by Julie Berry
Then:
“That’s enough,” Horace Bron roars. All the brats retreat to their mothers’ skirts. All the townsfolk remember work that needs doing. As quickly as it began, it ends, and everyone flaps off to gnaw on our bones from a safer distance.
III.
Horace Bron returns to his smithy, which faces the common. He can work and watch us at the same time. Still more than two hours remaining, and no relief to anticipate when this is done.
I wonder what the French girl felt, tied to the stake, while her countrymen kindled flames at her feet. Relief, perhaps, that it would soon be over?
My eyes sting with the cold and with the refuse that splashed them.
My back aches.
But not as much as other things.
IV.
We stand. We droop. We stand again. We twist our necks so the sinews bear some of the head weight, and not our windpipes.
I can’t see you but I feel your movements through the pillory beams.
We don’t speak. What is there to say?
V.
“I’m cold at night,” he said to me one morning. “Unless you want to share my bunk, use those scraps and old things of yours to make me a blanket, since I’ve given you mine.” I made him a blanket.
He criticized my sewing. Mother would have done the same, I thought. And oh, how I would have loved to hear her do it.
VI.
He didn’t need to lock me in that second night. I was still too frightened by all I’d seen, and by the man who had threatened me, to think of escape. Such thoughts and boldness came later.But he locked me in anyway. He said he had a delivery to make. He took something large, wrapped up in a blanket.
VII.
Lottie was in love. I knew it must be why she had run away. I worried about her, but not like others in town did. I was certain she was alive, hiding somewhere with her fella. I hoped she’d come tell who the boy was. She was sure she’d be married soon. Love brought her no better luck than it has brought me.
VIII.
I picture the dress, dangling from the miller’s hand. So limp and crumpled, faded and devoured. It is strange to me to think that I once envied her that dress. I thought about that even during my years with him. How ironic it was that I had once envied Lottie her two fancy dresses. Much good they did her. Even so, I thought about the brown one, so elegant, nothing like the dress I wore out until he replaced it. Its beauty was long faded.How little do things like dresses truly matter, then or now.
IX.
What was Abijah Pratt doing outside my house with a lantern? Why would he still hate me so? Lottie died long ago. “Judith.”
The voice seems to come from far away.
“Judith. Are you all right?”
The back of my neck bangs against the top plank of the
pillory.
You. You’re speaking to me.
“Um-hmm,” I answer. “You?”
I can only imagine how you must look in the pillory. “I can think of other places I’d rather be.”
My laugh is weak.
“Not I,” I say. “I love it here.”
You laugh, and for a moment I could forget where we are.
But the laughter dies away, and we’re left no closer. “I’m sorry,” you say.
“Why?”
You aren’t finding words. “For . . .”
“For thinking you mightt love me?”
“What do you mean?” You sound angry.
“Nothing,” I say. “Ssorry.”
Your anger rises. “What?”
“Doesn’t matter, Lucass,” I say. “I’ll be dead by tomorrow noon. Find anyone you will, marry her and raise a dozen babies.”
“What do you mean, you’ll be dead by tomorrow noon?” I rotate my head from side to side, searching for a comfortable spot. “They won’t restt until they can blame someone for Lottie.” Oh no, don’t cry now! “Now that I’m a wantton and a whore, I’m no loss.”
All I can hear is the sound of your breathing. Supper smells begin to drift from village chimneys.
“Judith.”
“Mm?”
“Judith. Listen to me.”
Something in your voice stops me from ranting more. “I am.”
“I love you.”
Oh, help.
“Since I was a boy I’ve loved you. Do you believe me?”
I’m waylaid by tears that aren’t from the cold. And I have no way to wipe them off my nose.
Your voice is warm and loving. “I need you to believe me.”
I sniffle. “I do.”
“Good,” you say. Your voice changes. “Then I’m going to tell them that I did help my father abduct Lottie Pratt.” “No!”
Horace Bron looks up from his anvil across the way. “No,” I repeat with more control.
“I’ll do it,” you say. “And you will go free.”
“No I won’t,” I cry. “They won’t let me go free.”
You are silent for a time. “Then, if not that, when they release me I’ll find a way to rescue you.”
“Oh? And then whatt?”
“Then we’ll ride away on Phantom and start our life together.” You sniff. The cold has congested you. “Maybe we can find my mother.”
Oh, my dear. You still think of her. Of course you do.
“Why do you sound reluctant?” you ask. “Don’t you love me?”
Let me not weep any longer. Not in this place.
“Lucass,” I say, “would you love me if your father had . . . forssed himself upon me?”
You do not hesitate. “Yes,” you say, bravely and well. I pause to savor what this means.
“And if I’d . . . forssed myself upon you, that night in the woods?” I almost smile, imagining your discomfiture.
“Yes,” you say, not without embarrassment.
I can barely bring myself to say these words. “And if I had triedd to sedusse Rupertt Gilliss?”
You’re quiet a long time. “I would still love you,” you say slowly, “but it would be hard to overlook that.”
I’m pilloried in the center of town, torn and tattered, and smiling. The sun begins its descent in the sky, and I’m chilled to the bone, but I’m happy. I wait for a gawking child to pass before I speak.
“Would you believe me,” I ask, watching up and down the street for anyone to come by, “if I said none of it happened?”
How I wish I could see your face.
In the west, clouds pile on the horizon. The air grows colder.
Blood’s not flowing to my fingers properly anymore.
“None of it?”
“None.”
At first I assume you’re pondering this, until I feel the pillory boards shaking.
You’re crying! “My . . . father didn’t hurt you?”
There is no need for me to protect you from him anymore.
“He cutt out my tongue. But he never forssed me.” This word is the one good thing I’ve gotten from knowing Rupert Gillis.
Your crying dries up. “Then he did this to you.”
“He was inssane, Lucass,” I say. “He said it was to protect me. He also said it when he first took me away.”
“Protect you from what?” you ask.
I am not sure how to answer this question. I have never been sure. “It was a disstortion,” I say. “A lie. His great fear was being discovered. He said my ssilence would protectt me, but it only protectted him.”
This troubles you for a time. I understand.
“And the schoolmaster?” you ask.
This question angers me, and I don’t try to hide it. And the ache in my back is now a stabbing pain. “Lucass. Am I a whore?”
“No.” At least you sound sure of yourself.
I must be strict with you. You’ve insulted my judgment. “How couldh I ever favor Rupertt Gilliss?”
I hear you chafing against the neck opening of the pillory. “He’s so . . . educated. Good with books and speaking. Someone like you would f
ancy that.”
I am too shocked to reply well. I laugh out loud. “Is that what you think?”
“Well, isn’t that why you went to school?”
Incredible.
I think of Gillis’s ruler stinging my hand. “I wentt to learn. And help Dharrel.” You sniff some more. I still can’t believe it. “You thoughtt I wentt to be near Gilliss?”
You actually thought so! And you’re piqued with me, even.
You clear your throat. “When Mother left, she . . .” This is painful for you. “Her beau was a scholar. Aiming to teach.”
X.
The church bell strikes the hour. Two o’clock. We have another hour to go. I’m cold in every place I can be cold. I wonder if I’ll last the hour. Yet it cannot end. These will be my last moments with you. You spoke of escape, but you’re as bone-weary and famished as I am.
How will they kill me? I wonder. Stoning? Hanging? No such thing has happened in Roswell Station in my lifetime.
“Judith,” you say, “did you speak truly when you told me that my father had not killed Lottie Pratt?”
What I’d give to rub my neck. “I never liedh to you, Lucass.”
I see a speck approaching slowly on the long westward road, coming from the direction of your house and mine. What used to be mine. I watch it move to pass the time.
It’s Goody Pruett, carrying something in a basket. The sun moves faster across the sky than poor Goody can walk down the road.
“Then how did he come to have her dress in his house?”
I’d been wondering that myself. There must have been something confused in my memory. When he brought her body to the house, and then, when he took her to the river . . .
Goody Pruett approaches and crosses the common to where we are. When she tries to climb the steps to the platform, Horace Bron sees her and runs out to help her up.
“What is it, Mrs. Pruett?” he asks.
“Got soup for them,” she says. “They’re spent, and it’s much too cold to stand still this long. They need something to warm their bellies.”
The smell of the soup reaches my nostrils, and my mouth fills with water. Bless Goody Pruett forever. I watch Horace, anxious at what he might say. He says nothing, though. Only looks on as she unwraps the cloth around her kettle of soup.
“Carry on, then,” Horace says, jumping down off the platform. “Holler at me when you’re ready to come down, and I’ll fetch you.” He walks away.
“Thank you, Goodhy,” I say.
She eyes me sharply. “So you can talk.”
I nod my head. Soup! Give me the soup!
She eyes me appraisingly. “Sound a bit garbled, but it’s speech. I’ll be darned.” She clamps the kettle of soup to her side and dips a large spoon in. She tips the spoon against my lips and warm chicken broth flows in.
I know you’re next to me, just as famished, but I slurp the broth hungrily, as fast as she can give it to me, until I feel the warmth inside me. Then I can close my lips when she offers more. “Now Lucass,” I say.
She shuffles over to where you are. It’s maddening to watch her arm raise the spoon and hear you drink, but not see your face.
“So are you sweet on her?” she asks you. Always direct, our Goody.
You gulp your soup. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And why not?” She leans back to look at me. “And you’re sweet on him?”
I feel my face flushing. I’m in the stocks, and this embarrasses me? “I am.”
She feeds you another bite. “Course you are. You’d be a fool not to be. Goody Pruett was a girl once herself! Always told your mother you were no fool. Clever little slip of a thing you were. Didn’t say much, but took everything in with those big cow eyes of yours.”
Cow eyes. It’s fitting.
She gives you more soup, then returns for a second course for me.
“So what Goody wants to know is why you didn’t speak up for yourself in there. Because something’s not right about this. That’s plain as turnips. Something ain’t right, and why didn’t you say so?”
I’m at a loss. My reasons seem less clear to me now.
“They’dd never believe me,” I say.
She scrapes the kettle. “You don’t know that.”
“Not even my mother believes me.”
She gives you the last scrapings. I’m full now.
“Ah,” she says, “there’s a heartbroken woman for you. Loved your father like nothing Goody’s seen. There’s no justice in this world, the things that happen to people.”
Father. I remember the way Mother’s eyes watched him. Like she could never get enough. She spent her life loving him, like I’ve spent mine loving you.
Goody stoops to pack up her things. She stands with her basket on her arm. “So, now, Judith Finch,” she says. “What does Goody Pruett do to help you?”
XI.
Horace Bron looks up from his forge and sees Goody ready to leave. He sets out across the road.
XII.
Lottie’s face showed fear when he appeared, but not terror. She didn’t expect to die.
XIII.
Horace is nearly here.
Now. I make myself speak.
“Ring the alarm, Ghoody. Ring the bell.”
She blinks once, then offers her arm to Horace. They venture down the stairs, Goody chattering all the way. He leads her to the road.
“What are you going to do?” you whisper.
“I’m not sure,” I confess.
Goody thanks Horace and ventures off toward the church.
He retreats into the smithy. Goody’s slow steps seem quick enough now.
XIV.
I climbed down from the tree and tiptoed across the clearing to where Lottie’s body lay. I crouched beside her and touched her neck. Her mouth was open, her tongue distended. She looked nothing like herself. If it weren’t for her dress, and what I’d seen before, I could almost wonder if it was her.
I backed away.
Then hands seized me from the back and wrapped themselves around my neck.
XV.
Goody reaches the top step and disappears through the door. Just an old widow, making afternoon prayers. It must be around half past two.
XVI.
Something crashed into us like a boulder rolling downhill. I fell to the ground, crushed under the man’s weight and whatever had hit him. It was another man. They rolled off me, struggling. The boulder man quickly overpowered the first, pressing his face into the dirt, facing away from me. I couldn’t see the face.
XVII.
The church bells ring. Again and again they clang the alarm. Doors open and villagers come streaming out, their faces astonished. Reverend Frye hurries out from Alderman Wilson’s house and limps toward the church as fast as he can. What will happen to Goody, I wonder?
The bells stop ringing. Abijah Pratt comes around a corner. He glares at us on his way into the building.
Rupert Gillis and his students come around the pillory from behind and pass us on their way to the church. We take a few pinecones flung at our backs.
Villagers pour into the church, then neat as you please, Goody Pruett slips out and makes her way down the steps. She is the only one moving against the tide, and several heads turn to watch her. They go into the church, but in a few minutes they return.
Now she stands on the grass at our feet, looking up at us expectantly. She watches me, nodding slightly, encouragement shining in her beetle eyes.
The church disgorges its occupants and they move as a body to where we are. The latecomers approaching from out of town come straight toward us.
I can’t squash this panic. What have I done?
“Judith,” you say. “I believe you.”
XVIII.
“What is the meaning of this?” Reverend Frye demands. “Who rang the bell?” He and the aldermen have caught up with the rest of the village. Without their robes they lack some of their fearfulness. The tips of their noses are red with cold. “I
did,” Goody Pruett says. “Miss Judith Finch here has something to say.”
This is so unexpected that for a moment no one speaks.
I find Maria’s face looking up at me intently. Her face is pale and swollen, and then I know: she’s going to have a baby. Goody Pruett’s insight is rubbing off on me.
I want to kiss Maria’s baby on its christening day. I want her to kiss mine someday.
Out on the road I see Darrel and Mother approach. Mother halts when she sees the gathering on the common, and starts to turn back. Darrel grabs her arm and makes his way forward on his crutch. Mother, reluctant, follows.
“This is ridiculous,” Alderman Stevens says. “We all know she can’t speak.”
“Pratt said she can,” Alderman Brown says. “Well, young woman?”
I swallow several times, which hurts my throat. There is no turning away from their faces. I’m stuck.
That’s the first problem.
“Releasse uss,” I say. Mouths hang open everywhere at the shock of me talking. “I will tell you the truth aboutt Lottie Pratt’s death. I was there. I ssaw it happen.”
XIX.
Rupert Gillis’s eyes grow wide. He doesn’t favor a world in which Judith Finch can speak. “But that’s ridiculous,” Abijah Pratt says. “She went missing days after Lottie did.”
“But before Lottie’s body was found,” Dr. Brands says.
They are all a chorus of arguing voices. I hear some calling to release us, others protesting that our sentence is not yet up, still others arguing that it’s nearly up.
Horace Bron steps forward and releases the latch on the upper plank. The pain in my back when I finally stand is overwhelming, but it’s heaven to let my arms fall. I come forward and lean against the pillory post for support. At last I can see your face. Horace sets you free, too, and you stand beside me.
