The Widow's War: A Novel

by Sally Gunning

  “How long?”

  “A week. Maybe two. Ah, well, naught to do but keep up the regimen I described to you and send for me if you need me.”

  As Sam Cowett said nothing, Lyddie said, “Yes. Thank you.”

  The doctor motioned to Lyddie. She followed him to the door of the house, and he leaned over, speaking low. “You watch out for yourself, Widow Berry. There’s of course not a shred of hope for that poor woman, and when she goes, there’s no telling what he’ll do. I understand you’ve managed to complicate things with your son, but if you don’t mind my saying, considering that I’ve known you a long time now—”

  “I’ll watch out for myself,” Lyddie said. “Thank you.”

  She reentered the sickroom. Sam Cowett sat staring at his wife.

  “A week or two.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve a boat needs caulking and graving. She’s had a hard winter at whaling.”

  “Then why don’t you do it? I’m able to stay, I told you.”

  “For pay.”

  “Yes, for pay. Let’s not talk that round again. I’m through with kindness, I assure you.”

  His face did something that reminded her, absurdly, of Eben Freeman.

  They settled on meals plus two shillings a day, or its equivalent in goods.

  Lyddie would have liked to say that her head was filled with concern for Rebecca Cowett, and that thought did occupy a fair portion of her mind, but the rest of it was filled with food. In addition to the stew she found the remains of a turkey pie and an Indian pudding and milk and dried fish and dried meat and dried pumpkin and pickle and applesauce and a fine, heavy rye loaf and a tub of butter and a whole cheese and a basket of eggs and tea, fresh bohea tea, and a tin of seedcakes. The Indian wolfed down the turkey pie before he left, but Lyddie went back for the stew, spearing out fat chunks of meat and vegetables to conserve the broth for Rebecca, icing a thick slice of dark bread with butter, brewing up a strong pot of tea, finishing all with seedcake and applesauce and counting herself well paid for that day and the next one, too.

  The Indian was gone three hours. He returned in the middle of the afternoon to find no change in his wife. He would not return to the shore. He would not try to sleep. He paid Lyddie for the day, by mutual accord, a pound of cheese, one of butter, and a half-dozen eggs.

  19

  The next day the Indian worked at the shore again, this time through heavy rain. As soon as he got home he retreated to change into dry clothes, then went directly to see his wife. As Lyddie had yet to make her report, and as it was supper hour, she set out a plate with bread and butter and cheese and waited. At first all was silent in the little room, but soon she heard his voice, deep and low and so intimate it took her aback. “Beck? Beck. Wake up, now.”

  More silence.

  He reappeared and looked at the plate. “I said naught about you feeding me.”

  “I’ll not charge you, if that’s your worry.”

  “’Tis your not charging worries me.”

  “Very well, then, add this to today’s nursing and give me an ounce of tea for all.”

  He got up, shook two ounces of tea into a napkin and shoved it across the table. “Put down a plate and tell me how she fared.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Cowett, I see no change in her. But she swallows. The worst that can be said—”

  “The worst. You say naught of the best. Because the best is the worst. For her to lie there in pain—”

  “But she swallows. She takes the tincture. I must tell you, we’re near run out of brandy, so if you would like me to stay while you visit the store—”

  “No.” He returned to the money pot, held out more coins. “You go.”

  Lyddie felt a hot prick of anger. She was not his servant; it was not her job to fetch and carry for him.

  “You go,” he said again, and this time she caught it, the fear in him, the doubt, what he might do with a bottle of brandy in his hand.

  Lyddie took the coins. Sam Cowett went into the little room and sat beside his wife. Lyddie could see nothing of him but his broad back and hear nothing but his wife’s name, over and over, “Beck. Beck. Beck,” louder and louder.

  She left them.

  The rain still pelted hard at the ground, but Lyddie moved gratefully through the wet. She felt fevered herself, her skin tight and hot, her mind raw. Would he sit and shout his wife’s name all night? she wondered. If it were Edward who lay ill, what would she do? The same, she thought. Or, rather, she knew. Once, when Edward had been out in a storm, she’d stood on the black shore and yelled his name until she’d heard her own foolish voice thrown back to her on the wind. She’d been shocked by the anger in it, as if Edward could have known the weather, or sent a message home, or made as fair a living with his feet on land. When Edward had finally come home she had not wanted to touch his cold, sodden body. Later that night, when Lyddie had shifted in the bed for the hundredth time, Edward had stilled her with the weight of his hand. “My friend,” he said, “you bear it all while I’m away, my house and my child and my affairs, but when I return, you may give it over. Let me toss and turn. Go to sleep, now.”

  “I cannot. You cannot. You cannot so suddenly take up the torch and blow me out like some candle.”

  Edward rose up on his elbow. “What’s this, now?”

  “I had to buy a cow because the last one sickened. There’s not enough to pay your tax.”

  “The oil will pay the tax.”

  “And what if you’d not come back with oil? What if you’d not come back at all?”

  “Shubael has his instruction.”

  “And should I not be told of such instruction?”

  “Why trouble your head with thinking on such matters?”

  “And what else do you guess troubles it? I must steel myself for you to be gone and then steel myself in case you don’t return, and when you come home I must put it all away and—”

  “Ah! Now I understand all. You would have me stay gone.”

  “No,” Lyddie said. “But I would perhaps save some worry over your tax if I knew Shubael’s instruction.”

  “Well, now, you might. Indeed, I see now that you might. Mind you, never did I think you sat here worrying over my tax…Very well, my friend, in for a penny, in for a pound. From hence we share all tossing and turning. Now then, were I not to return, which would only happen, I promise you, if the vessel I am mastering did not return, Shubael pays your keep out of my shares in his sloop.”

  “In Shubael’s sloop!”

  “If I and my ship go down, what good are my shares in that? So, I took an additional interest in Shubael’s, which interest he inherits on my demise and may then sell in exchange for keeping you and our daughter and whatever other children we might have acquired in the meantime. And as we speak of that, if you plan on tossing and turning yet, why not do so in this direction?”

  That night they had started a babe, or perhaps it was the next night, or the next, and then Edward had gone, and the babe had come stillborn, and she’d miscarried three more, and lost three others wellborn, with only Mehitable surviving. Mehitable had been a babe in Lyddie’s arms that day on the beach in the storm, and despite the heavy wrappings her fair hair had been plastered dark with rain and her cheeks turned clammy and red with cold; Lyddie had done that to her, and yet Mehitable had lived and thrived and grown up to marry a man who sat warm at his fire and let others do his seafaring for him. No doubt if any of Lyddie’s boys had grown up, they would have followed their father to sea, so there was that blessing in it, that Lyddie had none of Rebecca Cowett’s pain over a boy gone off the rigging at Hatteras.

  Lyddie arrived at the store, purchased the brandy without incident, delivered it to Cowett, who still sat by his wife, but silent now, collected her tea, and set off home. When Lyddie reached her house she saw Eben Freeman’s long form huddled just inside the barn door.

  He ran out from under cover. “Good Lord, Widow Berry, you’re soaked to th
e bone, and no wonder, you stroll along in this odious rain as if it were the first sun in April.” He caught up her provisions and hustled her through her own door. “What prompts you out into this weather?”

  Lyddie explained.

  “And you nurse her? Why doesn’t Cowett call in Granny Hall, or one of the women from the nation for that matter?”

  “Mr. Cowett seems content with my services.”

  “I didn’t mean to say…It merely strikes me odd that the task falls to you.”

  “It falls to me because I need to eat.” She opened her parcel of tea. “Today’s pay. May I offer you some?”

  Freeman looked down at the black leaves and up at her. “Do you mean to say—?”

  “I’ve been cut off by my son, as you predicted.”

  “Predicted! I did not predict it. Not this. Not cut off. This is—” He stopped.

  It occurred then to Lyddie that for a man who made his living by the fluidity of his tongue, Freeman’s stuck too often. “Tea?” she repeated.

  “Yes. Thank you. I—” He looked again at the tea. “I must say, the Indian pays you well. Bohea’s at three shillings an ounce now.”

  Lyddie felt the usual flush to her skin but was unsure if it marked shame or anger. Why shouldn’t the Indian pay her well? She moved around, delivering their tea, the conversation going along in fits and starts, in favor of weather over Indians, until the tea was finished and Freeman at last came to the purpose of his visit.

  “You’re determined to remain here, Widow Berry?”

  Lyddie considered and discarded several long answers. “Yes,” she said.

  “You’re within the law, of course—”

  “And my son is without it. And we’ve long established there’s naught to be done about it.”

  “We’ve established nothing like it. We established there was another course, which it now appears you’ve definitively rejected, against my counsel and advice. And with that established—”

  “We may say our good-byes and part with no rancor between us. At least that would be my hope.”

  The lawyer’s face went through an entire series of its convolutions and settled into something new and slightly frightening. He leaned forward in his chair. “And mine would be something other, Widow Berry. I attempted in good faith to carry forward your husband’s wishes, but as that is now done with, I look to my own ideas. If I may say, as much as I respected your husband—” He paused. “He would see a better nature in a man than I. I would have spelled out my direction. But now we may amend the situation. I have an idea—”

  But Lyddie didn’t fully hear the rest, her brain stalled on Freeman’s previous sentence. Yes, Edward would have seen a better nature in a man—he would have trusted Nathan with all matters concerning her, as he had once trusted Shubael—and now, as she looked, she found she could not blame him for it. He had done as most men would do. She had confessed her worry over a sick cow, an unpaid tax, and he had tried to spare her more of it.

  “Widow Berry?”

  “I’m sorry. I was after a stray thought.”

  “And did you catch it?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Would you forgive my curiosity if I asked what you think about so intently?”

  “Edward.”

  “Ah. Yes. Of course.”

  He stood up. “I must go. We’ll talk more on this later. Please send Cowett my sincerest wishes for his wife’s speedy recovery.”

  20

  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…man
y 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.

  21

  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?”