A Measure of Light

by Beth Powning

  “I do not know whether ’tis worth the effort to eat,” she said. “Yet my body bids me take comfort.”

  He paused in the doorway, watching her.

  “Thine eye,” she said. “’Tis healed.”

  “Aye. ’Twas a syrup made of sow bugs drowned in white wine.” I must tell Sinnie. Then her mind tipped, dizzy. Sinnie. Lilting voice, hands reaching for hers. She would never see her again. The soil vanished from beneath her, she swung by the neck. Her hands were bound to her sides so she could not reach up.

  Keep close to the light.

  “The other prisoners. Please tell me of them.”

  He looked at her, considering. She took up her bowl and tasted the hotchpot. It was flavoured with savory and she wondered who had cooked it and whether kindness was in her heart.

  “All the women are together.”

  “Good.”

  “They moved them two men that is to die. One of them was a-shouting out of his window so we put ’em down deep, in irons. There’s a few other men. They be just there.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

  “I heard hammering,” she said.

  “They called for a fence to be built. Too many people are coming round.”

  “Jailor,” she said. “Will thee tell me? Will thee tell me the night before I am to die? I needs must have a night to prepare my soul.”

  He did not answer. The door shut behind him and she was in darkness.

  Eight straws, now.

  She held the candle close to the tiny letters of her Bible.

  O God, whose might is over all, hear the voice of the despairing, and save us from the hands of evildoers. And save me from my fear!

  “Save me from my fear,” she said aloud, her eyes fixed on the four lines of light high in the wall.

  The tiny spring which became a river, and there was light and sun and abundant water—the river is Esther.

  “The river is Esther,” she murmured. “The river is Esther.”

  —

  Nine days had passed.

  The door cracked open.

  The jailor lifted a fist, tipped it towards her.

  “Tomorrow.”

  Her heart leapt.

  “What is the time now?”

  “’Tis just past five in the afternoon.” He closed the door.

  They rose before her, all the men. The night in the vale of Worcester when she and Dafeny had sat in the stocks. Bent double, freezing. Men, warm in their houses, laughing, talking of the foolish Quaker women as they ate stew, drank beer, went to their feather ticks. She imagined the Boston magistrates, bringing up the dirt-caked bundle. Groaning, peeling back the cloth. She thought of how they had looked at her—the English constables, the Boston magistrates—and did not see Kettlesing, nor her soft childhood hair, nor her mother’s fingers on the strings of a harp, nor bees and moors, nor London streets and a young husband’s caress.

  No. They saw a creation of their own making, to serve their own ends.

  She remembered the moment on the moor when George Fox had looked into her eyes.

  She prayed to still the rage in her heart but it remained, and grew, and so she supposed the Lord had left it to her as a gift.

  One night.

  One night left here on earth.

  She would not regret the minutes as they passed.

  She would think, rather, of the future that unfolded before her.

  It lay on the other side of her suffering.

  Rage would be with her even when they thrust her from the ladder. Rage, like light, increasing in proportion to her passion. Without it, she could not continue. Rage was neither anger nor hate, and this, she thought, the magistrates did not understand.

  She struck the tinder, held spark to linen, flame to wick. She set the candle next to her, leaned against the wall with the board on her lap. She dipped her quill into the ink and began to write.

  Her letters were square and even.

  … greetings of grace, mercy and peace to every soul that doth well: tribulation, anguish and wrath to all that doth evil … whereas it is said by many of you that I am guilty of mine own death by my coming as you call it voluntarily to Boston …

  She wrote all night, until she saw the lines of light and knew the day of death had come.

  She finished, hastily:

  … I desireth that the people called Quakers in prison or out of prison that are in the town of Boston at the time of our execution may accompany us to that place and see the bodies buried.

  A knock at her door.

  The jailor never knocked.

  “Come,” she said. She laid down her board, clambered stiffly to her feet.

  The door opened wider than the meagre gap the jailor allowed himself; torchlight revealed the stone floor, the lidded chamber pot, her straw-flecked skirt. The jailor stood back to admit the Reverends John Norton and Zachariah Simmes.

  “I do not wish to speak to you,” Mary said.

  Both had preached incendiary sermons concerning the Quakers. John Norton had spoken out firmly for the passage of the laws inflicting the death penalty. Zachariah Simmes had come over on the Griffin with the Hutchinsons and had been one of Anne Hutchinson’s most bitter accusers.

  “Mrs. Dyer,” said Reverend Norton. His accent was of Cambridgeshire; his words key-holed his nostrils. He held a hand up to forestall her speech. “There is no need for your death. I say this to you with every hope that you will believe me and trust me. There is no need for your death, I repeat—and indeed, if you will depart from this city quietly and promptly, never to return without prior permission, we shall grant you your freedom.”

  Mary watched the man closely. His eyes met hers and then shied away to the straw on her skirt.

  “Thee hath said the same to Marmaduke Stephenson and William Robinson,” she said. “I see by thine eyes that thee had from them the same answer I shall give.”

  “How shall you answer?” Norton said.

  “That I scorn thy offer unless ’tis proved to me that the General Court hath repealed its bloody laws and shall release all ‘Quakers,’ as thee calls us, now in this prison. And that thee never more shall cut ears, whip, trammel, murder or otherwise persecute those who do no evil but to come amongst you.”

  She took a step towards the men—cramped, unsteady.

  “Can thee give me a paper or some other way to prove such to be the case?”

  Symmes opened his mouth but she raised a hand, pointed at him.

  “Can thee promise me such? For if not, I wish to be left in peace to prepare myself for the dreadful hour to come.”

  She knelt, gathered up the letter she had written. She handed it to John Norton.

  “Take this,” she said. “Do not destroy it.”

  She held his eyes, took a breath.

  “For my husband will know whether or not thee hath delivered it to the court.”

  She turned her back on the men.

  A diminishing slice of light; then—blackness.

  An hour later, she was slumped on the pallet, head on her knees. She had fallen asleep.

  The jailor put out a hand and touched her shoulder.

  “Come wi’ me, now,” he said. “I’ve a treat for ye.”

  For the first time, he took her hand and helped her to her feet. She followed him from the cell. They went along the hallway, down a flight of stairs. He opened a door and stepped back. She saw a large room filled with men and women. Friends.

  “You’ve an hour,” he said. “They be having their execution sermon. Then they’ll come for ye.”

  She spread her arms, not knowing whom to embrace first.

  Mary Scott, Hope Clifton.

  “Mary, Mary. Oh, Mary.”

  An older couple. John Copeland, Samuel Shattuck. Two other young women. Two men. And an old woman who held out her arms to show Mary the linen shrouds she had prepared.

  Mary could not speak. The Friends gathered close around her, clasped her tightly.

  The door.
Opening.

  Hope Clifton fell to her knees. Mary turned, turned. Quieting, hushing, stroking a cheek, a man’s tear, sunlight in their eyes, the parting words, hands. Goodbye, Mary, goodbye, God be with …

  Drums.

  She stepped outside.

  A coif on her head. The same cape she had worn on the day that she and Hope and Mary Scott had left from Newport.

  The two young men were led forward and placed beside her. They were unbound.

  William, Marmaduke.

  She reached for their hands. One on either side. Bright-faced young men, smiling at her. They called out to the crowd.

  “This is the day of your visitation, wherein the Lord hath—”

  The captain of the guards shouted. Drummers began their work of drowning out the prisoners’ words. They were marched down Prison Lane; taken by a back way to avoid the largest crowd.

  One hundred guards. Before them, after them. Filling the streets.

  Sun on the men’s white collars. Glinting on muskets, pikes.

  “Mary! Mary!”

  A woman’s cry, a face in a window, waving a handkerchief.

  A chill coming from the shadows beneath the jettied upper storeys. Sun glancing on window glass. A feather, drifting down.

  William. What is he doing now. Does he know.

  The rattling drums were the size of barrels, bound with red leather, brilliant against the drummers’ blue frock coats. Their rhythm drowned out even the tramp of boots.

  The children.

  Sinnie.

  She pictured her mother. And her father, and her brother. They stood in a meadow where bluebells had sprung from the winter soil. There, too, was her first baby, William—and the “monster,” a perfect tiny girl. They looked in her direction, not quite seeing her but realizing the imminence of her arrival. The air smelled of the flowers’ sweet spice, and the air thrummed with the drone of bees.

  They turned onto Corn Hill Road. Over the rooftops she could see the hills of the tri-mountain. People pushed forward to get a better view of the prisoners. The guards raised the butts of their muskets.

  “Keep back.”

  The drums fell silent for a time. Marching boots, the jingle of musketry. A whinny, from ahead. The clatter of hoofs.

  A man shouted out.

  “Are ye not ashamed to be walking hand in hand with two men?”

  Mary turned to search the faces, found the speaker. It was the marshal. She remembering having seen the man when the world was normal—standing on the docks, papers in hand, conferring with a ship’s master.

  “Nay,” she called back. Marmaduke and William turned their heads towards the man. “’Tis the hour of the greatest joy I ever had in this world.”

  “This is your hour—” Robinson began.

  “Drummers!”

  The tattoo began again, silencing Robinson.

  It was a mile. The cobbles gave way to packed dirt.

  Just in front of Mary was a scratched leather jerkin. She remembered the Kettlesing Market, George Fox’s face above the crowd. Moors, swallows, the church tower. Mother, Father. Bluebells.

  Wings. Legs, marching. Wings.

  They arrived at the gallows. Low tide; the October grasses were red-silver, sleek, rising from the glistening mud. Across the isthmus maples and birches tossed—all the colours of a fire’s heart. Ducks, flushed up, headed southwards with clapping thunder. People in boats. Men on horseback. Glinting muskets and pikes. Helmets. Drums.

  Wings.

  The scaffold stood on a small hillock. One of the uprights was fresh-milled. The ministers gathered at its foot. Two ladders leaned against the cross-post, one for the hangman.

  The drums made a long rolling. An official stood forward and the crowd fell silent. He read the warrant for the execution. Every word could be heard, yet the voice was thin in the expanse of sky and light.

  Marmaduke, William and Mary turned to one another.

  Arms, chests, breath. Alive, in this moment.

  Alive.

  “We will meet in the everlasting day,” she murmured.

  Lips against her ear, strong arms, quick and fervent. Marmaduke, then William.

  William was pushed forward towards the gallows. He did not resist, yet looked up at the sky as he stumbled over a clump of sod and Mary wondered, suddenly, if he had changed his mind, if he had decided that by remaining—to preach, to convince, with his powers of persuasion—he might better serve the Lord.

  He will recant.

  He will pause, and turn to Wilson, and recant.

  He climbed the ladder, rung after rung, hand over hand.

  He stopped when his hands reached the ladder’s last rung. His voice rang out. “We suffer not as evildoers, but as those who testified and manifested the truth …”

  The executioner tied William’s neck cloth over his face, knotted it at the back of his head, and still the young man shouted. Mary straightened her shoulders. Her heart was hammering and she tasted blood in her mouth. His voice. Other voices, haranguing him. Her vision narrowed, dark at the edges, so that she saw only William’s blonde hair, the rope sliding over his head, adjusted, his tall figure against the sky, the ladder pulled from under his feet, the fall, the drop, a great roar from the crowd. The birds, flying up.

  William, struggling.

  Struggling.

  Swinging.

  Marmaduke. Red-cheeked despite having been weeks in darkness. Marmaduke, climbing the ladder next to the body of his friend. Neck cloth over his own face now. Shouting out, over the crowd, over the isthmus, his words small and silver like the light on the leaves. “We suffer not for evil but for conscience’s sake. This day shall we be at rest with the Lord.”

  The drop. His body, twisting, twitching.

  Swinging.

  Joy. He is there.

  Mary felt the eyes of a thousand people. Watching her.

  I will not look away.

  The blood in her mouth.

  I will speak before I fly.

  She walked to the ladder. A man knelt beside her. He bound a rope around her skirt, not so tightly that she could not climb. Reverend Wilson stepped forward and handed the man his handkerchief. The man bound it over Mary’s face. The cloth smelled of cedar and bayberry. Hands, placing hers on the rungs.

  Joyfully I come.

  The light filtering through the handkerchief was not the light of an October day but warmer, more golden. Filling her head, her mind, her heart.

  She placed hand over hand. Felt in the air. Nothing. She had reached the top. Air beneath her, only air. Her arms were bound to her sides.

  The heavy halter settled around her neck.

  She took a breath to speak into the surrounding silence and heard the percussion of hoofs, galloping along the road, the shouts of its rider.

  “Stop! Stop!”

  The ladder had stirred beneath her feet.

  “Stop!”

  Men’s voices. A disturbance. Beside her, she heard the hangman climbing down. A different man’s voice, coming closer as he climbed up the hangman’s ladder, panting. She heard a rustle of paper. He shouted out the words.

  “Hereby, I read an order of the court. Mary Dyer hath been reprieved by the order of the governor and by the petition of her son, William. She shall return to the prison for forty-eight hours and then shall depart the Massachusetts Bay Colony. After which time, if she be found within the colony, she shall be forthwith executed.”

  She felt the ladder bounce as a man climbed up behind her. The halter was lifted from her neck. Her hands were unbound, the handkerchief removed.

  “Nay,” she said. Bewildered, wild. “Nay! I disown this order! I utterly disown it.”

  Below her, a man stood with the halter in his hand.

  “Put it back,” she ordered. “Put it back on my neck and let me fall beside my brethren.”

  People ran towards the gallows. Women screamed. She heard her name called by many voices.

  “Mary! Mary!”


  “Mary, come down!”

  The man backed away down the ladder. Others rushed forward. Two men crowded up the ladder to seize her at the waist.

  Cold. She was freezing, shuddering. A roaring in her ears.

  The ladder slipped, slid sideways. Hands caught them. She walked through a press of faces. Reverend Wilson, taking back his handkerchief. A smile, a leer.

  She was lifted up and set on a horse. The horse threw its head up violently, she gripped the saddle. Someone settled her feet in the stirrups.

  The drums, the drums. Horses and riders close on either side.

  The light is gone and I am freezing.

  “I disown the reprieve!” she screamed, but her words were only as a beat in the vast din.

  —

  She stumbled into the jailor’s office, stunned. Afternoon sunshine. A healthy fire on the hearth, warming the room. The space was crowded with two men and two women, friends from Aquidneck. And her son. Young William bent over the fire with the tongs, settling a log. Far taller than she, now, a man.

  “They tell me the letter was from thee and not from thy father,” she said. Her voice was harsh, as if her vocal cords had been damaged. “Why?”

  “It was … thought …”

  For the people, for England, for the world to see. The compassion of magistrates, to spare a mother for her children’s sake.

  A woman stepped forward.

  “You may come home with us, Mary, when you are free to leave,” she said.

  The woman’s collar lay against a yellow dress, draping her shoulders. It was edged with a neat roll, every stitch perfect. It was ironed and sun-whitened.

  Mary was in the same clothes she had worn for weeks. She had slept in these clothes, used the chamber pot in them, spilled food upon them.

  There was emptiness where once had been William and Marmaduke.

  “Where is the jailor?”

  She wished only to see his pocked, familiar face and to be back in the darkness with a candle and a sheet of paper.

  My life doth not avail me if it be given by you.

  The words formed in her mind and they included her son. She wished to write them down so they would never go unsaid or be forgotten.