The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare [6]
"My father sent me to find you, Mistress Tyler." One couldn't have guessed, by his tone, that he had ever addressed her before. "Since my mother has left the ship he thinks it best that you eat at board with Goodwife Cruff and her family."
Kit wrinkled up her nose. "Ugh," she exclaimed, "that sour face of hers will curdle my food."
Nat laughed shortly. "'Tis certain she expects you will curdle hers," he answered. "She has been insisting to my father that you are a witch. She says no respectable woman could keep afloat in the water like that."
"How dare she!" Kit flared, indignant as much at his tone as at the dread word he uttered so carelessly.
"Don't you know about the water trial?" Nat's eyes deliberately taunted her. "'Tis a sure test. I've seen it myself. A true witch will always float. The innocent ones just sink like a stone."
He was obviously paying her back for the morning's humiliation. But she was surprised to see that John Holbrook was not at all amused. His solemn young face was even more grave than before.
"That is not a thing to be laughed at," he said. "Is the woman serious, Nat?"
Nat shrugged. "She'd worked up quite a gale," he admitted. "But my father has smoothed her down. He knows Barbados. He explained that the sea is always warm and that even respectable people sometimes swim in it. All the same, Mistress Katherine," he added, with a quizzical look, "now that you're in Connecticut I'd advise you to forget that you ever learned."
"No danger," Kit shuddered. "I wouldn't go near your freezing river again for the world."
She had made them both laugh, but underneath her nonchalance, Kit felt uneasy. In spite of his mocking tone, Nat had unmistakably warned her, just as she knew now that John Holbrook had been about to warn her. There was something strange about this country of America, something that they all seemed to share and understand and she did not. She was only partially reassured when John said, with another of those surprising flashes of gentle humor, "I shall sit with you at supper, if I may. Just to make sure that no one's food gets curdled."
CHAPTER 2
IT TOOK nine days for the Dolphin to make the forty-three mile voyage from Saybrook to Wethersfield. As though the ship were bewitched, from the moment they left Saybrook everything went wrong. With the narrowing of the river the fresh sea breeze dropped behind, and by sunset it died away altogether. The sails sagged limp and soundless, and the Dolphin rolled sickeningly in midstream. On one or two evenings a temporary breeze raised their hopes and sent the ship ahead a few miles, only to die away again. In the morning Kit could scarcely tell that they had moved. The dense brown forest on either side never seemed to vary, and ahead there was only a new bend in the river to tantalize her.
"How can you stand it?" she fumed to a redheaded sailor who was taking advantage of the windless hours to give the carved dolphin at the prow a fresh coat of paint. "Doesn't the wind ever blow on this river?"
"Mighty seldom, ma'am," he responded with indifferent good humor. "You get used to it. We'll spend most of the summer waiting for a breeze, going or coming."
"How often do you go up this river?"
"Every few weeks. We make a run, say to Boston or New Orleans, fill up the hold, and then back to Hartford."
She could see why Mistress Eaton chose to stay at home in Saybrook. "Does it always take as long as this?"
"Call this long?" the sailor replied, swinging far out to daub the curving tail of the dolphin. "Why, ma'am, I've known it to take as many days to get from here to Hartford as to go all the way to Jamaica. But I'm in no hurry. The Dolphin's home to me, and I'm satisfied, wind or no wind."
Kit was ready to fly to pieces with frustration. How could she eke out the patience that had been scarcely enough to see her through a few remaining hours? And how could she force herself to endure another meal at the same board with Goodwife