by Lara Parker
At that moment, out of the corner of his eye, Barnabas saw Jacqueline rise, still holding fast to her mother and neighbor, but her body was rigid as though in pain, and spasms traveled through her frame. She threw back her head and screamed.
The huge table shuddered and the great gothic window flared as if from a falling meteor. Lightning careened behind them, and thunder exploded and shook the building. Barnabas thought the window had shattered, for the room was drenched with a light so blinding he shielded his own eyes, and his head pitched forward on the table. He rose and instinctively he reached for Antoinette, drew her to him, and stood with her body molded to his. They hovered in a disembodied mist—rain blowing through the opening. It was bitter cold, and he wrapped his cape around her shivering form, as thunder cracked again and streaks of blue and silver light flew past. Then, to his dismay, he began to lose his grip on her; first her body and then her skirt shifted in his hands, and some unseen power wrenched her from his grasp.
TWENTY-ONE
Salem—1692
WHY ARE YOUR EYES SILVER.’
Miranda looked up at the smudged face of the seven-year-old child who was curled beside her in the corner of her jail cell, and, as it was bitter cold, tried to pull her skirts around them both, her shawl over their shoulders.
“From the moon,” she said. Her chains chafed her ankles, now raw with open sores, and she moved gingerly that they might not bleed again. She knew she was gravely ill. A fetid vapor hung in the air like wisps of oily smoke, for there was still waste in the center of the cell; the jailer had not come for the bucket. Sickly and weak, Little Dorcas nestled into her, and Miranda thought she must die; but the child said every day she wanted to live to see the baby born. She was an orphaned girl accused of witchcraft, her mother already hanged. Damn them! May they all burn in the very Hell their zealotry envisions. God in Heaven, may it be for them.
She mourned that she had no roots or herbs to save those who were ill, and although she was able with laying on hands to aid a few, all her feckless spells were lost to her now. There was no help for it in a dungeon where even the rocks oozed a sour grease, and the floor was slimy with mold. Though the women made every attempt to use the chamber pot, those few with chains, like Miranda, were so burdened they could not manage it. If not for the cold, the stench would have killed them all, that and the fleas and the rats that came every night. And if they did manage to sleep, they woke bitten. Unrecognizable now, one from the other, shapeless gray shades, they wept, moaned pitiably, embraced for meager comfort, and when the jailer came with their gruel, roused themselves to beg for a new trial.
From where Miranda lay, she could see one small window. Without bars or panes, it allowed a glimpse of the dawn and then the day, a slowly changing spectrum from pale rose of morning, to glittering black when the frigid night settled over them again. At times the sun caught an angle that bestowed gentle warmth for an hour or so. But the harsh light revealed the grime on the faces of the inmates: the tortured grimaces of those gone mad with grief, or the deathly stupor on the masks of those who had abandoned hope. Some nights the moon drifted across the little window, and they were able to count their days by its changing shape. This night it had a bulge on one side, a melon moon, glowing brightly in a sky with no clouds.
In the outer room where George Locker, the constable, kept watch, visitors often stopped by, curious about the inmates; but then none looked into the cells, as they were driven back by the foul odor. There were no locked doors, for even the unchained accepted their fate like penned sheep. Where would they go? Not to the forest they feared more than death itself, nor upon the road where they would be ridden down and shot. Newcomers talked in hushed tones, were incredulous, whispered among themselves, and bought George’s beer, for he had opened a tavern on the premises; sometimes they challenged him to a game of chess. Did they play for the souls of the prisoners, Miranda wondered?
Some poor women made every effort to keep themselves clean, having to choose between drinking and washing with the grimy cup of water they were given once a day. Those losing faith began to scream in the night and, after first praying to Lord Jesus, began to curse the God forsaking them.
Word came that Andrew had appeared with his musket and stormed the meetinghouse demanding his wife—that was what he called her. He was fired upon and driven away. A body of men organized to assist the constable was sent to burn his hut, destroying all that he had. Defense of a witch was cause for suspicion, but for once they stopped short of arresting an innocent man, perhaps out of fear for their own hides. He must have fought all six of them with his great heart bursting, and in the end he fled to the forest, banished from Salem, never to return in this lifetime.
A yeoman friend to George brought news that Judge Sewall had argued eloquently for Miranda’s release, saying that she had healing powers, had often saved the lives of animals, or treated young children. Increase Mather took an interest in her case and she was to be examined again, but Amadeus Collins insisted her healing arts were nothing less than witchcraft. She had two months before the birth, and in that time by some miracle, she might win a reprieve.
Only the baby, bastard that it was, kept her from the gallows. She cupped her hands around the bulge in her stomach and was warmed by the small fire. But she was failing fast. Whatever little she had to eat was not enough to feed them both, and the child took the necessary portion. She knew something was wrong in her body, tearing at her, a tiny knee or elbow; and she was so thin she could feel its shape with her hand: the rounded back, the fluttering tail, for the little beaver in her belly clawed and dug.
There had been no hangings for weeks, and every day another prisoner was released. Fine ladies had been called out, and there was the mistake. The fashionable wife of the new governor, Sir William Phips, had been named by the foolish girls, now emboldened to the point of absurdity; and she had come in her finery to see the prison, incensed that her person would be tainted with this terror. She had not even reached the door before the stench assailed her delicate nostrils, and she withdrew enraged.
Miranda grew weaker and drifted in and out of sleep. Voices jarred her consciousness, but they gave her little hope.
“Nathaniel Saltonstall has resigned against the proceedings.”
“More than a hundred still imprisoned.”
“Increase Mather has asked his son Cotton Mather to forbear. No more spectral evidence is to be allowed.”
“They are saying those from Andover were innocent.”
“Abigail Hobbes has incriminated her own father!”
“Sheriff Corwin grows rich on jailer’s fees and confiscated property.”
“God help us all for we are innocent.”
Her limbs ached from lying on the stone floor, and her body was like a paper package with the loose bones no longer attached to one another. Because of the grime on her skin, she imagined she was a piece of the wall, one of the stones embedded in the cement, and she thought if someone were to come for her, they would find only a reeking boulder or a pile of discarded rags.
Dorcas often sang to her in a bright voice, hoping to soothe them both with stories from her young childhood set to mournful melodies.
“An earthly nourris sits and sings,
And low she sings by lily wein,
Saying little ken I my bairn’s father,
Far less the land where he dwells in.”
“What song is that?” Miranda asked, although she shivered when she saw the child’s blazing eyes.
“It is a song my mother sang to me, of a woman who married a silkie and had his baby.”
“Did she love her child?”
“Aye, but the great seal came in the night and took him away.” Dorcas had a voice like chimes, bell-like and pure. All the shadows in the cell held their breaths and listened when she sang.
“And he has tain a purse of gold
And he ha’ placed it on her knee
Saying give to me my little young son
And take thee up thy nourris fee.”
Miranda wondered whether Judah Zachery would have come for his child, and if it truly was the child of the Devil. Would he have paid her a paltry price and taken it away to raise in the manner of his breed?
“Did she let go her baby?”
“Aye, she was bound to do so, for she was a nourris.”
“Ah, I see. Sing, Dorcas.”
“And he came one night to her bed feet,
And a grumbly guest I’m sure was he
Saying Here am I thy bairn’s father
Although I be not com-e-ly.”
Miranda closed her eyes and dreamed of the young seal swimming the foam with his father. And she thought of Andrew’s very human jealousy as Dorcas sang in her mournful voice.
“And ye shall marry a gunner good
A fine ship’s gunner I’m sure he’ll be.
And the very first shot that ere he shoots
Will kill both my young son and me”
Perhaps Andrew would have killed the child, she thought, one day in the forest, mistaking him for a deer. “ ‘Tis a strange song,” she said. “Did your mother sing many?”
“Aye, too many for her own good. Her own mother, my old grand-mama, came from Scotland and taught her the ballads. And then, when I was little, she taught them to me. But singing, except for the dull hymns in church, is heresy. They called her a witch and for that they hanged her. I will sing them anyway, since I am a witch, and I don’t care what they say. She was like you, Miranda, kept in prison until her wee babe was born. I saw it—so small and sick, like a little doll. Will your babe die too?”
“Pray let me rest.”
“Why do you have light eyes?”
Miranda roused herself to answer. “The Indians told me the moon was caught in the branches of a tall tree, and little slices slid into my face.”
Dorcas snuggled closer to her and looked up at her with a curious searching gaze. So hungry was the child for love, she began in her small way to care for Miranda. She bathed her ankles, seeping now with pus, using the water she was given to drink; and she tore rags from her shabby dress to pad the iron rings. When Dorcas slept, and Miranda woke to look for the moon, she sometimes gazed down on the girl’s small limbs, and wept in her heart—loving her as her own child—for she was helpless to love the child she carried, a little brown beaver with long claws and beady eyes, scratching and biting, making her ill.
“Have you seen the witch’s teat on my finger?” Dorcas said once. “See. There it is. The witches suck on it at night.”
Miranda inspected a red sore as small as a freckle at the base of the child’s knuckle. “I think it is only a flea bite, Dorcas.”
“No, it’s a witch’s sign. We are witches both, you and I, and worship the Devil.”
“You must not believe that. We are not witches.”
“But I have only to look at that matron there,” she pointed to a moaning woman seated against the wall, “and she will be tormented. I have not to come near her but I can bite her, and leave a circle of teeth marks on her hand.”
Miranda’s heart grew heavy. “Why have you been sentenced, Dorcas? Was it for singing?”
“I had a doll my Mother made for me, with a green dress. They called it a poppet. They said I stuck it with pins, but that I never did. I would not stick my dolly what I loved with all my heart.”
One night the child shrieked in her sleep, and George Locker looked in with a swinging lantern and a grizzled face.
“Quiet that little beast,” he said.
Miranda knew she was losing her strength when the moon’s lunatic face peered in the window and grinned. With so little means to move about, her limbs grew rigid, and Dorcas helped her sit, holding her steady, and rubbed her legs with her small hands. “May I have a taste of your milk when it comes? I won’t take what goes to the baby.”
Miranda watched the moon waver and change, shrinking to a sliver almost invisible with the green-dark orb in its arms. And then it was a fish wriggling in phosphorous seas, and then the snout of a dog. Once it became a fine boat, and she felt herself glide from the grimy shell of her body, and float clean and white up to the shining frigate in the sky, where she stretched beneath the fluttering silks and breathed the pure air of the heavens. Each night the moon grew larger until one night it was enormous, and when she saw it, she thought it was not a solid thing, but a huge hole in a sky surrounded by black and forbidding water. The golden aperture beckoned to her, and she swam towards it, through a thicket of tangled limbs, the wreckage of Salem, the houses collapsed back into fallen trees still strewn on the ground. She kicked and struggled toward the light, towards leafy boughs that reached for her, enfolded her, and wrapped her in their sticky arms.
Miranda woke to find all the water of the sea was beneath her. Dorcas’s eyes were dark with worry. “The child is coming,” she whispered.
“No, no.” At first she could only howl in silence, a wrenching sob she tried to smother. “Not yet,” but she was swimming in wetness under her body, between her legs, and a pain like a knife sliced deep inside her, doubling her up. Her legs jerked into the air, and she cried out, then hugged her knees to her stomach and said, “Not yet. Oh God, if there is a God, don’t let it come so soon.”
Dorcas was stroking her, caressing her hair, crooning another song in her ear, when the pain came again, precise, insistent, like a huge wave that shuddered and shook the secret den where the small creatures waited, eyes bright. She clung to Dorcas, rolled over and moaned. She opened her eyes and saw Dorcas’s face streaked with tears, and fear rising off her like steam.
Women gathered around, crooning and murmuring.
“Would we had a piece of groaning cake.”
“Ask the jailer for a draught of his beer.”
“The agony of childbirth is God’s punishment of Eve, for her evil ways.”
Miranda struggled to rise, but she was helpless to move, and a new pain hammered her to the ground as though huge rocks were rolling over her body. Through her daze she heard a woman’s sure voice speaking with George Locker.
“But I am her mother. I’ve come a long way. You have to let me in.”
The lady was as gentle as an angel when she leaned over Miranda, bathed her face, gave her water to drink, took her hand and pressed it to her lips. Her golden hair fell in shining locks free from her cap, and her blue eyes were smiling and kind. She held her as no one had ever held her, with great tenderness.
“I’ve come to help you,” she said.
Dorcas looked with wide eyes. “Can you make it stop? She doesn’t want it to come yet.”
The lady kissed her face. “Darlin’ you’ll be all right. Don’t be afraid.” She pulled her close. “When you were born, it was hard. But I’ve always loved you so much. You are my treasure.”
“But my mother is dead.”
“No,” she said. “I am here.” She leaned into her and whispered in her ear, “I won’t let you die.”
When the pain came again, and she lay moaning, the lady went to the jailer.
“Send for a midwife, can’t you?”
“Alas, there be no midwife in Salem Town. Goody Nurse was the midwife, and she was hanged this past month for murdering newborns.”
“Isn’t there a doctor? Someone who can come?”
“Look at her. Too weak to bring forth, and the child too early.”
“Never mind. You can help. Unlock those chains and bring me a blanket and some water. Go on. Don’t stand there like a fool!”
Miranda was swimming now, following the webbed feet, the undulating paddle, in among the branches; but the opening was too narrow, and then she was caught, squeezed from all sides, and once again the pain seared her lungs. She should never have come this way; it was too dark, and there was no way out. The underwater trees betrayed her, were killing her surely, sucking her in tighter, pressing on her body; and enormous bearlike creatures tugged her into the mesh, trapped her a
rms and legs until she could no longer breathe, twisted and wove her as a part of their den.
Dorcas whispered, “There’s the head,” and the lady leaned in and kissed her and said, “It’s here, darling. Have you got anything left? Can you push?” She doubled up her knees, tore her limbs loose, broke free, and swam towards a silver moon caught in the branches of a great tree, which sighed and released it and flung it into the sky.
When the afterbirth gushed out, Miranda opened her eyes and saw a golden-haired angel holding the baby with Dorcas by her shoulder, staring down at the child. From somewhere the lady produced a little knife and cut the pulsing cord. She wrapped the child in her blue shawl, but it made no sound. There were whispers, “At least it’s a boy. Less chance it will be called a witch.”
