Hester(92)

She has seen the blackbird hovering at the edge of the cottage even as the snow piles up, and she has seen the scarlet blood on her bedclothes. She knows that she will die soon, and young. This is a great and terrible pain, for she wished to see many more Scottish summers, to hear the bagpipes coming over ford and field, to lie in her husband’s arms, to splash in the River Clyde and run about the maypole as her children laughed and danced beside her.

But it is not to be.

Margaret cannot read and write as she wished, but she is good with pencil and paper and knows how to put hope and beauty into needle and thread.

“Here—” She pulls her daughter into her lap and opens a sketchbook full of irises and orchids. “When I was a little girl my mother took me to a field filled with irises of every size and color. We spent the whole day there, and I dreamt of them for years.

“One day you must make a dress with irises ringed around the bottom,” she tells Isobel. “You must wear it when you want to be brave and wise.”

That night, when the child is asleep, Margaret finds her rosary beads and prays to the Virgin Mother that what she has done is not a sin, for the irises are the color of the faerie lights, and protection from nature is not the power of the Lord.

Yet she has done what she can, and she prays that it will be enough.





THIRTY-ONE





I have a week to decide.

If I go to Maine, Nat might keep me as a mistress and in time come to love the child. He’s cowardly but passionate, and the child might keep him returning to me.

If I stay, the captain might help bring business to me in Salem, even speak on my behalf to his friends, and Felicity might remain as silent and sullen as she was at the banquet—just as Abigail predicted.

But if I’m here and Edward returns, the child and I would be at his mercy. If I stay, people might still call me all the terrible things that Felicity and Nat have already said. And though I might be strong enough, my child would have to live with a shame that she didn’t cause.

Perhaps I should sell the Adam and Eve shawl as I intended and make enough money to start someplace entirely new.

Just like this, round and round I go until I am worn down with indecision.



* * *



TWO DAYS PASS without a single visitor, and Tuesday grows closer. I must speak to someone about my choices, for my head is spinning and I do not trust myself.

Friday morning in the sleeting cold, I pull my plain brown cloak over the red one and lurk in the alleyway entrance near Felicity’s shop, but Abigail arrives under an umbrella with Felicity and I dare not speak.

I try to find Nell, but the Silas house is shuttered to the wet morning.

I take the shortcut through the graveyard on the hill and stand where I once saw Nat kicking the tombstone. On the left is the grave of William Hathorne and on the right is the gravestone of John Hathorne. The son’s stone leans away from the father’s. They were cruel men who punished with glee, Nat said. Men who delighted in delivering the lash and noose. Yet even as the memory of their cruelty has carved a deep scar into Nat’s life, these are the men he cannot leave behind.

Is it true? Is that what keeps him from me? Or is it that I am good enough for him in the night but not in the light of day?



* * *



SATURDAY PASSES WITH thread through cloth, my ladies at the door, the exchange of work for food, the rattling of the chatelaine at my waist.

On Saturday evening the undertaker arrives holding his black cap at his heart. It is the first time I’ve seen his face without the cap, and the clarity of his gaze surprises me.

“I’m very sorry,” he says. “It’s the Irish girl.”

The sky is a cold slate gray, the leaves fallen from the trees have browned on the ground. A woman steps into the yard behind him. She is wearing a threadbare blue dress and pulling a basket on two large wheels. I recognize the washerwoman and stifle a scream.

“My wife, Eveline.” The undertaker gestures behind him.

“I don’t understand,” I say.

“The Silas maid passed.” He spits out a stream of black tobacco juice. “Lovely young lady. The newlywed called Nell.”

The cat curls around my legs and mewls.

“You must be wrong—” I grip the door frame. “I went to the house a few days ago—”

He shakes his head.

“Fever. It happens fast like that sometimes.”

Nell’s cheeks were flushed the night of the banquet and she looked frail. I remember she said she was unwell, but I thought she was being kind and selfless on my behalf.

“I could have done something.” I slide against the doorway and fall to my knees. The doorway between life and death that Edward spoke of the first time we met: I am in it now.

“You couldn’t do nothing to save her.”

His wife comes toward me.

“Poor dear,” she says. I do not have the strength to shy away from her. “Bring her water, Joseph, so I can tend to her.”

Her hands are cold as she helps me into the house and gives me the water. She pulls a blanket over my shoulders and kneels in front of me. Nell is dead. Green and lovely Nell, the girl who first told me that life here had been good to her and promised it would be good to me.

“I knew you’d want to make her shroud,” the washerwoman says. I look at her hands for the sharp and mud-dirty nails of the bean-nighe and wait for the soupy-water breath of a spirit. But this woman is only kind. She’s brought plain cotton for the shroud as only the simplest folk use, and says a prayer over the cloth. But Nell deserves more.