by Aaron Galvin
“This Judge Sewall,” I say. “What did you think of him? Were he a righteous man?”
“All men believe themselves righteous, girl.” says Mary, twisting the bit of straw in her hand.
“But you have seen him,” I say. “Been in his company and witnessed how he treated both the condemned and the accusers.”
“Aye, and, in fairness, he did indeed seem a goodly man to my eyes at the time,” she says. “I might have casted doubt on his judgment had I not also witnessed Mercy and Abigail’s convincing acts.”
“You would trust him then?” I ask.
Mary’s face sours. “Hard to say. Time changes many things and it has been over thirty years since I saw him last.” She sighs. “I heard it said Sewall begged public pardon for his part in the trials, though I cannot speak to if that be true or no. Still, if he truly did ask forgiveness from the public for his actions, then he were the only one to brave Mather’s wrath and live to tell of it.”
“But you once spoke to me of Putnam’s daughter,” I say. “You said she too asked forgiveness for her part in the trials.”
“Aye, and I said also she were silenced for doing so.”
“Then why not Sewall?” I ask. “How is it he could ask forgiveness and be left to live?”
“Because he is a man.” Mary chuckles. “And the laws of men grant more weight to the sons of Adam than they do the daughters of Eve. Far more still when that man holds a powerful position other men be desperate to suckle at. The untimely death of a judge who asked forgiveness for his part in the trials would call questions. I doubt any cast little concern at all when Putnam’s daughter were found dead.”
Silence stands between us for a time. I wonder if Mary lies now, yet believe she has little reason—if we were found out by Mather, then she should be discovered also.
“I will say this on behalf of Sewall,” says Mary. “Betty’s father had many contacts of note throughout these lands, yet for all his choices, he sent her among the Sewalls. And of all my Salem sisters, Betty alone lives safe within Mather’s reach, her life untouched and her daughter unclaimed. The Sewalls hold some sway, but whether they use it for good or evil I cannot say.”
I nod at her conviction. “Then perhaps I will meet this man and take what lessons I can from him.”
“Allow me caution this also,” says Mary. “Betty were the youngest of us during the trials, and she never once hesitated to join in the sport.”
My brow furrows.
Mary smirks. “That which all the powerless secretly wish to witness played out—to bring the mighty low and to heel. Aye, learn them but a little taste of what it means to know true fear, the same fright we lowborn live with all our lives.”
“I did not come for sport,” I say.
“Aye, but you play nonetheless. As Mercy once said, we few that remain are but the last pieces upon the board.” Mary fixes her stare on me. “And let you believe me now, Betty has a talent for creating division. It be the same gift her father had.”
“Betty will not divide us,” I say firmly.
“She has already,” says Mary. “Her promise of a shield has made you reshape your plot. In one move, Betty rids her house of us and leads the daughter of Simon Campbell into Boston. Who can say she does not lead you to your doom?”
“None, perhaps,” I say. “But she would be a fool to think I cannot reap my vengeance from beyond the grave.”
“Ciquenackqua is a lone warrior in white lands, and Andrew has no family ties,” says Mary. “Strong and steadfast as both may be, they cannot withstand a host of witches swayed by Devil’s powder.”
“I do not speak of Ciquenackqua or Andrew,” I say. “I speak of you.”
Mary sits back. “Me?”
“You noted Betty a player in this game,” I say. “Just as you once said of Mercy in the wild, but you yet remain upon the board also, Mary Warren.” I reach into my robes, taking one of the long daggers from my belt. I toss it at her feet. “I trust you will do your best to alter the board should Betty betray us.”
Mary looks on my dagger, though she does not move to take it. “Why do this?”
I think of my manitous, willing the convincing words it would have me speak to Mary that will bring her to my side. “I do not give my trust easily, but George spoke of his faith in your goodness,” I say. “And of Hannah’s belief in you also—”
Mary’s eyes well, giving me pause.
“I have wronged you thus far and mean to make amends. You are no longer my prisoner. Let you be gone from this place, if you wish.” I glance at the dagger. “It may be the lonely life you desire yet awaits you, but I would have you delay it a little longer.”
Tears stream down Mary’s cheeks as she reaches for the dagger and takes it up. “If there be any honor in me, it belongs to you and George. I will help you gain your vengeance”—she stares upon the blade’s edge—“or else see Betty and Susannah join you in the grave for their trespass.”
I rise. “Then I leave you the barn and to your thoughts.”
My mind cautions turning my back to her so armed, yet my brother’s words of trust and faith ring louder still.
I halt by the barn door, risking a glance back at Mary Warren.
She yet stares upon the blade, turning it to catch the candlelight, mumbling words I cannot rightly hear.
My conscience screams for such an act and warns me take back both the dagger and my words.
I open the door, embracing the cold and howling winds as doubt threatens to hold me in its sway.
-Chapter 6-
I break my fast to meager fare, eating of it heartily after witnessing both Susannah and Betty partake of the same. While Andrew and Mary ready the wagon that will bear us to Boston, I sit at George’s side. My spirit wishes him wake that I might speak with him, to provide me some small comfort before leaving. My mind bids me let him rest.
A soft knock comes at the door.
“My mother and the others wait for you outside,” says Susannah, her head bowed. “All is prepared.”
I give George one final kiss, his forehead cooler than last I felt though the fever still rages in him. “Sleep well and rest easy, brother,” I say, rising to leave.
“I will take good care of him,” says Susannah.
Her voice seems full of innocence, her words and intent pure. Indeed, a small part of me would almost mistake her goodliness for Hannah’s had I not cast doubt upon she and Betty the night before.
Susannah wilts under my gaze, more intrigued by the floor than my face. “A-Andrew spoke of you often,” she says. “Sometimes I wondered if it were truly me he loved and not you.”
She glances up, expectant, I think, for me to ward off such concerns.
I do not.
Susannah averts her gaze from me again, her fingers playing at the waistline of her dress. “N-now that you stand before me, I know you for a wild beauty that I could never possess.” She sighs. “If Andrew loves you, I know now he could never truly love me.”
Only when her green eyes dare meet mine do I speak.
“Life has taught me little of the bond shared between a man and woman,” I say. “But Andrew spoke on your goodliness often.”
Susannah blushes at my mention, adding to the reasons I prefer leaving George in her company rather than Betty’s. So do I notice my words give Susannah courage to lose some of her former nervousness.
“Andrew cares for George more than his own soul.” I say. “If you love him true, you will take care of my brother as if it were your intended himself fallen ill.”
“I will.” Susannah weeps openly, her chin nodding. “You need not worry. My mother has oft said God gifted me a healer’s touch. Your brother will be well again before you return.”
“Aye, see that he is.”
I stride past her. Worry keeps me from chancing another look upon George’s face, fear that I will falter from my path and choose to stay at his side. I move quickly through the home, pulling my furred robes ti
ght before stepping out into the cold.
The night winds have ceased and the sun has yet to peek over the horizon, but the sky provides enough light to know the dawn comes soon. I breathe deep of the cold air and stare out over the windswept and snow-covered lands.
My companions gather near a covered wagon. Ciquenackqua and Andrew load crates into the bed for Mary to stack. Steam flares from the nostrils of both draft horses at my approach. They stomp their hooves in anxious wait, pulling at their yokes whilst Betty holds tight to the reins from her seat atop the wagon.
“What troubles you?” she asks.
“The last I rode in such a wagon were in the life before,” I say. “When I was but a girl in Winford.”
Memories of the man my brother and sister named father live in my mind, how he smiled when catching me as I leapt into his arms from such a wagon.
I grab hold of the bench and use a wheel spoke to aid me climb and join her.
“God be praised for quitting the winds,” says Betty. “It should have been a long drive to Boston elsewise.”
“We are not there yet,” says Andrew. “Let you instead pray the weather keeps awhile.”
I ignore their sparring, my attention turned on the bits of cloth poking through the wooden crates. I tease one of the strands out.
Betty slaps my hand. “If you intend to converse with those in Boston, you should dress as they do.”
The cloth feels thin enough to rend with little regard.
Betty wears similar garb and already shivers, despite her wool blanket.
Though the temperature reddens my cheeks also, the rest of me remains warm and leaves no want to change them out for the light rags Betty donates. I tuck the cloth back in the crate as Ciquenackqua springs into the wagon bed, joining Mary.
“This thing stinks of white men,” Ciquenackqua says in our native tongue.
“Aye,” I reply. “Though we should give thanks at least for the cover it gives upon the road.”
Andrew stands with Susannah near the Barron home, the pair of them conversing in hushed tones, bidding their farewells.
Susannah wipes her cheeks with her sleeve as he takes his leave of her to rejoin us. Her gaze switches to my face, lingering in a way that unsettles me. Whether scorn we abandon her or envy that I should be in Andrew’s company and not her, I cannot tell.
I move the leather flap aside to join Ciquenackqua and Mary in the wagon bed as Andrew climbs onto the seat. Though Andrew claimed Boston is but a day’s ride away, he and Ciquenackqua have stocked the wagon near full up with supplies in the event a sudden winter storm should waylay us.
Mary sits near the back flap, as if ready to retreat at the first sign of trouble. Between her natural bulk and the furred robes, I cannot guess where she hid the dagger. Her confidence bids me assume she yet keeps it upon her person.
I sit beside Ciquenackqua with my back against the wagon front. My surroundings darken with the rustle of leather—Andrew closing the flap to shut us of the cold.
The closed flaps in both the front and back of the wagon prevent me from witnessing the countryside roll by, and I stir with entrapment.
A snap of the reins breaks the quiet and the wagon jolts beneath me to the neighs of the draft team. The snow crunches under the wheels and boards groan against one another as the wagon sways side-to-side.
My stomach soon lurches with each bump we strike upon the road and, after a time, forces me close my eyes. The darkness soothes my ailment. When my head nods, I clutch the hilt of Father’s dagger, waking me to my true purpose.
I think of my promise to George, how it conflicts with the plans I have laid since first leaving his and Andrew’s trade post in the wilderness. Mary’s distrust of Betty and her alleged protector, Judge Sewall, also weigh heavy on my mind. Everything in me wishes either Father or Bishop yet lived to guide me in the path to come and remove the burden from my shoulders.
I lean closer to Ciquenackqua, drinking deep of his comforting smell—a blended mix of the wild and home.
“Are you with me, brother?” I ask him in our native tongue. “Truly?”
“I am,” he answers.
Though I know my question need not have been asked, his quick reply eases my spirit. “I have spent much time dwelling on this moment and those to come,” I say. “Yet now we are here, I doubt. Do you fear, as I do, where this path may take us?”
“Aye, but we must go. For your sister and father. Our people.” His voice grows quiet. “And my father also.”
Though I dare not open my eyes for fear of the moving sickness, I picture Ciquenackqua gazing upon his war club, as I lean on him for comfort.
“You need not have come all this way for your father alone,” I say. “You claimed your vengeance on Two Ravens for his death.”
“I did not follow you on his account,” says Ciquenackqua. “You once found me in the wilderness, lost to fear and with Creek Jumper near death. It was you that led me to hope again, and you that I made the war dance with. How might I name myself a man if I abandoned you to walk this path alone?”
I smile at the memory, longing for the beat of drums and Creek Jumper’s songs rather than being shut in a foul wagon. “You are a good man,” I say to Ciquenackqua, my gut wrenching with what I think to ask next of him. “As a good man, do you recognize another?”
“Who?”
“The one who rides with us now,” I say, not naming Andrew for fear he might hear overhear his name and know we speak on him. “Would you trust him to do any task that needs be done? Or do you think he should wilt at the last?”
His answer does not come quickly. “I cannot say without knowing the task,” says Ciquenackqua. “He loves you and your brother dear, yet he is a different man in the presence of women. And the two have grown close in our journey.”
“The two?”
I open my eyes, curious to gather his meaning.
He raises his chin in the direction of Mary Warren. Snoring, her head rests upon the leather gap between the wooden arches, riding out the wagon’s rhythm in gentler waves.
“I know not why you kept her after her betrayal,” says Ciquenackqua. “But if she has a role to play in your plans, do not speak them to Andrew.”
My shoulders sag at his words, beliefs that echo my own. Though the flap prevents me the sights beyond its leathery borders, I picture Andrew seated next to Betty. The two have not spoken a word during our journey and her distrust of him bids me think they will ride the whole of our way to Boston in similar silence.
George’s demand for me to forgive Andrew rises like a phantom in my mind, yet Ciquenackqua’s words ring true also. I sigh at the war plaguing my soul, half wishing to recognize Andrew Martin as the friend I have known all my life, the other urging me not forget the drunken fool he became when my family needed him most.
“And what of you?” I ask Ciquenackqua. “Would you wilt at a task I asked of you?”
His silence and stern gaze serve as his reply.
The wagon’s sway bids me close my eyes again, or else allow the sickness overtake me. I scoot to the side of the wagon bed and follow Mary Warren’s example, resting my head between the wooden arches.
The gap between the leather flap and wind outside bristles goose pimples up my neck.
I revisit my plan over and again in the hours that follow, safe in the knowledge Ciquenackqua will stand by me in the events to come. Without the pouch around my neck to cling to, I clutch at the hilt of father’s dagger with one hand. With the other, I hold to the bone dagger I took from Mercy Lewis.
I fade in and out of sleep throughout the day, waking to a sudden bump in the road, the voices of those bidding Andrew and Betty good day as they pass our wagon on horseback, or else when we halt to answer nature’s call.
Night falls before I risk standing in the wagon to peek my head out the leather gap.
Andrew sits hunched in the wagon seat, his head dipped low in his robes like a hawk resting upon a tree branch. Betty sway
s beside him, sitting taller, alert.
“How far?” I ask Andrew.
The sudden jerk his body makes bids me wonder if he had fallen asleep at the reins. “A few hours more,” he says, his voice hoarse with cold. “Look yonder.”
I stand upon my tiptoes in the wagon, gasping at the sight ahead.
A second heaven with a thousand stars burns in the direction we ride. The fires strike doubt in my heart, their sheer number speaking plain to the number of folk residing within the city’s bounds.
Scattered homes and barns litter the surrounding area. They grow in number with each passing mile, echoing the expanded reach of white men, bidding me understand we drive into the heart of their territory.
I force myself not to look away and to drink in every sight the moonlight provides. My thoughts drift to the life before, warn I too would have lived in such a home were it not for Hecate and her brood. My father’s voice cautions those who live in these houses are not my enemy and that many of them are likely innocent, as I were in my youth.
Then my mind warns some might be Mather spies.
That we ride under the cover of darkness comforts me somewhat. We meet fewer travelers upon the road the longer we ride. But always the shadow of Boston looms closer.
Andrew pulls back on the reins, slowing the wagon.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“We are but a few miles from the city now,” he says. “And the guards there inquire of those entering after dark. We will camp here until the dawn.”
He and Betty both squeeze back into the wagon bed with the rest of us, our five bodies lumped as one in wait. Andrew falls to sleep quickly, his snores mixing with Mary’s.
I sleep little, my mind restless with wonder of what awaits me, and warier still of the night terrors in my dreams—Father pitched in darkness, abandoning me to watch Sarah suffer and die at the hands of Mercy Lewis over and again.
At the first hint of our canopy brightening, I shake Andrew awake.
He wipes sleep from his eyes and yawns, then moves to unpack the crates.
