Love's Pursuit

by Siri Mitchell

  “ ’Tis as simple as that?”

  He smiled. “ ’Tis no harder.”

  “But—”

  “There are no buts in faith. There is only grace.”

  “And work.”

  “God’s work. God’s saving grace.” He spoke the words with quiet confidence.

  “And our own to go along with it.”

  “Nay. That is something I do not believe. ’Tis all on God’s side, the work. We have nothing to add to it that He has not accomplished.”

  He seemed to be fully informed about matters on God’s side of things but remarkably lacking in knowledge of our own. “But we must labor to show ourselves approved by Him.”

  “You mean you must labor to save yourself?”

  “Aye.” That was exactly what I meant.

  “You leave no saving work for Him to do at all!” His protest was evident in his volume.

  “Then . . . what must I do to be saved?”

  “Throw yourself at God’s feet.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And trust that He will go about the keeping of His promises.”

  ’Twas curious strange in the way of gospels. It sounded much too . . . simple.

  Thomas had gone to the smithery for his morning’s work. He returned for dinner, carrying a sack between his hands. Before I could lay the board with a board cloth and the trencher, he touched my hand for a moment.

  “I . . . have something . . . brought something . . . for you. I bought it. Last time I was to market.”

  Last time he was to market? That had to have been at least two months ago. Before the snows had come. And stayed. “For me?” Had I ever asked him for something? I did not have need of anything.

  He drew a red bundle out of the sack and then he laid it on the board and pushed it toward me.

  I took it. Unrolled it. Held it up. It was a cape. A cape of some of the softest, finest wool I had ever seen. But it was scarlet. A bright, blinding red that could never hope to be hidden. He had brought me a new cape. But why could it not have been green like Susannah Phillips’s, or blue like Abigail Clarke’s? All I wanted was to live my life unnoticed. But how could I do that in a red cape?

  I could have wept. From Thomas’s simple kindness and for my inability to welcome it. Must I be forever marked? Would I forever be soiled?

  “I thought . . . yours has holes.”

  Holes aplenty. I took the stuff between my two hands, though what I wanted most to do was to rub it against my cheek. It had the feel of a chick’s downy feathers, it was that soft.

  “Do you . . . like it?”

  Though I could not look at him, I nodded. “Aye.”

  Did not one say ’twas the thought that counted? In the whole of my life, no one had ever thought of me before.

  Not like Thomas had.

  He moved toward the pegs where my old cloak was hung. “Shall I put this somewhere else?”

  Aye. “Nay.”

  He paused in his movements, hand still reaching out for it. “I shall put it elsewhere so that you can put up the new one in its place.”

  “Nay. Do not move it. I thank you for the gift, but ’tis far too . . . fine. I shall soil it. I will put it away, keep it—” I did not finish my thought because by then he had left, pulling the door shut behind him.

  I stood there for some time, holding the scarlet cloak to my face, letting it absorb my tears. I wept silently. I wept in wonder.Who would have thought that I would ever be given something so fine? And because I would never have thought it, never expected it, I settled the cloak about my shoulders and went to find my husband.

  I heard Thomas at work before I saw him. But it was only after I stepped into the smithery that I fully understood the violence of his mood. He had stripped to the waist, flinging his shirt over the handle of his bellows. As I watched, he bent again and again, striking his hammer against a piece of iron with such ferocity that it birthed sparks.

  “What do you do?” Whatever it was that he worked at, the iron had long since cooled, rendering his work utterly useless.

  He threw one more savage blow at the iron before setting his hammer atop the anvil. Pausing, he stood, cheeks reddened, panting, steam rising from his body into the chill air. “I am beating your father.”

  I did not know what to say.

  “If I could kill him I would, and I am more than half convinced that God would forgive me. But, alas, he is not here. So . . .” He picked up the hammer and continued his pounding. “I am beating that despicable, vile, loathsome coward for beating you. For tormenting you. For torturing you. For condemning his only daughter, his only child, the woman that I love to a life of fear.” Clang. “And terror.” Clang. “And shame.” Clang. “That is what I am doing.”

  35

  SMALL-HOPE. THOSE WERE THE first words my father spoke to me. “Small hope of ever amounting to anything now.” He said them as my mother lay dying, as her life blood poured out of her, wrenched from her womb by my birth.

  Least that is what I was told.

  I was not a boy child. I had killed my mother. I was despised by my father.

  At first his anger was manifested only in neglect. He left me to the care of a day-girl until he threw her into the board one day at dinner. She struck her head and died. ’Tis my first real memory.Not the confrontation that proceeded it, nor the vile curses that came after—though I have no doubt they occurred—but the red, red color of her blood and the way that it glistened upon her temple as it flowed down her face.

  Now I wonder at the fact that no one approached my father about taking another wife. He was not a destitute man. There were widows aplenty and young girls ripe for marriage. But unlike other widowers, he never courted any of them.

  He had no need because I provided all that he required.

  Perhaps they suspected, those goodwives of Newham, for they convinced my father to offer me to them in service. They told him it was so I could be groomed under the influence of a watchful feminine eye. It was in their homes I learned to read and recite the catechism. To bake biscuits and take up a needle. It was there, I am sure, that those townswomen thought I was safe. But they erred. They always sent me home at night.

  And so I became two persons. The Small-hope who worked and laughed and prayed in the midst of those good townspeople and the Small-hope who went home at night. I existed in the middle of a town, in the middle of a people, sitting with them of a service every Sabbath, and they did not know me. Or if they did, they chose not to see me. They did not wish to see me. And there was nothing I could do.

  I wonder now about that. I wonder now why I took no action. Why I did not run away. But when one is made to feel so very small, when one has been shamed by the unthinkable, when words cannot be shared, be spoken . . . then there can be no help. When one doubts the merit of one’s own existence, when one is nothing to begin with, then why should anyone care? Why should anything be changed?

  But then Thomas came.

  Of course, he had come before. He was a blacksmith and he came to the market to deal in his wares. But when he came that day three winters ago, he saw my father strike me in the middle of the green. And instead of diverting his eyes, instead of pretending he had seen nothing at all, he spoke.

  And he moved.

  He moved toward me and then went right on past. He had a gaunt, wormy look to his height, but he gripped my father by the collar of his doublet and hauled his feet from the ground. “ ’Tis a puny coward of a man who strikes a woman.”

  “She’s my daughter. ’Tis my own business.”

  “If she is your daughter, and a daughter grown, well, then ’tis certainly my business. I have seen you exercise unnatural severity toward her, and I will stand as witness to it. She shall have free liberty to complain for redress. The Code of Liberties guarantees it.”

  “ ’Twas but a simple disagreement.”

  “Aye. And preceded by several weeks—several months—of disagreements, if I do not read the marks on
her hands and round her eye incorrectly.”

  I drew my hands out of sight beneath my apron. The bruising about my eye I could not hide and so I lowered my head. They were not the only marks upon my body, but the less he saw of them, the better.

  “I have seen your daughter in town on previous visits. And a girl of her years should not be hobbling about like an old woman.” He cast my father to the ground, far from him, like a dirty old rag.

  The crowd gathered round us stepped back.

  The blacksmith turned to me. “Come. We will make a complaint to the authorities for redress.”

  At my hesitation, he extended his hand.

  I looked at my father, who had picked himself up from the dirt, and I read the look in his eye. It was well and good to have a champion, but what would become of me after the stranger had gone? I was already certain that it would go twice as bad for me now that someone had come to my defense. And if I went with the man and lodged a complaint . . . I had good reason to fear for my life. The sight of that poor day-girl sprawled across the floor, bleeding, dying, had never left my memory.

  And so, eyes downcast, I shook my head at his invitation.

  He stepped closer. Spoke to me in a tone only I could hear. “You have fear of him.”

  I did not dare to answer, but I lifted my eyes to his.

  “And you have reason for this fear.” He did not expect an answer.

  He had already obtained it. From my hands, from my walk, from the dread in me that even I could smell.

  He spoke a bit louder now, to be heard above the murmurs of the gathering crowd. “Will you trust me?”

  How could I answer that? And for what cause?

  “Marry me.”

  I remember stealing a glance at my father. And then stealing a glance at the stranger.

  He took one step closer. We were toe to toe. My father was approaching, and so he spoke rapidly. “If you marry me, I will take you from here. You would have no need for fear.”

  Behind him, my father clenched a fist and came at the stranger in order to accost him.

  Interpreting my sudden stiffening and intake of breath, the stranger turned, dodged my father’s blow, and then dropped him to the ground with a solid fist to his gut.

  My father kneeled there before him, gasping for breath.

  Surely this man could be no worse than the one I had lived with for all of my life. And if he was, then I would run away. Or kill him.

  “Will you marry me?” He asked it loud enough to be heard above my father’s groanings. Loud enough to be heard by the crowd.

  I nodded.

  He stretched out a hand to me. “Then come.”

  I put my hand in his quickly.

  My father called out as he stumbled to his feet. “I have not given my permission.”

  The stranger placed himself between us. “You lost your right to give permission the moment you started to accost her.”

  “She’s my girl.”

  “And I wish to marry her.”

  “You cannot have her.” My father put up his fists and lowered his head as if to assure there would be no mistaking his words.

  “I will give you five pounds.”

  A gleam shot from father’s eyes at the stranger’s words. He dropped his hands. “Agreed.”

  The stranger placed me in the care of the deputy’s wife, who cleaned me up and tended to my wounds. He saw to it that our banns were read each Sabbath at the meetinghouse three Sundays in succession. And after that third reading, the next week when he came to town for market, we were wed.

  I rode pillion behind him when he brought me to his house in Stoneybrooke Towne. It was new. And clean. It smelt of freshly planed wood. I breathed deeply and held the scent of it within my nostrils. There was no smell of stale sweat, no scent of rodents hiding in the corners, no fumes of liquor here.

  I made him a supper of bread we had brought from the market and a cheese I found in his lean-to. I explored the place while I was at it. There was sugar and salt in abundance. Both of them things that I had seldom had.

  I placed the food and drink upon the table and then stood back to let him eat.

  “Do you not join me?”

  “Do you wish me to?”

  “Was it not the custom in your father’s house?”

  I shook my head. He would not want to know what was done to me in order that I might eat. But I sat down on the bench beside him. There was only one bench in that place.

  I ate my food quickly, as was my habit. And then there was nothing left for me to do but sit, since he ate slowly. Once finished, he laid aside his napkin and took up a Bible. After he finished reading, I stored away the bread. Put back the rest of the cheese. Wiped clean the trencher. Stirred the fires.

  And then, there was nothing else left to do.

  “I will just . . . step outside and . . . while . . .” He shrugged and disappeared out the door while I stood staring after him.

  Quick as I could, I stripped to my shift, grabbed a knife, and slipped into the bed. I would not give up my newfound freedom so easily. The sheets were clean and soft. They smelt of him. And if he tried to attack me, then they would be soaked with his blood.

  He returned some time later. I had almost fallen asleep.

  He came toward the bed and then took off his own clothes, hanging them upon a peg.

  I clutched the knife in my hand.

  He drew back the covers, saw my knife. “I married you to protect you; to free you. I would never take you unwilling and I will never force myself upon you.” He held out a hand for the knife.

  Could I trust him?

  He waited for a long moment, and then he sighed. He slid between the sheets, turned his back to me, and fell asleep as if he did not care what I might do to him. As if he trusted me.

  I stayed pressed to the wall, trembling, knife in my hand, until I knew him well and truly asleep. Then, knife clasped at my chest, I gave myself to sleep as well.

  I slept that way, with the knife between my breasts, for three months. And then, when I realized I would not need it, I placed it beneath my pillow.

  He wanted me, Thomas did. I could see it in his eyes whenever he looked at me. But . . . I could not do it. How could a good man like him want one such as me? I would soil him, shame him, besmirch him.

  Nay.

  I would protect him from me at all costs.

  36

  THOMAS STOPPED HIS HAMMERING eventually. Then he turned toward me, panting and spent, and he asked me one question. “Why do you despise me?”

  “I do not despise you.”

  “You do not love me.”

  I thought about that. Was it true? Did it even matter? “Do you love me?”

  There was agony at work in his eyes when he replied. “I have never done anything other since the day that I first saw you.”

  “With my eye blacked and my hands covered with burns?”

  There was puzzlement at work on his brow. “On the day I took you from your father? Nay. The first time I saw you was several years before, on my very first trip to market. ’Twas from Boston I came then.”

  He had seen me so long ago? A stranger to our town? Well, he was the only one. I had never been noticed by any I had lived near.

  “And why else would I have married you? Why else would I have paid your father for you?”

  “If I despise you, then ’tis for that reason.”

  “Because . . . I paid for you?”

  “Like some prized ox.”

  “How else was I to save you?”

  “ ’Tis that exactly. I had to be saved. I had to be rescued. I could not do it myself.”

  He blinked. “And so . . . you punish me for it? For saving you?”

  “Nay! I punish me for not being able to save myself.” I left the smithery at a run, going I cared not where. My footprints in the snow would lead me home. My feet kept to what I took for the cart path, punching knee-deep holes in the snow, but then they veered off into the woo
d of their own accord. The snow was not as deep there, the drifts not so high.

  At the start I had been running from the brutal truth of my own words, but now I ran for the joy of it. For the freedom of it. Every foot that crunched down into the snow, every stride I took was a footprint I made, was a mark that I left in a place of my choosing.

  And so I walked on. And on. And on.

  I did not deserve Thomas, and that was the plain truth.

  Why should he love one such as me?

  He deserved someone decent. And kind. And good. Someone who did not even know that the things I had seen, the things I had felt, the things that had been done to me, could happen.

  And how could I love him? How could I do that to him? How could I curse him with the stain of my affection?

  I would not do it.

  I could not do it.

  He was too good a man for one such as me.

  My steps had slowed, and I found myself entering the cave of a snow-covered forest.

  But I was not alone.

  Somewhere in the trees ahead of me were voices speaking a language that I could not understand. Indians. Must be. And I was standing alone, in a forest bleached by snow, wearing a bright red cape. Even were I to run now before I was seen, a trail of footprints would lead them right back to my front door.

  I sunk to my bottom at the base of a tree, putting the trunk between myself and the savages. And then I drew up my knees to my chest. There was nothing to be done about my cape, so I drew it right around me. At least I could keep myself warm until they slit my throat.

  I sat there, trembling, listening in terror, until I realized that the voices were coming no closer. And that the words were punctuated by the sounds of an axe and the sighs of a horse. Or two.

  What could they be doing with an axe? Besides murdering people?

  Even as I asked myself that question, the yawn of a falling tree swept through the wood. It was followed by a muted thud.

  I pushed myself forward onto my knees. Peered around my tree.

  I could see nothing. Taking refuge behind the trunk once more, I sat, thinking. Trying to make sense of the sounds I heard.