by Beth Powning
Her voice began to shake. She did not turn to look at Mary but spoke to the clouds.
“Thee knows they do not take the ears of women. Only the ears of men, for the first offence. For the second offence, the other ear. We women are only to be whipped. But both, man or woman, shall have our tongues bored through with a hot iron for a third offence.”
Celia turned from the window.
“In what way do we harm them? How can they be so cruel, Mary?”
Mary pressed her hands together, palm to palm, cupped them over nose and mouth and closed her eyes. Faint, the twitter of birdsong. She drew breath.
“’Tis fear, the fear of weak men. They do not wish for the ministers to be usurped—for just as men rule the home, so, in effect, do the ministers rule the government.”
Celia gazed at the floor, pondering, her own hands tightly clasped.
“I will not go to Massachusetts,” she said finally. “I am not such a person as could bear to be whipped. But I will do what I can in the service of the truth.”
Mary spread her hands on the counterpane. It was a quilt Sinnie had made from bits of the children’s clothing. Blue wool, green tabby, white holland. Ribbed, burred, soft. Scraps, gathered together to serve a purpose.
“We needs must wait upon the Lord,” she said. “Listen for his bidding.”
“Would thee go to Boston if thee were to be called?”
Mary did not answer.
Elizabeth Swale’s back. The swish before the whip lands. Pain, worse with each stripe. George Fox. “Just a smash …”
“Yes,” she said. “I would go.”
After her friend had left, Mary took up a pamphlet of Fox’s sermons.
“We must have the patience to bear all manner of evil done or spoken against us for Christ’s sake, and rejoice at it.”
She pressed the pamphlet to her breast, thinking how the light within must burn so brightly, when refuted, that it became as a cushion to the most savage blows.
Spring, summer, fall. The skies darkened with migrating birds. The air smelled of apples.
Mary received a letter from Catherine Scott.
October 1658
My dear Mary,
Christopher Holder speaks often of his visit to Dyer Farm so I know thee will wish to receive news of him. (Did I tell thee he is to be married to my daughter Mary?) Many Friends do come to our house here in Providence to plan how we are to help our brethren in Massachusetts. He and two others agreed to go to Boston to protest, and there they were imprisoned. All of them suffered the loss of an ear, sliced off in the secrecy of their cell so that the townspeople could not witness the outrage. I did ride to Boston to protest. My youngest, Patience, had to be constrained, so earnestly did she wish to accompany me. I was whipped and they did tell me if I came again, there would be a law to hang me. I did say to them, “If God calls us, woe be to us if we come not.” I remembered my dear sister Anne Hutchinson and how they did torment her. I wish thee to know that I am well, despite what thee may hear, and that Christopher Holder and the others have returned from Massachusetts, and that we have written to George Fox, and do gather here in Providence to plan what we may do next …
Winter.
At supper, William brought news.
“Oliver Cromwell hath died,” he said. “He is to be succeeded by his son.”
Mary thought of Cousin Dyota, clutching the chip of wood stained with king’s blood. Cousin Ralf—“England, oh, England,” he had cried, at news of the king’s murder.
Another letter came from Catherine Scott:
January 1659
Dear Mary,
Our Meetings here in Providence do grow. We have truly a live centre here, and many who long for the arising of the Day Star in their hearts come here to our home. The Power of God hath taken place in our children, most especially in my daughter Patience, who at such a tender age—eleven—doth faithfully attend our Meetings and is privy to the plans set forth as many gather here to plan our resistance to the Bloody Laws. I write to thee as a mother and healer, for my heart saddens for what this child has seen, stripes upon my own back and Christopher Holder’s ghastly scar where they did cut off his ear. Thee knows that she is the child of rebels, my own father was held under house arrest in England, and her Aunt Anne was outcast and murdered. But despite or because of her heritage, the child does not eat, her body fails, and I fear she lives on faith and ardour, and wonder if thee might suggest any posset or herb …
Mary thought of Littlemary, who read her Bible not from passion but duty—and by preference went to Newport, returning with buttons or ribbon.
Patience, Mary thought, would have listened to the young Woodhouse Friends telling of how the Lord shepherded them across the Atlantic; would have helped soak her mother’s bloody shift from her back; and sat, on every First Day, surrounded by silent adults, waiting upon the Lord.
She wrote to Catherine, advising daily walks and peppermint tea.
Spring. Peepers, and the first shad. William stripped a spine from the tiny, steamed fish, laid the bones on the trencher and lifted the flesh to his mouth.
“Cromwell’s son abdicated,” he announced, licking his fingers. “They say the king will return.”
“And the Boston charter?” Mary asked. “Dost remember, William, once thee did think they were clever, to take it from England.”
He glanced at her, a twisted expression, as if this memory evoked the way they had once been to one another.
“Aye, and so they felt they could make up their own laws.”
If the king returns …
William reached for the next fish.
“The Puritan reign is over,” he said. He laid another spine along the side of his trencher, nudged it until it was aligned with the pewter’s curve. “England is in chaos.”
The children, at their table, paid little attention but Sinnie paused for an instant before setting down the serving bowl, glancing at Mary, who sat with hands folded in her lap, head bowed as if in meditation but eyes alight with thought.
In the pre-dawn darkness, Mary rode through the gates of Dyer Farm. The gelding’s long-reaching stride was a sudden, fearsome intimacy; she slid her hand beneath his mane for reassurance, felt the silky warmth. Her knees pressed leather saddlebags filled with secreted provisions.
As she rode up the island, sunrise glittered on the waters of the bay; against its coppery script, shallops set out for the fishing grounds. Smoke juddered from chimneys and women thrust doors and windows wide against the July heat. Already, the horse’s withers slickened and Mary cast back the hood of her summer cape.
Too young for this. Her parents would not have allowed it. Perhaps she crept from the house.
Eleven years old, Patience Scott had ridden to Boston with three young men to protest the new laws. Catherine Scott had written to Mary, telling of how, upon arrival in Boston, the magistrates had taken the child to the House of Correction. How Patience had astounded them with her composure and knowledge of Scripture. How, nonetheless, she had been thrown in jail along with her companions.
Mary stuffed her cloak into a saddlebag. To her left, a pasture ran down to the shore. Sheep nibbled the grass, their spines lined with light.
I will not let them harm her.
Mary kicked her horse into a canter, heard the jingle of bit, watched between the horse’s ears as the dirt track unfurled. Anger settled in the bones of her jaws.
—
To the keeper of the Prison:
You are by virtue hereof required to take into your custody the person of Mary Dyer, who on her examination before Authority, professeth her coming into these parts was to visit the prisoners, the Quakers now in hold, and that she was of the same religion …
… and refusing to give a direct answer unto what was proposed unto her, she came hither for affirming the Light within her …
… keep her safely in prison until the next Court of Assistants, according to the Law Titled, “Quakers.”
<
br /> Dated: July 21, 1659, at Boston
They bade her wait in the rain for an hour, under guard, while they conferred with the jailor inside.
Papers signed, the jailor led her to the cell.
Five flock beds lay on the floor, wool tufting from torn seams. In one corner, a blanket was suspended to make privacy for the chamber pot. The air was heavy with the reek of urine, tempered slightly by an open window, whence came the sounds of rain—splatter against cobblestones, steady river-splash from eaves.
Surrounded by men, the girl was a forlorn, grey bundle, huddled by the window, face hidden against knees.
“Patience,” Mary said. She tried to keep her voice steady. “Thy mother wrote to me.”
The girl scrambled to her feet, rushed to her. Mary opened her sodden cloak, pulled the girl to her breast.
William Robinson looked up from where he sat hunched over his Bible, long legs splayed across the floor. He was fair, sunken-cheeked, with thin, veined hands. Marmaduke Stephenson turned from the window. Mary had heard it said that he had left his plough at the Lord’s calling and walked away from his hill farm, leaving wife and children. He smiled at her, round lively eyes beneath a fringe of black hair. Nicholas Davis lay on his side, half-asleep, beard askew in a full-lipped, solemn face.
The jailor pulled back the blanket, reached in for the chamber pot.
“We need water,” Marmaduke said to him.
The jailor tossed the contents of the pot, drenching the young man with urine. “As ye wish, so ye get. Makes my job easier.” He returned the pot, wiped his hands on his breeches, and strode from the cell. The key turned in the lock.
No one spoke.
“I had to come,” Mary said. Her voice shook yet strove for calm. She pressed her cheek on the child’s head. “I heard they had jailed Patience. I said I wished to visit the prisoners and offer them succour.”
William Robinson lifted the cloak from her shoulders. “And for such kindness, thee were cast in with such as us.”
“Welcome, Mary Dyer,” said Marmaduke, voice muffled from the shirt halfway over his head. “We will wait on the Lord.”
The jailor had allowed Mary her Bible, writing paper, quill and ink horn. She set them beside the pallet and sat, untying her soaked shoes, peeling away her stockings. Nicholas Davis rose and settled his blanket over Mary to ease her shivering. Patience curled against her.
Mary closed her eyes. Marmaduke and William resumed their places on the floor and then a vibrant quietude grew such as she had known in a Yorkshire farmhouse. In a Whitehall stable. In a goldsmith’s parlour. In a ship’s berth.
Patience pressed her eye to the pine planks nailed over the window and could see nothing between them but the colour of the sky. She and Mary were in a smaller cell now, alone.
“I shall take thee to my mother’s garden,” Mary said. She had tied her coif low and tight over her forehead to hold back her greasy hair. Her grey petticoat was soft, sour. She described the walled garden and her father’s glass apiaries shaped like castles. She closed her eyes and told Patience how she envisioned light like a cobweb of silver threads in which were woven a tapestry of poppies, pansies and lavender.
They sang. It steadied them, like the thought of the men in the next cell or the meetings they knew were being held by Friends in Newport and Providence, planning further assaults on the laws.
God is near as the beating of my own heart.
“What does thee wish for?” Mary murmured. Patience lay on her side. Her breasts were like mushroom caps, two perfect mounds beneath the grimy shift. They knew it was a fine summer day, since the cracks were blue.
“A husband. And a house in Providence near to Mother and Father. And children. And a nice riding horse and a flock of hens. And we will all go to Meeting together, all the family, and then I shall have them to my house and we shall eat all together. I will serve them apple pie and …”
She talked of food, enumerating puddings and pastries, steaming drinks, fruit tarts.
And for myself, what do I wish for.
Mary lay on her back, arms folded over her chest, hands tucked into armpits to keep them from tearing at her scalp where lice crept like trickling water.
She closed her eyes.
She thought of her children as if they were someone else’s, glimpses gathered in the two years she had been home—hopeful, argumentative, restless with forward momentum. She sensed their frustration, wondered if perhaps they themselves did not know how deference, drilled from infancy into all Puritan children, was like the sound of a wheel turning upon an axle, a monotony whose variation was minimal and forced.
She glimpsed, then, the answer to her own question—what do you wish?—and knew she would never reveal it to Patience. Should the girl think to ask, she would tell her—“I wish to wander the world, spreading the Truth.” For when she had been in Barbados, she had heard of women Friends who had visited the Sultan of Turkey; who had spoken to Catholics in Venice, Jews in Rome; who had been held by the Inquisition on Malta.
She remembered the dream she had had in London. A young man had lifted her onto a black goose. He had dissolved from man into love itself—wondrous and vast. And she had lain forward and clasped the neck of the bird, while all around her, others, too, rode birds. And the black wings lifted.
Do I wish to give my life in the cause of Truth?
She received a letter from William.
August 1659
The children are well, as am I, but anxious for your return and well-being. I wonder if word has reached you of the new law. All visiting Quakers in Massachusetts Bay Colony are to be banished on pain of death. You will surely be returned to me soon, never again to set foot in that cursed place, my dearest wife, for I trust you will be banished … We are busy with the harvest, the hay is heavy and there is a crop of apples beyond my expectations, I cannot get away at present, do you keep quiet and patient, I have written the Court of Assistants, I do all I can with what influence I can wield. You will be released soon, I am certain …
The jailor held the door open.
“Court of Assistants,” he said. “You are bidden to hear your charge.”
Walking the hallway with Patience at her side, Mary’s legs trembled and her knees had scant strength. Sunlight blazed in the jailor’s office, making her squint, and as they passed through, ordinary things struck her with their intricate strangeness: a pewter candlestick, the jailor’s cloak, the cracked leather of a bellows.
Marmaduke, William and Nicholas joined them in the street. It was a day of morning-glory blue, with vast cloud pillows and light so brilliant that birds rode the wind like sparks of a bonfire. The air was crisp, the leaves had turned. They followed six officers up the street and into the square. They mounted the outside stairs of the new two-storey market, Keayne’s Town House, and were prodded into a large room where the courts were held. Windows stood half-open on their iron hinges, shadows stretched across the floorboards. The room smelled of lumber. They were made to stand facing a row of magistrates.
Their eyes. Filled with hatred.
“I shall heckle,” William had told them, back when they were still confined in one cell. “I shall argue, rail, speak without cessation.”
Governor Endicott held his pointed beard with one hand. He wore a black silk cap with purple braiding.
“You have interrupted our meetings,” he began. “You have caused disturbances.” He spoke at length, detailing their offences.
When he finished, William Robinson stepped forward.
All summer he nurtured this plan.
“Is this thy converting of others?” he began. “By compelling of people to come to your meetings? By imprisoning, whipping, putting in stocks, burning in the hand, and cutting off the ears of those that come to bear witness against your cruelty and idolatry?”
His blue eyes widened, a vein pulsed beneath blanched skin.
“By fining people and taking away their goods? Hath thee no other way no
r word to convince those you call heretics and deceivers but to take away their lives?”
“You will BE SILENT or you shall be gagged!” Endicott roared, jumping to his feet. “The child will be sent from here under custody of her uncle. She is under no banishment. However, you and the others are hereby banished from Massachusetts. Should you return, you are under pain of death.”
“Know this,” William Robinson said. “If thee puts us to death when we return, thee will bring innocent blood upon thyself. And this thee will certainly know one day, that the Lord God of heaven and earth, whom we serve, sent us among you—”
Men closed on him, took his arms. The others were seized as well, their shoulders held, their ribs poked with musket stocks. They were hustled through the door, out into the sounds of gull-cry and snapping flags, and marched down the stairs. At the bottom, William Robinson lurched wildly as a man thrust a foot to trip him. He was dragged to the whipping post. Men hauled his hands up, began to bind them. Others stripped away his shirt.
“Look there,” Mary said to Patience. She stepped between the whipping post and the girl, pointed to the piling clouds. “Surely ’twill thunder later on.”
She did not repress a knife edge from sharpening her words, knowing how it would startle the girl and keep her tears from falling.
The following day, Mary returned to the tavern, where her belongings and her horse had been kept safe by the sympathetic owner.
Two nights later, she arrived back at the farm, took her horse to the barn, and walked wearily to the house. She let herself in, for they had not heard her arrival. Sinnie was putting linens in the hall dresser. She turned as the door opened.
“So thin, Mistress!” She reached for Mary’s cloak with both hands.
“Nay,” Mary said, staying Sinnie’s efforts, making her way into the parlour, where the family sat by the fireside. William looked up and his face opened, like a sleeper suddenly wakened. He was teaching the boys how to carve; Littlemary was sewing a quilt piece. “I am only thin, Sinnie. I am strong as trees, my heart feels delight.”
