The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin

by Robert J. Begiebing

  I felt, and now feel, that bleak, oppressive certainty that the Kingdom of Satan rules all, that we are all foolish creatures and dolls, and that the laughter beyond the gate is the blast of Hell. “Behold, I will make my words in thy mouth fire, and this people wood, and it shall devour them.”

  June 23, 1647

  This is a sorrowful mid-summer’s time, for an epidemical sickness has come among all—Indians, English, and it is told Dutch and French as well—that takes like a cold and light fever, but upon bleeding or using cold drink, kills some, while others inexplicably recover in a few days. Worse yet, a ship from Barbadoes and the Indies was isolated for a plague and great mortality there. Many cannot but despair.

  August 20, 1647

  Mr. C. returned today. His tropical sojourn has ended.

  There was a clatter before the house, I looked out the front door, and there he was, dressed in light clothing, stepping down from a horse cart driven by a Negro man and full of trunks and cases. I quickly closed the door and drew my breath, trying to calm myself while he directed the man in the unloading of his impedimenta.

  Later, I discovered that he had hired the man and his truck at Strawberry Banke, taken a river barge up with the tide to the landing below the falls, and ridden the cart sitting beside the truckman right up to our door.

  While the truckman carried the boxes to the house, I collected myself and ran out to greet Mr. C. Immediately I saw that he was changed. Not only was I surprised at his sun-darkened flesh, his loss of fifteen or twenty pounds, his loose light clothing, but I was taken by his face and eyes, by his peaceful demeanor and speech. Here was a man who looked upon me with interest, as if two faulty years of marriage had been wiped clean. We might have just arrived in the New World. The source of this transformation I am never more likely to know than I knew at that moment.

  This evening we walked about our garden, inspected every outbuilding, promised to walk to our planting fields in the morning. Whatever outrage I had stored to unleash upon his possible return he has completely disarmed. All the more so since he begs forgiveness for his inexcusable and unhusbandly behavior toward me previously. He promises to be my husband and true companion, and he asks me to take whatever days or weeks might be necessary to consider whether such a life together might be possible. At that moment, as at this, I confess I do not know what might be possible between us. My instinct tells me to think it unlikely. But it will certainly require my consideration—the implications for a lone woman are so pregnant and uncertain—and there is of course my confusion over Jared Higgins.

  Our first night together, however, Mr. C. related his travels and adventures, albeit in far too much detail and number to record here. He ranged through Brazil, Barbadoes, Christophers, the Summer Islands, Grenada, St. Lucia, Guadeloupe, and so on, hiring his passage in English, Dutch, French, and Portuguese ships. He promises to tell me of six weeks spent in Spanish captivity headed into a life of slavery until an English privateer, in turn, took the Spanish ship.

  He seems pleased by the state of my household and his lands. So much has passed between us since his arrival that I will stop to record only that he further demonstrated his new sympathy with my own state of mind by offering to sleep, for the indefinite future, in his own chamber, where he has stacked a princely collection of books and specimens in cases piled to the ceiling. His last words to me were: “Let us be off, now, to sleep. Think on all I have said, and will say, these coming weeks, and then in good time we shall decide how it is that we are to regulate our lives.”

  I go to my bed this night strangely happy, strangely sorry, asking the Lord again to guide me and forgive me. As I contemplate my transgressions and my share in fleshly corruptions to which all are prone, even the mastering desire to sleep confronts my secret kernel of fear, viz., might the slightest provocation unbalance him once again, or might this transformation be but another guise of the husband I had so painfully learned never again to trust?

  October 10, 1647

  As to the change in Mr. C., let me record that he has not cast off his predisposition to study. Rather, his preoccupation has somewhat abated. Of course his present need to pore over his specimens and books is substantial, and he spends hours daily closeted with these materials, pursuing his lodestar. But he now emerges from his study, and upon these occasions is more energetic than melancholic. In brief, he looks upon the world with a human eye.

  He says little more of his previous behavior toward me, as if that were a subject too painful to discuss. To all appearances, I seem to have regained the man I married. Yet I cannot say whether I will ever again be capable of responding to him as my husband. Of course to the world, that is a wife’s duty, but he makes my burden easier by his cordial distance, allowing me to determine the nature of our relations. Lately, after evening tasks, we have been spending a late supper and evening in conversation. I come to treasure his exotic tales of slave traders, gigantic serpents, strange savages and practices, enormous tides and rivers, unendurable heats and rains and mists. In his turn he seems as fascinated by tales of my daily rounds and events here. He praises Higgins’ tireless labors.

  In this so sudden and astonishing an alteration of my circumstances and relations, I hardly know what to say of Higgins. Nor shall I until my soul is prepared, nor until I am assured to my very soul of a deeper change of heart in Mr. C.

  December 18, 1647

  I feel some certainty of the general improvement in the relations between us. More, that Mr. C. feels deep remorse for past behavior, that never can those relations grow as bad as they had previously grown. Yet how does a wife remove the stain of such a past? Is it this hesitancy in myself, or some remaining canker in Mr. C. that promises to hinder a life together reborn at the least in that tenderness between men and women, which might otherwise flower? For does he not seem to revert, in some degree, to that former coldness that arose between us, rising with the patient surety of a wall beneath the mason’s hand?

  Part III

  Oh this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. . . . And the Lord said unto Moses, “Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book . . . in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them.” And the Lord plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made.

  —Exodus 32:31–35

  XIII

  In the autumn of 1650 Richard Browne returned from England to Robinson’s Falls. The second day after his return Browne walked from his new house, which the carpenters had finished in his absence, toward the houselot of his nearest neighbor, Elizabeth Higgins. Among the reasons for seeing her he wished to borrow some fire. As he approached her dooryard, he heard a wild screaming and hurried around the corner of her garden fence to find Elizabeth holding between her legs the hind parts of a small but meaty pig. She was just taking the pig’s snout in her left hand and poising a long knife in her right over the animal’s breast.

  Browne stopped. The knife plunged. The animal’s blood jerked onto the soil. Only when she hoisted the dead animal up above the pot of boiling water over the dooryard hearth did Elizabeth notice Browne standing just beyond her fence.

  “Mr. Browne!” she called to him. “You’ve come back!”

  “Just as I said,” he called and moved closer.

  “But so soon?”

  “As you see. My business in England is completed.”

  The pig’s body slid into the hot water. With a reddened rag she wiped sweat from her face.

  “With success, I trust?” she said.

  “As much as I might hope, amidst the discords of the motherland. We have good hap to be in New England, Goody Higgins.”

  “So many say.” She hoisted the pig from the water by means of a rope running over a branch, swung the carcass onto a rough-hewn table, and began to rub the animal’s skin vigorously with rosin.

  “I have divers irons in the fire and expect trade to go well once I arrange for proper shipping. Lumber products are gr
eatly desired in England and the Indies.”

  She looked up at him; he held his fire pan in the air to show her what he needed.

  “May you have good fortune, Mr. Browne,” she said. “Yes, I’ll have young Jared get you some fire when he returns shortly.”

  “Thank you, Goody Higgins. I’m in no hurry. How have you kept?”

  She was now stripping the hair off the pig. “We’re well, thanks be to God, well enough in this time. But I cannot rest easy. Many children throughout New England have met death this year. He enters every village and house.”

  “Not here, I pray, has his scourge entered?” A look of pain came quickly to his face.

  “No. With the Lord’s blessing.”

  “Then have your past trials proved sufficient, and you have entered a new epoch in your life, Goody Higgins.” He tried to sound pleasant.

  Working diligently, she said nothing. Eventually, in her own time she spoke. “Yes. A new epoch, and without my husband still.” The hair off the pig, she began to disembowel it.

  “Ah!” he said, then tried to banter: “But I daresay there have been suitors by now.”

  She stopped her work for a moment and looked up at him. “Yes,” she said, serious. “Suitors there have been. Many place Jared among the dead, others place him among the never-to-returns, the deserters.” She saved the organ meats for cooking presently and put the intestines aside for sausage casings. “I have brought my cause before no court. Though there are those who offer to plead my cause as theirs.”

  “I doubt not that one so fair and skilled,” Browne smiled and tested deeper waters, “so sure and robust in all her ways has a royal share of suitors. But you have no pressing need for such a protector and companion? You have turned toward no suitor’s bait?”

  “Because I fancy none now.” She did not look up from her task.

  “Ah!” he said again, watching her work quickly and deliberately in the cool morning air. “Has every bait been as unworthy as that?” He laughed, but it sounded false to him.

  She did not laugh with him, but looked up again briefly. “It is not the bait, as you say, that interests me, but the measure of the man, Sir. More, the husband I need is my true husband, who is, I feel, alive. Merely kept from returning to me, by what devices or arts I do not know.” She turned to her work, adding: “I place no blame at your door, Mr. Browne, who have made such efforts in my interest. But there’s too much unsettled, too much wanting to my satisfaction.”

  She began to prepare the largest cuts of meat to be roasted immediately or preserved in the powdering tub. He was tempted to tell her all he knew, but he thought and saw again how much he needed now to consider carefully the whole story he had unravelled so far before speaking to anyone. All he could think to say was: “So you have not sought a widow’s status yet?”

  “I have not.” She looked up at him. “And be left with even less than I have now? They’ll take it soon enough. We cannot live on some widow’s third or lesser estate, not without a new husband to replenish us.” Then she smiled at him for the first time since they had begun speaking of remarriage, and said: “What sort of fool do you think me, Mr. Browne?”

  He laughed, glad to be on smoother waters. “Well, yes, you are right. Oh these magistrates, as everyone says, these robbers and destroyers of widows and the fatherless! Yet Mr. Cole would see the best done by you. The laws and practices are changing these days, and ought not your son Jared come into some of the property? Or as is the case here more frequently in these days, Enoch, the youngest son, to care for you in your dotage?”

  “Oh, all such arrangements might be made, I do not doubt. Were my husband dead, and my wishes turned in that direction,” she said in a tone of dismissal. “We have a new minister, finally. Just recently here among us.”

  “That is good news. Who is he?”

  Again she did not answer for a time, being too busy in her labors.

  “One Mr. Vaughan,” she said. “The Reverend Nehemiah Vaughan. Highly regarded. Everyone seems to believe we have struck fortune equal to our years of waiting and past divisions. Another Cambridge man, Mr. Browne.”

  “I see. Most fortunate then. Have you met him?”

  “Only to hear him teach, once. Mr. Cole introduced us afterward and told him of my situation and trials. I told him of all your help to me. He seemed interested in you, begged to meet you upon your return. Which we expected much later. But now, here you are. Back with us!” She had emptied the iron pot and replaced it with a spit over the smoky fire.

  “I’d like to meet him. You yourself are pleased?”

  “Why should I not be? Pleased enough. Our little ship of spirit so long without a rudder. Though Mr. Vaughan’s a wealthy and worldly enough man. We paid dearly to gain him in the end, settled one of the largest properties on him, along with his living. He’s no lady’s chambermaid. They drained a hogshead of rum at his installation.”

  “He is a married man?”

  “Yes. A gentle wife. And four children living.”

  “Then he is well set indeed.”

  They were quiet while Goody Higgins cleaned her knives and put meat and organ scraps into a bucket. She then picked up the bucket and started toward the house, at the door glancing back to say: “I’ll be back in a moment.” Browne finally entered her yard and walked about in the sunshine, sniffing at the remaining herbs that were drying in the autumn air. He noticed particularly a great quantity of sage remaining and recalled that before he had departed for England she had begun to grow sage to sell.

  He looked about for any sign of the children, but they were apparently all five busy elsewhere with tasks she had set them. He assumed the older girls, on this day of pig killing, had been given charge of the younger while they worked. Most likely they were in the hall.

  When Elizabeth Higgins returned, her apron changed, her hands and face washed, she came right up to him, took both his hands, and said: “Now let me welcome you back properly, Mr. Browne.” She looked happily into his eyes. “It is good to see my neighbor again. I often thought of your adventures these past months, and I prayed for your safety.”

  “I can’t tell you how good it seems to be here again, and to see you flourishing as you are. I have seen only Mr. Cole briefly since landing. It was he who mentioned your suitors.” He smiled.

  “You found me at a busy time. But now we’ll tell one another our adventures.”

  They walked about the gardens, pens, and small outbuildings within her houselot, talking briefly about his new house and prospects. Everything they looked upon was mellowed in autumn light. She answered his inquiries about her children, her winter supplies, and her beliefs as to her missing husband. Behind the appearance of good cheer at his return, however, she seemed, Browne began to think, less than happy, perhaps lonely. She spoke, finally, with slight, understandable bitterness toward her fate. Yet at that moment she nevertheless seemed to him, aside from his family in England, the most solid, deliberate, and honest human being he had encountered in months. He felt shamed by the secrets he held from her.

  He explained that whatever freedom he could salvage from his responsibilities to his new household and enterprises he would use to pursue the enigma of her husband and Balthazar Coffin.

  “That may be difficult, Mr. Browne,” she said, looking down at a patch of old pumpkin vines by which they had stopped. “Mr. Coffin left us, without warning. No one knows where he went.”

  He was, for a second, as stunned as he would have been had someone laid a pole into his stomach. She looked up at him, saying nothing.

  “When?” he asked finally.

  “Sometime during the thaw it was, long after you had shipped for England.”

  “No one knows where he is you say?”

  “Not that I have heard.”

  “Cole never spoke of this. I must speak to him, if you’ll excuse me, Goody Higgins. You know nothing more of this?”

  “Nothing more, Mr. Browne. Only that he is gone from us.�
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  XIV

  “It is just as she tells you,” Cole said, nodding his head comfortably. “He left us with the most secretive preparations. A strange man. Learned, but wanting probity, it would now seem.”

  “Has no one been to ask for him?” Browne asked. “Has he left no place to send messages, associates, any business that might arise? How can a man disappear overnight with a house full of specimens and books?”

  “Nevertheless, this man has done so.”

  “His property has been transferred, or sold?”

  “His houselot and all its meadows upon the river were sold through the court, quite some time ago now.”

  “He must be found.”

  “I would have thought you now had other pressing interests to consume your energies, Richard. Hence I did not mention this matter when we spoke briefly yesterday. I was more interested in your prospects from England, and your news, not in troubling you further at the time. It would seem he is out of harm, or doing harm, now.”

  “My curiosity is much aroused, however. There may never be a resolution in all these matters, now. It is Coffin who still holds the answers to many questions.”

  “You have learned something more, in England, Richard?”

  “Not in England. But I took the opportunity of my travel to read, and reread, a most curious document. A small gift Mr. Coffin made me near the eve of my departure and, as I now know, not long before he departed as well. Mistress Coffin’s private journal. A record of certain times and episodes since her arrival here, including the period of her husband’s expedition to the Indies, and elsewhere.”