Bound (21 page)

Once in the widow’s room Alice went to the trunk and pulled out the sewing kit she’d packed in it the week before. She went to the window to capture the last of the light, pulled up the hem of her bodice, and picked it apart at the seam. She lay in the four pounds Nabby had given her, and sewed it closed. When she let the hem fall the thick seam concealed the coins well, but if she ran her hand down the cloth she could feel their shape, and that too made her feel strong. Four pounds. Her own.

A
lice woke on the morning of her second trial thinking an odd thought: how strange that a life such as hers should hold two such days in it. She tried to comfort herself with the thought of the next day, when all courts should be behind her, but as she couldn’t settle into any certainty of where that day might find her, it didn’t ease her. All the ease she could muster came from this odd, new strength in her, but in truth it ebbed and flowed as the morning crept on.

Freeman and the widow spent a good deal of that time in muted discussion behind Freeman’s closed door. Alice didn’t dare venture too far into the hall, and from where she stood she heard only the occasional heated rise in tone. From the widow: “Contingency!” as if repeating Freeman’s word; from Freeman: “Practical—” and from the widow again: “Practical! Hah!” but then a falling-off. Alice gave it up and went back to her room.

When the door finally opened, Freeman went directly to the stairs, the widow to her room. She looked Alice over, brushed down the back of Alice’s skirt, retied the ribbon that held her hair. She said, “Come,” and herded Alice ahead of her down the stairs. Freeman stood outside the door, beside the carriage. He handed Alice in, squeezing her hand before releasing it. Alice took the squeeze as the same kind of sign the old look of gentleness had been. The widow climbed in beside Alice. The carriage had so short a trip to take that Alice held out little hope of any kind of disruption to the journey, and indeed, they arrived at the courthouse with such great speed that Freeman hadn’t managed to complete his sentence to the widow about their plans to sail for Satucket on the morrow, assuming completion of his business.

His business: Alice.

They pulled up in front of the courthouse. Freeman helped Alice out and kept his hand on her elbow as he steered her through a high, wide door into a room that she didn’t see, because Verley stood inside it. Alice had fixed it in her mind that she wouldn’t look at Verley, and in that way she might pretend that he wasn’t within reach of her, but in fact she did look, and what she saw amazed her: this man who had loomed as high and wide as a barn in her dreams didn’t come up past Freeman’s shoulder. Verley saw Alice and began the old smile, but before it had reached its limits it faltered.
She
made it falter. She, Alice, who hadn’t been able to meet Verley’s eye since their initial encounter at Medfield. And how could she not stare? So small he seemed! So coreless! And how could he not seem so, next to Freeman?

Soon enough Verley got his smile back, his brash eye back, his pushed-out chin back, but none of it worked the same on Alice, now that she had seen underneath; she could look at Verley now and see nothing but painted surface. So dazzling was this new idea for Alice that she could take in only the general shapes and colors of that second courtroom, making note of its differences—no jury, no crowd of spectators—sure proof of how dull the crime of running away must stand next to the crime of murder.

The charge was read, and Alice could not refute it: she had, indeed, run off from her lawful master, Emery Verley, with three years’ time remaining on her contract. When the judge asked for Alice’s plea Freeman could only answer, “Guilty, but with cause.”

So Alice’s second trial began. Verley’s attorney stepped forth, a man as different from the Barnstable king’s attorney as Verley was from Freeman, or so it seemed to Alice. The first part of his speech, describing Alice’s crime of running away while under debt to a master who had “lawfully fed and clothed her and attended to her health in the most conscientious manner,” could not have moved the justices greatly, but from there he grew warmer.

“I must now give you some idea of the character of this man, this Emery Verley, Your Honors; I must explain to you that he only took on this girl’s indenture as an act of the purest love and kindness. The girl had reached an age—indeed, her old master, Mr. Verley’s father-in-law, had reached an age—where the girl had proved too difficult for him to handle. And as Mr. Verley’s wife still held an unreasonable attachment to the girl, fostered during her motherless childhood, Mr. Verley succumbed to her wishes and took over the girl’s indenture. Her former unruliness was soon brought under control with the kind of firm and consistent treatment that had been missing at her previous master’s, or so Mr. Verley was led to believe by what now appears to have been a most devious, deceitful plan to lull him to sleep in order to effect her escape at the first opportunity. Mr. Verley now asks only what the law allows him in such circumstance, and this is the return of the girl, with the addition of seven days for each day absent appended to her contract.”

No witnesses were called. Verley’s attorney rested there, as if in wait for the simple matter of the justices working the arithmetic. Alice hadn’t been taught in the subject of mathematics, but she knew how to multiply one year absent into seven additional years on her contract. She knew the eternity of another kind of hell when she saw it.

Freeman stood up and addressed the justices, but in a different voice than he had used before the jury at Barnstable. He spoke quietly. Sadly. “Your Honors, we do not argue the fact before the court that Alice Cole unlawfully left her master. We argue that she left out of the greatest necessity, that necessity being the securing of her safety, and that only a fifteen-year-old girl’s natural ignorance of the law sent her outside the purview of the legal process.” There he began, again, to outline the abuses Alice had suffered at the hands of the Verleys. Freeman included in it the birth and death of Alice’s infant, and at first this shocked Alice, that he would expose her to a second judgment on that count, but after a time she reconsidered. Surely the news of the trial at Barnstable would have traveled with her to Suffolk, and any omission now might appear an attempt at concealment. Indeed, Alice looked at Verley and saw no surprise in him at the news that a child of his had been born and died in the year since he’d last seen her.

Freeman called but one witness, the widow, who testified that she had employed Alice Cole on her immediate arrival in Satucket and witnessed bruises about the neck, a burned hand, a cut cheek, a torn shoulder. Verley’s attorney asked, as the king’s attorney had asked, if she had witnessed Alice receiving such injuries and could attest to the fact that they indeed came from Emery Verley. The widow answered only
no,
a lesson she’d perhaps learned from Shipmaster Hopkins. Freeman had perhaps learned a lesson too: he’d not brought the shipmaster with him.

When Freeman had finished, the chief justice took up and examined several papers that lay before him. He addressed Freeman. “You have no witnesses to this abuse at the hand of Mr. Verley?”

“Mrs. Verley was witness, Your Honor, although she declines to admit it. But although the law does not allow Alice Cole to speak in her own defense, you might consider allowing a brief examination of her person. It bears its own evidence.”

The chief justice nodded. The sheriff drew open the gate on Alice’s box and led her to the bench. Freeman picked up Alice’s hand and first flexed then extended it, comparing it to the other, as Otis had done; he took her by the chin and turned her cheek for better viewing of the now-pale crescent. But as Freeman turned Alice’s face his eye met hers, and it seemed to her that something changed in him. Or was she looking only at her own changed reflection?

Freeman dropped his hand from her chin. He said, “If I may quote to you from our colony’s Body of Liberties, Your Honors: ‘If a man smite out the eye or tooth of his manservant, or maid servants, or otherwise maim or disfigure him, unless it be by mere casualty, he shall let them go free from his service.’ I respectfully request that the court consider the physical evidence before you, making note of the disfigurement as well as the reduced function, and declare Alice Cole a free person.”

Alice stared at Freeman. He would free her! He would try this! She stood fixed in her spot as he continued to speak his piece, much like the one he gave at Barnstable in its content, but spoken in such quiet conviction it allowed no doubt of it. Oh, how could her trust in him have faltered? He would free her from Verley! He would free her altogether!
The widow and I will take you home.

Alice was sent back to her box. The chief justice called on Verley’s lawyer to rise. “What have you to say in answer to this countercharge, sir?”

“I say, Your Honor, that from the first word my colleague has spoken to his last, it is a fiction of the highest caliber. I must salute him. Why, I might even believe him! But my client of course refutes every claim. You have before you a deposition from Andrew Sherbourne, the Medfield smith’s apprentice, although he was not at such leisure to travel as some others here, but you may read there that he lay with Alice Cole from soon after the time that she arrived at Medfield until the very night she convinced him to run off with her. He saw the error of his ways and returned at the first opportunity, but the girl wouldn’t be persuaded. In fact, she attacked him so violently he was forced to cause some slight injury to her person to get free of her. ’Tis all in the paper, Your Honor.”

And so the smith’s apprentice was brought back to life. Another circle closed, like a shackle. Alice didn’t know the smith’s apprentice, but she couldn’t imagine him possessing any interest in returning her to Verley; she could, however, imagine what threat might have been brought against him to coerce such a statement. Alice stared at Verley’s lawyer as he lied in all his calmness, then looked up at the justices to see by their faces what they might make of it; she was surprised to discover that even as Verley’s lawyer talked, the five pairs of eyes were fixed, not on Verley’s lawyer, but on
her
, as if they would see what
she
made of it.

Alice must have lost track of some minutes, for the next thing she took in was the fact that Verley’s lawyer had returned to his seat, and that the justices were filing out of the courtroom to a small chamber adjoining. In their absence no one spoke. If anyone looked at Alice she didn’t know it, because she had fixed her eye on the homespun cloth that covered her legs. Her armor.

The justices didn’t stay out long. When they had regained their seats the chief justice said, “Lydia Berry, will you approach the bar?”

The widow stood up and stepped forward.

The chief justice said, “You took this girl, Alice Cole, in your employ, once she’d run off from her master?”

“I didn’t know her to be run off. I thought her time served. In truth, there was some trouble about a reference—”

“The court has not called you to the bar to account for your harboring of a fugitive. The court has called you to give testimony to the fact that she came to you direct from her previous employment.”

“She did, Your Honor.”

“And what account do you give of the girl since she came into your employ?”

“Why, she’s worked for me at spinning and some weaving, doing various other domestic chores as I’ve needed them, all with industry and without complaint; I may say without reservation I’d not find a better girl if I looked over the continent.”

“You paid her for this work?”

“Her keep and care and sixpence a day.”

“For what period of time?”

“Just over a year.”

The chief justice turned to Alice. “Has any harm been done to your person while under this woman’s roof?”

“None, sir.”

The chief justice said, “It is the judgment of the court that the defendant’s plea of maiming and disfigurement is insufficient. Freedom is denied.”

Freeman leaped up. “If you please, Your Honor—”

“Desist, sir. You do not prove your case. The girl shall serve out her remaining time. The court does not, however, grant Mr. Verley’s claim that the act of running away extends her time to the additional seven years. She will serve the remaining three years on her contract and no longer.”

Alice looked at the chief justice. A strange thing seemed to have happened: he had turned to Verley sitting there. Like Verley, he could do as he liked with her. Alice felt a hard, bitter anger sweep through her, that for a minute she could have put her faith in such a man, but with the anger came another thing, sprung from the wild courage she’d uncovered in herself the day before: the certainty that no matter what the court ordered she would not go back to Verley. She’d run away before and she would do so again. She’d find Nate and go with him to Pownalborough; she’d find another ship to New York and go to Mrs. Story; she’d set off on a new, strange road if she had to. And this time she had four pounds in the hem of her bodice to aid her.

But the chief justice had continued to speak. “Although the court does not find Alice Cole maimed or disfigured to the degree the law requires to award her her freedom, it does give considerable weight to the testimony presented here and the physical evidence of her person. If her present employer, Lydia Berry, wishes to pay Mr. Verley a sum of eight pounds against future time lost on his contract, the court will award her the remaining three years of Alice Cole’s indenture.”

“Eight pounds!” the widow cried.

The chief justice’s head came up in surprise. “You will confine your remarks to a negative or affirmative, madam.”

“You would give that man eight pounds for what he’s done to her?”

“Madam, I issue you one more warning only. You will answer the court as you are directed, or you will be brought before it on your own charge.”

Freeman said, “Your Honor, if I may speak with the witness.”

The chief justice nodded. Freeman joined the widow at the bar and began to whisper. The widow whispered back, or attempted to whisper, but Alice could hear her plainly.
Not a bent pin.
Freeman whispered again, something louder, with a hint of impatience in it, out of which Alice could pick out her name, the word
value
, the word
save
, and near the end, the word
loan.
Out of the widow’s answering whisper Alice heard only the word
crime.