Caleb’s Crossing. Geraldine Brooks

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Название Caleb’s Crossing
Автор произведения Geraldine Brooks
Жанр Историческая литература
Серия
Издательство Историческая литература
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780007334643



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      GERALDINE

       BROOKS

       CALEB’S CROSSING

       For Bizuayehu, who also made a crossing.

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Chapter I

      Chapter II

      Chapter III

      Chapter IV

      Chapter V

      Chapter VI

      Chapter VII

      Chapter VIII

      Chapter IX

      Chapter X

      Chapter XI

      Anno 1661 Aetatis Suae 17 Cambridge

      Chapter I

      Chapter II

      Chapter III

      Chapter IV

      Chapter V

      Chapter VI

      Chapter VII

      Chapter VIII

      Chapter IX

      Chapter X

      Chapter XI

      Chapter XII

      Chapter XIII

      Chapter XIV

      Chapter XV

      Chapter XVI

      Chapter XVII

      Chapter XVIII

      Chapter XIX

      Chapter XX

      Chapter XXI

      Chapter XXII

      Chapter XXIII

      Anno 1715 Aetatis Suae 70 Great Harbor

      Chapter I

      Chapter II

      Chapter III

      Chapter IV

      Chapter V

      Chapter VI

      Chapter VII

      Chapter VIII

      Chapter IX

      Chapter X

      Afterword

      Author’s Note

      Also by Geraldine Brooks

      Copyright

       About the Publisher

missing

      Chapter I

      He is coming on the Lord’s Day. Though my father has not seen fit to give me the news, I have the whole of it.

      They supposed I slept, which I might have done, as I do each night, while my father and Makepeace whisper together on the far side of the blanket that divides our chamber. Most nights I take comfort in the low murmur of their voices. But last evening Makepeace’s voice rose urgent and anguished before my father hushed him. I expect that was what pulled me back from sleep. My brother frowns on excessive displays of temperament. I turned on my shakedown then and wondered, in a drowsy way, what it was that exercised him so. I could not hear what my father said, but then my brother’s voice rose again.

      “How can you expose Bethia in this way?”

      Of course, once I caught my own name that was an end to it; I was fully awake. I raised my head and strained to hear more. It was not difficult, for Makepeace could not govern his tongue, and though I could not make out my father’s words at all, fragments of my brother’s replies were clear.

      “Of what matter that he prays? He is only— what is it?— Not yet a year?— removed from paganism, and that man who long had charge of him is Satan’s thrall— the most stiff-necked and dangerous of all of them, as you have said yourself often enough. . . .”

      My father cut in then, but Makepeace would not be hushed.

      “Of course not, father. Nor do I question his ability. But because he has a facility for Latin does not mean he knows the decencies required of him in a Christian home. The risk is . . .”

      At that moment, Solace cried out, so I reached for her. They perceived I was awake then, and said no more. But it was enough. I wrapped up Solace and drew her to me on the shakedown. She shaped herself against me like a nestling bird and settled easily back to sleep. I lay awake, staring into the dark, running my hand along the rough edge of the roof beam that slanted an arm’s length above my head. Five days from now, the same roof will cover us both.

      Caleb is coming to live in this house.

      In the morning, I did not speak of what I had overheard. Listening, not speaking, has been my way. I have become most proficient in it. My mother taught me the use of silence. While she lived, I think that not above a dozen people in this settlement ever heard the sound of her voice. It was a fine voice, low and mellow, carrying the lilt of the Wiltshire village in England where she had passed her girlhood. She would laugh, and make rhymes full of the strange words of that place and tell us tales of things we had never seen: cathedrals and carriages, great rivers wide as our harbor, and streets of shops where one who had the coin might buy all manner of goods. But this was within the house, when we were a family. When she went about in the world, it was with downcast eyes and sealed lips. She was like a butterfly, full of color and vibrancy when she chose to open her wings, yet hardly visible when she closed them. Her modesty was like a cloak that she put on, and so adorned, in meekness and discretion, it seemed she passed almost hidden from people, so that betimes they would speak in front of her as if she were not there. Later, at board, if the matter was fit for childish ears, she would relate this or that important or diverting news she had gleaned about our neighbors and how they did. Oft times, what she learned was of great use to father, in his ministry, or to grandfather in his magistracy.

      I copied her in this, and that was how I learned I was to loose her. Our neighbor, Goody Branch, who is midwife here, had sent me off to her cottage to fetch more groaning beer, in the hope that it would cool my mother’s childbed fever. Anxious as I was to fetch it back for her, I stood by the latch for some minutes when I heard my mother speaking. What she spake concerned her death. I waited to hear Goody Branch contradict her, to tell her all would be well. But no such words came. Instead, Goody Branch answered that she would see to certain matters that troubled my mother and that she should make her mind easy on those several accounts.

      Three days later, we buried her. Although it was spring according to the calendar, the ground was not yet thawed. So we set a fire on the place my father had chosen, between the graves of my twin brother Zuriel, who had died when he was nine years old, and my other infant brother who had not tarried here long enough for us to name him. We tended the fire all through the night. Even so, at dawn, when my father and Makepeace commenced to dig, the shovel rang on that iron-hard earth. The sound of it is with me, still. The labor was such that father trembled all over afterward, his limbs palsied with the work of putting her to rest. So it is, out here on this island, where we dwell with our faces to the sea and our backs to the wilderness. Like Adam’s family after the fall, we have all things to do. We must be fettler, baker, apothecary, grave digger.