Alis (3 page)

She hoped her blushing would not prompt Thomas to question her further on the subject of marriage; she was not used to lying. Fortunately, he was turning his attention to more immediate matters.

“Go, Sarah, and see that Lilith is preparing the supper. It is time that we should eat, and I am sure that Alis has an appetite after so long a journey, even if you are too sickly to swallow so much as a mouthful.”

As his wife scuttled from the room, grateful to escape her husband’s presence for a few minutes, Alis wondered why he spoke so harshly to Sarah. To be sure, her feebleness could be very provoking. If only she would not cry so often and so much! Surely if she showed a little more spirit, her husband might be less inclined to crush her?

Sarah, however, seemed more crushed than ever over the meal. She barely spoke and only picked at her food, so that Thomas complained of the waste. Lilith served them in silence, scowling when her master spoke to her sharply for some carelessness.

When the eating was done and the prayer of thanks to the Maker spoken, Thomas dismissed his wife to bed. As Alis moved to follow her out of the room, however, he said in a tone more courteous than she would have thought possible, “Pray you, Alis, sit up with me a little while if you are not too weary after your journey. There is more I would hear of your Community and its doings.”

In the doorway Sarah turned her head at his words and made as if to speak, giving him a frightened look, but a glance at her husband’s face silenced her, and she disappeared, leaving Alis alone with him.

He asked her first about her own occupations. Did she assist her mother in the Community? Did she read the Book every day? What other learning did she have? Did she wish to be an Elder like her mother? This she thought unwise to admit, but she saw no harm in telling him of her hope that she might be one day be a midwife, helping to bring young ones into the world. His lips curled in what might have been a smile.

“And has a husband been proposed to you that you have set your heart on this? You must be a married woman to be a midwife, must you not?”

Once more Alis felt herself flush. “No husband has yet been suggested, Master Thomas, although I know that my parents are beginning to give it thought.” Her heart beat with anger at the memory of how much thought they had given it and where it had led.

He was watching her closely. “Perhaps you have ideas of your own on the subject? There is some young man of your Community who has won you with kindness and soft words.”

She shook her head, wishing he would change the subject, but it clearly interested him.

“You are content for your parents to choose for you? You wish to have no say in the matter?”

“I have not given it much thought. My mother”—she broke off, momentarily choked with rage at the lie she must tell—“my mother says that there is plenty of time and that she will not hurry me.”

Her mother had indeed said that . . . once. She would never, never forgive her.

Thomas was not done with the subject yet. How she wished he would let her go to bed.

“You are fourteen, I think you said.”

“Yes, Master Thomas. I will be fifteen in two months.”

“And you would like to have children of your own?”

“I think so, in good time. Do not all women wish it when they are married?”

“If they are worthy daughters of the Book they do. Not all women are so.”

She wondered if he was talking of his own wife. There was no sign of children in the house. Abruptly changing the subject he said, “Your Minister has a name for mildness among the Communities. They say he would rather pity sin than punish it. Is it true?”

She was startled by this. Minister Galin had always seemed to her a strict man: insistent on the rules, sparing of praise, and not much given to smiling. She would not have called him mild.

“He is . . .”

She did not know what to say. How could she talk naturally about the man from whom she had fled? She must answer Thomas’s questions, but it was like putting her finger in fire to speak of Galin. With an effort she said, “The people say he is hard but just. And with us . . . the young ones, I mean . . . he always seems to know when we have done wrong, as if he can see us even when we think we are hidden.”

As she spoke she shuddered, wondering if indeed Galin knew what she was about, and would send after her to bring her home before she could make her escape.

“You do not like him?” Thomas spoke softly.

She looked at him. Was he trying to trap her so that he could rebuke her for her lack of respect? Nervously she said, “He is my pastor. I am under his judgment. It is not for me . . .”

He laughed at this and his laugh, like his smile, was not a pleasant one.

“Well, Alis, I thank you for your company, but it grows late and you are in need of your bed, I doubt not. We will converse more on these matters, if you will do me that kindness.”

She smiled her agreement, flinching inwardly from the mockery of his tone. If she would do him that kindness! What choice did she have?

In the tiny attic chamber, Lilith was already snoring. Alis put out the candle Thomas had given her—no doubt he would be displeased if she wasted it—but sleep did not come for many hours.

T
wo Rivers was a good deal larger than Freeborne, and Alis soon found that her mother had been right about it. The Minister was a gentle old man, and his wife, Mistress Elizabeth, welcomed Alis warmly when Thomas introduced her. For the most part, however, the people seemed to have forgotten how to smile. They scurried about their business, looking anxiously over their shoulders and avoiding each other’s eyes. At every prayer meeting, some shamefaced man or woman was singled out for public rebuke and obliged to declare penitence for sins that in Freeborne would have been dealt with privately. She remembered Minister Galin saying it was no sin to laugh, but here no one seemed to laugh. Even the children were like little adults, stiff and nervous in their tidy clothes.

The household was gloomy, too. Sarah’s misery hung in the air, infecting everything. She would hardly talk to Alis, and when she did venture a remark she seemed terrified that her husband would hear her and disapprove. She had few visitors, and those who did come were quickly defeated by her unresponsiveness. She and Alis spent their time in sewing, in silent reading of the Book, and in such of the domestic work as was not done by Lilith, who rebuffed all Alis’s attempts to be friendly. She had managed to avoid offending Thomas, who made a point of talking to her, but she saw that this was intended to distress his wife and knew he was not to be trusted. Not only was it a wearisome life, but Alis could not see that she was any nearer to finding her way to the city and her brother. If anything, she was worse off. How was she to get away from Two Rivers where she had less freedom than was allowed her at home?

One morning, she had gone to the kitchen to fetch the crock of butter that Lilith had forgotten to put on the table. As she reentered the dining room, she heard Sarah say, “Please, Thomas, I beg you. Do not make me watch. I cannot bear it.”

Her voice was low and desperate. Thomas’s face was red with anger.

“You must watch. This punishment is not one man’s will; it is ordained by the whole Community in the persons of the Elders. The whole Community must bear witness.”

“But everyone else will be there. No one will miss me. They look only for you.”

“You are a fool, Sarah, or worse, a liar. You know very well that to stay away is to show dissent. I cannot have it said that my wife does not support my view, when you know with what difficulty we have established a wholesome discipline in these matters.”

The early-spring sunlight fell on Sarah’s pale features as she sat before her uneaten breakfast. Behind her, on the wall, was a piece of tapestry showing the great circle of the Maker embroidered in two intertwining threads, red and green. Within the circle were two figures, a male and a female, one in each color. A marriage gift no doubt, stitched in love and hope by Sarah’s mother or Thomas’s. It was a common practice.

In the cool early-morning light Sarah’s skin seemed transparent, the veins blue under the surface, and the bones of cheek and jaw painfully prominent. She had grown even thinner in the weeks since her return home. It was not that she did not eat—sometimes, at least—for Thomas would not stand for that. But once, passing the privy, Alis had heard her retching and coughing. Sometimes, too, there was the sour smell of vomit. This morning she had not touched her food.

“I know, Thomas, how hard you have worked and that . . . that the man Samuel deserves his punishment, but can you not say I am ill? I was not brought up to this severity as you were. I am not used to it.”

Thomas’s fingers whitened around the tankard he was holding. “And you are not likely to become used to it if I allow you to hide yourself at home, instead of making you do your duty like a good wife of the Book.”

Sarah’s eyes filled with tears. “Please, Thomas. It will be of no credit to you if I faint. Better that you should say that I am sick. Indeed, it would be no lie, for I do not feel well at all.”

Thomas’s expression grew darker still.

“Sick! People will think that you would have the man excused and left to his filthy ways. No matter that he corrupts our young and defies our discipline. They will think that you have returned from your sister’s to preach the doctrine of Master Galin and his kind.”

Alis had been sitting quietly, hoping that Thomas’s anger would not be turned on her for her presence at this disagreement. At the mention of her pastor’s name she looked up, startled. The venom in Thomas’s voice was unmistakable.

Sarah’s tears were spilling over now and Thomas looked thunderous. An idea came to Alis. “Master Thomas . . .”

The room went still. He turned to look at her and her heart beat with sudden terror. What had she done? His face was a stone mask. When he spoke, his lips scarcely moved and the low voice hissed between them. “Do you dare to interrupt? A daughter of mine would taste the whip for less.”

Sarah gasped and cried out, “Thomas, no! Have a care.”

For a long moment he held Alis in his stare. She could not wrench her gaze from his face. At last his expression changed, the familiar sneer lifting his lip.

“You need have no fear, my dear Alis. I have no authority to punish you. What was it you wished to say?”

She was trembling. “Forgive me, Master Thomas. I should not have spoken.”

“Answer my question, if you please.”

She could think of nothing to tell him but the truth, though surely it would serve only to reignite his wrath. “I . . . I wondered if . . . if I might accompany you?”

She did not dare complete what she had intended to say. What folly it seemed now. He was looking at her still, as if he knew she had not said all. When she did not continue he said, “You are offering to come with us? To support my wife in her distress at seeing a sinner punished as he deserves?”

Alis nodded, hoping he would not press her further. She had intended to offer herself in Sarah’s place. How could she have been so presumptuous?

“Or perhaps”—he spoke softly—“you were thinking of yourself as her substitute.” It was not a question. He knew.

There was a long silence. Sarah was watching her husband with a scared expression on her face. At length he said coldly his wife, “I will say that you are sick. Let them think you are with child again.”

Sarah flinched and two patches of red stood out on her pale cheeks. “Do not be so hard on me, Thomas. It is not my fault that our babes do not live. I long to be a mother. It is my dearest wish.”

He stood up suddenly, pushing back his chair so violently that it clattered to the floor.

“Not your fault?
Not your fault
? My children wither in your womb and you say that it is not your fault! What sin have you committed that the Maker punishes you thus?”

Sarah was on her feet now, crying out in a wild voice, “Why should it not be
your
sin? Why must it be mine? You are cruel, Thomas, cruel and unjust.”

At once he was standing over her, his fingers in her hair, wrenching her head back so that her eyes bulged and she choked. He was hissing again.

“My sin! Mine? The children are conceived, are they not? It is in
your
belly that they shrivel and die. And you dare to accuse
me
!”

He let her go so suddenly that she almost fell.

“Get out! Take to your bed! Be grateful that I do not insist on your presence at my side today. But know this. The time will come, and soon, when such disobedience will not be endured, when a man’s authority in his own house will be absolute, and then you will not be able to trust to such indulgence.”

Clutching at her throat, her hair coming loose from its pins, Sarah stumbled from the room.

Alis sat motionless with horror. Thomas was still standing, white-faced with fury, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. At last he seated himself again at the table and looked at her.

When he spoke, it was in a voice held steady by effort. “I must join the others. If you will accompany me, fetch your shawl.”

Submissively, for she could hardly refuse now, she said, “I will, Master Thomas.”

 

 

Clouds had already hidden the sun as they crossed the empty square to the prayer house where the Elders were to gather. The air felt cold. The wooden platform with its great post dominated the scene. Alis had no need, now, to ask what it was for. Around the sides of the square, the shuttered houses were silent. The people had been told to remain indoors until the prayer-house bell was rung, and no one, it seemed, was inclined to disobey.

Leaving Alis in the vestibule of the prayer house to wait for him, Thomas disappeared within. In ones and twos the Elders arrived. There were some women among them but not, Alis noticed, nearly as many as in her own Community. It had come as a shock to her to find that Thomas was an Elder. Surely the people here knew how he treated his wife. Sarah’s tearful disposition was no longer a mystery; Alis was afraid of him herself, especially when she thought of what he might do if he knew she planned to defy her parents and Minister to run away to the city. And yet he hated Galin. For a moment she longed to be back at home with her mother and father, before that dreadful day when her world had changed forever, before she had lost faith in her parents’ love for her. The tears rose in her eyes, but she wiped them away hurriedly. It was no good wishing for the past. She must face the future as well as she could. The world was a harder place than she had known, and she must harden herself to deal with it.