The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin

by Robert J. Begiebing

  “Strawberry Hill,” he said, chewing lightly. “I like that.” He looked at his own red palm.

  “You will build here?” she asked.

  “A little farther down toward the river,” he said, pointing, “to gain some protection against winter winds.”

  “Perfect,” she answered. “I would say just off toward the southern edge of the meadow there, where that great shade tree would be pleasant in summer. And you’d turn the house to be square with the sun at noon?”

  “Certainly. Just so.”

  “It can mean so much in this country, come winter. It’s a perfect spot, Mr. Browne. Quite beautiful!”

  Browne smiled and spread his arms wide. In full voice he began to recite toward the horizon:

  Ye have been fresh and green,

  Ye have been fill’d with flowers;

  And ye the Walks have been

  Where Maids have spent their houres.

  You have beheld, how they

  With Wicker Arks did come

  To kisse, and bear away

  The richer Couslips home.

  Y’ave heard them sweetly sing,

  And seen them in a Round:

  Each Virgin, like a Spring,

  With Hony-succles crown’d.

  Their eyes were drawn again to the river by a passing cargo boat, large and flat, that steered along in the ebbing current by men wielding poles. Cattle stirred and murmured in their pen, bundles of wood and fur lay upon the deck.

  Field and saltmarsh rose greenly from the muddy river bank. Beyond the farther easterly shore groves of trees were scattered like islands in a meadow-green sea. Farther still on the horizon rose a final, wooded hill between them and the unseen Atlantic.

  “I had thought of a two-story house,” Browne said. “Perhaps even a third, garret or corn loft. A shingle roof and plaster walls, rather than flush siding or wooden shingles.”

  “White walls would add to the beauty here,” she said. “Chimney at either end?”

  “Central. And a second range of rooms under a shed roof in the back. Nothing exceptional, but commodious. Sufficient for a future. My carpenter is traditional and insists on an oaktimbered frame. He’s indentured to Mr. Cole, one John Steele. You know him?”

  “Jared worked with him once. I’ve seen him. He is said to be the best.”

  “It’s the sawyers that are costly, nearly seven shillings a day.”

  “You’ll have a beautiful view and warmth if you arrange the windows properly to the southeast,” she said. “My husband always builds that way. And the good high, steep roof is best, of course. Let’s go down to the house site then, shall we? See the prospect. There is nothing so pleasant as a good prospect, coming and going.”

  They walked without speaking down the hill. “Yes,” she said as they reached the site and began to look around them, “You might as well build large enough for a family, Mr. Browne. You will want to settle.” She put her hands together and looked around as if she were planning and seeing the whole future of the Browne family on this spot.

  “That is what Mr. Cole tells me,” he said and then laughed.

  “Oh, he’s right. Let me begin to look around for someone likely. She should have more than common manners and style. And money?” She smiled. “Let’s see,” she continued, “family . . . perhaps two or three languages, music. . . . Why Mr. Browne, we shall have to send to Salem or Boston, if not London, to satisfy your requirements.” They laughed.

  “But my requirements are modest, Goody Higgins, as are my present circumstances.” Modest and perhaps desperate, he thought. He had a flash of vision: some coarse jade from the Isles of Shoals, a dozen miles off the coast, where, as a ship’s officer once told him, as many men shared a woman as a boat. The very edge of his vision awoke to a terrible debauch in some dark corner where naked men like besotted satyrs snorted and licked about the unclean, undulant body of a woman who grunted and licked back.

  He forced the vision away.

  “I’ll think about it,” she was saying. “There may even be a suitable young woman hereabouts that I can summon for your consideration.” She laughed.

  “I have no one in mind,” he said. “As we all know maids are soon gone in this country.” She nodded in agreement. “I have been too occupied since coming here for that.” She did not speak, so he continued. “I simply have not had the leisure to meet unattached women. I expect to build and live alone, and to rebuild what others have squandered. Even now I am cultivating associates in the fur and lumber trades that I mean to develop between myself and certain gentlemen and merchants of London. Mr. Cole propounds the real future is in lumber products—boards, planks, shingles, masts, barrel staves, everything. Fur already promises to diminish. He sees a parade of shallow draft ships constantly plying the river in five or ten years, transporting wood above all.”

  “It goes well, then?” she asked, looking at him.

  “Not so well as I’d like. There is the problem of avoiding as many intermediaries as possible if one is to profit by shipping. It seems I will have to return to London, toward the end of this house building now. August, September. I must go to Boston soon to book passage. But, yes, I have begun to make arrangements for trade on this side. And I plan to hire some knowledgeable men for this venture.”

  “Darby Shaw might advise you. I’ll say a good word. He’s met with success with the savages and merchants, and without even your advantages, Mr. Browne.”

  “None but his own skill. I have approached him. He seems agreeable to some relationship, but word from you I would much appreciate, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Why shouldn’t I help you?” she said and then turned toward the crown of the sloping meadow. “Wouldn’t that gentle rise make a good orchard? Let’s go back up to consider plantings and outbuildings.”

  Walking back up the slope of the hill, he said: “And I may not be alone after all, Goody Higgins. I may prevail upon my younger brother to return with me, and his wife. He is the only immediate family I have left in England. He lives on family property, where I also was living before coming to America. But since so much of my future patrimony was invested dangerously, we have been having a hard time of it. I can no longer fund the operations and upkeep of the estate, modest as it is, from America in my present circumstances. And although they have survived the civil strife without becoming embroiled with either side, their situation will be uncertain. His help could be invaluable to me, and to both our futures, here. Provided I can tighten the arrangements I have in mind in London. If not, I may need his help on the other side of the Atlantic. All that remains to be determined.”

  They reached an outcrop near the top of the meadow and sat down. Browne asked: “Have you seen Mr. Coffin since we last met?”

  “Not at all. I’m just as pleased. I have no wish to look on his face.” The breeze strengthened at the top of the hill and stirred her hair out from under her cap. She leaned forward and plucked another strawberry.

  “I have spoken with him on a number of occasions and need to see him again soon. I now believe he has kept something from me.”

  “Be sure to place yourself in no danger. I shouldn’t like to see you come to harm for my troubles.”

  “No. No, I think you overrate his evil intentions. I have met with nothing but kindness and reasonableness from him.”

  “So they say of the Devil.”

  “They say many things. My belief is that this man is not the source of your afflictions, but merely a principal player in the bloody drama.”

  She looked at him blankly. “Nevertheless, Mr. Browne. The danger is real. You had better take care to watch yourself. I would say that now both your safety and mine depend on your watchfulness.”

  “I will watch.”

  “Then I can ask no more.”

  She attempted to gather her hair back under her cap from the wind, but it was useless now. The breeze had been steadily increasing on the knoll. Fair weather clouds were gathering on the horizon
behind them and flying rapidly over their heads in the bright sky.

  The wind finally drove them from the knoll back to the pathway to her house, where the children had abandoned their tasks and were playing by the brook which ran through the yard and down into the river.

  XII

  On another warm day that June, Richard Browne paid a fourth visit to Balthazar Coffin. Coffin greeted Browne warmly, but the older man was haggard. Browne conjectured that the gaunt face was the result of Coffin’s loss and sorrow, as if his pain had only gradually worked into him during the past year. Now Coffin seemed to be the one living without sleep.

  “You have been away, Mr. Browne,” Coffin said. “Welcome back.”

  Browne explained that he had come to discuss several points that were yet unclear to him about the circumstances of Mistress Coffin’s death.

  “Your journey was fruitful?” Coffin asked.

  “Yes. But so much remains to be uncovered.”

  “Ah. Ever the case, Browne. Ever the case.” He shook his head and, pointing to a chair for Browne to sit in, slowly sat into another. A woman servant entered the room and asked if they would care for refreshment.

  “Cider?” Coffin asked. “Claret?”

  “Thank you,” Browne said. “Cider would be excellent.”

  “Two drams of sharpest cider, Martha, please,” Coffin said. As the woman left the room, Coffin added: “I’ll be alone soon; Martha is leaving within the month. Then it will be just me and cook. And that old widow, Goody Hastings, grows more deaf and blind, more the crone, each day. We’ll make a pretty couple.” He laughed and shook his head, as if imagining two invalids hobbling about the house like damaged crows.

  “To what extent did your wife know Higgins before you hired him to take her to market?” Browne asked quietly.

  “I can’t remember much anymore. Oh, I remember old times, way back, clear as yesterday. But yesterday itself? Or recent events? Even an hour ago? And I forget so many small things now. You’d think me eighty, rather than approaching the half-century.” He laughed. “Crabwise, to be sure, but approaching.” The woman entered again with two servings of cider. Coffin thanked her and added in the same breath: “I am tired, of many things. But as to your question, forgive me. Yes. Yes, she knew him. How well? That is more difficult. I am perhaps among the least to answer it. May I let it go at that for the moment? May I enlighten you further on that point later? Let’s consider these other questions first that you spoke of, Mr. Browne.”

  “My other questions depend on your answer to my first, so we will return to it as you say. But let me ask you this, Mr. Coffin. Why did you hire Higgins? Why that man?”

  “Have I not told you at a previous interview that Higgins is an able man, a skilled man? He is widely respected. There are few men anyone would hire before Higgins for river travel as much as for building a shed, or fencing, or judging the worth of planting grounds, or any multitude of things.”

  “There is no other reason?”

  “Not in the main. I knew him, as here everyone does.” He paused, waved his hand and fixed Browne with his eyes. “Kathrin knew him.” He paused, then continued. “I am tired to the bones, Mr. Browne, so let me come to the point. I wish to show you something, in secret trust, something I discovered after her death.” Coffin rose slowly and left the room.

  While he was absent—perhaps some quarter of an hour—Browne rose and paced nervously. He walked into the library, a room which on an earlier visit he had seen only superficially, and looked at the table covered with papers as well as writing and drawing implements. His glance passed over a flat, ornately carved, open box on the table. Within the box were delicate measuring instruments and several small round stones of a kind he had seen once before and now immediately thought of as oriental bezoar stones. He looked at Coffin’s books. There must have been nearly twenty in folio and more in quarto, many bound in good leather and stoutly corded. A few in quarto seemed to have been stitched and bound, some in parchment, by their owner. He pulled a few free and discovered considerable polite reading: Virgil, Lucan, du Bartas, Jonson, and the like. But there were many more works of a speculative and investigative turn: various herbals from Dodoens, and Gerard, to Parkinson; and there were Pliny, Gesner, Clusius, Alpinus, Monardes, and Cornuti. It was, in all, a curious mixture of polarities, of the quaint and the philosophically advanced—Paracelsus the shelf neighbor of Galen, Harvey of Valentinus. He quietly discovered some of those bound in parchment to be transcribed, perhaps by students, perhaps by Coffin himself. These were shelved as bound manuscript copies of older books. There were trunks of books as well, but hearing Coffin calling to him, he did not look into these. He returned to the parlor where they had been sitting.

  “Remarkable library!” Browne said upon entering. Coffin managed a smile and said: “As you know, Mr. Browne, my library is at your disposal. Perhaps some time we may discuss more pleasant topics?”

  “Indeed,” Browne said, but then he noticed that Coffin held a small, red, leather-bound book. As Coffin laid the book on the table and pushed it toward him, Browne noticed a gold clasp or locking device on the book.

  “I have here,” Coffin said, “a curious little book that may answer many of your questions. You may take it up; it is for your study.”

  Browne picked up the book and caressed the soft red leather. Coffin handed him the clasp key, which was strung upon a delicate necklace.

  “By giving this to you, Mr. Browne, I indicate that I will have no more to say upon the matter of Mistress Coffin’s death. All I know of the matter is in that book. It does not reveal all the mysterious circumstances of her tragic misfortune. But you shall learn more from it, from her, than from any other source.

  “This book,” he continued after a pause, “I found in a locked cabinet after I buried Kathrin. Martha and I were clearing her belongings out of the house. Such reminders weigh too heavily on my soul.” He looked up at Browne carefully. “This was her private journal.”

  “You wish me to read this?” Browne asked.

  “It will answer many questions. I trust you to keep its contents confidential. Except for confidential Court records, should you judge it new and significant evidence.”

  “That I can promise. Unless by your leave.”

  Coffin sat down slowly, indicated Browne’s chair with his hand, and said, as if to himself: “She seems to have required some expression of her secret thoughts, her private experiences. Though such a tendency is not uncommon among men in our day, it is unusual in women, wouldn’t you agree? And you may find an urgency and frankness that suggests something more.”

  He paused and looked at Browne again. As Browne was about to speak, Coffin added: “Perhaps I failed as a husband. If not in my outward duties toward her, in the ways of the heart, Mr. Browne. I think you will see quite clearly that in her eyes I did fail. And I cannot quarrel with her on that point.”

  “Had she never shared her private thoughts with you?”

  “Were you to have asked me that two years ago, I would have answered yes. But since finding Kathrin’s journal, I cannot say that she did. Oh, we shared private memories and meanings, mental sympathies and the like, as married people, even in a bad marriage, do.”

  “Does this journal implicate anyone in her death?”

  “No more than I have told you myself. But that is for you to decide, or the Courts, should you deem this confidential evidence worthy of a Court of law, of renewed action before the bar. I hope that you will not find it so. However, I do not ask you to cross your integrity.

  “For myself,” Coffin continued, “I cleanse myself of further anxiousness over justice in this matter. My personal failures I will bear myself. I am no longer a man who can view his life a moderate success.” He stopped to look Browne in the eye. “You hold in your hands not only her secret soul, but mine as well, in a sense. I would be in your debt if you were to treat us with tenderness. But you must do what is your duty and follow justice and conscienc
e.”

  “I am honored, Mr. Coffin, by your trust and frankness with me. We shall speak again after I have studied this document.”

  “I think not. You’re still a young man, but knowledgeable about the world and certain niceties of the law. Moreover, Mr. Browne, you are a man of understanding and education, and have none of the narrow prejudgments of those who have lived in this remote settlement. That, I take it, is the foundation of Mr. Cole’s faith in you as well. You will achieve things in this New World, I am sure of it. As a partial resolution to your investigations, this little book may increase your opportunity to look after your own affairs. And, as I myself did, you too may learn useful truths from its contents.

  “During the initial inquiries I showed this book to no one. I think you will soon understand why. Consider this private journal rather as a gift; learn from my own misfortunes, Mr. Browne.”

  “Felix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum!" Browne said and smiled.

  “Ah! Indeed, Mr. Browne, indeed. Fortunate is he who thus learns caution.” He smiled. “Now about your trip up into the country. You met the aborigines? Would you be so kind as to amuse me with some tales? They have a certain wisdom too, do they not?”

  “Yes, Mr. Coffin. But my mind is full of your astonishing gift. I fear I’m at a loss at the moment for tales of aborigines. Another time perhaps?”

  “Certainly.”

  “My house is underway now. I’ll be leaving for London at summer’s end. It will take time for me to understand what you have given. May I take this with me wherever I go?”

  “It is yours. I have given it to you. In confidence.”

  “Please accept my apologies if my earlier questions have offended you. I thank you again for your generosity and frankness whenever we have met.”

  “All I ask in return, my young friend, is that you press me no further on the contents of the journal after you’ve read it. Everything related to Kathrin is too painful for me now. I look for some release from that pain; I have long felt the need to impart these contents to another. But I can discuss it no further.”