MILL CREEK BRIDGE         

It is nearing five o’clock in the morning when I urge Brutus into a lope. I am too exhausted to ride this hard, but I want nothing more, at this point, than my own bed, my own pillow, and the soft, worn quilt on top. Now, with home only moments away, and my nerves still raw, I cross the bridge and turn west, up the lane. Once again, I nudge Brutus to go faster, but we’ve not made it a quarter mile when a living shadow melts out of the woods. Tempest darts into the road in front of us. Her eyes are an amber flame blazing in the dark. The fox barks out a ferocious warning, and Brutus rears back, forelegs pawing the air in alarm. The movement catches me off guard, but not so much that I’m unseated.

Tempest looks directly at me, warning and fear and something else reflected in the light of the moon. She sniffs the air, searching for my scent, and takes another step forward. Brutus flicks his tail. Snorts. He sees only sharp teeth and wicked claws. He knows nothing of my fondness for this creature.

I am unprepared for the buck.

Off balance. Arms akimbo, and then, before I can adjust or pull in a full breath, I am tumbling through the air over his head. The horizon—now pale and silver—spins, and the earth rushes toward me. I have gone forward, arse over teakettle, and though I try to land on my feet, I cannot tell up from down. And there is no time to judge my position in the air.

I hit the ground, hard, on my back—breath rushing from my lungs in a guttural oof—before I can protect myself from the fall. I feel the impact everywhere. My ribs throb, my head aches, my hips feel battered, and even though it is dark, bright little lights spin in front of my eyes, dancing to some nauseating rhythm. I taste blood and know that I have bitten my tongue. The thing that scares me most, however, is that my mouth opens and closes but my lungs refuse to pull in air. I gasp and flail like one of Cyrus’s fish when pulled from the pond.

I cannot breathe.

I roll onto my side, trying not to panic. It takes another long, frightened moment, but I am finally able to pull a thin stream of air into my burning lungs in a ragged, wheezing whistle. It feels like water and fire, life and death, and I lie there drinking in both, my lungs aflame. Drowning. Burning. The sound I make, trying to breathe, would have me on my knees, begging God for help, if this were a birthing room and I heard a woman in this state. But it is only me, beneath the stars winded and wounded.

Think, breathe, think, breathe, I tell myself. You cannot die here alone in the middle of the road.

Brutus is fifty feet away, stamping the ground, impatient for me to get up. I’d kill him if I could, that’s how much I hate that stupid, ruthless, brute of a horse right now. Worst decision I ever made. Worst money I ever spent.

Wheeze.

Gasp.

A breath, deeper now, but still the burning.

I am furious.

My own horse has tried to kill me.

I glare at the damned, stubborn stallion. I should have castrated him when I had the chance. Ephraim was right. That’s the only way to tame a wild beast.

The cold and wet seep into my clothing, my bones, and I know that I should get up. That I cannot lie here forever. I am certain—mostly, I think—that nothing is broken, but my body is slow to rise.

There is a soft padding near my head, the tiny crackle of little feet moving through leaf and mud. And then there she is. My fox. All dark and silver in the moonlight, her startling eyes locked on me.

Tempest.

I say nothing.

Don’t budge an inch.

I barely allow myself the air that my lungs are screaming for.

Because the fox is sliding forward, one delicate paw after the other, and now she is only a whisker’s breadth away, staring at me as though I am the most curious creature on earth. I would never have believed such a thing could happen, have never heard of such a thing in my life.

Tempest—my own little fox—eases her slender head forward and sticks out her pink tongue. Once. Just once she licks the tip of my nose. It’s a greeting. A peace offering. Some acknowledgment that we are one and the same. But it is fleeting. Gone as quickly as it came, just like her, because in one bound, she springs over my head, nose pointed toward the house, tail toward Water Street, and begins to bark.

There is nothing comely or tender about the sound this time. They are vicious little snarls that rip the air and snap my senses into order once again. I struggle to my feet and back away. Not because I am afraid of Tempest. Certainly not. But because I realize that these are warning barks.

We are not alone in the woods.

But in the distance, I hear an answering call. Another fox. Her mate, perhaps, somewhere closer to the house.

I turn to Brutus just in time to see him spin around and bolt in the opposite direction. That traitor has run off and left me.

“Et tu, Brute?”


I limp toward the mill. My ankle is sprained, and a cut runs the length of my right forearm, dripping blood into the cuff of my sleeve. My breath comes easier now, but still, there is a whistle at the end—a dispute, lodged by my body for its recent treatment. Brutus is gone—run off toward the Hook—and has taken my medical bag with him, so I do not even have my bandages.

I am still cursing the beast when I step out of the woods and see a lantern burning in the mill window.

“Ephraim,” I wheeze, and shuffle faster.

A horse is hitched to the post, snorting deep in the shadows, and a long rectangle of pale light slips out from the door and falls onto the muddy yard.

I turn sideways and slide through the narrow wedge of open door. “That damned horse threw me again,” I say. “Mark my words, I’m selling him for glue.”

At the sound of my voice a low, angry growl fills the room. Cicero. He lies on the floor beneath Ephraim’s workbench. He lifts his head from his paws and rounds his spine slightly, all the bristly hair standing on end. Teeth bared. Eyes flashing. No wonder the foxes are barking tonight.

His master stands a few feet away, flipping pages in a book that I immediately recognize as my journal. He looks up at me, dispassionate.

“I would like to know,” Joseph North says, ripping a page from the spine, “what you were really doing in my house yesterday?”


“Get out,” I say, grabbing onto one of the large central posts for support.

“No.”

“Ephraim will be home any moment.” “That excuse didn’t work the first time,” North says, tearing another sheet of paper from the book. It falls to the floor and settles at his feet. “And I’m rather weary of hearing it. Your husband is in Boston. Petitioning his claim to this property.”

“My children—”

“Are all in bed. Asleep. You are alone, Martha. The question is whether you are afraid.

Rrrriiiipp. The sound echoes through the mill. This time he wads the page with his fist and throws it to the corner.

“No. I am not afraid of you.”

“Rebecca was afraid when we went to her that night. You should have seen the way her legs trembled on that bed.” He says it so casually. As though he doesn’t care that he’s confessing to a crime. “Don’t worry,” he adds. “I’m not incriminating myself. I’ve been acquitted, remember? I can’t be tried again.”

Get out,” I tell him, the air hissing through my teeth, ribs creaking in protest. I wonder if I broke something after all.

Cicero leans forward at the note of anger in my voice. Bares his teeth.

“No. You and I are going to have a little talk. And we’re going to start with why you were in my house.”

“Medicine. For your wife.”

His eyes narrow. “You’re hurt.”

I wince but do not answer him.

“Well, that will make this easier.” He turns another page in my journal. Reads a benign entry aloud. Pats his mouth as though yawning. “Where is my letter, Martha?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You are a terrible liar.”

“I wish I could say the same about you.”

He laughs. “No doubt I’ve had more practice.”

I summon every bit of nerve that I have. Stand as straight as I’m able. “Get away from my journal. And get off my property.”

“It’s my property now. But I think we might come to an understanding.” North holds up the journal by its spine, then yanks out a fistful of pages. If one could rip my soul in half, that would be the sound. He shakes them in front of me. “I underestimated you. I never knew you kept this book. Until the first hearing.”

I need to run. Everything about North—his demeanor, his words, everything—feels dangerous. Unhinged. But I wouldn’t make it to the path before he caught me. I could scream. There’s a chance one of the children would hear me. But which one? Hannah? Dolly? Young Ephraim? I would pray for Jonathan, but he was passed out drunk, not five hours ago. Cyrus is the best option, but there’s no certainty he’ll be the one to come running.

“If not for this, Rebecca’s claims would have never made it past the first hearing.” North yanks at the book again, and my eyes sting as I watch a week’s worth of careful documentation being torn in half.

I ease back toward the door, but Cicero is on his feet now, growling deeper, edging closer, and I stop. I lift my hands, palms out to ease him back. He sits back on his haunches in the middle of the floor.

North snorts. Tears out another page.

“Why did you rape Rebecca?” I ask. Stalling is the best option I have now. Keep him talking. Give Cyrus time to get up and get to work.

“I taught her a well-deserved lesson.”

“You broke her body and destroyed her life. You forced a child upon her. What did she ever do to you?”

North looks at me, lips twitching in fury. “She brought those damn Indians into this town! Not once. But two dozen times. Do you know how long it took us to root the Wabanaki out of this place? Seven years. Seven years of war with the French and their barbaric allies. And she waltzes into the Hook with her high ideals and that idiot husband and invites them into her home. It could not be tolerated.”

“Who she associates with is none of your business.”

Everything to do with this town is my business! I was here before any of you, and I’ll not have this place polluted by our enemies.”

I shake my head. He truly believes what he’s saying. “You raped her because of the Wabanaki? Because of a grudge held over from some old war? You are a judge. You had no right to violate your oath of office.”

“I had every right!” He thumps his chest. “I am the judge. I decide what is just.”

“You are a disgrace.”

He laughs, but there is no mirth in the sound. “Rebecca Foster is just a cunt. Same as you. Same as every woman. Just a nice wet hole to dump a bit of seed. Nothing more.”

Samuel Coleman is right. This man has lost his soul. It is the only way to justify such a belief. He was born of a woman after all. He has a wife and grown daughters. He moves through a world that is equally filled with women.

“What happened to you?” I ask. “During the war?”

“Nothing happened to me. I learned the greatest lesson of my life.”

He sounds more like a judge again, and less like a zealot. His voice has slipped into oratory, the kind he uses from the bench. There is no courtroom to lecture, however, only me, and I use this bit of space to test the strength of my wounded ankle. The jolt of pain that shoots up my shin is reminder enough that I cannot run.

“If you see something,” North says. “If you want it, then you must take it. That is how you survive not just a war, but a life. The French and Indians taught me that.”

“So you are a thief as well as a rapist?” I lift my arm and indicate the mill around us. “You take land. Women. Scalps.” He flinches at this. “And then call yourself a victim when challenged?”

It is risky, but I need more time. So I press harder. Fold my arms across my chest.

“No,” I shake my head. “You’re no hero. No founding father. You are a coward who runs in the face of justice. You are the kind of man who hides in a dead man’s house instead of facing the jail yard.”

North looks at me, eyes wide, as though astonished I could have figured this out.

“Let me guess,” I say. “You couldn’t find the eviction papers. So you threw a tantrum and torched Burgess’s homestead?”

You,” he hisses. “You have them.”

“No. Not anymore. They are currently in the possession of your employers. And I would imagine the Kennebec Proprietors will find this little scheme of yours quite illegal. See it, want it, take it only works when there is no one around you to stop you, Joseph.”

He is not a man given to silence. Swollen by self-importance, impressed by the sound of his own voice, Joseph North always fills a void with vain and stupid words. But, for the first time in our long acquaintance, he closes his mouth.

Ten seconds.

Twenty.

For thirty long seconds he shakes with rage.

“There is no one to stop me now, is there, Martha?”

I should have known where this was headed. He’d made it clear up front with his nonchalant confession. But it isn’t until he tilts his head and the look in his eye changes from pious to prurient that I understand the point he has come to make. Joseph North intends to take a pound of flesh.

“You have caused me a great deal of trouble. And there is a price to pay for that.”

“You wouldn’t dare touch me,” I say, shifting as best I can toward the worktable. I need something, anything, to support my weight.

“I admit that I have not fantasized about you the way I did with Rebecca. At least not in many years. You were quite lovely when you were young, though. Billy Crane thought so at least, didn’t he?” He licks the corner of his mouth as he makes a roving assessment of my body. “Your breasts were smaller then, but your legs just as long.”

Billy Crane.

I haven’t heard that name spoken aloud in at least a decade. Maybe more. And the fact that North says it now, with his own threat hanging in the air, makes my heart trip harder.

“Oh, don’t look so surprised. You think I don’t remember? We hung him from a pine tree. No trial. And I learned a good lesson in the process. Don’t get caught.”

He takes a step toward me.

“Touch me and you will regret it for the rest of your life.” I edge back, looking for something with which to protect myself. “You will not find me such an easy victim. And you do not have help tonight.”

“I can admit that Burgess was a mistake. He enjoyed it too much. Wanted another go at her when he was done. But I didn’t need him then, and I don’t need him now.”

I take another step toward the worktable. Force the fear out of my voice. “So why take him? It was such a stupid risk.”

“It was brilliant. People might have believed her if she said one man raped her that night. But two? It’s ludicrous. A story cooked up by a vengeful woman who’s just seen her husband fired. I took Burgess with me so that no one would believe her. You saw how well that worked for me in court. Charges of attempted rape. And then an acquittal.”

“An acquittal only because she wasn’t there to testify.”

“And whose fault was that?”

You are the only one at fault here. Don’t you dare try to blame anything on her.”

I have to keep him talking. That’s the thing. He’s just so damn impressed with himself. Always has been. And the more he talks, the lighter it grows outside. Men aren’t so brave in the daylight as they are in the dark. My children might be asleep, but not for long. This is a farm, after all. And besides, the thing that I want is here, three feet away. But if I lunge for it, he will block me.

“Come now, Martha, we have business to attend.” North untucks his shirt. Pulls at the laces of his trousers.

“Don’t you dare.” I edge another step closer toward the table.

“Go on, try to run. But I don’t think you’ll get far. Not with that ankle.”

Cicero swishes his tail across the floor, kicking up a fine cloud of sawdust. He bares his teeth and the dark gums above them.

When North tugs his trousers down, and then the drawers beneath, I do not deign to look at the thing he strokes in his hand. Instead, I watch his eyes, wait for him to charge, knowing that I will have only one chance. If he reaches me, or knocks me down, the fight will move to the floor, and any leverage I have will be lost, along with any hope of defending myself.

“It must vex you to know that you can’t scheme your way out of this,” he says.

I am sweating. At my temples. Under my arms. My upper lip. I haven’t sweated in six months. Maybe seven. Not since the last time I worked in my garden. Winter has stripped this experience away entirely. But here it is again. Assaulting me. Unwelcome. The air feels thick and heavy inside the mill. I can smell North’s breath. His sweat. His crotch. I can smell the anger seeping from his body.

Thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump-thump. Faster and faster and faster my heart beats.

Smell and memory are linked together. Nothing conjures the latter like the former. And now, my entire being is seized with a memory from thirty-five years ago. Billy Crane. The shed. Four horrendous minutes with my face shoved into the dirt.

“I knew you were scared,” North says.

And I cannot deny it. The proof is there in the rapid rise and fall of my chest. The breath that I cannot force into submission. I can hear the blood rushing through my ears, like a river that has broken loose from winter’s grip. Raging. Violent. I know what is coming. My body is aware. It remembers. And it will not be calmed.

I lurch toward Ephraim’s worktable when North takes that first step in my direction. He is faster than I am with a sprained ankle, and he catches me by the hair. Yanks me backward, hard.

I scream.

The pain is so startling that the sound has escaped my lips before I realize I’ve drawn the breath to cry out. Cicero jumps to his feet again. Growls. Inches forward. I sound wounded, like an animal. I sound like prey, and he salivates at the noise.

North winds his fingers through my hair. Pulls me closer. Whispers.

“What a pretty penny this would have earned.”

“Let go of me!” I scratch at his hands.

“Oh no. You are going to be quiet about this. While I’m doing it, and afterward. You’ll not say a word, because no one will believe you. They’ll think it’s some bit of petty revenge, just your way of getting back at me after losing in court.”

No one will believe you.

It’s the line spoken by every man who has ever used a woman in this way. The trouble is that so often they are right. But I am angry now, and I do not want to be used in any way by Joseph North. There is only a foot between us, and we are near the same height, so I do the only thing that I am able. I tilt forward as though trying to move, and when he grips my hair tighter, I smash my head backward into his face.

It is North’s turn to scream. Then he grunts. Curses. He drops my hair and clutches at his bleeding nose.

When he lets go, I dive for the worktable, scrambling for Ephraim’s wicked, curved blade. Revenge. Hilt in hand, I turn. The knife feels heavy in my palm. Unwieldy.

“You aren’t going to kill me,” he says, laughing.

And it’s that arrogance—the certainty—that enrages me. “I have no intention of killing you.”

Even though I could.

“Then put down your toy and take what’s coming to you.”

I grip the knife tighter, lift the blade, and slash the air. Just once. Just close enough that he flinches and raises his arm to block me. Revenge cuts a clean swath through his sleeve. A three-inch slit that exposes the skin of his wrist.

North looks at it, stupefied.

“You stupid, little c—”

“Don’t touch me.”

I swipe again, and he stumbles backward this time. Two steps. He nearly trips over his pants, and it’s enough that I can maneuver into a better position. Press my hips against the worktable. Support my weight.

Anger. Fear. Both mingle to make my voice unreliable. I do not want to sound weak, so I clear my throat. Even so, it is better to reply one word at a time. “You. Will. Not. Touch. Me.”

“I don’t take orders from women,” he says. And then he lunges, hands out as though he would take me by the throat and throttle me.

I drop down.

Ignore the blinding pain that cascades through my knees when they hit the floor.

Lean forward at a slight tilt.

And bring my arm down in a quick, purposeful slash, just as his hands grab hold of thin air.

I do not swing blindly.

I do not miss.

And I am not sorry.

The blade catches him right between the legs. It is a clean cut, the kind that takes a moment to feel.

But when he does, his scream rises high in the early morning air, for Revenge has done its job. Joseph North will never rape another woman as long as he lives.


North falls on top of me, and now we are a tangle of arms and legs, and Ephraim’s blade toggling between us. I try to scramble away but have no leverage, so I must use my arms to create some distance. I feel him shift on the ground beside me, and I swing wide, again, but connect with nothing but air.

North isn’t coming for me, however. He is bent over himself, hands cupped at his crotch, blood flowing between his fingers. Cicero goes insane, unsure whether to defend his master or attack, the smell of blood making him frantic.

“What did you do? What did you do!” he gasps, then begins to cry and curse and swing his arms in my direction, and I feel each drop of blood hit my face. It smells of copper and rust and salt. It smells of fear.

I can hear the words that he hurls at me, but they do not make sense together. Random insults, violent but utterly impotent. He screams. Gags. Curses.

“I told you not to touch me,” I say. “I told you to leave.

I scoot away from him and use the worktable to pull myself up. Wipe the blood on my skirt. I grip the blade as Cicero takes careful, measured steps around his master. He has made his decision and identified me as the threat, the cause of all this pain and screaming. One large paw glides through the slick red puddle, and when he sets it down again, the print is perfect, as though stamped in wax.

Revenge is ruthless but might not do much good against those teeth if Cicero gets them around my arm. Or throat. My hand is shaking now anyway, and the hilt is slippery in my palm. The dog senses this, edges closer.

I had thought that the rising sun might bring one of my sons to the mill for work, but it brings the sound of hoofs thundering down the drive instead.

It brings an unholy screeching as well. It rings in my ears. It makes my teeth hurt.

Blood.

It spreads on the floor beneath North. I feel no pity for him, but neither do I want him to die here, in my husband’s mill, in such a way that I will bear the blame. My intent was to maim, not kill. To teach him a permanent lesson. To ensure that he had one less weapon with which to wound the women of this world. I shrug out of my shawl and throw it to him.

“Use that,” I order. “Staunch the bleeding.”

He screams at me. Curses through a slobbering haze of fury.

“Calm down and do as I say. Or you will die.”

I expect Cyrus or Jonathan but instead it is Ephraim who steps through the door. I stare at him, stupefied.

“What the bloody hell?” Ephraim asks when he sees North sprawled out, blood pooling between his legs, as he tries to press my shawl to his groin.

Cicero is backing away now, alternating between growls and whines, when Percy swoops through the door and dives for him. The dog yelps, as though he’s just been branded, and runs for the door. Percy takes a sharp turn and is after him, talons extended.

My journal is on the floor, torn to shreds.

And I am crying at the sight of my husband. I drop Revenge. The blood feels oily on my hand, and I wipe it against my skirt.

“He was waiting for me when I got home.” I look directly at Ephraim and try to communicate everything in two sentences. “I told him not to touch me. He wouldn’t listen.”

My husband goes still. Quiet. His pupils dilate, and he takes me in, looking for injury, then he turns to the gory sight of North twitching on the floor. He understands what I am trying to say.

“Are you hurt?”

The question is both gentle and ferocious.

“Only because Brutus threw me.”

I test my weight on the sprained ankle, limp toward Ephraim anyway. “North needs a doctor.”

Ephraim studies him on the floor. “There isn’t time,” he says.

“But—”

“It will take too long to get him to the Hook. Without help he’ll bleed to death. If he’s to be saved it will have to be by your hand.”

Saving Joseph North is the last thing I want to do, but we cannot let him die here. Not after all that’s happened.

Ephraim moves toward him, and North growls, “Do not touch me!”

“You would give me orders? In my own home? After what you have done?” Ephraim goes to stand over him. “If you aim to die, it will not be on my property.”

Still, North howls and spits and curses at me, and through clenched teeth he heaves every possible insult he’s ever heard for the female species.

A moment ago, he thought me weak. Vulnerable. And perhaps I was, but I am not helpless.

“It is a pity you hate women so much,” I tell him. “Because you are going to spend the rest of your life pissing like one.”

There are a thousand things I want to know about how Ephraim came to be here in this moment, but, given the look on his face as he surveys the gravity of North’s wounds, my questions will have to wait. He has only just realized what his blade has done.

“Martha…” he says, and I hear the note of uncertainty in his voice.

“I will need my medical bag. And a great deal of ice.”


I am a midwife.

I am a healer.

I do not take life.

I shepherd life into this world.

This is what I tell myself as we staunch the bleeding. Ephraim applies the pressure as North slips in and out of consciousness, his eyes growing wide in alarm, then rolling back until only the whites are showing. Every time he comes to, his body twitches, but then the pain takes him away again and he flops back to the floor.

The bleeding is the main problem, but once we have it under control, I go to work with needle and thread. There isn’t much left to sew. The cut was clean and effective, and time will have to do the rest. I rinse the wound with a tincture of witch hazel so that infection will not set in.

Once I’ve tied off the last stitch, I pile a mound of ice on top of the wound. This will both temporarily numb the pain and shrink the blood vessels. But North is restless, twitching. He won’t stay asleep for much longer. What I wouldn’t give for Dr. Page’s bottle of laudanum.

When I look at Ephraim, there is an ocean of sadness in his eyes.

“I told him not to touch me,” I say.

“Stop. You will not blame yourself for what happened here tonight, or for showing him mercy.”

“I doubt North will ever call this mercy.”

“If it hadn’t been mercy, you would have gone for this throat.”

“I cut exactly where I meant to, Ephraim. An eye for an eye.”

“Then we’ll call it severe mercy, love.” He comes to sit beside me on the filthy, stained floor. “Will he live?”

“I don’t see why not. Assuming there is no infection or fever. Which there shouldn’t be if the wound is kept clean.”

“And are you going to do that for him?”

“Absolutely not. He will get no further ministrations from me. He can find his own nursemaid.”

“What should I do with him, then?”

“Take him to Dr. Page. As I recall, the good colonel here has a great deal of respect for that buffoon’s medical experience. We’ll see how satisfied he is with the care he receives.”

“And what will I tell Dr. Page about these wounds?”

I look around the mill, at a loss for an answer, but then I settle on Ephraim’s worktable and the row of clean, shining knives.

“It isn’t uncommon for inexperienced woodworkers to have an accident with the draw blade. Particularly when they don’t wear that leather apron.”

“And if North argues that explanation?”

“Then he can explain that he broke into our home, attacked me, and was castrated in the process. But if I know anything about the man, that’s not a story he’ll want known.”

Ephraim looks at the blood on my hands, on my dress. “And what about you?”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I will be. Eventually.”

“And until then? What will you do?”

“I have not slept in twenty-four hours. I am going to bed.”

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21

Tired and battered though I was, I couldn’t sleep when I made it back to the house. I could only wash my face and hands and light the hearth fires.

By the time the children got up and about, I’d collected myself and they didn’t know there was anything wrong. Nor did they think it strange when I asked them to draw and heat water for a bath. It was only when Ephraim came home and stomped right to our bedroom that they cast wary glances at one another. Not finding me there he’d come to the workroom, and we have been shut inside together ever since, whispering, the door locked.

He pulls a new journal and a box of ink from his satchel and lays them on my table.

“For you,” he says.

And that is when I begin to cry. It is a heaving that begins deep within my chest, a current that bursts the dam of resolve that I keep so firmly in place. I weep. Long and loud enough that I know our children can hear it on the other side of the door. Ephraim pulls me against his chest and lets me wring out every tear.

After several long moments, he pulls away and takes in my appearance.

“You need a bath,” he says.

“I know. The girls are heating water.”

“Get undressed,” he tells me. “I’ll collect everything.”

Soon I am standing in the washtub as Ephraim pours hot water over my body. It is only three feet wide, certainly not as luxurious as a copper tub, but it is better than nothing. And I am filthy. Covered with the muck of birth and mud from the road and blood from North. It has been less than eight hours since I delivered Rebecca Foster. Five since I left her daughter in the care of Sarah White. Three since Ephraim loaded North into the wagon and made for the Hook.

“I caught Brutus on Water Street, as he was heading toward Mill Creek Bridge. That’s how I knew you were in trouble,” he says. “I grabbed his reins and tore home as fast as I could. But when I heard you scream…” Ephraim takes a deep breath. Shakes his head. “Brutus had gone for help, and you’ll not convince me otherwise. That horse loves you.”

“I thought you hated him?”

“Not anymore.”

“He tried to kill me. How many times does he have to throw me to prove that?”

“If he threw you, he had a reason.”

“It was the fox. She darted out in front of him. I think…” I pause because I know it will sound ridiculous.

“What?”

“I think she was trying to warn me. She knew that North and Cicero were waiting for me.”

“That makes sense.”

“Oh! That’s the thing that makes sense to you in all of this?”

He looks out the window, to the giant live oak that grows in the south pasture. “Foxes and coyotes are natural enemies, love.”

Something about the way he says this makes me think that he is no longer speaking of Tempest and Cicero, but my mind is filled with all the things he doesn’t yet know, and I must keep them in order, so I put this observation aside.

“Sit.” Ephraim points at the tub. “I’ll wash your hair.”

“There’s no room.”

“There’s room enough.”

For my bottom only. My knees are bent and my feet rest on the floor, but the water comes up to my ribs, and sitting feels much better than standing on my lame ankle. He pours a pitcher of water over my head, and it runs down my neck, down my back. I tilt my head back. Look at his worried face. Smile sadly.

“Thank you.”

“Tell me everything,” he says.

I wrap my arms around my knees and start at the beginning, with Jonathan and Sally and our new grandson. He is neither surprised, nor entirely displeased in our son’s choice of girl.

“He didn’t choose her,” I say. “She trapped him.”

“You cannot have it both ways. Only recently you were complaining that he hadn’t yet found a wife.”

“He still hasn’t. Not really. He’s only found a girl willing to let her skirts be thrown up in the woods.”

He sighs. Pours another pitcher of water. “Don’t let him off so easily. He went to bed with her willingly enough. There’s choice in that. And now there’s a child. Have they posted their intent to marry?”

“Last night.”

“Good.”

“I can’t say he was happy to do it. He went back into the tavern and soaked himself in whiskey afterward.”

Ephraim shakes his head. “Our daughters are in such a hurry to marry. And our sons in no hurry at all.”

“Cyrus would if he could.”

“Still no luck with Sarah White?”

“No. Though I am loath to admit it, you were right. She has made her choice, and it isn’t him.”

“Who then?”

“That is a long story involving Rebecca Foster.”

“Explain that to me.”

“I will, once I tell you why Joseph North came to the mill.”

I go back to my place in the story, where I was called to attend Sally. Then I tell him how I went to North Manor to give Lidia her medicine. How I found the letter that North was drafting to the Kennebec Proprietors.

“It’s in my medical bag. There. In the corner.”

Ephraim pauses his ministrations to dry his hands and read the letter.

“Now I understand,” he says. “North’s lawyer, Henry Knowland, is an agent of the Kennebec Proprietors. Or at least he was. I’d wager he loses the position after Paul delivers the documents to them.”

“Documents?”

“A scheme the two of them had to take leases for themselves and gain a monopoly on the lumber trade in Kennebec County. This letter proves it. It also proves that he meant to use our property as a base of operations.”

“But why take ours? Why not just build his own? There are thousands of unclaimed acres here. Most of what he’s requesting in that letter is open land.”

“Perhaps. But it doesn’t have access to the river. Joseph North is a lazy man, Martha. He doesn’t want to go to all the hard work of building a thing himself when he can take it from someone else.”

See it, want it, take it, I think. He’s never changed.

“That doesn’t explain why he had our lease assigned to Burgess first.”

“I think you were right about that to start with. He bought Burgess’s silence with the promise of our land.”

“Burgess never made any secret of wanting property with river frontage,” I say.

“It’s likely how he talked Burgess into going to the Fosters’ that night in the first place. Burgess got what he wanted, and North got something to hold over his head. A way of controlling the property without having to do any of the work.”

“That’s a long game to play.”

“I found his original lease request, and it was for this property.”

I crane my neck to look at him. “How did we get it, then?”

Ephraim smiles. “Paul’s letter of recommendation.”

“Of course. Paul.

We had arrived in Hallowell, in 1778, almost halfway through the Revolutionary War, thanks to a letter of recommendation written by the famed silversmith not three years after his infamous ride through Charlestown. On a horse borrowed from my husband, no less, the same night Ephraim had taken that dirty punch and got his nose broken.

“Then I take it to mean that you have settled the issue of our eviction?”

“I have. And gained a bit of influence in the process. You are looking at the newest agent of the Kennebec Proprietors. No one can try to wrest this property away from us again. We have been on the property twelve years this month.”

“So North…”

“Did everything he could to steal it in the limited time he had between October and April. But we have officially fulfilled all the terms of our lease. We own the land now.”

“That’s a relief. I am too old to start over in a new place.”

Ephraim takes the soap from its basket, plunges it into the water, and begins to lather my shoulders. “Keep going,” he says. “You found the letter in North’s office and then what?”

“I took it. Obviously. And then he walked in. I got away by telling him that I’d only come to care for Lidia. But he figured out the letter was missing soon enough. And came looking for it later. I went to Pollard’s after I left his house.” I look up. “The militia is back.”

“I meant to tell you that. In December. After I got back from doing that survey. They were stationed at Fort Halifax when I was there. Said they’d be coming through again this spring.”

“Well, they have.”

“And Sarah’s man? Is he with them?”

“I’m getting to that.”

I tell my husband how I came home and waited up for Jonathan after being at Pollard’s, and how Doctor arrived to tell me that Rebecca was in labor. I tell him of the difficult birth. The delivery. And what Rebecca asked me to do afterward. His hands still as he waits for me to finish. They rest on my shoulders, warm and soapy.

“I took the baby to Sarah White,” I tell him. “She has her for now. Until I can think of something different. Sarah also has a fiancé.”

His lip curls into a smile. “Her soldier?”

“Indeed. You would have never convinced me that he’d come back. But he did. And I have to say I’m glad to see it. He’s bought Coleman’s Store, and I think he’ll give her a good life.”

“Hold on for a minute. I’ll go get more warm water.” He’s back two minutes later with a fresh kettle and a hair comb. “Go on.”

I continue, telling him about how Brutus was startled by the fox on our way home. How he threw me. And finally about finding North at the mill. He wants to know every detail about our confrontation. Everything North said and did. He doesn’t like the details, but he listens quietly as he washes my hair with the soap.

“I’ve been thinking about something,” he tells me.

“What?”

“That dog of North’s…”

“Cicero?”

“He’s the one that got into Percy’s mews.”

“I know.”

“He’s half mutt, half coyote, best as I can figure.”

“Okay…”

“The thing about a half-tame dog is that it’s still half-wild. That can’t be changed.”

“And now you’re talking about North?”

“I am making an observation, love.”

Ephraim rinses my hair, then reaches for a small bottle of rosemary and lavender oil. He pours a few drops into his palm, then rubs his hands together. He works it through my hair slowly to ease out the tangles, and then he begins to comb, listening to me all the while. The story ends with details he already knows. A knife and blood.

“Is he…?” My voice trails off.

“Alive? Yes,” Ephraim says. “You saved him.”

“Did Page ask what happened?”

“He did. And I gave him the answer you suggested. North didn’t contradict a word of it.”

I rest my head on my knees as Ephraim works his way upward with the comb. We are silent for a long while once he abandons the comb and begins to massage my neck and scalp.

“There was quite a mess at the mill,” he says, thumbs rubbing circles right behind my ears.

I mumble something that almost sounds like I’m sorry. Even though I’m not.

“Three buckets of water and some scrubbing took care of the blood,” he tells me. “But it took a bit of thinking to figure out what to do with the… rest,” he says.

The thought makes me queasy. “Oh.”

“I wrapped it up. Stuffed it in a box. And took it to Rebecca Foster.”

I sit up straight. Gape at him. “Why?”

“It isn’t much as far as justice goes,” he says. “But it’s better than nothing. And that’s exactly what I told her.”

“What did she do?”

“Threw the whole thing in the fire, box and all, then sat in her chair and cried.”

The tears are good, I think. That’s a start, at least.

I am cold now, and when Ephraim sees the goose flesh rise along my arms, he helps me out of the tub. Helps me dry off. Helps me into a clean dress, and onto the stool before my desk. He wraps my swollen ankle in linen bandages.

“What did you learn in Boston about Cyrus’s arrest?”

“Henry Knowland paid a man to have that warrant forged. He delivered it to the court in Vassalboro himself. Obadiah Wood had no idea Knowland was representing North. They arrested Cyrus on what they believed were orders from a higher court. Knowland has been charged with bribery and corruption. He’ll lose his license to practice law.”

“And what of the charges against Cyrus?”

“Permanently dropped.”

“Good. Because he didn’t kill Burgess,” I tell him.

“I know.”

“Nor did Isaac Foster.”

“Never thought he did.”

“And it wasn’t Joseph North either.”

This surprises him. “You’re sure?”

“Quite.”

“Then who?”

I take a deep breath. Tell him what I’ve finally figured out.