by Tanya Chris
“No, certainly not.” Hathorne tugged at his beard. “But what would God’s will be then?”
“Why, to hang the witches, of course. Sarah Good might be hanged.”
“Yes, yes,” Hathorne agreed. “She has the markings of a witch, certain. It would be our duty to hang her.”
“And others,” Corwin prompted. “Do we smite all God’s enemies, we might find our way clear to feed what poor remain. For they do not cost us money who do not live.”
Shi-it. That was some fucking evil logic. God hated poor people. That was why they were poor! If there weren’t any poor people, there wouldn’t be any need for Christian charity, which meant no money out of the pockets of rich white men with gold-edged frock coats and ivory-topped canes.
I shouldn’t be eavesdropping on their Machiavellian plotting. I was meant to be lying low, not making enemies out of the rich folks in town. I tried to ease myself out of the pew but tripped on the claw foot at the edge of the aisle and landed hard.
Corwin turned to me with a scowl.
I held out the stack of notes I’d taken by way of explaining my presence and Hathorne came and collected them.
“We’ve finished with your services, boy,” Corwin said. “You may go.”
“My name is Johnson.” I drew myself up to my full height, which was several inches more than his. “Luther Johnson.”
“Yes, yes, Mr. Johnson,” Hathorne said appeasingly. “These pages are very well done. Give him something for his trouble, Corwin.”
Corwin reached into his pocket and drew out a coin and flipped it to me. I caught it reflexively. I had half a mind to flip it straight back—or wing it, rather—but I talked down my pride. This coin was my entire net worth.
“We may have need of your services again,” Hathorne said as I stalked towards the door.
I swallowed my pride a little deeper. “You can find me at the Cheevers’ ”
I gave Hathorne a bow so tight even Mr. Darcy would’ve felt snubbed and left the meeting house. Cold or not, I’d wait for Ezekiel outside.
Chapter 9
I was awfully glad to see Ezekiel and Daffy trot into view. I hadn’t gotten as many dirty looks skulking about town as I had the day before—my appearance in church that morning meant I wasn’t a full-on stranger anymore—but Salem was still a really boring place to hang out. Even if I’d felt comfortable going into the Ordinary, I only had that one coin in my pocket, and I had different plans for it than food or drink.
Besides, it was just nice to see Ezekiel’s smiling face. Whatever classist hate-mongers might be running Salem, Ezekiel was nothing like that. I gave Daffy a nuzzle-hug, wishing I could give one to Ezekiel.
“Yeah, I’m glad to see you too,” I whispered into Daffy’s ear, even though she seemed pretty indifferent to our reunion. To Ezekiel, I offered my hand. I just wanted to be touching him, however I could.
He shook back with a similar enthusiasm and we spent a minute looking at each other with matching stupid grins on our faces, which was overkill since we’d last seen each other only a few hours before, but it felt right and made me warm for the first time since Hathorne and Corwin had thrown me out of the meeting house.
“How did it go?” Ezekiel asked. He made a clucking sound at Daffy and she swung into a wide u-ey to head us back towards home.
“The scribing went well enough. There was nothing new in the testimony.” I wondered if I ought to say anything to Ezekiel about the conversation I’d overheard, but decided against it. There was no way to make him understand everything I knew. “They might need me back. Tituba said there were nine names in the Devil’s book.”
“Nine!” Ezekiel exclaimed. “I thought ’twere only five.”
“Yesterday it was five. Today she was up to nine.”
“You said there was nothing new in the testimony.”
“Only that number. She didn’t name any new names. But they’ll be out there looking for them. They’re planning to go talk to some other children who’ve been claiming similar visitations.”
Ezekiel nodded. “Mother heard at church this morning that the Hubbard girl is like afflicted. I fear this witchcraft knows no bounds.”
Yeah, I feared that too.
“I told Hathorne I’d be available if they needed me again, but I don’t like you having to drive me back and forth with all you have to do. I could’ve walked back this afternoon.”
“Near two hours ’tween home and Salem by foot. Best you learn to ride, I guess.”
“But you’d need Daffy during the day.”
“Got a mule.” He shot me a sideways grin. “Wouldn’t you cut a fine figure on a mule?”
I imagined a small grey donkey with big ears and a straw hat and myself swaying on top of it. I reached over and poked him in the side.
“I’d like buy a pair of pants and some socks,” I said. “There’s a hole in my pants from the, uh, the fall I took that night we met, and these socks aren’t very thick. I showed Ezekiel the ladders in my tights and the gash above my knee.
“Mother might mend your stocking in no time,” he said, “but it would be well for you to have a second suit. Have you money? I thought you hadn’t and I don’t know what Father could spare.”
“They paid me.” I pulled the coin out of my pocket and showed it to him.
“You’ll not buy a suit of clothes with that, nor even the wool to knit a pair of stockings. That’s a penny. A few of those together would buy you an ale at the Ordinary.”
I put the coin back in my pocket. I’d swallowed my pride taking it from Corwin; I wished it had meant something.
“Do not be glum, for ’tis more than they paid me, and if they use your services again, ’twill grow. You’ll be rich enough for that ale yet.”
“Sure. I’ll save up and buy you one, too. Do you drink alcohol?”
“I’ve had an ale a time or two, when someone has stood me to it, but Father doesn’t keep it in the house and I’m not paid in coin often. When you’re a wealthy man, I’ll be glad for you to buy me an ale.” He knocked against my side with his elbow and beamed one of his careless smiles at me. I let my annoyance over the coin go, but it didn’t solve the problem of only having one outfit and a pair of tights that would soon be more hole than fabric.
“I’ve an idea,” Ezekiel said. “You remember the far barn, where I found you?”
“Of course.” That building had never been far from my mind. If there were a way back to my own time, it must be inside that barn.
“There are clothes there as belonged to my grandfather. He was not so big a man as you through the shoulders but he were portly about the waist. We’ll find you a pair of his breeches that my mother can alter so as to make them fit.”
“Your grandfather won’t mind?”
“He passed on these several months. He had a small house near to town and we emptied it into the far barn as the homesteaders what bought it brought their own furnishings with them. We’ve not had the weather to sort through it yet, but ’tis a fine day today.”
The sun had nearly set by the time we arrived. Even with the barn door thrown wide, we could barely see well enough to maneuver, but Ezekiel found a trunk full of clothes and we hauled it outside where we could use the remaining light to look through it.
He hadn’t been kidding about his grandfather being a portly man. I couldn’t imagine his breeches being altered to fit me, but they were made out of wool, which would feel damn good. We found a cloak, which was shapeless enough that we didn’t have to worry about the fit, and a hat—a nice formal three-cornered one like Hathorne and Corwin wore. The hat fit just right. I wished I had a mirror. I hadn’t seen myself in days.
We carried the trunk back into the barn as the light faded. As I dodged a draped hulk that might have been a table, my heel came down on something with a crunch. I picked up what I’d just stepped on. The fragment was sharp in my hand and I knew even without holding it up to the last rays of sunshine that it was mirrored.
>
“What have you got?” Ezekiel asked.
“A piece of mirror. Broken.” Wherever it had come from, that must be the portal back.
“Not the large mirror from my grandmother’s armoire, I hope” Ezekiel said, even as I spotted the piece of furniture in question. “That was a fair nice piece. Would have brought in enough coins for a whole round of ale.”
I walked over to the armoire, which would fetch even more money in my time than in Ezekiel’s. At its base rested a wooden-framed mirror with a chunk missing from the lower, right-hand corner.
The hole was large, but certainly not large enough for me to fit through. I passed my hand between the jagged shards that lined it and was disappointed to see it come out the other side rather than disappear into the twenty-first century.
Ezekiel’s hazy image appeared next to mine, much as it had in the mirror maze except that now he really was standing behind me, not beckoning from another time.
“I think I’m the one who broke this,” I said, rising to face him. “That night you found me, I crashed—” through “—into something. I’m sorry.”
“That’s how you came to have those cuts?”
“Yes.” I slipped the piece of mirror into my pocket. It rested against my cell phone, which I carried with me for lack of anywhere better to keep it. Putting broken glass into your pocket wasn’t the wisest course of action but, like the cell phone, the mirror connected me to a world I didn’t want to let go of.
“I thought you’d tussled with someone,” Ezekiel said.
“No, I told you no one was chasing me.”
“You never said how you came to be here.”
“Because I can’t exactly explain it.” Boy, could I not explain it. “I became separated from my friends and confused about how to get back to them. Somehow I ended up in your barn. That part’s a little vague, but I didn’t mean to break your grandmother’s mirror. I’m not a fugitive from the law or from a planation or … or anything. No one will come looking for me, Ezekiel. I swear it.”
“Were you a fugitive, still I wouldn’t ask you to leave. I don’t wish you anywhere but here, Luther, except that I wish you were home.”
Yeah, well, that wasn’t going to happen. My eyes filled with tears. Shit. I hadn’t made it through a single day in this place without crying. I pushed past Ezekiel for the door, needing to be out of this barn which was temptingly close to home in a heartbreakingly unreachable way.
Behind me I heard him close the barn door and pull down the bar that latched it, then I felt his presence at my side. I kept steadfastly turned from him, not wanting to give in to the tears that threatened, but he eased closer until we touched and then his arm wrapped around my chest. He pulled me back against his body.
My tears burst free with a choked sob. I turned in his arms and buried my head against his shoulder .
He made a clucking sound a lot like the one he made at Daffy sometimes. It meant “go on, then,” as best as I could figure, so I went ahead and let the tears run. His cloak was scratchy against my cheek, but my mouth pressed into his neck and the skin there was warm and salty and his pulse fluttered beneath it. He held me so tight it nearly hurt, but it was exactly what I needed.
“Luther,” he said against the top of my head when my sobs had trickled to a halt. “Someday, will you tell me where you’re from?”
I nodded, feeling my cheek scrape against the rough fabric. I didn’t know how I could explain where I was from, but I knew that someday I would try.
~~~
After dinner, Ezekiel helped me drag in enough water from the pump to fill the metal tub in the lean-to at the back of the house. Mrs. Cheever boiled up a big pot of it and I added the hot water gradually into the cold until the steaming tub looked like the best thing I’d ever seen.
I peeled off my wig, which had grown ratty—the curls more fuzzy than glossy—and left it on the sideboard in a heap of unruly nylon. Then I stripped myself, piece by piece, until I was down to my own boxers and t-shirt.
There was a hand mirror on the sideboard and I used it to appraise myself in small sections. My beard had grown almost as fuzzy as the wig without trimmers to shape it. The gash down the side of my thigh had scabbed over. It didn’t look infected, which was a relief. A person could die of infection in the seventeenth century.
My t-shirt was probably ripe enough to walk away without me, but at least it was black. It didn’t show the pit stains that would have accumulated after a couple of days without deodorant. My boxers still framed my package nicely. I admired my bulge longer than necessary, but damn, mine was the only cock I was likely to ever see again. I gave it a squeeze and promised it that if I couldn’t figure out a way back to my own time, I’d at least figure out where and when I could jerk off in this one.
It wasn’t then and there, though. Only a curtain separated me from the rest of the family and I didn’t want to waste hot water while I had a chance at it, so I finished stripping and climbed into the tub.
It was as good as I’d hoped it would be, something like heaven. The soap was rough and smelled too strongly of soap to my twenty-first century nose, which was accustomed to soap smelling like cocoa butter or Irish springs—whatever Irish springs smelled like—but it smelled better than I did, so I applied it vigorously.
When the curtain opened, I wheeled to face the intruder, but it was only Ezekiel. He took my pants and tights from the pile of my clothes and said, “Abigail will mend these while you bathe. Mother’s looking at the breeches we brought from the barn, but ’twill take her some time to alter them.”
He left and I relaxed back down into the tub only to jolt upright when he came through the curtain again a moment later. I wondered if he was, perhaps, checking me out? Looking down into the tub, I could see myself perfectly. It wasn’t a bubble bath—just a lot of clear water and my own dark skin shimmering beneath it. My dick floated, plump from the warmth and from wondering if Ezekiel was eying it.
I looked up to see that he was, but he turned quickly when he found himself caught and made for the sideboard.
“I thought I might shave,” he said.
I waved at him to go ahead and leaned back against the rim of the tub to resume soaping myself, though at a more leisurely pace now. The water was still warm and I was naked with another man in the room. Why rush the moment?
Ezekiel whipped some soap up into a thick lather which he applied uniformly to his face. Then, holding the mirror in one hand, he took a straight razor to his throat with the other. I winced. That did not look safe. Or comfortable.
I fondled my own beard. It grew scraggly when it grew long, and I’d noticed that beards weren’t the fashion in Salem for any but the oldest of men. I’d have to bite the bullet and shave at some point, but I was likely to slit my throat if I had to use a straight razor to do it.
From the other side of the curtain, I could occasionally hear Mrs. Cheever or Tom, but Ezekiel and I were quiet in our shared nook. Lather disappeared from his face in long, precise stripes as I imagined my tongue tracing over the freshly-shaven skin. I’d washed every square inch of myself more than twice by that point—I was cleaner than the water—but I didn’t get up, too mesmerized by the show.
“I’d kill myself if I tried to do that,” I said when he’d finished.
He turned to me with a confused expression.
“I’ve never shaved with a straight razor.”
“Ah, you’re a city boy, having always a barber to go to. In the country, we learn to shave ourselves. I’ll be your barber, if you like. I can promise not to slit your throat on accident.”
He whipped up a fresh batch of lather in the wooden bowl and brought it over to the tub. He knelt on the floor and used his hand to rub the soap into my face and down my neck. Weren’t there meant to be brushes for applying shaving cream? This hands-on application was intimate and him kneeling next to me was suggestive. If I were to stand up, he’d be at exactly the right height to—
Not t
hat I could stand up, not with my dick plumped up the way it was, not that my dick wasn’t plainly visible through the dingy water. I tried to cover myself, but I had more dick than hand. I could only hope Ezekiel kept his attention on my face.
He put a finger under my chin and tipped it up. I let my head fall back and my eyes fall shut and my body rest more fully against the back of the tub. The first long swipe along my neck felt like a caress, so exactly did his blade brush the very surface of my skin. The sensation was nothing like the scratch of a safety razor.
When he’d finished with my throat, he hooked his fingers around my chin and lowered it, then proceeded to shave along my jaw and down my cheeks, one satiny stroke after another with hands so steady I couldn’t be nervous. It was lovely. For all the things I’d done with a man, I’d never done this—sat back and let one pamper me.
Slowly I became aware that what was stroking at my face now wasn’t a blade. I opened my eyes to find him watching me, his fingers tracing lightly along my now-clean jawline.
“You look very fine clean-shaven.” He pulled his hand away, but I caught it by the wrist to keep him near.
“So do you.”
His beard was lighter than his hair, so the stubble had hardly read, but now that it was gone, I could see the delicate curve of his features more clearly. I ran my thumb over them. Just as he’d tested my skin, I tested his. It wasn’t as soft as it looked. This was a man who worked hard outdoors, and his cheeks had a texture like un-sanded wood, but his lips—his lips were made of red-velvet. I wanted to bring my mouth to his, to taste as well as touch.
I dropped my hand in frustration. It landed in the water with a splash, drawing his eyes down to the tub, to my hard length that wanted him like I’d never wanted anyone. Maybe this was what delayed gratification did to me—maybe anyone would have been tempting by now—or maybe Ezekiel was precious and perfect with his winter-white skin and those two red spots staining his cheeks.
“The water’s getting cold,” I said.
