“It was right, no matter what a magistrate might say. And is our secret.” I pressed against him, glad of his strength and warmth.
“The babe is our best secret,” Jotham said. “To think that so long ago, we were each cheerless souls, attached to no one beyond those we met each day, praying for better days and a place to belong.”
“Forlorn in the wilderness,” I said.
“And once you were truly at the mercy of the forest and sea, roving on horseback in the world of perilous wonders, not knowing where you were bound. I could have lost you to chaos.” He tightened his grip on me.
“Before you even knew me. Indeed, that would have been sad.”
“Perhaps I loved you before I knew you, Charis. In a dream. Or the memory of you as a red-headed child in Boston was lodged in me, sleeping like a dormant seed.”
“Like a red, red rose hip, maybe,” I teased, for few men would have loved me for the sake of my red hair.
“Like anything beautiful. Perhaps I was studying to love you all the time, whenever I heard an enchanting voice or looked into the red flames. Like the way angels appear and disappear and are sometimes in modest guise and so mistaken for the ordinary sons of men.”
“Angels inspire awe and fear,” I said.
“Yes. That also. Like a flaming sword,” he said. “And you with your white and red are as bold as a newly smithed sword with the name engraved along the blade and a secret motto. And the transparent, unearthly flames playing along its edge.”
“That is far too grand for me,” I said. “More like something homely, I expect—a ball of madder root dye-paste, tied up in linen, or a ripe plum on a dish.”
He laughed and rested the palm of his hand on my belly. “Growing round and red and white like an apple. And full of seed.”
“Seed again! So now I must be an apple in a garden. That sounds perilously like being the fruit that makes the world stumble into woe. For which we women still take blame from grandmother Eve.”
“No, just a wild, sweet apple on a branch,” he said, and spiraled an escaped lock of my hair around his finger.
“With not just any seed.”
“A boy-seed or girl-seed,” he said, “or perhaps two.” He let go the tight-wound lock of hair, and it loosened but did not fall away.
“Do not wish such giant-work on me! I am not a big-bellied ark to have children march from my doors two by two. . . I am not so capacious. A midwife knows that one by one is safer,” I said.
Jotham laced his fingers with mine. “To have is to be joyful but with all pleasure braided with fear to lose. Not to have is barren and a lone-sorrow. Nothing earthly is pure content.”
I heard and understood his words, and yet he looked peaceable and replete to me.
“Still, I am in good comfort,” he murmured.
“What a marvelous-strange thing is mortal life,” I said, taking pleasure in the pale gray of his eyes and the gold of his hair.
He drew back and inspected me. “You are full young to be a mother, though I can call to mind a few who were younger. If we had any family but each other, we might not be glad of this so soon,” Jotham Herrick said.
The words came into my mind, Care not then for the morrow, for the morrow shall care for itself: the day hath enough with his own grief. But for now, all sorrow was flown. What was I like but the German girl in Goody Waters’ story who flew up from the ashes in her supernaturally glorious raiment, as lovely as lilies and birdsong and sparkles on the water, and married the prince? She kept faith with her mother’s memory and all the wisdom that her mother had handed down to her, and so she found her reward and became whole and joyous. And perhaps even if sorrow came later, after the woven selvage of the story, surely she had the strength and recollection of what had been to sustain her. I glanced at the fire on the hearth, the flames punching at the air and struggling mightily against the cold, and drew the curtains shut.
One day when I was mending the crumpled bowl of a spoon, though not making much progress with Jotham Herrick’s arms about me, showing me the way, Goody Bel Dane burst in at the door, calling my name, “Charis Herrick! Charis!”
I left the spoon to my husband and slipped through the curtain to the shop. “Whatever is the matter?”
She looked red with cold but also wild, her bonnet and hat in hand, her hair a half-combed thicket, and her coif cocked to one side. As she reached up, it came loose and drifted down her back. “How do you fare—can you come with me to Phoebe Wardwell?”
“What, now?”
“Yes, I fear we must make haste to help her. Truly, I feel so. I was there earlier but must go back again.”
I went up to Bel and fished the coif out of the folds of her cloak and set it aright. “Let me see, and I will go with you if I may.”
Jotham Herrick had set down the spoon and come out to greet her—again calling her Goodwife Dane, to her evident satisfaction—and said that he could manage the shop and tend the pot on the fire until I returned. So I dressed warmly and even added my mother’s blanket as a great shawl over my hat and cloak, and ventured out to the street with its snow packed down and only a few muddy spots and a single mound of horse droppings to mar its whiteness.
The air was bitter, and we spoke little on the way, taking short bursts forward on the snow when we could. Our faces were well wrapped against the cold, so that when we met the stick-like, erect shape of Mr. Barnard hurrying toward us, we bobbed a greeting but doubted that he knew us. He was moving along at a brisk rate, almost a run, his fine dark cloak billowing down to his heels, and the man to me resembling nothing so much as an upright insect with a winter-blackened leaf clinging to its back.
“Good morrow, Mr. Barnard, and how goes Goodwife Wardwell?” Bel bawled after him, but the minister only kept walking as he shouted back to her.
“In the devices and lime-snares of Satan, I fear!”
I pulled the wool away from my mouth. “What does he mean?”
Bel only looked at me, her eyes running with wet from the mad dashes of the wind, and shook her head.
Usually, the closer we came to a place beyond the outskirts of town, the deeper the snow, for fewer people would brave the walk after a storm. And yet here was a clear track to traipse in, marked by many boots and pattens, that made me wonder.
At last we glimpsed the house and began to race, puffing clouds into the sharp air, careless of the treachery of snow that is stars but wants to make us fall. Being lighter, I would have beaten my friend to the goal but suddenly remembered the child inside me and slackened, letting Bel flounder ahead.
In her impetuous way, Bel Dane sprang through the door and began greeting the room at large. I followed, shutting it and standing in the shadows to look about me and remove my pattens. Six or seven people from town were gathered in the front chamber, sitting or standing, murmuring among themselves or else crying out a “How now?” to Bel and me.
“Come and spread your cloaks before the fire and dry your feet,” Mr. Dane said.
His own snow-trimmed cloak was already splayed out at the hearth, and I guessed that Mr. Barnard must have left when the elder minister arrived, the two often being at loggerheads when stalled in the same room. A tug of war went on between them, Mr. Barnard dwelling on the schemes and snares of Satan, opposed by Mr. Dane, drawing the soul to the throne of grace.
I came forward, greeting the others as I passed, and settled on a bench, intending to dry my shoes and stockings and glad for the heat of the fire. My hands and feet prickled as they thawed, and I sat quietly, listening to Mr. Dane. The group of villagers was about to depart and, their outer gear in place, cried out their farewells to us.
“She is dear to me,” Bel was saying when we heard a great howl from the back room.
Mr. Dane paused, his hand in the air, and excused himself. “Evidently she is awake. I must see what mischief has been done to the poor young woman,” he said. “Come in when you are warm. I know that Goodwife Wardwell would be pleased to see
you both if in her right wits, and it may be that she will be at least somewhat gratified even out of them.”
Bel, no doubt feeling herself authorized as a new-made Dane, trailed him, telling me to come as soon as my feet were dry. I pulled off shoes and stockings, noticing that I ought to rub fat into the leather of my shoes before traipsing in snow again, and held my feet before the fire. My peeled-off stockings steamed. I sat a little longer, chafing my toes and gazing at the bed of coals that, as ever, seemed a glowing, magical landscape. And yet, if a soul were to find its way to such a region, those smoldering hills would be hells.
What is the trouble with Phoebe Wardwell?
My soaked stockings would not dry. But I had brought an extra pair, which I now put on and gartered, the front room being empty. I padded to the lean-to room at the back, leaving my shoes on the hearth but taking my mother’s blanket for warmth.
I pushed open the door and saw Goody Ann Poor seated in the chimbley corner, suckling Phoebe Wardwell’s babe. She nodded at me and did not get up.
Josiah. A winter babe, he looked red and overheated by the fire. It is a wonder any of our winter children survive the heat and smoke hard by a chimbley, or the cold when they are abandoned to sleep, safely tucked away from the flames but suffering the freezing airs of our chambers. A tail-clout and swaddling bands and other wraps were drying on a rack by the flames, and the odor prickled at my nose.
Thomas Wardwell was there also, seated on a stool with his head lowered. He did not glance up as I shut the door behind me. The minister was bent over the bed, Bel Dane close beside him.
“My dear child,” he was saying, “do not study to undo yourself, abusing those sweet and precious gifts that God has granted you, your health and wit and strength. Do not let your reason succumb to perturbations and chaos.” She stared up at him, her face a rigid mask of panic. “Remember your calling in the world, remember your babe and husband, remember the charitable love that God asks of us. The black bile of melancholy can be overcome through right thinking.”
“But Mr. Barnard says I may be damned else—”
“Think on Christ’s pardon,” the elder minister said, “and consider how God so loved the world and has called you to be his own. Where are these terrors of conscience and this hopelessness then? They melt and vanish at the mercy seat.”
“I am roiling in fear,” Phoebe Wardwell said, and here I caught a glimpse of her sunken eyes that startled me. “Whelmed in the depths of my deeds and thoughts. In doubt of my election.”
Her fingers plucked nervously at the bed rug that topped the linens and coverlet.
“Dear child, despair and shame and horror of conscience may seem like truth in a world so fallen from our first estate in the garden of Eden. But we are beloved of God, and to be destined means that God has called us, and we are free to answer. Trust in more than your own mind. Remember compassion and love that stream from heaven.”
“Mr. Barnard spoke to me of devilish wiles, and how Satan has his bad miracles and wishes to thrust my soul to hell—”
“Hush, daughter,” Mr. Dane said, and he caught up one of her hands to pat it. “This malady, for so it is, is one of black bile and too much preoccupation with judgment. All may now seem tainted with sinful intentions, but you have known God’s gracious clemency and the increase of your love for God and man. Remember those past times. You are weakened and bled by childbirth, and that makes you susceptible to the bad antics of the humors.”
“I have fasted,” she said.
When he let her hand return gently to the coverlet, I was struck by its curled shape. Claw-like, the fingers seemed to implore us for comfort.
“Let us anatomize this melancholy,” Mr. Dane said to her. “There can be a case of too much of fasting and meditation, too much precision in our ways. If there is the Devil’s work at such times, it is surely in over-contemplation of judgment and destruction.”
“The Archfiend,” Phoebe said softly.
“Do you remember how old Mistress Faulkner read the tale of The Pilgrim’s Progress to the children, and how the giant caught Christian and shoved him into Doubting Castle?”
Phoebe Wardwell nodded.
“Well,” he said, “you should also remember that the giant and giantess starved and beat Christian and his friend until they quite despaired, but that afterward he remembered a key in his pocket.”
Phoebe lay still, her eyes on his.
“Do you recall the name of that key?”
“Promise,” she whispered.
“Yes. Promise. The key that could open every door that barred their way, and every gate that locked them in the castle. So the giant was defeated by God’s promise and radiance, for the giant could not bear light. And every crystal star that falls from heaven, every blade of grass, every color above the hills at sunset reminds us of that immortal glow and promise.”
She didn’t move, though she didn’t take her eyes from his.
“Christian took hold of the key, the promise, and all doors were free to him. That promise can do the same for you,” he said.
“Goodman Thomas,” Mr. Dane called out, and the man raised his head. “Your wife needs mild, pleasant recreation, light food rather than abstinence, and the avoidance of fearful subjects rather than a dwelling on satanic powers and judgment. Her mind is wounded and must heal, as surely as her body after a lying-in. The spirit’s dissolution she has suffered must be ended.”
Thomas Wardwell appeared downcast and tired. I supposed that he had been up in the night with his wife. “She must endure longer before she finds the joy of grace once more,” he said dully. “So Mr. Barnard told her.”
“What she feels is not healthy or natural, though it may be praised by some of our New England divines in their diatribes. Too much agony of soul and melancholy will make the heart a stone.” Mr. Dane frowned, looking toward the fire and the seated man. “And sometimes evil comes by accident from those who want to impose good on others.”
“The spirit’s war,” Thomas Wardwell said. “Mr. Barnard said anguish is a needful struggle. He told us that the realm of witches and demons and powers is fighting to possess her.”
Mr. Dane made a clicking noise with his tongue. “It is a flaw in our Massachusetts divines to be always so set on thoughts of writhing and furious devils who pitch trouble at us from the invisible world. In consequence, they often find their own splenic dispositions bereft of tenderness.” Mr. Dane discoursed as if rehearsing an old complaint and, indeed, had said something similar to me before. “Likewise, it is a blemish on the settlements of the New World that so many suffer from melancholy, deadness of heart, and over-anxiety as to sin. The sense of the corrupt self is too extreme, the sense of God’s kindness too small.”
He shook his head as if to clear his mind and spoke again. “Some find rapture, others something worse. You do not wish Goody Wardwell to be one of those, surely.”
The unfortunate babe set up a thin, mewling wail. The woman who had nursed Josiah in the chimbley corner took him out of the room, where he fared no better. His cry was louder there, away from the fire.
Mr. Dane went on as though he did not notice. “This agony of mind is not so among our godly brothers and sisters in England, who are quicker to find a durable comfort in Christ.”
Thomas Wardwell got up from his seat and came near, offering the minister his hand and pledging to heed his counsel. “I do feel some hope,” he said.
“As so you should,” Mr. Dane said.
The minister prayed, asking that darkness be lifted from the home, and that the Wardwells find assurance in God’s grace and love. He promised to come again on the morrow during a round of visitations, and said that he should be sent for sooner if needed. When he departed with Goodman Wardwell, who meant to walk into town to fetch a cone of sugar and some spices to tempt his wife into eating, we were left to be watchers.
Phoebe Wardwell’s eyelids were closed, and they looked faintly purplish from the veins beneath the
skin. Her features had sharpened since I last had seen her.
“She is too thin,” I whispered to Bel, who glanced at me and gave a nod.
“Would that we could lend her flesh,” she said.
We lapsed into silence until she woke with a bitter, curlew-keen cry, sitting halfway up in bed and looking around as if bewildered. I noticed that someone had sprinkled the nest of stained bedclothes with dried lavender blossoms.
“Here we are—me, Bel, with Mistress Charis Herrick.”
“That was not her name before,” Phoebe Wardwell said.
“I am wed,” I said, leaning toward her. “To Mr. Jotham Herrick the goldsmith and selectman. A sergeant for the militia. They say he will be lieutenant soon. Do you remember that we talked of him?”
“Oh,” she said.
“Are you better?” Bel Dane moved closer to the bed and looked down on her friend.
“The fear is stirred up in me that I shall die in my sins,” she said, “and I am afraid to be catapulted to hell. Afraid that I am not elected and never shall be.”
“Think on mercy,” I said, but she did not mark the words.
“That I never, never shall be. But sometimes I remember the sweetness of the past and find that there is hope. And I swing back and forth between one and the other and can get no rest.”
“You must eat and sleep and grow stronger,” I said. “You should not be racked and ravaged. For surely the Spirit sends forth springs and spates of love.”
“But I get no sip to drink,” she answered me, seizing hold of my wrist and pulling me toward her. “Not one drop to save my soul.” I sat down on the edge of the mattress, hearing the corn husks stir and rearrange themselves. Tentatively, I rested my hand on her shoulder.
“Shall we bring you something to drink? Water? Tea? Or perhaps you might eat an apple?” I thought that she must be parched, but she only looked from one of us to the other.
Bel Dane sank down next to me with a great rustling of husks. “Could you taste something now, Phoebe Wardwell?”
Sad to see her appear silent and bewildered, I asked Bel, “Perhaps some water with something strengthening? She will be so thirsty if she has nothing to drink.”
Charis in the World of Wonders Page 22
