The widow's war Page 4

  She walked up to him and stood beside him, silent.

  “I have some trouble reconciling it,” he said.

  “As do I.”

  “Yes, and I wished to help you in it. Now I do naught but hinder.”

  “’Tis a task best tried together.”

  He took her arm and pulled it through his, pinning it fiercely to his side, anchoring her fingers in his. After a while, they walked home together.

  Lyddie pushed her dead children back into the dark recesses where she had kept them for so many years, much as she had kept their old beds under the eaves in the attic. Soon, very soon now, she must find a place to push Edward. On Tuesday Lyddie had almost joined Cousin Betsey’s lament over the impending departure of the whale men for the Canada River until it struck her she was now spared this small grief on account of the greater. On Friday Lyddie woke from a doze to the smell of Nathan’s pipe, and in that sweet, thick minute before full consciousness thought, “Edward’s home.” Sunday at meeting, when James and Betsy Lincoln stood up to confess to the sin of fornication after giving birth to a six-month child, Lyddie’s mind had trailed off after memories of that thing she would no longer be knowing.

  Nathan’s voice hit a high note and pulled Lyddie back to the present. He was now listing the sins of those less peaceable Quakers who used to charge into meeting to denounce the standing order’s religious practices. Lyddie had heard this particular rant before and knew it to go on some minutes; she finished cutting up Bethiah’s pumpkin, collected her cap and cloak and muffler, and moved toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” Mehitable asked.

  “To walk.”

  Lyddie couldn’t wonder at the look her daughter gave her; such idle behavior would have seemed strange in good weather. She left the house, steering carefully away from the landing road, past the water mill and Winslow’s fulling mill, just rebuilt after the old one had mysteriously burned down in the middle of the night. She cut south along the creek, seeking shelter from the wind, continuing without thought until the ground became smooth under her feet and she realized she had wandered onto the worn depression of the Indian trail that circumvented the millpond. It had been years since Lyddie had walked so far; she looked ahead and saw a pair of huts covered in marsh grass with anemic streams of smoke rising from holes in the roofs; she began to turn around, but Eben Freeman’s words about the sad little nation came back to her. Why did some Indians like Sam Cowett move successfully into the mainstream of English village life and some stay here in poverty, among their brethren?

  Her curiosity took her forward. The millpond stretched frosted hard before her, and two young boys chipped at the edge. An old woman stepped out of the nearest wetu; as she lifted the flap Lyddie saw an English table and chairs inside. In the distance a small hive of women scraped a carcass that hung from a tree, another pair pounded a skin on the ground. Two small children chased a pig between the huts. She saw only one man, either very old or very crippled, hobbling into view with a basket of firewood slung over his shoulder.

  Lyddie turned around and slipped back through the trees.

  When Lyddie reached the house she found that Eben Freeman had just delivered some more papers and letters from Boston and now stood at the door under bombardment by Nathan’s favorite diatribe: Mr. Winslow’s usurping of the millstream. Lyddie greeted both men and went inside, where she found the Boston Gazette lying on the table. She picked it up and went to the fire. In a minute the lawyer joined her there.

  “You’re interested in the newspapers, Widow Berry?”

  “I’ve not the wit to comprehend all that I find in them. But I am interested, yes. I see your friend Otis named in it.”

  “He’s your friend as well, Widow Berry.”

  “Mine!”

  “He would say you’ve all the wit but not the education for the paper. He has a sister, Mercy, a rare creature; her father sent her with her brothers to their tutor. And James brought home his Harvard books to share with her. He’s now seen firsthand what an educated woman might accomplish and would spread the practice further.”

  “And what has Miss Otis accomplished?”

  “She’s Mrs. Warren now. And I believe she writes poems on the seasons.”

  “And what does her husband say when he’s served a poem for his dinner?”

  Freeman’s face did that thing she’d come to recognize as a smile. “He claps for her.”

  “Then there’s your rare creature.”

  “Please. Don’t mistake me. When I said Mrs. Warren was a rare creature, I referred not to any great rarity in her cleverness, but to—” He paused.

  “But to the fact she has three such men around her?”

  “I…Perhaps…well, yes. Indeed.”

  “And don’t mistake me, Mr. Freeman. I’m lost in admiration of them all: both the brother and the sister, and the father who sent his daughter to the tutor, as well as Mr. Warren, who claps for her.”

  “Ah! Now I must do something to add myself to your list. Perhaps if you made a poem and I clapped for you—”

  “We’d all be better served if I made your dinner and you clapped for Mr. Otis.”

  “If Mr. Otis does what he’s set out to do in his challenge of the Writs, we’ll all clap for him.”

  “Except, perhaps, the members of Parliament?”

  “Widow Berry, you underestimate your own wit. Perhaps you should make Mr. Otis’s speech for him.”

  The notion made Lyddie smile, and as the muscles around her mouth pulled back stiffly, she thought, Have I lost this, too, my talent for laughter? Or was it Edward who had found all the amusement in their life? Perhaps so, but if so, he would certainly have found it in this: his wife talking writs and Parliament with Ebenezer Freeman.

  7

  Mehitable came to Lyddie’s room in rare smiles and invited her mother to join the family at dinner. Nathan, too, appeared in peace, so much so that when his discourse on the price of barrels in Satucket versus Boston ran down, Lyddie decided to interject a question.

  “I walked to the Indian village today. They’re greatly dwindled in number. Are they gone away someplace?”

  “They’re gone where all weak people go,” Nathan answered.

  “I know of their great trouble with disease, but surely that touches both sexes. I saw no men in the village.”

  “’Tis more than just disease that has reduced them to this pathetic gaggle of women and children. ’Tis our war with the French.”

  “Do you mean to say the men have all been killed in this war?”

  “Killed or crippled.”

  “But why so many Indians and not Englishmen? Surely our own men fight in the war in greater number.”

  “Not in such great number as compared to their total population. If the Indians have five men in their village they risk all five in such manner.”

  “Why so?”

  “What else might they succeed at?”

  “You call death and dismemberment success?”

  Nathan laid down his knife and studied her. “Is there some purpose to your questioning?”

  “None whatever.”

  Bethiah let out a burst of air that stood for her odd version of a laugh and was rewarded with a cuff to the cheek; but the cuff was followed with a tousle of her braid, and, “Very well, Mother, as the alternative appears to be naught but discussion on whether the reverend looks best with his wig or without, I shall take this opportunity to educate you on our Indian brethren. It so happens these people live in a land that has become greatly populated with Englishmen. You will note, please, we did not conquer or capture these lands but bought them at fair value. Oh, you will hear all manner of talk: we took this piece for a cow or this one for a kettle, and yes, the old sachem sold this very parcel we sit on for a cow, but the next month it was sold again for five pounds, and I ask you, what was the worth of the cow? Six pounds! And as to the kettle, which held the greater value at the time, ten acres of woodland out of hundre
ds of acres of forest or a thing made nowhere on this continent, shipped to us all the way from England? And what did I pay old Sequattom for our meadowlands? One hundred ten pounds for a paltry forty acres—”

  “Then whence comes the trouble?”

  “Well, Mother, if you’d stop your constant interruption I might tell you whence it comes. Here, on the one hand, you have an Englishman who would own a stable piece of land and keep on it and farm it; on the other hand, you have an Indian who might plant a field in one place in summer, then move to the woodland to hunt in winter, then find a fresh field the next year, etc., etc. But suddenly the Indian finds that in his greed for cows and kettles and English silver he’s sold away so much land there’s not enough left for this old way of living. Now in such case the Englishman might say, very well, I’m unable to live by my old methods, let me put them aside and try living by this new one, but this the Indian will not do. He calls farming woman’s work; the man’s work is the hunt; and if he can’t hunt his deer and bear and fox, he’ll hunt his fellow man. ’Tis an instinct in him. So he goes to war for the English, and not only does he get a respectable wage, he gets a steady ration of rum in the bargain. And there, my dear Mother, we come to yet another cause of the Indian’s dissipated condition. Look at your Mr. Cowett and you have it in a nutshell.”

  “Mr. Cowett served in our army?”

  Nathan laughed. “Mr. Cowett would not go to the aid of his own mother, let alone his king. I reference the man in regard to his habit of drink, not in any fondness for the military. When they were out drumming up men for the attack on Nova Scotia he hid his boat in the Point of Rock channel.”

  “As did half the men in this town, as I recall, including your brother.”

  Nathan slapped the table. “And so would I have done after what happened to Louisburg! Hundreds of Cape Cod men giving over their living to march to Canada, carrying their whaleboats with them, capturing the fort with much blood and pain only to have it turned back to the French in the next treaty. And now what do we have? Those bloody French setting out from that same bloody fort, pirating our coast from sunup to sundown, costing me a bloody fortune! And if that’s not enough to bear we have these bloody Writs come down on us—”

  Mehitable stood up with the pudding and refilled her husband’s bowl, a tactic that proved successful only in diverting her husband’s fire in her direction. “What are you doing, you bloody woman? Did I ask for more pudding? I’m done with eating. Fetch me the rum.” He pushed away from the table and retreated to his study.

  Mehitable got up and took the rum bottle off the shelf, casting a look at her mother that was not what Lyddie would have called dutiful.

  It was some weeks before Lyddie was again asked to join the family table.

  One night in early March Nathan called Lyddie into the study.

  “Mother, I’ve been going over the accounts, and I’m appalled at our tally at Sears’s store. My wife can answer for but half the total; she informs me you’ve done a good deal of shopping there.”

  “I purchase my foodstuffs there, yes.”

  “I skip over food, although it does seem that tea and sugar are used to excess in this household. I refer to three charges made to the account this week for which my wife takes no credit: pins, shoe buckles, almond oil. These are yours?”

  “They are.”

  “I don’t mean to be petty; indeed, a woman needs her pins. I might ask what she needs with new shoe buckles every week or two, and I’m quite certain my wife has almond oil in the pantry, as I used it for a sore tooth not a month ago—”

  “Teeth are the very devil, are they not?” said a voice behind Lyddie.

  She turned and saw Eben Freeman just canting his long frame against the doorjamb.

  “Good evening, Widow Berry.”

  “Good evening.” Lyddie turned back to her son. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  “Yes, yes, but have a care. When I sell the bloody house you’ll have your pin money and you may spend it as you like, but until such time—”

  Freeman straightened. “As Edward Berry’s legal representative I might point out that you are charged with his widow’s keep and care.”

  “She’s got her keep and care, Freeman. She wants for nothing.”

  “Did I not just hear evidence to the contrary? Something of shoe buckles, was it?”

  “Shoe buckles! Do you see her limping around on a stocking? I’ve settled her husband’s debts; I don’t need to put down half a fortune at Sears’s store every month as well.”

  “I recall no extraordinary debt when the will was proved,” Freeman said.

  “Would you call me a liar?”

  “Here, now. We need no such words—”

  “I should say we do, since if I’m not, you’re one.”

  Lyddie heard a sharp click from the lawyer’s direction, but she couldn’t decide if it came from his teeth or his heels. “I make it a practice in life to speak with utmost fairness of everyone,” he said quietly, “and in that vein I would be pleased if you’d not toss around your own words unwisely.”

  “Ah! So now you call me a fool!”

  “In four decades of life I’ve never been so big a fool as to call another man one. And I believe if you gave thought to the matter at hand you would conclude that dispensing a few shillings per month to your widowed mother in advance of the sale of the property would in no way compromise your long-admired talent for economy.”

  To Lyddie’s great surprise this speech seemed to mollify her son-in-law. “Very well then, Freeman. Now, what’s your business? Mother, you will excuse us.”

  She would have done, but the lawyer stayed her with a finger on her sleeve. “My business is twofold, Clarke, and one of those I’m sure will interest the Widow Berry. But let’s settle yours first.” He reached in his pocket with his free hand and withdrew two envelopes, handing one to Nathan. “I served on the committee of arbiters to determine the shares in the oil profits and these are yours.” He handed Nathan the second envelope. “And these are Edward Berry’s.” As Edward’s profits had been earned at such a great cost to Lyddie herself, she had some curiosity to know the tally; she watched closely as Nathan opened the envelope and counted down: fifteen pounds eight shillings.

  “And as to the second piece of business,” Freeman said, “it concerns a friend of the widow’s: Mr. James Otis.”

  Nathan looked first at the lawyer and then at his mother-in-law with astonishment. “Her friend?”

  Freeman winked at Lyddie. “A new one, but nevertheless, I believe, a friend. His speech before the superior court regarding the Writs of Assistance has set the town on its end. As the widow has some interest in matters of Parliament I thought she would like to hear—”

  “Matters of Parliament! What the devil are you on about? Leave her be and get on to it. I’ve not had a paper in a month, nor an informed letter, nor a decent conversation. What of this speech?”

  “Otis spoke above four hours, but in my life I never heard such learned discourse, nor such passion, nor boldness, nor wit. He was a flame of fire. He began by declaring such things as natural laws—”

  “Natural laws! What the devil are natural laws?”

  “Laws that are written in a man’s heart. And he put those laws above any laws made by any Parliament. He found basis for this rule of natural law in old Saxon law, the Magna Carta, and the English Constitution; among these natural laws he claimed a man’s right to his life, his liberty, and his property. He declared it a man’s natural right to sit as secure in his house as any prince in his castle.”

  “Well, there’s Otis for you, off chasing castles. I’d like to know what castles have to do with it.”

  “They have to do with a man’s right to live safe from interference by immoral, illegal search and seizure, put in place by an immoral, illegal, man-made law of Parliament. And Otis made his case, Clarke; you’ll not find a man in the chamber who’ll deny it. He then went on to define the power of the court i
n such a way that it could not prevail unless it declared itself supreme and Parliament irrelevant. Oh, it was a pretty piece of work. I assure you, even his opponent stood lost in admiration of it.”

  “Ah! Then the matter was defeated.”

  “It was not. The court chose to confer with England before issuing an opinion. The matter was postponed to the next term and the session closed without a verdict.”

  There Nathan launched into his view of the court and the great lot of thieves and wastrels that sat on it. Freeman apparently decided that the best way to stem that particular tide was to bring on another wave of equal proportion; he then mentioned that Otis used the occasion of his speech to put forth his plan to free the slaves. There Lyddie excused herself and continued through to the keeping room, but Nathan’s voice gusted so loudly after her that Mehitable looked up in alarm. “What in heaven can it be now?”

  Lyddie attempted to form a short answer but found her mind too clouded for it; she needed time and quiet to wrap her wits around all that Freeman had just described. The little she could grasp seemed so large and awful and magnificent that she would have felt sure she’d misconstrued it if Freeman himself hadn’t appeared to stand in such awe of it. Lyddie lifted her shoulders to indicate her own puzzlement to Mehitable and stepped quietly out into the dark.

  Lyddie hadn’t yet untangled her mind when the door opened behind her and Freeman stepped through it. He’d taken the first few strides toward the road when he saw her standing by the barn and diverted.

  “Widow Berry! What on earth are you doing out here?”

  “Thinking. And having no great success at it. But I’m glad enough to have this chance to thank you for your help in regard to my funds.”

  “Do not, please. I was not useful.”