by Julie Hearn
“’Tis cold enough to freeze Hell over,” one of the other women mutters as they crunch into the village. “That be one lucky newborn, to survive so. The piskies must’ve tended to him, I reckon. I’d give him a good rub with rowan oil, if I were you, Mistress, in case he be tainted.”
Mistress Bramlow smiles in the dark and hugs the baby closer.
Never mind the piskies, she thinks. The Powers look after their own. And this infant, she is almost certain, isn’t tainted. Only special. A child sacred to nature.
A Merrybegot.
It is still bitterly cold the following morning, but the threat of more snow has passed, and the sky, as Mistress Bramlow pushes open the gate to the minister’s house, is the exact shade of blue that used to light up the stained-glass window in the church. The blue of forget-me-nots and the Virgins robes. The aching blue of heaven.
She has come here alone, leaving her husband and the girls to mind the baby. Having taken to goat’s milk and survived the night, he is sleeping soundly. Mistress Bramlow believes he will live. She is sure he will live. But there are two matters over which she must set her mind at rest—matters things only the minister can resolve.
The path leading up to the house is as tangled over as ever with the arching stems of brambles. Walking beneath the arbors, Mistress Bramlow is surrounded by spikiness—thorns, blackened thistles, and dripping icicles—with little scraps of blue above and between, making the sky look torn up.
At the front step she hesitates. Really, she should go round the back, to the entrance used by servants and tradesmen.
But, no.
She bangs with the door knocker, listens to the sound of it bouncing away into the house, and waits.
After a while, just when she is beginning to wonder whether the minister and his household have already fled the place, the housekeeper opens the door.
Mistress Bramlow can tell straightaway that this person knows something. For there is a shiftiness about her and a look in her eyes that speaks of a sorry deed, recently done and only partly repented.
“I must talk to the minister,” Mistress Bramlow tells her.
The housekeeper flushes red as a radish but says not a word, only points across the hallway at a closed door, behind which the minister is brooding and drinking and wishing that he could snap his fingers and find himself transported, magically and immediately, to the New World. Alone.
He makes no reply to the knock at his study door, but Mistress Bramlow goes in anyway and stands there, hard-eyed.
Again she can tell, just by looking at the minister, that something has happened in this house.
“A foundling was discovered last night,” she tells him. “Half frozen in the snow.”
He returns her gaze without moving a muscle or betraying any feeling at all.
“Dead or alive?” he asks, his voice so carefully neutral that Mistress Bramlow knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the existence of the newborn—whoever it was who birthed him—comes as no surprise.
“Alive,” she snaps. “By some miracle.”
She waits for him to say more, but he is too busy digesting her words. Watching him is like watching a man trying to swallow a big lump of something sour.
Mistress Bramlow would like to give her tongue full rein. She would like to tell this twisty-faced, mealymouthed hypocrite that a man—any man, but particularly one who speaks for the Lord—would be deserving of nothing but contempt—nay, a stoning—should he have left a healthy newborn to die or knowingly allowed such a terrible thing to happen.
She is tempted to hit him, actually, but whatever she does, she mustn’t spoil her chances of keeping the baby. She must hold her temper in check and say only what is necessary to keep the infant safe in her care.
“I have taken the child in,” she says. “I wish to raise it as my own.”
At that the minister flinches.
She presses on. “I take it that no one would wish to stop me? There is no mother that you know of, who might want the child returned?”
With a hand that is visibly shaking, the minister lifts a bottle from the table beside him and pours himself a drink.
“The mother,” Mistress Bramlow repeats. “Do you know of any unfortunate woman or maid hereabouts who might want this baby back, knowing it to be alive still?”
The minister tips the drink down his throat and sets the glass on the table with a movement that is both bitter and resigned.
“No,” he replies through gritted teeth. “I know of no such person.”
“So I may keep the child?”
“I suppose so. If you must.”
Mistress Bramlow breathes a little easier. That’s the first matter cleared. Now for the second.
“So you will baptize it immediately—today?”
The minister splutters and looks at the floor.
“I don’t think—I don’t believe—I can.”
“Why not?”
“Because … I cannot spare the time. And anyway, he is a foundling, is he not? A bastard child, steeped already in sin and shame.”
Mistress Bramlow steps closer. She is furious, absolutely furious, but her voice remains steady as she tells him, “I do not recall saying whether this be a boy-child or a girl-child.”
That’s it. She has him. She has him well and truly cornered. Trapped, in fact.
“This child—this boy—is a Merrybegot,” she continues calmly. “The Powers will look after him, whatever happens. But you will baptize him anyway, for good measure, and you will do it today. And then we will speak no more, and I will forever keep my counsel on the matter of his birthing. Do we have an agreement?”
The minister will not look at her, but he nods.
“And your daughter Grace,” Mistress Bramlow adds, just to make things absolutely clear between them. “She is well? Or as well as can be expected?”
Utterly defeated and finally shamed, the minister nods again.
“Then I will take my leave and await your visit this afternoon for the baptism of my … my son.”
At the door she pauses.
“I will call him Nathan,” she says softly. “Which means ‘a gift.’”
Nathan.
A gift.
The minister will dream about this grandson of his, intermittently, for the rest of his life. The dream will trouble him, but not as much as the one in which he sees again the look of his wife on the face of the cunning woman’s granddaughter. That dream will haunt him forever, but he will blame it on the climate or too much cheese at supper. Awake he will refuse to dwell on it or recognize the likeness as anything more than a trick of the light. Awake he will push that likeness far away, to a place in his head where it cannot be seen.
Mistress Bramlow crosses the hallway, opens the front door, and steps outside. Coming from the dark of the house, she is dazzled by the white of the snow and the blue of the sky. Feeling dizzy, too, after such a difficult encounter, she cannot for the moment think about walking home.
I will sit down for a minute, she thinks. Just for a minute, to calm my nerves and gather my thoughts. She does not want to be seen hanging around the front of the house, so she walks shakily round to the side, where she finds a bench set beneath the kitchen window. Its seat is covered with snow, but she brushes a clear space and sits.
It takes a while for her legs to stop trembling. That was no easy task, she thinks, closing her eyes. But I did it.
Above her head, someone has scattered crumbs on the kitchen windowsill and left the window slightly ajar. So when the shouting starts, Mistress Bramlow cannot fail to hear it.
“My instructions could not have been clearer, woman! ‘Take it where it will not be found,’ I said, ‘and bury it.’ And yet it lives!”
“I took it as far as I was able to walk, sir. Far enough away for no fingers to point at this house, should its remains be discovered one day. But the ground was too hard for me to dig. Too frozen—”
“Well, a pretty pass we’ve come to
now, with it down in the village and tongues wagging nineteen to the dozen, I’ll wager.”
“Then ’tis a miracle, sir, for ’twas cold enough outdoors last night to kill a grown man in the skin of a bear.”
Mistress Bramlow has heard enough. She stands abruptly, not caring if she’s seen or heard, and turns away from the kitchen window to walk back along the side of the house and away from this place as quickly as possible.
And then she realizes she is being watched.
Startled, but not unduly worried, she picks her way across the snow to where a girl is standing as still as a bush.
Patience Madden. The minister’s younger daughter.
“Good day,” Mistress Bramlow says to her. “Aren’t you cold?” For the girl has no shawl over her dress, and her bare hands are almost purple.
The girl does not reply, only continues to stare, as if she hasn’t properly understood.
Ah, yes, thinks Mistress Bramlow. The simple one. And what can this be at her feet, embedded in the snow?
A bird. A dead robin, placed in a scooped out hollow but not yet covered over. And she has fashioned a small cross out of twigs and rimmed the edge of the grave with tiny stones, holly berries, and pins.
“Oh,” says Mistress Bramlow. “Poor thing. But it’s kind of you to bury him.”
The girl looks at her strangely.
“I’m not burying him,” she says. “He’s too pretty. I’m going to leave him like this, where I can still see him.”
Her voice is slurred as if she is not used to speaking.
“Oh,” Mistress Bramlow says. “I see. Well …”
She looks again at the dead robin, then back at the plain blank face in front of her. Poor child, she muses. Stuck here in this bleak place with such a one as a father and no mother to see that she at least wraps up warm before going outdoors. And how much does she know, I wonder, of her sister’s plight?
“I’ve been to see the minister,” she tells her gently. “Because a baby was found last night, up in the orchard. He’s a handsome little baby and lucky to be alive. Your father has promised to baptize him.”
The girl says nothing, only glances quickly across at the house—up to a window, a bedroom window—and then back again.
She knows, Mistress Bramlow realizes. She knows everything.
“Are you all right?” she quizzes her softly. “I have five daughters of my own, you know. You can talk to me, my dear, should there be something the matter—some troublesome thing on your mind.”
She reaches out to touch the girls arm in a motherly way, but Patience Madden rears back, like a young cat that has never been stroked.
Mistress Bramlow is genuinely upset. “Please … it doesn’t matter,” she soothes, holding out her hand still, but to reassure this time instead of touch. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. It’s just …” She feels completely at a loss now and not sure what else to say.
“Your sister, Grace,” she murmurs eventually. “Is she all right?”
The girl nods mutely.
“Then … you will be leaving for the New World soon? The two of you, with your father?”
She nods again.
“Well, that’s good. I’m sure you and your sister must be very dear to each other. So if … if she needed help or was sick in some way, you would say so, I’m sure. Would you not?”
And then, for the first time, the girl’s expression changes. And Mistress Bramlow realizes that there is little point in talking to her anymore. For she has never seen hatred written so clearly on anybody’s features. Her own girls have their differences occasionally. All sisters do. But this …
That child be not right in the head, she thinks, stepping quickly from the garden and letting the iron gate clang so hard behind her that great drops of melting snow rain down on her head and shoulders.
Months—even years—later she will sometimes remember the way Patience Madden stood in the snow, with a frozen robin at her feet and flashes of loathing in her eyes. And she will wonder what became of her and her sister, far away in the New World.
Most of the time, though, she will be too busy enjoying her own family—her five daughters and little Nathan, her dark-eyed, golden-haired Merrybegot—to spare them any thought at all.
The Confession of Patience Madden
THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1692
Ana so we sailed from Plymouth in the spring of 1646, Father, Grace, and I, and arrived here in the New World to begin our lives afresh.
And my sister married, as you know, and had five children, three of whom are living still. And I did my duty, as was expected of me, keeping house for Father until the Lord called him home in the winter of 1669.
In time the events of 1645 grew faint in my mind, the way certain colors do on the patches of a quilt—so slowly that you don’t always notice unless someone else points out that what is now a faded pink was once the deep red of tomato fruits or a summer poppy.
The scent of a poppy can send y ou to sleep. Did you know that, brothers? I long to sleep. My mind spins so, for the lack of it. But I must finish my story, so that you will understand.
There were poppies in the corn the night I met the Devil. There were foxgloves in the hedgerows, curving like pink scythes above my head. And I … I had no idea, no idea at all, why the Devil should take it for granted that I was waiting for him there beside the orchard. Or that I would willingly jump up on his horrible horse and go with him straight to Hell.
But I worked it out. Oh, yes. I put two and two together long ago. Only I kept my counsel for my dear father’s sake and to give my much-loved sister, Grace, a chance to repent of her terrible sin and live a decent life here in the land of new beginnings.
And I believed she had repented and made her peace with the Lord. I truly did.
Until now.
When the girls of this neighborhood—Betty Parris and Abigail Williams—took to their beds with strange fits and visions, I prayed day and night for an end to their affliction. When it grew worse, I dared to hope they were merely playacting, as I once did, out of ignorance and fear—and because my sister made me.
But when Annie Putnam saw yellow birds dipping and diving in the meetinghouse and fell to the ground in agony at being pinched by fingers no one else could see, I knew she could not be pretending.
I knew that Satan was here among us. And I knew why.
Ah. I see there are more of you now, come to hear the ending of my tale. It has been a long one, I know, and I have been glad of your patience in listening so intently. Glad, too, that you have written it down, for every word is true and, as such, should be recorded.
Forgive me … yes … I will continue.
The girls who pointed their fingers at me at the meetinghouse … two moons ago now … the ones who call me a witch. Don’t you see, brothers, how mistaken they are? I have been locked away in this place a long time now—too long—and believe me, it is not I who should be here.
The cunning woman was innocent, and so was her granddaughter. They were not witches, brothers, and neither am I. Don’t you see how Satan moves? How he covers his tracks and looks after his own?
That night I met the Devil—do you know why he thought I would go willingly? Because he had already met with my sister. He had frolicked with my sister, in the woods below our home. That night and all the others before.
Don’t you see?
We were the minister’s daughters, Grace and I. And that made us special. Mary by Gods. I was not mistaken.
Don’t you see it all clearly now?
The heart I found beneath our mattress. The wooden heart branded through with the letters “S” and “G.” It was his mark burned there, next to “G” for “Grace.” That awful, twisting “S.” Satan’s brand.
He took Grace first because she was the prettiest. And willing. He thought I would be easy prey too. But he never took me. I didn’t let him.
And all that followed—the fits and the spitting of pins, the lies about the frogs
, the trapping of the cunning woman’s granddaughter—it was all deceit, all trickery played out by my sister, with me as her dupe so that no one would guess that the thing growing in her belly was … was … truly the Devil’s spawn.
I saw it—yes, I did—before the housekeeper took it away. I saw it in the basin, and the sight of it … I can barely …
It was as black as your hats, brothers, I swear it was. And with yellow-green eyes wide open … wide open and flickering like twin fires, newly lit. And instead of feet and hands, it had hooves—cloven hooves, like those of a goat.
Forgive me, I can speak of it no more.
The wooden heart?
Yes, I have it still, and you may take it for your evidence. You will find it in a box, buried to the depth of my arm, six paces from the door to my father’s house. A baneful thing. A nasty thing. But I have never dared destroy it or try to throw it away, for fear of Satan’s wrath. Buried deep, it has done no harm. But be careful, brothers, how you raise it. And do not touch the “S.”
The jeweled frog?
I know not what became of that.
Perchance my sister has it. If so, be sure to take it from her, for I fear she has been using it with baneful intent.
Well now, I can see by your faces, brothers, that my words are no longer falling on deaf ears. I am glad of that. For it is not I who should be here. Not I who am a witch.
It is my sister, Grace.
She lives on the outskirts of Salem, in the house grown all around by corn.
Go get her.
Author’s Note
I always knew this novel would end in Salem—and why. I’d been reading about witch trials in seventeenth-century New England and discovered that a significant number of accusers were young girls who were either the daughters or the servants of ministers.
All of these girls went in for the kind of writhing, shrieking, and hysterical behavior associated then with demonic possession.
Why? Did they truly believe themselves possessed, or were they just getting a thrill out of behaving very badly indeed?
Something the writer Carol Karlsen said of them stuck in my mind: “As the community looked on, their bodies expressed what they could not: that the enormous pressures put upon them to accept a religiously based male-centered social order was more than they could bear.” ( The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England [London, 1987].)
