Page 117 of Dark Tides
He led the way out of the room and closed the door behind him. Their nighttime candles were burning on the marble side table in the shadowy hall. Sarah was suddenly acutely aware that the house was silent and that they were alone together, and that his dark gaze was on her face.
“Now,” he said quietly. “Would you like to sleep in your bedroom? Or would you prefer to come to mine?”
Sarah shot one horrified glance at his smiling face. “No!” she said. “I’m not… I’m not…”
“Not that sort of milliner,” he said understandingly, not the least embarrassed. “In that case I will give you your candle and bid you good night, Miss Jolie.”
DECEMBER 1670, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND
Ned went through the laborious process of loading his basket with goods, strapping on his snowshoes, shooing Red out of the door, and heading into town. Red bounded through the snow, sinking and leaping, his thick fur ice-tipped. Ned did not need to dig out his garden gate; the drifts were so high that they stepped over the top of it andonto the wide featureless snow plain that was the village common. On either side Ned could see the roofs and the shuttered top-floor windows of the houses. One or two settlers had dug out their front doors; but most had abandoned the front of their houses to the snow and only dug out their yard so they could feed their beasts and get to their stores. Every house carried a cap of snow, every house showed a streamer of smoke at the chimney, as if to say that the village was fighting to stay warm, burning huge stores of wood every day to try to get through the ordeal of winter.
Ned traded venison from Norwottuck as he went, picking up a small cheese from a dairywoman whose cow was still in milk, and admiring some knitted woolen gloves. Though his fingers were red and chapped from the cold, he did not think he could afford to trade food for gloves.
He made his way down the street to the minister’s house where the slaves had arduously dug a path to the front and back door and to the meetinghouse. Ned, carrying his basket, went round to the back, and knocked on the kitchen door.
“You have to push it open, the wood’s warped,” came a shout from Mrs. Rose inside.
Ned put his shoulder against the door and fell into the kitchen. “Beg pardon,” he said, flinching from her glare as snow from his hat cascaded on the clean floor. He stepped back out again, took off his snowshoes, shook himself like a bear, and then came inside, leaving his oiled cape, coat, hat, and mittens on the hooks at the side of the door. “I am sorry,” he said.
“Never mind, you’re in now,” she said. “Is it cold out?”
“Very. I left my dog in one of your stables.”
“Will he be warm enough there?”
“Yes, I won’t be too long. I brought you some meat.”
She glanced into his basket. “Thank you. They’re all upstairs,” she told him. “The cellar’s too cold in this weather. And no strangers come in this season, anyway.”
Ned hesitated, wondering if he should say something more intimate to her. “I’m glad to see you,” he said. “You’re looking well.”
She threw him a little smile. “And I you,” she said. “I think of you, beside the ice river, the last house of the town.”
“It’s not that far away,” he protested, as he always did.
“Look at you!” she replied. “Wearing half a bear just to get to the minister’s house.”
He nodded. “John Sassamon came the other day and he was wearing half what I put on, and he was warm. I must get him to trade me his furs.”
She turned her head at once. “He’d rather have a red or a blue coat,” she said. “They all would. They all want proper clothes; but they won’t work to earn it. You shouldn’t buy his native clothes, and he should stay in his proper trousers and shirt. Why would he run around in buckskin when he’s got a perfectly good proper house in Natick? A wife? A ministry? What’s he even doing this far north?”
“That’s what I’ve got to talk to the minister about,” Ned said.
She nodded, compressing her lips on what she might have said. “He’ll be spying,” was all she said shortly. “Running about the woods and spying on us.”
“He came openly to see me,” Ned protested. “Boot’s on t’other foot. He took me to spy on them.”
“Well, you can go on up,” she said, silencing him. “They’re all three together upstairs.”
Ned made an awkward little nod to her and went out of the kitchen and up the staircase. As he climbed, he called: “It’s Ned Ferryman!” and the door at the head of the stairs opened and the minister looked out.
“Good to see you!” he said. “All well with you?”
“Aye, I came to see that all was well with you?”
“Praise God, yes. Come in.”
John Russell opened the door and Ned edged into the room. The three men were sitting on hard high-backed chairs with the single bed pushed back against the wall to give them more room. A mean fire burned in the grate, there were frost flowers on the inside of the window. A Bible was on the table, open at the Psalms.
