Bound (3 page)

V
erley returned from wherever he’d gone and came into Alice’s room, reeking of spirit, as drunk as she’d seen him. He dropped on top of her but seemed to have some trouble bringing his part to attention. He closed his hands around her throat until she thrashed wildly under him, near to passing out, but it didn’t aid him; he flung her onto her stomach and there managed to enter—a new place, a new pain, a new kind of shout from him.
He likes to puncture you in odd places.
He pulled himself off her, stood up, and picked up the candle, but he didn’t hold it over her. He stumbled out.

Alice lay breathing in and out, pressing her hand against her chest to try to push her heart back into calmness. After a time it quieted enough so that she could hear Verley’s progress through the house: a chair knocking against the wall, the outer door banging open, piss hitting stone, the outer door banging shut, and finally, the door to his bedroom. Nabby’s blow had reopened the old cut in Alice’s cheek; she could feel the sting of it along with the throb in her shoulder where the poker had struck as well as the burn of the torn flesh between her buttocks, but she didn’t know who had frightened her more, Verley or Nabby.

Get away from me! Be gone!
With those words Nabby had settled it once and for all—she wouldn’t help Alice—and yet those words
had
helped Alice. She knew what to do now. She must be gone from there, alone. Now.

Alice waited a time longer, but no one stirred. She slid her feet to the floor, crept to the pegs, put on her workday skirt and bodice, took down her winter petticoat, her shawl, her one spare shift and skirt, her extra stockings. She emptied her workbasket of Nabby’s mending and stuffed her clothes in, then reached under the bed tick where she’d tucked her father’s old money pouch that again held her indenture paper, as well as most of the birthday coins Mr. Morton had given her. She lifted the tick and thrust her hand deeper; she could feel nothing but the straw pad and the rope web it lay upon. She pulled the tick right off the bed frame and onto the floor; she ran her hands over every square of rope and over the floor beneath; the pouch wasn’t there.

Only when Mr. Morton had made out the new indenture that bound Alice to his daughter had Alice understood the exact meaning of the paper she’d carried around her neck for so long: two copies written out, one set atop the other, the edges of the papers cut into a matching set of indentations. Alice’s father had told her to keep hold of her paper because as long as she kept it she held proof against any change made in the copy held by the owner. Now Verley had both copies and could make any new kind of paper he liked; he could write Alice as bound for five years, or eight, or ten or twelve, instead of the three years that lawfully remained on her contract. Yes, Verley could do as he wished with the paper, but what did it matter if he didn’t have Alice?

Alice left her room for the keeping room and stood still, listening again. Still quiet. She opened the back door, eased into the half moonlight, stepped around the wet stones in the dooryard, and into the Dedham road.

THE TEN MILES
to Dedham took Alice near dawn but not into it, which left her with a problem. If she walked across the Morton’s dooryard the geese would start awake, raising the household, and Alice didn’t want to speak with Mr. Morton on the heels of so rude an entrance. She found a damp patch of soft June grass by the woodpile, shielded from both house and road, and dropped down onto it. She had an idea that she might sleep until Jerubah came out to empty her night jar, waking the geese herself, which would in turn wake Alice, but her hand and cheek and shoulder pulsed too much for sleeping. She lay in the grass until she heard the geese, lay some more until the sun streaked the woodpile, then stood up, shook off her skirt, and crossed into the dooryard.

Jerubah had left the door open to the June air and Alice stepped through it. Jerubah lifted her head from the eggs she was beating and stared at Alice; her eyes could go either soft or hard at will, but she seemed unable to decide how to fix them until she fixed them on Alice’s neck, no doubt speckled by now with the plum-colored marks of Verley’s fingers.

“I’ve come to speak to Mr. Morton,” Alice said.

Jerubah’s eye slid from Alice’s neck up to her cheek, and down again to the hand, which had closed on itself in an awkward claw. She raised a finger and pointed to Mr. Morton’s study.

Alice walked up to Mr. Morton’s door, attempting to lift her good hand to knock, but discovered that the injured shoulder was less agreeable to movement than the burned hand. She switched sides, and tapped the wood with her knuckles. Mr. Morton called out, “Come along, come along!” with an impatience Alice hadn’t remembered in him.

Alice opened the door and stepped in. Mr. Morton lifted his head from his papers and pushed his chair back. “Alice!” he cried. “Alice, my pretty girl! My sweet, good girl! Come here, child, and let me feast my eyes on you!”

Alice drew closer to Mr. Morton’s chair. The low morning sun cut across her, causing odd patterns and shadows; Mr. Morton peered at Alice until he’d sorted shadow from skin, skin from bruise, bruise from blood, and with his daughter’s eyes, looked away from her. After a time he returned his eye to a spot just beyond her and asked, “Are you visiting with my daughter?”

“No, sir.”

“She sends you to do her errands? Some business here in Dedham?”

“I’ve come to speak with you, sir. To ask if you would take me back from the Verleys. I’ve not been treated well there.”

“Not been treated well! If you mean they don’t spoil you as I used to do—”

“They’ve hurt me, sir. First him and then her. The both together.”

“Now, Alice, you don’t expect me to believe such a fib as that about my daughter. Not unless you’ve grown rude and lazy since you went there.”

“I’ve grown nothing like it, sir. I only wish to come back here and go on as we did before.”

“Now you know we can’t do that. You know that Mr. Verley owns your time now,” and there he jerked around in his chair to peer out the window. “What’s that noise? Is it the fox again? Pray tell Jerubah to come in here.”

Alice had held it in her mind all the way from Medfield that when Mr. Morton saw what had been done to her he would take her back and keep her safe, as he would have kept his own daughter safe, but now she wondered what had dulled her brain so. She wasn’t his daughter. She wasn’t even his servant anymore. She turned away and walked to the door, but there she looked back. Mr. Morton seemed happy enough to look at her more directly from afar, but even so, he began to blink as he looked. Alice might have pretended he blinked out a tear, but in the slashing light the only thing she felt sure of was the look of fixedness that grew on him the longer she stood there. Why should he disrupt his family’s life over a servant he had liked to call his “sweet, good girl,” but who wasn’t so sweet and good anymore?

Alice returned to the keeping room and let Jerubah stare at her again, longer this time, as if reading the wounds on Alice’s skin the way someone not a slave might read words on a paper. Alice said good-bye to her without passing on any order from Mr. Morton; she wasn’t his servant anymore. She stepped out into the yard and looked first left, then right. The road ahead of her had long been called two different things, depending which way one turned into it—the Medfield road if one headed for Medfield, the Boston road if one headed for Boston. Alice knew well enough what lay in one direction and little enough what lay in the other, but the one was enough for her to make her choice. She stepped into the Boston road.

A
lice clutched her basket in the fingertips of her burned hand and pulled down a few wisps of hair to attempt to conceal her cheek and neck; she didn’t want to attract any kind of attention whatever. She walked at the steady pace of a servant on an errand, crossing the road as if to enter one of the shops if someone appeared ahead, and as she walked she counted off each familiar establishment as she passed: Courtenay the smith, Hatch the cobbler, Shaw the weaver. As she left the village cluster she counted off the familiar farms as she’d counted the shops in town: Houghton, Young, Wood, Walker, Sexton, until the road stretched empty on either side and she had nothing to count but the crows, or the clouds, or her own footsteps. She began to feel more and more like a drifting ship with each place she left behind. She couldn’t imagine herself in front of any of these places again, but neither could she imagine herself against any other horizon. At times Alice slowed to ease the discomfort in her shoulder and hand, both of which pulsed whenever her heel hit the ground, but in the main she kept to a steady pace, feeling Verley behind her like a great tidal wave, ready to roll over her and suck her back to Medfield.

After Alice had walked a fair way she stopped alongside a horse trough to plunge her hand into the coolness—a rust-red star now flamed out around the central wound—and the cold felt so good she dipped her face as well, the black bottom of the trough reminding her of the water on the ship, but as she’d drunk that and survived she decided to drink again there. She wiped her face on her skirt and noted the pink stain left behind on the cloth; she attempted to scrub it out against the trough, and when she finished she was wet in more places than she was dry, but she didn’t let it trouble her. The day was as fine as any she could have wished, the sun just hot enough to dry her clothes but not hot enough to overheat her, the road smooth and hard, as it wouldn’t have been in the rainy months before. As Alice moved into her stride again she thought of the day, the road, that portion of luck that had set her loose in such a season instead of another, and wondered if she should take it as a sign. Alice trusted in God, but she also trusted in signs; in truth, she’d never got quite clear in her head where one took up from the other. She’d walked the Dedham road toward Mr. Morton as she might have walked any road that contained no turning, that route being the only one she knew, and so, in a way, had it been with the Boston road, but from now on all would be different. Alice had formed no great plan for when she arrived in town beyond hoping to hide in its crowds; once she got there she would need some sort of sign to guide her future turnings.

Alice calculated by the sun that she’d walked nearly three hours when the traffic began to thicken. Farmers drove pigs and sheep and cows ahead of them along the road; carts rolled by loaded with poultry crates, barrel staves, and shingles; women shouldered past carrying baskets of new greens, dried herbs, and great, round cheeses. Alice stooped to fuss with her shoe every time another walker drew too close, afraid the next pair of eyes to fix on her would belong to a Medfield neighbor who would report to the Verleys the minute he got home—
saw your girl on the Boston road
—but no one appeared to take any great notice of her.

At length Alice came to a narrow, marshy spit that she remembered from her childhood trip out of the town, the gallows marking the entry gates hanging empty but still full of warning. Alice passed through the gates, following the market crowd. The way grew more congested, the houses tall and close, the crossroads more frequent; a gentleman on a fine horse wearing a fine coat swerved in front of Alice, and she caught her breath, thinking it was Verley; she decided the gentleman was a sign that she should leave the main road for a side one. She glanced down each narrow lane as she passed, not knowing what she looked for, until she caught a flash of gold light gleaming on purple water like the jewels on a king’s robe.

Over the years Alice had held varying ideas about the water. She remembered her mother’s early fears, but she also remembered her own excitement at the sight of it; she remembered the terrible knocking of the ship, but she also remembered the beautiful towering mountains of spray crashing on deck; she remembered the boy being swept overboard, but she also remembered her mother calling him a lucky boy. On a particularly black day during Alice’s first year at Mr. Morton’s she had thought she might better understand what her mother had meant by that remark—that her mother had wanted to be done with the ship, that she had wanted to go in the water—and as Alice thought about her mother afterward she took some comfort in the fact that she
had
gone into the water. Perhaps that was why her daydream of the ship had come to her, and the vague, green, syrupy place where her mother flew about like a finned bird, safe and happy with her brothers. Of course, Alice understood better now what the water was and wasn’t, and where her mother was and wasn’t, but understanding was one thing, and believing was another.

Alice walked toward the water.

THE WATERFRONT SEEMED
different from what Alice remembered, the sheer mass of sights and sounds and smells battering her senses. A row of small wharves stretched left and right, nothing like the great long wharf she remembered from her first landing, but behind her rose a familiar handful of steeples, similar shops and stalls. The air smelled of bread baking, fish drying, tar, sewage, seaweed, and spices; bells rang, dogs barked, hawkers cried out over their fresh fish and oysters, men stood everywhere in twos and threes or more, sometimes talking and sometimes arguing, the same odd words flicking through all the conversations like a flame: sugar, taxes, and an expression Alice had never heard before: non-importation. She also heard much mention of a man named Otis. She found herself standing and turning in a dizzying circle, following a voice from one crowd as it got picked up in answer from another:
Otis says Parliament can’t tax us without our being represented in that body…Parliament can do as they bloody well please…Otis calls it tyranny…I call it treason and so will the king when he hangs him!

Alice stood looking and listening, too struck by the greater scene around her to notice the nearer, until a cart swung too wide around the turn and knocked her to her knees, dislodging her basket. A man and woman who had been walking arm in arm across the road were forced to jump back as well, but once the cart had gone they hurried to Alice, the gentleman helping her to her feet.

“Are you all right, miss?”

“Yes,” Alice said, before she had any idea if she was or she wasn’t.

The man took out a handkerchief and handed it to Alice, for what purpose she wasn’t sure, until he pointed at her cheek. Alice pressed it to her skin and it came away red; she handed it back with great embarrassment, but he took it with little fuss and tucked it back in his pocket.

In the meantime the woman had retrieved Alice’s basket and rejoined them at the side of the road. She held out the basket, and as Alice reached for it she stopped and stared; the woman’s hand was burn-scarred. Alice lifted her eyes and found the woman’s eyes fixed on Alice’s hand in like manner; the eyes lifted from hand to neck, from neck to cheek, and there Alice looked away from her.

“Are you quite sure you’re all right?” the man asked again.

“Indeed, sir. Thank you.”

“We’ve a friend at no great distance who would be quite delighted to offer you a cup while you recover.”

“I’m quite fine, sir, thank you.”

“Very well.” The man turned to the woman, who had continued to study Alice. “We’d best get along or they’ll sail without us.” He offered the woman his arm, and they continued across the street. What else could a matching pair of burned hands be but a sign? Alice followed them. The couple wasn’t young, past forty by the look of them, but the man was greatly tall with loose-hinged limbs, the woman of good height herself and possessed of her own healthy gait; Alice had to skip to keep up with them. And keeping up with them became of greater interest to Alice once she caught the woman’s first sentence.

“Did you see the girl’s hand?”

The man’s answer was lost in the noise of the street, beyond a head shake in the negative. The woman pointed to her own body to demonstrate the rest of her observations. Neck. Cheek. Shoulder. She’d missed none of it. At the conjunction with a busy wharf the couple paused and Alice picked up the talk again.

“A worse fall than it looked.”

“Are you blind? She didn’t get those wounds from that fall.”

The man looked at the woman. “And such a lovely thing.”

“Well, I’m glad to see you noticed something.”

They exchanged a look between them, and Alice caught a better view of their faces, the man’s well creased but with the kind of creases that came from smiling as well as frowning, the woman’s softened some with age, but not enough to hide the clear line of a jaw clamped tight in agitation. Alice looked again at the woman’s hands and saw that both were burned, back as well as the front, the scars old and white and thickly ridged, perhaps to the point of being crippling. Perhaps to the point of requiring a girl’s help in managing her household.

The couple resumed walking and turned onto the wharf, Alice making the turn with them. A full breeze off the water lifted her hair, reminding her of the joy of her first visit to the ship’s deck after the sick days below, and she filled her lungs with it. The couple moved toward a pretty little ship tied at the end of the wharf, not half the size of the one that had brought Alice across the ocean but with the trim freshly painted, the deck better ordered.

“What say you of this wind?” the woman asked.

“I say we should have a fast run,” the man answered. “Perhaps land tomorrow evening.”

No long trip, then.

A half-dozen carts pulled onto the wharf and up to the ship. A stringy crew of different shapes and ages dropped off the deck and began to pile crates and barrels in a great heap near the forward hatchway. A square-built man with white hair came down the gangway and walked up to the man from the street; the two began to pore over some kind of ledger together. The woman moved off toward a vendor cart bursting with oranges, raisins, and lemons, and began to pick through them. Alice moved closer to the ship to read its name: the
Betsey.
Alice’s middle name was Elizabeth. So many signs! The name. The burned hands. The short voyage. The empty, unwatched gangway. What more could she wish for? Her mother’s voice, calling to her from the water? Verley’s voice, shouting from behind her?

The thought of Verley set Alice’s feet in the direction of the gangway. She looked at the distracted crew again, the two men bent over the ledger, the woman fumbling among the fruit; still not a single eye following. She could go back unseen as well as forward unseen, of course, but how much easier to go forward, up the gangway, across the deck…

Alice wouldn’t have said she had indeed decided to do it, and yet the next thing she knew, there she stood, at the top of the companionway. She pulled her skirt tight, hooked her basket in her elbow, and gripped the ropes on either side, the hemp stinging her burned palm like nettles, but as her palm had hurt before, she didn’t count it as a sign against her. She dropped one foot to the lower rung and eased the other after. She took another step, and another, listening for sounds from above and hearing nothing. At the bottom of the companionway Alice found lockers, bunks, benches, and beyond, another locker. She moved forward again, pulled open the door to the forward locker, and found herself in a kind of storage space crammed with boxes, rope, sails. How simple it was to shift a few boxes until she’d formed a small space, how effortless to curl up in her new nest, how easy to reach out and pull a piece of sail over her! And oh, how safe she felt, for the first time since she’d climbed into the cart that had carried her to Medfield!

ALICE COULD MAKE
no calculation of how long she lay among the smells of pitch, hemp, salt, fish, and mold before the feet began to pound overhead and the deck began to rise and fall beneath her. After a time her stomach griped, her flesh dampened, and she vomited into the sail. The rise and fall grew rougher, as if the deck beneath her had been picked up and slammed down from a great height; she collected new bruises on hips, knees, and elbows. There came a time when she was forced to pull up her skirt and empty her aching bladder where she lay; she grew so hungry she swallowed air, so thirsty she sucked the sweat from her fingers, so tired her eyes burned even against the dark.

After a time the pounding beneath Alice fell off, the bootheels and voices above quickened, and the only motion became a gentle rolling side to side, but that gentle rolling proved harder on her stomach. She vomited the last of her bile and lay waiting for the voices and bootheels to stop, for the ship to empty so she could sneak off as she’d snuck on, but instead of the noises growing quieter one pair of bootheels grew louder. Closer. The hatch to her hiding place blasted open.

“Ho! What the devil! Look-y here, will you?”

Alice blinked against the dim cabin light and made out a sun-browned face, then another similar, and another; at length a paler face appeared, more familiar, but she couldn’t think why it should be so familiar to her. He peered at her in the same kind of shock as the others until the shock melted into recognition, a recognition so complete that in her confused state Alice thought for a minute that perhaps it was her father come to get her, until she recognized the man from the street in Boston. First he pushed aside the other men, and then the boxes and sails; he took careful grip of her arms, eased her out of her nest and back through the vessel to the table and benches. He set her down on the bench. He peered at her, not smiling, but neither would she have said he frowned.

She said, “Will you tell me where we are, sir?”