Brudloe had seen with his own eyes his large companion kill three armed footpads with an ax when they had tried to rob goods that Cornwall himself had only just stolen. It enraged the big man no end to see his hard work come to naught. And yet here he sat like a cropped gelding, meek and soundless.
Brudloe said confidingly, “You need cunny, my friend, and right quick. Your wastin’ about’s frayin’ my patience.”
Cornwall looked at him, expressionless, and shrugged. The sound of a fist on the door below made them both startle, and Brudloe held out a cautioning hand to his partner, who had begun rising from the bed. Brudloe stepped to the window and looked cautiously down to the street.
“It’s the constable,” he whispered, gesturing for Cornwall to stay where he was. The sound of pounding began again, more forcefully, and Brudloe ducked behind the casement as the constable backed into the street, peering upwards to the second-floor windows. The man banged once more on the door, calling out to Mrs. Parker to come quick, but soon he mounted his horse and clucked to it to move on.
Brudloe turned back to Cornwall only to find the man observing Mrs. Parker’s silent form with something akin to sympathy, shaking his head as though he had come upon her lifeless body by accident.
With any luck it would be another day before their minder was discovered, and there would be no mark on her body to bespeak imposed violence in the event of their being detained and questioned. Brudloe had pointed the trail northward, and by the time their pursuers discovered their error, both he and Cornwall would be well hidden, and provided for, by their contact in Salem. There they could rest and plan for the killing of Thomas Morgan. He had often, on their miserable voyage overseas, relished the idea of hog-tying Morgan and slowly peeling him like an orange. But now he was tired, too tired to wrestle with the man; he could be happy with the criminal’s head alone. He had once gone to see the embalmed, desiccated head of Oliver Cromwell, kept on a pole outside Westminster Abbey, bits of flesh and hair still clinging to the skull. He imagined with satisfaction Morgan’s head like that, slowly drying to bacon in a salted barrel.
And then they could quit this sweltering, pine-boxed outpost at the arse end of the world.
CHAPTER 15
A BAG OF GOOSE down lay opened on the bed, the curling, delicate quills startlingly white against the dark gray sacking. There were other things as well, carefully positioned and repositioned next to the bag: four buttons carved from the tiny bones of a squirrel, a cloak pin for the English woolen bought at market, shaved from the pointed splinter of a stag’s antler, a doeskin throw, supple and warm from being cured in the sun. Martha sat, picking up and setting down again each thing, one by one, regarding the treasures that Thomas had left for her almost daily since the mowing of the fields, leaving them in places he knew she would go; shyly, stealthily, without any show or stated expectation for return of favor.
Patience had said nothing of the gifts. She would merely, with a disapproving glance, turn away with a cautionary exhalation of breath as though the frequency of the offerings was suspect, even though Thomas was as ever steadfast in his work on the settlement.
Martha picked up the red book and painstakingly recorded each offering, noting with satisfaction the growing list. It was only recently that she had begun writing again in the journal. Each morning or evening, whenever she could be alone, she would carefully tear open the seam in the pillow casing, make her few entries, and then carefully sew the book back into its hiding place. It was the only thing that she could hold completely, without the prying eyes of others, to herself. Patience had not yet asked her about the book. Her cousin was too preoccupied with her own fears about the coming labor pains to think on that which held for her no great worth.
Martha turned back a page and read the entry from the day before.
Monday, July 7th
Patience gave us a fright on the sabbath for in the meetinghouse, while we sang our hymn, she let out a great gasp and grabbed low at her belly. Ezra Black, the bandy-legged reaper, stepped forward to lift her up and gave hate-filled looks to Thomas and me, as though he would cinder our hair to ashes. We carried Patience from the pew but the pain passed away and by evening she was well and begging for sweet cream and calf’s-foot jelly. As we had none, Thomas stooped for hours to pick mushrooms for her. For me, he has brought purslane.
Thomas had wordlessly upended the green and glistening clusters on the table to dry, their red stalks pointing up towards the ceiling. Like tiny advancing pikemen, she thought. She knew he had picked the purslane for her because she had said in passing that she hungered for it. She stuffed a few of the leaves raw into her mouth, savoring the stringent, almost bitter taste, and held the rest back for a stew for Patience.
Her cousin was becoming more and more knotted over with worry about the birthing, which Martha was certain was soon to come. The pregnant woman’s ankles were swollen, as were her hands and the skin under her eyes. At least her appetite was good, the retching now all but gone. But there was still a disturbing lack of movement within Patience’s belly, and she would often grab at Martha’s hand and place it over the mounded flesh, pleading, “Martha, tell me you yet feel the flutterings.”
This morning, before the sun grew too hot, Martha would go with Thomas to scrape enough slippery elm to make a poultice to ease the passage of the infant through the birth channel. She had wanted to go days earlier, but Thomas had put her off, saying it was not safe. He had for the past week been frequently gone, searching out the scarce game that hid from the heat, and had told her that between the pox and the Indian raids, life was of late never more the width of a blade’s edge.
She closed the book and quickly stitched it back into her pillow. She then took up a short curved knife for peeling the elm branches and tucked it into her apron. Joanna had been sitting at the hearth, practicing writing her name in the ashes with a stick, the letters floating canted and disconnected like sprigs of rosemary in soup.
Martha bent down and kissed her head, the girl’s hair smelling of acrid smoke and lavender, and admonished her, for her mother’s sake, to be at least quiet if not good.
As she walked from the house, John grinned at her and loudly sang, “Now is the month of Maying, when merry lads go playing…” She scowled, her face reddening, but secretly she was pleased, and John laughed and sang even louder, the words of the song following her across the yard.
Will waited outside with the stubborn pout she had come to know as the desperate disappointment of the man-child, forever being left behind when an adventure away from the settlement was under way. She waved to him as she and Thomas walked south, but Will stood, his arms crossed, his narrow hips thrust angrily forward, glowering at them until the view to the path was veiled by the branches of low-hanging trees.
They walked for a while, not talking, Thomas’s pace deliberately slow for her benefit, but there were no glances, and when he didn’t soon reach for her hand, she moved nearer. He stopped once and hunkered down, gesturing for her to do the same, and pointed into the shadows of the bracken. It took her a long time to see the deer, twin mottled shapes, their heads bowed in sleep over each other’s backs, motionless except for the delicate, almost imperceptible motion of their ribs. He gripped the barrel of the flint, upright like a staff, but never moved to fire it.
They stood quietly and moved on, the building heat creating crescents of sweat under their arms. The birds stopped their morning rustling, settling into sporadic calls and answers, and Martha’s hand brushed the carapace of a grass locust clinging, with serrated arms, to her skirt. She swept it away and looked once more at Thomas, his brooding face framed from behind by the powdery dust kicked up by his boots.
She became more discomfited by the silence, by his withdrawn, distracted air, and she burned to ask, Are you Thomas Morgan? Instead, she pulled at his sleeve and said, “I thank you for the gifts.” He stopped, his chin pointing towards the road in front of them. “Thomas…,” she began. It was the
first time she had uttered his name in his presence and she was suddenly desperately shy, as brittle and insubstantial as the locust she had flicked away into the grass.
He took her wrist and walked her to the side of the path where a small boulder was planted firmly into the earth and lifted her in one motion, setting her feet on the flattened edge of the rock so that her face was closer to his own. He swept off his hat, gripping her arms tightly as if to keep her from falling off a great height.
“Martha,” he said. She waited for him to speak further, but he dropped his chin and looked away. She knotted the linen of his shirt in both her hands and tugged at the cloth until he looked at her again.
“There are things,” he began, “which must be said.”
“Nothing needs to be said now, except for those promises you are willing to give.”
“No,” he said, his hands tracking the distance of her arms, coming to rest over her fingers still gripping the front of his shirt.
Through her palms she could feel the rhythmic pulsing beneath his ribs, and imagined his heart as large as a waterwheel, churning his warming blood through the length of him. His breath expanded and contracted in moist waves around her face, and a half smile rimmed his lips. “The wolf skin would’ve been better suited to you than the doeskin.”
“Is that how you see me?” she asked. “Like a wolf? Is that who I am in your tale of Gelert? Am I the wolf?” Her face was defensive and half-fearful, like a child expecting punishment.
He leaned closer, bringing his lips to her ear, and asked solemnly, “D’you still not know?” She shook her head, and cupping the side of her face with his hand, he said, “You are the deer shot through with arrows whose heart grows cold for want of being taken.”
He looked at her, his mouth solemn, and her eyes filled with tears. He held her, speaking to her in his own tongue, the guttural sounds fractured and sweet against her cheek. “Branwen,” he called her, pulling off her cap to crimp the black hair in his hands. He whispered into her neck, first in Welsh and then in English, the tale of the myth-woman Branwen, with cheeks the color of raven’s blood and the body of snow. He kissed her mouth, encircling the backs of her thighs with his arms, pressing her against him. Tracing upwards with his fingers the bony prominences of her spine, he rested his palms beneath the hollows of her arms and he slowly pulled her away. He lifted up her apron to show her she should wipe her face, streaked and glistening. He helped her by brushing the creases of her eyelids with his thumbs and smoothing back the knots of hair from her forehead.
“Sweetheart,” he said, kissing the hollow of her throat.
By measures her tears dried, and after lifting her from the rock, he took her hand and led her to the grove where she set to work with her curve-bladed knife, gathering the sap from the slippery elm. The insides of the trunks were still soft, the hidden bark light-colored and strong-smelling, and she scraped at it vigorously, the sweat from her face burning her eyes like lye. After a time, she gathered the shavings into a small bag and watched Thomas scanning the path and the woods for movement, his form grown restless and agitated.
After a while he said, “When you take up a man’s name, you take on his history. I’m nigh on fifty years. D’ye know that?” She nodded for him to go on. “I’ve had a wife before. In England.”
Her grip on the knife handle tightened, but she kept her eyes on the bark and the rhythmic scraping of the blade.
“She died when I was a soldier fightin’ for Cromwell in Ireland. I were his man in all things, Martha, and you should know it before you tie yourself to me.”
His eyes searched the length of the path from the opposite direction they had come, as though he expected someone to appear. She anxiously peered into the woods, looking for something hidden in the shadows, but saw nothing alarming. He glanced up at the sky, the sun at midpoint, and then, nodding, turned to her. “I’d tell you all, here and now, but for the others.”
Others? she thought, wiping away a limp strand of hair with the back of her sleeve. She saw him look sharp to the road and she stood up, following the direction of his gaze. A man walked towards them, his arms swinging easily in counterpoint to his rapid stride. He was dressed in a leather jerkin and full breeches like any farmer, but with the confidence of a man used to certainty of action. Lacing her fingers around her eyes against the noon glare, she looked up at Thomas and with a jolt realized that he knew the man, that he had been waiting for him. As he walked nearer, she saw that the man was tall, only a head shorter than Thomas, with a few days’ growth of heavy beard, as though he had been living hard on the ground. His footfalls made explosions of dust as his heels struck the path, and the long barrel of a flintlock, strapped with leather to his back, gleamed dully over one shoulder.
He came to stand in front of them, placing a familiar hand on Thomas’s shoulder. There was nothing said between them, merely the nodding of heads in casual greeting.
“Here is my friend Robert Russell.” There was weight in the word “friend,” but Thomas offered nothing further.
Martha looked at the man, unsure how to place his name or face. He was a stranger to her; she had never heard Thomas speak of him before today. Robert regarded her closely, scrutinizing her face, and she wondered if her eyes were still red and swollen from weeping. She self-consciously wiped her slick palms on her apron and waited.
Suddenly he grinned, displaying an alarming array of strong white teeth, and said, “You look confounded, missus. But that is to be expected, as you know little of me, and I know so much of yourself.”
His speech was not like Thomas’s, but neither was it accented as it would have been with a whole life spent in the colonies. She crossed her arms and said, “I know nothing of you.” Uncertainty had made the sound of her voice strident but, rather than taking offense, he smiled wider at her and cut a look to Thomas.
“That is why I am here, missus.” Robert reached into a bag at his waist and pulled from it an apple, a perfect globe of pale red and green, and extended it out to her like an offering. “It is from General Gookin’s orchard.”
“I don’t know General Gookin either,” she said. She paused a moment before reaching out and taking the apple.
“Walk with me, then,” he said, “and I will tell you.” He gestured off the path, towards the stand of trees. Thomas took her arm and they walked the short distance to the shaded places. Standing, she propped her back against a slender trunk and held the apple briefly up to her nose, breathing in its rolling perfume, roselike and tart. She looked to Thomas for some guiding word, but he stood apart from her, staring down at his feet, lost in his own thoughts. She clasped her hands under her apron, tense and expectant, knowing that good news never would need such a courtship of words.
“General Gookin is known to both of us, Thomas and me, from the Great War. He fought like us for Parliament. He is now here, in the colonies, and has great tracts of land: orchards, fields, and men, of which I am but one. Thomas and I made the passage on a ship with the general.” He paused and looked expectantly at her, as though he had run a great distance ahead and waited for her to follow.
Unaccountably, she remembered the instant of fear when the tinsmith blew out the candle, the blackness, the scrambling to find the lock. And the name he had given her when she crossed the threshold to leave. “Prudent Mary,” she said. “The ship on which you crossed over was the Prudent Mary.”
Robert dipped his head in assent.
“And there were others,” she said, using Thomas’s word. “Others who came with you, because to stay in England would bring… danger.”
Robert laughed, throwing his head back. “That’s putting it prettily, missus.”
Thomas held up a cautioning hand and said, “Martha.” When she looked into his face, she saw that he was afraid for her. “It was General Gookin who found us shelter, and he watches over those who made the crossing with him, as best he can. All our fates are tied together. So one goes, the others may follow. I wo
uld not burden you with a name that’d mean prison, or death, if you didn’t know the truth.”
He moved in closer, grasping a branch above her head. “Robert an’ me, we sleep with our backs to the wall. One loose word about any one of us, and some village newcomer, and all his grandchildren, would have coin enough to live like princes.”
Her hands, hidden beneath the apron, squeezed tighter together, her nails piercing the skin of the apple. She turned her back to Robert so that Thomas alone would see her face, and asked, “Why could you not tell me this, Thomas? Do you not trust me?”
“It’s not for lack of trust, Martha. It’s our way. It’s for our safekeeping, and for yours. If I should be taken, Robert would do his best to protect you.”
“You needed to see my face, and I yours,” Robert said, pushing himself away from the tree where he had been leaning. “Though it is better truth to say I am more the advantaged by having seen yours.”
Thomas led her back to the path and she followed him haltingly, her head filled with the knowledge, and half-knowledge, of his life before coming to Billerica; that he had had a wife and had fought across two countries with the Great Protector, Cromwell, now proclaimed a criminal throughout England and its colonies. Yet the one question she burned to ask had not been uttered.
Thomas waited for her in the sandy loam of the path, Robert at his side, the afternoon light filtering in columns through the dust of a midsummer’s drought. They looked at her solemnly, waiting for her to step from the lip of the meadow’s edge onto the road. If she turned away now, she could walk through Fitch’s settlement, following Bent Stream all the way to the Taylors’. There she could take up the hoe and hack away at the vines overtaking the corn until she had worked herself through the choking runners, clearing neat channels of earth, row upon row upon row, in endless successions of soil and rock and sand, until she in turn was planted in the dirt.
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