by Peg Kerr
They hailed Katherine and sent her to fetch her mother. Goody Carter soon appeared, wiping her plump hands on her apron. “Why, good afternoon to you, Reverend, Mr. Latham,” she said in surprise. She was a big woman, with strong fleshy arms and a ruddy, good-humored face with a sprinkling of moles over the corner of one lip. A fringe of black curls spilled out of her cap and over her forehead. “Is Dorcas low again, good Reverend? I had thought the gargle I brought her would make her comfortable.”
“Nay, Dorcas is better,” William replied. He felt taken aback at her assumption that he had come personally to fetch medicine for his servant, but then smothered his irritation with a stern warning to himself to cultivate the humility proper to a minister of God.
“We have come to you for help for this girl, Goody Carter,” Jonathan said, dismounting. Carefully, he pulled Eliza off the horse’s back. “We found her alone, in the wood. I will carry her—do you have a bench or stool inside where I may set her down? For, see, her feet are inflamed and raw, and her hands, too.”
Patience stepped forward, squinting a little, to look at Eliza’s hands. “Poor girl!” she exclaimed. “Aye, make haste and come inside, Mr. Latham. Mind the doorstep, for I fear me the board is loose. I have asked Daniel to nail it down any time this last fortnight but he— Reverend Avery, have a care, the doorstep. Katherine! Pray you bring the washbasin and the pitcher I just filled from the well.”
She lifted the wooden latch and led the small party inside to the parlor, where the aroma of bean and turnip soup drifting in from the hall filled the air. Eliza looked around warily. Although the walls were whitewashed, the floor had not been swept, and several meals’ worth of dishes covered the table. The bed, with a pile of washing dumped upon it, had been left unmade. Patience Carter had many virtues, but a firm command of the housewifely arts was not among them.
If she felt embarrassed to have two of the most important men in the town see her home in such a state, Patience gave no sign. Hastily, she removed a couple of bread pans from a bench and dragged it away from the wall. Jonathan set Eliza down there gently. When Katherine brought the basin, Patience laboriously knelt down, grunting, to place it on the floor. “What is your name, child?” she asked as she guided Eliza’s feet to rest in the basin. “How came you to be so hurt?”
“We don’t know her name,” Jonathan said.
Patience looked up at Eliza in surprise as she picked up the water pitcher. “Can she not tell you?”
“We think she can hear and understand us, but she is mute.”
“Yet she can hear? Perhaps her wit is diseased, or she has suffered some kind of attack. Did she have any other hurt?”
“We don’t—” Jonathan began, but stopped as Eliza shook her head.
“Ah, you can understand me, can you?” Patience said kindly.
Eliza nodded.
“Well, then, I must ask you my questions, instead of speaking to those around you, as if you were deaf or witless, eh?” Patience set the pitcher down and leaned forward, frowning, to look closely in Eliza’s eyes. Gently, she took Eliza’s chin between her thumb and forefinger, turning her head so that the sunlight from the window shone in her face. She leaned in, so closely that for a startled moment William thought she was going to kiss the girl, but she was only comparing one eye to the other. “The apples of your eyes are the same size, and respond well to light. No blow to the head, then, I think.”
“She was making—where is it?” Jonathan began.
“Here.” William, who had come into the house behind the others, had the bundle of nettle flax and woven cloth under his arm. He put it on the table for Patience to see. “This leaf here, you see—Goodman North said it was a nettle.”
Patience’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and she looked at Eliza’s feet and hands again. “She has been breaking nettles with bare hands and feet? Why would she— Here now, don’t touch that, child,” she said quickly as Eliza stepped out of the basin and rose to limp eagerly over to the table. “Some leaves are still clinging; you will burn yourself again.”
Eliza reached for the bundle anyway—until Jonathan seized her hands and gently pulled them back. Eliza wrenched one free, but William twitched the bundle out of her reach. She slammed a fist against the table in frustration.
“This happened in the woods, too,” Jonathan said tensely, trying to recapture Eliza’s other hand.
“Take that outside, out of her sight, Reverend Avery,” Patience said quickly, and William did so. “Let her go, Mr. Latham, you will only vex her more. Child, harken to me. Child!” She took Eliza by the shoulders and gave her a shake. Once Eliza looked at her, Patience immediately released her. “Your work will be kept safe for you,” Patience said reassuringly in answer to Eliza’s stricken look. “But look you, we must now tend to your hurt. Please, come sit down again.”
For a long moment Eliza hovered indecisively on the edge of flight. But Patience smiled at her, gesturing in the friendliest possible manner toward the bench. Eliza looked over at Jonathan, who nodded encouragingly. “Goody Carter will help ease your hurt,” he said. “Will you not sit and tarry with us?”
Reluctantly, Eliza came and sat down again. Patience helped ease her feet back into the washbasin and then emptied the pitcher into it. Eliza hissed at the touch of the water against the raw, oozing patches. Patience shook her head, clucking her tongue. She beckoned her daughter over and hoisted herself to her feet. “Here, Katherine, bathe her hands and feet. Carefully now, wipe the dirt out of the wounds with this.” She handed Katherine a rag and went over to the sideboard to fetch a candle.
“Can you help her?” Jonathan asked her in a low voice as she lit it at the fireplace.
“Aye, if it be only nettle burns. I have no dock leaves in my house now, but I do have dock root in my stores; a decoction of that will give her ease. It will take but a shake of a cat’s whisker to prepare. I can gather the leaves tomorrow.”
Patience went down to the cellar with a candle and soon came back, drawing long slender dock roots from her waist pocket. As she busied herself at the hearth, raking up coals and setting up a kettle on the trammel hook to boil the root in cider vinegar, Jonathan went to sit on the bench beside Eliza. The afternoon light pouring through the western window onto her unruly hair caught glints like curves of molten copper wire, so bright they almost hurt the eye if he stared too long. Rarely had he ever seen a maiden with uncovered hair. He wished he could know what she was thinking, as she looked quietly around the room. He thought her gaze seemed interested and observant, if still wary and watchful. She certainly did not look to him to have the vacant gaze of a half-wit. She became aware of his regard and her eyes met his for a moment. The intensity of silent thought in them intrigued him. He wondered whether she was curious to know what manner of man he was. He smiled at her, hoping to coax a warmer expression from her in return. Although she held his gaze for a long moment, she did not smile back, but merely turned her attention back to the basin. William, coming back in from outside, noticed the silent exchange and frowned.
“A word privately in your ear, Mr. Latham,” he said, placing a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. “And you, Goody Carter.” Jonathan rose from the bench and followed him, and when Patience had covered the kettle and stepped over to join them, William said, his voice lowered, “We must decide what is to be done with her. She is an alien. And as an alien, she may not, by law, linger here in the community without any business for longer than three weeks.”
“Unless examined and approved by the local authority,” Jonathan amended, a small gleam in his eyes.
“As magistrate, I believe I am that authority.”
After a moment of dismay, William recovered himself, saying, with a small bow of his head, “Indeed. Yet how can you discover her business and the moral fitness of her character if she cannot speak? Or will not,” he added darkly.
A baffled silence fell for a moment.
“Can she write?” Jonathan said suddenly, a new hope s
pringing to life.
“‘Tis a good thought. Well, let us see.” Patience went over and gently dried Eliza’s hands with a lockram towel and then fetched a slate and slate pencil. “Do you know how to use these, child?”
Clumsily, because of the blisters on her hands, Eliza took the slate. She raised the pencil to write upon it... and then hesitated. The first word you utter will pierce through the hearts of your brothers like a dagger. Their lives hang upon your tongue. Eliza did not think that writing and speech were the same, yet she wondered now whether the fairy would agree. The fairy had clearly warned her, above all, to keep the nature of her task to herself. Perhaps the constraint was truly about whether or not she told another at all, rather than about whether the telling was in speech or writing. If that were true, then the first touch of a pencil upon a slate might be just as fatal to her brothers. She couldn’t know for certain, she realized with a rush of despair. She looked up at the intent faces watching her. Jonathan and Patience, at least, showed nothing but sympathetic interest, and she longed to unburden her soul to them in response. And yet... reluctantly, she put down the pencil. Risking her brothers’ lives for her own comfort was simply unthinkable.
Jonathan sighed in disappointment as Eliza placed the slate on the bench at her side.
“A great pity,” William said slowly, and he sighed, too. “How can we ever learn aught about her?”
Patience laughed and shrugged. “Dear me, child,” she said, giving Eliza a conspiratorial wink, “if our good Reverend should ever have babes of his own, we must hope they never will be left in his care if they fall sick, eh?”
Jonathan threw William a speaking look. “She baits you, my friend.”
William sniffed, knowing it, too, but was unable to resist saying, “I do not dispute I may lack a woman’s touch as a nurse, Goody Carter, but I do not see—”
“Faith, sir, exactly so! And if you do not see, ‘tis because you do not look. Why, if I only cared for people who speak or write, how could I help a young babe with worms, or a man fallen into insensible fever from unbalanced humors? A poor nurse I would be, indeed! No, any healer who wishes to earn the fee must watch for other, harder signs. This girl,” she gestured toward Eliza, “has much to reveal about herself, even if she can neither speak nor write. We only need take the time and trouble to study, to learn it.”
“I do confess I had thought,” Jonathan began, throwing William a glance, “that she might stay with you, Goody Carter. If you could do as you suggest, watch her, and find out about her...”
“Hmm,” Patience said consideringly.
“Yet there may be a danger,” William said doggedly.
“From her?” said Jonathan, incredulous astonishment at the very idea plain in his voice. Patience laughed her characteristic merry laugh. “Why, I think my arm is stout enough not to fear any danger from a girl with wounded hands and feet.”
“Then you will take her?” Jonathan said eagerly. “If you give her some simple tasks, perhaps you can learn about her, as you say.”
She went back over to the bench, took the rag from Katherine, and lifted Eliza’s feet and then her hands carefully to inspect them. “With those hands, she may not be able to work much at first,” Patience said. She went to take the dock root kettle from the hearth.
“Come now, Goody Carter, what can persuade you?” He thought for a moment, and an idea occurred to nun. “I heard Goodman Noah Fish saying something to you after meeting this last Sabbath. About a debt—”
“Aye,” Patience replied a little shortly, not liking the reminder. “I bought some boards last winter from his sawmill, to repair my stillroom lean-to. I had planned to pay with the new calf I expected this spring, but the cow miscarried.” She set a piece of cheesecloth over a bowl and poured the kettle contents through to strain it.
“I will pay to redeem the debt,” Jonathan promised. “If you will provide her with bed and board, at least until I have to examine her in three weeks and”—he stopped, trying to think of an excuse to call before then—“and if you, er, will mend a half a dozen shirts for me.”
Patience blinked in surprise, but after a moment’s thought, she nodded. “A fair bargain, I think, Mr. Latham.”
“Then we are agreed?” he said eagerly, extending his hand.
“Ah, but you forget one thing.”
He looked puzzled. “And that is?”
She shook her head in disbelief and indicated Eliza with a small jerk of her chin. “Her. Does she wish to stay?”
She went over to the bench, motioned her daughter aside, and added part of the decocted dock root solution to the basin. “Nettle in, dock,” she half sang under her breath. “Dock in, nettle out, dock rub nettle out.” She poured the rest of the solution into another basin and set it on the table. “Here is another bowl for your hands, too. Dabble your fingers in it. There.” She smiled when, after a few moments, Eliza lifted her hands out of the water and looked at them in blank surprise. “Eh, they do feel better, do they not?”
Eliza nodded. In fact, the relief from the nettle sting was great, although her hands and feet still felt swollen.
“Put them back in to soak more,” Patience told her, and Eliza did so. “I’ll make a salve of flax seed and slippery elm bark for you,” Patience continued, “and then wrap your hands and feet. We don’t want the wound closing with proud flesh. I will find some dock leaves tomorrow and rub your skin with the juice and then dress them again. I would like you to stay here with me for several days so that I may be at hand to watch how they heal.”
A frown line appeared between Eliza’s brows. She was not certain of the way back to the cave. Worse, her nettles had been taken away, and the fairy had admonished her that not just any nettles could be used. She was not sure how or even if she could get them back, but perhaps if she waited a few days, something might happen to restore them to her.
And yet, her brothers would be so frightened and worried for her when they returned and found her gone. She wondered whether they would be able to find her, if she was not free to look for them. As she wavered, torn, Patience gave her a keen look. “You’re sharp set, ain’t ye?”
Eliza consulted her stomach, and nodded.
“I have bean soup, and bread and cheese to fill your belly. And an apple tart, too....” She raised an eyebrow as her words trailed off invitingly.
Jonathan bent down so his face was almost level with Eliza’s. “Please stay,” he said simply. “Goody Carter will be good to you, and it would please her to have you as her guest. It...” He hesitated. “It would please me if you would allow us to make you comfortable. And you can give her help in exchange, if you are willing. Will you not remain with her for a while?”
He looked at her so earnestly, so wistfully, that to her own faint surprise, as her eyes met that look, something about it made her nod once in agreement, almost without meaning to do so.
“Good!” Jonathan said, his smile warm with gratitude.
“Reverend, Mr. Latham, will you sup with us?” Patience offered. “Or stay at least to drink a mug of cider?”
William managed not to look at the dishes on the table as he declined. “Nay, you are very kind, but work on my sermon awaits, and Dorcas has no doubt dressed my dinner already. Mr. Latham,” he added pointedly, “you will accompany me back to town, I hope?”
“Aye,” Jonathan said reluctantly, standing. “I should go, too, I suppose.” A happy thought struck him.
“But... perhaps I might accept your kind invitation later this week, when I bring the shirts?”
To William’s dismay, this plan was rapidly agreed to. Recognizing the inevitable, William merely bit his lip and smiled, fearful of arousing Jonathan’s stubbornness by arguing the point. Patience accompanied the men outside as they readied themselves to take their leave. As Jonathan mounted his horse and gathered up the reins, he said to Patience with a touch of anxiety, “You will take good care of her. Won’t you?”
She managed to reply so
berly that, aye, of course she would, with only a quiver at the corner of her mouth betraying her. Satisfied, Jonathan turned his horse’s head and touched its sides with his heels.
“Coming, Reverend?” he said back over his shoulder.
“In a moment,” William said, climbing up into his own saddle. Once Jonathan had ridden out of earshot, he said in an undertone to Patience: “See that she is given a coif, so her hair may be decently covered.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned his horse and flicked the reins, urging it to a trot to follow Jonathan.
Goody Carter had excellent skills as a nurse, and Eliza’s hands and feet were very soon on their way to healing completely. For the first day or two, she merely sat quietly in the kitchen yard on the bench outside the doorway, looking up at the sky hour after hour. But then, one day, Goodman Danvers arrived to call Patience to his house to apply a roasted sorrel poultice to his son’s lame foot. When Patience returned, she found Eliza hobbling around the parlor slowly, pulling a broom across the floor. Eliza had taken care to sweep in the corners and under the legs of the dresser that held the pewter plates, something Patience had not bothered to do for over a year. She had used sand to scrub away the sticky spot on the floor where Patience had spilled a dose of Solomon’s seal syrup. And, as Katherine reported, she had tended the fire, unasked. Although secretly very satisfied, Patience made no more outward notice of this initiative than to thank Eliza politely. She privately instructed her daughter and son, however, to watch and let her know whatever else the strange girl took it into her head to do about the house and yard.
The next night, Jonathan arrived for supper bearing his talisman of admittance—a half dozen shirts bundled under his arm. Patience served a simple pottage, made of leftover broiled fish and greens from the midday dinner, and Jonathan ate his helping without noticing much about the taste. He talked with Patience about the arrival of the new blacksmith, Goodman Norcross, into the community, the rumors of troubles with the Indians to the north, and the difficulty caused by the rivalry of the two local brewers for the town’s business. And all the while, he covertly and openly watched Eliza. He exerted himself to interest and even amuse her, and tried to make her feel included in the conversation by stopping to explain to her who the people were they were discussing. Although she did not laugh or even smile at his stories, she listened carefully to all that was said, he was sure.