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A
lice marked time by the increase in her strength, the decrease in pain in her breasts and loins. The widow remained in a constant state of great excitement, her voice rising from below at frequent intervals. At first Alice thought she argued with Freeman, but after a time she came to understand that Freeman wasn’t there, and that the widow argued with the guard they had assigned to Alice until she could travel to the gaol. Alice’s strength had returned enough so that she might have rekindled her old habit of creeping to the stairs at any time to listen to the on-again-off-again struggles below, but she could think of no reason to take the trouble.

The widow too seemed to wish to keep her where she was. She fed her, washed her, and helped her to the night jar as she was able but asked her nothing, and Alice made no offer. The hours and days since the first pain had struck seemed to weave together and fall apart, reconnecting themselves in no kind of pattern. She recalled great pain, and one moment of such bliss she wished she might have died at that minute to keep hold of it as it was, but the next thing she recalled with any great certainty was the sheriff. She drifted in and out of sleep, ate, sat up, and walked the length of the room as the widow directed, but sleep was the thing she craved, although it was never peaceful.

She dreamed of the babe, a great bloody babe, lifting bloody hands to strangle her; she dreamed of the widow raising scarred hands to strangle her; she dreamed of Verley come after her, and Freeman accosting him, not to rescue Alice but to demand his five pounds reward for her capture. She dreamed of her mother, finned and swimming across the floor toward her, tears puddling around her, and her father, kicking the trunk, which had a dead, bloody babe inside it. If she dreamed of Nate she didn’t remember it.

She woke to more shouting below: men, at least two, neither voice recognizable, and a woman she thought a stranger also until she realized it was the widow, in as hot a fury as Alice had ever heard her. At length the widow appeared with a bowl and a plate, her face raw red, her jaw a ridge of locked, jumping muscles. She sat down on the bed and fed Alice a salty broth along with some soft, sweet bread; it tasted very fine, and Alice felt very warm under her coverlet; it occurred to her that if she could have erased the commotion around her she would have said that her life had come around to a good spot. She was out of pain, she had been shed of the babe, she had kept her bed at the widow’s.

The widow put the dishes on the floor and went to the pegs to collect Alice’s quilted petticoat and wool flannel gown. She set them on the bed. She said, “I’ve held them off as long as possible. They say you must come down now, or they’ll come up and get you.”

Alice didn’t move. The widow fetched a thick pair of worsted stockings from the chest, then another. She returned to the bed, and as Alice still hadn’t moved, drew down the covers and began to push on her stockings.

“All right, now, Alice, you must get up.”

But Alice couldn’t move. It was as if her legs understood that if she once gave up her bed under the widow’s eaves she would never return to it. The widow said, “Do you want them to carry you out like a trussed hog, Alice?”

Alice didn’t. She jerked her legs to the side of the bed and stepped into the skirt as the widow held it, but it had been made loose for an expanded girth, and the widow had to cross the tapes to fasten it. She held out Alice’s boots, and Alice pushed her feet into them. She stood up, the widow helping her. She walked to the stairs and worked her way down, holding on to the rope rail.

The two men waiting for her in the keeping room were built in similar blocky shapes like a pair of matched oxen. They stared and shuffled back and forth, looking at each other in between, until one of them stepped forward and captured Alice’s elbow. The widow came up and brushed him aside to fix Alice’s cloak around her, tie on a muffler, hand her a pair of mittens. The men, both of them together this time, stepped in and took hold of Alice’s arms. They led her outside to a heavy wooden cart filled with straw and lifted her in. One of the men—Alice made no effort to distinguish them—reached into the wagon, grabbed Alice’s ankle, and clamped it in an iron band fixed by a chain to a heavy metal ring in the wagon floor.

The widow reappeared with a bundle, which she thrust into Alice’s arms; she tossed two bed rugs over her. One of the men climbed up onto the seat and the other mounted an already saddled horse that had been tied to the wagon; they each clicked to their beasts, and the cart wheeled off into the road. The widow called something after her, but Alice couldn’t make it out against the wind off the water.

The wind followed the cart, and Alice pulled up the hood of her cloak; after a time she lay down in the straw and pulled the bed rugs closer. The wagon jolted over the ice-crusted road; the light turned from dull gray to bright gray to dull purple. The wagon took a sharp turn up a hill and wobbled to a stop. The driver jumped down, the rider jumped down, and they came at Alice, urging her to do this or that or say this or that, or perhaps that was later. She remembered being taken into a room that had a fire and being allowed to stand close to it but not long enough to warm her through; she remembered a third man speaking to her and perhaps she spoke to him; she had some trouble remembering anything but the cold, and the heat, and the cold again when they took her to the gaol.

A WOOD BOX,
a tiny, barred window, a pallet to sleep on, a bucket. Alice dropped onto the pallet and pulled her rugs over her; she slept, but the bad dreams still found her, the old dream, of Verley coming at her, Verley reaching for her throat. She clawed at his hands, but he caught hers up and said, “Whoa, Alice! Whoa, Alice! Whoa!” But the voice wasn’t as Verley’s was at all. It began to say things like, “Look at me, Alice, settle now, Alice, look at me. Look at me.”

Alice wrenched her eyes open and saw it was Freeman who had hold of her. She lay back, panting.

“I’ve frightened you, Alice, and I’m most sorry for it. I shouldn’t have waked you if we had more time, but we’ve none of it; I only just received the widow’s letter. Are you well? Dear God, look at you. Tell me you’re well.”

“I’m well.”

“Very good. Very good. Now, then, you must collect yourself and talk to me. First, do you understand the charge against you? That you murdered your infant?”

“I do not understand. I did nothing to it.”

The lines that divided Freeman’s forehead softened. He got up off his knees and walked the box in the tight square allowed him, once around, twice, three times. He stopped.

“All right, Alice. The thing now is for you to tell me everything as it happened. Everything, do you understand? We’ve no time for you to blush or demur or speak in roundabout terms. Can you do that, Alice?”

Alice nodded.

“Very good. Very good, Alice. Now let us begin with your entering your travail. Were you alone?”

Alice nodded again. “Until the widow came.”

“Had you delivered of your child when she came?”

“No. She went for the midwife.”

“She left you alone?”

“She thought I’d some time remaining. I made her think it.”

“Why? Why would you make her think that?”

“I didn’t want her to know of the babe.”

Freeman closed his eyes. “Alice. Child. Surely…all right, now. You entered your travail. The widow found you. She set off for the midwife, thinking she had time to fetch her. Now, then. What happened next?”

“’Twas great pain. A very great pain. I wanted it gone.”

“You wanted what gone?”

“I wanted the pain gone.”

“Very good. You wanted the pain gone. And what of the babe?”

“I wanted it out of me so it would stop hurting. I tried to push it out of me. I pushed it out of me.”

“Very good. You pushed it out. And then what did you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think, Alice. The babe is out. What did you do with the babe?”

“I don’t know. They took it downstairs. The widow wanted me to have it back and I didn’t want it.”

“You didn’t want the babe?”

“It was nothing of mine.”

“What do you mean, it was nothing of yours?”

Alice made no answer.

Freeman studied her. “All right, Alice, perhaps now is the time for us to go backward. Perhaps now is the time for you to tell me how you came into this circumstance.”

Alice turned her face away.

“Alice, understand me. I wish this information only so that I may help you. You do believe I wish to help you?”

She didn’t. She couldn’t. Why should he wish to help her, after she had caused him such great trouble? Why not see her hanged, and then he and the widow could keep in one bed all the night long?

He said, “Alice, I would ask you to look at me and tell me if you see anything in my face that might cause you to think I mean you harm.”

Alice looked at him and couldn’t say she saw any such thing. And yet she couldn’t give him Verley’s name. She couldn’t risk going back there.

“All right, then,” Freeman said. “Tell me this. The midwife Granny Hall thought the child had been brought near to term. Do you think this true or false?”

Alice thought. “What was the date it came?”

“The twenty-seventh of last month. The twenty-seventh of February.”

“It was near to term.”

“All right. Now tell me again what you did with the babe. After you pushed it out, what did you do with it?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you pick it up?”

“No.”

“Did you touch it in any way?”

“No.”

“The widow in her letter says they found it wrapped in a blanket. Did you wrap it in a blanket, Alice?”

“No.”

“It was found wrapped in a blanket. Who might have done that if not you?”

Alice remembered the bloody lump between her legs; she remembered the pulpy thing that came after it. She said, “I didn’t want to see it. I covered it in the blanket.”

“It was cold in the room?”

She remembered shaking, shaking so hard she thought the bed tick might slide off its frame. She nodded.

“So you covered the babe to keep it warm. And then what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did it cry?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did it breathe?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know! I didn’t look at it! It was naught to do with me; I had naught to do with it!”

“Alice. Please.” Freeman took a step toward the pallet; Alice crabbed backward. Freeman stepped back, folded his arms, and peered down at his boots for some time. At length he said, “I wonder if you understand how a lawyer works in a court of law, Alice. As defendant you are not allowed to testify in your own defense, so your lawyer must do it for you. Your lawyer must tell your story. The king’s attorney will speak too, and he will tell his own story. The one this king’s attorney will tell is of a wanton young girl with no moral fiber who got herself into some trouble and wished to rid herself of the evidence with the murder of her bastard. I don’t believe this is the true story, but I need another to tell them. Can’t you help me with that story, Alice?”

Alice couldn’t. She couldn’t.

After a time Freeman said, “Perhaps you could tell me something of your young life, your parents.”

Her parents! What could her parents have to do with it? Alice looked for the trick but could find none. So she told him of the ship, and her mother and brothers, and of Mr. Morton taking her away in his carriage, but she didn’t tell him Mr. Morton’s name, or where he took her, or anything of the Verleys. Freeman then launched a long series of odd questions, such as did she ever have any younger brothers and sisters, and did her first master have any more children after she came to live with him, and had she ever stood watch at a woman’s travail. He asked her many more, and came near to the place where she didn’t wish him to be, but he didn’t push into it.

After a long time he ran out of questions. He said, “All right, Alice, do you have any questions for me?” And she asked him what date it was, and he said it was the sixth of April.

April.

The word sounded new and strange, because for so long Alice hadn’t allowed of its existence. If she had she might have imagined it anything other than what it was, and yet here it was, perhaps not as bad as it might have been, for here was the gaoler come for Freeman, and here was Freeman paying him for her food and asking her if she needed more of it, asking if she needed more clothes or blankets, when she might have been out in the cold with a newborn babe in her arms, looking for a night’s shelter.

But April also meant that somewhere in the confusion of days at the widow’s the twenty-first of March had swum by and Alice was sixteen now. Which made Alice think of a second question. “How long will they keep me here?”

“They’ll keep you here until your trial. A capital crime allows for no bail. The circuit returns to Barnstable in July.”

And so the line Alice couldn’t think beyond moved from March to July.

A
lice came to know her box well. A man named W. Bartlet had carved his name in a beam, with “13d October 1698 and 27d he went out.” Another man, or perhaps the same man, had whittled a ship into one of the thick oak planks, another had carved out a huge, thrashing whale, yet another had covered both sides of the doorjamb with diagonal lines, possibly to pass the time, or possibly to mark his days in gaol. Alice thought what she might do if she’d had a knife: carve her name, perhaps, but which name? Her dates? She didn’t know them. Her life story? If she began at the floor and climbed the wall how far up would it take her? It seemed to Alice that a great many things had happened to her in fifteen years…no, sixteen now. She was only grateful that she’d passed her birthday in the widow’s attics and not in Barnstable gaol.

In the end, Alice marked the days, not with any knife mark but with Freeman’s visits. He came bearing gifts, but not the same kinds of gifts he’d brought her in her past life. He brought a foot warmer, a woolen cap, a thick blanket, a meat pie made by his Barnstable housekeeper. But Alice also noted the increasing tightness of Freeman’s mouth and jaw as he greeted her, and she knew well enough what that meant. Alice didn’t wish to be hanged; she wanted to help Freeman help her; but she couldn’t give him Verley’s name or any more of her circumstance; she couldn’t give away any clue that might take her back to Medfield. She thought many times what might happen if she told Freeman what he wished to know, and when she wasn’t lying awake thinking it, she dreamed it. In her dream she stood before a row of justices, with Verley towering beside her within an arm’s length, his height and breadth nearly filling all the space around them, his hands pulsing to get at her. Alice never came as far as the actual judgment in her dream; the nearness of Verley was all the nightmare she needed to cause her to wake sweating.

Alice had other visitors besides Freeman. The gaoler, a reedy man with a pinched face, came to let Freeman in and out of her box, to bring her the food that Freeman bought her, to take away her full chamber bucket and return it emptied. He made an early point of telling her he had ten children of his own and didn’t take well to people who murdered their infants. The sheriff came, seemingly just to stare at her through the tiny square of bars in the door, and the king’s attorney came, a man not as tall as Freeman but half again as wide, who seemed to think if he stood in the box long enough and let Alice drink him in she would let loose a different story than the one she’d already told him. When the king’s attorney came, Freeman came with him, and when the king’s attorney asked the name of the babe’s father, Freeman cut him off with, “That’s not the issue before this court, sir,” after which the king’s attorney gave Freeman the kind of look that suggested he’d learned what he’d come for.

One day of visits stood out among the others. It began with the widow. She brought things Freeman couldn’t have thought of: beeswax for her chapped skin, clean linen for when her courses returned, cornstarch to clean her hair. She said, “You look like death,” and sat down and combed the starch through Alice’s hair herself, brushed her cheeks and lips with the balm, and tied a new woolen shawl around her shoulders. She didn’t talk of Alice’s troubles but talked of affairs in the village, and the half-wit she’d hired to take Alice’s place at the wheel, “whose mouth works faster than her fingers.” Before she left she said, “Do as Mr. Freeman tells you. I need you home,” and Alice would have given much to have been able to speak at that moment, but she knew of no words that would say all she owed.

And Nate came. It so happened that Freeman was in the box when the gaoler unlocked the door and ushered the boy in. “Nate!” Freeman exclaimed. “How now? Why aren’t you at the college?”

“I came away.”

“Do you know the fine for that?”

“Two and six. Another one and three per day for tarrying.” He looked at Alice and back at Freeman and said nothing more.

Freeman said, “What news have you from town? What’s said of the stamp tax? We hear rumor of its passing.”

“’Tis passed. To take effect the first of November. A ream of bail bonds goes from fifteen pounds to a hundred.”

“The devil! And what does Otis say? Has he waked from this odd sleep of his?”

Nate drew a pamphlet from his coat pocket. “He’s just come out with this. He says in it that Parliament has the ‘just, clear equitable and lawful authority’ to impose taxes on the colonies. He says that the colonists are ‘virtually, constitutionally, in law and equity to be considered as represented in the honourable House of Commons.’ He does add that an American member in the house would be a ‘reasonable indulgence.’”

Freeman snatched the pamphlet and began to read.

“They say in the street that Otis has made a deal to keep quiet on the stamps in exchange for his father’s appointment as probate judge and chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas here at Barnstable.”

Freeman lifted his eyes from the pamphlet. “No. No. This no rational man can believe who knows him. Or his father. Or the relation between them.”

“As I hear the people talk, your Mr. Otis won’t get reelected to the legislature. They call him reprobate, apostate, traitor. I hear it on every corner.”

Alice looked at Nate, puzzled. Was it a note of glee she heard in him? Did he wish to torment Freeman? He hadn’t yet looked at Alice, but this Alice could understand better; she was no longer the girl he’d thought her.

But the news of Otis’s doubtful future in the legislature appeared to perk Freeman to a degree. “That itself disproves any theory of deals made with his enemies,” he said. “Why boost a father’s paltry career compared to his own stellar one? ’Tis madness to consider it.”

“All I can say for certain is that Otis had best do something to earn back the people’s trust in him, and he’d best do it in a hurry.”

Freeman didn’t answer, his gaze again directed at the pamphlet.

Nate said, “I must go,” and there he looked at Alice for the first time. She would have given much for another kind of look, one with something of his old silliness in it, but even as she completed her thought he had already turned away, banged on the door for the gaoler, and disappeared through it.

After Nate had gone, Freeman stood as he was some time, gazing at the pamphlet he held, so that Alice assumed it was Otis that occupied his mind, and was greatly surprised when he lifted his eyes and said, “I wonder what I must do to earn your trust in
me
, Alice.”

It had been a wearing day. That was all Alice could think to account for it. The widow’s visit had swelled her bruised heart near to cracking; Nate’s visit had cut her; it had also reminded her that she had taken Freeman away from events of more import than her own poor life, and that if Freeman saved her life she would owe him a debt she could never possibly repay. There Alice thought of the widow and how the widow owed Freeman her life as well; she thought of how the widow was repaying him. She thought of the noise she’d heard through the door of the widow’s room. This was the best Alice could explain it: the day, the debt, the memory of the widow and Freeman together. She burst out, “You might leave the widow be!”

Alice supposed that if she’d drawn a knife and sunk it in Freeman’s back unaware she couldn’t have more greatly surprised him. He stared at her long until his features sank into a depth of sadness Alice had never seen in him, but that sadness only spurred Alice the more. “Don’t you see how you shame her? She’s been cast from the church! She can’t go about the village! You save her life and then you take away her life as pay for it! Why didn’t you leave her to burn, then?”

Freeman’s face turned from sadness to puzzlement. “Save her life? Take her…
burn
? Let her
burn
? Upon my word, I haven’t the least…Oh, good Lord. The fire. You’ve heard somewhere about the fire, and you assume it was I…It wasn’t I. I wasn’t living there. But what in the name of—”

He broke off. A flush overtook his face and neck, deeper and darker than anything Nate Clarke had yet managed. “You think the widow gives as pay…you think I
take
as pay—” He turned around and banged on the door for the gaoler. He swung back at Alice. “I won’t debase either the widow or myself by giving answer to that allegation. As to my shaming her, I assure you, my suffering on that account is by far the greater.”

“Then why don’t you marry her?”

The gaoler’s key scraped in the lock, the door swung open, Freeman stepped into the frame, turned back to her. “I would marry her today, or tomorrow, or yesterday, for that matter. She will not consent, for the dower rights her husband left her to her home would be canceled on her remarriage. You see by this how much shame troubles her.”

ALICE LAY AWAKE
that night as usual and yet not as usual, for instead of herself and her troubles filling her thoughts, they were filled with the widow and Freeman. Or she supposed she would have to say they were full of Freeman; Alice felt she understood the widow no more nor less than she had ever understood her. To trade a house for a husband who had another fine house in Barnstable, seemed no bad bargain, but Alice had long accepted that the widow’s actions would run contrary to Alice’s expectations. Freeman, though. She must rethink Freeman entirely. If he wasn’t the thing she had first thought him, he wasn’t the second thing she’d thought him either; she supposed—oh, she more than supposed—she might have concluded this before now without the words of explanation just offered her. She might have looked only as far as the image of a man’s hand touching a woman’s door in a gesture that could speak of nothing but the greatest tenderness to come to a proper understanding of Freeman’s nature.

But in truth should Alice have needed even that? Shouldn’t she have taken his true measure in his treatment of her? If he were a man who would take what he could, why had he not taken Alice, if not before she’d made him the offer of it, as a Verley would, then afterward, when few would have blamed him for it?

Thinking thus, understanding thus, Alice could only lie on her pallet in misery at the thought of the harsh words she’d dare to throw at him. How easily now she could see the widow as he painted her, a woman without shame! How easily she could see the truth of Freeman’s statement that he was the greater sufferer! But if he suffered so, why did he continue so with the widow? Alice supposed she could see why. She had put the case before, but in another consideration entirely. An aging man alone and lonely, a man of little physical attraction, a man with little but his money to recommend him, where else would he find his comfort?

But there too, as Alice considered the old description she’d assigned to Freeman, she began to see how poorly it fit him, how shallow had been her assessment of him. He wasn’t a young man, it was true, but neither was he past his physicality, as she’d discovered with her own fingers. He wasn’t a handsome man, it was true, but he possessed the kind of face that, although slow to give up its secrets, once opened, warmed him into something as good as handsome. And little but money to recommend him? No, Alice had been another kind of fool to think so. She thought of what she’d said to Freeman and flushed hot. She’d greatly wronged him, twice now. He’d forgiven her the first, but what man would forgive the second thing too? No doubt she’d seen him for the last time; no doubt he would leave her case to another now.

FREEMAN STAYED AWAY
the next morning, just as Alice had feared, but the widow came in his place. Alice couldn’t look at her.

The widow said, “Mr. Freeman asked me to come to see you before I leave for Satucket with Mr. Cobb. I’ve neither the time nor the patience to go ’round and ’round with you as he’s done. He says he’s attempted unsuccessfully to discover how you came by this child, but as you wouldn’t tell him you might feel more comfortable telling me. He said also that if you didn’t tell me you were lost. Understand that by the word ‘lost’ he means you will hang.”

“He…he spoke to you of what we talked of?”

“He said nothing but what I’ve told you. He was quite distressed. I dislike seeing Mr. Freeman distressed, and when I see him so, I like to do what I can to remedy it. I should think you might too.” She waited, but not long. A scarred hand snaked out and captured Alice’s chin, bringing her eyes level with the widow’s. “I shall make but one last attempt to make Mr. Freeman’s position clear to you. He must know all your story, Alice, not just such parts as you wish to tell. It makes no difference what that story is; he must know it in order to know how to build his case.
He must know it,
Alice. If you lay with the reverend’s son, he must know it. If you lay with the
reverend
, he must know it. If you lay with a sailor, or two sailors, or three sailors—”

“My master lay with me against my will. He got the child on me.”

The widow dropped her hand. She said, “This would be Verley? Of Medfield?”

The name out of the widow’s mouth stopped Alice. How could the widow know it? How?

The widow said, “Don’t look so stricken, Alice. I’m not out to claim the five pounds he offers.”

So there it was. Straight out of her dream. Straight out of the newspaper. Of course the widow and Freeman would have remembered the newspaper. Of course they had never truly believed in that other Alice run off from her master. They could have sent her back to face Verley at any time they chose. Alice began to tremble, or did she only feel that she trembled? If she did shake, the widow took no notice; she picked up Alice’s hand and turned it over to expose the three ridged lines across her palm. “And how came you by this? Verley also?”

Alice nodded.

“And the marks on your neck when you first came to Satucket? And the cut cheek, the injured arm? Verley as well?”

“And Mrs. Verley.”

The widow blinked. She said, “You must tell me the whole of it, Alice.”