Love's Pursuit (7 page)

10

THOMAS RETURNED FROM THE WATCH AT THE rising of the sun.

I was ready for him, pulling his doublet from his shoulders and offering him a jug of water with which to wash his face. The biscuits I placed before him were enriched with a precious handful of wheat flour, and the cheese I offered was the creamiest that was left us.

He followed the food with a cup of cider. And then he stood and took his doublet from the peg where I had hung it.

“Can you not take even a small rest?”

He turned round and looked at me, his face without any expression, red-rimmed eyes looking into mine. Smudges pressed into the space beneath his eyes made his skin seem even paler. “Nay. But thank you for thinking of me.”

I blushed, for I
had
thought of him.

One corner of his mouth lifted in an attempt at a smile, and then he was gone. Out the door and to the smithery.

Aye, I had thought of him. And worse, I had shown it.

The captain came back the next morning as Nathaniel and Father were headed out. Mother placed his food before him as Mary and I began our labors. I endeavored to ignore him as we prepared for the day’s task: cheese making. I poured a quantity of milk into a kettle, Mary added some rennet to it, and together we hung it above the fire.

As we worked we stepped around several tool handles that Father had placed in the ashes to season. Had that been the only thing he had subjected them to, none of us would have minded. But he had soaked them first in manure for a full two weeks before he had brought them in to Mother. And manure smoked just as well as wood. Maybe better. Worse. Mother had muttered at her work throughout the whole of the day that he had laid them down.

Once the milk and rennet began to bubble, it was Mother’s task to watch it work. And it was our task to begin the preparations for dinner. By the time we sat to eat, the whey had been set aside for use on the morrow and the cheese wrapped in dry cloths.

Supper was nearly upon us when I went outside to get some firewood. The captain surprised me with his presence near the fence. “Would you wish to walk?”

I eyed the garden before us, looking for some task that needed to be done, but I could see none. Mary and I had worked too hard at weeding that forenoon. “Why?” The thought of his comments the previous night still had the power to pink my cheeks when I remembered them. Not that I had very often. Nor failed to follow them quickly with some thought of John.

“For the pleasure of another’s company on a pleasant summer’s evening.”

Surely he must be jesting. “There is more than walking that needs be done this day!”

“And I am sure that with your industry, you shall accomplish it. But why not take two minutes to accompany me? To walk beside me. To appreciate the beauty in the evening that lays itself before us.”

“It can be appreciated from inside the house with a ladle in my hand as well as here, idling with you.”

“Must you always be so busy?”

“Have you not heard that idle hands are the devil’s workshop?”

He reached up a finger to scratch behind his ear. “I seem to recall being told the same. By a knobbly-headed Puritan with a great air of nothing better to do than to find fault with me. And if I recall correctly, he was doing naught himself. Just as you are now. So why not walk a turn with me . . . since you seem to be doing nothing at all in any case?”

I did not know whether to be galled that he had called us Puritans knobbly-headed or to be shamed that he had discovered me to be absent some useful activity.

He took several steps away from me toward the hill.

I followed him so that I could speak to him . . . once I had determined what it was I wished to say. “We have not, all of us, knobbly heads!”

“Nay. I spoke a mistruth. Some of you are roundheaded and blockheaded as well. Come. Perhaps you misread my intentions. I do not wish to accost you. I simply wish to come to know you better.”

“Know me?”

“Aye.”

“Know what?”

“From where have you come—”

“Boston.”

“And where are you going?”

“To gather firewood. Now, if you will excuse me.”

“Why can you not be restful? And where are your manners? Do you not wish to know more of me?”

He seemed so certain that he was a fascination that for an instant I longed to tell him that I did not. But it would have been a lie. And so I said nothing.

“Where I am from, for instance? Do you not wish to know that?”

“Where are you from, then?”

“Gloucester. And you do not have to ask so meanly.”

“I do not have to ask at all.”

“Is there nothing more you wish to know of me?”

Aye. There was. I wished to know how he could laugh so easily when life was so difficult. How he could be so confident when all was so uncertain. And most of all, I wished to know . . . everything. Everything about who he was and why. But I could ask him none of those things. And so I asked him something else instead.

“You are a soldier for long?”

“Aye. Too long.” My question must have disappointed him, for he turned from me. But then, just as quickly, he turned back. “You know, you do not have to live like these people.”

Like
these
people?
These people
were me! “How else would you have me live?”

“Less . . . gravely. Can you never be restful?”

“I can. As I occupy my hands with a task, then my mind can dwell on other things.”

“Such as?”

“Such as . . . God’s great love and His benefits. His care for me and all of His children.”

“Do your thoughts never go to such things as the setting sun or an evening’s first star?” He swept his arm forward toward the valley.

As I followed his gesture, I gasped at the beauty of what lay before me. The sky glinted as if dipped in gilt. “I have never seen such a sight.” I was always too busy with preparations for supper.

“I thought not. Or you would not have protested so greatly.”

I tore my eyes from the sun’s setting to fix them upon his own.

Fascinating. They had gone purple in the shadow of the evening. I blinked. And then I remembered who I was and what I was about. “I have dawdled long enough.”

“Nay. I daresay you do not dawdle enough.”

Was he daft as well as vain? “We must none of us waste anything that God, in His goodness, has granted us. One day we shall have to stand before Him and account for it all.”

“Really? You believe that? That God is some glorified clerk, tracking all the minutes of one’s day? As if He has nothing better to do?”

“You say He does not care what we do with our time?”

“I say I hope I do the things that please Him most, but I can count on the fact that I will fail to. Most abysmally at times.”

“Which means you must simply try all the more to please Him.”

“Nay. It simply means that I rejoice all the more in His grace, knowing how truly wretched I am. Do you not believe in grace? Is that why you must work so hard?”

“Aye. Nay. Of course I believe in God’s grace. But we must none of us rely upon it.”

“Why? Because God is not trustworthy?”

“You twist my words to make them mean things I did not say!”

“I make them mean exactly what you say. You seem as if you know the right answers, but I ask you, Susannah Phillips: Do you know the right questions?” His eyes softened, changing from purple to periwinkle. “Do you not think that my time here and your time now is being put to good use?”

He seemed to almost pity me. I had liked it better when he had professed an interest in me. He wanted my own words? Well then, he would have them! “I cannot think how it could be, seeing that we do nothing but engage in idle chatter.”

“There is no finer moment in life than one spent speaking to a beautiful girl on a beautiful night. You cannot tell me that even here, right now, God does not instruct me on the goodness of His grace and His benefits. ’Tis here, at this moment, that I know He truly cares for me.”

“And how do you know it?”

His teeth flashed in the gloaming. “If He did not care for me,

He would not have sent me here. And, I daresay, did He not care for you—”

“No matter what you think of our customs, Captain, you still do not know how many days you have left on this earth. I should think you would care more for tending to your soul than coaxing a smile from me.”

“But who is to say that coaxing a smile from you would not be the chiefest end and greatest glory of all my days?”

“You will not have it this night.”

“Pity. Then I suppose that I shall have to live one day more.”

I turned from him, marched toward home, and picked out my firewood. But just before entering the house, I turned my face toward the sunset and savored its last lingering traces.

The next morning, in a change from our normal tasks, Mother set Mary to the making of our biscuits.

“But why cannot Susannah—”

“Because Susannah knows very well how to do this. And if I read the signs correctly, she may soon be leaving us.”

I blushed.

Mary frowned.

“So tell me, if you please, what is the first consideration?”

Mary and I grimaced at each other and answered in unison. “Always set aside some of the mother dough for future use.”

Mother beamed. “Such good girls, I have.”

Mary measured out a portion of the mother dough and put it back into its crock. Mother and I watched as she added flour and water to the dough that remained on the board in front of her. Kneading it with awkward movements, she pushed at it, folded it in upon itself, and then turned it.

Mother intervened, showed her how to do it more ably. “One and push. Two and fold. Three and turn. ’Tis a dance of your hands with the dough. And if you do not lead out, the dough knows not what to do.”

As Mary worked, Mother watched her with ill-concealed apprehension. “ ’Tis my pride and joy, that mother dough. From my own family back as far as can be remembered. From my mother and my mother’s mother. And her mother before her. And her mother before her. To think that I join my hands with theirs whenever I make biscuits. . . .” She turned to me, her eyes both bright and sad. “When you are married, I will give some of it to you, joining your own hands to mine . . . and then you shall pass it to your own daughter.” She shook her head as she swiped at the corner of her eye with the edge of her apron. “A sentimental fool is what I am.”

“And you’ve the best biscuits in town.” Mary’s dough was growing glossy, and she pushed her words out to the rhythm of her kneading.

“The best we’ve ever tasted.” I could match Mary’s pride with my own.

Mother smiled and let go of her apron. If the sin of vanity could ever be found in her, it would be linked to the pride she took in her biscuits.

Later, as I turned a pot over the biscuits for baking, the fire flared, sending out sparks of copper and gold, in precisely the same shades that had laced the sunset the evening before.

The captain thought I knew all the right answers but not the right questions? Who was he to judge? He was a stranger forced upon us who would soon be leaving. What did he care about who I was or what I thought?

I was Susannah Phillips, aged twenty years, soon to be betrothed to John Prescotte, an able and honorable man. I could see no questions there.

Least none worth asking.

I heard Thomas’s axe ring out just as I finished shaping my biscuits. After scraping dough from my hands, I stepped outside. Swiping at flies from the chickens’ coop, I walked around the back of the house toward the smithery.

Thomas had stripped to his shirt and was chopping at the woodpile.

I knew a moment’s regret for causing him undue work. He might have ordered his logs from Simeon Wright and avoided some of the chopping of it . . . and all of the hauling. Indeed, he had spoken to the man about it, but the price that had been quoted was much too high. Thomas had called it extortion. Though I had agreed with him, I begged him not to bring it to the attention of the town’s deputy.

The less notice Simeon Wright took of me . . . of us . . . the better.