The Wolves of Andover

mouth, savoring the stringent, almost bitter taste, and held the rest back for a stew for Patience.

Her cousin was becoming more and more knotted over with worry about the birthing, which Martha was certain was soon to come. The pregnant woman’s ankles were swollen, as were her hands and the skin under her eyes. At least her appetite was good, the retching now all but gone. But there was still a disturbing lack of movement within Patience’s belly, and she would often grab at Martha’s hand and place it over the mounded flesh, pleading, “Martha, tell me you yet feel the flutterings.”

This morning, before the sun grew too hot, Martha would go with Thomas to scrape enough slippery elm to make a poultice to ease the passage of the infant through the birth channel. She had wanted to go days earlier, but Thomas had put her off, saying it was not safe. He had for the past week been frequently gone, searching out the scarce game that hid from the heat, and had told her that between the pox and the Indian raids, life was of late never more the width of a blade’s edge.

She closed the book and quickly stitched it back into her pillow. She then took up a short curved knife for peeling the elm branches and tucked it into her apron. Joanna had been sitting at the hearth, practicing writing her name in the ashes with a stick, the letters floating canted and disconnected like sprigs of rosemary in soup.

Martha bent down and kissed her head, the girl’s hair smelling of acrid smoke and lavender, and admonished her, for her mother’s sake, to be at least quiet if not good.

As she walked from the house, John grinned at her and loudly sang, “Now is the month of Maying, when merry lads go playing…” She scowled, her face reddening, but secretly she was pleased, and John laughed and sang even louder, the words of the song following her across the yard.

Will waited outside with the stubborn pout she had come to know as the desperate disappointment of the man-child, forever being left behind when an adventure away from the settlement was under way. She waved to him as she and Thomas walked south, but Will stood, his arms crossed, his narrow hips thrust angrily forward, glowering at them until the view to the path was veiled by the branches of low-hanging trees.

They walked for a while, not talking, Thomas’s pace deliberately slow for her benefit, but there were no glances, and when he didn’t soon reach for her hand, she moved nearer. He stopped once and hunkered down, gesturing for her to do the same, and pointed into the shadows of the bracken. It took her a long time to see the deer, twin mottled shapes, their heads bowed in sleep over each other’s backs, motionless except for the delicate, almost imperceptible motion of their ribs. He gripped the barrel of the flint, upright like a staff, but never moved to fire it.

They stood quietly and moved on, the building heat creating crescents of sweat under their arms. The birds stopped their morning rustling, settling into sporadic calls and answers, and Martha’s hand brushed the carapace of a grass locust clinging, with serrated arms, to her skirt. She swept it away and looked once more at Thomas, his brooding face framed from behind by the powdery dust kicked up by his boots.

She became more discomfited by the silence, by his withdrawn, distracted air, and she burned to ask, Are you Thomas Morgan? Instead, she pulled at his sleeve and said, “I thank you for the gifts.” He stopped, his chin pointing towards the road in front of them. “Thomas…,” she began. It was the first time she had uttered his name in his presence and she was suddenly desperately shy, as brittle and insubstantial as the locust she had flicked away into the grass.

He took her wrist and walked her to the side of the path where a small boulder was planted firmly into the earth and lifted her in one motion, setting her feet on the flattened edge of the rock so that her face was closer to his own. He swept off his hat, gripping her arms tightly as if to keep her from falling off a great height.

“Martha,” he said. She waited for him to speak further, but he dropped his chin and looked away. She knotted the linen of his shirt in both her hands and tugged at the cloth until he looked at her again.

“There are things,” he began, “which must be said.”

“Nothing needs to be said now, except for those promises you are willing to give.”

“No,” he said, his hands tracking the distance of her arms, coming to rest over her fingers still gripping the front of his shirt.

Through her palms she could feel the rhythmic pulsing beneath his ribs, and imagined his heart as large as a waterwheel, churning his warming blood through the length of him. His breath expanded and contracted in moist waves around her face, and a half smile rimmed his lips. “The wolf skin would’ve been better suited to you than the doeskin.”

“Is that how you see me?” she asked. “Like a wolf? Is that who I am in your tale of Gelert? Am I the wolf?” Her face was defensive and half-fearful, like a child expecting punishment.

He leaned closer, bringing his lips to her ear, and asked solemnly, “D’you still not know?” She shook her head, and cupping the side of her face with his hand, he said, “You are the deer shot through with arrows whose heart grows cold for want of being taken.”

He looked at her, his mouth solemn, and her eyes filled with tears. He held her, speaking to her in his own tongue, the guttural sounds fractured and sweet against her cheek. “Branwen,” he called her, pulling off her cap to crimp the black hair in his hands. He whispered into her neck, first in Welsh and then in English, the tale of the myth-woman Branwen, with cheeks the color of raven’s blood and the body of snow. He kissed her mouth, encircling the backs of her thighs with his arms, pressing her against him. Tracing upwards with his fingers the bony prominences of her spine, he rested his palms beneath the hollows of her arms and he slowly pulled her away. He lifted up her apron to show her she should wipe her face, streaked and glistening. He helped her by brushing the creases of her eyelids with his thumbs and smoothing back the knots of hair from her forehead.

“Sweetheart,” he said, kissing the hollow of her throat.

By measures her tears dried, and after lifting her from the rock, he took her hand and led her to the grove where she set to work with her curve-bladed knife, gathering the sap from the slippery elm. The insides of the trunks were still soft, the hidden bark light-colored and strong-smelling, and she scraped at it vigorously, the sweat from her face burning her eyes like lye. After a time, she gathered the shavings into a small bag and watched Thomas scanning the path and the woods for movement, his form grown restless and agitated.

After a while he said, “When you take up a man’s name, you take on his history. I’m nigh on fifty years. D’ye know that?” She nodded for him to go on. “I’ve had a wife before. In England.”

Her grip on the knife handle tightened, but she kept her eyes on the bark and the rhythmic scraping of the blade.

“She died when I was a soldier fightin’ for Cromwell in Ireland. I were his man in all things, Martha, and you should know it before you tie yourself to me.”

His eyes searched the length of the path from the opposite direction they had come, as though he expected someone to appear. She anxiously peered into the woods, looking for something hidden in the shadows, but saw nothing alarming. He glanced up at the sky, the sun at midpoint, and then, nodding, turned to her. “I’d tell you all, here and now, but for the others.”

Others? she thought, wiping away a limp strand of hair with the back of her sleeve. She saw him look sharp to the road and she stood up, following the direction of his gaze. A man walked towards them, his arms swinging easily in counterpoint to his rapid stride. He was dressed in a leather jerkin and full breeches like any farmer, but with the confidence of a man used to certainty of action. Lacing her fingers around her eyes against the noon glare, she looked up at Thomas and with a jolt realized that he knew the man, that he had been waiting for him. As he walked nearer, she saw that the man was tall, only a head shorter than Thomas, with a few days’ growth of heavy beard, as though he had been living hard on the ground. His footfalls made explosions of dust as his heels struck the path, and the long barrel of a flintlock, strapped with leather to his back, gleamed dully over one shoulder.

He came to stand in front of them, placing a familiar hand on Thomas’s shoulder. There was nothing said between them, merely the nodding of heads in casual greeting.

“Here is my friend Robert Russell.” There was weight in the word “friend,” but Thomas offered nothing further.

Martha looked at the man, unsure how to place his name or face. He was a stranger to her; she had never heard Thomas speak of him before today. Robert regarded her closely, scrutinizing her face, and she wondered if her eyes were still red and swollen from weeping. She self-consciously wiped her slick palms on her apron and waited.

Suddenly he grinned, displaying an alarming array of strong white teeth, and said, “You look confounded, missus. But that is to be expected, as you know little of me, and I know so much of yourself.”