The Heretic's Daughter: A Novel - By Kathleen Kent Page 0,45
a good while, perhaps most of the morning, for they had broken down the remaining ears. The cow looked at Mother contentedly, the little brass bell on her ear tinkling faintly, and continued her chewing despite Mother’s shouting and hand clapping. On the bell were carved the letters “S.P.” Over the sound of the gently threshing hooves came the sounds of Hannah crying. Mother turned with pinched lips and a raised brow and said, “Sarah, go back to the barn and, after you have untied your sister, bring me the tether. And be fast. We will be paying a visit to Goodman Preston this morning.”
Hurrying to the barn I gauged the time to sneak back to the house and take up a biscuit. We had not yet eaten, and my stomach had folded in on itself. I untied Hannah and, giving her over to Andrew, ran to the kitchen and tucked a biscuit into my apron. After a moment’s thought I took yet another, as Mother’s biscuits were hard to break in even parts and if I was clever and quick, I could eat a biscuit in secret while generously encouraging Mother to eat the whole of the other. The cow came willingly enough, as there was no corn left in our garden to eat, and I walked behind, using a stick to keep the calf apace with Mother’s rapid stride. Samuel Preston was our neighbor to the south, below Chandler’s Inn and Thomas Osgood’s house on Preston’s Plain. He was long established in the town, having ten acres, but he was careless with both family and livestock alike. In July Father had found one of Preston’s cows in a bramble pit, her legs and udder torn to bloody ribbons by thorns. He worked her free and spent days salving her wounds with small beer and bear fat. She was returned to Samuel Preston whole but with her injured bag empty of milk. Goodman Preston gave little thanks, accusing us of keeping the cow those few days to take her milk for our own uses.
As we walked I broke small pieces of the biscuit hidden in my apron and put them into my mouth, keeping a close watch on my mother’s determined form marching in front of me. The evening had been cool, laying a fog on the fields, but the sun was raising the billowing mists much as the swelling harbor tide effortlessly lifts an armada of ships. The trees and meadows were still a deep green, but here and there I could see tips of burnt yellow on the outermost branches of the oaks. Elm and ash arched and grew together tangled above the road, blotting out the light like the inverted bowl of a dark green cauldron. Cardinals and crows perched high in their waving green tents, rasping out warning calls. The fragrant air was like a warm, wet flannel on my skin, and I slowed my pace, dragging my shoes in the road to make dust angels. The sound of Mother’s voice, humming a rare tune, rose up warm and throaty, and soon her pace slowed as well. She looked at the crisscrossing bower of branches and at the grasses underfoot and once glanced at me over her shoulder and smiled. Not a smile of unfettered joy, but a smile of pleasure nevertheless. She waited for me in the road and said, “Do you know what day it is, Sarah?”
I thought for a moment and answered, “It’s a Tuesday. I think.”
“It is the first day of autumn. The end of harvest. Ended sooner than expected,” she said, patting the cow’s hide. “What say we have a pudding for supper. There are eggs and a cone of sugar and you shall have licking rights. Would you like that?” Without waiting for an answer, she gave my chin a gentle cupping and then turned from me. It had been a very long time since we had had a pudding, and Mother almost always gave Father or Richard the dregs left inside the bowl. Some hardness within me loosed its grip, and had I been able to see my own face, I am sure I would have seen astonishment and gratitude in equal measures. She walked down the path at an easy pace and motioned with her hand to follow.
I watched from a distance her graceful form moving under the trees into shadow and light and shadow and light. There for an instant and then swallowed up by the