The Wolves of Andover (2 page)

He called her gently by name, “Martha,” telling her to come in and settle herself by the fire. She slowly turned her head in profile
to him as though still reluctant to give up her vigil on the road. A few dark strands of her hair, as coarse as a horse’s mane, had blown free from her cap and whipped around her cheek in the damp wind. He braced himself for the onslaught of tears that surely must come in answer to being left, yet again, in the home of near strangers. But when she turned fully to face him, his breath caught in his chest, for there, in place of tears, was dry-eyed fury, and a mouth so pinched and implacably set that his first thought was to hide his tender belly from her approaching form. Good God, he thought, and cleared a wide space at the door for her to enter.

A
HEAVY RAIN
had started that morning, pouring in unbroken sheets, and though Patience had begged her husband to put off his leaving one more day, Daniel had thrown an oiled canvas over his head, mounted his carting wagon, and clucked his heavy gelding out of the yard and onto the road. But for the downpour, Martha thought, her cousin would still be standing at the door crying, holding her slightly protruding belly, seemingly unaware that Daniel had made all haste in leaving. Martha looked about the room, noting all of the tamped-down and dirt-ridden rushes scattered beneath the table, the scabs of food clinging to the previous evening’s dishes, the soiled linen loosely draped over a chair—the entire unwholesome mess creating odors both fetid and close. Patience, finally closing the door against the rain, began showing Martha the places where the house goods were stored.

“Of the cellar,” Patience said, motioning for Martha to lift the trap in the floor, “there are cranberries in a firkin of water, some
wheat flour, cornmeal, two baskets left of apples, pumpkins, and squash.”

Martha took a candle from the table and, lifting the hem of her skirt, stepped down the shallow ladder to the cellar. She held the candle high and saw at once that rats and mice had done their job during the winter months, chewing through the poorly tended baskets. Remembering her mother’s stone-lined cellar, carefully cleared each day of blackening mold or encroaching pests, she wrinkled her nose at a braid of darkly speckled onions, rotted and evil-smelling from hanging too close to the sweating dirt walls. She could hear Patience shifting her weight restlessly in the space above her head. Finally Patience called down, “It’s been a month or more that I cannot climb the ladder. I send the children down to fetch food for the table… and they… things may not be as they should…”

In the small arc of light, Martha quickly tallied the remainder of the cellar’s holdings: one half-barrel of cider, thirty head of dried corn mixed with peas, two sealed pots of salted pork and salted cod each, one covered tin of autumn tallow, and fifteen candles in a box. The approaching scarcity of food would have to be addressed at once, as it would be days yet before any seed could be put to ground for the house garden. She had been told by Daniel that one of his two field men was a creditable hunter. They would need his skill, and soon, for they would all require fresh meat, whether it had swum or crawled, to have the strength to put the house to rights.

She prodded with her foot a bag of potatoes made unfit for eating by lying too long on the damp floor, but she reckoned with a hard boiling the spuds could be rendered to starch for the wash.
It would take a week at least to get clean all the dirty linens. Even now there were three or four baby’s clouts hung close to the fire drying, looking as if they had not been scrubbed for weeks.

She held the candle up to light her way to the ladder and saw the pregnant woman’s face appear at the hatchway, her eyes and lips still swollen from crying. Underlit by the soft yellow light, Patience looked like nothing so much as a petulant child, even though the woman was on the downhill path to twenty-five. As Martha climbed up out of the cellar, Patience was saying, “I think it fitting that Will and Joanna be made a porridge now.” Two children, a boy of perhaps five and a much younger girl, came to stand behind their mother, yawning and rubbing at their faces. Martha bent to drop the cellar trap, hiding a look of disapproval, as it was long past the breakfast hour. When she raised herself upright again, she realized with a jolt that Patience had given her her first order. She’d been there only an hour and already she was being sorted like a common stone to the bottom in household prominence.

“When you are finished with the porridge you may—”

“Cousin.” Martha’s arms had crept together to cross in front of her apron, fingers gripping tightly at opposing arms. She saw Patience wince at the biting tone, and she quickly unclenched her hands, letting them fall to her sides. She cautioned herself from speaking so abruptly, a habit she had learned from her father, and one her mother had warned her would chase away flies, leaving only the vinegar.

She gentled her tone and began again. “Cousin, if I am to be both husband and wife to this house, there must be an order to things. Breakfast is past, and since there is no greater sauce to a meal than hunger, the children will eat at midday with the rest of us.”

“Martha,” Patience said testily, her mouth pinched and resolute. “The children are hungry. I cannot have them hanging about me, crying for their breakfast for two hours or more until their dinner. Cousin though you may be, you are here to aid me in my labors. So now, if you will be so kind, you may serve the porridge for my children.”

Martha saw it all clear in that moment: this was the instant her place in the family would be decided. If she lost her footing at the outset, she would forever be dealt with as no more than a servant. She resisted the indignation that threatened to turn her voice shrill and said quietly, “Very well. But then Will
may
fetch the rain barrel, as he is such a great big lad, and if Joanna can stand on a stool, she
may
wash and wipe the bowls. You will need to call in the men straightaway and,
if
you can push a broom, you need to sweep free those rushes or we’ll have rats crawling into the stew. I will soon need a book for the house accounts, a quill, and whatever ink you have for writing. The washing will be started as soon as we are free of rain, and I will want to strip today every bed and mattress and smoke them for lice.”

There was silence in the room for a few breaths until Patience, grabbing the mantel for balance, retched violently into the hearth. After the spasms had passed, she took each child in hand and walked them back to the bedroom, firmly closing and latching the door behind her.

T
HE EVENING WAS
late before Martha closed the door to her own narrow room. It was farthest from the hearth and cold; she
could see her exhaled breath by the circle of candlelight. She sat carefully on the edge of the bed, feeling the ropes under the mattress give way, and began sorting through her meager belongings: two blankets and a pillow with ticking, a pair of summer stockings for the coming warmer weather, a good collar and cuff. Her father had given her a bowl to show Patience and her husband that his daughter would work to fill it with her own labors and not be a burden to them in this regard.

I have certainly been a burden in my own house, she thought bitterly—although not from what went into her mouth but rather from what came out of it. Earlier, Martha had tried to make amends for her harsh words to her cousin by kneading the pregnant woman’s back with lard and mustard seeds. Patience had shown her gratitude with a kiss on the cheek, and Martha had felt a more amicable balance restored between them. But in her deepest heart, she knew that relations between them would always be more like servant and mistress. Patience as a child had been sullen and demanding, with an inborn grasping nature that had blossomed into a sense of entitlement after she had made a profitable marriage with Daniel.

Blowing out the candle, Martha pulled both of the blankets close under her chin and lay in the dark. Here I am, she thought, traded like a kettle to yet another family. She knew it was not just for the wages, though, wages that went to her parents; it was to find her a husband. Her father had said to her that morning as they rode in the wagon, “Ye’ve spent more time in the company of far relatives than in yer own house and ye still have yer maidenhead. Fer Christ’s bloody sake, my hunting dog is more hospitable.
Yer twenty-three and I begin to despair of ye ever comin’ to bed with a husband. Can ye not for once, just for once, guard yer tongue and mind yer place?”

It had been pointed out, and often, that Martha’s own sister, Mary, had been married and settled in Billerica for ten years; she had a good home and a husband who provided for her, a son to share in their labors, and another babe on the way. Martha rolled over on her side, restless and overly tired, and spread her hands over her belly. She had at times wished it possible to be with child without having to be bothered with the needful attentions of men, their smells and their gropings, their intrusive probings. Even if she were to settle on a husband, and make children of her own, she doubted that her father would ever resolve his disappointments over her stubborn and contrary ways.

Sleep finally came, washing over the demands of her family, the calculations of laundry to be done, the setting to rights of the cellar, the sweeping of the floor, the scrubbing and sanding of pots. The imaginings of work yet to be done stayed with her through her dreams and left her exhausted and ill-tempered in the morning.

D
ESPITE A HIGH
, buffeting wind and slanting rain, the entire household had embarked early on Sunday to attend the meetinghouse in the town proper. The women and children rode in the horse cart, each one struggling to hold on to a corner of the oiled canvas draped over their heads, while the hired men followed behind on foot. Sodden dirt caked their boots to midcalf, and the younger of the two, a Scotsman named John with a ruddy childish
face, mired himself again and again in the muck. The other, a Welshman named Thomas, walked between the ruts in easy strides. He was, without doubt, the tallest man Martha had ever seen, and though she was accustomed to having indentured laboring men about her father’s house, he had a hard-bitten look about him that made her uneasy.

Past the one-mile mark, the cart tilted dangerously into a hole, one wheel sinking to its upper rim, and Thomas moved quickly to support its sagging weight. John took the horse’s head and pulled at the trappings, but the cart would not be freed. They lifted Patience and the children onto a small hillock out of the ground water, but when Thomas offered his arm to help Martha down, she gave him a withering glance and waved him away.

She jumped from the wagon into the mud, and as she struggled to keep her balance, she saw John palm a grin. Her pride would cost a good hour cleaning clods from shoe leather, and her irritation grew as John passively eyed her wilting progress to join Patience and the children on the hump of ground, already crowded with furze and lichen.

Thomas bent his shoulder to the frame and, with little effort from the horse, pushed the cart rocking from the sump. There was no labored exhalation of air or grimacing of his face to prove to the women a superior show of strength. There was only a corded straining of tendons in the forearm and neck to mark the effort of freeing a baling wagon weighted with oak and a full morning’s rain.

“As easy as plucking a plover’s egg from a nest,” John said with a grin and a whistle. He gave his hand to Martha to help her back into the wagon, but she refused it, barking her shins as she climbed
over the spokes. He turned his head to stifle a laugh and she blushed with anger. The Scotsman may blow all he likes, she thought, but it did not give him a place to ridicule her. She would bide her time, waiting for the opportunity, and then he would learn who gave the marching orders in the Taylor household.

After the evening meal, Martha lingered at the table, watching John as his head drooped into the hollow of his chest. The meal she had prepared was sparse but savory, with heat and grease enough to loosen the day from the men’s heads, and she knew John was thinking longingly of his bed in the new-built quarters behind the hearth. It was a room he shared with Thomas and was close and cramped. But the walls were boarded tight, the shake roof sealed properly with pitch, and, unlike the barn where the men had slept all last summer, it would not leak.

“I heard howling during the night,” Martha said suddenly, turning to Patience. “The rustling of the hens has brought feral things from the brush.”

John opened one eye drowsily and said, “Oh, it’s only a fox come to pester the hens.”

“No,” Martha said, shaking her head. “It was a wolf I heard.”

The rattling on the roof surged louder as the day’s rain turned to ice. It would be an especially cold night, Martha knew, for anyone sleeping outside the walls of the house.

“Mark me,” Martha said to Patience, her eyes resting heavily on John. “Someone should stay in the barn tonight or we’ll wake tomorrow to find feathers with nothing besides but air.”

John had been roused fully from his pleasant nodding and he lifted his head, cutting his eyes to Thomas, who sat close by with a whetstone, slowly sharpening a hoe. The stone made harsh
scraping noises at odd intervals, and Martha sensed, although she was not certain, that the Welshman was marking every one of her pronouncements with purposefully long screeching sounds.

“But surely,” Patience answered weakly, “it is too cold. And Daniel has never before insisted the men sleep in the barn before the first of April…”

It took another quarter hour for Martha to cow Patience into submission. She reminded her cousin that Daniel would be sorely disappointed to lose his prized hens to his wife’s careless disregard, while bringing base and predatory beasts to their front door, endangering the very lives of their children, and on and on. Patience, complaining weakly, finally retreated to her bed, dragging the children along behind her. Martha, left alone with the men, turned triumphantly to John and pointed to the front door.