Page 38 of The Frozen River

“Regardless, Hannah appears to be spoken for, and Dolly is still a bit young for courting, but if the circumstances were different on either count, yes, I would open the door for John Cowan. And I believe Ephraim would as well.”

“That’s about how I reckon things, but I wanted to make sure,” Abigail says. Then, as I turn to go, she reaches for her mug. “Martha?”

“Yes?” I hand it back.

“Dinna be surprised if Moses comes knocking a bit sooner than ye expect.”

I set my quill on the desk and stretch my hand. It aches. From cold and age and the strain of small muscles put to work guiding a child into this world.

Friday, December 11.—Birth. David Sewell’s son. Cloudy. At Mr. Sewell’s. I was called to attend Grace Sewell yesterday evening. Her travail was mild. But she and her mother were intimidated and called Dr. Page who gave my patient fifty drops of laudanum which put her into such a stupor that her pains (which were regular and promising) became scant until she puked. Her pains returned and she was delivered at the seventh hour of a son, her first born. I received twelve shillings as a reward. Left her cleverly at ten and walked across the river.

Cyrus and Young Ephraim have long since crawled into their beds on the second floor, and I can hear their snores rattling down the stairwell. The girls have also retreated to their room and whatever dreams the night might bring. Jonathan, as usual, is sleeping elsewhere.

My brows pinch together in frustration at the thought of him, but I continue writing: Saturday, December 12.—

Clear and cold. James Wall was carried to Fort Western by an officer today. I hear a charge was given against him for failure to pay debts.

I stretch my back, listening to the wind in the pines and the creak of the house as it settles around me. I can hear a coyote yipping in the pasture and an owl hooting near the barn. The fact of the matter is that I am lonely.

And then I laugh. If anyone had told me two decades ago, when I was buried in small children and endless chores, that one day I would sit at my desk in a warm, quiet house while the snow fell outside and complain of loneliness, I would have slapped them. That future seemed as far away as Constantinople.

I blow a long, cool breath over the new entry to set the ink, then put aside my quill. I would very much like to join the rest of the house in slumber, but I can already feel the creeping wakefulness that often assails me at night. This is a new affliction, something that began once I rounded the corner of forty-five. I never understood what a gift sleep was until it vanished. Whereas, in all the decades before, I slept deep and heavy, soaking up every morsel of rest that was offered, I now skim the surface, fitful, easily woken, and unable to drift off again. On nights like this, no amount of physical exhaustion can induce my mind to shutter, so I read by candlelight instead. It is the only time I allow myself this indulgence. The joy of falling into another life, another world, is the one thing that mitigates the frustration of a sleepless night.

I change into my nightgown, brush my hair, slip under the covers, and reach for the candle on the bedside table. I scoot it closer, then open Emmeline by Charlotte Turner Smith. Ephraim purchased the novel on his last trip to Boston. The cover is tattered—I am not the first owner—but the print is clear, and there are no missing pages, which is more than I can say for most of the novels I’m able to get my hands on. Within seconds, I am immersed in a make-believe world of English aristocracy. But it does not escape my attention that, had my own ancestors enjoyed such comfort, I would be living across the sea, and not here in the vast wilds of the new world.

BALLARD’S MILL SUNDAY, DECEMBER 13

The house smells of dead animal. Like hide and fat and wild game. The acrid scent will last for several days, but there’s no help for that. The deer tallow is pungent, but once it has been made into candles and cured, the stench will fade. I have added dried, crushed lavender and rosemary—along with their oils—to each of the four rendering pots that sit on my worktable. In a week, the candles will simply smell like the forest. And the house will smell of home once more.

“There,” Dolly says, tying the last of the linen threads to the end of a slender, foot-long branch. “Two hundred and forty.”

I inspect her work, then nod in approval. Dolly tied the wicks while I readied the hardening racks along the edge of the room. Each branch will hold two candles, and each rack will hold forty-eight. Altogether, we should have enough candles to get through the winter, with extra for bartering.

We spent all morning rendering the deer fat given to us by Amos Pollard, then straining it until the tallow was smooth and pale. Dolly and I both wear aprons to keep the oily splatters off our clothes, and scarves around our hair to keep it from falling in our eyes. Candle making is hard, sweaty work, and not a task meant to make a woman look pretty. It is, however, one of the necessary parts of running a household.

We take our spots at the table and lower the first branches so that the wicks on either end drop into separate pots. The thick linen strings soak up the wax for a moment before we lift them out again. It takes a few seconds for the rendered fat to harden and then we plunge them in again. We repeat the process, watching each candle grow in width with every immersion. Once they are an inch wide, we set the branches across a drying rack so that the candles dangle as they harden. The task will take several hours to complete, but neither of us minds. Rarely do we get an entire day together.

It is one of those winter afternoons that is so bright the sun reflects off the snow and hurts my eyes if I look at it directly. I cannot help but worry about Ephraim working his way through the frozen marsh up north. His people are Welsh but have lived in the colonies for two generations and have grown acclimated to these northeastern winters. He insists that he no longer feels the cold. I know that he’s lying, but he says it anyway. It’s the game we play—a dance of concern and denial.

Hannah has been with Lucy, our oldest, married daughter, and her family on the other side of the river, near Fort Western, all week. Lucy had her seventh child—Hannah’s namesake—earlier in the year and was eager for both her help and her company. There are eleven years between them, but they have always had a special bond. And now that Hannah is nearing the age of marriage herself, I suspect there are questions she would rather ask her sister. This reality makes me a bit uneasy, however, given Lucy’s casual attitude toward things of a carnal nature. Her first child was born a mere five months after her wedding.

There are rules and rituals, of course, for young people and how they court. Usually, it begins at one of the seasonal Frolics. Just last month, May Kimble’s family hosted one, and there will be another in January here at the mill. But still, young people always find ways to be together, away from watchful eyes, and anytime my children are out of sight, I wonder what they might be up to.

As for the boys, Young Ephraim has joined his older brothers in cutting trees in the forest today, and none of them will be home until dinner. Only Dolly and I are here, and it is both restful and strange. It seems as though only yesterday I had a baby on each hip and two more wrapped around my ankles.

I plunge the candles into the tallow, then pull them out again, watching the excess drip off and back into the pot. The rendered fat has cooled slightly and isn’t as runny, making the process go faster, and I like the way the dried herbs speckle the tallow. But I keep an eye on the consistency because if it gets much thicker the pots will need to go back over the fire.

We work in companionable silence until Dolly says, “I took stew and bread to Mistress Foster yesterday while you were out.”

“And is she well?” I ask.

“No better,” Dolly says. “No worse.”

Ever since Sally Pierce made her accusations, the Fosters’ world has grown increasingly small. Many of those inclined to defend them now whisper behind their backs. They wonder. They gossip. Some neighbors avoid them altogether. Few in the Hook cared that Joshua Burgess was dead until their pastor was incriminated in his murder. And those who dismissed Rebecca’s claim of being raped look at her askance now that she is pregnant.

I am thinking about what I might do for Rebecca when Dolly points at something out the window.

“Who is that?” she asks. It’s a simple question, but there is a curiosity—a certain kind of light in her eyes—that I note before turning to the window.