Charis in the World of Wonders

by Marly Youmans

  “Good Hortus,” I said. “Not so much longer now.”

  “Also,” the major said to Jotham Herrick, “there are the court-appointed coin searchers in Boston. I expect you have some gold to smith and perhaps some estate in coin left by your father. The searchers of coin have the right to seize your possessions if you are found attempting to carry specie out of the colony.”

  “That I had not thought,” he said.

  I looked over my shoulder to see my husband’s hand instinctively reach toward jerkin and doublet with the gold coins well sewn into the hems.

  “But you are right, of course,” he added.

  We rode on until we came to a turning in the way. There we took what was little more than a deer path through the trees and down to a sandy river beach. The water here was open, as usual in November, though here and there broken panes of ice clung to stones and shore.

  “I am not sure how far we go on,” the major said.

  “See.” Lud pointed above the tree line. “A wisp of smoke.”

  “Keen eyes,” Major Saltonstall said. “Young eyes.”

  The horses moved slowly along the top of the bank where the snow and undergrowth gave way to washed earth and sand, and in a few minutes we came on another steep-roofed house, crudely clapboarded.

  “Wait here,” the major said. “This may be the place.”

  Climbing down from the saddle, he set our bundled goods to swinging. “Stay, Comet,” he said, his hand lighting momentarily on the horse’s neck.

  He picked his way over the ice and snow before the house and thumped on the door.

  “See at the little window,” Lud said to us.

  A one-board shutter banged closed, the door came ajar, and a head appeared, so whiskery and gray that I pictured the walruses in a volume of natural history that we children had loved to pore over. The head cocked and stared at us, the door swung open, and Major Saltonstall stepped inside.

  “Now to bide,” Jotham Herrick said, taking Samuel from me.

  He passed the babe back to me after I slid from the horse, showing a generous amount of hose and breeches to the trees and Lud, who looked away as if concerned with the snow-draped rubble in the yard, stumps and an anchor and a tumbled stack of greenish bottles.

  My husband landed on the ground beside me and lifted the child from my arms, pulling away the skein of linen that swaddled the babe’s face and humming a tune when Samuel blinked his eyes and gave us an open-mouthed grin.

  “His cheeks are cold,” Mr. Herrick said.

  “Is he all right?”

  “Just chilled, wife. He likes the trees and birds.”

  “Too frosty for many birds.”

  “If one flies, Samuel will catch sight of the wings. I will watch over him. My sweet, my liking—you have a private ramble. A short one.”

  Hortus followed me as I wandered toward the bank of sand, dirt, and roots that sloped toward the river, and when I paused to stare out over the water, he dipped his head and blew a cloud of breath over me. I pressed his cheek against mine and stroked his jaw, rubbing away a thin beard of ice.

  “It’s a sore thing to be a rider. And maybe to be a horse in winter, too. But you are the one who has heard my woes and my secret thoughts, and I am glad of you.”

  He snuffed at my hands, and so I rummaged my petticoats to find the pocket tied at my waist. I withdrew a parsnip and offered it to him.

  “Hortus, here is a parting gift to you from Mistress Saltonstall.”

  He lipped and ate it slowly, craunching and dropping hunks of the sweet pale flesh, and nosing among the weeds for what was lost.

  “You are the finest, fairest horse in all the colony,” I told him. “My blossom, my emerald, my gold-among-horses. For who has saved me so often? You are the providential horse who came when I was in the greatest need. A miracle and a mystery enclosed in hide. And who knows but that the good God, pitying my distress, sent you? For you are my beauty and my rescuer. We should have named you Angel.”

  Hortus seemed pleased at the compliment, bobbing his head as if bashful, though he was never shy around me.

  “You were named for the hortus conclusus. Once, people liked to conceive that this was also the little walled garden where Mary sits with her babe in her arms near a fountain and flower and trees. Did you know? And said she herself was a kind of garden, too. And so you must also be a black-shining garden, as dark as night, a nosegay of soot-flowers hidden in the deeps of the night when we needed to be secret from men.”

  My hand rested on his neck.

  “It was not pure and biblical,” I said, still thinking of Mary, “but idolatry, as our ministers preach. But that a woman might be a type of garden paradise is a pretty thought.”

  On the river close to shore floated a boat, the water on that spot so smooth that the shape was neatly reflected on the surface. As mere matter often does, the vessel seemed oddly crammed with spirit, as if it might soon open a yet-unseen eye to stare back at me. Although the thought was but fancy, the boat seemed glad to be gently stirring on its tether.

  “If we could climb into the mirrored boat on the river, where would we go? And why did my father name you for a garden and perhaps also for Mary? I should like to ask him to tell me how he imagined a horse could be a garden, as a woman seemed a garden to people who lived hundreds of years ago. And still does to some, I dare say, though not among us.”

  Hortus nuzzled my shoulder, and I leaned against him, dreaming of my father and mother and all their hopes for me and my sister and my brothers. Now those wishes had all come down as inheritance to me, and without sons my father’s name was lost. No one would recall him in fifty or sixty years, or praise him as one honored in his generation.

  “So many solid things are brimming over with riddles, Hortus. The natural world can seem so sturdy, and yet it is flooded with spirit from another world. And we gutter out like candles, all our life fleeing away. It is a mystery.”

  I did what I had come to do—the breeches of men can be a great deal of bother for a woman—and afterward walked back to the house, Hortus nudging me as I went until at last I grasped his head between my hands, laughing, and stroked his face and the thick winter mane.

  Jotham Herrick was arguing with Major Saltonstall. Lud stood listening, head down.

  “If this turns out to be our boat to a new port, you should not pay our passage—let me meet the cost, for I have enough.”

  “Keep your coins, Jotham Herrick. Your spouse Charis is dear to us, and you also, enough so that there should be no thought of coin. But more, she will be leaving behind a valuable gelding.”

  I ran forward and caught the major by the arm.

  “Hortus! Can I not take him with me, wherever we go? I would have died in the wilderness without him. He is so much to me, more than any ordinary beast of burden. To me, he is chief among horses, the one who bears away every prize.”

  “There is no room for a horse—barely enough space in the boat for passengers and your household bundles,” the major said. “I am sorry.”

  And though I had lost all my kin long before, I now cried as though they had all been slaughtered afresh, and I hung my arms around the neck of my horse and wanted never to let go. Even now, I do not believe it wrong to grieve to part forever from a horse, when God is a trembling harp string that registers even the death of a sparrow.

  Jotham Herrick brought our child and put him in my arms. I nodded and looked down at Samuel. “We have given up so many things,” I said.

  “But there will be more, my dear Charis,” he said. “We are like Goodman Job, who was tested and lost all that he loved. Surely he never forgot what had been but was given more and more in time, until the scale was in balance, loss and gain perfectly joined as one.”

  “I saw the boat on the water, and yet I never thought that it was not large enough, that I would not be able to take my horse.”

  “Someday, all wounds will be healed,” he said.

  “Not in this lif
e.”

  “No,” said Jotham Herrick. He gently blotted the tears from my eyes with the hem of his sleeve.

  While we were standing close and murmuring together, gazing down at Samuel, Major Saltonstall and Lud went to fetch the captain. He must have had the niceties washed out of him on the ocean because he did not wait to be formally introduced.

  “Ebenezer Swan. Master of the Promise, as sound a boat as you may find. At your service,” he said, whipping the beaver hat from his head and giving a jounce that was meant to be, I believe, a bow. He was a stout, short fellow with sea-reddened cheeks and bright blue eyes with crinkled lines at the outer corners.

  It seemed we had a new problem.

  “The boy who helps me has up and roamed with his mother to Newbury. Belike he may not come back.”

  Captain Swan’s gaze rested on Lud Duston. “You ever thought about roaming to sea?”

  “Me?” Lud glanced over his shoulder, which made us laugh.

  “You. I hear your name is Lud. So why not? The first Lud was the grandson of Noah, who saved the whole world two by two in a boat.”

  Lud stared at him and slowly began to break into a blissful smile—one that seemed to eat up his whole face. If truth be well told, Lud always looked innocent and half-addled, and now even more so.

  “You know how to steer a horse?”

  “I can ride.”

  “If you can get a horse to do what you want, I can teach you how to sail a boat. Horses and boats can be headstrong, and both can heave and toss.”

  Lud continued to beam.

  “Sailoring with me will pay in coin. And you can gape at queer sea-sights and a fair piece of the world. What do you say?”

  “I—” Lud swung around to Major Saltonstall, who laughed and clapped him on the arm.

  “If you go jaunting on the sea, you have no ride home.”

  “He can anchor here if he wants,” Captain Swan said. “I can find out a use for a likely-looking young man with strong arms.”

  Lud looked at us, and we stared back at him.

  “Yes, then!”

  And that was that—a revolution in Lud’s life, decided in a trice.

  While Lud went on smiling as if he would never stop, Captain Swan told us his story, how he had once lived contentedly in Haver-hill. Some years before his wife’s death, she had been taken captive. Though later ransomed and restored to her husband and child, she was never wholly right in her mind.

  “How sad that she was not herself any longer. I am sorry for that loss.” The thought gave me a pang. How easy it would have been to be shattered by misfortune!

  Captain Swan nodded. “She was a fine wife when she did not come unmoored and go adrift with Indians in her fancy. And after she died, our child was better off with a woman to mind her.”

  Jotham Herrick looked puzzled. “I have met a Swan or two in Haverhill,” he began.

  “No near relation,” the major said hastily. “I inquired, and the daughter now lives in Ipswich with her grandmother.”

  The master of the Promise paid little notice to this interruption, but whether it was because he was determined not to admit connection to the Haverhill Swans or whether he was intent on recounting his story, I could not tell.

  “Since then, I have taken to the river and sea and lived a watery life, being a bit of a carpenter of oak planks and pegs and a bit of a tailor of hemp canvas, sailing with the tide and adventuring along the coast to strange coves and corners, avoiding the shoals.”

  “A smuggler’s life,” I said.

  “Not much more guilty than the men who carried Goodman Jonah toward Tarshish, all unknowing,” he said, “for what do we do but take back a little of our own from what the crown in England steals? Parliament thieves might as well have tried to catch a blowing snowstorm in a rollipoke as block our trade.”

  “The coast is all smugglers,” Major Saltonstall said. “The people want to buy from the Dutch and others. They do not like to be taxed or cheated by England for our own native materials. And afterward they charge and tax us overmuch for what is made from them. So magistrates often choose not to see or hear.”

  “Trade makes for peace and goodwill between peoples,” Captain Swan said, “even when it is a smuggling trade.”

  “I am glad of a smuggler today, when I mean to smuggle my wife into a foreign port,” Jotham Herrick said.

  “People do say the name Newport means pirates.” I lifted Samuel against my shoulder and joggled him up and down to stop his tears. Somehow he had managed to free an arm from swaddling and furs. The babe knocked my hat askew and grasped at my hair, pulling a loop of red out from my coif and bonnet. He pressed his fist against his mouth and sucked the freed strand.

  “Rhode Island means a mixed lot. You will find some to admire and some to avoid, but that is the way of it everywhere in this world. But if you and Mr. Herrick are content in harness together and conduct a fair trade, you will find your way,” Captain Swan said. “And if you ever wish to moor in a Massachusetts harbor again, I will fetch you.”

  “My place must be with Mr. Herrick. But I grieve to leave our Saltonstall friends and my horse behind. For Hortus saved my life more than once.”

  “Ah, well, I am sorry for that trouble,” he said. “A dumb beast sometimes has a wonderful manner of coaxing a way into the heart without ever using words.”

  “We will take the best care of him,” the major promised. “And when you come back to Essex, he is yours.”

  But I would never be back again, or not in time to see Hortus, I feared. Boston, Falmouth, Haverhill, and Andover had been my homes, each for a period of years or months, and I doubted that I would see any of them another time. Return seldom seemed to be my story, and journeying far is hard and a greater danger once children come. So I clung to Hortus and let Jotham Herrick bear Samuel and walk him up and down.

  “Will you be afraid of a boat and the sea’s swell and rush? I wonder,” Captain Swan said. “It is the land and man that can frighten me. I keep my boat always on the river in memory of Alice Swan.”

  “How is that?” Jotham Herrick stopped in his to-and-fro parade with Samuel.

  “I keep my tender hidden in the scrub and can make a clean escape if attacked. Unless I am clubbed in my sleep,” he added. “But old men are canny and light sleepers and—”

  “Babe Samuel is cold and perhaps hungry,” Major Saltonstall interrupted. He never liked people to speak of massacre or captivity in front of me, though the dread of either was common enough in people’s minds and mouths.

  “Come to the fire—I am forgetting manners, here in the wilds,” Captain Swan said. “I would let the horses in the doors as well and be content with them, but it would be like trying to thread a needle’s eye with cable.”

  “They will be patient in the weather,” the major said.

  “No, no, there is a broken-down shed at the edge of the woods that will do.”

  Lud, taking the hint, led away our horses. The rest of us ducked under the low doorway to the house—a dark cupboard of a house but with a chimbley that did not smoke.

  As my eyes grew used to the gloom, I saw that the front room was gaudy with valuable objects: chairs carved with scrolls, triangles, diamonds, and flowers; goblets with marvelous stems of twisted and colored canes cased in clear glass that Captain Swan said had come from the Netherlands; a small oil painting of lemons and shellfish, the first such thing I ever saw; and an astonishing pair of Dutch andirons with brass ball finials and a wonderfully detailed head and torso of a woman that cast light prettily from the flames. Though I had often been warned against taking delight in images, I was amazed and found the work marvelous and strange.

  But since sleep called more strongly than man-wonders, however curious and captivating, we sat and drowsed by the hearth until the high tide began to turn back to the sea the next morning. We had maintained that the master must sleep in his bed, for we wanted him rested for the journey, and sent Lud and the major to sleep there
as well. When I fed Samuel in the night, I wept again to leave the Saltonstalls and my horse, and could not tell which meant the most to me.

  In the morning, Lud had lessons in handling Captain Swan’s tender, rowing rather clumsily but safely. He ferried cargo, the bundles that had been divided between the horses, and us. The weather being fair and the wind promising, we must depart.

  Crossing awkwardly from the tender, I was grateful once again for men’s breeches. I must have climbed out of one boat and into another before but had no memory of doing so, and I found it a delicate, wobbling sort of transaction. Once aboard, all I desired was to catch hold of Samuel and grip him so that he could not possibly roll into the river, for the current was not as gentle as I had assumed on shore, and we could feel its sliding, powerful tug.

  The floor of the boat—a shallop—was heaped with straw, and on it were many tidily packed bottles of molasses from the Dutch West Indies bound for Newport, as well as special items obtained for and promised to particular buyers, which we were privileged to see before they were swiftly wrapped in oiled canvas and hidden from view: two deftly-executed Dutch still-life paintings, one of a vase of flowers with a collection of chased gold cups and another showing uncooked shrimp and fish on a platter next to a bowl of cherries (both of these painted by a woman, a truth that surprised me greatly); two pendulum clocks, also of Dutch make; crates of certain free-thinker books that could be printed only in the tolerating Netherlands; and a few casks of Madeira wine. Neat wooden boxes held folded furs and canvas, mysterious spare rings and hinges, coils of rope, and a stone anchor that resembled a small millstone, tools of the sailor’s trade.

  “These things say to me how our lives—”

  “Are changing,” Jotham said, finishing my broken-off thought.

  Canvas belled outward and seemed to be longing for adventure. Captain Swan explained the spritsail and staysail to Lud, and how he handled the shallop with them, and how the leeboards could be raised or lowered. He would lower the board on the lee side so that the river or sea would press the boat forward and not let it drift to one side.

  He paused to ask our forgiveness, saying that he had been meaning to put a deck over half the shallop but had put off the work.