Page 61 of The Frozen River

“You would recognize mine, non?”

“Indeed.”

There is a rocking chair on either side of the fireplace and a flat, round stump between them with a lantern on top that emanates a soft, golden light. Roughly a decade younger than me, Doctor has high cheekbones and a long, slender neck. She wears a green muslin dress, and her hair is kept up and away beneath a matching headwrap. There is a mortar in her lap and a pestle in her hand. Beside her is a woven basket, lid fitted tightly on top. No doubt a gift from the Wabanaki for services rendered.

Doctor sees me looking at the basket and says, “The woman you saw outside has gone dry. She has nothing left to feed le bébé.”

I take this as my invitation to come in and sit down. As I arrange my skirts, she continues.

“It happens. No one knows why. But le bébé has not weaned. So they came to me for help.”

“Are there none in her tribe who can nurse the child for her?”

“None with milk to spare.” She looks at me as though I ought to know this. “It is winter. And many are hungry.”

“What did you tell her?”

Doctor flexes the hand that has been working the pestle. Her fingers are long and thin. Elegant. But I can see that the pinky on that hand was once broken and healed poorly. It does not fully straighten like the others. “There is nothing so good as mother’s milk, but feeding the child boiled walnuts mixed with cornmeal and water will get him to the spring when he can eat other foods.”

I did not know this, and I tell her so.

She looks me up and down, and says, “You are not ill.”

“No.”

“Tell me why you’re here, then.”

I place the bottle of syrup beside the lantern. “Ellen Parker borrowed my horse this week to come see you.”

“And you are curious why?”

“No. I have enough secrets to carry. I’ve little interest in adding hers to the pile.”

“And yet you didn’t come to visit.” Doctor turns her gaze back to the mortar and pestle. She cups the rounded knob in her palm and rolls it in a counterclockwise motion against the mortar, crushing the fine, dry leaves into powder. It smells of black pepper and sage.

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“No one does. There is always a reason.”

“What about Hitty?”

Doctor looks up at me sharply, dark eyes still and steady as a lake at midnight. “Not even her,” she says. “Not since she took up with cet homme.”

“I thought they were married.”

“Only… aah… what is the word…?” She laces her fingers together and holds them up.

“Handfast?”

“Yes. Not that it matters. No law recognizes a marriage—handfast or otherwise—between your kind and mine.” Doctor licks the end of her broken pinky and sets it to the fine powder in her bowl. She tastes it, thinking for a moment with eyes closed, then nods once, deciding it’s the way she wants it, and sets the bowl on the floor beside her. “But again, you didn’t come to talk about my daughter.”

“No.”

“Tell me then.”

There are so many things about Doctor that I don’t understand. Where she comes from and where she goes when she isn’t in Hal-lowell? How she learned the craft of medicine and from whom? When she learned to speak English and how she became acquainted with the Wabanaki? How she travels so freely on her own as a woman in the wild? But if I could ask Doctor any question—and be guaranteed an answer—I would ask her name. What is it? Yet that is forbidden knowledge, a question that will have me immediately dismissed. So I ask what I came here to learn.

“What do you know about the herbs tansy and savine?”