“Bethia, when father first spoke of you, when you came to him, he was loud in praise of your understanding. He told me how he looked forward to converse with you each evening. At first I did not credit it. Knowing how he had been with my mother, leaving her to a lonely silence, night following night. He is become old, I thought, and fond. He would not be the first, in his dotage, to find pleasure in gazing at a fair young face. But I took note of you, thereafter. I admired what I saw. I felt regret, when father allowed me to know that you already had a suitor. Then, when father confided that you were minded to refuse that suit, I began to fan a hope. And of course, there was the trouble with your brother, and there you were, at meeting, in the sinner’s box, standing under accusing eyes, confessing to weighty faults. And yet there was a luminance about you as you spoke. You admitted your sin, but even as you did, it was with such eloquence and dignity that those with ears to hear must know it was no true evil, what you did, but necessary and justified.”
He fell silent. I said nothing. I had no such fond recollection of myself in that hour. Luminance, indeed. I had never in my life felt so extinguished.
We continued walking. His eyes regarded me, slantwise. “Three days ago, I asked you a question. We were interrupted before you could give me an answer.”
“Quite a lot has happened, since.”
“Exactly so.”
“And I think it troubles you?”
“Indeed.”
“May I ask in what—?”
He had cracked a switch from a low-hanging branch, and was picking the young leaves off one by one. He tossed it aside, turned suddenly and grasped my shoulders.
“It had not occurred to me that strong-minded also meant headstrong!” His voice was raised. I took a step back, detaching myself from his grip. Although the trees were in full leaf, I was not sure what might be seen from the college windows, and I had no wish to be the object of boyish gossip. Nor could I afford to be.
My wisk was creased where he had gripped it. I raised a hand and tried to smooth the marks upon the linen. He grabbed my wrist mid-gesture, to force my attention.
“Bethia, why must you involve yourself so intimately with the affairs of these salvages? What are those boys to you, that you take up such cudgels in defense of their reputation? You sat there in my father’s schoolroom, and I saw that you were prepared, if necessary, to blacken the name of the highest in the colony in order to defend them. A defense, I might add, that would have put you at great risk. I see, dimly, how they might represent your father’s work to you, which you would not have besmirched by the evidence of so great a moral lapse, and I begin to grasp an edge of it. But then I think of that girl—whom you have not known above three months. What can she possibly be to you, that you would abet her flight? Oh, do not trouble to deny it”—I had opened my mouth to protest—“She was in no state to affect such a thing without assistance and you are the only one person she trusted in the least degree. Nor do I think the act wrong in and of itself. She faced harsh treatment, which she likely did not deserve—”
“Likely?” I spat the word back at him and pulled my wrist away from his encircling fingers. I could contain myself no longer. “How say you so? That child did nothing to ‘deserve’ any of this. It is calumny to suggest….”
He threw up a hand and shook his head impatiently. “Hear me!” His voice was quite loud. I, unaccustomed to being addressed so, was briefly surprised into silence.
“You risk bringing down the ire of the General Court upon yourself, for obstructing the functions of justice.” His complexion had darkened beyond its usual olive cast. He began to look like a Moor.
“You really think the General Court will be anything other than grateful that she is gone? You have an exalted view of their dedication….”
“And you have an exalted view of your own opinion!”
I considered for a moment before replying. I could see the blood beating in a vein at his temple. It had become engorged in a most uncomely fashion, and writhed there like a worm.
“You are right. I do. Since God has seen fit to take my parents from me, I see no one left above me whose views on my conduct matter more to me than my own.”
“You see? That is the very—What sort of speech is that? No dutiful wife should utter such—”
“You forget yourself. You may have asked me to wife. I have not accepted you. And from what you now say, it seems that such a match would be most ill-advised. I think it best for all concerned if we wind the clock back and forget that the question was ever put.”
I turned then, and made off quickly in the direction of the school.
“Bethia!” he called. I did not turn, but quickened my step. He was running after, and with one or two long strides drew close enough to reach out and lay a hand on me. His grip was hard, and this time I could not pull free. His ruffian’s face was close to mine. I turned my head away from him. He reached out with his other hand and dragged off my cap and dug his fingers into my hair, pulling my head back so that I had to look up at him, right into the deep of those ink-black eyes. His voice, when he spoke, was low and urgent. “I love you,” he said, and kissed me.
I
do not pretend to know what would have happened to me had I in fact been wrong in my predictions about the General Court. But in the event, I was not wrong. With the girl out of sight, so vanished the scandal. There had been no appetite on the part of the governor to investigate her whereabouts with any degree of vigor. I was not even questioned in the matter. If Master Corlett shared his son’s conviction as to my role in Anne’s departure, he elected not to raise the subject with me. He had never wished to have her under his roof, and all that had followed her coming had justified his view of the thing. Having her there in the midst of his male pupils had been as unsettling as a snake set loose in a stable. Master Corlett, more than anyone, seemed relieved that the matter was behind him. The whole sorry affair had been let fall like a plummet down a well shaft and forgotten, by all except those three of us who cared for her.
Caleb, particularly, pined after justice in the matter. “It beggars belief, that this goes unpunished,” he said one evening, as he carried in bavins for me from the yard. “If she were an English maid, raped by an Indian, that man would have been swinging from the Common’s gallows long since.”
Since what he said was true, I did not attempt to contradict it.
“Caleb, you know well what the price of such justice would have been. I do not think Anne could have withstood that court and its cruelties. And had they flogged a name out of her, do you think such a devil as would forwhore a child would thereafter scruple to traduce her? She would have stood there, tarred a liar. And even in the unlikely event his part in the act was somehow proven, he would cry off the charge of rapist and make her out a jade and a Delilah who seduced him. Truly, a man so pressed might say anything….”
“I would discover him, if I could….”
“Caleb, no. You must put it behind you. I do not say forget it. Who could forget so horrible a crime? But set it by, for now, and get you to your books. That is the best thing you can do for her. Distinguish yourself, and then, one day, you might take your place among those whose word shapes justice here.”
He looked up at me as he bent to the hearth, stacking the wood. I could see him, entertaining some dim notion of such a future. But his face remained drawn, his looks entirely sorrowful.
“God knows who did this thing,” I said. “Leave it now in his hands, and trust to him for justice.”
“I will pray for it,” he said. There was a dull, rote quality to his response. He stood up, and walked out into the garth. I saw him, standing there, gazing up at the waxing moon.
Two nights later, the moon was full. I turned on my pallet, stirred from sleep by a shadow passing over me in the dark.
“Caleb?” I whispered.
“Hush! Go back to sleep.”
I sat up. The moon was so bright, I should have been able to make him out, but I could not descry his features. Then I knew why. He had taken a coal and blackened his face below the line of his cheekbones. He was wearing the master’s long black gown.
“Caleb!”
“Quiet!” he hissed. “This is not your affair, Bethia.” He passed through the door, silent and invisible, into the dark. Even if I had summoned the courage to follow him, I could not have done so. He had vanished entirely, as if conjured away.
I lay there, fretful, sweating with anxiety and oppressed by a sense of doom and helplessness. My first thought was that Anne had indeed confided the name to him and that he had set forth thinking to administer some rough justice, an exploit that likely would cost him his life. Then, as clouds scudded across the luminous disc, riding high now in an inky sky, the truth of the thing fell into my heart. I had told him to pray, and he was doing so. But not necessarily to a just and loving God.
He was back within the hour, his face scrubbed clean and the master’s purloined gown folded neatly in his arms. I did not speak to him as he passed by my pallet, nor for the next sennight. I could not look him in the eye without the greatest agitation of heart. But to the extent that my spirit was roiled, so his seemed calmed. The heaviness about his brow had lifted, and he applied himself to preparing for the coming examination with a renewed diligence.
Then came the morning when Master Corlett was obliged to suspend instruction at the school while he attended the burial of the governor’s second son, who had served as his father’s clerk. As I helped the master prepare his mourning dress, he reflected that the loss was a heavy providence, since the young man left a widow and two babes. He had been carried off quite suddenly, after an uncommonly violent bout of flux.
I do not know if it was my ungoverned fancy, but later that day, when I passed by Caleb in the hall, it seemed to me that his face was lit by an expression of ardent satisfaction. By coincidence, the next day I heard from Makepeace, in a letter, containing the news that the “gift” for the Takemmy sonquem had been well received, and that “the squa in his household in whom I had once taken interest” was in good health.
It was the first time I had spoken to Caleb beyond a few required words since the night of the full moon. As I gave him the news, I had thought he would be pleased, but I soon sensed that he set little store in it. “I wish we had some authority, other than your brother’s word, that she is indeed well set. He is not a man renowned for his fellow feeling. I will be glad, Bethia, when you are safely returned to the island and can see to her welfare.”
“Caleb, I should tell you that I might not—” I began, but I could not continue, for we were interrupted then, by one of the smaller boys, crying out for my help with a splinter driven deep into the fleshy part of his palm. I turned to the boy. Caleb sighed, and went off to give the news to Joel.
As the candidates for the college examination sat late at their book and the master heard their sundry recitations, I went about my work, but my mind was unquiet. With the approach of matriculation day, the matter of my own future was in the balance as much as theirs. I had to consider what to do with Noah Merry’s gift of my unexpected liberty. At one time, the choice would have been plain. I would have scuffed the stinking mud of Cambridge town from my boots, packed my box and booked a passage on the first boat heading for the island.
The island cried out to me. I longed to feast my senses on its light and air, and restore my spirit with its peace. If I answered its call, soon enough I would live again in the familiar rhythms of its seasons—the wincing winters and dappled summers, its shy, reluctant springtide and gleaming, bronzed leaf fall. I would be cradled by the known world of kine and crop, the heaviness of each day’s familiar chores lightened by love of the very place in which I did perform them. I knew that life; I knew my place in it. If I threw my thoughts forward I could see myself at every age. To be sure, parts of the picture were wreathed in fog—the goodman beside me did not turn his face to show me who he was; the number of children at my board ebbed and flowed—but the woman at the center of the vision was clear; in bud, in blossom, and blown. I did not fear even the last of these visions: the frail old crone, hands gnarled and claw-like from a lifetime’s toil, cheeks, etched and hollow, billowing forth a final breath. I knew that even as her petals withered, a good fruit ripened: the fruit of a life lived for family and faith and the rich harvests of a fertile place.
But there was another vision, less welcome, that went with this one: a single image in my mind of a door—heavy, solid, oaken—closing forever in front of me. It was the door to a library. The door that had opened for me, just a chink, in this place of learned men. I did not have an exact vision of what my future life would be if I married Samuel Corlett. I only knew what would not be, if I did not. There would be no more Latin phrases drifting down hallways, no works of poetry gifted me by tall men in scholars’ gowns, no high rhetoric or witty disputations.
And this, also, I could conjure, for better and for worse: the press of lips and urgent hands. These had not made fertile furrow for lucid thought about my future. Instead, the memory of a moment under the apple boughs would come to me unbidden. I would have to stop what I was doing and try to gather myself. I learned then that girlish yearnings are one thing and womanly desire quite another. One might feel the light brush of Eros’s wing and entertain forbidden fancies when one knows full well that what is longed for lies far beyond reach. It is another thing to burn with lust and be sure that a turn of your finger will bring the object to his knees before you. I had a struggle now that threatened my peace and looked set to pull me in the direction of all manner of vanities and follies if I did not take the most stringent pains to discipline myself. Had a speedy marriage to Samuel Corlett been on offer, I believe I would have consented to it, whatever my misgivings about the suitability of the match. But I was saved by the certain knowledge that even if I accepted him, we stood a year off the safe harbor of a marriage bed. An engagement, I reasoned, would create more, not less, temptation.