The Witch of Blackbird Pond (2 page)

"'Twas a very foolish thing, I realize now," she admitted. "I am forever doing foolish things. Even so, I can't understand why it should make everyone so angry."

He considered this gravely. "You took us aback, that is all. We were all sure you would drown before our eyes. It was astonishing to see you swimming."

"But can't you swim?"

He flushed. "I cannot swim a stroke, nor could anyone else on this ship, I warrant, except Nat who was born on the water. Where in England could they have taught you a thing like that?"

"Not England. I was born on Barbados."

"Barbados!" He stared. "The heathen island in the West Indies?"

"'Tis no heathen island. 'Tis as civilized as England, with a famous town and fine streets and shops My grandfather was one of the first plantation owners, with a grant from the King."

"You are not a Puritan then?"

"Puritan? You mean a Roundhead? One of those traitors who murdered King Charles?"

A spark of protest flashed across his mild gray eyes. He started to speak, then thought better of it, and asked gently, "You are going to stay here in Connecticut?"

Under his serious gaze Kit was suddenly uneasy. She had had enough questioning. "Do you live in Wethersfield yourself?" she turned the tables. The young man shook his head.

"My home is in Saybrook, but I am going to Wethersfield to study under the Reverend Bulkeley. In another year I hope to be ready to take a church of my own."

A clergyman! She might have guessed it. His very smile had a touch of solemnness. But even as she thought it, she was surprised by the humor that quirked his fine straight lips.

"I mistrust you will be a surprise to the good people of Wethersfield," he said mildly. "What will they make of you, I wonder?"

Kit started. Had he guessed? There was no one who could possibly have told him. She had kept her secret even from the captain's wife. Before she could ask what he meant, she was diverted by the sight of Nat Eaton swinging along the deck in their direction. His thin clothing had dried on him, but the friendly grin of that morning had been replaced by an aloof and mocking smile that showed only too well that his morning's ducking had not been forgotten.

"My father sent me to find you, Mistress Tyler." One couldn't have guessed, by his tone, that he had ever addressed her before. "Since my mother has left the ship he thinks it best that you eat at board with Goodwife Cruff and her family."

Kit wrinkled up her nose. "Ugh," she exclaimed, "that sour face of hers will curdle my food."

Nat laughed shortly. "'Tis certain she expects you will curdle hers," he answered. "She has been insisting to my father that you are a witch. She says no respectable woman could keep afloat in the water like that."

"How dare she!" Kit flared, indignant as much at his tone as at the dread word he uttered so carelessly.

"Don't you know about the water trial?" Nat's eyes deliberately taunted her. "'Tis a sure test. I've seen it myself. A true witch will always float. The innocent ones just sink like a stone."

He was obviously paying her back for the morning's humiliation. But she was surprised to see that John Holbrook was not at all amused. His solemn young face was even more grave than before.

"That is not a thing to be laughed at," he said. "Is the woman serious, Nat?"

Nat shrugged. "She'd worked up quite a gale," he admitted. "But my father has smoothed her down. He knows Barbados. He explained that the sea is always warm and that even respectable people sometimes swim in it. All the same, Mistress Katherine," he added, with a quizzical look, "now that you're in Connecticut I'd advise you to forget that you ever learned."

"No danger," Kit shuddered. "I wouldn't go near your freezing river again for the world."

She had made them both laugh, but underneath her nonchalance, Kit felt uneasy. In spite of his mocking tone, Nat had unmistakably warned her, just as she knew now that John Holbrook had been about to warn her. There was something strange about this country of America, something that they all seemed to share and understand and she did not. She was only partially reassured when John said, with another of those surprising flashes of gentle humor, "I shall sit with you at supper, if I may. Just to make sure that no one's food gets curdled."

CHAPTER 2

I
T TOOK
nine days for the
Dolphin
to make the forty-three mile voyage from Saybrook to Wethersfield. As though the ship were bewitched, from the moment they left Saybrook everything went wrong. With the narrowing of the river the fresh sea breeze dropped behind, and by sunset it died away altogether. The sails sagged limp and soundless, and the
Dolphin
rolled sickeningly in midstream. On one or two evenings a temporary breeze raised their hopes and sent the ship ahead a few miles, only to die away again. In the morning Kit could scarcely tell that they had moved. The dense brown forest on either side never seemed to vary, and ahead there was only a new bend in the river to tantalize her.

"How can you stand it?" she fumed to a redheaded sailor who was taking advantage of the windless hours to give the carved dolphin at the prow a fresh coat of paint. "Doesn't the wind ever blow on this river?"

"Mighty seldom, ma'am," he responded with indifferent good humor. "You get used to it. We'll spend most of the summer waiting for a breeze, going or coming."

"How often do you go up this river?"

"Every few weeks. We make a run, say to Boston or New Orleans, fill up the hold, and then back to Hartford."

She could see why Mistress Eaton chose to stay at home in Saybrook. "Does it always take as long as this?"

"Call this long?" the sailor replied, swinging far out to daub the curving tail of the dolphin. "Why, ma'am, I've known it to take as many days to get from here to Hartford as to go all the way to Jamaica. But I'm in no hurry. The
Dolphin's
home to me, and I'm satisfied, wind or no wind."

Kit was ready to fly to pieces with frustration. How could she eke out the patience that had been scarcely enough to see her through a few remaining hours? And how could she force herself to endure another meal at the same board with Goodwife Cruff and her cowed shadow of a husband? Never a civil word had been spoken by either one of them. Plainly they considered the becalmed ship all her doing. And it spoiled her appetite just to watch that miserable little wraith of a child Prudence, not even allowed to sit at board with them, but kept behind her mother where she had to eat standing up the stingy portion they handed back to her. Once or twice she had seen the father furtively slip the child an extra morsel from his plate, but he was plainly too spineless to stand up for her against his shrew of a wife.

A more unpromising child she had never seen. Kit thought, yet she couldn't get Prudence out of her mind. There was some spark in that small frame that refused to be quenched. Late one afternoon Kit had come upon the little girl standing alone by the rail, and seeing the child's wistful, adoring gaze, had moved closer. As they stood side by side a crane rose slowly from the beach, with a graceful lift of its great wings, and they followed its flight, a leisurely line of white against the dark trees. The child had gasped, tilting back her head, her peaked little face aglow with wonder and delight. But in that instant a harsh call from the hatchway sent her scurrying. With a pang Kit realized that not once since they boarded the ship had she glimpsed the wooden doll. Had her own rash performance only served to cheat the child of the one toy she possessed?

They were certainly not good at forgetting, these New Englanders. Captain Eaton treated her with punctilious caution. Nat remained aloof, absorbed in a totally male world of rigging and canvas. On such a small ship it was remarkable how he managed to avoid her. The few times she happened to be directly in his path he tossed her an indifferent grin and his quizzical blue eyes flicked past and dismissed her.

If it weren't for John Holbrook I couldn't bear it, she thought. He's the only one on this ship who doesn't seem to begrudge my existence. He doesn't mind the delay, either. I believe he's actually grateful for it.

She looked with envy at where he sat, propped against a bulkhead, lost in a bulky brown volume. What could there be in those books of his? There he sat, hour after hour, so intent that often his lips moved, and two spots of color burned in his pale cheeks, as though some secret excitement sprang from the pages. Sometimes he forgot meals entirely. Only when he had wrung the last dregs of light from the sunset, and the shadows reached across the water and fell upon his book, would he reluctantly raise his head and become aware of the ship again.

When that moment came, Kit made sure that his eyes, blinking half blindly from his book, would focus on her gay, silk-clad figure nearby. John would smile, mark his place with deliberation, and come to join her. In the soft half-darkness his stiff manners gradually relaxed into a boyish eagerness. Slowly Kit pieced together the details of what seemed to her an appallingly dull history.

"I suppose it was foolish for a tanner's son even to think about Harvard," John told her. "It was six miles to the school, and my father never could spare me for more than a month or so out of the year. He wanted me to learn, though. He never minded how long I burned the candles at night."

"You mean you worked all day and studied at night? Was it worth it?"

"Of course it was worth it," he answered, surprised at her question. "I was set on college. I finished all the requirements in Latin. I know the
Accidence
almost by heart."

"But you're not going to Harvard?"

He shook his head. "Up till this spring I kept hoping I could save money enough. I planned to walk over the foot trails through Connecticut and across Massachusetts. Well, the Lord didn't see fit to provide the money, but now He has opened another way for me. Reverend Bulkeley of Wethersfield has agreed to take me as a pupil. He is a very famous scholar, in medicine as well as theology. I couldn't have found a more learned teacher, even at Harvard."

Such frank talk about money embarrassed Kit. Her grandfather had seldom mentioned such a thing. She herself had rarely so much as held a coin in her hand, and for sixteen years she had never questioned the costly and beautiful things that surrounded her. In the last few months, to be sure, she had had a terrifying glimpse of what it might mean to live without money, but it seemed shameful to speak of it. Instead she tried to tell him of her own childhood, and it was as though they each spoke a totally different language. She saw that John was scandalized at the way she had grown up on the island, running free as the wind in a world filled with sunshine. The green palms, the warm turquoise ocean rolling in to white beaches meant nothing to him. Didn't her parents give her work to do? he insisted.

"I don't remember my parents at all," she told him. "My father was born on the island and was sent to England to school. He met my mother there and brought her back to Barbados with him. They had only three years together. They were both drowned on a pleasure trip to Antigua, and Grandfather and I were left alone."

"Were there no women to care for you?"

"Oh, slaves of course. I had a black nursemaid. But I never needed anyone but Grandfather. He was—" There were no words to explain Grandfather. In the twilight the memory of him was very sharp, the soft pink skin aging on his fine cheekbones, the thin aristocratic nose, the eyes, so shrewd and yet so loving. She dared not trust her voice.

"It must have been hard to lose him," said John gently. "I am so glad you have an aunt to come to."

"She was my mother's only sister," said Kit, the tight pain easing a little. "Grandfather says my mother talked about her the livelong day and never got over being homesick for her. Her name is Rachel, and she was charming and gay, and they said she could have had her pick of any man in her father's regiment. But instead she fell in love with a Puritan and ran away to America without her father's blessing. She wrote to my mother from Wethersfield, and she has written a letter to me every year of my life."

"She is going to be very happy to see you."

"I've tried so hard to imagine Aunt Rachel," mused Kit. "Grandfather said that my mother was thin and plain, like me. But Aunt Rachel was beautiful. Her hair and eyes will be dark, I suppose, like mine. But what will her voice be like? My mother remembered that she was always laughing."

John Holbrook looked earnestly at the girl beside him. "That was a great many years ago," he reminded her. "Don't forget, your aunt has been away from England for a long time."

Kit was aware again of that intangible warning that she could not interpret. Every day of this delay made it harder for her to shake off her uneasiness.

On the seventh morning Captain Eaton resorted to a curious device which John Holbrook called "walking up the river." Two sailors in a small boat went some distance ahead bearing a long rope fastened to a small anchor. Rowing as far as the rope would stretch, they dropped the anchor. On the deck of the ship the crew lined up, ten hearty men bared to the waist, each grasping the rope, and began a rhythmical march from one end of the ship to the other. As one man reached the end, he dropped the rope, and raced back to grasp it again at the end of the line. Painfully, almost imperceptibly, the
Dolphin
inched forward through the water. In an hour's time they had reached the anchor and the rowboat went ahead a second time. Over and over, hour after hour, the men moved, hauling the ship by the sheer force of straining muscle and gasping breath. Sweat poured down their arms and shoulders.

The agonizing slowness was harder to endure than no motion at all. Kit shuddered away from the sight of those lunging bodies. A hot spring sun beat down without relief. She twitched her own shoulders fretfully under the silk that stuck clammily against her skin. In the heat the stench of horses steamed up from the depths of the hold as though the animals were still there. This morning the cook had refused to spare her enough water even for a decent bath. It was almost too much to bear when she heard a splash directly below her and saw that Nat and two of the other young men had taken advantage of a wait for the rowboat and were thrashing about like porpoises in the river.

Nat looked up and caught her wistful eye. "Jump in, why don't you?" he taunted.

"You warned me never to do it again," Kit replied incautiously.

"Do you need an excuse? I'll shout for help and go under. You couldn't just stand there and watch me drown, could you?"

"Yes, I could," Kit laughed in spite of herself, "and I would, too."

"Then you can stay there and frizzle," responded Nat. As he paddled toward the ladder Kit watched him with both envy and relief. He had sounded as friendly and easy as on that first morning in Saybrook harbor.

As though to prove that the constraint between them was broken, in the next wait for the rowboat Nat strolled over to join her where she stood watching.

"I'll wager you're wishing you'd never left Barbados," he said. "'Twas unfair of me to tease you."

"How I envied you," she exclaimed. "To get into that water and away from this filthy ship even for a moment!"

In a split second a squall darkened Nat's blue eyes. "Filthy—the
Dolphin?
"

"Oh," she laughed impatiently, "I know you're forever scrubbing. But that stable smell! I'll never get it out of my hair as long as I live!"

Nat's indignation found vent in scorn. "Maybe you think it would smell prettier with a hold full of human bodies, half of them rotting in their chains before anyone knew they were dead!"

Kit recoiled, as much from his angry tone as from the repulsive words. "What are you talking about? People—down in the hold?"

"I suppose you never knew about slaves on Barbados?"

"Of course I knew. We own—we used to own—more than a hundred. How else could you work a plantation?"

"How did you think they got there? Did you fancy they traveled from Africa in private cabins like yours?"

She had never thought about it at all. "But don't you have slaves in America?"

"Yes, to our shame! Mostly down Virginia way. But there are plenty of fine folk like you here in New England who'll pay a fat price for black flesh without asking any questions how it got here. If my father would consent to bring back just one load of slaves we would have had our new ketch by this summer. But we Eatons, we're almighty proud that our ship has a good honest stink of horses!"

Nat was gone again. What a touchy temper he had! She hadn't meant to insult his precious ship. Why did he deliberately turn everything to her disadvantage? He had been just on the point of making friends. Now the trip would probably be over before she could speak to him again. And why should she care—a rude, freckle faced sailor who took more notice of a strip of canvas than of a brocaded gown? At least John Holbrook knew how to speak with respect.

But even John Holbrook did not approve of her completely. She was forever astonishing him. Last night, for instance, she had reached impulsively for the volume he held, opened it at the marked page, and squinting curiously at the words in the wan light, had read aloud:

"We are in the first place to apprehend that there is a time fixed and stated by God for the Devil to enjoy a dominion over our sinful and therefore woful world. Toward the end of his time the descent of the Devil in Wrath upon the World will produce more woful effects than what have been in former Ages. The death pangs of the Devil will make him to be more of a Devil than ever he was—"

"Goodness!" Kit wrinkled up her nose. "Is this what you read all day long?" She looked up to find John staring at her.

"You can read that?" he questioned, with the same amazement he had shown when she had proved she could swim. "How did you learn to read when you say you just ran wild like a savage and never did any work?"

"Do you call reading work? I don't even remember how I learned. When it was too hot to play, Grandfather would take me into his library where it was dark and cool, and read to me out loud from his books, and later I would sit beside him and read to myself while he studied."

"What sort of books?" John's voice was incredulous.

"Oh, history, and poetry, and plays."