She heard the sharp squeal of the sow coming from the barn and knew John was feeding her extra mash to make her fatter. She had been held back from slaughter in the fall for breeding, and by the way her belly hung low to the ground, Martha knew they would have piglets soon. Perhaps, she hoped, as many as eight. She sensed Patience was already regretting having promised to give her any piglets over the number six. If the sow had eight, then Martha would get two, enough to buy four yards of good cloth for a new dress. And perhaps a new dress would make her more attractive to a suitor than her present worn and spotted skirt.

She had seen her reflection in a bucket of water often enough to know she had a kind of beauty, mirthless though it was; her skin was clear and unspotted, her forehead high and sloping. Her black hair, thick and ropy as a horse’s mane, was no doubt her glory, but she knew her brows knitted together too often to be pleasing, causing a deep well to form between them. But beyond all of that, she feared, she had too much force, too much animal vitality, to be winning; at least to any civil, unprotesting sort of man.

Picking up the hoe once more, Martha called to her cousin, idling just inside the door, to come spread topsoil in the garden. Patience pushed herself from the door frame and slowly made her way into the garden. The smell of dried fish and manure, coming in waves from the bucket at Martha’s side, made her gag and she clenched her teeth.

As she dragged the heavy bucket behind her, Patience ladled the sticky mess over the loosened soil. As soon as she had covered a small area, she picked up the short hoe and tamped it into the dirt. She continued in this way until a spasm, just below her breast, made her catch her breath and drop the bucket. A look of fear eclipsed the frown on her face, the fear of slipping too soon, in a wave of blood and viscous matter, the nesting bit of life in her womb. Martha quickly caught up her cousin’s arm, her eyes questioning, but Patience shook her head and motioned Martha away.

Martha upended a bucket and settled Patience down on it, tucking her skirt over her lap and out of the dirt. She kneaded the pregnant woman’s shoulders and clucked vaguely to soothe her. Martha knew her cousin mistrusted midwives who used slippery elm to ease the passage of the babe through the birth canal; “a squaw’s poultice,” Patience had called it, a custom of native savagery. But Martha decided that she would go soon and harvest enough for the birthing. Patience would be glad enough of a liberal application between her legs, she thought, when her labors came.

Thankfully, Patience let herself be led into the house. Martha steeped mint leaves in water to quell the griping, assuring her cousin she would soon enough want to eat again. But Patience bleakly eyed the suet pudding made for their supper, and she managed to whisper through gritted teeth that she doubted with her whole being she would ever again eat anything but bread.


ON A SATURDAY morning a harried-looking yeoman appeared at the door soon after breakfast, holding an ancient matchlock. He stood to the fore of two younger men, both carrying hay forks, and all looking as nervous as cats on a sinking ship. He nodded to Patience when she came to the door and asked, respectfully, for Thomas. When she asked their business, he told her that a pair of wolves, perhaps a male and his mate, had felled two lambs on his farm in Andover.

“They have seemed to bound up, fur, teeth, and claws, from the very ground of that place,” he said, his tongue working carefully through broken teeth. “So clever were the beasts, they et through the high leather latches on the lambfold. The Town Fathers has charged us to kill the wolves what killed my sheep.” At Patience’s blank face, the farmer continued. “There be a bounty of fifty shillings apiece for the pelts. And twenty shillings more if the pair be skinned doubly so… at the same time, is what I mean to say… that is, together…” His voice trailed away and he stood, looking baffled by the ensuing silence.

Martha, coming to stand at the door, huffed air through her nose and said, in a loud aside to Patience, “Your boy, Will, would have better luck with my garden trowel against the beasts than these men here with their forks.” Patience covered her mouth against a sudden smile.

“Now, missus, you’ll not laugh when these great monsters climb through your shutters. They’ve come to Billerica now to do some mischief. As your man Thomas is a creditable shot, and as he has his own weapon, we are here to ask him to lend aid in rooting out and killin’ these here wolves. We’ll pay him a part of the boun—”

The sight of Thomas’s towering form approaching the house cut off his speech as cleanly as a hand around the throat. They watched him set by the door a hundredweight sack, his head grazing against the beams at the ceiling, and Martha realized for the first time that he must duck or bump every time he came inside.

“You’ll not catch them by day,” Thomas said, wiping his hands over his shirt. “They’ll be hidin’ in a thorny lair. And if you did find them, you’d need to climb in face-first to kill ’em. No, a gun’s not the way to catch a wolf.” He looked significantly at the rusted barrel of the cradled matchlock, and the farmer bristled.

“Well, then,” the man said hotly, “if you’re too afraid to come, you only need say so.” Thomas shrugged and, wishing the men a good day, walked back into the fields. The lead farmer motioned for his men to follow away, and they walked in single file down the path like geese tied bill to tail feather.

Soon after, though, Martha saw Thomas returning to the house and, with a flash of irritation, thought he wanted his dinner before the appointed hour. But he gave her no notice and instead addressed himself to Patience.

“Missus, if you’d be willing to give over a hen, I can kill those wolves. I’ll buy you back a hen from the skinning bounty.”

Patience looked at him in surprise and said, “But you told Goodman Shed he could not kill the wolves.” Will, who had spoken of nothing else since the farmers took their leave, clapped his hands and tugged at his mother’s skirts, shouting, “Mamma, Mamma, Mamma, let me go. Let me go hunt the wolves with Thomas. I can help, I tell you I can!”

Thomas laughed and answered, “No, Goodman Shed could not kill a cow with that rusted pipe of his, little less a wolf. But I can.”

Patience pulled Will from her skirts and shushed him, but a calculating look had settled into her face. Martha looked from Patience to the Welshman and realized a deal was being struck; Thomas had sent the other men away so he could collect the bounty for himself. She looked with new eyes at his raw-boned figure; his face, cut by hard living, was well beyond comfortable middle years. But as he inclined his head to Patience, she saw ambition flare in his eyes, like a sudden sharp flame.

Martha, thinking a knotted cord the best way to plumb deep water, clanged the spoon loud and long against the cook pot. “Well, then,” she countered. “You’re going to spend the night thrashing about after the wolves yourself, are you?”

His eyes shifted to Martha’s, and for the briefest moment, she felt the short hairs on her head bristle. He turned his attention back to Patience.

“I’ll build a pen, missus. They’ll come for the hen. Once they’re inside, I’ll spring the gate behind them, and shoot ’em dead.”

After some pointed haggling, it was agreed upon that the bounty would be split three ways, John getting the third equal share for helping build the pen. She felt hostile eyes on her and turned to see Will regarding her with a jutting lower lip. He was a sweet child, she knew, but a handful at times and rebellious.

“What is it?” she asked crossly.

“You shouldn’t look so at Thomas. He’s been a soldier in England,” he said defensively. “Haven’t ya, Thomas?”

Thomas nodded briefly, but there was a sudden guardedness about his posture, a wariness that made Martha think there was a good deal more to the story. The angling scar dividing one brow neatly into two halves took on a more interesting history than a careless fall onto a harvesting blade, or a village brawl. Her father used to say that eight parts of speech came into the world at Creation and that women made off with seven of them. The eighth part held by men was the language of war, conquest, and bragging. The Welshman, like most men, had a tongue for boasting; and she was sure, with the right abuse to his pride, those secrets could be tipped into revelation.

“And what kind of aimless fables have you been throwing the boy?” she asked dismissively. “You’re too long in the tooth to have served the king as soldier. More like stable boy or muck-about…” Her voice trailed off as she watched his jaws working together, knotting the skin at his cheeks. There was a slight lowering of the chin, but nothing was said, no gestures made nor distracted shuffling of feet. He merely stood, hatless and calm, and in that moment all other action in the room ceased. And settling over every motionless figure, like gilt over wood, was a lingering, brittle tension.

CHAPTER 4

TIERNAN BLOOD STOOD quietly in a small alley off Pudding Lane and watched the night-soil men carting their refuse noisily over the stones. It was only just past midnight, but from the bawdy laughter and the unsteady stopping and starting of the handcart, Blood knew the refuse men were well on their way to being insensible with drink. It was dark, with no moon, and he could hear more than see the watchman in the alley opposite him stir with the noise. He had been waiting for three hours for the watchman to fall asleep, and he cursed, resolving himself to waiting another quarter hour for the man to nod off again.