Chapter 50
fifty
Live free or die; death is not the worst of evils.
General John Stark
In the November twilight, Mae stood by the window of her upstairs bedchamber and took in shadowed outbuildings, fences and fields, and the long rutted road that wound in and out of their portion of the valley.
From which direction would Rhys come?
Cold seeped through the panes and turned her away from the window. Barefooted and nightgowned, she crossed the room to replenish the fire. Above, the mantel clock seemed to be ticking her life away without him.
Was she a wife or a widow?
The heirloom cradle rested to one side of the hearth, lined and softened by Bronwyn’s bedding. Father Harlow had carved a remarkably lifelike toy lamb from willow, which rested at the cradle’s foot.
Would their baby ever know his or her father?
Every day seemed to bring new changes. No longer nauseous nor so tired, she still felt different.
She certainly looked different—fuller of face, not only rounder of body.
Her dresses had to be let out at the waist, her stays loosened or remade.
Though she’d seen countless expectant women over the years, she felt she was the very first.
“You look lovely in your new quilted cotton,” Bronwyn had told her. “My brother will be blessed indeed to find you waiting.”
Would he? Bronwyn, despite her deep loss, held on to hope in the face of the unknown, while she herself waged a private war between hope and despair. Lately she even dreamed of Rhys. Troubled, restless dreams that left her shaken and half sick.
Might he still be fighting or wounded? Or a prisoner, taken to one of the hellish prison ships in New York’s harbor? ’Twas a fate worse than death. And then there were James and Jon, whose fate was just as uncertain.
Nights were the hardest, when the distraction of the day ground to a halt.
In the silent, dark hours, so much loomed that left her feeling powerless.
Her love for Rhys had not waned, but had his for her?
All she recalled was his fury at the last, which tainted all that had been before.
It made a poor bedfellow, leaving her to grasp hold of whatever assurance she could as she lay awake and awaited the dawn.
I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety.
Autumn’s chores set in as frost rimmed forest and fields. Mae found soapmaking tedious, while butchering involved a bloodbath that turned her squeamish. But candlemaking was a soothing if time-consuming task, especially on a fair, chilly December day.
“You’ve not dipped candles before?” Bronwyn asked, careful not to look too incredulous, Mae thought. “Rather delightful, actually.”
“We always bought them from a chandler in Chatham.”
Together they donned plain aprons and set about the work, melting wax and preparing the flax wicks in the dyeing shed, where vats and candle ladders awaited.
“I can’t abide the smell of tallow and it smokes abominably,” Bronwyn told her, stirring the wax with a long-handled spoon. “So we indulge in beeswax and bayberry instead.”
With Bronwyn’s guidance, Mae handled the candle tree. She dipped multiple wicks into the wax again and again between their cooling, all the while breathing in the honey-spice fragrance.
“Last year we burned a hundred fifty-two candles, by my tally in the household account book,” Bronwyn told her. “We’ll double that amount this year since you’re up the hill.”
“Candlemaking is one of your favorite tasks, you said.”
“It is—or was. Now it brings back that terrible December day in ’75 when Micah fell. I was candlemaking then too when I heard the news.”
“The battle at Great Bridge.” Mae looked at her with sympathy, hearing the pain in her voice. “Rhys told me.”
“A great loss to us both.” Bronwyn bit her lip as she hung hardening candles on a candle ladder. “We were betrothed for a short time, but it was not to be.”
Mae hesitated, wondering the wisdom of asking her question. “What was he like?”
“As fine a man as Rhys. Birds of a feather really do flock together. Strong. Steady. Dependable. In fact, Father’s getting in hay with his father this morning at their farm. I rarely visit now. ’Tis still too painful, though I do see his kin at church.”
“I understand.” Mae fell silent as the sound of wagon wheels on the rutted road took her attention.
“A tinker perhaps.” Bronwyn looked out the shed’s open door and wiped her hands on her apron. “They do happen by, though not as regularly with the war on.”
A gust of wind threatened to bang the door shut, so Bronwyn propped it open with a piece of firewood.
Mae continued dipping candles, her mournful thoughts so full of Micah they crowded out Rhys.
She paid little attention to the wagon halting in the yard beneath the biggest oak or the brief exchange of voices after Bronwyn left the shed.
Hearing her startled cry, Mae nearly dropped the candles she’d just dipped.
She hung the candle tree from a hook and hurried outside toward the wagon.
Bronwyn was already climbing into the wagon bed, her face drawn with alarm.
What on earth? Mae leaned over the side panel, and her whole world flipped.
There, atop a scattering of wet hay and a tattered blanket, lay Rhys in the blue coat she’d made, filling up the wagon with his height, his eyes closed and oblivious to their shock. Dead?
“Rhys?” Mae’s hand shot out to smooth the unkempt hair from his unshaven face. His dry skin seemed to sear her palm.
With a groan, he thrashed about as Bronwyn pushed his coat back to expose his wounds.
His right thigh was cocooned in layers of bloodied, dirty cloth that carried a sickly smell even in the open air.
Beside him lay his rifle, which had likely kept him alive on the field.
How it had made the journey seemed a second miracle.
The wagoner frowned. “He was transported by ship to Alexandria. The man with him sickened and died of a fever once they docked but paid me handsomely to bring him here before he did. I know little about General Harlow, but there’s no doubt we’re at the right place.”
Mae clasped her husband’s cold, dirty hand, her stinging eyes telling her she was crying before the realization struck.
When Father Harlow rode into the yard on his gelding, Bronwyn called for him to come.
The next minutes were a dizzying mix of panic and movement as the men carried Rhys from the wagon to the house and laid him out on a narrow corner bed. Mae hovered, unsure of what to do next.
Voice low, she looked to a clearly distraught Father Harlow, his usual stoicism scuttled. “Is there a doctor nearby?”
He nodded and, without another word, left on the horse he’d just ridden home, the wagoner departing in his wake. Mae and Bronwyn began stripping off Rhys’s filthy garments, top to bottom. His breeches were so threadbare they fell apart.
“Bring the washtub nearer and we’ll fill it with warm, soapy water and bathe him as best we can,” Bronwyn said as she tugged off a torn stocking. “His garments are beyond saving so we’ll burn them, all but his boots.”
Mae did as she was told, fetching hot water they’d meant for their own baths from the hearth till the tub was half full and sudsy.
She looked him over in all his humbling barrenness but kept returning to his face, trying to reconcile who he’d been with the gravely wounded man before her, his only movement the slight rise and fall of his bare chest.
Cleaning a man so begrimed was not for the fainthearted. And Mae felt both faint and sick at heart. Where was the man she’d fallen in love with? Had he returned not to reunite with her as she’d hoped and prayed but to be buried instead?
“Look away, Mae, while I bathe the wound,” Bronwyn told her quietly. “I would spare you that.”
Mae took a cloth and bathed his face instead, then fetched a basin to wash his shoulder-length hair as he lay there. Soon she was as soap-spattered and damp as he was, but the task helped ground her. When he stiffened then flailed, his arm hitting her middle so hard the baby moved, she pulled back.
“He’s feeling the pain of the wound, which seems to be festering, and I fear—” Bronwyn’s whisper faded, then she continued. “Fetch the whiskey in the medicine cupboard.”
Mae did so, knowing what her sister-in-law had been about to say but didn’t.
Festering. She’d heard Aaron say it with dismay and finality. It usually meant the loss of a limb. Or worse.