The Copper Sign (58 page)

“Well, as you can see, now we have twice as much work!” Rose answered. “But even with one child I still would not have let you go.”

Eve beamed. “Does Isaac know yet that there are two new youngsters in the house?”

Rose took a deep, audible breath. “He knows about it, no doubt, but I don’t think it particularly interests him. Right up until his wife died he wanted nothing more than a son. Now it will be hard for him to accept that Jean suddenly has two.”

“Well, I’ll see when I bring him his breakfast.” Eve raised her eyebrows. “Now more than ever he’ll hide in his room, but his grief will eventually fade.”

Rose wanted to nod, but suddenly she had to yawn.

“Oh, excuse me, you must be tired. I’ll let you sleep now and will come back later.”

“Thank you, Eve,” Rose said, and immediately drifted off to sleep.

Eve was right: Isaac withdrew even more after the birth of the twins. Though he used to go out and sit in the kitchen from time to time in the afternoon, now he avoided going anywhere he might bump into the children. He either went out into the woods, back to his room, or to the meadow on the hill behind the house.

One day Jean discovered little William hiding in a bush all by himself. Tears streamed down his face and over the freckles on his cheeks. “Now, now, Will! What is this? A boy doesn’t cry!” he scolded him gently, thinking for a brief moment of his own father. It was almost as if he could hear his father’s voice.

“I know, but I can’t help myself!” William answered sadly, and sniffled.

“What’s wrong?” Jean sat down alongside him and started poking around on the ground with a stick.

“It’s because of Uncle Isaac.” William’s nose was running. He sighed and then took a deep breath.

“Really?”

“I think he doesn’t like me anymore.” William looked sadly at Jean and wiped his face on his sleeve.

“But that’s nonsense, William. What makes you think that?” Jean looked at the little boy with compassion.

“Since we have been here he hasn’t kidded around with me a single time or taken me on his lap. He never talks to me anymore at all! And when I go to see him, he tells me to go away.”

Jean took the boy in his arm and tried to console him. “He doesn’t laugh anymore because he’s angry,” he explained.

“Angry?” William looked at him, wide-eyed.

Jean nodded. “Yes, Will, but he is not angry at you.”

“Who, then?”

“Maybe he’s angry at God.” Jean raised his eyebrows.

“But you mustn’t get angry at God!”

“I know, Will, and Isaac knows it, too.”

“But why is he so angry at God?”

“Because other men get sons.”

“Like you!” William smiled broadly, and Jean nodded.

“And because God took Mildred away from him, and his hand as well.”

“Did God cut it off?”

“No, William, a barber-surgeon did that.”

“But then he has to be angry at the barber-surgeon!”

Jean took a deep breath. It was harder than he had thought to explain that to a boy who was barely five years old.

“Or at your mother, because she held my arm down when the barber-surgeon started to saw,” said Isaac, who suddenly appeared out of nowhere behind them.

William looked at him, horrified. “You’re lying, she didn’t do that!” he shouted, then jumped up and ran away.

“Isaac!” Jean scolded the smith.

“What?” Isaac answered belligerently.

“Was that necessary? The child adores you and loves you!”

“And his mother was responsible for my becoming a cripple!”

“You must know she didn’t have a choice. Do you think she did it on purpose?” Jean looked at Isaac defiantly.

“Maybe she wanted the smithy…” Isaac’s voice quivered.

“She already had a smithy!”

“She hates me because I said women don’t belong in a workshop.”

“You’re a fool, Isaac!”

Isaac groaned.

“The boy is a cripple himself. Do you know how much it would mean to him…?” Jean couldn’t continue, because the smith interrupted him.

“You can call me a cripple, but don’t you dare call him that again!” he shouted furiously. “He’ll make out all right.”

“Certainly he will, and you are a really good model for him. You can see he is already running away and hiding, just like you.” Jean was intentionally provoking Isaac.

Furiously, Isaac reared up in front of Jean and took a deep breath.

Jean continued to stare at him defiantly. For a moment he thought Isaac would sock him in the face with his other fist. He almost hoped he would, but nothing happened. Jean started to leave, but then turned around again. “The boy never had a father. You could have been one to him,” he said reproachfully, and looked at Isaac in disappointment. “He deserves something better than you, and so does Ellen.” Without deigning him another glance, he returned to the smithy.

Isaac mumbled an oath to himself and shuffled back to the house.

One day in April when the weather was in a playful mood, going from rain to snow, showers to sunshine, Isaac bumped into Ellen alone in the kitchen.

“We must talk,” he said, and sat down on the bench opposite her. His good hand lay on the table, and the other arm hung down.

Ellen looked at him questioningly. It was the first time he had spoken to her since Mildred’s death.

He cleared his throat and wiped the table nervously with his good hand.

“What do you want?” Ellen asked impatiently.

“It’s about the wedding.”

“Have you changed your mind?” Ellen preferred not to look at him.

“Of course not!” It was clear that Isaac was annoyed. “Even though I would like nothing more than to have some peace and quiet.” After a pause, he continued. “We swore we would.”

“I have not forgotten,” Ellen responded. She turned up her nose. Since Mildred’s death, Isaac had rarely bathed and hadn’t shaved at all. “Before the wedding you will have to take a bath. You stink.” Ellen expected an outburst, but he just nodded.

“Your year of mourning is over,” he reminded her.

“Then we must make good on our promise soon. I’ll speak with the priest.” Ellenweore stood up. “Is that all?”

Isaac nodded without looking at her and remained seated motionless until Ellen had left. Then he pounded the table so hard with his fist that the earthenware cups began to shake. He jumped up, stormed out into the forest despite the rain, and didn’t return until dusk, soaked through and through.

The wedding was just one month later, on a dark, rainy day in May. Rose walked arm in arm with Ellen on the way back from the church while Jean, Peter, and Eve came behind them with the children. Isaac walked far behind, all by himself. Even though Ellen was wearing a new linen dress and had a wreath of white flowers on her head, she did not look like a happy bride. Rose pulled her friend into the house to the room she would have to share with Isaac from now on. Jean had replaced the curtain with a door, and in the middle of the little room with its headboard along a wall stood the oaken bed that Jean had made for them. The four corner posts reached almost up to the ceiling and held up a canopy and curtains made of light blue linen.

Ellen’s eyes filled with tears when she thought about having to share this bed from now on with Isaac. Contrary to her expectations, and without further prompting from her, the groom had taken a bath and put on the new clothes she had laid out for him, but that did nothing to relieve her anxiety of having to spend the rest of her life as his wife.

Rose saw her tearful eyes but didn’t know what to do. “Oh, Ellen,” she said, stroking her cheek and trying to console the unhappy bride, “everything will turn out all right, it will just take time.”

“I’m afraid of tonight!” she confessed to her friend in a choked voice. Rose nodded sympathetically and brushed a wayward lock of hair from her face.

At the wedding feast that followed and to which additional guests were invited, there was much drinking and laughter. Only Ellen and Isaac sat at the table stern-faced and without speaking. The longer the party went on, the tipsier and livelier the group became. When Ellen could no longer bear to watch how the others were celebrating her wedding, she arose. As custom required, so did Isaac. The wedding guests laughed and howled, making smutty comments and raising their goblets to the young couple. Their departure for the conjugal quarters meant the party was over.

“How did they get that bed in here?” Isaac asked incredulously when they were alone in the room.

“I wondered that myself. Who knows what else went on behind my back!” Ellen replied, attempting a shy smile. She could sense that Isaac felt just as uncomfortable as she did. She withdrew to the farthest corner of the room where the light from the tallow candle didn’t reach, took off her dress, and slipped under the covers in her undergarment.

Isaac sat on the other side, at the edge of the bed. “I won’t insist on any conjugal rights,” he said calmly, then took off his shoes and his soiled clothes and slipped into the bed in his nightshirt. He put out the candle and turned his back to Ellen.

She lay awake alongside him for a long time and woke up again in the morning later than usual. The sun had risen already, and the bed on Isaac’s side was empty.

“Did you sleep well?” Rose asked anxiously when Ellen finally came out into the main room.

Ellen nodded. Rose could see the relief in her eyes.

Rose smiled at her. “Jean and Peter want you to know that the workshop is off-limits to you today. You have to rest, and not go to work until tomorrow.”

Ellen blinked in the bright sunlight shining through the open door and took a deep breath. “So much time, what can I possibly do with so much time?” She took one of the meat pies left over from the evening before and hungrily started to eat. “What a beautiful day, I think I’ll go for a little walk. It has been a long time since I was outside,” she said as she finished the meat pie.

“I’d like so much to come along, just as we used to, do you remember? But Eve isn’t here today for the children, so unfortunately I can’t.”

The twins sat on the floor next to Rose and played with wooden blocks left over from building the bed.

“Very well, it won’t hurt me to be alone for a while.” Ellen decided to go out onto the wide meadow near the forest’s edge where she could lie down in the grass and look up at the sky, just as she had done as a child with Simon. It seemed like an eternity since she had been able to take time to relax like this. Her thoughts wandered back to her youth. She could see the faces of Claire, Jocelyn, and William, and a wonderful, warm feeling came over her that wasn’t just from the warmth of the sun. Suddenly she was torn from her reveries by a scream. She jumped up and looked around. Her son was running out onto the meadow, and Isaac was running as fast as he could after him. He caught him, and William screamed again. Ellen ran as fast as she could and soon reached the two of them.

“You are so mean!” she heard William shouting and saw how he was pounding Isaac with his little fists.

“What’s going on here?” Ellen demanded angrily. “William, come here!”

The boy fled to his mother and hid behind her skirt, something he rarely had the opportunity to do and which he appreciated so much more now. “I cut my finger really bad,” he wailed, and showed her his hand.

“Where did you get the knife?” she asked suspiciously after convincing herself that the wound was only superficial.

“Isaac gave it to me,” he replied meekly, and showed her a small but very sharp knife.

Ellen looked at Isaac in bewilderment. “Are you completely crazy? You can’t let a five-year-old play by himself with a knife!”

“He wasn’t playing with it by himself but was learning how to whittle wood under my supervision. Anyway, he didn’t cut the finger off,” Isaac answered roughly.

“That’s what he told me, too, and then he laughed at me because I cried, so I ran away.”

“You laughed at him?” Ellen could feel how the anger was welling up inside her without being able to do anything about it. “You, of all people? All day long you just sit around and feel sorry for yourself!” she shouted.

Isaac yanked up his sleeve and pointed the bare stump of his arm at her. “Yes, I laughed at him. A boy doesn’t cry over a little cut on his finger. I, on the other hand, have every reason to quarrel with my fate. If you hadn’t let them cut off my arm…” The vein in his neck was swollen and looked like a giant, pulsating worm.

“Then you would have been dead long ago and would finally have the peace you are looking for!” Ellen shouted in reply. “Yes, I have long ago regretted saving your life. I only did it for Mildred’s sake. I was afraid she wouldn’t be able to bear losing you. If I had known she would die anyway, I would have left you to your fate. You would have rotted away!” She broke out in a laugh. “I realize now how suitable that would have been for you, you loafer! I wish I had stayed in Normandy and had never been there to watch Mildred die. How could I ever have sworn to marry you? You are selfish, cruel, and ungrateful!”

“Ungrateful?” Isaac repeated. “Should I be grateful to you for having held my arm as the barber-surgeon sawed it off? Never, ever shall I forgive you for doing that!”

“I hated doing it, Isaac, and now I hate you, too. Every night I am dogged by the feeling of helplessness I had that day, watching the saw cutting into your bone. I can still smell the rotten flesh! You are stupid and vain, Isaac! The boy has nothing to learn from you!” Ellen turned to Will. “Let’s go, Aunt Rose will make you a little bandage,” she said with more understanding than usual. She took the boy by the hand and returned to the house.

Isaac raged so loudly that it could be heard far and wide.

“He is not always like that,” Will said softly after a while, looking up at his mother.