Next morning the widow’s face looked something brighter, Freeman’s much the same. He set off for Winslow’s farm as soon as he’d breakfasted. A brief altercation took place where the widow attempted to hand him some money from her jar, he attempted to wave it off with talk of a loan, the widow thrust it at him again. Freeman took the money and went off.

He returned lugging a bag of wool, and again that thing leaped in Alice’s chest. More wool to spin meant Alice there yet, in the widow’s home. The widow laid an old blanket over the keeping room table, and she and Alice sat one to a side, picking the bits of pitch, dirt, and matting out of the fleece until they were both slick to the elbows in lanolin. They picked the whole day, rolling up the blanket only long enough to serve up a cold mutton dinner, throughout which Freeman sat uncommonly silent; after the dinner he disappeared and didn’t return till supper, where again he had little to say.

Alice went to bed and listened to the wind combing the pines, the waves raking the beach. She thought she might possibly be lulled to sleep by the sounds until she heard a new one: the rise and fall of voices below. She crept to the stairs in time to catch a question from the widow.

“You told her Alice could spin?”

“I did so.”

“Mr. Winslow said right here at this table they had no one to spin at home.”

“He did say that, yes. But as I said before, she’s got no paper, no reference—”

“And a halfhearted recommendation from you. You needn’t deny it, sir; you’re incapable of speaking other than you think.”

“I might say to you, Widow Berry, that one often puts to others what one possesses in oneself. I might also say that we should be a very great pair of fools if we did not assume our friend Shubael had spread the tale of his stowaway across the whole village.”

Silence, after which Freeman took a second turn. “I might also remind you, Widow Berry, of the very fair chance that Mr. Winslow himself said something to his wife about the girl.”

“What might he have said that could possibly turn his wife against her? He sat right here and watched her work at her tasks all the evening without a misstep or a whimper.”

“Perhaps he reported on the uncommon beauty of her face and form.”

Another silence, after which Freeman again took double turn.

“You understand the wife’s not well.”

“Yes, I do. And I understand you men are a great lot of fools. I’m going to my bed. Good night, sir.”

“Good night?”

“Good night.”

“Well, good night, then.”

THE WOMEN BEGAN carding the next day, pulling the handfuls of fleece through fine-toothed wire brushes over and over until the strands came straight and smooth; after the carding came the combing of the fleece into rolls for easy handling, like the ones Alice had pulled from the dusty basket. As they worked Alice looked often at their paired hands. Alice’s burn had already eased under the widow’s care, but the widow’s scars put an awkwardness to almost any task she attempted, and Alice wondered often at the flames that had disfigured her.

As the women worked, Freeman came and went, his long shadow moving in and out of the house, his horse shuffling in and out of the yard, and although in his absence Alice sometimes worried that he would pop up and surprise her unaware, she felt easier with him gone.

The women worked at the carding and combing until they had prepared enough wool for Alice to move to the wheel again; from there the widow carded and combed alone as Alice spun. The next full day at the wheel Alice spun six skeins of wool, and as that meant a backward-forward walk of near twenty miles, she had no great trouble that night with her sleeping.

THE DAYS MOVED along: one, another, and another; Alice spent most of each day at the wheel. The nights developed a habit of their own: the widow and Freeman would wait for Alice to take the stairs and then settle into a discussion of the day’s events below; Alice would take the stairs loudly to the top, then creep halfway back to listen. But in that listening Alice caught no further mention of Freeman’s efforts to find her work in the village. She considered what this might mean and decided it meant that for now the widow needed her to spin down her bag of wool. She calculated it would take her eight days to complete the job and lulled herself to sleep that night by chanting it over and over: eight more days in the widow’s home.

ONCE THE WIDOW had finished the carding and combing she returned to the other work the season demanded: slaughtering the calf, cooking up its offal and making mince and sausage, milking, weeding, egging, and always, cooking and washing. But even a weaver of the widow’s reduced dexterity could fully occupy three or more spinners, and so Alice stayed at the wheel. After Alice had produced a quantity of yarn the widow also took on the next chore—dyeing—alone. She emptied the night jars into the blue dye tub to dissolve the indigo cakes with the chamber-lye, and went woods-walking to collect red oak fronds for the red dye and sassafras bark for the yellow. She soaked and dried and soaked and dried and soaked and dried the yarn, first filling the house and then the yard with the stink of it as she spread the wet yarn on the bushes to dry.

When Alice had spun her way halfway through the bag of wool the widow asked Freeman to pull the loom out from under the eaves in the attic and help her repair its tackling, which he did with an ease and agility that belied his hinged-together appearance. Aside from that single task he began to spend more daylight hours outside of the home, attending to whatever was his business, or perhaps just avoiding the stench by visiting the tavern, but he always came home by supper and sat with them in the evening. Alice and the widow would wind yarn or sew while Freeman read, either to himself out of a book by someone named Locke, or out loud from something like Pope or Shakespeare. From time to time Freeman asked Alice to mend a cuff for him, or remove a sauce stain from his shirt, or affix a button, and for each task he gave her twopence. At first Alice feared those coins, suspecting what else the man expected them to pay for, but as time went by and the coins continued to come but the man didn’t, she began to accept them with greater comfort. She even began to look forward to the evenings. Freeman seemed pleased that Alice knew some of the works he read from, and that she listened with such grave attention; he sometimes asked her a question about a particular passage, and if she knew what he talked of he seemed more pleased than he did over a clean shirtfront.

The walking wheel sat in the northeast corner of the keeping room, and from there Alice could observe and take note of the occupants of her new household with freedom. In addition to observing, she listened. She had long ago made note that few masters or mistresses credited a servant with a working pair of ears, but she also imagined that the hum of the wheel caused the others to believe their speech better muffled than it was. Through her listening she discovered that both the widow and Freeman had been raised in Satucket and that Freeman had been a particular friend of the widow’s husband, which perhaps went some way to explaining the loose way of speaking between them. She learned that Shipmaster Hopkins was the widow’s husband’s cousin, that he’d married Freeman’s sister, and had eight grown children. She learned that the widow had one living child, a daughter named Mehitable, who had married a man named Clarke and lived in one of the big houses near the mill, with two babes of her own and several older stepchildren, which explained the age of the widow’s spinning granddaughter Bethiah, but not what might have happened to her.

As the position of the wheel allowed Alice to face the window if she desired she also came to recognize the widow’s nearest neighbors, the mismatched Deacon Smalley, a man so slightly built as to appear near Alice’s size from the road, and an Indian called Sam Cowett, taller even than Freeman and half again as broad. Alice had several times heard the widow or Freeman give their good-days to either neighbor as they passed along the landing road, and heard the neighbors offer up their greetings in return. Yet with all these people connected to the widow by blood or proximity, except for Freeman’s political gatherings, no one ever came to the widow’s home at all. Alice was therefore greatly surprised one day when Freeman returned from the village with a young, pink-faced boy beside him.

If the boy surprised Alice he more greatly surprised the widow. She let a skein of yarn drop from her hands into the dye kettle, and rushed toward the boy in such a hurry she trailed blue dye all down her apron. She gave him a fierce hug, stood back from him, and said, “Well!” and then “Well!” again, before seeming to notice his eyes darting toward Alice’s corner like a pair of hummingbirds. The widow introduced him: her grandson Nate Clarke, her daughter’s oldest stepson. It seemed she would have said more if she could have thought of it before Freeman came up and laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

Freeman said, “Your lad has news for you, Widow Berry,” but the boy stood dumb. Freeman continued. “He’s stood the examination of candidates and has been admitted to the fall term at Harvard College.”

The widow hugged the boy again; Alice gave him a second look. The fine bones, fine hair, and fine features had deceived her; she wouldn’t have thought him the age for college. Besides that, he seemed dim-witted. As the widow inquired after the particulars of the examination he answered with two disjointed words: English. Latin.

After a time Freeman disappeared into his room and returned with the book by Locke, which appeared to be the real purpose of the visit. Freeman handed the book to the boy as if he were handing him a basket of eggs; in truth, Alice was surprised he could bring himself to relinquish it. He said, “Take heed of him, my boy. Take heed. You’ll find his faith in the goodness of man most inspiring.”

“But how does he account for the not-good?”

Alice gave the boy a third look. Perhaps some wit in him.

“Read the book, lad,” Freeman said. “Now don’t be late for your tutor.”

But the boy didn’t move. He seemed to have shaken off his stupor. “Will you tell me first, sir, what you say of this non-importation plan?”

“Well, lad, you’re fifteen now—”

“Nearer sixteen, sir.”

“Nearer sixteen, then. You tell me what you think of it.”

“My father’s strong against it. He’s against the new tax too, but he thinks—”

“I know what your father thinks, as does all the village. I ask what you think.”

“I don’t know. I have some trouble over it.”

“What troubles you?”

“Well, ’tis the law, sir.”

“Ah. The law. Very good. The law declares the tax must be paid, and so the tax must be paid. Is that how you make it?”

“I do, sir.”

“Very good. Now suppose you ask yourself if this tax is indeed a lawful one. Suppose you ask yourself who made the tax and why, and by what right.”

“I should say a law come out of Parliament to be a law of the highest order.”

“Higher than the law of nature? Higher than the law of a man’s own conscience?”

The boy stood silent.

“Suppose you next ask yourself who gains by this new tax and who loses. Suppose you ask yourself too who pays it, and whether those who pay it are allowed a say in its making. Ask yourself these things, and report to me what you make for answers. Now be gone or you’ll be late for your tutor.”

LATER THAT NIGHT Alice heard the widow and Freeman in argument below, their voices rising in counterpoint up the stairwell. Alice moved far enough down the stairs to catch such phrases as would identify their subject, and when she discovered they talked of the boy she thought to return to her bed but found herself caught by the next sentence.

“You pit the boy against his father,” the widow said.

“I let him see another side,” Freeman answered.

“You let him see your side.”

“Not mine alone.”

“Nor all the province’s, as you’d let him think it.”

“He’s old enough to think for himself.”

“But not old enough to survive by himself. You shouldn’t have brought him here. If his father were to learn of it—”

“The boy knows enough to keep quiet.”

“Nonetheless—”

Silence.

“Nonetheless?” Freeman prompted.

“Nonetheless, sir, I thank you for it.”

“Pah! A happy accident. By the way, did Myrick send a boarder to you?”

“He did not.”

“How now? I was almost sure of it; a large party come for the wedding—”

“Mine is a ‘pagan house,’ Mr. Freeman. I heard the Myrick sisters call it so two days ago at the mill, before they saw me approaching. I expect no recommendation from them or anyone else in the village.”

“You might do something for yourself in that regard.”

“What ‘something,’ sir?”

“You might appeal to the reverend, return to the church.”

“For that I must be greater starved than I am at present. When you’re next in the village would you be so kind as to fetch another bag of wool from Mr. Winslow? Alice has neared the bottom of this one.”

Alice heard no more talk. Another bag of wool. Eight more days. Nine or ten if she slowed some. Already, the waking dreams of Philadelphia and the high-walled ship had been replaced by dreams of Satucket and her bed in the widow’s attics.

Her sleep dreams remained the same.