Caleb’s Crossing. Geraldine Brooks

now, a skin cloak thrown over him, his breathing the regular breath of one deep asleep. I realized, with alarm, that I had not returned the gourd to his side, but left it in the thicket. It could not be helped; I could not fetch it now. Father was speaking to me, so I struggled to attend to him. “I propose to bleed him. You may hold the basin if you feel you can.”

      I followed father into the wetu where the sick sonquem lay, his son at his side, surrounded by the most notable men of the village. “What do you have for a lancet?” Father asked. One of the men turned over his hand and showed an arrowhead. Father took it up. The man’s arm, where father thought to open the vein, was greasy with streaks of raccoon grease and carbon black, so I washed it, to better reveal the vein, and rubbed the place with crushed mint. Father pressed the stone point into the flesh. I held the basin in my trembling hands, and tried to give myself up to the prayers that father was offering. When father believed we had let sufficient blood, I pushed healing comfrey leaves upon the wound and bound them up with a leather thong that someone passed to me.

      While the onions roasted, I smashed the mustard seed into a paste to add heat to the poultice. I could hear the rattle in Nah noso’s chest as father strapped it on. Time crawled, marked by the rise and fall of that ragged breathing. By and by, I thought that the man’s color began to change. It was dark in the wetu, so I thought perhaps my eyes tricked me. But in a while there could be no mistaking it, his labored breathing eased. An hour passed, and then, miracle! He opened his eyes and looked about, asking where he was and, in some agitation, who we were. His son Nanaakomin gave a great cry of joy and embraced his father. It startled me when he cried out, so like was his voice to Caleb’s.

      The Takemmy sonquem spoke up then, and told him the whole of it, from the time he had fallen ill: of their own pawaaw’s failure to turn back the sickness, and of sending for Tequamuck and that man’s day-long, fruitless efforts. Then he pointed to my father and described how heat magic (the poultice) and blood magic, partnered with spells addressed to the English God, had returned him from the brink of death.

      “Manitoo!” breathed Nah noso, and fell back on his mat. Father turned to me then and spoke in English. “I would like to stay and see to his care, but I do not want you to pass the night here.”

      “Why not, father?”

      “Because there is no wetu in which you might lay your head without risk of witnessing some indecency. I will ask Momonequem to return us to the Merrys and then I will come back here with him.”

      “You need not escort me, father. I am quite prepared to go with Momonequem.”

      “By no means. Even if the youth is honorable, which I have no reason to doubt, I would not put your reputation at risk. What would the Merrys make of such a thing? You, alone in a boat with . . . no, it is unthinkable.”

      I thought of all the hours I had spent alone with Caleb. Innocent hours that would make a harlot of me in my father’s reckoning, and in the eyes of our society. It was well that no one knew of them.

      We rowed back to the Merry farm by rushlight. Jacob Merry insisted on ceding his place to me, so I lay down with Sofia as my bedfellow. Her featherbed was twice as wide and lofty as my straw-and-rag-filled shakedown. Though I fell straight to sleep I was awakened many times by fell dreams. I had to resort to the necessary several times throughout the night. When Sofia asked what ailed me, I blamed my bowels’ distress on the corn mash I had taken from the common pot in the wetu.

      In the morning I rose, weary, and gave a hand to Sofia with her chores until the men came in for bever. I felt Jacob Merry’s eyes upon me as I helped Sofia serve out cider and slices of crusty bread spread thick with new-churned butter. I tried to hide the tremor in my hands.

      “Noah, as Mistress Mayfield is detained here for some hours, perhaps she would like to see the farm. Why do you not show it her?”

      “I will, father,” said Josiah brightly.

      “Not you, Josiah, I can’t spare you. I want your help at the mill.”

      “But we already ground . . .”

      Jacob Merry pushed his chair back noisily and glared at his eldest son.

      “I am in want of your help.”

      “Very well, father.” As Josiah rose obediently from his seat, I saw him wink at his brother and punch him lightly on the arm. Noah flushed.

      Whatever consciousness he might have felt, he quickly shook it off as we walked the fields. I tried to attend to him, but my mind was still occupied with the prior day’s madness and my thoughts were as scattered as blown chaff. Noah’s zeal for farming was patent. If only I shared it, how much simpler my life would be. I let his remarks about the forage virtues of timothy and vetch flow over me, exclaimed where it seemed required at the remarkable number of twins the ewes had produced at last lambing and nodded sagely as he outlined his plans for orchards, a creamery and all manner of improvements. “Josiah’s interests are with the mill, and developing that enterprise will be his main pursuit. My concern is the farm. In time, father and I hope to have the means to expand, if the sonquem will sell more land to us. There are fertile bottoms in yonder woods that would yield easily to the hoe. It does seem strange to leave them a wasteland . . .”

      As he prattled, my mind was on Nah noso. I wondered how he fared, since father’s fate was now bound with his. But suddenly Noah stopped his prating and turned to me with an avid look. “It seemed yesterday that you understood the speech of the Indians at our board. Is it so, indeed?”

      “Well, I— ” I gazed into Noah’s open countenance. His pale blue eyes looked back at me with curiosity. Was this youth really destined to be my spouse? I felt next akin to nothing in my heart that said it should be so. But if it were to be, I must not lie to him now. What manner of marriage could be built upon a foundation of untruth? The falsehood that was forming on my lips, I swallowed. “Yes,” I said. “Though it is a most difficult tongue.”

      “I know it! I cannot retain above two or three words of it— I was never one for rote learning. Father does better, but ’tis a struggle for him also. How marvelous that you can converse with them! It would be a great thing for us if someone from our household could have easy speech with them— we could do much if we understood each other better.”

      Now it was my turn to color. Did he mean to say he already counted me a potential member of his household? Or did I, knowing what I should not, feel too conscious of an innocent observation? Either he was too forward, or I was too fretful. But if father had not given me a full accounting of the understanding regarding myself and the Merrys . . . At that thought, I felt the ember of anger flare suddenly and burn white hot.