Alice would have said she never slept if the sound of the crow hadn’t so startled her. She opened her eyes and saw the first graying of the sky; with it came the first gray uncertainty. Had she dreamed it? As she eased her feet to the floor she felt the burn between her legs and thought no, it had been no dream, but even as she thought it she began to search for other reasons for the soreness. The long, rough cart ride. An early onset of her courses. Irritation from the stiff, new linens. Yes, a nightmare, surely. But how real it seemed! And how could she know such a thing in order to dream it? Was it from seeing Nabby and Verley in the front room at Morton’s? Might she have gone to bed full of thoughts of the reenactment going at that moment, and at no great distance? Might she, indeed, have imagined herself in Nabby’s place, and from such a sinful thought the nightmare had descended?
Such half-belief-half-disbelief allowed Alice’s feet and hands to move, to take her skirt from the hook and collect her shoes and stockings from the floor, to dress herself and enter the keeping room to begin the morning ritual. The sight of the keeping room table reminded her of the comfortable supper the three of them had shared the night before, and gave even more weight to the idea of a nightmare. She removed the ashes from the fire, blew up the coals, fed in enough wood to get a blaze for the kettle, unwrapped and sliced the bread, and set the first slice on the toaster.
Nabby appeared from her brand-new marriage bed in such wide-mouthed cheer that Alice felt even more sure of her imaginings. But the minute Verley appeared she knew it had all been as real as he was, standing there smiling at her.
“Good morning, Alice,” he said. “And how did you enjoy your first night in your new bed?”
Alice blushed and made no answer.
“Now look how you embarrass her!” Nabby said. “Don’t tease my Alice.”
Verley bowed an apology, and Alice marveled that only now could she see how the gesture mocked her. She marveled too that he could continue to smile at her. Alice felt the lock of that smile as she’d felt the lock of his hand at her throat, forcing her to draw breath as if through a cheesecloth; only when he’d finished his gill of cider and left for the sawmill did her breath come clear.
THE FIRST DAY at the Verley home was spent as many at Mr. Morton’s had been, working side by side with Nabby to order the household. They shifted and unpacked trunks, brushed and aired clothes, set up her iron spiders and kettles. On this day, however, Alice’s thoughts weighed as heavy as the work, and the only thing that kept her hands and feet in rhythm was her fear of drawing Nabby’s suspicions. She didn’t want a year added to her time. She didn’t want to be sold to Old Peters at the tar pit.
Oddly, when Verley returned for supper that night, he seemed to take no notice of her, and Alice’s spirits lifted. He made a fine fuss over Nabby, reading to her from the almanac after supper as she hemmed a curtain, getting up twice for no purpose but to drop a kiss on her hair or draw a finger across her sleeve. This last appeared to be the signal that he wished to retire; Nabby leaped up, all smiles and giggles, and followed him to the bedroom.
Alice finished the curtain hem, banked the fire, and went to her own room in some good hope that Verley had done with her, but she hadn’t yet managed sleep when the latch lifted and he came exactly as he had the night before, standing over her in his shirt, holding his candle. Alice crabbed backward into the corner of her bed, against the wall.
“What’s this, now?” Verley said. “You can’t mean you’re not glad to see me.”
“I am not, sir!”
His hand snaked out, clipped her throat, and pushed her back against the wall she’d foolishly thought might be some help to her. “Now, Alice, why do you beat those lovely bird-wing lashes at me? Could it be you’ve not understood me? Or could it be you don’t like your breath stopped? Very well, then, here’s where we strike our bargain. I take my hand away and you lie quiet. You may nod your assent when you wish to breathe.”
Alice nodded. The hand came away. Whether she wished to make noise or not, the sucking of air was all she could manage.
“So,” he said. “You keep quiet. ’Tis a wise child you are, Alice,” and he yanked her away from the wall by the ankles, pulled off her shift, and beat himself into her.
Afterward, as before, he held the candle high and looked her over. He said, “It would be a shame, indeed, to let Old Peters have you. Or did I mention the hot tar? It would do bad things to such a skin as yours. Very bad things, Alice.”
OVER THE YEARS Alice’s daydream of the house in Philadelphia had grown and expanded. Her mother had acquired more fine dresses; her father had brought her dolls as well as oranges; every night he pulled her onto his lap and held her tight while he listened to her recite her Bible passage. Even her brothers had grown kinder, sharing their books with her, showing her the pictures and even teaching her some of the words. That night Alice’s dream changed again, the house changed; it sported a room just for Alice on the second floor, the window too high for anyone to climb up from out of doors, and the door locked with a big gold key that Alice kept on a cord around her neck. The house itself was surrounded by a high fence and a gate barred with a long, iron bolt; she and her mother spent their days behind the fence planting tall lilac bushes that twined together with long-thorned roses.
AT FIRST ALICE’S daytime hours appeared safe, as she and Nabby worked so often side by side there was little space for Verley to fit between them. Alice bore his nighttime intrusions buoyed by the hope that after a time he must surely grow tired of his little game with her, but instead of growing tired he grew bolder in the daytime, as if testing her will to keep silent: he grabbed her buttocks as she left the room just behind Nabby or thrust his fingers beneath her skirt as she leaned over him at table; once, with Nabby absorbed in cutting out a pattern in the front room, he followed Alice out to the barn and pushed her facedown across the feed bin. The rough head of a nail in the lid of the bin cut into Alice’s cheek, and when Alice came inside Nabby said, “Good heaven, Alice! What have you done to yourself? You’re bleeding all down your face!”
Now, Alice thought, now is the time to tell her, with the smith’s apprentice hard at work at the forge, with Verley just taking his horse from the barn behind her. She said, “’Twasn’t I did it,” and readied to say more, but Nabby’s eye had fallen to the damp stain on her skirt and come back up to her cheek, and there looked away.
It seemed to Alice that Nabby looked away from her many times more, but then came the day of the escaped mare. Verley was at the mill, and Nabby was first to see the horse through the keeping room window. “Alice!” she shrieked. “Come! The mare’s got loose!” And she leaped out the door. Alice ran after her and they divided, Alice down the road behind the horse, Nabby striking out across the field to cut the horse off farther along the way. Nabby reached the fence, picked her skirt up to her waist, and flung herself over. She ran into the road, flapping her arms and shouting to turn the horse; it pivoted on its hind legs and ran straight at Alice, who in her surprise leaped back and turned the horse again, this time away from them both and into the neighbor’s meadow. Alice and Nabby took after it, by now gasping like a pair of bellows, finally cornering the horse up against the neighbor’s stone wall. Nabby whipped off her apron and tied one end around the horse’s neck to lead it home, but there they collapsed together against the wall to collect their breath, and they began to laugh.
Oh, how good it felt—the laughing, the damp grass, the cool stones against her sweating back! And oh, how silly the horse looked in its apron! The laughter rose and rose, and burst, and turned wet, and dried away. They fell silent. Now, thought Alice, now I’ll tell her, and she began to form up the words, thinking out which ones might work best to show Nabby who her husband was and that she must take them back to her father. She had the first words ready, but she felt she needed to give Nabby some kind of warning; she reached out and touched Nabby’s arm.
Nabby leaped up and began pulling at the apron to start the horse back toward the barn. In a tight, fast run of words that left no room for Alice, Nabby began to talk of her husband. Her husband had bought her the mare. Her husband had just that week bought her a pair of silver hair combs. Her husband had declined to go to Boston for a lucrative trade because he couldn’t bear to part from his bride so soon. She could not have asked for a finer husband.
Alice stayed silent.
Nabby said three other things to Alice in the course of that day: she’d oversugared the pudding; she’d put out the wrong plates; she’d raised too much dust with her broom.
THAT NIGHT ALICE heard husband and wife arguing in the study; when her own name rose up out of the noise, she made her way closer to the door to listen.
“Your father?” Verley said. “What the devil do you want to give her back to your father for?”
“I told you last week after my visit to him. He misses her terribly.”
“No doubt. But he’s missed his chance now.”
“He would give us Jerubah instead. He wished to in the first place, but I begged for Alice. I now see the mistake I made.”
“And what should I want with old Jerubah?”
“Why, she’s not yet thirty. In three years Alice will have served her time and be gone; Jerubah we’d have forever. In truth, Emery, I’m not happy with Alice. Not happy at all. She’s lazy and careless, and today she spoke to me most rudely.”
“You would take one wrong word as an attempt on your life? I’ll speak with the girl.”
“I don’t wish you to speak to her; I’ve already spoken to her and misliked her answers. Indeed, I fault my father for making such a fuss over her, sitting her at table and teaching her out of his books as if she were my sister. She’s grown so bigheaded only he can manage her.”
“Leave the girl to me. I’ll set her right.”
“I don’t wish her set right, I wish her gone! She must go back to my father or be sold. I’ve decided.”
The next words were said softer but pierced the air all the harder for it. “Perhaps you forget, my love, that what was yours became mine by law at the time of our marriage. ’Tis I who’ll decide what’s to be done with Alice.”
Alice waited for Nabby’s answer but heard none.
AFTER THE ARGUMENT in the study Verley changed the game. He stopped troubling to close the door. He spoke loud, laughed loud, grunted louder. One night he said, “You don’t make a sound no matter what I do to you, do you, Alice?” And he picked up her hand and thrust it palm down into the flame of the candle.
That night Alice stopped dreaming of a house in Philadelphia and began dreaming of a high-walled ship sailing across a wild but sunlit ocean. Her father sailed the ship, pulling Alice between his knees and holding her warm and close as he steered; her mother and her brothers had become odd, finned creatures, half human, half dolphin, who swam around in the water and leaped out of the wake to smile at her.
TWO DAYS LATER, with Nabby not ten paces away setting candles in the front room, Verley pulled Alice onto his marriage bed and drove himself into her. No matter how quiet Alice chose to be Verley made his own kind of noise, too much noise, or so it seemed until footsteps approached the door and Alice saw—no, felt—the surge of excitement in Verley; there Alice understood it. Verley wanted Nabby to hear. He wanted her to see. He had grown bored with his quiet wife and his quiet Alice; he would test them each against the length of her separate chain, forged by her separate contract. But good, thought Alice. Good. Because Nabby had now seen for herself what her husband was; now she would take them away from there.
ALL THE WAY through supper Alice watched Nabby for a sign. They must wait for the right time, of course: after Verley had paid his visit to Alice, after he had returned to his room and fallen asleep. That was how Alice would do it. But after supper Verley went off to his study with his bottle of Madeira, and Nabby declared illness and went to her bed. Was the illness a ruse? Alice couldn’t determine. She cleared away the supper and put the beans to soak for morning, listening for sounds of Nabby stirring, perhaps secretly packing, but she heard only Verley, leaving the study and going outside; soon after she heard the horse pounding out of the yard and down the road. Now, Alice thought. Now. And yes, she’d barely drawn up the thought in full when Nabby appeared in the kitchen.
“Where’s he gone?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You don’t know? Is that how you talk to me? What of ‘I don’t know, madam?’ Do you think yourself the equal of me? Is that what you think, Alice?”
“No, madam.”
Nabby lifted her hand, drew it back, and slapped Alice hard across her face. She dashed to the fire and grabbed up the poker; Alice twisted away as the poker came down, and it glanced off her shoulder, clattering to the floor.
Nabby leaned over, clutching her stomach. She straightened and caught Alice gaping at her. “What do you stare at? Why do you stand there? Get away from me! Be gone!”
Alice backed toward her bedroom door, whirled around, and dashed through it.