Read Online Crow Hollow by Michael Wallace - Free Book Online Page A

I’m sure both men will sup with us.”
    “I meant the Indian too,” Lucy said quickly with a glance at her sister. Alice covered her mouth and turned away, as if suppressing a laugh.
    “Are they out?” Prudence asked innocently as she helped Anne carry the Dutch oven into the front room, each woman gripping one of the iron handles. “I thought maybe they were upstairs, resting.”
    “You know good and well that they’re out. I’ve seen you watching the door, looking out the window when you think I’m not paying attention.”
    Prudence glanced at the reverend, but the man didn’t look up from his work. His brow furrowed and he touched at his forehead with an ink-stained hand, leaving smudges. Then the words seemed to come to him; he brightened and went back to forming his smooth, even letters, lips moving.
    Prudence used the iron shovel to clear a space in the hearth. With tongs, the women eased the oven in and shoveled coals over the top. Anne made a notch on a candle to mark the time when she’d need to check the oven.
    “What do you suppose they’re doing, anyway?” Prudence asked.
    “Vexing the good folk of Boston, no doubt.”
    “On the Sabbath?”
    “It’s the devil’s work they’re about, and make no mistake.”
    Was Anne right? Or was James even now in the Common, waiting to meet her? It was dusk already. Much longer and it would be too late.
    Old John Porter came into the front room and made a show of looking at the wood box. It was still half full, but bringing firewood in from the shed out back was one of the few things the deaf old fellow could still do—his hands were too unsteady even to split kindling anymore—so he grabbed his cloak from its hook and made for the back door.
    Prudence touched his shoulder to get his attention. “It’s icy out there. Let me help you.”
    A smile brightened his aged face. She put on her cloak, and she took his elbow when they reached the wooden stairs out back, which were slick with ice.
    When they came to the woodshed, she loaded his arms with split logs from the older, dry pile.
    “I’m a grown woman. I kept my own household before Benjamin died.”
    Old John turned. “Eh, what?”
    Now was the time, but she hesitated, torn with guilt. “I don’t need anyone’s permission to come and go. Let Anne scold me when I return—what does it matter to me?”
    He cupped a hand at his ear. “Speak up, child. These old baskets don’t gather like they used to.”
    She only smiled at him, then helped him back up the stairs without bothering to gather wood herself. When he was inside, she pulled the door shut and walked quickly around the side of the house to the lane.
    Her clogs clacked on the cobbles as she hurried up the lane, and she shortly regretted not having put on her good boots. It was at least a mile to the Common; her feet would be sore and cold by the time she arrived. But boots would have looked suspicious. Already she could picture Anne’s disappointed expression, see the judgment in the minister’s eyes.
    “Let it be,” she said aloud.
    How easy to falter, to doubt. It was like a blemish in the skin, and picking at it would only make it bleed, and then there would be a pock. Enough guilt and you could cover yourself with scars and blemishes. Her husband had told her that once, when she’d been worrying over some piece of gossip she’d idly passed along, and the more she’d thought about it since, the more true it seemed.
    Sir Benjamin had been a nominal Puritan—perhaps not a true dissenter, but no friend of the Papist trappings of the Anglican Church, either. He was twenty-seven years old and handsome when he died. He owned a share in a small merchant fleet trading in furs from New England and sugar from the Indies. A fine house in Boston and six hundred acres of rich land in Winton, plus more land outside Springfield. By all accounts, a good husband.
    But in the two short years of their marriage, Prudence had not been a very good