Truly, there was no place in my life for such a thing, even had propriety allowed it. I struggled with the many demands of the turning season, up much of the night to help a ewe with a difficult lambing, then up again before first light to work through the blur of daily tasks. Always tending to Solace, who needed an eye upon her at every minute lest she pick up some bright, sharp-edged tool thinking it a fine plaything, or pull a boiling kettle down upon herself—as Aunt Hannah’s seventh babe had done, and was scalded to death, the poor chuck. I looked forward to the day, not so very far distant, when Solace would become a helpmate, rather than a charge, able herself to feed hens and fetch eggs and the like small chores which I had done for mother with a high heart when I was barely more than a babe.
Oft times, as I bathed her or rocked her in my arms, I would look into her sky-blue eyes and wonder what her character might prove, in time, to be. I would let a finger stroke the line of her rounded cheek and tickle the folds of soft, creamy flesh beneath her chin. She would stare back at me with an intense, knowing gaze, and I would imagine her, a year or so hence, at my hem, as I had been at mother’s. I was, after all, the only mother she had ever known. I was determined to be worthy of the charge God had set for me. I let my mind run on ahead, seeing us together as she grew into her girlhood. She would be always at my side, and I would open to her the world and all that I had learned of it. If she wished to study her book, she would not be obliged to go to it alone. I would see to that. I would carve out the time to instruct her, no matter what father or Makepeace had to say of it. And I would not marry any man without wit and heart to understand that Solace was my sacred charge and the first of all my duties.
She played beside me as I thinned out the seedlings, picking up clods and mashing them in her tiny mittened fingers, then smearing her face with the mud. I had come to think that the Wampanoag, who dealt so kindly with their babes, were wiser than we in this. What profit was there in requiring little ones to behave like adults? Why bridle their spirits and struggle to break their God-given nature before they had the least understanding of what was wanted of them? So I smiled at her, and made faces, although I knew I would have to clean the muck from her clothing, and from her silky hair, and that there would be howls of protest when I did so. It was a small price to pay for the sound of her merry laughter.
That night, at board, I stole a look at Caleb, considering him. As I had learned from him, and changed my views about the discipline I should mete out to Solace, so he must have changed his views on so many matters. I recalled how he had vexed me with his hard questioning about the scriptures and I wondered what it was among the many things father might have said or done that had won him so fully. In every outward particular, he was now a Christian. But who could see into his heart?
I was wandering along this line of thought when father turned to me. “Do you not think so, Bethia?”
Since I had not been attending to the conversation in the least degree, I had no idea how to answer. But Makepeace broke in, and said, “Perhaps better we ask Caleb for his views. His people have age-old experience in this place and must know when the danger of frost is generally past. I am sure he will like to help Bethia in the planting of corn and beans when that time comes.”
It was the first time Makepeace had directed such an amiable remark to Caleb. Having been the target of my brother’s wit often enough, I felt sure there was some barb to it. And to hear him proposing that Caleb and I do something together seemed odd, given his supposed reservation concerning the enforced intimacy of our situation.
Father saw the trap before I did. “Surely not,” he interjected, turning his face to Caleb. “Planting is women’s work, is it not, among Wampanoag? The menfolk shun such tasks, I think?”
Caleb smiled, sensible of father’s kindness. “True. But since I eat at your board, how not help raise the food set down upon it? Cum Roma es, fac qualiter Romani facit.”
Father laughed so he had to wipe a tear from his eye. “Faciunt, dear boy, faciunt,” he said at last. “‘Do as the Romans do,’ plural, you see: do as they do. Facit would be ‘as the Roman does.’… But very well said, I am sure. We are each, in a sense, in Rome, are we not? You must learn the ways of our family, and we must learn the ways of your island. It would be a kindness if you would teach us.”
I glanced at Makepeace. The arrow of his wit has missed its mark and his expression revealed vexation. “I’ll not favor making our tidy English field into an unruly salvages’ hillock and an object for our neighbors’ jests.”
“Makepeace,” said father sternly. “I might be more inclined to note what you favor if you were more inclined to do your share of field work.” Father rarely rebuked Makepeace. But rudeness was a thing he never could countenance. “We will hear the advice of our young friend, and if our neighbors care to laugh, well then. We will see who laughs when the bushel baskets are counted.”
So it was that instead of ploughing up the whole field into straight rows and hauling hods of manure—all of which was back-breaking work—we left the earth be. We made small mounds and buried a herring in each, digging in handfuls of sea wrack that had the salt washed off it. When the soil was warm enough, we planted a corn kernel in each mound, and when it sprouted, we placed our beans all around to climb upon the stalks, saving the trouble of staking out air rows. We followed that with the squash as the heat increased, and presently the vines covered all the unploughed ground, smothering unwanted growth. If neighbors raised their eyebrows, I did not care. Their opprobrium was a small price for the many hours I no longer had to spend with a hoe, fighting back the weeds.
The one person who did not raise his eyebrow at our tousled field was young Noah Merry, who walked all around the plantings, praising the work and the robust growth and declaring that he had thought of adopting like practices, and our experiment emboldened him. Suddenly, it seemed, we saw a good deal of Noah Merry in Great Harbor. Whenever his family was in want of supplies or due to pay grandfather his share of receipts from the grist mill, it was no longer Jacob or Josiah who could best be spared from the farm, but always Noah. Whatever business brought him, he generally contrived to drive his cart past our dooryard just as I was setting board for dinner. Each time, father would tell me to make another place.
I do not say it was a hardship to have his company, such a lighthearted young man. On other nights, talk at board might go on in Latin, as practice for the boys, who sorely needed it, since they would be allowed to speak nowt else at college. Though I had ceased to try to advance myself in that language, I could follow well enough, and I liked to try to construe father’s questions and form answers in my mind, matching them against those my brother and Caleb brought forth. Even when they spoke in English the talk must be of scholarly things. But since Noah was clearly no square cap, conversation in his presence went on differently. The chatter might be of village matters: comings and goings to the mainland, a new family making the crossing to join us, a birth or a death, who had published their names to marry, who had bought a cow, and such small, pleasant bits of news. When Noah asked how someone did, he actually listened with attention to the reply. For his part, he spoke with greatest animation about his farm.
And this, also, was different: father and Makepeace were grown used to me sitting in silence, letting the talk pass around me. They rarely pressed me for an opinion or turned to me for comment, and Caleb had taken the lead from them in this. But Noah was another gate’s business. He was forever turning to me with a “Do you not think…?” or a “What do you say…?” and in courtesy I would stammer out something so as not to seem cold. He must have noted that I grew more animated once, when talk turned to the Takemmy otan that neighbored his farm, for the next visit he came supplied with information. He was full of a description of a mishoon he had observed in the making, praising the patient industry whereby a great log would be part-burned, day following day, the coals scraped out until the exact shape for a swift canoe was accomplished. He questio
ned Caleb closely as to how it had gone on in Nobnocket, whether the trees were chosen in like ways or whether each otan had singular practices. Caleb seemed out of sorts, and answered tersely. I thought this odd, until I reflected that talk of his old life might bring unwelcome memories. But then it came to me that he often was reserved when Noah joined us, no matter what the subject. I concluded that he had not yet learned to be at ease with any English person outside of our family. I could not see any other reason for his coldness.
IV
Yester eve, when I wrote of the ordinary daily doings of those early summer months, a feeling of peace brimmed up within me. I dreamed of that time last night, and woke to disappointment. It is true that I was tired to the bone then. I often woke in the half-light wishing for more sleep above all things, my arms aching from the last day’s toil, so that it was all I could do to gather up Solace and carry her downstairs. Oft times during the day I would straighten up from the kneading trough or rest on my hoe and think how, a year earlier, I had been running free and wild with Caleb in the soft air, still innocent of the sin that had brought such affliction. For I was foolish, and thought my life a sad business that summer, and did not value the gifts of that season. I had not foreseen the loss and the hardship yet to come.
The wearisome chores of those days are as nought to my present labors here in Cambridge. This morning, letting down the bucket to draw water for the wash, I caught a glimpse of my face in the well. I did not at first recognize the gaunt, frowning drab gazing up at me. On the island I could revive myself with sweet air. There was never lack of clean water or of wood to warm the house. My tasks, though numerous, were various. Here, I am cold and clemmed, and all is drudgery. The late mistress of this house was elderly, and with poor eyesight. She had not maintained a godly cleanliness, so it took me some time to scour the floors, rid the corners and recesses of mouse droppings, and restore the dingy linens with blue starch and boiling kettle. It falls to me to launder all the scholars’ clothes and the threadbare linens, mending them as needed. Daily, I sweep the floors, scrubbing and sanding them every sennight as we did at home, though here, with the muddy boots of so many lads, the task is much the heavier. The master sets the boys to chop the wood, such as we have, but I am left to split bavins. We rely on gifts to build our woodpile and most times the supply is short. I cook the poor dinner and set out the scraps for bever and supper. I bake loaves, I boil a thin broth. I can do no more with such a frugal providence—a sack each of rye and Indian corn, a little yeast, some gristly cuts of meat and a turnip or two. When one of the pupil’s families comes with an offering—a neck of mutton or a brace of hens—it is a blessing, and I make the most of it, boiling the goodness out of the bare bones till not even a starving cur dog would trouble to carry them off. But times are hard for the planters, and such gifts have been uncommon this season.
The school faces on to Crooked Street, with a neighbor house pressed upon the other side. There is room for a garden on our small patch of earth, whose produce, even if just roots and herbs, might keep the boys in better health. I was much astonished, when I came, to find that nothing of the kind had yet been put in hand. There was space enough to keep a few hens at the door, and I thought to hatch some chicks once the weather warmed. Through the fall season I had walked the Cow Common and clipped sprigs of wild dill or gathered leaves for a salat, falling upon any berries other gleaners had missed and sprinkling them through a hasty pudding. But come winter there was no chance for even these small measures, and every one of us now is hollow-cheeked, with running nose or a wetness in the chest.
Cambridge is an unlovely town. Those who settled here in the ’30s decreed that the first sixty houses be pressed tight together, for fear, I suppose, of assault by European rivals—the native inhabitants of the place having been laid waste long since by some earlier plague of which there is no record. The house lots, along a gridiron, are narrow, and the low ridge on which they were built has formed a barrier to the drainage of the land behind, so that in foul weather all turns swamp and mire. There is factory here, enough to rob the peace—tanner, brick maker, smith and shipbuilder fill the daylight hours with their clamor—yet not enough to bring prosperity. The roads remain too rough for carriages. Since the townsfolk do not trouble where they tip their slops, the air reeks, and everywhere the middens rise, rotting in steaming piles of clutter and muck. The creek is brackish, but even were it not, its waters would be unwholesome, since the township uses it as a drain. One must, in consequence, drink only the small beer, which makes my head ache and I cannot think helps the boys, especially the youngest, two of whom are not yet nine years old. Since there is no wood to spare for warming bathing water, the master expects the boys to wash in an outdoor trough from which they have to crack the ice each morning. Of course they do a poor job of it. I had to badger him for a little fat and lye to mix with ash for soap. I cannot think how it was before I came here. Even now, with soap in hand, the boys’ bodies are rank when pressed side by side on their benches in the schoolroom, and I can barely take a breath of the foetid air when I am obliged to clean their crowded sleeping loft.
It has all of it been sore trial for Makepeace, the oldest pupil here, a full two years senior to the next closest him in age. It may be why he traveled to the island at any excuse, to dine at a good board and sleep a few nights warmed by a decent fire, and to get some peace and solitude away from the rackety boys. Yet these absences did not prosper him in his studies, where the younger pupils all too often overpeered him. Whenever we walked out together, I saw his gaze travel the short distance from the school to the Harvard College. His gaze would follow the gowned scholars. He had a hungry look at such times, but a small frown played about his brow. I knew then that doubt ate at him as to whether he would ever take his place among them.
For Caleb and Joel, there is no such respite as Makepeace takes for himself. The island is barred to them by lack of means for the journey. I can only think it is insupportable for them here, in this world so strange, and in many ways so inferior, to the one they knew. For Caleb, especially, who lived most of his life as a natural man, to be cloistered up in this way is a vast change of condition, and I know full well how he struggles to fit himself to it. Several times, in the first weeks after we came here, something would disturb my sleep in the dark hour before dawn. I would turn on my pallet as a shadow passed across me. It was Caleb, stalking on silent feet, out the door and through the kitchen garth. He was looking, as I suppose, for a place to greet Keesakand. He does not do this now. I have not spoken to him of it, not wanting to rub upon a wound, so I do not know his reasons. I suppose that he looked for a place such as he was used to, from which to greet the sun, a place unsullied by the smear and stench of English industry. If so, he looked in vain, for upon every rod of nearby ground, man’s mark is already darkly etched.
It galls me, when I catch a stray remark from the master, or between the older English pupils, to the effect that the Indians are uncommonly fortunate to be here. I have come to think it is a fault in us, to credit what we give in such a case, and never to consider what must be given up in order to receive it. And yet, it is not for me to weigh this balance: Christ, and knowledge against a pagan pantheon and an unaccomodated wilderness existence. I must suppose that Caleb and Joel believe the scale weighs fair. For they keep faith with my father’s ambition for them and work diligently at their lessons. They are each of them determined to matriculate to Harvard next leaf fall. They have taken to heart father’s belief that they are destined to lead their people out of darkness, and to do so they must endure hunger and cold as they press their understanding to its limits.
I will say this for Master Corlett: he will extend himself to an extraordinary degree for those who wish to learn, instructing them late into the evening hours. I pray only that Caleb and Joel do not founder under the burden and that their health proves equal to the unwholesomeness of this place. They are strong, but even so, I see a change in them.
Not so long ago, as I passed through the hallway by the schoolroom, I overheard the master ask him to read aloud a passage from the Hebrew bible. Since they had only recently commenced upon the study of that language, putting sounds to the strange, firey letters, I stopped there, my arms full of linens, to listen how he did. Master Corlett had asked him to choose a passage, and he had taken some verses from Jeremiah. I heard his voice, strong, confident with the guttural sounds that so closely resembled those of his own mother tongue. Since I came here I have heard that some learned men think that the Indians are the lost tribe of the ancient Hebrews, because of this similarity in the tongues. He went carefully, sounding each word in his head before he spake it aloud. At first, my heart lifted, to hear him get on so well with such difficult work. But there was that in his voice more foreign than the speaking of strange Hebrew words. His voice, in the ancient tongue, took on a different pitch and tone. It went through me that he chanted the words in the voice of a pawaaw … and, with that thought, I was under the gaily-colored headland again, the wild, fierce prayers rising into a flame-lapped sky.
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