A Wild Yearning, page 15
Someone lay on a pallet at his feet. As they got closer, the reek of blood and feces emanating from the blankets was so strong Elizabeth made a small gagging sound in the back of her throat.
"Lizzie, perhaps you should wait outside." Caleb said.
To Delia's surprise, Elizabeth almost snapped at her husband. "Nonsense, Caleb. The poor girl might need our help."
Delia thought it was Ty's help the poor girl needed most. As he knelt beside her, the girl gazed up at him with sunken eyes that were huge in her thin, sallow face. She had black straight hair and a small pointed face, and she couldn't have been older than fourteen.
Susannah Marsten shoved aside a jar of bear grease and a pot of bean seeds to clear a space on the counter. "Here, put her up on this, Increase. Where the doc can get a better look at her." Then she came back to stir up the fire, raking the glowing embers to one side to put a kettle on to boil. Elizabeth hurried over to help her.
Ty picked the girl up off the filthy pallet and laid her carefully on the countertop. He said something to her in her own language. It startled Delia, hearing the guttural syllables coming so naturally out of Ty's mouth.
He unlaced the front of the girl's deerskin dress and slipped his hand onto her chest, then moving down to her stomach. The girl smiled; she had lost a good part of her teeth and her gums were bloody. But her smile was bright and Delia could almost see the pain visibly leave her face.
He has magic hands, she thought, and felt a jumbled mixture of pride and admiration and possessiveness as she looked at Tyler Savitch's sharp profile. He was smiling at the Indian girl, with gentleness and hope, and Delia loved him more in that one moment than she would have ever thought possible.
The old trapper shuffled over. "What's she got, Doc?"
"She has a disease that comes from improper diet, Increase. You two have to eat more than salt meat and biscuits for months on end." He said something else to the girl in Abenaki and she nodded seriously. "Boil her up a mess of fiddleheads this afternoon and make her eat every bite. And then get her to drink a couple of tankards of spruce beer. Can you do that?"
"Aye. She gonna live?"
"If you start feeding her right. Spruce beer, greens and vegetables, almost every day, Increase. Berries and apples when they come into season, and preserve them so you'll have them to eat come winter. Right now I've got something in my pack for you to brew into a tea for her. It'll help stop the purging."
The old trapper nodded. He picked the girl up and followed Ty back outside into the yard without another word.
Susannah looked after them, sighing and shaking her head. "He's crazy as a backhouse rat, is Increase. Poor girl. Although I think deep down he really is quite fond of her." She sighed again and then turned to give the Hookers, who were standing side by side in front of the hearth, a bright smile. "Well, I've got to get dinner started. You all are stayin' at least the day and the night, I hope?"
"I sure hope so," Caleb said, with a sigh. They had endured two weeks of hard traveling since leaving Wells and they were all exhausted. "Ty mentioned something about having to get us a ride on a schooner going the rest of the way to Merrymeeting. I guess there isn't a road."
"The road ends right here in Falmouth. There's a deer trail that runs around the bay, but that's too rough even for a horse let alone an ox cart. That old pirate Cap'n Abbott has a schooner anchored out in the stream. He'll take you over tomorrow. He owes Ty because he got the chest consumption winter before last and Ty pulled him through it."
"How far away is Merrymeeting from here?" Delia asked, even though Susannah was studiously ignoring her.
"Not far. If the tide is right, about a day going by ship, which is the way most folks do it..." She stroked the tow-head of her son, who had been hovering at her skirts looking shyly at the activity around him with wide-open blue eyes. "Toby, why don't you run up to the attic and bring down a bunch of corn ears. We'll pop some corn before dinner and drink a flip or two. It's one of Ty's favorite things."
She laughed almost girlishly and glanced back down the length of the room, and Delia saw that Ty had come back inside, ducking his head to avoid banging it on the low door. "The flip, I'm talkin' about. Not the popped corn," Susannah added and laughed again, for Ty had flashed his slanted smile.
A day's ride by ship, Delia thought. That meant by tomorrow they would be in Merrymeeting and Ty would deliver her to Nathaniel Parkes. She would be married to a man whose face she had yet to look upon. She would live in the same place as Ty. She would see him from time to time at bees and raisin' parties, and maybe on the Sabbath day if he bothered to come to the Meeting. When she got sick he would come and smile at her and touch her with his magic hands. And if she had babies...
Every morning when she woke up there would be the chance that she would see his face sometime that day. It was what she had thought she wanted. But, oh Lord above us, what had ever made her think that would be enough?
Susannah Marsten mixed a batch of buttermilk biscuits, whipping the spoon so vigorously it thudded against the side of the wooden bowl. Delia sat across the table from her, perched on a grindstone, her legs spread wide, while she snapped beans in her lap. The pop of the beans and the thud of the spoon were the only sounds to disturb the heavy silence.
Except for the boy Tobias, who turned the spit where a haunch of venison roasted over the fire, Delia and Susannah were the only ones in the room and Delia thought the other woman was feeling uncomfortable because of it. Delia had to admit she was a bit unnerved herself.
After munching on the popped corn and drinking a couple of flips—a potent concoction of beer sweetened with molasses, thickened with an egg, and strengthened with rum—Ty and Caleb had felt about as relaxed as cats stretched out napping in the sun. It was only with considerable difficulty that Ty was able to force himself up and out of the house to try to track down Cap'n Abbott to see about getting passage tomorrow or the next day. Caleb went with him, wobbling a bit on his long, thin legs.
From time to time Susannah would glance at the closed door of the inner room where she and her son slept at night, and where Elizabeth Hooker had retired an hour ago, claiming the need to rest before dinner.
"Is Mrs. Hooker ill?" Susannah finally asked, when the uncomfortable silence had dragged on too long.
Delia shrugged. "I don't think so. She's just a bit weary from ridin' in the ox cart. She's used t' an easier life, ye see, her da bein' minister t' Brattle Street Church back in Boston."
Susannah sniffed disdainfully and Delia realized she had, without intending to, put Elizabeth in a bad light. Guiltily, she tried to make up for it by adding, "Mrs. Hooker's always been real nice t' me," which only caused Susannah to sniff harder.
Susannah set the biscuit dough down on the hearthstone to rise while the oven got hot. She touched her son's shoulder. "Toby, go out to the spring house, please, and fetch me that jug of milk."
Delia watched the little boy scurry to obey. "Your boy sure is good, but he don't say much."
"He's shy at first. By tonight he'll be chewing your ear off."
Susannah straightened, wiping her hands on her apron. Since Ty had left she had taken the time to change her clothes, putting on a linsey-woolsey petticoat and calamanco short gown that showed off her uptilted breasts. She had covered her head with a long, checked kerchief that fell over her shoulders and was tucked into her apron. With her hair pulled back off her face, her delicate features of tiny, bow-shaped mouth, upturned nose, and small, pointed chin stood out in classical relief.
She's beautiful, Delia thought, dismayed. And Susannah couldn't look more different than herself.
As Susannah turned from the hearth, Delia glanced quickly down at the beans in her lap. She could feel the woman's eyes on her questioning and evaluating just as she had been doing, and unconsciously Delia's spine stiffened. She drew her feet up, pressing them against the side of the grindstone as if to give herself support.
"Those are pretty moccasins," Susannah said, forcing a smile.
Delia's head came up and triumph flashed in her eyes. "Ty gave 'em t' me. They were his mother's."
A shadow crossed Susannah's face and Delia's moment of triumph grew. "Oh... how nice of him," Susannah said.
Delia decided she would have no peace if she didn't know the truth, and the only way to get at the truth was to ask for it outright.
"Are you an' Ty sleepin' together?"
Susannah's thin shoulders jerked and a dark flush stained her fair skin. "Of course not! And how dare you even imply such a wicked thing!" she exclaimed, which Delia took to mean that if she hadn't done it yet, she had certainly thought about doing it, and more than once, probably.
After a moment of heavy silence, Susannah asked, "So you've come to Merrymeeting to marry Nathaniel Parkes?"
"Aye... if we suit." Another long silence passed before Delia added, "How come ye don't marry him?"
Susannah snatched a bean pot off the table, then set it down again with a sharp rap. Her face was the deep purple color of overripe apples. "He hasn't asked me."
Delia hid a smile. "I didn't mean Ty. I was talkin' about Mr. Parkes. Since ye lost yer husband, and he's just lost his wife, it would seem only natural the two of ye would think about hookin' up. These beans're done."
Susannah stood stiff, with her mouth partway open. Then she snapped her jaw shut with an audible click. "The eating things are in the top drawer of that cupboard. Should you want to set the table."
Delia dumped the beans into the pot on the table, then went to the maple cupboard. In the drawer were pewterware and linen napkins, all very refined-looking. Ty would be pleased.
"As a matter of fact, Nat did ask me," Susannah said to Delia's back. "He's a good man, but we don't suit."
Which meant, Delia thought, that she was holding out for a better offer. From Tyler Savitch.
Ty ate three thick slabs of the roasted venison and eight biscuits smothered with gravy.
After dinner and after the plates were cleared, Susannah picked up a grist sack and announced that she and Tobias had planned to go down to the mill that afternoon. She looked at Ty as she said it, but although he smiled at her, he made no offer to accompany them.
Caleb and Elizabeth sat down side by side on the settle, which had been drawn up to the light of the fire, and Caleb began to read from the Bible in his mellifluous voice. Ty sat farther away from the heat, on a chair made from a barrel with a sealskin seat. He cleaned and oiled his flintlock, his pipe forgotten on the floor. Delia perched beside him on the grindstone, as close to him as she dared to get without being obvious about it, and watched him from beneath sleepy lids. She felt jealous of the way he ran his long, slender hands over the gun, so gently, as if he stroked a woman's flesh.
Once, he glanced up and met her eyes, but she couldn't read the look on his face. She wondered if he would spend the coming night in Susannah Marsten's bed.
Caleb had just started reading Delia's favorite, the Twenty-third Psalm, when he was interrupted by a sharp rap on the door. Ty set his rifle on the floor and got to his feet, but the latch string had been left out and so a second later the door opened and an enormous woman came bustling through. She paused on the threshold and her eyes raked the room, settling on Ty.
Ty's eyes widened at the sight of her. "Oh, shit," he said beneath his breath, and looked behind him as if hoping there had suddenly appeared a second door out the back.
The woman advanced and Ty retreated, going around behind the barrel chair. She stopped halfway down the path along the counter and pointed a fat finger at him, wagging it menacingly. "You can't escape from me, you riphell, though you might think to try. My sister said she'd seen you skulking into town early this morning."
"I rode in quite openly, if I remember, Sara Kemble," Ty told the formidable-looking woman. "Hello, Obadiah." He nodded to a small, thin man who hovered behind her. The man had a white mustache stained yellow at the ends and edges and small, pale pumpkin-seed eyes with heavy drooping lids. Ty gave him a quick smile. "What are you folks doing over here in Falmouth Neck?"
Obadiah Kemble opened his mouth to answer, but his wife did it for him. "We're visiting my sister, but never you mind about that. I didn't come here to talk about my affairs."
Sara Kemble advanced, banging the swinging door open with her hip, stopping just inside the living area. Her husband slunk behind like a puny shadow.
She wore a heavy quilted petticoat and a white mobcap with trailing ribbons, and the whole effect when added to her bulk reminded Delia of a ship under full sail. She put her fists on her broad hips and looked around her. Her eyes passed over Delia, pausing only briefly on the Hookers. Caleb had risen politely when she first entered the room and now he offered her a tentative smile, which she ignored. Then her narrow, short-lashed eyes fastened back onto Ty. "Well, where is he? What have you done with him?"
Ty had attempted to arrange his features into a look of pure, cherubic innocence. "Done with whom?"
"Don't you play dumb with me, Tyler Savitch. We sent you to Boston to bring us back a parson and I don't see him anywheres. Knowing you, I suppose you drank and wenched away your time there, instead of seeing to the business at hand."
Ty's eyes were now brimming with laughter, although Delia noticed he still kept the barrel chair between himself and the awe-provoking woman. "You just looked right at him."
Sara Kemble's two chins snapped around and she peered again at Caleb, only more carefully this time, starting with the round crowned hat on his head and going down to his square-toed shoes.
Caleb swallowed so hard that his Adam's apple bobbed. "How do you do, uh... Mrs. Kemble."
Sara's eyebrows disappeared into her cap and her small mouth formed a perfect circle as she drew in a deep breath. "Why, he hardly looks old enough to be out of hanging sleeves!"
"He's old enough to have earned a divinity degree from Harvard," Ty said, grinning at Caleb.
"Harvard!" Sara Kemble sniffed and her whole—and considerable—body trembled. "We're simple folk at Merrymeeting," she said to Caleb. "God-fearing folk. We don't hold with fancy, educated ways."
"Yes... Well, I..." Caleb cast an imploring look at Ty, which he ignored.
Sara Kemble's fists went back on her hips. "Haven't you got a proper tongue in that head of yours? You can't expect to preach a decent sermon if your tongue ties itself in knots every time you open your mouth to use it. Didn't they teach you that at Harvard?"
"I, uh..." Caleb swallowed noisily and pulled at his collar. Reaching behind him, he yanked Elizabeth off the settle and gave her a slight push forward. "Uh, this is my wife. Elizabeth. Elizabeth Hooker."
Having thus been thrown to the lioness by her fearless mate, Elizabeth handled herself quite well, Delia thought, feeling proud of her new friend. First, she met and held Sara Kemble's eyes until the older woman was the first to blink, then she dropped into a polite but restrained curtsy. "How do you do, Goodwife Kemble," she said, using the old-fashioned term of address for a woman of the middling sort, a respectable craftsman's or farmer's wife, and most effectively relegating Sara Kemble to her proper place in the order of things.
Sara's dirt-colored eyes looked Elizabeth over carefully and she nodded her approval. "Well, then. At least your missus appears to have her wits about her." Then she rounded on Ty again. His grin slid off his face. "And that reminds me... Did you get that wife for Nathaniel like you promised?"
"As a matter of fact—"
But Sara Kemble's scathing gaze had fallen onto Delia. "So this is she, is it? You there, girl, stand up."
Delia stood up slowly and her chin automatically went up into the air.
"Law you, Tyler Savitch, anyone with a dab of sense can see she's nothing but a tart!"
Delia jerked as if she'd been slapped.
"Now, Sara, you can't expect—" Ty began.
"What I expected was that you'd have had the wit to bring Nathaniel back a decent woman to be wife to him and mother to those poor girls of his. Instead you bring the likes of this one and she no better than she ought to be. This is a fine state of affairs and I blame you for it, Tyler Savitch. I told Mr. Kemble you should never have been entrusted with the errand." Seeking his confirmation, she turned to her husband, who still lingered outside the partition. "Didn't I, Mr. Kemble? And you can see now how I was right."
Obadiah cast an apologetic look at Ty. "Yes, m'dear."
Ty spared a glance for Delia, who stood stiffly beside him, her face so drained of color that it reflected the flickering light from the fire like a windowpane. "Nat asked me to do the best I could for him. Just because Delia's worked in a tavern, she's—"
"We all know what she is. And you're a lazy man, Tyler Savitch," Sara Kemble scolded. "Where did you look? Not far beyond the tavern she worked in, I vow. You can hardly expect me to believe this little tart was the best you could turn up with the whole of unmarried female Boston to choose from—"
"Aooow!" Delia snatched up Ty's rifle, holding it like a club. "If ye call me a tart one more time, ye old bawd, I'll wrap this flintlock 'round yer fat an' wrinkled neck!"
Sara Kemble's jaw flapped open as if it had become unhinged. She backed up two steps, her hands fluttering up to her heaving bossom. "Oh, my Lord have mercy. Somebody do something. She's threatening to shoot me!"
"Aye, shoot ye and worse!" Delia lifted the flintlock into the air. "If ye don't take back those things ye said about me, ye old lard-faced witch."
Sara gasped and her bossom swelled to alarming proportions. "Witch!"
"Aye, back in Boston we hang women like you. If somebody were t' give ye a birch broom, why I bet we would see that ye can fly!"
Sara Kemble whirled around and hit the swinging door at a lumbering stride. She tottered down the length of the store so hard the puncheon floor shook beneath her feet. Fumbling frantically with the doorlatch, she craned her head around to keep a wary eye on Delia.
