“But look here,” he said, “I have waited near eight months, eight months, for this cloth.” The weaver frowned, shaking his head. “Look at the weave. Feel the weight. Why, the shade of it is a mirror to your own eyes. Look here, missus, do not ask me to come so far down.”
“No,” she said, pinning him with her eyes, responding no to every one of his entreaties and proclamations of sacrifice in giving her back coin as overage on the second pig. Martha had seen enough of her father at bargaining to know when to stand and when to walk away. She shook her head and, giving the cloth over to the weaver, turned around. After twenty paces the weaver called out, “Very well, missus, I will give you back your sixpence, but it should be you and not I who tells my good wife of her newfound penury.”
Smiling, Martha accepted the cloth and the coins and pointed the weaver to the wagon to collect his pigs. When she asked him to direct her to the tinsmith, she was dismayed to see him gesture in the direction of a small outbuilding next to the reverend’s plot. The young woman in the garden had finished her work and had gone back inside, and Martha quickly walked to the small shed, hoping the minister would be in the meetinghouse and not at home. She knocked softly on the closed door and waited for the clopping of heavy footsteps of the tinsmith coming to let her in.
She heard the sound of jeering laughter coming from the far side of the green, and when she turned to look, she saw a small knot of children, and a few older girls, taunting something obscured by their swaying bodies. She shook her head, thinking how often a gathering of idle children meant the misfortune of some other child, or animal, smaller than themselves. A girl shrieked in gleeful malice and Martha’s face turned grim, remembering that children can often be sweetest before they turn bad.
The group parted, scattering into differing tribes of girls and boys apart, and she saw what they had been tormenting. A woman, bolted fast in the stocks, her head pointing towards her toes, cried loudly and bitterly to be freed. She called for water, and for pity, but the children had moved on with their games and no one else on the green gave her any notice beyond a nod of annoyance. Martha turned back to the door, and with her hand poised to rap again, it swung widely open, revealing a slight man in well-worn but clean linen and vest, and with the milky eyes of the blind. His chin pointed beyond her shoulder but his head cocked as though following the sounds of her breathing. “Good day,” he said formally. There was a slight pause, and he added, “May I hear your voice? To place you, you understand.”
“I’m here for a lantern,” she answered, casting one last look at the woman in the stocks.
“Ah, yes, of course,” he said and stepped aside, allowing her to enter.
The room inside was as shaded as a cavern, and she realized, as she moved hesitantly over the threshold, that he must work in darkness, as there were no discernible windows set into the walls, the only light coming from the fire pot close to the bench, faintly glowing with copper soldering fragments. He promptly closed the door and she stood in the blackness in uncertain silence. He walked confidently to his workbench and bent over the fire pot, lighting a short taper which he fit into a reflecting lantern.
The startling light revealed a workroom, well swept and orderly, with lanterns of differing sizes pegged to the walls. Baskets fronted the walls, some with cups and long-tined forks, some with smaller workpieces not easily identifiable. The bench was filled with tools, in exacting rows, from the most brutish-size pliers down to smallest, hair’s-width dowels and punches. The smith stood at the desk, fingering the tools gently, as if to assure himself of their placement. She stared at his hands, fascinated by their restless creeping, as though the fingers, long as alder whips, had been fashioned with too many articulating joints.
“I do not know your voice.” He had waited to speak, talking only when she had drawn in a breath to inquire about the lantern.
“I am Martha Allen,” she said, beginning to feel the acrid burn of the soldering pot behind her tongue. The smith raised his brows expectantly but said nothing.
“I would like a lantern. For evenings.” She had added the last foolishly, as if he would not know a lamp would be useless in daylight.
There was a slight pursing of the lips, and the man’s eyelids fell more heavily towards closing, making him appear at once disappointed and yet self-satisfied. “For evening reading, perhaps? Or for the keeping of personal writings?”
At his insinuating tone, she stiffened, remembering the red book sewn into her pillow casing.
He moved assuredly to the wall with the lanterns and asked, “Which one would you choose?”
“I would have something that gives greater light than a candle might. For the writing of accounts, you see. A reflecting lantern, like the one on your bench.”
He clasped his hands together, the long fingers dangling loosely at his groin. “Ah, the pity is I have only one, which, as you can see, is mine own.” He placed the slightest pause before the word “see,” tilting his head to the opposing side, and waited.
“That is a pity,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “Well, then. I thank you…. My cousin Goodwife Taylor waits for me…”
She turned to leave but he surprised her by saying, “If you wish, I could sell you mine.” He returned to his bench, his hands encircling the base of the lantern.
“I have only sixpence to pay for it,” she began. The large, mirrored lantern on the tinsmith’s table, she knew, was dearer by far than the coins she held in her apron.
“Well, the lantern is old. Stay but a moment and I’ll grease the hinges and polish the mirrors. Come sit while you wait.” He motioned to a stool next to the bench, his manner suddenly solicitous, his smile seemingly ingenuous.
His warmth disarmed her, and despite being disquieted over his initial aloofness, Martha walked to the stool and, balancing the woolen cloth over her lap, sat down.
“I did not realize you were family to the Taylors,” he said. He took out the candle that had been burning inside the reflecting lantern and placed it in a simple brass holder close by. He began to dismantle the lantern, laying the pieces carefully on the workbench. The lack of reflected light from the single, guttering candle diminished the scope of the room, crowding the corners into shadow again. “You are, I think, daughter to Goodman Allen of Andover.”
“You know of my family?” she asked.
The tinsmith pointed his face towards her, one corner of his mouth curling into a half smile. “I am blind, missus, not deaf. There is very little that escapes my attention. Mind you, I have never traded with your father, but I have heard enough to know the measure of Goodman Allen.” There was the faintest hint of mockery in his voice, but he had turned away to breathe moist air onto one of the mirrored panels. He rubbed it vigorously for a time with a cloth before asking, “How is it, your time spent with the Taylors?”