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poker came down, and it glanced off her shoulder, clattering to the floor.
    Nabby leaned over, clutching her stomach. She straightened and caught Alice gaping at her. “What do you stare at? Why do you stand there? Get away from me! Be gone!”
    Alice backed toward her bedroom door, whirled around, and dashed through it.

FIVE

    V erley returned from wherever he’d gone and came into Alice’s room, reeking of spirit, as drunk as she’d seen him. He dropped on top of her but seemed to have some trouble bringing his part to attention. He closed his hands around her throat until she thrashed wildly under him, near to passing out, but it didn’t aid him; he flung her onto her stomach and there managed to enter—a new place, a new pain, a new kind of shout from him. He likes to puncture you in odd places. He pulled himself off her, stood up, and picked up the candle, but he didn’t hold it over her. He stumbled out.
    Alice lay breathing in and out, pressing her hand against her chest to try to push her heart back into calmness. After a time it quieted enough so that she could hear Verley’s progress through the house: a chair knocking against the wall, the outer door banging open, piss hitting stone, the outer door banging shut, and finally, the door to his bedroom. Nabby’s blow had reopened the old cut in Alice’s cheek; she could feel the sting of it along with the throb in her shoulder where the poker had struck as well as the burn of the torn flesh between her buttocks, but she didn’t know who had frightened her more, Verley or Nabby.
    Get away from me! Be gone! With those words Nabby had settled it once and for all—she wouldn’t help Alice—and yet those words had helped Alice. She knew what to do now. She must be gone from there, alone. Now.
    Alice waited a time longer, but no one stirred. She slid her feet to the floor, crept to the pegs, put on her workday skirt and bodice, took down her winter petticoat, her shawl, her one spare shift and skirt, her extra stockings. She emptied her workbasket of Nabby’s mending and stuffed her clothes in, then reached under the bed tick where she’d tucked her father’s old money pouch that again held her indenture paper, as well as most of the birthday coins Mr. Morton had given her. She lifted the tick and thrust her hand deeper; she could feel nothing but the straw pad and the rope web it lay upon. She pulled the tick right off the bed frame and onto the floor; she ran her hands over every square of rope and over the floor beneath; the pouch wasn’t there.
    Only when Mr. Morton had made out the new indenture that bound Alice to his daughter had Alice understood the exact meaning of the paper she’d carried around her neck for so long: two copies written out, one set atop the other, the edges of the papers cut into a matching set of indentations. Alice’s father had told her to keep hold of her paper because as long as she kept it she held proof against any change made in the copy held by the owner. Now Verley had both copies and could make any new kind of paper he liked; he could write Alice as bound for five years, or eight, or ten or twelve, instead of the three years that lawfully remained on her contract. Yes, Verley could do as he wished with the paper, but what did it matter if he didn’t have Alice?
    Alice left her room for the keeping room and stood still, listening again. Still quiet. She opened the back door, eased into the half moonlight, stepped around the wet stones in the dooryard, and into the Dedham road.

     

    THE TEN MILES to Dedham took Alice near dawn but not into it, which left her with a problem. If she walked across the Morton’s dooryard the geese would start awake, raising the household, and Alice didn’t want to speak with Mr. Morton on the heels of so rude an entrance. She found a damp patch of soft June grass by the woodpile, shielded from both house and road, and dropped down onto it. She had an idea that she might sleep until