The Sea Hath Spoken

by Stephen Lewis

  “They say,” Phyllis began and then hesitated as though waiting to be stopped. When Catherine said nothing, she continued, “that Abigail carries the devil’s child got in the woods one night when there was no moon and the wolves was roaming and howling about.”

  “I think not,” Catherine said. “I think the babe’s father has no cleft feet, nor no tail nor horns. And that the only darkness there is what he hides in.”

  “Still, I fear what we shall see.”

  “The stool and the butter, and no more talk of devils,” Catherine replied. “Abigail and the babe bide.”

  She strode out through the door, and waited a moment for her eyes to adjust the dim light of stars and moon, and then began to walk down the familiar path from her house to the road, and once on the road, as her feet felt the familiar terrain she gathered speed, heading northward to the outskirts of Newbury where the poorer farms were located, and where she knew she would find a frightened fifteen year old servant girl about to give birth to a baby whose father she had not yet as acknowledged, giving rise to the rumors that fed Phyllis’s overactive imagination.

  Chapter Three

  The King house was a ten foot square hut of wattle and daub construction, with a door in the front, windows on the side, and a fireplace giving out to a wooden chimney at the rear. The mud walls were cracked in several places, and as she approached Catherine could see dim light oozing through these openings. She pushed open the door. Abigail lay moaning on the pile of straw that served for her bed, with perspiration dripping from every pore. Her mother sat on a stool next to her, holding her daughter’s hand. A contraction seized the girl. Her moaning rose to a scream that gurgled in her throat and her fingers tightened so hard around her mother’s hand that Miriam’s face contorted in pain. She leaned over her daughter, made a cooing sound into her ear, and wiped the girl’s brow with a piece of rag.

  Catherine placed her palm against the girl’s abdomen and exerted a gentle pressure until she could feel the rock hard uterus beneath. She held her hand there until the contraction eased and the girl settled back into the straw. She motioned to Phyllis to put the birthing stool near.

  “I do not think it will be long,” she said. She turned to Miriam. “Have you not sent for your gossips to attend?”

  Miriam swept her arm in a gesture that pointed to the empty corners of her tiny house. “You see how it is,” Miriam said. “I did indeed make inquiries at the houses of Esther Farnworth and Josephine Matthews. The one’s husband was abed with the ague and the other’s son could not shit. But if you ask me, if you was to go there, you would find Frederick Farnworth fit to dance and young David Matthews sitting down to a meal that would shame many a man.”

  “Yes,” Catherine replied, “it goes hard with you, I well know.”

  “And what am I to do? There is not bread enough for the two of us, and now this.” She swung her head toward her daughter whose face, relieved now of the pain of the contraction, had formed itself into a sullen scowl.

  “First we must attend to the babe, and to Abigail. All else will follow.”

  “And the Lord will provide,” Miriam said, her voice tinged with a dark and despairing irony, “just as He did when my Peter went to sea and got himself drownded like Jonah, only he did not find no friendly whale to swallow him up and spit him back out on the land, a changed man, for he was not much good, if the truth be spoke, when he was alive with his feet on solid ground.”

  “Has she not told you who the babe’s father is?”

  “She did a moment before you came. I told her she must. That you needs must ask her, and that she must answer.”

  Abigail again moaned. Catherine lifted her shift and probed with her fingers.

  “I feel the babe’s head,” she said. “Phyllis, the butter.”

  Phyllis handed her the cloth through which the melting butter oozed. Catherine opened the cloth and covered the fingers of her right hand with the oil. She coated Abigail’s peritoneum. The girl offered a wan smile. Catherine stroked her forehead with her other hand, and then ran her fingers down her cheek.

  “Soon, my love,” she said. “But you must tell me the name you told your mother .”

  Abigail nodded. The pain of the contraction tightened her jaws and her front teeth came down hard enough onto her lower lip to draw blood. She forced her mouth open for a deep breath.

  “Jonathan,” she said. “Jonathan Peters.”

  Catherine had heard many childbed professions over her years as a midwife and had trained herself not to respond to even the most shocking revelations, including hearing years ago that the young girl, no more than fourteen writhing in agony before her had been impregnated by her own brother. Abigail’s finger pointing at Governor Peters’ young nephew, recently arrived from England, an ordained minister with a special interest in bringing the Gospel to the savages, almost caused her to lose that well trained composure, but she permitted herself only a small nod and then turned to Phyllis.

  “Take an arm, if you will, while I lift the other, and we will have her onto the stool. She will not wait much longer.”

  Almost as soon as Abigail settled on the u-shaped seat of the stool, another contraction began, and tears filled her eyes,

  “Mother,” she cried out, “I cannot bear it.”

  Catherine was on her right side, holding her hand, and Phyllis on her left. Miriam leaned over from behind and cradled her chin.

  “You can and you must,” she said.

  “Aye mother, but cannot you send for Jonathan. He should be here. He...” she tried to continue, but the pain forced her mouth closed, and she shut her eyes against it. Her body tightened as the contraction reached its peak, and then she let herself fall back against her mother. “Jonathan,” she whispered.

  “Hush,” Miriam said. “You know he will not come, that the governor does not open his door to me, and the lad himself would not greet you if he saw you on the street, so how can you believe that he will come here to see his babe born?”

  Abigail sighed and her face set into an expression of resignation that dulled her eyes at the same time it puffed out her cheeks.

  “Then he and the governor care not that this babe be a bastard.”

  “Perhaps in time,” Catherine said. She knelt in front of Abigail and searched between her legs with her fingers. She felt the tuft of coarse hair, and she permitted herself a small smile. “The next one,” she said, “push your babe out, for it is half way through the door.”

  The contraction came almost immediately and Abigail threw herself back against Miriam. She planted her feet hard against the floor and pushed. She rose off the stool, and the babe’s head was out. A moment later, the babe was in Catherine’s arms. She held it upright, and squeezed the nostrils to clear them. The babe opened its mouth, scrunched up its cheeks, and announced his entrance to the world with a loud and prolonged cry.

  Abigail straightened herself on the stool and stared at her child. Her eyes showed a mixture of disbelief and pride. Catherine held the babe for her to see.

  “A boy,” she said, “and his name will be Jonathan, whether his father acknowledge him or not.”

  Catherine though was not listening. Her fingers had probed and she had felt the warm blood mixing with the oil of the butter on the torn peritoneum.

  “Phyllis,” she said. “We will need the needle.”

  The needle was a fish bone with its natural point sharpened to a fine edge. It broadened slightly toward its base where a hole had been drilled to accommodate the catgut that served as a suture.

  “Take her legs,” Catherine said.

  Phyllis leaned over Catherine, who was kneeling between Abigail’s knees, with the fingers of one hand holding the torn flesh together, and the needle poised over the wound in her other hand. Phyllis seized Abigail’s thighs with her strong hands.

  “Right,” she said.

  Abigail’s eyes started and saliva flecked her lips. Her nostrils flared with fear like those of a cap
tured animal as she struggled to move her pinioned legs.

  “This is nothing like what you just felt,” Catherine said, “but I cannot have you moving about, so you must bide a while longer.”

  As she talked, she pulled the needle through the edge of the wound, and with a few, efficient motions closed the tear. She rose stiffly against the resistance of arthritic knees.

  “I warrant you will not be walking about much,” Phyllis said, “or...”

  “Hush,” Catherine said.

  “Or sitting for that matter,” Phyllis muttered under her breath.

  * * * *

  The afterbirth was slow in coming, but Abigail did not lose much more blood when it did. Still, her head lolled and her flesh was white and damp with perspiration.

  “Do you fear for her?” Miriam asked.

  “As I always do, but I think she is no worse than exhausted, poor girl.” She turned to Phyllis. “I fear more for those two under my roof. Phyllis, get you home to them, and see if you can help them ready themselves to stand before the magistrates. I follow as soon as I am content that Abigail is not in danger.”

  “I do not think they will listen to me,” Phyllis said.

  “Speak to them, nonetheless, and say your words come from me.”

  “I do believe...”

  “You may be right, but try anyway.”

  * * * *

  Catherine heard the voice as though from far away, and for a moment she was a young wife again, listening for the sounds of distress from her three year old daughter. She began to rise before she realized that the sound was not coming from her memory of that night so many years ago when all of her skill could not save the life of her Abigail. She looked about confused for the moment until she saw Miriam, holding the babe, standing over her daughter who stirred now on the straw.

  “I was dreaming of my daughter,” Catherine said.

  “I know you will always remember that night.”

  “Yes,” Catherine replied, “but how is your Abby?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she leaned over and ran her hand over the girl’s cool forehead.

  “Well,” she said, “very well indeed.”

  “I thought so, but better it is to have it from your lips.”

  The babe cried, a soft, needy cry, and Abigail rose to a sitting position and extended her arms.

  “My Jonathan,” she said, “I must have my Jonathan, if I cannot have the other.”

  * * * *

  Those words rang in Catherine’s mind as she paused unexpectedly before the house of her old friend Magistrate Woolsey. The pain and anger, and perhaps something like love, in Abigail’s words demanded a response from Catherine beyond her duties as midwife. She turned on her heel, walked to the magistrate’s door and knocked. In a moment, Woolsey’s serving-girl, Dorothy, opened the door, and without a word motioned Catherine into the front room. There at his desk with a shawl about his shoulders in spite of the summer warmth sat her old friend. He rose a little out of his chair but then sat back down again with a shrug.

  “It’s the ague,” said Dorothy, with the emphasis of one who speaks only with certitude. She bowed and left.

  “I must attend the hearing on the morrow,” Woolsey said with a frown. “I hope you did not come to sway me to leniency in my illness.”

  “Not at all,” Catherine said. “I would never so presume to anticipate your settled judgment. It is another matter brings me here.”

  Woolsey groaned.

  “Worse and worse, I fear.”

  “Not so,” Catherine said with a grim smile. “Just a little matter of justice for one who has no-one else to speak for her.”

  A look of recognition spread over the magistrate’s face.

  “Dorothy tells me you have been attending Abigail King.”

  “I have.”

  “And you now know the father of her babe.”

  “I do.”

  “And you want me force him to acknowledge his responsibility.”

  “Why, yes,” Catherine said. “You see how simple some matters are.”

  “You have not told me...” he began.

  “Ah, but you do admit the principle?”

  “I must.”

  “Then the man you seek is Jonathan Phillips.”

  Woolsey settled further back into his chair, his shoulders slumped.

  “Simple, you say.”

  “With your authority I will have him fetched to you.”

  “Do so and I will what I can,” he murmured.

  “I thought you would,” Catherine replied. “And I will send Phyllis around with a tea that will relieve your ague.”

  “I trust it will give me strength,” he said.

  “It, and the Lord,” Catherine answered. She turned to take her leave and, appearing as though on call, Dorothy led her to the front door.

  * * * *

  Massaquoit’s wigwam, stationed beneath the spreading limbs of a huge maple on a rise behind Catherine’s house, had its flap entrance face south toward Newbury Harbor. Massaquoit had built it with this orientation so that the wind blowing off the water would reach him at his front door. But he did so, not because he yearned for the ocean, but to remind him that the water just beyond the harbor was where his comrades’ bodies rested fathoms beneath the calm, blue surface, victims of the English treachery that had promised life in exchange for an end to war and had delivered death instead to guarantee the peace.

  If the south brought sad memories, the east and the rising sun reminded him of life’s promise. And so he had cut an opening in the summer reed sheathing on the eastern side of his wigwam so that he could feel the sun’s rays as soon as it rose above the horizon each dawn. Even in the winter, except in the harshest weather when he felt compelled to cover the opening with a deer skin, he kept this window to the dawn uncovered, choosing to suffer the cold air it admitted so as to feel the distant slant of a December morning’s sun.

  This morning he had been up for some time, roused by the hotter rays of the sun, and he sat now cross legged at his fire circle heating a pan of samp, a mixture of cornmeal and maple syrup. He dipped a spoon into the samp to test its warmth when he heard a concatenation of voices, two sopranos belonging to females with the occasional baritone of a male. He recognized Phyllis’s voice, of course, and he surmised that the others belonged to the English brother and sister. He peered through his window and saw Phyllis’s broad back. Her arms were spread out and her voice was raised to something approaching a shout. Her words, which issued in a steady stream, alternated between threats and pleas. The other female’s voice, much lighter and almost lilting, was like bubbles bouncing above the vehemence of Phyllis’s language. It seemed that the young English woman was amused, for she giggled whenever Phyllis paused for breath .

  Phyllis stepped aside and standing in full view was the young English woman with her chest bared to the morning sun, her red hair running down her back to her waist, her hands on her hips, her voice a song of merriment. Some twenty yards away, Catherine’s man servant, Edward, was hoeing between the rows of beans. He did not look up.

  “But they are staging this farce. I come to them only as a player,” she said.

  “Even so, you might come covered,” Phyllis replied.

  “I expect I am to be whipped.”

  “I cannot say.”

  “But I am certain, and when I am, will they not bare my back, and in so doing...” She did not complete her sentence. Instead, she thrust her chest out, and turned toward Edward. When he kept his head down, she whistled, a trill like a song bird. Edward looked up, stared at her for a moment, and then bent back to his hoeing.

  Phyllis looked to the brother.

  .“It would be well to cover thyself, now,” he said to his sister. She looked at him with a sly smile, and then nodded. She joined the two ends of her bodice together and pulled the laces through the eyelets, one after the other. Phyllis waited until the lace reached the top of the bodice, and then she seized the e
nds and tied a firm knot.

  “She does as the spirit moves her,” the brother said.

  “What spirit might that be?” Phyllis asked.

  “Why, the spirit of the Lord,” the brother replied.

  “In Newbury,” Phyllis said, “she would do well to listen to the magistrates who have summoned you both to attend them this morning. It is only the influence of Mistress Williams that gives you the freedom to make your own way. Else the constable would be here to lead you away himself.”

  Jane grabbed Roger’s hand and with an exaggerated step toward the path leading away from the house pulled her brother along.

  “Why, then, we must not keep them waiting, and so sully Mistress Williams’ good repute. Come along, now, but do not forget your hat.”

  Roger smiled and put his hand on the wide brim of his hat.

  “I surely would not.”

  “But you will remove it before the magistrates, will you not?” Phyllis demanded.

  “Let us hurry along, then,” Roger said.

  Massaquoit watched them leave. The young woman was determined, he concluded, to create trouble for herself, for her brother, and therefore for Catherine, and that trouble would sooner or later find itself at his door. For now, though, he chose to make his breakfast and enjoy the sudden quiet, broken only by the thwack of Edward’s hoe against the sun hardened earth.

  * * * *

  A sense of foreboding weighed on Catherine as she made the last turn and started up the rise toward her house. The sun was already up, and she could see her man servant, Edward, stooped over a row of beans, pulling out weeds one at a time with a deliberate care that sometimes impressed her with its thoroughness, and at others irritated her with its slowness, but this morning served only to indicate that she was too late to accompany Roger and Jane to their hearing before Governor Peter and Magistrate Woolsey. Edward always breakfasted after everybody else, and since he was now at work, the others must have left for Newbury Center some time ago, perhaps as much as an hour. She saw the smoke rising from Massaquoit’s wigwam. She would get more information from him than from her taciturn man servant, and so she paused before the flap. Long custom had taught her that Massaquoit would sense her presence without her announcing it, and within a few seconds he emerged through the flap.