Charis in the World of Wonders

by Marly Youmans

  Bel looked at me sidelong, smiling. I guessed she was thinking that she might have the chance to see Richard Dane and tell him her tidings.

  Mr. Barnard strode forward and inspected the unfortunate Lizzie, and swung around to us. “That is all well enough. Mr. Dane may take care of the matter of his grandson’s contraction. And I will stay to speak to this professed fortune-teller, who has had so little of wisdom and so much of corruption as to fall into the claws of Satan. Young women are ever vulnerable to the Devil, being watery storehouses of bodily humors, subject to monthly purgings. I will counsel her, and battle to restore her to our community.”

  He nodded with one quick jerk of the head. “We may not suffer an open and obstinate contemner of holy ordinance to continue in villainous works. And to misspend precious time.”

  Watery storehouses! Purgings! I felt even more sympathy for Lizzie Holt, and was glad the minister had not questioned her closely about her companion in sieve-and-scissors fortune-telling.

  Mr. Dane, I noticed, looked angered or offended by the younger minister’s speech. He spread his hands as if to encompass the room with his words.

  “As the wise Mr. Robert Burton asserts, ‘We ought not to be so rash and vigorous in our censures, as some are; charity will judge and hope the best. God be merciful to us all.’ ”

  Mr. Dane’s reproof might as well have been spoken to a stock or stone for all the heed Mr. Barnard, Goody Holt, or Lizzie paid to his words. He shook his head slightly, and I was struck by how lonely and frail he appeared. And yet I could feel nothing but comfort and content at the meeting’s outcome.

  Bel and I made our courtesies to the visitors and slipped out the door. We raced up to the garret, pushing each other and laughing.

  “We will both be married soon and have our own households to govern.” Bel snatched at my hands and we jumped up and down like children playing.

  When we slowed and stopped, I confessed to her that I regretted having a confirmed enemy.

  “You did nothing to earn one. My sister will get over her disappointment. Mayhap she will marry some crabbed old man and leave it all behind.”

  “How mighty you were! Indeed, I would be fearful to have you as a foe.”

  “Then do not cross me!” Clapping her hands together, she laughed. “I like to have my own way.”

  “Who does not?”

  Bel rubbed her arms briskly. “How stingy Mother was with your room. You needed warm fires, but I often heard her tell John to put the wood down when he was headed up the stairs.”

  “ ’Tis over,” I said, and bent to gather up my store of gowns and waistcoats from the floor.

  “Yes, and good fortune to sister Lizzie, cooped in this house. Likely she’ll be a downright thornback and have to live with Mother always.”

  She did not seem a whit concerned by this imagined outcome but shook out my mother’s blanket and began to lay out petticoats and chemises on top in preparation for rolling them up in the soft cloth. Once she paused with Mary’s blank-faced doll in her hand.

  “Poor little rag child,” she said, and gave it a kiss.

  6

  Promise

  Andover, November 1690

  The world was a bitter thing with the water turned to crystalline bone that could be shattered into brittle fragments with a hard shove, the air sharp in our noses, the snow a thin scattering on the ground. Bel Holt and I were wrapped in cloaks, hunched against the cold. Children were picking up sticks among trees on the edge of town, heaping them into great bundles that some already wore on their backs, resembling so many prickly hedgehogs—like the half-hedgehog boy in the German-forest story Goody Waters told me when I was a child, whose father wished for a son so long and hard that one day he declared that he would take even a hedgehog. And fairies in the woods by the field heard him and granted his wish with much laughter. But I expect it was not so amusing for the boy.

  The seven children were singing despite the cold and their red cheeks and noses. One of the boys had taken off his doublet and cloak and was running about with a prodigious bundle on his back. The others sang without him, their voices piping, each one singing a different tune so that the syllables jangled together:

  Four dilly-dangles,

  Four stave standies,

  Two crookers,

  Two lookers,

  One big bag,

  One wig wag.

  A child shouted that we must guess, and they all took up the refrain, pausing in their work to call, “Guess! Guess! Guess!” at us.

  Bel Holt and I laughed, not wanting to pause in the cold but caught by their game.

  “An elephant,” Bel shouted.

  “No, no, no!” They jumped up and down, pleased at our silliness.

  “Belike, say, a unicorn with a bundle,” I guessed.

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s just one crooker!”

  “It’s a horse.”

  “It’s not a horse.”

  “It’s not real!”

  “It’s the Devil’s pony!”

  “No, it’s like an angel only with four legs.”

  The last was spoken by a girl with curly hair peeping out from under her hood. Nittle and sweet-faced, she looked colder than the rest and was shivering.

  “You have enough tinder. Run home, all of you,” I said. “The air is raw.”

  “But you haven’t guessed our riddle,” a girl said. The boy who had thrown off his duds came bursting up and bellowed, “A cow, a cow, a cow.”

  “You spoiled it, Esau!”

  “That was bad!”

  “You always spoil the joke!”

  “What cow?” Bel looked around, shading her eyes.

  The children laughed, dancing about in rapture and to warm themselves. When they stopped and looked at us, their faces eager, I could not help smiling and joining in their game. “I see no cow. Not one or two or three. None at all.”

  Here they roared again, laughing and stumbling about as if I had said words so fantastical that their joy would never be at end.

  “Crookers!” A boy wearing a man’s hand-me-down felt hat held up curled fingers beside his head to stand for horns.

  “Lookers!” Another made his fingers like spectacles and peered at me.

  The boy Esau dropped onto four legs and pretended to eat snow as if it were grass. His pack of sticks wobbling, he looked more like a hedgehog boy than ever.

  “Oh,” cried Bel.

  “You mean a cow! Crookers and lookers and dilly-dangles? A cow?” I lifted my hands in amazement.

  They jumped around us, pricked us with their bundles, and shouted, “Stave standies! Wig wag!” One little one grasped me around the knees, and I leaned down to rub her back and give her a bit of warmth.

  “Now snickup,” Bel called, and clapped her hands together. “Spank away home! Tell your riddles by the fire.”

  Cloaks whipping, they wheeled like enchanted creatures who could ride the wind and dashed away, the boy Esau rushing back to retrieve his cloak and jacket and pounding after the others so strongly that we saw him overtake them before they reached the nearest house.

  “They should not be so far, alone,” Bel said. “I am glad they have gone.”

  “Yes,” I said, a sense of the quickness and ferocity of attack from the natives burning through my thoughts and dying away. It was hard to spoil my pleasure in the day, however harsh the elements. Andover was a secure place, I reminded myself. Mr. Barnard had spoken of the winter, already upon us, as a punishment for transgression, but I found it difficult to connect briskness with sin when walking in the free air with Bel Holt, talking and laughing as we went.

  We were on our way to visit Phoebe Wardwell, Bel’s friend, or, more rightly, to sew baby clothes with her. Two weeks of the banns had passed, two weeks of staying in the Dane household, two weeks of being free from Goody Holt, who had decided that she would prefer not to pay for any more of my handiwork, two weeks when Bel Holt had heard gossip join her name w
ith Richard Dane’s in the assembly. Had we ever been so glad and pleased in Andover?

  The Wardwells’ house was purchased cheaply when John Lovejoy, the man who had inherited it from his uncle, gave up on Andover and rode back to Boston and from there sailed to Norfolk, England, where he died a few years later. Afterward, Mr. Dane received a Lovejoy bequest of a small ivory triptych said to be three hundred years old, crowded with scenes of Mary and the child Jesus before a crammed architectural backdrop of stiff, tiny houses and towers. Although the sort of religious object that our people rejected, it held a fascination and was cleverly artificed. On application to the minister, this strangeness could be viewed. But there seemed nothing about the narrow, steep-roofed Wardwell house that was either so fantastic as African elephant ivory or so artfully made as the carving, although the fine brick chimbley that should have been at the center of the house jutted from the side, and the clapboard on the overhang looked scorched. Bel Holt had said there was something else peculiar about the place, and so I felt a curiosity to see the interior. The setting was ordinary enough, though a round hillock rose up near a hedge of trees and shrubs.

  “Odd,” I said, pointing.

  “Yes,” Bel said, looking smug, so that I suspected she had a secret knowledge.

  “What?”

  “Just a mighty hump of dirt,” she said.

  Inside, there was nothing strange visible, just a fire jumping on the hearth to welcome us, along with a hot drink containing maple-water and spices and a kettle of pottage slowly bubbling on the fire, as well as the special treat of marchpane molded into the shape of tiny castles, each with a sugared almond for the door.

  I held one on my palm, admiring the towers and crenellations. “It is almost as good as seeing a castle like the ones I have heard described by people born over the sea,” I said, “and will be much tastier. Thank you.”

  “Samuel Wardwell, my father-by-marriage, whittled the mold for me. I do not know why he chose a castle, as none of us have ever seen one. Nor are there likely to be any hereabouts. But a pretty fancy. He was good to make me a gift,” Phoebe said.

  She was a slight woman, a little older than Bel, and I guessed that her child would be born in about two months.

  “I am right glad you have come,” she said to me. “My sister-in-law told me of your sufferings before you found us here. You have been racked and harried but have come through.”

  She embraced me, and I found that she was as delicate as a snowbird. Her bones seemed mere twigs.

  “And I am pleased to know you,” I said.

  “Where is your husband?” Bel was not paying attention to us and looked around as if she expected to see him approaching.

  “He carted a load of trattles to the field. Dung is good for the land,” she said, “and we were given rabbits last year. They thrive and are good eating, too. But I do not know that Thomas Wardwell can work the trattles into the ground, because it is already near hard winter.”

  “The wind is bitter,” I said, and tasted the sweet marchpane with the tip of my tongue. “I do not envy Goodman Wardwell’s time in the field.”

  “He endures the chill hardily enough,” she said, “though he will be glad to warm himself by the fire and have a hot drink.”

  “As we are glad after the walk here,” I said. “I was tempted to ride my horse and bring a pillion-pad for a passenger, but Hortus was hired out for the week and nowhere to be seen.”

  “Perhaps he would not have liked to carry me,” Bel said. “I am not so light as you. And no horsewoman.”

  “Hortus is gentle. And strong.”

  “And far away, luckily for me. I had rather be chilled than ride,” she said.

  “I do not like the cold and ice,” Phoebe Wardwell told her.

  “But your supper is hot,” Bel said.

  Phoebe Wardwell laughed. “Could that be a hint, Bel Holt?”

  “It might be.”

  Goody Wardwell’s blessing sticks in memory. In time, I might have forgotten her words except that the sentiment made such a contrast with later events in her life: “We beseech Thee, good Lord, that just as our bodily hungers long for earthly bread, so may our soul’s hunger ever seek and find the abundant life of the bread of heaven; that is, Jesus Christ, who is and will be and was before the worlds were made, amen.”

  We set to and made short work of the pottage and mugs of maple-water. The fresh air in our mouths on the way was a drink that had made us hungry, and Bel and I scraped the bowls clean. But only slowly did we consume the lovely castles, wanting them to last. Still, they went to ruin so quickly!

  We talked about infant clothing and gear, trying to fathom what Phoebe Wardwell still needed to be made ready before her trouble came on her. At last we determined to venture on a few plain shifts, several long aprons, and some caps, all suitable to an infant.

  “And we can trim them.” I held out some curls of ribbon. “Bel persuaded her mother to hand over some snippets.”

  “How pretty!” Phoebe Wardwell drew them through her fingers. “Finer work than I have seen in Andover. I thank her for this, and you for coming to sew when you must have much to do.”

  “It will be handy practice for us,” Bel said. “For we may have need of such sewing on small garments ourselves someday.”

  She looked filled with mischief at this thought. I could not help but laugh and feel glad to have so merry a friend.

  “I hope you are joyful in your bridal night, and have many well-made children to raise up,” Phoebe told her.

  “I expect we will be pleased enough,” Bel said. She put the last bite of marchpane in her mouth and closed her eyes to savor it, and afterward licked her fingers to catch the last trace of sweetness.

  “Your Richard Dane is a fine figure of a man. And a kind man.” Phoebe Wardwell rested a hand on her belly. “Like my husband.”

  “Yes.” Bel rocked forward, smiling, and held her hands out to the fire.

  After our supper, we cut garments from a length of muslin the Danes had sent as a gift, and soon were busily engaged in seaming the parts.

  “In a year we may be sitting together, stitching clothes for one of you,” Phoebe Wardwell said.

  “Perhaps. And if so, I will be glad.” I felt a lightning streak of some feeling—anticipation, fear, excitement, or a mixture of them all. Jotham Herrick drifted through my thoughts, his ethereal, imaginary hand brushing against me.

  “I can wait till children come,” Bel said. “I want to rommock about in bed first, not be forbidden because a child lives in my belly. Though it is good to birth well-favored boys and girls that like to laugh and play.”

  “Rommock about in bed! Bel Holt, you are a frisky woman!” Phoebe Wardwell stretched and reached to rub the small of her back. She was smiling, though. “What a bride you will be! I am not sure your betrothed will know what a storm has overtaken him.”

  “I like to play and gambol,” Bel said. “My own mother and sister pull the sour faces more than I can bear, and to no fit purpose. I shall marry Goodman Dane, and I expect to be always frolicsome in bed and be gladsome the rest of the time. When nothing ill has happened, I mean. Because evil events do happen. We cannot do much about that except to go on. But I intend to march on with a blithe humor and with spirit!”

  Not for the first time, I reflected that I knew entirely too much about ill and evil things, and that it was hard always to be thinking on them when Bel Holt or some other person chattered as though I was still a young woman with family and an even tenor to her life. Though my story had flashed around town before I even arrived, few were so thoughtful as to consider their words around me.

  But I only bent to the work and sewed faster.

  Phoebe Wardwell, to whom I had barely spoken before the day, put her hand on mine so that I paused and looked up. “I pray that many consoling years come to you,” she said. “And that you are glad, content in your marriage. Mr. Jotham Herrick is a man much admired for learning and skill in Andover. Wh
en you become Mistress Charis Herrick, you will be restored to something like the place you once had, I imagine.”

  “He is one our Lizzie would have liked to capture,” Bel said. “Not that she can be that particular, being an elvish companion. She swings back and forth between choler and melancholy as to disposition. And she idles about the house, complaining. If she didn’t spoffle about so, going on about trifles and wasting the time! I cannot imagine her being a good manager, or making a man pleased under the bedclothes.” She stabbed at the cloth with her needle.

  “Do you never waste the time?” Goody Wardwell smiled down at her work.

  Bel Holt shrugged in reply.

  “Perhaps she will find the right man, and then she will behave differently,” I said.

  “No,” Bel said, her tone decided. “She’s harnsey-gutted in body and mind.”

  “Harnsey-gutted! A lean, stalking bird? The kind we see hunting and spearing minnows along the water’s edge? You are angry with Lizzie Holt,” I said, “and you want to be unkind. But she is your sister. Soon you will be sanguine again, and not worry so much about what she says and does.”

  She darted me a look.

  “I have no great love for Lizzie Holt because she dislikes me, and for no solid reason,” I said. “But I expect she has estimable qualities.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, I do not exactly know,” I said, “but am sure she must have some. I am not so privileged as to know her well.”

  “I am,” Bel said, “and I say that she has very few of them.”

  Phoebe Wardwell shook her head. “I believe she is attentive to your mother. And she comports herself well in the meetinghouse—”

  “What about that tempest-fit outside the meetinghouse door? That was not behaving properly,” Bel said.

  “I did hear something about that.”

  “The whole town was talking about my sister for a full week. And everyone stared at her at the next public meeting, wondering if she would tumble out of her seat and flail her arms and legs and go to woltering on the floor like a laldrum.”