The Wolves of Andover by Kathleen Kent Page B

Will had told her, and decided that when morning came, she would question Thomas more directly about his past. Her fingers crept up to the space beneath the pillow and she felt the smooth edges of the red book there. She had not yet been able to tear out the pages as she had intended to do, the pages where she had deposited her troubling thoughts. The book seemed to her to be an integrated, almost animate, thing. It had a spine and a hide and within the coverings were stiff, rustling pages thatmoved the air about like the wings of a bird. Ripping out the glistening paper would be like plucking the white feathers from a goose while it yet lived. It came to her that she would soon have to hide the book from the prying eyes of others if she could not bring herself to blot out the clandestine words.
    At first light, upon the last of the breakfast dishes put away, Martha announced to Patience that she would go to the river for leeks and that Thomas should accompany her.
    When Patience raised a brow at her, Martha said, “There may be Indians.”
    “God help the Indians,” John mumbled, handing the older man the flintlock.
    Martha gathered her shawl around her shoulders, and without looking behind her to see if Thomas followed, she walked purposefully towards the river. When they reached the embankment, Thomas walked ahead of her and she fit her shoes to his footprints, sunk deeply into the soft, loamy soil, up the steeply angled hillock towards the river, which lay in a depression on the other side. Halfway to the crest, he motioned for her to sit on a fallen log and wait. He disappeared quietly over the ridge, moving with caution through the undergrowth, using the barrel of his flintlock to prod his way forward through the tangle of maidenhead ferns.
    He was gone for a short while, but she soon heard a low whistle and saw him at the ridge, farther south this time, waving for her to come on. She climbed with some difficulty the last short distance to the top, pulling on roots and jutting rocks to scramble over the peaked ridge, and saw the river running fast and clear below her. Carefully hitching up her skirt, she sidestepped downthe far embankment to the water’s edge. The boggy ground was chilled, but she felt warmth on her upturned face through branches of willow and beech. She smiled in surprise at the coltsfoot growing like borrowed sunlight along the shaded dimples at the river’s edge; and on the opposite shore she spied columbine, its red blossoms stirred into motion by hummingbirds.
    Thomas had propped himself against a beech, crooking one foot up on a jutting root, and was looking to the right and the left, scanning the bank and the stream for any movement. His silence was of a belligerent sort, like a guard dog gone mute, so she turned her back on him and began pulling up the tender shoots of leeks, which yielded easily in the damp earth.
    She soon had a small sack filled, the wet green stalks soaking the coarse linen, their sharp odor staining her hands and apron. But she was loath to leave the spot and decided to look for wild onions as well. When she caught him, through the reflection on the water, looking at the back of her head, she said in an offhand manner, “I am told you have been as far as London.”
    There was a long silence as she picked through the plaited shafts of river grasses before she heard him say, “Aye.” She waited for tale-telling or bragging of some sort, but the silence stretched into minutes. “Well, then,” she prompted, “you must now think Billerica flat and rude.” She turned to face him, her expression challenging.
    He abruptly swept away the small battery of flies hovering below the brim of his hat and answered, “There’s good in it. Here ’n there.” He met her gaze and stared long past the point of courtesy.
    Finally dropping her eyes, she fussed with the linen bag and said, “Will was told you have been a soldier.”
    He shifted his weight restlessly against the tree