After Alice had collected three more payments from Sears and watched them go into the widow’s money jar, after she’d felt the growing weight of her own little money pouch, she began to eat like she used to do. Or more than she used to do. Her waistband grew tighter, her face rounder; she checked herself in the hall mirror more and more now, but as no one commented on her changed shape she began to think she might keep her secret forever. She expected herself to be delivered of her bastard by early March; she made the calculation and then pushed it away as she might push away a turned piece of meat—far enough away from her and it wouldn’t smell. Or at least so it worked in daylight. At night she woke with pounding heart and sweating skin and wondered what was to become of her.
It seemed the greatest irony that as her internal situation became daily more alarming, the household around her seemed to settle into a greater state of ease; even Freeman seemed used to her presence now. The point was proved one night after Alice had gone up the stairs and she heard Freeman’s voice below, in that softer, looser tone he sometimes fell into after an extra mug of cider.
“I declare that girl draws half the light when she leaves the room.”
“Does she, now.”
“I said half the light, Widow Berry.”
“But which half sends the spark?”
“I say nothing of any sparks, I say only—”
“’Tis the old, dry wood goes first to flame.”
“I only mean to say that I think she’s a fine girl, and I’m glad you took her in.”
“So I see.”
“You might stop your nonsense and admit you’re glad as well.”
“Glad of what? That I took the girl in, or that you’ve succumbed at last to her charms? Or is it one and the same?”
Freeman’s chair scraped. “The amusement you seem to find in this particular line of conversation escapes me. I believe I shall say good night.”
“Good night to you, sir. Enjoy your dreams.”
To which Freeman made no answer that Alice could hear.
AT FIRST ALICE took the conversation as nothing more than the widow’s teasing, and yet it kept her awake, running over and over through her head, not just the words but the various tones in which they’d been spoken. After a time Alice thought she began to see the problem: Freeman wouldn’t admit the widow’s jest about the spark, and this had provoked the widow into more jesting, which further provoked Freeman into…what? More praise of Alice.
Alice thought on this some more and began to think on some other things: Freeman’s statement earlier that she’d won him “utterly,” his new ease around her, how he’d warned Nate to leave her be, how upset he’d become when she’d walked off at the frolick. At first the new thoughts caused her flesh to prickle with sweat, but then they took another turn, and a new conversation began to take place inside Alice’s head, in another pair of voices, both Alice’s. They batted a single thought back and forth, unable to agree between the two selves whether to keep it or let it go.
When Alice woke the next morning it was as if the last night’s conversation with herself had continued in her sleep until one voice had won out, so that what had seemed an argument last night was now no argument at all, was, in fact, no choice at all.
The boy Nate couldn’t help her. The man Freeman could. It was that simple.
That awful.
BUT COULD SHE do it? Alice would have been a fine fool indeed not to know the kind of thoughts she sparked in a certain kind of man, but what she didn’t know, even after all this time, was whether Freeman was that kind of man. It was true he didn’t ogle her as did the other men in the village; it was true he was never anything but kind and courteous; it was true he didn’t seem to consider himself in any way entitled to her services; but as Alice watched and listened over the next few days she concluded that although he was more careful at it than most, Freeman didn’t necessarily live on any higher plane than the other men in the village.
First came a bit of gossip at Sears’s store about the death of a mulatto whore who had been “kept at the tavern by Eben Freeman.” Alice lingered behind the shelves, selecting pins for the widow and discovered that the word kept got taken looser or tighter, depending on who did the talking. It seemed generally acknowledged that at one time Freeman had favored the whore, and she’d favored him; it seemed also acknowledged that she’d been better fed and clothed than most in her situation. There opinion turned left and right. The youngest Myrick sister insisted that the whore had died near Yarmouth’s Indian Town in a cabin that Freeman had built for her and where he continued to visit; the youngest Winslow girl countering that the Yarmouth whore was another one entirely and naught to do with Freeman; Mrs. Cobb declared that the tavern whore had gone off for a time with some money everyone suspected came from Freeman, but that she’d come back to work at the tavern and died in the same bed she’d been born in, being no better than her mother had been. There Mr. Sears spoke up to say that he’d not heard such a lot of nonsense since the business about the witch baby; Mrs. Sears then spoke into the new silence to say that if widowers like Freeman insisted on keeping themselves single so long they might expect their reputation to suffer; the older Myrick sister then supposed that one dead whore wasn’t likely to harm Freeman’s reputation any more than it had been harmed by “that other one.” Alice fussed over the pins a time longer, but there the talk cut off, as if all throats had been severed.
Next came Freeman himself. She now knew that he was a man long widowed and that he was a man yet desirous of a woman’s company, but because he’d passed that age where he might hope to acquire a woman by virtue of a natural attraction, he’d been forced to go out and buy one. Alice would have thought there might be a number of older widows ready to take him for his money alone, but as none had done it thus far it seemed clear enough to Alice that Freeman wasn’t going to settle for any of the toothless old vultures who circled the village.
And, his whore was now dead.
With all that in Alice’s mind, along with what she’d heard out of Freeman’s own mouth, she decided to attempt it.
THE DIFFICULTY WAS in finding her chance. She thought she’d found it one day in late August when the temperature dropped down with September-like chill, prompting the widow to head into the yard to pull goose down for the winter mattresses. Pulling down was long, hard work, requiring the catching and securing of the goose under one arm while fixing an old stocking over its head with the other, then fighting against beating wings and pummeling beak to pluck free the soft undercoat of feathers. The widow would have been engaged with the noisy geese more than long enough for Alice to do what was needed; the trouble arose when Freeman decided to take that exact morning to ride to Eastham to visit an ailing uncle.
Alice’s next opportunity came when the widow set out for the shore to collect sand for the floors, but Freeman had come upon something in his newspaper that stiffened his neck and cobbled his brow as well as his jawline; Alice didn’t feel it just the moment to test the strength of her power to draw him.
Alice waited, and soon enough another chance came: the widow upstairs at the loom laying a web that should busy her for hours and Freeman off to the barn to check on a recent lameness in his horse. Alice didn’t like the idea of the barn, as it held a bad association for her, but it had one certain advantage: the widow wasn’t in it. True, the sash in Alice’s end of the attics remained raised, because she liked to smell and hear all she could of Satucket, but Alice didn’t think Freeman the kind of man to make enough noise to reach the widow’s end of the attics. Besides, Alice’s pregnancy was advancing, and if she waited much longer she would be too far gone to fool a man of Freeman’s wit into believing he’d spawned what she carried.
Alice found Freeman in his shirtsleeves, just leaving his horse’s stall. “Why, Alice,” he said, and smiled. Alice thought herself well acquainted with that smile by now, but in that minute she saw she had long missed one thing in it, something she could only call a well-worn sadness. For a second she thought with shame of what she was about to do, of how it would shame him. Alice wasn’t so great a fool as to think that someone like Freeman would marry her just to give his supposed bastard his name, but surely he would feel as honor-bound as he would be law-bound to keep such a child fed and safe and warm. To keep Alice fed and safe and warm. And after all, if he’d managed to keep a whore at the tavern without losing the respect of all the village, how greatly could a single dalliance with Alice shame him? And a single dalliance was all she needed of him. As Alice stood under Freeman’s smile she felt her edges soften, felt necessity joined with inclination. She began to form a not unpleasant idea that if she stepped closer he might of his own will put his arms around her, hold her. What he might do next she didn’t count as pleasant at all, but as it was her only hope she must allow it. The question was, how to begin it? She’d never needed to start Verley in her direction.
Freeman had pulled an old sack off a peg and begun to wipe his hands; Alice watched his long fingers work the cloth around and knew she needed to get them to leave the cloth and light on her, but how? She said, “Do you find your horse fit, sir?”
“Sound as ever.”
There Alice stopped, her best effort exhausted.
After a time Freeman said, “Have you come for me, Alice, or has the widow sent you out here on your own chore?”
And there it lay. The thing she needed to start him toward her as plain as the word of God, or if not the word of God, a sign, then. She said, “I come for you, sir.” She took another step forward, stretched up tall, and put her arms around his neck, hoping to press her mouth to his lips, but Verley had never troubled to put his lips on Alice, and she wasn’t at all sure how to fix them. She paused, and Freeman had just that second’s hesitation in which to pull back. He caught her hands from behind his neck and drew them down. “Here, now, what’s this?”
“’Tis all right, sir. You want me, you may have me. Right here. This minute.” She raised her arms toward his neck again, but halfway there she saw the look on him and thought perhaps he didn’t care to trouble with lips, either. She pulled open her bodice strings, caught up Freeman’s hands, and fixed them on her breasts—Verley had liked to squeeze her breasts near to rupture—and dropped her hands to his breeches buttons, working the first button through before Freeman came to life again.
“Whoa, now, Alice!” He lifted his hands off her swollen bosom, but there they stuttered in the air, as if he couldn’t decide where else to put them. He attempted to back up, but he only had a few inches to go before he came against the stall, and he struck it hard with his bootheel. It startled the horse, causing it to strike the wall a return blow that rattled the stall door, and Freeman looked behind him in alarm; it gave Alice time to work the second button through, and she felt his part stiffen under the cloth; one moment more, she thought, and all will be finished. She lifted her skirt, but there Freeman seemed to have decided what to do with his hands; he clamped them around her arms like a pair of shackles, picked her off her feet, and swung her around against the wall, startling the horse a second time. It thrashed so hard Alice thought it might bring the barn down over them, but she needed so little time now. She grabbed Freeman’s bobbing part; Freeman said, “Alice, now! Alice, now! Alice, now!” and another voice said “What on earth is the—” and stopped there.
The widow stood in the barn door, peering at them through the dimness. Freeman spun around, fixing his breeches as he went, attempting to adjust the awkward twist in them.
The widow said, “I do not…I do not—” and stopped a second time.
Freeman pushed past her into the dooryard. The widow followed him.
Alice leaned against the wall where Freeman had left her, knees puddling, heart thundering, as breathless as if Freeman had tried to strangle her. Tears massed thick and hot behind her eyes, but she wouldn’t let them loose. She wouldn’t. After a time she calmed enough to hear the raised voices from the yard. She edged nearer to the barn door to listen.
“And so you have nothing else to say on what’s just happened here.”
“What the devil do you think’s happened here?”
“Judging by what was before my eyes, any number of things.”
“And judging by what you know of a man who’s lived under your roof for the past two years?”
“I know better than to put any of us on any pedestal, Mr. Freeman. I should like to think, however, that you wouldn’t further abuse a young girl already—”
“A young girl already in possession of a trick or two!”
“You would blame her for what I saw, then?”
A pause, in which Alice imagined Freeman would very much like to blame her, but he said, “I blame no one but myself, for the sin of slow-wittedness in extricating myself from an entirely unwarranted and unsolicited situation. Now if you will excuse me.”
“So you would run off now.”
“I walk to the water in the hope that it will cool my temper, and if you’re wise you’ll leave me to it.”
Silence.
Alice peered out. Freeman was disappearing around the side of the house, the widow in the direction of the chickens. Alice crept out of the barn, crossed the yard, and climbed the stairs to her room. Her room, but for how many more minutes? The widow had seen her, and she’d heard Freeman; she would send Alice away now, instead of later.
After a time Alice heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. She sat down on the bed, her hands under her to stop their trembling. The widow came into the room. She didn’t look at Alice but went to the chest where Alice kept her loose belongings, and began to fuss with them as Alice used to do, as if a whirling mind could be stilled by busy fingers. The widow picked up Alice’s hair comb and put it down, wound and unwound a hair ribbon, thumbed a book by Swift that Freeman had pushed on Alice, and last, she picked up the pouch that had once held the pennyroyal and now held the coins Alice had earned from the widow and Freeman. The widow hefted the pouch as Alice had done so often, as if weighing it. Regretting it. She tipped the pouch upside down and the coins fell out onto the chest, along with a few dregs of pennyroyal. The widow stared absently at the mess for a time, and then as absently wet her finger and picked up a scrap of leaf; she smelled it, set it on her tongue, and slowly, slowly, as if in a kind of trance, her head came up; she turned; she stared at Alice. She might as well have held a mirror before Alice, so clearly did Alice see her own puffy face, her swollen breasts, her tightening belly reflected across the widow’s features.
The widow set the pouch down. She said, “You’re with child.”
Alice said nothing.
“How far gone are you?”
Alice stayed silent.
“Speak up, girl! Who’s got this child on you?”
It began in enough anger, but halfway through something went wrong with it; it didn’t hold its fury all the way through the second sentence. Alice lifted her eyes to the widow and saw her do a thing Alice had never seen her do before; she glanced away from Alice. As if she were ashamed. As if she were somehow to blame. Alice didn’t understand it, and then she did. Why, the widow had even said it! I should like to think that you wouldn’t further abuse a young girl… She wasn’t ashamed over Alice, she was ashamed over Freeman, the man she had taken under her roof and so allowed to abuse Alice.
Alice imagined a faint breeze of hope entering through that tiniest of cracks. Perhaps it didn’t matter what had actually happened in the barn, perhaps it only mattered what the widow chose to believe had happened. She had appeared in the door just as Freeman had swung Alice against the wall; for all she could know it was Freeman who had undone her bodice and his breeches. Alice tried to concentrate, to think through the rest of it. If the widow were of a mind to blame Freeman, would she consider Alice as now in even greater need of her protection? Was it possible she would leap to Alice’s defense as she’d done on the deck of the ship? Was it possible she might choose to keep Alice under her roof and throw Freeman out the door? After all, how much did she need his money now that the cloth was selling at Sears’s store?
The widow cut through Alice’s swirling thoughts. “Speak up!” she snapped. “I asked you who’s put you in this way?”
Through the open window Alice could hear the sounds of a horse’s hoofs scuffling in the dirt. Apparently the walk to the water hadn’t cooled him, and Freeman had decided to ride off somewhere. Alice let her eyes float toward the window, and it was enough. The widow came at the bed, grabbed Alice’s wrist, and pulled her to her feet.
“Understand me, Alice. You’ll answer me in God’s own truth, right now, this minute, or you’ll go out of this house this minute. You put this child on Mr. Freeman?”
Alice nodded.
“And how long…Well, I might figure how long.”
The widow dropped Alice’s wrist, walked with purpose to the stairs, and down.
Alice hurried to the window. Freeman was still in the yard, tightening the girth on his saddle, when the widow appeared. He didn’t straighten.
“So you have no further words for me on this matter?” the widow said.
“Judging by the words that have flown thus far, I’d say fewer were required, not more.”
“Even on the subject of the child Alice credits you?”
Freeman laughed.
Alice heard the laugh, returned to the bed, and lay down on it. She needed nothing more to know the sound of a plot failed. No man could laugh so in anything but the purest innocence, and as Alice knew it, so the widow must know it. All was ended there.
Yet the conversation continued below. Alice leaped up and returned to the window. Freeman had at last straightened to his full height, and stood staring at the widow. “My God, you mean this!”
“As I’ve just been told it, yes, yes, I do.”
“Well, if that’s what she’s told you, she needs a lesson in the animal sciences.” Freeman turned back to the horse, and then pivoted again. “Good God, was that the little wretch’s scheme? To tempt me into rashness and lay some ill-gotten child at my door?”
Alice returned to the bed, rolled on her side, and hugged the bolster to her. Foolish, foolish girl! To have tried such a thing on such a man! And worse, oh, so greatly worse, to have confessed her condition to the widow! If she’d but kept to her deception she’d have stayed safe there for many months more. Now she would either be sent away as sinner or, if she admitted to Verley’s abuse of her, carted away to face Verley in a courtroom somewhere. If Alice knew one thing about herself it was that she couldn’t physically enter any room that held Verley in it. So, she would be sent away. She had admitted to the child, and there was no turning back from it now.
A pair of boots crossed the floor below and hit the stairs, not lightly. Alice leaped up as Freeman swung himself around the stair rail into the room, with the widow behind; he stopped short a good distance from Alice. She saw his face and realized she had never until that moment seen anything like anger in it.
“What in all the—” He stopped. His chest and shoulders rose once, and fell. He began over, in another kind of tone, but still not his. “The widow informs me you’re in the way to having a child. She informs me further—” He stopped again, and Alice understood his difficulty. He couldn’t believe, he wouldn’t believe, that such trust as he’d come to put in her could have been repaid with such treachery. Alice made herself look at him, made herself take his anger as her punishment, and was amazed to see that his disbelief in what she’d done lingered yet. Oh, how hard he would try to believe her something other than the thing she was! How hard he would try to turn back, as Alice would turn back, to before her claim against him! But if Alice had her choice she would turn back further yet, to before her claim of a child at all. Oh, if only she could go back there!
If only she could go back there. Alice looked again at Freeman, at the widow. Why, what if she could go back there? Wasn’t there a chance of it, right here? Freeman wished so much not to believe. He could be persuaded, Alice was sure he could be persuaded. But could the widow be persuaded to go along? And what if she didn’t? What risk did Alice take that could be any greater than the risk she faced now? If she left things as they lay she was already gone from the widow’s home. Why not try to go back?
Alice’s heart began to pulse until her flesh grew damp. She wiped her lip, her forehead. She said, “Child, sir?”
“Child, child,” the widow interrupted. “The one you claim Mr. Freeman’s got on you.”
“I’ve got no child in me, sir. Madam.”
Freeman whipped around to face the widow. “Did you not just accuse me—?”
“I accuse! ’Twas she accused. What game is this you’re playing, girl?”
“I made no such claim against Mr. Freeman, madam. Mr. Freeman may have had certain wishes—”
“The devil I did! I go to the barn to see to my horse as any man might expect to do in peace—”
“Did I not ask you,” the widow cut in again, “in the clearest possible terms, if you were with child? And did you not answer me—”
“I didn’t answer you, madam. I couldn’t understand how you could ask such a question, and so I made no answer.”
The widow stared at her. “Perhaps you didn’t answer my question, but neither did you deny. And at a moment further on, when I said to you, ‘Do you put this child to Mr. Freeman,’ you said—”
“I said nothing, madam. I didn’t understand your first question, nor your second, except as you might think, after seeing him a short time before—”
“You nodded your assent! As clearly as you shake your head now! What’s the matter with you, girl, do you think me a fool?”
“Here, now.” Freeman took a step forward, positioning himself more evenly between them. “Let’s collect ourselves. Let’s attempt to proceed in a rational manner. What matters now isn’t what was purported or believed purported at some point heretofore, what matters now is the state of affairs at present. Answer me, Alice, with the fear of God’s wrath in your heart, are you or are you not with child?”
With the fear of God’s wrath. And what was God’s wrath? A vague, unknown, distant thing, no matter how desperately described by the reverend, as compared to the other choices laid before her. “I am not, sir.”
The three of them stood in silence for the space of time it took Freeman to expel a breath, the widow to take one in, and Alice to hold one.
“All right, then,” Freeman said. “As we have no child, we can therefore have no false accusation. We can have nothing, in fact, but some false assumptions. And let me say to you right now, Alice, whatever you might have fancied as my intention toward your person, that too was falsely assumed. Now I suggest we put this behind us and return to whatever business we’d been engaged in before this unpleasantness began.”
He strode to the stairs. The widow peered a second longer at Alice before following him down. Alice sat down hard on the bed, as suddenly weak as if someone had punctured her lungs, but she hadn’t sat for a five count before she realized she couldn’t afford such luxury. She must know what they said of her yet. She pulled herself up and went to her spot on the stairs.
The widow had wasted no time in laying out her case again.
“I said to her flat out, ‘You put this child on Mr. Freeman?’ and she gave me a clear nod. Further again, when I entered her chamber I found a pouch that had at one time held pennyroyal—pennyroyal, which you well know will destroy a conception. And look how she’s filled out—”
“Widow Berry, you lay too much on a nod. She admitted to a state of confusion over your question; she might have been nodding at anything under the sun in response to it. As to the pennyroyal, it has its other uses, has it not? As to her filling out, no doubt she eats better here than she has in her entire lifetime. Besides, what might she gain by denying a condition, which if true, will certainly show itself down the road?”
Time, Alice answered him silently. She gained time. And she counted as gain every hour she remained safe in the widow’s home. Besides, who knew what might happen down Freeman’s road?