A Measure of Light

by Beth Powning

  Like those wee marks in books, she thought. Each one different, making words that Mary can read.

  Sinnie was playing fox and geese with Samuel. The little red-capped fox came running down the path marked in the snow, and Sinnie shrieked and ran.

  “A fox, a fox!”

  She clapped hand to mouth, darted a glance up the street, but no one loomed from the snow to bid her cease such childishness.

  Tis a shame to be happy when Mary be sae pitiful sad. And William still away and not knowing.

  Ever since the birth, Mary’s silence had burdened the house. Sinnie sang under her breath, aiming the sound towards Samuel. Even Jurden spoke up at meals, for the sake of the child. He told of seeing steam holes in snow, “a sign of sleeping bears”; he told of giving chase to a wolf upon the sands.

  Mary could not help her lips’ sweet upward curl but her eyes were haggard and she did not eat.

  Will make an apple pandowdy. Tempt her … poor thing.

  She clapped her mittens at Samuel.

  —

  Mary stepped outside and stood holding a bucket in each hand. Sinnie and Samuel’s red knitted caps were vivid against new shuttered houses with their dark timbers. Seeing their happy play, Mary wondered at her lack of jealousy.

  I was not meant to be a mother.

  Since the birth, Samuel had absorbed Mary’s mood. He was querulous—wept and screamed until Sinnie bundled him up and took him into the frigid air. Mary watched Sinnie’s small, quick fingers tying ribbons, tucking hair, lacing shoes; listened to her Nornish croon. She felt no ease with the child, since she could think of no songs or fairytales, could not smile or play silly games. At bedtime, when she said her prayers—on her knees, murmuring obedience and begging redemption—a furious whisper seeped into her mind, like air beneath a sill, saying that she and William did not deserve their punishment. She tried to stop it, knowing that the Lord was listening. Her hands went to her temples, she collapsed against the bed and pressed her face to the coverlet.

  I shall go mad. I shall go mad. Oh, that I ever came to this accursed place.

  Sinnie—kneeling, arms out for Samuel, eyelashes laden with snowflakes—looked up as Mary came down the path from the house.

  “Mistress, I will fetch the water. You stay and play with the bairn.”

  “Nay, I will fetch it, Sinnie.”

  Mary needed to walk, smell the ordinary goodness of lobster pie on the metallic air. She hung the buckets on the yoke, picked her way over the street’s hummocked detritus: half-frozen spoiled beets, peelings thrown out for pigs, a staved barrel. There was not a breath of wind, as if the snowflakes in their density had quieted the air.

  In the square, women in hooded capes or broad-brimmed leather hats were gathered at the well.

  If I avoid their eyes, they will see that I hide something. If I return their look, they will see my suffering. And become curious.

  She knelt, pretended to disengage a bit of her cape that had caught in the bucket’s bale. She attached her bucket to the rope and sent it plummeting downwards.

  At the whipping post, a punishment was in progress—three armed men stood by, while another knotted a man’s wrists and lifted his shirt. The whip whistled.

  Out-of-doors, her despair did not rise, spread and diminish—she found herself containing it, with fear, like all the other goodwives. They drew closer at the man’s cries and did not look at one another.

  Returning with the water, Mary saw William turn the corner and come striding down Mylne Street. She knelt, set down the yoke and buckets, and ran to meet him. They threw their arms around one another, stood without speaking. Then his lips moved against her cap.

  “I met Anne Hutchinson in the street. She told me.”

  Mary nodded, face on his shoulder.

  “Are you well, Mary?”

  “In body, yes, I am well. In mind, greatly disturbed.”

  Sinnie came to the door, Samuel at her skirts.

  “Papa!” The little boy ran through the falling snow.

  William shrugged from his pack as he went down on one knee, spreading his arms. Samuel went limp in his father’s embrace and Mary, too, felt a crumpling within herself, a desire for safety and a place to hide.

  “There are some islands in the bay where Roger Williams thinks we might settle,” William said. “The land is good, with grazing grounds and trees.”

  He laid down his spoon, reached for the water jug.

  About the baby, they held their words—all through supper, and prayers, and Samuel’s nightly routines, and the household’s settling. They waited until they had closed the door to their bedchamber.

  Mary pulled the quilts to her chin. William sat at the fire with iron tongs, lifting and resettling the blazing logs.

  “I do not remember the moment of birth,” she said. She drew a long breath. “So terrible it was that I was rendered unconscious.”

  “Girl or boy? Anne did not tell me.”

  “William …” Hands covering her face.

  He looked up at the sound of her voice. He set down the tongs, went to the bed and drew away her hands, but she would not meet his eyes.

  “What?” he said. “Tell me.”

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  “’Twas a girl. But Anne told me she was … disfigured.”

  “How disfigured?”

  “She … she told me there was no … head.”

  “No head? How could there …”

  “A face, yes, but no …” She drew a breath. “Head. She told me no more than that. Although something about … the eyes being …” She covered her face again, spoke into her hands. “But in any case, William …” Her voice broke. “The child was dead.”

  “My love.”

  He put his arms out, gathered her up. She spoke into his chest.

  “She told me that Mr. Cotton said God intended it as an instruction for the parents.”

  His arms loosened, blood rushed to his face. He rose.

  “Damn Mr. Cotton to hell.”

  “William. Remember …”

  Her voice thickened, her tears fell.

  “The Lord did take our first child. Then he gave us Samuel.”

  Her chest lifted with a sob. Her words were gasped, torn, choked. “But now he doth send some … some warning. I do believe he hath … hath damned me. Or that I was damned at birth. Why, I know not. I have searched my heart.”

  He sat back on the bed but did not gather her. She pushed herself upright.

  “’Tis not you, William. ’Tis me. Only me.”

  He lifted her hands.

  “I do not believe any such thing,” William said. “You have committed no sin. You do what is required of a wife and mother. You attend church, you work, you—”

  “I attend Anne’s meetings.”

  “As do many other people, Mary. Why would God punish only you?”

  “I … we cannot know his reasons. I am filled with dread and darkness. I feel my punishment.”

  That night, Mary slipped from bed, lifted her cape from a hook, slid hands into mittens.

  She eased open the front door.

  Over the sea, slivers of cloud shimmered like minnows. The moon was full, and the house cast a black shadow. She heard the surf breaking on frozen sand.

  A single wolf trotted across the marsh.

  Purposeful, she thought, watching its steady progress. It went up a rise. It sat in the numinous light, its back to Boston.

  A howl rose, its tremulous descent dying into silence.

  Baby, marked. A sign. Come from her womb.

  I try, I try, I try. I cannot understand.

  —

  He left the house before breakfast. When he returned, his eyes were puzzled, grim.

  “What did she tell you?”

  “No more than she told you.”

  He spoke with sudden vehemence, and she saw both his love for her and his rage at the men of higher education.

  “You are not to blame, M
ary. I do not believe God sent punishment to either you or me. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, knowing acquiescence was her gift to him, for she did not believe his words, nor understood, nor thought that his own understanding was complete. Yet she would not say more, for he glanced at his musket.

  He longs to be away from this.

  “Go,” she said. “The sky is filled with birds.”

  Men and women almost overwhelmed Anne’s next meeting. All bore the dazed and frustrated mien of having left one kind of urgency for another. Men stamped snow from their boots, removed hats and gloves. William stood amongst them along the wall; Mary sat in her usual place by the fire, clutching her Bible like a wrapped, warmed stone. People cast assessing glances, gauging one another’s anger.

  Anne waited for silence and for the door to be shut tight. She glanced at the window where Governor Winthrop’s house could be seen through the warped glass—icicles glittering, curtains drawn.

  “As you know, they have come to me,” Anne announced. “They have told me that I may no longer hold these meetings. They say …”

  She broke off, searched not through the pages of her Bible but amongst her papers.

  “Here, let me read it to you: ‘Though women might meet (some few together) to pray and edify one another, yet such a set assembly (as is now in practice in Boston) where sixty or more do meet every week, and one woman (in a prophetical way, by resolving questions of doctrine and expounding Scripture) takes upon her the whole exercise, it is agreed to be disorderly and without rule.’ ”

  An angry murmur rose from the room.

  “They do choose to ignore that this is a gathering of women and men, and that we do all agree on many matters. Shall we continue these meetings?”

  “Aye. Aye.”

  “What care we for their …”

  “’Tis a campaign of persecution …”

  Anne held up her hands for quiet but it was some time before the voices subsided.

  I will follow her, Mary thought. Still she looked down when other women spoke kindly of her miscarriage, fearing what her eyes might reveal; but she had resumed her work with Anne, accompanying her to births and illnesses. They did not speak of what had occurred.

  William returned home one evening carrying a dead grey goose. He dropped the goose onto the hearth, hung his musket on its pegs over the mantel and shrugged from his snow-laden greatcoat.

  “Do you remember that remonstrance that I signed? About Wheelwright, stating our belief in his innocence?”

  “Aye, I remember.”

  “Wheelwright hath been disenfranchised and banished. Aspinwall, he who drew the petition, is the same. Others are disenfranchised, including me.”

  Sinnie froze, laden trencher lifted. Her eyes touched Mary’s.

  “They have sent for Anne Hutchinson. We shall see what they do make of her case.”

  They assembled at the narrow trestle table as was their custom and ate in silence—William, Mary, Sinnie, Jurden—Samuel in his high-legged chair. There was no sound but the drag of spoons against wood. Disenfranchised. Mary’s shock was offset by the room’s settled peace. She left the last scrapings in their trencher for William and sat watching Sinnie and Jurden, seated side by side, each with a bowl. Jurden’s kindness towards Samuel had won him a loosening of Sinnie’s shoulders and the occasional nervous glance.

  We are, truly, as a family. Knit together.

  William, seeing that all spoons were still, began the prayer.

  Knocking—loud, insistent. William broke off. His face darkened, he strode to the door. Two men stood on the step, carrying muskets.

  “You did not turn in your weapons as ordered, William Dyer.”

  “Of course I did not. How am I to hunt? Protect my family?”

  Mary dropped her napkin, stood.

  He did not tell me of this.

  The two men came in without being invited. One man walked to the hearth, kicking aside a basket of onions with his snowy boot. He lifted down William’s musket.

  “’Tis ordered. Where are the rest? Pistols, sword, knives.”

  Wax brimmed in the candle, reached its breaking point and poured onto the table. Jurden had half-risen from his chair.

  “You have come to take them, then you will have to find them,” William said.

  Slowly, Jurden resumed his seat, fists set beside his bowl. Sinnie untied the sash holding Samuel in the highchair and carried him into the bedchamber.

  Mary stood watching the obscene intimacy of William’s unmanning.

  London. The day he returned with musket, shot, wadding. His soft hands caressing the stock.

  The men rummaged through chests, pulling out clothing and linens, leaving them heaped on the floor. They went into the bedchamber. Sinnie screamed and ran out clutching the weeping child. She stood trembling, Mary’s arms around her, while the men returned and climbed the ladder into her attic. Mary heard the scrape and thud of skidding chamber pot, overturned pallet. They climbed down, kicked open the back door, went through to search the sheds. They returned, bearing a collection of two pistols, hunting knives, and three muskets. One paused to aim a kick at a long-legged trivet on the hearth. It flew, taking with it gridiron, bake kettle, broiler.

  The door slammed shut.

  William took one violent step, then turned back to the room. He looked at the dead goose, dusted in ash. His eyes were hard. Unrepentant. Seeking loopholes.

  November 1637

  My dear Aunt Urith,

  My teacher Anne Hutchinson hath been gone this past week. She is being held under house arrest at the home of Joseph Weld, two miles away in Roxbury, on the mainland. There she must stay without communication save with family and clergy, till such time as she is tried by the church. She was called up before the General Court and ’tis said the magistrates found no reason for banishment until she spoke of direct revelation from God. Thereupon they found her guilty of two crimes—the first being heresy, for the Puritans believe the word of God may be revealed only through Scripture and thus transmitted only by the clergy. The second is the crime of sedition for her questioning of the ministers. It is my belief that they fear her, although they say she is unfit for our society. Such is their fear that they have today ordered a college in a settlement near to Boston, the name of the settlement to be changed to ‘Cambridge’ and the college to be called “Harvard.” ’Tis is for the education of young men to keep them from “corruption” by the likes of Anne. Today would have been the day for my dear friend’s meeting, when I would go to her house. It is as if a light hath gone out which once graced the day’s toil and tribulation, giving me balm of spirit. William, however, hath gone this day to the Hutchinson home, for he and other merchants plan our departure from this place. We shall leave in the spring, where to I do not yet know, perhaps the Narragansett Country, perhaps New Hampshire. I do miss Anne Hutchinson with whom I can talk as I could talk only to you, my aunt, or with uncle. I am forbidden visits to her.

  I do grow tired of this barren peninsula. The wind here is worse even than the moors. We are living at the edge of wilderness whose terrors are unknown and thus magnified. One day, God willing, I will return to you, my aunt, and will see once again the gentler lands of home …

  Another Christmas came and went, unmarked, save that Mary gave herself one gift. She took the letters she had received from Urith. She sat by the window and read them. One word—all she needed to evoke an entire epoch and the people she held in her heart.

  Yorkshire.

  Mary and William set out before dawn, trudging westwards out of Boston. There was no sunrise, only a gradual lightening that revealed storm-bearing clouds over a black January sea; meadows buried beneath drifts; and an Indian village, where rotting cattail mats hung from decayed wigwams and scavenged human skeletons lay exposed by the wind.

  They stopped. Stared.

  “Last summer … unspeakable,” Mary said, hands to mouth.

  In Connecticut, they had bee
n told, the Pequot tribe “was no more.”

  William’s eyes were grim. He nodded but said nothing in reply. He was friendly with many of the Englishmen who had gone with the militia. Only by chance had he not gone himself. In public he kept his counsel, although in the privacy of their home he had listened to Mary’s diatribe against the violence; had agreed not to accept a slave into their home; and had voiced the opinion that he was unsure whether they were now safer or in greater danger.

  At the narrowest point of Boston Neck, near the gallows, William swept snow from a stone and they sat to wait for low tide. They ate maize bread studded with dried huckleberries, sipped water from a leather bottle.

  At noon, they crossed over the sand. The road wound up an incline to the mainland. In the distance, Roxbury broke grey from snowy fields, a cluster of buildings set around a meeting house. They kept to the road until they saw the house that they recognized by its situation as Joseph Weld’s. The smoke of a banked fire was a desultory breath from the great chimney.

  They made for a boulder surrounded by wild cherry trees. William squatted on one heel. A few snowflakes tipped from the sky.

  “Be quick,” William said. He had procured a musket from a friend, carried it slung over one shoulder.

  Mary stepped out into the field, stumbling, since her toes were frozen within her shoes. She lifted her skirts, eyes on the window she had been told was Anne’s. She carried a pack in which were letters from the silenced women.

  Roger Williams’s phrase burned like a beacon. Soul liberty. The reason they had left England—for the right to worship as they wished.

  She thought of the Indian camp.

  It was not for Winthrop’s God that she began to run across the open ground, her heart racing.

  As Mary crouched against the house, hands pushed the quarels and the window above her swung open. She fumbled the papers from her pack, pushed them over the sill. Anne slid her hand out, Mary pulled off her own icy mitten. Their flesh touched, a quick clasp.

  Through the harsh winter of 1638, wolf heads nailed to the fence surrounding the meeting house bore tilted crowns of snow; inside the building, the cold was so intense that dogs were brought to lie on their masters’ feet.