WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24
Lidia North is in terrible pain. The headaches have increased in frequency, and she has long since run out of tonic. That’s why she’s come all the way out to Ballard’s Mill without her husband’s knowledge or consent. His escape from Hallowell last month made that part easier, no doubt. But God only knows what she’s done to assuage the unrelenting pain in the meantime. Often, when the aches descend upon her, Lidia shuts herself in a dark room and goes to bed. Sometimes for days on end. I have seen her only three times since September when she purchased her last bottle: once when she and North passed by on their way to Vassalboro, and twice in court.
The sky is dark and gloomy, fat, lazy snowflakes drift to the ground like autumn leaves, but Lidia shades her eyes with one hand as though the sun is shining. She stands on the threshold, uncertain. From my seat before the fire I can see that her eyes are watering from the pain, that Lidia is dizzy and nauseous from her illness. Her hands shake. Her face is pale. But still, I cannot bring myself to welcome Judge North’s wife into our home. Twice now the woman has lied on his behalf.
It is Ephraim who remembers his manners. “Please, Mistress North,” he says, “come in.”
“Thank you.”
Lidia removes her cloak and her gloves. Hands them to Ephraim. Then, with a cautious bob of her head, makes her way to where I sit before the fire and gingerly lowers herself into the opposite chair.
“Martha.”
“Lidia.”
Oh, this miserable dance. Pleasantries and politics. I want no part of it.
So I am blunt, crueler than I intend, in my approach. “You have run out of tonic?” I ask.
“Yes. Months ago. I can barely think most days. My head throbs as though someone is pounding on it with a hammer. I cannot sleep. I can barely eat. Please”—Lidia sets a leather purse on the small table between us, and I can hear the metallic clink of coins—“I will pay you anything.”
Though we have been neighbors for many years, Lidia and I have never been close. Certainly not friends. We have always been cordial, however, each respecting the other’s station. What bothers me most about the woman
—apart from her unyielding loyalty to a man I despise—is that Lidia North is a weak woman. Timid. Milquetoast. She has no metal in her spine, no opinions of her own. I need my friends to be interesting. To have vim and vigor.
I try to keep the judgment out of my voice. “May I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“It has to do with your husband.”
Lidia narrows her eyes but says, “All right.” “Major Henry Warren?”
“What of him?”
“Did he dine with you on August tenth?” Her eyes narrow. “Yes.”
“You remember it? That night specifically?”
“I do not keep a guestbook if that is what you’re asking.”
She has no recollection of that night, I think. She’s only saying what North told her to say.
“Were you awake, Lidia? You told the court that Joseph was home with you the entire time. But were you actually awake to see him there?”
“Of course he was home.” “That is not what I asked.”
Lidia pulls her bottom lip into her mouth and chews on it with the edges of her teeth. “My husband does not cavort about. And I do not need to stay awake an entire night to know that for the truth.”
“So you lied?”
“Of course not!” Her voice cracks. “He cannot have done the thing he is accused of.”
I lean forward, press with my words. “Were you awake?”
It takes several long seconds for her to admit the truth. Lidia shakes her head.
“And will you admit to that at trial?”
She shakes her head harder this time. “I will not. And no one can force me to do so. I am a judge’s wife, after all, and I know the law. I cannot be compelled to implicate my husband.”
“Then I do not want your coin,” I say, as I push the small leather purse back toward her, “because I will not make your tonic.”
The woman is stricken. “How can you say that? How can you be so cruel?”
“If I am cruel, then I am only matching the example you set for me. You won’t tell the truth about that night, nor would you tell the officer of the court where your husband has fled.”
“I have already told them! A dozen times at least,” she cries. “Joseph has gone to Boston on business.”
“A very convenient fiction.”
“The only fiction is the one being told by that Foster woman. She lies. Joseph would never lay a hand on anyone in the manner she claims. But do his friends and neighbors believe him? No! They’ve taken the word of a heretic’s wife. A woman who hasn’t lived in this village for five years. And now the very court my husband serves is after him? You tell me where the justice is in that, Martha Ballard. Tell me.”
“I will tell you the same thing that I told the court. The same thing I saw with my own eyes. Rebecca isn’t lying. The real cruelty is happening to her. And you would realize that if only you bothered to learn where your husband goes at night.”
“I know Joseph! And I know the law,” she says, half weeping and half spitting with anger, “and I don’t have to tell anyone where he’s gone. Not you. And certainly not that whippet of an officer from the court. Not if it means acting against my husband.”
“Then come back when you are ready to tell the truth.”
I hear the wind pick up outside and the snowflakes spin and hiss through the air, getting tossed against the windowpanes where they stick, then melt. In the distance I hear thunder.
Lidia North rises to her feet, unsteady, the tears openly running down her face. “You think you’re so clever. That you understand everything. But you never ask the right questions, Martha. Certainly not of your little pet Rebecca. Do you even remember what it was like in the District of Maine before the war against the French and Indians? Do you? Because Joseph does. And he fought to clear the Kennebec of that vermin. Samuel Coleman was there. He fought with Joseph. He could tell you. But no, you only listen to Rebecca. And she brings them back into this town?” Lidia shakes her head. “That woman deserved whatever she got. But my husband had nothing to do with it. Tell her, Ephraim! Tell your wife that she is wrong. About everything. Tell her to make the tonic.”
“My wife knows her mind, Mistress North,” Ephraim says. Then he looks up and directly at me. “And I’ll only tell her to follow her conscience.”
Throughout the entire conversation, Ephraim has been sitting at the kitchen table, bent over his ledger, as he balances the accounts. But when Lidia walks across the room and lifts her cloak from the hook he goes to hold it for her. The physical effort to ride out to the mill must have cost every bit of energy she had in reserve.
“I thought better of you, Martha,” she says, pulling on her gloves and stepping out the door.
I.”
Once it is shut, Ephraim turns to me. Leans against the frame. “So did
So rarely have I been scolded by my husband in these last thirty-five
years that I can feel the heat seeping into my cheeks. “You would have me make her a tonic? When she has lied to the court? When those lies may well mean the difference in whether North faces some kind of justice or none at all?”
Ephraim goes back to the table and gathers his ledger, tucking it under his arm, and there is sadness in his voice when he says, “I did not take you for the kind of woman who would punish the innocent for the sins of the guilty.”
