Page 57 of Dark Tides
“And how do you do your washing?”
“There you have me!” Ned admitted. “I pay one of the women to come and do my washing.”
“Not savages?” she asked, a little shocked, and when he nodded she shook her head. “Savages won’t get your linen white. You can bring your collars to the minister’s house and I’ll do them in our weekly wash.”
“I’m obliged to you,” Ned said politely. “But I won’t impose. Not now that you have a little holiday, with your guests gone away for the summer.”
“They’re no trouble,” she said. “Men of God, both of them, and exiles for a great cause.”
“Have you always been in service?” Ned asked shyly.
“From when I was a girl in Devon. My master was called by God to come here and brought us, his household servants, with him. He died on the voyage, my husband too, and we that were left had to findnew places. It wasn’t hard—everyone wants a servant over here, and I chose to work for the minister as he promised me a plot of land in his new settlement, if I found a husband at the end of my time with him.”
“You want your own land?” Ned asked.
“Of course,” she said simply. “Everyone does.”
“You would farm it yourself?”
She risked a glance at his face. “I hope to marry a good husband and we’ll farm it together,” she said bluntly.
Ned hesitated, not knowing how to answer her, and at once she finished her cup and rose to her feet.
“I’ll leave you to read your letter.”
“I would walk you back into town—”
“I know you can’t leave the ferry,” she said. She hesitated and then told him what she had been thinking from the very first day she had seen the ferry-house go up and Ned spreading reeds for thatch on the roof. “You could make it a good business here. You could build a bigger house and open it as an inn for travelers going north, you could hire men to farm your plot, and maids to serve. If you had a wife who knew her trade in the kitchen this could be the best house on the river.”
Ned did not argue that he had no appetite for a good business and desire to be an innkeeper. He smiled down at her. “You’re an enterprising woman,” was all he said.
“That’s why I came here,” she agreed. “I was called by God to make a new life in this new world, and I thought it could be a better life than the old.” She hesitated. “There’s nothing wrong with that? Wanting a better life?”
“No,” Ned said quickly. “And it’s what I wanted. I wanted a better life too. Just not… not at anyone else’s cost.”
She put out her hand to shake, as if she were a man. “Good-bye.”
He took her work-hardened hand in his own, and closed his other hand over it, so they were hand-clasped. “I’ll see you the day after tomorrow,” he promised her. “I’m picking fruit tomorrow. Shall I save anything for you? I’ll have high bush blueberries and the first of the wild grapes.”
“I’ll take three pound of blueberries for bottling.” She hesitated butshe did not draw her hand away from his warm clasp. “I’ll be glad to see you, Mr. Ferryman. The minister has no objection to you coming to the house to visit me.”
Ned was very sure that John Russell had no objection to a visit, nor to a marriage. The whole village of Hadley was of the minister’s making; he had moved his congregation here from the river settlements in Connecticut, he had measured out the plots himself and invited other settlers to come. Ned had been awarded the ferry to the north and a plot of land, for escorting and guarding William Goffe and Edward Whalley; but even Ned must be settled under the rule of the town and that meant attendance at church, a godly marriage, and a family for his plot. Mrs. Rose was an indentured servant, a widow; she too must settle and marry at the end of her service.
Ned followed his guest to the town gate and opened it for her; she passed through with a little smile.
“I’ll see you, Mr. Ferryman,” she said, and started to walk down the wide green common way.
It struck Ned that this was not the freedom that he had hoped for when he had crossed the ocean. He had dreamed of a life that they had passionately imagined, in the evening lectures of Cromwell’s army—a land where every man would have his own plot, his own faith, and his own rights. Every man would have had his moment of blinding illuminating godliness that would guide him for the rest of his life, every man would have his own voice in government and every man of every color would be free and equal. But here in the land that he had thought would be free, there were still laws that put everyone in his place, there were still masters and men, landlords and servants. Ned was still pulling a ferry, and his wife would be a maid, an indentured servant whose greatest ambition was to make others serve her.
He thought he should have said something warmer, something more agreeable in reply to her plan of winning a husband, but he had not found the words. He thought he had always been a fool around women. His wife had died young, and the only woman he had ever understood had been his sister, and she had betrayed everything he had believed, and nearly died for her falseness. So he let Mrs. Rose go, and she walked on, her white bonnet visible all the way down the track.
Ned turned inside to open Alinor’s letter and, at the first line, pulled the stool towards his rough table, to read and reread the words, holding the paper to the light from the open door to make out the scratched-out sentences. As soon as he understood that his nephew was drowned he dropped his head to his hands and prayed for the soul of Rob, the bright boy who had been the brightest hope of his family and who had been lost in deep waters. With a little groan Ned slid off his stool to his knees to pray for the boy’s mother, Alinor, and that she survived this new blow, and learned to accept it, as yet another tragic loss.
“Amen,” he said quietly. “Lord, You know the pain that this family has endured. Spare us any more. Let my sister come to understand that her son is lost to this world and gone to another. Let her find peace at her home, and me in mine.”
AUGUST 1670, LONDON
The shipping on the Thames was at its peak in the fairer weather; the great galleons from the East Indies which had caught an early monsoon wind passed the little wharf as if they disdained it, heading to their own deep moorings, and their own great warehouses. Alys maintained her rounds of meeting merchants, drumming up business for the wharf, and seeing the goods in and out, and the Custom duties paid.
