Hester(27)

She stands and follows them, as she knows she must.

Dawn turns to day and to night, and for one full cycle of the moon she leaps from rock to rock, following the trill of faerie lights until at last, hungry and exhausted, she falls at the mouth of a wood hut and wakes at the feet of a crone.

The old woman’s face is like the bark of an old tree. She patches Isobel’s hands and coats her pinprick wounds in a thick ointment that smells of sap and ash. The crone feeds her bits of bird eggs in blue shells, broth made of turtle and frogs, and little by little Isobel grows stronger.

“Let me stay,” Isobel says when she is healed. “I will do anything for you.”

She has a new brown cloak on her shoulders and there is a ring of flowers around her forehead like a halo.

The old crone shakes her head. “You belong in the world of men,” she says.

Isobel stands beside the tree that was her home and refuge for many months. She does not want to leave it.

“The world of men doesn’t want me.”

The crone puts a hand upon Isobel’s crowned head.

“You will give birth to a line of strong women who will carry your seed across the oceans and join with others who live for freedom.”

“It cannot be.” Isobel bows her head and clasps her womb.

“And yet I have already seen it,” the crone tells her with a soft smile. “You must fly from the nest, little faerie child.”





NINE





By morning the rain has stopped. I prepare a basket, review my list, decide where I will go and how I will bargain for silk and threads. One of Pap’s gold pieces should bring me eight or nine dollars—more than enough to buy what I need.

I’m distracted and excited and cannot readily put my fingers on the coins. I kneel down and reach farther into the back of the yellow cupboard, where I find the welt of wool in which I hid them.

The wool is folded upon nothing but itself.

I pull everything out of the cupboard.

I search the wax cloth, the tarp pieces, the lace from home.

Perhaps I’m going mad. I think back over my steps the week prior: buying the buttons, bringing them home, hiding my money in a bit of cloth. I put the silver and gold together and stored them away in the cupboard. A few minutes later, Edward came into the cottage.

He was frustrated when he went out to meet Salem’s apothecaries and druggists. He complained that they didn’t understand his ambitions and didn’t like foreigners. But later that very day he stopped complaining.

All of my money—the silver change from the buttons, the gold pieces from my father—was wrapped in the same bit of cloth I hid away in the cupboard. I remember it clearly.

Now it’s all gone. And there’s only one reasonable explanation.



* * *



I WASN’T ANGRY when Mam told me to hide my colors or when Pap put me to work. I wasn’t angry when Edward forbade me to make a banner for the shoemaker. Even when he lost the shop and we were sent to the poorhouse, I was more despairing than angry.

Now my rage is fuel and fire.

I pull everything from the shelves, spill out Edward’s formulas and papers, kick away his old Sunday coat—the filthy coat of a thief, I would never reuse a single thread—and throw it all into the hearth, strike a match, and watch it burn.

When everything’s reduced to ash, I wash my hands and face and take stock of what I have. Silk thread. Scrimshaw buttons. My sketches. Needle and sewing tools. Three embroidery hoops. Edward’s fat apothecary book that might still be of use. A sharp stiletto, a thick, long canvas needle from the captain. Scissors. My dress embroidered with flowers. The red cape. My mother’s gloves.

Well water. A yard for a garden.

“Plant a rainbow,” Zeke said.



* * *



IT’S ONLY A short way up the rise to Zeke and Mercy’s place, and I stomp and slide through the mud in my haste. My hands are still shaking and I am splattered with dirt when I enter the yard. Chickens are clucking and goats bleating. Zeke’s cart is on the gravel. There’s no sign of the children.

The plot is less a farm than a small clearing with three low huts tilted against a central brick chimney. The yard is filled with chickens—white, brown, orange tailed, perhaps thirty of them pecking and fussing. Trees overhang the dirt, branches greening with leaves and buds. Behind the huts are two rows of chicken coops cobbled out of wire and old crates. They lean together in a maze of straw and wood. Mint and what looks like pennyroyal are sprouting at the edge of the dirt, glistening with last night’s rain.

Mercy steps into the yard, wiping her hands on an apron. She’s in a gray work smock and her arms are bare. The chickens peck and chatter at her feet, and I remember the rats rummaging under my skirts at the poorhouse.

“What do you want?” She makes no attempt at niceties.

I nearly tell her that Edward has stolen my gold, but at the last moment I bite my tongue. Secrets aren’t easily kept in Salem, and I don’t want the whole town knowing my husband is a thief.

“I’ve been robbed, and—”

“Nobody here robbed you.” She raises her chin.

“I don’t suspect you—it’s just that I hid my gold and it’s been taken.”

Mercy’s eyes are hard on mine. She means for me to know that no one in her family is a thief.