Love's Pursuit (15 page)

21

THE NEXT MORNING I woke in expectation of some good thing. It took only the briefest moment before I realized what that good thing was. I was to be betrothed. Was as good as betrothed!

I pondered all during breakfast and later, during the morning’s work, on how I might slip away for just a moment to see John.

“I have a . . . could I . . . ?”

Mother turned from her chores with a frown. “What is it you’re saying?”

“I . . .” What was it I had been saying? I knew the end of it, but I could no longer remember the beginning.

She relented. Smiled. “Go, daughter.”

I adjusted my coif and placed my hat atop it with care. Slipping into the parlor to look into the glass, I saw only relief at work in my eyes.

John was pulling turnips from his father’s field and so he did not see me coming.

“John.”

He lifted his head. Smiled as he saw me. “Susannah.” He straightened.

“I did not mean to . . . I mean.”

His brows drew together.

“I had been asked . . . I did not want to make you . . .”

“You made me do nothing. I had always intended to ask your father for your hand. Only . . . your father can be so . . . imposing . . . I was not certain . . .”

I smiled.

He smiled back.

“Surely I am blessed, Susannah.”

I felt my cheeks color and suddenly, I did not want to look at him at all.

“I will start on our house as soon as I am able. I’ll speak to Simeon Wright this week about the lumber for it. By winter, God willing, we will be wed.”

I began calculating that day what I had laid aside for my hopes. And Mother with me.

“You must have bedding.”

“I have it.”

“And linens for your board.”

“I have one.”

“You must begin, then, on another. You have a cushion for pins? And a thimble?”

“Aye.”

“And I will give you a paper of pins and a needle. Your Father will make you a great chest as a present, and we shall ask him to get you some stitching and sewing silk when he next goes to market.”

I began to work on a shirt cut from linen for John. It pleased me to assemble the pieces, to stitch it together and know that it would clothe him. That it would be to him a symbol of my esteem. And it would make it plain to everyone what a good wife I was.

That Sabbath John walked into the meetinghouse with me. Though we sat on separate sides of the building, his glance warmed me as surely as he had been sitting beside me.

My hands were folded on my lap and my eyes properly downcast when the minister stood. “I announce the banns today of Simeon Robert Wright . . .”

Simeon Wright was getting married? Relief flooded my heart.But it was followed by curiosity. To whom? Surely not to Mary, so to whom, then . . . ? I raised my eyes and looked as far as I could without turning my head, to see if I could guess.

Beside me, Mary grunted.

“ . . . son of Robert Wright and Arabella Howard Wright . . .”Arabella? Arabella was his mother’s name? It was lovely. Fanciful.And completely at odds with the shell of a woman that sat among us.

“ . . . to Susannah Elizabeth Phillips, daughter of John Phillips and Susannah Phillips, residing in Stoneybrooke Towne, Somershire County, Massachusetts Bay Colony, aged twenty years, single.”

To me?

But—but—John! I half rose before I remembered where I was.

I leaned forward to see if I could spy Father in his pew on the other side of the aisle. He was blinking rapidly, as if he did not understand what he had just heard.

I glanced wildly about the room, looking for someone, some person, to tell the minister that he was mistaken. To tell him the truth.

But no one did.

Of all the pairs of eyes that were fixed upon me, only one set mattered. John’s. And he looked at me with outrage, anger, and disbelief.

What had happened?

My heart beat heavy within me.

Susannah Phillips was to be wed to Simeon Wright.

Everything that was decent and kind in this town married to everything that was dark and evil. I wanted to weep from the knowledge of what must come. I knew what would happen. I understood how it would start. Only one such as I could comprehend how a woman could be turned into a shadow, how she could be tied so tightly, so vastly overshadowed by a man that the only sign of her presence was a dull, flitting spot of shade upon the ground.

I lifted my head so I could see her.

Her hands were clasped in her lap. She sat straight, staring out past the minister into the misery she must see beyond. I knew how she felt, a creature entrapped. And there would be no release. No escape without much pain.

The minister spoke for two hours, but I did not hear a word he said. Father had not accepted Simeon’s proposal. How could he have when he had just reached an agreement with the Prescottes? Clearly Simeon Wright had misunderstood. Clearly he had mistaken Father’s words for agreement.

And just as clearly, he must be made to understand.

As the minister brought his sermon to a close and we broke for dinner, I pushed through clustering women, intent upon reaching Father.

But John reached me first. “I thought we had an understanding! I thought we had reached an agreement!”

“We do. We had—”

“I was to start building a house, Susannah.
Our
house.”

“It was a mistake.”

“A mistake! No one announces banns mistakenly.”

“I never told him—I never made him believe—”

“You? What have you to do with it? With anything?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but then shut it up tightly. What
did
I have to do with anything? Father could well have made an agreement with Simeon Wright. On his own. Without my knowledge.

But I could not believe it.

“You must trust me, John. This is not as it seems. It has always been my wish to marry you.”

“How can I know what to believe? And how can you give your hand in marriage to two men? At the same time?”

As John turned and stalked away, Mother stepped close and put her arm around my shoulders. I wanted nothing more than to turn my face into her broad chest and weep from frustration. But I was no longer a girl.

“Your father will make all right.”

But how had matters gone so wrong?

I looked around for someone to speak to of the injustice, but those who approached me only wished to congratulate me.

“Felicitations, Susannah Phillips. He is a fine man.”

“A godly man.”

“If my own girl were just a few years older . . .”

“A fine house you’ll be going to.”

“ . . . strong sons, by the look of him . . .”

“Could there be any finer match?”

Aye! My own to John Prescotte!

I passed around my thanks for their good wishes and then broke from that circle of women to find my own friends. Mary was part of that circle, but she left as soon as she saw me coming.

“Good day, Susannah Phillips.” The greeting of Mary’s friend Hannah was polite, if cool. “I suppose you wish to hear our felicitations.”

Another of Mary’s friends spoke. “I, for one, cannot profess to what I do not feel. You have taken Stoneybrooke’s finest bachelor.Did you not hear all the times I spoke to you of my own interest in him?”

“I do not want him!”

She shook her head. “False modesty is no virtue.”

“You have your sweet temperament and your fair looks—could you not save something for the rest of us?” Hannah asked.

Sweet temperament? Fair looks? If I knew any oaths, I would have shouted them. If I had a pair of scissors and thought that it might save me, I would have shorn my head myself. But still their angry stares made me feel so guilty that I turned on my heel and left. Surely there was no dearth of women wanting to marry Simeon Wright. Why could he not have chosen one of them?

I found Mother and Nathaniel and prepared to return to the house for dinner. Father left us in our going and went to speak to the Prescottes. He returned shortly after we began to eat.

Mother glanced up, her face lit with expectation. “Has all been righted, then?”

He sat down hard upon the bench. “They will not listen to reason. They choose not to understand.”

“But what is there to be understood? ’Twas a mistake.”

“They do not understand how Susannah’s hand could be pledged to two persons at the same time, and I must confess that . . . neither do I.” He looked at my mother, bewildered. “I did not agree to the man’s proposal.”

“Nay. You did not.”

“But the Prescottes will not hear me speak.”

“What do you mean they will not hear you?”

“They go on and on about not aligning themselves with persons of wavering minds. Of not being dealt with honorably or being able to trust in one who breaks his promise. But it was not I that broke it. I did nothing. ’Twas all Simeon Wright.”

I could not refrain from speaking. “But what are you saying? What did they say?”

“They say John will not have you.”

“But then—”

“They say the marriage is off. They retract the offer as they say I have retracted mine.”

Mother stayed his hand when he would have put drink to his lips. “Surely they do not mean it.”

Father scratched at his chin. “It seemed as if they did.”

“Then you must go to Simeon Wright and tell him to retract the banns.”

Father looked at her with haggard face. “For what reason?”

“She was promised to another.”

“Perhaps she was, but she is no longer.”

“One would almost think Simeon Wright did it on purpose!”

Mother clearly was not pleased with this turn of events.

“Nay. It was a simple misunderstanding.”

“Nothing simple about it. It leaves Susannah unattached.”

“But betrothed.”

“To the wrong man!” I could not keep myself from speaking.Why were they talking as if I must accept what had happened?

Father turned toward me. “Aye, Susannah, perhaps. But what am I to tell Simeon Wright? I am obliged to the man for my wood and if he chooses not to sell to me . . . ? I might have told him that you were already betrothed, but now I cannot. What reason would you give me now to make him wish to subject himself to ridicule?”

That there was no warmth in his eyes? That his mother was witless? That the man himself frightened me?

“He is a good man. A supporter of the church. A leader in the community. Head of the militia.”

Mother smiled at me. It reminded me of the way she used to coax me out of a bad humor when I was yet young. “He is a godly, learned man.”

Father took a drink from the cup. Wiped his mouth with his napkin once he was done. “What would you have me say to him, Susannah? Do you have any reasons to give me to stop what has been started?”

I had suspicions, fears, and vague apprehensions. But reasons?“I have none.”

22

THE FOLLOWING DAY AS I was turning a chicken upon the spit, Abigail appeared at our door, babe toddling at her side, snowflakes clinging to her cloak.

’Twas Mother that saw her first. “Abigail Clarke! And you’ve come with snow.”

“ ’Tis just an early taste of what’s to come. Surely it will melt.”

I turned from my labors to find her looking at me. Her smile warm. “Congratulations, Susannah.”

She chattered on and on about my dowry. About how many handkerchiefs I ought to bring to the marriage. And how many spoons. And then, at the last, when I was ready to weep with selfpity, she allowed that she was with child.

“And maybe, this time next year . . . God willing, Susannah . . . ?”

“Felicitations!” My mother was quicker with her congratulations than I was. But it was only because Abigail’s announcement had revealed to me the full horror of what would happen when I joined myself in marriage to Simeon Wright. Of course I knew what would happen, had to happen, but I had not dwelt upon it. Not even in my thoughts of marrying John. There were so many things to consider—my dowry, the house, the banns—that the actual union had been last in my mind.

It was soon after that Abigail left. And soon after her leaving that I stumbled outside and began to walk. I did not know at first where it was that I wandered, but my steps led me to the one person who could help me.

“John.”

He looked up from his work, but what had been an impression of quiet peace about his face vanished.

“It was a mistake.” I clasped my hands in front of me, beneath my apron, so that I would not cling to him in the way I so desperately wanted to do.

“I fail to see how banns can be published without some sort of agreement between the parties.” He turned from me toward his ox cart.

I stepped in front of it. “You have to believe me. Please, John.”

“Do not ask that of me.”

“They will marry me off to Simeon Wright.”

“Is that not what you wanted?”

“Nay! I wanted you. I always only ever wanted you.”

“ ’Tis a fine way to show it . . .” He stabbed at the ground with his spade. “To have your banns published to some other man.”

“It was not Father’s fault. Simeon asked for my hand, ’tis true. But Father did not give it. He came to you instead. He chose you.”

“And I agreed, as we had agreed, and then your banns were read . . . and . . .”

“You must help me!”

“I cannot help you, Susannah. I have no right. You are pledged to another man.” He turned from me and returned to his labors, snowflakes salting the back of his doublet.

That night, the dishes tidied from dinner, I wrapped my cape around my shoulders and stepped outside. The snow had stopped and a clear coldness had blown in to take its place. Gazing up at the sky, I wondered what it would feel like to touch a star. And if in touching one, I might be swept far away from Stoneybrooke and up into a world where there were no men. And no maids. No promises that could be broken.

“ ’Tis not often I have the pleasure of company of a night.”

I sighed as I perceived the captain, standing near the wall of the house, smoking his pipe. The wind blew past me before it went on toward him and so I had not noted his presence. The snow that sifted from the clouds earlier in the day had turned the ground into a soft downy mattress.

I took a step or two away from him. Away from the house. I might have continued on were it not for the snow. Might have ended my journey in Boston. At Grandfather’s house.

“Felicitations.”

“On what?”

“Your marriage. Or is that not what you people say? Are you not allowed to be gladdened by such things?”

I lifted a shoulder and pulled the cape tighter about me.

“ ’Twas a jest.”

“Then it should have been amusing.”

“Must you marry him?”

“There is no reason not to.”

“ ’Tis flimsy as far as reasons go.”

“Then how is this: The man I wished to marry will not have me. Not any longer.”

“Ah. The young John.”

“You speak of him as if he were still a child!”

“And when he stops acting like a child, then I will speak of him as a man. There are things worth fighting for. You are one of them.”

It was ridiculous that such foolish words would make me feel like crying.

“Your father should fight for you as well. Tell the good Mister Wright that he can stuff his underhanded proposal right down the front of his lace-collared shirt.”

I choked on laughter as I tried to imagine anyone telling Simeon Wright anything. “Here, in this land, children do as their fathers ask.”

He laid a hand on my arm. “And in England, fathers do not marry their daughters to brutes.”

“Don’t they?”

His grip tightened. “You should tell him yourself.”

“Tell him what?”

“That you will not do it.”

“For what reason?”

“For any reason at all.”

“And offend the man from whom my father buys his wood? How can I do it when our own lands are destroyed? The arrangement has been made. I cannot break it.”

“Not even if . . .” The captain’s words trailed off, but his eyes seemed to speak just the same.

Why could he not have come earlier to Stoneybrooke Towne?

Why could I not have known him sooner? But even if . . . I heard myself sigh. There was no use thinking about it. My father would never have given me over to a king’s man.

He blinked. And then he smiled, but it was halfhearted in the way of smiles and only succeeded in tipping up one side of his mouth. “Here is a thought to cheer you: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers . . .’ ”

He seemed to want me to complete the verse and so I obliged.

“ ‘For they shall be called the children of God.’ ”

“ ‘Blessed are ye that weep now . . .’ ”

“I do not know it.”

He sighed. “Do you Puritan folk know nothing? ‘Blessed are ye that weep now . . . for ye shall laugh.’ ”

“Laugh? I am to laugh? At what?”

“At this.” Staring as I was into his eyes, I barely saw his arm move.I only realized what he was doing after his snowball hit me on the throat above my cape and disintegrated as it slid beneath my shift.

I gasped.

And then I lunged toward the ground to take up snow in my bare hands and roll it into a ball. When I threw it, it struck him right between the eyes.

He gasped. And then he ran around the corner of the house and disappeared.

I considered his character for one brief moment before deciding what to do. And then I gathered a mound of snow and shoved it into a bucket. Stepping softly around the other side of the house, I lifted my skirts and climbed upon the woodpile. And then I waited.

I did not have to wait for long.

The captain came around the corner backward, searching, I suppose, for me. Looking as he was behind him, he failed to see me in front of him. I upended the snow upon his head, causing him to let out a great shout in exclamation.

At that, the door was flung open and Father appeared, his musket at his shoulder.

Nathaniel followed at his heels. His eyes widened as he saw the captain and me. And then he scooped snow into his hands and flung a snowball at the captain before taking cover behind our father, who, unfortunately, received the snowball intended for his son.

The door opened once more and Mary and Mother appeared in silhouette. They stood and watched while we exchanged snowballs until our clothes were spattered with snow and the chill had turned our laughter to wheezing. But I returned to the house thinking that marrying Simeon Wright might not be the worst thing in the world.

I had watched the snow filter down from the skies all day. It was not a snow to stay, for it was too early in the season for that. But it was a snow nonetheless. I used to hate snow. It was a harbinger of the times to come. Of days when all work would be done inside, when one would not be able to escape four walls that seemed to form a very prison. The worst things had always happened to me in winter, within the confines of my father’s house.

But not anymore.

Since coming to Stoneybrooke, my days continued untouched by weather or season. I saw no one. No one saw me. I was mistress of Thomas’s house and everything I put to my hand was, in his mind at least, my own. I rose from bed of a morning to my own work, and I went to my bed at night unmolested.

Though I went to my bed light of heart, my first thought the next morning was of Simeon Wright. And so was the next thought and the one after that. Setting my mind on God’s Holy Scriptures was no help, for I began to wonder at His ways. Placing my thoughts into prayers did no good either, for I began to put my wonderings into words. And who was I to question what must be? What my parents were willing to allow? Surely they knew better than I. Surely those things . . . those . . . those . . .
things
about Simeon Wright that gave me pause were simply a lack of knowledge. Surely once I knew him, I would see him as everyone else, as every other girl in this town did. Surely I at least might be able to see him as Mary did. Had. But still, I confess my work shoddily done that day, as it seemed so often to get in the way of my thinking.

In fact, I nearly dumped the pigs’ slops onto the captain’s shoes as I walked through the door outside and caught him coming in.

He steadied me with a hand to my arm, and then he took the bucket from me and carried it out to the creatures’ pen. “I hope your frown is not on my account.”

I tried to straighten my lips. “It is not.”

“On John Prescotte’s account?”

What I could not do, the mention of John’s name had done. My lips had grown straight as a pin.

“ . . . or perhaps on Simeon Wright’s account.”

I snatched the bucket from his hand and dumped it over the rail into the pigs’ trough.

“It must grieve God’s heart to see you so despondent.”

“Why should He care who it is that I marry?” And why should the captain? He would leave as soon as he was able. With regrets, perhaps, and with my own as well, but in the end he would leave just the same. And it made something inside of me ache to know it.

“I wager He cares about you more than you think.”

“ ’Tis vanity to think such things.”

“I would bet my life upon it.”

“You wager your life on this or that. Is it worth so very little?”

“I do not plan on keeping it forever. I might as well enjoy it while I still have it.”

“And it is for such as you that our Lord was sent to die!” I was quite certain that God had not intended His son’s death to cover over a multitude of sins such as his.

“Exactly. His son. For such as me . . . and such as you.”

“For mankind.”

“Have you such a low opinion of yourself?”

“Have you such a high one?”

He laughed. “It seems we are of differing minds about it. But I wonder . . . which of us is right?”

“I am.”

“Ah. And now who is arrogant?”

Why did the captain keep pursuing me? Why could he not just go? Far away from me? “You must be one such as our Lord spoke of in the Scriptures.”

“Aye?” He narrowed his gaze as if he suspected some trap. “I have no doubt that I am but . . . what is it that you think He said of me?”

“ ‘That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.’ ”

“You make it sound as if He did not favor me.”

I shrugged. “They are not my words. They are His. I merely repeat what you might find out for yourself, had you the ability to read them.” I ducked my head in shame ere I had finished speaking. Had I truly said those words? My soul was darker than I had known. I turned from the pigs and started back for the house, but his hand on my arm stopped me.

“Bang on a drum that is already quite slack. I can read. But it takes time. And how am I to be about it when I stand watch all day for savages?”

I hardened my heart against the pity that worked up inside me.With him it was always one thing or another. “One day you will stand naked before your creator, and what will you say to Him? What excuse will you use then?”