ahead to chastise the younger girl, who had now dropped back to pester her sister with a chant: “Jane! Jane! Fair or plain! Fair says Joseph! Plain says James!”
Jane, if such indeed was her name, was indeed fair, as fair as her brother, and either as poorly skilled at being sociable or put out of humor by her sister’s teasing. She increased her stride just enough until she was again balanced in solitude between the two pairings of parent and child, her spine as straight as a mast, and continued so until Alice lost sight of them down the road.
THE WEATHER WARMED, and with it came new changes to the view outside Alice’s window: the yellow pine pollen no longer rimmed the puddles, the plum blossoms faded, the seaward skyline became dotted with masts, as the ships prepared to set off after fish or whales. The smell of the house changed too: the must of the seaweed that packed the foundation, the salt of the sand flats at low tide, the yeast of the new-turned earth, all came unimpeded through the open windows to replace the winter smells of smoke and grease and too-close bodies.
The boy Nate Clarke came by several more times to see if Freeman had returned, but neither time did he step within the threshold. The shipmaster Hopkins came by to leave off some papers for Freeman, greeting Alice now as if he’d forgotten how she came there, but those were their only visitors.
Alice’s hand healed into three thick, red, intersecting lines, forming a near star shape that caused that hand to open and close a fraction slower but otherwise didn’t restrict its function. Her neck had returned to its natural color. Her shoulder had stopped aching. The cut on her cheek could only be seen if one strained to look for it, like a fine, pale crescent moon in daylight. Alice could look at the widow’s scars and feel lucky.
The widow finished her blanket and laid a second web for a piece of jacketing, in a fine, deep crimson. When it was done she sent Alice to the fulling mill to get the weave tightened and cleaned of lanolin. The fulling mill sat across the stream from one of the fine, big houses Alice had made note of on her first walk to the village; as she walked past she saw a boy chopping kindling in a hail of flying wood chips; his hair glinted gold like the boy Nate’s, but he seemed less delicately built, unless it was the wild fury of his swinging shoulders that gave the look of heft to him. He looked up as Alice passed and stopped his work to stand dumb. The boy Nate, surely.
Alice left the cloth with the fuller, who shouted over the beating paddles for her to come back for it on Thursday, without giving Alice a first look, let alone a second. Oddly, that was the moment Alice began to feel at home in the village.
WHEN ALICE RETURNED for the fulled cloth and brought it home to the widow she surprised Alice by saying, “Take it to Sears. Ask him if he’d like a piece of homespun on his shelf to soothe the non-importers.”
Alice carried the piece of cloth to Sears with no small pride over her part in its making, but at the store Sears pointed to three bolts of English wool and said, “I’ve jacketing aplenty.”
The widow took back the cloth with nothing but a mild stiffening in the jaw and sent Alice back to her spinning.
AT NIGHT THE widow and Alice sat together, winding yarn or mending or knitting; it was that hour, and the quiet in it, that showed up Freeman’s absence the greater. It wasn’t that the widow and Alice didn’t try to talk; it was that there seemed no safe thread of talk for them to follow. If the widow made a remark that suggested a past life including husband and children and more back-and-forth with the people of the village, it would prompt a question from Alice that the widow appeared disinclined to answer. She would divert to talk of the great number of shipwrecks over the winter, or the lateness of the growing season, or the health of the rhubarb. And as the widow had
Jane, if such indeed was her name, was indeed fair, as fair as her brother, and either as poorly skilled at being sociable or put out of humor by her sister’s teasing. She increased her stride just enough until she was again balanced in solitude between the two pairings of parent and child, her spine as straight as a mast, and continued so until Alice lost sight of them down the road.
THE WEATHER WARMED, and with it came new changes to the view outside Alice’s window: the yellow pine pollen no longer rimmed the puddles, the plum blossoms faded, the seaward skyline became dotted with masts, as the ships prepared to set off after fish or whales. The smell of the house changed too: the must of the seaweed that packed the foundation, the salt of the sand flats at low tide, the yeast of the new-turned earth, all came unimpeded through the open windows to replace the winter smells of smoke and grease and too-close bodies.
The boy Nate Clarke came by several more times to see if Freeman had returned, but neither time did he step within the threshold. The shipmaster Hopkins came by to leave off some papers for Freeman, greeting Alice now as if he’d forgotten how she came there, but those were their only visitors.
Alice’s hand healed into three thick, red, intersecting lines, forming a near star shape that caused that hand to open and close a fraction slower but otherwise didn’t restrict its function. Her neck had returned to its natural color. Her shoulder had stopped aching. The cut on her cheek could only be seen if one strained to look for it, like a fine, pale crescent moon in daylight. Alice could look at the widow’s scars and feel lucky.
The widow finished her blanket and laid a second web for a piece of jacketing, in a fine, deep crimson. When it was done she sent Alice to the fulling mill to get the weave tightened and cleaned of lanolin. The fulling mill sat across the stream from one of the fine, big houses Alice had made note of on her first walk to the village; as she walked past she saw a boy chopping kindling in a hail of flying wood chips; his hair glinted gold like the boy Nate’s, but he seemed less delicately built, unless it was the wild fury of his swinging shoulders that gave the look of heft to him. He looked up as Alice passed and stopped his work to stand dumb. The boy Nate, surely.
Alice left the cloth with the fuller, who shouted over the beating paddles for her to come back for it on Thursday, without giving Alice a first look, let alone a second. Oddly, that was the moment Alice began to feel at home in the village.
WHEN ALICE RETURNED for the fulled cloth and brought it home to the widow she surprised Alice by saying, “Take it to Sears. Ask him if he’d like a piece of homespun on his shelf to soothe the non-importers.”
Alice carried the piece of cloth to Sears with no small pride over her part in its making, but at the store Sears pointed to three bolts of English wool and said, “I’ve jacketing aplenty.”
The widow took back the cloth with nothing but a mild stiffening in the jaw and sent Alice back to her spinning.
AT NIGHT THE widow and Alice sat together, winding yarn or mending or knitting; it was that hour, and the quiet in it, that showed up Freeman’s absence the greater. It wasn’t that the widow and Alice didn’t try to talk; it was that there seemed no safe thread of talk for them to follow. If the widow made a remark that suggested a past life including husband and children and more back-and-forth with the people of the village, it would prompt a question from Alice that the widow appeared disinclined to answer. She would divert to talk of the great number of shipwrecks over the winter, or the lateness of the growing season, or the health of the rhubarb. And as the widow had
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