And not that he’d decided yet. Retribution was barely thirty-five. He could wait a while longer. But if Resolution Brome himself took another wife, he’d have to fix up that old wife-house that was half falling down where Resolution himself had been born, where his own mama had lived right up until she died. He hadn’t put anybody in there since his own father had died and he had taken over the farm.
He wasn’t sure he wanted anybody in Mama’s house. Maybe he could lay off a wife. Send one back to her mother or over to the granny house. Retribution’s ma, Plentitude, was no damn good for anything, maybe he could move her over to the granny house. Not that she was quite old enough to be a granny. Close to fifty, though. One boy born to her when she was still a girl and then nothing until that other one five years ago, which was his own damn fault for takin’ too much of the sacrament at the observance. If he’d been sober he’d have known which wife-house he was headed into even if it was dark, and it sure wouldn’t have been Plentitude, who always smelled like sour milk and something moldy and had a duty place like wet sandpaper. But if he did move her into the granny house and put Perseverance in her place, it might give some of the other Elders ideas. Pretty soon he could move Rejoice, though. She was a granny, sure enough. Every time he saw her he thought of the smell of chicken soup. Woman always smelled like chicken soup. Hadn’t been a red scarf on her doorlatch for two years now, but it wasn’t usual to move a woman out of her wife-house until her youngest was gone. Rejoice still had one girl at home. Modesty, ten years old.
Then there was Matilda. Thirty-two years old, three dead babies, and her lying there coughing blood and taking up space. Nicest-lookin’ woman Resolution had ever seen, even now. Matilda was a Demoin. Maybe he’d do some sheep tradin’ and send her back to the Demoins. No point keepin a wife who couldn’t produce.
He counted on his fingers. Seven from Rejoice, all grown but one. Four from Cheerfulness, the oldest was only nine, and two from Plentitude. Six from Susannah, not counting the ones he’d disposed of. Nineteen, all together, fourteen of them boys. Could be that was just enough….
Damn Susannah, anyhow, he told himself. Any other wife a man could do his duty on for most of a year if he was minded to without her getting pregnant. It was like she did it just to vex him.
AT THE BACHELOR HOUSE, Retribution Brome was sharpening a scythe and preaching sedition to his brothers.
“Well, I say they’re not of a mind to let us have any wives at all, no matter how many acres we get cleared. You look at the home manor, now. You’ve got Susannah’s two girls, Chastity’s thirteen and Faith’s eight, and I’ll bet Chastity’s spoken for already. Cheerfulness has a seven-year-old who looks all right, her other girl’s a baby.
“That ten-year-old of old Rejoice’s has sniffles and a squint. Meantime, there’s only one of us Brome sons married off, and eight of us here in the bachelor house, and five more with their mamas. That’s a total of thirteen boys left unmarried and only five girls to trade off. Now you can bet the Jepson manor is just about the same, and so is the Gavin manor, and the rest of ’em on up the valley. Every family has three or four girls and a dozen or more sons. Papa’s getting on for seventy-five, and he won’t last forever. And when he goes he’ll leave Susannah, she’s younger than me, and Cheerfulness, she’s younger, and Matilda, she’s younger, but they’ll all of ’em be widows with kids, so nobody else can have ’em. What it amounts to is the Elders using up six or seven women apiece, some of ’em more than that, and killin’ off baby girls whenever they care to, and the rest of us can go hang! There’s about one girl for every four of us.”
“What you goin’ to do, Ret? Run off and join the devil women up north?”
“Figure I might catch one and bring her back.”
“You think she’d stay? You’re talkin’ just plain silly.”
“Figure if I break her leg, likely she’d stay.” Retribution continued stroking the edge of the scythe with the stone, glaring across the room at his half brothers, Diligence and Vengeance, Rejoice’s sons.
“Wouldn’t be any good to you. Those are city females, Ret. Wouldn’t know how to make a cheese, even.”
“One thing she’d know how to do,” he said darkly. “All she’d have to do about it is lie still.”
“I don’t know what you’re in such a sweat about,” Diligence observed. “Firstborn didn’t get him a wife until last year and he was almost forty.”
“And what did he get? Humility Gavin, from over the hill. She was half bald.”
“She had to have her head shaved when she got married anyhow, Ret. What the hell difference did it make?”
“Big difference between a woman with her hair shaved off and a woman without any. Like she’ll probably have half-bald kids, and Firstborn’ll be walkin’ around with his head down and these skin-headed kids trailin’ after him.”
“Way I hear it,” Vengeance observed, “Elder Jepson wants Chastity for Thankful, so he’s goin’ to trade Perseverance, and likely you’ll get her.”
“Perseverance, shit. Her
