The Witch of Blackbird Pond (18 page)

How could Hannah ever have endured it? Kit often shivered, alone in that cabin with the wind howling outside and no one to speak to for weeks on end but the cat and the goats. She hoped there was a cozy hearth at Nat's grandmother's house, and her own heart warmed at the thought of the two old ladies sharing it together.

Then her restless thoughts would drift after the
Dolphin.
Nat had offered to take her with him. Suppose she had accepted his offer? If she had never come back, would anyone here in this house really have cared very much? By now she would be in Barbados. At this very moment she might be—The broom in her hand, or the treadle under her foot would idle to a stop as she walked in imagination up the wide drive to her grandfather's house, and stepped up to the long shady veranda. Then she would shake herself free. Such daydreaming was a weakness. The house was sold, and she was here in New England, and perhaps Nat had never really meant his offer at all.

One night she woke from a vivid dream. She and Nat had stood side by side at the bow of the
Dolphin,
watching that familiar curving prow carving gently through calm turquoise water. They came soundlessly into a palm-studded harbor, fragrant with the scent of blossoms, and happiness was like sunshine, wrapping her round and pouring into her heart till it overflowed.

She woke in the freezing darkness. I want to go back, she admitted at last, weeping. I want to go home, where green things are growing, and I will never see snow again as long as I live! Her tears, scalding her eyelids, froze instantly against the pillow. Lying tense beside Judith, she made a resolve.

After that, all through the cheerless days, she hugged the dream close. Sometimes, driven by her restlessness, she would talk about Barbados to Mercy. "Once when I was quite small," she would say over the hum of the flaxwheel, "my grandfather took me to see a great cave. You had to go to it when the tide was very low, and when a wave dashed across the rocks it made a sort of curtain across the opening of the cave. But inside it was very calm and still, and the water on the floor was as clear as glass. Underneath the water there was a sort of garden, made of colored rocks, and all over the roof of the cave there were queer hanging shapes, like those icicles outside the window, only pale green and orange and rose colored. It was so beautiful, Mercy—"

Mercy would look across at Kit's wistful face, and smile in understanding. She knows, Kit thought. When I tell them that my mind is made up, she will not try to keep me. She will be sorry, I think, but truly, won't they, all of them, be a little relieved?

In all honesty, she often argued, wouldn't she help the family most by leaving? Did the help she managed to give her aunt and uncle ever begin to make up for their trouble, and for the inescapable fact that she was another person to feed and clothe? Though no one ever so much as hinted at it, the grim truth was that where a short time ago two girls had been well provided for, there was now every likelihood of three spinsters in the Wood household.

No, she amended, Judith would never be a spinster. Kit had watched William's face in Meeting, and she knew that he was only biding his time. And Judith, in spite of her downcast eyes, was well aware of this. By every right of beauty and accomplishment, Judith belonged in the new house on Broad Street. In their secret hearts all three of them, she and William and Judith, had really known that all along. It needed only time now to bring about the match which Kit and John Holbrook had interrupted.

In March a fresh blizzard buried the town in drifts. The long days wore on, one as like another as the endless threads of the loom. Though the bitter cold did not abate, the daylight hours grew perceptibly longer. They lighted the candles a bit later every afternoon.

Judith had just set the brass candlestick on the table one late afternoon, and the girls were moving the table nearer to the hearth in preparation for supper, when a knock sounded at the door.

"See who it is, Kit," said Rachel absently. "I don't want to take my hands out of this flour."

Kit went into the hallway, leaving the kitchen door open behind her, drew back the bolt, and opened the door. A gaunt, ragged figure stood on the step, and as she shrank back a man pushed his way through the door and halted on the kitchen threshold. Judith suddenly let fall a wooden bowl with a clatter.

Rachel, wiping her hands on her apron, came forward, peering in the dim light. "Can it be—John?" she breathed tremulously.

The man did not even hear her. His eyes had gone straight to Mercy where she sat by the hearth, and her own eyes stared back, enormous in her white face. Then with a hoarse, wordless sigh, John Holbrook stumbled across the room, and went down on his knees with his head in Mercy's lap.

CHAPTER 21

O
N A
L
ECTURE
D
AY
in April two marriage intentions were announced together in the Meeting House. John Holbrook and Mercy Wood. William Ashby and Judith Wood.

The Wood household was busy from dawn till close to midnight. There was so much to do if all were to be ready for the double wedding that was set for early May. There was the vital matter of two dowries. Judith had been carefully hoarding a small store of linens since childhood, adding one cherished bit from time to time, and her loom and needle had worked busily. But Mercy had never given a thought to a dowry. She had not a single pillowcase or linen napkin that she could call her own. Now, though Rachel fussed and stitched, Mercy still regarded the whole problem with indifference. Why did she need a dowry, she argued practically, when she was really not leaving home at all? She and John had already decided that for the first year at least they had best share the Woods' ample house. The company room was being readied with fresh whitewash and new linen curtains.

John had resumed his studies with Dr. Bulkeley. All his uncertainty had disappeared, and his steady eye and voice plainly revealed the core of strength that Kit had always sensed beneath his gentleness. In the days of his captivity, of which he never spoke, in the waiting for a chance to escape, and in the weary hunted trail down the Connecticut River, John had found his answers.

"Dr. Bulkeley is everything I ever thought him to be, a great scholar and a great gentleman," he explained. "In politics he is obeying his own conscience, but I think he is mistaken. We have come to an understanding. He will teach me theology and medicine, but I will think as I please." By June he would be ready to accept a call to one of the small parishes springing up to the south and west of Wethersfield.

William's house on Broad Street was nearly finished. Piece by piece he was assembling the costly treasures for its furnishing—fine hand-turned bedsteads and chests and chairs from the skilled Wethersfield joiner, Peter Blinn, glossy pewter plates and a set of silver spoons from Boston, real china bowls of blue and white Delft from Holland. Judith knew where every piece would go in the new house, and how to care for each lovely thing to keep it shining. She and William spent their evenings in happy planning, and their contentment was good to see. Kit had never found William so likeable before.

In the midst of all this preparation Kit silently made her own plans. She would not share them with anyone till every detail was carefully provided for. Her leaving would be a shock to them, she knew. Rachel, and Matthew in his own way, looked upon her as a daughter, but even a daughter, though welcomed and loved, could come to be a problem. There was no real place for her here. With John to help with the planting and Mercy still sharing the work of the household, there was no obligation now to hold Kit to the tasks she hated. They would protest, they might even sorrow a little, but in their hearts wouldn't they be relieved to see her go?

The ice on the river broke into great floating blocks, and gradually thinned and disappeared. The ferryboat began its daily journeys from Smith's landing back and forth to the opposite shore. Small boats slipped out of their winter moorings, and one day a bustling cheering crowd thronged along High Street to greet the first sailing ship up from New London.

That afternoon Kit climbed to the attic and surveyed the seven small trunks. She had not looked inside them all winter. Now, one after the other she threw back the lids and lifted the filmy dresses, holding them up to the dim light. How long ago it seemed that she had worn these things! Could it be not quite a year? The silks and muslins and gauzes still gleamed unworn and beautiful, and doubtless they were still fashionable. She touched them wistfully. It would be good to shed these shabby woolen garments and feel once more the softness of silk against her skin, and to hear the rustle of petticoats wherever she moved.

But the dresses must serve another purpose now. Would they bring enough to pay her passage on a ship? Fine cloth like this was rare in Connecticut. In many families, she had learned, one dress such as these would be handed down through three generations as a cherished possession. Surely in Hartford, or perhaps even here in Wethersfield, she would find willing buyers, even though she had not yet worked out a plan for approaching them.

As she lifted the peacock-green dress she hesitated. How radiant Judith had looked in this dress. "If only William could see me in it," she had said. She laid aside the dress, and very thoughtfully she chose another, a fine blue-flowered muslin. These two she would take directly to Uncle Matthew, and this time she felt sure he would let his daughters accept them, because he would know now that she offered the gifts with love instead of pride.

All Kit's plans now turned toward Barbados. She had no illusions about the prospect before her. She would not be going back as Sir Francis Tyler's granddaughter. She would go as a single woman who must work for her living. Her best chance, she had decided, lay in seeking employment as a governess in one of the wealthy families. She liked teaching children, and hopefully there might be a library where she could extend her own learning as well as that of her charges. Whatever befell, there would be a blue sky overhead, and the warmth and color and fragrance and beauty that her heart craved.

One day in mid-April she walked alone down South Road. She could not go far, for the river was still very high from the melting snows. It had overflowed so that the fringe of poplar trees on its banks stood deep in water, and the cornfields were transformed into endless lakes. Blackbird Pond had been swallowed up, and Hannah's house, had it still been standing there, would have been flooded up to its thatched roof. Poor Hannah, how had she endured this ordeal year after year, watching while the water crept nearer and nearer, stowing her valuables higher in the rafters, moving away goodness only knew where to wait out the season in some deserted barn or warehouse, and creeping back when the water receded to scrub out her house and replant her soggy garden? Kit was thankful, as she had been so many times when the wind howled and the snow piled higher, that her friend was snug in a proper house. But she knew a pang of homesickness, nonetheless. The little cottage had been very dear to her.

She perched on a sun-dried rock and sniffed the air. There was an earthy indefinable scent that stirred her senses. The new shoots of the willows were a sharp yellow-green. The bare twigs of the maples were tipped by swelling red buds. A low bush nearby had blossomed in tiny gray balls. She reached to touch one curiously. It was furry and soft as the kitten that Prudence had held in her arms that summer afternoon. All at once Kit was aware that this New England, which had shown her the miracle of autumn and the white wonder of snow, had a new secret in store. This time it was a subtle promise, a tantalizing hint of beauty still withheld, a beckoning to her spirit to follow she knew not where.

She had forgotten that summer would come again, that the green would spread over the frozen fields, that the earth would be turned up to the sun and the seed sown, and that the meadows would renew themselves. Was this what strengthened these New Englanders to endure the winter, the knowledge that summer's return would be all the richer for the waiting?

Yet the spring air held a sadness too, sharper than all the loneliness of winter. The promise was not for her. I am going away, she thought, and for the first time the reminder brought no delight, only a deeper longing. She did not want to leave this place, after all. Suppose she should never walk in the meadows again? Suppose she should never sit in the twilight with Mercy, or see Judith in the new house, or the girl Prudence would grow to be? Suppose she should never see Nat Eaton again?

Suddenly she was trembling. She snatched at the dream that had comforted her for so long. It was faded and thin, like a letter too often read. She tried to remember how it had felt to stand on the deck of the
Dolphin
and see before her the harbor of Barbados. The haunting joy eluded her; the dream shores were dim and unreal. Why had she closed her heart to the true meaning of the dream? How long had she really known that the piercing happiness of that moment had come not from the sight of the harbor at all, but from the certainty that the one she loved stood beside her?

If only I could go with Nat, she realized suddenly, it wouldn't matter where we went, to Barbados or just up and down this river. The
Dolphin
would be home enough.

"There is no escape if love is not there," Hannah had said. Had Hannah known when she herself had not even suspected? It was not escape that she had dreamed about, it was love. And love was Nat.

It must have been Nat from the beginning, she admitted now, and with that knowledge came a sureness that she had never known in all the last bewildering year. Memories of Nat came crowding back to her—agile and sure-footed, as she had first known him, leaning far out on a yardarm to grasp a billowing sail—throwing back his head in laughter, or shooting hot sparks of temper—sitting on a thatched roof in the sunshine—coming miraculously out of the fog that morning, bending tenderly to lift a frightened old woman into the rowboat—and as she had seen him last, standing erect by the door of the magistrate's office, sending across the anger and confusion a steady reassurance and strength.

Nat is New England, too, she thought, like John Holbrook and Uncle Matthew. Why have I never seen that he is one of them? Under that offhand way of his, there is the same rock. Hannah has leaned on it for years. And I refused to see.

Was it too late? He asked me to go, she reminded herself. But what did he mean? Only that he could never bear to see anyone in trouble? And he came back. He risked the whipping post to come back and help me. But he took the same risk to rescue a yellow cat!

After a long time Kit started slowly home. The sun slanted low in the sky, and behind her there began a sweet, disturbing melody. Peepers, Judith had said, the little frogs that lived in the swamp, and why should the sound of them tear at her heart? "Too late? Too late?" they queried, over and over, and she fled along the road to the house where she could shut herself away from them.

From that moment in the meadow Kit ceased to plan at all. She only waited. Somehow she found a way to meet every trading ship that came up the river. How beautiful these proud little sailing ships were! She never glimpsed their spreading sails without an answering surge of her spirits. Yet every new mast that rounded the bend of the river brought at the same time a fresh plunge of disappointment. Always she waited, her eyes straining to make out the figure on the prow, and always, at the sight of those strange, glistening white figureheads, her heart sank. Why did the
Dolphin
not come?

On the second day of May, as she came out on Wethersfield landing, a trim little ketch was already tied up, fresh-painted, with clean white canvas and not a barnacle on its hull. It must have been newly launched.

The wharf was a confusion of unloading and bartering. A seaman in a blue coat bent to check a row of barrels, and as he straightened up, even before he turned or before she consciously recognized him, Kit began to run.

"Nat!" The greeting burst from her. He turned and saw her, and then he was running, too. As he caught her hands she came to a stop, the wharf, the ship, and Nat himself swinging in a dizzy arc before her eyes.

"Kit? It is Kit, isn't it? Not Mistress Ashby?"

"Oh no, Nat! No!"

"I thought the old
Dolphin
would never make it!"

The blue gaze was too intense. She had to look away, and abruptly she was conscious of the crowded dock. She pulled her hands away and stepped back, trying, too late, to retrieve her dignity.

"H-how is Hannah?" she stammered.

"Chipper as a sandpiper. She and Gran have been fine company for each other."

"And the
Dolphin
? Did something happen to her?"

"Just a heavy blow. She's hove down for repairs at the yard. What do you think of the new ketch?"

"She's lovely." Then something in his tone made her look at him more sharply. The blue coat with brass buttons was brand new, and pride sparkled over Nat like the shiny paint on the new vessel. "Nat—you mean—you can't mean she's yours?"

"All but a few payments. By the end of a good summer's trade she'll be every inch mine from stem to stern."

"I can't believe it! She's beautiful, Nat—even more beautiful than the
Dolphin!
"

"Have you noticed her name?"

Kit leaned sideways to see the letters painted jauntily on the transom. "The
WITCH!
How did you dare? Does Hannah know?"

"Oh, she's not named after Hannah. I hadn't gone ten miles down the river that day before I knew I'd left the real witch behind."

She did not dare to look up at him. "Can I see her, Nat?" she asked instead. "Will you take me on board?"

"No, not yet." His voice was full of decision. "I want to see your uncle first. Kit—" His words came in an unpremeditated rush. "Will he think it is enough—the new ketch? There'll be a house someday, in Saybrook, or here in Wethersfield if you like. I've thought of nothing else all winter. In November we'll sail south, to the Indies. In the summer—"

"In the summer Hannah and I will have a garden!"

"Kit—" He glanced ruefully about the busy wharf. "Of all the places to choose! I didn't plan it like this. Aren't you going to invite me home with you?"

Happiness brimmed over into shaky laughter. "Captain Eaton, we'd be proud to have you dine with us."

"Then must we stay here any longer?"

She took the arm he offered, but still she lingered, looking back. "I want to see the ketch. Please, Nat, before we go! I can't wait any longer to see my namesake!"

"No," he said again, leading her firmly toward the road. "That ketch has a mind of her own. She's contrary as a very witch herself. All the way up the river she's been holding back somehow, waiting. Now you'll both have to wait. I'm not going to disappoint her. Kit. When I take you on board the
Witch,
it's going to be for keeps."