They married just two weeks later in the apple orchard. Reverend Clarke blessed their union under a bower of apple blossoms, their perfume drenching us like mist. It was as if the earth stretched herself at that moment, as if the loss of so many of her children allowed abundance of her other gifts. I looked at Gwenny’s poor babes, scars pitting their faces, and knew Dolly would be mother to them as if they were her own, for I saw them take her hands eagerly as only a child could.
Cullah decided not to reopen his shop. Though he had some tools at home and our friends and neighbors sought after his work, his large machinery could not be replaced with the money we had. I believed that in that year of deprivation, his heart was gone out of it. Our passion for each other seemed to wane, too, but our affection grew. I was startled one day to realize that my courses had ceased. There would be no more children for us. Cullah was no longer obsessed with making his lovely furniture, and I missed the sparkle that came into his eyes when he used to tell me about the challenges of it. Making a bead around a drawer front, set so that it had exactly a sixteenth of an inch on all sides when closed, was as exciting to him as a tracing of yellow silk on a gray linen to me.
We planted our fields, side by side, and spent our summer evenings hand in hand, walking the orchards and the fields, lingering by the stream when the wild geese led their goslings about, or settled on a bench he had built by the stream’s edge. If the weather was rainy, we stayed by the fire and read aloud. Cullah was quite proud of his ability at last to read, and though it went slowly, we had many a good evening’s entertainment that way. I found myself smiling at him as he worked at a word, thinking how humble and good he was, how earnest. How I loved him.
Alice kept the house, tending it until things sparkled in ways I never had managed before. Our house seemed so empty, to me, yet in every corner, I heard the echo of children laughing or squabbling over some slight by one of the others. I saw their little noses pressed against the window glass looking out at the snow, or remembered tending them and the endless days of illness.
*
When next I went to visit Margaret, intending to do some errands on the way, September’s first hint of frost was in the morning air as I set out to drive through barricades and questioning soldiers to brave Boston’s streets searching for needles and pins. Margaret seemed drawn and she wore a patch upon her face I had not seen before. “I am marked forever by this disease,” she said, pulling the patch from her face. “This ridiculous thing is the rage in London. People there wear patches though they have no smallpox scars to cover, did you know that?”
“No, I did not.”
“I look like a cur.”
I studied my callused fingers. I had spent so many hours at the loom, I felt almost as if I could not walk without repeating in my mind the clickety-tick sounds of the countermarche. It was just as the day we alighted the ship and the sand on dry land seemed to roll like a wave. “I have my scars, too. You look like a woman. The reason we love to see a babe is to be reminded what immortal beauty will be. We cannot walk this earth without our marks. Will you and George come for Thanksgiving in November?”
“Did you not hear? Governor Hutchinson has outlawed it. He said it was too frivolous, and that the colonists ought to be thankful they are not all hanged, rather than celebrating.”
“He is a cur.”
“Resolute? When did you grow so old?”
“Why, what a terrible thing to say.”
“I told you I was rude. I did not wish to imply your mien was unattractive. But, as you said to me, we are only as good friends as we are honest ones. I meant that you have such a motherly way about you. It is wisdom as if you were a hundred years old. I never noticed it when we used to sit and gossip. When did that change?”
I did not want to repeat the obvious to her that it often came with motherhood. I valued Margaret. I loved her spunk and vitality. I wanted to see myself in her, I suppose. “It comes with the scars, sweet Margaret.” As I picked up the reins—for I had learned to drive my own wagon—I said, “Margaret? If I have need of you? If ever I cannot get into Boston and want you, what can I do?”
She smiled as if she, too, knew we needed this. She reached into her skirt and into her pocket, and pulled out a silver shilling. “Send me this,” she said, placing it in my hand and closing my fingers with hers. “Send me a shilling and I will come. Only keep it in your hat, and let no one spend it.”
“Send a shilling,” I said. “It will only happen, of course, if I may trust any messenger with a shilling in these times.”
“True. Sixpence will do as well. Farewell, friend. I know not whether we will meet again soon. There’s talk they will close the town completely.”
“Let us plan, then. Come to my house next Tuesday for tea. I will spend my last lump of sugar making cakes.”