Alice came to know her box well. A man named W. Bartlet had carved his name in a beam, with “13d October 1698 and 27d he went out.” Another man, or perhaps the same man, had whittled a ship into one of the thick oak planks, another had carved out a huge, thrashing whale, yet another had covered both sides of the doorjamb with diagonal lines, possibly to pass the time, or possibly to mark his days in gaol. Alice thought what she might do if she’d had a knife: carve her name, perhaps, but which name? Her dates? She didn’t know them. Her life story? If she began at the floor and climbed the wall how far up would it take her? It seemed to Alice that a great many things had happened to her in fifteen years…no, sixteen now. She was only grateful that she’d passed her birthday in the widow’s attics and not in Barnstable gaol.
In the end, Alice marked the days, not with any knife mark but with Freeman’s visits. He came bearing gifts, but not the same kinds of gifts he’d brought her in her past life. He brought a foot warmer, a woolen cap, a thick blanket, a meat pie made by his Barnstable housekeeper. But Alice also noted the increasing tightness of Freeman’s mouth and jaw as he greeted her, and she knew well enough what that meant. Alice didn’t wish to be hanged; she wanted to help Freeman help her; but she couldn’t give him Verley’s name or any more of her circumstance; she couldn’t give away any clue that might take her back to Medfield. She thought many times what might happen if she told Freeman what he wished to know, and when she wasn’t lying awake thinking it, she dreamed it. In her dream she stood before a row of justices, with Verley towering beside her within an arm’s length, his height and breadth nearly filling all the space around them, his hands pulsing to get at her. Alice never came as far as the actual judgment in her dream; the nearness of Verley was all the nightmare she needed to cause her to wake sweating.
Alice had other visitors besides Freeman. The gaoler, a reedy man with a pinched face, came to let Freeman in and out of her box, to bring her the food that Freeman bought her, to take away her full chamber bucket and return it emptied. He made an early point of telling her he had ten children of his own and didn’t take well to people who murdered their infants. The sheriff came, seemingly just to stare at her through the tiny square of bars in the door, and the king’s attorney came, a man not as tall as Freeman but half again as wide, who seemed to think if he stood in the box long enough and let Alice drink him in she would let loose a different story than the one she’d already told him. When the king’s attorney came, Freeman came with him, and when the king’s attorney asked the name of the babe’s father, Freeman cut him off with, “That’s not the issue before this court, sir,” after which the king’s attorney gave Freeman the kind of look that suggested he’d learned what he’d come for.
One day of visits stood out among the others. It began with the widow. She brought things Freeman couldn’t have thought of: beeswax for her chapped skin, clean linen for when her courses returned, cornstarch to clean her hair. She said, “You look like death,” and sat down and combed the starch through Alice’s hair herself, brushed her cheeks and lips with the balm, and tied a new woolen shawl around her shoulders. She didn’t talk of Alice’s troubles but talked of affairs in the village, and the half-wit she’d hired to take Alice’s place at the wheel, “whose mouth works faster than her fingers.” Before she left she said, “Do as Mr. Freeman tells you. I need you home,” and Alice would have given much to have been able to speak at that moment, but she knew of no words that would say all she owed.
And Nate came. It so happened that Freeman was in the box when the gaoler unlocked the door and ushered the boy in. “Nate!” Freeman exclaimed. “How now? Why aren’t you at the college?”
“I came away.”
“Do you know the fine for that?”
“Two and six. Another one and three per day for tarrying.” He looked at Alice and back at Freeman and said nothing more.
Freeman said, “What news have you from town? What’s said of the stamp tax? We hear rumor of its passing.”
“’Tis passed. To take effect the first of November. A ream of bail bonds goes from fifteen pounds to a hundred.”
“The devil! And what does Otis say? Has he waked from this odd sleep of his?”
Nate drew a pamphlet from his coat pocket. “He’s just come out with this. He says in it that Parliament has the ‘just, clear equitable and lawful authority’ to impose taxes on the colonies. He says that the colonists are ‘virtually, constitutionally, in law and equity to be considered as represented in the honourable House of Commons.’ He does add that an American member in the house would be a ‘reasonable indulgence.’”
Freeman snatched the pamphlet and began to read.
“They say in the street that Otis has made a deal to keep quiet on the stamps in exchange for his father’s appointment as probate judge and chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas here at Barnstable.”
Freeman lifted his eyes from the pamphlet. “No. No. This no rational man can believe who knows him. Or his father. Or the relation between them.”
“As I hear the people talk, your Mr. Otis won’t get reelected to the legislature. They call him reprobate, apostate, traitor. I hear it on every corner.”
Alice looked at Nate, puzzled. Was it a note of glee she heard in him? Did he wish to torment Freeman? He hadn’t yet looked at Alice, but this Alice could understand better; she was no longer the girl he’d thought her.
But the news of Otis’s doubtful future in the legislature appeared to perk Freeman to a degree. “That itself disproves any theory of deals made with his enemies,” he said. “Why boost a father’s paltry career compared to his own stellar one? ’Tis madness to consider it.”
“All I can say for certain is that Otis had best do something to earn back the people’s trust in him, and he’d best do it in a hurry.”
Freeman didn’t answer, his gaze again directed at the pamphlet.
Nate said, “I must go,” and there he looked at Alice for the first time. She would have given much for another kind of look, one with something of his old silliness in it, but even as she completed her thought he had already turned away, banged on the door for the gaoler, and disappeared through it.
After Nate had gone, Freeman stood as he was some time, gazing at the pamphlet he held, so that Alice assumed it was Otis that occupied his mind, and was greatly surprised when he lifted his eyes and said, “I wonder what I must do to earn your trust in me, Alice.”
It had been a wearing day. That was all Alice could think to account for it. The widow’s visit had swelled her bruised heart near to cracking; Nate’s visit had cut her; it had also reminded her that she had taken Freeman away from events of more import than her own poor life, and that if Freeman saved her life she would owe him a debt she could never possibly repay. There Alice thought of the widow and how the widow owed Freeman her life as well; she thought of how the widow was repaying him. She thought of the noise she’d heard through the door of the widow’s room. This was the best Alice could explain it: the day, the debt, the memory of the widow and Freeman together. She burst out, “You might leave the widow be!”
Alice supposed that if she’d drawn a knife and sunk it in Freeman’s back unaware she couldn’t have more greatly surprised him. He stared at her long until his features sank into a depth of sadness Alice had never seen in him, but that sadness only spurred Alice the more. “Don’t you see how you shame her? She’s been cast from the church! She can’t go about the village! You save her life and then you take away her life as pay for it! Why didn’t you leave her to burn, then?”
Freeman’s face turned from sadness to puzzlement. “Save her life? Take her…burn? Let her burn? Upon my word, I haven’t the least…Oh, good Lord. The fire. You’ve heard somewhere about the fire, and you assume it was I…It wasn’t I. I wasn’t living there. But what in the name of—”
He broke off. A flush overtook his face and neck, deeper and darker than anything Nate Clarke had yet managed. “You think the widow gives as pay…you think I take as pay—” He turned around and banged on the door for the gaoler. He swung back at Alice. “I won’t debase either the widow or myself by giving answer to that allegation. As to my shaming her, I assure you, my suffering on that account is by far the greater.”
“Then why don’t you marry her?”
The gaoler’s key scraped in the lock, the door swung open, Freeman stepped into the frame, turned back to her. “I would marry her today, or tomorrow, or yesterday, for that matter. She will not consent, for the dower rights her husband left her to her home would be canceled on her remarriage. You see by this how much shame troubles her.”
ALICE LAY AWAKE that night as usual and yet not as usual, for instead of herself and her troubles filling her thoughts, they were filled with the widow and Freeman. Or she supposed she would have to say they were full of Freeman; Alice felt she understood the widow no more nor less than she had ever understood her. To trade a house for a husband who had another fine house in Barnstable, seemed no bad bargain, but Alice had long accepted that the widow’s actions would run contrary to Alice’s expectations. Freeman, though. She must rethink Freeman entirely. If he wasn’t the thing she had first thought him, he wasn’t the second thing she’d thought him either; she supposed—oh, she more than supposed—she might have concluded this before now without the words of explanation just offered her. She might have looked only as far as the image of a man’s hand touching a woman’s door in a gesture that could speak of nothing but the greatest tenderness to come to a proper understanding of Freeman’s nature.
But in truth should Alice have needed even that? Shouldn’t she have taken his true measure in his treatment of her? If he were a man who would take what he could, why had he not taken Alice, if not before she’d made him the offer of it, as a Verley would, then afterward, when few would have blamed him for it?
Thinking thus, understanding thus, Alice could only lie on her pallet in misery at the thought of the harsh words she’d dare to throw at him. How easily now she could see the widow as he painted her, a woman without shame! How easily she could see the truth of Freeman’s statement that he was the greater sufferer! But if he suffered so, why did he continue so with the widow? Alice supposed she could see why. She had put the case before, but in another consideration entirely. An aging man alone and lonely, a man of little physical attraction, a man with little but his money to recommend him, where else would he find his comfort?
But there too, as Alice considered the old description she’d assigned to Freeman, she began to see how poorly it fit him, how shallow had been her assessment of him. He wasn’t a young man, it was true, but neither was he past his physicality, as she’d discovered with her own fingers. He wasn’t a handsome man, it was true, but he possessed the kind of face that, although slow to give up its secrets, once opened, warmed him into something as good as handsome. And little but money to recommend him? No, Alice had been another kind of fool to think so. She thought of what she’d said to Freeman and flushed hot. She’d greatly wronged him, twice now. He’d forgiven her the first, but what man would forgive the second thing too? No doubt she’d seen him for the last time; no doubt he would leave her case to another now.
FREEMAN STAYED AWAY the next morning, just as Alice had feared, but the widow came in his place. Alice couldn’t look at her.
The widow said, “Mr. Freeman asked me to come to see you before I leave for Satucket with Mr. Cobb. I’ve neither the time nor the patience to go ’round and ’round with you as he’s done. He says he’s attempted unsuccessfully to discover how you came by this child, but as you wouldn’t tell him you might feel more comfortable telling me. He said also that if you didn’t tell me you were lost. Understand that by the word ‘lost’ he means you will hang.”
“He…he spoke to you of what we talked of?”
“He said nothing but what I’ve told you. He was quite distressed. I dislike seeing Mr. Freeman distressed, and when I see him so, I like to do what I can to remedy it. I should think you might too.” She waited, but not long. A scarred hand snaked out and captured Alice’s chin, bringing her eyes level with the widow’s. “I shall make but one last attempt to make Mr. Freeman’s position clear to you. He must know all your story, Alice, not just such parts as you wish to tell. It makes no difference what that story is; he must know it in order to know how to build his case. He must know it, Alice. If you lay with the reverend’s son, he must know it. If you lay with the reverend, he must know it. If you lay with a sailor, or two sailors, or three sailors—”
“My master lay with me against my will. He got the child on me.”
The widow dropped her hand. She said, “This would be Verley? Of Medfield?”
The name out of the widow’s mouth stopped Alice. How could the widow know it? How?
The widow said, “Don’t look so stricken, Alice. I’m not out to claim the five pounds he offers.”
So there it was. Straight out of her dream. Straight out of the newspaper. Of course the widow and Freeman would have remembered the newspaper. Of course they had never truly believed in that other Alice run off from her master. They could have sent her back to face Verley at any time they chose. Alice began to tremble, or did she only feel that she trembled? If she did shake, the widow took no notice; she picked up Alice’s hand and turned it over to expose the three ridged lines across her palm. “And how came you by this? Verley also?”
Alice nodded.
“And the marks on your neck when you first came to Satucket? And the cut cheek, the injured arm? Verley as well?”
“And Mrs. Verley.”
The widow blinked. She said, “You must tell me the whole of it, Alice.”
Alice told her. When she finished, the widow fixed her eyes on the floor and didn’t lift them until Alice said, “Madam?”
The widow looked up. “I’ve long ago stopped blaming or thanking God for the workings of a man’s heart. I’ll not squander the remainder of my time in further pondering the workings of this one. The woman’s, I’m ashamed to say, I understand well enough. Right now I’ve but one question for you, Alice. Why on earth could you not tell me this before, if not when first you came, then later, when you’d come to know me something better?”
“I was afraid you’d send me away.”
“For a sin not your own?”
“I’d heard it put the other way, madam.”
The widow peered at her. Alice knew the widow’s quiet rage by now and watched it as it grew, but just as she’d learned to grasp the difference between similar words as a child, she now grasped that she was not the object of this anger. The widow said, “How differently disguised our courage comes. Yours has my admiration. Now I must speak with Mr. Freeman,” and she banged for the gaoler.
FREEMAN CAME. ALICE had been so afraid of how he might look at her, and indeed, his face appeared less open than it had before, but he spoke gently. “I must hear it for myself, Alice.”
So she told him. He didn’t interrupt her, despite her many stops and starts, but when she was finished he bade her tell it again, and that time he interrupted often. When Alice had finished with that telling, he picked up her hand and said, “Hard as it may be for you to believe, Alice, this Verley is the saving of you.”
Yes, it was hard for Alice to believe, for without Verley there would have been no dead babe and no charge of murdering a bastard in the first place, but she looked at Freeman’s face, opened to her once again, and decided that perhaps she could trust him after all.