Brookland by Emily Barton Read Free Book Online

who’d had the time to cut and stack all the ice, but Johanna, parceling the eggs into bowls with moderate accuracy, said, “Dangerous, walkin’ across rivers. Don’t you remember when that little Luquer drowned?” Tem’s egg slithered over her toast.
    â€œNicolaas Luquer fell off a boat,” Prue said.
    Johanna felt for the table and put down Tem’s bowl.
    â€œHe
fell off a boat
.”
    â€œBut didn’t one of the Sands daughters plummet through the ice of the millpond?” Roxana asked.
    â€œChrist, yes, a lifetime ago,” Matty said. “Must you mention it in front of the gells? It was a warm day, and it was the millpond. Today’s cold enough to freeze a witch’s—”
    Roxana whistled sharply at him through her teeth as she reached over to swat him. He shook his head in annoyance, but Pearl smiled. No doubt, Prue thought, she liked it when someone else communicated as she did.
    â€œIt’s bloody bitter outside,” Matty went on, putting Tem down, “and the whole river’s frozen. Believe me, the men who walked across this morning read the ice as carefully as the ancients read entrails.”
    Roxana sniffed, and hoisted Pearl free of her father’s arms to place her on her chair. She said, “Let them eat before their eggs get cold.”
    Prue had heard of the North River freezing, up by Kingston, but never of any such happening in her own, more southern clime. Until the previous day, the river had only been frozen to about a hundred yards from shore; the men had dragged gin and timber out on sleds, and had loaded the goods onto barges at the edge of the ice. Prue could smell her eggs beckoning, but all she could think of was the fathers of the neighborhood. She pictured them wrapped (“like
Esquimaux
,” she wrote Recompense) in skins and furs, and gathered on the far bank, in the sad light of five in the morning, looking eastward to their homes and the dawn. She could imagine them consulting in low voices with their slaves. The person who’d taken the first step must have considered himself brave, but after that, they must all have felt themselves on holiday.
    Matty Winship said, “The gells won’t see the like again for years. Roxy, come. We’ll wrap ’em up tight against the cold.”
    â€œEat your egg,” Roxana said, tapping lightly at the back of Tem’s hand. “Good thing Losee’s home safe. Mrs. van N. must’ve had a fright yesterevening when he didn’t return.”
    Tem poked her finger into the yolk to break it, then smeared it down Pearl’s hair. Pearl turned to Tem with a look of shock on her face, and opened her mouth in what would have been a piteous yowl had she been her sister; as it was, she merely hissed. Almost as soon as the egg was smeared, Roxana slapped Tem smartly on the cheek. Tem, of course, began to bawl; and Johanna limped off, muttering, to prod at the fire.
    After the tearful breakfast, Roxana bound her daughters up so tightly in mufflers, Prue thought she might choke; but as if to make up for this, her father hoisted her onto his broad back and carried her all the way down to the river. The juniper bushes sat plump, fragrant, and dusted with snow in the otherwise bare dooryard. Johanna had refused to accompany them, but Prue wasn’t certain she’d understood the invitation. At that time, Joralemon’s Lane, which ran south of the distillery from the top of Clover Hill to the Shore Road—and which Prue thought, with mild indignation, ought to be called Winship’s Lane, as no Joralemon hadlived on the property in years—was only a rocky, rutted path snaking down the bottom of the ravine, so Prue was jogged along on her father’s back. The sails of the windmill, halfway down the hill between the house and the works, barely turned in the still, cold air, and the bright flag of the nascent republic drooped from its tall pole.