“I do love him,” Margaret said, her voice unexpectedly small.
“Will you love him when he’s gone? Will you love him when there is no loving to be had?”
Margaret did not know the answer. She only felt tight-chested and angry. She tried to shake the woman off, but Joanie pressed her face close to Margaret’s and said, “Let him go, then. Come to us. We’ll find a place for you. You’re a handsome woman, in your way. Now just suppose, when you get back to him, your husband wants to take the ships. No one wishes that on you, but just suppose that he’s gone and you’re alone. Then come back here and we can find a place for you, a bed for you, so long as you’re prepared to work with us and do your share. We’d have to dye your hair, of course. Some men are fearful of the red. We’d have to find you better clothes. You understand? Come to us. Come to us.”
Finally the woman let her go, although the dogs stayed with Margaret for a little while before returning to their owners and their suppers and their fires. Margaret hurried on, running almost. She was soon breathless from exertion and anxiety. But she slowed her steps when she could see the cabins and the flock of frenzied gulls. She needed time to think. She speeded up again only when she could smell the meat.
In that gap between seeing the cabins and reaching them, Margaret made up her mind. She could not lie to Franklin, no matter how persuasive Joanie’s advice had been. He was not hers to lie to. He was not her husband, not her lover, not the father of the child. She had no hold on him. He had set out all those months ago with his brother, Jackson, with little else in mind, like most men of his age, except to reach the coast and sail toward a better life. The fact that for…what, three or four days? they had traveled together in the fall and then escaped together for a couple more in the spring was hardly reason to imagine she had some call on him. No, she would explain the situation to him frankly and openly, and offer no opinion or advice. She would not mention Melody Bose, though, if she could help it. The shame, the sin, the cowardice, the selfishness of not having gone up to the woman with news of Jackie, Bella—the girl’s birth name seemed hard to use…Well, such an offense against nature was too great to disclose to anyone. That surely was a heavy sin, to have been so casual with the heartache of a grandmother. For an uncomfortable moment, and not for the first time, Jackie seemed to Margaret to be not so much a child who had been rescued as a child who had been stolen. Such theft, such wickedness, could not be confirmed to Franklin — not for the time being, anyway.
She would, though, have to mention to him that glimpse through the spy pipes of Captain Chief and the presence, on that day at least, of so many armed horsemen. She’d have to tell him, too, about the severed, flapping hand and how she’d felt instinctively that it had once belonged to one of Franklin’s escaped comrades from the labor gang.
Most important, what could she say about their chances of ever going offshore together, other than the callous truth? Yes, there were several large oceangoing boats at the anchorage taking emigrants, and fit young men like Franklin were welcome on them. He could trade free passage for work at journey’s end. She herself — unmarried, young, a virgin still, and not entirely without appeal, she hoped — could travel, too, probably, “Though you’ll think me vain for saying so.” Free passage in exchange for making herself available as a bride and housewife to some stranger speaking gibberish (and kicking her).
But there was Jackie to consider. And Jackie was her main concern now. A woman with a child of that age would not be welcome on the ship. That was certain. She’d seen it with her own eyes. Mothers had to stay on shore.
These were their choices, then. No choices, actually. She rehearsed exactly what she’d say: “We’ll have to bid farewell to you, Franklin. I know you owe it to yourself and to your brother to take this chance of escaping from America, of getting out to sea.” She understood entirely, she would say. She could not blame him for being a strong, tall man. She wished him well in his travels and endeavors. But she would stay behind with Jackie. That was her duty and that was her desire. “But you…” No, she would not dare to call him Pigeon. “But you should cross that ocean with an easy heart, because there’s some good news to go along with the bad. I’ve already found a home for myself and Jackie. I’ve found some sisters just along the coast. They’ll not take men, but I can live and work with them. They promised it.” She would not explain what that work might be. She could hardly admit it to herself, although she was so inexperienced in that regard that the prospect of being intimate with strangers and paid for it was only a little less alien and unimaginable, and probably more likely, than that she would ever be intimate with a man — the man — she loved.
Now, in that final approach to the cabins, Margaret considered Franklin’s possible responses: that he would not feel easy abandoning her and Jackie, that they should travel south just in case there really were some family ships ready to take them all, that maybe they should wait until later in the season of migration, by which time passage requirements might have loosened. She would say, “It isn’t safe for you to stay. You’re already a hunted man. If you care for me and Jackie at all, you’ll go. Disguise yourself and go. Our lives will be safer once you’ve gone.” She might then step forward, throw her arms around him, lift her face toward his. “Do what you know you must,” she’d say, and close her eyes.
In her toughest and most rational recesses, she expected and she feared that he would simply blush and protest unconvincingly before announcing a bit too readily that yes, her advice was sensible. He would have to take the ship. And Margaret, to tell the truth, was already angry with him, for his good fortune and for his selfishness.
In fact, when at dusk she eventually pushed back the door of the cabin, she was too startled by Franklin’s bloodstained hands and sleeves to wonder at the kitchen smells, the newly set fire, the lantern light, let alone speak her well-rehearsed arguments and lines. Maybe it would be sensible to observe the best traditions by waiting for the water to boil on the grate before voicing her difficult news or speaking ill of anyone at the anchorage.
It was as if she had returned as an adult to some untroubled place from her childhood. All was well. Jackie was sitting up happily on their makeshift bed, playing with some brightly painted fishing floats. She raised her hands to Margaret when she recognized her and cried out the sweetest greeting. And Franklin seemed too excited by his domestic achievements of the day and too pleased to see her for Margaret to destroy his boyish pleasure yet with her heavy news and her no choices. So she let him show her how he’d fashioned a firestick from the snapped end of a fishing rod and a bowstring and coaxed a flame in a handful of dried grass, how he’d slaughtered and butchered the larger of the horses, how he would use the smokeshop to produce jerky that evening, as soon as it was safe to make that amount of smoke, how he’d settled Jackie and her stomach with horsemeat grilled and made into a broth, how he’d made lamp fuel from fish oil and animal fat, how he’d prepared a feast of meat for Margaret to welcome her back from her journey. He even kissed her on her hand and pulled her to the fireside. “You see?” He was so happy with himself.
Once they had eaten and Jackie had been rocked to sleep, Margaret told him everything by lantern light, watching his face for any sign, any hint, that this would be their final night. But oddly, he seemed almost relieved to hear her news. “We’ll have to stay,” he said. “If they won’t have us, we have to stay.”