Bound (24 page)

“A fine idea, if I do say. We must take advantage of the last of the weather. I’ll propose it at once to Mrs. Dolbeare.”

They went inside together. Mrs. Dolbeare was in her room, standing before an overstuffed workbasket, sorting piles of children’s clothes by greatest need of repair. Mr. Dolbeare went in to speak with her, and Alice returned to the kitchen. She lined up Sukey to help prepare the supper and left Keziah in charge of the others, so the next Tully crisis, a shoe dropped “somehow” into the soap barrel, didn’t surprise her.

The Dolbeares reappeared, and supper was laid down; then came the clearing up and the putting to bed of six children, not counting the infant in its cradle, who slept yet with its mother. Alice herded them up the stairs and helped those who needed it out of their shoes, stockings, dresses, and breeches; she settled them under their blankets in their shifts, two to a bed, dealt with a scuffle over a bolster, and left them to their children’s dreams.

When Alice got back downstairs Freeman sat before the fire, talking with Mr. Dolbeare.

He sat just as he’d always sat at the widow’s, back reclined, hips forward, knees up, wrists dangling from the chair arms; he wore the crimson coat the widow had made from the yarn Alice had spun, and the shoe buckles Alice had polished many times over; sitting there in the Dolbeares’ chair he looked a stranger.

Mr. Dolbeare got up. He said, “A pleasure to meet you, sir. I hope we shall continue this acquaintance.” Freeman stood and shook Mr. Dolbeare’s hand; Mr. Dolbeare disappeared into the front room; Freeman turned to Alice. He pointed to the opposite chair, and Alice sank into it. Freeman returned to his seat and studied Alice; she felt as nervous as she’d felt standing before ten judges in two courtrooms.

He said, “Well. Here you are.”

“I’m greatly sorry, sir, for—”

He closed his eyes, lifted a hand, waved it in the air. With his eyes closed Alice noticed the line of his jaw: clamped down hard. He opened his eyes. “I might understand why you ran off better than you think, Alice. I might also understand why Mr. Dolbeare would be most sorry to lose you, as he’s just declared. But I would hear it from you, if you don’t mind. Are you content here?”

Alice nodded.

“Treated well? Unharmed?”

“Yes, sir.”

He studied her. “You understand I’m within the law if I take you back to Satucket?”

Alice’s heart began to leap randomly about, as if it weren’t sure where it belonged. “I do, sir.”

“You needn’t worry, Alice, I’ve no intention of carting you back there. I’ve made inquiry of this Dolbeare and I find him to be a man of good repute. I spent some time in converse with both him and his wife; I think you well enough situated here. In fact, I prepared the necessary paper this afternoon, in case things should prove out to my satisfaction.” He reached in his pocket and removed a folded paper: a new indenture, taking her away from the widow and putting her to Dolbeare. Alice unfolded it, glanced at her name at the top and Freeman’s signature below without troubling to read in between; she’d memorized three indentures by now and well knew the wording. But as she looked at Freeman’s signature on the bottom she grew puzzled.

She said, “Mustn’t the widow sign it, sir?”

“The widow? No.”

“But the Suffolk judge bound me out to her.”

“Indeed so, but your time passed to me at our marriage, in accordance with the law.”

Alice didn’t understand. She didn’t understand at all. And then, of course, she understood it very well.

The widow and Freeman were married.

Alice looked away from Freeman, and back, and away, blushing like Nate. Worse than Nate.

Freeman said quietly, “I thought my brother Shubael to have told you. No doubt he’s not used to it himself. It was done in something of a hurry, trying to get it in before the Act came down.”

Alice was only too glad to be offered another subject to fix on. She said, “The Act, sir?”

“After the Stamp Act takes effect the first of November no contract will be legal without the king’s stamp, which makes for an odd problem, as there are no stamp agents to sell them. The widow and I joined in the great rush with the rest of the village; we’ve been at wedding parties this past week from sunup to sundown.” Freeman smiled. The smile sprang across his face like a jackrabbit, except that once a jackrabbit springs, it’s gone. So this was the strangeness in him: not Dolbeare’s chair but his new marriage, and this springy smile that he’d been at pains to tamp down.

Alice said, “God’s blessing on you both, sir.”

“Thank you, Alice.” Even quieter now. As if he knew. He stood. “As my name has been put up for the legislature I’ll be in town a good deal now; you may reach me through Mrs. Hatch if you find yourself in need in any way.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And a letter to Barnstable or Satucket will always find us.”

Satucket.

Alice said, “Will you tell me, sir, what happens to the widow’s house now?”

“I bought it from her son-in-law. She retains her dower right, with title in trust to her grandson Nate.”

Trust. Alice knew the meaning of the word only as she’d come to understand it thus far. She said, “But she travels back and forth to Barnstable with you now?”

“She travels as she pleases.”

Yes, thought Alice, she would do.

They fell silent. It seemed to Alice that Freeman peered at her long, straining against the fire shadows, as if he would memorize her face. Or was that how Alice looked at him? After a time he took a step forward, lifted a hand, touched her under her chin. “Good-bye, child. I wish you well.” He turned for the door.

Alice cried, “Sir!”

He paused, turned again.

She said, “I wish to say—” But what did she wish to say? Oh, how much she wished to say! She lifted the paper, but again he waved a hand, dismissing her words. “’Tis as it should be.” He continued to the door, his hand brushing the corner of the table as he went, leaving a flash of something behind.

He bowed.

Gone.

Alice stood and stared at the door he’d slipped through, the floor he’d trod, the paper she held yet in her hand. A drop of water fell on the parchment and she shook it off, slapping the wet off her cheeks. She pushed the paper into her pocket, banked the fire, crossed to the table to collect a candle, and looked down at the shining lump Freeman had left behind: the four pounds she’d given the shipmaster for the widow. Who was now Mrs. Freeman. Which made it Freeman’s money now, loan or no.
Might as well pay himself, then.

Alice put the coins in her pocket and retreated with the candle to her little room off the keeping room. She set the candle on the table along with the paper and stood staring at the black panes of glass, trying to sort out all the things she felt: stricken, heartsore, alone. But after a time Alice was forced to add another word to the list: curious.

What had changed the widow’s mind about marrying Freeman? Had it been Alice, her talk of shame, repeated to the widow by Freeman? No. Without the face to examine, the words to overhear, Alice could only guess at the cause of so great a change, but somehow she couldn’t think the cause the widow’s sudden awakening to shame. Nor could she credit the rush to get in ahead of the Stamp Act alone, unless, in fact, the widow had intended to marry Freeman all along and had just been waiting for him to “argue the same point” for some time now. But no, Alice couldn’t picture the widow sitting in wait either. She could picture her sitting and weighing, however, the scale finally tipping to the other side. But what would tip it? The promise of a dower right returned? The promise of a trust in her grandson’s name?

There Alice thought of the other news Freeman had dropped on her in so offhand a way: his name being put up for legislature. A man thinking of serving as representative couldn’t afford rumor of a whore at Satucket.
Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath
sounded fine enough on the pages of a book, but who gave what? Who hazarded what? Perhaps the widow weighed the value of Freeman’s voice in the legislature over the importance of her own independence. Perhaps she thought of all those who might end up dead on some bloody Boston cobblestones, as she’d put it. Perhaps she thought of her grandson Nate.

Nate. Not at Pownalborough as she’d imagined him, but at Harvard College. Was he too like Otis, ready to twist the cord but not to cut it? Had he thought another thing about those “lawyers’ tricks” and made his peace with the profession? Or did he plan to study the law in order to alter it?

The law. What a changing thing it was! One day it made Alice answer to a Morton, the next a Verley, the next a Widow Berry, and the next, unbeknownst to her, a Freeman. The thought that she had belonged to Freeman for even a few days unsettled her, that he, like the others, could have bought and sold her. Had, indeed, sold her. And for how much? Had he gained back his eight pounds? Was that why he’d left her four on the table?

Alice dropped her eyes to the paper Freeman had given her and tipped it to the candle.

In the fifth year of His Majesty King George III’s reign this nineteenth day of October: Be it known that Alice Cole formerly of Satucket in the county of Barnstable and now of Boston County of Suffolk has served in full the terms of her indenture and is as of this date a free person entitled to travel and engage in commerce and make contract in the manner of any other free person. Signed this date by: Ebenezer Freeman, Esq.

In the presence of:

Shubael Hopkins
Clarke Winslow

Alice read the paper four times. After the fourth reading she folded it, rose from the table, and picked up her workbasket. Under the bodice she needed to rehem and the cap she was knitting for the new infant lay the cloth pouch, which now held the money she had earned at the Dolbeares’. She opened the pouch, and dropped Nabby’s four pounds in, listening to the sweet click, feeling the happy weight of it. She laid her freedom paper in the bottom of the basket, put the money pouch on top, next her sewing kit, and last the cap and bodice. She snuffed the candle, hung up her skirt, took off her shoes and stockings, and slid between the linens.

A free person. Alice couldn’t take the meaning of it. Could it be true that she was bound to no one now? That she might be ruled, as the judge had told the jury at her first trial, by her own good sense and understanding? Or, as Freeman had said to Nate, by her own conscience?
’Tis as it should be.
But oh, how strange it felt! How frightening!

The rain began to spit hard against the panes of glass beside Alice’s bedstead. She thought of the family’s trip to Mr. Joseph Dolbeare’s orchard. She considered what illness she might give herself that would convince the Dolbeares to leave her to her bed, and then a new thought struck her: she didn’t need to feign sickness if she didn’t wish to go to the orchard. She was free now. She might do as she wished. She might quit the Dolbeares without fear and go to New York, or Philadelphia, or even Pownalborough if she chose it!

Alice tried to loosen her mind, to let it choose its own path, but it flew around willy-nilly among all the new things she’d learned that day from the shipmaster and Freeman. She imagined the widow and Freeman coming out of the one room in the morning, their faces open and secret together, like children with a new toy, not yet willing to share it.
The widow! Hah! Never better!
Yes, Alice might imagine it. And she could speak for Freeman’s state herself, having seen that jackrabbit smile in him and something beyond the smile, a new air of peace in him. Yes, she could imagine them. So too could she imagine the granddaughter Bethiah at Alice’s place in the corner, the widow’s marriage no doubt removing the father’s objection to his children’s presence there. Nate might also visit as he wished now, when he wasn’t at Cambridge.

Alice imagined Nate at Cambridge, leaning over one of Freeman’s books, nodding yes over this page, no over that. She imagined Freeman not far off, alongside Otis in the legislature, their voices doubling and quadrupling as they argued reason over riot, a peaceable resistance over a bloodletting, as Otis had put it. Would they win their argument? Yes, they would; Alice felt sure of it.

After a time, as Alice ran over the images in her mind, she came to feel a new thing in herself. Oh, she felt chewed yet, torn yet, but below the raw edges she could feel one smooth one that she hoped would grow in time into something like the peace that she’d witnessed in Freeman. For indeed, all of it was, as Freeman had said, as it should be. She had seen into the hearts and minds of these people and knew for herself it was how it should be.

But where was Alice in it?

Alice heard an odd thump above. She leaped to her feet, gripped the candle, and took to the stairs, her free hand pulling at the rail to hurry her upward. The six children lay much as she’d left them, hunched into odd question marks and parentheses under their blankets, all quiet, all asleep. Alice pushed in one rump that protruded over the bed frame and pulled up another’s blanket. She stood a minute and listened for any more thumps; the wind, she decided, picking up and knocking a hemlock branch into the roof. She turned for the stairs but paused, turned back, reached out, and touched the nearest red head, which so happened to be Tully’s. She thought of her dead infant. Had she smothered it? Suddenly, there in the Dolbeares’ attics, it seemed an old, tired story. It seemed another girl. Another Alice.

Alice went downstairs. Behind the Dolbeares’ bedroom door she could hear the up-and-down of voices: Mr. Dolbeare telling Mrs. Dolbeare all about his meeting with Freeman. Alice began to cross the room to listen, but halfway there she stopped. It wasn’t the workings of other people’s hearts she needed to discover now; it was the workings of her own.

Alice returned to her room and climbed between the sheets. Her bed at the Dolbeares’, so near the keeping room chimney, was much warmer than her bed in the widow’s attics. Through the closed window she could hear the rain, the wind, the distant roar of the water; in finer weather, with the window open, she could smell its salt, tainted with the other town smells, but salt yet.