Lord, give me safe passage there and back!
The little building stood just within the tree line, a discreet distance from the cottage, but too far for Christine’s liking. If she screamed for help, would her voice penetrate the widow’s slumber?
She stopped, eyeing the tiny shed. The door was off the latch. He wouldn’t be inside, would he?
“So, ye came.”
She jumped and whirled to face a black shape emerging from the trees.
“Y–yes. I said I would.”
He gave a snort of a laugh. “So ye did. Ye can be sure I was watching to see if you went out again tonight. If you’d gone anywhere but here, I’d have known.”
She shivered, wanting nothing more than to get away from him. “Here.” She held out the tin plate with the food on it. “It’s all I could get. It’s not much, and the widow might question me about it even so.”
He took the plate and shoved a piece of the meat into his mouth. “You’ve saved a man’s life, miss.” She could barely make out the words, garbled as they were with his chewing.
“I doubt that,” she said. “You’d have found sustenance somewhere. I only made it easier for you and less likely you’d be caught.”
“That’s right. This ain’t stealin’, now, is it? You gave me these vittles.”
She didn’t deign to reply.
“I’m not so bad. Truly, I’m not. I’m innocent, you know?”
“Of what?” She wished she hadn’t responded, but he’d piqued her curiosity.
“They run me out of Haverhill, they did. Said I done something terrible, but I was innocent. I went to trial, and they couldn’t prove anything on me, but they still made me leave. The magistrate banished me from the township. I went to Portsmouth, but they heard about me from folks in Haverhill, and they said the same. ‘Go peaceful, or we’ll lock you up for vagrancy.’ But I’m innocent of the charges, I tell you.”
She wanted to ask what the charges were but decided she might be better off not knowing. She turned away.
“Wait!” he called, his mouth full again.
She paused and turned back unwillingly.
“You’ll need the plate.”
“Leave it on the step. I’ll get it in the morning.”
“Oh, I can do better than that. The old woman might go out early and step on it there. Nay, I’ll set it up on the window ledge, behind those pretty white curtains. When you get up, you can reach out and get it ever so easy. And bring me a blanket. Sure, it’s warm tonight, but it might turn cool tomorrow.”
She eyed his dark silhouette for a moment. He picked up a slice of bread and folded it, sticking half of it in his mouth. She left him, walking quickly down the path without looking back.
four
In the morning Christine found the plate, as promised, on the window ledge. She took it in, washed it, and used it in setting the breakfast table before Goody Deane was finished dressing. The old woman’s gnarled hands made it difficult for her to button and tie her clothing, but she didn’t want to give up trying. Usually she managed, albeit slowly.
“I believe I’ll go over to the Jewetts’ with you today,” the widow said.
“You’ll be welcome. I plan to do a wash and begin weaving that wool. If there’s anything ready in the garden, you and the children can pick it.”
“Aye, and pluck a few weeds.” Tabitha eyed her hands. “As long as God allows, I’ll keep on being useful.”
Christine was thankful that Tabitha had decided to go. Otherwise, she probably would have fretted all day, wondering if the stranger hung about and Tabitha were in danger. Of course, with the cottage empty, he might go in and help himself to whatever he could find. She refused to dwell on the unwelcome thought.
By the time the two women arrived at the parsonage, Pastor Jewett had already left with John to take Christine’s linen to the Heard garrison and visit his patients at the Chapman and Otis houses. Christine set to work with a sense of relief. His absence settled the nagging question of whether or not to tell him about her encounter with the outlaw.
“You should have fetched me last night,” she said, when Ben told her about Chapman’s call for his father the evening before. “I could have come back.”
“Nay, we were fine. Except Connie cried because there was no more mince pie.”
“What? I thought half a pie was left.”
“So we thought, but when John went to get it down, there was only one small piece left.” Ben shrugged. “Of course, we had to leave it for Father.”
“Of course.” Christine walked to the pie safe on the shelf and opened it. The tin box was now empty.
“Father said when he came home that mayhap you—” Ben stopped and looked away.
“What?”
He winced. “He said mayhap you took it home for you and Goody Deane.”
“I did no such thing.”
“We had a cake of our own yesterday, and no mince pies,” the widow chimed in, glaring at Ben.
“I didn’t really think it.” Ben kicked at a piece of bark on the hearth. “Do you want the fire built up?”
“I think we’d better,” Christine said.
Goody Deane nodded, her eyes snapping. “Aye, it sounds as though we’d best make some mincemeat pies for this rabble.”
“Oh, you don’t need to—”
“Hush, Ben,” Christine said with a smile. “She’s only teasing you. Fetch some good, dry wood and get a new crock of mincemeat from the root cellar.”
“There be only one left.”
“Ah, well, soon we’ll have apples to make more, won’t we?”
“Not for a good month,” Goody Deane said.
“I know where there be blackberries,” Abby piped up from the corner where she sat with her sampler. “May we go and pick some, Miss Christine?”
The thought of the outlaw crossed her mind. “Oh, I think not.”
“They’re only out behind the church,” Ben said. “I’ll take the girls, if you like.”
She turned that over in her mind. They would be easily visible from the common, and easily heard if Ben called for help. Still, she had no doubt the thief had been inside the parsonage while the family was at the Dudleys’ the previous day. “Very well, but leave Ruth here with me. “Ben, you must watch the girls, and beware of strangers, won’t you?”
He cocked his head to one side in a gesture that imitated his father exactly. “Aye.”
She helped them get ready, wondering if she were making a costly mistake. She tied Constance’s bonnet strings firmly and put a small pail in her hands.
“You will be careful of them, Ben?”
“You can be sure of it, Miss Christine.”
She leaned toward him and whispered, “All this pilfering, you know. There may be someone lurking about.”
His eyes widened. “You mean—the pie?”
“Well, we don’t know, do we?”
He nodded gravely and hustled the two girls out the door.
While they were gone, Christine went through the parsonage larder. She thought there were fewer raisins than there had been, but John was known to sneak a handful now and then. The height of the beechnuts in their jar seemed lower, but she couldn’t be sure. She simply couldn’t tell if the outlaw had stolen more than two or three pieces of pie, but she had no doubt in her mind that he had rifled the Jewetts’ stores while they were gone. He had certainly had more to eat than that loaf of Goody Deane’s bread on Monday.
She looked about the main room. He knew the arrangement of the house now and where the children slept. It made her skin crawl. “I shouldn’t have let them go.”
“What?” Tabitha Deane asked.
“The children. I should have made them wait until their father returned.”
“It’s only behind the meetinghouse.”
“I know.”
“Go with them, then. They’ll pick their berries quicker and be home in half an hour. I’ll watch Ruth and start preparing the crust.”<
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Christine untied her apron and hung it up. “You think I’m silly, don’t you?” She grabbed an iron kettle with a bail handle.
“Nay. You speak as a mother would.”
She dashed out the door and through the knee-high grass between the parsonage and the meetinghouse. Rounding the corner of the stark building, she slowed and made herself calm down. There were the children, picking around the edge of the berry patch that had sprung up where the men had felled trees several years earlier. They were fine. They laughed together in the sunshine, and the smell of the leaves and the warm, plump berries encouraged her. She walked onward, swinging the kettle.
“Miss Christine!” Constance let out a squeal and ran to greet her.
“I thought I’d help you, and we’d finish picking sooner.” Christine gently pulled up the bonnet Constance had let fall back on her shoulders. “You must shade yourself from the sun, dear.”
Ben looked askance at her but kept picking without comment, and soon they had more than enough fruit for two pies.
“We could pick more and make jam,” Abby suggested.
“Why not?” Christine also gathered blackberry leaves to dry for tea.
As they headed home at last, John and his father came ambling along the village street.
“Hello,” the pastor called. “I see you are all out foraging.”
“Aye, sir,” said Christine. “You shall have fresh blackberry pie when you sit down to dinner.”
“I look forward to it with pleasure.” He handed her a small leather pouch. “Your share of the linen money.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Christine felt the blood rush to her cheeks. She tucked the pouch quickly away, in the pocket tied about her waist beneath her overskirt.
“Mrs. Heard was most pleased, and she says if you have time to make more, she’d be delighted to get it.”
“My next project is already begun. Dark gray woolen for the boys’ new trousers.”
He nodded. “Well, I appreciate that, but I don’t begrudge you to earn more if you can.”
“Thank you.”
Ben and John carried the bundles the pastor had purchased at the trading post, and the minister left them to enter the meetinghouse and study for his Sunday sermon.
Christine headed for home with the children. She wished she could unburden her heart to the pastor. But if she did, what evil would come to the family?
A sudden thought chilled her. The outlaw had demanded a blanket. But Goody Deane had no extra blankets, and surely if she took one from the parsonage it would be missed. All day she thought about it.
In the afternoon, she sorted through Elizabeth’s clothes and selected an everyday linsey-woolsey skirt that she could make over for Abby. With care, she could probably make a dress for Ruth from the material, as well. Samuel had offered her his wife’s Sunday skirt and bodice, but she had turned him down. It would not be so long before Abby was big enough to wear them.
As an afterthought, she examined the bed linens in the trunk kept in the loft. The family didn’t need many blankets at present, and three quilts were neatly folded there. But she couldn’t give one of those to the stranger. Elizabeth had stitched them with her own hands. Not only would the family need them in cold weather, but they would be heirlooms for the three girls. Beneath them, in the bottom of the chest, she found a tattered woolen blanket. That might do. Surely no one would miss it for months, and if she worked hard, she might be able to weave some thick, blanket-weight wool after the trousers and Pastor Jewett’s new coat were finished, though those projects would take her the rest of the summer.
When she descended the ladder, Goody Deane picked up her basket. “I shall go over to my house now and lay supper on for the two of us, unless you plan to eat here tonight.”
“I’ll be there to dine with you,” Christine said. She hated the thought of the old woman’s possibly encountering the thief if she ventured about alone. “Would you like Master John to walk you home?”
“Me? Nay, I can take myself across the street.”
Christine almost protested further but could see no logical reason to do so. She had never been overly solicitous of the old woman in such matters. After all, Tabitha had fended for herself for years. If Christine began to fuss over her, she would get suspicious. “Very well, but do let us know if you need help with anything.”
While the children gathered the clean laundry off the clothesline behind the house, she managed to smuggle the old blanket outside and hide it in the woodpile, where she could get it when she left. And what would she take the man for sustenance? If she came with no food, he would no doubt rant at her. She wrapped two biscuits in a napkin and set them aside. She didn’t like to take him anything that required dishes. Returning them would be too obvious. And the Jewetts were already watching their food supply since the disappearing-pie episode.
And so it was with only the biscuits and blanket that she headed out that night after dark. She told Goody Deane she would make a quick trip to the necessary. When she reached the edge of the woods, she waited for a minute in the spot where the man had accosted her the night before, but all was still. She laid the blanket down, with the biscuits on top. An animal might get the food. But if the blanket were gone in the morning, she would know he had come for it. And if it remained where she left it? She prayed it would. For then she could assume he had moved on.
After evening prayers on Thursday, the parishioners stood about the green in the balmy evening air. The Dudleys and others whose homes were a mile or two away set out, but those who lived close lingered. The hour after Thursday meeting was the social time of the week, more so than on Sunday as the people had more freedom on weekdays to laugh and jest. The talk this week reverted to the rash of purloining suffered by the villagers. Samuel Jewett stood to one side discussing with William Heard the work to be done on the meetinghouse, but he kept one ear tuned to the conversation behind him.
“I think it’s just folks not paying attention and then blaming the imaginary thief,” said Mr. Lyford, who owned the gristmill.
“Nay, not so,” said Joseph Paine, the trader, who also served as the town’s constable now. “There be too many reports of things missing.”
“That’s right.” Daniel Otis, the blacksmith’s son, stepped forward. “I was smoothing the handle of a pitchfork I was making last week. I laid it by at milking time, with my knife beside it. When I came out of the byre and went to take it up again, my knife was missing. Clean gone. I looked all about and asked my family, but we’ve not found it yet. I’m afraid an Indian took it. With what designs, I won’t speculate. We’re locking up our tools, day and night, you can be sure.”
“Young Stephen Dudley goes about as quiet as an Indian,” Mahalia Ackley said.
Her husband smiled sheepishly. “Aye, he scares me. Came up behind me in my cornfield t’other day. I’d no idea the lad was about, and when he spoke to me, it startled me so I dropped my hoe on my foot.”
The other men and their wives laughed.
“That Stephen’s a sly one, that he is,” said Lyford.
“It comes of his living with the savages all those years.” Goody Ackley nodded emphatically. “I wonder if he’s not the pilferer, I do.”
Otis huffed out his breath. “What makes you say that? He’s a good lad.”
“But he’s so stealthy. Them Indians taught him to skulk about, and no doubt he learned to steal, too.” Goody Ackley glared at Otis, as though daring him to contradict her.
“Careful, ma’am,” said Pastor Jewett, and all heads turned toward him. “Speaking ill of someone without a shred of evidence to support the accusation can bring you trouble.”
“That’s right,” said the trader.
“I meant no ill,” Mahalia Ackley said quickly. “I only said how furtivelike he moves. And it’s the truth he stayed with those Indians long after he had a chance to go home to his folks. We all know his brother went to find him in Canada, and he wouldn’t come back. He—”
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“Enough.” Samuel’s steely voice silenced her. He advanced a step toward the couple and looked into her eyes. “I tell you, madam, such talk does not become you.”
Constable Paine took up a rigid stance beside the parson. “Indeed. This is gossip of the worst kind that can ruin a young man’s reputation.”
“Aye,” said Otis. “If there is indeed a thief among us, Stephen Dudley be an unlikely candidate. Why would a young man whose father owns a thriving farm steal a knife? Why would a lad whose mother can outcook all the goodwives in Cochecho steal a few biscuits and a dish of sauerkraut?”
“Goody Ackley, desist from this train of conversation or you shall find yourself in the stocks tomorrow,” Paine told her.
“Hmpf.” Mahalia lifted her skirt and turned toward her husband. “Husband, I believe it is time we went home.”
“A truer word was never spoken,” William Heard muttered as the woman marched toward the street with her husband trailing behind her, his chin on his chest.
Paine clapped his hand to Samuel’s shoulder. “Thank you for that, Parson.”
Samuel shook his head. “I should have spoken to her privately first.”
“Nay, she’s let her tongue run too many times in public. You’d think she would learn after the times she’s spent in the stocks.”
Samuel couldn’t help a pang of guilt. Paine represented the law, and he would have put the woman in her place without his own interference. As minister, he needed to stay neutral in local wranglings. Still, he’d felt a compulsion to stand up for Stephen and put a stop to Mahalia’s vicious talk.
“Well, time to get my children home and into bed.” He looked about for them and noticed Christine. She had the three girls and John clustered about her, waiting a short distance off. Ben had edged into the fringe of the knot of adults, but he detached himself and walked toward the family, reaching them just as Samuel did.
“Shall we be off?” Samuel asked Christine.
“Aye, sir.”
They turned toward the parsonage in silence. When they reached the house, Christine entered without asking whether he wanted her presence and helped the girls prepare for bed. Samuel placed his Bible on the shelf and hung up his coat. When he turned, Ben and John were standing by the loom, watching him.
Abiding Peace Page 4