won't be any time soon.”
“Few will regret it when it does happen,” Lem told her. “Except, possibly, the ‘Little Lord.’”
“Who?”
“It's what some of us call Godwin. I've heard it said the fool believes the island will be left to him, one day.”
Charlotte recalled something else Mrs. Knowles had told her, concerning a surprise in the boy's future. Could what Alex believed be true?
“That's why he always has airs,” Lem said, with an expression that made Charlotte laugh as she rose from her seat.
“Since we'll be busy again tomorrow, I think I'll go up to bed.”
“Pleasant dreams.”
“And you,” she replied.
“Though I hope you're not troubled by thoughts of the river.”
“The river? How do you mean?” She watched as Lem bent to retrieve one of the boots she'd removed that afternoon, and left behind a broom at the edge of the hearth.
“Still not dry,” he informed her.
So he'd known all along! But would he say more? At the moment, it appeared not.
For his observation, her friend received a pained look from another who did not enjoy being deceived. Charlotte made her way out of the kitchen, into the front room. She walked past the tall clock, patting it out of habit. Finally she climbed the stairs to her chilly bed chamber, clucking her tongue while Orpheus padded softly behind.
Chapter 6
PULL!” CALLED A chorus of voices.
The two horses on the bank strained at first, snorting bursts of breath that hung in the morning air. The slide did its job, and the long sledge, laden with blocks of ice, began to inch from the pond. Soon it reached the back of a waiting wagon. More men sent the slippery blocks— each a double hundredweight, two feet square and the depth of yet another—up an incline of planks. Pulled with iron prods and pincers, the blocks tumbled at last into a straw-lined bed to form a single layer, enough for the wagon's axles.
The horses were now hitched to the front, ready for another trip to Richard Longfellow's nearby ice house. Several years before, he'd supervised the diverting of a part of the creek that ran through his meadow, to create the shallow pond. For that reason, his claim came first. But once the blockhouse behind his stone barn was full, more ice would flow into Jonathan Pratt's storehouse, next to the stables that stood behind the inn. Then, smaller cellars about the village would open their doors.
As things proceeded, Longfellow felt the cold, and again donned his long coat and fur-lined hat. He spoke with a few of the loaders and packers preparing to walk by the wagon's side. Out on the ice, others stripped of outer clothing continued in pairs to wield their long, pointed saws with double handles.
Longfellow had earlier lent a hand in cutting the first two parallel lines two feet apart. These had run out into the pond for sixty feet. Crosscuts turned the ice between into blocks, which were pushed beneath the opposite lip, to create a trough of open water. Then a further line and crosscuts freed more blocks that were floated to shore and hauled out, until the first course was finished. The men moved back, sawed a new parallel line, and began to cut more ice from where they'd stood before. As soon as a wagon on the shore was filled, another moved forward to take its place in a changing row.
Longfellow turned to see a number of young women in full cloaks, most often scarlet, lining the shore, cheering as a competition began to see which of the current crews could cut the most blocks before they came together. Older women and small girls arranged food on trestle tables, keeping baskets full of the rolls donated by the Bracebridge Inn's landlord, Jonathan Pratt, serving soup from pots in double-tiered tin boxes lined with coals. Not far off, by a snapping bonfire, jugs offered a more pungent form of refreshment.
Shifting his attention away from the main bustle, Longfellow watched the adjacent ice, dotted with low islands of blueberry scrub. Here, skaters raced or circled one another on blades of steel, antler, or bone. Boys bundled until they resembled sheep romped nearby, awaiting turns. Waging serious battle, the eldest threw hard missiles of old snow and fell according to the rules of the game; younger brothers simply rolled about on their own.
One of these, Longfellow saw, was Mrs. Willett's occasional assistant Henry Sloan, happily at war with associates from the village dame school. Henry's sister Martha skated by