Charis in the World of Wonders

by Marly Youmans

  “I suppose that is as feasible a way as any. Or should we carry the sacks together to Hortus instead?”

  “I am afraid of being too slow,” I said. “What if the bells ring?”

  “Do not fear that they will wake the town for this, or at least not when night holds. When the first of dawn comes, who can say what Mr. Barnard might do?” Jotham Herrick shook his head slightly. “And what of Samuel’s clouts and linen still drying by the fire?”

  “Leave them,” I said. “When the constable returns from Boston, he will want to seize my goods. Let him snatch up the soaked clouts!”

  He nodded. “An admirable thought.”

  “I will not be happy until we are away, although I dread the thought of Samuel growing too cold on the journey. But the distance is not so very far to Haverhill.”

  “Far enough,” he said. “The river—if there is little or no open water, we need no contact with ferries at any of the usual crossings.”

  The month seemed much too early for the rivers to be frozen, but the ponds in the town limits—even the Great Pond—had been frozen over for some time. Whether the river passage would be safe for us was a mystery.

  “Strange to say, but this famously brutal winter coming on that the ministers declare is a judgment upon us. . . it may be the instrument of Providence to save me from false judgment. The land and water may redeem me from death. If the river is hard frozen like the ponds. If only it is. Life is so very wayward and wandering in its shape sometimes,” I said. “Who can predict what will come to us?”

  “I am wary of a river crossing,” Jotham Herrick said. “But I see no other route. A ferry would make our movements known. Though perhaps the ferries are ice-locked now.”

  We parted, and I clambered over the snow in my pattens, my steps making craunching and squeaking noises because it was so cruelly cold, and I found Hortus and lifted up the lantern to lead him to the lean-to. And I was glad to put on my cloak and find it warm and horse-fragrant from Hortus’ body.

  At the shed, Mr. Herrick tied on our burdens with ropes while I held Samuel under the cloak and Hortus blew billowing clouds into the air. My husband had been clever and tidy, as was always his wont, and even managed to bundle my little coffer into a safe, neat piece of wrapped baggage. Snow began to fall—a sparse snow of widely separated stars. In truth, it was so frigid that the air was numb and almost beyond all snowing.

  My stout Hortus braved the weight, though it was more than I liked. He nosed at the unfamiliar lantern and, feeling its heat, swerved his head sharply away. No doubt I pleased him by soon blowing out the light. Jotham fastened the last of the parcels and helped me onto the horse, handing up Samuel and mounting behind us. Starting out, I would not be the one to ride on the pillion-pad, since Hortus knew me best. We were uncomfortable and slovenly looking riders with our knobby, bunchy load and our cloaks and coverlets flowing over all. In settling into place, I was surprised to see that my husband had lashed our big colander onto a bundle. It was a handy and unusual piece with a deep belly, a thick band around the top, sturdy handles, and three little feet. The colander seemed a creature from a Goody Waters tale to me, a big-bellied German dwarf with snub feet and hands on high hips. But it was just the sort of object that I had been sure we would have to abandon.

  “Why the colander, husband?”

  “A useful and well-made piece of work that I did not want to leave behind,” Jotham Herrick said. “Besides, wife, I have an idea of how to wield it for our good help on the journey. Wait and see.”

  “What an amusing and ingenious man you have for a father, young Samuel,” I said, but the babe slept on, his face puckered against the rawness of the air. At least the winds had stilled themselves, so that the star-blessed, frozen landscape looked to be cut from crisp pasteboard.

  We moved off slowly, the light from stars and moon casting us down onto the snow as a monstrous shadow. Not wishing to cross the river near the two ferry sites at either end of the Shawsheen Fields, we followed the cartway in the direction of the meetinghouse but turned hard by a Swan house as if toward the ferry. We swung again to cross Cochichewick Brook (water as hard as stone, with its music locked away) and chose the road to Haverhill. I was easier in my mind when we passed Great Pond that some call The Patten because of its shape and two Barker houses (and there I thought of Goodman Abbot and Goodman Barker, snoring by the fire in the nigh-empty Wardwell house, and wished them well for the morrow) and after that the site where an Ayer house stood on the far bank of the Merrimack, though we could see nothing of its bulk in the dark.

  For some time we kept close to the river, searching for a certain location where it narrowed and yet was straight and fairly smooth in summer, with ripples around many low tables of rock. For we knew that the river would freeze first and hardest around stone. There we thought our footing might be best and safest, although in truth I longed to cross where the river shrank most and was not so daunting a width. But in those places where the water tumbled choppily in summer, the ice was rough and gleamed like a boneyard heaped with skeletons under the starlight and moon.

  “It looks as though the first ice was broken like sugared candy cracked with a mallet,” Jotham Herrick said. “And thrust into hillocks of slabs and shards.”

  “I was seeing bones.”

  “Not bones,” he said. “Candied sugars and sweetness.”

  So easy to smash, I thought, but said nothing.

  Samuel woke and made a series of small, trembling cries. Perhaps he was shocked at the cold in his nose like two tiny nails, or the odd sensation of frigid cold in his throat or on his young, moist eyelids. I pulled him closer under the shelter of my cloak and gave him milk to warm his body. When he was done and I held him so that he could see the world around, he looked about with eyes so intent that I smiled for pleasure in seeing him gaze on the stars and moon with a frosty ring around its misshapen head.

  “All will be well,” Jotham Herrick said.

  “Yes,” I said, though in truth I was fainthearted and unsure, and so took care to remember other days and nights in the wilderness, and how we are never really alone, and also how my mother used to say that the ones who do what they fear to do are they who win the most courage. That familiar reflection made me feel bolder, and I gazed around me at the river gleaming between trees and the dazzlement of the stars and was content with the ice scene and Jotham’s arm about my waist.

  “The flight into Egypt,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  I pictured Mary and Joseph and the child Jesus journeying toward Egypt, not under the self-same stars, yet by starlight and moonlight, and not beside forest and river but by sand and sea.

  Remember us in the wilderness, Child who fled and returned.

  But I might never return to this landscape: this should be my last glimpse of the spot, for I meant to flee and not return.

  “Look! This may be the crossing,” Jotham Herrick said.

  Hortus stopped when I called to him, bobbing his head to the ground to snuff and blow great clouds at the snow. He began nibbling at the tips of some scrub willows.

  “Someone has been here,” I said.

  Large footprints in the snow led onto the river and wandered back again.

  “But changed his mind,” Jotham Herrick said.

  “Could he have been fishing?”

  “Surely no one would chop a hole and fish that way on a river, not with so many ponds close by. Not with the risk of tumbling in.”

  We looked at each other uneasily. “I trust he is far away,” I said.

  “Snug in bed, I hope.”

  Dismounting, Jotham reached up his arms for Samuel before I slid from the saddle. Handing the babe back to me, he rummaged in the parcels and found a sack I had stitched together from scraps of camlet.

  “What have you done?” I was perplexed by the pale shapes inside—a dozen or more.

  Jotham Herrick smiled as he knelt down, spilling a dozen big shells from the bag.


  “Clams? From the coast?”

  “Not to eat,” he said, and showed me how the two halves of each shell were fastened together with tree sap.

  He set the colander on the ground, dropping a ball of threads, lint, and wood shavings into the bowl. Next he stamped the snow flat and laid flat pieces of wood on the smooth surface, and made a conical hut of splinters on top.

  “You brought kindling?”

  “Aged and split,” he said, and unfastened a bundle of oak from Hortus’ cumbersome load. “The driest wood.”

  “Whatever is he about, Samuel?” I held the babe close against me, occasionally letting him peep out from my cloak.

  Squatting on his heels, my clever husband pulled off his gloves and unclamped the shells to show coals sleeping inside—coals that with a little breath and tinder broke into life again. Quickly he ran a fingernail through the pitch on shell after shell, accumulating a heap of coals in the colander, and now and then blowing gently or dropping lint and twigs on top.

  “Your father is a master and a king of fire,” I told Samuel, who looked steadily at me as if he knew my words. “As you may be, someday.”

  Jotham Herrick rubbed snow on his fingertips where he had touched the hot shells. “I had plenty of hours in which to pack and contrive what we needed,” he said. “Otherwise, I would have wasted them in misgivings.”

  Samuel and I watched as Jotham combed through the bundles, Hortus shifting his feet and backing away. “Hortus, Hortus, be still,” I called.

  “Ah, my cordage for the river! Here it is. I was afraid that I had left the other coils in the shed. We will need strong ropes before we are done. But not yet.”

  “You brought ropes and wood and tinder. . and the colander,” I said, still not sure what he intended.

  “And a store of char-cloth,” he said, showing me what he had unpacked.

  Samuel stared at the flames and gave a cry when I drew a linen cloth over his face, wrapping it around his head until only the eyes showed.

  Jotham squatted again, feeding the coals with bits of char-cloth and sticks, nursing a fire in case the ice was not strong enough to bear our weight—a drenching without means of warmth afterward might mean death. Though this might be the winter most famous in the annals of the colony, still the month was only November, and it was hard to trust that the ice would hold.

  My husband’s ingenuity with flame, even in the snow, was nigh magical. He divided the fire between the colander and the small base of wood with its hut of splinters, and fed the twin blazes with tow, tinder, and wood from his bundle.

  “How canny you are! So now we will have heat on both shores so that if someone becomes wet—”

  “ ’Tis only in case of accident,” he said. “We could not carry much wood. It will be tricky work to keep a bonfire burning, if we must. So we will not plan on diving into frozen rivers. And we will be quick.”

  “No, we will not bathe in the Merrimack! But you are cunning all the same.”

  “We act against the law, at least in the village. We may not carry an open fire. But we are free of town,” he said. “And Hortus will have less to bear without the wood.”

  Jotham Herrick had prepared braided ropes from rags and strips of my old green dress so that we could drag our bundles, and now he fashioned a makeshift sled from hastily cut branches. Taking Samuel from me, he lashed the bundle of him on top with twisted, thick-spun yarns. The babe lay by the fire, babbling with his eyes on the flames.

  “We will tow Samuel,” he said, “so that there will be less burden on the ice in any one place. No risk of us toppling with him. And if one of us falls through, the other may attempt a rescue.”

  I stared at the contrivance, once again marveling at my husband’s handiwork, yet apprehensive now that we were close to crossing—or perhaps to plunging through ice and being dragged under by currents, who knows how far? Perhaps to float eastward, mother and child and father and horse, and to the bottom of the sea with its cold salt stars and mermaids, where we would surprise the monster Leviathan and make him wonder why we had no gills or tails. Perhaps to settle in some gorge chinked with the bones of sailors and travelers cauled in sailcloth and buried in water, their bodies waiting for resurrection and restoration to land.

  “I shall go,” he said. “You can cross with Samuel once I am sure that all is safe.”

  “Prithee, let me pass over first. For if the ice is too frail and you are drowned, I will be a fugitive on the wrong side of the river with no help. But if I am sunk and lost, you may go home again before dawn with our Samuel, and no one will blame you.”

  He saw reason in what I said, though he did not like it. I knelt and, pulling away the linen cloth, rubbed the babe’s face against my own, warming the nubbin of nose and the cold lips.

  “We must hurry,” Jotham Herrick said, and held out the colander. “Samuel will have chilblains if we do not, even with the fire so near.”

  So it was that I ventured onto the ice under starlight, stopping once to look back at Samuel on his sled and at Jotham Herrick and Hortus, and all my longing was for them to be snug with me on the other shore. Before me I carried the colander of coals, linen strips wrapped around the handles to protect my gloves. When I imagine that hour, I see a figure holding a pot of flame creep from rock to rock; the dome of the sky is a dark, upside-down colander pricked with white fire, and the trees are black scratches along the shore.

  But up close, the footing was treacherous, and I feared to slide or stumble and spill the bowl. My thoughts often turned to the current below, eating at the ice. If it gnawed too quickly, the new-made ice would not keep up, and the solid plain would be too thin. Earlier, winds had blown much of the river’s snow away, and the light made the ice luminous where it was not dusted or heaped with flakes.

  The ice cracked and boomed under my pattens; I dived onto hands and knees and lay at full length, my cloak spreading over the surface. The colander skidded away, striking a chunk of ice and spitting out sparks. The jolt kicked a red-hot fragment onto the surface.

  “Have mercy!” I cried to the stars and God in heaven.

  Selvages of fractured ice grated together, and air punched through to water. Now I could hear the Merrimack singing of drowning and death and indomitable flow.

  My husband shouted, but I could not make out the words.

  The ledge of rock beside me radiated cold. How long since I had slept? A wave of weariness washed over me.

  Samuel. Jotham. Hortus. Must scrabble and strive.

  Already the ice had seized hold of my cloak as if it meant to freeze the cloth and me to itself. I swam with my arms, pushed forward with my toes, gathered myself and thrust again, again, and slid on the ice. Getting onto my hands and knees, I crawled forward to the pot of fire and slowly stood, swaying a little. Must needs be unconquerable. God help me. I bent to pick up the colander. The lost coal seethed against the ice, sending up a small plume of smoke.

  Behind me, Jotham Herrick whooped his encouragement.

  Once, years back, my brothers and I saw a river otter, a sort of weasel-creature, tumbling on a frozen river. How easily she moved across the surface, alternately gliding and wriggling and rising humpbacked in readiness for another slide. The current of her very being was playful and fluent, moving like a stream. She was a joyful Merrimack of the animal kingdom that flowed where others loped along the ground or darted in air.

  But I. . . I did not belong on the ice that was sometimes white and sometimes clear or shadowed to blue and green. Nor did I belong in the quiet, cold chambers underneath, where the starlight was muted into near blackness and the chilly fishes hung, gently fanning their tails and fins. I did not wish for the Merrimack to be my Jordan.

  And though my people have a hatred for nightwalking and fear what lurks in wait in shadows, I had come to know shade and pitch. Deep darkness was not darkness alone but speckled with light. A glory shone around moon and stars and glowed from clouds. Hortus’ breath, mine, Samuel’s, and Jot
ham’s were likewise spark-catchers, made from tiny drops of crystalized breath, fanned into the night.

  Still, I feared the river’s flow and dropped to my knees or flung myself prone three times as I traversed from rock to rock, though by the time the slick, snowy bank loomed ahead of me, I was more afraid for the others than for myself. I was cold and damp, but again I had survived a crossing. Evidently I was a surviving kind of person, tenacious of life, and I thanked God for whatever core of vigor burned in me, and that I was made so, and that I had possessed wondrous gifts of hardiness and help to remain alive.

  The colander of the heavens was a pale glory of scattered light as I knelt down and reached for the bank, hauling myself upward by roots and stalks, digging the spikes of my pattens into the crust of snow. My colander of flame still snapped and burned, and I set to making it into a larger fire. Jotham Herrick stepped onto the ice, dragging our child by one rope and the train of our packs by another.

  10

  The Far-Faring

  Haverhill and after, mid-November 1691

  Once a thing is mastered, it may seem ordinary. But I found Jotham Herrick’s crossing of the Merrimack more agonizing than my own. He had a longer, freer stride than mine and often jumped to a promontory rock before reeling in the sled and bags. I squatted by the fire-headed imp of a colander, feeding the flames with twigs and wind-dried weeds that rattled with seed when I tore them from the ground, making ready to build a bonfire on the shore. But in truth I could hardly bear to do anything but watch.

  To my mixed anguish and delight, I could hear Samuel crowing as he slid along the ice and bumped over obstacles.

  Once the cable to the bags was caught, and a sack broke open, shedding its contents across the ice.

  “Leave them,” I shouted.

  But Jotham would go back and collect what was spilled and drag the sacks more slowly, so that I danced up and down by the fire until he was perched on a stone and surveying the distance that remained between us. He leaped to another rock and slid, flailing his arms and only slowly straightening.