Alis

20
Her heart was eased by Elzbet’s friendship and she was glad to have made some kind of peace with her mother, but still she felt as if her life were over. And though her days were better, her nights remained a torment.
Late one morning, coming back from seeing the dairy wife about the cheese and cream, Alis found little Deborah from Boundary Farm in the kitchen with a message: her father was bad again—raving about his sins, howling that he was cast into the darkness. The Minister must come: no one else could soothe him. Martha reported that Galin had a visitor and she was about to take in some refreshment.
“I will see to it,” Alis said. “Stay here with the child.” She put the tankards and the plate of cake onto a wooden board and carried it to the front room. The man sitting at the table with Galin turned his head as she came in. She felt the room spin and blur and knew she was about to faint.
When she came to, she was lying on the polished boards feeling weak and sick. Galin leaned over her, his pale face anxious. “Alis, you are not well. I will send for someone.”
She shook her head, feeling the tears trickle out of the sides of her eyes and into her hair as she lay there. The dreams were bad enough. And now this. How was she to bear it?
She could hear Galin instructing Martha to stop cleaning up the broken pots and fetch one of the Healers. She struggled to sit up. “No. It was a moment’s giddiness, no more. Martha, stay here and finish what you are doing. I do not need a Healer.”
Galin protested but she would not hear of it. She would be better in a moment; she required no one. He helped her up. The visitor had disappeared. Remembering her errand, she told Galin that he was wanted. He looked troubled. He did not like to leave her. She made an effort to smile at him. Martha would take care of her; he must not neglect his duties. He agreed reluctantly.
“Are you fit to entertain the young man who has come? I am anxious to know his news but I must attend to Deborah’s father first. He is not safe when these fits come upon him; I fear for the child and her mother.”
He would have said more but Martha came through from the kitchen saying that the child was crying: her father would kill himself. Why did the Minister not come?
“Tell her I am coming,” Galin said. “Alis, it troubles me to leave you. Shall I not send Martha to have someone come to sit with you?”
She shook her head. “No indeed. I am quite recovered. Get you gone before the man does violence upon himself. I will tend to our guest.”
Her husband looked at her doubtfully. She was very pale, with dark circles under her eyes, but when did she not look so?
He went away and Alis sat for a few moments gathering her strength. Now she must deal with the visitor and if there was a resemblance, she must endure it. He was in the garden, Martha said. He begged the privilege of a few words with her if she were well enough. He was sorry to intrude. She rose, and as she did so the prayer-house clock struck four.
“Go now, Martha. I am quite well again. I do not need you.”
The girl did not need bidding twice.
Alis went out of the door and stopped. The blood pounded in her head. It could not be true. “Luke?”
He was dressed in farm clothes—a man now, taller, broader in the shoulders, but with the same soft brown hair and olive skin. He said stiffly, “I heard you had married him. I came to find out why.”
She stared at him, unable to speak. He looked away, saying in a lower voice, “When Ethan did not come again, I feared for you. I thought perhaps he was dead and you were lost somewhere with none to aid you, or even that you yourself were dead. I thought to tell my grandmother the truth so that I might come to seek you. And then we heard the news.”
He looked straight at her, his face full of grief. “Oh, Alis! How is it that you are married to that man? You said you would rather die.” His voice shook, and he stopped speaking.
She said in a whisper, “I went to Ellen’s and there was no one there. Even the cows were gone.”
He gave a strangled exclamation and slammed his fist into his open palm. “Fool that I am! I never thought of you coming back there by yourself. Ellen left word for Ethan with one of the Healers whom she trusts. She knew that having medicines to sell, he would go to see the woman and would learn where we were. We’d moved in with Ellen when my grandfather fell sick and the Elders said he could not be Minister anymore. But then my grandmother thought we would be safer with some friends of Ellen’s who live outside the Two Rivers boundary, where it would be harder for the Elders to trouble us. Her neighbor, Saul, put Ellen’s cows in with his so that she could travel with us to help care for my grandfather. It is too cruel that you should have come just then!”
Her throat closed up. “I thought you were dead.” She could not go on. He was alive! He had haunted her dreams until she thought she would go mad with grief. And now he was here.
Luke looked baffled. “You knew we expected to go away. Why should you think me dead just because there was no one at the farm?”
“It was not because of that, but . . .” She saw again the shrub and Lilith tearing the petals, the litter of white fragments at her feet.
Lilith had known her, and had lied to get her out of the way! Shyly she took Luke’s hand—there was no one to see them. She had been cruelly misled, but he was alive, his hand warm in hers. “Come and sit here, and I will tell you how it was.”
On an old bench, among the weeds and wildness of the neglected garden, they sat down together and she told him her story.
He clenched his fists at Lilith’s lie. “But why did you believe her when she said I had died?”
She had to think. Not for a moment, then, or in all the months since, had it occurred to her to doubt what Lilith had said: the shuttered farmhouse, the girl’s tear-reddened eyes, the sense of secret dread fulfilled, perhaps. And then the story fitted with events and seemed likely enough.
“Likely enough?” Luke scoffed. “As if a night in the open would kill me.”
“I see that now, but at the time . . . Besides, I did not think Lilith had recognized me, and why should she lie to a stranger?”
“But even then,” Luke said angrily, “when you thought I was dead”—she shuddered remembering it and clasped his hand more tightly—“why did you come back here? You could have found work at an inn as you say you had done before. Or you could have gone back to the city to your brother.”
How easy he made it sound! She said slowly, “I thought it was meant to be a lesson, your death, because I had defied my parents and because I had not heeded the signs of the Maker’s anger.”
He looked at her uncomprehendingly.
She tried again. “Your grandmother, Ethan, Joel. Things went ill with them because they tried to help me. And I would not see it. Then when Lilith said you had died, it was as though the Maker was saying, ‘Now do you see?’ And although nothing could be worse than your dying”—she closed her eyes, remembering the horror of that day—“I would not bring evil on anyone else. We are to obey our parents, the Book says. So I came home at last, to obey.”
Luke said furiously, “You should not have married him. You should have kept faith. You said you would rather die.”
“Oh, Luke!” She was despairing. How was it that he did not understand? “If I had known you were alive, do you think I would have done it? I thought you were dead. I was like a dead thing myself, except for the pain. It did not matter to me whether I married him or not, only—I would not bring more grief to those who had been good to me.”
He was not looking at her. He disengaged his hand and stood up. His mouth twisted bitterly. “Well, you are married now and no help for it. And I must care for my grandparents. Lilith cannot have dreamed her little trick would work so well.”
It hurt her to hear him speak so. “Do not be angry. Think how it is for me. All this time I have mourned for you—it has been so dreadful.” Her voice broke and his expression softened. “And now you are alive after all; it is like coming into the light and air after being trapped in a dark place.”
She made a little sound, half laugh, half sob. He moved toward her as if he would have taken her hand once more, and then as if some unwelcome memory had arrested his gesture, he stopped. She looked at him. His face had gone hard.
“Are you with child?”
She was so startled she could not speak for a moment. “With child? No, indeed. Why should you think it?”
“You fainted. My grandmother says it is sometimes thus with women when they conceive—she did so twice when she was carrying my mother though she is strong and never sick.”
Alis said firmly, “I am not with child, I assure you. It was seeing you that made me faint.”
His expression did not lighten, however. He said viciously, “Well, if you are not, you will be soon enough, I daresay.”
She shook her head.
He frowned. “How can you be sure?” And then in sudden distress, “Alis, you will not be foolish and do that which will harm you to stop a child from coming. Women die that way, I have heard.”
She put her hand on his arm to stem the flow of words. “Dear Luke. You need have no fear. There is no question of that.”
She could see he was not persuaded.
“How can you be certain there will be no child? When husband and wife lie together”—she interrupted him.
“We do not lie together, he and I. We have never done so.”
He sat down again upon the bench and stared at her disbelievingly. She said gently, “He will not force me. He has given me his word.”
Luke took a deep breath and let it out again. The hardness was gone from his face. Hesitantly he said, “You do not share a bed?”
She smiled. “I have my own chamber.”
Luke shook his head wonderingly. “He must be a strange man. But Alis, suppose he changes his mind. What will you do?”
“He will not change his mind.”
“You cannot be sure.”
“I am sure.”
His expression was mulish. “All the same, what would you do?” “Oh, Luke! I don’t know. I wouldn’t let him touch me, you may be sure of that.” She remembered her first sight of the marriage bed, and the nausea rose in her throat as it had done that day. “I think I would kill him. I know how to use a knife, I suppose.”
He looked at her, appalled, and she hastened to reassure him. “But truly, there is no danger of it. He has no desire for me. And though he says the marriage is the Maker’s will, in truth I am not sure he believes it.”
For a long time they sat without speaking. The sun left the garden and a little wind got up. She took him indoors and prepared food for him, assuring him that Galin would not be home for hours, for he said he could not endure to sit at table with the man who was her husband. While he ate, she asked for the news from Two Rivers. Luke looked gloomy.
“There is little good to tell except that you are no longer spoken of as starting the fire. They have blamed the mute woman who Samuel lived with before he was whipped and driven out. But Thomas is more powerful than ever. He and Robert have their way in everything. Sarah is with child again. My grandmother is unchanged, only grieved for my grandfather who is full of sorrow, and sick, too. They have made him so: he could not bear to see the people suffer, and yet he would not leave them until he was forced to. And the Elders are extending their power, buying up farmland closer to where we are living. We may yet be driven right away.”
She sat opposite him at the table as he talked, reluctant to take her eyes from him for an instant, wishing that the meal might never end. But at length he said, “I must go. I do not like to leave my grandparents any longer than need be. Tell your . . . tell Minister Galin my grandmother bid me say to him that Freeborne is not far from Two Rivers and you should not think yourselves safe from the contagion of reform.”
They went to the door and stood there. It was too cruel that they must part. They could not say, this time, that they would—must—meet again. She was married. She put her arms around his neck as she had done once before.
“Oh, Alis.” His voice trembled.
She thought she would weep. “Don’t say anything, Luke. It is hard enough to bear.”
For a moment they clung to each other, then she was watching his tall figure stride away into the June dusk and biting her lip to hold back the tears.
Galin returned weary and vexed, and she had to hide her feelings. The farmer he had been to visit was tormented by ideas of sin since his widowed mother-in-law had come to live with them.
“I would that we could send her away again,” Galin said, sitting down to the food she put before him. “The reformers rule where she has come from, and I would not have her spread their poison here. I suppose they have tightened their hold on Two Rivers also. What did the young man have to say?”
She told him the news and gave him Luke’s message from Mistress Elizabeth. He looked gloomy. “These are ill tidings. I hope we shall not take the infection.” He looked at her, and then went on a little hesitantly, “You are recovered from what ailed you earlier, it seems. There is color in your cheeks. You need young company. I hope you will see much of Elzbet, now that you have begun. You and she were inseparable once.”
“Galin.” She was looking at him intently, a plan forming in her head. “Why might not Luke’s grandparents”—she would not say
Luke—“come here to Freeborne if they are driven even farther from Two Rivers?”
His face was somber. “They might, but it is usual for such moves to be agreed between the Elders of both communities, and I daresay those of Two Rivers will declare Minister Jacob and his wife vexatious. Then we would have to ask permission of the Great Council for them to settle here. And I do not think it would be granted. I have heard that Master Robert has friends on the Council.”
She felt cold suddenly. “Will it be the same everywhere?”
He nodded. “Among the Communities, yes. There would be no place for them.”
“Could we not take them despite the Great Council?”
She wanted him to say it was so—she was afraid for them—but he shook his head. “If we defy the Council, Freeborne would cease to be one of the Communities of the Book. I do not think our people would vote for that.”
In her mind, she saw the three of them: Minister Jacob leaning on his stick, Mistress Elizabeth wincing at the stiffness in her shoulders, and Luke staring ahead. They had their backs to her and the empty road stretched away before them. There was a tremor in her voice. “Where would they go? How would they live?”
The oil lamp was beginning to smoke a little. Galin said, “As to where they would go—who knows? There are farms and villages outside the Communities, and forest settlements. The city, too. But”—seeing her distress, he sought to sound a more cheerful note—“perhaps it will not come to that. And they have their grandson. He will take care of them, surely.”
He was trimming the wick of the lamp as he spoke, and the light burned clear and steady again. She was comforted. They were not without help. And as for herself? Luke had come, and he had gone once more, but he was not dead. They would meet again: she knew it.