The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare [12]
Two of the three sailors had already started back along the road, but Nat still stood beside the trunks and looked down at her. As their eyes met, something flashed between them, a question that was suddenly weighted with regret. But the instant was gone before she could grasp it, and the mocking light had sprung again into his eyes.
"Remember," he said softly. "Only the guilty ones stay afloat." And then he was gone.
The doorway of Matthew Wood's house led into a shallow hallway from which a narrow flight of stairs climbed steeply. Through a second door Kit stepped into the welcome of the great kitchen. In a fireplace that filled half one side of the room a bright fire crackled, throwing glancing patterns of light on creamy plaster walls. There was a gleam of rubbed wood and burnished pewter.
"Matthew! Girls!" cried her aunt. "Something wonderful has happened! Here is Katherine Tyler, my sister Margaret's girl, come all the way from Barbados!"
Three people stared up at her from the plain board table. Then, from his place at the head, a man unfolded his tall angular body and came toward her.
"You are welcome, Katherine," he said gravely, and took her hand in his bony fingers. She could not read the faintest sign of welcome in his thin stern lips or in the dark eyes that glowered fiercely at her from under heavy grizzled eyebrows.
Behind him a girl sprang up from the table and came forward. "This is your cousin Judith," her aunt said, and Kit gasped with pleasure. Judith's face fulfilled in every exquisite detail the picture she had treasured of her imagined aunt. The clear white skin, the blue eyes under a dark fringe of lashes, the black hair that curled against her shoulders, and the haughty lift of her perfect small chin—this girl could have been the toast of a regiment!
"And your other cousin, Mercy." The second girl had risen more slowly, and at first Kit was only aware of the most extraordinary eyes she had ever seen, gray as rain at sea, wide and clear and filled with light. Then, as Mercy stepped forward, one shoulder dipped and jerked back grotesquely, and Kit realized that she leaned on crutches.
"How lovely," breathed Mercy, her voice as arresting as her eyes, "to see you after all these years, Katherine!"
"Will you call me Kit?" The question sounded abrupt. Kit had been her grandfather's name for her, and something in Mercy's smile had reached straight across the gulf so that suddenly she wanted to hear the name spoken again.
"Have you had breakfast?"
"I guess not. I hadn't even thought of it."
"Then 'tis lucky we are eating late this morning," said her aunt. "Take her cloak, Judith. Come close to the fire, my dear, your skirt is soaking."
As Kit threw back the woolen cloak, Judith's reaching hand fell back. "My goodness!" she exclaimed. "You wore a dress like that to travel in?"
In her eagerness to make a good impression Kit had selected this dress with care, but here in this plain room it seemed overelegant. The three other women were all wearing some nondescript sort of coarse gray stuff. Judith laid the cloak thoughtfully on a bench and reached to touch Kit's glove.
"What beautiful embroidery," she said admiringly.
"Do you like them? I'll give you some just like them if you like. I have several pairs in my trunk."
Judith's eyes narrowed. Rachel Wood was setting out a pewter mug and spoon and a crude wooden plate.
"Sit here, Katherine, where the fire will warm your back. Tell us how you happened to come so far. Did your grandfather come with you?"
"My grandfather died four months ago," Kit explained.
"Why, you poor child! All alone there on that island! Who did come with you, then?"
"I came alone."
"Praise be!" her aunt marveled. "Well, you're here safe and sound. Have some corn bread, my dear. 'Twas baked fresh yesterday, and there is new butter."
Surprisingly, the bread tasted delicious, though of a coarse texture like nothing she had ever tasted before. Kit lifted the pewter mug thirstily, and abruptly set it down. "Is that water?" she asked politely.
"Of course,