Bel Holt groaned when she opened her eyes and sat up. When she surveyed me, she laughed aloud. “You have cinders in your hair!”
I stood and shook my braid. Some flakes of ash floated on the air, and crumbs of charcoal slid down my shift.
“What’s this?” Bel had risen and wandered away from the hearth.
“What do you mean?” I went over to her and saw that she had Mary’s doll in her hand. The needle was still as my mother had left it.
She offered the toy to me, and I took it from her. “Mother was making a plaything for my little sister. I couldn’t give it up, not when there is so little remaining that belonged to my family. All our books and silver and objects are gone. That’s a drop of Mary’s own blood on the poor thing’s face. Holding the doll is as close as I can come to touching one of my family. That is my hair and Mary’s and Mother’s, bound together. Perhaps I should finish her face someday. Or perhaps she is better like this.”
Contemplating the little figure, I found the tears pricking at my eyes. “Truly, it is my fault, my own fault, that Mary died. I would not be so alone if not for my failings.”
“Surely that is not true,” Bel said.
“We had been fleeing through the forest, headed toward shelter. I was weary and half-angry at her for rebelling against me. She pulled her hand out of mine and fell back against the stones. And she died beside me in the night while I slept. So it is the truth. It is.”
“Some things are mishap. You did not wish it or want it,” Bel said.
“No. But if I had taken better care of her. . .”
I set the doll down again, and Bel put her arm about my waist. “Let me comb your hair,” she proposed, and so I sat wrapped in a coverlet as she combed and combed. I closed my eyes and pretended to be at home with my mother drawing the teeth through my hair.
The night and morning with Bel proved sweet, though a little thread of guilt ran through the hours, for did we not make a great waste of time? Or perhaps it was an acceptable task to relieve a loaded, over-burdened mind, charged with nightmare. Despite how they began, I still recall those hours as our happiest together.
All the rest of that day I expected news, some sort of movement from Mr. Herrick. None came, and the dream-like nature of our encounter began to weigh on me.
But on the fifth day past our meeting at the shop, the elder minister, Mr. Dane, paid a pastoral call on Goody Holt and took a glass of cordial with her and the daughters, and afterward tarried with me in my sewing room. His declaration of the proposed visit upstairs caused a pother in the hall, Goody Holt protesting that there was no need for me to receive such a courtesy in my low estate, and then insisting that Bel accompany the minister. But she scoffed at this idea and refused to spy on a private interview.
It was impossible not to hear the commotion, any more than if an African rhenoister had been ruttling and stamping below, so I jumped up and, setting aside my sewing, began brushing the threads from my gown. But the minister was looming in the door before I was done, greeting me in his mighty preaching voice that was too big for my little room.
“How now? How do you fare?”
“Well, thank you. I am glad to see you looking hearty, sir,” I said.
He stepped inside and rubbed his hands together as he glanced at the empty, swept grate. “So cold—how can you sew? How can she wield the needle?” he called out to Goody Holt, who was still protesting at his heels. “Her fingers must be quite numb.”
“Indeed, it is not chilly! Why, I hardly feel it myself,” she exclaimed as she pushed into the room. “Why, as a girl, I am sure the upper chambers were much colder in my parents’ house, and we found it bracing and healthful in the winter.”
“No doubt, Goody Holt, no doubt. But this maiden was once used to comfort, and she has gone through trials that would have shattered many a grown man or woman like a clay vessel flung against a pavement stone. Surely you would not begrudge a few sticks in the grate so that she can stitch at your finery?”
The minister smiled down on Goody Holt, who straightened and gave a severe nod of the head. I knew her well enough to be sure she was displeased by his manner of reproof.
Backing into the hall, she peered down the stairs. “It is the work of that lagarag John, I assure you.” She bellowed his name a few times before clattering down the stairs, carping as she went.
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
He did not wait for further pleasantries but took my hand between his and bade me, “Sit you down.” When I was perched in my place again, he said to me in a low voice, “I have had a long confabulation with a certain young goldsmith, and so I have come to find out for myself whether his wishes and your wishes are as one in the matter of the banns.”
My face felt warm despite the cold, and I knew all over again that everything that had happened was real, and that Jotham would be my husband. Vie with me, you women if you can! The line from our own poet, Anne Bradstreet, flashed through my head like field-fire through a windrow of dry leaves. I would be content and loved and not alone; I would be a mother and have a family on this side of the Jordan, instead of one barred from me by the waves that were death.
“They are,” I said, and thrust aside every qualm and uncertainty.
He went to the door and cast a glance down the stairs before speaking again.
“I have a good deal of respect and liking for that young man, and I judge, from what I have heard of you and your family, that the two of you are not ill-s uited. As the assay-master sets down the goodness of silver by half-penny and penny weight and ounces troy, as in gold assay he sets down the fineness of gold by karats and karat-grains and half grains and quarter grains, so I measure man and woman by character and traits, my experience of others, and the touchstone of Scripture. And these inform me that you are fit, one for the other. But there are matters relating to matrimony that I should like to talk over, and I see there is some petty difficulty”—here he gave a droll quirk of the lips—“in arranging a meeting that someone who wishes to marry off daughters might attempt to prevent.”
I smiled at him, glad that I did not have to explain my situation, and gratified that he found merit in Mr. Herrick. Misgivings had sometimes come to me in hours of reflection, when I wondered who I could ask for advice and judgment.
Goody Holt could be heard in the stairwell, railing at someone, who proved to be John with a bundle of wood in his arms. He winked at me, and knelt down at the hearth to arrange the tinder and split logs.
“My dear Mistress Holt,” began the minister, proving with a single stroke that he knew how to please her when it was needful, “you may be saving for now, as there is no need to begin a wasteful fire now that the light for sewing is gone, and a good day’s work complete. If it please you, I should like to borrow this young woman and her clever needle for the evening. The ladies of the Dane household are eager to learn some of the finer points of stitchery from her. Your new garments have made them quite eager to acquire further skills and undertake such brave work for themselves.”
It was easy to perceive the tug of war at work in Goody Holt, pleased with his notice of their costly new gowns and gratified to be spared the lighting of another fire, and yet not entirely content that I would be admitted into the home of so important a figure in the town.
“Yes,” she said at last, after these contrary impulses had swept across her face. “So long as she remains useful and is not in the way.”
Poor Goody Holt! She was one of those souls of whom it is said that they can be read as easily as a child’s ABC hornbook. I could not like her and almost laughed to see how roiled she appeared.
“Excellent! I am glad to hear it.”
“As for me, far be it from me to grudge the loan of any servant in my house,” she added.
“Thank you, but I will not be needing one of your servants,” Mr. Dane said, “though I shall remember that kind word.”
This response pleased her less, but she only frowned a little.
“I shall send Charis over to you,” she said.
“Oh, no need—I shall be glad to accompany the young needlewoman myself, since I am here. No doubt she is swift and light enough to find her cloak and be ready in mere instants.”
I noted the hint and ran upstairs to my room to change hurriedly into my elderberry-dye gown, fetch my cloak, and follow their voices downstairs, for Goody Holt made a great show of bidding the minister adieu with her daughters, with Bess bobbing in respect by the door.
Along the way, we chattered pleasantly of sewing and Hortus and Mr. Dane’s daughter, but once he paused and, looking about, asked me about my dream. “Goody Holt reported that you shalmed so piercingly with fright at a dream that you roused the household. How now, what did she mean?”
I must have looked at him imploringly because he immediately told me not to worry. “My dear child, I mean only to help you to a better understanding if I can. And there is no shame in such eruptions. As Robert Burton said in his great work, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ‘how many sudden accidents may procure thy ruin’ and destroy present happiness. And who should know better the ruin of peace of mind and the rule of Lady Melancholia than one who has been through the trials of loss and braved the shadows of wilderness?”
“Yes,” I said, hesitating to say more, for I did not fully know his purpose.
He swung his cane as if he now meant to tilt with Melancholia and shadows.
“Perhaps I should never have told anything of my dream.”
He looked down at me, startled. “Oh, no, daughter, it is good to unburden yourself to a proper person; and by that I intend, a sympathizing person, as I hope to be. It is well to speak, but poor on the part of others to tittle-tattle the news of such an incident without considering your situation. For a disturbed mind often dreams of disturbing things. Such dreams may not be prophetic but simply reflective of recent unrest.”
We walked on slowly, the minister carrying his cane in one hand like a sword to whip at any old-shocks, the goblins of the night.
“That is what I have told myself, not wishing to accuse any. Because in my dream a dark material settled on top of me and gained weight and form until a face I knew appeared, the eyes alight and staring into my mind—as if it belonged to some leopard of the forests who wanted to tear at me. But there are many ill images in my thoughts, even in the sunlight of afternoon.”
“That must have been frightening,” he said.
“No more than many other pictures in my head. I have seen and fancied too much, and at night I meet the dark sights again, or new ones that seem to rise out of them.”
“Well, I am sorry for that trouble.” The minister slashed at some dry, pricklesome weeds with his stick. “I would be sad for any granddaughter of mine to have seen what you have seen, to have endured what you have endured.”
“I have been,” I said, “woefully stirred in mind over what happened to my family and whether it was God’s will—from Mr. Barnard, I hear that we have a God who must have wished for all my kind to be lost. And yet they were dear to me and sweetful, lovely in their ways.”
He stopped, shaking his head, the puff of air from his breath like the incarnation of gracious white words as he spoke. “With faith, you may be assured and be confident in the gospel. Be not terrified. Are you afeared that your kin were destined for destruction? Just as we reject our works and our merits as some kind of payment for salvation, so we can reject such man-forged acts of ruin as punishment and proof of damnation. Ours is a fractured world, and shattering events will happen. But we are called to be well and whole, come what may. We may die a thousand little deaths in our trials, yet each crisis counts, and we will fly up anew like the phoenix and go on. For Christ is with us amid all slings and arrows.”
The tears came to my eyes, for I had often pushed away the thought that some would call my family condemned. “I have remembered often the words, ‘As it is written, I have loved Jacob, and have hated Esau,’ ” I said.
“And you feared your own to be Esau,” he said. “But Esau was loving to the brother who cheated him, was he not? And God blessed Esau and his descendants. The love that is meant is the plain fact that God chose Jacob to be father of the chosen people. And in that way one was picked and one passed over. You should not keep such things in your heart without sharing them with a proper person. And remember, your kin trusted Christ and so could be content in faith. To be destined does not mean that our lives are play for God. It is not some wretched fatalism that faces the godly. God was at work for our salvation, regenerating hearts before we were aware; he calls us and gives us ears to hear.”
He struck his cane on the ground in emphasis and walked on slowly.
“Truly, that is comforting to me.” Since the day at Falmouth, I had thought of myself as wandering outside the teachings of the godly. And now there was something better to consider.
“There are as many ways of pondering about mystery as there are ministers in the world, I suppose, though we in the colony have much unity. Many things are a cloud and a shadow to us. But God is still the great covenanter who promised to bless the world through the seed of Abraham.”
I was glad of his kindness, and said nothing more but stayed close beside him in the early dark. The sharp, piercing relief I had felt at his words died away, and it felt companionable to walk with this old man in the evening.
“You may talk to me anytime you feel unrest and would like counsel,” he told me. “But I would caution you not to speak of the matter of ill dreams to Mr. Barnard.”
“Not to speak of them?”
“Mr. Barnard is—over-sensitive, shall we say—to the invisible world. He longs to root out Satan and devilish impulses and to scour the unregenerate. I am not so quick to blame disorder and ill dreams on the crafty machinations of the Devil when we human beings are afflicted with a fallen nature and prone to err. Nor are we two completely in harmony on predestination and many other matters.”
“And you think to confide in him would be—?” I did not know how to finish my question. Dangerous? Calamitous? Dire?
The minister struck out with his cane, hitting a patch of bleak, draggled thistles. A few remaining stars of seed sailed into the air and vanished.
“It would, I believe, not be entirely wise,” he said.
“Not wise,” I repeated.
“No,” he said. “Mr. Barnard has a deal of concern about dreams and ghostly evidence. He might well consider that you were afflicted by a conjurer or a witch. Many years ago I had to bear witness in favor of a man accused of witchcraft. He was not a particularly upright man and a rather litigious one, and so a likely target. A bird flew into the house where he was staying, and worked itself out through a hole. The family charged him with mocking them in saying the bird had come to suck at the wife’s teats. He may well have made such a rude jest, but he did not deserve to be hanged for his lax talk.”
“How strange,” I said.
“Yes. I saw how one dwarfish incident becomes blown into a Goliath. And then there is no recourse for a minister except to find a stone and a sling and attempt to be as much of a David as he can. All of that is to say that I see no proper grounds for thinking your dream anything but your natural fears and trouble springing up in a new guise.”
“I understand what you suggest about Mr. Barnard,” I said. “I will be careful.”
“This matter of dreams and dream accusations is difficult. As declares my master in the region of the mind, Mr. Robert Burton, we are all in ‘a brittle state’ and may soon be dejected, our minds overturned ‘how many several ways, by bad diet, bad air, a small loss, a little sorrow or discontent, an ague.’ In sum, the sleeping mind is a queer sea, alive with eels and glowing dragonfishes and jellies. Who can fathom its depths and denizens? I have a rooted dislike for censures founded on dreams and all manner of phantom evidence. For I do not trust such assaults, invisible to the eye: I do not believe we know where they come from or what they mean, or whether they are true or
false. But it is not so with the passionate Mr. Barnard, who learned from his master, Mr. Mather, in Boston.”
“I will remember,” I said, hurrying to keep up as his stride lengthened.
“I have found that here in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, there is a deal too much tumultuous anguish about sin and salvation, and often a ruinous obsession with the wiles and ambushes of Satan and the rebel angels. It was not so when I was a young man at King’s College. At Cambridge, I heard much more about the mercy seat. More about Christ’s divine love. More about grace. We have lost some skillful leaders who sailed back to England, finding this world harsh and fierce, even bloody and malicious.”
The minister toyed with his cane as he walked. I felt surprised that he confided so much in me.
“Some prideful new-minted men of Harvard College,” he added, “are remarkably prone to believe their own half-digested reflections correct. They wish to be the mirror that displays what all others should think—or better, the one others consult and are led by.”
“You are strong minded like Major Saltonstall, who said similar things to me about mercy. And it was brave of you to defend a man slandered unjustly. Thank you for helping me as well. You have been a kind friend to my interests, and it makes me feel less solitary in the world.”
“Good,” he said. “That is excellent. And here is the house waiting for us, and no doubt some drinks to warm us also.”
And so we went through the gate, up the walk, and through the door. Inside, I found smiling faces and beeswax candles in Jotham Herrick’s silver candlesticks, reflected merrily in glass and more silver.
How angry my mistress would have been to see me welcomed and spending a happy half an hour embroidering with the Dane women, and afterward enjoying powdered cakes and taking cordial at the table with the family. One figure interested me greatly: the pastor’s grandson, Richard Dane, the man whom Bel wished to marry. He passed through the room, was introduced, and bowed and said a few words. “I have heard only good of you,” I told him. Plump and with a comely, open face, he had a fine, curling beard and merry eyes.
Charis in the World of Wonders Page 15
