Kathleen Kent: The Wolves of Andover

“Arlington, do you know why I depend on you?” Charles turned and smiled perfunctorily, though his eyes remained thoughtful and hooded. “Because you are ruthlessly dependable.” In a distracted motion, he rubbed one hand over his closely shaven head. “Do you know what I wish for more than anything in this world?” He had spoken quietly, almost to a whisper, and there was a brief pause before Bennet realized the king had asked him a question.

“I wish to dream of nothing,” Charles said, tracing with his eyes the opulent fittings of the room: the lavish tapestries, the intricate gilt-laden furniture, the mammoth canopied bed. “Giving me the body of the man who murdered my father will give me a quiet sleep.” He smiled lazily again, saying, “And, Henry, it will give you a duchy.”

Bennet recognized the subtle signs that he had been dismissed: the look of restlessness on the king’s face, the turning away again to stare out the window at the beauty of St. James’s Park, the language of the Royal Body which stated, “You are no longer in my presence.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Bennet said as he bowed and left the chamber. He passed Chiffinch, returned to his post by the door, and thought, The next time you see me, you old goat, you’ll address me as “Your Grace.”

MARTHA STOPPED HACKING at the weeds in the house garden and dropped the hoe to give her aching arms a rest. She cupped her hands over her eyes and looked across the adjoining fields, four acres in all, black and undulating from the rigors of the plow. The sowing had been well begun and would be finished before the next sabbath. She heard the strangled yerping of the old cock again for the hundredth time that day, made nervous and full of fight because of a coming change in the weather. She had learned to place such readings into the noises of an old rooster from her mother, who had recited to her many times, “A rooster crows at the sun and the moon, but peckish and quarrelsome, rain will come soon.” Rain would be a welcome beginning to the sprouting, even though the sky overhead was clear except for a few high wisps of mottled clouds far to the west.

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.