Chapter Thirteen
Initially, he’s happy to find she has crossed the Atlantic. She lingered so long in Europe, he had grown concerned that she may never explore further. Then he sees the company she surrounded herself with, and his feelings sour.
NEW ENGLAND
Her favorite chore is doing the laundry.
The other women prefer to go together—too afraid they’ll be kidnapped by the natives to dare being alone so far from the safety of the settlement’s walls.
Anna holds no such fears. Mostly because she’s almost certain it’s all fear mongering, anyway.
Besides, she strongly suspects living among the natives would be far more enjoyable than the current company she finds herself in.
The Puritans are unlike any other community she’s lived among.
Their rules are strict, governed entirely by the religious men in power—clergy who preach of divine rights and Eve’s sin.
Sermons that encourage rooting out the evil the devil has surely planted in their midsts.
In her short time among them, Anna has seen many a man and woman find themselves fastened in the pillory, their neck and wrists bound between two slabs of wood while they suffered the humiliation of being spat upon.
The first week, she witnessed a man who suffered two hours merely for committing the indecency of kissing his wife in public.
The parish has been more insistent lately on her taking a husband.
She thought, when she garnered passage with the story of being widowed, it would be enough to let her practice her midwifery in peace for at least a few years.
It hasn’t even been three seasons since her ship pulled into port, and yet the elders have already started dropping thinly veiled suggestions that she start considering a match.
Anna knows full well that her own wishes carry no merit in their eyes. A lone woman, with no husband and no sons to keep her from straying, is a liability at best and an invitation of sin at worst. No matter how useful she makes herself, she suspects that will never change.
She hikes up her skirts, tying them around her knees to keep the hem from soaking, and steps barefoot into the creek.
The water is calm, but steady. A far cry from the rushing waters it was born from several leagues away.
A shiver dances up her spine, goosebumps rising on her arms and legs as she wades in.
Beneath her bare feet the stones are smooth and polished, their roughened edges worn by water and time.
Anna releases a long suppressed sigh, the tension in her body soothed by the simple sounds of the creek and whispered rustle of leaves overhead.
There are no ministers to preach down to her, here.
No masks of piety to wear, or suspicious eyes to spot the pale patches of skin creeping down her forearms and accuse her of being marked by the devil.
Only water running between her calves and soiled linen and wool in her hands.
The sound of bird call and babbling brooks take the place of righteous accusations and promises of hellfire.
It’s no wonder why she prefers the world outside Puritan walls.
If she wasn’t so sure they’d find a reason to condemn her for it, Anna would offer to wash the entire settlement’s dirty clothing just for the chance to escape their prison more often.
She feels like she’s walking on glass—every step a chance for everything to splinter and crack.
One of these days, she’s certain to fall through.
Especially with Mary having chosen to walk along the warpath of the Lord as of late.
For someone named after the virgin mother, she is neither merciful nor kind.
Just this morning, Mary scolded her harshly just for humming a tune under her breath as she sewed.
Anna was forced to sit through an hour-long lecture regarding the devil and how he uses music to sway one’s ear away from the word of God.
“Anna!” A grating, feminine voice calls to her from behind, one she needs no help recognizing. Lately it feels like she’s heard it more than her own. “Do you need help? You really ought not be alone.”
Anna blinks, her hands pausing in her scrubbing. Mary’s hands are on her hips, her disapproving scowl an exact replica of the one she wears when she catches children doing things they shouldn’t.
It’s an excellent likeness, but not quite convincing enough. Anna straightens, pushing a damp curl from her face. “You know full well that I’m perfectly fine on my own, Khiran.”
His scowl slips, the image of the god-fearing woman drifting away like smoke. He sighs, petulant, but there’s an amusement dancing in his blue-green eyes that makes him look a little bit proud. “I’m at a loss. I studied that pitiful woman for three days. How did you guess?”
Anna turns back to the river and her laundry. “Perhaps you should have expanded your studies—they know me by Grace here. Also, I’m fairly sure Mary prays for my kidnapping on a weekly basis.”
He raises a brow, settling on a large boulder to her right. “Decided on a new name, have you?”
Anna shrugs, scrubbing at the cloth. “It makes it easier. I have to tell so many lies about myself—where I’ve come from, how old I am. Having a different name makes it easier to keep track of who I’m supposed to be this time around.”
A frown furrows his brows, his head tilting. “I’ve never considered that. I suppose I’ve never stayed in one place—one form—long enough to have to concern myself with it.” His nose wrinkles in distaste. “How irritating.”
She laughs under her breath, working on a particularly stubborn stain. Irritating is certainly one word for it, though she thinks it might reflect how spoiled he is in that aspect. All things considered, she doesn’t put that much effort into her personas. At heart, she is still Anna.
He watches as she wades across the creek up to her knees to lay out the scrubbed linens on some of the flat, sun-drenched rocks. “I’m surprised to find you here,” he says, bending a knee and resting his elbow there. “I can’t imagine you … fit well.”
She scoffs, more amused than offended by the indelicateness of his statement.
“They’re much more … stringent than I think even I expected.
” She straightens, placing her hands behind her hips and stretching her spine.
A few pops skitter along her lower back.
She looks across the creek, into the untouched bits of forest. “I just … I wanted to see for myself. Before it changes.”
Because, she knows, it will change. The settlements will grow, their efforts to force the word of God to the tribes will spread by conversion or massacre.
The heartbreak in Khiran’s eyes, the loss he felt, at the destruction of a civilization she will never see, has stuck with her.
She knows he’s bracing himself for the possibility of something similar happening here, too.
How could he not when history has shown him all the ways humans destroy each other?
When he’s seen the way empires reach out and swallow smaller ones to fill their vaults and stores?
Again, and again, and again. Anna wants to remember what it looked like before it twists into something else entirely.
Khiran’s eyes soften, following her gaze. “A worthy reason to force yourself into a mold you don’t fit, I suppose.”
She wrings out one of her dresses, water dripping down her forearms and over one of the larger patches of pale skin.
“I don’t think I’ll be staying long,” she admits, shaking the dress out and laying it beside the other laundry.
“The sermons Father Daniel gives … they’re hard to listen to.
” She places a hand over the visible patch on her arm.
“One look and they’ll have me branded as being marked by the devil, no matter how many of their babes I’ve delivered. ”
“They are an overly zealous bunch, aren’t they?” Khiran hums, gaze dropping to her arm. “There are other places you can go, you know. Other communities you can live in.”
The natives. She meets his eyes, but the flare of hope is smothered as quickly as it catches. Anna shakes her head. “They’d blame them, if I left. They’d twist it into a kidnapping; claim it as proof that everyone on this land save them works at the devil’s hands.”
Khiran’s look is long and weighted. The reflections of the water dance over his skin. “They already believe that, Anna.”
She wilts, running a damp hand over her face.
“I know, but I’d hate to give them an excuse to justify their bigotry.
That’s not the imprint I want to leave.” Sighing, she cranes her neck to look up at the sky.
The clouds are full, white and pristine.
“It’s been four hundred years,” she murmurs, “and I still don’t understand how people can hate so violently. ”
“I hope you never do,” he says, so honest it aches. When she looks, he’s staring up at the same sky as if there were answers hidden between the wisps of cloud. “You wouldn’t be you if you did.”
The smile she gives him is soft and lined with gratitude, and they fall into a comfortable silence. It’s only when she’s wringing out the last of the laundry that he speaks. “Why Grace?”
“It’s common,” she answers, hands pausing as she considers. “But also … it’s one of the few things from the pulpit I’ve been able to relate to—divine grace.” She shakes her head, resuming her task. “I wish they spoke more of love and kindness than of the devil.”
“The devil strikes fear.” He says it as if it explains everything. In some ways, Anna believes it does.
She lays out the last sheet in the sun, before wading back to the bank where Khiran lounges and finds a boulder beside him to sit and wait for the laundry to dry. Watching the clouds move between the break in the trees, a stray thought strikes her. “What name would you choose for yourself?”