Hester(59)

When he twists, I see blood on his shirt.

“You’re hurt.”

He lowers his head like a child and raises his arms to let me slip the linen over his head.

The cut is small but deep in the thick of his dark chest hair. I press my finger to it.

“It has to be cleaned and stitched.”

I have boiled water in the pot from this morning, a clean rag, and lye soap. I scrub at the wound, prepared for his protests, but he’s too drunk to feel much pain.

“I need a new coat,” he says. “Same as this one. I know you can do it—will you help me, please?”

I press the skin together and sew four, five, six stitches into his chest. Nat bites on his lip but doesn’t cry out. His eyes are closed. His wrists are bony, arms ropy. With his shirt off he’s more length than muscle. Hair runs in a line down his chest and belly and disappears into his trousers. I remember the captain’s fever and seal the stitches with a generous coating of pennyroyal ointment.

“You have to rest.” There’s no place for him to lie out but on my bed. I help him to his feet. “Come.”

On his bare back I see a rash of tiny wounds like the scratching of a cat’s paws, small and sharp—some crusted, others fresh. It looks as if someone tried to claw something from his skin.

“Did they do this, too?” I touch a spot between his shoulder blades.

“That’s nothing.” He twists away before I can treat the area with the ointment.

I wonder if he’s been with a woman who scratched at him in passion and am stung with a sickening jealousy. But when I bring him tea he sings my name and the green envy dissipates.

“Is-a-bell.” I hold the tin cup to his lips and he takes a sip. “Is a bell to ring.”

His words are a golden bell now; the gong that rings them is fire red. I am startled by the affection in his voice and even more by the desire—Is-a-bell, IS-A-BELL—as he says my name over and again, his words getting smaller until he’s asleep, his mouth half-open, snoring gently.

All around me I see the red shadow of my own name fading in the air—as if it is a curse, or a benediction, or a witch’s spell.

IS-A-BELL

IS-A-BELL





* * *



HE SLEEPS, BUT I do not. I sit in the chair by the bed and remember every moment I have spent with him—the gold and red of his voice, even the way his face grew sad and tender when he spoke of his father. I remember all of it.

I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth, flat the way it went when I saw him that very first day on the wharf. I put a hand to his bare shoulder and for an instant I put my face against his skin. My heart is pounding, but his breath, long and slow, long and slow, makes a new rhythm.



* * *



I WAKE CURLED on the floor beside my bed, and in a single breath I remember he is here.

He has to leave before the children come to the well. I allow myself a moment of vanity to comb my hair and splash sleep from my face. Then I shake him awake.

“You have to go while it’s still dark.”

He sits up bleary and confused, blinking until he realizes where he is. I see many things cross his face before he decides on the most practical, the least troubling.

“Will you make me a new coat? Can you finish it for Friday? Please, Isobel. I have no money for a new coat and I can’t have my uncle knowing I was gambling.”

I smooth down my wrinkled dressing gown as he climbs off the bed. I do not even inspect his wound, for I am overwhelmed now that he has slept in my cottage and in my bed.

“I can’t make a new coat in three days, but I’ll repair this one if I can find the fabric.”

He pulls his shirt over his head and again I see the scratches on his back are a puzzle of crisscrossed angles, almost a patchwork of red-and-brown plaid.

With a start, I recall the pitiful penitent who wandered outside the cathedral in Glasgow applying a thorny whip to his own back. It was whispered that men did such things to punish a guilt or even to purge a carnal desire. The thought of Nat doing the same should quake me, but instead, it draws me closer. Here is a man who is as at war within himself as I am with my colors and the fear of my own power.

And if he has a lust in him, perhaps it is for me.

Before I wed Edward, a lust like that would have frightened me. But I’ve seen what comes from a man who doesn’t try to control his own desires.

“I’ll come back tonight.” Nat is putting on his boots by the door.

“Not tonight.”

“Then tomorrow. Put a candle in the window if I may come.”

I find the filaments of red hair in my pocket and, without thinking why, tuck them into his vest just before he shrugs into it. Think of the faeries beneath the May trees, Mam whispered. But in life she never wanted me to think of the faeries. She didn’t want Pap frightening me with those stories.

“There’s always a candle in the window—if there is no candle in the window, then do not come,” I say.

We step into the yard and I look up the hill toward Mercy’s place.

“Go now.” I want to reach for him. I remember the smell of tobacco on his shoulder like the tobacco on my pap’s letter and fold my arms around myself as he walks into the morning dusk.

It’s the last moment between night and day, and as I strain to watch him fade down the hill, something moves across the hillcrest on the other side of the yard.