The Blind in Darkness

by Stephen Lewis

  “Now,” Worthington said, “he is gone and cannot pollute this rite. Let him return to Sodom from whence came he.”

  The minister’s face tightened in disapproval.

  “We are burying your son,” he said. Worthington looked toward the tree behind which Thomas had disappeared and made no answer. The minister lifted his eyes. “And the king said unto Cushi, Is the young man Absalom safe?” he intoned, his voice struggling to rise above the wind. Catherine, although she was no more than a couple of feet away, and although the minister’s voice, a strong and resonant baritone that on Sundays rose from his plump body and filled the meeting house, was now barely audible, his words swallowed by the onrushing wind whose whoosh carried to the ears of the mourners only the cold message of the insensible winter storm. Again, Minister Davis paused. Worthington strode to him and lowered his face to his.

  “Proceed, I say, or I will do the office myself. Do you not have the words in your memory locked?”

  “I do,” Davis said, although he had to clench his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering.

  “And the king said unto Cushi,” he repeated, “Is the young man Absalom safe? And Cushi answered, The enemies of my lord the king, and all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, be as that young man is. And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gage, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! I would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

  The wind, as though out of respect, ceased for the moments it took for Minister Davis to recite this passage, and as his voice now reached all the mourners it was joined by that of Master Worthington, who said the same words except each time the minister said the name of David’s son, the merchant cried out the name of Nathaniel, his own child now in the grave at his feet, and when the words were uttered the merchant bowed his head to his chest.

  The mourners turned back down the hill, in their minds the words they had just heard, but in their ears the sound of shovels of dirt mixed with snow now thudding against the coffin. Catherine walked at the head of the procession, as the Worthington family and Minister Davis lingered at the grave side watching the sexton and his son ply their shovels. As she walked, she occupied her mind with speculations designed, in part, to keep her thoughts from the cold that clenched her bones. She thought of Thomas, and she thought of the merchant’s choice of Biblical passage, and she remembered how Absalom had risen against his father. She wondered why Worthington had chosen such a text. Was it because in pursing Thomas, Nathaniel had revolted against his father’s wishes. Or was it only the heart wrenching cry of King David, grieving for his dead son that seemed fitting to Worthington?

  Why she asked herself, as she trudged down the hill, had the merchant conjoined a reference to Sodom to his father’s lament over his dead son? If Worthington were David, and Nathaniel Absalom, where did Thomas fit? For although she could not yet figure out these connections, Worthington’s insistence on that passage being hurled into the teeth of what was now clearly a late winter blizzard must carry some significance as well as the curse he muttered at the disappearing friend of his son were somehow all of a piece.

  Colliding with these nebulous speculations in her mind was the hard roundness of the object entrusted to her by Massaquoit. That button, and the man who had lost it, now pushing his sturdy body, head bowed into the wind, like a ship’s prow cutting a high sea, must be the key that would enable her to weave together the various strands now so stubbornly separated in her mind.

  * * * *

  No more than fifty feet from the grave, on the bottom of the far side of the hill, Thomas crouched huddled beneath the lowest branches of a spruce. The wet snow layered the limbs of the tree so that they drooped to form a screen behind which Thomas had been led a few minutes earlier by Massaquoit who now knelt beside him.

  “They are now gone,” he said.

  Thomas, who had been watching the snow continue to coat the branches over his head, did not respond.

  Massaquoit pushed his way through the branches and began walking toward the grave. Thomas picked up his crude cane, brushed off the snow that covered it, and followed. When Massaquoit stopped a short distance from the mound of earth now covering the grave, and itself being covered by snow, Thomas continued. He stood leaning on his cane, looking down at the earth. When he came back to Massaquoit his face was set in a determined expression.

  “I must leave this place,” he said.

  “The English wanted you back, and now they want you gone,” Massaquoit said. “It is strange.”

  Thomas shook his head.

  “Not at all.” He pointed to the grave. “He wanted me. No-one else.”

  “I see,” Massaquoit replied. “Where will you go?”

  He shivered and pulled his coat about him.

  “To the south. To where it is warm.” He paused, struck by a sudden thought. “Perhaps I will stop on to Long Island, or one of the harbors along the way. I must try to intercept my sister on her way here, expecting to be married, to tell her that her husband is in the ground. It would be a kindness for me to do that, do you not think so?”

  Massaquoit noted the change of tone in the young man’s voice, from his usual sneer to something approaching concern. Still, a wicked little smile played on his lips.

  “I think it would,” Massaquoit said. “Will she continue here anyway?”

  Thomas shrugged.

  “I do not think I can speak for her.”

  Massaquoit took his arm, above the elbow, and squeezed.

  “May you find what you seek,” he said, “you and your sister.”

  Thomas’s eyes seemed to respond to the pressure on his arm, but then he pulled away.

  “As for that,” he said, “I do not know that I will go so far away that I might not return in warmer weather.”

  “That might not be wise,” Massaquoit said.

  “It might depend,” Thomas replied, “on whether I have the proper attire.”

  He drove his cane through the six inches of fresh snow until it reached the ground beneath, stepped forward with good leg, and then dragging the injured one behind, he walked off into the snow, his back to Massaquoit and the grave.

  * * * *

  Two days later Catherine sat at her desk, an account book open in front of her, but her attention drawn to the stream of melting snow falling from her roof onto the ground. Every few moments a large chunk would come down, shattering against the side of the house and sending a spray against the window. She was content for the moment to ignore the figures that indicated that the severity of the winter had flattened her income for the past two months, ignoring that unpleasant fact while she watched the snow explode, as though she were finally witnessing the loosening of winter’s grip. It was two days after the funeral, and the weather had again turned warm, perhaps as prelude to spring.

  In her preoccupation, she did not immediately take note of the person approaching the house. When she did, she snapped back to the immediate moment, for she recognized the substantial shape of Matilda, the black servant of Master Worthington filling the walk as she hastened toward the door. Catherine did not wait for a knock, but opened the door.

  “Is it Felicity?” Catherine asked. “Or the babe? I can be ready in a moment.”

  Only the whites of Matilda’s eyes were immediately visible as she had a dark, heavy cloak bundled about her head and shoulders in spite of the warming temperatures so that her skin merged with the color of the garment. She pulled the cloak from her head and shook her head.

  “No. It is none of them. It is the mistress herself that sends me to fetch you. She say that she cannot rid her bones of that chill from the cemetery and bid me tell you to come right away with that special tea you give her sometime.”

  “But . . .” Catherine began, but then caught herself.

  “Has she the fever then?”

  “She seem well enough until the master leave the house and then she take to her bed
and tell me to fetch you.”

  “Tell her I will be there very soon. With the tea.”

  Matilda nodded, drew her cloak around her head again, and left. Catherine closed the door and walked back through the front room to the kitchen where Phyllis stirred the stew in the iron pot suspended in the fireplace.

  “I will be needing the ginseng tea,” she said. “Alice Worthington has sent Matilda to have me come with some.”

  “But did you not send me to her the day of the funeral with instructions that she should drink her fill of it.? And did not I myself give her enough roots to last for a month, if she drank the tea every morning and night?”

  “Indeed, you did.”

  “Then . . .”

  “Then go find my stock so I can bring her more, as she bids me.”

  “But . . .” Phyllis said, and then shrugged her ample shoulders. She took a step toward the door that led to a small room off the kitchen where Catherine dried her herbs, but then stopped.

  “You know I do not fancy handling these roots.”

  “And that is why I want you to fetch them now, to see they are just the roots of a plant we plucked from the ground ourselves.”

  “So you say,” Phyllis muttered and walked into the room. A few moments later, she emerged from that room, her arm fully extending, holding a handful of the roots.

  “Look at them. Just like little devil imps.” She dropped them on the table. “Little imps with legs, and a little head, and just a stump of an arm here and there. I tell you I fancy I heard them scream in a tiny little voice when I took them off the rack.” She looked back. “I think I can hear them even now, them that I left on the rack, crying out after their fellows, they are.”

  “Nonsense,” Catherine replied. She picked up the roots, so much like a human figure. “Roots, only roots.” She put on her cloak, and then turned to her servant.

  “Well, come along then. The air might clear your head of these thoughts.”

  They hastened along the road that led to Newbury harbor. Just as they reached the path that branched off it to climb to the knoll on which the Worthington house sat, Catherine stopped to face the water. She heard the cracking sound, like thunder in a summer storm, only today proceeding from the cracking asunder of the ice that had brought shipping to a stop all winter. Now, as she gazed at the bay, she could see expanding lines of black water pushing between blocks of ice, and toward the shore blue waves reflected the sun and rolled toward the beach. On the dock next to the Helmsford, a knot of men were busy hoisting boxes up to the deck of the ship, and she was fairly certain that Samuel Worthington was standing among them, waving his arms about.

  Matilda, still wearing her cloak, opened the door and led them into the hall. Catherine peered to her left into the well furnished front room in which the fireplace offered a roaring fire well in excess of what the warming temperatures seemed to demand.

  “I do not think I will feel warm again,” Matilda said.

  “Perhaps in the summer you will forget these cold days.”

  “Only I forget if I am back home in Barbados,” Matilda replied. “Then I can forget all this snow and ice.”

  “I have the roots for the tea,” Catherine said. “Perhaps you can boil some water. Phyllis can assist you.”

  Matilda held out her large, strong hand, into which Catherine placed the roots. Matilda studied the roots, a puzzled expression on her face.

  “Yes,” Catherine said, “I am sure you have made tea from such as these before.”

  “Ah, yes, I have. Mistress waits for you in her room up there.” She pointed to the stairs that led to the second floor. She looked at Phyllis. “We bring the tea when it ready up there.”

  Alice Worthington was sitting up in bed, a cotton shawl wrapped about her shoulders.

  “You do not look too poorly,” Catherine said, as she pressed her hand to Alice’s forehead.

  “Indeed, I do feel better.” She looked out of a window that faced the harbor.

  “I saw the men loading The Helmsford as I came by the road,” Catherine said.

  “Did you see Samuel there?”

  “I believe I did.”

  “He knows I sent for you.”

  “I am glad of it.”

  “When Felicity and Daniel offer the babe for baptism, they will name him Nathaniel. That has softened Samuel’s heart a little.”

  “And yours?”

  Alice shook her head from side to side.

  “The Lord’s will be done,” she said, “but never will my heart be whole again. That is, in part, why I wanted to speak with you.”

  There was a knock at the door and Matilda entered carrying a tray with a bowl of steaming tea. Phyllis followed with another, on which sat another bowl.

  “I thought Mistress Williams might want some,” Matilda said, with a nod toward Phyllis. “It is from her roots that I make this tea.”

  “Bring mine here,” Alice said, and Matilda set the bowl on a table next to the bed. Phyllis handed her bowl to Catherine.

  “It really is very good,” Alice said with a smile, after they left.

  “Ah, yes,” Catherine replied, “but you had a fair stock and brought me here to tell me something.”

  Alice put the bowl down on the table.

  “It is not easy for me to tell you this. Especially after I did not defend you as I should have against my husband’s accusations.”

  “You could not,” Catherine replied. “I well understand.”

  “I dared not,” Alice said. “But in part because I did not do the right thing then, I feel I must now.”

  Catherine studied the sorrow in her friend’s eyes.”

  “You need not,” she said.

  “But I do.” She stood up and walked to the door. She beckoned Catherine to join her, and when she did, Alice pointed down the hall to a closed door.

  “That was Nathaniel’s room,” she said. She walked toward the door, but stopped at a narrow staircase that led to the attic. “When his friend Thomas first came here, he slept up there. But after a while, that was not good enough. He said it was too cold, that the wind came through the cracks in the wall. Nathaniel agreed with him. We did not see any harm when Nathaniel asked that another bed be placed in his room. Samuel had Matilda drag down Thomas’ bed from the attic and place it next to Nathaniel’s. But you see, I soon came to realize that they were using only one bed. Thomas’s was never slept in. I kept this to myself until I confronted Nathaniel, and he just said they had become very close. Finally, I told Samuel. He was going to have Thomas brought before the magistrate for his unnatural attentions to Nathaniel, but I convinced him that Nathaniel would join Thomas before the whip, or worse.”

  “And so,” Catherine said, “you had Thomas sent away.”

  “It seemed a good idea,” Alice replied. “Isaac was getting old, and he needed help farming Samuel’s land. Samuel thought Thomas could be made useful if he learned husbandry, and Nathaniel could still see him. At a distance.” Alice strode to Catherine and threw her arms around her. “And now see how it has turned.”

  “Hush,” Catherine said. “You could not have known.”

  * * * *

  As they left, they saw Master Worthington coming up the road, flanked by Osprey and Frank Mapleton.

  “He won’t be here long, that one,” Phyllis said.

  “The lieutenant?”

  “The boy. Matilda told me that his things are packed, and Master Worthington will have him on his way. On that ship in the harbor if the ice melts, or overland up the valley if it does not, but he will be gone.”

  “I will not be sorry of it,” Catherine replied.

  “Me neither,” Phyllis replied.

  The three men were now directly in their path. Worthington stepped aside with an exaggerated bow. Osprey and Frank followed his lead and moved to the extreme edge of the road, which had been narrowed by melting snow banks on either side.

  “A good day to you, Mistress,” Worthington said, and
then he offered a quick nod of his head toward Phyllis.

  “And to you,” Catherine replied. “I have visited with your wife.”

  Worthington waved his hand in a dismissive gesture.

  “She fancies that you can cure her of her grief.”

  “I do not think so.”

  “Come, come, Catherine,” the merchant said, “My son is dead, no fault of yours, but my grandson lives and Alice believes I have you to thank for his life. And I grow weary of our quarrel.”

  “As do I.”

  Worthington expelled his breath slowly through his clenched teeth, as though in that manner he was releasing his long held animosity.

  “Then permit me to ask you a question concerning Nathaniel’s death.”

  Catherine did not want to close the door of truce that the merchant opened, but she remained wary of his sincerity.

  “I do not think I can help you with that, Samuel, as I saw him only as he was about to die.”

  “Of course,” Worthington replied. “It is your judgment I seek. Tell me what you think of what young Frank here has told me. About Nathaniel and that sodomite Thomas.”

  “I do not think I want to hear such talk,” Phyllis said.

  “Why, go to, then,” Master Worthington replied. “I talk to your mistress.”

  Phyllis sucked in her breath loudly, looked down at her feet, but did not move away.

  “As you wish, then,” Worthington continued. “The lad here tells me that shortly before the attack in which Nathaniel was killed, he heard those two quarreling, and here is the odd thing, do you hear, they were arguing about a woman. He is sure of that.”