DECEMBER 1789
I’ll note you in my book of memory…. Look to it well and say you are well warn’d.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HENRY VI
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1
One of the great cedar doors to the mill stands ajar, and a large bay mare is tied to the post outside. I don’t hear the expected sounds of saw and hatchet within, but rather the muted strain of conversation, so I stop outside the door and tip my head to one side, listening. The horse whickers, and I set a hand on its nose, urging silence so I can hear what is being said.
“I’ve already completed that survey,” my husband argues. “And I have three lumber orders to fill by next Friday. I don’t have time to do it again.”
I have been married long enough to catch the nuance in Ephraim’s voice—every clipped syllable and strained vowel—and there is no doubt he is struggling to control his temper.
“The Kennebec Proprietors want it done again.”
Ah.
Joseph North.
I press my lips together and give the horse an accusing stare—traitor— then pull my hand away from the soft, warm nose and slide closer to the door.
Ephraim clears his throat. “Doing it again won’t change the results.” “They might beg to differ.”
“They can beg all they like. But they’ve not seen the land. It’s nothing but bog for miles in every direction. Unsuitable for farming. And besides, right now it’s little more than a block of ice.”
“They want to assign a lease on the property.”
“And doom their tenants to a life of failure and poverty?” A drawer rattles and papers shuffle. I can hear the warning note in my husband’s voice grow sharper. “Here. The survey. I was there two months ago. I assume you’ve filed the last copy I gave you?”
“Not yet.” I hear the crinkle of paper as North straightens the map and then folds it again. “I can’t.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“It’s not what they’re expecting. And you know they have expectations,
Ephraim.”
“I am not leaving my family in the dead of winter to confirm something I already know.” Ephraim’s voice is now low and smooth and deceptively calm. “Besides, I know what you’re doing, Joseph.”
“I am reminding you of your obligation.” North lightens the tone of his voice, cajoles. “You like this lease, don’t you? You like living here?”
Ephraim doesn’t answer, and there is wariness in that stretch of silence. “This land is leased to you by our mutual employers. The Kennebec
Proprietors can be quite generous when they’re pleased with a tenant. I think you’ve experienced that yourself over the last eleven years. You have the lease—and the surveying contract—but not the deed to this mill. Not yet.”
The Kennebec Proprietors, a part of the Plymouth Company in Boston, acquired vast land holdings along the Kennebec valley one hundred and fifty years ago. They own most of the land along the river, for fifteen miles on either side, and have been leasing it out to encourage settlement in the District of Maine. Our family assumed the lease on Ballard’s Mill eleven years ago but do not yet own the deed. That won’t happen until next April when we finally meet the third condition. The first two were met within a year of living here: building a home and tilling a minimum of five acres. The last, however, is a matter of time. We must live on this property for
twelve consecutive years before it can become legally ours. So we are in breach of nothing. Yet I can feel the threat hanging in the air between North and my husband.
“I remember the terms of our lease well enough. You don’t have to remind me.”
“Don’t I? Because you seem strangely unwilling to see reason. Is one survey worth losing both your home and your income?”
“You want me to falsify my findings? To claim it’s habitable land?”
“I want you to understand there are bigger things at stake. Without the mill and your contract, you’d find your family in a dire situation.” North pauses for a moment, and I would give anything to see his expression. “It is, as you mentioned, the dead of winter.”
He has delivered his orders but won’t stand around to watch Ephraim mull over the decision. Boots shift impatiently on the worn plank floor. And since I don’t want to be caught eavesdropping, I step around the door and into the mill. I say the first thing that comes to mind.
“Have you seen my ink?” I smile at my husband, then make a show of being startled by North’s presence.
At his feet lies a mongrel; half mutt—some indeterminate breed that’s been bastardized a dozen times over—and half coyote. He is brown and black and white, with tall, peaked ears, a long snout, and yellow eyes. He sees me and growls.
There is a rustling in the loft, and I tilt my chin to see Percy, perched on the rail, rousing his feathers. His talons pulse like a man flexing his fingers in anticipation. The bird likes neither the dog nor the growl. And from the way those hackles rise in response along the bony ridge of the cur’s spine, I can see the feeling is mutual.
“Hush, Cicero,” North orders, looking first at the falcon, then at the dog. After a moment his gaze returns to me and he says, “Sit.”
Cicero obeys because he must, but keeps his teeth bared. I remain standing, with my arms crossed because I will not be told what to do by the likes of Joseph North.
“Your dog has poor manners,” I tell him.
“Or good judgment.” He tips his hat, but his voice is cold, and his eyes are slanted, hateful. “Martha.”
Ephraim notes the exchange with a narrowed gaze. Joseph North is a genteel man, not typically given to rudeness, and I doubt my husband will tolerate another snide comment. I do not return the greeting. North wants an apology for disrupting his court last week, but he won’t get one.
“There,” Ephraim says, nodding toward the drafting table where a small wooden box is spread open. “Your ink.”
My quill lays flat beside the box, the tip blackened by Ephraim’s morning scribbles. Beside the writing paraphernalia is a neatly stacked pile of woodworking tools. Knives and blades of various lengths. One of them
—Ephraim’s favorite—is a wicked, hook-shaped thing used for stripping small branches off felled trees. A bottle of linseed oil and a polishing rag sit beside it, abandoned. The mill smells of frost and sawdust, oiled metal, and old leather. It smells like Ephraim.
Where two disks of ink are usually nestled, only one remains. Ephraim crosses the floor and slides a protective arm around my waist, and I relax as his thumb strokes my rib cage.
“This is your ink?” North asks, lifting a hand. It is only then that I notice the hardened disk pinched between his thumb and forefinger, the pads of which are now stained black. “Ephraim never told me that you draw.”
I open my mouth to answer, but Ephraim grabs the back of my dress in his fist and pulls me closer in warning, so I shrug one shoulder instead.
“I suppose it comes in handy. You must need pictures of your herbs. Speaking of which,” North adds, “I believe my wife will stop by for another tonic soon. Her headaches have gotten worse of late.”
I have never drawn a picture in my life, and I certainly don’t need one to help me remember that Lidia North requires a concoction of dried feverfew, peppermint, and ginger, combined with crushed rosemary and yarrow. It only works when I soak the herbs in brandy for sixty days, however. The result is an effective tincture that I try to keep on hand. But if Lidia’s debilitating headaches have gotten worse, I blame North and all he’s
put her through in recent months. Regardless, his cavalier assumption that I will play nursemaid to his wife has me gnawing on the edge of my tongue.
After a prolonged silence, North turns to my husband. “I’ll be expecting your survey at the end of the month.” And with that he strides out the door and swings onto his horse. The dog trots after him obediently.
Ephraim lets go of my dress and picks up the hooked blade from his worktable. He taps the flat against his palm as the sound of hooves retreats into the distance. More so than anything else on the workbench, that instrument looks like a thing built to maim.
“The rogue hast lived too long,” he mutters under his breath, and brings the blade down onto the drafting table in a neat arc. It lodges there, quivering, and swath of pale wood gleams beneath the cleaved board like an open wound.
I peer at him, skeptical. “You’ve been reading Shakespeare again.”
He shrugs, then yanks the blade free. “I like the way he delivers an insult.”
“Then surely you can do better than that for a man such as North.”
I love my husband’s smile. It transforms his stoic face, revealing two rows of straight teeth and laugh lines around his eyes. “That clay-brained guts, that knotty-pated fool, that whoreson, obscene, greasy tallow-catch.”
“Well,” I say, “your clay-brained, greasy whoreson took my ink. How do you plan on getting it back?”
He tosses the knife onto the table. “I’ll buy you more.” “That thing looks like revenge to me,” I tell him.
“What?”
“Your knife.”
“That’s not a bad name for a blade.” He picks it up again. Balances its weight in his palm, then brings it down onto the table once more. “Revenge it is.”
After a moment, Ephraim turns back to the wide double doors that North passed through, and frowns.
“Are you going to do it?” I ask. “The survey. I overheard your conversation.”
He scratches behind one ear. “I don’t think I have much choice.” “You realize he’s punishing us for what I did in court?”
“Yes. But I think there’s more to it than that.” “How so?”
“North wants me to be hundreds of miles away when it comes time for you to testify.”
“Why?”
“Because the law of coverture prevents a woman from testifying in court without her husband present.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I give testimony in court many times a year without you being present.”
“Only because your profession allows you to do so regarding a woman’s declaration of paternity during childbirth. Those parameters do not extend to a situation like this.”
“But if I’m not able to testify next month—”
“Rebecca Foster will lose her only witness, and her allegations will be dismissed,” he says.
