The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare [36]
"How fast you go," she said, watching the thread fattening on the bobbin. "Did you grow the flax yourself?"
Hannah dipped her fingers into a gourd shell without slackening the wheel. "Some of the families in town always bring me their flax to spin," she explained. "I make a nice neat thread, if I do say so, but every year it seems to get harder to see it. I have to tell by the feel. Is it smooth enough, does thee think?"
Kit admired the fine perfect thread that slipped evenly through Hannah's fingers. "It's beautiful," she said. "Even Mercy can't spin it like that."
Hannah looked pleased as a child. "Fourpence a skein," she said. "Enough to pay the taxes and buy what I need."
"Taxes? On this swamp land?" Kit was indignant.
"Of course," Hannah said matter-of-factly, "and the fines for not going to Meeting."
"They make you pay fines for that? Wouldn't it be better to go to Meeting instead?" Kit looked around at the much mended clothing and the sparse furnishings of the little room.
"I doubt they would welcome me," Hannah said, again dryly, "even if I chose to go. In Massachusetts we Quakers had our own meetings."
"Can I become a Quaker?" asked Kit, only half joking. "I'd rather pay a fine any day than go to Meeting."
Hannah chuckled. "Thee doesn't become a Quaker just to escape the Meeting," she said, and Kit flushed at the gentle reproof in her tone.
"How does one become a Quaker?" she asked seriously. "I wish I knew something about it, Hannah."
The old woman was silent for a moment. Before she could answer, a shadow fell across the sunlight. A tall figure filled the doorway. Kit started. For an instant she thought that Hannah actually had conjured up a vision. There, unbelievably, was Nathaniel Eaton, the captain's son, leaning easily against the doorpost, with that well-remembered mocking smile in his blue eyes.
"I might have known," he said, "that you two would find each other."
Hannah's face crinkled up with pleasure. "I knew thee would come today," she triumphed. "I saw the Dolphin pass Wright's Island this morning. Kit, my dear, this is the seafaring friend I told thee about."
Nat made a bow. "Mistress Tyler and I are already acquainted," he acknowledged. He tried to set down, without anyone's noticing, the small barrel he carried under one arm, but Kit's glance was quick. A keg of fine Barbados molasses. So it was not just coral trinkets and flower bulbs that this seafaring friend of Hannah's brought from afar! Hannah caught the action, too.
"Bless thee, Nat," she said quietly. "Now sit down and tell us where thee has been this time."
"Charlestown," he answered, settling on an upturned barrel. Instantly the cat slid from Kit's lap and with a loud "R-rr-iouw" leaped into Nat's and circled contentedly. Nat winced as her claws dug rapturously into his coarse homespun trousers.
Hannah made fast the thread and sat with idle hands, her eyes never leaving the young sailor's face. "And thy father?"
"He is well and sends you his greetings."
"I've been listening for a breeze every morning, just thinking thee might be coming up the river. I said to Thomas just yesterday, 'Tom,' I said, Tm going to save the last of these berries, just in case the Dolphin comes soon.' He'll be pleased when I tell him you've been here."
Kit's breath caught suddenly in her throat. Hannah had spoken as though her husband, so many years dead, were still here in the little house. A cloud had passed across the old woman's eyes, a vagueness that Kit had noticed there before. Kit turned a troubled look to Nat. He seemed not to have noticed anything amiss, but very casually he reached out his hand and covered Hannah's worn fingers with his own.
"Has the old she-goat had her kids yet?" he asked easily. "Don't tell