Charis in the World of Wonders

by Marly Youmans

  “This is truly a world of wonders,” he said.

  “Yes.” I pressed his hand, still thinking of the Leviathan’s power hidden under his joined scales, and how this being, however strange its appearance, might be a danger like the monster in the sea who laughed at blades and hurled stones: In the earth there is none like him: he is made without fear.

  I stepped back, one pace at a time, still clinging to Jotham Herrick’s hand and he holding to me. My heart sent me a message, flittering fast and urging me to rush. When out of sight of the beast, we sped homeward, suddenly released from caution, laughing and heedless, leaping sloughs of mud and crushing the tender green grasses.

  Remembering our child and turning abruptly, Jotham caught me up in the air. And that was the end of my hoyden running, though I have always loved to skip about when no one is watching.

  Later on, we learned that the creature was what is called by some of our people the swamp donkey, and moose by some of the tribes. Mr. Dane, who had an interest in natural-history curiosities and knew much about the ways of animals, told us that the male sheds his antlers each fall and begins to grow new ones in early spring, and that if we saw our moose again in another month, the antlers would have burgeoned into a grove of velvet trees with large, pleading arms uplifted, each with many fur-clad fingers. I found this hard to credit, but he told us that they grew as swiftly as the grass on a hot spring day.

  Months later, I may have seen our same hard-to-fathom monster again. Antlers wonderfully diademed his head. To me, it seemed that a giant, furry moth had settled to rest there.

  But the first sighting at the weir lingered long in my mind.

  “We have seen a creature as rare and strange as a chimera,” I said to Jotham Herrick, and longed to tell my mother. And that afternoon, I felt a little sad, as if I had lost something precious, though it was only the memory of the morning, slipping away.

  All late winter and spring, the little rise under my gown grew rounder, became a hillock, until one day I felt the first convulsive clench and jump of the child in my belly. Human nature being what it is, entirely strange, I wept for joy and grief in the space of a few moments. Again I longed for my mother. That also is human nature, to yearn for what we once possessed and can never, ever have again, not in this life.

  That night we lay inside the freshly aired and hung summer curtains of the bed, and Jotham Herrick pressed his narrow, clever goldsmith’s hands against my belly to feel for the new life. And we laughed for pure bliss.

  Soon I began to help around the shop more and took my place as a pounder of silver. At first, my husband wanted to shield me from that work, but I said no, that I could do it as well as any boy apprentice. Moreover, it would not keep me from the cook-pot or my needle. I loved my days at that time more than ever, for from the hour I woke in the morning until Jotham Herrick drew me toward bed, all my labors felt rich with meaning. And that was my privy happiness. I sewed for the child to be and made my husband two new shirts. Some days I hoed in our plot, enjoying the brisk air and the sight of green ribbons and tendrils waving in the breeze. My mouth was full of new words and old ones used for a new purpose: anneal, solder, cast, hammer, and shape. Little by little, I began to learn the trade.

  “A goldsmith’s apprenticeship means a ten-year’s labor,” Jotham Herrick told me.

  “So be it,” I said, bobbing him a little curtsey. “Do you want me to sign the articles and be witnessed?”

  He was amused and smiled as he put his arms around my waist. “Shall you faithfully serve the craft, keep its secrets, carry out its duties, never mar the sterling standard by blending too much copper with the silver, and always obey the laws of the goldsmith?”

  “Are there many secrets?”

  “To those who do not know, surely everything is a mystery,” he said.

  “And do you have a great many laws?”

  “Just the right number, I expect,” he said. “A contract would read something like this: the apprentice, Charis Herrick, shall her master, Jotham Herrick, faithfully serve, his secrets keep, his lawful commands gladly obey. She shall do no damage to her master nor see it be done of others without giving notice thereof to her master. She shall not waste her said master’s goods (I do not believe that you would waste my silver, would you?) nor lend them unlawfully to any—most particularly to Goody Holt, I should say.”

  I clasped my arms around his neck. “That will not be a difficulty.”

  “What else? She shall not commit fornication—”

  “Never,” I said. “I shall sleep only with the aforementioned master!”

  “Nor contract matrimony within the set term—a bit too late for that, I fear.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “At cards, dice, or any unlawful game she shall not play—”

  “Never,” I said again, my voice muffled against his chest. “But I shall play all lawful games with you.”

  “Indeed,” he said. “And she shall not absent herself by day or night from said master’s—”

  “Bed?”

  My husband leaned back to look at my face and laugh at me before he went on. “Said master’s service, without his leave, nor haunt taverns or play houses.”

  “There are no play houses in the wilderness,” I said. “And I desire no habit of haunting such places.”

  “She shall in all things behave as a faithful apprentice. And the said master, Jotham Herrick, shall find and furnish the said apprentice, Charis Herrick, with wearing apparel, and doth covenant and promise to instruct the apprentice in the art, trade, and calling of smithing in precious metals, and at the expiration of the term of years, dismiss her from apprenticeship.”

  “Well, sir, so long as I do not need to name you master from now on, I shall serve the ancient company and guild of goldsmiths and keep its precious secrets.”

  “In this country, there is no guild, so we shall be a company of two.” Jotham Herrick kissed me on the forehead, and so our compact was sealed.

  My life was fair and promising better. Reading and study were not denied to me. I had one area of skill mastered with the work of my hands: spinning and the stitching together of loomed cloth into garments and embroidery to deck them, and all the arts of needle and thread. And now I stepped onto the long, slow path to knowledge of metals. I had a family again and took pleasure in my husband. When terrible dreams came to me at night, he was there to wake and console me. We would have a child before long. On the Lord’s Day, I walked to the meetinghouse with Mr. Herrick and found that I had many things to be grateful for, and was glad.

  In early June, we saw the Saltonstalls and had a meal with them when Andover was the site of a confabulation between militia officers who journeyed from Salem, Salem Village, and Haverhill. Andover paraded its soldiers before the meetinghouse, and there was a prodigious stamping-about of men in boots. The few town horses had their glory-moments, too, and Jotham Herrick rode my beloved Hortus with the others. The officers and local soldiery were busy with talk and training all day, and so for many hours I had Elizabeth Saltonstall to myself.

  We made that time a holiday. I showed her the shop and my first accomplishments of hammering and marking, the jumble of tools, and the crucibles out back, flecked with drops of metal. Upstairs, the gear sewn for the babe made a fine display. Last, I made her a gift of violet flowers and mint leaves sealed in rock candy.

  After the amusements of the house were shared, we walked out and sat on stools in the road to Ipswich between Shoe Meadow and Great Wade’s Meadow, there to watch the formal inspection of weapons. Once a musket fired by accident and struck the Marston house door, and so whoops and screams went up, but no harm was done to any person, which was a fine thing.

  I was pleased and grateful to Mistress Saltonstall for coming so far out of affection for me, as she was not of an age or temperament to enjoy picking her way on horseback from Haverhill to Andover in company with militiamen. Her generous words came back to me many times. “You are like
my own daughter,” she told me. “You are dear to us. If there is ever anything you desire, you have only to come to Haverhill, and we will give you whatever it is you need. My Nathaniel feels the same. That is a promise I make to you from both of us.”

  “Thank you, my dear foster mother! It is sad to contemplate an hour of dire need appearing again,” I said, “but life is from time to time an outlandish, baffling business prone to remarkables, and no one knows what will come to pass.”

  “From moment to moment in the stream of years, we cannot know.” She hesitated, gazing at the knots of militiamen. The examination of firearms had begun. “Our lives are frail, and the world stony and harsh. But so long as either of us lives, you have another place to claim as home,” she told me, speaking with firmness and clapping her hands together in emphasis.

  I thanked her, and afterward we meandered slowly around Shoe Meadow, arm in arm, chatting of needlework and Damaris Hathorne and Eliza and the sons, Gurdon and Richard and Nathaniel Saltonstall. We talked of less pretty matters as well. The major felt weary. Fresh struggles in the Essex court with Goodman Swan’s sons, mischievous and destructive by bent, disturbed him, and he had recently upset the village by sending a young Emmerson woman to the Boston jail for whoredom, she having given birth in mid-May to two babes, sewing them in a bag and burying them behind the house while the family was at meeting. Poor Elizabeth Emmerson was found out soon enough. It seemed to me that her mother and father must have known. How could she give birth to two infants without them hearing, and all sleeping in the same room, along with her prior child, also a bastard? I pitied the major for having to stand against the unfortunate girl and all her friends in Haverhill, and I also pitied her for having no more hope than to murder her children, though perhaps they had been stillborn.

  “He found no other choice, as she had buried the babes. Though we both ached for her. She never had much affection at home, and her father lashed her without mercy when she was but a small girl.”

  “Woefully sad,” I said.

  “I should not have told a woman with child that story,” Mistress Saltonstall said, slowing her steps.

  “It makes me grieve,” I told her, “but also grateful for my husband. I have naught to fear.”

  And that was a true sentiment, for there are many ways a young woman may risk and lose her place in the world and plunge down, down into a gulf of burning darkness. I knew one way, but the drabble-tail Emmerson daughter knew another and had traded her own too-short pleasures for hell on earth. And where was the man with his grasping hands and sharp desire to share blame and dishonor for folly? She would suffer the heat and filth of the Boston jail, and in the end be hanged while he roamed free.

  The Saltonstalls had hired rooms elsewhere, but I met with both of them several times before they rode home again in company with the Haverhill militia. I was mournful to see Elizabeth Saltonstall riding pillion and watched until she was out of sight, and wished that she could be with us in August when our babe would be born. But I did not ask, feeling that we had no chamber fit for her, and that I must make do with those who were closest to me in Andover.

  As it fell out, we heard that they were no sooner arrived home than the alarm went up in Haverhill, and the militia there was busied with chasing shadows and conducting further training. Captain Bradstreet received a note from the major saying that one “John Robie, husbandman,” had been killed by the enemy. The subsequent flutter of activity meant that there was little chance of Mistress Saltonstall returning.

  But I was not sure who my companions in my down-lying would be. Goody Mehitabel Dane continued somewhat cold to me.

  “Are you yet angered with me, Goodwife Dane?” I asked her the question one Sabbath at meeting, but she shrugged and said only that she was weary. She, too, was with child, and her time would not be so long after mine.

  But the well had come between us.

  Was it because I had been the one to discover her friend, and not Bel herself? Despite the uneasiness between us, we later tried to restore friendship. That is, she confessed that she regretted feeling anger over my discovery of Phoebe Wardwell and the babe. And I told her that I was sorry she had felt so, and said how much I valued her affection and former kindnesses to me. It was an awkward meeting that left me discontent.

  After that, we still occasionally met to sew, though she often seemed impatient and out of temper. As time went on, these afternoons happened less frequently, and she made more excuses than before. At last, I no longer asked her to come and found that I was glad no longer to be refused.

  “She has lost her love for me,” I told Jotham Herrick as we stood by the small stone furnace behind the house.

  “Something I shall never do,” he said, not looking up from the pool of metal in a crucible. But he reached and pulled me against him.

  “I have wondered, looking back, how I let her lead me into laughing at her sister and mother so often, or taking pleasure in Lizzie Holt’s distress. That was wrong of me. And I did not like it when she was merry about sieve-and-scissors. Perhaps I was at fault out of gladness to have someone who might be a friend.”

  “She is no paragon,” Jotham said, letting go of me. “Let that be a consolation, even if it is sad.”

  “No one is a paragon, truly,” I said, my eyes on the puddle of silver. “When I remember my family, the recollection of a thousand little faults rises up against me. I failed my sister on the day that mattered most. If I remember my time with Goody Holt, I recall many angers.”

  “Your little Mary fell—she was not pushed,” he said. “And despite all, you are lovely in your ways.”

  “I do not know.” What I felt just then was a flare of resentment against my supposed friend, but I could not bear to speak of it.

  “And you have other, more faithful companions in Haverhill,” Jotham reminded me.

  So I put that Andover friendship aside, sorrowful that Bel Dane had floated away from me, and yet well pleased with marriage and hours spent in sewing for my own family or learning the mysteries of metals. I remembered Deliverance Dane’s story of how Lizzie and Goody Holt spoke against me to the minister. Perhaps the two of them had worn down Bel’s affection for me with ill words. Did making peace with family mean adopting their dislike of me? Perhaps, as Jotham once suggested, the tanner’s daughter had been tainted by jealousy.

  As the summer fled and my garments were unloosened more and more, I wondered at my contentment and happiness and feared to lose it when my trouble came. Not that I did not remember my dead daily, for I did—at times contemplating how I might have to join them soon. Often enough, a woman perishes in first childbirth. I did not speak much of the coming risk. Nor did my husband.

  The goldenrod and purple asters bloomed, and still the babe had not made an appearance with us. The town’s weather predictors all vowed that there would be a bitter winter, and rare August frost marred our crops. I grew sluggish and heavy and, I am afraid, sometimes neglected both shop and needle to sleep or idle by the fire, stirring the pot and baking ashcakes as if their mere presence meant I must sit and be watchful—in truth, doze.

  “Making a babe is more tiring than making a silver punch bowl with gadrooning and legs and Latin inscription,” Jotham Herrick said to me one evening, waking me where I lay curled by the hearth with ash in my hair. “I believe the wicked Albertus Magnus had the easier task, making a mechanical man out of metal.”

  “What are you saying? A punch bowl? I must have fallen asleep watching the pottage,” I said.

  He hoisted me up, grasping me above the belly.

  “My time is soon, I hope.” I yawned and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

  “Perhaps I shall finish the punch bowl for my Salem sea captain first,” he said.

  “Maybe,” I said, but it was not true. I ate the bread but could eat no more, and that night I woke in the night to swing my legs over the bed’s edge and stand to let the waters pump out of me.

  Jotham lit a cand
le from the fire.

  “It’s just water,” I said faintly. “Oceans.” Something like a distant drum had begun to throb, miles inside of me.

  “There’s a slip of something greenish,” he said, bending to look.

  I shivered uncontrollably, and Jotham Herrick wrapped my mother’s blanket around my shoulders.

  “The birth will be wholesome and right. I feel it, God be praised,” he said. But his face looked worried.

  “I pray so. And if not, I hope for courage and a good—”

  “Hush,” he said. “Let us have no talk of death when the surety is with me that all will be well. Only thanksgiving.”

  But I thought it secretly all the same, how a wife had the call and duty to make what was called a good death if she could not live, and how that was a hard, fearful command to heroism but had been fulfilled bravely by many women before me.

  Courage, I told myself, courage.

  Also I remembered a sermon on the famous monster borne by Mistress Dyer in Boston that the attending midwife, Mistress Hutchinson, desired to have kept secret, though Mr. John Cotton of First Church knew. Such frights cannot be hid for long. Later, Mr. Winthrop, governor at that time, mandated that the creature should be dug up from the common grazing ground, and more than a hundred people saw the shrunken remains, monstrous with the head mingled with the breast, the eyes popping from the skull, and all the rest mixed higgle-piggle, back to front, front to back, with holes and horns and claws. The tale was still a nightmare among the godly. I forced the images away, praying that they leave and not come back to blight the child in my womb.

  Those well-born, well-educated ladies, Mary Dyer and Anne Hutchinson, were busy in the cause of liberty, but our ministers preached that each of them suffered an unnatural birth because they abandoned the right role of woman and usurped a man’s duty. That our pastors were right in claiming them as heretics, I knew, yet I had a fellow feeling for the two, with their passion for truth and grace and desire to act for the good. Was I not a woman who longed to be like a boy eagerly riding off to Harvard, and who wished to make beauties not just in cloth and thread but in a man’s prerogative of silver and gold? Perhaps my childbirth might resemble theirs, I feared, and all because I sometimes thought too freely.