Ethan sat stiffly in the chair by Jordan Foster’s bed, relieving Judith
of the duty. The doctor’s color had returned early that afternoon. As had his temper, Judith had warned him. Jordan complained about the egg portion of his remedy, but had eaten. Ethan began drifting off to sleep himself, his head in his hand.
“Did you deliver the jalap remedy to Mr. Hill
?” sat him up again.
“Yes, sir.”
“And check the Collins baby’s fever?”
“No sign of one. Third straight day.”
“So you gave Mr. Collins a bill for services rendered?”
Had him.
Damnation,
Ethan thought. “No, sir. I forgot it was the last visit.”
“Forgot! With what are we supposed to pay the rent? Your card tricks? Are you afraid the money might turn to dust in your hands?”
“You may be right, sir.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Ethan took a deep breath. “I am sorry about what happened at the tavern, Dr. Foster,” he began formally.
“I’m coming out of a dead drunk without so much as a headache, and
you’re
sorry?”
“Yes. I wish I could take your son’s place, instead of being the cause of your pain at his loss.”
Jordan looked away quickly, scanning the spartan room. His focus riveted on the portraits of his wife and children. “Ethan,” he breathed out. “Oh, God, Ethan. What am I doing, all over again?”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
Jordan Foster finally looked away from his lost family and at his apprentice. Ethan was shocked to see tears in his eyes. “She played her dulcimer for you, you said? In your dream?” he whispered.
“Yes, sir.”
“I burned everything. There’s not a trace of any of them. Why did Maggie play for you?”
“I don’t try to understand the gifts of the women, Dr. Foster. But perhaps you loved her better than you remember.”
“Ethan, forgive me.”
He smiled. “There’s nothing to—”
“Please.”
“Yes. Of course. I do, sir,” he said. How could this man who’d twice given him his life be asking this? But he must stop his infernal questioning, as Fayette would say, and be gracious.
“Let’s start again. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Ethan said cautiously.
“Did you manage all right today?” Dr. Foster asked.
“Yes. It was a light visiting schedule. And I had my compass. Mrs. Willard is asking for you.”
“That intrusive old—”
“She needs us, Jordan. She needs both of us.”
“Her plight finally got you calling me by my Christian name again. For that I’m grateful. Nothing more. I don’t know where you find the patience with her.”
“She reminds me of my father.”
“Your father?”
“When I came home, he took Judith for my light skirt mistress. I wanted to … to snap him in two, shamed by even the possibility of having such a doddering old imbecile for a father. When my memory of my life in his house returned, I realized something else.”
“What?”
“That I was never what he expected, either.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was the grand architect of our family. He still is, even as his life’s work is disintegrating around him. Everyone had a place in his scheme, followed his preordained destiny. He had his heir in Winthrop, his churchman in Clayton, and beautiful Sally to ornament his house. I was a surprise, an afterthought, with no place.”
“Were you very unhappy?”
“No. I was my mother’s child, and Sally’s. What man could complain under those women’s care? I tried too hard, that’s all. To gain my father’s affection. I took my position on the
Ida
Lee
to help multiply his fortune, and so to find a place in his heart. I was too young to understand. The objects of his affection have never been people, have they?”
“Not—not in my experience.”
“Even people were to him possessions, like Mrs. Willard’s china dogs. I fear becoming him, Jordan.”
“That’s not possible.”
“My hands grow cold and sweat when I handle money, when I figure accounts, when I lose control of my anger. I love that Judith cannot master cooking, and so I do not have the scent of roasting meat about me, as he always does.”
“Ethan.”
“You will not cast me into an asylum for these things, Jordan?”
“I have no great fondness for spit-turned meat, myself.”
“Truly?”
“Truly.”
“You must tell our Judith this,” Ethan urged, “she frets on it.”
“I will. Judith endures quite enough for our sake already.”
“My mother will be reminding us both of that when she visits again, I expect.”
“Your mother? She’s in Richmond?”
“You don’t remember her dousing you with honey last night?”
“You doused me! I knocked you down over it, damn it all!”
“That’s when she threw me out and took over your care.”
“No. No, she did not.”
Ethan shrugged. “Ask Judith. She never lies.”
Jordan grabbed his apprentice’s waistcoat. “How will she ever forgive me for my miserable state?”
“I did. And my mother’s more generous than I am where you’re concerned, I suspect.”
“Don’t start that nonsense again. Ethan, help me. Intercede, please. Tell her I haven’t failed you, or she’ll hate me.”
“You haven’t failed me. And my mother will never hate you. She found her strength in that time with you, I think.”
“What time?”
“I only know the stories. It was before my birth. The time of the sickness. You remember, don’t you?”
“Of course I remember.”
“That’s good. It wouldn’t do to have a principal player in a family legend to be forgetting his place.”
“Hang it all, where’s Judith?” Jordan Foster suddenly stormed.
Ethan blinked. “Am I talking too much?” he asked.
“Yes,” the doctor answered dismissively. “Where’s Judith?”
“Gone to bring the tavern rouster’s wife some tonic.”
“Since when is this woman our patient?”
“Last night. You don’t remember talking with her worried husband, either, do you? No wonder drink does not appeal to me. I’ve had
enough of my own memory problems without inviting new ones. But do you see what a fine physician you are now? You draw new patients in, even while inebriated.”
T
he tavern was quiet, the noon diners having gone their way. Judith tried to imagine Ethan trudging street after street with Dr. Foster on his back while she brought Odette to the docks, dressed as a laundress to deliver a stack of Ethan’s shirts to the
Opal.
The sloop’s captain, Mrs. Atwater’s son, reminded her a little of Fayette. He had held her hand, praised her courage, promised her Odette would be safely delivered north with the others. To freedom.
She’d felt fired with purpose when she’d asked to be allowed to sew clothes for the runaways he collected along the James. And so pleased when he accepted. Why did she want to do more? People were already suspicious of her plain dress, her slips back to the
“thee
s
”
and
“thy
s” of a Quaker.
She had missed the fiery purpose of her missions, she admitted to herself. But now she had no Meeting to sponsor and support her efforts. She had only these two men who would put their hands in the fire for her. She must make sure they were not called upon to do so. She risked her husband’s dream of becoming a physician. And she would put his life at risk, if ever he were called to defend her. But Odette was so brave—wasn’t her obligation to help in some way?
If she told Ethan, he would understand that she must follow her Light, just as he had followed his own in the stormy Atlantic. But she must protect him from this, her small mission. And so, she now had a secret from her husband. A small secret.
She looked up at the jewel-colored sign.
“Judith Blair.”
She turned. A woman stood in the shadow of the building, her long shawl fringed in green. Judith saw a shift in the shadows and felt the woman’s deeper scrutiny. “It’s you put the sassafras in the waiting-woman tonic?”
“Yes,” she said, relieved the woman was no slaver.
“Who taught you that?”
“My father.”
“A doctor?”
“He was a botanist.”
“Herb doctor?”
“Yes.”
“You bring this tonic to Ellen Post now?”
“I do.”
“Where’s your husband?”
“Caring for the doctor.”
“The drunk one.”
“He’s sober today.”
A short burst of laughter erupted, before the eyes turned serious again. “Hark at me now. Curry Post, he told your man about his ailing wife yesterday. Your man, Curry said, bespoke him thus: ‘What does the midwife say?’ he spoke.”
“I did not hear the words, friend. But that sounds like Ethan.”
“Does it now? They don’t look to be stealing away the women from me, then, those new doctors?”
“No, Mother Ballard.”
“You know me?”
“Thy questions, concern for Ellen Post, give you away.”
“It is that, what you call it—concern. I had naught to do with the loss of the two before this.”
“I’m sure you did your best. You’re highly spoken of by all the mothers of our acquaintance. My tonic is very mildly doused, and of good flavor. Would you like to see a bottle?” Judith asked gently.
“I would.”
Judith approached the alley between buildings, as much as she feared enclosed, shadowy places since her father’s death. She handed the bottle to the midwife. Her hands shook.
“You ’feared of Mother Ballard?”
“No.”
“Of the dark, then?”
“The dark, yes. Sometimes.”
“Not when that husband casts about for you in the dark, I’ll wager!”
Judith felt herself blushing.
“Closer. There. I can see for myself now something they say about you—that your hair does not come with age, but by the touch.”
“Touch?”
“A terror. It’s true, what else they tell? That your man stole you out of the plain folk, and married you all legal? Did the doctor’s bastard son do that?”
Judith wondered at the swiftness of rumor.
“Did you marry Ethan Blair common or legal?” the woman persisted.
“Legal. Twice.”
“Twice?” The woman laughed again in that breathless burst. “Think on it! There are wonders yet in this new world of Reason. Visit with Ellen Post. Then come to me.” The midwife smiled and Judith got a glimpse of her ancient, earned beauty. “Your man will not learn everything from the schooled doctor. He chose well in you. Will you come, that I might get a better understanding of that tonic, and yourself? Are you brave enough for that?”
J
udith wished to embrace her own family, after the sadness of Ellen Post’s story, and the wonder of the midwife’s pronouncement. She peeked into the doctor’s bedroom, smiled at his sleeping form. She expected Ethan to be keeping vigil, but there was no sign of him on the first floor. She climbed the stairs to their rooms. His desk looked as if he’d been interrupted midletter. Beside his chair, his boots, newly refurbished and shining thanks to Aaron, were discarded.
She turned when she heard his high-pitched whistle, like the dolphins’ greeting.
He sat in a corner by a rear gable window, the way he sometimes did in his quarters aboard the
Standard.
“Ethan,” she said, approaching, “what are you doing?”
“Hiding.”
“From what?”
“Whom,” he corrected her quietly, casting his glance above.
“Whom, then?”
“Mrs. Blair!” sounded a cheery voice from below.
Ethan groaned.
“Mrs. Blair?” it came again, “is that you I saw come in just now?”
“Meddlesome woman,” Ethan muttered, “and her damned hens.”
Judith sighed and approached the window so that her head and shoulders cleared the sill. She looked down over her garden.
“Yes, Mrs. Atwater, I’m home. Is your son off safely?”
“Himself and cargo both, bound for Philadelphia, thank you, dear. Now, you appear tired, sweet girl. After all you’ve been through, to need my good brown hens to come to aid the … indisposed member of your household this morning! Shame, I say.”