Page 31 of The Frozen River

“Or good judgment.” He tips his hat, but his voice is cold, and his eyes are slanted, hateful. “Martha.”

Ephraim notes the exchange with a narrowed gaze. Joseph North is a genteel man, not typically given to rudeness, and I doubt my husband will tolerate another snide comment. I do not return the greeting. North wants an apology for disrupting his court last week, but he won’t get one.

“There,” Ephraim says, nodding toward the drafting table where a small wooden box is spread open. “Your ink.”

My quill lays flat beside the box, the tip blackened by Ephraim’s morning scribbles. Beside the writing paraphernalia is a neatly stacked pile of woodworking tools. Knives and blades of various lengths. One of them—Ephraim’s favorite—is a wicked, hook-shaped thing used for stripping small branches off felled trees. A bottle of linseed oil and a polishing rag sit beside it, abandoned. The mill smells of frost and sawdust, oiled metal, and old leather. It smells like Ephraim.

Where two disks of ink are usually nestled, only one remains. Ephraim crosses the floor and slides a protective arm around my waist, and I relax as his thumb strokes my rib cage.

“This is your ink?” North asks, lifting a hand. It is only then that I notice the hardened disk pinched between his thumb and forefinger, the pads of which are now stained black. “Ephraim never told me that you draw.”

I open my mouth to answer, but Ephraim grabs the back of my dress in his fist and pulls me closer in warning, so I shrug one shoulder instead.

“I suppose it comes in handy. You must need pictures of your herbs. Speaking of which,” North adds, “I believe my wife will stop by for another tonic soon. Her headaches have gotten worse of late.”

I have never drawn a picture in my life, and I certainly don’t need one to help me remember that Lidia North requires a concoction of dried feverfew, peppermint, and ginger, combined with crushed rosemary and yarrow. It only works when I soak the herbs in brandy for sixty days, however. The result is an effective tincture that I try to keep on hand. But if Lidia’s debilitating headaches have gotten worse, I blame North and all he’s put her through in recent months. Regardless, his cavalier assumption that I will play nursemaid to his wife has me gnawing on the edge of my tongue.

After a prolonged silence, North turns to my husband. “I’ll be expecting your survey at the end of the month.” And with that he strides out the door and swings onto his horse. The dog trots after him obediently.

Ephraim lets go of my dress and picks up the hooked blade from his worktable. He taps the flat against his palm as the sound of hooves retreat into the distance. More so than anything else on the workbench, that instrument looks like a thing built to maim.

“The rogue hast lived too long,” he mutters under his breath, and brings the blade down onto the drafting table in a neat arc. It lodges there, quivering, and swath of pale wood gleams beneath the cleaved board like an open wound.

I peer at him, skeptical. “You’ve been reading Shakespeare again.”

He shrugs, then yanks the blade free. “I like the way he delivers an insult.”

“Then surely you can do better than that for a man such as North.”

I love my husband’s smile. It transforms his stoic face, revealing two rows of straight teeth and laugh lines around his eyes. “That clay-brained guts, that knotty-pated fool, that whoreson, obscene, greasy tallow-catch.”

“Well,” I say, “your clay-brained, greasy whoreson took my ink. How do you plan on getting it back?”

He tosses the knife onto the table. “I’ll buy you more.”

“That thing looks like revenge to me,” I tell him.

“What?”

“Your knife.”

“That’s not a bad name for a blade.” He picks it up again. Balances its weight in his palm, then brings it down onto the table once more. “Revenge it is.”

After a moment, Ephraim turns back to the wide double doors that North passed through, and frowns.

“Are you going to do it?” I ask. “The survey. I overheard your conversation.”

He scratches behind one ear. “I don’t think I have much choice.”

“You realize he’s punishing us for what I did in court?”

“Yes. But I think there’s more to it than that.”

“How so?”

“North wants me to be hundreds of miles away when it comes time for you to testify.”

“Why?”