A Measure of Light

by Beth Powning

  Mary shuffled the letter back into its envelope. She went to a chair set well back from the heat and began slicing apples. Baby Charles slept in his cradle, bathed in sunlight. Through the window she could see a hedgerow of wild roses running down to the cove, their hips like varnished cherries. Everywhere, seed vessels burst with the insistence of survival. Burrs hooked socks or the fetlocks of horses. Silk exploded from milkweed pods and spilled into the wind. Orange pumpions sprawled, crusty-leaved, their vines frail as abandoned rope.

  Mother, Father, my brother, my babies, Anne, Uncle Colyn. Gone to Christ. And now Aunt Urith had written of her own impending death.

  … a dimness comes over my eyes …

  On the wind came the sound of shouting. Geraniums on the windowsill, blurred by sun, framed the shapes of William and another man who came around the corner of the house.

  “You’ll not come into my house,” William roared.

  “I’ll follow you wherever you go till you give me your promise.”

  “I’ll promise you nothing. ’Twas your pig and you will pay. The suit stays before the court.”

  “You have no proof.”

  “No man in Newport will believe otherwise. Every other man’s pigs are on the islands.”

  “Could be ’twas no pig but a wild creature.”

  “I am a Lincolnshire farmer’s son. Dost think I cannot recognize the prints of a pig or the damage it can do? Now be gone with you, Nicholas Babcock. Else I will add to your charges the fire you let run at random. Or harassment. Or the time you did not complete your corn fence.”

  “I care not a fart for your charges.”

  “Take your pigs to the island or strengthen your fences, else you will find yourself worse than fined.”

  William stormed into the room, hurled his hat onto a chair stile where it whirled to stillness. He sat, working his scalp with his fingers.

  “And last week my sheep killed by Marston’s dog,” he fumed.

  And so many other things, Mary thought, that he found necessary to take before the court. Contumelious words from a neighbour. A copper kettle missing from the barn. These slights were as the small fires of a vast, inner conflagration.

  Sinnie pushed the lug-pole from the fire, took up a basket of apple skins and slipped out.

  Peelings curled from Mary’s knife, tapped to the floor, writhed and settled. She glanced at him without moving her head.

  Ah, my William. Her love for him was like a buried seed without the conditions for growth. She saw that he felt this and so channelled his own love into a passion of work, displaying pride to those who would condemn his wife, refuting the impugned “instruction of the parents.” He thickened in body. Coarsened in mien. And ever since Winthrop’s henchmen had taken away his arms, he had become outraged by the slightest infringement upon his, or another’s, rights.

  “Littlemary is well, William,” Mary said, like a suggestion. “She is working with the boys. She carries a basket and hath a bloom in her cheeks.”

  His fingers relaxed. He dropped his head back against the chair.

  He was my young man. My glove-seller. She wondered if he ever thought of the wealthy London merchant he might have become.

  Truly, she knew, he loved his part in the creation of a new society, watching his children thrive, standing at the centre of a community as one of its governors. He sat on committees to establish laws: prohibition of tree-peeling or fire-starting by Indians; cash rewards for fox and wolf heads; compulsory fencing of corn fields, woods clearing, the marking of pigs’ ears. He marched musketed militia in the fields. He began to practise law.

  Loneliness, a cold rill.

  “The letter you brought me from Aunt Urith.” She held it up. “My Uncle Colyn hath died. I long to go to England, William.”

  “So did my mother die,” William replied. “So does every person here in the New World lose family in the old country. We cannot go stand by their gravesides.”

  “I do not care to stand by his graveside,” she said. “I care to see my living aunt before she, too, dies.”

  “You are the mother of six children.”

  Outside, a cat scurried by, mouse in mouth.

  “The children do not need me. They have Sinnie.”

  “Sinnie is our servant.”

  “And I tell you, William. They have Sinnie.”

  Out the window, blurred by the swirled glass, she saw the chickens clustered round Sinnie and the yellow peelings falling from her hands.

  “You cannot go to England. I forbid this, Mary. You must put it from your mind. The very thinking of it makes me … You cannot go alone to England! Where would … how … I …”

  He rose from his chair, took up his hat. He rolled it on one finger, hand chopping the brim.

  “Make an end to these thoughts, I beg of you.”

  “William,” she said. “Please …”

  She put her face in her hands, muffling her words. “I cannot imagine another winter. I cannot bear another pregnancy.”

  And he is sick unto death of hearing these words from me.

  —

  I long to go to England … Sinnie had lingered at the almost-closed door long enough to hear these words. Then she had eased it shut, hurried over the scythed grass.

  The children, in the orchard. Contented chickens, pecking at the peelings. The big house, rising on the point.

  May I never leave here.

  Oh, may she not go.

  A sheep trail.

  Juniper bushes.

  Outcroppings of granite.

  Up the coast, a group of Narragansett were digging for clams, distant, bright figures—pausing, stooping.

  The waves rolled with languorous potency. They crested, crashed. Spent, frothing water slid towards her bare feet.

  No head. A face, but …

  Monster. I am. Mother of a monster.

  The children at the table. Speaking to William, to Sinnie. Their eyes meeting mine and then … then … shifting away.

  She pulled Urith’s letter from her pocket, pressed it to her cheek and slipped it back. She pulled her hood close around her face. Tears came to her eyes, slid into the corners of her mouth.

  Neither to lie down nor to stand up. Neither to eat nor to starve. Neither to begin nor to cease.

  She stepped into the shallows. Her feet were instantly numb. Watching—the gathering water, towering, sleek curve at its throat, the thunderous pound and rush, inevitable. She entered farther. Her cloak floated around her hips, swirling. The next wave struck her chest. She lost her footing, went down into froth and chaos.

  Torture, howls, the fires of damnation.

  No.

  She staggered to her feet, turned back towards shore. A new wave buckled her knees. Again she fell, undertow dragged her over the hollowed shelf, she heard the sinister hiss, clutched at gelid pebbles.

  Another underwater tossing. She gasped, clawed her way to the beach and crawled from the surf. Face down in the sand, she drew long, shuddering breaths.

  Mary rolled onto her back and lay with her arms outspread.

  No one watches.

  FIFTEEN

  Decision - 1650–51

  WILLIAM NUDGED THE TRENCHER closer to Mary.

  “Eat,” he ordered beneath his breath. She had taken a chill weeks ago and had only recently risen from her bed.

  Every day, the wind rose at noon. Through the window, Mary saw November light slanting over the fields, glistening in the gone-to-seed meadowsweet. The children’s wooden spoons—too big for their mouths—tapped the trenchers, a small, furtive sound, like mice.

  Sinnie set down pewter platters heaped with baked pumpion, boiled cod, apple pandowdy. The lace on her cuffs was neatly folded and tucked under her sleeves.

  Mary dipped her spoon into the hot, molasses-sweetened apple.

  William had returned from his office in Newport, angry. He began to talk, looking at no one. Words that he could not keep inside, exploding from him.

&
nbsp; “Coddington hath been in England for over a year.” His nostrils were white at the edges. “Now I hear that he is beseeching Cromwell for a separate charter for Aquidneck Island.”

  The children, accustomed to his rantings, paid no attention. Sinnie was busy with an iron lid, wrestling it to the hearth.

  Nor is he speaking to me.

  He filled his mouth, chewed.

  She glanced at him, repelled by the juicy sound. In Boston, it had been she who had returned from Anne’s meetings, keen with new ideas; and he who had queried her. Now, William spent his evenings at gatherings and returned home so roiled that her health, or thoughts, were as an excess that strained his patience.

  “Coddington doth indeed think himself of the aristocracy. He feels himself the fit ruler of Aquidneck.” He scraped at their shared trencher, leaving nothing for Mary. His voice became argumentative. “We should send Roger Williams back again this spring to reaffirm his charter. At first we thought ’twas Roger’s bid for authority over us all, but then … well. We saw that ’tis good for Providence, Newport, Warwick and Pocasset to make up one colony. Providence Plantations. There is no need for Aquidneck to split away. For there are merits in unity and …”

  At meals, the children were not allowed to speak, or meet each other’s eyes, or slouch, or ask for more food.

  “… now that Massachusetts hankers after our lands, ’twill behoove us to reaffirm of ourselves as a patented colony.”

  “Would you go to England with Roger?” Mary asked. She spoke with an edge in her voice.

  Startled from his inner rooms, he looked up with habitual affront. Relaxing, then, when he met her eyes.

  A scuffle beneath the children’s table—Samuel and young William sent thoughts to one another through the sides of their boots. Maher was holding apple in his mouth, not swallowing. He liked to taste his food for as long as possible. Littlemary sat with her hands tight-folded in her lap, watching a fly whose feet were trapped in a pool of molasses.

  “Perhaps. Nay, there is too much for me here. Although …”

  He shrugged, folded his napkin, pushed back his chair. In the kitchen shed, the workers were finishing their meal.

  Men sail to England. They go and then they return. And then go again. It is not to them a place so remote as to be lost.

  The bay’s sparkle livened the sunlight, illuminating crumbs on the table, making silver cuticles on the apples.

  The children have Sinnie.

  William hath no need of me, in fact he …

  Anger. A surge, like energy.

  One bayberry candle flickered on the chest of drawers. Wearing only a linen shift, Mary shivered, putting away her coif. The floorboards creaked as William approached.

  “I will have a fireplace in our new bedroom,” William said. He slid his arms around her. “Ah, my lovely. Skin and bones. You are starved as a mongrel.”

  She slid from his arms and climbed into the high bedstead. She pulled the quilt up to her chin, set her feet on a flannel-wrapped brick.

  “’Tis not an illness of the flesh,” she said. She had seen him clasp his hands as if to hide the uselessness of palms that could apply neither knife nor potion to alleviate her pain.

  He set his candle beside the Bible on the bedside table, slid in beside her, taking a breath at the linen’s dank chill. Their feet tussled for the brick. She saw that this would make him laugh, then sigh and blow out the candle; and so, forestalling, she relinquished the lovely warmth.

  All day long, she had planned how she would tell him what had recently clarified in her mind.

  “You cannot know how it is to be ordered by men to ‘eschew the sin of barrenness’ and continuously produce children, even when they have told me my womb is as a malevolent pit, seeded with evil.”

  He began to speak but she held up her hand, conviction darkening her voice.

  “I have only dread when nausea announces new life. I cry out in terror when my babes slither from my body. ‘Do not cry,’ they say, ‘’tis a perfect child.’ But I am hollow as the vessel they have made me. It is not that I do not love them. I cannot love them.”

  He pushed himself upright against the headboard.

  “How can you not love your children?”

  “I cannot, William. I yearn for the feeling that I have for you, or for Aunt Urith. But it is as if there is a door closed between me and my children. I do not know if they notice. If they do, the boys no longer, nor ever, it seemed, care—but Littlemary … asks of me … and I needs must …”

  There were no words for the emptiness where love should be but was not.

  They would never be her children. Governor Winthrop, the black-frocked clergymen, the magistrates and their followers had taken them from her when they had dug up her baby and brushed the soil from its body. When they had handed it about, groaning with triumph and disgust.

  “I feel myself unworthy to love or to be loved,” she whispered.

  He sat so still that she was afraid to glance up at him.

  “I must go to England on the spring sailing. I must go see Urith. That, I do believe, is the only cure.”

  “Ah, Mary … I would that …”

  “Children may have other mothers.” The words came as if spoken without her volition. She was swept with sudden, profound regret and realized that until this moment, she had never truly understood this. “Sinnie knows their every thought. Her life is naught save for them.”

  “As you had your aunt,” he said, slowly, surprised by the realization and its implications.

  “Aye. Yes, my William. As I had my aunt. And now she is dying.”

  He drew a long breath. Then he reached for her hand, studied it. He rolled to his side.

  “I remember the first gloves I gave you,” he murmured. His fingers were delicate as the legs of a foraging bee. “They were of lamb skin, dressed flesh-side out. Silk-lined, silver-gilt thread. Your left hand slipped into the glove. A perfect fit … Will you miss us?”

  She saw that he struggled against long-withheld grief. She could say yes, my William, surely you know I will, but did not, for she knew his question was a wedge and this but the first tap.

  “I fear to lose you,” he said.

  “You will lose me if I stay, William. If I do not go to England on the spring sailing, I will surely die.”

  The quilt rose as he took a breath so deep he must sigh its release. She was touched by a wisp of memory, the essence of what had once been: Mary Barrett from Yorkshire, supple as a lily, seeing love in a young man’s eyes.

  November 16, 1650

  My dear Aunt Urith,

  May this find you well, for I shall come to you. William hath agreed that ’tis best I go in spring. William wearies of what he sees as my foolishness, for all my children have thrived. I strive to cast away my darkness but cannot. The children are happy in the care of Sinnie and do think of her more as mother than they do me and for this I am grateful, for I have been as a wraith all these past years. ’Tis now the beginning of New England’s deepest cold. The great house is not yet finished but William shall take the family there next fall, when I shall be with you. We spend our days in reading of the Bible, spinning, baking, sewing and …

  They left at dawn. Sinnie had been long awake, stoking the fire, preparing food. The children had been called from their beds and sat on the settle, stupefied with sleep. In the iron pot, cornmeal heaved, emitting puffs of steam.

  The latch clanked, the door opened. April air chilled their ankles. Jurden leaned into the room, bearing the smell of barnyard; beyond him, two horses stood saddled, two others laden with packs. Mist ghosted the meadows.

  “Ready,” Jurden said. He eased the door shut.

  Baby Charles had been carried down from his trundle bed but had not awakened. He lay, now, in the pine cradle that Sinnie had set just beyond the reach of sparks from the fire.

  Mary’s eyes burned, dry. She had lain awake all night. She turned to the cradle, knelt, reached to touch the ba
by’s face. The children rose from the settle, gathered around her.

  “Best not wake him,” she whispered.

  She stood and gazed at her children, leather travel mask pushed up onto her forehead. The children stood facing their mother—barefoot, wearing linen night-shirts—as if already an ocean separated them. Last November, William had told them of Mary’s “trip.” Her aunt, he’d said, who had been as a mother to her, was ill and had begged her to come. Your mother has no choice.

  Their eyes winced into hers and slid away. William waited by the door in his greatcoat and boots, gloves in hand. His silence, Mary knew, was maintained with difficulty.

  They know. They know. What child does not sense their parents’ deepest inclinations?

  She embraced the children, one by one.

  “Goodbye, Samuel.”

  “Goodbye, mother.” Fifteen. Conscious of his self-control.

  “Goodbye, William. Maher. Henry. Littlemary.”

  A horse whickered. They heard the jingle of bit, Jurden’s low command. Sinnie stood on the hearth, fists tight against her breast.

  Littlemary burst into tears.

  Mary knelt, arms spread. The little girl came to her, buried her face in Mary’s shoulder.

  “I will write. I will be back. I must go see my auntie before she dies.”

  The child’s sobbing caused Henry, aged three, to burst into tears. Maher and William, seven and eight, looked towards their father, frightened. William stepped forward, went down on one knee to gather the little girl into his own arms.

  “I am sorry,” Mary said. She stood, stepped back. Her wide mouth crimped at the corners, she pressed hands to cheekbones, distorting her eyes. “I am sorry.”

  “Come,” William said. “Say goodbye to Sinnie and then we must leave.”

  “Ah, Mistress.”

  Sinnie ran forward, Mary spread her arms.

  “You are my dearest friend,” Mary whispered into Sinnie’s hair. “You are my dearest friend. Oh, my Sinnie.”

  The children and Sinnie clustered in the doorway. Littlemary put her arms around Sinnie’s waist, face half-hidden, tear-wet.

  William helped Mary to her saddle, then mounted his own horse. Mary took a breath, but only raised her hand in a wave.