Woolsey peered at the paper and his face reddened.
“Why this is a deposition from Henry Jameson,” he said.
“So it appears,” Peters replied.
“But is that not why we are here, to hear what the man has to say?” Woolsey insisted. “Not to read his words, but to hear them?”
“What does he say?” Ned demanded, his face red with agitation.
“Silence!” Peters snapped. “You are here to listen.” He turned back to Woolsey.
“Indeed, that is so,” Peters said, his voice and face as blank as stone. “I wanted to dispose of this matter. I took this deposition myself, late last night. I saw no reason to disturb your sleep for so menial a chore as writing down Henry Jameson’s words.”
“Indeed,” Woolsey said. “This is most irregular.”
“As is the killing of a babe,” Governor Peters said, “and as is a prisoner breaking out of our jail, and as is the dead babe’s flesh being made to bleed at a touch, and then that magic repeated with a blanket bleeding, and the moon disappearing and reappearing, as though on command, all of it highly irregular.”
“The moon,” murmured Minister Davis, “obeys the Almighty.”
“To be sure,” Peters replied. “As do we, I trust.” He took the paper back from Woolsey and held it up to Henry.
“Henry Jameson,” he said. “We have summoned you before us to determine if you see fit to repeat your confession.” He held up the paper. “You have stated it again in this deposition, taken by me last night at your house, have you not?”
Henry stood up. Catherine fixed her attention on his eyes. They shifted from his daughter to his wife. He seemed reluctant to take his glance away from Martha, but when he did he looked straight at the governor.
“Yes,” he said, and although his tone was firm, and his body steady, Catherine knew that he was about to repeat a lie. She had thought this all through in the hour before dawn as she lay in bed in that state half between sleep and waking. She knew that she would have to let him tell his lie, before she attempted force the truth out of its hiding place. And she had committed herself to letting that truth lead her where it may, although she recognized that, if her suspicions were correct, she would shudder at its revelation.
“Then say so, out loud, so we may all hear, and so my learned colleague can satisfy himself that I took your words down truly.”
Henry shrugged.
“I killed the babe,” he said. He pointed to Catherine. “With that very blanket Mistress Williams is now holding.”
“Your reasons?” Governor Peters asked in a tone as dry as though he were taking inventory of cargo being loaded on an outgoing vessel in which he had no pecuniary interest.
“Poverty, as well you know,” Henry said.
“Be plainer,” the governor insisted, as though he were inquiring about the specific contents of a hogshead.
“We did not have enough to eat before the babe arrived. I hired that Irish girl to help my wife, but when the meetinghouse was to be repaired, as your honor knows, I did not get that job, as I had hoped...” Henry broke off. “It is all there in that paper. I do not want to recite it over again.”
Peters nodded, and then looked down at the deposition. After a moment, he slid the paper to Woolsey.
“I am satisfied,” he said. “Woolsey?”
“What he says agrees, in the main, with what is written here,” Woolsey said. “I take no position on its veracity or his.”
“Do you not believe me?” Henry demanded.
“I do not know,” Woolsey said. “It is not reasonable to have you first accuse that girl and then confess, for the very same crime.”
Henry ran his hands over his throat.
“I did not want to hang. The girl did do what I said she did, leaning over my babe, muttering those words, splashing water on it. My memory led me astray.”
“And there was the question of the rope,” Woolsey said in a tone even drier than that used by Peters. “Let us not forget that.”
“And the rope,” Henry agreed.
“Do you not fear it now?” Woolsey asked.
Minister Davis cleared his throat and waited for eyes to turn in his direction.
“I trust that Henry values his immortal soul more than his neck.”
“Yes,” Henry said, “my soul.”
Peters glanced from Henry to Woolsey to the minister.
“I repeat, I am satisfied that we now have the truth.”
Catherine stepped forward.
“If it please you, governor, I would like to ask Henry a question or two, as the matter touches me closely.”
“Our business is concluded, Mistress,” Governor Peters said.
“Let her speak.”
The words were slurred, as though from a tongue unused to speech, and delivered in a tone approaching a screech. They came from Martha, who had risen to her feet.
“Please,” Martha said, in a softer, more articulate tone. Catherine looked at Martha who stood with her arms out as though she would seize the moment, if she could, and shake the truth out of it. Her strong, red hands waved in front of her, trying to find something solid to hold. Catherine looked at those hands, and with a shudder was reassured that she was right. Ann took her mother’s arm and held it tight.
Peters shrugged.
“I do not see the purpose, nor the harm. Ask your questions, Mistress, so we may finish this affair.”
Catherine stared hard at Henry until perspiration beaded the large man’s forehead, and he twisted his hands behind his back as though unable to control them. She held the blanket toward Henry.
“Is this what you used to kill the babe Henry?” She waved the cloth slowly in front of his eyes. He pulled his head back.
“It is, as I said.”
“And what exactly did you do? Did you wrap it around the babe’s head?”
“Yes.”
She handed the blanket to him.
“Can you show us?”
He shook his head.
“I will not. I do not remember.”
“How long did you have to hold it over the babe’s face?”
“I do not recall.” Sweat now glistened on his whole face, and he looked at the governor in silent appeal, but Peters was now leaning forward, showing more interest than he had during the whole proceeding to this point.
“Did it kick, or struggle?” Catherine asked.
Henry now stood mute, shaking his head from side to side.
“Did you press this very blanket down on the babe’s face until it stopped breathing.” She lifted the blanket again and pushed it hard against his nose. “Did you do that?” she asked.
Henry swiped the blanket away.
“Yes.”
Catherine snapped the blanket away and turned to the three dignitaries behind the table.
“Master Davis, you should have instructed Henry that a false confession is worse than no confession at all, is that not so?”
“It is, of course,” Minister Davis said.
“Can you come to the point?” Peters now demanded.
“Just this. I delivered that babe. It was a perfect little babe, and the birth did it no harm. When I saw it the night it died, it was still perfect. Its nose was as it was when I cleared it to start drawing breath. If Henry had smothered it, as he said he did, there would have been some show of that on the babe’s face.”
Henry held out his powerful hands. He stared at them as though they belonged to somebody else, and then he let them drop to his sides.
Catherine took a deep breath, and walked over to Ned. He shrank away from her, but the constable sitting at his side pushed him to sit upright.
“Tell us, lad, why you prevailed upon my husband to allow you to go to sea as apprentice sailor?”
Governor Peters half rose out of his chair, his face red.
“Mistress where go you?”
“Why to the truth, Governor.”
Woolsey’s face wore a perplexe
d expression. Catherine nodded at him, and he changed it to one of stern command.
“Answer, lad.”
“Why, my uncle’s house was getting small for a grown man such as myself.”
“Was that the only reason?” Catherine demanded.
“It was as the lad says,” Henry interrupted.
“Ned,” Catherine said, “did not your uncle order you out of his house because you could not keep your hands off the servant girl.”
He pointed at Henry. “Ask my uncle that question, if you dare.”
“I never,” Henry began to say.
“What we want to know,” Peters said before Henry could finish, “is who killed the babe, not who the father of the Irish girl’s bastard is. For that, I am content it is the thief whose nostrils we just slit.”
“A marvelous conception that would be,” Catherine said, “quickening faster than flies, as she was in his company but once not a week ago.”
“He will do for me,” Peters declared. “Do you have any place further to go, Mistress?”
“Yes, and soon we will be there. We have just heard how Ned was forced out of his uncle’s house after he had taken advantage of Margaret. And it is known that Ned was unhappy when his little nephew was born, the first male child to Henry and Martha.”
“How is it known?” Peters asked.
“It is known,” Catherine repeated.
“Women’s gossip, no doubt,” the governor snorted. “But proceed.”
“And, from the same sources, as well as the girl herself, it can be learned that he had forced himself on Margaret Donovan, who now carries his child.”
Ned took in his breath.
“Why she never told me.”
“Silly boy,” Catherine dropped Ned’s hands. “Do you think she would? After your uncle threatened to have you both whipped out of town for fornication, you turned against her, valuing the skin on your back more than the girl you had seduced. You conspired with your uncle to cast the blame for the babe’s death on the girl.”
“He said she would be banished, he did.”
Catherine looked toward Massaquoit, who still stood by the door, and nodded.
“He is the one who hid that very blanket,” Massaquoit said.
“Psaw,” Peters said in an explosion of breath. “Evidence from a cross worshiping papist and a savage.”
“Ned hid the blanket, but he did not kill the babe,” Catherine said. She turned to Henry. “No, nor did Henry, for all that he has said.”
The wail began again, starting as a whisper and growing to a howl, and Martha shrugged off Ann’s restraining hand and walked to her husband.
“Henry,” she said, again, the one word she had whispered into Catherine’s ear, and Catherine now understood, that it was only the start of an unarticulated thought, a thought so disturbing that Margaret could not form it in her mind, much less give it full voice. And it was not that her husband was a murderer, but that he wasn’t, and that he would offer himself to protect herself. “Henry, “ she said again, and this time added, “Don’t.”
She collapsed against Henry’s chest and sobbed. He held her to him. Ann started to cry. Martha turned away from Henry. She walked back to her daughter. Catherine followed and waited while Martha stood in front of her child.
“I should not have told him,” Ann said.
Catherine put her arm about the child. “You must tell it,” she said. “You cannot let this child carry the burden alone.” Martha’s eyes brightened as though she now understood something that had eluded her.
“Me,” she said.
“Yes,” Catherine prompted.
“Me,” Martha said.
* * * *
“‘Me,’” Peters said. “What does that signify?”
Only he, Woolsey, Minister Davis, and Catherine remained in the meetinghouse. The Jamesons had gone home in the company of the constable.
“Why, that she is confessing,” Catherine said.
“I heard no such thing,” Peters declared.
“Nor I,” Woolsey asserted.
“The man himself told me,” Minister Davis added. “Told he did this terrible thing, with the full peril of his immortal soul in the balance.”
“He was protecting his wife,” Catherine said. “He felt he must.”
“And why is that, Mistress?” Peters asked.
“Because he was ashamed, because although Ned is the father of that girl’s child, it is only because she rebuffed Henry, and Martha knew about that. That is why she almost let him hang for her, but in the end she could not.”
Peters’ face said he did not want to believe any of this. “You say the babe’s nose was not crushed. Then how did it die?”
“In its mother’s arms. That night, when Henry was holding the babe up for all to see that it had bled, I thought I saw something on the babe’s back. Now, I know what it was. It was the mark left on the babe’s back by Martha’s hands, which are near as strong as her husband’s. What I do not know, nor she I warrant, is whether she squeezed the breath out of that babe in love or anger, or perhaps a despair that was an equal admixture of both.
“Maybe she did not start out to do so, but the idea came upon her, as she held the babe. And then she left the babe on the floor, not knowing whether it still breathed. Margaret found it and tried to save its soul. Henry saw Margaret and accused her. It was only later, his daughter told him what she had seen. Then he offered himself.”
“She did not say any of that,” Peters insisted.
“She now does not know more than that one word,” Catherine replied.
“Her rational faculties,” Woolsey said, “do not seem sound.”
“They are not,” Catherine replied. “And they were not.”
“The learned doctors say that when a person falls into madness, it is the rational faculty that collapses,” Minister Davis said. “Such a person has lost the power to understand.”
Peters brightened, as Catherine had hoped he might.
“Then you agree that she is mad,” he said to Davis.
“So it appears,” the minister answered.
“Then, perhaps, we cannot...”
“Surely,” Catherine finished the thought, “she did not know what she was doing.”
The governor stretched his long frame and closed his eyes. When he opened them, his expression was clear and confident. “I do not want to hang the mother. I have no stomach for that. Nor the father. The boy can go back to sea. They will all be banished. It troubles me to set them at liberty, but it would trouble me more to see them on the gallows.”
“They will be at liberty only in their bodies,” Catherine said.
“Banishment,” he repeated. “The Jameson must not pollute us any further.” “Excommunication,” Minister Davis offered. “The church must also be free of them.”
“Margaret?” Catherine asked.
Woolsey looked over at Peters.
“She will be at liberty as soon as we can notify the jailer of our decision.”
“As you wish,” the governor said. “Yet she must be released to Mistress Williams, who has shown herself willing to take in unfortunate girls along with savages.”
“She can abide with me as long as she likes,” Catherine replied, “although she may want to leave Newbury.”
“That would be most fortunate. Perhaps your savage can be persuaded to take her to wife.” He stood up. Without another word, he strode to the door in long, efficient strides.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The clang of iron against wood thudded against the morning air, and startled two gulls who had been floating on the water.
Woolsey looked past the two men who were driving a substantial log into the soft sand at water’s edge in Newbury Harbor to where the sloop Good Hope lay at anchor. The shallop sat on the beach. The two men stopped working and pointed at the sloop. Their voices suddenly rose and one lunged at the other. Captain Gregory stepped between them.
“What is the troub
le, Captain?” Catherine asked.
“Just some nonsense about that,” he said, pointing to the figurehead, a crowned lion, on the bow of his ship. “Nate here,” he said, pointing to one of the sailors, “says we should strike that crown off the lion’s head, since our King Charles is an enemy of the true religion. The other man says he cares not about the king, but only that the ship stay afloat. It is all nonsense.”
“Indeed,” Woolsey said. “But my correspondent in London has written me to say that this King may lead the country into war.”
Captain Gregory shrugged.
“As for that. I am glad that I am on this side of the ocean.” He looked at two men who were now peacefully back at work. “It will be a pleasure to be able to walk up a gangplank from a dock,” he said. “The governor does make some good decisions for our advantage.”
“That he does,” Catherine said, “as long as he is dealing with the price of a barrel of flour or a bolt of cloth, which he makes sure is to his advantage.”
“Now, Catherine,” Woolsey said.
“And now Joseph,” she replied. “Do not try to distract me from my worry.”
A small smile curved the corners of his lips.
“Catherine, I know better than to try to distract you from any thought that has seized your attention.”
The sound of a tuneful whistle announced the arrival of Ned, who came strolling onto the beach, carrying his duffle on his back. He strolled to where Catherine and Woolsey stood, and smiled.
“Good morrow, Mistress.” He offered a little bow to Catherine. “And to you sir,” and he extended the same mocking gesture to Woolsey. Captain Gregory trotted to them.
“Ned,” he said. “What do you here?”
“Why, to come aboard your good ship,” Ned said. “I’ve been banished you know. It suits me to leave Newbury behind and to take me where you sail, as sailor or passenger, I care not, so long as I leave this place.”
Gregory looked to Catherine. She shook her head.
“You are welcome to leave with Captain Gregory next time he leaves, after he returns from his present voyage.” The captain’s eyes, used to scanning the distance, had locked on two figure coming slowly toward them. Catherine followed his glance.
The Dumb Shall Sing Page 22
