Caleb's Crossing

by Geraldine Brooks

  We were kindred indeed, Caleb and I. I cast my hands over my face, but Caleb reached out and pulled them away. “Tell no one, Bethia. You must never speak of this. There is not another soul alive who would understand it. Not even Joel.” His eyes bored into me. “I am not even certain that you do.”

  “Oh, I understand. Perhaps more than you think.” My voice was as weak as a mewling kitten. I stood then, unsteadily. I could not speak anymore. I felt wrung out. The shadows had begun to lengthen on the other side of the noon hour. Makepeace would be looking for his dinner.

  “I must go,” I said, still shaken, struggling for self-command. “Caleb, you should know that I mean to accept this indenture, and if my reason remains obscure to you, all I ask is that you believe it is my willing choice. As I try to accept what you say, even though it scalds my heart.” I brushed the sand from my skirt, pulled out my crumpled cap, and tried to knot up my hair. Caleb made to walk back to Great Harbor, but I would not have him do so. He climbed up behind me on Speckle, and we rode by a slow way, through the woods, so as to be unobserved. When Speckle foundered slightly on an uneven tussock, his hands grasped my waist for a moment, and I was conscious that however much I might feel him to be my brother, it was not so in fact. In the town, we would need to be even more wary of our manners one unto the other.

  A half mile short of the plantation, he dismounted. As he turned to go, I reached down and touched him lightly on the shoulder. “One thing further: hold some charity in your heart to grandfather and Makepeace. Even if they do not always do well, they mean well. I truly believe so. And it is what father would want of you.” He lifted his chin in a gesture that might have been assent, might have been dismissal. I rode on then, alone. When I glanced back, my hand raised in farewell, he had melted into the trees, invisible. He had not lost the art.

  A good thing I had been prudent, because Makepeace was in the dooryard when I rode up, and when he saw my state, he turned a bilious shade. He barely held in his wrath, even though I could see it cost him. I tried to imagine what would have happened had I added a half-clad Caleb to the spectacle. The thought of it caused a smile to break across my face, and at that, Makepeace snatched his hat and staff and stalked off, needing to put some distance between us or else loose what remained of his composure.

  By the time he arrived back, I had seen to the mare, dressed my hair decently, donned a fresh cap and set a hearty board. When he saw the plate of roasted cod and green beans, he made an eloquent and heartfelt grace, including in it a blessing upon the hands that had prepared the food. I let him eat a slice of treacle pudding and a dish of raspberries. As he scraped up the last of it, I told him I meant to accept the indenture. I would dearly have liked to keep him on my pin a few days longer, but we all of us needed to plan for the journey, and time was short.

  XI

  I had never seen a set of indentures, and had surely never thought to see my own. In as much as I had given my mind to such a thing, I had thought perhaps that I would, as a wife, one day in charity assent to take into service some poor young person in need of a roof and sustenance.

  Grandfather, sensible of the awkwardness of the moment, paced his chamber as I read over both copies of the paper. I could tell that it irked him when I insisted to read them, just as he was about to set his name and seal. But willing or no, he handed them to me. It was a short form of words, but since it bore so heavily upon my future I read it over slowly.

  This indenture, made the 25th day of August one thousand six hundred and sixty between Elijah Corlett of Cambridge on the one part and Thomas Mayfield of Great Harbor on the other part, that the said Thomas Mayfield has bound and does hereby bind minor child Bethia Mayfield his granddaughter and ward by law to any lawful work for and to reside with the said Elijah Corlett until the 25th day of August one thousand six hundred and sixty four. During which time Elijah Corlett covenants to use all means in his power to provide for said Bethia Mayfield boarding and lodging and such attendance as is necessary to her keep and care in health and sickness and further covenants to afford her brother, Makepeace Mayfield, full scholar’s privileges, board and lodging at the Cambridge Latin School and to educate him in Literature as he is capable.

  The papers already bore Corlett’s sign and seal, and both had been laid together and cut around the edges with a set of indentations so that the one paper exactly matched the other. When I had read and compared them, I handed both silently to grandfather and watched as he dipped his pen and made his usual flourishing signature.

  “So, that is done,” he said. “I will send the one copy with you to Master Corlett and keep the other safely here, not that I expect for one moment that Corlett would transgress any particular of the agreement … but … just to be prudent…”

  I watched him place the paper in the box where he kept wills and deeds and debtors’ bonds. He locked it with a key that he kept on a fob. I thought how glad I would be, four years hence, on the day I could retrieve that paper, tear it into small pieces and feed it into the fire.

  From Great Harbor to Cambridge as the crow flies is no great distance. But alas, we are not crows. The choice lay between a short sail across seven miles to the nearest point on the mainland, and then a long and difficult trek west and north upon narrow Indian paths through wilderness; or else a longer sail, up and around the arcing arm of the cape and onward to Boston, which takes the better part of a day and night to accomplish, in fair weather. From there, one must arrange a barge up the river to the town landing at Cambridge—an hour with a fair wind and a flood tide, but an impossible journey should an easterly prevail. As we needed to fetch books and clothing with us, we decided to go by the longer sea route—despite great misgivings.

  There was much to do. I had to instruct the neighbor’s young boy, who was good with the tegs, on the special care of my ewes, and show him how to make my earmark on the lambs in due season. I saw Speckle into the hands of grandfather’s manservant, and, before I left her, spent some time stroking her long nose, telling her not to become too spoiled while we were gone. The day before we were to sail, I conceived an errand to the Iacoomis cabin, telling Makepeace that I thought it would be charitable to let that family have the last of the season’s unspun wool, since I was not about to fetch it with me to Cambridge. He raised an eyebrow, saying that a nearer neighbor would be just as glad of that kindness, but in the end assented. I walked out to what had once been the extreme edge of Great Harbor. When I was small, and Iacoomis had first settled down there, he had built a rude sort of a hut, made of poles and timber sheets in the native manner. Over the years he had enlarged and amended it to a sound wattle-and-daub dwelling, not much different to its English neighbors. The cabin had once been set off at a distance from the nearest English house. But now the town had grown out and past it, and no one save the Aldens thought anything about it any more, the Iacoomis family living just exactly as we did in every particular.

  By great good fortune, I found Caleb in the dooryard, playing at jacks with Joel’s young brothers. After I told Iacoomis’s wife, who went by the English name of Grace, about the wool, I tarried for a few minutes and joined in the game. Under cover of the children’s merry voices, I asked Caleb, in Latin, if his uncle Tequamuck knew we were to sail on the next morning’s tide. Caleb’s head lifted sharply, his dark eyes regarding me gravely. “I know what you fear,” he said, also in Latin. “I, too, fear it. I have said nothing to him. We have not exchanged words together since Worm Moon. But Tequamuck hears and knows much.”

  “Will he do to us as he did to father?”

  “My heart says no. He loves me, Bethia, even now. He was always more to me than father or mother. I think he feeds a hope that I will yet abandon the English God. That hope is therefore our hope….”

  We had to stop then, for Iacoomis himself came out of the cabin to thank me for my gift, and for my attentions to Joel’s welfare in Cambridge, and to wish me Godspeed.

  The next day dawned bright and fair an
d almost windless. We had to sit at anchor until the breezes picked up late in the afternoon. All that time, I scanned the shoreline with a tightness in my throat, trying to make out that feathered cloak upon the bluffs. I saw Caleb’s glance turn that way also. But his uncle did not come, and as the canvas bellied out and the timbers creaked we beat away from the island. I watched from the stern until the last low nob of land flattened to a dark line, then a hazy disturbance on the horizon. Finally it merged into the edge of the world and vanished from my sight. At that moment, fear gave way to a grief for home that has not left me since.

  To be sure, the journey hence is hard enough even without devilment, and since others have written of its rigors I will not trouble to set them down, except to say I was able to get no sleep aboard the sloop, which pitched and yawed to an alarming degree for almost every hour of our voyage. In Boston’s harbor the next morning all was delay and frustration in finding a barge, and then an easterly blew that kept us from setting out till sunset. The wide river wound through fens and marshes, all bronzed in the failing light. It was full dark when the bargeman sighted the rushlight that marked the turn into a canal dredged from the Cambridge town creek. He disembarked us at the landing and hallowed for the carter who lived in a rude hut nearby. I could see nothing beyond the narrow circle of the carter’s lamp. I could, however, smell my new home. There was a reek of beasts from the Ox-Pasture and the Cow Common, a rich tidal stink of rot and decay, and a stench such as comes from people pressed in close habitation. When finally we arrived, exhausted, at Master Corlett’s door, the hour was late. Although the paths around the college were lit by cressets full of burning rushlights, I couldn’t tell much about the town. The lamplighter himself showed us the way to Master Corlett’s school. The master greeted us civilly, roused a pair of bleary-eyed boys to help fetch our boxes off the cart, and after a few words to Makepeace, sent him with Caleb and Joel to find their places in the attic dormitory among the other pupils. As their boots clumped up the narrow stair, he ushered me into his own chamber.

  “You brought the document, I suppose?”

  I handed his copy of the indenture across his desk.

  He barely glanced at grandfather’s signature, and then pushed the paper away as if it were as distasteful to him as it was to me. He gazed at me with a pair of watery blue eyes. “Uncommonly obliging of you to join us here. I trust you will not find the duties too onerous, and if you do, you must come to me at once and we will see what can be done to adjust them. I told your grandfather that I was in want of a gentlewoman, and you shall be treated as one, within the limits of our means here. I will not ask of you anything that my own dear wife Barbara did not do, full willingly, to keep these boys in health and heart. But here I am, speaking of my fine intentions and I do not even offer you a chair—do sit.” I looked about the sparsely furnished little chamber, which contained a hand-hewn desk, a bookshelf, a single ladder-backed chair, a bedstead, and little else. Then I spied a rush-seated stool tucked under the bedstead and pulled it out. I was glad to sit, even on so low and rickety a perch.

  “I had the pleasure of meeting your father, did you know, when he was a stripling in Watertown. Never did meet your grandfather, though saw him at meeting. Interesting venture of his, the island. We all of us thought it a bold and reckless plan, at the time. But they say the settlement prospers. And your poor late father. Such miracles they say he wrought, bringing the gospel. Cut down untimely there, to be sure. Always an excellent scholar, and godly, so his master said, when he was but a youth. Privilege for me to teach his son, your brother, as I said to him just now. Uncommonly fortunate that you are easy in company with the young Indian pupils—we have two others enrolled, younger than the brace of islanders come hither with you, and the prospect of at least one other, perhaps, from the Nipmuc people…. Most interesting case, though not without challenges…. I will tell you of it, perhaps, another time. I expect your grandfather shared with you the catalogue of my difficulties here. The Cambridge women, most reluctant to bide with the Red Man. Even, it seems, with the Red Boy….” He gave a little wheezy laugh at that. “Any rate, one went about with a switch in her hand, and used it, any time the poor mites came near her, whether they erred or no. The next had such a case of the vapors if she was obliged to be in the same room with them that she could barely get her work done.”

  I was swaying on the stool, my fatigue so great. I longed for my pallet. I began to wonder if he would ever think to show me to it. I envied Makepeace and the others, able to put their heads down. But Master Corlett seemed oblivious to the hour, and my state. He was speaking now of Master Eliot, and his great hopes for education in the colony, so as to ensure the ministry and professions endured beyond the talents that immigrant generation had brought with them from their English colleges. “He was ardent for it, yes. Fervent. I heard him once pray: ‘Lord, for schools everywhere amongst us! Before we die, may we be so happy as to see a good school encouraged in every plantation of this country.’ And so we have, now, in all places with one hundred families or more. His own town, Roxbury, boasts an illustrious school, having fitted more scholars for the college than any town of its bigness, or even twice its bigness…. But we are hard upon its heels, here. Indeed we are. We may be poor in material goods—you will see that we get on hand to mouth here—but we are rich in the things of the mind….”

  I felt my eyelids droop and strove to prop them open, as good manners demanded. But my body defied my will. I must have dropped to sleep for an instant, for my head lolled onto my breast and I came awake with a start, lifting my chin with a sudden spasm.

  “… and I am sure you will find the boys conscious of the good fortune that brings them here.” Master Corlett rambled along, undaunted by, or oblivious to, my stifled yawns. The boys might very well be conscious of their good fortune, but I was near to unconscious, and I realized I would have to speak up or fall down. So I stood.

  “I am sorry, Master Corlett. I would be very glad to hear more of the school tomorrow. But I have had a trying journey and a very long day, and I would be most grateful…”

  “Of course, of course. Must forgive me.” He rose and came around the desk, offering me his arm. “Too much on my own of an evening, that is the trouble. Used to sit up till all hours, talking with my son Samuel, when he… Thoughtless of me. My son still, sometimes … but generally his evenings are bespoke by his duties—at the college—you know…. I fear you will find your accommodations rather Spartan. I have no chamber to offer you. There is only this one, then the schoolroom, which doubles as refectory, and the dormitory, which is in the attic … eight boys up there now. Your brother the only one won’t have a bedfellow, the rest all go two-a-pallet. There are another six boys come as day pupils, families live here in town, you know. You’ll need to give them bever, but they don’t take commons with us—home to their families for dinner. Any case, as I was saying, no chamber for yourself, but I thought, a pallet in the kitchen … private from the boys, and the cook fire, warmest place when the weather hardens. We haven’t the luxury, generally, of a fire in any other room, unless a boy’s people gift us extra wood.” He directed me along a short hall, and then we stepped down into the dark kitchen. There was a scent of old fat, damp rags and mouse piss. A pallet with a thin shakedown was wedged against the wall. Half of it extended underneath a worn deal table, very stained, greasy and unwholesome-looking. Scrubbing it white and clean would be my first chore. He set the candle down and took a taper to light his own way. “We follow the college schedule here, get the boys used it, do you know. Prayers at six, first class at seven. You will please serve them their morning bever at nine. That will be a pint pot of small beer and a slice of bread for each boy. I will instruct you on the rest of your duties at that time. Good night to you now. God keep you till morning.”

  I murmured a good night. As soon as he closed the kitchen door, I snuffed the candle and fell upon the pallet. I barely had the strength to unlace my boots. For the rest
, I fell asleep fully clad.

  XII

  I woke to a clatter of feet above my head, followed thereafter by a bustle of young bodies jostling each other down the narrow stairs. When the last pupil had crammed himself into Master Corlett’s chamber, I heard the door close and the master’s quavering voice rise to lead the prayer.

  I got up, stiff and weary still, to take the measure of my new surroundings. Throwing a shawl over my shoulders, I stepped out into the garth. It was true, what grandfather had reported; the college was not a stone’s throw away. The older building was a large clapboard structure, which must have seemed very fine when they first built it on these wild coasts, almost twenty years earlier. It was a full three floors, with three wings set off at right angles to the main structure. In the center was a tall turret with a bell tower. It seemed a remarkable thing, to have raised such a place as this, at the very dawn of settlement, when material cares and the very business of survival pressed so hard upon the colony. I had heard that some had deemed the college building too gorgeous for a wilderness. But the grace of its design cannot have been matched by skill in its construction, for its shingle roof sagged woefully in several places and the sills showed signs of well-advanced rot. The neat new brick building beside it—which I guessed must be the Indian College—only emphasized the decayed condition of the larger and more venerable structure.