disturbed your rest.” I stood up stiffly, with aching limbs, and looked after her. The long braid swung as she walked down the flagstones.

  XIII

  Some weeks later, Makepeace sought me out for a private conference, which was not usual. He had been reserved since the morning after our arrival; civil enough, but never more than that. We would walk out together on the Lord’s Day, after meeting, if the weather happened to be good, but during the rest of the week he was no more to me than any of the other pupils. I could not tell which galled him more: my menial status in the house, or my conversations with the master of an evening, when he was obliged to keep dormitory hours with the younger boys.

  “I would be glad if you would walk with me. I have that which I need to say to you.”

  I sighed inwardly, thinking of the chores that would pile up in my absence, but I was anxious to hear him out, so we fixed upon a time, and in the afternoon I left Anne in the kitchen, at her book, and fetched my cloak.

  Generally we walked down Crooked Street in the direction of the meeting house and town square, but this time Makepeace stepped off the other way, toward the college and the Cow Common beyond. We made our way between the Indian College and the sagging clapboard hall that housed the English scholars. From the common, the cows turned their slow heads and regarded us. We walked on in silence through the apple orchard. The mud had iced over so that the path, although slippery, was not the usual boot-sucking wallow. Even so, I did not like to risk my one pair of stout footwear to it.

  “Why must we go this way?” I said.

  “I do not wish to be overheard,” he replied.

  The trees were glossy with ice, but the first buds had begun to form and snowdrops bloomed about the base of the trunks. Makepeace reached out a hand and worked off a curved wafer of ice. He raised it, like a glass, and gazed through at the wavy vision it afforded. He let it fall and shatter, and looked up into the dark squiggle of branches. “These trees,” he mused. “Almost as old as the colony. A quarter century, they must be, now. Do you know, Bethia, that these were planted by the sweat of the scholars of the very first Harvard class? They say Master Eaton billed as if he had paid local workers and pocketed the cash himself.”

  I did recall something about those long ago scandals, for it was a favorite jest of grandfather’s, at board, to remark that he was glad that Mistress Eaton was not his cook. She had been accused, in the General Court, of feeding the scholars a hasty pudding made with goat dung, and mackerel with the guts still in. He liked to read over the cases that came before the court, and that was ever one of his favorites.

  “Such a flawed man,” my brother went on. “Yet chosen for a post deemed essential by the living saints of the colony. So may we learn that none but God has perfect judgment regarding the true state of a man’s soul.”

  I was sure he had not brought me here for spiritual musings, yet he seemed downcast, so I tried to cheer him. “Perhaps you will make a sermon upon that theme, one day.” I could not, it seems, have said anything less apt to the purpose. His eyes filled, and he turned from me and pressed his brow into the icy tree trunk. I laid a mittened hand upon his back. “What is it, brother? What troubles you so?”

  “I cannot do it, Bethia. It is plain to me now. On the island, with fathe
r, alone, I could tell myself that my abilities, though less than I wished, would serve. Even when you found so easy what cost me such struggle, even when that heathen lad … still … I deluded myself. I thought that with steady work I could o’ercome my deficiencies and get on, as everyone about me seems to do. I said to myself, Makepeace, in Cambridge you will not be found wanting. Others there will be, whose wits work more slowly. But it is not so. Though I am oldest, yet am I generally the least able pupil in the room.”

  He raised his head, his brow all cratered from the impression of the rough bark. “And now comes this squa, and I hear her, reading to you, and even she, a self-schooled salvage, does with ease what I cannot do with utmost effort.” He gave a dry and humorless laugh. “I tell you, I am fortunate that Master Corlett is no Master Eaton, or I would be thrashed thoroughly every day, so behind hand am I with my lessons.”

  “But Makepeace,” I said, feeling an unaccustomed tenderness, reaching up to smooth his brow. “Surely Master Corlett does not despair of you? Has he spoken to you?” He shook his head. “No? Then neither must you despair of yourself. You have struggled, yes, but through that struggle you have come far—” I knew this to be true; I was not just speaking words to ease his feelings—“You must know this. You must feel your progress. It is plain to me, who has watched you through these months and years.”

  “It will not serve! If someone says a thing to me, it is plain enough, and with effort I can con it by rote and repeat it back to them. But when I turn to books the writing there makes no good sense to me. English books and Latin—these are trial enough. But Hebrew, Greek—the characters swim all about and I cannot … I will never…” He reached up, snapping a budding twig and brandishing it at me. “You see? Spring is almost upon us. Summer brings the examination. I will not pass it.”

  “Makepeace. They will test your Latin knowledge and a very little Greek. Surely you might—”

  “I cannot! And what is more, I will not! I will not set myself up to be reduced. Caleb and Joel will matriculate with colors flying, and I will be shamed before everyone who knows me: Makepeace Mayfield, more stupid than a salvage. I cannot bear it, Bethia. I … I … want to go home.” He sounded now as plaintive as a small child, and my sympathy that had waxed so strong waned of a sudden.

  “So. You cannot bear it.” My tone was mocking, insolent. “You cannot bear it. You are a man, Makepeace, with all the privileges and rights that come with the title. Why then do you not act like one? You want to go home. Do you trouble to think, for one instant, how sorely I might want to go home? And how is that to be accomplished, since, on your behalf, I am indentured here, deprived of my right to go and come for three and one half years more? You will go back to the island, to warmth and friendship and a certain station in society, and I am to stay here, in this vile town, scrubbing and mending, deprived now even of a pallet on which to lay my head in peace and solitude? No, Makepeace. You will stay. And you will study and endure, and earn this sacrifice which I have made for you. And if, when you meet Master Chauncy at yonder college, you are found unequal to the challenge, then you will strive to see God’s will in it, and to find what it is he intends for you. If you do other, then I tell you, Makepeace, from the day you quit this place I will not call you my brother.”

  Even as I said this, I knew I did not mean it. But the words rode out of my mouth mounted upon an anger I could not bridle.

  Makepeace looked stunned. In seventeen years, this was but the second time I had spoken my mind to him, and on the first occasion I had been defending myself from his attack. Now I was attacking him. His face hardened. He drew himself up and folded his arms across his chest in the gamecock pose I had always despised.

  “’Tis well our mother did not live to hear what a hectoring fishwife you are become, sister. You do not even give me space to say my piece. Do you not think that your condition daily rebukes me? It is the chief cause of my despair, that I have brought you to this. I lie awake at night, thinking how to redress it.” I felt the sting of his words, and lowered my gaze. “If you were not so quick to abuse and to condemn me, you would have heard what I propose. I have written to Jacob Merry regarding his son Noah and his suit for your hand in marriage. I have said we will accept it, if he is in purse to buy out your indenture, the which sum I will work to pay off in whatever employ I am able to obtain.”

  “Makepeace!” If I had been angry before, my new condition was of so violent a nature that I do not know what word to put upon it. “Please, tell me you have not sent this letter?” His look told me the answer. “Then you will write another, this night, retracting it.”

  “That is not possible….”

  “Not possible! What is not possible is that you should usurp the right to sell me off into a marriage that I have not agreed to, a match that father himself deemed untimely, that grandfather, who—must I again remind you?—is my guardian, also felt unsuitable at this time….”

  “But grandfather has reversed himself.”

  “He … what?”

  “I unburdened myself to him, when last I was on island, one month since. He told me to consider well, and make no decision, and work my hardest, and if after one month had passed I still felt the same way, then he thought my plan a good one, and said he would carry my letter to Jacob Merry in person, and stand surety for the debt.”

  I could hardly breathe. I felt all the blood drain out of my face and a great coldness rise. For the first time in my life, I thought I might faint. I leaned my weight against a tree and grasped at a low-curved branch to support me.

  “Why look you so? Why such a violent reaction? Any one would think I—” He stared at me, frowning. His face darkened. “It is your unlawful affection for that half-tamed salvage that brings this about, is it not? There is no cause otherwise for you to have such a revulsion to so suitable an alliance as Merry.” His mouth twisted then, into a mirthless smile of triumph. “I knew it! All your protestations to the contrary, just feints and falsehoods. Know this, sister: you will put that attachment behind you today. You shall do my will in this, and that is an end of it.”

  I had never in my life uttered an oath to God but I did so then. “God damn you, Makepeace,” I said, and turned, and made an unsteady way back towards Mr. Corlett’s house, with Makepeace’s voice calling after me that I was the one at risk of damnation.

  XIV

  I entered the kitchen only to find the room crowded, just when I most needed some time and space alone. Anne was seated where I had left her, her book open upon the table. Master Corlett had joined her, and Caleb and Joel one on either side of him. A lively seminar of some kind seemed to be under way. Anne’s face, no longer hidden and shadowed, seemed lit with a sharp intelligence as she listened to Caleb and Joel, who were engaged in a disputation on whether beauty implied godliness. She had just asked a question, and Caleb had his face turned to her, answering. His voice, as he addressed her, was soft and solicitous. As distracted as I was, it struck me how different this was to our rough and tumble arguments, our many seminars held upon sand dunes or under oak boughs. He had shown no care for proper manners then but spoke his mind in a carefree, brotherly way.

  Brotherly. Now, of all times in my life, did I wish Caleb truly was my brother, rather than that selfish, imperious, weak-willed soul to whom fate had shackled me. If it were so, I could turn to him now, and he would surely help me change the fate being thrust upon me.

  I had my hand on the door latch, hesitating. There was supper to prepare, and yet I did not want to interrupt the teaching, nor could I get about the kitchen with so many bodies in my way. I was struggling to keep my composure, and felt I might give way at any moment. I turned, to go back out, but the master called my name and bade me sit. “I—I do not think—I need to be about my duties,” I said, trying to speak in a normal voice. Caleb, whose back was to me, caught the agitation in my tone and turned. I have no idea how much of what I felt was disclosed in my face, but Caleb’s gaze informed me that I did
not look myself. He stood up and grasped my elbow, and steered me down upon the bench.

  “Are you quite well?” said Master Corlett, all concern. “You look flushed—are you fevered?”

  “It is nothing,” I said. “A headache merely.”

  “My dear, please, go into my chamber and lie down upon the bed. I shall send a boy to the apothecary for a draught….”

  “No, master, do not trouble a boy, there is no need of a draught.” The apothecary charged a chouser’s prices for draughts any goodwife could distill. I knew the master was not in purse to pay for such things. “But I will lie down for a brief while, if you can spare me.”

  I was never so pleased to be alone. When the master closed the door I turned my face into his pillow and wept without restraint. After, I lay there, depleted, unable to summon the will to rise. Before long, the exhaustion of the previous night lay hold of me and I fell into an unintended sleep.

  When I woke it was full dark. I jumped up, poured some cold water from the master’s pitcher into his washbowl and splashed my face, straightened my cap and went to the kitchen. There was no one there, just a pile of trenchers piled into the sink. It seemed the boys had fetched their own bread and cheese and I had not even heard the racket they usually made in the dining hall. They were all now at evening prayers, where I should have joined them. Instead, I pulled out a stool and sat quietly, trying to think. I decided that if the master called me to his chamber after prayers I should unburden myself to him, and seek his counsel. He was a kind man, wise and godly. He would know how to advise me.

  Not long after that, one of the younger pupils came to say that the master indeed wished to see me. I knocked upon his door and entered, expecting his usual kindly good evening, and perhaps a solicitous enquiry as to my headache. Instead, he looked up at me with a face stern and filled with displeasure.