Bound (6 page)

F
reeman rode off for Namskaket to oversee the loading of the clams, and Alice and the widow spent the day at the various chores that the widow bemoaned had got out of hand while she’d been at Boston.

First they tied up their skirts and weeded the flax, barefooted so as not to damage the tender plants; as they each exposed their white flesh Alice saw that the widow’s legs had suffered from burns along with her hands and arms. Alice looked as she could at the widow’s scars and wondered about them; she wondered too about the widow’s dead husband; she wondered if her husband had died in the fire and how long ago it had happened. She imagined the widow’s husband carrying her to safety and then returning to the house for something else, perhaps his money, perhaps some papers, something important, but not as important as his wife had been to him.

The flax took till noon, after which they ate a quick dinner of cold duck and early greens, then collected the hoe and spade from the barn and began planting the bean, turnip, cabbage, onion, cucumber, and squash sets in the dooryard garden. The soil was loose and sandy in places and hard and claylike in others; they made uneven progress as they worked their way around. By the time they reached the last raised box of earth by the door the widow said, “Best get supper on.” Alice looked at the sky and saw that her first full day in Satucket had run down.

The widow ordered her to take down the mugs from the cupboard, but after Alice had set out three and stopped, the widow said, “We’ll need them all down. And both those platters.”

Alice looked at her in surprise.

“They all come,” the widow explained. “The first evening he arrives from town. Hot after the latest news, the latest talk, the latest predictions.”

And so they did come. Freeman brought the first two with him, but the others came in fast behind; some Alice already knew, like shipmaster Shubael Hopkins and storekeeper Sears, but others she didn’t, men greeted as Cobb, Winslow, Myrick, and a late arrival named Thacher who complained as he came in about how hard it had been to break away from his custom at the tavern. As each man entered the room his eye went first to Alice, who stood at the cupboard filling platters; the shipmaster looked once and away, but the others showed no such qualm at staring.

The widow moved around the table, pouring mugs of cider, and soon the air filled with the pungent odor of fermented fruit, yeasty bread, smoking pipes, and fresh-cut cheeses. The talk began light—crops, weather, ships in, ships out, prices—and then Freeman said, “Well, gentlemen.” The table quieted. Freeman began to speak the same words Alice had heard in the streets at Boston—sugar, taxes, non-importation—and again Otis, who was well known to those present as a native of Barnstable, a town that Alice gathered lay somewhere to the west of Yarmouth.

Alice listened to the pieces of talk, and after a time she found she could make something of it almost whole. A thing called the Sugar Act had upset all the colony, and although it was called the Sugar Act it seemed that rum was at the back of it, because one of the things the act would tax was the molasses used to make rum. James Otis came into the talk so often not only because he had once been neighbor to them but also because he had recently stood up at Boston town meeting and proposed non-importation of all unessential English goods in answer to the Act; this non-importation agreement seemed to be the focus of the present meeting. That much was easily gathered; the rest came more slowly, especially the sorting of the various opinions of Otis and the non-importation agreement. Alice heard one man’s “devil” answered with another’s “savior,” the words
genius
and
mad
out of a single mouth, mugs banged down and voices raised, as loud in agreement as in disagreement.

“It’ll mean ruin,” Sears said.

“It’ll mean tight times,” Thacher countered. “The ruin’ll come if we let them get away with it.”

“I’m with Sears,” Myrick said. “I see naught but starvation in it.”

“Over coffee and tea and a bit of sugar?” Winslow asked. “Come now, Myrick.”

Hopkins said, “Now, now, we’re all Englishmen here. I think if we but make our position clear—”

Cobb picked up the
Boston Gazette
, which Freeman had placed before them on the table, and slapped it down again. “Read our own legislature’s instructions for our agent to the Crown, right here in this paper; ’tis Otis’s work if I ever saw it. He says we admit to no right of Parliament to impose duties and taxes upon a people who are not represented in the House of Commons. He says if we are not represented we are slaves. How much clearer can we make it? And yet they pay no attention to our words. Full half of England’s trade is done with these colonies; if we shut that down, I promise you, they’ll pay attention.”

“Perhaps a more peaceable means—” Hopkins ventured.

“Peaceable! What’s not peaceable? I’m not asking for the king’s head on a block. But if you’d rather bend over and kiss their arse while they rifle your pockets—”

“Well, no—”

Alice took count: Cobb, Thacher, Winslow, and Freeman for, Sears and Myrick against, Hopkins to be persuaded any moment. If the table represented the whole, the non-importation agreement would go, but whether it went or not meant little to Alice. Yet she couldn’t help listen to the men’s urgent pleadings, and though some of the phrases were strung together fine enough, she felt in the other men the same thing she felt in herself—they waited for Freeman.

Not until the jabber began to repeat itself did he speak. “Gentlemen, I take the measure of this room and I take heart. You all see the importance of this moment. You all speak to the necessary points. You all speak with reason. And I have no doubt, once we’ve garnered their attention with this non-importation agreement, reason will prevail in England. I need not tell a man in this room that I love my king as I love my father; nor do I doubt every man in this room feels as I do toward his sovereign. Now, as we all understand one another, the next step is to marshal our forces. Our
peaceful
forces. And one thing that became clear this past week in my discussion with Otis and some of the others at Boston is that our forces must include the women.”

The table broke out again.

“Women!”

“What the devil?”

“What women?”

“Yours, gentlemen. All of them. If we can’t buy English tea or coffee it will be up to the women to brew up a substitution. If we can’t buy sugar the women must work the hives. And most important, if we can’t buy West India cotton or English wool or Irish linen the spinning wheels our women have sent to the attics must come down and be put back into motion. We must marshal the women to the cause, gentlemen. And once we do, I have every faith they will quickly turn homespun into high fashion.”

Some more general noise went around.

Then, from Cobb: “I’d take a wife in homespun if it would serve our purpose.”

“Yes, but would your wife?” Thacher asked.

The men laughed. “A fair point,” Cobb said. “I admit I’m in some doubt of it.”

“You think she’d prefer to pay a king’s ransom for a bit of cambric?”

Alice looked up from cutting the rind off a new cheese. The widow. It was the widow who had spoken. Hopkins, whose mug the widow had just filled, straightened out his smile of thanks and looked away in embarrassment. Someone else coughed. A pair of boots scraped the floor. The widow continued to move around the table, filling mugs, the clink of earthenware and the swish of her skirt the only sound.

It didn’t surprise Alice that it should be Freeman who would break the silence, as she had already observed him to be uncommonly unruffled at the widow’s forwardness. “The widow makes a fair point, gentlemen,” he said. “If the wheels don’t come down now, this tax they put on cambric and other goods will continue, and you may be sure of it, if we let this one slip by another will follow. What slave, once broken, is then offered his freedom? And make no mistake, this is what we shall be—slaves—our English blood and sweat going straight into another Englishman’s pocket, an Englishman who thinks he’s earned it for no other reason than that he lives on the other side of the ocean. So there you have it, gentlemen: ’tis a choice you make now between slavery and freedom. And what’s the price of that freedom? A little sugar and tea and coffee and cloth. Leave it on the shelf now, and you may cast away your chains forever.”

Storekeeper Sears clapped his mug onto the table and stood up. “You mean leave it on
my
shelf. How the devil do you expect me to eat, Freeman?”

“The same as we all will,” Freeman answered. “Your shelves, our ships, Thacher’s straitened custom, all will suffer for a time, but if we don’t suffer a short time now, we’ll suffer the rest of our lives. Otis reports they’ve received commitment from most of the merchants in Boston to cease import of all English luxuries come August; he’s proposed our leading citizens to correspond with merchants throughout the other colonies; he’s asked that we all go home and organize our villages in support of the leaders at Boston and see that they stand behind the non-importation agreement. So, what say you, gentlemen? Will you leave here committed? Will you go home and enlist your women?”

Thacher said, “My wife should make up for the foodstuffs well enough, but I don’t know about the cloth.”

The table rumbled. Hopkins had grave doubts of his wife agreeing to chain herself anew to a spindle. Winslow, who raised sheep but sold off most of his wool now that his daughters were married away and his wife not well, couldn’t promise any great change in his household. Cobb declared confidence in bringing his wife to the cause. Thacher began to think better of his own wife. Hopkins allowed that if indeed homespun became the thing, his wife would be sure to follow along, although as to taking up the wheel again…. Seth Cobb admitted some doubt of his wife turning out any great yardage. Winslow spoke of working his fulling mill up to the old rate of production, and where Sears took loud note of one man’s making his hay while another’s out licking the bottom of the barrel, it appeared to Alice that the general mood around the table began to lighten.

The talk of non-importation ran down. Someone made comment on the fine run of herring. Someone else reported on the successful repair of the mill wheel. Someone else noted how behind his Indian corn was. Mugs were drained and refilled, and Alice was sent to the cellar for another jug. As Alice stepped through the buttery door she heard Thacher drop his voice a token register. “So who’s the girl?”

“She came with us from Boston where she’d just finished out her time,” the widow answered. “She takes a room here while she looks for work in the village.”

A pause, into which Freeman spoke. “I might say a word on the girl’s behalf—”

“Might you,” someone said, and the rest laughed.

“She’s a hard worker.”

“Oh, I could work her.”

Another laugh.

“Here now, without any joke, I could use such a girl at the tavern.”

“I could use her there too.”

Again, the men laughed. Alice listened for Freeman’s rich tones in it and didn’t hear them. She lifted the cellar hatch, climbed down the ladder, and collected the cider jug. When she returned to the room, Freeman had just risen to his feet. “All right, gentlemen, I’d say our work this evening is completed.” He raised his mug. “To the king!”

The mugs came up.

“To the king!”

“To the king!”

“To the king!”

A
lice woke to the sight of dawn just touching up the rafters, and an unreasonable joy washed through her. She’d made it to a second waking in Satucket. She leaped out of her bed and went to the window, eager to get to know the look of the place, but already it had changed: rusty white plum blossoms sprang up like clouds over the scrub along the shore, the water pulsed more lavender than blue, a sudden breeze caught at the nearby pines, knocking clouds of chalky, yellow dust into the air. She breathed in and felt the grit in her lungs. Satucket. In her. She left the window and dressed herself with as much speed as neatness would allow, hoping to be first to the keeping room.

She was. She’d unbanked the fire, set up the kettle, and sliced the bread when the widow and Freeman appeared, sharing a matching somber expression that immediately damped Alice’s spirits. She remembered, oh, how could she have forgotten! The man Thacher and his talk of hiring her to work at the tavern. Was this the grim news the widow bore on her features, that she was sending Alice to the tavern that morning? The little Alice knew of taverns had come from walking by Fisher’s Tavern in Dedham on her various errands for Mr. Morton; it had spilled out a constant stream of hooting men, with an occasional girl not dressed as she should be answering back from an upstairs window.

Alice did not wish to work at the tavern. She kept her eyes down throughout breakfast in the hope that it would keep the talk away from her, and it seemed to do so; the widow and Freeman laid out their plans for the day, yet as the plans didn’t seem to include her, she began to think their talk as bad as the actual announcement she dreaded.

But once the breakfast was cleared away, the widow’s first concern appeared to be Alice’s poultice. She sat Alice down, unwrapped her hand, examined it without change in expression, and went to the cupboard for the salve jar and a clean strip of linen. After she had swabbed and wrapped she said, “You must keep it dry. Fetch me the clothes you came in so I may wash them.”

Alice went to the stairs, her face in flame over the state of her clothes, and over the fact that the widow had noticed them, but as her face flamed the thoughts underneath tumbled as hotly. Why should the widow care about Alice’s clothes if she only wished to send her to Thacher? Or did she only care about sending her to Thacher in clean linen? In either case, of course, the clothes must be washed and laid out to dry; a thick haze hung damp in the air, and until the sun did something better Alice couldn’t be sent anywhere. Or would the widow send Alice ahead and the clothes after?

Alice found her dirty clothes as she’d left them, wrapped in a tight ball and pushed as far back under the eaves as she’d been able to push them. She shook them out; they smelled of piss and puke yet; she balled them up again and returned to the stairs.

If the widow sent Alice away she needn’t go to the tavern; she could empty the widow’s money jar as Freeman had suggested and set out for Yarmouth, as Freeman had also suggested. But at Yarmouth, what then? She might find another widow. Or another Verley. Or another tavern.

Alice returned to the keeping room. Freeman had disappeared. The widow took her clothes from her without fuss and said, as if it had been the subject all along, “You claim some skill at spinning?”

“Yes, madam.”

The widow held up her scarred hands. “I manage the loom, but not the wheel. For a time my granddaughter Bethiah spun for me—” Her voice trailed off.

Alice looked again at the widow. Yesterday Alice wouldn’t have thought her old enough to have a granddaughter able to spin, but now something seemed to have aged her, troubled her. Had the granddaughter Bethiah died? The widow collected herself, went on. “And then, of course, foreign cloth came in so cheap, but now—” She stopped again, no doubt reminded of the men’s talk of the night before. Was this what had been on her mind all along? She had hoped to do her part to aid the non-importation plan, but as she couldn’t spin…

Alice turned to the wheel that stood pushed back in the corner of the keeping room, a walking wheel, for turning fleece into woolen yarn, not the smaller foot wheel that was used to spin flax into linen. Alice had begun to use the walking wheel at Mr. Morton’s as soon as she’d come into her height, but at Medfield, Nabby Verley had put both her wheels away in favor of purchasing the more fashionable imported fabrics.

Alice said, “Where is your wool, madam?”

The widow turned and climbed the stairs. She returned with a dusty basket half full of combed and carded rolls of fleece, as if the spinner had been forced to leave off abruptly. Alice picked out a roll and pulled the end into a thin snake; she wound the snake onto the spindle with her bandaged hand, pleased to see she could work the fingers as she needed above the bandage. She tested the wheel, rocking it back and forth to take its motion, and began. It took her some time to recapture the rhythm: three steps back and spin the wheel clockwise to twist the fleece into yarn, three steps forward and spin the wheel the other way to wind the yarn off the spindle; three steps back again to wind the yarn onto the bobbin. Backward, forward, backward. Backward, forward, backward. Alice’s fingers needed some time to adapt to the restriction in the palm, her aching shoulder wouldn’t rotate as fast as she’d have liked, and she walked many unneeded steps, but soon enough the roll of fleece began to draw down and the yarn to build up on the bobbin.

The widow observed Alice for a time but then left her to her task and returned to her own. The wheel hummed like a steady wind, isolating Alice in her corner, and her attention was so fixed on her task that by the time she looked around she was amazed to see how much the widow had accomplished. The laundry tub had been set up in the dooryard, the water lugged, the washing already done and spread out on the shrubs to dry.

ALICE FINISHED OFF
the basket of fleece that afternoon; that night she and the widow sat with the hand reel, winding the yarn off the bobbin and knotting it into skeins. Four of them, all told. Even Freeman, sitting nearby tilting a thick book toward a candle, looked at the finished skeins and lifted an eyebrow. Did Alice’s small success disappoint or please him? The one arched brow didn’t tell.

That night, as Alice climbed the stairs, she heard the widow’s voice rising up behind her. “She’s a good spinner. You might mention that in the village.”

“I shall. Although you might recall my efforts last evening didn’t end well.”

“And these our better citizens. If she were to end up at that tavern—”

“This is why I so strongly urged returning her to Boston.”

“So she might end up in some Boston tavern?”

“So she might take her case before a court, which will place her somewhere in safety to work out her time.”

“You have such blanket faith in this court.”

“And you such blanket distrust.”

“I have greater faith in you finding her somewhere safe to work right here in this village.”

To that Freeman seemed to make no answer.