He took another long drink and answered, smiling, “Ezra Black is a dead man.”
Two hours past sunset, there were only five men left in the field, and the villagers sent their yawning, limp children into the blackening shadows to take water to the reapers and to bring back word of who thrived and who faltered. Soon nothing could be seen beyond the cook fires, but the voices of the still-working men could be heard calling back and forth, encouraging, taunting, challenging one another to stay or give up and return to the warmth of a fire and a well-deserved rest. Within an hour’s time the calling ceased and there was no sound from the field but a distant whooshing noise of the evening breezes sweeping and bending the remaining shafts.
Martha sat feeding the fire with dried grasses and watching the children, delighted with the little leather- winged bats that flew above the flames, chasing the sparks as though they were fireflies. Patience, resting hunkered on the ground, had begun nodding drowsily into sleep when a man approached the circle of firelight asking for Goodwife Taylor. He had the ruddy face and breadth of shoulders of a farmer, but his shirt was of a better quality than those worn by the other village men, and though it had been soaked with sweat, it looked decently clean. Patience roused herself and, gesturing for Martha to help her up, rose awkwardly to face him. Straightening her apron down over her swollen belly, she said, “I am Goodwife Taylor.”
“Goody Taylor, my name is Asa Rogers, recently come from Salem with my brother. I’ve heard from some here in Billerica that you’ve land which lies fallow on the river.” He pointed southerly towards the Concord and continued, “I am here to propose a fair price on the land. More than fair, in fact.” When she didn’t answer, he added, “A quite generous offer.”
“Who has put about that the land is unclaimed?” Martha asked, realizing with sudden alarm that he spoke of the plot promised to Thomas.
He cut his eyes briefly at her, and she saw a hard shrewdness far beyond the simple cunning of a farmer at trade. “As it so happens, it was Edward Wright, the tinsmith.” He turned back to Patience, his voice reasonable and reassuring. “Goodwife Taylor, I’ll be building a mill and need land seated on water. Whatever arrangements have been proposed, if there is no binding contract and no coin proffered, the land is yet in your possession, to be disposed of at your will. And to your gain.”
“My husband is not here…,” Patience began uncertainly, flinching as Martha’s grip tightened painfully on her hand.
“That land is promised to another,” Martha said, noting the barely concealed flash of irritation crossing the miller’s face.
He took off his hat, slapping it twice against his thigh. “What if the land was promised in good faith but accepted under false pretenses?”
Patience frowned and opened her mouth to speak when Martha tugged at her hand to remain silent.
“Very well,” he said after a moment’s pause. He nodded to Patience. “I’ll speak to your husband about this when he is returned. I stay with the Reverend Hastings if you have a change of heart. Good night.” He flashed a final hooded look at Martha and walked away.
As the stars pinpricked their way through the sky, there were only two men left in the field. Martha wrapped some bread and meat in her apron and let Will lead her to the place where he had last seen Thomas working. Martha could see from a distance his broad-brimmed straw hat towering above the whispering grasses, reflecting the faint nocturnal light as sharply as a sail under the moon. She wordlessly gave him the food and drink, and when he had finished, she felt his hand slip warmly around her upper arm. He kneaded the flesh, his fingers gripping her tightly. He released her and stepped away to resume his reaping, careful to keep the swinging blade from cutting her or the child. Close by, she could hear the rhythmic swish of Ezra’s scythe, his breathing beginning to sound burdened. Will took her by the hand, and she followed him back to the cook fires blazing close together in defensive clusters.
One by one, as midnight passed, the villagers and their children drifted off to sleep, the fires wasting down to embers. The breeze turned cooler and Martha lay down under a blanket, Patience at her back, the children huddled together for warmth nearby. She closed her eyes but sleep would not come. Like a plague carcass, the tinsmith had thrown at her the unfamiliar and dangerous-sounding names of
She woke when the sky was lightening, the stars gone, and she sat abruptly and rubbed at her eyes. A small band of men had walked into the field some distance away and stood motionless looking in the same direction. She quickly rose and walked to where they were gathered and saw that another five acres had been mown through the blackest of night, the grass lying cropped and flattened, as though a monstrous mill wheel had been rolled across the ground. Two men reaping could be seen afar in the newly made clearing. One figure had stopped and leaned heavily on his scythe handle, swaying gently as though balanced on a rending ice floe. The other figure continued in a slow and steady pace, hacking through the stalks with a dulled blade, step and sweep, step and sweep, until the smaller man stopped his weaving and crumpled onto the freshly cut hay.
The fallen man was carried from the field, and there was no clapping on the back or welcoming draught of ale for Ezra Black, only the amazed and wary looks from the waking men and women now running into the field to stare at the victor. Their incredulous faces looked to the tall man, relentless and poised, holding his scythe with a firm and steady hand, as if the roaring pendulum of God had come to sever the life strings between Heaven and Earth.
He walked the few miles to home, refusing to be carried in the wagon’s bed on top of the soft and fragrant mown grasses, and Martha walked beside him, slipping her hand into his at the quarter-mile marker.
CHAPTER 14
BRUDLOE SETTLED THE palms of his hands more securely over the pillow, leaning closer to Hammett Cornwall, who sat next to him on the bed. He studied Cornwall’s large, mournful face, his downturned mouth, and impassive eyes floating wetly within pouches of skin still tinged with gray. He had begun to worry about the big man, the way he now often stared at the bedroom walls by the hour, never speaking unless responding in grunts to Brudloe’s questions or directives. Brudloe observed the pallor, the tinge of mottled scarlet around Cornwall’s lips, remaining like a stain, and knew they had both escaped death only barely. The sickness had come upon them quickly, and ferociously, after leaving the ship at Boston Harbor, and if not for the ministrations of the kind Mrs. Parker, their boarding mistress, they both would have been buried with their young companion, Edward Thornton.
“Along with all his fine clothes. And with him an earl. Much good it did him,” Brudloe muttered out loud.
The bed under Cornwall heaved and shuddered briefly, and with an exasperated sigh, Brudloe brought his weight down more firmly on the pillow under his hands. “It’s takin’ forever for this bitch t’ die. She must’ve found a pocket of air in the down.”
Cornwall remained silent, and Brudloe signaled with his chin for the larger man to settle his considerable weight back more firmly over the bulge under the quilt.
The movement under the pillow was growing fainter and he breathed out, “About fuckin’ time.”
Mrs. Parker, the owner of the inn on Water Street where they had landed after the crossing, had been a pleasant diversion once he had recovered enough to plow her well-trod fields. She certainly seemed willing, crawling right into his bed the minute his eyes had lingered on the upper swell of her bodice, chastely covered with a muslin scarf. She had the breasts and thighs he preferred, soft and malleable like undercooked bread. She was enthusiastic and unguarded in her mounting, riding him topside like a weathervane on a pole but, and this was the thing he found the most exciting, with the withholding, almost modest, puckered kisses of a little girl.
She had nursed the men beyond an illness of almost two months, seeing them through the retching and watery bowels that had killed Thornton after the first few weeks. Following the unexpected deaths of Baker and the eel boy, both seemingly washed over the side of the boat in the storm, the captain of
