“Thee is much too tall for that churn,” she said, but sat down nonetheless on the edge of the porch, stretching out her legs and shrugging her shoulders with a sigh of relief.
“The butter will come soon,” he said. “Won’t it?” It had been a long time since he’d churned butter himself—perhaps … fifty years? That thought disturbed him, and he churned slightly faster.
“It will,” she said, turning her head to frown up at him. “But not unless thee goes more slowly.”
“Oh, aye.” He obediently slowed to her previous rhythm, enjoying the sense of the heavy liquid moving to and fro in the churn with a soft rhythmic slosh. “Have ye seen the captain at all?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, slightly surprised. “I met his mother a few weeks ago, soon after they came. In the forest, gathering comfrey. We talked for a bit, and I helped her to carry her baskets to her house. Her son was very kind, and offered me tea.” She raised an eyebrow to see whether he appreciated this bit of intelligence, which he did.
“I dinna suppose anyone in the backcountry has even seen tea in the last five years.”
“No,” she said thoughtfully. “He said that he has friends from his naval career who are so kind as to send him a small chest of tea and other dainties now and then.”
“Ye said ‘soon after they came’—when did they come?”
“At the end of April. Bobby Higgins told me that the captain told him that, like Odysseus, he had walked away from the sea with an oar on his shoulder until he came to a place where no one knew what it was—and having found such a place, proposed to stay, if he could.”
Jamie couldn’t help smiling at that.
“Does Bobby ken who Odysseus was?”
“He didn’t, but I told him a bit of the story and explained that the captain had been speaking metaphorically. The captain made Bobby rather nervous, I think,” she added delicately. “But there was no good reason to deny him—and he paid five years’ rent in advance. In cash.”
Any figure of government authority would make Bobby nervous, with the murderer’s brand on his face, this inflicted after a skirmish in Boston, where he was a soldier, had left a citizen dead.
“Seems that people tell ye a great many things, Rachel,” he said. She looked up at him, hazel-eyed and open-faced, and nodded.
“I listen,” she said simply.
She knew a number of small things regarding the Cunninghams, for she stopped now and then at their cabin when she’d been foraging in their vicinity—it was no more than a mile and a half—to share, if she had extra of something. None of the things she knew seemed unusual, though, save that Cunningham had confided to her a desire to preach.
“To preach?” Jamie nearly stopped churning, but a certain resistance reminded him that the butter was coming, and he continued. “Did he say why? Or how?”
“He did, evidently, when he was a sea captain. Preach to his men, I mean, on Sundays aboard his ship. I gather that he found it gratifying, and had a notion, when he retired, of becoming a lay preacher. He has no real idea of how that might be accomplished, but his mother assured him that God would find a way.”
The news of the captain’s desire to preach was surprising, but also something of a comfort. Still, he reminded himself, there were a good many preachers who would call down hellfire in the service of an army, and having a vocation to preach didn’t limit a man’s beliefs in other directions. It wasn’t likely that a retired sea captain of the British navy would have strong tendencies toward independency for the American colonies. And he didn’t think wee Frances’s observations regarding Mr. Partland were in any way mistaken.
“Did ye ken that Roger and Brianna called on them, and were shown the door for their trouble?” he asked. “I think the butter’s come.”
She rose, smoothing her dark hair back under her cap, and came to look. She took the churn handle, worked it a few times, and nodded.
“Yes. Brianna told me. I think,” she added delicately, “that perhaps Roger should try to speak with Friend Cunningham in the absence of his mother.”
“Perhaps he should.” He pulled off the top of the churn and they looked in, to see the flakes and clumps of pale-gold butter swimming in the cream.
19
Daylight Haunting
IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL day, and I had persuaded Jamie—with some difficulty—that the world would not end if he didn’t hang the door for the kitchen today. Instead, we collected the children and walked up through the woods toward Ian’s cabin, bearing small presents for Rachel, Jenny, and Oggy.