The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare [17]
"Father doesn't mean to be unkind. It has been very hard for him here in Connecticut."
In the months since her grandfather died there had been no one whom Kit could trust. Now she found herself saying the words she had never dared to speak.
"I had to come, Mercy. There was another reason. I couldn't say it this morning, but there was a man on the island, a friend of grandfather's. He used to come often, and afterwards I found he had lent Grandfather money, hundreds of pounds. He didn't want the money back—he wanted me to marry him. He tried to make me think that Grandfather had wanted it, but I'm sure that was not so. He wanted to pay everything. He would even have kept the house for us to live in. Everyone expected me to marry him. The women kept telling me what a wonderful match it was."
"Kit! How could they? Was he dreadful?"
"No, he wasn't really. He was very kind. But Mercy, he was fifty years old, and he had pudgy red fingers with too many rings on them. You see, Mercy, why I couldn't wait to write? You do see why I can't go back, don't you?"
"Of course you can't go back," said Mercy firmly. Her hand reached for Kit's and pressed it warmly. "Father has no intention of sending you back. You will just have to prove to him that you can be useful here."
By the end of that first day the word useful had taken on an alarming meaning. Work in that household never ceased, and it called for skill and patience, qualities Kit did not seem to possess. There was meat to be chopped, and vegetables to prepare for the midday meal. The pewter mugs had to be scoured with reeds and fine sand. There was a great kettle of soap boiling over a fire just behind the house, and all day long Judith and her mother took turns stirring it with a long stick. Judith set Kit to tend the stirring while she readied the soap barrel. Kit tried to keep a gingerly distance from the kettle. The strong fumes of lye stung her eyelids and stirring the heavy mass tired her arms and shoulders. Her stirring became more and more halfhearted till Judith snatched the stick in exasperation. "It will lump on you," she scolded, "and you can just blame yourself if we have to use lumpy soap all summer."
Toward evening they set her at the easiest task they could devise—the making of corn pudding. The corn meal had to be added to the boiling kettle a pinch at a time. Before half of it was consumed, Kit's patience ran out. The smoke made her eyes water, and there was a smarting blister on one thumb. She suspected that Judith had invented the irksome procedure just to keep her busy, and in a burst of resentment she poured in the remaining cupful all at once. She learned her mistake when the lumpy indigestible mass was ladled onto her wooden trencher. There was nothing else for supper. After one shocked stare, the family downed the mess in a silence that made Kit writhe.
After the candles were lit, Rachel and the two girls picked up skeins of yarn and began to knit as Matthew drew the great Bible toward him across the table. Matthew's voice was harsh and monotonous. Kit could not keep her mind on the words. Every muscle in her body ached with weariness. As the reading went on her head grew heavier, and twice she jerked herself painfully back from the brink of sleep. The others, intent on their knitting, did not notice. Only when her uncle closed the Book and bent his head for the long evening prayer, did the clicking needles cease.
Kit, in her eagerness, went up ahead with a candle into the chilly bedchamber. But once there she remembered that in the morning she would need a fresh gown from the trunks to replace the soot-stained calico. Going back down the stairs she overheard some words not intended for her ears.
"Why does she have to sleep with me?" Judith demanded in a sulky tone.
"Why, daughter," her mother rebuked her, "are you not willing that your cousin should share with you?"
"If I have to share my bed will she share my work? Or will she expect us all to wait on her hand and foot like her black slaves?"
"Shame, Judith. The child tried her best,