Caleb's Crossing

by Geraldine Brooks

He barely glanced at grandfather’s signature, and then pushed the paper away as if it were as distasteful to him as it was to me. He gazed at me with a pair of watery blue eyes. “Uncommonly obliging of you to join us here. I trust you will not find the duties too onerous, and if you do, you must come to me at once and we will see what can be done to adjust them. I told your grandfather that I was in want of a gentlewoman, and you shall be treated as one, within the limits of our means here. I will not ask of you anything that my own dear wife Barbara did not do, full willingly, to keep these boys in health and heart. But here I am, speaking of my fine intentions and I do not even offer you a chair—do sit.” I looked about the sparsely furnished little chamber, which contained a hand-hewn desk, a bookshelf, a single ladder-backed chair, a bedstead, and little else.

I would like to say that it was Makepeace who leapt to my defense, but I learned later, from Joel, that it was Caleb. Makepeace, ardent to curry favor with the highest born of his fellows, had been ashamed to speak for me. But Caleb stepped up to the young man and enlightened him, in strong terms, as to my family’s position, and said that he would take personally any further insults upon me or my work.

an Indian maid, Anne. The governor, generally speaking no lover of the native people, as I am sure you know—he

has taken a fancy to this girl, whom he found already an abecedarian. He took her into his own household some months since and sent her to a dame school nearby to his residence, in Boston, where it seems that, at age twelve, she has outstripped the mistress in learning.

But what am I to do with an Indian girl? I can hardly include her in the same classroom. . . . The disruption would . . . no. It cannot be. I am, truly, at a loss as to how to go on, and she comes here within the sennight.”

do not like to ask you . . . who live so far beneath your station as it is . . . to take a bedfellow, . . . but I do not see another way. . . .”

“What are you afraid of?” I asked her suddenly, in Wampanaontoaonk. Her head lifted sharply, the green eyes wide with astonishment. For a moment, I was back on the island, a girl her own age once again, dripping pond water, as the same look of wonderment lit the face of a wild heathen boy in deerskins.

terse sentences, she explained how she had asked to be allowed to return to the western woodlands from whence she had been plucked years since, and the flurry of attention that had followed the governor’s receipt of her letter. He denied her request to return to the remnant of her people. Instead he had taken her into his household and sent her to the dame school.

Clearly the trader had fed and educated her. Perhaps he had been a godly person, saving a child from a disease-ravaged town, raising her with a kindly fatherliness. But her fearfulness implied something other than fatherly affection.

“No, Anne. You are a scholar here, not a servant. You must be clear about your place from the first, and insist upon what is due to it, because you can be sure there will be some always more than happy to reduce you.”

I burned to know what had put this child into such a state, beyond anything that mere shyness, or the novelty of the situation, could account for. On the other hand, if the answer was as I feared, then I preferred not to know it. I felt this even more strongly after I passed the first night sleeping beside her. I should say, rather, attempting to sleep beside her. Hers was the wracked slumber of the tormented.

“I cannot do it, Bethia. It is plain to me now. On the island, with father, alone, I could tell myself that my abilities, though less than I wished, would serve. Even when you found so easy what cost me such struggle, even when that heathen lad . . . still . . . I deluded myself. I thought that with steady work I could o’ercome my deficiencies and get on, as everyone about me seems to do. I said to myself, Makepeace, in Cambridge you will not be found wanting. Others there will be, whose wits work more slowly. But it is not so. Though I am oldest, yet am I generally the least able pupil in the room.”

I cannot bear it, Bethia. I . . . I . . . want to go home.” He sounded now as plaintive as a small child, and my sympathy that had waxed so strong waned of a sudden. “So. You cannot bear it.” My tone was mocking, insolent. “You cannot bear it. You are a man, Makepeace, with all the privileges and rights that come with the title.

Do you trouble to think, for one instant, how sorely I might want to go home? And how is that to be accomplished, since, on your behalf, I am indentured here, deprived of my right to go and come for three and one half years more? You will go back to the island, to warmth and friendship and a certain station in society, and I am to stay here, in this vile town, scrubbing and mending, deprived now even of a pallet on which to lay my head in peace and solitude? No, Makepeace. You will stay. And you will study and endure, and earn this sacrifice which I have made for you. And

Do you not think that your condition daily rebukes me? It is the chief cause of my despair, that I have brought you to this. I lie awake at night, thinking how to redress it.”

“Not possible! What is not possible is that you should usurp the right to sell me off into a marriage that I have not agreed to, a match that father himself deemed untimely, that grandfather, who—must I again remind you?—is my guardian, also felt unsuitable at this time. . . .” “But grandfather has reversed himself.” “He . . . what?” “I unburdened myself to him, when last I was on island, one month since. He told me to consider well, and make no decision, and work my hardest, and if after one month had passed I still felt the same way, then he thought my plan a good one, and said he would carry my letter to Jacob Merry in person, and stand surety for the debt.” I could hardly breathe. I felt all the blood drain out of my face and a great coldness rise. For the first time in my life, I thought I might faint.

“God damn you, Makepeace,” I said, and turned, and made an unsteady way back towards Mr. Corlett’s house, with Makepeace’s voice calling after me that I was the one at risk of damnation.

“My dear, please, go into my chamber and lie down upon the bed. I shall send a boy to the apothecary for a draught. . . .” “No, master, do not trouble a boy, there is no need of a draught.” The apothecary charged a chouser’s prices for draughts any goodwife could distill.

“But I will lie down for a brief while, if you can spare me.” I was never so pleased to be alone. When the master closed the door I turned my face into his pillow and wept without restraint.

“Your brother reports that you have subjected him to most grievous execration, even unto uttering an oath to God. What say you?”

General Court exacts stern penalties upon it, even unto driving an awl through the offending tongue.”

He gave me over to Makepeace for beating, and I shall not write of it, only to say that, when I turned, between blows, to look at my brother, I saw that his eyes were glazed, his lips moist and his face slack with pleasure. I did not look at him again, even as I lowered my skirt and thanked him, as I was obliged to do, for correcting me.

I told no one of the beating. But Anne must have disclosed something about it to Caleb. When I passed by him in the hall, he bent his head close to mine and whispered, “I will see to your brother.”

As for me, my punishment was not done with. It continued the following Lord’s Day, when I was required to make public amends. To do so, I had to stand forth in afternoon meeting and declare my remorse for having inadvisedly and blasphemously expressed myself. For the week thereafter I was obliged to wear a paper pinned to my breast which bore the words of the psalm: I will take heed unto my ways that I sin not with my tongue; I will keep my mouth with a bridle. This was unfortunate, as the younger pupils felt licensed to make sport of me by poking out tongues or neighing like a horse every time my back was to them. When the sennight had passed I tore the paper from my bodice and cast it into the fire that warmed the oven for the morning’s loaves.

It seemed to me that Anne had bloomed under the tutelage of Joel and Caleb. She no longer trembled at the slightest cause, and even seemed to sleep more restfully at night. But I pressed my lips together stubbornly. If silence was what they required from a woman, then silence they should have.

“Am I to take it that you do not want to marry this fellow—this islander—Merry, is it?” I looked up then, and met his eye for the first time. “No,” I whispered. “I do not.”

I know full well that legally you are bound to me, whether he completes his year or not. And neither am I obliged in law to agree to sell the indenture to any person. I don’t wish to be uncivil to your grandfather. But neither do I wish to let you go, all the more so since I see you so very unhappy.”

He was a plain man, not handsome—his nose had been broken, perhaps in some childhood mishap, and no one of any skill had seen to it. It splayed across his face, giving him, at first glance, the cast of a ruffian rather than the look of a refined scholar.

“I would not, that is, I have no objection. . . .” Of the two of us, of a sudden, I was the addlepated, tongue-tied one. I took a deep breath. “What I mean to say is, I would be pleased to receive your son, Samuel Corlett.”

Why

So might I steal learning, with such a husband. I thought of the alternative: arranging my face into an expression of interest while my spouse expounded on the conditions of pasture or the virtues of an undershot millstone, the struggle to access a book—any book—and the loneliness of longing to explore its weighty ideas and having no one with whom to share them.

“What an odd course fate charts for us, does it not? Bereavement is the unwelcome current that forced you to an unintended harbor. But here, perhaps, the vessel lies that will carry you onward to the place where you were always meant to go.”

This stilted little speech had a stale air about it, as if he had fashioned it in advance of our meeting. He was moving swiftly. Too swiftly, perhaps. Could any man know his mind, as this man seemed to imply that he did, on so slight an acquaintance?

Noah Merry was like a pup, full of zest, ready to lick a friendly hand. Samuel Corlett was more like a wise old collie, head on paws, eyes following his one master’s every move.

And so we set out. As soon as we turned off Crooked Street, Joel and Anne increased their pace, as if by arrangement, so that Caleb and I could fall just far enough behind to have private speech. Caleb, as ever, was direct. “Anne says you have a suitor. She said he as good as proposed marriage to you this morning.” I turned my face to him. “It is true. I believe he will ask me, formally, at the first opportunity. I don’t know how I should answer him.”

“Not so, for ours. A woman does not cease to be a person, in our law, just because she has got herself a husband. In most cases, he will go to live with her family, not she with his, so her daily state changes little. And if, at some later time, she wants to leave him and be married to another one, then that can be settled through parley.”

idea,” he said at last, “of the great regard in which I hold you.” So we came to it. I took a deep breath. The silence in the room lengthened. Since he said nothing, I was obliged to. “I am not sure . . . ,” I began, but my voice broke. I coughed a little, to clear my throat, and tried again. “That is, while I welcome your good opinion, I do not see how it is I that I have earned it. Until this past sennight, the only one time you had heard my voice was in meeting, execrating myself.” He turned then, a slight smile playing on his lips. “But you did it with such eloquence. Who could be unmoved?”

“Even were you to agree to make me the most fortunate of men, we could not marry at once. I offer an engagement only, since if any tutor shall enter into the marriage state his place at the college shall be ipso facto void. I must serve my charges, the boys over whom I have had supervision these last three years, until they complete their senior year. At that time, I will take my master’s degree. After, I would go to Padua, if I could, for the study of medicine, but I cannot yet see how I will be in purse to do it. Likely, I will hope for the offer of a schoolroom, if not yet a pulpit.”

“Will you take me, Bethia, on such terms as these?” While he spoke, the blood hammered in my temples. As I struggled to form an answer, the voices drifting up from the hall below us grew louder. Then there was a great tattoo of boots, pounding up the stairs. The latch rattled, the door opened. Samuel Corlett dropped my hand and jumped to his feet. A scholar, ruddy and gasping, almost fell into the room. Caleb stood behind him, his face, generally schooled to an inscrutable stillness, twisted up by uncontained emotion. “Excuse me, tutor,” the boy stuttered, “but this lad here burst in, demanding . . .” Caleb extended an arm and firmly pushed the stammering scholar out of his way and addressed Samuel. “Your father sent me to fetch you.”

We entered through the kitchen door. There was blood, a glossy pool of it, upon the floor. A dark trail led away from the kitchen, into the hall. The master’s voice, high, cracking with emotion, called out to us from his chamber. “Son? Bethia? Are you come? In here, quickly.”

Samuel opened the door and pushed me in ahead of him, pulling the door shut behind. I glanced back as the door closed and saw Caleb. For the first time since I had known him, I saw tears pooling in his eyes.

Anne was upon the bed, writhing, her face, sweat-misted and clenched in pain. Her skirt was blood soaked. “Have you sent for the midwife?” I demanded. “Midwife?” “Yes. Midwife. The girl is plainly miscarrying.” “But she . . . that would . . .” “Master Corlett, send a boy to fetch the midwife, before this child bleeds . . .” I was about to say “to death” but I bit back the words, seeing the fear in Anne’s face.

When it came to my ears that Caleb and Joel were severally suspected of performing this corruption upon the girl, I went straight to the master and gave him the ground of what I knew to be true.

“Master, the state of what came from that girl allows of no doubt. She was with child when she came here. I am certain of it.”

“There is no way Caleb or Joel—or any other male person at this school”—and I said this last plain and slow, so that he would understand that the shadow of suspicion might fall not upon the two Indian youths only—“could possibly have committed this debauchery. Furthermore, master, we cannot lay it upon her English foster father, nor upon the police or militia or whosoever it was who held her incarcerated several months ago. It is my belief—no, certainty—that the girl was defiled somewhen between a month or two months before she arrived here, while she was in attendance at the dame school.”

“You say she is intelligent. Well then. She will know better than to lay scandal upon such a powerful doorstep.” His judgment proved correct. Anne would not name the man who had forwhored her, to me or to any other person, even when the master, his hands a-tremble and his head shaking, told her that if she did not do so, the matter surely would come to the attention of the General Court, and that as soon as she could stand upright she would be called there to be pressed by those hard men.

When I heard the familiar voice, I could not credit it, so I stepped out into the hall. Noah Merry, wild curls caught back into a tidy queue, barn frock laid aside for sober town apparel, and standing a good head taller than when I had last seen him, was asking for the master. When our eyes met, we both of us colored. He made me a slight bow, but we did not speak, as the master came from the schoolroom then and the two of them retired to the kitchen, where they were shut up together in private conference for what seemed to me to be a long time. When they emerged, the master called for me and told me he had consented to spare me for an hour, after I served the boys’ bever, so that I could walk with Noah Merry.

“Please. This is difficult. Let me say my piece. The short of it is, since you left the island, my affections have become engaged elsewhere. Father did not know of it, and I now see it was very wrong in me to keep my own counsel in this matter—I should have made a clean thing of it and told him from the beginning—but in the event, I did not do so, the lady in the case being even younger than yourself and not of an age for handfasting.

Corlett’s copy, and grandfather’s, both. “I—I don’t understand. What does this mean?” “It means you are free. We have bought you out. The master’s only condition in releasing you was that you stay on at the school during preparation for the matriculation. After, you will be free to go, or stay, on whatever terms you agree between you.”

“I can hardly prevent him from taking ship with me,” Merry said. “But if he does so, we shall have to tell him about the girl. I see no other way,” he said.

This is feeling drawn out

In the deepening dimmet, I walked out with my brother and kissed him, the hatred I had felt melted all away by the warmth of his concern for Anne. He climbed up to ride beside Merry. I raised my hand, and bade them a fond farewell. I put my whole heart into my good wishes for their safe and easy journey, knowing my words carried to that other passenger, hidden under a burlap in the cart.

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