“Is that how you see me?” she asked. “Like a wolf? Is that who I am in your tale of Gelert? Am I the wolf?” Her face was defensive and half-fearful, like a child expecting punishment.
He leaned closer, bringing his lips to her ear, and asked solemnly, “D’you still not know?” She shook her head, and cupping the side of her face with his hand, he said, “You are the deer shot through with arrows whose heart grows cold for want of being taken.”
He looked at her, his mouth solemn, and her eyes filled with tears. He held her, speaking to her in his own tongue, the guttural sounds fractured and sweet against her cheek. “Branwen,” he called her, pulling off her cap to crimp the black hair in his hands. He whispered into her neck, first in Welsh and then in English, the tale of the myth-woman Branwen, with cheeks the color of raven’s blood and the body of snow. He kissed her mouth, encircling the backs of her thighs with his arms, pressing her against him. Tracing upwards with his fingers the bony prominences of her spine, he rested his palms beneath the hollows of her arms and he slowly pulled her away. He lifted up her apron to show her she should wipe her face, streaked and glistening. He helped her by brushing the creases of her eyelids with his thumbs and smoothing back the knots of hair from her forehead.
“Sweetheart,” he said, kissing the hollow of her throat.
By measures her tears dried, and after lifting her from the rock, he took her hand and led her to the grove where she set to work with her curve-bladed knife, gathering the sap from the slippery elm. The insides of the trunks were still soft, the hidden bark light-colored and strong-smelling, and she scraped at it vigorously, the sweat from her face burning her eyes like lye. After a time, she gathered the shavings into a small bag and watched Thomas scanning the path and the woods for movement, his form grown restless and agitated.
After a while he said, “When you take up a man’s name, you take on his history. I’m nigh on fifty years. D’ye know that?” She nodded for him to go on. “I’ve had a wife before. In England.”
Her grip on the knife handle tightened, but she kept her eyes on the bark and the rhythmic scraping of the blade.
“She died when I was a soldier fightin’ for Cromwell in Ireland. I were his man in all things, Martha, and you should know it before you tie yourself to me.”
His eyes searched the length of the path from the opposite direction they had come, as though he expected someone to appear. She anxiously peered into the woods, looking for something hidden in the shadows, but saw nothing alarming. He glanced up at the sky, the sun at midpoint, and then, nodding, turned to her. “I’d tell you all, here and now, but for the others.”
Others? she thought, wiping away a limp strand of hair with the back of her sleeve. She saw him look sharp to the road and she stood up, following the direction of his gaze. A man walked towards them, his arms swinging easily in counterpoint to his rapid stride. He was dressed in a leather jerkin and full breeches like any farmer, but with the confidence of a man used to certainty of action. Lacing her fingers around her eyes against the noon glare, she looked up at Thomas and with a jolt realized that he knew the man, that he had been waiting for him. As he walked nearer, she saw that the man was tall, only a head shorter than Thomas, with a few days’ growth of heavy beard, as though he had been living hard on the ground. His footfalls made explosions of dust as his heels struck the path, and the long barrel of a flintlock, strapped with leather to his back, gleamed dully over one shoulder.
He came to stand in front of them, placing a familiar hand on Thomas’s shoulder. There was nothing said between them, merely the nodding of heads in casual greeting.
“Here is my friend Robert Russell.” There was weight in the word “friend,” but Thomas offered nothing further.
Martha looked at the man, unsure how to place his name or face. He was a stranger to her; she had never heard Thomas speak of him before today. Robert regarded her closely, scrutinizing her face, and she wondered if her eyes were still red and swollen from weeping. She self-consciously wiped her slick palms on her apron and waited.
Suddenly he grinned, displaying an alarming array of strong white teeth, and said, “You look confounded, missus. But that is to be expected, as you know little of me, and I know so much of yourself.”
His speech was not like Thomas’s, but neither was it accented as it would have been with a whole life spent in the colonies. She crossed her arms and said, “I know nothing of you.” Uncertainty had made the sound of her voice strident but, rather than taking offense, he smiled wider at her and cut a look to Thomas.
“That is why I am here, missus.” Robert reached into a bag at his waist and pulled from it an apple, a perfect globe of pale red and green, and extended it out to her like an offering. “It is from General Gookin’s orchard.”
“I don’t know General Gookin either,” she said. She paused a moment before reaching out and taking the apple.
“Walk with me, then,” he said, “and I will tell you.” He gestured off the path, towards the stand of trees. Thomas took her arm and they walked the short distance to the shaded places. Standing, she propped her back against a slender trunk and held the apple briefly up to her nose, breathing in its rolling perfume, roselike and tart. She looked to Thomas for some guiding word, but he stood apart from her, staring down at his feet, lost in his own thoughts. She clasped her hands under her apron, tense and expectant, knowing that good news never would need such a courtship of words.
“General Gookin is known to both of us, Thomas and me, from the Great War. He fought like us for Parliament. He is now here, in the colonies, and has great tracts of land: orchards, fields, and men, of which I am but one. Thomas and I made the passage on a ship with the general.” He paused and looked expectantly at her, as though he had run a great distance ahead and waited for her to follow.
Unaccountably, she remembered the instant of fear when the tinsmith blew out the candle, the blackness, the scrambling to find the lock. And the name he had given her when she crossed the threshold to leave. “Prudent Mary,” she said. “The ship on which you crossed over was the Prudent Mary.”
Robert dipped his head in assent.
“And there were others,” she said, using Thomas’s word. “Others who came with you, because to stay in England would bring… danger.”
Robert laughed, throwing his head back. “That’s putting it prettily, missus.”
Thomas held up a cautioning hand and said, “Martha.” When she looked into his face, she saw that he was afraid for her. “It was General Gookin who found us shelter, and he watches over those who made the crossing with him, as best he can. All our fates are tied together. So one goes, the others may follow. I would not burden you with a name that’d mean prison, or death, if you didn’t know the truth.”
He moved in closer, grasping a branch above her head. “Robert an’ me, we sleep with our backs to the wall. One loose word about any one of us, and some village newcomer, and all his grandchildren, would have coin enough to live like princes.”
Her hands, hidden beneath the apron, squeezed tighter together, her nails piercing the skin of the apple. She turned her back to Robert so that Thomas alone would see her face, and asked, “Why could you not tell me this, Thomas? Do you not trust me?”
“It’s not for lack of trust, Martha. It’s our way. It’s for our safekeeping, and for yours. If I should be taken, Robert would do his best to protect you.”