Girl in a Buckskin

Chapter One
     
     
     
    THE LEGGETT GIRLS WERE GIGGLING IN THE NEXT ROOM. Becky could hear them as she slid the bear steak into the hot skillet and watched the smoke rise from it in clouds. Absently she reached out and turned the turkey that was roasting on its spit in the great fireplace. Taking the bread peel from the hearth she drew from the oven three loaves of rye-an’-injun bread and placed them on the trestle table to cool.
    There, she thought, pushing at the damp hair that clung to her forehead, another job done, and straightening she paused a moment to rest her back and listen to Adah Ann and Prudence as their voices came through the open door. What would it be like, she wondered, to fill an afternoon as they did, with light chores like mending and quilt-patching and spinning candlewicks from hemp or silkdown? A very pretty life, she thought, knowing that before she crept into her rough bed behind the chimney she must polish the pewter, scour the floor, serve dinner and make up a gallon of flip for Mr. Leggett’s friends. She thought of the years ahead that she must do these same things, if not for the Leggetts then for another family, and a pinch of resentment tightened her heart. In truth she was no different from Adah Ann or Prudence; she came of equally good stock and was actually prettier, but both girls had parents and dowries and could marry whomever they chose. There would be very little choosing for a town pauper bound out to the Leggetts for a few shillings a year.
    Unless she married Mr. Smeed.
    “Rebecca!” cried Mrs. Leggett shrilly from the next room, and a moment later the lady herself swept into the kitchen. “A posset cup of mulled wine for Mr. Leggett,” she said. “Fetch it from the tavern, will you? Such a day, such a day, the pewter still uncleaned and not a drop in the house for him. Hurry, now will you?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    Mrs. Leggett paused and her glance swept Becky from head to foot. “And have you thought on Mr. Smeed, Rebecca?”
    Becky fumbled for words. “It’s true, then?”
    “True? Of course it’s true. Didn’t I tell you it was all arranged? He’s going to ask Mr. Leggett for your hand tonight—and a very rare chance for you, Rebecca, a very rare chance for a girl in your circumstances.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Rebecca said politely.
    “Just think,” she said, “to be your own mistress in your own house, after being bound out by the town these many years. Mr. Smeed is a man of much substance and not yet fifty. I declare, Rebecca, you are fortunate to have caught his eye.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    Mrs. Leggett glanced at her sharply. “You’re not going to be coy, are you? I’ve told you how fortunate you are. He’s paying Mr. Leggett a very pretty piece of money to free you from service.”
    “Yes, ma’am. I’ll go to the tavern now, ma’am.” Keeping her eyes low Becky snatched a pelisse from the peg on the door and hurried out with the posset cup before Mrs. Leggett could detain her further. Oh, but the spring air smelled delicious after working beside the fire all day. Not all the garbage rotting on the common could make it smell less than fresh. She walked quickly down the muddy lane that was called Town Street, taking care to keep her skirts from the mud. The Cock and Bull stood at the far end of the common and she was thinking that she would walk more slowly going back.
    She was halfway down the common before she saw her brother Eseck. There was nothing surprising about seeing him bound in the stocks again; some folks said if you needed to find Eseck Pumroy you had only to go to the common and look in the stocks or the pillory. “A wild ’un,” they called him, and a wild one Becky knew him to be, but with more reason for his strangeness than most people could own to. She stood a moment watching him, feeling pride in him rise in her like sap in a tree.
    “Seen only one person sittin’ like that,” somebody said behind her, and turning she saw Hob Olcott and a stranger walking up to the inn. “That was an Injun the year I was no’th with the militia. They had a fire lit under this Injun and his arms tied, and he just set. Like that feller.”
    “That’s Eseck Pumroy,” Hob said. “Half Injun at that.”
    “Looks white.”
    “Is white. But five years with the heathen ain’t calculated to make some men whiter.”
    “Captive?”
    “Aye, and back only a few years.” Hob saw Rebecca standing there and nudged his friend.