The widow's war (10 page)

Lyddie met the Indian next day and listened to his latest report on the patient, which was little different. The boat was now clean and tight and ready for the cod season; he planned to fish three hours either side of high tide—any longer and the sand flats would either ground him or trap him at sea till the next tide cycle.

Once Cowett had left, Lyddie spooned some milk into Rebecca, gave her the tincture, cleaned her, and changed her linen. Rebecca Cowett’s breathing had become so shallow Lyddie could barely detect it. Rebecca never opened her eyes or responded to touch or voice, but Lyddie continued to speak to her, telling her of the weather and the status of her house and garden, things she could report on in full, as she’d now taken over most of the indoor and outdoor chores as well.

Lyddie was outside laying the freshly washed linen on the bushes
to bleach when she looked up and saw Cousin Betsey approaching. She led her inside and watched with some amusement as Betsey stepped gingerly over the sill, just as Lyddie had once stepped, while now the Cowett home was as familiar to her as her own.

Betsey had brought a pudding and some pennyroyal and sage brewed in beer, a remedy she insisted had healed all her children’s ills in a matter of hours. She peered through the little chamber door at Rebecca Cowett and began. Good Lord. O blessed Lord. Is there hope? I would doubt it. I would greatly doubt it. Does she respond? She does not. Do you see, she pays no notice of my voice or hand. And how sunken she is! Will she eat? She must eat. How long, I wonder? Oh, not long. Not long at all. Although I remember little Stephen Cobb lingered two full weeks with brain fever, and he not half the size of this poor creature.

Lyddie allowed Betsey to run on, asking and answering her own questions, until she dropped into the chair Lyddie set for her.

“You’re a good Christian,” Betsey said at last. “You’re a good Christian to be here.”

“I know a better,” Lyddie said. She pointed to the sick chamber.

Betsey sniffed. “Well, she may come to meeting, but I wonder, would she nurse you with such care?”

“If my husband paid her as hers pays me.”

“Pays you! Well!”

Betsey fell silent, her face a picture of confusion. Many Indian women took work in English homes, or indentured their children in exchange for some education or training, but who ever heard of a white woman working for an Indian?

Betsey had not yet untangled her features when Sam Cowett entered. She leapt up. Lyddie explained about the pudding and was relieved when Sam Cowett thanked her in good grace, without mentioning that his wife took no solids. Betsey in her turn made up a pretty speech about the patient’s devout nature, reminded Lyddie
not to miss the Sabbath again, and stepped out much more decisively than she’d stepped in.

Lyddie and Sam Cowett exchanged a look and, in an instant of mutual accord, for which Lyddie could find no perfect explanation, broke into smiles. Both smiles were fleeting, but in their short lives they managed to carry away something of the strange and leave behind more of the familiar.

Cowett went to see his wife, and Lyddie went to set out their food. In a little while Cowett reappeared and sat down at the table. Orange firelight colored one side of his face while a greenish purple, late-day glow from the window washed the other; he loomed in front of her like some wild, painted pagan god, and yet the things she noticed most were the long crevasses marking his cheeks, the strained cords in his neck, the way his great shoulders appeared shrunken.

“What news?” he asked.

“None of your wife. Some of your cow. I’m afraid she’s run dry. I’ll get some milk from Sears’s tomorrow.”

“Why bother? My wife will die soon enough.”

As Lyddie could not contradict that, they sat silent.

“Was it like this before they found him?” Cowett said finally. “Someone dead and not dead? Alive and not alive?”

Edward. He was talking of Edward. But unlike Freeman’s recent mention of him, which had forced her inside Edward’s mind, this query forced her inside her own.

“Something like,” she said. “I knew he was dead, but didn’t believe he was dead. Neither did I believe he was alive. I felt…relieved when I saw him.”

Cowett nodded.

“And dead. I felt dead when I saw him.” Lyddie leaned across the table. “Mr. Cowett, your wife is
not
dead. You may talk to her. She doesn’t speak or look at you, but who’s to say she doesn’t hear you?
You might have many things you would say to her, things she would like to hear. I would have had…I did have…many things—”

“So you speak to your god, and your god whispers in your husband’s ear. Is that not the way it works with you?”

Lyddie stood up. “Nothing works with me. Good night.” She moved to the door.

“Widow Berry.”

She turned.

“There’s enough milk in the jug for the morrow. Bring some when you return the day after.”

At Lyddie’s blank look he laughed. “So. You’d forget your precious Sabbath, would you?”

“But what will you do?”

“As you don’t work, I don’t work. You may tell them at meeting you’ve turned me Christian.” He laughed again.

Lyddie woke in an anxious state, the kind that used to accompany having a sick child in the house. What? she thought. What? And then she remembered. Meeting. She rose and tended to her night jar, gave her face and neck and arms a good wash, took out her best dress and unrolled a fresh pair of stockings. She spent some time combing out her hair and then attempting to contain it with pins, back from her face, up under her cap. She seldom wore a cap, a thing that had troubled her daughter; she felt it a gift to Mehitable that she took such pains setting it down now. When she was finished, Lyddie went out to the well and peered down.

A strange woman looked up at her, defiant and drawn.

Lyddie stepped around the house to the road, the breeze off the water tamping down the delicate heat from the sun. A quail burst from the wood and flew across Lyddie’s path, a maneuver designed
to draw Lyddie away from the young; Lyddie quickened her pace, and after a time she heard the familiar two-note whistle from behind, the mother’s “all safe.”

Lyddie pushed on toward the King’s road, thinking of Mehitable. What dangers lay ahead for her, and Lyddie not there to deflect them? Lyddie pushed the worry away. Mehitable had little need of her mother now, had never had a great need to begin with. She’d never been troubled by the ill health of her brothers and sisters, had, in fact, never appeared greatly troubled at all. She had moved with sturdy quiet steps through her own little world, and even as she’d grown she had chosen her husband in private, lived her marriage in private, and, Lyddie could only assume, grieved for her father in private. But Lyddie would have to say her daughter seemed content in her choice of husband, as much as the choice had puzzled Lyddie at the time and continued to puzzle her now. Mehitable had barely been alone in his company before she had agreed to the marriage. When Clarke had asked his permission of Edward, Edward had said only, “God bless you and good luck to you,” but afterward he’d said to Lyddie, “What think you?”

Lyddie had begun by expressing her concerns over Mehitable’s youth, but Edward had said, “Better he gets her before she turns headstrong like you.”

When Lyddie failed to laugh he said, “Come, woman, he’ll keep her better than I’ve ever kept you.”

When Lyddie still didn’t lighten he leaned forward and brushed his lips across her buckled forehead. “There can’t be another pair as lucky as we two. If by chance my daughter had managed to learn your good sense, Clarke wouldn’t know enough to count his good fortune, as I count it daily with you. Don’t fret about it, my old friend. They’ll make do.”

Make do. Indeed, Mehitable seemed to make do, better than Lyddie could ever have managed with such a man as Nathan Clarke. Had Edward known their daughter best after all?

Lyddie thought ahead to meeting. She would not distress her son-in-law by attempting to sit in the family pew, but still, she would be able to
see
Mehitable; she would be able to form a judgment on her health, if not her state of mind, and with that she would make do.

Lyddie stepped into the King’s road and took the rise; she joined the foot traffic funneling toward the door of the meetinghouse, and if she ignored the darting eyes around her and the pockets of silence followed by bursts of excessive greeting, it might have been any Sunday of her life past.

Lyddie entered the meetinghouse and took her seat in the women’s gallery, straining her eyes to look over her daughter hungrily. Mehitable’s face looked rosy and full, her arms plump and strong under her fine English cambric. In due time Lyddie noticed that others looked her way, that her presence in the women’s gallery had been noted and passed along with an elbow jab here or a jerk of the head there. If anyone needed further proof that she and her family were estranged it was there in her separate seat in the gallery. Lyddie felt an odd lightness in her head, or possibly her heart; what did it matter what these people knew or thought? She didn’t care. She sat back and let them look, until even her son-in-law turned in his pew on the men’s side of the hall. Lyddie dipped her head; he turned away; another ripple went through the crowd.

The Reverend Dunne spoke about the son greeted by the fatted calf; Lyddie stared ahead, all attention, and heard nothing.

Lyddie had hoped to leave the meetinghouse without further offending her family, but a jam at the door held her back while the occupants of the pews moved forward, and as a space fell open to her right, Nathan Clarke pushed through. He looked, he saw, he looked away to Mr. Mayo and made a great business of accepting an invitation to spend the noon hour between sermons at his home; Mehitable came around on the far side of the two men, as did Nate and Jane and the Negro Hassey; only Bethiah’s face opened bloomlike at Lyddie’s
side, but she was pulled quickly away, by which hand Lyddie didn’t know.

Lyddie cleared the door and struck out directly west, toward home. The wind blew soft and damp from the south; a sky the color of dirty linen hung low; it would rain soon. Since she’d last been along the road the English lilacs in front of Judah Snow’s house and the chestnuts along the road had come into bloom. These were Lyddie’s thoughts: the weather, the advancing season; she would not have said the fatted calf cluttered her mind at all, and yet suddenly Edward’s little cow popped into her mind and refused to give room. Why? Did the cow stand there blocking the road for the other, more somber thoughts that waited in the lay-by of Lyddie’s mind, or did the poor creature worry it might be neglected like the Cowett cow, and run dry? Whatever its purpose, the cow stood square in front of Lyddie’s eyes until she was forced to look back instead of ahead, back to the reverend’s fatted calf, back to her daughter’s glowing cheek, back to Bethiah’s puzzled eyes, back to Nathan Clarke’s noon respite at Mayo’s.

And there Lyddie saw the creature’s plan as if it had been spoken aloud. The cow would have dropped her calf by now; in fact, the calf would have been put to grass by now; the calf was of course Nathan’s property, as was the cow, but the
use
of the cow was Lyddie’s, as was enough winter hay for its maintenance, by decree of Edward’s will. And twice a day now, Jane would be emptying the cow’s freshened udders of the milk that was Lyddie’s own. But here sat a stretch of time where the Clarkes would be either at Mayo’s or at meeting and the rest of the town would be either at meeting or sheltering indoors out of the rain, which had just begun to scatter its small, dark coins in the pale dust of the road.

The Negro Jot was just leaving the barn when Lyddie approached. She’d thought to arrive unnoticed and lead the cow away, but she’d forgotten about Jot and the fact that his Christian leanings were more haphazard than his partner’s.

“Good afternoon, Jot.”

“’Noon.”

“I’ve come to collect my cow.”

Jot’s black forehead erupted in ridges. “Mr. Clarke’s at meeting.”

“Yes, I’ve just seen him.”

“He knows about this cow, then?”

Lyddie considered the various degrees of truth she might use and settled on, “He knows I’m to have the cow, yes.”

Jot ran his hands down his homespun breeches. The rain had not
yet picked up in any impressive degree, and he seemed happy to linger. It was all Lyddie’s rush.

“I won’t keep you from your work,” she said.

“’Tis Sabbath.”

“Yes, Jot, it is, and I certainly wouldn’t have undertaken such a task today, while Mr. Clarke was out, if he were happier with my presence here.”

This Jot understood. His forehead smoothed. “You want to take it now, then?”

“Now.”

Jot swung around and reentered the barn. He returned with a length of rope and set off for the meadow in the quickening rain. When he returned, Edward’s little cow trailed peaceably behind. He held out the rope to Lyddie, but she hesitated, suddenly foreseeing a situation where Jot would take the blame for her actions.

“I’d best go in and leave my son a note,” she said, and before Jot could respond one way or another, she ducked inside.

The house was as the house was on any other Sabbath: the people gone, the fire banked down, any unnecessary household work put away. Lyddie stepped into the keeping room, and the first thing her eye fixed on was her own pewter tankard. Which was worse, she wondered, the half or the whole? She decided that in this case they were equal. She took up the tankard and hunted around for her plates and spoons but was forced to admit she would not be able to manage her kettle. She found a pair of flour sacks in the pantry and stuffed her belongings into them, then strode to her son’s study and sat at his desk to search out paper and pen, but the sight of something familiar waylaid her: the old pocketbook in which Edward had kept his important papers. Lyddie stretched out her fingers and touched the worn leather; it felt thick yet; she removed it from the pigeonhole, unfolded it, and withdrew the first paper inside.

Know all men by these presents that I Sachemus, sachem of Satucket, for and in consideration of that great love and respect which I bore to my ancient and much respected and kind friend, Jonathan Berry, to whom I am many ways engaged for many kindnesses received, freely and absolutely give all that my parcel of land commonly called the old Indian field, next Satucket river on the easterly side thereof excepting and reserving only for myself and my children and their children and the longest liver of us the right to harvest wood for fence and fuel. In witness thereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal.

Below the words
Sachem of Satucket
sat a simple mark that looked like a
V,
and the names of the two witnesses to it,
Stephen Paige
and
Willyium Freeman,
with the date of October 13, 1676. But a further note followed:

The within and above said Sachemus appeared this 8th of January, 1679, and acknowledged these presents to be his act and deed…and that he gave the above mentioned lands freely to the above said, a great while ago and was greatly sorry that his good friend Jonathan Berry had been troubled by it.

Before Thomas Freeman, Asst.

Jonathan Berry. Edward’s great-grandfather. Lyddie’s eye traveled back to the primitive
V
. The old sachem would not, of course, have written the formal document himself. Neither did she imagine he would have been familiar with its legal language. But surely the document would have been explained to him before he signed it; surely he must have understood the nature of a gift or he would have stood in expectation of recompense. And wasn’t the addendum fur
ther proof of his intention? Some question had arisen over the ownership of the land, and the sachem had taken the great trouble to return to court and testify that the earlier gift had been genuine. But why had he given away the land at all?

Lyddie returned the paper to its pocketbook, the pocketbook to its pigeonhole. She removed a sheet of paper from the drawer and inked the pen.

      Mr. Clarke,

In an effort not to disturb you I have taken advantage of this time to lay claim to my property. In addition to a few items my daughter has overlooked returning to me I have collected my husband’s cow, whose use and maintenance were deeded to me in his will. As to the maintenance there specified, I will expect delivery of the winter hay come fall.

   Yours sincerely, Lydia H. Berry

She returned outside. Jot stood with the cow just inside the barn. Lyddie handed him the sacks, and he affixed them without question across the cow’s withers.

“I’ve left my son a letter explaining my action,” she said. “In it I make no mention of your presence. It is indeed possible you were off chasing my husband’s mare; she’s been known to leap a fence or two.”

It took him no more than a second. He nodded. Lyddie led the cow out of the barn. The rain had begun to take itself up with some seriousness. The cow trod along behind her in erratic stops and starts, coming to a halt every time the kitchenware clanked together inside the sack. Lyddie soon learned that if she turned around and leaned into the rope the beast planted her feet and went nowhere, but
if Lyddie stayed facing straight ahead as if the halt had been of her own devising, the cow soon stepped out on her own.

Lyddie had the good fortune to run into no one along the King’s road, but at the intersection with the landing road her luck turned. An old, wasted man limped toward her; once he got close she realized it was no old man at all but Nathan’s brother, Silas Clarke, the so-called limp more a list from the usual cause. He drew himself up as straight as he was able and withdrew his hat.

“Good afternoon, madam.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Clarke.”

“I say, what have you got trailing?”

“A cow.”

“A cow! You say a cow?”

“I say so, yes.”

“And what’s it got toting? Some meal, is it? Been to the mill, have you?”

Lyddie made a noncommittal bend of the head.

“Well, now! A cow. And a sack of meal. And may I inquire as to how your family is faring?”

“They’re well. And yours?”

“Ah, ’tis a sad thing about my family. It seems they’ve run out on me again. I woke up some time ago and found them gone.”

“I believe I saw them at meeting.”

“At meeting! Well, now! ’Tis the Sabbath already? I declare, it would appear we have one every two days in this village. I find that very taxing. Well, then, may I inquire as to how your own family is faring?”

“They’re well, Mr. Clarke, as we’ve established. Now if you would excuse me—”

“And your husband off to sea, no doubt? Or has he given it up? Did I not hear something—?”

“He’s given it up. Excuse me, please; you see my cow is pulling.”

“Well, then, let me assist you, Mrs. Berry. Has your husband taken up dairying over the sea, then? ’Tis all very well to give up the sea, but if one gives up the sea, one must do something else, like dairying. Here, now, let me help you.” Silas Clarke wrenched the rope from Lyddie’s hands and began to tug the animal in an easterly direction while the cow backed west and Lyddie came in from the north, attempting to regain control. It was all too much for the poor cow. She began to buck and hop until the sacks sprung open and pewter went flying in all the directions along the road.

Silas dropped the rope and stared. “Here, now, I thought you said ‘meal’! Did you not say ‘meal’? I don’t call this meal. I don’t call it anything like. Why, these are
dishes.
And look here, why, I call this a fine, big tankard. A very fine tankard. Just lying here in the road! I call that very fortunate.” And he wandered off in the wrong direction, or, rather, the right one, assuming he was headed for the tavern.

Unfortunately for Lyddie, the cow decided to trot off after him, and more unfortunately, Lyddie was unable to catch her up until she herself had reached the tavern, where she drew an audience of the two Grays, the tavern keeper Elkanah Thacher, and three strangers whom she identified by their clothes as mariners. Lyddie’s wet and muddy form dancing after the cow set the strangers off into hoots, but the Gray brothers shuffled out from under the eaves and came around on the two sides of the cow so that Lyddie could move in and grab her halter.

Lyddie thanked them, set off down the road, collected the remains of her wares, and trudged home. She deposited the cow in the barn, went inside, blew up the fire for tea, took up the bucket, and went back out to the well. The first two buckets went to the cow, but the third went to the kettle; by then every scrap of cloth covering her body was soaked through. She unfastened her skirt tapes and let the skirt fall to the floor, then peeled off her shift, pulling on a loose
flannel gown better suited to winter. She padded back to the fire and hung the wet clothes from the beam.

The tea tasted like gold. She cut and buttered a square of corn bread she’d made with the Indian meal and reveled in a guilty flush of contentment until she thought, Why guilty? Not the cow, certainly, and not Jot, or Silas, or the men at the tavern…She looked again at the bread and came to it: today had been her first in many without an Indian in it.