Page 95 of The Frozen River

“If I am cruel, then I am only matching the example you set for me. You won’t tell the truth about that night, nor would you tell the officer of the court where your husband has fled.”

“I have already told them! A dozen times at least,” she cries. “Joseph has gone to Boston on business.”

“A very convenient fiction.” “The only fiction is the one being told by that Foster woman. She lies. Joseph would never lay a hand on anyone in the manner she claims. But do his friends and neighbors believe him? No! They’ve taken the word of a heretic’s wife. A woman who hasn’t lived in this village for five years. And now the very court my husband serves is after him? You tell me where the justice is in that, Martha Ballard. Tell me.”

“I will tell you the same thing that I told the court. The same thing I saw with my own eyes. Rebecca isn’t lying. The real cruelty is happening to her. And you would realize that if only you bothered to learn where your husband goes at night.”

“I know Joseph! And I know the law,” she says, half weeping and half spitting with anger, “and I don’t have to tell anyone where he’s gone. Not you. And certainly not that whippet of an officer from the court. Not if it means acting against my husband.”

“Then come back when you are ready to tell the truth.”

I hear the wind pick up outside and the snowflakes spin and hiss through the air, getting tossed against the windowpanes where they stick, then melt. In the distance I hear thunder.

Lidia North rises to her feet, unsteady, the tears openly running down her face. “You think you’re so clever. That you understand everything. But you never ask the right questions, Martha. Certainly not of your little pet Rebecca. Do you even remember what it was like in the District of Maine before the war against the French and Indians? Do you? Because Joseph does. And he fought to clear the Kennebec of that vermin. Samuel Coleman was there. He fought with Joseph. He could tell you. But no, you only listen to Rebecca. And she brings them back into this town?” Lidia shakes her head. “That woman deserved whatever she got. But my husband had nothing to do with it. Tell her, Ephraim! Tell your wife that she is wrong. About everything. Tell her to make the tonic.”

“My wife knows her mind, Mistress North,” Ephraim says. Then he looks up and directly at me. “And I’ll only tell her to follow her conscience.”

Throughout the entire conversation, Ephraim has been sitting at the kitchen table, bent over his ledger, as he balances the accounts. But when Lidia walks across the room and lifts her cloak from the hook he goes to hold it for her. The physical effort to ride out to the mill must have cost every bit of energy she had in reserve.

“I thought better of you, Martha,” she says, pulling on her gloves and stepping out the door.

Once it is shut, Ephraim turns to me. Leans against the frame. “So did I.”

So rarely have I been scolded by my husband in these last thirty-five years that I can feel the heat seeping into my cheeks. “You would have me make her a tonic? When she has lied to the court? When those lies may well mean the difference in whether North faces some kind of justice or none at all?”

Ephraim goes back to the table and gathers his ledger, tucking it under his arm, and there is sadness in his voice when he says, “I did not take you for the kind of woman who would punish the innocent for the sins of the guilty.”

CLARK FORGE

My conscience stings, and I’ve just changed into my riding skirt and cloak to go after Lidia—she can’t have gotten far—when there is a pounding at the door. Huge fists pummel the wooden timbers. I can see them shake from ten feet away.

When I pull it open, John Cowan stands at the threshold stomping his boots on the flagstone to knock off the snow. He takes in my attire, nodding once in approval.

“Good,” he says, “you’re ready.”

“For what?”

“To ride.”

It takes a moment. My mind is elsewhere, and I wasn’t expecting the young blacksmith’s apprentice. So it’s a full five seconds before I realize one of the Clarks needs my help.

“Which one of them is ill?” I ask over my shoulder as I go to get my medical bag.

“Mary,” he says, then adds, “the baby. She’s been having fits.”

John Cowan has not bothered with the wagon this time, having instead ridden Charles Clark’s draft horse, Sampson. Better suited for the plow, he looks ridiculous with a tiny saddle on his broad back, as though someone has tacked a square of leather to a Highland steer. He stamps at the gate, impatient.

“Let me get Brutus and we can leave.”

“No need. Your husband’s already gone for him.”

“How—”

“I passed the mill on my way in. Told him you’d been summoned.”

And sure enough, he has. For no sooner do I reach the garden gate than Ephraim comes down the path from the barn, leading Brutus. If he is sorry for his harsh words, he doesn’t show it. He simply helps me into the saddle and wishes us well as we head for the lane. I look back once, hoping to meet his eyes, but he’s already turned back to the mill.

I can handle being out of sorts with half the town, but this—Ephraim’s disappointment—pains me. Sorting that out will have to wait, however. At a full gallop, it takes less than ten minutes to reach the forge, and then John leads the horses to the barn for water and hay while I make my way to the house. I can hear Betsy Clark crying from the other side of the door. But still I knock, to be polite. Sometimes people would rather keep their tears to themselves. It’s a choice I always try to give when possible.