Dawn on a Distant Shore
Page 83

"You need breeches," she said, in the unapologetic tones of the very old when they had made a personal decision for someone younger. "Skirts tie you down on board. In breeks you'd move freer, and fight better when the time comes. But I expect you'll tell me it isn't your way. You're that type."
Elizabeth found herself bristling. "I'm not sure what type you mean, but the fact is, I have worn leggings. All of last summer I wore them, when I was--" She hesitated. "On the New-York frontier."
The brown eyes snapped at her under a creased brow. "So I hear tell. Jack Lingo was a tough one, weren't he?"
Elizabeth rubbed her forehead. "I suppose your grandson told you."
"I keep my ears open," said Annie Stoker. "And my eyes."
Wearily, Elizabeth said, "And what do you see?"
The knotty hands gripped the arms of the chair as the old woman leaned forward, her beads and chains making a soft clinking sound. "I see a woman et up with anger, and no place to go with it. You won't weep, not in front of me. Maybe not in front of anybody. That Scot don't know what kind of trouble he's called down on his head with you. Took your babbies, and left you with more than one kind of pain. I expect if I put a finger to your breast it might feel ready to burst about now."
Elizabeth composed her expression. "It's not so bad."
The old lady had a whoop of a laugh with very little of amusement in it. "Maybe you can make your menfolk believe that, but you look at me again, girl, and see what you're looking at. Ten children I've brought into this world, the first one when I was sixteen years old. The last one was Mac's da, when I was forty-five. But when I look at you I'm put in mind of my second. My only girl, and they took her away from me before I could give her a name." She picked up the cane again and pointed it at Elizabeth's bodice with two quick jabbing motions. "They ache like two bad teeth. Ain't that so?"
Elizabeth folded her arms across herself and tried not to flinch as her breasts, rock-hard, pulsed and leaked in response. But the old lady had already turned away to begin rummaging around in an open chest at the side of her chair. Her pipe worked furiously up and down as she clawed through a jumble of fabrics: old-fashioned waistcoats and pelisses of yellowed brocade, petticoats and skirts dangling torn flounces.
"There we are," she said, hooking something dull brown to deposit it onto Elizabeth's lap. "And these. Make good use of them."
There were breeches and a loose-cut shirt. "This is very kind of you," Elizabeth said, resisting the urge to examine them for lice in front of the old lady.
Annie Stoker waved a hand dismissively. She pointed with her cane to another chest. "In that box there you'll find linen for binding. You wrap your chest up tight as ever you can stand it, that will help some. You can do it now. But if the pain gets to be too much anyway, you have that man of yours give you some ease."
"Ease," Elizabeth echoed. What right do I have to ease? And she saw with some distant surprise how her own tears fell to darken the rough homespun of the breeches. Her bodice was full wet now, but she did not have the strength to hide this from the old woman.
She said, "Why did they take your daughter from you?"
A shrug of the bony shoulders. "I was headed for the gallows at the time. You may not credit it to see me now, respectable old lady that I am, but I was a terror back then, and I near swung for it. Until Paddy Stoker got a better idea and took me away to Ireland. We left the girl behind. I never knew what became of her." The old woman leaned forward to grasp Elizabeth by the wrist. Her skin was dry and warm, and her grip was unforgiving. "A bellyful of anger ain't the worst thing, right now," she said.
The last of the evening light shifted from the window to lay its warmth on Anne Stoker's face. Tears were swelling in Elizabeth's throat and she blinked hard as the old woman doubled in her vision. The blur of color around her neck glimmered and took on sudden clarity: a blue-tinted diamond the size of a woman's thumbnail. A string of square-cut sapphires, and a pendant of amber and worked silver. Coins of all sizes and lands. And half hidden in the folds of the faded calico shirt another coin, larger and heavier, on a chain of its own. A five-guinea gold piece, with old King George in profile.
Elizabeth touched the spot between her own breasts where that very coin had rested for almost a year, and then her gaze traveled up the length of the chain to Anne Stoker's face.
The old lady showed her empty red gums and two dimples carved new grooves on the lined cheeks. Then she reached into a crewel-worked pocket tied to her waist over a pair of leather breeches and drew out a pendant: a single pearl in a clutch of silver petals and curling leaves. She held it up so that the pearl twisted in the scattered light, and then she tossed it.
"Lookin' for that, are you?"
Elizabeth caught it with one hand. The metal was cold against her palm, but there was a warmth in the pearl that she had first noted when Nathaniel had put the chain around her neck as a wedding present. How it had hurt her pride to have this taken from her. Now it seemed a very small thing, and unimportant.
She sent Anne Stoker a sidelong glance. "I must have dropped it when I came on board at Sorel."
"Must have."
Her innocent tone was at odds with the satisfied expression in those bright eyes. A respectable old lady, indeed. Knowing that she flushed, and that her high color gave away something, Elizabeth said, "There was a panther's tooth, too."