The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare [19]
The Puritan service seemed to her as plain and unlovely as the bare board walls of the Meeting House. She felt a moment's surprise when her uncle stepped forward to line the psalm. His firm nasal voice set the tune and pace, one line at a time, and the congregation repeated it after him. By the time the long psalm was over Kit was glad to sit down, but presently she longed to stand again. The hard edge of the narrow pew bit into her thigh, in spite of every gingerly effort to shift her weight. Kit's gaze flicked over the other churchfolk. A varied lot they were. Not all of them shared her uncle's opinions of seemly garb; some were as fashionably dressed as Kit herself. But the majority were soberly and poorly clad, and here and there, in the farthermost pews, Kit glimpsed the familiar black faces that must be slaves. All of them however were alike in their reverent silence. How could they sit there without twitching a muscle, even with the black flies buzzing under their bonnet brims? It was impossible that they could be listening to the sermon. She could not keep her mind on it for an instant.
A steady rustling sound told her that a few muscles were as unruly as her own. On the stairs leading to the gallery nearly twenty small boys were clustered, shoulder to shoulder, and the solid ranks undulated with the constant jerking of restless elbows straining under tight woolen jackets. A rosy-cheeked boy on the second step, with one fleeting motion, captured a fly and held it imprisoned against his knees. Four boys nearest him were convulsed. Snickers spilled out past the hands they clapped over their mouths. A man stepped menacingly from the corner brandishing a long pole, and Kit winced as two sharp raps descended on each luckless head. The cause of all the commotion sat serenely, his rapt, innocent gaze never straying from the minister's face, his hand still cupped over the imprisoned fly. Kit felt a giggle rising in her own throat, and looking frantically for distraction, caught John Holbrook's eye. He looked away without a sign of recognition.
Bother these people! Look at Judith, sitting there with her hands folded in her lap. Didn't her feet ever go to sleep? Nevertheless, if this were a test of endurance, then she could see it through as well as these New Englanders. She tilted her chin so that one plume swept gracefully against her cheek, discreetly curled and uncurled her numb toes inside the kid slippers, and set herself to endure.
The sun slanted directly downward through the chinks in the roof when the sermon ended. It must have been a good two hours, and would, Kit suspected, have been much longer had not the minister's voice grown increasingly hoarse till it threatened to fail altogether. Kit rose thankfully for the final prayer, and stood respectfully with the rest of the congregation till the minister had passed down the aisle to the door.
Outside the Meeting House the Reverend Gershom Bulkeley took Kit's hand in his. "So this is the orphan from Barbados?" he rasped. "How grateful you must be, young lady, for the kindness of your aunt and uncle in your time of need."
Two deacons also took her hand and stressed the word grateful. Had Uncle Matthew informed the whole town that he had taken her in out of charity? If so, then she was obviously a surprise to them, by the suspicion and downright hostility with which the deacons' wives were surveying her from feathered hat to slippered toe. She did not look like a pauper. Let them make what they liked of that!
Most of the churchgoers did not come near her. A little distance away she glimpsed Goodwife Cruff, surrounded by a close huddle of whispering women, all darting venomous glances in Kit's direction. Kit turned a defiant back on