cheesecloth filled with dried hop flowers. Hannah looked to her daughter Martha. She alone among her sisters and brothers had stayed indoors this morning, no doubt hoping for a visit.
“Take this bag, Mattie,” said her mother. “Pour boiling water over it, and let it brew—then squeeze it out for me. I can hardly move today, for the pain!”
Martha found a bowl and began to do as she'd been told, then took what she'd made to a table across the room. Lem followed, admiring her second-best petticoat, and curls the color of ground ginger tucked under a nearly transparent cap. Orpheus, too, went to sniff at the hops, and sneezed at their unpleasant odor. The couple sat and gave a conspiratorial look back toward the fire.
“They're not holding you, then?” Mattie asked, fingering a ribbon at her ear.
“Well, not exactly,” said Lem. For the first time in days, he felt at peace. It was not to last. “Though I am staying with Mr. Longfellow. And I'm still not supposed to go out on my own.”
“Good,” said Mattie. “We'll all know where you are, for a change. I've been hearing stories…”
“What kind of stories?”
“On Sunday, after the sermon, a girl I know who lives north of the village told me she'd seen you up there last week.”
“That's not so strange, is it? My parents live north of here, you know. And my brothers and sisters.”
“Whom you rarely visit, as you've told me yourself.”
“Sometimes I do. Occasionally Mrs. Willett gives me something to take to them.”
“When, exactly, was the last time that happened?”
“A while ago,” said Lem, praying it would be enough. He stuck a finger into the bowl that held the poultice— and withdrew it suddenly, hissing his discomfort.
“It's not as hot as all that,” said Mattie. “I should think you'd be used to hot water, by now.” She lowered her own hand into the water to move the cheesecloth around, but withdrew it immediately. “There,” she said, biting her lower lip in a way the boy found most attractive. “We'll let that sit. But she also said,” the young woman continued, sliding easily back to her first subject, “that you'd passed her without a word, and even turned away—as if you didn't want anyone to know you were there. Why, I wonder, was that?”
“Who was it?”
“I'll not tell you. I can keep secrets of my own.”
“Oh,” he returned unhappily. “I'll tell you this, if you would like to know. It's not much good keeping a secret, Mattie. It's far better to have none in the first place.”
“That, I'm sure, is true,” she sighed. “Especially between people who are married.”
“Married?”
“Yes, as an example.”
“I'd not keep anything from you, Mattie. If we were ever—”
“To marry?”
“Well, as an example.”
His smile, she thought, had become almost witless. Perhaps she had baited him too long. When his hand felt for hers behind the bowl, she let him take it.
Meanwhile, by the fire, the two women glanced over. They said nothing of what they saw, but returned to their own quiet conversation.
“I was sorry to hear about the Godwin boy, of course,” said Hannah. “Still, I doubt he's much of a loss to his parents, if they sent him away from Worcester.”
“Did they? Why do you suppose that was?” asked Charlotte.
“Samuel says he got himself into some sort of trouble. When they managed to get him out of it, he came here to start over. That didn't work out well. Some are born bad, it seems to me.”
“There's something else I came to talk about,” said Charlotte, not wanting to make a judgment on the information she'd just received. “It's something you'll find irritating.”
The larger woman tilted her red face, putting her best ear forward. “Just what I need to distract me. What now?”
“It seems there's been a scheme of sorts going on in the village, perhaps for some time. It's one many of the men have organized, and neglected to mention to the rest of us.”
“There's little news in that!” Hannah leaned back and gave a groan; her hand then went to her lower back to give it a rub. “Not here, nor anywhere else in the world. When have they not conspired to have things their own way, at our expense? Though I'm fond of a few of them, I can't say I've trusted any man for years…”
“But this is something rather unusual.” Charlotte supposed, too, that what she was about to divulge would end this particular problem within their little society—if events took their