The widow's war (19 page)

“I’ll tell him. What’s got you, a stomach? I can tell by looking at you. You’ve got the color of it. I lost three days to it last month and nothing settled me till I took a good purge and followed it with a tonic of warm wine and skunk cabbage.”

“Thank you, Mr. Gray, I’ll try that.”

“You’ll hear them say mint, or gentian, or chamomile, but I tell you, Widow, ’tis the skunk cabbage cures it. Mind you, once you go to bile, you’ve got to get in something yellow. Gold thread, perhaps, or goldenseal—”

“I thank you, Mr. Gray, for taking my message.”

“All right, then, I’m happy to do it. Now is there anything else I might do for you?”

Lyddie paused, considered, leaped. “I do have one thing more. A question that’s long been troubling me. If you won’t mind going back to the subject.”

“No, no, no, we have to keep our health. After that—”

“I don’t mean my health, Mr. Gray. I mean my husband, Edward.”

“Oh. Aye.” His jaw slacked. He stood silent.

“I dream of it yet. Of Edward alive in the water, still breathing.”

“Good Lord, I should not have—”

“No, no, I need to know all of it. You said to me, if I remember, that Mr. Cowett had him in his hands while he yet breathed, and then something happened.”

“Damnedest thing. I’d just heard this great huzzah from the men because we’d got him. And then I turned around and…nothing.” He shook his head.

“And Mr. Cowett?”

“What of him?”

“He said nothing? No word of explanation?”

“A few words I’d not tell a lady, if I may say that much to you. A ruddy great streak of them. And something about his coat. His coat tearing out of his hands. But he wouldn’t give him up. He kept flailing around in the water with the oar until we almost went over ourselves and we had to put to in a hurry. After that we were too far off the spot. He went back, though. Kept going back. Set me at the stern and stood up in the bow, yelling at us to peel our eyeballs, but we saw nothing. Nothing. I’ll tell you this, Widow Berry, no men tried harder, but there comes a time when you say, all right, then, we’ve lost him. A hard thing to say to yourself, but it comes down to it sometimes: you’ve got to say to yourself, ’Tis over. We’ve lost him.” He said the words so gently Lyddie couldn’t mistake the direction of the message.

She’d taken the coward’s way; she was sensible of it and yet didn’t regret it for a minute. She needed the day to think. She could see two versions: a Sam Cowett in honest distress over the loss of his friend, shouting out curses, jabbing at the water that hid him long past the point of reason, but what of the coat? The thought of the coat took Lyddie to the second version, in which a Sam Cowett in grudging fury tinged with fear of being caught strikes Edward down with the oar, but as Edward still rises Cowett must pretend a rescue, only letting go when he feels no one is looking, blaming a torn coat, continuing to jab the water to make sure Edward is under, crisscrossing the black water to make sure he hasn’t surfaced somewhere farther along.

Lyddie’s stomach began to churn for real. She lay down on the bed and pulled up the coverlet. She might actually have slept; she roused to the sound of voices in the keeping room and a strong sense of living an old day over.

Sam Cowett: “I’ve come to see the Widow Berry.”

Patience Clarke: “I’m sorry, sir, she’s not well today.”

Sam Cowett: “I’ll see her.”

Patience Clarke: “Sir! Sir!”

But Lyddie had no hope of someone like Patience waylaying someone like Cowett; boots clipped across the floor and Lyddie’s chamber door flew open, snapping hard shut behind him. He took a knife out of its sheath and jammed the latch with it.

Lyddie tossed back her coverlet and got up.

“Gray says you’re ill.”

“I’m a good deal better, thank you.”

“I had you dead. Again.”

“I’m not dead or anything near it. And you’ll give us away with all this visiting, especially behind closed doors. Please, open it.”

He didn’t move. “You asked Gray about your husband.”

“I did, yes. He happened by at a troubled moment.”

“What troubled it, Clarke?”

“No one. A dream.”

“What of?”

Lyddie stayed silent.

Cowett stepped toward her. Lyddie stepped backward. Cowett stopped still.

“So. You listen to this fool in his drink and are afraid of me now.”

“No.” But she looked at the door, and he saw her looking. He crossed the room, pulled out the knife, sheathed it, and banged out, one door, two doors. The end of it.

A lone sail swept into the bay and moored at the landing. The first time the carts rumbled by Lyddie paid no notice. The second time she noticed but said nothing. The third time she asked the oldest Clarke boy, who stood at the window, “What’s all this traffic?”

“Some Indians. With barrels.”

The fourth time the boy ran right out into the road, and when he came back in he had a biscuit and the story. Scotto Hallet had landed to take on supplies and crew to make a last trip north after whales, and the big Indian was shipping out with him. They were traveling back and forth with the cart, refitting and provisioning from Bangs’s chandlery.

The boy ran up and down the road for two days, happily reporting on progress: the big Indian had replaced some shingles on the roof; the livestock had been carted off to Mrs. Gray’s; an Indian
woman had picked over the garden; the fire had gone out; and, finally, the sloop had sailed. Lyddie walked down the road past the lifeless house as far as the rise and saw the dirty white triangle of sail just piercing the horizon. She watched until it disappeared, then continued down the road to the landing, thinking to recapture her old habit of walking the shore, but as she stepped onto the flat she saw a fresh-painted sloop in the channel ahead, several men swarming her deck, and Shubael Hopkins standing on the sand talking to Seth Cobb. He saw Lyddie and his hand shot in the air in greeting. Seth Cobb tipped his head in a bow, and Lyddie felt she had little choice but to join them.

Shubael greeted her with, “And what do you think of our vessel, Cousin?”

“She’s lovely,” Lyddie answered truthfully.

Shubael elbowed Seth Cobb. “You see? All fall in love with her at first sight.” He turned back to Lyddie, his old reticence around her forgotten in the glow of this newfound love. “As soon as she’s fitted we take our first run to Barnstable. Did I tell you, Cobb, how tight to the wind she sails?”

“Aye, aye, a dozen times now. Widow Berry, I warn you, walk away now or you’ll spend the next hour telling your cousin how tight and trim and perfect his vessel looks. Hopkins, you’ve done well. In truth, I’m quite jealous of you.”

He set off.

Alone with Lyddie, Shubael grew solemn, but Lyddie no longer detected any apprehension over her presence. She could understand the change in him; he would have heard Silas Clarke’s tavern babble and would know that another had done his dirty work for him; besides, Cowett was no longer at hand to trouble him.

As for Lyddie, she held no grudge against Shubael; one person afraid could not blame another for being so. “She’s truly a pretty thing, Cousin,” she said. “I fear she’ll tempt you away from us too often.”

Shubael turned on her eagerly. “And who would not be tempted? Are you not tempted? Have you no business at Barnstable? It would be my great pleasure to carry you there. If we have such wind as—”

“No, no,” Lyddie said. “I’ve no business at Barnstable. But I wish you every success in her. What have you named her?”

He looked down and up. “The
Betsey.
”

“Ah. A fine name.”

He beamed at her.

Lyddie spent the rest of the day busying herself in her room, replacing her summer bed tick with the down one, quilting a petticoat, mending stockings, but as busy as she kept, it wasn’t long before the feelings she’d run ahead of most of the day caught up with her and ran her down. But how to name what it was that laid her out? Was this deadness in her relief or dread? Were these poundings of her heart fear or anger? And who owned the tears, the Indian? Edward? Eben Freeman? Or were they for some other thing she could only feel without naming?

Silas Clarke carried home all the talk from the tavern. There appeared to be little surprise over the fact that the Indian had left for the north; the surprise was that he’d waited till so late in the season. Some blamed the dead wife; some blamed drink; some blamed the in-born, contrary nature of the Indian. As far as Lyddie could tell, no one, openly at least, factored her into the equation.

But Lyddie had other problems now, or, rather, the same old one. No matter how neatly Patience Clarke kept her shelves, they were seldom full enough for a husband, wife, and five children, and Lyddie’s own pantry frequently got raided. Lyddie knew it and even saw it and had no heart to snatch a piece of bread out of a hungry child’s hand, but when she caught Silas Clarke ripping open a fresh loaf she
shouted so loudly he swung around with the loaf pressed to his chest like a shield.

“Blast you, woman, you war-whoop like some Indian!”

“Mr. Clarke, you will pay for that loaf.”

“And what did you think, I was stealing it? Write it in the book and clear out of my way.”

“And the beer barrel. I’m marking you down for half.”

“Bah! I’ve not touched your stinking rat piss. Here, step aside or be sorry you didn’t.”

Lyddie stepped aside. She had as little hope of collecting for the bread as she did for the beer, and if she didn’t wish to starve feeding the Clarke family she would have to find some other kind of work, and find it in a hurry.

But the theft of her food was not the only harm Silas Clarke brought down on her. It soon became clear that as he brought home one kind of news from the tavern, he left off another. He hadn’t been so blind drunk as to miss the implication of Sam Cowett’s several visits, especially the last one, behind a closed bedroom door. Silas Clarke began to look at Lyddie with a certain air of speculation, and soon after that, the Myrick sisters cut off their chatter when Lyddie came into Sears’s store and Caleb Sears roughly tossed her change across the counter.

Another week of raids on her stores, another week of nothing but rebuff to all her work inquiries, another good chill descending, and Lyddie found herself where she thought she’d never be again: on Nathan Clarke’s doorstep, lifting his knocker.

Hassey opened the door and called behind her in a hoarse whisper, “Madam! ’Tis the widow here!”

Mehitable came into view with the babe on her hip. Hassey backed
away. Neither woman spoke, but when Lyddie held out her arms, Mehitable laid the infant in them, a fat, rosy child, fresh-fed and drowsy. “Oh, Daughter,” Lyddie said. “It thrives and you thrive. I’ll see no happier sight in my lifetime.”

Mehitable’s eyes teared. Or did it just appear so through the film in Lyddie’s? But soon enough Nathan Clarke stuck his head out of his study.

“’Tis Mother,” Mehitable said.

“I need you to tell me that?” Nathan said. “Rather you tell me her business.”

“She comes to see her grandchild only.”

“She has no grandchild. She’s no part of this family. Tell her to be gone.”

Lyddie reluctantly handed the babe back to its mother. “In truth, Nathan, my business is with you. It concerns your brother and his family. They invade my stores and strap me beyond my capacity.”

“And what do you tell me this for?”

“They’re your tenants. You’ve arranged to extract your rent from Mr. Clarke’s pay at the tannery; perhaps you could also extract their board.”

He laughed. “You expect me to run your collections for you?”

“Or perhaps if you speak to Mr. Clarke—”

“You speak to him. You seem to have little trouble carping at men. And as we come to that subject, what do you hear from your Mr. Freeman?”

“I hear nothing from Mr. Freeman.”

“Hah! Did I not tell you, Wife? You said he would not so easily give over! A lot you know of it. And now, with this latest we hear—” He broke off, even Nathan Clarke not quite able to look at her. It must have been quite the shock to him, to find his own falsehoods come back at him as truth. “All right, then, Mother, does that conclude our business?”

“I came to determine if you would make any effort to remedy an unlivable situation. As you do not, I’ll now pursue my own course.”

“Your own course! And what might that be? You can’t look to Eben Freeman to throw the law after me now.”

“Eben Freeman is not the only lawyer of my acquaintance.”

Clarke stiffened as if he’d been thrust through. Lyddie had tossed the words out with little thought; indeed, she’d not gone as fast as Nathan to the legal issue, but once Nathan took her there, it began to come together in her mind. Why not find another lawyer and sue Nathan Clarke for her keep and care as Eben Freeman had once suggested? At the time it had seemed a poor choice, but as a last choice, it shone brighter. But how to pay for such legal service?

Lyddie walked home, making a mental list of her personal possessions, taking tally of the sum she might get for this plate or that coverlet, but when she walked into her house she found Silas Clarke rampaging through her room looking for the bottle of brandy. She was forced to drive him out with a pair of scissors held point-first. Once he had gone Lyddie jammed her latch with the scissors and dropped onto the bed, shaking, less from fear than from fury.

To have given up so much in order to secure her small corner and to now have that corner invaded set loose a new thing in Lyddie. Two weeks earlier and it might not have taken her the same way, but now her mind had been eased about daughter and child, and she’d seen Shubael’s pretty sloop at anchor in the channel. She took down Edward’s picture in its silver frame and carefully removed the canvas. She wrapped the frame in a piece of flannel, set it on top of the chest, and sat down to write a note to Shubael.