Hester(20)

* * *



WE SLEEP ON the floor that night, and the next day Edward purchases a slat bed and a large table. He hires Zeke, who helps carry the items into the house, talking all the while.

“You got a fine garden out back, Mrs. Gamble, just needs hoeing, weeding, and planting.” Zeke wears a straw hat with a neat blue band around it and tips it back when he looks at me. “Wild blackberries in spring, orange squash in October. You plant a rainbow out here, you’ll eat all year long.”

“A rainbow?”

If he notices the word startles me, he gives no hint of it.

“Berries and plants in every color is the best way to grow a garden that makes you strong against sickness and bad spirits.”

I follow him out back as he ticks off a long list of foods—yellow and green peppers, red rhubarb, purple potatoes—then roots out a rotted squash and pulls a few seeds from the soft flesh.

“Dry the seeds before you put them in the ground.” He points to an old shed in the back of the lot. “Might be some tools in there,” he adds before he and Edward head into town for supplies.

In the shed I unearth a hoe, a large old bucket, a rake and an ax, and a large cupboard littered with animal droppings. Mice rustle underfoot as I drag and push the heavy cupboard outside, where a finger through the crusted top reveals it’s made of blond wood with a backboard of white-and blue-painted tiles. By the time Edward comes home I have cleaned up the piece and we lug it inside together, where it makes a fine centerpiece beside our hearth.

At last, we stoke the fire and eat our bread and beans as evening falls. In my mind I see Zeke’s words in patterns of color—whether the colors are a curse or a gift I still can’t say, but soon I’ll be a woman alone and I must make use of what’s mine.

When Edward begins to snore, I sketch out a design for a pillow with Zeke’s very words—Plant a rainbow—and stitch it as the night bleeds dark outside my window. I make the letter P spring-grass green, R a deep orange, and the W a bright royal blue. This is how the letters appeared to me when I was a girl and how they appear again now—a rainbow across an ocean of time and space.





Scotland, 1662


A rope hangs from the gallows and a torch burns at the guard post. In the morning they will come for her.

At the sound of footsteps outside the prison door, Isobel Gowdie lifts her head from the straw. Her shaved hair has begun to grow in a jagged red halo around her scalp.

“Stop and say your name,” the guard calls.

“’Tis John Gilbert.”

Isobel stands on shaking legs. Her husband has come—she can scarce believe it. John is a good and sturdy man, but neither rich nor clever enough to bribe the guard and set her free. “You’ll surely let a man say goodbye to his wife,” he says loudly.

Isobel hears the sound like coin on metal—not at the front of the cell but at the rear. Her husband’s voice drones on as a hand slips through the barred window at the back of the jail and hacks apart the wooden bars. The reverend’s wife’s face appears through a slot no larger than a small cupboard; an eye, a nose, a hand that waves for her through the dark.

Isobel hesitates. She knows Satan can take the shape of a cat or dog or even a man. But Forbes’s wife is insistent, flapping her hand and hissing, “You don’t have much time.”

From the front of the jail she hears the guard shouting at her husband to “move on, you cannot be admitted.” Gowdie is so thin she nearly melts through the space Margret Forbes has made for her.

“Run toward the full moon,” Margret says as she presses a small bundle of food into Isobel’s hands.

But Isobel knows better. She runs into the deep forest glens; she runs along the river and never looks back.





SEVEN





New Harmony

Now accepting cargo and investment

Sails March 16, 1829

to BERMUDA and LIVERPOOL

with stops in Ports of Baltimore and Charleston

Captain William Darling taking appointments at Charter Ale House

noon on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays



It takes twelve days for the New Harmony cargo to be weighed, recorded, sold, and delivered. An advertisement is posted in the Salem Gazette and the captain and his first mate take meetings in the Charter Ale House with investors, traders, and manufacturers. Edward buys himself a new coat and a day dress for me, and each night he tells me about the goods the captain has added to the ledgers: English and Scottish linens, shoes made in Lynn, pottery and metal barrel staves manufactured in Marblehead and elsewhere in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

“Shoes are best.” Edward leans back as I put a steaming plate of potatoes with goat’s milk in front of him. “Light for their value and the space they use.”

All week Edward tromps the Salem streets and calls on apothecaries, druggists, and doctors to raise capital for his own ventures. He speaks with new confidence about wooing investors and bargaining with merchants.

“They want cola leaf from Peru and cocaine from Mexico,” he reports. “Americans are looking for medicines to protect them from the pox and other calamities, and I’ll charm it from the slaves and savages.”

Robust after a week on land, Captain Darling and Ingo spend two evenings at our table charting out their journey. The course will take them to Baltimore, then south to Virginia and on to Bermuda, across the Atlantic to Liverpool, and then back home to Salem.