Hester(86)

“This is beautiful.” I touch the green blue.

He lifts it into the light, where it shimmers like a mirage. If I were still planning to attend the banquet, I would wear this color.

“Verdigris. True green. In France they call it vert de Grèce—green from Greece.”

I’m reaching for the length of it when the heat hits me and I swoon.

Darling steadies me with two hands on my waist right at the thickening, and I dare not look at him.

“Sit, Mrs. Gamble.”

He fetches water from the well and brings the brimming ladle to me. His hands hover around my face as I drink, and there’s a strange tenderness about him. Captain Darling’s attentive protection feels like a steady ship upon the sea. But I cannot forget Felicity’s words or what the town will say of our friendship.

“I can’t accept a gift so dear,” I say, although I am already imagining the dresses I might make of these silks.

“It’s enough to start up your own seamstress shop.”

I will have no shop here, but I don’t say this to him.

“Except everyone will know I couldn’t buy such fine silks—there would be gossip.”

Darling frowns.

“Then we’ll make it an investment,” he says. “When you sell the dresses, you can repay me with interest.”

I can’t deny this is a reasonable business offer, one that a clever woman wouldn’t turn down. With silks like these I can make glorious dresses to bring to Philadelphia as soon as I hear from Charlotte. I can even approximate her new measurements and make one to suit her.

“How much interest would you charge?”

He doesn’t smile or twist his lips into the amused grin that I have seen on Nat’s face. His gaze remains fixed on mine, clear and steady.

“What do you propose is fair?” he asks.

I think back to those first weeks in Salem, when I heard the men talking about business in percentages.

“Ten percent,” I say.

Darling nods.

“We must shake on it, as I have seen it done,” I say.

He tips back his cap. His eyes are bright.

“We can shake on it,” the captain says. “But I have not forgotten that I owe you my life, Mrs. Gamble.”

I remember those words, blue as sky and white as clouds, right before we sailed into the great Massachusetts Bay.

“You don’t owe me your life, Captain Darling, but I will accept your silks and your terms,” I say, and we shake as two merchants might.

The captain eats both scones that I offer and passes the time telling me about the landscape in Nova Scotia, “just up past Maine,” he explains. I blink away the memory of Nat teaching me to swim in the secret cove, Nat describing the cold water in the lake of his boyhood summer days. For just a few moments I let myself soak in the sea-and-sunlit landscape Darling describes.

He is still sitting in my yard when Mercy comes with a fastening hook she promised for Lily’s cape. Ivy is with her.

“Where is your brother?” I ask as I realize I have not seen Abraham in many days.

Ivy tucks herself behind Mercy and grabs the edge of her mother’s apron. I’ve noticed the little one is always more talkative when her brother is beside her.

“Abraham’s gone north.” Mercy’s quiet words are flat and small. She’s carrying two empty chicken feedbags across her shoulder. Something is wrong—the pitch of her words is slant and her throat is tight.

“Where?”

Mercy glances at the captain, her face strained in a way I have seen only once, that day in Lynn after we visited the shoemaker.

“He’s got an uncle up Canada way.” She does not sound convincing.

I look from Mercy to the captain.

“Will he be back?” I ask.

Mercy reaches behind her to pat Ivy’s head, and I understand that she’s afraid of something.

“Can’t say for sure.” She looks at me with the same hard expression she gave when I asked about the sugar house and her embroidery.

I think back to the slave catcher, the lady in town who warned Mr. Remond, their talk of an eight-year-old boy. About Abraham’s age. Perhaps she has hidden her son away so he is not mistaken for a runaway.

“Best not to think on it too much,” Mercy says.

I want to assure her that I will say nothing. “I pray he takes good care,” I say instead, and try to impart meaning in my words.

Soon they leave for town together and I’m left watching their retreating figures—Mercy holding Ivy’s hand, the captain leading the way. I put a protective hand across my abdomen and hope I will never have to say a sorrowful goodbye to my child, for I have grown accustomed to her—yes, I believe it is a girl—and love her already, just as Mercy loves her own.



* * *



FOR WEEKS THE heat is merciless. Two old merchants die in their beds, and the undertaker is at my door twice more. I wonder why he has come to me again, but I need the work and don’t ask why.

I begin to fashion dresses from the captain’s silks and imagine I will sell them when they are done. Perhaps Mrs. Silas will help me find buyers. Perhaps Charlotte will bring me to Philadelphia. All I know is how to stitch, and so this is what I do.

Even in the worst heat in the final days of summer, the ladies trickle to my clearing. I finish the cape for Lily and show her mother how to position the strap and lace up the back, tightening it a little bit more each day. The girl straightens ever so slightly and her face brightens. Her mother cries, but I do not, for I can see that Lily is a girl who doesn’t want pity.