FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19
The saddle shop is all but hidden from the road. It sits a block off Winthrop Street in the middle of the Hook, accessible only by a path through the snowdrifts. It is attached to a small, timber home with wooden shingles, and I can hear the tap-tap-tap of a leather punch, then the clean whoosh of a strap cutter as I lead Brutus through the narrow channel of dirty snow. The entire place smells of leather. Not like a tanner’s shop, all rank and fetid with tallow and carcass, but rich and burnished. Like belts and bags and boots. Jeremiah White crafts other things as well: reins and gloves, mostly. But he makes his real living on saddles. I still use the one I bought from him a decade ago, and I slide out of it as I dismount Brutus before the hitching post.
After unbuckling my satchel, I go left to the front door since my business is not with Jeremiah today. But the door swings open before I can knock.
I haven’t seen Rachel Blossom since I found her, Clarissa Stone, and Peggy Bridge gossiping that day at Coleman’s Store. She pulls up short when she finds me on the step. Then, glancing behind her, she closes the door.
“I want to apologize to you as well,” she says, lifting her small, pointed chin in defiance, as though I think her incapable of such a thing.
“As well?” I ask.
“I’ve just apologized to Sarah for what we did that day. You were right.
It was disgraceful, and I’m sorry.”
She offers no defense for her actions, doesn’t chase the admission with a but, and I respect her all the more for it.
“Clarissa and Peggy are your friends. It can be hard to speak up.” “It shouldn’t be.” She looks away. Blinks back tears.
When Rachel meets my gaze again, she sets a hand to her stomach and pulls her dress tight to reveal the small mound. I would have never noticed otherwise. She’s maybe five months along.
“Will you still deliver this one? I won’t call for Dr. Page. They shouldn’t have either.”
I pull Rachel close and wrap my arms around her. “Of course. It would be my honor. And I am sorry for Clarissa and Peggy. If they’d called for me, I would have come.”
“I know.” Rachel pulls away and clears her throat. “I like Sarah. I hope she’ll let me visit again.”
“I like her too. And I think she’d be a good friend to you.”
Rachel bids me goodbye, and I watch her disappear around the corner of Winthrop Street.
I turn back to the door and knock but don’t have to wait long before it is thrown back by a small woman with graying hair pulled into a tight bun.
“Martha!”
“Mistress White.” I nod in greeting.
“Do come in.” She wipes her hands on her apron and ushers me inside. “It has been too long since I’ve seen you. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
“I’ve actually come for Sarah. If you don’t mind.”
Alice White is startled to hear this but doesn’t say so. “Of course. Busy day for her. She’s in her room with the baby now. I’ll get her. Please, have a seat.”
I take one of the two polished wooden chairs before the window and tuck my satchel underneath. There is whispering in the other room. Urgent. Possibly frustrated. But I can’t make out the words. After a moment Alice slips back out.
“She’ll just be a moment,” she says. “Don’t mind me.”
There is nowhere for the older woman to retreat, so she picks up her knitting, goes to the kitchen table, and makes a show of spreading out her yarn and needles.
Sarah White lives with her parents, still sleeps in the same bedroom she occupied as a child. Only now there is a cradle against the wall and a general aura of sadness permeating the house. After a few minutes she comes out, baby tucked into the crook of her left arm, as she tries to button her blouse with her other hand.
She joins me at the window while Mrs. White knits a pair of socks and pretends not to listen.
“It is good to see you,” Sarah says.
“And you.” I lift the plump little girl from Sarah’s arms and fold back the blanket from her face. “You both look well.”
“Forgive me for taking so long. I was nursing.” “I thought you might be.”
“She eats so much. All the time! But it doesn’t seem to matter. I am still making more milk than one baby can consume. It’s”—she waves a hand in the air—“relentless.”
“Consider yourself blessed. I’ve known more than one woman to go dry long before a baby is nine months. Nurse her for as long as you can. It will do the both of you a world of good.”
Typically, I give this advice for the baby’s health and also to help a young woman regain her figure. However, it does not appear that Sarah is struggling in that regard. Her dress reveals the same hourglass figure she sported before, if not a bit heavier on top.
Sarah looks at me, large eyes curious. “I heard about Cyrus. It’s outrageous, what happened. Is he all right?”
Though I hate that news of his arrest has spread, I am encouraged by her interest.
“He’s as well as can be expected. The jail yard is difficult in winter. So few hours between sunup and sundown. Hard to put in a full day’s work. But I’m certain the charges will be dismissed. Cyrus had nothing to do with Burgess’s murder.”
She lowers her voice to a near whisper so her mother cannot hear. “You are certain it was murder?”
“I am.”
“Good,” she says, then smiles fondly at her daughter. “Good riddance to him.”
“Sarah.” I shift the baby in my arms and lean closer. “Did you ever have trouble with Joshua Burgess?”
“No more than anyone else. He could never keep his eyes to himself. But there was one time that he…” She blushes and turns to the window but looks more angry than embarrassed.
“He what?”
“Offered to pay me. So I’d go to bed with him.”
My stomach twists into a knot. “Oh God. The fee you paid me last month…?”
“No. I refused him of course. But he was steaming mad. Said I was a whore now and couldn’t afford to be picky.”
“Having a child out of wedlock doesn’t make you a whore.” “I know that. And told him as much.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“No. But if I was in town, he had a habit of being there. Always watching. It scared me. So I wasn’t sad when I heard that he’d been killed. Less sad when I heard that you’d called it murder.”
“You aren’t alone in that.”
“I think about it though, what he said, that I can’t afford to be picky. He was wrong. I have to be picky.” She nods toward the baby. “Because I have her now.”
The child in my arms is astonishingly pretty. Round cheeks. Round eyes of the same blue gray as her mother’s. Chestnut hair that is already flipping outward in small ringlets. Chubby, dimpled knuckles. And such an easy smile! She flashes her gums at me, delighted to be so readily admired.
“What have you named her?” I ask, my voice now at a normal level. “Charlotte. After her grandmother.” Sarah looks to the table, catches
the flinch on her mother’s face, and adds, “On her father’s side.”
“Ah.” There is little more that I can say, for every word is a pitfall. “Henry will come back.” Sarah looks at me with the steely kind of
defiance that only a jilted woman can summon. “That’s what I’m waiting for. He promised to come back. Henry is going to marry me.”
If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, I think. It’s what my own mother used to say when my fancies outgrew reality. I keep the saying to myself. It will do Sarah no good and would hurt her besides.
Charlotte is eight months old, and this is the first time I have heard Sarah speak the father’s name, as she had refused to do so in the birthing room. I am curious, though. There are several Henrys in the Hook, and it’s possible Sarah made up her story about the father being in the militia to protect a married man right here in Hallowell. Such a thing is not unheard of.
“Henry?” I prod.
Sarah knows what I’m doing. Knows that I am fishing for more. She lifts her chin. “Henry Warren.”
I am immensely relieved. I know of no man in the Hook by this name. “Major Henry Warren,” she adds, “of the Boston militia.”
That name takes a moment to settle in my mind. Like a rock dropped to the bottom of a pond. Then there it is, the realization of what she’s just admitted.
Oh.
Major Henry Warren is the name of the man that Judge North gave the court as an alibi for the night that Rebecca was raped. That is the man who abandoned Sarah, with child, in ill repute. She sees the expression of dismay on my face but does not know the cause.
“He will come back,” she insists.
I cup my hand at the back of Charlotte’s head. Smile at her. She returns the grin in earnest, so happy she nearly jumps out of my lap.
“Is that why you didn’t come to the Frolic?”
Sarah nods. “He wouldn’t want me acting as though I am free.”
Alice White watches me—I can see her in my peripheral vision— daring me to shut down this dangerous line of thinking that continues to seduce her daughter, but I keep my eyes on Sarah. That’s who I came to see, after all. And it’s none of my business what goes on between mother and daughter. I won’t get in the middle.
“Well,” I say. “I have an idea that might help you pass the time.”
And I am afraid it will be a very long time, I think. “What do you mean?”
“Something occurred to me when I saw you at the tavern last month—” “I earned every shilling honestly—”
“I don’t doubt that for a moment,” I say, pulling the baby up and laying her against my shoulder. I pat until a raucous burp erupts and then—much to my astonishment—a tiny giggle.
“What then?”
“It has to do with Dr. Coleman.”
Sarah waits, unsure where this is leading.
I clear my throat. “He is getting older. And his eyesight is starting to fade. That doesn’t matter so much with the shop inventory. He has a system and knows where everything is. But it’s becoming a problem with the ledgers.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“I think you might be of some help to him in that regard. He mentioned that he wants to hire a shop boy. Perhaps he would consider you.”
“I am not a boy.” “I know.”
Sarah looks down at her hands. Flexes her fingers wide, then curls them into a ball. “You know I canna read.”
“Yes. Is that all?”
“All? You may as well be asking if I speak Latin.”
“Well, that would do you no good whatsoever. Coleman is deeply prejudiced against all the Romance languages. He prefers English, it being of Germanic origins. And those letters are easy enough to learn.”
“How?” There is suspicion but also interest in Sarah’s voice and she leans forward slightly.
“I could teach you.”
The next obstacle presents itself in the form of Alice White. “That is preposterous!” she says. “What an idea. Sarah has no need of sums or letters.”
“Why shouldn’t she learn?” I ask, turning to her pinched, angry face. “There’s simply no point.”
“What ought she to do instead?”
Alice clamps her hand around the knitting needle. “Take care of her child.”
“Of which she is doing a fine job. It’s obvious just looking at Charlotte. And besides, reading won’t interfere with that at all. But it might”—and I am careful here, as though performing a tight rope walk on the edge of a razor blade—“provide her opportunities. A source of income and a viable way to provide for her daughter on her own.”
It is my turn to stare at Alice now. My eyes are wide, my lips pursed, daring her to contradict me.
It might keep her out of trouble, I want to scream. It might distract her from this fool’s hope of ever seeing that baby’s father again. I only admit the real reason to myself, however. And Cyrus cannot court her if she cannot read.
Alice is clever enough to understand my stern look. “How would you even go about it?” she grumbles.
I hand Charlotte back to her mother and bend down to pull a small book out of my medicine bag. “The same way I learned,” I tell her. “And the same way I taught each of my children.”
I hold the book out for them to see. The cover reads, The New England Primer: or An easy and pleasant guide to the art of reading.
There is a hungry look in Sarah’s eyes but uncertainty in her voice when she asks, “Don’t you think I’m a little old to learn?”
“Not at all. I was about your age when I did.” Sarah wrinkles her brow. “Who taught you?” “My husband,” I say. “After we were married.”
