A Mercy Read online

  Early on when she settled on Jacob’s land, she visited the local church some seven miles away and met a few vaguely suspicious villagers. They had removed themselves from a larger sect in order to practice a purer form of their Separatist religion, one truer and more acceptable to God. Among them she was deliberately soft-spoken. In their meetinghouse she was accommodating and when they explained their beliefs she did not roll her eyes. It was when they refused to baptize her firstborn, her exquisite daughter, that Rebekka turned away. Weak as her faith was, there was no excuse for not protecting the soul of an infant from eternal perdition.

  More and more it was in Lina’s company that she let the misery seep out.

  “I chastised her for a torn shift, Lina, and the next thing I know she is lying in the snow. Her little head cracked like an egg.”

  It would have embarrassed her to mention personal sorrow in prayer; to be other than stalwart in grief; to let God know she was less than thankful for His watch. But she had delivered four healthy babies, watched three surrender at a different age to one or another illness, and then watched Patrician, her firstborn, who reached the age of five and provided a happiness Rebekka could not believe, lie in her arms for two days before dying from a broken crown. And then to bury her twice. First in a fur-sheltered coffin because the ground could not accept the little box Jacob built, so they had to leave her to freeze in it and, second, in late spring when they could place her among her brothers with the Anabaptists attending. Weak, pustulate, with not even a full day to mourn Jacob, her grief was fresh cut, like hay in famine. Her own death was what she should be concentrating on. She could hear its hooves clacking on the roof, could see the cloaked figure on horseback. But whenever the immediate torment subsided, her thoughts left Jacob and traveled to Patrician’s matted hair, the hard, dark lump of soap she used to clean it, the rinses over and over to free every honey-brown strand from the awful blood darkening, like her mind, to black. Rebekka never looked at the coffin waiting under pelts for thaw. But when finally the earth softened, when Jacob could get traction with the spade and they let the coffin down, she sat on the ground holding on to her elbows, oblivious of the damp, and gazed at every clod and clump that fell. She stayed there all day and through the night. No one, not Jacob, Sorrow or Lina, could get her up. And not the Pastor either, since he and his flock had been the ones whose beliefs stripped her children of redemption. She growled when they touched her; threw the blanket from her shoulders. They left her alone then, shaking their heads, muttering prayers for her forgiveness. At dawn in a light snowfall Lina came and arranged jewelry and food on the grave, along with scented leaves, telling her that the boys and Patrician were stars now, or something equally lovely: yellow and green birds, playful foxes or the rose-tinted clouds collecting at the edge of the sky. Pagan stuff, true, but more satisfying than the I-accept-and-will-see-you-at-Judgment-Day prayers Rebekka had been taught and heard repeated by the Baptist congregation. There had been a summer day once when she sat in front of the house sewing and talking profanely while Lina stirred linen boiling in a kettle at her side.

  I don’t think God knows who we are. I think He would like us, if He knew us, but I don’t think He knows about us.

  But He made us, Miss. No?

  He did. But he made the tails of peacocks too. That must have been harder.

  Oh, but, Miss, we sing and talk. Peacocks do not.

  We need to. Peacocks don’t. What else do we have?

  Thoughts. Hands to make things.

  All well and good. But that’s our business. Not God’s. He’s doing something else in the world. We are not on His mind.

  What is He doing then, if not watching over us?

  Lord knows.

  And they sputtered with laughter, like little girls hiding behind the stable loving the danger of their talk. She could not decide if Patrician’s accident by a cloven hoof was rebuke or proof of the pudding.

  Now here in bed, her deft, industrious hands wrapped in cloth lest she claw herself bloody, she could not tell if she was speaking aloud or simply thinking.

  “I shat in a tub … strangers …”

  Sometimes they circled her bed, these strangers who were not, who had become the kind of family sea journeys create. Delirium or Lina’s medicine, she supposed. But they came and offered her advice, gossiped, laughed or simply stared at her with pity.

  There were seven other women assigned to steerage on the Angelus. Waiting to board, their backs turned against the breeze that cut from sea to port, they shivered among boxes, bailiffs, upper-deck passengers, carts, horses, guards, satchels and weeping children. Finally, when lower-deck passengers were called to board, and their name, home county and occupation were recorded, four or five women said they were servants. Rebekka learned otherwise soon enough, soon as they were separated from males and the better-classed women and led to a dark space below next to the animal stalls. Light and weather streamed from a hatch; a tub for waste sat beside a keg of cider; a basket and a rope where food could be let down and the basket retrieved. Anyone taller than five feet hunched and lowered her head to move around. Crawling was easier once, like street vagrants, they partitioned off their personal space. The range of baggage, clothes, speech and attitude spoke clearly of who they were long before their confessions. One, Anne, had been sent away in disgrace by her family. Two, Judith and Lydia, were prostitutes ordered to choose between prison or exile. Lydia was accompanied by her daughter, Patty, a ten-year-old thief. Elizabeth was the daughter, or so she said, of an important Company agent. Another, Abigail, was quickly transferred to the captain’s cabin and one other, Dorothea, was a cutpurse whose sentence was the same as the prostitutes’. Rebekka alone, her passage prepaid, was to be married. The rest were being met by relatives or craftsmen who would pay their passage—except the cutpurse and the whores whose costs and keep were to be borne by years and years of unpaid labor. Only Rebekka was none of these. It was later, huddled ’tween decks and walls made of trunks, boxes, blankets hanging from hammocks, that Rebekka learned more about them. The prepubescent girl thief-in-training had the singing voice of an angel. The agent’s “daughter” was born in France. By the time they were fourteen the two mature prostitutes had been turned out of their family homes for lewd behavior. And the cutpurse was the niece of another one who taught and refined her skills. Together they lightened the journey; made it less hideous than it surely would have been without them. Their alehouse wit, their know-how laced with their low expectations of others and high levels of self-approval, their quick laughter, amused and encouraged Rebekka. If she had feared her own female vulnerability, traveling alone to a foreign country to wed a stranger, these women corrected her misgivings. If ever night moths fluttered in her chest at the recollection of her mother’s predictions, the company of these exiled, thrown-away women eliminated them. Dorothea, with whom she became most friendly, was especially helpful. With exaggerated sighs and mild curses they sorted their possessions and appropriated territory no bigger than a doorstep. When under direct questioning, Rebekka admitted she was to be wed and, yes, for the first time, Dorothea laughed and announced the find to everyone in earshot. “A virgin! Judy, do you hear? An unripe cunt among us.”

  “Well, two aboard, then. Patty is another.” Judith winked and smiled at the little girl. “Don’t trade it cheap.”

  “She’s ten!” said Lydia. “What shape of mother do you take me for?”

  “In two years we’ll answer.”

  The laughter was loud among the three, until Anne said, “Enough, please! Rudeness offends me.”

  “Rude words but not rude behavior?” asked Judith.

  “That, too,” she replied.

  They were settled now and eager to test their neighbors. Dorothea removed a shoe and wiggled her toes through the stocking’s hole. Then, tugging carefully, she folded the frayed wool under her toes. Replacing the shoe, she smiled at Anne.

  “Is behavior the reason your family put you to se
a?” Dorothea opened her eyes wide, batting her eyelashes at Anne in mock innocence.

  “I’m visiting my uncle and aunt.” If the light coming from the open hatch above had been stronger, they might have seen the crimson of her cheeks.

  “And bringing them a present, I reckon.” Lydia giggled.

  “Coo, coo. Coo, coo.” Dorothea cradled her arms.

  “Cows!” snarled Anne.

  More laughter loud enough to agitate the animals behind the planks that separated the women from the stock. A crewman, perhaps on orders, stood above them and closed the hatch.

  “Bastard!” someone shouted as they were plunged into darkness. Dorothea and Lydia, crawling around, managed to find the sole lamp available. Once lit, the dollop of light pulled them close.

  “Where is Miss Abigail?” asked Patty. She had taken a liking to her port side, hours before they set sail.

  “Captain’s pick,” said her mother.

  “Lucky whore,” Dorothea murmured.

  “Bite your tongue. You haven’t seen him.”

  “No, but I can surmise his table.” Dorothea sighed. “Berries, wine, mutton, pasties …”

  “Tormentor. Leave off. Steady. Maybe the slut will send us some. He won’t let her out of his sight. Pig …”

  “Milk straight from the udder, no dirt or flies on top, stamped butter …”

  “Leave off!”

  “I have some cheese,” said Rebekka. Surprised how like a child’s her voice sounded, she coughed. “And biscuits.”

  They turned to her and a voice chimed, “Aw, lovely. Let’s have tea.”

  The oil lamp sputtered, threatening to throw them back into a darkness only travelers in steerage can know. Rocking forever sideways, trying not to vomit before reaching the tub, safer on knees than feet—all was just bearable if there were even a handspan of light.

  The women scooted toward Rebekka and suddenly, without urging, began to imitate what they thought were the manners of queens. Judith spread her shawl on the lid of a box. Elizabeth retrieved from her trunk a kettle and a set of spoons. Cups were varied—pewter, tin, clay. Lydia heated water in the kettle over the lamp, protecting the flame with her palm. It did not surprise them that no one had any tea, but both Judith and Dorothea had rum hidden in their sacks. With the care of a butler, they poured it into the tepid water. Rebekka set the cheese in the middle of the shawl and surrounded it with biscuits. Anne offered grace. Breathing quietly, they sipped warm, spirited water and munched stale biscuits, daintily brushing away the flakes. Patty sat between her mother’s knees, and Lydia tipped her cup with one hand and smoothed her daughter’s hair with the other. Rebekka recalled how each of them, including the ten-year-old, lifted her little finger and angled it out. Remembered also how ocean slap exaggerated the silence. Perhaps they were blotting out, as she was, what they fled and what might await them. Wretched as was the space they crouched in, it was nevertheless blank where a past did not haunt nor a future beckon. Women of and for men, in those few moments they were neither. And when finally the lamp died, swaddling them in black, for a long time, oblivious to the footsteps above them, or the lowing behind them, they did not stir. For them, unable to see the sky, time became simply the running sea, unmarked, eternal and of no matter.

  Upon landing they made no pretense of meeting again. They knew they never would, so their parting was brisk, unsentimental as each gathered her baggage and scanned the crowd for her future. It was true; they never met again, except for those bedside visits Rebekka conjured up.

  He was bigger than she imagined. All the men she had known were small, hardened but small. Mr. Vaark (it took some time before she could say Jacob) picked up both of her boxes after touching her face and smiling.

  “You took off your hat and smiled. Smiled and smiled.” Rebekka thought she was answering the grin of her new husband, but her parched lips barely moved as she entered the scene of their first meeting. She had the impression, then, that this was what his whole life had been about: meeting her at long last, so obvious was his relief and satisfaction. Following him, feeling the disabling resilience of land after weeks at sea, she tripped on the wooden walk and tore the hem of her frock. He did not turn around so she grabbed a fistful of skirt, clutched her bedding under her arm and trotted along to the wagon, refusing the hand he offered to help her mount. It was seal and deal. He would offer her no pampering. She would not accept it if he did. A perfect equation for the work that lay ahead.

  “Marriages performed within,” read the sign next to the coffeehouse door, and underneath in small letters a verse that combined warning with sales pitch: “When lawless lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin.” Old and not quite sober, the cleric was nevertheless quick. Within minutes they were back in the wagon steeped in anticipation of a fresh bountiful life.

  He seemed shy at first, so she thought he had not lived with eight people in a single room garret; had not grown so familiar with small cries of passion at dawn that they were like the songs of peddlers. It was nothing like what Dorothea had described or the acrobatics that made Lydia hoot, nor like the quick and angry couplings of her parents. Instead she felt not so much taken as urged.

  “My northern star,” he called her.

  They settled into the long learning of one another: preferences, habits altered, others acquired; disagreement without bile; trust and that wordless conversation that years of companionship rest on. The weak religious tendencies that riled Rebekka’s mother were of no interest to him. He was indifferent, having himself withstood all pressure to join the village congregation but content to let her be persuaded if she chose. After some initial visits and Rebekka choosing not to continue, his satisfaction was plain. They leaned on each other root and crown. Needing no one outside their sufficiency. Or so they believed. For there would be children, of course. And there were. Following Patrician, each time Rebekka gave birth, she forgot the previous nursing interrupted long before weaning time. Forgot breasts still leaking, or nipples prematurely caked and too tender for underclothes. Forgot, too, how rapid the trip from crib to coffin could be.

  As the sons died and the years passed, Jacob became convinced the farm was sustainable but not profitable. He began to trade and travel. His returns, however, were joyful times, full of news and amazing sights: the anger, loud and lethal, of townspeople when a pastor was shot dead off his horse by warriors of a local tribe; a shop’s shelves stacked with bolts of silk in colors he saw only in nature; a freebooter tied to a plank on his way to the gallows cursing his captors in three languages; a butcher thrashed for selling diseased meat; the eerie sounds of choirs drifting in Sunday rain. Tales of his journeys excited her, but also intensified her view of a disorderly, threatening world out there, protection from which he alone could provide. If on occasion he brought her young, untrained help, he also brought home gifts. A better chopping knife, a hobbyhorse for Patrician. It was some time before she noticed how the tales were fewer and the gifts increasing, gifts that were becoming less practical, even whimsical. A silver tea service which was put away immediately; a porcelain chamber pot quickly chipped by indiscriminate use; a heavily worked hairbrush for hair he only saw in bed. A hat here, a lace collar there. Four yards of silk. Rebekka swallowed her questions and smiled. When finally she did ask him where this money was coming from, he said, “New arrangements,” and handed her a mirror framed in silver. Having seen come and go a glint in his eye as he unpacked these treasures so useless on a farm, she should have anticipated the day he hired men to help clear trees from a wide swath of land at the foot of a rise. A new house he was building. Something befitting not a farmer, not even a trader, but a squire.

  We are good, common people, she thought, in a place where that claim was not merely enough, but prized, even a boast.

  “We don’t need another house,” she told him. “Certainly not one of such size.” She was shaving him and spoke as she finished.

  “Need is not the reason, wife.”

 
“What is, pray?” Rebekka cleared off the last dollop of lather from the blade.

  “What a man leaves behind is what a man is.”

  “Jacob, a man is only his reputation.”

  “Understand me.” He took the cloth from her hands and wiped his chin. “I will have it.”

  And so it was. Men, barrows, a blacksmith, lumber, twine, pots of pitch, hammers and pull horses, one of which once kicked her daughter in the head. The fever of building was so intense she missed the real fever, the one that put him in the grave. As soon as he collapsed, word went out to the Baptists, and no one from the farm, especially Sorrow, was allowed among them. The laborers left with their horses and tools. The blacksmith was long gone, his ironwork aglitter like a gate to heaven. Rebekka did what Jacob ordered her to do: gathered the women and struggled with them to lift him from the bed and lower him onto a blanket. All the while he croaked, hurry, hurry. Unable to summon muscle strength to aid them, he was deadweight before he was dead. They hauled him through a cold spring rain. Skirts dragging in mud, shawls asunder, the caps on their heads drenched through to the scalp. There was trouble at the gate. They had to lay him in mud while two undid the hinges and then unbolted the door to the house. As rain poured over his face, Rebekka tried to shelter it with her own. Using the driest part of her underskirt, she blotted carefully lest she disturb the boils into pain. At last they entered the hall and situated him far away from the rain blowing through the window space. Rebekka leaned in close to ask if he would take a little cider. He moved his lips but no answer came. His eyes shifted to something or someone over her shoulder and remained so till she closed them. All four—herself, Lina, Sorrow and Florens—sat down on the floor planks. One or all thought the others were crying, or else those were raindrops on their cheeks.