The Purchase (31 page)

Mary drew in her breath and hesitated, but how could she refuse? She climbed into the Ransome wagon. Perhaps she would catch a glimpse of Bry at the Fox house. Did he wander around the property, climbing in and out of trees? She got into the Ransome wagon and took another look at her visitor, who appeared to be younger than Mary by some years. So nicely dressed, Mary thought, struggling with a sense of envy she had never felt before. At her father’s house, they found Daniel on his bench and Benjamin hunched over the table mending a broken harness. Mary introduced the visitor, who took in the humility of the house while Daniel rose politely and Benjamin sprang up as if he had never seen a pretty girl before. He found himself staring at a face so articulate it might have been carved and he suddenly felt impoverished. Mary asked if he would please follow them in his wagon so that he could bring her home after
she had seen the girl’s father. She clutched a black bag that her father had given her for her doctoring trips. It had belonged to her mother and now held a vial of laudanum, wads of cotton, a knife, and a small container of salts.

The two wagons rolled out to the road in utter darkness and the horses trotted past outlying fields of corn and black stretches of forest. The stars were only pricks of light and the smell of damp earth was sweet. There were settlers in the clearings now – a bachelor who travelled with a pair of bulldogs, playing the fiddle wherever he went; a young couple who were going to farm, and the blacksmith, who would stay in Jonesville as long as it provided customers. Between those dwellings the crowns of trees met overhead, and under the trees, there were rustlings of large and small creatures.

At the Fox house, in the narrow hallway, Mary could hardly breathe. The house had the feel of a place abandoned by women years before. Nor was there sign of the male inhabitants. She heard the baying of hounds somewhere outside and thought of Bry again, out in the quarters, unreachable.

Miss Ransome’s father lay on an iron bed in a small back room that overlooked a rear porch. Mary put her palm on the old man’s wrist. “You must both come back with me to my house,” she told the daughter nervously, for she was anxious to quit this place. “My husband is away for the present and you can rest comfortably there.”

Angel of mercy, the daughter called her, clasping Mary’s hand in her own.

Mary thought Miss Ransome must be glad to escape this dismal house, and while Benjamin gathered the Ransomes’ trunks and helped the sick man into the wagon, she took a look at the dusty parlour out of rude curiosity, wondering how the boys who had murdered Simus managed to sit in the chairs
or pick up the Bible or look at their faces in the hanging mirror.

At her house, she settled her patient in her own marriage bed. It was the chance she had wanted to be able to tend to a patient properly, with Bett at her side, and she would find something to say if her husband suddenly returned. She left father and daughter together and went downstairs and then outside and around to the back of the house. Opening the door without announcement, she found Bett standing by a window at which the curtains were always drawn. Tonight the curtains were open.

“Please put out the light,” Bett said, pointing at Mary’s lantern. Seeing Bett’s tears, Mary asked what was wrong, but Bett kept her eyes on the starry sky.

Mary held out her hand. “We have a patient upstairs. He needs a tonic.”

“What are his symptoms?”

“Heart, I believe.”

“What age?”

“Perhaps forty.”

Now the healer began to cry soundlessly. How, she wondered, could anyone live so long as that? She reached for the hanging gourd with the hawthorn tonic.

“H
ow is it that you have your girl mixing my father’s medicine?” Elizabeth Ransome asked one morning as Mary put a plate of biscuits on the table next to a bowl of butter.

Mary winced. “Are you concerned for her?”

The younger woman widened her eyes. “My concern is for
you
, Missus Jones. And of course for my dear papa. I expect you know we must keep an eye on them.”

“Bett mixes things strictly to my orders.”

“The Negroes have practices.” Elizabeth reached for a biscuit. She wiped her hands on a cotton napkin and looked over at a pile of grey pelts in the corner. “Are you expecting your husband back soon?”

Mary wondered why the question had been asked. Perhaps Miss Ransome was worried about losing her rights to the upstairs room, where she slept beside her father at night and read to him when he was awake. The old man did not speak but the daughter sat beside him, applying a cloth to his head and directing Mary as to his needs. Now Mary said she did not know when her husband might return. “It is the season to bring in provisions,” she said as a warm streak of sun came through the open window and slid across biscuits and butter and the small painted table. For just a moment she longed to confide in her guest, to say that her husband’s trips were longer than ever, that
she rarely saw him for more than a day or two at a time. But Mary could think of no way to explain this – not to her guest, not to herself. There was no way to speak of her confusion without revealing what she could never say to anyone.

“And he is a woodsman,” mused the guest, staring again at the stack of pelts. “With the Indians fed weapons and promises by the Redcoats, you must live in a constant state of worry and dread.” Touching the napkin to her lips, she added that the Redcoats were blockading the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, making trade impossible.

Mary did not care about the Redcoats. She was watching that streak of sun melt the butter and wondering what to do about her marriage. Why was there no child to prove their love? Were her caresses inadequate? Was that it? She had no mother to ask. Did Wiley know that she had discovered his crime? Was she loyal to him only because she blamed herself? If she had protested that Simus was innocent when they dragged him away, her husband would not be a murderer. But how could they ever speak of it without unravelling their lives? Each of them had a burden that could not be shared.

“I do wonder that your husband and brothers have not joined a militia,” Miss Ransome commented.

Had Mary missed some part of the conversation? She looked at her guest and blinked to show that she had not been following.

“Those purple shirts on the Kentucky boys look very nice, I think.” Miss Ransome got up then, leaving her plate and cup on the table to be collected and washed.

And does she know what labour each cup and napkin cost me? wondered Mary, who was proud of the home she had made out of wood and cloth and wilderness. “My brothers are pacifists,” she said. To change the subject, she said, “May I ask what business you have with the Fox brothers?”

Elizabeth Ransome fluttered her hand. “We bring them two field workers.”

“Slaves.”

“And very much needed in these parts, from what I hear. Will you have yours bring my father’s breakfast up to our room?” Elizabeth made a tiny curtsy, then turned and went to the stairs.

Yours
. Bett had come in and was standing with her feet planted firmly apart, remembering a thousand encounters from an earlier time in her life. Once, when she had run crying to her grandmother about a small verbal injury, the old woman had told her that she came from a kingdom where white men had no importance. “Your great-grandfather was nganga mbuki. Yes, he wore a mark on his skin because he worked with the spirits of plants. Your grandfather was the same. Those are your ancestors.” While Bett watched the white woman ascend the stairs, she took a deep breath and held it for some time.

T
he Ransomes went home the night Mary was called to a house in the hills. A boy had knocked on her door. Would Mary come with him? He was stamping his feet for some reason and it was very late. Mary mounted the bay, packing her black bag in a pannier with a loaf of bread. The boy rode beside her on a lame donkey and found the path up the mountain in darkness while Mary listened to the howl of wolves. “Will we meet up with them?”

“Donno, ma’am.”

After climbing for a while, thick fog settled in and the air was moist and chill. Mary thought of Wiley walking alone somewhere in the dark. Had he gone north or west? She tucked her cape around her legs and kicked at the bay, who picked at the path with its loose stones. “No moon tonight.”

“No, ma’am.”

A growling wind had joined the growling wolves. Time passed and they climbed into fog. The horse shied at the sound of an owl.
May he who has received true grace have ground to fear?
Mary wished she had memorized poems instead of the Catechism. “Do you know any rhymes?”

The boy took up a chant about hunters and Mary hitched up her skirt and lifted her right leg, which was sore in the stirrup. “Why is the donkey lame?” If Wiley had met with an accident,
she would never know. They rode on. At times Mary could make out the rear end of the donkey but more often it was lost in milky vapour. “Are you up there ahead?”

“I am.”

At last the shape of a small cabin made itself felt in the mist. Mary dismounted, tied the bay to a fence, and felt her way along a narrow path. In the dark cabin, a woman lay on a log bed with an infant tucked into her arm. The stench of the place was overwhelming so that Mary held her apron over her nose and breathed through her mouth as she moved toward the bed. “Is there a candle?” As her eyes adjusted she saw four children sitting at a table as if carved from the same piece of wood.

“Where is your papa?”

“Gone off.”

“No one else here?” Mary was stunned. She ventured close enough that the woman took hold of her hand, moving her lips.

“Is there pain?” Mary asked.

The rough hand gripped hers.

Mary felt her way to the cold fireplace to see what the children might eat. “We must light the fire,” she said to the boy. “Go to your nearest neighbour and ask for a cinder pot.”

The boy said, “Ain’t nobody near.”

Mary pondered her situation, wishing for Bett. With proper care, the mother might surely be saved. She told the boy to go back down the mountain to her house and to bring Bett and a cinder pot and some food. The boy did not flinch as Mary used a small piece of coal to write out a pass on a found scrap of paper.
This alows Bett to
 … She suddenly stopped her hand. Bett had not been on a road in twelve years. How would she react to the huge nothingness of the hills? She would likely be afraid with only a boy to guide her. Mary finished writing.…
move as she well
 … and gave up the paper. “Tell her to bring her medicine bag. Use the word
emergency
.”

When he left, taking her bay, the boy tucked the slave pass into his sleeve and Mary sat down by the mother, cutting slices of her bread and murmuring to the children that more food was on the way. None of them responded. In the middle of this fouled night they were sleepless. Checking the cupboard, Mary found two turnips, three cabbages, and six potatoes. There was a bowl of ground corn. The four children ranged in age from seven or eight to three. “Have you a cow?” None of them answered. Mary picked the children up one by one and carried them to a cot in the corner of the cabin. While they leaned against one another, some of them dozing and some of them watching, she sat down again by the woman and put the new child to suckle after uncovering a leaking breast. How many births had she attended? None. Mary opened the door and stepped outside where the air was fresh. She remembered her mother and wondered if there had been this smell of putrefying flesh. The fog had cleared. Millions of stars were studding the sky and she thought of the boy alone on the mountainside travelling by their light. The donkey was grazing and she could make out the shape of a cow behind a spindly gate. Someone had brought a wife and children to this high, hidden place, built a cabin, and put up a fence. She opened the gate and the cow lumbered to her feet and lowered her head. “Pail,” said Mary, too late, as she saw the swollen udder, but she turned then and the cow moved fast and rammed her hard against the fence. Collecting herself, she found the pail hanging on a hook at the side of the cabin, and when the cow saw the pail she mooed and stood to be milked. Mary thought of Ruth and the thousands of hours her stepmother had spent on her milking stool. All for us, she thought guiltily, and so that Papa could have back
Miss Patch. She had been unchristian to her stepmother and this wicked cow was giving good milk. When Mary looked up she saw the four children standing outside the fence holding hands against the night. A wind had come up again. She took the pail to them and let them drink.