The shears were fine; the Damascus steel was strong and not likely to suffer harm. Perhaps if I had stayed to sift the cooling ashes and dig among the spars, I might have found some precious objects belonging to my family, I reflected. Had I been too precipitous, too frightened that my life was about to be snipped short?
“My Aunt Mary always said that a man’s knife alone was nothing particularly special but that two blades fastened with a spring made a useful marriage. Is her husband-to-be what your sister wanted to know?”
“Yes, and mine as well. The sieve said that I would marry someone whose name begins with a D.” Bel shrugged. “But since Lizzie’s hands shake, I fear she is not reliable. The sieve danced around as if bewitched and leaped into the air.”
“I trust it was not enchanted,” I said. “But hope also that you will have your heart’s desire without any meddling sieves.”
“You do not want me to try for you? To find out who you will marry?” She gave me a teasing look and seized the shears from me and clacked the blades together.
“I lost everything not so long ago. So perhaps I am not a good prospect.”
“You have skills. And moreover—”
“Bel, I am quite content knowing just exactly as much as I know now,” I said. “And can wait to see what comes to me.”
“You have the patience of a Job,” she said, “though I do not. Perhaps it is because I am older and weary of my mother’s designs and her lack of care for my desires.”
“Thank you for the compliment, but I am not so very patient,” I said. “Further, I’m not sure Job always was.”
“Lizzie tried for O, T, R, and H, but she got no satisfaction: some yes replies on other letters but not on the one she wanted most. I am afraid that the sieve usually tumbled before she got the words out, and once remained quite still and did not give her any hopeful movement.” Bel smiled as if pleased by that thought.
“And we all know that H likes you better,” she added. “I expect that she is green-jealous of you.”
“I hope she is not.” I held my needle up to the light from the window, fumbling with the thread and eye until the silk sailed through. “The lastmost thing I need is a foe, especially one who shares the same roof.”
“She has a peevish temper,” Bel said. “And so she is her own enemy.”
“Sad,” I said, bending to my work.
“Are you sure? You do not want to ask?” Scissors in one hand, with the other Bel was pawing idly through the hanks of thread scattered on the coverlet.
I remembered Jotham Herrick: the glance of fingers against fingers, the radiance of touch, the sense that the fabric of my day had been stitched tightly to an underlay of paradise.
“No, I thank you. As before, I am pleased well enough with my small knowledge. All I wish is to have the shears again.”
Bel handed them over. “La, you are a mistress of restraint,” she remarked. She stared at the gown in my lap. “I shall look just as much a calamitous pudding in that gown as the other.”
“No, no, I think not. This one will suit you. It is a better pattern for your figure, and the deep indigo is right. Your rosy cheeks and chestnut hair will be well set off by the color, and Goodman Dane will think you quite fine.”
She laughed but looked pleased, her smile fading only slightly.
How strange and shivery it was to think of witchcraft! The shears felt unfamiliar in my hand. They were warm and tingled a little, but I expect that was only the effect of Bel’s bodily heat and remembered tales of bewitched articles—dishes that smashed themselves to shards and jots, rags that danced on air and besmirched a sleeping face, stones that leaped from the ground as easily as a fish arcing from water. But an angry servant or child might smash a dish or paint a sleeper with ash or fling a stone. My father brought me up to question such curious events and to seek whether I could find more ordinary causes. Only when none could be found was it right to go on to more baleful possibilities.
Still, I laid down the shears, and later on I washed them carefully with some of Goody Holt’s aqua bryony and a rag that I afterward tossed into the privy. I suppose it was a superstition in me, but I felt that if the water was healing for the skin, it might be good for a tainted surface of metals as well.
Later on I remembered my father telling me that bryony was also called mandrake, and that a false Englishman could dig and place a mold in human form around a root of bryony to make it grow into that shape. And I suppose the magic-peddler could lug it about the near countryside and so make a few coins that way, selling his neighbors the chance to peep at the root-man or root-woman.
So perhaps I was merely compounding the error of sieve-and-scissors by washing them in mandrake water.
5
Sybbrit
Andover, Indian Summer 1690
Having a secret did not keep me from bad dreams, fears, or resenting Goody Holt and Lizzie when they were unkind. I did not suppose that anything could satisfy a person like Lizzie Holt except perhaps having a mort of hang-sleeves at her beck and call, and perhaps even so many admirers would not have left her entirely pleased. Goody Holt was likewise hard to delight, no matter how many hours I spent moiling-and-toiling at my needle. When not scolding me or one of the others in the house, she would nattle, ever fussing until some trifling matter had achieved a royal mightiness in her mind. From the death of the speckled pig to the misplacing of a comb, everything that happened was someone else’s fault. John and Bess and Bel spoke the only pleasant words in that house, at least the only ones pointed to me.
But I felt strong—stronger than Goody Holt in her angers. At stray moments, a heavens of memory sparkled in my thoughts. And so I did not care what Goody Holt might think of my conduct.
At night I lay by the smolder of coals, dreaming of Jotham Herrick and his gray, reflective eyes, and how he had swept me away with his words of love that sometimes felt like an illusion and at other times like a fine glouse of sunlight that warmed my whole body. The feel of his lips on mine, the heat that flowed between us: at times I could catch hold of the memory. A flick of gold seemed to pass through me and be gone. But his face was difficult to conjure. I wished for a portrait so that I could recall him and the hour more clearly. Sometimes the meeting seemed like a spectral morning mist that would burn away as light increased.
When something hard and sharp is dragged along a frozen pond in winter, the metal or wood kicks up a fine spray of crystals that puff in the air and catch the sun and powder the surface of the ice. Sometimes the hour with Jotham Herrick seemed so frail and quick. The heat of it, the blossoming and the fire, would fall away into the uncertain gulf of memory.
Only the book and the engraving of Joseph were always solid to me, a gift left over from the talk and questions. In the late evenings, I sometimes sat with the book by the fire and gazed at my brother’s face by the poor illumination of flames. He had my father’s brow, my mother’s mouth. But I never stayed there to reflect long, my back chilled, my front over-warm.
Though the autumn was unusually cold, we had a respite in October, a few weeks of what the Holts called Indian summer. Later on, I was told that the Wampanoags had first described this warmth in fall to Mr. William Bradford, long the governor of the Plymouth Plantation, and that the last huzzah of seasonable weather was named for them, but whether or not that is true, who can say? I was glad of a return to fairer days, though the sunny air hardly seemed to have made a difference in the house, which appeared to have decided on winter already and be loath to change its mind. My sewing room stayed as dank and gelid as a December toad.
The start of Indian summer was marked by a great outcry, and a second one marked the close. The first happened this way. At night I quaked with cold in my bed, and when I dropped into sleep like someone tripping and falling over a brink, my dreams proved ill. One night I pulled the bed near the flames and loaded myself with sealskin and blankets and all my petticoats, shifts, and gowns. In the middle of the night, I seemed to wake, though I belie
ve now that I only hovered between sleeping and waking in the place where visions come. The smoky odor of the fire drugged me, and I had some trouble breathing. My thoughts jumbled together, so that one moment I remembered Jotham Herrick and the next felt a creeping dread of a shape hiding in a dark corner. I wished to rise and flee from the room but found that I could not move my limbs. Only my eyes behaved as they should, and glanced fearfully from one side of the chamber to the other.
The weight of the sealskin oppressed me more and more until I panted for air. My heart felt wrong, too large for its container of bone, and thumped too quickly. Something in the room flicked back and forth: something dim-edged but with a dark, gathering center. I told myself it was fumes from the hearth, but there were no flames left, only a few coals that glowed on the bed of their expiring—a thought that, foolish though it seemed, only gave me new alarm.
The shadow-stuff in the room drifted on the air like a skein of smoke and settled on my bed-coverings and piled clothes. It took on more distinct form and weight, leaning on my chest. I heard a clanging voice speak my name, and the coiling shape leaned forward until I recognized the face and was at once released to stir again and shrieked as I had not shrieked before, not when I saw my house a ruin or when I pressed close to the dead mountain of the English, or when I hung onto Hortus’ mane as we crossed the deep, churning waters. The sound fountained from my throat, tossed like a bird hurled by updrafts.
Shouts answered from below. Goody Holt appeared at the door, trailed by John and Bess.
“I pray your pardon,” I said, trembling, unable to take in what Goody Holt was saying, her voice peevish.
John lit my candle from the one held by Goody Holt, and Bess, ever kind, knelt down on the floor and took my hand.
“What’s happening?” Bel Holt appeared in the door, but I could not speak.
“She’s mortally shocked,” Bess said in a low voice.
John set to work laying a new fire with kisks and dry wood while Goody Holt continued to upbraid me. Her words beat at my ears, but I could not make out what she had to say.
Lizzie Holt peered in the door, and I gave a little jump of fright.
“What ails her?” Bel had come near and now draped my mother’s blanket around my shoulders.
“I—I had—”
“She had the nightmare, most like,” Bess said. “But it’s gone, Mistress Charis. It’s gone quite away.”
“Mistress!” Goody Holt hawked up a glob of ill humors and spat them onto the floor.
Lizzie was nosing around my room by the light of the two candles. I watched her, feeling a faint horror still. My head throbbed with headache as I followed her shape. At last she drew near and studied me.
“That’s such a fine piece of weaving,” she said and reached out a hand to touch my mother’s blanket, now drawn about my shoulders.
I jerked back instinctively, and Bel pushed her away.
“Leave her be,” she said. “You can see she’s not right.”
Lizzie yawned, her eyes on me. “I just don’t know why she needs such a sumptuous covering. What’s the use of it to her?”
“Keeps her warm at night, of course,” Bel retorted. “And her mother spun the thread and dyed it, so why would she ever give it up?”
I gripped Bess’ hand. “Only a dream,” I whispered. “There was something—someone—pressing against me.”
Lizzie made a face fit for a sneering-match as she stepped toward me. “Who?”
“A dream,” I said. “I couldn’t say.”
But I did know, and I could have said. But I did not. Dreams are oracles to my people, and I did not want to tell. I wanted to muse on what had happened. Or better, to forget.
“Mother,” Lizzie said, “she doesn’t need such a delicate piece of work, now does she? What does such a forlorn, lone thing need with such quality? It’s a neater, smoother piece than you could find in all of Andover.”
Her tall shadow loomed high on the wall, sinking and rising with the play of the flames. My eyes rested on it, wondering at how much she seemed to dislike me and to assume me unworthy. And yet my father was a man of good birth, education, and thought, and I had been instructed by him and my mother, who was more learned than most women.
Lizzie had little-enough reply of her mother. “The girl has a fine maggot in her brain to play us with such knobble-tree tricks! To wake us so bloodthirstily in the deeps of the night as though we were all to be murdered by savages, and in our very beds,” Goody Holt was saying. “Can you grasp such lack of feeling and care for the nerves?”
I shook my head, trying to toss mother and daughter out of all hearing. “My mind tells riddles,” I said to Bess and Bel. “It’s restless. I do not trust it, nor my dreams. Not since—” Not since the whole world that was mine died. Not since it burned. Not since I took a sealskin from the dead. Not since I saw the hill that was flesh. No matter how often I remember those words, “When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid: yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet,” I am afraid when I wake in the small hours of the night.
“You are safe now,” Bess said. “Look, John has made up the fire, all merry and dancing for you.”
“I’m sorry for your upset.” John nodded at me. He was wearing a worn bed rug over his clothes and, in the gloom, might have been one of Goody Holt’s savages.
“That is enough,” Goody Holt told him. “She needs nothing else, she and her hellish designs on our slumber. And we must try again for sleep, whether our bodily frames be shattered or no.” She pushed Lizzie toward the door, and the two of them grumbled out of the room. As customary, the daughter was forced aside so that her mother could go first.
John hesitated, nodded to me, and followed.
“Would you like me to stay awhile?” Bel sat down next to me on the bed. Bess was still close beside me, my hand in hers. “I don’t mind. You must be cold up here, all alone.”
“That would be good of you. But Bess is chilled,” I said. “And must be up early. Thank you for the comfort you gave, Bess, with all my heart. I wish you would find sleep again and have a better dream than mine.”
But as she padded down the stairs, I was not sure it had been a dream. Who can discern the selvage between a dream and an oracle, the line between a nightmare and a witch? In dark, mysteries swirl around our heads. I knew that such a dream with its spectral visitant was enough to confess to a pastor, but I also felt certain that my mind was aroused and not right, as it had been for a long time now. Hadn’t it been a face that I could not like? And had my own thoughts formed her into dream? I did not want to fear that she could be downright evil—I did not like her, but I did not think of her as evil.
With a twitch of my head, I cast the thought of her away.
“Let’s pull the bed even closer to the fire,” Bel proposed. “And I’ll fetch a coverlet, more wood, and the packet of marchpane I was saving for later. I’m not sleepy any longer. We can loll and tell stories.”
“I’m tired, but I’m afraid to sleep. I would like that.”
So we hunkered by the fire and drank the last of the leftover tea from earlier in the day, heating it in a little pan set among the flames. The misery in my head ebbed away. The tea was harsh, the marchpane over-sweet, but somehow it was lovely to lean against the bed, the wool coverings in a nest around us, and talk. Bel told some stories of her father—she had been fond of him—and about the young man she wanted to marry, if only she could make her mother agree. She promised to take me to visit her friend Phoebe Wardwell, and to give me her copy of Mr. Michael Wigglesworth’s The Day of Doom (though afterward she forgot), and to show me the best place to harvest strawberries when spring came again.
The sweet marchpane dissolved in my mouth, morsel by morsel, and I grew tolerably calm.
“I have something to tell you, Bel Holt. If. If you can keep close my news.”
Lighthearted, she laughed to hear that I had a secret. “Mother does not like me overmuch of late.
I am too much like my father in my general carriage and my shape, she says. So there’s no worry there. And she definitely does not care for you. That means we are in the same leaky boat and must paddle along together. And Lizzie and I, well, there’s as much sour as sweet. My good friend Phoebe Wardwell I hardly see, now that she is a married woman and I am not. Your secret is quite well coffered in me.”
And so I told her about Mr. Herrick, and she was much astonished and sat quite still, marveling at my words. But I did not say that we had met alone in the room behind the shop.
She frowned so that I thought she was envious of me, and perhaps she was. I was almost envious of myself. “You are promised and the banns will be declared and you will be married,” she said at last.
“Yes. We are to confer with the minister.”
“Mr. Dane, you mean? I am less fond of Mr. Barnard, though accounts of Satan and his wiles fascinate. He is always fearful of signs of devil-pranks.”
“Yes, Mr. Dane.”
She slopped some tea onto her shift and stood to shake the drops into the fire. Sitting down again, she smiled, looking into the flames. “How vexed Lizzie will be,” she observed with considerable satisfaction. “She is envious-spirited and often spiteful, but she will be especially jealous of you.”
“I hope not. That would be no fit service to me.”
“Everyone knows she has a bad temperament. No one will be surprised or blame you.” She broke off a shard of marchpane and handed it to me.
“But I have had enough of enemies to last me,” I said, and thanked her for the marchpane.
“I suppose you have, indeed.” Bel leaned against the bed, looking mischievously at me with her mouth crimped up at one corner.
“What?”
“I was just thinking that if you may have Mr. Jotham Herrick, well, I feel inspired to battle Mother for my Richard Dane.”
We talked for a long time, eating every jot of marchpane, and burning through a mort of dry wood. Goody Holt would have disapproved of our pleasure in each other’s company and the formidable way we loaded the fire. Eventually we fell asleep on the floor, rolled in the bedclothes, and woke the next morning to the sun streaming through roof-chinks.
Charis in the World of Wonders Page 14
