Free The widow's war by Sally Gunning

you’d best return to your stockings.”

12

    Lyddie was tightening her bed ropes when she heard several male voices in the study, and soon after, a call for her to attend. She dropped her bed key and hurried in to find five men standing around the table in a sweep of grayed and balding heads that dipped and smiled at her like gone-to-seed dandelions. She knew Deacon Smalley and Griffith and Eldred, the two neighbors on Clarke’s side of the millstream feud; the last man was introduced to her as Esquire Doane. As soon as greetings were dispensed they looked in unison at the table. A paper lay on it. Lyddie had never seen the paper before, but she knew what it contained the same way she had known the faces of each of her children before they were born.
    “’Tis all arranged, Mother,” Nathan said. “Deacon Smalley takes it all off our hands. We wait on nothing but your signature.” Hedipped the pen and extended it to Lyddie, but her step flagged, as if a stone wall surrounded the table.
    “Mother,” her son said a second time, more sharply, which was a mistake; his tone planted Lyddie’s feet hard on the ground.
    “Widow Berry?” Mr. Doane said more kindly. “You do understand the law requires you to sign?”
    Lyddie stepped forward, read the paper, and saw it was as she had suspected.
I, Lydia Berry, relict of Edward Berry, relinquish all dower rights to the dwelling house and buildings on the parcel of land, said land being bounded westerly and northerly by the public road, southerly by that lot belonging to Theophilus Smalley, and easterly by that lot belonging to the Indian Sam Cowett…
    The Indian Sam Cowett, who had caused her to be here, by dividing the woodlot, and thereby indirectly creating this paper. An odd thought popped into Lyddie’s head. What would James Otis say of Sam Cowett? Was obeying only those laws written on your heart the same as doing as you pleased? And did Sam Cowett actually do only as he pleased? Could anyone?
    “Come, Doane,” Nathan said. “She’s no experience with legal documents; show her the place to sign.”
    Doane stepped forward. “Here, Widow Berry. You affix your name here, and Mr. Eldred and Mr. Griffith bear witness to it.”
    “And you, Mr. Doane? Do you sign as well?”
    “No, no, I’m here only as Mr. Clarke’s legal representative.”
    And Lyddie’s unbiddable thoughts flew off again, this time to Eben Freeman. In law and in life…I am at your service. Dear God, did she dare? And what would it get her? Nothing but time, a few more minutes or hours or days before she was forced to put that pento that paper. She lifted her eyes to meet her son-in-law’s. “And where is my legal representative?”
    “Good God, Mother, what need you with a legal representative?”
    “Did not you just say it? I’ve no experience with legal documents. Best send for Mr. Freeman.”
    “Nonsense, Mother, ’tis all just formality. Tell her, Doane.”
    Esquire Doane smiled at Lyddie. “Perhaps your son has neglected to explain it to you in such a way that you may have a full understanding. Let me do so now. If you wish to have your funds, you must sign your consent to the sale. There, I think that says it most simply.”
    “Very simply, Mr. Doane. Wouldn’t you even say perhaps too simply? By ‘funds’ I take you to mean in this case my widow’s thirds, or the profits on one-third the sum received from the sale?”
    “Exactly, Mother,” Nathan said. “Now let’s get on, shall we?”
    “And if the house were not sold, I should retain life use of one-third the property?”
    Nathan smiled. “And what use could you possibly make of a third the property?”
    “The same use I made of it before. Shall we send for Mr. Freeman now?”
    “Good God, you can’t be serious.”
    “I think we’d best send for Freeman,” said Doane, and from there the conversation moved around Lyddie as a storm circles its eye.
Clarke: “I’ll not waste my time in this!”
    Smalley: “I